Caroline

by Richmal Crompton

  Although Caroline’s attentiveness had often irked Fay when the two of them lived alone, she found that she was jealous now that it was transferred to Susan. She often felt sulky and neglected when Caroline was fussing so affectionately over Susan. And sometimes she suspected that Caroline knew that she felt like that and was pleased by it. Caroline didn’t seem at all worried by the tragedy of Susan’s marriage. She seemed, in fact, happier than she had seemed for a long time.

  But, despite Caroline’s cheerfulness, there was a curiously oppressive atmosphere about the house, so that at times Fay felt that she could hardly breathe in it. She missed Billy, too. Billy would have made it all less horrible, but she hadn’t seen or spoken to him since her talk with Caroline. She now did some of her home-work in the dinner hour and left school earlier. That meant that she got home before Billy was out of school and so could not walk home with him. She refused all Sybil‘s invitations to tea on the score of work. Sybil smiled and said, “I’m not going to take offence. I’m far too fond of you for that. I’ll just go on asking you till you do come.”

  The expedition to Town with Philippa and Richard in Richard’s car came just when she felt she couldn’t bear things any longer. It was a glorious respite. As soon as she heard of it her depression fell away, and a bubbling well of happiness seemed to spring up inside her. Even her headache felt better. Instinctively she tried to hide her excitement from Caroline, lest even at the last minute she might decide to join the party. But she didn’t. She just stood at the door, smiling gravely till the car was out of sight. . . . Then a heavenly sense of relief seized Fay. It was all right. It was really happening. Nothing could stop it now.

  During the journey Philippa and Richard teased her and made jokes that Caroline would have considered unworthy, and they all laughed a great deal, and Fay felt so happy that she wished it could go on for ever. It was over at last, however—far too quickly—and Richard took them to the oculist’s, then went to garage the car.

  The oculist was a tall thin man with a kindly manner that put Fay at her ease at once and seemed a natural part of the wonderful holiday. He examined her eyes carefully and said that there was nothing wrong with them and that the pain was neuralgia.

  “Oh, I’m so glad,” laughed Fay. “I was dreading having spectacles. I know I should be always losing them.”

  He gave Fay some illustrated papers to look at and took Philippa into another room.

  “She ought to be thoroughly overhauled by a doctor,” he said. “I should say that her nerves are in a pretty bad state. Has she been subject to any severe nervous strain lately?”

  “She’s working hard for a scholarship examination,” said Philippa.

  “That must be it. She’s obviously not got the stamina for that sort of thing. Anyway, see what the doctor says. I know what I’d say in his place.”

  They met Richard for lunch, and it was Richard who suggested taking Fay to hear Moiseiwitch at the Queen’s Hall while Philippa looked at flats. Fay’s face flushed and paled with excitement at the suggestion.

  “But . . . Oh, how lovely!” she stammered, then made them laugh by saying quite seriously, “I feel I don’t mind how soon I die after this.”

  They arranged to meet at Marcia’s for tea. Philippa spent the afternoon looking at several of the new blocks of flats that had recently appeared in London. They were all furnished in impeccable taste, but she found something depressing in the thought of the seven or eight hundred of them under the same roof, all furnished in exactly the same way.

  “I suppose I’m old-fashioned,” she said to Marcia, “but this modern craze for uniformity does depress me so. I think I’ll come up again next week and look at unfurnished flats, and then I’ll start haunting sales and buy some second-hand furniture. It will be far more exciting. One couldn’t ever make companions of furniture that had been chosen by somebody else, and I like to make companions of my things.”

  The meeting between her and Marcia had been unexpectedly easy. They had taken to each other at once. They were sitting now by the tea-table, waiting for Richard and Fay to come from the concert.

  Marcia shrugged faintly when she heard about Susan.

  “I’m not surprised, of course. Susan’s a dear little thing, but she hasn’t much character, and she’s always looked on Caroline as a sort of god. I often wondered whether, when it came to the point, Ken would be able to hold his own against Caroline.”

  “It’s Fay I’m worried about,” said Philippa, “not Susan.”

  “Yes . . . Fay’s a different proposition. Fay has character, though so far Caroline’s managed to dominate her completely.”

  “It reacts on her health.”

  “Yes, I can see that. She looks worn-out. She gets it, of course, in a concentrated form. She’s the baby, the ewe lamb. I wonder Caroline let her come with you.”

  “She wouldn’t have done but for Susan. . . . The tragedy is that she’s really fond of them and that they’re really fond of her.”

  “I know. . . . I never got on with Caroline, but in a way I’ve always admired her. She was wonderful when they were children. Really wonderful. She did give up her whole life to them. She was utterly devoted. When Robert had pneumonia she didn’t go to bed for a week. And it wasn’t only what she did. It was what she was. She really was sweet to them. I have to hand it to her, though I dislike her. She was always so patient and kind. She loved them so terribly. Terribly’s the word. They were her children, and she was their entire world. She made a lovely home for them. She was always arranging games and amusements for them. They didn’t need any outside interests or friends. She saw to that. And she couldn’t bear it when they grew older and developed individualities of their own and wanted to try their wings. She fought like a demon—literally like a demon—to keep them as dependent on her as they’d been when they were babies. She never let them see what she was trying to do, of course—she’s too clever for that—and they adore her, all three of them—even Fay, though she’s eighteen, and is treated as if she were still in the nursery. If it weren’t so horrible, it would be funny.”

  “They’re not particularly fond of each other, are they?”

  “Oh no. Caroline saw to that, too. Divide et impera—that’s her motto. She was very clever at planting little seeds of division and distrust among the three of them. Of course, the difference in their ages helped. . . . What do you think of Richard?”

  “I like him. . . . He and Caroline are great friends, aren’t they?”

  “Yes. She’s never told me so, but I believe he’s proposed more than once. He’s a dear old thing, though a little slow-witted. He’s taken her at her face value. The perfect example of womanly self-sacrifice. The elder sister who’s given up her whole life to her little brother and sisters. And, of course, it’s true. She is . . . she has . . . I think it would do her good to marry Richard and have half-a-dozen children of her own. It would work the poison out of her system.”

  “I gather that you and she don’t see much of each other.”

  “No. . . . Neil and I used to go to stay with her, but—even though I understood her so well, I always began to have a feeling of grievance against Neil when I was staying there. I don’t know how she did it. She knew I’d never belong to her, but she couldn’t bear to see me belonging to Neil. Her possessiveness is a sort of disease. I shouldn’t be surprised to hear any day that she’d gone off her head.”

  “You and Neil are happy, aren’t you? I’ve only to look at you to see that.”

  “Yes. We get on very well on the whole. As well as two people can get on who have to live on the top of each other in a modern flat. It’s an acid test, isn’t it? I wonder so many people survive it. My feelings for Neil have always gone round in a sort of circle. I suppose that most people’s for most people do. He begins to get on my nerves, and gets on them more and more and more till I wonder how much longer I can bear him, and then quite suddenly he seems terribly nice again, and I think I’m lucky to have hi
m. I believe his feelings for me go round and round like that, too, but it was only when we stayed with Caroline that we were on each others’ nerves at the same time—and so badly that we could hardly speak to each other. That’s why we stopped going, though we never said so to each other. I just said that I thought it was too much for Caroline and he agreed. . . . Fay’s the real problem, of course. It’s tragic how Caroline’s made her give up her music just because it took her into a world where she couldn’t go with her. She has real talent, you know, but that meant nothing to Caroline. Caroline saw it only as something that would separate them. If she just goes to college and then takes a teaching job—in Bartenham, probably—Caroline can continue to order her life for her indefinitely as she did Susan’s, which is all she cares about.”

  “I want to have Fay to stay with me when I get my flat.”

  Marcia laughed.

  “You won’t, my dear. I’ve often tried. Caroline always has some perfectly good reason why she can’t come. Poor little Fay! It’s hardest on her. She’s much more sensitive than either of the other two. And she—needs her own life in a way that Susan never did. That’s the artist in her. Robert, of course, being a boy, Caroline never tried to possess in the same way in which she’s possessed Susan and Fay. Still—he adores her. Effie was sick of the sound of her name long before they were married. Her mistake was the same as Ken’s—in thinking that it would be all right once they were married. If she’d only pretended to think Caroline as marvellous as Robert thought her it would have been all right. Caroline has no personal vanity, but she’s got a sort of diseased appetite for affection. It’s pathetic in a way. And she must possess wholly. Don’t you adore the way she talks about ‘loyalty’ and ‘disloyalty’? Anyone who likes her is ‘loyal’ and anyone who doesn’t is ‘disloyal.’ She’s just a little stupid, too, with all her cleverness. It would be quite easy to pretend to adore her even if you didn’t. Evelyn’s proved that. I believe that, at the bottom, Evelyn hates her more than anyone, but she knows which side her bread’s buttered. It would have been better for Effie if she’d realised that. Oh well . . . I’m far enough away from it all, I’m glad to say. I’d get out of it, too, if I were you, as soon as I could. . . . Oh, here they are!”

  Richard and Fay entered. Fay was flushed and starry-eyed.

  “It’s been lovely,” she said in a dreamy voice. “I shall remember it all my life.”

  “It evidently quite came up to her expectations,” smiled Richard, “but she’s decided not to die immediately, after all.”

  “I can’t tell you what it was like,” said Fay.

  She was aglow, with a soft radiant happiness. None of them had ever seen her like that before. The shy uncertainty, the faint unhappiness, that hung about her normally had gone. It was as if she had been swept away from them into another world.

  “Well, how did the flat-hunting go on?” said Richard, sitting down by Philippa.

  Marcia poured out tea while Philippa described the various flats she had inspected. Fay sat wrapped in her dreams, her cheeks still flushed, her eyes bright. She ate little and heard nothing that was said around her.

  Neil came in when they were half-way through tea. He was a big, red-haired man, with a rough-hewn face and humorous expression, to whom Philippa at once took a liking.

  “Here’s a mother-in-law for you,” said Marcia. “I’m afraid she won’t run to type, but you must just do the best you can.” She smiled at Philippa. “Neil’s always missed a mother-in-law. He says that he likes to sample all the experiences that life has to offer, and that that is one of the most poignant.”

  Neil smiled at her as he shook hands.

  “No, she doesn’t look really typical,” he said. “Not poignant enough. What does one call her? Philippa? Good!”

  “He was always so glad that you weren’t on hand to show him snapshots of me in my childhood,” said Marcia. “He does so hate snapshots of people in their childhood.”

  He laughed and tweaked Fay’s ear as he went to his seat. She gave him her sweet dreamy smile.

  “And Marcia’s just been telling me how much she enjoyed being motherless,” said Philippa. “I appear to have been, despite myself, the perfect parent.”

  They talked in a desultory fashion as they had tea. There was a happy sense of intimacy about them, of absence from strain. It formed a pleasant background to Fay’s dreams.

  “How’s Caroline?” said Neil suddenly to Philippa.

  Something of Richard’s serenity dropped from him at the question. He had been thinking a good deal about Caroline lately. When he proposed to her, the week before Philippa arrived, he meant it to be for the last time. If she refused him, he would not propose again. He would put her out of his mind as an impossible dream. Though he still did not mean to propose again he was worried—not by the thought of her refusal, but by a growing feeling of relief at her refusal. In these last few weeks Caroline seemed to have changed. Or rather he had a suspicion that Caroline was the same, but that he was looking at her, as it were, from a different angle. He felt as if he had walked round to the back of an imposing statue and found it hollow. Or as if the imposing statue had suddenly begun to dwindle before his gaze till it had reached pigmy size. He didn’t know how it had happened or indeed exactly what had happened. It was since Philippa had come, of course, but that hadn’t anything to do with it. Or had it? Was it something large and generous in Philippa that had revealed Caroline’s smallness to him? Had Philippa’s keen sense of humour shown him that Caroline was quite devoid of any sense of humour at all? Had Philippa’s quick amused interest in everything around her shown Caroline as rather pompous, rather limited, rather self-sufficient?

  Then there was Susan. . . . Everyone in Bartenham knew that Susan and Kenneth Melsham had quarrelled and that Susan had come back to live with Caroline. There were a dozen different accounts of the affair going about the town. But it wasn’t the fact that Susan had left her husband that worried Richard. It was the fact that Caroline seemed to be making no effort to bring the young people together. When he—very tentatively—questioned her on the subject, she hinted darkly that young Melsham was living a grossly immoral life and that she had only just rescued Susan from him in time, which was absurd, on the face of it, for young Melsham, though a little headstrong and quick-tempered, perhaps even a little weak, was as decent a boy as one could hope to meet anywhere. It wasn’t like Caroline. She’d been so different in the case of Robert and Effie. He didn’t know Robert very well—Effie he knew hardly at all—but Caroline had often told him about them, and, reading between the lines, he knew how hard she had worked to make that marriage a success, how patient she had been with harum-scarum little Effie, straightening the tangles of her inefficient housekeeping, doing her accounts for her, engaging her maids, taking over her domestic responsibilities, ready always to go to the rescue cheerfully and without reproach, however tired or busy she was. She’d saved the marriage from shipwreck a dozen times. He could tell that even from her own account, and Caroline always tried to minimise the good she did. And then, finally, by a stroke of good luck or genius, she’d engaged Evelyn Marston, who appeared to be almost as capable and tactful as Caroline herself. Effie was certainly lucky in having Caroline for a sister-in-law. Or was she? The question was a monstrous one, but it lodged itself suddenly and immovably in his mind, as he sat stirring his tea and listening to Marcia’s chatter. Suppose he knew Effie and Robert and Evelyn intimately and hadn’t only Caroline’s story to go on, would Effie seem as fortunate as Caroline’s story made her out to be? What did Effie think of Caroline? He felt, for the first time, very curious about that. He glanced at Marcia. She was laughing at something that Philippa had just said, and an elusive likeness between the two women struck him. It didn’t lie in any particular feature. It was rather some quality—something keen and humorous and generous that was lacking in Caroline. What did Marcia think of Caroline? He had never seen much of Marcia, and Caroline had generally met any
reference to her with, “I’m very fond of Marcia, of course, but we haven’t really very much in common.” His infatuation for Caroline had made that equivalent to an unqualified condemnation of Marcia. Moreover, he’d secretly resented the way in which Marcia had left Caroline to bear the burden of their father’s young family alone and unaided. Now suddenly he felt curious to know what Marcia’s account of the situation would have been, what Marcia thought of Caroline. . . . And Philippa. . . . What did Philippa think of Caroline? He’d give a good deal to know that, too. He’d ask her one day when he knew her better, though he felt that he knew her extraordinarily well already. What a delightful companion she’d been on the drive and during lunch, so quick and amusing and responsive and understanding! He mustn’t lose touch with her when she left Bartenham. He would drive her to Town again on her next flat-hunting expedition, and when she was settled in London he would come up for an occasional evening, and they would have dinner together and go to a show. . . . He was conscious of a feeling of relief that Caroline had so definitely and finally refused him. . . . His gaze travelled on to Fay. There was still that dreamy, rapturous haze about her. Her soft eyes were fixed on the distance. She saw nothing, heard nothing, of what was going on around her. Had it been anyone but Fay you would have said that she was in love. But Fay was living again every moment of this afternoon. . . . And yet another doubt of Caroline arose in his mind. It was as if seeds had been sown on a vacant plot of ground without the owner’s knowledge, and suddenly all began to spring up simultaneously, to his surprise and dismay. Caroline had seemed so wise in her decision that Fay must give up all interests that might interfere with her career. But—surely music itself should have been her career. . . . In the interval of the concert she had talked to him with an enthusiasm that had amazed him. She was transfigured—a Fay he had never seen before. Then he had said something about her going to college, and it had brought her abruptly to earth. All the glow had faded. She had become listless, dejected, as if he had reminded her of something distasteful. He had at once taken her back to the subject of music, and the glow had returned. Had Caroline been as wise in this matter as he had thought? She could not realise, of course, that she was depriving the child of what was part of her very being, but—oughtn’t she to have realised? Could one tell her? No, he remembered that Caroline never took kindly to advice given her by other people. She liked to give advice but not to receive it. Again he pulled himself up with a sort of horror. It was dreadful to be criticising Caroline like this, Caroline who had always seemed to him the ideal of womanhood. Disloyal . . . that was it. He remembered her saying that Marcia was ‘disloyal.’ . . . Watching Fay, he became aware of a feeling of uneasiness. Despite her radiance, there was a look of strain about her, a suggestion of something fine worn almost to breaking point.