by Henry Green
“Well but you’re a woman after all Mamma.”
“And I should hope so too indeed. No but your Daddy and I will have to have a little talk shan’t we you angelic creature,” his mother proposed to Mary with some firmness.
“Of course Mrs. Weatherby. I’m sure Philip never meant . . .”
“Now who are you ‘Mrs. Weatherbying’ dear. And you’re never to call me ‘mother’ because I would simply rather die that’s all” she laughed. “You do agree with me don’t you Liz? John you’d never like Philip to call you Father?”
Mr. Weatherby began to show signs of distress. Before he could open his mouth Jane went on rather fast and anxiously.
“No it’s all Christian names these days isn’t that so, and very sensibly too in my opinion. Anything to do away with the gulf between generations. Oh whenever will these sweet tiresome guests of mine drag themselves off to bed at last. John it’s been such a day and a half and I’m so tired!”
“Bed? You think of bed on a night like this?”
“I truly am so tired John dear!!”
“Well I feel I could go on somewhere. What d’you say Liz?”
“Can Philip and I drop you back?”
“I can’t very well go before the people I’ve invited can I?” Mrs. Weatherby answered Mary in a sharp tone of voice. “Oh do you think I could send for the bill?”
“Really Jane,” Mr. Pomfret protested. “You’d never hear the last if you did.”
She looked round the noisy party, the people who went from table to table with laughing flushed faces.
“They wouldn’t notice you’d hardly think?” she hazarded.
“Shall I get hold of Richard?” Miss Jennings volunteered.
“Perhaps he could go tactfully round Liz to drop a word here and there but not so much that anyone would actually realize.”
“No no both of you,” John said. “Jane can’t break up her own party.”
“I don’t know,” Mr. Weatherby suggested, “but Mary and I don’t feel quite as if we wanted to go home yet. And if we went on somewhere it might start the others off.”
“Of course you darlings want to be alone. Oh don’t I remember! And who wouldn’t!! But Richard has most cruelly deserted me all evening.”
“I shouldn’t wonder he just found he couldn’t intrude,” John explained.
“Then you maintain I should have gone to that beastly bitch’s daughter’s table,” Liz almost shouted. She seemed to have difficulty focusing her eyes.
“My dear Liz,” he replied with gentleness, “I regard you almost as one of the family.”
“Thanks,” she said and appeared to subside. “OK” she said.
“A woman needs another by her at a time like this,” Mrs. Weatherby murmured.
“Well parents,” Philip began. “What say if we simply pushed off?”
“Certainly not,” Jane sharply reproved him. “Not now you’re the guests of the evening. And before this surprise started it was your twenty firster after all. Please remember, if only to please me please remember that!”
“Why of course,” Mary Pomfret agreed and seemed most nervous. “We wouldn’t dream of the slightest thing . . .”
“Hm . . . m,” Mrs. Weatherby replied. “That’s settled then.”
“You know Mary,” her father pronounced “this is a great moment in a woman’s life. You must be extra nice with Jane, it has quite bowled her over.”
“But I am Daddy.”
“Of course you are you angel,” the older woman agreed. “Now John don’t butt in between, we shall manage our own affairs perfectly shan’t we dear? Still I can’t tell why all these people shouldn’t go. I really feel I almost hardly know them now. I’m so tired don’t you understand John? No of course you two must stay at least for the present, dreadfully dull as it must be for you both. I’ve such a tearing headache. God what a day!”
“Anything I can do Mamma?”
“Just don’t let poor darling Penelope the little saint into this secret, promise me will you? I know her better than anyone in the whole wide world but even I couldn’t tell what the results might be now, I wouldn’t dare.”
“I say, she could be one of our bridesmaids,” Philip said.
“I should hope so indeed,” his mother took him up. “If not then I can’t possibly imagine who else. And when we’ve just got her over the man in chains down at Brighton! Oh my dear if you didn’t ask the child why she’d simply rather die.”
“Well it’s not exactly secret now is it Mamma?”
“But we must break it gently don’t you understand,” his mother answered. “We’ve had this wedding trouble before with the sainted little sweet. Oh I blame myself but really John wasn’t it wicked of you and now only four months later we’re to go through this all over again! And when I told her the facts of life a year back, she was just five and a half then, will you believe me but she’s forgotten every word, she must have done from what the little angel’s said lately. Oh isn’t parenthood confusing! I always tell these girls when they get engaged they simply can’t guess what they’re in for.” At which she gaily laughed “Now there I go again,” she went on, beaming at Mary “I do declare I’d quite forgotten for the second! What will you think of me? Oh Philip your stupid Mamma!”
“When they began giving sex instruction at Council schools,” Philip told them, “there was a woman wrote to say the lesson had taken ninety minutes each week off her daughter’s mathematics and surely maths must be more important.”
“My dear boy,” Mrs. Weatherby approved, “that was almost witty.”
“Good for you Philip!” Mr. Pomfret said. “Well then mum’s the word where Pen’s concerned eh?”
“Yes, you must all and every one of you promise faithfully,” Jane agreed. “In fact the less spoken about this secret engagement the better, so it doesn’t get to her sacred little ears poor soul.”
•
Later on, when John Pomfret’s excitement drove him to circulate among the other tables with Liz and Mary in tow, Richard Abbot came back to his rightful place at Jane’s left hand.
“Where have you been?” the lady cried “and what d’you mean by it just when I wanted you!”
“Family matter I thought. Felt an outsider!”
“Well Liz didn’t did she? She stayed. Oh Richard you do let me down at times of crisis.”
“Now my dear this’s been a great day for all. Only natural to be overwrought a bit.”
“Oh I am,” she wailed, her large eyes even more enormous. “Don’t you think Richard you could persuade them to go so I can get home to bed?”
“My dear Jane, can’t do that! Let me fetch you a black coffee.”
“In a moment. No, sit here,” and she patted the chair next her. “Oh Richard I’m worried about little Penelope. You remember how she was after she imagined she’d married John? Well what will it be like when she realizes her brother has got engaged to what she must truly believe to be her own stepdaughter, have you thought of that?”
“She’ll have forgotten everything about it.”
“But how can she I ask you? Richard do concentrate, this is important to me. Her little sanity’s at stake.”
“She’ll have forgotten about that tomfoolery with John I meant.” “If you say so, then you pit yourself against the psychoanalyst. I asked Maud Winder’s advice who’d such a lot of trouble with her girl at one time and I went to the best. He told me it might have bruised Pen’s soul, he couldn’t be sure he said until he had seen the child but I wouldn’t allow that, don’t you think I was right, I mean one never knows where these clever famous men will end does one, playing politics with my own precious darling’s very being, Richard?”
“Don’t hold with ’em myself.”
“Yet I’m not trying to say the chief responsibility doesn’t rest with me, it must of course, it always will, oh my dear the load devilish Providence has put on my poor bended back! No I have to guard her against her sweet self. And when she hears and
starts one of her things the desperate brave little martyr, I shan’t be able to turn everything off as I did to finish the escapist at Brighton by giving the child a bag she liked to hang from the elbow she would insist on holding. Still if I have to I shall think of a ruse, it’s what I’m here for after all. But the strain Richard!”
“Shouldn’t wonder if Philip’s a bit worked up too eh?”
“Oh the boy’s all right. Not normal of course but in absolutely no need of help I can tell you.”
“Don’t know Jane. Big moment in a young fellow’s life, must be.”
“How can you judge? You yourself have simply never even risked it.”
“Not from want of trying.”
“My dear how utterly sweet you can be!” she said. “In spite of this deplorable habit of yours of not being there when you’re wanted. But don’t you see Richard you’re older, tougher. Oh dear have I been horrible, torturing you all this time?”
“If I were you I’d decide Penelope was all right for the moment and concentrate a bit on Philip.”
“How can I make up my mind against my better judgement?”
“Then there’s Mary to consider,” he reminded Mrs. Weatherby. “Tricky few days this in a girl’s life, always will be. She’ll need making a fuss over.”
“Does one never have a rest?”
“You ought to have a man about to take some of the load off your shoulders.”
“To put a greater weight on, you mean! Oh I didn’t intend to be beastly, you must believe. But I’m at my wit’s end Richard.”
•
Later still Philip and Mary made good their escape, got away to a nightclub.
“Well,” he said “I told you! It went quite all right.”
“Oh Philip darling,” she cried above but somehow under the music so that she sounded hoarse, “they’ll never let us marry, I know they won’t, isn’t it awful!”
“But see here,” he objected “everything worked like a dream. I swear this was the only way to deal with my mother. I learned by watching Pen as a matter of fact. When she wants whatever it may be she just takes it; as soon as she feels ill she doesn’t just say she feels something coming on, she is ill and Mamma loves the whole business.”
“We should’ve got married first. There’s what we ought to have told them, not that we were only engaged.”
“I know but it’s so rude to the relations when people elope.”
“Yes you’re right,” she gulped.
“And then eloping’s out of date, it went out with horses.”
“Oh dear now they’re all eaten poor things.”
“Too many people on this island keep carnivorous pets Mary,” he replied. “The waste is fearful.”
“But what happens next Philip?”
“With our parents? Well you know how it is. They’ll argue, there’ll be no end to the amount they’re sure to squawk which they’ll love. And Mamma will weep once or twice and your father will act pretty idiotically for quite a time.”
“Don’t say anything against Daddy darling, please.”
“OK then lay off Mamma.”
“What d’you mean, I haven’t said a word about her!”
“It was just I thought you seemed a bit unenthusiastic when you made out she’d try and stop us.”
“I said ‘they.’ I didn’t say anything against her.”
“Well who is ‘they’ in that case?”
“All of them.”
“But look here it passed off awfully well didn’t it? I mean they seemed overjoyed to me. As a matter of fact I thought my speech went rather grandly didn’t you?”
“Oh you were wonderful darling,” she warmly assured him. “Heavens though I do feel I’d been put through a mangle.”
“Poor sweet,” he said and squeezed the hot hand he was holding. “Shall we dance?”
They danced. Eyes closed, cheek to cheek, better than ever before. When they had had enough for a time they came back to their table.
“That’s the way to do the rumba,” she told him. “See that man on the left, how he makes the girl go round while he stays in the centre.”
“Should I do that with you?”
“Of course darling.”
“I doubt if I ever shall be able.”
“Then take lessons silly.”
“I say,” he said “you do feel better now, you must?”
“I think so, yes.”
“Can’t find out yes or no.”
“But no one can. First something inside says everything is fine,” she wailed, “and the next moment it tells you that something which overshadows everything else is very bad just like an avalanche!”
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I truly am.”
They danced again and again until, as the long night went on they had got into a state of unthinking happiness perhaps.
•
A week later Mrs. Weatherby asked John Pomfret to dinner.
“And how is dear Liz?” she enquired as she brought the man a glass of sherry.
“Quite well I trust.”
“Aren’t you seeing so much of her now then John?”
“But of course,” he said. “The fact is this news about our respective children has rather thrown me out of my normal gait.”
“So it’s become a question of striding between you and Liz,” Mrs. Weatherby commented. Her look on him over the decanter was one of sweet compassion. “Oh my dear,” she continued “you must be careful. Don’t let it end as our love did in great country walks.”
“Really Jane when do I ever get away?” he cried. “All my work in town here, and now this engagement! Philip and Mary are going to keep us pretty well occupied you know. Lot to arrange and so on.”
“I’m sure,” she agreed. “Just sit back and relax.”
“And how is little Penelope?” he enquired.
She made a beautiful flowing gesture of resignation. “Oh my dear,” she said. “Sometimes I bless Providence I have a man like you can share my problems.”
“Isn’t Richard much use then?”
“I don’t know what I should do without him but he has that failing John of the absolutely true, true to one I mean, of being almost completely unimaginative poor dear.”
Mr. Pomfret laughed. “I see,” he said. “Sometimes I have just wondered what you found in Richard.”
“Loyalty,” she breathed and smoothed her skirts.
“Which you never came across in me?”
“Don’t let’s rake up the past darling. What’s over’s over.”
“Enough’s enough you mean?”
She let out a gentle peal of laughter, leaning back on the sofa.
“Oh John aren’t you horrid!” she cried.
“Good sherry you have here,” he said.
“I’m so glad you say that. Ned makes me go to his man and I wouldn’t know.”
“While Maud Winder sends you to her psychologist about Penelope?”
“No but John who told? Oh don’t people talk!”
“You yourself did.”
“I’d quite forgot. No one must know darling, it would be unfair on my sad long suffering angel. Who’d want to marry a girl later who’d been analysed?”
“Would it make any difference?”
“Who can tell my dear? It might quite disgust Pen with all that side of life. So you won’t breathe a word John will you? Besides I never did let him set his terrible hypnotizing eyes on her, no I guard my poppet too well for that. The thing is, she’s heard!”
“Heard what?”
“Why that they’re secretly engaged.”
“There’s not so much secret now surely after the public announcement? It must be all over London.”
“But we’ve put no announcement in the Press yet John?”
“That’s just one of the matters I wanted to have a word about.”
“Yes there’s so much to discuss,” she sighed.
“Then you don’t think Penelope ought to be a bride
smaid? Overexcite her or something?”
“My dear one she’d simply die as things are if Mary didn’t ask her.
It was Isabella. Penelope absolutely jabbers in Italian now, so wonderful, while I can still hardly put two words together. And you see I don’t understand what they say all the time. I spent hours with the dictionary to warn the woman not to breathe a word.” Mrs. Weatherby merrily laughed. “I must have looked a sight poring over it and in the end perhaps I said the opposite, as one does, even gave her orders to tell Penelope at once. Oh John what it is not to understand a syllable of one’s only servant’s beastly tongue! But the child knows, she babbles of the wedding all day and I’m afraid for her.”
“You know Jane,” Mr. Pomfret interrupted “I think I’m going to grow very fond of Philip.”
“I should hope so too. He’s such a splendid bull of a boy.”
“I seem to have got really far with him the last few days.”
“What d’you talk to him about? My brother-in-law?”
Mr. Pomfret appeared to ignore the dryness of her tone. He was peering at the sherry in his glass.
“We shall make friends. I always wanted a son,” he said.
“I’d so like to give Mary just a touch of advice about her clothes,” Jane suggested in a small voice.
“Then we seem ideally suited as in-laws,” Mr. Pomfret laughed. “Though you must not mind if the girl has thoughts of her own; she can be very pigheaded about dresses I believe.”
“Why how d’you mean John?”
“Liz took her round the various establishments some time back and didn’t get her own way much so I understand.”
“But isn’t that natural? You can hardly say darling Liz has any taste at all.”
“I never notice what a woman wears. Liz always looks very nice and neatly turned out to me.”
Mrs. Weatherby smiled.
“Neat is not quite the word!”
“Well for the matter of that I’d like five minutes with Philip about the cut of his jib.”
“He goes to the best tailors.”
“It’s his hats dear Jane.”
“He’s never bareheaded is he? I should hate him to be.”
“So wide brimmed.”
“Now John you’re not to put the poor boy into one of those bowler things or I’ll never speak to you again.”
