Bell Timson

by Marguerite Steen

  There have been a lot of “whys” in my life, questions which have gone on plaguing me and to which still, in my sixties, I have never found the answers. Why, considering all the people who wanted to marry me, did it have to be Harry? I suppose that’s a question that about fifty thousand women are asking themselves every day. Why, of all the men I have ever known, did the only one I ever let down have to be George, whom I loved and respected’ more than the whole lot put together? There isn’t one who wouldn’t admit I gave him a square deal — though plenty of them didn’t deserve it — except George; and he would knock any fellow down for suggesting that I played him false — which I did. You know I did, George. And I suppose I’ll pay for it someday.

  Well, I did my best to comfort him. I told him I’d make him no sort of a wife, because being married ten years to Harry had given me such a horror, I doubted if I would ever get over it — which was true. It was years before I was what they call “normal,” and I’ve never found any pleasure in it from that day to this. And I told him all the mean things about myself, and how I was deeply in debt, which he knew already, and reminded him that a man with his career to make didn’t want to hamper himself with two step daughters. And all George said, when I had finished, was:

  “All right, Bell. I see you don’t want me.”

  I’d rather he had given me a black eye.

  We went out into the Strand, and George stopped a taxi and told the man to take us home. I was so upset, I said nothing about the extravagance, and it was only when we were held up by the traffic at Trafalgar Square that it came over me that this was what George had planned: us driving back together as a happy engaged couple! And even though it had all gone wrong, he was standing by his plans like a gentleman. All the cakewalk had gone out of me by now; I was so miserable I could have cried; and I clutched his arm and said:

  “For goodness’ sake, George, don’t waste your money. Why don’t we have a nice ride on the top of a bus?”

  But having given the man his orders, he wouldn’t change them. So on we went, and it was one of those old, creaking taxis with the springs gone, that pick up every dent in the paving. We would have been much more comfortable on a bus.

  Presently George said, “You’ll have to marry somebody, you know. You’ll never manage on the alimony.”

  “I don’t mean to,” I snapped back at him.

  It was very little alimony, much less than my solicitors had wanted me to ask, but I knew it was as much as Harry could afford. A man has to live, and if he couldn’t keep it up it would be no use suing for back payments. I had worked it out carefully, so that if he kept his job he would have just enough to live on, and what he paid me would about cover the rent and the coal and gas bills. He tried hard to wriggle even out of that, but the lawyers were too sharp and made short work of the fancy statement he put in about his earnings.

  “Then how are you going to manage?” George was asking. I guessed what was coming; he was working round to lending me some money, and I wasn’t having any of that. I had my pride, and I’d treated George badly enough, without putting my hand in his pocket. “Don’t be silly, Bell; you and the children can’t live on air. You’ve not only got yourself to think of, you know; there’s the kids.”

  “Oh, shut up! Who else d’you suppose I think of?” And all of a sudden I started to cry. It seemed as if I couldn’t bear George, of all people, accusing me of forgetting the girls. I’d already had it from my sisters-in-law, about being a bad mother, and although I knew it was a lie, it was the only thing that seemed able to hurt me. “You should be ashamed to say such a thing, George Glaize, when you know if it wasn’t for the girls my head would be in the gas oven!”

  Well, then George was very nice to me, and it seemed quite natural to let him put his arm round my waist and lay my head on his shoulder. Being George, he took no advantage of it; I might have been his maiden aunt for all he showed of his feelings. How different from Harry, who would hate you all the time but put you down as soon as lay a finger on you. I’d got to the point when even in our quarrels I wouldn’t dare go to the same side of the room Harry was on. So I was in a mood to appreciate George and like him all the more for the way he behaved himself.

  “I haven’t worked it out yet,” I sniffed presently. “But I give you my word we shan’t be living long on the money I get from Harry.” The look he turned on me was so full of consternation that I burst out laughing.

  “You needn’t think I’m going on town!” I enjoyed shocking him sometimes. “I shan’t keep a knocking shop either; that would hardly do with Kathleen and Jo to look after, would it? Besides, though we do our best to forget them, there’s my family. No, I promise you that in some perfectly sober, respectable way the family will approve I’ll make more money in the next five years than —” I was going to say, than you ever made in your life, which would have been a heartless thing to say to George, who was being so kind; and I substituted rather lamely: “ — than you’d expect.”

  “I don’t see how you’re going to do it.” George sounded put out. “Even if you go back to nursing there’s no money in it.”

  “Who’s talking about nursing?” I was getting angry with him for being such a wet blanket. “I’m not after chicken feed! You can take it from me, I’m going to be in the big money! House with servants, a car, holidays abroad — all that kind of thing. And the girls shall have all the things I’d have been able to give them if my father hadn’t died and left us without any money.”

  I don’t mind confessing now it was boasting; I knew if I could keep us decently fed and clothed, and the girls at some inexpensive boarding school, it would be about as much as I could manage; the rest was what people nowadays call baloney. But it was the unbelieving look in George’s eye that set me off, and once started, there was no stopping me. “They’ll go to a finishing school when they’re old enough, and learn all the accomplishments. They’ll ride and swim and skate and ski in their holidays; they’ll dance and meet the right people —”

  George was looking at me as if he thought I’d gone mad.

  “If those are your ideas,” he said slowly, “no wonder you don’t want me.”

  “I’m only joking!”

  But actually I was a little drunk with my own words. They talk a lot about inhibitions these days: a catchword that psychoanalysts have pushed into the language. Things you thrust deep down inside your mind, so deep you can pretend they are not there. You go to a psychiatrist and he fishes them up for you, and at first you feel terrible, then you’re tremendously relieved, because they have been poisoning you for years. All my inhibitions seemed to pour out of me like a fountain — things I had longed for and pretended I didn’t long for, because it was no use — and danced in the air like a flock of butterflies. And it seemed, now that Harry was gone, there was nothing to prevent my catching and keeping them, in all their beauty, forever. It’s a long time since I blushed, but I can still feel the color coming up my cheeks, so hot that it brought tears into my eyes. I laughed a bit, because I felt shy, and blinked to keep them from falling. And George laid his hand kindly over mine and said:

  “Well, Bell, I hope you find the man who’ll give you all those things. I’m sure you deserve them.”

  “No, no, George, you’ve got it wrong,” I told him hastily. “There’s no man in this; I’ve learned my lesson, and I don’t need to learn it twice. No man will give me what I want for myself and the girls on the terms I have to offer. I’ve said I don’t mean to marry again. That’s final. And I’m not going to be somebody’s mistress — not because of morality; hell to morality!” George winced as if I had stuck a pin in him, but I thought, It’s good for him to take a knock now and again, and if he doesn’t thank me, perhaps his wife will someday! “Living with Harry was morality, wasn’t it? All right; that lets me out. But nobody’s going to keep me, because I want my independence. Forget that nonsense I talked — cars and servants and trips to the continent. I was just joking. But I promise you i
n twelve months’ time I’ll be making a decent living for the three of us and after that — well, we’ll see.”

  We were just getting to Streatham Common, and I remembered I had to fetch the girls.

  “Put me down on the corner, George.”

  “What about going round that way and picking the kids up? It’ll save you a bus ride home.”

  “Thank you very much, George; I’d like to walk across the common — and I’ve got to think up a tale for Kathleen and Jo, about their daddy having gone for a long holiday. Kathleen’s a sharp little thing for eight, but thank goodness Jo’s a baby; she’ll swallow it like a chocolate drop.”

  George got out of the taxi first and helped me out. He never forgot these courtesies, but he made a little too much fuss about them, like a person who has been told the right thing to do but not had much chance of practicing it. He stood with his hat off, holding my hand, as if he would have liked to say something but couldn’t find out how to begin. I felt very tender and sorry for him again. Then I wanted to laugh, for I saw he’d got his funeral face back, and he was wondering if he had made a faux pas in proposing to me right, as it were, under the shadow of the decree absolute — as indeed he had, but who cared? He looked so mournful that if I hadn’t been in a hurry I’d have taken him across the road to the Greyhound and stood him a pint of bitter. He’d have spoiled it, of course, by not letting me pay for it, but the brightening effect would have been the same.

  However, I hadn’t mentioned it to George, but I had to make another call before I went to Stanley’s — which reminds me: I wish I could have seen Nora’s face if I had turned up there with George! “Losing no time,” “Off with the old” — all the things that don’t need putting into words if you’ve got a regular rubber face like Nora’s. After all, bless her heart, why shouldn’t she have the fun of thinking I was a light woman? She got little enough to amuse her — married to Stanley.

  “I’m sure it’s all been a great strain,” George was saying, leaving me to guess whether he meant the divorce or the proposal. He was doing the strong, silent man very well, on the whole. “I hope you’ll have a good rest when you get home.”

  “God bless you, George,” I said. “You’re my best friend.”

  I meant it then, and I mean it today.

  Chapter II

  I SUPPOSE I ought to say something about the events that went before that session with George at the Copper Kettle. I don’t want to harp on the divorce or to be vindictive about poor old Harry: they say time is a mellowing influence. Whether it is or not, I’ve always tried to get bitter thoughts about things or people out of my system as quickly as possible. Bitterness is like bile: it’s bad for the looks and the constitution, and if I’ve managed to preserve myself pretty well for my years it’s as much due to not harboring grievances as it is to my morning dose of Eno.

  Looking back, I don’t remember a single minute when I would have harmed Harry or even wished him ill. Harry’s conditioning was done in his youth, and, as you can ruin a horse or a dog by bad handling, so you can ruin a man. Sometimes the animal can be gentled back to decency, but the man — never. It seems strange that I, who was such a good judge of dogs and horses, couldn’t tell a ruined man when I met him. And odder still, I believe, if it had not been for the girls I should still be with Harry, trying to help him, trying to make the best of things. No woman likes to admit she has failed, and there were patches of good in Harry — though I’ll allow that, latterly, you had to look for them with a fine comb and a magnifying glass.

  I would not talk about my family, except that I always liked the girls to know they had good people on their mother’s side. I don’t know much about Harry’s; he gave me to understand they were gentry, but he always sneered at them and declared they had treated him shabbily. Except for an uncle, who turned up one night with a bottle of White Horse (or it may have been Haig) in his pocket, and broke the springs of the sofa, I never met any of the Timsons. It’s not fair to judge a family by a couple of poor samples, and I always say we are what we make ourselves, but it helps if the materials good.

  My father was a veterinary surgeon in the little country town of Crowle. His practice was very well situated, for, beside the hunting people who kept up establishments in the neighborhood, there were training stables within three or four miles and all around was farming land. The name of Lambton of Crowle was a household word in those parts, as you can imagine, and though from time to time other vets tried to settle and set up rivalry, they soon found they had no chance against Father’s fine record and his popularity with the farming and hunting crowd. Actually he had more work than he could handle and would have done well to take a partner, but he was waiting for one of the boys to come into the business, instead of bringing in another name which would carry less weight with the clients. As a matter of fact my sister Laura and I had more instinct for the work than any of his three sons, but in those days — back in the 1890s — no one had even heard of women veterinaries, and not only Mother, but Father himself, would have been shocked at the suggestion.

  The little town of Crowle is typical of many you will find in the rural South of England. There is the wide High Street, faced up each side with old red brick houses — the Georges, William and Mary, one or two even going back as far as Queen Anne, each one a little bit different from its neighbor, showing in the design of a porch or the setting of the windows the tastes of the people for whom they were built, yet all in the same dignified tune. Each had its own face, its decent, self-respecting personality; in fact they were so like persons to me that, walking up the High Street, I’d instinctively twitch up my stockings and feel if my skirt were straight, just as one did going into church.

  In those days they were nearly all private residences, except Dr. Lever s, about halfway down on the left towards the market, and Mr. Hurcotts, the solicitors, next but two on the same side; and, more or less opposite, the bank, where Father went on Fridays to take a glass of sherry with Mr. Runcorn and draw the wages. Now they’re antique shops and insurance companies and Rates and Taxes; Mr. Hurcott’s is the Buttercup Tearoom, and the very handsome double-fronted house next door — I forget who it belonged to — a youth hostel. It is good for young people to live m beautiful surroundings, but I doubt whether any of those girls with their bottoms sticking out of khaki shorts and the youths with greasy hair notice the Georgian architraves, and I hear they’ve ruined the paneling.

  They’ve taken out the ground-floor fronts of seven or eight of the houses and put in plate glass; there’s a radio shop, a branch of one of the London furnishing stores, and I’m told there’s going to be a Woolworth’s. It hurts me every time I drive through Crowle. There’s got to be progress, but progress isn’t taking a beautiful old house and cutting it about. I can feel the knife every time I look at those old rose-colored bricks and remember the little bow windows curving out on the cobbles, and the flights of steps, gently hollowed out in the middle of the treads, that led up to handsome front doors between the fluted pillars.

  In my day there were a few little shops, but they fitted into the design, with their small-paned windows, bow fronts, and the nice scrolled lettering in gilt over their doors. There was an old fellow called Badgett who used to do all the lettering; very critical of his work he was, and if he was not quite pleased with the way it had gone he would call round, weeks or even months later, take it all out, and do it again, without charging. The last sign he ever painted is up still, very faint and almost illegible, over Pumphrey’s, the chemist’s: the only one of the old fronts left on the High Street, a relic of times when a man took pride in his work, because he was his own master, not the slave of a union.

  Whenever I want to feel happy I remember the High Street on a summer morning, when the shadows of the plane trees dappled the pavement and sunlight came dancing off brass knockers and door handles; and there was the hot smell of wallflowers from the window boxes and fresh bread and sugar buns from Almond’s, the bakery. I’ve see
n country towns in France, Belgium, Norway, Sweden, Germany, and Holland, but I’ve never seen anything so sweet and wholesome as Crowle in my girlhood days. (I wouldn’t insult Crowle by comparing it with any of the Latin countries; I never came back from Italy or Spain without feeling I wanted a good carbolic bath.) I don’t know if it’s my imagination or if the people were just as wholesome and sweet as the place, but that’s how they seem, looking back.

  Our house stood — still stands — just on the crossroads, where they have brought in the new by-pass. It was one of the newer houses — early Victorian: a square, stucco place with a big porch and a glass conservatory built out over it, set well back on its carriage sweep, with three cedar trees, flat-topped, like Chinese umbrellas, between it and the wall that faced on the high road. Father bought it for the stables, which were just what he wanted for his business, though it cost more than he should have afforded and was too large, even for our biggish family; and he had his office, dispensary and surgery, kennels and looseboxes, beautifully kept, and a model of what such places should be. He was as particular about his dispensary as a doctor with human patients; in fact a few used to say they were surer of Lambton’s bottles than they were of Dr. Lever’s, which of course was just friendly prejudice.

  We children grew up in an atmosphere of love. That was Mother’s doing. Father would have been fonder of us if we had been horses or dogs. Not that he was ever anything but kind and jolly with us — it was just that he could not see that human animals were as important as beasts. There used to be a tale of how Mother went out and asked Father to look after Stanley, who was then a baby in his cradle, and how she came back and found Stan bawling, with a lump the size of a hen egg on his head and the cradle on top of him, while Father was giving a puppy a dose of bismuth for wind on the stomach. Mother never trusted him with us after that. He meant well of course; we were always being blistered for our sprains — which was hard on Mother, who disapproved of it, and on Ozzy, who had a very tender hide (like a girl’s, they used to say) and whose blisters tormented him for weeks, and on me, who had a course of condition powders (Small Dogs, Cats, and Puppies) because the spring had brought me out spotty — but that happened to do the trick. There was always a kind of friendly rivalry between Father and Dr. Lever, where we children were concerned, that kept poor Mother on the jump; she swore he would poison us one day.