Bell Timson

by Marguerite Steen

  “Well — I suppose you’ll have to start sometime. Mind now, if I let you do your shopping by yourself, you’re not to hang about outside the windows. Go right in, look round, and if you don’t see what you want, come straight out and go to the next place. And if anybody speaks to you — never mind if it’s a man or a woman — you’re to take no notice —”

  “Oh Kay’s arms went ecstatically round her mother’s neck. How easy to buy a child’s affection — just by letting it do as it waited! How easy — and how bad: for oneself as well as the child.

  “And mind you fix with Susan where you’re to meet, and don’t keep her waiting a minute, or I can’t let you do it again.”

  It was almost as much for her own sake as for Kay’s that Bell had given in. Common sense told her that little girls of Kathleen’s age were already earning their living, going in tubes, busses, tramping the streets in their flimsy high-heeled shoes, and coming to no harm — unless they chose to. Evidently she could not keep the girl in leading strings for the rest of her life. It would be all right if she had Jo with her ... Oh, don’t be an idiot! Bell told herself irritably. They can’t go about like a pair of Siamese twins forever. Yet ... If it was Jo I wouldn’t turn a hair: that one’s got her head screwed on the right way, although she’s two years younger — it’s high time I disciplined myself! thought Bell. She’s got to learn, and it’s a kind of last treat for the holidays.

  The telephone trilled in Richard’s office. His secretary lifted the receiver and held it to a languid ear. “One moment please.” She covered the mouthpiece with her hand.

  “It’s a Miss Timson.”

  “Hand it over.” Thinking she had the name wrong, and that it must be Bell, Richard took the call.

  “Hello, Bell.”

  A hushed, very breathless voice informed him, “Its Kay.”

  “Good Lord, child, what are you doing?” Her voice had sent a pang through him; something must surely be wrong for Kay to telephone — a thing she had never done before.

  “I’ll be in Bond Street, on the corner by Pinet’s, about eleven or a little bit after. Could — could you be there?”

  “Just a minute ... What is there this morning? Anybody coming?”

  His secretary shook her head, strangling the yawn of a long boredom as she consulted the pad.

  “Nothing until your manicure appointment at twelve-thirty.”

  “See how we run the country!” he jeered. “I can make that, Kay. Eleven prompt. And listen: no waiting on corners. Meet me at Barbellion’s — inside; we’ll have some chocolate — or whatever you like for elevenses.”

  “Heavenly!” she breathed. “Good-by.”

  Richard drew a breath of relief; it did not sound like anything serious. Were the children playing truant? Or had Bell let them off the leash, for some incalculable reason, to ramble round the West End?

  He was already there, at the counter, arming himself with boxes of candies, when the door was swung open by the commissionaire and Kay came in. The folds of her thin frock, molding themselves to her thighs, reminded him of a little Nike; there was urgency in the forward tilt of her body and the questing turn of her long, slim neck; something thrilling, suppressed, innocently clandestine about her poise, about her compressed lips that parted in a smile that lit up the whole of her when she saw him. Really, Kay! I’ve never seen anybody smile with her shoulders, with her wrists, with her feet and ankles, in that divinely shameless fashion.

  “Where’s Jo?” He looked across her head as she slid her gloved hand into his.

  “She’s having her teeth done. I’m by myself!”

  Ha-ha, la belle jaune giroflée! Are we blowing trumpets, thought Richard, or what? He had a self-conscious feeling that they were being looked at; he took her arm to steer her on into the tearoom, while she, breathless and unaware of anyone but the two of them, tilted back her head to answer his smile; he could see a vein throbbing in her long throat.

  “Do you mean you’ve — bolted?”

  “Mother knows — I mean, about being by myself. I had to get Susan a birthday present, so I couldn’t very well bring her with me, could I? — when it’s meant to be a surprise!”

  She looked older; the fashion of bobbing the hair had standardized women’s ages until one had to look twice before deciding whether one’s neighbor was forty or fourteen. Seated with her back to the wall, the light above casting the shadow of her hatbrim on her face, Kay might be seventeen or eighteen; the age, in fact, for legitimately having an admirer who brought her to Barbellion’s to drink chocolate at eleven. Richard gave an uneasy glance at other tables. He had been a fool to suggest Barbellion’s, a thoughtless, selfish fool. How to protect Kay from the sly-eyed curiosity of the women who were likely to come in became his preoccupation and stiffened their conversation, Kay herself being so excited that she had almost nothing to say. She kept looking at her wrist watch and, obviously, counting the minutes.

  “What are you going to get Susan?”

  “I don’t know. It’s time we were looking, isn’t it?”

  “Shall we try Smythson’s? They have good leather things — or she might like some dashing note paper, with an initial.”

  “I’ve only got two pounds to spend,” said Kay gravely.

  The morning was hot and bright, and the sun threw their long-legged shadows before them as they went into the street.

  “Back to school — on Tuesday, isn’t it?” (Hypocrite, pretending not to know!)

  “Yes. Oh, Mr. Dick! Did you say anything to Mother?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did she say?”

  He knew he could not cloud her sunshine by a description of Bell’s uncompromising reception of his attempt.

  “I think we’ll have to talk about it again, Kay. After all, she’s got a year, hasn’t she, to make up her mind?”

  “Two terms; you have to give a term’s notice — that’s one of the rules.”

  “All right. I’ll keep on working on her.”

  “I wish,” burst suddenly from Kay, “we could write to one another! Oh dear. That’s another rule. I’m sure to have thousands of things to tell you: things it would be no use to tell Mummy —”

  “Save them up for the holidays,” counseled Richard. “We’ll have an orgy of ‘telling’ when you come home for Christmas.”

  “But one forgets such a lot,” she lamented.

  It was one of Smythson’s “blue” weeks: blocks of deckled paper, fans of envelopes coquetting with quills and sticks of mammoth sealing wax opposed the frivolity of the boudoir to the baronial majesty of gold-tooled tree calf and the pale, polished pigskin of country houses.

  “Everything looks terribly expensive,” whispered Kay.

  “Oh, we’ll find something.” Frankly Richard was not sanguine; cellar books, game records, and sets of Burke, Bradshaw, and Whittaker were not exactly in Susan’s line. He had suggested Smythson’s with the idea that it was a less equivocal place in which to be seen shopping with a little girl than Asprey’s or the lingerie places. Confound the souls of one’s friends to hell — for obliging one to take such precautions! Even Emily — he would positively have smirked at Emily, if she had walked in to find him buying some such scholastic object as a fountain pen or a blotter, with Kay at his side. It would serve her right for her misjudgment of him.

  But he was amused by the decision and speed Kay brought to her choice. Rejecting the salesman’s suggestions, she wandered off by herself and presently, to Richard’s amusement, came back with a large ivory paper knife with a dagger-shaped shagreen handle.

  “That’s just the thing.”

  “Very pretty. But are you sure Susan will like it?”

  “Oh yes.” Her eyes smiled confidently into his. “It belongs to her powerful, fortress’d house.”

  “To what?”

  “I’ll tell you some other time.” She inclined her head toward the salesman, to whom Richard managed to convey, unseen, that the piece of the paper knife
was exactly two pounds: a message which, as Richard was an old customer, registered. He managed to smuggle some notes across the counter, behind Kay’s back, and they turned away, to wait for the parcel.

  “Kay, I’ve had an idea. Do you keep a diary?”

  “Yes, Mummy makes us.”

  “I don’t mean that kind.” He had seen the “engagement books” of Kay and Jo. “A real one, I mean. Putting down all one does and sees and hears each day.”

  “No, I haven’t kept one of those.” The idea evidently interested her. “Some of the girls start them in January, but they generally give up after a few months — or they lose them.”

  “If I get you a diary will you keep it properly? Then you would not forget things, and you could either let me read it or tell me the important things when you come back to town.”

  “Oh yes; that’s a lovely idea!” Her eyes sparkled.

  “Do you like that one?” Pie picked up a large, square volume, bound in limp leather. “Or do you prefer another color?”

  “No, I like this.” (I like it because you chose it!) “A whole page for each day! But I’ll never do enough things, at school, to fill this.”

  up!

  “Not only what you do but what you think: books, bits of poetry — anything you want to remember.” If she keeps it with any sort of fidelity, he was thinking, I shall have a complete record of Kay for the next three months!

  “Do you think,” said Kay shyly, “I might have two?”

  “Certainly. But why two? I thought you were going to find it hard enough to fill one,” he teased her.

  “Well ... I might lose one. No.” She gave him a quick, shy glance and hung her head. “I didn’t mean that,” she whispered.

  “Tell me what you did mean, Kay,” he said quietly.

  “One gets so in the habit of saying what one doesn’t mean! It’s dreadful — it’s lying; but what has one got to do, Mr. Dick? If you say the truth people don’t understand — or they ask you to explain — and then they don’t understand —”

  “I think I understand, usually, don’t I?”

  “That’s what’s so dreadful — you see, I do it even to you. It just seems to pop out — the thing that isn’t true.” Her face was crimson with distress. “Promise me you’ll never think I lie to you on purpose! Promise me —”

  “Of course I know you don’t. Now what did you mean — about the diary?”

  “I’d like to have another one, please, for private things.”

  He loved her for revoking her evasion but smothered a smile at the snub which, unwittingly, she had given him. Dear — dearest Kay! So even I am not to be admitted into your “private” life!

  “If you want to keep a private diary” — with a teasing echo of her own emphasis on the word — “it had better be one of these.” He picked up a smaller but thicker volume, that closed with a little gilt latch and key. “It’s my duty to inform you that keeping a private diary is considered a pernicious occupation. People have got into prison, and been hanged, and all sorts of unpleasant things, for keeping private diaries. So don’t say I haven’t warned you.” “How thrilling, to have a book that locks up!”

  “Well, they had better be done up with —”

  “Please — just a minute.” He saw she was confused. “Would — would you mind having them posted — from your home?”

  Danger. I le saw the red flash as though it had actually taken place in front of his eyes.

  He had assumed, of course, that Bell knew nothing of Kay’s summons by telephone; that went without saying. If she found out about their meeting it could easily have been a chance encounter; sharp as Bell was, she was hardly likely to suspect Kay of sending him a message. He had even debated the wisdom of telling Kay to mention, casually, that she had seen him, but knew he had no right to encourage the child in duplicity. Now, however, she revealed not only her intention of deceiving Bell but of making him her accomplice. Oh, Kay, why aren’t you older, and all this would not matter? Or it would matter less. Loving me, you make a blackguard of me, and I am too weak-spirited to resist it.

  “Will you?” she asked, pressing him.

  “All right.” He picked the books up roughly. “I’ll get Jenkins to pack them. I suppose, after today” — he spoke deliberately — “it would not do for them to arrive with the Smythson label.”

  “Oh no, it wouldn’t!” She was candid, without sense of guilt. To hell with you, Emily, thought Richard as they came out of the shop. “I’ve got to meet Jo and Susan at W Walpole’s,” she told him.

  And the boxes of sweets he was carrying; confound them, what was he to do with them? Another present for his secretary, he supposed. The girl would begin to think he had designs on her.

  “Well, I think it’s a soft present,” was Bell’s opinion. “If Susan had a place of her own, I suppose she could have it lying about as an ornament; but if you ask me, it’s a sheer waste of money.”

  Still, the outing seemed to have done the child good. Perhaps she needed a bit more independence; it was a boxed-up life in a boarding school — goodness knew what Kathleen saw in it. Laura and I couldn’t wait for our schooldays to be over! Very funny, how much older we were in some ways, and yet younger in others.

  “Now what’s this about?”

  It was the following morning; the parcel post had arrived, for once, before Bell went out — it would. Kay shivered. She would hardly look at the large, brown paper packet which Bell was examining; she was one of the many who could never see an unfamiliar writing on a cover without indulging in a long conjecture upon the sender and the contents.

  “It’s addressed to you, Kathleen; do you know who it’s from?”

  “No ... No,” repeated Kay with a desperate firmness. She was praying very hard for patience — only for patience — to bear with her mother’s procrastination.

  “You’d better have a look.” Bell handed it over grudgingly, as though she would have liked to open it herself but was obliged by justice to concede it to its owner. With the parcel flat on the dining table, Kay fumbled unhappily with the string.

  “Here, child, don’t waste time.” With a capable slash of her penknife Bell cut and dragged the string away. “Hurry up — I should be gone by now.”

  Why aren’t you gone? thought Kay bitterly as, with Jo breathing excitement at her elbow, she turned back the paper. The two diaries were there, with a smaller book on top of them, a thick, small volume in a rubbed calf binding. On the top, fatally exposed, lay a single sheet of Richard’s note paper. She read its contents at a glance.

  DEAR KAY,

  As it seems unlikely we shall meet before Tuesday, here is a going-back present; two diaries, use which you like. I am also sending you my Pepys, who isn’t a bad model for the aspirant diarist. Love to you and Jo.

  R.M.S

  “It’s from Mr. Dick,” she muttered.

  “What?” Bell put out her hand quickly. While she was reading the note Kay took the opportunity of opening the Pepys. On the flyleaf the name “Richard Morton Somervell” was crossed out; beneath it, in the brightness of fresh ink, was the inscription, “For K.T., from R.M.S.”

  Tim.” As Bell picked up the diaries something tinkled on the floor. “What’s that?”

  “Only — the key.” Kay bent quickly and slipped it in the pocket of her jersey.

  “Key? It’s a queer idea, having a book that locks up, if you ask me.” She raised the book toward her eyes; recently Bell had been forced to realize she needed glasses. Her thumb ruffled the stiff, gilt-edged paper, came to the marbled flyleaves: to a minute label lettered in gold. “Smythson! I suppose you didn’t meet Mr. Somervell at Smythson’s yesterday?”

  “No, Mummy.” The lie was out before Kay had time to consider it. Instantly she regretted it; it would have been so easy to say she and Mr. Dick had met — accidentally.

  “I hope you’re telling me the truth, Kathleen.”

  “Yes, Mummy.” When one lied it was terrible how one had
to go on lying.

  “Well” — Bell tossed the books back on the table — “if that’s how you want to waste your time I suppose it’s your business. I don’t know what you’ll fill it up with — a pack of nonsense, I expect.”

  She kissed Kay quickly and briskly, looked at her watch, and hurried to the door.

  Her fountain pen was filled. She had locked herself in the bathroom — the only room in the house where one could be private. Sitting on the cork bath stool, she opened the book on her knees, verified the date, and began her first entry.

  I saw him for the last time yesterday, and he gave me this. I shan’t see him again for three months — terrible. It was marvelous — the first time we’ve ever been alone together. He called me darling just at the end ...

  “Are you in there, Kathleen?”

  “Yes — I won’t be a minute.”

  Just a minute — only a minute — until I’ve finished this page ...

  An understood thing, on the afternoon before they went back to school, was the visit to George, George’s shop did not close until six, but on the day the girls came to tea he left at five o’clock. As the taxi turned into the road they generally saw George striding along, with his hands in the pockets of his overcoat, if it was cold weather, or swinging rather awkwardly by his sides if it was warm and he had only his suit on. Jo hung out of the window, shrieked, “Hello, George!” and Susan made her sit down and behave until they arrived at the gate of Kozy Kot, where the girls got out and Susan went back in the taxi to Plymouth Street. Coming back, they rode on the top of a bus with George; that was much better fun than the taxi, especially on winter evenings, when lamps were lit and one could see in through all the windows along the Brixton and Kennington roads.

  Jo raced back down the road to meet George, flinging herself into his arms and bestowing on him large, smacking kisses which were audible even from the gate of Kozy Kot.

  “Well, Katie!”

  She did not like being called Katie, which was Georges invention-one of the rather pathetic, blustering inventions, if she had but known, to cover the fact that he was rather shy of Bell’s elder girl. It was part of the pathos of George that, while he was perfectly at home romping and fooling with Jo, Kay made him shy; he had to put on a false heartiness and crack silly jokes to give himself confidence in the face of Kay’s quiet aloofness. He told himself that it was because she was growing up — becoming quite a young lady; but privately he rather agreed with Bell that Kay had been spoiled by school. She would get over it later on; and meanwhile one must not show more favor to Jo than to Katie. Pie could at least show her his books — the rather old-fashioned books of biography and travel that he collected secondhand and whose published price, eighteen shillings or a guinea, impressed him with the worth of the contents. It did not strike George, in his innocence, to wonder why these books had found their way into the marked-down boxes of publishers’ remainders within a year or two of their publication.