Bell Timson

by Marguerite Steen

  “I couldn’t tell Mother things like that ...”

  “Of course you couldn’t. She’s in the thick of it all, while I’m just gaddin’ round, like an old Aunt Sally, makin’ a fool of meself because it’s all I’m good for. Jesus God! If I’d bin forty years younger ... !”

  “Cissie! You know it’s people like you who are keeping us sane in days like these. I wish you’d have Mother down here for a while and make her rest.”

  “How is she?”

  Kay hesitated before answering.

  “You know Mummy. On the face of things you’d say she was taking it all in her stride; but she’s just too brisk, too snappy, to be convincing. We’ve got to face it: Mummy’s an old woman. Where she used to be tough she’s now brittle. And this fool breakdown of mine hasn’t made it any better for her.”

  Under the lowered lids, the heavily beaded lashes, Cissie’s eyes shot their dark, piercing look.

  “You’re a marv’lous kid, Kay.”

  “Oh, for the love of God!” Kay’s lips twitched into an unsteady smile. “I’ve told you I’m shot away, scared, pulped — ready to scream at the idea of going back to it again! Don’t tell me I’m marvelous; it doesn’t make sense.”

  “Yes, it does.” Cissie was obstinate. “You were a regular spoiled, pampered kid when I first came across you, and this damn war has been the makin’ of you. Of course you’re marv’lous. You’ve got it from your mother. She’s a marv’lous woman.”

  “Perhaps we all are, in these days.” Kay relaxed against the foot of the bed and closed her eyes. “We’ve got to be. Yes, Mother’s wonderful. But it’s getting her down. I wish I could persuade her to give up her work and come down here again into the country. God knows she’s had her whack and earned her rest by now!”

  “She wouldn’t be happy. No one — if they’ve got anything about them — could be happy if they were out of it all. Of course she’s tired. We’re all tired. You’re tired. I’m tired — so tired I sometimes feel as if I’ve been dead for weeks, and it isn’t me but just my ghost walkin’! The old ghost, goin’ on in motley, makin’ people laugh, because it can’t find anything better to do! But when it’s all over — don’t forget: it’ll be the other people who will be tired. Tired of themselves. Because they’ve missed the procession. Have you ever watched a procession?” asked Cissie inconsequently. “It’s hell. I’ve seen three royal funerals an’ three coronations, and I can’t count the weddin’s. For the first hour it’s lovely; then your backside starts to ache, and the sun gets in your eyes, and there’s some damn woman next you wearin’ a perfume you can’t stand; and you want to get away, but you can’t, for the crowds. And when you do get away you’re a wreck; but you wouldn’t have missed it for anything in the world!

  “That’s how the people will be who’ve ratted on this war. Nobody’ll want them. Their country, and their friends, and the generation that comes after them won’t have time for them. We’ve learned a new language, and they won’t know it when they come back. They’ll still be talkin’ the old one. And nobody’ll know or care what they’re sayin’.”

  The room filled with a curious glow of sunset, and Kay, taking the yellow light full on her drained face, was a long time silent before she spoke again.

  “You know, there’s the clinic, Cissie. Mummy could do such a lot with that — and with helping to look after evacuees.”

  “Enough people on that already, my dear: people without half the spirit and stamina of your mother. I suppose what you really want’s to get her out of the air raids?”

  “I honestly don’t see why she should go on taking them. We’ve got most of the windows out now, and the flat’s like an icehouse. It’s no place for a woman of Mother’s age.”

  “And what ’ud you do, supposin’ she left town?”

  “Me? Oh, I might stay on at the flat or get into some hostel. I’d be all right,” Kay defied her.

  “You’re cuckoo.” Cissie’s lips pursed into a smile. “Don’t you know what your mother’s main war job is? It’s lookin’ after you. And if I’d got a daughter I’d feel the same. You and I, dear — we don’t know what it’s like, bein’ a mother. I never had any kids; hadn’t the time. In the old days women used to give their sons to the country; now it’s the girls. In lookin’ after you Bell is doin’ her bit, and you bet she knows it! Why — Lord save us! A panzer column wouldn’t get her out of town while you’re drivin’ your silly ambulance!”

  “Oh hell,” muttered Kay. “It sounds as if I ought to give it up.”

  “Don’t be a little ass. It’s the glory of Bell’s life.”

  “Well ... She’s got Jo in the ATS, to be her glory!”

  “Not the same thing. You’re the kingpin, and you know it. What’s more, Jo knows it as well.”

  Kay moved restlessly.

  “I know she does. I wish she didn’t. It’s so unfair.” She hesitated before adding, “You know, Cissie, I can’t help feeling, sometimes, that — between the pair of us — Jo’s never had a square deal.”

  “By the way — how’s her young man?”

  “Do — do you know about him?” This came as a shock.

  Cissie nodded.

  “Gave a concert at the camp — when was it? Three — four months ago? Always get ‘em mixed up: one camp’s just like another. You know — mud; and starting like an icehouse and endin’ up like the scullery on Mother’s washin’ day. And all the poor kids’ faces, with their white teeth, liftin’ up toward the stage — lookin’ as if somebody’s promised ’em a treat if they’re good. It gives me a feelin’ I’d like to cry ... Well, I looked down, and there was Jo, with a bunch of ATS, in the row behind the officers. We grinned at each other and nodded. After the show was over she came round, bringin’ this chap with her.” Cissie paused and frowned.

  “What did you make of him?”

  “Well ...” Cissie’s hands, no larger than a small child’s, on which the rings now hung so loosely that she was always dropping them, plucked uneasily at the pink angora of the bedspread. “I like — well, when a chap’s got a girl with him I like to see him walk chesty. I like to see him take the lead and show the girl that he’s the one that wears the trousers. That’s what a woman wants, Kay: especially a woman like Jo, that wears all this hombray stuff to hide the fact that she’s just pure feminine underneath.”

  “You — didn’t care for him?” said Kay slowly.

  “What was there to care for? A snipy-faced little runt, looking out of the corners of his eyes, with nothing to say for himself! I know a shy boy when I meet him, and I like ’em shy. I know how to make ’em open up and get to feel homey with me. Mostly they’re shy at first, when they meet Cissie May!” She chuckled gently, then her brows drew together again. “But I couldn’t get ahead with that fellow of Jo’s. I don’t often take a dislike to a boy, but I felt raw with him for lettin’ Jo down —”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Oh, by his manner. By not standin’ up and lookin’ proud of her. By not lookin’ me in the eye, by mutterin’ and mumblin’ whenever she tried to make him do his stuff — Lord Almighty! I wanted to say to him, ‘You got a damn fine girl there — what do you mean to do about it?’”

  “Well,” sighed Kay after a pause, “he’s in Africa now. So perhaps it’ll all blow over.”

  “M’m.” Cissie sounded dubious. “She said he was going on embarkation leave next day. Jesus God! The things love does to us women!”

  “You really think she’s in love with him?”

  “Love? It was sprouting out of her ears. I could have taken and shaken her! Why can’t we run that sort of thing out of our systems with a good dose of castor oil? That’s what my poor old mother used to give me when she saw the symptoms. A lot of use it was! But at least I went in for good-lookers!” ended Cissie on a note of complacency which brought the smile to Kay’s anxious lips.

  “Mummy didn’t care for him either.”

  “What?” shrieked Cissie. “She had the n
erve to take him home?”

  Kay related the story of the night of the raid, Cissie glowering.

  “Well, I’m surprised at Bell! If I’d been her I’d have had Jo across my knee.”

  “Uniform and all? I don’t suppose she took it seriously; knowing Jo, who would?”

  “Knowing Jo, who wouldn’t?” snapped Cissie. “Mark my words” She shot a quick, sidelong look at Kay and checked her self. The girl had enough on her plate already, without loading her up about Jo. “You’re a funny kid, Kay. Why haven’t you got married?”

  Kay shrugged her shoulders.

  “Oh — one thing and another.”

  “Ever been in love?”

  “Once a fortnight, more or less!” jibed Kay.

  “Go on. I mean — in love,” persisted Cissie. Kay recognized the futility of resistance.

  “That way ... once.”

  “Something went wrong, dear?” Cissie settled down comfortably to the sympathy of which she was past mistress. “I suppose he was married?”

  Kay nodded.

  “It’s a common complaint. But” — winked Cissie — “it ain’t incurable!”

  “It was in this case. I happened to be only fifteen.”

  “Oh?” Cissie stared, then thrust the pillows out of her way with an expression of disgust. “Pooh! Calf love!”

  “No.” Kay leaned forward. “No, Cissie. That’s what most people would say; but not you — please! It was real. And nothing else of the kind has ever been real since. At least I’ve had enough sense to recognize that!” Even to the incredulous Cissie her manner was sufficiently serious to compel belief.

  “Well — if it had been anybody but you ... She accepted it with a shrug, reluctantly. “I guess we can’t all be made alike — and I always told Bell it was no good treatin’ you like an ordinary kid. Sure you’ve not made a mistake, dear? It’s nice, you know, to have a home and husband and kids of your own.”

  Dear Cissie, preaching the creed she had herself forsworn! Smiling, Kay leaned over and picked up the clawlike little hand.

  “Sure ... now. Loving’s better than being in love. You know that yourself. It’s more use to other people.”

  The evening post brought a letter from Lydia Roden. Kay read it in the hall, surprised by her own calm. Of course: she had known it. Ever since the small, red-haired girl from Lancashire joined the post. Ever since she came on the pair of them drinking in the nearby local. Just for a moment she had felt terribly sick, then she knew she was too tired to make a fuss. This must just be allowed to go on its way like others of Lydia’s fancies. Oddly enough it was her own indifference — only the outcome of physical and moral weariness — that had postponed it: Lydia, who reveled in a scene, abandoning, in her astonishment, her new béguin for the sake of plumbing the mystery of Kay’s lethargy. Then, of course, with the latter’s absence on sick leave, the inevitable had happened ...

  A year ago this would have laid me flat, Kay was thinking. Now only a kind of numbness, followed by relief. She found herself analyzing her emotions as she carefully tore the letter into small pieces and dropped them into a brass bowl standing in the hall. She walked out on the steps to look out over the mild English landscape, shaken by the vibration of a squadron of bombers passing overhead. Everything mad, shaken, pulled out of perspective and defocused by wartime. Jo ...

  What was it Cissie had intended to say? “Mark my words ...” Cissie — Cissie taking this affair of Jo’s seriously? But — but it was ridiculous! Unless — are we all mistaken about Jo? Is Jo wearing all that cheerfulness and courage like a glaze over something sad and lonely that we’ve never troubled to understand? Is it possible she’s keeping something to herself — Jo, who always tells everything?

  Susan had gone to the pictures. One kept on doing things like that, even in the middle of war — sitting in the dark, with an organ dropping lush gouts of sentiment, anodyne to jaded nerves; concentration ebbing and flowing between the screen and one’s thoughts. How many of those spectators who packed the cinemas for every session knew what the pictures they saw were about? Scenes, incidents flashed into perception, were blotted out in the dark, fulminating contents of the watchers’ minds Cinemas were used to sit down in, to sleep in, to weep in: for a few they provided escape into a world of romance from a world of reality.

  Bell let herself into the flat and switched on the light — although it was broad daylight out of doors. But most of the glass was now replaced by pasteboards, and such comfort as the apartment contained was mainly concentrated in her bedroom; the sitting room was uninhabitable, with part of an outer wall boarded up and the chimney breast piled on the hearth. Another flat had been found in a service block in Hill Street; it was merely a matter of having to wait until the existing tenants could arrange for removal. Storage was hardly to be had, vans and men were at a premium. Bell had considered moving into a hotel — that would have been inevitable if Kay had been at home; but Kay, fortunately, was still at Sunningdale. They had now found a little patch on one of her lungs which, with luck, would take her out of the service. Susan’s narrow divan had been pushed into a corner of the hall, and the two women continued to live there, in a state of discomfort preferable, at least to Bell, to the hotel life she detested. “It’s worse in Russia,” was her favorite observation; it was fortunate that she shared with Susan a prejudice for the privacy of her own home.

  She had turned on the electric fire and opened the Radio Times when the door opened and Kay walked in.

  “Good gracious, child, what on earth are you doing here?”

  Kay’s arm was round her shoulder; they kissed, and Kay looked with a grimace round the little room, crowded with odds and ends of furniture collected from the rest of the flat.

  “It’s more like, what are you doing here? Mummy dear, you really must move out. It’s quite absurd, your staying on in this mess. You might as well be in a junk store.”

  “I’m all right,” said Bell stubbornly. “They tell me I’ll be able to get into Hill Street next month. Well, Katie, it’s nice to see you — you’re looking better, my dear. What does the doctor say?”

  To think I should be glad of Katie’s having something the matter with her lungs! It would happen now of course. Why couldn’t it have happened in ‘39, when we could have got her into Switzerland? She’s always had that tuberculous look, but they wouldn’t have it there was anything the matter with her. Doctors — sod ’em all! What’s the good of a medical board?

  “I’m just going to make a cup of tea, but I didn’t want to miss Cissie’s broadcast. Turn it on, there’s a dear; she’ll be on in a minute.”

  Kay thought, This is like something in a dream or in a play — as Bell bustled out of the room. This isn’t real. Here we go on, doing all the usual things, talking in our usual voices, listening to the radio, and ... The switch clicked; the small panel filled with light. Someone’s talk roared out — on fuel economy. She adjusted the volume.

  Her own figure faced her from the glass of the wardrobe: thin, tall, rather shadowy in the gray, prewar tailor-made; her face, pale, anonymous — surely not her face? How one altered — without knowing — until one day ... Of course while she had been down in the country her hair had not been dyed; it was soft, rather ashen in color, in a loose, wavy crop round her head — a style that took no trouble to dress or keep up, that most of the girls had taken to on the ambulance post. Oddly enough it made her look younger, not older.

  She slid a hand slowly into her pocket, seeking cigarettes; encountered a folded sheet of paper, felt her finger and thumb close on it tightly, relinquish it, and draw out her cigarette case. Yes, one just went on — doing the usual things.

  When Bell returned with the tray someone’s signature tune was on. The electric kettle was plugged into the power beside the hearth; Kay crouched over the fire, sitting like a Kaffir on her high heels; the room felt chilled, dank, cheerless — and in some way empty, for all its overcrowding. How did her mother ever stand it? Desu
ltory conversation passed while some turns went on — brash sentiment, brash humor: B.B.C. conception of entertainment for the masses. Judging from the studio applause, the B.B.C. was right.

  “Are you stopping for dinner, Katie? I’d better ring up and get a table for the three of us if you are.”

  “Why, Mummy, aren’t you and Susan eating at home?”

  “We don’t go in for much of a meal in the evenings. I get a good lunch out — I don’t care for two big meals a day.”

  “I hope you’re eating enough.” Kay frowned; it was evident that Bell was very thin.

  “Good heavens, child — yes! We’ll get a table at the Knightsbridge Hotel, and I’ll join yon there at eight.”

  “You’ve not got to go out again this evening?”

  “Bless your soul, there’s no closing hours in my job!” Bell laughed shortly and raised her hand as the nauseating bonhomie of the announcer’s voice succeeded a burst of swing.

  “There’s no need to introduce our next singer — the great little lady who’s as much a part of the British Constitution as the Houses of Parliament! What she sings today we all sing tomorrow — and here she is, with a new number specially written for boys and girls in the forces all over the world. Cissie MAY!”

  The yells, the whistles, the applause roared out over the first notes of the band. Bell sat still, with a smile curving her lips. Yes, that was it: the blare of the band, the jolly, rowdy music that suggested the old-fashioned music hall, the saloon bar, the swirl of tobacco smoke — the good times before decadence set in with Negro rhythm and the blues, and Broadcasting House took the guts out of entertainment by catering for the Nonconformist masses! She felt moisture come into her eyes as she looked across at Kay — poor Katie, who didn’t even know what they were like, those grand days which had passed while she was only a little girl; Katie, who had never sat in a red plush seat at the old Holborn Empire to hear Cissie’s voice — the voice of the little bar at the Haymakers, of the girls on the street corners, of the champagne corks popping at Flora’s and the lads whispering hoarsely to their wenches behind the hedgerows at Crowle. Not a human emotion or experience that did not collect itself into that rich voice of Cissie’s — that trumpet of tarnished gold that rang above the band, bidding men be men and women women, under cover of some tawdry ballad. The B.B.C. might sterilize the words — they could not castrate the voice, that drew its inspiration straight from the womb of nature and carried its steadfast message past the frontiers of state-controlled morality, straight to the human souls that listened.