Judith

by Noel Streatfeild

  Old nurse stayed on. In a few hours she had established a nursery world for the two children, which, with her in charge, made them feel secure. Beatrice, having put on uniform, found it hard to take it off. Though she tried to make a point of seeing her children daily, quite often pressure of post-war work made it impossible. Basil struggled to get home in time to play with his children before they went to sleep, but the post-war paper position was so difficult it frequently called for conferences that went on half the night. Often he only reached home in time to go to bed. Old nurse was not displeased. Having had complete charge of the children she had become possessive. She would say “Wonder if Mummie’s coming up for a game to-night?” Or “Was that Daddy’s car I heard?” But looking back on those years, Catherine remembered that for quite a time after she came to live in Hampstead she had spoken of Basil and Beatrice as “the lady and gentleman downstairs”.

  Cynthia’s arrival a year later, if anything, removed the nursery further from the parents’ world. Old nurse obviously could not look after a baby as well as Catherine and Robert, so a Mrs. Dayton, who had come down in the world, was employed to come in daily to give the children simple lessons and to take them for walks. Both Catherine and Robert loathed Mrs. Dayton. A nervous, fussy woman, who could not teach, and had a tendency to whine, and who walked very slowly and insisted on the children keeping pace with her. There was no one to whom the children could complain. Old nurse, though wrapped up in her newest nursling, was pleased her place in Catherine’s and Robert’s hearts had not been stolen.

  “We are as God made us. Perhaps she means well, poor thing. Anyway I can’t help you. It wasn’t my wish she should be employed.”

  Catherine and Robert, already firm friends, became close as a double cherry, muttering in corners, devising secret signs, plotting and planning to annoy. No one cared what happened to them, even old nurse.

  “We’ll fight them,” Catherine whispered.

  Mrs. Dayton did not last long. When Catherine was eight she was sent to her mother’s old school. Robert went daily to a little boys’ dame school. But the alliance had been formed. The adults, which the children called “The growns”, were one world; they, and as she grew older Cynthia, were another, and if possible the two should be kept apart.

  Judith met her Carlyle cousins on the farm doorstep. The three Carlyles and their luggage were dropped off by the farm gate, a few minutes after Judith and her suitcase had been deposited by Charlotte by the front door. Judith watched her cousins struggling up the path carrying their suitcases. When they put them down to rest their arms, and to stare at her, true to her foreign training she shook each cousin by the hand.

  “I’m Judith.”

  The Carlyles looked at their hands in a surprised way.

  “Do you always shake hands with people?” Catherine asked, and then, without waiting for an answer: “I say, isn’t it gorgeous we’re here by ourselves? Except just while the wedding’s going on, we needn’t see a grown.”

  “I bet you’re glad,” said Robert. “It must have been pretty foul tacking round after your Father.”

  “What’s he like?” asked Catherine. “Ours isn’t bad as growns go. Yours did something awful, didn’t he? We heard Mother say he had to live in America.”

  “Was it forgery?” said Robert. “We hoped it might be.”

  Judith did not have to answer at that moment for Mrs. Branscombe came to the door.

  “There you are, me dears. Ready for your tea I shouldn’t wonder. Little Rosebud came this morning. She’s down the yard looking at the pigs. I’ll give her a call.”

  Evidently Mrs. Branscombe was an old friend of the children’s. All talking at once they enquired after different animals, and friends on the farm.

  Judith was left standing in the front garden. She knew she should follow the cousins upstairs, but literally surprise had knocked the breath out of her. “Except when the wedding’s going on we needn’t see a grown! It must have been pretty foul tacking round after your Father.”

  Rosebud Cornwall, Edward’s plain sandy-haired niece, strolled round the side of the house. She stopped when she saw Judith.

  “Hullo. The sow’s got eight little pigs. Are you Catherine?”

  “No. I’m Judith.”

  “Your Father lives in America. My Uncle Edward told Mummie. I heard him. Is tea ready? I’m starving.”

  Casually Rosebud strolled into the house.

  Catherine’s head came out of a window.

  “I say, why don’t you come up? We’ve got a smashing room.”

  Judith was about to ask who would show her the way, but she changed her mind. The cousins were not the sort of people who asked the way, they found it, and if Rosebud, who apparently had so far met nobody, could find her way about so could she.

  Tea was to Judith a startling meal. Apparently, while washing her hands, Rosebud had become a Carlyle. Catherine and Robert talked of her and Cynthia as “you little ones”. If Judith had not known, she would have supposed Rosebud was part of the family. All four, between mouthfuls, fired questions at Judith.

  “What did your Father do?” Robert asked again. “Was it forgery?”

  “He didn’t do anything, it was just a divorce.”

  “Divorce!” Eight eyes stared at Judith.

  “It’s odd we didn’t know that,” Catherine said to Robert. “You’d have thought Mother would have told us to be kind to her.”

  Robert helped himself to jam.

  “Child of a broken home, insecure background, all that yap.”

  Cynthia’s hazel eyes gazed at Judith.

  “Do you feel insecure?”

  “Why should she?” said Catherine. “That’s a grown conceit. They love thinking we’d all pass out if they weren’t there.”

  “Why does your Father have to live in America if he’s done nothing bad?” Robert asked.

  “He’s married an American.”

  Eight eyes were again fixed on Judith. Catherine was the first to work it out.

  “Do you mean you’ve two Mothers? A real and a step?”

  “Yes.”

  “You poor beast,” said Catherine. She turned to Robert. “Imagine! Two!”

  The three Carlyles were used to hearing of divided homes. At school Catherine had reached an age where she was given small responsibilities. “I’m putting a new girl in your room this term, Catherine. I want you to be nice to her. She may tell you about it, but it’s rather sad, her Father isn’t living at home any more.”

  Cynthia, in the junior school, had a friend in her class whose parents were divorced. “I hate holidays now. I have to go to different places. I never see my dog, or my books, or anything.”

  In Robert’s school the homes of several boys were broken, some between one holiday and another. Robert knew the boys this happened to had extra attention paid to them, and that often they became queer. One had run away from school. Another, who had been top of the form, stopped working. A third had tried to start a fire. The only boy Robert knew intimately that it had happened to told him it was simply foul, and he had been sick off and on ever since he’d heard the row that started the break-up. He didn’t want to be sent to the san, so if he was sick by mistake anywhere would Robert help him clean it up?

  Rosebud, the youngest of a family of five, attended a small day school. Her Father was a parson; divorce was not only not mentioned in her home, it was not a subject which was thought about.

  “I didn’t know anybody could have two Mothers.”

  Catherine felt that Rosebud might be the sort of child who, if left with an unanswered question, continued to ask it of everyone with whom she came in contact. If she asked a grown that sort of question, someone would probably come nosing in to be sure they weren’t being “nasty”. She kicked Judith under the table, and gave Robert a look.

  “Of cour
se they can’t, Rosebud. We were being silly, weren’t we, Judith?”

  Judith recognised Catherine’s kick. It was Catherine’s way of reminding people a child was in the room. But until this minute she had always been the child. What did you answer when you were given the reminder, and somebody else was the child? She did not want to look a fool before the cousins, but she had not the remotest idea what she was expected to say. In desperation she snatched words out of her past.

  “Nicht vor dem Kind!”

  Catherine and Robert were impressed.

  “Goodness,” said Catherine, “do you talk lots of languages? I learn French, and I’m starting German soon. We have to talk French at lunch every day, except on Saturdays and Sundays, but unless anyone’s listening it isn’t real French. You know—Voulez-vous passez-moi some sel, and vous êtes abominably rude not to have passé-d it devant je vous demandais.”

  “Can you jabber in any country you’re in?” Robert asked. “I mean, does it come natural? Mother told Father there was no place abroad you hadn’t lived in. I can talk a bit of French, I rather like it. It must be an awful help being able to talk it as well as you do English.”

  Judith, painfully aware of her insufficiencies, yet snatched at the suggestion thrown to her. It could only be a short time before the cousins found out how silly she was. What would they, who considered living in a farm on their own a piece of luck, think when they heard, as they might, that she had been scared of the prospect, and had begged to stay where her Father could look after her? What must children think of a girl of twelve who expected to be looked after, when they had with them two little girls of eight, who looked after themselves as a matter of course? It was a risk to pretend to know languages, for Mother and the Uncles could easily be wrong, and somebody in the Winster world might speak languages just as well as a Stratford-Derickson. But seeing how inferior to the cousins and Rosebud she knew herself to be, it was a risk she had to take.

  “I don’t jabber, but I can speak French and Italian fairly well. I say my prayers in French on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. And on Tuesdays and Thursdays in Italian.”

  The cousins and Rosebud stopped eating to gape at Judith. Catherine liked her facts straight.

  “Without a dictionary?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you say them in German too?”

  “Not yet. When I can speak better, German prayers will be on Wednesdays and Saturdays.”

  “What about Spanish?” Robert asked.

  “I don’t learn that.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Robert. “Say a prayer in French.”

  Judith flushed.

  She did say her prayers in French, but it was the Lord’s Prayer which, by repetition, had become easy, followed by a badly worded string of requests.

  “Cher Jésus, je vous demande que ma mère m’embrasse demain. Je comprends Seigneur, qu’il doit être difficile pour Vous, parce que je vous demande la même chose tous les jours depuis longtemps, sans succès.” Or “Cher Seigneur, pourriez-Vous demain nous laisser voir la procession, Simpsy et moi?” Or, since she had been in England, “Cher Jésus, je vous prie que mon père continue à m’aimer comme ça, et qu’il ne découvre jamais que j’ai menti quand je lui ai dit que ma mère regrette mon absence.”

  “I can’t, not at tea.”

  Robert passed his cup to Catherine, who was pouring out.

  “Fill it up. Why not at tea, Judith? There’s nothing bad in eating tea.”

  Rosebud leant across the table to Judith.

  “My Father says you can say extra prayers anywhere, not only in church or by your bed.”

  “You see, Judith,” said Catherine, “you’re overruled, three to one. Now you have to say one. Go on.”

  Judith was horribly embarrassed, but she accepted the children’s code, though she did not understand it. Hurriedly she gabbled:

  “Notre Père, qui êtes aux cieux . . .”

  When she finished Robert said:

  “Now do it in Italian.”

  Judith obeyed.

  “Padre nostro, che sei nei cieli . . .”

  While Judith was reciting the Lord’s Prayer the children remained perfectly quiet. When she had finished, eating was resumed. Catherine helped herself to cake. She spoke to Robert.

  “It’s pretty good Judith can do that. I vote we make use of her to confound the growns.”

  “Good idea,” said Robert.

  Judith tried not to sound frightened.

  “How? I mean, what d’you want me to do?”

  Catherine waved her cup in an airy way.

  “We haven’t decided yet. Most likely we’ll ask you something in English, and you’ll answer in French, or Italian. Showing off does them good. They always think they know everything. Haven’t you noticed that?”

  Judith thought of the Uncles. How true, they did think they knew everything, but in their case they were probably right. She was now in the world of Winsters who, according to Mother and the Uncles, knew nothing. They were the “unmentionables” who could never mix in Mother’s world, who said incredibly silly things called “Winsterisms”. Perhaps she could risk her French and Italian on them, and they would not know how bad it was.

  “All right. You tell me what you want me to say, and I’ll say it.”

  Nothing much occurred. Catherine said “good”, and the other three looked at her approvingly. But to Judith something wonderful had happened. The cousins had accepted her, as they had accepted Rosebud. For the time being she was one of the family. Pleasure tinged with excitement ran through her. There was no saying what the cousins would expect, but whatever it was, she would do it. It would be worth it to go on belonging.

  * * * * *

  In bed that night Judith learned a lot about Catherine, and Catherine a little about Judith. Mrs. Branscombe had decreed lights out and no talking for to-morrow’s bridesmaids, an order which Judith would have obeyed without question, but which Catherine ignored, so Judith, afraid of losing face, ignored too. As Catherine whispered, Judith discovered that she used the word “us” as she herself used the words “me” or “I”.

  “I’m the eldest, so it’s up to me to keep us together. Of course it means giving up thinking of taking up anything myself, art, or secretarial, or any of those. The growns think Robert’s going into Father’s business, but he isn’t. After his call-up and Oxford he’ll farm.”

  “Will you farm too?”

  “I’ll keep house for him, and Cynthia can help us on the farm.”

  “But suppose he gets married?”

  “I’ve planned for that. Whoever he marries has got to have a brother for me, and if possible another one for Cynthia. Anyway, we’ll all live near each other.”

  “What’ll you do while he’s in the army?”

  “Get a job near him, and the same while he’s at Oxford. I’m not fussy, as long as we’re together, I’ll cook or do anything.”

  Judith was amazed at the assured way in which Catherine spoke of the future. Of the type of farm Robert would have. Of how she intended to run the farmhouse. Of how Cynthia was to be trained to keep chickens.

  “Won’t your Father and Mother say what you’ve got to do?”

  “Mother’ll try, but she won’t succeed. Father won’t try very hard, I expect he’d like Robert in his business, but he’s not the sort to make people do things just because it’s good for them like Mother does.” Then, conscious the talk was one-sided, Catherine asked: “What are you going to do when you grow up? I don’t mean marrying, and having babies and all that, I mean first?”

  Judith hated the question. She hugged the bedclothes to her, as if their tightness could give her protection. Could she tell Catherine she did not want to grow up? Would she understand? She started cautiously.

  “I’m only twelve . . .”

  C
atherine thought she understood.

  “I know, when I was twelve I’d thought of lots of things I’d be. Mostly I meant to be a nurse, it seemed useful for us in case the others got ill, but really I think it was seeing a film about Florence Nightingale. Could you write books like your Mother does?”

  For a second Judith saw herself writing in one room while Mother wrote in another, then she knew the idea was nonsense. In the hope she might have inherited Mother’s talent, Miss Simpson set many essays. The results were poor; Judith had no gift for expressing herself on paper.

  “I’m afraid I have to accept that gift has been denied me. I expect I take after my Father.”

  Catherine giggled.

  “You do say things funnily. I suppose it’s living abroad. What’s your Father do?”

  “I’m not absolutely sure, but I think it’s to do with cars. What he wanted to do was to have a racing stable, he’s always loved horses.”

  “Can you ride?”

  “No.”

  “Then I shouldn’t think you take after him. In which case you’re absolutely free. Isn’t there anything you’d like to do more than anything in the world, of course not counting being a film star, or anything like that, which, let’s face it, we haven’t the looks for?”

  Judith nearly said “faintly Greuze, which can be pleasant”, but bit the words back in time.

  “I expect I’ll just do something ordinary.”

  There was some of her Mother’s organising ability in Catherine. She half sat up and looked towards Judith’s bed.

  “Could you bear to go on living with your Mother? I mean, she must have everything typed, doesn’t she? I should think it would be simply marvellous for her if you’d be her secretary, but I suppose you’d hate that, I can’t think of anything worse than being a secretary to mine . . .”

  It was as if the moon had risen and shown a path which before had been invisible. Secretary to Mother! What a gorgeous thought! “Oh Judith, how did I ever get my work finished before you typed it for me?” “Oh darling, how hard you work, what would I do without you?”