Judith

by Noel Streatfeild

  Amongst the functions Mercy understood to be undertaken by those who became wives was loving the relatives of a husband. In the case of Avis she found this difficult. Mercy’s family were far from clever, and she had seldom, until she had met Ambrose, mixed with those who were. Her world had been limited, composed as it was of those of her own station in life. As well, she had a wide range of friends amongst her Father’s tenants, patients and nurses she had met in the cottage hospital, and the humbler Red Cross personnel. Between these worlds she knew there existed a vast number of women who belonged neither to the aristocracy nor to the world of her humbler friends. Men from these middle reaches she could cope with, they had always popped in and out of her life, first as extra dancing partners, and latterly as acquaintances of her Father’s, who had schemes to make the stately home solvent. But the women terrified her. They never accepted her for what she was, in the easy friendly way her poorer friends did, instead they talked as if there was no difference between her world and theirs, which was confusing. As a result, in their company, and only in their company, she became awkward and ill-at-ease.

  Mercy had, of course, known that Avis would belong to this middle world, for Ambrose belonged to it, but she had supposed Avis would expect to love those who became wives to her brothers, just as she expected automatically to love sisters of a husband. Avis, from their first meeting, found Mercy excruciatingly funny. She was, to her, all the daughters of the more enclosed aristocracy rolled into one. She considered she was the perfect wife for Ambrose, for all the reasons that Ambrose thought her a perfect choice, but it never crossed her mind to love Mercy. She tolerated her, but did not attempt to get to know her, or to include her in the family circle. She treated Ambrose just as she had before he married, talking to him in family riddles, and sharing with him endless, to Mercy, inexplicable clever jokes. In self-defence Mercy had turned to the world she understood, that of the humble. Miss Simpson had thought her completely charming, and Judith became her slave.

  On that honeymoon visit Mercy had been left largely to amuse herself, so she had spent much time with Judith and Miss Simpson, accompanying them on their walks. Sometimes in the evenings, pretending to go to bed, she had left Ambrose and Avis to their clever selves, and had slipped up to the schoolroom for a cosy chat with Miss Simpson. One way and another, during those ten days she had spent at Madeira, Mercy had acquired quite a good idea of life in Avis’s home.

  Lord Peldon had not allowed his girls to go to school, instead they had shared foreign governesses with friends, and later had become pupils of small finishing establishments abroad. “Don’t want any of that Latin geometry nonsense for you girls,” Lord Peldon had said. “All a girl needs is languages and a decent seat on a horse.” Although, until she had married Ambrose, this education had not appeared a successful husband-getter in Mercy’s case, it had worked for her sisters, and Mercy was inclined to agree with her Father that English schools were a mistake.

  In the case of Judith, whom she thought a remarkably charming unspoilt child, Mercy considered an English boarding-school would be a disaster. As well, she had given her mind to Miss Simpson. Not many of her friends now employed governesses for their girls; it would be a shame if one so admirable in every way should find herself unemployed. Then, too, the maid Avis had rented with the Madeira villa had let drop some thought-provoking words. Always she used the prefix “poor little” when speaking of Judith. One day Mercy had asked her why. The Menina, she said, was surely lucky, well dressed, well fed, well taught, sympathy should be reserved for the miserable beggars in the streets, or those wretchedly paid embroideresses. Up flew every part of the maid that would fly. Good clothes, plenty to eat, and much learning were not what children throve on. It was love that brought the colour to the cheeks and the sparkle to the eyes, as indeed it did to those same children when they became women. In this house there was no love.

  Mercy, of course, had not discussed Avis with the maid, nor love, on which subject the maid had much more to say, instead she had changed the subject, but that had not taken the maid’s words from her mind. She had tackled the problem of Judith as she tackled the problems of patients in the cottage hospital. In the case of most patients direct interference in the home would not be tolerated, and it was certain direct interference would not be permitted in Judith’s education. But there was usually a way round, and in this case the answer must be Ambrose. Continually, and apparently casually, Mercy dropped praise and regrets in his ear.

  “Avis has brought that child up so well it seems a pity she has to be sent to school in England. She is sure to lose those charming manners Miss Simpson and, of course, her Mother, have given her.”

  “I expect my Father is old-fashioned, but he would approve of the way Miss Simpson is educating Judith, it’s very much the way we were brought up.”

  “I suppose next time we see Judith she will be talking slang and carrying a hockey stick.”

  Actually Avis had no particular wish to send Judith to a boarding-school in England. It had been something she had said she would do when Judith was older, and but for the timing of Mercy’s visit it would probably have happened. Ambrose, impressed by Mercy’s and his Father-in-law’s views on education for girls, and sharing their horror of uniformed misses squealing slang, had asked Avis if an English school was necessary; wouldn’t outside classes and perhaps a finishing school in France fill the bill better? Avis had taken some time to reverse from what had been a fixed plan, but when she did she reversed wholeheartedly.

  “You are quite right, Ambrose. Judith’s come on a lot lately, makes herself quite useful and her languages are improving. As a matter of fact I loathe English schools, I can’t think why I said I should send her to one.”

  Mercy and Ambrose, their honeymoon over, had returned to England, where quite often in the following months Mercy had thought of Judith, always with pleasure. It never crossed her mind at the time to wonder if, in interfering, she might have made a mistake; it was only when, three years later, Judith came to live in her house, that she found her conscience troubling her.

  In reply to Beatrice’s telephone call Mercy asked her to lunch. It was an uneasy meal. Beatrice was the type of woman with whom Mercy was at her worst. She had often met her kind; such women were the admirable pillars of the organisations which, since she had been a young girl, had demanded her presence to open or unveil. Always she had shrunk from them, conscious of her muddled existence against their supreme efficiency, and had tried to get away from them to enjoy the company of the humble, the workers, and not the organisers. Now here she was, not only hostess to an outstanding example of the type, but forced to take her into her confidence, and ask for help.

  In one glance Beatrice had summed up Mercy. She did not feel uneasy with her, she was never uneasy with anyone, but she knew she was in for a hard-working meal. Too often she had had a Mercy on her hands, a necessary evil designed by nature to appear on platforms and receive bouquets. Too often it had been her duty to force into the dim wits of Mercys the aims and work of the organisations, whose bazaar they were about to open, or the purpose of the building whose first brick they were about to lay. It had been her experience that Mercys needed to be spoken to slowly, and where possible words should be repeated.

  Owing to Mercy’s unwillingness to treat her lunch table as an office, Beatrice found it difficult to bring her to the point. It was not until the sweet was on the table that she was able to sweep away the last of what she considered Mercy’s vapourings about how charming Judith had been when she had met her in Madeira, and get her to the purpose of her visit.

  “I quite see this governess was all right while Judith was a child, but what I haven’t grasped is what has made Avis suddenly decide now to send her to school. I should have thought sixteen was a bit old.”

  The question surprised Mercy; she knew from Ambrose how little the Stratford-Dericksons thought of the Winsters, but surely th
ey should have been told that Judith was in London.

  “I thought you knew, in a way it’s because of us, the Stratford-Dericksons I mean. My brother-in-law Angus is married to a very clever girl called Lucy, she’s been to Oxford and got a First.” Unconsciously Mercy’s voice showed how little she found in this achievement to compensate for the difficulty she had in getting a foothold on Lucy’s affections. “Lucy, she’s rather outspoken, seems to have thought Judith backward in some ways. She told Angus and he told Avis,” it was clear Mercy marvelled at Angus’s courage, “and though Avis did not agree at the time it seems as if she must have thought it over afterwards, for suddenly she telephoned to Ambrose, and asked if we would have Judith. I was delighted, of course, and I would have liked to have Miss Simpson too, but I daresay she would not have mixed with that sort of school.”

  Beatrice tried to sound patient.

  “What sort of school?”

  “It was not Avis’s idea in the first place, it was Lucy’s I believe. Ambrose says Lucy is probably right, for Judith’s not got the brains for a university.”

  Beatrice struggled not to lose patience.

  “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

  “She’s to be sent to a school for speech training.”

  “Speech training!” Beatrice thought back to Charlotte’s wedding, but could remember nothing wrong with Judith’s speech. “Does she stammer?”

  “Oh no. She does imitations, didn’t you know? I don’t . . . well, I don’t mean I don’t think they’re clever, but I don’t like that sort of thing . . . you know, making fun. She did them sometimes when I stayed with them in Madeira, Ambrose and Avis thought them very amusing.”

  Mentally Beatrice was back in her Mother’s drawing-room on Charlotte’s wedding day. She saw the pretty child in her rustling blue frock, sitting on her Father’s knee, surrounded by a roaring admiring audience, and the aggravation she had felt then returned. Her Catherine had an excellent job as secretary to a Conservative Member of Parliament, and she had, both in private and public, stated that it was not a girl’s job that mattered, but her opportunity to serve. But that was all very well provided your nieces also filled niches where they could serve. It was an entirely different kettle of fish when they turned aside and took glamour jobs.

  “You don’t mean to tell me Avis is thinking of the stage?”

  Mercy saw Beatrice was incensed but mistook the reason.

  “Not the stage exactly. Lucy doesn’t think she’s right for that. I don’t quite know where you do imitations. She will learn at this school breath control, and all that sort of thing, and of course she is taking other classes as well. I rather hope that perhaps she won’t want to appear in public, and might take to hospital work, there are so many speech therapists needed.”

  Beatrice could not care less how many speech therapists were needed. Her mind was on a niece who went to a stage school. How would such a niece fit in with her home life? If she did not want such a niece in her home how was she to get out of having her?

  “Why do you want her to come to me? Avis presumably wanted her to be with you, or she wouldn’t have asked you to have her.”

  They had finished eating. Mercy was glad of a break for the next step worried her, she was sure from nervousness she would explain herself badly. She led the way into the next room. Pouring out coffee she said:

  “I think Judith is unhappy here. She cries a great deal. She is worrying about Miss Simpson, that’s the governess you know. I hope to put that right, I am interested in an old people’s home. I think she might run it, it’s in London, so Judith could see her now and again, and . . .”

  Patiently, but hoping to disguise the need she felt for patience, Beatrice led Mercy back to the point.

  “I daresay she is a little homesick, but that will wear off when the term starts, and her time is occupied.”

  Mercy struggled for words to explain her meaning.

  “She doesn’t know anyone, so all she seems to want is to be with me . . . I do a little hospital work . . . quite a lot, as a matter of fact . . . Judith would be contented to spend her time following me round the hospital. I thought perhaps, if you would have her for a short while . . . companionship with young people . . .”

  “So you said in your letter, but what is Avis going to say?”

  Mercy paused to pour out the coffee.

  “Avis won’t know. I think perhaps something has upset her. I am only guessing, but the day after she sent Judith here she left for Siam, we haven’t an address for her at the moment.”

  An upset Beatrice stirred her coffee while she wondered whether to tell Mercy what she knew. She decided that if Avis had gone to the other end of the world, leaving no address, that she might have to see more of Mercy, for she certainly was not having Judith wished on her for weeks on end.

  “You may be right. The man who was the cause of the break-up between her and Charles died recently, I saw it in The Times. I wondered if Avis would see it, and whether she still cared.”

  Mercy loathed gossip, but it was clear Beatrice was not gossiping, but informing.

  “I didn’t know why there was a divorce, but that could explain why Judith’s here. The child hasn’t said anything much, but obviously the change of plans was very sudden, even for Avis; in one day apparently she had telephoned Ambrose and arranged that Judith should come to us, and that the governess was to go to a sister in Rome. Then she closed the house. Was this man English?”

  “Yes. When he died he was editor of some paper I never heard of, but he must have been quite important, there was a long obituary. I expect Avis met him when she was working with your brother-in-law during the war, I never knew quite what happened. Charles suspected perhaps. Anyway, it was arranged he was going to New York for his firm, and of course we all supposed Avis would go with him, and Judith too, naturally, but Charles left alone, and soon afterwards Avis sued for divorce, and Charles didn’t defend. We were all rather annoyed at the time, because Charles is a faithful old thing, I’m certain even in the army he never looked at anyone else, and of course we knew more or less what Avis had been up to with this man.”

  “Why didn’t she marry him when she was free?”

  Beatrice’s mouth hardened and her voice took a note her children called “crowing”.

  “The day when her divorce was made absolute he married someone else.”

  “And he was her lover! How terrible for her.”

  Beatrice shrugged her shoulders.

  “The story was he was so terrified of having to marry her he married someone else in self-defence. Avis went abroad, she’s never been back, afraid of running into him I suppose.”

  Because of this story Avis, in Mercy’s mind, was changing shape. She was no longer the terrifying woman she had known in Madeira, but someone in pain, and pain Mercy understood.

  “It’ll be lonely for her in Siam. She must have been terribly fond of him.”

  “She’ll be all right, she’s very self-sufficient.”

  Mercy wondered how anyone could be called self-sufficient who had lived an exile, rather than meet casually the man she loved, and who, years later, on reading of his death was so distressed that she had to be alone.

  “Where is Judith now?”

  “I arranged that Lucy should have her for lunch. As I told you, it’s her and Angus’s idea that she should go to this theatrical school, they would have had her to stay but they haven’t a spare bedroom. Lucy isn’t a great deal older than Judith, for she’s still in the twenties, but to a girl of sixteen, even nearly seventeen, someone of twenty-five or six is immeasurably older, don’t you think?”

  Beatrice did not think about the gap in years between Judith and the unknown Lucy, but of the way Mercy was bringing the conversation back to Judith’s need for young companionship. She thought, too, of what Basil had said to the childre
n at breakfast; it was seldom he put even a gentle foot down, but it rather sounded as if he might about having Judith to stay. In any case she had come to the house prepared to agree to a short visit, but she must not leave before arranging exactly how short, or Mercy might wish the girl on them until Avis reappeared.

  “There are ten days left of the Easter holidays, how would it be if she spent those with us? I can’t offer to have her longer for I’m desperately busy, and in term-time no one is free to keep an eye on her. If you like you can send her to-morrow.”

  * * * * *

  Lucy and Angus had stayed with Avis when they were on holiday in Spain. Judith had then been fifteen. Until they arrived, both she and Miss Simpson, remembering Mercy, had looked on the visit hopefully. If Uncle Ambrose, in some ways the most terrifying of the Uncles, could marry someone as nice as Mercy, surely Uncle Angus, the youngest and easiest of the Uncles, would marry someone nicer still. The brilliant Lucy, with her degree in history, scared them to silence. Lucy had been married about six months, and because she had not intended to marry, was still inclined to be aggressively herself. She had meant to give her life to history, but had met Angus at a cocktail party and it had literally, on both their parts, been love at first sight. But with love, especially violent physical love, there were valleys and troughs into which she crept to be herself, and in which she took stock of that self and made vows. One of the vows was not to allow Angus to obliterate clever Lucy, at all costs she must keep the blade of her mind keen. Lucy had by nature a penetrating interest in people, and though largely absorbed in Angus did not let the interest die. Her interest was of the laboratory order, so she had not been under Avis’s roof a day before she had Avis, Miss Simpson and Judith under her microscope. Miss Simpson she dismissed as a dull, obvious type, and struggle as she would she could not get near enough to Avis to begin to understand her, so she focused her attention on Judith.