Judith

by Noel Streatfeild

  “I’m afraid it isn’t easy for you, old lady, coming back to us. Your Aunt Beatrice won’t mean to be unkind, couldn’t be, kindest of women really, but it’s a misunderstanding.” He saw that Judith was again blushing, so he scurried on. “So we’ve got to make the best of a bad job, that’s what your Aunt thinks, and talking won’t alter things . . .” Judith’s eyes, he noticed, had just the expression that he remembered in the eyes of a spaniel he had once owned, pleading not to be left behind, saying as if in words: “You’re the only friend I have in the world.” As if she were his spaniel, Basil patted Judith’s hand. “Then there’s Catherine, splendid girl really, wonderful reports from her school, good secretary too, I hear, but a bit too fond of Robert, they were thrown together in the war, and she was the eldest—natural really I suppose that she came to look upon him as her property. This trouble with her is nothing to do with you, be the same with any girl Robert looked at. Taking him away with me next holidays, separation will be a good thing. What I’m getting round to is that I know things won’t be easy for you, but stick it out as long as you can, and if you can’t, come to me, and I’ll fix something else.”

  It did not seem to him much of an offer, so he was quite ashamed at the wealth of gratitude shining out of Judith’s eyes and at her tone as she answered.

  “Oh, thank you, Uncle Basil. I will stick it out, I promise, and it isn’t half as frightening now I know I have you.”

  Basil patted her hand again.

  “This school of yours starts to-morrow, probably be no end of fun. Try and make some friends there, I’d like to see you running around with friends.”

  It was clear that Judith had not pictured the stage school as a place in which to make friends.

  “I’m afraid I’m not very good at that, you see, we moved about so much that I never knew many people really well.”

  Basil again wanted to pat, but this time he restrained himself. “Appealing little baggage,” he thought, “I suppose it’s all right sending her to this stage school, looks a bit young.” Then he remembered that for the next few weeks the only alternative was his awkward home set-up, and he forced enthusiasm into his voice.

  “Well, now’s your chance, there’ll be dozens to pick from. Tell you what, the first friend you make tell me, privately mind, and I’ll stand you a couple of theatre tickets.”

  Basil was thankful he had had his talk with Judith, for their reception on their arrival home would have chilled anyone, let alone a frightened sixteen-year-old. Beatrice had come in to find that Ambrose had telephoned, and, not knowing about the call to the office, rang at once, to learn that Basil had collected Judith over two hours before. The more her reason told her that there was nothing to which she could possibly object, in fact that she should be grateful that Basil had taken the girl out to lunch, rather than dumped her on an angry cook who had been told none of the family would be in, the more furious she became. “Little bitch,” she thought, “making eyes at Basil now. If there is illness why couldn’t one of the other brothers go? I bet Ambrose and Mercy Stratford-Derickson only offered so as to get Judith off their hands, probably had the same trouble I had.”

  When Judith and Basil arrived, had Beatrice not been so intent on showing disapproval without using words, she must have seen the Judith she had been thinking about, and the scared child in her hall were not the same people. Even with Basil beside her, Judith was so frightened her knees were shaking and the colour had left her face, which made her eyes look enormous, and at Beatrice’s tone, try as she would to prevent it, her lower lip trembled, and tears misted her eyes.

  “Here you are at last. I have put you in Cynthia’s room this time, Judith, it’s next door to mine. Where on earth have you been, Basil, I hear she left the Stratford-Dericksons hours ago?”

  Basil looked at his watch.

  “Two hours and twenty-five minutes to be exact. We had lunch, I knew it wouldn’t be tactful to land her here when they thought we were all going to be out.”

  The common sense of this reply was a whip to Beatrice’s temper.

  “You might have consulted me, you knew where I was.”

  Basil knew that remark did not refer to lunch, but to fetching Judith a day early. Now, if ever, he must show firmness or Judith’s life would be intolerable.

  “Very sensibly Judith’s Uncle rang me at my office, there was no need to bother you, my dear. I said of course we should love to have her to-day, and I should celebrate her visit by taking her out to luncheon.”

  It was strange to hear Basil taking a firm line, and somehow it took the years away from him. For a moment Beatrice saw not to-day’s Basil with a paunchy stomach, but the lean eager Basil she had married; not that she had allowed that young Basil to take a firm line, and a good job too, or she would be married to an unsuccessful writer instead of the head of a prosperous firm, but the moment of seeing the young Basil again softened her, and she decided to say no more about his luncheon with Judith. Instead she put a proprietary arm through his, and, shutting Judith out of the Carlyle world, led him towards his study.

  “You know your way to Cynthia’s room, Judith. Come and look at my speech, Basil, it isn’t often we get time to ourselves, is it?”

  * * * * *

  Totally unused as Judith was to working with others, the ordinary mechanics of school life which the rest of the students took for granted were for her something to be learned. There was a book to be signed before each session, which Judith could not remember. For some days after she entered the school her classes began when she heard someone say: “Everyone is present except Judith Winster.” There was a notice board which at the beginning of the term needed careful watching, for the rooms used for classes and the times of rehearsals were frequently changed, and on it the lists of students attending special classes was posted daily. Judith, unused to boards, was on many occasions in the wrong room at the wrong time, and, unaware she was expected, missed her first French acting class and a dancing class.

  The newcomers were grouped in one class, and at first had little time to think about each other, but when they settled down Judith became established as the class joke. It was not only that she was always getting herself mislaid, and scuttling into classes five minutes late, looking like a small flustered hen, but because of her acting. In the first week of each term the actor or actress who took the drama classes brought with them copies of the plays which would be rehearsed, and worked on throughout the term. As all the students in Judith’s class were new, the casting was managed partly by type but mainly by readings. Several students were chosen to read each part, and the most suitable were given an act or several scenes to work on. The first play in which Judith was chosen to read a part was Shaw’s Saint Joan. She was not the first called on to read, and it happened the girl who read before her was Welsh, and, at the suggestion of the actor who was taking the class, gave Joan a Welsh accent. Judith following, knowing no other way to read the part, convulsed both the actor and the class by a faithful reproduction of the Welsh reading. “Are you all Welsh?” the actor asked, then, wondered if she knew any more regional accents.

  Judith had no idea what he was talking about.

  “I don’t know any English accents. I’ve never lived in England.”

  “Only in Wales?”

  “No. I’ve never been there.”

  “Then why did you give Joan a Welsh accent?”

  Judith looked round for the Welsh girl.

  “Because she did.”

  Judith’s position as a class jester was set that morning, but she sealed her position the next day when she was told to read the part of Phoebe in As You Like It. This time she was the first to read, and it happened it was a play she had studied with Miss Simpson.

  “It’s hard for us to understand Phoebe,” Miss Simpson had said. “It takes a great deal of imagination to believe that Rosalind could look so like a yo
ung man that Phoebe could fall in love with her, but the way she argues with herself is very clever.” Then she had read the speech starting: “Think not I love him, though I ask for him . . .”

  Though Miss Simpson had given the words their value, nothing could make her sound like a flirtatious shepherdess. Judith, given the same scene to read, reproduced her every inflection faithfully. It took a few moments before the actress who was taking the Shakespearean class, and the pupils, realised Judith was not fooling, but imitating; when they did they rocked with laughter. It was ludicrous to hear little fair Judith presenting a Phoebe who sounded, and almost looked, like an English spinster with a middle-aged spread.

  The girls in The West End School were mostly in their teens, having come straight from school; the men were older, having finished their national service. Judith in those first days made little impression outside her position as a comic turn, for she looked an exceedingly shy schoolgirl. The pupils in her class were on the whole, as all artists must be, self-centred, and too busy making themselves felt to think much about each other, so Judith’s pleading eyes and forlorn manner went more or less unnoticed, except by a second year pupil.

  Lance d’Espoir, born John Robinson, had come to The West End School in the hope that through it his good looks and reasonably pleasant educated accent might provide him with an easy living. Born of wealthy parents, up to the age of fifteen he had had everything he wanted. Then his Father had died suddenly, and it was learnt that since the war he had kept up his own and his family’s way of life by living on capital, so that on his death there was little outside a life insurance for his wife and boy. John was immediately removed from Eton, and sent through friends to a minor public school, and told by all his relations and god-parents that while there he must prepare to earn a living as soon as possible, for the university career which had been planned was now out of the question. The boy had not accepted his changed fortunes, he had sulked, whined and sworn to himself that somehow he would get back into the world he had known before his Father died. For him it was to be horses, not a bicycle; best hotels, not cafés; a Bentley, not a motor bicycle; above all he would not be pushed into a job where they kept him at it from nine till six for a miserable salary; the world had treated him badly, it was his right that it should pay back what it had taken from him.

  It was unlucky that an abnormal heart, which had inconvenienced him very little, had kept John from national service, for he was the type of boy about whom schoolmasters say, more as a prayer than a hope: “Perhaps the army will do something for him.” His relations, in view of his Mother’s financial position, rejoiced he was turned down, and set about finding him a job. In turn he was in a bank, but left at the end of three months, not exactly at the bank’s request, but by mutual agreement that he was not the type. He worked as a useful young man in the office of a financier. That came to an end when it was repeated to his employer he was going round stating he had inside information to part with at a price. He was sent to sell cars, that job lasted six months and looked hopeful, for there were several more young men not unlike him in that showroom, but he borrowed a car and, pretending it was his own, drove a girl to Brighton for a week-end in the style he loved; on the way back he crashed the car and was out of work again. It was at that moment, while his relations were discussing friends abroad who might help, that he happened to watch a television programme, and looking at the announcer, thought: “What’s that fellow got that I haven’t?”

  It took John some weeks to appreciate that vaguely good looks, attached to a reasonably pleasantly spoken young man did not mean jobs in a television studio, but he did find an assistant producer who was a friend of a girl friend, who said: “Go and get trained and you never know.” Building this into a definite promise, John talked his Mother into putting up the money for The West End School, and shaking off John Robinson as if he were a loose skin, he invented Lance d’Espoir, old Etonian, a young man with plenty of money, who thought it might be rather amusing to get into the acting racket.

  The students had at first taken Lance’s story for granted. He had hoped to give it credence by display. Whenever he had borrowed or taken from his Mother sufficient money, he had invited the prettier of the girls out, and had given them a showy evening, but, though he did not know it, this was the beginning of the rumour that he was a phoney. His stories of how well known he was in the best restaurants were palpably untrue in the face of “What name, sir?” On one occasion he attempted “How stupid, I’ve forgotten my wallet.” He tried it on the wrong girl; she was tough, she had no money to lend, and would not have lent it if she could have, for she had heard that story before. The next day the whole school knew what had happened. The men students, fresh from army life, during which they had dreamed of training to be actors, had never taken to Lance. He would have had to be exceptionally likeable to have been part of their circle, for the military service he had missed drew them together, being what he was he became definitely disliked. His mixed career, which he never admitted, but which came out bit by bit, his big talk, his rather pretty good looks but weak mouth, his belief that the world owed him something for which he would not have to work, added up to a type for which the army had the perfect word.

  The principal would have dismissed Lance at the end of his first term, for he did not work, which to him was unforgivable, but his actor teachers pleaded for him. It was, they pointed out, a feather in their caps if a pupil did well, and those sort of weak good looks, bounce and charm, when allied to a well-trained voice, quite often hit the jackpot. None of the teachers liked Lance, so all took pleasure in letting him know how nearly he had been dismissed, and, in their different ways, hinted that they shared the men students’ idea of the right word for him.

  Being ignored or snubbed did not change Lance’s belief in Lance. Fifty times a day he thought “I’ll show them.” He made himself believe it was not dislike of himself, but jealousy of his looks and charm which made the men students unfriendly. The girls’ avoidance of him he dismissed by telling himself they were a lot of common little bits, who did not know a gentleman when they met one. Despised and forced in on himself, he lived in a glass house built by himself for the growth of the exotic plant called Lance. It was this exotic plant, sophisticated, casual, amusing, rich, a cut above the rest of the students, that Judith cannoned into, shedding at his feet her handbag, a copy of As You Like It, some dancing sandals, and a letter from Miss Simpson addressed to her care of Mr. Ambrose and Lady Mercy Stratford-Derickson.

  It was the bag that Lance noticed first; it opened as it fell, and out of it came Judith’s notecase, in which, his sharp eye spotted, were more than one pound note. Judith, gathering her belongings together, turned pleading eyes on him.

  “Do you know where room L is? I ought to be in it doing voice production.”

  Lance was on his knees collecting her belongings.

  “Ought you? You know, I’m nearly through here,” he dropped his voice to an amused whisper, “and I’ve always cut voice production.”

  “I thought it was the most important thing, breathing and all that.”

  Lance got up and put an arm through hers.

  “Come to the canteen and have a cup of coffee, and your Uncle Lance will tell you about those who have become famous by refusing to learn voice production.”

  Had it not been the beginning of term, before the school had sorted out the new students, Judith would probably have made friends with some of the girls, and might have heard what they thought of Lance. As it was, by the time the newcomers had faces, and names, Judith’s and Lance’s friendship started that morning, was an established fact, occasionally there was speculation.

  “Can’t think what Judith sees in that stinker Lance.”

  “Odd that kid Judith being so friendly with Lance. Must have known him before she came here I suppose.”

  The teaching staff had no idea the two were friends, for they n
ever saw the students out of class. The principal, who always knew what was going on, did nothing because it was not his habit to interfere unless he must. It was obviously an unsuitable friendship, but allowed to run unchecked it would probably die naturally. In any case Lance was leaving at the end of the autumn term, the principal hoped, never to be heard of again, but feared his teachers might be right, and Lance would blaze into fame as a participant in a television game, or as a film star. All the same, he kept Judith in mind, a nice child, if he had to he would have a word with Lucy Stratford-Derickson.

  * * * * *

  Avis proved even more of an anxiety than Ambrose had feared. She was so thin she looked as if she would snap, she was aggressive at the slightest sign of concern, she treated both Ambrose and Mercy as outsiders who happened to have turned up in the place in which she chanced to be staying, she was obviously suffering, but when she allowed herself to be seen, talked in a furiously gay way as if she did not know what pain was. Neither Ambrose nor Mercy wished to stay away from home longer than they must, but it was clear Avis could not be left, so, remembering she had always wanted to see Japan, Ambrose discovered a cargo boat that was going there, and announced that he and Mercy would be on her, and Avis at the last moment decided to go with them. Ambrose, who knew his sister, told Mercy she had probably only agreed because she would be amused to watch his discomfort. Mercy, who found herself understanding the suffering Avis, far better than the normal Avis, agreed he might be right, but added:

  “She won’t say so, but I think she will be comforted because we’re with her, and because we are there she is less likely to do anything foolish. And if she is amused by us, don’t let’s mind. Everyone has a different way of enduring suffering. I always think if it’s their way of getting through a bad time, others have no right to criticise.”

  Beatrice could scarcely believe her ears when Lucy telephoned her with the news that Ambrose and Mercy were on their way to Japan. She had to sound unconcerned on the telephone, but she told Basil exactly what she thought.