“The Stratford-Dericksons really are the most insufferable lot. Avis asks her brother to look after Judith, and he calmly goes off to the other end of the earth. It’s too much.”
Basil, unwilling to aggravate Beatrice further, fell back on a well-practised technique of non-committal noises. To himself he admitted the news was bad, poor little Judith would have to put up with them far longer than she had bargained for. He must try and get a word alone with her, and remind her he was around if she needed him.
Basil got a ready-made opportunity when Ambrose wrote to him about Judith’s finances. Charles, it seemed, paid Avis an allowance for Judith, which she insisted was a pittance, but was in fact generous. It had covered Judith’s living expenses, travel, taken care of her clothes, paid for the governess and allowed for pocket money. Avis, Ambrose wrote, was not, of course, touching a penny of the money, as Judith was not with her, but had written to Charles asking him to send it direct to himself and Mercy. Charles was doing that, but had suggested that Judith was now old enough to look after her own money. Ambrose thought, and so did Mercy, that this was nonsense, Judith was not yet seventeen, far too young to have charge of her income. But, Ambrose said, while she was in Basil’s care he must decide what was best, and since the length of her stay with him was indefinite, he was arranging with his bank that Judith’s allowance should be sent weekly. Less what had been spent on her school fees, and so on, it came to about sixty pounds a month. His wife asked him to point out that next year Judith would need all the money she could lay hands on, for, if her Mother agreed, she would present her, and arrange that she came out properly.
Basil did not show Beatrice this letter, for Catherine had not been presented at Court, but he told her the drift of it. To his surprise Beatrice agreed with Charles.
“I shouldn’t think she’s an extravagant girl, and if Charles is determined to give her all that money, the sooner she gets used to handling it the better. I can’t think why Ambrose Stratford-Derickson wrote to you and not to me, after all I am Charles’s sister, but since he has you’d better see to it. If I were you I’d open a bank account for the girl.”
Basil saw Judith in his study. She hurried in, wearing the scared expression that he saw too often on her face. He was at his desk, he held out a hand to her, and when she took it, drew her to him.
“There’s nothing wrong.” He gave her hand an affectionate pat. “It’s only about your money.”
Basil was amused at Judith’s reaction to the news she was to have her own bank account, and fifteen pounds a week. He might, he thought, watching her, be telling her she was to have half a crown pocket money, nor did she seem interested in the news that Mercy was planning to bring her out properly. She listened solemnly to all Basil said, agreed with him that she would not need to touch much of her money, and so would leave it in the bank, listened carefully while he explained about cheques, and under his instruction learned to fill one in. Only when the business talk was over did he see the Judith he had made friends with in the restaurant.
“Uncle Basil, you know you told me to make a friend at the drama school. Well, I have.”
Basil put away his cheque book, and tried to recall what he had said.
“Good. What’s she like?”
Judith’s face wore its spaniel look. Be pleased, it asked. I was expecting you to be pleased.
“It isn’t a she, it’s a he.”
Basil looked at her with an amused twinkle. Why not a he? Probably another Robert, not this time with a book to read to her, but perhaps parts to hear, or maybe he had written a play.
“Good. What’s his name?”
“Lance. I was wondering . . . you know you said the first friend I made you’d give me tickets for a theatre . . .”
The conversation came back to Basil, he tried to sound as if he had not temporarily forgotten it.
“I don’t think you’re old enough for an evening show, except in a party. How about a Saturday matinée?” He hesitated, wondering whether he should ask Judith and her boy friend to lunch, then decided against it. This Lance was probably the long-haired type, and he would not know what to say to him, they would do better on their own. “You tell me which day and my secretary will book the seats. I hope now you have your own money you’ll manage a show now and then, it’s a good opportunity while you’re with us to see some acting.”
Judith, for the first time since she had known about her bank account, appeared excited.
“Can I spend the money on things like that?”
Basil visualised inexpensive seats at Saturday matinées.
“Of course, it’s your own.”
The effect of this remark on Judith was, Basil thought, much greater than it warranted. To him she looked like a kid who had been given the fairy off the Christmas tree. It was on the tip of his tongue to qualify his statement, but another look at her stopped him. Poor little scrap, it was nice to see her looking happy for a change, why spoil things by avuncular warnings? After all, suppose she did go a dash once or twice, even took a stage box and invited all her pals, it would not be the end of the world. Then another thought came to him, of far greater importance. This Lance, if Catherine knew about him, it might make her more friendly to Judith; the puzzle was how to suggest to Judith she let Catherine know she had a new boy friend, and at the same time keep it from Beatrice, who might think it her duty to make a fuss.
“Getting on any better with Catherine?”
He watched with shame the gaiety die out of Judith’s face and anxiety take its place.
“Yes, thank you. I don’t see her very much, but she’s always very nice.”
“Damn your good manners,” thought Basil, “nice nothing.”
“Hope you haven’t expected to hear from Robert. I told him it was best not to write.”
“I thought that, I wrote to him too, and explained I was here so I couldn’t have letters.”
Basil looked at Judith’s childish innocent face, and wished more fervently than usual that he had a more reasonable family to deal with.
“It’s not as bad as that, you could have had letters of course . . .” He saw Judith was surprised that he, whom she admired, could make so foolish a statement. He hurried to his next point. “Fine girl, Catherine, as I told you, it was the war, came to look on him as her property, taking him fishing next holidays. Might not be a bad idea if she got to hear about this matinée. As I told you, it wasn’t you that worried her, be the same whoever the girl was. It’ll all come out in the wash when she falls for someone herself. Take my tip and drop a hint about this Lance, won’t do you any harm and cheer her up. No need to make a song and dance about it, no need for anyone but Catherine to know, see what I mean?”
* * * * *
Increasingly as the term passed Judith became the pivot on which Lance’s life turned. As if to give him a chance his inner voice, so long deliberately disregarded that he did not know it could still speak, warned him that for Judith the truth was his strong card. How right his inner voice had been he knew when, slowly at first, but presently in a flood, the long dammed up truth as he saw it flowed out of him. Judith’s expressive face told him without her saying anything how much she pitied him. How dreadful for a Father to die when a boy was only fifteen. How mean to take a boy from a school he liked, to send him to one he did not . . . Judith had barely heard of Eton, and knew nothing of school fees. How stupid of Uncles to think a boy such as Lance would like a bank or being in business . . . he had omitted the car salesman interlude.
“So you see,” Lance had finished, “there just isn’t anyone who cares what I do, or what becomes of me.”
“Oh yes there is,” Judith retorted, “there’s me, I care awfully.”
It was outside Lance’s plan for himself to have friends who were not of use to him, but for quite a while after he came to know Judith it was enough for him that she admire
d him and needed him. It would have amazed him if he could have known that in the first weeks while he was getting close to her, a chance not to be the creature his world thought him, had looked him in the face before passing him by.
Judith had not supposed it was possible that she could live with the Carlyles and be so happy; it had been lovely in the holidays having Robert to do things with, and it had been the nicest thing that had happened to her when he had told her about his book. It had been perfect being with Simpsy and Mother, especially when Mother let her do things for her, but nobody had been like Lance. Poor Lance, whom nobody loved, Lance who needed her. Lance to whom she could tell everything, who was always interested and always understood. Each day in her prayers, whether in English, French, Italian or German, she implored that she might be shown how never to disappoint him in the smallest way, and to be helped to be able to do whatever he asked.
“For you do understand, God, if I failed him he might stop being fond of me, and not want to see me any more. If that happened, God, I should die, for truly it’s not nice with the Carlyle relations, and Mother never writes, and though Simpsy is coming to England she will live at an old people’s home, which is in Kensington, which, dear God, is a long way from both The West End School and Hampstead. I do hope You won’t think I am praying too long, God, but I do want You to understand how important it is about Lance.”
It did not take Judith long to realise that Lance was poor, nor long for Lance to realise that Judith was not. Until the Saturday of Basil’s matinée no money changed hands, it was just not mentioned, but meals in the canteen were usually paid for by Judith. But before the matinée Judith invited Lance to lunch, and over that meal she told him her news and her plan.
“When Uncle Basil told me about the bank account I wasn’t awfully interested, I didn’t see how it could help. Then Uncle Basil said he hoped I would spend some of it on theatre tickets, and that it was my money and I could do what I liked with it. Oh Lance, would you let me give you some of it every week?”
At first Lance only took the odd pound, then, growing accustomed to the feel of money in his wallet, his needs grew. It was taxis not the Underground, a restaurant instead of the school canteen, endless small extravagances. Had there been any other way to get money except through Judith Lance persuaded himself he would have used it; living on what she could give him, he told himself, was not what he wished, but there was no other way, and each day the need to know there was money in his pocket grew on him. By the end of the term he seldom took less than ten pounds a week, though, as he frequently reminded himself, he spent quite a lot of that on entertaining Judith.
Judith never gave her money a thought, she had no use for it, and had she gone without things it would have pleased her, it was so wonderful being able to do something for Lance.
Had she not had Lance Judith would have had a very solitary term. Beatrice, in an outspoken talk, had made it clear to Catherine that until she could control herself and had ceased to try and have dominion over Robert, she would not see him.
“Your Father and I have decided it will be better for both you and Robert to be apart. For some time I have thought you foolishly possessive, your dismaying lack of self-control the other morning decided the matter. Next holidays Robert will go fishing with your Father, after that we shall see.”
Catherine outwardly accepted this ruling without argument, inwardly she scoffed at it. Better apart! That was an idiotic grown idea. All right, let them keep them apart, next holidays, the Christmas holidays, for a whole year if they liked, but it would make no difference in the end, whoever Robert married, and whoever she married, would not be allowed to interfere with their fondness for each other. All the same, though she scoffed, the fact that she would not be seeing Robert before Christmas at the earliest had its influence. Since she had left school she had looked upon school terms as blank patches to be lived through without Robert, now, since she would not be seeing him for months, she was forced to consider alternative companions.
Beatrice had not found it easy to bring Catherine out. They had given a dance for her, and she had in return been asked to dances given by their friends, but she had stuck there. A feeling her Mother was trying to make her have friends outside the family made her prickly to deal with. “Oh not Catherine, she looks as if she hates coming to us,” was the general cry among the children of Basil’s and Beatrice’s friends, so she was only invited when parents insisted.
It was not easy to retract a name for being unsociable, but Catherine worked at it until, to her parents’ relief, results began to show.
“I hope it’s not a temporary change,” Beatrice said to Basil, “but have you noticed Catherine is either out with friends, or has friends here every week-end, and she is being invited to dances?”
During June and July Basil and Beatrice too were out a good deal, and gave several dinner parties themselves. Since Judith was not quite grown up Beatrice treated her as she would have treated Cynthia had she been at home.
“When you’re alone, or we have friends here, or when Catherine has friends in, you’ll have something simple on a tray. I expect it will suit you really, you can listen to the radio while you eat.”
Judith loved tray nights. She was popular in the kitchen, and the something simple was usually one of her favourite dishes. While the meal was prepared she would sit on the kitchen table and give imitations of the household. The impersonation of Beatrice was a riot. There were two Polish maids who did not understand a word, but they could recognise Beatrice’s crisp high voice, and the kitchen rang with laughter. The English cook, who, as Beatrice saw her, was an enormously highly-paid dictator over whom she had no influence, was, beneath the façade she presented to keep employers such as Beatrice in their place, a warm-hearted motherly creature. The Carlyle house suited her, but she did not like Beatrice, and Robert and Cynthia, of whom she was fond, were usually away, so it had been in her thoughts to make a change, but Judith’s arrival had altered her mind. Long talks between herself and Mrs. Welsh had built a more or less accurate picture of Judith’s position.
“Didn’t want to ’ave ’er if you ask me,” Mrs. Welsh had said.
Cook had agreed.
“You’re right there, I wouldn’t wonder if He made her, He’s a real gentleman.”
One day Mrs. Welsh had whispered news.
“Creatin’ shockin’ Catherine is, ’eard ’er when I was doin’ me ’all. Somethin’ about Judith and Robert, and She’s actin’ up too.”
Cook had been shocked at such stupidity.
“And they as innocent as new-born babes. You know what it is, Mrs. Welsh, Her sort always joining societies to do good to someone, and poke their noses in where they aren’t wanted, gets nasty-minded, they sees dirt where there’s none to see.”
Mrs. Welsh had ruminated before she answered.
“Reckon she wants a friend, young Judith does.”
Cook nodded.
“That’s right, that is, and she’s got one. Young Judith is welcome to come to my kitchen whenever she fancies, she’ll always have a friend in me.”
The nights Judith feared were those she spent alone with Catherine, and these, though she never ceased to dread them, scared her rather in what she imagined would happen than in what occurred. Catherine liked Judith no better; if she was glad that Lance had taken Robert’s place she showed no sign of it. At the time she had scowled and muttered “Why tell me, I’m not interested,” and there the subject had dropped. Her antipathy was fundamental, she feared and distrusted a means of holding affection so utterly alien to her own. But, though she was unaware of it, she had become less difficult, for once she had accepted she would not be seeing Robert for some time, and was making new friends, she proved to have much of her Father in her. Being liked, she discovered, being accepted as a good companion, was a pleasant thing, so pleasant that she considered how, when she saw Robert again,
she could draw him into her new world, rather than removing herself from it, which had once been her intention. Also, though she never suspected it, her attitude to Robert changed. Amongst her new friends there were plenty of brothers and sisters, who got on well together in a casual way, but who would have thought interference from the other intolerable. Some of this attitude was accepted by Catherine, and crept into her letters; Robert was not aware her tone had changed, but found his letters to her easier to write than he had found them since he was a small boy. These factors, though not softening Catherine’s feeling for Judith, made it far easier for her to put up with her. She would always find her aggravating, she would rub her the wrong way, she would never trust her, but she began to consider her harmless.
“Actually the evenings with her aren’t so bad,” Catherine confided to a friend to whom she had talked of “my awful cousin”. “She tells me about the drama school and I tell her about the office; I’ll never like her but thank goodness we shan’t have her soon, for the Stratford-Derickson relations are coming back.”
Ambrose and Mercy, travelling by sea, were on their way home bringing, Ambrose hoped, Avis with them. She appeared in better health, was eating and sleeping well, and had begun to write again, and was once more sharing with Ambrose acid, clever, Stratford-Derickson jokes. Mercy who, as Avis recovered, was left much to herself, studying her sister-in-law, did not share Ambrose’s belief that Avis was returning to Europe to take up again the life she had dropped. She had a feeling that the wound that had sent Avis haring off alone was very far from healed. So it was not the shock to her that it was to Ambrose when Avis announced in her most don’t-argue-with-me voice:
“I’m getting off at Genoa. My plans are indefinite. I’ll write some time, and give you an address.”
Ambrose, though annoyed, wasted no time arguing.
Judith Page 16
