Cluny Brown

by Margery Sharp

  “That’s a terrible thing,” said Mr. Wilson.

  Cluny now felt she had been disloyal to Mr. Porritt, and though she loved sympathy, her conscience made her stand up for him.

  “But Uncle Arn—and Aunt Floss—brought me up and everything. Uncle Arn would have kept me, he only sent me here because he thought good service might do me good.”

  “I’m glad you had some one to think for you,” said the chemist.

  Every word he spoke made Cluny feel more like an orphan. (Usually she did not feel like an orphan at all.) But his sympathetic interest was very agreeable, and she instinctively played up to it by looking sad. Cluny could look sad very easily, she had only to drop long dark lashes on a colourless cheek. Appropriately enough, a first spatter of rain just then struck against the windows; the shop grew dark, and away towards Carmel thunder rolled.

  “You can’t go back in this,” said Mr. Wilson.

  “I don’t mind,” said Cluny bravely. “Mrs. Maile’s waiting …”

  But they neither of them took this objection very seriously. The chemist, after a moment’s reflection, came from behind the counter and threw open the door at the back of the shop. It was a very manly, no-nonsense gesture; and Cluny (still an orphan) submissively followed him through into a small cosy room.

  Cluny liked this room at once. It reminded her of the Porritt kitchen, though it was not a kitchen but a parlour, and much neater and brighter than anything in String Street: the likeness lay chiefly in its unlikeness to the rooms at Friars Carmel. A dark red wall-paper was enlivened by many coloured pictures of gardens, ladies, children and pet animals; the round table was covered by a red cloth, on which stood a large brass lamp; the curtains were bright green. In the midst of all sat a very old lady whose white shawl made her quite restful to look at.

  “Mother,” said Mr. Wilson loudly, “here’s a young lady to see you.”

  Mrs. Wilson slightly turned her head; she looked at Cluny without much change of expression, nor did she say anything; but out from under the shawl fumbled a little brown old hand like a rabbit’s paw, and poked towards the chair on the opposite side of the hearth. Cluny obediently sat down on it. Mr. Wilson meanwhile lit the lamp. Its light made the room seem smaller and brighter, and the sky outside darker.

  “I’ve got your place,” said Cluny.

  “I’ll sit here,” said the chemist, pulling out one of the four straight chairs that stood round the table.

  He seemed to have run out of conversation, but the silence was not embarrassing, even when broken by a light snore from the old lady. This, in fact, by giving them a good reason not to talk, eased the whole situation. Mr. Wilson reached to the book shelf and pulled out a large illustrated volume of British Poets, for Cluny, and a Blackwood’s Magazine for himself, and they settled down as for a quiet afternoon. But Cluny needed no steel engravings to keep her happy: it was so extraordinary to be sitting there at all, with these two perfect strangers, that the sensation was enough in itself. She felt like a doll that has been picked up and put into a doll’s house: the doll at once looks completely at home, as though it had been there always. Cluny thought that if any one suddenly came in, he would take her for a relation.…

  This peculiar situation lasted about fifteen minutes. Then the sky began to clear; a watery beam of sun mingled with the light from the lamp, making it look like a lamp that has been on all night. (Making Cluny feel as though she and Mr. Wilson had been sitting up all night.) He at once turned it out, glanced at the window, and gave Cluny an affirmatory nod. She put her book on the table and followed him back to the shop.

  “You’ll be all right now.”

  “Thank you for letting me stay,” said Cluny, blinking.

  “Mother’s taken a liking to you,” said Mr. Wilson. “I can see that.”

  Cluny wondered how he could tell. Several years before she had made quite a friend of an old man who took a tortoise into Kensington Gardens; and he told her he was never sure whether the tortoise enjoyed these outings or not, whether it didn’t after all think, “Damn this grass.” However, Cluny supposed that from long experience Mr. Wilson could detect in his mother shades of expression, intimations of pleasure, unapparent to any one else.

  “She likes to see a young lady who doesn’t put stuff on her face,” said Mr. Wilson. “If I may say so, so do I.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t do any good,” said Cluny frankly. “I’ve tried it, but I look worse.”

  “They all look worse,” said the chemist. “Only they haven’t the sense to know it.” He did up the bottle very neatly, with white paper, thin pink string, and a blob of sealing-wax. “When you’re passing this way again, perhaps on your afternoon off, I hope you’ll look in on us.”

  “Thank you very much indeed,” said Cluny.

  III

  This minute adventure pleased her so much that she thought about it all the way home. How different now was her mood from that in which she set out! A door had opened in Friars Carmel, a door of the most fascinating possibilities; for in retrospect the chemist’s shop and the room behind appeared not only attractive, but mysterious. Who kept them so bright and clean? Who looked after Mrs. Wilson? (Not for one moment did Cluny visualize a Mrs. Wilson Junior.) Did Mr. Wilson spend all his spare time reading Blackwood’s while his mother slept? And what was he doing there at all, keeping up-to-date in a place like Friars Carmel? “He can’t be dodging the Police,” reflected Cluny, “he isn’t that sort. I dare say he’s had some dreadful tragedy.”

  This heartening thought carried her along at a good pace, and having been delayed already she honourably refrained from stopping to pick things. But she had to pause just once, at the lane she had already named “The Gorge.” Rills and rivulets of rain-water were still running down its sides; against the dark red earth the newly washed ivy-trails stood out darker still, yet brighter too, like greenish jet. Every detail of stem, leaf, pebble, raindrop, showed brilliant and precise. Cluny stared and stared. She advanced just a step, and felt the ring of stone under her heel. The lane was paved in the centre for a width of about two feet. So it was used (or had been); it went somewhere. A beautiful smell of warm wet earth puffed out to meet her. A little farther on, where a sapling grew out of the bank, crinkled primrose leaves invited. Cluny took another long step forward, and as she did so something in her mackintosh pocket banged against her knee.

  It was Mrs. Maile’s cough cure. Cluny took it out and looked at it. So neatly wrapped, in its white paper and pink string, it seemed to retain something of Mr. Wilson’s personality. It did not exactly rebuke, but it reminded. Cluny returned the bottle to her pocket and set her face towards home.

  Chapter 10

  I

  Now Andrew’s original plan had been to stay down at Friars Carmel as it were on guard; and when it became apparent that there was nothing to guard against, he naturally grew restless. He decided to go up to London and see John.

  “You don’t mind, Mother?” he said. “I mean, you and the Professor get on perfectly well without me?”

  “Of course we do,” said Lady Carmel. “Really, dear, it’s quite strange to me that you make all this fuss about the one friend who’s no trouble at all.” (She had not really answered the question, but Andrew did not notice.) “Give my love to John, and I hope you’ll have a gay time. I don’t suppose there’ll be very many dances yet—”

  “I shouldn’t go to them if there were,” said Andrew, rather sternly.

  Lady Carmel sighed. She had taken great pains to keep up her London relations, so that Andrew should have nice houses open to him; but Andrew seemed to scorn nice houses as he scorned deb dances and garden-parties. He was too clever for them. Which was very odd, thought Lady Carmel, since for the exactly opposite reason his father hadn’t liked parties either. He said all the girls were too clever for him. Sir Henry had been to precisely two dances in his life: at the first he met his future wife, at the second he proposed to her, and after that he cried off. But at
least he had realized what dances were for.…

  “Andrew,” said Lady Carmel suddenly, “do you ever think of getting married?”

  “No,” said Andrew at once.

  “We’d be very pleased.…”

  He grinned at her.

  “Yes, darling, if I married some one suitable. Like the Duff-Graham girl. Holy mackerel!”

  “What a nice expression,” said Lady Carmel. “But I wasn’t thinking of Cynthia. In fact, I don’t think Cynthia would do at all. I think she’d bore you. Isn’t there some one else?”

  “No,” said Andrew.

  His mother looked at him thoughtfully.

  “Now, that’s where we’re so different,” she said. “You talk about war, dear, as though it were inevitable; and you think me rather foolish because I still hope we may have peace. But if you really think like that, you should marry immediately.”

  “Even if there’s no one I’m in love with?”

  “That’s not altogether the point—though of course your wife must be some one you are fond of, and respect. But this property has been in the family for three hundred years; you should at least get an heir,” said Lady Carmel.

  Andrew considered her with attention.

  “Is that how you really feel?”

  “Yes, my dear, it is.”

  His next words had a dreadful relevance.

  “Do you remember Betty Cream?”

  Lady Carmel instinctively closed her eyes, but bravely reopened them.

  “Certainly I do. I think she’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, and so does your father. Would she make you happy?”

  “I shouldn’t imagine so,” said Andrew. “But as you say, that’s not the point. Not that she’d have me, of course.”

  He looked at his mother, expecting to see her bristle; but Lady Carmel gazed blandly back.

  “Then dear, we’d better start a few house-parties; and I shall expect you home before the end of the month.”

  Before he left Andrew performed a last duty towards his guest which involved him in an interview with Cluny Brown. He had no difficulty in finding her, because she was singing—in the housemaid’s pantry on the first floor—and her deep resonant tones, particularly when echoed back from beneath a draining-board, were very audible. Cluny was so absorbed in work and song that for a moment Andrew stood unperceived in the doorway; stood and stared, for the last time he had consciously seen her had been out of doors, striding along in her mackintosh as though she owned half Devonshire. Now she didn’t look like the same person: her brown stuff frock, inherited from a predecessor, had been cleaned but not altered: it was much too short in both skirt and sleeves, and the waist only vaguely approximated her own. The stiff white cap had slipped forward over her nose, and her pony tail of hair, escaping from its pins, stuck out behind. But her manners remained easy.

  “Hello,” she said pleasantly. “Want to wash?”

  “No, thanks,” said Andrew. “Are you the one who hoovers the east corridor?”

  Cluny at once looked defensive.

  “Yes, I am,” she said. “I’m Cluny Brown. And I’m being as quiet as I can.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, but it still makes a row. It wakes the Professor every morning. Can’t you muffle it?”

  “No,” said Cluny. “It’s the way it works—like Hilda breathing.”

  “Oh, damn,” said Andrew.

  He looked so put out that Cluny felt sorry for him. She cogitated.

  “There’s one way,” she said at length. “I could just not do the corridor.…”

  “Won’t that get you into a row?”

  “I’m always in rows,” said Cluny, reassuringly. “One more won’t make any odds. You needn’t know anything.”

  Andrew regarded her with more interest.

  “That’s very decent of you. But’ why are you always in rows?”

  “Mrs. Maile’s training me,” explained Cluny, without rancour.

  “If she bullyrags, I’ll speak to my mother.”

  Cluny had been only six weeks at Friars Carmel, but that was long enough to have taught her the unwisdom of such a course; she thought it nice of Mr. Andrew to suggest it, but also rather simple. However, the incident as a whole amused her, and as soon as she had finished upstairs she went off to discuss it with Hilda in the laundry. Hilda was ironing; her own things and Cluny’s were finished, because she always did them first, while she was fresh; now she was engaged on a night-dress of Lady Carmel’s. Cluny cast an eye over it, half-expecting to see a coronet or two, but no, it was perfectly plain, and rather like those still laid away in Aunt Floss’s bureau. Sir Henry wore nightshirts, and Andrew blue poplin pyjamas.

  “Hilda,” said Cluny, “I’ve been talking to Mr. Andrew.”

  “Get along!” said Hilda admiringly.

  “He’s upset about the hoover in the East, on account of the Professor. What’s the matter with the Professor? Is he ill? He doesn’t look ill.”

  “He’s had an operation. I shouldn’t wonder if it was for gall-stones,” said Hilda. “See how I’ve done your knickers.”

  She had done them beautifully, pleats from the waist and the frill all goffered. She had become very attached to Cluny, and this was her way of showing it. Admiring the result, Cluny suddenly remembered an oft-repeated injunction of her late aunt’s: always have your underclothes nice, in case you get run over by a ’bus. But there seemed little danger of such an accident at Friars Carmel—even on the main road.

  II

  This road, with its implication of going to the chemist’s, now occupied a large place in Cluny’s thoughts; for she had lost no time in extracting from Hilda and Mrs. Maile the history of the Wilsons, and it turned out to be even as tragic as she had guessed.

  The facts were these. Mrs. Wilson had been born at Friars Carmel; while in service at Exeter she married a Scottish gardener, who took her to the Midlands; on his death she settled in Nottingham with her son Titus, whose brilliant career (scholarship after scholarship) there culminated in his own chemist’s shop. Titus Wilson was a flourishing and a lucky man; successful in love as in all else, he became affianced to a beautiful Miss Drury. They waited for two years, methodically and happily preparing their future home; for both were prudent; and a week before the wedding Miss Drury was injured in a traffic accident, survived four days in great pain, and died.

  Titus Wilson’s subsequent conduct revealed a strength of emotion unsuspected even by his mother. He was a broken man. He still ran his business efficiently, because efficiency was in his blood and bones, but ambition seemed to have died. One day about six months later he asked his mother whether she would not like to return to Devon. This had been a long-cherished wish of Mrs. Wilson’s, and she said that she would. Titus did the thing thoroughly by taking her back to Friars Carmel. He deliberately buried himself. But the sale of the Nottingham business had left him sufficient capital to make a good start; besides giving Friars Carmel a better chemist’s than it had ever dreamed of, he gradually acquired the custom of all the big houses round about. It was easier to send to Wilson’s than to write to the Stores; where his predecessor sold corn-plasters to the servants, Titus Wilson was soon selling expensive soap to their employers. Doctors and farmers found him equally reliable in the matter of a prescription or a fertilizer; a shed behind the shop developed into a sort of agricultural branch. Almost in spite of himself, Mr. Wilson prospered. In six years he made no friends and few acquaintances, but Friars Carmel became rather proud of him.

  “For sad as it all was,” said Mrs. Maile sententiously, “we are very fortunate to have such a good chemist so close at hand. He is very much better than the man at Carmel.”

  Cluny listened to this tragic story and pitied Mr. Wilson with all her heart. She also felt very flattered by the notice he had taken of herself.

  “I suppose he’s hated women ever since?” she suggested hopefully.

  “Certainly not. He simply pays no attention to them.”

&n
bsp; “Us be just so many images,” put in Hilda, with a certain resentment. “Old Sourface, I call’n.”

  “He is an excellent son to his mother, and a very superior man,” pronounced Mrs. Maile, “and that is quite enough about Mr. Wilson.”

  If she were speaking to Cluny, she might just as well have spoken to a bloodhound on the trail.

  Chapter 11

  I

  When in London Andrew shared with John Frewen a bachelor apartment in Bloomsbury consisting of one room. It was quite large, it was about as big as the smaller box room at Friars Carmel, and chiefly remarkable for its store of old newspapers. These (a great nuisance to the landlady) were roughly filed in old cardboard boxes, or elsewhere as space permitted—six months’ Evening Standards under John’s mattress, the New Statesman under Andrew’s—or stacked on the floor, or simply left about. When asked why they kept them all, John and Andrew replied, rather aloofly, “For collation.” It was extremely interesting to see how the same item was treated in, say, the Times and the News Chronicle. (“But not a life interest?” said Betty innocently.) They made notes of the most striking examples, and had an idea of some day publishing their findings to prove whatever the findings proved; and as these notes too were roughly filed, or simply left about, the general effect was one of great intellectual activity. Sometimes the co-editors Box-and-Coxed it, often they were there together, and when Andrew arrived from Devonshire he found his friend already in possession. John, however, appeared surprised to see Andrew, and at once asked where was Mr. Belinski.