by A. A. Milne
By some accident the freeholds of the twelve houses of Hayward’s Grove are in possession of twelve owners, all of whom live, or, as agents say, reside there. But for this, no doubt, the Grove would now be a block of delightful flats with a frontage into Eastney Street; or a day and-night garage; or the Wire-netting and Garden Accessories Department of Hankey’s Stores. From time to time Mrs. Carstairs, at Number 6, had expressed a willingness to be a twelfth part of the Wire-netting Department, but her situation, in the middle of the Grove, prevented the negotiations from crystallizing into anything like a firm offer, and she had to be content with an occasional ‘let’ to a ‘thoroughly satisfactory’ tenant.
One may be allowed a glimpse of her in bed before she goes to Buxton. She is wearing her ‘boudoir cap’ and the grey shawl, the one sent from Shetland by a grandson who had gone there to fish. ‘Let us hope’, said Mrs. Carstairs, as her maid unpacked the parcel in front of her, ‘that his taste in fish is better. I shall wear it when breakfasting, Parks, on the understanding that you do not express admiration for it. Nobody else is to see me in it.’ Parks expressing immediate admiration of its warmth, Mrs. Carstairs added, ‘By the way, when is Mr. Harold’s birthday? Tuesday? Strange!’
However, now she is in bed, breakfasting and opening her letters, while Parks stands by.
‘A Mr. Wellard,’ she is saying. ‘Apparently he has written a book called Bindweed. I must have read it, because I read every book which comes out, and I don’t remember a word of it, so it can’t have been a good one. Apart from writing a bad book, his references seem satisfactory.’
‘I remember the gentleman coming,’ says Parks. ‘He looked a very nice gentleman.’
Mrs. Carstairs raises her eyebrows, and says, ‘You will be with me in Buxton.’
‘Yes, madam,’ says Parks meekly.
‘I am leaving Stoker, and they bring a maid with them. A man is coming to-day to take an inventory. If you noticed the gentleman, Parks, no doubt you noticed the lady also. Any comments?’
‘She didn’t come the first time, madam, and the second time was my afternoon out.’
‘Ah! Go and look at yourself in the glass, Parks. No, the long one.’
Parks goes wonderingly.
‘Think yourself pretty?’
Parks blushes and says, ‘No, madam.’
‘You mean Yes, madam.’
‘Yes, madam,’ says Parks, looking quite pretty now in her confusion.
‘But no brains.’
‘No, madam.’
‘And brains last longer.’
‘Yes, madam.’
Parks having heard in the kitchen that the visitor was ‘a lovely one’, wonders if all this about brains refers to Mrs. Wellard or to herself. Anyhow, who wants silly old brains?
‘Would you have said that I was good-looking as a girl?’
‘Oh yes, madam,’ says Parks eagerly.
‘Well, you would have been wrong. I had a complexion. Nowadays you can buy them, but in my day you had to grow them. Much more difficult. A complexion, and a figure; which really meant a figure in those days, and not just an absence. That and brains. Brains, Parks. Mrs. Wellard, poor dear, is just beautiful—but, my God, how beautiful. All right, now you can send up Stoker.’
After which she goes to Buxton, and we lose her.
II
They came up to London on Tuesday, Reginald and Sylvia in the car, Alice by train with the luggage.
‘But can we use the car in London, darling?’ Sylvia had asked.
‘No, but we shan’t feel so far away from Westaways. We can pop down any time we feel like it. I don’t know how you “pop down”, but I’m sure it can’t be done by train. Not our sort of trains. Besides, I want to drive up.’
‘Are you sure you can, darling?’
‘No, I’m almost sure I can’t. By Tuesday I shall know for certain.’
‘Of course you can, darling.’
It’s very odd, thought Reginald. Just now she implied that I couldn’t.
‘Of course I can. Somewhere in the heart of South Norwood, possibly among the shoppers on the pavement, I may suddenly feel tired, and hand the wheel over to you for a bit. And when you have reversed out of the perambulator, dodged the lamp-post and missed the two trams and the policeman, I may feel refreshed again. I don’t know. I’m full of hope.’
But when he began to wake up on Tuesday morning something was hanging over him. He was either going to the dentist or making a speech. Oh no, he was driving the car up to London. Not quite so bad. Not at all bad, in fact. Rather fun. In fact, great fun. Ridiculous for a grown man, who had been asked for his autograph, to feel nervous about a little thing like that. He splashed loudly in his bath, and introduced a note of gaiety into his vigorous towellings. . . .
‘Aren’t you hungry, darling?’ asked Sylvia at breakfast. Most annoyingly.
‘Much as usual,’ said Reginald crossly. ‘Why?’
However, he did it. Alone he did it. No, not alone, he thought. Without Sylvia’s ‘It’s all right, darling’ at the anxious moments, I should never have done it. It ought to be possible to carry a very small Sylvia about with you everywhere; in the waistcoat pocket; so that wherever you were, you could take her out and feel her loving warmth in your hand, and hear her say, ‘It’s all right, darling.’ . . . And then, of course, if you liked to put her back in your pocket when you were discussing the Theory of Relativity at the club, or talking rather cleverly and humorously to—well, to Lena, or to—well, Miss Voles, say, then you could—if you wanted to.
‘Damn,’ said Reginald to himself. ‘Why do I keep thinking these things? And what does Sylvia think about me? What a hell this world would be, if we knew each other’s thoughts!’
Alice and tea were waiting for them in Mrs. Carstairs’ drawing-room. ‘Hallo, Alice,’ said Reginald gaily, as one back from the Pole and greeting a long-absent friend. Luckily Alice knew the right answer to that. ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ she said respectfully. But when she was out of the room, Reginald began to laugh.
‘What is it, darling?’ smiled Sylvia, happy that he was so happy.
‘I was just thinking how surprised we should have been if, when I said “Hallo, Alice”, Alice had said “Hallo”. The natural answer.’
‘Oh, but she wouldn’t,’ said Sylvia, almost shocked.
‘No, but it would have been funny,’ persisted Reginald. Dash it, he thought, you shall see that it’s funny.
Sylvia poured out the tea, frowning to herself. . . . Then she smiled. . . . Suddenly she began to laugh. . . .
Oh, my darling, I like to hear you laugh. Your laugh is as beautiful as the rest of you. How little you have laughed with me, Sylvia, my lovely. You who have been so generous with your other treasures. Give me your lovely laugh, sweetheart, for there is none other like it in the world. . . .
All the same, he thought, as she went on laughing, it wasn’t as funny as that.
III
Settled down in London, Reginald naturally asked himself why he had come there. What was his programme? The evenings would look after themselves; one could do all the things one did in the country (which was hardly anything) and then all the other things besides. But what of the mornings, what of the afternoons, what of that delightful interval between tea and the evening bath? ‘There’ demands so much less provision than ‘here’; ‘O, to be in England now that April’s there’: one could think so in Italy without definitely focusing one’s occupations between breakfast and luncheon, luncheon and tea, tea and dinner. No need then to say ‘O, to be talking to Mr. Tennyson in Freshwater at 11.30 on April 7th!’ England, April, the two words were enough. But once disembarked, one could not just go about crying, ‘I am in England, it is April, hooray!’ One would have to take advantage of it somehow.
London in late October. What did one do in London in late Oct
ober? One met people. Why else had he come to London? He was ‘out of it’ at Westaways, now he was ‘in it’. Right. He would ‘meet’ people. How?
It was a sparkling October morning. (Heavens, why had they left Westaways!) Sylvia at the moment was ‘meeting’ Mrs. Stoker in the kitchen. He could picture her half-sitting on the kitchen-table, making one of her natural conquests. Mrs. Stoker was suggesting a nice sole, but really telling herself that never in all her life had she had to do with one of them that easy and pleasant, and as for looks, why, the Queen of Sheba herself in all her glory would have felt sorry for herself next to Mrs. Wellard. But they would go on talking about what Mrs. Carstairs had fancied, and what Mr. Wellard might be supposed to fancy . . . and Hayward’s Grove . . . and Westaways . . . and, no doubt, the late Mr. Stoker, for a long time yet . . . until at last Sylvia would put on a hat (again a matter of time) and go down the road and round the corner to wherever Mrs. Carstairs went round the corner, and dazzle a fishmonger by promising him that he could continue to send round to Number 6, and stimulate now the brain of the author of Bindweed. Yes, Sylvia’s time was accounted for. Already she was ‘in it’. But what about Mr. Wellard?
‘I know,’ said Reginald suddenly. ‘What fun!’
So he, too, put on his hat (a matter of no time at all) and went off to Bingley Mason’s, saying doubtfully to himself as he went, ‘It is Bingley Mason’s, isn’t it?’
For though Bingley Mason, A. H. Pratt, Miller and Peabody, Stauntons and Weatherby Bell all sell the most enchanting things for ladies, yet there are ladies and ladies. Great ladies, real ladies, pretty ladies, undoubted ladies, and women who shudder at the word lady, all of them made more great, more real, more pretty, more undoubted, more womanly by one or other of these gentlemen. And though the windows through which all these ladies are irresistibly drawn are equally eye-opening to a man, yet to his wife one only is the opening to Paradise. At the others she shrugs her lovely shoulders and says, ‘Oh! Stauntons,’ or, if in kindly mood, ‘Wonderfully good for Weatherby Bell,’ knowing by instinct that Bingley Mason’s alone carries the hall-mark of class. ‘At least,’ said Reginald doubtfully, ‘I think it’s Bingley Mason’s.’
In the days of man’s financial innocence, before the war, it was possible for a respectable citizen to offer a respectable cheque to a respected tradesman without feeling uncomfortable about it. The tradesman had no doubts, the customer no uneasy realization that he was doubted. The time may come when those of us who suit the figuring of our cheques to our balances will hold up our heads again, and face our temporary creditors without shame; but now any sudden absence of cash moves us to a stammering apology for our default, and a nervous resort to our cheque-book, which only densifies the atmosphere of suspicion. We feel just as we imagine the accredited swindler must feel, though he, surely, would show his feelings less openly. In short, we are no longer ourselves, but an imagined projection of ourselves on the plane of another’s thought.
So, doubtless, in the days of man’s sexual innocence, whenever that was, it was possible for a husband to buy, unembarrassed, the pair of cami-knickers which his wife, equally unembarrassed, could then have done without. No harm, of course, nowadays in buying underclothes for your wife . . . and yet, said Reginald to himself outside Bingley Mason’s, will the girl in the shop believe that I am buying them for my wife? No? Shall I look as if I believe it myself? No. And even if we both believed it, isn’t it still rather embarrassing? I mean these things may have gadgets which—well, I mean—oh, but dash it, I can’t be the first man to have done it. They must know in the shop just how technical the conversation can be allowed to become. Or shall I stick to stockings?
At least he would begin with stockings. He began on the ground floor with a dozen pairs, fearing that his nerve, subsequently, might fail him. The young woman (young lady? girl? what do you call them?) smiled at him in friendly fashion, warmed by the pleasant October morning which came in by report with each new customer. Silk stockings? Certainly, sir. What size?
‘Oh!’ said Reginald. ‘Well, I don’t—— I quite forgot—— I mean I never thought——— They’re for my wife,’ he explained, as if the trade should now be able to make the necessary calculations.
But the young woman was still in need of data.
‘What size shoe does Moddam take?’
‘There you’ve got me again.’ He tried to visualize Sylvia’s pretty foot. ‘Fives? I really don’t know.’
‘Is Moddam about my height?’
Reginald looked at her thoughtfully.
‘Yes, just about, I should say.’
‘That would be nine and a half, then.’
‘That sounds a delightful size,’ smiled Reginald, feeling immensely at ease. And the wife-idea, he thought, came in most convincingly.
‘What colour would Moddam like?’
Very unfair, just when they were getting on so well.
This is much more difficult than I thought, said Reginald to himself. Isn’t there a colour called ‘elephant’s breath’—or am I thinking of a cocktail? Anyway, they have frightful names like ‘nude’ and ‘nigger’ which simply cannot be said aloud.
‘Show me a lot,’ he commanded. ‘All colours. The latest and the most beautiful. And the most expensive. And I’ll have a dozen pairs.’
By the time they had agreed on the most beautiful, and Reginald had accepted his colleague’s authority for the lateness and the expense, they were on such good terms that the mildest curate could have given the conversation a kick in the direction of nightgowns. And by the time the young woman had said, ‘That will be upstairs, sir,’ all his new-found courage was gone. Upstairs meant that instead of following a conversation along its natural lines with an intimate friend who knew all about one’s wife, one would crash into the startling topic of nightgowns with a complete stranger. And from nightgowns—where then? Still a higher floor, and a more daring flight into the unseen?
‘You are a man-of-the-world,’ said Reginald. ‘You are a man-about-town. You are a clubman. Pull yourself together.’ Pulling himself together, he went upstairs. . . .
Five minutes later he was thinking: If I were a woman, I should live here. Nothing would ever drag me away from this floor. If I were a leader of fashion, I should insist on bare legs, so as to leave more money for the other things. Stockings! Good Heavens, what a waste! When I had spent all my money, I should fake the household accounts. When my husband was bankrupt, I should become a shop-lifter. Yes, I’ll have that and that and those. And those and that. Oh and this. And what about that? Only seven guineas? The set? You mean that and that and those? It’s giving it away. Have you another set just like it in pale green? Eau-de-Nil, that’s it. Look here, we’ve got rather carried away. We were just talking about nightgowns when we got led on to these things. Going back to them for a moment, what about a pale green one and a pale gold one? Sorry, Eau-de-Nil. And does Moddam wear pyjamas? No, but I suppose she could. Let’s have one very exciting pair. The absurdest pair you have. And would you be frightfully annoyed—I mean, is it simply not done at all?—if I asked you to be so terribly kind as to choose a—a set or whatever you like, for yourself? I mean, it seems to me simply damnable that you should live among these lovely things, and not—or perhaps you—well, I mean anyhow one couldn’t have too many of ’em. Would you really? I say, thanks awfully. It makes the day so much happier for everybody, doesn’t it?
Feeling ridiculously proud and pleased with himself, Reginald raised his hat and marched away.
The two parcels came after tea. ‘Is that all?’ said Reginald, forgetting by how many ‘practically nothing’ must be multiplied to make anything at all. He took them up to Sylvia’s room, cut the string impatiently (Sylvia would have untied it) and laid the lovely things out on her bed. Then he went down to her.
‘Just come upstairs a moment, Sylvia. I want to show you something.’
She came, unsuspecting. He opened the door for her and waved a careless hand at the bed.
‘A little present for you, and don’t say I’ve got all the wrong ones.’
But for a moment she did not say anything, but stood looking in wonder. Then, as she touched this and that, little exclamations came from her, and catches of the breath, and suddenly she would see something else and dart round to the other side of the bed, and cry ‘Oh F again, and pick up the pretty thing to hold against her cheek; and the wild-rose grew deeper and deeper, and her eyes larger and larger, until they overflowed into tears which entangled themselves in her lashes, and had to be winked away.
‘Darling, do you love them so much?’
She nodded eagerly, shaking the tears down her face, and had to laugh at the foolishness of her tears when she was so happy, and at the way she had shaken them down her cheeks, and she said, ‘Oh—I love you so much.’ And then she said, ‘Shut your eyes,’ and when he opened them again at her ‘Ready!’ there she was in this or that one of her new treasures, looking so adorable that each time he had to take her in his arms. . . .
‘Happy?’ whispered Sylvia.
‘Absolutely,’ nodded Reginald, and wondered whether he was.
IV
For London, as Reginald was beginning to discover, is the most uncomfortable place in which to do nothing particular; you must either work or be bored. In the country you are never quite sure whether you are working or idling, for the one is as engrossing as the other. After breakfast you light a pipe, and stroll into the garden. You may be getting your thoughts into order before beginning your chapter on Polarization and Transversality of Light Waves, or you may be going to see if the dianthus cuttings have had a good night; in either case you stop for a moment at the zinnias and thank God for so much beauty. But who, having praised zinnias, could shut his mind to the butterfly prettiness of the coreopsis, the velvet of the salpiglossis, the flaunting dahlias, the blue mist over the ceanothus, the golden mass of marigold and nasturtium and eschscholtzia; who could not feel that, beside all this, the transversality of light waves was, for the moment, a little thing, so that, putting this lesser thing on one side, he must continue his walk through the garden . . . until he comes to the nursery beds and ascertains if the dianthus cuttings have had a good night? But at the nursery beds we are on territory of which at best we are no more than suzerain. Edwards or Challinor comes lumberingly or sharply up; there is talk, idle-seeming at first, but leading here or there; a swarm to be taken, a fence to be mended, seeds to be ordered, drainage to be put in hand. And if by lunch-time there is no more of our chapter on its new page but the heading, do we reproach ourselves? Have we been idle; have we wasted our morning? Why, no, when we have been living so luxuriantly.
