She stood for a moment beside the scarlet pillar-box. Suddenly the thought came to her: “I could go to Kersland. There’s nothing to stop me now.”
Perhaps it would be foolish to go back after so long; perhaps Kersland had changed, as so many things had changed. But Holly Lenox had spoken of the place as if they all loved it, and Dorothea was inclined to believe that if the Lenoxes found it enchanting, it must still be so.
CHAPTER 6
Mrs. Lenox, packing neatly and swiftly, thought what a blessing it was to have Miss Balfour next door to keep an eye on the house and its occupants while she and Holly were at Kersland for the summer holidays. Miss Balfour would never interfere unnecessarily, and her advice would be so gently offered that Willow would accept it without realizing that she had.
At this point in her preparations Mrs. Lenox paused, stood erect with two pairs of Holly’s stockings in her hand, and said aloud:
“How extraordinary!”
Yes, how extraordinary it was to think of Miss Balfour, who until a few weeks ago had been the less disagreeable of the two old ladies at Number Four, as a blessing!
It had come about so naturally, so simply, so imperceptibly, starting from that afternoon when she had put on her new hat and gone next door to see Miss Balfour. Or rather, it had begun before that. Rowan had begun it by paying her impulsive visit only a few hours after Miss Balfour’s sister’s funeral. The new friendship was really due to Rowan and her unorthodox behaviour. Of course, she must not be encouraged to do such odd things, thought her mother, frowning a little.
Rowan was different from the rest of her children, there was something unaccountable in her which made her more vivid, and gave her the capacity for feeling more intensely. She rode so high on the crest of her wave of happiness that Mrs. Lenox sometimes felt afraid of the depths to which sorrow might plunge her.
So far and fast do thoughts range that Mrs. Lenox, though she spoke severely to herself for day-dreaming and wasting time, had only stood clutching Holly’s stockings for a minute, before she bent and stuffed them into a convenient corner of the suitcase. It was impossible to save Rowan, or any of them, from the sorrows that life might bring. Her good sense told her so, but it was not very comforting, she thought, as she went on packing. What did bring her comfort, and it was not sensible at all, was the recollection of the odd old Highland cook who had been with them temporarily just before the War, when Rowan had been three or four years old!
She had always said that Rowan belonged to the Little People, and that they would guard her from sorrow and strife . . .
“Ridiculous!” muttered Mrs. Lenox, annoyed that the old woman’s words could still console her. “Quite ridiculous—an ignorant old creature—and she wasn’t a very good cook, either! Terribly extravagant . . .” but she was fond of the children, especially Rowan, and Nannie was away at the time, and even Holly, the baby, loved her.
At the thought of Holly, Mrs. Lenox’s mind sprang back at one bound to the present. Where was Holly? She should be home by now, she should be helping to pack.
Of course, St. Gregory’s had broken up for the summer holidays, and the child was enjoying her freedom, but at the same time, she ought to remember that there was a lot to do at home.
Holly was much nearer home than her mother supposed. With two companions of her own age she was proceeding very slowly down Kirkaldy Crescent, on the far side, stopping at intervals of a few yards for no apparent reason, and then strolling on again.
All three walked with a slight but noticeable waggle reminiscent of ducks on the move, which caused the full skirts of their cotton dresses to flounce about them, and all were giggling.
Miss Dorothea Balfour, standing at one of her drawing-room windows, watched their antics with puzzled wonder. They had reached the lower end of the Crescent, and so were directly opposite her, and they halted there as if undecided whether to turn back or walk on. As they hesitated, swinging their skirts and chattering, two tall boys on bicycles came down the hill, wearing the badge of a well-known Edinburgh day-school on their caps. They passed the girls without a sign of recognition, and pedalled on out of sight. The girls tossed their heads, turned and walked up the Crescent again.
In a few minutes the boys reappeared, rode up the near side of the Crescent, passed the girls near the top, and continuing their circular tour, passed them once more.
“Dear me!” said Miss Dorothea, as the meaning of these apparently senseless manoeuvres broke on her. “Dear me! They seem very young to be starting this sort of thing. I wonder if their mothers know?”
She remained at the window, watching for Rowan, whom she was expecting to tea, and saw the bus reach its stop at the upper end of the Crescent.
Rowan jumped lightly off, and a minute or two later joined Miss Dorothea in her drawing-room.
“Did you ever see such young ostriches as Holly and her friends?” she remarked indulgently, observing her hostess at the long window. “As if it doesn’t stand out a mile that they are hanging about waiting for some pimply boy to notice them!”
“Surely they would not want to be noticed by a boy with pimples, my dear?” said Miss Balfour.
“I think the point is to be noticed, whether the boy has pimples or not, at that age,” said Rowan. “I never bothered much about them myself—I mean the boys, not the pimples—but I remember Willow used to keep a little book and put down all the boys who looked twice at her. If she didn’t know their names she put ‘fair hair’, or something. And Willow was much prettier than Holly, so I expect Holly isn’t terribly particular.”
“I can’t help feeling that your mother would not be pleased if she knew.”
“No. She wouldn’t be pleased. She’d be furious,” was Rowan’s candid reply. “But what’s the use, Miss Dorothea? It’s just something that happens when you get to about seventeen.”
Very few people are so strong-minded as to be proof against the flattery of being treated as contemporaries by those young enough to be their grandchildren.
Miss Balfour was not so strong-minded. She was perfectly willing to believe that Rowan was right. Her own common-sense told her that if the game Holly was playing was foolish, it was quite harmless, but she said rather diffidently:
“I am sorry if it annoys your mother, my dear. Do you think that perhaps if Holly knew—”
Rowan shook her glossy head.
“No good. You can’t stop a—a force of nature. Holly would go underground, that’s all. I don’t see why she shouldn’t amuse herself like this. Mummy’s a darling, Miss Dorothea, but she doesn’t seem able to understand how girls feel at that age. It’s funny, isn’t it?”
Miss Balfour, who felt in some obscure way that it would be disloyal to Mrs. Lenox if she agreed, heard Edna clanking the tea-tray outside the drawing-room door with a sigh of relief and said: “Here is our tea, my dear.”
“Lovely! I’m starving!” announced Rowan, and as Edna staggered in with the enormous silver tray and its gleaming burden of tea-pot, cream-jug, hot-water jug, sugar basin, cups and saucers and a covered dish from which rose a delicious smell of hot scones, sprang to help her.
“That’s far too heavy for you, Edna,” she said.
“You know,” observed Miss Balfour mildly, picking up the heavy silver tea-pot and pouring out tea for them both, “I have suggested that we should put all this paraphernalia away in the silver-chest and use a wooden tray and a china tea service, but Edna won’t hear of it. She seems to enjoy being a martyr over polishing and carrying it.”
Rowan blushed. “Miss Dorothea!” she cried. “I never meant—it was only that Edna looked so overloaded!”
“I know, and I didn’t mean to sound as if I were scolding you,” said Miss Balfour.
Rowan sprang up, circumnavigated the table, and dropped a kiss on the little black velvet bow which Miss Balfour liked to wear on top of her hair.
“You are a pet!” she said. “And I’d hug you if you hadn’t a cup of hot tea in your hand!
”
Miss Balfour blinked to rid herself of two tears of pure pleasure. It was so comforting to be told she was a pet by this delightful young creature; and so far had her spirit progressed towards emancipation during the weeks she had known the Lenox family that the thought of Belle’s disapproval did not even cross her mind.
“Dear child,” she said, steadying her voice with difficulty. “I am going to miss you when you are at Kersland with your mother and Holly.”
Rowan, who had gone back to her chair, looked at her old friend and blushed again. “But I’m not going to Kersland, Miss Dorothea,” she said.
“Not? Are your employers not going away after all then? I understood from Mrs. Lenox that they were spending the next two months at North Berwick,” exclaimed Miss Balfour.
“Oh, they are! They are there already and the children have been parked with an aunt who keeps a maid to look after them,” said Rowan. “But I can’t leave Edinburgh just now. I’ll have to stay to practise with the rest of the team.”
“The country dancing team, of course. I had forgotten,” said Miss Balfour.
How strange, she thought. Rowan doesn’t seem to mind missing Kersland and staying in town all through her summer holidays.
“Is it really worth giving up a summer in the country for?” she asked wonderingly.
“To dance? Oh, yes!” Rowan answered. For a moment she struggled to try to express what dancing meant: the lovely stirring tunes, grave or gay, the ordered beauty of the pattern traced by the changing formations, the exquisite precision of footwork which yet must not give the faintest hint of stiffness, the harmony of music and movement, the known touch of her partner’s hand as he led her—no, it was quite impossible to convey any of it even to a person as sweet as Miss Dorothea.
So she only repeated: “Oh, yes!” and took a bite of the gingerbread which Miss Balfour had cut for her.
She thought about her partner, Angus Todd, and realized with astonishment how differently she saw him now that she had been dancing with him regularly for the past five weeks. He was still the same, yet though she winced when some particularly blatant expression of self-esteem set her teeth on edge, she made excuses for it and for him.
Poor Angus! He had had rather a miserable life. Adopted by a sedate, narrow-minded elderly couple who meant well enough but knew nothing about children, he had been brought up strictly, and never allowed to forget his good fortune in having been rescued from an orphanage and given a home and a name. Rowan had been told this by his former dancing partner, the girl with the ugly mouth.
“So you needn’t think you’re getting anything very great in the way of a partner, after all!” she had finished with a sneer.
“What does all that matter? He dances far better than any of the rest of us—that’s what counts!” Rowan had said. “D’you mind? I must dash, I’m late—” and she had slipped past the other girl and fled across the empty echoing floor towards the door and the sunlit street beyond it.
The effect on her of this unhappy story was the exact opposite of what the teller had intended. Rowan, with her vivid sympathy, could imagine just how the boy had been soured by the constant calls on him to be grateful, the reminders that he had no real name of his own. His defence had been to armour himself in self-satisfaction, to use as weapons a barbed tongue and a rough, gibing manner. Pity was the last thing he needed or desired, it seemed, and Rowan, though desperately sorry for him, was careful not to show it.
There was never any opportunity to show or hide much during the dancing practices, of course, but Angus had taken to seeing her home afterwards. And then, as they went by short cuts through the quiet grey terraces and crescents where the heavy-leaved trees in the gardens brought twilight early, they talked.
Or Angus talked, bragging, jeering, at odds with the whole world, and Rowan listened, wishing she could help him to see everything with a less jaundiced eye.
Miss Balfour wondered why she suddenly looked so grave, but being accustomed to watching other people without interrupting, she said nothing, and in a moment Rowan came out of her reverie with a start.
“I’m so sorry,” she said confusedly. “Did you ask me something?”
“No, my dear. You were talking about your country dancing,” was Miss Balfour’s placid reply.
“The old pet! She hasn’t noticed anything,” thought Rowan, much relieved.
Aloud she said: “You must come and see us dance, Miss Dorothea. Do say you will. I’ll get you a ticket—”
“That would be delightful. Thank you,” said Miss Balfour, inwardly deciding that it would also be interesting to see Rowan’s partner; for, of course, the child had been thinking about him. Anyone with eyes in her head could see that.
Rowan was standing now, thanking Miss Balfour for her nice tea, and saying that she must go home.
“Mummy gets in a bit of a flap when she’s going away,” she said. “So I’d better be there in case she wants me to do anything.”
Mrs. Lenox, when she came round later in the evening to say good-bye, showed no sign of flurry, apart from a slight and very becoming flush in her cheeks.
“Holly asked me to say good-bye for her,” she said, as she sat down near Miss Balfour in the big drawing-room. “She wanted to come with me, but really she had to tidy her room—or rather her half of the room she and Rowan share. It looks as if she has been turning everything over with a pitch-fork.”
“Dear Holly, she is probably at an untidy age,” murmured Miss Balfour.
“I’m sure I was never—” began Mrs. Lenox.
Then she broke off, frowned, and smiled rather unwillingly.
“Oh, well! Perhaps the children are right when they say I fuss,” she admitted. “But it’s difficult not to, I think it’s a kind of mothers’ disease. Some show it, some don’t.”
“I am sure you show it very seldom,” said Miss Balfour.
Mrs. Lenox sighed. “It’s just going off and leaving them to their own devices for so long,” she said. “I can’t help worrying a little. For the last two years we only went away for a fortnight, and they all managed to get their holidays at the same time, so we just shut up the house. And before that, of course, with Murray doing his National Service and Rowan still at school and Hazel at the University, everything was quite easy. If only Willow looks after them properly and remembers to feed them.”
“Oh, surely—” Miss Balfour could not help showing her surprise.
“No. You don’t know Willow. She’s very sweet and very pretty,” said Willow’s mother dispassionately. “But she’s lazy and selfish. I ought to have insisted that Archie and she should find somewhere to live on their own, but it seemed so—so brutal to turn one’s own daughter out of her home!”
Miss Balfour nodded. It could not be easy to tell a daughter who apparently preferred living at home to go, and it would be more difficult now than if Mrs. Lenox had hardened her heart when Willow was newly married.
“If I can help,” she began, a little diffidently.
“Dear Miss Dorothea, it is such a comfort to me just to know that you are next door,” said Mrs. Lenox. “And if you really wouldn’t mind just keeping an eye on them, and giving Willow the help of your good advice, I should be so very grateful. But you are not to let them—especially Willow—be a trouble to you.”
“She will be no trouble to me,” Miss Balfour assured Mrs. Lenox.
And then, though years of repression had made her almost inarticulate, she added shyly, “It—it is the greatest pleasure to me to have you all for my friends. You could never believe how much it means.”
They parted with feelings of mutual respect and affection, and on the following day Mrs. Lenox and Holly left for Kersland.
CHAPTER 7
For the first week the household at Number Six appeared to be running as smoothly as if it had been oiled.
Hazel, Rowan and Murray, who all came in to see Miss Balfour more than once, were loud in their praises of Willow’s efforts.
Murray added that he hoped they would last, but this ingratitude was received with such adverse comment from his sisters that he withdrew the remark.
“Under duress,” he added darkly, and muttered something about the everlasting triumph of hope over experience, which Hazel and Rowan prudently pretended they did not hear.
Of Willow herself, Miss Balfour only had fleeting glimpses, flying across the garden to hang dish-towels on the line or to pick a handful of parsley and mint and chives for a salad. Once or twice they met in the busy street at the far end of Linden Terrace, where the trams clanged to and fro, and the pavements were always thronged with people shopping. Willow, her prettiness enhanced for some reason by the large basket she carried, smiled and waved and cried, “Good morning!” as they passed, but quite obviously had no intention of stopping to talk.
Possibly she resented being told by her mother to turn to her elderly neighbour for advice, and was afraid that Miss Balfour, given the smallest opportunity, would try to interfere. Miss Balfour was sorry, but her good sense (inherited from Mamma, though Belle would never have credited either with possessing it), told her that the best thing she could do was to leave Willow alone.
What mattered was that she seemed to be keeping house quite successfully, and as for Murray’s scepticism, Miss Balfour had often heard that brothers were apt to judge their sisters rather severely.
So she and Willow continued to smile and say “Good morning” with complete amiability, and the last days of July passed, one very much like another.
Miss Balfour had discovered, not long after she took the reins of Number Four into her hands, that Edna adored doing the household shopping, and as it gave her such delight, her employer saw no reason why she should not do it quite often.
Near Neighbours Page 6
