Near Neighbours

by Molly Clavering

  “I found some alka-seltzer and gave him a dose. Old brute, he must have drunk a devil of a lot,” observed Adam. “But never mind about him. What about us?”

  Hazel was all at once overcome with shyness. “What about—us?” she repeated, looking everywhere hut at Adam. “I—I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Come over under that tree and I’ll tell you,” he said, leading her across the street to where an old hawthorn obligingly hung its branches over the garden railings.

  There, without another word, Hazel was folded in a close embrace and kissed most satisfactorily until she had no breath left. Just at first she stiffened instinctively against his arms, but soon Adam found that she was returning his kisses with an innocent ardour that made his heart pound.

  When at last he released her he said, rather shakily: “Look, darling, don’t let us have one of these long engagements. It would drive me mad.”

  Hazel, with her face buried in his tweed-covered shoulder, made a muffled sound which he took for assent.

  “I’ll come and see your mother to-morrow evening,” he said. “And I’ll tell mine to-night.”

  “Oh, Adam! Will she mind?”

  “Mind? She’ll be overjoyed,” he said. “She has wanted to get me off her hands for ages. Now, good night, my precious one. I’ll wait here until I see you are in, and then I’ll go home.”

  There was a last kiss, prolonged into several more, and then Hazel ran lightly across to her own door, opened it, turned to wave, and vanished inside.

  Adam, after staring at the door’s blank unfeeling oblong in a besotted way for several seconds, walked away in the direction of the West End.

  In spite of all their care and the extremely solid structure of the house, Miss Balfour, sitting alone in her drawing-room, had heard sundry bumps and a strange scuffling noise from the hall below.

  Once or twice recently she had heard Montagu come home late and have some difficulty in finding his way to his room. Until this evening she had left him alone, knowing how ashamed he would be if she saw him like that. But to-night he seemed worse than usual. She put down the book she had been trying to read, and crept silently out to the dark landing, to be nearer at hand if he should need help.

  Unseen she watched Hazel open the door and then leave Adam Ferrier to take Montagu into his room.

  “How good of them!” she thought, though she was very sorry that they should have discovered poor Montagu’s little weakness, and especially that Hazel should.

  She waited until the two had gone out, then went back to do the small tidyings of the drawing-room which she performed each night before going to bed.

  The books were laid straight on the little table by her chair, the footstools aligned, the cushions plumped up. Finally the curtains were drawn back and looped in regular folds by their tasselled bands of the same material.

  It was while she was doing this that Miss Balfour saw the two figures standing in the old hawthorn’s shade against the garden railing.

  The merest glance told her who they were, though she turned away at once.

  “Bless them both!” she said, under her breath, switching out the light by the door, and went downstairs to see that her brother-in-law was all right.

  Never in her life before Montagu came had she been in contact with anyone the worse for drink, but her attitude was as matter-of-fact as Adam’s, and she was less horrified than Hazel.

  Of course, she disapproved, and, apart from other and perhaps more important considerations, she was sure that what Montagu drank in that dreadful public-house at the corner near the bridge must be bad for his health. Somehow he would have to be discouraged from this habit.

  But when Miss Balfour thought of the drunken men she had seen in the streets on Saturday nights, not very many of them, but still a few, she could congratulate herself on Montagu’s behaviour. She could not picture him either truculent or tearful—“fechtin’ drunk or greetin’ fou”, as her neighbours in Linden Terrace graphically described these conditions—in fact, even when under the influence of alcohol, Montagu remained a gentleman.

  “What a horrid way to have to put it,” Miss Balfour thought, as she opened Montagu’s bedroom door very gently. “But I can’t think of any other that means the same.”

  Mr. Milner was sound asleep and snoring. He did not present an attractive appearance, but Miss Balfour pulled the coverings more closely round him without any feeling of revulsion. The arm she had covered was pyjama-clad, and a pile of clothes laid with moderate tidiness on a chair bore witness that Adam Ferrier had put him to bed.

  “Like a—an elderly baby,” said Miss Balfour to herself. “It was very good of him.”

  She went quietly up to bed, said her prayers with a special plea that guidance might be given her to deal with Montagu, and after a while fell asleep.

  But she did not have a restful night, for her sleep was broken and full of annoying dreams. She came down to breakfast feeling old and tired and washed-out, and for all her sweetness of temper, could not help thinking that there was injustice somewhere, or else why should Montagu be rosy, beaming and brisk, with an enormous appetite for his favourite breakfast, grilled kidneys and bacon.

  He showed concern when Miss Balfour refused them and nibbled a small piece of toast with her coffee.

  “I am so sorry you have no appetite, my dear Dorothea,” he said, anxiously. “I really think, you know, that perhaps you don’t go out enough. Nothing like fresh air and exercise to give you an appetite. Look at me. Fit as a fiddle and hungry as a hunter.”

  “Well, Montagu,” exclaimed Miss Balfour, stung into unmasking her hidden batteries and firing a shot before she had intended to. “It’s the first time I have ever heard of pub-crawling as a means of getting fresh air and exercise.”

  Mr. Milner was so startled that he jumped in his chair, a deeper tint crept into his pink cheeks, and he eyed his sister-in-law very uneasily indeed.

  At last, as she said no more and continued quietly to eat her toast, he succeeded in producing a laugh.

  “You—you were joking, of course,” he said, hopefully.

  Miss Balfour only smiled, but when she spoke next it appeared, to his great relief, that she had changed the subject.

  “I was wondering,” she said. “Whether we should have some of the Lenoxes to dinner one evening, and Mr. Ferrier and his mother. Food is quite easy to manage now, and—”

  “A splendid idea!” cried Montagu, heartily. “I suppose it wouldn’t be too much for Edna?”

  “Edna loves a party, and, of course, we would get Mrs. Lyall in to help with washing-up,” Miss Balfour answered. “Edna assures me that a bit of life about the place makes up for any extra work she may have to do. Then, Montagu, there is the question of what to drink. I think it is time you really looked properly at what is in the wine-cellar. I know Papa laid down some good wine, and it has never been touched since his death, apart from an odd bottle of sherry. Belle detested any form of wine or spirits, and I do not know enough about them to make it any use my looking.”

  Mr. Milner disclaimed interest in the contents of the wine-cellar rather too hastily.

  “That may be,” said Miss Balfour. “But I do think, Montagu, that if you feel you want to—to have an extra drink or two, now and then, it would be far better for you to drink your own good wine in your own house, than to ruin your stomach with the stuff you must get in a public-house.”

  Appalled, Mr. Milner stared at the sister-in-law who put these views so calmly before him in as matter-of-fact a manner as though she were telling him that coffee was bad for his liver.

  “I—I—” he began, feebly, and could think of nothing whatever to say.

  “I understand, though, that it is for the company that people visit bars, as much as for the actual drink,” pursued Miss Balfour. “And I am beginning to think that you must be finding life here very dull. Perhaps it was a mistake, our setting up house together, and you would really be happier on your own.”


  “Stop, Dorothea! Stop!” shouted Mr. Milner, suddenly finding his tongue. “If you turn me out, I will take to drink out of boredom and unhappiness! If you would just come out with me now and again—I don’t want you to sacrifice your peaceful life to me, of course, but if, now and then—”

  Miss Balfour began to laugh. “My dear Montagu, I should only disgrace you in a public bar!” she said. “One glass of anything is enough to make my head spin. You would always be having to bring me home in a taxi—”

  “Good God, Dorothea! You surely do not imagine that I propose taking you into a pub?” exclaimed Mr. Milner, profoundly shocked.

  Miss Balfour gurgled with unsuppressed mirth. “Oh, dear, Montagu, I am sorry!” she gasped. “But you do look so dreadfully shocked!”

  “I am shocked,” he said, stiffly. “What I intended to suggest was that you might go to a play or a concert with me occasionally.”

  “Only occasionally? And why not the pictures, if there happens to be a good one?” asked Miss Balfour.

  “Would you come?”

  “Indeed I would. I should love to go to the theatre and out to dinner.”

  “Then why have we never done it?” he wondered.

  “Well, Montagu, you have never asked me,” said Miss Balfour.

  “And now, here is the key of the wine-cellar. I wish you would go and see what we have down there.”

  CHAPTER 21

  “Rowan, my dear child,” said Mrs. Lenox, firmly. “If you are going out to dinner at Number Four with the rest of us, you really must have a new dress. Your green taffeta is hardly decent any longer, it is all splitting at the seams with sheer old age.”

  “Oh, it isn’t as bad as all that, Mummy, and I wanted to wait until Christmas to get a new one,” said Rowan.

  But she coloured a little, avoiding her mother’s eye, as she muttered that the green taffeta would do once more, and Mrs. Lenox was worried.

  She had not a notion of the truth, which was that Rowan had no money. She had not been paid at all by Martin Tinker or his wife since the children had started lessons again in September, and almost all her savings had been drawn by this time to pay her share of the household expenses which she gave her mother each month. In her heart Rowan knew that it could not possibly go on.

  After Christmas she would have to find another job.

  Arriving at the dingy house on the morning after Mrs. Lenox had spoken to her about her old dress, Rowan found the children huddled in a scared group in the dining-room. Viola, of course, was in floods of tears, Orlando looked as if he were going to be sick, even Rosalind was pale and subdued.

  “Well, children,” said Rowan, with determined cheerfulness. “Why haven’t you got the lesson-books out? What’s happened?”

  Orlando stared at her out of wide, alarmed eyes, saying nothing. Viola sobbed.

  Rosalind mumbled: “We’ve not had any breakfast, an’ Father’s gone an’ Mother’s crying in the studio. And we don’t know what to do.”

  Rowan considered for a minute. Then she said decidedly:

  “The first thing is to get you all some breakfast. Rosalind, you could set the table, couldn’t you? And Viola can stop crying and help. Orlando, you come to the kitchen with me and we’ll make some toast.”

  The kitchen was in wild confusion, and there was not much to eat as far as Rowan could see, but she found a loaf and some butter, and Orlando obediently watched the slices she put in the toaster under the gas grill while she filled the kettle to make tea. “I never saw such beautiful toast,” she declared, as she piled it on a plate to keep hot after it was buttered.

  “Is it good to make beautiful toast?” asked Orlando, very seriously. He looked less pinched and green, to Rowan’s relief, but she knew he was still upset.

  “Of course. It’s good to do anything well,” said Rowan. “Can you carry the toast into the dining-room very carefully, while I bring the tea?”

  Orlando nodded and set off with the laden plate held firmly in both small square hands.

  As soon as she had settled the children to their tea and toast, she poured out another cup and took it up to the studio.

  Mrs. Tinker, her face almost unrecognizable, it was so blotched and swollen with crying, was crouched on the edge of the model’s dais in a wretched heap, still shaken by racking sobs.

  “Take it away, I don’t want it!” she muttered, when Rowan came up to her.

  “Nonsense. You must drink it while it’s hot,” said Rowan. “Could you tell me what has happened, or would you rather not?”

  “Oh, you may as well know,” said Mrs. Tinker, pushing back a lank wisp of hair and taking the cup which Rowan offered her. “Martin’s deserted us, that’s all. He’s raised some money somehow and gone off.”

  “You mean—he’s not coming back ever?”

  “Not unless he finds himself without cash,” replied Mrs. Tinker, with a long quivering sigh. “And if he’s gone to the South Seas, as he says, he won’t be able to get back in any case.”

  Rowan stood staring at her. At last:

  “What will become of you—and the children?” she asked.

  “Oh, I’ll work, of course. I’ll have to,” replied Mrs. Tinker, with a sort of desperate calm. “My aunt will take the two girls, and they can go to the village school, and I’ll send her as much money as I can.”

  “And—and—Orlando? Is he going to go to your aunt’s too?”

  Mrs. Tinker shook her head. “No. She won’t hear of having Orlando,” she said, reluctantly. “She—you see, she knows he isn’t my child, and though I’ve told her many times that he is almost like my own to me, and begged her by telephone—I rang her up as soon as I’d read Martin’s letter—begged her to take him with Rosalind and Viola, she won’t do it.”

  “So—what’s going to happen to him?” Rowan spoke through stiff, dry lips.

  “My aunt wants me to get him into some sort of institution,” sighed Mrs. Tinker. “I can’t keep him with me.”

  “You might just as well kill him with a knife!” Rowan cried passionately, the anger and distress she had been restraining suddenly welling up and bubbling over. “It will be the end of Orlando!”

  Mrs. Tinker stared at her miserably. “Well, what am I to do?”

  “I’ll take him home with me,” said Rowan.

  “My dear child, how can you? What would your mother say? And—I won’t have much money to spare for him, poor child,” said Mrs. Tinker. “I must think of the girls first, after all.”

  “I’ll be able to pay for him,” Rowan said, recklessly. “I’ll get another job in the New Year, and he won’t cost a lot to keep. Do please let me have him!”

  “You must ask your mother first,” said Mrs. Tinker; and she stuck to this, though Rowan wanted to pack Orlando’s few clothes and take him away to Kirkaldy Crescent at once.

  “I shall have him,” was all Rowan said. Her head was high, the crusading light was burning in her eyes as she dashed out of the house and down the noisy dirty street to the nearest bus-stop.

  A young man hanging about in a doorway on the opposite side saw her go, and after a momentary hesitation, followed her, scowling.

  At the bus-stop he spoke to her abruptly.

  “Hullo,” he said. “Why are you going off in the morning?” Rowan swung round. “Angus,” she said, without any sign of pleasure or surprise. “I thought you’d be at a lecture.”

  Angus’s evil genius was in charge that morning. “I wanted to see that fellow Tinker that you’re so keen on,” he muttered.

  “Well, you’re too late, if you mean Martin Tinker. He’s gone,” said Rowan, coldly. “Nor am I keen on him, as you put it.”

  “Rot. Don’t tell me. You’d never go on teaching the chap’s brats for nothing if you weren’t!” Angus retorted. “He’s a handsome brute, I’ll allow you, if you fancy brawn by the stone.”

  Rowan turned and gave him her full attention. “Are you telling me that you’ve been spying on me?” she d
emanded, incredulously.

  “Call it that if you like,” he said, already ashamed, but too late.

  “There doesn’t seem to be anything else I can call it,” said Rowan. “Here’s the bus. Good-bye.”

  She sprang lightly on to the bus and was borne away, and before the conductor had come for her fare had forgotten Angus completely in her anxiety over Orlando.

  “But Rowan, darling, how can you do a thing like this? It’s a very serious step to take, it requires endless consideration,” said Mrs. Lenox, in reply to Rowan’s statement that Martin Tinker had deserted his family and as Orlando had nowhere to go, she was going to bring him to live at Kirkaldy Crescent.

  “There isn’t time for talking it over, Mummy,” said Rowan, with the steely calm which her mother recognized with dread. “I’d rather see Orlando dead than shoved into some institution, and Mrs. Tinker can’t keep him if she’s working, and her aunt won’t have him. If you won’t have him here, then I must go somewhere and take him with me.”

  “If Mrs. Tinker can’t do that, how can you?” asked Mrs. Lenox, hopelessly.

  “Because her job is stage work and B.B.C., and I’d answer one of those advertisements for a cook, child of school age welcome,” replied Rowan, at once. “I’ve thought it all out, Mummy.”

  “Well—bring the child here for the Christmas holidays, then,” said Mrs. Lenox. “It will give everyone time to think, if nothing else. But, of course, the whole thing is madness!”

  Rowan, ignoring this last remark, flung her arms round her mother’s neck. “Mummy, you’re a darling!” she cried.

  And so Orlando, puzzled but acquiescent, was brought to Number Six Kirkaldy Crescent. Rowan did not know whether he realized how final was the break with his old life, but she did know that he depended on her, and she vowed with all the ardent generosity that was her weakness and her strength not to fail him.

  In the flurry of packing the girls’ things and seeing them off at the station, helping Mrs. Tinker to collect her one or two personal household goods, and putting Orlando’s clothes and toys into a suitcase and taking him home with her, Rowan did not have a moment to think about Angus until she went to bed that night.