My American

by Stella Gibbons

  As the situation unfolded itself, getting worse every second, her tears welled warmly out and rolled down her face, but no one took any notice except Artie, who observed, quirking his fingers at her:

  “Cry baby cry, stick yer finger in yer eye.”

  “You shut your fat face,” growled Maurice, and under the table he pushed his big dirty khaki handkerchief into Amy’s lap. Artie, crimson with embarrassment both at the length of his own speech and the public rebuke from his admired elder brother, buried his face in his teacup.

  Amy muttered her thanks and wiped the tears away with the stale-smelling handkerchief. A lump ached in her throat, but she fought it down somehow, fiercely remembering her mother’s voice telling her to be brave. And then, exactly like a door quickly opening, she thought of Buck Finch among the savages, the Pony Express rider surrounded by Indians, all the heroes of her secret world who had faced danger against horrible odds—and she ran straight through the open door and suddenly felt better.

  Now I must be cool and wary … the words came into her mind. She looked coolly and warily round the table at the Beedings, met Mrs. Beeding’s glance, and smiled politely.

  “Feeling better now you’ve had yer tea, luv?”

  “Yes, thank you, Mrs. Beeding.”

  “That’s right.”

  I shall just have to work to keep all my things together, that’s all, she decided, finishing up her dough cake with a new relish. It’ll be simply awful, but I must make a plan like Nelson did with his battles and stick to it. If only they’ll all get used to me and leave me alone I can manage somehow.

  Her first impulse after tea had been to creep upstairs when nobody was looking, but she realized that if they got used to seeing her about like one of the family they would be less likely to notice when she disappeared, so she offered instead to help Mona wash up; and when they had finished and hung the sopping teacloth to dry on the wall nearest the bakehouse, she accompanied Mona upstairs to the Lounge.

  The agent who had showed Mr. Beeding over the house fifteen years ago had called the back parlour overlooking the garden the Lounge, presumably because its french windows opened into a small conservatory built by a former tenant, and the name had stuck. It was a large room. The wallpaper was covered with small blue and green objects shaped like tongues and little orange balls on a mud ground. There was a suite covered in grey cut-velvet, a shabby brown carpet, and lace curtains stiff and white as a waterfall across the french windows. The Beedings did all their sitting, sewing, reading, listening-in and entertaining here, yet the Lounge never looked anything but cold and stiff. The only nice part about the Lounge, to Amy, was the conservatory, where Mrs. Beeding harboured pots of cherry pie and mignonette and one or two aspidistra, whose leaves she kept glossy with polishings of salad oil; there were two old deck chairs in there where Mr. Beeding liked to sit on fine Sunday mornings and read The Sunday Express, and the place smelt faintly earthy and warm. That was because the bakehouse immediately below it kept it at greenhouse temperature six nights out of the seven.

  Amy sat down on a chair near the door and opened one of Mona’s cinema papers; Mrs. Beeding put on her spectacles and took up some knitting for Baby, who was playing on the rug at her feet, while Mr. Beeding hurried back to the shop to let Jack off to get his tea. Dora went upstairs, Artie rushed off to the Fields with Maurice. Only Mona was left, a bored and ever-present peril to the occupied, lounging round the room, picking up things and dropping them again, putting on the headphones and taking them off, interrupting Baby’s game, saying at intervals she wished she hadn’t finished her knitting.

  “Then go out and buy some more and start a new bit, do, Mona,” said her mother firmly at last, looking up over her spectacles. “Take sixpence out o’ my purse an’ go on, now, at once. You’re more worry than a blowfly over the meat, goin’ on like that.”

  Mona decided that she would. “Coming, Aime?” She stopped by the door and caught hold of her friend’s pigtail. “Coo! Isn’t your hair thick! I wonder you don’t get spots on your face. Coming?”

  Amy’s control snapped. She jerked her head violently away and sprang up, her imploring eyes turned on Mrs. Beeding.

  Mrs. Beeding did not fail her.

  “Go on, now, Mona. Amy doesn’t feel like going out just now. You run on; I’ve got to take the shop in a few minutes and I want you to mind Baby.”

  Mona went, and Mrs. Beeding continued, her gaze fixed steadily on her knitting:

  “Would you like to get a book for yourself from upstairs, luv? There’s not much to read down here. I’ll be packin’ all your stuff up in a day or two an’ we’ll have to think what’s to be done with it, but it’ll stand over just for a while.”

  “Oh … yes … thank you, Mrs. Beeding!” gasped Amy, and not even waiting to ask the all-important question about where she was to sleep, she darted away.

  Half-way up the stairs to the top (what a long time it seemed since she had been there!) she met Dora going inot her room with some clean sheets over her arm, looking rather irritable.

  “Hullo!” Amy muttered, flying past but greeting her on the principle that all Beedings were suspicious and must be hailed every time one was sighted in order not to make them more so.

  “Hullo, where are you off to like a fire-escape?”

  “Only to get a book.”

  “Well, I hope when you’re old and grey you won’t say I’ve never done anything for you; I’m late for Spanish now, but I’m making up your bed before I go. Hope to heaven you don’t snore, that’s all.”

  Amy stopped dead.

  “Oh! Oh, Dora, am I going to sleep with you?”

  “Yes. There’s plenty of room for us both, Mum says. There is, too, really; you can bring all your muck down and stick it over in one corner and I’ll have mine in another, and woe betide you, Aime Lee, if you go spilling rubbish all over my area, that’s all. Dad and Jack moved your bed down this afternoon while we … while we were all out. Only no pictures messing up the walls in my room, thank you. I never saw such a sight as you’ve made of the small-top-back in all my life, the Royal Academy isn’t in it. Good thing you haven’t pasted ’em on, that’s all, or Mum would have had something to say.”

  She went in and shut the door.

  So she was to sleep with Dora! Well, that wasn’t so bad, thought Amy, going on up the stairs. Anything was better than sharing Mona’s room, and never getting a second to herself. Dora was often bossy and sharp, but she had so many things to interest her—the office, her Spanish classes, her cycling at week-ends, her boy-friend—that she was always busy and therefore less likely to interest herself in Amy’s doings. And her room was large and pleasant, immediately under Amy’s bedroom in the flat, and therefore overlooking the same quiet old gardens with big trees. And she had said that Amy could have a corner for her things! Amy gave a little skip as she opened the sitting-room door

  But as she opened it, and stood on the threshold looking in at the familiar objects already coated with two days’ dust—the table marked with hot plate stains, the picture of Victorian ladies skating in a yellow sunset, the sturdy backs of her American books on their shelf, the well-known flood of light coming in at the dusty windows with all London spread out like a ghostly painting behind the golden splendour—such a rush of agonized longing for her mother swept her that she staggered and half-fell to the floor, exactly as though she had been struck. Resting her weight on one hand, with her head bowed, she gently pushed the door shut with her foot; and then slid to her full length on the floor, her eyes pillowed on her arm. She lay there for half an hour, quite still, until Mona’s blundering entrance (without the courtesy, now, of a preliminary knock) brought her scrambling to her feet.

  CHAPTER VII

  THERE WAS NO one to object to the Beedings taking possession of Amy and her two hundred and seventy pounds. Only four persons outside the family circle were at all interested in her—Miss Lathom, Mr. Ramage, the gentleman-at-the-insurance, and Old Porty,
and of these four Old Porty and Mr. Ramage soon lost what slight concern they had, while Miss Lathom and the gentleman-at-the-insurance were both won over by Mrs. Beeding’s common-sense, and the kindness and honesty that shone from her every word.

  She said frankly to both of them that Amy’s twelve and sixpence a week would be a help; but she also said that Amy was a nice good little girl whom she liked and for whom she wanted to do her best. Both Miss Lathom and the gentleman-at-the-insurance were intelligent people, and they were more convinced by the moderate tone of Mrs. Beeding’s statements than they would have been had she vowed that it wasn’t the money but the poor little mite had no mother and might end up on the streets unless Mrs. Beeding rescued her and took that mother’s place. After the formalities were concluded which handed over the money to Amy under Mrs. Beeding’s trusteeship, the gentleman-at-the-insurance felt easy in his mind about its proper administration and dismissed the matter to the care of his files. Miss Lathom, for her part, felt that as Amy would be under her eye for the next three years she would be able to see at once if the child showed signs of being neglected or unhappy. But she did not assume that Amy would be either. She had not only taken a fancy to Mrs. Beeding; she knew her type and liked it, and was sure that the Lee child would be safe in her care. Both Miss Lathom and the-gentleman-at-the-insurance returned to their routine affairs, once Tim Lee’s funeral was over, with that comfortable feeling we experience when we have seen a fellow creature adequately provided for and realize that we need worry about them no longer.

  Mrs. Beeding told Amy more than once that it was a Blessing and a Mercy that her Dad had kept up the payments of his insurance, for he had not a penny of any other money put away. It was Edie who had made Tim take out the policy as soon as Amy was born, Edie who had simply taken the money from him whenever he had any and posted off the premiums regularly, and it was Edie’s memory that had kept him faithful for a year after her death to this one piece of prudence. Thanks to her mother, Amy was not a pauper nor an object for charity. The policy and receipts were found in Tim’s small suitcase together with the certificate of his marriage to Edie and that of Amy’s birth, and some yellow snapshots of young people laughing before the War (the last time any one had really sound reasons for laughing in a snapshot) and some of Amy’s grandparents outside the house covered with ivy and built in the reign of George II in which Tim had been born.

  Yorkshire was a little impressed by these relics, for the Georgian house was handsome and Amy’s grandparents looked an imposing pair, but Mrs. Beeding did not let her charge see that she was impressed nor did she alter her manner by one note from its calm, complacent, yet comforting tone. Like everyone else under Mrs. Beeding’s roof and within her circle, Amy would be managed, gentry or no gentry. Her money would be scrupulously laid out for her, she would be properly fed, clothed, warned against Life and coaxed in time out of her mopey bookworm ways. In return, Mrs. Beeding wanted that Amy should be a clean, neat, self-supporting decent girl, the sort that her dead grandparents who had lived in that fine house need not look down from wherever-they-were and feel ashamed of. It did not occur to Mrs. Beeding that old Mr. and Mrs. Lee might have wanted something other for Amy than this perfect parlourmaid character, for her ideas about the gentry were hazy; the only clear notion she had of gentry was that it demanded, and usually got, proper behaviour. As for the gentry that romped brightly all over the Sunday papers, Mrs. Beeding looked upon that gentry as a sort of warning circus, a Horrible Example to the Virtuous but also a relish with the Virtuous’s tea. She did not connect it at all with Amy’s grandparents, in which she showed a wisdom beyond her actual knowledge.

  She was fond of Amy and there could not be too many children in the house for Mrs. Beeding, who liked nothing better than to sit at the head of a table crammed with food and faces. Amy was just one more face to make full and shiny with hotpot and dough-cake and apple-pudding. Nor was Mrs. Beeding completely insensitive to Amy’s nature and tastes. She had no intention of trying to make the little girl different all at once. She knew, of course, that Amy liked being alone with a nice book, and she saw no harm in that, provided it did not happen too often and make her mopier still. She frequently sent Mona off with a flea in her ear when the latter was worrying Amy to come out on a boy-hunt in the Fields or sit and knit on the side doorstep, telling her daughter to leave the child alone while she was quiet. For a week after Tim’s funeral Amy was able to escape for a little while every evening up to the flat and read or dream (she did not dare to write, for fear of interruption and consequent discovery) and she was just beginning to resettle herself into her secret world and recover a little from the shock of her father’s death—when Mrs. Beeding sent her heart into her gym shoes one evening at tea by announcing:

  “We’re going to pack oop’ yer bits to-morrow afternoon, Amy, luv. Mrs. Martin comes in on Monday and I’ve got to clean the place.”

  “Where will they go, Mrs. Beeding?” inquired Amy faintly but politely. They were alone in the kitchen except for Mr. Beeding and Baby.

  “In yer old bedroom, luv. Mrs. Martin and her daughter don’t want the small-top-back, she says, because they haven’t enoof stoof to make it look nice, so we’re goin’ to put yer bits in there an’ lock it oop until yer leave school and we can decide what’s ter be done with ’em.”

  “I should rather like some of the books kept out, please, Mrs. Beeding.”

  “Please yerself, luv. You take what yer want, an’ p’raps Dora’ll let you keep ’em in her room. There’ll be plenty o’ room for all yer bits in the small-top-back now yer bed’s gone downstairs.”

  “What’s Mrs. Martin like, Mrs. Beeding?” inquired Amy after a pause.

  “An old cow,” struck in Mr. Beeding unexpectedly, handing Baby a tremendous burnt crust in his excitement. “Bad-tempered old cow, that’s what.”

  “Now, David, no language, please,” warned his wife. (“Don’t give her that, luv, it’s burnt).”

  “She’s bedridden, poor old soul. The daughter works in Walton, Hassell and Port’s, down the High Street. I told her I can’t wait on her moother, she’ll have to do for herself.”

  “Hope she does, and quick,” Mr. Beeding said, tickling Baby’s white fat neck. Baby threw back her head, her brilliant blue eyes half-shut, and exploded with gurgles, then imperiously dashed her crust to the floor and looked hopefully at her father.

  “Pick it oop for her, David, luv.”

  “You’re a grown man’s work, straight you are,” observed Mr. Beeding, smiling lovingly at his daughter before he stooped to grovel among the wet crusts, splashes of tea, and cake crumbs under her chair.

  “Are the Martins nice, Mrs. Beeding?” Amy was wondering if she could get to know the Martins and sometimes go into the sitting-room at night to see the starry lights, the little wormlike golden trains and marching streets of lamps spread up the hillside like an exciting map that moved.

  “She’s an old maid. Keeps herself to herself. A bit fussy, Dora says. She knows ’em more than I do, really. They heard about us through Dora.”

  “Both cows,” said Mr. Beeding, passing his cup and sucking his dark moustache. “Another cup, Marie, please.”

  “’Ow,” repeated Baby, looking from one to the other with a bewitching smile. They all laughed, Amy’s thin little giggle joining with the rest.

  But she escaped upstairs directly after tea to the flat and spent an agitated half-hour choosing books and stacking up her treasures ready to take down to Dora’s bedroom tomorrow afternoon. She had carried her stories to school in her suitcase on the first day she went back after her father’s death for fear the Beedings might poke about and discover them, and they had been there in her desk ever since. She was fretting about them because she had not had a chance to write a line of The Mummy’s Curse ever since the Beedings had swallowed her up. Her head was full of the story, Beginning to Run in her mind, but there was never a minute that she dared snatch to write. She had a desperate fear of
the Beedings finding out and reading the story. Even had they been kind and full of admiration she would have hated them knowing about her stories. They were kind, the Beedings, but they would not understand.

  As for her furniture, one day, when she was grown-up and had a job, she could take all the things out again and furnish her own room with them. Meanwhile, it made her very miserable to think of all the things shut away in that little room; it was like losing friends. Her mother had cut out on the table, slept in the divan bed, sat in the armchair. Still, it might be worse. The things were not going to be sold. One day she would have them back.

  But her dreams about the future were vague. The idea of next Sunday was as remote as that of her eighteenth birthday, and far less real than any event in The Mummy’s Curse, and her sense of money was completely that of a child. Half-a-crown was a fortune, but her mind could not take in the fact of two hundred and seventy pounds in her name in the bank. She knew that she would not have to live on charity and she was glad, but only because Mona was always sneering at the Edmonton girl cousins to whom their local doctor’s wife sometimes gave old frocks of her own daughters’, saying that it was awful to live on charity and she, Mona, would sooner die. Apparently charity was something dreadful, thought Amy. Oh, well, I’m all right. Mrs. Beeding said so. But it never occurred to her to demand a separate bedroom for her twelve-and-sixpence a week nor to take on the airs of a lodger and insist on just a shred of privacy. She let herself be swallowed. Once inside the Beeding whale, however, little Jonah was very active in preserving her secret world.