Growing Pains (15 page)

Wattie found me crying over the wash-basin swishing my skirt about in the water, crying, crying!

“Carlight!”

“I got muddied, Wattie.”

She groaned, “That wretched foot!” She thought I had tripped. She finished washing the skirt, took it off to the fire to dry, draped a cover-all apron over my petticoat, took me into her arms and rocked. That was Wattie’s way. When one was in great tribulation she faced you, crooned, wound her arms round and rocked from side to side. She was such a pretty girl and gentle; had it not been for that clear-cut hardness of English voice, I could have forgotten her nationality.

Wattie would never have cried from being muddied. She would have squared her chin, stuck her high-bridged nose in the air but she would have kept out of slums and not have got herself muddied to begin with. English girls were frightfully brave in their
great cities, but when I even talked of our big forests at home they shivered just as I shivered at their big, dreadful London.

While I lived in Vincent Square I breakfasted in my own room. The view from my window was far from nice. I looked directly across a narrow yard into a hospital. Nurses worked with gas full on and the blinds up. I saw most unpleasant things. I could not draw my own blind or I was in complete black—my landlady cut the gas off at dawn. She went by the calendar, not the weather, and daylight was slow piercing through the fogs of Westminster.

The landlady got a notion.

“ ’Ere’s wot,” she said. “You eat in my ‘sittin’ ’ downstairs; save me luggin’ up, cosy fer yous.”

I breakfasted there once only. Her “sittin’ ” window looked into a walled pit under the street which was grated over the top. The table was before it. Last night’s supper remnants had been pushed back to make room for my cup and plate. A huge pair of black corsets ornamented the back of my chair. There was an unmade bed in the room. The air was foul. The “sittin’ ” was reached by a dreadful windowless passage in which was the unmade bed of the little slatternly maid-of-all-work. I rushed back up the stair, calling to the woman, “I prefer to breakfast in my own room.”

The woman was angry; she got abusive. I did not know how to tackle the situation, so, as was now my habit, I went to Mrs. Radcliffe, who immediately set out and found nice rooms near to her own. Wattie and I moved into them. Old Disagreeable remained in Vincent Square.

I COULD SCARCELY
bear to put my foot to the ground. I had to stay at home, penned in dreariness, eating my heart out to be back at work. Wattie was away all day. London landladies are
just impossible! Lodgers are their last resort. This woman had taken to drink. She resented my being home all day; there was no kindness in her. I had to have a mid-day meal. She was most unpleasant about it. She got drunk. With difficulty I hobbled to Mrs. Radcliffe. She was seated under an avalanche of newspapers when I burst in. The Boer War was at its height. Mrs. Radcliffe followed its every up and down, read newspapers all day.

Flopping onto the piano stool I burst into tears. “I can’t bear it!”

Mrs. Radcliffe looked up vexed.

“What now, Klee Wyck! Dear me, dear me, what a cry-baby! Pull yourself together. A brisk walk is what you need. Exercise—exercise—That stuffy Art School!”

“My foot is bad. I
can’t
walk.”

“Corns? Nonsense, every one has
them
.”

“It is not corns. Where is there a doctor? My foot will have to be cut off or something—I
must
get back to school.”

“Doctor, fiddlesticks! You homesick baby! Stop that hullabaloo! Crying over a corn or two!”

The portière parted—there stood Fred. He had heard. I nearly died of shame. He was never home at this hour. I had not dreamed he would be in the dining-room.

“Mother, you are cruel!”

I felt Mrs. Radcliffe go thin, cold, hard. Hiding my shamed, teary face in the crook of my arm I slithered off the piano stool. Fred held the door for me, patted my shoulder as I passed out.

“Cheer up, little Klee Wyck.”

I did not cheer. Afraid to face the drunk landlady I crawled to a bus, scrambled to its top somehow, got close to the burly, silent driver, rode and rode. The horses were a fine pair of bays. I watched their muscles work. At the end of the route I put fresh
pennies in the box and rode back to the start. Back and forth, back and forth, all afternoon I rode. The jogging horses soothed me. At dusk I went home.

“Mrs. Radcliffe has been twice,” Wattie said. “She seemed worried about you—left these.”

She held up a beautiful bunch of the red roses with the deep smell Mrs. Radcliffe knew I loved so well.

“I don’t want her old roses. I hate her, I am never going near her again. She is a cruel old woman!”

“She loves you, Carlight, or else she would not bother to scold. She thinks it is good for you.”

Wattie rocked, dabbing the red roses against my cheek as she rocked. Something scratched my cheek. It was the corner of a little note nestling among the blooms.

“Come to dinner tonight, Klee Wyck.”

“Wattie, d’you know what hell would be like?”

“Father does not like us to joke about hell, Carlight; he is a clergyman, you know.”

“This is not a hell joke, Wattie, at least it is only London hell! London would be hell without you and without Mrs. Radcliffe. But I must hurry or I shall be late for Mrs. Radcliffe’s dinner, and she’ll scold all over again.”

“Good old Carlight. I am glad you are going.”

ALL THE HOUSES
in Mrs. Radcliffe’s street looked exactly alike. I hobbled up the steps I thought were Mrs. Radcliffe’s. A young man came out of the door. He stepped aside—I entered. The door closed, then I saw I was in the wrong house. I could not open the door so I went to the head of the stair and rang a bell. A woman came hurrying.

“I got in by mistake, please let me out.”

“That’s your yarn is it, Miss Sneak-thief; tell it to the police.”

She took a police whistle from the hook and put it to her lips; her hand was on the door knob.

“Wait, really, honestly! A man came out and I thought he was the lodger above Mrs. Radcliffe, next house. I ran in before he shut the door. I am going to dine with Mrs. Radcliffe. Please let me out quick. She hates one to be late.”

“A likely story!”

“It’s true.”

She opened the door but stood in front so there was no escape. Taking a leap in the dark, I said, “You know Mrs. Radcliffe; she often sends you roomers. Please ask Mrs. Radcliffe before you whistle the police.”

The woman paused, she did not wish to lose custom. My chance leap had been lucky. I had not really known which side Mrs. Radcliffe lodged her visitors. I knew only that it was next door. The woman let me out, but she watched, whistle to lips, till I was admitted to Mrs. Radcliffe’s.

Dinner had just been brought up. Fred laughed when I told my story. Mrs. Radcliffe frowned.

“You always manage to jump into situations, Klee Wyck! My nieces don’t have these experiences when they come to London.”

“They are not Canadian, perhaps.”

“Some are.”

“But Eastern Canadians. I come from far, far West.”

Mrs. Radcliffe smiled, gentler than I had ever seen her smile.

“I have made an appointment with my surgeon-cousin. He is going to have a look at that foot of yours tomorrow,” she said.

THE DOCTOR FOUND
my foot had a dislocated toe, a split bone—results of an old injury. His treatment made no improvement.

“We will have to amputate that toe,” he said. “I do not care to do it, though, without the consent of your home people; your general condition is bad.”

“To write home and wait an answer will take so long, do it this afternoon. I want to get back to school. Please do it quick.”

“Not so fast. The fact is I do not care to take the responsibility.”

“It’s my foot. I have no parents.”

“Tell cousin Marion to come and see me,” said the surgeon. Mrs. Radcliffe went.

“I will accept responsibility,” she told her cousin. “If that toe must come o?, do it.” To me she said, prefacing her words as usual with “dear me!”—“My cousin is a good surgeon. If he says amputation is best, it is. You don’t mind, I suppose, don’t feel sentimental over a toe?”

“Goodness no! I only want to get back to work.”

“Of course a toe is not like your hand or head. I’ve told Cory to go ahead,” said Mrs. Radcliffe.

The foot went wrong. I suffered cruelly. Every day Mrs. Radcliffe tramped clear across London in fierce heat to sit by my bed. She kept a vase full of red roses, velvety red ones with the glorious smell, always fresh by my bedside. She sat close, rocking in a rocker. The toe of her shoe struck the bed with every rock, each vibration was agony, but I would not cry out. I bit my lips and my cheeks were scarlet.

She said to the nurse, “Klee Wyck looks fine! Such bright colour! That foot must be doing splendidly!”

“She is suffering,” said the nurse.

“Oh, well! The restless creature—doubtless she bangs that foot about all night.”

I longed to yell, “Turn the cruel old thing out!” and yet, when Mrs. Radcliffe had gone, I turned my face into the pillow crying, counting the hours until she would come again. She was my strength; without her I was jelly.

Mr. Ford sent his daughter with flowers. Aunt Amelia Green came, wagging her pinched little head, saying, “I told you … You should never have left my house. My Canadian nieces were the same—wayward.”

WATTIE HAD WON
her diploma. She was down in Cambridgeshire, at her father’s vicarage. She wrote, “Come to us, Carlight, the moment they will let you leave the nursing home. You will love the vicarage garden, the wonderful old church. I will take such care of you.”

When Wattie left London I had moved to Mrs. Dodds’ big boarding house for students.

THE VICARAGE GARDEN
was a tangled wilderness, the church and vicarage tumbling down. The Vicar had passed his eightieth year
and was doddery. He was, however, still possessed of a beautiful intoning voice, so the Church retained his services. Wattie from her seat in the choir, her sister from the organ bench, agonizingly watched their father. After the Vicar had filled the solemn old church with his voice, reading lessons and intoning the service, his strength was spent. Tottering up the pulpit stair, gasping out the text of his sermon, his eye roved vaguely over the congregation. A halting sentence or two, a feeble lifting of his arms to bless, the congregation was dismissed to its dinner.

But for the old man’s prattle Sunday dinner in the vicarage would often have been very sad. One after the other his three daughters taking me aside said, “Father ought to be retired,” but, in the next breath, “Isn’t his intoning voice rich and mellow?” They were proud of him, but the Church was not being fair to the congregation.

The vicarage garden was high-walled with red brick circled by venerable elm trees in which was a rookery. Daws and starlings chattered around the disused stable. The Vicar could not afford to keep a horse. He had an old gardener, an old cook, and an old nurse to maintain as well as himself and three daughters. The daughters helped to eke out the living expenses by teaching drawing and music and by running his house. The cook was too old to cook, the gardener too old to dig, the nurse too old to be bothered with children; besides, the vicarage nursery had been empty for the last fifteen years.

Wattie, scouring the unpruned rose bushes for a house posy, said to me, “Our gardener is beyond work, besides which he is lazy and drunken.”

“Why don’t you sack him?”

“Carlight! Sack an old servant! In England servants remain with us until they die.”

“What do they do?”

“Cook can still peel potatoes. The gardener sweeps up the paths, when he is not too drunk to hold the broom. Nurse dusts the nursery and makes our underwear all by hand.”

“Can’t she run a sewing machine?”

“Our family wearing machine-made body linen! Oh, Carlight!”

“Dozening hand stitches when you could million better, stronger ones by machine! Life’s too short! Come to Canada, Wattie.”

“Canada! Why, Carlight? England is the only place in the whole world to live.”

“Your brothers have all gone abroad, haven’t they?”

“Men are different, more adventurous. The world needs educated Englishmen. All my seven brothers went to college. It meant pinching a bit at home. They have all done so well for themselves in the Civil Service—India, China …”

“Why don’t they do a bit for you girls now, make up for your pinch? Why should everything be for the boys and men in England?”

“Mother brought us up that way—the boys first always. The boys have wives now.”

“I’m glad I’m Canadian! I don’t like your English ways, Wattie!”

“Being English is my greatest pride, Carlight.”

A narrow, walled way led from the side door of the vicarage to the church vestry, a sombre interlude in which to bottle secular thoughts and uncork sacred. Through a squeaky, hinged gate you could pass from vicarage garden to churchyard, from overgrown, shady green to sunny, close-clipped graves. Some of these had gay posies snuggled to the tombstones. Some stones staggered and tipped, almost as if they were dancing on the emerald turf.
Everything was so sombre about the vicarage and church it made the graves seem almost hilarious. Gaiety accompanied you through the churchyard, but, at the threshold of the church the merry spirit fell back into the sunlight, sky, air of the graveyard. The church was too dead, too dreary for that bright spirit. It belonged to life, to perpetual living.

“REBELLIOUS CARLIGHT!”
Wattie would say, with a shake of her head, and a few swaying rocks to my shoulders. “Rebellious little Carlight!”

There had been moments when I nearly envied Wattie’s uneventful calm at Art School. We worked easel-to-easel. Wattie’s work was stable, evenly good. Sometimes my work was better than hers, sometimes worse. She neither lifted nor sank. She had enough South Kensington certificates to paper the vicarage. I had none. She knew art history from the Creation to now. She knew the Elgin Marbles and the National Gallery, the South Kensington Museum, all the art treasures of London. She knew the anatomical structure of the human body, bone for bone. She stepped with reverent tip-toeing among the stone couches of the “Great Ones” in the Architectural Museum, but neither our Art nor our hearts had anything in common other than that we loved one another deeply. Each went her own way unfalteringly, staunch to her own ideals. When our ideals clashed, each jumped back into silence, because we wanted to keep both our friendship and our own opinion.