The Brontes Went to Woolworths (15 page)

Here I deliberately pulled his leg; gave him a reasonably adequate
résumé
of his public engagements for the past six weeks, together with the
bons mots
he had dryly delivered, the first nights he had attended and the barristers he had snubbed, at which his face relaxed grimly. ‘You dangerous lady! But that wasn’t quite what I meant.’

I smiled back. ‘Of course I know that. Well . . . there’s a lot of it.’ (
And some of it you can’t be told, Toddy
).

‘For instance, have I ever done anything disgraceful?’

‘Tut, no! Never. You’ve had scenes, of course, with Dion Saffyn
’ ‘And who
?’

‘A pierrot. He’s dead.’

‘Why did we disagree?’

‘Because you thought he wasn’t fit company for us.’

‘I was perfectly right!’

‘No. Not that time. You weren’t clever about Saffy. He was a dear. And Sheil hasn’t been told he’s dead, so he still comes in to meals.’

At last, Toddy was beginning to look at me with the expression I had had from him so often before. Knowledge . . . intimacy . . . infinite whimsical wisdom. The relief of it made me grip the acorn of the blind.

‘I see . . . and who else do I know? Am I on terms with anyone alive, for instance?’

‘Rather! Sir Horatio Sparrow.’

‘Ah, come now! That’s better. He is, as a matter of fact, a great personal friend of mine.’

‘Is he? How heavenly!’

He stood thinking. ‘By the way, is my wife in this?’

‘Yes.’

‘M’m . . . I’m glad of that,’ said Toddy.

And then I glanced across the room and saw on Lady Toddington’s face the wife-look. And suddenly I was Miss Deirdre Carne.

I don’t remember that we said anything as we walked home. I wondered whether Toddy would ring us up, as usual, last thing at night, and it then occurred to me that our actual acquaintance with the Toddingtons might put a stop to all that. It might be going to alter all the old, familiar things. We even might be going to lose more than we had won . . . it rather depended on mother and Sheil. I could go on, of course . . . I was irrationally despondent. Having to leave Toddy like that, and be ushered out into the Square, was as painful and ridiculous as a lovers’ quarrel. And if Lady Toddington was going to turn into affronted conjugality on us, we should have to make a drastic overhaul of the entire story. She had, I seem to remember, shown signs of restiveness in the past, when Katrine and I kissed him and called him an Old Pet, but on those occasions there was always mother to pick up the pieces and mend the breach in a jiffy. The Toddingtons have no ‘s.’ no ‘d.’ or they’d figure in
Who’s Who
. Was the attraction going to be Sheil? And was I going to mind too badly if it were? But one would adore to make them happy. Toddy has done so much for one that he will probably never know. And Mildred has given one so many laughs! Was it possible that knowing the Toddingtons might be going to be just a matter of ‘new friends’? Is it only selfishness to tinker at their personalities? But we’ve guessed right so often that it may be justifiable. On more than one occasion we’ve sent Toddy overnight to some public function, and found in the morning papers that he was actually there, or at something amazingly similar. And there is the sheer scavenging: for, once you are caught in anybody’s current, you are apt to be drawn towards people who already possess knowledge. There was that girl I met at the Florences’ – an Academy friend of Katrine’s. Her mother had once rented their seaside house at Birchington to the Toddingtons, and Lady Toddington hadn’t liked the bath-room having no geyser.

‘I like Mildred,’ said mother, that night.

‘Good thing, isn’t it? Because one always has,’ I answered. ‘What did you talk about?’

‘Oh, you and Sheil mostly. Well, you got Toddy, anyway. What did the old darling say?’

‘My dear, I told him about the Saga.’

‘You
didn’t!
’ Mother put down her cigarette.

‘Bits.’

‘Lor!
Lor!

’ ‘And I think he catches on.’ Suddenly I was full of happiness and, as I always do, rushed to the piano and improvised a dance tune. (A year later, I sold it for more than I’d ever earned, which only goes to prove what a basic ass the world really is.)

‘I like that,’ said mother. ‘Do go on going on.’

And then Miss Martin was in the doorway. Mother hastily crushed out her stub and I stopped at once.

‘Oh, Mrs Carne, I’m so sorry to trouble you, but could you come up to Sheil?’ We were both on our feet. ‘She’s being
so
difficult, this evening.’ At that, we both sat down. ‘Do come in, Miss Martin. What seems to be the matter?’ Miss Martin turned a brickish colour.

‘I – of course she doesn’t
mean
anything, but – it’s silly to repeat, of course – but she says she wants that Mr Pipson to sleep with her.’

‘How adorable they’d look!’ I remarked, but catching mother’s susceptibly watering eye, I gave an excellent imitation of efficiency and left the room to its atmosphere of apologies.

‘Anything else?’ asked Mrs Carne.

‘Well, when I asked her if she had enjoyed the afternoon with Lady Toddington, she began to cry, and became – really
’ ‘Ah. I was rather expecting something of the sort,’ responded her employer.

Over the schooled features of Agatha Martin flitted noncomprehension, dawning temper, and resentment. She had had a wretched day. The unfinished letters to Violet and

Mabel in which cheerfulness must be maintained . . . the letter from Arthur, confirming his transfer to a curacy in the East End . . . the secret offer of a portion of her salary to Flossie. Mabel’s old lady had died, and Mabel was out of employment, and at home.

Agatha’s eyes began to water. Inside, she was saying to Mrs Carne, ‘You are a fool and your children are liars. Your fault. You are undermining my work and encouraging senseless delusions.’ Oh, the
healing
of saying that! But repression and expedience said something else, though she was pleased to hear that her voice was chilly.

‘Indeed? In that case, could you not have given me some – hint?’

‘But, Miss Martin, does it really matter? You know what children are. I was very much the same, myself.’

(
You would be
.) ‘Quite so. But – do you think it is perhaps quite – the best thing to encourage so much pretence?’

(
I know it’s wrong of me, but I can’t seem to have patience with
women with faces like roast hares
.)

‘Ah, don’t try and turn them out of fairyland too quickly. There’s all the time there is for coming down to earth with a bump.’

(
But, apparently, they don’t come down, you silly woman. Katrine
seems to be acquiring a little sense, but look at Deirdre
.) ‘I see what you mean.’

(
That you don’t! and I wish you’d go
).

(
It’s ridiculous, and dangerous. How can one hope for results with
the child brought up in such an atmosphere?
)

Miss Martin left the room.

15

There was no engagement for the evening, and Sir Herbert Toddington joined his lady in the drawingroom, after dinner. It had been rather a silent meal; possibly, he thought, through contrast with the young voices whose tones still seemed to hang in the atmosphere. Mildred was being nervous with him. He hated it. It disappointed him, and she guessed that, and it made her worse. She was deep in one of what to himself he termed her ‘Should She Have Done It?’ novels. Curious how nearly all women could adapt themselves to the social side and still remain mentally at a standstill That little child . . . the pretty thing! Wanting him to play . . . and Miss Deirdre . . . there was a companion! The gift of fearlessness, when one was so sated with perfunctory deference. It wasn’t always easy to shed the lordship at home, and for the first time he wondered if he had ever seemed to bully Mildred? Of late years she hadn’t appeared to be able to get past his manner, though, goaded, she could occasionally let fly. Sparrow understood her, but then they were old flames and he wasn’t her husband. Apart from Mildred, Herbert knew that Sir Horatio Sparrow had a very low opinion of women, whereas Herbert had for the entire sex a curious tenderness and admiration which must have been innate, or his experiences of them in the courts would have destroyed it years ago. For women, he had often stretched the law to splitting point. And then he remembered the boiled cod and the Athenelium, and chuckled.

Mildred dropped her book. Stooping to pick it up, the title caught his eye.
The Life of Charlotte Brontë
, by Mrs Gaskell. Keeping a poker-face, he restored it. Mildred turned very red. He longed to know how it struck her, but to ask would lay him open to the charge of patronage. Mildred was sensitive about her mental attainments. He used to chaff her, in the old days. Defensively she forestalled him. ‘Not Edgar Wallace after all, Herbert!’

‘So I see, my dear.’

‘“The poor woman has got glimmerings of intelligence,” eh?’

‘Come, come!’

‘Come
where
? I do wish you wouldn’t use those silly Court expressions on me.’

‘Now, my dear, don’t let us be cross.’

‘All right. Only you do think I’m a perfect fool, don’t you?’

‘By no means. I think, in your own department, you are a most able woman.’

‘That means that I know just enough not to serve cheesestraws with the fish.’ Behind the pince-nez his eyes gleamed with amusement. ‘Oh well . . . humour the village idiot. Anyway, Herbert, you must admit that I’m a shade more presentable than the usual Chesterfield sofa your colleagues seem to marry.’

‘Dear Mildred, do not fight me, if you please.’

‘ . . . and now I suppose I’ve met my Waterloo in the Carne girl.’

‘My dear child!’

‘Oh, I suppose something of the sort was bound to happen.’ This, her husband thought rapidly, was an example of Mildred’s type of cleverness; too sensible to harbour dramatic fears, she was intelligent enough to dread the mental affinity as the profounder menace.

‘It would be singular indeed if I started making conquests at my age.’

‘I don’t know. You’re awfully attractive, Herbert. You were very plain as a young man, but you’ve found your face all right, now.’ She stopped the ‘Deirdre Carne adores you’ just in time.

One didn’t give girls away, even to one’s husband.

‘I should have said that I’m emphatically caviare to the general
’