The Gypsy in the Parlour (14 page)

“If it isn't,” panted she, “little Miss Sylvester!”

My name wasn't Sylvester, but I saw how she could have made the mistake. I didn't correct her. I was only too anxious to gain her confidence. Unfortunately my moment's hesitation was misread, with a swift, abrupt movement she pushed up her veil, (as she might have pushed up a visor), and said loudly,

“If you're too proud to speak to me, say so. If you want to walk off, I shan't blame you. Otherwise I'd be much obliged for a word.”

I had never in my life been so roughly addressed. (I may say that Clara never so roughly addressed me again.) My father's sarcasms, my mother's rebukes, were always couched in terms of at least surface politeness. But however astounded I was not alarmed; I hadn't the least idea what Clara was driving at, and I saw she was upset.

“Of course you can have a word,” said I soothingly. “At least till Cook comes back from the shops, because then I'll have to go home. But till then I'd like to talk to you very much. I
want
to talk to you.”

Instantly her wrath vanished.—Indeed, for one truly alarming moment I thought she was going to kiss me. But she checked in mid-swoop and seized my hand instead, pressing it so vigorously that her kid glove squeaked.

“There!” cried Clara energetically. “Didn't I say straight off you had a good heart? Straight off, ‘Charlie,' I said, ‘that young lady's got a good heart.'—If you don't mind sitting down, dear, I suffer with my feet.”

I led her to the nearest bench. It was a cold day, most people were walking briskly; we had our seat to ourselves. Clara collapsed upon it gratefully; I inclined to sit on the edge, keeping a weather-eye open for Cook, because I was forbidden to speak to strangers, and wished to avoid explaining why Clara was not.

“If you've a message from Charles—” I began.

“Now don't go running away with
that
idea,” said Clara at once. She was much more at ease, off her feet. She stretched them out before her, in tight buttoned boots, and delicately balanced them upon the heels. (“Lovely when the blood runs back, ain't it?” said she.) “No, dear, Charlie hasn't sent any message, he don't even know I'm out looking for you; and if he
did
, I can't tell you what he'd say, because he never says anything.”

“That's what they're all like,” I informed her. “All the Sylvesters.”

“I'm sure I'm glad to hear it,” said Clara warmly. “Christ, beg pardon, dear, you relieve my mind. Sometimes I've wondered if I wasn't going deaf.… Are they all as good-looking?”

I told her, all of them; though I really thought Charles was the handsomest. (“Fair bowls you over, don't he?” agreed Clara. “First time he came into the Saloon, you could've knocked me down with a feather.”) But I was by now most impatient for her to explain what she wanted with me: we hadn't all the time in the world. To prompt her, I said,

“He isn't like them in other ways, though. For instance, he doesn't seem to be doing anything, and all my uncles work all the time. Of course I know Charles can't farm, in London, but what I don't understand is why he's here at all.”

Clara looked at me with something like amusement.

“Not to be conceited, dear, there's some might see a reason not a hundred miles off. You're right just the same; all Charlie thinks about, business
or
pleasure, is land.”

“Well, there's no land in London,” I pointed out. “It all belongs to the Duke of Bedford or the Portmans.” I knew this because my mother admitted to her table these grandees' solicitors. Clara, however, was less impressed than I'd hoped.

“Don't be soft, dear,” said she. “Neither me nor Charlie expects plough in Trafalgar Square. It's just, as I say, all he talks about, when he ever does open his mouth, is
land
.…”

“But he's got land!” cried I impatiently. “Or at least he will have. He'll have acres and acres of it!”

“That's just what I want to know,” said Clara plumply. “I mean, has he for Chrissake got expectations, or not?”

2

I thought, sitting there on the bench in the Gardens, of the Sylvester farm. The broad Sylvester acres, the great Sylvester house, appeared before me so luminous with sun that even under that chill spring wind I felt August bake my marrow. I thought of the big beautiful rooms and of the broad sodded court, and of the dairy and the byres and the barns, and of the wide encircling fields whose names I barely knew. I said, yes.

Clara nodded gravely.

“I thought he couldn't be making it all up,” said she. “It sounded, if you know what I mean, too kind of
there
.” She sighed. “I'd like to see it,” said Clara Blow.

“I would too,” said I. “
Now
. It's where I'd like to be, now.”

She looked at me curiously.

“Don't
you
live in a fine house here?”

“I suppose it's big,” said I. “But not so big as the farm. And not warm, like the farm. It's not sunny like the farm. There, there's always so much more sun.”

“That's how Charlie sounds,” said Clara Blow. “But if he can't go back—”

“Of course he can,” said I. “All Sylvesters, always, can always go home. And Charles especially, because he's the eldest.”

“Well, there's something stopping him,” said Clara flatly. “If we could get a read of his letters we might know what, but I've been through his pockets time and time again.” (I don't know why Clara Blow never shocked me. In my own circle, to read another person's letters, without permission, was considered unpardonable. Unless of course the person was a child: any adult could read any child's letter without asking. There was something childlike about Clara Blow: perhaps I unconsciously reversed the law in her favour.) “He just tells me to mind my own business,” continued Clara sombrely, “but if you want to know what I
think
—”

She broke off. At that intensely interesting moment, she ceased to speak.—A hand descended on my scruff: Cook had taken us from the rear. She was so furious she didn't say a word, simply caught me by the collar of my jacket and hauled me round the end of the bench, and marched me away. From the tail of my eye I caught the outraged fling of a feather-boa; but Clara, to my gratitude, equally restrained her tongue. We marched, Cook and I, in strenuous silence all the way home, she breathing trifle as a dragon breathes fire. As we neared our door I did try, nervously, to explain that it was all right: I remember advancing the blanket-defence that I was sure I hadn't caught anything. Cook cut me short.

“The impudence of it!” she snorted. “The bare-faced impudence!—The likes of
her!
”

Entirely I think from a sense of guilt she gave notice next day. As I say, this turned out all for the best, since I do not believe she would ever have left me alone in the Gardens again; whereas her successor had a close friend attached to Knightsbridge Police station.

CHAPTER XV

1

When in 1905 my brother Frederick's daughter Cherry was discovered to be spending her Thursday afternoons not at the National Gallery copying Old Masters, but in the embraces of a shipping-agent, I was the only member of the family unsurprised. This was not because I knew Cherry particularly well, but because I remembered my own Wednesdays thirty years earlier. I knew from experience how easy it was for any well-brought-up young person to lead a double life. Certainly Cherry's behaviour was far worse, she had to marry the shipping-agent almost immediately; but I think my own mother would have been scarcely less horrified than was Marguerite, to know me spending
my
afternoons with Clara Blow.

A child hand-in-glove with servants, a child willing to
connive
, enjoys more liberty than parents suspect.

I had only one period of freedom—Wednesday afternoon; but it was complete. I didn't ask Cook where
she
went, and she didn't ask me. So long as she found me by the Pond at four, from two-thirty until then I was free as a Pond sea-gull. I had an hour and a half, I had ninety-five minutes, to spend as I, unquestioned, wished; and I spent them in Jackson's Economical Saloon.

Clara would never meet me in the Gardens again, on account of her feet. I at first thought her still put out by the rough termination to our conversation there—to apologize for which I hurried back to Brocket Place the first Wednesday after we changed cooks. Later, I found that she truly detested walking as much as any countrywoman. (It was the measure of her anxiety to find me again that she had actually struggled to the Gardens every afternoon for a week.) So though I assured her that Cook was now another one, Clara still refused to come out; and instead gave me a standing invitation to visit Jackson's as often as I could, and eat whatever I liked.

I grew very fond of Jackson's. Jackson's became my London equivalent of the farm. As the Spring term wore away, and the boring, featureless spring-vacation, I found there, in Clara, something of my aunt's old joviality. Her loud cheerful voice, her loud easy laughter, reminded me of Charlotte. She was also about the same size. (I always felt people in London too small. My father was distinguished, my mother elegant, but I never admired their looks.) Though I rarely ate more than an occasional bun, the sheer quantity of food about, and Clara's lavish attitude to it, produced a farm-like sense of plenty,—Whether Clara ever put a halfpenny in the till, or whether we were both indebted to Mr. Isaacs, I didn't enquire. I looked on the Saloon as Clara's private property. I never, naturally, in the middle of the afternoon, saw it under its commercial aspect.

I grew very fond of Jackson's, and I grew very fond of Clara. I couldn't grow fond, or fonder than I already was, of my Cousin Charles, because I never saw him.

He was always asleep. He slept through all the afternoon. (The day I saw him in the Gardens Clara could calculate as the seventh of February, when they had the exterminator in.) But I didn't miss him so much as might have been expected, because Clara and I had so much to talk about.

Our theme was the farm.—I cannot express what a luxury it was to have such an audience: no one at home wanted to hear about the farm at all. Clara loved every detail. “Tell again about the linen,” she would say; or, “Tell again about the dairy”—or about the pigs, or the poultry, or baking-day. She had indeed an inherited taste for such matters: though Cockney-born and bred, she nonetheless recalled Norfolk grandparents—had never seen them, but remembered, from extreme youth, Christmas turkeys of such fabulous proportions, infant Blows feasted for days … Thus she saw the country as I did, through glasses perhaps too rosy; acknowledging that my aunts must work for six, added that work hurt no one, so long as you had elbow-room. She had a way, as she said this, (our conversation early fell into a sort of ritual, we were always saying the same things to each other), of opening her big shoulders in a gesture of frustrated power.—She was really strong. She often wiped plates clean in two, and I once saw her twist the back off a bentwood chair, just giving it a polish.
I
was only surprised there weren't more breakages, considering the size of Clara Blow, and the size of Jackson's Economical Saloon.

No wonder, I thought, she yearned for elbow-room; I thought she would like the farm very much for its spaciousness alone. I thought it would be only fair, after all her kindness to him, if Charles invited her there for a holiday. But when I put this notion to Clara, she received it with a mixture of wistfulness and doubt.

“Christ, dear, there's nothing I'd like better,” said she. (I had long ceased to notice Clara's language. At first she tried to censor it, but the difficulty was that she didn't notice it either.
I
should have found it equally hard never to say, ‘Oh.') “I'd go like a shot,” said Clara, “and let old Isaacs do his worst. But it ain't up to me, it's up to Charlie. I couldn't hardly go without him, could I, now?”

“But he's got to go home
some
time,” I insisted. “And I'm sure he must want to.”

“There's something keeping him away,” repeated Clara darkly.

This was of course obvious. All I learnt of Charlie's life in London convinced me that he must at least be very bored there. According to Clara, he spent his mornings, vaguely, in giving her a hand: in the afternoon, as though to scamp up time, he slept: in the evening, when Jackson's did most of its business, lent Clara a hand again. I understood him naturally wishing to repay her hospitality: but did he actually wait, hand up sausage-and-mash and saveloys, like a waiter, from the kitchen door? I could hardly believe it. I couldn't imagine a Sylvester so lowering himself. If any one bade Tobias or Matthew or Luke carry plates, only wreckage, I felt, could ensue … I was extremely relieved, I remember, to find Charlie's role in fact that of chucker-out. Jackson's was respectable, so to speak, only ideally; some of its patrons from Notting Hill inclined to the hooligan; and Clara told me that nothing stopped a row quicker than the sudden appearance of my Cousin Charles. “He's as good as the police,” said Clara. “Better, you might say, 'cause coppers they know have to face a magistrate. Charlie they don't know what he might do. He did just throw one chap out for me,” said Clara reminiscently, “which a cabby took to hospital on spec. We had a whip-round for the fare, but I don't think he made much more.…”

I told Clara I thought Charles had had a quarrel with Tobias, the summer he came back from Australia. I said I was sure he had, because there couldn't be any other reason for his staying away. And I added that I didn't think the trouble would last much longer, because there was some one at the farm, my dear Fanny Davis, trying to cure it.

“I've always known there was someone wrote,” agreed Clara, less cheerfully than I expected. “Till you turned up I thought maybe it was his Ma. I'd have thought Miss Davis was too sick to bother.”