The Matchmaker (21 page)

“Of course, you poor sweeties, in you come. Weez, you’re cold—let me take your hood off. Was it really so awful?” she asked in a lowered tone as Jenny flew off to find her mother, for in the family it was generally realised that while the practical Jenny was sometimes swept away by her feelings, the unpractical Louise was capable of taking a more detached view.

“Bits of it weren’t so bad but it’s not
nice
,” said Louise, standing within the circle of Jean’s arms and gazing seriously up at her. “The Sisters were quite kind to me but they were beastly to Jenny. They didn’t seem to like her.”

“Never mind them, the old trouts, they’ll get over it and so will you,” comforted Jean, leading the way to the parlour. “Here’s lots of hot toast and some of your favourite pink horrors from the Linga-Longa. So cheer up!”

Jenny was already seated by the fire eating steadily and holding the attention of the room, though Mr. Waite looked more disapproving than ever (he belonged to that small and fast-disappearing rearguard which holds that children should seldom be seen and never heard) and Sylvia looked bored. She had already smugly asked Jenny whether she had been a good girl at school; having herself so recently attained grown-up status, her rare assumptions of its soberer mannerisms were still largely imitative.

Alda was listening to her daughters with mingled satisfaction and dismay. But was the place really as bad as this? What would Ronald say, if it was? He had been so determined that the children must remain there for as long as possible.

“Where’s Meg?” demanded Jenny, interrupting herself to gaze round.

“Gone to spend the afternoon with the old lady at Pagets,
they’re
bringing her back at six. Go on, Jenny,” said Alda. (“You will excuse all this, won’t you?” smilingly to Mr. Waite.)

“—and we had four lots of prayers. And no sooner was the praying over than the bullying began.”

“What sort of bullying?” demanded Alda. “Now, Jen, don’t exaggerate.”

“I’m
not
exaggerating, Mother. They speak to you in such an unkind voice and they won’t let
you
speak at all. The child next to me knocked a book off my desk and Sister Peter accused me of doing it, and when I tried to say I didn’t, she got red in the face and said—‘You mustn’t say it—you mustn’t say it’—and simply glared at me.”

“That seems very unfair,” said Alda, trying not to sound pleased.

“Old cat,” said Jean placidly, in exactly the same tone that she had used of her own form mistress twenty years ago.

“Oh, but Roman Catholics are like that,” broke in Sylvia loudly, “I wonder you sent them to the place. Beastly holes, convent schools are, teaching the kids to be deceitful.”

“All forms of organised religion are the same,” said Phillip Waite. “Teach a child to recognise The God in Every Man and to keep In Touch With The Transcendent, and that’s all they need.”

“But that won’t teach Jenny and Louise French verbs and long division,” retorted Alda rather sharply, “and the education at convent schools is always excellent.”

“I’m in a
very
low form, with people of
eight
,” mourned Louise, “and Sister Paul said that my writing was like
spiders
, and she held it up so that everyone could see and all the children laughed.”

“I simply hate it there,” Jenny said, drawing a long sigh, “and the lunch was wet mashed potato and icy beetroot.”

“I thought it was rather nice,” said Louise, looking up from her place by her mother’s knee, warmed by the fire and cheered by much toast and three pink cakes. “The meat was rabbit.”

“Cat, more likely,” put in Sylvia with her noisy laugh.

“And we’ve got
piles
of homework to do; all about Henry the something; it will take hours,” sighed Jenny.

“I’ll help you with it later on,” said Alda soothingly, deciding that she would also defer the inquiry about those tearstains. “Go in the kitchen now, darlings, there’s a nice fire there, and get your books ready.”

No sooner had the door closed than Sylvia burst out:

“I say, Mrs. Lucie-Browne, you aren’t having them taught religion at that place, are you? all that stuff about the Virgin Birth and the rest of it?”

“Sister Alban, the head, said nothing about their being taught religion,” Alda replied coldly, “I suppose they teach them Bible history; all schools except the National Schools do, I believe.”

“Oh, well, the Bible’s different,” said Sylvia tolerantly.

“There
is
quite a lot in the Bible, and I don’t mind admitting it, I’m capable of seeing both sides of a question, I’m like that, but I do draw the line at all that Jesus stuff.”

“A great Teacher,” put in Mr. Waite approvingly, “perhaps the greatest that ever lived.”

“Jenny and Louise and Meg have been brought up as Christians and when they are old enough they will be confirmed,” said Alda with some irritation. Then she glanced at her watch. “Meggy should be here any minute, J.; will you put the oil-stove on in her room?”

“Honestly, though, Mrs. Lucie-Browne, are you bringing them up as Christians?” Sylvia went on. “It sounds awfully queer nowadays, sort of old-world. Absolutely no one does. Why,
I
don’t even
know
any Christians.”

“I can well believe that,” snapped Alda—very severely, but her patience was exhausted. Sylvia looked surprised and hurt.

“It’s both interesting, and beautiful, the old faith, if only it were not marred by such hideous bloodshed and superstition,” said Mr. Waite. “And what are
your
views on Christianity, Miss Hardcastle?” suddenly pouncing upon Jean.

“Oh, help,” murmured Jean, who, not wishing to miss any of this conversation, had lingered to pile some plates upon a tray. “I’m bothered if I know,” and she went out of the room.

“Ah, there’s Meg,” exclaimed Alda, hurrying to the door. “Excuse me.”

When she returned she found Mr. Waite and Sylvia united in an unholy alliance against Superstition and Dogma, rolling the Pope in the dust, shoving the Church of England into the grave which its narrowness and timidity deserved, biffing the Saints and Martyrs all over the place, and hurling the missionaries into an outer darkness black as the converts whose primitive innocence they corrupted. She was just in time, had her irritation permitted, to hear them sailing off in separate clouds of glory, Mr. Waite towards The Transcendent and Sylvia towards the Classless World State.

“I must get the furniture back into this room, it’s beginning to snow again,” she interrupted smilingly.

“Can I stay and help wash up?” implored Sylvia, suddenly looking young and woebegone, “I haven’t got to be in until nine and it’s so deadly boring in that place.”

“Oh I daresay we can put up with you for a bit longer,” said Alda, exactly as she would have spoken to Louise. “Run along, the others are in the kitchen.”

Sylvia cheerfully blundered off, and Mr. Waite said that he must help her to get the furniture back.

“That
is
kind of you, this way, then,” she said, and led him down a dark passage smelling of coaldust. It was time that Mr. Waite came to somebody’s heel. If ever a man needed a woman’s touch, he did. Let him bump himself and starve his chickens while he helped her to move back the furniture, thought Alda; it would do him good.

“It’s only the sideboard and the bookcase and that little cabinet,” she said cheerfully, opening the door upon the chaos in the woodshed. A confusion of large, dark objects confronted them with a hopeless air. Snow blew in Mr. Waite’s face and settled upon his best necktie.

“Can you see?” she asked.

“Well enough,” replied Mr. Waite, without any of the inflections that might have been expected, and for the next twenty minutes he pulled and pushed and steered the furniture round awkward corners, while Alda, in silence except for an occasional laugh or brief comment, helped him at critical moments. When at last he stood in the hall, dusting his hands and looking down at her, she was surprised to see that he did not look cross. He buttoned his overcoat, still looking at her; he seemed absent.

“There!” she said, surveying the orderly sitting-room. “Now if Mrs. Prewitt comes back in the small hours, she’ll find everything all right.”

“Are you expecting Mrs. Prewitt?” in a startled tone,

“Of course not, it was only a joke,” soothingly. “Thank you so much for helping me. Oh—your hat.” She held it out to him and he took it. She opened the front door. “I’m so glad that you were able to come. Ugh! Summer seems years away, doesn’t it?”

Together they peered out into the night. Snow drifted glittering into the beam of light shining out from the hall and vanished again into darkness.

“But it isn’t cold,” he answered, still with that absent air; then seemed to recollect himself.

“Good-bye, Mrs. Lucie-Browne, thank you for a pleasant afternoon—oh, I nearly forgot.” He felt in his pocket and brought out some chocolate. “For the kiddies. They oughtn’t to have them to-night; too heavy; keep them till to-morrow.”

“You
are
kind!” exclaimed Alda, in a voice of genuine and unflattering surprise. “Thank you very much indeed; they will be so pleased.”

“Not at all. Er—you must all come and have tea with me one
day
soon, only,” laughing ruefully, “I can’t promise to move all the furniture in your honour, you know! Good night.”

“We’d love to. Good night.”

And she shut the door.

Oh, what a relief it was to rush into the kitchen, where washing up was in its last stages, accompanied by gales of laughter and jokes about the Sisters, who were rapidly being transformed by Sylvia and Jean into harmless funny old cats and who would remain so until twenty minutes to nine on the following morning when Jenny and Louise again saw Sister Benedict approaching in the car! Men can be bores, thought Alda, scooping her daughters into an embrace, and honestly believing that she preferred the society of women.

“What did you think of him?” she could not help asking of Jean, in a lowered tone.

“Wasn’t he awful?” said Sylvia, standing by the draining-board with a teacloth draped round her ample hips to protect her dress and glancing delightedly from one face to the other. “He didn’t half tick me off, didn’t he? But I soon bobbed up again; you can’t keep a good woman down. He’s a regular masochist or monagonist or whatever you call a woman-hater, isn’t he?”

“Misogynist—if you must call him something,” said Alda. “Meggy, my love, come along—bed.”

Meg was leaning with her elbows on the seat of a chair and sucking her thumb (a gesture she only used when she was sleepy), while her eyes, which were already heavy under her pale gold fringe, moved interestedly from one grown-up to another and then back to Jenny or Louise. She wanted to go on watching and listening, but something—a warmth, a deliciousness that came nearer and nearer inside her—kept breaking over her, plunging her each time a little deeper and making her open her eyes slightly wider against its drowsy waves. When her mother lifted her up, she said indignantly, “Meg will stay up to supper,” but as no one took any notice, she inclined her head gratefully upon Alda’s shoulder, sighed, and was borne away.

Alda came downstairs and found Sylvia patronisingly helping Jenny and Louise with their homework, her loud voice, giggles and dictatorial manner adding to their already considerable confusion.

“Off you go, Sylvia,” said Alda crisply. “It’s half-past six and these two have to be in bed by half-past seven sharp.”

“Oh, must I, Mrs. Lucie-Browne? We’re having such a lovely time, aren’t we, Jenny and Weez?” and she grinned at the children, who did not respond.

“Mother, I’m in an awful muddle and we really must get it done,” said Jenny, who now looked exhausted and inclined to tears, while Louise was pale and yawning.

“J., can you just start them on whatever they’ve got to do?” said Alda, “and I’ll take Sylvia up to get her things on,” for she perceived that Sylvia was not going to leave the cottage unless she were firmly ushered out.

“It’s not much fun at that place, I can tell you,” said Sylvia when they were in the bedroom. “Mr. Hoadley’s all right, but
she’s
very funny, you never know how to take her, and that girl they have in three times a week’s bats, if you ask me. As for the Italians, the little one’s always trying to paw you about, it makes me sick, and the red-haired one——”

“Fabrio? What about him?” asked Alda with some impatience as Sylvia paused to paint her mouth.

“Oh, he’ll murder me one of these days, I should think, he hates the sight of me.”

“Much more likely he’s in love with you and frightened that you’ll guess, young men don’t hate the sight of attractive girls,” said Alda, with the gay authority she used for such announcements, and looking at her with renewed interest. “How do
you
treat
him
?”

“It’s not my fault, Mrs. Lucie-Browne, I’m quite willing to be friendly. After all, we were all victims of the Capitalists’ War, weren’t we? Him just as much as you or me or anybody,
I
haven’t any Fascist hatred for Germans or Italians or Japanese.”

“Yes, I know all about that, but do you like him?”

“I don’t get the chance. He never speaks to me and if I speak to him he slaps me down.”