Young Mrs. Savage, page 10
The bartender, a short, tubby little man in a clean apron, agreed that he knew the Commander very well indeed. “We’ve cider to-day,” he suggested, with a glance at Dinah.
“Cider!” exclaimed the Commander. “Good heavens, I thought you knew me better than that!”
“For the lady, I meant,” explained Sam.
The lady said she liked cider much better than beer.
“There’s no accounting for tastes,” remarked Commander Yoker as he drained his tankard to the dregs.
The three of them sat at the bar-counter on high stools and talked about various matters in a friendly manner. Dinah was somewhat alarmed at the amount of beer her new acquaintance consumed. No sooner was his tankard empty than Sam seized it, refilled it and replaced it. Even Dan began to get a trifle uneasy.
“Go slow, Tapioca!” he said.
“But half of it’s water,” explained Commander Yoker gravely, “which means you have to drink twice the quantity. It’s a mathematical calculation—and I couldn’t say that if I’d had too much.”
“Why does he call you Tapioca?” Dinah inquired.
“It’s his prep. school mentality of course. But you can’t complain if you’re saddled with a name like mine. Pat Yoker—well, there you are! Awful, isn’t it?”
“It’s better than dinner-bell,” said Dinah, who had suffered from this cognomen at school.
“Worse,” declared the Commander. “Much worse. Dinner-bell is pleasant in my ears. It promises well. It may not live up to its promise of course, but it has a hopeful sound. Tapioca is just a mess . . . white (or perhaps grey), sodden, claggy, lumpy! Another beer,” said the Commander, shuddering. “Bring me another beer for heaven’s sake!”
“You’ll have the most frightful head to-morrow,” objected Dan.
“Not me,” he replied. “Beer suits me. I shall be as bright as a bee and as lively as a cricket. You wouldn’t like a game of golf to-morrow, Dan?”
“That depends on what Dinah wants to do,” said Dan, looking at her.
“Dinah won’t mind, will you?” the Commander inquired.
Dinah didn’t mind at all. She was a little surprised at being addressed as Dinah by Commander Yoker, but she liked him so she didn’t mind that either.
“It’s easier,” he explained, reading her thoughts. “I mean we’re going to see a lot of each other because of the uncle and aunt and the children.” He sighed and added: “You can call me Tapioca if you like.”
“I shall call you Pat,” said Dinah laughing.
Dan and Dinah walked home arm-in-arm. Everybody seemed to be walking home arm-in-arm. It was dark and the lamps were shining. The mist had cleared away and the stars were bright.
“You were right,” said Dinah. “I enjoyed myself and it did me good. The mist is clearing—my mist, I mean.”
“I’m as good as a bottle,” declared Dan, proffering the old joke. “And, talking of bottles, what did you think of Tapioca?”
“Rum,” said Dinah, thoughtfully. “Rum, but nice. There’s something very innocent about him.”
“Poor old Tapioca has lost his heart to you.”
“Nonsense! An old woman like me, with four children!”
“Quite senile, of course, but I don’t mind betting that he has. I know the signs, my dear,” declared Dan, with a little chuckle.
“You’re mad!” said Dinah, firmly.
The Dees loitered by the sea front. The air was warm and still and it was such a glorious night that it was a pity to go indoors. Quite a number of people seemed to have the same idea; shadowy couples passed and re-passed, strolling along and talking in lowered voices. It was long after midnight when the Dees said good night to the sea and retired to rest.
Dinah felt happier than she had for a long time, partly because she had been able to tell Dan what was worrying her and partly because the little outing had given her a new perspective. She realised she was too much with the children, too wrapped up in them, but what could she do? I must think of other things, decided Dinah. I must read more and go about and try to be sensible and sane. It will be better for me and better for the children.
Dinah was almost asleep when the door opened very softly and a small, woebegone figure in a blue flannel dressing-gown appeared. The moonlight shining in at the open window filled the room with radiance so that it was almost as bright as day.
“What’s the matter, Polly?” whispered Dinah.
“Everything,” replied Polly in a voice choked with tears. “Everything’s the matter. I can’t bear it! I was dreaming! Oh, Mummy! I was dreaming all about Christine!” She ran across the room and flung herself into Dinah’s arms.
“It’s all right,” declared Dinah, hugging her. “Just a dream—”
“But it isn’t,” sobbed Polly. “It isn’t all a dream. I shan’t see her ever again! I’m miserable. I love Dan awfully of course, but I love Christine too. I want to go to Edinburgh and I want to stay at home. You see I’ve always had Christine next-door, and she’s always had me.”
Dinah drew Polly into bed beside her. “Listen,” she said. “You’re old enough to understand so I’m going to talk to you just like a grown-up person. We can’t go on living at Nettleham because there are no schools and we haven’t enough money to pay for you and the boys to go to boarding-schools. Christine will go away to a boarding-school when she’s bigger because she’s an only child. It’s different with you.”
Polly was quiet now and they discussed the matter reasonably.
“We’ll have her to stay with us in the holidays,” continued Dinah. “You’ll like that, won’t you? It’s sad to leave Nettleham but it can’t be helped. We’ve got to think of what’s best for everybody. You see that, don’t you?”
Polly saw that. She was comforted and flattered at being talked to as if she were a grown-up person. She was the eldest. The others were too young to understand. She fell asleep in her mother’s arms and slept dreamlessly till the morning.
12
Dinah awoke to find Polly getting out of bed. She sat on the edge for a moment before she slipped down on to the floor and her mother had a view of her back: the narrow shoulders and the two little pigtails tied with white tape. The fragility of the little, white nape of Polly’s neck gave Dinah a qualm of compassion. Polly was a woman—feminine, mysterious, vulnerable as boys and men were not. “Oh, God! don’t let her get hurt,” said Dinah’s heart. “Don’t let there ever be anything I can’t comfort.”
Softly Polly crossed the floor, took up her blue dressing-gown (which already was too small for her) and stood gazing out of the window. It was a lovely day. Polly stretched her arms above her head and gave a little chuckle of pleasure before she tiptoed out of the room.
It was still very early as Polly could tell by the pale golden haze which lay over the sands and the sea; but it was too good a day to waste. She dressed hastily and let herself out of the door. How fresh it was! She felt as light as air—she felt as if she had only to spring into the air and she would fly or float or glide like the seagulls with her arms spread out like their wings. She was nearly the only person awake. There were two old fishermen digging for sand-worms and a small, slight figure in a grey suit standing upon a rock and gazing at the sea. Polly’s keen eyes told her it was Mr. Monk.
Polly ran down the sands and splashed into the sea. The little waves licked her legs and the sand squelched between her toes. Mr. Monk waved to her, so she paddled across to his rock and he pulled her up beside him.
“Have you got a parrot?” asked Polly. It was a question she had wanted to put to him when she met him on the pier (but there had been no opportunity for questions on the pier). If Mr. Monk thought it an odd question to be shot at him out of the blue, standing upon a rock at six o’clock in the morning, he managed to conceal it.
“Yes,” said Mr. Monk. “Not here of course; we left it at home.”
“Does it say: ‘Splice the main brace!’?”
“Well, no, I’m afraid not. My son was in the Navy so he taught it several nautical expressions, but—”
“But that isn’t naughty-cal,” objected Polly. “That means everybody is to have a glass of grog. The twins say naughty-cal expressions sometimes—like hellish, you know.”
“I know,” agreed Mr. Monk.
“My real name isn’t Polly,” continued Polly, following an obvious line of thought. “My real name is Elvina, but the twins called me Veener and Daddy said it was awful. Daddy called me Polly and then everybody did.”
“That’s the way it happens,” said Mr. Monk. He hesitated for a moment and then continued: “Talking of names, Polly, why am I Mr. Monk?”
“Because you are,” replied Polly instantly. “I mean you’re exactly like him. He’s very nice, so you needn’t mind.”
“I don’t mind in the least. I was interested, that’s all.”
“He has a heart of gold,” said Polly. She had enough social sense to refrain from mentioning Old Monk’s less desirable peculiarities. “Old Monk has twinkling eyes and a heart of gold.”
“And a parrot that says: ‘Splice the main brace!’, I suppose,” said Mr. Monk, laughing heartily.
“Yes,” agreed Polly, nodding. “Dan tells us stories about him—they were shipmates, you see. You’re sure you don’t mind being called Mr. Monk?”
“Not if he has a heart of gold,” said Mr. Monk decisively.
They stood and looked about. It was very pleasant. The golden mist was thinning rapidly and the sun was shining through, warming up the day. It would be hot later, but at the moment it was delightfully cool and fresh.
“We’re the only people in the world this morning,” said Mr. Monk, smiling at his companion as he spoke.
“Except the fishermen,” said Polly, pointing to them.
“But they’re just part of the scenery, you know.”
“Not real people, like you and me?”
He smiled and replied: “Real to themselves of course, and to their wives and children, but not real to us. To us, just a part of the rocks and the sea.”
“And we’re just ‘visitors’ to them,” said Polly, showing she had understood.
The day passed quickly and pleasantly. Dan played with the children in the morning, and in the afternoon went off with Tapioca for his game of golf. Dinah renewed her friendship with the old house, going round it by herself and remembering a hundred little incidents which happened when she was a child.
Dinah loved the old house. It was home to her as no other house could be. One could hardly call it a beautiful house but it was well-designed and strongly built of pale-grey stone with a blue-slate roof and squat chimneys. The house had been built close to the sea, exposed to the winter gales, and its designer had taken this into consideration when he planned it. There was no nonsense about the inside of the house either. On the ground floor, facing the sea, was the dining-room and the room which had been the doctor’s surgery; the kitchen premises and a small, cosy study were at the back and looked on to the garden. Upstairs was the drawing-room, Dinah’s bedroom (which had once been Doctor Bell’s) two small rooms and a bathroom. On the top landing there were several rooms which the Andersons used themselves, another bathroom and the nursery. The twins were sleeping in the nursery now, and sleeping in the same small beds in which, long ago, the Dees had slept. Later, of course, the Dees had been promoted to the two small rooms on the drawing-room floor and had used the old nursery as a play-room. Dinah looked out of the window, with its iron bars, and saw the same view: the walled garden, the green sweep of common and the steep green hill. It was all exactly the same.
Nannie had altered the house and furniture very little, for, like Dinah, she had always thought it as nearly perfect as an earthly mansion could be. She had replaced the furniture which Dan and Dinah had taken by furniture of the same Victorian style, good and solid and sensible; but most of the old furniture remained and Dinah recognised the pieces and greeted them as friends. The big, deep sofa in the drawing-room was especially dear to Dinah, for the Dees had sat there every evening and often on wet afternoons. They had sat, one in each corner, reading aloud to each other and discussing what they had read, or conducting exhaustive conversations about all sorts of matters which interested them. The big easy chairs, the cabinet and the table near the window were all the same and stood in the same places; so, too, the music cabinet which, for some reason which the Dees had never understood, was called a Canterbury. (Why Canterbury? they had wondered. Why not Salisbury, or Rochester, or some other cathedral town? They had never asked any one to elucidate the mystery and the matter was still obscure to the grown-up Dinah.) The dining-room had the same mahogany furniture, polished so that you could see your face in it; the same oil paintings, framed in heavy gilt, hung upon the walls. The pictures were of Highland mountains and glens and of Highland cattle standing knee-deep in Highland burns. They had hung there peacefully all these years, thought Dinah, as she looked at them.
The hall was slightly different for the stained-glass windows in the inner front door had been replaced by plain glass. Dinah regretted the change (she would have regretted any change) for the stained glass with the sun shining through had filled the hall with red and blue and yellow shafts of light which had been interesting and unusual. She was obliged to admit the hall was lighter now—perhaps that was why Nannie had done it. The stairs were of dark wood, with carved banisters and a rail from top to bottom. One afternoon—a wet one, of course—Dan, sliding down, had fallen off and landed upon the hall floor with a sickening thud and had lain there for a few moments without moving. Dinah remembered the event as if it had happened last week. She had been petrified with horror. Fortunately he sustained nothing worse than a slight concussion, but that had put an end to the sport of banister-sliding.
There was still the Indian Boy in a corner of the hall. He was made of black wood, and stood upon a small plinth of the same material; his hands were raised above his head and supported a brass bowl with a fern growing in it—not the same fern, Dinah supposed, but one which resembled its predecessor as one pea resembles another. There was still the coat-cupboard of dark oak with its elaborately carved panels depicting the eviction of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. It was a roomy cupboard—an excellent place to hide—and smelt most curiously of apples. There was a chip off one corner of the cupboard; Dan had removed it when practising a mashie shot and had disguised it very cleverly by rubbing in boot polish. The chip could still be felt, though not seen. Dinah’s fingers found it.
She was smiling over the chip and the memories it evoked when Nannie appeared from the kitchen premises.
“You’ve been all round, Dinah,” said Nannie, nodding approval. “It’s as well kept as it was in the Doctor’s day—except, maybe, the carpets. I’m needing new carpets but I’ll have to wait for them—and the door, of course. Och, I could have cried over the door! It was the wee Hamilton boy gave it a slam and the window fell out on the floor and smashed to bits. The Hamiltons were quite decent about it and said I was to get a new one, but they’re not to be had.”
“It makes the hall brighter,” said Dinah, comfortingly.
“Och!” exclaimed Nannie in disgust. “The place isn’t the same. I tell you, Dinah, I could have cried and that’s the truth.”
She hesitated for a moment and then continued: “And while we’re on the subject I might as well tell you that the house will be yours when I’m gone. It’s yours now to all intents and purposes—I always meant that, and Andrew agrees.”
“But Nannie—”
“I’ve always meant it and I always will. Who would I leave it to, Dinah? We’ve no chick or child of our own, Andrew and me, and you’re the one that ought to have it. The thing’s fixed,” said Nannie defiantly, “and there’s no need to talk about it.”
“Nannie—really! It’s most awfully kind of you. I hope it will be a long, long time—” began Dinah.
“I’m not dead yet, nor anything near it,” declared Nannie and so saying she disappeared into the kitchen premises and shut the door.
13
Dan returned home to tea slightly crestfallen. “I was hopeless,” he declared as he sat down. “Tapioca beat me six and four—I couldn’t hit a ball.”
“They’re such very small balls,” remarked Polly comfortingly.
Her uncle laughed and laughing cheered him. He declared that a football would have suited him much better and added that he thought he would go along to the bathing-pool after tea and have a swim.
“Dinah can go too,” said Nannie, who had brought in a fresh brew of tea and was lingering in the room as long as possible. “It will be a nice wee outing for Dinah. I’ll see to the children. You’ll not go in yourself, Dinah—not to-day. Just wait till you get acclimatised,” added Nannie firmly.
“Are you sure you can manage?”
“Manage!” exclaimed Nannie. “How would I not manage?”
It was pleasant to be ordered about. Nobody had ordered Dinah about for years and she found it soothing. Quite meekly she put on her swagger coat (“You’ll be cold, sitting,” said Nannie) and set forth with Dan.
The swimming-pool at Seatown is near the harbour (in fact it is part of the harbour rocks) and is surrounded by tiers of seats and a concrete wall. There is a large open space at one side of the pool where the pierrots give their performance, and Dinah reminded her fellow-Dee of an historic occasion upon which the sea, breaking over the wall, had suddenly and unexpectedly put a stop to the pierrots’ entertainment.
“It’s just the same,” declared Dinah looking round. “I love this part of Seatown. Most seaside places are so artificial, you feel they’re only for pleasure, but here you have the harbour and the fisherfolk and the rocks all round you and the pool in the middle.”
Dan found her a seat out of the wind and she sat down to enjoy herself and to watch the swimmers. She was surprised at the number of small children in the pool, most of them swam like frogs and, like frogs, seemed amphibious. In the shallow part of the pool there were about twenty little girls having a lesson from the swimming instructor. They belonged to a local school—so Dinah decided. She watched with interest and amusement as the children were made to lie down in the water with their hands on the bottom and strike out with their legs. Some of them seemed to enjoy it immensely; others were less enthusiastic and made no effort to learn.
