Young Mrs. Savage, page 7
In the old days all the houses in the East Bay had belonged to private people (most of whom had families of children who played on the sands together), but now nearly all the houses had been turned into small hotels or boarding-houses which let rooms for the summer months. Craigie Lodge was no exception to the rule.
Mrs. Anderson liked to have everything “nice.” It was her boast that her house was “run like a gentleman’s house.” She had had ample experience with the doctor, who knew what was what. She was plump and comfortable, rather stout, with white wavy hair and rosy cheeks. She wore spectacles with tortoiseshell rims and her aprons were always spotless. Mrs. Anderson did all her visitors well, but her preparations for the Savages were princely. The whole house—already clean as a new pin—was cleaned all over again and polished meticulously; curtains, bedspreads and chair-covers were plunged into the wash-tub; carpets were Hoovered within an inch of their lives. Nor was the important matter of food neglected. Meat was easy, of course, for Mrs. Anderson’s husband was a butcher, and she was aware that he would not let her down . . . but there were other things besides meat to be thought of and, on the morning before the arrival of the Savages, Mrs. Anderson armed herself with an enormous basket and “took a stroll round the shops.”
“Ye’ll mind Doctor Bell?” suggested Mrs. Anderson, leaning upon the grocer’s counter. “Aye, I was nearly sure ye’d not have forgotten the Doctor. Dinah’s coming tae me wi’ her four wee mites for August. Aye, it’s four she’s got. I was wondering if ye’d a wee pat o’ butter tae spare—over and above the rations. They’ve bin living in England of coorse, sae they’ll just have got their bare rations—if that. An’ what’s the jam situation, Mister Dobbie? Weel noo, that’s reel guid o’ ye! Aye, I was sure ye’d mind Doctor Bell. He was a grand man—never spared himsel’. D’you mind when your wee Alec took appendicitis in the middle o’ the nicht? Aye, I’m sure. Ye’ll not forget yon nicht in a hurry! That’s reel nice o’ ye, Mister Dobbie; bairns like steam-puddens an’ a pound o’ treacle is just what I’m needing . . . I’ll not say no to sultanas, eether. Hae ye any raisins? That’s fine. What about a nice piece o’ Dundee? There’s five o’ them, mind . . . My, I was a’most forgetting biscuits! I’ll need plain yins for Dinah and chocklate yins for the bairns. Hoo mony points? Och, away, Mister Dobbie; ye’ll get the cairds when they’re here.”
She stayed to chat with Mr. Dobbie for a few minutes longer—for it was well worth her while—and as she was coming out of the shop she overheard one of the assistants say, “No, madam, I’m sorry we have no evaporated milk at all. It’s terribly scarce,” so she hurried back to her friend and remarked in confidential tones, “An’ I could dae wi’ a couple o’ tins o’ condensed milk if ye could manage it.”
The same tactics brought equal success at the other shops. Mrs. Anderson collected oranges, bananas and strawberries.
She ordered fruit cakes and prevailed upon the dairy to deliver extra milk. Like many of her kind Mrs. Anderson was bilingual, speaking to her friends in the Doric, and to her visitors in English which was often better than their own. Neither method of speech was “affected” for both came naturally to her tongue. Indeed it is doubtful whether Mrs. Anderson realised that she could speak two languages with facility.
The train was nearly two hours late. Dinah had never felt so tired in all her life, nor so dirty and crushed. The children were exhausted; their faces and hands were black, their hair tousled and straggly. They got out of the train and stood, grouped round their mother, too tired to speak, too dazed to realise that at last they had arrived at their destination.
Mrs. Anderson saw them at once and rushed forward, closely followed by her tall, burly husband. “Dinah!” she cried (quite forgetting that she had intended to greet her visitor as “Mrs. Savage,” and had, in fact, been schooling herself for days in this manner of address). “Dinah, my dear lamb, here you are at last! And the bairns—oh the puir wee things! They’ll be tired to death! We’ve got a taxi waiting. Andrew, you’ll see to the luggage. Give me the wee girlie, I’ll carry her.”
“I’ll carry her,” said Andrew Anderson, taking Margy from her mother’s arms. “Bob’s seeing to the luggage. You can bring the laddies, Annie; they’re fair dazed.”
“Oh, Nannie, dear!” exclaimed Dinah. “Oh, goodness! I thought we would never get here! You must have been waiting for ages . . . Come, Polly darling; we’re there!”
They streamed along the platform; Mr. Anderson carrying Margy (who, having slept most of the way, had survived the ordeal a good deal better than the rest of the family), followed by Mrs. Anderson with a twin by each hand, followed by Dinah and Polly, followed by Bob with the luggage on a truck. Dinah’s knees were shaking beneath her as she walked along, her eyes were pricking with tears and there was an enormous lump in her throat. These unpleasant symptoms were not entirely due to strain, but partly to the joy of seeing Nannie and hearing her well-remembered voice, and partly to the sight of the little station which seemed to be altered not at all. The brightly painted pillars, the green benches, the bookstall with its pile of newspapers and rows of books were all exactly the same; so, too, the stationmaster’s garden, gay with marigolds, blue delphiniums and nasturtiums. Coming out through the big folding doors Dinah had a view of the sea and the islands and the wide stretch of sky.
She was so upset that it was difficult to speak, and when they got into the taxi and drove through the familiar streets it was almost impossible to answer the Andersons’ inquiries’ about the journey. Fortunately they had not far to go, just through the town (which was all shut up for the night) and along the front to Craigie Lodge.
“You’ll away to your bed straight off, Dinah,” remarked Nannie as she bundled them into the house. “I’ll see to the children—you can trust me for that—I’ve a gurrl here, helping me.”
“But Nannie, you can’t—”
“Away to bed, Dinah,” said Nannie firmly.
Dinah gave in. She felt as if she were nine years old and it was not an unpleasant feeling. It was certainly not unpleasant to lie in bed with her legs stretched out to their fullest extent and hear the sounds of Nannie “seeing to the children.” There were splashing noises from the bathroom and a well-remembered gurgling as the bath water ran away. There was the sound of children’s voices and the patter of slipper-shod feet . . . and then the tinkle of spoons and crockery which meant they were having their supper.
Dinah’s supper was brought to her by a young girl with fair reddish hair and fair reddish eyebrows. Her extreme plainness was accentuated by enormous freckles which covered her face and arms; but her eyes were beautiful, large and brown and soft.
“Mistress Anderson is managing them fine,” said the girl shyly. “They’re having bread and milk for their suppers. She said I was to tell you.”
“I thought it would be bread and milk. That’s what we always had,” said Dinah, smiling.
“She wasn’t going to bath them,” continued the girl as she arranged Dinah’s tray. “She said they’d be too tired—but she had to! You should have seen the water!”
“I’m glad I didn’t!” declared Dinah.
Dinah had not felt hungry—in fact, the reverse—but she could not resist the crisply fried sole and the small green peas with which Nannie had sought to tempt her. She finished it all and was eating the stewed raspberries and drinking the glass of creamy milk when the door opened and Nannie came in carrying Margy: a lovely, clean, rosy, smiling Margy with neatly-brushed hair and pink feet peeping from beneath her chilprufe nightie.
“There!” exclaimed Nannie, proudly. “Isn’t she beautiful? Isn’t she a duck? Isn’t she Nannie’s own dear wee lamb?”
Quite obviously she was. She allowed herself to be hugged and kissed by her mother, but made no objection when Nannie picked her up again and put her into the cot which stood ready in the corner of the room.
“You’re a marvel, Nannie!” said Dinah.
“They’re ducks, all of them, and so good. I can see them properly now. They might have been chimney sweeps, for all I could tell, till I got them washed. Are you feeling a wee bit more rested, Dinah?”
“I’m feeling much better, Nannie. It was just tiredness. I was tired when I started. It was an awful business getting everything ready and packing all the clothes. I was so afraid I’d forget something or that something would go wrong. And the journey was a positive nightmare.”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” declared Nannie, nodding. “They’re the worst age for travelling—and stirring at that.” She took the tray and added: “Now, you’ll just get away off to sleep, Dinah. It’ll be another day in the morning.”
9
The day foretold by Nannie arrived in due time. It was extraordinarily beautiful. Dinah awoke feeling rested and refreshed and, leaping out of bed, rushed to the window. The tide was far out and the brown sands glistened in the early morning sunshine; there was a faint mist over the milky sea, impalpable as angels’ breath. The rocky islands seemed afloat between sea and sky, serene and peaceful. There was no sound save the far-off crowing of a cock and the occasional shriek of a seagull as it wheeled in the air. The smell of the sea (or perhaps of the seaweed, left uncovered by the receding tide) was strong and pungent. Dinah had not smelt that smell for years and it took her straight back to her childhood. She could almost believe she was a child again, could almost believe that Dan was sleeping next door, that if she ran in and woke him he would sit up and rub his eyes and say, “Gosh, what a day! Let’s bathe before breakfast!”
Dinah smiled to herself a little sadly. How long ago that was! How much had happened! But she could not feel sad for more than a few moments—who could on a morning like this? She was enjoying the peaceful scene and searching out familiar landmarks and promising herself that she would revisit all her old haunts before she was very much older, when the door burst open and Polly rushed in.
“It’s gone!” said Polly in agonised tones. “Mummy, Mummy, it’s gone! The sea’s gone away . . . and Nannie said we could paddle this morning . . .”
Dinah was so used to the vagaries of the sea that for a moment she could not think what on earth Polly meant and by the time she had pulled herself together Polly’s tears were coursing down her cheeks, emulating the emotion of a film star.
“It’s gone!” sobbed Polly. “We’ve come here—to see the sea—and it’s gone.”
“It will come back! Polly, listen! The sea will come back!” cried Dinah, taking her daughter by the shoulders and shaking her gently to make her attend.
“How do you know?” moaned Polly. “How do you know it will come back?”
“The sea goes out and comes in every day.”
“Why?” gulped Polly. “Why does it? I wanted it to be there.”
“It is there, you silly billy! Look, you can see it in the distance. By the afternoon it will be right in here again, nearly up to the wall.”
“But why? And how can it? Where does all the water go?”
“To the other side of the world,” replied Dinah, hoping this answer was moderately sound; for the truth was that the incidence of tides had been taken for granted by Dinah (taken for granted in much the same manner as the incidence of night and day) so she was somewhat vague as to the reasons governing the phenomenon of the ebb and flow. She reflected—not for the first time by any means—that children’s questions are calculated to show up the ignorance of their elders to a positively alarming extent. You thought you knew, but when you started to explain and to deal with searching inquiries as to why and how, you found yourself stumped. “It’s the moon,” added Dinah, having just remembered this interesting piece of information.
“The moon!” exclaimed Polly, incredulously. “But Mummy, how can it possibly be the moon? The moon is in the sky!”
“The moon draws the water round the world. Dan will tell you all about it to-morrow when he comes. He’s a sailor, you know.”
“Why do sailors—” began Polly; but Dinah was not having any more.
“Why do sailors?” she echoed. “Well, you can think that one out while you’re dressing. Hurry up or you’ll be late for breakfast.”
Nannie was of the opinion that children required a solid foundation for the day so the breakfast provided for her visitors was a substantial meal, but the little Savages were too excited to eat much, too eager to set forth and find the sea; they gulped down the necessary minimum of food and rushed off to find their spades and pails.
“You’ll just leave all the catering to me, Mrs. Savage,” said Nannie, as she came into the hall to see them off. “It’ll be easier for you—and for me, too—and I know fine what the children should get.”
“Oh, yes; that will be marvellous,” agreed Dinah. “But why ‘Mrs. Savage’ all suddenly like this?”
“It’s the right thing. I was a wee bit het up last night.”
“Well, I don’t like it much, Mrs. Anderson,” said Dinah, gravely. “But if you say so, of course . . .”
Nannie looked at her—and smiled. “Och, well!” she said. “But the only thing is, it’ll not be very good for Mrs. Turtle’s Flo.”
“Mrs. Turtle’s flow?”
“The gurrl,” explained Nannie. “It’ll not be good for her to hear me calling you ‘Dinah.’”
“Well, of course, it’s for you to decide.”
Nannie hesitated, but only for a moment. “I’ll just need to be stricter in other ways,” she said.
Having settled this satisfactorily for all concerned (except perhaps “the gurrl”) Dinah pursued inquiries regarding this individual’s name.
“Florence, her name is,” said Nannie. “Mrs. Turtle was reading a book when she was born, and nothing would persuade her but the baby was to be Florence.”
“Dombey and Son, perhaps,” suggested Dinah.
“Well, fancy you knowing!” exclaimed Nannie, as she hitched Mark firmly into his paddling-drawers and tied the strings. “Always reading, you were, and that’s the result. If you want a book to take to the beach I’ve that nice Miss Buchan’s book all about when they were children. Dear little things they must have been, though maybe a bit of a handful.” At this moment Polly, who was already accoutred for the great adventure and had been dancing about in the front garden for the last ten minutes, came dashing into the hall shouting: “It’s Dan! It’s Dan!”
“Dan? It can’t be!”
“He’s here in Bildad!” cried Polly. “He’s come to help us find the sea!”
“They let me off to-day,” explained Dan, entering the crowded hall with a suitcase in his hand. “There was nothing much doing, so I asked Mr. Cray and he said ‘Yes.’ I intended to ring you up,” declared Dan, smiling. “But Bildad wouldn’t wait. Bildad was champing like a war-horse and pawing the ground like with his hooves, so . . .”
By this time Dan had a twin hanging on to each leg. Polly was doing a war-dance. The noise was positively astounding—one might have thought there were half a dozen children welcoming their long-lost uncle and rejoicing in his wit—
“Bildad was pawing the ground!” shrieked Nigel at the top of his voice.
“Like this!” yelled Polly, cavorting round the hall.
“Wanting to see the sea!” bellowed Mark.
“How lovely, Dan!” said Dinah, when at last the noise subsided and she could make herself heard. “It’s the nicest thing for you to have come sooner than we expected.”
“The nastiest thing would be if he had come later than we expected,” declared Polly.
“Or not at all,” suggested Nigel. “That would be still nastier.”
“That would be hellish,” said Mark.
Dinah let this pass; partly because she agreed profoundly with the sentiments expressed and partly because this was no time to rebuke her son for his unparliamentary language.
“I don’t know where they hear it,” she murmured to Nannie as she picked up Margy and followed the others.
The sea was still a long way out. Dinah, seated upon a rug with Margy, watched Dan and the other children making their way down the sands. The twins were gambolling round and round him like a couple of puppies but Polly had him fast by the hand. How they adored Dan! How good he was with them, how understanding and wise . . . if only Gilbert had been like that thought Dinah with a sigh. She had made excuses for Gilbert on the grounds that he could not be expected to take a real interest in the children because he did not know them, had not seen them growing up; but Dan had seen even less of them and already loved them dearly. These reflections led to the conclusion that the excuses were no excuses at all, and . . . but I shan’t think of that now, decided Dinah, and banished the problem from her mind.
The sun was warm but there was a cooling air from the east, real sea air from the North Sea which tempered the sun’s heat. Dinah lay down on the rug and relaxed. Her younger daughter was a peaceful companion, fat and comfortable and undemanding, taking life as she found it. The others had never been like that, thought Dinah, glancing at Margy affectionately. The others had always wanted attention, wanted to know something, wanted to crawl away or to find something unfit to eat and eat it. Was it because Margy had had so little attention—because there was so little time to give her—or was it simply that Margy was that sort of person, content with her lot? And did Margy think of anything much as she sat there on the rug looking round at the world and smiling at it quietly, or was her mind a complete blank like that of a cow, chewing the cud? I’ve time now, anyway, thought Dinah, abandoning with regret the idea of reading “that nice Miss Buchan’s book” and dedicating herself to her daughter’s entertainment.
