Tom Tiddler’s Ground, page 2
“Are you awake, darling?” said John, opening a sleepy eye.
“Yes. Yes, definitely,” said Caroline, and, on a sudden impulse, she sprang out of bed and wandered over to the window. “Oh, John! It is lovely to see the canal at the bottom of the garden. Look! There are some ducks on it.”
“Are there?” John lay down again and drew the blankets up to his neck.
“I wish a barge would come up,” murmured Caroline.
“They don’t any more. They don’t use Cumberland Market now. I told you.”
“I know. But I wish it would.”
“I bet that canal’s pretty foul at the bottom.”
“‘Two men looked out of prison bars One saw mud, the other stars,’”
mocked Caroline.
“Do come back to bed, darling. You’ll catch your death leaning out like that.”
“I’d much rather you said: ‘Come back to bed for God’s sake because I want to go to sleep again,’” said Caroline perversely, leaning farther out of the window.
“Silly child,” said John fondly.
“You never get aggravated with me, do you, John?”
“I don’t find you at all aggravating, darling.”
“Don’t you? You astound me. It’s almost inhuman. Really I am very aggravating, John, sometimes,” Caroline urged, “I even aggravate myself. So there!”
“So there—what? Really, darling, you can’t expect me to quarrel with you at half-past five in the morning on the grounds that I don’t find you aggravating.”
“No. . . . I don’t expect you to. All the same it’s rather awful the way we never quarrel.”
“I’m too old to quarrel,” said John comfortably.
“That’s selfish, because I’m not. Some day I shall throw a fish-cake at you, mark my words. Oh, John, I hope we have some fun in this house!”
“What sort of fun?”
Now why feel guilty at that? John could hardly be thinking of Vernon, could he?—He had only met him twice—and if she, Caroline, were thinking of him it was entirely an innocent guilt, so to speak.
“Oh, just anything,” said Caroline quickly. “I wonder if I could throw a stone into the canal from this window. I say, John, I wonder if the boiler’s still alight. Shall I go and look?”
“Isn’t that Florence’s job?”
“You can’t expect her to get up as early as this.”
“Well, she can’t expect you to, surely.”
“Aren’t we grand now, with a nurse and a maid sleeping in.”
“Very grand. Hope it’s not too expensive.”
“Hope not,” said Caroline gaily. (Bother that bill from Debenham’s. Better not tell him about it just yet.) “I wonder if Florence can cook. Do you think she looks as if she could?”
“God knows! Will she stay, do you think?”
“Oh, yes. I shall charm her. She’ll tell all her friends, ‘Mrs. Cameron is ever such a nice lady. She knows what’s what.’”
“What is what, darling, in this case?”
“Oh, it’s quite easy. ‘What,’ in this case, is calling her a working cook-housekeeper instead of a cook-general.”
“What’s the difference?”
“None.”
“It seems a bit trivial then,” said John, digesting this distinction thoughtfully.
“Don’t bother to turn your lawyer’s mind on to it. These things must be grasped intuitively, or not at all,” said Caroline, picking up a tip-tilted impudent-looking straw hat and adjusting the veil carefully before the mirror. “John! I must go on a tour of inspection.”
“What of?”
“The house, of course. Oh, not the sitting-room or dining-room. They’re all right. I’ve had them before. I want to go and gloat over the boiler and the tool-shed and the larder and that awful little patch behind the garage where they’ve left the broken deck-chair.”
“Are you going to wake up at half-past five every morning and behave like this? You are an infant, darling.”
“That’s because I’ve been spoilt,” said Caroline. “It’s not been very good for me. First Mummy, then you.”
“Well, I like you all right,” said John affectionately.
A shade crossed Caroline’s face.
“I don’t, though,” she said disturbingly.
“What on earth do you mean?”
“Nothing. I mean I know I’m pretty awful really.”
“Nonsense. Or, at least, if you are so’s every one.”
“Oh, no, they’re not. You’re not, for instance.”
“My dear child!”
“That’s just the trouble,” said Caroline seriously.
“What’s the trouble?”
“That you’re not pretty awful and I’m your dear child. Oh, well, I suppose . . .”
“Suppose what?”
“Oh, nothing.” (Suppose that’s the basis we got married on.) “John, do you remember moving into the flat after our honeymoon?”
“Of course I do!”
“It was a bit different, wasn’t it? Everything new, I mean. . . .”
Caroline woke in a strange room, but a room not long to be strange, for it was her first night in her own home. Even after a month’s honeymoon it was still odd to hear John breathing beside her in the new double bed. Darling John, so solid, so masculine, so competent with hotel managers and porters, so good at giving her that novel delicious “married woman” feeling. Married! It was an amusing, a piquant thought. Caroline, aged just twenty-two, excessively pretty, excessively indulged, giggled like a schoolgirl at the idea. Should she wake John up and tell him she was laughing at the idea of being married? Yes, she would! He would think it a charming whim (and so it was). Wake him with a kiss. There!
“Hello,” he said sleepily.
“Darling, I woke myself up laughing at the idea of being married. It’s four o’clock.”
“Grand,” said John. “Four more hours in bed with you. Good idea.”
“Does it make you laugh to think of being married, darling?”
The minute she had said it Caroline could have bitten her tongue out for her tactlessness.
“Not so much.” (A careful voice.) “You see I’m eight years older than you.”
And married before, AND married before, screamed the silence.
Caroline put her arms round John to console him. Only a month married—the obvious consolation.
“Darling,” she whispered, “we’re going to be so happy.”
“Of course we are. I’ll make you happy. I know I can,” murmured John, into the curls about her ear. His voice was almost grim. Poor darling! How he must have suffered in that dreadful first marriage, about which she must never, never talk. (“My dear, we never speak of it,” John’s mother, Lady Cameron, had told her. “It was all the most terrible mistake.” Her voice had sunk to a shocked whisper. She was doing her duty and telling John’s future bride all that she need be told, but the task was obviously abhorrent to her. Half-fascinated, half-repelled, Caroline afterwards found Lady Cameron’s words, her phrases, even her intonations, indelibly printed on her memory. “Only a boy—nineteen—at the time. Can you imagine it? . . . Oh, well, she’s dead now. A terrible thing that motor crash, but perhaps . . . Never would have been happy. . . . Years older than he was, and I don’t doubt—er—experienced. If my husband and I could have stopped it . . . ‘But, dear, who is this Edna girl?’ I said to him, the first time I met her. ‘What’s her family?’ No time to interfere. . . . She rushed him off to a registrar’s office. . . . Only saw her two or three times after they were married. . . . No children, of course. . . . Edna always rushing off somewhere . . . other men, I believe, and so on, poor boy. . . .Yes, four years of it. . . . Thankful it wasn’t longer—What, tea-time already? Splendid! And crumpets, too! Delightful! Have a crumpet, Caroline dear, and tell me all about the lovely furniture I hear your mother’s giving you. Switch on the light, will you please, Smithers?” Snap! went the light, switching on the present, switching off the past, as if to say, Henceforward let us never speak of this again.)
They never had. Neither Lady Cameron and she, nor even John and she during the six months of their engagement. But surely now that she was really married to him, now that at last they were in their own bedroom in their own darling little flat, she might whisper something to him that would indicate—oh, very delicately, of course—that she knew and sympathized and—no, not forgave. There was nothing to forgive, of course—well, just understood.
“Darling,” she murmured, holding him closer, “I’ll make it up to you, really I will. The—the past I mean and—” (John was stirring restlessly) “—everything.”
“Please don’t, Caroline. I—I don’t want you ever to think about the past—my past. Never. Promise.”
“Oh, of course, I won’t talk about it, but I just wanted you to know—”
“No, please, Caroline.” (He was really distressed.) “Don’t think about me at all. It’s my job to make you happy. That’s all.”
“Darling, you’ll spoil me,” said Caroline, cozily, rapturously, luxuriating in the idea like a kitten in a fur-lined basket.
II
The billeting officer of the village of Chesterford, Kent, thought with relief as she propped her bicycle against Mrs. Alfred Smith’s gate: “Well, here at least I shall have a pleasant reception. Did any one ever have a beastlier job than mine?”
Constance Smith opened the door herself.
“Oh, come in, Mrs. Latchford,” she said. “I’m so glad to see you. Now how lucky I didn’t miss you! I was just going to put on my hat and pop out to the village for the fish (they won’t send it in time, you know) and while I was there I thought I’d nip in to—”
“Wait till you hear what I’ve come about before you say you’re glad to see me,” interrupted Mrs. Latchford warningly. Every one always interrupted Constance Smith. It was the only way of bringing the warm-hearted, impulsive, voluble creature to the point.
“Oh, sit down, do! Look, try our new chair. Comfortable, isn’t it? Oh, I say—look! There’s Jimmy at the gate. There, he’s seen you—he’s too shy to come in now. Oh, Mrs. Latchford, your husband did make a good job of that horrid burn on his hand. Mary was so grateful about it. Look, I’ll just dash out and ask him what he wants—Excuse me one minute . . . I’ve given Gladys the day off, you know.”
And then she’ll nip into the kitchen and pop on the kettle for a cup of tea—I know—and I shall be here all the morning, thought the doctor’s wife, and ten more houses to visit. All the same, Constance is a really nice person, and that’s saying something after all I’ve been through to-day! Not that some of the village women haven’t been marvellous! I suppose they’re used to a squash, and one odd child or two doesn’t make much odds. But the big houses!—“I’m terribly sorry, Mrs. Latchford, but if there is a war we shall be shutting up half the house and just pigging it in these few rooms,” or “I don’t see how we can, Mrs. Latchford. There won’t be a war, but if there is my sister will be bringing all her family out of London down here.” (And I know for a fact all is one baby, but damn it—how can I cross-examine Rob’s best patient?) Or “I wish I could help you, Mrs. Latchford. All these awful slum-children on your hands—too terrible for you—but, of course, they’d be miserable in a house like this. Why not hire the Girl Guide Hut or something?” Mrs. Latchford grimaced and lit a cigarette. A thoroughly unenviable job altogether, and she felt she deserved a few minutes’ respite with nice, schoolgirlish, foolish Constance Smith. Foolish? Well, of course, it always looked a little foolish to see a woman of over thirty behaving like an enthusiastic bride, even after two years of marriage. But apart from that and her volubility and her poppings out and her nippings in and all her silly mannerisms, was Constance at all foolish? Certainly she handled the relations-in-law-in-the-village situation well, or rather did not “handle” it at all, but accepted it so naturally and pleasantly that she might really be said to be on the best of terms with her sister-in-law, Mary Hodges, the local greengrocer’s wife. The arrival of that family must have been a bitter pill for Alfred Smith to swallow, reflected Mrs. Latchford amusedly!
Alfred, of course, was only an imitation gentleman, but, by the time he had arrived in Chesterford at any rate, not at all a bad imitation—she would grant him that. It was the last war she supposed that had given Alfred his chance—“temporary gentleman” as they used to be called—but Alfred would be too smart not to stick to a good thing once he got on to it. Captain Alfred Smith, mused Mrs. Latchford, I can imagine it all so well—a taste of a different sort of life—a smart uniform, and Alfred, good-looking in a flashy way, getting to know all sorts of people, assimilating things, picking up things, discarding things, watchful, on the alert, on the make; and then Sir Robert Hulton taking an interest in him, Alfred the “bright boy” he had come across in London. (“He’s got a head on his shoulders, that young man. I took to him at once.”) Alfred, Sir Robert’s agent, left in charge at the Manor on Sir Robert’s extensive travels abroad, Alfred becoming more and more indispensable to Sir Robert. And then Sir Robert’s retirement and Alfred being found a job as car-salesman with Jenkins and Wellworth in Maidstone. A slight comedown, this. But then Alfred had, at one stroke, consolidated his position as a “gentleman” in the eyes of the village by marrying Constance, the Rector of Chesterford’s daughter, three months after her father died—the latter part at least of Alfred’s history was common knowledge to all the Chesterford inhabitants. Mrs. Latchford recalled Constance’s happy flushed face under her incongruous bride’s veil as she strode triumphantly down the aisle. She had not looked pretty, of course, but she had looked—radiant. Poor Constance! Or was it lucky Constance, for she still obviously adored her Alfred, and how badly people like Constance needed some one to love! Look at her now, talking to her funny little h-dropping snotty-nosed nephew Jimmy at the gate—her face positively shining with affection and kindliness. She ought to have a baby of her own, decided Mrs. Latchford firmly, and then Alfred wouldn’t matter so much. Personally, I wouldn’t trust him an inch, although in a way I’m sorry for him. His sister’s a decent, nice, superior type of woman and sells very good vegetables, but it is hard on Alfred that she should come to this village of all the villages in England—and so soon after his marriage too! Even the Rector, Constance’s father, the unworldly, scholarly old darling, would have blinked a bit at Mr. and Mrs. Hodges and all their common little children. Alfred loathes it, of course, but Constance genuinely doesn’t mind a scrap, bless her; and thrice blessed she shall be if she’ll promise to take some of my awful brood off my hands.
“So sorry to have left you, Mrs. Latchford, but Jimmy had a long message about—”
“Yes, yes. It’s quite all right. Now listen, Constance. I’m not going to insult you by going about counting up your rooms, because I know you’ll be a dear and promise to take some children if there’s a war, won’t you? Now don’t say you’ll have to ask Alfred—(hesitating, is she? Oh, Lord, surely she’s not going to let me down!)—because it’s your business, not Alfred’s.”
“No, it’s not Alfred, Mrs. Latchford. Of course, Alfred would do anything to help children whose homes were being bombed.” (Oh, would he? interjected, silently, the doctor’s wife. I don’t believe he’d raise a finger.) “It’s just that last spring—you remember Czecho-Slovakia being invaded and all that, and I was up in town trying to match up my grey costume with a hat for the Conway’s garden party—oh, it was difficult, you wouldn’t believe how tiresome greys can be—well, anyway I met Caroline Cameron in Oxford Street—of course, you don’t know her, and really I’ve hardly seen her for years, but we were great friends once at school—and she was looking at a newspaper poster, saying, ‘Hitler says “No War”,’ and I said, ‘Oh, hello, Caroline, oh, dear, I do hope not!’—no war I meant, of course, and she laughed (she’s always laughing and so smart and pretty!) and said, ‘If Hitler says that it’s bound to come and John and I have just bought a house in London, poor saps that we are,’ so, of course, I said, ‘Well, my dear, if there is a war and you with your darling little girl and everything’ (I’ve never seen her—I wish I had) ‘of course, you must come down to us because they’ll never bomb Chesterford’—will they, Mrs. Latchford? So she said she’d love to and then she went off to meet some one and I thought I’d try Barker’s next. I’ve never heard from her since (she’s always been naughty about letters), but I must remember my promise, mustn’t I? Perhaps I’d better write to her and find out.”
“Ring her up to-night,” said Mrs. Latchford concisely, “and let me know, could you?”
“Yes, of course I will. This very evening after seven when it’s only eightpence.”
“Thanks, Constance. I know I can depend on you.” (I can, too, she will make a long story out of everything, but at bottom, she’s efficient.) “Well, taking it that she does come—have you room for any others?” Mrs. Latchford caught her own glance straying to the ceiling, as if to probe into the secrets of the upstairs rooms. Really! The errors of taste this job forced on one!
Constance hesitated, genuinely anxious.
“I know this house looks big, Mrs. Latchford, and when just Daddy and I were left out of all the family it seemed enormous—no wonder when the new Vicar turned out to be a single man they let him have one of those new little houses—and really they’re awfully nice, Mrs. Latchford—”
“Yes, yes, I know. But let’s count up.” (The impertinence of it! I feel it more than Constance.) “You and Alfred—one bedroom. Your friend—another. Will she bring a Nanny with her baby?” Mrs. Latchford cocked a finger enquiringly.
“What? Oh, yes, I’m sure she will. Mrs. Latchford!”
“Yes?” Mrs. Latchford paused, surprised, leaving three fingers stiff in the air. (What’s she gone so pink for?)
“Alfred and I—two bedrooms really—now. You see, Alfred’s work sometimes keeping him late and . . .”
