Aunt Maud did not like my clothes and she said so, roundly. “The child looks
drab
,” she would pronounce, fixing me with a stern eye. “I shall take her to Harrods. She has … possibilities.”
I wasn’t sure what those possibilities were. When I peered in my looking glass I could see that I was tall and skinny. I had big feet, which looked even larger in the brown lace-up shoes, which Jenna polished until they shone like chestnuts. I had freckles, of which I was very ashamed. I had eyes of an indeterminate green. I had that horrible curly red hair, which reached halfway down my back, when all I wanted was to have short straight black hair, and tempestuous blue eyes like the heroines in Aunt Maud’s favorite novels.
No possibilities there that I could see, and the often-promised visits to Harrods never seemed to materialize. I think Aunt Maud, who was old by then and somewhat vague, may simply have forgotten; on the other hand, my mother, who found fashion frivolous, may have intervened. “I love Maud dearly,” she used to say, “but she can go too far. One has to put one’s foot down.”
It is true that on one of my birthdays—my seventh—Aunt Maud did, as she would say, push the boat out. Aunt Maud’s finances were a mystery, but as far as I could understand, she lived off paintings: a collection of paintings once given her by a very dear friend. Most of these paintings had been sold some years before, but a few had been kept in reserve—“For a rainy day,” Maud said.
I think that, when my seventh birthday approached, a painting must have been sacrificed, for Maud acquired several new outfits herself and she also went to Harrods. From London, some weeks in advance, she sent me a party dress.
I can still see that dress, in all its magnificence, being unwrapped from its sheaves of tissue paper in the nursery. It was made of velvet the color of Chinese amber. It had a full skirt, with froths of petticoats; it had puff sleeves and a large lace collar.
“Oh dear, Brussels lace—Maud is so terribly extravagant.” My mother looked at this dress in a sad way; and, over the top of her head, Jenna gave me a wink.
Later, when my mother had gone downstairs, Jenna drew the curtains and lit the lamps and set up the cheval glass in the middle of the nursery bedroom.
“Now,” she said. “We’ll try it on. And I’ll do your hair for you. No looking till you’re ready.”
I was very excited, skipping about the room and fidgeting under Jenna’s patient hands; it seemed to take so long. The cream silk party stockings, fastened with elastic garters, the bronze kid pumps, the petticoats. Even when the dress was on I was still not allowed to look. Jenna had first to brush my hair loose and tie it back from my face with a new black ribbon.
I think I knew there was a problem, even then, because it had been difficult to do up the dress; I had had to hold my breath, and I had seen Jenna frown. I forgot about that when I looked in the glass, because the dress was so beautiful and the girl who looked back at me was so transformed. I stood looking at this strange girl for some time; then Jenna sighed, and I began to see the things that were wrong. I was too tall and the skirt was too short; I was thin, but not thin enough for this dress, so the bodice strained across my ribs.
“I can let it out maybe—just a little.” Jenna fingered the hem. “And look, Vicky, there’s two inches here, maybe three. I’ll let it down. Maybe your Aunt Maud wasn’t too sure of the size. But don’t you worry now, it’ll be fine this winter. Charlotte’s party—you always go to that. You’ll be able to wear it to Charlotte’s party.”
Charlotte’s party was the one dependable event in the winter calendar. Charlotte was a small thin blond girl several years my elder, a girl I did not greatly like. She lived in a large house some fifteen miles from Winterscombe. Charlotte had parties of unimaginable luxuriance, with magicians from London and, the previous year, an ice-cream cake. Her father bought a new Rolls-Royce every year and smoked cigars, and her mother wore diamonds in the daytime. Charlotte had once come to tea at Winterscombe and had pronounced it shabby. This had hurt. I quite looked forward to wearing this astonishing dress to Charlotte’s party.
That year, Charlotte contracted measles and her party was canceled. The amber velvet dress hung in the closet, growing smaller and smaller as the weeks passed. I tried not to eat, but whether I ate or not, I seemed to grow taller and taller. When Christmas came Jenna let it out again, and we both began to hope: Surely I would be able to wear it at Christmas? Aunt Maud was coming for Christmas. I tried it on again, on Christmas Eve; the hooks and eyes would not fasten; I went down to Christmas luncheon as I always did, in sensible Viyella.
Aunt Maud had forgotten the dress by then, I think. On Boxing Day, I tackled her on another matter.
“Aunt Maud,” I said, waylaying her in her room, “can you make freckles go away? Can you get rid of them?”
Aunt Maud raised her lorgnette and inspected my face closely. “Of course you can,” she pronounced. “Fuller’s earth. It whitens the skin. I’ve used it for years. It’s unbeatable.”
We tried. Aunt Maud took me into her bathroom and mixed up a grayish paste. She rubbed this paste over my nose and cheekbones, then sat me down in a chair and read to me from one of her novels while the paste dried. The novel was called
The Crossroads of the Heart.
It took place on an ocean liner. There were always what she called Good Bits in Aunt Maud’s novels, and she read me one of the best of the Good Bits, toward the end; it was a tender scene, on the stern deck, by moonlight, and it ended with a most interesting description of an embrace. If my mother had heard it, I think she might have put her foot down, but it moved Aunt Maud a great deal, so much so that she started on one of her own stories about Winterscombe and the parties there used to be there in the old days, when my American grandmother Gwen was alive.
“I remember once,” she said, “there was a party for a comet. Halley’s comet, you know. We were all to have supper and then gather outside, to watch the comet go over….”
I sat very still. I liked these stories but my nose was beginning to itch; I wondered if it would be rude to interrupt and mention it.
“I wore my emeralds. Or was it my sapphires? No, the sapphires, I think, because I remember my dress was blue, and Monty—oh!” She gave a shriek. “The Fuller’s earth, Vicky! Quickly!”
I was rushed back into the bathroom, and my face was scrubbed with Aunt Maud’s special French soap.
“May I look now, Aunt Maud?”
Aunt Maud was staring at my face in a dubious way; with some reluctance, she handed me a mirror. I held it close to my nose and inspected. My nose was red; my whole face was a fiery red; the freckles winked. There seemed more of them than ever.
“I don’t think it’s quite worked, Aunt Maud,” I began, and Aunt Maud snatched the mirror away.
“Well, of course it doesn’t work in one go! Quick-smart, just like that!
Il faut souffrir pour étre belle!
You must persevere, Vicky. Now, if I were to leave you a little packet, and you were to apply it every week …”
I took the packet of Fuller’s earth. I tried it once a week for four weeks. When it was all used up and the freckles were still there, I acknowledged the truth. I loved Aunt Maud very much, but she had been wrong about three things: wrong about the dress size, wrong about the Fuller’s earth, and wrong about my possibilities. I had no possibilities. My faith in Aunt Maud, though still strong, was dented.
Aunt Maud was one of the pillars of my life; she defined its boundaries. There were other pillars, too: There were my father and my mother; there was my godfather, Steenie’s friend the poet Wexton; there was Jenna; there were my uncles; and finally there was William, who was called the butler but who did all sorts of things around the house that other people’s butlers never seemed to do, including cleaning the boots and shoes—on which subject Charlotte (on that day she came to tea) was very scathing.
“The
butler
cleans your shoes?” she said.
It was winter, and we had just returned with muddy lace-ups from a walk in the grounds.
“Don’t you have a bootboy?”
“Well, Jenna cleans mine. Usually.”
“Jenna? But she’s your nanny. She’s not even a proper nanny—Mummy said so. My nanny wears a
brown
uniform.”
This worried me more than I wanted to admit. When we had tea with my mother, I could see that Charlotte did not think much of her either. I could see her eying my mother’s dress, which was the kind of plain dress she always wore on weekday afternoons, and over which she wore an elderly tweed jacket. I knew my mother’s opinions about diamonds in the daytime, and—although I was sure she must be right—I began to wish she had worn something more dashing than a single string of pearls. She did have diamonds, after all; they were kept in the bank, and every six months there would be a debate about selling them.
I began to wish I could tell Charlotte about these diamonds and to plan how I might mention them, in a casual way, once my mother had left the room. On the other hand, I knew my mother would be ashamed of me if I did any such thing. I squirmed about in my chair and tried not to notice when Charlotte shivered and glanced toward the drafty windows.
My mother was telling her about her orphanage work, and Charlotte was listening with a small, tight, supercilious smile that made me more nervous still; she despised orphanages as much as she despised my mother, I could tell.
When my father joined us I relaxed a little. I was sure my father was beyond reproach: He was so tall and so handsome; he had fine hands and a quiet dry way of speaking; he was a good horseman, and when he wore his hunting clothes William said there wasn’t a man to touch him in the county. I rather wished he were wearing his hunting clothes then, so Charlotte might see him at his finest; as it was, he was wearing one of his old tweed suits, but those suits were built for him, and William (who had the job of brushing them) used to finger their material and say, “That’s quality.”
I hoped Charlotte would see this. I hoped that when my father began to talk to her, that small supercilious smile would disappear from her face. My father stammered a little over certain words, which was a legacy from the Great War, but he was gentle and kind and he charmed everybody. It could only be a matter of time, I told myself, before Charlotte succumbed.
He asked her first about her lessons—which was perhaps a mistake, because Charlotte was now at boarding school and she had already, during our walk, given me her opinion of girls who stayed at home for their education.
“Your
mother
teaches you? I thought you at least had a governess.”
“Well, I did. But she left.” I hesitated, because that was difficult territory: None of the governesses had stayed long; we now no longer had a parlormaid and the cooks were always giving warning. This was because of wages, and the boiler in the basement, which ate money, and the orphanages, which ate up even more.
“She takes you for
everything
?”
“She’s very clever. I do English and French and geography with her, and next year we shall begin on Latin. Mr. Birdsong comes over three times a week for mathematics.”
“Mr. Birdsong? But he’s the
curate.
”
Definitive scorn. I was instantly ashamed of Mr. Birdsong, a mild and patient man whom I had always liked. Sitting in the drawing room, I now began to wish that my father would change the subject. Charlotte was lecturing him on Roedean, and the small supercilious smile was still on her face.
“And what about the summer holidays?” my father said, when that speech came to the end. He said it in his most polite and gentle way, but I could tell he didn’t like Charlotte at all. In fact, I think he found her funny, but no one would have known, because his manners were perfect.
“Oh, Mummy says we shan’t go to France next year. She says the Riviera is overrun. We may go to Italy. Or Germany. Daddy says Germany is on the up-and-up.” She paused and swung her foot and gave me a sly glance.
“And what about you, Vicky? You didn’t say.”
“Oh, we have great plans,” my father said in his easy way.
“Really?” Charlotte fixed upon him a small hard gaze.
“Yes. We shall stay here, you know. Just as we always do.”
“All summer?”
“Definitely. All summer—shan’t we, darling?”
He turned to my mother, and I saw an amused glance pass between them.
My mother smiled. “I think so,” she said, in her quiet voice. “Winterscombe is so lovely in June and July, and besides, the boys come over—you know, from the orphanage. We have to be here for that, you see, Charlotte. Now, would you like a sandwich? Perhaps a piece of cake?”
When tea was over, my parents left us. Charlotte and I sat by the fire and played cards. We played gin rummy for a while and then, in a desultory way, took turns at patience. Charlotte told me about the new Rolls, which would be coming to collect her, and why it was so much better than the Rolls of the preceding year. She told me about Roedean, and how many name tags her brown-uniformed nanny had sewn on her new uniform, and she made it quite clear that playing patience was not her idea of after-tea entertainment.
I was very humiliated, and very afraid that Charlotte might return to the question of summer holidays, to the fact that we never took holidays abroad. When it was my turn to lay out the cards I did it very slowly, trying to pluck up the courage to mention my mother’s diamonds. By that time I wanted to mention them very much indeed, because I could see that Charlotte thought my mother was plain and shabby, like the house. The thought of my mother’s disapproval held me back, though, and so I continued to lay out the cards and scan my memory: There must be something I could mention that would wipe that supercilious smile off Charlotte’s face—but it was hard to think of anything.
There were my two uncles, those other pillars of my life, and laying out the cards, I did consider them. Both my uncles were exotic in their ways: Uncle Freddie had had so many careers, including flying mail planes in South America, which must surely be glamorous. He had his enthusiasms, as my Aunt Maud called them, and the latest of these were two greyhounds, brought to Winterscombe the previous month and fed—to my mother’s horror—on beefsteak. These dogs were “goers,” Uncle Freddie said. They were going to win the Irish Greyhound Derby.