Something Light

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Praise for the Writing of Margery Sharp

“A highly gifted woman … a wonderful entertainer.” —
The New Yorker

“One of the most gifted writers of comedy in the civilized world today.” —
Chicago Daily News

“[Sharp's] dialogue is brilliant, uncannily true. Her taste is excellent; she is an excellent storyteller.” —Elizabeth Bowen

Britannia Mews

“As an artistic achievement … first-class, as entertainment … tops.” —
The Boston Globe

The Eye of Love

“A double-plotted … masterpiece.” —John Bayley,
Guardian Books of the Year

Martha, Eric, and George

“Amusing, enjoyable, Miss Sharp is a born storyteller.” —
The Times
(London)

The Gypsy in the Parlour

“Unforgettable … There is humor, mystery, good narrative.” —
Library Journal

The Nutmeg Tree

“A sheer delight.” —New York Herald Tribune

Something Light

“Margery Sharp has done it again! Witty, clever, delightful, entertaining.” —
The Denver Post

Something Light

A Novel

Margery Sharp

To

Geoffrey Castle

Part One

Chapter One

1

Louisa Mary Datchett was very fond of men.

Not all women are, not even those to whom matrimony is the only tolerable state; for these often like men as husbands, as other women like them as lovers, and others again as small boys. Louisa liked men. If a bus driver halted for her at a pedestrian crossing, her upward glance was disinterestedly affectionate—there he sat, hot and conscientious, minding his own masculine business, no awareness of her save as a possible hazard to his time schedule—and there stood Louisa, liking him; and if on the island of her refuge she observed an old gentleman in a garish tie, striped red and yellow like a ripening pimento, her sympathetic imagination at once ranged over the whole field of English cricket—Dr. Grace, Ha'penny Down, “O my Spurling and my Hornby long ago”—as she mentally wished him on to a happy day at Lord's.

These examples, however, are merely illustrative. Most men were reciprocally aware of Louisa. If she paid for her rangy height by cheeks thin as a whistling boy's, if her fox-colored hair was turning like an autumn leaf—here a streak of cinnamon, there a dash of pepper—she had nonetheless only to stand still in any public place, at a bus stop or outside a telephone booth, and as to Red Riding Hood up came a wolf.

—Yet did she respond, and Louisa usually responded, how many a wolf turned nursling! To be listened to (wife not understanding wolf), to be found employment (wolf out of work), to have musical instrument (wolf potential member of dance band) got out of hock! It was extraordinary how swiftly they appreciated her special temperament.

Older acquaintances took it for granted. In June '56, Louisa gave evidence as to character three times in one week. This was a record, but only in its own field; no one, least of all Louisa, ever counted the times she got suits back from the cleaners, washed socks, or carried prescriptions to the chemist …

Bachelors in lodgings going down with influenza employed their last spark of consciousness to telephone Louisa. Sometimes their landladies telephoned her. Publishers of books commissioned but overdue telephoned Louisa. She was constantly being either sent for, like a fire engine, or dispatched, like a lifeboat, to the scene of some masculine disaster; and fond of men as she was, by the time she was thirty she felt extremely jaded.

2

“You know what?” said Louisa to the milkman. “I feel jaded.”

“No one would tell it to look at you,” said the milkman handsomely. (Louisa was wearing a rather rowdy housecoat, zebras on a pink ground, and the overnight skin food gave her face a healthy shine.)

“I'll tell you something else,” said Louisa. “I dare say I'm what suffragettes chained themselves to railings for.”

“My Auntie was a suffragette,” offered the milkman.

“I dare say I'm even Bernard Shaw's Intelligent Woman, I'm the independent self-supporting
femme sole
, up the Married Women's Property Act and I hope Ibsen's proud of me.”

“He'd be a fool if he wasn't,” said the milkman.

“And I spend as much time running about for men as if I was a Victorian nanny.”

“Why not take a spot of cream?” suggested the milkman.

“Thanks, I will,” said Louisa. “And you might leave a yoghurt for Number Ten.”

The milkman glanced at the neighboring door—not more than a yard away, in the converted house where dwelt Louisa—and cocked a deprecating eyebrow.

“To go down with yours as per usual?”

“Well, of course,” said Louisa.

“Which is okay with me 'n the dairy,” said the milkman, “but you'll regret it at the month's end.”

3

Louisa knew damn well she'd regret it. Yoghurt for Number Ten (an indigent and vegetarian flautist) was becoming a noticeable item on her monthly budget, moreover his very gratitude was a nuisance, since besides teaching the flute he fabricated costume jewelry out of beechnuts. Louisa had a whole drawerful; it attracted mites.

Standing cream jar in hand, as the milkman clattered on—

“It's not the suffragettes who'd be proud of me,” thought Louisa bitterly, “it's the Salvation Army. I may be the modern woman, the
femme sole
with all her rights, and I'm very fond of men, but it's time I looked out for myself. In fact, it's time I looked out for a rich husband, just as though I'd been born in a Victorian novel …”

4

A rhythmic tapping on the party wall called her back inside her room. Number Ten had formed the pleasant custom of thus conveying his morning greetings—usually with the opening phrase of a Beethoven sonata. Louisa, who wasn't musical, knew this only because she'd been told, and herself customarily banged back no more than “Rule, Britannia.” She did so now—POM, pom-pom-pom!—set down cream jar on sink, and returned to her meditations.

For once, rarely, contemplating an abstract conception: the position of the independent woman in modern society. Better their lot by far, Louisa was sure of it, than that of the timid Victorian wife trembling at a husband's frown. (On the other hand, not all Victorian wives were timid; Mrs. Proudie, for instance, browbeating her bishop, couldn't have been wholly fictional?)—Better their lot, again, than that of the Victorian spinster with no other economic resource than to become a bullied governess. (But some governesses achieved the feat of becoming bullies themselves.) Louisa had a higher opinion of women than might be expected; for those committed to any vocation, a genuine, wistful regard. If it was they who'd inherited the world the suffragettes fought for, that was fine with Louisa. But considering the average run of independent self-supporting modern women—

Here Louisa broke off to consider the case she knew best: her own. The way she, individually, supported herself was as a photographer of dogs. (Originally, of men and dogs; but the men became more of a hobby, also dogs didn't need retouching.) A nation of dog-lovers hadn't let her starve; but she noticed Number Ten's yoghurt on her milk bill. She was certainly independent, she hoped intelligent; and possessed only five pairs of stockings, two laddered.

—Considering the average run of independent self-supporting modern women, Louisa honestly believed they'd all be better off with rich husbands.

“And I'm one of the average,” thought Louisa.

This obviously, given her special temperament, wasn't strictly accurate, but Louisa was in no mood to split hairs; the general proposition stood.

Her eye traveled to the row of photographs adorning her mantelshelf. As though in summary of her career, they showed about two dozen men, all broke to the wide, and in pride of place My Lucky of York, champion greyhound '56 to '58, the best provider Louisa'd ever struck. Besides photographing him, she backed him regularly at short but safe odds.

Or used to; My Lucky had been retired after the last season.

“I need my breakfast,” thought Louisa.

5

She always had breakfast. With a really good dinner in prospect Louisa frequently skipped lunch, as after a really good lunch she could carry over, on cups of tea, till next morning; but she never went without breakfast. She instinctively agreed with the essayist Hazlitt that only upon the strength of that first and aboriginal meal could one muster courage to face the day. She now turned on a tap, filled a kettle, lit a gas ring, laid the table and reached down the coffee tin, all without moving her feet. Such are the advantages, to the long-armed, of a kitchenette-dinette.

Louisa's domain offered several other advantages: it was actually a divan-bedroom-bathroom-kitchenette-dinette. Except in very coldest weather, fumes from the penultimate area warmed all dependencies. There was a flap that let down over the bath, very convenient for ironing or making pastry on, and plenty of room, in the bottom of the hanging cupboard, for such essential stores as shoe polish and sardines. Some tenants found it a nuisance to be perpetually carrying down paper bags of tea leaves, potato peelings and other organic matter besides, to be deposited in one of the communal dustbins by the area steps; but such was the
genre de la maison
, and by a civilized convention they never recognized each other when so engaged, particularly if on the way out in evening dress. Louisa didn't mind in the least, and it was only because she'd temporarily run out of paper bags that her sink basket now overflowed—and smelt a bit.