Something Light (5 page)

Louisa had no scruples about eavesdropping in such a case as this; but sat up to listen better.

“Gel I've known all my life,” said Freddy. “That is, knew her people all my life …”

There was a slight pause.

“I don't remember any Datchetts at Keithley?” mused Mrs. Anstruther.

“Came from Leeds,” said Freddy instantly. “After you deserted me and went to Argentina. It's eighteen years, y'know.”

“You've changed so little, I forget,” sighed Mrs. Anstruther.—The next moment she rippled with pretty laughter; she was very volatile. “And
I
feel just a slip of a girl again,” confessed Mrs. Anstruther, “with my chaperone! Kind Freddy, to take such care of me! I wonder what made you ask Miss Datchett.”

“Convalescing after mumps,” said Freddy. “Thought I'd kill two birds with one stone.”

Louisa's outraged ear caught a delicate babble of alarm. Then—

“No, of course she ain't infectious,” said Freddy. “I told you, she's convalescing. Building up.”

5

As in completion of the circuit—

“Well, now you've seen her,” inquired F. Pennon, “what d'you think of her?”

He and Louisa were waiting in the spacious, galleried entrance hall for Mrs. Anstruther to come down to dinner—Freddy in black tie, Louisa, to keep her spirits up, in toreador pants.

“She's got the most beautiful profile,” said Louisa sincerely, “I've ever seen off an Afghan.”

“She has, hasn't she?” said Freddy eagerly. “It's what I've always remembered about her—that little nose, and the way her lip curls … she hasn't changed in the least. She says I haven't either.”

“In fact the water was quite warm,” said Louisa.

He looked at her suspiciously.

“What water?”

“The plunge. In off the deep end, up with your pockets full of fish,” said Louisa, who was feeling rather disagreeable. “Why the hell did you have to give me mumps?”

“It just came into my mind.—D'you mean to say you were listening?” retorted Freddy.

“Naturally, in this heat, I had the window open. You should be more careful, on that path.”

“Well, what would you have liked me to give you?” inquired Freddy sulkily.

“Appendicitis,” said Louisa. “If you had to give me anything, appendicitis would have been classier. I suppose I'm lucky you didn't think of pinkeye.”

“You haven't much regard for my feelings,” said Freddy, “if when I want to talk about Enid you start talking about pinkeye.”

Absurdly, they were almost quarreling. With genuine remorse, for she really was fond of F. Pennon, Louisa pulled herself up.

“Okay, let's get back to her,” said Louisa. “Her profile's smashing, and I'm only too glad, Freddy, honestly I am, everything's gone so well. In fact, if you'd like me to leave any sooner—” It cost her a slight effort to say this, a week's velvet being always a week's velvet; but she said it—“I've a kennel of dachshunds on ice, and you've only to give me the word.”

There was a slight pause. On the gallery above a door opened.

“Don't think of it,” said Freddy hastily.—“Enid, my dear, are you ready for dinner?”

6

Mrs. Anstruther, wearing gray lace, flitted mothlike down the stair and came to rest at Freddy's side like a butterfly on a buddleia. Her soft gray glance flitted momentarily towards Louisa's pants, and as swiftly flitted away again. Louisa acknowledged a possibly justified criticism, and at the same time diagnosed short sight and a reluctance to appear in glasses.

—“Stop being a cat!” Louisa adjured herself.

But it was almost impossible not to be a cat, Mrs. Anstruther being so like a moth, or a bird, or a butterfly; for of all three, it was plain, did her nature partake.—It wasn't only, Louisa had to admit, her profile: there was a softness and fluffiness and a featheriness about her which one could well imagine irresistible to the tougher type of male. As Mrs. Anstruther slipped a hand through Freddy's arm, Louisa saw their common destiny inevitable; and the presence of a temporary buffer as much a luxury as—a pink mattress.

Chapter Five

1

During the days that followed, this opinion was confirmed. How Mrs. Anstruther and Freddy behaved when alone together Louisa of course didn't know; in public Enid had certain possessive little ways with him—the hand slipped through his arm, occasionally she straightened his tie—but Freddy accepted such attentions rather warily, and Enid was discreet enough to go no further. The most overt sign of their relationship, and in the circumstances a conclusive one, was the way she at once slipped into place as mistress of the house.

She did it so neatly, so smoothly, an earlier judgment of Louisa's had indeed to be revised. There was a brain behind that profile—or at least there were formidable instincts. Mrs. Anstruther immediately perceived that the woman to make an ally of wasn't Louisa, but Karen; and directed upon the latter the full force of what could only be called her ladylikeness. Her manner was at once sweetly incompetent and perfectly assured; taking it for granted that Karen ran the house, she also took it for granted that Karen now did so under her, Mrs. Anstruther's, authority. Within forty-eight hours Louisa saw with admiration the new routine established: at ten o'clock each morning there was Karen with the day's menus—for Mrs. Anstruther's approval.

“My dear, I'm
used
to having servants!” explained Enid mildly. “In Argentina, even when poor Archy's business went so downhill, I always had at least
three
…!”

It appeared that Karen, in Sweden, had been used to having a mistress. Within forty-eight hours Karen added to her duties as housekeeper those of lady's maid. Louisa, furtively, washed her own gloves and stockings; not so Mrs. Anstruther. Karen washed for her.

Only a woman used to having servants—and Enid, a rarity in the England of her generation, was so used—could have pulled it off. At the same time, she could have done so only in the full consciousness of Freddy's backing; and her handling of Karen betokened this so complete, any other sign of her empire over him would have been superfluous.

In point of fact, Mrs. Anstruther and Freddy weren't alone together very much. Unexpectedly, it was Mrs. Anstruther and Louisa who were alone together.

Immediately after breakfast Freddy went for a good long walk. (“Too hot for you gels!” declared Freddy, stepping briskly forth.) The girls stayed behind in the shady garden, under the pine trees, turning over the daily papers. (Mrs. Anstruther also embroidered. Louisa sometimes did a bit of weeding.) The siesta occupied the afternoon, and when the girls descended for tea Freddy would be found to have gone off again; then they simply waited for him to come back. It was an extraordinary sort of life to Louisa, but Mrs. Anstruther seemed to find it quite natural, and stitched away, or did nothing at all, with every appearance of content.

(“I suppose you weren't ever in a harem?” asked Louisa impulsively.

“My dear, what things you think of!” exclaimed Mrs. Anstruther. “Of course I know you're only joking.”)

In theory, of course, Louisa was at perfect liberty to go for a walk herself—or go for a swim, go into Bournemouth to look at the shops. Unfortunately she was also, in theory, convalescing, and Enid Anstruther, now firmly in the saddle as hostess, was as strict as kind. “Freddy would never forgive me,” explained Mrs. Anstruther earnestly. “I've promised him
faithfully
to see you take a proper rest!—To think,” she added, “to
think
—you poor dear!—of having appendicitis
as well!”

Louisa was only half appreciative of Freddy's well-meant addendum: after mumps and appendicitis combined, caution was obviously sensible. Under the pines each morning, in the drawing room before dinner, Louisa continued to sit—condemned to harem life with Mrs. Anstruther.

Her function as buffer came into play chiefly at meals. F. Pennon took his food seriously, but Mrs. Anstruther pecked like a wren; it fell to Louisa to praise, discriminate, and tuck in.—She had often observed that men commonly like women to eat well; as though still Turks at heart, haunted by the full-moon image of beauty, however much they praise a lissom figure they dislike actually witnessing the abstinence so often involved. Mrs. Anstruther's resolution in sticking to a diet was thus an additional sign of her confidence, but Louisa's appetite was nonetheless useful, keeping Freddy company in greed, also promoting conversation.

“But aren't you
terrified?”
exclaimed Mrs. Anstruther uncontrollably.

“What of?” asked Louisa.

“Putting on weight.”

“I don't seem to,” apologized Louisa.

“Take some more sauce,” said Freddy.

It was Cumberland sauce; on baked ham. Louisa took some, also another roll.

“My dear, you really
shouldn't!”
cried Mrs. Anstruther. “I knew a girl in the Argentine, every bit as thin as you are, who thought she could eat anything she liked, and quite suddenly, at about thirty, she became simply
enormous!”

“What happened to her?” asked Louisa.

“Well, in the first place, she couldn't ride any of her horses.”

“That won't bother me,” said Louisa. “But of course you're quite right. I've seen it myself: one day a woman looks like a string bean, the next she looks like a cantaloupe.”

“But she needn't!” cried Mrs. Anstruther. “If she's on her guard!—Oh, see what kind Freddy's got for
me!”
cried Mrs. Anstruther. “A pineapple!”

After dinner Freddy liked to play chess. Enid—how confident she was!—at once proclaimed her incapacity; but Louisa, grateful for so much good grub, admitted to knowing the moves. “That'll do, give you a queen,” said Freddy; so after dinner he and Louisa played chess. Of course Enid sat beside them. Also beside them was a tray with brandy, ice and soda, cigarettes and cigars, for F. Pennon believed in making himself comfortable. Mrs. Anstruther had her own little table with lime juice and peppermint creams. Louisa was free of either.

“You wouldn't play badly,” said Freddy, “if you concentrated.”

“
I
think Louisa's very clever to play at all!” declared Mrs. Anstruther.

Actually Louisa rather enjoyed these sessions. Both she and Freddy played hard: dogged as an old Sealyham he bent his hairy eyebrows above the board—having given Louisa a queen, he gave her no quarter—while Louisa, concentrating, could sometimes force a draw. Sometimes they were both so absorbed they forgot Mrs. Anstruther altogether. She for her part always let them finish a game before rising to go to bed; generally she let them have two.

Louisa always went upstairs when Mrs. Anstruther did, because Mrs. Anstruther was her hostess. The time was usually no later than eleven, but Enid emanated such a force of feminine conventionality, Louisa went up too.

2

On velvet as she was, Louisa, idle, and alone for the chief of the day with another woman, could soon have become extremely bored; fortunately their long tête-à-têtes offered her the very opportunity she sought, to pick Mrs. Anstruther's brains.

Chapter Six

1

“Freddy tells me you've such a fascinating career!” mused Mrs. Anstruther—under the pines, in the grateful shade. “How
I
should have liked one too!—But then I married straight out of the nursery.”

“How did you manage it?” asked Louisa interestedly.

Mrs. Anstruther rippled with gentle laughter.

“My
dear!
I didn't ‘manage' it, it just happened! Of course I
was
rather pretty—”

(She paused automatically for Louisa to say
Oh but you still are!
Louisa said it. It wasn't her nature to want something for nothing.)

“—and when poor Archy came home on leave, he simply put me in his pocket! That's how poor Freddy missed his chance,” explained Mrs. Anstruther, “he thought of me as still a child. I shall never forget his tragic face, when I told him I was engaged.”

“Yes, but go back a bit,” said Louisa. “What were you doing when you met Archy?”

“Why, I was just at home,” said Mrs. Anstruther, surprised. “I was an only daughter. I just stayed at home.”

“Where?” asked Louisa.

“My dear, in the
depths
of the country. Keithley! But of course you know it,” added Mrs. Anstruther.—For the moment however Louisa was too absorbed to take the reference.

“And Archy just came along like one of those radar-fitted moths?”

“His people were neighbors,” explained Mrs. Anstruther. “Of course we knew several families.—And really, looking back, it seems quite strange: so many of the daughters
had
careers, and went off to London and so on, quite often when the
sons
came home I was the only girl left! Archy had to stand up to quite fierce competition!”

It was an exchange to leave Louisa discouraged. How early, it seemed, had she missed the way to matrimony! There were of course disparities: Louisa's original home was the strictly non-rural London suburb of Broydon, and none of the neighboring youths had people, they just had Mum and Dad. (With some Louisa skylarked about the roads on bicycles; the meeting place for intellectuals was the Free Library.) Nor could Louisa “have stayed at home if she'd wanted to; she'd been apprenticed to a local photographer not as any gesture towards a career, but for the sake of the pound or so a week she brought in. To set up on her own—to cut and run and set up on her own—had been a positive achievement … Mrs. Anstruther's next remark brought her sharply back to the present.

“You
must have come quite soon after I married?” remarked Mrs. Anstruther. “I mean, to Keithley. I wonder if I know the house?”