“Oo, it is lovely to be at a party again!” she cried, glancing round the room and then at the two ladies. “That’s the one thing I
do
miss down here, parties!”
“You look very nice,” said Alda, greatly amused, and attracted, as ever, by cheerfulness.
“Oo, this is my only really smashing dress. I bought it from one of the girls at the school, ever so inexpensive, it was. And look!—” she slid up her skirt and revealed, first a large leg tightly covered in silk and bound by a blue garter, and next the crisp, shelly ruffles of a blue taffeta petticoat. Alda and Jean exclaimed with genuine admiration, and both were favourably impressed by the perfect freshness of the exhibits.
“My mother made it. Out of a piece she had by her.”
“It’s beautifully made,” said Jean, recognising the hand of an expert.
“Mum is a dressmaker, that’s her profession. She’s wizard at it. Dad died about four years ago and ever since then she’s done everything for us.”
“Are there lots of you?” smiled Alda. “I thought you came from a large family. So do I.”
“Eight,” said Sylvia, and laughed outright.
“There are six of us. Are you the eldest?”
“No, Bob, he’s the eldest. He’s twenty-six. Mum was married twice, see, and her first husband left her a little bit of money (of course, I don’t approve of that, being a Communist, but it came in very handy) and then she married Dad and had
me
and Shirley and Alan. Then there’s Hugo, and Iris, Lily, and Sybil, she’s the baby. All Communists,” she ended, beaming.
“What, even Sybil? Poor little Sybil!”
“Oo, she loves it. She’s nine. She goes out selling
the Daily Worker
on Saturdays. Not for money, of course; just to help the Party.”
Alda and Jean, who were hugely enjoying all this and congratulating themselves upon having secured such an entertaining guest, were here recalled to more sober thoughts by a deep, melancholy dab upon the front door; it had a distinct suggestion of the tolling bell, and they glanced at one another with the same thought: how would Sylvia go down with Mr. Waite? Well, it could not be helped now. I hope he isn’t a Blimp, thought Alda, as she hastened down the passage, but judging by that evening in the car, he may well be.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Waite, I’m so glad that you could come. Oh—let me take that,” seeing him glancing doubtfully about for a place to put his hat, “there’s nowhere to put it here, I’m afraid, we must take it into the sitting-room. Do come in,” and she led him towards the parlour, his own contribution consisting of mutters and gestures with the hat.
A room cannot look completely unattractive when it contains three pretty young women and a bright fire, and even Mr. Waite, who had come prepared to be wooed into amiability, felt amiable sooner than he had intended as he surveyed the scene. After the presentations were over he seated himself in the most comfortable chair, and prevented a silence from falling (not that he noticed the threat) by staring round the room and exclaiming:
“What’s happened to all the furniture?”
“Oh, I suddenly couldn’t bear it another minute, so I moved it into the woodshed,” said Alda cheerfully, holding out the cigarette box, “but it’s all coming back this evening.”
“Into the
woodshed
? But from what I remember of the size of the woodshed here, and the amount of furniture there was in
this
room, you could hardly get it all into the woodshed. (Thank you.).”
“It was rather a squeeze, but I managed. (Have you a match?—Oh, Jean—your lighter—thank you.).”
“There were some heavy pieces, too,” pursued Mr. Waite, having acknowledged the offer of the lighter with a shake of the head at Jean, a mutter, and the production of one of those extremely large, heavy military lighters in yellow metal which suggest to the nervous the possibility of explosions.
“Not very heavy, if you made up your mind.”
“Quite nice pieces, as I remember them,” said Mr. Waite, reprovingly.
“Oh no, definitely nasty,” said Alda, who was beginning to feel slightly hysterical.
“‘
Something nasty in the woodshed
,’” said Jean. “Alda darling, shall I go and make the tea? The children will be in any minute.”
“Please, J. Er—are you lucky enough to have your own possessions at Meadow Cottage, Mr. Waite?”
“I took it partly furnished. There are some nice pieces there, too, but not so nice as here, as I remember them.” (He talks as if they were all dead and I wish they were, thought Alda.) “Well, if you are going to move them all back in here this evening, I must help you.”
“Oh no—it’s most kind of you—but really——”
“You cannot possibly move those heavy pieces of furniture by yourself,”
said
Mr. Waite sternly. “I must help you.”
“That will be kind of you; thank you very much,” said Alda brightly.
She opened her mouth to introduce the subject of her daughters’ first day at the convent school, when Sylvia, who had all this time sat in silence staring at Mr. Waite, said loudly:
“I don’t expect you remember me, do you, Mr. Waite?”
“I remember you perfectly,” answered Mr. Waite at once, turning upon her a disapproving look which proved that his ignoring of her presence had been deliberate, “but for the
moment
I did not recognise you.” His handsome gloomy eyes took in the raw steak, the pompadour and what Alda now only saw by the bright afternoon light: a sheen of blue upon Sylvia’s eyelashes.
“I expect I look a bit different from the way I do every day,” she said, colouring and looking annoyed. “You can’t make yourself look anything in those awful duds they make you wear, it’s a treat to get out of them.”
“It is not a becoming dress for a lady,” said Mr. Waite, and his audience felt that neither were mucking out cowsheds nor moving heavy pieces of furniture becoming occupations for ladies. He implied that somewhere there were ladies who did dress and behave becomingly; who wore tightly-buttoned, pale gloves and knots of sweet peas among their laces while they poured out the tea and listened to the gentlemen talking.
“Of course, I’m only doing this work temporary,” said Sylvia defiantly.
“Miss Scorby is going on the stage as soon as the Government releases her,” said Alda, now feeling that there were few things she would enjoy better than shocking Mr. Waite.
“A very hard life,” was Mr. Waite’s contribution.
“Oo, I shan’t mind that. My father was an actor—Sylvester Scorby—you may have heard of him.”
Alda glanced at her, then glanced away, remembering those remarks about “pretty ham,” but if the child wanted to glorify her father’s memory, that was touching and right.
Mr. Waite shook his head.
“A very hard life—especially for a lady,” he repeated, then stood up as Jean came in with a tray.
“I must help you,” he said with an awkward smile.
I wish he wouldn’t say he
must
help us, as if it were a sort of curse laid on him by Heaven, thought Alda, carefully not catching Jean’s eye, and observing that Sylvia had leant back and crossed her legs and was not going to help anybody except by displaying four inches of the petticoat.
“Oh, thank you,” said Jean, smiling up at him and letting him take the tray. All her diamonds, large and small, glittered in a late gleam of sunlight that had found its way through the screening laurels, and this accounted for his first definite thought about her:
she must have money
.
Soon the cups of tea were distributed, and everybody was eating bread and butter or a sandwich and Sylvia was dominating the conversation, as she always did where more than three people were present; only a
tête-à-tête
with someone who enjoyed eating, talking and showing off more than she herself did, could force
her
into the part of listener.
“—where I was trained, the Canonbury School of Dramatic Art, it’s three big houses; you know, regular mid-Victorian mansions, all knocked into one. Oo, we did have a wizard time there! I’d give anything to be back. On V.E. night, do you know what me and a lot of others did?”
Pause, while the eyes, positively darting sapphire sparkles of joy and mischief, roved round the circle of faces. Alda and Jean were sparkling a little themselves but were trying to look merely pleasant and entertained and Mr. Waite was looking extremely severe.
“Well, all us girls put on our trousers so’s not to spoil our good clothes (I had an awful old Lana Turner, too,
miles
too tight it was, it looked simply
awful
, so I pinched one of the boys’ coats, Benjy, a Jewish boy he was) and then we all went down into the West End. Crowds! You never saw anything like the
people
! And everybody dancing and singing and letting off crackers——”
“Highly dangerous,” put in Mr. Waite in a tone of melancholy satisfaction. “Easily blind anyone or cripple them for life.”
“—Oo I know, but that was part of the fun. Me and my friend Marie, she’s a Polish refugee, her people are rolling in money, not that that makes any difference to me, of course, I’m a Communist——”
Here Mr. Waite gave a sardonic nod. I knew it, said the nod; I was expecting it. Necromancy and the Black Mass to follow.
“—and she never has a dime anyway, they lost it all when Uncle Joe liberated Poland, she and I, we believe in
living dangerously
, you know, like Nietzsche said. Oo, we did have a lovely time! Do you know what we did? The boys got hold of one of those wooden carts the roadmen take round, and all us girls climbed on to it and the boys began to pull it downhill and it went quicker and quicker, and the boys couldn’t stop it, it was so heavy with all of us on it, and it began to
run away
! And did we scream! Oh boy, oh boy, we sounded like all the werewolves in Germany! And everybody was looking at us! Oo, it was lovely! And then what do you think happened?”
“The police arrived, I hope,” said Mr. Waite.
“No—I tore my trousers! They caught on something on the cart and I pulled and tried to get free and the next minute there was a r-r-r-r-r! and I nearly fell off the cart. It was simply flying down the hill now, the boys couldn’t keep up with it. And me with this awful hole in my trousers! Right on the seat!”
“Do have some more tea, Mr. Waite,” said Jean, holding out a white hand and a slender arm draped in a soft orange-coloured sleeve, for his cup. He gave it to her and noticed that her eyes were brown, rather unusual, he thought, dark eyes and fair hair.
“And then what happened?” asked Alda, feeling that it was time that someone beside Mr. Waite commented upon the tale.
“Oo, we all jumped off before it got to the bottom of the hill. I didn’t half bruise myself. One of the girls lent me a safety pin to pin up the tear and I was all right. Oo—and then Benjy and me got on the back of a lorry! (It was ever so late by this time, nearly one o’clock, but there was still crowds of people about.) Well, this lorry’d slowed up for the traffic lights, and me and Benjy got on the back! The driver never saw us, and next minute he really got cracking and we simply flew off down the road! Ever so dangerous, it was!”
“It must have been fun,” said Alda, and meant what she said. Jean, in whom no tomboy had ever dwelt, merely looked amused.
“All the others screamed when they saw us go off, but we soon left them behind and there we were, flying along the deserted roads at one in the morning!”
“I thought you said there were crowds of people about,” said Mr. Waite; said it with actual disagreeableness, without a smile, and then he turned right round to Jean, so that Sylvia could see nothing but his back, and said loudly: “Do you know this part of the world, Miss Hardcastle?”
The snub was so crude that Alda felt ashamed for him and sorry for Sylvia, but the latter only made a lightning and completely unembarrassed grimace and, turning to Alda herself, went on with the tale, which grew more alarming as it progressed; Benjy nearly fell off; I nearly fell off; me and Benjy hung on to each other like mad; we didn’t half shriek, and so forth.
With the other ear, Alda could hear the decorous exchanges between Jean and Mr. Waite. All seemed to be progressing easily enough, but she did not detect a trace of that mutual absorption and discovery which means that two people are attracted. And what a lot she’s telling him about herself! thought Alda, slightly disturbed. She really ought to be more discreet. She certainly will be married for her money one of these days unless she and I are both very careful.
“It’s nearly dark,” she interrupted Sylvia suddenly, “the children ought to be in by now.”
“There they are!” exclaimed Jean. “I’ll go and let them in,” and she hurried off to the front door, where the loud, fierce, despairing attack upon the knocker seemed to indicate that someone was in a bad way.
“Well, duckies?” she cried, opening it wide, and there looked up at her two faces, one crimson and indignant and bearing traces of tears, the other pale and solemn and similarly marred.
“It’s
awful
!” burst out Jenny. “It’s been the most absolutely beastly day I’ve ever had in all my life. It’s like
Occupied Europe
! And the food’s simply
filthy
! Oh, what a
heavenly
smell of toast!
Could
we have some
at once
, we’re simply
faint
and
starving
!”