After Such Kindness (9 page)

He was in many ways a strange companion for a child of eleven. I suppose he was about thirty-five years of age at the time – a little younger than our father, although he didn’t look it. Father was handsome and well-built, and had elegant clothes, even though they were mostly clerical black; and when he came into a room, you always noticed him. But Mr Jameson was thin, awkward and weak-looking, and his clothes, although immaculately tidy, looked droopy and slightly odd; and when
he
came into a room, no one at all noticed. Of course, he had that terrible stammer that came and went, but seemed to be at its worst in company, so I understood in a way why he preferred intimate chats with one person at a time to the generality of polite conversation. And in fact he was not particularly polite, now that I recall. He was quiet, and that can be taken for politeness; but when there was something that interested him, he talked very fast, and was not above contradicting everybody in the room. He had very decided ideas, and expected his friends – young and old – to conform to them. For some reason, I was always happy to conform. I made no effort; he and I simply seemed to share some common understanding, an appreciation of each other that the world at large did not share. I didn’t realize how strange it was; it seemed perfectly natural to me and I am sure it was equally natural for him. All the afternoons we spent together seemed to exist in a kind of sunny haze. Poor Nettie’s image faded swiftly into the past as Mr Jameson absorbed my waking hours. When I was with him, it was as if I were living in a different world, a world I wanted to be in more than anything else.

My sense of dislocation from my family was heightened by the arrival of the new nursemaid, Mrs McQueen, and my subsequent move from the familiar attic to a small square room on the first floor. Instead of overlooking the garden, this room had a window facing the road, and the clatter of early carts and late carriages, the drudging step of the postman and the comings and goings of the milk cart, baker’s cart and grocer’s boy, all seemed to mirror the change from a protected and enclosed life, to the more worldly one I was about to embark upon. I spent hours alone for the first time ever, and it felt strange. There was no Benjy to distract me in the daytime, and no Nettie or Hannah sleeping across the room to make me feel safe at night. Mama, I recollect, thought I would be pleased to have a room of my own, as even Christiana and Sarah were obliged to share, and she said she hoped I would make the most of it, although in what way she did not say. She supervised the removal of my bed and chest of drawers down one flight of stairs, and got Matthews to bring up a new washstand with Delft tiles and a blue and white washing set, as well as a bookcase Papa said he could spare for my increasing collection of books. Hannah brought down my clothes from the nursery wardrobe and put them away for me with quite a good grace. (Ever since Mrs McQueen had arrived, Hannah had been in good spirits, and she even put a posy of flowers into the vase on the mantelpiece as a gesture of welcome.)

All the time the removals were going on, however, we could hear Benjy howling upstairs and Mrs McQueen trying to placate him. ‘She’ll have her work cut out,’ Hannah said to Matthews on the stairs, nodding her head to the source of the cacophony. I remember Matthews glancing up too, saying, ‘Poor little sod. He doesn’t know whether he’s coming or going –’ then stopping because Mama came out of the bedroom and said, ‘That’s enough, Matthews. Thank you for your help.’

I never knew whether she had heard or not, but it made me feel guiltier still that I was abandoning Benjy in his hour of need. He had only just got used to Hannah, and Mrs McQueen was a complete stranger. I asked Mama if I could go up and play with him for a while, but she said I would only upset him and it was better to let him settle with Mrs McQueen, as he had to learn.

Wednesday 25th June

I am now in my own room on the first floor so I can write in this journal whenever I like. This is a great relief. But now I must find somewhere new to hide it as Hannah still comes in to do my hair and Christiana and Sarah are in the next room and I know they are very curious and would certainly laugh at what I have written if they found it. They came in to see me as soon as I moved in and went around picking everything up, reading the titles from my books and smiling to each other in a condersending way. As it is summer and there is no chance that we will have a fire, I am putting this journal under the grate inside the screen. There are no coals or ashes so it’s quite clean, but when the worse weather comes, it will be no good, as I expect I will have a fire from time to time though not every day like in the nursery, and Mama always has the chimneys swept in the autumn.

I am to eat my evening meals with Papa and Mama now, and lunch with my sisters in the morning room when I am not at school. If Christiana and Sarah are out, I am to eat by myself in the breakfast room, served by Cook. It seems as though everything is changing very quickly and I hardly know who I am any more. DEB

Daisy really is the most delightful child. She tries so very hard to be good, but she is also very natural, as all children are, and says what she thinks at the moment she thinks it. We adults rarely say what we think – indeed, I do not know how long it has been since I have said exactly what I think to another adult human being. But when I am with Daisy I feel at liberty to say whatever comes into my head – and it makes her laugh. I can scarcely believe my good fortune. I feel I am walking on air. My head is full of ideas and thoughts and wild imaginings, and she is sharing them with me.

But I anticipate myself. This state of bliss has not come about without effort, and I congratulate myself on the effectiveness of my strategy, beginning with the pleasant tea party I was able to arrange for the four little friends. The photographic experiment produced some interesting effects and the tea itself went well, although I was surprised at the amounts of bread-and-butter and cake such small children could consume. I don’t recall my sisters ever falling upon the tea table with such enthusiasm, but my father was strict (stricter than I am, at any rate) and we all had to wait our turn in order to begin, which was only ever after grace had been said and the eldest among us had partaken first.

After tea and games (of which the limericks proved a decided hit), I took all four children home and begged that on the next occasion I should limit myself to
two
young visitors on account of Dinah’s nervousness with company. This was agreed and Daisy elected to bring Annie with her. Annie is a very forward child with a wide face and a bold expression. She is as ignorant as an eleven-year-old should be, but she is always ready with her opinions, which can be amusing. However, she does not in any way compare with Daisy, around whose natural charm there is now an air of sadness that I am making it my daily work to dispel.

I managed to arrange it so that it was not long before their second visit, and Hannah brought them as before, marching them across the quad in their neat cotton dresses, white stockings and jaunty straw hats, where they rightly drew the admiring attention of all who had eyes in their heads. But this time the servant did not stay. I explained that I planned to take the two girls for a walk in the meadow before tea and there would have been nothing for her to do except walk along behind us. She was not anxious to remain in any case, saying she had some errands to do at the haberdasher’s in the High, but hoping I would not let the girls walk too far in the afternoon warmth. I promised I would take the greatest care of them and she took herself off. Hardly had she gone when Annie piped up asking if we were going to play games later on, as she found walks extremely uninteresting.

‘And do
you
find walks uninteresting too, Daisy?’ I enquired.

‘It depends,’ she said, wrinkling her forehead in a delightful way. ‘On whom I’m walking with, and where we’re walking. Sometimes it can be dull. I mean it’s very dull when Miss Prentiss makes us walk in line for half an hour without speaking to one another.’

‘And then makes us stand and look at some old bones in a glass case,’ added Annie. ‘In fact, I think museums are the most uninteresting places in the world.’

‘Well, I promise there will be no museums today. And no old bones. Although I can’t promise about young bones. There are inevitably a goodly number of them disporting themselves in the meadow, bowling hoops and playing at cricket. Unfortunately, they are mainly of a male variety.’

‘But what will we
do
in the meadow?’ moaned Annie. ‘We can’t play cricket because that’s a boys’ game. Could we play at shuttlecock? We play that at home on the lawn – but you’ll need the battledores. Do you have battledores, Mr Jameson?’

‘Sadly, no. Most of the games I know are in the mind. I think you can have even more fun with those, if you’ve
a mind
to play them. But there’ll be a lot to do and talk about on the way, I assure you.’

Annie looked unconvinced, but I picked up my hat and said, ‘Now, let’s begin by walking in the opposite direction and see where we get to.’

‘Opposite from where?’ Annie said, pouting.

‘Well, from here, of course.’

‘But in which direction?’

‘You ask a lot of questions for one who is only four and a half foot high,’ I said. ‘I’ve half a mind to make you sit down and answer an examination paper on all the questions you don’t know the answer to, while Daisy and I go a-walking on our own.’

‘But I won’t
know
the answers!’ She looked alarmed.

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Maybe there are no answers. I find there are far more questions in the world than answers, don’t you think? Otherwise school wouldn’t be the bother it is.’

They both laughed, and Annie being thus satisfied, we set off in good spirits as the clock in the tower chimed three.

‘Do you teach
all
the young gentlemen in the college?’ asked Daisy, eyeing a group of undergraduates who were reading on the grass and looked up as we trod by in our threesome.

‘By no means. It is hard enough to teach the ones I do. They are so very deaf.’

‘Oh, poor things!’ cried Daisy, instantly sympathetic. ‘But how can they learn when they are deaf?’

‘With difficulty,’ I said. ‘When I ask a question, I often have to ask it twice. But that may be on account of the distance.’

She looked up. ‘The distance?’

‘Well, they will insist on taking their lessons on the kitchen staircase, and I have to call out my questions aloud from my room and Benson has to scurry down and pass them on, and due to his imperfect knowledge of mathematics and their imperfect hearing, equation becomes “evasion”, and theorem becomes “peer at ’em” and we have to start all over again.’

‘Is that really true?’ asked Daisy with a sideways look.

‘Well, not altogether,’ I answered. ‘I made up the bit about Benson. And the students are not actually deaf.’

She laughed. And my heart shivered into many delicious pieces.

We left the college buildings and set off across the Meadow. As we walked along the path I was able to point out various butterflies and day-flying moths, and give them their proper Latin names, which the little girls attempted to learn by heart. Once by the river there was quite a congestion of rowing boats and punts and even the odd hopeful fisherman. ‘We might see people catching crabs later,’ I said.

‘Oh, you don’t get crabs in the Cherwell,’ said Annie confidently. ‘You only get them at the seaside.’

‘That’s what you think,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if there weren’t half a dozen people catching crabs at this very moment, down by Folly Bridge.’

‘It means when you miss your stroke, doesn’t it?’ said Daisy. ‘And wave your oar around in the air? That’s what Papa says.’

‘And your papa knows everything about rowing that there is to know,’ I said. ‘So you are right, Daisy.’ At which she blushed and looked pleased.

And I was pleased too, to be walking along with two such pretty children, as if I were their father or, even better, their uncle. We chattered away about this and that, and picked up the balls that rowdy schoolboys let run towards us, and answered innumerable requests for the ‘right time’ from all manner of people who only have to see that you have a watch about your person to think that you are obliged to keep them informed about the progress of the planet. However, the little girls were only too delighted to take out my pocket watch and read the hour and minute hands on my behalf, and supply the questioners with their answers. There were a number of people I knew by sight to whom I tipped my hat, and who acknowledged me similarly before passing on. However, one person hove into view whom I did not wish to encounter. It was Smith-Jephcott, strolling about in that purposeless way of his. I attempted to usher the girls off the path in an effort to evade him, but when he saw us, he came over. ‘Ah,’ he said, doffing his hat. ‘Two of your little fairies, I believe? Won’t you introduce me?’

And I was obliged to do so, even though I was very loath. When I said Daisy’s full name, he raised his eyebrows and said, ‘Any relation to Daniel Baxter, the renowned Christian Athlete of St Cyprian’s?’

‘Her father,’ I said shortly.

‘Indeed? And so the charming lady in the picture was her mother?’

‘Mr Jameson photographed us all,’ added Daisy, with a sweet eagerness to impart information that I could have dispensed with on that occasion.

He bent towards her. ‘And I was privileged to have, as it were, an advance view of the pictures. They were very good. Very good. What a lovely family you all are.’ Then he raised himself and addressed me sotto voce
:
‘I had no idea when you showed me the pictures that it was
Baxter
’s family you were so intimate with.’

‘I assume you don’t know him, then?’

‘Only by reputation. But that’s enough.’ He laughed unpleasantly. ‘But look here, Jameson, why don’t we all have tea together? I was just about to turn back, and could do with a little livening up.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I have other plans.’

‘You? What plans?’ He laughed again. ‘Are you going to introduce them to Dinah and play slapjack around the table for half an hour?’

‘What’s that to you?’ I replied, incensed.

‘Nothing at all. I just thought these two young ladies might rather see the musical box I have just purchased. It has a singing bird.’

‘Oh, may we, please?’ said Annie, her wide face made even wider with pleasure.

Daisy looked at me, and I think she could see the consternation on my face. But at the same time she was eager to see the toy. ‘May we?’ she asked quietly. ‘Just for five minutes?’

‘There you are!’ said Smith-Jephcott. ‘And while you are looking at it, I’ll get Benson to give us tea.’

‘But I have tea arranged in my own room. I have already p-purchased walnut cake,’ I faltered, my tongue tight in my mouth.

‘Then bring it down! I have some Bourbon biscuits, and Benson can see to the teapot and the bread-and-butter. The girls can know what it’s like to have proper college hospitality!’

I looked at their shining eyes: Annie’s bright and bold, Daisy’s softer but no less eager. I could not deny them. ‘Very well,’ I said. But I was terribly put out by this alteration to my plan.

Daisy must have sensed my disappointment because she reached out her little hand and touched me on the arm. It was as if her touch had melted right through the black worsted, and I could feel her fingers on my very flesh. ‘Do you mind very much, Mr Jameson?’ she said.

At that moment I loved her so much for her kindness and sympathy that I almost felt gratitude to Smith-Jephcott for being the cause of it. ‘Not if it makes you happy,’ I replied, daring to squeeze her gloved fingers.

And so we repaired back to college and Benson was obliged to bring down to Smith-Jephcott’s rooms the walnut cake and the bread-and-butter that he had already laid out upstairs. Smith-Jephcott, in spite of his boast, made no attempt to provide proper hospitality, or even a table, and put the plates down willy-nilly all over his desk and sideboard, mingling the cake with his bottles of port wine and muddling the bread-and-butter with his books.

The girls, meanwhile, were enchanted by the musical box, and in between forays to the cake and tea, they wound the handle over and over again while the bird moved back and forth and opened and shut its beak in time to the fluting music. Smith-Jephcott told them he had bought it for one of his nieces, who was ten years old in a week’s time. Annie said how lucky that little girl was and expressed the wish that she could have one like it. ‘Did you buy it in the High?’ she asked.

‘I got it in the Burlington Arcade. Do you know it?’

They both shook their heads.

‘Ah, maybe you are not acquainted with London?’

They shook their heads again. ‘My sisters were born in London,’ volunteered Daisy. ‘But they can’t remember very much about it and Mama says Poplar was not very nice.’

‘Poplar?’ Smith-Jephcott raised his eyebrows. ‘What were they doing in
Poplar
of all places?’

‘What do you think?’ I replied, somewhat testily. ‘Baxter had a parish there. Before he came to Oxford.’ Smith-Jephcott really is a fool.

‘Ah. That explains it. An excellent opportunity for Good Works.’

‘Papa says it was very
hard
work,’ added Daisy solemnly. ‘He often had to preach to a half-empty church. But I’d like to visit the interesting landmarks like Buckingham Palace and the Tower. Is the – Bullingdon Arcade interesting too?’

Smith-Jephcott laughed, and murmured, ‘Not unless you are interested in a certain sort of fine art. In fact, there is a photograph shop there that might interest you, Jameson. Also specializing in interesting images.’

I felt myself go quite red with embarrassment and anger. ‘I order all my necessaries by post,’ I said. ‘There is no need for me to linger in such places.’

‘Such places? I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.’ But he smiled in a lascivious way I found quite nauseating. I was beside myself to think that I had brought the little girls into such a situation, with such a man, and was only thankful that their innocence protected them from his foul insinuations. I never cease to be surprised that such a man can be a member of a respectable college and I determined then that I would ensure that Daisy – and Annie too, of course – would not be exposed to any further grossness. I indicated – slightly deceitfully – that Hannah would soon be coming for the children and that they would need to eat and drink quickly before returning to my rooms. They were rather reluctant to leave the mechanical bird and his songs, and I thought I might have to drag Annie away with main force, but Daisy, remembering she had originally pleaded to spend five minutes only with the toy, persuaded her friend to finish the cup of tea she had carelessly left in the grate and come upstairs with me.

It was such a relief to be back in the comfort and familiarity of my own rooms. But it was brought home to me again that, to keep the attention of the young, one needs toys or amusing artefacts to occupy them, and I promised myself that henceforth I would always have about me some small item for the purpose. But Dinah, bless her, provided an alternative on this occasion, as she was in a sleepy mood and prepared to let the children stroke her fur. They looked so lovely, both of them, kneeling beside Dinah’s chair, their glossy hair spreading over their shoulders, the line of their sweet profiles more beautiful than any duchess’s.