Cluny Brown (2 page)

“You left a trowel outside,” said Mr. Porritt.

“Aye,” agreed Trumper. “Where's young Cluny?”

“In bed.”

“What, ill?”

“No, she read a piece in the paper,” said Mr. Porritt; and remembered his own paper left in the 'bus. He now wanted it, because this was his time and place for a good read. It was also Trumper's time and place, and the minute he finished Addie started in, and it was wonderful how nothing annoyed people more than taking their Sunday paper. Mr. Porritt remembered a very striking illustration of this from his own experience: it was when his wife's sister turned up with the infant Cluny, and her husband dead, poor chap, and nothing for it but to take them in and give them a home; and both he and Floss agreed on it, glad and willing, and Cluny's mother behaved just as she ought, except for one thing: she would take the Sunday paper before Mr. Porritt had done with it. He never said a word, but just that one habit so irritated him that he gradually took a dislike to her. For a while he even bought two papers: it was worse. She wanted to read them in bits, piece here and piece there, swapping and muddling the sheets until you couldn't even find the football. And yet she was a nice woman in her way, and when she died, of pneumonia, Mr. Porritt felt sorrier than he expected.…

“I see Eden's gone and resigned,” observed Trumper. “I s'pose he knows what he's at.”

“If you ask me, we'll have trouble with Mussolini yet,” said Mr. Porritt, “and that Hitler. I don't trust 'em.”

“Nor me. What this country ought to ha' done—”

In another moment they would have been embarked on a good, meaty, masculine conversation; but the door opened, and in bounced Addie. She was four years junior to her husband, and five to Mr. Porritt, but one would never have guessed it, because she didn't hold with making yourself look young. She held with looking neat and clean and hard-wearing, and in this she perfectly succeeded.

“There you are!” she exclaimed—running her eye over her brother as though to make sure that he was all there indeed. “What happened?”

“Wrong 'bus,” explained Mr. Porritt.

“Had your dinner?”

“Snack,” said Mr. Porritt.

“Where's Cluny?”

“In bed.”

“What, ill?”

“No,” said Mr. Porritt patiently. “She read a piece in the paper, about how it rested the nerves and toned the system to stay a day in bed eating oranges.”

For a second Addie Trumper stared, speechless. Her jaw tightened. Her eyes snapped. Both her husband and her brother unconsciously braced themselves.

“My stars!” cried Addie Trumper. “Who does she think she is?”

There it was again, the inevitable question that Cluny Brown seemed always, and so unnaturally, to provoke. For what could be plainer than the answer?—her father a defunct lorry driver, one uncle a plumber, her late mother that plumber's sister-in-law, her other uncle a railway porter (Great Western)—how could any one doubt who Cluny was? How could there be any doubt as to who she thought she was? It was obvious. And yet if Mr. Porritt had heard that question once, he had heard it a thousand times. He even asked it of himself. And neither to himself, nor to Addie Trumper, could he give an answer.

“What young Cluny needs—” stated Mrs. Trumper, drawing breath—“I've said it before and I'll say it again—is to go into service. Good service, under a strict housekeeper. You mark my words.”

But Mr. Porritt did not intend to be browbeaten.

“And I've told you, I can't spare her. I've got to have some one for the phone when I'm not there.”

“What you
want
with a phone—!”

Mr. Porritt and Trumper exchanged brotherly glances. Of course a plumber had to have a telephone: half the calls, and all the urgent ones, came by phone. It was one of the reasons for Mr. Porritt's success—you could get hold of him. People rang up at midnight, or even later, and even if Mr. Porritt did not turn out, his solemn professional tones brought comfort, and if he said he'd be round first thing, they seldom bothered to get any one else. Of course he had to have a phone …

“And by the same token,” said Mrs. Trumper, turning on her husband, “you've left a trowel in front.” Then she snatched up the
News of the World
and bounced out.

It was a few moments before the atmosphere settled down again. The two men lay low, like fish at the bottom of a stirred-up pond. Mr. Porritt looked apologetically at his brother-in-law, and slowly reached for his boots.

“No need to go,” said Trumper kindly.

“Better,” said Mr. Porritt.

“You stick to what you think's fit. Young Cluny's a help to you, you find her keep, it's no business of Addie's.”

“Aye,” said Mr. Porritt. He finished lacing his boots nonetheless. “But I don't mind telling
you:
I'm worried.” He paused. There was that tea at the Ritz; there was something else, something he hadn't mentioned even to the lady in the park. “She's been followed,” said Mr. Porritt.

Trumper whistled.

“Followed? Cluny?”

“Twice,” said Mr. Porritt, “in the past week. First time she told me of, second I saw for myself. In the High Street, outside a shop: Cluny and this fellow talking together. He made off fast enough when he saw me.”

“I'll lay he did,” said Trumper appreciatively.

“Cluny says she's looking in this window, looking at hats, when up this fellow comes, asks her is there anything she fancies. Cluny says no, she's just having a free laugh. Then
he
says, maybe if they moved along to the West End, maybe they'd find something better. That was when I come up.”

“She'd never have gone.”

“So she said. She said there was a piece she wanted to hear on the wireless. But what beats me is
why
. You wouldn't call her pretty—”

“Plain as a boot,” agreed Trumper heartily. For a while they both pondered. “This other time—was it the same chap or another?”

“Another. Fellow outside the cinema.”

“She shouldn't hang about so much.”

“What's a lass to do?” argued Mr. Porritt defensively. “Can't she look into a shop-window? Maybe—I didn't tell you, but I was mentioning young Cluny to a lady—maybe we're treating her wrong. Maybe she didn't ought to be threaped down, but encouraged to develop, like.”

“Not her,” said Mr. Trumper firmly. “Whoever told you that didn't know Cluny.”

This was so true that Mr. Porritt could not dispute it. But for a moment his silence was stubborn. The lady's earnestness, just before they were interrupted, had made an impression on him: his attitude towards his niece had become as it were more elastic than ever before. He was ready for some sort of action on her behalf, if need be for some sort of shake-up in the solid routine of their common life. At the back of his mind there germinated a notion that perhaps Cluny might learn to type.

“All this foolishness about oranges,” added Trumper obliquely.

“She paid for 'em. And I don't mind telling you,” said Mr. Porritt, in a sudden admission of weakness, “nonsense or no nonsense, worried as I am, it's a real comfort to know she's safe home in bed.”

He spoke (as always) what he believed to be the truth.

Chapter 2

I

That Cluny Brown was not in bed, nor even at home, was due to sheer conscientiousness, a quality for which she rarely got credit. The piece in the paper laid great stress on complete repose, drawn blinds and no phone calls. Cluny had drawn her curtains, but she couldn't stop people ringing up a plumber, and when shortly before three the bell began to go, she reluctantly (but conscientiously) swung her long legs out of bed and ran barefoot downstairs.

“Hello?” said Cluny, in her deep tones.

A man's voice answered her—urgent, curt, harsh with that sense of injury common to all in trouble with their water-supply.

“Is that the plumber's? I want some one to come round at once—”

“He's out,” said Cluny.

“Can't you get hold of him?”

Cluny reflected. It wasn't the weather for burst pipes, and for no lesser calamity did she intend to disturb her uncle's Sabbath.

“No, I can't,” she said.

“Good God!” cried the voice passionately. “This is intolerable! This is unheard of! Isn't there any one else? Who are you?”

“Cluny Brown,” said Cluny.

There was a short pause; when the voice spoke again it was in quite a different key.

“She was only a plumber's daughter—”

Cluny, who had heard that one before, rang off and went back upstairs. She got into bed and lay down again and relaxed according to the directions, joint by joint all the way from her toes up to her neck.
“Now pretend you're a Persian cat,
” said the piece in the paper; but Cluny, whose imagination was precise rather than romantic, felt more like one of the long green or crimson sausages hawked about the streets to keep draughts from under the door. It probably didn't matter … What did matter was that hardly had she achieved this desirable state when the phone rang again. “Let it,” thought Cluny; and proceeded to the next stage, of completely emptying her mind. Only she couldn't, because of the telephone. It went on and on, until at last there was nothing for it but to get up and answer it again.

“Miss Brown?” said the voice. “Please accept my apologies.”

“Is that all you got me out of bed for?” cried Cluny indignantly.

Again there was a pause; and Mr. Porritt, had he been listening, would have sympathized with the caller. When you rang up a plumber you didn't expect—well, you didn't expect Cluny.

“Good heavens!” exclaimed the voice solicitously. “Are you ill? Shall I bring you some grapes?”

“It isn't grapes, it's oranges.”

“What is?”

“The cure. But I'm not ill.” (Having gone so far, Cluny felt she had better clear the whole thing up.) “You stay in bed twenty-four hours drinking orange juice, at least I suppose it's the same if you suck them, and the whole system is wonderfully toned.”

“You sound better already,” observed the voice.

“I feel better,” agreed Cluny.

“You don't feel well enough to come round and see what's the matter with my sink?”

Cluny hesitated. As a matter of fact, she felt very well indeed. Standing there in her cotton nightdress, in a draught, her bare feet on the bare linoleum, she felt quite extraordinarily well, all over, except for one spot on her upper lip which was rather sore from sucking oranges. Could it be that the cure had worked already? And if so, ought she not to do her duty by the trade, and perhaps get a new name on her uncle's books? A sink didn't sound serious; stopped up, most likely, and no one with enough sense to unscrew the bend …

“I'll give you ten bob, as it's Sunday,” lured the voice, “and you can take a cab. Ten-A, Carlyle Walk, Chelsea. Are you coming?”

“O.K.,” said Cluny; and conscientiously reached for the order-book, to put it down.

II

The correct costume for a young lady going to fix a gentleman's sink on a Sunday afternoon has never been authoritatively dealt with; Cluny had naturally to carry her uncle's tool-bag, but as an offset wore her best clothes. These were all black, being part of her mourning for Mrs. Porritt, and the circumstance was not, at this stage in her career, without importance. It explained for example how she had got a table at the Ritz. Unusually tall, thin as a kippered herring, Cluny in a plain black coat looked very well. From the back she looked elegant; it was only her face spoiled it from in front. But in twenty years Cluny had got used to her face, and now, dabbing on the powder, could contemplate it without resentment: thin cheeks, big mouth, big nose, not a spot of colour: a short face from brow to chin, wide-angled at the strongly-marked jawline; thick black hair, which she cut herself whenever it grew below the shoulder, and tied behind, well away from the nape, so that it stuck out like a pony's tail. “Lucky Uncle Arn's short-sighted,” thought Cluny philosophically; and then ran downstairs laughing, for it had suddenly struck her that maybe the Voice was looking for a bit of fun, and if so he wouldn't half get a shock when he saw her.

III

Ten-A turned out to be not a house but a studio, built over a mansion-garden in the palmy days of Victorian art. Since then the mansion had become a block of flats, and the studio a garage, now turned back into a studio by Mr. Hilary Ames. He was not an artist but liked giving parties. He was giving a party that evening, and it was therefore particularly necessary that his sink should be unstopped. But Cluny's malice was also half-justified: the quality of her deep voice, the incongruity of her occupations, had tickled his fancy. This was not difficult to do: Mr. Ames's fancy was for young women, and rather easily stimulated; but Cluny was right also in foreseeing a slight shock at first sight. She arrived, knocked, was admitted, and surprised upon the gentleman's face an extremely mixed expression.

“Now then, what's the trouble?” asked Cluny benevolently—standing over him rather like a young policeman. She was considerably the taller, and the first thing she noticed about Mr. Ames was the small bald patch on top of his head. For the rest, he was fiftyish, plumpish, and had on a canary-coloured pull-over which had cost six pounds, and which Cluny thought made him look like a tiddlywink.

Mr. Ames for his part took one look at Cluny's nose and dismissing all frolicsome thoughts at once led the way into a small malodorous scullery. The sink brimmed with greasy water, some of which had slopped upon the floor, but nothing seemed to have burst and there was no smell of gas. Cluny set down her bag in a competent manner, removed her good coat, and handed it to Mr. Ames. She might have been Arnold Porritt in person.