Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris & Mrs. Harris Goes to New York (19 page)

‘The bride, one of the most popular graduates of East-lake High School, has been a leader in the social activities of the younger debutante set. The groom, aged 34, an electronics engineer, was formerly in the U.S. Air Force, stationed in England. The couple will make their home in Kenosha, Wisconsin.’

Clutching the paper fiercely between her thin, veined hands, Mrs Harris performed a little solo dance about the Countess’s drawing room, shouting, ‘It’s ’im! It’s ’im! I’ve found little ’Enry’s father!’ There was not the least shadow of doubt in her mind. He was handsome; he resembled little ’Enry in that he had two eyes, a nose, a mouth, and ears; he was of the right age; he was well-to-do, had a noble look about his eyes, as Mrs Harris had imagined him, and now he was married to a fine-looking girl, who would be just the mother for little ’Enry. Popular the paper said she was, but Mrs Harris also noted that she had a good, open countenance, and nice eyes. What clinched it and made it certs was the name of Mr Brown’s father - Henry Brown: of course the grandchild would be named after him.

Mrs Harris ceased her dance, looked down upon the precious photograph and said, ‘George Brown, you’re going to get your baby back,’ and at that moment, for the first time, the thought of abstracting little ’Enry from the Gussets and of taking him to his father immediately smote her between the eyes. True, she didn’t have his address, but there would be no difficulty in locating him once she got herself and little ’Enry to Kenosha, Wisconsin. If this was not a sign from On High as to where her duty lay and what she ought to do about it, Mrs Harris did not know signs from Above, which she had been encountering and interpreting more or less successfully ever since she could remember.

Little Henry Brown was aged eight in terms of the tenure of his frail body, eighty in the light of the experience of the harsh and unhappy world into which that body had been ushered. In his brief sojourn he had learned all of the tricks of the persecuted - to lie, to evade, to steal, to hide - in short, to survive. Thrown on his own in the concrete desert of the endless pavements of London, he very early acquired the quickness of mind and the cunning needed to outwit the wicked.

Withal, he yet managed to retain a childish charm and innate goodness. He would never scupper a pal or do the dirty on someone who had been kind to him. Someone, for instance, like the two widow charladies, Mrs Ada Harris, and Mrs Violet Butterfield, in whose kitchen he was now momentarily concealed, involved in a thrilling and breathless conspiracy.

He sat there looking rather like a small gnome, gorging himself on tea and buns to the point of distension (since one of the things life had taught him was whenever he came across any food that appeared to be unattached, the thing to do was to eat it quickly, and as much of it as
he could hold), while Mrs Harris unfolded the details of the plot.

One of Henry’s assets was his taciturnity. Among other things he had learned to keep his mouth shut. He was eloquent rather by means of a pair of huge, dark, sad eyes, eyes filled with knowledge that no little boy of that age should have, and which missed nothing that went on about him.

Because he was thin and somewhat stunted in growth, his head had the appearance of being too large and old, rather an adult head, with a shock of darkish hair, underneath which was a pale and usually dirty face. It was to his eternal credit that there was still some youth and sweetness left in him - adversity had not made him either mean or vengeful.

Whatever the steps he took to make life as easy for himself as possible under the circumstances, they were dictated purely by necessity. He rarely spoke, but when he did it was to the point.

And now as Mrs Harris continued to unfold yet more details of the most fascinating scheme ever devised to free a small boy from hideous tyranny and guarantee him three square meals a day, he sat silently, his mouth stuffed full of bun, but nodding, his huge eyes filled with intelligence and understanding while Mrs Harris enumerated each point of what he was to do when, where, and under various circumstances. In these same eyes was contained also considerable worship of her.

It was true, he loved the occasional cuddle pillowed upon the pneumatic bosom of Mrs Butterfield, though he did not go for too much of that soft stuff, or would not let himself, but it was he and Mrs Harris who were kindred souls. They recognized something in one another, the independent spirit, the adventurous heart, the unquenchable soul, the
ability to stand up to whatever had to be stood up to, and get on.

Mrs Harris was not one to fuss and gush over him, but she addressed him like an equal, for equal they were in that nether world of hard and unremitting toil to feed and clothe oneself, where life is all struggle and the helping hands are one’s own.

In so many ways they were alike. For instance, no one had ever heard Henry complain. Whatever happened to him, that’s how things were. No one had ever heard Mrs Harris complain either. Widowed at the age of thirty, she had raised, educated, and married off her daughter, and kept herself and her self-respect, and all on her hands and knees with a scrubbing brush, or bent over mop and duster, or sinks full of dirty dishes. She would have been the last person to have considered herself heroic, but the strain of simple heroism was in her, and Henry had it too. He also had that quick understanding that gets at the heart of the situation. Whereas Mrs Harris had to go into long and elaborate explanations of things to Mrs Butterfield, and she did so with great patience, little Henry usually got it in one, and would nod his acquiescence before Mrs Harris was half way through exposing what she had on her mind.

Now when Mrs Harris had finished rehearsing step by step how the plan was to work, Mrs Butterfield, who for the first time was hearing what seemed to her to be the concoction of a mad woman, threw her apron over her head and began to rock and moan.

‘Ere, ’ere, love, what’s wrong?’ said Mrs Harris. ‘Are you ill?’

‘Ill,’ cried Mrs Butterfield, ‘I should think so! Whatever it’s called, what you’re doing, it’s a jyle offence. You can’t get away with it. It’ll never work.’

Little Henry stuffed the last of a sugar bun into his mouth, washed it down with a swig of tea, wiped his lips with the back of his hand and turning his large eyes upon the quivering figure of Mrs Butterfield said simply, ‘Garn, why not?’

Mrs Harris threw back her head and roared with laughter. ‘Oh ’Enry,’ she said, ‘you’re a man after me own ’eart.’

L
IKE
all great ideas and schemes born out of Genius by Necessity, Mrs Harris’s plan to smuggle little Henry aboard the s.s.
Ville de Paris
at Southampton had the virtue of simplicity, and one to which the routine of boarding the ship with its attendant chaos, as Mr Schreiber had carefully explained to her, lent itself beautifully.

Since the Schreibers were going First-Class and the two women Tourist, they would not be able to travel together, and he had rehearsed for her the details of exactly what they would have to do - the departure by boat-train from Waterloo, the arrival at the pier at Southampton where, after passing through Customs and Immigration, they would board the tender for the trip down the Solent, and thus eventually would enter the side of the liner and be shown to their cabin, and thereafter the French line would take over.

To these instructions Mrs Harris added a vivid memory of an instance when she had been at Waterloo to take a suburban train, and at one of the gates had witnessed what appeared to be a small-sized riot, with people milling and
crowding, children shrieking, etc., and inquiring into the nature of this disturbance had been informed that it was merely the departure of the boat-train at the height of the season.

As Mrs Harris’s scheme was outlined to her, even that perpetual prophetess of doom, Mrs Butterfield, outdid herself with tremblings, groans, cries, quiverings, claspings of hands together, and callings upon heaven to witness that the only possible result could be that they would all spend the rest of their natural lives in a dungeon, and she, Mrs Violet Butterfield, would have no part of it. She had agreed to embark upon this hare-brained voyage across an ocean waiting to engulf them, to a land where death lurked at every corner, but not to make disaster doubly sure by beginning the trip with a kidnapping and a stowing away.

Mrs Harris who, once she had what she considered a feasible idea in her head, was not to be turned from it, said, ‘Now, now, Violet - don’t take on so. A stitch in time will help us to cross over those bridges.’ And then with remarkable patience and perseverance managed to overcome practically all her friend’s objections.

Her intrinsic plan was based upon recollections of childhood visits to Clacton-on-Sea with her Mum and Dad, and the outings they used to enjoy on the excursion steamers to Margate, a luxury they occasionally permitted themselves. Poor and thrifty, her folks could manage the price of two tickets, but not three. When time came to pass through the gates and encounter the ticket-taker, little Ada had been taught to detach herself from her parents and, seeking out a large family with five or more youngsters, join up with them until safely through the gates. Experience had taught them in the Sunday crush the harassed ticket-taker would not be able to distinguish whether it was five
or six children who had passed him, and the equally harassed father of the family would not notice that he had suddenly acquired an extra little girl. Once they were inside, by the time paterfamilias, perhaps aware that something was a little unusual about his brood, instituted a nose count, little Ada would have detached herself from this group and joined up with her parents again.

Moreover, there was a reserve gambit in case a large enough family failed to turn up. Father and mother would pass through on their tickets, and a few seconds later little Ada would let forth a wail, ‘I’m lost! I’m lost! I’ve lost my Mummie!’ By the time this performance had reached its climax and she was restored to her frantic parents, nobody thought of collecting a ticket from her. The excursion proceeded happily.

Mrs Butterfield, who in her youth had had similar experiences, was forced to concede that neither of these devices had ever failed. She was further put off her prophetic stroke by Mrs Harris’s superior knowledge as a world traveller.

‘Don’t forget, dearie,’ said Mrs Harris, ‘it’s a
French
boat. Muddle, that’s their middle name. They can’t get nothing done without carrying on shouting and waving their arms. You’ll see.’

Mrs Butterfield made one more attempt. ‘But once ’e’s in our room, won’t they find ’im?’ she quavered, her chins shaking.

Mrs Harris, now slightly impatient, snorted, ‘Lor’, love, use yer loaf. We’ve got a barfroom, ’aven’t we?’

This was indeed true. So thrilled had Mrs Schreiber been with her luck in acquiring two servants whom she liked and trusted, that she had persuaded her husband to procure for them one of the better rooms available in Tourist-Class on the liner, one of a few with a bathroom connected, and
intended for larger families. Mrs Harris had been shown the accommodations on a kind of skeleton plan of the ship, and while she did not exactly know what part the barfroom would play once aboard the lugger, it loomed large in her mind at least as a retreat into which parties could momentarily retire during alarm or crisis.

A
S
may be imagined, the departure of Mrs Harris and Mrs Butterfield for the United States was an event that shook the little street in Battersea known as Willis Gardens to its Roman foundations, and all of their friends and neighbours, including the unspeakable Gussets, turned out to bid them Godspeed. Such was the excitement engendered by the arrival of the taxicab at number five, and the piling of ancient trunks and valises on the roof and next the driver’s seat, that no one thought about or noticed the absence of little Henry Brown.

Like all persons unused to travelling, the two women had taken far more with them than they would ever need, including photographs, ornaments, and little knick-knacks from their homes which meant something to them, and thus the inside of the cab was also stuffed with luggage, leaving, it seemed, barely room for the stout figure of Mrs Butterfield and the spare one of Mrs Harris to squeeze in.