Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris & Mrs. Harris Goes to New York (34 page)

‘Well, it isn’t exactly a tapping or a clicking, nor would I say it was exactly a knocking or a scraping - nor even a ticking or a pipping,’ explained Mr Bayswater, ‘but it’s there. I can ’ear it. You shouldn’t hear anything in a Rolls-Royce - not
my
Rolls-Royce. It’s under the seat somewhere, but not exactly - rather more at the back, and it’s driving me up the wall. It’s somehow as if the Good Lord had said, “You there, so proud and stuck-up about your automobile - perfect you said it was. I’ll show you perfect. Let’s see you get around
this
, Mr Stuck-up.” It ain’t that I’m stuck-up,’ explained Mr Bayswater, ‘it’s just that I love Rolls cars. All me life I’ve never loved anything else. All me life I’ve been looking for the perfect one, and this was it - until now.’

The distress on the handsome features of the elderly chauffeur touched Mrs Harris’s heart and made her
forget her own troubles, and she wished genuinely to be able to comfort him as he somehow had managed to comfort her. Some long-ago memory was nibbling at her newly awakened and refreshed mind, and it suddenly gave her a sharp nip. ‘I ’ad a lady once I did for some years ago,’ she said, ‘a proper Mrs Rich-Bitch she was. She ’ad a Rolls and a chauffeur, and one day I heard ’er say, “James, there’s something rattling in the back of the car. Find it before I ’as a nervous breakdown.” Coo, ’e nearly went orf ’is loaf tryin’ to locate it. ’Ad the car took apart and put together twice, and then come across it by accident. You know what it was?’

‘No,’ said Mr Bayswater. ‘What was it?’

‘One of ’er hairpins that fell out and slipped down be’ind the seat. But that couldn’t be it, could it? The Marquis don’t wear ’airpins.’

Mr Bayswater had a lapse, a real, fat, juicy lapse. ‘Blimey,’ he cried, ‘Gaw bleedin’ blimey!’ and on his face was the look of the condemned who hears that he has been reprieved by the Governor. ‘I think you’ve got it! The Marquis doesn’t wear hairpins, but last week I drove Madame Mogahdjibh, the wife of the Syrian Ambassador, home after a party. She was loaded with them - big black ones. Ada, my girl, here’s the smack you didn’t get on the boat,’ and he leaned down and kissed her brow, then leaped to his feet and said, ‘I’m going to find out. I’ll be seeing you,’ and rushed from the room.

Left to herself Mrs Harris reflected upon this matter of perfection for which humans seem to strive, as exemplified by Mr Bayswater’s distress over something that had come to shatter the perfection of the finest car in the world, and she thought that perhaps perfection belonged only to that Being on High who sometimes seemed friendly
to humans, and sometimes less so, and at other times even a little jealous.

Had she been asking too much? ‘Yes’, something inside Mrs Harris answered vehemently, ‘far too much.’ It had not been only fairy godmother she had been trying to play, it had been almost God, and the punishment that had followed had been swift and sure. And then her thoughts turned back to her Dior dress which had been so exquisite and so perfect, and the ugly burnt-out panel that was in it to remind her that though the dress itself had been spoiled, out of the experience had come something even better in the shape of some wonderful friendships.

And from thence it was but a step to the comfort that if she had been less than successful in her avowed mission of reuniting little Henry with his father, it had not been wholly a failure. Nothing in life ever was a complete and one hundred per cent success, but often one could well afford to settle for less, and this would seem to be the greatest lesson one could learn in life. Little Henry was out of the hands of the unspeakable Gussets, he had acquired adoptive parents who loved him and would help him to grow into a good and fine man; she herself had experienced and learned to feel an affection for a new land and a new people. Thus to grouse and grumble and carry on in the face of such bounty now suddenly took on the colour of darkest ingratitude. The Schreibers so happy, little Henry equally so - how dare she not be happy herself because her ridiculous and vainglorious little dream had been exploded.

‘Ada ’Arris,’ she said to herself, ‘you ought to be ashymed of yerself, lyin’ about ’ere on yer back when there’s work to be done.’ She called out aloud, ‘Violet.’

Mrs Butterfield came galumphing into the room like an overjoyed hippopotamus. ‘Did you call me, dearie? Lor’ bless us, but if you ain’t lookin’ like yer old self again.’

‘ ’Ow about making me a cuppa tea, love?’ said Mrs Harris. ‘I’m gettin’ up.’

T
HE
early summer enchantment of May and June in New York, with girls out in their light summer dresses, the parks in full bloom, and the skies clear and sunny, had given way to the sweltering, uncomfortable humidity and heatwaves of July. The Schreiber household was running like clockwork, with a permanent staff now trained and disciplined by Mrs Harris, the final formalities by which the Schreibers became the adopted parents and guardians of Henry Brown completed, and the child installed in his own quarters in the Schreiber house. The passage of time was bringing nearer two events about which something would have to be done.

One of them was the arrival of vacation time, the annual exodus from the hot city to the more temperate climes of mountains or seashore, and the other was the approaching expiration on the 17th of July of the visitors’ visas to the United States of the dames Butterfield and Harris.

Mr and Mrs Schreiber held several conferences together on the subject, and then one evening Mrs Butterfield and Mrs Harris were called into Mr Schreiber’s study, where they found the couple seated, looking portentous.

‘Dear Mrs Harris and dear Mrs Butterfield, don’t stand, do sit down please,’ said Mrs Schreiber. ‘My husband and I have something to discuss with you.’

The two Englishwomen exchanged glances and then gingerly occupied the edges of two chairs, and Mrs Schreiber said, ‘Mr Schreiber and I have taken a small cottage in Maine by the sea for little Henry and ourselves, where we intend to spend several months and rest quietly. Mr Schreiber is very tired after the work of reorganizing his company and we don’t wish to do any entertaining. We can leave our flat here in the hands of our staff, but we were wondering whether you and Mrs Butterfield wouldn’t accompany us to Forest Harbour and look after little Henry and myself while we are there. Nothing would make us happier.’

The two women exchanged looks again, and Mr Schreiber said, ‘You don’t have to worry about your visitors’ visas - I got friends in Washington who can get you a six months’ extension. I was going to do that anyway.’

‘And afterwards in the fall when we come back, well, we rather hoped you’d stay with us too,’ Mrs Schreiber continued. And then in a rush blurted, ‘We hoped somehow we might persuade you to stay with us for always. You see, little Henry loves you both, and - so do we - I mean, we feel we owe you a debt of gratitude we can never repay. If it hadn’t been for you we never should have had little Henry for our very own, and he already means more to us than my husband and I are able to say. We just don’t ever want you to go. You won’t have to work hard, and you can always make your home with us. Will you stay? Will you come with us this summer?’

In the silence that ensued after this plea the two Londoners exchanged looks for the third time, and Mrs Butterfield’s chins began to quiver, but Mrs Harris as spokesman and
captain of the crew remained more in control, though she too was visibly touched by the offer. ‘Lor’ bless you both for your kindness,’ she said, ‘Violet and I have been discussing nothing else for days. We’re ever so sorry - we carn’t.’

Mr Schreiber looked genuinely nonplussed. ‘Discussing it for days?’ he said. ‘Why, we’ve only sprung it on you now. We haven’t known about it ourselves until just recent— ’

‘We’ve seen it coming,’ said Mrs Harris, and Mrs Butterfield, all her chins throbbing now, put a corner of her apron to one eye and said, ‘Such dear, kind people.’

‘You mean you knew all about the house we’ve taken in the country and that we’d want you and Mrs Butterfield to come with us there?’ Mrs Schreiber asked in astonishment.

Mrs Harris was not at all abashed. She replied, ‘One ’ears things about the ’ouse. Little pitchers have big ears, and rolling stones have bigger ones. What is there to talk about in servants’ ’all except what goes on in the front of the ’ouse?’

‘Then you won’t stay?’ said Mrs Schreiber, a note of unhappiness in her voice.

‘Love,’ said Mrs Harris, ‘there’s nuffink we wouldn’t want to do for you to repay you for your kindness to us, and for giving little ’Enry a ’ome and a chance in life, but we’ve talked it over - we carn’t, we just carn’t.’

Mr Schreiber, who saw his wife’s disappointment, said, ‘What’s the matter? Don’t you like America?’

‘Lor’ love yer,’ said Mrs Harris fervently, ‘it ain’t that. It’s wonderful. There’s nuffink like it anywhere else in the world. Ain’t that so, Violet?’

Mrs Butterfield’s emotions were such that she was able to do no more than nod acquiescence.

‘Well then, what is it?’ persisted Mr Schreiber. ‘If it’s more money you want, we could— ’

‘Money!’ exclaimed Mrs Harris aghast. ‘We’ve had too much already. We wouldn’t take another penny off you. It’s just - just that we’re ’omesick.’

‘Homesick,’ Mr Schreiber echoed, ‘with all you’ve got over here? Why, we’ve got everything.’

‘That’s just it,’ said Mrs Harris. ‘We’ve got too much of everything ’ere - we’re ’omesick for less. Our time is up. We want to go back to London.’ And suddenly, as though it came forth from the deep and hidden wells of her heart, she cried with a kind of anguish that touched Mrs Schreiber and penetrated even to her husband, ‘Don’t ask us to stay, please - or ask us why.’

For how could she explain, even to the Schreibers who knew and had lived in and loved London themselves, their longing for the quieter, softer tempo of that great, grey, sprawling city where they had been born and reared?

The tall, glittering skyscrapers of New York raised one’s eyes into the heavens, the incredible crash and bustle and thunder of the never-still traffic, and the teeming canyons at the bottom of the mountainous buildings excited and stimulated the nerves and caused the blood to pump faster, the glorious shops and theatres, the wonders of the supermarkets, were sources of never-ending excitement to Mrs Harris. How, then, explain their yearning to be back where grey, drab buildings stretched for seemingly never-ending blocks, or turned to quaint, quiet, tree-lined squares, or streets where every house was painted a different colour?

How to make their friends understand that excitement too long sustained loses its pitch, that they yearned for the quiet and the comforting ugliness of Willis Gardens, where the hooves of the old horse pulling the flower vendor’s dray in the spring sounded cloppety-cloppety-cloppety in the quiet, and the passage of a taxicab was almost an event?

What was there to compare, Mrs Harris and Mrs Butterfield had decided, in all this rush, scurry, litter, and hurry, this neon-lit, electricity-blazing city where they had indeed been thrilled to have been a part of it for a short time, with the quiet comfort of cups of tea that they drank together on alternate evenings in their little basement flats in their own particular little corner of London?

Nor could they, without hurting the feelings of these good people, tell them that they were desperately missing quite a different kind of excitement, and that was the daily thrill of their part-time work.

In London each day brought them something different, some new adventure, some new titbit of gossip, something good happened, something bad, some cause for mutual rejoicing or mutual indignation. They served not one but each a dozen or more clients of varying moods and temperaments. Each of these clients had a life, hopes, ambitions, worries, troubles, failures, and triumphs, and these Mrs Harris and Mrs Butterfield shared for an hour or two a day. Thus instead of one, each of them lived a dozen vicarious lives, lives rich and full, as their part-time mistresses and masters confided in them, as was the custom in London between employer and daily woman.

What would Major Wallace’s new girl be like, the one he had carefully explained as his cousin just arrived from Rhodesia, but whom Mrs Harris knew he had encountered at the ‘Antelope’ two nights before? What new demands of service to be joyously, fiercely, and indignantly resisted would the Countess Wyszcinska present on the morrow? Did the
Express
have a juicy scandal story of how Lord Whosit had been caught by his wife canoodling with Pamela Whatsit among the potted palms at that gay Mayfair party? Mrs Fford Ffoulkes, she of the twin Fs and the social
position of a witty and attractive divorcée, would have been there, and the next afternoon when Mrs Harris arrived to ‘do’ for her between the hours of three and five she would have the story of what really happened, and some of the riper details that the
Express
had been compelled by the laws of libel to forgo.

Then there was the excitement connected with her other bachelor client, Mr Alexander Hero, whose business it was to poke his nose into haunted houses, who maintained a mysterious laboratory at the back of his house in Eaton Mews, and whom she looked after and mothered, in spite of the fact that she was somewhat afraid of him. But there was a gruesome thrill in being connected with someone who was an associate of ghosts, and she revelled in it.