The Brontes Went to Woolworths (10 page)

‘Yes, Toddy darling?’

‘I was so pleased to see you this evening.’

‘Bless you, my pet! Has Mildred gone to bed yet?’

‘My wife?’

‘Hah!’

‘Yes, I believe so.’

‘Why didn’t you come to the bazaar, Toddy?’

‘How kind you are to be so informal.’

‘Hah!’

‘I was at a rehearsal. Um . . . yes . . . ’ ‘Did they crowd round you, and make a fuss of you?’

‘I received every courtesy from those ladies.’

‘Oh, come off it, Toddy!’

‘What do you mean? Who are you speaking to?’

Katrine chipped in. ‘I expect the star sat on his knee.’

‘Who is this person? Introduce me.’

Toddy is never at his happiest with Katrine. For months we have introduced them to each other laboriously every day. Whenever she annoys him he makes this request. Katrine loves baiting him, and he comes to mother and Sheil and me for redress and sympathy.

By midnight it transpired that Toddy had set the entire company right upon a point of law, had been given a box for the first night, in which two chairs were to be sacred to mother and myself – we to dine first with the Todding-tons and then ‘go on’ in their car, and that he had been himself driven home by the leading man with whom he had made an engagement to play billiards on the following evening at the Garrick Club.

After all, why not? Toddington must have done exactly that sort of thing dozens of times. The worst of it is that, when the evening comes and one isn’t dressing and the car isn’t outside, one is so disappointed that it is tiring.

But the looking forward to the evening is lovely . . .

Mother’s final words were, ‘And the Lalique! Did she have a lot?’

‘Not a hap’orth! It was suède bags, and little disgustboxes of olive wood.’

11

Agatha Martin was shut into her bedroom. The schoolroom was pleasant enough, but she had often read that governesses were not expected to have a human side, and in any case the Carne girls, particularly Deirdre, used her pupil’s room to a degree which was surely unusual.

Mabel’s old lady was dying – she took up Flossie’s letter. There was a rumour that Mr Francis was to be transferred to another curacy.

Miss Martin turned yet again to his photograph. Between the two exhibits she unhappily pondered. Then, from the inner flap of her writing-case, she drew three closely, neatly written sheets. They were signed Arthur M. Francis, and in phrases well-expressed, if a little stilted, he offered her marriage. They would be definitely poor, but he ventured to think that as neither Agatha nor himself was of extravagant habits, as their outlook on life was essentially settled, as neither was one of our Bright Young People, he thought that a fire and a pipe for him, and a fire and some fancywork or a book for her when the day’s long trick was over . . .

Miss Martin smiled a little at the Bright Young People touch and the Masefield reference. They were typical of the man. Then she dwelt again upon the sincere love he had for her, the admiration of her pluck in becoming a part of strange families . . . the words swam before her eyes. What need to read on? She knew the letter by heart. She had written it herself. It was nearing the end of October, and so there was always the schoolroom fire in case of emergency.

Goodness really knew where Carne vagaries might move Agatha next summer, not that they could take her much further from Cheltenham than that appalling Yorkshire village. Such uncomfortable rooms, and the natives so terribly weird and unmannerly. Their sitting-room so close to the public bar, and their privacy not always respected, with that red-haired boy staring in over the curtains whenever he wished. A little more, and Agatha would have mentioned it to Mrs Carne. She had suspected once or twice that he was not sober.

It was, perhaps, the contrast of having travelled to it all fresh from home. Arthur had called round twice, and they had had one of their glorious afternoons under the mulberry, with the Pater in good spirits and Flossie more like a mother to him than a daughter. But already there were changes. Agatha’s desire for re-incorporation had, it seemed, meant little adjustments. Already she (and presumably Violet and Mabel) was counted out of the domestic reckoning. In the future, they were to be beloved visitors . . . Agatha Martin looked involuntarily and with a dreadful clarity into the future.

There was a postal order to send to Mabel. She would not have saved much of her salary . . . that winter coat . . . Arthur would be certain to drop in to say good-bye, if the rumour was true. On the other side of the writing-case were several letters from him; newsy, semi-affectionate, semi-fraternal.

What a year!

Unfamiliar railway stations, one’s trunk marooned on the platform. And all over the country, Violet and Mabel on platforms, too, wondering what their bedrooms were like? For that was, now, what mattered most . . . and Mabel, soon to be out of a post, for which she must hope as she must dread.

Agatha wondered how it had all come about? It was, she supposed, inevitable, since finances were the Pater’s concern, and if his arrangements for his family miscarried, the universe was to blame for a display of bad taste. What a mercy she herself was a Newnham woman! And that, before Cheltenham suspicion could have been awakened. The dates tallied, beautifully . . . quite three years before the Pater had to retrench . . . Arthur had called her Our Blue-stocking . . . and threatened to appear from her wardrobe, suddenly, at one of the cocoas, and get her sent down in disgrace (‘I want to hear what you girls really do talk about, only I’m afraid of being horribly shocked’). They had often stood joking on the pavement during the morning shopping, Mr Francis leaning on his bicycle.

For a long time she dwelt upon the idea of writing to him again. He was a friend of the family . . . it was a bother that Sheil said so few quotable things . . . but professionally speaking, Miss Martin believed she had cause for congratulation in general directions. There was, for instance, a sensible diminution in the nonsense-talk about that Dion Saffyn at luncheon, and his probably imaginary and in any case unremarkable daughters. It was only when they all returned so suddenly from Yorkshire that she, catching sight of the paragraph about his funeral, had condoled with Katrine about it and discovered – Miss Martin was overcome by a backwash of indignation – that the Carnes didn’t know him, even slightly. Katrine had said so, quite coolly, very quietly reducing Agatha to bewildered Buts – , then with an authority she had never assumed before, ‘Miss Martin, we have all agreed that Sheil mustn’t be told, if you don’t mind trying to remember,’ she walked out of the schoolroom.

After that, ready, she assured herself, for anything, Agatha was quite prepared for the Toddingtons to go by the board as well, but her calculations were thrown out once more, and Lady Toddington called, and remained to tea . . . Miss Martin had been present. She considered that Lady Toddington was probably one of the most respectable friends the Carnes possessed. A society woman. But when Miss Martin compressed her lips – it came to persons like Mr Pipson, she thought Mrs Carne was going altogether too far even for Katrine’s sake.

He had come to tea a week ago driven up in an immense car, and had been treated altogether as an equal by his hostess and her daughters. Agatha had made the terrible mistake of liking him, in spite of his accent and grammar. He had been most attentive and polite, and by his abstention from bad language or calls for beer, had given her no clue whatsoever as to who or what he was. He said to her, for all to hear, ‘Ah, I often wish I’d had more education. If you’ll believe me, Miss Martin, I couldn’t write till I was fourteen, and as for spelling – well!’ and she, assuming he was some business magnate of such long standing that his beginnings were purged, opened her mouth to expound her theories to a sympathetic ear, when Mrs Carne said, ‘I can’t spell, either, Mr Pipson,’ and Sheil, bright-eyed, called out, ‘
I
won’t spell – – if you can’t!’ and had evidently taken one of her terrible fancies to the little man, and that meant goodness really knows what, for Agatha to cope with and disperse. And she dragged him upstairs to see the toy theatre, and he examined it and said, ‘You’ll get the LCC down on you in the twinkling of a ton of bricks, Miss Sheil,’ which remark, for the usual baffling reason, delighted the child, for she exclaimed, ‘Now I
really
adore you!’ and Mr Pipson said, ‘Then we’ll be married on the Tuesday, if it falls early in the week, and I’m not laid up with one of my attacks of synopsis of the scenario.’ And then they had walked round the little garden, and he told Mrs Carne what to do for green-fly and how to deal with wire-worms (‘My gardener’s a good man but that old-fashioned you wouldn’t hardly believe. Now, what
you
want to do, Mrs Carne
’). And he showed Sheil some dance steps, and the child was enraptured, and they cut capers all over the borders, and Mrs Carne laughed until she cried. But as he was shaking hands he looked at Katrine and said, ‘In a fortnight we shall be in Bradford. Eh, Braaadford!’ then, to his hostess, with a sudden seriousness, ‘You can trust me to watch out for Miss Carne as if she was my own, Mrs Carne.’ And Mrs Carne said, ‘I know I can,’ and he put his arm round Sheil and said, ‘God bless you, dear, pleased to have met you, Miss Martin.’

Later, Agatha delicately approached the subject of the departed guest. It had called for tact, of course, but the elder girls, she had to admit, were seldom touchy.

‘A charming man, but – would one say he was
quite
a gentleman?’

‘Pipson? A gentleman?’ answered Deirdre, ‘he’s a low comedian, Miss Martin. He’s Freddie Pipson.’

And it was then that Agatha had begun to see that his good manners were merely bohemianism, helped out by the courtesy of herself and the family. The Carnes should have warned her, but they were an incalculable family. Kind, in many ways kinder than any of her previous families, but, somehow, having the effect of making one want, as never before, to have a long chat with Flossie, or to set out on a good walk with Violet and Mabel . . .

The latest Carne joke, it appeared, was to say, ‘Pleased to meet you,’ whenever they passed each other on the stairs, and to do what they described as ‘pipsonising’ at mealtimes. Deirdre would say, ‘If you’ll pardon me, Mrs Carne, you’re commencing to cut the beef wrongly, if you know what I mean,’ and Katrine would reply, ‘If I’m not robbing
you
, may I ask you to pass the cruet?’ then both together would enquire, ‘Is your tea as you like it?’ And even Sheil would call out, ‘Don’t spill it, Miss Carne; if I may pass the remark, whatever are you doing?’

Agatha had actually stopped all this. Sheil was admittedly her province, and her own possibly impulsive rebuke had nominally been addressed to the child. But she rather thought the others had taken the hint . . .

‘Well, really, Sheil, I quite thought Mr Pipson was a friend of yours, but one wouldn’t say so to hear you making fun of him.’ Silence had fallen round the table. Sheil flushed angrily, and began an incoherent sentence.

‘I wasn’t making fun of him. When – when – when
’ then, tiresomely, Deirdre finished her meaning for her, a way she had . . .

‘When one is really fond of people, you know, Miss Martin, it’s sometimes the greatest compliment one can pay them.’

Agatha, at a loss, remembered that she had replied, ‘Then I shall look forward to the day when you all begin to imitate
me
,’ and Mrs Carne offered her more beef. But after that there was no more Mr Pipson. ‘It may take time,’ thought Miss Martin, ‘but in the end I think one’s influence will be felt.’ It was all quite harmless, but it was beyond doubt the result of friendships with impossibles. It was lucky for the Carnes that they had known the Toddingtons for some years, or they might have scared them away, but Agatha supposed they were accustomed to it all, by now, though Lady Toddington had certainly seemed rather formal with them, for a friendship of such long standing. Now Agatha came to think of it, she had kissed nobody, on leaving – except Sheil, of whom she had said, ‘I can’t help it, she’s such a little pet, aren’t you, Baby?’