The Brontes Went to Woolworths (23 page)

‘Your children would be a ghastly toss-up. They
might
be like us, but can you see a daughter with Freddie’s nose? She’d be apt to resemble him, you know, daughters are always supposed to “take after” Papa (you’re like father). How would he mix with our friends? He’s a darling and an angel and
we
would love having him, but what about them? Try and conceive Aunt Susan’s comments and Uncle Noble’s; and dinner-parties together.

‘Another thing: Freddie would almost never be home. He spends three-quarters of the year doing circuits, and you already spew on the provinces after only three weeks of them.

‘My best of pigs, it
can
’
t
be done! I’ve known Pipson longer than you have, and I’m just as fond of him as you are, and I don’t mind saying that if there weren’t so many Ifs about on both sides I’d have loved a week with him at sunny Bognor Regis, in the past. One would enjoy every minute of the day, though I sometimes have m’doubts about (shall we say) the rest of the evening. (Aren’t Modern Gurls orful?)

‘I know exactly what you’re feeling, and I think, I hope, I believe, as we used to say at school when struggling to define “
doch
,” it will pass along.’

There. I’ve made a Roman holiday of my dear little acquaintance, and I only hope I’m right. I could weather it, but there are mother and Sheil . . . one can’t have things touch them. But oh! what a gad to marry Freddie! But she mustn’t. Oh, what a husband and father and lover were there. I’m sure Toddy would agree with me about the latter aspects; he’s awfully fair, even away from the Bench.

‘I know you’re right, Deiry, curse and damn you. I’d thought out lots of what you say, but not all of it. It’s rum how trifles clinch things, but when I’d read your letter I suddenly saw “Sydney” on our lawn – downing whisky after soda and calling me K’treen. I
know
one must stick to gentlemen, but they’re apt to be doocid slow, aren’t they? Toddy sounds a live wire, and there was father, of course
’

I was so relieved that I raced Crellie all along our street and called out ‘Whoops, dearie!’ to him, and the constable at the corner said, ‘Terrible noise . . .
ter
rible noise.’

‘Bless you, K. All the creatures think you’ve done what Toddy would call “the prudent thing . . . m’m . . . yes,” and Saffy, who thinks he’s cuts above Freddie Pipson because he makes eyes in white and pom-poms instead of appearing with a scratch wig, is capering with indignation at “the fella’s” presumption in aspiring to you. We didn’t even
tell
Ironface. She’s so hopelessly
crême de la crême
that she couldn’t take in the mere possibility of such a
mésalliance
. On the French stage, all is
canaille
, unless one is a
Sociétaire
of the
Comédie
. It would be so like her to overlook the fact that she herself sang the
Belle Mondaine
at the
Salle des Odalisques
. The other day I said to Sheil, quite casually, “Suppose Katrine married Freddie Pipson,” and she said, “
Won’t
Austen Charles hate it!” Emily, by the way, treats it with a marble contempt, but Charlotte says that where one loves, one takes. (She’s evidently got her Héger on the Other Side). N.B. – Sheil calls him “Hagar” and seems to think he’s the Bible one, so we’ve put her on to
Villette
.’

The schoolroom is beginning to put on its winter manner and to be at its best. Lighting-up time is earlier, and the air smells of wood smoke. To-morrow, I’m taking Crellie through the Gardens and meeting Toddy on his way home. There’s only one fly, no bigger than a man’s hand, in the ointment, as father used to say. The new governess arrives the day after. Miss Ainslie.

‘It’s no joke trying to keep one’s hands off Freddie, and I think he’s finding it as bad as I am. It’s
so
difficult to think Sydney steadily when one sees Freddie suddenly in the wings, or on the stairs. I only know you’re right when I’m alone in the digs. Perhaps all this is a sign that I’m not really in love with him, but burn me! if it feels like it. The oddest thing is that I feel I couldn’t possibly marry anybody unless Saffy and Pauline and Ennis (and even Ironface) approved. And I don’t believe you could, either.

‘Howjer mean about Emily and Charlotte? Have they joined us, too? What a scream! I always thought Emily rather crazy, myself. How do we strike her?’

26

When Katrine came home, I took her straight off to the Toddingtons. She must share everything we’ve got. We had so much to tell each other that we could hardly get our breath.

‘What do we call her?’

‘ “Lady Mildred,” quite firmly.’

Katrine grinned. ‘Well I
am
blithered! To think it’s really happened
’

‘I know.’

‘And we like her, do we?’

‘Awfully. Besides, there is what she did for Sheil. That night, you know.’

‘And has she really got that bewildered respect for brains that’s always getting out of its depth, as we said?’

‘Yes and no. She’s no fool. I used to be afraid that Toddy didn’t appreciate her; it’s difficult for brilliant people to be tolerant. Their minds work too quickly, and none of us has a chance when he starts summing up at table, or closing his eyes and giving faint hisses of distress when Mildred or any of us drop bricks. Things like “under the circumstances” . . . sometimes Mildred briefs me for the defence but Toddy is apt to rout us both. I never knew how illogical my mind was, until I knew him. Mother and I chaff him, and when he loves me he calls me “dear child,” and when he’s cross, “Come, come!” ’

‘How perfect! I suppose you’re getting no end of data; peeps behind the scenes, and so on.’

‘Masses.’

The famous Sir Horatio Sparrow is one of the Toddingtons’ oldest friends, and he and Toddy are apt to begin the evening in a tremendous atmosphere of one-old-colleague-to-another, and end it by squabbles, placidly referee’d by Mildred, on the most inconceivable subjects. In squabble, Toddy becomes remote and forensic, while Sir Horatio flounces like a bantam and I shiver with giggles in a corner. And Sir Horatio’s peevish little face lights with the joy of argument, and his mouth becomes a puckered hole of exasperation.

He writes poetry. Lady Mildred keeps a visitors’ book in both her London and her riverside house, because her mother always kept one. Toddy hates the book, and she told me that he once said she had the soul of a landlady and indeed there is one entry which reads, ‘Hope to come again. Rooms most clean and comfortable, and attendance all that could be desired.’ This, from a clever, spankable little playwright, who had overheard the remark, and enjoyed the Toddingtons’ hospitality at Molesey for a week. Sir Horatio’s contribution (date 1889) contains a plenteous reference to the Thames, and begins, and it includes a lot of Latin and compares the sunset on Molesey Lock with similar manifestations over the Acropolis (‘Here might I find me peace, meseems’), and by the end of the poem Sheridan is left in his shirt sleeves. Toddy was looking on when Mildred showed me the book, and shook all over and said, ‘Poor Sparrow’s verses haven’t a foot to stand on,’ and I said, ‘Laughter in court,’ and he made one of his lips at me, and said he’d have me removed by the tipstaff.

Methought the shade of Sheridan was there, And Tilburina, with her naiad’s hair,

Sir Horatio sometimes kisses Mildred when he comes in, and Toddy looks at him over his pince-nez and says, ‘When you’ve quite done with my wife, Horatio
’ and Sir Horatio says, ‘Haven’t begun with her yet, old boy. You must give us time.’ And last week Mildred said, ‘Time, you old terror? You’ve had twenty-five years!’

Lady Mildred and I often watch the two little creatures, toddling reunited to their club, and I say, ‘Aren’t they
rather
sweet!’ as the parchment-and-silver figures dwindle out of sight.

She has remembered about Crellie and the confessions at St Albans, Teddington, and when she discovered that we used to live near there, at Hampton Wick, she took me completely to her bosom. It is part of a past that mother says we are gradually living down, but for Mildred’s sake I hoist the skeleton from the cupboard.

My earliest memories are of expeditions filled with the desolate stink of scented rushes, and the sight of Pope’s Villa from the towing-path; and the July paraphernalia of collapsible cups and squeaking tea-basket, and spring evenings in the Home Park, pale and malignant, like the eyes of a goat. Mildred’s girlhood was spent at Molesey, and her mother left her her old home, so it’s all fish to Mildred’s retrospective net, and in her eagerness to recreate the past, she sometimes asks me if I remember the Tatham boys, or the Freers – or other persons who were married and fathers when I was still in a high chair. And, by now, the Tatham boys are far more real to me than if I had ever met them, or received their kisses under the suburban lilacs . . .

She can’t understand it. We had, as usual, been deep in discussion of some riverside family her people knew, and I found myself coming out with odds and ends of things about them. There was, for instance, Malcolm Cotton, who slipped down his punt pole under Kingston Bridge into the water, and Mildred was on to that ancient
cause
célèbre
in a minute. Then, ‘But, you say you never knew them?’

I said, ‘Look here, Lady Mildred, I can’t explain, but one can sometimes remember things one never saw just as it’s possible to be homesick for places one’s never been to.’

But here I struck a dead spot. I trailed off into, ‘If you’re frightfully interested in people, you begin to
know
things about them.’ She shook her head and said I was a funny girl . . .
I
often think that perhaps there is only a limited amount of memory going about the world, and that when it wants to live again, it steals its nest, like a cuckoo.

Mildred has told me how, as a young man, Toddy would ride over to Molesey from his rooms in Fountain Court, and spend week-ends, and she added, ‘Of course we knew everyone in Molesey society, and Herbert was wild with jealousy at my Sunbury young men,’ and Toddy, deep in the
Athenoeum
, gave a faint hiss, and I tried not to strangle with laughter. It seems that Mrs Brockley gave big lawn parties, and they had a punt and a small sailing yacht, and I can see it all. And so, in flannels, and I fear a straw hat and even a blazer, and to the accompaniment of tonkle-te-blips from the harps of passing steamers and the light and affable conversation that was current in the eighties, the rising young barrister proposed to Mildred Brockley.

We sometimes wonder who he would have married if