The Happy Prisoner (26 page)

“If only she goes before the wedding,” Mrs. North prayed, when Oliver warned her what they were in for. “She may not be having a fit, of course; but if she is, Heaven knows the trouble she'll cause. Maybe we could shut her up in her room? But that's unkind to John, and she's such a charming woman, in spite of it all, that she'll be quite an asset to the party. Lady Spicer was all over her at Heather's wedding, but of course she never did find out what happened to her spectacles.”

Lady Sandys and Miss Smutts arrived in a hired car from Shrewsbury, having taken a much later train than they had arranged, and kept John waiting fruitlessly half the day at the station.

Oliver heard shrill noises in the hall. “Well, I did think you'd have met us, darling,” John's mother was saying; “but as you didn't,
n'importe
. We found this delightful man, and he's been telling me all about the difficulty he has to get enough petrol, so I've promised to write to old Harrison about it. He's the fuel
king
, you know, and he'd do anything for me. Come in, Mr. Steptoe. Oh, the bags—thank you very much. Hattie,
dearest, how are you? I've promised him he should have a cup of tea; he tells me he hasn't had time for a meal all day. Isn't that dreadful?”

Oliver was sure Mr. Peploe would like bothering anyone for tea at seven o'clock as little as they would like having to make it, and when after: “And where is Oliver? I can't wait to see him. I've heard so much about him, he's quite a hero to me,” the door burst open, he saw Mr. Peploe in the hall making embarrassed protestations to his mother.

Lady Sandys was tiny and bright and brittle, insubstantial as a humming-bird. She had been exquisite, and was exquisite still, until you got close enough to see the lines like little bird tracks running all over her face, and the bones too close under the skin, as pathetically miniature as those of a quail on toast that you can hardly bear to eat. No food ever had a chance to fatten her, because she was always on the go, even during meals. Oliver's mother, who seldom sat still for more than five minutes at a time, was stagnant compared to Lady Sandys. She tripped into the room in a slickly cut tailormade with a skirt no bigger than a pocket handkerchief. A doll-sized Edwardian hat was tipped over one eye and the other sparkled at Oliver through a fine veil drawn tightly over her pointed chin. Barely touching the floor, she crossed the room, both hands in long suéde gloves held out to him.

“At last,” she said in her high, clear, musical voice. “I've heard so much about you. I feel you're almost like my son. I've come all this way, you know, really just to see you. Oh, this
is
nice. I am so delighted to meet you! How are you? You're even better looking then they told me. It's that pale, fragile look, you know; it's hopelessly becoming.” Her hand in his was as light as a leaf, and when she touched his arm she did not even press the pyjama sleeve against the skin. Oliver was not very substantial himself, but she made him feel quite hulking and clumsy. He grinned at her, and suddenly into his mind came the absurd fancy that if he opened his mouth wide enough he could take her whole head inside and snap it off the brittle stalk of her neck. Surprised at his thought, he realised that she had the same insect friability that arouses the sadist in small boys who tears the wings off flies. She chattered and sparkled at him, and although she was effusive, it was not the overpowering effusion of people like Mrs. Ogilvie, because it was not forced. The warmth of her greeting was sincere. She really was pleased to see him and as interested in him as she said. He could see why people were attracted by her.

Behind her into the room came John, whom no stretch of imagination could believe to be her son. “What about the taxi, Mother?” he asked:. “He's waiting to be paid.”

“Oh, but he's got to have his tea!” She whipped round in concern. “I promised him his tea. Do you know,” she turned back to Oliver, “that poor Mr. Steptoe hasn't had a thing to eat all day. I think it's scandalous. He was telling me how his wife always wants to make him sandwiches out of her cheese and corned-beef ration, but he won't let her, because she's anaemic, you see, and has to be fed up. I think it's quite haunting really, the lives some people lead. I wake in the night sometimes and worry about them; do you? Shall I go and put the kettle on, John, and do delicious buttered toast? I wonder if your mother-in-law's got any cinnamon. The poor man must have his tea. He's been looking forward to it ever since that village with the hump-backed bridge, where I suggested it.”

“It's all right, dear,” said John. “Elizabeth's getting it.”

“Elizabeth?” she asked, always interested in any new name.

“My nurse,” explained Oliver.

“Oh yes, of course. I look forward to meeting her. Nurses always appeal to me, especially young ones. Is she young? They have that fascination of being experienced beyond their years, like French girls.”

“If you'd give me the money for the taxi, dear,” repeated John patiently, “he could go straight out by the kitchen when he's had this famous tea. Smutty doesn't seem to have enough on her.”

“I never let her carry too much money about. She's so careless about it, poor old thing. You pay it, darling; I haven't any change.”

“Neither have I,” said John inexorably. He never gave up trying to train his mother.

“Let me.” Oliver reached into the drawer of his bedside table. “Here you are, Jonathan; it'll be six bob with the tip, unless there was a lot of luggage.”

“There was,” said John. “But I won't let you do that, old boy. I'll nip up and see what I've got in my other suit.”

“Oh, take this,” said Oliver, tired of holding it out.

“Thank you
most
awfully,” said Lady Sandys, with the butterfly touch on his arm again. “I'll pay you back tomorrow.”

The extraordinary thing was that she did. Oliver seemed to have some stabilising influence on her. She had taken to him immediately; she was fascinated by him and spent as much time
as possible in his room, behaving more calmly than she did with other people. She even settled into a chair for half an hour and read him some new Walter de la Mare poems, which she had brought him as a present. When, three days after her arrival, Mrs. North lost a new box of handkerchiefs, and Heather lost a scarf, and the half-moon table came into play again and everyone knew, without saying much about it, that the fit was on, nothing ever disappeared from Oliver's room.

Miss Smutts was most impressed. “I can't understand it,” she told him in her mourning voice. “You can do more with her ladyship than I can after twenty years. You mean that screw pencil I found really wasn't yours?”

“Nope,” said Oliver. “She never takes a thing from here, even though I've tried shutting my eyes and pretending to be asleep to see what she'd do. I believe you're making the whole thing up.”

Miss Smutts folded her arms on her bosom which was the shape of two peardrops in a bag. “Oh no,” she said, shaking her head with a sad, superior smile. “Indeed not. Twenty years she's been like this, poor lady, off and on. I've been with her since it started. It was her husband's death that did it, as I've no doubt you've heard. He was a very fine man; not that I ever saw him, except in his coffin, of course, when I first came to her ladyship, but the lid was on by then. Twenty years ago.…” She rocked herself slightly. “Twenty years of trouble. I could tell you some tales. Whoo-hoo!” She threw back her lolloping head with a singy imitation of an American soldier's love-call. “I wish I had a shilling for every time I've saved her from the Law.”

“Smutty!” came an amused voice from the doorway. “Get out of here and stop boring the invalid with tiresome stories of our past. She's always talking about me,” she told Oliver cheerfully. “I listen sometimes when she has friends to tea in her room. Most entertaining.”

“One of these days,” said Miss Smutts sombrely, “you'll hear something that'll make your eardrums rattle. That'll teach you to listen at keyholes.”

“Quaint old character, isn't she?”

Miss Smutts sniffed, stretching her pendulous lower lip up over the moustache.

“Do go and iron my nightie, Smutty, there's a pet. It's all rumpled, because I had such a sleepless night thinking of that poor postman having to bicycle up and down all those hills, and you know how I like to be
soignée
in bed.” She twinkled at Oliver.
He was always amazed that there was nothing arch about her conversation, which was frequently of the variety that makes raddled old ladies so horrible. But it was not put on for effect. Her talk and her whole behaviour simply bubbled from her naturally as water out of a hillside.

Elizabeth came in with Oliver's tea. She seemed to like Lady Sandys too. It was one of the few things she and Oliver had in common, and they enjoyed talking about her. It did not make her immune, however. Oliver noticed that she was not yet wearing her State Registered badge, which she had been waiting two days for Miss Smutts to find.

“Here's your lovely nurse,” said Lady Sandys, her eyes travelling admiringly over Elizabeth. “I've been meaning to ask you: what do you put on your face, my dear, that gives you that dewy, rosebud look? It's quite enchanting, isn't it, Oliver?”

“Not bad,” he said guardedly.

“Nothing much,” Elizabeth said. “Just the usual creams and powder and things. Would you like your tea in here, Lady Sandys?”

“I wish you wouldn't call me that. I wish you'd call me Muffet, like everyone else does. You'll have to, when I've adopted you. Did you know I was going to adopt her, Ollie? Not until you've finished with her, of course, but then I'll have her and I can pension off poor old Smutty. She gets more like the Frankenstein monster every day. This poor girl was telling me she's got no mother and her father's married someone she doesn't like. Did you know that?”

“What?” said Oliver. “Oh—er—yes.” He looked at Elizabeth sharply. Lady Sandys had “a way of getting things out of you by the sheer suction-power of her interest.' She had certainly got more out of Elizabeth in seven days than Oliver had been able to in as many months. Elizabeth was looking very nonchalant, which meant she was embarrassed. “Oh, I didn't mean that really,” she said; “I made that up for fun. I'll get your tea.”

“Funny girl,” said Lady Sandys, gazing through the closed door as if she could follow Elizabeth with her eyes as well as with her thoughts. “I thought she told me that, but I may have imagined it. I am a bit vague sometimes, you know. Why is she so quiet and buttoned up? I'm sure there's something behind it. She should have more effervescence at her age: she should let herself go.”

“Oh no,” said Oliver. “She's just made like that, with no great enthusiasms or affections. Some people are. They probably save themselves a lot of heartbreak.”

“They lose a lot too,” said Muffet. “But this girl's not naturally like that. She's putting on an act. I know it. I've got an instinct for people, you know, probably because I'm so interested in them. You are too, aren't you? I've noticed that. That's why you don't fret at having to lie here all the time. I should like to change places with you for a bit and have the opportunity of a detached view. I bet after a week of it I could tell you some astonishing things about the people in this house.”

“Lend me one of your legs then,” said Oliver, “and a slice of healthy heart muscle, and I'll swop.”

“I bet I'd do better with Elizabeth than you. If I were a man, I'd have the girl in bed with me in a week. Oh no, I mustn't talk to you like that, must I? That's the sort of act I put on to impress people I don't know very well, and then they go away and tell their scandalised friend what an old rip I am. I've led the most pure life actually. Sad, really, when you think of it.” As she put up a hand to pat at her upswept hair, which was still black like John's, with a silvery streak artfully incorporated in the front wing, Oliver recognised his mother's cameo ring.

Lady Sandys did not get on so well with everybody. She was at her best with Oliver, because she liked him, but with those whom she did not like so well she was much odder and more unpredictable, altering her behaviour according to the effect different people had on her. She seemed quite fond of Oliver's mother, but Mrs. North did not understand her. She did not realise that Lady Sandys was intrigued by anything that anybody did and mistook her passionate interest in herself and her running of the house for inquisitive interference. Sorry as she was for the little creature, she was not going to have her nosing about in her store cupboard and kitchen, dipping ladles into the soup to see what was in it and squandering eggs and butter and milk on making uneatable pancakes as a surprise for tea, as she had done one day when Mrs. North was out. Poor Muffet yearned after domesticity, but Mrs. North did not credit her with enough intelligence to fill the mustard-pots. She took quite the wrong line with her; instead of treating her as a rational person, she humoured her with elaborate tact, transparent to everybody, including Lady Sandys, whose resentment manifested itself in more eccentricities than usual.

Violet made Lady Sandys laugh. Mischievously, she liked to tease her, and to see Violet congealing into increased boorishness. Heather had abandoned all interest in Violet's appearance, and Lady Sandys took over, coming down each day with some
impossibly small garment or inappropriate piece of frippery. The fact that she was prompted by generosity, not malice, did not compensate for her delight in the ludicrous effects obtained, nor for making Violet appear ungrateful when she refused to try the things on.

“If that lunatic doesn't go before my wedding,” Violet threatened, “I shan't get married at all, so there! D'you know what she wants to do? Stick a socking great bow in my hair with spangles on it or some damfoolery. I told her to put it where the sergeant put the pudding.”