The Happy Prisoner (27 page)

“Violet, you didn't!” Her mother was aghast.

“Shall next time,” mumbled Violet, who, however, was always struck into dumbness by Lady Sandys' prattle, and revolved ponderously like a battleship, following with empty eyes the chattering, exclaiming little figure who pranced round her.

Fred ran a mile at Lady Sandys' approach, and made excuses not to come to a meal when she was in the house. He had spent three days in hiding, sneaking in and out of barns and peering from haylofts, because she had threatened to come and be shown over the farm. The children were attracted to her, as to all bizarre characters, from the bearded old tramp who sat on the pavement in Castle Street saying he was Christ, to the idiot boy in the village, with a head like a tombstone and a hyena's cackle. She doted on them, of course, but not suffocatingly. She took all their affairs seriously and never said: “Run along” to a request for string, or to that kind of conversation, which begins with heavy breathing and: “Shall I tell you something? D'you know, it was awfully funny; the other day—” and never gets to the point. Her company made up a little to Evelyn for the loss of Violet and Fred, who, although they could hardly be called love-birds and seldom spoke to one another, made her feel an unwanted third. They had been Evelyn's hero and heroine, and she had been their mascot and slave. Now they seemed not to need her, and she did not want to be with them. When Fred said: “Cut along, youngster, and put a head collar on Prince, and you can take him up to the smithy for me,” she still ran, from habit, but without that proud glow of a mission which had made her feel Joan of Arc as she perched on the rolling carthorse back, with her legs stuck out at right angles. She wished that Lady Sandys were more of an outdoors person. She was very good for indoors, but when Evelyn tried to make her come and see her jump, or visit the lambs, or the new fox earth, she would tittup along halfway in unsuitable shoes and then jib at some tiny obstacle like a drain or a stile and turn for home,
saying that she had the wrong pair of legs on; these were only good for pavements and floors. Evelyn enjoyed the secret of the kleptomania game. Sometimes she would deliberately begin a forbidden remark, so that she could clap a freckled hand over her mouth and say sensationally: “Coo, I nearly said something I shouldn't.”

“That's right, dear,” Lady Sandys would say innocently. “The rude words can be left to men. Women are allowed to make the rude remarks.” It was fun, too, to see what appeared on the half-moon table, and to say: “Anything in the post for me?” when anyone came down from upstairs.

John was patiently affectionate with his mother and tried to annoy her as little as possible. His ears were almost at right angles while she was at Hinkley, for he felt the responsibility of her as a great weight. He tried to protect her by laughing indulgently and saying: “Nonsense, Muffet, you don't mean that,” to cover her more extravagant remarks. He tried to protect the household by keeping her under his eye, which she took great delight in making as difficult as possible.

She knew that he was tracking her, although she did not know why he did it. “Poor little Johnny thinks I'm going to have a stroke or something,” she told Oliver, talking to him through the window from the lawn where she was hiding while John looked for her in the house. “He always wants to know where I'm going and what I'm going to do and why isn't Smutty with me? He treats me as if I were in my dotage, and it's enough to put me there. How did I ever come to have a child who took life so seriously?” Her swallow's-wing eyebrows drew together in a fleeting frown. “It's an awful thing for a mother to say, but d'you know, I'm afraid he's got
very
little sense of humour. Look how silly he is with Heather. She'd soon stop being
difficile
if only he'd laugh at her instead of letting her wipe her boots on him as if he were a mat with Welcome written all over it.”

She did not like Heather, and Heather did not like her. She made no allowances for her mother-in-law's abnormality and would not be shushed away from making dangerously close allusions to it. She suffered more from Lady Sandys than anyone in the house, because although her kleptomania was unconscious, she instinctively took more from people she did not like, and the things she took were often symptomatic of her conscious feelings. John had learned his rigid Protestantism from her. Her disapproval of Heather's conversion manifested itself by the repeated removal of her daughter-in-law's prayer book or
rosary. The blessed palm which Heather hung over her bed at Easter was never found again and Heather swore that Miss Smutts, who got to grips with Methodism every week in a kind of Nissen hut at Bornell Heath, had deliberately not looked for it. Once her crucifix disappeared, and even after it was found she muttered for a long time about sacrilege and blasphemy.

Her shoes were to Muffet like honey to a bee, but only one at a time, so that Heather was always hopping up the stairs to the half-moon table to complete the pair she had left in the scullery for cleaning. Her hand mirror and her brush and comb spent almost more time in the passage than in her bedroom. The doors at Hinkley had bolts on the inside, but no keys, but Heather found one in the tool chest that fitted and took to locking her door whenever she came downstairs, until John, returning late from a wet Sunday-morning walk, came like a dripping spaniel into Oliver's room, where the family were already at lunch.

“What's happened to the door of our room, Heather Bell?” he asked, treading up and down in his stockinged feet to try and get warm. “It's stuck or something and I can't get in. I'll get pneumonia if I don't change soon.”

Miss Smutts nodded sagely, as one who, after twenty years, guessed what had happened. “All the latches in this house want seeing to,” said Mrs. North innocently. “They're the original wooden ones, you know,” she told Lady Sandys proudly, “nearly three hundred years old. Try pulling the door tight shut before you press the latch, John. No, wait, I'll come with you.” She put down her knife and fork and got up, sure that no one but she could do it, just as no one but she could poke a fire, or open a sticking window, or get the cap off a pickle jar.

“It's all right, Ma. Sit down and get on with your lunch,” said Heather impatiently. She took a key out of her cardigan pocket and held it out to John. “Here, I locked it,” she said shortly, and turned her attention quickly away to David. “Eat up,” she said, pushing a spoonful into his mouth without noticing that it was already full.

“You
locked
it?” said John. “What on earth for? Oh—” as Heather made a face at him. “Oh yes, yes, yes; oh, I see,” he mumbled, looking chagrined.

“Well,” said Muffet brightly, “I've heard of wives locking their husband out of their bedrooms, but only when they were inside themselves. What's the game?” She looked round the table for enlightenment, at all the eyes that would not meet hers. David, who had been growing steadily blacker in the face
while he bravely tried to deal with his mouthful, fortunately created a diversion by opening his mouth very wide, putting in his whole fist and scooping everything out onto his plate and the table round it.

“Ma, we really must find his mackintosh mat,” Heather said, as she cleaned up the mess. “He can't be trusted to eat like a civilised being yet. I can't think what's happened to it. I remember washing it and hanging it up— Oh Lord, you don't suppose—? Oh no, really. That's just about the end: surely she—” She glanced enquiringly at Miss Smutts, who swung her head in negation like a pensive chimpanzee. John, not liking to leave the room until the atmosphere attributable to his mother had evaporated, still hung about by the door, beads of water running down his nose from the damp little ringlets of hair on his forehead.

“Did you have a nice walk, darling?” his mother asked him. “You look like a suicide just fished out of the Thames.”

Mrs. North swivelled round. “John, for gracious sakes go up and change. You're shivering as if you had the
grippe
. Will you never learn to look after yourself? I don't know which is the greater baby, you or your son. If it's lunch you're after, you can't eat it in that condition, so hurry up and change before it spoils. I'll cut you some off and put it in the oven.” She got up and went to the side table, and Lady Sandys, who could not sit still while anyone else was in action, got up too.

“Let me take it, Hattie,” she begged. “I always feel so useless in this busy house, and you never let me do anything.”

“No, dear, it's all right, thank you. You won't know how to light the oven.”

“Indeed I will; I'm not a mental defective.”

“Now you know it scares you when the gas pops.”

“Let me take it,” said John, through chattering teeth. “I don't really think I want any, though.”

“Of course you do,” said his mother and mother-in-law together, vying for custody of him. “But you know you always say you can never find the matches in the kitchen,” went on Mrs. North. “All right, dear,” to Elizabeth, who was already at her side. “You take it. Just put me on some vegetables then, Muffet, if you want to help. Not spinach. You don't know your son very well if you think he'll eat spinach.”

“Oh, is it spinach?” Lady Sandys giggled. “I've been eating it thinking it was cabbage. You ought to look after me better, Smutty,” she said, going back to the table. “You know I don't like spinach.”

“You want a keeper, not a companion,” grumbled Miss Smutts, pushing a bit of bread round her plate, and eating it with smacking lips.

When John had gone away, his shoulders hunched to his ears, Mrs. North sat down, ate a few mouthfuls, got up again and said: “I think I'll just go up and take his temperature. He did look awfully feverish, Heather, and I don't want him to be ill for the great day.”

“Don't
fuss
, Ma, he's all right.”

“You can't tell with John; he never says when he feels poorly. I think I'll just run up—”

Lady Sandys jumped up again. “Do let me do it,” she cried. “I'm terribly good at taking temperatures. Where's the thermometer?” The thought of her rootling in the medicine chest was too perilous. “I'll go up, shall I?” said Elizabeth.

“Well, after all, you are the nurse,” said Muffet, beaming at her. “Thank you so much, dear; I know you'll look after him for me. She's very fond of Johnny,” she told them when Elizabeth had gone. “They get on splendidly because they're both quiet people. Did you know he was going to take her up the Wrekin to see the sunrise? She's never been up. Neither have I, of course, and I don't intend to at my age, though they tell me it's well worth the climb.”

“You can take a car nearly all the way,” put in Oliver.

Lady Sandys turned round to smile and wave at him to make up for not having spoken to him for some time. “Oh, but too prosaic,” she said. “One ought to scramble up on hands and knees and cry ‘Excelsior!' at the top, with the world spread out before one.”

“That old view,” said Heather. “I'm sick of hearing about it. If you tell anyone you live in Shropshire, they say how wonderful the view from the Wrekin must be. I've seen it hundreds of times, at sunrise, sunset, midnight—wild horses wouldn't drag me up there again.”

“Of course not, dear,” said Muffet gently. “I wasn't suggesting you should. I said John and Elizabeth were going up.” She pushed out one side of her cheek with her tongue and smiled to herself, pleased at having piqued Heather.

In the silence that followed the handing round of pudding, Evelyn, who had been pursuing the subject in her mind since it was first mentioned, shook back her hair and asked in to dear voice: “But
why
did you lock your bedroom door, Aunt Heather?”

“Get on with your pie, dear,” said Mrs. North.

“I am. I'm talking with my mouth full. Why did she lock her door?” Oliver saw that Heather, wanting to get her own back on Lady Sandys, was struggling against the temptation of dropping a bombshell. Feeling like the man who brought the good news to Aix just in time, he rushed in with: “I'll tell you why. She's got your Aunt Violet's wedding present in there, only it's a secret.”

Violet woke up. “Have you?” she asked. “What is it, Heather? Do tell us.”

“Certainly not.”

“Come on, be a sport. I know, anyway.”

“Why ask then?”

“Don't be a cow.”

“Girls, girls,” said their mother. “What about my rule? No fighting in Oliver's room.”

“Don't be such a schoolmarm, Ma,” said Oliver ungraciously.

“They're not fighting, anyway. Oh cripes—” He suddenly remembered that Heather's wedding present to Violet was a new bicycle, and saw, by Lady Sandys' puzzled eyebrows, that she knew too.

Evelyn, who also knew, said with interest: “Well, what a funny place to keep it. There can't be much room. Where have you put it?”

“Oh, shut up about it, Evie,” said Heather.

“No, but where?” pursued Evelyn, who never gave up.

“Hanging on hooks,” said Heather grimly.

“Ye gods,” said Violet. “I hope it's not clothes or anything, Heather. You promised you'd give me something I could use.”

“It's a parrot in a cage,” said Heather.

Violet took this seriously. “How topping!” she shouted. “Just what I've always wanted. Where on earth did you get it? I shall teach it all the swear words I know, and get some more from old Halliday. What a yell! Poor old Fred. I wonder if he likes parrots.” Heather could not be bothered to enlighten her, and Violet was still chortling when Elizabeth came back, looking important.

“I'm afraid you're right, Mrs. North,” she said. “His temperature's a hundred point four; pulse to match. Probably only a slight dose of flu, but I've told him to get into bed, and I'll take up a hot bottle and another blanket. He's shivering as if he were trying to go in for a rigor.” That was the end of lunch. Everyone started getting up and exclaiming, except Miss Smutts, who sat sucking on a hollow tooth and intoning that these things easily
turned to something worse. David beat the table with his spoon and shouted for more custard.