High Rising (VMC) Read online

  ‘Mother or no mother,’ he said severely, ‘orders are given, and none of you boys goes into the tea-room. Get along with you.’

  Letting Laura through, he stood like Apollyon, blocking the doorway to the boys outside.

  Laura wandered through the tea-room, but could not see Amy anywhere. Presently her great friend, Edward, came up to her. Edward, who had enlisted at sixteen ‘for company’, had found his ideal job after the war as factotum and friend of all mankind at the school, with the company which he so much loved perpetually renewed. He could clean boots like an officer’s servant and patch them like a real cobbler; clean knives and sharpen them; mend the boys’ bats, skates, racquets, cameras; cut hair; sing any popular song ever written; repair the headmaster’s wireless and drive his car. When the whole kitchen staff went down with influenza, was it not Edward who held the breach for two days, cooking boiled beef and dumplings in the copper? When the sanatorium overflowed during the same epidemic, was it not Edward who took his turn as night nurse in the temporary hospital, and sang the convalescents to sleep with highly unsuitable songs from Flanders? On that blissful occasion when the local power station failed and all the school lights went out, and the Birketts were away, and Johnson and Butters collided in a dark passage where they had no business to be, and Johnson had a bleeding lip and Butters an eyebrow laid open, was it not Edward who had the wits to run them both over in one of the masters’ cars to the doctor’s house and get them sewn up at once, returning so swiftly that no one had time to think of any serious mischief to do? There was even a tradition that, in a crisis, Edward had taken the place of nursery-maid in Mrs Birkett’s nursery and wheeled her two little girls in a perambulator. But this was looked upon as going a little too far, and was slurred over by the school. One didn’t like to associate Edward in any way with those two great gawky girls, Rose and Geraldine. At least that was what the young chivalry of England felt.

  ‘If you were looking for Mrs Birkett, madam,’ said the omniscient Edward, ‘she is gone over to the house and hopes you’ll follow. She said she couldn’t stand no more parents at any price, madam, if you understand me.’

  Laura thanked him, and wound her way through the crowd of parents and across to the headmaster’s house, where she found Amy in the study.

  ‘Bill was so exhausted and voiceless that I’ve sent him to lie down for a bit,’ said Amy. ‘I expect he had a touch of flu. Come and sit down and tell me about the family. Is Gerald enjoying China?’

  ‘It’s Dick who is in China, at least somewhere about on the China station, whatever that is. He quite likes it, and he loves the ship.’

  ‘Oh, it’s Gerald who’s in Burma, then. How’s he getting on?’

  ‘No, that’s John. He’s getting on nicely. He hopes to get back next Christmas. Gerald is the one who explores. He has got a good paying job with some Americans in Mexico. He says it’s great fun. It sounds horrid.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Laura dear, that I mix your family up so. It’s so confusing of you to have four boys. And whenever I got used to a Morland Minor, his elder brother would leave us and his younger brother come on, and then he was Major and there was a new Minor. Most confusing. But I’m glad they’re all well. Things are easier now, aren’t they?’

  ‘If you mean money, yes. Gerald and John are self-supporting, bless them, and Dick almost. So really they cost me nothing except presents, and holidays when they come back. There’s only Tony now.’

  ‘But he’ll get scholarships, like Gerald.’

  ‘Tony has a splendid natural resistance to learning in any form,’ said Laura, in a resigned voice. ‘I expect he’ll be a pig-farmer.’

  ‘Then you can live on bacon, and not work so hard. Are you always writing?’

  ‘Mostly. But it’s much easier now than when I had three at school and Tony at home. I am actually saving up for my old age.’

  ‘Come in,’ called Amy, to a knock at the door. Tony came in. He had evidently got at somebody’s brilliantine. His hair was irregularly parted down the middle and slabbed shiningly down on each side, and he brought with him a powerful odour of synthetic honey and flowers.

  ‘Foul child!’ cried Amy, ‘what have you been doing? Have some tea.’

  Tony appeared to be accustomed to his headmaster’s wife, for he evinced no discomposure, and seating himself, replied, ‘It’s only a little Johnson’s hair fixative, Mrs Birkett. Two of the chaps poured it on for me, and I brushed it down. Did you hear the noise, Mrs Birkett, when Wesendonck’s books fell down? I was shouting like anything.’

  ‘Hear it?’ said Amy. ‘Why, you broke both Mr Birkett’s ear-drums and he has gone to bed.’

  Tony looked alarmed.

  ‘If this weren’t a tea-party and the end of the term and Christmas next week,’ said Laura, ‘I would kill you, Tony. Look at your suit.’

  Indeed, signs of the whole-hearted way in which the two unspecified chaps had entered into the spirit of the fixative job were visible on Tony’s collar and all down his jacket and waistcoat.

  ‘Oh, that’s all right,’ said Tony, ‘we wiped the rest off the floor with Swift-Hetherington’s gym shorts and then matron came in and went off pop.’

  ‘Well, thank heaven you’re going,’ said the headmaster’s wife.

  ‘You’ll come to me for a few days in the holidays, won’t you, Amy?’ said Laura, as they kissed goodbye.

  ‘Love to. Bill is taking the girls to Switzerland for a fortnight. I’ll let you know the dates and invite myself for a night or two.’

  ‘My love to Bill. I hope he’ll be all right again.’

  ‘Oh, he’ll be all right. It’s just end-of-term fatigue, and a lot of worry with a stupid secretary. We had what we thought a very good woman in the summer, but she went mad or something at the beginning of this term, and we had to change, which meant a lot of extra work.’

  ‘Bad luck,’ said Laura.

  ‘Goodbye, Tony, and happy holidays.’

  ‘Goodbye, Mrs Birkett, and thank you very much for having me to tea,’ said Tony, looking so seraphic that his mother had to concentrate her mind on his disgusting hair and suit to keep herself from hugging him on the spot.

  Laura and Tony got into the car and set off on the twenty-mile drive home.

  ‘Well, darling, I’m very pleased to meet you again,’ said Laura as they sped along.

  ‘I know,’ said Tony briefly. ‘I say, Mother, how old, really, are you?’

  ‘Forty-five, really, but I don’t always look my age.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Tony, with such relief in his voice that Laura had to ask why.

  ‘Swift-Hetherington said he knew how old his mother was and he betted I didn’t know how old mine was. So I betted him mine was older than his was, anyway, and I’m right.’

  ‘So what do you win?’ asked Laura, amused.

  ‘I don’t win anything, Mother. I just betted him.’

  ‘I see.’

  Evidently the vice of gambling was not wrecking Tony’s life, in spite of his misleading phraseology.

  ‘Oh, Mother,’ began Tony again, ‘are we going to the flat for Christmas, or the cottage?’

  ‘Oh, didn’t I tell you? The cottage.’

  ‘I see. Of course I left my railway at the flat, and I had specially made plans to play with it these holidays. That would happen.’

  He sank into the depths of gloom.

  ‘I did happen to think of that, too, Tony, and I brought the railway. It is on the back of the car.’

  ‘Thanks, Mother, but I’m afraid it’s no use. You see, I can’t play with it unless I have some new points for shunting, right-hand curve, and if I haven’t got my savings bank book and the railway catalogue I can’t get them. That’s all. It’s just all no good.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, you’ll find the catalogue in the railway box, and I have very kindly brought your bank book with me.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Tony, and fell into a mystic dream of fresh railway system
s on a more ambitious scale than before.

  Laura was looking forward to a holiday at the cottage after a hard-working autumn in town. When her husband had died, Tony was only a few months old, and there was very little money. Laura had written for magazines for some years past, in a desultory way, but now the problem of earning money was serious. She had considered the question carefully, and decided that, next to racing, murder, and sport, the great reading public of England (female section) likes to read about clothes. With real industry she got introductions, went over big department stores, visited smart dressmaking friends, talked to girls she knew who had become buyers or highbrow window-dressers, and settled down to write best-sellers. Her prevision was justified, and she now had a large, steady reading public, who apparently could not hear too much about the mysteries of the wholesale and retail clothes business. One of her novels had even been dramatised with considerable success, its central scene being the workroom of the famous Madame Koska, where a minion of a rival firm got taken on as a bodice hand, and made notes of advance season models. But a judgment fell on her when, in the handsome traveller for a French silk manufacturer, she recognised the lover she had robbed and left some years ago. How he also recognised her, the struggle in his breast between love and duty, how the honour of the dressmaking world got the upper hand, how he denounced her to Madame Koska, how Madame forgave her, how the mannequins struck half an hour before Madame’s spring opening, how the minion went on and wore forty-eight frocks with such ravishing grace that Madame Koska took five thousand pounds’ worth of orders in that afternoon alone: all this is too long and improbable to relate. But, most luckily, it suited the public taste, and so did the others, and Laura had educated Gerald and John, and got Dick into the Navy, and now there was really no anxiety and only the inscrutable Tony to be dealt with. She was quite contented, and never took herself seriously, though she took a lot of trouble over her books. If she had been more introspective, she might have wondered at herself for doing so much in ten years, and being able to afford a small flat in London, and a reasonable little house in the country, and a middle-class car. The only thing that did occasionally make her admire herself a little was that she actually had a secretary. Not a real full-time secretary, for Miss Todd lived in the village with her mother, and only came up for the mornings, but still, a secretary.

  This had been forced upon her when, a couple of years earlier, she had been asked, to her great alarm, to do some articles on women’s fashions for an American paper. The money was too good to refuse, so Laura, whose own idea of dress was hurried bargains in the sales, collected a mass of information in exclusive shops and took it down to the cottage, to work it up. Here she was found one morning, in tears, by her friend Miss Todd. Miss Todd sat down, took her hat off, and asked what had happened. Laura, amid sobs and snuffles, said she couldn’t, couldn’t do it. There was a serial to get on with, about a mannequin who wouldn’t pose in any silk but pure British artificial, and so somehow married a Cabinet minister; there was a second series of ‘Tales from Madame Koska’s Showroom’ to be finished; money was wanted to help Gerald through an extra year at Oxford, which was to lead to a fellowship and ultimately to exploration; but how, oh, how would she ever do it all? And she cried bitterly, and her hair began to come down, while Miss Todd lent an intelligent ear.

  Presently Miss Todd said:

  ‘Stop crying, Mrs Morland, and I’ll tell you something. What do you think I love most in the world?’

  Surprised by this curious attempt at consolation, Laura did stop. Pushing her dishevelled hair off her tear-sodden face, she thought for a moment, and then said:

  ‘Your mother.’

  ‘No,’ said Miss Todd. ‘Clothes.’

  Laura sat up, and forgot her own pressing troubles entirely. This was very interesting. Heaven knew that for a woman who made a good income out of writing about them, she, Laura, knew as little personally about clothes as need be. But Miss Todd. She stared. Miss Todd, who was certainly forty, who was celebrated for filial piety to an ailing and impoverished mother, who had apparently had one tweed suit and one black evening dress for ever and ever, who never left High Rising (for so the village was agreeably called) except to take her mother to Bournemouth for a fortnight, who—But, as Laura went on staring, some of Miss Todd’s better qualities, ignored until this outburst drew attention to them, began to impress themselves on her eye, which was trained to look at the appearance of others, though it always disregarded that of its owner. Miss Todd hadn’t a bad figure, she hadn’t bad hands, her feet were undeniably good in her shabby old brogues, if her hair hadn’t obviously been cut at home it would look very pretty, her teeth all looked good, thought Laura enviously. In fact, not at all an unattractive creature, Miss Todd, if once it occurred to you to look at her at all.

  Under this prolonged scrutiny Miss Todd appeared to think some explanation necessary.

  ‘Not that I don’t love Mother,’ she stated calmly, ‘because I do. One gets fond of them, you know. But she’s a bit dotty, and she’s got a bit of a heart, so it doesn’t do to concentrate on her.’

  Again Laura had to readjust ideas. Everyone knew that old Mrs Todd was slightly mad. While she was still able to get about alone, she had formed a habit of ordering groceries, meat, and boots, on a gigantic scale, from the village store. Miss Todd had been obliged to explain this to Mr Reid at the shop, who obligingly humoured the old lady and took her orders with great respect. Now, Laura knew vaguely, she had been kept to the house for some months, but she hadn’t realised that Miss Todd had, for all this time, been uncomplainingly nursing a rather mad mother, with a heart into the bargain. Her opinion of Miss Todd rose even higher.

  ‘Well, Anne,’ she said, distractedly running a knitting-needle through her hair, ‘I dare say you are right. You’ve been a brick. But where do clothes come in?’

  Miss Todd’s eyes glowed with a holy flame. ‘Mrs Morland,’ she said impressively, ‘they save my life. That’s why I read all your books. I don’t care for good literature, but when I read about clothes, it’s like taking opium. I forget all about Mother, and death, and dividends, and I revel. I know I couldn’t wear them. I’m not the type, even if I could afford them. But they mean a lot to me, and your books have been an awful help to me, so …’

  Here she broke off in embarrassment. Laura was immensely interested. Here was her real public, made flesh in Anne Todd. Laura herself had no illusions as to her books being, in any high sense of the word, literature, but she knew they had an appeal, and here was the person to whom they appealed. She gazed again upon Miss Todd, who sat with her knees wide apart and her toes turned in, her eyes shining, her cheeks red as flame. What was the matter with Miss Todd?

  ‘So,’ continued Miss Todd, seeing that no help was forthcoming from Laura, ‘I thought when I found you crying, perhaps I could help you. There. I’ve said it. Mother doesn’t need me all day. She stays in bed in the morning with the wireless, and Louisa can keep an eye on her. But if I could come up here between breakfast and lunch, and type things, or help you a bit … I did do a secretary course, you know, before Mother got so difficult … Oh, Mrs Morland, do say yes.’

  Laura’s hair came right down with emotion. ‘Pick up some hairpins for me, Anne, and you can come every day, and you can do this awful American stuff for me.’

  Miss Todd, on her hands and knees, handed hairpins to Laura. ‘Mrs Morland, you are an angel,’ she said.

  ‘But,’ said Laura, her articulation rather impeded by a mouthful of large tortoiseshell pins, and suddenly wondering if she had been rash, ‘do you think you can really do it?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Miss Todd, standing up and jamming her hat on. ‘Give me all that stuff, Mrs Morland, and tell me how many thousand words, and I’ll get it all into shape for you by the day after tomorrow.’

  Quite hypnotised, Laura handed a bundle of papers and sketches to Miss Todd, who left the house at once, without saying goodbye. With rising but bewildere
d spirits, Laura stuck the last hairpin into her head, and sat down to cope with Madame Koska, whose best tailor was turning out, very improbably, to be an Austrian grand duke, fallen on bad times. What with Madame Koska’s difficulties in refusing the grand duke’s suit and yet retaining his services, and her own lucky gift of being able to shelve her less pressing troubles till they had to be faced, Laura never gave the American articles another thought till, two days later, Miss Todd turned up with a parcel of typescript.

  ‘Here you are,’ said Miss Todd. ‘You’ll find it’s not bad.’

  Laura read it, found it not bad, and invited MissTodd to stay to lunch.

  ‘Can’t,’ said Miss Todd. ‘You know we haven’t got the telephone, and Mother expects me. But if you like it, that’s all right. I loved doing it.’

  ‘But I must pay you, Anne. You see I am to get—’

  ‘Never mind about that, Mrs Morland,’ said Miss Todd firmly. ‘That’s not my business, and anyway you collected all the material – I only put it together.’

  ‘But, my dear child, we can’t leave it like that. Sit down and have some sense.’

  After a good deal of protesting on Miss Todd’s part she agreed, under pressure, to come every morning while Laura was at the cottage, to accept a weekly salary at such times, to type at the usual rates any manuscripts sent her while Laura was away, and to take ten per cent on anything she actually wrote from Laura’s notes. More than this Laura could not induce her to accept.

  Several other people, finding this unexpected treasure among them, had tried to seduce Miss Todd from her allegiance, but she was singularly unmoved. Even when George Knox, the very successful writer of biographies, who lived a mile away at Low Rising, asked her to come as permanent secretary, and offered her a cottage in his grounds for herself and her mother, she declined.

  ‘You see, Mrs Morland,’ she said to Laura, who was scolding her for refusing such a good offer, ‘I don’t care so much for literature – it’s the subject of clothes that appeals to me. With Mr Knox it would be dates, and philosophy, and highbrow stuff. I like Mr Knox, and I like the girl – Sibyl’s a good child – but my place is with you. And I couldn’t move Mother if I wanted to. With a heart you never know, and here we are with Dr Ford almost next door, and she can look at the street and see what’s happening. At Low Rising she wouldn’t see anyone. If she died, I wouldn’t say—But you come first, Mrs Morland.’