“Well?”
“Somebody wanted to know whether Carol’s here. ‘Why yes, of
course,’ I said.
Then
, whoever-it-was hung up!”
“Louise – the voice?”
She looked at me strangely. “Liz, I couldn’t be
sure
.”
“Well, I never!” cried Cissie Potter. Still with her pearl kid gloves on,
she delicately opened the invitation. All of us, this minute, were
back from church: in our ears a joyous confusion of bells and music,
we assembled to see what the matter was. She went on: “I don’t
think I ever
knew
such a crowded day!” Unwilling to let the missive
out of her hands, she also could not resist passing it around.
It ran: “Miss C. Potter’s company is much desired at a Reception
for her at our Castle, the Barn, Christmas afternoon. Three o’clock,
which should not interfere with her taking her Nap before Christ
mas dinner. P. S. Better dress warm.”
“They thought of everything,” Mother remarked. “Cissie, I call
that flattering.”
“Are
you
asked?”
Mother shook a tactful head. She’d been told she might peep, but
was not invited. Nor, we let Cissie know, were any of us. She drew
a tremendous breath. “Then – I’m singled out?” She was in a whirl.
Hardly could Cissie wait for the stroke of three. We watched her
pick her way to the barn. The door opened, then closed.
Undecided whether to peep or not, Mother was influenced by
our curiosity. She found her coat, and followed. Returning, she
vanished into the kitchen to see to dinner. We know, of old, when
something has been too much. When she
did
tell us, she used these
curious words: “It was the most innocent sight I ever saw.” Candlelit,
at the far end of the dark barn, “Our Castle” consisted of frail
boughs, leaning together. Only faith and trust, out of which it was
built, can have kept “Our Castle” from falling down. Open in front,
it was something between an arbour and a fragile cave. The two
keeping house in it, Blinks and Carol, using scarlet quilts as mantles
for the occasion, were engaged in doing honour to Cissie, who sat
between and above them, enthroned on pillows. Cissie, Mother
recounted, was transformed. She revealed a responsive lovely face,
from which piteous sillinesses were all gone.
Mother had never realised Cissie’s simplicity. What a drear fate,
how it brings out the worst, year after year, to be nothing more than
“put up with!” Standing back in the darkness of the barn, Mother
was smitten to the heart. Taught by their own desolation, these two
children had headed straight to this other desolate soul. Their
understanding had pierced the poor, foolish mask. Not for them
selves only was “Our Castle.” They threw it open: all it was, as they
were, that they had to offer. They had sensed the fathomless need
of the unloved.
Our Christmas tree made the room larger, mysterious and dazzling.
One never remembers a tree quite as it is; there is always more, each
year. It reflected itself in the uncurtained glass of the parlour
windows. We like to think of its shining far out over the dark
country.
Round it we moved, under the spell of its treasure. Mother called
the names, Frankie bestowed the gifts. There was a clasping-on of
necklaces, a bouncing of woolly balls, a whirling of clockwork toys
set going. When kisses of gratitude had subsided, there was still,
however, an unaccountable feeling of expectancy. What more
ought
there to be?
Mother invited Cissie to play the piano. Obligingly, Cissie slid
off her bangles and struck one or two sprightly chords, only to
pause, hands in the air. Carol, in her shimmering party dress, walked
straight across to one of the windows: face pressed close to a pane,
shielding her eyes, she stayed looking out.
“What is it, Carol?” asked Mother.
“I think it’s Jim,” she said.
The inevitable happens so very calmly. She left the room to meet
him, leaving us waiting. All that agony of trouble to be unravelled,
in a few minutes? Why did it have to be? The children absorbed
in their new toys, old Uncle comatose in his rigid chair, were not
to ask; we others might never know. Closer to one another as we
wondered, we sat silently in the light of the tree, reliving these last
strange days, moment by moment. What victories, all the same!
Could
a Christmas have been more beautiful than this one, lit by her
courage? Soon, midnight would strike: this Christmas of ours would
be over. Let us forever remember its dear happiness!
UNPUBLISHED
AND UNFINISHED
SHORT STORIES
The Bazaar
M
rs. Bude was depressed, when she woke, by a dark
sky; she heard heavy rain falling. She parted the muslin modestyblinds to look out – the whole row of back gardens with their
arbours and aerials
1
wore the same sad air of subjection to circum
stance. Mrs. Bude, however, consoled herself with the thought that
as it must have been raining since before sunrise it was likely to clear
by eleven. Mr. Bude also got up, very silent and red, shaved in the
bathroom, dressed, had breakfast and left for the office. He was not
interested in the bazaar. Mrs. Bude looked through him intensely, as
though he did not exist. “You’ve got a wet day,” he said, more kindly
but as though he had always warned her, wheeling out his bicycle.
Mrs. Bude set out soon after ten, leaving preparations for Mr.
Bude’s midday dinner to the girl, who was becoming dependable.
On her way, she called in at the carriers, as she had promised, to
make sure the hired china would be delivered. Two or three resi
dential roads converged at this end of the village; black laburnum
pods drooping over the pavement stirred and swished in the rain.
Gates clicked open and Mrs. Bude, glancing behind, saw other
bazaar helpers, also in mackintoshes, hurrying urgently and all slung
over with parcels. Mrs. Bude, however, did not wait for the others.
She had a sense of high pressure, and was anxious also for a few
words alone with Lady Potter.
In the village, people were standing alert in the shop doorways,
asking each other in happy detachment what would become of the
bazaar in all this rain, and where Lady Potter was proposing to put
the band. There never had been a band before; it was an innovation
and seemed to have tempted providence. Mrs. Bude, looking neither
to left nor to right, herself wondered if wet drums were audible, also
what happened if rain got down a bassoon. Her wet red mackintosh
creaked with her haste; in spite of the ventilation holes she began to
feel stuffy inside it, for this was July. Rain blurred her glasses and
streamed down her kind pink face with its perpetual half-smile of
diffidence and astonishment. In addition to everything else she
carried two trays that kept slipping and some long rolls of
Denniston’s crêpe paper that it was important to keep dry.
At the gate of the Hall she met Miss Singleton in a sou’wester,
with an expression of resolute optimism. “Oh Mrs. Bude,” she cried,
“here you are! Well,
well
,” she added, looking up at the sky.
“Well,
well
,” said Mrs. Bude piously.
“I must tell you – of course this is confidential – Lady Potter is
very much put out: Mrs. Space has resigned from the Sports
Committee!”
“Gracious!” exclaimed Mrs. Bude, almost dropping a tray. But she
had quite a distinct sense of pleasurable excitement. “When did it
happen?”
“Last night. The committee met in the grounds to make last
arrangements, and – well feeling had been running rather high you
know, for some time, about the clock golf. Perhaps it was mentioned
to you? Several helpers mentioned the matter to me in confidence.
So last night at committee Mrs. Armitage happened to speak rather
hastily: it seems she had not been consulted. So Mrs. Space said that
things being as they were, and owing to the attitude of certain
people who should not be named, she did not see that she could
be of further use, and left the committee. She seemed very much
upset – ”
Mrs. Bude plucked at Miss Singleton’s sleeve and they stepped
quickly sideways into the rhododendrons, for down the avenue
came Mrs. Space, very fast, with a set expression. She had felt it her
duty to tell Lady Potter that though she was the last to consider a
personal matter, her feelings had been very much hurt. She swished
past within an inch of the rhododendrons.
Mrs. Bude and Miss Singleton turned the bend of the avenue;
the tents came into view. The bazaar was to be held in the Hall
paddock. Three pence extra was to be charged at the further gate for
a view of the Italian terraces and the walled garden. Though this
week’s rain might have squashed the flowers, you could admire the
cucumbers in the frames and see Lady Potter’s peas growing – they
said she had peas at the Hall from May to November – and, on the
terraces, wind in and out of the
fleurs-de-lys
neatly edged with box.
“I do not consider three pence too much to charge,” the Vicar had
said, and though Lady Potter looked modest the General Purposes
Committee had agreed.
The three marquees were up, with their sides hooked open, also
the little tent for the fortune teller, with Captain Winch, who was
to be disguised as Wise Meg the Gypsy this afternoon, walking
critically round and round it. He had brought some Hungarian
hangings to drape inside, but nobody would give him any pins.
“Paula,” he said, “I’m sure
you
could find me some pins.” But Paula
Potter, walking rapidly past in Wellington boots, took no notice.
Paula Potter had no heart for the bazaar. She had, it is true,
looked forward to walking about in the sun in a chiffon frock, taking
Lady Hottenham, who was to open this bazaar, from stall to stall.
Lady Hottenham spent ten pounds at every bazaar she opened, and
Paula had promised to divide her equally among the stall holders.
But yesterday Paula had written to break off her engagement with a
young man.
2
She had not found the young man sufficiently ardent;
he wrote dull letters and was too economical to telephone from
London every day. But today, crossing hers, there had arrived a letter
from the young man really full of ardour and suggesting Portugal for
the honeymoon. Paula sent off three telegrams and did not see how
she could be expected to attend to the bazaar. She darted restlessly
in and out of the tents but was most disobliging. She was a nice girl
with four freckles and a mouth like a raspberry.
Lady Potter in a Burberry went picking her way from tent to
tent. She smiled sympathetically, hoping they would not ask her for
anything more. She would rather not know if the tea urns had not
arrived or the trestles were unsatisfactory. She avoided groups in
dispute; when anything was referred to her, her eyes distended with
apprehension, like a rabbit’s. “I’m sure that would do excellently,” she
frequently said, and “I quite agree with you: that would be delight
ful.” In one hand she carried a pair of garden scissors, from her
arm hung a basket containing a note-book and a ball of string. She
swerved
3
whenever she saw Captain Winch, for fear he might ask
her for pins again. Powder, displaced by the rain, lay in clots at the
side of her nose. She felt in some way responsible for the weather;
this agitated her very much. She saw Mrs. Bude coming but had no
time to retreat, so she smiled anxiously.
Mrs. Bude said she particularly wanted a few words with Lady
Potter because she feared there had been some slight misunder
standing about the position of the flower stall. “I should like to feel,”
she said, after twenty minutes’ discussion, “that I had acted for the
best.”
“I think you were quite right,” said Lady Potter.
“I should not like to feel,” Mrs. Bude continued, “that any feeling
might arise – ”
“I am sure there will be nothing of that sort,” said Lady Potter,
longing to go in and lie down.
“I am sorry to hear, Lady Potter,” said Mrs. Bude, coming a little
closer and lowering her voice, “that there has been this little mis
understanding between Mrs. Space and Mrs. Armitage. I always feel
myself that one should not let personal feeling come in when one is
working for charity. For instance, yesterday evening I was inclined
to be quite upset over this little misunderstanding about the flower
stall. It quite upset me; I could hardly take my tea. But as I said
to Mr. Bude, we must all work together. I remember saying to Mr.
Bude at the time, ‘I always feel it is a mistake to let any personal
feeling – ’ ”
But at this point Captain Winch came up to ask Mrs. Bude, as a
new arrival, if she could let him have any pins. “I’m sure ladies
always have pins about them,” he said intimately.
Lady Potter, replying to an imaginary signal, moved quickly
away.
Lady Potter was a widow; her son, Sir Harold, had arrived
yesterday with a Cambridge friend. The young men had understood
they were to be the Sports Committee; finding that they were not,
4
they had returned to the smoking-room, taking the Vicar’s youngest
daughter with them to play the gramophone. The girl, anxious and
with a strong sense of impropriety, talked heroically at the under
graduates, saying, “That’s rather jolly,” and asking for records they
had not heard of and did not wish to own. Miss Singleton, who had
not been long at a loss to account for her disappearance, walked
several times past the smoking-room windows and at last put her
face to the glass, saying, “I’m so sorry, Betty, but when you have
finished I should be glad of your advice about draping the stall.”
Miss Singleton had been asking Harold to tea ever since he was five
and considered herself an old friend of the family’s, whereas the
Vicar was quite new.