The Happy Prisoner (25 page)

John had reddened too, a flush under the tan of his broad cheeks. “You're making a fool of yourself, Heather Bell,” he said. “Dry up.”

She immediately stopped championing him. “I certainly will. I was only trying to stand up for you, since you're incapable of doing it yourself. Considering you told me you didn't want to give Vi away and wished Ma hadn't asked you because you couldn't very well refuse—”

“Well, I like that!” cried Violet, now suddenly on the same side as Heather.

Oliver butted in rashly with: “He didn't mean it like that, Vi. It's only because he's scared of making a public exhibition of himself.”

“Oh, don't
you
interfere!” Mrs. North started forward with a little horrified exclamation as Heather rounded.on him. “You lie there doling out wisdom from your bed like a Salvationist handing out tracts. How do
you
know what he meant or didn't mean? Everybody's too damned interested in everybody else's business in this house, if you ask me. And that goes for you too,” she said, gathering up David from the floor where he was wailing an accompaniment to the angry voices, and bearing him away with his trousers rucked up and his legs dangling.

When she had gone, Fred made everybody jump by clearing his throat with a noise like a bad gear change. He got up and stood with his right hand wavering in the air between himself and Mrs. North. He never knew whether he were supposed to shake hands with her. “Er—well, I must be getting along,” he said. “Thanks ever so much for the drink.”

“Not a bit,” she said, and went with him to the door. “Say. I'm awfully sorry the girls behaved so badly. I can't think what's gotten into them lately. One's got her husband home from a prison camp and the other's just going to be married, yet they're as quarrelsome as a couple of alley cats. You'll have to knock some sense into Violet when you get her to yourself.” Fred looked shocked. Mrs. North stepped back as Violet pushed roughly past her and trod on the back of Fred's heels to get him out of the doorway.

“If your sisters weren't so large,” said Mrs. North, waving goodbye to Fred and dropping the artificial smile as she came back into the room, “I'd spank them both.”

“Too late now,” said Oliver. “They've been like this ever since they could speak.”

“Never as bad as this, dear. Not Heather, anyway. She just seems deliberately to say the most hurtful things she can think of to everybody. Only when she's tired and cross, of course,” she added, seeing John stiffen. “But she oughtn't to get tired and cross, John. She hasn't all that much to do, now that
Elizabeth helps her so much. Don't you think we should have her see someone? She may not be well.”

“I did suggest it, actually,” said John, “but she wasn't keen. Said she felt perfectly well.”

“I'm sure there's something wrong,” said Mrs. North, “but I can't do anything with her. I wonder you don't take her in hand. It can't be much fun for you to have her acting this way.” John had his hands on the arms of his chair and was looking round for an excuse to escape. He could not bear to discuss Heather.

“Why not try a bit of cave-man stuff, old boy?” suggested Oliver. “She'd probably love it. One damn good hiding and she'll be licking your boots.” John fidgeted himself to his feet, and gave a hollow laugh, as if trying to pass off Oliver's bad taste as a joke. “Well, I suppose I'd better go and change before dinner,” he mumbled to no one in particular.

Oliver pointed to where his hunting-crop hung with its lash neatly curled on two nails above the fireplace. “Take that with you, and next time she lashes you with her tongue give it her back with that.” He raised his arm and brought it sharply down across his chest, flicking his wrist and imitating the crack of the thong with his tongue against his teeth

John stood in the middle of the room, jingling the change in his trouser pockets, head poked forward between raised shoulders, chin jutting and accordion pleats forming in the loose skin of his forehead. He did not want to discuss Heather. He did not want to stay and hear them talk about her, yet he did not want to go away without saying something in her defence that would stop them criticising her after he had gone.

“It's not her fault really, you know,” he began and stopped. This implied that he agreed that there was something wrong with their relationship, and his loyalty would not let him admit even that.

“Not her fault?” Oliver pounced. “I suppose you're going to say that when she jumps down your throat it's your fault for opening your mouth wide enough.”

“Something like that,” said John, gazing out of the window and stretching the crease out of the front of his trousers by clenching his huge fists in the pockets. “I know I can be jolly irritating. My mother always tells me that I'm the most annoying man she's ever met, bar my father.”

“I dare say it's six of one and half a dozen of the other,” said Mrs. North, with the soothing sound of the English Nanny from whom she had picked up the expression. “Run along now, dear, and change, or you'll be late for dinner. And don't let's
worry about Heather; I'm sure she'll be all right when she gets a rest. You and she shall go off for a holiday somewhere, away from all of us, and enjoy yourselves. You deserve a little enjoyment after the terrible time you've had.” Even if he did not look like a small boy, he could still be quite successfully treated like one. He gave her one of his charming crushed smiles and ambled out of the room.

“I can't bear it,” said Mrs. North, shutting the door after him and sinking into a chair with her tubby little legs stuck out. “I can't bear him to be so humble. No wonder Heather feels sometimes she wants to stir him with a red-hot poker.”

“He's got no more idea how to treat her than my foot,” said Oliver. “The mashed one.”

“Don't, dear.” She gave an involuntary glance at the flat side of the counterpane. “I worry about them, d'you know it?” she said impressively, as if there were something unusual in her worrying about anything.

“Takes your mind off me, anyway.”

“Oh, you. You're the only one who doesn't give me any anxiety these days. This house was quite peaceful during the war. Now that we've got peace it's all haywire. There's Susan teething. Violet acting like a temperamental movie star and looking like a cowhand, Evelyn running wild as a mountain goat, and John and Heather right off key. Mrs. Cowlin's always more lunatic in the spring, and Cowlin's sulking because I want some of the cockerels killed for the wedding.” She sighed. “Even Elizabeth isn't the comfort she was. She's so quiet and distrait. And every time she comes back from her week-end I've noticed she's more distrait than ever. I don't believe she'll stay with us much longer. Maybe she's in love; I believe she's got some man in town. I have asked her, but she just went cagey on me, and it's not natural for a girl in love not to want to talk about it.” Oliver said nothing, and his mother swept on in the mid-stream of her woes. “And to crown everything, that poor, mad creature will be here next week, and you heard what John said about his annoying her? The poor man will be torn to shreds between his mother and Heather, and so will my nerves.”

“Mine too,” murmured Oliver, and wished he had not, for she changed her mind about not worrying over him and decided that her biggest worry of all was that the unsettled atmosphere of the house was bad for him.

“I'm going to make new rules about people coming in here,” she said. “Not too many at a time, and if they fight they'll be thrown out on their ear. I have it all planned about the reception.
It'll be in the drawing-room, with the doors open onto the garden if it's fine enough, and just the people you want to see will be allowed in here, a few at a time. I'm not going to have a whole mob barging in and wearing you out.”

“But I like seeing people,” objected Oliver. “I shall want to see them all, especially tricked out in their best. I. want to see all the women's hats.”

“You can see them through the window if it doesn't rain. Anyway, you don't like having people in here who bicker, I'm sure of that..”

“I quite enjoy it if I don't have to take sides. It's like having a seat in the stalls at
Private Lives
.”

“Darling boy. Remember when you took me to see that, years before war, and we went on to the
Savoy
? You were such a personable young man,” she gazed at him misty-eyed, and then the clock by his bed suddenly came into focus through the mist and she plumped her little feet down onto the ground, and bustled away, with her head full of dinner.

The poor mad creature was John's mother, Lady Sandys. She was not really mad, but suffered from spasmodic attacks of kleptomania, which had increased under psychotherapy, so were now left untreated, and politely ignored. She had been to stay at Hinkley once before, at the time of Heather's wedding, so everyone but Elizabeth knew the rules of the game. If you missed anything, you kept quiet about it and waited patiently, referring to your loss, if necessary, as having gone astray in the post

Lady Sandys had a companion called Miss Smutts, a pear-shaped little old bore with a moustache, who had become adept at retrieving alien goods from the ingenious places where Lady Sandys hid them when the fit was on her. If she did not know to whom they belonged, Miss Smutts would put the watch, or the glove, or the bracelet, on the half-moon table in the upstairs passage, and all you had to do was to help yourself. Everyone automatically glanced at the table whenever they passed it, as hotel visitors glance at their pigeon-hole for letters every time they pass the porter's desk. Lady Sandys herself could pass the half-moon table with its array of personal knick-knacks without more than a fleeting surprise that anyone should leaye a shoe or a toothbrush there, for once having taken the things, she lost interest in them and seemed quite unaware of ever having taken them. She might take them again, however, if the fit came on her, so it was wise to retrieve your property as soon as possible.

She never took money. She was theoretically honest but criminally vague. Since the death of his father, when he was only just grown up, John had always managed her affairs, and while he was away she had got into intricate tangles, for she kept Miss Smutts on a low plane and would not trust her to do the accounts. Lady Sandys would pay some tradesmen six times and others not at all, making it up to them just in time by having them to tea, squandering her entire butter ration on crumpets in a silver dish and paying them not only what she owed, but a bit extra to buy something for their wives and children, in whom, after a chat over the crumpets, she was passionately interested. If they lost anything while they were there, Miss Smutts would return it with a formal little note cramped into the top half of the notepaper, to say that their gloves, or their handkerchief, or their umbrella, had been found behind the hat-stand in the hall.

When John came home he had considerable trouble in straightening things out. Some of the local tradesmen were getting blase about tea-parties, and the manager of the bakery had actually heard Lady Sandys taking his stick out of the umbrella stand while he was washing his hands in the gents' cloakroom. There was quite a boycott consolidating round her in the Ebury Street neighbourhood, and Miss Smutts had to make constant trips to the town hall to re-register them. It was not good enough, John was told, when he went the rounds of his mother's creditors. They would like to oblige her ladyship, but what with having to make up their accounts weekly and send returns to the Ministry, she put their books right out. Then, too, she would insist on ordering things by telephone; and although they could never be delivered, it was a nuisance having her ringing up several times in a morning, when there was a queue of people in the shop waiting to draw their rations. When she could not wait any longer for the non-existent errand boy, and went down to the shop herself, she could never be made to understand about points, although she liked to gamble with them daringly, as if they were roulette chips. She had once caused quite a disturbance in a small dairy by trying to buy baked beans with clothing coupons.

On top of this, the landlord of her flat did not want to renew her lease at the end of the month. She had managed to buy a whole range of enamel paints, and he had agreed to let her touch up the paintwork, without knowing that she meant to do it herself and that she was colour-blind. After much difficulty, John had found fresh fields for her in Maida Vale; and although
she objected to it at first as being the wrong side of the Park, she was mollified by the proximity of Lord's, for she had loved cricket ever since she had been one of the belles of the Varsity matches in a lace hat and a dress with thirty buttons. As John could not find them an hotel while windows were being put into the new flat, Mrs. North had impulsively offered to have Lady Sandys and Miss Smutts at Hinkley, and had been regretting it ever since.

Before they arrived, having explained the situation to Elizabeth, who suggested Pentathol therapy, Mrs. North gave a little lecture to Evelyn. “It's just a funny game she plays, dear, to take your things. You may take them back off the table upstairs, but you must never say anything about it, because that's part of the game. It's a secret, isn't that fun?” She watched Evelyn's face doubtfully.

“It's wicked to steal,” said Evelyn righteously. “Once I stole a mangold-wurzel for Dandy out of Mr. Grainger's field. I prayed to Jesus and He told me to put it back. What does Jesus tell Uncle John's mummy to do?”

“I've told you, dear,” said Mrs. North wearily, “it's not stealing. It's a game.”

Oliver heard Evelyn telling David in a corner of his room at suppertime: “There's a new game, called Thieves. We can all play it. You take things out of people's rooms, and they can't be cross with you, like Aunt Heather was that time I took her lipstick for Red Indians.”