Faster! Faster! (2 page)

“Look, could Edie go off now? It's nearly five, and Collier or I could take any telephone-calls. We haven't got a thing to do. Collier's knitting a jumper.”

“There'll be plenty to-morrow morning.”

“Yeah, I know. Is it O.K. about Edie?”

“I suppose so. Yes.”

“Right-oh.”.

She drifted out again.

“That's our Miss Frayle. She's actually a very efficient young woman, though I admit she doesn't look it.”

“What does she do?”

“Secretarial. Takes all Claudia's letters, and acts as her secretary generally. Miss Collier does the general correspondence, and the accounts. The one you saw—the older one—does most of the outside work—interviews, and shopping for clients, and finding houses and so on. Except what I do myself.”

“You must work very hard.”

“It comes in rushes. You heard what Frayle said. They're slack to-night, but to-morrow they'll
probably be rushed off their feet. Especially if Claudia's in the office.”

“I suppose she's still tremendously energetic.”

“Oh, definitely. After all, one's got to remember that she supports her whole family—Copper and three children.”

“It's marvellous!” said Frances, her eyes shining with admiration. “And when I think how they were brought up—she and Anna. Do you know Claudia's sister—Anna Zienszi, she is now?”

“I met her once, staying at Arling. She hasn't been there for at least three years, though.”

“Not been there!” Frances echoed in ingenuous astonishment. “But I should have thought … They were always so devoted to one another——”

A rapid footfall sounded outside, and, almost simultaneously as it seemed, Claudia Winsloe came in.

“Frances dear!”

“Claudia!”

They kissed affectionately, and then stood, looking at one another.

Sal Oliver slipped from the room.

“Oh, Claudia! you haven't changed a bit. Well —except perhaps your hair.”

In Mrs Winsloe's dark hair the grey showed plentifully. But her clear-cut, intelligent face had retained its well-defined oval, there were not many lines round her eyes—big and hazel—and her tall figure was slim and upright.

Impossible to say why she looked like a woman of forty-three—except that she was forty-three.

Sal Oliver from time to time went to Arling with her partner for the week-end, especially if there was any work that could be done away from the office.

She was going there now, and was pleased to think she would meet Mrs Ladislaw again. She had found her, though faintly absurd, rather charming and if certain aspects of present-day life eluded her, Sal felt as if they might be defective in significance, rather than Mrs Ladislaw in perception.

She wondered how Mrs Ladislaw would react to Arling.

Sal travelled down by train on the Friday afternoon before the August Bank Holiday.

Arling stood in a Kentish village, some miles from Canterbury. Sal, from the train window, looked with absent affection at the hop-fields, the glaring white patches of chalky ground, the cherry-orchards, dense with green, and the little black-and-white houses.

She was a Londoner born and bred, but she liked the Kentish countryside—though perhaps mostly, she admitted to herself, on account of its associations with David Copperfield.

A shabby, familiar old car, driven by Copper Winsloe, met her outside the station.

“Hullo, Copper!”

“Hullo, Sal. Nice to see you. It's going to be glorious weather for the week-end. How was London?”

“Very hot, and very full, as far as I was concerned, of women screaming for impossibilities without delay.”

“The whole world is full of
them”
remarked Winsloe without rancour.

He was a tall, angular creature with thinning hair that had once been red and was now a faded rust-colour. The lines deeply-bitten into his tanned face, his slouching walk and listless movements always brought to Sal's mind the word
desœuvré.

“Frances Ladislaw is staying with us—she's a good sort. I like her. And Claudia's mother.”

“Oh God!”

“I know. And a chap of Claudia's—a fellow called Quarrendon.”

“I know. I've met him at the office. An Oxford don, very clever.”

“I dare say,” said Copper without enthusiasm.

“He came in to ask us to fix up a journey to Esthonia for him. It seems that he can't manage railway time-tables.”

To this peculiarity Copper Winsloe paid no tribute beyond a brief ejaculation expressive of scorn. He changed gear as the car approached a hill, and the noise that ensued made conversation temporarily impossible.

It was some little while before Sal spoke again. Then she asked:

“How's everything?”

“The situation,” Copper said deliberately, “is as usual, serious. The school-bills are in—absolutely terrific—they've surpassed themselves—and Claudia's working overtime, and all on edge.”

“It's bad, but is it any worse than it's often been before?”

“No, it isn't. And she'll manage, of course. She always does. My God, though, it was a fool's trick ever to buy the house.”

“How's the mortgage getting on?” asked Sal, as though enquiring after a familiar and longstanding ailment. Nor did the reply surprise her.

“It isn't getting on at all, so far as I know. I haven't asked Claudia, but if she's done anything about it, she'd have said so. I suppose she's paying the interest.”

“No hope of a job for you, I suppose?”

“I haven't looked for one. What's the use? Nobody wants a man of my age, not trained for anything in particular. The next war will give me my job. The whole world's in a funny sort of mess, isn't it? Not so much for you, perhaps—you're younger.”

“Not so very much. But at least I've nobody dependent on me. And I wasn't brought up to look on an income as something that was just there, as a matter of course. I always knew I'd have to work for my own living.”

“Everybody's supposed to be brought up to that nowadays—girls and boys alike. I wonder what the kids'll make of it all.”

“Living in a house like Arling, and going to expensive schools, and knowing well enough that they have more or less everything they want, regardless of the fact that it's never quite paid for?” she said ironically.

“I've always wondered whether it was better to
scrounge and save every penny and never let them have a taste of the fun one had oneself, or to let the future go hang—which it'll probably do anyway—and at least give them a good time to look back on. Anyway—it's Claudia that sets the tune. After all, she pays the piper.”

After that, a long uphill slope and the noise of the aged engine kept them silent.

Arling stood in a small park, consisting of rough grass-land and clumps of beeches. A shabby wooden gate, badly in need of paint, led into the winding drive and a little further on was another gate and then a gravelled square in front of the house.

It was a pleasant house, about a hundred and fifty years old, with no especial features. The french windows of the ground floor faced a long straggling garden, where a small stream ran along. by the bottom of the tennis-lawn, overhung by a giant pair of weeping willows.

Inside, it was roomy, shabby, and sparsely furnished. Of the ground-floor rooms, only three were in use—the library, that ran almost half the length of the house and faced south; a smaller room on the other side of the hall, traditionally called the smoking-room; and a square, cold dining-room at the back of the smoking-room.

The hall was also square, stone-tiled, and with a stone staircase leading to the floor above. Nine or ten bedrooms were inadequately served by two bathrooms.

It was a source of satisfaction to the Winsloes, and also to their guests, that Claudia's parents had
put both electric light and central heating into the house before the war. The intermediate owners of Arling, beyond repairing the roof and installing a separate boiler for the hot-water system, had done nothing. They had, however, after twelve years, decided to go and live in the Isle of Wight, and this timely resolution had led to the reinstatement of the late Captain Peel's daughter in the home of her childhood.

“I'm not coming in,” said Copper, at the open door. “I've got a job in the workshop.”

He spent a good many hours in his workshop, an outbuilding behind the stables. Sometimes he repaired small pieces of furniture or turned something on a lathe, but on the whole the visible results of the time he expended there were strangely inadequate.

Sal nodded without speaking and went into the house.

Her ears were at once assailed by a loud and hilarious outburst of community-singing in German. The wireless was, as usual, turned on full blast in the library, and the door into the hall—also as usual—stood wide open.

She paused for a moment in front of the round gilt mirror on the wall, took off her hat and ran a pocket-comb through her short satin-black hair, and then went into the room.

Sylvia was at the tea-table—auburn-haired, blue-eyed, and innocently pretty; Maurice—small, compact, and sandy, eleven years old—crouched upon the floor near the open window, surrounded by snapshots, a pot of paste, an open album, and
innumerable sheets of blotting-paper; and Taffy sprawled gracelessly over an armchair, petting an old and moth-eaten black cat.

The children's grandmother, Mrs Peel, sat in a sofa corner with
The Times.
At intervals she read aloud an extract from the news to which nobody paid any attention. Her slim, but undefinably elderly, figure was clad in thin tweed; her grey hair, piled high upon the top of her head, curled tightly into a neat little fringe on her forehead; and she wore steel-rimmed spectacles.

Standing next to Sylvia, with an awkward air of not knowing what to do next, was a man nearing forty, large and clumsily built, with an ugly, intelligent face and the habitual frown of the extremely near-sighted. This was Andrew Quarrendon.

Sal greeted them all adequately—Quarrendon obviously had no recollection of her whatever, although they had met several times—and sat down by the open window.

“Mother and Frances will be here in a minute. They're only in the garden,” said Sylvia. “I've made the tea—we won't wait.”

“Sal, do you know His Lordship was thirteen last week?” asked Taffy, petting the cat.

“There was a cat in the
Daily Mail
who lived to be twenty-two,” said Maurice abruptly.

“Oh dear,” said Mrs Peel.

This ejaculation was, with Mrs Peel, almost an automatic reaction.

“Schön sind die Mädeln mit siebzehn, achtzehn Fahr”
burst hysterically from the revellers of Leipzic.

“Must
we have the wireless quite so loud?” said Mrs Peel plaintively.

“Must we have it at all?” Sal enquired.

“I forgot you didn't like it,” Maurice remarked leniently, and went to turn it off.

It was a fine wireless set, of the newest type and very expensive.

“See when the dance music's coming on, though,” Taffy besought frantically. “Don't let's miss that, whatever we do. You wouldn't mind the dance music, would you, Sal?”

“I expect I shall be upstairs, or in the garden.”

Taffy grinned her understanding of the implication. She was a tall, lanky child of sixteen, of the same loose-limbed build as her father. She had none of Sylvia's golden prettiness, but her small apricot-tinted face, with wide-apart blue-green eyes set in long, light, curling lashes, was arresting in its air of defiant intelligence. Her straight sandy hair was cut in a Garbo-like bob that reached nearly to her shoulders. It suited her.

“Here they are,” said Sylvia.

Her mother and Frances Ladislaw came in by the long window.

The personality of Claudia Winsloe was of a kind that made it almost impossible for her to enter into any group of people without effecting an immediate alteration in the atmosphere.

In her own home this was markedly so.

The subtle inner currents running from one person to another seemed somehow accelerated and intensified by her presence, and there was a marked tendency, on the part of her children especially, to refer every manifestation of personality to the bar of Claudia's judgment. This was done simply and without disguise by Sylvia and Maurice, and even to a certain extent by Mrs Peel. In Taffy it took an oddly inverted form, causing her to disagree sharply with her mother on every point, although usually by implication rather than directly.

Sal Oliver had formed part of the Winsloe family circle so frequently that her observation of it, though always acute and interested, had become almost a subconscious process. To-day her chief preoccupation lay in watching for Frances Ladislaw's reaction to it. She had an idea that behind her obvious inability to conduct everyday life on any but rather muddled and ineffective lines, might lie a quite simple and uncomplicated honesty of
outlook that would make her judgments neither muddled nor ineffective. The Winsloes included her happily in their conversation. All of them were naturally good talkers, and Frances was, as naturally, a good listener.

With Andrew Quarrendon they had more difficulty. He did, indeed, appear to listen, but it was with a curious and disconcerting air of intensity, and he turned his large head from one speaker to another as though anxiously awaiting the introduction of some profound thought, brilliantly expounded.

Claudia did her best for him, begging for suggestions for a literary competition. She set one regularly for a weekly paper.

“Make them do a parody!” cried Maurice. “Like the time you said ‘A Railway-timetable as Dr. Johnson would have written it.' “

“Too difficult,” objected Sylvia, at the same time that Taffy ejaculated “Too easy.”