Privileged Children (13 page)

Finola was going out to have tea at Julia Morton’s house. She had put on her neatest, most Julia-ish skirt and jersey that morning, and plaited her hair too. Julia lived in Baron’s Court Road. The two girls walked there after school, by which time it was already nearly dark.

Mrs Burton opened the door to them. ‘So this is your friend, Julia. What’s your name, dear?’

‘Finola Molloy.’

‘Oh — well, you two girls will want to have your little tea alone, I expect. Julia, I’ve laid it up for you in the front room. Mind you clear it up when you’ve finished.’

Julia smiled delightedly. ‘Thank you, mum. Is Eddy back from school yet?’ she asked. Eddy was her small brother.

‘I’ve just sent Linda to fetch him. He’ll be wanting to play in the front room when he comes back, but just this once you can tell him he’s not to, as you’ve got — Finola.’ She smiled briefly at Finola.

The two girls went into the front room, in which there were two dim, shaded electric lights, a horsehair sofa, a mirror shaped like a fan, a dark patterned carpet, and a little table, set in the middle of the carpet. The table was covered with a lace cloth and had two plates and two cups with saucers on it. There were small forks, of a sort which Finola had never seen before, beside the plates, together with little spoons and knives.

‘Isn’t it ever so nice here? I feel just like a grown-up lady. Dad bought that lovely clock just after the war, when trade
was doing well,’ said Julia, grown-uply, pointing at the clock.

‘I’ve never seen a room like it,’ said Finola.’

‘You’re so lucky not to have a brother,’ sighed Julia. ‘They do make such a noise, and they’re allowed to. Well, more than girls are, of course.’

Mrs Morton came in with a tray, on which there were boiled eggs in special cups, sandwiches and a cake. Julia had persuaded her mother that, because Finola was half French, it was necessary to impress her with the elegance of their lifestyle. Mrs Morton had noticed that Finola wore boys’ socks and boots instead of white socks and shoes. She stayed in the room when the girls began eating, and saw that Finola was pushing in the top of her boiled egg with her thumb.

‘Is your mother French, dear?’ she asked Finola.

‘No, she’s Irish, my father’s French.’ There was a brief silence, a puzzled one on Julia’s side. Finola looked at Mrs Morton. ‘Oh, I’m not a bastard, my parents are married but Alice kept her name and gave it to me. If she had a boy he’d take my father’s name, but she says she won’t have any more children.’

Mrs Morton blinked. The other day, she was quite certain she had heard Julia, in the bathroom, say ‘bugger’.

‘What’s your father’s job, dear?’ She sat down. She no longer thought it important that the little girls be left alone together to chat.

‘He’s a musician. He plays the piano in a nightclub, and he composes, too. My mother’s an artist.’

Julia suddenly asked: ‘What did he do in the war, Fin?’

Finola pushed a crust of bread into her egg. ‘He wasn’t able to fight, he’s too small.’

‘Did he work in munitions, then?’ asked Mrs Morton. ‘Or perhaps an office job?’

‘No, he didn’t do anything to help kill people. He carried on giving music lessons. After all, you need ordinary people in a war, don’t you, as well as soldiers? But Alice — my mother — she worked at the War Office at the end of the war. Kate was a doctor in St Thomas’s hospital, but she was in France for a time too.’

‘Who’s Kate, dear?’

‘She lives with us. She used to be sort of married to Anatole — my father — I mean she lived with him for years — but now she’s going to marry someone else.’

Julia was beginning to think that her mother was being nosey, and she sat silently eating. Mrs Morton said brightly to Finola: ‘Have you any brothers and sisters?’

‘Two sisters. They’re nineteen — twins. Jenny’s reading chemistry at Cambridge and Liza works in publishing. They’re my father’s daughters by his first marriage.’

‘Dear me, well, I shouldn’t be interrupting your little tea-party, girls. I’ll go now. Julia, when Finola’s gone, you must do your homework before bedtime.’ Bedtime was at half past seven for Julia. It was five already. Mrs Morton left and the girls helped themselves to bread and butter.

Julia took off her spectacles. She had pretty blue eyes. ‘Are you going to carry on at school after fourteen?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. Alice wants me to leave school, because she says the education is bad. Well, she says it was pretty bad at Cressida Lake, where Liza and Jenny went. She wants to give me lessons at home but I’d rather be at school.’

‘I’m going to Kilbride Private School for Girls when Dad gets promoted,’ said Julia. ‘They wear red hats and proper gymslips there.’

‘Is it a day school?’ asked Finola.

‘Yes,’ sighed Julia. ‘Oh, wouldn’t you like to go to boarding school?’

Julia had lent Finola several school story books by Angela Brazil. Finola rubbed her nose and thought of Miranda. A sturdy glamour clung, for Julia and Finola, to the country boarding schools in books. From them they heard of match teas, dorm feasts, house colours and cosy yet lofty seniors’ studies. These things which they had never seen or done were described in detail in school stories and comics, but casually, as though everyone really knew all about them. Julia really felt that she did know all about boarding school. Finola did not, because of Miranda’s description of it.

Finola and Julia discussed school, other girls, the hatefulness of boys, and hopscotch. Julia showed Finola her doll, who had real hair and rolling eyes, and who wore a
fashionable dress of pink silk with a low waist. Julia had made a string of long beads for her neck, and told Finola that it had taken her an hour to thread them, and that the beads had cost sixpence. Julia got threepence a week pocket-money. She knew that Finola’s parents were too poor to give her pocket-money. She hoped that her mother would excuse Finola’s table manners because of this.

Mrs Morton came in again. ‘You must practise your new piano piece, Julia,’ she said. She smiled at Finola, who grinned back — cheekily, Mrs Morton thought. Finola saw a book which was on a shelf near the door.

‘Oh, Julia, can I borrow this? I haven’t read it.’

‘Oh, yes, if you like. There are some ever such good stories in it, except there’s a long one in the middle about love.’

It was a thick, blue book, with a girl’s sweet face on the front, called the
The
British
Girls’
Annual.

‘Well, I’ll see you tomorrow, Jules. Goodbye, Mrs Morton.’ Finola flattered herself about her politeness. She did not, Mrs Morton noticed, say, ‘Thank you very much for the lovely tea.’

Finola put on her coat, which was an old jacket of Anatole’s with the sleeves rolled up. On the way home she remembered what Alice had told her about being diplomatic about oneself with people who lived in a different way. Mrs Morton had wanted to know quite a lot about Finola. Perhaps one ought to have said that Anatole played in an orchestra. Mrs Morton did not look as though she would fit into the nightclub which Anatole had described.

To be polite, Finola would have to ask Julia back. No doubt she could rig up a lace-covered tablecloth in the cold drawing room at Bramham Gardens, which was only ever used for entertaining the odd stranger, and guide Julia past the kitchen. The only thing Finola had been told about courtesy was that you ought to make people feel at home in your house.

Finola wondered what the little forks had been for. She ought to have them, for ornament presumably, when Julia came. Julia had, in the middle of conversation, eaten her cake with her fingers like Finola.

‘Hello, where’ve you been?’ asked Alice from the kitchen as Finola came in.

‘Oh, having tea with Julia Morton.’ Finola was usually home by five. She went over to the stove and sniffed. ‘Ugh, not that beetroot soup again.’

‘Have cocoa if you want,’ said Alice. She glanced at the title of Finola’s new book. ‘Did Julia lend you that?’

‘Yes.’ Finola felt Alice’s contempt on her shoulders as she hunched them and sat down to read the book.

‘Do you really find that book interesting?’

‘Yes. It’s fun.’ Finola twitched over a page. ‘I do like it! It’s about nice, ordinary people who can be — jolly! They don’t have people wanting them to be interested in things like art and politics!’

‘Our life is very ordinary,’ said Alice. ‘We just try to live with the minimum of fuss and convention in a world which is full of unnatural and cruel social pressures of the kind which Miranda ran away from,’ Alice lectured.

‘What is the book?’ asked Miranda.

‘
The
British
Girls’
Annual
of 1920,’ said Alice.

‘All about ordinary middle-class people happily conforming to their safe little savage world, yes.’

‘You’re as bad as Alice! You’re worse!’ screamed Finola. ‘You’re so like her it’s not true. You even talk with her accent, only hers is faint and yours is much stronger, because you want to be just like her, and you’re as bad an intellectual snob and as fanatical a hater of ordinary people, so much so that you’d neither of you ever dream of talking to someone who’s clean and tidy and has a maid …’

‘Clementina’s very tidy, and she has two maids and a cook,’ Alice pointed out. But she looked crestfallen. Finola stormed out with her
Annual.

‘She’s right,’ said Alice. ‘We were awful about it. I’ll never comment on what she does again.’

‘Oh, Alice, don’t talk nonsense. Anyone would think you’d tried to confiscate the book. All you did was make it clear that she’s reading rubbish.’

Jenny had been reading and listening in the corner. ‘You know,’ she said, and Alice looked surprised to see her, ‘it’s a bad idea to send Finola to the Council school if you want her
to pick up proletarian attitudes, or liberal ones. All the kids who go to that school live in Baron’s Court, places like that. They’re all petit-bourgeois, frightened, competitive and conservative. Finola’s drinking in the spirit of the lace curtains and the aspidistras, and she’s certainly learning nothing. If she wants to go to school, why don’t you send her to Cressida Lake?’

‘We can’t afford it, that’s why. When Kate and Richard go off and get married there’ll only be three of us earning in the house. We’ve got to get some more people somehow.’

‘Don’t tell me Caitlin hasn’t been bullying you to let her pay for Finola’s education!’

‘She has, yes. Actually, I did suggest it to Fin, but she said she was quite happy at the Council school. And she won’t consider letting us teach her.’

‘She wants friends of her own age. How’s she going to meet them if she doesn’t go to school?’

‘What do you mean, she wants friends of her own age?’ asked Miranda. ‘Nine-year-old girls are utterly vile, stupid little bullies on the whole, or else scared nincompoops. It’s not their fault, it’s their training, but they are. It’s absolutely impossible to have friends of one’s own age if one’s got any brains.’

‘Let’s admit that Fin’s not very brainy,’ said Alice.

‘Of course she’s got brains!’ said Jenny. ‘Anyway, I think you should persuade her to go to Cressida Lake. Lots of the girls there go to Queen’s or St Paul’s or North London Collegiate afterwards. Fin certainly ought to learn something if she goes there. And the fact that the girls have money makes them less snobbish, not more so. I mean, girls of that class are not the market for that ghastly book Fin’s got at the moment.’

‘All right, I’ll have another go at her. But Anatole feels badly about letting Aunt Caitlin pay.’

‘You and Miranda could persuade him. Well, I must go and do some proper work.’ Jenny left.

‘It sounds odd, hearing her talk about work. All the time she was at school she messed around,’ said Alice. ‘She always did well, though, unlike poor Liza.’

‘Why did you find Liza attractive?’ said Miranda
suddenly, her chin poised on her smooth white hand.

‘I don’t any more. But she had such charm at fourteen, you don’t know. Just like a snowdrop. She still looks her best in January and February, don’t you think?’

‘She’s so colourless.’

‘It can be enchanting.’

Miranda stroked her own delicately coloured cheek. She was the best dressed person in the house, and took great care of her appearance. ‘Don’t look like that, Miranda. You know very well that all other girls are ugly compared to you.’

‘But you like ugly people. Look at Anatole!’

‘That’s different. He’s a man.’

Their conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Liza. Liza was smaller than Jenny. She now wore her thin blonde hair in a bun, like Miranda, and for work she wore tidy print dresses. Her face had become very thin. She had brought a friend with her.

‘This is Volodya,’ she said, putting a pile of papers on the table. ‘He needs lodgings, so I thought perhaps he could move in when Richard and Kate go.’

Alice looked him up and down. He was tall, brown-haired, scruffy-looking, with a short, small, curved nose. He was aged about thirty. ‘Of course you can if you like. From April, did Liza tell you? We share all our money here.’

‘I’ve warned him,’ said Liza. ‘He was in favour of Kerensky, you know; he only got out of Russia to save his life,’ she added.

‘Oh, I hope you can tell us something about what really happened,’ said Miranda. ‘We only get information through the capitalist press.’

Volodya laughed nervously, and stood twisting his hat in his hands.

‘Sit down and have a drink,’ said Alice. ‘Whisky, gin or beer?’

‘Gin, please,’ he said. ‘I think your system of dividing the income is most just.’

‘Good,’ said Alice. ‘You’re staying for dinner, aren’t you? There’s enough to feed an army,’ she said, stirring the soup.

‘Yes, Liza invited me,’ he said, looking at Liza.

Leo, Clementina, Michael and Mr Tuskin were also coming to dinner.

All thirteen people sat packed round the long deal table in the kitchen. Alice, looking at the faces of those around her, wondered for the first time at how much they had aged since she had first met them. Clementina and Leo were both grey-haired, and Clementina’s spectacles were now so thick that her eyes could hardly be seen behind them. Leo’s massive figure had sagged and spread, so that he was now enormously fat. Even just after the war, he had looked very young for his age. Michael Wood was ten, and Alice suddenly saw in him a resemblance to Luke. Perhaps it was the way in which his hair curled over his forehead. My son, she said to herself. She felt nothing. Anatole had aged considerably in the last few years. His pale skin was still smooth, but when he laughed his face became riddled with tiny lines. His hair was entirely grey at the front, and still dark in a long stripe down the back. Kate, too, was in her forties, and looked it. She dyed her hair to keep it black, and her blue eyes were now folded into her face by swarthy skin. Of all the adults at the table, only Mr Tuskin looked exactly as he had done in 1904, when he had first begun to teach Alice. Alice herself was nearing thirty, but she had changed little in comparison with the others.