Something Light (9 page)

“Well, did you always mean to live in the country?”

“I suppose so,” said Mrs. Meare, more vaguely. “Not that dachs take up much room. But of course Teddy being a vet—”

(“Ah!” thought Louisa—feeling her hand on a clue. The life, not the man: if you want to breed dogs, marry a vet.)

“—the country seemed obvious. Of course, I didn't
know
he was a vet,” added Mrs. Meare. “When we met, in the war, he was heavily disguised as a gunner! Actually we bought the cottage out of his gratuity …”

She looked affectionately over her shoulder towards the peeling paint, the unpointed brick; glanced fondly at the plaster dwarfs. Louisa found a compliment surprisingly easy to produce.

“It's so peaceful,” said Louisa. “It's quite marvelous … Would you mind going back a bit? How did you know—or didn't you know?—it would work out so well?”

“I saw Ted was steady,” said Mrs. Meare simply. “That's all a woman wants, don't you think? I mean, surely it's the
basis?
We'll never be rich, but Ted has a wonderfully steady little practice; and if he wasn't a vet he'd be something else steady!—Now I've just talked about myself,” said Mrs. Meare remorsefully, “and there he is with the car!”

6

Mr. Meare was a bit damp about the trousers, but he'd changed his jacket; in place of leather-patched tweed he now sported, Louisa was touched to see, an ancient gunner blazer. He meant to cut a dash indeed, he meant to drive her to the station in style! With what looked like an old pajama leg he carefully dusted the car seats; turfed out a bundle of old newspapers and a dog-odorous blanket. He even gave a swift polish to the door handles and headlamps, before inviting Louisa to enter.

Louisa entered looking as Londony as she could.—Casting her mind back to Cannes, she even tried to look cosmopolitan. (Or like a model; Louisa was so long-limbed, she practically achieved it—the elegant stretch of leg, the final loose-jointed subsidence.) A glance in the driving mirror confirmed her hat at a suitably cosmopolitan angle, and powder and lipstick both sufficient. As a final gesture of good will she impulsively got out her eyebrow pencil and drew a slight bistered streak up from the corner of each eye.

“I
say!”
exclaimed Mr. Meare, in candid admiration. “I'll feel I'm driving a film star! D'you mind if we slow down through the village?”

“Not a bit,” quoted Louisa, “so long as I catch my train.”

“There's plenty of time, I've allowed for it,” said Mr. Meare. “May as well give the natives a treat! Sure you're quite comfortable?”

“Perfectly,” said Louisa.

“Then I'll just get Molly,” said Mr. Meare.

Louisa heard him calling all up the garden. From the house, she heard his wife call some protesting reply. But whatever argument took place within, in a matter of moments Molly joined them.—Not in the least like a model looked Mrs. Meare, in her Panama hat, a woolly cardigan thrown hastily about her shoulders; but her beaming smile made her a very agreeable sight.

“This is all wrong!” she complained happily. “How will anyone take Teddy for a wolf, with me in the back seat?”

“You do our neighbors an injustice,” said Mr. Meare complacently. “They'll think you have to keep an eye on me.—We'll stop at the local on our way back,” he explained to Louisa. “It's not often I get Molly out on the spree!”

The parting at the station was genuinely affectionate all round. The Meares waited to see Louisa's train draw in, and then draw out. Her last glimpse of them was as they stood waving vigorously—Mr. Meare to the left, his wife to the right; it had to be thus, because they were also hand-in-hand.

7

The train drew out. Louisa, alone in her compartment, sat reflective and—envious.

She hadn't envied, or not much, Mrs. Anstruther and F. Pennon. Louisa might have envied all the good grub going, but she didn't envy the (prospective) Pennons in their personal relation. They'd probably do well enough—he acquiring a profile and an accomplished hostess, she a gilt-edged meal ticket; no doubt some slight festooning of sentiment, under Enid's expert hands, would soften the transaction to acceptability. The Meares were something else. In the Meares, Louisa saw something she envied not with her appetite, but with her heart.

They were just so damned fond of each other, Molly Meare didn't even see how the paint was peeling. Ted Meare was so fond of his Molly, driving a Londony glamour girl to the station became an innocent domestic joke. (“Which is going to last them for years,” thought Louisa perceptively. For years Molly Meare would remind her husband of that wild excursion!) On a railway platform they stood as unselfconsciously hand-in-hand as a couple of teenagers—more so; with the Meares it was evidently a matter of habit. Louisa pictured them hand-in-hand still, at the local; sitting close together on a hard bench, having a devil of a spree over small sherries.

“I've been on the wrong tack,” thought Louisa. “I don't need a rich husband, I need a husband like Teddy Meare …”

On either side of the line, now, small back gardens ran up to small houses. In more than one, a man was digging, or mowing the lawn; in more than one, a woman had come out to bear him company. Louisa fancied a breath of contentment rising up from them, as the scent of limes might have risen, the train running between an avenue of lime trees.

“What do
I
want with a lot of money?” thought Louisa. “I can't want it badly; if I did, I'd have collared old Freddy. It was my subconscious damn well right as usual,” thought Louisa, “I don't want someone rich, I want someone steady …

“Who do I know who's steady?” thought Louisa.

She had to think a long way back, all the way to Broydon, to the days when she'd skylarked about the evening roads with boys on bicycles. But it wasn't one of these Louisa at last recalled; against the more sober background of the Free Library—sniffing again the mingled odors of dust, bookbindings, and her own Phul-Nana perfume—she saw the figure of Jimmy Brown edge shyly round from Ceramics to Biography, as she, from Biography, edged round to Ceramics.

8

Louisa was the only girl who paid much attention to him. She was already so fond of men, Jimmy's gangling figure and pebble lenses didn't put her off, they rather roused her sympathy; she quite often kept a date with him at the Library even if it wasn't raining. Her reward was an earnest, awkward devotion, which if Louisa didn't particularly value, she allowed no one else to make game of.

Contemplating it, and Jimmy, now, she was more appreciative. He mightn't have been much to look at, but he was steady as a rock.

He had even, or very nearly (in Mrs. Anstruther's phrase), people. His father was an optician, and on the Borough Council. His mother had been a schoolteacher. From the rare occasions when she visited them Louisa recalled an upright piano and bound volumes of the
National Geographic
magazine. She recalled also their quiet pride in the fact that Jimmy was taking a full-time course at the London Polytechnic. “He'll be better qualified than his father,” said Mr. Brown, “when the time comes to take over!”

“Louisa ought to go to the Poly too,” said Jimmy earnestly. “She's got a very good brain, Dad; she has really.”

But both elders looked at Louisa's fiery hair and long legs.

“Louisa's found her career already,” said Mrs. Brown kindly. “How are you liking it, dear, with Mr. Hughes?”

Mr. Hughes was the local photographer. Louisa, a sulky if not idle apprentice, said he was all right.

“In my opinion, it's still a waste,” stated Jimmy.

“In
my
opinion,” said Mr. Brown heartily, “Louisa'll find herself married to one of her many admirers before she can turn round!”

Well, he'd been wrong. It wasn't marriage that took Louisa away from Broydon, it was her own initiative. And after an interval of ten years, if Jimmy himself hadn't married in the meantime, that same initiative was going to take her back.

The conclusion was as swift as when she decided to marry F. Pennon; but it will be seen that Louisa, from that same disappointing episode, had learned a modicum of prudence. Jimmy Brown was in fact still a bachelor; but she made sure of it in advance.

Chapter Nine

1

“Is that the optician's?” asked Louisa, over the telephone.

She'd already checked in the directory that it was listed under James, not Henry, Brown; fortunately Jimmy hadn't been named for his father. (Was his father dead, or merely retired? In any case the circumstance was propitious.) Propitious too was the answering voice—not Jimmy's, but evidently that of a female assistant.

“Actually it's
Mrs
. Brown I want to speak to,” said Louisa cunningly. “Mrs. James Brown. Could you possibly put me through to her?”

“I'm afraid there's some mistake,” said the assistant. “There is no Mrs. Brown.”

Louisa thought rapidly. She had learned all she needed, but didn't wish the conversation officiously reported …

The voice sounded conscientious—and prim.

“I suppose you wouldn't be interested yourself, in a new type of foundation garment?”

“Certainly not!” snapped the assistant, and rang off with her lips effectually sealed.

2

Newly prudent, newly cautious Louisa! (
Che va piano va sicuro;
also softly-softly catchee monkey.) A night's reflection had convinced her that this time she should not only look before she leaped but should also, so to speak, establish some solid base for unhurried operating. Steadiness has its limitations; however glad to see her, if she simply blew into the shop Jimmy was quite capable of letting her blow out again before he realized, too late, all of gladness the future might hold in store.… Only a semi-permanent relation (say a week) would give him time to get his hocks under him; and a week Louisa was fully prepared to devote.

Fortunately she had an extremely accurate memory for dogs. (This not in the circumstances an irrelevance; far from it.) After leafing through only two back numbers of
Country Month
Louisa picked out Ivor and Ivan Cracarovitch, owner Mrs. Arthur Brent, of Broydon Court. The aristocratic address was misleading; even in Louisa's day Broydon Court had declined to a residential hotel; Mrs. Brent was the proprietress.

She lifted the receiver again.

“Mrs. Brent? This is Miss Datchett speaking,” said Louisa, “Datchett Photographer of Dogs. May I tell you I think your borzois are quite magnificent?”

A flattered unsuspicious babble answered her.

“It's just a shame,” continued Louisa, “that they've been photographed so badly. I've Ivan in front of me now; one doesn't get the least idea of his quality.”

“Oh, don't you think so?” cried Mrs. Brent, distressed. “What's wrong with him?”

“He looks like a camel colt.”

“I'm sure he doesn't!” protested Ivan's owner.—But she sounded shaken nonetheless.

“Ivor,” continued Louisa remorselessly, “isn't even standing properly. He's carrying his tail too high. Really, one could weep.”

“I didn't think so very much of Ivor myself,” confessed Mrs. Brent. “But then of course I'm not an expert. I'm not
breeding
them, you know; I just want to sell them.”

“That makes it worse,” said Louisa. “Have you had any inquiries?”

“Well, no,” admitted Mrs. Brent. “I can't say I have. All the same”—a slight suspicion had evidently infiltrated at last—“I'm afraid I can't afford to have them taken again …”

This was no blow to Louisa. What she was working on was the presumption that Broydon Court, as so often in the past, lacked its full quota of residents.

“Look,” said Louisa, “I'm so impressed I'm not even asking a fee. What I
would
like is time. I'm prepared to spend if necessary a week—getting to know them, letting them get to know
me
, waiting to catch exactly the right moment. Then we'd have something really worthwhile.—And as it happens I've just got a week free; if you can put me up.”

Mrs. Brent fell for it.

3

A certain caution informed all Louisa's actions, that morning. She hadn't seen the milkman; she'd been in the bath. She didn't see Mr. Ross either; though she spent a couple of hours in his Soho hangout, she was there by ten and gone before he put in an appearance.—Not conscientiousness alone sent her there, she was sincerely grateful to Mrs. Meare for putting her on the right track, and wanted to have done an extra good job for Kerseymere Kennels; almost every negative promising success, she streaked back to Paddington with an easy mind.

The only other thing that held her up was an unfortunate encounter with Number Ten.

Louisa did her best to avoid it; perceiving his door half-open, she approached her own almost furtively. But he was evidently on the watch, and even as she slipped her key into the lock, emerged.

“Miss Datchett!”

“Hi,” said Louisa, “I'm in a blazing hurry.”

“Only to say, Miss Datchett—”

“Not now, d'you mind?” snapped Louisa—remembering amongst other things that Number Ten was due for the brush-off.

He brushed off very easily. He didn't argue. He didn't say anything at all. He just stood there, dumb and humble—with the box of beechnut-jewelry in his hand.

All arranged neatly on fresh cotton wool; six boutonnières, six brooches, and what looked like, however improbably, a sort of tiara or carcanet. Attached to each was a very small price tag, meticulously (and humbly) figured in green ink.

The edges of the box itself had been lovingly bound with green
passe partout
.—The only thing lacking, thought Louisa bitterly, was the one label more:
All My Own Work
.