Westwood (48 page)

‘Is this your first visit to Yates Row, Margaret?’ inquired Earl, marching along amidst the scurrying children and the gliding prams with their silent occupants as if he had been doing it all his life, and holding the umbrella steadily over Margaret’s head.

‘Oh, yes. I came down on Friday with Mrs Challis and Mrs Niland and the children. Is it your first visit?’

‘No, I had the pleasure of visiting with Lady Challis six weeks ago and she kindly asked me to come again. There is a vurry delightful spirit in that house.’

‘Isn’t it lovely?’ she answered eagerly. ‘I’ve been simply longing to tell someone how much I love it.’

‘Lady Challis is a lovely hostess. Vurry gracious.’

‘Yes, isn’t she,’ but Margaret was conscious that he had used a word which did not at all express the impression made by Lady Challis upon herself.

‘How is your friend, Mr – Levinsky, wasn’t it?’ she went on. (‘Claudia, dear,
don’t
do that; your shoes are soaking wet now.’)

‘Yes, but generally known to his friends as Lev. Lev is vurry well, thank you, but he has a grouch, as usual. Without wishing to tread on delicate ground, Margaret, I may say that Lev doesn’t like England.’

‘Oh dear, I’m sorry. Why is that?’

‘Well, there are a number of reasons and perhaps it would be better if I did not mention them,’ replied Earl, with a tact somewhat marred by the colour which came up into his fresh young face and the faintly wistful look in his eyes. For a little while they walked in silence, while Margaret wondered what could have so upset Lev as to cause his friend to blush, and Earl thought sadly about American girls; sweet-smelling, large-eyed, gay American girls, prettily dressed in frills and silk stockings, with tiny waists and little feet and shining hair. Certainly he was not going to confess to this pleasant British girl how desperately he and Lev, in common with all the other G.I.s, missed American girls and what a poor substitute he thought these little Britishers. In vain he had patiently explained to Lev that the British had already had nearly five years of war with the Germans less than a hundred miles from London; that their women couldn’t get the right lipsticks and stuff because it wasn’t being made in England any more, that all the good-lookers were in uniform (
and what uniforms
, groaned Lev) and the ones outside the Services couldn’t get silk stockings unless they went to the Black Market. Lev had heard all these arguments without being impressed, and all he would say at the end of Earl’s chivalrous defence was, ‘Maybe, but it isn’t what I’ve been used to.’ Earl knew how he felt, for he suffered from the same painful loneliness, and some aspects of the problem horrified him, but being a simple, serious and domesticated character rather than a lover of the hot spots, he managed to enjoy England more than his friend did. It was a poor, small, badly arranged, dirty place, but personally he had found the people very kind and he was fascinated by the orderly peace in some of the British homes he had visited, and by the miniature loveliness of the countryside. And their wheat! that was wonderful; twice as heavy in the sheaf as the wheat in the hundred-acre fields of his own State of Kansas; drooping with its load of big, hard, weighty ears. When he had been helping to pile the stooks in a Gloucestershire farm last summer, he had had to stop and rest every now and then, and to admit that this British wheat certainly was heavy on the arm muscles. But peaceful homes, and kindness, and wonderful wheat did not make up for American girls and the
feeling
, comfortable and unthought-of as an old shoe, of his own country, and under that pleasant, earnest, polite manner he was a lonely and homesick young American.

His admiration for Hebe had subsided with a shock on the first occasion that he had heard her be really rude to someone, and he now regarded her with bewilderment and some disapproval.

To relieve the tedium of the journey, Claudia and Barnabas (who seemed formed by nature to egg one another on) now set up an elaborate shivering and chattering of their teeth and demands for hot drinks when they got in, as they were sure they were starting colds.

‘Oh, are you, do you think, Claudia?’ said Margaret anxiously, having been warned that
Claudia caught cold as easily as most people breathe. ‘I do hope not.’

‘Well, no, as a matter of fact,’ confessed Claudia handsomely. ‘I’m enjoying it; I like rain’ (lifting a face like a wet pink flower to the dripping heavens). ‘When me and Helen were coming home from games one day it was pouring, and we walked along
very
slowly drinking ginger-pop out of a bottle and having a good long
talk
and sucking Singers rolled in butter. It was
heavenly
.’

‘Singers? What are they?’

‘Little black sweets to do your voice good and make your breath smell nice. They aren’t on points.
Your breath will smell like an angel
, it says on the packet. We were going to have a picnic in some bomb ruins, only it rained.’

‘Who is Helen?’ inquired Earl, looking down at her with amusement.

‘She’s my friend in
darling
London. Oh, if
only
I were there!’ and she launched a kick at Bedfordshire.

‘Don’t you like the country?’

‘
Like
it? My dear, I loathe and
abominate
it!’ in an affected squeak. Margaret was wondering whether she ought to administer a mild snub when Claudia and Barnabas and Dickon rushed off down the road, shouting that they were nearly home. The rain had now nearly stopped and Earl smilingly furled his umbrella.

‘I don’t believe they’re so very wet after all, thanks to you,’ said Margaret, indicating Emma and Edna. Her earnest face, which was beginning to acquire a thoughtful, tender expression because of her constant longing for beauty, was framed in a scarlet handkerchief which showed her dark parted hair. That painfully acquired neatness, that straightforward yet gentler manner, that spirit in her eyes, were all in her favour; whereas a year ago she had looked an ordinary discontented young woman, she now looked an interesting one. To connoisseurs like Gerard Challis, she was still ordinary, but Earl Swinger liked her grave look and the gentle movements of her hands as she felt over Edna for possible dampness.

‘It’s kind of funny –’ he said suddenly, as he watched her, ‘when I came over here I was crazy about books and ideas. I was working on a theory of aesthetics of my own. Now, it all seems rather remote.’

‘What did you teach in America?’

‘Drawing and the History of European Art. Margaret,’ he went on abruptly, ‘do you like classical music?’

‘Very much. It’s one of my greatest pleasures.’

‘That’s grand, because I want you to come to a concert in London with me, soon.’

‘It’s awfully nice of you, Earl, I’d love to,’ she answered quietly, beginning to push the pram once more.

‘That’s a date,’ he said smiling. ‘I’ll call you up in a day or two.’

While they were making these arrangements they reached the house, and soon they were putting the prams into the shed where they were kept and carrying Emma and Jeremy into the living-room. But here they found a group clustered about Seraphina and Hebe, and the former was wiping her eyes while Lady Challis looked shocked and sad: they had just heard – Irene said in a low tone to Margaret as she took Edna in her arms – a telephone message had come from Highgate to say that the old nurse, Mrs Grant, had passed over that afternoon about an hour ago.

By three o’clock on the following day – what with the arrangements for the funeral, and Barnabas’s questions, and the noisy grief of Zita and the silent grief of Cortway, and her mother’s distress, and her father’s scarcely hidden irritation, Hebe had had enough of it all; and she firmly parked the children upon Zita and, having previously stolen to the telephone and made the appointment as if with a clandestine lover, fled out of the house and away, away to the Maison Tel, to have her hair done.

A haughty, exhausted voice at the other end of the line had at first said that
It Was Impossible
, but had then discovered that someone had just cancelled their appointment. Madame could therefore have that appointment instead. Whom did Madame usually have? Mr Fidele or Mr Bonaventure? Mr Fidele, and Miss Gloria. Oh, very good then, would Madame please come at three o’clock.

Why do I come to this place, thought Hebe gloomily, at two minutes to three. It stinks like mad and all these little witches flipping about get me down, and she directed a glance at Miss Diana, who was floating past with a bottle of green stuff in one lily hand and her black curls cascading down her back, looking too beautiful to live. Honestly, they give me the sick, as Alex would say, thought Hebe, opening a door and entering a large, stiflingly hot apartment which smelt overpoweringly of green soft-soap solution, perfumed washes, scent and powder, and freshly washed hair. She looked about her at the patient seated figures; some with their wet heads, dripping and wretched, others slowly baking under vast metal hoods with no one paying attention to their cries, others merely huddled in corners, waiting, endlessly waiting, and turning over ragged copies of
Post
. At the reception desk was a lovely dark creature who kept pressing white fingers distractedly to her forehead, but doing little else. Fat little men in white coats with combs stuck in their pockets darted about; occasionally they tiptoed to one of the seated figures, lifted up the metal hood or carelessly pinched the waves under the net, and muttered, ‘Who
did
your hair, madam?’

‘Mr Fidele – or Mr Bonaventure,’ would reply the victim, on which the little men nodded mysteriously and glided away for another hour or so, leaving the patient baking or dripping as before.

Hebe, having progressed so far as having her hair contemptuously washed by Miss Susan, who had a face like a very young pig that had managed to get hold of a lipstick, found herself dumped in a chair in an appalling draught, and waiting for a seat under a drier.

It’s a hole, she thought, patiently dripping, but I must admit they do make your hair look all right.

Presently the inevitable little man came up and bent over her and whispered mysteriously.

‘Who
did
your hair, madame?’

‘Miss Susan,’ announced Hebe, indicating the youthful porker, who had apparently gone to sleep in a corner.

‘And who usually
sets
it, madame?’

‘Mr Fidele.’

The little man nodded and went away. (These inquiries were apparently purely ritualistic survivals, like Jack-in-the-Green, and led nowhere.)

Upstairs, an alarming being who was very cross and all done up in a white jerkin like a doctor in an American film and who looked at your hair as if he hated it (which he probably did), prescribed for those whose locks needed rejuvenating, but Hebe had fortunately never had to penetrate so far.

Presently the woman sitting next to Hebe was done. The porker woke up and came over to
Hebe, and moved her into the woman’s place, and began to slam her hair into curls, but she had only done three of them when Mr Fidele, who actually looked and spoke like a human being, appeared in majesty and waved her away and began to do them himself. The drier was put over Hebe’s head and began to whirr, and she became sleepier and sleepier in its warmth. She tried not to feel miserable about Grantey and Alex, and endeavoured to make her mind a blank.

Presently she became aware that someone was bending over her, and preparing (she supposed) to ask the inevitable question. She was just framing the answer, ‘Miss Susan,’ when a voice said, ‘Hullo, darling,’ and she opened her eyes and looked into the eyes of Alex.

He was bending down with his hands on his knees and peering at her under the drier, and he was chewing gum, and Miss Susan and the other Misses and the nymph in the reception desk and all the little comb-and-jacket men were staring at him with almost as much interest as if he had been a film star instead of a great painter.

‘Hullo!’ answered Hebe, beginning to smile in answer to his smile, and her happiness ran over her with warm delight because his eyes were full of love, ‘however did you get here?’

‘’Phoned your mother. How are you, darling?’

‘I’m all right. How are you?’

‘I’ve had a cold, but it’s nearly gone now. Hebe,
The Shrapnel Hunters
is finished.’

‘Gosh! You must have been working like stink.’

‘I have been. I’m dying for you to see it. Can you come along now? Get them to take this thing away, can’t you?’ and he tapped the drier with his finger-nail. ‘How are the children? How’s my Lady Hamilton?’ (This was his pet name for Emma.)

‘She’s all right. Alex, isn’t it bad about Grantey, poor old thing?’

‘I know; I’m awfully sorry.
The Shrapnel Hunters
is at Morris Korrowitz’s. I’ve got to get a frame for it. Can you come on afterwards when we’ve seen it and choose one?’

‘Yes. (Oh, blast them;
will
they come and get me out of this thing?)’ and she cast around her such a furious look out of her usually placid eyes that Mr Fidele himself glided forward and began to release her, protesting the while with an indulgent smile for love’s impatience that her hair was not yet dry.

‘It’s blazing outside. She won’t catch cold,’ Alex assured him, but Mr Fidele murmured that the Effect would be spoiled by taking off the net and removing the pins before the hair was dry.