Westwood (6 page)

The first part of the evening passed less dully than was usual, for Margaret must give her parents every detail she could remember about the house, and before he went off to the Luna Reg had supper with them, and for nearly an hour there was something resembling ordinary family life about the dining-room table, with Reg saying how good his mother’s cooking tasted after the Army, and making them laugh with his stories of the camp some twenty miles away where he was stationed. But after he had gone, and Margaret had told all that she knew about Number 23 Stanley Gardens, and Mrs Steggles had settled down with some fancy-work and Mr Steggles with the early edition of the London
Star
which he had brought from the office, the telephone bell rang.

Mrs Steggles continued to draw her silk evenly through her work and Margaret did not look up from her book: Mr Steggles went out into the hall and shut the door after him. A deeper flush slowly came into his wife’s face as the moments passed and he did not return, and Margaret felt miserably apprehensive. Presently her father half-opened the door, saying heartily, ‘I’ve got to go out, Mabel, don’t wait up for me, I may be late.’ Her mother looked up quickly, her lips pressed tightly together, but he had gone. They heard the front door slam.

The mother sewed and the daughter read in silence. A great dreariness filled Margaret’s heart. The neat, pretty room, the silence, the upright figure of her mother sitting embroidering, seemed unreal, and she felt she was a prisoner, and must sit there for ever. She was so sorry for her mother! and she could not comfort her because they must pretend that nothing was wrong. Yet she could understand how her father must get away from his home; out and away into something more real, at which she could only guess. Oh, surely, she thought wretchedly, there are homes where the evenings aren’t so miserable as they are here!

The move to London was as complicated and exhausting as most moves in war-time. On their first night there, as the furniture had not arrived, the Steggleses had to ask hospitality of the Wilsons and Mr Steggles’s reporter friend, who both proved friends indeed; Margaret and her mother going to the Wilsons and Mr Steggles to the reporter’s bachelor flat in Moorgate.

It was a time of strain for Margaret because of her mother’s awkwardness as a visitor; Mrs Steggles was unsociable and suspicious, and disliked paying visits unless it was to relations, and although Mrs Wilson and Hilda were born hostesses, able to make the shyest people feel at home, they were not successful with her; she determinedly made conversation and was anxious every ten minutes about giving so much trouble. After she had gone, Mr Wilson said that he felt as if she had been with them for three years. Mrs Wilson and Hilda rebuked him (for he was not encouraged to express opinions likely to lessen their social activities) but when alone they agreed that for once Dad was right; Mrs Steggles was not easy to get on with. The two families had only met briefly before this, and had known next to nothing of each other’s lives. Now Mrs Wilson and Hilda understood a number of things which had puzzled them about Margaret.

So Margaret was greatly relieved, on the evening of their second day in London, to stand for a
moment at the window of her own room at the back of the new house and gaze up at the hill, where lights were shining just before blackout time, and to know that all the bedrooms were ready to be slept in, and their new life fairly begun.

How lustrous, how golden and clear, shone out the evening lights! She rested her hands upon the windowsill and gazed pensively out into the dusk, and thought that before the war they had never looked so beautiful. We had got into the habit of taking them for granted, she thought, and yet a light shining at night is one of the oldest and most beautiful things in human life, and poetry and folk-lore are full of them; the light in the forest that guides the lost traveller to the witch’s hut, and the lamp shining between the trees in
The Merchant of Venice, like a good deed in a naughty world
, and the Lights of London in all the old novels –.

‘Margaret! Have you seen the spoons your Aunt Chrissie gave us anywhere? I believe those wretched men have lost them. What on earth are you doing up there?’ Her mother’s voice, shrill and irritable, came up the stairs.

‘I’m just doing the blackout, Mother; I’ll be down in a minute,’ she called, and pulled the curtains across her window.

If I couldn’t get five minutes to myself sometimes to think of things like that, I’d get as bad as Mother and Reg, and almost everybody else I know, she thought, running downstairs. The only person I’ve
ever
known who sometimes thought about things in that way was Frank; even Hilda – who’s a darling – never does. I suppose I’m just different, that’s all.

‘I seem to remember putting those spoons in a corner of the knife-box,’ she said, going into the kitchen and glancing critically about her.

‘You
seem
to remember! That’s helpful, I must say. Mrs Wilson telephoned while you were round at the shops to see how we were getting on, and said she might look in with Hilda this evening. Why people want to come round and see you on the first night after a move is more than I can make out.’

‘She meant it kindly, Mother.’

‘I expect your father got something solid for his lunch in town,’ went on Mrs Steggles. ‘What are you having?’

‘Oh – bread and cheese – anything,’ said Margaret indifferently, going into the dining-room, where the pictures were still leaning against the walls, to lay the cloth. She was not interested in food, and regarded people as rather low if they were; she herself ate quickly and without comment anything that happened to be provided.

After supper, to which Mr Steggles did not return, the front-door bell rang and Margaret answered it, as her mother was annoyed and slightly worried by her father’s absence, and did not want to leave the sorting and tidying with which she was working off her feelings.

Two romantic figures stood there in the starlight, with smiling faces and lace scarves over their heads. Mrs Wilson was as slim as Hilda, and almost as pretty. She had a good deal of innocent coquetry, and carried on running verbal flirtations, some of which had been in progress for years, with the better-looking among the tradesmen where she shopped.

‘Hullo, Margaret! Why, haven’t you got it looking nice! Are you nearly straight?’ she exclaimed, stepping into the hall and gazing round.

‘Looks a bit different from that first evening, doesn’t it?’ said Hilda, unwinding her scarf.

‘Mother, here’s Mrs Wilson and Hilda,’ said Margaret, opening the drawing-room door. ‘We aren’t quite straight in here yet,’ she added.

Mrs Steggles was on her knees in front of a large box by the electric fire, and gave her visitors a brief smile as she got up.

‘Good evening. We’re still at it, you see,’ she said.

‘Well, it’s a shame to come in, really, and I expect you’re calling us all sorts of names!’ cried Mrs Wilson, tossing the scarf away from her clear pink face, ‘but we really came to see if we could do anything for you – you know, tell you anything about the neighbourhood, and that.’

‘Do you want a reliable doctor and a good dentist?’ interrupted Hilda, waving a piece of paper. ‘Dad wrote you down the names and addresses of two – oh, and the chemist’s telephone number in case you wanted some Sloan’s or Aspro. Isn’t he a scream, though!’

‘Well, he thought it might be useful,’ explained her mother, laughing too. ‘You know what he is – prevention is better than cure is his motto.’

‘I’m sure it was very kind of Mr Wilson,’ said Mrs Steggles reprovingly, taking the paper from Hilda.

‘Margaret, will you write down these addresses in the book straightaway, before we forget it. Please sit down, Mrs Wilson, and Hilda; make yourselves comfortable. I’m afraid we’re still in a bit of a muddle in here.’ She moved books and boxes to make room, thinking the while what a mad thing it was to come out in the cold with those bits of lace round their heads.

‘Are you admiring our headdresses?’ asked Mrs Wilson cheerfully, catching her look. She was a kind and happy woman, but neither she nor Hilda let themselves be disapproved of without showing fight. ‘I expect you think I’m getting on a bit for this sort of thing!’ (As this was exactly what Mrs Steggles was thinking, she looked conscious.) ‘Hilda looked so nice in hers, I thought I’d try how I looked too!’ and she gave a gay little nod, smiling steadily at Mrs Steggles.

‘I think they’re lovely,’ said Margaret, too emphatically.

‘Rather cold, I should think,’ said Mrs Steggles, in whom old dreams and pains had been revived by the sight of the scarves. ‘But they are pretty,’ she added, and Mrs Wilson’s smile grew less steady. Poor thing, she thought.

‘How about a cup of tea, Hilda?’ said Margaret. ‘Mother? You’ll have one, won’t you? Mrs Wilson? I’ll go and put the kettle on.’

‘I’ll come and help you,’ and Hilda followed her out of the room, leaving their mothers to carry on a conversation about the neighbourhood’s amenities and disadvantages, which, considering their differing natures, was not too awkward; but Mrs Steggles’s manner was constrained, and as she talked she listened for the sound of her husband’s key in the lock.

The first cups of tea had just been poured out when she heard it, and set her own down with an exclamation to Margaret – ‘There’s your father at last! I wonder whatever’s kept him’ – turning to Mrs Wilson, ‘I’ve been expecting him this last two hours.’

Poor man, thought Mrs Wilson, but she said comfortably, ‘Oh, I expect he’s found the journey back took much longer than he expected; I always think you do, in a strange place,’ and turned her bright eyes towards the door. Her flirtatiousness did not extend to the husbands of her acquaintances, but she enjoyed masculine society, to which her daughter’s admirers had accustomed her, and saw no reason to subdue her smile because Mrs Steggles was a jealous wife.

Mr Steggles came into the room with the litter of half-unpacked boxes and tea-drinking, and smiled with pleasure at the sight of two pretty faces. Mrs Wilson was too good a woman to make her a dangerous one to him, but he liked to look at her and make her laugh, and he suspected Hilda of being the type known in his youth as a little devil. Hilda was not; but the illusion gave zest to his exchanges with her.

‘Hullo, what’s all this, a party?’ he said, looking round and blinking his handsome eyes because they were still dazed from the blackout. ‘I’m very late, I’m afraid, Mabel,’ putting his hand for an instant on his wife’s shoulder, and feeling her shrink, without any change of
expression: ‘I went in for a quick one with some of the boys afterwards, and we got talking.’

‘How did you get on, Father? Tea?’ asked Margaret.

‘Please.’ He moved some books from a chair next to Mrs Wilson, and sat down. ‘Well, I feel a bit as if I’d been running the quarter-mile all day, but I shall get used to it, I expect. The work is so much –’

‘Did you find somewhere nice for lunch?’ interrupted Mrs Steggles.

‘I went to a pub; quite good. A bit expensive, but I was –’

‘Well, I hope you had a good one, because there isn’t much for your supper,’ and Mrs Steggles glanced at Mrs Wilson with a little laugh. ‘What did you have?’

‘Steak and kidney (otherwise sausage and spam) pudding and –’

‘Isn’t it disgraceful the way they take people in?’ demanded Mrs Steggles, peering into Hilda’s cup. (‘More tea, Hilda? Really? Sure?) If everybody refused to pay the fancy prices they ask for the rubbish they give you, they’d soon change their tune. I expect Mr Wilson finds it the same, doesn’t he?’

‘Oh, Herbert has been to the same comic little old place for about twenty years now. They know him there and don’t try any tricks on him,’ said Mrs Wilson.

‘They must have seen Mr Steggles coming,’ and Mrs Steggles laughed again. Her husband laughed too, and held out his cup for more tea. If I was Margaret’s dad I should sock her mother one, reflected Hilda, sipping her tea and looking like a pensive aquiline angel.

‘Is it a very big building, Dad?’ asked Margaret.

‘The
Gazette
offices were blitzed; I saw it in that list they gave of the newspapers that were bombed out,’ said Mrs Steggles. ‘More tea, Mrs Wilson?’

‘No, thank you. Have they got temporary offices, then?’ said Mrs Wilson, smiling and shaking her head.

‘Yes, in Thames Street. They aren’t very big by London standards, I should think, but they’re much bigger –’

‘Than he’s been used to,’ said Mrs Steggles. ‘Well, they say London always rubs the corners off people from the provinces, so we shall see what it does to Mr Steggles,’ laughing.

Mr Steggles put his hand into his coat pocket for an instant. When it came out again it was holding an old pipe, and he glanced smilingly round at the ladies for permission to light it, which he received. But during that instant he had deliberately crushed in his hand a thick letter in a violet envelope scented with violets and signed, ‘
Always – always
your Bettie.’ The brief contact comforted him with the memory of a real woman as he sat among these four, who did not seem to him to be real women at all.

‘Oh, when Mr Steggles lights up that old pipe I know he’s really settled down, like a cat licking the butter off its paws!’ exclaimed his wife.

‘Yes, I don’t expect anyone does that to the cat when they move nowadays. When do you start at your new school, Margaret?’