Chapter Two

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(1)

“I’ve been thinking, Madge, darling. About my birthday.”

Mrs. Farrington walked into the great basement kitchen of Windermere House. Madge Farrington, immaculate in a freshly laundered white coat, was making pastry at the scrubbed kitchen table. Around her were pastry board, flour bin, and rolling pin, and condiments and enamelled tins were arranged in neat and shining array, as pretty as a still-life picture. Madge had strong white hands and shapely arms, and she continued rubbing the fat and flour together in a shining basin as she replied dutifully: “Yes, Mother?”

“I always have a little celebration, darling. Eddie was suggesting dining out and going on to a theatre, but I’m afraid it would be too much for me. I find restaurants so exhausting these days. The noise and smoking are too tiring for me, and as for theatres---well, I must face it. I don’t suppose I shall ever see a theatre again.”

She sighed heavily and wiped a tear away, while Madge went on with her pastry, efficient and unhurried. Seen thus, with eyes lowered over her work, Madge was not unprepossessing. She had thick dark hair, cut to a neat shingle bob, a very white skin, and regular features. It was her eyes which spoilt her looks. They were set too close together, and were reminiscent of boot buttons with their dark half-lustre.

Mrs. Farrington raised her head and straightened her back. “But I mustn’t worry you with my little troubles, Madgie. I’ve had such a happy life, and you have been so good to me. Don’t think I ever forget it, darling, and when I’m gone you’ll be quite independent. Now, about my birthday. I thought of a little dinner: Tony and Anne, Joyce and Philip, and perhaps that nice child who came to tea with Anne, Veronica Coniston, and her husband.”

“Did you mean to have dinner here. Mother?”

“Why, yes, darling. I told you that I find restaurants too exhausting. It’s not that I’m thinking of myself, I’m the last woman to do that, but if I turn faint or giddy, it spoils the evening for the others.”

“You are suggesting having a dinner party for eight, Mother. You know I have no help in the evenings: daily helps simply refuse to do evening work.”

“Darling, I’m so sorry. Won’t that nice Mrs. Pinks make an exception for my birthday? Would it be any good if I asked her?”

“No. It would be no good at all, Mother. Mrs. Pinks has a sick husband and four young children to look after, and she has no patience with people who expect late dinner. She works hard for me in the mornings and I don’t want to lose her. She’ll leave at once if you ask her to do evening work as well.”

“Oh, dear, how tiresome,” murmured Mrs. Farrington. “I can’t think what has come over all these women. Couldn’t you get a parlourmaid, Madgie? I always had such good servants in the old days.”

“If you want a good parlourmaid you’ll have to pay her three pounds a week, and then you’ll have to get a housemaid to keep her company at the same wages plus insurance,” said Madge evenly.

“Really, it’s iniquitous,” sighed Mrs. Farrington. “But just for the one evening, Madgie, for my birthday. Could you manage if I helped with laying the dinner, and perhaps Paula could help you dish up?”

“I had Paula in the kitchen once, and that was once too often,” said Madge. “I’ve no doubt she is a very good dancer, but at domestic work she is no better than a mental defective. I’m sorry, Mother, but the worm turns eventually. I will not cook and serve dinner for eight singlehanded.”

Madge kept her voice low by a conscious effort, but even so there was an edge to it, a quiver which told of inner tension. Mrs. Farrington looked at her with well-expressed astonishment.

“But, Madgie, how unlike you! You have always been such a dear unselfish girl. I have always thought of you as my chief blessing, darling.”

Madge turned the pastry out onto her board and took up the rolling pin, thankful to have something to occupy her hands. Strangely enough, Madge was frightened of Mrs. Farrington, and it took her courage to say what she was determined to say.

“I think one can go on being unselfish for too long, Mother. When the war started and I went to train in hospital I was twenty-five. Now I’m thirty-six. For eleven years I have worked like a drudge and had no life of my own. I think it’s time I had a sample of living.”

“Darling, what do you mean? Are you not well, Madgie? How dreadful of me not to have realised it. I will phone Dr. Baring----”

“Please don’t do anything of the kind, Mother. I am perfectly well. I have been thinking things over for a long time, and I think it’s better for me to say quite plainly what I have in mind.”

“Very well, dear. I am listening,” replied Mrs. Farrington. Her voice was subtly different: still beautifully pitched, still gentle, but with an undertone that was ominous to her stepdaughter’s ears. Madge rolled out her pastry dexterously as she talked.

“I worked hard in hospital, Mother. All nurses worked hard during the war, and eventually I crocked up. I admit it. It was the buzz bombs which finished me. . . . Anyway, after I’d had the nursing-home treatment and you came back here, I was very glad to run the house and cook for you. I enjoyed the peacefulness of working by myself in this kitchen after all the moil and toil and bitterness of hospital.”

“Yes, darling,” put in Mrs. Farrington gently. “I remember how happy and contented you seemed, and I was happy, too, to see you well---and normal---again, after those dreadful days. I suffered for you, my little Madge.”

“That’s all past history,” said Madge tersely. “I’ve been perfectly well ever since. The point is this: am I going to spend the rest of my life in a basement kitchen, running this house with inadequate help, and never getting anywhere?”

“But, Madgie, this is your home. Our home. We have been so proud of it. And surely with Anne and Joyce doing the work of their own flats, it can’t be so very hard?”

Madge slipped her pastry over the fruit in the pie dish and began to crimp the edges of her pie. “Between us, Mrs. Pinks and I clean this basement; we do your bedroom, my bedroom, the twins’ bedrooms, seventy stairs and five landings, the dining room and drawing room, and the outside steps and brass. And I cook as well. I don’t think you would find another pair of women who would do as much.”

“Of course not, darling! I know how wonderful you are. I always tell everybody how proud I am of you, and if I haven’t realised that you are finding it too much of a strain, it’s because I’ve had so much trouble from this silly old heart of mine. I’m very glad we’ve had this talk, Madgie. I will see about getting some more help for you, another daily woman. Or do you think one of those partially disabled men would be any good? Your father was suggesting getting one of them. I’ll tell him to see about it.”

Madge was twisting thin strips of dough into an elaborate decoration around the pie.

“That is for you to decide, Mother,” she said. “So far as I’m concerned, it makes no difference. I’ve decided I can’t go on here any longer.”

She spoke abruptly, almost harshly, because it had been such an effort to get the words out, and Mrs. Farrington gave a little cry of distress.

“But, Madge, darling, we’ve been into all this before. . . . I’m sorry, dear, but could you get me a glass of water? I’ll take one of my pills. I hate to worry you, but I find altercations so exhausting.”

Madge leaned across and put a firm hand on her stepmother’s wrist, feeling the pulse. “It’s all right, Mother. Your pulse is quite good. I’ll get you a glass of water, but you have no need to feel nervous about your heart. It’s perfectly normal.”

She went and fetched the glass of water, adding: “I will make your Ovaltine as soon as I’ve got this pie in the oven. You were saying we had been into all this before. That’s not quite accurate. You see, I have been offered a job, rather a good job. I am going to America as nurse and travelling companion to an elderly lady.”

Mrs. Farrington set the glass down on the table and looked at Madge very directly.

“I am sorry, Madge, darling. You should have consulted me about this before. You see, dear, it’s quite impossible.”

“Is it?” asked Madge. “Why?”

Mrs. Farrington sighed. “Darling, I know you’ve forgotten. It’s right and natural that you should forget, poor child. But when you had that breakdown, you were very ill. Not physical illness, but mental. It was an agonising time for me, I can hardly bear to think of it, and of course you made a marvellous recovery. But the doctors warned me, darling. You must lead a very quiet life, with no excitements or emotional disturbances. For you to go to America in charge of an invalid is quite out of the question. It couldn’t be allowed.”

“You mean you would try to stop me going?” asked Madge. Her breath was coming quickly now, and a pulse was beating in her temple.

“Darling, I shouldn’t try to stop you. I should stop you. It would be my duty to do so. I should have to see Dr. Baring about it. My dear little Madge, put all this out of your head. If you had only confided in me, I could have saved you so much distress. You see, dear, no doctor would sign the necessary papers for your entry permit to the States.”

Madge lifted her pie carefully and put it in the oven. Then she came back to the kitchen table and began to shape the fragments of the dough into tiny tarts.

“Let us get this quite clear,” she said. “Are you suggesting that I am insane because I had a nervous breakdown five years ago?”

Mrs. Farrington gave a little wail of protest. “Darling, never say things like that. It hurts me too terribly. And it shows how easily you are upset, how you lose your normal judgment in moments of stress. It’s just that you’re not strong enough, darling.”

Madge stood very still, leaning on the scrubbed table. “Mother, if you prevent me going to America, you will be very sorry. I’m not going to say any more now, and it would be better for you to say nothing else. Only understand this. You are not going to stop me doing what I want to do this time. Now I will make your Ovaltine and I suggest you should go and have a rest.”

As she spoke, the kitchen door opened and Colonel Farrington came in. “By Jove, Madge, you look a picture when you’re cooking---neat as a daisy. And the kitchen always looks so jolly. Sorry to bother you when you’re busy, my dear, but could you find me a drop of that cleaning fluid---always forget its name. I’m getting a grubby old man, dropping food down my waistcoat.”

“Of course, Father. If you wait half a minute, I’ll do it for you,” replied Madge. “I just want to make Mother’s Ovaltine.”

“I do not want any Ovaltine, dear. Eddie, I’m afraid you will have to help me up to my room. I’m sorry, dear, but I can’t manage the stairs alone.”

“Muriel, my dear, whatever has upset you? You look exhausted. Let me get you some brandy,” exclaimed the Colonel in consternation.

“No. Just your arm, dear. I am a little upset. It is foolish of me, of course, but we won’t talk about it. And you might phone old Dr. Baring. Now don’t fuss, Eddie. I shall be quite all right. Just your arm around
me, dear—and very slowly, please.”

(2)

When Mrs. Farrington had been conveyed out of the kitchen by her husband. Madge slumped down on a kitchen chair and tried to control the shivering fit which took hold of her. Then the scullery door opened and Mrs. Pinks came in.

“Well, miss, seeing I was in there, I couldn’t help hearing all that. Now don’t you take on. Your ma’s plain wicked. I’ve known it for a long time, and this last lot puts the lid on it. It was as much as I could do not to butt in and tell ’er off, you ’ipocritical old ’umbug, I thought. Now I’m going to make you a nice cup o’ tea and a drop of you-know-what in it. You needs it.”

Madge laughed shakily. “You are a dear, Mrs. Pinks. It was a bit shattering: she as good as told me I was certifiable.”

“Now don’t you bother about what the old ’orror said,” said Mrs. Pinks as she put the kettle on the stove. “If anyone’s bats, it’s ’erself, and I’d tell ’er so for two pins. And selfish! Eight to dinner, if you please. It’s time you got out of this, miss. She’s just eating your life up. I’ll be sorry for meself when you go, miss, you’ve been real good to me, but the sooner you does go, the better for you. I’d like to get my hands on her, I tell you straight.”

Madge shivered. “Don’t say things like that,” she said. “The awful thing is she frightens me. She always has. When I was tiny I was terrified of her, and it comes back. But it’s silly to talk about things.”

“That it isn’t,” said Mrs. Pinks trenchantly. “It’ll do you a power of good to talk, miss. I know I’m not much, but I’m fond of you, and you can say what you like to me, same’s I did to you over my own bit of trouble. You just listened and understood, and it helped me a lot. I reckon that old woman bullied you cruel as a kid.”

Madge nodded. “That’s true. You see, I wasn’t her child. She adored Tony, and he was always good and I was always bad, and I was hideously jealous of him. I wanted someone to be fond of me, and I knew she wasn’t, even when I was quite tiny, though she pretended to be, like she does now. She dominated me. Do you know that until I went to train as a nurse I’d never been away from her? She called me her darling Madgie and I’d always got to be at home with her to help her.”

“I know. There is some women like that. As though they’d got tentacles,” said Mrs. Pinks. “What beats me is why you ever came back here to slave for her.”

“I had a bad breakdown. That’s what she was talking about. You see, I was in a mental home for six months, and I had to come back here afterwards. I’d no money and I couldn’t go on nursing. Nobody would have me until the doctors were certain I was all right again.”

“If you’d ’ad an ’aporth o’ sense, you’d have gone out charring sooner than come back ’ere to be put upon,” said Mrs. Pinks. “But don’t you worry about ’as-beens, dearie. You just beat it and go away like you said. D’you know, I could ’ardly contain meself while I was listening out there in the scullery in case you went and told ’er the name o’ the party you’re going with. If you’d started doing that, I’d ’ve come in and been took queer meself just to stop you. While she don’t know she can’t make trouble, see? And now I’ll just make that tea. And remember to tip me the wink when you’re going, because I’ll walk out on ’er, too, and then she can see for ’erself what nice light work you and me’s been doing, and ’ave ’er eight to late dinner, I don’t think.” She gave a cheerful snort, adding: “And I’ll just pour that Ovaltine down the sink while I’m about it, to ease me feelings. And I’ll put a nice drop of that there in your tea---whisky’s just what you’re wanting. You’re all of a jelly after that set-to. And if you take my advice, you’ll pop your hat and coat on and walk out of that basement door with what’s left of the ’ousekeeping money. You’ve earned it, if ever a girl did.”

Madge began to laugh, and at that moment her father came into the kitchen again. “I seem to keep on hindering you this morning, my dear,” he began apologetically, and Madge said quickly:

“You never hinder me, Daddy. I’m always glad to see you. Give me that waistcoat, I’ll soon get the mark off. Mrs. Pinks is just making a cup of tea. Will you have a cup?”

“With a drop of something in it for Miss Madge, which she badly needs, her all of a jelly with the things that’s been said,” said Mrs. Pinks truculently.

“By Jove, that’s a good idea!” said the Colonel. “I’m very grateful to you for looking after my daughter, Mrs. Pinks. I know she has a tough time here, and so do you, with all those stairs to clean. I’ve often said the bloke who designed this house was demented. Simply made work for the sake of making it. You’ll find they’re more rational over domestic interiors when you go the States, Madge.”

He took off his coat and waistcoat and handed the latter to Madge, while Mrs. Pinks poured out the tea.

“You know what Mother says about it?” asked Madge bitterly.

“Yes, yes, but don’t you bother, my dear,” replied Colonel Farrington. “You must know, with your training, that a weak heart often makes people difficult. I’ll have a word with old Baring myself. Muriel needs a sedative; she’s very highly strung, and the heart trouble makes her unreasonable sometimes. Don’t you worry about what she said. She’s got a heart of gold: she’ll understand your point of view as soon as she gets over this little bit of heart pain. False angina, Baring calls it; very painful, I believe.”

“Dr. Baring’s an old fool,” said Madge. “Mother’s got a perfectly sound heart.”

Having poured out the tea, Mrs. Pinks tactfully removed herself to the scullery, and Colonel Farrington expostulated: “You mustn’t say that, my dear. I know Baring’s old now, and old-fashioned as well, but he’s known Muriel for thirty years, and when he says her heart has deteriorated, I know he’s telling the truth. But we won’t argue over that: I just want to assure you that your mother’s opposition to your plan was only due to agitation. You rather jumped it on her, you know. When she’s had time to think it over, she’ll be as pleased as I am. Most unselfish woman living---and she’s often told me how hard you work and what a dull time you have. So don’t fret, Madge, it’s all a storm in a teacup.”

“I only wish it were,” said Madge slowly. “You’re an optimist, Daddy. You always were.”

(3)

“Have you got any money, Anne? Money of your own, I mean?” asked Paula.

“Depends how much you want, twin. Have you been losing your purse again? Or are you broke after buying that new suit? It certainly is a poem. No one would ever think you were hard up.”

Paula looked at herself critically in Anne’s long glass. She was a slender girl, with exquisite slim ankles and pretty hands and feet. Her face, a little pale and pointed, with a minimum of make-up, was distinguished by wonderful eyes, deep blue-grey, widely set, and softly shadowed in eye cavities too deep for a young face.

“She is a lovely thing,” thought Anne, and added aloud: “Would a pound note do? I haven’t been to the bank this week.”

“Oh . . . thanks awfully, but that’s not quite what I mean,” replied Paula. “It’s not me. It’s Peter. He’s been rather idiotic. And I don’t want any rows just at the moment.”

“Peter ought to manage his own financial crises, twin. He’s no business to borrow from you. He’s got a decent job, and you only earn odd bits and pieces.”

Paula smoothed her sleek fair hair thoughtfully. “He hasn’t. He walked out of his job a fortnight ago. He just couldn’t stick it any longer.”

“Goodness! Does your mother know?” asked Anne.

“Of course not. She’d have been throwing fits with monotonous determination if she did. Eddie knows. He took it quite calmly. He’s an intelligent old boy considering the life he’s led. He said he never expected Peter to settle in a lawyer’s office, ‘but your mother was set on it, my dear, and we had to give it a trial,’ ” added Paula, with faithful accuracy giving the very tones of Colonel Farrington’s diffident voice.

Anne laughed. “But what’s Peter doing, then, Paula? He still goes out every morning at eight-thirty.”

“Of course,” said Paula calmly. “If he didn’t the balloons would go up. He’s designing sets for Vladimir, our choreographer. Peter’s got a flair for the job, but of course he’s never had any training, and I don’t expect it’ll last. I know he’s a bit of a mess, but that’s Mother’s fault. She simply made a mess of him. That dotty co-ed school she sent us to during the war was hopeless for Peter. He’d have done much better if he’d gone to a common or garden secondary and learnt to work. He’s bone lazy.”

“But I thought you liked your co-ed.”

“Oh, yes. We did. I liked it because the dancing and music were really good. Peter liked it because it was free discipline, you just walked out of anything which didn’t amuse you. Hence Peter.”

“I see. And what sort of mess has he got himself into now?” asked Anne. “Is it a girl?”

“Oh, lord, no. I wish it had been. I could have coped with that. I can’t do a thing about this. It’s money. I don’t quite know all the ins and outs, money leaves me stone cold, but it’s something about backing a bill or guaranteeing a cheque. The only part of it I really understand is that the alternative’s five hundred pounds or quod for fraud. Peter’s just been had by one of his phony friends and now he’s left holding the baby.”

“Five hundred pounds . . . goodness. He’ll have to go to his mother for it, then,” said Anne. “I haven’t a bean, and Tony won’t produce five hundred.”

“Peter won’t go to Muriel, he’d rather go to quod. He says it’d be cheaper in the long run,” said Paula. “You see, he’s developed a thing about Muriel: she’s choked him with mother-love. The sickening part of it is that I have got the five hundred, really, left to me under Granddad’s will, only Muriel’s got it for her lifetime. I do think it’s a bit grim. Still, never mind, I’ll cope somehow. If I really set my mind to it I shall get it.”

“Don’t talk rot, Paula,” said Anne quickly. “A girl like you might be able to raise five hundred, but there’s only one way of doing it, and you’re not going to do that.”

“Let us not argue,” said Paula. “It’ll be all right on the night. Things always are. Or does the phrase offend? What a funny old thing you are.”

“Have you talked to Eddie about it?”

“Of course not. He hasn’t a bean of his own and he’d only worry. I tried Joyce, but she and Philip are pretty well on the rocks, too. She’s an extravagant wench. It’s true I like nice clothes, but I contrive to get mine for tuppence by swapping. I got this suit from Helene in exchange for the black moire. Quite a good swap. Bye-bye, Anne. Sorry to have bothered you. I know you won’t utter. I’ll cope somehow.”

And with that Paula slithered out of the room, incredibly graceful and apparently quite untroubled.