Читать книгу The House That Is Our Own - Anna Masterton Buchan - Страница 6

Table of Contents

“Rob used sometimes to shout that—he couldn’t sing—when he was shaving in the morning. That man must be a Scot. Where’s my purse?” And, throwing up the window, she dropped a shilling on the player, who promptly stopped playing to grovel for the coin.

Then Kitty said rather apologetically, “To me there is something about a penny whistle.... Was it R. L. S. who described himself as a mighty performer before the Lord on a penny whistle? And that tune. Do you know, all this time I’ve practically forgotten, or, at least, completely lost touch with, what really means so much to me—my native land. I don’t know how I could, except that my one effort has been not to think of anything that recalled the past. Living in an hotel helped me. I could watch the people come and go, and talk to one and another—or rather listen. It does astonish me how people can pour out all their private affairs to strangers, but in a way it eased one to hear of others’ troubles.”

“What helped you most,” said Isobel, “was your love of reading. I never saw anyone devour books as you do.”

“Reading,” said Kitty, “has been a sort of dope to me. I’ve simply read and read through these months. My particular girl in The Times gives a resigned sigh at the sight of me. As you know, I visit her almost daily, and demand every new book as it comes out. Novels, biography, travel, history, exploration, all are grist to my mill. She must wonder what sort of life I lead, always with my nose in a book. And indeed I am a selfish wretch, doing nothing for any human creature.”

“No more selfish than the most of us,” Isobel protested, but Kitty shook her head, saying:

“Why, you, my dear, give hours every day to other people—doing Braille books, helping overworked secretaries in charitable work. You write such a beautiful clear hand. I wish I did.”

“I’m thirty, all but,” said Isobel, “a great, big, hulking, healthy person, and I’ve done nothing so far to justify my existence.”

“Why? D’you want a career?”

“Not particularly, and, anyway, it’s too late now to think of it. I forget if I ever told you that when I left school I went to live with my only relation, a great-aunt, who didn’t think a career a nice thing for a girl. I daresay I could easily have overborne the poor old dear’s scruples and gone my own way, but I didn’t care enough. I’ve never had much initiative, and there was no-one to give me a lead. Besides, I knew I wasn’t in the least clever. The only prize I ever got at school was for needlework. Another thing, I had enough to live on, and it hardly seemed fair to take a job perhaps from a girl who had to earn her own living—so there it was. I did nothing. My time was spent in the most approved Victorian way, doing the flowers, reading to my aunt, driving with her, playing tennis with some of the young people about, now and again going to a dance or a play. I was twenty-four when Aunt Constance died. After travelling about Europe for a bit with a friend, I came here to Queen’s Court, dug myself in, and that’s all. Nothing much to show for thirty years!”

Kitty sat up briskly and demanded, “But surely you don’t mean to stay indefinitely in this hotel, or any hotel? I certainly do not. I’m tired of living among other people’s things, eating with strangers, talking to them. I’ve suddenly realised that I want my own things about me. D’you know that it’s two years and a half since I saw my belongings? We gave up the Hampstead house when the specialists said that Rob must go abroad for a long time. Everything was stored, and I’ve hardly ever given the poor things a thought. I don’t know what Rob would think of me, losing grip of myself as I’ve done. His precious books and prints, the furniture we picked up, a piece at a time, with such pleasure, the family silver and portraits. I must get them all out at once.”

“There’s not much use getting them out if you’ve no place to put them,” Isobel pointed out.

“That’s true. I must start looking for a house at once. But where?”

“I don’t suppose you’d want to go back to Hampstead?”

“No,” said Kitty.

“A flat would be best, don’t you think?”

“If I could run to one,” said Kitty; “but aren’t they hideously expensive, except the very new ones, which are suffocatingly small? But we might look at them.”

“Yes, do let’s,” said Isobel. “I adore looking at houses.”

Isobel was delighted to see a spark of interest in her friend’s eyes, a slight colour in her cheeks. She had been such a pathetic figure all winter, so small and black, never caring to go out, except to The Times Book Club, shivering over a fire, speaking when spoken to, but making no advances, receiving confidences, but giving none. Isobel herself had been the one person she had been at all intimate with. They were in the same corridor, and Isobel’s room was a fairly large one with a pleasant outlook, and she had taken some trouble to make it home-like. Her bed in the day became a divan, a large cupboard did away with the necessity of a wardrobe, and she had supplied herself with two comfortable arm-chairs and a screen, as well as pretty rugs and hangings and shades. The two friends sat there when the lounge was crowded.

Kitty had shrugged her shoulders in resignation over her own room, and made no attempt to improve it. What, she asked, could be done with a jazz carpet, in shades ranging from brown to orange, ugly fumed-oak furniture, depressed cretonne curtains and covers, and an outlook on a court? Even flowers, she said, were out of place in such a room.

But now, Isobel thought, it looked as if she were rousing herself from the apathy that had held her for months, as if she might now take a grasp of things and remake her life.

“Here’s to-day’s Times,” said Kitty. “Let’s see what the house-agents have to say—‘A House of Unique Character, a Gilt-edged Investment.’ That’s not the sort of thing. ‘Something entirely new in Luxury Service Flats.’ ‘Flats with a Difference.’ They all sound rather prohibitive, don’t they? But there’s no harm in going to see them. You’re sure you don’t mind, Isobel? There may just chance to be something about my price. Which reminds me, I must go and see my lawyer and find out how things stand with me. Not that I understand in the least what he tells me. Are you a business woman, Isobel?”

Isobel laughed. “I don’t need to be—much. It’s all perfectly plain sailing with me. I’ve a certain amount of capital, invested in the very safest sort of things, which brings me in a little more than £700 a year, and I let it alone, and never attempt to make it any larger. Aunt Constance’s income came mostly from annuities. After the servants’ legacies had been paid, there was about £2,000 left for me. I’m keeping that as a sort of nest-egg, in case I should ever want to do something adventurous, like going round the world. I like to feel it’s there, though I may never use it.”

“But, my dear girl,” Kitty protested, “why d’you talk as if you were three-score and ten? You’re only a girl. You will marry.”

“I may,” said Isobel calmly, “but I don’t think so somehow. It’s not that I wouldn’t like to marry, but only that so far I’ve seen no-one I could care for in that way, and I’d very much rather live my life alone than take the second best. But I’m not really preoccupied with the subject. And I’m fed to the teeth with all the sex-talk in books and plays. Wodehouse and the crime-mongers are about the only writers free of it.”

“Not quite,” said Kitty. “I could name at least a dozen—oh, many more than that—whose books never descend. Of course, it’s absurd to object to frankness, but like you, I hate this slavering over sex; you’d think it was the most important thing in life! I don’t think you’d be easy to please, but I do earnestly hope that the right man will come along, for I hate waste.” She laid her hand on Isobel’s. “My dear, the only thing I regret in leaving this place is leaving you. I’m only now beginning to realise what I owe to you. You came and went so unobtrusively I hardly noticed you; I only knew that when you were there you seemed to warm and lighten the atmosphere.”

“You owe me nothing,” Isobel broke in. “All the other way. You gave me another interest in life. Now do stop bouncing on that poor bed. I can see that the hotel management will have to supply a new mattress for the next occupant of this room! The rain is gone, and your penny whistle man has gone too, to get a drink, probably with your money. The sun’s coming out. What about going now to an agent and getting a list of houses? There’s nothing like taking time by the fetlock, as Aunt Constance always put it. And if you would be so kind as to come and see me fitted for my new coat and skirt I’d be grateful. It’s such a help to have a friend to back one if any alteration is needed. I’m so easily spoken down.”

Isobel, as she spoke, brought out from Kitty’s wardrobe a coat, a fox fur, a hat, and gloves.

“Thank you, kind Nannie,” responded Kitty. “How do you suppose I’m going to stand on my own feet in a cold and draughty world after being made a pet of by you for months?”

“Oh, that’s going to cease,” Isobel told her. “You don’t need me any longer, I know, but I haven’t yet got out of the habit of looking after you. I shan’t be a minute getting ready.”