Читать книгу Latter End - Dora Amy Elles - Страница 9

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Julia got Jimmy Latter alone after breakfast next morning. He was smoking a pipe on the terrace, and she dragged him into the study and shut the door. Lois had altered the drawing-room almost beyond recognition—new covers, new curtains, new carpets, new ornaments, and all the furniture moved around and changed. But she hadn’t started on the study yet. There were the old shabby rugs on the floor, the old brown curtains at the windows, the old shabby books on the shelves. Of course no one ever studied here or ever had, but it was Jimmy’s room, and it had been his father’s before him, and Julia felt a lot better when she had got him there and the door was shut. She would have locked it if she could, but the key had been lost a long time ago, nobody knew how or when.

She sat on the arm of one of the big chairs and said,

‘Jimmy, I want to talk to you about Ronnie.’

Antony had always told her she hadn’t any tact, and when she flung back, ‘But what’s the good of beating about the bush? If I’m going to say a thing I say it,’ he usually laughed and said, ‘You’re telling me!’

Well, she had said what she had come to say, and Jimmy was frowning, his pipe in his hand and the smoke going up between them. Even before he spoke she knew that Lois had got in first.

‘You know, Julia, it won’t do—having him here, I mean. It simply won’t do. Of course it’s natural Ellie should want it, and I’d be pleased enough to have him, poor chap—you know that. But, as Lois says, Ellie would kill herself looking after him. You’ve only to look at her to see she’s not fit for it. Why, the poor chap’s a cripple—she couldn’t possibly manage. I tell you I’m very worried about her as it is. Here she is, at home, with every comfort, and Lois to look after her, and she looks like a ghost—no colour, no spirits. And you want her to take on a heavy nursing job like that. I won’t hear of it!’

Julia’s cheeks flew two red flags. She had very seldom been so angry. She had just sense enough to know that if she wanted to play Ellie’s game she mustn’t let her temper go. If it had been a game of her own, she would have thrown the cards on the table with a will and counted it well for the pleasure of saying what she thought about Lois. But it was Ellie’s game.

Her cheeks flamed and her eyes smouldered, but she controlled her tongue. Jimmy, looking at her a little uneasily, was struck by her likeness to Marcia. And he had not only been very fond of Marcia, but he had respected her judgment. This, and the likeness, began insensibly to colour his thoughts. Julia’s silence gave them time. When she spoke at last, her voice was pitched quite low.

‘Jimmy—do you remember what staff you had here before the war?’

He said, ‘That’s a long time ago. Everything’s different now.’

‘I know. But all the same, do you remember? There was Mrs. Maniple, with a kitchenmaid under her, and the between-maid after twelve o’clock, and Mrs. Huggins to scrub the floors. That’s on the kitchen side. For the rest of the house there was a butler, house-parlour maid, housemaid, the between-maid till twelve o’clock, and Mrs. Huggins any time there was extra work—people staying, or spring-cleaning—all that kind of thing.’

He took an angry pull at his pipe.

‘What’s the good of talking like that? Everyone’s had to cut down.’

‘I know they have. But just think for a minute, Jimmy, and you’ll see why Ellie looks tired. She and Minnie are doing what it used to take a man and three maids to do.’

‘You’re leaving Lois out.’

Julia looked at him.

‘Yes—I’m leaving Lois out.’

He turned away, went off to the writing-table, and stood there with his back to her, picking up first one thing and then another from a crowded pen-tray—picking them up and dropping them again with flustered, jerky fingers. When he turned round his face was red. He said angrily,

‘What do you mean by that?’

Julia’s right hand lay clenched in her lap. She drove the nails into her palm. She mustn’t let Jimmy see that she was angry too. She couldn’t manage him that way. Mummy never got angry with him or with anyone. That was why everyone listened to her. If only things didn’t boil inside you until you felt you didn’t care——

She’d got to care about Ellie. She managed such a temperate, reasonable voice that it surprised her.

‘Look here, Jimmy, I don’t want to have a row—I want to talk. I just want you to listen, that’s all. Lois does the flowers—that’s all she does in the house. It isn’t anything to be angry about—it’s a fact. It’s her house, and there isn’t any reason why she should do more than she wants to. She hasn’t ever lived in the country before. She’s been so much in hotels that perhaps she just doesn’t know what a lot there is to do.’

She began to feel pleased with herself. She was letting Jimmy down lightly, and who said she hadn’t any tact? She went on, warming to it.

‘I’ve got a really good plan, and it wouldn’t cost very much—it really wouldn’t. If you would have Mrs. Huggins here every day instead of just once a week for Manny, it would make all the difference. You see, neither Minnie or Ellie are what you’d call strong. They haven’t the muscle for the heavy jobs, and they get awfully tired doing them. But Mrs. Huggins is as strong as a horse—she’d just gallop through the work. And Minnie and Ellie could do the lighter things.’

Jimmy had stopped being angry. He looked puzzled.

‘But Mrs. Huggins does come. I’ve seen her.’

‘She comes on Saturdays, and she scrubs Manny’s floors. She doesn’t do anything else.’

He said in a worried voice,

‘I thought she did. And there’s a girl—Joe Marsh’s wife—I’ve seen her about.’

‘She does sewing for Lois.’

‘Are you sure she doesn’t help in the house?’

‘Quite sure.’

She left that to sink in.

‘Jimmy—about Ronnie—I do want you just to listen. If Ellie hadn’t the hard work, and those bicycle rides to Crampton which are much too much for her, I do think she could manage Ronnie. It would make her happy, and you can do a lot when you’re happy ... No, please listen. He gets about on a crutch now. If you let them have the old schoolroom, he wouldn’t need to go upstairs at all. The beds could come down from our old room, and there’s the cloakroom just opposite. It would all be quite easy, and—oh, Jimmy, it would make Ellie frightfully happy! You’ve always been so kind to us.’

She wasn’t angry any more. She was remembering all the times that Jimmy had been kind—a long procession of them, stretching back, and back, and back until they were out of mind. This warm remembrance filled the room. The look she gave him was a lovely smiling one.

He came over to her and put his arm about her shoulders.

‘Well, well, my dear—I’ll see. Very nice of you to put it like that. Very nice to have you here again. I’ve missed you very much. Haven’t given me much opportunity of doing anything for you the last two years, have you? But we’ll see what we can do about Ellie. She’s fretting, is she?’

‘She’s breaking her heart.’

‘Well, well, we can’t have that. I’ll do what I can.’