Читать книгу The House That is Our Own - O. Douglas - Страница 5

Table of Contents

My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits.

The Comedy of Errors

Kitty Baillie threw down the book she was reading and yawned inelegantly.

“Why,” she asked, “does anyone ever read a thriller? They leave such a nasty sticky taste in one’s mind.”

“They leave me scared stiff,” said her companion. “But then, I’m a feeble soul.”

She did not look a feeble soul, this Isobel Logan, as she stood smiling down at her friend, and Kitty Baillie, who had sat herself down on the edge of her bed, said:

“Feeble! You? Why, you look like a pillar of the British Empire.”

Isobel, unimpressed by this tribute, continued. “Why read thrillers if you don’t like them?”

“Oh, just to make a change. I’ve been reading nothing but history lately.”

“Yes. I know. I like the book you lent me last—Henrietta Maria. That was more interesting than any novel. But how they could have beheaded that little gentle Charles, I don’t know!”

“Well,” said Kitty judicially, “he was terribly obstinate: dour to a degree.”

“As to that, if every obstinate person was beheaded the world would be a shambles. Kitty, if you bounce like that, you’ll make your mattress sag.”

“It sags already,” said Kitty. “I do hate to feel the bones of a bed.”

“As bad as that? Mine is quite good, and think what I weigh compared to you.”

“Oh, you needn’t throw your superior height in my face. Am I nothing but low and little? (You know, you and I would make quite a good Helena and Hermia, though I’m too old for the part.) But let me tell you, my girl, you’re much too easily pleased with everything. The world will simply make a footstool of you if you ask so little from it.”

Isobel made no reply, and Kitty gave an impatient jump on her maligned mattress, and continued, “I’m sick of this place.”

“It’s quite good as hotels go,” Isobel reminded her. “It’s well kept, the cooking isn’t at all bad, they keep good fires, and the servants stay. Some of them have been here ever since I came—how many years is that?—five—six?—and that in itself is a testimonial to the place. It’s convenient too for tubes and buses, and near the Park. Perhaps, as you say, I’m too easily pleased, but I confess to a weakness for the Queen’s Court Private Hotel.”

“Oh, it’s all right,” said Kitty; “it’s simply that I’m sick of it.”

She sat staring before her with a look of misery in her dark eyes, and Isobel, who knew her in these moods, turned her back and looked out of the window.

It was not an inspiriting outlook, a sort of court, into which the rain was falling in the peculiarly stark way March rain often falls. A van was being unloaded down below, and a quantity of damp straw lay about, a small dog snuffling amongst it. A message-boy relieved the tedium by shrill whistling, while a street-singer with a blatantly black eye bawled:

I am so lonely, years are so long,

I want you only, you and your song.

“Isobel!”

The girl turned round.

“I didn’t mean to grumble and be ungrateful,” Kitty said. “I haven’t forgotten how thankful I was for this refuge when I came back to England last October. All I asked then was to be allowed to lean back and do nothing. I didn’t even think. I could read and I could listen, that was about all; I went about in a sort of dream.”

“You had had such a long time of strain,” said Isobel’s quiet voice.

“Two years,” said Kitty. “Two years watching my dear Rob suffer and die; wandering from hotel to hotel, from one cure to another. The only comfort was that Rob kept hopeful to the end, always sure that the next place, the next doctor, would cure him. He never knew how difficult it all was. Those foreign hotels are terrified of having a death on the premises, and when they saw Rob they sometimes would hardly let us in. And you couldn’t blame them, they had to look after their own interests. Anyway, it didn’t matter, for I managed to keep it from Rob: he had enough to bear without that.”

“You didn’t think of bringing him home when you found he was getting no better?”

Kitty shook her head.

“He didn’t want to come. It was easier for him being ill among strangers. I quite understood that. He had been rather a figure in his own set, good to look at, good at everything he tried, one of those buoyantly happy and successful people—how could he go creeping back to the pity of his friends? ‘Poor Rob! Have you seen him? Isn’t it tragic?’ Banishment was better than that. He clung to me, poor darling, and that stiffened my back. Before, he had always been the one who did things. I followed, squaw-like, behind. Now I had to stand in front and wrestle with hotel-managers and foreign doctors; worst of all, I had to manage the money. If I had had a brother—but both Rob and I were only children, and almost relationless. But I managed somehow, though not well, and anyway, I never worried Rob with my difficulties. And the only really horrible hotel-manager was the last. Rob had finished with it all by that time, thank God, and that meant that I was past caring much what happened to me. But the little French doctor was all that was kind, helped me with the formalities, arranged everything, and started me on my way home.”

Isobel remembered that October evening when, coming in from some party or mild junketing, she had noticed in the entrance-hall a forlorn-looking little black-clad figure.

Kitty went on. “And you were the first person I met when I got here. You came in behind me, your face rosy with the frosty air, and looking so large and golden that it was if the sun had suddenly risen! It had been a miserable crossing; I was chilled to the bone, tired, and sad beyond measure, but when you crinkled up your eyes and smiled at me, I felt, for the first time in months, a slight lifting of the heart. No-one had smiled at me for so long. Nothing but looks of pity and commiseration had come my way. And how I resented them! I tried so hard not to be sorry for myself, for self-pity is a loathsome thing. Rob never pitied himself—or me either. He and I were one in a way few married people, I imagine, are, and we were fighting together to win through. Even that last day, when all the strength he had seemed to go quite suddenly, when he could hardly speak above a whisper, and every breath was an effort, he tried to say something to me, I couldn’t catch what, about what we’d do when he was better—and smiled.”

“Kitty dear”—Isobel went over and stood beside her friend—“it’s too painful for you to remember.”

“I’m remembering all the time, and it’s a relief to tell it to someone, and you’ve been so good, never asking any questions. But there’s not much to tell. I had dreaded a struggle at the end, a dreadful insufficiency of breath, but there was none: he just stopped breathing. It was a lovely night, full of stars, and the windows were wide open. I knelt beside him, and looked at the lake and the mountains and felt almost happy. It lasted, that exultant feeling, through the painful, crowded days that followed, and through the journey to England—as if I were rejoicing in his escape—and it wasn’t till I reached London and drove through the streets to this hotel that I realised my loneliness. Rob and I had had such happy years in our little house in Hampstead, and the memory of them rushed over me like a flood. We always took our holiday late, in September or even October, for Rob liked the autumn in Scotland, and I had recollections of driving out from Euston on just such a frosty evening, eager, now that our holiday was over, for our own home. And when the taxi-man rang the bell in the wall, and the green door was opened by our Skye housemaid, Katie, so douce in her long skirt and white cap and apron, she’d say—‘Och, Mem, ye’re back then, and it’s glad we are to see you. It’s time you were home, for the leaves are all down.’ And through the open door we could see Maggie, the cook, hovering. The curtains would be drawn in our living-room, and we’d take just a glance round at our books and pictures, and our chairs drawn up to the fire, before we rushed up to change into something very cosy and shabby, and come down to our little Georgian dining-room and Maggie’s dinner, which tasted so good after the more aspiring cooking we had been having.”

She stopped speaking, and Isobel said, “If you’ve sad things to remember, you’ve very nice things too. Thank you for telling me.”

The van had finished unloading, and was departing, pursued by the excited barking of the small dog. The street-singer, discouraged, had left, and his place had been taken by another, a musician of sorts.

As Isobel stood watching her friend, a rollicking tune came up from the court.

Kitty looked up. “Someone’s playing a penny whistle—let me see—I knew it. Listen! D’you know what he’s playing?” And she repeated some lines of the song.

An ye had been where I hae been,

Ye wadna be sae canty-o,

An ye had seen what I hae seen

On the banks o’ Killiecrankie-o.

“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.”