Читать книгу Imagined Selves - Willa Muir - Страница 11

Number twenty-six High Street, which was being prepared for its new master and mistress, was approved by Mabel. Like every house in the old High Street, of course, it had to be entered from a ‘close’, but once the narrow close entrance was left behind a fair-sized paved courtyard opened out, framed by two respectable Georgian houses, pillared and porticoed, with clipped box-trees set in green tubs before the doors. Dr Scrymgeour’s name shone resplendently on one door, and on the other a smaller and more modest brass plate read ‘H. Shand’. Mabel’s eye fell on that as usual with a slight sense of shock; she could never think of Hector as H. Shand, a householder. She became very much Mrs John Shand as she looked at it; she stiffened a little and examined the big brass bell-knob on its square plate and the whitened doorstep. Both were speckless. That maid wasn’t going to be so bad.

The said maid was breathless when she opened the door, and her eyes were shining.

‘Miss Shand’s here,’ she said. ‘An’ everything’s like a new pin.’

‘You must never answer the door in a kitchen apron. You must always change into a clean one to open the door, Mary Ann!’

‘But that would keep folk waiting.’

‘Better to let them wait. Better still to keep a clean apron under the dirty one, and then all you have to do is to slip it off. Try to remember that.’

Mrs John Shand sailed into the hall.

‘Are you there, Aunt Janet?’ she called in a clear voice.

‘Here, my dear,’ came the answer in a deeper more muffled tone. ‘Up here in their bedroom.’

Mabel mounted the stairs, still armoured in dignity. It was her sole defence against the thought of her husband’s young half-brother, who annoyed her by making her feel like a schoolgirl. He was the only young man who had ever kissed her with indifference. But she was Mrs John Shand now.

Aunt Janet appeared in the doorway.

‘How are you, my dear?’ She pecked Mabel’s cheek and went on without a pause: ‘I think everything’s all right now; the sheets are airing and the kitchen’s in apple-pie order.’

‘I had to check Mary Ann for coming to the door in a dirty apron,’ said Mrs John Shand. ‘Do you think she’ll be all right?’

‘Oh, she’s strong and willing, and, you know, my dear, we can give Elizabeth a few hints, perhaps, now and then, you know.’

Between them there vibrated a mutual though unspoken opinion that Elizabeth would need those hints.

Aunt Janet drew Mabel into the bedroom and lowered her voice.

‘It’s a good thing I came up here. Do you know, that girl had set out the chambers under the beds.’

Mabel could not resist the reflection that Hector had survived more shameless facts than unconcealed chamberpots. Nor was Elizabeth likely to be a stickler for propriety.

The flicker of mirth in her face did not escape Aunt Janet, who became almost voluminous as she enfolded young Mrs John in benevolence.

‘I know you’ll do your very best for Elizabeth, my dear. She hasn’t as much social experience as you, but she’s a dear girl – a dear girl. And she’s so clever you know; she has done very well at the University.’

‘Clever she must be,’ admitted Mabel, trying to shake off her aunt-in-law, ‘or she would never have got Hector to marry her. She’s the only woman who has ever managed that.’

If there was any personal feeling in these words Aunt Janet did not notice it; she observed only an aspersion on her beloved nephew.

‘Hector may be thoughtless, but he’s not so bad as you and John think. I assure you he’s not. And he’s so conscious of Elizabeth’s goodness in marrying him. “She’ll keep me straight, Aunt Janet,” he said. “I promise you I’ll go straight.” Poor boy, he has so much against him.’

She absentmindedly patted the eiderdown on the nearest of the twin beds.

‘Oh, Elizabeth will keep him in order,’ said Mabel, walking to the window and staring out of the garden. Aunt Janet was too irritating.

‘A dear girl. A dear girl.’ Aunt Janet furtively wiped her eyes. ‘I’m sure they’ll be happy.’

In the kitchen Mary Ann was singing to herself. ‘Isn’t it fine,’ she was thinking, ‘a bride comin’ hame to her ain hoose? My certy! they’ll be here in half-an-’oor. Where’s that clean apron?’