Miss Clare Remembers and Emily Davis Page 12

  'But just wait till we're headmistresses!' laughed Emily. 'We can do as we like then with the children.'

  The possibility seemed so remote to the two young girls that they treated it with amusement. They might teach for a few years, they supposed, and enjoy it very much, but marriage, they felt sure, would one day claim them—marriage to someone as yet unknown, for all the known young men were far too familiar and dull to consider—and then another way of life would begin for them.

  And so, happy in the present, and with vague and happy dreams of the future, Emily and Dolly passed the years of their pupil teaching in the long golden afternoon of Edward's reign, with never a thought of the shadows of war which crept slowly but inexorably nearer to their small bright world.

  One June evening, about this time, Dolly came out alone from the evening institute in Caxley High Street. Emily was at home with a feverish cold. As she mounted her bicycle she caught sight of Ada in the distance, strolling some way ahead, on the arm of a thickset young man.

  Dolly had heard Ada say that morning that she would be late home all the week as they were getting stock sorted ready for the summer sales. Had she finished, Dolly wondered, or had the task been fictitious?

  The couple progressed slowly. They were deeply engrossed, and Dolly pedalled equally slowly to keep behind them. There was a look on Ada's face which she had never seen there before. It was a dumb, adoring look, quite unlike the bold flirtatious glances with which Dolly was familiar. The young man's arm crept round Ada's waist and they turned down a side lane towards the river.

  Dolly trundled home much perturbed. She had recognised the young man, as he turned, as the son of a local publican. Though the father was respected, it was general knowledge that he had hopelessly spoilt his only child who was allowed too much money and too much licence. Harry Roper, thought the youthful Dolly, must be quite old—twenty-five at least—and Ada knew, as well as she did, that there were dozens of pretty girls, in Caxley alone, who had been as besotted as Ada now was, and who later had regretted their infatuation.

  Cycling along the warm lane, with her eyes half-shut against the clouds of gnats, Dolly pondered. It was unlike Ada to lie to her mother. Then again, it was unlike Ada to be so secretive about her escorts. This affair was obviously more serious than the others, and Dolly did not like it.

  She decided to say nothing to her parents, nor to Ada. But she was uncomfortably guilty that evening in her parents' presence, and glad to escape early to bed. There she lay, anxious for Ada's safe return, but it was past eleven o'clock before the girl crept upstairs, and by that time Dolly was sound asleep.

  This escapade had its sequel, for the next day Francis met a friend who had been in Caxley the night before.

  'Saw your girl last night,' he said brightly, his face alight with the pleasure of tale-telling.

  'Oh yes,' answered Francis, observing the note of happy anticipation. 'She'd been to evening class.'

  'Not this one hadn't!' asserted the friend inelegandy. 'Behind the bar of "The Crown" she was, and served me with a pint, too.'

  Francis was completely taken aback, but with a countryman's caution did his best not to show it.

  'I must be getting along,' he said, collecting his thatching shears and making towards the ladder.

  ''Bye,' said the other, setting off in the other direction, well pleased with the encounter.

  Francis watched him go, and leant back against the ladder to consider this unsavoury piece of news. He was shocked by more than one aspect of it. In the first place, it looked as though Ada had deliberately lied about staying late for the sale. It also seemed that she was mixed up in company of which he had no knowledge. But worse still was the thought that she had appeared openly in a public bar. This hurt Francis deeply. She had disgraced them all.

  Francis liked his pint now and again, and enjoyed his local pub, but at a time when drunkenness was rife and the wretched results were everywhere around, the idea of women, and particularly his own young daughters, being seen in a public house, was horrifying. His parents had been strict teetotallers, and he had been brought up to consider public houses as dens of depravity. If word of Ada's escapade ever reached her grandparents, it would be the end of them!

  And what was the publican thinking of, to let a young girl serve in his bar? Francis grew belligerent at the thought, and found himself snapping the shears viciously.

  'Best get on with my work,' he said aloud to a prowling cat. 'But I'll have a word with that young lady tonight. Maybe I'm too soft with her.'

  He mounted the ladder and attacked the straw with unusual savagery.

  Ada did not trouble to deny anything. She was in a hard, bold mood, offhand and insolent, calculated to send her parents into a frenzy. Dolly, cleaning her shoes in the kitchen, trembled for her sister. Mary was torn between tears and an overpowering desire to box the girl's ears, but Francis handled the affair competently.

  'What's wrong with bringing the young man here?' asked Francis. 'If you like him well enough, let's see him. He'll come if he thinks anything of you.'

  'Everyone's against him,' protested Ada, 'and you're the same. You haven't even seen him but you tell me I oughtn't to go out with him. And I don't see why I can't go to his home. He can't help living in a pub.'

  'He don't live in the public bar,' said Francis shortly, 'and that's where you were—and serving too. His father could get into serious trouble for that, and he knows it.'

  Ada's face flamed scarlet.

  'I hates this place! Full of a lot of tittle-tattlers with nothing better to do than make trouble! But they shan't stop me seeing him—and neither will you!'

  Francis kept his temper with difficulty.

  'See here, Ada. I'm your father and I must do the right thing by my own daughter. You're young yet—'

  'I'm nearly nineteen,' Ada burst in, 'and he's twenty-five, and we're going to be married as soon as we can.'

  There was silence for a moment in the little room, then Francis spoke gently.

  'I'd like to have heard about that from him first. The sooner I see this young man the better, I reckons, and his dad, too.'

  'You don't understand—' began Ada, with a wail.

  'Your mother and me has both been in love, you know,' commented Francis dryly. 'We don't want it explained to us. All we're saying is: don't do nothing in a hurry. If you've got any sense at all you'll keep away from him for a bit until I've seen him.'

  'Oh, you old people!' expostulated Ada, flinging out of the room. Dolly heard the thud of her feet on the stairs and the creak of the bed as she flung herself upon it.

  Francis and Mary exchanged hopeless looks.

  'Well,' said Francis heavily, 'I'll go and thin my carrots. Need a bit of fresh air after that. Let her simmer a bit, my dear, and then you see what you can do with her. Proper headstrong hussy she's getting!'

  'She always was,' said Mary candidly, to her husband's departing back.

  The next day Francis made his way to 'The Crown' to see the publican. He did not relish the interview, but it had to be faced, and a steady anger helped his determination. He found his anger evaporating, as the meeting lengthened.

  Mr Roper knew nothing, he said, of Ada, although he had seen his son with a girl in the parlour. His wife was about at the time, and he himself was busy with a party of travellers. He had been obliged to go into the yard to arrange stabling for their horses and had knocked on the parlour window and told Harry to attend to the bar. He was as upset as Francis to hear the news, he said; and Francis believed him.

  They talked straightforwardly of the affair, and agreed to speak to their children again. If marriage was what they wanted, then Harry would call upon Francis at once.

  'But if he's lukewarm,' said Francis honestly, 'you can warn him off. I'm in no mind to lose our Ada anyway, and she'll have plenty of choice.'

  They parted civilly, and Francis returned to Beech Green with a more contented mind.

  But for Dolly, this
family row had particular significance. On the fateful night when the storm had broken Dolly crept to bed, praying that Ada would be asleep or content to he silent. She herself was in such a turmoil of doubts and fears that she craved nothing but the unconsciousness of sleep.

  But Ada was awake and in an ugly mood. She lay in bed watching Dolly undress by the light of a candle.

  'I suppose you're glad I've been found out?' she said, speaking low so that their parents would hear nothing through the thin wall which divided the two rooms.

  'Ada!' cried Dolly, cut to the quick.

  'Ada!' mimicked her sister in a spiteful squeak. 'You know you were watching us—sneaking along on your bike! I saw you!'

  'I couldn't help it—' began poor Dolly.

  'And I bet you told mum as soon as you got home, that I wasn't sorting stock. Wanting to make me out a liar.'

  'And are you?' asked Dolly, with a flash of spirit.

  'Yes, I am then,' said Ada defiantly. 'You're driven to it in this mean rotten place. And I don't care! When you're in love you'll do anything!'

  Dolly was shocked into silence. With trembling hands she hung the last of her clothes on the back of the chair, blew out the candle, and slid into her cold bed. The dreadful words beat in her brain—words all the more sinister from their sibilant whispering. 'When you're in love you'll do anything!' Lie to your parents? Shout abuse at them? Attack your sister with false accusations? Was this what love did to you?

  She remembered Mr Waterman reading poems about love to his callous young pupils. Surely he had told them that love was ennobling and fired people with all that was good and beautiful? Love had not done that to Ada, it seemed.

  She summoned all the courage and calm she could, amidst the tumult and the darkness, and spoke pleadingly.

  'Ada, you don't really mean that. You're just upset. Try to go to sleep.'

  Ada gave a hard, harsh laugh. It sounded like the cackle of a jay in the dark room, and it sent shivers down Dolly's spine.

  'Don't you soft-soap me! You're a sneak, and I know it. And I mean every word I say. What do you know about being in love, anyway? You only got me into trouble because you're jealous—and that's the honest truth, Dolly Clare!'

  The vicious whispering ceased as Ada thumped over towards the wall. Exhausted with emotion she fell asleep almost immediately, but Dolly lay, appalled and icily awake, until the dawn came.

  During that long terrible night she came to realise that the rift which had been widening so steadily between Ada and herself was now too wide for any successful bridge. Gone were the days when Ada was always right, when Ada led and she followed, and when Ada—the bright, the beautiful, the brave—could count on her adoration and obedience.

  Nothing would ever be quite the same again. The words had been said, the cruel blows given. Dolly felt that even if she could come at last to forgive, she could certainly never forget.

  She fell into sleep as the cocks began to crow, and woke, two hours later, leaden-eyed, to a world which had lost some of its brightness for ever.

  CHAPTER 14

  LOOKING back across the years, as she lay half-dozing in the sunny garden, old Miss Clare marvelled that she should remember that wretched night so clearly. Was it true, she wondered, that she had been jealous of Ada's popularity with the young men? She had not realised it at the time. She had been furious and severely shaken by Ada's spite. But was there an element of truth there which the youthful Dolly unconsciously recognised?

  Certainly her interest in boys was remarkably small at that time, Miss Clare remembered, and smiled to think of her first 'walking out', which occurred a little before Ada's escapade.

  It was, not surprisingly, with Emily's brother Albert. He was now a corporal and a very fine figure in uniform.

  When he came home on leave the family made much of him. Mrs Davis, all passion spent, was now proud to show off Albert in his khaki, and basked in the congratulations of her neighbours when he accompanied her about the village or took her shopping in Caxley.

  He was a quiet, happy boy, pleased to be back in the overcrowded cottage but secretly a little lonely when the rest of the family were out upon their various ploys during the day. He wandered round Beech Green, leaning on a gate here and there to chat with men gardening or women hanging clothes. He stopped to talk to old school-mates, as they cut back hedges or turned the plough at the end of a long furrow, and felt mingled pride and guilt at the envy which he saw in their eyes.

  'It ain't all beer and skittles,' he assured his questioners, almost apologetically. 'Sometimes I reckons you chaps has the best of it.' But he knew he was not believed. To the stay-at-homes, he had the glamour which a uniform and travel give.

  To have some purpose for his meanderings, Albert frequently strolled towards Fairacre to meet his sister and Dolly on their way home from school. He was fond of them both, and a little sorry for Dolly, whom he considered overshadowed by Ada. If he had been bolder he might have approached Ada himself, but he knew that she was besieged by young men, and was afraid that he might be rebuffed. He felt safe with Dolly, and asked her one day if she would like to go to Caxley with him on the next Saturday. Somewhat surprised, Dolly agreed.

  It was all very innocent and pleasant. They cycled together to the town, Albert on Emily's bicycle. It was a blue and white March day of strong sun and wind. Dolly bought some crochet cotton and a new hook, a pound of sprats winch her mother wanted, and two ounces of cabbage seed for her father. Albert accompanied her into the shops, watching gravely over her purchases, and buying some cold wet cockles in the fishmonger's as a present for the Davis family's supper.

  The fish was put into a small flat rush bag which was secured with a skewer. As the afternoon wore on it grew dark with dampness and decidedly smelly, but the two were in great spirits and felt very daring as they took their burden into a tea shop in Caxley High Street and Albert ordered ices.

  'What would you like to do?' asked Albert, as they tinkled their spoons in the glass dishes.

  'I don't really know,' said Dolly truthfully. 'I mustn't be too late because my bicycle lamp isn't right, and anyway I want to wash my hair when I get back.'

  Albert looked a little relieved. He had been wondering if he could afford to take Dolly to the show in the Corn Exchange put on by the local Nigger Minstrels. It might have been good fun, but they would have been late back, and Albert was not sure if his parents and Dolly's would have approved. Perhaps another time, he told himself vaguely.

  'We'll have a walk in the park,' he said firmly, and called for the bill.

  The daffodils were in bud, and they sat on a bench with the fish bag oozing gently beside them. Albert rested his arm along the back against Dolly's thin shoulder blades, and finding that she made no demur, shifted a little closer.

  Dolly's silence stemmed from surprise rather than shyness. She did not have the heart to tell the young man that she was very uncomfortable. Albert's arm gave her a crick in the small of the back, and he was sitting heavily on the side of her skirt. Dolly doubted if the gathers would hold at the waist, as the material was rather worn. She leant a little towards him in order to minimise the strain and found Albert, much encouraged, tipping her head to rest on his shoulder.

  Her discomfort now was considerable. His epaulette was stiff and dug into her cheek, and her neck was strained unbearably. A cold hairpin, sliding from her rumpled bun, lodged inside her collar and added to her troubles. Albert took her hand and held it very tightly and painfully in his own.

  They sat there in silence with a chilly wind blowing round them. A bed of early wallflowers competed unsuccessfully with the damp fish bag for their attention. Dolly, squinting sideways at the daffodils, found her view impeded by Albert's neck and was interested to observe how much larger his pores were than her own. It was a decidedly clean neck, she noticed with approval, and the lobe of the only ear she could see had a healthy glow.

  At last cramp began to invade her left foot, and feeling that
she could bear no more, Dolly struggled into an upright position. There was a cracking sound, but whether of gathers or stiff joints Dolly could not be sure, and then the two smiled upon each other, Dolly with relief and Albert with affection.

  'It's getting very cold,' said Dolly gently.

  'Best be cycling home,' agreed Albert, collecting the fish bag.

  They pedalled home companionably in the twilight, talking of this and that, but making no comment on their prim embrace on the park bench. Only when they stopped at Dolly's gate were future plans mentioned.

  'Will you write to me sometimes when I'm away?' asked Albert, looking very young as he screwed and unscrewed Emily's bicycle bell.

  'Of course I will,' said Dolly warmly.

  'And come out again perhaps?' continued Albert.

  'Thank you,' said Dolly, a little less warmly.

  'Good,' said Albert, and looked as though he might lean across Emily's bicycle and peck her cheek. At that moment Francis Clare opened the door of the cottage.

  'Got my cabbage seed, Doll?' he called cheerfully.

  'Goodbye,' said Dolly hastily, 'and thank you for that lovely ice cream.'

  Pushing open the gate, she trundled her bicycle towards the house. The lamp made a pool of light round her father's familiar figure in the doorway. It was good to be home.

  This incident, touching and absurd, had no real sequel, for Albert's leave ended very soon after. But Dolly kept her word and wrote occasionally telling Albert about the doings of Beech Green and Fairacre. Her letters were beautifully penned; no blots, crossings or spelling mistakes marred their exquisite pages, and their subject matter was as blameless, for Dolly had no stronger feeling than friendship for the young man and was too honest to pretend that anything more was felt. After some months the letters between them grew less and less frequent, and Dolly heard of his engagement to a girl in Colchester, some time later, with genuine pleasure and some relief.