Nightingale Wood (46 page)

‘It’s fer you, Mrs Caker.’ Mrs Fisher, still with her mouth mimmed, set the box down heavily on the path. ‘Post come up here a while ago, but you was out, so he come down ter us and knocked
us
up. Said he didn’t like ter leave it, ’case anyone was ter walk in and take it. Tramps, likely, he meant,’ ended Mrs Fisher meaningly.

‘If you mean Dick Falger, he’s gone and he didn’t steal neither,’ cried Mrs Caker, unaware of the three and twopence. ‘Fer maye? That monster?’

Her languor and depression gone, her eyes sparkling, she ran out and lifted the box, wincing as she pressed it against the bruise. ‘ ’Tisn’t very heavy, anyways.’

‘The old man gone?’ cried Mrs Fisher.

‘Aye. Just went off,’ indifferently. ‘Felt like a change, I expect. Here, gie us a hand, Mrs Fisher, ’tis all netted up.’

After they had tried for a little while to undo the string, Mrs Fisher’s curiosity got the better of her, and she cried:

‘Oh, where’s a knife? We’ll never undo these doddy knots.’

‘It’s not Saxon’s writin’,’ muttered Mrs Caker, sawing at the string. Together they lifted off the lid, Mrs Fisher’s contempt for Mrs Caker forgotten in the excitement.

Sheets of pale rose tissue were revealed.

‘Oh, what is ut?’ cried Mrs Fisher, hopping.

‘Maybe ’tis owd cloes from mie daughter-in-law—’ Mrs Caker was beginning, but her voice faded – died into a thunderstruck silence as she slowly, with arms at full length, lifted out a gorgeous dark grey squirrel coat, top-heavy with a collar of smoky fox.

‘Mercy preserve us,’ whispered Mrs Fisher, and her mouth came unmimmed. Slowly she put out a work-worn hand and touched the fur. Then she said confidently:

‘ ’Tis a mistake, Mrs Caker. Must be.’

‘It’s just mie size, Mrs Fisher! Did ’ee ever see – aye, the beauty! I must just try it on.’

‘Better not, Mrs Caker,’ croaked Mrs Fisher, circling about the coat like a warning raven. ‘Ye might soil it.’

But Mrs Caker was slipping her arms, in their dirty torn sleeves, into the silk-lined sleeves of the coat. She drew it round herself, and the soft, electric warmth of fur caressed her neck as she looked delightedly down the coat’s silvery length.

‘Do it suit maye?’

‘Looks kind o’ funny wi’out a hat.’

‘Niver mind; I’ll get one next week.’

‘You’re niver goin’ to
keep
it, Nellie Caker?’

‘You watch maye, Mrs Fisher!’

‘Wait a bit – here’s a letter.’

Mrs Fisher had been poking in the wrappings, as though hoping to find a hat they had overlooked, and held up an envelope.

‘Gie it ter maye.’ Mrs Caker snatched, and read.

The next instant Mrs Fisher found herself seized by the arm, and running out of the cottage and down the path. Mrs Caker, the other hand clutching the coat round herself, was crying—

‘It’s fer maye, Mrs Fisher, it’s fer maye! Saxon bought it fer maye! He’s come into a bit o’ money, he says, and it’s fer maye! Come on, quick.’

‘Where we goin’?’ panted Mrs Fisher.

‘Down to yours. You got a long glass, haven’t ’ee? Oh, Mrs Fisher, to think o’ maye in a fur coat! Oh, Mrs Fisher, a fur coat! Oh, Mrs Fisher! A fur coat!’

Viola’s first thought on hearing that Saxon had come into all that money was that perhaps he might help Catty, so she wrote off at once to Tina, asking her if she would tell him about Catty, and adding that she, Viola, would be awfully grateful if he would help.

The news by this time was all over the village. Mrs Caker’s coat had been the herald, assisted by Mrs Caker. The village did not at first know how much Saxon had come in for; of course, Mrs Caker was swanking all over the place and had said on one occasion (to the realist-barman at the Green Lion, in fact) that it might be as much as a thousand pounds. But that was a bit too much, that was, even when supported by the evidence of the fur coat, and Sible Pelden, laughing merrily, said ‘Oh yeah?’ Then Viola met Mrs Caker in the post-office in Sible Pelden and wishing, because of her plans for Catty, to stand well with Saxon’s family, schoolgirlishly introduced herself. In the course of the awkward conversation that followed, Viola said exactly how much Saxon had got: and Mrs Caker rushed off to the Green Lion to tell.

Sible Pelden laughed louder than ever. Putting its finger against its nose, Sible Pelden refused to believe – until Tina sent her mother-in-law a newspaper cutting mentioning the sum in print, and Sible Pelden was convinced.

And then the village quietly, angrily, withdrew from the Cakers. Like everyone else, Sible Pelden felt that Saxon’s luck was Just A Bit Too Much, and refused to discuss it. Mrs Caker found that no one would gossip with her. No one mentioned the event, except obliquely and spitefully. The fur coat was glamorous, and them up The Eagles had written and asked her to tea, but Mrs Caker was not enjoying the first few days of being a rich man’s mother.

Tina and Saxon were not completely enjoying their money, either. The Essex village was too innocent to suspect Saxon and his late employer of the modish vice, but it was plain what their neighbours in the mews, the reporters whom Saxon refused to see, and some of the more conventionally loose-minded friends of the Baumers thought. Tina felt angrily amused, but also a little sickened. She thought that everyone who had read the Amazing Will paragraph must have come to the same conclusion. ‘Uh-huh,’ she could hear the sophisticates gently saying, from Marble Arch to Fitzroy Square. ‘Uh-huh.’

Poor Mr Spurrey, innocent old Victorian bawdy! With what outraged amazement he would have gobbled at such an accusation. Perhaps, for more reasons than the obvious one, it was a good thing that he was dead.

So Tina was just in the mood to be a little irritated by Viola’s letter. Their fortune had not been theirs a week yet, they had not even actual possession of it, and here was Viola on the make. True, she was on the make for someone else, and in an excellent cause, but that made her request the more irritating because it was the more difficult to refuse.

So Tina wrote back quite crisply, explaining that Saxon was far too busy to be worried just now, and that in any case they had not got the money yet and when they did they would have to think very carefully about what they were going to do with it and could not make any promises. She added that she was very sorry and enclosed a cheque for Catty, value one pound.

Viola was pleased to have the pound but very snubbed by the letter and wondered more than ever what was to be done for poor Catty.

Then the pound gave her an idea. She would write to all the people she knew and try to get together a little Fund for Catty. It could be put into the Post Office and drawn out by Catty when she wanted it. By the time it was all gone she, Viola, might have managed to get some more from somewhere, though she had no idea where from, for that thirty pounds had almost gone, the last fiver having been broken into for her spring outfit, and now she was sure that she would never dare to ask her father-in-law for an allowance.

But she might earn some. Life at The Eagles had become so dismal since Tina had left that Viola was seriously thinking about trying to get a job in London as a salesgirl. Shirley would help her. She was frightened by the idea, but at least a job in London would get her away from this one-horse place, and help her not to go all broody about Him, That Beast. (Only it was getting more and more difficult to think of him as That Beast when all she could remember was how frightfully good-looking he was and oh lord! he was getting married in a fortnight, and back came the pain. No poet has yet compared unhappy love to toothache, yet that is what it undoubtedly most resembles.)

Then she remembered what Tina had said about sublimating your mind (it meant doing something else so that you didn’t think about what was making you miserable) and she decided that she would shut herself in the library that very afternoon and write all her letters asking people if they would send a contribution to Catty’s Fund.

So at half-past two she came slowly downstairs carrying her fountain-pen in her mouth and a lot of Woolworth notepaper. As she crossed the hall, Mrs Wither met her, looking preoccupied.

‘Going to write letters, dear?’

Her tone was absent, but sufficiently kind. The news about Saxon’s fortune seemed to have sent Tina further than ever out of her mother’s life, and naturally she turned more to Viola. They were all used to Viola now, even Madge. There was a tendency to call her Poor Viola. She was so much quieter and nicer these days, and after all it was a dreadful thing to be widowed so young.

‘Yes, Mother.’

‘That’s right, dear. Well … I wish this afternoon were over.’ And Mrs Wither sighed.

‘I expect you do,’ said Viola sympathetically.

‘Well, dear, Mr Wither – Father and I felt that it is really the only thing to do. After all, if Saxon is coming down here with Tina to be received as our son-in-law we cannot very well ignore his mother, can we? And it lies with us to make the first move. After all, poor creature, she used to be respectable once. It hasn’t been all her fault. And of course, he will be making her an allowance now, as Tina said.’

‘Has she stopped doing washing?’

‘Oh dear, yes – so I heard from Mrs Parsham. She sent a little boy round to all her people telling them not to send her any more. Well, dear, run along. I shall rely on you to help me.’

And Mrs Wither smiled and went into the drawing-room, to sit and knit and think what a lot of things had happened in the last year, and decide how she was going to cope with Mrs Caker, who was coming to tea at four o’clock.

Viola went into the dingy little library, and shut the door.

An hour passed quietly, while she sat at the table with her pale gold head bent over the paper and the brilliant April sunlight pouring over the faded backs of uninteresting books and the stout, ugly yellow wooden furniture. Everything was quiet except the sparrows who darted to and fro outside the window over the bright green grass. A quarter to four struck sleepily somewhere. Viola put down the pen, yawning. It was tiring, writing letters.

She had written to Shirley, and to Mrs Colonel Phillips, to Mrs Parsham and to the chemist’s son with whom she had danced at the Infirmary Ball and whom she had since met once or twice in Chesterbourne and once had a coffee with. She had written to that friend of Shirley’s who kept a dress-shop in London, and to Irene, nicest and most generous of The Crowd (though The Crowd as a whole was anything but mean), and spent a quarter of an hour over the letter to Lady Dovewood, which was very humble and imploring. To each of these persons she had explained that Miss Edith Cattyman who had been at Burgess and Thompson’s for fifty years had been dismissed, and was leaving at the end of the month and would have no recourses. She, Viola, would be so grateful if they could see their way to sending a small donation for Miss Cattyman to go into a Fund in the Post Office and she was theirs truly, Viola Wither.

She leant back, looking complacently at the pile of letters. Now was that everybody? Shirley, Parsham, Phillips, Dovewood, Morley, Irene, Mrs Givens …
and the Springs
.
Of course, I ought to write to the Springs
. The thought flew into her mind, and she sat staring at the writing-pad, her heart beating painfully.

Of course I ought. They’re so rich, and Tina always said Mrs Spring’s got rotten health and that makes her very decent about giving money to hospitals and things. She’d be sure to be sorry for Catty and send a good lot.

And suddenly she was overwhelmed with longing to write to Victor, to put his name with ‘dear’ in front of it, to sign herself ‘yours truly’, and stick the stamp very carefully on the envelope the least bit sideways so that it meant a kiss, and go out after tea in the lovely spring evening and post the letter in the box at the cross-roads. She would be able to think, all the next day, ‘Perhaps he’s opening my letter … now he’s reading it … now he’s seen it’s from me,’ and then, of course, he would have to write back – unless he just sent a cheque with compliments. But even then, there would be the envelope with her name on it in his writing, and she could keep that for ever.

She knew that it would do quite as well if she wrote to Mrs Spring or even to Hetty (who had been so kind that day last summer at the garden party) but the longing to write to Victor was so strong that it defeated her commonsense.

After all, it’s quite an ordinary thing to do, she told herself, and it’s for Catty. She picked up the pen and bent again over the table.

The letter was short. She was too afraid of boring or annoying him to write much.

My dear Mr Spring,

I am writing to you to ask you if you would kindly send me some money for an old friend of mine, Miss Edith Cattyman. She has just been dismissed from Burgess and Thompson’s, a Ladies’ Outfitters in Chesterbourne, after being there for fifty years without recourses. Of course the money would be put into a fund in the Post Office.

And then the pen hesitated. She was trying to make it write those wishes for his happiness that she knew she ought to give.

It was no use. The pen would not write. Carefully moving the letter aside, she put her arms down on the table and cried quietly, heart-brokenly, for a moment. Then with tears running down she finished the letter.

I am,

Yours truly,

Viola Wither

and put it into its envelope just as the clock struck four and the front-door bell rang.

The letter’s first words, unfortunately, were not true: he was not her dear Mr Spring, but its last ones were true to their last shade of meaning. She was his truly, and always would be. Worse luck, she thought, carefully powdering her nose. Then she went into the drawing-room to help receive Mrs Caker.

Mrs Caker wore the coat, and hat, shoes, stockings, gloves and handbag in grey to match. When Mrs Caker was young, ‘all to match’ was the height of elegance, and since then she had not been in a position to learn that ‘all to match’ is now regarded as the depths of dowdiness. But this did not matter, because Mrs Wither was in exactly the same state of ignorance, and she thought that, apart from the fuzzy bits of hair sticking out under her hat and her lack of teeth, Mrs Caker looked very nice. And soon Saxon would give her the money to buy some teeth, and then she would look nicer still.