The Pandervils (29 page)

‘Pleasant morning, Miss Hunt!'

‘Beautiful, isn't it, Mr Pandervil! Well, it was time we 'ad a bit of spring weather after that bitter wind. It fair nipped me up. What are your cream biscuits to-day?'

As he told her the price—the unvarying price— of his cream biscuits, Mabe slunk into the shop. ‘How do, Miss Hunt! Nice day!' Miss Hunt went out. ‘Hallo, Pa! Mar in?' An idle question, for Ma was never out.

‘In?' echoed Egg jocularly. ‘In bed, d'ye mean? I expect you'll find her about the kitchen somewhere. She's a bit better this morning.' He could tell by Mabe's demeanour that she had brought a load of trouble with her, and that mother and daughter would have a happy miserable hour pick-it over. ‘Anything wrong, my girl?'

She looked surprised and a trifle indignant. Her face took on the expression of a sick mule. ‘I'll go and find Ma,' said Mabe.

Egg knew himself rejected; and so strong was the influence of his new mood of self-searching that for a while he felt hurt about it, reluctant to face the fact that it was now too late to start making friends with his daughter. Some trouble between her and that Daniel, he thought, and tried to dismiss it from his mind, consoling himself— it was rich consolation—with remembering that to-night young Nicky was to have his weekly bath, and that, in relief of the scandalously overworked Selina, he himself, the surprised father, would supervise that orgy of laughter and splashing and boat-sailing. With Nicky, at least, he had lost no time in making friends, once it had dawned on him—a shy, gradual brightening of his sky—that of all the household he himself was the fittest and the favourite companion of this queer agreeable child; that under the surface of their intercourse, the confidences and the gaiety and the scoldings, something vibrated between them quick and delicate and never to be spoken. This anticipated pleasure coloured all his morning, and made weighing and packing and invoicing and passing the time of day with customers, a series of almost purely mechanical operations.

Just as the clock struck one, Bob came into the shop, a Bob stripped, it seemed, of his customary self-assurance. ‘Say, Dad, I want a word with you. D'you think we could go and have a bite
together somewhere? Par doe's is a pretty decent place. I … I got something I want to tell you.'

Egg, to hide his astonishment and alarm, attempted a casual evasion. ‘What do we want to go and spend eighteenpence at Pardoe's for, when there's our own food waiting in the kitchen?'

‘We can't talk in the kitchen.'

‘Can't we?' said Egg. He knew he was being foolish and awkward; but this son so often made him feel that. ‘First I've heard of it.'

‘Oh, you know what I mean,' said Bob. ‘Come on, Dad. Be a sport.'

A thrill travelled up Egg's spine, a thrill that mingled new friendliness with a kind of pride. His smart son, the estate agent's clerk, was inviting him, on terms of equality, to be a sport. The thing was without precedent. His resistance weakened. ‘And what am I to say to your mother, pray? She's taking her meals downstairs to-day. P'raps you dint know that?'

Bob shrugged his shoulders. He recognized a palpable difficulty. But in a moment he had braced himself to meet and overcome it. ‘Tell you what,' he said, leaning intimately across the counter. ‘If you're agreeable,
I
'll tell Ma. This very minute. I will. How's that?'

Egg waited in not unpleasurable agitation until his son returned from this hazardous mission with a cool ‘It's all right, I've squared her for you.' The spirit of holiday began dancing in his heart, for it was fun, undeniably fun, and not a little
grand, to be strolling down the road to take luncheon with one's eldest son—for what at home was ‘dinner' became ‘luncheon' when it cost nine-pence (with napkin) and was served at Pardoe's. Bob counted it lucky that they were alone for the latter part of the meal, and when, at its end, he wiped some glistening crumbs of suet from his mouth and expressed this opinion for the third time, it was evident that something important was to be discussed.

‘Well?' said Egg. ‘So you want a word with me, do you, my boy?'

‘You're right,' said Bob. ‘I do, and that's a fact.' He coughed nervously, and his face became slowly crimsoned over with embarrassment. ‘I'm going to get married, Dad. That's about the size of it.' He stroked the downy beginnings of a moustache, striving to look manly and casual, and succeeding in looking at least ten years old. Egg had never liked the young man so much before.

‘I see,' said Egg. He was envious and he was compassionate. 'And you 'aven't told your mother?'

‘You bet I haven't.'

‘And you don't much like the job?'

‘Can't say I do,' admitted Bob, staring down at his dirty plate and shuffling his feet in confusion. ‘And there's reasons enough for that. Fact is, I want you to promise to say nothing about it till I give the word.'

Egg stared. He was this boy's father, and something had got to be done about this affair.
‘Well, out with it, my boy. Who's the girl?' It occurred to him—and he half-smiled at the thought—that he ought to have asked that question before. But until this moment he had almost forgotten that his son's marriage involved a particular girl, and not the vague and radiant embodiment of young girlhood that in his own mind was evoked by what he had been told.

‘Well,' said Bob, speaking very slowly, with long painful pauses between his phrases, ‘that's the trouble, you see. I don't know that you'll be so extra special pleased about it. It's not a girl you know. Don't suppose you've ever seen her. In fact I'm jolly well sure you haven't. She lives out Keston way.'

Egg's agitation provoked him to sarcasm. ‘Has she got a name, this girl, as well as an address?'

‘Kitty Dyce is her name, and—well, she's all right, naturally.' Bob hurried past the question of her personal excellence. ‘I'm … we … she … well, we're pretty far gone on each other, if you want to know. So that's that,' finished Bob defiantly.

Egg considered this pronouncement. He could hardly believe that they were at the end of the story. ‘And what's all this about your not telling your mother? That don't seem to fit in somehow. She's got to be told, you know that ‘swell as I do.'

‘She'll have to be told some time, of course,' agreed Bob. ‘But not yet. I'd rather she wasn't.'

Egg became peevish. ‘That's silly talk. Still I
suppose you can keep it quiet for a bit if you're so set on it. But whyja bring
me
into it?'

Bob looked up in astonishment. ‘Well, that's a funny way to take it, Dad, I
must
say. You wouldn't a had me get married without telling
anybody
, would you! Not you! You'd a bin the first to complain. I thought being a man you'd understand how a chap feels.'

‘All right!' said Egg. ‘Steady does it, my boy. Don't excite yourself. But I
don't
understand, not yet I don't. You 'aven't told me everything. By the way you're talking it looks to me as though you want to make a fool of yourself. Want to get married to-morrow, I suppose. Is that it?'

‘That's it, near enough,' muttered Bob sulkily.

‘Bob!' said Egg, eyeing his son sternly. ‘Are you talking serious?'

‘You bet I am!'

‘You think you can get married, and you not turned twenty-two and earning next to nothing a week! Tie yourself up for life to some girl you've just said How-d'ye-do to! For life, mind you. For
life
. I know what I'm talking of, so make no mistake about it.'

‘It's to be a secret marriage,' said Bob, trying to take no notice of his father's outburst. ‘That's why I'm telling you. We shan't set up house, not for a year or two, not till I've made my way a bit. She'll go on at her work, and I'll go on at mine, and no one will know we're married at all till… they do. Only I thought I'd like you to know, you being a man.'

Egg was touched and grateful, but he thought it his duty to dissemble gratitude. ‘Work? What's she working at?'

‘Well, that's just it,' explained Bob, at once eager and sheepish. ‘Mother's got such big ideas, I'd never hear the last of it. She's … well, she's a general servant, if you want to know, down Keston way.'

Egg remained deep in thought for a few minutes. At last he said: ‘There's worse things than general servants. My own mother was in service once, and I never died of it. And there's an aunt of yours—'

‘I know!' Bob was triumphant. ‘'Tisn't our place to be high and mighty. And I wouldn't care if she was a gutter-girl, for myself. It was only Ma I was thinking of.'

‘Yes, I daresay,' remarked Egg. ‘But there's more in it than that, my boy. What's the hurry? That's what you haven't told me. And I'm waiting to hear.'

‘There's reasons for hurry,' said Bob.

‘Oh, there is, is there!'

‘Very good reasons,' said Bob, drawing patterns on the tablecloth with his forefinger. ‘It's all my fault, and I'm not going to let her down, and I don't care what anyone says. It was none of her doing.'

‘None of her doing, wasn't it!' What a noodle the boy is, thought Egg. Thinks he did it all by himself, I s'pose. ‘I'm surprised at you, Bob!' That seemed so inadequate that he added, not with
complete conviction: ‘And I'm ashamed of you, what's more!' In both these statements he lied, partly in the interests of good morals, but more because he must at all costs conceal from Bob how greatly alarmed and horrified he was by the prospect of a scandal in the family. Fancy having to break this news to Carrie! It was too dreadful to be faced. But the next instant it flashed into his mind how years ago, when he was Bob's age, he had carried upstairs Jinny Randall heavy with her child and Willy's; and he yearned towards his son, but could only repeat: ‘I'm ashamed of you!' And he added, in real exasperation: ‘First Harold, then you! It's too much of a good thing!'

‘Harold!' Bob's eyes widened with curiosity. ‘What's young Harold been up to?'

‘Nothing at all!' snapped Egg. ‘He knows how to behave himself, Harold does. Which is more than you do, seemingly.'

‘Oh, you don't understand,' said Bob wearily. ‘I don't suppose you've ever felt like Kitty and me feel. Pretty clear you haven't. You've never been what I'd call in love, have you?'

Egg, having essayed irony several times in this interview, now for the first time achieved it. ‘No, my boy, I never have. Old fogey like me, don't know what love is. Suppose you tell me, eh?'

Not entirely obtuse, Bob had the grace to blush for himself. ‘Anyway, Dad, you see how it is. I want to marry her. Quite apart from all this bother, I want to marry her. And I've just got to. You do see that, don't you?”

They rose, paid their bill, and walked back to the shop. As they crossed the threshold together, Egg took his son's arm and slightly, shyly, pressed it, grateful that the boy had not thought it necessary to demand a formal promise of secrecy. The future—at which for a moment he cocked a timid speculative eye—could hold little but storm for him, dark days and angry seas. Pandervil's was still yielding no more than a precarious livelihood, and Harold was the most reluctant of assistants. To look forward was no better than to look back, and to look back was bitterness. Passion, for him, had flowered vainly; budded and blossomed and spilled its scent in a desolate place and was now withered away. Yet there remained things in life that he would have been reluctant to lose. There was this belated feeling of kinship with his eldest son. There was friendship and neighbourliness, saying How-do to familiar faces, a pipe of tobacco of an evening when Carrie had gone early to bed, and a quiet read of the noozepaper, and summer mornings, and the way the slate roofs of the High Street glistened after rain. And, to-night, there was Nicky to be bathed.

The bath, which failed to resemble porcelain only because it looked somehow better than porcelain, so cunningly had the paint been applied—the bath demands a word to itself. It was new; it was Selina's pride and care; it possessed two brass taps
that were polished every day and never used (hot water was carried upstairs in saucepans); and it was the monument to a great event. It was Uncle Algy, and he alone, who had instantly with a prescience little short of extraordinary, recognized the greatness of the event. While others joined hearts, and sometimes voices, in deploring that yet another child was born to Carrie and Egg, Uncle Algy, paying them one of his infrequent but regular visits, was as hearty in his applause as he had been on previous and similar occasions; the house echoed with his ‘Bray-vo,
Carrie!
Bray-vo,
Egg!
Bray-vo,
Baby!'
And, with a change of accent that gave new and hearty emphasis to his pleasure and surprise: ‘Bray-vo!' Ever since his unexpected emancipation from farm-work and his espousal both of auctioneering and Aunty Min, Uncle Algy had bounced through life like a balloon—for time persisted in inflating him—heartily applauding and patronizing everything. And here at last was something to which with aptness as well as enthusiasm he could apply his favourite adjective; for Nicky was indeed little, the very smallest baby, thought Egg (who was no judge, however), that had ever been born. ‘I'
ad
thought of spoons, Carrie,' said Uncle Algy surprisingly. ‘I 'ad thought of a silver spoon, y'know, Eggie old son. But no, 'e don't want spoons. And besides there's plenty of such in the house already. Ha ha ha! No, seriously, Eggie, what I'll do is I'll give him a bath, old boy. Hear that, Carrie? I'll give the little man a bath. Blest if I don't!' Carrie, failing
to seize his drift, objected that he would take and drop the child, a remark of which Uncle Algy reminded her upon every succeeding visit. And when the bath came, newfangled affair though it was and a ridiculous expense no doubt, Carrie allowed it was very handsome of Uncle Algy. And Egg was overwhelmed to the point of feeling awkward about it. ‘That's nothing, old boy. Nothing at all, is it, Min, my dear!' For Uncle Algy was by way of being a rich relation, and though he took a franker pleasure in savouring his generosity than modern delicacy would approve, one could hardly grudge him his naive self-approval. ‘I haven't exactly gone down in the world, Eggie, and I won't pretend I have. But I'm never too big to remember old times, boy, and blood's thicker than water, whatever you may say.' And so here, mute witness to the inferior density of water, stood Nicky's bath; and though its taps were not connected to a cistern, it had a real plughole, with a plug that hung on a stout chain, and the water that was carried up by Selina did not need to be carried down again but escaped through a waste-pipe to the cesspool at the end of the garden. Here stood the bath, and here, with his father in attendance, was Nicky ready to use it.