Theatre Shoes (21 page)

Hannah nodded.

“Shocking it is. If we could get you something new, I'll put it on one side; or maybe cut it up for a pair of knickers or something, later on. You haven't enough coupons in your book, but you can have a few from young Holly and a few from mine; but you'll have to buy something big with room for turnings, nice, solid, dark stuff that'll last.”

Sorrel leant against Hannah and looked up feelingly in her face.

“Oh, Hannah, I knew you were going to say that; but it's a party dress I want. That's what I was saying when you came in, something that would rustle and stick out. Don't you think we could possibly spare the coupons for that? After all, it wouldn't be wasted, I could wear it to church on Sundays in the summer.”

“There's enough funny goings-on in this house,” said Hannah, “without my taking a dressed-up monkey that ought to be on a stick along to church of a Sunday.” But she did not say it with any conviction. She was obviously worried, and after a moment she added: “Something pretty in white you ought to have, with a sash; like the ones you've passed on to Holly.”

“I'd have liked something a little more grown-up,” Sorrel pleaded. “Just think, Hannah! Suppose it could be yellow. Crêpe de Chine or silk net over taffeta.”

Hannah got up. Her voice was cross in the way it was when she had to hurt and disappoint one of the children.

“It's no good talking like that, Sorrel dear; and well you know it. What with things you've got to have, like shoes and socks and warm clothes, and you all growing, I don't know which way to turn for coupons as it is. Yellow silk indeed! You know we couldn't manage it, so what's the good of talking. Come on, Holly.”

Sorrel did not give up the party frock easily. And Hannah, who was really very sorry about it, patiently went with her from one big store to another. There must have been hundreds of dresses, but not one that met even half-way between Hannah's idea of sensibleness and usefulness and Sorrel's of what she should wear at a party.

A fortnight before Grandmother's first night the children were officially told they were all going and that they were to sit in the stalls. Alice had told Sorrel that she thought they would sit in a box, and “If you do, dear,” she said, “there's no one behind to see if your frock's too tight.” There was no comfort like that about sitting in the stalls, and it was the very day Sorrel heard it was to be stalls that she gave up the search for the frock.

“Don't let's try any more, Hannah. I'll wear the old velvet. It's silly to spend the coupons or the money on something dark and sensible, because I don't want that kind of frock for anything. I'll keep the money and buy something with it later on.”

She said this so nicely that neither Hannah nor Alice grasped how despairing she was inside, though they watched her carefully to see.

“I do hate to disappoint the child,” Hannah said. “But even if we had the coupons, which we haven't, what could she do with a frock made of silk and that? I wouldn't have minded if she'd wanted something white. We could have bought it far too big, taken it in and turned it up, and then when this first night was over, folded it away for her confirmation; but she wouldn't hear of white. They wore white for best at that Ferntree School, that's why Holly's got two white frocks.”

Alice was having such a time with Grandmother, she had not a great deal of time to spend worrying about other people.

“I wish I could help, dear, I do, indeed; but we're very nearly demented, if you ask me. To see us get up in the morning is a proper pantomime. Acting bits of scenes as we pull on our clothes, and when I'm doing our hair the brush is snatched away and the script shoved under my nose. It's ‘Hear my lines, Alice. Start at the top of page so-and-so.' Then we get a line wrong and I correct us and we say, ‘Don't interrupt, don't interrupt. How can I ever learn this part, you fool of a woman, when you jabber all the time?'”

Hannah was clearing away the supper things during this conversation. She paused in the doorway with the tray.

“Ever since I've been in this house, I've wondered how you stood it, Alice; and the more I hear the more I wonder. What you want to do is to take a place in a vicarage where there's nice Christian goings-on and never anything more out of the way than a parish social.”

The week before the first night the three children were asked to spend the day with Miriam. Uncle Mose was going on tour for E.N.S.A., and he had a week's rest; and the moment he knew his holiday was fixed, he told Aunt Lindsey to settle a day and get Sorrel, Mark and Holly along. They chose to go on Holly's birthday.

It was a lovely day with a nip of frost in the air, and the sun caught the silver of the defence balloons and turned them into gigantic pink and gold fish. Most of the things the children thought they would do in London, and had been hoping were going to happen, happened that day. They went to the Zoo, and they went to Madame Tussaud's. Uncle Mose said that he would have taken them to the Tower of London only you could not see it in wartime, and then he laughed and said that much though he would have liked to have shown them the Tower, in his opinion the Zoo and Madame Tussaud's were enough for one day, and it was an ill war that did nobody any good.

After tea, at which there was a cake with nine candles, they sat round the fire and roasted chestnuts. The Cohens had a lovely flat, all white paint and very shiny. The children had liked Uncle Mose from the beginning and they had always been fond of Miriam; but now they discovered how nice Aunt Lindsey could be. She had not gone with them to the Zoo in the morning, because she had to cook the lunch, nor to Madame Tussaud's in the afternoon, because she had to get the tea; but now that there were no more meals to see to, she settled down in an armchair and talked in a friendly way as if she had known them always. She asked a little about Guernsey and a great deal about the vicarage. She and Uncle Mose laughed and laughed when they heard about Grandfather and the Bible animals, and then she began asking about living with Grandmother. Were they comfortable? Mark was busy with the chestnuts.

“Sorrel is; she's got our mother's room.”

“And you?” Aunt Lindsey asked.

Sorrel managed to kick Mark to remind him that Grandmother was Aunt Lindsey's mother. Mark looked over his shoulder and made a face at her to show that he had not forgotten.

“Quite, thank you,” he said politely.

Aunt Lindsey looked down at Holly.

“Which room have you got?”

Holly wriggled up to her Aunt and leant against her knees.

“I think it was your nursery. Mark's in the room next to me.”

Aunt Lindsey turned to Uncle Mose.

“He must be in the little room that the kitchen-maid had. I suppose Mother's put them on that floor because that's where Addie's room was. Henry and Marguerite and I slept on the floor below.”

“I daresay you did,” said Mark. “Those rooms haven't any furniture in them now.”

Aunt Lindsey laughed.

“You can't have lived in that house for quite a number of months, Mark, and think that; as you know, there's hardly room to turn round for all the furniture Mother's collected.”

Sorrel was so afraid that Holly's face, gazing up into Aunt Lindsey's, would give her away that she pulled her arm.

“I think your chestnut's burning.”

Miriam, by accident, led the conversation away from Grandmother's house.

“Do you know that Mum's written to ask whether, as Dad will be away for Grandmother's first night, you could all sit in the box with Mum and me? What are you going to wear, Holly? I've got a blue silk frock. Mum's let it out and altered it, and it looks very nice now.”

“I've only got white,” Holly explained. “But I've got the coral beads Aunt Marguerite gave me, and I'm wearing a coral bow.”

“And what's Sorrel wearing?” Aunt Lindsey asked kindly.

There was an awful pause while Mark and Holly looked at Sorrel to see what she would say.

Uncle Mose had his eye on Sorrel. He caught hold of her arm and pulled her to him, and made her sit on the arm of his chair.

“Come on, what are they dressing you in? Something you don't like?”

The most awful thing happened to Sorrel. Because she really was so worried about the frock and the shame of wearing it, and because Uncle Mose was so nice, she suddenly found herself crying. Uncle Mose did not seem in the least upset by this. He pulled her off the arm of his chair and on to his knee, and found his pocket-handkerchief and mopped her face and said he would like to hear all about it.

Sorrel had reached the cry and hiccup stage; but somehow she managed to tell the entire story, reminding him what the velvet frock was like, and about the shopping expeditions she and Hannah had been on, and what Hannah wanted and what she wanted, and the dreadful story of the coupons.

When she had finished, Uncle Mose looked at Aunt Lindsey.

Aunt Lindsey got up.

“You come with me, Sorrel. If there was one thing I was extravagant about before the war, it was evening dresses, and I'm a very good dressmaker. Let's see what we can find.”

They did not find yellow, but there was a white evening dress made of stiff rustling silk, with bunches of yellow flowers embroidered all over it. Aunt Lindsey had piles of picture papers lying on the table in her bedroom. She kept turning these over until at last she came to a picture on the cover of one. It was coloured and showed a girl of about Sorrel's age in a party frock with puffed sleeves. Underneath it was written, “It may be wartime, but Miss Adolescent wants her fun!”

“There!” said Aunt Lindsey. “How would you like that frock?”

Sorrel could not believe it was true. She kept fingering the stuff.

“Do you mean honestly made of this?”

Aunt Lindsey had whipped up a yard measure from somewhere and was measuring Sorrel. She stopped measuring for a moment and held Sorrel's chin between her fingers and looked into her eyes.

“Of course I mean it, goose; it'll be fun. You'll look a darling in it, but never let me hear of you crying and worrying about anything like this again. You come straight along to us; that's what uncles and aunts are for. There's no dressing-up at first nights these days, so I shall make you the smartest person in the theatre. You'll see.”

The children had heard about first nights from Alice and from Miriam. Fortunately, Miriam's theatre-going had been mostly during the war. If they had relied on Alice's story of what happened, they would have been bitterly disappointed at the real thing.

Alice, through long years of dressing Grandmother, had seen the splendid sort of first nights that there were in peacetime; when the whole road was blocked with cars driving to the front of the house; when the foyer was full of lovely clothes, and all the smart people who had come to the first night stood packed together talking to each other while the more important of them were photographed.

A first night in wartime was not a bit like that. Nobody, of course, came in a car; but a few lucky ones, including the children, came in taxis. In the days of first nights that Alice talked about, plays had begun quite late in the evening, eight or half-past; but now, because of the black-out and getting home, no play began later than half-past six. Grandmother's was to begin at six-fifteen. The children had a high tea; that is to say, they had a piece of cold spam with their ordinary tea. It was not the sort of day when any special cooking went on. Grandmother, and Alice too, if it came to that, were in such a flutter and excitement that the only thing for other people in the house to do was to keep out of the way, not to argue about anything, and to want as few things as possible. Alice had offered Hannah a seat in the upper circle, which she said she could get her. But Hannah said no, she would rather wait and go later on to a matinée, if that was convenient, she could not seem to fancy being out in the black-out. Actually, when it came to the day, the children could see she was rather sorry that she had said that. With everybody else going to a first night, it seemed a bit flat to be at home by herself. And it was clear by about tea-time that she felt this, because even when she was in the kitchen getting tea she did not sing.

“Not even one line of hymn,” said Holly. “Poor Hannah! I bet she's wishing she was us.”

For fear of getting messed up, the children did not change until after tea. Hannah had laid Sorrel's frock out on her bed. It looked, Sorrel thought, quite lovely against the blue eiderdown; and she stroked it a long time before she began to undress. Aunt Lindsey had made it beautifully, and she had not only made the frock but she had sent some yellow ribbon which matched the flowers for Sorrel to tie on her hair. Hannah, coming in to see how Sorrel was getting on, found her just standing there stroking, and she had to hurry her up.

“Come along now, I've had Holly dressed this last ten minutes.”

Sorrel looked at her with shining eyes.

“I shouldn't think there was ever a prettier dress in this room, would you? I mean, even when my mother lived here.”

Hannah privately thought the dress rather too grand, but not for worlds would she have told Sorrel. Sorrel had got as far as her knickers and socks and shoes, so Hannah lifted the frock off the bed and put it over her head. Sorrel really did look very nice. Hannah felt a swelling inside she was so proud of her. She did not, of course, say anything as she thought flattery was a sin; but when Sorrel passed her her comb and asked her to plait her hair, Hannah suddenly put the comb down.

“How about you not having plaits? Supposing you use these bits of ribbon to tie bows on the sides.” Hannah's great belief in neatness and plainness was such a feature of her that Sorrel gaped. Hannah was embarrassed with herself, but she stuck to her point. “No need to stare at me as if I had said something queer. There's a right and a wrong about everything; and plaits, which are right and proper at most times, wouldn't seem to me to fit in with your aunt's frock. Give me your brush. I'll just twist these ends round my fingers.”