A Bed of Roses Part 5

Victoria wondered for a moment whether her Ladys.h.i.+p was going to suggest sending her out to Johannesburg to marry a mine manager, but the Presence resumed.

'No doubt you would rather stay in London. Things are a little difficult here, but very pleasant, very pleasant indeed.'

'I don't mind things being difficult,' Victoria broke in, mustering a little courage. 'I must earn my own living and I don't mind what I do; I'd be a nursery governess, or a housekeeper, or companion. I haven't got any degrees, I couldn't quite be a governess, but I'd try anything.'

'Certainly, certainly, I'm sure we will find something very nice for you. I can't think of anybody just now but leave me your address. I'll let you know as soon as I hear of anything.' Lady Rockham gently crossed her hands over her waistband and benevolently smiled at her protegee.

Victoria wrote down her address and listened patiently to Lady Rockham who discoursed at length on the imperfections of the weather, the noisiness of London streets and the prowess of Charles Rockham on the Kidderwick links. She felt conscious of having to return thanks for what she was about to receive.

Lady Rockham's kindness persisted up to the door to which she showed Victoria. She dismissed her with the Parthian shot that 'they would find something for her, something quite nice.'

Victoria walked away; cold gusts of wind struck her, chilling her to the bone, catching and furling her skirts about her. She felt at the same time cheered and depressed. The interview had been inconclusive.

However, as she walked over the Serpentine bridge, under which the wind was angrily ruffling the black water, a great wave of optimism came over her; for it was late, and she remembered that in the Edgware Road, there was a small Italian restaurant where she was about to lunch.

It was well for Victoria that she was an optimist and a good sleeper, for November had waned into December before anything happened to disturb the tenor of her life. For a whole fortnight she had heard nothing from Lady Rockham or from Edward. She had written to Molly but had received no answer. All day long the knocker fell with brutal emphasis upon the doors of Portsea Place and brought her nothing. She did not think much or hope much. She did nothing and spent little. Her only companion was Mrs Bell, who still hovered round her mysterious lodger, so ladylike and so quiet.

She pa.s.sed hours sometimes at the window watching the stream of life in Portsea Place. The stream did not flow very swiftly; its princ.i.p.al eddies vanished by midday with the milkman and the butcher. The postman recurred more often but he did not count. Now and then the policeman pa.s.sed and spied suspiciously into the archway where the landladies no longer met. Cabs trotted into it now and then to change horses.

Victoria watched alone. Beyond Mrs Bell, she seemed to know n.o.body. The young man downstairs continued to be invisible, and contented himself with slamming the door. The young lady in the back room continued to wash discreetly and to snore gently at night. Sometimes Victoria ventured abroad to be bitten by the blast. Sometimes she strayed over the town in the intervals of food. She had to exercise caution in this, for an aspect of the lodging house fire had only lately dawned upon her.

If she did not order it at all she was met on the threshold by darkness and cold; if she ordered it for a given time she was so often late that she returned to find it dead or kept up wastefully at the rate of sixpence a scuttle. This trouble was chronic; on bitter days it seemed to dog her footsteps.

She had almost grown accustomed to loneliness. Alone she watched at her window or paced the streets. She had established a quasi-right to a certain seat at the Italian restaurant where the waiters had ceased to speculate as to who she was. The demoralisation of unemployment was upon her. She did not cast up her accounts; she rose late, made no plans. She slept and ate, careless of the morrow.

It was in the midst of this slow settling into despond that a short note from Lady Rockham arrived like a bombsh.e.l.l. It asked her to call on a Mrs Holt who lived in Finchley Road. It appeared that Mrs Holt was in need of a companion as her husband was often away. Victoria was shaken out of her torpor. In a trice her optimism crushed out of sight the flat thoughts of aimless days. She feverishly dressed for the occasion. She debated whether she would have time to insert a new white frill into the neck of a black blouse. Heedless of expenditure she spent two and eleven pence on new black gloves, and twopence on the services of a s...o...b..ack who whistled cheerful tunes, and smiled on the coppers. Victoria sallied out to certain victory. The wind was blowing balmier. A fitful gleam of suns.h.i.+ne lit up and reddened the pile of tangerines in a shop window.

CHAPTER VII

'I'M very sorry you can't come,' said Mrs Holt.

'Last Sunday, Mr Baker was so nice. I never heard anything so interesting as his sermon on the personal devil. I was quite frightened.

At least I would have been if he had said all that at Bethlehem. You know, when we were at Rawsley we had such nice lantern lectures. I do miss them.'

Victoria looked up with a smile at the kindly red face. 'I'm so sorry,'

she said, 'I've got such a headache. Perhaps it'll pa.s.s over if I go for a little walk while you are at Church.' She was not unconscious, as she said this, of the subtle flattery that the use of the word 'church'

implies when used to people who dare not leave their chapel.

'Do, Victoria, I'm sure it will do you good,' said Mrs Holt, kindly. 'If the sun keeps on, we'll go to the Zoo this afternoon. I do like to see the children in the monkey house.'

'I'm sure I shall be glad to go,' said Victoria quietly. 'It's very kind of you to take me.'

'Nonsense, my dear,' replied Mrs Holt, gently beaming. 'You are like the suns.h.i.+ne, you know. Dear me! I don't know what I should have done if I hadn't found you. You can't imagine the woman who was here before you.

She was the daughter of a clergyman, and I did get so tired of hearing how they lost their money. But, there, I'm worrying you when you've got a headache. I do wish you'd try Dr Eberman's pills. All the papers are simply full of advertis.e.m.e.nts about them. And these German doctors are so clever. Oh, I shall be so late.'

Victoria a.s.sured her that she was sure her head would be better by dinner time. Mrs Holt fussed about the room for a moment, anxiously tested the possible dustiness of a bracket, pulled the curtains and picked up the Sunday papers from the floor. She then collected a small canvas bag decorated with a rainbow parrot, a hymn and service book, her spectacle case, several unnecessary articles which happened to be about and left the room with the characteristic rustle which pervades the black silk dresses of well-to-do Rawsley dames.

Victoria sat back in the large leather armchair. Her head was not very bad but she felt just enough in her temples a tiny pa.s.sing twinge to s.h.i.+rk chapel without qualms. She toyed with a broken backed copy of _Charlton on Book-Keeping_ which lay in her lap. It was a curious fate that had landed her into Charlton's epoch making work. Mrs Holt, that prince of good fellows, had a genius for saving pennies and had been trained in the school of a Midland household, but the fortunes of her husband had left her feebly struggling in a backwash of pounds. So much had this been the case that Mr Holt had discovered joyfully that he had at last in his house a woman who could bring herself to pa.s.sing an account for twenty pounds for stabling. Little by little Victoria had established her position. She was Mrs Holt's necessary companion and factotum. She could apparently do anything and do it well; she could even tackle such intricate tasks as checking was.h.i.+ng or understanding Bradshaw. She was always ready and always bright. She had an unerring eye for a good quality of velvet; she could time the carriage to a nicety for the Albert Hall concert. Mrs Holt felt that without this pleasant and competent young woman she would be quite lost.

Mr Holt, too, after inspecting Victoria grimly every day for an entire month, had decided that she would do and had lent her the work on book-keeping, hoping that she would be able to keep the house accounts.

In three months he had not addressed her twenty times beyond wis.h.i.+ng her good morning and good night. He had but reluctantly left Rawsley and his beloved cement works to superintend his ever growing London business. He was a little suspicious of Victoria's easy manners; suspicious of her intentions, too, as the northerner is wont to be. Yet he grudgingly admitted that she was level headed, which was 'more than Maria or his fool of a son would ever be.'

Victoria thought for a moment of Holt, the book-keeping, the falling due of insurance premiums; then of Mrs Holt who had just stepped into her carriage which was slowly proceeding down the drive, crunching into the hard gravel. A gleam of suns.h.i.+ne fitfully lit up the polished panels of the clumsy barouche as it vanished through the gate.

This then was her life. It might well have been worse. Mr Holt sometimes let a rough kindness appear through an exterior as hard as his own cement. Mrs Holt, stout, comfortable and good-tempered, quite incompetent when it came to controlling a house in the Finchley Road, was not of the termagant type that Victoria had expected when she became a companion. Her nature, peaceful as that of a mollusc, was kind and had but one outstanding feature; her pa.s.sionate devotion to her son Jack.

Victoria thought that she might well be content to pa.s.s the remainder of her days among these good folk. From the bottom of her heart mild discontent rose every now and then. It was a little dull. Tuesday was like Monday and probably like the Tuesday after next. The glories of the town, which she had caught sight of during her wanderings, before she floated into the still waters of the Finchley Road, haunted her at times. The motor buses too, which perpetually carried couples to the theatre, the crowds in Regent Street making for the tea-shops, while the barouche trotted sedately up the hill, all this life and adventure were closed off.

Victoria was not unhappy. She drifted in that singular psychological region where the greatest possible pain is not suffering and where the acme of possible pleasure is not joy. She did not realise that this negative condition was almost happiness, and yet did not precisely repine. The romance of her life, born at Lympton, now slept under the tamarinds. The stupefaction of the search for work, the hopes and fears of December, all that lay far away in those dark chambers of the brain into which memory cannot force a way but swoons on the threshold.

Yes, she was happy enough. Her eyes, casting through the bay window over the evergreens, trimly stationed and dusty, strayed over the low wall.

On the other side of the road stood another house, low and solid as this one, beautiful though ugly in its strength and worth. It is not the house you live in that matters, thought Victoria, unconsciously committing plagiarism, but the house opposite. The house she lived in was well enough. Its inhabitants were kind, the servants respectful, even the mongrel Manchester terrier with the melancholy eyes of some collie ancestor did not gnaw her boots.

She let her hands fall into her lap and, for a minute, sat staring into s.p.a.ce, seeing with extraordinary lucidity those things to come which a movement dispels and swathes with the dense fog of forgetfulness. With terrible clarity she saw the life of the last three months and the life to come, as it was in the beginning ever to be.

The door opened softly. Before she had time to turn round two hands were clapped over her eyes. She struggled to free herself, but the hands grew more insistent and two thumbs softly touched her cheeks.

'Dimple, dimple,' said a voice, while one of the thumbs gently dwelled near the corner of her mouth.

Victoria struggled to her feet, a little flushed, a strand of hair flying over her left ear.

'Mr Jack,' she said rather curtly, 'I don't like that. You know you mustn't do that. It's not fair. I really don't like it.' She was angry; her nostrils opened and shut quickly; she glared at the good looking boy before her.

'Naughty temper,' he remarked, quite unruffled. 'You'll take a fit one of these days, Vicky, if you don't look out.'

'Very likely if you give me starts like that. Not that I mind that so much, but really it's not nice of you. You know you wouldn't do that if your mother was looking.'

'Course I wouldn't,' said Jack, 'the old mater's such a back number, you know.'

'Then,' replied Victoria with much dignity, 'you ought not to do things when we're alone which you wouldn't do before her.'

'Oh Lord! morals again,' groaned the youth. 'You are rough on me, Vicky.'

'And you mustn't call me Vicky,' said Victoria. 'I don't say I mind, but it isn't the thing. If anybody heard you I don't know what they'd think.'

'Who cares!' said Jack in his most dare devil style, putting his hand on the back of hers and stroking it softly. Victoria s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand away and went to the window, where she seemed absorbed in the contemplation of the evergreens. Jack looked a little nonplussed. He was an attractive youth and looked about twenty. He had the fresh complexion and blue eyes of his father but differed from him by a measure of delicacy. His tall body was a little bent; his face was all pinks and whites set off by the blackness of his straight hair. He well deserved his school nickname of Kathleen Mavourneen. His long thin hands, which would have been aristocratic but for the slight thickness of the joints, branded him a poet. He was not happy in the cement business.

Jack stepped up to the window. 'Sorry,' he said, as humbly as possible.

Victoria did not move.

'Won't never do it again,' he said, pouting like a scolded child.

'It's no good,' answered Victoria, 'I'm not going to make it up.'

'I shall go and drown myself in the Regent Ca.n.a.l,' said Jack dolefully.

'I'd rather you went for a walk along the banks,' said Victoria.