Alfred and Emily Read online

  ‘All fed,’ said Fiona. ‘The cat was here long before Rosie. It was jealous and I was afraid it might harm Rosie. One day when I finished feeding, the cat jumped on my lap and licked my breast so I put down a saucer of milk and the cat stopped being jealous.’

  ‘I wonder if the cat thinks it’s a baby or a kitten?’ said Emily. ‘I mustn’t let Miss Burton see me give my milk to the cat,’ said Fiona. Mimicking a hoity-toity voice, she said, “‘The cat’ll get ideas above its station. You don’t want that.” She’s already told the cook I’m a real Bohemian, but she thinks she can get me back in line.’

  ‘I wish you were coming with me to Scotland,’ said Emily.

  ‘So do I. Well, nursery days won’t be for ever.’

  A knock, and a large, matronly woman appeared, who said to Fiona, ‘Give me the baby. I’ll take him for tonight. I’ll give him a bottle if he wakes. And now you must get to bed early, you really can’t go on without some sleep.’

  In this way Emily learned of the hardships of nursery days. The nanny lifted the sleeping baby, pulled a little blanket over the older infant, and left, while Fiona sat yawning in the firelight.

  Another knock. The cook appeared. ‘Dinner is served,’ she said, and to Emily, whom she knew, ‘I’ve laid a place for you, madam.’

  The two women descended the stairs.

  In the dining-room, where there was now a smaller round table supplementing the vast one of Emily’s reign, Cedric sat yawning.

  ‘We are ordered to go to bed, Cedric,’ said Fiona, and he said, ‘Aunt Emily, thank you for letting us have your room. If Fiona and I hadn’t Miss Burton to keep us in order I don’t think we would survive.’

  He sat at the table, Fiona near him. Food arrived, and was not much eaten.

  ‘I don’t have to eat,’ said Cedric, ‘but poor Fiona does.’

  ‘Yes, you do,’ said Fiona. ‘I am sure Miss Burton would not hear of your not eating.’

  He accomplished a few mouthfuls and retired to a little green sofa that Emily had once been fond of. He sat and yawned. Fiona, eating as if Miss Burton stood over her, took in sole as if it were medicine and went to sit by Cedric who put his arms around her.

  ‘I am sure you have already worked it out, Aunt Emily,’ said Cedric, ‘but if we are going to have a third child then Miss Burton is absolutely essential.’

  ‘Well, are you?’

  ‘We haven’t decided,’ said Cedric, kissing Fiona. Emily felt that Miss Burton probably would not have approved this kiss and the others that followed.

  Not too tired to flirt, thought Emily, musing, If married couples do flirt – well, I and William certainly didn’t.

  ‘But if we haven’t got the energy simply to go upstairs to bed,’ said Cedric, ‘then is it likely we have enough energy for a third child?’

  Fiona murmured: a joke, Emily thought. Cedric laughed out loud, and said something that Emily knew was pretty sexual, but she did not know what he was really saying.

  The two, Cedric and Fiona, seemed to drowse in each other’s arms, kissing a little, then some more – and in came Miss Burton, surveying them with severity.

  ‘You two must really go and get some sleep,’ said Miss Burton. ‘You’ll lose your milk,’ she warned Fiona.

  ‘And what will I lose?’ enquired Cedric, seriously. ‘Very well, Fiona, up you get.’

  He pulled her up, and she stood resting against him, already half asleep.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Miss Burton. She nodded at Emily, and went out.

  ‘Good night, then, Emily,’ murmured Fiona.

  ‘Good night, dear Aunt Emily,’ said Cedric, and the two left the scene.

  Emily did not believe that sleep was on their immediate agenda.

  Emily found a cab, got to Beak Street, and lay awake thinking of how she would get the books Alfred wanted to him quickly. When Emily heard of a storyteller somewhere, she went to see him or her at once, and she was going to see a certain Alistair McTaggart, who lived in a village near Stirling. It was quite a journey, and she did a good deal of work on the train. She did not know what she would find. Some of the old storytellers behaved as if they were guardians of a store of gold, quickly diminished if used recklessly; others responded to invitations to visit schools and tell stories to small children. This Alistair was a tall, craggy, whiskery man who at once said that to introduce children to the great tradition was more important than anything. He was famous locally, in many pubs, was invited to ceilidhs and gatherings, and invited Emily to go with him that very night to a nearby pub where he was expected.

  This meant she would have to stay the night in Stirling, though he offered her a bed in what he called a spare room, which was a tiny space, not more than a large cupboard, off his main room. She did not at all mind the meagreness of the space, but thought that it would be late after the pub, perhaps he – or she – might be tight, and surely…But in the event the taxi to take her to Stirling was cancelled, because it was indeed late, both were pretty tight – they had sung and told stories till nearly morning.

  Emily, pressured by Alistair, had told a story inspired by Fiona’s cat, though the milk that staved off jealousy was cow’s milk. She was happy to fall into bed in her cubbyhole of a room and to enjoy a vast Scottish breakfast with Alistair. She could have stayed another day or two – she was invited – but had to return to London. Had to? Why?

  She told Fiona about this wonder of a storyteller, who kept a crowded pub silent for hours with his repertoire of traditional tales, and Fiona made an excuse to go up and hear Alistair McTaggart at work in the Martin-White school in Edinburgh. It was not easy for her to stay a night, or many, as invited, because of her infants, so she returned reluctantly to London and her duties.

  A conversation took place between her and Emily, soon after. Having said how much she had enjoyed Alistair McTaggart, and her experience watching him, listening to him, with the children, she remarked, casually though, that she thought Alistair was intrigued by Emily. That was how she put it. Did Emily seem conscious that more was meant? She did seem on her guard, and did not look at Fiona, who then spoke very low, so that Emily could pretend she had not heard. ‘He really likes you, Emily, but really.’

  Emily had heard, but was silent, her eyes down – was she blushing? – and then she said, laughing, ‘Well, I like him too.’

  Fiona, encouraged, asked, ‘Have you thought of marrying again, Emily?’

  Emily said, ‘You know, Fiona, not every marriage is like yours and Cedric’s.’

  At once Fiona said, ‘Oh, I do know, believe me. I know how lucky I am.’

  ‘And isn’t Cedric lucky too?’

  ‘Not as much.’

  Emily showed that she needed to hear more, and obliging Fiona gave her what she craved with ‘A good man is hard to find.’

  And hadn’t Emily herself proved the rightness of this pronouncement?

  ‘When I check with my friends, Aunt Emily, believe me, I do know my luck.’ Fiona was still looking enquiringly at Emily. She seemed now rather like an earnest little girl, even more so because she was wearing her hair in two fair plaits. She only wore these indoors. Soon after the first baby was born she was out and about with her hair plaited and even with little baby bows. This was for convenience: she did not go in for ‘Serb’ or ‘Turk’ hairdos. Friends, seeing her, instantly announced a new trend: ‘Pigtails for Peace’ was the craze, but Fiona scorned to approve it.

  ‘You know, Aunt Emily, we – that is, Cedric and I – think it is too soon for you to decide on being an old maid.’

  Emily had to laugh at this but there was no doubt she was troubled; no laughing matter, her face said, and then she asked, ‘But shouldn’t one be young to think of getting married?’

  Fiona clearly did not know what to say, but she was thinking: Aunt Emily wasn’t exactly old when she married Uncle William. And Emily was thinking: I wouldn’t marry William now, whatever age I was. She simply could not discuss with Fiona just how much
of a disappointment William had been. She had never told anybody. Fiona discussed her marriage with her friends, did she? Emily could not imagine doing that.

  ‘You haven’t thought it out, Fiona. Am I going to live in a little village in Scotland, just like that, and give up my work?’

  Now Fiona was silent, partly because she realized just how very much she would miss Emily.

  Soon she remarked that there would be trouble again with the debs. The two, Emily and Fiona, enjoyed their ongoing battles with the debs, which had become partly invented too. This time it was that the debs would say there was no need to spend so much on Alistair McTaggart’s engagement to ‘tell fairytales’, as they put it, in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling. The debs always contested any money spent on the storytellers: it was amazing how this was always being crowded out of any curriculum. Fiona and Emily fought their good fight, Emily remembering that this was where the whole great airy structure of schools and boards and trusts had begun: she had told funny little tales to some children in Longerfield and had been followed by crowds of them: ‘Tell us a story.’

  And so the subject of Alistair McTaggart was dropped, but messages came from him, saying how much he looked forward to Mistress McVeagh’s next visit; she had told him that her maiden name surely must mean she had a Scottish claim somewhere and he called her Mistress McVeagh. Between Fiona and Emily it was understood, without anything being said, that if Emily wasn’t so very busy she would certainly spend more time up there with Alistair McTaggart, for, as Fiona reminded her, with a smile, ‘He loves you, Emily; he does, you know.’

  Then he would telephone Fiona to say he was expecting Mistress McVeagh for the ceilidh next week. ‘I am counting on you, Fiona.’ And, more often than not, Emily did go. She became known as Alistair McTaggart’s friend from London, who was a storyteller in her own right. And all this went on, pleasantly enough, for a year, two, three – until one day Alistair rang Fiona to say he was not himself, he was poorly, would Mistress McVeagh perhaps come and see to him? Up went Emily to find him in bed, fevered, but with heavy sweats, coughing, and very much not himself. She telephoned Fiona to say she must stay and watch over Alistair, to whom she had already called the doctor, who agreed with her that Mr. McTaggart was not at all well. And then, one night, Emily found him dying: it was his heart that was doing him in. He died, and Emily, having alerted his daughter to attend to the arrangements, went weeping to London. But she had to go back to Scotland for the funeral.

  She learned from the people there that she would always be welcome if she returned for visits; and Emily wept again. She said to Fiona that she seemed to do little else. ‘And I’m not a weeper,’ she protested.

  As soon as Alistair McTaggart was buried Daisy rang to say her father had died. The funeral was next week.

  ‘It never rains but it pours,’ said Emily; and the two deaths were only part of it.

  On the whole, the Martin-White schools had gone along without much difficulty. Nothing very bad had happened, except for a fire, which burned nobody; the insurance, instructed by Cedric, paid up. And there had been a bit of trouble with tramps using a school in Cornwall as shelter.

  But now it seemed as if a quarter of a century’s accumulated bile was exploding over the name, the reputation, the very aims of the Martin-White schools. A teacher became pregnant, and before she could be unobtrusively got rid of, the press heard of it and there were headlines along the lines of ‘A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing’; ‘Martin-White Schools Shelter Immorality’; ‘Free Love Flourishes in the Martin-White Foundation’. For some reason the fierce moralities of the time had been touched off by this case, of a pretty girl called Ivy Smith who, like thousands of girls before her – fair-minded people were pointing out – found themselves in the family way before they’d got a ring on their finger. There was no chance of Ivy getting a ring – her so-called fiancé had disappeared. Emily was, as it happened, visiting Scotland, and Fiona was on holiday with her children in the country. Daisy simply sacked the girl, and advised her to apply to such and such a convent. Emily and Fiona, hearing of this, told Daisy she was harsh; Fiona even used the word ‘hypocritical’. ‘We can’t have illegitimate babies in our schools,’ said Daisy. ‘Didn’t you see what the papers said?’

  The trustees (the debs and the bishops), as Fiona said, put their collective feet down and threatened resignations, public scandals, letters to The Times.

  ‘We can’t have it,’ insisted Daisy, who was suspected by Emily of taking too much personal relish in this. People were remembering that Daisy Lane had spent years of her life examining girls not only for skills in nursing but for behaviour, reputation, conduct, morals.

  ‘There is nothing we can do,’ said Cedric, who thoroughly disapproved of how Ivy had been treated. ‘It will blow over. We can be sure of that.’

  Next thing, there was an article in one of the more sensational newspapers about how girls looked after by the nuns of that convent were treated. ‘Nothing like it has been heard of since Dickens’; ‘Conditions that would have been condemned in a Victorian workhouse’. And so on. Ivy, who had visited Longerfield and had become friends with the Redway women, was rescued from the convent, and invited to teach at the Longerfield school.

  ‘Well,’ said Emily to Fiona, and with the kind of grim humour not everyone appreciated, ‘the Longerfield school has its Montessori-trained teacher at last.’

  No sooner had Emily returned to London from the funeral of Harold than there came a letter signed by Betsy Tayler, Phyllis Redway, and a separate letter from Mary Lane:

  Emily, I don’t think you realize how much resentment – I think I may say, real anger – was caused by your dismissal of Ivy, and sending her off to that really dreadful place. I went to see the conditions there. I have myself written a letter to The Times about it. It is a disgrace that such a place should exist and – I presume – get public money. I believe the convent is a charity. I do think it would be a help if you could come down and explain. I simply do not believe that you would be so heartless as to condemn a girl to such a shocking place.

  Emily wrote to Mary to say that she had had nothing to do with the treatment of Ivy; and knew that Mary would see that this message was transmitted to the others. All the same, she might not be personally responsible, but responsibility she did have – some. And there was another thought niggling away. When she had heard first that this girl had got pregnant and there was no chance of a wedding, she had found herself thinking, What a nuisance. How very badly timed. And, Imagine that a baby could dislodge all our arrangements… They were negotiating a deal that would spread the foundation’s work into Wales and into Scotland. A scandal would easily put an end to that. Suddenly there were complications and difficulties where before there had been none. A baby. Just one baby. A ‘love-child’, they called it…So Emily had fulminated, admittedly, only to herself, her ill-temper kept private and not admitted even to Fiona. And now she was ashamed of herself. She, who had ‘swooned and mooned’ – as she put it – over Fiona’s infants, being so censorious over an illegitimate child.

  The train from London must be late: people waiting for Emily were on their second and third cups of tea.

  Who was waiting? Not Mr. Redway, who had said he was too old to get excited because some silly girl had a bun in the oven. He sat outside the long windows, in a chair, bundled up: there was a sharp little wind. Ivy was very much there, centre stage, the baby in a basket beside her. Mrs. Redway was dead, having gone presumably to her Maker, where she had told everyone for years she was heading. Alfred, who had not much changed, was there, with Bert beside him, who had got fat and blowsy: his hand shook as he lifted a teacup. Betsy, the fair-sized matron, sat with Phyllis, a sharp-nosed, dark woman. If this gathering had been only a week ago, the self-congratulatory complacency of the two wives would have been quite intolerable – but events were moving fast. What had not changed was Ivy’s readiness to tell her tale, again and…‘Oh, not again,’ Bert had complained
.

  She had indeed just gone through the recital, but concluded with ‘Yes, I know that Mrs. Martin-White had nothing to do with it – but she was off with her fancy man in Scotland.’

  At this Alfred, suddenly angry, said to her, and it sounded like an explosion of emotion, ‘Not well said, from a girl whose fancy man wasn’t up to much.’

  ‘But well named,’ said Ivy, standing up for herself. ‘He fancied me up and fancied me down, fancied me up the creek and there he left me.’ She tittered. This girl, who so recently couldn’t say boo to a goose, had acquired a hard gloss of defiance, like impertinence, from her experiences at the convent.

  Alfred said, ‘Emily McVeagh has been a friend to most of us here for many years – longer than you have been alive.’

  Bright-eyed with anger, Ivy remained silent. Her two supporters – the wives – were also silent.

  Rescuing Ivy from the convent, they had promised her a home with one of them.

  Ivy was a small dark round girl, rather like a squashed raspberry (Bert’s definition), who wore fluffy red jumpers and little short skirts.

  Alfred had said to Betsy, ‘No, she cannot come and live with us. Don’t you do it, Betsy. I’ll find myself in bed with her before I know how it happened.’

  Alfred was a susceptible man, and Betsy a jealous wife: never had anything so direct been said between them. Mr. Redway, perhaps not so old after all, said that Ivy was a girl ‘anyone could see, was no better than she ought to be’. With neither house being ready to take in Ivy, Mary Lane stepped in. She was alone now in her house; this didn’t suit her at all; she would be happy to give Ivy a home. Meeting Alfred out near the pond where the horses bathed, she told him that he needn’t worry: Ivy would be married within the year.

  ‘That girl’s trouble,’ said Alfred, to his old friend Mary. ‘She puts my back up. I don’t know why.’