Quartet 9781509859498, p.1
Quartet (9781509859498), page 1
Title
Richmal Crompton
QUARTET
Contents
PART I: 1900
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
PART II: 1910
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
PART THREE: 1919
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
PART FOUR: 1929
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
PART I: 1900
Chapter One
They were having tea at the dining-room table. Lorna and Jenifer wore clean starched pinafores over their gingham frocks, Laurence a holland smock that covered his blouse and most of his short serge knickers, and Adrian a white sailor suit complete with cord, whistle, and long, bell-bottom trousers. Adrian was nine and emancipated from pinafores and smocks. Jenifer, who was only six and the youngest, wore a feeder as well as a pinafore. It was a very old feeder, with the word “Baby” embroidered in washed-out colours across the hem. Jenifer disliked it, and when she wore it pulled it down as far as she could so that “Baby” was hidden by the edge of the table.
She had pulled it down as soon as she took her seat, and now she wasn’t thinking about it, but was surrendering herself to the enjoyment of having tea at Grandma’s. She always loved coming to Grandma’s. She loved the spacious, high-ceilinged rooms, with their polished floors and pieces of old furniture standing by themselves so that you could see how beautiful they were, not all crowded together as most people’s furniture was.
Once Jenifer had heard Mother say that the rooms looked “bare,” but Grandma had laughed and replied, “My dear, you know I’ve always hated crowds.”
It was Grandma’s birthday today, and they had each taken sixpence out of their money boxes and gone into Leaveston this morning to buy her a present. They had visited shop after shop and stayed in each so long without being able to make up their minds that Miss Marchant had lost patience.
“Now this is to be the last,” she said, jerking Jenifer sharply by the arm.
Miss Marchant never became openly angry. Her irritation found outlet instead in little tweaks and pulls and pushes. When the children annoyed her she would punish them indirectly by dragging the comb mercilessly through the tangles when she did their hair, or letting the soap get into their eyes when she washed their faces, or snapping the elastic beneath their chins when she put on their hats. She would also often vent her irritation with the elder ones upon the younger ones, as being less likely to resist or retaliate. She always left Adrian alone, because Adrian, though he was nine years old, had a disconcerting way of bursting into tears when his feelings were hurt. Lorna was Miss Marchant’s favourite, not only because of her flower-like prettiness, but because she alone of the four children seemed to have some real affection for the mother’s help. Laurence and Jenifer, therefore, came in for more than their fair share of the tweaks and pulls and pushes, which they bore with philosophical indifference. They felt glad, however, that they always came to Grandma’s on Miss Marchant’s free afternoon. It would have spoilt Grandma’s, somehow, if Miss Marchant had been there . . .
Grandma had been very much pleased with the present they had finally bought for her—a china jug that the man let them have for one and six instead of three shillings, because it had a little crack in it.
Jenifer hadn’t wanted to buy it.
“Oh no, Lorna,” she had protested, “not that. Not for Grandma.”
“But why ever not?” Lorna had said rather crossly. “It’s just an ornament. The crack won’t matter at all.”
And Jenifer somehow couldn’t explain why it seemed terrible to give Grandma—Grandma who was so perfect—a jug that had a crack in it, even a very tiny crack.
“Darlings, how sweet of you!” Grandma had said. “We’ll have the milk in it for tea today.”
And then Lorna, with that air of sweet dignity that made her appear so much older than her ten years, had explained that the jug had a tiny, tiny crack in it.
“You see,” she said, “it’s a so much better one than we could have afforded if it hadn’t had the tiny crack, and we thought if you’d just use it as an ornament–—”
“Of course, darling,” said Grandma, and she laughed as she kissed them—the gay happy laugh that was so like Mother’s.
She sat now at the head of the table, straight and slender, and looking like a queen, thought Jenifer, with her white hair and blue eyes and soft pink cheeks and faint secret smile. You never saw Grandma cross or upset or unhappy. She was always kind, always interested in you, and yet part of her seemed to be far away where you couldn’t reach it however hard you tried. Everything about her was lovely, even her name, Caroline Silver. Jenifer often used to say it aloud to herself because it sounded like music.
Aunt Lena sat at the other end of the table. She was tall and thin and angular, with faded hair that was taken straight back from her forehead and done in a tight bun behind her head. She always wore white shirt blouses with stiff linen collars, navy-blue serge skirts, and a leather belt into which her watch, at the end of its long gold chain, was neatly tucked away. Her pince-nez, too, had a gold chain, but a very thin one, that attached them to a little pin on her blouse.
Aunt Lena was always very busy “seeing to” something or other. She kept house for Grandma, and had a District, for which she made soups and jellies and shapeless underclothes of coarse grey calico.
“Sit up straight, my dear,” she was saying to Jenifer.
Jenifer sat up straight, pulling the feeder down so that “Baby” still didn’t show.
“And your mouth is too full, Laurence dear,” went on Aunt Lena.
Aunt Lena always kept up a stream of little admonitions and reproofs. Even when she read to them, she kept stopping to say, “Don’t fidget, Adrian,” or “Don’t loll like that, Lorna,” or “Are you listening, Jenifer dear?”
Jenifer noticed that Aunt Lena and Grandma never seemed to have much to say to each other, though Grandma and Mother always talked and laughed a lot when they were together.
Aunt Lena had given Grandma a beautiful cushion for her birthday present. It was blue satin with red poppies embroidered all over it. She had made it herself, sitting up late at night to work at it so that it should be a surprise for Grandma. “It’s beautifully done,” Mother had said, when Grandma showed it to her, and Aunt Lena had flushed slightly and jerked her head back as if she were annoyed.
“Why didn’t you have candles on your cake, Grandma?” said Lorna, looking at the iced cake in the middle of the table.
“Darling,” smiled Grandma, “it would take us all the rest of the year to get through the cake if I had candles.”
“When do people stop having candles?” said Laurence.
“It’s nearly time I stopped,” said Adrian in the high-pitched voice that he used when he was excited (it took very little to excite Adrian. He’d been excited all day just because it was Grandma’s birthday). “I shall be ten next year and—–”
He broke off. The sweeping gesture he had made with his hand had upset his mug of milk. It spread slowly and relentlessly over the embroidered table-cloth.
“Oh, Adrian!” said Aunt Lena.
There was an unusual note of sharpness in her voice because it was the best cloth, which she always washed and ironed herself, and she’d hesitated about putting it on today with the children coming.
“How careless of you!” she went on, the note of sharpness accentuated as she saw that the milk was making its way through the lace insertion on to the bare mahogany.
Adrian stared in speechless horror at the destruction he had wrought. He’d spoilt Grandma’s beautiful tea-cloth. Everyone in the world hated him. No one would ever forget it or forgive him as long as he lived. He couldn’t bear to go on living . . . The big dark eyes in the pale oval face seemed to grow bigger, darker . . . the wistful mouth began to quiver. Immediately the spell of dismay that held the table was broken. Adrian was going to cry. He must be stopped at all costs. At once. Before he began. It was too late once he had begun.
Aunt Lena hastily put out a hand and patted his shoulder. She remembered that his crying fits often ended in his being actually sick, and really that, on top of the milk, would be too much.
“It’s all right, Adrian,” she said, trying hard to sound as if she didn’t mind about the cloth. “We know it was only an accident.”
Lorna slipped from her chair and went to Adrian, putting her arms round his neck. “It’s all right, Adrian darling. Aunt Lena says it’s all right. You didn’t mean to . . .”
Jenifer watched them dispassionately, her mouth full of bread and honey above the degrading feeder. Adrian never got into trouble. It didn’t matter what he did, he’d only to look like that, and everyone began to fuss round him and try to stop him crying. Of course, it was terrible when he did cry. Jenifer knew that he couldn’t help it, that even the tragic gaze and quivering lip, which gave people a last chance of averting the catastrophe of his tears, was quite genuine. Still, it seemed to give him an unfair advantage over the others. Jenifer herself had tried the same tactics, but without success.
“We’ll all help Aunt Lena clean it up,” Lorna was saying, smiling at Adrian and stroking his dark curls.
He looked at her with tear-brimmed eyes, gulping. The crisis was over. He wasn’t going to cry . . . Jenifer’s clear hazel eyes were fixed on Lorna. Lorna was always nicer to Adrian than she was to the other two. Adrian admired her and did what she wanted, and Lorna was proud of her influence over him.
Watching her now as she stood smiling down at him, Jenifer thought: She’s thinking about herself really, not Adrian. She’s thinking how sweet she’s being to him. She’s showing off to herself.
Jenifer’s eyes turned to Laurence. Laurence was wholly unmoved by the little scene, had indeed barely noticed it. Someone had upset a mug of milk, but then someone was always upsetting mugs of milk. Laurence sat, as usual, lost in his day-dreams. There was nothing poetic or fanciful in Laurence’s day-dreams. He was generally thinking about insects. He loved small things like insects and birds and even mice. He kept collections of insects in wooden boxes with glass tops, and spent hours watching them. He would sit in the garden motionless for whole afternoons, watching a spider spin its web or a colony of ants at work. He was a solid silent child, and Miss Marchant often said that she was afraid he was going to turn out stupid. Though there was no hostility between the two couples, he was Jenifer’s ally as Adrian was Lorna’s.
“It’ll be all right if you put it in water straight away,” Mother was saying.
“Of course I’ll do that,” said Aunt Lena.
She spoke rather stiffly. Really, Marcia needn’t talk as if she were an authority on household matters, when everyone knew that she left simply everything at home to that poor Miss Marchant, and that she, Lena, supervised the smallest detail of her household most conscientiously.
“I suppose it ought to come off,” said Grandma. “The children can take their pieces of birthday cake into the garden.”
“I’m terribly sorry,” said Adrian again.
The nightmare feeling of desperation and misery was, however, leaving him. It was a dreadful thing to have done, of course, but he no longer felt that he couldn’t bear to go on living. He quite definitely could bear to go on living. He could even enjoy a piece of Grandma’s birthday cake in the garden.
Grandma cut the cake, and the children each took a slice out into the garden, where they sat down to eat it under the copper beech at the end of the lawn. Then Lorna went to old Croft, the gardener, who was digging in the vegetable garden. Adrian followed her, and Laurence, lying on his stomach, began to watch the little red spiders that ran in and out of the moss. Jenifer remained seated tailor-fashion beneath the copper beech. Now that her feeder had been taken off, the starched frills of her pinafore tickled her neck. She kept putting up a hand to smooth them down, but they always stood up and began to tickle her neck again. She wished that she had brought one of her dolls with her. Lorna said that it was babyish to play with dolls, but Jenifer loved her battered family of six with an unchildlike brooding tenderness. The more battered and featureless they were, the more she loved them. If she had had them with her now she could have made up stories for them. It never seemed worth while making up stories just for oneself. Laurence didn’t care for stories except about insects. “Is it about an insect?” he would say when she offered to tell him a story, and she didn’t like making up stories about insects. She would rather make up stories about fairies, but, of course, Laurence didn’t believe in fairies. “If ever I saw one I’d believe in them,” he said with an air of great reasonableness. Even when Jenifer tried to make up a story about insects for him, he was always interrupting and saying, “But it couldn’t have done that, Jenifer. They don’t.” And when Jenifer explained that it was a magic insect he lost all interest in it.
She thought with a warm happy feeling of her six children waiting for her at home. She would put them to bed and go on with the story of the magic windmill that she had begun to tell them last night. She hoped that when she was grown up she would have heaps and heaps and heaps of children . . .
She could see Lorna talking to the gardener, the sun shining on her golden ringlets. The gardener was smiling down at her. Lorna was his favourite, as indeed she was most people’s favourite. She laughed suddenly—a clear rippling little laugh that jarred vaguely on Jenifer, because she knew that Lorna was trying to make it sound like Mother’s. Lorna’s own laugh was quite different, but lately she had been doing the new laugh whenever she remembered.
Peter, Aunt Lena’s cat, walked slowly across the lawn. Jenifer called “Peter,” but he took no notice. He was rather a disagreeable cat and scratched you when you tried to play with him. He didn’t even like being stroked. He used to spend hours sitting on the morning-room hearthrug and gazing up at Aunt Lena’s canary that hung in a cage in the window. Aunt Lena said that they loved each other, but she never let the canary out when Peter was there. She said that Peter might be rough with it without meaning to hurt it.
Suddenly Jenifer remembered the red and white ivory chessmen, which stood in the cabinet in the drawing-room. Perhaps, as it was her birthday, Grandma would let her take them out and play with them. And there was the beautiful new cushion. She did want to look at the beautiful new cushion again . . .
She went into the drawing-room, where Grandma and Mother and Aunt Lena were sitting in the big bay window recess, talking.
“May I have the chessmen out, please, Grandma?” she said, standing in the doorway and smoothing down her pinafore frill, which was tickling her neck again.
“Yes, my dear,” said Grandma, smiling at her.
Anyone but Grandma would have added “Be very careful with them,” but Grandma knew that, when you loved anything as much as Jenifer loved the little chessmen, of course you’d be very careful with them . . .
She sat down by the china cabinet and took out the figures—white and red, exquisitely carved—arranging them in a little procession on the polished floor. Mother, Grandma, and Aunt Lena went on talking in the window recess in lowered voices that she couldn’t hear . . .
“And how’s Flossie?” the old lady was saying.
Lena stiffened. She always disliked the way in which Mother and Marcia spoke of Miss Marchant, referring to her as Flossie behind her back (her name was Flora) and sneering at her plainness and general unattractiveness. It wasn’t kind or Christian, especially when you considered what a good woman Miss Marchant was, going regularly to church on her free Sunday evening (when she happened to get it, that is, because Marcia was simply conscienceless about asking her to give it up), and working so hard in the house and looking after the children so well.
“Oh, she’s as dreadfully worthy as ever,” laughed Marcia. “I wish I could afford to do without her, but I can’t. I could never manage with only one maid if it weren’t for her. She’s nurse and governess and cook and lady’s-maid and heaven knows what else. I can’t think why she stays.”
“She’s in love with Frank, my dear,” said the old lady, calmly.
Marcia laughed again, and Lena’s pale cheeks flushed. Really, it was dreadful the things Mother said. And for Marcia just to laugh as if it were funny! Whereas, if it were true, it was wicked, and, if it weren’t true, it was a very unkind thing to say. In any case, it wasn’t a subject to joke about.
“Do you think so?” Marcia was saying. “I’d flattered myself it was partly my beaux yeux. She seems quite devoted to me.”
“No doubt she thinks she is. She’s probably completely unaware that she’s in love with Frank. She has to be. If she weren’t, her conscience would make her leave the scene of her temptation. Her only way of cheating her conscience is not to know anything about it.”
