Mothering Sunday Read online

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  Noel Streatfeild

  MOTHERING SUNDAY

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  Contents

  ANNA

  HENRY

  JANE

  MARGARET

  FELICITY

  TONY

  THE FAMILY

  SUNDAY

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  Also by Noel Streatfeild

  and available from Bello

  The Whicharts

  Parson’s Nine

  A Shepherdess of Sheep

  It Pays to be Good

  Caroline England

  Luke

  The Winter is Past

  I Ordered a Table for Six

  Myra Carrol

  Grass in Piccadilly

  Mothering Sunday

  Aunt Clara

  Judith

  The Silent Speaker

  ANNA

  THE HOUSE stood amongst trees. In summer the leaves on the trees hid the house from the road; already there were swellings on the branches to show where leaves would be, but only swellings; the branches were still a design in charcoal against the remote early-spring blue of the sky.

  Anna Caldwell walked round her garden. She had shrunk as she grew older, but remained remarkably lithe. She never thought about her body, but if she had she could have taken pride in the fact that at seventy she could, without the least trouble or discomfort, stoop almost double to look at her bulbs. Though she took no interest in her body she took a lot in her mind. She had that under discipline. It had taken most of her life to get control of it, and she still had consciously to govern it. To think of what she was doing and only of what she was doing. So easy to let the mind wander dreaming—worrying. Now she was in her garden to see how her bulbs were getting on and to pick replenishments for her blue bowl, so she closed the door of her mind to everything but bulbs and replenishments for her blue bowl. She stooped over a clump of daffodils and felt the thickness at the bottom of the leaves; good, no blind ones this year. They were a little backward compared with other people’s, but then Easter was early, and given a few warm, sunny days there would be some to decorate the church on Easter Sunday. Under an apple tree was a ring of crocuses. Anna looked at them with regret; how tattered they were! What a pity the birds could not settle down to one flower and finish it; picking bits here and there made such a mess. Not one fit for the blue bowl. Now how about the snowdrops? Were there one or two that had not gone too far? Anna saw her bowl clearly in her mind; from November until the daffodils started she kept it full of damp moss, and filled it with any flowers that might venture out: winter irises, jasmine, early primroses, violets and those flowers which mistook the season and flowered alone when their fellows were asleep. She passed her forsythia and an aconite; no yellow, quite enough yellow in the bowl already. A few snowdrops would be just right and some blue or purple; a pity about the crocuses.

  Miss Doe looked down at Anna from Anna’s bedroom window. She smiled. Very satisfactory she thought Anna looked. Just the way she liked her old folk to look—clean, brushed, contented, pottering about in the sun. Splendid. Miss Doe’s face had the red, glazed appearance that belongs to skins expected to enjoy wind, rain, sun and anything else nature may offer without the comfort of such nonsense as face creams. Miss Doe was plump by nature and made plumper by inward swelling caused by hearing frequently, and knowing always, that people could not imagine what they would do without her.

  “No need to pick anything to-day, Mrs. Caldwell. I know somebody who has forgotten what to-morrow is.”

  Before Anna looked up she deliberately forced her lips into a smile.

  “No, I have not. I shall go to the front gate presently and meet the postman.”

  “I know somebody who’ll get a box of daffs, shouldn’t wonder.”

  Anna allowed herself to think of the postman. Her inward eye saw the long box containing Margaret’s daffodils. She would have liked to argue with Miss Doe. She always wanted to argue with Miss Doe, and never more so than when she started a sentence with, “I know somebody . . .” but it was no good arguing about the daffodils. The other children varied their Mothering Sunday gifts, but not Margaret; daffodils it had always been, and daffodils it always would be.

  “These are just replacements for my bowl.”

  “I wonder if somebody is going to get sweets like they did last year. Very different to anything we buy on our ration. Yum. Yum.”

  The world Anna had been trained to live in had disappeared but early training dies hard. She and her sisters had been educated by a Miss Macintosh; a Scot of strong personality. Even now, though Miss Macintosh had been dead for over forty years, she could hear her voice with its Scotch burr and carefully enunciated vowels: “No gentlewoman ever speaks of food or money.” Anna was forced nowadays to speak of both; her acquaintances seldom talked of anything else, but she disliked doing so. Her tone, to the sensitive, would have killed the subject of sweets.

  “I hope not. I told Mrs. Betler that all sweets should be kept for the children.”

  Miss Doe was not sensitive to tones. All her old folk had their little ways. Mrs. Caldwell, especially of recent months, had several. Speaking to her of her children by their surnames was the least of her ways. Mrs. Wilson instead of Felicity. Sir Henry instead of just Henry. Mrs. Betler instead of Jane. Doctor Caldwell instead of Margaret, and never mentioning Tony at all, though that was understandable of course, but you would think she would to her. Miss Doe and her friend Emma, who was Matron of the Cottage Hospital, often talked of this habit as they talked of all Miss Doe’s old folks’ foibles. Emma would say, “I don’t know how you stand for it, dear. Sounds as though she thought she was better than you are just because you work for her. Which, seeing who you are and knowing what we do about a certain skeleton in a certain cupboard, is nothing short of nonsense.” Miss Doe, however unamused, always managed a laugh. “Bless her, it’s just one of her funny ways, and, mind you, I never let her get away with it. Give my old dears an inch and they take an ell.”

  Now, to show Anna she spoke from love and not from malice, she prefaced what she had to say with an over-jolly laugh.

  “I hope Jane . . .” she paused slightly for emphasis, “hasn’t listened to you. I know somebody who enjoys a little treat.” As she finished speaking she drew her head back to join the rest of her in Anna’s bedroom.

  Anna’s bedroom had no virtue except that it was neat. She had married when she was eighteen and in fifty-two years had collected much. There was all that would get into the room of the original heavy mahogany furniture which had been in her bedroom when she had first seen it as a bride. When, as a widow, she had brought her young family to their new home she had replaced the huge double bed by a single one, but the replacing had happened thirty-five years ago, and the type of bed that was modern then was anything but modern now. After her husband died Anna was indifferent to her surroundings, and everything that was attractive drifted into her children’s rooms; and what was unattractive, but which somehow belonged and so could not be given or thrown away, came into Anna’s. The hideous gilt clock under a glass dome with a dark red fluffy worm coiled round the base of the dome to keep out the dust. The bronze bull which was believed in the family, without foundation for the belief, to have been an uncle’s bull which had won some important medal. The depressing fly-walked engravings of New Testament miracles mounted in far too heavy frames. The door-stop representing an imp that someone at some date had unwisely purchased in Lincoln. The footstool with Anna’s and her husband’s initials A.H. the centre of an intricate design worked in beads, which an old woman, whose name Anna had now f
orgotten, had given her for a wedding present. Then, of course, photographs. Her husband. Harry at a very early age in a strange, stiff pelisse and pork-pie hat. Harry at eight. Harry on a horse. Harry at his prep. school. Harry in ever-increasing sartorial grandeur at Eton. Harry at Oxford. Harry standing on or holding up creatures he had shot or caught. Harry, looking as Anna knew he had felt, rather crushed as estate agent to his rich cousin Tom. Finally, in a small, black frame, Harry’s grave. Between the Harry photographs Anna had forced her way in. There was the wedding group, which belonged in period between Harry with one foot on a lion and Harry holding his finest salmon. Just after the first estate agent picture the christening groups began. Anna or Nannie holding the various babies, with Harry staring or grinning at the new arrival. The only christening group missing was Tony’s. Harry was dying then and Nannie, or whoever was about, saw Tony christened. Then there were tea groups. Everybody, often including Harry’s parents and Anna’s parents, sitting round a tea-table with cups in their hands, while the children sat on footstools gazing at the camera.

  It was the children’s photographs which fascinated Miss Doe. Henry’s photographs, though the clothes were different, followed the example of Harry’s, only before there was Henry at Oxford there was Henry in uniform for the first world war. Miss Doe had not come to the neighbourhood until the children were grown up and out in the world. She only knew Henry as Sir Henry, the Conservative member of Parliament who, either because he was a Member of Parliament or because he had been always like that, spoke with complete assurance and authority on every subject, even those of which he knew nothing. “Miss Doe, see my mother has chickens regularly. She enjoys them.” The local chicken situation was clearly defined. Mr. Perks, the fishmonger, had chickens; all but half a dozen a week he sold to the sort of people who came down at week-ends and gave him a pound for himself; the half-dozen were shared between the locals, turn and turn about. Anna could have a chicken about once in three months in the summer and more often in the winter, when the week-enders did not come. It was never any good arguing with Sir Henry for Miss Doe had tried; he just “knew” and that was the end of it. So she said “Yes” and Anna fetched her chicken as usual when her next turn came round. Miss Doe had tried to reconstruct the round, smiling baby Henry or the Henry at school from his photographs and from what the local people remembered, but it was not possible; the boy Henry did not seem to have left much impression, which he surely should have done seeing what a success his life had been. It was Jane and Felicity everybody remembered. According to local gossip Jane had been behind everything that happened; they still talked of the pageants she organised, the huge bazaars, and the library she had started; there seemed almost nothing that Jane, between the age of eleven and eighteen, had not had her fingers in. Miss Doe, on the few occasions she had met her, had disliked Jane intensely but she had to give her her due; she could understand how a brilliant man like Simon Betler had fallen for her. Miss Doe would have liked to have married because she thought Mrs. a better title than Miss, though thoughts of marriage, when they flicked across her mind, were followed by a quick funeral, for she never pictured a man further than the altar steps. Even in her young days, when there had been moments when she had fixed her eyes on a specific man, she had known her limitations and had selected remarkably sheeplike young men, usually curates. “I’m not one of the clever sort,” she had admitted. Jane was one of the clever sort, the type Miss Doe could imagine a K.C. like Simon Betler choosing, though what she could be like to live with after being chosen Miss Doe shuddered to think. How queer that the girl in the photographs, who seemed so alive as to be almost jumping out of the frame, should have become the person she was now. Miss Doe was no psychologist; she did not know what sort of a person she did think Jane was now, but just that she was not a bit like she seemed in her pictures. In her pictures, for want of a better description, she seemed like something cooking in a frying pan that might jump out any minute; but to meet, with her high, ordering-about voice and her continual talk about the things she was doing, and her touch-me-if-you-dare manner, she was more like a tin sent from abroad that goes on a shelf as there never seems a day important enough to open it and eat what is in it. The one of the family who had changed least was Margaret. Miss Doe often discussed this phenomenon with Emma. “Do you suppose it’s not having married?” Emma was not married but a nursing career which had familiarised her to contempt point with the human body had mistakenly led her into the error of supposing she knew the human mind and heart. “Could be. Marriage is ageing, and no wonder. If you knew some of the things I know, dear, you’d thank God you’d missed it.” Miss Doe, peering at Margaret in her christening robe, or sitting on a rug between elder sister Jane and younger sister Felicity, or sprawling long-legged in front of a tea-table, or bright, intelligent and serious in her cap and gown when she took her degree, pondered on Emma’s words. What could there be in being married that could change Jane and Felicity so utterly that the little girls in the photographs had gone for good, and leave Margaret, who had not married, still in part the little girl in the photo-frames staring out into her mother’s bedroom? “It can’t be just the . . .”—in her mind Miss Doe said “pardon” for the vulgar thought—“the in bed together that does it, and it can’t be having babies for Henry’s never had one and he’s changed, goodness knows. It must be something though. I expect Emma understands. She would.”

  Felicity’s photographs were the ones Miss Doe looked at most often for there was a mystery there and she loved a mystery. The house was full of Felicity. She was always sending presents, usually rather exotic presents. The newest and most expensive bed heaters; not one but a dozen azaleas for the garden. “I saw them at the flower show and knew you’d adore them.” Boxes of books. “I was in ‘The Times’ and thought you must have something to read; it’s so foully wet.” Vases, tea-services, cases of fruit, everything she set her eye on and thought her mother would like, but hardly ever the one thing her mother wanted—a visit. Now why? In London, fonder of her mother than all the others put together perhaps, but scarcely ever coming to see her, although she must know what pleasure a visit gave. Miss Doe had seen Anna on the few occasions when Felicity had turned up. “Thinks I didn’t see how excited she was, Emma. Always so calm and keeping herself to herself, bless her, but she let it out in a hundred little ways. Special flowers, taking trouble over the lunch. Dusting everything again when she thought I wasn’t looking. It’s a shame for I knew how it would be and it was; arrive late, leave early, never sitting down for a nice, cosy talk; ran into the kitchen and talked to me rather than to her mother. There’s something queer there, Emma, you mark my words.”

  There was a mystery too, though that was not Felicity’s fault, about her daughter, Virginia. Since she was a baby Virginia had spent a lot of time with her grandmother. Miss Doe’s heart glowed when she thought of Virginia; when she came it was as if a fire were lit in the house, warming her grandmother’s old bones and making Miss Doe’s middle-aged ones young again. Miss Doe didn’t put it that way, she said, “Keeps us alive, brightens us up,” but it was what she meant. Then suddenly the visits stopped. “I can’t understand it, Emma. It’s three months now since Virginia’s been near us. It’s not Felicity for she’s telephoned when I’ve been there, and you can hear from the answers she’s as surprised as I am. Mrs. Caldwell says, ‘I would love to have her, dear, you know that, but it’s not convenient just now.’ Then Felicity breaks in. Mrs. Caldwell says in that firm, that’s-enough-of-that voice, ‘I’m sorry, dear, you should think it strange. No, nothing’s wrong. Everything is splendid. It’s just not convenient.’” Emma nodded knowingly. “From all you tell me of her, dear, going off all over the place in her car or by bus, she that never moved except for church and shopping, and locking up so early, and refusing to have little Virginia to stay, it’s softening. Takes them all ways. I know, I’ve seen enough of it. And in this case we know what’s brought it on. It’s against nature
to be so bitter against your own son. You think of that hymn, ‘Can a mother’s tender care, Cease towards the child she bare.’ Well, she’s ceased all right, but it’s against nature; must be a bit touched to feel like she does.”

  Miss Doe never came into Anna’s bedroom without thinking about Tony. There were no recognisable pictures of him. He had been a baby when his father died so he did not belong, even lying on a knee, to the tea-table group period, though he was in a few later photographs in somebody’s arms or in a perambulator, but there were no proper pictures of him. Of course there had been, right up to Christmas, Miss Doe remembered them well. Rows of them right up to the last one in his officer’s uniform. Then it happened, and his mother had gone queer. Every photograph disappeared—burned probably—and his name never mentioned. All Miss Doe’s old folk had their little ways but that little way of Anna’s gave Miss Doe the creeps. No matter what you had done you would think your own mother would stand by you.

  Because she had been talking about her, and had withdrawn her head out of hearing just in time to have the last word about her, it was at Jane’s photograph Miss Doe looked. Jane, at sixteen, very intense and a little smug. Miss Doe made a face at the photograph and, uplifted by this self-expression, burst lustily into hymn:

  “Pleasant are Thy courts above

  In the land of light and love;”

  As Miss Doe’s head disappeared Anna let her smile go. It was as if she picked it off her face and disdainfully threw it away. As the notes of “Pleasant are Thy courts” reached her a twinkle came into her eyes. Doe—it was one of Anna’s few luxuries that in her mind she called Miss Doe just “Doe”—Doe, if she had her way, would one day lay her across her knee and sprinkle her with Fuller’s Earth, as she would her other charges, old Mr. Cord and Mr. Clarence. She probably was already sprinkling it on poor Mrs. Tomkins, who was bedridden and could not protest. “I know somebody who enjoys a little treat.” Poor Doe, what a way to talk! However, in many ways she suited splendidly, and she was a good-hearted creature. It was foolish to be irritated by her.