The Whicharts Page 10

  “My dear child, how?”

  “Don’t you worry. I shall.”

  “Forgive me. I’m an old man, and you probably consider me a prosy old bore. But I knew and liked your father, and I had the deepest respect for Miss Howard. She left Mrs. Rigg—Nannie,” he added apologetically—“your guardian, with me as a watchdog in the background, as it were. On all these counts perhaps you’ll bear me in mind, and remember that, old bore though I may be, I shall be glad to give you advice if ever you should need it.”

  Tania came in surly and tongue-tied with nervousness. He explained the situation to her, but he did not ask for her approval. She was a child. Children did what they were told.

  “As far as possible, everything will go on as before. You and Daisy will go back to school and to the Dancing Academy, and if you are fortunate enough to obtain employment, it will be a great help towards the household expenses.”

  “Of course I’ll give Nannie all I earn. But I think it would be better to train me for something else instead of sending me back to school.”

  “Train you for what?”

  “Well, something—”Should she tell him, was he the sort to understand?—“something to do with machinery.”

  “Young Mr. Bray” laughed. He didn’t understand her. He took her for a tomboyish young person still at the stage of wanting to be an engine-driver.

  “No, no, machinery’s not for little girls.”

  Without a word she left the room.

  He sat Daisy on his knee. He hoped she’d be a great dancer.

  “I hope I’ll make a lot of money to help keep us.”

  He stroked her red curls.

  “Little heads shouldn’t worry about things of that sort.”

  He made a mental note to order her some chocolates on the way home .

  They drove to the funeral in “Young Mr. Bray’s” car. They might be poor, economy might be the grimmest necessity, but Nannie said:

  “There’s times when savin’s wrong—an’ mournin’s one of ’em.”

  So it was a party of crows who stood round Rose’s grave. It was a heavenly morning. The sky was an almost royal blue, there was a delicious nip of frost in the air. There were lots of wreaths; they were all of chrysanthemums, mostly the golden­brown kind. They gave out that curious pungent autumnal smell. Maimie and Daisy cried bitterly, more because they had reached the last lap of the days of overwhelming depression than because the shining box sliding into the earth upset them. They had got used to the fact that Rose was dead, she would never come back. A shiny box couldn’t really make things worse.

  For the first time since Rose had died, Tania was happy. The glory of the morning got into her veins. She had a sure feeling that Rose was happy and was trying to tell her so. She thought suddenly: “Heaven is like Sussex. All space. You feel quick all over. You can move very fast.”

  That afternoon she bought herself some golden­brown chrysanthemums.

  “Miss Extravagance,” said Nannie, who was feeling cross after such a plethora of emotion.

  “I know it’s awful of me. But it’s only for this once. I’ll never buy myself flowers again.”

  She smelt them, and shut her eyes. She couldn’t get the feeling quite—yes, there it was—the sharpness of the frost—the tang of the chrysanthemums—Howdy’s happy—it’s like Sussex.

  Apart from a large wreath, Madame showed her sympathy by promptly finding Tania and Daisy work. She had already planned to take Daisy to a pantomime audition for a dancing part, she now tried really hard to fix Tania in the same show.

  “Keep ’em together, keep ’em together, keep ’em together,” she said to Nannie.

  She succeeded. Daisy was engaged as a speciality child dancer. Tania was attached to a troupe of twelve children in the same show, “Madame Elise’s Twelve Little Pumpkins,” the pantomime being “Cinderella.” She found herself terribly out of practice after her three and a half months’ tour, during which she had scarcely worked at an exercise, and only lifelessly gone through Daisy’s dances at the understudy rehearsals; she had to really slave to get herself sufficiently supple to get through the quite difficult steps required of her. Daisy, billed as “The Child Wonder,” though infinitely more important, had a far easier time.

  The pantomime ran well, and Daisy was a great success. Hope ran high in the flat. After such wonderful notices as she had had, she might get a stupendous offer at any moment. No one was very hopeful of Tania getting work, she was at the plain stage, and had suddenly begun to grow very leggy, and her black clothes, which were all the winter clothes she possessed, were most unbecoming to her. Both boredom with her work, and depression, for she missed Rose abominably, told on her health, she looked sallow, she stooped, and her hair hung lankly.

  “Miss Plain I said first time I seen her,” said Nannie to Maimie, “an’ I was about right.”

  But the pantomime came to an end, and no one wanted either of the children. Madame tried hard. Nannie, Tania, and Daisy eagerly watched for every post, and flew to answer every telephone call. But no one wrote or rang up. Tania was efficient, and Daisy quite brilliant, but children dancers simply were not wanted. Then in April, Maimie’s revue, which had been doing quite well, suddenly flickered and died. Dolly Kismet was still in America. She said that of course she’d easily get another job. It didn’t need Dolly to find it for her, she was known a bit now it would be quite simple. But there was only one new musical show coming on; she went to the audition for that, but she was not engaged; the music was elaborate, they wanted their girls to be singers more than dancers; Maimie’s voice was not up to the standard. While the children had worked, Nannie had tried to save. Tania had handed over the whole of her salary every week. But then she obviously needed new clothes, the money ought to go on those. There had been two-thirds of Daisy’s far larger salary coming in, but Daisy too needed new clothes. Nannie decided to try and run the house on Maimie’s twenty-five shillings. The children could make their present clothes do for another month; she would hold on to their savings for a bit anyway, and perhaps she wouldn’t need to spend them, something might turn up. Tania, in spite of “Young Mr. Bray’s” dictum, had refused to go back to school. She explained her reasons to Nannie.

  “I know the fees aren’t much, but then I don’t earn much. And what I do earn, you need to just keep me; I don’t want to be kept by the others. I shall be sixteen this summer, it’s not a bit too soon to leave, and you’ll be glad of me to help you in the house.”

  So all the morning she worked in the flat. In the afternoons and part of the evening, she worked at the academy. But whether at housework or dancing, she kept turning her position over in her head. She ought to try for something else. Here she was nearly sixteen, and only working at Christmas. But if she took another job, a messenger girl for instance, she would be busy all day, and her dancing would get out of practice. She was trained as a dancer; in a few months, if she looked a little less plain, she might get into a grown-up chorus. Obviously she would earn more while she was working in the thing for which she was trained; unskilled labour didn’t earn much. She was afraid to apply for any other job, she had no idea what could be earned, and it would be awful if she went off on her own and got something to do, and then found Madame had a well-paid job for her if only she’d stopped on. Yet somebody must get a job. If they didn’t, Nannie might have to ask help from “Young Mr. Bray”; that mustn’t be. He would think they couldn’t manage, he’d want to try something else. Tania could see quite clearly what she ought to do, she ought to have a talk with Madame.

  Her thoughts always led to this point, but it was days before she could make up her mind to carry it out. She was terrified of Madame. She didn’t know why, Madame had always been very kind, but there it was, she would rather have done almost anything than ask a favour of her. But at last, urged by Nannie’s worried face, she took the plunge. She hung abo
ut nervously outside the office door. She looked plain and awkward. Her check romper didn’t suit her long legs. She was too tall for socks, her nose and elbows looked blue, for it was cold in the passage. Madame, hurrying by, saw her.

  “Well Tania? Well Tania? Well Tania? What is it? What is it? What is it?”

  Haltingly Tania explained. She stressed no point. Madame knew that Rose was dead, knew they needed the money. What Madame did not know was how much they needed it. Tania didn’t say, but the way she said, “I must find work. Could you help me?” convinced Madame that there was urgency. She rang a bell. Muriel, the black-haired instructress, flew in.

  “Tania too big, too big, too big, Pansy’s Peaches, Pansy’s Peaches, Pansy’s Peaches?”

  “Stand up, Tania.”

  Tania turned anxious eyes on Muriel.

  “No. She doesn’t look more than thirteen, and Pansy’s not fussy. But does she want another Peach?”

  “Lucy leaving, Lucy leaving, Lucy leaving.” Madame waved a hand in dismissal.

  “You don’t want to join the Peaches, do you?” asked Muriel curiously, when they got outside. “They aren’t your style at all, and the dancing’s awful. Just one-two-three hop. I should think you’d hate it.”

  “Well, I have to do something,” answered Tania grumpily.

  Pansy Daw was a music-hall star. She made a vast fortune at song-plugging. Dressed in the most startling creations, she sang her songs, repeating the choruses so many times that it was a certainty that even the least musically-minded member of the audience must leave the theatre humming them. To increase the effect, Pansy contracted yearly with Madame Elise for twelve children, twelve competent girls who could be guaranteed to beat out the metre with their feet whenever she herself was singing, and who would continue the good work of screaming out the songs if she herself should dance a few steps. She never knew the names of her twelve girls, she barely knew them by sight. Provided they could do their work, Madame could send whom she liked. It was not one of the picked jobs of the academy. The work was hard—music-halls—always twice nightly, and sometimes three performances a day. The standard of dancing required was very low, the girls were picked mainly because they were small for their ages. Although they were sent in charge of a matron, none of them were under fourteen and many of them a great deal older.

  Tania was sent under the escort of Muriel to her first rehearsal. She found she scarcely knew the other eleven Peaches by sight. Her work was in a class far beyond theirs, and she had hardly spoken to them outside, for they belonged to the rougher and dirtier contingent of pupils. She sighed as she changed into her romper and shoes.

  The work she found very easy, she could have done it in her sleep. What bored her were the clothes. They changed an incredible number of times in the short while their turn was on. She could have borne with it if there had been any reason in the changing, but as far as she could see, there was none. In pantomime you changed at least with some purpose; the principal boy sang about Old Madrid, and you appeared all ribbons and castanets. Or the principal girl sang about Lilac, and you came in at any rate dressed in mauve, if it was only as a mauve powder-puff. But not so with Pansy. When she sang about Dixie and coal-black mammies, you put on an Early Victorian frock or dressed up in yellow swans­down as a chicken. But when she sang about grandmamma’s days, or the spring, then was the moment when you appeared as a coon, or in Hawaiian get-up. It was all most confusing, and even to Tania, whose taste was none too good, it appeared very inartistic. It was not till she had been with Pansy for quite a while, and rehearsed innumerable new numbers, that she realised that Pansy, who was a busy woman, had originally fixed the order in which the dresses were to be worn, and for no subsequent change of programme did she bother to alter it. She hadn’t the time, she said, to be always fussing about.

  Tania had her first solo part with Pansy. In one number, one of the children had to sing a chorus alone and unaccompanied. The Peaches were always changing, and the girl who had done this part left very suddenly. A hasty trial of voices proved that the remainder of the Peaches possessed more volume than tone; of the lot Tania was the most tuneful. She was quite unsuited, as the whole idea was that the singer should be very undersized with yellow curls, so that the audience could say: “What a little mite, can’t be more than ten!” But owing to a shortage of the right type, and the fact that everyone was too busy to bother, she kept her solo for quite a time. This put an idea into her head.

  She had all along taken a great interest in Pansy.

  She was fair, blue-eyed, and tall, with a perfect figure. But she couldn’t dance. She couldn’t sing. She couldn’t produce. She had no imagination. But she could put a song across, and for that she earned a salary that would have enthralled a prime minister. She was followed everywhere by a nervous little husband, who was a musician both by taste and by profession. He conducted for her, it was his only claim to her attention. She had also an enormous car, a devoted maid, and a humble chauffeur. She glittered with jewels, she had magnificent furs. Tania would look at her spell­ bound. There was money if you liked! Earned by putting on one of the stupidest and crudest music­ hall turns in England. And yet, thought Tania, she’s worth every penny she earns. Why? Because when she gets hold of a song, its sale goes into millions. Now why couldn’t I learn to do that? I’m sure I’m more intelligent than she is, and I can dance and she can’t, and I can sing about as well, at least I suppose I can sing, else why have I got that solo? Of course I’m nowhere near as good­ looking, but I may improve. It’s worth thinking of. Why! in a year or two I’d earn enough to have several aeroplanes. She practised the art of putting over songs on her family. They complained bitterly. Maimie said:

  “If you must be one of Pansy’s Peaches, for God’s sake don’t let’s have it at home. We shall have you doing it next: ‘Toothy Tania and her Toddlers.’”

  Maimie could not hear of any work. She continued to pay Nannie twenty-five shillings a week. She said she had savings. Tania was handing over her weekly wage, but she didn’t earn a great deal, and by the time Madame had taken her commission, there wasn’t much left; not much to a family all needing new clothes. Nannie found that there was never a week but she was faced with some unexpected expense. Daisy had toothache—three visits to the dentist. Tania’s shoes needed soling and heeling, and they were scarcely home before Daisy’s went through. Little things all the time, but preventing that pile of savings accumulating that Nannie considered necessary for their safety. She could not feel justified in buying new clothes. Tania and Daisy looked positively shabby.

  “Maybe in the summer sales—” said Nannie hopefully.

  Maimie alone was smart, and not only smart but happy. She missed Rose in her own way, but she had things to amuse her, which her sisters had not. Dolly’s departure to America had depressed her at first, but she had pointed out to herself that he was not the only “kipper in the sea,” there were others. Not, it was true, others with as much influence as Dolly, but others with just as much money! Still, all these were just casuals. “I must freeze on to something good soon,” she thought. But she couldn’t bring herself to bother, she was having a good time, going about with first one man, and then another. It was fun and there wasn’t all that jealous stuff, none of that fussing as to where you’d been and whom with. Still, it would be a good thing to fix up something more permanent. Rose’s death had given her a shake-up, made her feel how insecure life was. It was in this mood she metHerbert Rosen.

  He was a Jew, but he had not been noticeably one for a long time. His father was a baronet, they’d made vast sums in manufacturing paper, and with the vast sums done a lot for the country. Thus the baronetcy.

  Herbert had fallen in love with Maimie while she had been playing in the revue. She had no idea that she had taken his fancy, for he had made no sign. But he had watched her. He wanted to know if there was someone else. Then one night he met her at a suppe
r-party. He arranged to meet her again. Not too soon, he didn’t believe in rushing things. After their next meeting he sent chocolates; after the third, flowers; after the fourth, scents; and after the fifth, which was in his flat, she could have more or less what she liked.

  He wanted to give her a flat. He wanted to feel he really owned her. To know she was there if he should want her. He hated possessions he couldn’t lock up. He couldn’t lock up Maimie. He never knew what she did when she wasn’t with him. She said she went home, she said she lived with two sisters and an old nurse. That for a tale! Besides, if it were true, it was time she got away. Old nurse indeed!

  Maimie was selfish, but she was large-hearted. As a rule in a conflict the selfishness won. But over the business of a flat, she behaved well. If she let Herbert take a flat for her, how about their home? And her promise to Tania? Her twenty­five shillings a week was a help. Of course Herbert was really paying that now, and would go on sending that, and more, to Nannie every week if only she could get away. She toyed with the thought for a moment, but she could see it would never work. Nannie might be a bit blind, but even she would think that arrangement rather queer, it would take a lot of explaining. No, for the present things must go on as they were.

  “I’m sorry, Herbert darling, I’d just adore to have a little place of my own. But I must think of the others, my sisters, how would they manage without me?”

  Herbert, though annoyed about the flat, was touched. “Perhaps there really are some sisters,” he thought. He’d test her.

  “How about bringing those sisters of yours to tea to-morrow—Rumpelmayers.”

  Tania and Daisy were staggered when Maimie handed on the invitation. Nannie was so impressed that she excused them from their dancing-class so that they might go. And spent the morning steaming and brushing their black coats. “It’s a shame you has to go shabby, disgracing us in front of Maimie’s gentleman friend.”