Myra Carrol Read online

Myra chewed over Connie’s clumsy words. She followed in Connie’s tracks, taking her mind round her world and considering each case separately. She was eleven at the time and the great loves of her life were easily placed. There were, of course, her parents. She was fond of them, but even at eleven she knew that her excitement at their home-comings was because of the spoiling she received and not because she was needing them, in fact, on the whole she liked it better when they were away, the house was more her own. No, she did not feel squeezed to give the most in the world for either of them. There were the servants, did she love them? Would she sacrifice herself for them? Mentally she pictured the servants’ sitting-room without them. She would miss them most terribly, of course, but not the same sort of minding as it would be never to see her home again. There was Miriam, oh, and, of course, Fortesque! She pulled herself upright and whistled. Fortesque, her dachshund, was down a rabbit hole. He gave a shrill bark acknowledging the whistle but went on digging. At the thought of his shiny, brown, wriggling body Myra’s mind was clear.

  “I expect that yours is the right way to love; I love things differently. Fortesque ought to come when I whistle; he’d be a better dog if I beat him when he doesn’t.”

  “And he’d be a lot safer,” said Connie. “It makes me shudder to think of him on the road.”

  “And safer,” Myra agreed, “but I won’t do it. I don’t want him to think of me as the person who beats him, only as the person who loves him however bad he is.”

  “You don’t really put him first then?”

  “No. I put me first, I expect. It’s sad, Foggy, but it’s true.” Myra sighed. “All the loveliness has gone, we’ve talked it away.”

  Connie laughed.

  “Rubbish, goose! It’s still a beautiful morning.”

  Myra crossed to the other side of the bridge.

  “The meadow sweet still smells, and the may flies are still coming out. All the same, we’ve talked some of the loveliness away.” She caught Connie’s arm. “Come on, let’s go and look for wild strawberries.”

  Myra lived a double life. Even in maturity it is hard to separate deliberate deception from merely civilised behaviour. The enthusiastic greeting of unwanted guests, or the admiration for a hideous garment can spring equally from kindness of heart and moral cowardice. Myra was fond of Connie, she really enjoyed their thrashings out and discussions, and she picked up in the course of them, with the acquisitiveness of a jackdaw, what exactly in Connie’s eyes made a perfect child and, to please her, lived up to it, or as nearly up to it as a volatile temperament made possible. But living up to Connie’s standard should have included a lot of things which bored Myra, and with which she never had the slightest intention of competing. Connie was not decisively anything except an earnest governess, but she had “feelings” about almost everything. She felt it was wrong that there should be social inequalities, she “felt” people ought to go to church and say prayers “and all that” and, therefore, they should attach themselves legally to the Church of England to do it, chapel being something children who had private governesses never went to, and the Church of Rome dangerous as a snake. She “felt”, having done the right thing by the Church of England, baptism, confirmation, regular attendance at Holy Communion and so on, that too much interest in the soul was unhealthy, and led to silliness later on. She “felt” that healthy exercise and not coddling yourself were good things. Of course she did not expect Myra, under her method of training, to feel the things she felt, she was only too anxious to make any one of them the subject of mental searchings, but Myra managed to side-step. One of Connie’s feelings about righting social inequalities was that no work should be considered beneath anyone. “There is no such thing as menial work,” she was fond of saying. All work was splendid if done properly. Myra, to appreciate the splendour of domestic work, was passed over to the professionals for instruction. She was ten when she was sent for her first cooking lesson. So far her relations with cook had been admirable; cook always ready with buns straight from the oven, or hot bread thick in Devonshire cream and jam at unlikely hours. It was a spring day and Myra had put on a gay embroidered pinafore to cook in, bought in Czechoslovakia for her by her mother. Myra was feeling springtime unwillingness to settle to anything. She had been forced to agree with Connie that a person could not say they saw no use in learning a subject until they had tried studying it, and perhaps, as she opened the kitchen door, she meant to try. She stood on one leg.

  “Hullo! I’ve come for my cooking lesson.”

  Cook’s heart contracted. Bless the little dear! She did look a duck and no mistake. How her parents could gallivant off never seeing the little love was a mystery. Cook smiled. She was a fat woman and creased when smiling in a way nicely reminiscent of the folds in the pastry, the cake mixtures and the bread and scones she rolled. Myra smiled back and came to the table.

  “What are you making?”

  “Cakes for your tea.”

  “The spongy ones with the cherries on top?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Are you going to teach me to make them?”

  Cook pointed to a pile of small cake moulds.

  “As a start how about you filling them. That’ll be a nice little job, won’t it?”

  While waiting for the mixing to be finished Myra sat on the table. Cook had been drinking a cup of tea, the cup had been cleared of its dregs so that the leaves might be read. Myra knew all about tea-leaf reading from Miriam. She picked up the cup.

  “What does it say?”

  Cook shook her head. Things looked a bit queer. For weeks now there had been something like a dark cloud coming up. It all fitted in with her dreams. She had a dream that she had been having since she was smaller than Miss Myra. It didn’t sound much but in it she was being chased by a dog, but whenever she had that dream there was something bad coming. Myra was enthralled. While telling the story of how the first time the dream came to her she had been only eight, and in the morning after there was news her great-grandmother was dead, cook finished her mixing. Though she passed Myra a spoon, she actually filled most of the moulds herself, for after filling four of them Myra had given up. At a quarter to twelve Myra went up to her room to change into her riding things. Connie heard her and came to the foot of the stairs.

  “Well, wasn’t I right? Isn’t cooking rather fun?”

  Myra stopped and turned. In that second she decided that this was a subject it would be less trouble not to discuss.

  “Lovely fun.” She went on up the stairs.

  Bertha, the housemaid, was not so easy. She loved needlework and thought every woman should be able to what she called “needle”. Myra was to come to her on Wednesday afternoons. She sat the child down beside her and conscientiously instructed her in the art of hemming. Nannie had thought it would be nice for Myra to knit, and when that failed had bought a box of cards with pictures of animals perforated on them, and tried to make her enjoy outlining a fox in orange silk. Myra detested the fox even more than she had detested the knitting, she hated sitting still and doing things with her hands, so Nannie had abandoned the enterprise. Myra, remembering the fox, had not agreed to sewing lessons without protest.

  “I’ll never do it as long as I live, Foggy, so what’s the good of learning it?”

  “You can’t possibly say you won’t do it. You might marry a poor man.”

  “Even if I do I shall have money of my own; Daddy told me so. Anyway, enough to have somebody who can mend.”

  “You can’t tell, dear. Picture yourself on a ship. Who’ll sew for you then?”

  “I’ll be like mummy and take a maid.”

  “But your mother can sew. You know she says Marcelle is always seasick; who do you suppose does the stitching then?”

  “If I can’t sew I’ll never have to even when everybody’s seasick. I think it’s stupid to be able to do things you know you�
�ll hate doing.”

  “You can’t know you’ll hate it until you try.”

  “But I have tried. I worked for simply hours on that awful fox.”

  Connie laughed.

  “You can’t go through life with your sole knowledge of sewing based on that one fox.”

  “And that knitting.”

  “Give it a chance. If it really proves to be a subject for which you have no aptitude, then we can consider dropping the higher flights, embroidery and all that, but you must really be able to darn and hem, you do see that, don’t you?”

  Myra was turning Bertha over in her mind. She was nothing like so easy-going as cook. One by one her spare hours were being clipped away. Hours which had been used so intangibly. Of course, sometimes she fished; sometimes she called on people in the village; sometimes she dug in her garden; but more often her hours were spent in a half-dreaming state, roaming about the grounds, some new scheme or excitement gripping her. The gardener had said: “God dammy, they fairies be forever moving my tools!” Closely questioned he had no more to say on fairies, but it was clear he believed in them, or at least was not going to be foolish enough to risk annoying them by disbelieving. Myra, skipping along the woodland paths, humming as she went, a bemused look in her eye, was peopling the land. Every root hid a little face. A wing whisked out of sight as she appeared. The chatting of the river was tiny voices. The wind in the trees was a tune played by a minute orchestra. Reaching home and being asked where she had been, with the secretiveness of her age, she looked vague and said, “Just out.” In a way it was true. She could not recall what she had done, time had been enchanted and the hours fallen one inside the other. Another day it was a paper boat. “Other little children shall bring my boats ashore.” She had learnt that with Connie, the words falling out of her lips without much meaning, her voice dull, but afterwards they became a web of words in which she was tangled so that she could not escape. With the need natural to a child to do everything at the moment it becomes a thought, she had to have paper, had to make boats, had to see them drift under the bridge, had to think of strange children bringing them ashore, had to feel happy and yet sad at the same time.

  Myra came dancing in to her first Wednesday sewing lesson as if it were a treat to which she had been looking forward. Bertha, who had heard Nannie wail over the nursery sewing lessons, was not fooled.

  “No need to act up for me, Miss Myra. I know just how fond you are of your needle.”

  Myra grinned.

  “But I’m fond of you. I don’t mind an hour with you a bit, Bertha darling.”

  “No need to darling me,” said Bertha delighted. “Sit down here. I’m starting you on hemming.”

  It was a lovely afternoon. The river was singing like a Rhine maiden; the trees were misty with young green; the birds chattering hysterically of the fun of house-building. Bertha did not sit down. She hung over the back of Myra’s chair.

  “Try and make the stitches smaller, dear. Take up less on your needle.”

  Myra ached, not so much with sitting and concentration as with boredom, which wrapped round her like a fog. She could not relax and break the tedium by a nice gossip, which made the hour of torture the more unendurable, for no one was nicer to gossip with than Bertha when she was in a good mood. Her fingers cramped and sticky, her tongue between her lips, Myra was a picture of industry, but part of her mind was away from her work. Where was the loophole to get her out? Not for one second did she accept the Wednesday lesson as a permanency. She did face the possibility of spending the hour in the workroom watching Bertha sew, but not using a needle herself. It was Bertha who showed her a way of escape from the whole business.

  “There’s no need to look so close, you’ll be hemming your nose to your work if you’re not careful.”

  Myra was in the mood in which she had only to be told not to do a thing to do it the more thoroughly. She stooped lower.

  “I’ve got to see, haven’t I? I can’t see unless I look.”

  Bertha was interested. She tried to disguise it but failed.

  “Do you look at your books as close as that?”

  Myra grasped what was at the back of Bertha’s mind.

  “If it’s very little print.”

  Bertha took away Myra’s work.

  “Well, it’s nearly the hour away, and I think that’ll be enough for to-day.”

  Myra flung herself into her coat and raced outside. She was watching the building of a nest near the river. She made for it singing as she ran. She knew exactly what was happening in the house behind her. She could see Bertha and Connie together; she could hear the talk they would have. It might mean her being taken into the town to see the oculist. That would be simply heavenly.

  It did mean the town and the oculist, and a further step in Myra’s grasp of her powers. The testing was over. Connie left Myra while she went outside to look for the car, for she had sent Andrews, the chauffeur, to pick up some parcels. The oculist was a young man, brilliant at his job and something of a psychologist. He had been fascinated and entertained by Myra. What, he wondered, was the lovely little thing up to, for better eyesight he had never seen. However, he had listened quietly to Connie’s account of stooping over work in order to see, and even when the examination was over had kept up a mock serious tone. No, he did not advise glasses at the moment. He it was who had suggested that they should wait in his consulting room until the car arrived, which had sent Connie out into the street to look for it. Myra was playing with a paper-weight; she felt pleased with herself, the undivided attention of two adults was just what she liked.

  “What game are you up to?”

  Myra looked at the paper-weight, supposing for a second he meant that, then she thought of the note in his voice which made her look at him. He had stopped being grave and was twinkling at her. She smiled cautiously.

  “What d’you mean?”

  “There’s nothing the matter with your eyes and you know it.”

  Myra felt a glow run through her. She knew the oculist not only did not mind, but wanted to be friends, almost minded if he were not friends with her. It was a grand moment. She came round to his side of the desk and leant against his chair.

  “It’s sewing. I don’t want to be bothered with it.”

  He roared.

  “Well, that’s honest anyway. You’ll have to learn some day, you know.”

  “I don’t mean to. It’s one of the things I never mean to do in all my whole life.”

  “I can’t say there’s anything wrong with your sight.”

  She looked up at him from under her lashes.

  “Couldn’t you say something that wasn’t exactly a lie but meant no sewing?”

  He got up laughing, he put his arm round her and led her to Connie, who was coming in at the door.

  “The car’s here, Myra,” said Connie.

  The oculist held out his hand.

  “Well, good-bye, Miss Fogetty. Bring Myra back if there’s any more trouble, and for a month or two I think you might avoid exceptionally close work.”

  “What sort? You mean reading?”

  “Oh, no, but perhaps if she is reading a lot you can avoid strain in some other way. Needlework, for instance.” He patted Myra’s shoulder. “Good-bye, my dear.”

  Myra gave him a lovely smile.

  “Good-bye.”

  Miriam was Myra’s greatest ally. Cook and Bertha and Connie needed hoodwinking, but Miriam understood. Miriam was just sixteen when she came to Myra, and Myra was nearly nine. Seven years is a big gap in childhood, but it narrows when the elder girl is simple and the younger very intelligent. Miriam was sandy-coloured and cowed looking. Her position in her grandmother’s house had not been happy. Her grandmother, with unthinking goodness of heart, had taken in the child when a baby, but she had been no more keen to start the trouble of looking after
a baby again than any other woman who has brought her own family up, and is enjoying a little leisure for the first time in years. She was respected locally and disliked the whispering about bastards which she knew went on however good a story about desertion after the wedding she put up. She did her best by Miriam, striving not to let her know she was a burden. As the child grew up she strove also so to discipline her that when the time came she would have more strength to resist temptation than her mother. It was none of it a success. Miriam knew only too well she was in the way, and being a nice-natured child she did her best to atone for it by keeping out of sight as much as possible. The discipline made her unhappy; she was doing her utmost to do right, and did not need nagging at, which was what the disciplining amounted to. She was affectionate and supposed the nagging came from dislike, which meant tears in private.

  Myra was to Miriam a dream come true, a little sister on whom to lavish all the affection she had dammed up in her heart. Even if Myra had been plain and dull she would have worshipped her, but since Myra looked like the princess out of the fairy story, and had the princess’s imperious ways, together with incredible charm, Miriam was a lavish worshipper. She was jealous of her fellow worshippers. She had to be the one who heard the confidences, she had to be closest. Any small wangle of Myra’s in which she could give assistance brought her immense happiness. This was a secret between her and Myra. This needed her connivance to see it through. Connie never intended that Myra should be maided. She “felt” it must be wrong that one girl should wait upon another. Myra had her lessons and could not do everything herself, but except when she was starting off somewhere early she could make her own bed, and always she should hang up her things and keep her drawers tidy. Miriam had plenty to occupy herself, there was Myra’s mending and her rooms to turn out. It would be “fun” for Myra to help. Didn’t Myra think so?

  Both Myra and Miriam dismissed the whole idea of Myra touching a thing as if it had never been suggested. They gave in to Connie just to the extent of Myra’s spending an adequate amount of time in her bedroom to cover the supposed housework. Miriam made the bed, Myra messed about. It was a pleasant time. Miriam had been taught to call cook aunty.