Bell Timson Page 9

  I said I was glad to hear it.

  “You mark my words,” he said, “the hours of you unqualified people are numbered, and if the L.C.C. carries out its threat of licensing the massage establishments you’ll be cooling your heels. It’s bound to come. More and more people are going in for that.” He pointed to the new apparatus. “The massage clinic of the future is going to look like an electrical engineering shop, and we can’t have amateurs like you pottering about with power. Think it over.” He slapped down his cup and saucer and went to the door, turning round when he got there to say, “By the way, I’ve given your name to a woman who may get in touch with you; I had to tell her you weren’t qualified of course.”

  This made me sit up, for Dr. Remington had never sent me any patients. I kept my voice cool as I asked him what the case was.

  “Oh, just one of those fools with more money than sense.” He gave me a few simple details and ended by saying, as if it did not matter, “You can ask her a guinea a time; it’ll help her to believe in you.”

  “But why don’t you send her to Mrs. Logan?” I wondered what Alice would make of this; guinea-an-hour treatments were not so common.

  “If you want to know, because ‘Mrs. Logan’ “ — he pulled a face at me — “won’t encourage her to talk about herself and butter her up and — tell her a risky story now and again! That’s all she wants; and if she’s willing to pay a guinea for it somebody may as well profit. ‘Mrs.’ Logan,” he threw at me as a parting shot, “is too good a masseuse to waste on that rubbish!”

  I suppose it is time I was saying something about that career of mine — which, up to the summer of 1914, just before the war broke out, was hardly worth calling a career. I was deviling for Alice, and I had one or two children I was treating for spinal weakness. It was very hard work all the same, and, between ourselves, I was beginning to find it dull. I fell I knew more than I was allowed to use, and for another thing the money was not coming in as fast as I had hoped.

  Anyone who has children at school knows that fees and clothing are only the beginning of the expenses, and although Miss Cleveland was very good, and kept down the extras, there was first Kathleen’s teeth, which had started to grow all crooked in front, then Jo developed a cyst on her head that needed a little operation; and what with wear and tear and replacements, I was no better off than I had been before. At least I had the comfort of knowing that the girls were being well looked after and that they were happy at Egham.

  There’s no question about it: environment means everything to children. I never saw such a change in anyone as I saw in Kathleen when George and I went down on the last Sunday in the term. They had had their end-of-term play the Thursday before, and of course I was invited, but I would not go because I felt sure it would be smart, and I had nothing to wear. But I took George down on the Sunday, because I had always promised to show him the school, and I knew Miss Cleveland would understand.

  I am sorry to say that, so far as George was concerned, it was not a great success. Some other parents turned up, and — I can’t bear saying it, but he didn’t fit. George, with his bowler hat, the button chrysanthemum in his lapel, and his brown kid gloves, was just too much of a gentleman. Beside the informality of the others his manners made him seem as if he was done up in brown paper and string, as tight as one of his own parcels. He called the ladies “madam,” and handed cups and opened doors — but always as if he was saying, “Look how nicely I’m doing this.” And every now and then he would look at me, as if for my approval, and I would nod and turn my head away quickly, to hide the tears in my eyes; for I saw several people smiling, and they were not nice smiles, like the people in the Copper Kettle. They made me furious on George’s account — and I may as well admit it: I was a bit bothered about the girls, in case we were making a bad impression that would affect their position in the school.

  But, bless my soul, I need not have worried; children never see anything, and Kay (as they called her) and Jo were so delighted to see us, we might have dropped our aitches all over the place so far as they were concerned. Kathleen came running up to me like any happy little girl with no shadow on her mind, and I noticed at once that the tone of her voice was softer and she had lost her bit of cockney accent. She was always a little mimic, and she had picked up already not only the voices but the manners of the people around her. She was still inclined to slouch, but I saw one of the mistresses touch her on the shoulder, and she straightened up at once, like a dart. Her inclination to show off helped her, I dare say. And as for Jo, she was just like a fat brown puppy in a hamper of other puppies; after the first minute or two she was back with her playfellows, and it fairly tickled George and me, the little notice she took of us!

  I was nicer to George on the way home than I had ever been in my life. Mind you, he was so sweet-natured, I should be surprised if he had noticed a thing; but I could not help thinking of those snobs patronizing him and sneering at him behind his back; it got my hackles up. And I was touched to the heart when he said:

  “Kathleen’s another kid, Bell. I couldn’t have felt prouder if she’d been my own.”

  1 could almost have cried. It made me feel that if ever the girls grew up to be ashamed of George I’d disown them. But there is better stuff in them than that, thank goodness, and though Kathleen went through a conceited patch when she was getting on too well with her studies, she came out of it, and Jo always loved old George, and, I’m afraid, teased him as much as her mother did.

  It was queer, that very day when I was feeling so warmly about George, something happened to show me that affection is not enough, and that, although I had almost been in the mood to give up everything for him, in reality we were poles apart. It was just one of those silly things that swing up and sting you across the face, like the twig of a nut tree.

  It was some time since George had told me that the house he shared with his mother was condemned, and they would have to move before very long; and then that he had found the new one, down one of the roads within easy distance of the shop. It was called Kozy Kot. I gave George a bit of a look, but it did not seem to register, so presently I said quietly, “And what are you going to call it?” He said comfortably that he didn’t think he’d change the name: his mother liked and it was easier for the postman. I thought I would leave it to another time to suggest that it might be nice to have a fresh name; in fact that in that particular road, where all the houses were Kandahar or Khartoum or Bengal Lodge (it had been a regular Anglo-Indian colony), it would even be rather smart to call his house by its number, written out full, if he liked, Twenty four, or whatever it was, which would look quite well on the gate.

  He had asked me several times to walk round with him and have a look at it, but on Sunday afternoons, the only time when we were both free, I usually had too many odds and ends of washing and stitching, writing to the girls, and giving myself a shampoo and manicure, to go out. This afternoon, however, when he suggested we might go round that way from the station, I had not the heart to refuse.

  All the way there George was lyrical. He never had the faintest power of description, so I would not have gathered from anything he said whether it was large, small, square, oblong, Gothic, or modern. It was “a grand little place,” “what he’d been looking for,” “just his style,” and he’d “got it for a song.” I suppose I could have dragged from him, if I had asked questions, whether it was semidetached, how many floors there were, if there was any “outlook”; but I felt I could not stem George’s eloquence (such as it was), or interrupt his beaming satisfaction and pride that straightened his back and gave his head quite a cocky angle for once! I like to see a man pleased with himself, and I suppose he must have told me twenty times between the station and the house that it was “a treat” and I’d “be surprised.”

  I was. When George stopped and pointed, and said in a voice like a sort of modest trumpet blast, “There you are!” I was speechless.

  It was a pig of a house. The man wh
o designed it thought he’d be Gothic and then went Elizabethan. He clapped imitation black-and-white boarding on a Mid-Victorian gable and drove a sash window into the middle of it. You saw at a glance that every inch was shoddy, and done for show. There were red brick, roughcast, and stucco in the front elevation, and the first story was divided into panels with wooden laths painted a chocolate brown, with a purple brick diamond in the middle of each panel.

  “Well, what do you think?” George’s voice was positively trembling with pride.

  “I’m glad you’ve found something you like, George,” was the only thing I found to say. And all the time we were tramping over that frightful house, which, as you can imagine, was a mass of “ingle-nooks” and “cozy corners” and window seats made out of plywood (“That’ll just suit Mother, for her ferns”), I was stunned by the thought, George really likes this. Out of all the nice, plain, unpretentious houses which could be had, even in that neighborhood, at reasonable prices, he had chosen this horror, which was good for nothing but to make the foundation of a Fifth of November bonfire. God knows, I don’t mean to set myself up in any way as George’s superior. I suppose we had had similar educations, but education is like vaccination: it either “takes” or it doesn’t. It had “taken” in George to the extent of reading books I would never have opened; he was quite a bookworm in his way. But I think, on that awful Sunday afternoon in Kozy Kot, I got a glimmering of the difference between culture and education, and how one matters and the other isn’t worth a damn, unless you have got the first on top of it. Education is just learning other people’s ideas and taking them for granted, while culture is taste and the power to choose for yourself among the good and the bad. I suppose my taste was trained, without my knowing it, by those old brick houses in the High Street at Crowle, and even in my girlhood I knew enough to laugh at the epergne and the bear. (How George would have loved that bear; he would have said it “just put the finishing touch” to the hall.)

  I realized that, although you might live very happily with somebody who had no education, in the book sense, it would be downright impossible to live with somebody who was blind to ugliness. You would be like the man in the fairy tale who had to wear a shirt made of stinging nettles: in a constant state of irritation.

  Sad as I was at this discovery about George, it was satisfactory in another way; for I had better confess that, since the work wasn’t going as I had expected, and the money wasn’t coming in, and I was still in debt, I had had several moments of weakness. In fact I had almost got to the point of deciding that if he ever asked me again I would marry him. It seemed as if a woman could not make her way alone, and I knew George would be “comfortable” when his mother died. Kozy Kot settled that nonsense for good, and I am sure it was a mercy, for we would never have been as happy as husband and wile as we were in being friends. As it turned out, he never asked me again; perhaps he would not risk another snub, but more likely he paid me the compliment of thinking I knew my own mind.

  I was so relieved at what I then looked on (and still do) as my “escape,” that I was able to be quite nice to George about Kozy Kot. In fact I had to hold myself back from suggesting “improvements,” which dear old George would have accepted in good faith, simply because they were my ideas. I believe if I had told him to paint the parlor pea-green and put up fretwork brackets he would have done it, and sat there, happy to think that, if he had not got my presence, at least he had my notions of decoration to keep him company. So I behaved myself and never even mentioned the iron balcony I’d thought of for outside his mother’s window, where that flea-bitten fox-terrier bitch of hers could take the air without endangering that virginity which kept old Mrs. Glaize in a perpetual state of panic. I made a few modest suggestions for the improvement of the more hideous of the outer “features”: coloring the whole house cream, including the purple brick diamonds, and just keeping the window frames and doors a plain dark brown. Which George promised should be done. Unfortunately Mrs. Glaize preferred the patchwork effect, so, as the house was supposed to be for her, it was left in all its native horror. She only lived three or four years after they moved in; and then the girls and I started the campaign of persuading George that Kozy Kot was too large for him, which ended, after his retirement (nearly twenty years later), in the bungalow at Birling Gap.

  I was still living in the one room (it wasn’t a bad one) because each time I thought of moving something cropped up that put any increase of expenses out of the question; and all sorts of arrangements were made for the girls in the holidays. I generally managed to have them for a few days with me: Jo in my bed and Kathleen on the two armchairs and a stool — she was stretching out like pump water — which they both looked on as a picnic and great fun. But most of the time they were farmed out — sometimes with Hetty’s people; her father was a gardener on a big estate in Shropshire. It took a lot of planning, and it meant I did not see nearly as much of them as I would have liked. But beggars cannot be choosers, and as they both seemed, on the whole, to be happy and healthy, I tried not to make myself miserable about them.

  Then came the war, out of which so many people made fortunes: and although I did not come anywhere near that I am afraid the war, so far as we were concerned, was a blessing in disguise. It’s queer to think that if I had taken Dr. Remington’s advice, and perhaps got a diploma, it would have done me no good. I should have felt obliged to go into one of the war hospitals, like Alice, been worked off my feet and stranded high and dry in 1918, without even my practice to come back to. I sometimes wondered if I ought to offer to do some war work, but there was no conscription of women in the last war, and I felt it was my duty to the girls to take the first chance of making real money that had ever come my way. I should put in here that Alice’s husband had died very suddenly, the April before the war, and Alice went away (she was sent up to a military hospital in Yorkshire, where there was not the least chance of her keeping in touch with any of her patients), telling me I could have the use of her clinic, paying her whatever rent I could afford, and that I could help myself to any of her patients who were willing to come to me — on the understanding, of course, that she would take over again as soon as the war was over. I don’t think she would have done it if she could have found a trained locum who would pay her a percentage on the takings; but the few masseuses who had not joined up were already doing overtime; most of them were in the West End, and it was a long way out to Streatham Common, round about which most of Alice’s patients were situated.

  I had a good look through Alice’s case book after she went away, picking out the ones who were “worth while” and discarding the small fry. It sounds cold-blooded and unprofessional, but I was out for one thing only: to make money and to get a roof over my head. I discovered that Alice did a good deal of work that was practically non-profit-making, and I cut this out ruthlessly. When I was rich I would go in for charity. I would go to poor houses in back streets and rub children’s spines for them; I would give a girl who had won a scholarship for Holloway a free course to help her with the pain that came between her shoulders after hours of study; I’d show the little typist in the Council offices how to get rid of the pain in her hip.

  But until I had made Kathleen and Jo safe I would not look at anybody who could not afford to pay me a guinea each time. You see, I had found out how easily such money could be earned. Dr. Remington’s introduction had taken me into another world, and now was my chance to exploit it. Alice curled her lip when she heard about my case in Hertford Street. “If you once start with that class of work you’ll have your time filled up.” “Well, that suits me,” I told her. “I’d sooner save myself for the cases that are worth while,” she answered. I thought, That’s all very well, but I can’t afford to be idealistic. It was different for Alice: she had no one but herself to support, now Bob was gone.

  Dr. Remington was right about Mrs. Carpenter. There was nothing the matter with her at all, except that her metabolism was shocking — due to lac
k of exercise, overeating, and, particularly, overdrinking. The first time I was shown into her bedroom her greeting was typical. The room stank of spirits, perfume, and the powder she covered her body with. She had a mania for powder; I had to dredge her with it before I rubbed her, until she looked like some sort of a desiccated coconut bun. There was powder over everything: in the bedclothes, on the carpet, all over the dressing table, even in the cup of black coffee she was drinking when I was shown in.

  “Good morning. Dr. Remington says you don’t know a thing about massage; you’ve got a nerve to charge a guinea!”

  I burst out laughing. I never can stiffen up when people are rude for no reason. I paid her back in her own coin.

  “If I knew more you wouldn’t get me for a guinea!”

  Apparently that suited her. She fiddled and faddled about, wasting time, until I had to remind her it was getting late and I had another appointment. Then we set to work, and I soon had her yelping like a spaniel. Some people yelp because it hurts and others because they are enjoying it; Mrs. Carpenter belonged in the second class.

  It was a brute of a bed to work on, broad and low, with one of those spongy mattresses that give to every movement; I was aching in every muscle when I straightened up and told her that was all for the day.

  “All! But we’ve only had twenty minutes. You’re not going to have the cheek to charge me a guinea for twenty minutes.”

  “My guinea runs from the time I come into your house to when I walk out of it,” I told her. I saw this was one of the instances where I was going to have to put my foot down. She swore at me a bit, but it was the last and only time she questioned my fee. Sometimes she wouldn’t be massaged; she would keep me chatting and gossiping when I wished she would let me go, because I could have done a bit of shopping or run into the hairdresser’s for a set. But it meant a guinea whether I worked or not, and I got to look on it as money easily earned. It was nothing to her and a great deal to me. I decided to look for some more Mrs. Carpenters, and I knew that in wartime, with money rolling in the gutter, they would not be hard to find.