A Little Treachery

21

The little boy descending from the taxi hung his head and leaned it slightly to one side; obviously, he was not a happy child at that moment. Catherine was unreasonably surprised at his appearance. He was largely built and rather dark-complexioned, and she had expected him to be fair and girlish. The worried-looking young woman, getting out after him, did not immediately see Catherine, who therefore had leisure to observe them both. She stood at a little distance while Olive Hungerford dealt with the taxi-man. The young woman was wearing a white pirate-cap, which made her look very youthful, and had a ribbon in her button-hole, as had been arranged between them, since she and Catherine had never met; while Catherine had just decked herself with its counterpart.

Catherine had been over-anxious, and it was solely her own fault that she had had almost an hour’s wait for the taxi at Waterloo, where she had been asked to take over her little charge. Such vigils are sobering.

Olive came towards her, smiling, with her hand on the child’s shoulder, trying to disguise the fact that she was having to push him forward. Simon’s lower lip was well thrust out.

‘He will try to be a good boy with you, I am sure,’ she said, but somewhat plaintively, without conviction, while she straightened his beret and dusted the front of his coat with an unexpectedly capable-looking hand. Then Catherine thought she distinguished a curious expression passing over the young woman’s face as she gazed down at him, a look of repulsion, faint but unmistakable. ‘I’m afraid there’s this little case – his luggage has arrived, I suppose? Simon can quite well carry the case himself.’ She spoke with nervous severity. She seemed hardly to know what to say, but in a private voice, with the child standing apart, hurriedly gave Catherine a little information about his constitution and requirements. Most of this had already been gone over carefully between them by letter. Catherine thought her a nice-looking girl, mildly appealing, and felt sorry for her in some unformulated way. There was nothing at all metallic about her, as one had half expected; her air was pure and thoughtful, and one could not feel as if any troublesomeness in the child could be her fault.

Mrs Hungerford kissed the little boy and shook hands again with Catherine, and then, as if feeling much relieved, began smiling more naturally and looked kindly at the other woman; and appearing to want to add something sympathetic and yet not to touch on tragedy too long past, she exclaimed, ‘My husband told me about your little cottage, and how very pleased you were with it! I’m so glad you at least have that comfort. . . . But I must apologize for having brought you all this way. I’d have brought him right over myself and not troubled you – only I can’t leave Baby too long!’ Then, as she spoke of her baby, her pretty, shallow eyes filled with a look of restless, irrepressible happiness.

Her mission was accomplished, and she seemed to have cast off a load. Her delight was not to be hidden. She seemed to have a bird-like tendency to spread her wings and be gone; and Catherine, speaking a few final words, concluding the meeting, had a sense of releasing her. The young woman went off with a joyous rush, and did not even look round to smile or wave to them.

Catherine, a timid and incompetent traveller, then had too much to do in selecting the right platform in something of a hurry to take much notice of the child or to do more than give him a few words of direction. Relieved to find herself at last seated in the right train, she said quite gaily, with a spontaneity she could not usually compass with strangers, ‘Well, Simon, I do hope you’ll enjoy staying with us. We’re ever so pleased to have you, you know.’ Simon swung his feet and kept his eyes upon them. Catherine supposed he was shy, too shy to speak. At that, her own shyness gripped her fast; she thought humbly she knew what was wrong – her own appearance.

‘I have a pretty friend staying with me called Emmy – you’ll like her, she’s fun. She’ll make you laugh.’ Still he said nothing. Looking apprehensively at the child’s face, she fancied that it was self-possessed, hostile. No, he was not shy. He had simply made up his mind that he would not talk to her. He could hardly keep that up for long, she imagined, but for the moment he was in proud possession of himself. He pulled out a coloured picture-sheet, unfolded it and studied it with intent air, in imitation of a man with his daily paper. All the same, she thought that those unusually wide-apart eyes, not very large but bright as dark glass, had given her one or two glances which were entirely conscious. He was very well aware of her, she believed, and aware, possibly, of the effect he was making. But his expression did not change at all, it was fixed as an animal’s.

The little boy had red, frizzy hair, cut very short. (And Catherine recalled in some surprise her instruction that it was to be kept thus. It was ‘rather unmanageable hair’, it easily looked untidy.) He had neither the florid nor the milky complexion of the red-haired, however; he was sallow. His soft, thick, flexible mouth, which had not yet any set expression, had a slight natural pout. Altogether, without being pretty or handsome, he was a striking little person. He turned to the window and leaned both elbows on the arm. Then she, from the opposite corner, was astonished and disturbed to see that the frizzy hair, somewhat flattened yet aquiline nose and pouting mouth were all suggestive of the most aristocratic of the negroid profiles.

So, to test how much part her imagination had in it, she kept her eyes turned on the flying view for some minutes, and on looking again thought that perhaps it was not so remarkable as it had first appeared. Now it was the set, apathetic expression of her little charge which engaged her worried attention; and she tried to put herself in the place of this fine-grained little creature, and to imagine that those powerless hands belonged to herself, and that, all helpless and tender, she was being sent away against her will, with perhaps some dark and mystified sense of injustice burning in her heart.

But something went wrong. She found herself looking at him curiously, with an unwilling interest, almost hostile, certainly without sympathy. She could not help feeling that he was a disagreeable child. Still, she racked her brains for something reassuring to say; till remembering how certain occasions of her youth, anticipated with delight, had been ruined for her by the presence of a strange, informative grown-up, when all her desire had been to look and dream, she gave up thankfully.

She opened her book and between reading and gazing out of the window, and an occasional word to her companion, the greater part of the hour and a half’s journey was accomplished. She simply made her remarks into the air in a calm tone, never giving them the form of questions, without appearing to notice there was no response. But each time her heart throbbed in its discomfiture, pressed by an obscure feeling. ‘Very well – what do I care?’ – it was near to that.

The journey was, in any case, a bitter one to her because it held memories of the joyful and excited feelings with which she and Clem had first made it.

At last there came into view the silver spire and the elms clotted with nests, standing against the declining light. As they left the station, she walked slowly, carrying the case herself because she feared it was too heavy for him, and pointed out to the child various details of the scene which she thought might have interest in his eyes. The little boy went along scraping his feet sullenly. ‘It isn’t much further,’ she said, to encourage him. He did not answer and had not once smiled. In the faintly rufous light, some of the trees still had a reddish tinge, showing buds or catkins, but many had already broken into lacy leafage.

Emmy flung open the door, and at once, making a wrathful face, seized the case out of Catherine’s hand. ‘Hanging you all over with the kid’s luggage! Just what I should have expected of you know whom!’ She inquired how things had gone. But Emmy herself had a tale to tell.

‘Well, I’ve been getting friendly with a neighbour of yours this afternoon – can’t call her a friend of yours – but I don’t quite know what to make of the end of the story. Yes, I’ve quite a lot to tell you – but get your things off first. You must have had a hell of a wait at Waterloo – there, didn’t I say so? Well, what’s she like, for the love of heaven? Oh, yes, all right, then – tell me later. (Hullo, Buddy!) So you did get the fast train down – the one I came on, wasn’t it? Lord, don’t I remember getting all neurotic and thinking, “Suppose she’s a dragon?” Fall to, then, chaps – tea’s all ready – a lovely tea!’ Emmy rolled her eyes, somewhat absently, at the little boy. But a child was no novelty, she seemed a little preoccupied, she was full of her afternoon’s adventure, which, she asserted, had ended with ‘a bit of a mystery. Yes, well – as soon as you’ve got your things off. “Hullo, Grumpy,” I said. You been told not to answer back? Well, isn’t that a treat? Come on, smile,’ she whispered, pinching the small face. Then, struck at last by that lack of response which had already caught Catherine’s worried attention, she pushed him into the bathroom and when the door was shut pronounced him a lively kid.

Catherine felt half amused, still half dismayed. She drew Emmy down to the kitchen and there gravely recounted his odd behaviour. Emmy laughed. ‘Oh, he won’t keep that up,’ she said.

‘Isn’t it queer that he should have kept it up all the way down in the train? Of course I have no knack with him.’

Emmy was clearly astonished that anyone should take a small boy’s fit of the sulks seriously.

‘Well, I dare say he is a nasty little piece of work – what can you expect? He’s got a funny little mug, by the way! Does he remind you of his dear pop at all?’

‘Oh, no – Mr Hungerford’s fair. Or perhaps I should say sandy, a light auburn.’

‘I see. Foxy.’

Catherine laughed at her.

‘I wonder you can bear the sight of the kid – I wonder you don’t hate him.’

‘Oh, no! Good gracious, what an idea!’ But she felt at once that she had taken too serious a tone.

Here Emmy began to sing, in a hoarse, dramatic whisper, with the same funny intensity as before, ‘He shall die . . . he shall die!’ Catherine checked her quite sharply, calling back from the stairs where she had gone to hang her coat. Then she felt a stroke of alarm lest she should have given offence by her unreasonable squeamishness, and, returning, she began warmly praising Emmy’s tea-table. ‘What a wonderful tea, Emmy! How lovely it is to find it all ready when one comes in!’ And she looked at the girl with feelings of gratitude excessive for this trifling occasion, as she realized. All the same, Emmy’s domestic style secretly amused her, for the young woman was addicted to breakfast cups at all hours and inclined to put jam-pots and saucepans on the table. Emmy thought she considered the song vulgar and cheerfully promised to sing it no more. Meanwhile, she hastened to turn up the gas under the kettle.

‘I did wish you were with me,’ she began.

But at this point lagging feet were heard in the room above.

‘Where am I to be?’ called Simon, in an angry, demanding voice.

Emmy held up her finger and took upon herself to negotiate from the foot of the stairs. ‘You can “be” where you like – up there or down here. We don’t care. But we’ve got a nice tea, down here. But do as you please – Simple Simon.’

‘My name isn’t that at all – it’s Simon Hungerford,’ they heard the child say. Now his voice sounded proud but tearful.

‘Ah, be your age. Come and have tea, if you like.’

‘No, I shall sit here.’ ‘Very well, do as you please. More for us!’ ‘Is there toast?’ ‘Can be, if you want it.’ ‘Jam?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Cake – with sugar on it?’ ‘It’s your cake. It says so.’ ‘How?’ ‘Come and see.’ Then they heard, in a very weakened tone, ‘No, I shall sit here.’ ‘Very well. I’m glad. More for us.’

‘What is he doing?’ asked Catherine anxiously.

‘Squatting at the top of the stairs. Oh, let him stew in his own juice, that’s best. I’ll make the tea.’ She was impatient to begin her story.

But Catherine exclaimed nervously, ‘Oh, no, let’s wait a little and see if he will come down. Don’t make the tea for a few minutes – do you mind, Emmy? While we’re waiting, you can tell me your tale.’

Then Emmy’s narrative, embellished in her usual style, was retailed for Catherine so vividly that, relaxing in the warmth of the fireside and the comfort of the girl’s presence, she lost temporarily her uneasy sense of her little guest on the stairs.