Pilgrim’s Rest

chapter 5

Judy had come to Pilgrim’s Rest in the pouring rain. It is not the best way to arrive, or to see a house for the first time. The old hired car which had met them at Ledlington stopped halfway down the village street. It was about the wettest street she had ever seen, because not only were there gallons of water falling on it from the low grey sky, but quite a sizable little stream ran down the left-hand side in a paved channel bridged at intervals to give access to the houses which lay beyond, each with its own front garden and paved or gravelled path.

The car stopped on the right, and she saw the rain running in cascades over what looked like a conservatory. When the old driver opened the door of the car she discovered that it was a glazed passage about fifteen feet long leading from the street to the house. Of the house itself she had only a vague impression. For one thing, there was a high brick wall on either side of the entrance. It looked big and old-fashioned, and there were a lot of windows. She wondered if she would have to clean them.

And then the door of the glass passage was opening, and she jumped Penny across the narrow wet pavement on to old, dry cocoanut matting. The passage was paved with small red and black tiles, with the cocoanut matting running down the middle. A row of staging on either side supported some sparse and disagreeable plants. She was to discover that they were a source of controversy between Miss Columba and her sister-Miss Netta insisting that they should be retained because they had always had plants there, and Miss Collie asseverating that you couldn’t expect any self-respecting plant to put up with the draught in that horrible passage, and that if Miss Netta wanted to keep them there she could look after them herself. At the time, Judy was taken up with paying the driver, taking charge of the hand-luggage inseparable from travelling with a child, and controlling Penny, who was thrilled to the core.

It was the butler who had opened the door, an elderly man with a disapproving face. Whether it was always like that, or whether he thought it as well that Judy should know straight away how he and Mrs. Robbins felt about a young lady housemaid with a child of four, she had no means of knowing. There was, however, no sign of softening when Penny put out a small polite hand and said, “How do you do?” in her very best social manner.

They came into a large square hall with rooms opening off it on either side and a staircase going up in the background. The house felt big and cold though it wasn’t really a cold day. When she sorted out her impressions afterwards, that is what they amounted to-rain, and a big, cold house, and Robbins’ unwelcoming face.

The sorting out took place, as it generally does, at bedtime. She and Penny had a nice room, only one floor up, which was a great relief to her mind, because she would have hated to leave Penny all by herself at the top of the house. Their room was quite near the stairs, and farther along there was the invalid cousin, and his nurse, and a bathroom. She and Penny didn’t use it. They went through a door and half way down a crooked stair, and when you got there, the floor was all uneven and the roof very low, and the bath was enormous, with a wide mahogany surround. Penny found it all very thrilling.

But their room was quite modern, with twin beds enamelled white, which was a surprise, because the house rather suggested gloomy four-posters. Judy lay on a rather hard mattress and told herself that it wasn’t too bad at all; that everything would feel better when the rain had stopped and the sun came out; that it was idiotic to suppose it wouldn’t come out, because it always did in the end; and doubly, trebly idiotic, to let anything Frank Abbott said make the slightest difference to her feelings about Pilgrim’s Rest.

She began to think about the people there. Miss Columba coming into the hall to meet them. Rather a shock after only seeing her in town, large and quite normally covered up in a fur coat and a felt hat. In sprawling birdseye tweeds she looked immense, with an orange sweater up to her double chin and thick curly grey hair cut almost as short as a man’s.

Perfectly enormous hands and feet, and even less to say for herself than at their previous meeting. But quite nice and kind-the sort of kindness that expects to be taken for granted, and takes you for granted too. Very difficult to connect her as a sister with Miss Janetta, sitting in the sofa corner working at a tambour frame with a small frail white hand which looked as if it had never in its life done anything more practical than embroidery. The one thing that she and Miss Collie had in common was the curl in their hair, but Miss Netta’s was silver-white where Miss Collie’s was iron-grey, and she wore it in the most elaborate rolls, and curls, and twirls. And not one of them looking as if it could get out of place if it tried. Judy had wondered how long they took to do, and could make an approximate guess when she was informed that Miss Netta’s room could never be done till twelve o’clock, as she breakfasted in bed, and did not leave it until then-“I’m a sad invalid. I’m afraid I give a great deal of trouble.”

Judy thought she didn’t look in the least ill, with those blue eyes and pink cheeks, but of course you never could tell. Some of the colour was make-up, and very well done. She suspected that her personal appearance was one of Miss Netta’s preoccupations, the other two being her embroidery and her health.

Roger Pilgrim-she had sat through a meal with him but they hadn’t exchanged a word except the bare conventional “How do you do?” If Miss Janetta didn’t look ill, Roger certainly did. And nervous. His hand shook when he lifted his glass, his eyes looked here and there, he jumped when a door banged. Having come in late for the meal, he disappeared as soon as it was over, with a hasty “I’ll go and have a cigarette with Jerome.” When she came to think of it Judy couldn’t remember that he had spoken at all between his “How do you do?” to her and this excuse to get out of the room.

The invalid cousin’s name naturally brought Miss Day into her mind. Lona-that’s what they all called her-the nurse who looked after Captain Pilgrim and Miss Netta. She didn’t dress like a nurse, because Captain Pilgrim hated things that rustled and Miss Netta found the uniform inartistic. So there was Miss Day with a skirt of russet tweed and a soft yellow jumper. Not very young, but she had a good figure, and the jumper showed it off. Not goodlooking exactly-a peaked, pale face, greenish hazel eyes, and a lot of chestnut hair- rather good hair. There was some likeness-something odd and elusive-Judy couldn’t place it. It stayed in her mind in the irritating niggling way that sort of thing does. But she was quite sure she had never seen Lona Day before-she would have remembered her if she had. Something warm and interested in her manner. She seemed really to care about Penny, and about Nora and John. It wasn’t Judy who mentioned them, it was Miss Janetta. Lona Day hadn’t said a word, but Judy felt as if she cared. She had talked very nicely about Captain Pilgrim.

“I’m afraid his room is going to be rather tiresome for you. You will have to do it whilst he is in the bathroom, but that will give you quite half an hour, because he shaves there as well as having his bath. He wouldn’t shave for a long time because of the scar, but I am so glad he has begun now. He’s so sensitive about the disfigurement, and it’s so bad for him, poor fellow.”

“Doesn’t he come down at all?”

“Oh, yes, he does as a rule-on his good days. But it really is an ordeal for him to meet a stranger, and he’s dreadfully afraid of frightening your little Penny. What a perfectly lovely child she is. I don’t wonder you feel you can’t part with her. And so good!”

The last of all this was the best. Penny was being the authentic angel child, and she had gone down in the most miraculous way. It was too good to last, but just as well to begin with a buttered side. For this evening at least, Penny had done all the things which even the Victorian child was supposed to do-had said “Yes, please,” and “No, thank you,” had dropped no crumb on the floor, spilled no drip on the table, and had reserved for the privacy of the bath an enthusiastic appreciation of Miss Columba. “Wouldn’t she make a lovely big yelephant!” With a sleepy giggle Judy drifted out of waking thought.