Men and Angels Page 8

  “Silly gel,” screamed a voice.

  The bath chair vanished round the bend below. Rae sat still, stupefied. Hugh and Alan were extricating themselves from the hedge opposite; the cart lay on its side near them.

  “Oh, golly, did she hurt you?” asked Hugh, hurrying over. “I forgot about you—I’m sorry. Can you get up?”

  “I’ll try,” said Rae in a dazed voice. “But before I get on to my feet—if I ever do—was that a bath chair I saw?”

  “An ’lectric chair,” explained Alan. “She’s got a car, the old piece of cheese, but she only uses it sometimes. All the time, mostly, she goes bowling about in this thing. The first time, she knocked over our cabbages—”

  “Caulis,” corrected Hugh. “Twelve cauliflowers we had in the cart, and she knocked ’em all over the road.”

  “Didn’t she stop?” asked Rae.

  “She can’t stop. How can she stop a thing like that in the middle of a hill? She gets in at the Castle at the top and she rolls down to the bottom, and if anything’s in between, then—”

  “Castle?” said Rae.

  “Yes—she’s the Duchess,” said Alan. “Didn’t you know?” He extended a hand. “Shall I pull you?”

  “Not yet,” said Rae faintly. “A Duchess in a bath chair wearing a polo topee knocked me down—is that it?”

  “ ’lectric chair. Has she hurt you?”

  Rae got to her feet and felt herself.

  “Two arms, two legs,” she counted. “So far, so good. I think—”

  “Your shoulder,” said Hugh. “Look—she’s hurt that.”

  Rae examined the damage. There was a slit at the top of her coat sleeve, and her shoulder ached a little.

  “That’s where the bath chair must have caught me,” she said.

  “ ’lectric chair.”

  “Don’t keep saying electric chair,” said Rae with a touch of irritation. That’s what they keep for murderers at Sing Sing or Dum Dum or Tom Tom or wherever the place is. That thing was a bath chair.”

  “You push a bath chair. This one’s got a battery.”

  “Well, that’s what hit me,” said Rae. “I do hope that my friends are going to believe that I was hit by a Duchess in a polo topee in a bath chair with a battery—but it does sound a bit too much.”

  “Nobody likes her,” said Alan as they resumed their journey. “Everybody thinks she’s a piece of cheese, but she doesn’t take any notice.”

  “Was she on her way to the market?”

  “Dunno. But she owns nearly all of Thorpe—the woods; and the Castle and the village and everything.”

  “That’s no reason why she should push me over,” said Rae. “She doesn’t own me. Is there any way I can get my own back on the old piece of cheese?”

  “What we’re doing,” said Alan, “is making a cart like this one, only stronger, so’s we can ride in it. Then we’re going to wait till she passes, and then we’ll push off and we’ll catch her up—we’ll be heavier, see? And then we’ll see who can do the pushing.”

  “I’d like to be present,” said Rae. “I’d like—oh!”

  “What’s the matter,” asked Alan anxiously. “Is your shoulder—”

  “No, it must be my head,” said Rae. “The battery must have just glanced off it. I—I think I’m seeing things.”

  “Things? What things?”

  “I thought I saw an angel,” said Rae slowly. “A little, teeny, darling angel with blue eyes and a head of tight platinum curls and a rosebud mouth and—oh, look! its there again.”

  Hugh and Alan looked at her in alarm, and then followed her pointing finger, their expressions changing swiftly to disgust.

  “Oh, Bi-an-KER,” said Hugh furiously. “I told you not to come.”

  The angel, three feet high and clad in blue dungarees, climbed purposefully into the cart.

  “And your shoe,” shouted Alan in exasperation. “Your shoe, Bi-an-KER. Where’ve you lost your shoe?”

  The angel, looking surprised, stuck both feet out in front of her.

  “There’th one,” she said, and shifted her gaze to the bare toes of the other foot. “Where’th the other?”

  “That’s what I’m asking, you silly little fathead,” said Alan furiously. “Which way did you come?”

  The angel waved a tiny hand north by north-west.

  “She came by the bridge,” said Hugh resignedly. “That means we’ll never find it.”

  Rae withdrew her eyes reluctantly from the enchanting vision lolling nonchalantly in the cart.

  “Some relation?” she enquired.

  “Sister,” said Hugh without pride. “Bianca.”

  “Gee-up, gee-up, gee-up,” shouted Bianca impatiently.

  “Gee-up.”

  “We’ll gee-up when we want to,” said Hugh. “You shut up.”

  The tiny rosebud of a mouth opened and a piercing scream issued from it. Having released this steam, Bianca gave a seraphic smile and lay back to await transport.

  “How old is she?” asked Rae in awe.

  “Five,” grunted Hugh, preparing to pull the cart homeward.

  “My puppy,” said Bianca, settling to the motion, “got a bone and—”

  “Pipe down,” said Alan.

  “My puppy—”

  “Pipe down.”

  Bianca subsided, and the party turned into a narrow lane. Hugh opened a gate into a field, and Rae, looking beyond, saw a thatched farmhouse nestling in a hollow. They entered a yard, and Hugh, abandoning the cart and its occupant, led Rae straight into an enormous, red-floored kitchen. A stout woman looked up from the old-fashioned range, and Hugh led his guest forward.

  “I say, Mart,” he said, “we’ve brought a girl home.”

  The answer came in a rich, pleasant voice with more than a hint of London.

  “At your time o’ life!” Mart gave Rae a friendly wink. “What’s your girl’s name?”

  “Rae—Rae, I’ve forgotten what,” said Hugh.

  “Mansfield,” supplied Rae. “I’m sorry to come in like this, but—”

  “You’ve gorn and torn your sleeve,” said Mart, brushing aside non-essentials. “Those boys been rough?”

  “Us? It was the Duchess.”

  “Oh—her. One of these days,” promised Mart, “I’m going ter bring down a nice fat London policeman—fellow about my size—and stand him bang in the middle of that hill, and let’s see the ole Duchess knock him down. He’d give her bath chair, I reckon.—You staying for a meal ducks?”

  “Well, if you and Mr. Selwyn don’t—”

  “Mr. Selwyn? Bless you, he don’t know who’s here and who’s where. You can stay and welcome.—Want a wash or anything? Hughie’ll show you. It’s a long walk.”

  “This way,” said Hugh. He led Rae into an outhouse and jerked his chin towards a sink.

  “That’s where you wash, if you want to,” he said. “The towel’s hanging up. And the other thing’s over there—”

  He waved airily at a distant shed. “Come back when you’re ready.”

  Rae looked round at the evidences of a cluttered but carefree existence, and felt that she understood the reluctance of the boys to return to the formalities of school life. Making her way back to the kitchen after a simple but bracing clean-up, she made a shy offer of help.

  “That’s nice of you, ducks,” said Mart. “Yes, you can lay yourself a place—the things are in that drawer there. We all eat together. And you can give that dog of yours a drink.”

  Rae performed these tasks, and Mart waved her to one of the hard kitchen chairs.

  “Jest sit yourself down away from this ’ot fire, she said. “If there’s anything you can do, I’ll let you know. Won’t be long before this lot’s cooked, and then I can dish up. Where’d you fall in with the boys?”

  Rae told her, and Mart nodded.

  “I know the Lodge,” she said. “I suppose the boys told you that the gardener comes courting?”

  “Yes.”

  “He�
��s past it, really,” said Mart. She gave the fire a poke and blew out her cheeks. “Coo—it’s hot. Fire in June don’t seem right, really. But we’ve got to have hot water to get the dirt off them boys every night, and this thing’s all I’ve got to cook on. Yes, he’s past it, really, is the old chap, but he’s only got that daughter of his, and I suppose he gets a bit lonely.”

  Rae studied the stout figure and liked what she saw. Mart was about fifty—short and extremely fat, but with a tight, trim look and an air of tirelessness. Her hair was grey, parted in the middle, and pinned in two plaits across her head; her eyes were brown and twinkling. Rae thought she had the wholesome air of the servants she had seen in pictures by Dutch artists. She found the brown eyes on her, and smiled.

  “Bit lonely at the Lodge, won’t it be, if you’re there by yourself?”

  “It’s quiet,” admitted Rae. “Before I met the boys to-day, I was feeling a bit—well, a little depressed.”

  “Why’d you come?” enquired Mart with simple and inoffensive directness. “What’s become of Miss Ashton—isn’t she home?”

  “No. She’s working quite near, though, and comes for week-ends.”

  “There’s a brother come home from one of those places —Africa, or something.”

  In spite of herself, Rae felt her colour rising.

  “Yes—Mr. Ashton’s home,” she said. “I mean, he’s in England, but he isn’t here.”

  “Well, he oughter be, if you’re here, ducks,” said Mart bluntly. “You don’t leave a pretty girl like you with three old fogies like those up at the Lodge, not if you have any sense. Is ’e coming at all?”

  “No,” said Rae.

  “Well, I shouldn’t give up hope, if I was you. I know what men are—I wasn’t married to Joe Harris for ten years for nothing. I suppose ’e said he was coming, and then left you to it?”

  Rae tried hard to be offended, but there was a simple, motherly air about Mart which she found disarming. She gave a little smile of negation.

  “I hardly know Mr. Ashton,” she said gently. “Miss Ashton and I have been great friends for a long time—we were at school together.”

  She s a young Tartar, she is. Comes here for eggs and milk when they’re short.—If you’ll come and stir this, ducks, I can get on with something else.”

  Rae stirred the pleasant-smelling custard and poured it into a jug.

  “Now we shan’t be long,” said Mart.

  “Should I go out and meet Mr. Selwyn? He might think it odd if he comes in and finds me installed.”

  “He won’t,” promised Mart. “He goes about in a kind of ’appy dream, does Mr. Selwyn. Happiest man in England, he can’t believe he’s really here, half the time—it’s like a luv’ly dream, only ’e don’t have to wake up.”

  “The boys told me he liked the farm.”

  “Like it? He thinks it’s Heaven, and so it is, compared with what he’s had before. All those years shut up in an office—a man like ’im, fond of the open. And then to come to this. Mind you, he’ll never be a farmer—not by a long chalk. He knows as much about farming as Bianca does, but there’s men on the job, thank Gawd, that knows what they’re doing.—He dresses for the part, bless ’im—goes round wearing great thick boots and a Farmer Giles hat, but he can’t dress up his pale little face and his specs—he looks like a prerfesser who’s got into the wrong suit.”

  “Did you come here with him?”

  “Me? No—Reeny and I came when he’d been here a month or two. Nearly fell back when I saw him—I was expecting a burly farmer and—well, you’ll see what I mean when he comes in. When I got over my surprise, I said to myself, ‘Mart,’ I said, ‘Mart ole girl, this place is the one. This is the job you’ve looked for for seven years. This is a permanent,’ I said—and it was. We shan’t leave here, Reeny and I, till Mr. Selwyn dies—or till we do.”

  “Do you like it? ” asked Rae shyly.

  Mart poured a rich, brown gravy into a sauce-boat and turned to face her questioner. Her round, red face was serious; one strong arm, upraised, rested on the high mantelpiece.

  “Yes, I like it, ducks,” she said slowly. “I like it. I dunno whether you say you like something that’s a shelter or a home or a—a sort of harbour. It’s all those. I’d been trying to find a job for years—people would have been glad to have me, but they couldn’t get round Reeny. She’s got a little kink—but so’s everybody, when you come to think of it. I’ve got plenty of kinks—so’ve you, I’ll bet. I know people they call sane who act a lot queerer than Reeny.”

  There was a pause, and Rae found herself putting a halting question.

  “Is Reeny—is she—”

  “She’s all right,” said Mart. “And she’s a fine worker— quick and neat, and keeps the house a treat. But she’s been unlucky, that’s all. She waited fifteen years for a chap—saved for ’im, worked for ’im . . . and then he upped and married somebody else. It happens to a lot of us, but most of us ’ave a good cry and look out for the next. But Reeny couldn’t do that, pore girl, and I’ve looked after her ever since. We’re cousins, but you’d never know it—she’s real ladylike, is Reeny. Her family went up in the world, and mine stayed just where they was. Reeny never has to watch her aitches, like me.”

  “But is she—”

  “She’s as right as rain,” said Mart, “till something reminds her. She goes about, ’appy and busy as a bird, till mealtimes, and then she gets the bell in her hand and rings it, and that sets ’er off.”

  “Why a—a bell?”

  “She was a school-teacher. For nearly twenty years. That’s enough to send anyone off their heads, without bein’ crossed in love. And when Reeny rings the bell, it takes her back, see? She’s back at school.”

  “But then—why let her ring it?”

  “I wanted to stop ’er, but Mr. Selwyn said No. ‘Let ’er ring it, he said, and it’ll get something out of her system.’ And there must be something in that, ’cos Reeny’s been as right as rain since we came, and as ’appy as can be. It works out a treat; Mr. Selwyn leaves it all to us—the house, the work, the cooking, the boys and Bianca. We get the boys off to school and buy their clothes for ’em and pack for ’em and send ’em off and pay their school bills. And he walks about ’is farm with that look of bliss on ’is face—makes me warm up every time I look at ’im. I often wonder whether I should’ve saddled ’im with three kids, but look how happy they are, bless ’em.”

  Rae stared.

  “S-saddled him with—”

  “Yes, I did. Put the chairs round, ducks, will you? I’m going to dish up.”

  Rae put a hand on a chair, but did not move, and Mart saw the interest in her face. “Go on—round they go, dearie.”

  “But how did you—”

  “I’m just telling you. Just before I come ’ere, I went after a job in Croydon. A Mrs. Moore. I saw at once it wouldn’t do—small house, no room for Reeny. But I liked Mrs. Moore, and I liked her kids. When I got settled here, I couldn’t get ’er out of my head. Here’s him, I said to myself, here’s him all alone on this spanking place with nobody to spend all ’is money on, and there’s her all alone with those three kids in that box of a house. So I told him about her, and what a lonely widow she was—I didn’t bring in the kids, ’cos it might ’ave made him think twice. I asked her to come down for a day and see ’ow nicely I’d got settled with Reeny, and soon she came down again with the kids—and then again and again and then ’e married her. I often think ’e did it all in that dream of his, but they were happy. It didn’t last long for ’er, pore thing, but when she died, she was glad to know the kids were safe. I often think—”

  Mart broke off to shout loudly at three dogs—“Now then, you lot, you ’op it. Go on—’op off. We don’t want you round at mealtimes. Out, Nelson! Go on, Blake, get out!”

  “What’s the other one?” asked Rae.

  “Drake. Sailors, an’ they behave like it. Go out and see where those boys are, ducks, will you?”
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br />   Rae went outside and saw the boys, closely followed by Bianca, coming towards the house. Some distance behind them came a small, thin man, and Rae had no difficulty in identifying him. She looked incredulously at the workmanlike clothes, the pale, rather weak face, the pince-nez balanced precariously…

  She went to meet him, and held out a hand.

  “How do you do,” she said. “My name’s Rae Mansfield and I—the boys very kindly—”

  “Goood, goood,” cooed Mr. Selwyn, looking at her with a kind, nervous smile.

  “And Mart has very kindly—”

  “Goood, goood.”

  “It’s most awfully kind of you to—”

  “Goood, goood,” purred Mr. Selwyn, rubbing his hands. “Ah—lunch!”

  Rae turned and saw a thin, tall woman at the door of the kitchen. She wore a clean white overall, and her hair was taken into a neat bun at the top of her head. Her face was serene, and she smiled pleasantly at her employer.

  “Time to eat, Mr. Selwyn.”

  “Goood, Reeny, goood.”

  Reeny reached above her and took a large bell from a hook. She rang it vigorously for several moments, and the serene expression gradually gave way to one of the utmost severity. In a voice utterly unlike the one which she had used a moment ago, she rasped a command.

  “All in line, all in line,” she shouted. “Sharp, now—line up.”

  Hugh and Alan took their places near the kitchen door. Bianca, sucking a straw, strolled to her place beside them.

  Mr. Selwyn, beckoning Rae to follow, stood in line beside them.

  “Stand straight, now,” shrieked Reeny. “Heads up, chins up, shoulders back, hands straight to the side. You there—Roddy—straight.”

  Alan straightened.

  “Doris, what’re you eating? Take it out at once.”

  Bianca, with the utmost calm, removed the straw. The martinet moved down the line and stopped before Rae.

  “You a new girl?”

  “Y-yes.”

  “You’re too tall—move into place behind that boy there.”

  Rae moved.

  “Attention, mark time, left right, left right, left right, left right, left turn.”

  The family turned.

  “Left right, all together, left right, left right, now inside, quick march.”