A Mixture of Frailties tst-3 Read online

  She had not lost heart, in spite of her illness. She had been elated at the thought of travelling First Class, and she did not know that this had been the cause of hot debate among the Bridgetower Trustees. Miss Pottinger and the Dean had thought Tourist Class much more suitable, but Solly had once more been indiscreet in talking to the newspaper, and the Bellman had announced its intention of providing Monica with a large bouquet of flowers, with which she was to be photographed, at the dock. It had been considered wrong that a protégée of the late Louisa Hansen Bridgetower should be photographed in anything less than First Class accommodation, and so, with much grumbling from Mr Snelgrove, that was what had been provided. The Bellman’s flowers, firmly held in a cage which the ship provided for them, rustled and waved in a corner of her cabin.

  Getting away had been a strain. None of the Galls were travellers, and the belief had grown up among them, unspoken yet plainly understood, that once Monica had gone they need never expect to look upon her face again. People did travel about the world, it was true, and return to their families even after many years of absence, but the Galls could not believe that this would be so with one of their own. The sea voyage would almost certainly end in shipwreck; the more Mrs Gall thought of it, the surer she became. True, she did not say this to Monica in so many words, but she had a way of looking at her daughter, and melting into silent tears, which made speech unnecessary.

  Mr Gall’s solicitude expressed itself differently. Although he had been apparently indifferent to Monica’s fate since her childhood, he now took great pains to find out what kind of toothpaste she liked, and what her preference was in cold cream, and bought her large stores of these things to take away. He was apparently convinced that the ordinary necessities of life could not be bought in England, and he repeatedly made her promise that, when these things were exhausted, she would let him know, so that he could send more. He seemed to be provisioning her for a voyage to the Isle of the Dead.

  Monica had borne herself bravely through the partings, and had pooh-poohed the notion that there was any danger at sea, but during the days of her illness she had been troubled by a duality of mind. Certainly it had seemed to her that no vessel built with human hands could do what the Duchess of Richmond was doing and stay afloat. She had prayed, but the Thirteener faith had not armed her against such misery as this; she had tried to believe the ship’s doctor, when he had assured her that nobody ever died of it (ha ha), and that her best plan was to stop thinking about herself and get up on deck; she had submitted to the shameful ordeal of a soapy-water enema given by Stewardess Glebe, who insisted that this treatment was sovran for sea-sickness; she had, in the worst of her trouble, fallen into a sleep which was more like a swoon, and troubled by horrible dreams. But, although one half of her mind told her that she was about to die, the other half had continued to dwell on hopeful visions of what she would do when, at last, the ship reached port. Refreshed by the apple and the ginger ale, she gave herself up to such speculation now.

  England was sure to be fun. She had never thought much about that country, or made any special study of anything connected with it, but when she knew she was going there everything she had ever heard about England—and quite a few things she had never been conscious of hearing—collected and formed a pattern in her mind and she became, so far as her circle was concerned, an authority on the subject. England would be very quaint, and the people—though not so go-ahead and modern as the Canadians—would be exceedingly polite, honest and quaint as well. The Cockneys would be especially quaint, because they were so quick-witted, and so full of independence and courage. Cockneys might be expected to wear suits with hundreds of pearl buttons on them, on Sundays, just as they did in the photographs sent out by the British travel agencies; there would be splendidly uniformed soldiers, as seen in whisky advertisements; people in official positions were very likely to wear little wigs; there would be innumerable quaint customs—beating the boundaries, flinging the pancake, chewing the gammon, and the like, as described by the British Information Service; children might be expected to talk like grown-ups; it would rain most of the time, and this would be borne with immense good-humour; coffee would be awful but tea would be drunk in bucketsful; and there would be a lot of culture and gracious living and characteristic English understatement in evidence everywhere.

  This was the country which was to transform her. She was determined that in most things she would be transformed. The simple clerk at the Glue Works (for she saw, more clearly every day, how simple she had been) would, after experiences which would deepen and ripen her emotional nature, change into the internationally-known diva. She would never forget her family, of course, and she would certainly never be a loose-liver, as some internationally-known divas had so reprehensibly been, but she would no longer be bound by the chains of the Thirteeners or the social habits of Salterton. Monica Gall, the internationally-known diva.

  The name was not quite right. Indeed, the more often she repeated it, the less appropriate it sounded. Gall, in particular, would not do. An Irish name, Aunt Ellen had explained. Would it be better changed to Gallo, perhaps? Monique Gallo? Distinguished in appearance, with a spiritual beauty which seemed to shine from within, elegant yet simple in manner, living solely for her art and yet a familiar figure in the best society in Europe, Monique Gallo took shape in her mind. Monique Gallo, robed as Norma, acknowledging the applause of a vast audience before the curtains of a great opera house; Monique Gallo, in a black velvet gown relieved only by a few fine diamonds, graciously bowing at the end of a recital, while her accompanist wiped away his tears of pure artistic joy; Monique Gallo being drawn in torchlit triumph through the streets of Prague by a crowd of enthusiastic students, who had taken the horses out of her carriage… Why horses; why a carriage? Oh, probably a temporary gasoline shortage… Monique Gallo, who sang every kind of music with unmatchable understanding, concluding her recital with some simple, lovely ballad which left not a dry eye in the house. Monique Gallo telling stricken young men (not a bit like foremen at a Glue Works) that she must live for her art alone—an attitude which, while it broke their hearts, compelled them to love her all the more.

  The apple and the ginger ale had been gone for perhaps half an hour before the picture began to darken. Not Monique Gallo now, but plain Monica Gall was musing on the plain words of Humphrey Cobbler when last she had seen him—”chances are about a hundred to one that your voice is any better than scores of others; only work will tell the tale; this Bridgetower thing is really pretty much a fluke.” Well, it was a chance. She could always go back home and get a job.

  The Duchess of Richmond climbed higher peaks, shivered more terribly, plunged in corkscrew fashion to even more abysmal depths. Monica turned very cold, broke into an icy sweat, and was noisily, searchingly sick into the rattling container… And again… And (Oh God, have mercy!) again.

  2

  “Miss Gall, from Canada? I’m from Jodrell and Stanhope. Here’s my card—Frederick Boykin. I’ll see to your luggage. Hope you had a pleasant voyage? Well, yes, I suppose it’s bound to be a bit rough this time of year. Yes, it is a little foggy, but that’s common in London, you know. Oh dear no, this isn’t a real London fog; just a bit of a haze. Taxi! That’s right, three cases and a trunk. Well, you can put two of the cases on the roof, can’t you? You get inside Miss Gall, and I’ll see to this… There; that’s that. They hate trunks. Can’t think why; they charge enough for ‘em. Now, my instructions are to take you to Marylebone Road—Three Arts Club—ladies’ club, very respectable, and you’ll see Mr Andrews tomorrow. Pity you can’t see more out of the window. I suppose you saw a good deal of England coming down on the boat-train? Raining all the way? But you expected that, you say? Well I suppose it does seem queer to you, coming from all your snow, and so forth… The smell? I can’t really say that I’d noticed any smell. Bit smoky, perhaps, but that’s because of the haze—keeps the smoke down… Here we are; you go right ahead, I’ll attend to eve
rything. They’re expecting you.”

  Thus, within a quarter of an hour of her arrival in London, Monica found herself in a very small room, with nothing whatever to do. She had liked Mr Boykin, who was stout without being fat, and cheerful in what she supposed was the traditional Cockney way, and knew what he was doing. She had not so much liked the secretary of the Club, who was a very competent lady with a brand of genteel, impersonal hospitality which was new to Monica, and chilling. And what was she to do now?

  She would read her book. Before leaving Canada she had laid in intellectual provision—in the form of War and Peace, in a single large, heavy volume, complete with maps of Napoleon’s Russian campaign, and an informative introduction by a celebrated critic. Under normal circumstances she would never have considered tackling such a cultural monster, but it seemed appropriate to the new life she was going to live. Aunt Ellen had advised it, for her dead fiancé had often spoken of War and Peace as the greatest of all novels. To read it would undoubtedly result in permanent mental enrichment. Seasickness had come between Monica and Tolstoy on the voyage, and she had read, in all, four confusing pages. She would get down to serious work on it now.

  Many travellers have discovered that a book which seems strikingly appropriate in one country is insupportably tedious in another; the Lost Property offices of the world’s airports are heavily stocked with volumes which have not travelled well. In less than ten minutes Monica had decided that Anna Pavlovna Sherer’s party was not precisely what she needed at the moment (though unquestionably cultural); she was in the greatest city in the world, and she did not want to waste time sitting in a little room, with a bad light and a funny smell, reading about people who did not seem certain what their own names were. She would go for a walk.

  The genteel secretary caught her in the hall, and cautioned her not to go far, not to get herself lost, and to appeal to a policeman if she did so. This was dampening to Monica’s spirits, as was also the smell of Marylebone Road, which was just like that of her bedroom, only more intense and wet.

  It was a sour, heavy smell; a wet smell, of course, in which the smoke of soft coal played a large part. But it was not a constant smell. Sometimes the soft coal was so powerful that Monica choked a little; and then, in a few yards, it would have changed to a smell like damp mattresses; once, Monica was reminded of the time when a wool warehouse had burned down in Salterton. It was not an actively unpleasant smell; indeed, it had a caressing friendliness about it—almost a familiarity, as though she had known this smell at some earlier time in her life, and were encountering it again. But in spite of this delusive familiarity the smell was the queerest thing Monica met in the Marylebone Road, which seemed to her, in other respects, not greatly unlike Toronto.

  Baker Street. Had she, at some time, heard something about Baker Street? Nothing came to mind, and yet there seemed to be some familiarity in the address. The street names were pleasant; Nottingham, Devonshire, Harley—wasn’t there something about Harley Street? It was odd; being in London was like being in a dream, or in a life you had lived before, in which things seemed to have meaning but wouldn’t be pinned down.

  But she had been warned not to go too far, and the haze seemed to be increasing as the light failed. She found her way back to the Club without difficulty, listening as she walked to the unfamiliar voices—some of them very hoarse and almost incomprehensible. The secretary shot a meaningless, professional smile at her as she passed the office door.

  The smell inside the Club had deepened, and was a little warmer than it had been before, and there was a heavy premonition of food in it now. Monica lay on her bed until the gong sounded for dinner, and thought about Monique Gallo, to whom London and all the capitals of the world would seem like home.

  3

  The basement dining room of the Club was terrifying. It was not very large, but it was filled with alarmingly worldly girls who seemed to be perfectly at home. In the presence of these girls, with their loud, assured English voices—fully understandable and yet, for that very reason, so foreign and unaccustomed in tone and tune—Monica was, for the first time since she left home, afraid. But the efficient secretary came to her aid.

  “Miss Stamper,” she said to a girl who was sitting alone at a table for two, “this is Miss Gall from Canada. I’m sure you’ll find a lot in common.”

  Monica’s first impression of Miss Stamper was that she was dirty. Her hair was dull. Her face seemed to have grime under the surface of the skin. Her stubby fingers were dark. But her round face was cheerful.

  “I wonder why she thinks we’ll find anything in common,” said she. “Are you new here, too?”

  By the time they had eaten the watery soup and moved on to the fatty mutton, they were on excellent terms. Peggy Stamper was from Norwich, and she had come to London to learn sculpture. She had been doing a lot of clay modelling, which explained and almost excused the grime. She was not yet nineteen, which gave Monica a certain advantage in age, but Peggy was English, and was thus better equipped to meet the strongly national atmosphere of the Club. It was, she said, intended for girls who were engaged in the arts, or studying them, in London, but what it really worked out to be was a cheap residential place for girls whose artistic inclinations had lapsed, or had always been secondary to some other sort of job. She was there because an aunt, who was partly paying for her training, thought it a safe place for her to be, but she meant to get out as soon as possible.

  As they ate a pudding unknown to Monica, which seemed to be called Spotted Dog, she told Peggy about herself. But she noticed, with surprise, as though outside herself, that there were things she did not tell: Peggy heard a good deal about Monica, but she heard nothing of the Glue Works—only of an office job; nothing was said of Pastor Beamis and the Thirteeners—only of some broadcasting experience; the Bridgetower Trust emerged as the sponsor of a far-reaching contest in search of gifted young women, with Sir Benedict Domdaniel as its dominating figure. Not a word did she say with intent to deceive, but in that room, within earshot of those very English voices, facts presented themselves, somehow, in a rather different guise.

  Indeed, as Monica went to bed, she was astonished to recall how the facts which she had given to Peggy, without being in the least distorted had been, by some instinct of caution deep within her, edited. Was it Peggy’s fault? No, she had been very friendly, though in a way which was new to Monica—a way which suggested that she was glad to hear anything which she was told, but was not really seeking information and was not, perhaps, deeply interested. Was it something about England, which made real truth and real revelation impossible? Had that dreadful week on the Atlantic really drawn such a broad line between herself and her past? She was uneasy and puzzled until she went to sleep.

  4

  Mr Miles Peter Andrews was the most elegant young gentleman that Monica had ever encountered in the flesh, yet he was not really what she would have called a snappy dresser—not as Alex and Kevin were, certainly. Cheerful Frederick Boykin had brought her from Marylebone Road by taxi to Fetter Lane, off which, in Plough Court, were the offices of Jodrell and Stanhope. She now sat in the private room of the junior partner, who looked at her in a weary, lawyer-like fashion, which made Monica feel that he could see right through her. As a matter of fact, Mr Andrews knew next to nothing about her, and was trying to get his bearings. This was the girl from Canada, referred to his firm by—who was it—a Canadian firm called Snelgrove, Martin and Fitzalan, of some place called Salterton. It would have astonished the members of the Bridgetower Trust if they could have known how much in the dark Mr Andrews was about everything connected with their protégée. Mr Snelgrove, who had been entrusted with all the arrangements, had spoken importantly about “our opposite number in London—fine old firm”, as though Jodrell and Stanhope were in almost daily contact with his own office. It may even have been that Mr Snelgrove believed this to be—in a large, general way—the truth. But the fact was that on only one former occasion had Jodre
ll and Stanhope ever done any business in London for Snelgrove, Martin and Fitzalan of Salterton, and that had been many years ago, when Miles Peter Andrews was at Maryborough. He had been given Monica to look after because, as the junior, he got all the odds and ends, and perhaps also because his wife was musical in a well-bred, desultory way. Mr Andrews caressed his handsome moustache and blinked sorrowfully across his table at Monica.

  “Your first visit to London, Miss—ah—Miss Gall?”

  “Yes, sir. I came down from Liverpool yesterday afternoon.”

  All things considered, it was unfortunate that Monica called him “sir”, though she did so from the best of motives; she thought she should be polite, and Mr Andrews was in roughly the same relationship to her as her former boss at the Glue Works—a man of power on the other side of a desk. But the word spoke volumes—volumes perhaps of untruth, but nevertheless, volumes—to Mr Andrews’ English ear. He allowed his fine eyes to fall to the file which Mr Boykin had laid on his desk. There was not much in it, but a letter from somebody called Matthew Snelgrove made it clear that Miss Monica Gall was the beneficiary of a trust which was empowered to pay for her musical education. Mr Snelgrove, for all his assumption of familiarity with Jodrell and Stanhope, had not thought it necessary to tell them that the yearly income from about a million Canadian dollars might be spent on this project. So Mr Andrews drew his own conclusions from the fact that he had been called “sir”, and also from Monica’s style of dress, which he knew to be neither smart nor expensive. When he spoke again his tone was distant, though kindly.

  “Well, Miss Gall,” said he, “we must make you as comfortable as possible, mustn’t we. Our Chief Clerk, Mr Boykin, has arranged digs for you at a very good address—a Mrs Merry in Courtfield Gardens. She knows that you are a music student, and I believe she has made some special arrangement about noise. Now, as to money: we are empowered to pay all your fees for instruction, and any large bills; they can be rendered here, without reference to you. But you’ll need money for ordinary expenses. What do you think you’ll need? By the month, let’s say?”