The Beckoning Lady Read online

  The drawing made him laugh now as it had then; Minnie, shown as more than half a mule with her long nose and wicked eye, was wearing a dress of the period, its short skirt made of the Union Jack and the long-waisted blouse of the Stars and Stripes. On her head was a brave’s full head-dress, with paint brushes dripping where feathers should have been. It was wickedly like her, yet the masterpiece was Tonker. Tom had drawn Tiger Tim as he had appeared in the weekly comic paper of that name, and had apparently lifted the animal completely. There was the jaunty back, the overstuffed paws and the waving tail, yet every line of the figure was also irrefutably Tonker himself, truculent, sandy, and thinking of something dangerous to do. They were dancing, or fighting, and the dust rose in clouds from under their feet.

  Mr. Campion was still contemplating it when the door was kicked open and a small woman came pattering in. She did not see him immediately because she was carrying a newly pressed dress on a hanger high in front of her, in an attempt to save its trailing hem, but as he swung round she heard him and peered across the bed. He saw it was Emma Bernadine.

  Emma was a handmaid of the arts. When he had first met her she was painting children’s white wood tuck-boxes to look like pirate chests. In those days she had been a sly-eyed little party, much younger than the crowd which had grown up with Minnie, but she had strung along with them and, when Jake Bernadine’s first wife had given up in despair, had married and mothered him, enjoyed his strange pictures, and had children by him. Just before the arrival of the twins they had borrowed the cottage on The Beckoning Lady estate for a summer holiday and, since the landlord of their Putney studio had taken that opportunity to distrain upon their goods, had not yet gone away again.

  It was some years since Campion had set eyes on her and he saw with interest that she had become a type in the interim, stocky and cheerful and quite happy in the exhausted fashion of the times.

  She was wearing a bright blue dress of coloured sheeting, embroidered across the shoulders with huge hand-worked flowers, a black sateen peasant apron, and rope-soled shoes, while her head was wrapped in a dinner napkin, cunningly creased as long ago in good houses they used to serve bread.

  “Hullo,” she said, “why aren’t you working?”

  “I suppose people really do say things like that.” Mr. Campion sat down on the bed, since there was no chair.

  “Get up, don’t make a mess, be careful, look out.” She shooed him away as she spread the dress on the counterpane, and he looked at it dubiously. It was a minute print, grey on white, and seemed to be very plain.

  “Minnie’s, for the party. I made it. We hunted everywhere for the material and found it at last at the village shop. It must have been there in one of the stock drawers for seventy years. Ninepence a yard and we starched it. Isn’t it nice?”

  “Very,”he agreed and hunted for a word. “Restrained.”

  She screwed up her eyes and stood looking at it. “Oh not bad, it will look odd, you know, and rather good.” She pulled a seam out carefully and stood back. “Jake is painting mine,” she remarked. “I sized a piece of calico and ran it up, and he’s doing his damnedest. I must get back before he decides it’s too good to wear and cuts the skirt up to frame. Isn’t it fun but isn’t it exhausting! My feet . . . . . .”

  Mr. Campion looked dismayed. “You make me feel elderly,” he said. “Is it still worth it?”

  “Oh yes,” she assured him, her round face packed with earnestness. “It’s our only chance of seeing anyone at all. It’s killing while it lasts and the clearing up takes months, but at least one’s alive for a few hours. You don’t know what it’s like down here in the winter, sweetie. Not a sound. Not a voice. Only you and the radio. I exist from one of Tonker’s parties to the next.”

  The conversation threatened to become emotional.

  “I haven’t seen Minnie yet,” he said, hastily. “I wanted to phone and someone in the kitchen sent me up here. I’m in her bedroom, I suppose?”

  “You are. The telephone’s here, you see. It’s the only one. There’s a bell in the front hall and when it rings you have to run like stink before the caller gives up. Perfectly insane but there you are! Have you seen the rooms I’ve redecorated for Minnie?”

  She took his sleeve to hurry him and he found himself dragged first into Minnie’s old bedroom and then into the smaller one beside it, where there had been a transformation. His first impression on revisiting the old house had been that it was shabby in the pleasant way in which old homes crumble, but in the two bedrooms now so proudly displayed a start had been made. They were a little arty in their sprigged chintz petticoats, even a little dated, but they looked comfortable and the beds were plump and new, and there was running water.

  Emma looked round her and sighed. “Oh lovely,” she said earnestly.

  “Pleasant,” he agreed. “Who sleeps here?”

  “Just exactly who you’d think!” said Emma. “Nobody at all, of course. What a life, eh? So far round the bend we meet ourselves coming back. Run along. See you later. I’m dying to talk but I haven’t got time. Look up old Jake. He’s doing some very new stuff. Ask about it. Don’t just look.”

  “I will.” He tried to sound enthusiastic and went off down the staircase. On the first landing there was a magnificent leaded window overlooking a flower garden and he paused to glance out at the blazing mass of colour. The drive was a little shaggy he had noticed coming along, and the kitchen garden was a wilderness. But here there was a display which would have done credit to a Dutch bulb-grower’s catalogue. The effect was blinding; arches and trellises, vines and crawling roses, massed one on top of the other in ordered glory. The wide river, shallow as a ford, was almost obscured by the show. One small opening draped with clematis and lace-vine had been left, however, and as his eye was drawn towards it he saw Rupert pass by on the other side. He blinked. Unless he had been utterly deceived, the item clutched to his boiler-suited bosom had been a magnum of champagne. Campion saw the gleam of the gold paper distinctly. Before he had had time to clear his mind, another child passed the archway. She was a fat little person clad solely in yellow pants, and a squaw’s single feather. She too carried a gaudy bottle. Behind her came a boy two or three years older, and behind him a girl in her early teens. They were all vaguely Red Indian in costume, and were all laden with the same sensational freight, which they carried with earnest concentration. The operation appeared to be secret and of a military character.

  Campion was turning away when he saw two more laden children go by. A trifle dazed, he went on down the stairs. The door of the room which had been Minnie’s mother’s drawing-room was directly in front of him and he could not resist putting his head in to see the Cotman again. The white-panelled room was much as he remembered it, but the picture had gone. There was a flower-piece of Minnie’s own in its place, but the magic watercolour, so passionate under its placidity, had vanished for ever. Saddened, he pushed open the door of the old front kitchen which was now, it seemed, the family dining-room. There was a Swedish cooking-stove in place of the old range, a tiled floor, and an elm farm table scrubbed white and surrounded by innumerable stools. It was all very tidy and spartan and pleasant, and he passed on into the back kitchen where nothing, as far as he could see, had changed since the house was built. It was a dim, whitewashed shell of a place, very large, with a worn stone floor and a flat stone sink with a hand pump over it. Two doors, one leading into the garden and one into the yard, stood wide open, letting in the sunny air.

  At work at the sink was the woman he had seen briefly before in his search for the telephone, and as he came drifting in she turned to give him a wide china smile.

  “Found it, duck?” Her accent was as riotously cockney as Lugg’s own, and as Campion glanced at her he thought she could have sprung from no other place. She was a mighty woman, tall as he was, and built on aggressive lines, like a battleship, with a square squat head to which the iron-grey hair was bound as tight as possible in an intricate my
stery of tiny plaits. He guessed that she was in the sixties but she was powerful still, and hearty, with a merry eye and clear fresh shining skin. Her pinafore under the tweed apron, cut lightheartedly at some time from a pair of trousers, was gay to the point of silliness, and earrings as big as curtain rings, with a tin bird perching on each, brushed her plump shoulders where a wisp or two of hair which had escaped the plaits hung free.

  The general effect was sobered a little by a black band suspiciously like the top of a woollen stocking, which was pinned to the short sleeve above an arm as thick and powerful as a navvy’s. He suspected that she had been talking to herself, for as he appeared she went straight on, merely raising her voice to include him into the party. “It’s not right, is it?” she was saying—“’Im ’ardly in ’is grave yet, poor old dear. We know ’e was old but then that’s a thing we’ve all got to come to. Surely you can put the Londoners’ outin’ off, dear, for a week or ten days? I said. No I can’t, she said, and that’s flat. You don’t understand. We can’t back out of it now. Can’t? I said, there’s no can’t about it. Oh shut up! Dinah, she said. They call me Dinah, though me name’s Diane. Miss Diane Varley. I’ve never bin married. But Mrs. Cassands was upset. I could see it, though some people couldn’t. Well, she would be. ’E was like a father to ’er and me. We was just ’is girls to ’im. I’m speaking of ’er uncle, Mr. William that was, a saint on earth except for ’is bottle.”

  Mr. Campion, whose face had been growing more and more blank, took himself in hand. One item in the harangue stood out as an insult to his intelligence. He knew for a fact that this sterling example of a type which was as familiar to him as the city itself, could never have escaped matrimony. Glancing at her left hand he saw at once the bone-deep crease of the wedding ring. Fortunately she was wiping her eyes with the corner of the tweed apron and did not notice his stare.

  “Oh I miss ’im,” she said brokenly. “I’ve cried meself sick every night. Bleary old nuisance, ’e was, and I’ve told ’im so until I was sick of it. I know ’e was lucky to be took so quick. Sometimes they lie and lie. But all the same it was sudden. Old Harry was here, and we was sitting up. We ’adn’t gorn ’ome because Mr. Will seemed queer and I didn’t like to leave ’im to Mrs. Cassands while Mr. Tonker was down. She doesn’t ’ave a lot of time with ’im. Just before twelve I said to Harry—that’s my friend—I said ‘I’ll take ’im some of this ’ere tea, because ’e may wake up and then ’e’ll want it.’ So I did, and I went in talking like I always do. ‘There you are, you old lump of love,’ I said, ‘nice and ’ot,’ and I turned up the light and then of course I dropped the cup.”

  The thin man was gratifyingly interested.

  “Mr. Farraday was only ill for a day, was he?”

  “’E wasn’t ill at all,” she protested. “You’d ’ave soon ’eard about it if he was ill. If ’e was poorly ’is little bell rang night and day. ’E was only sleeping. They do. Old people sleep and sleep until you wonder why they bother to wake up.”

  “What did the doctor say?”

  “What could ’e say? Said ’e was dead. I could ’ave told ’im that. ‘Is poor old jaw was tied up by the time the doctor saw ’im.”

  She returned to her pail of soapsuds.

  “’E agreed it was sudden. Told us ’ow lucky we was. Said ’is ’eart ’adn’t seemed so bad, but at ’is age and with ’is ’istory we couldn’t be surprised at anything, and signed the doings. But we was surprised. The old chap ’isself wouldn’t ’ave believed it if ’e ’adn’t ’ad to.”

  “He wanted to live, did he?” Mr. Campion had seen his old friend for a few minutes the week before his death, and had seen then that he was very tired. He was happy enough, but weary, and like some crumpled baby seemed anxious to get his head down to sleep.

  “Come Gumper,” said Miss Diane unexpectedly. “’E’d made up ’is mind to live till Gumper night. ’E told me so.”

  Mr. Campion blinked at her and she laughed.

  “That’s what they call it down ’ere,” she explained. “Gumper treason and plot. Guy Fawkes night to us Londoners, bonfire night. My old love said ’e was goin’ to live till then. ‘That’s right,’ I said, ‘go to ’eaven on a rocket, so you shall.’ But ’e didn’t. Midsummer night, more like. That’s what Saturday is, Mr. Tonker’s party. Midsummer night, and William lyin’ out there missin’ all the bubbly.”

  She rubbed soap in her eyes and distracted herself, and at that moment there was a shrill shout from Emma somewhere in the house.

  “Four o’clock, Dinah!”

  “Four o’clock!” echoed Miss Diane and rushed to put her head out of the garden door. “Four o’clock, Spurgeon!”

  “Four o’clock!” an answering bellow resounded from the border, and Mr. Campion, who was taken off guard, was just in time to see a man in a straw hat fling down his hoe among the lilies and sprint towards the house. He diagnosed some domestic emergency, but it seemed to be merely a matter of fetching coke from the shed to the kitchens. The operation was conducted at the double and was followed by a headlong dash with the garbage pails to the incinerator, after which the man strode away upstream from where, for some time past, there had come the sound of hammering.

  The whole incident was mildly lunatic and Campion was still astonished by it when a voice he recognised floated in from the yard, and Minnie with a boy of about sixteen came in, carrying a load of stacked zinc baths between them.

  Visitors from easy-going New York, which will suffer parading Irish and piping Scots without a qualm, were sometimes taken aback by a first sight of Minnie on her own home ground. Latter-day Rip Van Winkles had been known to pour themselves drinks with shaking hands, whilst under the impression that the classic adventure had somehow overtaken them in reverse. Minnie’s America had been handed down to her by her father, who had left that country in 1902 and had not then been considered an advanced member of his generation. Like most painters, he was a simple and direct personality of strong affections, and his favourite authors were those of his childhood: Mark Twain, Fenimore Cooper and Louisa Alcott. Minnie visited the country and kept up with her relatives there, but neither experience had succeeded in modernising her view. She too was a simple obstinate person with the memory of an elephant, who wore strange clothes. In her youth she had adopted the Mother-Hubbard as the perfect garment to suit her angularity and the eagle’s beak nose of the Straws. She always worked with a stout apron for painting, and now, after twenty-five years, these had become as normal a part of her appearance as her John bob and piercing grey eyes. Since The Beckoning Lady was the kind of place where a covered wagon might easily be standing just round the corner, the effect at times was disconcerting. At the moment she looked tired and a trifle harassed but it was clear that she was enjoying herself and in command of a complex situation.

  The boy was very like her and was almost as tall. His hair was a corn-coloured mat and the laughter-wrinkles were already deep across his forehead and round his eyes. They planted the baths on the stones with a clatter and Minnie held out her hand.

  “Albert, how nice of you. Amanda told us you were here. There’s a frightful lot to do still. You haven’t met Westy, have you? Isn’t it a blessed miracle? He’s in quarantine for mumps. Sent home from school last night. The angels do take care of us. Now, this is Westinghouse Straw, my grand-nephew. My father married twice, you know.” She had a slow deep voice, very English in intonation.

  The youngster shook hands. “After that you just have to work it out,” he said with a hint of apology, which reminded Campion of Leo mopping up after one of Poppy’s clangers. “My sister and I are the children of the painter’s eldest son. Our parents wanted us educated over here, and so we just moved in on Minnie. Annabelle is over at the boat house, keeping an eye on the chain-gang, or at least we hope so. Aunt Hatt’s dog is minding the cellar, and at least we know he’ll raise the roof if anything happens.”

  Minnie sat down at the table and sagged a little.


  “Wouldn’t it be awful if they started opening them?” she said. “That would shake old Tonker.”

  Westy shot a horrified glance at her. “They might,” he said. “You don’t seem to know how young they are.”

  “They’re all right.” Minnie spoke with complete conviction. “They’ve got an orange-juice bar they’re running down there, and they’re all going over to the cottage for tea in a minute.”

  “I didn’t think they’d drink it,” said Westy with dignity, “but they might pull the wires off to hear the bang.”

  “Nonsense, they’re not fools.” She had the sublime faith of her type of matriarch. “I never have stupid children here. Now.” She fished in the pocket of her skirt and brought out a bundle of crumpled lists fastened with a safety-pin. “That’s done the baths. You’ll clean them, Dinah, will you? They’re only dusty. Then, when you’ve finished, write Ice with this bit of chalk on the two best, and leave them all here. Albert, would you like to catch the donkey?”

  “Frankly,” said Mr. Campion, who had met the beast, “no.”

  “I agree,” put in Westy hastily. “That’s a job for Jake, Minnie. He likes it.”

  “Well, will you see he does? Then you can harness the tub, and the baths and the six boxes of glasses can all go down together. Don’t forget to get yourself some tea. This goes on for days and you’ll get utterly exhausted and hate it if you don’t eat. Have a lump of cake now.”