Poor Caroline (12 page)

The Smiths had justified, indeed they had exceeded her
expectations; they were as vulgar, complacent and stupid
as her imagination had depicted them. But irritation can
provide an antidote to sorrow, and the Smiths served their
purpose.

Two days before Eleanor left Marshington, she came
down rather late to breakfast to hear her relatives sitting in
judgment on a letter. The letter was, she gathered, from
someone called Caroline. She heard 'Poor Caroline' this
and 'Poor Caroline' that, until, for the sake of conversation
rather than
from any active curiosity, she asked, 'W
ho is this
Caroline, Aunt Enid?'

'Well, my dear, her father was your Uncle Robert's
second cousin. He was a farmer at a place called Denton
in the North Riding, and married beneath him, a chemist's
daughter. There were two children. The elder girl, Daisy,
married, I believe, a jeweller in Newcastle. We never see
anything of her now. But Caroline . . .'

'Caroline's the skeleton in our family cupboard,' cried
Betty. 'She's our prize cadger, prize idiot, prize bore, and
prize affliction. She lives in some place in London,
on
her
relatives, writing stuff that nobody ever wants to read, and
trying to dodge her creditors.'

'She's an author?' inquired Eleanor, impressed.

'Well, dear. I should h
ardly call her that. Authors are
people who get their works published. Caroline of course
did
contrive to get one book into print. It was called
The
Path of Valour,
a devotional volume. But her family had to
meet the cost of publication.'

'Fifty pounds, Mother, wasn't it, eh? eh? Fifty pounds.
Eh? Couldn't read a word of it myself,' said Mr. Smith.

'She's not a very near relation then,' observed Eleanor in

the dry, precise voice which the Smiths found so unattrac
tive. 'Did you know her very well?'

'Well, I remember that after her father's death we all
spent a holiday together at Hardrascliffe. Your uncle and
I were first cousins, you know, Eleanor. Caroline and her
sister were just grown up, but we were children. I remember
so well that Caroline had a grey serge dress that we thought
rather smart - with rows of black velvet round the bottom, and black buttons down the bodice. She was always rather dressy - but too short, and inclined to be plump even then.'

'Rather go-ahead in those days, wasn't she, Mother?
Frizzy fringe and rather fine eyes, and used to carry on with
the officers. I remember someone teasing her about lifting her skirt to show her petticoat as she came down the steps along the sea wall. There was a young Carter, wasn't there,
a bit sweet on her?'

'Yes, but
he
married one of the Miss Peaks of Hunting
thorpe, and Caroline had to go and be governess to some people near Selby. It was there that she first became artis
tic, and set up as the local poetess in the parish magazine.
And then she took a situation in a private school near Mal
vern where she had one of those silly friendships with the
head-mistress. A clever woman, that Miss - Miss - what
was her name, Betty? I've told you, I know - Thurlby.
Adelaide Thurlby. Newnham or Girton or something. But
I never liked her from the first. She used to trail round in
olive green and old gold tea frocks - Pre-Raphaelite, Caro
line called them. Prehistoric,
we
said. And when the school
failed, as of course it would, and Miss Thurlby lost all her money in it, Caroline brought her home to Doncaster where
her mother was living, to have a nervous breakdown there very comfortably, though it killed Caroline's mother, we
always said. At any rate, she had a stroke just then, and
Miss Thurlby got engaged to the local doctor, though Caro
line had rather fancied him for herself, I imagine, and then
they had a quarrel or something, and Caroline had to borrow money from us to pay for her mother's funeral. She's been borrowing ever since.'

'More coffee, please, Mother.' Mr. Smith pushed forward
his cup. 'Eh, yes. Let it be a lesson to you, Eleanor. Don't
fall in love with scheming school marms, and stick to one job
if you want to get on, eh?'

'Well, certainly, Caroline must have tried almost every
thing. She has been a school matron, and an agent for some sort of educational books, and secretary to a Rescue Home,
and travelling companion to Lady Bassett-Graham's imbecile daughter, hasn't she, Mums?'

'Yes, and it was when she came back from Italy because Lady Bassett-Graham took a dislike to her, that she changed
her name to Denton-Smyth - with
a
y.
Smith wasn't good
enough for her.'

'Well,
they
does not seem to have done her much good,'
said Betty. 'Has anyone waded through that letter yet?'

'I have, nearly,' said Dorothy.

'What's it all about?'

'Oh, she wants my brown coat when I've finished with it,
of course. She always wants something. And there's a lot
of rot that doesn't seem very important about a cinema com
pany or something.'

'That's a new craze. Cinemas. She moves with the times.
It'll be flying next.'

'Here, Eleanor, you'd better read this. And learn what
you've got to avoid in London.'

Betty handed to Eleanor the letter headed '40 Lucretia
Road, West Kensington, S.W.10.'

'My dear, dear Enid and Robert,' Eleanor read. 'I feel
that I cannot wait any longer to tell you of the great good
fortune which has befallen me. The Christian Cinema
Company is not only formed, but marching triumphantly
along the Road to Victory.' There were eight pages of
letter, and Eleanor read them all.

§2

Eleanor dug her fingers on to a cracked button, and the
syren of her car uttered a long melancholy screech. To
Eleanor its note was sweetest music. She pressed again. An errand boy fifty yards ahead nearly fell off his bicycle with surprise. Eleanor steered cautiously round the back of a bus,
between two coal carts, a motor ambulance and a taxi, and
found herself facing the stormy splendour of the November
afternoon.
She was looking due west down the Richmond
Road. Above the roofs, where the road swooped down upon
itself, hung the wild drama of the setting sun. It gleamed
on the polished surface of the road. It gilded the metal caps of the coal hatches on the pavement, until they danced like
sovereigns dropped by the passers-by.
It caught the windows of the taxi, the bottles on the milkboy's bicycle, and the brass on the bonnet of Eleanor's own car. It transfused
with jubilant gold the exciting frosty freshness of the Novem
ber air. The whole of London rose in a golden flame round
Eleanor, as she drove for the first time her new car in triumph along the Richmond Road.

In her new car Eleanor forgot that her heart was broken.

She had seen the car five days ago in a second-hand shop in the Edgware Road. It stood in the window, a 1925 Clyno,
bearing a ticket on its bonnet - '£35. Splendid order.' She
had driven a Clyno in South Africa. She knew the engine,
and she could do running repairs. She walked into the shop
and asked if she might have a trial run. It was good to feel
a wheel under her hands again. Because it was in a motor
car that her father had met his death, motoring brought no
additional pain to her. She was running the same risks that
he had run. She might be killed in a motor accident herself.
The possibility of death took away her desire for it. She spent a rapturous week-end overhauling the Clyno, and
could hardly wait on Monday until her classes at the secretarial school were finished before she rushed round to the
garage. She meant to explore South-West London before
supper-time.

She was glad that her engine was uncertain, her brakes
worn, her mudguards battered. There was all the more
prospect of fun ahead for her. She enjoyed tinkering with machinery. Her head was clear, her fingers firm and steady. She could
apply her attention to mechanical problems with
diligence. The more perplexing the problems, the better protection they brought her against sorrow. She beat back
remorse by gears, sparking-plugs and carburettors.

She drove along the Richmond Road, enjoying herself.

To make quite sure of her lights, she tested them, turning
the switch up and down. Twice it responded. The third
time it clicked impotently. 'Damn!' muttered Eleanor. 'I
knew the battery was a dud.'

She looked round hopefully for a garage, slowly making
her way along the darkening road.

'Fool. You ought to have made sure about those lights.'
It was only a ten-minutes' run back to her own garage, but
she had no mind to turn again. She saw a slightly dilapi
dated establishment on her right, which was, however, far
smarter than the garages of the Transvaal. She hooted and screeched her way across the road. The grease-stained mechanic speculated that he would take about half an hour
to put her lights in working order.

'But it's only a five-minutes' job,' protested Eleanor.

'We must take orders in rotation. No "Ladies First" now
that you've got the vote. It's all Equality now,' he leered.

Eleanor drew herself up to the whole height of her five
feet three inches.

'Certainly pursue your usual routine,' she said, her small nose in the air. 'I was not asking for favours. I shall come
back in half an hour.'

She left the garage and strolled along the road. Even if
she had not the car, this still was London, an unknown city,
to be investigated, criticized or admired. Richmond Road
was clearly no fashionable thoroughfare. Eleanor looked
into shop windows displaying glass dishes on which drowsy
winter bluebottles crawled, befouling pink sugared hazel
nuts and Liquorice All Sorts. She inspected the garments
for sale in a Court Dress Agency, wondering who wanted to
buy tarnished tinsel slippers and stained georgette frocks,
dripping their beads and sequins from dismal threads. A
household store offered for sale jars of cheap mayonnaise
sauce, soup and tintacks, piled between cracked enamel
dishes and feather brooms.

While in her car, Eleanor had felt majestic and detached
from London and its people. She rode along, a stranger,
regarding splendour and squalor with indifferent curiosity.
Now on the pavement she felt herself part of the loitering or
hurrying crowd. She read the ill-written notices pasted
along a board outside a stationer's shop. 'Comfortable bed
sitting-room for quiet gent. Use gas-ring. 18/-.' 'Respect
able married woman wants morning work.' 'Family Bible
for Sale. Best offer.' She began to worry about the people
who passed by her, wondering whether the man selling shoe
laces was really starving, and whether the two young girls with brightly painted faces and wiry bunches of curls protruding from scarlet tam-o'-shanters were really prostitutes 'below the age of consent.' This London was full of prob
lems. Even without a Native question it offered work
enough for Sociologists. In South Africa, Eleanor had fol
lowed her father, supporting the Labour-Nationalist Pact.
She believed in Women's Franchise, and had read
My Own
Story,
by Mrs. Pankhurst, and the
Life of Josephine Butler
and
the first volume
of Fabian Essays.
But her interest in politics
had been purely academic. Here, in the Richmond Road,
she was no longer protected by happiness and her father's
companionship from her consciousness of human misery.
She could not help wondering whether she was right to plan for herself a prosperous business career, in which she was
determined to 'make good,' to 'do decently,' to show her brother in America that a girl could get on as well as a boy
at money-making. How far was one justified in making use
of one's immunity? 'I have capital behind me, and education, and opportunities. All this ugliness and poverty can't
really hurt me. I'm immune,' she told herself. 'Had one
any right to be immune? Ought one not to hand over one's
three thousand pounds to the I.L.P. Winter Campaigning
Fund?'