"SWEETHEARTS AND WIVES"
Betty finished her breakfast very slowly; she had dawdled over it, not
because there was anything wrong with her appetite, but because the
days were long and meals made a sort of break in the monotony. She
rose from the table at length and walked to the open casement window; a
cat, curled up on the rug in front of the small wood fire, opened one
eye and blinked contemplatively at the slim figure in the silk shirt,
the short brown tweed skirt above the brown-stockinged ankles, and
finally at the neat brogues, one of which was tapping meditatively on
the carpet. Then he closed his eyes again.
"Would it be to-day?" wondered Betty for about the thousandth time in
the last eight days. She stared out across the little garden, the
broad stretch of pasture beyond the dusty road that ended in a confused
fringe of trees bordering the blue waters of the Firth. A flotilla of
Destroyers that had been lying at anchor overnight had slipped from
their buoys and were slowly circling towards the distant entrance to
the harbour. Beyond the Firth the hills rose again, vividly green and
crowned with trees.
A thrush in the unseen kitchen garden round a corner of the cottage
rehearsed a few bars of his spring song.
"It might be to-day," he sang. "It might, it might, it might--or it
mightn't!" He stopped abruptly.
Eight days had passed somehow since an enigmatic telegram from the
India-rubber Man had brought Betty flying up to Scotland with hastily
packed trunks and a singing heart.
Somehow she had expected him to meet her at the little station she
reached about noon after an all-night journey of incredible
discomforts. But no India-rubber Man had been there to welcome her;
instead a pretty girl with hair of a rusty gold, a year or two her
senior, had come forward rather shyly and greeted her.
"Are you Mrs. Standish?" she asked, smiling.
Despite the six-months-old wedding ring on her hand, Betty experienced
a faint jolt of surprise at hearing herself thus addressed.
"Yes," she said, and glanced half-expectantly up and down the platform.
"I hoped my husband would be here ..."
The stranger shook her head. "I'm afraid his squadron hasn't come in
yet," she said, and added reassuringly, "But it won't be long now.
Your sister wrote and told me you were coming up. My name's Etta
Clavering...."
"Oh, thank you," said Betty. "You got me rooms, didn't you--and I'm so
grateful to you."
"Not at all," said the other. "It's rather a job getting them as a
rule, but these just happened to be vacant. Rather nice ones: nice
woman, too. No bath, of course, but up here you get used to tubbing in
your basin, and--and little things like that. But everything's nice
and clean, and that's more than some of the places are." They had
sorted out Betty's luggage while Mrs. Clavering was talking, and left
it with the porter to bring on. "We can walk," said Betty's guide.
"It's quite close, and I expect you won't be sorry to stretch your
legs."
They skirted a little village of grey stone cottages straggling on
either side of a broad street towards a wooded glen, down which a river
wound brawling to join the waters of the Firth. Cottages and little
shops alternated, and half-way up the street a rather more pretentious
hotel of quarried stone rose above the level of the roofs. Hills
formed a background to the whole, with clumps of dark fir clinging to
their steep slopes, and in the far distance snow-capped mountains stood
like pale opals against the blue sky. The air was keen and
invigorating, and little clouds like a flock of sheep drifted overhead.
Mrs. Clavering led the way past the village towards a neat row of
cottages on the brow of a little hill about a quarter of a mile behind
it, and as they ascended a steep lane she turned and pointed with her
ashplant. A confusion of chimneys, cranes and wharves were shrouded in
a haze of smoke and the kindly distance.
"You see," she said, "you can almost see the harbour from your house.
That's where the ships lie when they come in here. This is your abode.
They'll send your luggage up presently. I hope you'll be comfortable.
No, I won't come in now. I expect you're tired after travelling all
night. You must come and have tea with me, and meet some of the
others." She laughed and turned to descend the hill, stopping again a
few paces down to wave a friendly stick.
Etta Clavering occupied a low-ceilinged room above a baker's shop in
the village, and had strewn it about with books and photographs and
nick-nacks until the drab surroundings seemed to reflect a little of
her dainty personality. Thither, later in the day, she took Betty off
to tea and introduced her to a tall fair girl with abundant hair and a
gentle, rippling laugh that had in it the quality of running water.
"We belong to the same squadron," she said. "I'm glad we've met now,
because directly our husbands' ships come in we shall never see each
other!" She turned to Etta Clavering. "It's like that up here, isn't
it? We sit in each other's laps all day till our husbands arrive, and
then we simply can't waste a minute to be civil ...!"
She laughed her soft ripple of amusement, cut short by the entrance of
another visitor. She was older than the other three: a sweet, rather
grave-faced woman with patient eyes that looked as if they had watched
and waited through a great many lonelinesses. There was something
tender, almost protecting, in her smile as she greeted Betty.
"You have only just come North, haven't you?" she asked. "The latest
recruit to our army of--waiters, I was going to say, but it sounds
silly. Waitresses hardly seems right either, does it? Anyhow, I hope
you won't have to wait for very long."
"I hope not," said Betty, a trifle forlornly.
"So do I," said the tall fair girl whose name was Eileen Cavendish. "I
am developing an actual liver out of sheer jealousy of some of these
women whose husbands are on leave. When Bill comes I shall hang on his
arm in my best 'clinging-ivy-and-the-oak' style, and walk him up and
down outside the hateful creatures' windows! It'll be _their_ turn to
gnash their teeth then!"
Betty joined in the laughter. "Are there many of--of Us up here?" she
asked.
"There are as many as the village will hold, and every farm and byre
and cow-shed for about six miles round," replied Mrs. Gascoigne, the
new-comer. "And, of course, the little town, about four miles from
here, near where the ships anchor, simply couldn't hold another wife if
you tried to lever one in with a shoe-horn!"
"And then," continued their hostess, measuring out the tea into the
pot, "of course, there are some selfish brutes who stay on all the
time--I'm one of them," she added pathetically. "But it's no use being
a hypocrite about it. I'd stay on if they all put me in Coventry and I
had to pawn my wedding ring to pay for my rooms. One feels nearer,
somehow.... Do sit down all of you. There's nothing to eat except
scones and jam, but the tea is nice and hot, and considering I bought
it at that little shop near the manse, it looks and smells very like
real tea."
"I suppose, then, all the rooms are dreadfully expensive," said Betty.
"Expensive!" echoed the fair girl, consuming her buttered scone with
frank enjoyment. "You could live at the Ritz or Waldorf a good deal
cheaper than in some of these crofter's cottages. You see, until the
War began they never let anything in their lives. No one ever wanted
to come and live here. Of course, there are nice women--like your Miss
McCallum, for example--who won't take advantage of the enormous demand,
and stick to reasonable prices. More honour to them! But if you could
see some of the hovels for which they are demanding six and seven
guineas a week--and, what's more, getting it...."
"I'm afraid we are giving Mrs. Standish an altogether rather gloomy
picture of the place," said Mrs. Gascoigne. She turned to Betty with a
reassuring smile. "You don't have to pay anything to be out of doors,"
she said. "That much is free, even here; it's perfectly delightful
country, and when the weather improves a bit we have picnics and walks
and even do a little fishing in an amateurish sort of way. It all
helps to pass the time...."
"But it's not only the prices that turn one's hair grey up here,"
continued Mrs. Cavendish. "That little Mrs. Thatcher--her husband is
in a Destroyer or something--told me that her landlady has false
teeth...." The speaker extended a slender forefinger, to which she
imparted a little wriggling motion. "They wobble ... like that--when
she talks. She always talks when she brings in meals.... I suppose
it's funny, really----" She lapsed into her liquid giggle. "But poor
Mrs. Thatcher nearly cried when she told me about it. Imagine! Week
in, week out. Every meal.... and trying not to look...! She said it
made her want to scream."
"I should certainly scream," said Mrs. Gascoigne, who had finished her
tea and was preparing to take her departure. "Now I must be off. I've
promised to go and sit with Mrs. Daubney. She's laid up, poor thing,
and it's so dull for her all alone in those stuffy rooms." She held
out her hand to Betty. "I hope we shall see a lot more of each other,"
she said prettily. "We're going to show you some of the walks round
here, and we'll take our tea out to the woods.... I hope you'll be
happy up here."
The door closed behind her, and Eileen Cavendish explored the room in
search of cigarettes. "Sybil Gascoigne is a dear," she observed.
"On the little table, there," said the hostess. "In that box. Do you
smoke, Mrs. Standish?" Mrs. Standish, it appeared, did not. "Throw me
one, Eileen." She caught and lit it with an almost masculine neatness.
"Yes," she continued, "she's perfectly sweet. Her husband is a senior
Post-captain, and there isn't an atom of 'side' or snobbishness in her
composition. She is just as sweet to that hopelessly dull and dreary
Daubney woman as she is to--well, to charming and well-bred attractions
like ourselves!" The speaker laughingly blew a cloud of smoke and
turned to Betty. "In a sense, this war has done us good. You've never
lived in a Dockyard Port, though. You don't know the insane snobberies
and the ludicrous little castes that flourished in pre-war days."
"I dare say you're right," said Eileen Cavendish. She moved idly about
the room examining photographs and puffing her cigarette. "But even
the War isn't going to make me fall on the neck of a woman I don't
like. But I'm talking like a cat. It's not seeing Bill for so
long...."
Mrs. Clavering smiled. "No," she said, "I agree there are limits. But
up here, what does it matter if a woman's husband is an Engineer or a
Paymaster or a Commander or only an impecunious Lieutenant like
mine--as long as she is nice? Yet if it weren't for people like Sybil
Gascoigne we should all be clinging to our ridiculous little pre-war
sets, and talking of branches and seniority till we died of loneliness
and boredom with our aristocratic noses in the air.... As it is, I
don't believe even Sybil Gascoigne could have done it if she hadn't
been the Honourable Mrs. Gascoigne. That carried her over some pretty
rough ground, childish though it sounds."
"Bong Song!" interposed Mrs. Cavendish flippantly. "As----" She broke
off abruptly. "There I go again! There's no doubt about it: I have
got a liver ... I think I'll go home and write to Bill. That always
does me good."
That tea-party was the first of many similar informal gatherings of
grass-widows in poky rooms and cottage parlours. They were quite young
for the most part, and many were pretty. They drank each other's tea
and talked about their husbands and the price of things, and
occasionally of happenings in an incredibly remote past when one hunted
and went to dances and bought pretty frocks.
It was Etta Clavering who conducted Betty round the village shops on
the morning after her arrival, where she was introduced to the small
Scottish shopkeeper getting rich quick, and the unedifying revelation
of naked greed cringing behind every tiny counter.
Through Eileen Cavendish, moreover, she secured the goodwill of a
washerwoman.
"My dear," said her benefactress, "money won't tempt them. They've got
beyond that. They've got to like you before they will wring out a
stocking for you. But I'll take you to the Widow Twankey; I'm one of
her protégées, and she shows her affection for me by feeling for my
ribs with her first two fingers to punctuate her remarks with prods.
It always makes me hysterical. She has only got two teeth, and they
don't meet."
So the Widow Twankey was sought out, and Betty stood and looked
appealingly humble while Etta Cavendish suffered her ribs to be prodded
in a good cause, and the Widow agreed to "wash for" Betty at rates that
would have brought blushes to the cheeks of a Parisian _blanchisseuse
de fin_.
With Mrs. Gascoigne, Betty explored the heathery moors where the
distraught pee-wits were already nesting, and the cool, clean air blew
down from the snowy Grampians, bracing the walkers like a draught of
iced wine. They even climbed some of the nearer hills, forcing their
way through the tangled spruce-branches and undergrowth to the summit,
from where the distant North Sea itself was visible, lying like a grey
menace to their peace.
They would return from these expeditions by the path down the glen that
wound close to the brawling river; here, in the evenings, sometimes
with an unexpectedness embarrassing to both parties, they met some of
the reunited couples whom Eileen Cavendish found it hard to contemplate
unmoved; occasionally the fingers of such couples were interlaced, and
they talked very earnestly as they walked.
On fine days the husbandless wives organised picnics and boiled the
kettle over a fire of twigs. On these occasions the arrangements were
generally in the hands of a fat, jolly woman everyone called "Mrs.
Pat." She it was who chose the site, built the fire with gipsy
cunning, and cut the forked sticks on which the kettle hung. The meal
over, Mrs. Pat would produce a blackened cigarette holder and sit and
smoke with reflective enjoyment while she translated the rustling,
furtive sounds of life in brake and hedge-row around them for the
benefit of anyone who cared to listen. No one knew whence she had
acquired such mysterious completeness of knowledge. It was as if an
invisible side of her walked hand in hand with Nature; sap oozing from
a bursting bud, laden bee or fallen feather, each was to Mrs. Pat the
chapter of a vast romance: and if she bored anyone with her
interpretation of it, they had only got to get up and go for a walk.
She had a niece staying with her, the fiancée of a Lieutenant in her
husband's ship, a slim thing with blue eyes and a hint of the Overseas
in the lazy, unstudied grace of her movements. She spoke sparingly,
and listened to the conversation of the others with her eyes always on
the distant grey shadow that was the sea. Thus the days passed.
In the evenings Betty read or knitted and inveigled her stout, kindly
landlady into gossip on the threshold while she cleared away the
evening meal, and so the morning of the ninth day found Betty staring
out of her window, listening for the thrush to begin again its
haunting, unfinished song.
An object moving rapidly along the top of the hedge that skirted the
lane leading to the cottage caught her eye; she watched it until the
hedge terminated, when it resolved itself into the top of Eileen
Cavendish's hat. Her pretty face was pink with exertion and
excitement, and she moved at a gait suggestive of both running and
walking.
Betty greeted her at the gateway of her little garden, and her heart
quickened as she ran to meet the bearer of tidings.
"My dear," gasped Mrs. Cavendish, "they're coming in this morning.
Mrs. Monro--that's my landlady--has a brother in the town: I forget
what he does there, but he always knows."
For an instant the colour ebbed from Betty's cheeks, and then her
beating heart sent it surging back again.
"But----" she said. "Does that mean that our squadron is coming in?"
"Of course it does, silly! Get your hat quick, and we'll climb up to
the top of the hill and see if we can get a glimpse of them coming in.
You'll have plenty of time to get down again and powder your nose
before your Bunje-man, or whatever you call him, can get ashore.
Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!"
Together they toiled up the hill to the high stretch of moorland from
which a view of the entrance to the Firth could be obtained.
"This is where I always come," said Eileen Cavendish. She stopped and
panted for breath. "Ouf! I'm getting fat and short-winded. How long
is it since you've seen your husband?"
Betty considered. "Three months and seventeen days," was the reply.
Her companion nodded.
"It's rotten, isn't it? But now--at times like this, I almost feel as
if it's--worth it, I was going to say; but I suppose it's hardly that.
I always vowed I'd never marry a sailor, and ever since I did I've felt
sorry for all the women with other kinds of husbands.... Bill is such
a dear!"
They found seats in the lee of a stack of peat and sat down side by
side to watch the distant entrance. A faint grey haze beyond the
headlands on either side of the mouth of the harbour held the outer sea
in mystery.
"There's nothing in sight," said Betty.
"No," said the other, "but there will be, presently. You wait." She
put her elbows on her knees and rested her face in the cup of her two
hands. "You haven't got used to waiting yet," she continued. "It
seems to have made up half my life since I met Bill. I had a little
daughter once, and it didn't matter so much then.... But she died, the
mite..."
No Battleships had emerged from the blue-grey curtain of the mist when
lunch-time came; nothing moved across the surface of the empty harbour,
and they descended the hill to share the meal in Betty's room.
"Perhaps they won't be in till after tea," suggested Betty. "Perhaps
the fog has delayed them."
"Perhaps," said the other.
So they put tea in a Thermos flask, and bread-and-butter and a slice of
cake apiece in a little basket, and climbed again to their vantage
point in the lee of the peat stack. They read novels and talked in
desultory snatches through the afternoon. Then they had tea and told
each other about the books they were reading. But as their shadows
lengthened across the blaeberry and heather, the silences grew longer,
and Betty, striving to concentrate her interest on her book, found the
page grow suddenly blurred and incomprehensible....
"It's getting chilly," said the elder girl at length. She rose to her
feet with a little involuntary shiver, and stood for a moment staring
out towards the sea. "I wonder..." she began, and her voice trailed
off into silence. Betty began slowly to repack the basket. "Sometimes
I pray," said Eileen Cavendish, "when I want things to happen very
much. And sometimes I just hold my thumbs like a pagan. Sometimes I
do both. Let's do both now."
So they sat silent side by side; one held her breath and the other held
her thumbs, but only the dusk crept in from the sea.