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UT it wasn't Robbie. The diningroom window was the first to make the
discovery. Being on the ground-floor, it gazes across the pavement under
the trees and sees many things after nightfall which are missed by the
upper storeys. The first and second time that something unusual happened
I was not told; not until the third time was I taken into the secret.
The dining-room window does most of the watching for the entire house;
it sees so much that it has learnt to be discreet.
It was Armistice night when the unusual happening first occurred. London
had gone mad with relief from suspense. Wherever a barrel-organ could be
found people were dancing. Where more suitable music was not available,
tin-cans were being beaten with a dervish, rhythmic monotony. Dance the
people must. Their joy had gone into their feet; they could not convince
themselves that peace had come till they had danced themselves to a
standstill. They invented impromptu steps, dancing twenty abreast in the
open spaces, humming any tune that caught their fancy, with their arms
linked in those of strangers. But there were no strangers that night;
everyone was a friend. Top-hats, evening-dress, corduroys and privates'
uniforms hobnobbed together. A mighty roar of laughter and singing went
up from thousands of miles of streets, dim-lit and dusk-drenched to
ward off the ancient peril from the air. How suddenly unmodern peril
had become! All London laughed; all England; all the world. The sound
reached the Arctic; polar bears lumbered farther northward, stampeded by
the strum of our guffaws. If there were inhabitants on Mars, they must
have heard. The war was won. The news was so incredible that we had to
make a noise to silence our doubts.
Everything that could rejoice was out under the stars making merry.
We had hidden so long, walked so stealthily, wept so quietly, hated so
violently that our right to be happy was almost too terrible to bear.
We expressed our joy foolishly, hysterically, inadequately by shouting,
embracing, climbing lamp-posts, riding on the roofs of taxis. What did
it matter so long as we expressed it and brought the amazing truth home
to ourselves? The last cannon had roared. The final man had died in
battle. The wicked waste of white human bodies was ended. There would be
no more rushing for the morning papers and searching the casualty lists
with dread; no more rumours of invasions; no more musterings for new
offensives. The men whom we loved were safe; they had been reprieved at
the eleventh hour. We should have them home presently, seated by their
firesides. It seemed like the fulfilment of a prophet's ecstasy; as
though sorrow and crying had passed away and forever there would be no
death.
There were two people who did not dance, climb lamp-posts, beat tin-cans
and ride on the roofs of taxis that night. Perhaps they were the only
two in London; they were both in Dolls' House Square. The little lady
was one. She had tucked Joan and Robbie safely in their beds. She had
kissed them “Good-night” and turned the gas on the landing to a jet. She
had gone part way down the narrow stairs and then... and then she had
come back. She had picked up Joan and carried her into Robbie's room.
When the two heads were lying close together on the pillow, she had
seated herself in the darkness beside them.
The little boy stretched up his arms to pull her down; she resisted. His
hands wandered over her face and reached her eyes. They were wet. His
heart missed a beat. He knew what that meant. So often in the dark, dark
night he had wakened with the sure sense that she was crying and had
tiptoed down the creaking stairs to creep in beside her and place his
small arms tightly about her.
“Never mind; you have me, Mummy.” That was what he always said. He
whispered it now.
“Yes, I have my wee man.”
“And me, Mummy,” Joan murmured sleepily.
“Mummy knows. She has you both. Don't worry about her. She's feeling
silly tonight.”
“Because you're happy?” Joan questioned.
“Yes, happy for so many little boys and girls whose soldier daddies will
be coming back to them soon. Don't talk any more. Go sleepy-bye.”
But Robbie knew that it wasn't happiness that made her cry; he knew that
she was crying because she had no soldier to come back. What could he
say to comfort her? His eyes grew drowsy while he thought about it. He
waited till Joan was in Sleepy-bye Land, then with an effort he opened
his eyes.
“Mummy, do you know what I'd like best for Christmas?”
“I thought you were sleeping. Don't tell me now. There's heaps of time.
It's six weeks till Christmas.”
“But Joan and I have talked about it,” he persisted. “We don't want him,
if you don't want him.”
“What is he, dear? If he doesn't cost too much, you shall have him.”
Robbie procrastinated now that he had brought his mother to the point
of listening. It was a delicate proposal that he was about to make. “I
don't know whether you can get one,” he hesitated. “A boy at my school
got one without asking, and it wasn't even Christmas.”
He was sitting up in bed now, very intense and serious, and very much
awake.
“But you've not told me yet what it is you want. If you don't tell me, I
can't say whether I can afford it.”
She slipped her arm about the square little body and feeling how it
trembled, held it close against her breast. He hid his face in the
hollow of her neck. “Robbie's place,” she whispered. “If it's difficult
to say, whisper it to mother there.”
His lips moved several times before a sound came and then, “If it isn't
too much trouble, we should like to have a Daddy.”
Against his will she held him back from her, trying to see his eyes.
“But why?”
It was he who was crying now. “Oh Mummy, I didn't mean to hurt you....
To be like all the other little boys and girls.” When at last he was
truly asleep and she had come down to the lamp-lit room in which she
sewed, she did not take up her work. The parrot tried to draw her into
conversation with his eternal question, “What shall we talk about?”
“Nothing tonight, Polly,” she said. Presently she crossed the room and,
pulling back the curtains, stood staring out into the blackness. So her
children had felt it, too--the weight of loneliness! She had tried so
hard to prevent them from sharing it; had striven in so many ways to
be their companion. Try as she would, she could never make up for a
father's absence. She could never give them the sense of security that a
man could have given without effort, even though he had loved them less.
It was a bitter realisation--one which vaguely she had always dreaded
must come to her. It was doubly bitter coming to her now, on a night
when all the world was glad. She might be many things to her children;
she could never be a man.... What did Robbie think? That you bought
a father from an agency or engaged him through an advertisement? She
smiled sadly, “Not so easy as that.”
“What shall we talk about?” asked the parrot.
She drew the curtains together, extinguished the lights and groped her
way up to bed.
But her eyes had not peered far enough into the blackness. There was
another person in London who had not danced or climbed lamp-posts or
ridden on the roofs of taxis that night. For three hours he had watched
the little house from the shadow of the trees across the road. From the
pavement, had you been passing, you would hardly have distinguished him
as he leant against the garden-railings. The only time he gave a sign
of his presence was when the red flare of his cigarette betrayed him. He
did not seem to be planning harm to anyone; he could not have done much
harm in any case, for the left sleeve of his coat hung empty. He was
simply waiting for something that he hoped might happen. At last his
patience was rewarded when she drew aside the curtain and stood with the
lighted room behind her, staring out into the blackness. Only when she
had again hidden herself and all the house was in darkness, did he turn
to go. He was there the next night and the next. It was after his third
night of watching that the dining-room window told me.