III
We had been through so much worry since we came back from our world tour that it seemed wonderful to enter on this halcyon period. Perhaps it was then that I ought to have felt misgiving. Things went too well. Archie had the work he enjoyed, with an employer who was his friend; he liked the people he worked with; he had what he had always wanted, to belong to a first-class golf club, and to play every weekend. My writing was going well, and I began to consider that perhaps I should be able to go on writing books and making money by it.
Did I realise that there might be something not quite right in the even tenor of our daysI dona€?t think so. And yet there was a certain lack, though I dona€?t think I ever put it into definite terms to myself. I missed the early companionship of our time together, Archie and I. I missed the weekends when we had gone by bus or by train and had explored places.
Our weekends now were the dullest time for me. I often wanted to ask people down for the weekend, so as to see some of our London friends again. Archie discouraged that, because he said it spoilt his weekends. If we had people staying he would have to be more at home and perhaps miss his second round of golf. I suggested that he should play tennis sometimes instead of golf, because we had several friends with whom he had played tennis on public courts in London. He was horrified. Tennis, he said, would completely spoil his eye for golf. He was taking the game so seriously now that it might have been a religion.
a€?Look here, you ask any of your friends down if you like, but dona€?t leta€?s ask down a married couple, because then I have to do something about it.a€?
That was not so easy to do, because most of our friends were married couples, and I couldna€?t very well ask the wife without the husband. I was making friends in Sunningdale, but Sunningdale society was mainly of two kinds: the middle-aged, who were passionately fond of gardens and talked of practically nothing else; or the gay, sporting rich, who drank a good deal, had cocktail parties, and were not really my type, or indeed, for that matter, Archiea€?s.
One couple who could and did stay with us for a weekend were Nan Watts and her second husband. She had married a man called Hugo Pollock during the war, and had one daughter, Judy; but the marriage had not turned out well, and in the end she had divorced her husband. She re-married a man called George Kon, who was also a keen golfer, so that solved the weekend problem. George and Archie played together; Nan and I gossiped, talked and played some desultory golf on the ladiesa€links. Then we would go up and meet the men at the club-house and have a drink there. At least Nan and I would take up our own drinks: half a pint of raw cream thinned down with milka€“just as we had drunk it down at the farm at Abney in early days.
It was a great blow when Site left us, but she took her career seriously, and for some time she had wanted to take a post abroad. Rosalind, she pointed out, would be going to school the following year, and so would need her less. She had heard of a good post in the Embassy in Brussels, and would like to take it. She hated leaving us, she said, but she did want to get on so that she could go as a governess to places all over the world and see something of the life. I could not help being sympathetic towards this point of view, and sadly we agreed that she should go to Belgium.
I thought then, remembering how happy I had been with Marie and how nice it had been to learn French without tears, that I might get a French nursery governess for Rosalind. Punkie wrote to me enthusiastically saying that she knew just the person but she was Swiss, not French. She had met her, and a friend of hers knew her family in Switzerland. a€?She is a sweet girl, Marcelle. Very gentle.a€She thought that she was just the person for Rosalind, would be sorry for her because she was shy and nervous, and would look after her. I dona€?t know that Punkie and I agreed exactly in our estimate of Rosalinda€?s character!
Marcelle Vignou duly arrived. I had slight misgivings from the first. Punkiea€?s account of her was of a gentle, charming, little thing. She made a different impression on me. She seemed to be lethargic, though quite good-natured, lazy, and uninteresting. She was the sort of person who was incapable of managing children. Rosalind, who was reasonably well-behaved and polite, and on the whole quite satisfactory in daily life, became, almost overnight, what I can only describe as possessed by a devil.
I couldna€?t have believed it. I learnt then what no doubt most child-trainers know instinctively, that a child reacts just as a dog or any other animal: it knows authority. Marcelle had no authority. She shook her head gently occasionally and said a€?Rosalind! Non, non, Rosalind!a€without the least effect.
To see them out for walks together was pitiful. Marcelle, as I discovered before long, had both feet covered with corns and bunions. She could only limp along at a funeral pace. When I did discover this I sent her off to a chiropodist, but even that did not make much difference in her pace. Rosalind, an energetic child, strode ahead, looking extremely British, with her chin in the air, Marcelle trailing miserably behind, murmuring: a€?Wait for mea€“attendez-moi!a€?
a€?Wea€?re going for a walk, arena€?t we?a€Rosalind would throw back over her shoulder.
Marcelle, in an extremely foolish fashion, would then buy Rosalind peace offerings of chocolate in Sunningdalea€“the worst thing she could have done. Rosalind would accept the chocolate, murmuring a€?Thank youa€quite politely, and afterwards would behave as badly as ever. In the house she was a little fiend. She would take off her shoes and throw them at Marcelle, make faces at her, and refuse to eat her dinner.
a€?What am I to do?a€I asked Archie. a€?She is simply awful. I punish her, but it doesna€?t seem to make her any better. She is really beginning to like torturing the poor girl.a€?
a€?I dona€?t think the girl really cares,a€said Archie. a€?Ia€?ve never seen anyone more apathetic.a€?
a€?Perhaps things will get better,a€I said. But things did not get better, they got worse. I was really worried because I did not want to see my child turn into a raging demon. After all, if Rosalind could behave properly with two nurses and a nursery governess, there must be some fault on the other side which led her to behave so badly to this particular girl.
a€?Arena€?t you sorry for Marcelle, coming to a strange country like this, where nobody speaks her language?a€I asked.
a€?She wanted to come,a€said Rosalind. a€?She wouldna€?t have come if she hadna€?t wanted to. She speaks English quite well. She really is so awfully, awfully stupid.a€Nothing, of course, could have been truer than that. Rosalind was learning a little French, but not much. Sometimes, on wet days, I would suggest they played games together, but Rosalind assured me it was impossible even to teach Marcelle Beggar My Neighbour. a€?She just cana€?t remember ita€?s four for an ace and three for a king,a€she said with scorn. I told Punkie that it wasna€?t being a success.
a€?Oh dear, I thought shea€?d simply love Marcelle.a€?
a€?She doesna€?t,a€I said. a€?Far from it. And she thinks up ways of tormenting the poor girl, and she throws things at her.a€?
a€?Rosalind throws things at her?a€?
a€?Yes,a€I said. a€?And shea€?s getting worse.a€?
In the end I decided that we could not bear it any longer. Why should our lives be ruinedI spoke to Marcelle, murmuring that I thought things were not being a great success and that perhaps she would be happier in some other post; that I would recommend her and try to find her a position, unless she would rather go back to Switzerland. Unperturbed, Marcelle said she had quite enjoyed seeing England, but she thought on the whole she would go back to Berne. She said goodbye, I pressed upon her an extra montha€?s wagesa€“and determined to seek someone else.
What I thought I would now have was a combined secretary and governess. Rosalind would go to school every morning when she was five, at a small local school, and I could then have a secretary shorthand-typist for some hours at my beck and call. Perhaps I should be able to dictate my literary works. It seemed a good idea. I put an advertisement in the paper, asking for someone who would look after a child of five, shortly to go to school, and act as secretary shorthand-typista€“I added a€?Scottish preferreda€?. I had noticed, now that I saw more of other children and their attendants, that the Scottish seemed to be particularly good with the young. The French were hopeless disciplinarians, and were always bullied by their charges; Germans were good and methodical, but it was not German that I really wanted Rosalind to learn. The Irish were gay but made trouble in the house; the English were of all kinds. I had a yearning for somebody Scottish.
I sorted out various answers to my advertisement, and in due course went to London to a small private hotel near Lancaster Gate to interview a Miss Charlotte Fisher. I liked Miss Fisher as soon as I saw her. She was tall, brown-haired, about twenty-three, I judged; had had experience with children, looked extremely capable, and had a nice-looking twinkle behind her general decorum. Her father was one of the Chaplains to the King in Edinburgh, and Rector of St. Columbaa€?s there. She knew shorthand and typing, but had not had much experience recently in shorthand. She liked the idea of a post where she could do secretarial work as well as looking after a child.
a€?Therea€?s one other thing,a€I said rather doubtfully. a€?Do youa€“era€“do you think you cana€“I mean, are you good at getting on with old ladies?a€?
Miss Fisher gave me rather an odd look. I suddenly noticed that we were sitting in a room containing about twenty old ladies, knitting, crocheting, and reading picture papers. Their eyes all slowly swivelled to me as I put this question. Miss Fisher bit her lip to stop herself laughing. I had been oblivious of my surroundings because I had been wondering how to frame my question. My mother was now definitely difficult to get on witha€“most people are as they get older, but mother, who had always been most independent and who got tired and bored with people easily, was more difficult than most. Jessie Swannell, particularly, had not been able to stand it.
a€?I think so,a€Charlotte Fisher replied in a matter-of-fact voice. a€?Ia€?ve never found any difficulty.a€?
I explained that my mother was elderly, slightly eccentric, inclined to think she knew besta€“and not easy to get on with. Since Charlotte seemed to view this without alarm, we settled that she would come to me as soon as she was free from her present job, which was, I gather, looking after the children of a millionaire domiciled in Park Lane. She had a sister rather older than herself, who lived in London, and she would be glad if the sister could occasionally come down and see her. I said that would be quite all right.
So Charlotte Fisher came to be my secretary and Mary Fisher came as a help in trouble when necessary, and they remained with me as friend and secretary and governess and dogsbody and everything else for many years. Charlotte is still one of my best friends.
The coming of Charlotte, or Carlo, as Rosalind began to call her after a month, was like a miracle. She had no sooner stepped inside the door of Scotswood than Rosalind was mysteriously transformed to her old self in the days of Site. She might have been sprinkled with holy water! Her shoes remained on her feet and were not thrown at anybody, she replied politely, and she appeared to take a good deal of pleasure in Carloa€?s company. The raging demon had disappeared. a€?Though I must say,a€said Charlotte to me later, a€?she looked a little like a wild animal when I arrived, because nobody seemed to have cut her fringe for a long time: it was hanging down in front of her eyes, and she was peering through it.a€?
So the period of halcyon days began. As soon as Rosalind started school I began to prepare to start dictating a story. I was so nervous about it that I put it off from day to day. Finally the time came: Charlotte and I sat down opposite each other, she with her note-book and pencil. I stared unhappily at the mantelpiece, and began uttering a few tentative sentences. They sounded dreadful. I could not say more than a word without hesitating and stopping. Nothing I said sounded natural. We persisted for an hour. Long afterwards Carlo told me that she herself had been dreading the moment when literary work should begin. Although she had taken a shorthand-typing course she had never had much practice in it, and indeed had tried to refresh her skills by taking down sermons. She was terrified that I would rush along at a terrific pacea€“but nobody could have found any difficulty in taking down what I was saying. They could have written it in longhand.
After this disastrous start things went better but for creative work I usually feel happier either writing things in longhand or typing them. It is odd how hearing your own voice makes you self-conscious and unable to express yourself. It was only about five or six years ago, after I had broken a wrist and was unable to use my right hand, that I started using a dictaphone, and gradually became used to the sound of my own voice. The disadvantage of a dictaphone or tape recorder, however, is that it encourages you to be much too verbose.
There is no doubt that the effort involved in typing or writing does help me in keeping to the point. Economy of wording, I think, is particularly necessary in detective stories. You dona€?t want to hear the same thing rehashed three or four times over. But it is tempting when one is speaking into a dictaphone to say the same thing over and over again in slightly different words. Of course, one can cut it out later, but that is irritating, and destroys the smooth flow which one gets otherwise. It is important to profit by the fact that a human being is naturally lazy and so wona€?t write more than is absolutely necessary to convey his meaning.
Of course, there is a right length for everything. I think myself that the right length for a detective story is 50,000 words. I know this is considered by publishers as too short. Possibly readers feel themselves cheated if they pay their money and only get 50,000 wordsa€“so 60,000 Or 70,000 are more acceptable. If your book runs to more than that I think you will usually find that it would have been better if it had been shorter. 20,000 words for a long short story is an excellent length for a thriller. Unfortunately there is less and less market for stories of that size, and the authors tend not to be particularly well paid. One feels therefore that one would do better to continue the story, and expand it to a full-length novel. The short story technique, I think, is not really suited to the detective story at all. A thriller, possiblya€“but a detective story no. The Mr Fortune stories of H. C. Bailey were good in that line, because they were longer than the average magazine story.
By now Hughes Massie had settled me with a new publisher, William Collins, with whom I still remain as I am writing this book.
My first book for them, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, was far and away my most successful to date; in fact it is still remembered and quoted. I got hold of a good formula therea€“and I owe it in part to my brother-in-law, James, who some years previously had said somewhat fretfully as he put down a detective story; a€?Almost everybody turns out to be a criminal nowadays in detective storiesa€“even the detective. What I would like to see is a Watson who turned out to be the criminal.a€It was a remarkably original thought and I mulled over it lengthily. Then, as it happened, very much the same idea was also suggested to me by Lord Louis Mountbatten, as he then was, who wrote to suggest that a story should be narrated in the first person by someone who later turned out to be the murderer. The letter arrived when I was seriously ill and to this day I am not certain whether I acknowledged it.
I thought it was a good idea, and considered it for a long time. It had enormous difficulties, of course. My mind boggled at the thought of Hastings murdering anybody, and it was anyway going to be difficult to do it in such a way that it would not be cheating. Of course, a lot of people say that The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is cheating; but if they read it carefully they will see that they are wrong. Such little lapses of time as there have to be are nicely concealed in an ambiguous sentence, and Dr Sheppard, in writing it down, took great pleasure himself in writing nothing but the truth, though not the whole truth.
Quite apart from The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, it was success all along the line at this period. Rosalind went to her first school, and enjoyed it enormously. She had pleasant friends; we had a nice flat and garden; I had my lovely bottle-nosed Morris; I had Carlo Fisher, and domestic peace. Archie thought, talked, dreamt, slept and lived for golf; his digestion improved so that he suffered less from nervous dyspepsia. All was for the best in the best of all possible worlds, as Dr Pangloss so happily says.
There was one lack in our lives: a dog. Dear Joey had died whilst we were abroad, so we now purchased a wire-haired terrier puppy whom we named Peter. Peter, of course, became the life and soul of the family. He slept on Carloa€?s bed, and ate his way through a variety of slippers and so-called indestructible balls for terriers.
The lack of worry about finances was pleasant after all we had under-gone in the pasta€“and possibly it went to our heads a bit. We thought of things we would not have thought of otherwise. Archie electrified me one day by suddenly saying that he thought he would like to get a really fast car. He had been excited, I think, by the Strachansa€Bentley.
a€?But wea€?ve got a car,a€I said, shocked.
a€?Ah, but I mean something really special.a€?
a€?We could afford another baby now,a€I pointed out. I had been contemplating this for some time with a good deal of pleasure.
Archie waved aside another baby. a€?I dona€?t want anyone but Rosalind,a€he said. a€?Rosalind is absolutely satisfactory, quite enough.a€?
Archie was mad about Rosalind. He enjoyed playing with her, and she even cleaned his golf clubs. They understood each other, I think, better than Rosalind and I did. They had the same sense of humour, and saw each othera€?s point of view. He liked her toughness and her suspicious attitude of mind: the way she would never take anything for granted. He had been worried about the advent of Rosalind beforehand, being afraid, as he said, that nobody would take any notice of him any more. a€?Thata€?s why I hope we have a daughter,a€he said. a€?A boy would be much worse. I could bear a daughter; it would be very hard with a son.a€?
Now he said, a€?If we were to have a son it would be just as bad as ever. And anyway,a€he added, a€?therea€?s lots of time.a€?
I agreed that there was plenty of time, and rather reluctantly gave into his desire for the second-hand Delage which he had already seen and marked down. The Delage gave us both great pleasure. I loved driving it, and Archie naturally did, though there was so much golf in his life that he had little time for it.
a€?Sunningdale is a perfect place to live,a€said Archie. a€?Ita€?s got everything we want. Ita€?s the right distance from London, and now theya€?re opening Wentworth golf course as well, and developing that estate there. I think we might have a real house of our own.a€?
This was an exciting idea. Comfortable though we were in Scotswood, it had a few disadvantages. The management were not particularly reliable. The wiring of the electricity gave us trouble; the advertised constant hot water was neither constant nor hot; and the place suffered from a general lack of maintenance. We were enamoured of the idea of having a home of our very own.
We considered at first having a new house built on Wentworth Estate, which had just been taken over by a builder. It was going to be laid out with two golf coursesa€“probably a third latera€“and the rest of the sixty-acre estate was to be covered by houses of all sizes and kinds. Archie and I used to spend happy summer evenings tramping over Wentworth looking out for a site which we thought would suit us. In the end, we decided on a choice between three. We then got into touch with the builder in charge of the estate. We decided that we wanted about an acre and a half of ground. We preferred a natural pine and wooded area, so that we should not have too much upkeep of a garden. The builder seemed most kind and helpful. We explained that we wanted quite a small housea€“I dona€?t know what we thought it would cost us: about, I suppose, ?￡2000. He produced plans of a remarkably nasty-looking little house, full of every unpleasant modern ornamental feature, for which he asked what seemed to us the colossal price of ?￡5,300. We were crestfallen. There seemed no chance of getting anything built more cheaplya€“that was the bottom limit. Sadly, we withdrew. We decided, however, that I should buy a debenture share in Wentworth for ?￡100a€“which would entitle me to play on Saturdays and Sundays on the links therea€“as a kind of stake for the future. After all, since there would be two courses there, one would be able to play on at least one of them without feeling too much of a rabbit.
As it happened, my golfing ambitions got a sudden boost at this momenta€“I actually won a competition. Such a thing had never happened to me before, and never happened again. My L.G.U Golf handicap was 35 (the limit), but even with that it seemed unlikely I should ever win anything. However, I met in the finals a Mrs Burberrya€“a nice woman a few years older than myselfa€“who also had a handicap of 35, and was just as nervous and unreliable as I was.
We met quite happily, pleased with ourselves for having reached the point we had. We halved the first hole. Thereafter Mrs Burberry, surprising herself and depressing me, succeeded in winning not only the next hole, but the hole after that, a further hole, and so on, until, at the ninth, she was eight up. Any faint hopes of even putting up a good show deserted me, and having reached that pitch I became much happier. I could now go on with the round without bothering very much, until the moment, certainly not far off, when Mrs Burberry would have won the match. Mrs Burberry now began to go to pieces. Anxiety took over. She lost hole after hole. I, still not caring, won hole after hole. The unbelievable happened. I won the next nine holes, and therefore won by one up on the last green. I think somewhere I have still got my silver trophy.
After a year or two, having looked at innumerable housesa€“always one of my favourite pastimesa€“we narrowed our choice down to two. One was rather a long way out, not too big, and had a nice garden. The other one was near the station; a sort of millionaire-style Savoy suite transferred to the country and decorated regardless of expense. It had panelled walls and quantities of bathrooms, basins in bedrooms, and every other luxury. It had passed through several hands in recent years and was said to be an unlucky housea€“everybody who lived there always came to grief in some way. The first man lost his money; the second his wife. I dona€?t know what happened to the third ownersa€“they just separated, I think, and departed. Anyway, it was going cheap as it had been on the market for some time. It had a pleasant gardena€“long and narrow, comprising first a lawn, then a stream with a great many water plants, then wild garden with azaleas and rhododendrons, and so on to the end, where there was a good solid kitchen garden, and beyond it a tangle of gorse bushes. Whether we could afford it or not was another matter. Although we were both making fair incomesa€“mine perhaps a little doubtful and uneven, Archiea€?s well assureda€“we were lamentably short of capital. However, we arranged for a mortgage, and in due course moved in.
We bought such additional curtains and carpets as were necessary, and embarked on a course of living that was undoubtedly above our means, though our calculations looked all right on paper. We had both the Delage and the bottle-nosed Morris to keep up. We also had more servants: a married couple and a housemaid. The wife of the married couple had been a kitchenmaid in some ducal household, and it was assumed, though never actually stated, that her husband had been the butler there. He certainly did not know much about being a butler, though his wife was a most excellent cook. We discovered in the end that he had been the luggage porter. He was a man of colossal laziness. Most of the day he spent lying on his bed, and apart from waiting rather badly at table that was virtually all he ever did. In the intervals of lying on his bed he also went down to the pub. We had to decide whether to get rid of them or not. On the whole the cooking seemed more important, however, and we kept them on.
So we proceeded on our course of grandeura€“and exactly what we might have expected happened. Within a year we were getting worried. Our bank account seemed to be melting in a most extraordinary way. With a few economies though, we said to each other, we should do all right.
At Archiea€?s suggestion, we called the house Styles, since the first book which had begun to bring me a stake in life, had been The Mysterious Affair at Styles. On the wall we hung the painting which had been done for the jacket of Stylesa€“which had been presented to me by The Bodley Head.
But Styles proved what it had been in the past to others. It was an unlucky house. I felt it when I first went into it. I put my fancy down to the fact that the decorations were so flashy and unnatural for the countryl When we could afford to have it done up in a country style, without all this panelling and paint and gilt, then I said, it would feel quite different.
IV
The next year of my life is one I hate recalling. As so often in life, when one thing goes wrong, everything goes wrong. About a month after I got home from a short holiday in Corsica my mother had bronchitis very badly. She was at Ashfield at the time. I went down to her, and then Punkie replaced me. Soon afterwards she sent me a telegram to say she was moving mother up to Abney, where she thought she could be better looked after, Mother seemed to improve, but she was never the same again. She moved very little from her room. I suppose her lungs were affected, she was seventy-two by that time. I did not think it was as serious as it turned out to bea€“I dona€?t believe Punkie did, eithera€“but a week or two later I was telegraphed for, Archie was away in Spain on business.
It was going up in the train to Manchester that I knew, quite suddenly, that my mother was dead. I felt a coldness, as though I was invaded all over, from head to feet, with some deadly chilla€“and I thought: a€?Mother is deada€?.
I was right. I looked down at her as she lay on the bed, and thought how true it was that, once dead, it is only the shell that remains. All my mothera€?s eager, warm, impulsive personality was far away somewhere. She had said to me several times in the past few years, a€?Sometimes one feels so eager to get out of this bodya€“so outworn, so old, so useless. One longs to be released from this prison.a€That is what I felt about her now. She had been released from her prison. But for us there was the sadness of her passing.
Archie could not come to the funeral, because he was still in Spain. I was back at Styles when he returned a week later. I had always realised that he had a violent dislike of illness, death, and trouble of any kind. One knows these things, yet one hardly realises them, or pays much attention to them, until an emergency arises. He came into the room, I remember, acutely embarrassed, and it made him put on an appearance of jollitya€“a kind of a€?Hullo, her we are. Now then, we must all try and cheer upa€attitude. It is very hard to bear when you have lost a person who is one of the three you love best in the world.
He said: a€?Ia€?ve got a very good idea. How would it bea€“Ia€?ve got to go back to Spain next weeka€“how would it be if I took you out there with meWe could have great fun, and I am sure it would distract you.a€?
I didna€?t want to be distracted. I wanted to be with my sorrow and learn to get used to it. So I thanked him and said Ia€?d rather stay at home. I see now that I was wrong. My life with Archie lay ahead of me. We were happy together, assured of each other, and neither of us would have dreamed that we could ever part. But he hated the feeling of sorrow in the house, and it left him open to other influences.
Then there was the problem of clearing up Ashfield. For the last four or five years all kinds of rubbish had accumulated; my grandmothera€?s things; all the things that my mother had been unable to cope with and had locked away. There had been no money for repairs; the roof was falling in; and some of the rooms were dripping with rain. My mother had lived at the end in only two rooms. Somebody had to go down and cope with all this and that person had to be me. My sister was too embroiled in her own concerns though she promised to come down for two or three weeks in August. Archie thought it would be best if we let Styles for the summer, which would give us a large rent and put us out of the red again. He would stay at his club in London, I would go to Torquay to clear up Ashfield. He would join me there in Augusta€“and when Punkie came we would leave Rosalind with her and go abroad. We decided on Italya€“a place we had never been to before, called Alassio.
So I left Archie in London, and went down to Ashfield.
I suppose I was already run down and slightly ill, but turning out that house, with the memories, the hard work, the sleepless nights, reduced me to such a nervous state that I hardly knew what I was doing. I worked for ten or eleven hours a day, opening every room, and carrying things around. It was frightful: the moth-eaten garments, Grannya€?s old trunks full of her old dressesa€“all the things that nobody had wanted to throw away but had now got to be disposed of. We had to pay the dustman extra every week to take everything. There were difficult items such as the large wax-flower crown which was my grandfathera€?s memorial wreath. It lay under an enormous glass dome. I did not want to go through life with this enormous trophy but what can one do with a thing of that kindYou cana€?t throw it away. Finally a solution was found. Mrs Pottera€“mothera€?s cooka€“had always admired it. I presented it to her and she was delighted.
Ashfield was the first house that father and mother had lived in after their marriage. They went there about six months after Madge was born, and had stayed there ever since, continually adding fresh cupboards for storage. Little by little, every room in the house had become a store-room. The school-room, which had been the scene of so many happy days in my youth, was now one vast box-room: all the trunks and boxes that Grannie could not cram into her bedroom had gone up there.
A further blow dealt me by Fate was the loss of my dear Carlo. Her father and step mother had been travelling in Africa, and she suddenly heard from Kenya that her father was very ill and that the doctor said he had cancer. Though he did not yet know it himself, Carloa€?s stepmother knew, and apparently he was not expected to live longer than about six months. Carlo had to go back to Edinburgh as soon as her father returned, and be with him during his last months. I bade her farewell tearfully. She hated to leave me in all this confusion and unhappiness, but it was one of those priorities that cannot be evaded. Still, another six weeks or so, and I would get it all finished. Then I could begin to live again.
I worked like a demon, I was so anxious to get through. All the trunks and cases had to be examined carefully: one could not just throw things out. Among Granniea€?s things you were never sure what you would find. She had insisted on doing a good deal of her packing herself when she left Ealing, considering us sure to throw away her dearest treasures. Old letters abounded I was about to throw them all away; then a crumpled old envelope turned out to contain a dozen ?￡5 notes! Grannie had been like a squirrel, hiding away her little nuts here and there so that they might escape the rigours of war. On one occasion there was a diamond brooch wrapped up in an old stocking.
I began to get confused and muddled over things. I never felt hungry and ate less and less. Sometimes I would sit down, put my hands to my head, and try to remember what it was I was doing. If Carlo had been there I would have been able to go to London for an occasional weekend and see Archie, but I couldna€?t leave Rosalind alone in the house, and I had nowhere else to stay.
I suggested to Archie that he should come down for a weekend occasionally: it would make all the difference. He wrote back pointing out that it would be rather a foolish thing to do. After all it was an expensive journey, and, as he could not get off before Saturday and would have to go back Sunday night, it would hardly be worth it. I suspected that he would hate to miss a Sundaya€?s golfa€“but put that aside as an unworthy thought. It was not for long, he added cheerfully.
A terrible sense of loneliness was coming over me. I dona€?t think I realised that for the first time in my life I was really ill. I had always been extremely strong, and I had no understanding of how unhappiness, worry and overwork could affect your physical health. But I was upset one day when I was just about to sign a cheque and could not remember the name to sign it with. I felt exactly like Alice in Wonderland touching the tree.
a€?But of course,a€I said. a€?I know my name perfectly well. Buta€“but what is it?a€I sat there with the pen in my hand feeling an extraordinary frustration. What initial did it begin withWas it perhaps Blanche AmoryIt seemed familiar. Then I remembered that was some lesser character in Pendennis, a book I hadna€?t read for years.
I had another warning a day or two later. I went to start the car, which usually had to be started with a starting handlea€“in fact, I am not sure that cars did not always have to be started with the handle in those days. I cranked and cranked, and nothing happened. Finally I burst into tears, came into the house, and lay on the sofa sobbing. That worried me. Crying just because a car wouldna€?t start; I must be crazy.
Many years later, someone going through a period of unhappiness said to me: a€?You know, I dona€?t know what is the matter with me. I cry for nothing at all. The other day the laundry didna€?t come and I cried. And the next day the car wouldna€?t starta€“a€Something stirred in me then, and I said, a€?I think you had better be very careful; it is probably the beginning of a nervous breakdown. You ought to go and see someone about it.a€?
I had no such knowledge in those days. I knew I was desperately tired, and that the sorrow of losing my mother was still there deep down, though I trieda€“perhaps too mucha€“to put it out of my mind. If only Archie would come, or Punkie, or someone, to be with me.
I had Rosalind, but of course I could not say anything to upset her, or talk to her about being unhappy, worried or ill. She was particularly happy herself, enjoying Ashfield very much, as she always dida€“and extremely helpful in my chores. She loved carrying things down the stairs and stuffing them into the dustbin, and occasionally allocating something to herself. a€?I dona€?t think anyone wants thisa€“and it might be rather fun.a€?
Time went on, things got almost straight, and at last I could look forward to the end of my drudgery. August camea€“Rosalinda€?s birthday was on the 5th of August. Punkie came down two or three days before it, and Archie arrived on the 3rd. Rosalind was very contented at the prospect of having her Auntie Punkie with her during the two weeks Archie and I were in Italy.