Cakes and Ale

I could not get over what Mary-Ann had told me about Mrs. Driffield. Though I knew theoretically what people did when they were married, and was capable of putting the facts in the bluntest language, I did not really understand it. I thought it indeed rather disgusting and I did not quite, quite believe it. After all, I was aware that the earth was round, but I knew it was flat. Mrs. Driffield seemed so frank, her laugh was so open and simple, there was in her demeanour something so young and childlike, that I could not see her “going with” sailors and above all anyone so gross and horrible as Lord George. She was not at all the type of the wicked woman I had read of in novels. Of course I knew she wasn’t “good form” and she spoke with the Blackstable accent, she dropped an aitch now and then, and sometimes her grammar gave me a shock, but I couldn’t help liking her. I came to the conclusion that what Mary-Ann had told me was a pack of lies.

One day I happened to tell her that Mary-Ann was our cook.

“She says she lived next door to you in Rye Lane,” I added, quite prepared to hear Mrs. Driffield say that she had never even heard of her.

But she smiled and her blue eyes gleamed.

“That’s right. She used to take me to Sunday school. She used to have a rare job keeping me quiet. I heard she’d gone to service at the vicarage. Fancy her being there still! I haven’t seen her for donkey’s years. I’d like to see her again and have a chat about old days. Remember me to her, will you, and ask her to look in on her evening out. I’ll give her a cup of tea.”

I was taken aback at this. After all, the Driffields lived in a house that they were talking of buying and they had a “general.” It wouldn’t be at all the thing for them to have Mary-Ann to tea, and it would make it very awkward for me. They seemed to have no sense of the things one could do and the things one simply couldn’t. It never ceased to embarrass me, the way in which they talked of incidents in their past that I should have thought they would not dream of mentioning. I do not know that the people I lived among were pretentious in the sense of making themselves out to be richer or grander than they really were, but looking back it does seem to me that they lived a life full of pretences. They dwelt behind a mask of respectability. You never caught them in their shirt sleeves with their feet on the table. The ladies put on afternoon dresses and were not visible till then; they lived privately with rigid economy so that you could not drop in for a casual meal, but when they entertained their tables groaned with food. Though catastrophe overwhelmed the family, they held their heads high and ignored it. One of the sons might have married an actress, but they never referred to the calamity, and though the neighbours said it was dreadful, they took ostentatious care not to mention the theatre in the presence of the afflicted. We all knew that the wife of Major Greencourt who had taken the Three Gables was connected with trade, but neither she nor the major ever so much as hinted at the discreditable secret; and though we sniffed at them behind their backs, we were too polite even to mention crockery (the source of Mrs. Greencourt’s adequate income) in their presence. It was still not unheard of for an angry parent to cut off his son with a shilling or to tell his daughter (who like my own mother had married a solicitor) never to darken his doors again. I was used to all this and it seemed to me perfectly natural. What did shock me was to hear Ted Driffield speak of being a waiter in a restaurant in Holborn as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world. I knew he had run away to sea, that was romantic; I knew that boys, in books at all events, often did this and had thrilling adventures before they married a fortune and an earl’s daughter; but Ted Driffield had driven a cab at Maidstone and had been clerk in a booking office at Birmingham. Once when we bicycled past the Railway Arms, Mrs. Driffield mentioned quite casually, as though it were something that anyone might have done, that she had worked there for three years.

“It was my first place,” she said. “After that I went to the Feathers at Haversham. I only left there to get married.”

She laughed as though she enjoyed the recollection. I did not know what to say; I did not know which way to look; I blushed scarlet. Another time when we were going through Ferne Bay on our way back from a long excursion, it being a hot day and all of us thirsty, she suggested that we should go into the Dolphin and have a glass of beer. She began talking to the girl behind the bar and I was horrified to hear her remark that she had been in the business herself for five years. The landlord joined us and Ted Driffield offered him a drink, and Mrs. Driffield said that the barmaid must have a glass of port, and for some time they all chatted amiably about trade and tied houses and how the price of everything was going up. Meanwhile, I stood, hot and cold all over, and not knowing what to do with myself. As we went out Mrs. Driffield remarked:

“I took quite a fancy to that girl, Ted. She ought to do well for herself. As I said to her, it’s a hard life but a merry one. You do see a bit of what’s going on and if you play your cards right you ought to marry well. I noticed she had an engagement ring on, but she told me she just wore that because it gave the fellows a chance to tease her.”

Driffield laughed. She turned to me.

“I had a rare old time when I was a barmaid, but of course you can’t go on for ever. You have to think of your future.”

But a greater jolt awaited me. It was halfway through September and my holidays were drawing to an end. I was very full of the Driffields, but my desire to talk about them at home was snubbed by my uncle.

“We don’t want your friends pushed down our throats all day long,” said he. “There are other topics of conversation that are more suitable. But I do think that, as Ted Driffield was born in the parish and is seeing you almost every day, he might come to church occasionally.”

One day I told Driffield: “My uncle wants you to come to church.”

“All right. Let’s go to church next Sunday night, Rosie.”

“I don’t mind,” she said.

I told Mary-Ann they were going. I sat in the vicarage pew just behind the squire’s and I could not look round, but I was conscious by the behaviour of my neighbours on the other side of the aisle that they were there, and as soon as I had a chance next day I asked Mary-Ann if she had seen them.

“I see ’er all right,” said Mary-Ann grimly.

“Did you speak to her afterward?”

“Me?” She suddenly burst into anger. “You get out of my kitchen. What d’you want to come bothering me all day long? How d’you expect me to do my work with you getting in my way all the time?”

“All right,” I said. “Don’t get in a wax.”

“I don’t know what your uncle’s about lettin’ you go all over the place with the likes of them. All them flowers in her ’at. I wonder she ain’t ashamed to show her face. Now run along, I’m busy.”

I did not know why Mary-Ann was so cross. I did not mention Mrs. Driffield again. But two or three days later I