Human on my faithless arm;
Joanna Childe was large, with light shiny hair, blue eyes and deep-pink cheeks. When she read the notice signed by Lady Julia Markham, chairwoman of the committee, she stood with the other young women round the green baize board and was given to murmur:
‘He rageth. and again he rageth, because he knows his time is short.’
It was not known to many that this was a reference to the Devil, but it caused amusement. She had not intended it so. It was not usual for Joanna to quote anything for its aptitude, and at conversational pitch.
Joanna, who was now of age, would henceforth vote conservative in the elections, which at that time in the May of Teck Club was associated with a desirable order of life that none of the members was old enough to remember from direct experience. In principle they all approved of what the committee’s notice stood for. And so Joanna was alarmed by the amused reaction to her quotation, the hearty laugh of understanding that those days were over when the members of anything whatsoever might not raise their voices against the drawing-room wallpaper. Principles regardless, everyone knew that the notice was plain damned funny. Lady Julia must be feeling pretty desperate.
‘He rageth and again he rageth, because he knows his time is short.’
Little dark Judy Redwood who was a shorthand typist in the Ministry of Labour said, ‘I’ve got a feeling that as members we’re legally entitled to a say in the administration. I must ask Geoffrey.’ This was the man Judy was engaged to. He was still in the forces, but had qualified as a solicitor before being called up. His sister, Anne Baberton, who stood with the notice-board group, said, ‘Geoffrey would be the last person I would consult.’ Anne Baberton said this to indicate that she knew Geoffrey better than Judy knew him; she said it to indicate affectionate scorn; she said it because it was the obvious thing for a nicely brought-up sister to say, since she was proud of him; and besides all this, there was an element of irritation in her words, ‘Geoffrey would be the last person I would consult’, for she knew there was no point in members taking up this question of the drawing-room wall-paper.
Anne trod out her cigarette-end contemptuously on the floor of the large entrance hall with its pink and grey Victorian tiles. This was pointed to by a thin middle-aged woman, one of the few older, if not exactly the earliest members. She said, ‘One is not permitted to put cigarette-ends on the floor.’ The words did not appear to impress themselves on the ears of the group, more than the ticking of the grandfather clock behind them. But Anne said, ‘Isn’t one permitted to spit on the floor, even?’ ‘One certainly isn’t,’ said the spinster. ‘Oh, I thought one was,’ said Anne.
The May of Teck Club was founded by Queen Mary before her marriage to King George the Fifth, when she was Princess May of Teck. On an afternoon between the engagement and the marriage, the Princess had been induced to come to London and declare officially open the May of Teck Club which had been endowed by various gentle forces of wealth.
None of the original Ladies remained in the club. But three subsequent members had been permitted to stay on past the stipulated age-limit of thirty, and were now in their fifties, and had resided at the May of Teck Club since before the First World War at which time, they said, all members had been obliged to dress for dinner.
Nobody knew why these three women had not been asked to leave when they had reached the age of thirty. Even the warden and committee did not know why the three remained. It was now too late to turn them out with decency. It was too late even to mention to them the subject of their continuing residence. Successive committees before 1939 had decided that the three older residents might, in any case, be expected to have a good influence on the younger ones.
During the war the matter had been left in abeyance, since the club was half empty; in any case members’ fees were needed, and bombs were then obliterating so much and so many in the near vicinity that it was an open question whether indeed the three spinsters would remain upright with the house to the end. By 1945 they had seen much coming of new girls and going of old, and were generally liked by the current batch, being subject to insults when they interfered in anything, and intimate confidences when they kept aloof.. The confidences seldom represented the whole truth, particularly those revealed by the young women who occupied the top floor. The three spinsters were, through the ages, known and addressed as Collie (Miss Coleman), Greggie (Miss Macgregor) and Jarvie (Miss Jarman). It was Greggie who had said to Anne by the notice-board:
‘One isn’t permitted to put cigarette-ends on the floor.’
‘Isn’t one permitted to spit on the floor, even?’
‘No, one isn’t.’
‘Oh, I thought one was.’
Greggie affected an indulgent sigh and, pushed her way through the crowd of younger members. She went to the open door, set in a wide porch, to look out at the summer evening like a shopkeeper waiting for custom. Greggie always behaved as if she owned the club.
The gong was about to sound quite soon. Anne kicked her cigarette-stub into a dark corner.
Greggie called over her shoulder, ‘Anne, here comes your boy-friend.’
‘On time, for once,’ said Anne, with the same pretence of scorn that she had adopted when referring to her brother Geoffrey: ‘Geoffrey would be the last person I would consult.’ She moved, with her casual hips, towards the door.
A square-built high-coloured young man in the uniform of an English captain came smiling in. Anne stood regarding him as if he was the last person in the world she would consult.
‘Good evening,’ he said to Greggie as a well-brought-up man would naturally say to a woman of Greggie’s years standing in the doorway. He made a vague nasal noise of recognition to Anne. which if properly pronounced would have been ‘Hallo’. She said nothing at all by way of greeting. They were nearly engaged to be married.
‘Like to come in and see the drawing-room wallpaper?’ Anne said then.
‘No, let’s get cracking.’
Anne went to get her coat off the banister where she had slung it. He was saying to Greggie, ‘Lovely evening, isn’t it?’
Anne returned with her coat slung over her shoulder. ‘Bye, Greggie,’ she said. ‘Good-bye,’ said the soldier. Anne took his arm.
‘Have a nice time,’ said Greggie.
The dinner-gong sounded and there was a scuffle of feet departing from the notice-board and a scamper of feet
