by my mother saying that it would be all right, but I must wear a disguising cloak thrown over one shoulder. So a cloak was managed out of a piece of turquoise blue-velvet among Grannie’s ‘pieces’. (Grannie’s pieces were kept in various trunks and drawers, and comprised all types of rich and beautiful fabrics, remnants which she had bought in various sales over the last twenty-five years and had now more or less forgotten about.) It is not terribly easy to act with a cloak draped over one shoulder and flung over the other, in such a way that the indelicacies of one’s legs were more or less hidden from the audience.
As far as I remember I felt no stage fright. Strangely enough for a terribly shy person, who very often can hardly bring herself to enter a shop and who has to grit her teeth before arriving at a large party, there was one activity in which I never felt nervous at all, and that was singing. Later, when I studied both piano and singing in Paris, I lost my nerve completely whenever I had to play the piano in the school concert but if I had to sing I felt no nervousness at all. Perhaps that was due to my early conditioning in ‘Is life a boon?’ and the rest of Colonel Fairfax’s repertoire. There is no doubt that The Yeomen of the Guard was one of the highlights of my existence. But I can’t help thinking that it’s as well that we didn’t do any more operas–an experience that you really enjoyed should never be repeated.
One of the odd things in looking back is that, while you remember how things arrived or happened, you never know how or why they disappeared or came to a stop. I cannot remember many scenes in which I participated with the Huxleys after that time, yet I am sure there was no break in friendship. At one time we seemed to be meeting every day, and then I would find myself writing to Lully in Scotland. Perhaps Dr Huxley left to practise elsewhere, or retired? I don’t remember any definite leave-taking. I remember that Lully’s terms of friendship were clearly defined. ‘You can’t be my best friend,’ she explained, ‘because there are the Scottish girls, the McCrackens. They have always been our best friends. Brenda is my best friend, and Janet is Phyllis’s best friend; but you can be my second-best friend.’ So I was content with being Lully’s second-best friend, and the arrangement worked well, since the ‘best friends’, the McCrackens, were only seen by the Huxleys at intervals of, I should say, roughly two years.
II
It must, I think, have been some time in March that my mother remarked that Madge was going to have a baby. I stared at her. ‘Madge, have a baby?’ I was dumbfounded. I cannot imagine why I shouldn’t have thought of Madge having a baby–after all, it was happening all round one–but things are always surprising when they happen in one’s own family. I accepted my brother-in-law, James, or Jimmy, as I usually called him, enthusiastically, and was devoted to him. Now here was something entirely different.
As usual with me, it was some time before I could take it in. I probably sat with my mouth open for quite two minutes or more. Then I said, ‘Oh–that will be exciting. When is it coming? Next week?’
‘Not quite as soon as that,’ said my mother. She suggested a date in October.
‘October?’ I was deeply chagrined. Fancy having to wait all that time. I can’t remember very clearly what my attitude to sex was then–I must have been between twelve and thirteen–but I don’t think I any longer accepted the theories of doctors with black bags or heavenly visitants with wings. By then I had realised it was a physical process, but without feeling much curiosity or, indeed, interest. I had, however, done a little mild deduction. The baby was first inside you, and then in due course it was outside you; I reflected on the mechanism, and settled on the navel as a focal point. I couldn’t see what that round hole in the middle of my stomach was for–it didn’t seem to be for anything else, so clearly it must be something to do with the production of a baby.
My sister told me years afterwards that she had had very definite ideas; that she had thought that her navel was a keyhole, that there was a key that fitted it, which was kept by your mother, who handed it over to your husband, who unlocked it on the wedding night. It all sounded so sensible that I don’t wonder she stuck firmly to her theory.
I took the idea out into the garden and thought about it a good deal. Madge was going to have a baby. It was a wonderful concept, and the more I thought about it the more I was in favour of it. I was going to be an aunt–it sounded very grown up and important. I would buy it toys, I would let it play with my dolls’ house, I would have to be careful that Christopher, my kitten, didn’t scratch it by mistake. After about a week I stopped thinking about it; it was absorbed into various daily happenings. It was a long time to wait until October.
Some time in August a telegram took my mother away from home. She said she had to go and stay with my sister in Cheshire. Auntie-Grannie was staying with us at the time. Mother’s sudden departure did not surprise me much, and I didn’t speculate about it, because whatever mother did she did suddenly, with no apparent forethought or preparation. I was, I remember, out in the garden on the tennis lawn, looking hopefully at the pear-trees to see if I could find a pear which was ripe. It was here that Alice came out to fetch me. ‘It’s nearly lunch-time and you are to come in, Miss Agatha. There is a piece of news waiting for you.’
‘Is there? What news?’
‘You’ve got a little nephew,’ said Alice.
A nephew?
‘But I wasn’t going to have a nephew till October!’ I objected.
‘Ah, but things don’t always go as you think they will,’ said Alice. ‘Come on in now.’
I came in to the house and found Grannie in the kitchen with a telegram in her hand. I bombarded her with questions. What did the baby look like? Why had it come now instead of October? Grannie returned answers to these questions with the parrying art well known to Victorians. She had, I think, been in the middle of an obstetric conversation with Jane when I came in, because they lowered their voices and murmured something like: ‘The other doctor said, let the labour come on, but the specialist was quite firm.’ It all sounded mysterious and interesting. My mind was fixed entirely on my new nephew. When Grannie was carving the leg of mutton, I said:
‘But what does he look like? What colour is his hair?’
‘He’s probably bald. They don’t get hair at once.’ ‘Bald,’ I said, disappointed. ‘Will his face be very red?’
‘Probably.’
‘How big is he?’
Grannie considered, stopped carving, and measured off a distance on the carving knife.
‘Like that,’ she said. She spoke with the absolute certainty of one who knew. It seemed to me rather small. All the same the announcement made such an impression on me that I am sure if I were being asked an associative question by a psychiatrist and he gave me the key-word ‘baby’ I would immediately respond with ‘carving-knife’. I wonder what kind of Freudian complex he would put that answer down to.
I was delighted with my nephew. Madge brought him to stay at Ashfield about a month later, and when he was two months old he was christened in old Tor church. Since his godmother, Norah Hewitt, could not be there, I was allowed to hold him and be proxy for her. I stood near the font, full of importance, while my sister hovered nervously at my elbow in case I should drop him. Mr Jacob, our Vicar, with whom I was well acquainted, since he was preparing me for confirmation, had a splendid hand with infants at the font, tipping the water neatly back and off their forehead, and adopting a slightly swaying motion that usually stopped the baby from howling. He was christened James Watts, like his father and grandfather. He would be known as Jack in the family. I could not help being in rather a hurry for him to get to an age when I could play with him, since his principal occupation at this time seemed to be sleeping.
It was lovely to have Madge home for a long visit. I relied on her for telling me stories and providing a lot of entertainment in my life. It was Madge who told me my first Sherlock Holmes story, The Blue Carbuncle, and after that I had always been pestering her for more. The Blue Carbuncle, The Red-Headed League and The Five Orange Pips were definitely my favourites, though I enjoyed all of them. Madge was a splendid story-teller.
She