know this, that however poor a family may be the first thing they save for is their funeral. A sweet old dear who worked for me at one time said, ‘Ah, hard times, dearie. Hard times indeed they’ve been. But one thing, however short I’ve gone and all the rest of us, I’ve got my money saved to bury me decent and I’ll never touch that. No, not even if I go hungry for days!’
IV
I sometimes think that in my last incarnation, if the theory of reincarnation is right, I must have been a dog. I have a great many of the dog’s habits. If anybody is undertaking anything or going anywhere I always want to be taken with them and do it too. In the same way, when returning home after this long absence I acted exactly like a dog. A dog always runs all round the house examining everything, sniffing here, sniffing there, finding out by its nose what has been going on, and visiting all its ‘best spots’. I did exactly the same. I went all round the house, then went out in the garden and visited my pet spots there: the tub, the see-saw tree, my little secret post overlooking the road outside in a hiding place up by the wall. I found my hoop and tested its condition, and took about an hour to satisfy myself that all was exactly as it had been before.
The greatest change had taken place in my dog, Tony. Tony had been a small, neat Yorkshire terrier when we went away. He was now, owing to Froudie’s loving care and endless meals, as fat as a balloon. She was completely Tony’s slave, and when my mother and I went to fetch him home Froudie gave us a long dissertation on how he liked to sleep, what exactly he had to be covered with in his basket, his tastes in food, and what time he liked his walk. At intervals she broke off her conversation with us to speak to Tony. ‘Mother’s lovely,’ she said. ‘Mother’s handsome.’ Tony looked very appreciative at these remarks, but nevertheless seemed to take them as no more than his due. ‘And he won’t eat a morsel,’ said Froudie proudly, ‘unless you give it him by hand. Oh no, I have to feed him every single little piece myself.’
I noticed a look in my mother’s face, and I could see that Tony was not going to receive quite that treatment at home. We took him home with us in the hired cab which we had got for the occasion, plus his bedding and the rest of his possessions. Tony, of course, was delighted to see us, and licked me all over. When his dinner was prepared and brought, Froudie’s warning was proved true. Tony looked at it, looked up at my mother and at me, moved a few steps away and sat down, waiting like a grand seigneur to have each morsel fed to him. I gave him a piece and he accepted it graciously, but my mother stopped that.
‘It’s no good,’ she said. ‘He will have to learn to eat his dinner properly, as he used to do. Leave his dinner down there. He’ll go and eat it presently.’
But Tony did not go and eat it. He sat there. And never have I seen a dog more overcome with righteous indignation. His large, sorrowful, brown eyes went round the assembled family and back to his plate. He was clearly saying, ‘I want it. Don’t you see? I want my dinner. Give it to me.’ However, my mother was firm.
‘Even if he doesn’t eat it today,’ she said, ‘he will tomorrow.’ ‘You don’t think he’ll starve?’ I demanded.
My mother looked thoughtfully at Tony’s immensely broad back. ‘A little starvation,’ she said, ‘would do him a world of good.’
It was not till the following evening that Tony capitulated, and then he saved his pride by eating his dinner when nobody was in the room. After that there was no further trouble. Days of being treated like a Grand Duke were over, and Tony obviously accepted the fact. Still, he did not forget that for a whole year he had been the beloved darling of another house. Any word of reproof, any trouble he got into, and immediately he would sneak off and trot down to Froudie’s house, where he obviously told her that he was not properly appreciated. The habit persisted for quite a long time.
Marie was now Tony’s nurse-attendant, in addition to her other duties. It was amusing to see Marie arrive when we were playing downstairs in the evening, an apron tied round her waist, saying politely, ‘Monsieur Toni pour le bain.’ Monsieur Tony would immediately try to get down on all fours and slide under the sofa, since he had a poor opinion of the weekly bath. Extracted, he was carried off, his tail drooping and his ears down. Marie would report proudly later on the amount of fleas that were floating on top of the Jeyes fluid.
I must say that now dogs do not seem to have nearly as many fleas as they did in my young days. In spite of baths, brushing and combing, and large amounts of Jeyes fluid, all our dogs always seemed to be full of fleas. Perhaps they frequented stables and played with other flea-ridden dogs more than they do now. On the other hand they were less pampered, and they did not seem to live at the vets as much as dogs do today. I don’t remember Tony ever being seriously ill, his coat seemed always in good condition, he ate his meals, which were the scraps from our own dinner, and little fuss was made about his health.
But much more fuss is made about children now than was then the case. Temperatures, unless they were high, were not taken much notice of. A temperature of 102, sustained for twenty-four hours, would probably involve a visit from the doctor, but anything under that was given little attention. Occasionally, after a surfeit of green apples one might have what was termed a bilious attack. Twenty-four hours in bed with starvation usually cured that quite easily. Food was good and varied. I suppose there was a tendency to keep young children on milk and starch far too long, but certainly I, from a young age, had tastes of the steak that was sent up for Nursie’s supper, and under-done roast beef was one of my favourite meals. Devonshire cream, too, was eaten in quantities; so much nicer than cod liver oil, my mother used to say. Sometimes one ate it on bread and sometimes with a spoon. Alas! You never see real Devonshire cream in Devon nowadays–not as it used to be–scalded and taken off the milk in layers with its yellow top standing in a china bowl. There is no doubt about it, my favourite thing has been, is, and probably always will be, cream.
Mother, who craved for variety in food as well as in everything else, used from time to time to have a new craze. One time it was ‘there’s more nourishment in an egg’. On this slogan we had eggs at practically every meal till father rebelled. There was also a fishy period, when we lived on sole and whiting and improved our brains. However, having made the round of the food diets, mother usually returned to the normal; just as, having dragged father through Theosophy, the Unitarian church, a near miss of becoming a Roman Catholic, and a flirtation with Buddhism, she returned at last to the Church of England.
It was satisfactory to come home and find everything just as usual. There was only one change, and that was for the better. I now had my devoted Marie.
I suppose that until I dipped a hand into my bag of remembrances I had never actually thought about Marie–she was just Marie, part of my life. To a child the world is simply what is happening to him or her: and that includes the people in it–whom they like, whom they hate, what makes them happy, what makes them unhappy. Marie, fresh, cheerful, smiling, always agreeable, was a much appreciated member of the household.
What I wonder now is what it meant to her? She had been, I think, very happy during the autumn and winter that we spent travelling in France and the Channel Islands. She was seeing places, the life in the hotels was pleasant, and, strangely enough, she liked her young charge. I would, of course, like to think that she liked me because I was me–but Marie was genuinely fond of children, and would have liked any child that she was looking after, short of one or two of those infantile monsters that one does encounter. I was certainly not particularly obedient to her; I don’t think the French have the capacity for enforcing obedience. In many ways I behaved disgracefully. In particular I hated going to bed, and invented a splendid game of leaping round all the furniture, climbing up on wardrobes, down from the tops of chests of drawers, completing the circuit of the room without ever once touching the floor. Marie, standing in the doorway, would moan: ‘Oh, Mees; Mees! Madame votre mère ne serait pas contente!’ Madame ma mère certainly did not know what was going on. If she had made an unexpected appearance,
