Mrs. Piddington twiddled the envelope. Her eyes upon my face warned me, “Don’t forget I am your boss!”
“You are to call on the Roarats at once,” she said, and shook my sister’s letter in my face.
“I don’t intend to call upon the Roarats, I hate them.”
“Your hating is neither here nor there. They were old friends of your parents in the days of the California gold rush. Your sister insists.”
“And if I won’t go?”
“In place of your monthly check you will receive a boat ticket for home. You have the Roarats’ address? Very well, next Saturday afternoon, then.”
Mrs. Piddington approved the Roarats’ address.
“Um, moneyed district.”
“They are disgustingly rich, miserably horrible!”
The following perfectly good Saturday afternoon I wasted on the Roarats. The household consisted of Mr., Mrs., Aunt Rodgers, a slatternly Irish servant and an ill-tempered parrot called Laura.
Mr. Roarat was an evil old man with a hateful leer, a bad temper, and cancer of the tongue. Mrs. Roarat was diminutive in every way but she had thickened up and coarsened from long association with Mr. Roarat. She loathed him but stuck to him with a syrupy stick because of his money. Aunt Rodgers had the shapeless up-and-downness of a sere cob of corn, old and still in its sheath of wrinkled yellow, parched right through and extremely disagreeable.
Ellen the Irish maid had a violent temper and a fearful tongue. No other family than one specializing in bad temper would have put up with her. The parrot was spiteful and bit to the bone. Her eyes contracted and dilated as she reeled off great oaths taught her by Mr. Roarat. Then with a slithering movement she sidled along her perch, calling, “Honey, honey” in the hypocritical softness of Mrs. Roarat’s voice.
The Roarats said they were glad to see me. It was not me they welcomed, anything was a diversion. When I left I was disgusted to discover that I had committed myself to further visits and had, besides, accepted an invitation to eat Thanksgiving dinner at their house.
The turkey was overcooked for Mr. Roarat’s taste, the cranberry too tart for Mrs. Roarat’s. Aunt Rodgers found everything wrong. Ellen’s temper and that of the parrot were at their worst.
Laura, the parrot, had a special dinner-table perch. She sat beside Mr. Roarat and ate disgustingly. If the parrot’s plate was not changed with the others she flapped, screamed and hurled it on the floor. Throughout the meal everyone snarled disagreeable comments. Aunt Rodgers’ acidity furred one’s teeth. The old man swore, and Mrs. Roarat syruped and called us all “Honey”.
“Pop goes the weasel!” yelled Laura, squawking, flapping and sending her plate spinning across the floor.
“There, there, Laura, honey!” soothed Mrs. Roarat and rang for Ellen who came in heavy-footed and scowling with brush and dustpan. When she stooped to gather up the food and broken plate Laura bit her ear. Ellen smacked back, there was a few moments’ pandemonium, Mr. R., Aunt R., Ellen and Laura all cursing in quartette. Then Mrs. Roarat lifted Laura, perch and all, and we followed into the parlour. For my entertainment a great basket of snapshots was produced. The snaps were all of Mrs. Roarat’s relatives.
“Why do they always pose doing silly things?” I asked.
“You see, Honey, this household being what it is, my folks naturally want to cheer me.”
Aunt Rodgers gave a snort, Mr. Roarat a malevolent belch. The parrot in a sweet, tender voice (Mrs. Roarat’s syrupiest) sang, “Glory be to God on high!”
“Yes, Laura, honey,” quavered Mrs. Roarat, and to her husband, “Time you and Laura were in bed.”
Mr. Roarat would not budge, he sat glowering and belching. Aunt Rodgers put the parrot in her cage and covered it with a cloth but Laura snatched the cloth off and shrieked fearfully. Aunt Rodgers beat the cage with a volume of poems by Frances Ridley Havergal. It broke a wire of the cage and the book did not silence the bird who screamed and tore till her cover was in shreds.
Mrs. Roarat came back to her relatives in the snapshot basket for comfort.
“Here is a really funny one,” she said, selecting a snap of a bearded man in a baby’s bonnet kissing a doll.
Mr. Roarat was now sagging with sleep and permitted his wife and Aunt Rodgers to boost one on either side till they got him upstairs. It took a long time. During one of their halts Ellen came from the back in a terrible feathered hat.
“Goin’ out,” she announced and flung the front door wide. In rushed a great slice of thick fog. Mrs. Roarat looked back and called to me, “It’s dense out, Honey, you will have to stay the night.” I drew back the window curtain; fog thick as cotton wool pressed against the window.
The Roarats had a spare room. Mr. and Mrs. Piddington would get home very late and would suppose I was up in my bed. Mrs. Roarat’s “honey” and Aunt Rodgers’ vinegar had so neutralized me that I did not care what I did if I could only get away from that basket of snapshots.
The door of the spare room yawned black. We passed it and out rushed new paint smells. “Redecorating,” said Mrs. Roarat. “You will sleep with Aunt Rodgers!”
“Oh!”
“It’s all right, Honey, Aunt Rodgers won’t mind much.”
Aunt Rodgers’ room had no air space, it was all furniture. She rushed ahead to turn on the light.
“Look out!” she just saved me a plunge into a large bath tub of water set in the middle of the floor.
“Fleas—San Francisco’s sand this time of year! Each night I shake everything over water, especially if I have been out on the street.”
Immediately she began to take off and to flutter every garment over the tub. When she was down to her “next-the-skins”, I hurried a gasping, “Please, what do I sleep in?”
Too late, the “skin-nexts” had dropped!
Aunt Rodgers said, “Of course child!” and quite unembarrassed but holding a stocking in front of her she crossed the room and took the hottest gown I ever slept in out of a drawer. I jumped it over my head intending to stay under it till Aunt Rodgers was all shaken and reclothed. I stewed like a teapot under its cosy. At last I had to poke my head out of the neck to breathe; then I dived my face down into the counterpane to say my prayers.
After a long time the bed creaked so I got up. On Aunt Rodgers’ pillow was a pink shininess, on the bed post hung a cluster of brown frizz, there was a lipless grin drowning in a glass of water. Without spectacles Aunt Rodgers’ eyes looked like half-cooked gooseberries. Her two cheeks sank down into her throat like a couple of heavy muffins. A Laura’s claw reached for the light pull. I kept as far to my own side of the bed as possible.
Dark—Aunt Rodgers’ sleeping out loud! It had never occurred to me that I could ever be homesick for my tiny room on top of the old Lyndhurst but I was.
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