Francie: Off to London Read online

  “Inconvenient!” In spite of the tears that were choking her, Francie laughed. He was knocking away the props of her whole life, and he called it inconvenient! “Pop, have you thought what I’ll do with myself in a new place like England? I’ll simply hate it.” As she spoke she was convinced this was true.

  “Well of course, if you make up your mind to hate it, that’s that.” Fred Nelson looked at her squarely, standing in the middle of the carpet, his hands shoved into his pockets. “But I wouldn’t advise it, Francie. You go to bed and sleep on the idea; it’s not so terrible as it sounds. Most girls would welcome the new experience, I should think. By the time you’ve been there a few months you’ll be surprised; you’ll—”

  “I won’t. I’ll always hate it,” she said, weeping.

  “I can hardly blame you for feeling this way at first,” said her father as if to himself. “You’re used to a lot of attention, I understand. You queen it over the boys here in town. Well, all the better then to go away. Too much of that can’t be good for you; you’re an attractive girl if you are my daughter, but you need—I’ll tell you what it is, Francie; you’re spoiled.”

  “Don’t you give me that too,” sniffled Francie into her handkerchief. “I’ve been listening to that all night.” She scrambled to her feet, the handkerchief held to her nose. “I’m going to bed,” she said. She ran out of the room, and her father watched her go, his face troubled but still determined.

  CHAPTER 2

  “It does seem a shame.” Francie’s best friend, Ruth, spoke absently. The news had given her a good deal to think about. Plans needed rearranging, if the hub of her world was going to leave the scene.

  Francie sat in the window seat of Ruth’s bedroom, looking down into the front yard. The room was a pretty one, though perhaps a bit overfussy with its organdy bedspread and curtains to match. There were built-in wardrobes and a little ironing board that opened out, and the latest thing in indirect lighting, as Ruth’s father was fond of electrical appliances. The girls were drinking chocolate malts which they had just mixed down in the kitchen. For a girl whose life was ruined, Francie was looking very cheerful; after thinking it over she had begun to feel excited at the widening prospect of life.

  “I suppose you’ll change your mind now about going to State? You’ll have to,” said Ruth.

  “Pop said nearly a year. Maybe I can wangle it so as to get back home for State in the fall. Of course I may decide all over again not to go to college at all, though Pop blew his top over that last time I suggested it. Remember?”

  “Yes, I do. What a row! Still, taking you away like this, he can hardly object if you don’t want to come in later. That is, if you miss out on fall and have to come trailing behind the rest of us.

  “I’ve given up Romance Languages, I think,” Ruth went on. “I’m going in for psychology instead. More future to it. As for you, I’m beginning to think maybe you ought to go back to your original plan and be an artist.”

  This abrupt change of interest did not startle Francie; it was ordinary enough for the girls to make radical alterations in their life’s ambition. They did it, on an average, weekly. Francie merely replied, “Oh well then, I think I’ll do Political Science as a minor to Art. Pop says I’ll have a good chance to look at practical Socialism; he says England’s trying it out.”

  “Yes, there’s that of course. But Francie, coming down to serious matters, it’s terrible about Prom. And Beauty Queen. You were sure to get that. It’s just the limit. Have you told Glenn about it?”

  “I haven’t told anybody, except you,” said Francie. Her face grew doleful. “It is awful about Prom and all the rest. But Pop’s got the bit between his teeth and there’s not a bit of use making more fuss than I already have.”

  “You’ll probably end by loving it. I know I’d give anything for the chance of a year abroad.”

  “Right now? I don’t think you would,” Francie said. “This is the most perfectly terrible time to be snatched out of school. The best years of our lives, or anyway months, and I’m going to miss them all. I’ll never get over it … I wonder what English boys are like,” she added.

  “Cute, I should think. Listen, Francie, since you’re not going to be here, what about Gretta for Glenn? I mean to say, she’s really okay, she could be cute if she ever had a chance, and she hasn’t got a date for Prom. I know it’s tactless, talking like this as soon as you’ve told me about England, but you don’t mind, do you?”

  “Oh no, I don’t mind.” Francie went on studying the front yard, swinging her foot glumly. “I don’t mind really,” she added. “I get a boot out of the idea of adventure, to tell the truth. And there’s one bright spot about the whole thing; even if Glenn does take Gretta to Prom and falls for her—”

  “I don’t mean he’s likely to fall for her,” interposed Ruth hastily. “It just seemed such a shame to waste him—”

  “Even if he does, I don’t care. I forgot to tell you, Pop’s at least promised to give me a fur coat my next birthday if I get through the year without too much trouble. That’s better than Prom, isn’t it?”

  “You are lucky, Francie. Of course it’s better.”

  “Well, we’d better get downstairs to the phone and start in,” said Francie with a sigh. “I’ll have to call up everybody. Oh dear. And if you don’t mind a word of advice, Ruth, I wouldn’t go too fast on that Gretta proposition. Let Glenn think he thinks of it himself.”

  “You’re telling me!” said Ruth. Laughing like young harpies, they went out of the room.

  Fred Nelson put down the newspaper he had been trying to read for the last five minutes. He had no idea what was on the page. He said to his sister-in-law, peacefully knitting in her easy chair near the window, “Norah, what do you think about Francie?”

  Aunt Norah took off her spectacles and blinked at him mildly. As she grew older she reminded him less and less of Francie’s mother. But sometimes the trace of a smile that resembled her sister’s crossed her face and he felt again the old pang of longing for someone lovely and gentle and lost. Francie was growing startlingly like her mother in appearance, though in a bolder, more spirited way.

  “Think about Francie?” Aunt Norah repeated. “How can I think about her, Fred? She’s too close. I try to keep her well-fed and happy, without interfering with her too much. Girls are so strong-willed these days.”

  “You must have some opinion. You can tell me at least if she worries you much.” He pounced on her own phrase. “Strong-willed, you say? What do you mean by that? Is she one of these young girls who run away from home and are found a month later in Hollywood? Or is she likely to turn into one of these juvenile delinquents we hear so much about?”

  “Dear me, Fred, what lurid notions you do get! Of course she won’t do anything of the kind. She simply likes to have her own way, and I must say she usually manages to get it.”

  He tried another tack, since he was getting nowhere with his first one. “Tell me, Norah, do all young girls use as much lipstick as Francie? She has a nice mouth underneath all that junk, but you’d never know it.”

  “If you’ll just look around you, you won’t have to ask me,” said Aunt Norah. “I can’t make Francie behave any different from the others.”

  “And what goes on in her head?” continued Francie’s father. “Judging from what I overhear on the telephone—”

  “Oh, well,” began Aunt Norah, polishing her spectacles agitatedly, “you can’t go by that, completely.”

  “Boys, dates, and boys again,” said Mr. Nelson. “Parties and boys, boys and parties. Gossip. Do they ever have a serious thought? She’s not quite a child any more, Norah, but she doesn’t seem to realize it.”

  “She’s a good enough girl,” said Aunt Norah. She put on her spectacles and began again to knit. “She’s not really grown up, you know. Let her enjoy life while she can.”

  “But what about school? Don’t these young things ever do any homework?”

  “No more t
han they must,” admitted Francie’s aunt, “but the school standards are high, and she keeps up. And she draws and paints a lot. She has her mother’s talent for that. You’d be quite surprised if you knew how hard the child does work, sometimes. You wouldn’t expect her to talk about that all the time to her friends, would you?”

  “Well, maybe not.” He was silent for a while, and then blurted, “The real trouble is that I’m worried, I guess. Francie’s pretty.”

  “Oh yes, she’s unusually pretty. Popular, too.”

  “Well.…” His voice trailed off.

  “Too much of a responsibility, is that it?” asked Aunt Norah with a flash of shrewdness. “She’s an American girl, Fred. American girls know how to take care of themselves anywhere.”

  “But do they? That’s just it. Do they?”

  “Frances will be all right, Fred. She’s a normal, high-spirited American girl, and she’s pretty as a picture, and you’re going to be proud of her. You have to make allowances for occasional moods, considering the way you’re uprooting her from her established rounds.”

  Still Mr. Nelson looked dubious. “Well, if you’re not worried,” he said, inconclusively. “Do you think you can get her ready in two weeks? Don’t stint yourself on her clothes; I understand there’s not much to buy nowadays, over there.”

  Francie had looked forward to being wretchedly unhappy all the time, or at least for a while every day, before they sailed, but somehow she never found the time. There was the prospect of farewell parties, with lots of the boys protesting they would miss her too much to enjoy themselves, at least for weeks; there was shopping; there was the prospect of several days in New York, with more shopping. She had to help Aunt Norah pack her glass and china for storage. Aunt Norah was intending to sublet the house and spend some months in Florida, now that she need not make a home for her niece.

  “One good thing about all this,” Francie confided to her aunt as she wrapped silver fish-knives in flannel, “is that I’m finding out at last who are really my friends and who aren’t. Some of the girls are being awfully catty—their names would surprise you.”

  “You’ll forget all these little pinpricks by the time you’re across the Atlantic,” said Aunt Norah cheerfully. “I must say it makes me marvel, the way young people change from generation to generation. To look at you, anybody would think you’d been condemned to a prison cell, instead of getting a real treat. What wouldn’t I have given for your chance at your age!”

  “Yes, Aunt Norah, but times aren’t at all the same any more. I know people used to want more than anything to go to Europe. We had to read Henry James and all those for English. But don’t forget, it’s different nowadays. It’s the War that did it. You just talk to some of the G.I.’s and you’ll find out. I’d never have a better time anywhere else than here, honestly. I know that.”

  “You know everything, of course,” sighed Francie’s aunt. “It’s not a bit of use my arguing. Well, I must say it’s nice to think you like your own home so much.”

  “Not that I want to be narrow-minded,” added Francie judiciously. “It’s just that the time is inconvenient, but I’m perfectly willing to give England a chance.”

  It was decided in Francie’s crowd that her going-away should be marked, if not exactly celebrated, by a series of social gatherings. Movies, they felt, were not enough; everyone went to the movies whenever there was a new picture anyway. A dance in the high-school gym had already been scheduled for the week before and the crowd couldn’t very well hold another one so soon again, just before the going-away day. Instead, a party at someone’s house was indicated. But whose? Glenn, Ruth and Gretta, meeting at the Chocolate Shoppe by chance, argued about it.

  “Let me have it,” begged Gretta. “It’s my turn really, and I’d love to give Francie a going-away party.” Gretta was the doll-pretty type and everybody knew that if it wasn’t for Francie she might go all out for Glenn.

  “I know you would,” said Ruth with heavy meaning in her tone, “but after all I’m her closest friend and I do think—”

  “We could throw a good one at our place,” said Glenn, “if we give Mother enough notice.”

  They had not settled the question by the time Francie appeared for her morning snack, and they turned to her for decision.

  “Oh, it’s got to be at our own house,” she said immediately. “Aunt Norah would be terribly hurt, you know she would, if I went anywhere else on my last night. It’s nice of you all and I do appreciate it, but.…” Her voice grew tremulous; she broke off. The tactful Ruth changed the subject. They all gave in to the overpowering argument of Aunt Norah’s feelings, and Francie won the day.

  “They couldn’t have argued,” said Francie, reporting on the arrangement when she went home for lunch. “I just told them that would be the way you wanted it, Aunt Norah.”

  “That was right, Francie,” Fred Nelson approved. He looked gratified at Aunt Norah’s pleasure, and later when Francie had left the room he said to her, “She’s not so self-centered as I was afraid she might be. That showed real sensibility.”

  “Oh, Francie’s got the right instincts,” said Aunt Norah indulgently. “Francie and I understand each other.”

  “It will be fun to see a kid’s party again,” said Pop, musing aloud. “I haven’t seen one since I was a kid myself. I begin more and more to realize I’ve missed a good deal, one way and another, working so hard while Francie was growing up.”

  Aunt Norah looked at him, opened her mouth, but then thought better of whatever she had been going to say.

  The important last evening arrived finally. Pop sat in the living room, looking around with a tolerant smile at the preparations. Aunt Norah was in the kitchen in her good silk print with an apron over it, putting out glasses and depositing Coca-cola and ginger-ale bottles in the icebox, which had been cleared for the purpose. The doors between the dining room and living room were open; the dining-room table had been shoved back into a corner and the carpet was rolled up. The first guest’s step was heard on the porch and a young girl walked into the hall without ringing.

  “Hi!” she called up the stairs. “Francie? I’m here!”

  When she saw Pop she hesitated a moment, then came forward to shake hands, rather shyly. Francie ran down the steps. A boy with a crew cut arrived; the party was under way. The young people perched on chair arms, curled up on sofas, or slumped almost on the backs of their necks in chairs. No one, Pop observed, seemed to use furniture in the more conventional manner to which he was accustomed.

  They soon were talking animatedly about their own mysterious affairs, in a language Pop could not understand. Feeling very much out of it, he sought Aunt Norah in the kitchen.

  “Are the children getting on all right?” she asked, taking off her apron and hanging it up on the door.

  “Very well indeed. Very well. Fine-looking lot of youngsters,” said Pop. “Not that I can tell one from another, except Francie and little what’s-her-name—Ruth. And Glenn, naturally. I’d know Glenn by this time, even if he didn’t have all those freckles, he’s been around so much.”

  Aunt Norah said, “Well, if they’re started off, I don’t know that we’ve got any more duties to perform out here. Let’s go.”

  “Go? Why, where are we going?”

  “Out,” said Aunt Norah.

  “Why? Where?”

  “As for why,” said Aunt Norah hesitantly, “that’s rather hard to answer. Francie likes to have the old folks out when she has a party, so I always leave them to themselves.”

  Fred Nelson began, angrily, “Well, if that isn’t the most outrageous—” but Aunt Norah’s gentle voice continued.

  “As for where, it’s for you to decide if you’d rather just drive around somewhere—or we could see the new picture at the Odeon, or go and call on the Tuckers. I know they’re at home because I asked when I met Mrs. Tucker at the Stop and Shop.”

  Pop stood squarely in front of his sister-in-law, so that she was forced
to look at him. “Listen to me, Norah,” he said. “You know it’s all wrong, as well as I do, to leave those children in charge of the house. It’s—it’s unheard-of! It’s unmannerly of them to expect it! Our mothers would turn in their graves if they knew. What’s come over this country? What’s the matter with all the parents to permit this sort of thing? Have they gone crazy, or what?”

  “Why shouldn’t the youngsters be left, Fred? Don’t you trust them?”

  He made an impatient gesture. “That’s not the point—that’s not at all the point. It’s the manners aspect that makes me sore. It’s your house. Why should you be dispossessed of your house simply because a lot of selfish kids want to get together and have a party?”

  “Oh Fred!” She laughed helplessly. “What a queer way to look at it! It’s easy to see you haven’t kept up. Children have it their own way nowadays. As for me, I don’t see why not.”

  “Why not? Why not? Do you mean to say you don’t resent being kicked out to wander around all the evening because these young cubs haven’t the manners—”

  “If I’m not wanted here,” said Aunt Norah, “I don’t want to be here. Now you just calm down a minute, Fred, and be reasonable. Of course we could perfectly well insist on staying here, and attend the party, and spoil their fun. If you insist on it, that’s what we’ll do. But it’s Francie’s last night and—”

  “But why should it spoil their fun if we did? What’s the matter with you all? Why can’t we all get along together, even if we are different ages?”

  “Now that’s a question,” said Aunt Norah, “that’s too big for any one woman to answer. You can’t fight Nature, and young people like to stick to their own kind. Do you want to embarrass poor Francie on her last night, and spoil her party, perhaps drive all her friends out somewhere else where they can feel they aren’t being watched? They weren’t brought up as we were, remember, with chaperones watching us every minute, and all that.”