UNDERGRADUATE ARTICLE
Bedmakers
By T. G. KIRKBIUDE (Magdalene College, Cambridge) IN the morning as I lie in bed I can see out of the corner of my eye the garden reflected in my dressing-table mirror. On idle days this is one of my greatest pleasures, for the reflection welcomes one into consciousness with none of the brutality of real things. There it glows like some medireval Persian paradise, heavy with fruits and flowers and cooling leaf shadows against a back-cloth of rich, red brick wall, framed for ever in my mirror like a private looking-glass land with all the fancifulness and dreamlike quality of 'a child's vision. And so I preserve it with all the care one bestows upon a valuable jewel and with all the privacy with which one invests special personal fancies. Happily, too, this vision requires little maintenance: simply that the mirror be tipped at the right angle to include the beech trees and the cherry trees and to clear the top of the gardener's head as he walks up and down the drive, for my garden is uninhabited and the gardener plays no part in this fancy save to contribute towards the sound effects with a low and continuous tuneless whistle.
It was through this looking-glass that the 'character of Mrs. Bott emerged for the first time. Mrs. Bott is my bedmaker. "No, Mrs. Bott," I said, as she carefully adjusted my mirror one morning as she was dusting, "will you please leave the mirror as it is." "But, Sir, you can't see in it to do your hair." I carefully explained, and, although she looked at me curiously, the mirror was from then on always adjusted to exactly the right angle; whether .she lay on my bed to do this I do not know, but there was never any mistake in the reflec- tion. After a while she became used to my eccentricities and soon we became great friends. For half an hour every day between the hours of eight and nine I like to think that the bedmakers of Cambridge step into their own. This is certainly the case in the cloister where I live, a rabbit warren of rooms clustered round a long and winding passage and broken bY numerous poky staircases. Here in a minute Gyp room the two cloister bedmakers and a few undergraduates gather to drink their early morning tea. The fanfare which announces the start of this salon is unmistakable. Medieval garden paradises vanish abruptly beneath the yammering of an anti- quated tap turned on to fill the kettle, the shouts of " Li-za " whereby Mrs. Bott summons her colleague, or even some- times the exhortations of Bill the porter : "Come on, Botty, old girl, give us a kiss—come on, Botty—" jerked out in a curious wheezy staccato, followed by squeals of delight from Dotty, who always keeps him at a tantalising arm's length.
The University statutes lay down that bedmakers be middle- aged and attached, and therefore it must be realised that the platonic relationship between Bill and Mrs. Bott is essentially that of a golden summer. But Mrs. Bott, although she is middle- aged and married, with several sons and daughters, will, I am sure, never lose a certain youthful gusto. She greets me in the morning, a cup of tea in one hand, a. small bony figure untidily dressed, with bright blue unfocused eyes which fix themselves with a gaze, not kindly but of a certain eagerness, at a point just behind your head. Indeed, her face is neither kind nor gentle, but humorous and vivacious. Her com- plexion is pale, and, when she smiles her rather easy fixed smile, the skin puckers round her eyes and her whole face becomes mischievous and gnome-like within the ftame of her neat straight hair. She gives one that impression of a burning frailty common to intelligent highly-strung people, but this is Made strangely humorous by the lop-sided carriage of her body. She stands at an angle which makes one feel that at any moment she may topple over, and, becoming excited, Which she frequently does, her whole body sways wildly, her head cocks on one side, and her eyes fix themselves at an even madder unseeing angle giving her a quality of complete mischievous abandon. And so she will stand wedged against the sink handing out tea to her "young gentlemen" until Liza joins her.
Liza always sits, not just because she is old and large, but because in the Liza-Bott combination she is the foil for Mrs. Bott's witticisms. The opposition of their characters is perfect, so that together they almost become caricatures. While Mrs. Bott is tough, Liza is sentimental; her kindness bubbles over with every roll of fat and twinkle of her luminous eyes. She is neat, carefully dressed, with an immaculately groomed bun and perfect manners. If one did not know her to be other- wise, one might have thougtit her prim. Mrs. Bott constantly teases her, usually by being deliberately Rabelaisian or else by using. discreetly bad language, at which Liza pretends to be shocked, but secretly rolls with mirth in her chair until the tears spring from her eyes. She has twenty-nine grand- children and a garden, all unquenchable sources of conversa- tion, and while Mrs. Bott fvolics with ' her young gentlemen Liza fastens on to her nearest tea mate and divulges her latest family or horticultural problems.
One morning I was faced by an arrogant but really upset Mrs. Bott. "Liza won't come to tea," she said, quite simply. "Why on earth not,?" I asked, and stumped off with two other undergraduates to fetch her from the other side of the cloister. She had been ill and away for about a week, and it appeared she was shy of rejoining the salo'n. We could not understand it, but we marched her firmly down the passage, and Mrs. Bott, pretending that nothing had happened, thrust a cup of tea into her hand. But we were soon to discover the real reason. Liza's husband—" Daddy" she called him—was an eccentric; he spent all his money on fantastic schemes which never materialised, but she adored him nonetheless. "Daddy depression" was commonplace in our small circle; it was a malaise which came and went. "How's Daddy? " we would ask, as if we were giving a tap to the barometer, and the tone of the morning tea session would be established. That day it had been particularly bad, and, combined with her recent indisposition, it had proved too much for her. A barely concealed tear stole down her cheek, and Mrs. Bott made cutting remarks about Daddy's behaviour until .Liza forgot her troubles to rally to his defence.
But if Mrs. Bott was the greater realist, she was strangely sentimental over some things. Chosen undergraduates were always addressed as "my darling," and over her small son her sentiment had assumed almost perverse proportions. "He did have such lovely curls," she said; "I made him wear his hair down to his neck until he was seven." "But didn't they tease him at school ? " asked one of the gathering. "Oh, yes, but they were so lovely." " Y ou'v e probably given the little brat a permanent complex." "They were so lovely," she repeated herself, and that far-away look came into her eyes as she swayed gently by the sink. Liza roared with laughter. "But I'm modern, I am," said Mrs. Bott, as if to justify herself, and: indeed, in many ways she was a wonderfully independent spirit. The great event of one term was when the bedmakers all received formal invitations to a garden party at the President's Lodge. "Of course you'll go ? " I said to Mrs. Bott. "Go to that thing ? " she said. "Not on your life 1, With all them horrid old bedmakers ? No; if it was a party of young gentlemen, Sir, then it would be lovely . . . and then she described in detail exactly how she would behave herself, which, to say the least, would not have been con- ventionally. Of course, Liza went, and wore her hat: "I remember the days; Sir, when all bedmakers had to wear their hats in College even, when they were working," and a wistful look came into he( eyes.
But, opposed in spirit though they may be, these two bed- makers share one thing: a tremendous interest in and tolerance of their young gentlemen, and indeed they need this. "Fifty- seven pieces to wash up," grumbled Mrs. Bott one morning, "the young Turk," she said affectionately of the guilty under- graduate, but still if they enjoy themselves I suppose that's all that matters."
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