Bramton Wick

by Elizabeth Fair

  Miss Selbourne went to a drawer in the writing table, took out a key, went to the corner cupboard, and produced a bottle of whisky and a bottle of gin. Gillian was surprised and impressed. While she was congratulating Miss Selbourne and hearing the involved story of how one could buy whisky sometimes from a chemist in a remote village the other side of Bramworthy, the atmosphere seemed quite normal. Their voices, a passing train, the whimpering dreams of Leo, provided the usual amount of noise. But gradually, like rising mist, a cold silence crept over the room.

  Gillian took her glass and sat down on the sofa. Miss Selbourne took hers, but she did not sit down. She remained by the table, which was behind Miss Garrett’s chair, and she looked apprehensively at Miss Garrett, who was lying back in her chair with her eyes shut but with a wakeful brooding look on her face.

  Gillian was one of those happy people who can quickly determine not only what is best for themselves, but what is best for others. What was best for Miss Garrett at this moment was whisky. Since it was now clear to her that Miss Selbourne and Miss Garrett could not address each other, she felt justified in dealing with the situation herself.

  “Let me get you your drink,” she said to Miss Garrett, and to Miss Selbourne: “Do sit down, I’m sure you must be awfully tired, too.” Miss Selbourne retired to a rather distant chair, and Gillian poured out a generous measure of whisky and handed it to Miss Garrett, who sniffed at it suspiciously before raising it to her mouth and swallowing most of it in one long gulp.

  Conversation became a little easier; that is to say, both Miss Selbourne and Miss Garrett talked to their guest, who answered them in turn and sometimes by repeating what one of them had said drew a reply from the other, which could in its turn be transmitted to the original speaker.

  When this had gone on for half an hour Gillian decided that she had done as much as she could towards reconciling them, and that time must do the rest. She took her leave. Miss Selbourne came down to the gate, and once out of Miss Garrett’s hearing was able to tell her, in a hurried, indistinct whisper, how dreadfully disappointed Tiger had been over the judging. There had been something else, too, an offer of partnership, a suggestion that they should combine with some woman who had a large house and wanted to share it, an idea that if they had five times as many dogs they would make five times as much money. But, of course, she pointed out sadly, one might easily lose five times as much, and it was not a thing one could agree to on the spur of the moment.

  It was rather difficult to hear her, and Gillian could only offer general sympathy. Their whispering was interrupted by the appearance of Miss Garrett at the front door, who shouted impersonally that Agnes had been sick in the hall. Feeling sure that this mishap would draw them together, Gillian went off down the lane.

  Chapter Five

  The Rose Garden was at the far side of the lawn. It was a paved garden. The roses grew in long beds round the sides and in square beds set in the paved walks. The silvery-grey stones, still warm from the afternoon sun, looked luminous now in the fading light, and the flowers made pools of colour in the dusk.

  The garden was enclosed by a low stone colonnade, and beyond it at one side the ground fell gently away to a view of distant fields and woods; on the other side, across the smooth lawn, was the east front of the house, the Queen Anne front which was reproduced in nearly every book about the beauties of the county. At one end, approached by three shallow steps, was a small open-fronted temple or summerhouse, from which one could look down the length of the garden to the background of dark yews and silver firs. The colonnade and the pillared temple were wreathed with climbing roses, and their scent, filling the air, was the scent of Endbury itself.

  In the little temple, which was familiarly known as the Stone Shelter, Lady Masters liked to have her coffee on fine summer evenings when it was not too cold. She was not a person who felt the cold very much, but Laura was glad she had not had to put on a thin frock to dine at Endbury that night. She wondered how Lady Masters got her old parlour maid to carry the coffee right across the lawn. But, of course, Lady Masters got things simply by always having had them and by taking it for granted that she always would have them.

  The coffee, which was tepid and anaemic, was put on a small table between them and Lady Masters poured it out.

  “You take sugar, Laura?” She opened her bag and found a small bottle from which she fished out a tiny pellet for Laura’s cup. “This saccharine is much better than the ordinary kind,” she said. “I get it from my chemist in London.”

  Many articles of everyday use were magically improved by being used by Lady Masters; her approval, like a royal warrant, set a seal of virtue on certain kinds of soap, tea, and cosmetics; Gillian even declared that there was a special sort of hair dye, obtainable only from “my hairdresser in London,” which gave to Lady Masters’s coiffure its peculiar purplish-brown lustre.

  “It’s wonderfully sweet,” Laura said of the coffee. She had dutifully praised the economy soup, and had the recipe of the stale-cake trifle, but it was so difficult to admire the coffee that she was glad of this remarkable sweetness.

  After they had drunk the coffee, Toby remembered that he wanted to fill his cigarette case, and he ambled off across the lawn. Laura hoped they might all go, but Lady Masters declared it was too fine an evening to spend indoors.

  “You’re not cold, Laura?” she asked benevolently.

  “Oh, no.”

  Laura wondered if one got used to the cold. The rooms at Endbury were nobly proportioned, but they needed a great deal more heating than their present owner allowed. Lady Masters approved of fuel rationing; she said it taught people to be careful.

  But this was summer. Her thoughts were running too far ahead.

  “And you enjoyed the dog show?” It was less a question than a statement, and she hastened to agree with it. Conversation with Lady Masters was largely question and answer, but the answers had to be the right ones.

  “But Toby did not get a dog after all,” said Lady Masters.

  “No. I’m not sure if the dogs were for sale. You see, they were there to be judged, and—”

  “My dear child, of course they were for sale. People who breed dogs have to sell them. That is how they make their living.”

  “I suppose so,” Laura said humbly. “I wonder if Toby really wants a dog.”

  “I think it would be a good thing if he got one.”

  “But would he have much time for it?”

  “Naturally the dog would have to stay here—a bookshop is not the place for young dogs. But Toby comes home nearly every week-end.” Lady Masters added cryptically: “That is why I think he should have a dog.”

  Laura could not follow her. Did she mean that Toby needed a dog to complete the picture of the young squire in his home? Or was the dog to occupy him, to take him out for brisk walks and give him something to think about?

  She suggested that a spaniel would be nice.

  “Not a spaniel. They always get too fat. Not a white dog, because of the hairs, nor an Airedale, because they fight. And I abhor those silly little dogs that yap and trip you up.”

  “What about a Great Dane?”

  “My dear Laura, how should we feed it? None of the really big ones would do. I shall have to think about it.”

  With a gesture which swept a dozen breeds into limbo, Lady Masters dismissed the subject of dogs.

  “And now, Laura,” she said. “Tell me—do you think Toby is getting discouraged about his bookshop?”

  It was gratifying to be asked a question like that, but Laura did not know how to reply.

  “I don’t know,” she answered. “He hasn’t said anything to me about it.”

  “Oh, naturally. If it was anything definite, anything he needed advice about, he would have spoken to me. But his general attitude? Toby, you know, is a sensitive creature. One can often guess what he is feeling.”

  Lady Masters prided herself on understanding the young, and which of the young sho
uld she understand better than Toby?

  “I really don’t know,” Laura said again. “I think perhaps he’s been a bit depressed lately. But I haven’t seen much of him,” she added hastily, for she did not want to get Toby into trouble for being depressed. Lady Masters did not approve of people who hedged and she observed rather coldly that Laura and Gillian saw Toby almost as often as she did herself.

  “Though I expect,” she continued more kindly, “that even with you two he makes more effort to hide his feelings. And, of course, poor boy, he’s had such a difficult time since he came out of the Army.” Just for a moment, hearing an unusual despondency in the familiar clipped voice, Laura had a glimpse of another Lady Masters, and guessed that it might be his mother and not Toby who was having the difficult time. It was this glimpse, so brief and unexpected, that moved her to say quickly:

  “I think if only Toby would keep on with a thing he would be all right. I mean, it doesn’t matter what the thing is—the bookshop will do—so long as he keeps on with it. He needs—he just needs to get past a certain point, then he’ll be all right. He’ll settle down.”

  She had momentarily forgotten about the need to show herself as a docile and commendable person. She half expected to be snubbed. Lady Masters was not the sort of woman to welcome advice, and it was the first time she had ever discussed Toby.

  But after a thoughtful pause Lady Masters said: “Do you really think that?”

  “Yes, I do,” she answered more boldly. “I think Toby doesn’t know what he really wants to do, and so he will go on trying first one thing and then another unless he is—unless you make him stick to something.”

  “Dear Laura, I am not a tyrant to ‘make’ Toby do this or that. I do not believe in coercing young people,” Lady Masters declared. “I am very fond of young people and I understand them. And my poor Toby has wasted such a lot of his youth fighting a war. Do you think I could bear to tie him down for the rest of his life in some niche which does not suit him?”

  “But he’ll just go on wasting his youth,” argued Laura, suddenly stubborn. The thought of Toby’s being tied down in a niche did not depress her unduly.

  There was another long pause. It was almost dark now, and Lady Masters turned her head and peered at Laura, who realized that her choice of words had been unfortunate. Lady Masters was a possessive mother, but she could not bear to be thought possessive. Outsiders must not suggest that she ruled Toby. Persuasion and advice were permissible; maternal tyranny was not.

  “Ah, well, youth is the season for trial and error,” Lady Masters said at last. “All young people make mistakes, and hold strong views without much reason behind them.” She spoke with determined good humour, as one would speak to an argumentative child. It was hardly possible to pretend that it was Toby who held the strong views.

  “I can’t think what’s happened to Toby, but really it’s getting too dark to sit out here. Shall we go back to the house and find him?”

  The subject was closed. Side by side they walked back across the lawn.

  Laura felt uncomfortable for the rest of the evening. Lady Masters was as benign as usual, but it was plain that no alliance had been established. She had not expected to conquer Toby’s mother in one evening, but she had hoped to make a beginning. It seemed they were back on the old friendly footing that had existed since her nursery days, in which she was simply a subordinate figure, “dear Laura” or “dear child,” whose existence was taken for granted. And probably if Lady Masters thought of her at all now it would be as someone who criticized and argued—almost worse, she felt, than being a dear child in the shadowy background.

  It was not very late when Toby drove her home to Woodside. The moon was rising and the night was clear. A soporific peace lay on the countryside, and so quiet was it that they could hear the river splashing over its little waterfall at the head of the valley, as they lingered outside the gate. Usually Laura made her farewells quickly or took Toby into the house with her to talk to Mrs. Cole and Gillian, but tonight she made the beauty of the evening an excuse for staying at the gate where they could look across the moonlit valley to the Marly woods.

  “Nice day, wasn’t it?” Toby said placidly. “The dog show I mean.”

  “Oh, Toby, don’t let us talk about dogs any more.”

  “Were you very bored?” He spoke in what Gillian called his “hurt” voice, and she answered hastily:

  “Of course not, I loved it, I only meant that I’ve been talking about dogs all day, even to your mother after dinner.”

  “Mama is thinking of buying a dog for me.”

  Laura looked at him incredulously. Then she laughed. She had always thought he belonged to the cult which holds that Mothers are Sacred. In her present state of mind it was an enormous relief to discover that Lady Masters was not invulnerable.

  “I suppose that was why you wanted to buy a dog for yourself, today.”

  “Well,” he said doubtfully, “I thought it would be nice to choose my own dog.”

  She laughed again, but she realized that too much frivolity would be out of place. She suggested that he might buy a dog in Bramchester.

  Gillian was in her bedroom engaged in one of the routine inspections of all her clothes with which she whiled away her spare time. Coming in to tell her about the borrowed handkerchief, Laura was struck anew by the extreme neatness of everything in Gillian’s room compared with her own. Gillian’s possessions were always tidy, her stockings darned, her gloves clean, and she herself, even when wearing her oldest clothes, could achieve an effect of trim elegance that was quite beyond Laura. Laura attributed this to Gillian’s having been married and lived in London.

  “I knew you’d been in,” Gillian said calmly, “because you left the drawer open. Yes, of course it’s all right. But haven’t you got any of your own?”

  Laura said most of her good ones had got lost and the others did not look as white as Gillian’s.

  “It’s because you send them to the laundry or let Mrs. Trimmer wash them. The laundry loses them and Mrs. T. makes them grey. You should wash them yourself.”

  She went on to tell her sister how to make them white, but Laura forgot to listen. She was thinking, not for the first time, that Gillian was far more suited to be Lady Masters’s daughter-in-law than she herself. This did not mean that she would be the right wife for Toby, but it occurred to Laura that if Lady Masters should look to the Cole family for a bride for her son, Gillian would be her choice. It was a saddening thought.

  “And it’s really quite easy and doesn’t take much time,” Gillian concluded.

  “Don’t you think it’s time we asked Lady Masters to tea again?”

  “Oh, surely not,” said Gillian, showing no surprise at this change of subject. “Haven’t you seen enough of her lately?”

  “It isn’t that I want to, but I’ve been three times to Endbury since she was here, and you lunched there that Sunday. We must keep our end up.”

  Gillian said they had better ask their mother. Since Mrs. Cole was in the habit of agreeing with whatever her daughters suggested—except on the subject of gardening—it was hardly necessary to seek her approval. But the tradition that she must be consulted was stoutly maintained by both Gillian and Laura.

  “Make it next Sunday,” Gillian continued. “I shall be out.”

  She had already told her family about her meeting with Mr. Greenley at Bank Cottage, but she had not yet told them that she was going to be shown the gardens at Cleeve Manor. Now she explained to Laura, in a casual way, that on Sunday she was having tea with Mr. Greenley and seeing all the peculiar orchids and other exotic plants which were his only interest in life.

  “It will be very difficult to think of the right responses,” Laura sympathized. “What a pity Mummy isn’t going, she’s so good at talking about gardens. She’d know all the proper things to say.”

  This was as annoying for Gillian as it had been for Laura to hear that Toby was more suited to her mother than to
herself. But she concealed her annoyance and replied that anyone could cope with an enthusiast; one just had to look intelligent and admiring and make a few exclamations at intervals. This was really a brief and curtailed summary of Gillian’s whole doctrine of behaviour.

  “Is he very fat and bald?” asked Laura, who seemed to have got it into her head that Mr. Greenley was a fatherly old man.

  “Not at all fat, and not yet bald. He’s not as old as you think, and would look quite nice except for his frightful clothes.”

  She went on to describe the clothes.

  “Oh,” said Laura.

  Unlike sisters in fiction, they were not in the habit of confiding to one another the romantic secrets of their young hearts. Laura had had few such secrets to confide, and she had known instinctively that Gillian would not lend a sympathetic ear to the account of her deep attachment, which had lasted nearly six months, to a young man staying at the Vicarage for Latin coaching, or the even more unprofitable affection she had expended on film stars, the photograph of a school friend’s brother, and the heroes of books.

  Gillian herself had married young, and undoubtedly she had loved her William, but she had not talked of her love to Laura. Her marriage had taken her away from home; William had been killed in the early part of the war, but Gillian had stayed on in London, with her job as a good excuse for being there. It was not until the war was over that she returned to Woodside. By that time, it was only reasonable to suppose, her affection and her grief for William had diminished. She kept his photograph on her dressing-table; she had once told Laura that she had married much too young, but that she would never regret it because she and William were the right age for each other. It was difficult to know what to make of this.