Dear Hugo

by Molly Clavering

  While Miss Garvald crept away to make the tea, I was left to be put through the usual catechism by mamma: Did I like Ravenskirk? Was I not very lonely living by myself? Wouldn’t I find this a very quiet place?

  I am growing quite accustomed to answering this questionnaire, but with Mrs. Garvald I found that no answers were required, for she supplied them herself. It was a one-sided conversation.

  “Do you like Ravenskirk, Miss Monteith? Ah, well, you’ll soon tire of it. Are you not very lonely living by yourself? Bound to be, bound to be! Won’t you find this a terribly quiet place? We do, so I expect you will.” And so on.

  I sat there alternately nodding and shaking my head in an idiotic way, half stupefied by the heat, and was quite thankful when Miss Garvald (whose name, by the way, is Kitty, but her mother and intimates call her ‘Girlie’, which is nothing less than a catastrophe), reappeared carrying a tea-pot.

  “Enid Morton looked in to return that book of Miss Bonaly’s. She said she couldn’t wait for tea,” she said in her toneless voice.

  “Now that’s a pity, a great pity. You would like Miss Morton,” said old Mrs. Garvald. “She’s such a breezy person. You haven’t met her, I suppose?” And she immediately answered herself: “No, of course not. Enid said she hadn’t called and didn’t think she could be bothered to.”

  Thankful that I should not have to meet the breezy Miss Morton, but rather at a loss to know what to say after this very frank disclosure, I asked about the book.

  “Oh, yes, the book! A very strange tale,” said Mrs. Garvald. “Could Enid understand what it was all about, Girlie? I suppose not.”

  Miss Garvald, handing cups to her mother to be filled with very strong tea, said “No.”

  “We all thought it was going to be about a wedding,” Mrs. Garvald continued brightly. “And then it chopped and changed. There was a bird—have you read it, Miss Monteith? All in verse. I expect you have.” The story sounded entirely unfamiliar to me, and I said so.

  “Here it is,” said Miss Garvald, handing me a rather battered book, not very large.

  Hugo, you will never believe this, but it is quite true. It was The Ancient Mariner. . . .

  I suppose I ought to have guessed? The wedding, the bird—I must have made some sort of exclamatory sound, for Mrs. Garvald looked at me with her little bright eyes and said:

  “I thought you said you didn’t know it?”

  Feebly I tried to explain without being rude or superior that I had not recognised it from their description, but that I had read it.

  Both Garvalds nodded, as if it were just what they had expected.

  “You look as if you had read that high-brow sort of stuff,” Miss Garvald muttered accusingly in her complaining tones.

  As soon as I decently could, I left. I hurried away from Miramar, past Ascot, and The Pines, and Ruberslaw, and all the other pretentious villas that stand in a row with their backs turned to Ravenskirk, because I was going to laugh, and couldn’t keep it in. I felt like a soda-water bottle that has been shaken. Laughter came bubbling out of me, and it was a good thing that I did not meet anyone on the road, or to my other peculiarities would be added grave doubts of my sanity.

  How lovely it was to be out in the fresh air again, even though it was beginning to rain and I was wearing my respectable suit and hadn’t thought of bringing an umbrella. The sun came slanting through the veil of crystal drops and made the green hillsides, and the pasture fields and the drills of turnips, as bright as emeralds.

  As I took the door-key of Piper’s Cottage from its hiding-place under a flat stone beside the lavender bush and the southern-wood, I realized that I was happy. I’ve had odd moments of happiness, of course, but this is the first time I have known that I am quietly, peacefully happy since the survivors of Ivo’s corvette came back without him. Don’t imagine that I was turned into a grave unsmiling person by his death. Even from the little you know of me, you must have gathered that I can’t help laughing, that cheerfulness must break in no matter how heavy my heart is; but being happy is quite different, isn’t it? Happiness is a matter of one’s own inner state and is not really dependent on outside conditions—and now I must more or less contradict myself and say that it is easier for me to be happy in a place like Ravenskirk than in a city street. There is something about this place that breathes content into its inhabitants. Except, of course, people like poor Miss Garvald. I don’t believe she would be contented anywhere, and if she returned to London, would instantly be sighing for Ravenskirk.

  Your letter was lying on the mat inside the door when I came downstairs this morning, and I sat far too long over my breakfast coffee reading and re-reading it. I am glad that you didn’t think my letter too rambling or too long, and that you like to hear about the people as well as the place. I was sure you must have known someone exactly like Miss Bonaly; and how pleasant to think that when I go to tea with the Curries at Templerig I shall be visiting a house where Mr. Currie’s old uncle used to entertain you and Ivo to highly unsuitable feasts late in the evening, complete with port!

  Thank you for the snapshots of your bungalow and your boys. I could have wished that there had been a slightly less blurred picture of yourself, but I appreciate that your Number One boy who took it is not an expert photographer. The pictures of the plumbing and the hen-house are particularly pleasing. I like the tank and hot-water cistern sitting so artlessly outside the back door, and I love the long ladder up to the hens’ thatched house standing up off the ground on legs. It is fascinating to see things so different from what one sees here, though I note that you are not immune to servant problems, even if they are not the same as ours! With prices at their present high level, few of us in this island except the very wealthy, could bear the appalling toll of breakages which your boys seem to levy. Such extraordinary things to break—I mean, handles off cups and spouts off teapots can be accomplished quite easily by anyone, but how could they twist the spout from an aluminium kettle? Or break a poker in half? No, on the whole, I think you can keep your black boys, and I’ll be content with Madge Marchbanks three times a week to do “the rough.”

  I must tell you something about Madge. Her mother fell in love with a man unhappily married, who persuaded her into believing that his wife would divorce him. Madge was born, but no more was heard about the divorce, and a few weeks later the unhappy mother simply faded out of life, largely, I should imagine, because the righteous anger of her godly old father had taken the shape of keeping her indoors all the time she was carrying the baby. This with the idea of hiding the shame she had brought on her family as much as possible. It was old Marchbanks and his other daughter Nettie who brought Madge up as if she were a much younger child and sister, and not a granddaughter—the transparent deception practised so often in country communities, imposing on no one but respected by all.

  Madge, it seems, is very like her mother, a gentle, rosy, smiling creature with a soft voice, a softer heart, and not very much intellect. Too like her mother, her Aunt Nettie said gloomily. For during the war, when there was a big military camp near Ravenskirk all the old grandfather’s strictures and all Aunt Nettie’s vigilance failed to keep Madge from meeting the soldiers. . . . Madge finds it almost impossible to say No, and the result made its appearance in the shape of a baby girl months after the particular soldier responsible had vanished with his unit for some destination unknown to Madge. The only alleviating circumstance was that the grandfather died before he knew that disgrace had again overtaken his family. Nettie Marchbanks, though she looks the essence of acid spinsterhood, has a heart, and Madge’s little girl found the way to it without any difficulty. She is seven now, little Helen Marchbanks, and a splendid child, as such come-by-chance children sometimes are: full of life and spirit, brimming with intelligence. Madge is fond of her in the casual way that a cat is fond of its kittens, but she is the joy of Aunt Nettie’s existence. It is Aunt Nettie who keeps her so neatly dressed and sees that she has her share of all the thi
ngs the other children with respectably married parents have.

  When Nettie Marchbanks came to my door one morning and asked me, if I were not already “suited” with a daily help, to give her niece a trial, I thought her so forbidding and intimidating that I really dared not do anything but agree to try Madge. I have never regretted it. Madge is not only an excellent worker and honest as the day, but cheerful and sweet-tempered. Later, when I had heard her story and little Helen’s, I understood Aunt Nettie better. The cryptic remarks made by her at that first interview—“She’s a good worker, Madge, for all some folk’ll not give her a chance”—and—“Maybe they’ll say you’re daft to take Madge, but don’t you believe a’ you’re tellt about her”—became clear, though at the time Miss Marchbanks’s vehemence of noddings and frowns full of meaning conveyed nothing to me except that she was anxious to find a place for a not too satisfactory niece. And I learned to admire her fierce determination to see Madge settled in a steady job instead of the casual labour she so readily undertook at various boarding-houses during the summer. It was not so much the money, as that working regularly for me—or any other reputable householder—all the year round, would give her a better standing among the neighbours.

  As a matter of fact, the neighbours have decided long ago to overlook poor Madge’s one lapse, either for her aunt’s sake—“Nettie Marchbanks is a real decent body”—or her own, or the child’s. It is the potential employers who have boycotted her. I could hardly believe my own ears when Miss Bonaly accosted me outside the Post Office and said, “I hear you are employing Madge Marchbanks as a daily woman, Miss Monteith?”

  “That is so,” I replied much more mildly than I felt, for I wanted to ask her what business it was of hers.

  “I am sorry to hear it,” said she.

  “Indeed?” said I.

  “Perhaps you do not know the girl’s reputation, as you have so recently come here?”

  “I know that she is honest, obliging and a good worker,” said I.

  “We have made a point of never employing her,” said Miss Bonaly impressively.

  “Ah, then your loss has been my gain,” said I, passing the simmering stage and rapidly coming to the boil.

  “You will make a very bad impression on Ravenskirk if you persist in having Madge Marchbanks to do your cleaning—I am warning you for your own good,” said Miss Bonaly. “She has a very bad name here, let me tell you. Are you aware that she is an unmarried mother?” On these two awful words her voice sank to a whisper.

  “As long as she does her work to my satisfaction, I cannot see that her private life is any concern of mine. Good morning, Miss Bonaly,” I said, and walked quickly away, leaving her exclaiming: “Well! Really!” to the air around her.

  I know I shouldn’t have lost my temper and said that, Hugo. I could have handled it much better than I did; and heaven knows, I don’t hold any brief for Madge, and I do feel responsible for her now, but I could not stand Miss Bonaly’s sanctimonious priggishness for another second. She will disapprove of me more heartily than ever after this, and no doubt will tell her friends that I am a person of lax morals.

  I don’t care about that, but I am ashamed of myself for letting my temper boil over. It is usually under better control. Perhaps your boys are less trouble, in spite of all the breakages? At least, I don’t suppose you have to bother very much about their morals!

  There seems to be little or no local colour in this letter, but you must be collecting quite a gallery of portraits. In case you think that everyone I meet is odd or disagreeable, I hasten to disabuse you of the idea. The Curries are both nice and normal; old Mrs. Keith a jewel of rare water, and there is a delightful family of Drysdales, about whom more when I write next.

  CHAPTER III

  LATE AUGUST, 1951

  Oh dear, Hugo, I have missed so many mails. Please forgive me. It is a full-time job being an Aunt in the summer holidays. Yes, I have been promoted to Auntship—or should it be Aunthood?

  Arthur asked if I would mind being called Aunt Sara, it sounded more like a real relation than ‘Cousin’.

  “Not in the least,” I told him. “I am quite old enough to be your aunt.”

  “Oh,” he said hastily and politely. “I don’t think you’re old at all. In fact, you’re rather young.”

  “My hair is getting grey.”

  “More silver, I think. It’s silver in front, anyway. So can I call you Aunt Sara?”

  “Yes, of course,” I said. “And while we are talking about names, I do find Arthur a bit formal. And yet I can’t call you ‘Arty’, can I?”

  “No!” he said with violence. Then he grinned. “Oh, I see. You were just funning?”

  “Just funning. But is there anything I could call you except Arthur?”

  “The Grans—” he began, and then stopped. “My grandfather and grandmother called me Atty. I liked that.”

  “You wouldn’t mind if I did too?” I asked, hoping this was the right line. Apparently it was, for he nodded.

  “Well, I like Atty,” I said. “It has a sort of period flavour about it.”

  So Atty and Aunt Sara we are, and I feel that for me it is promotion.

  Ravenskirk, you know yourself, is ideal for the young, and Atty thinks it “super.” I must say I would have been greatly disappointed in him if he hadn’t liked the place. Farmers and landowners are very indulgent in the way they allow him to have the run of their ground, on the understanding that gates must be shut, and beasts and crops not disturbed.

  Rex has provided the boy with every possible thing a boy could wish for, perhaps almost too lavishly. Atty appeared not only with his trunk and suitcase, but a bicycle, a fishing-rod, creel and landing-net, a camera . . . would it be unkind to wonder if the paternal conscience pricked a little at the last, over leaving an only son to the care of a female cousin and the family lawyer?

  There were hints of a shot-gun and a point 22 rifle to follow, but I am thankful to know that these lethal weapons are not to make their appearance these holidays. Before they do, I shall have to find some kindly disposed man to initiate Atty into the mysteries of shooting. If only you were near enough to be roped in! But you aren’t. Perhaps the silent Mr. Currie would help, or I might ask Lewis Drysdale.

  The Drysdales bought Carmichael about five years ago, soon after the war ended. The house had been occupied by the army and was in pretty bad repair, and the garden was a wilderness, so they got it cheap. Knowing they would have to do a great deal to put things right, they made the place their hobby instead of just endless work. It is that too, of course, but they seem to enjoy it, and have done quite a bit of the papering and painting themselves. I cannot imagine why Elizabeth Drysdale doesn’t drop dead from sheer exhaustion, for she is cooking, washing, mending, sewing and gardening from early morning until late at night. The shepherd’s wife from up the hill at Over Carmichael comes in for a couple of hours every day, but except for that Elizabeth does it all. Lewis gardens hard, or as hard as he is allowed to, but active service in Burma has not left him very fit and he has to be careful. They have three children—now: there were four, but the eldest boy was killed in France in 1944. The daughter, Catherine, is an occupational therapist at one of the London hospitals, and I have not seen her yet; the second son is finishing his military service in Germany, and the youngest, Anthony, though he is fifteen, is kind enough to take Atty with him on fishing expeditions from which they return wet, dirty, fishless and ravenous.

  They also go for long bicycle runs, taking lunch with them, which does not prevent them from turning up either at Piper’s Cottage or Carmichael early in the afternoon announcing that they are too hungry to wait until tea-time, and having to be fed.

  “I never knew before that fishing and bicycling were such dirty sports,” I said to Elizabeth one day when I had walked up the glen to Carmichael to have tea with her. The boys were expected to appear at any moment, and I was helping her to set the usual enormous tea on the round dinner-table:
a new brown loaf, new raspberry jam, newly-baked scones, butter supplied by the shepherd’s wife, Mrs. Pattison; a huge jug of creamy milk, a sponge-cake filled with lemon-curd, a big fruit-cake. . . . It looked enough to feed twenty but when the boys left the table there would not be very much over.

  “Um?” murmured Elizabeth vaguely, counting cups and plates. “Dirty, did you say? My dear Sara, any sport engaged in by boys is bound to be dirty. Even after a bath and straight to bed, more dirt seems to ooze out of them in the night—At least, they always look dirty again at breakfast.”

  “But Atty is always washing, he spends hours in the bathroom,” I said.

  “Is he? I wish I could say the same for Anthony—though he’s a bit cleaner than he used to be,” said Elizabeth. “I shall never forget the first time Lewis and I took him out from his public school. He was wearing a spotless collar, and against it his neck was dark grey! Just a small bit in the very middle of his face was clean—and his hands! Of course at his prep. school he wasn’t allowed out without matron looking him over and seeing that he was reasonably pure. Michael and Ralph were exactly the same.”

  “But—”

  “For heaven’s sake, let’s sit down for a minute before the cormorants are upon us,” said Elizabeth, pointing to a chair and sinking into one herself. “I don’t want to disillusion you, but they don’t really wash when they lock themselves into the bathroom for ages. I think they fall into a kind of mystic trance or something, and running water helps them. It’s the only way I can explain it.”

  Were you and Ivo like that? If you were and I had known you then I daresay I should never have noticed it. My own standards of cleanliness were none too high at that age, and I do remember Mamma’s plaints that I treated my clothes as if rips and holes would mend themselves. Now that I have to darn and patch Atty’s garments, I feel for her as never before. . . .