Lydia, walking determinedly back from the end of the long platform, her hair and coat frosted with the fine, cold rain, her eyes and mind elsewhere, was suddenly conscious of a figure in front of her and recognized the stationmaster.
“Excuse me, miss,” said Mr. Beedle, “but it is coming on to rain quite fast. Won’t you come into the waiting-room, miss? We’ve a nice bit of fire there. It’s only the general waiting-room, I’m afraid, but we can’t get coal enough for the ladies’ waiting-room too. I don’t like it at all, miss, having to put ladies into the general, but that’s what war does.”
“Oh,” said Lydia, dragging herself back to the scene before her. “I hadn’t noticed the rain. Could you tell me, please, when there’s a train to Lambton? I forgot to look up the trains.”
“Well, miss, you’ve just missed the local,” said Mr. Beedle. “She pulled out two minutes ago. If I’d known, miss, I’d have held her for you. The next isn’t till 12.43.”
“Oh, well,” said Lydia desolately, “I suppose I could wait. Or is there anything to see in the town? A museum or anything?”
“Well, miss, I’m afraid there isn’t much a lady like you would like at present,” said Mr. Beedle. “There is the Whatmore Mechanics’ Institute, but it doesn’t open till twelve and the museum department is closed. It was a fine museum, miss, with a lovely collection of birds’ nests and their eggs, but the evacuees broke so many of the cases to take the eggs that the trustees had to close down for the duration. There is the exhibition of Mixo-Lydian Atrocities. I dare say you saw the lady who’s arranging it getting into the train. But I don’t think you’d like it, miss.”
“Thank you very much,” said Lydia gratefully, “I’m sure I wouldn’t. I’ll just go and sit in the waiting-room. You see, I was seeing my brother off. He’s probably going abroad and I never thought about getting back.”
Mr. Beedle hesitated. He well remembered his mother seeing him off to the last war and how Dad had put her arm under his and taken her away as the train got to the curve. He hardly liked to remember how he and Mrs. Beedle had seen young Henry off when he was suddenly recalled from leave, and how they had talked cheerfully to each other of all meeting again soon. The rain was driving more fiercely and the platform and lines glistened in the pale grey light.
“Excuse me, miss,” said Mr. Beedle, hesitating no longer, “I’m going off duty now for an hour. I don’t hardly like to suggest it, but if you’d care to come back to our place and have a cup of tea, I’m sure Mrs. Beedle would be gratified, with you staying at the Priory. Sir Harry was kind enough to stand godfather to our boy. Prisoner-of-war now, miss,” said Mr. Beedle, trying to convey by a cheerful business-like voice that his son was doing very well and that if a like fate awaited the young lady’s brother he would find himself quite pleasantly situated.
Lydia, grasping at this kindness, accepted at once. Mr. Beedle took her back to his office while he gave some instructions to Doris Phipps and Lily-Annie Pollett, and then requested Lydia to come with him. At the barrier she gave up the outward half of her return ticket to Bill Morple, who eyed with satanic scorn this alliance between bureaucracy and capitalism.
“Look at old Beetle making up to people just because they know Sir Harry,” said Bill Morple to Doris and Lily-Annie. “Fair makes me sick. Seeing an officer off she was. Now in Russiar it’s all different. Officers don’t have no more rights than you or me.”
“Well, I hope they’ve got more moustache than you, Bill Morple,” said Lily-Annie, whose tender heart had been much moved by Mr. Beedle’s brief description of Lydia’s plight. “A lovely little moustache the officer had.”
Bill flushed angrily, while both girls indulged in loud, hooting laughter, for his efforts to grow that ornament had never gone further than a few scrubby hairs.
“All right,” said Bill, “all right. But you aren’t the only clever ones. There’s some that knows a bit more than you. Where’s old Beetle’s silver cup, eh?”
“Well, where is it, then?” said Doris.
But Bill with a sudden access of virtuous industry, began to roll empty milk-churns along the platform, thus drowning all attempts at further questioning.
“Barmy!” said Lily-Annie scornfully to Doris.
Lydia, although friendly and adventurous in casual relationships, had never before been for a walk with a stationmaster, and had an uneasy feeling that everyone would stare. But Winter Overcotes early on a cold, dark winter morning had quite enough to do in getting its rations, hurrying to its office, standing in a queue at the Food Office, rushing into the W.V.S. office for information about a rumour of coupon-free khaki knitting wool, or hopelessly going to Miss Beak at the Morleena Domestic Enquiry Bureau to ask if there was a daily available for half a day a week, was not in the least interested in anything outside its own concerns. Mr. Beedle, walking at a good pace, occasionally touching his cap to some friend or acquaintance, led Lydia down the station slope, round by the Town Hall, up the wide market place, past Woolstaplers’ Hall, now the unwilling temporary seat of the Town Council. Here an old wall, relic of Overcotes Palace, a summer residence of the pre-Reformation prelates of Barchester, skirted one side of the quiet road. Mr. Beedle passed through a narrow archway in it, followed by Lydia who, in spite of her heavy heart, stood entranced by what she saw: a double row of mellow red brick houses, each with two stories of small but well proportioned sash windows and a dormer window in the red-tiled roof, and to each house a little front garden with a gate onto the flagged pathway between. Over the roofs could be seen the tall trees that had been part of the Palace garden. Boon’s Benefit, as this little backwater was called, was the relic of a foundation for old vergers, sextons and other cathedral servants, built by the executors of Thos. Bohun, D.D., Canon of Barchester, who died in the Great Plague and left moneys to that end. In the middle of the nineteenth century the foundation had fallen into disrepute, at about the same time as the public attack was made on Hiram’s Hospital in Barchester. The Charity Commissioners, after considerable delay, had sold it to the railway Company, who had put the houses into good repair and let them at moderate rentals to chosen employees. By an oversight they had chosen a good architect to overhaul Boon’s Benefit, and Mr. Barton, father of the present architect of that name, had made the cottages watertight and comfortable without spoiling their appearance. Each house, by a pleasant whim of a director of the time, was called after one of the company’s crack engines of the “River” class, and Mr. Beedle’s cottage, the last on the left, was called River Rising, with River Woolram next door and River Rushmere opposite.
Some basely said that Mr. Beedle’s fence was so well kept and repainted because he used the company’s paint. This was quite untrue. Mr. Beedle, seeing trouble ahead, had hoarded from the beginning of the war seven-pound tins of green and white paint with turps to match and repainted his fence every spring. He also repainted with infinite care the charming windox-box, made by his own hands. It had a little white fence with a gate in the middle, carefully modelled on the level crossing gate near Winter Underclose. This gate, envy of all the children in Boon’s Benefit, opened on a hinge, and as it opened so did a wooden signal, scale model of the station signals, go up. When the gate was closed the signal went down, the intention being to show that traffic in the shape of lobelias, geraniums and yellow musk could now pass unimpeded from end to end of the window-box. Some younger officials with new-fangled ideas had protested against geraniums as old-fashioned and suggested some nice spring bulbs, but Mr. Beedle was adamant. Hyacinths and crocuses and suchlike were very nice in the front garden, he said, and if some people said the sparrows tore the crocuses to bits, well if those people took the trouble to put a few sticks among the crocuses and wind black thread among them, those thieving sparrows wouldn’t come anigh; but geraniums were the proper thing for a window-box. So every summer the red geraniums, tended through the winter in the little glasshouse behind, bloomed fiercely outside River Rising, filling the front room with
their pungent smell. Between the geraniums grew lobelias of the most violent blue. But instead of golden-tawny musk Mr. Beedle now grew marguerites, for red, white and blue were our colours, and if old Hitler seed them they’d give him a bit of a shock.
But now in midwinter the window-box was desolate. Lydia, not knowing its summer bower, admired the gate and signal and was enchanted by the little grotto below it composed of broken china, bits of old tile from the ruins of Beliers Abbey, bottle-ends, chips of marble and granite (by favour of G. Smallbones, Monumental Mason, Orders Executed in All Styles), the whole topped by a cherub with a broken nose and one wing, dug up by Mr. Beedle in the back garden. This edifice was the joint work of Mr. Beedle and his son Henry and was immortalized in a picture postcard sold at the stationer’s and the toy shop.
“Walk in, miss,” said Mr. Beedle, opening the front door and standing aside.
He followed Lydia, shut the door and called out “Mother.”
“Coming, Beedle,” said a voice, and from the kitchen Mrs. Beedle appeared.
“This young lady is staying with the General,” said Mr. Beedle, hanging his cap on a peg. “She was seeing an officer, her brother that is, off this morning and missed the Lambton train. It’s a cold day and we can’t have a nice fire in the ladies’ waiting-room, so I asked the young lady if she would come back and have a cup of tea. This is Mrs. Beedle, miss.”
While he was speaking he had taken off his official coat and put on an old jacket.
“There now,” said Mrs. Beedle. “There was a stranger in my cup of tea this morning. I’ve just got the kettle on the boil, miss, and I’ll light the fire in the front room in a minute. Or, if you don’t mind, the kitchen miss, it is more cosier-like.”
Lydia thanked her and said she would like tea in the kitchen very much.
“Well then, Beedle, don’t stand there blocking up the passage,” said Mrs. Beedle, very unfairly, as her husband was behind Lydia. “Come in, miss, and sit down.”
Lydia followed her hostess into the kitchen. A good fire was burning in the little range. Through the window she saw a long strip of garden, exquisitely laid out with vegetable beds. Many of these were empty at the moment, but well dug. At the end, through the bare branches of a large pear-tree, the shingled spire of the old parish church could be seen.
Lydia sat down and took her gloves off. Mrs. Beedle cast one all-seeing look at her.
“Well, Beedle, you are a great stupid,” said his wife, “calling the young lady miss, and her staying at the Priory.”
Mr. Beedle said with great truth that he couldn’t see the young lady’s hands through her gloves and he was sure there was no offence.
“I’m really Mrs. Merton,” said Lydia apologetically. “My brother is Captain Keith. He’s a gunner and he’s in the same armoured division with the Barsetshire Yeomanry.”
“Then he’ll know our Henry, for sure,” said Mrs. Beedle, with the unshakable conviction that anyone in the British Army must know anyone else.
“I expect he does,” said Lydia. “Where is your son?”
“Prisoner-of-war, madam,” said Mrs. Beedle.
“Oh!” said Lydia. “Oh, I am so sorry.”
“Thank you, madam,” said Mrs. Beedle. “I’ll show you his photo. He was able to send us one from Germany.”
She took down from the mantelpiece a photograph of a group of men who looked to Lydia exactly like any other group of men she had ever seen; not starved-looking, and some of them apparently in high spirits.
“That’s our boy, miss,” said Mr. Beedle, putting his finger on a large young man with a grin.
“Don’t take no notice of Beedle, madam,” said Mrs. Beedle apologetically. “Can’t you remember the young lady’s married, Beedle?”
“Sorry, mother,” said Mr. Beedle. “Yes, that’s him, miss. He doesn’t look too bad, does he?”
Lydia said he looked splendid. Silence fell. Mrs. Beedle looked at her husband with a look which she meant to express that he wasn’t to bother the lady, and which he took to mean a command to get Henry’s last card out of the little drawer in the table in the front room. Lydia wondered, as we all do, whether people who tell one about relations killed, or missing, or as in this case prisoner, really want to talk about it. She didn’t very much want to talk about Henry Beedle herself, with Colin’s departure and the months or perhaps years of anxiety that were to come so fresh in her mind, but it was strongly borne in upon her that Mr. and Mrs. Beedle would not have introduced the subject if it was nothing but pain to them, and that it would be only courteous to take an interest. If they did not want to pursue it further, one could always switch off to something else.
Mr. Beedle was back almost immediately with the prisoner’s card in his hand.
“Now, Beedle,” said his wife, “you don’t want to go bothering the lady with that card.”
Lydia saw Mr. Beedle’s disappointment, guessed Mrs. Beedle’s protest to be mere form, and said she would very much like to see it.
“Well, read it, Dad, can’t you,” said Mrs. Beedle, basely changing her note, “and don’t keep the lady waiting.”
Mr. Beedle made a great show of putting on his spectacles, coughed, and read aloud:
“‘Dear Dad and Mum, Thanks for the letter it was fine.’ That,” said Mr. Beedle, “was the letter Mother and me wrote him in September. It seems a long time to get an answer, but as we have got one we can’t complain. ‘We had a concert party with community singing it was fine. We have been loading cabbages but the soil isn’t near so good as ours. It is fine getting the fags from the Red Cross and the parcels and all the boys say what price the old Red Cross. Well Dad and Mum I’m keeping fine. There is a railway where we load the cabbages but not like Our Line but I kid myself I hear the old 6.25 down whistling at the level crossing. All the best to you and Grannie and all friends from your loving son Henry. P.S. I’m keeping fine.’”
Mrs. Beedle wiped her eyes. Mr. Beedle looked proudly self-conscious.
“That is a nice letter,” said Lydia, all her doubts gone, speaking with the whole force of her warm nature. “I think it’s a splendid letter. Where was he taken prisoner, Mrs. Beedle?”
“After Dunkirk, madam, same as a whole lot of our Barsetshire boys,” said Mrs. Beedle.
“My husband was there,” said Lydia. “He got back one of the very last. When I got his telegram to say he was in England again I thought it was to say he was dead. Oh, I do hope the war will be over before too long and Henry will come back.”
“And I hope your brother, the Captain, will be back safe before very long, miss,” said Mr. Beedle.
Everyone now had another cup of tea and there was some cheerful talk about the day Henry would come home and how the engine-driver of the 6.25, an old family friend, would give an extra loud whistle as he passed the level-crossing gates to honour the prisoner’s return. Then Lydia was shown photographs of Henry from six weeks onwards, and the wedding group of Mr. and Mrs. Beedle, and Mrs. Beedle’s mother, who died at ninety-five and would never wear her false teeth. At last Mrs. Beedle looked at the clock.
“Time you was going, Beedle,” she said.
“Would you mind,” said Lydia, who had been casting about in her mind as to how she could best repay the Beedles’ kindness, “if I sent some extra money to the Red Cross and asked them to use it for cigarettes for the soldiers in prison camps?”
This suggestion evidently gave great pleasure; so much pleasure in fact that Lydia felt ashamed that a gesture which to her would be no sacrifice should mean so much to her kind friends.
“Will you be kind enough to give my humble respects to her ladyship, madam,” said Mrs. Beedle. “I was nurserymaid there under Nannie Allen just before Mr. George went to school. I hear Nannie’s Selina is at the Priory now. A pretty girl she was, and if you’ll excuse my saying so, all the men on the place were round her like flies round a honeypot. And then she had to take and marry old Mr. Crockett. I wonder if she’s changed much.”<
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“She is very pretty,” said Lydia, “and very kind. And certainly there always seem to be some of the convalescent soldiers in the kitchen, or Jasper.”
At this Mrs. Beedle laughed heartily. With many thanks Lydia said good-bye. Mr. Beedle went back to the station and Lydia, warmed by tea and her friendly reception, felt less depressed and went for a walk in the little town. She tried to see the church which was locked, tried to get one of Mrs. Morland’s novels in a Penguin, and failing that bought a thriller called Doom at the Deanery to read at the station. But it was so dull that she asked Doris Phipps, who was talking to Bill Morple, if she would care for it.
“Ow, yes,” said Doris. “I don’t mind reading a bit sometimes.”
“You hadn’t ought to read that stuff,” said Bill Morple contemptuously. “Now I’ll tell you a book you did ought to read——”
“Ow, I know you and your books,” said Doris Phipps. “Now I like a nice book like Film Stars at Home and Film Stars and the Men They Love. They’re lovely books. But thanks ever so for the book, Mrs. Merton.”
“How did you know my name?” said Lydia.
“You’re staying with Sir Harry, aren’t you?” said Doris Phipps. “Mum’s obliging on Tuesdays and Fridays and she said Mrs. Crockett says you’ve got some lovely camiknicks. Sir Harry’s a lovely gentleman, isn’t he?”
Lydia heartily agreed. Then at last the 12.43 came in and took her back to Lambton. Now that the excitement of her morning call had worn off she felt a chill of sadness fall on her again; but she thought of the Beedles, and though she knew she could never be as simply valiant as they were, she determined to do her best. Leslie Waring thought that anyone who could be so cheerful at lunch after seeing her brother off to the wars could not have much imagination. It is probable that Lady Waring gave Lydia credit for unselfishness.
Growing Up Page 17