In proof of this he stirred the kitten up with a finger till out of the corner of its eye it suddenly saw the tip of a highly desirable tail and at once became a living corkscrew. Tony then got an old envelope out of the waste-paper basket, drew from his pocket a piece of string, tied it on to the paper and dangled the paper in the air just above the kitten’s head. The kitten leapt into the air with every claw outspread, humped itself like a salmon, fell head over heels, rushed madly away, squashed itself under a chest of drawers, turned round and stuck its face and front paws out, emerged, waved its tail angrily from side to side, rushed at the paper again, skidded on the parquet floor against Tony’s foot, and embracing his boot in its fore-paws began to kill it.
“A very good kitten,” said Tony, picking it up. The kitten at once went to sleep. “How is your mother, sergeant, and the vegetable shop?”
Under Tony’s fatherly influence the sergeant, who was more than twice his age and had been in the last war, told him how his mother was carrying on at the shop and had been over to see the hospital and had tea with Mrs. Allen. Tony asked who Mrs. Allen was. The sergeant said she was an old lady, Mrs. Crockett’s mother. Tony gave the sergeant another cigarette and asked who Mrs. Crockett was. At this point the sergeant’s replies became a little confused owing to his going red in the face and stuttering.
“I think we’d better go and see this Selina of yours,” said Tony. “She sounds all right to me, but I’d better have a look.”
The sergeant, who had complete confidence in his young lieutenant, for very little reason except that Tony had sometimes listened to his sad story of his wife’s death and the Captain’s kindness, said he knew Mrs. Crockett had gone down to the village to see her mother and would be coming back about now.
“We might walk down to the Sheep’s Head,” said Tony, “and see if we can find Mrs. Selina. Then one drink and I must go and rescue my mamma.”
Accordingly, the sergeant, who really had no business to be out at all, took Tony by the side door into the garden. The sergeant talking, Tony listening, they sauntered through the garden, admired the view over Golden Valley, and went leisurely down the drive.
“Anyone else looking at your Mrs. Selina?” Tony asked.
The sergeant said he didn’t rightly know. Sir Harry’s head keeper was about the kitchen a good deal, but he might be after Cook or Baker.
“Is that Margett, the man we saw in the backyard?” Tony inquired. “Dr. Ford told my mamma that he was Sir Harry’s keeper and she thought he meant Sir Harry was in a loony-bin.”
Sergeant Hopkins, after an interval of thought, guffawed.
“Delayed action, but quite a success,” said Tony with scientific interest.
“Yes, sir,” said the sergeant doubtfully. “Margett’s a good sort, sir. He takes the boys out shooting. But I don’t think Mrs. Crockett ought to take up with him, sir. There’s something—well, I can’t quite explain, sir. There is a word just about fits him, sir, but I don’t know as I’d like to say it in front of Mrs. Crockett.”
“What is it?” said Tony. “I thought I knew most of them.”
“Well, sir, not a word I’d like to use, not in front of an officer,” said Sergeant Hopkins.
“Out with it,” said Tony. “I’ll stand you another one at the Sheep’s Head.”
“Well, sir,” said Sergeant Hopkins, tempted by the dazzling bait, “if I was asked to say what Margett was like, I’d certainly use a certain expression, sir, though it’s not one I’d care to use in public. The name I’d have for him,” said the sergeant, looking cautiously round as if the Manchester Watch Committee was behind the next tree, “is sinister. I’d call him a sinister man, sir.”
Tony, who prided himself on knowing a good deal of really bad language and had hoped to add some Barsetshire word of unprintable obscenity to his vocabulary, was slightly disappointed, but realizing how appalling the implications of the word must be to Sergeant Hopkins, he whistled.
“Yes, sir,” said the sergeant, much gratified. “Sinister. That’s what I’d say.”
“Well then, he mustn’t bother Mrs. Selina,” said Tony. “What does your mother say?”
“Mother’s always at me to marry again,” said Sergeant Hopkins, “and seeing Mrs. Crockett’s late husband was in the greengrocery, it does seem as if it was meant. I can fancy her handling a nice fresh savoy, or some early rhubarb,” said the sergeant rhapsodically, “or picking out the best toms for Mrs. Carter at the school. And we might do a bit of a sideline in flowers, sir, because after all there is other things than veg. I’d like to see her with a bunch of daffs, or some nice big chrysanths. My mother and Mrs. Allen, that’s Mrs. Crockett’s mother, sir, they both say I ought to marry again. I’ve got another board, sir, and Dr. Ford says he thinks they’ll discharge me because of my eyes, so if Mrs. Crockett was agreeable, well you see, sir, that’s how it is.”
As the sergeant finished his love-plaint, Selina appeared round the bend in the drive. She was looking extremely pretty, her face flushed by the cold air and the walk, and at the sight of the sergeant, or a young officer, or both, her hair appeared to wreathe itself in silvered tendrils more violently than ever.
“Well, Mrs. Crockett, who’d have thought of meeting you?” said Sergeant Hopkins, lying with a fluency that Tony much admired. “Mr. Morland was on a gunnery course with our lot up in Wales and we was just having a talk about old times.”
Tony saluted Selina.
“Mrs. Crockett,” he said gravely, this statement of a new acquaintance’s name being his affectation at the moment.
Selina bridled and dimpled and Sergeant Hopkins looked as silly as a man with an undeclared passion usually looks.
“Did the sergeant tell you about the time we shot the sheep?” said Tony.
“Oh no, sir!” said Selina, her eyes filling with tears, “not a sheep, sir!”
“It was all its own fault for being just where we were aiming at,” said Tony. “But the farmer kicked up a frightful row.”
“He must have been upset, sir,” said Selina.
“He was awfully upset,” said Tony, “till he got his compensation; and then the sergeants’ mess stood him drinks at the Taliesin Arms and he was more upset than ever. Wasn’t he, sergeant?”
“Never seen a man so bl—beg your pardon, sir, I mean blind drunk in my life,” said the sergeant. Excuse me, sir, but I can’t help laughing just to think of it.”
“And the sergeant carried him home and put him to bed,” said Tony to Selina, “all out of kindness.”
“Oh, it was kind, sir,” said Selina, distracted from the horrors of ovicide to the beauty of the sergeant’s kind action. “He must be very strong, sir.”
“He is,” said Tony. “Wait till you see him lift a sack of potatoes.”
Selina said that the late Mr. Crockett had to have a young man to help with the lifting.
“Well, you marry Sergeant Hopkins when he gets his discharge, Mrs. Crockett,” said Tony, “and you’ll have a young man and the potatoes too.”
“Oh, sir!” said Selina, so moved by virtuous indignation and the delightful sense that the officer admired her, that she quite forgot to cry.
Tony saluted; Selina went back as fast as she could to tell Cook that these young gentlemen you never knew what they’d say next, and the men continued their walk.
“Excuse me, sir, have you ever thought of marrying yourself?” said Sergeant Hopkins.
“Not seriously,” said Tony. “I mean to catch one young and bring her up to be just what I want. And then I suppose she’ll marry someone else like Mr. Day’s pupil.”
“Was that Mr. Day of the Loyal Barsets, sir?” asked the sergeant.
“Lord, no! A much older man,” said Tony. “I like your Mrs. Selina, sergeant. I’d see about it at once if I were you. And here is the Sheep’s Head. It’s a pity it’s not quite six.”
“I dare say if we was to go round to the back we’d find Mrs. Pollett somewhere about,” said Sergea
nt Hopkins carelessly.
“I’d like to meet Mrs. Pollett,” said Tony.
Meanwhile in the billiard-room Matron had briefly introduced Mrs. Morland to her audience, and then went away, as she had to see Dr. Ford. Mrs. Morland, left alone in front of some forty or fifty convalescent soldiers, nothing but a wooden chair, a card-table and a glass of water to support her, her son vanished, Lady Waring, Lydia and Leslie seated in the front row looking at her, heartily wished she had never been born. She hated any kind of public appearance and had only twice spoken to an audience, in both cases at the request of her publisher with whom she had almost quarrelled afterwards owing to general nervous misery. She had only accepted Lady Waring’s invitation because she felt one ought to do anything one was asked to do for convalescent soldiers, though, if her own sons were anything to judge by, the very last thing they would want was to have a middle-aged woman with no allure coming and talking to them about how she wrote books, for such was the subject that Matron had suggested, and Mrs. Morland had accepted it, feeling with dumb despair that she could be just as stupid about that as about anything else, and that certainly none of her audience would have read any. She had typed out again and again a rough synopsis of her lecture, but every time she looked at it she hated it more.
How on earth could one expect convalescent soldiers, or well soldiers, or any sort of soldiers, to read what were really only pot-boilers? Thrillers about Madame Koska, in whose dress-making establishment her readers demanded to meet a new hero, heroine, female spy and foreign secret agent every year, sandwiched with descriptions of clothes and the difficulties of a fashionable dressmaker, seemed to her the last thing in the world for military circles. After sitting up till one o’clock that morning she had gone to bed with a headache, slept in the company of nightmares and was at the moment on the verge of hysteria with icy feet, trembling knees, shaking hands, bleared eyes, her hat a little askew and the certainty that her hair would come down before long.
A polite clap greeted her.
“It isn’t my fault that I’m here,” said Mrs. Morland, looking vengefully towards Lady Waring, who was getting her spectacles out of her bag and did not notice it, “and I’m perfectly sure none of you have read any of my books and I really don’t see why you should, not to speak of writing them, which is really the last thing I know how to do.”
She paused, wondering how long she could drivel on like this, for her typescript was in a hopeless mess and had it been the tidiest in the world she could not have seen the words.
To her eternal surprise a voice near the back of the room said, “I did, miss. I liked them a lot. So did George; didn’t you, George?”
George thus appealed to, and told by his neighbours to speak up, said he had read three and his young lady had read them all. Other men, taking example by the courageous action of George, joined their voices, and Mrs. Morland, incredulous, found herself face to face with at least twenty fervent admirers out of her audience.
“I can’t tell you how pleased I am,” said Mrs. Morland, stooping to pick up a hairpin. “I’ve got a friend in the Air Force who said they were reading some of my Madame Koska stories in the mess, which I thought was extraordinary because one hardly expects airmen to be able to read, I mean to have time for reading when they are bombing Germany and Italy, but this is ever so much nicer. None of my sons read my books, because of course one cannot think one’s mother can do anything, so it is more cheering-up than I can tell you that you like them. Which did you like best?”
George and his friends, having overcome their first shyness, were delighted to have a literary discussion. Names of books flew about the room. Powerful, beefy-looking corporals invoked the names of their young ladies who wished they could be mannequins at Madame Koska’s and wear such lovely costumes. Pink-faced privates said they’d like to have been there when that foreign fellow tried to suffocate Rosalba the beautiful receptionist in a thousand-guinea mink coat and they’d have given him something on account for Hitler. A lance-corporal said his sister teased the life out of him to give her one for her birthday. Mrs. Morland could hardly contain her exultation, as the business side of her noticed that nearly fifteen minutes had already gone.
“Thank you all very, very much,” she said earnestly. “Lady Waring said Matron said you’d like to know how I write my books. Well, I’m frightfully sorry, but I really haven’t the faintest idea.”
She paused dramatically.
“Jew mean you go into a trance, sort of?” said George’s friend, awestruck.
“Not exactly,” said Mrs. Morland, “though I often feel just as stupid as if I had.”
“That’s the reaction, miss,” said George. “I often go that way myself after one of sergeant’s talks about the Bren gun.”
This allusion raised a loud laugh.
“Well, I’ll try to explain,” said Mrs. Morland, pushing all her hairpins well into her head by the simple method of banging her hat with both hands. “You see, my publisher will make me write books.”
She paused dramatically.
George said to his friend it did seem a shame, a lady like her.
“So then,” pursued Mrs. Morland, looking earnestly into space, “I get so furious that I simply don’t know what to do. So I buy some exercise books, which are a perfectly frightful price now, at least they cost the same but there are hardly any pages so it comes to much the same thing in the end, and some more pencils. And what is perfectly maddening is that nowadays the pencils called B are so soft that you use them up at once, besides the lead breaking every time you sharpen them, and the ones called H don’t mark at all. And then I sit down, very angrily, and write a book.”
She then realized with horror that though she had come to the end of her subject there were at least thirty minutes of her allotted time to be filled.
“I think it’s a shame, miss,” said George.
“I don’t do it on purpose,” said Mrs. Morland, pleading her cause as well as she could. “You see, when my husband died I wasn’t very well off and I had four boys, so I simply had to do something. I didn’t ever mean to write books.”
George’s friend, going very red in the face, brought out an ill-prepared sentence to the effect that the late Mr. Morland’s death had been on the whole a gain to humanity.
“Thank you very much,” said Mrs. Morland gratefully. “I do so understand what you mean, and it is so kind of you, and I must say that I get on very well as I am and don’t feel a bit like a widow.”
George said his Dad died before he was born, so he didn’t seem to miss him like.
“No,” said Mrs. Morland, after considering this statement, “you couldn’t. Not unless your mother put it into your head.”
“Mum died when I was a month old,” said George with some pride, “and auntie she brought me up.”
“I am sorry,” said Mrs. Morland.
Lady Waring now begged for silence so that Mrs. Morland could go on with her most interesting talk, thus earning the lecturer’s lively, if temporary, dislike. The convalescents all told each other to shut up and let the lady talk, George and his friend being particularly active in this way.
“Well,” said Mrs. Morland, miserably resigned to the inevitable, but without the faintest idea of how she was going to fill up the remaining time, “I hadn’t very much money and my third boy was just going into the Navy.”
“I got a brother in the Navy, miss,” said George.
Not to be outdone, various other members of the audience mentioned the names of brothers, uncles, cousins and brothers-in-law in the Senior Service. George’s friend said he wished he was in the Navy because a fellow got treated proper there; rum, they got, not like some people as couldn’t even get beer some days.
“You get treated proper, all right, my lad,” said George. “What about those drinks I stood you at the Sheep’s Head last week?”
This led to a good deal of laughter at the expense of George’s friend, who appeared to have a reputation
for parsimony.
“I don’t know where he is now,” said Mrs. Morland, feeling that she could never face her hostess again unless she justified her existence as a lecturer, “but two years ago he was in the Flatiron, on the China station.”
A voice, unidentified, said his two uncles were out there, adding, “Dirty yellow monkeys.” It then apologized, saying it was thinking of the Japs.
Mrs. Morland, having at last realized that Heaven was working directly on her behalf, gave up trying to interfere with it and allowed herself to drift with the tide of popularity. The whole life-stories of her three elder boys were discussed by her sympathetic friends, points of contact were found everywhere, and if Tony was not so analysed it was not from any diffidence on his mother’s part, for she was by now in a Delphic frenzy and would have told anybody anything, but that Matron came in and caught Lady Waring’s eye. Lady Waring, seizing a moment’s comparative calm, got up, thanked Mrs. Morland warmly for her delightful lecture and proposed a vote of thanks, which was carried by acclamation. Mrs. Morland, exhausted but content, had a kind of triumphal progress down the room and at the door was stopped by seven or eight men with sixpenny copies of her books which they wanted her to sign, offering fountain-pens and pencils of all sorts from silver-cased to indelible. In a writing blurred by emotion she wrote Laura Morland in eight different handwritings, thanked Matron for one of the nicest afternoons she had ever spent, shook hands with all the nurses, and went back with Lady Waring and her party to the servants’ wing.
Here they found Sir Harry and Dr. Ford talking about fishing in Canada, where neither of them had ever been. Mrs. Morland told Sir Harry that she had had a perfectly delightful time, which pleased him very much, for he wished his guests to enjoy themselves and felt personally responsible for the hospital when his friends spoke there.
“We must be getting along, Mrs. Morland,” said Dr. Ford. “Where’s Tony?”
Mrs. Morland had received Tony’s message, and though she believed him to be fairly truthful, at any rate in intention, she could not help an anxious glance at the clock, for Dr. Ford had always been one of Tony’s sharpest critics, and Tony’s mother, who adored and disliked her youngest son to distraction, did not wish her old friend to have a righteous cause of displeasure against him. The hands of the clock stood at fourteen and a half minutes past six when these thoughts rushed through her head.
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