China Court

by Rumer Godden

  In the hall, the sunlight lay on flagstone and Persian rugs with their worn deep colours, on oak furniture and copper, not polished now as it once had been; it shone on the big Chinese jar that held the walking sticks and umbrellas, on Great-Uncle Mcleod’s portrait over the fireplace, and on the watercolours of the sailing clippers, the Foundling and the Mary Bazon. The sun caught the banisters and struck a spark of light from the grandfather clock.

  Tracy paused a moment by that clock. Its face was faded, the gold of the Roman figures turned to brown; ‘1777, Gorham, Maker to the Royal Family, Kensington’, said the gold plate in its dial. It is older than the house, well used to humans, when Eustace buys it, but its pendulum still swung, its ticking filled the hall and could be heard upstairs, and its hands still went around measuring the hours of the day and night, no matter what their happenings, ticking steadily as the people come and go: Eustace, Adza. Adza, Eustace: the Brood: Mary, Eliza, Anne, Little Eustace, Mcleod the Second, Jared, Damaris. Jared, Lady Patrick, Borowis, John Henry, Ripsie. John Henry, Ripsie: Stace, Bella, Three Little Graces. Tracy and, in the ticking, voices rise, speak, whisper, laugh:

  ‘You will see Rome and Athens!’

  ‘I showed her into the morning room, milady, as I wasn’t quite sure.’

  ‘It is Papa’s place, my dear.’

  ‘He shouldn’t have touched what didn’t belong to him.’

  ‘Is Mr King Lee – Thomas – paying for my clothes?’

  ‘Throw it away. Burn it.’

  ‘Are you the milk?’

  Eustace, Adza: Jared: Borowis: Stace: went the clock, and Tracy, Tracy, Tracy, thought Tracy. She had meant this journey through the house and garden to be a leave-taking, but now the ticking seemed to take her one step further, As if I might have children, thought Tracy. It did not seem likely, not for years, thought Tracy, and certainly her children would not be here; but all the same she began to try names on the clock, names that her friends and her mother’s friends’ children were called, that were fashionable now: Simon, Christopher, Mark, Sarah, Clare. They did not appear to fit and, I shall go back to the old names, she thought. That pleased her; it was as if the clock hands had come around again and she saw a little Adza – but she would have to have blue eyes, and I couldn’t call a son Eustace, thought Tracy, but Stace is good, or John Henry, and Damaris is a beautiful name. Adza, Jared, Stace, Damaris; they seemed so real that they might have been standing around her. Adza seemed to reach to her elbow and Jared had – red hair? thought Tracy tingling. Then, Don’t be ridiculous! and she scolded herself severely: You are Tracy, with a grant to Rome. You have to study, work, earn your living. You don’t belong here now, but Adza, Jared, Stace, went the clock.

  Cecily’s steps sounded on the landing overhead. She was coming downstairs and, I don’t want to talk, even to Cecily, thought Tracy and she slipped down the passage to the arched door of the office where she used to escape when Mrs Quin had visitors – even then she was hopelessly shy – and sit on a pile of papers and play with the drawers of the old filing cabinet, try and open the safe and sometimes pull out one of the books. But you couldn’t tell which was which, thought Tracy, because they all had brown paper covers, and they were so dusty, Alice used to scold me for dirtying my frock. She remembered a book of martyrs, another with coloured plates of flowers, and she saw herself in the armchair with its broken seat, the heavy book on her lap, one leg hanging down – it did not reach the floor and wore a short sock and sandal – the other doubled under her. ‘Don’t hatch,’ Aunt Bella used to say – surely that was Aunt Bella? – but it was comfortable to sit like that. When visitors came it was peaceful and safe in the office.

  As quietly as she used to open the door then, she opened it now, but stopped; standing with his back to her was a man. Tracy knew certainly she had never seen him before; he was standing at a table laden with china – Our china, thought Tracy, puzzled – it belonged in the drawing room, she was sure – and he was holding one of Mcleod the Second’s plates up to the light; it had a ruby back and on its white ground were cocks and peonies in crimson-rose, faint Chinese pink, green-blue, and deep blue. As she watched, he rang it thoughtfully, turned it over, looked at the bottom, held it to the light again, and thoughtfully put it down. Then he picked up his pipe, knocked it gently in his hand, still thinking, then slowly put his pipe in his mouth and smoked. There was a feeling of quiet and thought in the room and this unknown man fitted in, yet why, it was difficult to say. He was wearing a dark suit – Don’t they call it pepper-and-salt? thought Tracy – and his bowler hat, odd in the country, lay on a chair; his hair was neat and he wore thick gold-rimmed spectacles. A city man, thought Tracy. She was against cities this morning, but she liked the way he touched the plate and she liked the smell of his tobacco. He picked up the plate to look at it again, put it down, sat down himself, and began to write in a long book – Like a ledger, thought Tracy. What was he doing? The pipe puffed steadily. Then he put down his pen, his hand went out again, flicked aside a duster, and there, among the plates and bowls and vases, were the Chelsea shepherd and shepherdess – My Pale Blue Girl and Little Pink Boy, thought Tracy. She had forgotten them but, They belong on the fireplace by the clock, she thought indignantly.

  He had picked up the Pale Blue Girl and was serenely looking at the petticoat patterned with roses that Tracy knew so well, at the curly hair and tiny tilted hat, the yellow sleeves, the lamb and flowers in the moss around the china feet, and ‘W-what are you doing with her?’ asked Tracy. ‘She’s mine.’

  He did not jump, or drop the figure, but carefully put it down beside its pair before he turned, then, ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said.

  ‘I mean she was mine. At least, I used to pretend they both belonged to me.’ August had pushed open the door behind her and she could feel his head under her hand, his solid warmth against her leg. ‘I used to play with them.’

  ‘I beg your pardon again,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know any of the family had arrived yet.’

  ‘I don’t expect I count,’ said Tracy. ‘I’m only a grandchild – and the youngest one. I’m Tracy Quin.’

  ‘Then you count very much,’ he said. ‘Mrs Quin talked of you a great deal.’

  Tracy’s face lit up. ‘She talked of me—’ she began, but Cecily knocked and came in. ‘Oh, Tracy,’ she said, ‘I meant to tell you Mr Alabaster was here,’ and, ‘Your coffee,’ she said to him putting the cup down on the desk. ‘Don’t you let it get cold now, Mr Alabaster. Tracy, there’s a cup for you if you want one,’ but, ‘Mr Alabaster,’ Tracy was saying. ‘What a nice name.’

  It is not really his name. It is Mrs Quin who calls him Mr Alabaster; she is never good at names.

  ‘Mother, can’t you be clear?’ Bella says often, but Mrs Quin is too riddled – ‘muddled,’ Bella would have said but riddled is more true – riddled with experience; with facts, thoughts, feelings, truths, half-truths, half-lies – ‘and downright lies,’ says Mrs Quin in her harshest voice – so riddled that nothing is clear, nor as simple as it seems, ‘or sounds,’ says Mrs Quin.

  Mr Alabaster, in reality, was Mr Percival Anstruther of Truscott, Alabaster and Grice, Valuers and Assessors, ‘called in at last,’ says Walter. For years Walter has been trying to arrange for a valuation to be done at China Court. ‘Nobody knows what is in this house,’ says Walter.

  ‘No one.’ Mrs Quin would have agreed, except that on principle she never agrees with Walter. ‘No one will ever know, but you can listen, and think,’ she could have said, ‘pick up a fork and spoon, look in a looking glass, study a picture, try on an ivory thimble and think, feel; if you strain all your five wits you may know a little.’ Mrs Quin could have said that, but Walter is holding forth. Walter seldom speaks, ‘he holds forth,’ says Mrs Quin. ‘A reliable firm,’ booms Walter, ‘like Truscott, Alabaster and Grice—’

  ‘Couldn’t possibly know the value,’ says Mrs Quin.

  ‘They are arranging to send their Mr Anstruther. He—’<
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  ‘Could not be expected to know the value.’

  ‘Mother, you are deliberately trying to annoy Walter.’

  ‘If Walter is annoyed by the truth I’m sorry,’ but Mrs Quin knows that she is being obstructive, knows too that she is ignorant of names and values and she gives in and Mr Alabaster comes.

  ‘It’s for your benefit, Mother,’ Bella impresses on her.

  ‘Hmp!’ says Mrs Quin.

  She has long ago fathomed why Bella and Walter want Mr Alabaster – though fathomed is the wrong word because, to her, they are quite transparent. ‘It is so that when I die they will know what they are likely to get,’ says Mrs Quin, ‘and will know what to keep or throw away. Like strangers with a guidebook,’ says Mrs Quin.

  ‘But I think you need a guidebook,’ Mr Alabaster would have said. ‘Do you know what this is?’ he asks soon after he comes, and he shows Mrs Quin a certain miniature in a dark frame that has hung by the second drawing-room fireplace for years. ‘Do you know what this is?’

  ‘It’s Richard Loftus Kennedy,’ says Mrs Quin. ‘He was a great-uncle of my mother-in-law, Lady Patrick. She was a Clonfert, her mother a Loftus Kennedy.’

  Though she is cut off by the Clonferts, Lady Patrick, when she is twenty-one, inherits her mother’s property.

  ‘They couldn’t prevent that,’ says Jared, ‘for all their bile.’ She gets the Loftus Kennedy pictures, and the Winterhalter of herself and her brothers as children – ‘He painted Queen Victoria’s children,’ Mrs Quin tells Tracy – and as well all the contents of the house in Dublin and a little fortune in money. ‘But that’s all gone,’ says Mrs Quin.

  ‘Yes, Richard Loftus Kennedy,’ she says now quite certainly of the miniature.

  ‘But do you know what it is?’ persists Mr Alabaster. Mrs Quin has no idea. ‘It is an Engleheart,’ says Mr Alabaster. Mrs Quin has never heard of Engleheart.

  ‘But I don’t think there is much of what Walter would call “money” hidden away here,’ says Mrs Quin when she has recovered from the Engleheart, ‘nothing really valuable. Except the Winterhalter perhaps and, of course, the famille rose.’

  Mr Alabaster had sat down again at his lists of the china now and Tracy read over his shoulder: ‘Vase with landscape panels. Ht 14½″, copy late 19th century, cracked, 40 guineas. Plate. D7⅞″, fine copy late 19th century, 110 guineas.’ ‘That’s an approximate value and there is one … another plate. It has the artemisia leaf mark, perhaps it’s an original,’ said Mr Alabaster. ‘Perhaps they may fetch more.’

  ‘Fetch?’ asked Tracy.

  ‘Unfortunately the china, though very nice, is not as valuable as your uncle hoped.’

  ‘But he can’t sell it,’ said Tracy, scandalized. ‘It was Mcleod the Second’s, my great-great-uncle’s.’ Mr Alabaster had picked up the Chelsea shepherd and fondled it as he listened. ‘I think he bought it after the Opium War,’ said Tracy. ‘Didn’t it come from the Summer Palace?’

  ‘I don’t think it did,’ said Mr Alabaster gently. ‘The Summer Palace was looted in 1861 and, according to the family tree Mrs Quin showed me when we were trying to trace the date, the young man would have been a schoolboy then. Nor, I’m afraid, except perhaps that one plate, are any of these originals, which are valuable, of course. Your uncle hoped they might be; indeed, he said from the time of Yung Cheng when he wrote. Well, original famille rose is, of course.’ He sighed. ‘These copies still fox the experts and I know your grandmother had high hopes of this porcelain, but—’

  ‘Gran had? Gran?’ Tracy was aghast. ‘You don’t mean Gran agreed with Uncle Walter?’

  ‘By no means,’ said Mr Alabaster hastily and then caught himself back. ‘At least, there sometimes seemed to be some disagreement between them. Colonel Scrymgeour—’

  ‘Is that Uncle Walter’s name? Yes, I suppose it is.’

  ‘The colonel, I think, wanted a complete sale, while Mrs Quin’ – and Mr Alabaster’s voice softened – ‘she was a fine old lady – Mrs Quin had hoped to find perhaps one piece that would have saved the house.’

  ‘Saved the house?’ whispered Tracy.

  ‘I understand it needs much repairing,’ said Mr Alabaster sadly. ‘Colonel Scrymgeour showed me a report. These’ – and he ran his finger down the list – ‘could make a nice little sale, but Mrs Quin hoped for something quite outstanding, shall we say, that she could have sold without damaging the whole. I wish I could have helped her,’ said Mr Alabaster.

  ‘And now,’ whispered Tracy, ‘Uncle Walter will win?’

  ‘I am afraid he must,’ said Mr Alabaster.

  The postman came with a letter from Bella, ‘telling me to do all the things I have done,’ said Cecily dryly.

  Everything was ready – the baking finished, windows opened in the rooms, flowers arranged: the sweet peas in bowls in the drawing room and hall, roses on the dinner table, and Tracy had put a posy in each aunt’s room. Groundsel had brought in vegetables; steaks and kidneys had been delivered; Peter had promised two chickens from the farm; and the shop had sent down groceries. Even Bumble and August had been brushed.

  ‘They have only to come,’ said Cecily; and the house waited.

  Sext

  Qui témperas rerum vices, splendóre mane illûminas,

  et ignibus meridiem …

  WHO DOST CHOOSE THE COURSE ALL THINGS SHALL RUN, DECK THE MORNING WITH BEAUTY BRIGHT AND NOON WITH THE BLAZING SUN.

  HYMN FOR SEXT FROM MRS QUIN’S Day Hours

  The Adoration of the Magi The scene takes place in the stable. The Virgin is seated and holds the Child on her lap. He stretches forth one of His hands toward the gift which the first Magus is offering and is crowing with delight (this expression on the Child’s face has been caught in a masterly manner by the artist). The two other Magi stand behind the first, waiting to present their gifts. Joseph stands behind the Virgin in an attitude of protection. A man (possibly the original owner) is watching the scene through a window at the side of the stable.

  Full border of conventional flowers and ivy leaves, painted in colours and heightened with gold. In the right-hand border the arms of the Bonnefoy family.

  MINIATURE FACING THE OPENING OF SEXT IN THE HORAE BEATAE VIRGINIS MARIAE, FROM THE HOURS OF ROBERT BONNEFOY

  Mrs Quin was buried at eleven o’clock the next morning, simply, and as quietly as the village would allow. ‘Buried?’ Bella had asked in dismay.

  ‘That was her direction,’ said young Mr Prendergast, who was not young – quite as old as Aunt Bella, thought Tracy, to whom a middle-aged person was old – but had to be distinguished from his father, old Mr Prendergast. What Mrs Quin had really said was, ‘Don’t let the girls have me cremated,’ but young Mr Prendergast did not tell Bella that. Prendergast and Holtby had been the Quin solicitors since the time of Eustace and young Mr Prendergast remembered Bella from children’s parties. She used to boss all the games, thought Mr Prendergast, and made us play even when we didn’t want to. ‘You shall not be cremated,’ he had told Mrs Quin and had taken it upon himself to give clear directions to Mr Hoskins and had driven over to see the family as soon as they arrived.

  ‘Who wants to be buried nowadays?’ They were still talking of it after the funeral when they had come back to the house. They don’t let things go, thought Mr Prendergast. ‘Who wants to be buried?’ asked Bella.

  ‘I do.’ It was that mouse of a niece who spoke as if it were jerked out of her. So this was the grandchild Mrs Quin had loved, thought Mr Prendergast, loved and sent for again and who had arrived too late. Pity, thought Mr Prendergast watching her. Tracy shrank back in her corner as soon as she had spoken but did not escape. Attention was riveted on her. ‘You do?’

  ‘My dear Tracy!’

  ‘I thought in America—’

  ‘But why?’

  Tracy blushed, but held her ground and, Not such a mouse when she blushes, thought Mr Prendergast.

  ‘Why?’ asked Tracy. ‘Because I thought Gran’s funeral was beautiful.
’

  ‘Beautiful?’

  ‘Yes. It was homely.’ As she said that the child seemed to light up, thought Mr Prendergast. ‘Homely. Oh, not as we use that word,’ said American-reared Tracy, ‘but as you do; being at home and carried up the village s-street where she had so often walked.’ The stutter was overtaking her, but she made herself go on. ‘Past c-cottages where she knew every person, and then in the ch-church where she was married,’ said Tracy, ‘and the churchyard where the f-family were. It wasn’t like going away, it was a joining,’ said Tracy in a rush.

  It is a joining; the family dead are up in the windy graveyard, a wide plot of grassed land, filled with wild daffodils in spring and only walled from the moor by piled grey stones; heather and bracken push through the chinks and sometimes wild ponies spring over. ‘I’m glad they brought Damaris back and let her lie there.’ Mrs Quin says that often. Damaris, whose story comes down through Polly, who tells it to Borowis and John Henry, particularly appeals to Mrs Quin. ‘I’m glad she is here.’ There is the same strength of granite as in the house, but the church is far older. ‘Norman,’ says Mrs Quin. Its square tower rises above the churchyard, but the vicarage elms, counterparts of the elms at China Court down the hill, at the opposite end of the village, are higher still.

  Though Bella and the Graces would hardly have believed it, cremation is still rare in St Probus and most of the village dead are here too, with the same names recurring over and over again: Quins, Neots, Tremaynes, and Minvers. The villagers come here often because, contrary to most modern belief, there is comfort in a grave; it can be a quiet place to sit by for a visit, with its ordered grass and still stones, and it brings a sense of nearness. Indeed, a grave can be almost a companion, a visit to it a pilgrimage back to love; but there are some graves in the churchyard with no one to care for them – Jeremy Baxter’s for instance. No one remembers now who put up the granite head-stone, plain but fine, and the inscription: IMMORTALIA NE SPERES, MONET ANNUS ET ALMUM QUAE RAPIT HORA DIEM,* the only Latin in the churchyard. It is cut in the Quin quarry and the entry for payment is simply ‘Miss X.’