China Court

by Rumer Godden

  As Hester obediently goes to her attic bedroom she realizes that Lady Patrick is right.

  At the servants’ breakfast that morning, Ann Sly shows the other maids her new scent spray. ‘And we know where that comes from,’ says Cook. Hester knows too; it is from Thomas, the head groom, who, like his master, knows a tempting girl when he sees one, ‘and I should guess she paid for it,’ says Hester and purses her lips, but Ann Sly is getting bolder and, though Hester is a senior servant, she dares to retaliate by squirting her with scent. ‘’Tis called “Rowers of ’eaven,’” says Ann Sly laughing. Hester ducks, but a few drops fall on her collar.

  No wonder Lady Patrick objects. The scent has such a strong cloying smell that when Hester takes off her collar and plunges it into the water jug, the water is permeated. “‘Flowers of Heaven.” Nasty cheap heaven, if you ask me,’ says Hester.

  She washes in fresh water, puts on a clean collar and apron, sniffs herself carefully, and goes downstairs. Lady Patrick is still in the bathroom and Hester sets about tidying the room and putting out Lady Patrick’s riding habit and boots. The summer dressing gown is on the bed exactly where it was before; Hester notices that because she has always and so particularly admired it.

  When Lady Patrick is dressed she stands a moment and smiles at herself in the glass. She cannot help smiling – she knows she never looks better than in a habit: the heavy skirt and tailored bodice of dark-grey cloth, the velvet collar show off her figure: it is a little fuller, but Jared still has not noticed that – she has not told him yet about the baby, and she smiles again, a secret smile; fuller, but still slender, thinks Lady Patrick. She does not wear a bun for riding on the moor and the thick chestnut hair is in a doorknocker plait with a bow. The severe white stock shows off her skin and her chin, with the dimples that caught Jared’s attention in the little bridesmaid. Her eyes, this morning, look like – topazes, she thinks, and no wonder; in the glass, she can see the bed behind her, tumbled now, and across it the dressing gown. Her nightgown, put on in the morning for Hester’s sake, is left in the bathroom. As she looks at the dressing gown, Lady Patrick blushes – but a blush can be happy as well as shy – and quickly she turns to snatch up the dressing gown and hold it close, close, closer – and as quickly holds it away.

  ‘Hester!’

  ‘Milady?’

  ‘You have put this on.’

  ‘On, milady?’ Hester’s voice is so incredulous that if Lady Patrick had been less angry even she would have noticed. ‘I?’ says Hester dazed. ‘Of course not, milady.’ But Lady Patrick is not listening.

  ‘Take it and throw it away, burn it,’ she says, her eyes blazing in a way that makes Hester afraid to speak. ‘No wait, I will see to that myself. You can pack,’ says Lady Patrick. ‘Then you may come to the morning room for your money. You will leave today.’

  Polly is bold enough to interfere. ‘It wasn’t Hester, milady.’

  ‘Who was it then?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I can guess. Hester would never do such a thing.’

  ‘It was Hester’s scent,’ says Lady Patrick and adds, ‘Hester is here to look after my room and my clothes. They are her responsibility and this happened. She must go.’

  There is real indignation among the servants; none of them dare approach Lady Patrick, but Pringle appeals to Jared, who lazily says, ‘If I were you, Pat, I should give the woman a second chance.’ Lady Patrick answers with the hard directness they learn later to expect, ‘I don’t give second chances.’

  They all think her hard; they do not know that she has an instinct so strong that it amounts to panic; something precious has been – desecrated, thinks Lady Patrick. How right that instinct is she finds out, not many weeks later.

  ‘Pat won’t hold out against me.’ Jared swears that to Eliza but the days, weeks, months go by. John Henry is born in the small room they call the Porch Room. ‘At least keep your own room,’ says Jared, ‘I can sleep anywhere. It’s your room, Pat.’

  ‘You could have remembered that,’ she says. Jared can hardly recognize this white hard face. ‘I shall never go into that bedroom again,’ says Lady Patrick and keeps her word.

  The house settles into its new regime. Eliza has to be housekeeper again, but this time she does not object. She has discovered, in her years with Eustace, what housekeeping as done by clever Eliza can mean.

  It begins, ironically enough, with her own honesty and exactness. Food has never been stinted at China Court and, in Adza’s time, the house is stored as if for a siege; it has its own fruit and vegetables – ‘garden vegetables, with seasons,’ Tracy was to say contentedly. Grown up in cities and in an era of deep freeze, she had forgotten the delights of the first peas, of fresh-picked lettuce and asparagus. ‘Even cabbages are beautiful,’ said Tracy. When Eustace adds Penbarrow to the estate, the farmer and his wife are expected to send down milk, cream, butter, and eggs in quantity, as well as supplying chickens and bacon. The butcher from Canverisk calls every day, fish is sent by carrier from Port Quin, and groceries come from Exeter every three months, ordered in bulk from Cutler and Barr, Provision Merchants, who send their catalogue and whose traveller calls personally at Christmas.

  The day the stores come is a great day for the Brood. All of them help to unpack, check, and put away, and the smell of blue paper, packing cases, straw bottle covers, shavings, soap, boot polish, and candles is part of their lives for, every day, one child is allowed to help Adza give out the day’s stores after breakfast. The servants come with their trays: Cook with a mighty black japanned one, covered in saucers and pudding bowls; Abbie takes mustard for the pantry, hartshorn powder for the silver; a housemaid may ask for soap or sweet oil, or emery paper for the steel fireplaces; the knife-boy wants dubbin for Eustace’s gaiters and Polly has a perpetual demand for soft soap. It is a busy time with the dark-blue, pink, and lilac print dresses, the white aprons and green baize ones going to and fro.

  In Cutler and Barr’s catalogue the prices are clearly quoted, but Adza is never good at figures and, as she grows older, relies more and more upon Abbie. Abbie becomes Miss Abbott to everyone round; and all the village knows that she wears a sealskin coat and muff on her Sunday in the month. She is unchallenged in the storeroom until, ‘That can’t be eight pounds of candles,’ says new-broom Eliza and, ‘That looks very little for a pound of tea.’ ‘Is there a whole two pounds of sugar in that bag?’ she asks. She weighs it and, too, weighs the tea and candles. There are six and a half pounds of candles, only twelve ounces of tea, one pound, ten ounces of sugar. Is each of the two-pound bags the same? wonders Eliza, looking at the shelves. She takes the trouble to weigh them all and, ‘Cutler and Barr, sending short weight!’ Eliza, stupefied, says it aloud. ‘Cutler and Barr! Why, we have dealt with them for years,’ and in her innocence she says to Abbie, ‘There must be a mistake. Father is going to Exeter soon. I will go with him and see them.’

  ‘Better let me do that for you, Miss Liz,’ says Abbie – Abbie who has been with them all as children. ‘It wouldn’t be pleasant for a young lady like you.’ It sounds faithful, but something in Abbie’s tone makes Eliza, always astute, look at her squarely. Abbie’s eyes flicker, there is a curious flush on her sallow cheeks and neck and, ‘No, Abbie,’ says Eliza, ‘this is my responsibility now. I shall go myself.’ Next day Abbie gives in her notice.

  Eliza goes to Exeter with Eustace, driving to Bodmin Road station to catch the morning train. ‘And what happened?’ asks Jeremy Baxter.

  ‘I was wearing my brown cloak,’ says Eliza. She should be in mourning for Adza, but Eliza always refuses to do as others do and, ‘My brown cloak and the old straw bonnet,’ says Eliza slowly. It seems an irrelevant answer, but Jeremy Baxter waits.

  ‘I should have said who I was,’ says Eliza, and for a moment she buries her face in her hands.

  ‘Go on,’ says Jeremy Baxter.

  ‘It didn’t occur to me. I just went into the shop and said, “I am calling on behalf of Mr Quin of Ch
ina Court and I want to speak to Mr Cutler.” Insufferable little man!’ says Eliza hotly.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘He asked if Abbie were ill. I said she had left. I was housekeeper now and he said, “Ah,” and looked at the tips of his fingers. Then I complained about the weights. He said, “Shall I take it off the bill?” and looked up straight at me. I didn’t know then what he meant and – well, it might have been Abbie alone though I don’t see how – I felt I had to be sure it was Cutler and Barr’s fault – and so I said, “Perhaps not this time,” and …’

  ‘And?’

  ‘My purse was on the table, I had put it down with my gloves and …’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He reached across, picked it up, opened it, and dropped in – five sovereigns.’ Eliza chokes.

  ‘Five!’ says Jeremy Baxter. ‘Whew! You must have a big grocery bill!’

  ‘Yes. He said, “Thank you, Miss …?” and I said, “Miss Quin.” He could have dropped through the floor. Then – I don’t know how it happened, but I found I had got up and was walking to the door with my purse – it was habit, of course. I picked it up quite naturally,’ says Eliza, ‘but when I remembered – I – I didn’t return the five sovereigns. Oh, how could I not?’ says Eliza.

  ‘Because you wanted them,’ snapped Jeremy Baxter.

  ‘Yes,’ says Eliza in a small voice. ‘Mr Cutler said, “We shall see you at Christmas, I hope. Miss Abbott’s order for Christmas was always very large.” He’s a horrid oily little man, but – I nodded.’ Her voice sinks away with shame.

  ‘Perhaps we shall be able to buy the Johnson after all,’ says Jeremy, and Eliza’s head comes up. ‘I must have something,’ she says. ‘If Mother was so stupid and Father so blind …’ and then she says breathlessly, ‘But not the Johnson. Today I went rummaging,’ her eyes light up with pride. ‘In a little shop at the back of the Cathedral I found … this,’ says Eliza.

  It is a folio, the binding shabby but: William Borlase. Observations on the Antiquities of Cornwall, 1769. ‘Humph!’ says Jeremy Baxter, but his hands go out to take it and he opens it at once.

  ‘The first edition is listed in Tarrant’s catalogue at fifteen pounds,’ says Eliza, ‘but this isn’t the first edition.’

  ‘It’s the second,’ says Jeremy Baxter. ‘The second edition is better; it’s a little worn, but still! How much did you pay?’

  ‘All my five pounds,’ says Eliza, but there is no regret, in fact unmistakable triumph, in her voice.

  ‘Books are not meant to be bargains.’ Jeremy Baxter is triumphant, too, though a part of him disapproves. ‘Buy books for what is in them, Miss Eliza’ – to the very end he keeps his punctilious way of addressing her – ‘for what is in them.’

  ‘Yes, but I like bargains,’ says obstinate Eliza.

  From that day, except for the three years’ interlude of Lady Patrick’s housekeeping, Eliza unpacks the stores herself, and only Eliza gives them out. No one is allowed to help her, ‘with good reason,’ says Jared afterward. ‘She got seventy pounds a year salary out of me – seventy pounds, my own sister! And on top of that …’

  She has a simple method of overordering and returning the things, personally and for cash, then not removing them from the bills until after she has presented these to Jared. ‘Give me the money to pay them directly and we shall get a discount,’ she says and the simple Jared does not ask who ‘we’ are.

  Now and again he wonders and complains, ‘The bills go up and up.’

  ‘Your wife keeps a lot of servants,’ says Eliza. She knows she has only to say ‘your wife’ and Jared is silenced. Once he is driven to real protest. ‘Twelve pounds of tapioca. Twelve pounds! It’s impossible.’

  ‘That was for St Thomas’s Day,’ says Eliza glibly.

  On St Thomas’s Day, December the twenty-second, the poor people, in Adza’s time, come from miles around to the servants’ hall, which is decorated for the occasion. Old men and old married women are given twopence each, widows threepence, and each person has a bowl of soup from gallons made in the washday cauldron – soup and a slice of homemade bread and tapioca pudding. They are waited on by the children, and as each comes to the door, he or she says, ‘Please to remember St Thomas’s Day.’ ‘But I didn’t know we kept that up now,’ says Jared. Eliza does not say that they do keep it up; she simply says, ‘You were in London.’

  Jared is very often in London. More and more he removes himself from the reproach that is in his home. Mr Fitzgibbon is worried; he is getting old and wants to retire and, at last, he suggests to Lady Patrick that Borowis should be taken away from school and put straight into the business.

  ‘Borowis!’ Lady Patrick stares at Mr Fitzgibbon in horror.

  ‘Before he gets ideas,’ says Mr Fitzgibbon. ‘I warn you, we can’t stand another Jared.’

  ‘Boro is not another Jared,’ says Lady Patrick, ‘and he won’t be going into the works.’

  ‘Not going! But he’s the eldest son.’

  ‘Borowis is not going into the works,’ says Lady Patrick. ‘He will go into the army, like all the Clonferts. The army to begin with, then later …’ She stops and Mr Fitzgibbon knows that he cannot follow her or Borowis where they mean to go. ‘You can have John Henry,’ says Lady Patrick.

  ‘John Henry is a good boy,’ says Mr Fitzgibbon discontentedly, ‘but Borowis has the brains.’

  So has his Aunt Eliza. ‘Show a cat the way to the dairy!’ chuckles Jeremy Baxter. In her housekeeping for Jared, Eliza pushes down, once and for all, the troublesome spear of conscience Adza – and, more successfully, Polly – has planted in her; from a spear it dwindles to a prick, and then to nothing. ‘Wasn’t she ashamed?’ asks Jared.

  ‘Not in the least,’ Eliza would have said. She is only amazed at her own cleverness, and the deviousness of her ways. For instance, she drives herself in the tubcart over to Canverisk to read to the old people in the almshouses there, ‘and take them a few comforts,’ she says.

  ‘Precious little comforts if you ask me,’ says Cook. Eliza goes once a week, ‘and it isn’t like her,’ says Jared. She takes a large bag and on the way she stops at the tumbledown little shop kept by Jacob Hinty at the crossroads, where she buys some tobacco and peppermints, which is not like Eliza either. ‘She never spends a penny if she can help it,’ says Jared, ‘and why Jacob Hinty’s? Why not our shop?’ There is one at St Probus. ‘Hinty is a first-rate villain,’ says Jared.

  ‘Oh, Eliza likes disreputable old men,’ says Lady Patrick.

  It seems she does. When drunken old Jeremy Baxter dies, falling down the disused tin-mine shaft, ‘in broad daylight,’ say the villagers, only one person goes to his funeral. He has been dismissed from China Court long ago, ‘drunk even at nine in the morning,’ says Jared, yet the one person is Miss Eliza Quin, sitting very upright in the front pew, walking out into the churchyard after the coffin, ‘and not a pauper’s coffin,’ the village remarks. Someone has paid for a good oakwood one with brass handles, all the village knows who it is, and, looking over the wall, knows too that, as she stands by the grave while the coffin is lowered into it, tears roll down Eliza’s cheeks. Jared will not believe it; no one at China Court, or out of it, has ever seen Eliza cry. Nor does she say one word about it; she does not, nowadays, say many words at any time. What has happened to the talkative little girl, the opinionated young woman? ‘A cross between a cat and an oyster,’ says Jared and, now and then, ‘Is something going on here?’ he asks.

  Long ago, as Ripsie, Mrs Quin sees something she is not meant to see. In term time she is forbidden to come inside the front gate or over the wall, but she still comes; like a ghost presence, an invisible child, she haunts the house and garden. Someone catches sight of the end of a coat, or a pair of legs in black stockings – ‘with holes in them,’ says Mrs Quin – or a flash of scarlet from her tam-o’-shanter and, perhaps, the print of a dirty small hand; no one exactly sees Ripsie, but Ripsie is there and it is she who watches Borowis’s
Aunt Eliza go down to the cellar and bring up the wine.

  With Eustace and Adza the wines are simple: claret and port, cider in the cask, or perry, that wonderful clean white English pear wine. When the Brood grow up there is also sherry, served sometimes in the morning with a slice of Madeira cake. Adza, too, makes cowslip wine and every spring there is a picnic in a wagonette to the cliffs at Mother Medlar’s Bay where the best cowslips grow. Next day, the Brood help to strip the pips, or flowers, from the stalks, throwing them into a tub that gradually fills with a heap of spring-pale green and gold. Wine is used in puddings, too – in the famous recipe of Adza’s for velvet cream: ‘Rub twenty lumps of sugar with the rind of ripe lemon; put in a silver pan with the lemon juice, a breakfast cup of raisin wine and four leaves of gelatine; stir until all is dissolved, cool, and when exactly cool enough, stir in a pint of thick cream.’ Like all Adza’s recipes it is simple and excellent though ‘exactly cool enough’ takes experience to gauge; Bella is too impatient and never fails to curdle it. There is, too, brandy butter each year for the plum pudding and brandy to light it; more brandy for setting fire to the Snapdragon played afterward, when the mysterious spirit-smelling blue flames dance over the raisins. There is also ratafia, pink and smelling of almonds; on anybody’s birthday, each of the Brood is allowed a thimble-sized glass at dessert.

  Two children at China Court never come down for dessert: Tracy, because in her day there is no formal dinner – Mrs Quin has a tray in the drawing room – and Ripsie because she is outcast.

  To come down for dessert. To Ripsie that is like the stars, moon, sun, and crown jewels all in one, and equally unobtainable. She thinks dinner is a feast and would not have believed that, night after night, Jared, Lady Patrick, and Eliza sit in silence while the boring panoply of food goes on. When Pringle has carried out the last tray of plates she goes in again and, by an occasional quiet chink and gentle swishing, the children can tell she is taking off the silver, sweeping away the crumbs.