‘It always seems to me a great pity to go in for oils unless you’re really good. Now Prague’s sister has a girl who draws quite nicely and she wanted to go to Paris, but I said to her parents, “Why let her learn oils? There are too many oil paintings in the world already. Let her do water-colours. They take up much less room.” Don’t you agree?’
‘I expect, in the case of your husband’s niece, that you were perfectly right.’
‘Now, do tell me, this is so interesting, what sort of things do you paint?’
‘Chiefly abstract subjects.’
‘Yes, I see, allegories and things like that. Art must be so fascinating, I always think. I have just been painted by Laszlo. By the way, did I see you at his exhibition? No? But I have seen you somewhere before, I know I have. It’s a funny thing but I never forget a face – names, now I can’t remember, but I never forget a face, do you?’
‘So few people have faces,’ said Albert, who was struggling to be polite. ‘Everyone seems to have a name, but only one person in ten has a face. The old man sitting next to Sally, for instance, has no face at all.’
‘That is my husband,’ said Lady Prague, rather tartly.
‘Then the fact must already have obtruded itself on your notice. But, take the general as an example. He hasn’t got one either, in my opinion.’
‘Oh, I see now what you mean,’ she said brightly, ‘that they are not paintable. But you surprise me. I have always been told that older people, especially men, were very paintable with all the wrinkles and lines – so much character. Now, you went, I suppose, to the Dutch exhibition?’
‘I did not. I wasn’t in London last spring, as a matter of fact, but even if I had been I should have avoided Burlington House as sedulously then as I should later in the summer. I regard the Dutch school as one of the many sins against art which have been perpetrated through the ages.’
‘You mean …’ She looked at him incredulously. ‘Don’t you like Dutch pictures?’
‘No, nor Dutch cheese, as a matter of fact!’
‘I can’t understand it. I simply worship them. There was a picture of an old woman by Rembrandt. I stood in front of it for quite a while one day and I could have sworn she breathed!’
Albert shuddered.
‘Yes, eerie, wasn’t it? I turned to my friend and said: “Laura, it’s uncanny. I feel she might step out of the frame any moment.” Laura Pastille (Mrs Pastille, that’s my friend’s name) has copied nearly all the Dutch pictures in the National Gallery. For some she had to use a magnifying glass. She’s very artistic. But I am amazed that you don’t like them. I suppose you pretend to admire all these ugly things which are the fashion now. I expect you’ll get over it in time. Epstein, for instance, and Augustus John – what d’you think about them?’
Albert contained himself with some difficulty and answered, breathing hard and red in the face, that he regarded Epstein as one of the great men of all time and would prefer not to discuss him. (General Murgatroyd, overhearing this remark, turned to Walter and asked if that ‘fella Gates’ were an aesthete. Walter looked puzzled and said that he hoped so, he hoped they all were. The general snorted and continued telling Captain Chadlington about how he had once played a salmon for two hours.)
Lady Prague then said: ‘Why do you live in Paris? Isn’t England good enough for you?’ She said this rather offensively. It was evident that Albert’s feelings for her were heartily reciprocated.
‘Well,’ he replied, ‘England is hardly a very good place for a serious artist, is it? One is not exactly encouraged to use one’s brain over here, you know. When I arrived from Paris this last time they would not even leave me my own copy of Ulysses. Things have come to a pretty pass when it is impossible to get decent literature to read.’
‘Indecent literature, I suppose you mean.’
Albert felt completely out of his depth, but to his immense relief Admiral Wenceslaus now turned upon Lady Prague the conversational gambit of, ‘And where did you come from today?’ thus making it unnecessary for him to answer.
Mr Buggins and Walter were getting on like a house on fire.
‘Curious,’ observed Mr Buggins, ‘for a house party of this size in Scotland to consist entirely of Sassenachs – seven men and not one kilt among them. I have the right, of course, to wear the Forbes tartan through my maternal grandmother, but I always think it looks bad with an English name, don’t you agree?’
‘Very bad,’ said Walter. ‘But you could wear it as a fancy dress, I suppose?’
‘The kilt, my dear sir, is not a fancy dress.’
‘My wife is Scottish; her father is Lord Craigdalloch’s brother.’
‘Yes, of course, Johnnie. Such an interesting family, the Dallochs; one of the oldest in Scotland.’
‘Really?’
‘Considering that you are allied to them by marriage it surprises me that you should not be aware of that. Why, the cellars of this castle date from the tenth century. I suppose you know how it came to be built here?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t.’
‘Well, the first Thane of Dalloch had no castle and one day when he was getting old he thought he would build himself a solid dwelling-place instead of the shieling or hut that had been his head-quarters up to then. So he went to consult a wise woman who lived in a neighbouring shieling. He told her what was in his mind and asked where would be the best place for him to build his castle. She replied, “When you find a bike1 in a birk,2 busk3 there the bauk4.”
‘The story goes that as he was walking away from the old woman’s shieling he was stung by a wasp. He looked high and low for the bike, intending to destroy it, and presently found it in a birk. Instantly he recalled the witch’s words. The next day he busked the bauk and soon a bonnie castle rose round the birk, which you can see to this very day in the cellars. To me, all these old legends are so fascinating.’
He then proceeded to tell Walter the whole history of the Dalloch family down to the present generation. Walter found it extremely dull and wondered how anyone could be bothered to remember such stuff, but he thought Mr Buggins quite a nice old bore and tried to listen intelligently.
Albert was now struggling with Lady Brenda, who was far more difficult to get on with than Lady Prague. Being a duke’s daughter she was always spoken of as having so much charm. The echo of this famous charm had even reached as far as Paris, and Albert was eagerly anticipating its influence upon himself.
He was doomed to immediate disappointment, finding that besides being an unusually stupid woman she had less sex appeal than the average cauliflower; and when, in the course of conversation, he learnt that her two children were called Wendy and Christopher Robin, his last hope of being charmed vanished for ever.
She told him that Lady Craigdalloch, her godmother, was improving the whole house, bit by bit.
‘This year all the oak on the staircase has been pickled. Of course, it takes time as they are not well off, but Madge has such good taste. You should have seen the drawing-room before she redecorated it: a hideous white room with nothing but Victorian furniture, bead stools and those horrible little stiff sofas. It was my mother who suggested painting it green. Of course it is really lovely now.’
‘You have known the house a long time?’ he asked, stifling a groan.
‘Oh, yes, since I was a child. We spent our honeymoon here.’
‘I hope,’ said Albert, ‘in the lovely bed which Sally is occupying at present. I thought when I saw it how perfect for a honeymoon.’
Lady Brenda looked horrified. Luckily at this moment Sally got up and the women left the dining-room.
As soon as the door was shut upon them, Admiral Wenceslaus monopolized the conversation, holding forth on his favourite subject: Blockade. Walter and Albert, who had a hazy idea that a blockade was a sort of fence behind which the white men retired when pursued by Red Indians, now learnt that, on the contrary,
it is a system of keeping supplies from the enemy in times of war. The admiral explained to them, and to the table at large, that it is permissible to ration neutrals to their pre-war imports in order to prevent the enemy country from importing goods through this channel.
‘Why wasn’t it done from the beginning?’ he bawled, in a voice which Albert felt he must have acquired when addressing his men in stormy weather from the bridge, and rolling his eye round and round. ‘Was there a traitor in the Government? That’s what I should like to know.’
‘Hear, hear!’ said Lord Prague, doubtless from force of habit, as he was, in fact, unable to hear a word.
‘We had them there.’ The admiral screwed his thumb round and round on the table as though grinding up imaginary Germans. ‘And all the time our poor fellows were being blown to atoms by British shells …’
His speech, for it was virtually one, continued for about half an hour, and when it was finished they joined the ladies.
Albert felt disappointed. Other admirals he had met had provided excellent after-dinner company and he expected better things of the Silent Service than a lecture on Blockade.
7
After dinner the general marshalled them all into Lord Craigdalloch’s study and turned on the wireless which was playing Grieg’s suite from Peer Gynt. ‘This is London calling.’ (Crash! crash!) ‘The Wireless Symphony Orchestra will now play “Solveig’s Song”.’ (Crash! crash! crash!)
Albert spoke to Jane in an undertone, but he was quickly checked by a look from Lady Prague who appeared to be in a state of aesthetic rapture.
When the Grieg came to an end it was announced that Miss Sackville-West would give readings from T. S. Eliot.
‘Tripe!’ said the general and turned it off. He then began to arrange about the next day’s shooting.
‘If any of the non-shooters would like to come out tomorrow,’ he said, ‘it will be a good opportunity as none of the drives are very far apart and it’s all easy walking. Those who don’t want to come all day can meet us for lunch.’
‘Jane and I would love it if we shan’t be in the way,’ said Sally meekly.
The general, who had taken a fancy to her, smiled benignly:
‘Do you good, my dear.’
‘Great,’ said Albert, ‘as is my distaste for natural scenery, I feel it to be my duty, as a student of the nineteenth century, to gaze just once upon the glens and bens that so entranced Royal Victoria, both as the happy wife of that industrious and illustrious prince whose name I am so proud to bear, and as his lamenting relict. I should like to see the stag stand at bay upon its native crags, the eagle cast its great shadow over the cowering grouse; I should like dearly to find a capercailzie’s nest. And I feel that I could choose no more suitable day on which to witness these glories of Victorian nature than the famous twelfth, when sportsmen all over the country set forth with dog and gun to see what they can catch.’
This speech was greeted by Captain Chadlington with a sort of admiring noise in his throat which can only be transcribed as ‘C-o-o-o-h.’
‘Shall you come, Monteath?’ asked the general, taking no notice of Albert.
‘I think not, sir, thank you very much. I have rather a lot of work to do for the Literary Times and if everyone goes out it will be a good opportunity to get on with it.’
‘Brenda and I will come, of course,’ said Lady Prague briskly, ‘so we shall be five extra beside the guns. Will you ring the bell, Mowbray?’ The general did so. She added, with a disapproving look at Albert: ‘Don’t you shoot?’
‘Excellently,’ he replied in a threatening voice. ‘With the water-pistol.’
‘Perhaps you had no chance of learning when you were young; probably you have a good natural eye.’
The admiral looked annoyed and there was an awkward silence.
‘Well, then,’ said General Murgatroyd, ‘that’s all settled. Those who are coming out in the morning must be in the hall, suitably dressed, by ten. We shan’t wait. I advise you to bring shooting-sticks.’
‘What are they?’ asked Albert, but his question was drowned by the overture from William Tell which suddenly burst upon the room.
The next day Jane came downstairs punctually at ten o’clock. Albert and Sally had apparently both found themselves unable to get up so early and had sent messages to say that they would join the guns for lunch. One of the footmen was just taking a glass of champagne to Albert’s room. Jane wished that she had known this sooner; she had found it a great effort to wake up that morning herself, and was still very sleepy. She half contemplated going back to bed until luncheon time, but catching at that moment the eye of the admiral, and feeling by no means certain that it was his glass one, she lacked the moral courage to do so.
In the hall scenes of horrible confusion were going forward; a perfect regiment of men tramped to and fro carrying things and bumping into each other. They all seemed furiously angry. Above the din could be heard the general’s voice:
‘What the — d’you think you’re doing? Get out of that! Come here, blast you!’
Lady Prague, looking like a sort of boy scout, was struggling with a strap when she caught sight of Jane.
‘My dear girl,’ she said taking one end of it from between her teeth, ‘you can’t come out in that mackintosh. Whoever heard of black on the hill? Why, it’s no good at all. That scarlet cap will have to go too, I’m afraid. It’s easy to see you haven’t been up here before. We must alter all this.’ She dived into a cupboard, and after some rummaging produced a filthy old Burberry and forced Jane to put it on. Evidently made for some portly man it hung in great folds on Jane and came nearly to her ankles.
‘I don’t think I’ll take a mackintosh at all,’ she said, rather peevishly, ‘and I hardly ever wear a hat in any case, so I’ll leave that behind, too.’
‘As you like, my dear, of course. I think you’ll be perished with cold and it will probably rain; it looks to me quite threatening. Have your own way, but don’t blame me if – Hullo! we seem to be off at last.’
Jane climbed rather miserably into a sort of ’bus and sat next Lady Prague. She was disappointed that Albert had not come, having taken particular pains with her appearance that morning on his account.
The moor was about five miles away, and during the whole drive nobody spoke a word except General Murgatroyd, who continually admonished his dog, a broken-looking retriever of the name of Mons.
‘Lie down, will you? No, get off that coat!’ (Kick, kick, kick; howl, howl, howl.) ‘Stop that noise, blast you!’ (Kick, howl.)
Jane pitied the poor animal which seemed unable to do right in the eyes of its master.
When they arrived at their destination (a sort of sheep-track on the moor) they were met by two more guns who had come over from a neighbouring house to make up the numbers; and by a rabble of half-clothed and villainous-looking peasants armed for the most part with sticks. They reminded Jane of a film she had once seen called ‘The Fourteenth of July’.
Their leader, an enormous man with red hair and wild eyes, came forward and addressed General Murgatroyd in a respectful, but independent manner. When they had held a short parley he withdrew, and communicated the result of it to his followers, after which they all straggled away.
Jane supposed that they were the local unemployed, soliciting alms, and felt that the general must have treated them with some tact; once aroused, she thought, they might prove ugly customers.
Presently the whole party began to walk across the moor. Jane noticed that each of the men had an attendant who carried guns and a bag of cartridges. She wondered what their mission could be: perhaps to stand by and put the wounded birds out of their pain.
After an exhausting walk of about half an hour, during which Jane fell down several times (and the general said it would be easy walking, old humbug!), they arrived at a row of little roofless buildings, rather like native huts. The first one they
came to was immediately, and silently, appropriated by Lord and Lady Prague, followed by their attendant.
Jane supposed that they were allocated in order of rank and wondered which would fall to her lot.
‘Better come with me, Miss Dacre,’ said General Murgatroyd. It was the first time he had spoken except to swear at his dog, which he did continually, breaking the monotony by thrashing the poor brute, whose shrieks could be heard for miles across the heather.
When they reached his hut (or butt) he shouted in a voice of thunder:
‘Get in, will you, and lie down.’
Jane, though rather taken aback, was about to comply when a kick from its master sent poor Mons flying into the butt, and she realized that the words had been addressed to that unfortunate and not to herself.
General Murgatroyd gave Jane his cartridge bag to sit on and paid no further attention to her. He and his attendant (the correct word for whom appeared to be loader) stood gazing over the top of the butt into space.
Seated on the floor, Jane could see nothing outside except a small piece of sky; she wondered why she had been made to leave her black mackintosh behind.
‘I can neither see nor be seen. I expect it was that old woman’s jealous spite. I don’t believe she’s a woman at all. She’s just a very battered boy scout in disguise, and not much disguise, either.’
She began to suffer acutely from cold and cramp, and was filled with impotent rage. Eons of time passed over her. She pulled a stone out of the wall and scratched her name on another stone, then Albert’s name, then a heart with an arrow through it (but she soon rubbed that off again). She knew the shape of the general’s plus-fours and the pattern of his stockings by heart, and could have drawn an accurate picture of the inside of the butt blindfold, when suddenly there was an explosion in her ears so tremendous that for an instant she thought she must have been killed. It was followed by several more in quick succession, and a perfect fusillade began, up and down the line. This lasted for about twenty minutes, and Jane rather enjoyed it – ‘As good as an Edgar Wallace play.’
The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford Page 6