Christmas at Candleshoe

by Michael Innes

  Jay has a henchman in a fair-haired boy called Robin, who must be of about his own age. Mrs Feather guesses that Robin too has a good arm for a bow, and her ear tells her that he is not what Mr Armigel would call a village child – although it appears to be in the nearest village that he lives. Robin is the vicar’s son, the doctor’s son – something of that sort. There are three other children – two girls and a boy – and although simple they are unselfconscious and natural, which makes it certain that their present situation is without novelty. The wooden platters and pewter mugs with which they are provided enable them to eat a great deal of pie and drink quite a lot of what appears to be a decidedly heady brew.

  From these utensils Mrs Feather’s eye travels to her own. She has occasionally eaten off gold plate, but never off silver. The design is distinguished and she comments upon it to her hostess. Miss Candleshoe, whose head and hands alone appear above the level of the table, receives her compliments with civility.

  ‘China of good design is hard to come by. My brother used frequently to remark that the Prince, had he lived, might well have elevated the public taste in these regards.’

  ‘The Prince?’ Mrs Feather is momentarily astray.

  ‘The Prince Consort.’ Mr Armigel takes upon himself the task of courteous explanations to the colonial lady. ‘We have been much grieved by his death.’

  ‘It was untimely, of course.’ Mrs Feather finds the tenses into which the chaplain is apt to cast his observations mildly unnerving. ‘And I believe he was interested in the arts.’

  ‘And crafts. But unfortunately a corrupt taste has become pervasive. Consider the novels of Lord Beaconsfield.’ Mr Armigel pauses, but finding Mrs Feather without facility in taking up this theme returns to that of table utensils. ‘As a matter of fact, we employed nothing but china until the Cataclysm.’

  ‘The Cataclysm?’ Mrs Feather supposes that Mr Armigel is referring to some obscure impact upon Candleshoe of the late world war. But she realizes that he may well be speaking of the Great Rebellion or the Norman Conquest.

  ‘Tib.’ Mr Armigel looks with great amiability down the table, where the half-wit girl is gnawing with concentration at the leg of a rabbit. ‘She had not long been with us when our entire stock of domestic crockery vanished in one single act of destruction. Dispassionately considered, the feat was no inconsiderable one, since it involved the accumulations of some centuries. When we made inquiries about replacements, however, we found serious obstacles in our path – obstacles which might be subsumed under the two general heads of artistic and financial. Fortunately Jay – as so often – had a sensible solution of the problem. He raked about and found these rather older things. Upon their use, as you can conceive, one crucial advantage attends. The Cataclysm is impotent before them.’

  ‘Was it Jay who thought of having meals together in the hall?’

  Miss Candleshoe answers this, bringing her magnificent nose out of a fine silver tankard to do so. ‘Certainly. The servants’ hall was becoming a little difficult to use–’

  ‘The river was coming in.’ Mr Armigel interpolates this with casual pride. ‘And the ceiling had come down.’

  ‘Moreover’ – and Miss Candleshoe frowns at her chaplain, conceivably feeling something impolitic in the suggestion that Candleshoe is in disrepair – ‘moreover there seemed to be remarkably few servants in it. So Jay contrived the present arrangement, which works very well. I do not at all know what put it in his head.’

  Mrs Feather suspects that the answer to this may be Sir Walter Scott. Being a woman capable of sudden large intuitions she has a sudden further suspicion as well. Unless there is a missing heir to Candleshoe who proves unamenable to financial persuasion, it is this boy who is the chief obstacle in her path. It is Jay alone who keeps the place going as a running concern. He has persuaded these old persons to revert, without their being much aware of the fact, to a feasible feudal economy.

  Mrs Feather buries her own nose – which at present she is conscious of as rather undistinguished – in her own tankard. Mr Armigel watches her benevolently. ‘You approve?’ he asks.

  Mrs Feather judges it safe to answer in the affirmative.

  ‘Pears.’ The chaplain is impressive. ‘When lately we had some cause of – um – dissatisfaction with the wine merchant–’

  ‘A circumstance unthinkable’ – this time it is Miss Candleshoe who interrupts – ‘in the time of my brother Sir James.’

  ‘And when, in consequence, we were under some apprehension that we might have to drink water–’

  ‘An unhealthy practice – and, to my mind, uncleanly as well.’ Miss Candleshoe disappears behind her tankard.

  ‘In this exigency Jay evolved a reliable process for fermenting pears. The result is the perry which you are now honouring. Jay tells me that he has some thought of going on to mead. But that, it appears, needs bees.’

  ‘Bees?’ Miss Candleshoe is sharply interrogative. ‘I saw several bees only this afternoon. Jay must be told.’

  ‘I am afraid they belong to neighbours.’ Mr Armigel is candid about this. ‘Without at all knowing what may be the range or – so to speak – tether of a bee, I judge it possible that they may even be from the apiaries at Benison.’

  ‘They were undersized bees.’ Miss Candleshoe appears suddenly reminded of this. ‘And their flight struck me as uncertain and sickly. Probably they were from Benison.’

  ‘What you might call Whig bees.’ It is Grant Feather who, rather to his mother’s alarm, cuts in with this somewhat facetious remark.

  But it is a great success with Miss Candleshoe. ‘Our bees are certainly Tory bees. Or would be, if we had bees. Perhaps it is possible to breed them. Jay has had remarkable success with his geese.’

  ‘He assures me that next year it should be possible to part with half the flock in exchange for a heifer.’ Mr Armigel advances this as intelligence of considerable importance.

  ‘An excellent plan. But the alternative advantages of several kids must be considered. A cow is very well. But while the cow is in calf…’

  Miss Candleshoe and her chaplain drift for a time into problems of estate-management not of the first interest to their guests. Mrs Feather glances down the table, where something is happening among the children. Jay has given a nod – and at this Robin, the two girls, and the third boy have risen and are filing from the hall. A certain ceremony – or at least precision – attends their departure. It has, in fact, a military air. As they go, Jay and Tib employ themselves in fetching the baked apples, and for a moment the elders are left alone.

  ‘Do you always have all those children?’ Mrs Feather addresses her hostess with candid interest.

  ‘The children? Ah, yes – of course they are friends of Jay’s. He has them to a meal from time to time.’ It is evident that Miss Candleshoe, although her perceptions are still acute in certain areas, is a little cloudy about much that goes on around her. ‘I believe the children assist Jay in various ways.’

  ‘Jay, although not what may be termed an interesting child, has a certain organizing capacity,’ Mr Armigel strikes in. ‘His mother was the same. Without being in the least a woman that one would notice, she was thoroughly capable. We were sorry when something fell on her.’

  ‘Something fell on her?’ Mrs Feather is startled.

  ‘Part of the house.’ Mr Armigel appears to be surprised that there should be any need for this amplication. ‘Miss Candleshoe acknowledged a certain obligation – the family has always done so in that precise exigency – and when no relatives of Mrs Ray’s could be traced, she made herself responsible for the boy. He was still very small, and we had some thought that he might eventually work in the gardens.’

  ‘If there were any gardens.’ Miss Candleshoe adds this proviso.

  ‘That decidedly became an issue.’ The chaplain nods. ‘Jay sprouted rapidly, but the weeks were ahead of him. While the grass grew, the steed starved.’ Mr Armigel frowns, aware of some lack of literary felicit
y in the application of this adage. ‘However, Jay has now adopted what may be termed a wider sphere of usefulness.’

  ‘Was it Jay’s mother – this Mrs Ray – who was American?’

  ‘Yes. It was a circumstance in which Miss Candleshoe took some interest, since she had at that time a nephew in Australia.’

  ‘I see.’ And indeed Mrs Father has now learnt that from the Candleshoe point of view one outlandish part of the globe is much like another. Then a horrid thought strikes her, and she forgets all about her late compatriot, Jay’s mother. ‘Would that be a nephew who was himself a Candleshoe?’

  ‘Certain – a near relation. A little more perry?’

  ‘Please.’ Mrs Feather absently allows the chaplain to pour her out something like a further pint of Jay’s beverage. ‘And is the nephew in Australia still?’

  Mr Armigel shakes his head. ‘He passed on.’

  ‘Oh.’ Mrs Feather is a little ashamed of the manner in which she finds herself hoping that this is to be interpreted. ‘You mean that ?’

  ‘He was called to a better place.’

  Mrs Feather sees Grant eyeing her satirically. She is genuinely contrite. ‘Oh, dear! I am exceedingly–’

  ‘California.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘He was called – or affected to be called – to more congenial employment there. It was always happening.’ Mr Armigel pauses, as if in search of a turn of phrase which shall give the matter complete definition. ‘Rupert Candleshoe might best be described as a rolling stone. Except indeed that his locomotion owed less to simple gravity that to traveller’s cheques provided by his aunt. However –de mortuis nil nisi bonum.’

  Mrs Feather can hardly trust her own Latinity. ‘This Rupert Candleshoe is dead?’

  ‘Certainly. His decease was obscure, but undoubted. And for the family it was, of course, a great calamity.’

  ‘He was my sole heir.’ Miss Candleshoe, despite some appearance to the contrary, has been following the conversation. ‘As you will appreciate, this makes the future of Candleshoe more speculative than it has been for some centuries. Ah, baked apples! It is to be hoped that they have not forgotten the cloves.’ Miss Candleshoe raises her magnificent nose from its near resting-place on the tablecloth to sniff. ‘What is a baked apple without its clove? Jay will no doubt serve them. I see that his friends have returned.’

  It is true that several children have slipped into the hall. But they are not the same children who left it a couple of minutes ago, and their interest is not in the apples but in the abundant remains of the rabbit-pie. Neither Miss Candleshoe nor Mr Armigel is aware of this; to them one child is the same as another, and it is the apples that engage their serious attention. At another juncture Mrs Feather would take lively notice of this odd circumstance, and her son is certainly doing so now. She realizes however that Miss Candleshoe has reverted to serious concerns. There is no heir to oppose the selling of the house at an advantageous figure, and it is a course which the present owner is really revolving. Mrs Feather has been brought up in an atmosphere of business, and she knows by instinct whether or not a deal is authentically on the carpet. So she plunges boldy in. ‘Candleshoe, I suppose, has never been without an heir before. It makes you feel that your own plans are unsettled?’ She catches Grant’s eye and feels acutely the indecency of such a question addressed to a woman who must be over ninety.

  ‘My thoughts turn more and more to a very long journey.’

  Mrs Feather’s heart sinks. Miss Candleshoe, like the sick man in the play, is about to say with dignity that her plans are very simple and that she is going to die.

  ‘In fact I am minded to embark upon the Grand Tour.’ Miss Candleshoe proceeds with some briskness. ‘Mr Armigel, I need hardly say, would accompany me. Moreover it has occurred to me that continental travel is always hazardous if one is unaccompanied by a personal physician. But a private chef is surely an unnecessary complication in the entourage of one who is happily free from digestive ailments. It would thus appear that the party may be completed simply by a courier and a maid; that the Channel may be crossed by the common packet. But ought one to hire conveyances and horses at Calais, or take one’s own? This is a detail which at present eludes me.’

  ‘And you would go far?’ Mrs Feather has no doubt that Miss Candleshoe would go far. But for the moment she can think of nothing else to say.

  ‘I should begin with the Low Countries and proceed to some of the lesser German States. I have been told that the Court life there is frequently entertaining and instructive. I should then proceed through Switzerland to Italy. It has long been in my mind to view some of the scenes so affectingly described by Lord Byron.’

  ‘We should then hire a schooner and proceed to Missolonghi.’ Mr Armigel takes up what is evidently a well-rehearsed itinerary. ‘Byron, poor fellow, died there, as you have no doubt heard. Our ultimate goal would be Constantinople and the monasteries of the Levant. There are reliable reports that it is a most interesting and informative part of the world. There was the Marquess of Dorchester’s daughter – not, I think, the present Marquess – who married rather a dull dog, but nevertheless found Constantinople full of instruction. And I recall another lady of very respectable family who domesticated herself with Bedouins amid the ruins of Palmyra. She found them to be well worth a visit.’

  ‘I’m sure she did.’ Mrs Feather is a little taken aback at realizing that she may launch Miss Candleshoe upon a nonagenarian version of the travels of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Lady Hester Stanhope. Nevertheless she sees that the proposal has its advantages. Miss Candleshoe retired to a villa in Cheltenham or Bath is unthinkable; Miss Candleshoe lurking in some small dower-house on the fringes of her present territory might be a somewhat awkward neighbour; But Miss Candleshoe perched, say, on Mount Lebanon would at least be a monument – and a blessedly remote monument – to the continued enterprise of her country and her class. ‘I think your Grand Tour deserves to succeed. But travel, of course, is extremely expensive nowadays. Particularly with a chaplain and a physician.’

  ‘We are under no illusions in that regard.’ Miss Candleshoe favours her guest with an extremely penetrating if mildly lunatic glance. ‘And particularly would it be so if we are then minded to move a little farther afield. There is an undoubted attractiveness about the idea of Cathay.’

  Mr Armigel nods placidly. ‘Perhaps you can confirm us in our impression that there is excellent sketching on the Yang-tse-kiang? Miss Candleshoe is fond of watercolour, and I still do a little in oils myself.’

  Mrs Feather understands that China is indeed regarded as offering great natural beauties.

  ‘Moreover it is said that fresh archaeological observations are still to be made upon the Great Wall.’ Mr Armigel takes a pinch of snuff. ‘I might conceivably address myself to a monograph on the subject.’

  ‘An interesting proposal.’ Miss Candleshoe is approving. ‘Antiquarian investigation is a very proper pursuit to fill the leisure of a clergyman.’

  To Mrs Feather it occurs horridly to wonder whether perhaps Miss Candleshoe and Mr Armigel are not already provided in some unobtrusive fashion with a physician, and with trustees or guardians as well. The English trade on being what Grant calls a mite crazy – of this they have had a sufficiently clear exhibition at Benison Court earlier in the day – but will even English social custom permit an old lady like this to dispose of property at will? May not some tiresome lawyer – or even Commission or Trust or Ministry – intervene on the ground that Candleshoe is a building of historic interest? But a building of historic interest is just what Mrs Feather wants, and what she considers herself very well able to care for.

  She becomes aware that Jay is offering her another apple; she glances up at him and he looks her very squarely in the eyes. She supposes that Grant has made friends with him – Grant is wonderful with young people – and she is therefore surprised at something darkling in his brow. The boy has divined her full intention –
she is suddenly sure of this – and his hostility to it is absolute. He is only a child, but he is the sole able-bodied and able-minded person about the place. He therefore bosses things. And he wants no change.

  Mrs Feather takes an apple. At the same time, since she is a good-hearted woman, she begins to form romantic plans for Jay. He is a good sort of boy, with a straight if lowering gaze. For such a lad the concocting of perry and mead and the exchanging of geese for heifers is all very well for a time. But it is scarcely likely to lead to any very prominent position on life’s stage. Jay must have education. Mrs Feather wonders whether it is too late to send him to Eton, which she understands is the best place for this purpose. But he can certainly go, like Grant, to Oxford. If he does well, he shall go into politics – British politics. Mrs Feather has not yet sunk her spoon into the fresh apple when the culmination of this reverie comes to her. Jay shall be Britain’s first American-born Prime Minister. And when this happy climax is achieved she, Alice Feather, will present Candleshoe Manor to the nation as an official residence for holders of the office. Conceivably one or two such places already exist. But by that time she will have made Candleshoe so superbly attractive –

  The undisciplined fantasy ends abruptly. For the second time at Candleshoe the Feathers are startled by the sudden pealing of a bell. This time it is from somewhere high overhead, and its character is not that of a summons to prayer but of a tocsin. The loud urgent clangour of the thing seems to crash down through the ancient building like a cataract and flood the hall. Jay drops his dish of apples and runs. The children at the farther end of the table follow him. Only Tib is left. The uproar delights her, and she laughs unrestrainedly.