Marling Hall

by Angela Thirkell

  ‘I thought David was abroad somewhere,’ said Lettice.

  ‘So did we,’ said Agnes. ‘But he rang Robert up at the War Office last night, so he must be back, especially as he said he would come down today.’

  ‘How is General Graham?’ said Lettice.

  But her enquiry for Agnes’s husband was not answered, for even as she spoke an officer in RAF uniform came into the room and stood looking at the scene. The class suddenly dissolved with shrieks of ‘Uncle David’ from a number of its members. David strode through them and heartily kissed his sister Agnes, whose calm was almost stirred at his greeting.

  ‘How lovely that you have come, David,’ she said. ‘You are just in time to see darling Edith do her tap dance.’

  ‘No, Agnes,’ said her brother. ‘Much as I love you I did not come here with infinite pains and in the teeth of all regulations to see a tap dance. And you don’t seem to observe that I am an interesting invalid. I have had jaundice and they have sent me home to recover.’

  ‘Emmy had jaundice when she was six,’ said Agnes proudly. ‘She was quite ill. I used to read to her every day. We read all the Footly-Tootly books, about the little elves that take care of baby animals and Emmy loved them and got well quite quickly.’

  ‘If they are anything like the story of Hobo-Gobo and the fairy Joybell you were reading to the children the summer John got engaged,’ said David, ‘I don’t wonder Emmy got well quickly. I’d have got well at once.’

  ‘We have got Hobo-Gobo in the nursery,’ said his sister, serenely unconscious of any double meaning, ‘and you can read it to Edith after tea. But you haven’t said How do you do to Lettice, David.’

  ‘Where is she?’ asked David, looking round.

  Lettice held out her hand.

  ‘Good Lord, I didn’t know you,’ said David. ‘You’ve done your hair differently and anyway it must be ages since we met. Before the war, wasn’t it? And how is Roger?’

  Not often in his life had David Leslie been at a loss, but for a moment he wished he were back in Cairo with jaundice. There was a dead silence. Lettice wanted desperately to explain to David that she didn’t blame him, that he couldn’t have known, that she really didn’t mind in the least, that Roger would have been the first to sympathise; but the only outward effect of these varying wishes was that she went first white and then red and said nothing. Even Agnes, into whose mind the idea was slowly creeping that it must be so uncomfortable for darling Lettice if darling David asked such a silly question, could find nothing to say and wished very much that her husband were there as he always knew what to do.

  ‘How often did I tell you in the schoolroom, David, to think before you speak,’ said a voice at his elbow.

  David turned and looked down.

  ‘Bunny!’ he cried. ‘Bless your heart, Bunny my love.’

  ‘Sit down,’ said Miss Bunting.

  David sat down and smoothed his hair rather nervously.

  ‘Lettice’s husband was killed at Dunkirk,’ said Miss Bunting in a low, severe voice. ‘If you read The Times properly you would have seen it.’

  And as she spoke David knew that he was judged, and that it would take all his powers of cajolery and more to reinstate himself in his old governess’s good graces. He might have explained that he had been in Canada, the United States and the Argentine most of the previous year on various Government missions, that he had then been sent to the Middle East and been away in Libya where The Times was not regularly delivered, that many letters from home had been lost at sea, but nothing, he felt, could make Miss Bunting forgive or condone. For the moment the question of explaining to Lettice was of secondary importance. He nervously wound his wristwatch.

  ‘And don’t fidget with things,’ Miss Bunting added.

  Agnes, who had at last grasped the fact that Lettice might be rather uncomfortable if people asked after her husband a year after he was killed, now joined the attack.

  ‘Darling David, how could you,’ she said with mild reproach. ‘It was quite naughty of you and darling Lettice is always so good about it and never cries. Robert admires her very much and says she has behaved splendidly, and her little girls are such darlings. Diana is just older than Robert and Clare is just older than Edith. So now we will forget all about it and you must not be so unkind another time.’

  At this castigation from his gentle sister David wished more than ever that he were in hospital, or even in the Libyan desert, and would have gone there at once, but that he was rooted to the spot by mortification and embarrassment, sentiments which were as much a stranger to him as he to them.

  ‘I’m awfully sorry, Lettice,’ he began, but Agnes cast a look of gentle reproach at him, and Miss Bunting, drawing herself up very erect, said distinctly, ‘Tchk, tchk.’

  Lettice now recovered herself.

  ‘I am so glad to see you, David,’ she said, ‘and you must come over to Marling and see us and I’ll show you the last photographs Roger sent me from his ship, and you must meet my little girls.’

  By a special intervention of Providence the class was now told to get its shoes on for tap dancing and David was again surrounded by a flock of admirers.

  ‘Who do you think that is?’ said Lettice to her little girls. ‘That’s David that wouldn’t brush his hair. David, these are Diana and Clare.’

  Diana at once put David through a severe cross-examination on the subject of cutting the bristles off his hairbrush, while Clare stood by. David, deeply grateful for this chance of reinstating himself in Lettice’s good opinion, so exerted himself to please that Diana refused to put on her tap dancing shoes unless she might sit on his knees to do so. The decayed woman at the piano struck up, Miss Milner clapped her hands and called, ‘All tap-dancers into the centre’ and most of the bevy fluttered away again. From the first it was evident that the two evacuees were swans among very callow ducklings. The amateurs were dismissed after a short lesson with instructions to practise their steps at home, while Miss Milner refreshed herself from her labours by joining in a pas de trois with the young professionals. The Colonial Bishop sat beaming at the success of his wards and told Lady Pomfret that they were as good as the witch-dancers at the Festival of the Ripening Maize, though of course quite, quite different, he added hastily. But here he was wrong, for Ruby and Marleen Valoroso, when not hampered by the presence of the gentry, could probably have given the witch-dancers points.

  ‘And who is that lovely little girl who dances by herself in a corner?’ he asked Lady Pomfret.

  ‘That is Agnes Graham’s youngest,’ said Lady Pomfret. ‘She is a little older than my little boy. Agnes,’ she said, leaning across. ‘I want to introduce Bishop Joram who admires Edith very much. My cousin, Mrs Graham.’

  The Colonial Bishop, who was highly susceptible, fell in love with Agnes at once.

  ‘Edith is always like that,’ said Agnes proudly ‘She pays no attention to anyone. I have heard about you from Canon Banister who used to be vicar here. He says you are being so splendid with evacuees. Are those your children?’

  The bishop said they were, adding hastily that he meant they were not, as he was not married, but was responsible for them. David caught Lettice’s eye and found comfort in the flicker of amusement that passed between them. Agnes said, with great sympathy and obvious want of understanding, that she did so understand and in these times one had to make allowances for all sorts of things. As it was clear that she had settled him in her mind as the father of all the children at the vicarage with a harem of East End wives, he began to explain, but Agnes very sweetly interrupted him.

  ‘I know you will excuse me,’ she said, ‘but it is getting on for the children’s tea time and I must hurry. You must come over to lunch one day and meet my mother, who understands everything and adores bishops. Could you come next Sunday?’

  The Colonial Bishop looked wretched.

  ‘How stupid I am!’ said Agnes, turning her deceptively earnest eyes upon him. ‘Of course Sunday is a
bad day for you. But I shall tell Mamma, and I am sure she will write to the Bishop of Barchester about it. And then I could take you to the children’s service at half-past three, while Mamma is resting. Mr Tompion, our vicar, has a delightful service and we all go and enjoy it so much. Don’t we, darling Edith? What does Mr Tompion tell us on Sundays?’

  Edith, a woman of one idea, said rice pudding and was at once removed by her scandalised nurse who had been lurking in the background in case of emergency.

  The two evacuees, who were quite pleasant-looking girls, if a trifle bold-faced, had now put their outdoor shoes on again and approached their guardian.

  ‘These are Ruby and Marleen,’ said the bishop to Agnes.

  ‘Mummy,’ whispered Clarissa loudly and urgently. ‘Can I go to tea with Ruby and Marleen? They can do the splits.’

  Whereupon she also was pounced upon by Nurse, who deeply disapproved all forms of democracy.

  ‘How nicely you dance,’ said kind Agnes. ‘Edith would love to dance like that.’

  ‘She’s a caution, isn’t she,’ said either Ruby or Marleen, ‘doing her solo turns.’

  Even Agnes, who comprehended practically everyone in a general mush of amiability, was assailed by a suspicion that she would not quite like Clarissa to cultivate the Misses Valoroso’s acquaintance.

  ‘Come on, mister, we’ll be late for tea,’ said Marleen or Ruby, ‘and we’re going to the pictures at Southbridge. It’s Glamora Tudor. One of my boy friends got her photo signed. I’m going on the films when I grow up. Come on.’

  With a Valoroso hanging on each arm the bishop felt he could not do better than go, which he did, accompanied by loud criticisms of Nurse as quite a madam from his gifted protégées.

  ‘And that,’ said David, ‘is the Brave New World.’

  Mrs John Leslie said it was so nice to have those poor bombed children at the class and that it was a great thing for their own children to mix with all kinds while they were too young to know the difference.

  ‘No, Mary,’ said David. ‘You may have married my elder brother, but as he is not here I am going to say that you are talking nonsense. If your children don’t know the difference between those two girls and Clarissa, it’s time you took them to a mental specialist.’

  ‘But in Russia,’ said Mrs John, ‘all children are equal.’

  ‘And look at them when they’ve grown up,’ said David indignantly. ‘When did you go all Slavophil, Mary?’

  ‘I’m not anything-phil, David,’ said his sister-in-law, ‘but Geoffrey Harvey was most interesting about the Russians the other day at the Middletons. He is with John at the Regional Commissioner’s Office. He says they are wonderful.’

  ‘Well, bless your innocent soul, my love,’ said David, ‘hell hath no fury, though that’s a misquotation, like a woman who has heard a long-haired member of the intelligentsia talking hot air. In less refined circles I should say tripe. I’ve known Geoffrey Harvey up and down town off and on for quite long enough. Give John my love. Bunny, I’m coming over to see you soon if Lettice will ask me.’

  Lettice, still anxious to show David that his mistake had not hurt her, begged him to come whenever he liked, to which her children added their artless entreaties, calling him by the endearing name of Uncle David, which they had at once picked up from the young Grahams.

  ‘Robert,’ said Agnes, who had just caught up with the preceding conversation, ‘was on a military mission to Russia and he didn’t like them, so I do not think they can be very nice.’

  She looked at David and Mary with the assurance of a perfect wife.

  ‘Good man, Robert,’ said David approvingly. ‘And now, Agnes, I shall speed ahead of you and catch Mamma unawares, or she will have painted a picture of the dove returning to the ark on the front door to welcome me. Do you remember when I came back from Buenos Aires in ’thirty-five how she had painted Welcome Darling David and a laurel wreath all over my looking-glass for a surprise? I still can’t tie my tie in that glass. If she expects me she is quite capable of gilding that thrush’s claws and beak. I must fly.’

  Extricating himself from the children who were hanging on to his legs he blew a kiss to Miss Bunting and left. The rest of the party quickly followed and Mrs John took Miss Milner and the pianist to her sitting room and gave them a good tea before they bicycled back to Barchester, discussing David Leslie with passionate worship and no rivalry.

  During the journey home Diana and Clare, sitting one on each side of Miss Bunting with their legs sticking straight out in front of them, demanded the story of how David cut the bristles off his hairbrush all over again. Lettice, alone in front, thought of all the things she might have said when David asked how Roger was. Anyone with any sense or any real kindness, she thought, would have put David at his ease at once by a few well-chosen words – though what the words would have been she could not quite imagine. But at least she could have said something, instead of sitting there like a great booby, going red in the face. It became most important that David should come to Marling Hall as soon as possible, so that she might be quite sure he did not altogether despise her for her graceless behaviour, or even worse fear her for her rudeness, though after the way she had behaved it was very improbable that she would ever see him again. Six times she decided to ring him up and repeat her invitation; six times she decided not to. Perhaps by the exercise of tactful hinting she could make her mother, a great stickler for the ties of family, do the ringing up. If only Roger had been there, she said to herself, he would have known what to do. And then it surged over her that if Roger had been there David’s blunder could not have occurred and she laughed at herself for her folly and then nearly cried when she thought that Roger could never help her at all now. But to drive through a mist of unshed tears (‘I’m driving with tears in my eyes,’ said her mocking self to her) was stupid when the safety of Diana and Clare and Miss Bunting depended on her, so she hit her eyes quickly and violently with her handkerchief and concentrated on what she was doing. When she got back to the stables Nurse appeared at the door.

  ‘Mrs Marling rang up, madam,’ she said, ‘to say could you go up to the Hall if you wasn’t too tired, as she wants to do something about the Red Cross.’

  ‘What was it, Nurse?’ Lettice asked.

  ‘I couldn’t say, madam, I’m sure,’ said Nurse, who dissociated herself entirely from any war activities, holding that her brother Sid represented the family and she, as she often said, was not one to meddle, besides having the children to look after and most of their washing now and madam’s undies as well, not like when the commander was at home. ‘Something about the Red Cross, Mrs Marling said. Come along, Diana and Clare.’

  The little girls demanded loudly that Miss Bunting should come up and have tea with them, but Miss Bunting, whom a long experience had made sensitive to the finer shades of nursery etiquette, saw in Nurse’s eye that the present moment was not propitious. It might be that the nursery tea was not quite up to visitors’ standard, it might be that nurse had some ironing to do, but whatever it was she knew better than to thrust herself, or let herself be thrust, on any nursery, so she said not today.

  ‘I’m sure,’ said Nurse, perceptive of Miss Bunting as someone who knew what was what, ‘we’d all be very pleased if Miss Bunting was to come to tea with us another day. Perhaps Miss Bunting would come on Tuesday if she is disengaged and Mummy says yes.’

  Miss Bunting and nurse both knew that Mummy would say yes, but nevertheless the form of asking her was observed, giving great satisfaction to both parties who had a very proper feeling for all affairs of protocol, and it was arranged that on Tuesday Miss Bunting should meet the nursery party in the lime walk after lunch, take the children for a walk and come back to nursery tea. The little girls then went in with Nurse, while Lettice with Miss Bunting drove on to the Hall.

  Tea was ready in what used to be the best spare bedroom but was now turned into the War drawing-room, a fine room on the first floor overlooking the b
ig lawn and the lime walk, which ran down to the Rising for no reason at all except the pleasant one of making a lime avenue from the lawn to the river. While they had their tea Mrs Marling, a fond but not besotted grandmother, asked about the dancing class, was pleased to hear that David Leslie was back, and said they must ask him to dinner soon. When they had finished tea the three ladies went to the disused drawing-room downstairs, where the afternoon sun pouring through the open french windows made the room though uninhabited feel cheerful. Here were stacked the bundles of dressings, bandages, bedjackets, and various stores which Mrs Marling as head of the Barsetshire Red Cross had in her charge. In addition to what was supplied by all the county working parties a large consignment of stores from America had recently been sent to the Hall, and it was these that needed sorting and labelling. The work was held up from time to time while the ladies admired the good material used, material that was not now to be got in England, and each confessed afterwards to severe temptation to keep back a few of the exquisitely sewn or knitted things for private consumption. But honesty prevailed and soon after six everything was in its place. Miss Bunting went to her own quarters while the mother and daughter had a little desultory talk in the upstairs drawing-room. Lettice had just got up to go when her brother Oliver came in with a man whom she didn’t know.