Marling Hall

by Angela Thirkell

  Instead of groaning he said to Lucy that he wanted just one word with his sister. Two steps brought him to her side, but unfortunately an equal number of steps had brought David Leslie to her other side.

  ‘Frances,’ said Mr Harvey urgently.

  ‘No, Geoffrey,’ said David, who had been sufficiently bored by Mr Harvey at one or two intellectual sherry parties to enjoy cutting him out even with his sister, who was certainly a very handsome girl, if girl you could call it, ‘you did not bring your sister out to dinner to persecute her with your unwelcome attentions. Miss Harvey, I shall not sleep sound o’ nights – pardon the expression, not mine but the Bard’s – unless you tell me what colour the art sheets are that your landlady mentioned the day I helped you to look at the house.’

  ‘Frances,’ said Mr Harvey, ‘I just wanted to tell you —’

  ‘Wait a moment, Geoffrey,’ said his sister, who loved him but could not forget that she was the elder by eighteen months. ‘The sheets are in two sets; the best ones are peach, or apricot, I’m not sure which, the second best are apricot, or possibly peach. There are also some rather inferior ones for guests which must have been boiled by the laundry as they simply look dirty by any kind of light.’

  ‘Perfect!’ said David.

  ‘And there are bath towels with bath mats to match in mermaid green,’ said Miss Harvey, ‘and pale purple face towels.’

  ‘And are there guest towels?’ said David passionately.

  ‘I will not deceive you, there are guest towels,’ said Miss Harvey proudly. ‘You know them because they are too small to use and have GUEST embroidered on them. From the look of them I should say Mr Smith was in the habit of wiping his razor on them.’

  David laughed so much that Mr Harvey was able to say once more to his sister, ‘Frances, Mrs Marling wants to talk to you about hens —’ but before he could say any more Mrs Marling came up behind him.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs Marling, ‘I was just telling your brother that you must keep hens. Of course the way the Government has behaved about the whole egg question is perfectly scandalous, but that’s neither here nor there. Our duty is to keep backyard fowls and increase the country’s egg production. Lucy knows of some good pullets you could get at a reasonable price and there is an old shed in the doctor’s garden next door that I know he would let you have for ten shillings. I’ll send Ed our chauffeur-handyman down, he can alter it for you.’

  ‘Ed is half-witted,’ said Oliver, who having enjoyed Miss Harvey’s society at dinner had gravitated back to her, ‘because his mother had an affair with one of Lord Pomfret’s keepers before he was born. I mean before Ed was born, not the keeper.’

  Miss Harvey expressed astonishment with her fine eyes.

  ‘Don’t put me out of my stride, Oliver,’ said his mother. ‘I want Miss Harvey to keep hens, and I thought Doctor March might let her have that rickety little shed where he used to keep that dreadful goat. By the way, Oliver, I wonder if we ought to keep a goat.’

  ‘But why, Mamma dear,’ said Oliver, ‘when we have three cows? Or only as a mascot?’

  ‘Well, you never know,’ said Mrs Marling. ‘Much as I dislike goats’ milk, we might be very glad of it if things get bad.’

  ‘No, Mamma dear, we mightn’t,’ said Oliver. ‘And even if the invasion comes here and drives our cows away I would rather pine and die than drink that filthy stuff. Besides, you don’t see the Germans overlooking a goat in the scrimmage. They’d have it, or I suppose I ought to say her if it’s a question of milk, at Corps Headquarters before you could say knife.’

  ‘I expect they’d cut her head off long before they got her as far as Headquarters,’ said Miss Harvey sympathetically. ‘I once lived with a goat for a few months and I’d have cut her head off myself if I’d had a sword. Devils!’

  Oliver laughed and settled himself more comfortably in his deck chair, if the word comfortable can be applied to those draped skeletons. If Frances Harvey could appreciate the devilishness of goats she was a woman after his own heart. He had liked her in the office where their work threw them together a good deal, but to have her in his own home was an experiment. He had felt some faint qualms, for Geoffrey, though they got on well enough, was not quite his style and Geoffrey’s sister might not fit into the atmosphere of Marling. Now, to see her listening to his mother, asking intelligent questions about wire netting and grain ration, handsome and self-possessed, made his heart feel an unaccustomed glow. Not falling in love, for he knew those symptoms quite well. Simply great pleasure in the society of a clever, practical, good-looking woman.

  Mr Harvey, despairing about hens, for he knew that if his sister approved the idea, hens they would certainly have, picked his way among deck chairs, wicker chairs, wood and canvas upright chairs, cane chairs, to where Lettice was standing with her father and Captain Barclay.

  ‘Come and help us,’ said Lettice. ‘We can’t remember who Lord Stoke’s mother was.’

  ‘Yes, who was she?’ said Mr Marling to Mr Harvey. ‘You ought to know, Carver.’

  ‘It is Mr Harvey, father, not Mr Carver,’ said Lettice gently, smiling at Mr Harvey to show that she at least was under no delusion.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know, sir,’ said Mr Harvey, conscious as he spoke of something like a gimlet in his back.

  ‘Hum! Carver’d have known,’ said Mr Marling, letting himself down into a cane armchair with a flat green cushion. ‘His mother was a sister of Victoria Norton’s.’

  Mr Harvey hated the unknown Carver as much as he had hated his hostess and wished he had blue, or at least county blood, and all the while the sensation of something boring into his back made him vaguely uncomfortable.

  ‘Let’s see,’ said Captain Barclay. ‘Old Lord Stoke’s second wife was from Yorkshire, wasn’t she? Lucasta Bond was her only child.’

  Mr Harvey hated Captain Barclay who knew who people’s second wives and second wives’ only children were even more than he hated the unknown Carver or his hostess, but still saw no place in the conversation for himself. Lettice smiled again to encourage him.

  ‘Old Lord Stoke’s first wife was a Miss Hooper an heiress from Somerset,’ said Miss Bunting appearing from behind Mr Harvey, who then realised to his horror that it was her eye of scorn that had been looking right through his back.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Captain Barclay, much relieved. ‘She was a daughter of Squire Hooper of Rumpton who drove the last coach right across the churchyard before it was taken off the road. Won’t you sit down, Miss Bunting?’

  He brought forward a comfortable cushioned chair.

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Miss Bunting, quite kindly. ‘The upright one.’

  Captain Barclay hastened to place it near Mr Marling.

  ‘There, if you please,’ said Miss Bunting, indicating a position just outside the little circle.

  Captain Barclay put the chair where she wanted it and Miss Bunting sat down. Lettice, Captain Barclay and Mr Harvey sat down too.

  While Mr Marling and Captain Barclay finally threshed out the ramifications of Lord Stoke’s family, Mr Harvey, who felt more and more nervous of Miss Bunting, asked Lettice in a low voice if Miss Bunting was offended.

  ‘Oh dear, no,’ said Lettice. ‘She always sits on a very stiff chair a little away from us. I am not quite sure if it is to show that she knows her place or to keep us in our places. The result is much the same and rather petrifying.’

  ‘What a nuisance she must be,’ said Mr Harvey in a low but sympathetic voice.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Lettice, surprised, ‘we adore her.’

  She then asked very kindly about the Red House, and Mr Harvey felt that he had been elusively snubbed. But he put the feeling away to annoy himself with at night and joined in the talk which had now left Lord Stoke and become general. They were all getting on very nicely when Lucy, who had taken David to look at two young bullocks, came back and pouncing on Captain Barclay, whom she regarded as her personal property, said she had to
go over to the Cottage Hospital for half an hour and he had better come too.

  ‘Come, come, Lucy,’ said David. ‘My car is just as good as Barclay’s and he doesn’t want to go with you, while I do. In all the wide borders my car is the best. Reconsider it.’

  ‘Oh rot,’ said Lucy good humouredly. ‘Come on, Tom.’

  ‘Ruin seize thee, ruthless Lucy,’ said David, who did not really care in the least whether he went with Lucy or not. ‘If you be not driven by me, What care I by whom driven you be. I shall go and cut someone out.’

  Captain Barclay excused himself and got up. David stood looking a very handsome figure against the sunset while he swiftly meditated. To cut out Harvey with Lettice would be fun. Equally it would be fun to cut out Oliver with Miss Harvey. After wavering for a second he decided on Mr Harvey as the nearer prey and took Captain Barclay’s chair, from which he had an excellent view of his cousin Lettice. With the devilish motive of annoying Mr Harvey he asked Mr Marling how the entries for the Skeynes Agricultural were going that year and if Lady Norton was sending anything. Mr Marling, overjoyed at an opportunity for exhibiting pessimism, said there was foot and mouth disease at Chaldicotes and he didn’t suppose there would be a show at all. That, he added, was the sort of thing the confounded Ministry of Agriculture did. Just the sort of thing they would do when he had two of the best heifers he had ever bred. As for the Norton Park herd, he knew nothing about them.

  ‘Geoffrey will know,’ said David, looking at Mr Harvey who was quietly though firmly telling Lettice about his new book of poems. ‘He has been staying at the Nortons, hasn’t he? Geoffrey, excuse my interrupting, but Cousin William wants to know what the Nortons are sending to Skeynes.’

  Mr Harvey, pulled away from the pleasant occupation of talking about himself, stared uncomprehendingly at Mr Marling.

  ‘Is it the shorthorn or the polled Angus, Carver?’ said Mr Marling.

  ‘Do you mean a cow?’ said Mr Harvey.

  ‘Of course Father does,’ said Lettice, coming to his rescue. ‘Father you must remember that it is Mr Harvey, not Carver. Mr Harvey works in John Leslie’s office with Oliver and writes poetry.’

  ‘Well, Carver’d have known,’ said Mr Marling, who appeared to bear a permanent grudge against Mr Harvey for not being someone else. ‘Poetry, eh? Not what it was in my young days. My father used to have them all to dinner. Tennyson and Browning and that lot. You wouldn’t have heard of them.’

  Mr Harvey, whose poetic circle had, for reasons best known to no one, elected to patronise Tennyson, tried to protest, but Mr Marling, vaguely feeling that he had somehow wronged that fellow Carver and anxious as a host to make amends to his guest, however little he liked him, came heavily over him like a tank.

  ‘All this modern stuff is what you young men like,’ he announced grudgingly, but determined to make a handsome job of it. ‘Kipling and A.P. Herbert and that lot. I don’t know much about it, the old stuff was good enough for me, but there’s some pretty poetry in Punch sometimes. Ever write for Punch?’

  Mr Harvey, who looked upon T. S. Eliot as a back number, could not at once find words to explain how little he would demean himself by writing for Punch, which had rejected several of his poems, and while he struggled for self-expression his host continued, ‘Stephen Phillips. You’d never have heard of him, but he wrote a lot of good stuff, plays and that. I remember as well as if it were yesterday seein’ old – now what the devil was his name, you know who I mean, the actor everyone was talkin’ about, actin’ in that play of Phillips’s about, dash it all I don’t remember things as I used to, it’s all this war. Lettice, what was the play when two young people fall in love while they are readin’ somethin’?’

  Lettice, sorry for Mr Harvey, but amused at her father’s rapid progress in his Olde Squire character, wished that Oliver were there, but seeing David’s expression she realised that he understood, and it was with a voice perilously near a giggle that she suggested Paolo and Francesca.

  Mr Marling then lost interest and went into his study to answer letters and fill up forms. Lettice applied herself to soothing Mr Harvey, who was quite ready to talk about his poems again. David, satisfied with his effort, got up and found himself face to face with Miss Bunting whose presence, just out of his range of vision, he had quite forgotten.

  ‘Up to mischief as usual, David,’ said his old governess.

  David said he hated being misjudged.

  ‘I am not misjudging you,’ said Miss Bunting. ‘But I don’t mind your getting into mischief in that quarter. It is not what WE want here.’

  David was not quite sure whether her royal pronoun referred to herself or to the whole Marling family, so he said nothing.

  ‘I am going upstairs to my room now,’ said Miss Bunting. ‘I always boil a kettle on the gas ring which Mrs Marling kindly had installed for me and make myself some tisane. I acquired the habit when I went to the Riviera as companion to the Dowager Marchioness of Hartletop one year. It is very soothing. If ever you care for a cup I shall be glad to see you. I never lose interest in my old pupils. Good night.’

  ‘Let me see you home,’ said David and with great gravity accompanied Miss Bunting as far as the side door where he bade her good night and returned, much refreshed, to help in the hen discussion. Miss Harvey had already mastered most of the theory of hen-keeping as laid down by Mrs Marling and was making notes of various official pamphlets and rules connected with those inhuman birds. Oliver, who was often tired in the evening, was amused by her eagerness and sat comfortably quiet, throwing in an unhelpful word from time to time. The strange late light of the long summer evening, curiously artificial as if all nature knew that its course was being run in a channel not its own, lay very clear on the lime avenue and the meadows beyond the Rising to where the distant line of the downs was darkening against the fading glory in the north-west.

  ‘On such a night as this,’ David remarked, pulling a chair up near Miss Harvey, ‘it seems almost sacrilegious to talk of fowls. Miss Harvey, have you no soul? If you have, Cousin Amabel will grind its bones to make chicken food. Why not take a turn in the lime avenue with me instead?’

  With unflattering want of confusion Miss Harvey said she would be delighted.

  ‘Why don’t you go, too, Oliver?’ said his mother, but Oliver said he felt too lazy. Mrs Marling looked anxiously at him.

  ‘Eyes?’ she said.

  Oliver nodded. They sat in silence while the dusk crept over the lime trees and the meadows. Mrs Marling longed to comfort her son, but respected his wish that his frequent fatigue should be ignored. Oliver valued deeply in his mother her power of standing aside and laying no burden of affection on him. They understood each other pretty well and cared for each other without words, without obligation. Presently Oliver got up, kissed his mother and went away. Mrs Marling followed him with her eyes to the corner of the house, with her thoughts to his room. She was not one of those mothers who have to come into their grown-up sons’ rooms and wake them up to see if they are comfortably asleep, nor did she ever ask questions. In return Oliver told her just as much as he thought fit, which is so much kinder to one’s mother than telling her everything. Her one wish for him was that he should marry happily. So far he had felt no enduring flame. Now Frances Harvey had brought her good looks and her clever mind into their intimate circle and Mrs Marling wondered if his daily work with her was to have the usual effect of propinquity. She was ready to lose him to whatever woman he chose to love, but whether Miss Harvey would be that woman she could not guess.

  The voices of Lettice and Mr Harvey sounded in quiet talk from where they were sitting. The voices of David and Miss Harvey who were returning from the lime avenue came across the lawn in laughter. All else was still. The trees grew black against a sky now clear emerald. The air chilled. Mrs Marling was just going in when a door in the Stone Parlour wall was opened and a loud noise burst out, which was Lucy, followed with less noise by Captain Barclay. Lucy at once made enqu
iries for everyone, and hearing that David was walking with Miss Harvey, called aloud ‘Six-pack bézique, David!’ at the top of her powerful voice.

  David, who to tell the truth had exhausted the possibilities of Miss Harvey for the moment, shouted back to her, and the whole company went into the house. The Harveys with polite cries against the lateness of their visit said goodbye. Captain Barclay lingered for a few moments. Much as he enjoyed Lucy’s company he had hoped for a talk with her sister, but this had not been. Lettice said goodbye with one of her encouraging smiles and he went back to camp thinking that the evening had on the whole been well spent.