Marling Hall

by Angela Thirkell

  ‘Hi, Govern!’ she shouted. ‘Is the house ready?’

  Govern, who was putting up perches inside the hen house, withdrew his head from it and shouted, ‘Yes, Miss Lucy.’

  ‘Tell Ed to come here then,’ Lucy shouted back.

  Ed came up with his unhastening walk, took delivery of the hens from Lucy and put them into the run. The hens shook out all their feathers to express their surprise at finding themselves on their feet again and began to peck about.

  ‘All right, Tom,’ Lucy shouted towards the front of the house, ‘you can bring the others. I’ve got the rest in a crate,’ she explained to David and Lettice, ‘but there wasn’t room for these two. Oh, there you are, Tom. Come on.’

  She strode off towards the hen run, followed by Captain Barclay and David, who obligingly helped to carry the crate. Govern had just put the fastening on the door of the run, the hens were decanted, the door shut and the new tenants left to sort themselves.

  ‘I wonder, ought we to feed them at once?’ said Miss Harvey, getting up from her knees and banging some of the earth off her boiler suit.

  ‘I believe,’ said David, ‘one butters their paws. Oughtn’t we to have a Harvest Home? Or perhaps Peace-Egging. Or would that be tempting Providence?’

  Mr Harvey laughed and said one did so understand that feeling, but he was sure Providence would find Peace-Egging a restful change from what it was doing at present.

  ‘But really, I mean,’ said Miss Harvey anxiously, ‘ought I to give them something to eat? I’ve put water in the run, but perhaps they’d feel happier with some bread or some scraps.’

  ‘They’ll be all right,’ said Lucy robustly. ‘They were eating up till the last moment at Farmer Hobbing’s and this earth is only just dug up. Who’s going to feed them?’

  Ed, who was helping Govern to collect his tools, looked up. A remark made earlier in the day echoed in his brain.

  ‘Auntie,’ he said, smiling at Miss Harvey.

  Miss Harvey, who knew that Ed was wanting, looked alarmed.

  ‘Beg pardon, miss,’ said Govern, ‘it’s your maid he means. She told Ed to call her Auntie. She understands hens all right. Thank you, sir,’ he added, as Mr Harvey tipped him, ‘a pleasure I’m sure. Come on, Ed; Auntie’s got some tea for you. Good evening, miss. Good evening, Miss Lucy.’

  He walked away towards the kitchen followed by Ed.

  ‘I don’t pretend to understand country life,’ said Mr Harvey, ‘but our Hilda is a farmer’s daughter and her sister married a farmer, so I expect she knows all about it.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what, I’ll go and talk to her,’ said Lucy, and went hotfoot after Govern and Ed.

  David and Captain Barclay lit cigarettes and fell into talk about men they knew. Miss Harvey went indoors to tidy herself and Mr Harvey took himself and his green corduroys to where Lettice was still sitting.

  ‘A green thought in a green shade,’ he said admiringly to Lettice as he sat down.

  ‘Really pale blue,’ said Lettice kindly. ‘Green makes me so yellow. Oh, but I said that at lunch time. Unless you meant you were the green thought.’

  Mr Harvey felt a slight exasperation, and the word merry-thought floated unbidden and unwanted into his mind.

  ‘And talking of green thoughts,’ said Lettice., ‘have you noticed that Mrs Smith spent quite half an hour among the pea-sticks?’

  Mr Harvey said he really thought that was Frances’s business, and he expected every morning to wake up and find Mrs Smith had taken the pillow from under his head.

  ‘Joyce is a very trying woman,’ said Lettice placidly.

  ‘You all say that,’ said Mr Harvey with a touch of impatience, ‘but it doesn’t make her any better.’

  Lettice looked at him with interest. To those with real roots in the country the intolerance of the city-dweller who comes among them is always a little surprising. The Marlings had accepted Joyce Perry, ever since she came among them as the wife of Mr Smith, as a natural phenomenon, and did not enquire. Mr Smith, apart from his weakness about spirituous drink, was a respectable corn and seed merchant trading in Barchester, whose father had been a respectable corn and seed merchant before him. Both also supplied coal, and though Mr Marling got most of his by the truckload, he had dealt with father and son for smaller quantities. The Smiths, with all their qualities and defects, were therefore part of the Marling world, and that Mrs Smith was a troublesome woman was accepted like the weather or the rates. If Mr Harvey could not get on with her, it was simply that he did not belong to the Marling world. We doubt whether Mr Harvey would quite have understood this.

  ‘Oliver says you are very busy this week,’ said Lettice, knowing that men like to talk about their work. ‘He would have liked to get the afternoon off and see the hen-house too, but John Leslie had to be away and couldn’t spare him.’

  It is below one’s dignity to be jealous of someone’s brother, but Mr Harvey felt a slight annoyance that his work should be less indispensable than Oliver’s. He then tried to check this feeling. The result was a silence which Lettice, well trained in good manners, did not allow to become embarrassing.

  ‘I expect you are able to write your poetry while you are at the office,’ she said. ‘Oliver says there is a lot of spare time.’

  Mr Harvey was again mildly annoyed that his muse should be considered as a stop-gap, but answered that he found it very difficult to work in fits and starts and really needed leisure to produce his best work. But he had, he said, been working on some translations lately.

  ‘Do tell me about it,’ said Lettice, wondering if Nurse and the children who were coming down in the old pony cart to fetch her would be much longer.

  ‘I don’t know if you came across a little book called A Diabolist of the Restoration by a man called Hilary Grant,’ he said. ‘A slight study, but quite well done, of a minor French poet of the Romantic Period.’

  ‘Oh, Hilary Grant who married Lavinia Brandon’s daughter over at Pomfret Madrigal,’ said Lettice. ‘We all thought the old aunt, Miss Brandon, at Brandon Abbey, would leave him a fortune, but she left all her money to a charity. I think Hilary is in the Intelligence Corps now. His mother used to make him go to Italy and he spoke Italian quite well. Do you know Mrs Brandon? She wasn’t anyone very particular, but she is very charming and a great friend of Sir Edmund Pridham whom you must know; everyone does.’

  If Lettice had not looked so charming and had such a pleasant voice, Mr Harvey would have put on the famous manner with which he was used to crush people who would do the talking. When one has carefully led up to a delightful conversation about oneself, it is mortifying to find one’s elegant audience much more interested in county ramifications; and not even county, he said rather bitterly to himself, thinking of Lettice’s description of Mrs Brandon’s family. Nor did he wish his title to fame to be judged by his knowing or not knowing Sir Edmund Pridham. He had more than once had occasion to come up against Sir Edmund on county business at the Regional Commissioner’s Office, and had on every occasion been worsted by that gentleman, who knew his county and its organisations inside out and had a baffling habit of standing no nonsense from anybody, or even worse, ignoring the degrees of precedence and going straight to John Leslie, who valued his help and advice highly.

  ‘I never knew Hilary had written a book,’ Lettice added.

  Mr Harvey, deciding that it would be below him to lose his temper, explained that Hilary Grant had printed as an appendix the little collection of verse entitled Belphégor which was the only extant work of the poet Jehan le Capet, whose real name was Eugene Duval. These poems he was translating.

  ‘And will they sell well?’ asked Lettice, who knew from Mrs Morland that authors wrote because they had to earn their living.

  If Mr Harvey had not been sitting down he would have stamped with rage at Lettice’s want of tact. Then he looked again at her and felt it didn’t really matter if she had tact or not, so long as she made so harmonious a picture upon the
curved seat, under the birch tree, so he ignored the question.

  ‘There is one sonnet,’ he said, ‘which I confess I find difficult. It is, as it were, a glorification of his mistress, in the type of the many-breasted goddess. The last two lines run:

  “Maîtresse féconde qui portes dans tes reins

  Bavants les trop ignobles jumeaux de tes seins.”’

  ‘How well you speak French,’ said Lettice.

  ‘The enjambement of these lines,’ continued Mr Harvey, gratified that his accent had not passed unnoticed, but quite determined not to be side-tracked, ‘is unusual in le Capet and seems to point forward to Mallarmé. I hammered out a couplet yesterday that seemed to me to be not without merit. But you shall judge.

  ‘Wide-wombèd whore — ’

  ‘I simply cannot bear,’ said Lettice firmly, passing over this embarrassing sample, ‘poetry that has the word “breast” in it. I don’t know why. Modern poetry at least. And there is Nurse and the children. Well, darlings; say how do you do to Mr Harvey.’

  Diana and Clare behaved very well. Miss Harvey, now clothed in a silk frock, came to say tea was ready and begged Lettice to let the children stay. Nurse graciously gave permission, Captain Barclay and David were collected and they all went indoors. Miss Harvey apologised for tea being a little late, but said she had not dared to ask for it till Govern and Ed had gone. Hilda brought in the teapot and hot water.

  ‘Would your little girls like tea with us,’ said Miss Harvey to Lettice, ‘or in the kitchen? Hilda used to be my and Geoffrey’s nurserymaid and she loves children.’

  ‘I’m sure the children would love to have tea in the kitchen if Nurse has no objection,’ said Nurse, speaking as one royalty to another through an ambassador.

  ‘Will that be all right, Hilda?’ said Miss Harvey.

  ‘I’m sure I don’t mind if Nurse and the young ladies have their tea in the kitchen,’ said Hilda, secretly flattered at being raised to the honorary status of full nurse. ‘And Miss Lucy said to say she was just coming, Miss Frances. She’s been helping me wash up the tea things after those men. Will you come this way, Nurse.’

  Having thus implied that the entertainment of Govern and Ed was a painful duty foisted upon her by her mistress, Hilda withdrew, followed by Nurse and the children. Lucy then burst into the room.

  ‘I never knew Joyce had such a good scullery,’ she said. ‘I say, Frances, I saw Joyce going across to Mrs Cox’s with about a peck of peas. What a nuisance she’ll be. I’ll tell you what, your maid does awfully good teas. Govern and Ed had just finished and she had given them a marvellous meal; sardines and cold rice pudding and cold mashed potatoes and beetroot and cake. I talked to her about the hens and she understands everything. She knows how to kill hens too, so if any of yours don’t lay and you want to eat them she can do it. It’s a thing I’ve always wanted to learn and she’s going to show me as soon as you want one killed. One ought to know how to kill hens.’

  Her eyes sparkled with enthusiasm and she dropped a piece of scone face downwards on the carpet which was of asymmetrical geometrical designs in tones of beige.

  ‘Tut, tut,’ said David reprovingly, as he picked it up. ‘It is well known that the only difference between butter and margarine is that you can get out butter stains but not margarine stains. I am willing to lay you sixpence, Frances, that your landlady will smell out the stain before this tea-party is over and commit hara-kiri, or whatever its silly name is, on the carpet to make you lose face.’

  ‘Don’t,’ said Miss Harvey piteously.

  ‘I won’t,’ said David. ‘Courtesy to women has always been my motto. I did know an English family in the Argentine that used to shoot their hens, because they were afraid to wring their necks. But they had the whole wide pampas to do it in, so it didn’t matter if their shots flew wide.’

  Lucy laughed so good-humouredly that David renounced teasing her as a poor job and turned his attention to Miss Harvey. They had plenty of common acquaintance in the Harvey’s London world and were able to to be quite unkind and funny about them. Lucy meanwhile attached herself to Mr Harvey, desiring to know all he would tell her about his work at the Regional Commissioner’s Office, rather, he gathered, so that she might be ready to do it all herself in any emergency. This left Captain Barclay free to talk to Lettice, which he was so seldom able to do. Not that he had anything special to say to her, but they had a pleasant background of the same kind of friends and ways of living. Lettice was never less than courteous to people she was talking to, and this afternoon her manners had the added courtesy which often comes from one’s mind being elsewhere and being conscious of the fact. Under her conversation her mind was running on David. That he should have called her a half-wit and a nincompoop gave her a secret pleasure, to which his addition of Woman as a final epithet of opprobrium somehow added zest. She wondered a good deal whether David was right about duty. Looking at the question impartially, or what passed in her mind for impartially, she saw that there was much to be said for David’s point of view. Certainly when people like Lucasta Bond had taken upon themselves to tell her things for what they mistakenly considered her good, she had hated them with a mortal hatred that only death could quench, and only the passage of a week or so had dropped into the gulf of oblivion. She went hot and cold. Had her words to David made him as angry as Lucasta Bond’s had made her? Would he lie awake planning bitter repartees, as she had planned them against Lucasta? If so, life was too hard to bear. A gentle pricking rose behind her eyes. Then the thought of crying before company made her ashamed. She laughed at herself inside, the pricking subsided, and as David, in the middle of being quite chivalrously impertinent to Miss Harvey, smiled at her with what she knew was a secret smile for her alone, her spirits rose, and she was able to show her liveliest appreciation of what she had not heard Captain Barclay saying about Lord Stoke. Captain Barclay thought she had never looked more charming and that he would like his mother and sisters to see her.

  Time had been passing. Lettice got up and said they must go. The Harveys expressed their gratitude for the way in which everyone had rallied.

  ‘By the way,’ said Miss Harvey, ‘our old governess that we mentioned to you is coming next week. I wonder if I might bring her up to the Hall one day. It would be such a pleasure to her and she will be rather alone as I am in the office most days.’

  Lettice said she was sure her mother would be delighted.

  ‘I don’t want to hurry or disturb anyone,’ said David, ‘but as Heaven is my witness I see my Miss Perry, your Mrs Smith, going down the garden again with her basket. Geoffrey, you had better go and look. She may have come to get the rest of the peas.’

  Mr Harvey looked so harassed that Lettice was sorry for him.

  Lucy volunteered to fetch the children and bring them round to the front door, so the rest of the party went down the little winding path to the front gate, accompanied by their host and hostess. In the road was the pony cart, Ed at the pony’s head talking to it in a confidential way that the pony perfectly understood. Nurse and the children joined them, with Lucy and Hilda in attendance. Lettice was just going to get into the pony cart when Captain Barclay came forward.

  ‘I’d like to drive you back if I may,’ he said. ‘I’ve got my car here and plenty of petrol.’

  ‘Oh – thank you,’ said Lettice, irresolute, for she was not sure if Nurse would approve.

  ‘That’ll be nice for Mummy to go in the gentleman’s car, won’t it,’ said Nurse to her young charges, ‘and Ed can drive us up. Get in, Ed.’

  Ed, his face all rapture, got in and took the reins. Diana and Clare were lifted in, Nurse mounted behind them. Suddenly Ed’s face blanched.

  ‘Look out, Auntie,’ he said to Hilda. ‘She’s coming.’

  Everyone looked round and saw Mrs Smith emerging from the front gate holding her basket triumphantly.

  ‘What a piece of luck that I was here,’ she said almost brightly. ‘I just happened to be passing wi
th my basket and I thought to myself, “Well now, suppose those fowls have commenced to lay?” So I just slipped down to the run and looked in the box and found – what do you think?’

  David suggested sotto voce a time bomb.

  ‘A dear, wee egg!’ said Mrs Smith. ‘So now, isn’t that nice. Quite the end of a perfect day.’

  An uncomfortable silence fell. It was plain that Mrs Smith having found the egg meant to keep it. Noblesse obliged the Harveys not to expostulate and they exchanged agonised and hating looks behind their landlady’s back. Even David was at a loss.

  ‘Thank you, m’m,’ said Hilda, dexterously taking the basket before Mrs Smith knew she was there. ‘I’ll put it away and I’ll tell Millie to take the basket back when she comes tomorrow.’

  She whisked round the side of the house and vanished.

  Everyone feverishly said goodbye to Mrs Smith, who however appeared to take the incident as part of the day’s work. Mr Harvey, in an ecstasy of terror lest she should have taken offence, said she must meet their old governess, Mademoiselle Duchaux, when she came next week.