Marling Hall

by Angela Thirkell

  ‘Oh, I did not know she was French,’ said Mrs Smith. ‘I used to like the poetry of Victor Yugo very much when I was a girl. I daresay she knows some. Well, I must be wending my way.’

  The company breathed again. Diana and Clare said ‘Gee-up,’ and Ed flapped the reins on the pony’s back, who trotted obediently away. Lettice got into Captain Barclay’s car and Lucy demanded to be taken to the Cottage Hospital.

  ‘I’ll tell you what, my girl,’ said David. ‘You’ll come in my car with me. It’s on my way back.’

  In a few moments they were at the Cottage Hospital. As the car drove up, an uninteresting girl, who was Octavia Crawley, came to the door in VAD uniform.

  ‘Hullo,’ she said to Lucy, ‘it was a rotten Caesar, absolutely straightforward. They had one at the Barchester General with the most ghastly complications last week. Oh, and Mother says she hopes you’ll all come to tea next time you’re in Barchester. Is he your brother? Oh, and Matron wants you at once.’

  ‘Cousin,’ said Lucy. ‘Goodbye, David.’

  She banged into the hospital. Octavia gave David a bored look, as to one who was not likely to supply any wounds, burns, scalds, fractures, or haemorrhages and went into the hospital.

  ‘If that’s the Dean’s daughter, no wonder people write to The Times about the state of the Church of England,’ said David to his car, and went back to Little Misfit.

  6

  Miss Lucy Marling was a strong believer in what she called wearing people down. Having a great deal of energy, an insatiable desire for practical information and no false modesty, her way of getting anything she wanted was to batter people till from sheer fatigue or exasperation they gave in. A happy few, among whom may be counted her brother Oliver, were proof against her assaults. Lucy had long cherished a wish to know every detail of what was done at the Regional Commissioner’s Office, how it was done and who did it, but Oliver, though he had no very vital secrets to give away and did not at all mistrust his younger sister’s discretion, thought the less said the better and evaded all her more searching enquiries. When Lucy had thoroughly mastered this fact she with great simplicity turned her powerful mind on to Mr Harvey who, while properly discreet, gave her a certain amount of interesting detail. Mr Harvey, who was quite used to the admiration of young women both in his capacity as poet and as Civil Servant, found in Lucy’s gentlemanly attitude a certain zest and rather enjoyed her company, looking upon her as a Roman of the empire might have looked upon a gigantic Gaul who had become domesticated in his house.

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Mr Harvey, who much to his own annoyance had been infected by Lucy’s phraseology, ‘why not come to the office one day when you are in Barchester? When I’m on day duty I’m never very busy between six and seven and I’ll show you some of the working.’

  This invitation was given at Melicent Halt, the nearest station for Marling. Before the war there had been talk of shutting the station, but with petrol shortage everyone now used it for shopping in Barchester, or to go in the other direction to Southbridge. Lucy had come down in the pony cart on a Friday after tea to collect some fertiliser from the Parcels Office and Mr Harvey was waiting for the down train from Barchester. It was a single line, and the up and down trains passed one another at Melicent Halt and even in war time were apt to linger while their guards and engine-drivers exchanged news, collected the washing, or did some bartering of cigarettes and onions.

  A very old gentleman with a Newgate frill, his wicked old face seamed with the dirt and wrinkles of a long disgraceful life, was talking to the ticket clerk who was also the porter.

  ‘Russians?’ said the old gentleman, ‘If a Russian was to say, “Take a fill of tobacco, mate,” I’d take the fill of tobacco.’

  ‘Our Russian comrades would give you a fill of tobacco all right, Mr Nandy,’ said the ticket clerk, who was an unfortunate example of a little too much reading of sixpenny pink books. ‘And you’d give them a fill.’

  ‘I wouldn’t give no Russian a fill no nor no one else,’ said the old gentleman, chuckling malevolently. ‘Anyone as gives away a fill of baccy is a fool. You can’t get a good fill of baccy nowadays, no nor a good glass of beer neither. Them Russians gets everything. I heard Mr Churchill say that on the wireless, but they won’t get my baccy, nor my beer. What’s the time, Bill?’

  The ticket clerk said five minutes to six.

  ‘I’m off to the Hop Pole then,’ said the wicked old gentleman. ‘I’ll show them Russians who’ll get a pint of beer first, them or me.’

  And spitting quite horribly the wicked old gentleman hobbled off to the Hop Pole.

  ‘That’s old Henry Nandy,’ said Lucy proudly to Mr Harvey. ‘He drinks and smokes all day long and lives in one room and it simply stinks. He’s supposed to be rolling in money.’

  ‘Funny the way Mr Nandy carries on, miss,’ said the ticket clerk, who always meant to assert the solidarity of the intelligent workers by refusing the antiquated titles of miss, sir, or madam to travellers, and was always – for the worst of us are not perfect – a little shy of putting his theory into practice. ‘He doesn’t seem to get the idea of Russia.’

  ‘Mr Harvey knows all about Russia and things,’ said Lucy tolerantly. ‘I’ll tell you what, Geoffrey, you ought to talk to Bill Morple about Russia. He’s frightfully keen about it and he’s read quite a lot. I must say I think it’s all rather rot myself.’

  Mr Harvey, though deeply conscious of the superiority of everything Russian over everything English, did not at all want to have a public debate with the ticket clerk. Lucy, to his horror, appeared to be considering herself in the light of a boxing match referee and to be ready to order all seconds out of the ring, so it was with much relief that he heard the jarring bell which announced the approach of the down train. Bill Morple vanished into the booking office and the distant engine hooted as it came through the cutting. Lucy, who believed among her other articles of faith in doing things herself, her opinion of other people’s powers of mind or action being low, took advantage of Bill Morple’s absence to storm the Parcels Office and get her bag of fertiliser. As she dragged it along the platform she banged into Mr Harvey.

  ‘Oh, sorry Geoffrey,’ she said.

  ‘And who is that?’ said a voice behind her in an extremely correct English accent.

  ‘Oh, Lucy, I want you to know Mademoiselle Duchaux,’ said Mr Harvey, laying a detaining hand on her arm.

  Lucy kindly shook it off, for she hated anything in the nature of what she called ‘pawing’ (though to do Mr Harvey justice he had no such intentions and would have shuddered at the thought), and looked round. An elderly woman, neatly dressed in exactly the right clothes, her grey hair perfectly done under a suitable hat, was looking at her with obvious curiosity.

  ‘This is Lucy Marling,’ said Mr Harvey in a placating way. ‘Mademoiselle Duchaux.’

  ‘She is Miss Marling, I presume,’ said Mlle Duchaux, withholding her approval or disapproval of Lucy till she had a thorough explanation of her.

  ‘Oh, how do you do,’ said Lucy. ‘You’re the one Geoffrey said about that was his governess. He talks awfully good French.’

  Mlle Duchaux was rent by emotions. Part of her was pleased that her ex-pupil should have done her credit; the other part resented the apparent patronage of a si disgracieuse jeune personne unspeakably. And indeed Lucy, in a very old shapeless coat and skirt, a shabby felt hat, dirty string gloves, dragging a large bag of some evil-smelling stuff, was not an object of aesthetic pleasure. Then Mlle Duchaux’s hard eye observed her well-groomed hair and her well-cut, well-cleaned shoes and her well-fitting stockings and recognised her for what she was.

  ‘Frances has spoken to me of you in her letters,’ said Mlle Duchaux more graciously. ‘It seems that you are doing great national work, looking after gardens and fowls and nursing. Une vraie patriote enfin.’

  ‘Good Lord, no!’ said Lucy, properly shocked by the use of the word patriot. ‘I just muck about the plac
e a bit. But the Cottage Hospital’s quite decent. I’ll tell you what, Geoffrey, would Mlle Duchaux like to see over it? Matron would love to show her the wards and we’ve got a Caesar and two lots of twins just now. Ring me up.’

  Sketching a kind of salute to Mlle Duchaux she strode off, stowed away her fertiliser in the pony cart, picked up the postmaster’s wife who had been down to see her aunt in Railway Cottages, a nasty little row of 1870 functional dwellings, and drove away. Mr Harvey, who was very helpless with luggage, at last got Bill Morple to attend to him and packed his ex-governess and her suitcases into his car.

  ‘Lucy Marling is a delightful young woman,’ he said with false ease as they drove towards Marling. ‘She really runs the whole place and I don’t know anyone I’d sooner go to in a crisis.’

  ‘Heureusement que les crises ne sont pas trop fréquentes,’ said Mlle Duchaux aloud to herself.

  ‘I know she looked a bit peculiar this morning,’ said Mr Harvey, basely apologising for Lucy. ‘She is rather a rough diamond.’

  ‘On ne s’en aperçoit que trop,’ said Mile Duchaux with icy detachment.

  Mr Harvey regretted unspeakably that he and Frances had ever asked their guest to pay them a visit and wondered how long a fortnight would last. Thank heaven he would be at the office a great deal of the time and so would Frances. Mlle Duchaux was visiting them for a holiday before taking up some job which she had not particularised. So long as the job remained fixed for that day fortnight he could bear it. In fact he would have to bear it, for one cannot turn an ex-governess away from one’s door. So, summoning all the traditions of the Civil Service to his rescue, he exerted himself to appease Mlle Duchaux and got back to the Red House with no further unpleasantness.

  When Lucy got back to the Hall she dumped her fertiliser in the gardener’s shed, put the pony and cart away, helped Ed to grease the car, a long overdue job which afforded the participants intense pleasure, and gave herself a kind of rub down before dinner. At least we can think of no other description of her sketchy and dégagé toilette. During the meal she took the opportunity of telling her parents what on several points, and as Oliver was on duty and Lettice dining in her stable-house, there was no one to save them. Mrs Marling, more than usually busy with her Red Cross work while some of her committee were having apologetic holidays which they much needed, let her daughter talk on. Mr Marling, also deep in county business, merely wondered why the feller who had taken the Red House, Carver or something, wanted a governess, and talked aloud to himself about the iniquities of Government departments and his hatred of interference. So Lucy was able unchecked to persuade her mother that the proper thing for them to do was to go and call on Mlle Duchaux on the following afternoon. In normal circumstances Mrs Marling would have pleaded press of work, but a desire to see for herself how the Harveys’ hens were getting on made her agree to Lucy’s plan.

  Accordingly, next day Lucy and her mother walked down to the village, enquired at the Post Office after the postmaster’s wife’s aunt, saw Dr March about the under-housemaid who had sprained her thumb, and walked up the little winding path to the Red House. As it was a normal English day in late summer, the Harveys and their guest were sitting in the drawing-room with a wood fire. Hilda threw Mrs Marling and Lucy into the room and went back to her kitchen to get tea. Introductions took place. Mlle Duchaux, recognising the County in Mrs Marling, was very pleasant and it was soon discovered that she had taught French to a nephew of Mrs Marling’s who had gone into the Consular service and died of fever. Hilda brought in tea.

  ‘What an amusing tea-service,’ said Mrs Marling, looking at the china.

  ‘I’m never quite sure if it is amusing or exasperating,’ said Mr Harvey.

  ‘Exasperating,’ said his sister, taking up the square black teapot with a sunk spout and pouring tea into square mustard-coloured cups with a few black circles on them. She then passed to Mrs Marling a black milk jug whose handle was flush with its outer wall, if we make ourselves clear, while the fingers of the holder went into a recess which bulged inside the jug into the milk.

  ‘It’s Swedish,’ said Lucy. ‘Joyce told me so when Mr Smith bought it.’

  ‘Les Suédois!’ said Mlle Duchaux with venom.

  There did not seem to be any answer to this.

  ‘Did you know,’ said Mrs Marling, turning to Mlle Duchaux and changing the conversation, ‘that my poor nephew left a widow? He had married a charming Austrian girl before the war, and we can’t get any news of her.’

  ‘Les Autrichiens!’ said Mlle Duchaux, to any powers of vengeance that happened to be about.

  ‘But luckily there aren’t any children,’ said Mrs Marling, hoping to pacify the situation.

  ‘Ça je le crois bien!’ said Mlle Duchaux, with such awful wealth of meaning that even Mrs Marling felt conversational helplessness descend on her.

  ‘I don’t know whose fault it was,’ said Lucy in an open-minded way. ‘Sometimes of course people just can’t have children. There was a woman that came into the Barchester General, Octavia said —’

  ‘I do hope, Miss Harvey,’ said Mrs Marling desperately interrupting her younger daughter, ‘that you will bring Mlle Duchaux to tea before she goes. Would one day next week suit you?’

  After a great deal of consultation about dates, for both ladies were busy women, a day was decided. Mlle Duchaux expressed great pleasure at the prospect of visiting the château and peace reigned again. Mrs Marling enquired after the fowls.

  ‘The brown pullets have given us a few eggs,’ said Miss Harvey, ‘and the white Leghorns are laying splendidly. Hilda is actually laying some down. I can’t tell you how grateful we are to you for making us keep them.’

  ‘I have often wondered why Leghorn,’ said Mr Harvey. ‘It seems curious to go to Italy to get white hens. Now if —’

  ‘Les Italiens!’ said Mlle Duchaux, almost spitting with hatred.

  ‘— if it were straw hats it would seem more reasonable,’ Mr Harvey bravely continued.

  Mrs Marling, hurrying to fill the breach, was just about to say that she remembered seeing the Chapeau de Paille d’Italie in Paris as a young woman, but terrified of the possible effect of the word Italie on Mlle Duchaux, hastily amended her words and said how very amusing Labiche’s farces were. Mlle Duchaux, recovering herself, gave a short, capable and quite unwanted lecture on Labiche and the Palais-Royal, and harmony was restored till Hilda opened the door and stood looking at the company.

  ‘We haven’t quite finished, Hilda,’ said Miss Harvey.

  ‘It isn’t that, Miss Frances,’ said Hilda. ‘Did you remember it’s National Savings today? I just seen Mrs Smith go into Dr March and she’ll be here next. I thought you’d like to know.’

  She approached the tea-table, announced that they would need more hot water and took the jug away.

  ‘Such a nuisance,’ said Miss Harvey plaintively. ‘I would far rather put bits of money straight into War Loan or something by cheque, but we felt we ought to join the Marling Savings Group as we are living here.’

  ‘We didn’t know how much to subscribe,’ said Mr Harvey. ‘Half-a-crown a week seems very mean, but we thought it would look proud to give more. We do put all we can into Government Bonds. But to have half-crowns ready on Saturday afternoons is really worse than the Germans.’

  He looked nervously at Mlle Duchaux, thinking that she might say ‘Les Allemands!’ but she remained unmoved.

  ‘And having Mrs Smith to collect it is so awful,’ said Miss Harvey in her turn. ‘It gives her such a chance to see what we are doing and take things away. Hilda won’t give her a chance in the kitchen, but I don’t know how to stop her in the house.’

  The front doorbell rang and Hilda was heard scurrying along the passage.

  ‘She’s here,’ said Hilda, hastily putting a jug of hot water on the table before opening the front door.

  ‘I am quite a stranger,’ said Mrs Smith as she came in. ‘But the war, you know. I have been out col
lecting since half-past three and am nearly at the end of my tether.’

  There was nothing for Miss Harvey to do but to ask her to have some tea and introduce her to Mlle Duchaux, who had been looking at Mrs Smith as if she were a grammatical mistake in a French essay.

  ‘Pleased to make your acquaintance, I’m sure,’ said Mrs Smith. ‘I used to read a lot of Victor Yugo’s poems when I was young.’

  ‘Ah oui, les vers de Victor Hugo,’ said Mlle Duchaux, with a cold clarity and precision worthy of the house of Molière.

  ‘You speak French,’ said Mrs Smith with interest. ‘Vous êtes Free French? J’admeer beaucoup General de Gole, le leader des Free French.’

  Mlle Duchaux said nothing, but it was evident that she resented Mrs Smith’s attachment to the General.