Marling Hall

by Angela Thirkell

  ‘Je ne dis pas non,’ said Mlle Duchaux. ‘Ah! le bon sucre de France, combien je le regrette!’

  She took two lumps.

  ‘I am very sweet-tooth,’ she announced.

  ‘One can always make up in quantity what one cannot get in quality,’ said Miss Bunting. ‘Lucy dear, pass the sandwiches to Mlle Duchaux.’

  ‘Je dois dire,’ said Mlle Duchaux taking two, ‘que votre margarine est infecte. Quand je pense au bon beurre qu’on avait en France, le beurre si frais, si délicieux – et dire qu’on se trouve forcé de manger cette espèce de graisse! Je veux bien prendre encore un sandwich, Miss Marling.’

  ‘It is so lucky,’ said Miss Harvey, ‘that we are having fairly good weather for Mlle Duchaux’s visit. We have had tea out of doors twice.’

  ‘And frankly,’ said Mlle Duchaux, suddenly becoming English, ‘it was two times too much. Enough is as good as a feast of this climate. Je vais vous dire une chose, madame,’ she continued, interrupting Mrs Marling who was talking to Oliver, ‘vous devriez installer des calorifères. Si vous aviez vu l’appartement de ma belle-soeur à Orléans, un si joli appartement, bien meublé, bien chauffé, the very last word in comfort, a snug little nest as you say. Votre château doit être froid comme tout, l’hiver. Take my advice, get your people to install central heating. It will not be expensive. I see you have quantities of trees in your property. Vous les ferez abattre, vous les brûlerez, un point c’est tout. Je veux bien prendre un de ces petits gâteaux, seulement pour l’essayer. Ce n’est pas comme nos gâteaux chez nous. Ah, les pâtisseries d’Orléans, they would make you lick your lips. The water comes into my mouth only to think of them. Enfin, il faut se résigner. Si vous m’offriez encore un gâteau – merci, mademoiselle Lucie. Il faut manger pour vivre.’

  ‘I hear,’ said Oliver politely, ‘that you are taking some kind of Government job, Mlle Duchaux. I hope it will be an interesting one.’

  ‘I have engaged myself as directress of an institution in which French ladies will work for their country,’ said Mlle Duchaux. ‘We shall organise des thés, des dancings, enfin everything to give the French Tommy a rousing good time when he comes back on leave.’

  ‘Where does he come on leave from?’ asked Lucy.

  Everyone flung themselves into the breach and discussed some one thing, some another, chiefly hens, a subject on which Mlle Duchaux, not being strong on fowls, felt it better not to express an opinion, beyond remarking that there was nothing in England comparable with a bonne poularde de Bresse, and that no English cook could accommodate fowls as a French cook did.

  Miss Bunting said aloud to herself that words which looked the same in both languages and had different meanings were a most interesting study. She herself, she said, learnt something nearly every day from the delightful dictionary of the late M. Chevalley whose death was such a loss to scholarship.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ said Mr Marling, coming heavily in and leaving the door open. ‘Havin’ a hen-party, Amabel? I suppose you haven’t kept some tea for me?’

  ‘Papa dear,’ said Oliver getting up, ‘Frances has brought a friend, Mlle Duchaux, to tea. My father, Mlle Duchaux.’

  He shut the door and sat down again.

  ‘And how are you, mademoiselle,’ said Mr Marling, letting himself down into his chair. ‘Enjoyin’ our part of the world, eh? No Germans here, thank the Lord and hope there never will be. Nasty business about France, very nasty. I’m an old man now and I daresay my children will tell you I don’t keep up to date, but the French are exactly like what they were in ’fourteen to ’eighteen. My regiment got badly let down by ’em in our sector. Well, my wife will show you the place. Not much to see now.’

  ‘I was just saying to Mrs Marling,’ said Mlle Duchaux, who was so startled by her host’s Olde Englishe manner that she did not, luckily, altogether follow his drift, ‘that you should install central heating here. I see your grounds are well wooded. You should have some trees felled to burn them and it would not cost you a halfpenny.’

  Mr Marling went purple in the face, but being of a courteous nature and trained to the sacredness of guests, he merely swallowed his tea at a gulp, heaved himself up again and saying he must go and look at a horse’s legs, left the room without shutting the door.

  ‘Mais il est tout à fait charmant, Monsieur Marling,’ said Mlle Duchaux. ‘Ecoutez, Monsieur Oliver, si vous vouliez bien fermer la porte – je ne peux pas m’habituer à vos courants d’air anglais. Oui, charmant. Il a tout à fait l’air d’un country gentleman.’

  This seemed so probable that Mrs Marling could only murmur something apologetic about his being very busy.

  Miss Harvey who was by now in a state of gibbering nerves at her old governess’s behaviour got up and said they must go, as she believed Lucy was going to drive them back. Lucy said Bunny was coming too and she’d go and get the pony cart up from the stables.

  ‘You can’t all get into the pony cart,’ said Oliver. ‘Look here, Lucy, you drive Mlle Duchaux and Bunny, and I’ll walk down with Frances – unless you are tired,’ he added.

  Frances, who was not relishing the prospect of being a fourth at very close quarters in the pony cart, said the walk would do her good after her day in the office.

  ‘I’ll tell you what then,’ said Lucy, ‘we’ll walk down to the stables and pick up the pony cart and Frances can come when she likes. Come on, Mlle Duchaux.’

  Mlle Duchaux embarked upon a fine arabesque of farewell, which from suggestions for a complete reconstruction of Marling Hall and the park, rose to a vigorous denunciation of English cooking.

  ‘Mais je dois dire une chose,’ she said as she shook hands with Mrs Marling, ‘vous mangez beaucoup trop en Angleterre, une nourriture excessive qui ne convient pas à ce temps de guerre. C’est un défaut de la race, je le sais, mais il me semble qu’à l’heure actuelle les Anglais pourraient et devraient se rendre compte de leurs défauts et tâcher de les corriger. C’est un crime contre l’humanité que les Anglais et les Américains se bourrent à leur aise pendant que mes compatriotes, si braves, si courageux, périssent de faim. Vous ne m’en voudrez pas de vous avoir parlé avec cette franchise toute française: nous sommes comme ça, nous autres.’

  Lucy said in a loud mutinous aside that the Free French at the Convalescent Home at Southbridge ate nothing but butter.

  ‘Alors, c’est au revoir, n’est ce pas,’ said Mlle Duchaux ignoring or not hearing this protest, ‘et merci mille fois, madame, de votre charmant accueil. Vos petits gâteaux ne sont pas mauvais: vous pourriez même dire à votre cuisinière de m’en envoyer, n’est ce pas. J’aime beaucoup les friandises.’

  Miss Bunting, saying with great composure that they must not keep the pony waiting, led Mlle Duchaux from the room.

  ‘I can’t tip the pony cart over, or I might hurt Bunny,’ said Lucy darkly as she followed them.

  Mrs Marling and Oliver hardly dared to exchange looks for fear of hurting Miss Harvey’s feelings, but she was only too ready to apologise for the behaviour of her old governess.

  ‘Mlle Duchaux never used to be like that,’ she said. ‘I suppose it’s very awful for French people now, and being Free seems to be so difficult. I’m sure she didn’t mean to say anything, Mrs Marling.’

  Mrs Marling begged her not to feel responsible so kindly that she cheered up. Mrs Marling then went to write letters for the District Nursing Committee and left her son and her guest alone. Miss Harvey said she ought to be getting back, so she and Oliver walked across the lawn towards the lime avenue which was a short cut to the village. The Double Summer Time light, which was so harsh at tea time, was just beginning to soften as they strolled down the avenue towards the Rising. The late afternoon was calm, their steps matched, they felt no particular need to speak. When they reached the further end where a white gate leads to the footbridge across the little river, Oliver stopped and looked back at his home. Its dignified garden front was an eternal joy to him and he felt that his companion was sharing
it.

  ‘What a perfect home,’ said Miss Harvey in a low voice.

  ‘I love it quite unreasonably,’ said Oliver. ‘I can’t say that I was ever really unhappy at school or college, but I always had Marling in my mind, and however much I looked forward to coming home, it was never so good as the thing itself.’

  ‘When your father dies – forgive me —’ said Miss Harvey, ‘I do hope you will be able to go on living here.’

  Oliver said he hoped that would not be for many years. He sank into a reverie, thinking of the place without his father and mother, trying to imagine Bill and his wife as master and mistress. Bill’s wife, though not exactly his sort, was a thoroughly nice woman, well trained to a sense of family duty, and he felt quite certain that she would always have a bed for him. Probably that rather uncomfortable little room near the top of the back stair by the baize door into which hunting bachelors were occasionally thrust would be known as ‘Oliver’s room’ and the children would come and jump on him in bed or watch him shave if they were not too old by then. Too old by then: what a way to put it, as if he were hoping his parents would die next year, though at moments he wondered if his father, confused and depressed in a rapidly changing world where all he stood for was being battered and undermined by friend and foe alike, would not be rather glad to slip out of it; though he would do his duty as long as he could stand or see or hear. He sighed.

  ‘Sad thoughts?’ said Miss Harvey, with so exactly the right tone of sympathetic yet discreet interest that she was quite delighted with herself.

  ‘Graves and worms and epitaphs,’ said Oliver lightly. ‘And talking of which, Frances, look what I have got.’

  He took Bohun’s book from his pocket and opened it at the title page.

  ‘The librarian at the Public Library rescued this from the salvage,’ he said. ‘Do you see the date?’

  ‘Sixteen sixty-five,’ said Miss Harvey, gazing at a woodcut of the Rev. Thos. Bohun, MA, with a skullcap, gown and bands, and his nose rather out of drawing.

  ‘That is to say,’ said Oliver, ‘two years later than the recognised edition. And there are two poems in it that have never been noticed in any criticism of Bohun’s work.’

  ‘How marvellous!’ breathed Miss Harvey.

  ‘It is rather fascinating,’ said Oliver, ‘to think that by some trick of fortune this is the only copy known to be extant. He went up to London in the year of the Plague and died there, and it is quite possible that in the general fear and confusion his new book was lost or burnt and this one copy, sent to some friend in Barchester, has survived. This poem, To his Mistrefs, on feeing fundrie Worme-caftes, has probably never been read until today.’

  He held the open book so that she could see it. Miss Harvey, leaning towards him, looked at the yellowed page with its elegant italics and long esses and read.

  ‘As Wormes their Bodies’ earthen Images

  Vpon the Grounde (groundlings themfelves indeede)

  Do voide, themfelves a Father, yet a fonne:

  So I, my Body’s race through thine b’ing runne,

  Do void (nor can avoid) th’immortal Feed—

  ‘I mean Seed,’ said Miss Harvey correcting herself,

  ‘“Making (with thine) our true Effigies.”’

  She stopped.

  ‘A very Bohun-like conceit,’ said Oliver. ‘One can take it as a type of the immortality of the soul, or of the body.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Miss Harvey thoughtfully. ‘He means that worm casts —’

  She paused.

  ‘Of course the body and the soul were eternally mingled in Bohun’s metaphysics,’ said Oliver.

  ‘Yes,’ said Miss Harvey, adding with an air of candour, ‘but I don’t think I quite follow his argument.’

  ‘It seems to me clear enough,’ said Oliver. ‘The worm makes the worm cast which though made of earth is the complete copy of itself. The lover, desiring to perpetuate himself, does so —’

  He paused.

  ‘Yes, I see the analogy,’ said Miss Harvey.

  They both paused. It was the very dickens, Oliver reflected, that one could not examine a simple metaphysical poem by a respectable Canon of Barchester without feeling uncomfortable. He and Frances were rational beings, experienced in the world, used to literature, but there was no doubt about it they were both shying away from the simple metaphysical poem. Regretfully he came to the conclusion that they were just too old to discuss this mingling of the sacred and profane with real freedom. He could think of dozens of young people, round about his sister Lucy’s age of twenty-five or so, who would thrash out the whole question of worm casts with academic interest and no feeling of constraint. Lucy herself would probably call it rot, which was of course an attitude. His parents would simply have read it, accepted it as a seventeenth-century poem and thought no more about it. But he and Frances stood between two generations and much as he had wished to discuss the poem in all its bearings he was forced to realise that it could not be done. With a spurt of rancour against the canon who had brought this confusion on his mind, he shut the book and put it into his pocket.

  As for Miss Harvey, she felt, not for the first time, how silly men were. Any child could understand the implications of the poem. She could think of dozens of intelligent women friends who would have analysed it word by word, laying full stress on its biological and psychological significance. But men were so apt to be squeamish. Still, she liked Oliver and if he were going to live at Marling, she did not shrink from considering that she might live at Marling too, for that would have been quite as squeamish. By a common impulse they walked on, across the footbridge and the water meadow, up by the allotments and so came into the village near the forge. Here they parted with a slightly clinging hand-clasp and a comfortable feeling that they would meet again at the office next day, and Oliver walked slowly back to the Hall.

  At dinner there was a considerable amount of discussion about the tea-party. Lucy said Mlle Duchaux seemed to have enjoyed driving back in the pony cart and how funny it was that she had been driving two governesses in what used to be called the governess cart.

  ‘Did you and Frances have a nice walk?’ she asked Oliver.

  Oliver said very nice.

  ‘Oh, I forgot,’ said Lucy. ‘Mlle Duchaux says she has a nephew in the Free French and if he comes anywhere near here can he come and see us? So I said of course, only to telephone first. Was that all right, Mother?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ said her mother. ‘And will you ask Octavia to tell her mother that I would be very glad to have tea with her on Friday if it suits. I have a committee in Barchester that afternoon.’

  ‘I’ve got to go in too about the chickens’ rations,’ said Lucy. ‘I’ll tell you what, I’ll ring Geoffrey up, he promised he’d let me see him at work in the office and you could come too. And I’ll tell you what —’

  ‘Je dois vous dire une chose,’ Miss Bunting quoted softly.

  Lucy stared; then her face and neck crimsoned.

  ‘Oh Bunny, you don’t mean I’m like Mlle Duchaux,’ she said anxiously.

  ‘Not a bit, Lucy dear,’ said the old governess, ‘but you do work your catchwords to death.’

  ‘I say, I am sorry,’ said Lucy with genuine and unforced contrition. ‘Why didn’t you say before, like the time I always said “definitely”? I’ve quite stopped that. I’ll tell you what, I’ll definitely try to remember —’

  She stopped as her mother, her brother and Miss Bunting began to laugh and in a moment had whole-heartedly joined them. Mr Marling said what on earth were they all laughing at and if no one would take the trouble to speak plainly no one could understand what they said.

  7

  Octavia Crawley, who though very dull was reliable, told her mother that Mrs Marling and Lucy would like to come to tea and Mrs Crawley said that would fit in very well as the Choristers’ Parents’ Club meeting was not till half-past five, and she hoped Lettice would come too. On hearing this Lucy teleph
oned to Mr Harvey and instructed him to show her over the Regional Commissioner’s Office after tea. Mr Harvey not having the presence of mind to say no said yes, adding that it would be very nice if Lettice cared to come too. Both these invitations were used by Lucy as a battering ram to make her sister come, who in any case liked Mrs Crawley and was pleased at the idea of seeing where Oliver worked; also Barchester was a good central point where one might see people one wanted to see. So on the Friday Lucy drove her mother and sister into Barchester and delivered them at the Deanery.

  In the drawing-room, that fine room on the first floor overlooking the Close, they found Mrs Crawley and Octavia who was having twenty-four hours off duty and looked as plain in her private clothes as she did in uniform, though not quite so shapeless. Mrs Marling, who had not seen her for some time, asked after the Dean’s ex-chaplain, Mr Needham, to whom Octavia had been engaged since the beginning of the war.