Marling Hall

by Angela Thirkell

  ‘Oh, Tommy’s very well,’ said Octavia with a faint air of animation. ‘He likes Iceland awfully. He saw a film in Reykjavik with Glamora Tudor in it. He wants to go to Russia.’

  ‘I hope he won’t,’ said Mrs Marling. ‘It will be so anxious for you.’

  ‘I wish I was going,’ said Octavia. ‘I’ve never had any proper frost-bite cases and I expect I’d get millions there, but that beast Matron says she couldn’t spare me even if I was allowed to go.’

  ‘I didn’t know nurses were being sent out,’ said Mrs Marling.

  A general conversation characterised by partial knowledge hovering on the verge of ignorance then took place, during which it was decided that no one knew if nurses were being sent or not, that if they were it was a shame, and it was a shame if they weren’t. This conversation might have gone on for ever had not the dean come in with Mrs Morland, the novelist, who was a friend of everyone present.

  ‘Laura, how nice!’ said Mrs Crawley.

  ‘I was trying to get some tapioca, though quite in vain,’ said Mrs Morland, ‘and I saw the dean on the other side of the road so I went across. How are you, Mrs Marling? Lettice dear; and Lucy; and Octavia. How is Tommy?’

  ‘He’s awfully well,’ said Octavia. ‘He saw an awfully good film at Reykjavik of Glamora Tudor. He wants to go to Russia. I think it’s awfully mean, because he’ll see all the frost-bite cases and I want frightfully to see some and no one knows if I could get there. People’s hands and feet and faces are ghastly when they’ve been frost-bitten and they often get gangrened.’

  Exhausted by this outburst she sank into a pleasant reverie of a wardful of hideously mutilated patients.

  Lettice enquired after Mrs Morland’s new book.

  ‘Adrian Coates wants it by the New Year,’ said Mrs Morland in her tragedy voice, ‘so I am working practically night and day. Of course there may not be a New Year at all, but one just goes on as if there would be. If it weren’t for the Russians I could manage.’

  And what, said the dean, had the Russians done.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Mrs Morland. ‘At least I mean they are wonderful of course, though it seems a little unreasonable to call them allies, because allies are people that help one.’

  The dean said laughingly that they all knew his devotion to the Finns, as indeed they did, for he had talked of little else for the first year of the war owing to having been on a cruise to the Capitals of Northern Europe before the outbreak of hostilities; but in spite of his deep, he might say his profound admiration for that gallant little nation he could not, in his conscience, withhold an equal meed of admiration for their quondam oppressors, now so magnificently holding their own against the German hordes. And how, he said, could any nation render greater help to a sister nation than by holding in check the common foe.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Mrs Morland, always only too ready to agree with anyone at the moment because she so hated arguments which often made her hairpins come out. ‘Of course it is really heroic of them to fight for their liberty and burn everything and I am sure if we had to burn Barchester we would think twice, but what I mean is two people being attacked by the same person doesn’t make them allies. At least not if allies is what I always think of it as, which is people who fly to one another’s help against anything, but they never flew to our help about anything at all – when I say flying I don’t mean aeroplanes of course.’

  The dean said with a patient voice that our dear Laura did not quite understand the principles which governed our alliance with the Soviet Government. He who was not against us, if he might turn the phrase, was for us and —

  ‘But Turkey isn’t against us, and no one could say she was for us,’ said Lucy, who had no hairpins and rather liked arguments.

  And, the dean continued, there was no doubt that Russia, by her magnificent resistance, was doing more for us than any declared ally.

  ‘I cannot forget,’ said Mrs Morland, ‘who killed the tsar and his wife and the poor little tsarevich and all those extremely good-looking girls.’

  The dean so far forgot himself as to say rather crossly that we had beheaded Charles I.

  ‘That,’ said Mrs Morland majestically, ‘is exactly what I mean. Look how pleased everyone was when Cromwell died and Charles II came back. Cromwell must have been very like Hitler.’

  This snipe-flight from Russia to Germany disconcerted the dean, who said huffily that the comparison was most unfortunate, as Cromwell was one of the most enlightened rulers England had known and look what had happened to the Stuarts only twenty-eight years after the Restoration.

  ‘Seventy, eighty, eighty-eight,’ said Mrs Morland counting on her fingers. ‘The flight of James II. But no one cut his head off. Besides I cannot bear Cromwell on account of that wart on his face which he could easily have done something about, though I’m not sure if wearing a chauffeur’s cap like Stalin isn’t just as bad. But then the Russians are eleven days behind us, aren’t they.’

  The dean kept an offended silence. Mrs Crawley said she thought it was thirteen days by now and Mrs Marling said hadn’t they altered that, like our having Double Summer Time.

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Lucy. ‘Let’s look in the Encyclopædia, Dr Crawley.’

  It’s no good looking in Father’s Encyclopædia,’ said Octavia, ‘because it has only got to where Dr Livingstone hasn’t been found yet.’

  ‘But Dr Livingstone wasn’t in Russia,’ said Mrs Morland, perplexed but tenacious.

  ‘No, in Africa,’ said Mrs Crawley, who felt that as a Dean’s wife she ought to intervene when missionaries were concerned.

  The Dean said that Dr Livingstone was beside the point.

  Lettice, who had not yet felt called upon to speak, thought she had better say something calming and mentioned the Russian ballet.

  ‘I wish,’ said Octavia, ‘that I could see a Russian ballet dancer’s feet. They get in a ghastly state going about on tip-toe like that. If I went to Russia I might see some.’

  The dean cast an unloving look on his unmarried daughter, and might even have spoken to her sharply, though it would have made no impression on her at all, but that the parlourmaid announced Mr Leslie, and David came in.

  ‘David, how nice!’ said Mrs Crawley, whose family when younger had been apt to chorus ‘how nice’ when visitors arrived, so that their mother should not get it in first.

  ‘I apologise for bursting in on you unannounced,’ said David, ‘or rather underannounced because your parlourmaid, though heaven knows I gave her my correct rank as His Majesty’s Regulations command, is so anxious to show that she was once under-parlourmaid at Rushwater that I wonder she didn’t announce me as Mr David, but hearing from a sure hand that two or three were to be gathered here – sorry Dr Crawley – I thought I’d make it three or four. And hundreds of Marlings, fair fa’ their sonsie faces.’

  His cousins greeted him and if Lettice looked a little confused no one noticed.

  ‘But I am showing gross discourtesy,’ said David, looking at Mrs Morland who, her colour heightened by her dialectical exercises, her hair escaping as usual from its pins, her hat at a decidedly unfashionable angle, sat looking like a second-class Sibyl.

  ‘Oh, I am so sorry,’ said Mrs Crawley. ‘One always takes it for granted that people know each other, though why they should I can’t think. Laura, this is David Leslie. You ought to know Mrs Morland’s name, David, even if you haven’t met her. You must have read her books.’

  ‘I don’t see why at all. How do you do,’ said Mrs Morland, who hated this form of introduction almost more than she hated the people who told her proudly how many friends they had lent her books to.

  ‘Not Mrs Morland who writes the books about Madame Koska’s workshop!’ said David. ‘I confess to my shame that I used not to be a reader of your books, but when I got into the air force I found the whole mess reading you and saw the light.’

  Mrs Morland was so pleased that two large brown hairpins fell out
of her. David picked them up and restored them.

  ‘Do they really?’ said Mrs Morland, who was never so surprised as when anyone liked her hard-working books.

  ‘Word of one of our gallant airmen,’ said David. ‘And what is more I have one of your books, only a sixpenny I admit, but the rank is but the guinea stamp, in my pocket. If you would write my name in it, the whole mess will be green with envy.’

  ‘Of course I will,’ said Mrs Morland, her eyes beginning to brim with emotion and grabbling in her bag.

  ‘If it is a pen, have mine,’ said David. ‘True I shall never be able to use it again owing to its hallowed association, but what of it? Sign please.’

  ‘What shall I say?’ Mrs Morland enquired earnestly. ‘I can’t say “David Leslie with love from Laura Morland”, because I didn’t give it to you. I know what.’

  She wrote something and handed the book to David with a pleased yet guilty look.

  ‘“I wish I had given this book to David Leslie.”’ he read. ‘A perfect inscription, Mrs Morland. Do you always write that?’

  Mrs Morland had the grace to look slightly confused and said she sometimes did.

  ‘Now I know you as well as if we had played together,’ said David, ‘and if I might have my pen back— Thank you,’ he added as Mrs Morland stopped putting it into her bag in her confusion. ‘And I can assure you that the daredevils of the air will toast you with a rousing cheer when I show them the book.’

  ‘We were having a very interesting talk about Russia just before you came in, David,’ said Mrs Crawley.

  ‘You can’t have been,’ said David. ‘Not interesting. Ignorant possibly.’

  ‘It was jolly ignorant,’ said Lucy cheerfully. ‘The dean and Mrs Morland were having an argument about Russia and no one knew if they had stopped having Easter at the wrong time or not, but Dr Crawley won’t have a word against them.’

  The dean said that Lucy exaggerated. None, he said, could admire the magnificent resistance of the Soviet more than he, but at the same time he could not but bear in mind, and the more especially since he had been privileged to tour the northern capitals of Europe just before the war, the undoubted oppressions exercised by the Russians in past years on a very gallant though unfortunately at the present moment misled little nation. He would, he said, deem himself a time-server were he to hold his peace on this subject. If one nation commanded our respect, that nation, whatever its subsequent deplorable and misguided policy, was the Finnish nation. All men of good will, he said, must needs think with him. Since the heroic ages no nation had compared with the Finns. Strong in purpose, lovers of truth and freedom, the Finns —

  Mrs Morland, who had kept her eyes shut in a very alarming way, suddenly opened them and said, ‘No,’ so loudly that the dean, to everyone’s relief, stopped.

  ‘Why “No”?’ said David, voicing everyone’s curiosity.

  ‘I know,’ said Mrs Morland, pushing her hair back with both hands in a very unbecoming way, ‘that I am not good at explaining, but one thing I can never forget, and that is my fur coat.’

  ‘None of us can,’ said David sympathetically. ‘But tell us some more.’

  ‘The winter before last,’ said Mrs Morland, looking round dramatically, ‘when Finland was being gallant, and the Russians were making so much progress in spite of everyone fighting in white nightgowns in the snow, I let the Finns have my fur coat. To be quite truthful it was only my second-best one, but I had paid three pounds to have it done up and there were years of wear in it and I hated parting with it. But I can’t bear to think of people being cold, though I daresay Dr Crawley would tell us that the Russians were cold too, only not gallant just then, so I did it up in a very large uncomfortable parcel, because you know how things like fur coats simply bulge out of everything, and sent it to the Finnish Relief Fund.’

  She paused for breath and David, who was enjoying himself hugely, said he hoped they had acknowledged it.

  ‘They did,’ said Mrs Morland impressively. ‘But no sooner had the Finns got my fur coat than they made peace with Russia. That is neither here nor there. If they wished to make peace that is entirely their own affair. But they had no business to take my fur coat under false pretences. If one gives people wedding presents and the marriage is broken off, they send the presents back.’

  ‘And your funeral baked fur coat Did coldly furnish forth the armistice table,’ said David.

  ‘So I am very sorry,’ said Mrs Morland, taking no notice of David’s Hamlet-words, ‘but that is a thing I never can forgive. Being gallant is one thing, but taking my fur coat under false pretences is another and though I may forget, for it is perfectly extraordinary how one forgets things, forgive I never shall.’

  David was so enchanted by Mrs Morland that he would willingly have lingered at her side, but though she thought he was a very pleasant young man, as indeed he was, her real wish was to talk to Mrs Crawley about grown-up things like servants and rationing. The dean had by now got into talk with Mrs Marling about a large Red Cross meeting at Barchester at which he was to speak, so David was able to take his cup of tea over to where his cousin Lettice was sitting on a small sofa. The peculiarity of this sofa was that a determined woman could fill it entirely or make room for a companion. Mrs Brandon had made good use of both these possibilities at the big Deanery dinner party in the first winter of the war and though she had been assisted by the chiffon dress of floating scarves that she was wearing, Lettice Watson, in a plain silk dress and a light woollen coat, performed the same miracle with apparent ease. As David approached she appeared to fill the seat. By the time he reached her she had shrunk into herself and left a space inviting him to sit down.

  When Lettice had heard of the invitation to tea with Mrs Crawley and the subsequent treat of going over to the Regional Commissioner’s Office, she had as we know accepted both. During the next few days not very much happened. The children were rather trying, she wasted five coupons on buying a pair of shoes that she didn’t really like, the Harveys were both on day duty, Captain Barclay had been away for ten days on a short course. More and more did her thoughts turn to her Cousin David as an amuser or livener-up. What she would have liked to do was to ring David up and ask him to dine with her in her stable, but if she did this she feared three things. David might be away in which case she might have to leave a message with Agnes Graham’s butler and he might not bother to ring her up when he came back; if he did come she was not quite sure whether Nurse would approve; and again if he did come she was perfectly sure that her mother, without any idea that she was intruding, would probably ask all about David’s visit, and even suggest that he and Lettice should both come and dine at the Hall.

  Lettice was angry with herself. David was her cousin and if she chose to ask him to dinner no one could say anything, certainly not Agnes’s butler, certainly not Nurse, though she could do a good deal by a terrifying reticence. Everyone knew that her mother always asked probing questions and expected circumstantial answers without the faintest wish to pry. But the fact remained that Lettice, a respectable widow nearer thirty than twenty, with an establishment and an income of her own, felt a diffidence for which she couldn’t account at the thought of ringing up her cousin.

  ‘It’s idiotic,’ she said indignantly to herself. ‘You aren’t in love with David and he isn’t in love with you. And why on earth you don’t ask him to dinner and have done with it, I can’t think.’

  And so she had gone on wavering, sometimes going so far as to take the telephone receiver off, once actually asking for Agnes’s number. She had then quietly hung up again: but the Exchange, who knew her very well, kindly rang her up a few minutes later to say she was through to General Graham’s. David was not in and she had to have a quite idiotic conversation with Agnes about the children, in the course of which Agnes mentioned that she was going to town on Thursday for the night. When she had rung off Lettice began to think and a little to dream. All through Wednesday she made up her mind and
unmade it. On Thursday she was busy in the morning over Red Cross work with her mother and fully occupied in the afternoon with her daughters, for it was Nurse’s afternoon out and Miss Bunting who so often came to the rescue was helping at a Bring and Buy Sale in Southbridge. By the time she had bathed her little girls and put them to bed she was very tired and depressed. Her evening meal was tasteless and when her maid, who was really quite a good cook, had cleared it away and gone home, she sat alone without even the twilight to soothe her, for Double Summer Time was still raging far into the night. Life loomed before her as an eternity of looking after children and being alone in the evening. Roger was gone and nothing would bring him back. She felt tears very close to the surface and got up and walked angrily about, hitting her eyes with her handkerchief.

  Suddenly she could bear herself no longer. She took off the receiver and asked for Agnes’s number. While the Southbridge exchange on which she was bandied words with the Nutfield exchange to which Little Misfit belonged, she was able to change her mind a dozen times and was just about to replace the receiver very quietly, hoping, for such are the self-deceptive powers of human nature, that the exchange would not notice, when the voice of Agnes Graham’s butler said this was Nutfield 703.