Marling Hall

by Angela Thirkell

  ‘I hoped you would wait till I came,’ he said.

  Lettice knew that any woman of spirit would say that she had not noticed whether he was there or not, but she also knew her own incapacity for putting a good face on her lies, so she smiled at him. Her smile was meant to convey that she cared not a whit about his movements, but it is rarely that our smiles look from the outside as they feel from the inside.

  ‘What a pleasing anxious being you are,’ said David.

  Lettice looked startled.

  ‘You do worry, love,’ said David. ‘I may be a laggard in love, but I am not a dastard in war, and nothing would have induced me not to come here when you were coming. Look at old John teaching Lucy’s young ideas how to shoot. You wouldn’t believe it, Lettice, but it was I who got John married. He and Mary were so full of delicacy that they were quite paralytic and I more or less knocked their heads together. Lord! Lord! I can make happy endings for other people, but I can’t make one for myself. And now I must go back to Little Misfit or Agnes will ask me how I could be so cross and naughty as to be late for dinner. Farewell, thou art just about the right dearness for my possessing. Give my love and goodbye to Cousin Amabel.’

  He picked up the end of Lettice’s scarf, kissed it, waved his hand to the company in general and was gone.

  ‘Mr David Leslie is a nice gentleman,’ said Miss Cowshay with a simpering sigh. ‘I always say, Mrs Marling, that Mr David Leslie is quite my beau ideel of a gentleman.’

  Amanda said one could always tell a gentleman by the way he acted and Mr David Leslie always acted like a gentleman, while another young female, the slave of the teleprinter, said he’d look lovely on the films. Lettice felt how true it was about people being sisters under their skin, but was glad on the whole that it didn’t show outwardly.

  As David had gone there seemed to be nothing to stay for and Lettice was quite glad when her mother finished talking to Miss Cowshay and summoned Lucy to drive them home. Oliver and the Harveys escorted them to the front door and then went back to their work.

  ‘You didn’t mind my telling Geoffrey about Bohun’s poem, did you?’ said Miss Harvey to Oliver.

  ‘I thought you said Bun,’ said Oliver, in whom the episode still rankled.

  ‘Only in front of Geoffrey,’ said Miss Harvey, with a downcast eye and sidelong glance which Oliver found very alluring.

  ‘I don’t mind in the least,’ he said, opening the door of his room for her.

  ‘But I do, a little,’ said Miss Harvey, laying her fingers very lightly on his arm and withdrawing them swiftly. ‘It was amusing when Bohun was our secret. But I know I am silly.’

  It did occur to Oliver that if she wanted it to be a secret, telling it to her brother was not the best way of keeping it hidden, but he made every allowance, and did not begin his work again for an appreciable space of time.

  At dinner Mr Marling asked as usual what they had all been doing, and before anyone could answer gave them a very dull and detailed account of his own day, including a good deal of abuse of various fellers who had not seen eye to eye with him on various subjects. When he had grumbled himself out, his wife with her usual even humour said they had had a very nice tea at the Deanery and then a very interesting visit to the Regional Commissioner’s Office.

  ‘And whom do you think we saw there, William?’ she said. ‘That nice girl, Miss Gowshay, who used to be in the cashier’s office at Pilchard’s. I always paid my bills to her and she used to cash cheques for me.’

  Mr Marling said why couldn’t they always have the beans cooked like that and what the deuce was a girl from Pilchard’s doing in the Commissioner’s Office.

  ‘I told you, William, she is working there,’ said Mrs Marling.

  ‘Never said any such thing, my dear,’ said Mr Marling. ‘Never mentioned a word about the girl workin’ there, did she now, Miss Bunting?’

  ‘Mrs Marling did not mention it in so many words,’ said Miss Bunting, ‘there you are perfectly right. But I confess I understood her to mean that the girl worked there, or she would not have been there at all. Lucy dear, the water please.’

  ‘It was splendid, father,’ said Lucy. ‘John Leslie showed me everything. You know, everything that’s happening everywhere in all sorts of secret ways, and the Barchester Fire Engines have to go as far as Budmouth if there’s a raid. I’ll tell you what, I’ll see if Captain Grant at the Fire Station will let me do AFS for a bit this autumn. I’d simply love to go down to Budmouth in a raid and help with the hose. And David was there but he was talking to Lettice. Oh Mother, I’m sorry, I forgot to telephone to Octavia. I won’t be a moment. It’s about the Free French.’

  ‘Finish your coffee first, Lucy dear,’ said Miss Bunting, and Lucy, to her own great surprise, finished it.

  ‘Amabel,’ said Mr Marling when his younger daughter had bolted her coffee and gone to telephone, ‘Lettice is seeing quite a lot of young Leslie. No business of mine, but you’re her mother. Don’t want the child to be disappointed, you know. David’s a good boy, but he and Lettice – wouldn’t do.’

  To avoid any comment on his remarks he lighted a cigar and went away to his study.

  ‘Why did William say that?’ said Mrs Marling, half to herself, half to Miss Bunting.

  ‘Men often understand men better than women do,’ said Miss Bunting. ‘When Lady Griselda Palliser was running after Lord Humberton, before he married Miss Rivers of course, it was her father, the Duke of Omnium, who drew the duchess’s attention to it and events proved His Grace to be perfectly right. Lord Humberton was a good enough young man, but he could not be considered for Lady Griselda. The duchess said to me afterwards, “Bunny, I thought the duke was making an unnecessary fuss, but I now see that he was perfectly right.”’

  ‘Well,’ said Mrs Marling with her usual candour, ‘I must say I think William is making a quite unnecessary amount of fuss. And as for running after men, that is a thing Lettice has never done.’

  ‘Lettice has an excellent character,’ said Miss Bunting. ‘I know few of my pupils who are more what I would wish. But she is so retired as a rule that a small advance from her means more than all Lady Griselda’s rather hoydenish way of pursuing Lord Humberton. She is too much alone.’

  ‘I daresay you are right,’ said Mrs Marling. ‘It’s all rather worrying. But I think you exaggerate, Bunny. After all, they are cousins. We might go through that list of dressings for the Nutfield Hospital now.’

  Miss Bunting signified her acquiescence. But the thought of Lettice exposed to unhappiness remained with her and that night she dreamt her Dream about Hitler more clearly than usual.

  8

  It was a phenomenon well known to David Leslie’s friends that from time to time, usually just when he appeared most settled, he would submerge as it were, and for a week or a fortnight or even a month or two, no one would know where he was. Then he would reappear, as charming as ever but quite silent about where he had been or what he had been doing. The truth, as he well knew himself, was that he feared boredom as he feared nothing else, and among the boring things of life he counted close human relationships. His mother, his sister Agnes, he adored and with them he felt safe. With all other human beings, however delightful they might be, however flattering their affection for him might be, he too quickly felt that he had had enough. Very often he left a wound behind by his rapid flight, but when he came back the scar was healed and no rancour was felt, because, as his sister-in-law had once remarked, he was so very Davidish. Had he possessed inner contentment, no one would have been happier.

  Now, after cultivating the society of the Marlings and of his cousin Lettice in particular, he suddenly resented his own affection for them and felt he must be gone. A special job of work came his way and he vanished, with only an Air Ministry address for letters. This news reached the Marlings through Agnes Graham, who rang up about their proposed visit to her mother.

  ‘Darling Mamma so particularly wants you, Cousin Amabel,’ she said
, ‘because she is in great difficulties about writing her reminiscences and she says you are the only person who can tell her what year your father went in the Big Wheel at Earl’s Court Exhibition.’

  Mrs Marling asked why.

  ‘I am sure,’ said Agnes’s unruffled voice, ‘that I have not the faintest idea, but Mamma has Lord Nutfield’s name written on a piece of notepaper with Windsor Castle on it, so she thought you might know.’

  Mrs Marling felt the faint bewilderment that so often overcame Lady Emily Leslie’s friends when her ladyship began to explain anything, and to avoid fuller explanation told Agnes they would be delighted to come to tea and rang off, as she knew Agnes’s powers of going on talking and wanted to write some letters before she went down to tea with Lettice.

  The occasion was Clare Watson’s fourth birthday which was being celebrated by a small party and a cake with four candles. The guests were originally Mrs Marling and Miss Bunting. To them had been added Mlle Duchaux and Captain Barclay; the former from pure kindness as it was her last day with the Harveys and both of them were on duty and, we may say, had made but a half-hearted effort to change their hours, the latter also from pure kindness, because he appeared to like coming to Marling and to be rather unemployed at the moment.

  Since the visit to the Regional Commissioner’s Office and David’s disappearance some time had passed. September was well into its last week and even Double Summer Time did not make the evenings last after dinner. Lettice had missed David a good deal, but to her own surprise and even relief she had not pined. On the contrary, she had quite enjoyed herself. Captain Barclay had been to Marling for lunch, for tea, for dinner, for the night, for tennis and for no particular reason, and though Lettice did not feel with him the pleasurable excitement, uncertainty and general unsatisfactoriness that she felt with David, she had found him very agreeable company and had promised to go and stay with his people in Yorkshire for a few days, later in the autumn. Intricate though the ramifications were, it had been established that, via the late Lord Stoke, Captain Barclay was if not a relation at any rate a distant connection by marriage, so everyone felt very comfortable and called him Tom.

  Lucy looked on his progress with an indulgent eye. It was clearly understood in her mind at any rate that he was her property, and this being so she was quite happy to let him amuse himself with Lettice, or in any other way he chose. As for staying with his people, she would have refused the invitation at once, on the grounds of having far too much to do at home and in the neighbourhood and in general not wanting to: which was perhaps why the invitation was not given. For Captain Barclay’s mother in Yorkshire, while delighted to ask Lettice Watson when her son suggested it, saw no reason to ask Lucy Marling when he had not suggested it. As for his sisters, if they had thought about it at all they would have said the same, but as they were busy being very efficient in war work and all wore uniform, they naturally had a kindly contempt for a brother who was merely a professional soldier, and for any of his friends.

  The auspicious day was marred by two contretemps. The first was that Clare was sick after breakfast owing to emotion and the sight of her birthday cake which Nurse had rashly left in the kitchen where she could see it; but she was none the worse and was considered to have acted on the whole in a way creditable to human nature. The second and really bad misfortune was that Mrs Smith who had come up to the Hall to ask if Mr Marling would sign a legal paper for her, met Mrs Marling at the door just as she was leaving and walked down the drive with her. On hearing where Mrs Marling was going, or rather on ferreting it out of her, she became so lachrymose on the subject of her own loneliness and childlessness, that Mrs Marling, though she knew that Mrs Smith had married at an age which made any chance of a family of quite Sarah-like improbability, was weak enough to say that she knew Lettice would be pleased if she would come in for a moment. Lettice was not particularly pleased, but she realised her mother’s position and did not wish to make it more uncomfortable. Moreover, the feeling, to which we have before alluded, of Mrs Smith as a kind of vassal or dependant having a claim on her courtesy was strong in her, so she welcomed the unwelcome guest very kindly.

  The tea-table was very well spread considering that the war had been going on for more than two years. In preparation for Clare’s birthday Nurse and the maid had hoarded sugar, the Marling fowls had supplied eggs, butter had been sent by various American friends, and the result was a very unwarlike cake with an iced top and CLARE written on it in pink. There was also bread and real butter, honey sent by Captain Barclay’s mother from her own bees, various very good little biscuits of oatmeal, Hovis flour and wholemeal, confected by Nurse who was a very good hand at such delicacies in a trifling, lady-like amateur manner that did not compromise her dignity, and as a special treat some sandwiches filled with grated chocolate, the gift of Lucy, who could not come till after tea because she was driving convalescent soldiers from the Barchester General Hospital and had very nobly sacrificed a slab of chocolate given to her by a grateful Canadian sergeant.

  When everything was in place Nurse, bearing herself high and disposedly, marshalled the company to their seats. Captain Barclay was placed between Diana and Clare, who had temporarily transferred their affections to him. Nurse who knew quite well that Mrs Smith was a gate-crasher kept her next to herself, for she had gathered from Hilda that Mrs Smith had a weakness for portable property and wished to keep an eye on her. The little girls were told to say their grace. Diana, who was rapidly approaching the age when to say one’s grace in public becomes a shameful ordeal, looked rather sulky. Nurse said, ‘Now then, we mustn’t have any silliness with Miss Bunting here,’ which remark relegated Mlle Duchaux and Mrs Smith to their proper place in a most satisfactory manner. Diana shut her eyes, put her hands together and said her grace in a very fat, complaining voice.

  Clare, just because Diana had sulked, was seized by the spirit of showing that she was very good. Clasping her hands and screwing her eyes up till nothing but her long lashes could be seen, she hurriedly said some words in gibberish and opening her eyes looked round with an expression of sanctity. Lettice of course adored them both, each for her peculiar wickedness. Nurse while thoroughly disapproving chose to say nothing, silently daring Mrs Smith and Mlle Duchaux to find any fault with her charges. The tension being now relaxed Nurse began to pour out tea and Diana passed the bread and butter to Mrs Smith.

  ‘Just a morsel,’ said Mrs Smith, ‘for I am never one for tea. Mr Smith was just the same. What a sweet sight some little people are, Mrs Watson. They remind me of those lovely lines of Victor Yugo’s. I cannot exactly call them to mind but maddemersell would remember.’

  Mlle Duchaux, who hated being called mademoiselle like that more than anything in her life as a governess, said she regretted that she did not know to which lines Mrs Smith was referring.

  ‘One of those beautiful poems where Yugo is a grandfather, I think,’ said Mrs Smith. ‘Something about Linnercence, the innocent child you know, having a palm in its hand, a palm-branch I should say.’

  ‘“L’innocence au ciel tient la palme”,’ said Mlle Duchaux, unable to resist the opportunity of showing off.

  ‘The very words!’ exclaimed Mrs Smith. ‘So feeling. And how does it go on? Ah, it comes back to me, “Et sur la terre le hoquet”.’

  It did great credit to Mlle Duchaux that she did not betray the faintest emotion. Miss Bunting had an instant’s indecision. Should she show by a slight twitch of the mouth that she fully appreciated Mrs Smith’s peculiar reading of the line, or should she sacrifice her own fair name and uphold the name of Britain by keeping Mlle Duchaux guessing. Her indecision lasted but a moment. Nor by look nor by sign did that admirable woman betray Mrs Smith. She asked Captain Barclay if he would pass her a chocolate sandwich and spoke of the difficulty of getting plain chocolate in Barchester or in London.

  Mrs Smith said, ‘Of course, we must keep every bit for the kiddies.’

  Clare, who had to Nurse’s sc
andal been feeding herself with both hands, suddenly remarked ‘Joggolate’, and opened her mouth very wide to show that it was full of chocolate sandwich.

  ‘Shut your mouth, Clare,’ said Miss Bunting. And we may remark here that no other woman in the world would Nurse have allowed to give such an order to one of her own charges. Not that she minded the order itself so much, but that the order should be cheerfully and obediently obeyed was a great test of her self-control. There was an imperceptible pause while steel grated on steel. The opponents saluted and retired, each with greater respect for the other. ‘I cannot at all agree with you, Mrs Smith,’ Miss Bunting resumed. ‘There is far too much fuss about children now. Oranges and chocolate for children only! Rubbish! My pupils did not have such pampering. Lord Henry had a piece of chocolate after lunch on Sundays. And as for oranges, when I was young there were no oranges. They came in at Christmas, so sour that one could not possibly eat them without sugar and we had one occasionally for a treat and a tangerine of course in the toe of our Christmas stocking. I do not see that I am any the less robust. All this fuss about orange juice for babies is very undignified. If English children were intended to have oranges, doubtless Providence would have arranged for them to grow here.’