Marling Hall

by Angela Thirkell

  Emmy, old enough to feel a little out of it, attached herself to Lucy who showed her with a scarf exactly how one wrung a chicken’s neck, so earning Emmy’s undying admiration. Clarissa, standing where the schoolroom and nursery meet and never quite sure to which camp she belonged, got behind her grandmother’s chair and with very elegant fingers looked through Lady Emily’s painting materials till she found a soft black lead pencil and a piece of clean paper and drew knights and princesses. Robert and John having admired the canary, asked for it to be in a cage, so Lady Emily drew a cage over it and Robert drew some birdseed very large and John drew a very crooked pot of water for the canary to drink from.

  Agnes, seated between Mrs Marling and Lettice, explained with gentle persistency the cleverness of James (at Eton), the mental gifts of Emmy (at that moment strangling her eighth turkey-cock under Lucy’s instructions), the exceptional sweetness of Clarissa, the kindness and courage of John and Robert and the brilliant gifts of Edith, who tired of dancing had got her grandmother’s embroidery bag and was neatly disentangling her silks.

  ‘If only Robert did not have to be at the War Office so much, it would be quite perfect,’ said Agnes, ‘but really the war has been quite a good thing in some ways, because Robert was always going away on Military Missions and as there is nowhere left to go now, we do get him at the weekend quite often. You know, Cousin Amabel, he went on a mission to Russia about five years ago, and I am so glad he went then, because if he had gone there now it would really be most uncomfortable never knowing where he was, because there is a different bit of the map in The Times every day and often they put in pieces of country that one does not know at all.’

  Mrs Marling, whose head, strong though it was, was beginning to reel, said they ought to be going, but Agnes begged them to wait a few minutes as her father, who remained in his room from lunch till after tea, so very much wanted to see them, and despatched Miss Merriman to see if he was ready.

  In a few moments Miss Merriman came back with Mr Leslie. Mrs Marling was again shocked by the change in him, but again as soon as the unreasonable surprise that we all feel when years have aged our friends had spent itself, she saw the Mr Leslie that she knew emerging from and as it were overlaying the half stranger who had for a moment appeared to her eyes. Mr Leslie was genuinely pleased to see the Marling family and enquired minutely after Mr Marling and Oliver and after Bill and his family, who were apt to be forgotten by outsiders because they were so seldom in the South.

  ‘And who’s that young lady?’ he asked, indicating Lucy.

  ‘That’s Lucy, Cousin Henry,’ said Mrs Marling.

  ‘Lord bless me, so it is,’ said Mr Leslie. ‘I thought she was still in the schoolroom.’

  Her mother called to her to come and talk to Cousin Henry. Lucy, with Emmy glued to her side, came across the room and shook hands, tempering her vigour as she saw how frail Mr Leslie had become.

  ‘Pleased to see you again, my dear,’ said Mr Leslie. ‘Come and sit down. And are you the young lady David has been telling us about? He was over at Marling nearly every day till he went on his course.’

  Most unluckily, his wife overhearing his question, her genius for meddling suddenly took possession of her.

  ‘Henry,’ she called, ‘it is Lucy you are talking to, not Lettice. It is Lettice that David visited every day. Lettice and I had a lovely talk about darling David. She understands him perfectly and is longing to talk to you about him. Yes, Robert, the canary must have a garden of course and we will give him a watering can and a rake.’

  Having done her deed of mischief she again became absorbed in her drawing.

  ‘So it is Lettice that David goes to see, is it?’ said Mr Leslie, kindly. ‘Well, he’s a good boy. I don’t pretend to understand these young men and he never sticks to anything nor to anybody: never has yet. But he’ll have to think of settling some day. We thought he’d marry Mary, you know; but it turned out to be John all the time. He must bring you over here to see us when he comes back.’

  Acute discomfort reigned. Mrs Marling, who was very courageous and realised better than either of her daughters how little Mr Leslie’s mistake really mattered, explained with kind firmness that Lettice’s husband had been killed before Dunkirk and that she was living with her two little girls at Marling.

  ‘Poor girl, poor girl,’ said Mr Leslie, laying his hand on Lettice’s very kindly. ‘We lost our eldest boy, you know, at Arras. His mother was wonderful about it. I don’t know how I’d have got on without her. And you have to get on by yourself. You must come over and see Emily more often. And don’t let David be a trouble to you. He’s bone selfish, always was. Expects girls to hang about waiting for him, and the girls will do it and it makes the boy worse than he is; but he’s a good boy.’

  Lettice was touched by Mr Leslie’s kindness and a little frightened by his words about David. They chimed too well with her own unacknowledged thoughts. She was no girl, though to Mr Leslie she might seem one, but had she not waited for David, hung on to him at the other end of a telephone; was she not one of the foolish women who helped to spoil him, who believed his charming, easy flattery?

  ‘I’d love to come over and see you and Cousin Emily again,’ she said. ‘And David is no trouble at all. He is so nice to my little girls.’

  ‘We are all very fond of David —’ Mrs Marling began, anxious to ease the situation and pass on to other subjects.

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Lucy, recovering her poise, ‘David is —’

  And then, always timing his entries perfectly with his usual perfect luck, who stood in the doorway but David.

  ‘Bless you all,’ he said, shutting the door behind him. ‘Home is the airman, home from the air, as far as one can be who has done nothing but mind his books and go to lectures. Mamma darling!’

  He went over to his mother, wormed his way among his nephews and nieces and kissed her happy uplifted face.

  ‘And Papa,’ he said, kissing his father with complete unself-consciousness, ‘and Agnes, and millions of Marlings, too divine. Cousin Amabel, I am longing to come over and see you all. Lettice, my precious, how are your daughters whose names I do not pretend to remember though I adore their faces? And Lucy, my love, we must have our six-pack bézique.’

  ‘Darling David, it is so nice to see you,’ said Agnes from the tea-table. ‘Darling Edith has nearly learnt a poem to say to you. And here are Miss Bunting and Merry.’

  ‘Blest pair of sirens,’ said, David, kissing a hand of each lady.

  Miss Merriman, who knew David’s place better than he knew it himself, said, ‘How do you do, David,’ and quietly went over to where Mr Leslie was sitting.

  ‘Well, David, showing off as usual,’ said Miss Bunting.

  ‘Quite right, Bunny,’ said David outwardly unabashed. ‘Is there any tea left, Agnes?’

  ‘Ring, darling, and we’ll have some,’ said Agnes, with less than her usual attention, her eyes following Miss Merriman. A look passed between them which Miss Merriman evidently understood, for she left the room with purpose in her step. The children crowded round Uncle David, the fresh tea was brought, social turmoil reigned. Then by a side door Miss Merriman came back and with her a nurse in uniform and crackling cap and apron.

  ‘Anything wrong?’ said David to his sister.

  ‘Not wrong, darling,’ said Agnes, ‘but we have Nurse Chiffinch here to look after Papa just now. She nursed Hermione Rivers when she had influenza at Pomfret Towers and is quite invaluable. Darling Edith calls her Iffy.’

  ‘Now, Mr Leslie,’ said excellent Nurse Chiffinch, ‘here comes the spoil-sport. We mustn’t have you tired with the flying son at home. Quite a tea-party too.’

  ‘Hullo, Nurse,’ said Lucy. ‘Barchester General, Ward D, winter before last.’

  ‘If it isn’t VAD Marling!’ said Nurse Chiffinch.

  ‘Do you remember the floating kidney case?’ said Lucy.

  ‘I never laughed so much in my life,’ said Nu
rse Chiffinch. ‘Now I must take Mr Leslie away to have a little shut-eye before dinner as we have the flight-lieutenant, isn’t it, at home. We shall be seeing you again I hope, Miss Marling. Now, Mr Leslie, we will have a nice little rest before dinner and be as fresh as a daisy.’

  With kind skill she helped Mr Leslie to get up, waited placidly while he said goodbye to his guests and escorted him from the room. His wife looked after him, her bright eyes veiled with anxiety, but as soon as the door was shut she gave her whole attention to the children again.

  ‘Poor Papa gets so tired,’ said Agnes, reducing the whole episode to every-day level by her unemotional statement. ‘Now Edith must say her poem to David and then she must go to bed.’

  ‘And we must really go,’ said Mrs Marling.

  ‘I wonder, Miss Bunting,’ said Miss Merriman as Edith was produced to recite her poem, ‘whether you would care to see the room where Lady Emily works. She has been doing a great deal of her charming painting lately. I expect you saw it at Rushwater.’

  ‘I would like it very much,’ said Miss Bunting. ‘When I was at Rushwater,’ she continued as the two ladies quietly left the drawing-room and went across the hall to Lady Emily’s sitting-room, ‘Lady Emily decorated the Peony Dressing-room most beautifully. She painted the washing stand and all the chairs and the window seats with a peony design and the paint would not dry for weeks. How is Lady Emily, Miss Merriman?’

  ‘Wonderfully well,’ said Miss Merriman. ‘Do sit here by the fire. She is anxious about Mr Leslie, but very happy with Mrs Graham and the children, and very busy with her book.’

  ‘And Mr Leslie?’ said Miss Bunting.

  ‘Not well,’ said Miss Merriman. ‘His heart is not good and his mind is easily tired. Mrs Graham is wonderful with him. I think if David were to marry suitably and settle down he would be glad.’

  ‘I do not think,’ said Miss Bunting, speaking with the authority of her age and her long knowledge of little boys who had grown to big boys and to men, ‘that David will settle. Or not till very late, if ever.’

  ‘That is my impression too,’ said Miss Merriman, wise with her long habit of observation and discretion. ‘I have felt that since I first saw him as a schoolboy at Lord Pomfret’s and I am glad to find that you feel the same, as you have known him so much longer and more intimately. And in any case I do not think he has met the right woman for his wife as yet.’

  ‘Nor do I,’ said Miss Bunting. ‘Not in this part of Barsetshire at any rate. Are these Lady Emily’s paintings?’ she added, looking through her pince-nez at some vivid watercolour drawings of deer and doves prancing and soaring among bright foliage.

  ‘Yes, she did these on a large piece of coarse paper that was wrapped round the books from the London Library,’ said Miss Merriman. ‘I wish she had done them on something more durable, but she uses whatever comes to her hand. How lovely Mrs Watson looks.’

  ‘She does,’ said Miss Bunting, gratified. ‘But she is too much alone. Commander Watson’s death was a great blow. She has behaved excellently, but she broods too much. I wish I could see her happily married again. She needs a great deal of patience and a strong character to lean on. So difficult to find.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said Miss Merriman. ‘I cannot think of anyone. Not in this part of Barsetshire at any rate. I think from the noise that Edith has finished her poem, Miss Bunting. Perhaps we had better go back to the drawing-room. Lady Emily may want me.’

  Without exchanging another word or even another glance the éminences grises left the room, having settled everything by the light of their knowledge and experience. The fates might mock at their decisions and reverse them all, but they knew that they were right in principle and that anyone who strayed from the path they saw would be the unhappier for it. That Lettice should not stray was Miss Bunting’s silent prayer. As for David, though quite fond of him she felt that no anxiety or pity need be wasted on one who was so well equipped to look after himself.

  In the drawing-room Edith, flushed with success, was finishing for the third time that short but excellent moral poem immortalised in The Daisy, accompanying it by a kind of rhythmic dance of her own invention.

  ‘Come, Pretty Cat!

  Come here to me,

  I want to pat

  You on my knee.

  Go, naughty Tray;

  By barking thus,

  You’ll drive away

  My pretty Puss.’

  Her fat yet elegant form, her dancing feet, her imperfect diction enchanted all her hearers, but it was too evident that the spirit of poetry had intoxicated her and that in a minute she would be quite out of hand, when Nannie appeared with the nursery maid in tow.

  ‘That’s quite enough now, Edith,’ said Nannie, graciously acknowledging the Marling family’s presence. ‘Say goodnight to Grannie and Mother and Uncle David and all the ladies and come along to bed. And send your love to Diana and Clare. Now John and Robert, you come along with Ivy. I will leave Emmy and Clarissa here, madam, just while Edith has her bath and then I’ll send Ivy for them and they had better not get excited or Emmy will have the nightmare again.’

  With the ability of a field marshal Nannie deployed her troops, turned the enemy’s flank and took the hostile forces into protective custody.

  ‘John and Robert and Edith are so little that they have to go to bed,’ said Clarissa loftily.

  ‘Clarissa has to go bed at seven,’ said Emmy, informatively, ‘but I go to bed at half-past seven.’

  ‘Now we will have some lovely reading aloud,’ said Agnes, apparently oblivious of her guests. ‘Mamma darling, where is Undine? You were reading it to the children last night.’

  ‘I simply. Cannot. Think,’ said Lady Emily, dividing her words by full stops the better to express her detachment from the whole subject.

  ‘Yes, Lady Emily, you had it in your sitting-room this morning and painted Undine with blue-green hair inside the cover,’ said Miss Merriman. ‘I’ll get it.’

  Mrs Marling felt that the family atmosphere of Holdings was closing round her like treacle and she and her party would gradually be absorbed and live there unnoticed till they died. It was now or never. She stepped over the hassock and said goodbye to Lady Emily.

  ‘Come again,’ said Lady Emily, flashing one of her brilliant smiles at the guests. ‘I had a great deal more to say to you, but I can’t think what it was. It is so good for Henry to see his friends. He is older, and I can’t do very much for him now. Lettice darling, come and see us again soon. David must fetch you over and we will have a long talk about him. Miss Bunting, it was so good of you to come and see me. It made me remember our schoolroom days and how dreadfully dirty David’s hands used to be.’

  ‘I always said,’ said Miss Bunting, ‘that David was never clean from the day Nannie Allen left till his last year at school. In the schoolroom he had to be clean, but elsewhere he was extremely dirty.’

  ‘God bless you, Bunny,’ said David, putting his arm round her shoulders and patting the upper part of her arm. ‘Among the crowd of servile sycophants you alone recall me to my better self, and I must say remind me rather unnecessarily of my worse self. Lord! how dirty I used to be behind the ears and under the collar. But always the gentleman.’

  Miss Bunting disengaged herself from David with as little interest as if his arm had been a strand of a climbing plant and said goodbye to Agnes and Miss Merriman. The Marling party left the room and even as they left it Mrs Marling, turning her head, saw Agnes settling herself with her knitting on the sofa near her mother, Emmy and Clarissa curling up one on each side of her, Lady Emily looking madly for her spectacles and Miss Merriman pointing out that she was wearing them. Mrs Marling would not have changed her family for Lady Emily’s, but seeing their complete self-sufficiency and their absorption in one another she felt a faint envy. Then she reflected how much nicer her own children were and the envy passed, though not the recollection of the family scene.