‘Going to bed?’ said his mother.
Oliver said he was, kissed her, said a general goodnight and slipped away, reflecting how blessed he was in a mother who didn’t ask questions and let one bear things in one’s own way. Lettice, who was spending the night at the Hall, embarked on a discussion with her mother and Miss Bunting which led to their all going to the Red Cross storeroom to check some lists. Lucy, who believed in rough and ready comfort for men, brought the whisky and soda out, splashed a drink for Captain Barclay over his trousers and the carpet and sat down with her knees apart and her feet turned in.
‘Are you any good about knowing if people are in love?’ she said.
Captain Barclay said not frightfully good because his sisters could never bother to get engaged on account of hunting and shooting and salmon fishing in peace and being in uniform in the war, but he had a few general ideas.
‘I’ve been thinking a good deal lately,’ said Lucy, so unusual a confession that Captain Barclay prepared to listen attentively, ‘and I think Oliver and Frances might get married. I daresay it’s all right, though it’ll be beastly if Oliver goes away, but it seems a bit queer, and I thought you might know.’
Captain Barclay said he certainly hadn’t considered the subject, and would do so. Why, he asked, did Lucy think so.
‘Well, she’s his secretary and people always marry their secretaries,’ said Lucy. ‘Besides, they looked a bit queer this evening, as if they’d been having a row with the broken glass in the fireplace.’
‘It hardly seems to me a valid proof of Love,’ said Captain Barclay thoughtfully, ‘but they always say women see farther into these things than men.’
‘Good heavens, I’m not a woman, Tom, at least not in that kind of way, but one can’t help noticing things,’ said Lucy, indignant at being included with her sex. ‘But I’ll tell you what, Geoffrey isn’t in love with Lettice. That would be too ghastly.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Captain Barclay, suddenly feeling great resentment towards the innocent Mr Harvey.
‘All he says is poetry and things,’ said Lucy scornfully. ‘But I’ll tell you what, I shouldn’t wonder if David was.’
‘Good God, girl,’ said Captain Barclay, choking into his whisky and soda, ‘what a coarse mind you have.’
‘Not coarse,’ said Lucy proudly, ‘you mean purrient or however one pronounces it, because I’ve never said it aloud before, at least that’s what you sound as if you meant. David comes here a lot and then he goes away and doesn’t write or ring up, so I think he is struggling against fate.’
‘And what on earth makes you think that?’ asked Captain Barclay, very glad that no one more percipient than Lucy was in the room if his face looked as red as it felt.
‘No one could help seeing that he did come here a lot,’ said Lucy patiently, ‘and he hasn’t been for ages, and I know he doesn’t write, because all the letters get delivered here so I’d see it. And Nurse said when I was helping her with her ironing last week that it was rather lonely for Lettice since she came back from Mrs Barclay’s and she wondered why David didn’t ring up and take her out somewhere. So you see.’
Captain Barclay felt such a surge of dislike for David Leslie that he would willingly have practised neck-wringing on him if Lucy would oblige with a few hints, but he knew that his Lucy, though often obtuse, would notice if he didn’t answer, so he said he expected David was on a course.
‘He was last month,’ said Lucy, ‘because he sent Bunny a picture postcard of the Berlin Opera House and said he mustn’t tell her where he was; but he was at Holdings before that when we all went to tea and he’s back again now, because Merry told Bunny when they had coffee at Pilchard’s the day they did a bit of the Messiah in the cathedral, I mean the choir did it. Geoffrey said the organ was all wrong because it wasn’t like Handel’s organ, but the organist who comes to my Anti-Gas class said it was absolutely what Handel would have used, not counting its being played by electricity now, so Geoffrey felt rather a fool, except that he never does.’
During this rapid survey of domestic and musical life Captain Barclay was able to recover his wits and persuade himself that Lucy was making a great deal of fuss about nothing.
‘You ought to be in Intelligence, Lucy,’ he said. ‘I never knew anyone who had so many channels of information. If your family aren’t coming back I’ll go downstairs and say goodbye. I’m off to town on a secret mission for a few days.’
Lucy said all right and she was going to bed, so Captain Barclay groped his way down the dimly lighted stairs to the drawing-room where the Red Cross stores were kept. Here he found Lettice alone, ticking off parcels on a list.
‘Oh, are you going?’ said Lettice, which he felt in his hypersensitive condition to be a feelingless question. ‘Mother is in Bunny’s room doing something about Christmas presents for the maids and the estate people. She’ll be down again soon.’
‘I won’t stop,’ said Captain Barclay. ‘Say goodbye for me. I’m going to London for a week or so on some special stuff.’
Lettice, instead of going pale and tottering to a seat, as he had vaguely hoped, said how nice and she hoped he would have a nice time.
Captain Barclay said it would be very nice to see London again. The devil then inspired him to ask if she knew where David was, not that he wished to know, but he hoped to have the great pleasure of making himself uncomfortable. She suddenly drooped a little.
‘I think he is at Holdings,’ she said, ‘but I expect he is too busy to ring up just now.’
The right answer to this would have been, ‘Why don’t you do the ringing up yourself,’ but it did not occur to Captain Barclay. All he saw was that a Deceiver was Playing Fast and Loose with Lettice, who was being pathetically brave.
‘I daresay I’ll run across him in town,’ he said. ‘I’ll let you know if I do.’
‘Not if he’s at Holdings,’ said Lettice with a matter-of-factness which seemed to him childishly beautiful though annoying.
‘Well, goodnight. If I can do anything in town for you, let me know,’ said Captain Barclay, ‘or anywhere else.’
‘That’s very sweet of you, Tom,’ said Lettice, ‘but I don’t think there’s anything.’
‘Well, if there is you can count on me, day or night,’ said Captain Barclay heroically.
‘I don’t see what you could do at night, but it’s very nice of you, all the same,’ said Lettice. ‘Oh, Tom, I wish you weren’t going. All these goings-away make one think of the day when people are really gone for good.’
‘I wish I could stay,’ said Captain Barclay. ‘But I swear I won’t leave England without seeing you again – that is if you’d like it.’ He made this noble offer the more determinedly that he was on a job of special work which would be very unlikely to take him out of England for at least six months.
‘I would,’ said Lettice, who was enjoying being sorry for herself. ‘It’s not so lonely when you are here.’
‘You’ll have David,’ said Captain Barclay, again under the direct influence of the devil.
‘Perhaps,’ said Lettice. ‘But when it’s you one feels safe. You don’t forget.’
The slight accent that she laid on the word ‘you’ flew to Captain Barclay’s head.
‘Bless you,’ he said, and held her hand in both of his very reverently. He was already wondering how one stopped being reverent without appearing brusque when Lucy came in.
‘Hullo, I thought you’d gone,’ she said. ‘I say, Lettice, Mother wants to know if you remember where we put those rolls of blue woollen stuff last year. She’s just remembered about them and can’t think where they are.’
Captain Barclay made his adieux and went away. On the drive back to his quarters he thought a great deal about Lettice and David. He finally came to the conclusion that if to marry David was going to make her happy he would insist on being best man, partly to make himself as miserable as possible, partly to be in a position to see that David turned up at the
altar and went through with it. Having settled this he spent the rest of the drive in remembering how sad and alone Lettice had looked, how she had said she wished he would stay, how he had felt her hand cling to his. So beautiful and uplifting were his thoughts and so rapt was he above mortal regions, that his colonel who was there when he got back said if he was in for a spot of flu he had better go to bed and not infect everybody.
The whereabouts of the rolls of blue cloth were established and the Marling family went to bed. Lettice was putting cream on her face when her sister Lucy walked in, wearing bright blue pyjamas and a camel’s hair dressing-gown.
‘I say, Lettice,’ she said, ‘Tom and I were having a talk after you’d gone to do the Red Cross things. I think he thought you liked David a bit.’
‘Lucy!’ said Lettice.
‘David’s all right,’ said Lucy tolerantly. ‘But Tom’s a much decenter sort of person really. I mean if he held anyone’s hand it wouldn’t be just for fun.’
Only a thick layer of cold cream prevented Lucy from seeing her sister’s crimson face.
‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Lucy, planting herself in front of the fire in a gentlemanly way, ‘if you like Tom, that’s all right. I mean not to bother about me. You’d better have this bathroom. I’ll have the blue one.’
She went out again, leaving the door ajar. Lettice got up and shut it and walked slowly back to the dressing-table. Her own face shining with grease was not a comforting sight and she badly needed comfort. It seemed to her that she had for the first time in her life been unkind to Lucy and that it was all Captain Barclay’s fault. She liked him very much, she was very fond of him, yes fond, anyone might hear her say it, but that she cared for him more than as a very pleasant, easy friend was a ridiculous idea of Lucy’s. He was Lucy’s property and everyone realised it. Suddenly her conscience smote her. She had certainly done what was uncommonly like leading him on over the episode of the gloves, but it was only because she liked him, not because she cared for him like that. And now Lucy had seen him holding her hand and like the kind creature she was had at once offered to give up her property to her sister. She was angry with Captain Barclay for putting her in a false position with Lucy. She was also angry with David for having given Captain Barclay the impression, or so Lucy said, that she had fallen under the Leslie charm. She hated them both and in fact everybody, but most of all herself for having got into so wretched a position. If only Captain Barclay were here now she could explain everything and he would tell Lucy and it would be all right. It did not occur to her to wish that David were here now, perhaps because she knew, though she didn’t acknowledge it, that it would be no good explaining things to him because he wouldn’t want to hear. There was no one to remind her that only a very few months ago she had been used to wish that Roger was there to make things all right. She went to bed in a state of great depression.
Lucy meanwhile went to the blue bathroom. In the middle of her bath she remembered that the bath water running off annoyed her mother, and such was the reaction from her noble deed that she said aloud, ‘Well, I don’t care if it does.’ But her kinder self came to the rescue and made her choke the flow with her sponge which stopped the gurgling. While patiently waiting for the water to run out quietly, she thought of Lettice and Captain Barclay. Most young women would have considered that an elder sister, having had a husband, had had all she ought to have, and thought of their own chances. Lucy, whose heart was very large, thought it such rotten luck for Lettice that Roger had been killed that she ought to have any consolation that took her fancy, even if that consolation took the shape of Captain Barclay. Facing the situation with her usual honesty she saw that she did not care for Captain Barclay in a falling-in-love sort of way, a sentiment which in any case she despised, so it would be pure dog-in-the-mangerishness to try to keep him. All the same she was very fond of him and it was she who had found him and brought him to Marling, her very own private property; and two large tears mingled with the final muffled gurglings of the bath water.
11
The reader may have forgotten that Miss Lucy Marling had a large disobedient dog called Turk, but we have not. During the entire course of this narrative Turk had been pushing doors open with his nose and making for the patch of sun on the floor or, as the season advanced, for the hearth, leaving a roaring draught in his wake. If the door was properly shut he had scratched its lower panels in an appealing and destructive manner. He had sniffed and whined continuously while Lucy was out and greeted her with hysterical barks every time she came in. He had refused the good bits of cake, the biscuits, the occasional cutlet bone that Lucy gave him in defiance of all war economy from her own plate, and eaten every kind of unpleasant refuse in the garden or the lanes. When Lucy was away for a night at the Cottage Hospital he had howled until Oliver unwillingly took him to his own room. Here he lovingly insisted on sleeping like a Crusader’s tomb on Oliver’s feet, not to speak of waking up in the small hours of the morning with a nervous twitch that almost upset the bed, and howling till Oliver, cursing, took him downstairs and opened the back door. Turk turned his back on the door and conducted an exhaustive search for Lucy in the dining-room, pantry, kitchen and boot-room, after which he returned to Oliver and with liquid eyes and uplifted paw begged him to take him back to his soft couch and not keep him shivering in the dark house. Oliver remarked with suppressed vindictiveness that he would thrash him to death if it weren’t for disturbing the family, and went back to bed, chill and irate, to toss uneasily till Turk woke him again at seven with a loving lick of his face. Luckily a housemaid was coming down the back stairs near Oliver’s room, so he pushed Turk out to her and went back to bed for half an hour with aching eyes and throbbing head.
These and other beautiful traits of canine fidelity too numerous to mention, for nothing is so boring as other people’s dogs, we merely note in passing to show that the dogs of Barsetshire, if Pomeranians, Alsatians, Newfoundlands, Chows, Dalmatians (one of whom lived with the Dowager Lady Norton), Samoyedes, Great Danes and Pekinese may be included as Empire Dogs, were pulling together against Fascism, communism and all forms of government which tend to suppress the liberty of the individual; also to prevent (in the classical and religious sense of the word) the comments of any reader who may still remember Chapter 1 and wonder why Turk was mentioned if he was never to be seen again. All of which leads to the dreadful day when Lettice and Captain Barclay walked down to the Red House with some grain from the farm for the Harveys’ hens and Turk would come too. And should any reader be so ill-advised as to wonder why Captain Barclay always seemed to have leisure to visit Marling Hall, we are quite unable to say, except that determination does a great deal, even in the army.
It was a cold December day and the blight of Christmas was already settling on England. It would certainly be a much nastier Christmas than the previous one, with trains, presents, coupons, rations and tempers all a little short, and many people said, Ah, but next Christmas will be much worse, and tried in their eleventh shop to get a wristwatch or a cigarette lighter for friends and relations in HM Forces. Bill Marling, his wife and children were loyally supporting the Government’s nervous request that people would refrain from Unnecessary Journeys at Christmas, by arranging to travel in company with four or five million other people ten days before Christmas instead of in Christmas week itself, bringing their nurse and two dogs, two turkeys, a goose and a case of mixed drinks which Bill was mysteriously able to procure.
Lettice was ready for the walk when Lucy shouted from the stable yard that she was just off to the Cottage Hospital and Turk was somewhere about and would Lettice shut him up in a loose box till she came back as he had chased a cow that morning. Not waiting for answer or expostulation she drove away. Lettice came down and called Turk, who presently appeared in company with Captain Barclay, fawning on his boots. At the sight of Lettice, whom he knew very well, he affected extreme terror and backed into a corner, so that Lettice thought she could easily ca
tch him, but Christmas was in his blood and he doubled and fled down the drive with the air of one who has suddenly seen a dangerous rabbit and must save his owners’ lives and property.
‘Oh dear,’ said Lettice. ‘And Lucy wanted him shut up.’
‘He’s off hunting,’ said Captain Barclay with the easy optimism of one who is not a dog-owner. ‘He’ll be back for his dinner. Jolly news from Pearl Harbour today, isn’t it. Well, well,
‘The Japs
Are filthy little chaps.
‘Ready, Lettice?’
Lettice said she was, gave him the small sack of grain, and they set off in silence, for after that morning’s news there was nothing to say and even saying it wouldn’t help anyone.
‘I’m glad I didn’t send Diana and Clare to America,’ said Lettice as they went through the lodge gates on to the road.
Marling Hall Page 26