Summer Half: A Virago Modern Classic (VMC)

by Angela Thirkell

  ‘He said,’ Lydia went on, giving Everard the feeling that he was at a lecture by a very competent female don, ‘that he thought marriage was very good for people it was good for, but not for the others.’

  ‘That seems reasonable,’ said Everard.

  ‘I said I’d probably get married,’ Lydia went on, ‘and I still intend to, but Noel said he didn’t think it would suit him at all. He said he would be a kind of uncle to people instead. And we both thought Kate ought to marry someone very nice. Someone like you or Colin, I thought, and so did Noel. I’d like to marry someone like Hamlet and Richard II and Richard Hannay and Browning.’

  ‘Well, I hope you will, Lydia,’ said Everard, getting up. ‘You deserve them all. There’s Colin. Let’s see if he will play squash, and you can score.’

  But Colin had not come for pleasure. He looked anxious as he said to Everard:

  ‘Simnet has just rung up from the Rectory to ask if we can go and see Mr Birkett, Everard. He says Mr Birkett seems quite upset. I expect that is only his literary way of putting it, but I’m going over at once if you will come too.’

  The two men hurried down to the footbridge, not trusting Bunce to be at the ferry.

  ‘You don’t think it’s Philip,’ said Colin. ‘He wouldn’t have – done anything?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Everard, but a cold fear assailed him. His relief at hearing Lydia’s account of her talk with Noel had been so great that he had hardly heard what Colin was saying. If Noel was not a marrying man, if Kate had not been attracted by his charming manners and were heartwhole, then there was still a chance for him. He made a vow to give Lydia a complete Browning gorgeously bound, if what she had said were true. Gradually the sense of Colin’s question came through the golden cloud of his thoughts, and he pulled himself together. His common sense told him that Philip wasn’t likely to have done anything, as Colin delicately put it, just when he was free from an irksome entanglement, but he didn’t know what might have happened last night. Rose might have regretted her outburst and bullied Philip into renewing their engagement. Philip might have had a nervous breakdown, or lost his memory, or gone too near the weir. In imagination he reconstructed the whole scene, travelled to Philip’s home to break the news to his father, dealt with his belongings, edited his literary remains and by the time they had got to the Rectory had rearranged the whole school timetable to suit altered conditions.

  When he came into Mr Birkett’s study with Colin and saw Philip sitting there quite well and normal, he was so much relieved that he did not grudge the waste of his mental efforts.

  ‘Good morning, Everard,’ said Mr Birkett, who certainly looked what Simnet had called quite upset. ‘Good morning, Keith. I’m sorry to disturb your holiday, but I’ve just had a wire from Lorimer’s sister in Perthshire. It’s about Lorimer.’

  Everard looked at Philip, who nodded. There was no need for Mr Birkett to say what had happened. There was a moment’s silence.

  ‘Heart, I suppose,’ said Everard.

  Mr Birkett said Yes.

  ‘He sounded tired in his last letter,’ said Everard. ‘You remember, Philip, the letter about your book.’

  ‘I do remember,’ said Philip, whose joy and excitement about his book had been honestly wiped out by his sorrow at the death of his old master.

  ‘Here is the wire,’ said Mr Birkett, pushing it over to Everard.

  ‘It just says that he died peacefully, and the funeral will be tomorrow, for members of the family only. We must have a Memorial Service in the School Chapel, of course, at the beginning of next term. I’ll have to write to Smith about it.’

  ‘He had extraordinarily good sherry,’ said Everard, thinking of a day when he had gone to complain about Hacker.

  ‘And very good port,’ said Colin, thinking of his last evening at school, and how Mr Lorimer had preached against the Vanity of Human Wishes.

  ‘Not a bad epitaph,’ said Mr Birkett, and there was silence again till the headmaster broke it, coughing before he spoke.

  ‘This will mean some changes in the school,’ he said, ‘and as we are all here, we might as well discuss them. The best we can do for Lorimer is to see that his work is carried on as he would have wished. Do you think you could take the Classical Sixth, Philip?’

  ‘Sir!’ said Philip, and fell dumb.

  ‘You needn’t make up your mind immediately,’ said Mr Birkett. ‘I shan’t suggest anyone else till you decide, only it must be before you go to Russia.’

  ‘Do you mind if I don’t stay, sir?’ asked Philip, and without waiting for an answer blundered out of the room.

  ‘He’ll take it,’ said Everard, as the door closed behind Philip, ‘and he’ll do it well. And he’ll be too busy to think so much about politics. I hope you don’t want to move him out of my house, sir. We got on quite nicely.’

  ‘No, no,’ said the Head. ‘I’m not going to interfere. But I want to have a talk with you, Everard. You needn’t stay, Keith, if this bores you.’

  Colin, interpreting this rightly as a suggestion that he was not wanted, rose to his feet, and then did a really heroic deed.

  ‘If Mr Lorimer’s death is going to give you trouble, sir,’ he said to his late headmaster, ‘I mean, if you’ll be shorthanded or anything, I’d be very glad to come back for a term or two if I’d be any help.’

  As he said this his heart sank as he knew how he would loathe to turn his back on the calm of Noel’s chambers and plunge once more into the seething cauldron of school life. But some kind of loyalty, some real liking and respect for the two men under whom he had served, forced him to say the words.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ said Mr Birkett, ‘but Harrison will be back next term, and Prothero, a man you don’t know, is coming back from a year in Canada, so we shan’t have any difficulty about staff. I very much appreciate your offer all the same.’

  With deep thankfulness Colin escaped.

  ‘Nice of young Keith to suggest that,’ said Mr Birkett, ‘but I want a real master. Now, Everard, if you can spare the time I’d like to run through the timetable with you and make a tentative programme for Philip and Harrison and Prothero. I shan’t put another resident master in your house next term, so you’ll have Keith’s room free. Do you think Philip will really take the Classical Sixth?’

  Everard said he was certain there was no doubt about it. Then they worked together till nearly lunch-time, when Mr Birkett put down his pen.

  ‘That about settles it,’ he said. ‘Now let’s forget it till next term. How much longer are you here?’

  ‘Only till tomorrow. And next week I’m taking those History Sixth boys to Hungary, you remember.’

  ‘Oh yes, of course. And Philip is off to Russia. Well, I’ll say goodbye till next term. We’ll miss Lorimer.’

  ‘We shall, sir,’ said Everard.

  There was only a small lunch-party at the Manor. Mr and Mrs Keith with Robert and Edith had gone to a political garden party at Courcy Castle, and were not expected back till dinner. The boys were having their midday meal at the gardener’s cottage, Everard and Colin were sobered by Mr Lorimer’s death, and the others were sympathetically subdued. After lunch Everard asked Kate to come for a walk with him. Leaving Noel, Colin and Lydia sitting on the lawn, they went across the river and up onto the downs. They said very little; Everard had no mind to break the happy calm of this afternoon’s companionship, and not till they were at the honeysuckle gate did he speak to her of what was in his heart. He spoke of the school, of the advantages to a housemaster of being married, of the help a wife could be with the boys, of the unlimited opportunities for mending, darning and sewing on buttons. He said he was not well off and so far had not been ambitious, but that with Kate’s help he might get a good headmastership in time. He also mentioned, though with such delicacy that Kate could not understand what he was talking about, that owing to Colin’s departure he would have an extra bedroom in his house.

  Kate listened, standing by the
gate, and became paler and more pale.

  ‘Is that all?’ she asked, when he had finished.

  ‘I am offering you everything I have to give,’ said Everard, very seriously.

  ‘It isn’t enough,’ said Kate, and turned away.

  Everard begged to know in what he had fallen short, whether she cared for anyone else, only just stopping himself from saying Another.

  Kate, her face averted, made no reply.

  ‘May I ask you again?’ said Everard.

  ‘Oh yes, when you know what to say,’ was Kate’s answer, and she went into the house, leaving Everard ill at ease. He took from his pocket a piece of tissue paper containing the spray of honeysuckle, now looking nastier than ever, gazed nostalgically upon it, made as if to throw it away, and put it back in his pocket.

  Tea was even quieter than lunch. Swan and Morland, though it was happily not yet in their nature to feel grief for long, had been genuinely shocked by the news, obligingly and without very much tact communicated to them by Lydia. They said Hacker was composing valedictory verses in Greek and had some secret about Gibbon which he would not tell them. Philip, roaming about the neighbourhood in a state of personal grief and literary dementia, dropped in to tea, and added to their gloom by talking about Russia, for which country he seemed suddenly to have developed an inexplicable distaste.

  ‘I always thought it sounded a horrid place,’ said Colin. ‘Why don’t you come to Austria with Noel and me?’

  ‘How long do the posts take?’ asked Philip.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. A couple of days at the outside. Much less by air-mail.’

  ‘I was thinking,’ said Philip, ‘that if my proofs did come, they would take ages to be forwarded to Russia.’

  ‘And when they did get there they’d probably be confiscated,’ said Noel.

  ‘Good God! So they might,’ said Philip. ‘That settles it, I shall cancel my Russian trip.’

  ‘And come to Austria?’ said Colin.

  ‘I’d love to if no one minds.’

  ‘I think it would be great fun,’ said Noel. ‘And perhaps we’ll go and meet Carter in Hungary with his young charges.’

  Kate looked up, startled, but said nothing.

  Colin got an atlas, and the four men gathered about it, pushing aside cakes and fruit, elbows on the table, discussing, arguing, laughing.

  ‘Come on, Tony and Eric,’ said Lydia, ‘let’s take the boat up the backwater. Last time we went there it stuck, and we had to get out and push, and I got up to my knees in black mud, and Colin pulled up a stick that was marking a wasps’ nest in the bank, and we had to run as fast as we could, and got into the field where Farmer Brown keeps his mad bull, and didn’t get back for ages.’

  On hearing of this attractive programme, Swan and Morland said they would get their bathing things and be back in a moment. Kate, entirely neglected, could bear it no longer and went out onto the terrace. That Everard thought of her as a kind of superior matron she had long suspected, and now it was only too plain. When he had showed her the honeysuckle he had kept, she had dreamed of romantic love, but all he asked was someone to mend and sew. And then, without a word, he was going to Hungary. Tears sprang to her eyes. As fast as she angrily wiped them away, so fast they welled up again, till she had no self-control left, and shaking with sobs went wildly down the garden towards the pond.

  Lydia, whom Kate had not noticed, stood staring after her. For Kate, the sister upon whom everyone relied, to be in such a state was to Lydia a reversal of all natural laws. She ran back to the drawing-room and burst in, wild-eyed, upon the map-readers.

  ‘Look here,’ she said. ‘Kate is crying like anything. Will you come and see what the matter is, Colin? She’s down by the pond.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Everard, and before anyone else could move he was out of the room and hastening down the garden.

  Colin and Philip looked surprised.

  ‘Hadn’t we better all go?’ asked Colin.

  ‘No,’ said Noel. ‘Haven’t you any sense? This is Carter’s job. Lydia, don’t leave this room till I tell you, or I’ll burn all the Brownings in the house. You are now seeing romance. Mr Browning was all very well when alive, but he has been dead for a long time, and Mr Carter has taken his place. If you go down to the pond in about ten minutes I dare say you’ll find him kneeling at her feet.’

  Lydia drew a deep breath.

  ‘Gosh, he will but say what mere friends say,

  Or only a thought stronger;

  He will hold her hand but as long as all may,

  Or so very little longer,’

  she said.

  ‘A fair comment,’ said Noel, legally, ‘but that’s quite enough, Lydia. Bless your heart, my girl, how I do like you. Mr Silas Wegg isn’t in it. Put the atlas away, Colin, and after a short but decent interval we’ll stroll in the direction of the pond.’

  Lydia, pleased with Noel’s praise and her own apt quotation, sat down, counting the minutes till the decent interval should have elapsed.

  Meanwhile Kate, sobbing with more and more abandon by the pond, was nerving herself to face a life of stern renouncement. Never would she marry a man who wanted a matron rather than a wife. Though it broke both their hearts, as it undoubtedly would, she would never change. With low voice and hushed footsteps she would move about her daily tasks, cheering her parents in their declining years. She would be the beloved aunt of Robert’s children and Colin’s and Lydia’s, if they married as they assuredly must, besides any more of Robert’s if he and Edith happened to have any. Aunt Kate’s room would be the shrine to which all the young would bring their griefs, telling her the secrets which they could never tell to their own parents. And this all seemed so awfully dull and depressing, as indeed it would truly have been, that she cried more than before. But before her long life of self-sacrifice had lasted more than a few moments it was nipped in the bud by Everard coming up, out of breath, and taking her in his arms so tightly that she could do nothing but go on crying, though in a quite different and wholly pleasant way.

  ‘I thought,’ she said presently, ‘that you only loved me because I could do housekeeping.’

  ‘I was afraid,’ said Everard, ‘that you couldn’t possibly care for me, but I thought if you liked running a house you might get used to me in time.’

  ‘Would you love me just as much if I couldn’t do anything sensible?’ said Kate.

  ‘I’d adore you if you were as silly as Rose,’ said Everard.

  ‘I’d adore you if you were as silly as yourself,’ said Kate, giggling feebly from sheer joy, and stroking his coat sleeve in a way which nearly destroyed Everard’s reason, so tender it was. ‘Darling,’ she went on, ‘your shirt cuff is frayed. I must turn it for you. Are you really going to Hungary?’

  ‘Yes, confound those boys, I must. But I’ll be back at the beginning of September. Oh, Kate!’

  ‘Oh, Everard!’ said Kate, and sat down on the stone balustrade at the end of the pond through sheer weakness.

  ‘Angel,’ said Everard. He took out of his pocket a small parcel, the worse for wear, opened it and laid reverently in Kate’s hands a wilted, battered, almost unrecognisable spray of honeysuckle.

  ‘Everard!’ she breathed, holding the precious relic as if it were a living thing. Everard went down on his knees and kissed both her hands.

  This rapturous sight was seen by Noel, Colin, Philip and Lydia as they came carelessly walking in the direction of the pond.

  ‘Gosh!’ said Lydia.

  ‘Yes, that’s the real thing,’ said Noel. ‘And I am sure you will vote with me, Lydia, by common consent, that it is no more than his due who brought good news from Ghent.’

  ‘Browning understood everything,’ murmured Lydia, fascinated by the group.

  At this moment Hacker came up from the cottage, carrying Gibbon’s cage.

  ‘Please, sir,’ he said to Everard, apparently not noticing his housemaster’s unusual position, or not finding it worthy of hi
s notice.

  ‘Well,’ said Everard, responding automatically to the familiar appeal, as he got up and dusted the knees of his trousers.

  ‘Please, sir,’ said Hacker, producing a sheet of foolscap, ‘I’ve done a set of verses on Mr Lorimer. I’d like you to look at them, sir. I don’t think he’d have found any false quantities.’

  ‘That’s very nice of you, Hacker,’ said Everard. ‘Later on I’d like to read them, but just now I’m engaged to Miss Keith.’

  Hacker looked at Kate with a marked want of interest.

  ‘Hymen O hymenaee,’ he said tolerantly, but without enthusiasm. ‘And please, sir, I’ve got something that I think would please Mr Lorimer very much. I got some black stuff from Nanny and she lined Gibbon’s cage with it for mourning, and I think, sir, he’s really turning black.’