Cheerfulness Breaks In

by Angela Thirkell

  ‘Is Mr. Hopkins a Trade Unionist then?’ said Mrs. Morland.

  ‘National Union of Teachers,’ said Mrs. Birkett hastily, hoping to retrieve the honour of the bourgeoisie, though without much hope.

  ‘Of course,’ said Mrs. Morland untruthfully. ‘But everything’s initials now and it is so difficult to remember. And then we call Russia, at least some people do but I won’t, U.S.S.R. and the French, who are supposed to be so very logical, call it U.R.S.S., which being our allies seems quite unreasonable. But nothing will stop me saying St. Petersburg,’ she added defiantly and looked round for support.

  Mr. Bissell had gone mad once already under Mrs. Morland’s divagations and it was clear that he was rapidly going mad again. He cast a frenzied glance at his wife who was taking it all very well, realising that people like Mrs. Morland who wrote books must obviously be quite uneducated and were probably doomed. But it was a relief to everyone when Miss Hampton and Miss Bent were suddenly dragged into the room by Smigly-Rydz.

  ‘Knew I’d find you here,’ said Miss Hampton to Mrs. Birkett. ‘Elaine told me you were coming and I saw you go in. Bent and I are going to the Phelps’s. You’d better come too. The Admiral shakes a good cocktail. Well, Elaine, how’s little Edna?’

  ‘I never told you,’ said Mr. Bissell proudly to Mrs. Birkett, ‘that Mother’s name was Elaine. Her father was a great reader of Tennyson and knew the Idles of the King by heart.’

  ‘It’s a lovely name,’ said Mrs. Birkett, ‘and very suitable,’ and then she hoped she had said the right thing.

  ‘You’re right there,’ said Mr. Bissell, casting a look of adoration at his wife that quite melted Mrs. Birkett. ‘She’d have had all the Sir Galahads after her in the Olden Times.’

  Mrs. Morland, who complained afterwards that she always coloured too quickly from her surroundings, said she was sure Mrs. Bissell didn’t need a Sir Galahad with Mr. Bissell there, and was thoroughly ashamed of herself. But Mr. Bissell’s lean tired face shone with gratitude.

  Mrs. Bissell said Edna was a good girl and getting on nicely at school.

  ‘Why don’t you teach her yourself?’ said Miss Hampton.

  ‘I’d love to,’ said Mrs. Bissell, ‘but though I am no longer a member I fear it would be disloyal to the N.U.T.’

  ‘My wife was a teacher before I married her,’ said Mr. Bissell proudly. ‘She did Psychology and understands all the complexes. She and Miss Hampton took to each other like ducks to water and many an interesting chat have we had, Mrs. Bissell on the theoretical side, Miss Hampton on the practical. Mrs. Bissell was offered the post of Headmistress in a very good Secondary School.’

  ‘I thought married teachers weren’t allowed,’ said Miss Bent. ‘It takes a single woman to explain life to girls. Married women are one-sided in their views.’

  ‘I did think of keeping on my job,’ said Mrs. Bissell, ‘and I discussed it very carefully with Mr. Bissell, but the Income Tax stood in the way. I should have been taxed on his income as well as mine, which made it hardly worth while. It is really much more economical to live in sin if it can be done without attracting attention. We discussed that alternative quite frankly and decided that it wouldn’t suit us as we are both home birds. Come along now, Edna, it’s time to go to bed.’

  ‘I?’ said Edna.

  ‘Put the blocks away, dear,’ said Mrs. Bissell. ‘Another way is to live with a woman. It is far more economical for Miss Hampton and Miss Bent to live together as they do than if they were married. Now put the lid on nicely.’

  ‘Wot sy?’ said Edna.

  ‘We say “pardon,” not “what did you say,”’ said Mrs. Bissell. ‘You must excuse her, she’s a wee bit tired. I must say I cannot quite agree with you, Miss Bent. I admit that one learns much at Teachers’ Training Colleges, but it is all bricks without straw. I would advocate married teachers in every case, with a suitable amount of leave on half-pay with every child. But the Income Tax laws would have to be revised first. Say good night, Edna.’

  ‘I?’said Edna.

  ‘She’s tired, poor little thing,’ said Mrs. Bissell and picking up her adopted child she held it tenderly in her arms, smiling at it. Mrs. Morland afterwards maintained that Edna had smiled back at her, but Mrs. Birkett, who was more prosaic, said the child had shown no change of expression at all. Mrs. Bissell went upstairs with Edna. Mrs. Birkett said they must go and thanked Mrs. Bissell warmly for a delightful tea-party.

  ‘Now you have once found the way you must come again,’ said Mr. Bissell, and escorted the ladies to the door, which was tight work with five people in a very narrow passage. Smigly-Rydz pulled Miss Bent violently out of the drawing-room and fawned heavily on Mr. Bissell.

  ‘No biscuits to-day, old fellow,’ said Mr. Bissell, patting the dog’s enormous head.

  ‘Mustn’t spoil him,’ said Miss Hampton, getting out of the front door. ‘He expects biscuits every time he comes.’

  ‘He has a hopeful disposition,’ said Mr. Bissell, by now entirely at his ease. ‘I think Panderer must have been his sponsor.’

  With this classical allusion he shook hands warmly with all his guests and went back into the house to wash up the tea-things.

  ‘What good people,’ said Mrs. Morland earnestly, as soon as they were out of earshot. ‘They make me feel ashamed. When I saw them so fond of each other and so good to that dreadful idiot child, I felt I ought to go to Poland, or become a munition worker, though I don’t suppose I could do either.’

  ‘Saints, both of them,’ said Miss Hampton. ‘Drive you mad to live with, but saints all the same. She got a good one in on you and me, eh, Bent?’

  And Miss Hampton laughed loudly.

  ‘I don’t agree with her at all,’ said Miss Bent. ‘I am perfectly prepared to pay Income Tax for the sake of my principles. What is the good of all the women like Rory Freemantle who have worn themselves out to make the world a safe place for us if we are not allowed to shoulder our part of the burden. If I had to pay Income Tax on Hampton’s income to-morrow I would be proud.’

  ‘Nothing to prevent you sending conscience-money to the Chancellor of the Exchequer to-morrow,’ said Miss Hampton, ‘but you won’t. Coming into the Phelps’s, Mrs. Birkett?’

  At any other time Mrs. Birkett would have refused, but so weak did she feel after the unexpected developments of her tea-party that she said After all she did owe Mrs. Phelps a call and might as well pay it now. So as they were now opposite the Admiral’s house, they rang the bell.

  Rear-Admiral Phelps was a retired naval man who had chosen Southbridge for his retirement, bringing with him his wife and a grown-up daughter. He was a small dry-faced man, quiet and meek in the home, quiet and industrious in all forms of Social Service. There was hardly a Committee, an Institute, a Good Work of any kind in Southbridge on which he was not an active worker, besides being Secretary of the British Legion, the Boy Scouts, and the District Nursing Association, and one of the churchwardens, keeping the Vicar rigorously in order. His wife, a great, bouncing, masterful woman, was so exactly what one kind of Admiral’s wife is supposed to be that it was almost like a miracle. She also took an immense and overpowering interest in village life, treating everyone as if she were on the quarter-deck; the Vicar as ship’s chaplain, his wife as non-existent, such gentry as there were in Southbridge, a very small village, as captains and commanders, the higher-class tradesmen like Mr. Brown of the Red Lion as lieutenants and midshipmen, the lower class as warrant officers, and everyone else as ratings. For some time she had been unable to fit Miss Hampton and Miss Bent into her scheme, but appeared finally to have placed them as a kind of marines of an amphibious nature, as indeed they were. The Birketts, who did not live in the village, had given her some difficulty, until she decided that Mr. Birkett being in charge of some four hundred men and boys might hold brevet rank as a captain, and to Mrs. Birkett as the captain’s wife she extended her friendship.

  Mrs. Phelps was one of those happy women for whom wars ar
e made and ever since September the 3rd had not been seen in a skirt except at church. She had become head of the local A.R.P. almost before it was thought of, and managed to combine these duties with running the Red Cross in the village, besides laying down a number of hens, rabbits and goats to save tonnage.

  Her daughter Margot, who was as bouncing and masterful as her mother, though not yet so fat, seconded her ably in all her doings, and knitted at incredible speed a vast number of comforts for the Royal Navy. Her ill-wishers said she knitted during the sermon, but this was not true, and choir practice is quite different.

  Jutland Cottage, as the Admiral had re-christened The Hollies when he took it on his retirement, was not only a centre for every village activity, but a port of call for any naval officer who had ever served with or under the Admiral. There was indeed a legend among the younger men that Mrs. Phelps had accompanied the Admiral on some of his cruises, bringing with her a cow and some poultry for personal use, but this would hardly be possible in the twentieth century, so we need not believe it.

  Only a few intimate friends knew that the Admiral was often in pain from a wound received at the battle from which his house took its name, and even fewer knew how badly off the Phelps’s were and with what courage they faced not only the rest of their own lives, but their daughter’s future, for Miss Phelps was nearly thirty and so used to being regarded as a brother by the navy that nothing else had ever come into her head.

  The Admiral himself opened the door. His guests walked in and were immediately enveloped in heavy black folds of some material and, as the Admiral shut the door, in complete darkness.

  ‘To the left,’ said the Admiral in his quiet precise voice. ‘This is my light-lock for the black-out. A good invention, don’t you think. You come in: no light can get out of the house through the curtain: you shut the door: then you turn left and come through into the sitting-room.’

  Guided more by the sound of his voice than by his directions the ladies extricated themselves from the folds, turned to the left and passing under a curtain held aside for them by the Admiral, emerged into the little sitting-room which was also hall, dining-room, smoking-room, and often a bedroom for visiting officers. Here Mrs. Phelps in blue serge trousers of a very nautical cut, her abundant bosom but imperfectly restrained by a blue serge zip-up lumber jacket, and a spotted handkerchief round her reddish-grey hair, was entertaining two young men in naval uniform whom she introduced as Tubby and Bill, and the Vicar. She warmly welcomed the newcomers and addressing the Admiral as ‘Irons’ told him to mix the drinks.

  Mrs. Birkett begged to present her friend Mrs. Morland.

  ‘Now, wait a minute,’ said Mrs. Phelps. ‘There’s a Lieutenant Morland in the Flatiron. She’s on the China station now.’

  Mrs. Morland said she expected that was her third son Dick, as he was in the Flatiron on the China station.

  ‘Dick, that’s it,’ said Mrs. Phelps. ‘My husband had a destroyer in the Iron class and we take a great interest in them. He was Commander of the Scrapiron and Captain of the Andiron and was with the Gridiron on her trials. All his friends call him “Irons.” I saw your boy at Malta two years ago, just before the Admiral retired. Tubby, you knew Dick Morland, didn’t you?’

  Tubby, whose other name is unknown to history, said Rather, and with very little encouragement told Mrs. Morland all about himself. Mrs. Morland, who on seeing so many naval men had suddenly thought that the heroine of her present novel might be rescued from the fangs of the Gestapo agent by an officer on leave listened with great attention, for though she did not exactly know what she wanted to ask, she knew that the strangely working mind that writes books for one would choose and remember a few points that would be useful, so she smiled on Tubby and drank her cocktail and let it all gently soak in.

  Miss Hampton and Miss Bent, to whom one cocktail was as naught, tossed theirs off, but refused any more.

  ‘Now, you must have another,’ said the Admiral. ‘Drinks are the last economy we are going to make. Must give our friends a drink when they come aboard.’

  But Miss Hampton refused for herself and her friend, saying she had promised Joe Brown to be in the bar of the Red Lion at opening time and must keep a steady head. Mrs. Birkett had a shrewd guess that both ladies had a steadier head than most men and were really considering the Admiral’s purse, and liked them none the less for it.

  ‘These boys were torpedoed a month ago,’ said Mrs. Phelps, ‘and they are joining their ship tomorrow.’

  Tubby tore himself from his conversation with Mrs. Morland to say it had been bad luck to be so long ashore and Bill broke a cheerful silence for the first time to say he wished he hadn’t lost his ocarina with his kit, because he had never had a better one. Mrs. Birkett was just going to speak when Miss Phelps, dressed like her mother, but very muddy about the legs of her trousers, came in from the back of the house and said it had taken her half an hour to catch the goats and they weren’t milked yet.

  ‘And what’s more,’ she said, ‘that Mrs. Warbury and her husband came by in their great whacking car and stopped and looked over the hedge and never even offered to help and then they had the cheek to say they were coming round to have a drink. Give me a strong one, Tubby, before they get at the bottle.’

  ‘We can’t refuse them drinks,’ said Mrs. Phelps, to whom the laws of hospitality were sacred, ‘but I’m sure they are spies. Mrs. Warbury has a refugee maid.’

  ‘So have I,’ said Miss Hampton. ‘Loathe Mrs. Warbury like the devil, but must be fair.’

  ‘Is that your Czecho-Slovakian?’ said the Vicar, who had been talking quietly to Mrs. Birkett about the Restoration Fund.

  ‘It was,’ said Miss Hampton. ‘But she would tell me how much better everything was in Czecho-Slovakia than in England, and I couldn’t stand it. Got her a very good job in Barchester. No, it’s a Pole now. Must support the Empire.’

  ‘Oh, well, a Pole,’ said Mrs. Phelps. ‘After all that doesn’t count. But Mrs. Warbury has an Austrian refugee and we all know what that means.’

  Several people said Vienna was such an enchanting place before the last war, and how gay and courageous the Viennese were.

  ‘Mrs. Warbury’s maid may be gay and courageous,’ said Mrs. Phelps, ‘but I think she looks very suspicious, and I have told the Admiral repeatedly that he ought to do something about it. And the Warburys only changed their name from Warburg in the last war. The Admiral ought to get them interned. Especially their boy.’

  Miss Hampton said he was a nasty piece of work and far too often in the Red Lion bar.

  ‘Always there when Bent and I go in,’ she said, ‘cadging drinks and listening to what people say. To be quite fair, I don’t know what he could find out there except the price of potatoes and what fat stock fetched last market day, but he isn’t up to any good. When our men begin coming home on leave I shall keep my eye on him.’

  ‘I have only met Mrs. Warbury once,’ said Mrs. Birkett, ‘at Mrs. Keith’s at Northbridge Manor, and Mrs. Keith told me afterwards that she hardly knew her and she had literally pushed her way into the working party. Poor Mrs. Keith.’

  Various other members of the party were about to express their dislike or their dark suspicion of the Warburys when the door-bell rang. The Admiral went to the door, visitors were heard making muffled sounds from among the folds of the curtains, and the Warburys came in. Mrs. Warbury we have already met. Of Mr. Warbury we need only say that any caricaturist wanting to draw a film producer would have been enchanted to see him, so exactly did his face, his hands and his cigar fit the type the public expects.

  ‘How sweet of the Admiral to let us in himself,’ said Mrs. Warbury.

  Mr. Warbury said ‘Good evening, all,’ and began ploughing his way towards the drinks.

  ‘Our maid goes home at six, because of the blackout,’ said Mrs. Phelps. ‘She lives at Elmtree Corner and her mother likes her to get home in plenty of time.’

  ‘You ought to have an Austrian lik
e mine,’ said Mrs. Warbury. ‘She works from morning to night and loves it. She has no friends nearer than London so she never goes out. She often says to me, “I feel quite English, gnädige Frau.” She and your Polish girl ought to meet, Miss Hampton.”

  ‘Don’t see how they’d meet if yours never gets a holiday,’ said Miss Hampton.

  ‘Now,’ said Mrs. Warbury archly, ‘you mustn’t put that in a book. With you and Mrs. Morland here we shall all find ourselves in print. You must be picking up a lot of character in this quaint nook, Mrs. Morland.’

  ‘People always seem to think that,’ said Mrs. Morland plaintively, ‘but as a matter of fact I seem to spin things out of my inside like a spider. People have to be much funnier than usual before they penetrate into me as it were, and even then they come out quite different.’

  ‘You don’t know how funny Oscar and I can be,’ said Mrs. Warbury laughing recklessly. ‘You must come to one of our Bohemian evenings.’

  ‘That is right,’ said Mr. Warbury suddenly. ‘You will all come, yes?’

  This was the last thing anyone present wanted to do and there was a moment’s uncomfortable silence, which the Admiral despairingly broke by asking the Vicar what they were going to do about God Save the King in church, as they ought to have it settled before the Church Council met. The Vicar, who was very shy and had been longing to get away for some time, said it was a question whether our National Anthem should be treated as a prayer, in which case it should be sung kneeling, or as an act of National Expression, outside the scope of the regular service if he made himself understood, and so sung standing. In his own opinion, he said, it would be more reverent to kneel. He said this with some trepidation, for his churchwarden, having been used for many years to read the service himself, looked upon his vicar as a kind of chaplain under his orders and was apt to treat him as such.