‘I really do feel quite wicked sometimes,’ she said earnestly to Mrs. Keith, ‘at not overworking myself and having a breakdown, but somehow I cannot, and if I broke down the babies would have to go. I am having ten more next week. I have had the old stables made into dormitories and put in fixed basins and a bath and central heating, and Sir Edmund says he can get me enough coal if I don’t ask how. But it all seems so wretchedly little when I see Delia at the Hospital and Mr. Merton in uniform and the Vicar and Mrs. Miller with those dreadful evacuee children.’
‘At least, Lavinia, you are helping all those children,’ said Mrs. Keith. ‘And all I have done is to be so unwell that my husband had to get rid of our evacuees, and take up all Lydia’s time, when she would like to be nursing. She is being more comfort than I can tell you.’
Noel Merton now began to get up.
‘I shall see you again whenever I can,’ he said to Lydia. ‘And let me tell you that when I see all that you do and what a good girl you are being to stick to this place and do the dull jobs, you make me and my uniform feel like three pennyworth of ha’pence.’
Lydia looked at him.
‘Well, what else could I do?’ she said. ‘I’m sorry about not going for a drive to-day, but it was great fun to clean out the boat house with you. If only Colin had been here too—I’ll see you out. It’s a bit dark on the front door step. Tommy wants to tell me something or other that he wants; more committees I suppose. Anyway I’d better get it over.’
Noel said good-bye to his hostess and Mrs. Brandon and shook hands with Mr. Needham. Lydia took him to the front door with a torch, to light him into his car.
‘You are a good, good girl,’ he said when he had buttoned himself into his British Warm. And he put an arm across Lydia’s shoulders for a moment as they stood in the darkness. Lydia turned her torch on. Noel got into the car and drove away, rather wishing that young Needham didn’t want Lydia’s help about anything. She gave far too much to everyone and though he admitted that she gave very freely to himself, he suddenly had a feeling that she oughtn’t to be so kind to young men of nearer her own age. ‘Middle-aged fool,’ he remarked aloud to himself and then had to give his mind to avoiding a car with far too powerful lights—the Warburys’ had he known it—which was crashing along with its wheels well over the white line, causing him to change his note to ‘Blasted fools.’ But the thought of young Mr. Needham remained too near the surface for his pleasure.
Lydia snapped her torch off and stood in the cold for a moment. She told herself stoutly that Noel must have lots of friends nearer his own age, grown-up in a way that she could never hope to be. There was a freemasonry of age and associations between him and Mrs. Brandon that she could never hope to share. She was too humble to resent it and indeed liked Mrs. Brandon as much as ever, but she wished quite desperately that she were over fifty and a woman of the world. She always thought of Noel as about her own age, but every now and then it was borne in upon her that he must find her rather a green girl. She gave herself one of her impatient shakes. Tommy wanted something and must be attended to. And perhaps she would be able to prop up his feelings for Octavia, which seemed to be melting again under Mrs. Brandon’s unconscious influence. Mrs. Brandon then appeared, kissed Lydia very affectionately and was in her turn driven away. Lydia went back to the drawing-room where Mr. Needham still lingered.
‘It does make one feel a worm,’ said Mr. Needham, ‘to see men of Mr. Merton’s age in uniform. I mean I know I am doing my duty in a kind of way, but it doesn’t seem enough.’
Mrs. Keith looked so tired that Lydia said she had better go up and rest before dinner.
‘I expect I’m rather a nuisance,’ said Mr. Needham, ‘but if you had a few moments to spare—’
‘All right,’ said Lydia. ‘Have a cigarette and I’ll ring for some sherry and I’ll come back when I’ve settled Mother.’
Mr. Needham was then left to face Palmer who brought in the drinks with a manner implying that every drop of sherry consumed in the house was directly taken from her and cook’s wages and that this was the kind of thing that led to a general uprising of the workers. He very basely pretended to be looking at some books in a far corner till he could feel in his back that she had gone, after which he was overcome with a sense of his own selfishness and was just going to slink away when Lydia came back.
‘Are you going?’ said Lydia. ‘I thought you wanted to talk to me.’
‘Well, I did,’ said Mr. Needham, ‘but I expect you’d rather I didn’t.’
‘Don’t be an ass,’ said Lydia good-humouredly, ‘it’s no good coming all the way here and going away again. Only hurry up, because Father will be back and I’ve got to see him about some business.’
Thus hurried and adjured poor Mr. Needham began to stutter again till Lydia’s patience nearly gave way.
‘It’s often easier for people who stammer to sing than to talk,’ said Lydia. ‘You couldn’t say what you want all on one note, could you? I mean like intoning, only that goes up and down. Is it about the Dean or anything?’
Mr. Needham was heard to mutter the words ‘Mr. Merton’ and ‘uniform.’
‘Well, I simply cannot understand you if you don’t say something,’ said Lydia, very reasonably. ‘Just try.’
Thus exhorted Mr. Needham began again, and managed to explain that he had been much exercised in his mind as to his duty in the present series of crises. If only, he said, he could do something really horrible he would feel much better. Being a secretary was like funking everything. If he could be a curate in a very poor, atheistic, East End slum and never see a blade of green grass and be hooted in the streets and work for twenty-four hours on end and have the church open for down-and-outs all night and be in charge of a plague-stricken district and fast a great deal; or if they would send him to convert cannibals, or preach to lepers, or have his hands and feet frozen off in the Hudson Bay country, he would feel much better. As it was he thought he would go mad. Or to be a chaplain in France, though that was asking far too much. It was the older men who got all those jobs and there didn’t seem to be any place for a young man at all. His speech then petered miserably out and he said he supposed he had better get back to the Deanery.
‘Look here,’ said Lydia. ‘It’s perfectly foul for anyone to be themselves just now, but it’s about all one can be. I expect the Dean feels frightfully rotten too and would much rather be killed like St. Thomas à Becket, but he can’t, so he has to do without. I feel pretty sick myself at doing nothing when Delia and Octavia are on night duty for weeks at a time and Mrs. Brandon is having a houseful of children and Noel doing something secret in uniform and Colin, that’s my brother, training artillery in camp like anything—oh and everyone doing something. You really aren’t the only one, Tommy. Anyway the Dean must have a secretary. And it’s an awful help for Octavia to have you about. Buck up.’
‘Do you think it really is a help to Octavia?’ said Mr. Needham.
‘Of course it is,’ said Lydia. ‘If you didn’t take her for a walk when she comes off duty or before she goes on, she’d never go out at all, she’s so lazy, and then she’d get fat and bloated and not be able to nurse anyone. Of course you’re a lot of use.’
Mr. Needham, who having unloaded all his troubles on to someone else felt quite light-hearted, said he was frightfully ashamed and she was most frightfully decent to have helped him so much and he supposed he’d better go. On his way out he crossed Mr. Keith, who had just returned from Barchester, said how do you do and good-bye to him in a breath and went back to the Deanery, his mind in a confused jumble of adorations: of Mrs. Brandon because she had that effect on nearly everyone, of Lydia because she was a girl one could tell anything to without upsetting her in the least and perhaps the nicest girl he had ever met, of Octavia because it is wonderful to feel that you are really being a help to someone and almost consoles you for not being murdered by East-Enders, cannibals, or lepers. But he determined to speak to his employer
again about the chance of getting to the front.
‘Tiring day at the office,’ said Mr. Keith, sitting down heavily in the drawing-room. ‘You know, Lydia, it’s no fun being old and out of things. It isn’t only the young clerks who have been called up, but I find myself actually envying Robert, because he is in the thick of everything. He is helping with every important county activity and I must say doing it all admirably, and so is Edith. And all I can do is what any junior clerk could do, routine work at the office and my usual committees, hospital and so on. It takes the whole heart out of one. There isn’t any place for the old men now.’
‘Rot, Father,’ said Lydia, kissing the top of his head. ‘If you didn’t keep the office going, Robert would have to stop being useful in the county, and then there’s the place, and Mother. And I wanted to talk to you about the third sluice in the water meadows. Something’s got to be done about it.’
So they talked about the sluice. And then Lydia went up to dress for dinner. As she pulled her stocking on to her right leg, there was a faint sensation on her knee and she felt the well-known feeling of a ladder rushing head-downwards from knee to toe-tip. It was not a very favourite pair of stockings, and one heel had a small darn, but suddenly it was more than Lydia could bear. She hurled herself on to her bed and there cried uncontrollably, as she had hardly done since she was a child. She would have given anything to cry herself to sleep and forget everything, but it was impossible, so with the last spasm of sobbing she got up, blew her nose several times, washed her face violently and determined to be starting a stye in her eye if anyone asked questions.
‘If only Noel were here,’ she said aloud to her reflection. But at these words her reflection showed such unequivocal signs of beginning to cry again that she went quickly downstairs, where her father and mother would at least give her every reason for keeping up her courage.
CHAPTER XI
THE CHRISTMAS TREAT
AS term drew to a close, the agitating question of Christmas holidays began to press upon everyone. The Hosiers’ Boys were almost without exception to go home, as their parents thought it would be nice to have them back for the holidays. The few boys that for one reason or another their parents could not have were billeted on the Carters, where Matron most nobly gave up her usual visit to her married sister, whose boy in the wireless in the Merchant Service had been torpedoed twice and was about to join his third ship with undiminished spirits, and was rewarded by one broken leg and a mastoid, who had to be taken off to Barchester Hospital at half an hour’s notice. The married masters relapsed into obscurity with their wives; some of the unmarried ones went back to wherever they lived and others were invited by friends they had made in the neighbourhood to spend Christmas with them. Mr. and Mrs. Bissell with little Edna remained at Maria Cottage and their friendship with Miss Hampton and Miss Bent grew and flourished. Mr. Hopkins, you will be glad to hear, got a very good job at Monmouth and left at the end of the term, unregretted by a single soul.
As for the evacuee children all over the county, their loving and starving parents, having had nearly four happy months of freedom, and seeing no reason why their children shouldn’t be lodged, fed, clothed, educated and amused at other people’s expense for ever, saw no reason to do anything more about them and hoped that the same fate would overtake the new baby whom most of them had had or were expecting. So all the hostesses buckled to afresh. Mrs. Birkett offered the school gymnasium for a great Christmas party with a tree, the sewing parties vied in running up party frocks for the girls, a levy on jerseys and cardigans for the boys was made in the neighbourhood. A house-to-house collection of small sums of money was made and Mrs. Phelps went to London on the cheap day return and came back with three dozen pairs of very cheap soiled white satin slippers which she and Miss Phelps dyed pink and blue and green, and two pounds’ worth of toys, paper tablecloths and napkins, silver ribbons, and sparkling glass ornaments from Woolworths. Cakes were promised by all the hostesses and their friends, fish paste, tin loaves and margarine were bought wholesale, lemonade was laid in by the gallon. In fact every possible preparation that good-will could suggest was made for an afternoon of noise, mess, over-excitement, tears and sickness.
The actual preparations were put in the hands of Kate Carter, whose gentle soul revelled in the prospect of a total upsetting of her life for a week or more and the subsequent clearing up. Under her benign and unruffled sway the Hosiers’ Boys who were staying at Everard’s House cleared away the gymnastic apparatus, swept the floor, brought in from under the pavilion the trestle tables that were stored for the school sports and big cricket matches, helped to unload with only three breakages the chairs that came like bony sardines in a van from Barchester, rushed down to the village for drawing-pins and string, borrowed the Scouts’ trek-cart and collected all the cups and plates that were being lent, carried up the two big tea-urns from the British Legion, and brought in coke for the big stove that more or less heated the building. It was really a crowning mercy that Mason, the School drill sergeant who had come up with Mr. Birkett from the Lower School, was in Manchester with his mother, or he would have infallibly gone mad at the desecration of his temple and the sight of the parallel bars shivering in the cold in the bicycle shed.
The question of invitations was not an easy one. It had gradually dawned upon the promoters of the party that it would be impossible to invite all the evacuated children in the neighbourhood. Mrs. Bissell, who was invaluable throughout the proceedings, suggested that the head teacher of each school represented in or near Southbridge should be given twenty-five invitations, with a request to distribute them among those of his or her scholars who were the least likely to let down the general tone. These schools were St. Bathos (C. of E.), Pocklington Road School (rigidly Baptist), St. Quantock (Catholic) and the Hiram Road School (aggressively non-sectarian not to speak of pink). The invitations were issued three weeks before the party so that the children might be chosen with care and deliberation. At first all went well; indeed too well, for on hearing of the ordeal by behaviour, every child behaved so unnaturally well that their teachers considered drawing lots. As time went on, however, the old Adam, and in a great many cases the old Eve, triumphed over virtuous resolves, and by the end of a week it seemed doubtful whether a single child would be eligible. The tickets were then distributed in a despairing kind of way and when they had all been given out it appeared that every child had several brothers and sisters who were crying all the time because they couldn’t go to the Ladies’ Party. It then became evident that to control a nominal twenty-five children at least one teacher per head would be needed, and failing this at least four teachers to each party. Sister Mary Joseph, who presided like a devout white pouter pigeon over St. Quantock, sent in a petition that all her teaching nuns might come, as a party would be such a treat for them, a request that could not well be refused to anyone so charming and so used to getting her own way. Urged by professional jealousy Mr. Simon of the Pocklington Road (Baptist) School asked to be allowed to bring his whole staff, saying darkly that he was responsible for his children, by which he was understood to mean that he must guard them against the Scarlet Woman in the shape of Sister Mary Joseph, who had quite enough to do and never thought of his children at all. Mr. Simon’s application was rapidly followed by one from Miss Carmichael of St. Bathos (C. of E.) School who wished to bring her entire staff on no grounds at all and was insanely jealous because she was not on the Committee. The rear was brought up by Mr. Hedgebottom of the Hiram Road School, who had at first decided to refuse to allow his children to attend a Capittleist function, but after wrestling with his conscience forced it to tell him that they ought to see how the so-called Upper Classes lived, that their teeth might be sharpened for the Class War in joyful hopes of which he lived.
By adding to these a number of evacuated mothers who wished their children under school age to participate in any over-excitement and over-eating that might be going on, Kate Carter and Mrs. Bissell,
who sat as a kind of permanent Committee of Public Safety, found that they might easily have from a hundred and fifty to two hundred guests, but pinning their faith on the number of colds that were about they prepared for a maximum of a hundred and fifty.
To Kate’s great pleasure Philip Winter came back at about this time on ten days’ leave, asking if he might bring Captain Geoffrey Fairweather who happened to be quartered near him. Not only was Kate delighted to have two extra in the house, but in her kindly way she thought it would be nice for Mrs. Birkett to see her son-in-law’s brother who might have news from Las Palombas. This was quite a mistake, for the Fair-weathers, though devoted brothers, never wrote to each other, relying on chance or their various clubs to bring them into touch from time to time.
The only real blot on the entertainment was that Mrs. Warbury had invited herself and her son, choosing a moment when she could not very well be publicly refused. On hearing this Geraldine managed to get leave from Matron for twenty-four hours, as the only casualty under her care was an A.R.P. warden who had stumbled over some sandbags belonging to a rival section in the black-out and sprained his ankle, also having his nose broken by two zealous A.R.P. helpers who hearing the noise had rushed to his assistance, collided in the dark, and fallen heavily across his face. Although Geraldine had rung up young Mr. Warbury’s secretary several times, she had not yet seen the film studios and her mother hoped she had got over her ill-judged affection for him, but such appeared to be far from the case. It was distinctly annoying for Mrs. Birkett to think of Geraldine wearing her heart on her sleeve for young Mr. Warbury to peck at, and she could only hope, though without much confidence, that among the crowd her virginal pursuit would not attract much attention.
By ten o’clock on the morning of the Treat the Committee were actively engaged. The Hosiers’ Boys had stoked the stove till it was almost red hot and gave out such alarming cracklings that Edward the invaluable odd-man had to be sent for at full speed from the school allotments where he was repairing some fencing, to deal with the dampers which none but he had ever understood. Kate, to whose mind conflagrations from one cause or another were always an imminent danger, expressed her fear that the iron chimney of the stove might cause some adjacent woodwork to begin smouldering with slow combustion, which, growing to a head at about five o’clock, would suddenly burst into flame, lick up the Christmas Tree and the trestle tables, cause the roof, which was supported by strong steel girders resting on brick walls, to fall in with a crash in five minutes and the whole party, who would have fled shrieking in wild disorder towards the three large exits whose doors opened outwards, to be incinerated in the horrid mass which the firemen from Barchester (for of the Southbridge Fire Brigade she had no opinion at all owing to knowing most of the members personally when off duty) would not be able to approach for three days, if indeed they had not themselves been overwhelmed to a man by avalanches of red-hot masonry and jets of white flame twenty feet long. Just as she was trying to decide whether she had better share the fate of the children, nuns, teachers, mothers, children under school age and other members of the School staff, or make her escape for her children’s sake, to be despised by mankind for evermore, Edward, answering her spoken question which had merely been, ‘Oh, Edward, don’t you think the stove is rather hot?’ had suggested that it should be allowed to rage unchecked until lunch time and then be allowed to die down, after which the accumulated heat plus the heat from far too many people crowded together in one room would make a delightful atmosphere. Kate felt much happier, and though at intervals her imagination still toyed with the idea of the slowly smouldering beam, we are happy to inform our readers that owing to the chimney having no beam anywhere near it, nothing of the sort happened.
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