High Rising (VMC)

by Angela Thirkell

  So Miss Todd remained as Laura’s secretary and what Laura called the prop of her declining years. And old Mrs Todd got gently madder, and her heart gave a little more anxiety, but Miss Todd, sustained by clothes, remained perfectly serene, and if she occasionally shed a tear about her aged mamma’s uncertain health, only Laura knew.

  2

  High Rising

  Now, as they drove along towards High Rising, Laura became vaguely conscious that Tony was asking a question. He suffered from what his mother called a determination of words to the mouth, and nothing except sleep appeared to check his flow of valueless conversation.

  ‘Mother, which do you think?’

  ‘Think about what, darling?’

  ‘Oh, Mother, I’ve been telling you.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Tony. I had to pay attention to the driving, and I didn’t quite hear. Tell me again.’

  ‘Well, I could get a Great Western model engine for seventeen shillings, but there is a much better L.M.S. one for twenty-five shillings. Which do you think?’

  ‘I should think the Great Western, if it only costs seventeen shillings and the other is twenty-five.’

  ‘Yes, but, Mother, you don’t see. The Great Western would only pull a coal truck and one coach, but the L.M.S. would pull three coaches quite easily.’

  ‘Well, what about the L.M.S. then?’

  ‘Yes, but, Mother, then I’d have an L.M.S. engine and Great Western coaches. Didn’t you know my coaches were all Great Western?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Tony, I’d forgotten that.’

  ‘Well, Mother, considering I was telling you all about them I thought you would know. Mother, which would you say?’

  ‘Look, Tony,’ said his mother, stifling a desire to kill him, ‘there’s Mr Reid’s shop. We shall be home in a minute.’

  ‘But which do you think, Mother? A Great Western to go with the coaches, or do you think an L.M.S.?’

  ‘Let’s have a look at the whole railway tomorrow, Tony,’ said Laura, temporising, ‘and then I’ll tell you. Here we are.’

  They turned up the short drive, and found the front door open, with light shining from it. A very fat woman in a grey flannel dress, girt with a tremendous checked apron, came out to meet them.

  ‘Well, Stoker, here we are,’ said Laura. ‘How’s everything?’

  ‘Quite all right.’

  ‘You and Tony get the things out, and I’ll run the car into the garage. Are the doors open?’

  ‘Yes, and supper’s all ready. I thought you and Master Tony would have it together as you’re alone. Here, Master Tony, come and help with your trunk.’

  But Tony had already secured his railway box from the back of the car and disappeared.

  ‘Don’t do it alone, Stoker,’ said Laura, as her maid prepared to lift Tony’s trunk into the house. ‘You’ll hurt yourself.’

  ‘Hurt myself?’ said Stoker scornfully. ‘Not unless I was to burst, and that would be a bursting.’

  Seeing her so determined, Laura put the car away. When she got back to the house she found that Tony had already unpacked most of his railway all over the drawing-room floor, flung his coat and cap on the sofa, and settled down to the construction of a permanent way.

  ‘No, Tony,’ said his mother firmly. ‘Put all those things back in the box and take them upstairs. You know you have your own play-room. I will not have your rubbish all over the drawing-room floor. And take your clothes off the sofa and go and wash for supper at once.’

  ‘But, Mother, you wanted to see the railway, because of settling about the engines.’

  ‘I don’t want to see the railway now, or ever,’ cried Laura, goaded to exasperation, ‘at least not this evening, and not in the drawing-room. Pack it up at once.’

  Unwillingly, with a delicious, pink, sulky face, Tony put his engine and lines away, piled his coat and cap on the box, and staggered from the room, with faint groans at the tyranny under which he lived.

  ‘No, not in the hall. Right upstairs,’ shouted his mother.

  Tony reappeared at the door.

  ‘I only thought you wanted me to hang my coat and cap up,’ he explained in an exhausted voice.

  Laura flung her own coat and hat on a chair and sat down. Darling Tony. How awful it was to be a person of one idea. The elder boys said she spoiled him. It was not so much that she deliberately gave way to Tony, she pointed out to them, as that, after bringing three of them up, she was too exhausted to do anything about the fourth. When, for about a quarter of a century, you have been fighting strong young creatures with a natural bias towards dirt, untidiness and carelessness, quite unmoved by noise, looking upon loud, unmeaning quarrels and abuse as the essence of polite conversation, oblivious of all convenience and comfort but their own, your resistance weakens. Tony was no more trying than Gerald had been – oh, those firstborn, how they take it out on one’s ignorance of their ways – or John, or Dick, but she was older, and less able to deal with his self-sufficient complacency. She had sent him to school at an earlier age than his brothers, partly so that he should not be an only child under petticoat government; partly, as she remarked, to break his spirit. She fondly hoped that after a term or two at school he would find his own level, and be clouted over the head by his unappreciative contemporaries. But not at all. He returned from school rather more self-centred than before, talking even more, and, if possible, less interestingly. Why the other boys hadn’t killed him, his doting mother couldn’t conceive. There seemed to be some peculiar power in youngest sons which made them resistant to all outside disapproval. When he was checked in his flow of speech, he merely took breath, waited for an opening, and began again. Laura could only hope that this tenacity of purpose would serve him in after life. It would either do that, or alienate all his friends completely.

  A noise like the sweep in the next-door chimney when you aren’t expecting him was heard coming down the stairs, and her hateful, adorable son burst into the room.

  ‘Supper’s ready, Mother, and old Stokes is just going to ring the bell.’

  ‘Have you washed, Tony, and why haven’t you changed your boots?’

  ‘I couldn’t, Mother. My other shoes aren’t unpacked.’

  ‘Well, there are some bedroom slippers upstairs. Put them on. And show me your hands.’

  Tony reluctantly exhibited two grey hands, fringed with black, diversified by a few streaks of lighter colour.

  ‘Where did you wash, Tony?’

  ‘In the bathroom.’

  ‘Yes. One second under the tap and then wipe the dirt off on a clean towel. Off you go, and put some water in the basin.’ As her son left the room in offended silence, she continued her recommendations in a louder voice. ‘And turn your sleeves up, and use the nailbrush, and when you’ve washed your hands, rinse them properly, and then clean your nails in my room if you haven’t enough sense to unpack your own bag. And don’t forget to change your boots,’ she wound up at the top of her voice. Then, with great and well-founded want of faith, she followed him upstairs, stood over him while he moodily continued his toilet, and showed a marked want of sympathy while he groaned over the knots in his bootlaces, knots which, as she unkindly pointed out, could only have been put there by himself. The result was so clean, so pink, and so inviting, that she had to hug it, to which it submitted with an excellent grace, putting its arms tight round her neck, and lifting its feet off the floor.

  ‘Mercy, mercy! you’re strangling me!’ she cried.

  Tony pushed his hard, pink cheek firmly against hers, and let himself down.

  ‘Come on, Mrs M,’ he said, leading the way downstairs, ‘old Stokes wants us for supper.’

  When they got to the dining-room, Stoker was standing before the fire with her arms folded. Laura often wished that Stoker didn’t feel it due to herself to wait at table with her massive arms bare to the elbow, but in matters affecting dress, Stoker was neither to hold nor to bind. She had entered Laura’s service soon after Gerald, the eldest, w
as born, with a very lukewarm reference from her former place, and nothing but her air of good-nature to recommend her. On this Laura engaged her, and never regretted it. She was an excellent cook, a devoted slave to the boys, and absolutely trustworthy. Manners she had none. Of her mistress’s housekeeping powers she had no opinion at all, and Laura had long ago given up any attempt to control her, or to interfere in the battles which raged between her and each successive house-parlourmaid in the early days. After every particularly fierce battle she was accustomed to give Laura notice, which Laura always accepted, saying, ‘All right, Stoker, but you are a fool, you know!’ After two days of awful sulks the notice was always withdrawn with voluble explanations, and things would go on as before. By the time the two elder boys were at school, Stoker decided that a house-parlourmaid was an unnecessary expense, and from that moment she reigned supreme from top to bottom of the house. For Laura’s husband, that ineffectual and unlamented gentleman, she had a kind contempt, which took the outward form of always alluding to him in his lifetime as ‘the boys’ father’, which didn’t prevent her going to his funeral in widow’s weeds which left Laura in the shade, and having hysterics on the way home. Whether she was Miss or Mrs, Laura had never dared to ask her. The London tradesmen, with whom she liked to exchange loud and pointless badinage at the kitchen window, called her Miss, until a fateful day when the Milk, so she told Laura, had called her Miss once too often. What she meant Laura never dared to enquire, but after her next Sunday out, Stoker appeared with a broad band of silver-gilt on the third finger of her left hand, bearing in embossed lettering the mystic inscription Bethel I’ll raise. Gradually she let it be known that the ring had belonged to her mother, an old lady of well-known piety, support of a peculiar sect, but when Laura enquired whether the ring embodied an allusion to the chapel she favoured, Stoker darkly replied that her mother was long since dead and no one knew what the Lord had seen fit to do with her, but that’s what the Milk would get if he tried it on again. She then took to herself the prefix Mrs, under the shelter of which title she felt at liberty to go to more outrageous verbal lengths than ever, especially with the Milk. By good fortune she took a liking to Miss Todd, with whom she commiserated loudly on her unmarried state, bringing to her notice the various bachelors of the neighbourhood, none of whom Miss Todd had the slightest wish to marry.

  ‘Now, how about Dr Ford, miss?’ she would say, as if she were recommending a cut from a good joint. ‘You won’t do much better, and neither of you are getting any younger, as they say. Or Mr Knox over at Low Rising? He’s been a widower these four years now, and there’s Miss Sibyl needs someone to look after her, for we all know her poor mother wasn’t much to boast of, lying ill on her back till death her did part. Think of it, miss.’

  Miss Todd thanked Stoker warmly, but didn’t feel called upon to think of it.

  ‘Soup’s hot now,’ said Stoker, getting her massive form sideways through the door to the kitchen. ‘Eat it while I see to the fish.’

  ‘Oh, Stokes, no meat tonight?’ asked Tony.

  ‘No, Master Tony. Young blood like yours doesn’t need no heating at night. There’s fried fish, and I’ve done some chips, too.’

  ‘Chips! Good for you, Stokes,’ cried Tony, letting the soup slide backwards out of his spoon in his rapture.

  ‘Mrs Birkett was quite right when she called you a foul child,’ said Laura dispassionately. ‘Wipe that soup off your waistcoat, Tony. No, not with the tablecloth. What’s a table napkin for?’

  Tony, like most small boys, had a curious antipathy to unfolding his table napkin, which remained in its pristine folds all through the week, merely getting greyer and more smeared on the outside.

  When Stoker had removed the soup plates and brought in the fish and fried potatoes, she settled herself in an easy attitude against the kitchen door, nursing her elbows, and began to impart information.

  ‘Just as well I come down a week before you,’ she began. ‘There’s always more than enough to do. I tell you, when I saw the way things were, I felt my back open and shut with the nerves.’

  ‘I’m very sorry, Stoker,’ said Laura. ‘That must have been awful. But hadn’t you Mr Knox’s Annie’s sister to help you? I told you to get her if you needed help.’

  ‘Annie’s sister!’ exclaimed Stoker, with withering contempt. After a dramatic pause she added, ‘What that one is you wouldn’t know if I was to tell you.’

  ‘Well, what’s wrong? I thought you liked her.’

  ‘There’s many a slip between does and did,’ was Stoker’s enigmatic reply. ‘When a girl spends half the morning talking to the young fellow that brings the wood, and sweeps the dirt under the drawing-room carpet, where it may be, for all she cares, to the present day, for I said to her, “There it stays, to show the mistress the way you work” – there’s no talk of liking.’

  ‘That’s very sad, Stoker. Suppose you sweep it up, and we needn’t have the girl again.’

  ‘I did sweep it up. I wasn’t going to have the house left like a dust-bin for you to see. But I told Mr Knox’s Annie what I thought of the girl, and she’ll sort her. And what do you think of the news at Low Rising?’

  ‘What news, Stoker?’ asked Laura, who sometimes vainly hoped that by using Stoker’s name rather often she might gently hint to her that some form of address would occasionally be acceptable – even Mrs Morland, if Stoker’s soul were above ma’am or mum. But Stoker had her own code of etiquette, and though she freely gave Laura’s friends their titles, and never omitted the word ‘master’ when speaking to, or of, one of the boys, she chose to express her deep devotion and pitying condescension to her mistress by never addressing her otherwise than as ‘you’.

  ‘They’ve got a new girl.’

  ‘Is Annie leaving, then?’

  ‘Annie? No.’ On this word, long drawn out, she disappeared into the kitchen, returning with a fresh supply of potatoes which she placed before Tony, and continued:

  ‘Annie, she wouldn’t go. No; sectary.’

  ‘Oh, a new secretary?’

  ‘That’s right. Miss James, it seems, was took suddenly.’

  ‘Do you mean she died?’

  ‘Died? No. There was trouble in her family, and she had to leave, beginning of October that was, and Mr Knox got a new girl, Miss Una Grey she calls herself,’ said Stoker, as if the secretary were indulging in a sinful alias.

  ‘Well, I hope she has settled down. It must have been very annoying for Mr Knox. Tony, if you must eat potatoes in your fingers, which I don’t really mind, at least don’t wipe your hands down that unlucky suit. Go into the kitchen and rinse them. You can take away, Stoker.’

  When Stoker came back, followed by Tony, who was gloatingly bearing a chocolate pudding, she took up her former position and went on with her news.

  ‘You may well ask me,’ she announced, though Laura had shown no intention of asking anything of the sort, ‘about Miss Grey. Mr Knox’s Annie says there’ll be more than one change in the family before long.’

  ‘What do you mean, Stoker?’

  ‘Sectaries have been known to marry their Masters before now, and Annie says she pities poor Miss Sibyl if such were to be, and she will hand in her notice the very day the banns are put up.’

  ‘Rubbish, Stoker. You and Annie have been gossiping as usual. You have tried to marry poor Mr Knox to every secretary he has had, and to Miss Sibyl’s governesses, and to Mrs Knox’s nurse. You are just as bad as Annie’s sister. Bring me my coffee in the drawing-room now. I’m tired to death.’

  Taking no notice of Stoker’s sibylline mutterings, she escaped, leaving Tony to give Stoker a highly coloured account of his doings at school, and how the masters went in terror of his mordant tongue.

  In the drawing-room she found a pile of letters waiting. Most of them were business, or proofs, which could wait till tomorrow, but presently she came upon one in her publisher’s well-known handwriting. If he had taken the trouble to write himself, it meant he
had something personal to say. It turned out to be a suggestion that he should come down on Saturday for the day, to talk over a possible cheap reissue of some of her books.

  Laura looked up at the shelf of her novels, with Adrian Coates’s name on their backs. She had been very lucky, she thought, to fall into the hands of so agreeable and helpful a publisher. Soon after she first decided that she must try to earn money by writing, she had met him at dinner, and inquired earnestly how many thousand words one needed to make a novel. Adrian was charmed, and rather touched, by this delightfully vague widow with four sons. He had not been long in business and was anxiously looking out for good writers whom he might add to his list, so he asked her if she would have lunch with him.

  ‘If you are really writing a book I would very much like to see it when it is ready,’ he said.

  ‘You mightn’t like it,’ said Laura, in her deep voice. ‘It’s not highbrow. I’ve just got to work, that’s all. You see my husband was nothing but an expense to me while he was alive, and naturally he is no help to me now he’s dead, though, of course, less expensive, so I thought if I could write some rather good bad books, it would help with the boys’ education.’

  ‘Good bad books?’

  ‘Yes. Not very good books, you know, but good of a second-rate kind. That’s all I could do,’ she said gravely.

  So in time her first story went to Adrian, who recognising in it a touch of good badness almost amounting to genius, gave her a contract for two more. Her novels had been steadily successful, and she and Adrian had had a very agreeable partnership over them. She looked upon him as a contemporary of her eldest son – after all, he was only ten years older – while he found it difficult to remember that she was almost old enough to be his mother. Owing to honest dealings on one side and conscientious hard work on the other, their relations had always been very friendly. Adrian’s only complaint about Laura was that she was too unconscious of her own worth, and would belittle herself as a hack writer of rubbish when she was turning out good, workmanlike stuff. Laura’s only complaint against Adrian was that he didn’t read her letters carefully enough, which may have been true, though to a busy man they were at times infuriating, as the business parts were sandwiched in among accounts of the boys’ progress, and general reflections on the conduct of life.