High Rising (VMC)

by Angela Thirkell

  Of course Adrian should come down for Saturday, and she wrote a postcard to that effect. Stoker came in with the coffee.

  ‘I want this to go tonight, Stoker. Tony can run to the pillar-box with it. What’s he doing?’

  ‘Helping wash up.’

  ‘Oh, all right. But send him up to bed soon, Stoker, it’s getting late. What’s the news of Mrs Todd?’

  ‘Miss Todd took her away to Bournemouth. She rang up today to say her poor mother was feeling the benefit and she’d be back on Saturday and you wasn’t to bother about any business letters till she came. And there’s a telephone message from Mr Knox. Miss Sibyl and him is coming over this evening to see you.’

  ‘Oh, Stoker, why didn’t you tell me before? Here I am all dirty and untidy.’

  ‘You’ll do all right,’ said Stoker robustly. ‘If Mr Knox wants to see you he can take it or leave it. That’s them now. I hear the car.’

  Taking the card for the post, Stoker went out and opened the front door. A pretty, dark girl of about twenty, with an ill-assured manner, got out of the car.

  ‘Good evening, miss,’ said Stoker. ‘Where’s Mr Knox? He said on the telephone you was both coming.’

  ‘I know, Stoker, but he found he couldn’t. Is Mrs Morland there?’

  ‘Well, that is a pity,’ said the hospitable Stoker. ‘It’s always nice to have a gentleman. Mrs Morland will be disappointed.’ Flinging open the drawing-room door, she announced, ‘Here’s Miss Sibyl, but you needn’t worry about not being dressed. Mr Knox isn’t coming.’

  ‘Dear Sibyl, how nice of you to come,’ said Laura reaching out a hand. ‘Come near the fire. What’s the matter with your father?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. At least I didn’t think it was much, but he had a little cold, and Miss Grey thought he had better stay in. He’s near the end of a book, you know, and Miss Grey’s awfully keen on it, and she’s afraid he’ll get worse and not be able to get on with it. He sent his love and hoped you wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘Dear me, of course not. I’m really rather glad, because I’m all dirty and untidy. What have you been doing?’

  ‘Oh, nothing much.’

  ‘Not typing?’

  ‘No, not much. You see Miss Grey’s frightfully good at it, and she thinks it’s better if only one of us does it. And her typing is really much better than mine.’

  ‘And what about your own work? Have you been writing anything?’

  Sibyl blushed painfully. ‘I wish you wouldn’t, Mrs Morland. You’re so clever, and I know I can’t ever do anything half as good as yours, and it makes me feel so mortified.’

  Laura laughed. ‘Good heavens, child. I’m a pot-boiler, that’s all. I look to you to do the Risings real credit, to rescue them from the disgrace of lowbrow novels that I’ve brought upon them. High Rising’s pretty low at present. You must follow your father’s footsteps and make Low Rising a star.’

  ‘Coffee for you, miss,’ said Stoker, bursting in with a tray. ‘Better than what your Annie makes.’

  ‘Thank you, Stoker. But we’re having much better coffee now. Miss Grey makes it herself in a kind of machine, and Daddy likes it very much. But I’m afraid Annie isn’t pleased.’

  ‘Listen to me, miss,’ said Stoker impressively, wrapping her arms up in her apron as she spoke, ‘a young lady like you doesn’t know what coffee made in the dining-room means. Extra trays to carry and twice the washing up. You shouldn’t let her do it.’

  ‘But I can’t help it, Stoker. I did tell Miss Grey that I thought Annie would be hurt, but she laughed. I don’t think she quite understands Annie.’

  ‘Send Tony to bed now,’ interrupted Laura, who began to fear that Stoker would favour them with her company indefinitely, ‘and tell him I’ll come up to see him in half an hour, and he must have a bath, whether he wants it or not. And now, Sibyl,’ she continued, as Stoker left the room with a burst of song, ‘what is all this about Miss Grey? Stoker is full of some gossip or other. She and your Annie are the death of all our reputations.’

  ‘Well, there’s nothing much really. Miss James’s sister got ill about the beginning of October and she had to go, so Daddy advertised and of course he got shoals of answers. He didn’t know which to take, so he made me choose one, and I thought Una Grey sounded a nice name, and she wasn’t too old, so we asked her to come on approval for a week, and Daddy and I liked her very much, or we shouldn’t have kept her.’

  ‘You don’t like her so much now, then?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  ‘What’s the matter? Isn’t she competent?’

  ‘Oh, yes, she’s terribly competent and Daddy likes her awfully. I’m the one that doesn’t care for her so much. You see, she’s very clever, and I feel so small and unhelpful beside her – I expect it’s really a horrid kind of jealousy.’

  ‘But what is there to be jealous of?’

  ‘Nothing really, I suppose. Only I feel less and less use to Daddy. I’m not very good at housekeeping, or typing, and Miss Grey is so good at both, so there doesn’t seem to be anything for me to do. But Daddy is terribly pleased with her, so I suppose it’s all right. Only Annie and cook and I have conversations sometimes when she is shut up with Daddy, and we wish we had Miss James again.’

  ‘But she isn’t unkind to you, is she?’ asked Laura, sticking a few hairpins more firmly into her head, as if in preparation for an onslaught on Miss Grey.

  ‘Oh, no, she’s very kind and asked me to call her Una, but I couldn’t quite do it, which is awkward, especially as she has called me Miss Knox ever since. She means to be very nice, I know, and encourage me; but she frightens me, Mrs Morland. She is always talking about how I must go and live in London, and meet lots of people, to help my writing, and she will make Daddy and me go out to dinner when we would much rather not, because she says she can’t bear us to stay in on her account. And then Daddy writes to whoever it is and says may he bring his secretary, and people don’t want an extra woman, but they don’t like to say no. And if she isn’t asked out with us, Mrs Morland, an awful thing happens. Her face goes scarlet, and she gets quite ill and goes to bed for a day or two. Of course, it is lovely to have her upstairs and have Daddy to myself again, but Annie does so hate taking her meals up, and then I have to do it, and she won’t speak to me. Then, when she comes down, Daddy is so sorry for her that he gives in more than ever. And the awful thing is that he won’t think of dismissing her, ever, because she has no home to go to and only distant relations, who despise her for being a secretary.’

  Laura listened to this outburst with some perplexity. She had looked upon Sibyl as a kind of daughter since Mrs Knox died, and was prepared to fight for Sibyl’s rights. But girls did exaggerate, and a girl like Sibyl, who had always lived at home with an adoring father, might easily make too much of Miss Grey’s attitude. Possibly it might be quite a good thing for Sibyl to be in town for a bit and learn to stand on her own feet and make her own friends. However, she put aside Sibyl’s speech for further consideration, resolved to judge for herself, and to get the opinion of Anne Todd, whose views were always worth considering. So she led the talk into safer channels, and delighted Sibyl by telling her some of the plot of the book she was working on. Sibyl, before she went, invited Tony to come and help with a little rough shooting on the following day and come back to Low Rising for tea, where Laura might meet him. Laura jumped inwardly at the prospect of seeing Miss Grey, and begged Sibyl not to let Tony kill himself, or, as a second thought, anyone else. Sibyl promised to put him in charge of the gardener, who would keep him out of mischief. Then she got into her car, and drove away.

  Laura was genuinely puzzled and a little upset by this new and disturbing element in the quiet life of the two Risings, but a yell from Tony sent Miss Grey out of her head.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she shouted up the stairs.

  There was dead silence, so she went up. Tony was sitting in a bath full of boiling water, with all the soaps, sponges, nailbrushes, loofa
hs and toothbrushes floating on the surface.

  ‘Did you hear me, Mother?’ he inquired as she came in. ‘I was being the South Wales Express going into the Severn Tunnel. This is the Severn, with all the boats on it. Now, watch.’

  Uttering another piercing shriek, he plunged under the water, there making a loud gurgling which Laura took to be the noise of an engine going through a tunnel.

  ‘Come out at once, Tony, and don’t splash the water about. You’ve been far too long already. Stoker has enough to do without your flooding the bathroom.’

  Tony emerged, his hair dripping down his face, and plunged into the bath-towel which Laura was holding for him.

  ‘Thank heaven you have washed that horrible stuff off your hair,’ she remarked.

  ‘Mother, did you see me go under the water? Did you hear the whistle? Mother, do you think old Stokes heard me?’

  ‘Get all those things out of the bath, and clean your teeth, and come along to bed,’ said Laura. ‘Sibyl has asked you to go over for some shooting tomorrow and have tea there, and you can’t go if you dawdle.’

  Tony, by now in what he called his pyjama-legs, executed a dance of joy, while his mother picked up his clothes and examined them. The result was not satisfactory.

  ‘Right through the seats again,’ she said hopelessly. ‘And a hole in the middle of your jersey, as usual. Why on earth do little boys keep spikes in the middle of their stomachs? I can’t account for it any other way. And why matron can’t darn your stockings with a wool that matches, I can’t think. I suppose I’ll have to get Miss Todd to re-foot them all before you go back.’

  ‘Mother,’ began Tony, who had abstracted his mind during this jeremiad, ‘it’s a good thing we don’t live on a planet where there isn’t any air, or we couldn’t breathe at all. We couldn’t move either. Even a rocket car couldn’t move. I wonder how we would manage. I suppose we’d have to wear gas masks and breathe oxygen. Mother, do you know what oxygen is?’

  ‘No, I don’t, and I don’t care,’ cried Laura, pushing Tony into his bedroom.

  ‘Oh, Mother, don’t you know that? We did an experiment about it in the lab last week. Mother, how do you think people could get on without oxygen?’

  ‘Get into bed, Tony, and stop gabbling.’

  ‘I thought you liked me to fold up my clothes,’ said Tony sanctimoniously. ‘Matron goes off pop if we don’t fold them at school.’

  ‘Leave them alone and get into bed!’ shouted Laura.

  Tony turned head over heels down the bed and dashed under cover, immediately poking up an anxious face to inquire, ‘Where’s Neddy?’

  ‘I’ll get him,’ said Laura, who was sorting out Tony’s ragamuffin attire. Opening a drawer, she extracted a stuffed donkey with a red flannel saddle, and threw him across to Tony. After rummaging a little more, she pulled out a foxcub’s tail, mounted on a handle, with the inscription Risings Hunt November, 1828, which was a mistake of a century on the part of the local naturalist, but Laura had never liked to have it altered. On this cub Tony had been blooded, at the instigation of Gerald and John. He hadn’t enjoyed the ceremony at all, but another and smaller boy had been frightened and cried, which had made Tony boast quite unbearably of his superior pluck and true-blue-ness.

  ‘And here’s Foxy,’ said Laura, throwing it.

  Tony caught them both with a scream of joy and arranged them carefully, one on each side.

  ‘You great baby,’ said his doting mother.

  ‘But Neddy and Foxy like it, Mother. And really Neddy is quite a trouble, because he takes up so much room he nearly knocks me out of bed.’

  ‘Put him on the table, then.’

  ‘Oh, Mother, he’d be cold. Mother, how would you like it if you were put on a table all night?’

  ‘The contingency would never occur,’ said Laura, and hugged her son tightly. Just as she was going out of the room, Tony’s voice was raised. ‘Mother?’

  ‘Well, what is it?’

  ‘Oh, Mother, do you know, the Cheltenham Flier does over seventy, part of the way. I should think it could do over eighty easily. Mother, did you ever go in the Cheltenham Flier? Mother—’

  Laura shut the door and reeled downstairs. Four weeks of this to come. Nearer five than four. Thank heaven it was the country, where he would be out all day, and would certainly amuse himself. Oh, the exhaustingness of the healthy young! Laura had once offered to edit a book called Why I Hate my Children, but though Adrian Coates had offered her every encouragement, and every mother of her acquaintance had offered to contribute, it had never taken shape. Perhaps, she thought, as she stood by Tony’s bed an hour later, they wouldn’t be so nice if they weren’t so hateful.

  There lay her demon son, in abandoned repose. His cheeks, so cool and firm in the day, had turned to softest rose-petal jelly, and looked as if they might melt upon the pillow. His mouth was fit for poets to sing. His hands – spotlessly clean for a brief space – still had dimples where later bony knuckles would be. Foxy was pressed to his heart, while Neddy, taking, as Tony had predicted, the middle of the bed, had pushed his master half over the edge.

  Laura picked up the heavy, deeply unconscious body, and laid it back in the middle of the bed. Neddy she put revengefully on the table. Then she tucked the bed-clothes in, kissed her adorable hateful child, who never stirred and, turning out the light, left the room.

  3

  Low Rising

  Holiday breakfasts were a ritual in which Tony and Stoker shared in equal ecstasy. As one who has been long in prison pent, Tony welcomed the extra hour which nine o’clock breakfast gave him, and the delicate inventions which Stoker, with the true cook’s worship of a hearty male appetite, laid upon his plate. When he came down on the following morning a sausage, a fried egg and a piece of fried toast, together with the remains of last night’s chips, were keeping hot for him under a cover. Of all these he rapturously partook, while expatiating to his mother on the meagre diet supplied by the housemaster’s wife. According to Tony the diet consisted of starvation alternating with poisoned food, but so long as his face was so round, and his body so obviously well-nourished, Laura paid scant attention to his complaints. Directly after breakfast, she sent him off with sandwiches to join the shooters at Low Rising, and after half an hour’s monologue from Stoker on life in its various aspects, she escaped to her room. Here, except for the occasional annoyance of having to get up and put coal on the fire, she hoped to do a long, conscientious morning’s work on the typewriter, though typing one’s own manuscript was poor fun, and she rarely did it now, except when Miss Todd was away.

  But it was one of the days when the typewriter exhibits original sin in some of its more striking forms. That her own manuscript, written in pencil in threepenny exercise books, was mostly illegible, was not, as Laura in fairness admitted, the machine’s fault; but there was no other fault which it left untried. To begin with, the evil day when the ribbon must be changed had been too long deferred. To do this job, Laura put on a large overall, turned her sleeves up, and after hunting for some time in a pile of papers, produced the Instruction Book of the Harrington Portable Typewriter. Any real author, she felt, without rancour, would, after having used the same kind of typewriter for about twenty years, remember offhand how to change a ribbon, but no vestige of remembrance ever clung to Laura’s mind. The diagrams in the book were undoubtedly meant to be helpful, but they were always drawn from an angle at which you had never seen your machine, nor ever probably could, and assumed that you would remember which was Catch Point Release Lever and which Left Hand Spacer Stop – or words very much to that effect. Before you could change the ribbon you had to press Release Knob A either to the right or the left. Then you lifted the old spool from one side, manoeuvred the ribbon from a small gridiron in the middle, and took off the spool on the left. By the time you had done this, and removed a little spring clip from the empty spool, not only did all your fingers and thumbs look as though you were a Bertillon fan, but the clip, w
ith the liveliness of necessary inanimate objects, had sprung high into the air and vanished. Laura could not see it anywhere on the carpet, so with a sinking heart she gently shook the machine. A rattle inside it told her that the worst had happened, and the spring clip had gone to earth. With a hearty curse she got a screwdriver from a drawer, wearily took the machine off its stand, rescued the clip, and screwed the typewriter firmly down again. She then refreshed her memory with a glance at the instructions, pushed Release Knob A in whichever direction she had not pushed it before, without being quite sure which that was, and reversed the unthreading process with a fresh black ribbon which, being new to the work, entered wholeheartedly into the spirit of the thing, and inked her so thoroughly that her fingerprints would have been entirely choked and valueless from Scotland Yard’s point of view. For an instant she contemplated living a wider and fuller life by cleaning the type as well, but reflecting that even a small bottle of petrol in a room with a fire had been known to cause severe injuries to be sustained by people in the papers, she contented herself with picking the dirt out of the ‘e’ and the ‘a’ with a hairpin. By the time this was accomplished, and the hairpin replaced, her face was so streaked with ink that there was nothing for it but to go to the bathroom and have a thorough wash, which meant that she had to shout to Stoker for the special soap from the garage, which again let loose the floods of Stoker’s eloquence upon her. But at last, with fingers only faintly blue-black, she sat down to work.