High Rising (VMC)

by Angela Thirkell

  ‘Oh, I’m very fond of George. No, he’s not an incubus, it’s his secretary. Amy, she is the most peculiar woman. She seems to be a kind of blight. I believe she’s awfully good at her work, and certainly she has made George stick to this book and get it done in time, which is unheard of for George, but she is bullying him horribly, though he doesn’t know it. And I believe, and so does Anne Todd, that she means to marry him.’

  ‘Would that matter? Authors often marry secretaries, don’t they? And so do lots of people.’

  ‘No, it wouldn’t always matter; but in this case it would. She’s quite unsuitable, and she is taking airs as if she were mistress of the house already, and not being very kind to George’s daughter, who is a darling, but a clinging little sort of thing who needs perpetual kind treatment. She’s that awful jealous kind of woman who wants all the men at once. We had a very funny but most uncomfortable evening at the Knoxes’, on New Year’s Eve. I took Adrian Coates there to dinner, and she tried to make a dead set at him and George at the same time. The sad part was that Adrian didn’t care if she were dead or alive as he’s head over ears in love with Sibyl, the daughter, and I honestly don’t think George Knox would notice if any woman were alive or dead, so long as he had an audience. But that’s just the danger. He might quite easily marry her without noticing he was doing it. Then I should lose George and gain nothing, and it would be most uncomfortable for the Risings, where she is universally loathed. It’s a dismal look out.’

  ‘But won’t Mr Knox see what a tartar she is and send her away – make an excuse that his book is finished or something?’

  ‘She is so cleverly dug in, Amy. To begin with, she has no relations to go to – one of these young women alone against the world – which of course rouses George’s chivalry. It’s rubbish, of course, because he could give her long notice, say two months, and she’d find another job, but George doesn’t see that. And as for the book being finished, that’s all right, and as a rule he goes off on the Continent with Sibyl when he has finished a book, and thinks about the next one. But she has managed to push him into beginning another already, and he is going to feel that he can’t get on without her. It is a mess, Amy. Anne Todd seemed to think you might have some helpful ideas.’

  ‘Why should I have ideas? But I should like to see your incubus. She sounds more interesting than assistant-masters’ wives.’

  ‘Of course you shall. I’ll ring up the Knoxes now.’

  Accordingly she went into the hall and rang up the Knoxes.

  ‘Mr Knox’s secretary speaking,’ said Miss Grey’s voice.

  ‘Oh, I am Mrs Morland. Is Mr Knox there?’

  ‘Could I take a message for you?’

  Damn your impudence is the answer I’d like to give, thought Laura, but aloud she said, ‘Shall I find you all in tomorrow if I come over to tea?’

  ‘Mr Knox is working terribly hard over his last chapter just now,’ said Miss Grey, in an expressionless voice.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Laura, keeping her temper with difficulty, ‘but he always comes down to tea. Tell him I’ll look in tomorrow with a friend.’

  ‘I am afraid he is busy just now, Mrs Morland, but I will tell him later and ring you up.’

  Laura rang off. ‘I’m not a proud woman,’ said she to Amy, sitting down by the fire again, ‘but I can’t stand that woman’s impertinence. I’ve known George Knox for twenty-five years, and here is an Incubus telling me he is too busy for me to come to tea, and she will give him the message and ring me up later. I could burst with rage.’

  Just then Tony came violently in.

  ‘Oh, Mother, here is Sibyl, and Sylvia is so pleased to see the dogs. They are all making great friends.’

  ‘Sibyl, dear, how nice,’ said Laura, kissing her. ‘This is my old friend Mrs Birkett, Tony’s headmistress. Sibyl, I am demented with rage – yes, Tony, you can take some cake and go to the dogs – I have just rung up your house, and the Incubus answered – yes, take some sugar for the dogs, too, and go away – and said your father was so busy he couldn’t have me to tea tomorrow, and couldn’t come to the telephone. I nearly burst.’

  ‘Oh, Mrs Morland! how too bad. Daddy is never too busy to see you, and of course you must come tomorrow and bring Mrs Birkett. And Daddy can’t have been too busy to come to the telephone because he wasn’t there at all. He was over at Castle Rising this afternoon, looking up something in Lord Stoke’s library.’

  ‘Then she said he was too busy just out of innate viciousness, I suppose,’ said Laura. ‘It is really too hard on your father if he isn’t to be allowed to see old friends. Then I may bring Mrs Birkett tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes, of course, and Tony, and that lovely cocker spaniel. What a darling she is, Mrs Birkett. Did you breed her?’

  The conversation then became highly technical and quite unintelligible to Laura, who only gathered that all judges were notoriously ignorant and prejudiced, if not actually venal, and that a cocker called Marston Hero, who was the best prize-winner of the year, was in every way inferior to Sylvia.

  ‘I do like that girl,’ said Amy when Sibyl and the dogs had gone. ‘She will be splendid for Mr Coates. He needs something that isn’t too complex.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll be glad to see him married,’ said Laura, smiling at her own thoughts.

  On the following day Laura, Amy, Tony and Sylvia walked over to Low Rising. Sylvia had, entirely against orders, spent the night on Tony’s bed and had later, for a great treat, been allowed to watch the newly acquired Princess Elizabeth doing her trial trip on the railway. It was difficult to find the right audience for one’s train, in Tony’s experience. Grown-ups would look on for five minutes, and then say, ‘It’s lovely, darling,’ and go away without having taken the least pains to understand. Other boys showed more proper interest, but they were too apt to want to run the railway themselves; an intolerable situation. Sylvia was perfect. Lying comfortably in front of the play-room fire, she followed the engine with her amber eyes, and listened with a deep appreciation, and without a single interruption, to a monologue on the subject of the relative merits of the Cornish Riviera Express and the Cheltenham Flier, for seventy-five minutes. As a reward Tony had run a branch line up to where she lay, and sent the tank-engine, the Adrian Coates, with a truck full of biscuits, right under her nose. Sylvia was too well bred to snap at the biscuits, but when Tony explained to her that the truck-load was a little middle-of-the-morning snack for her, she yelped with delight, plunged her nose into the truck, and upset the Adrian Coates, which lay on its side with its wheels revolving wildly.

  ‘Look, Mrs Birkett,’ cried Tony as Amy came in, ‘Sylvia has made a marvellous accident. Oh, Mrs Birkett, I wish you had seen the truck of biscuits running up to Cocker Station – I called it Cocker Station because of Sylvia – Cocker, you see, and Sylvia was so pleased. It was marvellous to see the truck coming right up to her. Oh, my darling Sylvia!’

  Sylvia had then got up and stretched herself, causing the Totley Tunnel, the longest in England, consisting of piled volumes of George Eliot covered with green crepe paper, to collapse, and had then sat down amiably upon St Pancras Station which, being built mostly of coloured stone bricks from a box called Ankerbaukasten, relic of the late Mr Morland’s childhood, was not calculated to stand the strain. But dear Sylvia could do no wrong, and she kindly watched Tony clear up the debris, while he told her about the dazzling future possibilities of an electric system, to be run off the lights, with a transformer.

  When the party got to Low Rising, they found George Knox at work in the garden. George, whose dramatic sense was not one of the least factors in the success of his biographies, liked to dress his part, and at the moment was actively featuring Popular Writer Enjoys Hard Work in Garden of his Sixteenth-Century Manor House. He had perhaps a little overdone the idea, being dressed in bright brown plus-fours, a gigantic pair of what looked like decayed football boots, a very dirty and worn high-necked sweater, and a tweed shooting coat with its but
tons and pockets flapping. Large as George Knox was at any time, this wilful collection of odd clothes made him loom incredibly. From his seven-league boots the eye travelled upwards to the vast width of his plus-fours, to the huge girth of thick jacket over thick sweater, only to find, with a start of surprise, that his large face, with its knobbly forehead and domed and rather bald scalp, completely dwarfed the rest of him. He had decided to devote that afternoon to heavy digging, and was excavating, unscientifically and laboriously, a piece of the kitchen garden. The sky was coldly pink in the west where the winter sun was setting behind mists, George Knox’s bare-branched trees made a delicate pattern against the sunset flush, George Knox’s smoke from the chimneys of his Lovely Sixteenth-Century Manor House was going straight up into the air, a light or two shone golden in George Knox’s windows, his feet were clogged with damp earth, his hands were very dirty, and a robin was watching him dig.

  ‘It couldn’t have been better arranged, George,’ said Laura as she approached. ‘Perfect setting for author, down to the robin. I shall have to write a book about the lovely vendeuse who marries the strong, noble son of the soil, and use you as a model.’

  On hearing this, the robin flew away.

  George Knox stuck his spade into the earth, straightened up painfully, in the manner of one who has been devoted to life-long toil in the agricultural line, and mopped his brow with a large red handkerchief with white spots.

  ‘That’s the worst of the country,’ he remarked. ‘Lady authors coming round unasked, frightening away one’s little feathered friends. Who frightened Cock Robin? I, said the Laura, with my feminine aura. Laura, dear, I cannot offer you my hand as it is all earth, but you are as welcome as ever.’

  ‘This is Mr Knox, Amy,’ said Laura, exhibiting George to her friend with some pride. ‘And this, George, if you will stop rubbing mould into your eyes with that preposterous handkerchief, is Mrs Birkett, whose husband keeps Dotheboys Hall and breaks Tony’s spirit.’

  ‘If I am to take your statement as one and indivisible, Laura, it is a lie, because no power on earth, nor indeed any demons under the sea, could ever dissever Tony from his profound self-satisfaction. But if I may separate your sentence into its component parts, I am more than willing to believe that this is Mrs Birkett, whose acquaintance I am honoured and delighted to make, and who, or whom, I look forward to shaking hands with when I have cleaned up a bit.’

  ‘I’m so glad you get mixed about that “who”, George. It is the death of me. That, and commas, are the bane of my life. The only way one can really express what one wants to say is by underlining every other word four times, like Queen Victoria, and that appears to be bad taste now. What are you digging, George?’

  ‘Earth?’

  ‘Yes, but I mean what? Potatoes, or bulbs, or asparagus beds?’ asked Laura, who cared little about gardening and knew less.

  George Knox looked guiltily round.

  ‘The gardener has gone over to Stoke Dry to fetch a parcel from the station, so I thought I would dig for exercise while his back was turned. He doesn’t like me in his garden when he is here. I dug up a lot of things that smelled like onions. Come into the house and we’ll find Sibyl.’

  ‘Probably it was onions,’ said Laura, as they went into the sitting-room, ‘or else leeks. You can send me some on St David’s Day, and I’ll wear them in my bonnet.’

  ‘Are you Welsh, then?’ asked Amy Birkett.

  ‘Oh, no, but it’s nice to wear things on the right day. Only the right day – yes, Tony, take Sylvia and go and find Sibyl, only keep Sylvia on the lead in case Sibyl’s dogs jump at her.’

  ‘Oh, Mother, Sibyl’s dogs wouldn’t jump at Sylvia. Dogs always know a friendly dog, Mother. They are marvellous. It’s a kind of instinct. Mrs Birkett, did you know about instinct? Mr Ferris told us about it in maths, one day.’

  ‘But why in maths, Tony? Is instinct a kind of algebra?’

  ‘No, no, but Mr Ferris is very sensible and tells us all sorts of things in the maths period. His father used to be a doctor in the country, and when the sheep were all buried in snow in the winter, the dogs had an instinct to find them and they leaped on their backs and licked the snow off them.’

  ‘But where does Mr Ferris’s father come in?’ asked George Knox, slightly bewildered.

  ‘He doesn’t come in, sir, it was the dogs,’ said Tony pityingly. ‘They have a marvellous instinct—’

  His mother gently pushed him and Sylvia out of the room, and returned to her seat, remarking placidly:

  ‘As I was saying, and I am going to say it, because it is too interesting to lose, the right day and the right flower never seem to come together. One can’t possibly expect roses to be out on St George’s Day, at least not if St George’s Day comes on the twenty-third of April. Unless, of course, in Shakespeare’s time April was much later on account of Old Style, or people had hothouses, which we never hear of.’

  ‘Where does Shakespeare come in?’ asked Amy, as bewildered by the introduction of the bard as George had previously been by Mr Ferris’s father.

  ‘Well, Shakespeare’s birthday was St George’s Day, so it all somehow goes together. And as for St Patrick’s Day, shamrock may be in season then, I don’t know, not in Ulster, I suppose, but anyway in the Irish Free State, but one can’t tell, because what they sell in the streets looks like compressed mustard and cress. Luckily one doesn’t have to wear thistles for St Andrew, and as for St David—’

  But here George Knox, who had been simmering with a desire to talk for some time past, took the floor, drowning Laura’s gentle voice entirely.

  ‘St David, dear Mrs Birkett,’ he began, ‘had no nonsense about him, and knew that a leek was about all his countrymen were fit for. I do not offend you, I trust, in saying this. I would quarrel with no one for being Welsh, as I, thank God, am French and Irish by descent, and am far removed from petty racial feelings, but for a nation who are, or who is – damn those pronouns, Laura – time-serving, sycophantic, art nouveau, horticultural and despicable enough to try to change the leek to a daffodil, words fail me to express my contempt. You were alluding just now to Shakespeare’s birthday, my dear Laura. What would Shakespeare have thought if Burbage had proposed to substitute a daffodil for a leek in Henry the Fifth? Where, Mrs Birkett, would be Fluellen and Pistol? The whole point of that scene would be lost – lost, I say,’ he repeated, glaring affectionately at Sibyl who came in with Tony. ‘As well might you have substituted the leek for the daffodil in the Winter’s Tale. Imagine Shakespeare writing that leeks come before the swallow comes – except, of course, when you are eating them – or take the winds of March; for though doubtless they may by the calendar, though on that point I profess no special knowledge, poetically it is impossible. No, dear ladies, the Welsh are utterly and eternally damned for this denial, worse than whoever’s it was in Dante, of their national emblem.’

  Sibyl, seeing her father in full flood of eloquence, was pouring out tea and feeding the guests. Tony took a large cup to George Knox.

  ‘Thank you, Tony, thank you, my boy,’ said George. ‘Tea is most welcome.’ While he buried his face in the cup, Amy took occasion to put in a good word for the unhappy Welsh nation, on account of its musical proclivities.

  ‘Music!’ shouted George Knox, emerging from his teacup, which was a special cup of Gargantuan size with FATHER in Gothic lettering on it, one of those presents given by his loving child before her taste was formed, and which had outlived all more valuable crockery.

  ‘Music, did you say? Dear lady, allow me. You are utterly deluded by that most preposterous of principalities. I have heard them singing, and though my pity for those unfortunates who walk the streets of London, blackmailing the kind English public into giving them pennies, which however never have the desired effect of making them cease their cacophonous hootings – deep as is my pity for these unfortunates, I say,’ George repeated, fixing Tony with his effulgent eye and frightening him considerably, ‘it is not mus
ic.’

  ‘What is it, then?’ asked Amy courageously.

  ‘What is it?’ repeated George, to give himself time to think what it was. ‘It is this. They all sing in parts, and not one of them sings a tune. The words are gibberish, yes, gibberish, Laura, and in no country but this blessed England would such an offence to taste, such a holding up of the traffic for these ear-splitting impostors be tolerated.’

  To emphasise this point he clashed his cup upon his saucer, so that Sibyl came and took it away from him.

  ‘Where is the lady secretary?’ asked Laura, quickly changing the subject.

  ‘She was very sorry to miss seeing you,’ said Sibyl. ‘She meant to be here, and I told her Mrs Birkett was coming over, but then she found she had to go to town to look something up at the museum for Daddy, and she won’t be back till late.’

  Laura longed to ask if there had been a scene when Miss Grey discovered that she was coming to tea at Sibyl’s invitation, but with George Knox there it was too difficult. Sibyl and Tony went off to the stables again to inspect puppies, and the three elders were left alone. George, having worked off some of his fireworks, became less behaviourist, and did his best to entertain his guests. As he and Laura gradually stopped talking nonsense, Amy was surprised and interested by the intimate quality of their talk. George obviously appreciated in Laura a fineness of mind which was untouched by her incursions into second-rate literature. Of the secondrateness of these incursions there appeared to be no doubt in the mind of either. Laura accepted them as a bread-winning necessity, and without being at all ashamed of her peculiar talent, frankly admitted that she envied people who were so placed that they did not need to exploit that side of themselves. Everyone has a second-rate streak somewhere, but there are many lucky ones to whom circumstances have been so kind that nothing has evoked it. If George Knox had been forced to exploit the second-rate in him, it would have overflowed and swamped him, but writing being, from a material point of view, luxury, as his merchant father had left him very well off, he kept his standard where it suited him and, largely through Laura’s constant encouragement, kept it high. Laura humbly admired the artist in George, whom she could never hope to emulate, and her open humility sat very becomingly upon her, though she was at all times ready to crush George in all his other aspects. Where she respected the artist, she took no nonsense from the man. George respected the hard worker that she was, and thought very affectionately of the woman; so that his feelings for her were altogether more strong than hers for him. Laura’s kindness to Sybil since his wife’s death had touched him more than anyone, except perhaps Anne Todd and Dr Ford, could understand. Always ready to take people at their face value, he had luckily found in Laura a friend who was worth quite as much as he imagined her to be, and might very likely prove to be worth more.