Mary followed him up a narrow winding stair into a long roofless chamber from which the whole extent of the abbey could be seen. Behind them rose a steep wooded hanger and before them lay the rich meadow land.
‘They were frightfully well off,’ said David. ‘They had twenty or thirty farms, and mills and a river. The old fishpond is still over there, just below the woods. We can look at it as we go home. I’m going up to the next floor; you’d better not come.’
‘But there isn’t any next floor.’
‘I know, but you can walk round the walls on the remains of a gallery. I expect the head monk used to sneak round it to watch if the monks said their prayers before going to bed. You’ll see me again in a minute.’
He disappeared under an archway and Mary sat in the embrasure of a window. Presently he reappeared, twelve feet or so above her, walking on a ledge that ran round the building.
‘Don’t look if it makes you feel sick,’ called David obligingly. Mary did feel rather sick, so she looked away through the window into the cloisters. Had David really thought her hands were perfect, or was it just his amusing way? It was difficult to know whether he meant anything he said or not. Mary was not sure whether she liked him better ragging with Martin or sentimentalising over her hand.
On the whole, she thought the ragging was better fun. She was not going to admit to herself how difficult it had been when David took her hand to let it lie in his, not to let it close a little over his, not to let a little pressure of her fingers ask for an answering pressure from his. That was the kind of thing people did in cinemas on Saturday nights and not to be thought of. Delicious anger flooded her, and she was lost for a moment, sitting between heaven and earth with a blue sky beyond. At the sound of footsteps she said, without turning round:
‘So you haven’t broken your neck, David?’
There was no answer. She looked up and saw a stranger standing beside her. In his face she saw reflections of David, as if David’s face were seen in an old mirror which dimmed its lustre and darkened its smile. David’s voice above them cried out:
‘The ledge has gone since last time. Look out, I’m going to jump.’
There was a little noise of falling mortar, and then David landed suddenly on toes and fingertips beside them. Mary, startled, drew back quickly into the window and nearly fell. The newcomer caught her and held her steady.
‘Jolly good jump,’ said David dispassionately. ‘Hallo, John, where did you come from?’
‘I’ve just finished up with Macpherson. I thought I heard your voice gabbling away up here and came to see. This is Miss Preston, I suppose. You nearly made her fall out of the window with your gymnastic tricks.’
‘Here’s your other uncle, Mary,’ said David. ‘Uncle John. Though what he is doing with his arm round you, I don’t know.’
John retreated.
‘I ought to have explained who I was,’ he said to Mary. ‘I saw you in the window and guessed who you were, and then that ass David had to show off, as usual. I hope you weren’t frightened.’
‘Of course she wasn’t,’ said David indignantly. ‘Steel true, blade straight, the great artificer made Miss Preston. And as for showing off, John, that’s just sour grapes. I bet you couldn’t do that jump as neatly as I did.’
‘I wouldn’t do it at all if I was going to make my guests fall out of the window. Shall I take you two back in the car? Macpherson has gone home.’
‘Right,’ said David. ‘We’ll be home just in time to do a little Holt-baiting. Oh John, we had a splendid time at lunch. Mamma was at her vaguest and little Holt was bounding like anything, and Papa just got up and left him to our mercies. He has been with Agnes and the children all afternoon. Mary and I escaped for a walk. She is going to act in my film when it gets going.’
By this time Mary and John had got into the front of the Ford and David was sitting behind, his elbows on the back of the front seat.
‘You’ll be glad to hear,’ said John, ‘that Father has at last named the bull.’
‘Poor darling, I thought that was going to last him at least another week. However, something accomplished, something done. What is it to be?’
‘Roderick. He says the Argentines can call it Roderigo if they want to.’
‘And what has Macpherson to say?’
‘He is quite pleased. He says doubtless Roderick is a very good Scots name and he is going to call his new terrier Rannoch, so that the name shan’t be wasted. My father’s bulls are nearly all bred for export,’ added John, turning to Mary, and obviously struggling to find conversation for a guest. ‘Most of them go to South America.’
‘Oh,’ said Mary, deeply conscious of David’s elbow almost touching her shoulder.
When they came in they found Lady Emily, Agnes and Mr Holt sitting at tea in what used to be Agnes’s sitting room, but was now used for sit-down tea at a round table. Mr Holt was in a state of sulks which he hardly endeavoured to control. He had come, ruffled by Lord Capes’s treatment, expecting to be honoured, taken round the garden by his hostess, his opinion sought, and deferred to. Instead of that he had spent the whole afternoon with Mrs Graham and her children, first being an unwilling audience of the adventures of Hobo-Gobo and the fairy Joybell, and then being taken round such parts of the garden as the children preferred. These included the potting shed, the furnace for the hot-houses, the compost bed, a small plantation of larches in which only those of tender years could walk with any comfort, and finally a pond in the kitchen garden. Here Agnes, looking cool and lovely, had sat on the stone edge under a parasol while her offspring tried to catch goldfish in their hands, and Nannie and Ivy walked up and down with Clarissa in her perambulator. Mr Holt had not at all enjoyed the sun on his back, nor was his plump figure adapted to sitting on a low stone edging. James had reached over too far, soaked his tunic, and had been removed yelling by Ivy. Emmy had succeeded in fishing out a small piece of duckweed, which she kindly laid in tribute on Mr Holt’s knee.
‘Oh wicked one, wicked one,’ said her mother in tones of besotted tenderness, while the unhappy guest gingerly laid the duckweed on the stone edge. ‘Mr Holt, you must wipe it off at once. Duckweed always stains.’
‘Emmy, you are a bad girl,’ said Nannie coming up. ‘Shall I get a cloth and wipe the gentleman’s trousers, madam?’
‘Yes, do, Nannie. You can leave the perambulator here.’
‘Fish,’ said Emmy, pointing to the duckweed.
‘Yes, darling, fish,’ said her mother, ‘green fish.’
‘Green fish,’ said Emmy.
‘Yes, darling, lovely green fish.’
‘Lovely green fish,’ said Emmy.
Conversation maundered along on these lines till Nannie returned with a jug of boiling water and a cloth, with which she rubbed Mr Holt’s knee, making a large damp patch.
‘It’s better to wet a large surface,’ she explained, ‘otherwise the stain is more likely to show.’
‘Thanks, thanks,’ said Mr Holt testily, getting up and walking about in the hopes of assisting the drying process.
‘Has Lady Norton a lovely garden?’ asked Agnes, dimly feeling that some kind of reparation was necessary. ‘I hear it is too lovely.’
‘It is quite the best in the county,’ said Mr Holt, still offended.
‘Tell me all about it,’ said Agnes, throwing into her voice a warmth which would have deceived none of her family.
‘That might be a little egotistic as I help Lady Norton in the planning,’ said Mr Holt, slightly mollified. He sat down beside Agnes. Emmy began to cry.
‘Fish, fish,’ she wailed.
‘Oh, Mr Holt,’ said Agnes, her wits sharpened by mother-love, ‘I am afraid you are sitting on Emmy’s fish.’
Mr Holt got up violently. The piece of duckweed, well flattened, was where he had been sitting.
‘There now,’ said Nannie, returning, ‘if the gentleman hasn’t got all over that green stuff again. Emmy, you are a bad girl.’
‘Oh, wicked one,’ said Agnes lovingly. ‘Take her in to tea, Nannie.’
‘Shall I get the cloth again, madam?’ asked Nannie.
‘Certainly not,’ said Mr Holt. ‘If tea is really ready I had better go in, as I have to leave shortly.’
If Agnes had not been an earl’s granddaughter he would certainly have killed her.
This accounts for the state of simmering fury in which he was discovered by the party from the abbey.
‘Come and sit by me, Mary,’ said Lady Emily. ‘I have had a really restful afternoon on my sofa, thinking about all sorts of things. Where did you go?’
‘David took me to the abbey and we explored the ruins.’
‘David,’ said his mother, raising her voice across the table. ‘Did you see Sutton?’
‘Yes, Mother.’
‘Did he tell you how Lottie was?’
‘No, darling. Is she a cow?’
‘David! She is that nice girl of his, the one that used to be scullery maid here till she went mad.’
‘I saw Sutton, Mother,’ said John. ‘He visited Lottie last week and she is very happy.’
‘Poor Lottie,’ said Lady Emily, turning to Mary again. ‘She was a very nice girl, but peculiar, and has to be in the county asylum. All her mother’s family are queer. I always think it was such a pity the abbey was put down at the Reformation. The monks might have been able to do something for her, as her people have always lived on this land.’
‘I expect they’d have burned her, Mother,’ said David, ‘or put her in a cell with straw in her hair. You never know your luck with monks.’
‘Talking of the abbey,’ Mr Holt began, ‘Lady Norton told me—’
‘Oh, we all know her people are mad, but we don’t talk about it,’ said David cheerfully. ‘Have you any lunatic ancestors, Mr Holt? We have heaps.’
Gudgeon came into the room to announce the car just in time to save Mr Holt from exploding. His adieux were brief and cold except to Lady Emily, to whom he expressed his intention of inviting himself again during the summer, hoping to see the garden with her. His emphasis on the word ‘her’ was accompanied by a venomous look at the unconscious Agnes.
‘That will be too delicious,’ said Lady Emily, ‘though I’m afraid Henry isn’t a very good host, but he never troubles to be nice to people unless he likes them, and he likes hardly anybody. Next time you come you must tell me all about Lady Capes, Mr Holt, and I shall read you some of David’s book aloud. You must tell all your friends to buy it. It is perfectly delicious and none of us can understand a word of it, but I always think reading aloud is the greatest help, don’t you?’
Mary was rather glad to escape to her own room before dinner, from the overpowering personalities of so many Leslies. First she explored her drawers and cupboards to discover in what unlikely places the housemaid had hidden her belongings, then she began to write to her mother. But before she had got very far her Aunt Agnes came in to invite her to see Clarissa have her bath.
‘Just in case you felt homesick, darling,’ said Agnes, who was convinced that her children were a panacea for every ill.
Mary, who knew her young cousins well in their London home and was very fond of them, was glad to go with Agnes.
‘I am not homesick in the least,’ she explained, ‘but I’d adore to see Clarissa bathed.’
‘I thought you would be missing your mother,’ said Agnes, with mild reproach.
She led Mary along the corridor, through a green baize door, and up some stairs to the nursery quarters, which opened off the long passage before mentioned. The nursery, which had been the home of Lady Emily’s four children, was a large, sunny room made from several half-attic rooms thrown into one, with sloping ceilings in odd corners. It was filled with the accumulation of many years of children. A large dappled rocking-horse with fiery nostrils stood in one corner. One eye was gone, and its tail was little more than a wisp. The pommel had long since been lost, and down its socket, which communicated darkly with the horse’s inside, a good deal of property had been lost, with or without intent, in the last forty years. Part of a doll’s tea-set and two nursery teaspoons were known to be in Dobbin’s stomach and no power on earth had ever been able to get them out. Mr Leslie had once made an ominous utterance about having a piece sawn out of Dobbin underneath, but Agnes had cried so bitterly that he had given up his plan. Scarcely had David outgrown the horse, when Martin was old enough to be held upon it for a short ride. It was later David’s avuncular pride to rock his nephew upon it, a treat which always began for Martin with tremulous anticipation, continued in hysterical shrieks of joy, and usually ended in tears. By rocking at full tilt it was possible to make Dobbin move bumpily round the room, and at times Martin in his turn did not disdain to dazzle Agnes’s children on their frequent visits by showing off his prowess in this way.
Just inside the door was an enormous upright mechanical organ, product of the Fatherland in its milder days. Into this you inserted a large metal disc covered with perforations, and then turned a handle. A huge metal roller, studded with spikes like some engine of the Inquisition, could then be observed in motion through the glass front of the upper part, and crashing melody poured forth. The discs, also from the Fatherland, were for the most part extracts from such masterpieces as William Tell or La Sonnambula, varied by such well-known English airs as Oft in the Stilly Night. This triumph of Euterpe’s art, known as a Polyphone, was still in good working order, and the delight of James, Emmy, Clarissa, Nannie and Ivy.
A large doll’s house stood over by the window, its once elegant contents a mere jumble of wreckage. This regrettable mishap had taken place when David was the spoilt baby. He had decided that his friend the kitchen cat wanted to be introduced to the joys of domestic life on a small scale. He therefore formed the habit of fetching George, all unwilling, from the kitchen, carrying him upstairs with his arms tightly clasped under George’s front legs, while George’s furious hind legs clawed the air in vain for support. He would then push George in at the front door and shut it behind him. George, much agitated, would worm his way up the staircase and squeeze his body into each room in turn, vainly seeking some mode of exit. Then David discovered that if he opened the windows George, who was just too large to get through them, would in his frenzy paw all the smaller articles of furniture out of the window and then sit, crossly regarding his kind young benefactor, his large sullen face far larger than the window at which it appeared. The doll’s house had also at various times been used as a home for mice and silkworms, and was rapidly qualifying for demolition under a slum clearance scheme.
The usual pictures adorned the walls. Coloured supplements from old Graphics, an engraving of a little girl in a long frilly frock standing on the lowest step of the staircase, entitled ‘All turn here and see me dump’, other engravings of more little girls in crinoline hats and empire frocks with large collies or small puppies, and a coloured representation of Queen Victoria receiving the news of her accession. These, with quantities of old family photographs, heads of Lord Kitchener, Lord Roberts and General Buller, represented art, as did the large four-fold screen pasted all over with pictures cut from story-books, or newspapers, or coloured catalogues. A canary in a cage in the window made a deafening clamour.
A slight concession to more modern methods was visible in the shape of a small blackboard fastened to the wall, but all three children preferred to use the distempered surface of the nursery walls as a medium for their urge to mural decoration. There was, however, nothing modern about the nursery tablecloth of dark red and blue checks, nor in the large old-fashioned grate with a hob on each side, nor in the high nursery fender with its brass airing-rail. On a rug in front of the fire was an oval bath of japanned tin. In it sat Clarissa, trying to catch the soap.
‘Good afternoon, Nannie,’ said Mary.
‘Good afternoon, miss. Baby is ever so pleased to see you, aren’t you, baby?’
But Clarissa very properly took no notice
of this rhetorical question, concentrating her whole attention on the soap, which had an annoying way of slipping through her fingers just as she thought she had grasped it.
‘Could I speak to you for a moment, madam?’ said Nannie to Agnes.
It was at moments of crisis like this that Mary chiefly envied her Aunt Agnes’s imperturbable disposition. Most mothers feel a hideous sinking at the heart when these fatal words are pronounced, but Agnes only showed a kindly and inactive interest. In anyone else Mary might have suspected unusual powers of bluff, hiding trembling knees, a feeling of helpless nausea, flashes of light behind the eyes, storm in the brain, and a general desire to say ‘Take double your present wages, but don’t tell me what it is you want to speak to me about.’ But Agnes, placidly confident in the perfection of her own family and the unassailable security of her own existence, was only capable of feeling a mild curiosity and barely capable of showing it.
‘Yes, Nannie, what is it?’ she asked, settling herself comfortably in the nursery rocking-chair.
‘It is about the children’s breakfasts, madam,’ Nannie began. ‘Come out now, Baby, and get dried.’
‘Oh, do let me dry her,’ interrupted Mary, feeling that the situation would be less acutely unbearable if she had something to occupy her. Nannie rose with a superior smile and taking off her flannel apron handed it and the bath towel to Mary.
‘I don’t wish to complain, madam,’ she continued, ‘but as I was saying to Ivy this morning, if this state of affairs goes on continuing I must speak to Mrs Graham. Come out, Baby, like a good girl when Auntie Mary tells you.’
‘Yes, Nannie,’ said Agnes, her mind obviously occupied with Clarissa’s enchanting form as, leaning gracefully on Mary’s arm, she stepped uncertainly out of the bath.
Wild Strawberries: A Virago Modern Classic (VMC) Page 6