‘I should very much appreciate it, Miss, if, one day, you could spare the time to let me show you some of my mother’s letters and photos . . . I think I ’ave every one she ever wrote me.’
Nursie’s version of the war was: ‘That’d be the time I dropped my specs into the pond, and they’re there to this day.’ Pressed by Margaret for her more stirring impressions, the old woman stated that Master Stacey was a regular One for catching colds, that Lady Roundelay made a shocking slow recovery from the birth of Angela, and that Margaret herself had always been the sturdy one of the three and practically no trouble at all.
When her nursling at this point showed an impatience that was also of healthy growth, Nursie said Hush Lovie, and added that it must have been in one of those wars that the family had been so unaccountably unkind to Nursie herself in the way of sweet-stuffs and butcher’s meat: that she couldn’t abide mashed swedes, but that all had come right, the family had apologized to her, that she was never one to harbour ill-feelings, but that it did seem curious, she being known to be partial to butcher’s meat and sweet-stuffs.
Dickon the gardener, tackled by Miss Margaret in the potting-shed where he was enjoying a mid-morning mug of tea, retained his chair, dumped his mug upon a bench, told her to make herself at home and them seedling trays weren’t too mucky to sit upon, and proceeded to indicate the political and international situation of 1914-1918.
There had been a bumper crop of apples, followed by a plague of caterpillars. The price of seeds rose. The present potato bed was under cauliflowers at the time, but was not, of course rotated by cabbages, they bein’ of the same family, like, and them beds went to runners. The tomatoes was a picture and had won a First at the Show of /17 when the committee ’ad decided to ’old it agen. Bin out in France? Nah . . . he was wanted at Delaye. He wuz a gardener. Yes, he and Mother ’ad lost their eldest and it seemed as though it ’ad to be. But they’d allowed ’im to go. Cowpons for food? He and Mother’d taken no notice o’ them. Always get what we want in village. Culling (grocer) and Wagstaffe (coal merchant) were ’is sons-in-law weren’t they? Delaye made no odds about cowpons, no more than Roon did. Land Girls? There was two over at Brouncker’s fornicatin’ about in britches, poor things, and he hadn’t heard of any particular harm they’d done to the crops. . . .
His daughter questioned Sir Edmund Roundelay. Here, she met a verbal explosion as her father, eyes gleaming and moustaches twitching with retrospective indignation, expounded the struggle of the nations twenty-four years ago.
‘Red tape, that’s the curse of the country — sending a parcel of young jacks-in-office from the Ministry of Agriculture to teach me my business, making me plough up four acres of good grazing land so that all the cattle had to be shoo’d off somewhere else, and it wasn’t even good ploughland, as I told ’em. So there we were — agricultural implements were almost impossible to get, at one period — all metal wanted for munitions, so those fields simply lay fallow for about fifteen months, no good to man or beast. Then they ringed about eighty of my trees for timber, and it wasn’t any use my telling ’em they were earmarked already to a local firm. Down they came. And they suggested my replanting with conifers — conifers! I nearly had a lawsuit over that. Why, they even commandeered half-grown trees though you’d have thought any fool could have seen that the timber would be worth double in bulk and cash if they’d wait a bit. But not they! They’d been sent to get wood. The government looks on the land as a bran pie, to draw what it wants out of: it doesn’t realize, not being a specialist, that land is a live thing and resents unintelligent upheavals, and goes back on you in a dozen ways by improper treatment. Like invalids.’
CHAPTER III
1
THE gong sounded again, and Margaret caught up handkerchief, tidied her dressing-table and ran down the turret stairs. The passage was dark, but two doors at its nearest and farthest end opened simultaneously, throwing oblongs of light upon the carpeting, and her great-aunts Sapphire and Amethyst were disgorged.
Perceiving this, aunt Amy closed her own door and retired again within her room. This was a more or less nightly programme. For the old ladies weren’t on speaking terms.
‘Ah, my chee-ild, there you be! Dear! It seems as though one was always eating!’ Aunt Sapphy didn’t mean that in the least, her niece knew: she would have hated unpunctuality for any meal, was a hearty trencherwoman always, but she was also of the epoch which had been trained to fill in any conversational gap by some bright nothing, and to work at men if they were silent in her company, a habit which, with years, had become sexless. Therefore a descent of three flights of stairs must be accompanied by vocal sounds. Silence might be golden, but in her youth it was also social failure.
Aunt Sapphy was wearing her purple, that evening. She moved, as far as personal contrivance and her private means allowed, with the current fashions from the shoulders down, but her head remained inexorably nineteenth century; the thought of shingles and bobs withered in her presence, and the head of Miss Sapphire Roundelay raised a monument to the memory of Alexandra, both as Princess and Queen.
In face of almost unsurmountable obstacles, of which a waning custom was not the least, Miss Sapphire still paid the afternoon call: it involved a telephone message to the firm in Norminster which, unmoved by the advent of taxis, still hired out its string of four-wheelers and victorias, a changing of the luncheon hour, another (anxiety) call when, booted and gloved and florally toqued, aunt Sapphy stood hovering in the hall of Delaye, mother o’ pearl card-case in hand, and a grating cross-country progress to the big houses, into whose drawing-rooms she entered diffusing a smell of stale straw and oiled harness while the cab drooped outside in the drive. Miss Sapphy never hired taxis, saying that they would seem discourteous and too informal to her hostess and looked flurried’ when waiting, also, they ticked up pennies quite impossibly, while Jamieson charged by the hour.
Quite often, the hostesses were most unfairly in another county, made accessible by possession of a car: oftener still, they were supplementing staff in the garden, and would arrive, pulling off wash-leather gloves, casting raffia hats on to settles, and apologizing for overalls, and once, an extra-harried lady, her thoughts reaching out lustfully to a half-finished border, had even stirred her tea with a small trowel.
But any tea is better than none, and it was an unhappy fact that, owing to the eye that Miss Sapphy must keep on the clock with regard both to the cost of her conveyance and the distances to be covered, she often spent an entire afternoon without any sustenance at all; she called too early, too late, or if her arrival coincided with a normal tea hour, the family was from home. It was seldom indeed that the time, the place and the tea-pot altogether were to be enjoyed. A thermos in the carriage and a packet of cake to be consumed on the road would, she said, soil her kids. And so, at six-thirty or seven o’clock, the cab would crunch up the avenue of Delaye and from it Miss Sapphy would step, famished, irritable, but triumphant.
Cards had been left. She had kept in touch.
2
On the landing below, Margaret and her aunt were joined by Miss Jacinth, also emerging from her room. At this stage of the general mobilization to the dining-room there was invariably a slight delay, for the old sisters paired off and concluded the progress downstairs, while Margaret paid a hasty good-night visit to Nursie, a custom which might or might not run smoothly, according to Nursie’s mood and occupation, but that was apt to be infinitesimally delayed by the cautious advance of aunt Amy, as ever hoping to make the dining-room in Jessie’s company while avoiding Sapphy, and, as ever, failing.
To-night, she arrived, failed, and as usual said to her niece ‘Going to see Nursie? The gong has sounded’, and as ever Margaret replied that she knew, upon which aunt Amy moved; off, murmuring ‘These stairs!’ as though she had not, for well over half a century, negotiated them, as plaid-frocked child with snooded hair, as girl, in basques and Serpolette frocks, as woman, in collars of boned net, and circ
ular skirts.
To-night, Nursie was peacefully poddling about her room, occupying her time in the unguessable ways of age; her windows overlooked that part of the garden nearest the kitchens, and the identification of menus by the arising savours was a keen interest to her.
‘Roast mutton to-night, so you’ll do well, lovie. There was a time you was always the tiresome one about meat, but — ’
‘Nursie dear, I must go.’ The old Nurse’s reminiscences once started were apt to take turns as dismayingly embarrassing as those of Juliet’s, and the most respectable memoir to end in byways of intestinal stress and adolescence that made the hearer hot. For once, Nursie was placid before the implied rebuke. ‘Well, come here and let me fasten you up behind, you was always a terror for tangling your hair in the buttons.’
‘There aren’t any buttons. It’s a zip fastener I can manage perfectly well — ’
‘You look very nice, dearie, very nice. And neat, though it’s time you asked y’mother for a new dress.’
‘Oh gracious, Nursie, I’m twenty-five. I’ve got an allowance.’
‘. . . very neat, though I never could abide that Guards uniform.’
‘Guides. Girl Guides.’
‘It makes you look like the postman. What you put it on for I’m sure I don’t know.’
‘It helps discipline with the girls. And now — ’
‘I never needed aught but a cap and apron to keep you all in order. Yes. Roast mutton. Leg, by the smell. Tell your father to cut me some of the knuckly bits near the bone. They eat a bit stringy, but tasty, and I can grind and swallow the goodness and then spew the waste.’
Margaret kissed the old woman and ran downstairs. Her life was so inextricably bound up with Nursie, her loss would be so irreparable, her presence as one of the family was so right, that Miss Roundelay was free to indulge in a strong desire to slap Nursie’s face until it rang.
3
The Roundelays were at dinner.
In the lingering daylight, the large framed portraits gleamed oilily. In the initial silence, Miss Jessie was heard to express a wish that this blest food that she was about to take might do her good for Jesus’ sake. Catching it by a long experience in timing, Musgrave ceased to extract a bottle of burgundy from the lead-lined cupboard of the sideboard and looked respectable and attentive. The aspiration concluded, and indeed nobody at table paid tribute to it but he, Musgrave duly clock-clock-clocked his portion of wine into Major Dunston’s glass.
‘If that dog — ’, began Sir Edmund.
‘How’s this lasting out, Musgrave?’
‘Two bottles left, sir.’
‘Don’t want to run out, with all the manoeuvring it takes to get Stone to deliver here.’
There was, at Delaye, no time-wasting gallantry of offering wine to the women: the family all perfectly understood each other’s financial state, and what each individual could afford was served to him or her exclusively without any ill-feeling whatsoever. Delaye, in common with a thousand other houses of similar standing all over England, was in a transition state between the rich security of the cellar and a willy-nilly recourse to the pump and, while Major Dunston would give his last drop of stimulant to any necessitous member of the family if he were dying of thirst himself, and as a matter of course, he did not, until that condition arose, see any need to offer one sip to anybody.
‘And what have you been doing with yourself all day?’ aunt Sapphy enquired of her niece, with bright civility, as though she had seen her for the first time that moment.
‘I got up the worst of that bindweed — ’
‘Leg of mutton,’ mused Sir Edmund, ‘“a joint upon their barbarous spits they put on”.’ He carved, gently chuckling.
‘We had a spit in the kitchen, once,’ supplied Miss Amy. ‘I often wonder where it is now.’
‘Cart-house,’ answered her nephew. ‘These old contraptions — and he entered into a dissertation upon spits, their antiquity evolution and causes of disuse. To this only aunt Amy listened and commented with the maximum of anxious unintelligence.
‘Edmund, do go on carving, we’re all starving at this end,’ Evelyn Roundelay exclaimed, between exasperation and affection. ‘I’m sorry, aunt Amy, I didn’t hear what you said.’
Miss Sapphy began to fidget, hunt, and discover that she had left her glasses upstairs, and hurried from the room. Miss Jessie looked resigned.
‘Had a letter from the Mater this morning,’ grumbled Major Dunston.
Sir Edmund accepted potatoes from Musgrave. ‘Ah . . . keeping well?’
‘She seems to be a bit on edge about things.’
Lady Roundelay said, ‘She’d better come here for a bit.’
‘Very kind of you, Evelyn, but I’d leave her alone.’
‘Well . . . hadn’t you — oh I do wish aunt Sapphy wouldn’t always leave the door open, Musgrave please! — hadn’t you better run up to town and see her?’
‘Good God, no!’
‘You could catch the 11.5 and we’ll ring up the station after dinner for a car — ’
‘That house of hers is a horrible place . . . came to choose it . . . beyond me.’
Lady Roundelay abandoned the idea, but Miss Amy was faithful unto death. ‘And if you caught the 11.5 there might be somebody who’d be glad of a lift in the car to Delaye.’
Maxwell Dunston drank burgundy.
Miss Sapphy hurried back into the dining-room hoping, as usual, that nobody had waited for her and asking how far we had got now, before resuming her mutton.
Miss Amy turned to Margaret. ‘Will you ask my sister to pass me the salt?’
‘We shall want about a hundred and twenty yards more barbed wire for that fence, Evelyn.’
‘Oh, my dear! and it is such a price!’
‘Ring the bell, will you, Margaret?’
‘Aunt Sapphy hasn’t quite finished, father.’
‘Only a little bit left, Edmund. I can be finishing it while — ’
‘No, no, no. Take your time. No need to choke — ’
‘Your aunt has dropped her table napkin.’
‘Aunt Amy, aunt Sapphy says your napkin’s on the floor.’
‘It’s these slippery silks. They always slip off.’
‘Let me.’
‘Thanks, dear.’
‘That dog’s got a touch of eczema, Evelyn. Better tell Dickon to treat him.’
‘Eczema,’ confirmed aunt Amy. ‘I thought he seemed scratching. Dickon will treat him.’
‘College pudding or fritters, aunt Amy?’
‘The pudding, I think.’
‘Aunt Jessie?’
‘Well — I — they both look — ’
‘Then have some of each.’
‘That looks very greedy!’
‘Oh, have the courage of your convictions.’
‘Then, perhaps — ’
‘Is anyone going in to Norminster to-morrow?’ asked Sir Edmund. ‘I want some tobacco and two gallons of whitewash and six dozen duchesses and half a — no, a quarter — of a gross of ladies.’
‘You are funny,’ said aunt Sapphy.
‘Duchesses,’ said aunt Amy.
‘Nails,’ gloomily elucidated the master of the house, ‘use ’em for slating according to size. Even the nail world knows its laws of precedence.’
‘The duchesses go in first, I presume,’ capped Miss Sapphy, smartly.
‘That’s the idea.’ He was off on one of his hobby-horses. ‘It’s curious how the caste idea permeates nearly everything: first, you get your nails, then it crops up in card games — take Canfield, for example — where a Queen may not be played in her own right, as it were, but only with reference to the priority placing of your King. Same with the Knave — the noble — who must follow the Queen . . . it’s a perfect feudal system in small, with wealth following on behind the Royal Family — ’
‘Demon is beyond me!’ cried Miss Sapphy, scenting a fullstop.
‘ — and then you have the king-p
in, the king-pole, the prop that keeps the whole structure together — ’
Lady Roundelay rose.
4
The Roundelays filed into the drawing-room.
As each member of the family had its chair or occupation, the effect was always as of a smoothly produced comedy, with the unimportant differences that the décor and properties, of rose brocade causeuse, gilt chairs, water colours, and objets d’art happened to be genuine, and that nobody present had an illicit lover, a dominant grandmother, or, at the other end of the scale, threw cocktail shakers and gramophone records at each other’s heads while the family drug-taker played the ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ upon a grand piano. There was a Brinsmead in the long room, but evasion was its portion: it had remained with the family from the cultural girlhood of Miss Sapphire, and now, through questions of cash, unprofitableness and inertia, its life was one of guaranteed security and neglect, though the maids quite often ran an unintelligent duster down its keys and so sifted the superficial deposit to the vital parts and attracted moth to the felt upon the hammers.
A Footman for the Peacock Page 5