A Footman for the Peacock

by Ferguson,Rachel

  Evelyn Roundelay had married into an epoch of financial calm. It did not last very long, but even the ensuing depressions could not take from her the things that Delaye had and was and looked, though a certain erosion of security was observable about the grounds, where, owing to the reduction of gardening staff from three men to one and a boy, the large lawns never seemed to be completely mown at one blow, but were always in a semi-shaven state, for by the time Dickon had barbered one tract and been called away to even greater urgencies, the other half was three inches high, and when he’d dealt with that, the mown half wanted attention again. Economy, as usual, was no economy except on paper, and a rusted cog, as any experienced landowner could have told her, can paralyse a whole machine. When the Government wanted more cash, it was to the country it turned, draining and depleting it, oblivious, as it triumphantly hauled in the swollen net of death and succession Duties, of tithe and land-tax, that the ready money was the equivalent of living on capital, and that, historic and sentimental associations apart, the break-up of an estate is an investment sold out and gone for ever: a boomerang smiting the workless cities with rural unemployed who knew but one craft, the earth and the creatures thereof, who came in due season, via the dole, upon the urban rates, problems helpless and unhelpable.

  Lady Roundelay had lived to see tears on the furrowed face of a dismissed groom when the horses had been sold to the Cloudesleys . . . she had come to realize that Delaye was a microcosm of the politics upon which she was unable to concentrate in newspapers. Disputes of The Farmers’ Union, the arguments of Pig and Milk Marketing Boards, might confuse and even bore you in print, but — impossible not to understand the workings of the agricultural problem if you looked out of your own windows. And in time, she saw as well, that England was in very actual danger of the collapse of a semi-feudal system which should be a final one, the full-stop of social history. Her husband had once said that the passing of the great house and the great name all down history had in point of fact signified little: an earl Surrey fancied the home of an earl Sussex and bought it; other castles and estates had been wrested by or bestowed upon ambitious Seymour or Howard. But is a Seymour better than a Surrey? The point was that these estates passed intact, whether by arrangement or confiscation, into hands of an equal social rating, whereas to-day they were pulled down, converted into centres of so-called education, acquired by wealthy nobodies or put under the hammer, their ground sold in parcels for the horror that is the bungalow and the allotment — gone for ever, untraceable in some cases to their original ownership. It was the beginning of the end. And Sir Edmund would gaze out of the window and murmur ‘Just for a handful of silver we lost him’ . . . and go about his business.

  But even statements of that sort cannot perpetually darken a profound content, although they lurk at the back of your mind, and Evelyn continued to enjoy her life: to revel in snow thick upon lawn and steps that the public foot could not despoil, even to build snowmen, a childish necessity never satisfied by London’s exiguous and unreliable deposits of her girlhood, though she did square her conscience by making the children of neighbours, and later her own son and daughters, an excuse for the exercise of a private desire. And when she found that holly grew plentifully in an unexplored shrubbery, her cup was full, that, and the sight of daffodils and narcissi in the avenue, fresh, brittle, rustling, and of remembering their cost in florists’ shops. And there was the preposterous business of being able to have picnics on your own land, outings that involved a genuine walk and saying ‘It’s time we packed up and went home’, and remembering that they all were home, in a sense. And the fun that was finding neatly-concealed debris left over from the previous picnic.

  And then there was the fact that she could invite people to stay, three at once, if she wanted them, and no qualms about their getting on your nerves and sitting on your bones where escape was so easy, so unremarkable, as it never could be in small houses. At home, if anybody said that they were ‘going to their room for a bit’ it simply meant that they were in a temper, or that nervous endurance of the guest was becoming seriously frayed. But at Delaye you simply invited, and nothing remained but to glance at the spare rooms at the eleventh hour and go and do what pleased you best, until such time as Musgrave came to tell you that the station taxi had arrived. The chauffeur and a housemaid, or even little Sue Privett, took the luggage up the wide, shallow flights, and you came, welcoming and unheated, into the drawing-room.

  The hours for the use of the bathroom were the nearest approach to any domestic upset. Otherwise, you merely said to the staff let there be light, and there was light. Even now, guests really cost little in a house already committed by sheer numbers to a certain standard of expenditure. Delaye, in Evelyn’s time at any rate, had never been a Daimler and caviare place; they grew their own fruit and vegetables, though the orchard crops were deteriorating through Sir Edmund’s inability to attend to the trees, and the outstanding expenses were groceries and meat. And wine. The cellars ran rather to cobwebbed bottles still laid down in their tan, and dated from the eighteenth century, and which nobody dared to broach on the grounds that their contents had probably turned to vinegar in the days of George the First, or would by now be of a priceless potency that might put the tableful of guests spectacularly under it. It was only Maxwell Dunston who went on hoping. There was a certain Frontenac . . .

  CHAPTER V

  1

  EVELYN CALCOTT had first met Edmund Roundelay at a hunt ball in the Assembly Rooms at Norminster, an unexpected invitation, for her, to which her family, with extra cash and a little lending, dyeing and altering, had generously risen. They didn’t want to lose her but they felt she ought to go. . . .

  Edmund Roundelay, immensely attracted from his first sight and dance, had taken it for granted that she was of some neighbouring family, only to find that Miss Calcott was one of a devoted family, mother and two sisters, who lived in Hereford Square, S.W.7. That fact accounted, perhaps, for her finished appearance and ready repartee — she made quantities of the county family daughters look a little crumpled and sound hoydenish, their humour three seasons old at least, unassailable though he knew their pedigree to be. Her open, preliminary announcement of a total lack of ability to distinguish between a pastern and a hock should have placed her outside all reasonable pales, but contrived to please Sir Edmund. He valued honesty and moral courage. Also, he wanted an heir, regretting as much as anybody his own indirect succession, even if his conscience was satisfied that no actual son of the house could better have filled the bill than he. And Evelyn had achieved a son and two daughters (he would have preferred a rather larger margin of security), and they all loved each other as a matter of course, and liked each other, which is a higher compliment, and a rarer. They even contrived not to feel inimical about each other’s endless in-laws, and the Calcott girls came quite frequently to stay at Delaye and though extremely modern in outlook (which seemed in the last resort to fine down to the question of how far it was safe for young women to go in the amorous department, and having gone there, whether it was not hopelessly outdated to regret the consequences — State Aid — more of Our Class needed — frustration — surplus women — asylums — how long? — and what about it? —) he was always willing and even pleased to house them. One really only saw them at table and in the drawing-room after dinner. . . .

  Evelyn’s first letters home as a young married woman were typical.

  ‘Come soon, and whenever. There’s a butler for Kathleen to adore and a rather shattering old nurse straight out of a problem play for Helen to walk round and explore. The important thing is not to mind her. Treat her like someone she once nursed and if she says she did don’t contradict her, just drift on her stream. Saves times. You’ll be all sorts of people to her including small boys in plush knickers, but never mind that. I think she’s tumbled to my position here, though you never know, and I may be Princess Helena Victoria for all I do. But old nurses have an extra sense where “the famil
y” is concerned and usually recognize a household acquisition! The aunts-in-law are quite maddening and disheartening when one’s tired, but pathetic social tragedies of unwantedness when one’s bought a new dog, or the chrysanthemums have come up to their advertisements. I’m all over moss, and I don’t know whether I want it scraped off me and to rush to London and see plays and go to sherry parties and talk nonsense and pretend I’m enlarging my outlook when I’m only spending money and getting heartburn on cocktails, or let the moss grow thicker. Thicker, I think. Inertia is very catching and comforting. There’s as much to do here as you want to, or as little. I may feel frustrated and thrown away and misunderstood later, but haven’t begun to yet.

  ‘Tell Kathleen she needn’t be in the least alarmed about anything here. We aren’t one scrap dressy except at garden parties and local dinners, etc., but at home we’re strictly semi-demi in the evenings and there’s no personal maid to look tossy about your outfit, and Musgrave doesn’t wait in the room between courses. The house is large enough to have a quiet fit in or feel bilious if you want to without being noticed and the old ladies melt away after meals a lot and so does “cousin Max”, whom I like. He’s rather fun and simply hates most things and people (except Edmund and me) and says so.

  ‘By the way, mother seems to be in a bit of a mix-up about the family tree, but if you tie a damp towel round your head and suck pieces of ice, it’s quite easy. Tell her:

  (1) That Mrs. (Frances) Roundelay had no son, but five daughters that she named after jewels.

  (2) That of these, only two married: Emerald, who’s now Mrs. Bertram Cloudesley, and Crystal (Mrs. Dunston, mother of Maxwell. A bore who lives in Kensington and who you ought to call on, I’m afraid).

  (3) That Mrs. Cloudesley had two sons: the elder is Marcus and the younger Edmund who is

  (4) My husband.

  That Frances Roundelay’s unmarried daughters are now “the old ladies” and my aunts by marriage.

  ‘Have you got that? It’s all done by mirrors.

  ‘Oh, P.S., and by the way: we actually run to a peacock, here, but only one, and I don’t think he’d stay if he knew how much less well off Edmund is than the house suggests! We’re one of “the big people” round here, but Edmund isn’t the Squire, though a local J.P., which I find impressive, even if I ask myself what can private men know about the law? I’ll tell you lashings about the village, next time. I’m approaching it with a mixture of excitement and apprehension.’

  CHAPTER VI

  1

  ON looking back, as she frequently did, to her anticipations of life as mistress of a large house, Evelyn Roundelay had not omitted to visualize the family breakfast.

  There were many possibilities. The first one composed itself of negligée, chocolate, French maid and petulance, while her husband, booted and breezy, soothed the charming tantrum and Marie tossed her head in a corner. The second derived more from Pinero and Chekhov, and was a morose gathering in which to the accompaniment of gallons of freshly-made tea, the Roundelays gave long-winded vent to their assorted aspirations and neuroses, while somebody else strode out of the room and their lives for ever and was later discovered hanged in an outhouse, upon which, general regret was expressed on the ground that he was a Roundelay of Delaye (the senior branch) and not to be confused with the Roundelays of Hereford, a scion of whom had married a woman who was once on the stage, a player, damned, curst, exposing herself, oh God! to the shillings of the mob. In this picture there was always a daughter who burst into wild weeping at table, until Evelyn remembered with a jerk that that daughter would be her own, and that she herself being still only engaged, quite nineteen years must elapse before the girl could begin to weep for any really dramatic cause.

  A third picture was inextricably bound up with the Christmas calendar and supplement; here there were also tears, but of domestic sentiment and joy, and however hard Evelyn wrenched her tableau about with proper reference to the unsuitable months, a meet on the lawn, and burly Master and Whips quaffing in pink, and stir, and jingle, and hikes, and huntsmen having extra places laid for them at the table, and a huge, unholy consumption of mutton chops.

  Or there was the Victorian picture in which one sate in an atmosphere of cap and shawl, always smiling and alert to greet the incoming breakfasters, and very attentive before the remarks of one’s husband, even if his speech were an interruption: one would sit, agreeing, at the foot of the table while he dispensed large sausages from a silver entrée dish, one’s eye the first to note the lowering brow, one’s ear to check the ebullience of the children: one would raise a very mountain of tact and pour barrels of oil upon troubled waters: one would shield the children and (unexpectedly) lie on their behalf, and develop into a Good Woman without one abstract idea in her head, or vice or temptation to her back, and the wreaths at the cemetery would be numerous and costly, and one’s identity lost for ever upon the headstone as Dearly Beloved Wife of Edmund Roundelay, Knight.

  That breakfast table was of the backbone of the nation type supported by the moral corsets of Tory newspapers. These would never be offered to the women, because politics was men’s province: if, however, indignation and indulgence took hands and paced towards the ladies of Delaye, the current Prime Minister would be dismissed as fool, the Chancellor of the Exchequer as that Knave, the Home Secretary as a Jack-in-Office, and the private members of Parliament A Pack of Sheep.

  There would, of course, be family prayers at which her husband surlily ordered the Almighty to bless that house with His everlasting peace, before he hastily rang the bell and gave the servant hades for forgetting the marmalade; and having made a hearty breakfast, the master of the house would take his firstborn into the study and thrash him for kissing the gamekeeper’s daughter, ostensibly because it was an immoral act, but actually because the droits de seigneur were now outdated and dangerous.

  And the breakfasts at Delaye were none of these things. To begin with, there were no morning prayers. Sir Edmund found God embarrassing to speak to in public, the cook didn’t like him, perversely preferring Abraham whose bosom, for her, was inferentially in a permanent state of décolletage, and Major Dunston wanted a walk before breakfast. The only desirous suppliant, Miss Jessie, was apparently never consulted upon the matter of public worship and made, presumably, her own arrangements in her bedroom. As for the newspapers, they never arrived until eleven o’clock, a.m., at which hour they were skilfully tossed over the entrance gates of the avenue by the carrier’s cart from Delaye village, strict punctuality of delivery depending upon the state of the horse’s knees and hoofs, which, on giving out, were replaced by the bicycles of any passing errand boys whose employers also supplied the village of l’Oex (spoken Lex) two miles on the other side of Delaye itself. Thus the news of world affairs first penetrated the house by rumour, through the man who brought the milk from a farm, by the gardener and his boy who arrived an hour later for the day’s work, and by the postman who shot up and down the avenue twice a day on a motor cycle and retailed such journalistic headlines as his eye had caught to the staff, by whom they were passed up, sifted, refined and sub-edited by Musgrave, who, if questioned, would impart them to the family (Musgrave on the subject of outraged nuns in Spain was, Major Dunston often reminisced, well worth the cost of Civil war). Therefore, the absence of news threw the Roundelays upon their own resources, and except for the vagaries of the great-aunts, the breakfast table, Evelyn thought, was singularly like that of everyone else save for the inevitable rural motif running through the conversation and from which she became mistress of many and assorted bits of knowledge, interesting, tedious, odd. Nobody wept tears of sentiment or frustration, and so far no Roundelay had strode out of their lives for ever: their silences were ruminative and not the devil’s brew of some psychologic ill. At eight-thirty a.m. nobody even called the Prime Minister a fool. The essential mischief of Westminster’s hired bravos could wait until after dinner, indeed, it had to, where all the family were so occupied,
and the more usually pressing and predominant question was apt to be ‘Is anyone going into Norminster to-day?’

  2

  Housekeeping without a car, with a village two miles away whose shops were wholly inadequate, and on means just not sufficient to run a well-stocked store cupboard of emergency meats and delicacies, partook, Lady Roundelay was to discover, more of the nature of a game of chess than an exercise in domesticity. In a household of that size it took a long apprenticeship to compute quantities of anything where goods were, alarmingly, reckoned by the stone and feed by the peck and hundredweight.

  Over this the aunts had been unhelpful. The size of a joint for twelve to fourteen people? They really couldn’t say, my dear. A good, large one, no doubt. Large joints were more flavoursome, too. Mamma had always kept, of course, a very good table.

  Evelyn, damning her dashing but defunct predecessor, made at first many mistakes. From a relatively small home herself, she possessed a little housekeeperly knowledge where complete ignorance would have served her better; a feature of this was a perfect comprehension of the wastefulness and greed of the average domestic and an overlooking of the fact that when you were faced with such a kitchenful as now confronted her, few joints can be made over and used up, because, so to speak, the servants had cut in first, and that which you had earmarked for cottage pie and hash was now one shocking bone and very little else.