A Footman for the Peacock

by Ferguson,Rachel

  ‘But what about the morning after?’

  Eastbourne smiled. ‘I did the rounds of what appeared to be the principal cottages; I somehow got the notion I’d gate-crashed the party and thought that an apology might give us some copy.’

  ‘And — ?’

  ‘Do you remember that part in Doctor Nicola when he gets tripped up on a question by one of the monks in the lamaserai? Well, the Rohan folk assured me that, as there had been no festivity, I could not have delighted them with my honourable presence, and therefore no perfumed apologies were called for, or words to that effect.’

  The Editor gazed and muttered ‘Good God’ before returning to his littered desk. ‘England’s a rum place . . . a very rum place . . . oh, Eastbourne . . . about this evacuation of kids if war should break out — ’

  ‘D’ you believe it?’

  ‘It’s a dead cert, looks like. The Government’s just beginning to lose its head and is being influenced by friend Adolf’s methods to an extent it doesn’t realize. Hitler, whatever you may think of him, has been a success so far. This scheme of billeting is England’s first attempt to ape his tactics and Sovietize the British home.’

  ‘There’d be a revolution in any other country.’

  ‘Yes, but not here. The Government knows us just well enough to count on that. What it doesn’t foresee is that the scheme is going to have some very nasty repercussions at the next General Election, that, and the confiscation of property idea which is getting into the air.’

  ‘War conditions are no fair test of any government.’

  ‘Tah! The voters won’t look at it that way. All they’ll see is a chance of booting out M.P.s who let them in for measures their constituents were violently opposed to. They got away with the evacuation idea in the September Crisis because it was only infinitesimal, and being premature as events proved, the country got no idea of what it might work out like because the schools were back before they started, almost.’

  ‘Well, we can down it in the Wire. I should enjoy letting myself go on the subject, personally.’

  ‘You won’t get the chance.’

  ‘No, I suppose Tatchett’ll handle that.’

  ‘Eastbourne, we had a staff conference last night, and the Chief is coming out strong in favour of the scheme.’

  ‘ What? He’ll be on the wrong side of the fence if he does — or has he got wind that the Cable is against it? The Chief’d be against washing your neck if the Daily Cable advocated it. Why are they always at each other’s throats?’

  ‘A politer term for it is “healthy competition”.’

  ‘Anyway, what’s the idea?’

  ‘Just what a friend of mine asked me last night. I told him that in Fleet Street one learnt not to ask why certain newspapers take a violent stand for or against anything; you either don’t get told, or stay on a paper so long that you know all the answers. It can be sincere. It’s usually a Peerage: sometimes it’s exhibitionism-wanting to be “different” and discussed; sometimes it’s because the proprietors own interests in war or other material and production, or because they want to show up a rival who doesn’t, or because some relative of theirs in public life has made a bloomer. I’m not alluding of course to England’s Big Four publications, such as The Times, but to some of the papers like the one I edit, the kind that the upper-middle classes call Lower-class, the aristocracy calls Gutter, and we’re trained to call Popular.’

  ‘Which of the reasons is it this time?’

  The Editor of The Daily Wire looked pensive, and suddenly giggled. ‘A misunderstanding. Of course, we wrap our motives up in six sheets of the thickest brown paper, but from what I know of the Chief, plus having a friend or two in our good rival’s offices, I gather that when this billeting scheme first came on the air, the proprietors of the Wire and the Cable did some quick thinking. You see they both own large houses in the country . . . the next move was to find out what line the other meant to take about it. They circled round each other like prizefighters for weeks — that was the time when both papers went all non-committal about evacuation, and we had to bump out our columns with photos of Waacs and Wrens and old Princess Henrietta Maria beaming at a sandbag, and keep our readers’ noses steadily to the grindstone of possible rationing, and so on, and leaders headed “Whence, Goebbels?” and “Whither Hitler?” and “Why Czechoslovakia?” and “Wherefore Munich?”, plus stating that every day and in every way we were fitter and fitter and fitter. . . .

  ‘That was a very curious period, trying with the help of the B.B.C. simultaneously to warn the public to be prepared and at the same time to allay panic by hinting that there was nothing to be prepared for. . . .

  ‘Well, then the Cable’s proprietor happened to take another house further inland in case of raids, and our Chief got wind that he was moving out. He sent a reporter down to do a bit of snooping, and this chap actually saw the furniture being put into pantechnicons. That seemed conclusive, and just as the Chief ordered, supervised and printed a sarcastic stinger on the subject of lack of civic feeling — no names, of course: just a pontifical essay on public spirit and selfish obstructionism — he found out that the Cable’s boss had only been precautionary, that he’s dead against billeting and is now free to say so, while we, in our columns, are committed to the loving and fostering of several million children for an indefinite period. Even The Woman’s Page has been dragged in and poor old Theodosia is preparing a grand idea for the women of England by which they sew their fingers to the bone at their own expense for the needy, send their work to us, and we get all the credit.’

  Eastbourne hung on to a chair and looked swoony, then his body shook.

  ‘Hah, hah!’ he began. ‘Oh ha ha ha HAR! . . . oh! Did she tell her readers that it would be a patriotic as well as pleasant occupation for the long winter evenings ahead of us?’

  ‘But, naturally. She even told us all that this black-out might make theatre-going difficult —’

  ‘Oh, ha — !’

  ‘Can you guess why, Eastbourne? Because the streets would be unlit.’

  ‘Oh ha ha ha!’

  ‘And then she said that every day gained for peace meant one less day of war.’

  Eastbourne mopped his eyes. ‘Oh — I must marry that woman.’

  ‘And now, as you’ve let me down over this Rohan business, go and earn your keep.’

  ‘But I haven’t a feature in my head, except my nose.’

  ‘Then go and look out of the window. The whole secret of journalism lies in the capacity to make a mountain out of a molehill at a moment’s notice.’

  CHAPTER X

  1

  ROHAN might and did exclude a London newspaper from its social occasions, but it was Lady Roundelay, also uninvited, who experienced a keener disappointment that was almost childish. Take it all round, her greatest victory had been over Ronsell and his songs. But if she had mentally assessed the farrier as a character of the gentle-giant type, slow to move and pitiful to bird and beast, she revised her idea when he sang her The Running Song.

  Writing of it to her sister, she said: ‘It’s somehow horrible. There’s a kind of appalling jocosity running all through it which makes it worse, a matter-of-fact acceptance of cruelty — even a grim little pun, something about the cheapness of life and “two bodies for a noble”. This man sang it without any attempt a phrasing or concert-platform tricks. It just poured from him. Quite why I found it so repellent I don’t know; it’s got very few notes and they’re all in the minor, and the rhythm is a son of sprinting staccato especially in the repeated lines (Ra-tata-tat-tat-tat) like hail pattering on a glass roof and about as chilling. Oh, why can’t I write down music, or even describe it? “The Running Song” oughtn’t to be striking: even I can hear that it doesn’t scan, is a law unto itself, and that the key line ( “Run running run-ner run”) is schoolboyish. Possibly its dreadfulness is just due to the fact that it’s all wrong from the lyricist’s point of view: no neat verse and chorus with everythi
ng tied up in an effective bow at the end. As it is, it’s just a tussock of raw suffering. I can’t send you the words unless Ronsell will sing i often again, but I’m haunted by the tune and catch myself humming it at odd moments about the house. Edmund says he never heard it at all, only of it, and that it’s only one of hundreds they know at Rohan, and even at Delaye, but it’s quite beastly.’

  2

  This is The Running Song of Rohan:

  Run, running runner, run,

  The horses o’ertake you

  Though breath shall forsake you,

  Run, running runner, run.

  Run, running runner, run,

  The hoofbeats are gaining,

  Lungs bursting and straining:

  Run, running runner, run.

  Run, running runner, run,

  Is there sweat on your breast?

  (They are nearing the crest)

  Run, running runner, run.

  Bodies are cheap, are cheap,

  One body for a noble,

  Two bodies for a noble,

  Three bodies for a noble

  (Run, running runner, run).

  A furlong, a mile, to go

  With sight that is dim

  Is your pace getting slow?

  Run, running runner, run!

  On your lips there is froth, is froth,

  (Run north, and run northward):

  Does your travail make east

  That your killer may feast?

  Or make south? Is that blood on your mouth?

  Is it flowing?

  Are you slowing?

  Is it heavy the going?

  (Run, running runner, run)

  Run

  Run

  Run

  (Run, running runner, run!)

  3

  Evelyn had walked home from Rohan curiously oppressed, her simple faith in Ronsell, the farrier, distinctly shaken. It was, she thought, as though over the years he had been concealing his real nature from her. Treacherous, almost . . . or at least unfriendly. Or was it a proof of trust, finally arrived at and achieved by her own fostering and interest? If you deliberately sought out medieval England you must take the rough with the smooth, and, loving still, be prepared to welter with it in bloody cruelty and that supreme injustice which is the fashioning of weapons against the helpless and disarmed, the birds and beasts who learned, in time, to fear humanity as its natural enemy.

  The pity of it!

  There was, of course, she reasoned, no logic in the sentimentalist: he returned wet-eyed with pity to a dinner of roast venison or pheasant which he enjoyed extremely, which, indeed, mollified his vicarious suffering entirely until next time, when sheer chance brought him up against some beastliness to the animal that was, unhappily, available as a spectacle at all times.

  One must eat. And even vegetables contained the same life principle. The Running Song should have recognized that . . . have harrowed one a little less in the indecency of the mental picture it evoked of that death-before-death. . . .

  It never once occurred to Evelyn Roundelay that The Running Song of Rohan might refer to a victim that was neither winged nor four-footed.

  4

  Nor could she have foreseen the effect of the song upon her daughter Angela.

  As Evelyn had told her sister, she caught herself at odd moments humming the song about the house. She could not, on looking back, remember when Angela had first heard the song save that it was in the spring. Angela was so much from home that a considerable period could have elapsed before, casually, unwittingly, mother had passed it on to child. But Evelyn remembered the outcome only too well.

  They had been together in the garden, were strolling by the little marble temple where in bad weather the peacock lurked; and, as one so often does over trifles which precede something of moment, Evelyn could even recall the subject of their conversation which ended in her own humming of The Running Song — some nonsense about the peacock being like a discontented inmate in a boarding-house (‘He’d be the type who’d dispute every item and mark his bottle of ginger ale so that the down-trodden waitress didn’t get any,’ she had said), and stooping to stick a plant, to tap the green tooth of a bulb as they walked towards the house, she began to hum. Angela stopped short. ‘What’s that tune?’ She spoke sharply, for her.

  ‘It’s called “The Running Song”.’

  ‘Ohhh . . .’ it was half acknowledgment, half acquiescence in the remembered details of some forgotten disturbance. Then, ‘Yes . . . yes. It would be’.

  Evelyn had missed the possible significance of that as she answered, ‘It’s a Rohan song. I find it rather awful, but quite haunting, with a certain fascination of its own’. In her enthusiasm, she enlarged upon the song, quoting fragments, whole memorized lines, while Angela looked sick, listening as though compelled by some uncomprehended duty.

  ‘These medieval songs ought to be saved, somehow. As things are, their preservation is at the mercy of memory, and of elderly memory at that; they’re all getting on in years, at Rohan,’ Evelyn said.

  ‘Medieval . . . no. It’s not that,’ Angela answered, correcting one abstractedly yet with authority, her mother, piecing together the memory of that morning, recollected.

  ‘You think it was of later date? Why?’

  Angela looked harassed as she groped. ‘I don’t know. It’s the way I feel about it,’ and then urgently, ‘We needn’t hear it again, ever, need we?’

  It was, Evelyn recognized afterwards, the oblique appeal that is all of direct request which some daughters feel free to make to parents.

  ‘Never, if I can remember,’ Evelyn answered, still obtuse and, as always, ready to respect a whim. ‘I hate it, myself, rather, as I told auntie Kathy. It gets hold of one so, and the fact that it’s only a song doesn’t lessen the tension. In the same way, one can be roused to fury by a purely fictional account of cruelty to an animal in any novel. The fact that it never really happened doesn’t help one an atom.’

  ‘No. Not an atom. . . .’

  ‘And it’s like that over The Running Song; we shall never be able to pin down the actual hunt which it tells of, if indeed one special and particular hunt ever did — it’s far more likely that it was scribbled by some tosspot who’d never been able to afford for himself what in those days was still a gentleman’s pastime, and who worked off his bloodlust by popularizing it in verse, if you can call it verse. It’s a symbol of the misery of any poor hunted beast — ’

  And it was then that Angela had looked at her mother as if Evelyn for the first time had failed her utterly, leaving Angela alone to shoulder some burden.

  And she had begun to tremble all over.

  Evelyn took a chilled hand in her own. ‘My ducky, don’t you feel well? We’ll go in, it’s beastly cold out. There’s — nothing the matter, is there?’ Angela would understand that particular vagueness, must have long realized that she herself was of a different texture from, say, Margaret, and that the family colloquialism which called it ‘something the matter’ could in her own case range from a cold in the head to (on one former occasion at least) a sheer instance of unhappy and unwelcome prevision.

  Angela was obviously straining towards normality, almost, it seemed, seeking to apologize to her mother for some failure to conform to family standards, some disability of the nature of which she was, as obviously, in the dark. It was, Evelyn rapidly calculated, no use closing with her and asking what the trouble was. Quite patently, Angela didn’t know, any more than she knew what, years ago, had made her shiver in that upstairs bedroom with its window-pane and scrawled epitaph. Both she and Angela were unpleasantly affected by The Running Song, Angela to a greater degree. Then why worry?

  5

  It was while they both stood there on the path in mutual helplessness that what might be regarded as a solution of a sort had presented itself. For over the box hedge they saw the head of Sue Privett, hurrying towards them.

  The little creature was also shivering, had been
, Lady Roundelay supposed, too respectful to snatch a coat from behind the kitchen door. . . .

  ‘Yes, m’lady?’

  ‘Hullo, Sue. What is it?’

  ‘I understood Miss Angela wanted me, m’lady.’

  ‘No. She’s been out here with me.’

  The kitchenmaid looked unconvinced, Angela bewildered and relieved. Evelyn said, ‘You hadn’t a message for Sue, had you, dear?’

  ‘No, mother.’

  ‘You’d better trot back to the fire, Sue.’

  Sue Privett hesitated. ‘I’m very sorry, m’lady. I was quite sure I heard Miss Angela calling out. To me.’

  ‘No. And you couldn’t have heard from the kitchen if she had.’

  Sue’s training held.

  ‘No, m’lady,’ agreed the kitchenmaid, woodenly, and turned away obediently.

  Angela started forward. ‘I —I think I’ll go back with Sue. It’s warm in the kitchen.’

  Evelyn was adequate. ‘Yes, off you go, and tell cook to give you both a glass of hot milk.’

  The two girls ran together towards the house.

  Evelyn, watching them, was hoping that the pin which had pricked her when Angela abandoned her own mother in favour of a servant, wasn’t resentment. Mothers, as she herself had told Basil Winchcombe, could be quite lamentably insufficient, and from the day she had recognized that fact Evelyn had determined never to assume that any act or word of her son or daughters should, by her, be treated as a final expression of character, but merely as a temporary quirk of development. To overstress a passing phase was to make the mistake common to too many families. ‘And when one is reduced to philosophizing’, she told herself, as she too moved away from the marble temple, ‘it’s nearly always a sign that one is in the last ditch, and trying to bamboozle oneself out of it.’

  CHAPTER XI

  1

  AND of these things Evelyn Roundelay still thought, as she dusted the drawing-room, for Delaye was once more going through a period of domestic stress, and only one of the village girls available, this time, who was housemaiding abovestairs, helped by Sue Privett.