A Footman for the Peacock

by Ferguson,Rachel

  Miss Sapphy was soon to be rewarded by a sign of life: Margaret, wheeling her bicycle across the gravel drive by the front lawn. She leant out. ‘Margaret, you’re not going out! Alone?’

  ‘Village,’ shouted her great-niece, and indeed, Margaret thought, preparing to mount, it was a jolly good thing war had broken out on Sunday. Week-days were usually busy ones at Delaye and everyone — particularly the servants — would have had time to get used to the idea and let off steam among themselves.

  ‘But — are you all right? Aren’t you nervous?’

  ‘What could happen between here and the village?’ shouted Margaret in common with thousands of other outgoing relatives all over England who trusted implicitly in the security of their familiar routes because they were familiar.

  ‘Have you told your mother? But I will. Oh, dear — I don’t like it for you.’

  ‘Back for tea,’ shouted Margaret.

  Miss Sapphy sighed and stood dithering in indecision. The sky was a big place, of course, particularly that stretch between house and village . . . and all those great trees in the parks and pastureland made it more sheltered . . . and there were the neighbours on the way and the Vicarage to run in to . . . or Mr. Winchcombe might see Margaret home . . . you were always safer with a man. And there was dear Edmund coming round the shrubbery, his disgraceful but reassuring old pockets full of hammers and nails and goodness knew what.

  ‘Edmund!’

  ‘Hey?’

  ‘Must you work right outside the house?’

  ‘Fencing.’ He did not even pause in his retreat.

  ‘Where?’ anxiously screamed aunt Sapphy.

  ‘Fold-yard.’

  ‘Couldn’t you do something under cover until we know rather more where we are?’

  ‘What?’ (Damn the women.)

  From the hall Miss Jessie heard the voices of sister and nephew and came out on to the flight of steps. On such a day and in times like these you never knew . . . service to others . . . though it was very pleasant in the hall. ‘Can I do anything for you, Edmund?’

  ‘Oh good Gad no, no thanks. Better go in and rest.’ Miss Amy’s ears were also competent and her window now framed her head, timorously peering. ‘What is it? What’s happened?’ Her nephew disappeared round the angle of the house. This was intolerable. The fold-yard was now out of the question. He might be followed. Entering the outer kitchen by the side door and unhooking another coat from the boot-room he descended to the cellars. Nobody would pursue him there, the cellars had always stood for safety. Safety. Well, now he was down here he might as well vet the prospects in case there should be an air raid during the war.

  The walls were thick but the whitewash and stone flooring made the great echoing place impracticable, unless you sank a small fortune in oil-stoves, or piped for gas, and with a crowd of old women in their night gear . . . But it might be possible to — It was at this point that the eye of Edmund Roundelay fell upon the old household accounts books and the question of air raid precaution was shelved. Drawing up the disused kitchen chair on which he had sat, records on knees, so often and happily In the past, he plunged into that volume dated 1788-1806. The book opened by this time almost invariably at the same entry — the eighteenth century was a favourite period. To-day, something of later date towards the end of the book slid from the covers and fell to the flagstones. He stooped to the thick yellowed slip of paper. There were one or two loose pages, he knew: this was smaller, put in evidently as emendation. It was nothing much, but annoying that the entries should not run consecutively.

  ‘NOTA BENE’, requested the thin, elegant handwriting: ‘To date from the 19th January, 1792, the Sum of One Crown paid af wage in Lieu of Notice to Polly Privett, Kitchen maid, difmiffed suddenly.’

  Sir Edmund pondered. So a Privett had got the sack in the eighteenth century. He supposed that even in those days the domestic was beginning to get out of hand, though he would like to know wherein a mere kitchenmaid could have so presumed as to have got herself ‘difmiffed’ with five shillings in her pocket. Sue Privett was a direct descendant of this Polly: the week’s gap probably represented the only break in that line of service. He turned back the pages. Yes. Here we were. One week later, the entry of the wage of Susan Privett. He smiled at the business-like burying of the hatchet, this tacit condoning of Polly’s misdemeanour in her instant replacement by Susan. Someone at Delaye had an eye to good Privett service.

  His absent gaze lighted on the brickwork recesses in which on their tan lay those bottles of Frontenac and Sillery. But one somehow didn’t associate a Privett with tipsiness, even in that hard-drinking age.

  Three storeys above his head Miss Amy returned to her chair and Miss Sapphy dithered again, mentally marshalling the possible objects upon which to expend her affection, and sudden sense of loyalty and enveloping world-pity. There was Maxwell who was splendid, as an old soldier, or Mrs. Hatchett, pathetic because she was a servant among strangers in national calamity or Evelyn who was the mother of a son, or even Angela as the sister of a brother, or the dog who might be gassed or killed when doing his unpaid duty of retrieving. That was a very moving thought. Or one might actually get the tea for Musgrave — only one didn’t know where the things were kept . . .

  With tears in her eyes Miss Sapphire Roundelay planned benevolences.

  In her room, Nursie had put herself to bed. She was in disgrace, and knew it, and bed or the corner was associated in her mind with expiation. She smelt a strong odour of Coventry in the offing, guessed that her tea would be brought up by a servant instead of Margaret or Angela; she was at the same time bed or no, twitching with exultation at her deed. The middle-day dinner had been no meal for a person who liked butcher’s meat and the tray had gone out of window without a hitch That would learn them a lesson. Later would come the fussing over her and the extra attention, and she would, perhaps, find herself quite sorry about it. The afternoon was being very long and she might get up now and tell them so. But it was very warmish, the weather was, and Nursie hadn’t got down all them stairs in she couldn’t remember when. She wondered if she could? She’d do anything she set her mind to. To-morrow would do.

  Her sleep-sodden eye, ere it closed, fixed upon one of her photographs framed in whelk-shells and dried seaweed: Stacey Roundelay at ten years old. She told it, ‘Ah, Master Kenneth you never gave Nursie any trouble. Kenneth. Kenneth Culling that was his full name. Broom Water, Hillingdon. . . .

  2

  The washing up of the luncheon dishes was finished at last and Sue Privett free now until seven o’clock when she must give Mr. Musgrave a hand with the fetching and carrying of cold supper to the dining-room. She did not go to her bedroom on the attic storey to-day, or even take off her apron. There might be mucky work ahead of her. A nuisance that the master was in the fold-yard, doing work the gentry didn’t ought to, and the coach house had the Major inside painting his pictures. Quite different it looked now from the old days, Sue’s grandmother, coming over from Rohan to spend an afternoon at Delaye, had once told her; even Sue’s mother could remember the time when the coach house was a coach house and the great family coach of the Roundelays had stood much where the Major sat now, fiddling with his paints. A very handsome turn-out the coach was, Gran said, with hand lamps in the sockets that glittered like gold. She’d even, as a young maid herself, seen it in use once, rolling down the avenue, but it’d been given up in her time, and the master — that would be the father of the old ladies — had bought a gig. The coach itself had been sold dirt cheap to a livery stables the other side of the county.

  Sue was anxious. It wasn’t only that this war might worry Miss Angela and trouble her ladyship about Mr. Stacey, but because of the peacock who might be scared away when the bombs began to fall, as Mrs. Hatchett said they would almost at once. Cook had been awful about it, talking about Jehovah and the wrath to come and Abraham’s bosom, and asking that something she called ‘this cup’ might be taken from her, though she was dr
inking water out of a tumbler and the kettle hadn’t even boiled for the after-lunch tea. Even Mr. Musgrave had got a bit short, and turned her off by asking her for some raspberries for the dining-room. Even the old ladies were taking on a bit, it seemed. And birds were scarey of all guns. The dog didn’t mind them, but he was a gun dog, broke to it, but even he carried on alarmingly on the Fifth of November when there was fireworks, so that Miss Margaret always had to shut him up. He knew the difference. But a bird wouldn’t. Guns meant death to birds. . . .

  Sue must try and contrive a shelter for the peacock that he would know and settle down in if danger threatened, and there seemed nothing for it but the little temple. Nobody ever used; it, not to say sat there, and the round roof was strong enough; it was the open spaces between the pillars that’d need filling in for safety, and warmth, with the winter coming on. The temple would give him his freedom, too, even if Mr. Dickon allowed him, he’d be miserable shut up, nights, in an outhouse.

  There was old hay still in the mangers — no horses left to eat it, and straw in plenty in the granary for a bed. Sue, by rights, should ask the master or her ladyship for permission to take it and make the temple secure, but she was a little shy of the master since that time he’d wanted her pet to go to Severn Court, had never really felt the same towards him, kind as he was. And her ladyship didn’t understand, either. There was Miss Angela. Sue would ask her.

  Miss Angela she found at last, reading in the Turret Room, the old schoolroom that was; she looked pleased and said it was a good idea, and even could she help? ‘Of course the poor thing must be kept warm, Sue. I think you’ll find a lot of old hangings and unwanted stuff in the upstairs drawers, but better show them to me first in case they can’t be spared.’

  All over the house Sue flitted. There were cupboards and presses in the servants’ sleeping quarters full, as Lady Roundelay sometimes said, of heaven really only knew what, and that in wet weather she occasionally inspected, though she had not yet examined a quarter of all the accumulations of years. But there was, she told visitors, a certain fascination in the business; you literally never knew what you might find, or what, should you be hasty with latch, bolt or button, would tumble out on to your head. She herself had once received a smart rap on the temple from a rusted crossbow that became dislodged upon her accidentally pulling a wooden pillar that turned out to be a whole panel, and which nobody could have suspected opened at all, though her husband knew all about it. Once, Evelyn had unearthed from an iron-bound chest in a passage a fool’s motley, faded and crumpled, whose little bells still faintly tinkled when shaken. She had called it a Jester’s dress and been corrected by Edmund, who said that the confusion of Jester with Fool was a very common error and would have been regarded as an insult in the sixteenth century by the serious, hired wit of rank superior to the capering clown who was sometimes retained by even private families of high social standing. And once she and Angela had unpacked and shaken out in the odour of orris root an elaborate eighteenth-century gown, property of that fated square peg in the round hole of Delaye, the French Marguerite Roundelay who had died by a compatriot’s hand from sweeping through the situation as Rohan de l’Oeux, and whom Angela so strongly resembled in her small, dark fragility, if the portrait of Marguerite in the Lacquer Room was anything to go by.

  Angela had tried on the gown to please her mother, and looked charming in it, and a little apprehensive, though death had not touched its fabric . . . it had never known the Paris of the Terror but remained safe at Delaye, Evelyn said, hinting circuitously. One had to handle Angela with care.

  Dustily Sue rummaged comforts for the peacock: the strengthening of the temple itself she must contrive later, if the family seemed to be getting used to its changed appearance, filled in as Sue planned. It wouldn’t look nice, of course, but looks weren’t everything, in war.

  From attic and basement she took what seemed discarded. One empty bedroom had produced from a built-in cupboard what looked like a man’s shirt made of some stuff she didn’t recognize, but so coarse — holes, too — and so stained on the front that it was really no good to anyone except perhaps cut up for scrubbers. Someone’d laundered it badly, all splashed with ironmould, like that. . . .

  Sue Privett had always liked this room with the writing on the pane. It was only one of the servants’ bedrooms and not even a large one like some of the others which, she had heard, were once filled with servants sleeping three and four together, before staff was cut down. It had a nice view of the garden, too; it would be wonderful to own it and furnish it as you liked. One could be happy sitting there, away from the kitchen and everybody. There had, Sue knew, always been a Privett at Delaye. She liked to fancy that a great-great-great-aunt or grandmother had been put in that room. The bedstead was grand; much too big for the room and not valuable, probably, or it’d be downstairs in one of the principal bedrooms. Must be something the matter with it. Sue could not know that the meat of one era was the poison of the next, or that French taste, horrorstruck at its tilt with the elephantine however valuable, homesick for gilt and lovers’-knots however incongruous when combined with a rosbif English husband, had effected at least one alteration in banishing the splendid Carolean tester to a servant’s attic, or that in her turn the dashing Mrs. (Frances) Roundelay would reject, as tending to underline the whole marital question and if possible to stem the tide of daughters, the gilt Louis bed which was now upended in a lumber room in favour of Spanish walnut, upon which, to date, the untheoretic Miss Jessie nightly lay.

  Sue could not dawdle in that top storey bedroom to-day, but she sometimes ran in with dustpan and brush to give it a bit of a clean up when, by rights, she ought to be belowstairs running errands for Mrs. Hatchett.

  3

  To the pile of stuffs laid out on the table in the Turret Room Miss Angela said Yes, Yes, Yes, I should think so, or that she wasn’t sure about this and Sue had better ask her ladyship about the other. Sue spread the stained shirt. Angela scanned it.

  ‘That’s surely not one of Sir Edmund’s?’

  ‘Oh no, Miss Angela, he wouldn’t never wear such an old thing.’

  ‘Where did you get it from?’

  ‘The room with the writing on the pane, that “Heryn I dye”. Angela snatched her hand away from the shirt. ‘“Herein”. It means “in here”.’

  ‘Yes, Miss.’

  ‘Oh, take it, take it away and tear it up.’

  That was funny: it was what Sue had decided to do. That back breadth was whole and would stop a gap to keep the wind away. All that afternoon she laboured in the temple, tieing, tearing, folding, littering the circular floor with straw and hay until the sun set over the poplars bordering the Home field and the rooks returned clamouring. If the family made a fuss there was the coppice. The peacock might settle there though Sue didn’t fancy it for him. Too damp.

  It was while she was hurrying to the house that, casually, the great blue bird joined her, and she stopped to explain her action. Sue often told the chaffing servants that he understood all she said, in any case more than they knew.

  ‘You see, dearie, we’re at war, and you don’t want t’be bombed by no Germans. They may come over any time now trying to kill us all in our beds.’ The bird’s eye gleamed as he listened. ‘An’ you mustn’t be afraid if you see the house all dark an’ think I’m not there. It’s cos we mayn’t show any light or the Germans could see to hit us better.’

  She stroked his saddle and left him.

  CHAPTER XVII

  1

  THE gong sounded for supper. Margaret, changed and ready, switched off the light — she must really speak to mother about the whole question of lighting and warn her to read the riot act over the servants, if necessary — ran downstairs, witnessed the emergence from her room of aunt Amy and her withdrawal on sighting aunt Sapphy. But to-night, for Margaret, the descent could be unbroken, for Nursie was under a cloud and didn’t deserve a good-night visit.

  From the passage on
the lower storey aunt Jessie appeared, was advanced upon as usual by aunt Amy, hoping to make the dining-room in her company, who, this time, was doubly foiled by seeing her sister Sapphire in the company not only of Margaret but of Jessie as well, and as usual followed them after the necessary interval, during which Jessie made her nightly remark to her great-niece as to her little visit to Nursie.

  At eight-forty-five Musgrave brought in coffee to the drawing-room; Miss Sapphy went to her table and poured out her solitaire marbles of habit, though she felt exceptionally talkative, while Miss Jessie, her Parish Magazine already consumed, got out her knitting and Miss Amy wondered what she herself should read. Edmund had The Sunday Times and Maxwell didn’t seem to have anything, but was smoking in a silence that looked angry and Evelyn had flung herself on to the sofa and seemed to be half asleep. Margaret was busier than ever over her Guides’ affairs and Angela at her usual place by the window, her feet on her favourite footstool. Evelyn through half-shut eyes was thinking ‘She never gives the impression of idling even when she’s doing nothing. Personality? Or just immense power of receptivity?’

  Edmund cast his paper on to the floor, lit pipe and said, ‘About this black-out business . . . it says here they’re going to fine us pretty hot for lights showing. Are we all right?’

  ‘The shutters ought to do the trick, with the curtains. But we shall stifle on warm evenings.’

  ‘I’m too warm now,’ capped Miss Sapphy, thankfully discarding her marbles for conversation, ‘quite hottentot! Can’t we have something a little less shut?’

  ‘Yes, if you care to pay a hundred pound fine,’ grunted her nephew. Aunt Sapphy laughed heartily, Miss Jessie chittered general commiseration and Miss Amy exclaimed ‘A hundred pounds! There!’ Edmund Roundelay unwillingly supposed aloud that they’d better look into the matter and vet the shutters and curtains from the outside of the house. Major Dunston said ‘Want any help?’ in a tone markedly deterrent to acceptance. Margaret got up. ‘I’ll do one side and you do the other, father.’ Miss Sapphy called after them, ‘You’d better take a lantern, Edmund, or you may fall down!’ Evelyn, faintly groaning, reminded her that it was no use taking a forbidden light to look for forbidden lights, to which Miss Amy responded that she quite saw and that lights showed up so much more clearly in darkness and that she did hope that Edmund and Margaret would be all right as poachers were now in season. Major Dunston muttered, ‘Oh good God!’ but the invocation availed him nothing, for Sapphy and Amy suddenly elected for extreme femininity and dependence on masculine omniscience and worked steadily at him for the next six minutes to know how long the war would last and when or if the raids would begin. After all, he had been in the army and if that couldn’t produce inside information nothing could. Also, men liked to be drawn out about their work and hobbies. The sisters were both pleasantly alarmed at the departure of Edmund and Margaret at such an hour to safeguard the house. It made a change. Made the drawing-room seem more cosy.