The sudden, reiterated raucous yells from somewhere outside in the night stirred Evelyn to remark, ‘That confounded peacock! What’s started him off? At a distance, it’s exactly like laughter. Listen . . . there!’
‘Ha ha ha ha ha haha haha!’
‘If he’s going to start that,’ vaguely threatened Lady Roundelay. In her seat by the window Angela shivered in the warm air made warmer by closed shutters and curtains.
Sir Edmund and Margaret returned. ‘You brave people! Well?’ challenged aunt Sapphy. Her nephew addressed himself to his wife. ‘Dining-room windows all right, I got Musgrave to turn on the lights inside and go over the house turning everything else on. Bathroom doubtful. It’s that geyser vent that leaves about a foot of light showing all along the top.’
‘Oh lor,’ complained his lady. ‘I suppose I shall have to set to and make a valance. Damn Hitler.’
‘Servants’ bedrooms all right on my side, most of ’em empty of course. The kitchen shutters won’t do; quarter-inch of light showing through the join.’
‘Oh lor.’ Evelyn turned to her daughter. ‘What about you?’ Margaret referred to the notes she had made in the garden.
‘Hatchett’s bedroom light is much too near the window — ’
‘Then she’ll have to use candles — ’
‘She won’t like that,’ prophesied the Major. ‘You know what servants are, Evelyn.’
‘I do. From now on, the war is entirely my fault.’
‘Nursie was a blaze. She hadn’t even drawn her curtains, but of course she couldn’t know — ’
‘That old woman,’ began Sir Edmund, ‘going to be a fearful problem, ask me. We can’t give her candles or a lamp or she’ll set the place on fire.’
‘One of us’ll have to unscrew her Osram every night — ’
‘That’ll be awful fun for somebody, and what about the winter? She can’t sit in the dark from tea to bedtime.’ Evelyn said, ‘I see myself going into Norminster to-morrow there never to cease buying dark material and electric candles, and coming home weighed down like a carthorse. Somebody’ll have to come with me. And I shall be sewing till the end of time.’
‘Going to cost a pretty penny,’ fretted her husband, ‘and nothing to show for it.’ Miss Jessie, knitting, made no offer of help. Sewing for the house wasn’t working for the poor and the house was Evelyn’s province as the bills were Edmund’s. Aunt Sapphy exclaimed that she’d like to come and she could change books for everybody and they might have coffee at Dolly’s, ‘and if it will help, Edmund, I’ll of course go without a light at all in my room. Just something to undress by, and as for baths, couldn’t we all have them in the daytime, or every other night — ’
‘ — and the staircase windows are impossible,’ concluded Margaret, ‘one can see the hall and landing lights quite clearly through the curtains.’
‘Well, that about finishes us,’ announced her mother, ‘those curtains are twelve-foot long if they’re an inch. We’ll have to scrap the hall and landing lights and manage on torches and candles.’
Margaret sat down and began to make shopping lists. The family simmered. Evelyn asked Margaret if she had seen the peacock. ‘He was making the most infernal racket just now, like a maniac laughing.’
‘Yes, he was outside the dining-room windows when I joined up with father.’ Angela commented, ‘Not in the temple, then? Sue’s made him up a shelter there.’
‘No, right up by the house.’
‘Did he come from the temple?’
‘No, from the shrubbery as far as I can remember.’
Angela was thoughtful. ‘I wonder if he’s been to his shelter yet?’
‘Trust him to make himself comfortable.’
Sir Edmund knocked out his pipe. ‘Talking of Sue, I came across a rather nice entry in the accounts books this afternoon. That Polly Privett who was here in the French Revolution seems to have got the sack. A week’s money and no notice.’
The response was tepid. It was aunt Sapphy who pounced. ‘I thought you were in the fold-yard!’ Her nephew, recollecting the cause of his escape to the cellar, changed the subject. But he had had one listener in his younger daughter, stilled, mentally turning over the item. Her father was speaking again, if to her relief or disappointment Angela hardly knew.
‘Max, oughtn’t we to be doing something about your mother?’ Evelyn, from a haze of calculation of costs of torches and material, unwillingly supported her husband. ‘I’ll ask her down here, if you think — ’
‘Good Gad, no,’ rapped Major Dunston, ‘she’ll be all right. If the Mater’d wanted a funk-hole she’d’ve asked for it.’
‘She mightn’t have, you know, nice feelings, and all that.’ Sir Edmund looked shriven. ‘Well . . . if you think she’s all right . . . I must say I couldn’t stand having the Lost Tribes pumped into me with all our other worries.’
‘It’s The Second Coming, now. She scrapped the L.T.s years ago. It’s been The New Messiah for some time. Goes to meetings full of Indian pansies. Beats me.’
Miss Jessie compressed her lips and rose. It was a great pity that Chrissy, one’s own sister, should make a travesty of sacred subjects and lay herself open to getting talked about like that. Maxwell was far from young, but he was still only a nephew. About the actual question of this New Messiah of Chrissy’s, Jessie herself refused to be drawn into discussion though she had once written to her sister and pointed out that we had one already therefore there could not be another. Surely Chrissy would understand all the things behind that reminder: that one had not been able, of reverence, to bring oneself to write? That if there were two, what was to be done with the first one, and where did religion stand if Christ was, after all, the wrong one? Though to decorate the meetings with pansies was a pretty idea enough. Thoughts. . . .
‘Well — good night, everybody.’
Evelyn roused herself. ‘What? Oh, good night.’
‘Going up?’ brightly enquired Sapphy.
‘Don’t forget the lights,’ came from the interior of the wing-chair containing Edmund Roundelay. Miss Sapphy was valiant. ‘I’ll come with you.’ Miss Amy, relieved, for now she too could seek her bed, was wondering what difference it would make if Chrissy did choose to escape from the dangers of London and come to Delaye. On whose side would she range herself about the tennis (or the sausages)? One really hardly knew Chrissy. Or she might like Jessie best, they being both in religion.
Evelyn, wearily stumbling upstairs in the dark after having twice lost her bearings entirely and embraced the same armoire in the hall, was thinking.
It had been a queer day. And that recurrent number eleven had cropped up again in this war, after twenty-five years.
The Armistice: the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
And now an Ultimatum which expired at eleven o’clock.
‘From eleven o’clock this morning we have been at war with Germany.’ ‘Some peace which came at the eleventh hour.’ No. That wasn’t either of the wars; it was what Basil Winch-combe had said about that top room with the writing on the window-pane.
2
There was moonlight on the lawn.
Angela, pressed against the window of her room, waited, strained with listening. But there was no more eldritch laughter. Yet he came.
Round the corner from the shrubbery the peacock swept, taking the stage as she watched: Slowly, deliberately — or were peacocks always leisured in the process? — he displayed himself and paraded the lawn, sometimes pausing to look up at the sky.
Waiting? Listening? The exact word eluded her until it came with an impact of incredulity and a dismay that was not lessened by her own self-ridicule.
Guiding. No. Signalling. Pitting his wit against the darkened mass that was Delaye, moving with the moon’s light that his betraying colours might be seen at their most glittering. Where there were peacocks there was human life. Where there was life there could be death. And he knew it.
Heryn I dy
e. Thomas Picocke.
Angela groped her way to the bed. She was striving against belief that she must see that room again, and alone. That shirt which Sue had brought in had come from there.
Angela lay in a woebegone confusion, her brain milling its questions.
Assuming that her fantastic impression of the bird’s signals to the sky was correct, what about Sue, and Angela herself? He wished them no harm, he was apparently devoted, in his way, to the maid, though he had bitten Angela. Why? Because she had offered him some hard-boiled egg.
That got one nowhere.
She had seen him walking out with Sue. What did that recall? A servants’ phrase. ‘Walking out.’ Even in mental desolation Angela almost smiled. Yet it hadn’t been amusing at the time.
Run, running runner, run . . .
From nowhere the sickeningly familiar line slid into her brain.
CHAPTER XVIII
1
EVEN now, when remembering the following day, Evelyn Roundelay will say with placid irony, ‘Oh, there was something for everyone: even a dash of low comedy for those who can appreciate it.’
It began before breakfast, with aunt Jessie tripping down the short flight of stairs that led to the lavatory, and slightly straining her ankle. The fact that she had contrived to do it in daylight added fuel to Lady Roundelay’s exasperation; achieved in the black-out a more reasonable aura would have surrounded the affair. Then, the postman arrived so late that nobody could read their letters before the day’s round began — extra tiresome, as there seemed to be about thirty for every member of the family; Angela came to table looking tired out, and aunt Sapphy had not forgotten her overnight intention of coming in to Norminster where Evelyn, swiftly planning, meant to lose her. It could be done, and had been, in the past. You just went to the furnishing fabric department of Tatfield and Winter, told Sapphy to go and buy what she wanted — and vanished through the further door facing the Guild Hall. Subsequent explanations offered endless choice and permutations when, two hours later, you rejoined her at the bus stop. Sometimes the amende déshonorable had to be made over the table if they unluckily chose the same restaurant for luncheon. All outings and so all eating places were a treat to aunt Sapphy, although she had not failed to be cozened by Dolly’s, which, fortunately, she couldn’t often afford. Aunt Amy ate wherever she was advised, while aunt Jessie consumed a chastened scone anywhere and subdued the flesh at a cost of sevenpence halfpenny, counting tip to the waitress.
Evelyn had once told Basil Winchcombe that in the early years of her acquaintance with aunt Jessie she had tried to establish relations by giving her fish on Fridays during Lent, but the gesture had not, so to speak, appeared to ring any Sanctus bell with her new in-law. The curate considered. ‘That, of course, isn’t amusing’, he assured Lady Roundelay, ‘but it happens to suit me,’ and laughed till he cried.
The family had barely begun its eggs and bacon before the telephone rang. Margaret returned from the hall. ‘The blacksmith wants to know if we’ve all got our gas-masks.’
‘What’s that to do with him?’
‘They’ve asked him to be District Warden and he doesn’t know what it’ll involve, yet, and he says if we haven’t got them, the schoolroom will be open at seven to-night for fitting and distribution.’
‘Kind. But how do we get there and back? Does he expect us to take Nursie in a wheelbarrow, and all go without dinner? And what about aunt Sapphy and aunt Amy and aunt Jessie?’ queried Sir Edmund.
‘Well,’ considered Lady Roundelay, ‘I think we’ve all got ours, if I can remember where we put ’em. They weren’t fitted, just handed out a year ago after the September Crisis. I suppose they’re all right.’ She turned to the butler. ‘What about you and the maids, Musgrave?’
‘Er — I ’ave my respirator, m’lady. I and Mr. Severn’s man, Cocker, went over to the village when they was first given out. Mrs. Hatchett says she’d prefer not to ’ave one and the maids all say they can’t breathe in theirs.’
Evelyn had expected that; according to the remembered accounts of her neighbours, nearly all servants made a similar declaration. To the domestic mind, not to be able to breathe in your gas-mask conferred an unassailable gentility.
‘We shan’t want ’em out here,’ pronounced the Major, upsetting the public-spirited homily to the staff that Lady Roundelay was preparing to emit, ‘they can’t send gas down in sufficient volume — ’
‘Mother, I must go back to the phone.’
‘Yes. Tell your boy friend — I dunno!’
Margaret, in the hall, could be heard enquiring what defects were to be looked for in gas-masks. She returned with a written list.
‘The rubber can perish; the cellulose eye-pieces crack: the cotton come unsewn: the valve be dried, cockled or missing: the rubber band be too high if it’s a Medium and too low if it’s a Large (or be missing), the three safety-pins missing, and the nose-piece battered. If you’ll collect them all, mother, I’ll vet them by this list, only I don’t know where to look for the valve.’
‘Thing like a gramophone record in the inside on top of the nose-piece,’ supplied Major Dunston, taking another rasher.
‘Where’s yours, aunt Sapphy?’
‘My dear, I don’t believe I know.’
‘Well, may I go and look?’
‘Yes, of course, anything — but not among the hats. I do feel practically certain where I didn’t put it.’
‘What’s the use of ’em if you haven’t been fitted?’ groused the Major, ‘mine’s O.K. because I know something about ’em from the last war, and when this fellow at the schools gave me a Large because I’m a man I ticked him off and took a Medium. It’s the shape of a face as much as size of head. Stands to reason if someone’s got a face like a pear — ’
‘You are funny!’ said aunt Sapphy.
‘A pear,’ confirmed aunt Amy.
‘’Reminds me: if you have time, Evelyn, I’d be glad of another tube of Prussian Blue —’
‘Oh, my dear Max!’
‘That sounds most unpatriotic!’ Aunt Sapphy looked facetious.
‘Aunt Jessie, what about your mask?’
‘I have none.’
Evelyn was wondering if this statement of dearth was a manifestation of trust in divine Providence, and was ready with a reminder that heaven helps those who help themselves, when aunt Jessie explained that on the afternoon, last year, that she had walked over to Delaye to see about it, the distributing centre was closed and then the Crisis was over.
‘Well, we shall all have to try and go down in turn, though heaven knows how. If we aren’t properly fitted out it’s so bad for the servants.’
‘“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes”,’ murmured Sir Edmund, handing his cup.
‘Mmmmmm-mmm . . .’ began the Major, ‘d’you remember that fellow at school in old Prendergast’s form — Barclay? Burbury? No. Barton. Barton. And that morning — ha ha ha! — he translated — ha ha! — translated his bit’ve Pliny — ’
But even at this immature stage Edmund Roundelay joined in and the scholastic conte hocketed very deviously to its close while Miss Sapphy and Miss Amy sought, like eager hens, what grains of enlightenment they could peck and Lady Roundelay waited in an affectionate fume.
‘What about Nursie, mother?’
‘I did take a mask for her out of an unappetizing heap at the time, but of course she couldn’t be fitted, and frankly I don’t see any use in trying.’
‘ ’Nother thing,’ said Major Dunston, ‘we shan’t hear the sirens all this way out if there is a raid.’
‘Where are they?’ asked Evelyn. ‘Do you know, Musgrave?’
‘Mr. Severn’s man, Cocker, tells me one is at the Norminster barracks, m’lady: it appears the postman’s nephew is stationed there . . .’
‘Over five miles away,’ gloated the Major.
‘But the postman thinks, sir, that in the event of a raid we shall all be warned by the local Wardens.’
‘Spl
endid. And how are they to get here in the dark?’
‘Some ’as bicycles I presume, sir.’
‘They’ll be a lot of good over ploughed fields. What about the outlying farms? Half of ’em aren’t on the phone and if there is a raid the line’ll be the first thing to go.’
‘“Blest pair of syrens”,’ mused Sir Edmund, and chuckled.
‘It — does seem a little difficult, sir,’ despondently agreed Musgrave.
‘Well . . . it’s all being quite an experience,’ revelled Miss Sapphy, ‘I expect we shall look back on this morning, one day, and have a good laugh.’
‘May I remove your plate, Miss Sophia?’
A woman who could joke, however ignorantly, about war, thought Musgrave as he bore his tray along the passage to the kitchens, was of course preferable to one who cried out and panicked, but a man couldn’t help feeling jarred by it through anxiety about the family he served and the safety of Delaye.
A Footman for the Peacock Page 17