A Footman for the Peacock

by Ferguson,Rachel

  Miss Sapphy was so annoyed that she said, ‘I think Musgrave is looking very old this morning.’ Evelyn got up. ‘Well, we’d better be making a start, aunt Sapphy, if you really want to come, though I don’t advise it; it’ll be one long scrimmage round and I don’t even know when we can come back — ’

  ‘Oh, that won’t trouble me, my dear, I shall be able to help, so. And if we miss a bus we can always lunch out — ’

  Margaret handed a list to her mother. ‘That’s what’s wanted, and I’ll go to Delaye on my bike and get in this morning’s food. You can’t carry everything. One of the Guides’ll be waiting at the pub to give you a hand. Don’t tip her. Bring her some sweets.’

  ‘Bless you! But you won’t raise anything fit to eat in Delaye. You’ll all have to make do on a ham omelet and cheese and fruit for lunch, and anything tinned Margaret can find. Edmund, if you and Max can’t face it, ask the Severns to give you a meal.’

  ‘Good Gad!’ Her husband looked astonished. ‘Too much to do. Can’t go changing m’clothes all day.’

  ‘ — and tell Dickon to kill four fowls, they’ll do for the middle of the week.’

  Margaret said, ‘Cousin Max, if you understand about these gasmasks couldn’t you fit us all?’ He shook his head. ‘No good, my dear girl, we used Service pattern, not like these Civilian contraptions. Shouldn’t care to take the responsibility.’

  ‘But you’ll take your masks with you into Norminster. They must, mustn’t they, Edmund?’ keened aunt Amy. ‘I mean, it would be something to put on.’

  ‘Hey? Oh, I suppose so. Extra thing to carry, though. Well, I must be off. Evelyn, you might just find out as you’re going in why Ezor’s haven’t sent up that size I ordered.’

  ‘What size? Oh, size.’ It later appeared that Evelyn, together with the size and the Major’s Prussian Blue, might find time to price uncurled ostrich feathers in Tatfield and Winter (aunt Amy), purchase a copy of The Church Times, and a card of slate-grey darning wool (aunt Jessie), and bring back a postal order for one-and-ninepence (very respectful request sent via Musgrave, bearing the sum itself, from Mrs. Hatchett).

  Even as Lady Roundelay stood in the hall waiting for Miss Sapphy the telephone rang. Receiver in hand she called up the staircase well, ‘Aunt Sapphy, we must be going. Delaye. Yes . . . ?’ The voice of Basil Winchcombe said, ‘Oh, it is you, Lady Roundelay. I say, have you heard? The Archbish’ has been threatened with twenty-five expectant mothers billeted on him.’

  ‘My dear . . . well . . . he’ll be able to Church them cheap. But of course it’s not true.’

  ‘No, really, I’m serious. He’s turned the whole matter over to his secretary and issued an encyclical, Papal Bull, or what not, to the effect that he will accommodate a similar number of boys at Normansmead if sent under suitable supervision. They’ll be put in the South wing of the Palace, trained for his private chapel and he won’t even see them. I’m sorry the story tails off so, but the first part was such that I had to ring you.’

  ‘But, they won’t really do things like that, will they? I mean, it can’t be done.’

  Certainly, Normanshire had heard a year ago through its newspapers and wireless sets of an evacuation scheme by which innumerable strangers of no credentials at all were to invade the homes of private householders, where, the B.B.C. announcer brightly concluded, he was sure they would very soon become household pets (some listeners swear he said Pests), but the enormity of the idea was so vast, violating as it did the very principles of privacy and individual liberty, demolishing at one blow that rule of life that the Englishman’s home is his castle, that, indignation and apprehension having passed with the Crisis, the county went back to its affairs, social, domestic and agricultural and thought of it no more. Some things are too bad to be true, and the word evacuation was one which they only associated with the worming of their dogs.

  ‘Well, so long as they leave us alone . . . can you imagine a mob of children here? They’d drive my husband and the Major distracted, and the old ladies, and my cook would give notice at once and then where’d we be?’ And, indeed, the idea was so preposterous, looked at from any angle, that Lady Roundelay was not perturbed. ‘I suppose people aren’t forced to take in these children and mothers?’

  ‘That’s what the whole village wants to know. It appears to boil down to this: that the scheme is voluntary for the receptionist until the need to put it into operation arises, when it becomes compulsory, though at no time is it compulsory to the evacuee.’

  ‘But that’s not fair.’

  ‘It’s British hypocrisy. The Government daren’t take the onus of forcing us to accept a measure that can only be universally unpopular, so it is leaving us in doubt on the matter, and diffusing an idea of leaving the choice to us. They’ve already begun to praise the reception areas in the newspapers for joyfully co-operating in a scheme they mean to fine us heavily for if we refuse to. Why, old Burrowes has two girls of nine and twelve billeted on him — ’

  ‘Burrowes? But he’s bedridden and on the Old Age Pension and only has a village woman to come and feed him and clean up twice a day for half an hour — ’

  ‘Well, there it is; the only person who’s been definitely exempted is Miss Tybonnet at the post-office, who’s overwhelmed with extra work over the billeting money and at it till ten o’clock at night. The poor woman looks a perfect wreck . . . I say, Lady Roundelay, what about your son?’

  ‘Oh, he’ll be off soon, I suppose.’

  ‘One does feel so savage about it . . . is Sir Edmund taking it hard?’

  ‘He hasn’t said anything, you know.’

  ‘No. One doesn’t, does one? It’s always been a theory of mine that eldest and only sons ought to be exempted entirely except for Home Defence, particularly in the case of the old name and the historic house. Too much is at stake; it’s race suicide of the worst type.’

  ‘I know . . . and what about you, Basil?’

  ‘I’m down to go out as Padre but don’t expect to hear just immediately. I went over to the barracks yesterday afternoon after children’s service to see if I could be doing anything in the meantime. All I got the offer of was to guard one of the bridges in Norminster.’

  ‘What against?’

  ‘Two old men fishing for dace and the language of the bargees, apparently. I shall be issued with an armlet of sorts and a rifle that I rather fancy I shan’t be allowed to fire in emergency because I’m not in the army. Otherwise it’s a picked position.’

  ‘“Have you had quiet watch?”’ bantered Evelyn.

  ‘“Not a mouse stirring.” Crosses Left,’ responded Winchcombe.

  ‘Mice?’ exclaimed Miss Sapphy on the staircase. ‘Don’t say we have mice!’

  2

  That was at nine-forty-five. At eleven-ten, Evelyn Roundelay and Miss Sapphy were still waiting outside the public house at Delaye for the ten-thirty bus to Norminster. Miss Sapphy watched the cottages, the vicarage field, and a dog, while Lady Roundelay rather thought that a tin advertisement of Leney’s Ales would be found written on her heart. When another ten minutes brought no reassuring red and cream monster to fill the road, she was impelled to make an odious pun about the advertisement.

  The Léner Quartette

  Leney’s Quart Tot

  Greatly daring, she sat at last upon the bench outside the pub for the first time in her married life. It would, of course, be all over the village by the afternoon that she had taken to drink, but was worth it. Aunt Sapphy sank down too, and said she’d ‘fancy’ a glass of sherry and her niece-in-law was struck as much by the commonsense of the idea as by its impossibility. It took a really good woman like Sapphy to have no sense of social nuances whatsoever. To her, a dubious speakeasy and the cocktail bar of the Criterion would be equally an outing. Occasionally aunt Sapphy would alternatively suggest their walking on and letting the bus overtake them or giving it up and walking back home, to which Evelyn, worried, responded that if they walked on the bus might fail to see
their signals and if it didn’t come at all they couldn’t walk to Norminster, and that if they went home the bus would arrive two minutes after their backs were turned.

  Occasionally, villagers came up to condole with the ladies of Delaye about the war, of which they had much to say, but of the bus time-table no information of any kind. At her end of the bench Miss Sapphy held a small levee, happily receiving personal enquiries and greetings, and dispensing answers as to the rest of the family with great volubility and fundamental lack of knowledge of her subject.

  From the window of the saloon bar the landlord looked down something sourly upon the backs of Lady Roundelay and Miss Sapphire, for did not Major Dunston deal with Stone for his wine? And the fact that the landlord did not stock wine himself, there being no demand for it, still left the whole question of beers and spirits unsettled. Six dozen of ginger-beers and lemonades for the school and Guide Treats at Delaye twice a year was neither here nor there. Deliberately he flicked half an inch of cigarette ash on to the unconscious floral toque of Miss Roundelay. Highderangers. A very dressy flower. Same as what Queen Mary favoured for her rats.

  At the moment that Lady Roundelay had given up watching for the bus and while The Leney Quart Tot was dangerously in the ascendant, the bus arrived, and the conductor — not what Miss Sapphy described as ‘the same man’ — alighted for a few minutes to answer questions about the war posed him by two loitering villagers and an avid crone at an upper window. It was felt that coming as the conductor had from a market town ten miles away, the news, if not better, might be different.

  The bus contained five strangers, two soldiers, four gipsies who sang uninterruptedly on the back seat to which for hygienic reasons they were relegated, and Mrs. Holland who greeted the Delaye party as one shipwrecked, asked if they thought that the luncheons at Greensleave’s would have ‘gone off owing to all this’ and sympathetically grieved over the putting to sleep of all Mrs. Galbraith’s cats. At the next stop, outside the bungalow of Mrs. Galbraith, Champion Milk of Magnesia was seen, taking gluttonous bites out of his pad in the verandah, was cheered by the driver (‘Eh, Maggie, lad!’) while his mistress waved to the Roundelays and Mrs. Holland, and Evelyn marvelled at the times which had induced in herself, a disliker of Persian cats, regarding them as she did as boring animated hearthrugs, a warm pleasure and relief that the Persians of Mrs. Galbraith were still alive.

  In Norminster, the streets seemed to be extra congested, and a tanned policeman wearing a tin hat with a reversed chin-strap binding the back of his head that caused him to resemble a determined but fashionable dowager, dealt with the traffic, receiving in the process a succession of raps from the official respirator carriers that the townsfolk self-consciously, and with smiles to complete strangers, had slung to their backs, and which gave, until you looked at their clothes, an impression wholly misleading of a race meeting. There was not, to Lady Roundelay’s immeasurable relief, a run on the Bank. Business was as usual. It was only at the chemist’s and in Woolworth’s that an unmistakable queue had assembled for Keating’s Powder, ringworm ointment, toilet paraffin and carbolic soap that the feast might be more joyful and the guests be more contented, and the Government safeguard several hundreds of thousands of children from the cities at the expense of their hosts by infecting those in the rural districts.

  In Tatfield and Winter’s, Evelyn lost Miss Sapphy without a hitch by the lure of Miss Amy’s (uncurled) ostrich feathers. It was to be about her only achievement; for with mounting consternation Lady Roundelay discovered that in regard to the laying in of blacking-out material and torches three-quarters of the city also had the same idea, and to-day, typically, belatedly, apprehensively, good-naturedly were trying to take those precautions which had been open to them for weeks past, and found themselves paying inflated prices for black paper through which straws could be shot, repellent megaphones of cardboard for the shielding of electric lights, and patent bulb-darkeners whose feature was the giving of a black-out so complete inside the house that the family, having attached them, could not see one inch in front of their noses, though the bills from the electric light company remained as bright as ever. But despite the faintly beleaguered atmosphere and the feeling that every man’s hand was against you what time the last yard of black cardboard was snapped up under your nose, humour of our rough island quality still held.

  The search for torches took Lady Roundelay to Boots, W. H. Smith, Marks and Spencer, The British Home Stores, Woolworth’s, three chemists, four bicycle and six wireless and radio accessories shops. Some had three batteries left which fitted no torch in the establishment, the rest had a magnificent display of torches and no batteries at all, although as mitigation to her tour she was at various times offered bicycle lamps, a pedestal light costing half a guinea and a ship’s lantern.

  It was for the moment evidently hopeless; they must just be as careful as they could at Delaye and wait until the emergency rush was over. Delaye, reasoned its mistress, stood in its own grounds half a mile back from the high road and the Wardens and police, if any, would not have time to come all that distance to scold even if they could see through the trees, so it really left the house safe from everything but the Germans, who would with luck give very little trouble, far less, certainly, than Nursie and the cook. It would be catastrophic to be fined, and Edmund dreaded falling dividends worse than falling bombs. Meanwhile the torch-cum-paper chase developed into an affair in which, on passing Mrs. Holland or other friends in the act of vanishing into shops, Evelyn cried out ‘No use! I’ve tried there myself!’ or was called to over a hurrying shoulder, ‘They say Flaxman’s still got a few.’

  At 1.20, Evelyn sighted Miss Sapphy turning into Dolly’s and herself promptly collapsed into Greensleave’s.

  The bus home to Delaye village already contained Mrs. Holland and Miss Sapphy and by some unexplained whim left Norminster so punctually that Evelyn nearly missed it and the butcher’s boy panting up with the Roundelay meat entirely did, until by taking a short cut and pedalling wildly he intercepted the bus at the next stop, and the joint was passed from hand to hand until it reached Lady Roundelay — a not unfamiliar routine.

  It was at about this time that in her room at Delaye, Nursie, her luncheon consumed, prepared to embark upon the small adventure of a journey downstairs. She meant to see what the family was up to and what the house looked like. According to her reception by any Roundelay by her encountered would depend her own attitude towards the tray she had thrown out of the window yesterday. It might be an apology from Nursie or it might be a good talking-to. Nursie couldn’t tell. Certainly the midday dinner, she pondered, had been very poor again — no butcher’s meat, only an egg mess and some bits and pieces bought by Margaret from the village, according to Sue Privett who brought in the tray; on the other hand, Nursie had been hasty, yesterday, so that equalled matters. She’d see.

  Like a parrot over his cage, Nursie laboriously handed herself down the staircase.

  3

  At the Mill House the bus conductor threw out a roll of newspapers, causing Miss Sapphy who had seen nothing at all so far except a month-old copy of The Screen Pictorial in Dolly’s to speculate aloud as to the nature of the latest news on what she described as ‘the headlinings’; at Mrs. Galbraith’s bungalow the bus stopped to deliver an unmistakable bundle of fish, a carton labelled ‘Pussipurr’ (which looked as though the Persians were to be spared), stopped again to eject Mrs. Holland who diminished across a footpath and at the post-office slowed up to cast a roll of black-out paper into the small front garden.

  At the public house, where Leney’s Ales at last meant nothing to Lady Roundelay, they being now overlaid by filleted plaice and two cups of coffee, a Girl Guide, faithful and bored unto death, received her share of parcels from the ladies of Delaye and with them slowly achieved the two miles to the lodge gates against which Lady Roundelay leant exhausted while Miss Sapphy recklessly sat on the post.

  ‘Come on, aunt Sapphy. I’m parc
hing for my tea.’

  They straggled up the avenue to find a small crowd by the front door which, sighting them, broke up, surrounded them and began the discussion with renewed energy.

  Tired as she was, Evelyn still found vitality for dismay in the fact that her husband had been drawn into whatever was going on.

  ‘Ah, my dear, we seem to be in a bit of a fix. This gentleman is the district Billeting Officer — ’

  Evelyn’s heart flopped and she said the instinctive thing.

  ‘We’re tired out. We must have some tea.’

  Musgrave, his face lined with anxiety, disappeared up the steps, even as Evelyn’s eye, beginning to focus more clearly, took in the presence of Mrs. Hatchett, a housemaid, the gardener and her elder daughter on the drive.

  Margaret said stoutly, ‘I’ve told him how we’re placed.’ The officer who looked overworked and disillusioned, remarked ‘You will not be expected to receive evacuated persons for three days; you’ve by now received your notification of my call, I presume?’

  ‘I — I never saw it; it may have come this morning, but I haven’t had one second even to read my private letters . . . are private houses compelled to take in strangers, Mr — I’m afraid I don’t know your name?’

  ‘Mallet. You will be allowed to billet boys or girls, or mothers accompanying young children,’ evaded the official. ‘You are down for fifteen children accompanied by two teachers, or ten mothers with babies, or twenty boys or girls.’

  Lady Roundelay felt her face growing green as fragmentary aspects of the family’s future for an indefinite period shot into her brain. The chairs brought by Musgrave arrived timely indeed. From hers, she opened a faltering case for the defence while her daughter vanished up the steps.