‘I don’t think you can possibly realize how impossible this is. I have not sufficient bedding or bedsteads for one quarter of such a number; my four spare rooms are practically dismantled, and one of those is my son’s, who may be home any day, now. My staff is barely adequate to our own needs, catering is never easy — oh go on, Edmund.’ For it was a lamentable fact that oratory, the true and telling argument, was never at call, at any rate in her own case. She had, for years now, ceased to aim any higher than declaring bazaars open, the prepared word, rehearse it as she might, escaped her on the platform offering no substitute, where, she had discovered, one’s breath vanished as well, and one’s voice came from one what sounded like an octave higher than normal. Edmund, she reckoned, might not be domestically plausible in the way that only a woman can be, and to another woman, who will understand and foresee to the last dreary saucepan and bicker round the oven the hinterlands of hades which such a scheme must open up (which was no doubt why the Government had sent a man, who could shelter behind a very real obtuseness), but Edmund was a J.P. and they had the gift of the gab of a kind, and in a major crisis of this nature any words are better than none.
He was saying, ‘I’m sorry, it’s quite out of the question. This household is largely composed of old women — ’
‘Well!’ exclaimed Miss Sapphy, from her chair. Evelyn bent to her. (‘Oh, aunt Sapphy, please don’t mind. Don’t say anything. Please be an old woman until this man goes.’)
Margaret ran down the steps and muttered in her mother’s ear.
‘I’ve been on the telephone to Doctor Elmslie. I told him your nerves wouldn’t stand it and father can’t be badgered like this and can’t he give you a medical certificate — ’
‘You marvel!’
‘ — but he says he’s had fifteen similar requests already and has had to turn them down.’
‘Oh, my God,’ murmured Lady Roundelay.
Musgrave was at her side with tea. ‘Oh, . . . Musgrave! What are we to do?’ The butler shook his head. ‘It’s beyond me, my lady . . . if I might suggest, though: could you not invite relatives in place of these persons? The Misses Calcott — Mrs. Dunston — that would fill three of the spare rooms, and if Mr. Stacey comes ’ome — ’
‘Yes, yes. We’ll have to do that.’
The announcement was instantly scotched by Mr. Mallet. It appeared that application for the housing of relatives should have been put in in writing and that in plain English the Government had, by now, reached a stage of pessimism with regard to last-minute exhibitions of hospitable concern by blood relations for each other’s safety. ‘Also, I understand that practically the whole of the top floor is vacant.’
‘There are four vacant rooms in the servants’ quarters, but if we did take these people, where would they eat? There’s no gas or water laid on on the top storey, and what about fires in winter? My maids already have all they can do, in this big place — ’
‘That would be a matter of arrangement.’
‘Who with? And where are their separate lots of coal to be stored? There aren’t even fireplaces in most of those attic bedrooms.’
‘I won’t have any strangers messing up my floors,’ announced the cook.
‘Please, Mrs. Hatchett!’ Evelyn was torn between exasperation at the parochial objection and wholehearted gratitude for the forthright ultimatum. Her husband remarked kindly, ‘These old country houses aren’t hotels, you know. One can’t adapt ’em at no notice even if one had the capital. Another thing: do you realize that all my life I’ve set my face against even the admission of paying trippers to see the place under escort for three hours once a week in the summer months. There are valuables here — pictures, tapestries, and what not — that would be in very serious jeopardy if you let a parcel of children loose among ’em.’
‘Then you’d better take the mothers with babies. All you will be expected to do for them is to give them reasonable facilities for cooking, access to water and lavatory, and their room.’
Miss Sapphy’s cup was arrested at her Ups. ‘My dear man, what should we do with a houseful of crying babies?’
‘Then, what about girls?’
‘I won’t have a pack of youngsters in my gardens,’ rasped Dickon, ‘pulling the flowers, tramplin’ the beds, throwin’ stones at the fruit an’ breakin’ the boughs. We’ve ’ad some in village already an’ two gardens wrecked. No better than savages, some o’ them town brats.’
‘And suppose they get ill?’ asked Lady Roundelay, ‘are we expected to nurse them?’
‘There is the local hospital — ’
‘ — seven miles off. Who gets ’em down there? We’ve no car and the hospital will be chocabloc in ten days, even if they don’t turn it over to the military authorities. Our doctor lives five miles away and will be booked to the eyes from now on.’
‘That will no doubt be attended to — ’
‘Who by? Be reasonable, my dear fellow.’ But Mr. Mallet was not there to be reasonable but to represent the British Government.
‘The children would, of course, be at school for the greater part of the day,’ he solaced.
‘How are they to get there?’ asked Margaret. ‘Do you expect them to walk four miles a day in the winter?’
‘And what about their luncheon?’ added her mother.
‘That matter is under consideration. It is hoped to set up communal eating places — ’
‘Tah! “Hoped”!’ joined in Sir Edmund, ‘meanwhile, they haven’t got ’em. So that makes six miles a day, coming back here for lunch — ’
‘ — unless my maids cut eighty sandwiches every morning, allowing four per head,’ concluded his wife.
‘Lady Shelter is taking twenty children,’ began Mr. Mallet improvingly, but Sir Edmund cut in with, ‘It’s not my habit to discuss the private affairs of my neighbours, but I have to remind you that the Shelters have a staff of eight resident servants and five thousand a year — ’
‘Wonderful parties,’ confirmed Miss Sapphy, putting down her cup on to the lawn.
‘ — but even if I had the same I should still challenge the right of the Government or anybody else to upset my home and my family and put me to incalculable incidental expense in the process — ’
‘That’s what I say,’ agreed Mrs. Hatchett.
‘ — because a problem hasn’t been properly tackled. We may live in the country but we read the newspapers and the Government has been given every opportunity for a year now to run this billeting scheme fairly and sensibly; it’s been deluged with letters of caution, protest and prognostication from the womenfolk whom it will most affect; it’s been offered the free advice and co-operation of such fellows as this Butlin who’s had a lifetime of experience in building holiday camps at wholesale rates, and what does it do? Turns him down cold and expects the country and people like ourselves to clear up a mess for them that never need have existed. Well . . . sorry we can’t help you out, Mr. — um — Mitchell — er — Masters. ’Fraid landowners have no time to waste these days, y’know. Where’s tea, Evelyn? ’Offer you a cup, I hope, sir?’
Mr. Mallet reddened. He had had an appalling day, ranging from tears to threats and abuse. He had helplessly placed a girl of nine in the care of a hard-faced woman who admitted she hated all children: had put, willy-nilly, two more into an unventilated cottage where the elder would have to share bed with an asthmatic of seventy-two, he had even suspected a case of whooping-cough in the boy he had installed with a young married couple with a six-months-old baby . . . his own underclothes felt prophetically acrawl . . . at a hamlet called Rohan, there had been no scenes, no violence or abuse, but a silent listening — and Mr. Mallet had found himself unexpectedly outside the village again in the company of two tall men who spoke in an odd manner, and with the conviction that he would not trouble Rohan further in the matter. . . .
And here, at Delaye, was a feast of pure reason and politeness to wind up the day.
‘I’m afraid I can’t l
et it go at that, sir. I must definitely put you down for — ’
To his despair, yet another female appeared from the hall doors, one of those old women they’d spoken of.
Tottering, mowing, Nursie advanced sideways down the stone steps, each felt-clad boot placed in her descent as in the second position of dancing.
‘I’ve come to see what you’re all doing and why my tea hasn’t been brought up,’ she panted.
‘Come along, Nurse,’ urged Musgrave in an undertone, attempting like a sheep-dog to round her up.
‘Don’t touch me!’ Her eye fell on the empty cups dotted about the turf. ‘There is tea! They’ve had it!’
‘T’tt . . . (augh),’ murmured the butler.
‘Go along upstairs, Nursie, and you’ll get your tea. Mrs. Hatchett, will you see to her? You and Margery will be wanting your own.’ Unwillingly cook and housemaid moved away, but without Nursie. They drew the line at tackling her in that mood. Above the group a bedroom window opened and the alarmed head of Miss Amy peeped forth.
‘What is it? Has anything happened?’
‘Don’t come down it’s all right oh my God’ answered Lady Roundelay, without a comma. Once more Musgrave reentered the house, giving as he went a meaning glance at that Mr. Mallet; his own immediate roaring upon the gong might act as a hint, though Musgrave expected little of social perception from one whom he had instantly summed up as a half-sir.
‘No tea,’ ruminated Nursie, ‘and no meat for dinner to-day or yesterday — ’
‘Go along in, Nursie, I don’t know what’s come over you.’
Lady Roundelay spoke with rare sharpness. Nursie instantly began to cry. ‘And stop that nonsense. When we have twenty children landed on us will be time enough to complain.’
‘Twenty children,’ retorted Nursie. ‘I can manage them. I’ve managed ’em all my life and I can manage ’em till I’m gone.’ She advanced upon Mr. Mallet. ‘You remember Kenneth? You’re Kenneth’s father. Very like him, you are. Where’s Kenneth?’
‘No . . . no,’ disclaimed Mr. Mallet, retreating, and treading upon the joint that the Girl Guide had set down on the grass.
‘He never gave Nursie any trouble, though a terror for skinning his knees and diarrhoea in the summer — ’ Nursie inspected the unwieldy bundle through which a betraying bone protruded. ‘Meat! They had it all along and not a morsel for me . . .’
She clung to Mr. Mallet’s arm, tottering with unaccustomed excitement, exertion and ire. ‘I’m over ninety,’ she confided.
‘Yes. Quite so . . .’
‘I’ve worked all my life and now this. I’ve seen King William in London and don’t you believe it when they tell you I never. No. No butcher’s meat at all, so I threw my tray out of window.’
Mr. Mallet disengaged himself with some difficulty and lowering his voice said to Lady Roundelay, ‘I hadn’t been informed there was a mental case here.’
Evelyn did some rapid thinking. If this meant that Delaye was to be permanently exempted from evacuees, then Nursie was not only insane but on occasion dangerous: if, on the other hand, the mental faculties of Nursie were only to act as a numeric reducer of strangers, then the family would be the first to resent the imputation of derangement on behalf of the poor dear old woman, damn and confound her. She selected ‘She is not, so far, violent.’
‘No, no . . . but with children about, or nursing mothers . . . I think we must remove you from the list of receptionists.’
‘Oh, yes?’ Lady Roundelay hoped that her voice was sounding casual. ‘Then, if we can’t offer you any tea, I think — ’
But Delaye had not yet quite finished with Mr. Mallet, and supplied him as tailpiece with a spectacle so essentially improbable that, he told friends afterwards, had he been a Roman Catholic he would have crossed himself. For suddenly and quite silently across the drive and down the avenue came a young man running, white-faced, his cheeks spattered with blood. In pursuit, plumage furled, neck extended, skimmed a peacock. There were, perhaps, six yards between them.
The old woman they called ‘Nursie’ sidled up to him and confided, ‘It’s a peacock. Peacock. Chook! chook! chook!’
Lady Roundelay, her eyes glazing, asked of the autumnal air, ‘What is the Severn’s footman doing in our grounds?’
Mr. Mallet leaked away. He does not remember saying goodbye to anyone.
CHAPTER XIX
1
TO be in the hall again, sheltered in its coolness of gleaming wood, was heaven. After four cups of tea Evelyn could even rise to speech from overlong, dazed and unintelligent listening to that of the family.
‘These fellows — ’ began Sir Edmund, but his eye caught and held by an article on the training of bassets in Field Fare, left his denunciation incompleted.
‘Guide there all right?’ asked Margaret, eating cake. Her mother nodded. ‘Nice child. Forgot her sweets, though.’
‘Doesn’t matter. To-morrow.’
Aunt Sapphy was impressive with Maxwell Dunston. ‘And if you’ll believe me — twenty children! Here!’
‘Might as well let Moscow have England and be done with it. Glad I missed that. I’d give ’em pack-drill. Show ’em hell. ’Kick this chap’s backside for tuppence.’
‘And he said Nursie was dotty.’
‘Well, here’s to her.’ Major Dunston slowly drank his tea; he was still crimson with incredulous fury.
‘Musgrave suggested filling up with your mother and Helen and Kathleen,’ Lady Roundelay at length managed to inform him.
‘The Mater? Oh, she wouldn’t care for that, I daresay. Anyway . . . question doesn’t arise now, thank God.’
‘I quite thought something had happened,’ contributed Miss Amy.
‘It had!’
Evelyn’s eyes roved the family. Aunt Jessie seemed to have said nothing since they all assembled, and Evelyn expected that quite soon she herself might summon enough energy to enquire about her strained ankle which Jessie was as usual bearing with unendearing fortitude.
Idly, Evelyn scanned two communications which had arrived by the second post. The first was from an illegible signature writing from a printed address that conveyed nothing to her whatsoever, and was headed:
NATIONAL VOLUNTARY DEFENCE SERVICES
Norminster
It informed her that her kind offer of sorting and grading apples had been noted, but that at present the N.V.D.S. was awaiting further instructions from The Board of Agriculture before putting the scheme into operation. The second was a postcard printed in two colours bearing the facsimile autograph of Mr. Walter Elliot. It thanked her warmly for her generous co-operation in the Evacuation Scheme. Lady Roundelay leant back and closed her eyes. ‘It’s no use,’ she murmured, ‘we must just let all this roll over our heads.
Musgrave was at her side. ‘The telephone, my lady. Lady Shelter sends her kindest regards and wishes to know if you would care to help her with the canteen she is organizing —’
‘My kindest regards, Musgrave, and I’d rather remain friends with her.’
‘Hah!’ said the Major.
‘Tell her — oh, I don’t know.’
‘I’ll attend to it, m’lady.’
From the outer hall Musgrave was heard to inform Lady Shelter, with Lady Roundelay’s kindest regards, that her ladyship was as yet a little undecided as to what form her war work would take.
The effort to get upstairs to the relief of changed clothes and shoes still seemed to Evelyn one of the impossibilities, and she sat on, postponing it. Angela was really looking very unwell, worse if anything, than in the morning. She had come in rather late for tea, her mother now remembered. And quite suddenly she also remembered what, on a normal day, could not have been so long overlooked.
‘By the way, what was the Severn’s footman doing here?’
Her husband looked up. ‘Hey? D’you mean Joe Dale?’
‘Well, if that’s his name that’s the one I mean. And the peacock was after him.’
; ‘Damn that bird.’
Angela spoke, unwillingly. ‘Dale had been for a walk with Sue. I — I saw them go.’
‘Oh. Sets the wind in that quarter? Well, hope we don’t lose her. He’s the world’s worst manservant, Severn tells me,’ her father commented, ‘still, suppose he’ll be called up any day, now.’
‘Is she fond of him?’ Evelyn was thinking that of all the family Angela would be in closest touch with current developments in that particular direction. For the past few years Angela and Sue had been friends; the tie of youth, she supposed, and their mutual interest in the peacock. Given easier financial circumstances one would like to promote Sue as personal maid to Angela and Margaret.
Angela shifted. ‘No, I should say decidedly no.’
‘But he’s keen on her?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘No chance, then, of her leaving us?’
‘Sue says that if she marries it will be a Rohan man; it’s her village, you see. There’s the telephone again.’ Angela’s face relaxed in relief at the shrilling of the bell. Margaret called from the hall, ‘Father! It’s Mr. Severn. Says he wants to speak to you personally.’
‘Ah, damn,’ murmured Sir Edmund, and went unwillingly. He was back in five minutes. ‘Severn’s very peeved about young Dale. It seems that the chap came home in a regular state, blown and his face bloody and a nasty jab just over the left eye. He says he can’t get a straight answer out of Dale, just that he was “walking out” as he put it with one of our maids and the peacock attacked him. I’ve offered to settle the doctor’s bill, but as I pointed out to Severn, if his man comes on to my land he does so at his own risk, and he knows as well as any of us that that bird’s a bad-tempered brute. Had to agree, and we left it at that.’
‘Poor fellow!’ vaguely sympathized Miss Amy. ‘First it’s Jessie’s ankle and now another accident. Quite an unfortunate day.’
‘And a war on the top of everything,’ capped Miss Sapphy, addressing Margaret.
‘Well,’ decided Evelyn, ‘we don’t want the chance of this recurring, and if Sue isn’t going to marry the youth I think I’d better give her a hint. What d’you say, Angela?’ Angela was obviously thinking, hard. ‘Yes. I quite agree. They’d both prefer that.’ The ambiguous statement passed over her mother’s exhausted head. It was Margaret who asked, ‘How d’you mean “they”? Dale or the peacock!’ Angela said swiftly, ‘Dale, of course,’ and saw too late where that opinion led her, adding confusedly, ‘I didn’t mean “they”, of course, I meant “she”, Sue, would prefer it.’
A Footman for the Peacock Page 19