Before Lunch

by Angela Thirkell

  ‘We used to have bran pies when we were small at Christmas,’ said Mrs Stonor.

  ‘Dr Williams certainly did not recommend it to Her Highness as a pie,’ said Miss Starter, doubtfully.

  ‘In a wash tub with red baize round it,’ said Mrs Stonor, her eyes shining wistfully at the thought, ‘and we always made a frightful mess.’

  Mrs Middleton, who had been listening, thought it time to interfere before Miss Starter went mad under her eyes, so she asked if Princess Louisa Christina was not a daughter of old Prince Louis of Cobalt. This at once led the talk on to the Royal Family and its relations, a practically unlimited sphere for people who know their Debrett well to triumph quietly over their friends and even Miss Starter’s well-bred, plaintive voice was raised a little.

  ‘Well, I feel quite certain somehow that Princess Louisa of Cobalt was a Hatz-Reinigen,’ said Mrs Stonor. ‘I can’t think why I feel it, but I feel as if I had heard it or read it somewhere in the way one does, you know.’

  ‘I don’t quite think so,’ said Miss Starter. ‘Princess Louisa’s sister married one of them, but the Princess – dear me, I should know her name as well as my own. Here comes Lord Bond, we will ask him. Lord Bond,’ she said as the owner of Staple Park and his son came to the tea-table, ‘we were discussing the mother of Princess Louisa Christina. Do you remember —?’

  ‘Princess Louisa Christina?’ said Lord Bond. ‘Her mother used to drive a brougham and pair. Married old Cobalt. Her marriage was annulled. Shocking business, shocking. Where’s Middleton, Mrs Middleton?’

  Mrs Middleton said he was out walking with Mr Cameron and might be back at any moment.

  ‘When you have drunk your tea, Alured,’ said Lady Bond, ‘will you take Mrs Stonor’s young people through the principal rooms. I feel sure they would be interested.’

  Lord Bond obediently gulped his tea and stood up.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ said young Mr Bond, who could not abide Miss Starter, and avoiding his mother’s eye he joined Denis and Daphne for the tour of the house.

  Lord Bond had a real passion for his ancestral seat and if he had not been so well off would have been quite happy to show people round it at sixpence a head every day. Unfortunately for him the house was only shown to visitors when he and Lady Bond were away. He had once made an excuse and hurried back to Staple Park from Aix-les-Bains, hoping to enjoy the pleasure of the sightseers, but his butler had been so unkind and cutting that he had not even dared to ask if he might spend the night in his own house and had to go over to his brother-in-law Lord Stoke, who was not only an archaeologist but very deaf and incredibly boring. So he gladly seized the opportunity that his wife gave him of showing the house to his visitors and led the way through the marble hall to the dining-room.

  ‘That’s the marble hall,’ he said as they walked across it. ‘Black and white marble. We had a very good central heating system put in a few years ago and that’s where one of the mantelpieces was cracked when the men were in the house. Here is the dining-room. We don’t use it much unless we are a large party. You can’t see it very well with all the shutters closed.’

  ‘I’ll open them, father,’ said young Mr Bond.

  ‘No need, no need,’ said Lord Bond. ‘Plastered ceiling and all that, you know. It’s very much admired. Portraits of my family and their wives. All want cleaning I think, but my wife likes them as they are. I was talking to a man at the club last time I was in town, forgotten his name. He said he cleaned his with slices of raw potato, but old Carruthers who was there said he did his with soap and water. Now we come into the south octagon room.’

  The south octagon room, lined with locked bookcases with gilded grills across their front, was admired, but Lord Bond left them little time to express their admiration, hurrying them on through a door masked with sham books. Daphne lingered.

  ‘I do like those doors with books on them,’ she said. ‘If I had a house I’d have one and choose the names of the books.’

  ‘I always thought I’d like to do that,’ said young Mr Bond, lingering with her. ‘My great-something-or-other that built this place hadn’t much imagination. He just thought of one book for every shelf and said Vol. I, Vol. II, and so on.’

  ‘I see,’ said Daphne, examining a shelf which contained twenty-four volumes of an imaginary work entitled Historical Survey of Taste. ‘If I had a door like this I’d have a lot of names of real books like History of England or Life of Gladstone and then when people tried to get them out to read they couldn’t.’

  ‘I don’t suppose anyone would want to get out a Life of Gladstone,’ said young Mr Bond doubtfully. ‘One would have to have an awfully dull set of friends to want books like that.’

  ‘But don’t you?’ said Daphne. ‘I mean judging by Miss Tartar I should say you did.’

  ‘Miss Starter,’ young Mr Bond corrected her.

  ‘Well, I said Miss Tartar,’ said Daphne. ‘Oh, Miss Starter. I see. Well, she’s dull enough.’

  ‘I can tell you I’ll be glad to get back to New York,’ said young Mr Bond fervently. ‘I love this place and my people are jolly decent, but the kind of guests they have… Let’s go round the rooms the other way.’

  Accordingly they went back to the dining-room where young Mr Bond opened some of the shutters and let in the afternoon sunlight so that Daphne could admire the ceiling, exquisitely plastered in low relief with sheaves of corn, wreaths of vine leaves and tendrils and bunches of grapes, painted in what were called Pompeian colours.

  ‘I don’t know why father was in such a hurry,’ said young Mr Bond as he closed the shutters again. ‘Come across the hall and I’ll show you the yellow satin room and the musical boxes that my great-grandmother collected.’

  ‘And tell me about your cows,’ said Daphne.

  If she and her companion had stayed with Lord Bond they would have discovered the reason for his hurry. His lordship paused inside the room they now entered and said reverently to Denis, ‘Look!’

  Denis looked. In front of him was one of the most nobly proportioned long drawing-rooms he had ever seen, lighted by six long windows almost the height of the room. The ceiling and the walls were decorated with exquisite carvings, painted white and gold, and the fireplace was a masterpiece in pale golden marble. A few English landscapes of the early nineteenth century hung on the white walls. The furniture, serene, fitting, unobtrusive, must have been there since the house was built. Denis almost gasped with pleasure at its quiet mellow beauty.

  ‘I thought you’d like it,’ said Lord Bond. ‘My old great-great-grandfather and his son spent a lot on the furniture. It’s been in Country Life. But there’s something I really wanted you to see. Look there!’

  Taking Denis by the arm he pivoted him round so that he looked into the corner of the room to which his back had hitherto been turned. In it stood the largest, most hideous, most elephant-legged grand piano that Edwardian money could buy. Over its bloated form a piece of Turkish embroidery, glistening with little bits of looking-glass, was carelessly draped. On it stood two large bronzes of matronly nymphs in the respectful embraces of decent satyrs, a huge green glass vase of coloured pampas grass on an oxidized silver stand representing the Three Graces in Art Nouveau style, three elephants’ tusks, at least a dozen signed photographs of royalty in massive chased silver frames and a richly bound volume of the songs of Alicia Adelaide Needham.

  ‘I knew you’d like that,’ said Lord Bond, as his visitor stood spellbound. ‘My old pater gave it to my dear old mater the year he got his peerage. The most expensive English piano on the market. And we’ve always kept it exactly as it was when she used it. The pater bought those bronzes at the Paris Exhibition in 1900. The mater was very fond of flowers. I remember those grasses when I was a boy, and the mater used to sing to me before I was taken to bed.’

  Denis, gazing awestruck on the late Lady Bond’s memorial, wondered how on earth her ladyship had managed to use a piano which could only be opened with the aid of
two or three strong men, for each of the bronzes must have weighed half a hundredweight, and came to the conclusion that she preferred to make her effects in a small way.

  ‘She had a way of playing all her own,’ said Lord Bond, almost echoing Denis’s thoughts. ‘She always put the soft pedal down and played the notes one after the other.’

  ‘Arpeggios?’ Denis suggested, fascinated by the vision.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Lord Bond. ‘She said it put more expression into the music. Now, I wonder where the key has got to? The butler used to have it in his pantry, but when the piano tuner came on his yearly visit the Christmas before last Spencer was away for two nights owing to the death of his wife who lived in Wolverhampton and the key could not be found. So I put it in the drawer of the writing table and when I went to look the other day it wasn’t there. But we’ll find it, we’ll find it, before you come and play to me.’

  ‘I do hope so,’ said Denis.

  ‘Of course we will,’ said Lord Bond. ‘Where have your sister and C.W. gone? Is your sister musical?’

  ‘She’s got a nice voice, sir,’ said Denis.

  ‘We’ll have a concert, all to ourselves, some day,’ said Lord Bond. ‘My wife isn’t musical, she’s artistic. Well, now I expect you’d like to see the rest of the rooms. We’ll find your sister and my boy somewhere about.’

  So saying, he led Denis through the farther door of the drawing-room.

  Meanwhile in the hall Lady Bond, free from her family and the young Stonors, had outlined to Mrs Middleton her scheme for the drawing-room meeting at Laverings. As far as Mrs Middleton could make out it was to be Lady Bond’s party, chosen by her, at her own time, but Laverings was to supply the tea.

  Mrs Middleton had often wondered if it was worth while standing up to Lady Bond, but every time she had come to the conclusion that it wasn’t. It was in her nature to give way, to be silent, and she followed her nature, not without inner mocking at herself. If her husband wanted Lady Bond to use their drawing-room, it would be less trouble to arrange for a few chairs and some cakes than to argue the point. Sometimes she wondered if there was in her anything strong enough to stand up to facts that she didn’t like, but to demand one’s own way always seemed an unnecessary and almost ridiculous glorification of self, so she let things slide, contenting herself with keeping her house perfectly appointed, cultivating a few friends and being a loving companion and supporter of her husband’s quick moods of overbearing wilfulness or despairing abasement.

  Miss Starter said she wished the dear princess were still alive, as she would gladly have taken the chair.

  ‘Of course you must come to the meeting if you are still with us,’ said Lady Bond. ‘I think your husband must take the chair, Mrs Middleton, unless of course my brother —’

  She paused. Mrs Middleton, reflecting that either suggestion would annoy her husband so it didn’t much matter, said nothing.

  ‘Then that is settled,’ said Lady Bond, rising. ‘Your men are very late, Mrs Middleton. Let us go and see what my husband and the young people are up to.’

  As they went into the marble hall they met Mr Middleton and Mr Cameron.

  ‘We have been waiting for you,’ said Lady Bond with grim graciousness. ‘I will have some fresh tea made, or would you prefer a drink?’

  Mr Cameron at once said a drink, so Lady Bond told the butler to bring drinks into the yellow satin room, and swept the whole party onwards. By this time Lord Bond and Denis had been round the whole suite of rooms and rejoined Daphne and young Mr Bond who had been amusing themselves by listening to the musical boxes that Athelstane Bond’s wife had collected and talking about cows, so her ladyship had no idea of the length of time that her son and Miss Stonor had been alone together.

  ‘It was a marvellous walk, a marvellous walk,’ said Mr Middleton, who felt that it was quite long enough since proper attention had been paid to him. ‘Flora – where is Flora by the way?’

  ‘I told the butler to shut her out,’ said Mr Cameron. ‘She had been twice through the duck pond in the village and the water is low.’

  ‘So be it,’ said Mr Middleton. ‘Bond, this was a walk that you would have loved. The whole soul of England was abroad on the hills to-day.’

  ‘Crowded, eh?’ said Lord Bond. ‘That’s the worst of all these cheap excursions by rail and coach on Sundays. Spoils all the walks. Why didn’t you go over by Pooker’s Piece? No one goes that way.’

  ‘We did,’ said Mr Cameron.

  ‘Well, I’m surprised that you found it crowded,’ said Lord Bond.

  ‘And what a talk we had with old Margett,’ said Mr Middleton, ignoring the misunderstanding.

  ‘I expect he did all the talking,’ said young Mr Bond. ‘He’s as deaf as a post now, but he does love the sound of his own voice. It was very kind of you, sir. The old fellow doesn’t often get an audience.’

  ‘I didn’t hear Margett say much,’ said Mr Cameron to a private audience of Mrs Middleton and the Stonors. ‘He did say Good afternoon when we found him and I think he said Good evening when we left him. Middleton was in great form.’

  Mrs Middleton looked at him half in amusement, half imploringly, while her nephew and niece burst into delighted laughter.

  ‘It is quite extraordinary how much Jack can talk,’ said Mrs Stonor. ‘It was just the same when we were small. I sometimes think it is because he hasn’t quite grown up.’

  ‘Darling, I do love you when you are mystic,’ said Denis. ‘I am sure you are right, but do tell me what you mean.’

  ‘Well,’ said Mrs Stonor, frowning in painful chase of a thought, ‘you know the way children do all their thinking aloud because they are too silly to think to themselves and how dull it is. Jack still does his thinking aloud, though of course it isn’t dull, and it must run in the family because I do too, and I know I say a good many silly things but it seems to me the only way to get at what one really wants to say. I’m doing it now.’

  She looked round for her audience’s opinion.

  ‘I think your criticism is extraordinarily good, but you aren’t quite fair to yourself,’ said Mr Cameron seriously. ‘I don’t suppose you ever are.’

  ‘That’s clever too,’ said Denis. ‘She isn’t.’

  Lady Bond’s voice now dominated the party, asking how far the walkers had been.

  ‘We left Laverings at three o’clock,’ said Mr Middleton. ‘No; no sherry I beg. A whisky and soda if I may. It is now nearly six. Say four good miles an hour, for Cameron and I are stout walkers, that would be ten miles, eleven miles or so. But it did not feel like half so much.’

  ‘It often doesn’t if you don’t notice it,’ said Lord Bond. ‘I remember once walking round the park here, nearly five miles that is if you keep to the wall, with Carruthers when he was Under Secretary for India, and when we got back we only had just time to get dressed for dinner. Extraordinary how time flies.’

  ‘And I’m afraid we must be going,’ said Mrs Middleton.

  Good-byes were said and Lady Bond reminded Daphne that she was to enter upon her secretarial duties to-morrow.

  ‘That’s right. Half a crown an hour,’ said Daphne. ‘Thanks awfully, I’ll love it.’

  Lord Bond courteously came to the door to see his guests off, the Middletons and Mrs Stonor in the car, Mr Cameron and the young Stonors walking. When he turned back into the marble hall he found his butler looking at him with an air of disapproving though long-suffering ennui that Lord Bond could hardly bear. Every memory of old wrongs sprang to his mind. The time he had come home from Aix-les-Bains and been practically driven out of his home. The key of the piano. His old wounds burned and bled anew.

  ‘Spencer,’ he said in an off-hand way, ‘I can’t find the key of the drawing-room piano. I left it in the writing table drawer.’

  ‘I found it in the eskritaw drawer, my lord, when I was Giving a Look Round,’ said the butler, fixing his employer with a basilisk eye, ‘so I took it into My Pantry where it belongs.’<
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  ‘Well, put it back in the escritoire drawer,’ said Lord Bond, finding himself much to his annoyance using his butler’s nomenclature. ‘I might want it at any time.’

  ‘Yes, my lord,’ said Spencer. ‘I was merely thinking, my lord, that when the piano tuner came it would be advisable to have the key where I could Put My Hand On It.’

  ‘Never mind that,’ said Lord Bond, too cowardly to remind his butler of the Christmas when the piano tuner came and the key could not be found.

  The butler bowed acquiescence and went away in the opposite direction from his pantry, thus leaving his employer in a state of pleasing uncertainty as to whether he meant to obey orders or not.

  The walking party were going back to Laverings by the footpath. It led them by fields of springing wheat, through pasture land, followed the course of disused lanes where the hedges were pink with dogrose and yellow flags grew in the ditches. The heat was intense and no breath of air stirred.