Before Lunch

by Angela Thirkell

  Mr Middleton stood for a moment irresolute. That he wanted to walk about in the sunshine and gossip with Pucken he well knew, and knew that his wife knew it, but to admit that he didn’t feel like work, especially after Daphne’s very trying and tactless description of the thriller he had been reading, was a mortification to his spirit. A way out must be found which would not impair his dignity.

  ‘I yield, I yield,’ he said, making his way among the chairs to the French window. ‘I sigh as a worker, but I obey as a husband.’

  Pleased with this neat parody, he repeated it, adding with sudden anxiety,

  ‘And no one is to have those chairs, Catherine. That is quite understood.’

  ‘Quite, darling,’ said his wife.

  She stood for a moment at the window, watching him go down towards the field, and then returned to the work of preparing the library for the meeting. There was really very little to be done now except to wait for half-past three. The chairman’s table was neatly laid out with water jug, glasses, paper, pens, ink, blotting paper and pencils. Chairs were arranged without too much formality. In her sitting-room tea-things were laid out for the twenty or thirty guests that might come.

  ‘That is always what happens,’ she said. ‘One gets everything ready much too early and then feels flat. It’s only a quarter past twelve. I’ll tell Ethel to bring some drinks into the garden. Would you ring, Alister.’

  Mr Cameron rang, the order was given and the whole party wandered across the lawn to where a willow drooped in a most becoming manner above a stone-rimmed pond in which goldfish swam among green weeds. Here in the shade chairs and a garden seat were set and Ethel came wheeling a double-decked trolley towards them, laden with drinks.

  ‘Beer, and lemonade, and cider, and ice,’ said Denis, gloating. ‘No sherry, thank goodness, Catherine. How clever of you not to have sherry on a hot day. It makes one come all-overish. May I pour out?’

  He helped everyone and sat down with a glass of cider on the edge of the pond, near his hostess. Mr Cameron joined Mrs Stonor on the wooden seat, for he always enjoyed her company. Whether it was the country air, or the pleasure of the Middletons’ company, or a lessened anxiety about her stepson, or all three, she looked much younger than when she arrived at Skeynes. Mr Cameron felt it to be quite ridiculous that she should be Mr Middleton’s sister. True, she was a very much younger sister, and Catherine had told him that she was about her own age, but Mrs Stonor, to his mind, looked younger than Catherine. Partly perhaps because she was very fair, partly because her greenish eyes danced so agreeably while she spoke, partly because she had, as she herself had said, a child’s way of doing her thinking aloud. With Catherine one never knew what her thought was till it suddenly dashed out at one, and if one didn’t understand it she never troubled to explain. Take it or leave it. And she couldn’t let life slip easily over her as Lilian, in spite of all her difficulties, had done.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ said Mrs Stonor.

  ‘I was thinking, Lilian,’ said Mr Cameron, and then stopped, confused.

  ‘Yes, Alister?’ said Mrs Stonor.

  ‘I don’t know what I was thinking of,’ said Mr Cameron. ‘I do apologize. I always think of you as Lilian.’

  ‘Well, it seems to me quite reasonable,’ said Mrs Stonor. ‘You are almost one of the family, in fact in a way you are more in the family than I am because you see a lot of Jack and Catherine and I see so little. I’ve got to know Jack better as a brother in the last few weeks than ever in my life before. And as for Catherine she is a great deal too good for him, or for anyone else for that matter, but luckily neither of them know it. So I really don’t see why you shouldn’t call me Lilian. The children always speak of you as Alister behind your back, but of course that means nothing in their generation. Ours is still a little more backward about Christian names.’

  ‘That is very nice of you,’ said Mr Cameron gratefully.

  As usual Mrs Stonor’s talk had ramified into a confusing number of by-paths, each of which he would have liked to explore with her but hardly knew where to begin or how to find time enough. What she said about her brother and his wife appeared to him to be so bristling with home thrusts that he could have reflected upon it for a very long time. And what she said about the children, about Denis and Daphne, was double-edged, though he hardly thought she meant it to be so. It was quite true that Daphne and he were of different generations, but really not a whole generation apart, only each fresh crop of young trod so quickly on the footsteps of the last that one felt like a great-grandfather at forty-eight. And probably Daphne felt a grandmother compared with all the young creatures between seventeen and the early twenties. Age, it seemed to him, mattered far less than it used to. Meanwhile it was very pleasant to see Lilian looking better and younger day by day.

  ‘And now, what was it you were thinking?’ said Mrs Stonor again.

  ‘I was really thinking how much better you looked since you came here,’ said Mr Cameron.

  ‘It’s because I feel better,’ said Mrs Stonor, accepting with great calm a compliment that most women would apply entirely to their faces. ‘The children are so happy here. Daphne is always well, thank goodness, and Denis is so very much better, and when he is better I feel so relieved that I feel much better too, and feeling better usually makes one look better. Did Daphne show you the snapshot she took of you last week? It came out very well. She has it in her room –’

  Mr Cameron’s heart rose in his bosom.

  ‘– with all her other snapshots. She takes a lot.’

  Mr Cameron’s heart swooped down to the very depths of his inside and then came to equilibrium again. After all it was something to be even one among many snapshots. Mrs Stonor went on talking of her stepchildren with a fondness and admiration that Mr Cameron found not only suitable, with special regard to Daphne, but wholly delightful in a stepmother. Denis looked up from trying to tease goldfish and gave his stepmother one of his quick looks.

  ‘Are you talking about me, darling?’ he enquired. ‘If so I will tell you that I am very well as this leaves me at present, and I do like you so much, and if only someone would leave me a thousand pounds, or even five hundred, to get my ballet put on I would be quite well and happy for the rest of my life. Catherine, I am tickling for goldfish. Wouldn’t it be dreadful if I caught one? It might die on me before I could put it back in the water. Would you mind?’

  ‘Not so long as I didn’t actually see it die,’ said Mrs Middleton.

  ‘I love your truthfulness,’ said Denis, laughing. ‘I won’t pursue my tickling. Daphne, I’ll have sixpence with you on the Great Goldfish Derby. I am backing that far one with a silver fin.’

  Daphne objected, on the grounds that all goldfish were exactly like each other and anyway they never raced, only swam about. Denis said they would each put a crumb on the water then, and whichever goldfish got it first would win sixpence for the owner, and there was absolutely no difficulty in telling them apart if you took pains. But as there were no crumbs about the idea had to be abandoned. Denis, who said he felt an overmastering passion to bet on something, offered to go up to the house and find a crumb, when Mr Middleton and Pucken approached.

  ‘You look hot, darling,’ said Mrs Middleton. ‘Come and sit down and have a drink.’

  Mr Middleton accepted the glass of beer which Denis got up and fetched for him, but remained standing.

  ‘What about Pucken?’ Denis said softly, bending over Mrs Middleton as he passed behind her chair.

  ‘Beer? No, please not. He has as much as is good for him when the Fleece opens.’

  ‘Right,’ said Denis, sitting down on the edge of the pond again, feeling a little confused, perhaps from bending so low to whisper to someone in a deckchair.

  ‘What about the manure, Pucken?’ said Mrs Middleton.

  ‘Well, mum, it’s this way,’ said Pucken.

  ‘Denis darling, are you sure the stone isn’t cold?’ said Mrs Stonor. ‘You have been
there a long time.’

  ‘It may have been cold in the beginning, though I didn’t notice it, but it certainly isn’t now,’ said Denis. ‘The sun was shining violently upon it while I got Uncle Jack’s beer.’

  ‘Well, do be careful,’ said his stepmother.

  ‘Bless your innocent heart,’ said Denis, blowing her a kiss.

  ‘Can’t you get it?’ said Mrs Middleton as Pucken remained tongue-tied.

  ‘Well, mum, it isn’t exactly that,’ said Pucken.

  After a great deal of questioning it appeared that the Fleece was responsible for the whole affair. Pucken had the promise of a load of manure, not none, he said, of your mucky pig manure, but a good clean load from Lord Bond’s farm stables, as sweet manure as a man could wish to see. But words having passed between him and Lord Bond’s second gardener, who was down at the Fleece, that gardener had said he was danged if Pucken should have so much as a wheelbarrow of manure off the place, and so the matter had remained. He could, he said, get a load off Farmer Brown but where was the use? There was nothing in the county to touch his lordship’s manure and set his heart on it he had for the marrows.

  After hearing this Mrs Middleton said she supposed she had better speak to Lord Bond about it.

  ‘Or will you, Jack?’ she asked her husband. ‘You will be seeing him at the meeting to-day, you know.’

  But Mr Middleton showed such signs of becoming a complete nervous and physical wreck if he had to take the responsibility that his wife said she would do it herself. Pucken was told to be more careful at the Fleece and went happily away talking to himself about the excellent qualities of the Staple Park manure. After this the party broke up for lunch.

  The first arrival was Lord Stoke, who enjoyed any kind of meeting so much that he always came a quarter of an hour too soon, to get his bearings he said, though neither he nor anyone else knew exactly what he meant. As his car drew up at the garden gate Pucken, who was hanging about to watch the arrivals, touched his cap. Lord Stoke, who knew every face connected with cows in the whole county and had twice seen Pucken at the Skeynes Agricultural Show, touched his hat in return.

  ‘You’re Mr Middleton’s man, aren’t you?’ said his lordship. ‘Pucken, that’s the name, isn’t it?’

  Pucken, much gratified, scratched the back of his neck and grinned.

  Lord Stoke enquired what cows Mr Middleton was sending to the Show, expressed great interest, not unmingled with relief, at the news that the Jersey was in calf again and so, gossiping with Pucken, moved slowly down the lane towards the field where the cowsheds were. As Pucken was too shy to answer except in monosyllables, his lordship’s deafness did not prevent conversation and time passed very happily.

  After Lord Stoke came the Palmers, carrying with them Mr and Mrs Tebben. Mr Tebben torn unwillingly from Bishop Ogmund was heartily wishing that Sir Ogilvy Hibberd, the source of all these woes, were spread-eagled. Mr Middleton who had come out on hearing the sound of cars to catch Lord Stoke was greeted by Mrs Palmer.

  ‘I don’t think you know my friends Mr and Mrs Tebben,’ she said. ‘Their daughter married my nephew Laurence Dean. And I’ve brought Ed Pollett over. Come here, Ed.’

  A man, stiff with consciousness of his Sunday suit, who was sitting beside the Palmers’ chauffeur, dismounted and came awkwardly towards her.

  ‘I thought you wouldn’t mind,’ Mrs Palmer went on, ‘his coming with us. He’s having his holiday.’

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Mr Middleton, courteous but perplexed. The name Pollett seemed familiar to him, but the bearer of it he could not place. He had heard that Mrs Palmer had strange theatrical guests…

  ‘Brother of your chauffeur,’ said Mrs Palmer, her quick eye at once detecting her host’s dilemma. ‘You must have heard of Ed. He is under porter at Worsted Station and has a perfect genius for cars, but a little bit wanting.’

  In giving this character of Ed, Mrs Palmer took no pains to moderate her voice, but Ed bore no grudge, appearing indeed to take some pride in this publicity.

  ‘Well, he’d better go and find Pollett, he’s somewhere about,’ said Mr Middleton. ‘You didn’t pass Stoke’s car on the way, did you? I want to speak to him.’

  Ed gave Mr Middleton a respectful nudge, and pointed towards a car a little farther down the lane, saying, ‘That’s her.’

  ‘Who?’ said Mr Middleton, for no female was visible.

  ‘He means Lord Stoke’s car, sir, don’t you, Ed?’ said the Palmers’ chauffeur, coming to the rescue. ‘Ed can pick out any car, sir, once he’s seen it, can’t you, Ed?’

  ‘That’s her O.K.,’ said Ed.

  ‘Well, I must have missed Stoke somehow. I expect we’ll find him in the house,’ said Mr Middleton. ‘Come in.’

  Mr Tebben had brightened perceptibly at the name of Lord Stoke, for a labourer while digging a drain on his lordship’s estate in a field called Bloody Meadow had lately turned up some bones, which might as well have been those of a Viking as anyone else. It was more or less authentically proved that a battle had been fought in the vicinity of Rising Castle between a local ruler and a Danish force stiffened with a roving contingent of Norsemen, and Mr Tebben had a secret hope that the bones might prove to be those of a hero called Thorstein Longtooth who was mentioned in a Norse ballad over which Mr Tebben and the President of the Snorri Society had quarrelled violently through the medium of the Journal of Icelandic Studies. If he could get from Lord Stoke a description of the bones, or better still permission to see them, his afternoon would not have been wasted, so he followed his host with a somewhat lighter heart.

  Mrs Tebben paused to cry aloud in ecstasy over the beauty of some delphiniums, but was hustled along by Mrs Palmer who wished to get front row seats as her husband was a little deaf.

  ‘All the same, Louise,’ said Mrs Tebben, ‘I do think my plan of getting a few packets of seed from Woolworth’s, quite at random, simply by the delightful coloured pictures on the outside, and sowing them here and there in our little garden in a spirit of adventure has often been most successful and seldom more so than this year. You haven’t seen that little corner down by the ash-pit lately. I have put nasturtiums there and it is going to be quite a splash of colour.’

  Mrs Palmer took no notice of her friend and bore the whole party into the house where Mrs Middleton was receiving her guests, most of whom knew each other, though not always on speaking terms, so very little introducing was needed. Mrs Palmer was moving towards the front row, but Mrs Tebben lingered to exclaim gustily over the beauty of the view from the library window and so lingering found herself face to face with the Bonds. Mrs Tebben did not in the least mind Lady Bond’s title, wealth, position or domineering ways, but on one subject she would brook no rivalry. She and Lady Bond each had an only son and each knew that her own son was quite perfect, though without prejudice to a good deal of fault-finding in the home. Neither lady appeared to have any idea that her husband was in any way responsible for the qualities of her child, each gathering all credit to herself. The race on the whole had been even. Young Mr Bond had a very good job and would eventually inherit a title, while Richard Tebben was doing very well in an engineering firm and had excellent prospects. There was however one triumph which Mrs Tebben could not forget and had no intention of letting Lady Bond forget. A few years earlier, before the two young men went out into the world, Richard Tebben at the annual cricket match between Skeynes and Worsted had caught young Mr Bond out with a spectacular catch never to be forgotten at the Fleece in Skeynes or the Woolpack in Worsted. The result had been a violent friendship lasting for one day, since when the young men had never met, young Mr Bond going to New York and Richard Tebben on a three years’ job to South America. But neither of the mothers had forgotten the event. At the sight of Mrs Tebben Lady Bond automatically became more the county magnate than ever, while Mrs Tebben could not help conveying by her air that she had taken a first at Oxford and had a son who caught other people’s sons out.

 
; ‘How are you?’ said Mrs Tebben to Lady Bond. ‘And how is C.W.? Still playing cricket?’

  Young Mr Bond, who thought this question was addressed to himself, was about to say that he looked forward to the match against Worsted and was sorry Richard couldn’t be there, when his mother, morally elbowing him out of the way, said he was quite out of practice as he only played polo in America. She then wished she hadn’t said it.

  Mrs Tebben, horrified by the inverted snobbism that at once overcame her against her will, said polo was alas! too expensive a game for Richard, but he had had a perfectly wonderful time during the opera season at Buenos Aires, having heard Strilla and Taglino every time they sang.

  Lady Bond, who was usually rather proud than otherwise of being entirely unmusical, felt that this boast was aimed at her and in a voice that she didn’t quite recognize as her own said That was very nice. Luckily Lord Bond and Mr Palmer now began to discuss the Skeynes Agricultural Show in a way that relegated women, even Lady Bond, to their proper place, and no blood was shed.