Before Lunch

by Angela Thirkell

  ‘We all thought they would be engaged,’ said Mrs Tebben aside to Mrs Stonor and Daphne. ‘I have never seen anyone so struck as Mr Bond was. Betty is such a nice girl. She has just taken a first in Greats at Oxford.’

  Daphne’s face expressed her opinion of nice girls that took firsts in Greats so clearly that Mrs Palmer began to bristle for her niece.

  ‘She tells me she saw quite a lot of you, C.W., while you were in America,’ said Mrs Palmer, glad to show Lady Bond that a Palmer niece was properly valued by the heir of Staple Park. ‘I believe she is going back to Bryn Mawr to do a post-graduate course, so doubtless you will see her when you go back to New York. It will be nice for her to have you there.’

  Young Mr Bond, acutely sensible of Daphne’s disapproval, said it would.

  ‘I didn’t know you were such a friend of Miss Dean’s, C.W.,’ said his mother.

  Young Mr Bond began to flounder so miserably that Mrs Middleton quickly asked Lady Bond why Miss Starter had not come to the meeting.

  ‘Oh, Juliana had one of her bad days,’ said Lady Bond. ‘She has headaches that are quite unlike anyone else’s, so she is staying in bed with the blinds down and will just have a little toasted Kornog bread for tea and perhaps come down to dinner. C.W., I think we ought to be going. Tell your father I am ready.’

  At the same moment Lord Pomfret, saying that the Bishop was dining at Pomfret Towers and he must get back, broke up the cow conference. A welter of good-byes ensued.

  ‘Good-bye, Mrs Middleton,’ said Lord Pomfret. ‘I never had my cup of tea with you. You must let me come over again one day. I don’t get about as much as I did since my wife died. She liked you. You look tired. Don’t overdo it.’

  Mrs Middleton said it was only the heat and she was afraid that they had rather wasted Lord Pomfret’s time.

  ‘Not a bit,’ said the earl. ‘I’ve learnt what I wanted to know. Drawing-room meetings are no good. I’ll have to think about that fellow Hibberd. My wife liked Pooker’s Piece. We used to ride there when we were first married. Can’t have a garage on it.’

  He took his leave, as did Lord Stoke and the Palmers, accompanied by Mr and Mrs Tebben, which last named lady expressed the greatest appreciation of her afternoon’s treat.

  ‘I do hope you will be able to come to tea with me one day,’ she said to Mrs Middleton. ‘Your tea was delicious, but we have a way of doing cake that I am sure you would like to know. When I have a cake that has got really stale and I don’t want to make a trifle with it, I cut it into slices and toast them and spread a little butter on them and pile them up in a dish and leave it in the oven for a few moments. You have no idea how good it is. I had a cake last week that had somehow got into a corner and been overlooked and when I had just cut off the little mildewed bit and toasted and buttered it, we all enjoyed it so much.’

  Mrs Middleton thanked Mrs Tebben warmly. The rest of the guests were going and after some more handshaking and thanks for the tea she found herself left with her family and the Bonds.

  ‘Cows!’ exclaimed Mr Middleton. ‘The whole subject of cows is one on which, I say it without pride, I am competent to speak, but I must confess that for the moment I am tongue-tied. In the face of Lord Pomfret and Stoke and Palmer I must perforce be silent. How they talked, Catherine; how they talked. Never have I been so borne down, so overwhelmed by sheer force of words, a veritable Niagara of talk. Bond, you will bear me out in what I say.’

  ‘I’ll never do anything against Stoke as long as he has that cowman,’ said Lord Bond mournfully. ‘But he won’t leave. I know for a fact that Pomfret would give him twice what he’s getting now. But I still don’t agree with Stoke about those Frisians. Mark my words…’

  While Lord Bond said what he felt about Frisians and Mr Middleton explained at great length how impossible it was for him to speak, Mrs Middleton, on the sofa which had been put at right angles to the chairman’s table, her back to the window, wondered what use anything was. The great drawing-room meeting had taken place, nothing useful had been said or settled; the one success of the afternoon had been the tea, and if people wanted tea she would far rather give it to them in a friendly way, a few at a time, than have the whole house upset. Denis sat down beside her, a glass in each hand.

  ‘One is sherry, one is brandy and a little soda,’ he remarked. ‘Which are you going to have?’

  ‘Thank you so much, but I really don’t think I want either,’ she said kindly.

  ‘I know you don’t,’ said Denis. ‘Which are you going to have?’

  ‘The brandy please,’ said Mrs Middleton meekly. ‘Not because it brings back the colour to my pale cheeks as in novels, but because I like it better.’

  Denis gave her a curiously ferocious glance and went away to look after the rest of the party. Lord Bond, on the pretext of mixing his whisky and soda himself, accompanied Denis to the table where the drinks stood.

  ‘About that concert,’ he said. ‘My wife’s going to town next week and Juliana is going to visit her widowed sister at Tunbridge Wells. Suppose you and your sister come up one evening to dinner and I’ll get the piano opened.’

  ‘I’d love to, sir,’ said Denis. ‘I’ll ask Daphne.’

  He fetched his sister, who was loud in her approval of the scheme.

  ‘But you needn’t mention it to my wife,’ said Lord Bond anxiously.

  ‘Are you concealing something from mother?’ said young Mr Bond, who had naturally gravitated to Daphne.

  His father explained the plan.

  ‘Jolly good idea,’ said young Mr Bond. ‘Make it Wednesday and I’ll run down for dinner.’

  ‘That’s right. We’ll be four then,’ said Lord Bond, feeling like Guy Fawkes.

  Daphne, without looking at young Mr Bond, said would Lord Bond think it awfully rude if she asked if Mr Cameron could come. He was staying at Laverings for some time and was most awfully nice and she knew he liked Gilbert and Sullivan.

  Lord Bond, who delighted in hospitality, said of course Cameron must come and wouldn’t Mrs Stonor come too. In view of Lady Bond’s well-known gift of spotting at once what was going on the invitations had to be given with great care and secrecy, but both were gladly accepted.

  ‘There, that’s splendid,’ said Lord Bond to the conspirators. ‘Now we shall be six. Oh, one thing though. My wife is taking the Rolls to town and I haven’t got anyone to drive the other car. Young Phipps is the only one I’d trust and he is away on his holiday. Tell you what. I’ll get the car from the Fleece to bring you over and take you back. Would that be all right?’

  ‘I could fetch them all on my way down from London, father,’ said young Mr Bond, ‘and take them back.’

  Daphne said he might have an accident or a puncture on the way down and then where would they all be.

  ‘Quite right, Miss Stonor,’ said his lordship. ‘Much better to have the car from the Fleece. Do you remember, C.W., the time you were to fetch Juliana from Tunbridge Wells and forgot all about her? Wouldn’t do to forget Miss Stonor. Where were you that day, C.W.?’

  Young Mr Bond, suddenly feeling a profound dislike for his father, said rather sulkily Which day?

  ‘The day you forgot Juliana,’ said Lord Bond. ‘I know. You were driving Mrs Palmer’s niece to Oxford, Betty; that’s the name. Betty Dean. Handsome girl that. You’d like her, Miss Stonor.’

  Daphne said she was so glad she had never been at Oxford, because all the girls she had known who went there were perfectly ghastly. Lady Bond then summoned her husband and son and everyone walked to the garden gate with them. By their car Ferguson, the Bonds’ chauffeur, and Pollet, the Middletons’ chauffeur, were deep in discussion, with Ed Pollett standing by.

  ‘Excuse me, my lady,’ said Ferguson, who like most of the Staple Park employees looked to his mistress for orders, ‘but if his lordship was wanting anyone to drive the car while I am away, Mr Pollett’s brother is quite as you might say a wizard with cars. Of course I wouldn’t have suggested it, my la
dy, but Mr Spencer, who was in the dining-room at the time, happened to pass the remark that his lordship said he didn’t know who to have seeing that young Phipps was away.’

  Lord Bond said almost pettishly that he wished Spencer wouldn’t gossip in the servants’ hall, but his wife who never let anything pass without investigation asked who Mr Pollett was and, hence, who his brother.

  If Ferguson had been among his equals he would have said that Mr Pollett drove Middleton’s car, but in deference to his employers’ class prejudice he said that Mr Pollett was Mr Middleton’s chauffeur.

  ‘Can I speak to your man?’ said Lady Bond to Mr Middleton, thus grossly offending Ferguson’s class consciousness. Then without waiting for Mr Middleton’s assent she set up a Board of Inquisition on Pollett, harrying and browbeating him in a way to which his free mechanic’s spirit was quite unaccustomed. Pollett’s ancestors had lived at Worsted ever since there was a Pollett in England; respect for the gentry had been bred in the family since the days of Gorwulf who lived at Gorwulf-Steadings and had a Pollett as serf; and all Pollett’s education, his training in motor works, his experience with armoured cars in Mesopotamia during the war, fell from him like dust before the broom under Lady Bond’s eye.

  ‘Well, Mr Middleton,’ she said after a few moments’ talk, ‘your man’s brother appears to be distinctly wanting, but I gather that he has a licence and understands cars, and your man says he is absolutely trustworthy so I daresay he will do for a few days. Will that suit you, Alured?’

  Lord Bond would, on the whole, have preferred not to be driven by what he not unnaturally took to be the village idiot, but if his wife said it was to be he supposed he had better agree. Besides he liked Ed Pollett’s face and thought he might get some amusing local gossip out of him. So he agreed.

  ‘Then I’d better have a word with him now,’ said Lady Bond. ‘Ed!’

  Ed, roughly awakened from the pleasant day-dream about nothing at all which was his normal state, came nervously forward.

  ‘Do you understand, Ed?’ said her ladyship in a clear voice. ‘You are to come up to Staple Park on Monday and your brother will show you the car you are to drive, and you will drive his lordship till the end of the week.’

  Ed looked at his brother for confirmation.

  ‘Say Yes to her ladyship,’ his brother prompted.

  ‘That’s O.K., miss,’ said Ed.

  ‘It’s a little Denham,’ said Lady Bond, quite unperturbed by her temporary chauffeur’s mode of address. ‘Do you know them?’

  Ed smiled blissfully.

  ‘Of course Ed knows them,’ said young Mr Bond who had been wondering where he and Ed had met. ‘Do you remember the play at Mrs Palmer’s two or three years ago, Ed, and how Mr Richard Tebben’s car got stuck and you put her right? She was a Denham, wasn’t she?’

  ‘That’s right, sir,’ said Ed, smiling more benignantly than before.

  ‘He’ll be all right for you, father,’ said young Mr Bond, with the happy assurance of the young that their elders are so dull as to be immune from accident. ‘You’ll drive my father nicely, won’t you, Ed?’

  ‘That’s O.K., sir,’ said Ed, and then said something to his brother that the audience couldn’t catch.

  ‘Excuse me, my lady,’ said Pollett, ‘but Ed wants to know if he can have a uniform, because he’s only got the one good suit and he wouldn’t like to spoil it and he doesn’t think Mr Patten, the station master at Worsted, would like him to wear his railway uniform. I could lend him my old one.’

  This matter being satisfactorily arranged Lady Bond was just going to get into her car when a thought struck her.

  ‘Oh, Mr Middleton,’ she said, ‘we have arranged nothing about the public meeting after all. I really don’t know what my brother was thinking of.’

  ‘Of cows,’ said Mrs Middleton. ‘They all do at this time of year. Would it be better to put the meeting off till after the Skeynes Agricultural Show?’

  ‘Perhaps you are right,’ said Lady Bond. ‘Daphne, if you will come up to the Park on Monday I will give you a list of people and we will settle a date and then you could get on with the typing while I am away.’

  Daphne was quite ready to do this at half a crown an hour and at last the Bonds went away. Ed went to get his tea at his brother’s cottage before catching the 7.33 from Skeynes to Worsted, a journey which he intended to perform either in the cab of the engine driver, Sid Pollett, his first cousin, or in the van of the guard, Mr Patten, his aunt’s husband.

  Laverings and the White House all sat in chairs on the terrace and drank what they fancied.

  ‘I can’t think,’ said Mrs Stonor, ‘why people ever have meetings. It really seems to be the one way of not getting anything done. I think it would be so much easier if someone would simply write to Sir Ogilvy Hibberd and explain. He would be much more likely to take notice of a person than a meeting. Jack, why don’t you write?’

  ‘I write, Lilian?’ exclaimed Mr Middleton. ‘No, no.’

  ‘But why not?’ asked his sister.

  ‘My dear Lilian!’ said Mr Middleton, ever active in avoiding things he didn’t want to do. ‘My dear Lilian,’ he added, hoping to find something to say. ‘My dear Lilian, the thing is impossible. My name may carry some little weight. I have tramped the country about Pooker’s Piece year in year out, under blazing June suns, under the bitter blasts of winter, under the slanting showers of April –’

  ‘And do not forget the golden shower of autumn leaves,’ murmured Denis, catching Mrs Middleton’s eye, who wanted to laugh and frown at once and compromised by a glance of reproving sympathy.

  ‘– till every flower, every hedgerow, every blade of grass is as familiar to me as the palm of my hand –’

  Mrs Stonor said she wondered why the palms of people’s hands should be familiar to them. She for one, she said, never looked at hers, because it always seemed to be the back of one’s hands that one saw, or one’s fingernails if they suddenly happened to be dirty when one thought they were clean, which was always happening in London. It was really, she thought, because London water was so hard, certainly much harder than it used to be when she was a girl and it was an extraordinary thing that the water seemed to be getting harder all over England; and it was all very well to say Collect the rainwater in a butt, but when you lived in London it was quite impossible to have a butt in a flat, because first it wouldn’t go in at the front door and then there would be nowhere to put it unless one could have it on the roof and padlock it so that other people couldn’t use it and in any case London rain was so dirty, as anyone who left her window open when it was raining and saw the white curtains afterwards would agree, that it would really hardly be worth while unless one had a filter. Her hairdresser, she added, had a water softener machine which was very nice.

  ‘– but,’ continued Mr Middleton, who had been champing while his sister unburdened herself, ‘though I am, as it were, one with this Saxon countryside, bone of its bone, soil of its soil, there are others who have a yet greater and longer claim on it, affection towards it, and to them I must yield pride of place. Besides I don’t know the man.’

  ‘But that doesn’t matter, does it?’ said Daphne. ‘I mean if you begin Dear Sir it’s all right. People get heaps of letters from people they don’t know. Lady Bond gets about six or seven every day asking her to be a patroness for a ball, or sell tickets for something.’

  ‘Of Lady Bond’s post bag I know nothing,’ cried Mr Middleton, goaded beyond endurance, ‘but the cases are entirely dissimilar, entirely. I do not wish to ask Sir Ogilvy to patronize anything, to take tickets for anything. I do not wish to have anything to do with him at all. I do not know him, I repeat. In fact nobody knows him.’

  ‘But they must, Uncle Jack,’ said Daphne, severely practical. ‘You can’t be a person that nobody knows them, unless it was a kind of mystery film.’

  Mr Cameron laughed, so Daphne laughed too, though she didn’t quite know why. Then Mrs Stonor took
her family back to dinner, with a promise to return later in the evening.

  ‘How did you and Mrs Pucken enjoy the meeting?’ said Mrs Stonor to Palfrey while she was carving a chicken and Palfrey was handing breadsauce, gravy, peas and new potatoes.

  ‘It was very nice, thank you, madam, I’m sure,’ said Palfrey with such a wealth of sinister meaning that Denis and Daphne got the giggles.

  ‘Couldn’t you hear?’ said Mrs Stonor. ‘Lord Stoke wasn’t very distinct.’

  ‘It wasn’t that, madam,’ said Palfrey in a manner carefully calculated to stimulate curiosity.

  ‘Well, I hope you got a nice tea afterwards,’ said Mrs Stonor, dismissing the whole affair in what Palfrey considered an unfair and unsympathetic way.

  ‘Well, I always said no one could make breadsauce like you, Palfrey,’ said Denis, helping himself to far more than his share. ‘What was wrong?’