Before Lunch

by Angela Thirkell

  ‘I shan’t,’ said he. ‘I shall go for a long walk.’

  When Lou went into the drawing-room a few minutes later in answer to the bell, Mrs Stonor asked her to bring fresh tea for Miss Daphne who was coming down. Lou, who cried loudly and freely herself on the slightest provocation, knew at once that Mrs Stonor had been crying. As Lou could see no reason for the gentry to cry except Lovers’ Quarrels, she was much exercised. For Miss Daphne to cry would have been reasonable, but why Mrs Stonor?

  ‘Has Mr Cameron gone?’ said Mrs Stonor.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Stonor, he came into the kitchen to get his shoes and said he was going for a nice long walk. He is a nice gentleman, Mrs Stonor, and said it didn’t matter a bit when I told him about Miss Daphne’s photo.’

  ‘What photograph?’ said Mrs Stonor, not much interested in the girl’s chatter.

  ‘Mr Bond’s photo that Miss Daphne put under her pillow,’ said Lou, half frightened, half full of a delightful sense of power and the unchaining of unknown forces. ‘Mother didn’t see it, Mrs Stonor. I slipped it into Miss Daphne’s handkerchief drawer as quick as anything.’

  ‘All right, Lou, that will do,’ said Mrs Stonor, much to her informant’s disappointment. ‘And bring the fresh tea the moment Miss Daphne comes down.’

  When Daphne did come down she looked so wretched that her stepmother had not the heart to say anything about the engagement, and very soon went upstairs herself to lie down before dinner, for her head and her heart were both aching so much that she didn’t know which she disliked more.

  While Mrs Stonor and Mr Cameron turned into the little gate of the White House, it was but natural that Denis, who had been walking with Mrs Middleton, should accompany her into Laverings. Ethel, who was just bringing in tea, said that Mr Middleton had taken Flora and gone for a tramp over Worsted way.

  ‘He will do it on wet days,’ sighed Mrs Middleton, ‘and Flora is one mass of mud. However it doesn’t seem to do him any harm. You had better have tea with me, Denis, and we will look at those duets. Jack won’t be back till six at least if he has gone to Worsted.’

  As they drank their tea before the fire that Ethel had thoughtfully lighted, rain and wind beating on the windows outside, Mrs Middleton asked Denis how his ballet was. He was not much inclined to speak of it at first. The excitement of the mood had passed and he was in the Slough of Despond that so often follows some prolonged mental exertion. He saw all its faults and more clearly still he saw the extreme improbability of its ever being performed. But the temptation to unburden himself was too great, and gradually he found himself talking about his hopes and plans just as he so often did.

  ‘And now I have tired you,’ he added, in a fine glow of self-accusation. ‘You shouldn’t let me.’

  ‘How can I help it?’ said Mrs Middleton.

  ‘Do I know what you mean by that?’ asked Denis after a silence.

  Mrs Middleton said she wished he would tell her again exactly how much money would be needed to get the ballet company going. Denis mentioned the sum that would put the company on its feet. Ethel came in and cleared tea away. While she was in the room Mrs Middleton and Denis talked about the Agricultural. When she had gone there seemed to be no need to talk and a silence fell that was full of disquietude. Mrs Middleton tried to speak, but as no sound came from her she gave it up and reflected, with the nightmare clarity that is given by an anaesthetic, that not to speak was the very best way of laying up irremediable trouble for two people, and possibly for a third for whom her long affections and devotion were very deep. It did not help her at all when Denis said in a carefully ordinary voice, ‘If you look so tired I don’t know how to bear it.’ But seeing that she must help him even if she couldn’t help herself, she wrenched her mind back savagely from its far wanderings, got up, and said she would look out those duets. The music was piled on the piano. She began to turn it over. Denis threw his cigarette into the fire and came to her side.

  ‘I think,’ said Mrs Middleton, ‘not duets, Denis. Duets are a perpetual battle for the loud pedal. Music for two pianos is much more fun. If we had two pianos in the library —’

  Then because Denis’s hand touched hers she was speechless and powerless.

  ‘I think you are quite right about duets,’ said Denis, speaking to the top of her head. ‘You always are right. Also kind. Also too tired. I am going home to see how Daphne is. I am only talking because it is extremely important that someone should talk at this moment. When I first saw you again at Laverings I wanted more than anything in the world to make you look less tired. I still want that, but I have made no kind of success of it. Indeed a failure. I shall see you at Lady Bond’s horrible dinner to-night.’

  Then Mrs Middleton was left alone. So she put away the music and wrote some dull letters and before long Mr Middleton came back.

  ‘A giant refreshed, Catherine,’ he called to her as he came in. ‘I have walked in good English rain and mud since three o’clock. So has Flora. She delights in everything that her master loves. Now to prepare for Bond’s dinner party. I feel that I shall be in vein to-night. Did you enjoy the Agricultural, my dear?’

  Mrs Middleton said it had been very nice and they went upstairs to dress. While they were waiting for the car Mr Middleton looked anxiously at his wife.

  ‘There is a cloud,’ he said. ‘Can you tell me?’

  ‘It is just a small, secret grief,’ said Mrs Middleton, faintly amused that she was capable of so accurately analysing her own feelings.

  ‘Keep it then, my dear,’ said her husband with all his kindness. ‘I wouldn’t interfere with your secret griefs. But let me know when I am needed.’

  11

  Mr Cameron Escapes

  The dinner table at Staple Park was round on ordinary occasions, and by the addition of various leaves it could seat as many as twenty-four. To-night there were to be eighteen, so it was not developed to its greatest extent, but even so it looked highly impressive and Spencer felt that it was on the whole worthy of him. Lord Pomfret was always invited to the Agricultural dinner and always declined. The other local landowners present were Lord Stoke, Mr and Mrs Palmer with their niece Betty Dean, the Middletons and Mr and Mrs John Leslie, a very nice, rather dull couple who came as representatives of Mr Leslie and Lady Emily Leslie at Rushwater. These, with Miss Starter, Mr Cameron, the Stonors and the Dean of Barchester and Mrs Crawley, made up the party.

  Poor Daphne found herself between Mr Cameron and young Mr Bond, and as Mr Bond was getting on extremely well with Betty Dean on his other side, she wished more than ever that her cold had been bad enough to keep her in bed. On the same side of the table Mrs Stonor, in the intervals of talking to Mr Leslie and renewing an old acquaintance with the Dean, was able to look across at Denis, between Mrs Leslie and Mrs Palmer, and wonder what exactly had happened that afternoon, for that something had happened she was perfectly sure.

  ‘I hope, Mr Dean,’ said Lady Bond to her left-hand neighbour, ‘that you and Mrs Crawley will be able to come to a meeting in the village on the evening of the ninth about preserving Pooker’s Piece. You will have an invitation by Wednesday morning.’

  The Dean said that if there was an Evangelical humbug in England it was the Bishop of Barchester, who had arranged a meeting at the Palace for that evening. What the meeting was about he could not at the moment precisely remember, but if it was intended to further any of the Bishop’s plans, he ought to be there and lead the opposition.

  ‘You know it is Sir Ogilvy Hibberd who has bought Pooker’s Piece,’ said Lady Bond. ‘He wants to build a road house.’

  ‘Hibberd?’ said the Dean. ‘A pestilent fellow. One of those clerically-minded laymen that are such a thorn in our flesh. I had the pleasure of blackballing him for the Polyanthus. I’ll come if I can, Lady Bond, and if not I’ll send my secretary. He is young and vigorous to a degree that quite exhausts me and will lead any movement with the greatest of pleasure. In fact if you would switch him onto the Preservation of Po
oker’s Piece it would be a real godsend to me and perhaps he would allow me to answer some of my own letters.’

  As the talk between Lady Bond and the Dean was long and animated, lasting well into the saddle of lamb and red currant jelly, Mrs Stonor on the Dean’s other side had to go on talking to Mr Leslie, which was easy enough if one asked him about his two young children; and the next couple, Betty Dean and young Mr Bond, were similarly thrown into each other’s arms. As they had many American friends in common, and young Mr Bond took no notice of Betty’s peculiar manner, they got on very well and indeed made a good deal of noise, which was far from inspiriting to poor Daphne. And, as a stone thrown into water spreads a ripple over the pond, so did the ripple from the Dean and Lady Bond reach Daphne, forcing her to talk to her affianced on her other side. In justice to this unhappy pair it must be said that they did their best. Daphne told herself again and again that Alister was one of the nicest people she had ever met and asked him a great many questions about the College of Epistemological Ideology, but she couldn’t help hearing the gay and heartless chatter between young Mr Bond and Betty Dean, nor could she help turning her head from time to time to lacerate her eyes with the sight of the huge sapphire on Betty’s left hand. Mr Cameron told himself what a darling girl Daphne was, and how well she looked even with the remains of a cold and how nice it would be to have a wife who took an interest in damp courses and reinforced concrete, but he thought a good deal about Lilian Stonor and people making mistakes and honourably living up to them, and often answered Daphne’s questions rather at random, which made no difference, as she was not listening to the answers.

  On Mr Cameron’s other side Mrs Crawley was talking comfortably to Lord Bond about the shocking state of the Deanery coal cellar, while beyond them Mrs Middleton fed Mr Palmer with questions about his dairy and how his nephew Laurence was getting on. She could not see Denis, two couples away, and wished she could and was glad she couldn’t. As for Miss Starter and Lord Stoke they became almost inseparable at once, for Lord Stoke’s mother had once been proposed to by Miss Starter’s father, and after crying for twenty-four hours, for Lord Mickleham was poor and a poet and quite ineligible in spite of his title, had married old Lord Stoke, while Lord Mickleham had immediately married the first of the three wives who had brought him his eighteen children. Miss Starter, having lived with semi-royalty, was extremely good at Debrett, a book of which Lord Stoke made an almost religious study, and cousins and connexions by marriage flew between them like so many shuttlecocks, till Miss Starter quite forgot her diet and took melted butter and a piece of ordinary toast, both of which were well known to be death to her. Beyond them Mrs Leslie talked gently to Denis about her two young children, her sister-in-law Agnes Graham and her six children, her brother-in-law David who always had such an amusing time, her nephew Martin Leslie who was down from Oxford now and working in his grandfather’s estate office, and how much she liked Littlehampton. Her mild babble gave Denis every chance of wishing he could see Mrs Middleton, two couples away, and being glad that he couldn’t. And Mrs Palmer and Mr Middleton were doing their best to talk each other down on the subject of the Post Impressionists, both having very decided views combined with a distinct difficulty in remembering whether Manet and Gauguin were Monet and Van Gogh or someone else.

  Altogether Lady Bond was able to tell herself, as she always did, that her party was being a complete success and even Spencer relaxed a little as the roar of contented diners-out rose louder and louder. But the happiest of parties must be broken up when the fatal moment comes for the hostess to take a gracious leave of her first partner and set to her second. Much as Lady Bond would have liked to go on talking to the Dean, who was speaking evil of his Bishop in a way that was balm to her staunch High Church spirit, she saw that the turning point had arrived, said the Dean must tell her more about the Palace later on, and seizing a lull in the discussion on Post Impressionism asked Mr Middleton for news of Lily, thus releasing Mrs Palmer to talk to Denis.

  ‘What’s the matter with your stepmother?’ said Mrs Palmer ‘She doesn’t look well.’

  Denis said she had been nursing Daphne, who had a cold.

  ‘I suppose she wears herself out over you young people,’ said Mrs Palmer, and then softening to Denis, for she had no children and was very fond of her nephews and nieces and the young in general, she put him through a rigorous cross-examination about his own past life, health, work and prospects. Denis liked her blunt kindness and answered all her questions as well as he could. ‘Of course a wife is what you need,’ said Mrs Palmer. ‘Someone like Betty who would look after you. Pity you didn’t meet her sooner. How well she looks to-night, and no wonder.’

  Denis looked across at Betty, who certainly looked handsome and animated beyond her wont talking to young Mr Bond, and shuddered at the thought of managing her.

  ‘You young men will not wear enough clothes,’ said Mrs Palmer, noticing the shudder. ‘This weather is very treacherous. I’ll tell you what you ought to do.’

  So she told him, and next to him Mrs Leslie told Lord Stoke about her children, and her husband’s relations, and Lord Stoke thought she was a nice sensible little woman and told her about the new kitchen range at Rising Castle.

  Miss Starter, abandoning with regret her genealogical talk with Lord Stoke, turned to Mr Palmer, and asked him, for she had acquired a royal memory for faces and names, whether she had not seen him and his wife at Homburg before the war. Mr Palmer, who had never forgiven the Germans for making it impossible to take his usual cure for several years, said they were a bad lot and now he had quite stopped trying to see any good in them he felt much more comfortable. Miss Starter was able to tell several harrowing stories of insults accorded to her at minor German courts where she had been in attendance on H.H. Princess Louisa Christina, courts where, in spite of their intolerable stickling for rank and precedence, she, an English Honourable, had been treated as a commoner. Mr Palmer put forward the comprehensive view that all foreign titles were rubbish and there was nothing abroad to touch an English Duke, to which Miss Starter agreed so heartily that she ate some ice pudding, a delicacy absolutely forbidden by her physician.

  ‘You look a little tired,’ said Lord Bond to Mrs Middleton. ‘It was very good of you to come to the Agricultural, but it’s too much for you on a day like this. Sorry Middleton couldn’t come.’

  ‘He was rather busy with work,’ said Mrs Middleton, feeling that any kindness was more than she could bear.

  ‘Nice of Mrs Stonor to turn up too,’ said Lord Bond, in great content with his party. ‘She looks a bit run down. Nice girl that stepdaughter of hers. Plenty of character Miss Daphne has. Only person I ever knew that got the upper hand of my butler. I’ve had the piano key ever since she told him to give it back to me. And Denis is a nice boy too, a very nice boy. I’d as soon listen to him playing Gilbert and Sullivan as anything. What’s he going to do with his music, eh? Not much money in music, I suppose.’

  Mrs Middleton said he had written the music for a ballet but it cost a lot to get that sort of thing produced, naming the sum that Denis had mentioned.

  ‘Ballet, eh?’ said Lord Bond, looking down from the head of the table at his young guest with increased respect. ‘Pretty girls in tights and crinolines, eh? Is it pretty music? I did mean to ask him to play me some, but we always got back to Gilbert and Sullivan. He likes it as much as I do.’

  Mrs Middleton said it was very pretty music.

  ‘I must have a talk with that young man,’ said Lord Bond. ‘Now you know what you need is a good holiday, Mrs Middleton. Go off on a cruise or something.’

  So he gave her a great deal of very kind and quite useless advice, and she wondered why to say a person’s name was so difficult and was thankful that she had been able to speak of Denis as ‘he’ when Lord Bond was asking about him.

  Mrs Crawley and Mr Cameron both knew Mr Barton, the architect who was doing some repairs to Hiram’s Hospital in Barchester, an o
ld building in which the Crawleys were much interested, so they got on very well, and now Daphne found herself left with young Mr Bond.

  ‘I’ve been longing to talk to you ever since dinner began,’ said young Mr Bond.

  Daphne wanted to say ‘So have I,’ but a stranger that had got inside her and was hurting her dreadfully said in a rather horrid voice that he had seemed very happy with Miss Dean.

  ‘She’s a splendid girl,’ said young Mr Bond enthusiastically. ‘I wish you could know her better, but she’s going to America so soon. You know we are going on the same boat. I wish you were coming too.’

  The stranger said she knew she would simply loathe America.

  ‘I say, Daphne,’ said young Mr Bond anxiously, ‘I haven’t done anything stupid, have I? I thought I might have annoyed you about something last time I was down here and you know I’d die sooner than be a nuisance. Can’t you tell me what it is and I’ll apologize like anything, even if I haven’t done it.’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ said Daphne, pushing the stranger aside. ‘It’s only —’