Nothing happens here except that Mad Ianthe has come home. She is another Ravonsbridge Worthy. You see, Canon Pillie, who is the incumbent of the early perp. church, is always called ‘poor Canon Pillie’. Why poor? Because he has a mad stepdaughter called Ianthe Meadows, who is always disgracing him. To me she sounds like a perfectly sane show-off, but she manages to set Ravonsbridge by the ears. When the town gets too hot for her they send her away for a while to an uncle in Yorkshire.
Emil says she is frustrated, but that means nothing. He is a howling cad about women. You must know that all our sex is divided into three classes.
(I) The select and, I hope, small class which has had the good fortune to be loved by Emil. These are described with a smirk, as fulfilled.
(II) The larger class which doesn’t want to be loved by Emil. These misguided creatures are subdivided into: (a) Nymphomaniacs, (b) Lesbians, (c) Frigid. I think, and trust, that I am now relegated to group (c).
(III) The unfortunate masses whom Emil does not love. These are frustrated. They may be married and mothers of ten, but they have missed the highest experience life can offer. If you give one little moan of protest, when he tells you all this, you will be accused of British prudery and British hypocrisy.
So when he says Ianthe is frustrated he merely means he doesn’t think her attractive.
You say in your last that I can’t really like him. Well, I do, though he often annoys me. Why? Why does one like anybody? I don’t know. At his best he is first rate. And he has done rather a lot for me: I have really got round to understanding rather more about painting, and enjoying it, through talking to him, and it has been a helpful occupation. So I’m grateful to him.
Well, Ianthe turned up at one of my lectures on Donne, and I nearly lost the thread, I was so much consumed with curiosity as to who she could be. She is most striking — a dead white face; very lovely, rather crazy, dark-blue eyes, black bangs, and an enormous scarlet coat, like a bell tent. Like nothing I’d yet seen in Ravonsbridge.
At discussion time, before anyone could bring up Kipling or spiritualism, she asked if she might recite her favourite poem of Donne’s. I said yes. I should have known better, for it was one of those poems and my audience had decamped before she had finished. I had naturally touched but lightly on them in my lecture. Oh — you’ll want to know which. It was the one about the ghost in the middle of the night. She said it beautifully. No point missed.
So then she grinned and said: “That’s what’s called making a party go.” I asked who she was and she said: “I’m poor Canon Pillie’s stepdaughter and I’m ma-a-ad! I’ve been away for six months in a looney bin.” She hadn’t. She’d only been in Yorkshire.
Since then she has rather attached herself to me, and I can’t help liking it, for she is amusing in a breathless, scatty sort of way. She is rather like something out of a Marx Bros, picture. She is a very good mimic; she can imitate anybody’s voice. I was on a ladder on the stage, fixing some lights, when the voice of Lady Frances rose up from the dark stalls. “Miss Carmichael! I can see right up your legs! Go home and put on sensible knickers.” I was furious. I quite thought it was Lady Frances and was just about to hand in my notice.
Dec. 15
What a honey you are to want me at Campden Hill Square for Xmas, and how kind of your mother to send that message! My dearest M., it’s very, very good of you to invite this skeleton to the feast. But I think I ought to go to Gorling and make merry with my poor Ma and little Bro. It’s going to be so madly gay I can’t wait, though we needn’t Hark the Herald in that church. We have three in Gorling, as Miss Betteridge pointed out.
Mr. Meeker has found ‘a objick in life’ for me, to quote old Annie the Scout. What objick? To run this Institute! Me!
You see, I went to him in rather a flap because I’d been to tea with the Chicks, the cultured railway clerk and wife who come to my lectures — my only link with the new town besides Mr. Meeker. Terrific high tea with sausages and Mr. Chick quoting Shelley; rather in the style of Mr. Wegg. “Life like a dowm of many coloured glass, Miss Carmichael, stines the white ridiance of eternitee!”
I said why shouldn’t we have a poetry reading evening at the Lump? And was told by the Chicks that the Lump has been taken away from the town by ‘Lady Millwood’, who wastes all the money putting on plays and concerts that aren’t worth going to. Well, that’s true. They aren’t. But it made me feel a little uncomfortable to think I’m taking the town’s money and giving so little for it, though the Chicks say they like my lectures. Somehow I’d always thought of myself as employed by Lady F. and, if she’s satisfied, why worry?
I pointed out that the town elects the Council, once every five years. Why do they keep on electing Lady F. if they don’t want her? But it seems that the Chicks never bother to vote. They just grumble and mutter that Mrs. Meeker says she’s going to get the Lump back for the town if it’s the last thing she does.
Now Mrs. Meeker is my Mr. Meeker’s daughter-in-law, and she is misnamed Grace, for she is quite the most disagreeable woman I’ve ever met. She lets me in when I go to read to Mr. M. and sniffs at me as though to suggest she knows I’m up to no good, but never utters, except that once she told me my lectures would be worth listening to if I’d been sent to work in a factory instead of to College. She has hair like an O-Cedar mop and a pale face full of sharp features, and she is on the Town Council and full of good works, and quite sure that everybody else is full of bad works. Having to live with her must be hell. But I believe Mr. M. is quite fond of her, though he laughs at her. He says she’s the most innocent creature in the world, and will bark like Cerberus in defence of the People’s rights, but any crook can throw her a bone with a nice name like JUSTICE or DEMOCRACY, and she’ll be off yapping after it while he gets away with the loot. And that has happened so often she’s got sour.
The idea of Grace as my Boss gave me quite a turn. So next time I went to Mr. M. I asked him what he thought. Isn’t it this town’s fault that it’s got such a dud Institute? He said yes it is. Will they ever bother to get a different Council? He said he didn’t suppose so. Very few are even interested enough to grumble. So then I said: Need I worry? Hoping he’d say: Of course not.
But no! He gives me to understand that he’d simply love to have me worry. He sits in his blue spectacles, stroking a cat that’s always on his lap, and urges me to worry. I said I’ve worries enough already. Said he: No, I don’t think you’ve any. That’s your trouble.
Which is perfectly true. When nothing matters any more one has no worries. I suppose he thinks if I could get into a flap about anything, even the Lump, it would mean I’d started to think something mattered. He’s a fly old bird. He doesn’t know a thing about me except my voice.
Well but, said I, wasn’t Matt Millwood crazy to wish a thing like this onto the town? He said no. If Matt had lived he’d have carried it through and got the town interested. He wasn’t a starry-eyed dreamer. He didn’t put a big theatre and concert hall in a small town without making plans to fill them and attract good artists. He’d have got motor coach lines from Birmingham and Bristol, and a variety of restaurants at different prices, so that people over a wide area could find it easy to run over to Ravonsbridge and dine and do a show, as they do at Stratford. And he’d have known which people in the town to get hold of, to help him, because he was friendly with everybody. He’d have got Chick on to organising poetry discussions. And there’s a young Welshman at the Works now, who has an amateur dramatic society which puts on very good shows; Mr. M. is going to take me to see one. He says that’s just the sort of man Matt would have roped in.
When he talked like that I did see that a lot could be done. A wonderful job for someone, I said. Whereat the objick was thrown at my head. After an interval of cat-stroking he said: Why not for you?
Me? Lucy C.? What could I do?
Anything you like, says Mr. M. You’re that sort of person. Matt Millwood was another.
Now Melissa, do
n’t start sending me telegrams to tell me not to. Lady Frances can worry about the Lump. Mrs. Meeker can worry. But if ever you catch me worrying about anything in Ravonsbridge you may put me into a straight waistcoat. My objick is to keep my hair on and not lose any more. I said so, and read T. S. Eliot to Mr. Meeker until sniffed off the premises by graceless Grace, who wanted to lay the table because Mr. Hayter was expected to supper. He, I may mention, seems to be exempt from her general disapprobation, which shows you what a smooth man he is. I believe he could get onto slap-and-tickle terms with the Furies.
But I rather wish I had known Matt Millwood.
Dec. 24th
Damnation! I can’t go home for Xmas. I have got shingles. What do you know about that? I didn’t know anybody my age could have them, but they can for I have, or something of the sort.
It came on at a horrible party they have at the end of term, after a most depressing Nativity Play. The Millwoods, the Staff, the Students, etc., all have to have an agapemone in the assembly hall, and sing carols and dance Sir Roger, etc.
I felt so ill I could hardly crawl through it, and when I got home I was very rude to Emil who was being spiteful about Thornley’s Nativity Play. I had a crise de nerfs and screamed at him, and we had a most disgusting brawl and next day I was all out in spots. Also a temperature. The Doc. prescribed anti-phlogistine, but I felt too ill to put it on and lay in my attic for 3 days wishing for nothing but death. Till “Lo and Beholes”, as Annie the Scout used to say, who should appear before me but Lady Frances! She had heard of the shingles and came storming along to reform them, in the good old Ravonsclere way. She declared that my attic was much too cold and uncomfortable and that I wasn’t being properly looked after, which I wasn’t. Poor Nancy can’t look after herself, let alone anybody else.
Within two hours I’d been whisked away to the Women’s Hostel, which was nearly empty, owing to vacation, and put in charge of Miss Plummer the matron, who is an excellent nurse, though nosey. She is one of those women who say: “Ah! I understand young things.” And hopes for confidences. She says people of my age never get shingles unless they’ve had a fearful nervous shock, and then she looks at me invitingly. Wouldn’t she get a turn if I told her my life story? But I must say this place is like heaven, after Angera Heim; so clean, so warm, and the food so delicious. And here I am, on Xmas Eve, for the whole holidays! It serves me right for having rather dreaded the idea of going home and facing Gorling.
Dec. 31
A happy New Year, and all that sort of thing.
My Xmas was full of drama but I haven’t felt up to writing about it till tonight, while I’m waiting to hear midnight strike.
On Xmas morning the Plum was in my room and we heard a car drive up and she rushed to the window and let out a shriek: MISTER MILLWOOD IN HIS RAVON ROADSTER! Terrific Charles at last! Out she rushed, and out of bed I popped, anti-phlogistine poultices and all, to get a dekko at this fabulous young man. But he’d gone into the house by the time I got to the window, so I admired the Ravon Roadster. In a couple of seconds he emerged. And I’ll say, right away, that as far as I could see he does look like the complete answer to the Maiden’s Prayer, and I am sorry that we move in such widely different circles.
“E’en in our ashes live their wonted fires.”
I’ll tell you who he is a little like: that man David produced when Martin couldn’t come, when we all went to Stratford on Avon. You remember we both admired him, but you said he had sensual lips, which was rather hard on him, because it turned out a wasp had stung his mouth and the swelling hadn’t gone down. We saw him at a concert later on, and he had quite an ascetic mouth really. But we always called him Sensual Lips, because we didn’t know, or had forgotten, his name; and for a long time he was our standard of manly beauty. Terrific C. is the same type: tall, dark, patrician. Very like his Ma. You said Sensual Lips was élancé, which impressed me very much and I’ve always wanted to say it about someone myself, and if it means what I think it means, Charles is too.
A face was goggling at him from every window in the hostel, but he never turned a hair and got into his Ravon Roadster and drove off in a very dashing manner. I nipped back to bed. Presently Plum comes in with hothouse grapes and freesias from Cyre Abbey and a kind little note from Lady Frances, wishing me a happy Xmas and saying how sorry she was I couldn’t be at home. Cried I: Did Charles bring them? Plum’s eyebrows went up at my impudence. She said Mister Millwood has brought them because Lady F. probably didn’t care to take her chauffeurs away from their families on Xmas day.
After this excitement I felt suddenly very flop. I suppose it’s because I’m not well. I get quite interested and amused and excited for about 5 minutes and then — poof! I go flat like a burst balloon, and realise I’m not really interested. I felt more depressed than you can imagine, until a big box of candy arrived from dear Thornley, and some tulips from the Mildmays, all with such kind messages. And in the afternoon Emil came with a little Christmas tree he and Nancy had decorated.
This is exactly like the Angeras. You can starve in their house. But over an unnecessary and imaginative thing Emil will take endless trouble. He must have spent hours doing this little tree. It was charming. And he led off with a handsome apology for his part of our brawl. He said: I am a fool and ungrateful. Thornley is my best friend here. But I am jealous of him, because he is happy here and contented, and he is doing the best work of which he is capable, and I am not.
While he was there, Ianthe came with a bottle of gin, and she was very nice too; she didn’t show off at all. They both laid themselves out to be nice and the Plum came in and we all drank the gin, with some orange juice, so I didn’t have too bad an Xmas after all.
I am much better now. Nearly well. It is midnight. The bells have just rung out.
Happy New — oh, I said that. Oh, Melissa!
2
COUNCIL meetings took place on the first and last Mondays of each term, at two o’clock in the afternoon. Lady Frances came in from Cyre Abbey. Tish Massingham, her eldest married daughter, came from Gloucester. Lady Anne Chadwick, her sister, came from Bath. Meeting in a café in Market Square they would lunch frugally and settle in advance any matters of importance which might come up at the Council, upon lines already suggested to Lady Frances during her many confidential discussions with Mr. Hayter.
On the first Monday of the Spring Term Tish was late, and her mother and aunt, waiting impatiently in Betty’s Bunshop, decided to order their meal without her.
“Don’t bother with your spectacles,” commanded Lady Frances. “I can tell you what there is. Baked beans or welsh rarebit. Which for you? Beans?”
She beckoned to a languid waitress and ordered one beans, one welsh rarebit, two rolls and butter, and two coffees.
“I’m sure that child has curvature of the spine,” she said, as the girl slouched away. “I wonder … oh! There’s Tish. Why is she decked out like that?”
Tish had merely put on a hat instead of the dingy headscarf which she generally wore. But she had a coat of black-and-white check in a loose cut which was unfamiliar to them.
“She’s not going to have another baby?” speculated Lady Anne, peering at the approaching Tish through the steamy window.
“Certainly not. I expect it’s the fashion.”
This was said with considerable scorn, and poor Tish, when she joined them, had to defend herself for her moderate finery. She was going, after the meeting, to a sherry party given by Mrs. Meeker whose acquaintance she had made at a Gloucester conference on Juvenile Delinquency. This sounded dreary enough to be permissible, though eyebrows were raised at Mrs. Meeker’s name, for she was greatly disliked by all the Millwood faction.
“One must be civil,” conceded Lady Frances. “But do listen to our news. Aunt Anne says Mr. Morgan is dying; she’s heard he can’t last a week. Such a good thing it’s the Lent Term.”
Tish perfectly understood the connection. Mr. Morgan was the Socialist Member for Ra
vonsbridge, put in by all that rabble across the river. If he were to die, there would be a by-election in which family honour required that her brother Charles should stand as the Liberal candidate, since few people could better afford to forfeit their deposits. All resources must be mobilised in his support, including those of the Institute, which was never very busy in the Lent Term.
“No play,” remembered Lady Frances, biting into her leathery welsh rarebit. “Some of the students might be available. And I must get hold of the younger Staff: Mr. Haverstock, Miss Turner and Miss Carmichael.”
Nobody asked if her intended recruits were Liberals. She assumed that if they were not they would say so. She respected the consciences of people who disagreed with her, but had no compunction for those who were too timid to speak up.
“How is Miss Carmichael?” asked Lady Anne. “Is she quite recovered from the shingles?”
“Oh, quite. But I must get her away from the Angeras. I must find her something more comfortable.”
“You think she’s a really nice girl?” persisted Lady Anne.
“Oh, very. So quiet and sensible. A little slow. She takes rather a long time to answer, when you speak to her. Why? Have you heard anything against her?”
Lady Anne had. During the vacation she had learnt Lucy’s story from a friend in London, and she now told it, with the comment that it might not have been Lucy’s fault.
“We-ell,” objected Tish, “no sensible girl would try to drag a man to the altar who was so obviously unwilling. Unless of course …”
Lucy Carmichael Page 9