PART VI
L’AFFAIRE ANGERA
1
UNTIL Melissa came to Drumby the workers at the research station believed it to be the deadliest spot in the British Isles. Too large to have the charm of a village, too small to offer any urban amenities, it scattered a litter of houses on either bank of a disused canal. There was no cinema. The branch railway line only produced four trains a day, two in and two out. A bus ran, at impossible hours, three times a week.
Nor was the surrounding country at all pretty. Heathy wastes and flat fields, intersected by ditches, gave way to a horizon which always looked a little too near. A few windmills struck an exotic note, but they soon grew familiar. Groups of cows standing motionless under a cloudy sky suggested Cuyp; not everybody cares for unmitigated Cuyp. In the summer there was little shade, in the winter no protection from the gales which swept in from the North Sea. The local population had the smallest vocabulary known to man: the researchers had never heard them say more than: “Ah … bar …”
Yet some grandee had once built himself a house in this horrid place. It stood to the east of the town — Drumby Hall, with Palladian wings, cupolas, ornamental water, an orangery, a gothic ruin, a walled park and stone gate-posts surmounted by gryphons. The walls were now encrusted by barbed wire and a custodian stood between the gateposts, who examined minutely the passes of everybody going to the house. For, behind the barbed wire and under that magnificent roof, John Beauclerc and his associates spent their days doing a deed without a name. Not even their wives were allowed to know what it was.
These lodged precariously in the meagre little town and led the life of a frontier station without the common bond of shop which is the breath of life to an isolated community. Outside the barbed wire no man spoke of his work. Yet there were very few who could speak of anything else. Parties at Drumby were silent functions and there was nothing to do in the evenings save drink at one of the locals, all of which were bad, to grumble and to bicker. Some wives had babies and some had affairs; but research chemists are a serious breed, not expert in dalliance, and the wanton wives were short of material. There were numerous feuds over lodgings and charwomen, and a few scares about spies.
Everybody was glad to see a new face. Melissa’s face had a tonic effect on all the men while the women brightened at the sight of her clothes. She went to church, which nobody else had thought of doing, and made friends with the parson. Through him she discovered that several white men were living in darkest Lincolnshire. Some of the natives danced and drank sherry, had tennis-courts and could talk English. They had noticed that a crowd of disconsolate exiles was now wandering about Drumby, but had never thought it possible to make contact with any of them until introduced to Melissa; she was discovered to be ‘quite nice’ and had reputable connections, although her husband was one of ‘the Research People’. Invitations were issued, not only to Melissa but to others in the colony. The beginnings of social life were observable.
Officers from the training camp up the line were now also to be seen in Drumby. Hitherto they had spent all their off time in Fenswick, which had a cinema, and had regarded anything to the east as a wilderness. But they took to coming in for little parties, of which there was a sudden spate. Wives cooked chicken in port wine, a recipe introduced by Mrs. Beauclerc, and took the bus to Fenswick in search of brie, because Mrs. Beauclerc had discovered a shop there which stocked imported cheeses, which she served with amusing salads. Also they bought material and made themselves hostess gowns and became much fonder of their husbands, because dissatisfaction had suddenly gone out of fashion. There was still very little to say, but everybody smiled more, and those who grumbled acquired the outmoded air of people who use ancient slang. It was dowdy to be glum.
All this was quite unintentional on Melissa’s part. She had not set out to reform Drumby. She was extremely happy for the first time in her life and her spirits were infectious. She was passionately in love with John. She had her own little red-brick house, right on the main street, all fresh and sparkling with wedding presents. Not a cup or a saucer was broken as yet, nor had her chintz faced the laundry. She had time to polish her furniture a great deal and wash the lustres of her pretty candlesticks; she could eat what she liked and get up when she liked. She took great trouble over her little parties and became an accomplished cook.
John, escaping every evening from the barbed wire, could not believe that this was the same town in which he had lodged uncomfortably last year and thought so unpleasant that he dreaded having to bring her there. He would jump onto his bicycle and scorch back to her as fast as he could. Sometimes she would be polishing her goblets for a party, and sometimes she would be cooking his favourite supper dish of red cabbage in cider, but she was always smiling and always delighted to see him. So that for very perversity, in order to make her frown, he occasionally called her his dear little pudding, which was not a gentlemanly thing to do, for he had promised that he would not, when, after much persuasion, she had explained this mysterious phrase in their wedding address.
So passed the autumn and the winter. At Easter she glowed so warmly that Mrs. Callow, the town gossip, predicted a baby. But it turned out merely to be a brother who was coming to stay. Hump’s work was over and he was returning from Africa. The French Government, alarmed at the spread of cattle sickness to richer territories south of the Dandawa, had taken over his research. For Kolo and his poor little tribe this was fortunate. But Hump, after four years of struggle, after considerable success, was coming home with no prospects and very little credit for all that he had achieved.
Melissa wept indignantly over the collapse of Humptopia, but she was overjoyed to see him again. He arrived in the highest spirits, able, as he always was, to live in the moment and find it satisfying. He was sure that he would get another job sooner or later. In the meantime he meant to enjoy himself, tease Melissa, like John Beauclerc, and flirt with the girls in Drumby. As all the other men were shut up behind the barbed wire every day he had unique opportunities. Within a week he had improvised a golf course for himself and his harem on a sandy common near the Hall, cured Mrs. Callow’s chronic catarrh, and was said to be in love with a young sister who was staying with her. But his great gift to Drumby was the canal. He had taken a look at it in the train while on his way there, and asked if anybody sailed on it before he was out of the station. There was a rush for boats. Brightly coloured sails began to skim through the fields and frighten the cows, and at last Drumby discovered a topic for general conversation. Every man could speak of his boat.
Melissa thought her brother quite unchanged. He had put on weight but was getting it off very quickly. During much of the time in Africa his work had been sedentary. He had lived in a small mosquito-house, six feet by four, made of grey netting, inside which, he complained, everything, himself included, looked as though it was in a tank of dirty water. His ecstasy at getting out of it, at moving freely in the cool air, made every day delightful to him. He was perhaps more talkative than he used to be. Kolo and Mary Lou had been congenial, but for four years they had been his only civilised companions and he relished social variety. He would talk about anything to anybody and even managed to converse with the peasantry, who seemed to understand him better when he spoke Dandawa. He maintained that Ah bor! was a Dandawa greeting too, but his translation of it varied according to his company.
He also read a great deal, for he had been short of books for a long time — mowing through volume after volume with the speed and force of a bulldozer.
By the end of the second week the odds had lengthened on Mrs. Callow’s young sister. It was realised that Hump, though susceptible, was not a marrying man. This was bad news for maidens but not displeasing to wives, and increased the competition for him. He had decided that what Drumby needed was a club — some building with a large room where the colony could meet in the evenings and where, as he explained to Melissa, “one could dance with all the girls”. Everybody agreed with him
but declared that no suitable building existed in the town. He found one, however. On the banks of the canal there was a disused warehouse which, with very few alterations, would be just the thing. The Government, of course, would pay for these, if properly approached.
“Just say it’s for Drama,” he told them. “That’s the key word just now. Say you can’t carry on at the Hall unless you are able to act plays, and they’ll fall for it. I know there’s no money for houses or hospitals or a cure for the common cold. But there’s plenty for anything really crackers. Plenty for Drama. Believe me or believe me not, in the British Dandawa they’d got a chap going round teaching drama in the villages, yes, teaching it to people dying of hookworm. You paid him, I expect. But not our side of the border. The French aren’t crackers where money is concerned.”
His persuasive powers were so great that John eventually wrote in the name of the research workers to ask for a grant for a Drama Club.
For the rest of his stay Hump worked like a maniac over his scheme. He drew neat little plans for the alterations. A staircase must replace the ladder to the upper floor, which was to be the ballroom. Downstairs there were to be cloakrooms, a kitchen and a buffet. He made John apply for catering and drink licences. He went round to sales and bought furniture, curtain materials and a piano with only one note gone in the bass. He spent money freely and was convinced that the Government would pay.
“If you work hard,” he said to Melissa at breakfast, on his last morning, “you can have it open by the autumn. The girls had better start sewing those curtains at once. It occurred to me in the night that you’d better have a fire-escape. The staircase will be narrow; if the kitchen caught fire while you were all dancing upstairs, you’d be grilled in no time. Can I borrow Crabbe to read in the train?”
John here appeared with the letters and burst into loud cries of astonishment over his share of the mail. Authority had taken to the idea that Drama was necessary to chemical research and a grant would be forthcoming.
“Just what I told you,” said Hump. “If you can’t get cash for something sensible, say you want it for something silly. Go on asking for it for every reason you can think of until you hit on some nonsense that suits their nonsense.”
“But won’t we be bound to use it for Drama?” asked honest John.
“Certainly. The girls can act some plays in the Club. It’s the sort of thing they like. What’s your letter, Melissa? What has poor Lucy been doing now?”
Hump took a great interest in Lucy’s doings, though he was very critical of her and generally asserted that she had better have done something else. He was always asking Melissa for more about Ravonsbridge.
“They’re having a most sinister drama,” said Melissa, looking up from the scrawled pages. “A regular Dreyfus case.”
“And poor Lucy the leading Dreyfusard, I bet! What childish writing she’s got! Calls herself an educated girl!”
“It’s legible, which yours isn’t.”
“Only very primitive types are legible. Who is Dreyfus? And what is bossy Lucy doing about it?”
“She’s not bossy,” expostulated Melissa.
“I say she is bossy. Read it out. Bet you sixpence she starts bossing somebody before the end of that letter. Is Dreyfus our friend Emil? Thought so. Well … read it!”
Melissa read:
“‘Of all the horrible things that ever happened this is the bottom. Poor Emil has been sacked. He brought it on himself — one of his token resignations, but the Council have accepted it and ignored the letter he wrote taking it back, because it was sent to the wrong person (to the villain Hayter!), which is crazy of them, for they’ll never get anyone else so good. And everybody thinks that’s only a pretext and it’s really because of the Ianthe scandal. But I don’t, because that would be so unlike Lady F.’”
“I call it unwomanly,” complained Hump, “not to believe what everybody believes. What I say is, women ought to be clinging, dishonest little things. Don’t you think so, John?”
John, who was still wondering if it was all right to take this Government grant, said yes, caught Melissa’s eye, and said that he had meant no.
“‘And nobody is doing anything about it.’”
“Aha! So Lucy will.”
“‘If it had happened to anyone else there would be an uproar. But they don’t like Emil. Still — nasty people have as much right to justice as nice ones.’”
“Another very unwomanly sentiment!”
“‘So though everybody says they’re disgusted at the Council half of them are glad Emil has got into a scrape, and is going, and the other half don’t like him enough to exert themselves on his behalf.
“‘He’s been to see Lady Frances and she said the Ianthe scandal had nothing to do with it. That’s why I think it really hasn’t. Lady F. would be more likely to do a strip-tease dance than tell a lie. But he says he doesn’t believe it and that he called her a liar! And he says he got it out of her that Miss Foss accused him. But you can’t trust his account of anything. He’s got it into his silly head that Miss Foss was his accuser.
“‘I talked to Mr. Meeker about it and he agrees it is a disaster, whatever the Council’s reasons may be, because the town is very much worked up and all sorts of wild rumours are going about. He says somebody ought to tell them what they’re doing….’”
“I see sixpence coming!”
“‘So I said I couldn’t. I’m the youngest member of the Staff.’”
“Oh, come, come, Lucy! Don’t let me down!”
“‘I wish one of the men would do something. Bossy women are so repulsive….’”
“Too right, my good girl!”
“Hump! If you keep on interrupting I shall stop.”
“No, go on. I’ll be quiet. It’s just getting really exciting. She’s going to work on some unfortunate man.”
“‘So I decided to talk to Mr. Mildmay, the Librarian. He’d hardly heard about it; he mixes so little with the rest of us. So I was very scatty and feminine so as not to scare the poor old … er … man.’”
“Old what?” demanded Hump, sitting up.
“Man,” repeated Melissa smugly.
He stretched out a hand for the letter but she withheld it, admitting that the word was not man, and that Lucy was sometimes rather vigorous in her expressions, but that this was written only for another girl to see. Hump threatened to guess something much more vigorous than it probably was, but she said that could not be helped, and continued:
“‘When he took in the facts he was quite upset. I plugged Nancy Angera and how tough this is for her. Don’t you think that’s an artful line? I mean, men don’t like it much when a woman preaches to them about honesty and justice — but if she’s worried about another woman they pat her reassuringly and do what she wants….’”
“I say! I say!”
“‘So I appealed to his manly feelings and he ate it.
“‘He said it sounded like a bad misunderstanding that ought to be cleared up, and that he would speak to Lady Frances. I only hope he’s got it all clear, poor old honey pie….’”
“Really honey pie?”
“Yes, Hump, really honey pie.”
“Gals’ gossip,” said Hump, “is beyond any man’s power to comprehend or imitate. It’s perfectly unpredictable … the idiom, I mean.”
“Theocritus captured it,” said Melissa. “If you want to know how Lucy and I talk, read Gorgo and Praxinoë. Purely imbecile!”
“But no. That’s the point. It’s not purely imbecile. Go on.”
“Oh, you interrupt too much. And there’s not any more about that. The rest is about Lucy’s summer clothes.”
“I think I get sixpence.”
“You can’t say she was bossy!”
“She interfered. She pushed the honey pie into doing something.”
“Yes, but in a nice, womanly, clinging, dishonest way.”
Hump looked thoughtful and said that poor Lucy had better have stuck to her s
ummer clothes.
“Personally,” said John, who saw that Melissa was a little ruffled, “I respect her very much.”
“Oh, so do I,” agreed Hump. “I respect her like anything. But when I respect a woman I want to keep my distance, you know. I walk out backwards, making a low obeisance. Whereas, with an attractive woman the boot seems to be quite on the other leg. Towards her I rush.”
“Oh, I’m sure,” said Melissa. “Like the Hyrcan tiger. But don’t you agree, Hump, that this is a sort of Dreyfus case?”
“Absolutely. L’Affaire Angera. One of those muddles which wreck dynasties. A lot more in it than meets the eye. I’ve a notion Angera is merely a stalking horse.”
“I mean Mr. Hayter must know that this construction would be put on it. And he, I believe, is on the Council. Why doesn’t he speak up?”
“Oh, there’s a cartload of monkeys around. But poor Lucy has got it coming to her if she insists upon smelling them out. It’s a mug’s game to be a Dreyfusard. You see! They’ll all let her down. Honey pie will let her down. I’ll bet he hasn’t got his facts clear. Angera will let her down. He’ll do something idiotic. Only idiots manage to get themselves badly treated. Rush in to champion a poor victim and you’ll always take a toss over something silly that he’s done; there’s always something that weakens his case. I know. I’ve been through it all in my time.”
“If you’ve done it, why shouldn’t Lucy?”
“Oh, it’s all right for a man. Part of his education. It doesn’t hurt a man to make a fool of himself and come a smacker for the sake of truth and plain dealing. But girls should hang on to their dignity.”
“I sometimes think you’ve never rounded Cape Turk,” said Melissa in disgust. “I suppose that you think the girls (by which you seem to mean the whole female sex) had better stand by with balm and bandages while their men come smackers?”
Lucy Carmichael Page 28