Peace Breaks Out

by Angela Thirkell

  “I have a quite dreadful feeling that peace will be tomorrow,” said Lady Graham as they all sat in the garden after tea on Tuesday.

  “It’s our own fault if it does,” said Miss Merriman, who was hardly ever known to complain or criticise, “for arranging the sale. We might have known that any day we fixed would bring bad luck.”

  Nurse, who had come out to fetch Edith for her bath, said no one seemed to consider anyone’s feelings nowadays and she wouldn’t be surprised if Hitler hadn’t been at the bottom of all this peace after all.

  “Cook said, No bread,” said Edith, who was given to poetic outbursts.

  “What do you mean, Edith darling?” said her mother.

  “Really Edith, the way you do repeat things,” said Nurse. “We had tea in the kitchen, my lady, for a treat, and cook was passing the remark that they were saying at The Shop we’d better get our bread in to-day as there’ll likely be a run on it to-morrow. Really, some people don’t seem to have any consideration. Say good-night, Edith.”

  “Good-night Merry and eat a cherry,

  Good-night Clarissa and don’t cut yourself on a scissor,

  Good-night Anne, come again as soon as you can,” said Edith, accompanying her verses by a kind of hopping dance.

  “Good-night, darling Edith,” said Lady Graham, kissing her youngest daughter with great affection.

  “Come along now, Edith,” said Nurse, secretly very proud of Edith’s lyrical gifts, but determined not to let her know it.

  “Oh, mummy! I’d forgotten you,” said Edith running back. “Good-night mummy, I love you with my whole tummy.”

  “Come along, Edith,” said Nurse, justly outraged; and withdrew her young charge.

  Next morning the very worst had occurred. News of the outbreak of Peace had been announced in a grave yet refined manner to England at midnight through the courtesy of the British Broadcasting Corporation, who being used to keeping peculiar hours themselves did not realise nor care that the great mass of people were in bed and asleep at that time, nor that, in spite of all the Beveridge and Social Security fuss, there were a number of people who couldn’t afford a wireless at all. The next editions of this news were heard by the people who had to be up early and get breakfast for their husbands, or go to work early themselves and they were in too much of a hurry to bother; some shouting to Tom for the love of mike to turn off that filthy noise as they couldn’t hear themselves speak, others reflecting gloomily that it was the hell of a lot of good their knowing it was Vee Jee Day, they meant Vay Jay Dee, oh, blast it whatever it was then, as the shops wouldn’t be open when they went to work and would be empty and probably shut into the bargain at the lunch hour. By the time the later announcements were made, exasperated housewives said Oh God! another Peace and we’ve only half a loaf and Sheila and Dick coming to supper; so that by the time the newspapers arrived with the announcement that there would be a kind of public holiday, a number of people in suburbs and dormitory towns had already started by train to earn their daily bread in London, Liverpool, Birmingham and other places. Some of these discovered through the conversation of other passengers and a general feeling of apprehension that their office or works would probably be shut and angrily got out at the junction, there to await the very slow 10.40 down train and go home. Others, not having been warned, got to their destination and if employers swore loudly and attended to the correspondence themselves, if employed swore even more loudly because the pubs weren’t open yet (chiefly male) and the tea-shops were all sold out of cakes and mostly closed for the day (female).

  They then all walked aimlessly about London, swelling the already gigantic crowd of Esquimaux, Tibetans, Americans, Free French, Tierra del Fuegans, Poles (who owing to each supporting a different kind of Government seemed even more numerous than they were), Mixo-Lydians, Canadians, Slavo-Lydians, Australians, Indians (which to the English mind roughly included any Persians, Arabs or South Sea Islanders who happened to be about), Argentines who had loyally come into the war the day before, Chileans who were all called Eduardo O’Coughlin or Ignacio Macalister, a clergyman who had once lived on Tristan da Cunha, Irish labourers out of whose large wages paid by the Saxon Oppressor Dark Rosaleen was doing very nicely while her sons pursued a divil-may-care policy of sitting on doorsteps all day smoking and contemplating the repairing jobs they had been imported to do, Lapps, Swedes, Broccoli, Calabresi, Chinese who being used to three million people dying of famine or being drowned in floods were unimpressed by crowds, some Russians one supposes, practically the whole of the Balkan states, the head chief of Mngangaland who was in England with a large retinue to put his eightieth and favourite son to Balliol, and the President of the Republic of Sangrado, so-called from the great Liberator Shaun O’Grady (murdered 1843). And all these people walked up and down London all day, with very little to drink and little or nothing to eat, and squashed each other loyally in front of Buckingham Palace, irritably in the Strand, angrily in Trafalgar Square, furiously in the Tubes as long as they were open, and drove the long-suffering Metropolitan Police nearly demented by being funny at night in Piccadilly Circus.

  Meanwhile in the residential suburbs of London bakers’ shops were practically looted and mothers of young families went home with angry tears to make such scones as they could when they had meant to get the fat ration this very morning, my dear, and how on earth was I to know it would be peace when Tom and I are sleeping like the dead at twelve o’clock at night and goodness knows I haven’t a moment to listen to the wireless when I’m getting him and the children off and he always takes the newspaper with him and of course the milkman has only left us a pint to-day and what the good is of having three children under ten if you can’t get their milk don’t ask me, my dear. Whereas in transpontine Squattlesea and other less residential parts of London the bakers were working full time because their fellow-citizens, being as Communist as they were, would have wrecked their shops if they hadn’t, and the public houses mysteriously had beer for quite a long time after closing hours if you knew how to get it.

  In Barchester the day passed off in comparative peace, though with an amount of irritation that six years of war had not yet produced. The Close was convulsed by the news that the Bishop had asked the Dean to allow the organist to play the Red Flag after evensong as a sign of gratitude to our Wonderful Red Comrades, which piece of meddling the Dean had very neatly countered by asking the precentor to include in the service the hymn beginning “Lord God Omnipotent” which is sung to the tune of the Russian Imperial National Anthem, and announcing that instead of a voluntary after the service there would be a two minutes’ silence in memory of the Barsetshire dead, after which the congregation were asked to leave silently and reverently. Luckily the Deanery’s annual dinner-party for the Palace had taken place a week earlier and the Palace’s annual dinner-party for the Deanery—if you could call it a dinner-party with soup made from a packet and tap-water to drink, said Mrs. Crawley—was not due till February, which gave things time to simmer down.

  But we are anticipating and must return to Holdings where Lady Graham and Miss Merriman held counsel as to the advisability of cancelling the sale. Lady Graham thought that everything would be so upset that nobody would come. Miss Merriman considered that everyone who possibly could come would come so that they could tell other people how annoying it all was. Miss Merriman was usually right, the sale had been made widely known and one didn’t want to disappoint people, so it was decided to go ahead.

  The sale was to be held in the large room with long windows onto the garden. It had been known since the late eighteenth century as the Saloon and was now used as a kind of store for unwanted furniture and pictures till such time as it was possible to live in the whole house again, while a smaller room was used as the family drawing-room. Three or four large trestle tables had been put up, and here Miss Merriman, Clarissa and Anne spent the morning in arranging all the nasty things to look as nice as they could, which wasn’t saying much, fo
r few people had anything pretty left to give and all sales relied largely on the jam, cakes, fruit and vegetables brought in by the Bringers, who then themselves became Buyers of other people’s vegetables, fruit, cakes and jam.

  “That horror has been all round Barsetshire to my certain knowledge since Lady Pomfret gave it to the Pomfret Madrigal Women’s Institute sale in 1941,” said Miss Merriman, holding up an olive green earthenware vase at least two feet high with a spray of bulrushes painted on it. “It will go all round Barsetshire again I expect.”

  Clarissa asked if she might improve it.

  “You couldn’t,” said Miss Merriman, looking with fascinated loathing at the vase, “but do try.”

  So Clarissa fetched some gold and silver paint and with her neat, elegant fingers touched up the bulrushes in silver and painted the word PEACE in gold, slantingly.

  “I think that is just about right for a sale,” said Clarissa, putting her paints neatly away; and Miss Merriman thought that Clarissa was growing up very fast and must certainly go to school that autumn and become a child again for a year or two, while improving her mathematics and science if she really wanted to do engineering draughtsmanship.

  As they worked they chattered about the weddings and how sad it was that David and Rose couldn’t come to the Sale. Still, Martin and Emmy were coming with farm produce and Martin was going to bring Sylvia’s engagement ring with him.

  “How pretty your ring is, Anne,” said Miss Merriman.

  “Mummy said only to wear it for evening or occasions,” said Anne, holding out her right hand to let Miss Merriman inspect the ring more closely.

  “It must be an old one,” said Miss Merriman. “It is one of those Regard rings. A lovely little thing.”

  Clarissa asked what a Regard ring was.

  “Ruby, Emerald, Garnet, Amethyst, Ruby, Diamond,” said Anne. “Robin’s father gave it to me—old Dr. Dale. It belonged to Robin’s mother that died when he was quite little. And I thought Lady Graham’s Bring and Buy Sale was rather an occasion, so I put it on.”

  Miss Merriman again expressed admiration and Mr. Scatcherd came into the room carrying a parcel.

  “My humble contribution to Lady Graham’s sale,” said Mr. Scatcherd to Miss Merriman. “I should be much obliged to you, miss, if a reserved price could be put upon my sketches. One must keep up the standard and I should not like to see them go for less than her ladyship purchased them from me for.”

  Miss Merriman, who quite understood what he meant, said she would see that a reserve was put on the drawings.

  “Especially,” said Mr. Scatcherd, undoing the parcel and laying the contents on the table, “this one. It is the one I was doing the morning her ladyship happened to look in and see me about the sale. If I LIVE,” said Mr. Scatcherd, “I mean in the artistic sense of the word, for of course one might have a heart attack or be run over any day and mors is quite common in an omnibus as the saying is though I dessay it was horse buses they were thinking of, not motor buses in the Olden Times,” said Mr. Scatcherd with a scholarly air, “if I LIVE, this is what I shall live by.”

  “I remember it,” said Clarissa, coming to look. “It’s the Rising and some bulrushes. Are there really any bulrushes as tall as that, Mr. Scatcherd?” she added, pointing to the centre background of the picture.

  “Ah, it takes a Lifetime to understand sketches,” said Mr. Scatcherd. “Look again, miss.”

  Clarissa looked again.

  “Ah!” Mr. Scatcherd repeated in a superior way, with a kind of sneering smile which exhibited his rather cheap uppers to their fullest extent.

  “I know,” said Anne. “It’s the spire of the cathedral, isn’t it, Mr. Scatcherd? Only one does’nt really see it from here, does one?”

  “Now, here is a young critic who understands Art,” said Mr. Scatcherd, by-passing in a cowardly way the question of the spire. “Are you one of the family, miss?”

  Miss Merriman, who wanted to get on with the arranging, said this was Miss Fielding who was on a visit from Barchester and it was so good of Mr. Scatcherd to bring his drawings and she hoped he would come in the afternoon and buy something.

  “Not Number Seventeen, The Close?” said Mr. Scatcherd, getting so near Anne that she slid to the other side of Miss Merriman. “I know Number Seventeen inside and out, every corner. The postcards I’ve done of Number Seventeen, Miss Fielding, would surprise you. When I say ‘inside,’ I’ve never had the pleasure of being in the house, Miss Fielding, but the Eye of the Artist sees a lot through the windows in summer and what the Eye doesn’t see the Imagination can imagine. My sketches of the interior of the drawing-room with a nice Jacobean buffet and a spinet is quite one of my best sellers.”

  Anne was just going to protest that there was nothing Jacobean in the drawing-room and certainly no spinet, but luckily for her (for Mr. Scatcherd would have pitied her ignorance and despised her), Hettie who had been up to Holdings about a hen to sit on some ducks’ eggs and was passing the open French window, heard her uncle’s voice and came in, calling heaven to witness without a single comma that if uncle could give trouble he always did and hadn’t he the sense to see Miss Merriman and the young ladies were busy instead of standing there talking about his painting and rubbish good GRACIOUS did he think no one had anything to do but to listen to him and to come along at once if he wanted his dinner.

  Mr. Scatcherd, unable to make his voice heard, tried to make the kind of face Socrates might have made while Xantippe was, in Miss Lucy Marling’s favourite phrase, telling him what; flung his cloak round him so theatrically that not being buttoned at the top it all fell onto the floor, picked it up and followed his masterful niece.

  The ladies then disposed his sketches to the best advantage, provided raffle tickets for his view of the cathedral, washed their hands and went in to lunch.

  It had been arranged earlier in the week that Robin Dale, who was spending the school holidays with his father at Hallbury and had lately bought a cheap little car from a young man on leave who had spent his all on wine and women and wanted some cash, should come to Lady Graham’s sale and drive Anne back to Hallbury where her parents were also spending a few weeks, thus saving her the tiring roundabout journey by train to Barchester with nearly an hour’s wait. The sale was to be from two to five with tea sixpence at one end of the Saloon and when Robin arrived at half-past two he found Anne selling raffle tickets for the green earthenware vase. Robin said he would buy all the tickets if he might be allowed to break the vase, but Anne, who was taking her duties seriously, said that would not be fair and five tickets was the ration. So Robin bought five tickets and went to pay his respects to Lady Graham who was in the small drawing-room mildly trying to control her mother, who was profiting by Miss Merriman’s absence at the sale to make hay of the books, drawing and painting materials, letters, scarves, so carefully arranged by her secretary; also to knit an Air Force blue scarf into a state of inextricable and triangular confusion.

  “Mother darling, here is Mr. Dale,” said Lady Graham. “You know he is the Latin master at Southbridge and he came to Rushwater with John’s boys.”

  Lady Emily, always enchanted to meet new people, begged Robin to sit down and talk to her. To sit, owing to the barricades of portable property with which Lady Emily had surrounded herself, was not easy, but with her daughter’s help a breach in the fortifications was made, into which Robin was able to introduce a small chair.

  “I am so glad those dear boys of John’s are learning Latin with you, said Lady Emily. “I feel it is extraordinarily important, though I do not really know why. My father learnt Latin at Eton. I cannot remember who taught him, but I remember he was a very distinguished scholar because he became a Bishop afterwards and had a very good cellar. Papa bought some of his port after he died and I believe there is still some of it at Pomfret Towers. Papa translated a poem by Ronsard once and had it privately printed. Of course not Latin exactly, but I expect you know French too, Mr. Dale.”

>   Robin, feeling as giddy as anyone usually did who met Lady Emily for the first time, said he did know French a bit, but not enough to teach it.

  “Of course not,” said Lady Emily, with an earnestness that meant nothing at all. “My maid Conque, who has been with me for forty years, still can’t speak English. It shows what an extraordinary language French is.”

  Robin said it did, hoping to win favour thereby.

  “And are you by any chance connected with the Allington Dales?” said Lady Emily.