Never Too Late

by Angela Thirkell

  “So does our Vicar, Mr. Choyce,” said Edith, “which is a good thing, because father will be at home now that he has more or less retired and he is going to read the lessons and he is really annoyed if the clergyman leaves out a lot of the first prayer and he reads it aloud to himself so that everyone can hear him. He did that when we were staying at Pomfret Towers and mother and I thought people might think it was interfering, but Cousin Gillie said ‘And a good thing too— I’ve always wanted to do it myself.’”

  “That is Lord Pomfret, isn’t it?” said Mrs. Morland.

  “Yes. I’m sorry,” said Edith. “Mother is always telling me to call people by their real names unless it’s just in the family, because they mightn’t know who they were” which rather muddled bit of reasoning Mrs. Morland appeared to understand and telling Edith not to hurry, but they would be starting at about a quarter to eleven, she went away.

  As the weather looked nastier and nastier, Edith decided to go in the tweeds which her mother, much against Edith’s wishes, had caused her to pack. She found Mrs. Morland waiting for her and they walked down towards the church, rather to Edith’s surprise who, in common with her generation, thought that if one had a car one used it even to post a letter in the pillar-box round the corner, an attitude which her American experiences had not done anything to change. The service—apart from the everlasting beauty of the words —was excessively dull and as there were four hymns, not one of which Edith knew, she derived but little benefit from it, and indeed found herself thinking about the party the night before during the sermon and only got to her feet just in time. The Vicar was standing in the porch as they went out, greeting his parishioners.

  “This is Edith Graham, Mr. Gould, who is staying with me,” said Mrs. Morland. The Vicar pressed Edith’s hand and said Graham was a fine Scottish name.

  “Not this one,” said Mrs. Morland. “Her father is Sir Robert Graham over at Little Misfit. He has just retired and is quite English.”

  Mr. Gould said “Ha!”

  “Besides,” said Mrs. Morland, looking at him severely, “her mother was Agnes Leslie, old Mr. Leslie’s daughter.”

  Mr. Gould said “Indeed,” though in quite a friendly way.

  “And our Vicar is Mr. Choyce,” said Edith, feeling that she ought to contribute to this rather halting conversation.

  “Choyce,” said Mr. Gould. “Ah yes. A bachelor, I believe.”

  “Well,” said Mrs. Morland, “there isn’t any law about clergymen getting married or not, though I believe the Bishop has a preference for celibate clergy but really, considering what life at the Palace must be, one cannot blame him,”

  “My dear Mrs. Morland,” said Mr. Gould, suddenly emerging from his official manner, “far from blaming I am ready to make every allowance for his lordship. A veritable Socrates.”

  “Oh, not as bad as that!” said Mrs. Morland, though exactly what she meant the Vicar did not know and nor, we think, did she, unless it was an expression of general contempt for people who let themselves be henpecked.

  “One does not of course know what goes on behind the Iron Curtain,” said Mr. Gould laughing slightly to show that this was a joke, “but from what one hears, his lordship is, shall we say, slightly under female domination.”

  “Oh, Xantippe you mean,” said Mrs. Morland. “I thought you meant he had a kind of satyr’s face with a broken nose,” at which Edith couldn’t help laughing. “Had you heard about the black-out curtains?”

  The Vicar said he thought those were, thank heaven, a thing of the past.

  “Well, we don’t have to use them at present,” said Mrs. Morland, “though of course one never knows with space rockets or whatever they are, but these were the old blackout curtains they had at the Palace in the war and my maid Stoker says the Palace head housemaid told her that the old cat—she meant the Bishopess—was having them made into extra aprons for his lordship.”

  Mr. Gould very properly said he could not believe it, even of That Woman, but it was obvious that he not only could but did and would spread the glad tidings as far as possible.

  Mrs. Morland then enquired after the Vicar’s garden, and took Edith away.

  “Are they really so awful at the Palace?” said Edith as they walked back to the house. “Father and mother dine there once a year and they have to ask the Palace back of course, but I wasn’t old enough for dinner parties till last year and then I was in America when they did come to dinner.”

  “Well, my dear, I feel I oughtn’t to try to influence you in any way,” said Mrs. Morland. “You know, people who write books often begin to look at real people as if they were people in books, and the Palace to me is an example of this. I mean I only know them very slightly and I must say that the Bishop’s wife has been quite extraordinarily rude to me once or twice, though I feel perfectly sure she didn’t mean to be, but is simply so ill bred and stupid that she can’t help it. But certainly I have the impression that she is a very unsuitable woman and makes a good deal of ill-feeling in the diocese.”

  “Perhaps she will have a stroke and die, like that Bishop’s wife that darling Gran used to talk about,” said Edith hopefully.

  “Would that be Lady Emily Leslie?” said Mrs. Morland, which question might, to an ignorant outsider, have seemed applicable to the Bishop’s wife, but Mrs. Morland knew her county, though not of county rank.

  “I wish you had known Gran,” said Edith. “I was almost too young then.”

  “And what are you now?” said Mrs. Morland, kindly.

  Edith was silent as they walked. Then she said: “Really, Mrs. Morland, I don’t quite know. Actually”—and though Mrs. Morland was quite sick of hearing that word from the young she gave Edith a good mark for pronouncing it distinctly and correctly—“I am a grown-up daughter at home.

  Emmy—that’s my eldest sister—got married when she was quite young and anyway she was always cow-minded and Clarissa did go to college but she got married too,” which rider amused Mrs. Morland. “But I’m not really anything-minded. And I think mother forgets a little that I am grownup. Perhaps it always has to be like that with the youngest.”

  “I really don’t know,” said Mrs. Morland. “All mine are sons.”

  ” Tour son’s your son till he gets him a wife’” said Edith.

  “So far so good,” said Mrs. Morland. “But the second line ought to be: ‘But he’ll go on expecting you to help him and his family all your life.’ Still, there it is.”

  When they got back to the house Stoker had nice cups of tea for them which neither of them wanted in the least, but there it is, as Mrs. Morland so truly said.

  “And there is one thing about the summer—if summer one can call this,” she said, looking vengefully at the grey sky, the depressed flowers outside bending (or in some cases breaking or already broken) before the nasty wind, and noting with no approval that it was beginning to rain,—“it can’t last for ever. Come and drink your tea while it is hot and then we will start.”

  The way to Crosse Hall as we know already was past the horrible new Housing Estate, over the downs and so past Boxall Hill, between which and Mr. Gresham’s seat Crosse Hall was situated. As they passed the turning to Little Misfit Edith had a very short attack of homesickness, but reflecting that her parents were spending the weekend at Pomfret Towers she quickly got over it and began to look forward to lunch.

  “By the way,” said Mrs. Morland as she turned into the short drive that led to Lord Crosse’s house, “their butler here used to be at The Towers.”

  “Yes, Peters,” said Edith. “I saw him here last year when I came with mother. He used to make skipjacks for us when we were small. I kept mine under my pillow till nurse found out because the cobblers wax had made the sheet so dirty,” and then they stopped at the front door.

  “Will you ring, dear,” said Mrs. Morland, “while I put the car a little further away” and she turned the car on the gravel sweep and parked it by a clump of nasty variegated laurels. The l
arge front door was open as at Holdings, and as at Holdings and so many other country houses, there was an inner door with glass panels in the upper part through which the hall could be seen. Edith pulled the shining brass knob to the right of the outer door and waited. A very satisfactory jangle could be heard inside the house. A boy in a neat blue suit appeared in the hall, gave an alarmed look at Edith and opened the inner door.

  “I’m Miss Graham,” said Edith to the boy, “and Mrs. Morland is parking the car. We have come to lunch.”

  “Mr. Peters only said to answer the door,” said the boy, who having faithfully obeyed his superior’s instructions now showed every symptom of being as silly as Casabianca. At that moment Mrs. Morland joined Edith, and Peters appeared. Ignoring the boy he bowed the guests into the house.

  “His lordship is in the library, madam,” he said to Mrs. Morland, “if you will come this way” and with stately tread he took them across the hall, opened the library door, announced “Mrs. Morland and Miss Graham, my lord” and went back to his pantry, where he gave the boy a cold look and told him to do those spoons all over again.

  “Mr. Peters,” said the boy, “can I spit on them? Dad always spits on his boots when he’s polishing them for Sunday.”

  “Boots is one thing and his lordships silver another,” said Peters, and quite rightly we think. “You keep on rubbing till that spit comes right off. And don’t look like that.”

  “I didn’t mean to look, Mr. Peters,” said the boy, “but I don’t see no spit, not now.”

  “Now, you pay attention, my lad, or you’ll never get a job in a good place, not even as boot and knife boy,” said Peters. “And when you do your military service the sergeant’ll tell you off good and proper if you can’t clean brass. Not that his lordship’s silver is brass, but it’s all the same thing. Spit and polish in the army; plate powder and polish in the Pantry. And a drop of methylated with the plate powder, but don’t go drowning it.”

  “Can I breathe on it, Mr. Peters?” said the boy.

  “Certainly not” said Peters. “You don’t breathe on the silver till you’re a second footman and not even then if you don’t listen to what I tell you. Carry on,” with which impressive command, relic of his war experience in the Home Guard, Peters took a tray of silver away to the dining-room, thinking regretfully of the days when he had three under him, or even four in the shooting season, at Pomfret Towers what time the present earl’s predecessor ruled as an autocrat before the last war. Relieved from his superior officer’s presence the boy spat on the spoon, rubbed the spit off with his cuff and gave his mind to polishing.

  “That’s better,” said Peters, who had come back for a tray-full of glasses. “You do as I tell you and you’ll be a mess sergeant yet, even if you don’t get into good service later. You can give those glasses an extra polish while I see about the wine.”

  When he had gone the boy breathed into all the glasses and rubbed them with a clean corner of his apron.

  “Let me see those glasses,” said Peters coming back with his empty tray. “What did you polish them with?” he added, casting a suspicious eye on the polishing cloth which lay neatly folded and spotless on its shelf.

  “Please, Mr. Peters, mother always does the glasses on her apron,” said the boy. “She says it’s the elbow grease as counts.”

  “Never mind what your mother does,” said Peters, which pronouncement appeared to uproot the whole fabric of society in the boy’s mind. “When you’re in My Pantry, you pay attention to ME. Now put all those glasses under the tap and polish them again with the glass cloth. In some places you might have a glass cloth as had been used for the silver,” at which words the pantry boy tried to look as if the very suggestion of such an enormity had eaten into his soul. “I suppose they learned you to read at school.”

  “Yes, Mr. Peters,” said the boy.

  “Then you see what’s on this cloth,” said Peters, holding a clean glass cloth as Barbara Frietchie (dreadful old bore) might have held the Union Flag.

  “Yes, Mr. Peters,” said the boy.

  “Well, what does it say?” said Peters.

  “I don’t rightly know,” said the boy. “It’s like Htolc Ssalg or something. Ow, it’s the wrong way round, Mr. Peters.”

  “What do you mean Wrong way round?” said the outraged Peters. “None of your sauce, my boy. Now, tumble to it,” which further reminiscence of his superior’s war service further confused the boy. “ ‘Glass Cloth,’ that’s what it says and don’t you forget it. Glass Cloths for glass and My Shammy for silver. It isn’t every house where the butler would let you use His shammy, but I want you to learn proper, my lad, and then you’ll get a good place. Another year or two here and you might get a place as second footman to Lord Aberfordbury, him as was Sir Ogilvy Hibberd. Not quite a gentleman’s establishment, but I know Sic Ogilvy’s butler and he’s doing his best to learn his lordship proper behaviour. Now don’t sit there chattering because there’s lunch to serve. And if you do those glasses and silver properly now, next time his lordship has company I might— I say I might —let you sound the gong.”

  To this magnificent offer the pantry boy could only respond by the words “OW, Mr. Peters,” but the butler felt that he had that day kindled a light which would not be put out.

  “And now you’ve made me two minutes late with My Gong,” said Peters, lest his slave should have been unduly uplifted, “and what his lordship will say, I don’t know.”

  But in the library Lord Crosse and Mrs. Morland, with some of his lordship’s excellent sherry, were perfectly happy discussing Mrs. Morland’s new book, for though that worthy creature had no illusions about the literary value of her books she was grateful to them for having over the last twenty years and more earned enough money for her to finish educating her four sons and now to live comfortably though simply by herself. The fact that she had—sometimes under stress of family worries or bad health—written them all by hand herself and now commanded a faithful audience for what she freely admitted to be second-class literature, did not appear to be present to her mind. Edith, feeling rather young with two such grown-up people, had taken herself and her sherry into the far corner where there was a complete set of Punch with one volume missing (a very common form of complete sets in country houses) and was happily lost in the year of the Du Maurier French Limericks, written and illustrated by that gifted being.

  “You know that book of mine you said Lady Crosse enjoyed having read to her while she was so ill, at the end,” said Mrs. Morland to her host, “the one where the Indian Ranee asks if she can come as a mannequin for a few weeks and turns out to be a Russian agent in disguise, and you said you had lost her copy. I found I had a spare one, so I brought it for you. The cover is rather dirty but one could put some brown paper over it.”

  “How very kind of you,” said Lord Crosse, with real feeling. “My wife did so enjoy it, and specially the part where Gandhi’s agent disguises himself as a Russian agent and tries to kidnap the Russian agent who is disguised as the Indian Ranee and Madame Koska locks them both in the stockroom and they try to set fire to it but your wonderful detective knew they were going to do it so he had sprayed everything in the stock-room with a secret preparation that stops things getting burnt and luckily they both shoot each other.”

  “I am so glad your wife liked it,” said Mrs. Morland, who felt that “Lady Crosse” was perhaps a little formal now that she had got to talk to Lord Crosse so easily. “I do wish I had known her.”

  “So do I,” said Lord Crosse, “at least I mean I wish she had had the great pleasure of knowing you. And now that you are here, will you be so kind as to write your name in your books? She always wanted to write to you about them, but felt shy,” at which flattering words Mrs. Morland felt rather shy herself, but said she would love to.

  “Then after lunch, if you will really be so kind,” said Lord Crosse, at which moment the booming of the gong, an instrument on which Peters performed as a past-master,
filled their ears and indeed most of the house. Such indeed was its booming that young Mr. Crosse came into the library not only unseen, as his father and Mrs. Morland were looking out at the garden, but also unheard. Amused by their conversation he slipped further into the room with intent to listen and saw Edith sitting on a footstool with her Punch, so he went over to her.

  Edith looked up, but the gong made speech impossible, so she smiled and shook her head.

  “Aren’t these heavenly, John-Arthur,” she said as the dying fall of the gong at last made speech possible. “Look at this one, about the Nightmare.”

  “Is that the one that begins ‘J ument de la n uit, ombre sombre’?” said Mr. Crosse. “I used to write them out for French impositions and it made M. Dupont furious. He was frightfully particular about punctuality and we used to call him Dupont de l’Heure.”

  “After that boring deputy one had to learn about in history?” said Edith.

  “Goodness, my girl! what a lot you know,” said Mr. Crosse. “That’s the one, Dupont de FEure, and why his name stuck in our boyish minds, I don’t know, or in your girlish mind either. But it’s funny that we both know.”

  “I think rather nice,” said Edith primly, and she got up and handed the Punch to Mr. Crosse who bowed and put it back in its place and went over to say how do you do to Mrs. Morland, with apologies for being a little late. Then, after giving her and Edith a questioning look which in modern English meant “Shall I top up your glass?” and getting a shake of the head in reply, he filled his own glass.

  “Bring it in, boy,” said his father kindly. “You know what Peters is” and he led the way with Mrs. Morland. Mr. Crosse winked at Peters, who was steadily observing a point just above Mr. Crosse’s left eyebrow, and followed the grown-ups into the dining-room where lunch was at a round table in the large bay window, much more comfortable for four than the big mahogany table, even without its extra leaves.