Miss Bunting

by Angela Thirkell

  After exchanging a few genteel commonplaces, Jane Gresham asked Mr Pattern if he knew of any house of a moderate size to let in Old Town, New Town or the neighbourhood, from the end of July for two or three months. After making a great show of running through the pages of a large book, during which Jane felt sure she heard him say: ‘Mrs Aggs, Mrs Baggs, Mrs Caggs, Mrs Daggs, Mrs Faggs, Mrs Gaggs and Mrs Gresham,’ he looked up with a fevered brow and said there was simply not a house to be had.

  ‘I know there isn’t,’ said Jane. ‘There never is now. But what I want to know is if there is one.’

  This request Mr Pattern appeared to find quite in order.

  ‘Well, there is The Cote,’ said Mr Pattern, ‘and I dare say The Cedars might consider a let.’

  ‘I don’t think they would for a moment,’ said Jane. ‘They’ve got three ex-Land Girls each with a baby and her husband abroad, so things are quite comfortable. And The Cote is far too large. The friend who wants a house only wants it for his daughter and a governess, and he might come down at week-ends himself.’

  ‘Well, there is Mrs Foster’s house, Mrs Gresham,’ said Mr Pattern, warming to the game, as he always did. ‘Quite a small nest but cosy. She might be thinking of going to her sister at Torquay for the summer.’

  ‘That wouldn’t do a bit,’ said Jane. ‘You know there are only two bedrooms and an attic where no servant would sleep even if you had one. Well, I’ll have to try Barchester.’

  ‘Just one moment, Mrs Gresham,’ said Mr Pattern. ‘Slow and sure wins the day as they say. I suppose your friend wouldn’t care to try the New Town, or further afield?’

  As Jane had already mentioned both Old and New Towns, not to speak of the neighbourhood, she only said she thought he would. Mr Pattern, with damped forefinger, then made an excursion through various large books and loose-leaf holders, while Jane wondered if a woman would do it better, and came to the conclusion that she would probably do it far more quickly and efficiently, but would also wreck herself in the process, and this Mr Pattern was quite obviously, and perhaps rightly, determined not to do. So, being quite used to waiting for nothing to happen, she waited.

  ‘Ah!’ said Mr Pattern, shutting a large book with a lordly gesture, but keeping his finger in the place he wanted, ‘here we are, Number 28 De Courcy Crescent, three bed, one large sit. with alcove dining, kitchen and usual offices. Bath is in kitchen, Mrs Gresham, but it’s a luxury bath, with a splendid cover that your friend could use for an ironing-table or for the sewing-machine.’

  Jane said she didn’t think her friend would want to iron or use the sewing-machine as he was in Barchester all day, and she was sorry Mr Pattern had nothing suitable. Besides, she added, De Courcy Crescent had the railway on one side and the gasometer on the other, and everyone knew the smuts were dreadful, especially when the washing was out.

  ‘Of course if I’d known the gentleman wished to wash at home,’ said Mr Pattern, sibilantly and pityingly.

  ‘Well, thank you so much, and you’ll let me know if you hear of anything,’ said Jane, getting up.

  ‘Now, just one moment, Mrs Gresham,’ said Mr Pattern, who was enjoying to the full the age-old conventions of bartering. ‘There’s a house just come in this morning in Riverside Close.’

  Abstracting her mind from an unbidden vision of a peripatetic house – perhaps on chicken’s legs like Baba Yaga’s – Jane said she would look in another time.

  ‘Three bed, two sit., lounge hall, lock-up garage, constant hot water, fridge, tiled bath and ekcetera,’ said Mr Pattern with a resolute display of his fine uppers.

  ‘I can’t wait now,’ said Jane. ‘But if you’ll give me the address again I might look at it. Is there anyone there or shall I take the key?’

  ‘Well, Mrs Gresham, there is someone there,’ said Mr Pattern. ‘I don’t think I made it quite clear that it’s not to let, Mrs Gresham, at least, not as a house if you see what I mean. The owner, Mrs Merivale, takes paying guests. She is a widow and she always makes everyone very comfortable. Canon Banister’s mother was with her for some months before she died, and I know some of Mrs Crawley’s daughters have been there with their children during the war.’

  The mention of Canon Banister and the Dean’s wife, both old Barchester friends, made the whole affair seem much more possible. Jane took the address, thanked Mr Pattern and, for much time had gone in shops and at the house agent’s, had to hurry to the Rectory to fetch Frank home to lunch. This was not really necessary, for Frank had taken himself to and from school unaccompanied since he was quite small, but it was a pleasant diversion for her before lunch, and as Frank had not yet reached the stage of being ashamed of her, she profited by his tolerance.

  Hallbury Rectory was a modern building by Hallbury standards, certainly not earlier than 1688. The original Rectory, which stood on the north side of the church and almost against it, naturally got no sun from the south. Owing to a thick screen of clerical vegetation such as dark conifers, ilex, a kind of cypress and high laurel hedges, it got little or no light from the east or west, and on the north looked across a wall on to a large barn. As there was also a well in the cellar, fed mostly by the town drainage, the incumbents and their wives and families had died off like flies until a lucky fire one Guy Fawkes Day had reduced it to a blackened shell. The Rectory was then moved to a commodious brick and stone house and produced quantities of valuable children, among whom was the Augustus Palliser who had served under Lord Howe and bought Hallbury House. As a thank-offering for this mercy the special prayers for Guy Fawkes Day were regularly read on the Sunday nearest to November the Fifth, and though, owing to a deplorable access of broadmindedness, the Rev. the Hon. Reginald de Courcy had suppressed them in the eighteen-thirties, many of the old prayer books still had them, and Admiral Palliser always made a point of reading them to himself with some ostentation during the sermon on the appointed day.

  The church, one of the many beautiful and unpretentious stone churches of these parts, with a tower and battlements, was called St Hall Friars. The origin of this name was rather obscure. Early local antiquarians with simple enthusiasm had decided that Saint here stood for Holy or Blessed, and referred to a supposititious hall or lodging house for monks from the great abbey at Brandon, now utterly lost. As there was known to have been a church on that spot in one form or another since the conversion of Wessex, and no indication of the monks from Brandon Abbey having ever lodged there or anywhere but in their own house and in any case monks are not friars, this theory was held up to ridicule in the Barchester Mercury (one of England’s oldest provincial papers, now incorporated with the Barchester Chronicle) in about 1793 by a notorious freethinker, Horatio Porter, Esq., who subsequently died of a stroke while having a debauch in his kitchen with his cook. Such was Mr Porter’s profligacy, and such the weakness of the owner of the Mercury who was heavily in his debt over cards, that his letter was printed entire, with an ingenious suggestion that for Hall Friars, Hell-Fire should be read. Mr Porter’s death (accompanied by a violent thunderstorm and the birth of a calf with six legs at Brandon Abbas) so shocked the public that the whole matter dropped until a disciple of John Keble, digging among old papers in the Bishop’s library at Barchester, found that a certain rude Saxon swineherd named Ælla had been slain by the bailiff of the monastery to which he was attached for refusing to drive the pigs afield during Lent, owing to which saintly action, most of the pigs (six weeks being a long period) had died of hunger and thirst, while the swineherd was in due time canonized. As there was no corroboration of any kind for this story it obtained great credence and even caused a weak-minded young gentleman of good family to draw back from Rome. Under the influence of Bishop Stubbs a variety of further research was made, leading nowhere at all, and there the matter rests. It is true that the Hallbury branch of the Barsetshire Mothers’ Union has a banner heavily embroidered in gold representing St Ælla in mauve and green robes with a shepherd’s crook, but the present Rector, Dr Dale, is rather asha
med of it and keeps it reverently in tissue paper in case the gold should tarnish.

  When Jane Gresham got to the Rectory she passed the front door and went through a gate in the wall into the old stable yard. Here what used to be a stable with grooms’ quarters above had been converted into a light and airy two-storey building with a furnace to heat it, and from it came a chirruping of young voices, high above which Jane, with mingled love and irritation, could hear that of her son. She looked cautiously through an end window, but her caution was not necessary, for the whole school of seven or eight little boys was tightly clustered round a young man who was showing them something. She sat down on a stone mounting-block and looked about her. A deceptive gleam of sunshine lit the stable yard, though with no warmth in it; the smell of horses and leather still lingered in the air, she could almost hear the rustle of straw, the pleasant jingle of harness, the steady champing of oats, almost hear the clank and splash of buckets being filled at a pump and the hissing of the grooms at work. Then the half-hour after noon sounded from St Hall’s tower. The babel inside was suddenly stilled, a little boy ran out and began to pull the wrought-iron handle of the yard bell and out came the whole class, nearly tripping up their master.

  ‘Hullo, Robin,’ said Jane Gresham.

  ‘Hullo, Jane,’ said the young man, and sat down on the horse-block beside her.

  ‘What was all the noise?’ said Jane.

  ‘I promised I’d show the boys how my foot fastens on,’ said the young man, ‘and now I can’t get the foul thing fixed again. Do you mind?’

  Without ostentation he pulled up his right trouser leg and busied himself with his artificial foot. Having accomplished the job at last to his satisfaction, he smoothed the crease in his trousers.

  ‘Ass,’ she said. ‘One day you’ll do it once too often. Anyway, they’ve all seen your foot about a hundred times.’

  ‘I know,’ said the young man. ‘I expect it’s showing off. It isn’t everyone who has a foot like mine. I remember when I was little I had a book called Otto of the Silver Hand, with illustrations, woodcuts I think, rather grim and frightening, and always wished I had one. I didn’t think of a foot. But a silver one would be a bit heavy.’

  Jane Gresham looked at him. Robin Dale whom she had known all her life, the Rector’s only son by a late marriage, had been a junior classical master at Southbridge School just before the war. Then he had gone into the Barsetshire Yeomanry, got a commission, fought all through Africa and Sicily, and finally had his right foot so badly shattered in the Anzio landing that it had to be amputated, and he had been discharged. Southbridge School would willingly have taken him back, but he still felt too crippled and self-conscious to face the school life. His father, a widower for many years, living alone, wanted Robin to stay at home for a time. Robin had done his best to be valiant, but he moped sadly till Admiral Palliser, who did not like to see people mope and found work a cure for most evils, suggested that he should give little Frank some tutoring before he went to Southbridge. The tutoring was a success, other little boys in the Old Town joined the class. The Rector, who had private means, managed to get the stables altered and the furnace installed, and Frank Gresham was the first pupil. When we say that the horses’ racks and the original narrow box staircase to the grooms’ quarters had been left untouched, as had the rather terrifying kind of gallows over which sacks of oats and bales of straw were hauled up to the loft, the reader will realize what an unusual and delightful school Frank and his fellow scholars had.

  ‘I think a silver foot would be horrid,’ said Jane. ‘You’d have to keep it clean and if there’s anything I loathe it’s the feeling of plate polish on my hands.’

  ‘There was Götz with the Iron Hand,’ said Robin, entering enthusiastically into the subject, ‘but I daresay it got rusty and anyway it wasn’t a foot. And Nez-de-cuir; but that was his nose, so it’s different. I never heard of a Leather Foot.’

  ‘No,’ said Jane, thoughtfully. ‘There was Leather Stocking, but he had a leg inside. And there are leather-jackets in the garden, beastly things. Oh, Robin, I do wish it hadn’t happened.’

  ‘However much you wish it, I wish it more,’ said Robin. ‘Any news of Francis?’

  Very few people asked Jane this question now. Partly they thought it might wake painful thoughts (‘thinking of the old ’un,’ she said sardonically to herself), partly they had honestly forgotten about it, for the whirligig of time has so bruised and stunned us all that yesterday is swallowed in oblivion almost before to-day has dawned. Jane did not want inquiries, nor did she resent them. Her surface self responded pleasantly to the kindly and sympathetic and was unmoved by the forgetters. As for her inner self she did not quite know what it thought, and sometimes wondered if it knew itself. A sense of duty made her say to Frank from time to time that they would do this and that when father came home: and what this meant to him she did not know and had no means of knowing. And as he was very cheerful and ate enormously and slept like a dormouse, she saw no reason to delve deeper.

  ‘No, no news,’ she said. ‘But I don’t expect any. It will come some day. Or else it won’t.’

  At this moment Master Gresham came up, bursting with suppressed giggles.

  ‘I say, mother,’ he began, ‘do you know this poem?

  “It was the miller’s daughter,

  Her father kept a mill,

  There were otters in the water,

  But she was ’otter still.”

  Tom Watson told it me. There are a lot more verses. Shall I tell them you?’

  Horrified at the resurgence of this hoary and vapid echo of early Edwardian humour, Jane said they must hurry up or they would be late for lunch.

  ‘But, mother, isn’t it funny,’ said Frank, dancing from one foot to another.

  ‘I know a much better one,’ said his mother, ‘in Latin.’

  ‘You don’t know Latin, do you, mother?’ said Master Gresham, obviously incredulous.

  ‘Not as well as Robin, but much better than you,’ said Jane, manfully. ‘Can you read this?’

  She took a pencil out of her bag and wrote something on the back of an envelope.

  ‘Caesar adsum jam forte,’ Frank read. ‘That’s not Latin, mother. I mean it doesn’t mean anything. Sir,’ he added, appealing to his master, ‘it doesn’t mean anything, does it?’

  ‘If your mother says it does, it does,’ said Robin not wishing to commit himself.

  ‘Mother, it’s nonsense, isn’t it?’ said Frank. ‘It is nonsense, isn’t it, mother?’

  ‘What you tell me two times is true,’ said his mother enigmatically to her son. ‘I’ll say it to you. “Caesar had some jam for tea!”’

  It touched and amused her to see her son’s round face, temporarily serious, his soft brow puckered, his eyes remote, till the light of reason began to dawn and he broke into a joyful smile with a toothless gap at one side of it.

  ‘Oh, mother,’ he shrieked. ‘I’ll tell Tom in afternoon school. I’ll bet him I know Latin better than he does. Oh, mother! Is there any more, mother?’

  ‘Quite a lot,’ said Jane, ‘but I don’t remember it all. I expect Robin knows it, because he knows Latin properly.’

  ‘I’m ashamed to say I’d forgotten that one,’ said Robin. ‘But there’s another awfully good one that I can’t quite remember too; something about “here’s a go, forty buses in a row” – how does it go, Jane?’

  ‘Lord! I had quite forgotten it too,’ said Jane. ‘The boys used to teach me odd bits in the holidays. Didn’t it go on something about trux, As quot sinem: pes an dux?’

  Frank looked perplexed.

  ‘But that’s English,’ he said.

  ‘Well, come along now,’ said his mother, feeling herself out of depth, ‘or we’ll be later for lunch than ever. And it’s fried fish with lots of fried parsley.’

  Robin went back to the Rectory while Jane and her son walked home. And when we say walked, Master Gresham’s mode of progression was rather in
the nature of a hop, skip and a jump, hanging on his mother’s arm the while, highly fatiguing to the hung-upon.

  Lunch which was also new potatoes and early peas from the garden and a summer pudding having been despatched, Frank went back to afternoon school, and Jane, having no particular job that afternoon, thought she might as well pursue her inquiries about a house for Mr Adams, so that she might have something to tell her father when he came back that evening. So she rang up Mrs Merivale and asked if she might come and see her, being authorized thereto by Mr Pattern, and a pleasant voice said yes, adding that the house was three houses down Riverside Close from where it branched off from Rising Crescent and the name was on the gate, Valimere, and anyone would tell her.

  Accordingly Jane, after picking some strawberries for supper and doing some ironing and mending some places where the laundry had wrenched or hacked holes in sheets and pillowcases, went down the hill, crossed the railway by the footbridge and entered the New Town. Rising Crescent was about ten minutes’ walk from the station and near its farther end she found Riverside Close, so called for no reason at all as it was neither. Owing to the ravages of war many of the names on the garden gates were almost effaced and she thought she must have heard the instructions wrongly, but on retracing her steps she found the name, Valimere, almost invisible, on a gate which had sagged away from its gatepost and could never be shut again. As she walked up the little path she noticed that the garden, though bright with flowers, was also quite out of hand and the hedges running riot. The house was just like a hundred other New Town houses of so many styles that it had no character at all.