Miss Bunting

by Angela Thirkell

  She rang the bell. The door was opened by a plumpish woman of about fifty who must have been very pretty and still looked very agreeable, with a kind expression, rather anxious eyes, and grey hair which curled becomingly round her face.

  ‘Mrs Merivale?’ said Jane. ‘I am Mrs Gresham. It was very kind of you to let me come.’

  ‘Oh, how do you do?’ said Mrs Merivale, and shook hands. ‘Please do come in. We can talk more cosily in the lounge.’

  Owing to Mrs Merivale’s great politeness, Jane found it quite difficult to squeeze past her in the narrow hall, but by dint of a kind of sidling high and disposedly the difficult passage to what Mrs Merivale had called the lounge was effected. This was a good-sized room at the side of the house, full of sun and looking into the tangled garden. It was furnished with two hideous elephantine chairs covered with sham leather, a hideous cupboard with some ugly silver on it, two more hideous bulky chairs with a kind of plush covering, a tottering little bookcase of two shelves with some magazines on them, and a couple of what Jane could only think of as occasional tables. There were a few water-colours obviously of ‘abroad’ hung very high on the walls, and over the fireplace was a flight of wild ducks in china, being as it were Elle-ducks with a bulgy side for the public and a flat side which only the wall could see. They were of various sizes and Jane felt that they were of great value to their owner.

  As Mrs Merivale, though obviously friendly, was twisting her hands together in a demented way and quite speechless, Jane thought she had better break the ice and said she had heard that some of Mrs Crawley’s married daughters had been with her.

  Mrs Merivale said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘And Canon Banister’s mother,’ said Jane.

  Mrs Merivale, wrenching her fingers nearly out of their sockets, said ‘Yes.’

  A friend of her father, Admiral Palliser, said Jane, had asked if they would find some lodgings for his daughter and governess during the summer holidays, and would like to be able to come down himself at week-ends. Could Mrs Merivale consider that kind of let?

  ‘Well, I suppose you’d like to see the rooms,’ said Mrs Merivale after a choked silence and looking desperately about her.

  ‘Please, if I may,’ said Jane. ‘And may I say how much I was struck by those flying ducks. I have never seen anything quite like them before.’

  Mrs Merivale twisted one foot round the other in agony but appeared gratified.

  ‘This is the lounge,’ said Mrs Merivale as if she were saying a lesson.

  ‘And what a lovely view of the garden,’ said Jane, feeling herself getting sillier and sillier.

  ‘It is pretty,’ said Mrs Merivale, and untwisting her feet she stood up. ‘And if you look through the glass door you’ll see we’ve a nice lodger.’

  Jane also got up and looking through the glass door at the far end saw that there was a little veranda where one could sit enjoying the view, but the lodger was not visible.

  ‘This makes a nice room for a gentleman, or a party,’ said Mrs Merivale in desperation.

  Jane said yes, of course it was and how nice, especially the little green china hearts let into the back of the sideboard.

  ‘And this,’ Mrs Merivale continued, opening another door, ‘is the dining-room, it’s all fumed oak, you see; and this would be the sitting-room, with a nice view.’

  ‘And what a lovely vase of flowers,’ said Jane gazing awestruck upon another Elle-figure, this time the face of a rather depraved girl, its flat back glued and hooked to the wall, a bunch of floppy yellow roses in an opening in the top of its head.

  Mrs Merivale said it always made her think of the Lady of Shalott and Jane, to her horror, found herself saying that it was quite out of the common.

  After another minute of politeness, the ladies got to the first floor where Jane was shown three light, airy bedrooms each with fixed basin and gas-fires; also a good bathroom. Mrs Merivale insisted on her looking at the mattresses, which Jane’s expert hand and eye admitted to be excellent.

  ‘There’s another room, the one we just call the Other Room,’ said Mrs Merivale, showing Jane a slip of a room with a bed in it and otherwise occupied by a table and sewing-machine. ‘If your friend wanted a spare room at any time he could have this. It’s really Annie’s room, that’s my girl in the ATS, but she’s abroad now.’

  Jane thanked her, and so genuine had she been in her praise of the obvious good points of the rooms that Mrs Merivale further unbent and asked if she would like to see the top floor. So they went up a very steep stair.

  ‘This,’ said Mrs Merivale, opening the door of a kind of superior attic, ‘is Elsie’s room, that’s my girl in the Waafs, but she’s overseas now. And this little room next hers,’ she continued, showing Jane a smaller attic, ‘is Peggie’s, that’s my girl that’s in the Wrens, but she’s at Gibraltar. If they bring a friend home we can put a mattress on the floor and they talk all night. We’ve had as many as seven sleeping here, Mrs Gresham, not counting myself. That was the time Evie was at home, that’s my girl in the Foreign Office, but she’s in Washington now.’

  ‘Where did Evie sleep?’ Jane asked, deeply interested in this life of doubling up, unknown to her.

  ‘Oh, she came in with me,’ said Mrs Merivale. ‘We’ve got a little camp bed. The girls laughed all the time and we all thoroughly enjoyed it. We’ve got our own bathroom up here.’

  She opened the last door and disclosed to the visitor a room evidently scooped out of one of the gables that were a feature of most New Town houses. A large cistern occupied most of it and a very small bath was squashed into a corner. On the sloping wall beside it was a notice saying, ‘MIND YOUR HEAD’, below which was a rough drawing of a head banging a beam with stars and exclamation marks radiating from it.

  ‘Evie did that,’ said Mrs Merivale. ‘She’s the artistic one. Peggie’s the musical one, she’s got some lovely records.’

  ‘Are the others artistic, too?’ said Jane.

  ‘I suppose you would say so,’ said Mrs Merivale. ‘Elsie was studying dancing in Barchester with Miss Milner before the war and Annie isn’t exactly artistic, but she crochets shawls and doylies and things quite beautifully and used to make quite a lot of pocket-money.’

  As she spoke she was leading the way downstairs again, and in the most friendly way offered to show Jane the kitchen, which was quite the nicest room in the house, spotlessly clean, with gay yellow paint, bright curtains, a dresser with pretty china, a long old-fashioned sofa under the window, and a cooker with an open-fire front, before which a large cat was dozing. Jane expressed her admiration and Mrs Merivale beamed.

  ‘I quite agree with you, Mrs Gresham,’ she said. ‘It is so cosy here and if I’m tired after getting the supper I just put my feet up on the couch and turn on the wireless and write a letter to one of the girls. And when any of them are at home we have such fun in the evenings that I have to say: “Hush, girls, or you’ll disturb the guests!”’

  Rather humbled before such capacity for cheerful gratitude under such cramped and hardworking conditions, yet extremely thankful that she was not called upon to show gratitude for that particular form of enjoyment, Jane felt she really must inquire about terms and so bring her talk to an end. Thanking Mrs Merivale for letting her see the house she said she thought her friends would be very glad to hear of it and what would they pay for the rooms.

  Mrs Merivale became dumb and began to twist her hands again in a most distressing way.

  ‘I’m so frightfully sorry,’ she said, in a tearful voice, ‘but when people ask me how much I charge I could kill them.’

  Jane looked at her with some alarm.

  ‘I know I’m horrid,’ said Mrs Merivale, ‘but it’s so awful talking about money. I’d rather let the rooms for nothing if I could afford it.’

  This, though highly creditable to human nature, was hardly helpful and indeed rather silly. Jane, who really did not know what to suggest, stood silent.

  ‘Would three guineas
be too much, do you think?’ said Mrs Merivale, nervously.

  Jane at once said it would be far too little, especially if the boarders were to have a dining-room and sitting-room to themselves, not to speak of the lounge, and begged Mrs Merivale to name a higher figure. But as that lady would do nothing but repeat that she knew she was horrid but it seemed so unkind to ask people for money, Jane had to say that she would tell Mr Adams how nice the rooms were, and probably he would come and settle everything himself, to which Mrs Merivale agreed. As they went towards the front door Jane paused to look through the glass door of the lounge into the garden.

  ‘It is nice to have a lodger,’ said Mrs Merivale. ‘Especially on a summer evening.’

  It seemed a curious preference, but there is no accounting for tastes. At the front gate Jane said good-bye.

  ‘It was very good of you to let me take up so much of your time,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I was late, but I missed your house and went right to the end of the road. What a pretty name Valimere is,’ she added, untruthfully.

  ‘Thereby hangs a tale, Mrs Gresham,’ said Mrs Merivale.

  Seeing that she wished to be encouraged, Jane encouraged her.

  ‘When Mr Merivale bought this house, Mrs Gresham,’ said Mrs Merivale, earnestly, ‘we didn’t like the name. It was called Lindisfarne.’

  She paused. Jane said it was certainly a horrid name for a house, and was ashamed of herself for time-serving.

  ‘That’s what Mr Merivale felt,’ said his relict. ‘So we talked it over thoroughly, till we were quite at our wits’ end. But Mr Merivale said not to worry and I went to stay with Mother for a few days for her eightieth birthday, poor old soul, and when I came back the name was on the gate.’

  ‘How very nice,’ said Jane, feeling this a distinct anti-climax.

  ‘You see it’s Merivale, only the letters all mixed like the crosswords,’ said Mrs Merivale. ‘It seemed so original. The girls love it and Elsie, she’s my baby, the one that’s in the Waafs, sometimes calls me Mrs Valimere, just in fun, and we all thoroughly enjoy it.’

  Jane then managed to get away. As she walked home, she pondered on the niceness of Mrs Merivale; also upon her exhaustingness. What her father’s Mr Adams would think of it she could not guess, but she knew he was rich and wanted accommodation, and hoped that Mrs Merivale and her daughters might benefit. All she could do was to give a good report of the rooms and hope for the best.

  When she got back she found Master Gresham and his friend Tom Watson having their tea in the garden. Beside them was a large iron dipper containing a quantity of snails frothing themselves to death in salt and water.

  ‘How disgusting,’ she said, unsympathetically.

  ‘Well, mother, you don’t want the snails to eat the vegetables,’ said Frank, reproachfully. ‘Oh, mother, I told Tom about Caesar adsum jam forte, but he’s only just begun Latin so he didn’t laugh.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s kerzackerly funny,’ said Master Watson, who had perhaps inherited from his father, the Hallbury solicitor, a habit of thinking before he spoke and speaking with rather ponderous authority.

  ‘Never mind, Tom, when you know Latin properly you’ll laugh like anything,’ said Master Gresham, with a kindly patronizing manner which his mother found intolerable, but which Master Watson appeared to take gratefully. ‘Oh, mother, Mrs Morland rang you up. She’s going to ring you up again. She says Uncle Tony is fighting in a canal. Mother, Tom got twenty-eight snails and I got thirty-three. Oh, mother, can we pick lettuces?’

  ‘I don’t think we want any to-day,’ said his mother, answering his last remark first.

  ‘I don’t mean us; I mean for Tom’s rabbits, mother. Tom’s cook told him the gardener had sold all the lettuces so Tom said he’d get some of ours. Can we, mother?’

  Jane found this vicarious generosity rather embarrassing. The lettuces were not Frank’s, they were not hers. They belonged in theory to Admiral Palliser, in usage to the cook and the gardener. There had already been words about them, the cook accusing the gardener of neglecting to bring any in, so that she had to take a basket and go down the garden just as she was if the Admiral was to get his dinner that night, the gardener maintaining that in the gardens he’d been in the cook never set foot in the kitchen garden and he’d rather not bring the vegetables up to the house if it was going to make unpleasantness. To which the cook had replied, if kitchen garden meant kitchen garden, it was for growing kitchen stuff and she’d put the gardener’s elevenses in the wash-house. All this Jane, unfortunately for her own peace of mind, had heard from the bathroom window, as she was washing Frank’s vest and stockings.

  ‘I think they are grandpapa’s lettuces, Frank,’ she said, trying to sound as if she knew her own mind. ‘But if Tom’s rabbits really need some, we’ll go to the kitchen garden after Chaffinch has gone home, and see if there are some very tall ones. Cook won’t want them.’

  On hearing this joyful news the little boys fought each other with bears’ hugs and the snail-pot was upset.

  ‘Come on, Tom,’ said Frank to his friend, ‘we’ll pretend the snails are Japs and put them on a stone and scrunch them.’

  ‘I don’t like Japs,’ said Tom stolidly.

  ‘All right. Yours can be Germans and mine can be Japs,’ said Frank. ‘Come on. I bet I’ll scrunch more than you.’

  Leaving the little boys to their war-time avocations, Jane went back to the house, wondering if children ought to be allowed to hate enemies. Being pretty truthful with herself, she came to the conclusion that if enemies were not only unspeakably horrible, but highly dangerous, it was just as well for everyone to hate them. And if hating them meant being un-Christian, she was jolly well going to be un-Christian. And if she saw a real Japanese she hoped she would be brave enough to hit him with the first sharp and heavy object she could find, or throw him down the bricked-up well in the churchyard. Full of these reasonable thoughts she telephoned to several people about the camouflage netting work-party, and was answering some letters when Mrs Morland rang up.

  That well-known but quite unillusioned novelist was an old friend of the Pallisers and though she was really old enough to be Jane’s mother, the two had always been very intimate and Mrs Morland’s youngest boy, Tony, had adopted himself as an uncle to the small Frank, who thought him the cleverest and most delightful person in the world and copied faithfully all mannerisms least suitable for a boy of eight. What Mrs Morland wanted to say, in her usual circumlocutory manner, was that the Fieldings had asked her to dinner and spend the night next Wednesday, and would Jane and her father be there. Jane said they would.

  ‘I’ll tell you everything at dinner,’ said Mrs Morland, ‘or at least after dinner, unless it’s the kind of war dinner party where we sit next to a woman because of not enough men, which is very restful but not exactly what a dinner party is for. Not that there’s anything to tell. There never is. At least not here.’

  ‘Sadly true,’ said Jane. ‘Nor here either.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Mrs Morland, who understood by this that Jane had no news of her husband, just as well as Jane had understood that Mrs Morland was asking if she had heard of Francis. ‘Oh, Jane, do you know anything about a Mr Adams? Mrs Tebben’s son Richard has been turned out of the army, I don’t mean for cowardice or drink or anything, but some tropical disease I think, though nothing that shows,’ she added, in case Jane envisaged a hideous leper or an acute case of elephantiasis, ‘and I saw her in Barchester, and she says he has been offered a job at this man Adams’s works who is immensely rich and Richard has had very good experience before the war in some kind of business and can talk Argentine, or whatever they talk in Argentina which seems to me a most disloyal place, and Mr Adams is going to have a branch there and it sounds very suitable, but Mrs Tebben wondered if it was all right.’

  When Jane was quite certain that Mrs Morland had said all she had to say for the time being, she was able to reply that she had never met Mr Adams, though her fa
ther was on his board, but that she believed he was coming to Hallbury for part of the summer and she would tell her what he was like.

  ‘Oh, if your father is on the board it is quite all right,’ said Mrs Morland, ‘and I’ll tell Mrs Tebben. I’ll see you on Wednesday then.’

  Jane would have liked to ask after Mrs Morland’s boys, but as this would have meant at least ten minutes’ monologue she said good-bye.

  Then she took the little boys to the kitchen garden where she gave Master Watson four lettuces that had run to seed and sent him home. The evening was as cold and blustery as the day. As she gave Frank his bath she thought with unpatriotic dislike of Double Summer Time. All very well in peace when summer was summer, she thought crossly. But in wartime when the weather was always beastly and we had hours of grey north daylight after dinner and it was too cold to garden or sit out, it was a horrid infliction and what was more it kept Frank awake and while he was awake he talked and sometimes if he talked once more she thought she would burst. But when she saw him clean and pink in his pyjamas, she knew she wouldn’t really mind if he talked from now till Doomsday, as indeed he showed every sign of doing.