‘You know her nurse gave notice because there wasn’t another new baby,’ said Robin, crossing his legs and nursing his unreal foot. ‘It’s a bit stiff. And I must say it’s a bit stiff for Francis too. He can’t have any more children and he can’t see the one he’s got.’
Miss Bunting’s face grew very stern, for too many of her ex-little boys had no boys of their own, or would never see them again; or, like Francis Gresham, were perhaps alive, perhaps dead, and no one could know.
‘I suppose,’ said Robin, thoughtfully, ‘I ought to get married and give a hand with the good work, but I’ll have to get a proper job first. Six little boys in a stable isn’t going to be good enough to marry on and my father, though eighty-two, is quite capable of living till ninety. Not that I grudge him the pleasure, if pleasure it is, dear old chap,’ he added.
‘You will forgive me,’ said Miss Bunting after a silence, ‘if I look at things from a practical point of view. I always have: also a commonsense one. Many excellent preparatory schools have been greatly assisted by a headmaster’s wife with kindness, energy and money.’
‘But I can’t be a fortune-hunter, Miss Bunting,’ said Robin, alarmed. ‘And anyway, who wants a man with a wooden leg?’
The bitterness in his voice went to the old governess’s heart, but it was never her policy to let her pupils suspect any weakness in her, so she merely said:
‘Mr Dale, you are talking in an exceedingly foolish way. You must pull yourself together.’
Having said this she recrossed her hands with great composure and looked at Robin. He flushed angrily, made as if to speak, but apparently thought better of it. Presently he said:
‘I’m sorry, Miss Bunting. And I wish you’d call me Robin. Mr Dale isn’t so friendly.’
‘Thank you, Robin,’ said Miss Bunting. ‘I will. All my old pupils,’ she added, ‘call me Bunny.’
Robin flushed again, but this time with overpowering gratitude for her condescension. Not too awkwardly he took her chilly, withered hand, kissed it with an air and laid it respectfully on her lap. At the same moment the set finished and the Watsons, frankly rejoicing in having beaten their guests, brought the tennis players back to the veranda. Heather and Anne were recalled from the raspberry nets and with Jane and Robin went onto the court. Neither of the girls was very good; Robin, though once expert at the game, was hampered by his foot, and the set proceeded with more laughter than skill.
It is possible that Heather, who had worked pretty hard at tennis during her last spring and summer term, would have played better had she not been overcome by the dazzle and glory of playing against Jane Gresham. Anne may have thought Miss Holly very nice, but there her admiration stopped. For Heather, the whole world was shaken by a new star, a Gresham Sidus, blazing in the empyrean. Not only was this shattering enough in itself, but she was also suffering from split personality, one half of her wishing to play so well that Mrs Gresham would utter some such epoch-making words as: ‘Oh, well taken, Heather’; the other wishing to lose every stroke and then die at Mrs Gresham’s feet. The result of this dual control was that she hit more and more wildly, became as red and damp as when she had bicycled up the hill, and cannoned into Robin several times, nearly throwing him off his balance and making him swear under his breath. Anne, acutely sensitive to mental currents though she did not know it, was less and less happy. That she had made several good strokes and remembered what Jane had told her about foot-faulting that morning, counted for little with her in comparison with seeing poor Robin being buffeted and Heather looking so cross and almost horrid. However, the set must be played.
Meanwhile, the Watsons and Miss Holly joined Miss Bunting on the veranda. All were intelligent and Mrs Watson was almost educated, so their talk roved in a gentlemanly way through a variety of subjects.
‘Was that the bell?’ said Mrs Watson, interrupting her husband in his description of the Bishop entertaining some coloured bishops at the palace with ostentatious want of profusion.
‘You’d have heard it if it was,’ said Mr Watson; which appears deplorably illogical but is plain to any householder.
‘No, I wouldn’t,’ returned his wife. ‘You remember that time it was Lady Pomfret and I was in the scullery.’
The argument, if so it can be called, was proceeding along these rather devious and irrelevant lines when a scrunching was heard on the gravel at the side of the house.
‘It was the bell,’ said Mrs Watson, whose chain of reasoning will at once be apparent, and even as she spoke a powerfully built man in almost well-cut grey tweeds came round the corner.
‘Pardon me,’ said the newcomer, addressing himself to Miss Holly, ‘but am I right?’
Miss Holly, recognizing her charge’s father and correctly interpreting his words, said to her hostess:
‘Oh, Mrs Watson, this is Heather’s father. Didn’t Mrs Merivale give you my message, Mr Adams?’
‘She did,’ said Mr Adams. ‘As soon as I arrived back she said you and Heth had gone to play a tennis match with Mrs Watson up the hill and you had said to give me a cup of tea. But it’s a bit late for tea so I said I’d push on a bit and see my little Heth playing. Mrs Watson, isn’t it? I’m glad to meet you, Mrs Watson, and to thank you for your kindness to my little girl.’
Mrs Watson said she was so glad to have Heather, who was on the court at the moment, and introduced her husband.
‘Mr Watson and I are old acquaintances,’ said Mr Adams, sketching a kind of salute to his host. ‘Clubmen, as you might say. There’s not many a Thursday I don’t see Mr Watson at lunch at the County Club.’
‘So that’s how Charlie spends Thursday,’ said Mrs Watson who, as she afterwards penitently told her husband, could not help talking to people as she thought they would like to be talked to, to which her husband replied that she would do it once too often if she weren’t careful. She then, to cover her lapse, quickly introduced Mr Adams to Miss Bunting, who greeted him civilly and was quite obviously suspending judgment.
Mr Watson quietly went into the house.
‘Did you walk up, Mr Adams,’ said Mrs Watson, ‘or bicycle like Miss Holly and Heather? It’s a good pull up the hill.’
‘I don’t bicycle,’ said Mr Adams, ‘not unless I must, though I’ve bicycled as far as most people in my young days before I could afford a car,’ which piece of autobiography rather depressed his hearers as showing clearly that he regarded them as, on the whole, effete plutocrats. All but Miss Bunting who simply sat, accumulating evidence, waiting the right time to weigh it, unbiased, clear of mind.
‘And I don’t mind telling you, Mrs Watson, that I wouldn’t ride up that hill of yours for five pounds. No; my sekertary phoned up a taxi to meet me at the station. Now, it’s a rule of mine, when you take a taxi, don’t dismiss it till you’re sure you’ve done with it. I’ve seen more than one good deal slip through my fingers before I learnt that. So when we got to Mrs Merivale’s house I said to the driver, “Wait a minute, I may be going on.” And in I went and got Miss Holly’s message and so I said to myself, Sam Adams, that’s my name, Sam; you take the taxi to Mrs Watson’s and you’ll kill two birds with one stone. You’ll see Heth playing tennis and you’ll see her friends. So I came up. Packer’s waiting for me outside.’
‘Packer!’ said Mr Watson, who had come out with such drinks as the times could afford on a tray while Mr Adams was finishing this soliloquy. ‘He won’t come out for anyone on a Saturday afternoon, let alone wait for them. He always goes to the bowling club.’
‘He mayn’t do it for anyone – thanks, lime and soda if it’s all the same to you,’ said Mr Adams, ‘but it isn’t anyone or everyone who’s got Packer’s son in his nuts and bolts shop; and a very good apprentice he’s making. Well, here’s fun.’
He took a deep draught of his innocuous beverage and looked round. The impression he made on most of his audience was overpowering size. Mr and Mrs Watson were tall and on a generous scale; Miss Holly, though short, had a good cubic c
ontent, but Mr Adams reduced them all three to mediocrity. Only Miss Bunting, small, spare, almost insignificant to the eye, kept her value unchanged, as indeed she did whatever the circumstances.
A confused sound of talking now heralded the arrival of the tennis party. Largely owing to Heather’s love-smitten condition, Jane and Anne had won the two sets and Anne, with quite a pink face, pleased and excited, looked a different creature. At the unexpected sight of her father Heather’s face cleared and she flew into his arms with a rapturous shout of ‘Daddy!’
‘And, daddy,’ she continued, ‘this is Mrs Gresham. She lives here with her father – your Admiral Palliser.’
‘A fine old gentleman, Mrs Gresham,’ said Mr Adams. ‘We think a lot of him on my board. You can’t pull the wool over his ears, get up when you may.’
Jane smiled at this tribute and Heather thought so did the angels smile.
‘And this is Anne Fielding, daddy,’ she went on. ‘She’s awfully keen on Shakespeare. Daddy, couldn’t we go to Stratford and see Shakespeare? Anne’s never seen him, only read it. You know her father, daddy.’
‘So you are Sir Robert’s young lady,’ said Mr Adams, taking Anne’s hand and looking down kindly on her. ‘Well, him and I have had more than one tussle, but no bones broken, and he’s a man I have a regard for.’
After paying which tribute he looked so huge and important that Jane thought of the Frog and the Ox, and said so to Robin, who grinned.
‘And Mr Dale,’ said Mrs Watson completing the introductions. ‘He has a school here and my younger boy and Mrs Gresham’s go there.’
‘Dale?’ said Mr Adams. ‘Seems familiar, but I can’t exactly place it. Glad to meet you. I never got much schooling myself and dare say if I had I wouldn’t be where I am now. Still, it’s a good thing for them that can stand it. You aren’t any relation of the Reverend Dale of the Barsetshire Archaeological by chance?’
‘That’s my papa,’ said Robin. ‘Eighty-two and going strong. I’ve heard him mention your name. You are coming to the Archaeological’s meeting here, I hope.’
Conversation now became general and the party soon broke up. Mrs Watson, whose youngest son was spending the afternoon at Hallbury House with Master Gresham, asked Jane to send him home at once, as it was high time he had his bath and went to bed, so that she and Charlie could have their supper in peace.
‘Daddy!’ said Heather in an urgent undertone to her father, as he was talking to Mr Watson, ‘couldn’t you take Mrs Gresham back? She hasn’t got a car.’
‘That’s an idea,’ said Mr Adams, ‘and have a chat with the old Admiral. And what about you, girlie? I’ll tell Packer to tie your bike onto the car if Miss Holly doesn’t mind.’
Miss Holly being consulted was agreeable to anything her employer proposed, and said she would walk her bicycle as far as Hall’s End with Anne and Miss Bunting, and then ride back to Valimere. Robin, finding that no one wanted him, went back to the Rectory, thinking what a hideous lump that Adams girl was and pitying Jane who was saddled with her and her father for at least half an hour longer.
So Mr Adams said goodbye to the Watsons, took his ladies in tow and found Packer sitting in the driver’s seat reading the Barchester Evening Sentinel, to whom he gave instructions to convey the party to Hallbury House, return to Mr Watson’s house, fasten Heather’s bicycle to the car and pick him up again at the Admiral’s. Mr Packer, without removing the cigarette from his mouth, said ‘OK,’ and what did Mr Adams think of United Steel Products; up half a point they were. Mr Adams said he didn’t think, he knew, and all his spare cash was going into Government Loans. Mr Packer looked dejected.
‘Gambling,’ said Mr Adams to Jane and Heather as soon as Mr Packer’s overdriven gears let talk be audible. ‘If I’ve told my hands once I’ve told them twenty times, small men must play for safety. And mind you, it’s the British Empire we’re backing, and if that isn’t safe, no one knows what is.’
‘Except shares in an undertaker’s business,’ said Jane.
Mr Adams looked almost bewildered, then began to laugh with sudden uncontrolled amusement and Jane realized, and was slightly ashamed of it, that her remark had established her in his mind as a wit.
‘Daddy’s frightfully patriotic’, said Heather admiringly, and Jane again felt ashamed that the word ‘patriotic’, which heaven knew was what we all were, or ought to be, or wished to be, should make her feel uncomfortable and hoped her new friends would not notice it. But she might have spared herself the trouble, for Heather said she supposed we’d all be buried on a Beveridge plan now; and during the few moments that their journey lasted she and her father indulged in a joke of their own, almost unintelligible to Jane, about the actuarial calculations for such a scheme. It was a world she did not know and she suddenly felt lost, and thought of Francis with a pang of longing such as she had schooled herself not to encourage. But these things come upon us indirectly, sideways, and our defences are vain.
The taxi stopped at Hallbury House and they all got out. Jane led the way to the garden, where she knew her father would be working. The Admiral was in his shirt-sleeves among the beans and rather surprised to see his visitors, especially Heather whom he had never met and by whom he was much struck and that not very favourably, as he had always liked his womenfolk good-looking or smart, preferably both. But they were guests in his garden, so he showed them all his vegetables, his joy and pride, and discussed United Steel Products with Mr Adams, while Jane showed Heather the fowls and the rabbits and the runner ducks and let her collect the eggs, and Heather walked in a roseate mist and hoped the visit would never end.
Her father’s voice calling her to say goodbye then shattered her crystal globe, and they all walked round the other side of the house, where they found Frank Gresham and Tom Watson sitting on the back doorstep eating raspberries and cold rice pudding.
‘I’m giving Tom his supper now, mother, in case he doesn’t get enough when he goes home,’ said Frank, who was obviously being Harry Sandford to Tommy Merton.
‘You must go now, Tom,’ said Jane, unsympathetically. ‘Your mother wants you.’
‘But, mother,’ said Frank, casting a noble and protecting glance towards his friend, who was hastily running his spoon round the rice-pudding dish to get the last bits of skin, ‘he needs his supper. Mother, if you’d been trying to unstop the scullery pipe, you’d need some supper.’
‘His supper is waiting for him at home,’ said Jane, rather annoyed to find herself arguing with her son over Master Watson’s uninterested head. ‘Go along now, Tom, and you’ll see Frank after church to-morrow. You can come to lunch if your mother says yes. Only go at once, or I won’t ask you.’
Master Watson got up with a satisfied expression, shook hands and said good night to everyone present, known to him or unknown, and disappeared. The Admiral, who had been looking at the scullery drain, now turned upon his grandson and asked if he had heard him say that pipe was not to be touched and what the dickens had he been doing. The eyes of all were then turned upon the mouth of the pipe, from which protruded a piece of decayed rubber.
‘It’s only one of the tyres off that old pram in the Watsons’ garage,’ said Frank in an aggrieved voice. ‘Tom and I got it off on purpose to help, and we poked it up the pipe and it got stuck, because bits of it kept breaking.’
‘Did I or did I not say that pipe was NOT TO BE TOUCHED?’ said the Admiral.
‘Oh, dear,’ said Jane, ‘Frank, you are very disobedient and we can’t get a man till Monday. Go and get washed.’
‘Pardon me,’ said Mr Adams, ‘but have you tried the U-joint?’
The Admiral indignantly said of course he had, but the obstruction was lower.
‘Well, Admiral, what you want is a length of our pliable one-and-seven-sixteenths annealed spang-rods,’ said Mr Adams, kindly, as a keeper might reason with an elephant.
‘Good God! you needn’t tell me that, Adams,’ said the Admiral. ‘And where am I to get a spang-rod
? Might as well try to get a razor blade.’
‘Good God! Good God!’ said Frank, performing a small dance as he looked admiringly at his grandfather.
‘Go and get WASHED!’ said Jane, desperately.
‘If Packer hasn’t got one in the garage I’ll have one sent out to-morrow from the works,’ said Mr Adams. ‘Packer can run over and fetch it. Don’t you worry, Admiral. We’ll have that pipe cleared by lunch time to-morrow. Well, it’s been a pleasure to meet you, Mrs Gresham. That’s a fine youngster of yours. What’s your name, sonny?’
Frank, who had taken advantage of Mr Adams’s diversion not to go in and get washed, said he was Francis Gresham and he was going to be a sailor like his father.
‘I didn’t know your husband was a sailor, Mrs Gresham,’ said Mr Adams to Jane, ‘but of course he would be with your father an Admiral. He must be proud of this young man.’
Jane, ever determined above all things not to allow her anxiety to cloud any friend’s mind, said with a brilliant smile that he was very proud.
Miss Bunting Page 15