Miss Bunting

by Angela Thirkell

  Jane nearly said ‘Contrariwise,’ but pulling herself together she said she thought the Rector really enjoyed trying to get the accounts right, and her father was always glad to help him.

  ‘Well, that’s very friendly of the Admiral, Mrs Gresham,’ said Mr Adams, ‘and he’s a fine old gentleman. But, take it from Sam Adams, it may be ten thousand pounds, it may be tenpence, it needs a man that’s been brought up to it. If there’s any hurry, Mrs Gresham, say the word and I’ll have my man back from Sheffield to-morrow. You want the best for the old Rector. Well, you’re right. Always aim at the best and you won’t get the worst.’

  Even worse.

  ‘It is so very kind of you,’ said Jane in desperation, ‘but I think Dr Dale would be so worried by a real accountant that he would be quite ill. I know he would. You see he is very old and has always done it in his own way. I can’t bear to seem ungrateful, but if you won’t take it unkindly, it would be most kind of you to leave things as they are.’

  Mr Adams’s massive face became an unpleasant dusky hue, and the large hairy hand which lay on his knee assumed a form uncommonly like a fist.

  ‘All right, Mrs Gresham,’ he said after a pause of a few seconds which felt to Jane like an eternity in Purgatory, ‘Sam Adams can take a hint with any man. I’m not wanted. Right. I shan’t be there. I don’t know that Mrs Belton would have treated me like that. Me and Heth won’t be here long and she’s got plenty to do studying her figures. I’ll speak to Miss Holly.’

  The worst. What Jane had feared all along and hoped, though not too hopefully, would not occur. She was quite certain that if she stood up her knees would bend the wrong way and darkness shot with coloured flashes come before her eyes. But the Navy does not surrender.

  ‘We didn’t in the least wish to be ungrateful,’ she said. ‘But the Rector is so old, and he doesn’t explain things very well, and we thought —’

  ‘Who’s we?’ said Mr Adams, his fist unrolling itself on his knee.

  ‘Father and Dr Dale,’ said Jane. ‘They didn’t want to seem ungrateful —’

  ‘So they put you onto the job,’ said Mr Adams, not unkindly. ‘See here, Mrs Gresham, if you’ll say the word we’ll call the whole thing off and forget it. I dare say if anyone tried to run my works his way I’d feel the same.’

  ‘We would be —’ Jane began trying to express her gratitude.

  ‘Never mind about we,’ said Mr Adams. ‘What I said was, you say the word and we’ll forget it all.’

  At this moment Jane would willingly have thrown her glove in his face, except that she had left it with its fellow in Mrs Merivale’s lounge. But being level-headed enough she reflected that a change of wording would be a very small sacrifice to make to redeem the happiness of her father and the Rector, and then suddenly thought of Monna Vanna and began to laugh. Mr Adams looked at her with a kind of suspicious unwilling admiration.

  ‘Well, then,’ said Jane, standing up and suddenly feeling quite unfrightened, ‘you will do me a great kindness if you don’t send your accountant, and I’m most grateful. Thank you very much indeed. And now I really must collect Frank or he will have talked Mrs Merivale to death.’

  Mr Adams also got up and began to make the gesture of shaking hands, but Jane was already a pace ahead, so he merely dropped into pace beside her, and Jane asked if he was coming to the Archaeological Meeting on Saturday, and he said he was. And by this time they had reached the house where they found Mrs Merivale and Frank sitting in the veranda shelling peas into a colander.

  ‘Mother,’ said Frank, ‘I’m eating all the peas that go through the holes. Look, mother!’

  He jiggled the colander in the air. Five or six very small peas fell out onto the veranda floor. Frank picked them up and crunched them, dust and all.

  ‘Come along, Frank,’ said Jane, observing her hostess’s agitation as a good deal of grit and a strand of coconut matting went into her young guest’s mouth. ‘I hope he hasn’t been a bother, Mrs Merivale.’

  Mrs Merivale said she had enjoyed having a butler very much and the worst of lodgers was they got dirty so quickly: a remark about whose meaning Jane did not bother to inquire. Her son, though not exactly a lodger, was certainly as dirty as a small boy needs to be, and the sooner he was home and in his bath the better. And then Heather and Miss Holly came out and they all said good-bye, with promises of meeting again on Saturday at the Archaeological, and Jane and Frank walked back to the Old Town.

  ‘Daddy,’ said Heather when the guests had gone. ‘Why didn’t you get Packer’s car and take Mrs Gresham home?’

  ‘Well, why didn’t I?’ said Mr Adams thoughtfully. ‘Suppose I’m not as quick as you, Heth, at thinking up those things. Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Oh, well, never mind, daddy,’ said Heather. ‘Miss Holly and I are going to play in some mixed doubles down on the courts. Come and watch us. Mr Pilward is playing and his son that’s on leave.’

  ‘Righto, girlie,’ said Mr Adams. ‘I wouldn’t wonder if Pilward is Mayor of Barchester next year. In fact, I don’t wonder at all.’ For Pilward & Sons Entire with the horse-drawn drays that it still managed to keep going was a powerful name in Barchester business circles. ‘He did about eight thousand pounds’ worth of business with us last year one way and another. It’s all good for trade, eh, Heth?’

  ‘Daddy,’ said Heather. ‘We are going to the Archaeological meeting on Saturday, aren’t we? Mrs Gresham asked Miss Holly and me to have tea with her. Oh, and Anne asked us to tea at Hall’s End too, daddy. Which shall I say?’

  ‘Well, girlie,’ said her father, thoughtfully, ‘I’d go to both if I was you. Miss Anne’s a nice girl and I’ve got a few words I’d like to say to Sir Robert. And you listen to what Miss Bunting says, because though she mayn’t be much to look at, there’s very little she doesn’t see. And we’ll go and see Mrs Gresham too. I may have something to say to her myself. Some of my pals are well in with the Red Cross and I might hear of something about her husband. I’ve got my feelers out. And I’d like to show her all’s friendly,’ said Mr Adams, half to himself. ‘Well, run along and get ready for your tennis. Your old dad’ll come down. It’s as good a place as any other for having a word with Ted Pilward about those chromium taps. Have a look at young Ted, too.’

  Heather turned to go upstairs, whither Miss Holly had preceded her. In the doorway she stopped and stood in ungraceful irresolution, one hip well thrown out and fiddling with the door-handle.

  ‘Daddy,’ she said.

  ‘Eh?’ said her father, looking up from the evening paper. ‘Old Uncle Joe’s going strong in East Prussia. What is it, girlie?’

  ‘Daddy,’ said Heather. ‘Do you know who I think Mrs Gresham is like?’

  ‘She must be a good-looker whoever she is,’ said Mr Adams. ‘And all her wits about her too. And plenty of pluck.’

  ‘I think she’s like Queen Guinevere,’ said Heather, with the pleasing agony we all feel when avowing our feelings for the adored object. ‘Anne lent it me.’

  ‘Lent you what, Heth?’ said her father.

  ‘Tennyson, daddy. He’s wonderful,’ said Heather, her face transfigured, or shall we rather say, shining at the romantic thoughts suggested to her. ‘I wish I was Sir Lancelot.’

  ‘Always wishing you were somebody, aren’t you, Heth?’ said her father good-humouredly. ‘Run along now. I don’t want to miss old Ted Pilward.’

  So Heather went upstairs, hugging the thought of riding with Mrs Gresham through a green forest on May Day morning and subsequently rescuing her by lance and sword from enemies, finally to renounce her in favour of Captain Gresham, RN, miraculously back from the Far East, and becoming a hermit.

  Mr Adams sat in thought. He then went to the telephone, rang up his secretary at her private address, and told her to get a copy of Tennyson’s Poems for him.

  ‘Good metal,’ he said aloud to himself. ‘As good a job as I could turn out at the works and then something. Best stainless steel.’ />
  Over which loverlike words he fell into a muse till Miss Holly and Heather came down in tennis things, and they all went over to the New Town tennis courts.

  8

  The Barsetshire Archaeological Society is a body of very respectable age, having been founded in 1759, thus adding, as nearly all its presidents have said at the annual dinner, something more to this wonderful year. Its originator was Horatio Palmer, Gent., an ancestor of Mr Palmer at Worsted. He was a gentleman of considerable property in the Woolram Valley and believed that anything he dug up was a Roman remain. He was succeeded in the presidency by Sir Walpole Pridham, whose descendant Sir Edmund Pridham is still a hard-working servant of the county. Sir Walpole believed with fervour equal to Mr Horatio Palmer’s that whatever he dug up was British, and since then the presidentship had been divided pretty evenly between the Roman and the British enthusiasts, and had gradually become the blue ribbon of Barsetshire, having been held by the Duke of Omnium, an Earl de Courcy, an Earl of Pomfret, Dean Arabin, Mr Frank Gresham (little Frank’s great-grandfather who married a fortune), and in fact by all the county’s most noted peers, landed proprietors and spiritual leaders. The office, which is held for life, was at present represented by Lord Stoke, a very energetic old peer, almost stone deaf, who had slightly varied the nature of the post he held by his conviction that everything he found was Viking. Over the remains excavated a few years previously in Bloody Meadow, on his estate, feeling had run very high, but Lord Stoke, having on his side the Icelandic antiquary Mr Tebben from Worsted, had borne all before him. It was well known in the county that Lord Bond at Staple Park coveted this honourable post, but he was of the first creation and though he was liked, his wife, Lord Stoke’s half-sister, was of an overbearing nature and his chances were not favourably considered. Also Lord Stoke, though over eighty, was very well-preserved, and showed every sign of living for ever.

  The treat or bait offered by this year’s summer meeting was, as we already know, to examine the disused well in the grounds of the old Rectory, and decide whether any of the brickwork was Roman; much to the annoyance of Lord Stoke, who had to admit that the probability of anything Norse, or even Danish, was extremely remote. Feeling was running very high. Each side hoped to smash the other in the Journal of Archaeological Studies in Barsetshire. But the person who perhaps looked forward to the day’s meeting more than anyone was Mr Freeman, the verger, who was going to get a whole column about it into the Barchester Chronicle or die in the attempt.

  In happier days the little town of Hallbury could hardly have held the cars that would have rallied from all over the county. But times were changed. Not only was petrol severely rationed, but many people were shy of appearing in a car at all and did not like to stretch their Red Cross, or County Council, or any form of compassionate allowance for what was so obviously a pleasant outing and of no particular use towards winning the war. Those who proposed to attend were mostly coming by train from Barchester. Some would come in the morning and lunch with friends; some would come after lunch and stay to tea with friends. Lord Stoke proposed to ride over from Rising Castle on a useful cob which was still up to its twenty-five or thirty miles a day, and had sent his brougham to fetch his champion, Mr Tebben from Worsted, thus causing Mr Tebben a good deal of irritation, as it was now impossible for him not to bring his wife. The Dean of Barchester was coming by train. Mrs Morland was coming with her old friend and ex-secretary, Mrs George Knox, wife of the famous biographer, for Mrs Knox had WVS petrol, and had, rather cunningly, arranged to take a large parcel of harsh, stringy knitting wool and a bale of very nasty sham flannel to the Hallbury WVS who were making clothes for liberated Central Europeans, and serve them right. Lord Bond and Lady Bond and their tenants the Middletons from Skeynes were going by train to Barchester, lunching with the Bishop and coming on after lunch. The Pomfrets hoped to come with the estate agent, Roddy Wicklow, who was on leave from Belgium and could have petrol for three hundred miles, and so the rather wearisome list of ways and means went on. But the whole company about to be present was united in despising such people as Sir Ogilvy Hibberd, who just because he was a trade expert though no one quite knew of what, or why, had free quarters at a very expensive London hotel and all the petrol he wanted. There is a snobbery of doing without luxuries – or what one used to call ordinary necessities – which binds a great many good people together against those who profit by the condition the world has got into.

  Hallbury House, Hall’s End, the Rectory, the Watsons’ and other houses were having simple lunch parties, and there would be open house everywhere for such teas as could be given, and everyone was looking forward to seeing friends and acquaintance and getting, even for so short a time, outside the very small circle in which we now all perforce live. No one was looking forward to the day more than Anne Fielding, whose opportunities of seeing people during the past year had been very limited. To her mother’s great delight she was, though pleased, not over-excited about the day. A year ago she would have had a temperature, or had to go to bed feeling sick from sheer over-excitement. But now, thanks to Dr Ford’s directions and perhaps even more to Miss Bunting’s vigilant care, she was so well that the daily rests were almost a thing of the past. In fact, at the last consultation, Dr Ford had said he saw no reason why she should not go back to Barchester in the autumn and take up a normal life with classes, so releasing Miss Bunting. This lady, though she had enjoyed her task of helping Anne to widen her mind and strengthen her body, was not sorry at the prospect of leaving Hallbury, where she saw very few people, and returning to the Marlings after her visit to Lady Graham. For at Marling Hall there was still a certain amount of coming and going, and though she would have died sooner than admit it to anyone, the Marlings were the kind of family to whom she was accustomed, while the Fieldings, kind, delightful and intelligent people though they were, could not be called county: not possibly.

  An amicable division of the more important guests had been made among the houses in question. Dr Dale, as of right, had Dr Crawley and his wife. Admiral Palliser was entertaining the Pomfrets and their agent. The Watsons had invited the George Knoxes. The Fieldings had offered to entertain Lord Stoke, whose groom and horse could go to the Omnium Arms, Mr Birkett, the headmaster of Southbridge School with his wife, and Mrs Morland. To these they had kindly added Lord Stoke’s friends Mr and Mrs Tebben. And when we say friends, Mrs Tebben’s rule in life was that wheresoever her husband went, there (if humanly possible) went she also; which meant that she had to be asked, because if not asked, she came.

  A lunch party of ten, six of whom are guests, is more than most housekeepers would care to face, but to Gradka it was but an occasion to show her skill and her art. Also the news from Mixo-Lydia had of late been very good. Powerful Russian forces had entered it from the north-east, driving the Germans before them with great slaughter, had beaten off all counter-attacks and freed nearly all the country, and were now rapidly penetrating Slavo-Lydia before the Germans could re-form. The Mixo-Lydian flag, which being composed of bands of blue, white and red was very difficult to distinguish from a lot of other flags, had been hoisted on the cathedral of SS Holocaust and Hypocaust, and there had already been several highly enjoyable clashes on the Mixo-Lydia frontier and some cattle-maiming on both sides. All this Gradka had read in the newspapers and heard on the wireless; also at Mixo-Lydian House, the headquarters of her nation, near Southbridge, where Monsieur and Madame Brownscu had had a frightful quarrel about Mixo-Lydia’s post-war policy. Though as this policy was the simple one of exterminating all Slavo-Lydians there would not seem to outsiders to have been very much to quarrel about.

  At half-past twelve the pleasant and unwonted sound of a horse’s hoofs at a spirited trot were heard in Hallbury High Street as Lord Stoke came smartly up the hill on his cob, followed by an elderly groom in livery. Old Mrs Freeman, the verger’s mother, who was ninety and annoyingly active in the body though weak in mind, came onto the pavement and called out, ‘G
od bless your Grace,’ under the impression that it was the great Duke of Omnium who died in the ’6o’s. A number of women who were still doing bits of shopping said what a sweet horse it was, and all the children within earshot rushed along with desultory cheers, hoping it was going to be a circus. Lord Stoke, owing to his deafness, could not hear them, but was pleased by their attention, and reining in his cob, let him proceed at a foot-pace to Hallbury House. Here his groom dismounted and held the cob’s head while Lord Stoke, who at eighty was beginning to feel an occasional touch of stiffness, climbed down. The groom then walked the horses slowly to the Omnium Arms while Lord Stoke, finding that the front door in proper county fashion was not locked, went in and was lost to view.

  Now one of Lord Stoke’s amiable eccentricities was an inordinate interest and curiosity about all his friends’ domestic concerns. Whenever possible he entered their houses by the back entrance. When he did not know the house an infallible instinct directed him to the kitchen quarters, and so it was that Gradka, giving her finishing touches to the cold lunch she had arranged, was startled to see an old gentleman in a shooting-jacket, riding-breeches and gaiters, wearing a flat-topped brown billycock, standing in the kitchen doorway.