Miss Bunting

by Angela Thirkell

  ‘Shall I get the School for you, sir?’ he asked, seeing that nothing would stop his reverend papa.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Dr Dale. ‘Thank you, my boy.’

  So Robin and his father went to the back passage and there Robin asked for the headmaster’s number. The telephone was answered by his invaluable butler, Simnet, who protected him against all his foes and rather too many of his friends, often intercepting messages which Mr Birkett would have preferred to deal with personally. This Robin knew, and rather hoped Simnet would pretend Mr Birkett was dead, or at any rate in bed.

  But Simnet, on hearing that it was Robin Dale whom he remembered as an upper-school boy, at once fetched his employer, who was going through the time-tables for the next term with his head housemaster Everard Carter and was rather annoyed with Simnet – and hence with Robin – for disturbing him.

  ‘Good evening, Robin. What is it?’ said the voice of Mr Birkett.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, but my father insists on speaking to you himself,’ said Robin. ‘I’ve tried to head him off, sir, but it can’t be done. Here you are, father.’

  He handed the receiver to Dr Dale.

  ‘Good evening, Birkett,’ said Dr Dale in his most resonant pulpit voice. ‘I wish to have a word with you. What is wrong with my son?… Nothing, you say… Then what, may I ask, is the reason he is not going to your school as a classical master?… No, no; he cannot have said that. I do not wish him to stay at home… No, I will not be responsible for what he may or may not have said, Birkett… Yes, it is high time he got into the collar again… What did you say?… No, of course you do not want him this term… Yes, he will come next term… Yes, that is all… You will write and confirm this, of course… Yes… Yes… My kindest regards to your wife, Birkett.’

  He hung up the receiver and turned to his son.

  That same son’s feelings may better be imagined than described. The freedom he had been pining for was suddenly within his grasp by the most unlikely means he could have imagined. He could wind up his little school by Christmas and in the New Year would be back among men and boys and books. No one would pity him there. A master with a pretence foot would simply be a master with a pretence foot to the boys. He might even become a School Character, like old Lorimer who taught classics till he died and kept a bottle of port in his desk. He might become a housemaster like Everard Carter, only then he would need a wife, which was a nuisance. Still, for the school even that might be accomplished. He looked round to thank his father as coherently as possible, but he had pushed the green baize door and gone away. Robin followed him to the study and found him winding the study clock, which could only be done at certain hours because of the way the elegant ornate wrought-metal hands got in the way of keyholes for large chunks of the time people were about.

  ‘A great deal of unnecessary fuss,’ said the Rector severely. ‘A few minutes’ common sense on the telephone and everything is settled. Your father is not too old to know his way about the world.’

  Galling as his much-loved father’s complacence was, Robin could not wish ill to any man at the moment and stammered some words of thanks.

  ‘I can always come back for week-ends when I’m not on duty, father,’ he said.

  ‘You need not have that on your mind,’ said Dr Dale. ‘I have been alone most of the time since your mother died and I get on very well as I am. You will understand this as I mean it,’ said the Rector, looking keenly at his son. ‘Not that I don’t like to have you here, Robin, for I do; but I can also do without you, and it will be better for you.’

  If instead of ‘like’ his father had said ‘want’, we believe that Robin might have made a protest. But he realized that he had heard what children rarely hear from their parents; how little his father really wanted a companion; how, in fact, he was in truth more contented alone. It was a draught with a bitter flavour, but Robin swallowed it and even as he did so reflected that he had felt exactly the same about his father, but lacked the courage, or the brutality, to say so. He sighed with relief, went over to his father, rubbed his face against his father’s venerable head and said Thank you very much indeed.

  There was then a short though not too uncomfortable silence, during which each wondered if something ought to be said about the late Mrs Dale, who was possibly looking at them through the ceiling.

  ‘I think your mother would say I was doing the right thing —’

  ‘I’m sure mother would have said you were most awfully kind, father —’ said father and son simultaneously, and horrified by this display of emotion replunged each into his own occupation. Robin, who found it very difficult to concentrate on his letter, looked at his father from time to time, and noticed that old man’s face, which had become quite strong and almost youthful in his excitement, was gradually falling back into its customary air of remote gentleness.

  ‘Do you know, Robin,’ said Dr Dale presently, in his usual kind, vague way. ‘I have had rather a good idea.’

  Robin, who by now would not have been in the least surprised if his father had rung up the Archbishop of Canterbury and told him to take a funeral service for him on Tuesday, asked what it was.

  ‘They tell me,’ said Dr Dale, ‘that there is a sale of some kind going on to get money for some good cause. Now, it occurred to me that there is that old goat-carriage in the stables. You wouldn’t remember it, Robin. It hasn’t been used since you were a child. Now, with the shortage of perambulators, and so many people keeping goats for their milk, it struck me that the carriage might be sold at a very good price. What do you think?’

  Robin, hardly daring to breathe lest this should be some baseless fabric of a vision, said he thought the plan first-rate, and he believed he had heard that the money was to go to the Cottage Hospital.

  ‘A very good use for it,’ said Dr Dale approvingly. ‘And another idea has just come to me. There is that old croquet set which we have not used for years. Do you think they would like it?’

  Robin said he thought it would be a splendid plan.

  ‘That is the kind of thing you young people don’t think of,’ said the Rector, much gratified. ‘Can you arrange it, Robin? I should be at a loss whom to address on the subject.’

  He looked so anxious that Robin hastened to reassure him and said he would do everything necessary and his father was not to give it another thought. They then wrote and read in silence till the Rector took off his spectacles and said he was going to bed. Robin said he had some letters to finish and wouldn’t come up just yet.

  ‘Well, good night, my dear boy,’ said the Rector. ‘You are going to Southbridge School, aren’t you?’

  Robin again reassured his father, who walked slowly to the door, looking at the backs of his beloved books as he went. At the door he turned.

  ‘I am in vein to-night,’ he said. ‘I have just got a third good idea, Robin. That old Aunt Sally. We don’t really need her, do we? Good night, Robin.’

  ‘Good night, papa dear,’ said Robin.

  For the next thirty-six hours Robin went about holding his breath lest this bubble should break, but on Tuesday morning he received a letter from Mr Birkett briefly expressing pleasure that he was going to rejoin the staff and suggesting that he should spend a few days of the Christmas holidays with him and his wife and discuss the next term’s classical work with himself and Everard Carter. On reading this letter Robin felt that he was at last grown-up. Everard Carter, head of the top house, openly picked as the next headmaster, viceroy of Jove himself, was now going to turn into a colleague of Robin Dale, ex-soldier with a pretence foot. The fact was so overwhelming that he could not speak of it, having a primitive and quite unnecessary fear that no one must know or the whole affair would burst and he might find himself back in the Lower Third at Southbridge Preparatory School. He also routed out a lot of his old Latin and Greek text-books and began to re-read them and to try to remember where his own chief difficulties had lain, so that he might the better understand the chief difficulti
es of his pupils: which was well meant. To the world he was simply Robin Dale who has that nice little school where Alan, or Dick, or Michael goes; he has been very happy there but my husband and I really feel he must go to a proper school now, though Robin is a charming boy and so devoted to his father, and I think the dear old Rector would simply pine and die if he hadn’t got his son with him. And the world noticed with approval that the Rector was sending some of the lumber out of the coach-house down to the Bring and Buy Sale for the Cottage Hospital.

  It would have been difficult for the world not to see this if it was about in the High Street on Tuesday morning. Robin, meeting Jane Gresham on the previous day, had heard from her that she was thinking of emigrating.

  ‘Why?’ said Robin. ‘Also where; not to speak of how?’

  ‘I did think,’ said Jane, ‘that while Frank was at Greshamsbury I’d have a little peace. But now those odious cousins of his have measles, so I’ve got him on my hands for the rest of the holidays, and mostly Tom Watson as well. I feel like Mrs Alicumpane. I wish you were Mrs Lemon, Robin.’

  ‘So do not I,’ Robin remarked. But he thought of Jane’s words, and next morning caught both little boys and made them help him to get the goat-carriage out, dust it well, and polish its metal parts.

  ‘Would you like to pull it down to the New Town?’ he said.

  ‘Oh, sir!’ shrieked both little boys.

  ‘Sir! I’ll pull it,’ said Frank. ‘Tom’s littler than I am, sir. He might get tired, mightn’t you, Tom?’

  Tom Watson looked rebelliously at his friend and said he wanted to pull it too.

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Robin. ‘I’ve got to get Aunt Sally down too. Put her in the carriage and you can both pull.’

  The little boys screamed with pleasure. Aunt Sally was exhumed and placed in the goat-carriage.

  ‘She does look a bit off-colour,’ said Robin, eyeing the battered and rakish figurehead. ‘I wish we could paint her up a bit.’

  Tom Watson said his father had a lot of paint in the workshop. Robin, drawn in spite of himself into the spirit of the thing, said they would go round and ask Mrs Watson, so the cavalcade went round by Little Gidding and into the Watsons’ garden by the side door. Mrs Watson was stringing beans for lunch on the back veranda and said they could use the paints with pleasure so long as they put them back tidily. So Robin and his pupils had a delightful and not too messy time giving Aunt Sally white eyes, nose and ears and a bright red mouth, and Mrs Watson contributed a piece of old window-curtain to nail on her dissolute head as a cap. A few touches of black paint were then applied to the more dilapidated parts of the goat-carriage, everything was put tidily away and the party moved off down the hill. Everyone who had the slightest claim to their acquaintance stopped to ask if that was really an Aunt Sally, and the old groom at the Omnium Arms produced a blackened clay pipe which was stuck into her mouth and looked very well, while Frank and Tom tried to adopt an aloof manner, as of people who habitually dragged Aunt Sallies about in goat-carriages.

  At the station such a piece of luck befell as they might never have again, for the station-master, hearing that the carriage was going to the Bring and Buy Sale, said the Cottage Hospital had done wonders for his wife when she was taken so bad, and allowed the little boys to pull Aunt Sally down the ramp on the Up side, across the line where only porters were allowed to go, and up the ramp on the Down side. Both boys loudly expressed their desire that an express might come through at the same moment, but no one paid the faintest attention to their boasting. In another ten minutes the whole party had arrived at the Palliser Hall, a very nasty wooden affair with a corrugated iron roof, impossible to keep warm in winter or cool in summer, presented by the present Duke of Omnium to the New Town for civic and other meetings. As it was used almost ceaselessly for war work, whist drives, dances for the Forces, amateur theatricals, the Women’s Institute, Flag Days, Grand Gala Concerts for the Allied Nations and twenty other activities, had no ventilation to speak of and no accommodation for making and preparing tea and other refreshments except one small lobby with a gas ring and a cold tap, it had acquired so rich a smell that Admiral Palliser, after presiding at a British Legion meeting, had said he now knew all about what England smelt like in the Middle Ages that he ever wanted to know.

  Robin left his pupils outside and went in to look for someone in command. The hall was full of women arranging miscellaneous objects on the trestle tables used for refreshments, and pricing them. There was a shrill hurly-burly and Robin felt like Actaeon, but luckily the first person he met was Mrs Merivale, to whom he explained why he had come.

  Mrs Merivale said she hadn’t seen a goat-carriage since she was a tiny tot and her parents took her to Swanage to stay with auntie, and it would be quite like old times.

  ‘I must tell Sister,’ she added, as a pleasant-faced woman in nurse’s dress came up. ‘Sister, this is Mr Dale, our Rector’s son. Sister Chiffinch, Mr Dale, who has taken over the Cottage Hospital since Sister Poulter left. Mr Dale has brought us a goat carriage, Sister.’

  Sister Chiffinch greeted Robin kindly and said she had heard of him from Mrs Belton at Harefield.

  ‘I nursed Miss Belton when she had the ’flu about a year ago,’ said Sister Chiffinch. ‘Such a sweet girl, Mr Dale. Mrs Belton kindly asked me to her wedding which was a quiet affair, but Miss Belton looked a picture in white; quite one’s ideal of a bride as you might say. You know her husband is some kind of Admiral now, and I think I may say without betraying professional secrets as you are a friend of the family, Mr Dale, that I am reserving a certain date for a little visit to Mrs Hornby apropos of a certain joyful event.’

  As Robin barely knew the Beltons and had found Elsa Belton, now Mrs Rear-Admiral Hornby, rather alarming, he could not be much interested by the news so delicately adumbrated by Sister Chiffinch, but that lady herself he found enthralling.

  ‘The Event itself was to be in the Land o’ Cakes where they have a large estate,’ said Sister Chiffinch, ‘but as Admiral Hornby is at sea I do hope Hitler isn’t listening and one cannot be careful enough, it is to be at her old home in Harefield. Such a sweet grannie Mrs Belton will make. Really, Mrs Belton, I said to her when we were discussing the Event, you look younger than any of us. But what is this I hear about a goat-carriage?’

  All excitement she and Mrs Merivale hurried to the door, outside which the carriage was drawn up, surrounded by a number of New Town children who had never seen an Aunt Sally before and were a little alarmed.

  ‘How sweet!’ said Sister Chiffinch rapturously.

  This did not appear to Robin to be the mot juste, but Mrs Merivale used the same words, so he supposed they were right. The question then arose where to put the carriage and its contents and how much to ask for it; or whether it would be better to have a raffle, only one couldn’t call it a raffle said Mrs Merivale who seemed to know all about these things because of the police, but it was really exactly the same. An arrangement was quickly made for the carriage to be on show outside the hall with a Boy Scout selling the tickets, but Aunt Sally was less easy to deal with, for clay pipes could not be procured. Robin said he must leave it to the ladies as he had to get those boys back by lunch time.

  ‘By the way, Mrs Merivale,’ he said. ‘We’ve got an old croquet set that my father thought you might like, only I don’t quite know how to get it down. It was too heavy for the boys to pull in the goat-carriage.’

  ‘Are these your boys?’ asked Sister Chiffinch, looking at Frank and his friend.

  Robin hastened to disclaim parentship and explained that they went to his little school.

  ‘Well now, wonders will never cease,’ said Sister Chiffinch. ‘I was hearing about you from Mrs Morland who writes the lovely books. She’s quite an old friend of mine. Her youngest boy Tony was quite a mite when I first knew her – just about your age,’ she added to Frank.

  ‘I know Uncle Tony,’ said Frank. ‘He’s gone to Burma. Tom doesn’t know him, d
o you Tom?’

  Sister Chiffinch said East was East and West was West as the saying was, and it was quite funny the way people knew the same people and as she had some petrol for the Cottage Hospital and the car was there, she would run Mr Dale and the kiddies home and fetch the croquet set, an offer which was gratefully accepted.

  ‘We nurses do notice things, Mr Dale,’ said Sister Chiffinch as she drove in a masterly way towards the station. ‘You have something wrong with your foot, haven’t you?’

  ‘I haven’t got it at all,’ said Robin, ‘It fell off in Italy.’

  ‘Oh dear, I am sorry, perhaps I shouldn’t have spoken,’ said Sister Chiffinch. ‘I had a patient once, a most delightful man whose name you would at once recognize, and he made quite a joke about the way he had left bits of himself in various wars. “There’s my appendix in South Africa, nurse,” for I was nurse in those days, he used to say, “and my right kidney on the North-West Frontier and one eye at Cowes,” but that of course was a yachting accident not a war, “and when I wake up in heaven,” he used to say, “I’ll find I’ve left the rest of myself in Kensal Green.” I assure you he was quite a scream. Is this the Rectory? How sweet.’