by Jane Gardam
I said that it was wonderful.
‘Do you love Tennyson?’
‘Oh yes.’
She lifted a necklace out of the Persian box.
‘Better than anybody?’
I watched the necklace. It swung. It was seed-pearls, with a little diamond clasp like a diamond daisy. It was small. Made for a girl.
But I had to say, ‘No, not better.’ And the necklace swung.
‘Not best of all?’
‘Well, I don’t think he’s quite as good as Daniel Defoe.’
‘Daniel Defoe?’ she said, as if other Daniels might have got by—the one in the lions den, or the one George Eliot wrote about, or Daniel the Upright and Discerning Judge.
‘Daniel Defoe? You mean Robinson Crusoe? Moll Flanders?’
‘Yes.’
‘But my child—no trace, no trace of poetry. No trace of poetic truth.’
But then, Aunt Frances, I grew terribly angry and said in a fury, ‘Robinson Crusoe is full of poetic truth. And it is an attempt at a universal truth very differently expressed.’
‘No form,’ she cried, ‘no form.’
I said, ‘It is wonderfully written. It is true to his chosen form. Because of this verisimilitude it reads like reality. I have read it twenty-three times. In a novel form is not always apparent at a first or second reading. Form is determined by hard secret work—in a notebook and in the subconscious and in the head.’
‘You speak of journalism.’
‘Yes. Why not? With glory added. And not a lot of gush and romantic love.’
She let the necklace trickle back into the box and there was a long silence and then Maitland said, ‘Oughtn’t Miss Polly to be going to change?’
So I went out.
I went out rather noisily, I am afraid, because I felt very angry on behalf of Daniel Defoe. And I love you and goodnight and I’ll continue probably tomorrow, Your loving Polly.
There was a thunder storm on Sunday evening this week and a tremendous sheet of rain across the plain of York. The drawing-room windows were closed and we all watched the lightning and listened to the swish and hiss of the tropical-sounding rain. Whenever the rain eased a little we opened the windows to let in the steamy summer night. When at last it had nearly stopped, the butler came and flung them wide and the sweet smell of flowers and wet grass—and lilacs—swam into the room.
The house was lamp-lit. Lady Celia and the guests sat talking in undertones very earnestly. The purple woman and the fringed water-colourist sat together in a window-seat and the Fellow of all Souls enunciated carefully to Herr Grünt who seemed to be nodding asleep. Mr Thwaite was not there, nor the painter. I wished somebody–not Herr Grünt–would play the lovely piano. I wondered if I should go up to bed, when there was a little noise beside me and I looked up and saw the butler.
It was not so much a noise he made as an easing of the feet. One, two, they went on the oriental rug. Like a cat padding. He held a tray with nothing on it for he had finished distributing Madeira round the room (the purple lady had taken two) and he was looking firmly at me.
‘Message from Maitland, Miss Polly.’
‘Oh, thank you, Mr Barker.’
‘To speak in the sitting-room.’
‘Yes I see. When?’
‘Now, Miss Polly. If you have a moment. When you have said goodnight.’ He looked from me to Lady Celia and back again and at once I went over to her and said goodnight, and goodnight all round, though nobody noticed much.
‘Listen to the owls,’ cried the purple lady. ‘I distinctly hear owls.’
‘Owls, owls,’ mumbled Herr Grünt and went to the piano and shrill unhappy yearning noises came out of it as I followed Barker out. They cut into the stillness of the drawing-room and all its lamps and whispers as we closed the door, but the music did not catch the true awfulness of the cries of owls whose essential quality is bad temper (Robinson Crusoe was spared owls) and Herr Grünt has not the vitality for bad temper.
After a long walk, Mr Barker bowed me not into the servants’ hall but into a smallish room where a fire burned bright but didn’t make it stuffy in spite of the storm. Three lamps were turned up as high as they would go, one on a round table covered with thick, cream-coloured oilcloth and tacked in underneath. On the oilcloth a pack of cards was laid out. In a rocking-chair Maitland was darning and on an upright chair opposite sat Mr Thwaite, slapping down one playing-card upon another at top speed. He had removed his dinner jacket and black tie and sat in his studs and silver braces. He looked rosy and at his wrist stood a great glass of beer. ‘And so and so and so,’ he said, to the last cards, and looked round in triumph. ‘And so! Out. Finish. Chess? Mr Barker. Ha—Polly. Very unsettled evening. The barometer is almost at risk.’
‘Here she is,’ said Mr Barker to Maitland who looked at me over her gold glasses, while her needle flew about the wooden mushroom she held to the sock-hole.
‘A game of chess, Polly?’ said Mr Thwaite.
‘Mr Barker said that Maitland wanted me.’
‘Yes—never mind her for chess, Mr Thwaite. We thought she might like a cup of tea in here with us. You two get down to the chess.’
She stooped forward and crunched the kettle down in the coals. ‘We always have a cup of tea about now. And a shortbread. Sit down and make yourself comfortable. I’ll have to start measuring you before long for this kingfisher festivity.’
It was funny to see the way she was in charge—not only of me the newest guest but of her husband. On the other side of the baize door Mr Barker looked and behaved like King Rameses of Egypt in Grandfather Younghusband’s book of Kings. But she was also in charge of her employer—for Mr Thwaite sat there engrossed, using his head, drinking his beer, filled with the acceptance that life is very good.
‘Move your arm now, Mr Thwaite,’ she said. ‘Let’s set down these cups and saucers. Barker, take your shoes off. Put them by the fender.’
Mr Thwaite opened up the chess box as Mr Barker brought the board and they set out the men between them.
‘Your move, sir,’ said Mr Barker. He set down a glass for himself and a jug of beer among the tea-things. ‘Yours last night.’ Mr Thwaite looked piercingly at the pieces—and at length moved queen’s pawn. ‘They’re off,’ said Maitland, ‘that’s better. Here’s your tea, Miss Polly, and we’ll have a nice talk.’
‘Lady Celia thinks I’ve gone to bed.’
‘Well then, she’ll be content. She’s happy when everyone’s safe in bed.’
‘Is she? Why?’
‘She likes to lie thinking of the good she’s done—helping everyone, knowing that all these wonderful people are resting.’
‘Why does she?’
‘She believes that she was born to help geniuses and I dare say that she is right. They go away fatter than they came.’
‘It’s very kind of her.’
‘It’s very kind of her. Very kind. That’s what tends to get forgotten in any discussion of Lady Celia. She may order them cruel but she never stops giving. Behaving filthily, a lot of them.’
‘I suppose if they’re geniuses—’
‘There’s no excuse for filthy under-drawers where there’s soap and servants. Some never takes them off in a week. Mr Dodgson, of course, was very clean. Here—let’s see. Turn to the door—no, there isn’t enough far a long sleeve. I said there wouldn’t be. You’re a good round arm. You’ll look well in this blue.’
‘I could darn for you if you like.’
‘You’re here for a holiday.’
‘I’d like something to do.’
‘I hope you are not going to be bored with us,’ Mr Barker called over his shoulder in a much more host-like way than Mr Thwaite or Lady Celia would ever have done. It would never occur to Lady Celia to enquire how anybody was enjoying himself. I was still very embarrassed about not knowing quite what I was meant to do all day and I’d been spending quite a lot of time just wandering about between meals, picking up books in the library and
putting them down again. They weren’t so engrossing somehow as the ones at the yellow house, being so often books people had written about other books and so many of the pages being un-cut was rather strange. You had to peer in sideways.
Wherever I walked I tended to meet the other guests walking idly, too. Not the water-colourist–she was safe because she had her easel–and not Herr Grünt. He was safe with the piano: but the rest of us, it occurred to me, might perhaps all be playing the same game. The snapping painter never painted. He stood for long periods quite still on the lawn. The purple woman poet I had met that morning, transfixed before a fat blue hyacinth which burned intensely at her feet. I said, ‘Oh sorry,’ coming round a bush, and then wondered why, for she had not moved a muscle. Later on I found her staring at another hyacinth right down near the great glasshouses. It was a thinner, pink hyacinth, looking rather poorly, beginning to bend a bit and go tea-coloured at the tips. I had had to say, ‘Oh sorry,’ again and this time she turned and seemed to come out of her trance. ‘I was the hyacinth,’ she said.
‘Yes, I see.’
‘I was it, and it was I.’
‘Yes I see.’
‘You see? See? lf only you could. If only any of us could truly see.’ We both looked down at the pink hyacinth which chose that moment to keel over. It is a rare sight to see a hyacinth collapse, being so sappy and stout, but this one tipped slowly and inevitably over like a soldier fainting and its bulb stuck out in the air with all its root threads writhing about like wire-worms. I couldn’t help laughing, but she glared furiously—first at the hyacinth and then at me, and when I said, ‘Oh poor thing. It’s all been a bit much,’ the purple woman walked off very grimly twirling her ebony cane.
Thinking about it now, darning, I started laughing again and Maitland said, ‘And so what’s this?’ and I began to tell her, putting down the darning and taking swigs of tea. Deep breathing came from the chess players and the odd little chink from the fire but otherwise the room was quite still and utterly beautiful. I do not mean that there was anything of definite beauty—it was a cluttery dingy room—unpainted for years. There were ugly framed family photographs, an ugly sewing machine, an ugly rag-rug. It was the atmosphere which was beautiful—Mr Barker, Mr Thwaite, Maitland and I and the blue material were beautiful. Four people happy together. Light-hearted and happy in a way that was not very usual at Oversands.
‘That’ll do,’ said Maitland when I got to the bit about the hyacinth falling over. She was trying to make her tight mouth deny itself.
‘And what of the hair-cutting?’ called Mr Thwaite from behind his hovering knight. Maitland said, ‘And that’ll do from you, Mr Thwaite.’
I said, ‘Oh no—please, what about the hair-cutting?’
So he told us the story about when a very famous writer indeed was staying at the house and there was a poet staying, too, who had been here so long that his hair was getting in his soup and he wanted it cut. Lady Celia liked it, however, and said there was no barber nearer than York and so secretly the poet asked the very famous writer just to trim his hair a little on the quiet. While Lady Celia was resting, they spread a bed-sheet on the poet’s bedroom floor and the writer came to borrow Maitland’s scissors but they were not adequate. He needed very long sharp scissors he said, and Maitland had been rather worried, but had sent for horse-clippers and shears.
‘Needlessly,’ said Mr Barker, ‘needlessly worried. That was not one we ever had trouble with. Melancholy at times, yes. Suicidal and dangerous, no.’
I wondered whether to tell them that when I arrived I’d thought it was a lunatic asylum but then thought they might be hurt. ‘I shouldn’t think geniuses would be very good barbers,’ I said. ‘It is quite difficult for an ordinary man to cut hair. Even a practical, very very sensible man like Robinson Crusoe couldn’t cut hair. It was a great drawback to him. I always wondered about that though. I’m sure a woman would have found a way. Like gnawing.’
‘He made a very fair try,’ said Barker, ‘A very even finish, the novelist,’ and both he and Maitland looked across at Mr Thwaite, and I saw that servants do not laugh before their employer at the guests of that employer. Mr Thwaite said, ‘No bad hand at it at all. Trouble was he had a bit of a go at his own afterwards and a lot of hair got scattered off the bed-sheet around the room and they tried to get it up with the hearth-brush and left some soot-marks on the carpet. Then they burned it.’
‘What, the carpet?’
‘No, the hair. They lit some paper in the fireplace and burned the hair on it and then they gathered up the bed-sheet hair into the grate too and the bed-sheet caught fire.’
‘Yes, I see.’
‘Then they crammed the whole bed-sheet into the fireplace to try to choke out the fire but there was quite a—well, a very fair blaze. Not many actual flames but rather a great deal of smoke which went billowing out and they flapped it about the room with pillows and things to try and do something about the smell of burned hair and then the pillows caught fire. Somebody sitting on the lawn—we were all waiting for tea—heard them and saw the smoke and cried: “Fire”, and Mr Barker and the stablemen had to go running with buckets and a boy was sent to Pilmoor brigade, but they didn’t get here for two hours.’
‘Whatever did Lady Celia do?’
‘Oh, she was quite wonderful. She never said one word except at dinner. She asked the great writer why one side of his hair was six inches shorter than the other. He hadn’t been able to finish you see.’
‘What about the poet?’
‘He disappeared.’
‘Check,’ said Mr Barker.
‘Serves me right,’ said Mr Thwaite. ‘Not concentrating.’
‘You do have fun here,’ I said.
‘We have our little moments,’ said Maitland. ‘Not much for anyone your age though, Miss Polly. No young life. You’re the first child I ever remember.’
‘I’m not a child. I’m sixteen.’
‘You are and you’re not. You’re younger than many a twelve and you talk older than many a one we’ve had here of forty.’
‘She makes these utterances,’ said Mr Barker. ‘My wife is a very wise woman.’
‘I didn’t know you were married to each other.’
‘Does it seem so strange?’
‘No. It seems perfect.’
Mr Thwaite cleared his throat and said, ‘Excellent. A very excellent arrangement.’
‘I think everything here is absolutely excellent and perfect,’ I said. ‘I’ve never been so happy.’
‘You should go to bed now though,’ said Maitland, ‘child or no child. There’s something for you to look forward tomorrow. Did you know? A new one.’
‘No. What—a new guest?’
‘Yes. Something special. A poet. The most hopeful thing since Shakespeare, we understand, and he must be. He’s to have the green room.’
‘I hope he doesn’t snap the air.’
‘He’s scarcely more than a boy,’ said Mr Thwaite. ‘Celia is very fond of boys.’
‘I think she’s asked him for Miss Polly.’
‘Oh, I shouldn’t count on that.’
‘For Miss Polly,’ said Maitland very firmly. ‘And there’s a new blue linen and a good hat for you you’ll find in your wardrobe as well as the new brown velvet. I had a roust about. And I took the liberty of discarding the pelisse.’
*
The motor went off for the poet the next morning—not the trap. This guest was important.
I heard it leave and I can’t say that I waited about for its return but as I sat reading on the lawn until luncheon I found that every now and then I stopped to listen and often looked up.
But at luncheon nothing was new. The dining-room was dark–the pale blinds drawn against the sun and Lady Celia playing with curls of toast and examining her sole. There were not many of us. The poets all seemed to be resting and the water-colourist had not returned from her morning session by the wheat-field. The snapping painter had completel
y disappeared and only Herr Grünt sat dismally at the far end of the table, his long blue under-lip extended as a ledge for his spoon.
Afterwards, I wandered about, wishing for Mr Thwaite. He was said to have gone for a walk somewhere after breakfast and I wished he had asked me to go with him. He had gone across the fields, Maitland said, towards Brafferton and if I took the hedgerow paths and then the river path I might just meet him coming back. He had probably gone by Thoralby and Roundstone.
‘Thoralby?’
‘The Jewish people are near Thoralby.’
‘Jewish people?’
‘Yes. They live near Thoralby.’
‘You mean a sort of—tribe?’
I couldn’t understand her or why she laughed. I had never met any Jews as I had never met anybody black or a Roman Catholic. Jews were in the Old Testament. ‘A great family,’ she said, ‘rich as princes. They are industrialists.’
‘But it’s all farms,’ I said.
‘They have bought a manor house here. They have houses all over the place. They’ve branched out from Tyneside somewhere—they’re foreigners. Originally from Germany or some place like that. Thwaite doesn’t mix with them. Not socially.’
‘But you said Mr Thwaite might have gone there?’
‘Oh, Mr Thwaite mixes everywhere. Mr Thwaite, we don’t question.’
‘Doesn’t Lady Celia know the Jews?’
‘No. She wanted to. She thought they might be musical. When she found out they were just industrial she was very disappointed.’
‘Yes I see. I’d love to meet some Jews,’ I said. ‘Do they worship idols?’
‘They worship the same good God as you and me and Jesus Christ,’ she said. ‘Hist?’
There was a crackly noise of the motor arriving and after a moment Mr Barker came in—we were in the kitchen—to say ‘Three trains have been met and no guest alighting.’ He and Maitland exchanged a long look.
So I set off across the gardens to a gate in the wall and along the hedgerow paths and down to the river and along the meadows hoping to meet Mr Thwaite on his way back, perhaps accompanied by some of the industrial Jews. I imagined them walking together in a little group like on the road to Emmaus, but it was difficult. I felt like poor Robinson Crusoe when he first saw the cannibal boats, staring and staring as hard as he could but making out nothing because he’d come out without his expanding-glass.