by Evelyn Waugh
They came in breathless and rather flushed for whiskey and soda.
“Tony nearly had one through the window,” said Jock.
That night Tony slept in Guinevere.
“Everything is all right, isn’t it?” he said once.
“Yes, of course, darling.”
“I get depressed down here all alone and imagine things.”
“You aren’t to brood, Tony. You know that’s one of the things that aren’t allowed.”
“I won’t brood anymore,” said Tony.
Next day Brenda came to Church with him. She had decided to devote the weekend wholly to him; it would be the last for some time.
“And how are the abstruse sciences, Lady Brenda?”
“Absorbing.”
“We shall all be coming to you for advice about our overdrafts.”
“Ha, ha.”
“And how’s Thunderclap?” asked Miss Tendril.
“I’m taking her out hunting on Wednesday,” said John. He had forgotten Princess Abdul Akbar in the excitement of the coming meet. “Please God make there be a good scent. Please God make me see the kill. Please God don’t let me do anything wrong. God bless Ben and Thunderclap. Please God make me jump an enormous great oxer,” he had kept repeating throughout the service.
Brenda did the round with Tony of cottages and hot houses; she helped him choose his buttonhole.
Tony was in high spirits at luncheon. Brenda had begun to forget how amusing he could be. Afterwards he changed into other clothes and went with Jock to play golf. They stayed some time at the club house. Tony said, “We’ve got the hounds meeting at Hetton on Wednesday. Couldn’t you stay down till then.”
“Must be back. There’s going to be a debate on the Pig Scheme.”
“I wish you’d stay. Look here, why don’t you ask that girl down? Everyone goes tomorrow. You could ring her up, couldn’t you?”
“I could.”
“Would she hate it? She could have Lyonesse—Polly slept there two weekends running, so it can’t be too uncomfortable.”
“She’d probably love it. I’ll ring up and ask her.”
“Why don’t you hunt too? There’s a chap called Brinkwell who’s got some quite decent hirelings, I believe.”
“Yes, I might.”
*
“Jock’s staying on. He’s having the shameless blonde down. You don’t mind?”
“Me? Of course not.”
“This has been a jolly weekend.”
“I thought you were enjoying it.”
“Just like old times—before the economics began.”
*
Marjorie said to Jock, “D’you think Tony knows about Mr. Beaver?”
“Not a thing.”
“I haven’t mentioned it to Allan. D’you suppose he
knows?”
“I doubt it.”
“Oh Jock, how d’you think it’ll end?”
“She’ll get bored with Beaver soon enough.”
“The trouble is that he doesn’t care for her in the least. If he did, it would soon be over… What an ass she is being.”
“I should say she was managing it unusually well, if you asked me.”
*
The other married couple said to each other, “D’you think Marjorie and Allan know about Brenda?”
“I’m sure they don’t.”
*
Brenda said to Allan, “Tony’s as happy as a sandboy, isn’t he?”
“Full of beans.”
“I was getting worried about him… You don’t think he’s got any idea about my goings on?”
“Lord no. It’s the last thing that would come into his head.”
Brenda said, “I don’t want him to be unhappy, you know… Marjorie’s been frightfully governessy about the whole thing.”
“Has she? I haven’t discussed it with her.”
“How did you hear?”
“My dear girl, until this minute I didn’t know you had any goings on. And I’m not asking any questions about them now.”
“Oh… I thought everyone knew.”
“That’s always the trouble with people when they start walking out. They either think no one knows, or everybody. The truth is that a few people like Polly and Sybil make a point of finding out about everyone’s private life; the rest of us just aren’t interested.”
“Oh.”
*
Later he said to Marjorie, “Brenda tried to be confidential about Beaver this evening.”
“I didn’t know you knew.”
“Oh, I knew all right. But I wasn’t going to let her feel important by talking about it.”
“I couldn’t disapprove more of the whole thing. Do you know Beaver?”
“I’ve seen him about. Anyway, it’s her business and Tony’s, not ours.”
V
Jock’s blonde was called Mrs. Rattery. Tony had conceived an idea of her from what he overheard of Polly’s gossip and from various fragments of information let fall by Jock. She was a little over thirty. Somewhere in the Cottesmore country there lived a long-legged, slightly discredited Major Rattery, to whom she had once been married. She was American by origin, now totally denationalized, rich, without property or possessions, except those that would pack in five vast trunks. Jock had had his eye on her last summer at Biarritz and had fallen in with her again in London where she played big bridge, very ably, for six or seven hours a day and changed her hotel, on an average, once every three weeks. Periodically she was liable to bouts of morphine; then she gave up her bridge and remained for several days at a time alone in her hotel suite, refreshed at intervals with glasses of cold milk.
She arrived by air on Monday afternoon. It was the first time that a guest had come in this fashion and the household was appreciably excited. Under Jock’s direction the boiler man and one of the gardeners pegged out a dust sheet in the park to mark a landing for her and lit a bonfire of damp leaves to show the direction of the wind. The five trunks arrived in the ordinary way by train, with an elderly, irreproachable maid. She brought her own sheets with her in one of the trunks; they were neither silk nor colored, without lace or ornament of any kind, except small, plain monograms.
Tony, Jock and John went out to watch her land. She climbed out of the cockpit, stretched, unbuttoned the flaps of her leather helmet, and came to meet them. “Forty-two minutes,” she said, “not at all bad with the wind against me.”
She was tall and erect, almost austere in helmet and overalls; not at all as Tony had imagined her. Vaguely, at the back of his mind he had secreted the slightly absurd expectation of a chorus girl, in silk shorts and brassiere, popping out of an immense beribboned Easter Egg with a cry of “Whoopee, boys.” Mrs. Rattery’s greetings were deft and impersonal.
“Are you going to hunt on Wednesday?” asked John. “They’re meeting here, you know.”
“I might go out for half the day, if I can find a horse. It’ll be the first time this year.”
“It’s my first time too.”
“We shall both be terribly stiff.” She spoke to him exactly as though he were a man of her own age. “You’ll have to show me the country.”
“I expect they’ll draw Bruton Wood first. There’s a big fox there, daddy and I saw him.”
*
When they were alone together, Jock said, “It’s delightful your coming down. What d’you think of Tony?”
“Is he married to that rather lovely woman we saw at the Café de Paris?”
“Yes.”
“The one you said was in love with that young man?”
“Yes.”
“Funny of her… What’s this one’s name again?”
“Tony Last. It’s a pretty ghastly house, isn’t it?”
“Is it? I never notice houses much.”
She was an easy guest to entertain. After dinner on Monday she produced four packs of cards and laid out for herself on the smoking room table a very elaborate patience, which kept her engr
ossed all the evening. “Don’t wait up for me,” she said. “I shall stay here until it comes out. It often takes several hours.”
They showed her where to put the lights out and left her to it.
Next day Jock said, “Have you got any pigs at the farm?”
“Yes.”
“Would you mind if I went to see them?”
“Not the least—but why?”
“And is there a man who looks after them, who will be able to explain about them?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I think I’ll spend the morning with him. I’ve got to make a speech about pigs, fairly soon.”
They did not see Mrs. Rattery until luncheon. Tony assumed she was asleep until she appeared in overalls from the morning room. “I was down early,” she explained, “and found the men at work stripping the ceiling. I couldn’t resist joining in. I hope you don’t mind.”
In the afternoon they went to a neighboring livery stables to look for hirelings. After tea Tony wrote to Brenda; he had taken to writing letters in the past few weeks.
How enjoyable the weekend was, he wrote. Thank you a thousand times for all your sweetness. I wish you were coming down next weekend, or that you had been able to stay on a little, but I quite understand.
The Shameless Blonde is not the least what we expected—very serene and distant. Not at all like Jock’s usual taste. I am sure she hasn’t any idea where she is or what my name is.
The work in the morning room is going on well. The foreman told me today he thought he would begin on the chromium plating by the end of the week. You know what I think about that.
John can talk of nothing except his hunting tomorrow. I hope he doesn’t break his neck. Jock and his S.B. are going out too.
*
Hetton lay near the boundary of three packs; the Pigstanton, who hunted it, had, in the division of territory, come off with the worst country and they cherished a permanent resentment about some woods near Bayton. They were a somewhat ill-tempered lot, contemptuous of each other’s performance, hostile to strangers, torn by internal rancor, united only in their dislike of the Master. In the case of Colonel Inch this unpopularity, traditional to the hunt, was quite undeserved; he was a timid, inconspicuous man who provided the neighborhood with sport of a kind at great personal expense. He himself was seldom in sight of hounds and could often be found in another part of the country morosely nibbling ginger nut biscuits in a lane or towards the end of the day cantering heavily across country, quite lost, a lonely scarlet figure against the plowed land, staring about him in the deepening twilight and shouting at yokels for information. The only pleasure he gained from his position, but that a substantial one, was in referring to it casually at Board Meetings of the various companies he directed.
The Pigstanton met twice a week. There was seldom a large field on Wednesdays, but the Hetton meet was popular; it lay in their best country and the prospect of stirrup cups had drawn many leathery old ladies from the neighboring packs. There were also followers on foot and in every kind of vehicle, some hanging back diffidently, others, more or less known to Tony, crowding round the refreshment table. Mr. Tendril had a niece staying with him, who appeared on a motor bicycle.
John stood beside Thunderclap, solemn with excitement. Ben had secured a powerful, square-headed mare from a neighboring farmer; he hoped to have a hunt after John had been taken home; at John’s earnest entreaty nanny was confined indoors, among the housemaids whose heads obtruded at the upper windows; it was not her day. She had been out of temper while dressing him. “If I’m in at the death I expect Colonel Inch will blood me.”
“You won’t see any death,” said nanny.
Now she stood with her eyes at an arrow slit gazing rather resentfully at the animated scene below. “It’s all a lot of nonsense of Ben Hacket’s,” she thought. She deplored it all, hounds, Master, field, huntsman and whippers-in, Mr. Tendril’s niece in her mackintosh, Jock in a rat-catcher, Mrs. Rattery in tall hat and cutaway coat, oblivious of the suspicious glances of the subscribers, Tony smiling and chatting to his guests, the crazy old man with the terriers, the Press photographer, pretty Miss Ripon in difficulties with a young horse, tittupping sideways over the lawn, the grooms and second horses, the humble, unknown followers in the background—it was all a lot of nonsense of Ben Hacket’s. “It was after eleven before the child got to sleep last night,” she reflected, “he was that over-excited.”
Presently they moved off towards Bruton Wood. The way lay down the south drive through Compton Last, along the main road for half a mile, and then through fields. “He can ride with them as far as the covert,” Tony had said.
“Yes, sir, and there’d be no harm in his staying a bit to see hounds working, would there?”
“No, I suppose not.”
“And if he breaks away towards home, there’d be no harm in our following a bit, if we keeps to the lanes and gates, would there, sir?”
“No, but he’s not to stay out more than an hour.”
“You wouldn’t have me take him home with hounds running, would you, sir?”
“Well, he’s got to be in before one.”
“I’ll see to that, sir.”
“Don’t you worry, my beauty,” he said to John, “you’ll get a hunt right enough.”
They waited until the end of the line of horses and then trotted soberly behind them. Close at their heels followed the motor-cars, at low gear, in a fog of exhaust gas. John was breathless and slightly dizzy. Thunderclap was tossing her head and worrying at her snaffle. Twice while the field was moving off, she had tried to get away and had taken John round in a little circle, so that Ben had said, “Hold on to her, son,” and had come up close beside him so as to be able to catch the reins if she looked like bolting. Once, boring forwards with her head, she took John by surprise and pulled him forwards out of his balance; he caught hold of the front of the saddle to steady himself and looked guiltily at Ben. “I’m afraid I’m riding very badly today. D’you think anyone has noticed?”
“That’s all right, son. You can’t keep riding-school manners when you’re hunting.”
Jock and Mrs. Rattery trotted side by side. “I rather like this absurd horse,” she said. She rode astride and it was evident from the moment she mounted that she rode extremely well.
The members of the Pigstanton noted this with ill-concealed resentment, for it disturbed their fixed opinion according to which, while all fellow members of the hunt were clowns and poltroons, strangers were, without exception, mannerless lunatics, and a serious menace to anyone within quarter of a mile of them.
Half-way through the village Miss Ripon had difficulties in getting past a stationary baker’s van. Her horse plunged and reared, trembling all over, turning about, and slipping frantically over the tarmac. They rode round her, giving his heels the widest berth, scowling ominously and grumbling about her. They all knew that horse. Miss Ripon’s father had been trying to sell him all the season, and had lately come down to eighty pounds. He was a good jumper on occasions but a beast of a horse to ride. Did Miss Ripon’s father really imagine he was improving his chances of a sale by letting Miss Ripon make an exhibition of herself? It was like that skinflint, Miss Ripon’s father, to risk Miss Ripon’s neck for eighty pounds. And anyway Miss Ripon had no business out on any horse…
Presently she shot past them at a gallop; she was flushed in the face and her bun was askew; she leaned back, pulling with all her weight. “That girl will come to no good,” said Jock.
They encountered her later at the covert. Her horse was sweating and lathered at the bridle but temporarily at rest cropping the tufts of sedge that lay round the woods. Miss Ripon was much out of breath, and her hands shook as she fiddled with veil, bun and bowler. John rode up to Jock’s side.
“What’s happening, Mr. Grant-Menzies?”
“Hounds are drawing the covert.”
“Oh.”
“Are you enjoying yourself?”
�
��Oh yes. Thunderclap’s terribly fresh. I’ve never known her like this.”
There was a long wait as the horn sounded in the heart of the wood. Everyone stood in the corner of the big field, near a gate. Everyone, that is to say, except Miss Ripon, who some minutes ago had disappeared suddenly, indeed in the middle of a sentence, at full gallop towards Hetton Hills. After half an hour Jock said, “They’re calling hounds off.”
“Does that mean it’s a blank?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“I hate this happening in our woods,” said Ben. “Looks bad.”
Indeed the Pigstanton were already beginning to forget their recent hospitality and to ask each other what did one expect when Last did not hunt himself, and to circulate dark reports of how one of the keepers had been observed last week burying Something late in the evening.
They moved off again, away from Hetton. Ben began to feel his responsibility. “D’you think I ought to take the young gentleman home, sir?”
“What did Mr. Last say?”
“He said he could go as far as the covert. He didn’t say which, sir.”
“I’m afraid it sounds as if he ought to go.”
“Oh, Mr. Menzies!”
“Yes, come along, Master John. You’ve had enough for today.”
“But I haven’t had any.”
“If you come back in good time today your dad will be all the more willing to let you come out another day.”
“But there mayn’t be another day. The world may come to an end. Please, Ben. Please, Mr. Menzies.”
“It is a shame they shouldn’t have found,” said Ben. “He’s been looking forward to it.”
“Still, I think Mr. Last would want him to go back,” said Jock.
So John’s fate was decided; hounds went in one direction, he and Ben in another. John was very near tears as they reached the main road.