Читать книгу The Headmistress - Angela Margaret Thirkell - Страница 5

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By eight o’clock on Monday morning all three young Beltons had left the house and returned to their respective jobs. Mr. Belton had his usual local and county work to do, and as he had his estate office in the East Pavilion his life, apart from coming back to Arcot House to eat and sleep instead of to the Park, was not much changed. Mrs. Belton, grimly and efficiently seconded by Wheeler, well-meaningly though temperamentally by the cook, and zealously though ineffectively by Florrie Wheeler, aged sixteen, very soon had her household organized. The Red Cross working party that used to meet once a week at Harefield Park now met at Arcot House, and Mrs. Belton found that she enjoyed the various meetings at Plassey House, Clive’s Corner, or Dowlah Cottage all the more that she could get home in a few minutes instead of having to walk or bicycle a mile uphill in all weathers. Dr. Perry was, as indeed he always was, as good as his word and looked in on Potter the chemist the very next day and had a tonic and a tin of glucose sent to Arcot House. Mrs. Belton, after the fashion of intelligent women, took some of each when she thought of it, and if she had forgotten it took a double dose of one or both for luck.

It will hardly surprise our readers to learn that the evening chosen with so much trouble for Mr. Oriel’s dinner party had to be altered after all, because his housekeeper had a slight attack of influenza. But a fresh date was settled for the first week in October which suited everybody, including Dr. Perry. On the afternoon of this day (which was a Wednesday) Mrs. Belton set out for Plassey House where Mrs. Perry had a working party once a week, though no one ever quite knew what it was for. It had been begun, long before the war, to make children’s underclothes for an East London Mission. At the outbreak of war all the children were sent to one of the midland counties and Mrs. Perry turned her workers on to making pyjamas for the Barchester Infirmary. When this was amalgamated with the Barchester General Hospital who already had more pyjamas than they knew what to do with and in any case did not approve of the pattern used by the Infirmary, all the ladies switched onto seaboot stockings for the Merchant Navy, but were headed off from this by an urgent appeal for nightgowns for expectant mothers evacuated from a bombed West-country town. This was followed by an interval of bandage-making during which every worker got her hair, eyes and nose full of particles of lint besides being mostly too stupid (though delightful intelligent women) to sew a many-tailed bandage together in the right way. So when Lady Pomfret, the head of the Barsetshire W.V.S., came to address the united Harefield Working Parties and told them that at the Barchester General the nurses hated and despised the elaborate many-tailed bandages and used them as dusters whenever the ward sister took her eye off them, the Plassey House party gave a sigh of relief. Mrs. Perry put her ladies back on to knitting in which, as she truly said, it was impossible to waste quite so much material, as one could always unravel the ones that were knitted all wrong and knit them up again. Assisted by Mrs. Belton she had embarked upon a process of elimination by which the good knitters made socks and gloves for the Barsetshire Regiment Comforts Fund, the less intelligent made Balaclava helmets if Mrs. Perry would just be good enough to show them once more how one cast off for the hole for the face, and the real incompetents made scarves for the Mixo-Lydian refugees, whose cause, as we know, was very near to Mrs. Perry’s heart. Their work was not professional, in fact it was very bad, but as the Mixo-Lydians used the scarves as floor cloths on the rare occasions when they did any cleaning, it was not altogether wasted.

Plassey House was smaller than Arcot House and its sash windows less elegant, but it had a beautiful carved shell-shaped projection over the front door. Mrs. Perry kept to the pleasant country practice of an open front door during the day, with a glass door inside it, through which people passing the house could see the long garden beyond and the big cedar tree, Dr. Perry’s pride, the biggest in that part of the county except those at the Palace. Patients went by the carriage-gate through the cobbled yard to the surgery which had once been a little orangery and was connected with the house by a short passage.

Mrs. Belton came out of Arcot House with the intention of going straight to Plassey House and telling Mrs. Perry that Mrs. Updike, the solicitor’s wife, must somehow be degraded from socks to Balaclavas as nothing would cure her of doing a peculiar variety of stitch that made the heels end in peaks instead of being rounded. She was always perfectly agreeable about it, and never minded undoing them again in the least, but her last pair had been such a Penelope’s web that they appeared likely to last her till the end of the war.

It was a mysterious property of Harefield, as indeed it is of most villages, that it was practically impossible to go straight from one point to another because life, as Mrs. Updike had said when a lorry carrying the trunks of several enormous trees came round a corner too sharply and crashed with its near front wheel into the wall of the almshouses while the tree trunks caught the laundry van full in the bonnet, was always going on to such an extent.

First Mrs. Belton remembered that she had forgotten to post her husband’s letters, so she had to go in the wrong direction to the post office. This was an uninteresting building, called by the knowing ones functional, but luckily tucked away round the corner where it did not spoil the High Street, and here she met Mrs. Hoare from Dowlah Cottage, who was also going to the working party and was sending a parcel to her married daughter in Australia.

“Gladys has just had her fourth, Mrs. Belton,” said Mrs. Hoare. “A dear little girl.”

Mrs. Belton congratulated her and said a girl must be very nice.

“They did hope for a boy this time,” said Mrs. Hoare. “Four girls is quite a lot. But her husband is partly Dutch, you know, so I always thought they would have girls. It’s something to do with Princess Juliana I always think, it seems to run in the blood. I’ll come with you if you are going to Plassey House.”

Mrs. Belton didn’t really care if Mrs. Hoare came with her or not, and the ladies left the post office together.

“It is very sad for you not being able to see your grandchildren,” she said, for want of anything better to say.

“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Hoare, who though she had always worn decent black since her husband’s death a few years previously was a very active bustling woman, full of good works and always rushing off to nurse relations in impossible parts of England. “I often think it’s just as well. If Gladys lived in England she would expect me to have all the children to stay and go off gallivanting herself. Besides, my family need me. Old Aunt Fanny in Derbyshire died in the summer and left me her Sheraton writing-table. Aunt Patience is weak in the intellect, but she does miss Aunt Fanny, and often says she would be glad to be Taken, but those mental cases always have very good constitutions. The house is left to me and Gladys, so I’ll have to go up there soon and see that everything is all right. And Uncle Joe at Tregaskis is breaking up. Uncle Andrew, his brother, died last winter and left me all his Indian brasswork, and when Uncle Joe dies I am to have the house. When they have all Passed Over I hope Gladys will come back and she and the children could go and live at Morecambe with Cousin Harriet who needs someone in the house since she got so blind. But I really couldn’t manage children at Dowlah Cottage.”

“I should have thought,” said Mrs. Belton cautiously, not wishing to offend Mrs. Hoare, who was an old acquaintance “that one would get rather fond of one’s grandchildren. Of course I don’t really know, as I haven’t any, as none of my children are married.”

“All very well in peace-time,” said Mrs. Hoare firmly, “but not now. If I had four little girls at Dowlah Cottage and probably no nurse, for you know how impossible it is now and the wages they want, I would kill them all at once.”

“I suppose there is something in that,” said Mrs. Belton, who was far too apt, from a distrust of her own powers of judgment, to give undue consideration to statements with which she disagreed. “But one always might get a nurse. Alice Wicklow has one.”

“What does she pay her?” said Mrs. Hoare.

“I never asked her,” said Mrs. Belton, feeling even as the words left her mouth that they might sound rude, and remembering also that Mrs. Hoare, as widow of the late agent to the Pomfret estate, naturally had a rather poor opinion of the wife of the present agent, though on perfectly good terms with her. “But the nurse has curvature of the spine and something wrong with her eyes, so she mayn’t lift either of the children and has to lie down every afternoon for two hours. Still,” she continued, feeling that she was not making out a very good case, “it is another pair of hands in the house.”

Mrs. Hoare looked at her with the interest a mental specialist might show in a hopeful borderline case, but made no comment. Just as they got to the chemist’s shop a little pony-cart dashed up and a chorus of small voices shouted, “Mrs. Belton.”

“It’s Lady Graham,” said Mrs. Belton delightedly.

“I’ll go on then,” said Mrs. Hoare, looking at the cart full of children and dissociating herself from it. “I’ll see you again at the working party.”

Out of the pony-cart then tumbled three of the Graham children, followed by their mother, a charming dark-haired creature in what Mrs. Belton wistfully recognized as the well-cut tweeds she could no longer afford, with a diamond and ruby clip on her jacket and a pearl necklace of exactly the right length for a country outing.

“Lucy!” said Lady Graham, embracing Mrs. Belton in a soft impersonal way. “How lovely to see you. John and Robert, say how do you do to Mrs. Belton. Darling Edith, say how do you do to Mrs. Belton. And here is Merry. We have all come in to buy our chocolate ration. Come and ask Mr. Humble at the shop if he has some nice chocolate, darlings.”

Lady Graham and her flock went into J. Humble, General Supply Store, and Mrs. Belton shook hands over the side of the pony cart with Miss Merriman, the perfect secretary of Lady Emily Leslie, Lady Graham’s mother.

“How are Lady Emily and Mr. Leslie?” she said.

Miss Merriman said Mr. Leslie’s heart was always an anxiety, but he had been better this year. Lady Emily, she said, apart from her usual arthritis, was well and full of energy.

“We had a Wings for Victory week at Little Misfit,” said Miss Merriman, “and General Graham lent the racquet court for a meeting. Lady Emily painted one of her lovely imaginative compositions of cherubim and seraphim with red and blue wings on the back wall of the racquet court behind the platform for the speakers and Sir Robert was really annoyed. Even Lady Graham noticed his annoyance.”

Mrs. Belton laughed. Miss Merriman did not laugh, but she and Mrs. Belton understood each other very well and both loved Miss Merriman’s provoking, incalculable, enchanting employer. Miss Merriman asked after Mrs. Belton’s children; Lady Graham and her flock came back and got into the cart. With many wavings and hand kissings from the children the pony cart went away towards Little Misfit.

“Whenever I see Lady Graham,” said a voice at Mrs. Belton’s elbow, “I feel how entirely unnecessary intellect is in a woman. Are you going anywhere? I am going to see Updike.”

Mrs. Belton turned and saw Mr. Carton.

“Well, I am really going to Mrs. Perry’s working party,” said Mrs. Belton, “but I had to post some letters first and somehow it is always very difficult to get along the High Street.”

“More happens in this High Street than anywhere else in the world,” said Mr. Carton, accommodating his long stride to her walk. “I’ve been away with my mother, but I can assure you that Bognor was the Gobi Desert compared with Harefield. And here is Oriel. Much as I like and value Oriel, I sometimes feel that if I meet him more than five times a day in the High Street I shall come to hate him. A delightful man, but he cannot see one without stopping to talk.”

They were now abreast of Clive’s Corner, a long two-storied house in the angle formed by the High Street and Bodger’s Lane. Mr. Oriel was coming down the steps accompanied by Mr. Updike the solicitor.

“Ha, Carton, we meet again,” said Mr. Oriel, and took his hat off to Mrs. Belton. Mr. Updike with a friendly gesture disappeared into his office. “A busy man,” said Mr. Oriel, looking after him admiringly. “You are the very man I wanted, Carton. I have a small favour to ask you.”

“Out with it,” said Mr. Carton, mounting the first step. “I am going in to see Updike about a bit of college property near here.”

Mrs. Belton said she would leave them, as she was going to Mrs. Perry’s work party.

“I will accompany you if I may,” said Mr. Oriel, “as I have an errand in Madras Cottages. Just one word with Carton and I am at your service.”

Mrs. Belton would have liked to say, “All right, only do hurry up,” but courtesy forbade, so she smiled and stood waiting.

“On second thoughts it will keep,” said Mr. Oriel to Mr. Carton. “I will look in on you on my way back to the Vicarage, for I must not detain Mrs. Belton. It is extraordinary,” he continued, as he and Mrs. Belton walked on, “how one cannot help meeting people in the High Street. This meeting with Carton was fortunate, as I particularly wanted to ask him something; yet I sometimes feel that much as I like him I shall one day be tempted to cross the road to avoid him, so often do our steps cross each other during the day.”

Mrs. Belton thought it was either very nice of Mr. Oriel (as showing that he didn’t really dislike Mr. Carton) or very silly of him (as wasting a good opportunity) not to have asked him whatever it was when he was there. But she had long ago decided within herself, though perhaps barely conscious of the decision, that it was better not to take any notice of what men said, because they didn’t seem to have much sense.

Apart from a few friendly words with three friends whose names do not concern us and two shopkeepers who were taking the air at their doors, and nearly being run over by Miss Holly on her bicycle, there were no more interruptions. Mr. Oriel left Mrs. Belton at the door of Plassey House and pursued his way to Madras Cottages.

As it was by now half-past three, the working party was in full swing. Mrs. Perry’s comfortable and slightly over-furnished drawing-room looking out on the cedar was boiling over with nine or ten ladies, some winding wool on the back of a chair or on a friend’s hands, some not being quite exactly sure how one did that other casting-on stitch, not the one where you go on knitting with two needles, my dear, but the one where you measure off ever so much more than you want and twist it round your left hand like this—no, like this—and keep on making a stitch with one needle, but I haven’t quite exactly got it, don’t look at me for a moment and I’m sure it will come back. Others again were knitting with such frenzied speed that, being also much occupied in conversation, they overshot their mark and had to take off all the stitches and unravel back to where they ought to have begun increasing and pick up all the stitches again except the one that always managed to escape, turning up sometimes as the end of a long ladder. And Mrs. Updike, a tall, fair, thin woman looking ridiculously young for the mother of four children between fifteen and twenty-five, was sitting with her legs crossed, examining her knitting with an expression of bewildered friendliness.

School summer holidays were usually a close time for the Harefield working parties, as mothers were either away with their families or worn out by them. Mrs. Perry’s was the last to begin again and its members were all a little, though quite kindly, curious to see how Mrs. Belton would behave now she was a villager and no longer living at Harefield Park. Mrs. Belton, though she did not attach very much importance to the change in her life when everything was changing and so many old things uprooted, could not all the same help feeling that she came back to the working party slightly on approval as it were. But if she was at all nervous, the friendly murmur of greeting which met her was enough to make her feel quite comfortable. Knitting needles clashed on the floor as ladies half rose to offer her their seat, and the ball of wool that Mrs. Hoare was winding sprang out of her hands, ran with incredible speed across the floor and went to earth under a Chinese cabinet.

“Oh, dear,” said Mrs. Hoare, pulling at the wool.

“You’ll only make it worse if you do that, Mrs. Hoare,” said Mrs. Perry. “It’s because the floor slants in that corner. A lot of our floors do. One moment and I’ll poke it out.”

Seizing the hearth-brush she pushed it under the Chinese cabinet. The ball ran out, Mrs. Perry picked it up, the wool caught round one of the clawed feet and broke.

“That’s all right,” said Mrs. Hoare. “I’ll tie the ends together.”

“Oh, Mrs. Hoare, it will make a knot if you do,” said Mrs. Updike. “I believe one ought to lick one’s fingers and roll the ends together.”

Mrs. Perry’s sister-in-law who was staying with her said licking was no use because the natural grease in the wool didn’t give the lick a chance and she always threaded one end into a darning-needle and wove it in and out of the other end and if anything stuck out afterwards she cut it off. The wife of a Rear-Admiral who was in the Middle East said tie it by all means, but a reef knot. This led to several ladies showing each other how a reef knot was made, but owing to an uncertainty as to the second movement of the tying, all the knots came undone at once when pulled. Mrs. Perry said she knew reef knots were all a matter of luck. Mrs. Hoare, who had sat down again, took up the broken ends of her wool, tied them together in a knot with two tails sticking out of it and continued her work.

This enthralling episode being disposed of, Mrs. Belton was put next to Mrs. Perry’s sister-in-law, took her knitting out of her bag and cast on for a glove. As soon as she was well settled into knit two, purl two, she cast her eye on Mrs. Updike on her other side. That lady, who had not taken any part in the affair of the knot, was still looking at the knitting on her lap with a benign but dazed expression.

“It is quite extraordinary,” she said, “how I can’t do things. Do what I will these socks get the better of me. What do you think I have done, Mrs. Belton?”

Mrs. Belton examined the sock which would have been an excellent fit for anyone who had a conical back to his heel.

“I have done it four times, and each time it comes out differently,” said Mrs. Updike. “And I do exactly what it says in the book. I suppose I’ve got a sort of thing about it.” She laughed a very young, pretty laugh.

“I wonder if you would feel more comfortable with a different kind of knitting,” said Mrs. Belton, seizing her chance.

“Oh, I’d love it,” said Mrs. Updike, tearing all the needles out of her work and beginning to unravel and re-wind the wool. “I always love doing anything new. I’m always making experiments with cooking and the family seem to like them. Look at my hands.”

With some pride she held them out. Mrs. Belton had seen many women’s hands, previously cherished, coarsened by all kinds of household or other work. Mrs. Perry’s were not improved by two days a week at camouflage netting, Mrs. Hoare did part-time in a small factory from nine to one six days a week, Mrs. Belton’s own hands were the worse for a mixture of camouflage nets and gardening, but Mrs. Updike’s were more chipped, burnt, cut, rubbed, bruised and generally ill-treated than any she had seen.

“What have you done to yourself?” she asked.

“I can’t think,” said Mrs. Updike, with her gay laugh. “I only do some housework and cooking and gardening and the family mending, but I must have a thing about getting knocked about. All those dirty lines,” she said, looking proudly at a network of grime on the forefinger of her right hand, “aren’t really dirt you know. I mean not dirt from not washing, but when I clean the gas stove it seems to get grimed in. That horrid red place is where the lid of the little boiler that heats the water fell on me when I was raking it out, and the children all say I am not fit to be trusted near a knife or a kettle,” said Mrs. Updike, gazing with abstract interest at a very unpleasant cut on the top of one finger and the mark of what had evidently been a severe scald.

“But you really ought to take more care,” said Mrs. Belton. “Do you put anything on them after they have been in water?”

“Lots of things,” said Mrs. Updike vaguely. “I am always going into Potter’s for hand cream, but it only gets all over my clothes and doesn’t seem to make my hands any better.”

At the mention of Potter the whole room had pricked up its ears and no sooner had Mrs. Updike finished than seven or eight ladies began to speak at once, each lady recommending a different salve or unguent for war-worked hands, mostly with the rider that one couldn’t get it now. All were genuinely shocked by Mrs. Updike’s hands, and none could quite understand how anyone could get herself into such a mess.

“It is partly being very clumsy,” said Mrs. Updike, pleased at being the centre of so much kind attention. “And then I don’t see very well without my spectacles.”

Mrs. Perry said she had never seen Mrs. Updike wear spectacles.

“My husband always says I don’t wear them because I am vain,” said Mrs. Updike, laughing at the idea, “but it really is because I often can’t find them.”

“You ought to have two pairs,” said Mrs. Hoare. “My old Aunt Janet—the one who died last Christmas and left me all that silver,” she added to the company in general—“always had a pair of spectacles for each room she used. Of course most of Durnford Grange had been shut since Uncle Henry’s death, but she always had six pairs in use. That nice still-life in my little hall was Uncle Henry’s bequest to me and I value it very much. If he had been spared he was going to have it cleaned and find out what it was really meant to be.”

“I love still lifes,” said Mrs. Updike. “I’ve got a perfect thing about them. But I have got two pairs, Mrs. Hoare, only I can’t see with either of them and somehow I never seem to find time to go to Barchester. I know I ought to. But if I go to the oculist he is sure to make me have a new pair and it does seem such waste when I’ve got two pairs already, both quite useless.”

All the ladies began to recommend their favourite oculist, as they had before recommended their favourite hand cream, with the same drawback, that the oculists were as impossible to get as the cream, having all gone abroad or been sent to military hospitals. As no work at all was being done, it was just as well that tea came in at that moment.

Mrs. Perry, owing to her husband being a doctor, was allowed to keep her faithful maid Ruth who was in any case above calling-up age and didn’t hold with people going into factories and earning all that money. Most of Mrs. Perry’s friends were rather afraid of Ruth. She put the tea-tray down on the table and went out to fetch the cakes which her standard of living for the gentry caused her to provide whether her mistress liked it or not.

At this point a curious ritual took place which was repeated in every working party in Harefield, and for aught we know in the whole county. The majority of the ladies drew from their reticules bottles of varying sizes and shapes, from a large bottle of pleasing blue formerly the home of fluid magnesia (Mrs. Hoare) to a smaller bottle whose stout and well-fitting cork proclaimed it unmistakably as the former abode of Eno’s Fruit Salts (Mrs. Belton). In these bottles the wise virgins—or in other words the patriotic and thoughtful members of the party—brought their portions of milk, for not only was milk officially rationed, but owing to a dry summer the local dairies had been obliged to cut down supplies especially to houses where there were no young children. These ladies having produced their bottles and set them up on the table, a piece of furniture now conveniently to hand, the improvident members of the party then exclaimed with apparent, and often with genuine surprise, that there now, they had forgotten their milk again, and would drink their tea without, just to remind themselves. To which the hostess, in this particular case Mrs. Perry, would say it didn’t matter in the least and there was quite enough milk in the house. The faithful Ruth, who kept a very sharp eye on “the working ladies” as she called them, stood by the door, looking through her uncompromising steel-rimmed spectacles for possible backsliders.

Mrs. Perry’s sister-in-law who was staying with her was of course a member of the family for the time being and had an emergency card for her rations, though Ruth held it against her that two points, lawfully the property of the Perry household, had been done away with before the kitchen was able to use them. Mrs. Updike, after a great deal of cheerful conversation aloud with herself, found in the bottom of her bag a very small aspirin bottle which she said was all the milk there was left over because she had let half a pint boil right away when she was making a custard for lunch and the dairy didn’t come till three.

“I hadn’t time to wash it out, so I expect I shall go off into a deep slumber,” she said, amused by the idea. “I used the last aspirin last night for my toothache and of course it is Wednesday so I can’t get any more.”

Every lady present except Mrs. Perry’s sister-in-law, who came from some outlandish place where Thursday was early closing, told her nearest neighbour what she had forgotten to get at the shops that morning and it was universally decided that Wednesday came at least twice as often as any other day. If the Rear-Admiral’s wife and Mrs. Hunter, who was not a Harefield native and had only been asked on approval, thought this discussion would enable them to escape the consequences of careless, and in the case of Mrs. Hunter we fear deliberate forgetfulness, their fools’ paradise did not last long. The faithful Ruth, advancing a step and planting herself before the tea-table, waited for a temporary lull and said to her mistress and her mistress’s sister-in-law,

“That’s all the milk there is. There’s just enough for you two. Cook kept it back from the pudding she’s making for the doctor’s dinner.”

She then cowed the whole room with a glance and went away.

The Rear-Admiral’s wife apologized; Mrs. Belton said she had heaps for two and the ladies fell into naval talk, for Freddy Belton had been on a torpedo course at the beginning of the war under the Rear-Admiral. Mrs. Hunter, on the other hand, not only omitted to apologize, but said with the voice of one crying economy in the wilderness that in her kitchen she never used anything but powdered milk for puddings, because her dear pussies needed the fresh milk.

There was a moment’s tension which Mrs. Belton relieved by saying how much she liked Miss Sparling and how glad she was that the Park would be in good hands. As none of the other ladies had yet met the headmistress of the Hosiers’ Girls’ Foundation School, Mrs. Belton was plied with questions, those who had known the Park in former days being anxious to know exactly what changes had been made and who slept where.

Mrs. Hunter, having made a pretence of looking in her bag which deceived nobody, said she knew sugar was a difficulty, but had anyone any saccharine as she had forgotten to bring hers.

“It was one of the things I meant to get at Potter’s this morning,” said Mrs. Updike. “I used all mine to bottle apple pulp yesterday and most of it stuck to the pan while I was putting some sticking-plaster on my finger where it had burst out again. It is so stupid, but I’ve got a perfect thing about Wednesdays.”

Mrs. Perry said with a cheerful smile which those who knew her best took at its face value that there was plenty of sugar for everyone and put two teaspoonfuls into Mrs. Hunter’s cup. That lady stirred it with loud clinkings and said sugar wasn’t as sweet as it used to be; in which hour she sealed her own doom.

Tea and talk being over, which were partly the secret of the success of Mrs. Perry’s working parties, as what with homes and work and children and one thing and another the ladies sometimes hardly saw a friend, unless at the shops, from one Wednesday to the next, they began to pack up and go.

“It was so nice of you to come, Mrs. Hunter,” said Mrs. Perry. “And if I have another working party after Christmas, perhaps you will be able to come.”

Mrs. Hunter said she would like to so much. She had thought, she said, that it was a weekly fixture.

“Well, you know what it is,” said Mrs. Perry. “One means to do a thing regularly, but in war-time things do get out of control. And I am so frightfully busy with my Mixo-Lydian Refugee work that I can’t ever be sure when I’ll be free.”

“Mixo-Lydian?” said Mrs. Hunter, looking at Mrs. Perry as if she was a blackbeetle.

“A most gallant little people,” said Mrs. Perry, with a slight edge on her voice. “Such a fuss is made about Czechs and Poles that people forget the great, great sacrifice that Mixo-Lydia has made.”

“One sometimes wishes,” said Mrs. Hunter, “that they could have dispensed with sacrificing themselves to the extent they do.”

“Oh? How?” said Mrs. Perry coldly.

“Coming here in millions and living in great comfort at our expense,” said Mrs. Hunter, her voice trembling slightly. “Of course no one who has not been in Slavo-Lydia knows the atrocities the Mixo-Lydians have committed. I cannot repeat to you the horrors the manager of the hotel in Slavo-Lydiapolis, a most intelligent Russian Jew, told me about the massacres of 1832. They have never been forgotten.”

Both ladies were now in a difficult position. Mrs. Perry as hostess had to keep her temper; Mrs. Hunter felt that this moment of triumph was the moment to go, but also felt a slight awkwardness about the manner of doing it.

Luckily Mrs. Updike, who had just upset the remains of her bottle of milk into her lap and was wiping it off with Mrs. Belton’s assistance, looked up and said, “Who massacred the Russians?” which enabled Mrs. Hunter to smile a pitying and all-forgiving smile, shake hands, and take her leave.

“I never know anything,” said Mrs. Updike, “because it’s all so confusing, but the next thing will be millions of Russians coming over here like the Mixo-Lydians and then we shall wish we hadn’t.”

“If I were you, I’d dip my handkerchief in the hot water if there is any left,” said Mrs. Perry’s sister-in-law, “and just dab the front of your skirt. Don’t rub; dab.”

“Hadn’t what?” said the Rear-Admiral’s wife, who liked conversation to be all taut and shipshape.

Everyone looked at Mrs. Updike for an explanation, but she was now turning the hot-water jug upside down in vain.

“Hadn’t what?” Mrs. Updike repeated in a perplexed way.

“Well,” said Mrs. Belton, who always had a protective feeling towards the solicitor’s wife, “when Mrs. Hunter talked about the Mixo-Lydian massacres in Slavo-Lydia, you said we’d wish we hadn’t.”

“Oh, I know,” said Mrs. Updike, with the air of someone who for the first time that day had come to grips with a real fact. “I mean Russia is so enormous, especially on that sort of map that makes the British Empire look so large, you know, the one where the North Pole is the same length as the Equator.”

The Rear-Admiral’s wife said Mrs. Updike must mean Mercator’s Projection.

“Quite right,” said Mrs. Updike, gratified by the last speaker’s understanding. “Only I can’t do maps. I’ve got a sort of thing about them. I mean even on the map that was specially made to make Us look big, Russia looks much bigger, so it stands to reason that it must be, because Mercator probably didn’t know anything about it in those old days. Well, imagine the millions of people in Russia, all wanting to get out.”

“But why should they want to get out?” said Mrs. Perry’s sister-in-law.

“Everyone does,” said Mrs. Updike vaguely. “I mean they want to colonize and things; anything sooner than live at home, for which one can’t blame them, poor things. Well, they can’t get out on the right, can they?”

“You mean the east,” said Mrs. Belton doubtfully.

“Well, the east is the right on the map, isn’t it?” said Mrs. Updike. “And the Japs are somewhere there and the Russians are friends with the Japs, at least they intern American airmen who are their allies for flying over Japan which is, I suppose, International Law, so they don’t want to go that way, so they’ll have to go to the left. And if you ask me,” said Mrs. Updike, suddenly assuming a most statesmanlike business voice, as of one in inner cabinets, “if they once get as far as the Rhine which they are sure to do, at least everyone says they are so wonderful, so I suppose they’ll simply have to go on advancing unless it rains, we shall have to spend the rest of our lives keeping them out of England, where they would all turn into refugees, because all foreigners do.”

As Mrs. Updike, once launched, showed every symptom of going on for ever, Mrs. Belton gently interrupted her and suggested that she might care to knit seaboot stockings, as the wool was beautifully greasy and might be good for her hands.

“My father used to say I had nice hands, like his grandmother,” said Mrs. Updike, rising and dropping her bag mouth downwards.

At these words Mrs. Belton and Mrs. Perry, as they found on comparing notes afterwards, nearly cried, and each confessed that while grabbling (as Mrs. Belton said) or grubbling (as Mrs. Perry preferred to say) among the legs of the table to collect the contents of Mrs. Updike’s bag, she had seized the chance of dashing her hand across her eyes and sniffing.

Mrs. Updike then remembered that her husband had asked for dinner early and she was sure the rabbit wanted attending to, though she had done the potatoes and vegetables before she came out and made a cold pudding.

“But it is much more fun cooking in the holidays when the younger children are at home,” said Mrs. Updike. “It seems to give one more scope. I cut my hand so badly last holidays filleting some fish that I had to dash round to Dr. Perry’s surgery to be stitched up. When they are back at school, Phil and I feel almost old.”

When she had gone, Mrs. Perry, Mrs. Perry’s sister-in-law, Mrs. Hoare and Mrs. Belton had a kind of committee meeting about Mrs. Hunter. No harsh words passed, but it was understood that Mrs. Hunter would not come to any more working parties.

“I think,” said Mrs. Perry’s sister-in-law, “you ought not to try any more of those London refugee people, Maud. You remember there was that woman who put us all in a book, though I must say I didn’t think the likenesses were very good.”

“I don’t think you are quite fair,” said Mrs. Perry. “The whole of Little Misfit and Pomfret Madrigal are convinced they are the people in the book. So are a lot of people at Nutfield and even at Skeynes. But I certainly shan’t have Mrs. Hunter again. I will ask her to come to the next Bring and Buy sale for the Mixo-Lydians.”

Her sister-in-law said Mrs. Hunter certainly wouldn’t come, as she was too stingy to bring, too mean to buy, and didn’t like Mixo-Lydians, and Mrs. Belton and Mrs. Hoare went away rather quickly in case Mrs. Perry should begin to get enthusiastic.

Mrs. Belton had not in the least forgotten that she and her husband were dining with Mr. Oriel, but it had gone rather far down into her mind during the working party, so it was with a slight shock that she heard the church clock melodiously chiming the half-hour.

“It can’t be half-past six!” she exclaimed.

“It must be,” said Mrs. Hoare, “because it was a quarter past when we began to say good-bye. Not that the church clock is always right. I go by my French clock on the drawing-room mantelpiece. It belonged to my husband’s old cousin Sarah Hoare whose mother was a Parisienne—but a good, worthy woman. She left it to me when she was Taken, which was only two months after my poor husband passed to Higher Service. You know, Mrs. Belton, his chosen motto, though of course he never had a coat of arms, was ‘For he had great estates.’ Not that he had any land himself except the house in Hampstead that his Uncle Beecham left him which was let on a ninety-nine years’ lease, but he had always looked after the Pomfret estates since he came as under-agent when he was thirty and he said those words meant much to him. And without punctuality you can accomplish nothing, he used to say, so he particularly valued Cousin Sarah’s clock for being such a good timekeeper. Well, here I am at my own front door.”

Mrs. Belton said good night and walked quickly up the street to Arcot House, where she found her husband in the hall.

“Who do you think has just rung me up, Lucy?” he said. “Captain Hornby.”

His wife looked at him with a glazed eye.

“The old lady’s nephew,” said her husband.

Her mind still occupied with the working party, with Mrs. Updike’s domestic misfortunes, and a top layer of Mrs. Hoare’s recital of legacies, she still stared at her husband.

“He wants to look at some things that are put away in that locked room,” said Mr. Belton. “Not to-night of course, because he is in London, but some time when he can get leave and it suits you. I said you’d settle it all with him. ‘I never meddle with anything to do with the house,’ I said. ‘You get onto my wife about it.’ ”

“Oh, you mean Captain Hornby,” said Mrs. Belton, pulling herself together. “I’ll write to him. Do you remember we are dining with Mr. Oriel, Fred?”

“Of course I do,” said her husband. “I’ve heard of nothing else all day. I was up at the estate office after lunch and ran across Miss Sparling in the grounds and she said she was looking forward to seeing us to-night. Nice woman she is. Then Wheeler wanted to know what I should be wearing.”

“You look very nice as you are,” said Mrs. Belton. “Or were you thinking of your blue suit, the other one I mean?”

“I wasn’t thinking of anything,” said Mr. Belton almost snappishly. “If people go out to dinner they ought to be able to dress like gentlemen, not go in the clothes they’ve been wearing all day. I told Wheeler she could put out what she liked. I’ll probably go as I am, I said.”

Mrs. Belton felt very sorry for her husband. She didn’t much care for going out to dinner herself in a day dress and groping her way back with a torch, but she knew that her husband minded much more and that there was nothing she could possibly do for him. So she murmured some consoling noises and went up to her room, quite confident that Wheeler would have put out the blue suit and that her husband would wear it.

All of which came to pass. For much as many of us loathe changes, and especially changes that imply a lowering of standards which we know can never be restored in our lifetime, if ever, the passing of time brings its soothing influence and we can at least pretend that it is rather fun to eat in the kitchen and all live in one sitting-room, and hang our tail coats and evening gowns in a bag with moth balls, thus fostering a pleasant delusion that we may one day put them on again.

“But most of us will be too thin,” said Mrs. Belton aloud to herself as she put on a light woollen frock with high neck and long sleeves for Mr. Oriel’s party, and thinking of the number of times her coats and skirts had had to be taken in since the war; or to be exact since Munich, when the shadow fell darker and the nerves became more taut. In fact every time she took a suit to her tailor to be altered she had feared he would dismiss her as unworthy of his craft, for she knew that he still had many customers who could afford new suits and mysteriously had the coupons for them. Then she laughed at herself for being sentimental; and then she laughed again, because it made her think of Mrs. Updike and her silly yet captivating way of deriding herself for her own carelessness. So that Mr. Belton called from his dressing-room to ask what she was laughing at and when she said because she was always getting thinner, said it was time she let Perry give her a good overhaul.

As they left the house together they saw a fragile silver sickle in the sky, half-veiled in a dusty pink wisp of cloud. The west was cold, clear green, and away to the east a faint after-glow hung upon the rolling top of a great cloud bank.

“How heavenly,” said Mrs. Belton.

“Must look nice from your sitting-room,” said Mr. Belton, looking up the slope to where Harefield Park was silhouetted against the sky. “One always got a good view of the sunset from that room. My mother chose it because of the view. Funny how you don’t notice things at the time. I never understood why one sunset was better than another when I was a little boy. It was something the grown-ups talked about.”

“Never mind, we get a splendid view from the High Street,” said Mrs. Belton. “There is Miss Sparling, Fred, coming out of the lodge gates.”

They quickened their pace, met Miss Sparling and went up together to the Vicarage.