Читать книгу Marling Hall - Angela Margaret Thirkell - Страница 4

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At half-past two Lettice put her little girls into her car and drove up to the Hall where Miss Bunting was waiting. With shrieks of joy the children, who had been packed into the front seat by their mother, cascaded out, flung themselves on the old governess and dragged her into the back seat, sandwiching her between them and clamouring for the story of David Leslie who cut all the bristles off his hairbrush because he didn’t want to brush his hair. This story Miss Bunting had told them at least eight times, but its interest never palled and when she came to the climax where the bristles were found blocking the waste pipe in the nursery bathroom both little girls screamed aloud in ecstasy. Lettice, alone in the front of the car, liked to hear her daughters’ squealing voices, and if it occurred to her that Miss Bunting was a far better entertainer of the young than she was she merely felt grateful, for much as she adored Diana and Clare, she also found them highly exhausting.

The road to Rushwater ran through the little village of Marling Melicent, followed the course of the Rising, went over the hill leaving the Risings in the river valley on the right, and came into Rushwater near the vicarage, which was one mass of evacuees under the able rule of a retired Colonial Bishop who had done locum work at Little Misfit in the beginning of the war and was now doing it with equal enthusiasm at Rushwater, treating his evacuated mothers and children as heathen (which indeed they were) and seeing with his own eyes that the children were properly bathed once a week, regarding it as an only slightly lower form of baptism.

As they passed the vicarage the Bishop emerged with two little girls and Lettice slowed down.

“Ah, Mrs. Watson, we meet again!” said the bishop. “As you see we are just on our way to the dancing class.”

Lettice stopped and offered the party a lift if they could fit in. The bishop, who was a man of action and the terror of all backsliders in his sub-equatorial diocese, pushed his two charges into the back, telling them to sit on the floor and himself got in beside Lettice.

“First-rate little tap-dancers those two,” he said, jerking a very unepiscopal thumb towards the back of the car. “Father was an acrobat and is in the Middle East now. Name of Valoroso. It’s an old name on the halls. The mother had taken to drinking, but I soon settled that.”

Lettice asked how.

“Drank with her, knee to knee,” said the Bishop. “Only beer of course. I couldn’t have done it with whiskey. I find that is the only way with natives. In my diocese they drank ’Mpooka-’Mpooka, filthy stuff, fermented ants’ eggs, the female ones, mixed with all sorts of unpleasant things. But I made the chiefs drink all one night with me and next day they were so sick they all took the pledge. I gave them each a Leander cap as a reward—I used to row a bit, you know, and caps were my hobby—and they passed a law forbidding the manufacture of ’Mpooka-’Mpooka. The High Chief had an interest in a soft drinks factory at Durban, so we did very well. These children’s mother has taken the pledge and I give her my tea ration to stop the craving. Now she’s a different woman and if any of the other mothers bring drink in she throws it into the lily pond. Two of the gold fish died, but the others seem to like it.”

As he finished this interesting story of missionary effort they arrived at Rushwater House which was surrounded in Diana and Clare’s eyes with a halo of romance, as having once been the home of the wicked David Leslie who wouldn’t brush his hair. Other cars with mothers and children were there and the air was filled with the twitterings of young voices. The dancing class had been started by Mrs. John Leslie for her own nice dull little girls and a few friends’ children and this was only the second meeting. In the big drawing-room, where most of the furniture was pushed into corners and dust-sheeted, were a dozen or so chairs and a tinkling piano at which a middle-aged woman with a decayed air was sorting music. Another middle-aged woman with a tired though worthy face and very neat feet was already exercising one or two of the early arrivals, holding their hands and making them count and hop: One, two, three. One, two, three.

Lettice, who was vaguely connected with the Leslies through her mother, kissed Mrs. John Leslie and introduced Miss Bunting, who enquired after her hostess’s father and mother-in-law, Mr. Leslie and Lady Emily Leslie.

“They are quite well, thank you,” said Mrs. John, as most people called her. “They were staying with my sister-in-law Agnes Graham when the war began, and as they are getting on and both a bit invalidish my husband and Agnes and David talked it over and they all thought their parents had better stay with Agnes for the duration, so John and I brought the children down here. John is Regional Commissioner, you know, so it is quite convenient, and we try to keep things straight here. It makes a home for David when he is on leave, except that he much prefers London and practically never comes. And for Martin too, John’s nephew who will have the place if he isn’t killed. Forgive me, but I must go and talk to Sally.”

She went across the room to greet young Lady Pomfret, also a connection of her husband’s family, who had brought Lord Mellings, aged three. His lordship did not actively partake in the dancing, but was allowed to skirmish in the back row.

Words cannot describe how Miss Bunting’s heart expanded as she found herself in an assemblage where everyone was what she mentally called the right people. And what was more, where practically everyone was connected by blood or by marriage. As the eagle, soaring in lonely majesty, discerns far below the lamb, or in rarer and less probable cases the swaddling child, and drops like a thunderbolt to seize her prey, so did Miss Bunting sustained by her intimate acquaintance with so many of England’s gilded youth and fortified by Debrett, pounce upon every relationship and make it her own. In fact she could probably have told many of the young mothers present their exact degree of kin to one another far better than they knew it themselves. Only for a moment did she falter over young Lady Pomfret and in a trice she had it at her fingertips that the present Earl of Pomfret’s father, Major Foster, had been second cousin and heir presumptive to the late Lord Pomfret who was Lady Emily Leslie’s brother and thus uncle to David Leslie, the reprobate, and uncle by marriage to nice Mrs. John Leslie. Lady Pomfret had been a Miss Wicklow, whose brother Roddy, agent to the late and to the present Earl had married Alice Barton, whose brother Guy had married the Archdeacon’s daughter from Plumstead, whose mother had been a Rivers. And so the endless, fascinating chain went on in her mind till via the Honourable George Rivers, cousin to old Lord Pomfret, and his wife who was a niece of old Lord Nutfield, Mrs. Marling’s father, she came round again to Lettice Watson, quietly knitting at her side, and rejoiced that she knew her Peerage and her Landed Gentry so well.

Ten or twelve mothers with some nurses in the background were by now established, each with her knitting or other useful work, while their young charges jumped about in a cheerful and inelegant way, laughing a good deal and presenting an agreeable picture. Only the two evacuee children showed any real aptitude for the dance and it was evident that they were rather bored by the amateur nature of the proceedings.

Mrs. John came back and joined Lettice who had been talking to Mrs. John’s Nannie.

“It is rather a small class to-day,” she said anxiously. “I did hope Clarissa and the little ones would be here. Oh, here they are.”

She got up as there came into the room four children; a girl of about nine, two little boys who might have been seven and five and a little girl who could not have been more than three holding her mother’s hand.

“Darling Mary,” said the mother, giving Mrs. John a soft-enfolding embrace, “here we are, so late, as usual. It was Edith’s fault, the wicked one. She ate her pudding so slowly that it made us quite late, didn’t it, Edith? So I was quite cross and then Nannie had to put on her blue dress because there was rice pudding on the one she was wearing.”

“Rice pudding,” said Edith, looking round for approval.

“Agnes darling,” said Lettice, receiving in her turn the soft, scented, unemotional embrace. “How are you all? Here is Miss Bunting, who knows David. She is longing to see the children.”

Mrs. Graham appeared to find this wish quite natural and sat down by Miss Bunting.

“Of course I remember you so well,” she said, turning on Miss Bunting a smile of vague, ravishing sweetness and starry eyes. “David was very naughty the summer you were here and teased everyone dreadfully. I wish you could see James, my eldest boy. He is so like my father, but he is at Eton now. Emmy is exactly like my mother, but she is rather old for this class so I left her with the governess. Darling Clarissa, come and say how do you do to Miss Bunting. She used to give Uncle David lessons when he was a little boy and he was very, very naughty. Clarissa really ought to be with the governess, but she looks so delicious in green that I had to bring her. Darling John, come and say how do you do to Miss Bunting, and Robert too. John is so like my eldest brother who was killed, Martin’s father you know, and Robert is very like a photograph of grandfather Pomfret when he was a little boy. Darling Edith, say how do you do.”

“Rice pudding,” said Edith.

“Wicked one, wicked one,” said her mother fondly. “She is called after my aunt who died, Edith Pomfret, and I think she will be very like her when she grows up, though of course there is no relationship. Go and dance now, darlings, and pay attention to Miss Milner, because she is going to show you some lovely dances.”

The bevy of children, each with a different kind of ravishing good looks and charm, ran across the room.

Agnes, having exhausted herself in praise of her young, sat benignly quiet, thinking as was her habit of absolutely nothing at all, and occasionally drawing Miss Bunting’s attention to Clarissa’s way of pointing her toes, or John’s bow, or Robert’s neat legs, or even more proudly, Edith’s habit of leaving the class and performing a private dance in a corner.

“I hoped Cousin Emily would be coming,” said Lettice.

“Darling Mamma!” said Agnes. “She did want to come, but it is so much better for her to rest after lunch and she has a thrush that John rescued from the kitchen cat and is trying to make it eat bread and milk, so I persuaded her to lie down. Besides I wanted her to be quite rested for David.”

“I thought David was abroad somewhere,” said Lettice.

“So did we,” said Agnes. “But he rang Robert up at the War Office last night, so he must be back, especially as he said he would come down to-day.”

“How is General Graham?” said Lettice.

But her enquiry for Agnes’s husband was not answered, for even as she spoke an officer in R.A.F. uniform came into the room and stood looking at the scene. The class suddenly dissolved with shrieks of “Uncle David” from a number of its members. David strode through them and heartily kissed his sister Agnes, whose calm was almost stirred at his greeting.

“How lovely that you have come, David,” she said. “You are just in time to see darling Edith do her tap dance.”

“No, Agnes,” said her brother. “Much as I love you I did not come here with infinite pains and in the teeth of all regulations to see a tap dance. And you don’t seem to observe that I am an interesting invalid. I have had jaundice and they have sent me home to recover.”

“Emmy had jaundice when she was six,” said Agnes proudly. “She was quite ill. I used to read to her every day. We read all the Footly-Tootly books, about the little elves that take care of baby animals and Emmy loved them and got well quite quickly.”

“If they are anything like the story of Hobo-Gobo and the fairy Joybell you were reading to the children the summer John got engaged,” said David, “I don’t wonder Emmy got well quickly. I’d have got well at once.”

“We have got Hobo-Gobo in the nursery,” said his sister, serenely unconscious of any double meaning, “and you can read it to Edith after tea. But you haven’t said How do you do to Lettice, David.”

“Where is she?” asked David, looking round.

Lettice held out her hand.

“Good Lord, I didn’t know you,” said David. “You’ve done your hair differently and anyway it must be ages since we met. Before the war, wasn’t it? And how is Roger?”

Not often in his life had David Leslie been at a loss, but for a moment he wished he were back in Cairo with jaundice. There was a dead silence. Lettice wanted desperately to explain to David that she didn’t blame him, that he couldn’t have known, that she really didn’t mind in the least, that Roger would have been the first to sympathise; but the only outward effect of these varying wishes was that she went first white and then red and said nothing. Even Agnes, into whose mind the idea was slowly creeping that it must be so uncomfortable for darling Lettice if darling David asked such a silly question, could find nothing to say and wished very much that her husband were there as he always knew what to do.

“How often did I tell you in the schoolroom, David, to think before you speak,” said a voice at his elbow.

David turned and looked down.

“Bunny!” he cried. “Bless your heart, Bunny my love.”

“Sit down,” said Miss Bunting.

David sat down and smoothed his hair rather nervously.

“Lettice’s husband was killed at Dunkirk,” said Miss Bunting in a low, severe voice. “If you read the Times properly you would have seen it.”

And as she spoke David knew that he was judged, and that it would take all his powers of cajolery and more to reinstate himself in his old governess’s good graces. He might have explained that he had been in Canada, the United States and the Argentine most of the previous year on various Government missions, that he had then been sent to the Middle East and been away in Libya where the Times was not regularly delivered, that many letters from home had been lost at sea, but nothing, he felt, could make Miss Bunting forgive or condone. For the moment the question of explaining to Lettice was of secondary importance. He nervously wound his wrist watch.

“And don’t fidget with things,” Miss Bunting added.

Agnes, who had at last grasped the fact that Lettice might be rather uncomfortable if people asked after her husband a year after he was killed, now joined the attack.

“Darling David, how could you,” she said with mild reproach. “It was quite naughty of you and darling Lettice is always so good about it and never cries. Robert admires her very much and says she has behaved splendidly, and her little girls are such darlings. Diana is just older than Robert and Clare is just older than Edith. So now we will forget all about it and you must not be so unkind another time.”

At this castigation from his gentle sister David wished more than ever that he were in hospital, or even in the Libyan desert, and would have gone there at once, but that he was rooted to the spot by mortification and embarrassment, sentiments which were as much a stranger to him as he to them.

“I’m awfully sorry, Lettice,” he began, but Agnes cast a look of gentle reproach at him, and Miss Bunting, drawing herself up very erect, said distinctly, “Tchk, tchk.”

Lettice now recovered herself.

“I am so glad to see you, David,” she said, “and you must come over to Marling and see us and I’ll show you the last photographs Roger sent me from his ship, and you must meet my little girls.”

By a special intervention of Providence the class was now told to get its shoes on for tap dancing and David was again surrounded by a flock of admirers.

“Who do you think that is?” said Lettice to her little girls. “That’s David that wouldn’t brush his hair. David, these are Diana and Clare.”

Diana at once put David through a severe cross-examination on the subject of cutting the bristles off his hair brush, while Clare stood by. David, deeply grateful for this chance of reinstating himself in Lettice’s good opinion, so exerted himself to please that Diana refused to put on her tap dancing shoes unless she might sit on his knees to do so. The decayed woman at the piano struck up, Miss Milner clapped her hands and called, “All tap-dancers into the centre” and most of the bevy fluttered away again. From the first it was evident that the two evacuees were swans among very callow ducklings. The amateurs were dismissed after a short lesson with instructions to practise their steps at home, while Miss Milner refreshed herself from her labours by joining in a pas de trois with the young professionals. The Colonial Bishop sat beaming at the success of his wards and told Lady Pomfret that they were as good as the witch-dancers at the Festival of the Ripening Maize, though of course quite, quite different, he added hastily. But here he was wrong, for Ruby and Marleen Valoroso, when not hampered by the presence of the gentry, could probably have given the witch-dancers points.

“And who is that lovely little girl who dances by herself in a corner?” he asked Lady Pomfret.

“That is Agnes Graham’s youngest,” said Lady Pomfret. “She is a little older than my little boy. Agnes,” she said, leaning across. “I want to introduce Bishop Joram who admires Edith very much. My cousin, Mrs. Graham.”

The Colonial Bishop, who was highly susceptible, fell in love with Agnes at once.

“Edith is always like that,” said Agnes proudly. “She pays no attention to anyone. I have heard about you from Canon Banister who used to be Vicar here. He says you are being so splendid with evacuees. Are those your children?”

The Bishop said they were, adding hastily that he meant they were not, as he was not married, but was responsible for them. David caught Lettice’s eye and found comfort in the flicker of amusement that passed between them. Agnes said, with great sympathy and obvious want of understanding that she did so understand and in these times one had to make allowances for all sorts of things. As it was clear that she had settled him in her mind as the father of all the children at the vicarage with a harem of East End wives, he began to explain, but Agnes very sweetly interrupted him.

“I know you will excuse me,” she said, “but it is getting on for the children’s tea-time and I must hurry. You must come over to lunch one day and meet my mother, who understands everything and adores bishops. Could you come next Sunday?”

The Colonial Bishop looked wretched.

“How stupid I am!” said Agnes, turning her deceptively earnest eyes upon him. “Of course Sunday is a bad day for you. But I shall tell mamma, and I am sure she will write to the Bishop of Barchester about it. And then I could take you to the children’s service at half past three, while mamma is resting. Mr. Tompion, our vicar, has a delightful service and we all go and enjoy it so much. Don’t we, darling Edith? What does Mr. Tompion tell us on Sundays?”

Edith, a woman of one idea, said rice pudding and was at once removed by her scandalised nurse who had been lurking in the background in case of emergency.

The two evacuees who were quite pleasant looking girls, if a trifle bold-faced, had now put their outdoor shoes on again and approached their guardian.

“These are Ruby and Marleen,” said the Bishop to Agnes.

“Mummy,” whispered Clarissa loudly and urgently. “Can I go to tea with Ruby and Marleen? They can do the splits.”

Whereupon she also was pounced upon by nurse, who deeply disapproved all forms of democracy.

“How nicely you dance,” said kind Agnes. “Edith would love to dance like that.”

“She’s a caution, isn’t she,” said either Ruby or Marleen, “doing her solo turns.”

Even Agnes, who comprehended practically everyone in a general mush of amiability, was assailed by a suspicion that she would not quite like Clarissa to cultivate the Misses Valoroso’s acquaintance.

“Come on, mister, we’ll be late for tea,” said Marleen or Ruby, “and were going to the pictures at Southbridge. It’s Glamora Tudor. One of my boy friends got her photo signed. I’m going on the films when I grow up. Come on.”

With a Valoroso hanging on each arm the Bishop felt he could not do better than go, which he did, accompanied by loud criticisms of nurse as quite a Madam from his gifted protégées.

“And that,” said David, “is the Brave New World.”

Mrs. John Leslie said it was so nice to have those poor bombed children at the class and that it was a great thing for their own children to mix with all kinds while they were too young to know the difference.

“No, Mary,” said David. “You may have married my elder brother, but as he is not here I am going to say that you are talking nonsense. If your children don’t know the difference between those two girls and Clarissa, it’s time you took them to a mental specialist.”

“But in Russia,” said Mrs. John, “all children are equal.”

“And look at them when they’ve grown up,” said David indignantly. “When did you go all Slavophil, Mary?”

“I’m not anything-phil, David,” said his sister-in-law, “but Geoffrey Harvey was most interesting about the Russians the other day at the Middletons. He is with John at the Regional Commissioners Office. He says they are wonderful.”

“Well, bless your innocent soul, my love,” said David, “hell hath no fury, though that’s a misquotation, like a woman who has heard a long-haired member of the intelligentsia talking hot air. In less refined circles I should say tripe. I’ve known Geoffrey Harvey up and down town off and on for quite long enough. Give John my love. Bunny, I’m coming over to see you soon if Lettice will ask me.”

Lettice, still anxious to show David that his mistake had not hurt her, begged him to come whenever he liked, to which her children added their artless entreaties, calling him by the endearing name of Uncle David, which they had at once picked up from the young Grahams.

“Robert,” said Agnes, who had just caught up with the preceding conversation, “was on a military mission to Russia and he didn’t like them, so I do not think they can be very nice.”

She looked at David and Mary with the assurance of a perfect wife.

“Good man, Robert,” said David approvingly. “And now, Agnes, I shall speed ahead of you and catch mamma unawares, or she will have painted a picture of the dove returning to the ark on the front door to welcome me. Do you remember when I came back from Buenos Aires in ’thirty five how she had painted Welcome Darling David and a laurel wreath all over my looking glass for a surprise? I still can’t tie my tie in that glass. If she expects me she is quite capable of gilding that thrush’s claws and beak. I must fly.”

Extricating himself from the children who were hanging onto his legs he blew a kiss to Miss Bunting and left. The rest of the party quickly followed and Mrs. John took Miss Milner and the pianist to her sitting room and gave them a good tea before they bicycled back to Barchester, discussing David Leslie with passionate worship and no rivalry.

During the journey home Diana and Clare, sitting one on each side of Miss Bunting with their legs sticking straight out in front of them, demanded the story of how David cut the bristles off his hair brush all over again. Lettice, alone in front, thought of all the things she might have said when David asked how Roger was. Anyone with any sense or any real kindness, she thought, would have put David at his ease at once by a few well-chosen words—though what the words would have been she could not quite imagine. But at least she could have said something, instead of sitting there like a great booby, going red in the face. It became most important that David should come to Marling Hall as soon as possible, so that she might be quite sure he did not altogether despise her for her graceless behaviour, or even worse, fear her for her rudeness, though after the way she had behaved it was very improbable that she would ever see him again. Six times she decided to ring him up and repeat her invitation; six times she decided not to. Perhaps by the exercise of tactful hinting she could make her mother, a great stickler for the ties of family, do the ringing up. If only Roger had been there, she said to herself, he would have known what to do. And then it surged over her that if Roger had been there David’s blunder could not have occurred and she laughed at herself for her folly and then nearly cried when she thought that Roger could never help her at all now. But to drive through a mist of unshed tears (“I’m driving with tears in my eyes,” said her mocking self to her) was stupid when the safety of Diana and Clare and Miss Bunting depended on her, so she hit her eyes quickly and violently with her handkerchief and concentrated on what she was doing. When she got back to the stables nurse appeared at the door.

“Mrs. Marling rang up, madam,” she said, “to say could you go up to the Hall if you wasn’t too tired, as she wants to do something about the Red Cross.”

“What was it, nurse?” Lettice asked.

“I couldn’t say, madam, I’m sure,” said nurse, who dissociated herself entirely from any war activities, holding that her brother Sid represented the family and she, as she often said, was not one to meddle, besides having the children to look after and most of their washing now and madam’s undies as well, not like when the Commander was at home. “Something about the Red Cross, Mrs. Marling said. Come along, Diana and Clare.”

The little girls demanded loudly that Miss Bunting should come up and have tea with them, but Miss Bunting, whom a long experience had made sensitive to the finer shades of nursery etiquette, saw in nurse’s eye that the present moment was not propitious. It might be that the nursery tea was not quite up to visitors’ standard, it might be that nurse had some ironing to do, but whatever it was she knew better than to thrust herself, or let herself be thrust, on any nursery, so she said not to-day.

“I’m sure,” said nurse, perceptive of Miss Bunting as someone who knew what was what, “we’d all be very pleased if Miss Bunting was to come to tea with us another day. Perhaps Miss Bunting would come on Tuesday if she is disengaged and mummy says yes.”

Miss Bunting and nurse both knew that mummy would say yes, but nevertheless the form of asking her was observed, giving great satisfaction to both parties who had a very proper feeling for all affairs of protocol, and it was arranged that on Tuesday Miss Bunting should meet the nursery party in the Lime Walk after lunch, take the children for a walk and come back to nursery tea. The little girls then went in with nurse, while Lettice with Miss Bunting drove on to the Hall.

Tea was ready in what used to be the best spare bedroom but was now turned into the war drawing room, a fine room on the first floor overlooking the big lawn and the lime walk which ran down to the Rising for no reason at all except the pleasant one of making a lime avenue from the lawn to the river. While they had their tea Mrs. Marling, a fond but not besotted grandmother, asked about the dancing class, was pleased to hear that David Leslie was back, and said they must ask him to dinner soon. When they had finished tea, the three ladies went to the disused drawing room downstairs where the afternoon sun pouring through the open french windows made the room though uninhabited feel cheerful. Here were stacked the bundles of dressings, bandages, bedjackets, and various stores which Mrs. Marling as head of the Barsetshire Red Cross had in her charge. In addition to what was supplied by all the county working parties a large consignment of stores from America had recently been sent to the Hall, and it was these that needed sorting and labelling. The work was held up from time to time while the ladies admired the good material used, material that was not now to be got in England, and each confessed afterwards to severe temptation to keep back a few of the exquisitely sewn or knitted things for private consumption. But honesty prevailed and soon after six everything was in its place. Miss Bunting went to her own quarters while the mother and daughter had a little desultory talk in the upstairs drawing room. Lettice had just got up to go when her brother Oliver came in with a man who she didn’t know.

“I’ve brought Geoffrey Harvey in for a drink, mother,” said Oliver, and vouchsafing no further explanation retired into what had been a large dress closet when the drawing room was a bedroom and was now used as a kind of genteel licensed grocer’s where some drinks and such odds and ends as biscuits, sweets, cigarettes and other vanishing delicacies were kept. It was a point of honour with the Marling family to put everything of that nature into a common stock, and they were all fairly honest about using the contents except Mr. Marling who had a secret passion for biscuits and was apt to go to the cupboard at odd moments like a boy in a moral story stealing jam. Still, as his son Oliver remarked, the biscuits were paid for with his money, so he deserved first pick. Lettice of course kept her biscuits and sweets for her little girls, but as she hardly ever smoked she put most of the cigarettes she got into the common stock and contributed gin whenever the Marling Arms could supply it.

As long as Oliver was in the cupboard clinking bottles and glasses it was useless to ask him who his friend was, so his mother and sister confined themselves to generalities. Mr. Harvey was a tall, lean man with dark eyes and a great deal of dark hair which was perpetually falling over one eye and as often being thrown back by a toss of his head or put aside by one of his long and very well-shaped hands. To those who admired him this trait was very endearing, having a certain air as of one so innocent and defenceless that he could not even protect himself against his own hair. To those who disliked him it was but a reason the more for their (as they considered) well-founded dislike. Lettice was so busy wondering why his name sounded familiar that she did not consider the question of like or dislike. Mrs. Marling had a general preference for men who were neat and well-groomed, but as it was her rule never to show her disapproval of her children’s friends till they themselves found they didn’t like them, she asked Mr. Harvey if he knew that part of the country well in a voice which accurately conveyed to her son and daughter exactly what she thought of him. Oliver, collecting glasses and bottles in the cupboard, smiled to himself and wondered if Geoffrey Harvey would be quick enough to spot it. He was still smiling as he emerged with a tray and catching Lettice’s eye saw that she had spotted it too, which made her smile back to him. Mr. Harvey saw her smile and found it disturbing.

“Sherry, Geoffrey, or gin and whatever we can offer?” said Oliver. “We are mixing it with some Spanish white wine at the moment, as the village is out of lime. Mamma, I know you’ll have whiskey and soda. Lettice, a little something to keep the cold out?”

Mr. Harvey asked for sherry, Mrs. Marling took her whiskey and soda like a man and Lettice shook her head.

“I will now,” said Oliver, “expound your visitor to you. He was bombed out of London in the last blitz and came down to some cousins near Barchester, and owing to his personality is now under John Leslie and co-equal with me at the Office, only really an inferior job as he only organises hundreds of typists and what-nots, while I am allowed to sit in a little room with a telephone and draw pictures on the blotting paper. Geoffrey, my mother and my sister Lettice.”

Having distributed the drinks he took off his spectacles and held his hand over his eyes for a moment, a gesture which made his mother and sister each say to herself, “Oliver’s eyes are bad again,” and lose all interest in the newcomer.

“Oliver is only pulling my leg,” said Mr. Harvey in a deep, melodious voice. “I was really seconded here from the Board of Tape and Sealing Wax because I am rather good at handling masses of dull and mostly useless correspondence and putting people off who want to know things.”

“A kind of Tite Barnacle,” said Mrs. Marling, testing her man.

“Exactly. How nice of you,” said Mr. Harvey enthusiastically. “But a very unworthy disciple. And what I want dreadfully is a little house for my sister and myself. If we live any longer with my cousins we shall go mad, and it is certainly not worth paying ten guineas a week which is supposed to include drinks and emphatically doesn’t, for the privilege of qualifying for Colney Hatch.”

“Who are your cousins?” asked Mrs. Marling.

“I don’t suppose you know them,” said Mr. Harvey. “They are called Norton and have a quite dreadfully boring garden that people used to come miles to see, all very rare plants that mostly don’t come up.”

“His mother, Victoria Norton, is a cousin of my husband’s,” said Mrs. Marling.

“I’m sorry—” Mr. Harvey began, but whether he was sorry for his own unfortunate remarks or for Mr. Marling we shall never know, for Mrs. Marling without paying any attention to him added—“and a dreadful woman with a face like a cabhorse. Her son was at school with Oliver and is quite insufferable and so is his wife.”

Mr. Harvey laughed and flung back his hair.

“I remembered old Lady Norton at the Leslies’ once, Mamma,” said Oliver. “She got the better of a whole lunch party including the Bishop of Barchester and we all had to listen to her account of the way she mulched—it is mulched isn’t it, or do I mean squelched—her tenth greenhouse.”

Then Lettice remembered that Mrs. John Leslie had spoken of Geoffrey Harvey and felt the relief we all feel when two things click together in our minds. It made her feel quite friendly towards the newcomer. True, as David Leslie had said, he was long-haired, but quite a lot of quite nice men had rather long hair. Oliver’s was fairly long in front, only he kept it very tidily brushed back. And even if David had known Mr. Harvey up and down town off and on for a long time, no fair minded person would hold that against anyone. So she smiled at Mr. Harvey and asked what kind of house he wanted.

“The dream house, of course,” said Mr. Harvey, mocking himself a trifle obviously. “Just big enough for Frances and me and our dreadfully faithful cook who is really Frances’ old nurse. But not a little house with beams that hit your head. Sooner a Council Cottage, however Councilish.”

Mrs. Marling said in any case he wouldn’t get one.

“I do so understood,” said Mr. Harvey. “All for Tolpuddle Martyrs, and so right.”

“That is not the way to ingratiate yourself with my mamma,” said Oliver. “Here in Barsetshire we think but poorly of Dorsetshire. Now if you said the Hogglestock martyrs, not that there ever were any, mamma would smile on your suit.”

Mr. Harvey, who liked showing people that he appreciated their remarks, laughed again, and again flung back his hair. Mrs. Marling, ignoring her son, embarked upon a catalogue raisonné of houses in the neighbourhood which had at one time or another been to let, but as they were all crammed to overflowing with refugees or people’s relations were not worth practical consideration.

“But mamma,” said Lettice, “what about the Red House? Mrs. Smith is longing to get rid of it and go to her mother at Torquay. Do you want it furnished or unfurnished, Mr. Harvey?”

Mr. Harvey said he didn’t mind at all, but as most of his furniture was stored he would prefer unfurnished. On the other hand, he added, he didn’t suppose there would be the faintest chance of getting it down from London within the next six months, so perhaps furnished; but anything would be perfect.

“Mrs. Smith wants to let furnished,” said Lettice. “She doesn’t want to see any of her furniture again, poor thing.”

Mr. Harvey said one did so understand that feeling.

“It’s because her husband died there,” said Oliver. “You wouldn’t mind that?”

“My dear, no!” said Mr. Harvey. “It is all so fantastically perfect. Which room did he die in?”

Lettice said in the best bedroom.

“Then I’ll have to let Frances sleep in it,” said Mr. Harvey regretfully. “I might have seen an elemental, quite too terrifying and marvellous. What is the rent?”

But this was a detail no one knew. Mrs. Marling said if Mr. Harvey really wanted to enquire he had better write to Mrs. Smith. Or perhaps he and his sister would come over one day soon and see it for themselves. Mr. Harvey said his hours of duty were a peculiar kind of jigsaw puzzle, like Oliver’s, but he would have a whole day off next week and would tell his sister.

“Ring me up and have tea here then,” said Mrs. Marling. “I would like to say lunch, but we are not able to do very much now.”

“How one understands that,” said Mr. Harvey. “Though nothing to my cousins, I assure you, who simply welcome rationing as an excuse for never asking people to meals and starving their guests. If Frances and I have to sit much longer like the old person of Sheen, who dined off one pea and one bean, with George and Eleanor who is really my cousin, and George, saying in loud voices that they can’t think why anyone complains about rations, we shall expire. Thank you so much for your help and now I must be going.”

“Do stay and meet my husband,” said Mrs. Marling, who wanted that gentleman to cast an eye over the possible tenant of the Red House before she went any further. “Where is your father, Oliver?”

“Isn’t he back?” said Oliver.

A great deal of cross-talking then took place from which it emerged that Oliver had come out in Mr. Harvey’s car and knew nothing of his father’s movements. At the same moment Mr. Marling came in and leaving the door open stood glaring at the company.

“Been waiting in that confounded Club for more than half an hour,” he said angrily. “Thought you were coming out with me, Oliver.”

“No, papa dear,” said Oliver. “I came out with Geoffrey Harvey in his car. Here he is,” he added in confirmation of his statement.

“You said I was to wait for Oliver, Amabel,” said Mr. Marling. “Waited nearly an hour and then he comes out with a feller I don’t know. Afternoon, young man, didn’t get your name.”

“Geoffrey Harvey, papa dear,” said Oliver.

“Oh, all right, all right,” said his father. “Thing is your mother said you wanted me to wait for you.”

“No, William, I only said would you ask at the Club if there was a message from Oliver in case he could come out with you,” said Mrs. Marling, unperturbed. “Did you ask for a message?”

“No, I didn’t,” said her husband. “What message? No one gives me any messages. I’ve been sitting over an hour in that Club and that silly feller Norton got hold of me and talked a lot of nonsense about the War Agricultural Committee. Tell you what I said to him though—this’ll amuse you, Amabel—he said he was putting a bit of the park under wheat, that bit along the Southbridge Road, so I told him he’d never do any good there. Worst bit of soil for twenty miles round. And you can tell that to the Agricultural Committee, I said.”

He paused, evidently expecting applause for this brilliant anecdote.

“Eleanor Norton is Mr. Harvey’s cousin, William,” said his wife.

“Eh?” said Mr. Marling, suddenly afflicted with deafness. “Whose cousin’s that?”

“You know you heard quite well, father,” said Lettice. “Mr. Harvey has been staying with the Nortons and he wants to look at the Red House. Sit down, darling, and have some sherry.”

Mr. Marling allowed himself to be offered a chair and said sherry was poison except with the soup, but he supposed he’d better have some and he couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. If Mr. Carver was staying with the Nortons, why did he want to look at the Red House.

“Not Carver, father, Harvey,” said Lettice.

“Oh, all right,” said her father. “If you’d been about an hour and a half with that pompous ass Norton talking nonsense about wheat, you’d say Carver.”

“George is enough to make anyone say Carver, sir,” said Mr. Harvey sympathetically. “My sister and I are being starved at Norton Park and we want to find a small house where we can be on our own, not too far from Barchester. Miss Marling said a place called the Red House might be available.”

“Lucy? Where is she?” asked Mr. Marling. “I want to talk to her about the young bull.”

Mrs. Marling said she hadn’t seen Lucy since breakfast, which made her husband ask how the devil it was that Lucy had told Mr. Carver about the Red House. Oliver, realising that the mistake was due to his carelessness, apologised to Mr. Harvey and begged to be allowed to reintroduce his sister as Mrs. Watson. The real Miss Marling, he said, would be back from the Cottage Hospital at any moment. Mr. Harvey in his turn apologised for his unwitting mistake and then said he must really be going.

The door, which Oliver had shut when his father stopped standing in the doorway, was suddenly flung open again by Lucy, in her V.A.D. uniform.

“I say,” she said, standing in the open door as her father had done, “I’ll tell you what I did to-day. I helped Doctor March to vaccinate two babies. One was Welper’s baby, you know father, the man who had the chicken farm, but he’s having to give it up because of grain rationing. It’s a fine baby. I held them both while Dr. March jabbed the stuff in and he says I can come to his consulting room the day I’m off duty and help if I like. Whose car is that in the drive? I don’t know the number-plate. I’ll tell you what—”

“Lucy, my angel,” said Oliver, “it is Geoffrey Harvey’s car. He drove me out in it and he wants to take the Red House. Geoffrey, this is the real Miss Marling.”

“Oh, hullo,” said Lucy giving Mr. Harvey’s arm a hearty kind of pump-handle shake. “I didn’t see you. You’ll like the Red House. It’s a bit art, but the beds are good. I slept there once to keep Mrs. Smith company when her husband was getting over D.T. You know he died of it. But I’ll tell you what you ought to do, get the gas oven moved into the scullery and make the kitchen a sort of dining-room. It’ll be much warmer in the winter.”

Mr. Harvey, amused by the strong family likeness between his host and his host’s younger daughter, explained that he must see the Red House before he took it and was coming over next week with his sister. He then managed to get away. As he drove back to Norton Hall he thought how families ran in types. Mr. Marling, a real character (and he plumed himself on his collection of characters) and his younger daughter an absolute replica of him, though the fine, insular self-confidence which led Mr. Marling to stand in the doorway bellowing at everyone was not so attractive in a girl, or a young woman, for Miss Marling must be at least twenty-five. Anything less like his conception of Oliver Marling’s family there could not be. Yet Oliver’s other sister was very like him. Both had a certain quiet elegance and the reserved though perfectly cordial manners which had attracted him to Oliver in the Office. He almost wished the elder sister were not married, for she had all her brother’s charm. He would like to see her smile again in that disturbing way. Very likely her husband was in the army or away on some war work and a light flirtation would not come amiss to her. The more he thought of her, the more the plan of taking the Red House smiled on him. His London friends, most of whom had managed to get pretty good jobs, would be frightfully envious when they heard he had taken a house where the last occupant had died of D.T. It would knock out completely that conceited young Rivers and his flat where the actress had taken veronal. He felt a sudden spurt of annoyance at the thought of Julian Rivers being an official war artist and paid for it too, all because he was a connection of Lord Pomfret’s. But in this he did Julian Rivers less than justice. That odious young man had not asked any help from his cousin, who would not have been much inclined to give it, and by his own arrogance and push as the leading light of the Set of Five, an artistic coterie centring round the Tottenham Court Road, had shoved himself into the job and was now painting munition factories in terms of pre-war surrealism, besides a spot of collage, his portrait of a girl shell-filler done entirely by gluing bits of bus tickets together having had a particular success.

At least, Mr. Harvey reflected, he was not an able-bodied young man who had found a non-combatant job. He was well over military age. He did his work very well at the Board of Tape & Sealing Wax and knew it. Until a few months ago he had been certain of a place in the Honours List, possibly a K.B.E. Whether his work at the Regional Commissioners Office would sidetrack this he was not sure. He would take care to make a good impression in it and if the impression were not good enough he would manage to get back to Whitehall and his London life, for to live among barbarians in the provinces was no part of his plan. Still, Lettice Watson was not a barbarian and one must make the best of any position in which one found oneself; so he sped on to Norton Park and its amenities in a more hopeful frame of mind.

Meanwhile the unconscious object of his thoughts had gone back to her home over the stables. She found her daughters in bed, very pink and clean, waiting to say their prayers. When they had finished Nurse said,

“I didn’t like to trouble you, madam, while the children were saying their prayers, but we couldn’t clean our teeth to-night.”

Lettice, rather surprised, asked why.

“I thought Diana was very quiet after tea,” said nurse, “but I was ironing and didn’t see what she was doing. Just look, madam.”

She held up two small toothbrushes, industriously clipped to the bone by the older Miss Watson.

“With the nursery nail scissors, madam, as quiet as you please,” she said.

“Oh, Diana, how could you be so naughty,” said her mother, trying not to sound loving and making no success of it at all.

“Like Uncle David,” said Diana and shut her eyes tightly to show she had gone to sleep.