Dear Hugo

by Molly Clavering

  “Do you think I should?” He peered at me uncertainly.

  “Yes, of course I do! Take it home now.”

  He nodded, gave a vague smile and walked away quite meekly and obediently, with the pheasant dangling by the legs from his hand.

  I felt quite shaken by this encounter, and most terribly sorry for Mrs. Kilmartin. No wonder she is afraid to leave him! No wonder they are never seen about anywhere! For the man is not quite sane, Hugo, or wasn’t when he came to my door this morning. Poor Mrs. Kilmartin.

  *

  Your air-mail letter arrived yesterday. It is very kind of you to ask so solicitously about My Mice, which are small game indeed compared with the lions and elephants and leopards prowling round you in the game camp you visited lately. I wonder if I should really like to be roused by a boy at 5 a.m. with “Bwana, quick! Elephant he come!” I expect I’d be wildly excited when the moment arrived. It only sounds a trifle cheerless at dawn, which has never been my best hour! Thank you, I no longer have any mice on the premises. Aunt Nettie disposed of them with relentless speed and decision, just one trap after another until no more appeared. I believe she mesmerised them into those traps, poor little brutes.

  How very upsetting about your bewitched cook. At least those of us in this country who still have cooks are not liable to lose them for that reason! Sitting here in Piper’s Cottage close to a log fire, with the rain gurgling and tinkling in the gutters outside it seems incredible that such things can be.

  If it were not pitchy dark I should go out and comfort myself by looking at my homely Border hills with their nice round backs and humped green shoulders. It is quite a relief to know that to-morrow, rain or fine, I must do a round of the out-lying cottages selling horrid little flags in aid of the Lifeboat! Mrs. Currie roped me in for this, and was so apologetic about it that I was astonished, the organisers of flag-days usually being pretty thick-skinned. They have to be or they wouldn’t get anyone to do it for them! Sylvia, who was with her mother, noticed my surprise and laughed.

  “It’s because Mother wants you to go round the cottages and the housing scheme that she’s being so delicate,” she explained. “The other collectors all bag the big houses, they get more money in their tins from them!”

  “Sylvia dear, I’m sure—” began Mrs. Currie, getting into a fluster at once. “What will Miss Monteith think?”

  “She’ll think the same as I do, that most of your collectors are a lot of snobbish old cats,” Sylvia answered promptly.

  “You know they all want to have more than anyone else in their tins, Mother!”

  “Well, it means more money for the Lifeboat if they compete with one another,” I said mildly. “But I really don’t mind in the least where I do my collecting.”

  “Sylvia is very naughty,” said her mother. “And I am very grateful indeed, Miss Monteith. It is such a help when people don’t make a fuss about their districts!”

  “I bet it is,” murmured Sylvia, unabashed. “I’m not really naughty, you know, Mother. It’s just that I see things as they are and not through the rose-coloured spectacles you blind yourself with.”

  “If we all went about seeing things as they are and remarking on it life would be impossible,” said Mrs. Currie with unexpected acuteness. “We must be going. Come in and have tea with us at Templerig when you have finished your round to-morrow, Miss Monteith.”

  *

  As it happened, I enjoyed my collecting. The rain had stopped, and though there was no sun, it was a mild grey day smelling of spring. Pam and I went from door to door with the tin and a large envelope full of little cardboard emblems representing lifeboats, and the only drawback was that the pins attached to them kept on working their way through the envelope and pricking me at intervals. Perhaps the “snobbish old cats,” to quote Sylvia, who collected at more important houses made bigger hauls, but I am quite sure they did not meet more willing givers. Not a single person refused me, and if they only put in a penny or two, it was done with such a good grace that it made the business a pleasure. Quite often before I had time to ring or knock, the door would be opened, with the words, “I saw ye comin’, and thinks I, I’ll just be ready wi’ my sixpence. It’s no’ much, but I aye try to gi’e a pickle to a’ the flag-days.” One woman put half-a-crown into the tin, explaining, “Ma laddie’s in the Merchant Navy.” Another gave me two shillings because she had once been at St. Abbs on the Berwickshire coast in wild weather, and seen the lifeboat launched. I saw a few men, digging or sawing logs in their bits of garden. They had not much to say, nor anything to give, but with a backwards jerk of the head towards their houses, muttered: “The wife has it ben the house.” I got many glimpses of little kitchens, most of them exquisitely neat and comfortable, some with old-fashioned china dogs decorating the mantel-piece. Of course there were one or two houses where the door, reluctantly opened, offered a prospect of dirty children with tear-begrutten faces in the midst of disorder, disagreeable smells, and grime, but they were few, and their occupants produced sixpence or a shilling just as readily as their tidier neighbours. I had no scruples about taking it, for I know that in these houses the men are making good money, and the squalor is due to bad housekeeping and not poverty. Ravenskirk has very few really poor people among its inhabitants, and none who lack actual food, for their friends help them out. They take their duty towards their neighbour seriously in this part of the world. I always like to think that some of the kindliness of the friendly hills and the sheltered dales has fallen on those who live under and in them. I know the hills can be wild and fierce when snow comes, but it is a familiar wildness, lacking the terrors of Africa or Asia.

  When I had finished, and the envelope had only one or two flags in it, and the tin was heavy with pennies, I decided not to go home, as it was rather late, so I lunched in a dashing way at the Lion Hotel. They have made very little attempt to modernise the Lion. The big arched entry under which the coaches swung to the stable-yard behind when they changed horses on the way to or from Edinburgh has not been altered, though there are cars in the yard now instead of horses. The dining-room and smoking room (nothing so out of place as a lounge!) are low-ceiled, and the panelling, almost black with age, and the small-paned windows with their deep window-seats, are still as they must have been in coaching days. They are dark, slightly stuffy, and I suspect not too clean, but I like the genuine period flavour which hangs about the old inn, quite as noticeable as the faint reminiscence of the many hundreds of good meals pervading its air. The “usual offices” are pure mid-Victorian: bath cased in dark polished mahogany and overhung with an arched roof for which various plunges and sprays descend on the bather’s head if he—or she—unwarily turns the wrong tap; enormous wash-hand basins to match, and in the discreet apartment next door, a throne-like structure also of solid wood approached by steps and with a long brass chain hanging from a gurgling cistern high up in the ceiling. I sampled all these when I stayed at the Lion for a week while I was moving into Piper’s Cottage, so my knowledge is first-hand.

  But they have spoiled the beautiful long drawing-room on the first floor, though they have not fallen so low as to label it a “Residents’ Lounge.” The old fire-place has been torn out and a modern grate installed under one of those mean little tiled mantelpieces so narrow that even a glass will barely stand on it. The walls have been distempered in yellow with that lumpy surface which simply invites one to pick bits off it, and must harbour dust much more than any wall-paper, besides looking hideous.

  Mr. Crichton, the landlord, and his wife, are innocently proud of the ruin they have wrought in this once stately room, and are distressed at my want of taste in preferring the smoking-room. “The drawing-room”, they tell me, “is real up-to-date.”

  Fortunately their longing to be up to date does not extend to the meals they serve, and I had an excellent lunch of honest plain food, owing nothing to tins, and followed by a cup of quite horrible coffee. (I was able to pour this unnoticed into a pot contai
ning a moribund fern which stood near my table.) Then, with my clanking tin, and Pam on a lead—he is still much too carefree about traffic to be let loose on the main road—I set off to walk to Templerig.

  I found Elizabeth Drysdale with Mrs. Currie at Templerig, in the drawing-room which I am sure was furnished to suit Mr. Currie’s mother, and has only been added to and never altered. All the chairs have embroidered linen slips on their backs and arms to protect the chintz covers, and there is a profusion of photographs and china ornaments. It is rather cosy, though I always manage to wrinkle the chair-backs and pull the cuffs off the arms whenever I sit down.

  Sylvia had done her collecting early, and gone off somewhere in the car with her father, to buy a bull: or at least, to look at a bull. Mr. Currie is an extremely careful and judicious purchaser of stock, I am told. I thought that perhaps his absolute silence and averted eyes so affect the nerves of the sellers that they bring down their prices unasked, but Mrs. Keith said No, all farmers were like that when at a sale. So it must have become second nature to Mr. Currie.

  You can imagine that with no men and no young present our three tongues wagged freely. There is something about the patient masculine attitude towards “women’s chatter”, no less than the indulgent impatience of the younger generation, that casts a blight on feminine small-talk. I don’t mean that we cease to talk. We persist bravely, but there is no spirit left in it. So we made the most of this opportunity, discussing such important questions as why there is so little juice in Seville oranges nowadays, and whether it is worth using one’s carefully hoarded sugar to make marmalade with them. From this we drifted on to W.R.I. affairs, via the next monthly competition, which at this time of the year is always for the best jar of orange marmalade, it seems.

  “Have you told Miss Monteith that the committee wants to co-opt her to help with the March entertainment?” Mrs. Currie said suddenly.

  “I’m just going to,” Elizabeth answered. “You will help, Sara, won’t you? It’s just a little sketch—”

  “Why me?” I asked piteously, but without avail.

  “Because we are sure you will be good,” Mrs. Currie said with inexorable kindness.

  “Because you’re the only person we can think of who has a few brains and not too much to do already,” said Elizabeth.

  “Surely you have enough people on the committee without me?”

  “We haven’t anyone who is willing to take the fourth part in our sketch,” said Elizabeth relentlessly.

  I said I would do it, of course. It was no use trying to argue.

  “Perhaps that will teach Miss Garvald not to say that people won’t do things!” remarked Elizabeth obscurely, but with triumph.

  “I must say Miss Garvald is rather a trial on the committee,” Mrs. Currie said. “She sits there, and whenever anyone’s name is mentioned, she says, ‘Oh, you’ll not get her to take it on!’ with such gloomy pleasure I could hit the woman!”

  “She always makes me think of that bit in Kubla Khan,” said Elizabeth. “‘Ancestral voices prophesying war’, you know. If you just change it to ‘prophesying woe,’ you have Miss Garvald to the life.”

  “Did you hear her at the last meeting?” chimed in Mrs. Currie. “It was during tea, and some of us were praising young Mrs. Drummond for those delicious little buns she had made, and she so pleased, poor thing! Miss Garvald was passing, and she stopped and said in her gloomy voice, ‘Och, you’ll get the recipe for them off the Rice Kruncle packet!’”

  “The W.R.I. does not merely provide an opportunity for gossip among its members,” I said maliciously, for I felt I owed them something for badgering me into taking part in their horrid little sketch.

  Both of them looked slightly ashamed, I am glad to say.

  CHAPTER X

  MARCH, 1952

  I waited until the W.R.I. meeting was over to write, Hugo, so that I could tell you about the sketch. After all our rehearsing and struggles to learn the inane words of our parts, we acquitted ourselves quite well, and the members thought it was “grand”, so no doubt it was worth the effort.

  Now I am deeply involved in preparations for the Easter holidays. Atty and I are going to France for as long as our meagre currency allowance holds out. Twenty-five pounds for me and fifteen for Atty won’t go very far, but at least we should be able to stay ten days. I am quite as excited about it as he is, for I am a most untravelled person. Papa considered the British Isles good enough for him and therefore for his daughter. It never seemed worth a family row to make a stand about it, and then the War put a stop to foreign travel, so in a way this is my first opportunity of seeing the Continent. I hope Atty will enjoy it. I think he will, for though he is young he is so keenly “intrusted” in everything that even the new scene ought to impress him. We are going to stay in Tours, and visit the Loire Chateaux from there. How much easier it is to explain this in writing than by word of mouth. I have said to so many people, “We are going to Tours,” and they have, not unnaturally, taken this to mean that we are going to tour, and have at once asked: “Where?” It has sometimes been quite difficult to make them understand that we shall be staying in the city of Tours, and doing tours from there. You can see for yourself the complications likely to arise.

  Only two things have bothered Atty. The first was Pam. What was to become of him while we were away? I said that the Drysdales were going to look after him, and Atty was content. The other was the slight blow to his pride on finding that not only did he have to share my passport, but that on it he was described as a child or worse still, an “enfant”.

  About this, of course, I could do nothing except point out that as soon as he was sixteen he would have a passport of his own, which partially consoled him.

  My own private bother is that I wish Rex would write even a postcard to say that he approves of my taking his son to France. His lawyers assure me that I am covered by the written agreement Rex gave me, in which I am allowed an entirely free hand with Atty’s holidays, but I feel that Rex ought to take a little paternal interest in what the boy is doing. Atty hears from him perhaps once a term, I not at all, though he sent me nylons for Christmas with a card to say who they were from. Atty had money and a huge box of “candies”, and wrote a polite letter of thanks as to some well-intentioned stranger.

  I am heartily sick of writing long accounts of Atty’s doings both at school and here, of his health and growth, when there is never any answer. It seems so unnatural that Rex should turn the boy over to me like this, apparently without any regret, or it seems so in my more sentimental moments. Then I remember that they really hardly know one another, and stop fussing. I certainly don’t want Atty to pine secretly for his father like a child in one of those dreadful morbid novels of the late nineteenth century! And it is a constant delight to me to know that he is quite happy and feels no want in his life. All the same, it is terribly difficult for a woman, and a spinster at that, to bring up a boy. . . .

  Here is something for you to answer. I know that if March comes in like a lion he goes out like a lamb, and vice versa; but how does he go out when he comes in like a polar bear?

  All night on the last day of February it snowed, and when I got up on the morning of the first of March, it was to see a white countryside spread out all round the house.

  Pam was deliriously happy, charging about in the snow with yelps of joy, and burying his black muzzle deep in it. Aunt Nettie’s reactions when she came plodding up the hill and shed her rubber boots and waterproof inside the back door, were quite the opposite.

  “Fair sickening,” was her description of the weather, and she groaned aloud as she viewed the dirty tracks made by Pam over the carpets.

  I beat a hasty retreat to the drawing-room fire, taking the culprit with me, and left her to shake her head alone.

  There seems to be a curse on some days, particularly those which you have decided shall be quiet and undisturbed, for they never are. On many days you may sigh in vain for some visitor to drop i
n, or the telephone to ring, but as surely as you wish for peaceful solitude, it is broken in upon.

  Pam, worn out by his exertions, had collapsed into a black woolly ball at my feet, and I was writing letters, when the door opened.

  “Here comes yon queer chap from Wallace Cottage,” announced Aunt Nettie. “He’s got a shovel in his hand. Will I lock the door?”

  “No, of course not, Miss Marchbanks. Why should you?” I asked a little crossly.

  “It’s the shovel. He’ll maybe bash our brains out,” said Aunt Nettie with gruesome relish.

  “He’s much more likely to be going to clear a path through the snow. Just pay no attention to him.”

  “Weel, I’ve warned ye,” said Aunt Nettie, and withdrew.

  For some reason, ever since the day when I made him take the pheasant, Mr. Kilmartin has looked on me as a friend, or at least, as someone not actually hostile. That is to say, he doesn’t rush into his house or the nearest shed, or hide behind a bush, when he sees me, and on his good days he sometimes nods if I say good morning to him.

  Mrs. Kilmartin is pathetically pleased about this. She came into the drawing-room, ushered by Aunt Nettie, looking quite pink and almost happy, to ask if I would mind her husband clearing a path through the snow from my door as well as their own.

  “Mind? Of course not. I’ll be only too pleased if he can be bothered,” said I, pushing my writing things to one side. “Do sit down for a little now you’re here.”

  “Well—perhaps—as Ronald doesn’t need me, I might—” she said, and perched on the edge of a chair.

  Aunt Nettie had the sense to bring in a tray with tea and biscuits, and when Mrs. Kilmartin saw the two cups, she agreed to stay and have some. It is extraordinary what a tongue-loosener a cup of tea is. No wonder gossips are always pictured talking over tea.

  Of course it may not have been the tea that made Mrs. Kilmartin burst into confidences while the sound of her husband’s shovel scraping on the snow outside came faintly through the shut windows. She may simply have reached the stage when she had to talk to somebody or go mad; but I think the tea helped.