Growing Up

by Angela Thirkell

  Lady Waring considered. It might have been that some friend of theirs who was a patient of Dr. Ford’s was suddenly worse. She could not think of anyone probable, for Dr. Ford did not really practise in their district, but owing to having petrol to visit the convalescent hospital was able to attend a few old friends who liked a doctor they knew. What Sir Harry deserved was for no one to take the faintest notice of him, which would force him, rather sulkily, to disgorge. But as she was busy she decided to forgo this just revenge and asked what had happened. Even Lydia, not oversensitive, admired the way in which she kept the faintest show of long-suffering patience out of her voice, though it would have been impossible not to feel it inside.

  “Eh?” said Sir Harry. “Happened? Oh! thought I’d told you. It’s old Horniman’s sister.”

  “Do you mean Miss Horniman is dead, Harry?” said Lady Waring.

  His defences now being breached, Sir Harry cast aside his pose of indifference and said the old lady had died at two o’clock that afternoon quite peacefully and the funeral was to be the day after to-morrow.

  “And none of that nonsense about no mourning,” said Sir Harry. “I asked Ford and he says there’s a very sensible niece who is arranging everything. What’s the use of people dying if they don’t want anyone to wear mourning? Might as well stay alive and make nuisances of themselves that way. No patience with them.”

  “But Uncle Harry, don’t you think that they really don’t want to be mourned for sometimes?” said Leslie. “I mean if they are frightfully old and ill and really glad to die.”

  “In my experience,” said Sir Harry, “the iller and older they are the more they want to live. Hope I’ll die before I get like that.”

  Leslie said it must be very difficult to know exactly when to die and she supposed that very old, ill people thought they were quite young and well and were annoyed with people who were even older and iller because they wouldn’t die. She then drifted into remembrance of a talk she had had with Colonel Winter, Philip she meant, and how he had said that the very aged and demented would dance on all their graves. At this she laughed aloud to herself which made her uncle look up at her again and feel glad that the girl was enjoying herself so much.

  “After all, we all begin to die the moment we are born,” said Lydia, looking round with a gratified expression, for she had only just evolved this highly original thought and was rather pleased with it.

  “I certainly should not dream of going to a funeral except in black,” said Lady Waring. “It would be extremely discourteous; nor would I wish to dictate to my friends what they should or should not wear at my funeral. Who is taking it, Harry?”

  “I think Miller from Pomfret Madrigal,” said Sir Harry. “Well, now the Vicarage will be empty, so I’ll have to do something about a new Vicar. We can’t go on like this.”

  “Oh, Sir Harry——” Lydia began, violently, and then checked herself.

  Sir Harry, who really wanted to read his paper in peace, looked up at the noise, but as it did not continue he gratefully retired behind the attenuated pages of The Times.

  Lydia was silent. But in this hour a mighty purpose was born in her, which she determined to consult Noel about that very night. Noel, who was used to his Lydia, realized at once that something was brewing in her mind, but as he only got back just in time for dinner he had no opportunity of asking what it was. Lydia managed to get through the evening somehow, though with occasional alarming bursts of what looked like suppressed apoplexy, so that Noel was quite glad when they could be alone together. She then laid before him her plan, which was that Tommy Needham should, while staying with Nannie, so ingratiate himself with the Warings that Sir Harry would appoint him Vicar of Lambton. The Vicarage would then be empty, and if he and Octavia ever did get married everything would be perfect. Noel, while highly approving the idea, said she had better say nothing about it for the present, to which his Lydia very reasonably agreed, though she was slightly disappointed, having had a vision of Tommy being in the Vicarage the very moment old Miss Horniman’s corpse was carried out.

  “I’m not coming to bed just yet,” said Noel. “I’ve some papers to look at, so I’ll work in the sitting-room. There’s only Sir Harry there now.”

  “It will be nice when we can have a proper home,” said Lydia wistfully. “I mean so that you can have a proper room to write things in. I haven’t heard of anything possible round her. What a pity we couldn’t take the Vicarage and have Tommy as a lodger.”

  Noel, a little alarmed lest Lydia should suggest this to Sir Harry, begged her to keep the idea to herself for the moment.

  “Besides,” he said, “we may not be needing a house. I heard from Robert to-day. He and Edith have bought a house near Nutfield which Edith has always wanted, and he is quite willing to sell Northbridge Manor back to you. If you really want to live there, I don’t see why we shouldn’t buy it. We could always use the bailiff’s cottage while the house is occupied.”

  “Oh, Noel!” was all Lydia’s reply.

  “Then I’ll write to Robert,” said Noel. “I must say you have a very nice, obliging elder brother, Lydia. Nothing from Colin yet, I suppose?”

  “It’s much too soon,” said Lydia cheerfully; which did not deceive Noel in the least. “Oh, Noel,” she added, but with a diffidence quite unlike her manner a moment earlier, “you won’t mind if I do full-time V.A.D. here, will you? I mean, if the Warings will have us, or we can get another lodging?”

  “I don’t see how I could mind,” said Noel. “At least, I shall mind, quite unpatriotically and unreasonably, but as it’s obvious that you might be picked up and stuck into a factory in Merthyr Tydvil or what not, this would be more satisfactory.”

  “Well, first I was ill, and then I got deferment because I had to take care of mother when her heart was so bad, but now I’m as fit as anything and mother is safely at Bournemouth with Aunt Kate, I’d feel a TRAITOR if I didn’t,” said Lydia with extreme earnestness.

  “What did Dr. Ford say?” asked Noel, touched and annoyed.

  “He said, ‘Proceed, V.A.D. Merton,’” said Lydia.

  “That’s that, then,” said Noel. “I shall tell Ford to speak to Matron about you. Well, farewell to the felicity of unbounded domesticity. I must say I quite agree with Leslie’s brother in preferring my womenfolk ornamental. My precious Lydia, you will take care of yourself, won’t you?”

  “Of course I will,” said Lydia. “After all, it’s only convalescents here, not woundeds and lifting people. And I’m really frightfully well.”

  “Yes, I know you are, and that’s what frightens me,” said Noel. “Now go to bed. Leslie has left me a heap of stuff, beautifully sorted, and I must deal with it now, or heaven knows when I’ll get a chance, as I have to be on late duty the rest of this week.”

  “Noel, I’ve never asked what you do at the Dower House,” said Lydia, “but is it anything?”

  Noel laughed.

  “I sometimes wonder if it is,” he said. “We are all so hush-hush, with Army and Air Force and Signals and A.T.S. and W.A.A.F.s all bundled up together pretending no one knows where we are. And what is even more mortifying, no one taking the faintest interest in us. I hear from Corporal Jackson, who gets the information at the Woolpack at Worsted, that the village say we are a lot of lazy blighters and have absolutely no opinion of us at all. And they are usually pretty near the truth. Oh, well.”

  Lydia clung to him for a moment, as if this were a moment of parting, and then he went downstairs.

  CHAPTER IX

  SELINA brought in word next day that her mother had heard from Mr. Needham, who was coming over to-morrow by the morning train from Barchester.

  “Mother’s been down to the butcher herself about it,” said Selina, “and he’s letting her have a nice bit of steak for the gentleman’s lunch. And he’s keeping her a nice bit of best-end neck for the week-end.”

  “I think Nannie has the whole village terrorized,” said Lady Waring, when Se
lina had gone. “I know she got veal when no one else had any for weeks, and chocolate biscuits when there was a famine, and last time I went to see her she showed me two lemon soles in the larder when we hadn’t seen anything for three weeks except frozen cod. Still, it’s just as well, because I can always give her vegetables or a rabbit if we have any, but meat and fish I can’t, nor can anyone else. We must ask your friend up to lunch soon, Lydia.”

  “It’s Miss Horniman’s funeral in the afternoon, so it’s lucky he’s coming in the morning,” said Lydia, who apparently felt this to be a suitable house-warming for a clergyman. “Do you think it would be all right for me to come, Lady Waring? I mean as I didn’t know Miss Horniman.”

  Lady Waring said it would show a neighbourly spirit for anyone at the Priory to go.

  “Suppose we drive you down in Crumpet, Aunt Harriet,” said Leslie. “We could drop you near the Vicarage and go on to Nannie’s and see if Mr. Needham would care to come. He’ll hardly want to walk there if he’s only got one arm.”

  “A very kind thought,” said Lady Waring approvingly. “Poor young man. Perhaps we could have Miss Crawley over for a night next time you are in town, Leslie.” For Dr. Ford had now given Leslie permission to go to London once a week for the night to see friends and pick up the threads of her work, and she appeared to thrive on it.

  So directly after lunch Crumpet was harnessed and the three ladies went down to the village. And if anyone thinks that three ladies, one in a neat black coat and skirt, a black felt hat and a fur coat, the other two in tweeds, for they were on a visit and had not brought their blacks with them, crammed into a small pony cart drawn by a cheerful, unclipped pony, attracted any attention, we may at once say that person is mistaken. A few convalescent soldiers who were hanging about the drive cheered; the laundry, who to Lady Waring’s great relief was turning in at the lodge gates, for he had not called since last Thursday week, touched his cap and nearly ran into the bank in his attempts to evade Crumpet’s downhill charge, and a few quiet people who were living at Lambton for the duration cast wistful eyes at pony and cart. As for the village, it saw no reason to think anything at all about a normal occurrence.

  Lady Waring got out of Crumpet near the Vicarage, mysteriously managing to step down backwards out of a small tilting cart with no loss of dignity, and Leslie drove on to Ladysmith Cottages. Marigold’s brother, aged ten, was playing in the street with some friends.

  “Here, Percy!” said Leslie, who never forgot a tenant’s name to the third generation, “come and take Crumpet. You and the others can have a ride up the lane in the cart, but mind, you must lead him all the time.”

  “They’d have rides anyway,” said Leslie as she and Lydia walked up Nannie’s path, “but if Percy has Crumpet he’ll be all right. Percy’s father is Uncle Harry’s head carter, if you can call it head when there isn’t anyone under you now, and Percy was practically brought up in a stable.”

  “I half wish I hadn’t come,” said Lydia, rather to Leslie’s surprise, as they stepped into the house. “I mean Tommy’s arm. I don’t know if I ought to notice that he’s lost it or not.”

  Leslie, rightly judging that the sooner this was over the better, knocked at the sitting-room door. A slightly muffled voice, as of someone talking with a very full mouth, said “Come in.” Leslie opened the door and stood aside for Lydia, who summoning all her courage went in. At a well-spread table sat Mr. Needham, a heaped plate of grilled steak neatly cut up, potatoes and brussels sprouts before him, a glass of beer at his side. Opposite him sat Nannie with a face of grim satisfaction.

  “Oh, Tommy,” said Lydia, suddenly half-blinded by her feelings.

  “If it isn’t Lydia!” said Mr. Needham, getting up and stretching a hand across the table in warm welcome.

  “Oh, Tommy!” said Lydia again, grabbing Mr. Needham’s hand in both hers. Then she looked at it. “Oh, I am glad it’s the other one,” she said, looking at the left sleeve which was pinned across his coat. “It is so awful to have to shake people’s left hands, because you never know which way round. Oh, Tommy, this is nice.”

  “Nice goings-on,” said Nannie indignantly to Leslie, “young ladies coming in while a gentleman’s having his dinner. Eat it up now, sir, or it’ll all be getting cold, and there’s another nice little bit of steak Nannie will cut up for you.”

  She got up and bustled into the kitchen, with no sign of rheumatics.

  “Good lord, Lydia!” said Mr. Needham. “Octavia said you were hereabouts, but I never thought I’d see you so soon. Where are you?”

  Lydia explained that she and Noel were at the Priory and that Miss Waring who had brought her was the Wirings’ niece.

  “Do sit down,” said Mr. Needham. “I say, excuse my going on with my lunch, but that old lady will probably put me to bed if I don’t. I only got here just before lunch and she apparently thinks I’m a mentally defective child of seven. But what a dear old thing she is. When I was in Libya I used to dream about grilled steak and beer and a good fire, with a cold day outside, and by Jove, here it all is. I am a lucky fellow. It’s a good thing Dr. Crawley isn’t here. The Army makes a fellow a bit tough and I wouldn’t like to come out with by Jove in front of him. How’s everyone?”

  Lydia, her face beaming with joy at finding an old friend so well, poured out all the news of family and friends that she thought Mr. Needham would not have got from the Crawleys. Nannie brought in the fresh bit of steak, cut it up into suitable mouthfuls and put it on her lodger’s plate, who forked it into his mouth and talked and drank his beer with perfect unself-consciousness, while Nannie went in and out with an air of great importance.

  “I’ve just unpacked your suitcase, sir,” she said, as she brought in a fine apple turnover and a jug of custard. “You can eat the custard, sir, it’s made with eggs from my own fowls, not those nasty powders. And I can’t find a toothbrush nowhere, sir,” she added accusingly.

  “Not in my bedroom slippers?” said Mr. Needham, entirely unembarrassed.

  “No, sir, nor in the sponge-bag,” said Nannie.

  “Well, then, I left it behind at the Deanery,” said Mr. Needham. “I’ll write to Octavia and ask. I suppose there’s a chemist here.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Nannie, “but it’s early closing.”

  Mr. Needham said that he had always told his scout troop that one could clean one’s teeth with a twig and, by Jove, this was the moment to try it.

  “Certainly not, sir,” said Nannie. “Clean your teeth with a twig! I never heard such nonsense. I’ll put a nice new one in your tooth-vase, sir. I always keep some for my young gentlemen and ladies in case they forget.”

  “I’d like to see her up against our sergeant-major,” said Mr. Needham admiringly when Nannie had gone upstairs. “By Jove, I don’t think she’d give him a chance.”

  “I expect she’ll want to bath you,” said Lydia. “What’s the matter?”

  For Mr. Needham had suddenly made a curious movement, half-turning his body and then slewing round in the other direction and helping himself to sugar.

  “I really must cure myself of that,” said Mr. Needham seriously. “It’s a rum thing, but I often don’t believe my left arm’s gone. I was trying to reach the sugar with it just then. I wish you’d tell me when I do anything like that. It looks so silly.”

  Leslie interrupted to say that it was getting on and she would go and fetch Crumpet, and perhaps Mr. Needham would care to come with them.

  “It’s a funeral,” said Lydia as Leslie went away, “so we thought you’d like to come, especially as it’s the old Vicar’s sister. We’ve got the pony cart in case you couldn’t walk.”

  “Look here, Lydia, do you think I walk on my hands like an acrobat?” said Mr. Needham. “I was never fitter. And as soon as I get out of these silly habits of thinking I’ve got an extra arm, I’ll be at the top of my form. I’d love to come to the funeral. By Jove, it will be like old times. It will be good to get into harness. That is if I ca
n,” he said, suddenly sober, “for one doesn’t drop into a living all of a sudden. But I’ve done a good spot of curating, so I dare say they’ll put me somewhere, and Dr. Crawley would recommend me. Or do you think a Dean doesn’t count now?”

  Lydia said she was sure they counted frightfully.

  Much cheered, Mr. Needham folded up his table napkin with his right hand and put it into a ring composed of the largest whorl of a many-coloured shell with “A Present from Frinton” in black upon it.

  “My coat’s in the passage,” said Mr. Needham, “and if you wouldn’t mind giving me just one hoick up with it. Thanks awfully. I’ll soon get into the way of things, but I don’t know what my tailor will say.”

  “No you don’t, sir, not without your muffler,” said Nannie, suddenly appearing from the kitchen. “It’s in the drawer of the hall stand, and when you come in you can fold it up nicely and put it away.”

  A very few minutes in Crumpet brought them to the churchyard. Leslie took Crumpet and cart round to the Vicarage backyard and put them in the garage. Lady Waring, who had been in to Bolton Abbey about the weekly working party that took place there, was already in the church, where they joined her. Mr. Miller from Pomfret Madrigal took the little service, the ceremony out of doors was soon over, and the few friends present were invited by the niece-in-charge to come back to the Vicarage and have a cup of tea.

  To Lydia’s great surprise, who was waiting in the drawing-room among the teacups but Octavia Crawley.

  “Miss Horniman was a mistress at the Barchester High School,” said Octavia, who appeared to think that her presence needed a little explanation. “So when father said old Miss Horniman was dead and her niece was alone in the Vicarage, I thought I’d see if I could help her. You know, Lydia, she used to do maths, but you never got so high as her form.”

  “Gosh!” said Lydia, gazing with reverence upon the pleasant, efficient, young-middle-aged niece in whose lineaments she now recognized the ex-maths mistress.