Growing Up

by Angela Thirkell

  But Lydia, always inclined for adventure, had gone up and was examining the attic bedrooms with interest, pleased to find that, although in the roof, there was only one place in each where one couldn’t stand upright, and some good cupboards.

  Sir Harry and Mr. Needham went down into the garden and took a turn in front of the house in the sun. Mr. Needham tried to express his admiration of all he had seen, but found himself as shy as a child at a party; or, let us rather say, as some children at parties, for heaven knows that the others are self-confident, overbearing and noisy enough, and though psychologists may say that this is merely a form of intense diffidence the results are identical and highly displeasing. He had fallen in love with house, garden, little conservatory, bathrooms. In the study, tucked away in a safe corner with escape provided, he saw the study of his dreams and had already thought how well his college and Leander oars, never to be used again, would look upon the wall, and how well the photographs of himself in a group at school, Oxford, theological training college, and in camp would fit over the mantelpiece, and that at last his father’s Arundel prints would find a home.

  But he knew that for a young man back from the wars, with only one arm, his way to make and a bride waiting to marry him, such a haven could not be. His thoughts went back to the early days of the war while he was still the Dean’s secretary and eating his heart out because he was too safe and comfortable, pining to work in the East End and be stoned, or be a missionary to lepers and come back a human wreck. Now he knew that some forms of usefulness were closed to him and had tried hard to submit. Yet the sight of this little house filled him with such longing that he would have been almost glad if Nannie had appeared and taken him back to Ladysmith Cottages.

  All the time while they had been walking up and down, Sir Harry had been talking, but though Mr. Needham tried to listen, he was so unhappy that he had not followed what his companion was saying. Not that this would have been easy, for Sir Harry, as we know from his conversation with Noel about the rent, had the greatest difficulty in bringing himself to the point in any discussion of business between gentlemen. At last Mr. Needham, with a violent effort, concentrated upon the present moment and as if coming out of an anæsthetic heard Sir Harry’s voice gradually approaching from a great distance.

  “You know, Needham,” it was saying, “the Dean is an old friend of mine and Miss Octavia is a very sensible young lady. So if you like to think it over, and if everything is all right and satisfactory on both sides,” said Sir Harry, who evidently felt that by this form of words he was insuring himself against interference from the Bishop, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Court of Arches or any other religious authority, “it would give Lady Waring and myself great pleasure to see you both in the Vicarage. Don’t trouble to answer now, my boy,” said Sir Harry, seeing his young friend’s deep confusion. “Think it over and let me know. Consult Miss Octavia. She’s got a head on her shoulders.”

  Mr. Needham was not sure whether he was standing still and the whole world wheeling and rocking round him, or the world was going on as usual while he stood on his head on the butt-end of a spear surrounded with blazing fireworks, but whatever it was he had to get control of it. A wild thought passed through his head that the Bishop, knowing the scarcely veiled hostility of the Deanery party, might refuse to induct him, but he came to the considered opinion, or what in his frenzy he took for such, that the Bishop, though as a cleric practically indistinguishable from Arius or Pope Celestine V, was probably quite reasonable as a man. So he said something incoherent.

  “No need to hurry at all, you know,” Sir Harry repeated kindly.

  But there was every need to hurry. If he did not accept now there was, Mr. Needham felt, every probability that Sir Harry would take offence and at once give the living to one of the Bishop’s sons-in-law.

  “I’d like it more than anything in the world, sir,” he managed to stutter.

  “Well then, that’s settled,” said Sir Harry, much relieved. “That’s all right, Needham. We needn’t say any more, now. I shall take all the proper steps. You’re the third presentation I’ve made to this living and I hope you’ll see me out and get on well with my nephew, Cecil.”

  Mr. Needham, still quite demented, could only say he hoped he would. He would like to have explained that he meant he hoped he wouldn’t ever bury Sir Harry and yet would always be on excellent terms with Commander Waring, R.N., but found himself incapable of formulating this reasonable wish.

  “Oh, and one thing, Needham,” said Sir Harry, nervously.

  Mr. Needham knew the worst had come. Sir Harry probably held views about the Trinity to which Mr. Needham, as a loyal son of the Church, could not subscribe. Farewell vicarage, study, conservatory, wife: welcome a curacy in an industrial town, phthisis and early death.

  “You saw the monkey-puzzle down in the far corner of the churchyard,” said Sir Harry nervously. “My wife can’t bear it, but old Horniman wouldn’t hear of its being moved. He said it reminded him of the barren fig-tree. If you wouldn’t particularly object to its coming down——? I’d send Jasper and a man to see about it. No trouble for you at all.”

  “I LOATHE the thing, sir,” said Mr. Needham, relieving his long pent up emotions in one outburst. “I’ll cut it down to-day, sir, if you’ve got an axe. Oh,” he added, “I’d forgotten. I can’t. Sorry, sir.”

  “Bad luck, bad luck,” said Sir Harry, looking kindly at his empty sleeve. “Now we won’t say anything about this till I have got matters in order. Make a surprise for Miss Octavia and my wife and Mrs. Merton. Got to be going. See you again soon, Needham. You must come up to dinner again and tell me about my old regiment.”

  Mr. Needham wanted to say “God bless you, Sir Harry,” but wasn’t sure if this would be a proper way to address one’s patron, and while he was madly considering, Sir Harry shook him warmly by the hand, clapped him on the shoulder, and strode away, evidently much relieved at having got this piece of business off his mind.

  Mrs. Merton, who had taken advantage of being alone in the house to go thoroughly over the kitchen premises, turn on every tap, open every cupboard, see if the windows opened properly, examine the coal and coke sheds and generally inspect everything, now came round the corner of the house and apologized for being so long, giving at the same time a favourable report on all she had seen.

  Mr. Needham said he hadn’t noticed, he’d been talking to Sir Harry; he meant he had noticed but it didn’t matter because Sir Harry was talking to him; he meant it was awfully nice that Sir Harry, he meant Lydia, liked the kitchen and things; he meant——

  “You’d better stop talking for a bit, Tommy,” said Lydia good-humouredly. “You look as if you’d had a stroke. Can people get strokes from having their arms off? It’s a nice Vicarage, isn’t it?”

  Mr. Needham said yes, but in such a rum and distracted way that Lydia looked piercingly at him and at once knew the truth. Miss Lydia Keith would have hit Mr. Needham on the back and congratulated him in a loud voice. Mrs. Merton only said that it had been a very nice walk and she ought to be getting back to the Priory now. Mr. Needham said, Oh, yes, of course she must, but with such an addled expression that Lydia’s suspicions were confirmed.

  “Well, see you soon, Tommy,” she said. “Give my love to Octavia when you write and say I’m most terribly glad.”

  “What about?” said Mr. Needham, burrowing his head into the sand.

  “Well, if you don’t know, I don’t,” said Lydia. “And heaps and heaps of luck, Tommy.”

  She wrung his hand painfully and went off through the churchyard and away by the wood path to the Priory.

  Sir Harry and Lady Waring were enjoying the very rare treat of having tea together, alone, in peace. One of the few advantages of the war had been that Lady Waring could at last put away the massive silver tray, spirit-kettle, long-handled extinguisher for flame under same, teapot, milk-jug (with gilded inside), cream-jug with ditto, sugar-basin, sugar-tongs, muffineer, two
special salt-shakers to put salt on muffins, slop-basin and one or two other parts of the service whose use no one had ever discovered. During the whole of her married life she had wished to use one of the really good china tea-services in the Priory, but Sir Harry had a pious feeling that to drink tea with the aid of about a stone of solid mid-Victorian silver was the equivalent of making a daily sacrifice to the memory of his parents and grandparents. Nor, while he had a butler and two footmen, was there any reason why he shouldn’t. Now at last Lady Waring’s opportunity came, and as soon as they moved into the servants’ wing she had all the heavy silver wrapped and put into the strong-room. The results were two. In the first place the butler gave notice, the footmen having already gone, one into the Air Force, the other into the Barsetshire Yeomanry, and went to old Lady Norton who refused to abate one whit of her dowagerial state. In the second place Baker broke the Sèvres, the Dresden and the Crown Derby with punctuality and dispatch. Lady Waring was about to collect and put away the sad remnants when Selina came. Her mother, who had sympathized deeply with her old mistress, gave Selina orders to wash all the china herself. By a miracle of tact Lady Waring kept Baker from taking offence, and it was now Selina’s pride to ring the changes on the various tea-sets. Her mistress would willingly have put them away, only keeping one for daily use, but Nannie Allen, coming up on a visit, very loftily forbade any such lowering of the standard, and as Selina loved the delicate objects, things remained as they were.

  On the very rare days when Sir Harry was able to have tea in peace with his wife it was his habit to read a chapter or so of Jorrocks to himself afterwards. In past times he had tried to educate his wife in his favourite author, but though she had listened kindly, it was obvious that the root of the matter was not in her, as indeed it is not in any woman as far as we know. He had still not lost the habit of reading choice bits aloud to her, swallowing half his words and dropping his voice at the end of every sentence, to which she listened with her affectionate and unalterable patience; and when we say listened, her spirit flew to a Red Cross meeting, or a W.V.S. committee, or whether Mrs. Phipps would come for a fortnight while Cook had her holiday, and if so, exactly how horrid the meals would be.

  But on this afternoon Sir Harry appeared to have something on his mind. He read aloud even worse than usual; his wife’s comments had not roused him to look over his spectacles and lose the place. Suddenly he put his spectacle-case in the book and closed it, an outrage on books to which Lady Waring could never accustom herself, and said:

  “I’ve been thinking about the Vicarage, my dear. It needs a bit of doing up. Paint and paper and so forth. The drains are all right, so are the fittings, gas-stove and so on. But we want it to look bright again. Old Horniman liked things gloomy, dark curtains and that sort of thing.”

  Lady Waring quite agreed in principle.

  “Wouldn’t it be better, though,” she said, “to wait till we have a new Vicar? If you get a married man his wife might like to have a say in it.”

  “Or the young lady he is going to marry, even if she isn’t his wife yet,” said Sir Harry.

  Lady Waring quite agreed.

  “It would be so nice,” she said, “if we had a really sound Vicar. I mean a man we could comfortably ask to dinner and whose wife would take an interest in the parish without getting across the village. When I think of that dreadful Mr. Moxon who used to be curate at Worsted, and how dear old Dr. Thomas suffered from him, I feel one cannot be too careful.”

  “Quite right, my dear,” said Sir Harry and relapsed into his book. But suddenly, looking round at his wife, half through, half outside his spectacles, he remarked carelessly, “By the way, my dear, what does Nannie think of her present lodger?”

  “Mr. Needham? She likes him very much,” said Lady Waring, who had not the faintest doubt of what was in her husband’s mind. “And of course as Octavia Crawley was one of her babies she thoroughly approves of the marriage. I feel so sorry for Mr. Needham and he makes light of his misfortune in such a courageous and unselfish way. I would very much like to help them if I could.”

  “Well, my dear,” said Sir Harry, again marking his place in Jorrocks with his spectacle-case, so that his wife could hardly pay any attention to him in her sympathy for the book, “I have been thinking that too. Now, what would you think of Mr. Needham, and of course Miss Crawley who would then be able to marry him, for the Vicarage?”

  Lady Waring, who had been thinking of this ever since the evening of the dinner party, expressed every suitable grade of surprise, doubt, gradual conviction and complete agreement.

  “I thought you’d come round to my way of thinking,” said Sir Harry complacently, “and I may as well tell you now that I spoke to Needham about it this afternoon. He took the suggestion very well, in a very nice modest way. But of course not a word to anyone about it at present.”

  “Of course not, Harry,” said his wife. “And I do hope it will be soon, because Canon Tempest gets angrier every week, and last Sunday he really barked the service at us.” She then went away.

  Hardly had she gone when Lydia came in.

  “I’m so sorry I’m late, Sir Harry,” she said. “I was having a good go over the Vicarage and didn’t see how late it was. What lovely cupboards there are, and I do like the kitchen sink.”

  “You know a lot about it, young lady,” said Sir Harry, amused. “Ring for Selina to bring you some fresh tea.”

  But Lydia said so long as it was wet she didn’t mind what it was.

  “I did know quite a lot about sinks and cupboards before I was married,” she said, “but I got a bit out of the way living in hotels and rooms and things. It’s a pity you haven’t got a clergyman living there. Being empty makes it look a bit uninhabited.”

  “Well, well, we’ll have to look round,” said Sir Harry. “You are a friend of Dr. Crawley. Perhaps you know of someone.”

  Lydia, thinking of the vacant living and her friend Tommy had, as we know, laid very deep and diplomatic plans, but now that the moment had come her natural straightforwardness got the better of her and she said, very simply, that she thought it would be most awfully nice if Tommy were there, because he had loved the house and it was all so labour-saving and as he only had one arm that would be such a good thing now one couldn’t get servants.

  “That’s an idea worth considering,” said Sir Harry with great subtlety. “But what would Miss Octavia think?”

  Lydia gave it as her opinion that Octavia would like it very much indeed, adding that Octavia had always meant to have eight children because she was an eighth, so it was a good thing there was plenty of room for nurseries.

  “Eight children, eh?” said Sir Harry, amused. “Well, it’s a round number, and we need big families now.”

  If Lydia felt his friendly gaze fixed on her for a moment we do not know; nor do we know whether he was conscious of it.

  “I am going to treat you as if you were Leslie and tell you quite privately that I like your friend Needham very much,” said Sir Harry.

  Having got so far, and seeing Lydia’s look of approval, he could not longer deny himself the pleasure of indiscretion and added, “In fact, while you were looking into the cupboards this afternoon, young lady, I offered him the living.”

  This was no surprise to Lydia, but the delight of hearing it from Sir Harry himself was so great that she was able to look as surprised and excited as if it had never before occurred to her. While she ate her usual hearty tea they rearranged the whole Vicarage and had even added a downstairs playroom with an extra bedroom and bathroom over it.

  “But mind,” said Sir Harry, heaving himself up to go out while the last daylight made it possible to saw a log or cut down a piece of dead wood, “not a word to anyone.”

  Lydia sat by the fire thinking her own thoughts till Selina came in to clear the tea-things away.

  “You’ve been drinking all that cold tea, madam,” she said reproachfully. “Why didn’t you ring for fresh?”

&n
bsp; Lydia said she quite liked it.

  “Besides I was so late I really didn’t deserve fresh,” she said. “I went over the Vicarage with Sir Harry and Mr. Needham. What a nice house it is.”

  “Yes, indeed, madam,” said Selina. “And we’re all ever so pleased that Mr. Needham’s coming there. Cook had a stranger in her cup at teatime, a funny shape it was, and she says it’s the way the leaves tell you if it’s a man that isn’t all there.”

  “But Mr. Needham isn’t mad!” said Lydia indignantly.

  “Oh, no, madam,” said Selina. “But he’s not all there with his arm goodness knows where. They say the Free French eat frogs and snails and anything. Mother will be so pleased. I shall run down and tell her before dinner.”

  “But who told you, Selina?” said Lydia. “I don’t know if anything is really settled yet.”

  “Well, madam, I thought it was quite settled,” said Selina, “because I met Sir Harry in the kitchen passage and he said he had a nice surprise for us, so I said that would be very nice and he said, Well, Mr. Needham is going to be the new Vicar, but don’t tell anyone. So I only just stopped to tell Cook and Baker and came straight along to clear the tea. I was so pleased, madam.”

  “But ought you to have told Cook and Baker?” asked Lydia.

  “Oh dear, yes, madam,” said Selina. “Cook knew it because of the Stranger, and Baker said Mrs. Hamp had told her that everyone said it would be Mr. Needham, and they were so pleased.”

  Lydia reflected that Sir Harry must be enjoying himself very much.

  Then Lady Waring came back and sat down as usual to her writing-table to deal with her correspondence. Lydia was burning to talk to her about Mr. Needham’s new job, but could not feel quite sure whether Sir Harry’s recommendation of secrecy applied to his wife or not. So she sat and knitted and made plans in her head for living in the bailiff’s delightful little house near Northbridge Manor, working at the Barchester General, and in her spare time doing vegetables in the garden. Lady Waring too would fain have discussed the Vicarage with her guest and the possibility of another bathroom if one built out a little at the side, but as Sir Harry had said it was a secret, a secret it should remain as far as she was concerned.