China Court

by Rumer Godden

  ‘All belonging.’ And Tracy gives a sigh of content.

  In her short life she has been rattled around ‘unmercifully,’ says Mrs Quin, first in the wake of her father, Stace, in the army, which means India, Egypt, back to England; then in the war when Barbara takes Tracy swiftly to America and Connecticut, her home state; Barbara divorces Stace and gets her first part in films and grows ambitious; she and Tracy go to Beverly Hills, with changes to hotels or rooms in Bel Air, Santa Monica, or Los Angeles as their fortunes vary. ‘Sleeping in so many different beds,’ says Tracy, getting to know people, friends, and servants, and then losing them; leaving pets behind, gardens, schools. Tracy is proud of the memory of her father and of her elegant gay mother, but if a little girl can be world-weary, she is and, at China Court, she sinks with bliss into an ordinary humdrum child life, but three years later Barbara comes to England with a stranger man; Tracy knows what that means, ‘and he lives in America,’ she says in horror. It is not that she does not like America, but it is not China Court.

  Tracy, like Ripsie, is wary of grown people, but she has learned that Mrs Quin is safe and she decides to sound her. ‘Can I have another father?’

  The question jolts Mrs Quin. Stace seems to have been dead such a little while, but, It is nearly four years, and anyway, they were divorced, thinks Mrs Quin and she answers evenly, ‘You can have stepfathers, but only one real father and mother.’

  ‘And one grandmother?’

  ‘You can have two.’ With a pang Mrs Quin has to acknowledge that other and American grandmother. ‘Two, but you can’t change them either.’

  ‘Not whatever they say?’

  ‘Not whatever they say.’

  Tracy gives another sigh. ‘I shall stay here forever,’ she says, but she is a child and children can be taken away.

  When, that last day, the time comes for Barbara to take Tracy from her grandmother, Tracy clings to her with eyes shut. It is Mrs Quin who bends down and gently unloosens her hands. ‘Listen,’ she says and Tracy – who on countless occasions these last three years has listened to story after story, all the tales and happenings ‘and wisdom,’ says Tracy afterward – opens her eyes and listens.

  ‘You will come back,’ says Mrs Quin.

  Tracy nods – she trusts her grandmother – but her eyes still stream with tears and her face is white and swollen with grief.

  Mrs Quin takes one of the pair of big front-door keys from its place on the hook by the front door and puts it into Tracy’s hand. ‘Here is the key.’

  Her voice is so matter-of-fact that it seems as if Tracy were coming back tomorrow, but the years pass and the gap between America and China Court widens. Soon, for Mrs Quin, Tracy, Stace, and Borowis slide into one, and it begins all to get misty and confused.

  Is it Borowis or Stace who has the glossy little hunter, Mirabelle? She seems to remember John Henry’s complaint: ‘I never had a hunter,’ but did he say it of Stace or of Borowis? And that small figure, flying up the drive above the scudding legs in blue dungarees, is Tracy? asks Mrs Quin. It must be Tracy and yet it could be one of Tracy’s children, ‘Because I believe it goes on,’ says Mrs Quin.

  No one else believes that. ‘It has had its day,’ pronounces Walter. ‘It is time it went,’ until Mrs Quin is driven to answer, ‘Walter, I think you should remember the apricot tree.’

  When Bella marries Walter as a young captain he has, as a hobby, just completed a correspondence course in agriculture and fruit-growing. ‘When he finishes his service we shall go in for apples,’ says Bella. ‘He’s really quite an expert,’ and she brings him to China Court to advise on the orchard. ‘I don’t need advice,’ says Mrs Quin. ‘I understand the orchard,’ but Bella brings him.

  The young Walter spends the morning appraising the trees and then takes Mrs Quin around, telling her of his findings: This apple has canker, he tells her, this pear, pear midge; ‘Diplosis pyrivora’ says Walter, and Mrs Quin listens in a silence that even Bella begins to sense is ominous. Finally they come to the apricot on the south wall, an espaliered tree, mottled, and spreading thirty feet wide, buttressed with iron hoops. ‘One of the oldest in the county,’ says Mrs Quin.

  ‘Kept for sentimental reasons?’ suggests Walter.

  ‘Kept for fruit,’ says Mrs Quin. She says nothing more, but listens while Walter tells her what is wrong with it. ‘It is time it went,’ says Walter of the tree as he has said of the house. ‘It’s diseased.’ And he shows her. ‘It has mildew,’ says Walter. ‘It might even be silver leaf, Stereum purpureum,’ he says solemnly.

  ‘I thought that attacked plums, not apricots,’ says Mrs Quin, but Walter sweeps on. ‘The wood here’ – he taps the trunk – ‘is wormy. Yes, it has had its day. It’s a mistake,’ says Walter, ‘to keep these old trees; the yield grows less, the fruit gets bitter and small.’

  That is twenty years ago. Mrs Quin still says nothing but every year she sends Walter a basket of large sweet apricots.

  ‘What be ’ee goin’ do now?’ Mrs Abel asked Cecily.

  ‘Make cakes,’ and presently, through the house crept the warm and living smell of baking: of Cecily’s drop scones; of yeast in a bowl set in the fender with a cloth over it for the yeast to prove; and presently, a smell of hot fruit bread and, pungent, of saffron cake.

  ‘They will expect that,’ said Cecily. ‘Saffron cake and clotted cream. They don’t have time to make homemade things, poor souls.’

  ‘Will ’em all come?’ asked Mrs Abel as she and Cecily were drinking tea at the kitchen table. Cecily nodded, but the nod was short.

  ‘If Miss Bella and Mr Walter takes over th’ house I suppose you’ud be stayin’?’ said Mrs Abel for mischief.

  ‘Not for all the tea in China,’ said Cecily. ‘Bella’s all right,’ she added. ‘Her bark’s worse than her bite, but Mr Walter!’ Then Cecily’s face hardened, which was the only way she could contain her grief. ‘The house won’t be taken over. It will be sold.’

  ‘Not for all the tea in China’ is one of Cecily’s favourite expressions and it is odd that she should use it, for it is, in a way, the tea in China that builds China Court. Great-Uncle Mcleod, ‘who began it all,’ says Mrs Quin, makes a fortune in the China tea run and, though Eustace is only his nephew, the St Probus quarry is bought for him; it amuses Mcleod to buy property in the village where he began – he buys land as well and builds China Court as a wedding present for Eustace and Adza.

  The portrait over the fireplace in the hall is of Great-Uncle Mcleod. ‘Your great-great-great-great-uncle,’ Mrs Quin tells Tracy. There has always been a rumour in the village that he has Gypsy blood and this, with the gossip that he is in reality Eustace’s father, might explain the magnificent and unexpected darkness of the two youngest of Eustace’s brood, Jared and Damaris, though they do not look Gypsy, but as if there were a strain, from some sailor perhaps, darker than Cornish, a Venetian or Spaniard. It is only a rumour and certainly the middle-aged man in the portrait is very much an Englishman, portly, with pale-brown hair, paler blue eyes, a long nose, and such a floridly red complexion that Mrs Quin’s irreverent children call the portrait ‘The Prawn’.

  The water-colours on the stairs are Great-Uncle Mcleod’s too, his clippers, the Foundling and the Mary Bazon. ‘His wife was Mary Bazon and he was a foundling in this village,’ Mrs Quin tells Tracy. ‘That was why he took the name Quin.’ The village is full of Quins, to Eliza’s chagrin.

  The house is not named for the tea clippers, nor for the collection of famille rose porcelain – reputed to be authentic – sent home by Mcleod the Second when he goes out to his great-uncle’s business in Canton when it has settled down again after the Opium War. Though these reasons for China Court’s name are invariably given by the village, it is from neither of them, but from the more mundane fact that the day the roof goes on, with beer for the workmen and a green bough in a chimney, is also the day Eustace – following in his uncle’s footsteps in making money – buys over the china-clay works
at Canverisk. ‘Better call it China House,’ he says, but to Adza, his little bride, plump even then as a pigeon and as simple as a bud, the house is more impressive than any she has ever imagined and, ‘Not China House, China Court,’ says Adza.

  It has a courtyard, where the kitchen and nursery wing makes an L, but the house is decidedly not a court: it is middle-sized ‘and middle-class,’ says Eliza, but the name suits a house built on the edge of the Cornish moors that have a strange foreign flavour as they roll to the skyline, with their tors and the pale-coloured Chinese coolie-hat shapes of the sand dumps at the different china-clay works breaking the dark landscape: Stannon, Hawks Tor, Temple, and Canverisk. The house is quiet, domestic, but one has only to hear the wind in the chimneys to know how near and rough the moor wildness is. ‘Quite a lot of us that were brought up here are a little wild,’ says Mrs Quin. ‘A little queer.’

  ‘Believe me,’ said Cecily to Mrs Abel now, putting down her cup. ‘She knew something was going to happen.’

  ‘Mrs Quin?’

  ‘Mrs Quin.’ Cecily was solemn. The tea was so black and strong that it gave the drinker a knockback almost like spirits; this was the fourth pot Cecily and Mrs Abel had drunk since the morning and, with it and her tiredness and shock, Cecily felt what she called ‘out of herself’. ‘I have been turning it over in my mind,’ said Cecily. ‘Yesterday she was excited.’

  ‘Mrs Quin was?’

  ‘Yes, and glad.’ Glad in a way Cecily had not known her to be glad for years, ‘though she was always contented,’ said Cecily. ‘When she walked she was – quick.’ Cecily searched for words. ‘I have never known her more alive,’ and Cecily’s eyes filled again. Cecily’s big body was worn; though it was heavy, it had the thin knotted legs and overlarge hands of a woman who has worked too hard, but her black eyes were still young, and innocently responsive. ‘It was as if somebody was coming,’ whispered Cecily.

  ‘Do ’ee think her knawed her was goin’ die? That her foresaw it?’ asked Mrs Abel. ‘Some folks do y’knaw. I mind—’ but Cecily cut her short.

  ‘It wasn’t dying she was thinking about, it was living. She was at me to spit and polish the house. She did all the flowers. Somebody’s coming. I’m sure of it,’ but nobody came. ‘Except the ones who would come,’ said Cecily.

  There were many of them. August was kept busy, frantically barking and running first to one door, then another; he had not learned the wisdom of Bumble, who knew that most comers to China Court were friends; besides August’s nerves were on edge. Dr Taft came again; then the vicar, who, though Cecily was strong chapel, was still her good friend. He sent Hoskins the builder, who was also the undertaker, while all day there was a trickle of people to the back door: women carrying a basket, or a plate covered with a napkin. ‘Just slipped down with a bit of my lardy cake,’ ‘… saffron buns,’ ‘… a Lyons Swiss Roll,’ ‘… half a dozen eggs,’ ‘… thought you would be needing extra with all the family coming.’ Most often it was a bunch of flowers: ‘Cottage flowers, the only kind I want’ – Cecily could hear Mrs Quin saying it. ‘But don’t pick all the Michaelmas daisies,’ she would have said. ‘I don’t want to spoil the harvest festival.’

  It was odd that Mrs Quin, who has done less in the village than any other lady of China Court – Adza with her soups and visits, or conscientious Anne, or Bella with her Red Cross lectures and Workers’ Adult Education courses – should be the one St Probus loves, perhaps the first it really accepts; though Great-Uncle Mcleod is village-born, the Eustace Quins when they come from Devonshire are reckoned as foreigners in St Probus, foreigners from England. ‘Well, isn’t Cornwall England?’ Barbara asks puzzled, but in Cornwall people speak of ‘going to England’ as if it were another country and St Probus is Cornish unalloyed, encouraging no outsiders. ‘Well, nobody would live here unless they had to,’ says sharp-tongued Eliza. ‘There is nothing here, nothing,’ she cries passionately.

  ‘Only everything,’ says Damaris, her sister.

  The flowers began to heap up in the tubs Cecily put for them on the larder floor and in the afternoon telegrams began to come, ‘but no one will be here until tomorrow,’ she told Mrs Abel. ‘Bella and Walter have to come down from Worcestershire – he will be in a fine old state, having to leave just when apple-picking starts. The others are on holiday in Oban,’ said Cecily looking at the telegram, ‘that’s Scotland, isn’t it?’ The second Grace was working in London, and could not get away until tomorrow. ‘They will all bring their husbands. That means getting all the rooms ready,’ said Cecily. ‘Just as well Mrs Quin did make me have a real clean.’ Mrs Abel helped her with the beds. The sheets were linen but old now and thin – some of them come with Adza when she marries, some are turned sides to middle during the war. The blankets were old too, washed thin, almost cottony, and some of the towels were rubbed through. For years there had not been so many rooms used and Cecily had to send Groundsel up to the shop for cakes of soap to put in the soap dishes on the old-fashioned marble-topped washing stands. She filled the jugs with clean water, ‘and weren’t they dusty inside,’ she told Mrs Abel, ashamed.

  ‘’Ee couldn’ do all th’ work o’ this gurt house,’ said Mrs Abel.

  It was late afternoon when they reached the White Room, ‘but I have done that,’ said Cecily. ‘It was got ready yesterday, before—’ she broke off, not trusting her voice.

  The White Room by tradition belongs to the girls of the family. ‘We even have to be bedded two by two,’ says Eliza. ‘I want, how I want, a room to myself.’ When she has one after Anne is gone, Eliza is no longer a girl but a ‘cantankerous secretive old spinster,’ says Eliza. After she dies, there are, for a long while, no girls. Borowis sleeps in the handsome Red Room, where no boy or girl has been allowed before; it is John Henry who has the boys’ traditional room, the shabby Brown; as he and Borowis are the only two children where all the Brood have been, they can inhabit a room each.

  Ripsie, of course, does not dream of sleeping at China Court, but she is condescendingly allowed to peep into the White Room when the boys’ cousin, Isabel Loftus Kennedy, comes to stay. With its white-and-pink-dotted wallpaper, white muslin curtains, flowered rugs, and its low mahogany furniture, the White Room looks to Ripsie like a girl’s bedroom in a book, and when her own daughters, Bella and the eldest Grace, come to sleep in it, she will not have it changed. No man or boy or married woman has ever slept in it, it is kept for girls, and now, when Cecily and Mrs Abel went in, they saw something that was not there when Cecily cleaned it yesterday: a vase of pink Damascus roses, twin of the one she had put by Mrs Quin. ‘She put it there,’ whispered Cecily.

  Cecily always knows Mrs Quin’s rating of people by the flowers she gives them. She gives plenty; no visitor ever leaves China Court without a bouquet; flowers are always put in Bella’s or the Graces’ rooms when any of them come to visit, ‘but only the ordinary kinds of roses,’ says Cecily, ‘or sweet peas or anemones or snowdrops.’ Mrs Quin is careful of her pearls.

  Once, when Cecily is ill, Mrs Quin gives her a bunch of these same roses and Cecily has known her to take them up to the churchyard for Damaris, but they were for nobody else, thought Cecily.

  Now, for a moment she stayed looking at them; then she pushed Mrs Abel out and closed the door. The room seemed suddenly private. ‘I can put a Grace and her Tom into the night nursery,’ she said. ‘Or they can split up and go into the Porch Room and the Yellow, but I don’t think they should come in here, especially not Bella,’ she added. ‘No. I won’t let Bella and her questions in here.’

  ‘Would ’ee like me to stay th’ night?’ asked Mrs Abel. But Cecily shook her head.

  ‘Don’t bother. I shall sleep.’

  ‘Sleep?’ Cecily felt Mrs Abel’s look of surprise, but it was better that Mrs Abel should disapprove than have hurt feelings. ‘No one shall watch by Mrs Quin but I, Cecily Morgan,’ that was what Cecily wanted to say but, ‘I’m sure I shall sleep,’ she said instead and presently, under the e
yes, surprised too, of the village, Mrs Abel went home. Soon dusk settled over China Court.

  It was late when Peter came from the farm, down through its field to the river, across the bridge and up the valley path. He stopped by the wall to look, as Ripsie stops more than seventy years before.

  He had been threshing since dawn – ‘and two men short on the thresher,’ said Peter. It was booked to go on to Glentyre so that Penbarrow had had to finish in one day. Peter’s clothes smelled of oil and dust; there was chaff in his hair and down his neck; its dust was stuck to his sweaty body and his eyelids were swollen with it. The throbbing noise of the thresher and the worry of its cost seemed locked into his head; he ached with tiredness and such sadness as he had never known for his old friend, Mrs Quin.

  ‘I have no father and mother now, thank you,’ says Peter when he first meets Mrs Quin again and she talks of Lord and Lady St Omer. ‘No relations, thank you, no friends,’ but he and Mrs Quin grow steadily through all the stages he condemns: friends, then curiously intimate relations, until it is almost ‘mother and another son,’ says Mrs Quin.