China Court

by Rumer Godden

  It was uncommon for Tracy to smile at strangers, however approving, but Peter was right: she was in a state of shock, a turmoil of unhappiness for Mrs Quin, and happiness, because nothing could gainsay the fact that she was back at China Court, ‘but nothing was as I had imagined it,’ she said afterward. For her China Court and St Probus had been halcyoned by distance – and I suppose by how Americans think of England, thought Tracy, as mellowed, picturesque, cosy; she had not been prepared for the wastes of moorland, bleak and grey in the early morning, nor for the harsh plainness of the village, ‘and the house and garden seem so small,’ said Tracy. ‘I had thought they were boundless.’ It’s all so matter-of-fact, she had thought disappointed, and then, strangely, began to be glad – because it makes it real, thought Tracy. Altogether she, like Cecily, was quite out of herself; she had forgotten to put on the polite defensive mask she usually clamped over her too childish face, and now she smiled warmly at Peter and, ‘Are you the milk?’ she asked.

  He did not look like a milkman, this tall young man, lean to thinness, in the shabby whipcord breeches and checked shirt. He was looking at her as if he were displeased – Why should he be displeased? wondered Tracy – and he said stiffly, even accusingly, ‘It was you who picked the sweet peas.’

  Tracy would normally have been routed at once but, when one defensive person meets another, they recognize each other, like prisoners, thought Tracy, and Peter’s defensiveness only calmed her, so that it was without even the stammer which dogged her in moments of nervousness – and she was always nervous with young men – that she answered, ‘Yes, I picked them,’ and explained, ‘I used to do that with Gran, and Cecily wanted them.’

  If I had stayed in St Omerland, Peter was thinking, I should have met girls like this on equal terms. It doesn’t matter how rotten you are, he thought savagely, if you have the trimmings. What trimmings had he? A few cows and stock, a crop of wheat, some silver cups and books in a tumbledown farmhouse – that isn’t even mine, thought Peter. I had better go, he thought, and put the can on the table. ‘Yes, I’m the milk,’ he said abruptly.

  ‘But you must have a name?’ Tracy was still calm.

  ‘Peter St Omer.’

  ‘St O—There was a Lord St Omer here, I remember him. Then are you …?’

  ‘I’m the fanner at Penbarrow.’

  ‘But it was Mr—’ She broke off. ‘Of course, that was twelve years ago.’ She lifted her eyes to look at him again. ‘I’m Tracy Quin,’ she said.

  ‘Tracy? The Tracy?’ asked Peter, interested in spite of himself. ‘But you were a little girl.’

  ‘I was, twelve years ago,’ said Tracy sadly and she cried, ‘Oh! How could I have stayed away so long?’

  ‘You seem to have managed it for twelve years.’ Peter was cold again but she did not appear to notice.

  ‘I let them keep me, let them order me about,’ and she said, more to herself than to him, ‘I don’t think it occurred to me that I could order myself. And all this time I was quite close, in Rome. Why, I have been there nearly two years.’ Her eyes were filling with tears again, but Peter refused to sympathize.

  ‘You must speak Italian very nicely,’ he said coldly.

  ‘No. I’m not good at talking to people. I think altogether I was wasting my time. Then Gran wrote to me, but to America; they sent the letter on, too late.’ She stopped, looking down at the table, trying to hold back her tears. ‘Oh! I came as fast as I could,’ cried Tracy. ‘I thought I would surprise her. I came straight on from London. I had to stay the night in Exeter, but I didn’t leave the station and caught the first train.’ The words tumbled out pell-mell. ‘It was a funny little milk train to Camelford and the stationmaster there woke up a taximan.’

  ‘I heard a car come down the lane and wondered …’ But Peter would not betray his interest and instead, ‘You needn’t have done all that,’ he said. ‘There’s a perfectly good night train from Paddington that puts you out at Liskeard.’

  Why was he so unsympathetic and terse? But Tracy was often terse herself, and once again, it had the effect of making her calm and she was able to lift her head and look at him squarely. She had not seen colouring like his before and the red hair, skin brown as a Mexican’s, made her feel like a wraith in her paleness; his eyes were brown too, not easy eyes, and now, not friendly. ‘Please tell Cecily,’ he said, ‘I brought three pints extra for the Horde.’

  ‘The Horde?’

  ‘I’m sorry, that was rude of me. It’s my name for Mrs Scrymgeour, Bella, and the others, your uncles and aunts.’

  ‘You know them?’

  ‘I know them.’ He said no more than that, but his briefness told Tracy what he did not say, and, Did I like Aunt Bella? she thought. I don’t think I did. ‘Tell me about them,’ she wanted to say but she could hardly ask questions about her own relatives from someone so obviously hostile; instead she put out her hand and touched the bunch of clover on the can. ‘You brought these for Gran?’

  The edge went out of his voice – and out of his face, thought Tracy – as he said, ‘The cow she gave me, Clover, had a calf last night.’

  ‘A calf?’ Tracy sounded as pleased and interested as Mrs Quin herself would have been, and, ‘It’s our first,’ Peter volunteered. He had to tell somebody. ‘But you have other cows as well?’ She seemed really interested, and, ‘We had Clover, Buttercup, and Daisy, Poppy, Pimpernel, Parsley, the beginnings of a real Jersey herd,’ said Peter; then the edge came back, abruptly. ‘But that’s no use now,’ he said.

  ‘Why is it no use?’

  ‘Because’ – and Peter said it as lightly as he could – ‘because tomorrow, or the next day, as soon as they read the will, my farm will probably belong to your Aunt Bella.’

  ‘To Aunt Bella?’ Tracy looked startled. ‘And China Court, the house?’ she asked anxiously.

  ‘The house too, I expect.’

  ‘What will she do with it?’

  Peter shrugged. ‘Sell it, I suppose. If she can.’

  ‘Sell it, but she can’t.’ Tracy was incredulous.

  ‘She can and she will. Bella and Walter or one of the others,’ said Peter, ‘it makes no difference. It will be sold, broken up. I’m sorry,’ he said as he saw the tears really spill over now. ‘I’m sorry but it will.’

  ‘Gran wouldn’t have let them,’ Tracy whispered because she could not trust herself to speak. She bent her head so that the sides of her hair swung further and he could not see her face, but a sob shook her, then another. Peter did not go away as ten minutes ago he would have done at once. Instead he felt an answering uncomfortable tightening in his throat and, Thank God, Cecily came in then, thought Peter.

  Cecily came in and looked at them, but all she said was, ‘Peter, you had better have some breakfast,’ and, ‘Tracy! Are you letting that bacon burn?’

  In Eustace’s day, before there can be bacon there have to be family prayers. Mary and Eliza, the two eldest of the Brood, take it in turns to put out the books, ‘if you have learned your hymn verse, text, and Collect,’ says Adza.

  ‘I have learned them,’ says Eliza. ‘I learned all three while Mary was learning her verse.’

  ‘Eliza, you must not boast.’

  ‘But I did.’

  ‘That will do, Eliza.’

  Eliza, at this time, is an exceedingly plain little girl of seven, dressed like Mary in a wide four-tiered skirt of triangular plaid in bilious blues and greens with a white bodice jacket, the vest and sleeves trimmed with white braid. The low neck shows Eliza’s knobbly little shoulders, while her hair is strained tightly back on her head by a round tortoiseshell comb, so that her forehead is revealed as large and unmistakably bumpy, but, ‘Those are my brains,’ says Eliza.

  ‘Eliza, you must not boast.’

  Eustace, who loves them very much, has drawn up a timetable for his children.

  Eliza has no inkling yet that he never intends her to get far beyond it: ‘Solfeggio, needlework, drawing, accomplishments,’ mocks
the grown-up Eliza, but now there is nothing to disturb her content. At the foot of the nursery stairs, five holland pinafores hang on hooks; only five because Jared is still a baby, and Damaris is not yet born. The pinafores vary only in size; after breakfast the Brood will put them on, boys and girls alike because there is no difference marked between them yet, except that little Eustace, being just five, learns less, while Mcleod the Second, who is two years old, does not learn at all. Eliza can still be proud; she has not yet understood that she is only a girl, plain and without money or distinction – the little Quins are not invited to the St Omer parties, for instance – she only knows she is the best at copying, arithmetic, and reciting, though the younger Anne is gently best at music, while Mary, like Adza herself and, years later, like Bella, has a voice like a flute. Little Eustace is not best at anything; Mcleod the Second does not count. The three girls in their plaid and white, ranged before Adza, have each a private hassock to kneel on, their own prayer books to read from, while the mop-headed little boys have nothing at all and simply stand by their mother.

  Abbie sounds the gong – Adza has forgotten she was ever in awe of her – the maids file in; only Cook is excused because she has to get breakfast, and the knife-boy because he is too dirty.

  Eustace comes in, solid, almost square in his long buttoned-up frock coat and his fawn waistcoat with lapels that are always slightly crumpled because a child often hangs on to them when riding cockahorse on his knee. He has a chain that ends, as the children know, on one side with a seal and fob and on the other with a large gold watch which they are allowed to hold in their hands when they have a dose of medicine – Gregory powders, thinks Eliza with a shudder, or rhubarb.

  Eustace and Adza, at this time, have grown to look very alike; the plump little bride has become solid and by the weight and width of her clothes – fourteen yards make a dress-length for Adza – she is even squarer than her husband, just as her brown hair is a deeper shade than his, her round eyes deeper blue than his pale-blue ones.

  As Eustace comes in there is a respectful standing up and a hymn is sung. One of the little girls says the Collect of the week – Eliza loves this – and then there is a rustle as everybody sits for the chapter that Eustace reads from the big Bible carried in by Abbie from the hall. A longer, louder rustle follows, with creaks of whalebone – now and then even a crack – as they all kneel devoutly facing their chairs, while Eustace prays aloud, which makes the young maids inclined to giggle. The little girls kneel on their hassocks, the soles of their small cloth boots upturned to heaven, the ends of their embroidered long drawers showing above a gap of white stocking, and their heads so devoutly bent that their hair falls forward and Eustace can see the napes of their necks, so small and white and vulnerable that sometimes he loses his place.

  The smell of bacon drifts across the Lord’s Prayer – always for Eliza, the two are mingled, though she does not, at that age, get any of the bacon – and as the smell rises Eustace increases his pace. Adza deplores this – she knows what the maids must be thinking – but she is too tender-hearted to tell him of it, and it is, thinks Adza, a comforting thought that breakfast is waiting; the children, upstairs, have porridge and milk, white bread and the second-best butter; but for Eustace and Adza the morning-room table is laid with porridge in blue-and-white plates, cream, brown bread, muffins, honey and rolls, while the bacon keeps hot in a silver dish over a flame, with another dish of kidneys or sausages or sometimes kedgeree. A comforting thought, thinks Adza and gives a contented sigh; a good table, a clean and comfortable house, a full nursery; and a thriving business – what more could anyone want?

  It is the year of the Great Exhibition. All England is humming with new inventions, new ideas; new horizons too, because foreigners have come from all parts of the world. ‘Those are mandarins!’ squeals Eliza, finding engravings of them in the Illustrated London News, and she asks, ‘Does my great-uncle Mcleod look like that?’

  ‘Don’t be foolish, my dear. He is not a heathen Chinee!’

  Eliza loves to unfold the diagrams and pictures. “‘The Transept looking north,’” she reads out reverently. ‘“The view from Hyde Park East.” “The Pavilion.” “Her Majesty the Queen opening the Exhibition on May the first, eighteen fifty-one.” “The Prince of Wales in Highland dress,”’ Eliza reads out; “‘The Princess Royal in white lace with a wreath of flowers.’” Adza likes to hear about the royal children’s dresses, but Eliza is not interested in them but in herself and cries, ‘Oh, Mamma, when can we go? We are going, Mamma? Say we are.’

  ‘Papa may go,’ says Adza comfortably. ‘For us it is too far.’

  ‘But Mamma! We must go!’

  ‘You may not say “must” to Mamma, Eliza.’

  London has never been so fashionable and gay. The small Eliza follows it almost breathlessly. “‘Court and Haut Ton,’” she spells out. ‘What is Haut Ton?’

  ‘I don’t really know, my dear.’

  ‘“May tenth. The Queen gave a State Ball at Buckingham Palace to a most brilliant Court.” How lovely,’ breathes Eliza. ‘“Covent Garden, Carlotta Grisi danced in the revived ballet of Les Métamorphoses as the sprite, assuming six different forms with the utmost grace and vivacity.” Who is she, Carlotta Grisi?’

  ‘I don’t know, my dear.’

  ‘“Mr Macready’s last performance as Macbeth.” Who is Mr Macready? Can I read Macbeth?’

  ‘You must ask Papa,’ but it is no use asking Papa either; he doesn’t know or care, ‘about anything,’ cries Eliza. Not about the hummingbirds in Mr Gould’s collection at the Zoological Society’s Gardens in Regent’s Park; nor that it takes only eleven hours now to get to Paris – ‘My dear, I am not likely to go to Paris’ – nor about Mrs Fanny Kemble’s Shakespeare Readings, nor the ascent of Mr Hampton’s balloon. He does not care a pin about any of them.

  All the same Eliza loves her father far more than her mother and she finds his work as enthralling as she finds Adza’s domesticity boring. Eliza has never wanted to help give out the stores, or make cowslip wine or jam or pickles, but she loves going to the quarry with Eustace. All the children have been there; it is next door, just up the hill. They have been shown – though Anne grows cold with terror because she knows a bang is coming – how the explosives are placed in the holes drilled in the granite hillside; ‘Ten minutes and that ull blaw up, my dears’; and seen the cutting of the granite while water squirts to prevent its getting too hot. Even the noise of the drilling is exciting to Eliza, when the deadly fine granite dust flies up – ‘It can kill a man if it gets into his lungs’ – and she takes a real delight in the precision and finish of the polishing and letter-cutting and carving of headstones.

  She has never been to Canverisk, though Little Eustace has, riding across the moor on the front of Eustace’s saddle, but Eustace has made out a copy about the works for all the children to write and learn: ‘What is china clay? It is a high-grade white or nearly white clay, formed by the natural decomposition of mineral feldspar.’

  ‘What is this natural process called? This natural process is called kaolization.’

  ‘For what is china clay or kaolin used? It is used in the manufacture of paper, pottery, ceramics, and pigments.’

  Mary complains that the words are too difficult, but Eliza loves them. ‘Pigments, ceramics and pigments,’ she chants. ‘And our china clay, in England, is the best in the world, especially here on the moors. Papa says so,’ she boasts, but now the first buffets of being only a girl begin to be felt. A girl cannot ride cross-legged on the front of Eustace’s saddle; she must stay at home with Mamma, which in Eliza’s case is not comfortable for either of them.

  ‘Mamma, why does Papa always read prayers? Why not you?’

  ‘It’s Papa’s place, my dear.’

  ‘Why is it Papa’s place?’ or, ‘Mamma, does the lady have to wait until the gentleman asks her?’

  ‘Asks her what, my love?’

  ‘To marry her or can she ask h
im first?’

  ‘Mamma, when we go up to the Exhibition’ – and Eliza still cannot believe they are not to go – ‘shall I call the Queen “Your Majesty” or just plain Victoria?’

  It is a cuckoo voice – Adza cannot compete with it – and gentle little Anne when she says ‘no’ can never be made to say ‘yes’ and when Damaris, the youngest, is born and grows up, she is oddly shy, ‘like a little savage,’ says Polly, and will not speak to people or, even at five years old, go into anyone’s house, ‘not even for the nicest party,’ says Adza, unless Polly holds her coat and hat in front of her the whole time so that she can see them and know she can go away. ‘But they were all so sweet,’ says Adza, ‘with their silky heads and their little hands joined together when they prayed; they were so sweet, but where are they now?’

  ‘Once upon a time,’ she could have said, ‘the house was like a nest.’ Indeed, it is for that Eustace calls his children the Brood, but, ‘Where is everyone?’ asks Eustace, looking around the empty morning room, and Adza echoes, ‘Where are they?’

  Some are gone legitimately as it were: Mary marries, ‘the only available man,’ says Eliza. He is Dr Smollett’s new young assistant and, ‘Who would want to marry a man like that, no better than an apothecary?’ says Eliza. Little Eustace dies; Mcleod the Second has been pledged from his birth to go out to China to Great-Uncle Mcleod – Mcleod the Second, who sends home the famille rose. These absences Adza can understand; she can grieve over them, miss these children and mourn their empty places without bewilderment, but the grown-up Eliza will not get up in the mornings and lies in bed staring at the wall and has written ‘fuddy-duddy’ across her prayer book, while Anne has suddenly begun going to the common Bethsaida chapel in the village and, ‘Goodness knows where Damaris is! Probably walking the moors, like a Gypsy, and all alone!’ says Adza. Then Mary ceases to write, Mcleod the Second is in mysterious trouble in China while Jared, the adored, has been sent to this costly and dangerous place, Oxford, and, last time he is home, comes in at breakfast, still in evening clothes, his breath smelling, ‘of spirits,’ says Adza, horrified.