by Rumer Godden
There is an outdoor pelisse of stiff white serge, braided and lined with silk; to match it, is a cap for a boy, a bonnet for a girl. Over these goes a veil and, round and round the baby, like a cocoon, a wide shawl. ‘If a baby won’t stop crying,’ Polly teaches, ‘wrap it tightly round in a shawl, and it often will.’
There is not one of her charges whom Polly does not know through and through and, ‘You must behave yourself,’ she says to Jared this morning, as she says when he is six years old. ‘Behave.’ But she knows he will not. ‘Cocks can’t quack,’ is one of Polly’s maxims. Jared paces through the hall into the drawing room and back through the hall into the dining room and out onto the terrace, then backward and forward over its stones. ‘I suppose I must stay here,’ he says. For his little Patrick’s sake – and for decency’s sake – he knows he must, but he would give worlds to have a horse out and gallop fast up on the moor; or go potting at rabbits – there is nothing else to shoot in July – but speed would be better, or to take out a ferret, anything to get out of the way. ‘I suppose I can’t,’ says Jared like a rebellious small boy.
He does not like the stillness, and he does not like the sympathy, it makes him feel irritable; nor the expectancy, it makes him feel trapped. I ought to be pleased, but I don’t want to settle down yet, thinks Jared. Not start a family. I want to get away with Pat sometimes to town, not rot here. He does not like himself for thinking this, but it is true and he cannot help it and he has a feeling of being throttled by his young wife. ‘I didn’t ask to be loved like this,’ says Jared to himself and kicks the scraper outside the french doors.
Above all he cannot bear the joy in Lady Patrick’s face, joy at being hurt like this, thinks Jared shrinking. Lady Patrick is tall, but she is slender, narrow-hipped, and she has ridden a great deal and in 1876 an old-fashioned doctor does not believe in too much chloroform. Like many big men Jared cannot bear pain; like many thoughtless men he is appalled when he sees pain naked: I did this to her! and his whole being recoils.
‘I’m glad you did,’ pants Lady Patrick. ‘Be glad.’
Glad! Jared sees the sweat break out on her face as her eyes widen in an effort to hold back the screams; he did not know she could look ugly. ‘Glad,’ she pants with that dreadful distorted face, the body he has loved spread and swollen on the bed, making curious movements of itself, thinks Jared stunned. ‘Don’t leave me,’ she cries, ‘help me,’ but Jared cannot bear it and, as Sister Priscilla’s hands come to her back and hold her, he tears himself loose and stumbles out of the room, ‘and out of the house,’ says Polly, as from the landing window she watches him go. She stands for a minute, considering, her hands under her apron, then she goes in to Lady Patrick. ‘I have sent him away,’ says Polly.
‘Sent him away! How dared you!’ It is the imperious Lady Patrick speaking. No one else must know Jared, thinks Polly silently, but at least the young ladyship has been saved from knowing that he has deserted, thinks Polly, though he should never have been asked to stay. My goodness, the mistress would never … thinks Polly.
Adza is the one she admires. ‘Send a message to Mr Quin,’ says Adza on each occasion. ‘Tell him I shall not be down for breakfast – dinner – supper – to make him his tea.’ When Jared is born, she is in the middle of making marmalade.
‘I think you should come upstairs now, ma’am.’
‘Not just yet, Polly. I think we can finish this batch,’ and, ‘He was nearly born in the kitchen,’ says Polly; but, as Lady Patrick excels Adza in beauty, she excels her in feeling too, ‘more feeling than sense,’ says Polly.
Polly would have given Jared a rap: ‘Grow up. You are married now,’ but he is gone. From the terrace he goes, stepping lightly by back paths, to reach the drive and disappears toward the stables.
The grandfather clock strikes twelve; the other clocks follow, and Polly runs out on the landing again. ‘A boy.’ Her cheeks are pink, her eyes look like a girl’s, and she throws her arms around Eliza, who happens to have come upstairs. There is under Eliza’s cloak a sharp-edged parcel, but Polly is too elated to feel it.
Eliza stands listening to a cry that fills the landing, a sound like sparrows chirping or an engine starting up, while below Pringle scurries to the kitchen with the news: ‘A boy. A boy.’
‘A boy! and both safe and well, thank God,’ says Polly. ‘Thank Dr Smollett, I should say,’ says Eliza crisply, but Polly is not having that behaviour. ‘Certainly thank Dr Smollett, but none of your talk now, Eliza. You can go and find Jared and tell him. Tell him he can come now,’ says Polly.
‘Jared.’ Eliza stands on the terrace and calls, ‘Jared.’ No answer. She looks around the garden, then goes down the drive and calls again toward the stables. ‘Surely not gone out?’ says Eliza, and goes down to the stables to see.
‘Gone out?’ Lady Patrick’s eyes that have looked so eagerly at the opening door cloud with bewilderment. ‘Are you sure?’
Eliza has none of Polly’s mercy. ‘Quite sure. Trust Jared!’ she says.
‘We must expect gentlemen to go out and in,’ says Sister Priscilla.
‘He will be back in a few minutes,’ says Polly, but these are only bandage words, covering up a cut that bleeds through. Lady Patrick will not, as they desire, go to sleep or drink her beef tea. ‘Something must have happened to him,’ she insists. It is only toward evening, and then only if they let her hold the baby that, worn out with pain and fretting, she falls into a sleep.
It is both of them asleep that Jared sees, his wife and son, when he comes home late, ‘with his tail between his legs,’ says Polly.
‘And where have you been?’ she asks.
Jared never lies to Polly. It would, in any case, be no good; Polly knows him through and through. ‘Meant to go for a quick ride,’ he says sullenly, ‘but I met Harry St Omer.’
‘And?’ says Polly, not letting him off.
‘We found a fair, and fooled around.’ Polly knows his fooling and she asks no more, but drives him sharply into the bedroom.
He stands by the bed, ashamed and miserable, looking at the two heads against the pillow: Lady Patrick’s almost child face, still stained by tears and white with tiredness, and the other head, no bigger than a doll’s beside her. He stares at that round dark head lying so confidently where no head was before and, as he looks, comprehension of what has been going on here dawns on his mind: While I was fooling with Harry, thinks Jared. I could kick myself! He groans and goes down on his knees by the bed. Even now she is not properly asleep – every few minutes she has wakened fretting, and she wakes now. ‘Jared!’
‘Little Pat. My love, I—’ The words choke him. ‘How could I—’
‘No Jeremiahs.’ Polly’s voice comes from behind him and he stops, but kisses Lady Patrick’s hand, keeping it against his face, covering it with kisses. ‘Sweetheart.’
Polly does not like these endearments: ‘Darling’, ‘sweetheart’ seem to her extravagant. They won’t weather, thinks Polly. The most she ever hears Adza or Eustace allow themselves is ‘my dear’, now and again ‘my love’. Nor does Polly think it wise that Lady Patrick says not one word of reproach. ‘Jared needs bringing up,’ Polly could have told her, but Lady Patrick only draws her hand gently away from him and turns the blanket back. ‘Not me – him,’ she whispers.
Jared’s face as he looks at his baby is so comical that Polly and Sister Priscilla have to turn their faces away, but Lady Patrick draws Jared down to her. ‘Do you know what his name is?’ she whispers.
‘His name?’ asks Jared stupidly. He has not really taken it in that this is his son, a person.
‘He has to have a name,’ says Lady Patrick and laughs. Jared is so relieved she can laugh that he can almost manage a smile. ‘What name, my darling?’
‘The dearest name in the world,’ she whispers. ‘Your name, Jared.’
‘No!’ cries Jared, stung.
‘Why no?’ but he is not prepared to confess and he says lamely, ‘I want him to hav
e another name.’ ‘What name?’ asks Lady Patrick. The only name that comes into Jared’s mind is the name of the tightrope walker at that ridiculous fair that afternoon. He and Harry St Omer have seen a good deal of the tightrope walker for he has a partner, a taking little brunette with plump legs in black mesh stockings. Before he can stop himself, to his horror Jared has said the tightrope walker’s name: ‘Borowis.’
‘Borowis?’
He tries to take it back. ‘No, it’s too queer.’ Borowis, the Russian Tightrope Wonder, but, ‘I like it,’ says Lady Patrick. ‘Borowis,’ she says to the baby.
She is weak and very tired; Sister Priscilla carries away the baby and, with Jared’s hand in hers, Lady Patrick has settled down. Polly puts her finger to her lips. ‘Dear, dear love,’ murmurs Lady Patrick and is asleep.
Jared kneels there and, in spite of cramp, does not move his hand, ‘for almost twenty minutes,’ says Polly.
‘Miss Quin, Miss Damaris Quin for luncheon.’
‘They mean Eliza and Anne,’ says Damaris. ‘They must mean Eliza and Anne.’
‘Then they wouldn’t say “Damaris”,’ snaps Eliza and turns on her sister. ‘Don’t pretend Harry St Omer doesn’t know your name.’
‘Then why only two of us?’ asks Damaris bewildered.
‘Because they don’t know there are three,’ says Eliza, ‘don’t know or care.’
It is the day after the gale, a day, in the way Cornish weather can change, of sun and calmness, and the note comes soon after breakfast, brought by a groom on horseback, the groom in the buff-and-maroon livery that, though familiar to everyone in St Probus, has never, so far, been seen at China Court.
In those early days of the house there are not many visitors. The doctor visits, of course, first Dr Stone and then Dr Smollett; very often in those days, the stable boy walks Dr Stone’s horse up and down while the doctor is inside with Adza. Dr Smollett’s assistant, courting Mary, comes often; Mrs Smollett now and then, and there is, of course, the vicar – many vicars, for they change; sometimes there is a vicar’s wife, sometimes, as with Miss Preedy, a vicar’s sister. There used to be school friends of Mary’s or Anne’s – Eliza, as has been told, has not the knack of making friends – and presently there will be several of Jared’s from Rugby and Oxford – ’too young for us,’ says Eliza – but on the whole, the family lives to itself. ‘That happens with a big family,’ says Polly.
‘But how do people ever meet people?’ asks Eliza in despair, which means, ‘How do girls ever marry?’
Now the chance is here. The note, borne respectfully on a salver, is brought in to Adza in the morning room. She takes it uncertainly, but Eliza is already trembling, half with eagerness, half with suspicion. Adza reads the note, her lips moving in the way that always irritates Eliza – like a school child, thinks Eliza – and, ‘She writes as if she knows us,’ says Adza, puzzled.
‘Lady St Omer?’ asks Eliza.
‘Yes,’ and Adza reads aloud: “‘Dear Mrs Quin, Harry tells me the girls are home …’”
‘Home for eight years,’ says Eliza.
“‘… so pleased if they may come to an early luncheon with our young people. If you say ‘yes’ as I hope you will, Harry and his friend will drive over – Harry should pay his formal call on you—’”
‘When has he ever?’ asks Eliza.
‘“—and, if they may, the young men will drive them back, cordially, Jane St Omer.”’
‘Cordially! He must be very rich,’ says Eliza.
‘Who?’
‘This man, Harry’s friend, who wants to see Damaris again.’
‘He doesn’t,’ cries Damaris, crimson, but Adza looks at the note more thoughtfully still. ‘There is a postscript: “I hope you do not object to their driving in a dogcart. I allow Helena.”’
‘If Helena does, we can!’ says Eliza acridly. She longs for Adza to say no, that she certainly cannot allow her girls … but that might seem narrow and provincial. She longs for Adza to refuse the whole invitation and yet … It is gratifying to have the St Omers asking us, thinks Eliza. ‘A horridly condescending letter,’ says Eliza aloud to relieve her feelings, but it is not condescending, it is friendly, even if absent-minded. Why is it so friendly? Adza is palpably asking herself that and sits staring at the letter for so long that Eliza loses patience and cries, ‘Mother, a note is meant to be answered! That groom won’t wait all day.’
When the answer is gone: ‘Dear Lady St Omer …’ written slowly, for Adza is not much accustomed to notes, she sits on silently at her desk. For once Adza is thinking deeply. ‘I wish your father were not at the quarry,’ she says. ‘I think I shall send for him,’ and she rings the bell. Meanwhile, behind her, an altercation is going on: ‘It says Miss Quin. You are Miss Quin, Liz. You must go,’ says Anne to Eliza.
‘Wild horses wouldn’t drag me,’ says Eliza.
‘But you are Miss Quin. They will think it odd.’
‘They won’t, because they don’t know – or care,’ says Eliza. ‘They only know that Damaris has a sister, or sisters. I’m not going in Damaris’s train.’
Anne does not want to go either. Her reasons are stronger than Eliza’s but she is biddable and gentle. ‘And Anne should go,’ says Eustace, summoned home. ‘It may put an end to this chapel nonsense.’ Anne does not answer, but bends her head over her work.
Two hours later there is the sound of wheels on the gravel, of horses’ hoofs, men’s voices. ‘They are here already!’ Damaris is pale.
‘You see, they knew we wouldn’t refuse,’ says Eliza.
Eustace goes out to meet the young men – though Mr King Lee is not young, nearer middle age – and for a few minutes they stay talking on the step, Eustace admiring Harry’s horses. Then their voices sound nearer. Eustace is bringing them in and, ‘Liz, where are you going?’ cries Damaris in panic, but Eliza is gone, slipped out of the drawing room, where a fire has been lit at this unaccustomed hour and the family has gathered. Eliza runs swiftly out of sight down the passage as the men cross the hall to the drawing-room door, and Adza, Anne, and Damaris rise all together; a moment later, ‘How do you do,’ Damaris is saying unwillingly.
As soon as she has said it she knows that it is fatal, as fatal as the pink of her dress with its white cuffs and folded white muslin at the neck that shows off her skin and the sheen of her hair. ‘Can I help it having a sheen?’ she wants to ask. ‘I don’t brush it; it’s just health and the wind, soft water and air.’ Mr King Lee seems to know very well what it is. He looks at it – as if he would like to touch it, thinks Damaris, as frightened as a caught bird. ‘Don’t look at me, look at Anne,’ she wants to cry.
Harry St Omer’s loud voice, not quite at its ease, praises the room, the flowers, and Eustace’s sherry. Mr King Lee praises nothing but continues to look at Damaris, as if it were wonderful to him to find the Gypsy of yesterday morning turned into a young lady. Look at Anne, begs Damaris silently, but he will not look at Anne, so delicate in her summer dress, her skin so fair that the blue veins show, her hair brushed neatly into a pale-gold chignon. The girls’ dresses that year are made alike, and in the very newest style taken by Eliza from Paris fashions in the Illustrated London News, ‘though Miss Dawnay’s cut is not the same,’ says Eliza, discontentedly. The dresses are in toile-de-Chine, the upper skirts caught up at the side into panniers, the underskirts plain, but with tabliers, as Eliza calls them, trimmed with a series of flounces, each edged with bands of white muslin and lace. They are dainty and maidenly, with more white muslin and lace edging the neck and sleeves, but Damaris hates them. ‘Oh Mother, not those sickly sweet-pea colourings. I want scarlet,’ she has pleaded, ‘or amber.’
‘You can’t wear a scarlet dress!’ says dictatorial Eliza, and Damaris is forced to have the pale pink that matches Anne’s pale blue, Eliza’s lilac. She hates it, but it appears so to entrance Mr King Lee that she retreats into the conservatory; she has forgotten, she says, to water the plants. Mr King Lee follows her th
ere.
Damaris waters Adza’s geraniums and begonias, taking extreme care not to knock or bruise the flowers. Although she is so careful, the spout of the small watering can trembles. Presently Mr King Lee takes it from her and puts it down. ‘The pots are overflowing,’ says Mr King Lee.
There is not a servant in the house who does not now know about Mr King Lee. Two dogcarts, with yellow wheels, each with a small attendant tiger in buff and maroon, are waiting on the drive. Shy Anne is unwillingly to drive with shyer Harry – ‘Only shy of girls of his own kind, I hear,’ says Eustace disapprovingly – but the servants’ network of communication is exact and no one wastes a glance on them. It is the sight of Miss Damaris being handed up by the American gentleman that brings all heads to the kitchen window: plain caps and streamers, Cook’s ginger hair puffed high with tortoiseshell combs, the kitchen maid, her cap crooked, humbly peeping in a corner. Miss Damaris, they all observe, has a blush. The cook is Cornish in Adza’s day and ‘Her ’ud look purty as a pi’ture in white satin,’ says Cook.
It is at the time of the kitchen dinner when, always, a peculiarly rich and appetizing smell hangs about the house, ‘much nicer than ours,’ declares Jared. China Court kitchen meals are always good; that day there is soup – ‘made with bones and trimmin’s,’ grumbles a housemaid – roast leg of mutton, vegetables, and cheese. ‘Wot? No pudden!’ says the knife-boy and gets his ears boxed. Cook sits at the head of the table, Abbie at the bottom; Polly’s dinner is carried up to her on a tray and the knife-boy takes his out to the scullery.
There is also, at this time, a smell of hot pasties which have been warmed up for the outside men.
Years later, Groundsel, coming in to fetch his pasty, lingers to catch a glimpse of Minna. One day in late autumn he makes up his mind to speak to her. She is, as is usual at this time, washing up in the scullery from the children’s early dinner.
The scullery then, too, has its inconveniently shallow big wooden sinks and an even bigger plate rack; cold water has to be pumped from the hand pump at the side of it but still, to Minna, washing up is a thing of beauty. Plates are scraped clean of scraps and stacked, the knives put aside for the boy to clean in the knife machine, a strange wheel with hollow spokes; spoons and forks are put to soak in a jug of hot water, and the glasses drained. Then Minna gets ready a bowl of soapy hot water, another of hotter water and soda, a third for rinsing, and her deft pink fingers get to work. First the glasses are dried and polished while they are still warm; next the forks and spoons washed, dried, and polished hot; then the small plates, last the large, are sluiced, put in the rack to drip, then carefully dried. Last of all washbowls and sink are emptied and swilled, the mop rinsed and hung by its stick to dry, the draining board scrubbed and dried too. Groundsel, who has seen the other maids throw everything higgledy-piggledy into the sink, is charmed. He stands in the doorway watching with, as it has been raining, his usual rainwear, a sack over his shoulders. Stealing a glance at him, Minna can see raindrops on his dark hair.
