China Court

by Rumer Godden

  It had begun quite pleasantly at dinner the night before; Cecily had cleared the table, carried out the tray, and shut the door, when a Grace said thoughtfully, ‘Mother will have looked after Cecily, I suppose.’

  ‘Cecily and Groundsel, possibly Minna,’ said Bella. ‘I expect there will be several bequests.’

  ‘I hope not too many,’ said Walter. ‘The estate won’t fetch very much as it is.’

  ‘The farm more than the house, I should guess,’ said Tom.

  ‘There isn’t much in the way of securities.’ Walter had settled down in his chair. He likes talking about money, thought Tracy. In fact, all the voices had quickened.

  ‘I could have doubled her capital if she had let me,’ Walter was saying.

  ‘But she would hang on to her consols and three percents.’ That was Bella.

  ‘And there are some unfortunate South American railway holdings. She never would take my advice,’ said Walter.

  ‘If we had known there would be this fantastic rise in cosmetics we should never have let her sell the works,’ said Bella.

  ‘Is china clay used in cosmetics?’ asked Tracy. She would have liked to hear much more about the family business, but Walter swept her question out of the way.

  ‘You must remember Canverisk was out-of-date, and we should have been up against big concerns like the Associated Clay Works,’ he said. ‘It would have meant sinking a new shaft, and making a new pumping station. There was only an old-type Cornish pump,’ he explained. ‘I don’t want to criticize your father,’ he said to Bella and the Graces, ‘but it should have been modernized long ago, while as for your mother! She just used to say, “Plenty of works manage as they are.’”

  ‘And I gather she wanted to get money, not spend it,’ said Dick.

  ‘Get it for us girls,’ said the third Grace softly.

  ‘But we should have had more,’ said Bella.

  ‘Anyway, let’s hope, there’s enough cash to pay duty,’ said Harry. Dick had sent around a decanter of port and Harry poured himself another glass and pushed the decanter across to Tom, as if they were settling down for a comfortable talk, thought Tracy. ‘Pay duty and allow a clear sum from the sale.’

  ‘If she had seven hundred a year, I shall be surprised,’ said Tom.

  ‘No, the old lady won’t cut up very well.’

  ‘Harry, what a horrible expression!’ But that is just what they are doing, thought Tracy, cutting her up, and Gran is still lying upstairs! Tracy’s cheeks burned and she gripped the edge of the table so hard that the polish showed slurred marks.

  ‘If the whole could have been left to one daughter—’ Walter began again.

  ‘Meaning Bella?’ The second Grace’s voice was high, but Tom, the peacemaker, quickly interposed.

  ‘Of course Walter didn’t mean that. It’s only fair you girls should share.’

  ‘If I were asked, I should like the pink tea set,’ said the youngest Grace – and that started them off, thought Tracy.

  ‘Who will have the piano?’

  ‘Does anybody want an old square piano like that?’

  ‘It won’t bring much,’ said Walter.

  ‘I could do with these dining-room chairs.’

  ‘They match the table, and none of us has room for that.’

  ‘It will spoil the price if they are not sold together.’

  ‘The silver must be divided.’

  ‘But most must be sold.’

  ‘I agree. Who wants silver dish covers, and teapots, and who would clean those silver trays?’

  ‘It must be worth a good deal.’

  ‘No, too old-fashioned.’

  ‘There’s that little Queen Anne coffee service. I always called it mine.’

  ‘But it wasn’t yours.’

  It seemed almost as if there might be a quarrel and Tracy quickly asked the question that was tormenting her.

  ‘What will happen to the animals? Moses and Bumble and – and August?’ She could hardly trust herself to say his name.

  ‘Yes, we shall have to think of that,’ said Bella and a silence fell.

  ‘Moses is easy,’ said Bella at last. ‘Cecily will have him, I’m sure, or Groundsel and Minna.’

  ‘And anyone could have Trill,’ said the youngest Grace. ‘He’s the sweetest canary.’

  ‘But the dogs?’

  There was an uneasy pause; then, ‘Let’s face it,’ said Bella, ‘none of us could undertake old Bumble. He’s old, old and smelly. We shall have to let him be put to sleep.’

  Bumble, hearing his name, thumped his tail, while August’s anxious face looked from one to another of them.

  ‘And – August?’ whispered Tracy.

  ‘I couldn’t have August in a flat,’ said a Grace. ‘He’s far too rampageous.’

  ‘I couldn’t have him either, not in London,’ said the second.

  ‘He’s still young. He could be sold to a good home,’ said Tom.

  ‘We paid enough for him,’ said Walter.

  ‘He’s worth more now he’s over his puppy troubles.’

  ‘Yes. Poodles get more and more fashionable every year.’

  ‘They were the most popular breed at Crufts.’

  August’s big body trembled; he crept closer to Tracy and under the table put his head with its black peruke on her knee.

  ‘W-wouldn’t one of you have him?’ asked Tracy, stammering with misery. ‘I mean, he would hate to be sold. Oh, I would have him at once, but I wouldn’t be allowed him in Rome. Oh please.’

  ‘They are dogs, Tracy,’ said Bella, but kindly. ‘We mustn’t be sentimental. If we had bigger homes …’

  It was no good protesting. It was all being settled – irrevocably, thought Tracy. Already the talk had swept on.

  ‘What shall we do with the paintings?’ the second Grace asked. ‘Share them out or sell them?’ and the talk broke out again.

  ‘They should be kept together. Perhaps Bella as eldest …’

  ‘Bella can’t expect to have everything.’

  ‘Who said I expected it?’ Bella was belligerent but, ‘Of course not,’ Tom said quickly. ‘If, in her will, your mother doesn’t specify, we should perhaps draw lots,’ but most of them preferred a sale.

  ‘I love the Winterhalter, but I wouldn’t like the responsibility,’ said the first Grace.

  ‘No, imagine having to insure!’

  ‘We have no room to hang it, or any of them.’

  ‘Better sell,’ said Walter. ‘Paintings are fetching fantastic prices.’

  ‘Yes. Surely with them and the silver and china, especially the famille rose—’

  ‘Alabaster says those are copies.’

  ‘Copies are worth quite a lot.’

  ‘Yes. We should have quite a noteworthy sale.’

  And Gran is upstairs, thought Tracy again. She is here still, but they are wiping her out. It was then that the third Grace, mistaking the stiff unhappiness on her face, asked, ‘What would you like, Tracy?’ and the others, perhaps ashamed of those almost avid moments, had joined in. ‘Yes. We mustn’t forget you, Tracy.’

  Now, as Mr Prendergast settled his papers, Bella turned to her and said, ‘Tracy, you never told us what it was you particularly wanted.’

  ‘I – couldn’t choose,’ said Tracy.

  ‘Of course you can. You are Stace’s daughter.’

  ‘And he was the only son.’

  ‘Didn’t you like the Chelsea figures?’ asked the third Grace. ‘I seem to remember …’

  ‘Or anything else you like.’

  ‘Not, of course, the most valuable pictures.’

  ‘And excepting the porcelain and best silver.’

  ‘Of course. Well, Tracy, what would you like?’

  ‘I would rather wait and see what Gran says.’

  It fell into the middle of them so like a rebuke that Tracy hurriedly said, floundering, ‘I m-mean anything she put down that I should have, w-wanted me to have, I should love, but I c-couldn’t choo
se. I couldn’t!’

  ‘Tracy,’ said Bella. ‘You are not by any chance a little prig.’

  ‘I’m not a prig,’ and Tracy burst out in sudden anger, ‘I’m sorry but’ – and it flared out – ‘I hated to hear you adding up and dividing Gran’s things.’ Then she floundered again. ‘I m-mean, it isn’t f-for us to divide—’

  ‘Do you think,’ Bella’s voice cut across at Tracy, ‘do you think I hadn’t Mother’s fullest confidence? Why, your Uncle Walter arranged all her affairs as Mr Prendergast can tell you.’ But Mr Prendergast stayed silent and Bella’s eyes narrowed as they did when she was displeased. ‘You are ready, Mr Prendergast,’ she said. ‘Then what are we waiting for?’

  ‘For Mr St Omer,’ said Mr Prendergast.

  ‘For Peter?’ and like dismayed echoes: ‘For Peter! Peter? St Omer? Why St Omer?’ came from all parts of the room.

  ‘How can this possibly concern him?’ asked Walter.

  ‘It does concern him, Colonel Scrymgeour.’ Mr Prendergast spoke steadily and quietly as if, thought Tracy, he was prepared for everyone at once to turn on him.

  ‘Concerns Peter! Whew!’ said Tom.

  ‘We might have known it,’ said Walter and, ‘You don’t mean to say Mother has been so foolish—’ Bella had begun when Cecily came in.

  ‘Peter, Mr St Omer, is sorry, sir,’ she said to Mr Prendergast. ‘I sent Groundsel up, as you asked, but he brought back a message. Mr St Omer can’t come until he has finished milking.’

  ‘Well!’ said Bella. ‘Well!’

  ‘Cows have to be milked,’ said Mr Prendergast mildly, but they were not appeased.

  ‘Disgracefully rude,’ said Bella.

  ‘That is certainly a very cool young man,’ said Tom.

  ‘I thought cows were milked at four o’clock,’ objected Walter.

  ‘Not with daylight saving,’ said Cecily. ‘He has no one to help, and he wasn’t expecting to be needed,’ she said with emphasis and at Bella, but Bella was too indignant to be fair.

  ‘Not only is he to be here,’ she cried, ‘here, on a very private occasion, in the middle of our intimate affairs, but we are to wait. To wait!’ said Bella, the indignation growing. ‘We certainly shan’t do that. Mr Prendergast, you will please start to read the will at once.’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t.’ Mr Prendergast’s voice, thought Tracy, was very pleasant after Bella’s rising tones. ‘Your mother expressly laid it down that her will was to be read in the presence of you all – of course she did not know about Miss Tracy, but I’m very glad that she is here – of you all, and Miss Cecily Morgan and Mr Peter St Omer.’

  It was a long and difficult hour. ‘An hour!’ cried Bella and she said, ‘Surely, no cows can take as long as this?’

  ‘He has six, seven with the calf.’ Tracy could have bitten her tongue for saying that, but Cecily’s calm voice came across hers and saved her from being noticed. ‘He has to milk by hand,’ said Cecily. ‘There are no machines at Penbarrow.’

  ‘Good thing when that farm is brought up to date,’ said Walter, who was restlessly pacing the room. Funny, thought Tracy, when they knew what was in the will it didn’t matter when they heard it; now that they don’t know, it’s urgent. She had an idea that Mr Prendergast was enjoying himself. I wonder if Gran has left Peter all her money, thought Tracy with a thrill of amusement and she settled down in her straightbacked chair, the most insignificant in the room, to wait, not listening to the talk, shutting her ears to it, looking around the room.

  She loved this drawing room with its length and twin windows back and front looking over the rhododendron island and across the garden to the woods, a restful quiet room that had grown into its own beauty, by accident, as it were; it might equally well have been ugly, thought Tracy; but for Lady Patrick it would have been, as neither Adza nor Mrs Quin has any taste.

  Lady Patrick removes Adza’s horsehair sofa and chairs with their white crocheted ‘protectors’ as Adza calls them; her Turkey carpet goes into the servants’ sitting room, her red curtains are laid away in the attic. Lady Patrick brings over her own mother’s furniture from Dublin; it is mahogany, dark and plain, while the wood of the chairs and sofas is inlaid with gilt that is still gold, though the striped damask of their upholstery has split so that the stuffing is coming through.

  The wallpaper is French, faded to faint silver-green, its stripes long lost, but the carpet still has its true moss-green and its pattern of roses and white ribbons. ‘Early nineteenth-century French,’ said Mr Alabaster. In Mrs Quin’s day there is never any money for furnishings and when the curtains rot she searches through the attic and discovers Adza’s red ones; Lady Patrick is right when she says in dismay that they will never wear out; their silk twill is perfectly good and the room receives them back and fits them in, for it is a living room, thought Tracy – it takes and contains the new as it contains the old: the miniatures of the Three Little Graces are added to the Loftus Kennedy paintings, the ‘Boy with a Hoop’ by Benjamin West, and the companion ‘Girl with a Muff’, who are Lady Patrick’s uncle and aunt. A daub of Eliza wearing a blue dress, the painting set in a wide golden frame, hangs next to the exquisite Engleheart; there is a framed watercolour of surprised-looking clematis, painted by Anne, a photograph of kittens given to Mrs Quin by Tracy, and the most famous painting of all, Lady Patrick herself as a little girl with her brothers and sister, in the Winterhalter over the fireplace.

  The whole room is full of things, old and new, cheap and valuable.

  The cabinets along the wall are bought to hold Mcleod the Second’s famille rose with its crimson and pinks, blue-greens and dark blues on white glaze, but now Mr Alabaster had all its pieces in the library; only a few figures in ivory were left and some jade cups, set out with Stace’s running cups, won at school, and with cheap eggcups and ashtrays in Staffordshire china, presents from the seaside bought for Mrs Quin by Bella and her sisters long ago on summer holidays. There is a collection of shells and a broken silver punch ladle, its handle mended with sticking-plaster. On the chimney shelf over the farther fireplace, the French clock was alone. The Pale Blue Girl and the Little Pink Boy were with Mr Alabaster too. Tracy missed them.

  There are few books in the room, only some bound volumes of Punch and old albums in the bottom shelves of the bureau, a shelf of what the family call ‘drawing-room books’ in bindings of white and gold and, on a table, a miniature set of Shakespeare in scarlet leather in its own small bookcase.

  On the windowsills were saucers of seeds put to ripen in the sun; August’s ball was on the writing table. It’s all very shabby, thought Tracy, not only the split damask, and marked mahogany, but the paint was yellow and cracked, while the window catches were rusty and one grate was broken. Tracy saw this with a pang and, damping her handkerchief with a little spit, tried to rub away a mark on the table near her. ‘Must you fidget?’ asked the irritated Bella and Tracy guiltily put the handkerchief away and sank back into her private remembering.

  There is a square piano in mahogany with a wide panel of pleated brown silk. On each side of the keyboard a bracket pulls out to hold a candlestick. As a child Tracy thinks its inscription the height of romance: ‘J. Broadwood. Maker to Her Majesty and the Princesses. Poulteney Street, Golden Square, London.’

  The room smelled of lilies. Someone, perhaps a neighbour who grew them, thought Tracy, had brought an armful of arums too late for the funeral and Cecily had put them in a jar in the empty fireplace. They made the afternoon air heavy, drowsy, as did the sound of a bee going up and down the windowpane, but no one was sleepy. They were all waiting, alert – and their voices still hostile, thought Tracy.

  Thoughtfully she got up and let the bee out. ‘I asked you not to fidget,’ said Bella sharply and broke off. Steps had sounded in the hall.

  It was a man’s step, firm and decided – what the house needs, thought Tracy – and if a man had been here, all those last years with Gran, she thought suddenly, it wouldn’t have grown so s
habby. The paint would not have been allowed to crack and yellow, the catches to rust, the grate not to be mended. I wish … thought Tracy, but it was no use wishing. Peter – Mr St Omer, Tracy corrected herself – was in the doorway; in a minute Mr Prendergast would start to read the will.

  ‘I’m sorry I kept you,’ said Peter. ‘I had to finish up there, and, as I guessed you would be in the drawing room, I had to change.’

  ‘What I should have done myself,’ said Mr Prendergast but no one else spoke and Peter’s face took on its ‘flint look’, as Cecily called it. ‘May I sit here?’ he asked curtly and sat down in an empty chair by Mr Prendergast’s table and next to Tracy. She gave him a fleeting smile; it was fleet only because she was shy before all the relations, but his look grew more flintlike still and Tracy, absurdly, felt rebuffed. Oh well! she thought, I’m only a spectator, I came to see Gran, no one else. I can go back to Rome tomorrow.

  “‘THIS IS THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF DEBORAH QUIN of China Court, St Probus in the County of Cornwall,’” and Mr Prendergast began to read, “‘I HEREBY REVOKE all former Wills and testamentary dispositions made by me and declare this to be my last Will and Testament.’”

  The exact legal language soothed Tracy and filled the room.

  “‘I give to Cecily Morgan the sum of £500, and an annuity of £150 and also my personal clothing in appreciation of the many years of devoted service she has given to me.’”

  Cecily did not cry, but her dark eyes grew very bright as she sat looking far over their heads.

  “‘I give to Maurice Edward Groundsel the sum of £200 and my late husband’s gold watch free of duty.’”

  One or two small gifts followed and then, ‘There are certain sums of money invested in securities,’ said Mr Prendergast, ‘and of these Mrs Quin says:

  ‘I have kept these securities unchanged in spite of Walter’s advice [Walter gave an indignant snort] in the hope that these securities will realize a sufficient sum to pay all death duties and my debts and testamentary expenses leaving my estate free and unencumbered for the benefit of those who become entitled under this my Will.’