China Court

by Rumer Godden

  ‘I don’t think it matters who talks to her,’ said Bella. ‘I don’t believe she listens.’

  ‘She certainly isn’t very responsive,’ said the second Grace. ‘When Dick and I—’

  ‘Who would have believed that such a timid manner could hide such a stone wall!’

  ‘It isn’t that she’s rude—’ began the youngest Grace.

  ‘The reverse,’ said Bella in an access of irritation. ‘She’s bafflingly polite.’

  ‘The child ought to play poker,’ said Dick.

  ‘It isn’t funny, Dick.’

  ‘I asked her what her mother would think,’ said a Grace, ‘and all she said was “Mother can’t talk to me about marrying!’”

  ‘Nor Barbara can.’

  ‘All the same, she shouldn’t talk of her mother like that.’

  ‘Tracy didn’t say it until we pressed her.’ The youngest Grace was fair.

  ‘I knew you would take her part,’ said Bella. ‘You are far too soft.’

  ‘But I like her,’ said the youngest Grace.

  ‘We all like her,’ said Bella angrily. ‘Isn’t she in the family?’

  ‘Of course,’ said the first Grace, ‘I told her we were only thinking of her good.’

  ‘Naturally. One just couldn’t let her be saddled …’

  ‘At her age.’

  ‘Yes, she’s so young.’

  ‘She has no idea what she would be letting herself in for.’

  ‘A house can persecute you.’

  ‘She wouldn’t have a moment to call her own the rest of her life.’

  ‘Did you tell her that?’

  ‘Yes, and she said, “A moment to do what?’”

  ‘Why, all sorts of things,’ cried Bella now, ‘take an interest; taste life; travel,’ but it seemed Tracy had not responded to this. ‘She said she had done all that,’ said the second Grace.

  ‘Well, she has travelled a great deal,’ began the youngest, but Bella cut across her again and, having the softest voice of them all, the youngest Grace had to yield.

  ‘I tried to advise her,’ said Bella. ‘I pointed out that when we were young we broke away from this tyranny of domesticity,’ said Bella, her colour high. ‘She said why? and I told her we wanted to live for bigger things: movements, ideas, causes.’

  ‘What did she say to that?’

  ‘She said, “That’s just it. You had causes. You didn’t live.” The child is obsessed with living, daily living, that’s all you can call it,’ said Bella, more than ever incensed.

  ‘She has no idea what she would be letting herself in for,’ said a Grace again.

  ‘And, like all young people, she won’t be told.’

  ‘C-could I speak, p-please Aunt Bella.’

  Tracy, with her shadow August, was standing in the middle of them. As if all these criticisms had been buffets, her skin showed hectic patches; nerve patches, thought the youngest Grace. Tracy was so tense that it looked as if any moment her stillness might crack, and she stammered more badly than ever as she said ‘I h-have had a l-l-letter from Peter. I should l-like to read it to you, p-please, Aunt B-Bella.’

  ‘You could have heard a pin drop,’ Cecily told Mrs Abel afterward, for Tracy had gone into the kitchen first and called Cecily in. ‘You too, C-Cecily. Everyone.’

  ‘And not one of them said a word,’ said Cecily. ‘Oh, no! I could have burst out laughing they were all so anxious.’

  “‘Dear Tracy,’” read Tracy and as she read her stammering calmed. “‘I think you are probably in your room now, as I am in mine, as I have been all day when I was not working about the farm, while perhaps you were out too in the garden, but both of us thinking. I hope they have left you alone to have your own thoughts.’”

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Tracy, breaking off, ‘but I am going to read it all,’ and she went on.

  “‘I know the round and round, in which our thoughts must go: if you say ‘no,’ you make me lose Penbarrow: if I say ‘no,’ you lose China Court and we both of us love these places, so I have been trying to think differently and, being older, for both of us.

  “‘It was a beautiful idea of your grandmother’s,’” read Tracy, “‘full of imagination and generosity, as she always was, but she did not choose one of her people well, because, you see, we don’t start evenly: you are fresh and clean while I should be bringing you someone stained and once a bit disgraceful. (I hate to agree with your Aunt Bella and her Walter but I have to over this.) It would be easy for me: Penbarrow is my world and I could never hope to marry such a girl as you – I shall never forget you that first morning …’”

  ‘Ah, so he had met you,’ began Bella, but Tracy gave her a glance so unexpectedly severe that she stopped.

  “‘… that first morning,’” read Tracy, “‘but if you don’t have China Court there is still the whole world waiting for you, with every chance, and I think that solves it; and that is why, dear, I am going to refuse.

  “‘In an hour I shall have to wash and change and come up the valley path because I have telephoned Mr Prendergast and asked him to come – no need to keep everyone on tenterhooks – but I wanted you to know this first. When he comes, I hope you and I shall take hands – to show them we are friends – and firmly and gently say ‘no’. Then we shall go our separate ways. May yours be as splendid as possible – and don’t worry about mine. Peter.

  “‘The clover is from Clover. Come and see her calf all the same.’”

  There was silence until Cecily took out her large white handkerchief and blew her nose.

  ‘Well! Well! Well!’ said Bella. ‘Who would have thought it?’

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ said Walter, as if there were a catch somewhere.

  ‘I could almost take off my hat to the boy,’ said Tom reluctantly.

  ‘It’s a sweet, sweet letter,’ said the youngest Grace; it was the first breach in the wall of opposition, but Tracy turned on her.

  ‘It isn’t sweet. It’s silly,’ said Tracy.

  They all stared at her.

  ‘But Tracy, what he says about not starting evenly – so brave and sensible.’

  ‘It’s morbid,’ flashed Tracy. Her eyes were brilliant with temper. They had never seen her look as pretty. ‘Gran believed in him. What more does he want? Didn’t he think she would take all that into account? And how does he know I’m fresh and clean?’ asked Tracy, furious. ‘I might have led a terrible life for all he knows. Of course we shan’t refuse. We shall accept.’

  ‘But Tracy, if he doesn’t want you, you can hardly—’ began Bella.

  ‘He does want me,’ said Tracy roundly. ‘He came up twice today and stood by the wall. I saw him. I hoped and hoped he would come to me. Well, he will have to now. I’m going down to meet him, with Uncle Walter.’

  ‘With me?’ asked Walter.

  ‘I can’t ask him to marry me,’ said Tracy. ‘You heard Aunt Bella. I can’t ask him and he must be asked before Mr Prendergast gets here. Peter has told him to come and he will be here any minute. You can see Peter won’t ask me. Oh, I need somebody,’ said Tracy, almost wringing her hands.

  ‘A go-between,’ said the second Grace but she did not say it mockingly. ‘A go-between. Well, Walter, will you?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Walter.

  ‘Why ask Uncle Walter when you know he doesn’t approve?’

  ‘Approve!’ said Walter and snorted.

  ‘I don’t ask you to approve,’ said Tracy, ‘but you are the eldest and so I ask you to do it.’

  ‘In the teeth of your whole family’s opposition?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tracy and she pleaded, ‘You are the head of the family, Uncle Walter. You s-said so.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, he isn’t.’ The usually silent Dick suddenly spoke, making the second breach. ‘He isn’t.’

  ‘Then who is?’

  ‘You,’ said Dick, and before the others could break in, he went on, ‘If Mrs Quin had been the queen, her son, your father, Stace,
would have succeeded her but, as he died before she did and left a daughter, that daughter would be queen.’

  ‘Isn’t that rather far-fetched?’ asked the second Grace, his wife.

  ‘Legitimate succession,’ said Dick blandly.

  ‘Over her uncles and aunts?’ asked Tracy looking at the ring of her powerful elders.

  ‘Over her uncles and aunts.’

  ‘Then what should they do if she asks something of them?’

  ‘They would doubtless advise her,’ said Dick dryly.

  ‘Yes, but if she still chose her own way, they should do as she says?’

  ‘She could command them – I think,’ said Dick and he added, ‘If Walter won’t do this, I will.’

  They all, including Dick, knew that Walter particularly disliked this brother-in-law, so much more detached than the rest of them. ‘He hasn’t had time to be attached,’ says Bella, which is true; he is the second Grace’s third husband – ‘Not even a gentleman,’ says Bella when the family first meets him. ‘Bounder. Dresses like a bookie,’ says Walter and, ‘I wasn’t going to have Mr Dick poking his nose in,’ Walter said to Bella afterward.

  From the window, they waited for Walter and Tracy, with the dogs, to come out from the hidden path behind the yews and go down past the sweet peas, until they disappeared again into the kitchen garden, then came back into view as they walked across the field, Walter’s shape large and ambling, and Tracy looking slim and small, her hair touched to green-gold by the light. In the drawing room they heard August’s excited welcoming bark. ‘Peter must be coming,’ said Bella. Then they saw Tracy stationing herself under a tree, while Walter went up to the wall.

  ‘Tom proposed to me,’ said the youngest Grace softly, ‘on the front stairs.’

  ‘Harry asked me in the garden.’

  ‘Walter asked me at breakfast,’ said Bella. ‘We were both down early. I remember the smell of sausages.’

  The second Grace who, like Barbara, had had ‘a Tom, a Harry, and now a Dick,’ as Mrs Quin says, did not speak.

  ‘Miss Quin. Mary,’ says the doctor’s young assistant. ‘I have come to regard you …’ and Mary, the long-forgotten eldest daughter of the Brood, says, very simply, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Miss Damaris, you know that I am going to marry you.’

  ‘Oh no!’ cries Damaris, her eyes like a startled hare’s. ‘Please no!’ but ‘Yes,’ says Mr King Lee.

  There is, in the house, an exquisite valentine – exquisite because it is expensive, lace on white satin with rosebuds, from Bond Street – sent by Harry St Omer to Anne in a moment of passing fancy. ‘Very passing,’ says Anne, but it causes Eustace and Adza to look at one another.

  ‘You are probably the only girl he ever met who didn’t angle for him,’ says Eliza astutely, and Eustace that night says to Adza, ‘Mother, I believe we should ask the St Omers to dinner.’

  Borowis proposes to Isabel, exactly as planned, at her – and John Henry’s – joint birthday dance, the only dance ever given at China Court. John Henry never asks Ripsie to marry him; he announces their engagement, ‘because it was the only thing to do,’ while Ripsie, white-lipped, does not stop him.

  Groundsel asks Minna in the dell.

  In Minna’s second winter at China Court, it snows and the snow lies.

  When she steps out of bed in the morning, a quick exhilaration that she has not felt here before is in her limbs. She dresses joyfully, her feet and fingers fly and she is halfway through her work before the other maids come down. Her steps are light and crisp and every now and then she steps outside in her felt slippers, to powder the snow in her fingers.

  There is sun and frost in the trees with a Switzerland sky, and, round the house, a continual attendance of birds. The snow hushes all the outside domestic noises: the turning of barrow wheels, the sweepings, and sluicings, the digging and the comings and goings between the house and the stables.

  Groundsel comes to sweep the snow off the back steps and Minna smiles at him, her face awake with a sparkling firmness; he stands up straight and looks at her with a grave particular attention. ‘More like your home?’ he asks.

  ‘Please? Yes. Yes.’ Minna smiles and nods. ‘It is fine. Yes.’

  He watches her, then says, in his slow Cornish voice, ‘Be ’ee goin’ down the wood in the afternoon, Minna? Be thick down in the woods.’

  There is a sudden pause in Minna, then a deep inward trembling as if she has to step across a dangerous gulf. The moment hangs in space, then ‘Yes. Yes,’ she says, ‘I shall go … Yes.’

  Groundsel waits in the dell and toward four o’clock, when the sun is low and red behind the wood, he sees her coming down the field; the curiously patterned foreign apron she wears under her short coat shows, as she moves toward him, a patch of yellow on it fluttering like a star between her legs. Her hair shines and her face is touched by the sun as if she wears a halo.

  ‘Minna,’ he calls, ‘Minna.’

  Minna runs down the field and through the wicket gate to him and he puts his arms around her and kisses her. He is warm and so is she. The crisp cold air comes up about them; their breaths are warm together on the air. She turns in the circle of his arms and puts her own round his neck and kisses him too. Their lips are warm, hot against one another in the cold.

  ‘I love ’ee, Minna. Do ’ee love me?’

  ‘I love. Ach yes! Ich liebe.’

  ‘Will ’ee marry me, Minna?’

  ‘Miss Quin. Mary. I have come to regard you …’

  ‘Bella, before you begin your coffee I …’

  ‘And I have to tell you all, too, that I am engaged to Miss Russell.’

  ‘Miss Russell? Who is Miss Russell?’ The whispers run through the guests.

  ‘That little dark-haired girl with the strange eyes.’

  ‘Who is she? Doesn’t anybody know?’

  ‘Who is Miss Russell?’

  On the afternoon of one of China Court’s luncheon parties Lady Patrick asks that question herself. The parlourmaid – Paget, successor to Pringle – has come into the drawing room with a card on a salver. ‘I had a card printed,’ says Ripsie as if it were a talisman and, ‘I showed the young pers—lady into the morning room, milady, as I wasn’t quite sure,’ says Paget.

  ‘A young lady? Alone?’

  ‘Yes, milady.’ Paget’s voice is so carefully expressionless that it expresses – everything, thinks John Henry. Lady Patrick looks at the card. ‘Miss Deborah Russell,’ she reads and asks, ‘Boys, do I know anyone called Deborah Russell?’

  There are several people in the room, ‘leftovers’, as John Henry calls them, from the luncheon party. In the brief budding-out that is the habit of county families when sons and daughters reach a marriageable age, Lady Patrick this summer has been systematically entertaining. It is the year 1899, so that it is John Henry who comes of age this season, ‘but I don’t count,’ says John Henry. He says it without resentment for it seems completely natural to him. Borowis’s coming of age was unmarked because he was in India, on special absence from his regiment to go with a second cousin, General Francis Brandan, to the frontier, ‘and had my first taste of blood,’ says Borowis, but he is on long leave now before he goes to Egypt with Isabel’s father. ‘Boro specializes in special absences,’ says John Henry. Everything for Borowis is coming to fruition, fruition because the seeds were sown long ago and the plant has been carefully watched and grown. Isabel’s father, now General Loftus Kennedy, is on a mission, ‘and if Boro …’ says Lady Patrick. She need say no more; Borowis knows quite well it all depends on him and what he does now. He means to do it, but at times he can be rebellious. ‘To get anywhere you must do some time on the staff. The Clonferts have always been brilliant soldiers.’

  ‘I’m not a Clonfert, I’m a Quin, and is being old Charles’s aide brilliant?’

  ‘It’s a step.’

  ‘Handing cups of tea when I ought to be subduing the natives,’ Borowis banters but John Henry can tell he is serious.
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  ‘It isn’t a question of cups of tea,’ says Lady Patrick. ‘It’s your career.’

  ‘There happens to be a war on,’ says Borowis, ‘and I happen to belong to a regiment. It’s going out and I shall go with it, I warn you.’

  ‘But Boro—’

  ‘Mother, you are talking about what you cannot understand.’

  Lady Patrick looks at his face and is diplomatically silent.

  John Henry is not on leave or even on holiday. From school he is delivered over to Mr Fitzgibbon to put into the works and the quarry. With the pattern of Eustace, long ago, and the warning of Jared, old Mr Fitzgibbon works him hard. The quarry, it is decided, shall be sold – Jared leaves a load of debts behind him and Lady Patrick’s money is all spent – but fortunately the works are growing and John Henry has plenty to do learning all the processes of winning and treating china clay: the washing, the removal of waste, ‘sand, stone, and stent,’ says John Henry; the pumping of the slurry, wet clay, to the surface; refining it again and drying it. Mr Fitzgibbon makes him go in with the men and then keeps him long after they have gone home, working over figures and ledgers, so that it is only once in a while, ‘A while! A blue moon!’ says John Henry, that he gets an hour or two off. He is tired and now has eaten too much – he is greedy – and is drowsing in an armchair. Borowis, bored, is on the far windowsill catching flies while Isabel is whispering by the piano with her pretty friend Margaret. ‘Pretty! Hair like straw and eyes like china beads,’ says John Henry derisively. ‘Intended for you,’ drawls Borowis. Isabel’s mother is on the sofa talking to Lady St Omer, who has driven over from Tremellen. The other guests have gone, and Lady Patrick is making plans for the afternoon as Paget brings in the card.

  ‘Deborah Russell?’ asks John Henry lazily. ‘No. I have no idea who she is.’

  ‘Probably one of Isabel’s innumerable cousins,’ says Borowis who has had a sickener of eligible girls.

  ‘My cousins don’t call on people alone,’ says Isabel smartly.

  ‘But who can she be?’ asks Lady Patrick.

  ‘Have her in and you will see,’ says Borowis. He is tired of luncheon parties, all parties, tired of Isabel too; he feels she has been rammed down his throat. She has not; Lady Patrick has been most skilful, but Borowis knows so well what is expected of him that the least mention of Isabel makes him fume. A new girl, he thinks, will at least be more entertaining than catching flies and, ‘Have her in,’ he suggests.