Mrs. Miniver

by Jan Struther

  “I’ve seen its cage, but it’s never been actually on view.”

  “It wouldn’t be. It’s nocturnal; but we’ll get them to rout it out. It’s worth seeing, as a horrible warning. Zaglossus bruijnii. My unfavourite of God’s creatures. If indeed it is one, which I sometimes doubt.”

  There was no gainsaying Badger. Mrs. Miniver relinquished her hopes of the brilliant, sneering mandrills, the gentle, bowing, improbable giraffes. But she liked the Small Rodent House, anyway. It contained three of the most engaging animals in the Zoo—the Indian Fruit Bat, which was like a doll’s umbrella; the Golden Hamster; and, best of all, the Fat Sand Rat.

  But Badger marched her straight past these to the low cages at the end. The keeper opened the door of the sleeping-hutch; and there, huddled in one corner, was what looked like a sack-shaped lump of clay about two feet long. On closer investigation, however, it proved to be covered with short, sparse, dirty-white spines; and between the spines there was some coarse greyish-brown hair. The keeper reached over and lifted it out of the hutch by one hind leg. (“It’s the only way,” Badger explained. “There’s no other approach to an echidna.”) The under-side of the creature was even less attractive than its top view. It had tiny pig’s eyes, squeezed tightly shut. Its face, almost nonexistent, was extended into a pipe-shaped snout, so long and thin that it looked far more like a tail than did the short spatulate appendage at the other end of its body. Through this snout, which it kept pressed down against its belly in a vain attempt to curl up, it emitted a prolonged, petulant hissing. As soon as the keeper put it down it hunched itself back into its corner again, squirming with distaste for light and activity.

  “Of course,” said Mrs. Miniver, trying to be fair, “I suppose it’s more lively at night.”

  “Not much,” said the keeper. “Waddles out just far enough to get its food, then back it goes.”

  (“Habitat: West End,” murmured Badger.)

  “Sucks it in through that snout. No teeth.”

  “Tell me,” said Mrs. Miniver, “I see it’s been here for a good many years: have you ever managed to get up any affection for it?”

  “Not much,” said the keeper, apologetically. “It’s just about alive, and that’s all you can say for it.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Badger abruptly. “It’s as bad as pyridine. Besides, that animal gives me the horrors.”

  “It’s certainly not pretty,” said Mrs. Miniver.

  “Pretty? It’s criminal. It’s what’s been peopling half the world. Lowest sub-class of mammal. Barely alive. The incarnation of accidie.”

  “Accidie? Oh, yes—one of the seven deadly sins.”

  “The only deadly one,” said Badger. “Well, here we’ve all been. Some of us less than others, but all of us to a certain extent. No vision. No energy. No discrimination. Spiritual monotremata.”

  Mrs. Miniver had often noticed that when Badger got worked up his sentences grew shorter and his words longer. They stepped out into the fresh autumn sunshine.

  A Wild Day

  Looking up casually in the middle of writing a letter, Mrs. Miniver saw, through the back window of the drawing-room, something that she had never consciously seen before: the last leaf being blown from a tree. One moment it was there, on the highest bough of all, wagging wildly in the wind and the rain. The next moment it was whirling away across the roof tops, a forlorn ragged speck. The line of its flight was the arabesque at the end of a chapter, the final scroll under the death-warrant of summer. Once more the lime-tree stood bone-naked.

  So that was that: and a good thing, too. At first, like most people, Mrs. Miniver had enjoyed the amazing spell of warm weather which had lasted throughout October and most of November. It had been pleasant and comforting; it had helped to heal the scars which the last fortnight of September had left behind. But later, as day after day broke close and windless, and night after night failed to bring any refreshing chill, she began to feel oddly uneasy. The year, now, seemed like an ageing woman whose smooth cheeks were the result, not of a heart perennially young, but of an assured income, a sound digestion, and a protective callousness of spirit. Out of those too-bright eyes there looked, now, not youthfulness, but infantilism; and the smile which accompanied the look was growing a little vacant.

  Therefore, it had been a great relief when, a few days before, the weather had broken with a spectacular gale. The old beautiful painted aristocracy of the leaves, already tottering, had fallen in a night, overthrown by outward pressure and inward decadence. What remained were the essential masses of the tree, bare and sober, with a workaday beauty of their own. Through them, after a while, the sap would rise into a new aristocracy, which would flourish until it, too, had lost its freshness; and then fall. There is no other way, it seems, in a deciduous world. True evergreenness does not exist: the word is only another term for the ability to overlap the old with the new.

  By the time she had finished her letter (which was a long one to Vin) the rain had nearly stopped, though the gale was as strong as ever. She put on a mackintosh and struggled up the square to the pillar-box. Outside the little news-agent’s the evening paper placards were flapping under their wire grids like netted geese. The lower half of one of them had been folded upwards by the wind, hiding everything except the word “JEWS.” Mrs. Miniver was conscious of an instantaneous mental wincing, and an almost instantaneous remorse for it. However long the horror continued, one must not get to the stage of refusing to think about it. To shrink from direct pain was bad enough, but to shrink from vicarious pain was the ultimate cowardice. And whereas to conceal direct pain was a virtue, to conceal vicarious pain was a sin. Only by feeling it to the utmost, and by expressing it, could the rest of the world help to heal the injury which had caused it. Money, food, clothing, shelter—people could give all these and still it would not be enough: it would not absolve them from the duty of paying in full, also, the imponderable tribute of grief.

  She turned down the next street towards the river. It was Nannie’s day out and she was going to fetch the children from school. The Royal Hospital, with bare straining trees in front of it and black flying clouds behind, stood sombrely magnificent, a fitting backcloth for the latest tragedy of the world. And here, perhaps, she thought as she battled along St. Leonard’s Terrace under the lee of the wall, was a clue to the uneasiness which she had felt at the lingering on of summer. All the associations of November, the traditional flotsam left upon its shore by the successive tides of history, went ill with halcyon weather. It was the wind-month, the blood-month, Brumaire, the month of darkness: its sign was the evil scorpion, who, when surrounded by a ring of fire, was said to sting itself and die of its own poison. It was ushered in by the Vigil of Saman, Lord of Death, by the witches and warlocks of Hallowe’en. A later tide had left a later mark—the ritual bonfires of Guy Fawkes’ Day, round which children still stood in primitive excitement, their innocent eyes reflecting unconsciously the twin flames of sadism and fire-worship. This year, down at Starlings, the farmer’s children next door had made an extra large bonfire, and for the Guy’s face they used a mask representing the wicked Queen out of Disney’s “Seven Dwarfs,” which Joey Iggulsden had bought at the village shop. This blend of two nursery ideologies, three hundred years apart, had particularly appealed to Clem. It showed, he said, that children had an inborn knowledge that evil was evil, irrespective of time or place: but Vin said it only showed that Joey Iggulsden had a sense of humour. Anyway, it had been a grand bonfire, of a terrifying heat and redness. Mrs. Miniver had tried for a few moments to treat the scene as a reality, and had found herself wondering whether there was any cause or conviction in the world for which she would have the courage to go to the stake. She could think of several for which she would make the attempt: but, as the effigy lurched forward suddenly from the waist, with forked flames writhing out of its sleeves like burning fingers, and its painted leer crumpling up in the heat, she shuddered, and admitted humbly enough that s
he herself would probably recant at the crackling of the first twig.

  However, nobody nowadays was burnt at the stake. The unfortunate ones of the world were subjected to a more lingering torment, and the fortunate ones were merely condemned to watch it from a front seat, unwilling tricoteuses at an execution they were powerless to prevent. The least they could do was not to turn away their eyes; for with such a picture stamped upon the retina of their memory they would not be able to lie easy until they had done their best to ensure that it could never happen again. But it was going to leave yet another ineffaceable watermark on the bleak shores of November.

  When she reached the Embankment she met the full force of the gale, and exulted in it. Yes, this was the kind of weather that the events of the world called for: a wild, dark day, suitable for a wild, dark mood. From the two tall chimneys of the power station the smoke streamed out horizontally, a black banner and a white one. The river was at the three-quarter flood. It looked like a battlefield, water and wind meeting angrily in a thousand small hand-to-hand contests. But in an hour or so the tide would turn.

  New Year’s Eve

  New Year’s Eve was the only day of the year on which Mrs. Adie really unbent. Christmas she held to be of little account, though she cooked the turkey and the mince-pies faithfully enough and took a benign interest in the children’s presents. Boxing Day made her, if anything, more tight-lipped than usual, for on that day the Minivers were in the habit of eating a “June dinner” as a respite from Christmas food: a practice which Mrs. Adie looked upon as unnatural and faintly sacrilegious. There was a no-good-can-come-of-this expression on her face as she served up the clear soup, the fish mayonnaise, and the summer pudding (made of bottled currants and raspberries); but up till now nobody had so much as choked on a fish-bone.

  On New Year’s Eve, however, Mrs. Adie always invited the whole family into the kitchen for a Hogmanay tea. There were scones and oatcakes and shortbread and rowan jelly; and a Melrose spongecake sent down by her brother, and a Selkirk bannock sent down by her sister; and in addition to all these she managed to provide a constant supply of fresh drop-scones all through the meal. She let the children take turns in pouring spoonfuls of batter on to the hot griddle, and in watching each little sizzling yellow pool go beautifully brown round the edges. She even let Gladys make a few, on condition that she gave up her regrettable Sassenach habit of calling them “flapjacks.”

  After tea came an even greater treat—the fortune-telling. Clem and Vin pushed the table back, and they all settled down round the kitchen fire, while Mrs. Adie produced a large iron saucepan, seven bowls of cold water, and a box full of pieces of lead which she had somehow collected during the past twelve months from various sources, such as plumbers and roof-menders. (At this time of year Vin always took care to lock up the cupboard in which his sea-fishing tackle was kept: he was afraid that Mrs. Adie might have her eye on the weights.)

  While the lead was still melting in the saucepan the children were allowed to peer over it and watch. But when all the dull grey lumps had dissolved into a pool of liquid silver Mrs. Adie made everybody move back to a safe distance. Then she arranged the seven bowls of water in a row on the hearth, pulled on a pair of old leather gauntlets, lifted the pan off the fire, and poured a generous dollop of lead into each bowl. The noise it made as it entered the water was peculiar, and rather frightening—something between the crack of a pistol-shot and the hiss of an angry swan. Toby always blocked his ears and stood very close to Clem; and Gladys, who was new to this ceremony, gave a shrill “Ool” and retreated into the scullery.

  “C’m mout o’ there,” said Mrs. Adie contemptuously. “It’ll not hurt you. If you run from your lead you’ll run from your luck.”

  Obedient to the power of rhythm and alliteration, Gladys came back. Marvellous, thought Mrs. Miniver, the way almost any Scot, in almost any situation, can coin a phrase which has the authentic ring and cogency of an ancient proverb.

  And now Mrs. Adie knelt down on the hearth, took off her gloves, fished the bright silvery “fortunes” out of the water, and began to interpret them. The lead had hardened into the most fantastic shapes: shapes like groups of statuary, like fern-fronds, like intricate machinery, like outstretched wings, like gnarled olive-trees. To the uninitiated, they might have meant anything or nothing; but Mrs. Adie—helped, it is true, by a pretty close knowledge of her hearers—contrived to give each of them a detailed and appropriate meaning.

  “My word now!” she would say, speaking to Judy but at Clem, because it was easier that way, “look at all these fine new houses your daddy’s going to be architecting. And one of them’s got a terrible tall tower to it—ay, it’ll be a kirk he’s to build next, sure enough.” And then, to Vin: “Here’s you with a fishing rod in your hand and a great big fish on the other end of it and a wheen more o’ them lying round about your feet. Oh, it’s going to be a grand year for the fishing, and no mistake.” And to Toby: “Now there’s two wee wheels in this one, as plain as plain. That’ll be that bicycle you’re wanting for your birthday, my lamb. … And whatever’s this I can see in yours, Nannie? My lands! I believe it’s a wedding-cake!”

  “It’s no such thing,” said Nannie primly. “It’s a nice big new work-basket, that’s what it is. Just the thing I need, with the amount of stockings they all manage to wear out down here.”

  “Well, well, we’ll see,” said Mrs. Adie darkly. “Wedding-cake or work-basket, what will be will be, and one thing leads to another.”

  There she goes again, thought Mrs. Miniver with an inward chuckle. Rhythm and alliteration: the phrase-makers always get the last word. She herself was sitting in a big wicker armchair at one side of the range. She had drawn back a little because of the heat, and from where she sat, half in shadow, the scene looked wonderfully theatrical. Mrs. Adie, with a flush on her high cheek-bones and her usually neat hair quite dishevelled, was reaching forward to fish out Judy’s “fortune”; and, opposite, the six fire-lit faces were awaiting, with varying degrees of credulity, her next pronouncement. It didn’t much matter, after all, whether the fortunes came true, or whether anybody believed in them; what mattered was that here at least was one small roomful of warmth and happiness, shut in by frail window-panes from a freezing, harsh, and inexplicable world. All one could do was to be thankful for moments like these. During the next twelve months, perhaps, the remaining odds and ends of their civilization would have been tipped into the melting-pot; and not even Mrs. Adie—

  But she became aware that her own fortune had just been told out of the seventh bowl and that she had not heard a word of it.

  “Thank you so much, Mrs. Adie,” she said with a smile, taking the cold, queer-shaped lump of metal on to her palm. So far as she could remember, it was almost exactly the same shape as the one she had last year. So that was all right: for herself, she could think of nothing better.

  Choosing a Doll

  It was Judy’s birthday. For some reason, her presents this year included an unusually large proportion of money. There were several postal orders, a half-crown or two, a ten-shilling note from Clem’s father, and fourpence-halfpenny from Toby, who had brought her a purse as a present and thoughtfully put into it everything that he happened to have got left. Altogether it came to nearly thirty shillings, which was an unprecedented amount.

  Judy had long ago discovered that the chief problem about spending present-money was to choose between quality and quantity; between the satisfaction of buying something really worth while, far beyond the scope of her weekly allowance, and the excitement of returning home with an armful of smaller parcels: so she had worked out a form of compromise which she called Crust and Crumb. This time she decided to lay out about fifteen shillings on Crust, in the shape of a new doll, and to spend the rest later on Crumb. So the day after her birthday she persuaded her mother to come on a shopping expedition.

  The choice of a doll, Judy found, was unexpectedly difficult. They were things you didn’t usu
ally get a chance to choose for yourself: they arrived as presents, chosen for you by other people, and you had to get to know them and love them as they were. But when you saw rows and rows of them together it was almost impossible to be sure which you liked best. She explained this to her mother.

  “You see, it would be so awful to pick the wrong one. I mean, suppose you could have gone and bought me in a shop instead of just having me; you might have made a mistake and chosen Marigold Thompson instead.”

  Mrs. Miniver’s mouth twitched. She couldn’t somehow imagine herself choosing Marigold Thompson. A nice child, but pudding-faced.

  “Well,” she said, “I like Marigold.”

  “Oh, so do I. But what I mean is, she wouldn’t have done for you. And what’s more,” pursued Judy, “Marigold’s mother wouldn’t have done for me. At all,” she added with conviction.

  “Why don’t you like Marigold’s mother?” asked Mrs. Miniver. “She’s always very kind to you. And she’s frightfully fond of children.”

  “Oh, I know. She told me so. But you see, when people are frightfully fond of children you never know whether they really like you or not, do you?”

  Mrs. Miniver felt a quick glow of sympathy. It was exactly what she had so often thought about the boringness of the sort of man who “likes women.”

  “And besides,” Judy went on, “she makes such a Thing about everything, if you know what I mean.”

  Mrs. Miniver knew only too well. She had been at school with Marigold’s mother.

  “And do you happen to know,” she asked, “what Marigold thinks of me?”

  “Oh, she likes you,” said Judy. “She says you leave people alone.”

  Mrs. Miniver cast her mind back, trying to remember whether she and her contemporaries had discussed one another’s parents so freely and with such perception. Not till much later, she felt sure—fourteen or fifteen, perhaps; at Judy’s age one had more or less taken them for granted, comparing them only in degree of strictness. And to discuss them with one’s own parents would have been quite impossible: horizontal divisions were far stronger in those days than vertical ones. Perhaps the psychologists were right, and the “child mind”—that convenient abstraction—matured earlier nowadays. On the other hand, she herself had outgrown dolls by the age of nine, and here was Judy, at eleven, buying a new one.