Good Behaviour

by Molly Keane

  ‘Oh, Mrs Brock, wherever was it?’

  ‘It came to me’ was all she told him.

  This was a time when Mrs Brock had the entrée to all sorts of private dramas. Her gift put her in a dreamlike position of importance. Even to herself she did not admit that it was her powers of detection, her valid interest in the lives of other people, which gave her the thread to follow in their losses. Having done her homework thoroughly, she would, as it were, get inside her own infallibility and pull down the blind. ‘I don’t know yet. I’ve got one of my feelings coming on . . .’

  There were two members of the household who refused to join the circle of excitement and interest created by the exercise of Mrs Brock’s strange powers. The more considerable of the unbelievers was Nannie; the lesser was horrid Raymond. Nannie was among the few who had stuck to her own fancy in the 3.30 so had not shared in the Peeping Thomas bonanza. When her fancy finished down the course she simply expressed her own opinion, which was that Mrs Brock’s powers of divination were neither natural nor quite nice. But Raymond was the catalyst for disaster. Raymond was a sloven and a malign sloven too.

  ‘Why, Raymond,’ Mrs Brock asked him, ‘are you using Sholto’s hairbrush?’

  ‘Mine’s lost.’

  ‘Lost? You haven’t been grooming the guinea-pigs again?’ Already divination stirred.

  ‘Oh no. Those rotten guineas are hatching again. They eat their young if you groom them.’

  ‘Don’t be disgusting, dear.’

  ‘Nannie says so.’

  ‘Perhaps. If it’s not with the guineas, when did you use it last?’

  ‘Brushing my own hair.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Lunchtime. In the bathroom.’

  ‘What about teatime?’

  ‘Nannie brushed my hair in the nursery.’

  ‘Then go and ask Nannie where it is. Nip to it now – be a first-time childy.’

  ‘It’s not in the nursery.’

  ‘Nonsense. How can you know if you don’t ask?’

  ‘Because I can see it looking at me, that’s why. Can’t you? Can’t you, Mrs Brock?’

  Stalwart and solid, usually humane, Richard and Sholto joined in the tease. They didn’t know where the hairbrush was themselves, but they jumped up and down, shouting: ‘We can see it, we can see it too. Find it, Mrs Brock. Go seek!’ they cried as if she were a dog. She was confused and mortified. There was nothing jolly for her about the situation. When Nannie came in, with an enquiry for a torn jersey, the matter worsened. They danced round chanting: ‘Mrs Brock can’t find the hairbrush – hairbrush – hairbrush!’ And Raymond squealed, ‘Mister Brock’s a badger – smelly old badger!’

  ‘Now, now, steady yourselves.’ Nannie spoke, in a moment restoring order and authority, although towards Raymond she suppressed a smile. ‘I should leave the whole thing to Mrs Brock. I shouldn’t be surprised if one of her feelings isn’t coming on. Bedtime, boys, and give her a chance.’

  ‘I’ve told Raymond to find his own hairbrush.’ Mrs Brock’s voice was less than steady. ‘I don’t really have time for such a nursery nit . . . wit,’ she added, after taking a breath.

  How had the word popped into her mind, or out of her mouth? It stung Nannie in a vital, secret spot. Once, long ago, there had been just that trouble in her own sacred nursery – caught of course from the gate-lodge children as surely as ringworm came from calves.

  ‘I don’t think,’ she spoke in her most foxhunting voice, ‘that any of us quite heard what’s just been said, Mrs Brock. Perhaps you’ll think again before you repeat your remark. It’s not exactly what we’re accustomed to in our nursery.’

  That was how the loss of confidence and happiness began. The joking approaches, the laughing asides grew into a mild kind of persecution. Only kind people, Lady Grizel, Julia, the head housemaid, and Walter, still brought her their losses and mislayings. To compensate for her frequent failures in detection and to retain their grateful interest she would knit furiously: a cardigan for Walter, a jersey for Julia, and for Lady Grizel a cloud of purest Shetland wool, light as feathers in a breeze, billowed towards completion. She longed to see Lady Grizel sit up among her pillows, arranged in this pink cloud. But Mrs Brock held no possible entrée to Lady Grizel’s bedroom – her place was the schoolroom, ‘her schoolroom.’ At luncheon in the diningroom, where she had been inspired and eloquent in the family game – inventing conversation, spiced with sharp repartee – between Lady Grizel’s precious Chang and the Captain’s terriers, Spice, Spider, and Grips, all silent in the tranced discipline of their baskets; where once she had come up with a forgotten cricketing score, and – in the crown of her heyday, such was her euphoric application – had even known the top price at Newmarket sales and the breeding of the yearling that made it, she was silent now.

  ‘If she would apply her mind to geography,’ Nannie said in a holy rather than a foxhunting voice, when Lady Grizel remarked upon this surprising change. ‘Only last Thursday Richard had no idea of the capital cities of Europe. And Mr Entwhistle won’t be very pleased about that.’

  4

  The Cambridgeshire came and went and nobody asked Mrs Brock what she thought about it. Perhaps they had grown tired of hearing her say ‘a very open race.’ Now she sat silent in the diningroom and spent longer hours enclosed in her schoolroom, thudding away at the piano. Sholto, tone deaf, would talk to his hamster or tease a dog, unheeding; but Richard, leaning against the throbbing piano, was secretly affected. This first experience of music delighted him. He found it strangely preferable to the approved outdoor sports.

  ‘She never takes the boys for a decent nature walk these days,’ he overheard Nannie report to his mother. ‘Remember when you could hardly get into our nursery for acorns sprouting and tadpoles – well it’s one of the ways of breaking it to them nicely, at least that’s what I think, and from there it’s just a step on to their rabbits and they can draw their own conclusions. Enough said is quite enough.’

  Geography and sex education – perhaps Mrs Brock had failed on both these counts. Such failures were of very little importance in Lady Grizel’s simple values. Her boys would grow up as their father and their uncles had done – living and loving the country life, and marrying nice girls with a bit of money. ‘So long as they’re happy, you old fuss bag,’ was her inattentive, affectionate reply as she went on her afternoon way, calling for her dogs.

  It was unlucky for Mrs Brock that before Nannie’s hints had time to slip quite out of her mind, Lady Grizel should find Richard alone in the boys’ tree house, halfway up a Spanish chestnut tree, with what could only be a book – a book, and at three o’clock on a perfect afternoon.

  ‘Doing your prep, old boy?’ she called laughingly.

  ‘No. Reading.’

  ‘Reading? Well, stop it. Come and dry the dogs with me . . . did you hear me, darling?’ she called again, quite sharply.

  ‘Coming, Mummie.’ He delayed a moment before climbing rather hesitantly down the tree and the rope ladder that linked the lowest great branch with the lawn. This upset her, as she liked her boys to do things in the right way, whether they were getting up on their ponies or eating artichokes – there was a right and wrong ritual in doing anything.

  ‘What were you reading?’ she asked when no answer came from Richard to quite a funny remark of Grips’s about bathwater in his ears.

  ‘Left it in my tree house.’

  ‘What’s it called?’

  ‘Just Tree House.’

  ‘No. The book.’

  ‘Oh.’ He hesitated. ‘Robinson Crusoe’ he brought out triumphantly.

  ‘Haha. Where’s your Man Friday – that’s what Grips wants to know.’

  ‘My who?’

  ‘Man Friday. I remember he came into it.’

  The rims of Richard’s ear went very pink. ‘Ask Gripsy,’ he said. ‘Tell us about old Friday, Grips.’ Richard and Grips went flying round in circles on the enormous close-woven spaces of the law
n. She laughed, watching them. But, for once, a question stayed at the back of her unruffled brow.

  ‘Perhaps she doesn’t give them quite enough to do. You may be right,’ she admitted to Nannie that evening. ‘I found Richard all by himself, reading.’

  ‘Reading a book?’ Nannie asked, incredulous.

  ‘Yes, Robinson Crusoe. Quite harmless, really.’

  ‘Harmless? On a lovely afternoon like today?’

  Nannie took the matter further. To climb a rope ladder and explore the tree house was beyond her, at her age, but she could persuade Walter to do it for her.

  ‘Oh, Master Richard –’ the apology Walter tendered later was heart-felt – ‘talk about crafty! . . . “You’re a proper active young chap, Walter” – oh, she was nice! “You wouldn’t take those long legs of yours up the tree-house ladder, would you? Master Richard’s left his new blue jersey up there. Fetch down anything else you find – looks like rain tonight.” See the cunning of her cleverness? I put my foot straight in, of course, silly me, I know, and handed her down your book . . .’

  Nannie took the book of poetry straight to Lady Grizel, who talked it over unhappily with the Captain. His response was a genuinely worried one: ‘Yes, we’ll have to put a stop to this bookworming. No future in that. And he was having a music lesson yesterday when old Sholto was schooling his pony.’

  ‘That’s hardly the point, is it? The awful thing is, he told me quite a big fib.’

  ‘That’s more natural – it’s this poetry that bothers me. What’s the book called?’

  ‘The Children’s Golden Treasury of Verse.’

  ‘Unhealthy-sounding stuff.’

  ‘It’s what Nannie says, they don’t get enough exercise . . .’

  So, I came to understand, went their comments. They are in accord with Mrs Brock’s remembered phrases and stories, and true to the intricacies of the rather cruel cult game that, years later, Richard, Hubert, and I were to play at Temple Alice. Richard, creator of the game, enjoyed recalling every level of life at Stoke Charity in that era of childhood when he lost his first love, Mrs Brock. We joined in, despoiling our memories of her with horrid fun. Beyond the decorations and inventions of the game, essential to laughter, behind the lengths and colours of days, or the remembrance of a glance, revealing hidden loves or spites, we taunted the separate childhoods, which had left us the people we were. Richard could look back unforgivingly on his parents’ decision: for lying he must take his little flogging, and Mrs Brock, with her music lessons and poetry readings, must go. It was to be hoped that any damage Richard might have suffered from them would be repaired by an early start at Entwhistle’s.

  ‘And who is going to sack Mrs Brock?’ Lady Grizel would have wanted to know.

  ‘You are, of course.’

  ‘No, my darling, I am not. You are. You thought of it.’

  •

  To suit some inescapable duty – judging at a neighbouring hunt’s puppy show, most likely – Richard’s punishment was postponed until Friday, two days away, and two very dreadful days intervened. Richard, the condemned man, set about his pony in a fiery way, went a great deal to the lavatory, and was sick after breakfast and very sick after tea on Friday.

  Sholto reported that he was unable to sleep a wink because Richard was so quiet. Richard didn’t know how many people knew he had told a lie and was going to be beaten. He took any kindness or cordiality as an insult. His hair stood up in stiff little dry peaks on his head. He jumped off the garden wall into a seed-bed to prove to himself his manly side. Walter, white to the lips, came to the schoolroom to say the Captain was waiting for Master Richard in the gunroom. Richard, white to the lips too, met the Captain, green about the gills, but prepared to do his duty.

  ‘Why did you lie to your mother, Richard?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You were ashamed about that rather silly book, I suppose, and rightly so.’

  ‘No, I wasn’t.’

  ‘But you told a lie. We don’t have liars in our family, do we? Anything to say about that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, bend over this chair.’

  ‘Oh, please, Daddy. Please, Daddy—’

  ‘Look – keep quiet, will you, or I’ll have to get Walter to hold you.’

  ‘No. I’ll be good. I’ll be good.’

  ‘Now, shut up, old boy,’ the Captain said kindly, as he put down his leather-covered malacca stick. ‘You’ll upset Mummie if she hears you. Got to take punishment, haven’t we, old son. I’ve had plenty in my time.’ And the Captain laughed heartily, far more from nerves than from any unkindness. ‘Cut along to Nannie. She’ll look after you.’

  But it was to the schoolroom that Richard went, very quietly, almost creeping in. He stood still, lost for a reason, for anything to say, a guilty embarrassed person.

  ‘Forgot to do my history,’ he muttered.

  ‘History, Richard? We don’t have history this week.’ Mrs Brock turned back to the piano, where, when he came in, she had been playing and softly singing ‘Abide with Me.’ Now her throaty animal voice filled the whole air in the room, as a smell takes over the senses. As the air throbbed round him, all proper rules escaped Richard’s control. When Mrs Brock, crying too, twisted her piano-stool round towards him, he forgot all the stiff-upper-lipmanship and threw himself, sobbing wildly, into her arms. Mrs Brock folded him to her breast where he burrowed his head into the dark comfort of that strictly clothed bosom. For ever afterwards he remembered the smell of security in an embrace where Rimmel’s toilet vinegar and papier poudré fought a losing battle with warm, merciful human flesh. He sobbed on in measureless relief.

  It had to be then that Nannie, high priestess of correct behaviour for little boys, made her entrance and stood for a minute, holding on to the door handle for support, as she saw with unaffected horror the pair enlaced on the piano-stool. Speechless for once, she turned away, shutting the door sharply on the scene, and lost not a moment in imparting her triumphantly unhealthy news to Lady Grizel.

  So Mrs Brock was next in the gunroom, summoned by a shaking Walter. He had heard Richard’s cries and wondered what more could be in store for his schoolroom friends.

  ‘Mrs Brock, do sit down. I asked you to come and have a talk with me because, actually, his mother and I aren’t too happy about Richard. Frankly, he’s getting a bit, er, well . . . first reading poetry when he ought to be getting his pony ready for the Bath and County next Thursday, then lying to his mother – took his beating in a very, well, cowardly way, then, am I right? howling on your, in your, in the schoolroom,’ the Captain finished desperately.

  ‘Oh, Captain Massingham, the child was so upset. I don’t usually cuddle him. Never, in fact.’

  ‘Don’t let’s discuss it. I’m sure it won’t happen again.’

  ‘Oh, no.’

  ‘And another thing I must tell you, Mrs Brock – we’ve decided that the boys are to start at Entwhistle’s this autumn, so I’m afraid we shan’t be needing you, much as we’re going to miss you.’

  ‘Raymond?’ she questioned desperately. The chill of reality circling her, curdling the rich air of the gunroom.

  ‘I suppose Raymond’s Nannie’s boy for a year or so, don’t you think? Only five, after all.’

  ‘I see.’ Mrs Brock looked round the room. Foxes’ masks (neatly labelled: FOUND —— KILLED —— THE POINT —— THE DATE ——) were grouped, memories of glorious moments, on the walls. Some stood out sharply on their wooden shields, small pricked ears and deathly snarls; others hung down on faked leather couples, ears back, tongues lolling and curling. All the pictures were of foxhunting, foxhounds, or masters of foxhounds. The living terriers, snoozing in their baskets, had their backs turned to her. Everything in the room belonged to a different and more glorious race from Mrs Brock. ‘It’s hard to believe,’ she said. ‘I’ve been so happy—’

  ‘So glad. So glad,’ the Captain shut her up at once. ‘And another thing, we’d
like you to have a cheque for this term’s salary, and next, and a little present in token, if that’s the word, sounds funny, of our, h’m . . .’ He pushed a thick blue envelope across the writing table. She took it up, overcome by twin floods of regret and gratitude.

  ‘We’ve put in an excellent what you call a reference, I believe, too.’ The Captain’s voice was easing into a more usual tone now that the back of the situation was, as it were, broken.

  Mrs Brock was stupefied by so much kindness: ‘It’s not the end of the term for six weeks, Captain Massingham.’

  ‘I know. But we’ve rather decided to let you go immediately. Seems the best idea.’

  ‘I don’t understand—’

  ‘Neither do I, damnit.’ The Captain got to his feet, longing to end the whole horrible business. ‘Anyway, I’m afraid now I must say goodbye, Mrs Brock, and the very best of luck to you. Have to get the seven-forty-five up to town, and by Jove, I’ll hardly make it.’ He laughed heavily, as he had after Richard’s thrashing. Then he held the door open for her before he went charging across the hall, in the opposite direction from the schoolroom, nursery, and servants’ wing, whistling to the dogs and making an enormous racket.

  Mrs Brock did not delay. She was in a panic which hurried her through the hall, her heels chattering and muttering alternately as she stepped from whitened flags to spread tiger-skins. How the dogs loved to pee on the latters’ heads; generations of dogs, beaten and fed and cloistered in this family; it was just a thought which came to her before she opened and passed through the door dividing the hall and its staircase from the other side of the house.

  Mrs Brock went straight to the schoolroom lavatory, where she was overtaken by a violent diarrhoea. When she got off the mahogany seat to lift the D-shaped hand-fitting which swirled out the blue-flowered basin, she sat down again at once ‘in case,’ that tiny euphemism that covered so much so usefully. The exhaustion of physical necessity calmed her. She washed her hands and blew her nose and decided to follow her usual habit – a cheery goodnight to the boys before Walter brought up her supper.