by Rumer Godden
Say – a – prayer
For – the – boys – over – there.1
‘Pshaw!’ said Rolls and turned the wireless off.
There are carols. The carols, like the hymns and the nursery rhymes, are an integral part of the house and, in their simplicity, they and the bald matter-of-fact nursery rhymes are the least sentimental of all the songs.
The holly and the ivy now are full well grown,
Of all the trees that spring in wood the holly bears the crown.
The holly bears a blossom as white as lily flower,
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ to be our sweet saviour.
The holly bears a berrie as red as any blood
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ to do poor sinners good.
The holly bears a prickle as sharp as any thorn
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ on Christmas day on the morn.
The holly bears a bark, as bitter as any gall …
And
Tar-ra-ra-boom-de-ay …
the barrel organ cuts across it from the Place outside where the Italian with his black felt hat and long cold nose and white teeth and brilliant ingratiating smile is standing by the kerb, bowing, while his little monkey with its cheeks well pouched sits on the organ top in its red flannel dress.
There are surprisingly few lullabies. Did Griselda then, not sing lullabies? There is the song she sings, that Uncle Billy of the Children’s Hour sings in Verity’s time, the song about the ship laden with lovely things; but no, on the whole, Griselda does not sing lullabies.
It was nearly dusk now on the landing. The glow from the electric fire fell softly on the carpet and it made a smaller circumference in the increasing darkness. The house, outside the small circle, was in less than twilight; half-light.
‘Give them candles to-night,’ said the Marchesa. ‘Candles everywhere.’
Twilight. Half-light. Candlelight.
‘Selina put in gas,’ said Rolls. ‘I always regretted it.’
‘You put in electric light. Why did you Rollo? You never used the house?’
‘I didn’t want it to miss anything,’ said Rolls slowly.
They were silent and, round them, the house, that did not miss the smallest thing, manifested itself in stirrings, rustlings, tickings, the train vibrations, the sound, again, of a mouse.
‘I am the house dog.’
‘I am the house cat.’
‘Chick chick chick chick chick chick.’
‘Take three tenses.’
‘And last of all, before we say “Good night”, to Verity Dane of London …’
‘You are beautiful. Beautiful.’
‘You understand about the soubise?’
‘John, how do you pronounce Popocatepetl?’
‘Can’t he get boots in Worcestershire?’
‘When you said “All right”, you meant all right for flying didn’t you?’
With his eyes open Rolls stared at the gathering darkness; at the glow of the fire, at the dusk of the Place outside the window, where the snow flakes showed themselves white for a moment as they fell. He opened the window as Grizel came upstairs. He could not see more than her figure and the oval of her face.
‘Look Grizel,’ he said as she came up to him.
‘What are you doing Uncle Rolls?’ Her voice sounded muffled.
‘Looking for the lamplighter,’ said Rolls and then chuckled as he drew back his hand and sleeve. ‘But look Grizel. Real snow.’
1 Copyright 1917 by Leo Feist, Inc.
EVENING
Now it was evening.
In every window of every house the curtains and blinds were drawn more meticulously than any parlourmaid or any Athay or Slater ever draws them; they were drawn to the cracks, sealing them. On the pavement the street lamps were in darkness and a car coming along the Place had its lights hooded, deflected down on the road. Evensong was going on in the church but it had no bell to make it known. No bells, no lights; only a hush and darkness; but there was going to be a moon.
Presently the city, in spite of all mortals could do, presently the city would be lit.
It is evening.
Griselda has just come in. Athay opens the door to her. Griselda is not like Grizel, she has no key for herself. The keys are on the Eye’s key ring, or else in Athay’s charge. Griselda has only a large heavy bunch of household keys. She loses them frequently. ‘Where are my keys?’ ‘Children, look for my keys.’ That is very often said by Griselda. The Eye laughs; everything is carefully locked up and the keys are often lost.
Athay opens the door. ‘Miss Dunn is waiting in the drawing-room, madam. And the master said would you please go to him as soon as you came in. Cook would like to speak to you before dinner if you have a moment.’
‘One minute Athay. I must go upstairs first. Send Agnes to me.’ She goes upstairs drawing off her gloves, loosening the wide satin strings of her bonnet that is made of gold-brown plush with a quilling round the edge of it of that same satin ribbon in lavender and brown. Athay comes upstairs with the parcels that he has taken from the footman. This last year the Eye has kept his carriage, a landau with a pair of bays.
‘Did Miss Dunn say what she wanted Athay?’
‘No madam. She seemed – a little upset.’
‘Ask her if she will mind waiting a few minutes. Is there a fire for her? I must see your master first.’
Mrs Proutie rustles from the service door. ‘May I come, m’m? There isn’t too much time.’
‘Yes Cook?’
‘Huskisson ’as no soles for to-night m’m. You particularly said soles so I thought I better ’ad arsk. And did Athay show you the flowers? I told him he ’ad better not do them till you ’ad seen them. The iris are such a funny colour of blue. You ordered them for purple and mauve I told him, not an ’orrible colour like that.’
Lena skips downstairs. She is a well-grown little girl of six with her brown straight hair tied up in bows over each temple, tartan bows to match her wide-skirted tartan dress that has a low neck and short sleeves. Selina’s elbows all her life are cold. It is from those early dresses. Now she is bright-eyed, alert. She has been watching for Griselda and is determined to catch her.
‘Mother. Listen!
A ree, a ree, I wander,
A penny piece I squander—’
‘Lena. Go with Nurse.’
‘If I were Elizabeth,’ remarks Lena, ‘you would listen.’ And she kicks the chair.
‘Miss Lena what a naughty wicked fib!’
‘Little girls should be seen and not ’eard,’ says Mrs Proutie.
Agnes, Griselda’s young maid, comes in and takes her gloves and bonnet. ‘About to-night ma’am,’ says Agnes, ‘will you wear the black? Or the net? There is a little hole in the net that wants a darn. It won’t show if I hide it in the folds. But I must get on. It is almost time for you to dress. And that poor Mrs Trelawny is downstairs, crying. She says her husband has been beating her again and sold all the clothes off the little girl’s back.’
‘A prawn mousse m’m?’
‘It might be the beginning of a rash it seems to me. I have his throat tied round in flannel.’
‘The answer for Lady Lomax madam, and the master is waiting.’
In a wondering voice Griselda inquires from Athay what time the Eye came home. He had come in at half-past five says Athay and gone straight to the study, where Athay had taken him a brandy-and-soda. Come in, gone straight, peaceably, without impediment, and shut himself in the study where, sacrosanct, Athay had served him with a brandy-and-soda. And what shall I have? asks Griselda of herself. I have had no tea. I shall have dinner of course. Yes, presently. But how presently?
‘Lena, not just now dear,’ says Griselda. ‘I shall come up to Freddie by and by Nurse. I had better look at the flowers Athay. I particularly wanted them mauve, and tell Miss Dunn I shall be in directly. About the mousse, Mrs Proutie, now let me think. Give Mrs Trelawny something hot, Agnes, cocoa; I must just write
an answer to this note.’
She goes towards the door of her room but they follow her.
‘Shall I get out the net then ma’am?’
‘Wear the black Mother. Oh Mother, I do so want a blue silk Sunday dress with a ruche here and a ruche here and lace—’
‘Shall I take Miss Lena upstairs with me ma’am?’
‘If you could spare a minute to decide m’m.’
‘Just as you think Cook,’ says Griselda. ‘Anything.’
‘In that case—’ says Mrs Proutie indignantly and, her bosom indignantly bouncing, she goes out to the backstair door.
‘Could I have the note madam? The man says he has a long ride.’
‘The net …?’
‘Well if I can’t have a new dress may I wear my new cherry sash to come down to dessert?’
‘And the master says will you come down madam.’
Woman was created from a rib in Adam’s side, but by an odd arrangement it turns out in a house that the man is the head, remains aloof, the children are the hands that go out and touch, experiment, contact; and Oh! cries Griselda shutting the door and going to her desk, Oh! I should like to be the hands. But the woman is the heart … and if she stopped beating for a minute, thinks Griselda irritably sitting down to write the note, if she stopped beating for a second the whole house would stop! ‘Lena dear not now.’ ‘By and by Nurse.’ ‘A prawn mousse Cook?’ ‘I had better look at the flowers.’ ‘Give Mrs Trelawny a hot drink.’ ‘Dear Lady Lomax, – Thank you for …’ ‘Tell Mr Dane …’ ‘Please ask Miss Dunn …’
Adam’s left rib! thinks Griselda, sealing Lady Lomax’s note. Soles or prawns. Either or neither. Let the irises be blue or mauve, or purple or crimson or black. Let Mrs Trelawny be beaten purple and blue like the iris. Tell Miss Dunn to go away. Tell Freddie’s spots to go away. Never Lena never. Never. Tell your master that your mistress has run away.
On Griselda’s desk are the parcels, the things she has bought this afternoon: the Eye’s collars, on approval, because no one is allowed to choose the Eye’s collars but the Eye; Griselda is not sure, either, she remembered his size. Freddie’s medicine; the saltcellar repaired; cutting-out scissors for Nurse; Griselda has a suspicion that these are the third pair this year but she has not kept count of them. I should have counted, says Griselda. I ought somehow to have contrived to have kept count. Buttons; tape; shirt buttons; the boys’ handkerchiefs. The candles for Lena’s cake; a little toy, a wooden apple with a tiny tea-set, wooden painted with roses, that I thought Elizabeth – but of course I ought not to have bought it. How funny, thinks Griselda, to have to spend most of your life trying to like the things you can’t like, and the rest dissembling how much you like the things you like – you love. Elizabeth’s toy, then: the library books.
She stops. She picks up one of them and opens it. Popocatepetl – She reads and then she looks more closely: –
Popocatepetl, a mountain whose pleated sides take on the most vivid reflections; sometimes at sunset the peak rises, rose and flame and soft convolvulus blue under its cap of snow.
She stands by the table with her eyes shut. Then gently, with a rustle of her skirts, she turns and goes downstairs, giving Athay the folded note for Lady Lomax as she passes to the study door.
‘Where have you been?’ says the Eye. ‘Why didn’t you come down? I wanted you.’
‘So did everyone else.’
‘Leave them to manage by themselves,’ says the Eye. ‘They know their work. Let them go on with it.’
‘It isn’t as simple as that,’ says Griselda and she speaks in a faraway voice.
‘It is perfectly simple. Look my dear. I come in. I go straight to my study and who interferes with me?’
‘Yes who?’ says Griselda, and she says, thinking again, ‘Woman was created from a rib in Adam’s left side wasn’t she?’
‘Under his heart,’ says the Eye.
That is clever, diabolically clever. That disarms her. That is how the Eye loves Griselda and how she is joined to him, by a transcendental mystery of the flesh; and it must be transcendent, thinks Griselda, because they are obviously, in an earthly sense, of very different flesh. There is this bond, this joining, and it has become intrinsic; torn or broken it would bleed almost mortally. If she were free, to go free, suddenly set free, would she go? Griselda cannot answer that question. Presently – Presently – that word is her shield. ‘Presently,’ says Griselda. ‘Not now. Not now Lena. By and by Nurse – Tell Miss Dunn I shall be in directly. Presently there shall after all be a prawn mousse – and the irises shall be mauve – and Mrs Trelawny, after cocoa, shall be given consolation – presently, I shall come.’
‘John,’ says Griselda aloud. ‘How do you pronounce Popocatepetl?’
The post came. The big double knock sounded through the house and Proutie came upstairs and went along the hall to collect the letters. He walked in the track of many thousand other evenings, when the knock sounds over and over again, the same knock; knock upon knock. Athay goes to get the evening post; Slater goes; the letters are taken into the study or drawing-room on a salver; those for the rest of the household spread out on the chest in the hall by the blue-and-white bowl.
Proutie took two letters and a postcard out of the cage. The postcard was a printed one: –
MESSRS. WARRINGTON AND RESEDALE
Beg to announce their
SPECIAL PRE-CHRISTMAS WHITE SALE.
There was an air-mail letter for Grizel from New York with gay blue and red edges. There was one letter for Rolls: –
General Sir Roland Ironmonger Dane, K.C.B., D.S.O.
On the flap of the envelope was printed a firm’s name: –
WILLOUGHBY, PAXTON, LOW AND WILLOUGHBY
Proutie took it up to Rolls in his dressing-room, where Rolls was sitting.
‘The post Mr Rolls.’
‘Go away,’ said Rolls. ‘Leave me alone.’
Proutie put the letter on the table at Rolls’s elbow and went away.
Years before there is another letter, a letter written by Rolls in answer to many letters of Selina’s.
She reads it in her room sitting in the blue-and-white armchair on which this afternoon, dressing to have tea with Pax, after she had been asleep, Grizel tossed down her pyjamas and left, standing by it on the rug, a pair of swansdown slippers that she called her ‘scuffs’.
Selina as a girl has a swansdown muff, dyed violet with a rose in it, but she keeps it tidily in tissue paper in the cupboard; she does not throw her things about nor leave them on the floor. As she reads Rolls’s letter, Selina is not a girl; she is an elderly woman and that day she feels old. You ask me, Lena, why I don’t come home. That is a question that is rather difficult to answer. I seem to have a distaste for the house.
And for me, thinks Selina staring stiffly over the muslin blind. A distaste. There is nothing dramatic in the word that Rolls has chosen but it is deadening to Selina. That is the truth. Whether it is the whole truth I can’t tell. I should like to see you. Can you lunch with me? I shall be sailing sometime next month.
Lunch with me! My Rollo! says Selina and her hand holding the letter is stiff and cold.
‘Why does Rollo write so seldom?’ That, long ago, is Pelham’s voice.
‘He is working very hard.’
‘He doesn’t regret going out there?’
‘Why should he regret it?’ Selina’s voice is high. ‘No certainly he doesn’t. It was a wonderful chance for him.’
‘Has he been crossed in love?’ asks Pelham idly.
Why should Pelham ask that?
‘He is so changed,’ said Pelham. ‘His letters are so changed.’
‘Nonsense. He is working hard as I told you. He is a Dane. All the Danes are ambitious.’
‘Rollo was different,’ says Pelham slowly. ‘I thought he was different,’ he corrects himself. ‘Has he been crossed in love?’
‘Why should you ask me?’ cries Selina passionately and defensively.
‘Good heavens Selina! I thought you might know, that is all.’
Now Selina goes to the window. She looks down on the garden, on its long walls; its black earth beds; its paths; the syringa bushes; the row of lime-trees; it is autumn and the leaves have been raked into a pile and presently, to-morrow or the next day, there will be a bonfire and the smoke, leaf-smelling, country-smelling, will blow out towards the road. In the bed are a few Michaelmas daisies. Selina has seen it so every year for fifty-eight years; she has seen the garden more than twenty thousand times but she never remembers seeing it as quiet and empty as it is now. Where, she wonders suddenly, are the Jewish children from next door? When the plane-tree boughs were still green, she remembers, they used to build their sukkoth on the balcony for their feast. She can remember looking down, not from this window but from the one above, to see it. I used to be scolded for the smuts on my cheek, thinks Selina. There is no one to scold her now. Suddenly she seems to see the little comic figure in a dowdy bonnet of Miss Dunn.
‘What is there to show for it,’ says Miss Dunn, ‘when you are old and perhaps left alone? You haven’t been anywhere, done anything, and there is no time left—’ And it was Miss Dunn who said of Griselda, ‘She was rewarded. She was loved.’
‘Is it so important to be loved?’ asked Lark.
Lark! It was all because of Lark, thinks Selina, as she has thought so often. Lark went and Pelham went and Rollo never came back. What weapon had Selina against Lark? And yet Lark had no weapons, she was defenceless. Lark had nothing at all. If I had been different would it have been different? asks Selina and immediately she covers up that thought in her mind and pushes away the sight of Miss Dunn.
I am like a quince, thinks Selina and she is deliberately, slightly proud of that. I am like a quince. Some women are like those sweet oranges, bergamots, that you stick full of cloves, each an experience with a spice, and as the bergamots wither they make an incense, a perfume. I don’t. I have none of these spices. I am sour.
Still she thinks of Lark. Lark, she remembers, is now only thirty-six. Lark has been in London that summer. Among the visitors the beautiful young Marchesa Zacca del Laudi in a toque of parma violets …; I saw the attractive Marchesa Zacca del Laudi …;… wearing the del Laudi emeralds …;… the Marchesa Zacca del Laudi in grey lace was in the Royal box …; The Marchese and his beautiful English wife … ‘Have you news of Miss Lark?’ It is Proutie who asks that. ‘None whatever Proutie. None,’ Selina answers. ‘You have always hated me,’ says Lark.
