‘Any time,’ Fulke Ferneydale said.
Caspar Ferneydale did, in the event, pay a formal call on the Vicar of Mallows. This was much to his credit as a genuinely courteous young man; and the more so since the call awkwardly followed upon a fait accompli. Mr Rich, it is true, was unaware that Caspar regarded him as one whom it was hard to take seriously, and who was probably bringing up a daughter as a little snob and prig; nor did anything in Caspar’s manner during the visit so much as faintly hint disrespect. But the visit was demonstrably a foray from the achieved citadel of Holy Church, unpreceded by any troubled intimation of doubts as to the validity of the Anglican position, and it was therefore impossible to disguise the fact that nothing more than a social propriety was being observed.
But Mr Rich approved of social proprieties, and moreover he was quickly aware that it was a well-educated as well as well-mannered young man who had turned up in his study. Almost his only habitual visitors were female parishioners who were either obtrusively devout (which was embarrassing) or boringly concerned with Sunday School outings or jumble sales or the embroidering of hassocks which there would eventually be few to kneel on. Caspar appeared more speculatively than devoutly inclined, but he was presumably at least less interested in hassocks than in cassocks; what he had come to speak about, even if a sad error, was not at all trivial but rather to be regarded as of grave import. This in itself was a pleasant change. And Mr Rich, anxious on his part not to appear perfunctory in his reception of what was being communicated to him, ventured some cautious remarks of a theological nature, and even asked Caspar if he had any intention of entering the priesthood. To this the young man made a guarded reply. Nevertheless the conversation continued for some time.
‘I happen to have heard from our common friend Mrs Martin,’ the vicar said politely, ‘that you take a considerable interest in the thought of Soren Kierkegaard.’ (The vicar had refreshed his memory of the Danish sage following that conversation.) ‘I have been told that he was the original of Ibsen’s hero in Brand. Brand is scarcely, to my mind, among the most successful of Ibsen’s plays.’ (The vicar produced this with perfect aplomb.) ‘But there is certainly a link between the two in an implacable hostility to all institutional religion. So I am surprised that you can build Kierkegaard into – shall we say? – the Roman Catholic pantheon.’
Caspar smiled engagingly by way of receiving this. It would have been impossible to guess that he was vastly amused by Mr Rich’s transparent satisfaction in thus sustaining a donnish rather than a clerical role. One could be quite certain that the man didn’t know the first thing about Kierkegaard. But Kierkegaard was at this time a little fading from Caspar’s own mind. Father Fisher at the Chaplaincy had come down against him, and had recommended a study of Maritain. There would be no point, however, in tackling this old donkey on neo-Thomism. So Caspar offered what he knew would sound a baffling remark about Kierkegaard’s having been ‘trampled to death by geese’, and prepared to bring his duty call to an end.
But at this moment there came a knock at the vicar’s study door, and it opened to admit Penelope Rich. Caspar Ferneydale took one look at the child – who had recently passed her ninth birthday – and at once got to his feet.
Mr Rich approved of this politeness. Penelope, whether she approved of it or not, produced a more than adequate response in the form of a prompt curtsy: behaviour of a Victorian-nursery order which she was inwardly resolved to have no more of once she had got away to school. But she was pleased with Caspar, all the same. She had come into the room to break the news that the vet had called, and had pronounced Jolly Boy, the vicarage pony, to be suffering from mange. The position was a delicate one, since Miss Hiscock, with whom the vicarage hunters were now kept (‘at livery’, as Mr Rich liked to express it) at the other end of the village, had positively delivered herself of a contrary opinion. Penelope knew that her father was bound to be upset. And she found the unexpected presence of Caspar Ferneydale disconcerting, since she judged mange to be a disreputable affliction, the presence of which at the vicarage must be to the discredit not only of her father and herself, but also of all Riches throughout the land. So she said nothing, but waited to be addressed.
‘My dear, I think you know Mr Caspar Ferneydale?’ the vicar said, amiably if with the slight excess of formality habitual in him. ‘My daughter,’ he then said to Caspar, ‘is a great admirer of your tennis.’
This wasn’t quite as bad as ‘My daughter likes you very much’ would have been. Even so, it represented the violation of a confidence, so that Penelope coloured faintly and offered Caspar a smile more distancing than she intended. Her feeling about her father in such matters, if put into words, would have been that he meant kindly but wasn’t always reliable.
‘Oh, well,’ Caspar said modestly, ‘I can just give my brother a game. It doesn’t amount to more than that.’ The kid’s having come into the room like this, he told himself, was distinctly useful. His call could now end in a few minutes’ time on a purely social and neighbourly note. ‘Not that it looks,’ he went on, ‘as if we’ll be having much tennis this season at the Hall. There’s been a tremendous invasion by moles.’
‘By moles!’ The vicar was aghast. The vicarage moles had been persuaded to migrate as his own tennis court got under way. But it looked as if they had done so in a deplorable direction, and were now to be described as (so to speak) at livery with the Ferneydales. In fact it appeared that tennis attracted them just as it did his daughter. ‘They have really attacked,’ Mr Rich added, ‘your father’s admirable court?’
‘In quite a big way, sir.’ This was the first time, on the present occasion, that Caspar had said ‘sir’ to the vicar. Caspar had a lively period sense, and believed that the lavish employment of the word towards one’s seniors had lately been passing from the old to the new gentry, so that it had become a stockbrokerish and commuter-belt sort of thing. But Henry Rich, who belonged pretty well before the Flood, would certainly regard it as de rigueur and wholly ‘U’ (‘U’ was a very recent invention) as from a younger to an older man.’It looks like a bomb-site. And the gardeners don’t seem to know what to do about it.’
‘You have a step-ladder,’ Penelope said suddenly. ‘You put it over a molehill, and you wait on it with a shotgun for twelve o’clock.’
‘Midnight?’ Caspar asked. Penelope, he decided, was much less boring than her father.
‘No – the middle of the day. Moles have something like a little watch inside their heads, and at twelve o’clock they move up towards the sun. So at twelve o’clock you fire your gun straight down into the molehill and kill one mole, or perhaps even two.’
‘My dear child!’ The vicar allowed himself a moment’s kindly laughter. ‘Wherever did you hear such nonsense?’
‘From Mrs Martin, papa. She told me that her father had great faith in it. He would do it every day for weeks. And then the moles would give up and go away. Bearing their dead with them, Mrs Martin says.’
‘Like the dolphins, Penelope,’ Caspar interposed. ‘And with their wounded. They get them away too.’
‘Well, well!’ If his daughter’s information brought Mr Rich a little to a stand it was because he recollected that Mrs Martin’s father had been – doubtless among other distinctions – Lord Lieutenant of the county. ‘Then your tennis must be played here at the vicarage,’ he said, turning to his visitor. (He was coming quite to approve of the absurd young papist.) ‘As you may have heard, I am having a hard court constructed now. It will certainly be at the service of your family, my dear Caspar’ – this was an astonishing mark of favour – ‘until your own beautiful turf is in order again.’
‘That’s most kind of you, sir.’ (Caspar thought he might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.) ‘I’ll look forward to the pleasure of being well licked by you myself.’
‘Certainly, certainly – or the other way round.’ Mr Rich seemed to find this, although oddly expressed, an entirely agreeable proposal. And a cap
ital idea now occurred to him. He felt that – with the exception of that cryptic bit about Kierkegaard being trampled to death by geese – he had kept his end up fairly well with this bright young man from Oxford. But he wanted no more of it for the moment. His tennis was a little rusty, but not so rusty as his theology. And, given another go, the boy might bombard him with Teilhard de Chardin –the Chinese monkey-man, he vaguely recalled – and heaven knew what. ‘You must really see how our court is coming on,’ he said. ‘And it would be a kindness to let Penelope show it to you. She’s tremendously looking forward to learning to play on it herself – and perhaps against you, one day. That’s so, isn’t it, my dear?’
‘Yes, papa.’ Penelope was sufficiently offended to dissimulate her excitement at this idea and to speak in the resigned tone of a dutiful daughter. ‘Only if Mr Ferneydale has the time, of course.’
This was not encouraging, and moreover Caspar was unable to feel that much interest could attach to inspecting a half-made tennis court. But the child herself attracted him. So he made his bow to Mr Rich, was benignly shaken hands with, punctiliously opened the study door for Penelope, and followed her through the vicarage and into the garden.
Penelope had frequently accompanied, or watched, grown-ups being ‘shown round’ gardens. They made small delighted discoveries as they walked, and now and then their host or hostess would modestly invite their attention to something they had missed. Penelope felt this should be happening on the present occasion. But Caspar Ferneydale said nothing at all. He strolled along in an absent-minded way which she was sure wasn’t meant to be rude, but which was disheartening, all the same. It occurred to her to wonder whether he was a philosopher, and happiest when shut up alone with a great many bumper books and a favourite cat. Philosophers, however, were usually rather old, whereas Caspar was almost as young as a fully-grown person can be. Still, he must be eighteen or nineteen, and it was perfectly possible that he was exactly twice her own age. Skirting the lily-pond near the bottom of the garden, Penelope worked it out that one person could be just twice the age of another person only at a single moment in his life. That was one of the funny things about time. If Caspar really was a philosopher, or even intended to become one at the appropriate age, would he be interested if she told him that her father proposed one day to write a book about Time – and sometimes talked to her on the subject in a very deep and incomprehensible manner? She had almost embarked on this disclosure when it came to her that her father mightn’t like this cherished plan of his to be generally known. Perhaps it was a family secret – like her Aunt Maud, who was mad and shut up in some kind of hospital.
‘There used to be goldfish,’ Penelope said rather desperately. ‘In this lily-pond, I mean. They were supposed to amuse me and my friends, and we had to feed them with smelly little pellets. You can’t really do much with fish. Except just look.’
‘That’s very true, Penelope. They’re a remote and isolated creation, the finny tribe.’
‘What do you mean, please: the finny tribe?’
‘It’s poetry for “the fish”. Just as “the feathered songsters of the grove” is poetry for “the birds”.’
‘Good poetry?’ Asking this, Penelope glanced at Caspar askance.
‘Bad.’ Caspar was interested to see that the child received this verdict with satisfaction, as if reassured that he wasn’t teasing her. ‘And what happened to the goldfish?’ he asked. ‘Were they eaten by the cat?’
‘Of course not! That would be horrid.’
‘Not at all. What cat’s averse to fish? That’s poetry too – and a good deal better.’
‘Do you know a lot of poetry, Mr Ferneydale? Do you and your brother recite it at home?’
‘We certainly don’t do that. It wouldn’t be appreciated. And Fulke, as a matter of fact, says he hates poetry.’ Caspar saw that Penelope was shocked by this. ‘What did happen to the goldfish?’ he asked quickly.
‘Well, they were eaten, and it was rather horrid. A heron came and swallowed all of them. It flew down three days running, and just stood in the pond until the silly things came near enough to be gobbled up. When it went away for the last time it was so full of fish that it could hardly flap itself into the air. Papa was cross with Mr Ferris – Mr Ferris is our gardener – for not netting the pond after the first time. Do you think it would have been fair to do that, Mr Ferneydale?’
‘That’s a very hard question.’ It was clear that Caspar said this in a serious and truthful way. ‘And please don’t call me Mr Ferneydale. It’s a ridiculous name, anyway. Call me Caspar, please.’
‘But you’re a grown-up.’
‘My dear Penelope, look round Mallows, and you’ll see that you and I are almost the same age. Think of Mrs Hufkins in Willow Cottage, who remembers the Battle of Waterloo. Or of old Mr Botley, who used to wash down stage-coaches in the yard of the Winton Arms. Or of Grannie Elbrow, who was a Londoner once, and sold oranges along with Nell Gwyn at Drury Lane. You’ll realise that you and I are as near being kids together as doesn’t count.’
‘I am going to school in September,’ Penelope said. She spoke with a sobriety which might have been felt as a rebuke to these absurdities, but in fact they enchanted her. ‘And, Caspar, you’re at the ‘varsity, aren’t you, now?’
‘Yes, but I’m only just beginning there. By the way, we don’t say “‘varsity” any longer, Penelope. We say “university”.’
‘Papa says “ ‘varsity”.’
‘And not many people say “Papa”, either. It seems to be mostly “Daddy” nowadays.’ Caspar was aware that these were impertinent remarks, and might be resented. But ‘ ‘varsity’, at least, was a bit too archaic to be put up with – except, perhaps, in reports of football matches – and he didn’t like to think of this nice girl being laughed at when she went curtseying into school, uttering outmoded words like a character strayed out of an Edwardian novel.
‘Will you tell me more about dolphins, please?’ Penelope had moved on from the lily pond, and at the same time had changed the subject thus with mature composure. ‘I’ve only seen them in picture-books. Do they have a great deal of fun?’
‘I think it quite likely that they do.’
‘Because Cleopatra says Antony’s delights were dolphin-like. I don’t know quite what delights. Do you?’
‘Well, he seems to have enjoyed all sorts of things. Fighting, for instance. And making speeches.’
‘Oh, yes – speeches. It’s in the speeches-from-Shakespeare book I sometimes read with Mrs Martin. They showed his back above the element they lived in. That makes you see a dolphin.’
‘Better than you see Mark Antony, perhaps.’ Caspar was impressed by this odd evidence of precocity in Penelope’s present education. ‘Long ago, people used to say the dolphin is the king of the fish, just as the lion is the king of the beasts, and the eagle of the birds. It was rather a good choice, because we know now that dolphins aren’t just frolicsome. They’re very clever indeed. If they didn’t happen to live in water – which we’ve agreed is rather thwarting – they’d probably be running things on this planet now instead of us.’
‘Why are the dolphins very clever?’ Penelope had given the strange and mildly alarming information she had just received due consideration before asking this pertinent question. ‘There can’t be a great many things to do with cleverness, down there in the sea. Except avoid octopuses.’
Caspar had no answer to this mystery – or at least none in terms of the ceaseless operation of the Divine Abundance, the only area in which, at this period, he thought it profitable to seek one. So he offered, without enthusiasm, what he supposed to be a Darwinian explanation. Dolphins had gone through hard times – probably for several million years – and it had marvellously sharpened their wits. They might be regarded – he added with an irresistible start of fancy – as the Jews of the watery element.
Penelope received this respectfully, but didn’t seem very impressed. Caspar found himself hoping that s
he hadn’t got him typed as somebody exclusively concerned to talk nonsense. He oughtn’t, perhaps, to have produced that stuff about the Battle of Waterloo and Nell Gwyn’s oranges. Being funny wasn’t at all his true line; he left that to Fulke. It was just that he hadn’t wanted to be positively dull with the child. Her home couldn’t be exactly a sparkling concern. He hoped that Mr Rich had chosen a thoroughly lively school for his daughter. But that was something the old snob was likely to have done only through inadvertence.
They inspected the unfinished tennis court, and Penelope said there was a promise that it would be ready for play within a few weeks.
‘And Daddy,’ she added, ‘is going to give me a short lesson every day. He says there are some things it’s very important to do properly right from the beginning.’
‘I expect you’ll come on like anything.’ ‘Daddy’ had quite startled Caspar, and he was also impressed by such evidence of paternal devotion on Henry Rich’s part. Perhaps the vicar had chosen a lively school. One must remember, Caspar told himself, that even Anglican clergymen are also God’s creatures. ‘I’ve played tennis once or twice with your father,’ he said. ‘He’s pretty good. You have to get him running about the court, or you haven’t a chance.’
‘He says it’s going to keep him fit – our tennis court, I mean. And it’s nice that it will be ready before what’s so dull a part of the year for him. It’s a long time, you see, between the point-to-point and the pheasants. If it hadn’t been for John Knox and people, he says, he might be a bishop in Scotland and have the grouse from the glorious twelfth. I don’t know what the glorious twelfth is. But I think he’s making some sort of joke.’
‘It’s the twelfth of August. And yes – I believe he must be.’ Caspar was trying to remember whether there were any clerics just like the vicar of Mallows in Trollope. Or possibly in Peacock? Mr Rich seemed to belong even further back than either.
‘I expect you and your brother don’t find an awful lot to do in the country,’ Penelope said. The interest of the tennis court being exhausted, they were now returning to the vicarage. ‘Do you still swim in the little lake in your park?’
A Villa in France Page 5
