Marling Hall

by Angela Thirkell

  ‘Lucy, you really must go to bed,’ said Mrs Marling. ‘Goodbye, David. Come again soon.’

  ‘I say,’ said Lucy, ‘we never played bézique.’

  ‘I can’t if you go gallivanting with the military,’ said David. ‘I’ll come another day. What a nice fellow Barclay is.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what —’ Lucy began.

  ‘No, you won’t,’ said David. ‘Goodnight and go to bed.’

  He kissed his cousin Lucy in an unemotional way and went off, thinking with some pleasure of his persecution of Geoffrey Harvey.

  Mr Harvey, who was a little afraid of his sister, drove her home and put the car away. When he came into the house he found her in the drawing-room.

  ‘We aren’t going to have hens, are we?’ he said anxiously.

  ‘Of course we are,’ said his sister.

  ‘Well then, is there anything to drink?’ said Mr Harvey.

  ‘Only gin and lime,’ said his sister. ‘I told Hilda to leave it out. It’s all we’ve got left. There’s the tray.’

  On the tray was a piece of paper addressed to ‘Miss Harvy’ in an unknown and laborious writing.

  ‘Who wants to write you letters?’ said Mr Harvey.

  ‘“Mrs Smith as borrowed the lime because it ran out”,’ his sister read aloud.

  ‘Oh God!’ said Mr Harvey. ‘Cows, and poetry, and now that woman has taken the lime juice. I wish we had stayed at Norton Park.’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ said Miss Harvey. ‘Lettice Watson wasn’t at Norton Park.’

  5

  If Mr Harvey hoped that his sister and Mrs Marling would forget about hens, he was the more deceived. Miss Harvey rang up the Hall. Mrs Marling rang up Dr March. Miss Harvey rang up her brother who was on duty at the Regional Commissioner’s Office that day, and asked him if he could get Wednesday off as it was also her day off. Mr Harvey said he supposed he could, rang off abruptly, and was so rude to his senior typist that she was able to finish the sleeve of a jumper while he got over it.

  Lucy, getting wind of all this, arranged with Octavia Crawley who was doing a month at the Cottage Hospital to take her duty on Wednesday, promising her what in hospital language was called a Caesar, a form of operation to which Octavia was at the moment much attached. She then told everyone what till her father said, For God’s sake then take Ed and don’t let’s hear any more about it. Ed, delighted to be of use, came down to the Red House with a wheelbarrow containing a piece of corrugated iron about four foot by six, and some dilapidated wire netting, both taken by him off the village scrap-metal heap where they were slowly rusting to death because it seemed to be no one’s business to collect them.

  The delightful hot weather had broken, but Wednesday was not an unpleasant day, with quite warm intervals. Mr Harvey, though very much annoyed with his sister for being hen-minded, was not above putting on a pair of green corduroy trousers and a paler green Aertex shirt with short sleeves, in which he felt rather dashing. His sister, despising fancy dress, was wearing a tailored boiler suit, and we must grudgingly admit that she was one of the few women who could do it. The proceedings as arranged by Lucy, who kindly allowed Miss Harvey to act as vice-president, were to begin with the removal of Dr March’s old shed by Ed and the estate carpenter, who could then re-erect it in a slightly different form in the back garden of the Red House. After this a kind of hen-house bee was to take place, everyone helping to make perches, put up wire netting and in general arrange for the comfort of the new tenants. The Harveys had offered a fork lunch, David Leslie who had heard about it was coming with some drinks, and later in the afternoon Lucy, with the aid of Captain Barclay who tended to spend most of his free time at Marling, would fetch the hens from the farm where they had been residing and install them.

  About eleven o’clock Ed, balancing his corrugated iron and wire netting in the wheelbarrow like Blondin, arrived at the Red House and went to the back door, where Hilda, once the Harveys’ under-nurse and now their maid, was preparing not to approve of the hen scheme. Not that she disliked fowls. On the contrary she had delighted her employers’ childhood by tales of her sister in the country who had married a farmer, and drew glowing pictures of her own future bringing up hundreds and thousands of pullets by hand. But she still had towards her ex-children the very proper nursery-maid attitude of seeing what they were doing and telling them not to, and ever since the great hen question had been mooted she had shown a tendency to exaggerate the less favourable aspects of hen-keeping. According to her Sibylline utterances while dusting the drawing-room, making the beds, or standing in the kitchen with a blank face while Miss Harvey suggested dishes for lunch or dinner, all day-old chickens were cockerels, if one bought pullets they did not lay for seven years, if one bought laying hens they ceased to lay or laid double-yolked eggs and died. All hens died if possible just before one could kill them for eating and must be burnt. Having hens was more trouble than a whole nursery of children. There was no proper food to get in war time. Anyone who tried to keep hens must have over twelve or under fifty or the Government would do something about it. Hens meant grain and meal. Everyone knew the Government had sent all the grain to Canada to be safe, and as for the meal it was what anyone would call less than no good at all; besides, where there was meal there were rats and where rats were she could not possibly stay.

  Ed knocked at the back door which was opened by a tall, middle-aged woman with short, unwaved, greying hair, a tight-lipped mouth which when opened showed quantities of very unconvincing false teeth, and an unwelcoming expression. She wore a gaily coloured cotton frock of no particular cut and a flowered overall that crossed behind. Most people who came to the back door were stricken with terror by her appearance, but Ed had no such feelings, for by a piece of great good luck she was extremely like his mother to whom, for no reason except that she took all his wages and paid him a very small weekly allowance, he was quite devoted. So remembering his manners he took off his cap and smiled.

  Hilda, seeing a strange man before her, was convinced that he was a gypsy, a tramp, a German, or a burglar’s confederate come to spy out the best way of getting into the house at night, and was preparing to turn him off by force if necessary and certainly by the rough side of her tongue, when he smiled his slow, Barsetshire and, we must add, half-witted smile.

  Hilda was no sentimentalist, for a lifetime in the nursery does not encourage that attitude, but she had one soft spot in her heart for her elder nephew Albert who had been killed near Ypres. True Albert had been a sergeant-major with a hideous moustache and a medal-covered chest which he stuck out like anything, while Ed was clean-shaven and had a slow, shambling walk, but there was something in the stranger before her that brought Albert very vividly to her mind.

  ‘Well, young man,’ she said, ‘what’s the matter?’

  Ed smiled again and said Miss Lucy had told him to come about the shed.

  ‘What shed?’ said Hilda, just as sharply as his own mother might have said it.

  Ed rolled his cap up in his hands.

  ‘I dunno,’ he said, looking admiringly at Hilda. ‘Mr Govern, he’ll know.’

  ‘And who’s Mr Govern?’ said Hilda, with just his mother’s impatience, but without the addition of You Great Fool.

  ‘He’s to be here at eleven,’ said Ed.

  ‘Well, a cup of tea won’t do you any harm,’ said Hilda and opened the back door wide.

  She pushed Ed into the kitchen, shoved him on to a chair, banged a large cup of tea and a plate of bread and some vague cheese substitute called Spread down in front of him, banged another cup down for herself and put her elbows on the table.

  To Ed’s gentle and permanently mystified soul this was no stranger than anything else in his life, so he chumped his bread and Spread and drank his tea, into which Hilda had put a generous spoonful of sugar.

  ‘And what’s your name?’ said Hilda.

  Her guest said it was Ed, and Mr Govern had said to be at the Red House at eleven with
the wheelbarrow.

  ‘About those hens, I’ll be bound,’ said Hilda. ‘Mucky creatures they are, near as mucky as ducks. And I know who’ll have to feed them.’

  ‘You will, miss,’ said Ed. ‘Mother feeds our hens. She won’t let me.’

  Another knock at the door interrupted their conversation. Hilda opened it. A weather-beaten man with a long nose was standing outside. He wore a carpenter’s apron under his jacket and carried his carpenter’s bag.

  ‘It never rains but it pours,’ said Hilda grimly.

  ‘Mr Govern said he would be here at eleven,’ said Ed, who by tilting his chair on to its hind legs could see what was happening at the back door.

  ‘Mr Marling’s estate carpenter, madam,’ said Mr Govern. ‘Is Pollett in there?’

  ‘If that’s Pollett he’s there all right,’ said Hilda, ‘having a cup of tea.’

  ‘He’s a bit wanting, you know,’ said Mr Govern, ‘and if you’ll excuse me I’ll come in and have a look.’

  ‘Have a cup of tea you mean,’ said Hilda, not averse to additional male society.

  She stood aside while Mr Govern wiped his feet violently, and ushered him into the kitchen. Under the beneficent atmosphere of strong tea and a quite unrationed amount of sugar Mr Govern explained that Miss Lucy wanted him to take down that there shed of Dr March’s and turn it into a hen house. It was, he said, no kind of a job, not what he called a job, with the gate into the ten acre crying out to be rehung and Mrs Marling wanting the kitchen door mended and Miss Lettice’s bathroom door needing a bit planing away where it stuck on the linoleum, but Miss Lucy was a one-er for having things done, so done it must be.

  ‘Well, if it’s got to be done, you and Mr Pollett had better do it,’ said Hilda. ‘And what may your name be?’

  ‘Govern, miss,’ said the carpenter. ‘Christened James, but my old woman she always called me Govern. She died two years ago come Christmas and I made her coffin. A good job it was too. I’d had that bit of elm lying by for five year.’

  ‘Well my name’s Plane and the sooner you know it the better,’ said Hilda, suddenly becoming the under-nurse. ‘Now get along to your work.’

  ‘Plane by name, miss, but not by appearance,’ said the gallant Mr Govern. ‘Quite the name for a carpenter’s mate as one might say. Come on, Ed, and thank Miss Plane for the tea.’

  Ed rolled his cap, smiled his ravishing smile and murmured, ‘That’s oke, miss.’

  ‘You’d better call me Auntie,’ said Hilda to Ed. ‘And if you want a cup of tea any time, let me know, and Mr Govern too. There’s plenty here. Have you got your dinners with you?’

  Ed shyly produced from a pocket a small packet wrapped in a dirty rag and laid it on the table.

  ‘Mother said that’s all I could have,’ he said.

  ‘It’ll do nicely for the chickens when they come,’ said Hilda, contemptuously poking the contents with one finger. ‘You come up here at dinner time, Ed, and I’ll find something for you.’

  ‘I wish I wasn’t going home for my own dinner, miss,’ said Mr Govern, ‘but I dessay my niece won’t remember to put it on the fire. She’s quite flighty since she got the job as postman. If my old woman had seen her in leggings she’d have died of laughing. It seems a pity she wasn’t spared.’

  At this broad hint Hilda invited Mr Govern to share pot luck, and the church clock having by now struck half-past eleven her guests went off to Dr March’s garden and began to take down the shed.

  At half-past twelve Mrs Marling arrived at the Red House and found the Harveys looking disconsolately at the mess Govern and Ed were making. The goatshed had been removed in sections and was being re-erected near the end of the garden. Sawdust lay thick on the ground and wire netting and corrugated iron blocked the path.

  ‘Look here, Govern,’ said Mrs Marling, hardly waiting to greet the Harveys, ‘that won’t do. There’s too much shade down here. The chickens won’t get any sun.’

  Govern said he supposed the lady and gentleman wanted vegetables and unless he put the hen house right on the vegetables this was the only place.

  ‘By the way,’ said Miss Harvey, ‘are we to let the hens loose in the garden? I suppose they’ll eat all the vegetables if we do. Couldn’t we have a wired-in run for them, Geoffrey, on the lawn?’

  ‘You won’t get any wire,’ said Mrs Marling with authority. ‘Not a foot to be had anywhere. Lucky if you can wire a little run for them round the house. Where did you get that wire, Ed?’

  ‘She’s OK,’ said Ed. ‘Ed found her.’

  ‘That will do nicely,’ said Mrs Marling, measuring it with a professional eye. ‘You’ll be wanting to get your dinner now, Govern.’

  Govern touched his cap and put by his tools. Then followed by Ed he took his way towards the Harveys’ kitchen, much to the owners’ surprise.

  Mrs Marling laughed.

  ‘Govern always finds a friend,’ she said. ‘How long has he known your maid?’

  ‘I didn’t know he knew her at all,’ said Miss Harvey.

  ‘I daresay he didn’t,’ said Mrs Marling cryptically. ‘How do you manage with only one maid? She’s a good age, isn’t she?’

  ‘Not so very old,’ said Mr Harvey. ‘She was our under-nurse and quite a young one at that. And Frances has found a girl to come in and help in the morning.’

  ‘You are lucky,’ said Mrs Marling. ‘I didn’t know there was a girl in the village. Who is it?’

  ‘Her name is Millie,’ said Miss Harvey. ‘A red-haired girl.’

  ‘Not Millie Poulter?’ said Mrs Marling. ‘I suppose you know she lives with her aunt.’

  Miss Harvey said Millie had said something about an aunt, but she hadn’t paid much attention.

  ‘Well, you’d better,’ said Mrs Marling, moving towards the house. ‘Dear, dear, how late Lettice and David are. Her aunt is Mrs Cox, where Mrs Smith is lodging. You’ll find it a bit inconvenient, but Millie ought to be called up soon.’

  Mrs Marling did mean, though she knew she would repent it afterwards, to put Miss Harvey in her place. People who came to live in a village should, according to her code, take an intelligent interest in their neighbours. If Miss Harvey had not discovered since she had been at the Red House that her daily girl was to all intents and purposes a spy from her landlady’s camp, she had only herself to blame.

  ‘That accounts for the lime juice,’ said Miss Harvey thoughtfully, but concealing her annoyance very well. ‘Do come in. I am sure David won’t be long.’

  ‘And why that proprietary air about David?’ said Mrs Marling uncharitably to herself. Not that she cared who David’s friends were, but David as such was a relation and one must keep an eye on family ties.

  Even as they got to the house David’s little car drove up. He was driving Lettice, and the back of the car seemed to consist chiefly of bottles.

  ‘Hi! Geoffrey, come and help,’ said David. ‘You take the drink while I put my head in the boot.’

  So speaking he opened the hole at the back where dirt and string live and with some difficulty pulled out a roll of chicken wire, which he carried into the garden and dumped in the porch.

  ‘My dear David!’ said Mrs Marling. ‘Where on earth did you get that? I thought there wasn’t a foot left in the country.’

  ‘No more there was,’ said David. ‘But let me defer my narrative till we get inside, because I want to make a good impression on Frances, though why in a boiler suit I cannot tell. For you alone I did it, Frances. I heard that Barton had got a lot of pre-war wire netting for the alterations he was making for the Trustees at Brandon Abbey, and I knew his wife wanted onions and a setting, or clutch, if I make myself clear, of hens, if you will excuse my dragging them in when we shall hear quite enough about them before the end of the day. Agnes has unlimited onions, Mary appears to have unlimited clutches, so we did business. And how delightful the drawing-room looks. A little more off-white even than before.’

  Miss Harvey thanked David warmly for the wire
and rather wished she were not wearing a boiler suit. The party then adjourned to the dining-room. The fork lunch was a figure of speech, for the food that Miss Harvey and Hilda had provided required spoons and knives as well, and was very good. David uncorked his bottles and demanded ice. Hilda, summoned from entertaining Mr Govern and Ed, brought in a tray of cubes and retired. Lettice congratulated Mr Harvey on his green corduroys.

  ‘I’m so glad you like them,’ said Mr Harvey, tossing back his hair in a gratified way. ‘They do give one colour in this drab world.’

  Lettice said she always found green made her look rather sallow.

  Mr Harvey said one did so understand that, but he meant a dash of colour in the landscape, at least he didn’t quite mean landscape, but the surroundings, the ambience as it were. The sad thing was, he said, that it would take at least thirteen coupons to replace his shirt and trousers, even if they could be got again, which he doubted.