Summer Half: A Virago Modern Classic (VMC)

by Angela Thirkell

  It was Mr Lorimer’s weakness to desert from time to time the Latin for the English Muse, and drop into poetry of an occasional and weak-kneed nature. For these unworthy productions he had all an anxious father’s feelings, and got nearly as much pleasure out of seeing his verses in the School Magazine as he did when his pupils swept the scholarship board. Everard, well aware of this amiable failing, sometimes liked to pull Mr Lorimer’s leg.

  Mr Lorimer guiltily shuffled some papers on his desk.

  ‘Nothing, nothing,’ he said.

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Everard. ‘I can see poetry sticking out under the blotting paper. What is it? A new version of the Carmen?’

  ‘No, no, a mere trifle, a little occasional piece written after supping with the Head last Sunday.’

  ‘Well, I shan’t ask you again,’ said Everard, ‘so this is your last chance. Out with it.’

  Mr Lorimer put on his pince-nez and began sorting the papers.

  ‘Parody,’ he began, in his high drawling voice, ‘is perhaps an unworthy garment for the Muse to wear, but even the Muse may disport herself in seasonable time and place. The English language has not the mordant and terse qualities required for the epigram, but for parody our language is perhaps peculiarly fitted. I have, not altogether uninspired by current events, been indulging in an attempt at parody, choosing as my model, or perhaps more correctly my victim, the one English poet in whom, to my thinking, the epigram approached the feeling of the Greek, whose choice of Ianthe as a name to personify an abstraction of female charm shows the trend of his thought; a man of wide reading and powerful mind, if not a scholar in the profoundest sense of the word, and estimated today, except by the few that really value him, at considerably less than his proper worth.’

  ‘Eighteen letters. Walter Savage Landor,’ said Everard. ‘I dare say there’s an anagram of it, but I can’t be bothered. Let’s hear the parody, Lorimer.’

  Mr Lorimer, a little self-conscious, picked up a paper.

  ‘I must explain,’ he said, ‘the circumstances to which this opusculum owes its origin. I was supping, as I mentioned, with the Head. Winter was there, and Birkett’s daughter, to whom he is so regrettably engaged. After observing Miss Birkett’s personal appearance, her very limited vocabulary, and her total want of consideration for the gentleman to whom she has plighted her troth, I came home, and in the heat of the moment wrote down the following lines. They need polish, they need polish, but they are not without their point.’

  He gazed happily out of the window at the invisible peaks of Parnassus, and then composed himself to study his little work, pencil poised over the paper, which already bore the marks of many corrections and emendations.

  ‘I haven’t heard your poem yet, you know,’ said Everard, after the lapse of three or four minutes.

  ‘My dear fellow, my dear fellow,’ said Mr Lorimer, confused, ‘forgive me. The lines, not of the first water you will say, but such as they are a poor attempt to reproduce, by the medium of parody, the feelings aroused in me on Sunday night, are as follows:

  Ah, what avails the painted face,

  Ah, what the curving spine –

  she slouches terribly, you know,

  What every want of every grace,

  Rose Birkett, all are thine.

  I think they are good,’ said Mr Lorimer, in a broad-minded way.

  ‘Excellent,’ said Everard. ‘Have you any more?’

  ‘I was thinking,’ said Mr Lorimer, a little shyly, ‘of going on to the second stanza, but inspiration is lacking. I have got as far as

  Rose Birkett, whom our hating eyes

  Unluckily must see…

  but the Muse has fled.’

  ‘She will come back,’ said Everard. ‘I gather that your feelings about the lady are much the same as mine.’

  ‘That Lesbia; neither more nor less,’ said Mr Lorimer angrily.

  ‘I saw Catullus by the boat-shed just now,’ said Everard. ‘My impression is that he would be thankful to be out of the whole affair, but feels in honour bound, and still loves where he can’t like.’

  ‘The best Junior Classical Master I’ve had since Turnbull was killed,’ said Mr Lorimer, thinking of the dark days of the war. ‘He was disappointed at not getting the Mixed Fifth, but his work is excellent, first-rate. No one else could have got into Swan and Morland’s heads last year even the miserable modicum of Latin that the School Certificate, that filthy spawn of the devil, demands. And he sent Hacker to me ripe for development. Hacker owes the Montgomery as much to him as to me.’

  ‘He’ll be glad to hear you say that,’ said Everard.

  ‘No, he won’t. He would rather hear that painted Jezebel,’ said Mr Lorimer, now thoroughly roused, ‘saying that everything is marvellous or sickening. If I had my way —’

  Here Mr Lorimer paused, unequal to finding words for his feelings.

  ‘Well, I must be getting along,’ said Everard. ‘We can only hope for Fate to do something.’

  ‘I’ll make a waxen image and stick nibs into it,’ said Mr Lorimer vengefully. ‘And I’ll just run my eye over the Eighth Eclogue again. One might get some hints there.’

  Towards the end of June the annual school sports took place, to the intense annoyance of the masters who were working their forms up for the summer examinations. Boys began to come in late for lessons on the plea that they had been competing in the heats. Mr Lorimer said that anyone who didn’t want to take part in the preliminaries could say he had been kept in, and defied the sports committee. Swan deliberately came last in his trials, and so to his fury found himself put down with Hacker for a consolation race. Morland, by well-timed references to a poisoned insect bite, got matron to put a large bandage on his leg and so scratched from all events.

  It was Everard’s habit to keep open house for parents and old boys on sports day, and any master or prefect could have tea in his own room. Colin invited Lydia and Kate, who had not yet seen the school, to be his guests. They accepted with enthusiasm, and Lydia asked if she might bring Geraldine Birkett, who was getting the afternoon off from school, with her.

  ‘You wouldn’t care to have tea with me and my sisters, sir, I suppose,’ he said to Everard, ‘or a drink afterwards?’

  ‘Nothing I’d like better,’ said Everard, ‘but I have to be more or less on duty as housemaster. Let me come in later if I can.’

  Swan and Morland were invited, and greeted with pleasure the idea of seeing Lydia again, and Colin had the kind thought of asking Hacker to come with his chameleon. He wanted to ask Philip, but did not know how his thorny colleague would take it. At last, the night before the sports, having finished his school work, he knocked at Philip’s door.

  ‘Come in,’ said Philip, not looking up from his work.

  ‘I’m having my sisters to tea tomorrow and one or two senior boys,’ said Colin. ‘If you’d care to look in it would be very nice. Or for a drink after sports.’

  ‘Oh, you don’t want me,’ said Philip ungraciously.

  ‘Is that yes or no?’ said Colin, trying to make his voice sound ordinary, but as Philip only muttered something about wishing one could get a moment’s peace, he withdrew, feeling uncomfortably that he had intruded and wishing he had left things alone. It was impossible to say to Philip that Rose was an infernal nuisance, and that if he thought one cared about her he was wrong, and one was very sorry for him being in love with such a selfish girl. That was a thing one simply couldn’t say, and Philip, who was rather good at boxing, would probably fly at one and punch one’s nose. So he returned to his law books and was soon immersed in a chapter that needed all his concentration. Presently he became aware that someone had knocked more than once on his door and he in his turn called out, ‘Come in.’ Philip, looking half defiant, half apologetic, stood in the doorway.

  ‘Do you mind if I come in?’ he asked.

  ‘Not a bit,’ said Colin. ‘What will you have? I’ve sherry and I’ve whisky, but no soda water.’

  �
�No thanks,’ said Philip. ‘Look here, Colin, I didn’t mean to be gruff just now. I was thinking about some work I’m trying to do, and it made me a bit stupid. May I come to your party tomorrow? I’d like to see your elder sister again. She seems awfully kind.’

  ‘Splendid,’ said Colin. ‘Lydia’s a good chap, too, but a bit overflowing.’

  ‘Are you working?’ asked Philip, always ill at ease.

  Colin said he had finished his school work and showed Philip what he was reading. Philip began to thaw and spoke with enthusiasm of the work on Horace that he always had in his mind. Colin said Lydia would be interested in that, and they were beginning to talk quite pleasantly, and Philip had accepted some whisky and tepid water, when another knock came at the door. One of the maids came in with a note.

  ‘Please, sir,’ she said to Colin, ‘this note came for you from the headmaster’s house, and please is there an answer.’

  Colin opened the letter, read it, and looked annoyed.

  ‘No answer,’ he said. ‘Or I’ll answer it later.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the maid. ‘Oh, and matron said would you come and speak to her for a moment. She says she won’t keep you.’

  ‘All right,’ said Colin. ‘Excuse me, Philip, I won’t be a moment.’

  Philip wandered about the room looking at Colin’s books. Then he sat down again near the table and saw the letter his host had just received. He knew only too well the flowing ill-formed writing. On a sudden impulse he looked at it, knowing he was behaving quite disgracefully.

  Dear Colin [it ran]. Do ask me to your party tomorrow because Geraldine says she is coming to tea with you with Liddia with heaps of love from Rose.

  When Philip had read it he drank the rest of his lukewarm whisky. He would have had some more, but his host had hospitably given him the last drop in the bottle.

  ‘She only wanted me to get the broken cork out of a bottle of syrup of figs,’ said Colin, coming back. ‘No one had the gumption to push it right in and find another one. Anything wrong?’

  ‘I have read your letter,’ said Philip, pointing an avenging finger at the document.

  ‘Well, you shouldn’t,’ said Colin. ‘You’re as bad as Lydia. It’s bad enough having that girl sending round letters by hand, making me a laughing-stock, without having you reading them.’

  ‘She has never written me more than a postcard,’ said Philip.

  ‘Well, I can’t help that. God help anyone she writes to in that awful writing. Don’t do it again, Philip, that’s all.’

  ‘How dare you speak about her like that?’ said Philip.

  Colin, after more than half a term of pinpricks from Philip, was near the end of his temper.

  ‘Look here,’ he said, ‘you are a boxer and I’m not, but I’m heavier than you and a good deal fitter just now, and if you go on like this I shall have a fight with you, and I don’t know the rules, so I’ll probably roll on you and bite your ear.’

  ‘It’s like hell,’ said Philip.

  ‘All right, it is like hell. But if you think I ever want to see the writer of that note again, I don’t. I wish you and she were on a desert island and couldn’t get back. I’ll have to say yes, because she’s the Head’s daughter and one must be civil, but my party will be entirely spoilt. You may well say hell.’

  ‘Is it any good apologising?’ said Philip.

  ‘Oh, rot,’ said Colin. ‘Have another drink. Bother, there’s no more whisky. Have some sherry.’

  ‘No thanks,’ said Philip. ‘I’ll come to your party if you’ll let me. I swear I don’t mean to be a fool, but you don’t know how appalling it is to be engaged.’

  ‘Well, don’t be engaged,’ said Colin, ‘and do go to bed.’

  ‘Would you like to hit me?’ said Philip hopefully, with the gesture of one who bares his breast to the sword.

  ‘Of course not, you fool,’ said Colin, ‘and for God’s sake do go away. I’ve got to answer that blasted letter. Would you like to see me do it? No, blast it, she can wait till tomorrow.’

  He tore the letter into a great many little bits and threw them into the waste-paper basket. Philip went back to his room, and to bed, where he lay staring into the darkness. Half of him would have given anything in the world to be free from his Rose. The other half was still instinctively jealous of anyone she looked at, but he believed Colin now and felt safe with him, and this was the first sign of sanity he had shown since the beginning of the winter term when his engagement took place.

  Colin felt extremely annoyed with Philip, and also extremely sorry for him. Once or twice before going to sleep he got out of bed, went gently to Philip’s room, and listened at the door in case he had committed suicide. Complete silence gave him no clue as to what was going on, but he found it reassuring.

  The day of the sports was fine and warm, and matron said she knew someone would faint before the day was over. After a very sketchy morning school and a hasty lunch, the whole school prepared for the event. The competitors gathered on the grass under the elms and brought out bottles of fearful oil or embrocation, with which they pinched, rubbed, and massaged their own legs and those of their friends. The spectators borrowed each other’s hair fixative, and made such a noise that matron turned them all out of both dormitories. Mr Birkett had a large lunch party, including the Dean and other Governors. Everard entertained a number of old boys in his study. Philip was out on the ground helping at the sports secretary’s table. Colin felt rather lonely, and thought wistfully of Noel Merton’s chambers, untroubled by boys.

  While the first events were being run or jumped, there were not many visitors, but by three o’clock the fringe of spectators round the field was several deep. The sun shone, a light breeze blew, the Barchester Police Band played the same selections from Gilbert and Sullivan that it played every year. Colin, looking in the wrong direction, was pounced upon by Lydia and was no longer alone. Lydia had been for once forced into the right clothes by her mother and Kate, and was looking extremely handsome in a gay flowered dress. With her were Kate and a speechless girl, whom Colin rightly guessed to be Geraldine Birkett. Colin managed to find places for them, and they sat talking while the sports went on. In the distance they saw Rose enjoying herself.

  As they walked towards Mr Carter’s house for the tea interval, Kate explained that Geraldine Birkett was very devoted to Lydia.

  ‘I think Lydia finds it a bit trying,’ she said, ‘because Geraldine follows her about at school all the time and never says anything, but Lydia is really very kind-hearted and puts up with it, and Geraldine does her maths which she can’t do. Mother let us have the car today and we offered to bring Geraldine, but I didn’t know she was going to stick so tight. I thought she would be joining her own people.’

  ‘It’s better than Rose, anyway,’ said Colin. ‘She has invited herself to tea.’

  Kate looked anxious, but said nothing.

  The tea in Colin’s room looked perfectly delightful. There were mustard and cress sandwiches, cucumber sandwiches, jam sandwiches, bloater paste sandwiches, cakes with pink icing, a chocolate cake, a coffee cake, and two plates of biscuits. Colin, poking about in the village, had found a grocer who kept those joys of his early childhood, animal biscuits and alphabet biscuits, and had bought a pound of each. There was also a huge bowl of strawberries, a large jug of cream, and on the dressing-table beer and sherry for the later comers.

  Swan and Morland, who were already in the room, made Kate and Lydia welcome. Geraldine they greeted with a nicely mingled shade of conventional respect for the headmaster’s daughter and suspicion of any sister of Rose’s. Geraldine moved closer to Lydia, twisted her own legs round the legs of her chair, and prepared to enjoy the party. The next arrival was Hacker with the chameleon. Colin, who had previously primed his guests about Hacker’s attainments, formally introduced him. Kate very sweetly congratulated him on his scholarship, calling him Mr Hacker. Hacker, after silently and despairingly twisting himself about, suddenly found his
voice, an octave lower than where he expected it, and said something about Mr Lorimer.

  ‘I am so sorry,’ said Kate. ‘I thought Colin said Mr Hacker.’

  ‘Mr Lorimer is the Senior Classical Master,’ said Colin hastily. ‘Hacker is working under him. He coached Hacker for the scholarship exam.’

  ‘Hullo,’ said Lydia, ‘what’s that you’ve got?’

  ‘It’s his chameleon,’ said Swan, seeing that Hacker was in a state of palsied imbecility owing to shyness. ‘It’s a good sort of fellow and eats flies. Got any flies, Hack?’

  Hacker pulled from his pocket a small glass jar with a screw top and held it up. In it four or five flies were walking about upside down.