Summer Half: A Virago Modern Classic (VMC)

by Angela Thirkell

  ‘You must have made a mistake,’ said Mrs Birkett. ‘Lydia is only Geraldine’s age. Philip couldn’t have said a thing like that.’

  ‘He did, he did,’ bellowed Rose. ‘Lydia came splashing round the boat, and he said I was rude to her.’

  ‘I expect you were,’ said Mrs Birkett. ‘Rose, you can’t go on like this. Daddy and I are not at all happy about you. You got engaged so very suddenly, and you and Philip don’t seem to get on at all well now. If you feel unhappy about it, tell me, and I can talk to Philip, or Daddy can, and no one will mind. It’s no good being engaged if it only makes you miserable.’

  At this Rose’s sobs redoubled and she was heard to say in a thick voice that no one loved her, and she adored Philip, and why did Mummy and Daddy want to make her miserable.

  Mrs Birkett would dearly have loved to hit her daughter.

  ‘Drink some water,’ she said, giving a glass to Rose, and trying to make her voice sound kind. ‘We cannot have this going on all through the holidays – well, for as long as Philip stays here, and you will drive him away if you go on like this. Daddy and I do want you to be happy, but you must help. Do you really care for Philip enough to be nice to him, because if not it would be much better to stop being engaged and you and Philip can just be friends.’

  On hearing this Rose said no one should come between her and Philip, and she would go and tell him at once. She then threw her bath sponge across the room with great vehemence, so that it went out of the window, made up her face, and banged out of the room and downstairs. Mrs Birkett felt almost sick with worry and the noise Rose had made. She heard Rose burst into the study, and the sound of voices. Trying to calm herself she tidied the room a little, went downstairs and aimlessly into the garden. Under Rose’s window Geraldine was reading Woodstock, which was her holiday task, with Rose’s bath sponge by her side.

  ‘Have you been sitting there long, Geraldine?’ said Mrs Birkett.

  ‘Yes, Mummy,’ said Geraldine simply. ‘Rose made such a noise that I couldn’t help hearing. I wish Miss Pettinger could have heard her. She’d have passed out, and a good thing, too.’

  Mrs Birkett chid her younger daughter for eavesdropping and for speaking unbecomingly of her headmistress and went slowly indoors.

  ‘Poor Mummy,’ said Geraldine to herself, as she resumed her reading, ‘she hasn’t much grip.’

  When Rose left him, Philip stood irresolute for a moment, and then went indoors. With the sound of his affianced’s ringing shrieks in his ears, he knocked at Mr Birkett’s study door. Philip’s real efforts to control himself and be less difficult with his colleagues had not escaped Mr Birkett’s notice, and what Everard had said had confirmed his opinion. Although he was very fond of his Rose, her alienating ways of late had made him feel more and more sorry for Philip. A good classical master was not to be easily found, nor lightly thrown away, but for the peace of his house and school he might have to make the sacrifice. When he had unwillingly given his consent to Philip’s spending the beginning of the holidays with them, he had anticipated an uncomfortable time for everyone, but with Philip in this better frame of mind, his fears were slightly dissipated. Perhaps Rose would settle down, perhaps all would yet be well when the lovers could meet peacefully every day. And he must speak to Philip about the Mixed Fifth. All these confusing threads were hindering him in the composition of a speech to be given in September at a conference of headmasters, and his pen traced circles and crosses and spirals on the blotting paper, while his thoughts wandered.

  A loud shriek from above his head, followed by a sound of determined crying, recalled him to the present. Rose again! His sympathy for Philip increased, and he hoped he would begin their married life by beating her, and wished they could get married at once and let him write his address in peace. A minute later Philip knocked at the door and came in. Their eyes met, and a faint gleam of amusement flashed between them, which both men instantly suppressed.

  ‘Well,’ said Mr Birkett, ‘I suppose your visit is not unconnected with that devilish noise upstairs.’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s my fault,’ said Philip conscientiously. ‘I said something to Rose that hurt her.’

  ‘Hurt! No one makes a noise like that about being hurt. Sheer temper. Philip, I’d give a year’s pension if you would marry that daughter of mine out of hand and thrash her.’

  ‘There was nothing I would have liked more,’ said Philip. ‘To marry her, I mean. I think, sir, if you’ll forgive my talking shop in the holidays, I had better give you my resignation now, and leave the Rectory tonight. Have you a few moments?’

  The eternal question from boys to form masters, from boys to housemasters, from boys and junior masters to housemasters, from boys, junior masters and housemasters to headmasters. People needing help all the time and mostly getting it. Mr Birkett put his speech into a drawer.

  ‘Have you any reason for those decisions?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, sir. I think I’m a nuisance here, and I’m afraid I’ve been a nuisance at school this term. I’d better go.’

  ‘You’ll be a nuisance if you do,’ said Mr Birkett. ‘Will you young men never learn any consideration?’

  ‘What do you mean, sir? I’ve behaved rottenly all this term, and the least I can do —’

  ‘Is to allow me to judge. I don’t want to know how you behaved. I don’t care. If you want to come clean – excuse the revolting phrase from Hollywood – go to the Chaplain. You have done very good work this term and your conscience is your own affair, not mine. I am going to suggest that you should try the Mixed Fifth next term. Your private affairs must not interfere with the school. We will discuss Rose in a minute. Are you resigning?’

  ‘The Mixed Fifth, sir?’ said Philip. ‘Of course, sir, if it’s for the sake of the school – oh, damn it, excuse me, sir, I’m being heroic – I mean, I believe I could make a do of it.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have asked you if I’d thought you couldn’t,’ said Mr Birkett. ‘Very well. Now, what about you and Rose? This can’t go on,’ he said, looking at the ceiling, which was almost quivering under Rose’s outburst. ‘Have you and Rose broken off the engagement?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Then, do you want to marry Rose, and does she want to marry you?’

  Philip said nothing.

  ‘I haven’t much time to spare,’ said Mr Birkett in his firmest headmaster’s voice.

  ‘Rose must say,’ said Philip.

  ‘That isn’t an answer.’

  ‘As far as I am concerned, Rose could be free, with my love and gratitude,’ said Philip, looking at the floor, ‘but as long as she wants me, I am here. I don’t mean to be heroic again,’ he added anxiously.

  ‘You’re not heroic, you are very silly,’ said Mr Birkett, ‘though not half so silly as Rose. If Rose doesn’t behave better to you, I shall break off the engagement myself.’

  Philip’s heart leapt, but he said, ‘I don’t think you could, sir.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ said Mr Birkett ruefully. ‘I don’t know at what point we, I mean my generation, lost control of our children, but there it is. They have the whip hand of us all the time, just because they don’t care. We brought them up to be independent and they are. Where did they get their strange inhumanity, their want of consideration, even of ordinary good breeding?’

  ‘Rose isn’t like that, sir,’ said Philip, again approaching the heroic.

  An even louder shriek came from above, and a sponge hurtled through the air into the garden.

  ‘You win, sir,’ said Philip, laughing in spite of himself. ‘I can’t decently give up Rose, sir, you do see that. But if she wants me to —’

  The door was flung open and Rose burst in, her lovely locks in slight disorder, her face flushed. Crying, ‘Oh, Philip, I’ll never, never leave you,’ she threw herself into his arms. Mr Birkett, who hardly ever lost his temper, went out of the room and banged the door as hard as he could to relieve his irritation. In the hall he met his wife, lo
oking quite distraught.

  ‘You needn’t say anything, Amy,’ he said. ‘I heard the noise. It’s my belief that Philip would be thankful to get out of his engagement at once and go, but he feels it must come from Rose. I wonder if you took her up to London for the autumn – it would be awkward, but I’d manage without you. I will not have a good master spoiled for all the daughters in Christendom.’

  They sat for some time in depressed silence, trying to guess from the voices what was happening between Philip and Rose. Simnet came through from the kitchen quarters and approached them.

  ‘Excuse me, madam, but the dressing bell went some time ago, though doubtless you was prevented from hearing it, and cook is wondering about dinner. Shall I request her to postpone it?’ he said, looking significantly towards the study door.

  ‘No,’ said Mr Birkett sharply. ‘We’ll have it at once.’

  ‘Without dressing, sir?’

  ‘I said, at once.’

  ‘Very good, sir,’ said Simnet and retired.

  Rose and Philip emerged from the study, Rose sparkling, refreshed and triumphant, clinging to her lover’s arm, Philip looking haggard and exhausted.

  ‘It’s all right, Mummy,’ she said. ‘I’ve forgiven Philip and it’s absolutely all right. Oh, and Geoff and John are coming over tomorrow with the car and we’re going to the Barchester cinema. You won’t mind, darling, will you?’ she added to Philip.

  ‘Do you want your sponge?’ asked Geraldine, coming in from the garden.

  ‘Oh, there it is,’ said Rose. ‘I wondered where it went. Put it in my room when you go up, Geraldine, like an angel.’

  At dinner Philip behaved as well as anyone can behave who has seen a glimpse of freedom and then had his fetters more firmly riveted. So well indeed did he bear himself that Simnet had nothing more to report to the servants’ hall than that Miss Rose and Mr Winter seemed to be as taken with each other as ever.

  By tacit consent the whole party kept together all evening, so that no private speech was possible. Rose amused herself but no one else on her piano-accordion, while Geraldine told the others how old Pettinger had had the meanness to refuse swimming colours to Amber Dandridge, simply because she had cheeked Miss Moore in the bookroom. Only as they separated for the night did Mr Birkett say to Philip, ‘Promise you won’t do anything without letting me know.’

  ‘All right, sir,’ said Philip, and Mr Birkett thought he had seldom seen a more hopeless face.

  9

  Croquet at the Rectory

  By lunch-time on Saturday Swan, Morland and Hacker were blissfully installed in the gardener’s cottage, with Lydia to assist. Mrs Twicker had the old Nanny’s passion for gentry children, and welcomed them with as much joy as if they had once been babies in her charge. Of her own children, who were all out in the world, she never had thought much, owing to their parentage, though she had treated them with the impartial kindness due from the upper classes to the lower. To her Robert was still ‘Master Robert’, though she had married when he was only four; and none of the other Keith children could hold the same place in her estimation.

  When the boys arrived, having been met by Sanders and Lydia at Northbridge Halt, she at once provided thick cocoa and bread-and-dripping which the boys, though it was twelve o’clock on a blazing hot day, and they had all had good breakfasts before starting, fell upon with avidity. Mrs Twicker was a farmer’s daughter from Westmorland, and though she had been a nurse until she married, her housekeeping was that of the north, and it was her boast that her husband had never eaten baker’s bread except for a week at the birth of their various children. Her kitchen with a large open range, her little dairy with bowls of cream on stone shelves, her wash-house and copper, her mangle, were all the subject of enthusiastic praise.

  ‘I say, Mrs Twicker,’ said Morland, after mangling Hacker’s blazer and breaking two buttons, ‘I wish I could help you with the washing. I’d love to see the water swishing off the sheets and things in the mangle.’

  ‘Oh no, Mr Tony,’ said Mrs Twicker, who had immediately inquired and adopted the names of all three, ‘that’s not young gentlemen’s work.’

  ‘Oh, do let me, Mrs Twicker. We’d all turn the mangle. Oh, Mrs Twicker, Hack’s buttons off his blazer got broken in the mangle.’

  ‘Of course they did, Mr Tony. You don’t ought to go putting blazers through the mangle. Now come along in the kitchen and we’ll see if Nanny has some buttons in her workbasket that will match.’

  They followed her to the kitchen, where Lydia was still eating bread-and-dripping. From a chest of drawers Mrs Twicker got a large basket, once lined with quilted blue satin, and full of all sorts of enchanting odds and ends, such as strawberry emery cushions and ivory stilettoes, among them a shell box containing apparently one of each kind of button in the world. Mrs Twicker, putting on a much worn thimble with an agate top, sewed them on, while the boys looked at the dough that was rising in a big earthenware bowl before the fire, and the chickens that were being reared by hand in warm flannel in a basket, with a cat taking care of them.

  When Mrs Twicker had finished the jacket she took the dough out of the bowl and shaped it into loaves for baking. Each visitor was allowed to prick his initials on the top of a loaf, and Mrs Twicker promised them that each should have some of his own loaf next morning, before they went up to the Manor for breakfast. It was at this point that Swan said he would like to live there for ever.

  ‘I wish you could, Mr Eric,’ said Mrs Twicker. ‘I do miss having young gentlemen about the place. Where I was in service before I came to Mrs Keith there were five young gentlemen, and they all came to Nanny for everything, some of them quite big young gentlemen, from school, like you.’

  ‘I say, Mrs Twicker,’ said Morland, ‘if we are going to stay till Tuesday, do you think we could call you Nanny, like Lydia does? It would feel friendlier.’

  ‘Of course you can, Mr Tony, it will be quite like old times. And here’s a bit of dough left over, and I’ll give you some currants for a bun man.’

  By the united efforts of the visitors two shapeless, grey masses, studded with currants, called by courtesy bun men, were made, and Nanny put them into the oven with the loaves.

  ‘You’d better hurry up,’ said Lydia, eating a few fragments of dough to round off her repast. ‘It’s quarter-past one, and lunch is at half-past.’

  ‘OK,’ said Swan. ‘What about Gibbon?’

  ‘Is that Mr Percy’s rat, sir?’ said Nanny. ‘Isn’t that a funny pet for a young gentleman to have? Master Robert used to have white mice, but rats are nasty, dirty, vicious animals.’

  ‘It’s not a rat, Nanny, it’s a chameleon,’ said Lydia.

  ‘If you leave your rat with me, Mr Percy,’ said Nanny, taking no notice of Lydia, ‘he’ll be quite safe. Pussy wouldn’t touch him. I always looked after Master Robert’s mice.’

  Accordingly Gibbon’s cage was hung on a nail by the kitchen window, and the party set off to the Manor.

  During lunch Mrs Keith announced that anyone who liked was invited to tea and tennis at the Rectory. She and Mr Keith would not be going. Edith was delighted at the idea of tennis, for the Rectory court was better than the Manor court. So was Robert, who had driven out from Barchester with his father and was staying for the weekend. Noel, Colin and Kate said they would go. Lydia wanted to start cleaning the pond, but her mother said they could do that another day. After lunch Edith’s children were brought down for a short visit, and Hacker suddenly came into prominence as an entertainer of the young, telling a long story of aeroplanes and battles which enchanted Henry, and inventing a game of pretending to lose his handkerchief and finding it up his sleeve, which exactly suited Catherine’s style of humour.

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Lydia to Swan and Morland, ‘we’ve got to see about the pond. Tomorrow’s Sunday, and Mother will want us all to go to church, but if we empty the pond before breakfast we can get too dirty to go.’

  This delightful pla
n met with the full approval of the boys, who had each brought specially dirty clothes for the job at Lydia’s request, and it was decided that they should all be up early next day and get things in order.

  When the Manor party arrived at the Rectory Mrs Birkett apologised for Rose’s absence.

  ‘She had promised to go to the Barchester cinema with your brothers, Edith,’ she said to Mrs Robert, who replied complacently that Geoff and John were quick workers. ‘But they’ll be back for tea,’ continued Mrs Birkett, ‘so we might get some tennis first.’

  Edith and Robert, both very good players, went off to the tennis-court with Mrs Birkett and Noel, while Mr Birkett and Kate said they would watch them and cut in. The others adjourned to the croquet ground, where Lydia suggested they should play a seven-ball game, but no one wanted to, and luckily there were not seven balls, so this plan fell through. Geraldine, however, had plans of her own and took Hacker off to play clock golf on an adjoining lawn, which they did in complete silence, but apparently with satisfaction. So the others tossed for partners, and Lydia and Morland played against Philip and Swan.