Music at Long Verney

by Sylvia Townsend Warner

  “I’ve come about that dome. But I don’t see it, though it was here yesterday. You seem to have moved everything. What’s the object – Oh, there it is.” He produced his pocket rule and made careful, censorious measurements. “It’s a bit cramped, but it will have to do. I’ll take it. I must say, I wonder what in God’s name these flimflam objects were meant for? How could any bird fly with wings like ballet girls’ skirts, I’d like to know.”

  “You will take the group?”

  “The group? Good God, no! It’s the dome I want.”

  Mrs Harington had now come in, carrying an opossum muff. Leaving Mr Collins to explain to Mr Grimshaw that the dome could not be sold without its denizens (a routine matter but wrong-headedness sprang eternal in Mr Grimshaw), Mr Edom went to greet her. He was too late. She had gone straight to the screen and had eyes for nothing else. She was always lovely, but never before had he seen her look like this: enfranchised by pleasure at the brilliant paper mosaic.

  “And there’s so much of it!” she exclaimed.

  Her intent gaze travelled from seedsman’s-catalogue carrots to giraffes, copper kettles, smirking blonde children in pinafores, Grace Darling, marrow-fat peas, Indian braves, Goody Two-shoes, the Taj Mahal, dahlias, chest expanders, guardian angels, trophies of grapes, peaches and nectarines, foxhunters, cauliflowers, steam engines, illuminated texts, gorillas, Persian kittens, hip baths, crocodiles, robins, General Gordon, Eno’s Fruit Salts, camellias, pineapples, sewing machines – their irrefutable fortuity firmly pasted on and guarded by the splendid varnish of the period. The travelling gaze reached the edge of the screen, flicked inattentively over the shabby human figure standing by it, went back to the solemn raptures of discovery. Mr Edom stole a congratulatory glance at Mrs Otter – and realised that in another moment she would be giving the screen away.

  “Mrs Harington, do you know Mrs Otter? We are selling the screen for her.”

  “How do you do? I’m afraid I’ve been rude, thinking of nothing but your screen. Please forgive me and tell me about it. What’s this queer thing, next to the lobster?”

  “A mangle, for squeezing wet washing in before you hang it on the line.”

  “What a good idea! And this?”

  “A bonnet.”

  Their voices mingled. Of the two voices, Mrs Otter’s sounded the younger. Presently, they were down on their knees, studying the base of the screen.

  “The bull, Mrs Otter! Look at the bull!”

  Below the bull a hand in the Norfolk rectory had stuck an illuminated text: He shall be called Wonderful.

  “Do you think it was his real name? It’s the sort of name people give bulls. Or was it a coincidence?”

  “I wish I knew. I’ve often wondered about it.” Mrs Otter was stroking the opossum muff.

  Meanwhile Mr Grimshaw, who had paused before a small ivory Annunciation to comment injuriously on the angel’s deficiency in pectoral muscles – how did Mr Collins suppose it would ever get off the ground again? – was slowly making his way out from behind the screen. An engraving caught his eye. As if the bull called Wonderful had materialised, a strangled yell rang through the Galleries.

  “Furnivall’s hoopoe! Furnivall’s hoopoe! I say, Edom, do you know you’ve got a Furnivall’s hoopoe here?”

  “And begonias!” murmured Mrs Harington.

  “Jammed in among all these tomfool foreign cathedrals. It’s a marvel I saw it. Furnivall’s hoopoe, by Wilkins. What a find – and I daresay you hadn’t even noticed it. Do you know, the last Furnivall’s hoopoe in this country was shot in 1852? By a clergyman, needless to say. Pity nobody shoots clergymen.”

  Mr Edom made a deprecatory noise.

  “I tell you, the Church of England has wiped out ninety per cent of the rare birds in this country. All those country parsons, they all had guns, they all fancied themselves as naturalists, they all had six days of the week to do nothing in. So whenever they saw a rare bird, they shot it. Go into any ornithological museum and read the tickets. Shot by the Reverend Mr So-and-So. Shot by the Reverend Mr So-and-So. What a pack!”

  Mrs Otter from her side of the screen took up the challenge. “Fiddlesticks, Mr Grimshaw. Both my husbands were Church of England clergymen and neither of them shot as much as a canary.”

  “Why should they? Canaries are as common as sparrows. They left canaries to their wives and went out to extirpate siskins and choughs and avocets and rare migrants like Furnivall’s hoopoe. It makes my blood boil.”

  “And the stuffed birds in the museum,” retorted Mrs Otter, “those which weren’t shot by clergymen. Do you suppose they all died a natural death?”

  “Madam, you stray from the point. The purpose of an ornithological museum –”

  “Ornithological shrike’s larder,” interposed Mrs Otter.

  “If you are referring to Lanius collurio, I will admit that I hold no brief for the bird, but –”

  “I do. At least shrikes have the decency to eat what they’ve killed, which is more than ornithologists do.”

  While the contest raged from either side of the screen and a customer came in only to say she would be calling later and hurry out, Mrs Harington went on enumerating toads, volcanoes, turkeys, etc. Maddened by this incessant cooing, harassed by Mrs Otter’s agility in straying from the point, Mr Grimshaw broke off and went back to his first purpose. “Edom. I will take the engraving of Furnivall’s hoopoe. How much do you want for it?”

  Mrs Harington sprang to her feet. “If you think you are going to have my screen –”

  “There, there, don’t get excited. Of course he shan’t” and “I understand the screen is already under offer,” said Mrs Otter and Mr Edom, speaking simultaneously.

  “Nothing would induce me to buy it,” said Mr Grimshaw. “All I need is the engraving of Furnivall’s hoopoe. I presume it can be peeled off.”

  “I doubt it. I very much doubt it,” said Mr Edom. “Mid-nineteenth-century paste is very tenacious.”

  “And as it happens, I want Furnivall’s hoopoe too,” Mrs Harington declared. “I’m very fond of hoopoes.”

  Mr Grimshaw’s sardonic laughter behind the screen sounded quite devilish. The screen itself trembled. The tip of a penknife appeared in the centre of Grace Darling.

  “You old beast, you sneaking old beast!” exclaimed Mrs Harington; and with great force and accuracy she hurled the opossum muff over the screen in a line with Grace Darling. There was the sound of a strong man struggling with a mouthful of fur. The penknife made another slash.

  Mr Edom said, “George.”

  Mr Collins stepped forward, and inexpressively, like a force of nature, conveyed Mr Grimshaw into the street.

  Saying, “You were marvellous,” Mrs Harington threw herself into Mrs Otter’s arms.

  “So were you,” replied Mrs Otter. “Avenging and bright. Now shall we all sit down? Do sit down, Mr Collins.”

  Mr Collins sat down and smoothed the muff, which Mr Grimshaw had used as a boxing glove. Mrs Otter advised him to pretend he was in the Salvation Army and give it a good shake. He did so.

  There was a long silence spent in getting over it. Mrs Harington was the first to speak.

  “Now I must buy it, mustn’t I? What’s so extremely grand is that I can. Richard gave me a hundred pounds yesterday, to buy myself a present. Will that be enough?” Before Mrs Otter could get her word in, Mr Edom said, “It would have been handsome, Mrs Harington, but now it’s excessive. The screen is no longer in mint condition. I think it can be repaired, but I can’t in conscience ask more than ninety. George, did you happen to notice what it’s like at the back?”

  “The bird’s all right. He took care of that. But the Tower of London’s a bit knocked about.”

  The two men went off to consider the damage. Mrs Harington moved closer to Mrs Otter. “I wonder if I ought to give him his bird. I’m afraid he was rather set on it.”

  “It would be a kind thing to do – if you could manage it without putting his back
up.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of being kind. I was thinking about being on the safe side. For suppose he decided to steal it? Suppose I woke up one night and heard the magnolia creaking and saw his face glaring in at my bedroom window and it came out on the baby as a port-wine hoopoe.”

  “If I were you, I wouldn’t give it another thought. For one thing, he’s respectable at heart and would never climb up someone else’s magnolia. For another, speaking as an experienced matron, all this talk about birthmarks is bugaboo.”

  Mrs Harington opened her lovely mouth, then closed it again. When the screen had been settled, the two ladies left together, as Mrs Otter was being given a lift home. Mr Edom watched their departure with satisfaction. It had all turned out very nicely: Toby Otter would not go to prison and his mother would be left with a comfortable remainder. Yet it seemed to him that despite this happy ending a sudden cloud had shadowed her, a resignation, a tremor of regret for something precious and irrecoverable, not to do with the screen.

  The Listening Woman

  IT IS COMMON experience how the possessions of one’s childhood vanish: the blue and white mug with D on it, picturing a dog and a duck and a dairymaid, and at the bottom when you have drunk up your milk, a daisy; the ombres chinoises marionettes, with strings attached to their joints – and if you pulled injudiciously, their elbows started up level with their ears, while their faces retained an impassive scornfulness for such mere contortions; the stuffed printed-cotton cat, on whose oval base were four mushroom-coloured underpaws, a triumph of art and realism; the high chair, detestable because it was childish, but with a better side to its character since it raised you to the level whence you could see out of the window; the picture of Queen Victoria, and the watercolour landscape with the moon and the row of silhouetted fir trees that you privately connected with wolves and weren’t easy about; and the carved wooden bear brought from Switzerland, and the red velvet pincushion, and the dolls’ dinner service – all scattered, all gone, broken or left behind in house moving or given away. All gone from your ungrateful memory, too, forgotten for half a century or only brought to mind by something in a display cabinet; having emerged from neglect and oblivion as an antique, rare and costing a great deal of money.

  And then, suddenly, when you are an old woman – though not in your case a rare and valued antique – they flock back; and as they reappear you discover that they are far more yours than you supposed – that you remember everything about them, the crack that ran through the dairymaid, the smell of the bear and of the pin-cushion, the rattle of the dolls’ soup tureen because the lid didn’t quite fit, the mild supportingness of the cat when used as a pillow. They are more faithful than you.

  Mr Collins, the assistant at the Abbey Antique Galleries, did not interrupt this train of thought that a thimble case had aroused in the old lady’s mind. She was a Miss Mainwaring, and said by his employer, Mr Edom, to be knowledgeable – high praise on those controlled lips. Mr Edom did not acclaim this quality often – perhaps once a year or so. She was an aunt of Canon Balsam’s, and visited. During those visits she would come to have a look round the Galleries, and this was what she was doing now. It was the first time Mr Collins had been tête-à-tête with her; but her presence was so contained and her examination so unobtrusive – she was not one of those people who take things up or ask to have things taken down – that to all intents and purposes he might have been alone. Ultimately, she would buy something – if only for manners’ sake. She was one of the old lot.

  Mr Edom was out, doing a valuation. That same morning he had come back from the auction rooms with a tea chest full of pewter – measures, platters, tankards, and tobacco boxes, collected by the late Randolph Fyffe-Randolph, M.F.H. – remarking that a good half of it was Britannia metal but the remainder not too bad. Mr Collins was now peering into the remainder for touch marks. Touch marks are the devil, for pewterers had no conscience and stamped them here, there, and anywhere. He had settled a tankard – William Tomkins – and was thankfully putting it by when he happened to glance inside the lid. There, near the rim, was a different set of touch marks. He checked the second set of marks. If the lys was in fact a sceptre and the mark like B face downward an elephant, the lid was David Oliphant, Anne and George I. A lid might have been wrenched off and replaced by an earlier lid; but the hinge showed no sign of this and the tankard, now that he came to look at it as a piece of pewter and not merely a field for touch marks, seemed a cut above William Tomkins, who supplied mostly pothouse stuff under George III. If William Tomkins had bought the tankard in a job lot – as he might well have done if he was short of stock just then – a begrimed David Oliphant tankard might have been handed to an apprentice for a rub-up, and the apprentice tempted to illicit sporting with the punches. Or was this being imaginative? Mr Collins glanced at Miss Mainwaring and wondered if she was knowledgeable about pewter.

  He saw her halt in front of a carved and gilded oblong frame. She was knowledgeable about frames, anyhow. He saw her look with a tranquil smile at the blackened oil painting on wood. He heard her say, “So here you are.”

  The candlelit woman leaning from the window was no darker than she had always been. If you were acquainted with her, you could distinguish the rim of her linen cap against the hooding shadow behind, and the hand holding the candlestick, and the other hand shielding the flame – the flame whose light shone gently and ruddily on the oval face, colouring the nearer cheek and the tip of the long nose and laying areas of shadow between the cheekbones and the rather small almond-shaped eyes. There she was. No restorer, no flaying turpentined hand, had come between them. Unchanged, she was still watching from her window, unalarmed, patient, and slightly amused; still, after more than half a century, waiting for Lucy Mainwaring to come into her grandfather’s library.

  She had watched several generations of Mainwarings. Grandfather’s grandfather, a squire in Cambridgeshire, had taken her in quittance of a debt, together with a Watteau that turned out to be a Pater. They hung on either side of the fireplace, being much the same size. For a while the Watteau that turned out to be a Pater had been Lucy’s preference: you could see more of it, and the lady had a lap dog. You could see more of it, and that was why after a year or two you saw there wasn’t much in it. The lady sat propped against the balustrade like a doll, and the legs of the gentleman playing the mandolin were not a pair. But the other one, the older you grew and the oftener you looked at it, the more there was to see, to see into, to think about. So it came to be called Lucy’s picture.

  Time sweeps one on, sweeps one into the enthusiasms of one’s adolescence and out of them into fresh enthusiasms. Lucy was sixteen and living for Botticelli when her grandfather died. The house was sold, the property distributed. Aunt Lalage, who lectured about Anglo-Saxons at Girton, went off with the library books, and with the books went the two pictures. Mother resented this. It was such a beautiful old frame; Lalage had no appreciation of antiques and would probably stick a fancy portrait of Beowulf in it – the last thing in the world Grandfather had intended. And whenever she and Lalage met – which was seldom – she would ask, “Have you still got Lucy’s picture?” Lucy saw her picture once or twice on Lalage’s wall. No, noted it: she did not see it. By then she was living for D’Annunzio, and for a young man called Dennis Macnamara, who thought all that sort of thing great rot and died of dysentery in Mesopotamia. Lucy remained a spinster. Aunt Lalage maturely married a don, who was Welsh and made everyone read the Mabinogion. They retired to the land of his fathers and Lucy’s picture was lost in the mists of Snowdonia.

  But here it was.

  Mr Collins had heard her quiet exclamation. Obviously it had not been addressed to him, since here he already was. But when a lady speaks, especially such an old lady, it is manners to get up. He got up. Having got up, he realised that it would not be manners to sit down again. Mr Edom had a particular way of approaching contemplative customers that Mr Collins in his clandestine heart called the F
uneral Gondola. It was inimitable, though no doubt part of it came by practice. Mr Collins practised a few hushed strokes forward, and the old lady turned to him and said, “I recognised it.”

  If she could do that through all those layers of varnish, she was certainly knowledgeable about the Dutch Masters.

  “A Schalcken,” he said.

  She nodded.

  “The frame is unusually fine,” he continued. “It is contemporary. It was probably made for that very picture.”

  “So I have always understood,” said the old lady. “You see, it’s my picture.” She turned back to the Schalcken and smiled at it.

  Poor old thing, she must be a little mad. He must deal with her gently – but he wished Mr Edom would come back.

  When people get up on your account, it is never easy to get them down again. Lucy Mainwaring also wished that Mr Edom would come back, and faithful Ponto, his watchdog, return to those tankards. Instead, here he was, lankly hovering. She would have to say something to him. What a pity, when she had so much to say to the woman leaning out of the window; or rather, so much to ask, for she herself had not very much to tell.

  “Where did Mr Edom get her?”

  Mr Collins did the best he could, which was to pretend he hadn’t heard. For this was appalling – at any rate it was on the brink of becoming appalling. The poor old thing wasn’t going to stop at being a little mad. She was going to work herself up, idée fixe, persecution mania, and all that. How on earth was he to deal gently with an elderly maniac, convinced that the Schalcken was her picture and had been stolen from her? He looked to see if she had an umbrella. She hadn’t; but she could do a lot of execution with that handbag. If force of godless prayer could have fetched Mr Edom back, Mr Edom would have darkened the door at that same instant. Instead, it was a couple inflamed by a television series about adventures in finding unidentified antiques. Mr Collins knew that kind at a glance – perhaps because there, but for the grace of God, he might have been adventuring himself.