The Daughters of Mrs Peacock

by Gerald Bullet

  ‘But aren’t you forgetting, Mama,’ said Catherine, ‘that I am turned twenty?’

  ‘I do not propose to argue, Catherine,’ said Mrs Peacock, resorting to her favourite formula. ‘You have grieved me very much.’

  It was clearly her last word. The meal proceeded in silence. Julia shot an anxious glance at Catherine, waiting for the words of contrition that did not come. Catherine, feeling like a whipped child and angry with herself for so feeling, swallowed the food with difficulty. She wanted nothing so much as to leave the table and hide herself away but was determined to resist the impulse. Sarah, shocked at last into gravity, kept her eyes on her plate.

  Yet the sequel, as they all knew, was not in doubt. If dear Mama was grieved, or claimed to be so, there was only one thing to be done. Sooner or later, and the sooner the better, the ritual of apology must be performed, that the cloud might be lifted and all breathe freely again. Sarah knew, and Julia knew, that it was only a question of waiting until Catherine, her resentment subsiding, her lifelong affection reasserting itself, could for all their sakes bring herself to the point of surrender. This she did, later in the afternoon, choosing a moment when her mother was alone. She said she was sorry, shed a few tears, and received a kiss of forgiveness. Peace and happiness were restored: the family was united again.

  A sweet child though wilful, thought Mrs Peacock, with a backward glance at her own spirited girlhood. As for Catherine, though in her heart she did not repent, and thought her mother unreasonable, she bore no grudge. If Mama was like that, knowing herself to be always in the right, that was how she was made, and the harmless fancy must be humoured. It did not prevent her being Mama—the best in the world.

  Chapter Two

  A Proposal

  Before the week was out Mr Peacock, Edmund, Papa, was in circulation again. He was a restive patient and could suffer his wife’s coddling no longer. Dr Witherby, whose appearance suggested an amiable eagle in spectacles, solemnly pronounced him to be out of danger, but taking his cue from Mrs Peacock he advised him to have a few days more rest at home, to get his legs back and build up his strength before braving the east wind again, which, it appeared, was for some unexplained reason more to be feared in the neighbourhood of Newtonbury than here at Lutterfield.

  ‘Nonsense, Witherby!’ said Edmund Peacock. ‘I was never in danger. You and my wife are in a conspiracy to make an old woman of me. As for the wind, it’s shifted, or I’m a Dutchman. And anyhow there’s not enough of it to fill a paper bag.’

  The advice, however, was not unwelcome: in no great hurry to get back to the office he was glad of the excuse to spend Saturday, as well as much of Sunday, pottering about the farm in breeches and gaiters and an old tweed jacket. So clad, so occupied, he felt more himself than in his sleek town-going gear, interviewing clients, drawing up wills, executing conveyances, and dissuading hotheads from litigation. All those activities represented not only another life but another personality. This was recognized by the whole family: it was one of his favourite jokes, of which they never wearied. ‘You’re a shameless woman, Emily,’ he would say. ‘You have two husbands.’ And Emily, pretending to be shocked, would answer complacently: ‘What a way to talk, and in front of the girls too!’ He did in fact sometimes shock her with his more audacious pleasantries, but she enjoyed the sensation and was perhaps obscurely gratified that though he would often defer to her judgment, more especially in matters that did not greatly concern him, he was a genially masterful person with a will of his own. His visible presence in the house—a large vigorous man, with long chestnut-brown moustaches and copious side-whiskers adorning a broad red face—made a subtly different woman of her, younger, more placid, a wife as well as a mother. For that reason alone, had there been no other, his daughters would have adored him. The family atmosphere was never so serene as when Papa was at home.

  Sunday morning was dedicated to churchgoing. The Peacocks, a full muster, occupied the family pew, the maids, following at a discreet distance, disposing themselves elsewhere, near enough to show that they belonged but not so near as to seem presuming. Cook, who was regrettably but perhaps conveniently a Dissenter, deferred her devotions till the evening, for the hot Sunday dinner at one o’clock—roast sirloin of beef with two vegetables, followed by a fruit tart—was an institution only one degree less sacred than divine service itself: it was an indispensable part of Sunday observance. In the evening, after Evensong, they would settle down to enjoy the lees of the day in whatever fashion their collective fancy suggested: desultory talk, reading aloud, or music. In earlier years, when the children were little, the Bible and Bunyan had been almost the only permitted Sunday reading, but recently Mr Tennyson’s In Memoriam had been added to the list. The music, too, had to be appropriate to the day, Handel or Mendelssohn in their more solemn moods—though with Handel, indeed, a certain liveliness was always apt to break in.

  Sometimes Mrs Peacock was prevailed on to sing, to her own accompaniment, Oh rest in the Lord. She did so this evening, and Edmund, who never failed to be surprised by her rich contralto, so unexpectedly different from her speaking voice, was transported in memory to the occasion of his first hearing it, twenty-six years ago, in her mother’s house. Here was the same yellow-keyed rosewood piano, the same girl seated at it, and the same alien deep voice suddenly proceeding from her—the voice, it seemed, of another and secret woman, mature, alluring, intimidating. It was that that had startled the young man into first noticing her. He had been by no means sure that he enjoyed her singing, but it excited him, it hinted at unimaginable possibilities, it was the sign of a mystery that must, at whatever risk, be explored.

  And now she was a woman of forty-six, and the mother of his three daughters.

  ‘Thank you, my dear,’ he said, as she left the piano. ‘That was wonderful.’ Meeting her oddly shy glance he grinned. ‘I never thought to be married to a trombone.’

  ‘Really, Edmund! You do say the oddest things!’

  ‘Now, what’s next?’ said Edmund. ‘Come along, Catherine.’ His eyebrows shot up. He pulled excitedly at his moustaches. ‘Give us the Harmonious Blacksmith.’

  ‘But is it suitable, Papa?’ asked Sarah mischievously. ‘Is it sacred enough?’

  ‘All good music is sacred, my love,’ he answered with a wink.

  ‘And is all sacred music good, Papa?’

  ‘As to that, you must ask your mother.’ Conscious that she was in danger of being teased by these two, Mrs Peacock refused to be drawn. ‘Perhaps,’ her husband continued, ‘Julia has some ideas on the subject?’

  ‘I do not see,’ said Julia, ‘how music that is written to good words, words from the Scriptures, can be anything but good. Am I not right, Mama?’

  ‘Yes, dear. Perfectly right. Your father knows that quite well. He was only joking, you know. He is feeling much stronger this evening,’ she added with an indulgent smile, ‘and that makes him inclined to be a little naughty.’

  ‘Naughty on Sunday!’ said Sarah. ‘Oh, Papa!’

  The Harmonious Blacksmith was a favourite with Mr Peacock. He liked it less for its musical than for its descriptive quality, and during Catherine’s performance kept up a running commentary, by whispered word and animated gesture calling attention to this and that illustrative feature that he fancied he detected—the sound of the forge, the strokes of the blacksmith’s hammer—and to the simple homely theme persisting through all the variations. Mrs Peacock uttered no protest, for Handel, even in his lighter moods, was still Handel, invested with an aura of sanctity by virtue of his Messiah. Before Catherine had reached the last bars, her father was hovering by the piano, fingering the music sheets on its lid and ready to be persuaded to oblige the company with one of his songs. Everyone applauded the prospect, and with scarcely an interval Catherine addressed herself to the joyous task of accompanying him. Even the most sanctimonious pieces acquired a robust heartiness, a resolute jollity, in his rendering, so that smiles and laughter, which he did not
in the least resent, were apt to mingle with the eventual applause. He enjoyed singing, it let something out of him, gave him a sense of fulfilment; and his family, even the more critical among them, enjoyed his enjoyment.

  They went to bed happy, all five. Next morning Mr Peacock got into urban uniform and resumed his career as a solicitor. The girls, as usual, between breakfast and luncheon did as their mother ordained, each also as usual loyally playing up to her pretence—or was it an illusion?—that they were perfectly free agents, suffering no shadow of compulsion. And in the afternoon Mr Pardew paid them a call.

  He was shown into the ‘garden room’, so called to distinguish it from the other and larger drawing-room, to which it was a comparatively recent supplement.

  Designed in an earlier century as a farmhouse, not as a gentleman’s residence, the general layout of Peacock Place had features that would have discontented a prouder, less sensible man than Edmund: he, because it had been his father’s and grandfather’s before him, found no fault with it. The house faced west, fronting the prevailing wind, the slanting rain, the glory of sunset. At the north end, flanking the house, was the farmyard, accessible equally from road and from dairy; and beyond the yard, to the east, lay the orchard and all that now remained to the Peacocks of the once-extensive farmlands. The garden, with its lawns and shrubberies, its winding paths and green arbours, its distant spinney of tall trees and its frequent hedges that by dividing it into many rooms, as it were, made it full of happy surprises, was situated not at the back of the house but on the south side, shut off from the street by a mellow brick wall. The windows of the drawing-room, which was sometimes called the music room out of compliment to the piano, looked to the east, and so were flooded with sunshine only in the mornings, when the room was unoccupied; and the adjacent garden room, which Mr Peacock had supplied with two wide windows and a double glass-panelled door giving on to the nearer lawn, represented his retort to that inconvenient circumstance. The alterations had been planned primarily with a view to his wife’s comfort, that she might enjoy the benefit of sunshine from the southern sky whenever that commodity was available; but in practice she used the room less often than did her younger daughters, and it was to Sarah and Catherine that Mr Pardew made his bow on this Monday afternoon.

  Catherine, curled up in an easy chair with a book in her lap, raised her head reluctantly and looked at the intruder with dazed eyes, hardly recognizing him, unable or unwilling to rally her romance-enchanted wits. Sarah, with a nicer sense of the proprieties, put down her sewing and got up.

  ‘Mr Pardew! How nice!’

  ‘Good afternoon, Miss Sarah.’ He bowed over her extended hand. ‘Good afternoon, Miss Catherine. Pray don’t let me disturb you.’ But Catherine, blushing for her bad manners, was now on her feet, ready for the ceremonial handshake. ‘Good afternoon,’ he said again. ‘And what a good afternoon it is!’ He smiled wistfully, as at some secret solemn joke. ‘One only wishes one deserved it.’

  ‘Do sit down, won’t you?’ said Sarah. ‘I don’t know where my mother is. I’ll go and find her, if you’ll excuse me.’

  ‘No, no. Please not. Anything but. Delighted though I should be,’ he added hastily, ‘I would not dream of troubling her.’

  ‘I fancy she may be resting,’ said Catherine, longing to get back to her book and knowing that Mama, if she appeared, would insist on his prolonging the visit and staying to tea.

  ‘Quite so. Quite so. I hope she is in good health, your dear mother? Splendid. Splendid. I need not ask whether you are,’ he said, with a glance at Catherine and a longer glance at Sarah. ‘Your looks, if I may say so, proclaim it.’

  He punctuated his remarks with a series of little nervous laughs. Breaking the awkward silence that followed, Sarah said:

  ‘Is this a pastoral visit, Mr Pardew, or merely a social call?’

  ‘The latter, my dear Miss Sarah. Most emphatically the latter.’ He laughed again, more happily, recognizing the banter. ‘I’m sure you’re in no need of my professional services.’

  ‘That,’ retorted Sarah, ‘is a very rash statement. Really, Mr Pardew, I’m surprised at you. I cannot answer for my little sister,’ she continued with mock-gravity, provoking a grimace from Catherine, ‘but as for myself, I assure you I sometimes have thoughts that would surprise you.’

  ‘That I can well believe,’ said Mr Pardew gallantly. ‘And how privileged I should be if you would share them with me.’ With a sudden change of tone, his smile giving place to a look of ingenuous admiration, ‘I know you are exceedingly clever,’ he said, ‘as well as …’ Seeking for a word less daring than the one he had in mind, he failed to find it, so left the sentence unfinished.

  Mr Pardew was a tall young man, stalwart, athletic, with well-modelled regular features, a head of vigorous fair hair, and an unblemished complexion. The startling cleanliness of his appearance, a cleanliness that was somehow moral as well as physical, suggested to Sarah a diet of cold baths and carbolic soap. But for his bovine eyes, and an excess of earnestness in his manner, he would have been—and by many, indeed, was—accounted handsome. Sarah, though she laughed at him, was more kindly disposed towards him than she would have admitted. Her sense of his absurdity, which often amused but sometimes exasperated her, was at war with her recognition of his masculine attractions. The exasperation was perhaps significant, though not to her. She felt it to be a wicked waste that good looks should have been bestowed on a young man whom it was impossible to take seriously.

  ‘You are very polite,’ said Sarah, helping him out, ‘though I’m not sure you mean it as a compliment.’ She wished he would go, and to prevent his perceiving the wish went on talking. ‘Have you brought us some nice tit-bits of gossip from the village? It must be so interesting to be a clergyman and have everyone tell you their secrets. But of course you wouldn’t tell us, it wouldn’t be proper. Your lips are sealed, like my father’s. And we shouldn’t listen if you did, should we, Kitty?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Catherine. ‘We should stop our ears and run from the room.’

  Studying their grave faces, ‘I rather think you’re making fun of me,’ said Mr Pardew, with a puzzled, inquiring smile. ‘I hope so, I’m sure,’ he went on earnestly. ‘Because, you know, we don’t normally hear confessions in our Anglican Communion. That is a Roman practice.’

  If his simplicity was sometimes embarrassing, his good nature was disarming. Sarah repented of her well-meant frivolity, and finding nothing unfrivolous to say merely murmured assent and waited, hoping that some more fruitful subject would turn up. Catherine’s eyes, in the silence that followed, strayed back to her book, furtively desirous. She contrived to read a line or two in a detached manner, as if by accident, while still maintaining an attitude of polite attention.

  Mr Pardew cleared his throat. He shifted a little in his chair. Meeting Sarah’s glance of inquiry he smiled painfully and remarked, for the second time, on the beauty of the day.

  ‘It’s almost,’ he said, ‘a shame to be indoors, don’t you think, Miss Sarah?’

  ‘Would you like to take a turn in the garden?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘Indeed yes. I should enjoy that.’ He rose eagerly and stood hovering at Sarah’s elbow. ‘I wondered, I half-wondered, Miss Sarah, if I might venture to propose a game of croquet?’

  ‘Of course, if you like,’ said Sarah, dissembling her surprise.

  ‘But perhaps it is a little cold for you?’ he said, on an anxious afterthought.

  ‘Not in the least. It’s quite warm.’ She moved towards the glass doors, and he darted ahead and flung them open for her. ‘The grass may be a little damp,’ she said, ‘but that won’t hurt us.’ She stepped out, spreading her hands wide as if to catch the sunshine. ‘Coming, Kitty?’

  Before Catherine could respond, which she was in no hurry to do, he saved her the trouble by saying: ‘Miss Catherine, I fancy, is inseparable from her book. What book is it, Miss Catherine, if I may ask?’ She exhibited the volume. ‘A
novel? I see.’

  ‘Do you disapprove?’ said Catherine.

  ‘Not necessarily. By no means. There are novels and novels.’

  ‘Which is this, I wonder?’ she murmured, but expected no answer, seeing with a sigh of contentment that he was gone.

  Sarah, though surprised at his boldness, was pleased with Mr Pardew for suggesting croquet, a pastime which, though now played annually at Wimbledon and well established in popular favour, had still not entirely lost the charm of novelty, the distinction of being ‘modern’. She could still vividly remember the joyous excitement, some years ago, of lifting the lid of a long box delivered by carrier from Newtonbury and seeing for the first time the strange, beautiful implements. She remembered little Catherine’s squeals of delight, dear Papa’s boyish enthusiasm, and all the solemn business of measuring and marking the lawn. Even now, she not only enjoyed playing the game, but took a childlike sensuous delight in everything associated with it: the brightly painted wooden balls, blue, red, black, yellow; the long-handled mallets, so good to grip, so glorious to swing; the two upstanding varnished pegs or posts; the six white-enamelled hoops; and the four coloured clips which, shifted, from hoop to hoop, recorded the progress of the match. All these, today, had to be fetched from a garden shed and carried to the sunk lawn just beyond sight of the garden room window, a rectangle of level sward, newly mown, recently rained upon, surrounded on all four sides by a smooth grass bank and approached by three stone steps. It was a green and private place, sheltered from the April breezes, open only to the bright sky.