To the views from the three long windows Evelyn resolutely shut her eyes; a drawing-room was very well in its place, but on a morning of early September in the country, your place definitely wasn’t in it; but at least dusting, which is probably the most imbecile employment in the world, left your mind free to chew its cud.
There was no doubt that, however quick and well-organized your dusting might be, the drawing-room was too full of knick-knacks. It wasn’t only the pearl and enamel comfit boxes (queer that they’d been handled by a murdered predecessor), but the contributions of a contemporary. For whenever he was at a loose end, or was extra-galled by Nursie and the aunts, Maxwell Dunston retired into an improvised studio which had once been the family coach house, and, unexpectedly to Lady Roundelay, painted endless views of Delaye. For bad pictures they could have been much worse, but their frames all had to be dusted. Cousin Maxwell was too shy to paint nature as she was from the grounds themselves, and his efforts, to ensure privacy and avoid gardener or boy glancing over his shoulder (or the ultimate calamity that an encouraging ejaculation from Jessie, Amy or Sapphy would have been) were from memory. In time, these works of art were so numerous as to threaten to assume a serious aesthetic problem, and Lady Roundelay gave away as many as possible both as personal presents and to the local bazaars and sales of work. Unfortunately, people, faced with the alternatives of hand-painted sachets and lavender ladies with china heads, bought Maxwell’s output, which so frequently came back to Evelyn and Margaret as Christmas presents from their innocent donors, that a proportion of his pictures was always in the house. The marble temple had made three returns already. . . .
Evelyn herself could date a great number of the pictures by the topical fury by which they had been inspired.
There were the marble temple (War Loan’s Conversion to three-and-a-half per cent): the avenue at sunset (first Socialist Government): the kitchen garden in spring (admittance of women to the annexe of The Athenaeum), while Sir Edmund could, of course, go back much earlier, and had once told his wife that the unfinished sunk garden was Mrs. Pankhurst and the militants. Cousin Maxwell’s present canvas — the stables at noon with the peacock in the foreground — was his reaction to Hitler and the Nazis. General Elections were apt to culminate in canvases that, if uncontrolled, would overflow into other rooms as well, and God knew, thought Evelyn Roundelay as she feather-brushed, what the future of the world might bring on to the walls, for there was another acute Crisis on at the moment, and England had made a singularly bad convalescence from the September one a year ago, so that everybody was beginning to say that a war would be an evil lesser than this everlasting trade depression, nerve-wrack and general uncertainty. But she still liked Maxwell, though, she saw, he was far more coherent and concise even in paint when in indignation. At calm, particularly at meal times, he was a little prone to committing, or being committed to, long jokes at which you laughed much too soon. Evelyn and her children, when the latter were of an age proper to the exchange of such confidences, found that they all secretly likened his locutions to mechanical transport. Evelyn herself saw his jokes as a lorry negotiating a hairpin bend: a slow progress . . . a sudden backfire to a forgotten incident that must find its allotted place . . . a creaking advance, and then it came! It came!
Her son, Stacey, agreed about the hairpin bend, but ached to get out and shove behind to accelerate the dénouement, while Margaret sympathized with her old great-cousin’s vocal gears and longed to apply the brake. Angela once said that she saw his conversation as the mills of God, grinding its material remorselessly yet with the maximum of delay.
The Roundelays knew when jokes or reminiscence might be imminent, for then Major Dunston emitted a preliminary noise that resembled a swarm of large mosquitoes, and which seems to be a peculiarity of retired army men.
‘Mmmmmmmm-mmmmm,’ cousin Max would begin, ‘Old Coleman’s — mmmmm — on the ramp again. I remember — ha ha — ha ha — him coming to my father — ha — and saying — hahahahaha — that he — ha ha ha! —’
Sometimes, quite monstrously, Evelyn’s husband would join in and abet Maxwell, and the two old men, flushed, their lean cheeks damp with tears, ha-ha’d and hooted themselves to a standstill. Well . . . they were kinsmen, with shared memories, but it was on these occasions that Evelyn seriously wondered if, after all, she herself was deficient of any sense of humour: on these occasions that, with a queer pang, she suddenly saw the whole tableful, except her children, quite objectively, and asked herself what she was doing in that galley. Who were these people? What combination of circumstances had connived to set her at this board? And then her mind clicked and they all sank back into the subjective, explained, liked, with all they stood for. . . .
Marriage, she pondered, however contented, was probably like that. It was a great tribute to Edmund that it was only when Max was on the stump that she felt the disparity between her own age and her husband’s. Edmund would be sixty-one next winter, and she was now that baffling age, fifty, which roughly meant that you were still young enough for anything and old enough to know better.
People said that your children were a steadying influence. So they might be, socially, but never emotionally. No family, probably, ever saves a woman from susceptibility, because women are born romantic idealists or they couldn’t weather the sidelines of marriage for six weeks. As it was, for women of Evelyn’s type, the early years of marriage, at once more thrilling and repellent than the later; were a constant struggle to preserve the romantic element by calling the grosser side of it by any name but the correct one, a constant tussle to explain away to yourself the incompatible.
And marriage, of course, shut the door of adventure in your face until death, and that meant another struggle not to become even superficially attracted by any other man, lest, out of pure contrariness and knowing you mustn’t succumb, the surface attraction developed into something deeper. And that was a thought so alarming that you went off to the Lacquer Room and darned socks and hemmed handkerchiefs to send to Stacey at school.
In the early years, Evelyn had even made a dreadful little gamble with herself which she involuntarily indulged in at meal times and which her sister Helen would doubtless diagnose as a compulsion neurosis. It concerned the exact and unthinkable moment at which she might suddenly cease to love Edmund. Love was such a delicate thing: a state of mind, largely, so that there seemed no real reason why at any minute it might not vanish like a puff of smoke, leaving you, so to speak, with a perfect mountain of unwanted and unsaleable effects, human and material, on your hands. And so, at table, she would sit internally muttering ‘I shall stop loving Edmund while Musgrave hands the potatoes to aunt Amy . . . no? Still caring for him? Then it will be as Musgrave goes to the sideboard (one — two — three — four)’, or ‘I shall continue to love Edmund unless Maxwell makes a joke or tells a story before we all get up.’
It had been Helen, fluent, wise, as unmarried young women so frequently are, who had anticipated Evelyn’s state of mind and laid it out on the bed for her eldest sister’s inspection during her own first visit to Delaye. Strictly, of course, as an abstraction: brides were apt, Helen knew, to sprout sudden loyalties and reticences which were very tiresome while they lasted and to overcome which they must, within reason, be helped. ‘I’m always sorry’, Helen had remarked, ‘for women like us who, in the last resort, would be kept perfectly happy on kisses. But unfortunately by the time most husbands have left off pestering you with sex, they’ve also left off wanting to kiss you. The business runs together, with them, and it never does, with us. They’re just opportunists, and it doesn’t even work out from the family point of view, because men go on for ever, while women cease to be able to oblige far sooner. Which is about the only way in which that arch-muddler, nature, protects ’em. So nobody is ever being kissed at the right time.’
Over Edmund Roundelay, at least, Helen Calcott was wrong. He had been charmed when he and Evelyn achieved three children, but there was
no getting over the fact that since he and Evelyn had, without discussion, abandoned the purely sex relationship, they had become far better friends, companions and allies. It was, Evelyn supposed, that for the first time they saw each other fairly, as they really were, without all that hypocritic hocus-pocus, those conventional intimacies which could be so dismaying coming at the end of a day which had included a squabble or a serious difference of opinion about the children, or a session depressed and cautionary on his side, vindicatory and statistical on hers, about the household expenses. It was, she had come to suspect, this horrible attempt to reconcile the grandiose with the petty that was the downfall of matrimony. And it was a downfall because, acting on the hocus-pocus plan, this aspect of things was kept from you by even the kindest of mothers until you were married, when it was hoped it was too late to do anything about it. Helen had once said that they managed these things better in the East, where the houris of the harem weren’t expected to combine allurement with the market price of rump steak.
2
Thoughts of her sister led Evelyn Roundelay by placid, dusting stages (did one whang a feather broom out of the window to clean it or just shake it? She had never met the things save in Bath-Comedy novels until she came to Delaye) to Angela, who was at present concluding a visit to her aunts in Hereford Square and acquiring in the process, one passionately hoped, a more robust outlook on life.
Perhaps Evelyn, in her mental catalogue of blessings and contentments, had been a little too sweeping, for what, in Angela, passed with Edmund as just uncertain physical health, Evelyn perceived to go deeper and to rank among those psychologic upsets about which doctors could do little even in these days of sight-restoring and skin grafting. Kathleen, from her letters to her sister Evelyn, evidently thought so too.
‘She’s fearfully reserved, you know, and yet can be extraordinarily perceptive: the kind of girl who doesn’t seem to talk very much but who listens a lot, and without appearing to take one in at all suddenly shows you by some remark that she’s more than followed your character, and has known what you were feeling all the time. Oh, nothing the least rude. All your kids are polite, and we’re all fond of them . . .’
Evidently, perception ran also on the Calcott side of the family, for Kathleen’s letter had put into words what Evelyn felt to be true. It was the Roundelay reserve that stood in the way of progress.
And that brought Evelyn’s thoughts back to her last autumnal garden party, a year ago.
She herself had stood under a tree admiring the effect of the burnt colours of September, the pink sun, the suggestion of mist — even the heathery tones of the tweed suits of her guests as they talked and laughed and exclaimed at the peacock, who had elected to show himself (he was a chancy bird), while Musgrave moved among them all with his tray.
Angela had joined her mother, who made some comment upon the scene, and Angela looked, too, and said slowly, ‘It’s awful . . . it’s not a party at all. It is a scene, like the theatre, you know, when they show you this sort of thing to heighten something bad to come.’
‘My dear!’
‘Only in the theatre the party is usually in the summer, to look gayer and more sunny.’ And then, urgently, ‘You’d better go and speak to that man over there, the nice-looking one.’
‘But — he’s not thinking of going. It’s only half-past four.’ That had apparently confused Angela for the moment. But she said, ‘Yes, but you won’t see him again. Who is he?’
‘Darling, he’s always on tap! Though we haven’t known him many months. You must have just missed each other, with your visits and his work. He’s a great dear, is Charlie Carfrae, and going into the Air Force. He’s on leave from Cranwell — ’
And six months later the name of Flight-Lieutenant Charles Carfrae had appeared among those missing, believed killed, while on a reconnaissance flight over the North Sea.
3
It was at this moment that the attentions of Lady Roundelay to the knick-knacks were shattered by a loud and corncrake screech. She dropped her feather broom, emitted a mild ‘damnation!’ and, raking the room with her eye, found that the peacock had had the temerity to fly up to a very window-ledge, from which he regarded her with a sarcastic bead.
‘Go away! Yes, I know you’re a dream of loveliness, but go away all the same.’
Steps sounded in the hall outside. ‘Oh, Musgrave! Do turn the peacock out. He’s come right in.’
The butler located the trouble and advanced upon it, making sotto voce reproaches and shooing gestures. ‘Get out! Out you go (augh!), it’s very difficult to know what to do, m’lady. Should I get a broom from the housemaid’s cupboard?’
‘Yes, anything. And poke him hard. We really cant have this.’
Musgrave left the room, relieved that her ladyship had not entered into further particulars . . . The peacock waited. When the manservant (one felt he was thinking of Musgrave in that way) had returned with a long broom commonly reserved for dealing with the immense staircase windows, the creature, head tilted and critical to the last, turned tail and, taking his time flumped to the roseborder below. It was enough. He had made a fool of Musgrave. The latter, his occupation gone, apparently stranded without any suitable exit line, triumphed at the eleventh second over the broom and situation, and murmuring ‘Did you ladyship require anything further?’ gently quitted the arena.
CHAPTER XII
1
HAD you made a tour of the household, and, assuming the impossible, that you were upon confidential terms with all of them, from little Sue Privett to the master himself, you would have discovered that the peacock was disregarded by none, and that their feelings about him were widely different and of varying degrees of intensity.
Taking the family first: Sir Edmund, tolerant of all creatures furred or feathered, forgave the bird’s maraudings, his furious advances upon the poultry-yard, spiteful beak wide with ire, because a peacock seemed to go with the general surroundings and pleased the stranger within the gates.
Lady Roundelay took little notice of the creature, only regretting the quality of his voice.
Margaret Roundelay sometimes said ‘Hullo, you’, as she gardened, and wondered if his chronic ill-temper were due to lack of a mate; her brother would have preferred guinea fowls who at least laid and could be later roast, and said so.
The sight of the peacock upon the lawn roused in the old ladies an atavistic urge to get a closer view of him which Miss Amy and Miss Sapphy, back in their rooms, explained to each other coldly on post-cards was no doubt due to Mamma’s love of jewellery, and resulted, while on the lawn slowly drinking him in from every angle in a perfect mutual ignoring, in frequent colds that had to be dosed by Lady Roundelay.
On those occasions when Angela was at home, she of all the family wasted time and breath in attempts to humanize the gorgeous vision. She would save fruit and bread, steal chicken meal and Indian com in efforts to establish some friendly contact, racking her brains for their scant knowledge of what diet peacocks preferred. Sometimes, with bated breath, it seemed to her that a partial success was in sight: then, at worst, it looked as though the bird was merely doubtful. Committed to its taming and confidence, this made Angela unhappy. It was terrible to fail with a helpless thing . . . his character was beside the point: it was, she came to believe, an effect and not a cause. He had been ill-treated? But that was unlikely. Peacocks, even now are still the appurtenances of a certain degree of financial standing and as for ill-treatment, how correct a peacock? You can’t slap him, and being only semi-domesticated, depriving him of food as a punishment is futile. He could fend for himself.
Once, as a last resort, she had saved half of her breakfast egg to tempt him. The cook had boiled it rather hard, that morning. And the bird had seemed to dim before her eyes, his own brilliant sight to cloud (with what?) and he had attacked her for the first time, digging once and deeply into her wrist.
2
With the staff, Musgrave and the peacock headed t
he list with a straightforward mutual detestation, a feeling which was, if possible, intensified by an occasional habit the bird had of making for one of the back doors and promenading the long length of kitchen and scullery, choosing by some unknown sense the time at which the servants were sitting about enjoying their mid-morning meal — for snack it could not be called. At these times, Musgrave, about to retire to the pantry with his own portion, would (he hoped unnoticed by the other servants) accelerate his pace lest the peacock from an apparently large repertoire should find yet another means of causing him to lose his dignity.
Except that the cook was conventionally shocked by the discovery of anything in its wrong place, being of the type that automatically turns any sleeping cat off any chair however shabby and unwanted, there was no active emotion generated between the peacock and herself. At worst they looked upon each other as necessary evils, although she had once exclaimed on finding the bird surveying her struggles with a refractory oven that it almost looked as though that brute enjoyed seeing a person working herself to a shadow.
There are degrees even in ill-humour: so, with the upper and under housemaid, the tension was of a fluctuating quality. On the whole, they all left each other alone, though even the staff had begun to notice that the peacock was distinctly more inimical to those housemaids who had served at Delaye for any period of time than he was to the stopgap village help. . . .
The girls themselves were slightly nervous in his presence (one’s ankles), but would cluster together delightedly to watch the creature’s really superb rages whenever the master was about. This, it was felt, was the real thing. For then, with beak ajar and gleaming eye, that miracle of construction which is a peacock unfolded piece by piece before their gaze.
A Footman for the Peacock Page 12
