Peace Breaks Out

by Angela Thirkell

  “And some of those Hosiers’ teachers brought bottles along too,” said Mr. Brown. “Miss Hampton she said to me, she said, in the bar it was and no later than last Wednesday evening if I remember rightly, she said to me it seemed quite a pity the Hosiers couldn’t stay a bit longer. She said she could have made something of them, she said, if it hadn’t been for the war looking as if it might be over. Ah, it’s a great pity, sir. Another year here and we’d have made something of those teachers. Thank you, sir. Good-night, sir.”

  He ground his old gears and jarred and clanked away.

  Robin Dale walked over to Everard Carter’s house where it was the friendly custom for any resident master to report himself in the Housemaster’s private quarters and kind Mrs. Carter was always delighted to see any member of the school.

  “Come in, Dale,” said Everard Carter. “Have some whiskey.”

  “Good Lord!” said Robin, overcome with surprise.

  “You may well say so,” said Everard. “Miss Hampton gave it to me. A good three-quarters of a bottle left over from her party. And a syphon nearly full. Help yourself.”

  With a heart overflowing with gratitude Robin half filled a glass and sat down.

  Mr. Carter asked if he had had a nice evening. Very nice said Robin.

  “And how was that nice Anne Fielding?” said Mrs. Carter. “She is nineteen now, isn’t she?”

  Robin said just about.

  “‘And you are twenty-seven aren’t you?” said Mrs. Carter, looking up from darning her husband’s socks.

  Robin agreed.

  “I was twenty-one when I married,” said Mrs. Carter, “and Everard was twenty-nine. I shall always remember my wedding, because Lydia, you know, my sister Lydia Merton, trod on the front of her bridesmaid’s dress and a lot of the gathers ripped out and I wished I had a needle and thread as I could have just run it up again in a second.”

  Full of these beautiful and interesting thoughts, her soft eyes beamed upon her husband with great affection and upon the junior classical master with an air of kind calculation, which might have embarrassed anyone who knew her less well. But Robin was by now so used to her matchmaking propensities that he only said eight years was a very good difference between a husband and wife.

  “Lydia is much younger than Noel than that,” said Kate, with a charming pride in her younger sister’s achievements.

  Robin, not to be outdone, said there were thirty years between his father and his mother, who had died when he was very small so that he hardly remembered her.

  Kind Mrs. Carter was so unhappy at the thought of a little boy left motherless that Robin had to hasten to assure her that he was quite happy and had not been in the least blighted, and being of a gentle and confiding nature she believed him and became quite cheerful again. The talk roved over school topics, but all the time Robin knew quite well that Mrs. Carter was thinking of the eight years between herself and her husband and the miraculous coincidence of the eight years between himself and Anne Fielding, and upon this slight foundation building matrimonial castles. He did not mind. Ma Carter, as the small boys affectionately called her, would never make mischief or say a word that could hurt. Yet all the same he rather wished the gap between himself and Anne, or alternatively between Mr. and Mrs. Carter, had been slightly larger or smaller.

  His feelings for Anne, so far as he had troubled to clarify them, were of a very warm and comfortable nature. He had, during the last year or so, seen an agreeable but gawky fledgling take on elegant plumage, spread its wings and try its notes. The results were eminently satisfactory. Anne had at last come out from under her mother’s wing, talked to people, had charming manners, and showed an intelligence which Robin in an elder-brotherly way had encouraged and fostered. If a young schoolmaster thought of marrying he would be very lucky to find such a wife as Anne. On the other hand one still had one’s position to make. Of money he had enough for himself with his salary and what his father allowed him, and he knew that several of the assistant masters at Southbridge and their cheerful competent young wives managed on about the same sum. But Anne was different. To apply the words cheerful and competent to her would be an error in taste. Not that she was sulky and stupid: on the contrary she had a very sweet, even temper and having escaped, owing to poor health in her early teens, the levelling effects of Barchester High School, and having had for a year the great advantage of living at home with a first-rate governess, she was extremely polite and well-read. What kind of life could one offer to such a girl? One of those little cottages in the village where Miss Hampton and Miss Bent lived? A husband coming in a little late for meals, busy with examination papers, perhaps talking about end of term reports in his sleep? The necessity of consorting with the other masters’ wives and talking their talk? Hence, vain deluding joys! Anne should marry a Duke while he, junior classical master at Southbridge School, would remain a one-footed bachelor pedagogue and perhaps give her ducal offspring some coaching in the summer holidays.

  From the foregoing attempt to analyse Mr. Robin Dale’s feelings towards Miss Anne Fielding, it will we hope be clear that not by any stretch of the too willing imagination could it be said that Robin was in love with Anne. Had that glorious passion filled his heart, he would not for a moment have considered his future wife’s happiness or convenience, being fatuously convinced that with HIM her life would at once become a bower of roses. He was very fond of Anne; the fatal word propinquity had been responsible for much; and her attention and deference had been very pleasant, though of late he had been amused and also in a way flattered to see her assert her own opinions against his, for had not her reading, since the death of her excellent governess, Miss Bunting, been largely guided by Mr. Robin Dale.

  Kate Carter went on with her darning. Everard Carter did The Times cross-word, which he always pretended to despise, but could not go to bed with a quiet mind unless he had run down the last quotation, unravelled the final anag., and loudly cursed the appearance of a Surrey bowler which was unfair to people who weren’t keen on County Cricket. Robin drank his whiskey and let his fancy embroider upon the theme of Anne’s children. Yes; he would coach the Marquis and the young lords in Latin and Greek within an inch of their lives for her sake and, in an excess of self-abnegation, determinedly sit below the salt if asked to lunch. And being gay and light-hearted on the whole, he couldn’t help laughing aloud at his own thoughts.

  Kate, whose attention had been entirely absorbed by a thin place on a navy blue sock of Everard’s, one of those places that you are not quite sure whether you will just darn across now so as to catch it in time or risk for another few days’ wear, looked up, softly wrinkling her mild brow as she glanced over her spectacles in Robin’s direction.

  “It’s nothing,” said Robin, who was devoted to Mrs. Carter and knew it was no good trying to explain what he had been thinking. “I just had a funny thought.”

  This explanation appeared to satisfy Kate, who used it as a peg on which to hang several anecdotes, illustrative of the brilliant wit of Master Bobbie Carter, Miss Angela Carter and Master Philip Carter.

  “Blast the fellow,” said Everard, suddenly smashing The Times on the floor. “‘A remnant painfully toed.’ What the devil does he mean?”

  “STUB,” said Robin.

  “Oh,” said Everard ungraciously.

  He picked up The Times, smoothed it, filled in the missing word and said, as he said at least once a week, that it was pure waste of time and he’d never look at the thing again.

  “It isn’t really cleverness,” said Robin. “I looked at Sir Robert’s Times this evening and he had done it.”

  “Those lawyers,” said Everard. “And to think that I read law till I found I couldn’t afford it and became an usher.”

  “I couldn’t have borne it, darling, if you had been a lawyer,” said his devoted wife. “You would always have been eating dinners, and I can feed you much better at home, even with rations and points.”

  The Senior Ho
usemaster looked at his wife with the kind of married look which makes young bachelors either wish they were married or be fervently thankful that they are not. Robin said he would go to bed.

  “One moment, Dale,” said Everard Carter. “Young Leslie in the Upper Fourth and his brother have been asked out on Sunday for the day and to bring a friend. I understand that you are to be the friend. I’m driving over that way on Home Guard business and can drop you all at Rushwater.”

  “Thanks very much, sir,” said Robin, who knew that the Housemaster had made this offer with his artificial foot in mind, and had probably invented the Home Guard business, “but there’s quite a good train that gets us to Rushwater about three.”

  “If a boy had asked a master to join him in a Sunday outing in my young days,” said Everard, “he would have been put down as a softy, or expelled. How alarming the young are. You can get a train back after tea from Rushwater to South-bridge. It’s about the only train on that line that is any help to anyone.”

  Kate, who could not bear unkindness, said there was a very good 6.53 train before the war from Southbridge for people who wanted to get the 7.33 to London at Barchester Central; but her husband, as a rule ready to agree with all she said, said it was a heathen hour, and then they all went to bed.

  CHAPTER 3

  WHEN Lady Graham had made a promise she always kept it. Her vague and charming way of inviting people for dinner the same evening or lunch seven weeks ahead was backed by a good memory, a real wish to be kind, and the collaboration of her mother’s secretary, Miss Merriman, whose life had been devoted to sheltering the upper classes.

  “Both those nice young people of Mrs. Halliday’s are coming with us on Sunday, mamma,” she said to Lady Emily at lunch on the Saturday after the Deanery tea-party, “and Lady Fielding’s girl. So that is very nice and darling David will drive us all to Rushwater.”

  “That,” said Lady Emily Leslie, “will be five.”

  “Six, mamma,” said Lady Graham.

  “The Hallidays, whom you must tell me everything about, make two,” said Lady Emily, laying a spoon and a fork side by side. “The Fielding girl is three—”

  “Only one, mamma,” said Agnes.

  “Three,” said Lady Emily firmly, adding a saltspoon to her heap, “and you and I make five.”

  In proof of which she put two fragments of toast by the silver and flashed a smile upon the company.

  “And what about me, mamma?” said David. “After all I’m going to drive, and those lovely days are over when even a chauffeur didn’t count as a human being. Six.”

  To the joy of Lady Graham’s younger children who worshipped Uncle David with blind devotion, he took a matchbox from his pocket, struck a match, put it into his mouth where it at once expired, and laid the match with the fork, spoons and toast, to a chorus of “Do it again, Uncle David” from his young nephew and nieces.

  “I can’t,” said David. “Matches, as your mother is just about to observe, are worth their weight in gold.”

  Clarissa remarked in a rather priggish way that people ought to use lighters.

  “True, my love,” said David. “But I can’t put a lighter into my mouth so I have to use matches.”

  “And Merry,” said Lady Emily. “Seven. Will your car take us all, David? I will tell you how we will manage it. You will drive of course and the Hallidays, who sound rather large, can sit with you. Then Agnes and Merry can go behind with me and we can fit the Fielding girl in somewhere, because she is sure to be small.”

  “Why mamma?” said David.

  “She must be small,” said Lady Emily. “Anne Fielding is a small name.”

  “You may be right, darling,” said David, “or she may be a great wopping girl like Ursule. Do you remember that French girl, mamma, whose people took the Vicarage the summer John got engaged to Mary? How that girl did eat. But as I have never seen Miss Fielding I can’t tell.”

  “But you did see her, David,” said Agnes. “At Mrs. Crawley’s tea-party just when we were going.”

  “Bless your heart, one sees so many girls,” said David.

  Miss Merriman, who knew exactly when she was really needed and had a gift of withdrawing herself at the right moment, and in any case had had no intention of joining the party, then said she was not coming.

  “You are the only woman I know, Merry,” said David admiringly, “who can say No without giving reasons. They all say they have letters to write, or are going to have their hair washed.”

  “Then,” said Lady Emily, dropping as she rose from the table her bag, her scarf and an engagement book with a number of loose papers in it, “that is settled. At least,” she added, pausing in the doorway so that no one could get out and the old parlourmaid who was rather crossly waiting to clear the table could not get in, “there is still Anne Fielding.”

  “She looked a charming girl,” said Agnes, “though it was so dark in the Deanery hall that I really did not see her. Come into the drawing-room, mamma, and Clarissa will bring your scarf and everything else.”

  “I will just have my scarf first,” said Lady Emily. “Bring it here, Clarissa.”

  Clarissa, the exquisitely tidy, had collected the scarf and presented it, neatly folded, to her grandmother. Lady Emily, propping herself and her stick in the doorway so that no one could go in or out, took the scarf and began to drape it about her head.

  “What we must really settle,” she said, “is how Anne is to get here on Sunday.”

  “She is coming with the Hallidays, mamma,” said Agnes, with unruffled placidity.

  “That is all very well,” said Lady Emily judicially. “But how will she get back to Barchester? David, you must drive her home in your car.”

  “No, my love,” said David. “What’s Halliday to me, or, I may add, me to Halliday, that I should cart their female friends all over the county? And you know, mamma, that works of supererogation are strictly forbidden in the Thirty-Nine Articles.”

  Undaunted by David’s very unfair way of bringing up the Church of England to support his already rock-like determination not to put himself out in any way for anybody, Lady Emily sketched a masterly piece of strategy by which David was to drive her to Barchester for the morning service, take her to Number Seventeen so that she might satisfy her lively curiosity as to what Sir Robert and Lady Fielding were like, collect Anne, drive her to Hatch House, collect George and Sylvia Halliday and bring all three to Holdings for lunch. From this she was beginning to adumbrate a plan by which David should, after the Rushwater expedition, drive herself and Anne to Pomfret Towers that she might there do any meddling that occurred to her fertile imagination, thence to Barchester, and so home, when Miss Merriman, considering that her beloved but exasperating employer had had quite enough rope, suddenly exerted her secret magic of authority and without apparent effort transferred her ladyship with all her portable property to the drawing-room, where she handed her over to her old French maid for her afternoon rest.

  “Eef miladi does not rest, il n’y a pas de repos pour moi, ni pour personne,” said Conque, who combined devotion, incompetence and rudeness to a degree of which only our Gallic neighbours are capable, and hustled her ladyship off to lie down.

  David, suddenly a prey to one of the waves of affectionate boredom that his adored mother and his much-loved sister—and indeed all his friends—were apt to induce in him, thought of getting his car out. But even as he thought of it he realised that he had no particular wish to go anywhere or see anybody. There were lots of people he would have liked vaguely to see if he could suddenly materialise in their drawing-room and as quickly dematerialise if not amused. His cousins the Pomfrets, that attractive Mrs. Brandon at Pomfret Madrigal, the Warings at Beliers, that handsome Mrs. Merton at Northbridge, the Marlings, so the list went on. But in each possible port of call his spoilt fastidious mind found a flaw. Sally and Gillie were so overweighted by County work and children, Lavinia Brandon’s charming readiness to be made eyes at seemed out of
date, Beliers had such an atmosphere of old age, Mrs. Merton was great fun but he didn’t feel like her, at Marling the old people were a bit heavy in hand and his cousin Lucy was too robust: and as for his cousin Lettice, now Mrs. Barclay in a happy second marriage, he couldn’t imagine why he had ever imagined he was in love with her. Everywhere he looked it was the same thing. Old people conscientiously doing their duty in a world they didn’t understand, a world which did not want them; middle-aged people losing their charm under the endless strain of sons and daughters in danger, public duties, aged and failing parents, and growing discomfort and privation at home, or if they did keep their charm doing so with a plodding determination which ruined everything; young people mostly being so good and doing what they had to do, emerging for leaves in which there was so little fun to be got that they had almost stopped trying to get it. And anyway, not too amusing, thought David, for a girl to get into an evening frock when her hands need at least a month’s rest and attention and every restaurant and dancing place is already crammed. Everything in fact was beastly for everybody, except for people like Frances Hervey who got a frightful kick out of being important and ordering other people about, or old Dame Monica Hopkinson who had been a queen-policewoman in the last war and still went about in chauffeur’s gaiters and lunched with old generals at the Carlton Grill every day.

  With such moody thoughts, though we cannot exactly call them exaggerated, David walked down to the village for want of anything better to do. Here he found Mr. Scatcherd seated on his camp stool, his back to the low churchyard wall, busily sketching. David thought poorly of Mr. Scatcherd’s work and did not in the least care what he was drawing, but the demon of idle boredom impelled him to ask Mr. Scatcherd what was the subject of his pencil to-day. It was pretty obvious that any artist sitting exactly opposite the Mellings Arms was probably drawing it, but David’s worse self grasped at the opportunity for a little facile social success, and Mr. Scatcherd was enchanted.