Peace Breaks Out

by Angela Thirkell

Sylvia and Anne expressed great pleasure at this good news, and each wondered if David would be there.

  CHAPTER 7

  THE weather had been steadily improving and by Friday all Barsetshire was lying sleepily under July sunshine. About four o’clock in the afternoon the Ford van from Rushwater drew up outside Hatch House with Emmy driving and Macpherson the old agent seated beside her. Mrs. Halliday who was weeding in the front garden came up in her large kangaroo-pocketed apron and asked them in to tea.

  “Love to,” said Emmy, stopping the engine with great violence and climbing out of the van. “Come on, Mr. Macpherson.”

  The agent, who would have retired some years ago had it not been for the war, got out rather reluctantly, for a market-day in Barchester was becoming a burden to him and he longed for his own house and his armchair and his Times. Mrs. Halliday, seeing that he looked tired and guessing that a tea-party might bore him, carried him off to her husband’s study, otherwise known as the Office, and left the two men together.

  Presently Hubback brought tea in to them and Mr. Macpherson accepted a cup.

  “I like a decent-sized cup,” said Mr. Macpherson, looking with approval at the large flowered cup which held a good half pint.

  “So do I,” said Mr. Halliday, who rather unfairly had an even larger cup with a view of the Eddystone Lighthouse on one side and “Rule Britannia” on the other. “I’ve had this cup since I was a child. My old nurse gave it to me. What I can’t stand is these drawing-room cups with rims that turn out and over. You know the sort I mean. The tea runs down both sides of your face if you aren’t careful.”

  There was a peaceful silence while they ate jam sandwiches.

  “Do you know Fielding?” said Mr. Halliday.

  Mr. Macpherson said he did, and Emmy had told him that Anne Fielding was a nice girl.

  “So she is,” said Mr. Halliday. “A bit shy, but very pretty manners. I believe she had that old governess Miss Bunting, who used to be with Lady Emily.”

  “Well I remember her,” said Mr. Macpherson. “She was the only one that David was afraid of. She reminded me of some of the Edinburgh ladies in my young days; as well-educated as you could find, plenty of character and a tongue like a steel spring. She kept it in check, but when she loosed it, heaven help the one it was loosed upon. There are not many like her now. John’s children and Lady Graham’s should have had her, but she was getting too old for the very young ones.”

  “By the way,” said Mr. Halliday, “Anne Fielding knows John’s boys. She met them at Rushwater and again at Southbridge School the other day. She says they are nice boys.”

  “So they are, so they are,” said Mr. Macpherson. “But you know, Halliday, none of Lady Emily’s children or grandchildren come near her, in my opinion, unless it might be David at times. John is a good fellow and I have a great fondness for his wife and their two boys, but there is something wanting. I wouldn’t like to admit that a Leslie could be dull, but I sometimes think it is possible. Now Lady Graham’s children have more of their grandmother and her family in them. Emmy is very like old Lord Pomfret sometimes. Clarissa and Edith have a good deal of Lady Emily’s charm and James, I understand, has already quite a reputation as an eccentric at Eton. It’s early to prophesy about Henry and Robert.”

  “What about Martin?” said Mr. Halliday, amused by the old agent’s frank appraisement of the Leslie family by the standard of Lady Emily.

  “He is a good lad,” said Mr. Macpherson, his voice softening. “His father that was killed in the last war was Lady Emily over again. Martin won’t be that, but he is a good lad and his heart is in Rushwater. I’m glad Emmy is with him, for it’s a lonely life for a young man after the army. If I could see Martin well married I’d be away to Dunbar and lay my bones there with pleasure.”

  “I wouldn’t say that, Macpherson,” said Mr. Halliday, for it was well known that although the agent had spoken nostalgically of his native Scotland for the last forty years, it was not known that he had ever revisited it. “You’ll find as many excuses for staying on at Rushwater as Andrew Fair-service did for not leaving Osbaldistone Hall.”

  Mr. Macpherson laughed.

  “Ay, there’s aye something to saw that I would like to see sawn, or something to maw that I would like to see mawn,” he said, and then the talk turned to Barsetshire politics and the town and county elections, till Macpherson heaved himself out of his chair and said it was high time they were away. Emmy was summoned, Anne and Sylvia said good-bye to Mr. and Mrs. Halliday and they all got into the Ford van.

  This vehicle combined commercial utility with discomfort in the highest degree. In front there were two seats with broken springs and shiny worn leather seats. The back was used for potatoes, calves, sheep, mangolds, spare parts for the tractor, oil drums, coke, wood, parcels of wool and materials for the W.V.S., harness, milk, the Rushwater Women’s Institute competitors in the local Drama League Competition; in fact, as Macpherson bitterly said, everything except a baby elephant. To meet these varied requirements the back seats had been removed and passengers sat on packing cases, dirty tarpaulins, or rolls of chicken wire.

  “I’ll drive,” said Emmy. “You come by me, Mr. Macpherson. You’ll find a couple of cow blankets behind, Sylvia, or there’s Martin’s old mackintosh only there’s some tar on it.”

  Sylvia and Anne preferred to sit on some low wooden crates which were not so obviously dirty as the seats Emmy had offered. With loud grindings and clankings the Ford got under way and carried them down the river valley and along by the little Rushmere Brook, tributary to the Rising, through the village, into the park where they crossed the brook and drew up in the stable yard.

  The stable yard was flooded with sunshine and warmth. The mounting-block on which Anne was perched while the van was being unloaded was for a moment almost uncomfortably hot. White pigeons were purring sleepily on the coach-house roof, and taking lazy flights only to settle again in their former places, while the stable cat stretched along the warm tiles looked tolerantly at them, gave itself a slight wash and brush-up, yawned pinkly and went to sleep again. For the first time since peace had burst upon an apathetic world, Anne felt that peace was a real thing.

  Then Mr. Macpherson got into his own little car and went home, and Emmy led her guests through the kitchen passages, dark and beetle-haunted, to the room where they had tea on their previous visit to Rushwater. Here they found Martin, having a belated tea after his day’s work. Emmy at once began instructing Sylvia, whom she evidently regarded as a promising pupil whose education had been neglected, about the farm routine and the personal tastes and peculiarities of various cows and bulls, to which Sylvia listened with unfeigned interest. Seeing that the cow talk threatened to go on for ever, Martin asked Anne if she would like to see the house and have a walk round the gardens.

  “We don’t use the drawing-room now,” said Martin, opening a door into the long room with its six tall windows opening onto the terrace. “It used to be fun when my grandparents were living here and lots of people came. They had celebrations for me when I was seventeen, and a dance with a band and a big house-party and a cricket match. It was great fun. They would have had a twenty-firster for me, but there was too much war in the air and my grandfather wasn’t well.”

  “I am so sorry,” said Anne, looking with romantic sympathy at the long deserted room, its shining floor uncarpeted, furniture and lustres in holland coverings, pictures sheeted. “Was David there for the party?”

  “Lord, yes,” said Martin. “Gran wouldn’t have enjoyed it without him. He was here off and on quite a lot; though looking back,” he added dispassionately, “it was mostly off, I think. I wonder what the piano is like now.”

  He pulled the cover off the piano and struck a few notes.

  “Not too bad,” he announced. “I think Macpherson has it tuned regularly. David used to play it a bit. Have you ever heard him sing?”

  “No,” said Anne, “I didn’t know he did. Miss Bunting nev
er told me.”

  “I don’t suppose Bunny would have called it singing,” said Martin, re-covering the piano. “But he sang jazz like a nigger.”

  On hearing these romantic words Anne nearly fainted.

  “I’m not musical like David,” said Martin, leading the way through the suite of rooms that opened from the drawing-room. “But I’ve got a good radio-gramophone if you’d care to hear it, and some fairly good records.”

  Anne said she would like that very much and that her friend Robin Dale had some very good records.

  “I like your friend Robin Dale,” said Martin. “I hope he will come here whenever he likes. I’m awfully fond of Rushwater and I mean to make a success of it, but somehow one does miss the army dreadfully.”

  “Are you lonely here?” said Anne, with such obvious and genuine sympathetic interest that Martin was touched.

  “Off and on,” he said. “But there’s always a job to be done, thank heaven.”

  “That’s what Robin says,” said Anne.

  Then they visited the library, an octagonal room where books heavily bound in calf reposed behind locked grilles, and there was a door masked from the inside by sham book-backs, including “The Snakes of Iceland” in twenty volumes, which Martin said was a joke of his grandfather’s.

  “The Leslies are all like that,” he said, leading Anne up a wide slippery oak staircase. “They joke with difficulty.”

  “David doesn’t,” said Anne.

  “David is like Gran,” said Martin. “With the Pomfret men it turns to a kind of sardonicness, but Gran is the most amusing person I have ever met and the kindest.”

  “David is very like her,” said Anne.

  “David is one of the nicest uncles I know,” said Martin. “But not exactly kind. No; one couldn’t say kind. This was Gran’s bedroom and I adored coming to see her in bed in the morning when I was small and she used to draw pictures for me. And this was Aunt Agnes’s room, bless her, the sweet idiot.”

  This irreverent character sketch of an aunt passed almost unperceived by Anne owing to the dreadful words Martin had just uttered. David was not kind. How could Martin be so unkind, so untruthful, as to say that. She felt almost angry with her host as they finished their tour of the house and went into the garden. But she behaved well and talked agreeably, and presently forgot her resentment in her delight at eating hot strawberries from under the nets.

  “And here,” said Martin, “is the Estate Office where I spend a great deal of my life with Macpherson.”

  They walked in and found Emmy and Sylvia deep in Milk Marketing Board papers.

  “I say, Martin,” said Emmy. “What did you do with three-eighty-six stroke bee sea stroke eye tea pea stroke ex queue pea tea sea?”

  At least that was what it sounded like.

  “If you’d looked in the right place you’d have seen it,” said Martin, taking a file from a shelf and opening it on the table. “Here you are.”

  He handed her the Board’s circular 386/BC/ITP/XQPTC.

  “That’s the one I was telling about,” said Emmy to Sylvia, forgetting in her wish to instruct her new helper to thank her cousin Martin.

  Sylvia read the form carefully.

  “What idiots they are,” she said, her finger laid on paragraph five, sub-section eighteen. “That goes bang against the official supplement to BX378 that you showed me.”

  “By Jove,” said Martin, “you’re right.”

  “And what a couple of fools we’ve been,” said Emmy.

  “A triplet if you come to that,” said Martin. “Macpherson didn’t see it either.”

  And then the three enthusiasts began to talk all at once, though Emmy talked the most loudly.

  Anne, suddenly feeling that she was a town dweller, quite uneducated in the eyes of these true country folk, slipped away and wandered about the garden, enjoying the beauty and the peace and the hot afternoon sun (for by the almanac it was only a little after four). In the park the elms and oaks were heavy as thunderclouds in the dark summer foliage against the dark blue, infinitely remote sky. Anne sat down on the terrace, a little tired though delightfully and comfortably so, thinking how heavenly everything was and how happy she would be among such kind people.

  Kind; the very word was like a bell. What was the echo it woke in her mind? Who had used it to her? It was Martin. And he had said it about David. He had said that David was not kind. A surge of hot anger rose in her against Martin. She would have liked to be angry with him, but as he was not there she had to get rid of her anger inside herself as well as she could. Of course Martin did not understand David. Nephews, she thought loftily, though Martin was at least eight years her senior, couldn’t possibly understand uncles. She had seen David quite a lot this summer and he was Miss Bunting’s favourite pupil. Then suddenly, there came into her mind a day when Miss Bunting, discussing the Leslie family in her impersonal way had said, “Mr. Leslie was quite right though, my dear. He always said that David was bone selfish, though he was very fond of him.” At the time she had not paid much attention to the old governess’s remark, but now, and most annoyingly, it came back to her mind. And then, having mostly found that the old governess was right in her judgments, she tried to think over the question fairly. And as she thought, or did her best to think, a horrid conviction came over her that perhaps old Mr. Leslie and Miss Bunting and even Martin were right. Had she ever known David do anything except what he wanted to do? If she were unhappy, or had a difficulty in her life, would David help her? She very much doubted if he would. Robin would, of course. Robin would always be there. And she had a strong instinct that Martin, though she hardly knew him as yet, would do all he could to help anyone in distress or perplexity. But David—. Well, she said stoutly to herself, it didn’t matter if he did not want to help her. She would be gay. And then she could not help laughing at herself, for she knew she could not be gay to order and would always be a little shy of opening her mind to anyone but Robin. Then another echo, quite a horrid one, rushed into her mind. Gay. Why did the word make her feel uncomfortable? And then she remembered how David had said he must have a wife who would be as funny as hell all the time, and all the anger she had felt for Martin suddenly turned against people who could be as funny as hell all the time, and go on being it. Anne knew that she was not funny and she knew that David was not kind, and the warmth went from the sun, the sky was lowering, the trees were menacing, strawberries were tasteless, Rushwater was horrid, and Anne felt desperately homesick and wished she were back at Number Seventeen, safe in her parents’ house.

  The mellow sound of the stable clock striking seven broke in upon these mortifying reflections. Anne got up and walked back to the house and as she went the warmth, the sunlight were there again, the trees in the park handsome and majestic in their July leafage. By great good luck Siddon the housekeeper was shutting the windows of the great disused drawing-room and seeing Anne, took her upstairs.

  “You are in the Tulip dressing-room, miss,” she said, “and there’s a door through into the Tulip bedroom where Miss Halliday is. Bertha will look after you, miss. She was head housemaid here when Mr. Leslie was alive. We had three in those days.”

  Anne thanked the housekeeper and as soon as she had gone cautiously opened the communicating door. In the Tulip room, to her great relief, she found Sylvia who was brushing her golden hair violently, almost standing on her head to do so.

  “Hullo,” said Sylvia, looking at Anne upside down from among her shining mane. “The Jersey may calve while we’re here. I do hope she will.”

  She then stood up, shook her hair back and combed it swiftly into its natural ripples.

  “I wish my hair were like yours,” said Anne, perhaps thinking that with hair like Sylvia’s it might be easier to be funny.

  “Rot,” said Sylvia. “If you have fair hair everyone thinks you are a peroxide. Hurry up.”

  She accompanied Anne back to her room and curled herself up in the window seat while Anne exami
ned the cupboards and drawers and found, to her great relief, that Bertha had put everything where she could find it. Emmy had told them not to change, as there was such a lot to do outside now the evenings were long.

  When they had finished supper, which was a good deal interrupted by Emmy reminding Martin that they must give up all the bacon coupons if they wanted to kill the pig, and Martin saying he mustn’t forget the meeting of the Barsetshire Road Board on Wednesday, and Mr. Macpherson ringing up to ask if the five acre could be mown on Thursday, and telephone messages from Sir Edmund Pridham and Lord Pomfret and Mr. Marling and Mr. Belton on various county matters, they all went onto the terrace and basked on the warm stone in the evening sunlight. Emmy and Sylvia talked about potato spinners, a subject on which Sylvia came out rather strong as Mr. Halliday had had one of the first in that part of the county. Martin, suspecting that Anne felt a little out of it, asked her about the Sale of Work at the Palace and was amused by her comments.

  “I hope you’ll enjoy Rushwater,” he said. “It’s a bit dull now, but I’m very fond of it. When I was away in Africa and Italy I used to think of it on a day like this; all hot and comfortable.”

  “It has a kind of feeling of going on for ever,” said Anne sympathetically.

  “Like the brook,” said Martin, thinking how the level sunlight suited Sylvia’s golden beauty.

  “More like the land where it was always afternoon,” said Anne, half to herself because she was not sure if Martin liked Tennyson or would think she was talking rubbish. But Martin apparently had not heard, so Anne sat quite happily thinking about poetry, because one simply could not help thinking of poetry at Rushwater; and Sylvia and Emmy continued their conversation about potato spinners.

  Siddon came out onto the terrace.

  “It’s Mr. David on the telephone, Mr. Martin,” she said.

  Martin got up, stretched his long legs and went into the house. Emmy and Sylvia drifted from the potato spinner to the prospect of a few partridges later on and the trouble the foxes gave without a proper hunt, and Anne went on feeling that she belonged to a lower civilisation. But she felt this quite comfortably and without shame, for after all life was very pleasant in Barchester and in the Close, and it would not always be afternoon or summer at Rushwater.