I was wedged under the platform and not unhappily situated, for there was an exit flap within a few yards of me and a current of air kept the people on the platform awake throughout the long-winded address. The people farther back, however, began to get restive as Major Fayne swam through a sea of Socialist disasters toward the global trouble spot in Manchuria, and thence to the value of the pound. He was about to inveigh against Snowden’s monetary policy when there was a ripple of laughter at the back of the tent, followed by a volley of startled exclamations and then two individual screams, as loud and piercing as those of a radio heroine.
Major Fayne stopped speaking but remained standing, his overworked jaws agape, his slightly poppy eyes fixed on the scene of mounting confusion at the extreme end of the long marquee. Then Mrs. Gayelorde-Sutton jumped up and shouted something and after that there was a sudden scramble on the part of the platform party to climb down and head for the exit.
As they all tried to do this in unison, and because the trestle platform was high and there was only a single pair of steps, the result was a confused struggle just above my head. A row of potted hydrangeas broke away from their fastenings and fell onto the press table, scattering mold over myself and the County Press reporter and adding to the general tumult. Mrs. Gayelorde-Sutton rushed past me as I was picking myself up and I saw that her face was white with rage.
I hurried after her toward the flap but the platform contingent had now reached level ground and was trying to charge the exit in a body.
Major Fayne fell headlong over the taut guy rope and somebody, with more loyalty than sense, stooped to pick him up, so that others fell and I was turned back into the rapidly emptying body of the marquee and the heart of a scene of wildest confusion. It was like an illustration from an improbable book of Irish country life. Alice’s litter was advancing rapidly up the narrow aisle between the close-packed seats; a yard or so behind, grunting and snorting like a mad elephant, came Alice herself. Behind Alice dodged two of the Heronslea estate workers, armed with goads, both screaming directions at one another and obviously out of touch with a deteriorating situation.
The constituents, mad with fear, were scrambling out of the marquee in every direction, the majority diving under side curtains, others battling their way to the open flap behind Alice’s cautious pursuers. As I watched, aghast at the shambles, the marquee emptied like a tube and Alice followed her squealing litter out through the platform exit.
I was too shocked to see the funny side of the incident and after gathering up my notebook I went into the open and pushed through the chattering, gesticulating Mayfayrers to the coach house. Inside, weeping with laughter, was Diana, and I knew at once that she had been responsible for the appearance of Alice at the meeting.
It was some minutes before she could speak.
“Oh Lord! Oh Heaven! Did you see it? Were you there? Did you see the laughter turn to terror the minute Alice showed up in pursuit of the babies?”
I had to laugh too, but the reflection of what might have resulted from such a reckless practical joke sobered me almost at once.
“It was a crazy thing to do, Diana,” I protested. “Supposing she’d savaged someone? Supposing there had been a real panic and people had got trampled?” Then my journalistic curiosity prompted me. “How on earth did you manage it, anyway, and how do you know you won’t get found out? Your mother would half kill you for this, it’ll make her a laughingstock all over the county!”
“If I tell will you swear to keep mum—for ever and ever?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Even though you’re a reporter?”
“You don’t imagine I’d sneak on you, do you?”
She stopped laughing then and looked at me with her teasing, half-mocking expression, eyes half-closed, head inclined to one side.
“Dear Jan,” she murmured, “it’s very flattering to have a newshawk like you put love before duty.” Then, seeing my face cloud, as it usually did when she made fun of me, she put both hands on my shoulders, kissed me on the cheek and told me how she had waited until everyone except the Heronslea staff was inside the tent and then let her horse Sioux out of the paddock to graze among the stalls.
“I knew anyone who was around would try to catch Sioux before she bumped into anything, and you know how difficult she is to halter if I’m not about. Well, it worked just as I knew it would. They all went after Sioux, who cantered around behind the house, and when they were out of the way I drove Alice’s litter toward some meal I had scattered outside the marquee. When they were nicely clustered there I let Alice out, knowing that she’d make straight for them and that some of them would trot into the tent. I didn’t bargain for such a complete uproar, though! The people at the back were ever so glad to see the piglets, because they were so bored, but they all lost their heads when Alice appeared. Don’t worry, Jan,” she added, seeing that I still looked harassed, “I let her loose for a bit last night and the estate hands think the pen was insecure. I won’t get into trouble over it.”
“They might!” I grumbled, remembering Mrs. Gayelorde-Sutton’s savage expression during the scramble for the exit.
“Oh no,” she said calmly, opening a basket and offering me savory pies and sandwiches, “I thought of that! I warned Mummy last night that Johnson, the pigman, thought that Alice ought to go back to her sty on the day but she pooh-poohed the idea and told me to tell Johnson to leave Alice where she was. She always knows all the answers, you see, and this might help her to learn to listen to someone else for a change! Here, have some pâté, it’s good, and open this bottle of hock I pinched for us. I brought a corkscrew.”
I took the bottle and drew the cork, my misgivings less than half resolved by her assurances.
“All the same, I bet there’ll be repercussions,” I said gloomily, and, as always where Diana’s family was concerned, my pessimism was justified. Mrs. Gayelorde-Sutton’s counteroffensive opened the following Saturday, and I narrowly missed becoming its first victim.
Uncle Reuben always stayed in the office on Saturday morning, mainly for the purpose of hearing complaints. We could always rely on a steady stream of irate readers each Saturday, people whose names had been omitted or misspelled in a sale-of-work notice, or the principal mourners I have already mentioned, whose claims to precedence had been jumped by mere in-laws in a funeral report. Uncle Reuben never lost his temper with these idiots and nearly all of them were soothed by his bland explanations. I was engaged in plotting next week’s tide table when the door flew open and in stormed Mrs. Gayelorde-Sutton, with her big-headed husband in silent tow and everything about them promising a brisk engagement. She flourished a copy of our paper under my nose but I wasn’t unduly worried by that, because we had carried a straight report of the incident and there was nothing in it that had not appeared in the County Press on the previous day. Uncle Reuben offered her a chair but she refused it, demanding to know the identity of the reporter who claimed to have witnessed the appearance of Alice into the marquee. When Uncle Reuben gravely indicated me she whipped a small newspaper cutting from her handbag and pushed this under my nose.
“Then Ai suppose Ai have yew to thank for this!” she shrilled.
Before I could protest, Uncle Reuben relieved her of the cutting and glanced at it briefly. It was a piece written by the columnist of a London Socialist weekly, in which the writer had made use of the advantages to be derived from the preoccupation of ex-Premier Baldwin with pig breeding. It was a heavy little gibe, beginning:
We are interested to hear that Stanley Baldwin’s interest in pigs has spread to his backbenchers and that one of them, the Honourable and Gallant Member for a West Country Constituency, is now more Catholic than the Pope, inasmuch as he actually invites pigs to his public meetings….
There was a crude cartoon clipped to the extract, the drawing portraying the Whinmouth Member and a hawkvisaged supporter (who might or might not have been a caricature of Mrs. Gayelorde-Sutton herself) s
tanding on a platform and addressing a row of attentive pigs. It was entitled “Pigs in Clover.”
I was wondering how Mrs. Gayelorde-Sutton came to connect our little paper with the report and cartoon but her next declaration solved the mystery.
“There were only two pressmen actually present in the marquee,” she wailed, “and one of them was thet boy! Now Ai’ve been assured by the County Press—a respectable Conservative organ, I might add—thet they had no contact with the London papers as a whole, or this scurrilous publication in particulah!”
“And what makes you think it originated from us?” asked Uncle Reuben, innocently.
For a moment Mrs. Gayelorde-Sutton seemed disconcerted, then she rallied and did her best to intimidate him with her hard blue eyes.
“You must hev!” she said. “How else would they have heard of it?”
Uncle Reuben regarded her sadly. I have never admired him so much as I did on that occasion, for somehow he made a reality of the vaunted majesty of the British press, standing, as it were, foursquare as the champion of free speech from Paine and Cobden onwards.
“Mrs. Gayelorde-Sutton,” he said, consciously inserting a heavy sigh into his voice, “this incident actually occurred and was faithfully and fairly reported in two West Country papers. Copies of those papers have since been mailed all over the world and their contents, I don’t doubt, have since been read and digested by journalists of every political creed and shade of opinion. There is nothing, so far as I am aware, to prevent any such journalist using this factual base as the skeleton of a partisan gibe at you and your party. We can hardly be held responsible for the use made of our straight reporting in any corner of the globe!”
It was a dignified rebuke, magnificently delivered, for somehow it conjured up the picture of the arrival of a bundle of Whinmouth & District Observers on the busy quays of Hong Kong or the railway sidings of Chicago, where hordes of white, black and yellow journalists were queueing to seize and comment upon the intrusion of a fat sow into a marquee full of Whinmouth Conservatives. It absolved us from all consequences of their several interpretations, at the same time elevating us to Olympian isolation, alongside the shades of W. T. Stead and the late Lord Northcliffe. Its effect upon Mrs. Gayelorde-Sutton, however, was less salutory than upon her hitherto silent husband, who rose, a little stiffly, and laid a restraining hand upon his wife’s glove, addressing her in a thin, nasal voice that I now heard for the first time.
“Come, come, my dear,” he said, quietly but not meekly, “you’ve had your say and you’ve got your answer! Go back to the car while I have a private word with the editor.”
To my intense surprise she obeyed him. Without a word of protest she swung round on her stiletto heels and clacked out of the office, leaving behind her a pleasing aroma of perfume to join hopeless battle with the reek of dust, printer’s ink, moldering newspapers and Uncle Reuben’s semilethal tobacco.
“Well, sir?” demanded Uncle Reuben, his tone hardening now that he found himself addressing a member of his own sex. “I trust you are satisfied with my explanation? Not that I am under any obligation at all to offer you one, even supposing it was I myself who had telephoned Fleet Street This is fair comment, you understand? Nothing libelous there, so don’t waste time and money on lawyers!”
It occurred to me that this little speech was a bit highhanded, but Mr. Gayelorde-Sutton did not resent the advice. He just stood blinking heavy-lidded eyes, his head looking more and more like a pink egg balanced on the extreme end of a collared cabbage stalk.
“My wife is naturally upset,” he said very civilly. “She feels that this unfortunate incident has been magnified into something calculated to make her a laughingstock among her friends. I did point out before she called however, that the local press could not be held responsible and I feel your explanation is a fair and an honest one, sir. I would, in passing, like to proffer my apologies to this young gentleman, who might have made a good deal more capital of the occasion than in fact he did, yet still acted within his rights as a er … gentleman of the press! Good day, sir, and thank you for your courtesy.”
He left us then and Uncle Reuben looked after him sympathetically. I felt a little dizzy, partly with relief but also with elation, for up until then I had never taken Gayelorde-Sutton into consideration as a man or the father of Diana. He had been a mere symbol of wealth, and a caricature of one at that. I had never forgotten his pitiful appearance at the Heronslea meet on Boxing Day. Diana hardly mentioned him and I suppose I had already written him off in my mind as a hen-pecked nonentity. I saw that he was more than that and I was now able to regard him if not as an ally, at least as neutral in the conquest of Diana. A man like that, I reasoned, would at least be fair-minded about his daughter’s choice of a husband.
I could hardly wait to recount the scene to Diana and when I saw her at the Folly that same evening I was deflated by the discovery that she not only knew all the essentials of the interview but had, in a sense, engineered her father’s attitude by taking him on one side and pointing out that Mrs. Gayelorde-Sutton’s attack upon a local paper would only injure the cause of the Conservatives in the district. I was warmed, however, by her comment upon an aspect of the matter that had not even entered my head—my honoring of the promise I had given her to keep her part in the matter a close secret.
“I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d blurted out the truth, Jan,” she said. “After all, I don’t see why you should get a rap over the knuckles for something I did and I don’t mind saying I had the wind up a bit when I heard that Mother intended storming into your place about it. You see, for all I knew, it was you who had sent the piece to London!”
It saddened me to reflect that she could even contemplate a betrayal of confidence on my part, to say nothing of presumed willingness on my part to see her family ridiculed. When I told her this she laughed and gave me one of her side-tilted looks.
“You’re a real old-fashioned one, Jan! I believe you’re a masochist and would enjoy dying for me. I believe it would give you no end of a kick. What is it, Jan? I’m not beautiful and sometimes I’m not very nice to you. I’m not going to pretend that I don’t like having a true-and-gentle-knight, and I’ll always come back to you in the end, you can be quite sure of that, but—”
She broke off, as though suddenly deciding she had said enough on the subject. I was far from satisfied, however, and pressed her to say whatever she had begun to say. This brought an obstinate expression to her face.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, pettishly. “I’m not in the mood to say it right now and I won’t!”
Earlier in our association I should have pressed for an explanation but I was learning very quickly about Diana, and took the hint. It was never the slightest good goading her into explaining anything. Her mother had followed that course throughout her childhood and all she had earned by it was resentment that came close to hatred. We let the subject drop there and then, and whenever we touched on it in the future we did so in a mood of hilarity.
3.
The next glimpse I had of a hidden facet in Diana’s character was afforded by a trivial incident that took place at the Whinmouth Fancy Dress Parade.
One of the annual events on my calendar was the Whinmouth Winter Carnival, a week of local entertainment sponsored by a veteran committee and aimed at popularizing the town and raising money for the Cottage Hospital and St. John Ambulance Association.
Few British annuals are as profitless as the seaside carnival, and our local affair was no better and no worse than the average small-town carnival. The Englishman is fundamentally devoid of carnival spirit and even if a sense of civic duty, and frequent draughts of alcohol, induce him to don a paper hat and prance about his familiar streets, the weather is usually at odds with the forlorn strings of bunting and determined good cheer.
Our event was organized by tradesmen who were prevented from staging a summer carnival by the demands of their businesses during the period,
May to September. Thus the carnival was always held in the third week of October and had to compete with autumn gales, as well as the national distaste for public enjoyment.
The torchlight procession of tableaux was usually a spectacular affair, providing the rain held off, but somehow the carnival, as a carnival, could never divest itself of its overcoat. The only weatherproof event of any size was the Baby Show and Children’s Fancy Dress Parade, both held in the Church Hall, in Fish Street.
I was very busy throughout this event, collecting the names of countless Bo-Peeps and Jack Homers. I had, indeed, been busy throughout the week, so much so that I had overlooked the fact that Mrs. Gayelorde-Sutton, in her role of local patroness, had agreed to preside over the panel of judges for the children’s parade. I did not remember this interesting fact until I arrived at the hall for the final selection of prize winners.
The children had been divided into various age groups and there were prizes for the first boy and first girl in each class. The organizers, however, had overlooked the dire need for consolation prizes, and as some of the mothers had gone to very considerable trouble to dress the competitors the stewards were faced with the problem of coping with a dozen or so bitterly disappointed finalists in each group.
We were accustomed to trouble with the Baby Show mothers, and the acrimony among the parents grouped at the far end of the hall after the judges had made their final selections was always regarded as something of a joke among Whinmouth tradesmen. Invariably there were threats that children who had failed to win a prize would not be called upon to face humiliation the following year, but nobody took these threats seriously. Each year the number of competitors increased and the two events were enormously popular, over a hundred children entering the parade in costumes that made judging a difficult task.
Diana Page 17
