The Matchmaker

by Stella Gibbons

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Stella Gibbons

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Uprooted from war-torn London, Alda Lucie-Brown and her three daughters start a new life at Pine Cottage in rural Sussex. Unsuited to a quiet life, Alda attempts to orchestrate – with varying degrees of success – the love affairs of her neighbours. Her unwilling subjects include an Italian POW, a Communist field-hand, a battery-chicken farmer and her intelligent friend Jean.

  About the Author

  Stella Gibbons was born in London in 1902. She went to the North London Collegiate School and studied journalism at University College, London. She then spent ten years working for various newspapers, including the Evening Standard. Stella Gibbons is the author of twenty-five novels, three volumes of short stories and four volumes of poetry. Her first publication was a book of poems, The Mountain Beast (1930), and her first novel Cold Comfort Farm (1932) won the Femina Vie Heureuse Prize in 1933. Amongst her works are Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm (1940), Westwood (1946), Conference at Cold Comfort Farm (1959) and Starlight (1967). She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1950. In 1933 she married the actor and singer Allan Webb. They had one daughter. Stella Gibbons died in 1989.

  ALSO BY STELLA GIBBONS

  Cold Comfort Farm

  Bassett

  Enbury Heath

  Nightingale Wood

  My American

  Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm

  The Rich House

  Ticky

  The Bachelor

  Westwood

  Conference at Cold Comfort Farm

  Here Be Dragons

  White Sand and Grey Sand

  The Charmers

  Starlight

  To Enid Gibbons and The Blue Idol – affectionately,

  peacefully

  STELLA GIBBONS

  The Matchmaker

  1

  ON THE JOURNEY from London down into Sussex, Major Ronald Lucie-Browne was entrapped into conversation by an elderly gentleman, who lost no time in revealing that he had once been a Captain, and went on to relate that he was an expert in the science of firing a revolver. This (as you would of course be aware) was no easy performance; none of your shutting one eye and taking aim at the target; no, it was a highly complicated operation; it was a science; but neither in the war that was just over, nor in the one before that, had he found it properly accepted as such. There will just be time, before we reach your station, to explain it.

  Ronald Lucie-Browne listened in silence, not once letting his eye stray towards the satchel upon his knee containing reports from the Liberal Party’s office in the constituency which he hoped to contest during the next General Election. Born and educated as a gentleman, he had earned his living during the fourteen years since coming down from Oxford as Reader in French Language and Literature at one of the older provincial universities, but his nature was not completely suited to the calm of modern academic life in England (which lacks the excitement of intellectual speculation characterising such life in the great American universities) and also—like so many of his generation—he was cursed with a sense of social responsibility. It had seemed to him, after much uneasy and earnest thought, that it was his duty to try to enter politics. His voluntary enlistment during the first months of the war and his subsequent military service had interrupted this plan, but now that the date for his demobilisation was in sight, he hoped to enter seriously upon it.

  He had intended to study the reports during the journey into Sussex because he knew that he would have neither the time nor the inclination to read them after he got there, but he had not the ruthlessness necessary in dealing with elderly gentlemen who explain to us about revolvers, being a kind, grave, affectionate young man who proposed, thus handicapped, to enter the political sewers for the good of his fellow beings.

  It appeared that you fired at the chap’s stomach when you intended to hit him in the heart. There! It was out! The elderly gentleman relaxed; he leaned back; he repeated the secret several times in a lulling diminuendo which seemed to marvel at the simplicity and infallibility of the method just revealed; and then, having accepted one of Ronald’s cigarettes, he became silent, as if exhausted by his efforts, and gazed rather glassily out of the window.

  As it was now too late to begin upon the reports, Ronald also looked out of the window. The scanty copper and bronze leaves of late November burned along the hedges and far down in the brown and purple woods under a breaking grey sky, and the autumn landscape, that for six years had seemed to be watchfully, patiently submitting itself to darkness and danger and cold, was now settling into its natural winter sleep. There was relief in the very air, but his thoughts always became sad when he found himself alone, and presently, as he watched the woods gliding past, the familiar despair with the state of the world began to invade his mind—until it was suddenly banished by the realisation that in a few moments he would be with his family.

  “Nearly there; yours is the next station,” observed the elderly gentleman, coming out of a reverie-doze. “Ah yes, this is where we began to get our luggage down when we lived at Sillingham.”

  He went on to inquire if Ronald himself lived there? (having asked no personal questions during the journey because he had been busy explaining about the revolvers).

  “My wife has just taken a furnished cottage down here,” was the answer.

  “Oh, really? She was lucky to get it. I wonder if I know it?” with a gleam of reviving, but this time purely civilian, interest.

  “It’s called Pine Cottage. It’s about two miles out of Sillingham on the Froggatt road, near a small farm called Naylor’s.”

  “In-deed! Pine Cottage! Yes, I do know it; I know it well, and so does my wife.”

  His tone was far from encouraging; indeed, it combined dismay with commiseration in a manner that would have alarmed Ronald, had not his anticipations about Pine Cottage already been coloured by knowledge of the tastes and habits of his wife, to whom he had been married for twelve years. He forbore to comment, merely remarking that Pine Cottage stood in the fields, about a quarter of a mile from the Froggatt road. That (added Ronald, deliberately inviting comment) would be a disadvantage in winter weather, he feared.

  But the elderly gentleman suddenly went into his shell; he said no more; he only nodded and gazed out of the window with his lips portentously compressed, rather as Bottom’s may have been when hinting marvels to honest Snout. Ronald had his luggage ready and was waiting by the door for the train to stop.

  They were now passing low-lying meadows, mounting into hills crowned with the leafless woods of winter through which evening light was shining, and both travellers simultaneously became aware of a row of faces co
nfronting them along a white gate in the hedge below. There was a woman in a gay plaid coat, with bright hair blowing about, and three little girls, one a mere baby, all cheering and waving as the train went by. It looked quite a party of pleasure in the midst of the silent fields under the fading light, and even above the noise of the train they could hear the children’s shrill voices; blankets were scattered about on the grass, and there was an old pram in the background, and bunches of autumn leaves were being waved above the laughing faces.

  “Evacuees,” announced the elderly revolver expert, settling his tie with a well-kept hand. “We have suffered greatly from them down here, poor things. Both sides have done their best, but there is a fundamental difference in outlook, so why not be a realist and admit it? Is your wife meeting you by car?”

  Ronald, smiling for the first time that afternoon, shook his head.

  “We hope to have ours in use again next week and damned glad I shall be, too. Well, here you are. Good-day; give my love to the Ruhr. It’s twenty-five years since I was there in the last Army of Occupation.”

  “I will, sir. Good afternoon.”

  A moment later he was hurrying down the platform, looking nowhere but towards the ticket-barrier, and some ten minutes later (the train having been most irritatingly delayed over some matter of eggs) the elderly gentleman had the shock of seeing him walking along the road arm in arm with the bright-haired woman in the plaid coat.

  “Married beneath him, poor fellow,” he thought, as the train moved away.

  Alda Lucie-Browne pushed the pram with one hand and clung to her husband with the other, while the two little girls skirmished on the outskirts and the baby twisted herself round to join in the conversation. They all talked at once except Ronald.

  “—and we shall just have time to see the cottage before it gets dark, darling,” said Alda.

  “We always have high tea at Pagets, Father, and it’s sausages to-night. Every night we have something different. To-morrow it’s macaroni cheese,” said Jenny, the girl of eleven. “They’re going to save you some sausages, too.”

  “Will there be remartoes for Meg’s tea?” demanded the baby, who was aged three and a half, in a clear, precise voice.

  “To-matoes,” muttered Jenny.

  “Don’t pick on her, Jenny, you know mother likes to hear her,” whispered Louise, who was ten, as Alda turned the pram aside through a gate which Ronald swung open.

  “Thank you, dear. We go across this meadow and the next one, and there we are,” she said.

  “It’s getting very dark.” He glanced doubtfully across the still, damp fields where mist was already rising. “Is Meg well wrapped up?”

  “Oh yes, she’s got her winter vest on to-day.”

  “And me cardigan,” added Meg, pulling half of that garment out from her overcoat. “Look, Farder.”

  “And her rubber boots,” said Louise. “And on Tuesday we have bacon and egg pie, Father, and on Wednesday boiled shell eggs …”

  “Look!” Jenny stopped short in a patch of long moist grass and pointed upwards. She was smiling, as if offering her family a present. They all gazed at the heavens, following the dark line of her finger in its woollen glove and there, hidden until now among the clouds but at last revealed as they thinned and rolled away at sunset, was a pink November moon.

  “A moon!” said Jenny. “Now it doesn’t matter how late we are, because we can see,” and she ran off into the meadows, followed by Louise.

  “Meg will get out,” announced Meg, struggling with the strap that confined her.

  “Oh no Meg won’t. It’s too wet. Father will push the pram now, because the ground is bumpy, and Meg will have a nice ride,” said Ronald, taking over the pram from Alda, who placidly dropped her hands into her pockets and strolled along smiling absently at the ground, while he steered the pram round molehills and the tussocks of last spring’s grass, and patiently extracted details from her about the lease and rent for Pine Cottage and the terms of the agreement.

  “But there is inside sanitation, Ronald. Didn’t I tell you? I thought I did. And a bathroom. But no electric light. Oh look, children, there’s a rabbit! Quick, Louise, there by the hedge! You can see his white scut.”

  “Oh Mother, where?” Louise’s voice was anguished. “Quick!”

  “There,” said Jenny scornfully, and her finger came steadily over her sister’s twisting shoulder, and pointed, “In a direct line with my finger.”

  But it was no use; Louise could not see, and the rabbit, startled by their voices, suddenly whisked and was gone. Louise came silently over to her father and slipped her cold hand into the one that left the handle of the pram to meet it.

  “And four bedrooms, Alda?” Ronald went on. “That sounds all right. Is it properly furnished?”

  “Indeed it is, rather too much so. You wait till you see the pictures. You’ll hate them.”

  “I shan’t have much opportunity to hate them, sweetheart.”

  “O Ronald, why?” Startled, she looked up at him.

  “I’m being sent to Germany.”

  “O darling! O Ronald, how unutterably sickening. When did you hear?”

  “Only this morning. I didn’t want to spring it on you the minute we met.”

  “How long for, in heaven’s name?”

  “Indefinitely, but I shall get leave of course.”

  “Won’t you even be here for Christmas, Father?” demanded Jenny, outraged. “I do think, now the war is over, they might let you. They are beasts.”

  “I’m afraid not, old lady.”

  Alda was silent for a moment; then she said: “Well, we must just look forward to leave, that’s all. It’s too bad, losing you again after we’d just got you after four years, but it’s no use grumbling, I suppose, and we’ll have a lovely time while you are here. You’ll be out altogether soon. When do you go?”

  “Next week, I’m afraid, lovey.”

  She said no more, but slipped her arm through his and pressed it. Her gay, rebellious spirit would never learn patience but she no longer wasted energy in defying the inevitable, and they had long ago decided that, should he be sent to Germany, they would not risk her accompanying him with the children.

  “Over here,” she said presently, withdrawing her arm and beginning to climb a slip-gate marking the entrance to the next field. Beyond its bars of silvery oak, Ronald could see another dim green meadow placidly extending away into the gathering twilight, while overhead the pink moon had changed to gold amidst fragile grey clouds. The evening bus to Horsham with all its lights blazing cheerfully was passing along the main road three fields away.

  “How would you have managed with the pram if I hadn’t been here?” he demanded, when he had lifted the pram over the slip-gate. “Seriously, Alda, is it much further? How on earth you’re going to manage in the winter——”

  “Oh, this is the long way round,” she laughed, turning back from hurrying up the rising slope of the meadow with her daughters. “The cottage is only two or three hundred yards from the Froggatt road. We came this way to-day to meet your train. There!” She stopped, pointing. “There it is.”

  He had not realised, so gradual was the incline which they had been ascending, that they now stood on the highest point for miles around, and could command a wide prospect over dusky woods and darkening meadows ending at last in the long, rolling line of the downs fifteen miles away, sable and mysterious against the fading yellow sky. Immediately below lay a group of barns and other buildings with black wooden walls and mild grey thatched roofs, and beyond these, standing upon another low incline and surrounded by dark pines amongst whose pointed tops flashed a star, was a small, square house.

  But stronger than his admiration of the scene was his relief that a cart track, unmistakable even in the dusk, ran across the meadows from the farm buildings to the cottage, and even as he looked, the headlights of a car, reassuringly close, glided past on the Froggatt road.

  “Isn’t it a marvellous pos
ition?” demanded Alda.

  “Those pines will make it damp,” he pronounced, beginning to push the pram forward again. “How far did you say you are from the village?”

  “Not more than a mile and a half—well, say a mile and three-quarters——”

  “Or two miles,” he muttered.

  “And there’s a good road, downhill all the way. And there,” pointing away towards the woods, “is the convent where Jenny and Louise are going.” (Here Louise made a remarkable face expressing repugnance and despair, but Jenny looked attentively at her mother.)

  “I went to see Sister Alban yesterday. It is so lovely and clean there, Ronald, with that marvellous feeling convents always have—you know?”

  Ronald said, “H’m.”

  “You can h’m, but they do.”

  “How do you feel about it, Jen?” turning to his eldest daughter.

  “I will deal with the situation as it arises,” answered Jenny sedately, quoting one of his own expressions. “All schools are beastly except Miss Mottram’s, so what does it matter?”

  Louise looked at her sister respectfully, as one who hears of an ancient and honourable grief. She herself could barely remember the school in Ironborough which the sisters had attended before their home had been destroyed and their present nomadic existence had begun, but Jenny remembered it all; every schoolfellow, every detail of the day’s routine, every article of furniture in the large old-fashioned mansion converted into a school, and longed to return there.

  Alda thought it wisest to ignore this, and said cheerfully:

  “Here we are.”

  They had now arrived at the house, and its square little face, with windows reflecting the yellow remnants of day, stared aloofly above them. Sussex tiles, pointed and decorated, covered the upper walls; there was a tiny porch over the front door, and the pines stood about it in a close half-circle. The front garden was primly enclosed by a wooden fence, and every foot of it was filled with thick, strong, bushy laurels whose branches pressed against the small front windows. Even on a bright day Pine Cottage never seemed full of light—the pine trees saw to that—and this evening in the eerie owl-light it actively breathed out darkness; the porch was a cave; the room beyond the laurel-shadowed windows might have been filled with squid-juice, so black was it, and every shadow from the surrounding woods seemed drawn into the circle of those sighing pines.