With the house they had taken over Effie Bunce, daughter of the wicked old ferryman up the river who though now unequal to ferrying (which was just as well for his boat was falling to pieces and he had no intention of having a new one unless They, unspecified, gave him one for nothing) was a very good hand at cadging drinks at the local. Miss Bunce and her sister Ruby, housemaid to Lady Merton, were a shining example of the wages of sin being not death, but very nice positions as daily helps with handsome salaries (for we cannot repeat the word wages so soon) a very good table kept and unlimited freedom to gossip at the backdoor, while their good-looking, healthy children of shame were getting free education and free transport to the local school from The State, which would probably support them in one way and another for the rest of their lives.
Miss Heath and Miss Ward, having long experience of wardmaids (mostly the offspring of Dark Rosaleen and doing extremely well in England under the Saxon Oppressor), had at once taken Effie Bunce’s measure and that too friendly being found herself—for the first time in her life and to her own great surprise—doing exactly what she was told and even giving up bright red paint on her nails. What Miss Heath had said no one ever knew, but she gave Effie some nail cream and a nice washleather buffer and Effie’s shining nails in their natural colour had become the cynosure of neighbouring eyes. So much so, indeed, that everyone was afraid she might qualify once more for the enviable status of an unmarried mother. But everyone was wrong, for Miss Bunce knew exactly on which side her bread was buttered and was indeed considered by her friends to be giving herself airs because she was doing for real trained hospital nurses. The expression “doing for” being used in its domestic, not its murderous sense.
It was always doubtful to visitors at Punshions which meal its owners were having: partly because having lived so long by routine in hospitals they were apt to have meals at extraordinary hours as a kind of symbol of freedom, and partly because they had not as yet decided whether lunch, tea, or supper should be the Principal Meal; which name, hitherto unknown to them, fascinated Mrs. Villiers and her friends, including Lydia Merton who though she did not live in Northbridge itself had many friends there and did there such shopping as she did not do in Barchester. But it was obvious by the crockery on the table that they were having tea; that is to say tea which you have at any time between half-past three and half-past five, not TEA which you have at any time between half-past five and half-past seven or later.
Miss Heath and Miss Ward, looking up as they saw Lydia’s car pass the window, both said it was that nice Ladv Merton, which lady shortly appeared from the kitchen, commonly used as an entrance by friends of the house. She apologized—as our old Lydia Keith would probably not have done —for coming round by the back because she didn’t know if anyone was in and it was easier to turn the car in the yard, which explanation appeared to satisfy the hostesses, who at once asked her to join them and they would make some fresh tea, an invitation which usually leads to a lot of argle-barg-ling about Oh no, I really like it cold, and We were just saying we must make some fresh for ourselves. But Lady Merton accepted her hostesses’ decision with a word of thanks and sat down, while Miss Ward picked up the now tepid teapot and went into the kitchen where a large kettle was talking aloud to itself on the expensive Sultan combined cooker and water heater which the owners had installed. Miss Heath, being the soul of honour, did not ask Lydia any questions and told her about the Nasty Finger that Effie Bunce’s fourth child, a little boy popularly supposed to be the result of a day excursion to the coast in one of the Southbridge United Viator Passenger Company’s fleet of motor coaches, had been having and how Dr. Ford had lanced it and The Place was doing nicely and by the time she had taken the last bandage off Master Hovis Bunce (so called from Hovis House where Effie Bunce had sometimes worked for Mrs. Dunsford and her daughter) Miss Ward came in carrying a large tea-tray heaped with crockery and food.
Lydia, full of admiration, said Miss Ward ought to be a turn in a Music Hall and get a thousand pounds a week.
“I carried some pretty heavy trays when I was a V.A.D. in the war,” she said, “but Matron wouldn’t let us have the teapot. We had to bring that separately. She was ghastly. Her name was Miss Mells so of course we all called her Smells.”
Miss Heath and Miss Ward looked at each other.
“Well,” said Miss Heath, “it never rains but it pours as the saying is and I did my training with old Smelly. She was Ai on the surgical cases but I beat her hollow on prems. In fact Matron said to me: Tve seen plenty of abdominal cases and Mells isn’t so bad, but when it comes to prems, Heath’s the man every time.’ Of course man was just her jocular way of passing the remark, Lady Merton, but though it isn’t for me to say it, when there’s a nasty abdominal I’m—well I can’t exactly express it.”
“Like a guided missile,” said Lydia, rather despising herself for getting so much into the spirit of the thing, but her words appeared to command the admiration of Miss Ward who laughed heartily and said she did hear that men working on guided missiles were apt to get Hopkinson’s Disease, at which words Miss Heath looked very grave, so Lydia tried to look grave too. But as it was evident that both her hostesses were burning to discuss their whole careers from probationers upwards with special reference to Hopkinson’s Disease, she assumed—as she had taught herself to do, the better to be able to protect her husband—rather a Lady of the Manor air and said How interesting, but she must not forget what she had come about.
“There! we’ve been going on about your prems, Heath,” said Miss Ward. “We do talk,” but Lydia said she liked it and sometimes she wished she were back in the hospital where she nursed in the early years of the war; which was perhaps not quite true, but had some truth in it.
“What I really came about,” said Lydia, “was a friend of mine, at least we both are friends of the same people.”
Miss Ward said Quite a case of Our Mutual Friend.
Stifling a strong and reasonable wish to say that (a) it wasn’t and (b) that with the deepest respect and love for Charles Dickens a friend cannot be Mutual, though he (or she) may be Common, and realizing with a quickness of which our old Lydia would not have been capable that what she was saying would probably sound like rubbish to her kind hostesses, she at once began to tell them about the Hallidays and the sore need for them to be helped. It was obvious from the pursed lips, the headshakings, and the glances of her hostesses that the story was, to use a most unsuitable phrase, exactly their cup of tea.
“A sadly common case,” said Miss Heath. “You remember, Wardy, poor Lady Babs Sol way. She died exactly a week after the General—absolutely worn out.”
“And there was the Honourable Henry King,” said Miss Ward. “You remember how he would not let his wife go into a nursing home when she was so mental and in the end he had to be certified. Such a charming man and I hear he beats all the other patients at double bézique and thinks he has broken the bank at Monte Carlo.”
Entrancing though these Notes from a Casebook were, Lydia felt they were not getting her much nearer her object and time was passing.
“I will just give you a few details,” she said in her Committee Voice, at which both her hostesses immediately came to heel. “Old Squire Halliday at Hatch End is a permanent invalid and I’m afraid his mind is affected,”—Miss Ward said Just like old Mrs. Banton, poor old dear,—“and his wife,” Lydia continued, unmoved by Mrs. Banton, “is working herself to death to nurse him and keep him happy—” Miss Heath said You never know of course what those senile cases were really feeling inside even if they looked happy “—and their son, George Halliday, who was all through the war, is running the estate and his father’s affairs and doing half the farmwork himself and trying to keep his father happy and he’ll go mad quite soon,” said Lydia.
“They don’t,” said Miss Ward, pursing up her mouth very wisely. “It’s never the ones that you expect that go mad. You remember that nice R. E. Major, Heathy, at Gib. in the war,”
but before Miss Heath could answer Lydia—slightly despising herself for so doing but there are limits to one’s patience, let alone one’s time—put on her Lady of the Manor air and said she was terribly sorry she had to go on to a Red Cross meeting and would Miss Heath and Miss Ward talk it over and let her know as soon as possible if either of them would be available for an indefinite period and §0 took her leave, having done her best to honour her sister Kate Carter’s blank cheque and pretty certain that one or other lady if not both would jump at the offer.
And so, we are glad to say, it proved. By lunch time Miss Heath had rung up Northbridge Manor and told Lydia that she found she could go as soon as it suited Mrs. Halliday and if there were any difficulties (which made Lydia suddenly think of Mrs. Gamp and her infallible methods for elderly or mentally unsound patients) she was sure she could deal with them and if any further help were necessary, or night nursing, Wardy would come at the shortest notice.
Lydia thanked her warmly and hung up the receiver with the sigh of relief that we can only spell as Ouf! Then she rang up her sister Kate, who in her turn rang up Mrs. Carter at Hatch End and asked if she would let George Halliday know, because she had to go over to Gatherum Castle for a committee meeting of the St. John and Red Cross Hospital Libraries, and so, almost with the words “Over to you,” took her mind off the Hallidays’ affairs and applied it to her own again.
Mrs. Carter was as good as her word and rang up Mrs. Halliday who, sincerely touched by the trouble taken for her, said she would come over and see her, but Mrs. Carter, kindly compassionate in her young energy, said that was nonsense and she would come over to Hatch End. There was a short silence which made Mrs. Carter wonder if she had ignorantly transgressed some local etiquette. Then there was a quick reply of acceptance and the telephone was dumb, but just as it died Mrs. Carter thought she heard another voice.
As there were various small household shoppings to be done, Mrs. Carter picked up her basket and went up the village street which still, we are glad to say, retained some of its immemorial village aspect, with the old country names— Vidlers, Hubbacks, Caxtons, Panters—over the little shops. And there were still, here and there, cottages of what was almost wattle and daub, and there were still one or two garden walls made of a kind of primitive clay and straw mixture, roofed with soft rounded red tiles to keep the rain from disintegrating the tops of the walls and to protect the fruit trees that were espaliered against them on the sunny side. Not to last much longer, but to be held fast in remembering that such things were.
Having dealt with The Fish (left by Vidlers’ van at No. 6 Clarence Cottages with Mrs. Panter, wife of Mr. Halliday’s carter, for the gentry; whereas the serfs and villeins happily collected theirs from the Mellings Arms where it was dumped by courtesy of Geo. Panter, cousin of the carter, in a corner of the stables) she was just going into The Shop, which was also the post office and sold everything in the world except the thing you particularly wanted, when she saw, seated on a camp stool, what was undoubtedly An Artist; an elderly man wearing a Norfolk jacket with a belt, knickerbockers buttoning below the knee, a battered Panama hat swathed in a green veil and a faded silk scarf passed through a kind of flat ring. In his left hand he held a sketching block, in his right a pencil and Mrs. Carter, who had not been born yesterday, observed that as she approached he began to draw with sweeping lines, sitting back after each sweep, the better to admire his own work. Having no very pressing business on hand she stopped to watch him. After a few moments of frenzied work the artist stopped, suddenly saw Mrs. Carter whom he had been seeing for at least a minute, laid down his pencil, took off his Panama hat and made as sweeping a bow as anyone sitting on a camp stool can manage.
“How do you do?” said Mrs. Carter politely. “A lovely day for sketching.”
“Ah!” said the sketcher. “That’s what you ladies say, but to the Reel artist there isn’t no good or bad days for Art. If it was to rain like old Noah,” he went on, apparently confusing the Patriarch with the Flood, “I should see in the Mind’s Eye what it would be like on a nice day like this. A Nartist, ah, he’s the crux. All those great old masters, Rubens and Jawjone and the rest, they didn’t copy nature, they saw nature the way she should be and they painted what they saw.”
“Le peintre qui voit d’une certaine façon et peint comme il voit,” said Mrs. Carter, perhaps rather showing-off where it wasn’t necessary.
“It’s like a glass of champagne frappy to hear you say so, madam,” said the artist. “Scatcherd is my name and it’s well known in these parts.”
“Oh, of course, Scatcherd’s Stores at Northbridge,” said Mrs. Carter. “Lots of my friends deal there.”
“My brother, madam,” said the artist. “He stuck to the shop. I did not. I have never repented it. Ars may be long, but it will be longer before I’ve done with it. And when I think of those Beings, which I would scorn to call men, as make coloured photos of the landscape, ruining the Artist’s Profession, well, madam, I feel I could paint their faces Prussian Blue.”
“We were talking about those people that make coloured photographs of places only a night or two ago at dinner,” said Mrs. Carter, who had an inherited gift for talking to duke or dustman in almost exactly the same kind, interested, unemotional way. “That young Mr. Hibberd whose father is Lord Aberfordbury only it is such a silly name that I never get it right. He is a director of the National Rotochrome Polychrome Universal Picture Post Card Company. No one seems to like him.”
At these apparently harmless words Mrs. Carter saw Mr. Scatcherd go so red in the face that she wondered if he was going to have a fit, but as she could not remember from a brief course of first-aid she had done as a girl what you did for fits, she thought it would be safer to do nothing.
“HIM!” said Mr. Scatcherd, his drooping moustache almost standing on end with rage. “Him and his commercial photos. If Art dies in this dear old country of ours, it will be him as done it. He doesn’t sit sketching in all weathers the way I do and get the pewmonia. He doesn’t know what it is to be A Nartist. He doesn’t know the Feelings a man has when he sees Nature; no nor Architecture needier.”
“I quite agree,” said Mrs. Carter. “And what is worse Mr. Hibberd’s father wants to make the Bishop have a memorial chapel to a clergyman who wrote shocking immoral poetry. Really dreadful poems.”
“And I’ll lay a sovereign that Lord Aberfordbury as this young spark’s father calls hisself, has read those poems cover to cover. Sort of books gentlemen keep under the bed, or locked up if there’s housemaids. But they don’t know Vice. Lord Whatshisname he may buy those sort of books but he don’t know. I do. I was at Bulloyne once, a week I was, in a hotel and I KNOW. If Lord Whateverhisnameis had been to Bulloyne and in a certain address I could give him, though I expect the Madam is dead now as she was a fine old piece of work when I knew her, that would open his eyes. Experience is what us artists need. I’ve had experience. I KNOW.”
Pleased by this peculiar interlude, but quite unmoved, Mrs. Carter asked if she could buy one of his lovely views, chose one of the river with a tall bulrush in the background and gave him half a crown. “And please don’t bother about the change, Mr. Scatcherd,” she said. “I shall ask you to do a few more views for me. Why don’t you do a caricature of Lord Aberfordbury?”
Mr. Scatcherd remained silent, bouche bée as his Boulogne friend might have said though probably in less classical language.
“Or would he be too difficult?” said Mrs. Carter rather treacherously.
“AH! that as the poet says is the Question,” said Mr. Scatcherd. “It all depends on the artist. Now that young chap, Hibberd, though chap’s too good a name for him, he’s not a Nartist. Commercial, that’s what he is. All for money. Now, mind you, I’m not against Money as such, but what I say is, What does it buy?”
Mrs. Carter suggested food.
“Food I grant you,” said Mr. Scatcherd. “But there’s other things than food. There’s—”
“I know: drink. And clothes,” said Mrs. Carter, and we are sorry to say that she added in the jargon of her contemporaries, “and how right you are about food. It really stands by itself.”
Never Too Late Page 21
