Cluny Brown

by Margery Sharp

  V

  As Andrew and John Frewen were returning from the stables, whither they had gone to inspect certain arrangements made there by Andrew, they were crossed by Cluny Brown, travelling at great speed.

  “Who’s that?” asked John.

  “New maid,” said Andrew indifferently.

  “Looks to me like an anarchist,” said John.

  Cluny’s appearance was indeed rather wild, for she had pulled off her cap and released her pony tail when she ran out to get a breath of air. But her determined expression (like her need for a breather) was purely professional: her coming début at the dinner table was weighing on her more than she would own. The ousted Hilda, on the other hand, was even then singing “Jeepers-Creepers” in the larder. A girl entirely without ambition, she had hailed their change of functions with frank delight. (And she was good-hearted as well: the reason she was in the larder was because she was getting Cluny a snack to fortify her for the coming ordeal.) Cluny was not exactly ambitious—at any rate so far as parlour-maiding was concerned—but she had a great desire to startle Mr. Syrett. She was keyed up like a prima donna, and far too preoccupied to notice either of the young men.

  “Sit down a minute, my dear,” said Mrs. Maile kindly, as Cluny came loping back into domestic territory, “and then get Hilda to help you fasten your hair.”

  “Shall I cut it off?” suggested Cluny desperately.

  “Certainly not; for when it grows a little longer, you will be able to have a proper bun.”

  Hilda at that moment placed a sandwich before her. Cluny took a large semi-circular bite and chewed and chewed.

  “Do nothing until Mr. Syrett tells you,” continued Mrs. Maile, “and you can’t go wrong. When he says ‘Plates,’ either take the used ones or set fresh, as the case may be; when he says ‘Vegetables,’ or ‘Sauce,’ hand vegetables, or sauce.”

  “And mind you don’t go breathin’,” exhorted Hilda.

  “Nonsense, of course she can breathe,” said Mrs. Maile liberally. “The trouble with you, Hilda, is that you breathe into persons’ ears.”

  “Mother says my lungs be like bellowses,” agreed Hilda proudly.

  “Suppose I get hiccups?” muttered Cluny.

  Mrs. Maile looked at the pair of them and repressed a sigh. She was not poetically inclined, but the names of Bessie, Gracie, Flora, did at that moment chime in her mind like three sweet symphonies.

  “Hilda, go and help Cook,” she ordered sharply. “Brown, go upstairs and tidy; you will not get hiccups. If you both thought more of your duties and less of yourselves, we should all get on a great deal better.”

  No mention has so far been made of Cook because she was merely a temporary. She was obliging Lady Carmel for six months while her own employer was in the Argentine, and had therefore no roots at Friars Carmel. In her own kitchen her personality was a rather interesting one, unusually sardonic, as she herself was unusually thin, and expressing itself in savouries and sharp sauces. So she turned out steamed puddings for Sir Henry efficiently, but without enthusiasm. She did all that was required of her, and kept herself to herself. This left in the servants’ hall what might be described as a cook-shaped space, and removed a good deal of the wholesome pressure to which Hilda and Cluny would normally have been subject.

  VI

  Sir Henry and Lady Carmel kept early hours; for them a pleasant evening ended at ten-thirty, and Andrew, who wished his protégé to make a good impression, remarked at twenty-five past that they had all had a long day. Mr. Belinski at once rose and kissed Lady Carmel’s hand; after so mild a programme—a game of auction bridge, a little talk on gardening—he did indeed look curiously exhausted. Andrew took him up to his room in the east corridor, where Belinski immediately sat down on the bed. (A predecessor of Cluny’s once divided all guests into two classes: those who sat on the beds, and those who sat in the chairs provided.)

  “Everything you want?” asked Andrew.

  Belinski looked at the bedside table with its lamp, its carafe, its silver biscuit-box, its two books, one of them in German. A lower shelf held cigarettes, matches, ash-tray. He looked at the primroses on the bureau. The warmth of a hot-water bottle communicating itself, he shifted a little and looked at the small mound it made through the bed-clothes. Then he looked at Andrew.

  “It is unbelievable,” said Mr. Belinski.

  “What is?”

  “All of it. That I should be here—in this house—with your parents—is like a dream.”

  “Particularly my parents,” suggested Andrew.

  Belinski nodded seriously.

  “I had forgotten that such people were. No, that is wrong: I never knew of such people. They are good like saints.”

  “Do you mean—not of this world?”

  “Of a far better.”

  “Like a dream.” Andrew grinned. “You’re dreaming them, and they’re dreaming you.”

  “They can never have had such a dream before. Tell me: why does your mother call me Professor?”

  “Well,” said Andrew, “she’s got it into her head that that’s what you are. I mean, she’s not in the least dense—”

  “Certainly not. She is rationalizing her dream.”

  “You don’t mind?”

  “On the contrary, if she wishes, I will be a Rector. But—but I am still perplexed. I ask myself, Why am I a Professor? Why am I here? You and your friends, why should you involve yourselves? Why?”

  Andrew walked across to the window and looked out at the moonshiny night. Very far away an owl hooted; then silence again, dropping like dew.

  “Well, at Cambridge they thought rather a lot of you.”

  “Then I am to be respected, yes. Cheered, after a discourse—if you happen to agree with my opinions. But you and your friends—I may tell you, I do not agree—believe me to be in some sort of danger. I saw that young man who drove the car put a pistol in his pocket! If there are such risks, why should you take them?”

  “Well, we think you’re a valuable sort of man.”

  “And that is sufficient?”

  Andrew hesitated. Then he turned round from the window, and all his father came out in him as he answered.

  “If you must know—there’s also the sporting interest of the thing.…”

  The effect of this admission was not such as he expected. Adam Belinski leaped up from the bed with a beaming smile.

  “That is such a pleasure to me,” he said warmly, “you do not know!”

  VII

  There were several things Andrew did not yet know about Mr. Belinski; for even left-wing authorities on European literature have their human side, and Andrew, being young, expected people (and especially celebrities) to be all of a piece. He would have been much surprised, and even rather shocked, to know the true reason of both Mr. Belinski’s melancholia and his reluctance to leave London; but the fact was that besides being interested in prose, Mr. Belinski was also interested in women.

  He was particularly sensitive to certain attributes in them. These included length from hip to knee, ability to interpret Chopin, very dark eyes, very light eyes, impregnable virtue, insatiable temperament, and a trustful disposition; and a week before the party in Hampstead he had met a young lady who combined no less than three of them. She was tall, dark and virtuous; the married daughter of his landlady. When John Frewen espied him behind the piano, such was the vision that filled Belinski’s thoughts: lovely and cruel Maria Dillon. No wonder he looked wretched. And when Andrew followed and argued with him—hopeless yet ever hoping, repulsed yet enchanted, in the first throes of a new passion—how could Belinski tear himself away? He couldn’t. But at last he was given notice; and so allowed himself to be carried off into Devonshire under armed guard.

  And Adam Belinski had also a conscience, though an erratic one. The precautions taken by young Andrew had touched him: he felt he had pulled a double bluff, assuring the boy there was no danger, yet allowing him to believe in it. Now Andrew’s confession had p
ut all to rights; he too, in a sense, had deceived Belinski: he was not all pure altruism, he was enjoying himself like hell; and so they were quits.

  Mr. Belinski lay between the smooth, cool, lavender-scented sheets and thought of Maria Dillon. He found her image curiously hard to fix: it was overlaid by too many other impressions, of the great house, of the candle-lit dinner table, of Lady Carmel and Sir Henry. This was no unusual phenomenon with him: ardent in pursuit, he was also rather easily distracted. Besides, he was in Devonshire, and Maria in London. (As Hortense was in Paris, and Sonia in Warsaw, and another girl in Budapest.) “Good-bye, Maria!” thought Mr. Belinski sadly; luxuriated a moment in this fresh loss, and so fell into a sound sleep.

  VIII

  Dear Uncle Arn,

  I waited at table to-night for the first time. Two guests, a friend of Mr. Andrews and the Professor, and Mr. Syrett said I might have been worse. The only thing I did really bad was offering mayonaze again with the trifle, thinking custard. The Professor took some before Mr. Syrett saw but ate it up, we think perhaps being a foreigner he wouldn’t notice. But he speaks English like you or I. Her ladyship wore grey velvet though not low-necked, all the others in evening clothes just like the films. This is the brightest spot so far in my hard life. I hope you are quite well and not missing me too badly. It would be funny if after all these years you did not miss me at all. What I think is if you miss people why not say so.

  Your affectionate neice,

  CLUNY BROWN

  Chapter 8

  I

  The beauties of a Devonshire spring—exquisite in detail, splendid in broad effect—are too well known to require description. Natives, from old habit, keep their heads pretty well; they do not (as might be expected) unanimously down tools and give themselves up to admiration; but both Cluny and the Professor were powerfully affected. The latter’s sensibility made Lady Carmel like him all the more; she felt that a Devonshire spring was just the sort of thing a foreigner ought to see, and she determined that he should see it thoroughly. They took packets of sandwiches and tramped for miles, leaving Andrew and Sir Henry, who was no pedestrian, to face each other over the lunch table. The meal was usually a silent one, for Andrew, like many another young man of his generation, was extremely fond of his father but had nothing to say to him.

  “I’m glad your mother’s got some one to walk with,” observed Sir Henry. “I don’t like her going alone.”

  Andrew nodded, but without conviction. Lady Carmel, known to and revered by every man, woman and child within a radius of ten miles, could scarcely come to harm. She occasionally overtired herself, and then stopped the first vehicle going her way and asked for a lift. Once she came home in a char-à-banc, once sitting serenely on the front seat of a lorry. In a quiet way Lady Carmel was one of the pioneers of hitch-hiking in Great Britain.

  “You didn’t go with ’em?” added Sir Henry.

  “Letters,” mumbled Andrew, avoiding his parent’s eye. On him too the season was having its effect—and so conventional a one that he instinctively repudiated it. But the Tennysonian jingle, like all platitudes, could not be denied: in the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. So Andrew’s thoughts had turned, though not lightly—so seriously, in fact, that he could not endure to contemplate a bank of primroses except in company with the beloved. This was all the more annoying to him because he had only just decided that far from being in love with Betty Cream, he rather disliked her, and she had therefore no business to pop out as it were from under the first violet. This horrid image produced a certain amount of revulsion, but not much.

  “Pity the Duff-Graham girl’s away” said Sir Henry suddenly.

  “Why?” asked Andrew.

  “Well, she’d be company for you,” said Sir Henry; and then, remembering several warnings of his wife’s, began to talk about trout.

  II

  Mr. Belinski’s reactions to the spring met with every encouragement; not so Cluny Brown’s. What was an asset in the guest became a liability in the parlour-maid: for only by scamping her work could Cluny spend enough time out of doors, and every day she scamped a bit more. She left hot-water bottles in the beds, and omitted to refill the carafes. She substituted Kia-Ora for Mr. Andrew’s orange juice. With real ingenuity, she dropped the key of the linen cupboard somewhere in the orchard, and had to spend a whole afternoon looking for it. Above all, she picked things. Every time she ran out she came back with her hands full—of catkins, violets, primroses, daffodils. Born and bred in London, she could not get over the fact that these were all there free. (Pussy-willow that sold for a shilling in Piccadilly and sixpence even in Paddington.) In the room she shared with Hilda every available surface was soon covered with chipped vases and old jam-jars, filled with these spoils. She brought moss into the kitchen, also a thrush’s egg, fallen from the nest, which she tried to hatch in a tea-cosy. Later she tried to blow it. This thorough-going attempt to cram a whole country-childhood into the space of a few weeks was very much in Cluny’s character; it was not however in Mrs. Maile’s character to allow it.

  Mrs. Maile put up with a great deal, almost any parlourmaid being better than none; but after Cluny played truant for two hours, simply to look at lambs, the housekeeper decided that the time had come to give her a thorough dressing-down. This was something Mrs. Maile did particularly well: generations of Bessies had been reduced to tears in an average of five minutes, and to penitence in an average of ten. Mrs. Maile rather grimly allotted Cluny a quarter of an hour, and there is little doubt that Cluny too would have succumbed, but for one unforeseeable accident. “Who do you think you are?” demanded Mrs. Maile coldly; and this question, awaking such familiar echoes, effectually distracted Cluny’s thoughts. The rest of the scolding was lost on her: she was far away, back in String Street with Mr. Porritt. Passionately she wondered how he was managing without her; whether Aunt Addie darned his socks properly; whether the respectable woman gave him his favourite liver and bacon on a Saturday night. It was quite wonderful how little his letters managed to communicate: “All well, everything much the same,” wrote Mr. Porritt—with such regularity that Cluny sometimes wondered why he didn’t send a post card with just “Ditto” on it …

  “Well?” repeated Mrs. Maile impatiently. “Have you anything to say for yourself?”

  “I do wish Uncle Arn was here!” sighed Cluny.

  The housekeeper’s face relaxed. She had, as it happened, actually been speaking of Mr. Porritt, drawing a most harrowing picture of his emotions on learning of Cluny’s wickedness: she thought perhaps Cluny wished he were there so that she might promise him to do better.

  “And why do you say that, my dear?” asked Mrs. Maile helpfully.

  “I’d like him to see the lambs,” sighed Cluny.

  Like Mr. Ames a month earlier, Mrs. Maile felt baffled. For it wasn’t even impertinence; it was something far more elusive and—and unnatural. The housekeeper was so put out that she actually waited for Cluny to resume the conversation, on the chance that her next remark might prove more answerable.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear what you were saying. Have you sacked me?” asked Cluny hopefully.

  Mrs. Maile would have given a month’s wages to be able to answer, “Yes, I have.”

  III

  It was on one of her legitimate excursions, however, on a Wednesday afternoon, that Cluny, having upset Mrs. Maile, upset Andrew Carmel. Andrew was tramping the lanes at a steady four miles an hour, trying not to observe the beauties of nature: he was out purely for exercise. As he had hoped, exercise drugged his mind; he achieved an almost complete unawareness of his surroundings—until suddenly, at a point where Colonel Duff-Graham’s boundary marched with the road, there leapt through a gate a golden dog followed by a tall dark girl in a mackintosh.

  A mackintosh, especially in the country, has peculiar properties. It blends people into the landscape, making them look as if they belonged there. Worn with heavy shoes and a battere
d hat, or no hat at all, it is for several months of the year the uniform of the country gentlewoman. A dog goes with it. Andrew therefore did not recognize Cluny for at least five seconds, or four seconds after he had recognized Roderick.

  “Hello,” he said. “Where are you going?”

  “It’s my afternoon off,” said Cluny.

  “You’ve got the Colonel’s Roddy.”

  “I’ve just fetched him. Isn’t he beautiful?”

  “Grand,” agreed Andrew.

  Cluny grinned, twisting her hand in the animal’s collar.

  “It’s all right, the Colonel knows. And Mrs. Maile knows. I’m let.”

  “Well, I didn’t think you were stealing him,” said Andrew.

  “I take him out every week, and he’s mine for the afternoon. He’s going to have puppies—I mean his wife is.” All at once Cluny’s friendly look changed; she stared at Andrew inimically. “Mr. Syrett,” she stated, “says you’re ever so worried about Europe.”

  This sudden change of subject took Andrew aback.

  “How on earth does he know that?”

  “There’s nothing much goes on he doesn’t know,” said Cluny darkly. “I suppose he hears you talking. He says you think it’s just awful.”

  “So it is.”

  “Well, here,” said Cluny, “I’m not allowed to keep a dog.”

  She turned and made rapidly off, Roderick following.

  Andrew was so struck by this encounter that as soon as he got home he went straight to his mother in the garden room and asked if there were any reason why the maids shouldn’t keep dogs.

  “They don’t, dear,” said Lady Carmel. “Have you had a nice walk?”

  “Grand,” said Andrew. “And I know they don’t, but is there any reason why they shouldn’t?”

  Lady Carmel carefully filled a jar with water.

  “There’s no place for them,” she explained. “Chauffeurs sometimes keep dogs, but then there’s the garage. Coachmen used to keep dogs. Housekeepers have cats—and I’m sure I wish Mrs. Maile would, because Syrett has seen a mouse. Have you seen a mouse, darling?”