Christmas at High Rising: A Virago Modern Classic (VMC)

by Thirkell, Angela

  ‘Oh, blast!’ said Mrs Morland as she hung up the receiver. ‘That means at least half an hour wasted.’

  Next morning, armed with a large shopping basket containing paper for wrapping the problematic fish, a string bag for any overflow, a light rug, her gas mask slung across one shoulder and her bag with a long strap across the other, Mrs Morland drove down to the station and parked her car. As she stood in the queue at the Booking Office her attention was caught by an announcement pasted rather askew on the wall, bearing the legend in red lettering IS YOUR JOURNEY REALLY NECESSARY?

  ‘Yes, and no,’ said Mrs Morland thoughtfully aloud to herself, to the great terror of Rear Admiral Jones R.N. (Retd), who looked upon women who wrote books as a landsman might look upon a mermaid, with attraction and some fear. ‘I mean of course I needn’t go anywhere, but if one is to go anywhere at all one must go somewhere, and I can’t go to London and get the book George Knox wants unless I do go to London. Day return, please,’ she added to the booking clerk, and when the usual rather addled conversation as to whether a day ticket would entitle her to come back on the 4.10 or not, even if it had been changed to the 4.00, had taken place, she walked to the far platform, hoping in common with the whole shopping population of High Rising to find a partly empty carriage, choosing, as was her custom, a non-smoking compartment.

  The train was bitterly cold and she was glad to wrap her rug round her knees. At the next station a very unattractive couple got in and took out cigarette cartons. Mrs Morland shrieked inwardly. She did not see any reason why people should disobey railway regulations, she knew pretty well the reception she would get if she drew their attention to the non-smoking notice; and it was just possible that they were not really going to smoke. But this supposition was ill-founded. The woman, who was dressed in sham ocelot, with ladders on the fronts of her stocking, and had dark greasy ringlets confined by a dirty blue fillet, lit her cigarette and then her companion’s.

  ‘I am so sorry,’ said Mrs Morland, with great courage and disliking the sound of her own voice so much that she felt for the moment quite sympathetic towards the smokers, ‘but this is a non-smoking carriage.’

  The couple looked at her.

  ‘Ow,’ said the woman. ‘I thought they smoked everywhere now.’

  ‘It isn’t my fault,’ said Mrs Morland, becoming more and more apologetic and despising herself more and more for so becoming. ‘It’s just the regulations.’

  ‘Djer mind if I smoke?’ said the man.

  This was awful, putting Mrs Morland as it did hopelessly into the position of an aristocratic oppressor of The People, but having gone so far she stuck to her guns and said, ‘I am so sorry, but I did get into this carriage specially because I don’t like smoke. There are heaps of smokers along the corridor.’

  The man ground out his cigarette on the seat of the carriage, while the woman laid hers, still alight, on the ledge of the window and began to make up her very dirty face. Her companion took out a penknife and devoted himself to cleaning his nails, carrying on a mumbled conversation the burden of which appeared to be the doings and probable future fate of ‘Some People’, so that what with this, and what with the sickening smell of the cigarette that lay burning itself out, Mrs Morland almost wished that she had not spoken. But not quite, for although the rest of the travellers had afforded her no support and indeed dissociated themselves from her by silence and a hermit-like retirement behind their newspapers, she knew that they were secretly grateful.

  Arrived in London, Mrs Morland forced her way into a bus which put her down near the large store with which she usually dealt. Having, after a sickening moment of despair, found her shopping list, she went towards the Wines and Spirits. Here, trying not to think about the depressing notice which said No more orders for sherry can be taken, she took her place in the queue of hopeful shoppers. Since her last visit to London, the department had been considerably changed. Instead of the familiar counter where she had been accustomed to place her modest orders were two tables where girls were efficiently and uninterestedly taking the names of customers who had registered and informing the rest that it was no use waiting. When Mrs Morland got to the desk she was informed that her name would come up in rotation for a bottle of brandy in ten days or a fortnight. A chauffeur and a clergyman then made a massed attack on the desk and Mrs Morland was pushed into the arms of a little wizened assistant with whom she had often dealt.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Siskin,’ she said. ‘It all seems rather a mess, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Sad days these, indeed, madam,’ said Mr Siskin, his eyes brimming. ‘When I think of the shipments we used to get, and now having to ration the customers that have looked to us for so many years, it makes me realise what we are Up Against. It fair breaks my heart, madam, to see ladies like you standing in a queue instead of “Good day, Mr Siskin, twelve dozen of the usual and a dozen three star whiskies and a half of the usual brandy, or six dozen of the usual Burgundy and a case of Bollinger ’23”. Still, so long as we win I suppose it’s all right. Good morning, madam.’

  Mrs Morland, flattered by Mr Siskin’s rehearsal of orders such as she had never dreamed of giving, nor could have afforded, thanked him and made her way to the perfumery department where many empty glass cases bore silent witness to the dearth of powder, scents, nail-paint, lip-stick and other necessities.

  ‘I suppose,’ said Mrs Morland apologetically to a young lady when she had finished talking to another young lady, ‘you haven’t a hot water bottle.’

  ‘We’ve got some nice hot-bottle covers, modom, in pink plushette,’ said the young lady, examining her nails which would have reflected credit upon a Mandarin of the First Class.

  ‘I mean a bottle. A rubber one,’ said Mrs Morland.

  ‘Oh, that! You won’t get that anywhere, modom, the Government won’t allow it,’ said the young lady and resumed her conversation.

  Mrs Morland, depressed, enquired about a sponge-bag, to which the young lady with infinite condescension replied, ‘Sold out, modom, and no more expected,’ and, to avoid further persecution by customers, went away to her lunch. So Mrs Morland took the lift down to the ironmongery.

  Here the scene was even more desolate. Where once fish-kettles had hung like bunches of grapes from the ceiling, saucepans had been piled to tottering heights, kettles had stood on shelves in serried rows, whole batteries de cuisine had been grouped with tender art about a pyramid of baking tins, all was now silence and gloom. Gone were the piles of zinc pails that impeded progress at the corner where fire-irons looked like a giant game of spillikins. Upon the counter formerly laden with tin-openers, tea-strainers, iron-stands, egg-whisks, perforated ladles, and all the small fry of the kitchen, stood a personal weighing-machine and a blue and white enamel pie-dish; behind the counter, Mr Hobson, once autocrat of some dozen assistants, drooped disconsolate.

  Mrs Morland, feeling rather as if she were brawling in church, murmured an enquiry about saucepans.

  ‘We did have a dozen last week, madam,’ said Mr Hobson, ‘but it was in and out. The ladies were down on them in a moment. But I have a nice enamel pie-dish, really a nice handy thing in the kitchen, only twenty-seven and sixpence.’

  Mrs Morland said apologetically that she was really looking for a saucepan; or a kettle perhaps. ‘Or we still have this personal weighing-machine,’ said Mr Hobson. ‘Very nice for the bathroom, though I believe the spring’s broken. No, madam, no chance of saucepans or kettles till our next quota and I don’t know when that will be nor if they’ll send us anything. We just have to take what we can in these days. Still, the great thing is to keep going, I always say.’

  Mrs Morland refused the pie-dish or the weighing-machine, said a few words of cold comfort to Mr Hobson and went away, feeling guilty.

  After this depressing interview she was much cheered to find a sudden glut of chocolate in the otherwise Sahara-like confectionery department, and by standing in a queue twice running, again with a feeling of guilt,
she got two half-pound packets of a good brand, which encouraged her to look for fish. At the entrance to the fish department, a large notice said No kippers, dried haddocks, or sausage meat. Please do not ask; a refusal often offends. Further depressed by this and by the smell of other fish trying to pretend it was fresh, and wondering as she often had before why sausage meat was fish, she wandered, jaded and footsore, to the umbrella department. Here a young lady with purple lips and finger-nails was reading in a grove of highly priced oiled-silk umbrellas. Mrs Morland enquired whether she could get her umbrella re-covered.

  ‘No re-covering done anywhere now,’ said the young lady languidly. ‘Government won’t allow it. Where’s the theatre tickets? Couldn’t say, I’m shore.’

  Mrs Morland enquired again and was directed to the ticket bureau. It was now twenty minutes to two and she was hungry and exhausted. There was no one at the counter. She asked an assistant at the watches and clocks close by if he knew where one could be found.

  ‘The gentleman goes to his dinner at a quarter to two,’ said the watches and clocks.

  ‘But it’s only twenty to two,’ said Mrs Morland, looking distractedly at the large clock above the counter.

  ‘I dessay he’s gone a bit early,’ said the watches and clocks. ‘He’ll be back at a quarter to three.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Mrs Morland, nearly crying with fatigue and annoyance. ‘Oh, by the way, you haven’t a Service wrist-watch, have you? I’ve been trying everywhere to get one for one of my sons.’

  ‘None for the last year,’ said watches and clocks with gloomy satisfaction, ‘and not likely to have any. The Government did say we’d be getting some, but we haven’t heard any more.’

  Mrs Morland went up to the restaurant, an enormous room covering the whole top floor and full to bursting with shoppers, male and female, in uniform and out of uniform, eating and talking as fast and as loudly as they could. Not a vacant place was to be seen. After walking miserably about the room for some time Mrs Morland found one empty place at a table whose she-occupants, engaged, she gathered from their talk, in some kind of secretarial work in a government office, looked at her with undisguised hostility. At last, a waitress came to give the lunchers their bill and remove the dirty plates.

  ‘Oh, could I have a cup of coffee and —’ Mrs Morland began.

  ‘Sorry, I’m attending to these ladies,’ said the waitress. ‘You’ll have to wait your turn. There’s a war on.’

  Well knowing that complaints would be useless, Mrs Morland got up and left the restaurant. As she passed the haberdashery counter, Fate, suddenly relenting, showed her quantities of elastic in every width except the one she needed, and she laid in a store in desperation, feeling a certain pleasure in at last having something to put in her shopping-bag, even if it wasn’t what she wanted.

  ‘Oh Lord!’ she said as she came out into the street. ‘George Knox’s book. Well, it will have to be a taxi this time.’

  A short drive brought her to Rutland Gate where the Knoxes’ depressing family mansion stood, looking with its peeling paint, shrapnel-pocked front and broken boarded-up windows even more depressing than usual. When Mrs Morland had rung several times, the caretaker came to the door and, recognising Mrs Morland as a friend of the family, opened it wide enough to let her in.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Ramsden,’ said Mrs Morland. ‘Mr Knox wants a book out of the library. Is that all right?’

  Mrs Ramsden shut the front door and Mrs Morland came into the hall. The house, which had not been inhabited since the air-raids of the preceding winter except in a mole-like way by Mrs Ramsden who lived in the basement with a varying number of her family, struck a chill to the visitor’s heart and her body. In the half-darkness made by the boarded-up windows she could dimly see furniture dust-sheeted and dirty marks on the walls where the pictures had hung. The carpets were rolled up against the walls and there was a general flavour of mushroom beds. In the library the shutters were barred over the shattered windows. Mrs Ramsden turned on the electric light.

  ‘I’d light a fire for you, miss,’ said Mrs Ramsden, who was no respecter nor noticer of persons, ‘but the Gas aren’t giving us any gas, leastways if I turn the fire on here I can’t boil my kettle in the kitchen, but I dare say you’ll manage.’

  Mrs Morland assured her that it would be all right, listened to her story of her daily fight against dirt and damp, not to speak of the ARP Wardens whom she looked upon as her natural enemies, and gave her some tea which she had thoughtfully brought from her store. She then turned to her business of finding the book. The room under the unshaded light was inexpressibly dreary. Soot had fallen down the chimney and tarnish lay on all the bright objects. She drew aside the dust-sheet which covered one of the bookcases and found the book she wanted without much difficulty.

  ‘Goodbye, Mrs Ramsden,’ she called down the kitchen stairs.

  A clumping noise was heard and Mrs Ramsden’s head and shoulders rose majestically from the depths.

  ‘I don’t like to write to Mr Knox,’ said Mrs Ramsden, whose dislike was founded rather on her splendid immunity to any school education than on any personal grounds, ‘so would you tell him a lady come to see about billeting people here if there was any more blitzes, so I said all the beds was occupied. I don’t hold with strangers in the house while I’m here.’

  ‘Quite right, Mrs Ramsden,’ said Mrs Morland, anxious to please one who she felt was far more capable and wiser in ancient wisdom than she could ever be, and at the same time wondering whether in a properly run country she would be hanged for such words.

  She then went into the street, where she was lucky enough to see a cruising taxi, so she hailed it and got in, almost too tired to tell it to go to the station. In the little mirror fixed over the opposite seat she caught sight of her own face looking haggard and, she had to confess, rather dirty. Her gloves were covered with thick sooty dirt from the library, reminding her horribly of the sticky substance that Mr Guppy and Mr Weevle touched at Mr Krook’s house. She wished, as she mostly did after these visits, that she need never see London again till civilisation had returned.

  But blessed be the London Stations where civilisation is not yet quite submerged. On the platform, where the four o’clock was waiting for her in unhurried calm, was a tea trolley, from which not only an inestimable cup of tea could be procured, but packets of biscuits and potato chips, of both which Mrs Morland shamelessly bought as many as she could. Fortified by her tea, she tottered into the train and fell into an exhausted sleep which lasted till the station before High Rising.

  When she got back to the house, Stoker was just taking the tea-things into the drawing-room.

  ‘I don’t suppose you got the fish,’ was her greeting, ‘so as I was down in the village I found two lovely kippers. And I knew you wouldn’t find a kettle, but Mr Reid at the Stores had some just come in, nice machine-made ones and cheap too, so I got a couple. And Sid Brown’s uncle, the one that used to be in Tooting till he was bombed, says he’ll do your umbrella, he used to work for one of the big shops there. There isn’t no chocolate, nor no elastic, stands to reason, so we’ll do without. Same with biscuits and potato chips. Mr Reid says the Government won’t let them make any more.’

  ‘Here are two packets of chocolate and a great deal of elastic,’ said Mrs Morland coldly. ‘And will you ring up Mr Knox and say I got his book. Oh, and here are some biscuits and some potato chips.’

  ‘Well, you did have a nice day in town,’ said Stoker admiringly.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Mrs Morland, suddenly so tired and depressed that she could have lain down on the floor and died. ‘It was mostly rudeness and nothing to buy.’

  ‘Well, you didn’t do so bad,’ said Stoker generously. ‘And there’s a letter from Mr Tony. He’ll be an officer before we know where we are.’

  Mrs Morland almost snatched the letter from her youngest son which Stoker, who disdained trays, produced from her apron pocket.

  ‘I’
ll just wash some of the dirt off and then I’m ready for tea,’ she said.

  A few minutes later, comforted by steaming tea, stayed with the fruit cake that Stoker still mysteriously managed to make, Mrs Morland sat warming her feet before the fire and reading Tony’s letter, written from the camp where he was learning to be an artillery officer. Tony appeared to be in good spirits. He did not say that he was wet, cold, hungry, penniless, coughing, overworked, to all of which complaints Mrs Morland was so accustomed that she had almost succeeded in believing that her youngest son exaggerated his miseries; as indeed he did, for parents must be kept on the qui vive. So his mother’s spirit rested for a while; and as she reflected on the things that she had succeeded in buying, on the promise of brandy, on the niceness of Mr Siskin and Mr Hopkins, on the reliability of Mrs Ramsden, on Sid Brown’s uncle who would re-cover her umbrella, on all the blessings that were once so common and were now to be counted and cherished, she felt that she had indeed had a very nice day in town.

  First published in London Calling: A Salute to America, 1942

  VIRAGO MODERN CLASSICS

  HIGH RISING

  Angela Thirkell

  Successful novelist Laura Morland and her boisterous son Tony set off to spend Christmas at her country home in the sleepy surrounds of High Rising. But Laura’s wealthy neighbour George Knox has taken on a scheming secretary whose designs on marriage threaten the delicate social fabric of the village. Can clever, practical Laura rescue George from Miss Grey’s clutches and, what’s more, help his daughter Miss Sibyl Knox to secure her longed-for engagement?