Ripeness is All

by Eric Linklater

  ‘You’ve given me a great deal to think about,’ said the General. ‘Have some more brandy, my boy. Have another cheroot – no, don’t try to light that one again, take a new one.’

  The argument found other fruit, and Stephen continued to have the best of it. It was midnight when he reached home, and it was not till the following morning that he realized, with any apprehension of its significance, that Bolivia had kissed him good night and that he had responded. The memory of their embrace made him very uncomfortable and not a little ashamed. He was patently ill at ease when Wilfrid, at the breakfast table, asked him how he had enjoyed himself and what had been the nature of his entertainment, and throughout the morning he was subject to a recurrent flush of embarrassment. But Bolivia, calling for him at two o’clock to take him to the golf course, showed nothing of the complementary shame that he had feared, but rather treated him with a new confidence and a curiously protective and even possessive manner.

  It was the General, however, who, more than anyone else, gave substance to the gossip which his daughter’s sudden friendliness with Stephen had naturally promoted. The General began to talk in the highest terms of Stephen. He made a point of praising him. ‘He’s an uncommonly sensible fellow,’ he told Sir Gervase; and Miss Montgomery reported a conversation in which the General had ascribed to Stephen ‘a sounder grasp of modern problems than I’ve observed in any other young man of my acquaintance’.

  ‘The significance of such a remark is obvious,’ said Miss Montgomery to her tea-party.

  ‘I don’t follow you,’ said Mrs Corcoran.

  ‘He’s developed a high opinion of Stephen because Stephen is about to become his son-in-law.’

  ‘That’s very clever of you, Harriet,’ said Mrs Corcoran.

  ‘You mean the General is trying to make the best of it?’ suggested Miss Foster.

  ‘Oh, not deliberately. But there’s a natural tendency to magnify the good points of one’s new friends and prospective relations-in-law.’

  ‘I must confess that I’m surprised at Bolivia,’ said Mrs Sabby. ‘I did not think she was a girl like that.’

  ‘Like what?’ asked Mrs Corcoran.

  ‘Surely it’s clear that she’s marrying him for money?’

  ‘But he hasn’t got any money. Not yet, at any rate.’

  ‘That’s what I mean. I think Bolivia’s behaviour is absolutely shameless.’

  ‘Perhaps she’s in love with him,’ said Miss Foster. ‘I myself have always found him very agreeable, and I see no reason why Bolivia shouldn’t have made the same discovery.’

  ‘I think it’s a pity,’ said Mrs Fowler decisively. ‘I think it’s a great pity. And I’m very sorry indeed for poor Wilfrid: he and Stephen always appeared to be so happy together.’

  ‘Indeed, Wilfrid was looking miserable when I saw him last,’ said Miss Foster thoughtfully.

  There was a general murmur of commiseration.

  ‘I hope Bolivia gets married quickly, or it will be too late,’ said Miss Montgomery.

  This observation caused considerable surprise, and Mrs Corcoran asked sharply, ‘What d’you mean, Harriet?’

  ‘Katherine Clements returned to Rumneys yesterday, and I am told that her very first words to Hilary and Jane were that she expected to have twins in May.’

  ‘Twins!’ exclaimed Mrs Sabby. ‘How does she know?’

  ‘She doesn’t, of course. But I believe her husband’s family makes rather a speciality of them, and Katherine is being optimistic.’

  The tea-party discussed this new and important development of the drama with relish and a keen appreciation of all its niceties. There woke within them, and became vocal, that interest in the mechanism of creation which had dominated so much of the aggregate three hundred years of their lives, and old Mrs Fowler, brushing a crumb from her bosom, set down her tea-cup and flatly contradicted Miss Fowler’s rash assertion that twins were an accident which no one might prognosticate and none explain. The fire burnt brightly, the yellow curtains were drawn against the October dusk, and the half-emptied plates on the cake-stand showed twice the look of comfort they had worn when full. The vanished frail slices of bread and butter, the diminishment of the cherry-cake, the toasted and now absent scones, had taken their place in three hundred years of life, and the trio of mortal centuries they had strengthened spoke like a college of midwives – but with ladylike regard for decency – about the immortality that flesh can make. They would have listened with sympathy to Juliet’s nurse, and all sound women. Had a man come in they would have fallen silent as stone, not so much with embarrassment as with impatient scorn of the episodic as opposed to the progressive partner.

  Presently, with the tone of conclusion, Miss Fowler said, ‘Well, if Katherine is justified in her expectation – though for my part I don’t believe she will be – Arthur and Daisy will have to take a back seat, because I don’t for a moment suppose …’

  ‘Now don’t say anything rash,’ said Miss Montgomery with a little smile so gentle that it could not be called a smile of triumph, and yet, to those who knew her, betokened a most pleasurable satisfaction. She was very small and delicate in person. She had weak eyes, and a thin wrinkled face, and a black ribbon round her neck; and she gathered more news, and gathered it more quickly, than anyone else in Lammiter.

  Mrs Sabby, Mrs Fowler, Miss Foster, and Mrs Corcoran spoke together. ‘You don’t mean to say,’ they exclaimed, ‘you don’t mean…?’

  ‘Indeed I do,’ said Miss Montgomery. ‘I was talking to their little girl, Ruth, only this morning. She’s a very clever, rather old-fashioned child, and her information was quite definite.’

  Again the room was filled with a clamour – so far as old ladies’ voices may produce a clamour – of speculation and annotation, comment, and criticism. Again the warm air was fluttered with obstetrical dialectic and the brouhaha of three hundred years of gynaecology. Endless were the permutations and combinations of vital statistics, interminable the reminiscences and anecdotes of lying-in. The world was narrowed, in Miss Montgomery’s drawing-room, to a likeness of the Great Bed of Ware, and womankind for ever contemned the sterile theories of T.R. Malthus.

  It was with a noticeable diminution of interest that the conversation turned at length to the reputed growth of friendship between Hilary Gander and the Reverend Lionel Purefoy. This was a minor matter. Sentimentality had no flavour after the strong substance of procreation. ‘She’ll be forty in December,’ said Miss Montgomery with a deprecating smile.

  ‘And the Vicar’s children wouldn’t count, would they?’ asked Miss Foster.

  ‘Count? Count for what?’ asked Mrs Corcoran.

  ‘Well, if Hilary married the Vicar – of course I don’t suppose there’s anything in the story, but just for the sake of argument, suppose she did – then she’d have six stepchildren: that wouldn’t mean that she won the Major’s legacy, would it?’

  ‘No,’ said Miss Montgomery decisively. ‘That possibility occurred to me some time ago, and I had a little conversation with Mr Peabody. I was extremely tactful, and naturally I mentioned no names, but I had Hilary’s case in mind, and I satisfied myself beyond doubt that stepchildren, however many, were no qualification in terms of the will.’

  ‘None the less, it would be a very good thing if she did marry him,’ said old Mrs Fowler.

  ‘Why?’ asked Mrs Corcoran.

  ‘Because the Vicar is the sort of man who must have a woman to look after him,’ said Mrs Fowler. ‘All men are the better of a wife, but he really needs one. There was no conviction in his voice last Sunday, and there won’t be till he’s married again.’

  It was clear, however, that dissection of the putative relations between Hilary and the Vicar would be an anticlimax, and the party showed little inclination to pursue it. Katherine’s condition and Daisy’s gave them enough to think about, and like wise women they were satisfied with plenty.

  Miss Montgomery’s party had been a great success, and Miss M
ontgomery had wit enough to be grateful to Major Gander for his ingenious will.

  Chapter 8

  The winter migration began of mist and cloud, of wind and rain and biting airs. As though with a huge flock of arctic birds the sky was filled with cold grey plumage and feathers that in their flight flung spray they had caught far off in northern seas. On reluctant wings the morning mist rose wearily, the hovering clouds obscured the sun, and in the slip-stream of the flighting winds the last leaves fluttered wildly on bare branches. The birds of winter came and struck at the land with cold sharp beaks, and shook their wet wings over house and field. They invested the hills and beleaguered the snug valleys.

  This was the season when, if Stephen had his way, the streets would flower with crimson and with ermine, with cloaks of scarlet and gaiters of holly-green, and glittering tassels and gold braid would gleam in the sombre air. But as Stephen had no disciples, not even Wilfrid or himself, the people subdued their outward guise to an aspect even gloomier than the firmament, and secure from envy walked abroad in dingy hues and the dripping shade of dark umbrellas. And yet, though these were indeed the colours of mourning, it would be foolish to think they were defeated or afraid. These dismal winter trappings were only the relics of a lost habit of hibernation – the umbrella their vestigial cave, the grey waterproof a memory of some hollow tree-trunk – and in the heart of hibernation there is always the thought of spring. Strip off the hideous clothes of winter and underneath them you will see divine impatience for trees in blossom, buds again, and the brightness of tall blue skies. April is always astir in December’s womb, and in the darkness of the year green buds are germinating.

  It was this impatience, or the joy of realization after long months of impatience, that so often made the renouveau a poet’s topic, and helped Chaucer’s daisies to grow so white. When the seasons were closer to them than they now are, the poets rose and sang like larks in spring. But even the poet who sang, between March and April, of his love for Alysoun; or he who saw love and Lent come into town together; or they who sang for ever the nightingale, the white moon, and the Provencal dawn; or she who cried to the west wind for rain and to heaven for her lover; or they who hymned a bel oil vair in cowslip time – take them all, hot clerk and fevered girl and passionate trouvere, and make a sweet sum of their longing, and however much it differed in quality, it would be no greater in quantity than the pother and impatience and flustered expectancy with which plump Arthur and bespectacled Daisy and shallow Katherine, and indeed some three hundred busybodies and kind gossips of Lammiter attended the promised burgeoning of the new year.

  Katherine was more honest than Daisy in her maternal expectancy. She simply made herself a nuisance to everybody with whom she came in contact by talking for ever about her anticipated child, or rather children, for the law of averages and the numerical odds in favour of a singleton did not for a moment diminish her assurance of two. Every morning, with impressive regularity, she described, for the benefit of Hilary and Jane, the current state of her health, and such was her simple faith in the perennial interest of this subject that even Hilary’s patent boredom and Jane’s frequent rudeness did nothing to check the copious details of her matutinal narrative: a narrative not too aggressively matutinal, however, for the delicacy of her condition now made it advisable for her to eat breakfast in bed.

  ‘I’m taking no risks,’ she would bluffly say. ‘A lot depends on me now, and I’m going to take every possible care of myself and build up my strength, because it will be a bit of a strain to nurse two children. I’ll be able to do it, of course – I haven’t any doubt about that – but I’m going to be sensible and really study rny health for the next few months. It’s only fair to them that I should. I was wondering, Hilary, if we could have dinner at seven instead of at eight – it won’t be for very long: just till the spring – because I think an earlier meal would give me a better night’s rest.’

  Daisy was also determined to take every care of herself, and in this pious resolve she was encouraged by Arthur, who was relieved to find that his own health was no longer a matter of interest. Daisy still bought patent foods in great quantity and variety: all the newest agglomerations of vitamins, proteins, peptones, diastase, phosphates, hormones, galactogogues, and glandular extracts, as well as other boluses, plasters, carminatives, cathartics, and nostrums, were delivered in profusion to Hornbeam House, and applied or swallowed according to the confused aggregate of directions: but now it was Daisy herself who consumed the innumerable pills, potions, and farinaceous messes: not a husk or a capsule was given to Arthur. And Arthur was content.

  But though Daisy took such inordinate trouble to maintain her health and prepare for motherhood, she did it all in secret and was very much offended if Arthur made any allusion to her diet or to her state of health. It was not, she thought, a matter to be discussed. She could not refrain from informing people of her condition, but as soon as she had told them she regretted her indiscretion, and desired them to say no more about it. She assumed, for the world’s benefit, an aloofly smiling delicacy of temper, and revered as a miracle that which had happened: and indeed it was a miracle.

  It was a pleasant sight to see Daisy taking her walks abroad. Her nose might be a little red with the frosty weather, her sloping shoulders might seem unapt for her enormous weight of clothing they supported, the long feet burdened with gaiters and goloshes might seem larger than they were; but her eyes had a whimsical and dreamy look, and a little smile was on her mouth. It was a pity that so few flowers grew in November, for Daisy would have liked to gather blossom as she walked, but she did her best with hips and haws and a few catkins, and the winter melody of thrush and hedgesparrow, nuthatch and titmouse, pleased her greatly, though she did not know which was which. She made a brave attempt to live in spiritual communion with the prettiest of nature’s activities, and though she never forgot the proper hours at which to eat her unnatural compounds of vitamins, phosphates, peptones, and so forth, it was perhaps a mark of grace that she insisted on consuming them in private.

  She fortified her sense of living beautifully by reading the poems of W. H. Davies and the works of W. H. Hudson, and whenever she could she resolutely banished from her mind all thought of the financial significance of her expectations. This, however, was not always possible, for Katherine made a point of calling on her every week or so, and Katherine’s conversation, the mere sight of Katherine, would rouse in her such feelings of hostility and discomfort as banished, for the time being, all the complacency and consanguinity with birds and trees that her reading had so happily suggested, and made her feverishly desirous of winning the Major’s legacy simply to spite her cousin-in-law.

  Katherine would come in looking boisterously maternal. At a very early stage in the proceedings, and long before there was any need for them, she took to wearing loose gowns and corselets designed to support her increasing figure. Enlarged with these wholly redundant garments, she gave forty times more promise of fecundity than Daisy, whose modesty bade her do everything possible to retain a slender fallow look; and Daisy’s temper was invariably ruffled by this too procreant spectacle and by the objectionable confidence of Katherine’s manner.

  Katherine would come in and say, ‘Well, Daisy, how are you feeling? Looking a bit down, aren’t you?’

  Daisy would glance with a slight shudder at the exuberant folds of Katherine’s dress, and answer primly, ‘Thank you, Katherine, I’m perfectly well. There’s no reason why I should be otherwise, is there?’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ Katherine would continue. ‘It takes different people in different ways. I’m extraordinarily fit myself, but some women I know become chronic invalids as soon as …’

  If Ruth were in the room, Daisy would rise, at this point, with purposive interruption, and ask her daughter, ‘Wouldn’t you like to go for a walk, Ruth? It’s quite a nice afternoon, and I think a little walk might do you good.’

  Ruth’s response to these suggest
ions was always immediate and acquiescent. ‘She’s getting so good,’ Daisy would say. ‘A child’s intuitive sympathy is really wonderful. It’s as though she realized and understood that my life must be calm and peaceful. I can’t bear an argument, and even a jarring atmosphere upsets me. It always has. I think that’s why I spend so much time in the garden, talking to my flowers, for they always agree with me and sympathize with my little worries.’

  Daisy had said nothing to Ruth about her expected baby. Despite her earnest explication of the wonders of nature, as they occurred among bees and flowers and guinea-pigs, she had come to the conclusion that it would be too difficult, and certainly embarrassing, to explain the quickening of her own procreant faculty, and she had excused the evasion of a task that to other mothers she would have called imperative, by pretending to herself that she was withholding the news in order to give Ruth a charming surprise. Ruth, however, as Miss Montgomery had already discovered, was not in a position to be surprised. She was an inquisitive child, and having early suspected the existence of a secret she had set out in a quiet and unobtrusive way to discover it. She had succeeded by skilful eavesdropping. The healthy walks on which she was dispatched when Aunt Katherine came to tea had never taken her farther than the garden, where, oblivious of the cold, she would crouch and listen outside the lee window that was generally left discreetly open. Sometimes she had even succeeded in returning, unobserved, to the drawing-room, and crawling silently behind the couch that stood a little distance from the wall that was adjacent to the door. She had been very interested in what she heard, and her success in learning so much gave her a feeling of virtue: her father had once told her not to rely on books for information – this had been when she was studying hedgehogs – but to use her own eyes and ears; and now she was very profitably obeying him.