Cheerfulness Breaks In Read online

  VIRAGO

  MODERN CLASSICS

  658

  Angela Thirkell (1890–1961) was the eldest daughter of John William Mackail, a Scottish classical scholar and civil servant, and Margaret Burne-Jones. Her relatives included the pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones, Rudyard Kipling and Stanley Baldwin, and her godfather was J. M. Barrie. She was educated in London and Paris, and began publishing articles and stories in the 1920s. In 1931 she brought out her first book, a memoir entitled Three Houses, and in 1933 her comic novel High Rising – set in the fictional county of Barsetshire, borrowed from Trollope – met with great success. She went on to write nearly thirty Barsetshire novels, as well as several further works of fiction and non-fiction. She was twice married, and had four children.

  By Angela Thirkell

  Barsetshire novels

  High Rising

  Wild Strawberries

  The Demon in the House

  August Folly

  Summer Half

  Pomfret Towers

  The Brandons

  Before Lunch

  Cheerfulness Breaks In

  Northbridge Rectory

  Marling Hall

  Growing Up

  The Headmistress

  Miss Bunting

  Peace Breaks Out

  Private Enterprise

  Love Among the Ruins

  The Old Bank House

  County Chronicle

  The Duke’s Daughter

  Happy Returns

  Jutland Cottage

  What Did it Mean?

  Enter Sir Robert

  Never Too Late

  A Double Affair

  Close Quarters

  Love at All Ages

  Three Score and Ten

  Non-fiction

  Three Houses

  Collected Stories

  Christmas at High Rising

  CHEERFULNESS BREAKS IN

  Angela Thirkell

  Published by Virago Press

  ISBN: 9780349007489

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © The Beneficiaries of Angela Thirkell 1940

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Virago Press

  An imprint of

  Little, Brown Book Group

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DZ

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  CONTENTS

  I HASTE TO THE WEDDING

  II THE BRIDESMAIDS’ TALE

  III GO, LOVELY ROSE

  IV THE STORM BEGINS TO LOWER

  V A ROOM WITH A PICTURE

  VI THE WORKING PARTY

  VII MRS. BRANDON AGAIN

  VIII THE BISSELLS AT HOME

  IX SHERRY AT THE BIRKETTS’

  X THE PATH OF DUTY

  XI THE CHRISTMAS TREAT

  XII NEWS OF THE FLEET

  XIII BRIEF WINTER INTERLUDE

  XIV DINNER AT THE DEANERY

  XV STORY WITHOUT AN END

  CHAPTER I

  HASTE TO THE WEDDING

  TO all those who had admired and disliked the lovely Rose Birkett it appeared (with the greatest respect for the Royal Navy) quite inevitable that she should marry a naval man. As the elder daughter of the Headmaster of Southbridge School she had every opportunity for trying the effect of her charms on as many as three hundred and twenty-seven members of the opposite sex, ranging from the newest comer in the junior school to Mr. Walker who dealt out the very highest mathematics to a privileged and harassed few and was popularly supposed to be coeval with the late Queen Victoria, but except for one or two junior masters to whom she simply couldn’t help getting engaged, a term which appeared to her parents to mean absolutely nothing except that she would always neglect the man of her choice for any later arrival, the whole school united in a total disregard of ‘that Rose,’ as they called her on the infrequent occasions when they bothered to think about her. Young gentlemen up to eighteen, or at a pinch, and if one can’t pass one’s School Certificate and is really good at cricket, nineteen, rightly regard their Headmaster’s daughter as beyond the pale, while the senior masters had little but dislike for the exquisite nitwit who played havoc with their juniors’ hearts and work. Everard Carter, Housemaster of the largest House, had particular cause to feel annoyance with Rose, as she had three years ago so devastated his second-in-command, Philip Winter, that he could willingly have shaken her till her lovely head fell off her perfect shoulders.

  Since the fateful summer when Rose had first got engaged and then got unengaged, to use her own description, to Philip Winter, she had plighted her troth to at least six admirers and with equal fervour unplighted it. Her parents, who had not the faintest control over their wayward child, began to fear that she would live with them for ever, when Lieutenant John Fairweather, R.N., who had made her the object of his attentions for several years whenever he was on leave, came into a very nice fortune and was appointed Naval Attaché to the South American capital of Las Palombas. Immediately on the receipt of these pieces of news he proposed to Rose, was at once accepted, for such was her artless custom when wooed, and told her parents he was very sorry but he must marry her at once.

  Mr. and Mrs. Birkett, who had known Lieutenant Fairweather ever since he and his brother were in the junior school, made a faint protest for form’s sake and then arranged with joy to have the wedding in the school chapel two days after school broke up for the summer holidays, a date which only gave Mrs. Birkett a fortnight to get her daughter’s trousseau and send out invitations. In this her husband would, she well knew, be little or no help, partly because he wouldn’t in any case, partly because end of term occupied his every moment, but in the joy of getting rid of her daughter she would willingly have undertaken a far more onerous task. It was difficult to believe that in two weeks Rose would be safely married and no longer drive everyone mad by coming down late, combing her hair and making up her face all over the house, bringing young men in for drinks at all hours and being very rude to her parents, or having equally exhausting fits of remorse accompanied by loud crying and yelling, but if any effort of hers could help towards this long-desired end, Mrs. Birkett was ready to make it. In all her preparations she was loyally seconded by her younger daughter, Geraldine, who while not envying her elder sister her beauty or her admirers (for she was an intellectual), very much looked forward to having the old nursery, which Rose had in vain attempted to rechristen a sitting-room, for her sole use and to receiving there such old girls of the Barchester High School as she happened to favour.

  Under normal conditions it would have been perfectly easy to Rose to get unengaged within a fortnight and even get engaged to someone else, but two things contributed to make her love burn with a steadfast glow. The first was that her mother firmly took her up to town for such an orgy of dress-buying that even Rose’s delicate frame, proof against a twenty-four hour day of cinemas, driving in fast cars, dancing at nightclubs and listening to the wireless at full blast while she talked to all her friends, was slightly affected; the second that she had nearly learnt to play the ocarina and did not wish to lose any moment in which she might be perfecting herself on that uninteresting instrument.

 
There had been moments when Mr. and Mrs. Birkett had suffered from compunction, wondering whether they had done right in delivering an Old Boy into the hands of their lovely Rose, and Mr. Birkett had gone so far as deciding to enlighten his old pupil as to the character of his daughter. For this sacrificial act he had chosen a Sunday evening after dinner. Lieutenant Fairweather had been spending the week-end at the school and had filled his future parents-in-law with admiration by telling Rose that if she couldn’t be down and dressed by ten o’clock on Sunday morning he wasn’t going to wait for her, as he had promised to meet Everard Carter on the Southbridge Golf Links at half-past. Rose, sauntering down at five minutes to ten, her golden locks tied up in a scarlet fish-net, her exquisite figure draped in a yellow short-sleeved shirt and grey flannel slacks, her feet with their gleaming red toenails thrust into blue beach shoes with soles two inches thick, carrying her ocarina under one arm and a large, dirty, white vanity bag under the other, found her betrothed sitting on the front doorstep of the Headmaster’s house in the sun.

  ‘You can’t come like that, my girl,’ said Lieutenant Fairweather, looking with affectionate disgust at his Rose.

  ‘Don’t be so dispiriting, darling,’ said Rose.

  ‘Four minutes and a half to put on some decent clothes,’ said the Lieutenant, turning his back on his beloved, going down the steps to his car and looking with great interest at the bonnet. He then took a neatly folded piece of wash-leather out of a pocket in the car and began to polish some chromium work. When he had finished he folded the wash-leather neatly up again, put it away and got into the driving seat. As he did so Rose in a becoming light woollen coat and skirt (for the day, though near the end of July, was not very hot), her hair confined by a neat bandeau, her beautiful legs and feet in silk stockings and brogues, ran down the steps and round the car and took her place beside him, remarking as she did so that he was foully dispiriting.

  ‘Not half so dispiriting as that pumpkin of yours, my girl,’ said the gallant Lieutenant, and taking the ocarina from Rose he stretched out his long arm and put it in one of the stone flower-pots at the bottom of the steps.

  Rose said that was too dispiriting and foul.

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Lieutenant Fairweather, starting his high-powered sports car with a jump and roar that would have shaken the teeth out of anyone less toughly made and insensitive than the exquisite Rose. ‘It’ll do nicely in the flower-pot. Grow into an ocarina tree. Isn’t there a book called that by some fellow?’

  Rose said it sounded a pretty dispiriting sort of book and she daresaid it was one of those foul books Mummy got from the libery.

  ‘Fellow called something or other,’ said the Lieutenant, swinging the car out of the school gates into the main road on one wheel while he lighted a cigarette. ‘Morn, or Morm, or something. The Torpedo Lieutenant of the Anteater lent it me and I lost it.’

  The rest of this intellectual conversation was lost in the joys of overtaking every car on the road and the happy pair were not seen again till dinner-time. Sunday dinner, for the loathsome meal called Sunday supper Mrs. Birkett had always managed to avoid, was the usual mixture of family, three masters, and a couple of rather spotty senior boys, upon all of whom Rose lavished her charms with great impartiality and but little success, for the masters talked shop with the Headmaster as a relaxation from talking shop with him all the week, and the boys regarded her much as Hop o’ My Thumb regarded the Ogre’s daughter, finding her sister Geraldine a much better sort of fellow. Lieutenant Fairweather talked very happily with Mrs. Birkett about old days in the junior school and his elder brother in the Barsetshire Regiment, and when Rose sauntered out of the room no one missed her in the least.

  When the guests had gone Mr. Birkett looked at his wife and in an offhand way invited Lieutenant Fair-weather to come into his study and smoke a pipe. As the Headmaster and most of his guests had been smoking pipes ever since supper the invitation might have struck an unprejudiced observer as quite unnecessary, but the Lieutenant, who took everything as he found it unless he wanted to alter it, at once got up.

  ‘Good night,’ said Mrs. Birkett, ‘I suppose I ought to call you John, but I always think of you as Fair-weather Junior.’

  ‘Well, I always think of you as Old Ma Birky,’ said the Lieutenant. ‘Jove, those were the days, Mrs. Birky. Do you remember the boxing competition when I was in the Lower Fourth?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ said Mrs. Birkett. ‘You and Swift-Hetherington were in the under four stone class.’

  ‘And Mrs. Watson went out of the hall till the fighting was over because she was afraid young Watson might bleed,’ said Lieutenant Fairweather. ‘He was a glutton for a fight.’

  ‘Now Bill is waiting for you,’ said Mrs. Birkett, always a good Headmaster’s wife.

  Lieutenant Fairweather knocked his pipe out against the revolting tiles of the drawing-room fireplace, put in at vast expense by the Governing Body under the influence of one of their members who had been to the Paris Exhibition of 1900, and followed his old Headmaster to the study. The long summer evening was drawing to its close and from the study window lights could be seen in the various Houses across the school quad. Mr. Birkett turned on the light at his writing-table.

  ‘Sit down, Fairweather,’ he said.

  ‘Makes me feel quite young again,’ said the Lieutenant, taking a chair within the little pool of light. ‘Those were the days, sir. One used to get the wind up like anything when you sent for us. I remember you giving me six of the best for cheeking Mr. Ferris in the Upper Dor., when I was in the Lower School.’

  ‘Did I?’ said Mr. Birkett, feeling more and more how awkward it was to have to warn an Old Boy against Rose, especially an Old Boy whom he had beaten for cheeking that dreadful Ferris who had since become one of H.M. Inspectors of Secondary Schools and the right place for him too.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’d remember, sir,’ said the Lieutenant, warming to his memories. ‘Rose was yelling like anything that day because Mrs. Birky wouldn’t let her bang her toy drum in the hall.’

  ‘Yes; Rose,’ said the Headmaster absently. ‘Yes. Fairweather, I feel I ought to speak to you seriously about Rose.’

  He paused. Much as he disliked his exquisite daughter he must be loyal to her and between this feeling and his deep loyalty to all Old Boys he must decide.

  ‘Sounds a bit like the Chaplain’s jaws before we were confirmed, sir,’ said Lieutenant Fairweather cheerfully. ‘Of course we knew all about facts of life but we used to give him his head.’

  He laughed cheerfully.

  ‘It’s not that,’ said Mr. Birkett in great discomfort. ‘Rose is a very good girl, but I don’t think you quite understand what you’re undertaking. I’m afraid my wife and I have spoilt her rather.’

  ‘Take it from me, sir, you have,’ said the Lieutenant. ‘But this is where the Navy puts its foot down. Do you mind if I smoke, sir?’

  He filled his pipe again and began lighting it. From the far corner of the room where by now it was quite dark came a low sound as of a melancholy and not very musical owl hooting in syncopated time.

  ‘Hi! Rose!’ said Lieutenant Fairweather, quite unperturbed. ‘Come out of that.’

  At his loving words Rose with her ocarina came slowly and gracefully towards the table, remarking that it was quite dispiriting if one couldn’t practise because people would talk so much, and she had nearly got “Hebe’s got the jeebies but they’re not so bad as Phoebe’s” right.

  ‘Right, my girl? You wouldn’t get it right if you tried for a fortnight,’ said the Lieutenant. ‘And listen; that thing of yours is not coming on my honeymoon.’

  ‘Don’t be so foul, John,’ said Rose. ‘Daddy, I think it’s too dispiriting to be told one’s spoilt.’

  Mr. Birkett, though he knew that he was in the right and his lovely daughter an intruder, an eavesdropper and a nuisance, felt more embarrassed than ever and was quite delighted when his younger daughter Geraldine came into th
e room with an avenging expression and went up to Rose.

  ‘You’ve taken my stockings again,’ said she.

  ‘I couldn’t find mine, and anyway they’re a foul pair,’ said Rose languidly.

  ‘They aren’t,’ said Geraldine coldly. ‘They are my good new pair that Mrs. Morland sent me for my birthday. Rose, you are a mean beast. You always take my things and you know I wanted specially to keep this pair for your wedding.’

  Rose played a few uninterested notes on her ocarina. Mr. Birkett’s heart sank. This was a judgment on him for trying to warn Fairweather against Rose. Now he had seen Rose in this very unfavourable light he would break off the engagement and Rose would go on living at home, probably for ever. At this thought the Headmaster almost groaned aloud.

  ‘Come, come, my girl, that’s not cricket,’ said Lieutenant Fairweather getting up. ‘Give Geraldine her stockings. No, not now,’ he added, as Rose began pulling up her skirt and showing apparently yards of a very elegant silk-clad leg. ‘Go along now, and give them to Geraldine when you get upstairs.’

  Rose dropped her skirt again and went towards the door.

  ‘And don’t forget to say good night,’ said the ardent lover. ‘Your father first, my girl.’

  To her own great surprise Rose kissed her father good night, an attention to which he was little accustomed, and then put her face up for her betrothed to salute her, which he did with great affection, at the same time taking the ocarina from her, saying that she would keep everyone awake all night.

  ‘Darling John, I do love you,’ said Rose, clinging heavily about his neck.

  ‘Of course you do,’ said Lieutenant Fairweather, ‘you’re not a bad sort when one comes to know you, Rose. Good night, Gerry. Let me know if Rose tries to put it over you about those stockings.’

  Geraldine, who as a rule resented any shortening of her name, kissed her future brother-in-law with almost as much affection as Rose had done and the two girls went off together, perfectly reconciled.