Cheerfulness Breaks In Page 18

  ‘Very well,’ said Noel. ‘At a quarter to two I shall fetch you with some illegal petrol and take you for a drive. Would that do?’

  Lydia nodded violently.

  ‘The Communal Kitchen is in Northbridge High Street in that empty house next to The Laurels,’ she said. ‘You’ll know it by the smell of rabbit and onions to-morrow.’

  Mrs. Crawley then descended upon Noel to take him to look at the delightful Mixo-Lydian embroidery in the dining-room, so after exchanging a handshake with Lydia which stopped all his circulation for thirty seconds he followed his hostess. Lydia, feeling a little lost, went in search of other company and found Geraldine with Octavia Crawley and Mr. Needham, all eating potato crisps.

  ‘Hullo, Lydia,’ said Geraldine. ‘Isn’t it a shame Fritz Warbury couldn’t stay? He’s going to take me round the studio one day, though.’

  Octavia Crawley, her utterance rather impeded by a mouthful of potato crisps that crackled like fireworks, said they had a man in from the film studios last week with the most ghastly burns on his arms, but that beast Matron had put him in D ward. Delia Brandon, she added, said they were the most splendid burns she’d ever seen. Tommy, she continued, a little more distinctly, had been in to read to him and thought he’d probably die soon.

  ‘We’ve never had a funeral from the Hospital since I was there,’ said Geraldine. ‘It would be rather fun, but I wish it was a military one. Fritz could film it.’

  Geraldine and Octavia then continued their artless talk, each on the subject that most interested her virgin heart, while Lydia gravely listened. On any other occasion she would have given her own views in no uncertain manner, but this evening, or more correctly since the last few minutes, she was conscious of an unusual want of interest in her young friends’ conversation. Mr. Needham, who had felt a certain awe of her on the day she drove him to lunch with Mrs. Brandon, suddenly had a peculiar sensation of being sorry for her, he couldn’t tell why. Her quiet manner seemed to him rather touching after the overbearing ways he had previously witnessed, and he could not help contrasting her with Geraldine and Octavia, who were still eating potato crisps and enlarging in a rather boring way upon films and funerals. Lydia’s handome face in pensive repose suddenly seemed to him much more pleasing than Octavia’s plain though animated countenance; even Mrs. Brandon’s more mature charms were forgotten; and it must be confessed that Mr. Needham fell in love for the third time since the beginning of September, which was pretty good going.

  The party was now thinning rapidly and Mrs. Birkett begged such guests as were still in the drawing-room to come across and look at the embroideries before they went. Accordingly Lydia and her friends who were still eating potato crisps and accompanied by Mr. Needham, followed the rest of the party into the dining-room from which Mr. Hopkins had been trying for at least half an hour to escape without success, till at last, to his horror, he found himself almost in the arms of Mme Brownscu, who was determined to get rid of the remains of her merchandise.

  ‘You will buy this,’ said Mme Brownscu. ‘I will abandon it to you for three thousand Lydions, that is one shilling and you will tell all your friends to buy more. You will bring them to see me and I shall sell them much better embroideries which also cost more dear. One shilling, yes.’

  But Mr. Hopkins, who was very avaricious, had no wish to part with a shilling. Indeed he had more than once thought of resigning his membership of the B.S.R.S.C.S. or Brotherly (and) Scientific Relations (with our) Soviet Comrades Society, because of the yearly subscription which with the poundage on a postal order and the postage amounted to nearly five shillings and sixpence. So he tried to slip past Mme Brownscu, but was brought up short in the doorway by Mrs. Bissell.

  ‘Good evening, Mr. Hopkins,’ said his Headmaster’s wife with her usual calm. ‘Here you see me a latecomer. Poor little Edna had one of her fits, so I said to Mr. Bissell not to wait for me. But the poor little thing got off to sleep nicely and Mrs. Dingle is sitting with her and here I am. Now you must show me the exhibits. What a pretty piece of work that is.’

  ‘One shilling,’ said Mme Brownscu. ‘That is as much as giving him a present of it. I shall lose on this bargain but God wills it so. If you have no change it does not matter. It will benefit my compatriots.’

  ‘No thanks, no thanks,’ said Mr. Hopkins, angry and afraid. ‘Very nice. Quite like the Russian work, but I don’t want it to-day.’

  He could not have made a more unfortunate remark. Mme Brownscu’s eyes flashed, she stubbed her half-smoked cigarette out among the small change on the table with the action of one ridding the world of a loathsome viper.

  ‘Russian, you said?’ she inquired. ‘You were in Russia, hein?’

  Mr. Hopkins, wishing more and more that he had never accepted Capittleist sherry, said he had been in Moscow and must be getting back.

  ‘Ha! Getting back to Moscow, doubtless!’ said Mme Brownscu. ‘Tu entends, mon ami,’ she continued to her husband, ‘ce type est ami de Moscou, de ces sales Russes.’

  Poor M. Brownscu pulled his sheepskin coat so far up round his face that only his large miserable eyes were visible between the collar and his béret and shrinking away from Mr. Hopkins said in an agonised voice, ‘Czy, pròvka, pròvka, pròvka.’

  By this time all such guests as were left had gathered round in pleasurable excitement and those that were just going came back and looked over each other’s shoulders in the dining-room door. Mrs. Birkett, who did not at all want her party to finish with a row, came up and begged Mme Brownscu to allow her to buy that delightful piece of embroidery which she had so much admired. But Mme Brownscu paid no attention to her at all.

  ‘You do not know what that means,’ she said, addressing Mr. Hopkins but gathering the whole assembly in her eye. ‘He says “No, never, never, never. Non, jamais, jamais, jamais.” Et savez-vous pourquoi il dit cela? It is because of the Russians, c’est à cause des Russes, pouah! quels sales types, which have destroyed his piano and his gramophone, lui qui est musicien par-dessus tout, and driven away, enlevé, all his stallions and mares, lui qui est cavalier accompli, et qui d’ailleurs ont violé sa mère, ses quatre soeurs, sa cuisinière, lui qui adore la bonne chère, et sa femme. And when he sees this dirty type of which I do not know the name which says “ Moscou,” cela lui tourne les sangs. N’est-ce pas, mon petit Gogo, ça te porte sur le foie? Take your embroidery, Mr. Russian, et allezvous en à Moscou. C’est un schilling que vous me devez.’

  So saying she thrust the embroidery into Mr. Hopkins’s hands.

  That unfortunate gentleman who had little or no acquaintance with French had not understood what Mme Brownscu was saying, but most of those present had been delightfully shocked and horrified. Among the exceptions was Mrs. Bissell who told Miss Hampton afterwards that she had given up French as a girl, but she saw that Mr. Hopkins, whom she had never liked, was interfering with the amenities of that nice Mrs. Birkett’s party.

  ‘Give the Russian lady her shilling, Mr. Hopkins,’ she said in her gentle, authoritative voice.

  Mr. Hopkins, against his better self, pulled out of his trousers pocket one of those leather purses of rather horseshoe shape, tilted some loose coins into the cover and held out a shilling. Mme Brownscu took it, threw it contemptuously into the plate of small change and then with a sudden effort snatched the embroidery from its purchaser, tore it in two and threw it on the floor. She then lighted another cigarette and hummed a national air very loudly. Mrs. Bissell, with the same imperturbable serenity, took Mr. Hopkins by the arm, led him into the hall, said Good-night to him and returned to the dining-room where Mme Brownscu was putting the money she had collected into a bag and preparing to go home. Everyone was longing to question her about her appalling experiences at the hands of the Russians, but felt a certain delicacy in beginning. Just as despair was seizing upon all hearts Octavia Crawley, whose interest in anything to do with hospitals we already know, earned the everlasting gratitude of her mother’s friends by aski
ng Mme Brownscu if the cook had got over it.

  ‘Over which?’ asked Mme Brownscu.

  ‘The Russians. I mean what you said about the way they treated her,’ said Octavia, suddenly finding it more difficult to talk about the facts of life in her mother’s dining-room than she did with her V.A.D. friends.

  ‘Oh, celle-là. Elle n’était pas mécontente. C’était d’ailleurs son amant, ce Russe,’ said Mme Brownscu carelessly. ‘Viens, Gogo; tu es prêt?’

  But Octavia was of the breed of Bruce’s spider and did not know the word defeat.

  ‘And were you all right?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, I am oll right,’ said Mme Brownscu.

  ‘But I mean then; the Russians,’ said Octavia.

  ‘Octavia!’ said Mrs. Crawley, much to everyone’s annoyance.

  ‘Les Russes? I am not in Lydpòv then. C’est la femme de Gogo qu’ils ont violée; mais enfin c’était le colonel russe, qui était son amant. God wills it so.’

  She then swept up the wretched M. Brownscu and took her leave, urging those present to send all their rich friends to buy embroideries. Mrs. Bissell thanked Mrs. Birkett for a most pleasant social gathering and saying how sorry she was for the poor Russian lady having to do all that embroidery went away with her husband, to release Mrs. Dingle from watching over little Edna.

  The Dean then said one must not judge uncharitably of anyone, especially of those who were dependent for their bread on the charity of strangers. With this to encourage them the Birketts and Mrs. Morland together with the Deanery party and Lydia skirted with delicacy round the interesting question: If M. Brownscu’s wife was not Mme Brownscu, who was Mme Brownscu. And to this question they regretfully saw no chance of ever getting an answer.

  ‘Well, we must be getting home,’ said Mrs. Crawley, who had decided not to speak to Octavia about her behaviour, though chiefly, it is to be feared, because she did not dare to. ‘Josiah, are you ready?’

  The Dean, who often wished that with all due respect to the Bible he had not been called after his grandfather, rallied to his wife and good-byes were said. Noel repeated his promise to Lydia to come and fetch her from her Communal Kitchen on the following day. Geraldine who was on night duty was to go back with the Crawleys. Mr. Needham, who was driving them, was suddenly struck with the thought of Lydia, alone, driving herself home through the black-out, and asked her earnestly if she would be all right. Lydia, seeing nothing not to be all right about, said of course she would.

  ‘I have to be over at Northbridge to-morrow about a football match between the Boy Scouts there and our Choir School,’ said Mr. Needham. ‘I was thinking I might perhaps come and see you about tea-time if you are in and your mother is well enough, unless perhaps you are going to be busy or anything. I thought you might perhaps be kind enough to help me about something, if it wouldn’t be a bother.’

  Lydia said of course. As she drove home she faintly wished that Mr. Needham, whom she did not in her mind call Tommy, as she had never thought of him since the day they lunched with Mrs. Brandon, weren’t coming on the same afternoon as Noel Merton; but if Mr. Needham needed helping about something, that was not the way for her to think so she didn’t; or if she did, she tucked it away into the back of her mind, and gave her parents an amusing account of the sherry party.

  Mrs. Birkett and Mrs. Morland agreed at dinner that the party had on the whole been a great success.

  ‘Why did you ask those pestilent Warburys, Amy?’ said Mr. Birkett. ‘If I had any time to dislike people, which heaven knows I haven’t just now with chicken pox bursting out in all the Houses, I would dislike those people as much as I have ever disliked anyone. And as for the boy— —’

  ‘After all,’ said Mrs. Birkett, ‘Geraldine has nowhere else to see her friends.’

  ‘Friends!’ said Mr. Birkett angrily. ‘Rose’s friends were bad enough, but Geraldine’s are insupportable. I really wish Rose were back sometimes.’

  He looked very tired. Chicken pox and a sherry party and the Warburys. Mrs. Morland could not decide whether his remark was less in favour of Rose or of Geraldine, so for once she held her tongue.

  CHAPTER X

  THE PATH OF DUTY

  ON the following day Lydia Keith, after a single-handed fight with Palmer about tea-cloths in which she scored heavily, went off on foot to Northbridge village with a large flowered overall in a bag. As most of the neighbourhood was Cathedral property, and the firm of Keith and Keith had for many years done much of their legal business, Mr. Keith had been able to put gentle spokes in the way of building development, and even bully the Barsetshire County Council into building quite presentable houses for the working classes well away from the delightful village street, of which no fewer than fourteen different views, including the church, the brick and stone houses of the gentry and the remaining plaster and thatch houses of the cottagers can be got at any picture postcard shop in Barchester. Next to The Hollies, a pleasant Georgian house standing back behind its shrubbery, was a plain-faced stone house that had been vacant for some time owing to a death and an entangled will. As soon as the threat of evacuee children had become a near menace, the Women’s Institute, headed by Mrs. Turner who lived at The Hollies and her two nieces who lived with her, had given an entertainment followed by a whist drive and dance by which they earned enough money to start a Communal Kitchen. The trustees had consented to the use of the large kitchen quarters of the empty house, the money from the entertainment had been used to instal a new gas cooker and buy a quantity of cheap tables and forms, some very cheap cutlery and various cleaning materials. Volunteers had supplied cooking utensils, dish cloths, crockery, and other necessaries. The possessors of vegetable gardens and hens had promised weekly supplies according to their means. Mrs. Turner from her own purse bought a part share in a pig whose owner was on the dole and had no intention of coming off it, and supplied a pig bucket, on the understanding that the pig’s owner would fetch the bucket daily and make over certain portions of the pig to the Women’s Institute when it was killed.

  With a great burst of gladness and relief nearly all the hostesses of the evacuated boys and girls sent them up to the Kitchen, paying threepence a head for an excellent and substantial meal. It is true that almost in the same breath they said threepence was too much, but Mrs. Turner took no notice at all. Under her truculent despotism a number of ladies undertook to do the cooking, the serving, and the washing-up in rotation, and it must be said to the credit of Northbridge that very few had defaulted. What with her mother and the house and the Red Cross and the estate and working parties, Lydia had not much time to spare, but she helped to serve the lunches one day a week and, as we have seen, did not allow anything to interfere with it.

  The church clock was striking twelve as Lydia went into the house by the side door and down a long stone-flagged passage to what were called by the estate agent the commodious offices. Here Mrs. Turner was hard at work superintending the preparation of great saucepans of rabbit stew and potatoes. She had been at the Kitchen since ten o’clock that morning and would be there till the last helper had gone, and this she did every day except Saturdays and Sundays. By her instructions the gas cooker had been installed in the scullery, so that the washing-up could go on under her eye. The kitchen itself with its wasteful range and huge dresser was not used, and the servants’ hall had been turned into a dining-room. In it Mrs. Turner’s nieces were laying a knife and fork and a spoon and fork and a china cup fifty times over on the bare deal tables. Lydia put on her overall and seizing two large tin loaves cut them up into small hunks, two plates of which she put on each table. She then filled a large jug with water and poured some into each cup, repeating these actions till all the cups were half-full; for if they were any fuller the children always slopped them at once.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Mrs Turner, as she prodded a large saucepan of potatoes to see if they were done. ‘How is your mother, Lydia?’

  ‘Pretty all right,’ said Lydia. �
�What’s the pudding?’

  ‘Stewed pears and synthetic custard, and plain cake baked in meat pans,’ said Mrs. Turner. ‘Where’s my colander, Betty?’

  ‘Ackcherly,’ said Betty, who was Mrs. Turner’s elder niece, ‘it’s on the hook. I’ll get it.’

  Mrs. Turner took the colander and began turning out her potatoes, of which a dozen large dishes were put on a long table near the door of the servants’ hall, together with piles of plates. At the same moment the younger niece opened the door into the stable yard and fifty children, rushing, clumping into their dining-room, formed up in a rough, pushing, gabbling queue. The well-known smell of children and stew filled the air and Lydia wished for a moment everyone were dead. The other helpers, who though extremely good and conscientious are too dull to mention, lifted great fish kettles of stew from the stove on to the serving-table and the ritual began.

  ‘Who’s doing the veg?’ asked Lydia, getting behind the table.

  ‘Well ackcherly it’s me,’ said Betty, ‘but you can if you like. I’ll do the rabbit. I hope they didn’t leave any eyes in.’

  Betty stationed herself behind a kettle of rabbit and with an iron ladle half filled a plate with a luscious stew. To this Lydia added potatoes and handed the plate to the child at the head of the queue. The other helpers served in the same way and each child carried its plate to its own seat. No sooner were they all served than a dozen or more came back, carrying their plates, with expressions of fastidiousness and insolence that Lydia tried hard not to see.

  ‘Miss, I don’t like rabbit.’

  ‘Miss, there’s something nasty on my plate. Dorrie says it’s kidneys.’

  ‘Miss, the lady didn’t give me any gravy.’

  ‘Miss, Gracie’s got a bigger bit than me.’

  ‘Miss, mother wrote to me not to touch rabbit.’

  ‘Miss, can’t I have some more rabbit? I don’t like potatoes.’

  ‘Miss, Jimmy Barker took three bits of bread and I ain’t got none.’