Cheerfulness Breaks In Page 2

  ‘You know I’m awfully fond of Rose,’ said Lieutenant Fairweather, sitting down again, ‘and you needn’t be anxious about her, sir.’

  ‘No, I don’t think I am,’ said the Headmaster.

  ‘Nor about me, sir, if it comes to that,’ said the Lieutenant, looking his future father-in-law straight in the face with an immovable countenance.

  Mr. Birkett came as near blushing as a middle-aged Headmaster can do and was silent for a moment.

  ‘It’s a queer world, Fairweather,’ he said at length. ‘We can’t tell what’s going to happen and none of us feels very safe. My wife and I rely on you implicitly.’

  Lieutenant Fairweather again looked steadily at the Headmaster with his sailor’s concentrated gaze.

  ‘I think I get you, sir,’ he said. ‘If there is any trouble about and I have to join my ship instead of going to South America, I shall get a special licence and marry Rose out of hand. I’ve known her ever since she was a little girl, and I know she’s been engaged to lots of fellows, but this time she’s for it, so don’t worry, sir.’

  Mr. Birkett’s first impulse on hearing that he need not fear that his lovely daughter would be left on his hands was to say, ‘Thank God,’ but as Headmasters have to keep up a pretence of being slightly more than human he merely said that he hoped things wouldn’t be as bad as that and inquired after the Lieutenant’s elder brother, Captain Geoffrey Fairweather, who was at the moment doing a staff course at Camberley and was going to be best man.

  The last few weeks of the term sped away, the prize-giving and breaking-up took place, boys were whisked away to Devonshire, or the South of France, or walking tours in Scandinavia, or Public Schools camps at the South Pole, while masters prepared to pretend they were ordinary people for six or seven weeks. The matrons of the various Houses had left everything sheeted and tidied and gone to join their married sisters at Bournemouth or Scarborough, and an unwonted hush lay on the school quad, only broken by the occasional roar of a car as the guests who were coming for the night before the wedding arrived.

  Everard Carter, the senior Housemaster, and his wife were among the few members of the staff who were still in residence. Mrs. Carter’s brother, Robert Keith, had married Lieutenant Fairweather’s elder sister Edith, which made Mrs. Carter almost a relation, and under the Carters’ roof Lieutenant Fairweather was to spend his last bachelor night. There had been talk of dining in town that evening, but London is not at its best at the end of July, most of Lieutenant Fairweather’s friends were away and his brother reported that Camberley seemed a bit sticky about giving leave, so the idea was abandoned. Rose had then suggested that they should all go to a cinema at Barchester, but this her mother vetoed, with firm support from the bridegroom, who told his Rose it was simply not done and she would see quite enough of him when they were married. Rose had shed a few very becoming tears and then forgot all about it in the excitement of unpacking a large china pig with pink roses on its back, the gift of the matron of Mr. Carter’s House.

  The party at the Carters’ was not large. Everard Carter was tired at the end of term, Lieutenant Fair-weather was quite happy to smoke with his host and talk with his hostess, and there were only three other guests at dinner. One was the Senior Classical master, Philip Winter, who had been engaged to Rose for a few months of the hot summer three years before, an engagement which he had bitterly repented and from which he had only been saved by the fit of temper in which Rose had thrown him over, since which time he had almost loved her for not marrying him.

  The two ladies, if one may use the expression, were Geraldine Birkett and Lydia Keith, Mrs. Carter’s younger sister, who had been at the Barchester High School together and were to be bridesmaids next day.

  Miss Lydia Keith at about twenty-one had toned down a little from her schoolgirl days, though not so much as her mother might have wished. Her family had thought that when she left school she might wish to train for some sort of work in which swashbuckling is a desirable quality, though they could hardly think of any form of employment, short of Parliament, that would give Lydia’s powers sufficient scope. But to everyone’s surprise she had preferred to stay at home, where she wrested the housekeeping reins from her mother and ran the house with a ferocious yet tolerant competency that made her mother prophesy dolefully that Lydia would never get married, though on what grounds she based this opinion, or indeed any other, no one quite knew. To all such young men as were prepared to accept her as an equal Lydia extended a crushing handshake and the privilege of listening to her views on all subjects. As for any more tender form of feeling no one had ever dared to approach the subject with her and Lydia’s general idea of matrimony appeared to be that it was an amiable eccentricity suitable for parents in general who were of course born too long ago to have any sense, her sister Kate, and really silly people like Rose Birkett. In these matters her sentiments were echoed by Geraldine Birkett who had been her admiring follower ever since she used to do Lydia’s maths, at school and Lydia did Geraldine’s Latin. In fact, except that Lydia was tall, dark-haired and good-looking while Geraldine could only be described as a girl with a rather clever face, they were twin souls and had often toyed with the idea of breeding Cocker spaniels together. But Mr. Birkett wouldn’t hear of it and as Lydia’s mother had developed a heart Lydia couldn’t be spared. Most of Lydia’s contemporaries would have regarded an invalid mother as an additional and cogent reason for leaving home and breeding dogs, but Lydia, in spite of her swashbuckling, had too good a heart and, though she would have died sooner than admit it, too firm a sense of duty to desert her mother and led on the whole a very contented life.

  ‘Who are the other bridesmaids?’ asked Philip Winter, who had not taken much interest in the wedding.

  ‘Delia Brandon,’ said Lydia, ‘you know, the one that her mother’s Mrs. Brandon at Pomfret Madrigal and one of the Dean of Barchester’s girls that is called Octavia.’

  ‘And how,’ said Geraldine, who had a passion, her only trait in common with her sister Rose, for American gangster films.

  ‘How?’ asked Philip, amused.

  Before Geraldine could reply Lydia, fully armed, leapt lightly to the breach, as she nearly always did when it was an affair of answering a question, whether addressed to her or to someone else, preferably someone else.

  ‘Anyway,’ she said scornfully, ‘if I had a lot of daughters I wouldn’t call one of them Octavia, even if she was the eighth. It seems invidious, if you know what I mean,’ she added, glaring belligerently at the company.

  Her sister Kate Carter who was so good and sweet-tempered that one would hesitate to apply the word dull to her if there were any more suitable description said that after all it showed she was the eighth.

  ‘As a matter of fact she isn’t,’ said Geraldine, seizing her chance where mathematics were in question, ‘because two of them were boys and one died quite young, really before he was born I think.’

  Kate quiedy and anxiously changed the subject by saying that the delphiniums in the School Chapel looked quite lovely and a blue wedding would be so nice and bridesmaids always looked nice in blue. But her sister Lydia, who despised such palterings with stern facts, said even if the brother hadn’t really been born someone must have known about him or they wouldn’t have known, and it might have seemed unkind to give him a miss when they were counting up the family.

  ‘And anyway,’ she continued, slightly raising her powerful voice, ‘being called Octavia doesn’t really show. I mean Octavian, the one who was Augustus you know, Philip,’ she said to the Senior Classical master, ‘there’s nothing to say that he was the eighth, whether anyone was born or not. At least if there is I haven’t read it and it’s not in Shakespeare,’ she added with the air of one making a handsome concession.

  Kate with an effort wrenched the talk round to the wedding guests and the preparations for refreshments afterwards, which quite distracted Lydia and Geraldine from the problem of the Dean’s daughters, and the tal
k became more general.

  Lieutenant Fairweather, who had said nothing because his pipe was drawing well and he did not know the Dean or any of his daughters, asked Mr. Carter about various Old Boys and school notorieties.

  ‘Did you know Harwood was dead?’ said Everard Carter.

  ‘No, sir. By Jove!’ said Lieutenant Fairweather, rather weakening his interjection by adding, ‘Who was he?’

  ‘Of course I forgot, you wouldn’t know him. He only took the Senior boys,’ said Everard.

  ‘He was the cricket coach,’ said Kate, coming to the Lieutenant’s rescue.

  ‘By Jove, yes,’ said Lieutenant Fairweather. ‘He had that ripping cottage in Wiple Terrace. Who lives there now?’

  ‘People called Warbury,’ said Kate. ‘He is something in the films, I think, and she is an artist; at least she paints. And they have a son who I am sure is very nice.’

  ‘Out with it, Kate,’ said Philip Winter. ‘Your understatements are worth their weight in gold.’

  ‘Well, I dare say he is quite nice,’ said Kate, defending herself and modifying her statement simultaneously. ‘Often it is only shyness that makes people seem conceited.’

  ‘Then he must be uncommon shy,’ said Philip dryly. ‘And if shyness makes him so confoundedly rude and patronising in the Red Lion bar, I wish he would get over it.’

  Kate then invited anyone who liked to come and see Bobbie Carter aged nearly one in bed. Lydia and Geraldine accepted the invitation and the men were left alone.

  ‘You were engaged to Rose, weren’t you?’ said Lieutenant Fairweather to the Senior Classical Master.

  ‘Yes,’ said Philip, rather wondering if the bridegroom proposed to fight a duel, or keelhaul him. ‘But it was some years ago—not for long.’

  ‘Don’t apologise,’ said the Lieutenant. ‘That girl has a genius for thinking she is in love. I thought she might get tied up before I could cut in. One doesn’t get much chance with a sailor’s life, you know. But that’s the end of it. I hope she didn’t give you much trouble.’

  Philip politely said none at all. Everard Carter said that his wife was not the only person with a genius for understatement and that Rose had nearly wrecked the peace of his House during her brief engagement to Philip.

  ‘She only needs handling,’ said Lieutenant Fair-weather. ‘I’ve got her pretty well where I want her and she knows it, and it’s the best day’s work I ever did in my life. The Dagoes will go quite mad about her, bless her heart.’

  Everard asked when he was leaving for South America.

  ‘Day after the wedding,’ said the Lieutenant. ‘I had a sort of idea I might be recalled to my ship, but it doesn’t look like a scrap now. I shan’t be sorry to get a couple of years ashore. What are you and Mr. Winter doing, sir?’

  Philip said he was going into camp with the Territorials after the wedding and then to Constantinople to do some work, unless of course there were a scrap and then he supposed Senior Classics would know him no longer.

  ‘I thought you were a Communist, sir,’ said the Lieutenant. ‘Do you remember that time my brother and I came over to see Rose when her people took Northbridge Rectory, and you told us all about Communism? Geoff and I thought it was jolly interesting to meet a chap that knew such a lot, but it didn’t worry us. One has enough to do in the Navy without worrying.’

  ‘I think you were right,’ said Philip, colouring a little. ‘I wasn’t busy enough then. I dare say I’m still a Communist if it comes to arguing, but for all practical purposes I have quite enough to do being a schoolmaster.’

  ‘And if it came to a scrap, sir?’ said Lieutenant Fairweather.

  ‘Then I suppose I’d have enough to do being a Territorial,’ said Philip, after a moment’s thought.

  ‘Excuse me, sir, I didn’t mean to barge in,’ said Lieutenant Fairweather, ‘but when one isn’t a brainy chap it bucks one up a lot to find that the brainy chaps see it the same way the rest of us do.’

  At this ingenuous compliment Philip Winter coloured even more deeply to the roots of his flaming hair, feeling that to be called sir and deferred to by a naval officer, even if he was really only Fairweather Junior in disguise, made him almost older than he could bear. Everard, who was a good deal older and had even been called ‘sir’ by the brilliant young Attorney-General of a short-lived Administration, took it all more calmly and said he expected to do nothing but go on school-mastering.

  ‘If anything did happen,’ he said, carefully choosing a form of words that would not be likely to let any Higher Powers know what he was talking about (for to such superstitions even a Housemaster may be prone) ‘we have our work more than cut out for us, because we are going to take in the Hosiers’ Boys Foundation School.’

  Lieutenant Fairweather sat up.

  ‘The Hosiers’ Boys, sir. But aren’t those the chaps who had a week’s camp down by the river the summer I left school. I mean they were very decent chaps— —’

  There was a silence, so charged with agreement that Philip almost expected an immediate vengeance for snobbish feelings to fall on them all three. Then Kate came back with the girls and a very interesting conversation took place about the horribleness of the physical exercises mistress at Barchester High School. When we say conversation it is of course to be understood that Lydia did most of the talking, backed by Geraldine, while the others listened, amused, and Lieutenant Fairweather smoked and thought of an improvement in the fourth hole at Southbridge golf course, after which Geraldine went home and they all went to bed.

  CHAPTER II

  THE BRIDESMAIDS’ TALE

  IF it was inevitable that Rose Birkett should marry a naval man, it was equally inevitable that the day of her wedding should be the most perfect day of unclouded sun tempered by a breeze not powerful enough to disarrange her hair or her veil. Mrs. Birkett, going into her elder daughter’s bedroom at half-past nine o’clock, found her in bed with two large, loose-jointed, depraved-looking dolls and a rather dirty plush giant panda, the wireless turned on at its loudest to an enchanting programme from Radio Luxembourg sponsored by the makers of a famous corn cure, eating an enormous breakfast off a tray balanced on her knees and blowing melancholy blasts on her ocarina between mouthfuls.

  ‘Hullo, Mummy,’ said Rose, ‘they’re doing Lips of Desire at the Barchester Odeon, you know, the film about the Brownings, the ones that were poets, and Glamora Tudor is Mrs. Browning and to-day’s the last performance. It’s too dispiriting for words.’

  Mrs. Birkett, wondering in an exhausted way if Rose would rather go to the cinema than be married, turned the wireless down, for the noise made it very difficult to converse.

  ‘Don’t, Mummy,’ shrieked Rose, spilling a good deal of tepid coffee into her bed as she reached towards the wireless and turned it on again. ‘I’d nearly got “Hebe’s got the jeebies” right on Radio Luxembourg. Mummy, the first house is at twelve o’clock. Couldn’t I and John go? We’d easily get back in time for the wedding.’

  Mrs. Birkett, praying to keep her temper for the few hours during which Rose was yet under her wing, said, Certainly not.

  ‘If I rang up Noel Merton, he’s staying at the Deanery, could I go with him then?’ said Rose.

  Mrs. Birkett said with some severity that Rose did not seem to understand that a wedding was a wedding and that until she was married she was not going to leave the house. Rose clasped the giant panda and her lovely eyes filled with tears.

  There was a knock at the door and Mr. Birkett came in.

  ‘Good morning, Rose,’ he said. ‘Everything all right? I was just looking for you, Amy.’

  ‘Oh, Daddy,’ said Rose, gulping. ‘It’s too foully dispiriting. It’s the last performance of Lips of Desire and Mummy won’t let me go.’

  ‘Now, be sensible, there’s a good girl,’ said Mr. Birkett giving his daughter’s shoulder a nervous but well-meant pat. ‘Amy, the Dean has just rung up to say his car is out of order, and his secretary is going to drive him over.’<
br />
  ‘Then if I went to Lips of Desire at the 12 o’clock session the Dean could drive me back,’ said Rose, throwing the panda on the floor, jumping out of bed and slipping on a flowered dressing-gown in which she looked like Botticelli’s Flora, except that intelligent mischief was an expression entirely beyond her powers. ‘Oh, Mummy! Oh, Daddy! Could I?’

  Mrs. Birkett snapped at Mr. Birkett for bringing such a foolish message. If the Dean were coming in any case, she said, it was quite immaterial how, and she only hoped all the buttons would fly off his gaiters, and Rose had better go and have her bath arid see about finishing her packing. Rose picked up the panda again and clutching it to her bosom began to cry. Mr. Birkett, considerably alarmed by the storm he had innocently helped to raise, was trying to get away unseen when Geraldine came in, followed by Lydia Keith.

  ‘I thought you and Daddy wouldn’t have much grip to-day,’ said Geraldine, speaking with the kind firmness of a District Visitor to the Deserving Poor, ‘so I brought Lydia along to help. The man from Barchester about the extra glasses and things is here, Mummy, and there’s a man called a name I couldn’t hear like Gristle it sounded that wants you on a trunk call, Daddy.’

  The distracted parents, only too glad of the excuse, left the room.

  ‘Who can Gristle be?’ said Mrs. Birkett to her husband, who replied that he hadn’t the faintest idea.

  Rose, left alone with her unsympathetic bridesmaids, at once became her normal self and taking a box of chocolate creams out of her stocking drawer shared the contents with Geraldine and Lydia. Geraldine, as a sister and an intellectual, objected to the number of chocolates Rose had bitten into to see if they were soft, but Lydia, who liked hard ones, said it would save her biting them herself, and Rose and Geraldine could have all the soft ones. The head housemaid, sent by Mrs. Birkett to assist with the packing, was dismissed by Lydia who having seen an elder sister into matrimony was an authority on trousseaux. What with packing, trying some of Rose’s face creams, listening to the wireless, playing swing records on the gramophone, discussing the probable cast for a film about Building the Pyramids in which Rose hoped that the Marx Brothers would be Totems or whatever it was (which Geraldine was able to explain by saying Rose meant hieroglyphics and even then it wasn’t sense), getting Rose by degrees bathed, partly dressed and made-up, the morning passed as swiftly as lightning. At half-past twelve Mrs. Birkett, feeling that she would rather not see Rose again for the present, sent up cold lunch on a tray and all three young ladies made a hearty meal. Over the depraved dolls and the plush panda there was a slight difference of opinion, Geraldine maintaining that they ought to be sent to the Barchester Hospital, Lydia that they would be invaluable for her mother’s Jumble Sale, and Rose, who after all was their mistress, declaring that nothing would part her from them and anyway the panda zipped up the back and made a splendid bag for her ocarina.