Cheerfulness Breaks In Page 7

  CHAPTER V

  A ROOM WITH A PICTURE

  NEXT day, much to Mr. Bissell’s relief, he had breakfast alone with his host, after which they walked across the School Quad to the Carters’ house. Here they collected Everard and Philip and with them made an extensive tour of the proposed new quarters of the Hosiers’ Boys. By midday everything was settled and Mr. Bissell was able to feel that his school would not be badly housed.

  ‘By the way,’ said Everard, ‘have you thought about coming to us with Mrs. Bissell? No hurry, but my wife would like to know in time to get things ready for you.’

  Mr. Bissell had forgotten all about it. But even as he heard Everard speaking he realised that to share a house with other people, however sympathetic their wives, was the one thing he and his wife could not do. Their house they would leave dust-sheeted and empty, their books and furniture and picture (a coloured reproduction of the Van Gogh sunflowers) they would abandon, but if they were to keep their balance in this new and peculiar world where no one knew what dialectic meant, they must somehow be alone in their spare time. The thought of evenings spent with the Carters was more than he could face. Even at the risk of giving offence he must strike out for freedom. In halting words he began to explain that to stay at the Carters’ house would give very great pleasure to Mrs. Bissell and he, but his misery was so apparent that Philip Winter on an impulse came to his rescue.

  ‘Before Mr. Bissell decides,’ said Philip to Everard, ‘what about taking him to see that cottage in Wiple Terrace? I know it’s empty because Jessie’s brother delivers the milk there and he says it is to be let furnished. Jessie is the head housemaid at Carter’s,’ he added to Mr. Bissell, ‘and her brother does the milk round for Abner Brown who grazes one of the school fields and carts coal.’

  Everard’s relief at this suggestion was not less than Mr. Bissell’s. He liked Mr. Bissell and felt that they could pull together, but the thought of housing indefinitely a fellow worker who regarded the School as a product of Capittleism was not bliss, the more so as he knew his own code would not let him point out to Mr. Bissell that the Hosiers’ Boys was supported by one of the richest of the City Companies on money obtained partly from their appropriation of several very wealthy abbeys under Henry VIII, partly from the investment of funds obtained by rather piratical trading with the East in the seventeenth century, and that its original purpose was to educate the sons of Hosiers and enable them to enter the church through one of the Universities. So he said that he thought it a good idea, but Mr. Bissell must feel perfectly free to come to them or not.

  ‘My wife will be delighted if you do come,’ he said truthfully, knowing that his Kate enjoyed any guests, even Mr. Holinshed, a parent who had disgraced his family by suddenly taking orders at an unusually advanced age and having family prayers, which he insisted on conducting wherever he stayed, regardless of the embarrassment he caused his hosts before their servants, ‘but of course if you and Mrs. Bissell prefer to be on your own we shall quite understand.’

  He then wondered if he would ever dare to call Mrs. Bissell ‘your wife’ to Mr. Bissell; put away from him as harsh the thought that ‘the wife’ might be tolerated, vaguely wondered again if that lady’s Christian name would ever be made known to him and thought probably not. Philip said he would take Mr. Bissell down to the village and he could have a look at the cottage, and they might drop in at the Red Lion and talk to Mr. Brown, Abner Brown’s uncle, who was a useful man to know. Mr. Bissell unexpectedly said he could do with a pint and the doctor had put Mrs. Bissell on stout last winter which had done her a lot of good; so they went off across the playing-fields, by the footbridge over the river, across the allotments, and so by the lane that led into the backyard of the Red Lion.

  During the eighteenth and early nineteenth century the Red Lion had been, as its capacious stables showed, a coaching inn on a fairly large scale, and its handsome red brick front on Southbridge High Street was to be seen in more than one engraving, copies of which can still be picked up in antiquarian shops in Barchester. Now its stables were used as garages except for one wing where a young woman kept a few hunters and hacks on hire, and through the great archway under one side of the hotel came nothing more exciting than a flock of sheep or a drove of cows once a month on market day. Philip led Mr. Bissell into the public bar.

  ‘There is a Saloon, why so called I can’t imagine,’ he said, ‘but it despises one and the drinks cost more. Besides here we get Eileen. Look at her.’

  The most dazzling blonde Mr. Bissell had ever seen, dressed in skin-tight black, was behind the bar, passing the time of day with two commercial travellers and a farmer. Catching sight of Philip she bent her swanlike bust forward over the counter and asked if he would have the usual. Philip said yes and would Mr. Bissell like the same, namely Old and Mild.

  ‘I’ll have Old and Bitter if it’s all the same to you,’ said Mr. Bissell to the vision, only just stopping himself saying ‘Miss.’

  The vision drew two pints and as a mark of special favour did not put them on the counter, but saying to the commercial travellers and the farmer, ‘Well, ta-ta boys, I must be looking after my guests,’ brought them herself on a tin tray to Philip’s table.

  ‘Thanks, Eileen,’ said Philip paying. ‘This gentleman is the Headmaster of a school in London and he is coming down here with all his boys.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure!’ said Eileen. ‘More of them evacuees, poor things, and really, Mr. Winter, what they have on their heads or in their heads as you might say makes you want to give Hitler a kick in the pants as the saying is. Three my married sister has, and the number of those nasty creatures they brought with them, well as I said to her, Gladys, I said, if there’s a word I do not like it is lousy, but I wouldn’t be doing those poor kids justice if I didn’t say it. So she does them three times a week and I give her a hand and a nicer set of kids I must say you couldn’t find. Greta, Gary and Gable their names are, not triplets as you might think, but hardly ten months between them and their mother, she’s at the Vicarage, expecting again, poor thing, but always look on the sunny side I said to her and now your husband’s at sea brighter days may be in store.’

  Philip saw that Mr. Bissell would shortly burst at Eileen’s misconception of his young charges and hastened to inform her that Mr. Bissell’s boys were not evacuees, but a school like Southbridge, only in London. The look of relief on Mr. Bissell’s face on hearing this noble lie was so great that Philip could almost see the Recording Angel drop his expunging tear upon it.

  ‘Come along then, Bissell,’ he said, ‘and we’ll find Mr. Brown. Where is he, Eileen?’

  Eileen said he was out in front talking to the beer, so the two schoolmasters went out into the High Street, and there was Mr. Brown talking to the driver of a fine dray full of casks and bottles, the property of Messrs. Pilward and Sons Entire.

  ‘Morning, gents,’ said Mr. Brown. ‘Beer’s up a penny.’

  ‘That’s bad,’ said Philip. ‘This gentleman is looking for a small cottage, Mr. Brown. Do you know if Maria Cottage is still to let?’

  Mr. Brown said that rightly speaking it was and the key was at Adelina Cottage and he knew Miss Hampton was in because Bill had just taken the usual over, six gin, two French, two Italian, two whisky and a half-dozen syphons that was, as regular as clockwork once a week, besides what Miss Hampton bought extra and what she drank when she came in, and he’d been in the street himself ever since and would have seen Miss Hampton go out.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Philip. ‘This is Mr. Bissell. He is the Headmaster of a London school and they are all coming down to us in case of air raids.’

  ‘I was at a London school myself,’ said Mr. Brown, looking at Mr. Bissell with interest. ‘My Grandfather, Grandfather Smith that was, had a tied house in Camden Town and when my mother, his daughter that was, married my father and came down here to manage because Grandfather Brown was beginning to fail, she used to send me up to keep him company for a bit when
I was a nipper. And I went to the Old Sewerworks Road Board School. Elementary they call them now,’ he added explanatorily to Mr. Bissell, ‘but boys are boys call them what you like. Hope we’ll see more of you, sir.’

  As this was clearly in the nature of a royal congé Philip moved on with Mr. Bissell, hoping that his colleague would not have resented the comparison of the Hosiers’ Boys with a London Board School in the ’eighties. Could he have seen into Mr. Bissell’s mind he would have found no resentment, only an intense bewilderment at a world where every value seemed to be wrong and an increasing wish to find a roof under which he and his wife could be safe from the turmoil and misunderstanding of this new life.

  ‘Just across the road,’ said Philip encouragingly.

  Mr. Bissell looked and saw a little Terrace of four two-storied cottages in mellow red brick, with a wide strip of grass lying between them and the road. They were surmounted by a stucco pediment on which the words ‘Wiple Terrace 1820’ were visible. Mr. Wiple, whose monument is to be seen in Southbridge Church, though rather the worse for wear and in parts illegible owing to the lettering being painted and not incised, was a small master builder of the village who had erected the terrace as a monument to his four daughters, Maria, Adelina, Louisa and Editha, calling each cottage after one of them. The property now belonged to Paul’s College, who also owned the Vicarage and the living, but was always run in a very friendly way, the tenant of longest standing having a shadowy claim to pre-eminence. It was on this account that Miss Hampton, a spinster lady residing at Adelina Cottage with her friend Miss Bent, was in possession of the key of Maria Cottage which the Vicar’s aunt, who had gone to join her husband at Gibraltar, wished to let furnished. Of the other two cottages, Louisa Cottage, residence of the late cricket coach at Southbridge School, was tenanted by the Warburys of whom mention has already been made, and Editha Cottage by the Vicar’s other aunt who was a widow and would have Nottingham lace curtains, but otherwise will not, I think, come into this story at all. Each cottage had a very narrow flower bed at the foot of its wall, divided from the footpath by low white posts with chains. Maria Cottage had a red door, Adelina a green, Louisa a yellow and Editha, owing to the insistence of the Vicar’s other aunt, imitation oak grained with so many twiddles and such a liberal coat of varnish that all highbrow tourists stopped to exclaim at it and the Nottingham lace curtains as Perfect Period.

  ‘That’s the empty one,’ said Philip pointing out Maria. ‘We’ll go and ask Miss Hampton for the key.’

  Mr. Bissell said it was quite Old-World.

  At Adelina Cottage Philip rang the bell. The door was opened by a rather handsome woman with short, neatly curled grey hair, not young, in an extremely well-cut black coat and skirt, a gentlemanly white silk shirt with collar and tie, and neat legs in silk stockings and brogues, holding a cigarette in a very long black holder.

  ‘Come in and have a drink,’ said Miss Hampton.

  ‘Certainly,’ said Philip. ‘This is Mr. Bissell, the Headmaster of the Hosiers’ Boys Foundation School, who is bringing his staff and boys down here and wants to find a cottage. Brown says you have Maria’s key.’

  ‘French or Italian?’ said Miss Hampton, who had already three-quarters filled four very large cocktail glasses, or indeed goblets, with gin. ‘Bent has just taken Smigly-Rydz out, so I might as well mix hers too. She won’t be a moment.’

  ‘Is Smigly-Rydz a new dog?’ said Philip. ‘It was Benes last winter.’

  ‘Gallant little Czecho-Slovakia!’ said Miss Hampton in a perfunctory way. ‘But it’s gallant little Poland now, so we’ve changed Schuschnigg’s name; Benes’s I mean, but one gets a bit mixed, everyone being gallant.’

  ‘And wasn’t he Zog at Easter?’ said Philip.

  ‘So he was. Gallant little Albania,’ said Miss Hampton. ‘We bought him after Selassie died. We buried Selassie in the garden. Put it down, Philip, and you too, Mr. Bissell. That’s the name, isn’t it? I never forget names. So you keep a boys’ school; and in London; interesting; much vice?’

  Mr. Bissell spilt a good deal of his cocktail and remained tongue-bound.

  ‘Come, come,’ said Miss Hampton filling his glass up to the brim again. ‘We’re all men here and I’m doing a novel on a boys’ school, so I might as well know something about it. I’m thinking of calling it “Temptation at St. Anthony’s”; good name, don’t you think?’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Philip.

  Mr. Bissell was pretty strong on psychology and had for years been accustomed to explain certain facts to his pupils, drawing his examples first from botany, then from nature study, and later from outspoken serious talks, from which most of his boys had emerged with a very low opinion of their Headmaster’s intellect, who could think them such chumps as he evidently did. He had also had many an interesting and intellectual exchange of views with other authorities at conferences, but his soul was extremely innocent and when he thought of exposing Mrs. Bissell to such a woman as Miss Hampton he heartily wished the war had never been invented. But he lacked the social courage to flee, and the strong cocktail was reacting unfavourably on his legs, so he looked at her, fascinated, and said nothing.

  ‘Well, here’s fun,’ said Miss Hampton, taking a deep drink of what Mr. Bissell saw with terror to be her second cocktail. ‘I study vice. Interesting. It’s a thing you schoolmasters ought to know about. Prove all things, you know, and stick to what’s good. Here comes Bent. She’ll tell you about vice.’

  The door of the little sitting-room burst open and a black dog came in dragging Miss Bent after him. The dog, presumably Smigly-Rydz-Zog-Benes-Schuschnigg, was one of those very stout little dogs with a black shaggy coat, short in the leg, with a head as large as an elephant’s and mournful eyes. Miss Bent, whom he had just taken round the village, was a rather flabby edition of Miss Hampton. Her coat and skirt of an indefinite tartan had obviously been made locally, her figure bulged in a very uncontrolled way, her short hair of a mousy colour looked as if she trimmed it with her nail-scissors, her stockings were cotton and rather wrinkled, her shoes could only be called serviceable, and she wore several necklaces.

  ‘Come along, Bent,’ said Miss Hampton, handing the fourth cocktail to her friend. ‘Put it down. Here’s Mr. Winter come for Maria’s key. Mr. Bissell has a boys’ school and I’m going to pick his brains for my new novel.’

  ‘Hampton sold one hundred and fifty thousand of her last novel in America,’ said Miss Bent, looking very hard at Mr. Bissell. ‘That was the one that was the Banned Book of the Month here. But of course one can’t hope for that luck again. After all, other people must have their turn. I have a friend on the Banned Book Society Council and he says Esmé Bellenden’s Men of Harlech will probably be the next choice. Have you read it?’

  Mr. Bissell, helpless with confusion and cocktails, said he hadn’t, and was Esmé Bellenden a man or a woman.

  ‘I couldn’t possibly say,’ said Miss Bent, ‘and what is more I don’t suppose anyone could.’

  Miss Hampton who had been staring at Philip for some time said,

  ‘Do my eyes deceive me, or are you in khaki?’

  ‘Indeed I am,’ said Philip, ‘and only on twenty-four hours’ leave, so if we can have Maria’s key we will look at her now. I have to get back to camp and Mr. Bissell to London, and incidentally we both have to get back for lunch.’

  ‘Will you fight?’ said Miss Bent in a deep voice.

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ said Philip. ‘It all depends where they send me. Probably I’ll get stuck on Ilkley Moor, with or without a hat, till the war is over, doing gunnery courses.’

  ‘It is only a mockery to fight now,’ said Miss Bent, giving herself another cocktail. ‘You should have fought Italy, four years ago.’

  Philip, who was used to Miss Bent’s ferocity, only smiled, but Mr. Bissell, in whose pacifist soul gin and French were doing their appointed work, took the wind out of Miss Bent’s sails by saying:

  ‘If we had foug
ht Franco three years ago, all this wouldn’t have happened.’

  ‘That,’ said Miss Bent, ‘is where ybu are entirely wrong. Civil war is quite, quite different. Besides Franco is a Churchman, or what corresponds to a Churchman in Spain, though under the Bishop of Rome who has no jurisdiction in England, so we should try to understand him. Have you ever been in Spain?’

  Mr. Bissell had to admit that he hadn’t.

  ‘No more have I,’ said Miss Bent, ‘so it is absolutely no good arguing with you. We’ll go and look at Maria.’

  Accordingly she took a large key off the mantelpiece, but Miss Hampton said before they went they must just look over Adelina, so the whole party inspected the rest of the cottage, which consisted of a kitchen behind the sitting-room, a narrow breakneck staircase, a bedroom overlooking the street almost entirely filled by a very large square flat divan which made Mr. Bissell back out of the room in terror, a little bedroom behind called the guest room, and a tiled bathroom, all spotlessly clean.

  ‘Mrs. Dingle comes three times a week to clean,’ said Miss Hampton. ‘You can have her the three other days. She’s a treasure. You can trust her with any amount of drink.’

  ‘She is Eileen’s sister and a very nice woman,’ said Philip.

  Then they all went next door and Miss Bent put the key in the lock and opened Maria. The moment Mr. Bissell saw Maria he knew that in spite of the terrifying (and yet rather attractive) proximity of Miss Hampton and Miss Bent, this was where he and Mrs. Bissell could be happy. If the Vicar’s aunt had been his own aunt and a nice aunt at that, she could not have made a house more after his heart’s desire. He could almost have fancied himself back at 27 Condiment Road, E.48, except that no trams clanged down the road and there was a long garden instead of a little back yard. In the hall was the fumed oak umbrella stand with hooks above it. The sitting-room, carpeted up to the walls, had a sofa (or couch as Mr. Bissell preferred to call it) and two arm-chairs that made both ingress and egress impossible, the dining-room-kitchen had the same red-tiled linoleum as his own. Upstairs the bathroom he was pleased to see had a geyser of the same type as that at No. 27, so he knew it would not blow him up, or if it did, exactly when and how. The guest room had two narrow divan beds and a fumed oak chest-of-drawers. In the front bedroom, also carpeted up to the walls, were twin beds (not divan) and a fixed basin, a luxury he had always secretly coveted, and facing him, above the fireplace, was a coloured reproduction of the Van Gogh sunflowers. There was no doubt that the house must be his if he could afford it. So kind was Fate that Mr. Hammer, the estate agent, had just not gone out for his dinner, the rent was most reasonable, and within twenty minutes everything was settled, with the enthusiastic assistance of the ladies from Adelina Cottage.