Private Enterprise

CHAPTER 1-4

“Father Fewling. Tubby Fewling,” said Mr. Wickham. “You know him. The high church padre at St. Sycorax. He was in the Navy in the last war. A Commander he was and I only got as far as Second Lieutenant, but he’s one of the best. When the rum begins to get out of hand I have old Tubby down to the cottage and he helps me to straighten things out. At Easter,” said Mr. Wickham thoughtfully, “the cupboard was quite full and there was one bottle I couldn’t fit in, though I had them head to tail and double-banked. Now it’s a principle of mine never to leave spirits lying about and never to have them in the bedroom. So on Easter Monday I got old Tubby down here and we showed that bottle what the Navy is made of.”

“Was Father Fewling all right?” said Noel, who though he had never attended St. Sycorax, being put off by the ferocious smell of incense that came rushing out of it, had liked the hard-working, selfless priest-in-charge.

“The British Navy is always right,” said Mr. Wickham. “As a matter of fact it did him a lot of good. Easter must be plain hell if you go at it baldheaded like old Tubby. That bottle just saved him from a good old breakdown. Well, what do you think of her?”

They had by now reached the Home Farm where a number of cows were standing about in the yard, whisking their tails in a perfunctory way and chewing sideways.

“I told Bunce to have them here for you to look at,” said Mr. Wickham. “Come over here, Bunce.”

The cowman slouched across the yard. It was at such moments that Noel Merton, the very successful barrister, a man of the world equal to almost any occasion, able to tip exactly the right amount, felt how insignificant he really was. To Wickham and Bunce his legal fame, the large retaining fees marked on his briefs, his acquaintance with the best of what is left of London’s good society, his delightful and competent wife, his two excellent children, his position (through his wife) as practically Lord of the Manor, including the right of presentation to the living of St. Mary’s, Northbridge, alternately with the Bishop of Barchester, meant absolutely nothing. It is true that most of these things were quite unknown to them, but had they heard of them they would have been equally unmoved. A man who did not know cows, or was incapable of talking as if he knew about them, was not worth considering. Deeply did he envy Colin who had lived at Northbridge most of his life and knew who everyone was. Colin could ask Bunce how his wicked old father Bunce the ferryman was, and how Mrs. Bunce’s rheumatism was doing, and whether his disgraceful sister Effie Bunce had had her baby christened yet.

“Well, no, sir, not rightly christened,” said Bunce to Colin. “She’s expecting again, sir, and she don’t rightly know who the father is. I seed her coming out of the bushes at Christmas with young Hibberd, that’s old Hibberd’s son that’s gardener at the Rectory leastways it’s his father that’s gardener if you take my meaning, and I reckoned it was him, but Mum she caught our Effie in that old air-raid shelter outside St. Sycorax with that young Syd Fitchett and she gave Effie a rare old beating. I did laugh. So did Dad. He laughed till his teeth got crossed-like in his mouth and Mum she had to hit him on the back to stop him. So Effie says she’ll have them both christened together and Mrs. Villars is going to be godmother and Effie says she’s going to be confirmed now she’s got two to work for, if it costs her the last penny she’s got.”

“Splendid,” said Colin. “Tell your father I’ll be coming down to see him before I go back to London. And now let’s see the heifer you’re showing.”

“That’s her, sir,” said Bunce, pointing to a group of four cows all exactly alike.

“Well, you’ve never bred a nicer one,” said Colin approvingly and fell into technicalities with Bunce and the agent.

Noel thought seriously of emigrating, and had he not been extremely fond of Lydia might have done so at once, except that he had not the faintest idea how to set about such a thing, assisted passages for emigrants not being one of the subjects in the law curriculum. He also thought of suicide and of catching the next train to town. By this time the inspection was over. Bunce opened the yard gate and the herd moved slowly out, elbowing each other with their large hip-bones with a kind of lazy spitefulness.

“Here’s good luck to Northbridge Verena,” said Colin, handing half a crown to Bunce.

“All the best to you too, sir,” said Bunce and went back to whatever he was doing.

“Come back and have a drink before lunch,” said Mr. Wickham.

Noel thanked him but said they ought to be getting back.

“By the way, Wickham,” said Colin, as they took the path back by the water-meadows. “You don’t know of any small house or cottage anywhere in the neighbourhood, do you? Or really anywhere round about Barchester. It’s for the widow of an army officer, a friend of mine. She’s not very well off.”

Mr. Wickham said he would look out, but the outlook wasn’t too bright. What with Government offices still occupying the big houses and the wrong kind of people sticking like leeches to the small ones, he didn’t see where the right kind were going to have a look in.

“Does she need much looking after?” Mr. Wickham asked. “I know Miss Talbot and Miss Dolly Talbot have taken a lodger from time to time since their old father died. An aunt of Mrs. Villars’s who had arthritis stayed with them last winter and said they were most kind and made her very comfortable.”

Damn people, thought Colin, why on earth do they think widows must be old. Aloud he only said, with a forced cheerful patience that amused Noel and put him back into his usual good temper again, that Mrs. Arbuthnot was quite young and would manage splendidly if she could get a woman to help in the mornings. She was very nice, he rashly added.

“Veuve Clicquot, eh?” said Mr. Wickham. “Well, let’s hope she’ll click with someone. I can’t think of anything at the moment, but I’ll keep my eyes and ears open in Northbridge. I’ll ask at all the pubs. They know what’s going on.”

Colin’s desire to call Mr. Wickham out for his coarse witticism was cancelled by his gratitude for Mr. Wickham’s evident wish to be of use. So instead of offering him a choice of rapier or pistol he thanked him very much. They then separated; the agent to look at a sluice that needed repair, Noel and Colin to go in by the little gate from the water-meadows and on through the garden.

“Funny how one remembers things,” said Noel. “Do you remember the summer Everard and I were here, before the war, while you were still a schoolmaster at Southbridge? I fell very slightly in love with Kate, really nothing to mention, but then I saw her give Everard a piece of honeysuckle from this bush and I realized that I wasn’t in love with her at all.”

“When did you begin to fall in love with Lydia?” said Colin.

“Not for quite a long time,” said Noel. “I was very much attracted to her all along and thought she was an extremely good sort. It wasn’t till your father died and I suddenly found her looking lonely that I knew.”

“Does one always know?” Colin asked.

“I couldn’t say,” said Noel, pausing at the garden door. “I knew at once when I saw her looking sad. I expect everyone knows in a different way. Lord! how glad I am I didn’t marry Kate. She is quite perfect, bless her heart, but it would be like being married to a warm fire and a feather bed and sixpenny-worth of toasted crumpets swimming in butter.”

“I suppose,” said Colin, in a rather legal voice, as if asking counsel’s opinion, “that it sometimes comes on one by degrees.”

“I expect it does,” said Noel, adding rather unkindly, “but in any case it sticks out a mile when one is in love with anyone. I do hope we shall be able to find a house for your charming friend. I feel sure we shall like her.”

He then escaped into the house, rather ashamed of himself, and hoping that Colin would not detect the parody.

Lunch was not marked by any special incident unless it were that Lydia nearly choked over a fishbone and had to be beaten on the back by Colin. After lunch the sun came out, though in a very amateurish way, and Lydia said they ought to clean out the boatshed in case it ever got warm enough to go on the river, so they went down the water-meadows carrying the cushions for the punt and the rowing-boat. The boat and the punt were well dusted, the cushions put in their place, the punt pole and the sculls brought from the shed where they hibernated, and everything was ready. But no one felt much inclined to do anything.

“It’s quite dreadful,” said Lydia, “but I suppose we are all too grown-up. Or else it’s the war.”

“More probably the peace,” said Noel. “When we were at the Warings—was it three winters ago?—we were at least ten years younger than we are now. Apart from my work in London, which I do really like, I feel I am an old, old man, doddering about the haunts of my childhood.”

“I don’t a bit want to punt up to Parsley Island,” said Lydia. “And I’d hate to fall into the river. What’s wrong?”

“I’ll tell you, my precious love,” said Noel sententiously. “We have seen the end of a civilization. It began to crash in 1789 and this is its last gasp. It’s a sickening thought, but there it is. All our scrabblings and scutterings, our trying to save a bit here and a bit there are useless. We are out of date. All we can do is to bring up our children to have nice manners and not tell them how much they have missed. They’ll never believe us; no more than I believed my father when he told me that life was much happier before motors were invented. Perhaps Horace was right.”

“Some people,” said Lydia, “think exercise is a good thing if one feels depressed. Let’s take the punt up as far as the Rectory and call on Mrs. Villars. We do owe her a call.”

At this moment the sun emerged from behind a cloud and a perceptible feeling of warmth stole over the river. Everyone’s spirits rose, Lydia’s plan was adopted and the punt set out on its journey. For the first time since 1939 the authorities responsible for the river had been at work. A large elm that had been blown down near the ferry and had accumulated such a mass of weed and rubbish in its branches as almost to constitute a dam had been in great part removed and the sight of a tractor on the bank, neatly tarpaulined against the weather, with a heap of chains and other tackle beside it, gave hopes that the course of the river would be cleared before long. Beside the tractor old Bunce was sitting on a log while a grandchild of shame, the child of the disgraceful Effie Bunce, was making mud pies at his grandfather’s feet, just as if he knew his father’s name. Lydia and Colin shouted greetings to old Bunce. The child, with the engaging friendliness of the State-protected young of to-day, threw a handful of mud at them and yelled a few words of fine old Anglo-Saxon obscenity. Its grandfather gave it a hearty cuff. The child returned to its mud pies.