Private Enterprise

CHAPTER 1-2

But Lydia had heard from Mrs. Brandon that there wasn’t so much as a hen-house unoccupied in the village, partly owing to the increasing age and size of the evacuees who had never been claimed by their parents, and partly because the Government Department housed at Brandon Abbey had overflowed into neighbouring villages, including Pomfret Madrigal. Several equally unfelicitous suggestions having been made and squashed on both sides, the Mertons agreed to make further inquiries and let Colin know the result.

“I’m sure we’ll find something,” said Lydia to her brother. “I’ll tell Kate to ask at Southbridge and I’ll ask Nurse. She might know of something at Worsted or Winter Overcotes. Come and see the children, Colin.”

So Lydia and her brother went upstairs and as they went Colin thanked Lydia for taking so much trouble about a cottage for Mrs. Arbuthnot, adding that he was sure Lydia would like her; a statement with which Lydia was quite prepared to agree, though reserving for Noel her own private opinion of Mrs. Arbuthnot whenever she should meet that lady. She also had at the same time a faint feeling that if Colin said even once more that she would like Mrs. Arbuthnot she might, for the first time in her life, find her beloved Colin a little exasperating. But the nursery door opened onto a delightful warmth smelling of milk and biscuits, and these darker thoughts vanished.

Nursery breakfast had of course been finished some time ago. Miss Lavinia Merton was seated on a small chair near the window, a small table in front of her, playing industriously with some small wooden cubes painted a different colour on each face. Master Harry Merton was lying on his back on a rug, waving his hands about with a general air of wondering where on earth these starfish creatures had come from. From time to time he gave a few convulsive kicks with his firm fat legs and smiled a broad almost toothless smile.

“Well,” said Nurse, a middle-aged woman of uncompromising appearance, coming in with a tray of breakfast things which she had been washing up, “isn’t it nice to see Uncle Colin, Lavinia? And baby is ever so pleased to see Uncle Colin, aren’t you, baby?”

Master Merton, who had managed to catch one of his fat feet in his fat hands and was a good deal surprised by what he had done, made a bubbling and quite unintelligible remark.

“He’s saying how do you do to Uncle Colin,” said Nurse.

This was so palpable a lie that Lavinia pushed all her bricks onto the floor and said, “Silly Harry,” in a very clear voice.

“Now you know that’s not the way to talk, Lavinia,” said Nanny, “in front of Uncle Colin too. Pick your bricks up nicely, there’s a good girl.”

“Uncle Colin,” said Lavinia, turning upon her uncle a bewitching and appealing smile.

Colin began to pick up her bricks.

“Now don’t you trouble yourself, sir,” said Nurse. “She’s just seeing how far she can go. When I was with Mrs. Dean, Jessica was just the same. Always a smile for the gentlemen. No wonder she took to acting. I expect you’ve seen her, sir. She gave me seats for her last play and I went with Mrs. Laurence Dean’s Nanny and we had ever such a nice tea between the acts, and the young lady took us round to Miss Jessica’s dressing-room afterwards. ‘Well, Jessica,’ I said, ‘what’s the use of my telling you times without number that there’s a place for everything and everything should be in its place and you keep your room in a mess like this.’ But she only laughed and then she gave Mrs. Laurence’s Nanny and I cocktails and cigarettes and we had ever such an interesting time and she wrote her name on her photo for me.”

“Do you mean Jessica Dean?” said Colin, his opinion of Nurse suddenly rising to fever height.

“I had all Mrs. Dean’s younger children, sir,” said Nurse. “Jessica was the baby. I’ll never forget the day we met the bull in the lane and Jessica fell off the donkey, Neddy we called him. Young Mr. Tebben saved her life. We did think there was something between him and Miss Susan, that’s Miss Jessica’s next elder sister, but it seems there wasn’t. Miss Susan is working for the Barsetshire Red Cross Hospital Library. You would like Miss Susan, sir.”

And that, thought Lydia, as she watched her brother reeling slightly under so much information about a family whom he hardly knew intimately, will learn you not to say you know people will like people. But Colin for the moment appeared to be entirely absorbed in Nurse’s connection with Jessica Dean, looking upon her with a reverence which amused Lydia, who had not realized that her brother was such an admirer of the young actress. For Lydia, having spent nearly all her life in the country, first working and then being married and very much occupied in running Northbridge Manor, knew little of London. Now that Noel was working so hard at the bar they had a flat in town, but she did not often leave Northbridge and was not in touch with London events, and the name Jessica Dean meant little to her. Still, if Colin liked her she must be a good actress and if Nurse approved of her she must be nice.

“Oh, Nurse,” she said. “A friend of my brother’s is looking for a small house or a nice cottage. You don’t think Mrs. Dean would know of anything at Winter Overcotes or Worsted, do you?”

“I’m sure I couldn’t say, madam,” said Nurse. “But I can ring up Miss Susan and ask. She stays in Barchester for the week, at the Deanery, but she’s always at home at the weekends. Would it be a real cottage the gentleman wants, sir, or a nice one?”

Colin said he thought a nice one. It was for a lady, a widow, he added nervously and then felt that his character was ruined in Nurse’s eyes. A war widow, he added even more nervously, and knew he had damned himself for ever.

“Well, poor things, they can’t help it,” said Nurse charitably. “But I must say it was all much better when we didn’t have these wars and things and ladies could live quietly without their husbands being killed. It doesn’t seem natural. And so many of them were babies too, sir, and no more fit to look after them than Mrs. Merton is.”

“Oh, I say, Nurse,” said Lydia. “You know I look after them frightfully well on your day off.”

“Now Mrs. Carter,” said Nurse, “there’s a lady that does understand children. Really, the way Mrs. Carter looks after the young ladies and gentleman, you’d think she’d been in the nursery all her life.”

Much as Lydia loved her sister Mrs. Everard Carter this unfairness was more than she could bear, so she made a diversion by telling Nurse that mumps had broken out in the Carters’ House.

“I did want to go over and see Kate,” she said, “but Mr. Merton didn’t want me to.”

“Quite right, madam,” said Nurse. “You might bring them back with you. Now Mrs. Carter, that’s a lady that wouldn’t have mumps. Don’t you worry, madam, just leave it all to Mrs. Carter and I’ll be sure to ring Miss Susan up about a cottage. But I don’t think there’s much chance, sir. Is it a young lady, sir? Some of these war widows are very young, poor things, and it doesn’t seem right. Before the war a lady that was a widow was a widow, sir. These poor young ladies they really don’t hardly know what they are.”

“I think you would like Mrs. Arbuthnot very much, Nurse,” said Colin. “She is very lonely. Her husband was killed in Burma and she hasn’t any children.”

But if Colin thought he could win sympathy by this appeal he was wrong.

“Tschk, tschk,” said Nurse (which but feebly represents the sounds we wish to convey). And this appeared to damn so irretrievably the unlucky Mrs. Arbuthnot that Colin hardly dared to speak for fear of making matters worse. But speak he did and immediately regretted it.

“They had only been married a year,” said Colin.

On hearing this Nurse kept silence with a vigour that was quite terrifying and was so obviously making Gampish calculations that Colin felt the nursery was no place for a man and said he ought to answer some letters.

“Say good-bye to Uncle Colin, Lavinia,” said Nurse.

Lavinia looked at the floor and then looked up under her long lashes at her uncle.

“I think,” said Colin to Lydia, “that Mrs. Brandon gave your daughter more than her name. Mrs. Brandon herself couldn’t have given me a more alluring look. Good-bye, Lavinia.”

He picked his small niece up and hugged her, a most pleasurable sensation. He then set her down and she ran to Nurse and hid behind her, looking round Nurse’s skirt at her uncle.

“That’s enough, Lavinia,” said Nurse. “Come and get your things on to go in the garden, there’s a good girl.”

She withdrew her young charge to the night-nursery. Master Merton, who had lost his foot and given it up as a bad job, smiled broadly at his uncle and chuckled to himself.

“Come on,” said Lydia. “We’ll go and see Nanny Twicker.”

She put her arm through her dear Colin’s and led him away from the nursery.

Mrs. Twicker, as all Lydia’s friends must know, was the wife of Twicker the gardener, a North-countrywoman who had been nanny to the Keith family and still treated them as if they were her adored young charges, thinking but poorly of her own grown-up children because they were not gentry. Already did Miss Lavinia Merton know that in Nanny Twicker’s cottage she could break all nursery rules with impunity. As for Master Harry Merton, we should not like to take it upon ourselves to say what went on in his fond and foolish mind, but though a placid and silent child at home he burst, whenever taken to the cottage, into such a spate of melodious and unintelligible conversation as made his mother fall into helpless laughter, though Nanny Twicker indignantly said that she understood every word Master Harry was saying.

Though Robert Keith, Lydia’s married brother, was Nanny’s favourite as her first nursling she felt very affectionately towards the rest of the family. Her welcome to Colin took the form of a large cup of cocoa with cream on the top and to Colin’s mind quite nauseously oversweetened, accompanied by two large slices of bread and dripping.

“Oh, I say, Nanny, you shouldn’t,” said Colin, appalled by the sight of this rere-breakfast so soon after coffee, boiled egg, toast, butter and honey.

“Now you sit down, and eat what Nanny’s given you,” said Mrs. Twicker. “It won’t do you no harm. It’s not that nasty dripping you get at the shops,” said Nanny, who as a North-countrywoman had the deepest contempt for everything that was not made, grown or reared on the estate. “That’s the old gander, Mr. Colin. We fattened him up for Christmas and he ate like a young pullet,” said Nanny, alluding to the quality of the gander’s flesh rather than his appetite, “and the fat I got off him would have surprised you. I did it all down and put it in a nice jar and greaseproof paper on the top and made it air-tight with some candle grease the way the Women’s Institute showed us and I put it on a nice cool shelf in the larder. Many’s the time Twicker made sheeps’ eyes at it, but ‘No, Twicker,’ I said. ‘No. That’s meat for your betters,’ and I gave him a nice bit of pork dripping Twicker got off that little runt in the old sow’s last litter. You remember, Miss Lydia, the one that had such a funny shaped back and died. There was a gentleman come from the Government or somewhere said Twicker must kill the runt and burn the body, some rubbish or other about making you ill, and then the poor thing died, so I said to Twicker, ‘You humour the gentleman, Twicker, and say you killed the runt and leave the rest to me,’ and he cooked beautiful. I don’t like gentlemen interfering round my place, Mr. Colin, and by this one’s boots he’d never so much as set foot on a midden.”