Private Enterprise

CHAPTER 2-1

CHAPTER 2On the following day beyond church, Sunday lunch at which Lavinia was allowed to assist and behaved very well, Sunday coma, a Sunday walk after tea and Sunday supper to which Mr. Wickham came, nothing of note occurred. The question of a house or a cottage for Mrs. Arbuthnot was discussed at intervals. Kate Carter rang up from Southbridge to say that the mumps had been a false alarm and it was an impacted wisdom tooth which had caused the swelling and the boy was in the Barchester General and doing nicely and would be back at school in a few days, so when would Lydia and Colin come over. As everyone was going to Mrs. Brandon’s party on Monday, Kate suggested that the Manor should come back to supper at Southbridge and meanwhile she would inquire about a small house, adding that she didn’t know Mrs. Arbuthnot but if she was a friend of Colin’s she was sure she was very nice.

As there was no fine or warm weather that summer and there will obviously never be again, we will try not to allude to it. Monday was slightly colder, wetter and windier than Saturday or Sunday, and the same holds good for every other day. Luckily for Mrs. Brandon’s party the house faced south and so had what daylight there was, and in any case the presence of a number of human beings all out-talking each other has a warming effect on the atmosphere. During the war Mrs. Brandon had housed at Stories a small private nursery school and enjoyed it very much. The school had now gone back to its own home, but two or three of the more delicate babies had remained with the nice teacher Miss Feilding in charge of them. The reason for this was twofold. The ostensible reason was that if They knew that Mrs. Brandon was being so capittleist and undemocratic as to have a drawing-room and a spare bedroom They would probably, nay certainly and deliberately, have billeted Mixo-Lydians or hands from the Hogglestock iron-works on her. The second reason and the really important one was that Mrs. Brandon’s ex-Nurse, who had brought up Francis and Delia and remained as a kind of general utility, having tasted the joys of power over a series of babies was not lightly going to give up this power.

“Very well, Nurse,” said Mrs. Brandon. “Miss Feilding and the three little ones can stay and keep the Green Room and Dressing-room and they can go on using the drawing-room for I really do not see how we could ever get the furniture and carpets put back. But the Pink Room I must have, because if anyone came to stay with me I would need a room for them.”

“I quite see what you mean, madam,” said Nurse condescendingly, “and I am sure Miss Feilding will be quite agreeable. Really, madam, when we remember how poor Baby Collis wasn’t quite the thing when first he came here and what a fine little fellow he was when he left us, it does seem as if it was meant.”

“It was your idea of putting him onto Toddlefood that made all the difference, Nurse,” said Mrs. Brandon, basely pandering to the tyrant.

“Well, madam,” said Nurse pityingly, “one couldn’t expect Miss Feilding to know a thing like that. Those trained ladies, madam, they don’t study the babies. It’s all out of books with them. Still, she’s a nice lady, for a nursery-teacher, and I’m sure we have always got on very well. Of course the ideas she has, they are all right for the babies that come here, but I wouldn’t dream of letting her do anything for Miss Delia’s children. Our babies need someone who really does understand them. It’s to be hoped that Miss Delia and Mr. Grant and the children will be visiting us again soon. I found an old dress of yours, madam, that chiffon you had the first year of the war, sweet-pea colour and sweetly pretty, and I was thinking that I could make a lovely little frock for Miss Felicia out of the skirt. And that green tweed skirt that Rose scorched, though I told her at the time she ought to do it with a damp cloth, would just be enough to make some nice knickers for Master Freddy.”

As usual Mrs. Brandon submitted, and indeed to what better use can one’s pre-war clothes be put than to be cut up for one’s grandchildren. For one will not wear them again. One is too bony, one’s skin is coarsened, one’s hands are not fit to show, one’s neck and shoulders are better covered than uncovered; the very dresses look strange and out of place in the Foul New World. Better to cut one’s losses, to make frocks and knickers, to cover cushions or reline coats, to relegate sentiment to the attic or the dust-bin. It is of no use to look back. Lear’s fivefold “Never” is our lament for the lost douceur de vivre.

The first arrival at Stories on Monday afternoon was Sir Edmund Pridham, Mrs. Brandon’s old friend and trustee, an indefatigable worker for every good public cause in the county, a champion against all bureaucratic oppression. He had once, sorely against his will, almost offered honourable matrimony to Mrs. Brandon under the misapprehension that she was about to contract a second and most unsuitable marriage, and seldom had he been more relieved than when he found his offer was not necessary.

“Well, Lavinia, so you’re having a party,” said Sir Edmund. “I can’t stay long. Some damfool official is trying to get that land round Starveacres Hatches for a sewage farm. I’m meeting Pomfret about it. That bit was flooded in ’23 and half the vixens in the county were drowned. If these fellers get their way all the vixens will be drowned. If I had my way the whole of this Government would be drowned. Not one of them knows about the country and none of ’em want to know. You’re looking your age, Lavinia. Why don’t you wear one of those pretty dresses you used to have? Mustn’t look an old woman before your time.”

Mrs. Brandon did not resent his criticism. For a delightful and stupid woman she had flashes of great insight, and she knew quite well that her once entrancing good looks were gone for ever. It was all very well to take more care of one’s hair, to cream one’s face, to add quietly a little more make-up; youth was gone long ago, and the young, graceful middle age which had adorned her had become a little withered. Short sight helped one to forget, but she had to put her spectacles on now when she made up her face, and sometimes she wished her spectacles did not show her the ravages of the long war and the hateful peace so clearly. And then, having never taken herself seriously, she couldn’t help laughing at her own face and thinking how very little it really mattered and how very nice it was that she still had Stories, and Delia could come to stay with her babies, and friends had more petrol and could visit her again. What she did not see was the elegance of the bones in her face, the distinction that had taken the place of her young-middle-aged beauty. Some saw and admired it who had never admired her looks before. Sir Edmund saw a pretty woman who had lost her bloom, but he found her as charming and irritating as ever.

“Nurse won’t let me,” she said. “She has just told me that she is going to make an evening dress and a tweed skirt into a frock for Felicia and knickers for Freddy.”

“Damned interfering woman that nurse of yours,” said Sir Edmund. “Tell you what, Lavinia, you ought to wear black. My old mother always wore black. You looked very nice with a black lace affair on your head that night we dined under the Spanish chestnut years ago.”

“I don’t remember that,” said, Mrs. Brandon.

“Don’t be stoopid, Lavinia,” said Sir Edmund. “You were wearing the ring old Miss Brandon gave you and I told you you ought to get it insured. By the way, you ought to insure it a bit more now. Price of diamonds is up.”

“I wish you would see about it for me,” said Mrs. Brandon, feeling that if she was to be called an old woman she might at least have the advantage of being treated like one. And she lifted her tired but beautiful eyes to Sir Edmund.

“All right, Lavinia. No need to make eyes at an old feller like me though,” said Sir Edmund. “You’ve a fine pair of eyes, my dear, even if you’ve lost some weight. You ought to fatten up, you know. Well, I must be off.”

But even as he spoke a crowd of visitors came into the room all at once and Sir Edmund, who preferred to do business by word of mouth, was detained by one and another county friend till at last he got away and went off to Pomfret Towers.

As always happens at a party, the empty room suddenly filled and the hostess’s ears were gladdened by the parrot-house screeches of successful entertainment.

“And where is Francis?” said the Dean’s wife. “Josiah wants him to come and dine with us. We have that nice girl of Mrs. Dean’s living with us during the week. I haven’t seen him since he came back.”

Mrs. Brandon said she couldn’t see him at the moment, but if Mrs. Crawley made for the noisiest bit of the party he would probably be there. Mrs. Crawley did as she was told and came face to face with her hostess’s son who was looking after the drinks.

“Francis! This is nice. You’ve grown,” said Mrs. Crawley.

“I never quite know if I have grown or my clothes have shrunk,” said Francis. “With nearly all my suits I feel as I did in the growing-years, when one went back to school every term looking rather like Smike, with one’s coat sleeves and one’s trouser legs too short. The tailor in Barchester has been very nice about trying to let things out, but there are limits, and two perfectly good suits are doomed to the rag and bone man.”

“You wouldn’t think of selling them privately, would you?” said Mrs. Crawley. “Some of my grandsons are perishing for want of decent clothes and they will grow so fast that no one has any coupons. Look here. The Dean wants you to dine with us. Bring over any suits you can’t wear and I’ll get the girls,” by which Mrs. Crawley meant various daughters with large schoolboy sons, “to make you an offer for them. Have you any shirts or underwear?”

“I wish I had,” said Francis. “Most of them are in such a state that Nurse has taken them to use for dusters.”

“Well, if you can grow out of any before next week, do bring them,” said Mrs. Crawley. “What about Tuesday week?”

Francis said Tuesday week would be very nice indeed, and he didn’t know what the world was coming to when the Dean’s wife had to tout for old clothes at the back door.

“One just can’t help it,” said Mrs. Crawley. “Josiah is really very lucky, because the kind of clothes and hats he wears are so unsuitable for ordinary life that his grandsons can’t take them, though my eldest grandson did borrow his grandfather’s second best gaiters last Christmas to keep goal in a hockey match.”

Francis said he didn’t think gaiters would be much good as hockey pads.

“Oh, not to keep the balls off,” said Mrs. Crawley. “Only to keep his legs warm. The dreadful thing was that they were too tight and he burst three buttons off. Not the buttons just coming off in the ordinary way, but a bit of the gaiter coming off with them. I managed to get them repaired, but it was very awkward because Josiah was looking for them everywhere and you cannot say that gaiters are at the wash. Really, this Government does make life very difficult.”

“Though I regard His Majesty’s present Government with a fascinated mixture of fear and loathing,” said Francis, “one must be fair. Much as I should like to accuse them, collectively and individually, of having abstracted—I will not say stolen—the Dean’s gaiters to play hockey in, I cannot believe that they have the wits to do it.”

“Well, Tuesday week then,” said Mrs. Crawley, her eye already on the next person she wanted to talk to. “I have the Deans’ youngest girl—no, the youngest but one—staying with me during the week.”

Francis could not think why Mrs. Crawley should allude to one of her daughters as her husband’s youngest but one girl, and must have looked as perplexed as he felt, for Mrs. Crawley added hastily, “A daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Dean at Winter Overcotes. A sister of Jessica Dean the actress. She is working for the Barsetshire Red Cross Hospital Library and goes home for the weekends, or I would have brought her today. Kate, I want to talk to you about my third girl’s second boy. He is going to Southbridge Junior School next term and I hope you will let him come to tea one day.” For Kate Carter and the Dean’s daughters had all been at the Barchester High School and the families of Crawley and Keith were old friends.