Mrs. Tim of the Regiment (9 page)

Reply mildly that I am sorry for Grace as I sometimes feel that way myself, and advise her to take a course of ‘Jane'. Grace says what is that patent medicine that I am always prescribing – it is
her
belief that I have shares in it.

She pursues me to the corner producing new and increasingly fantastic arguments against my proposed visit to Mrs. Parsons, to all of which I turn a deaf ear. Grace then says will I wait a moment while she goes into the fruiterer's and buys a bunch of black grapes for me to take to Mrs. Parsons? I ought to know better at my age – Grace says – than to visit a bedridden person without taking them a bunch of black grapes.

Accept the reproof humbly and the grapes with gratitude and board a bus which will take me to Mrs. Parsons' door.

I like going to see Mrs. Parsons because she is so different from myself. Whereas I have too little time to think, Mrs. Parsons has too much. Sometimes I think she is like Meredith's Emma ‘There is nothing the body suffers that the soul may not profit by that is Emma's history.'

Mrs. Parsons is propped up in bed and her bright eyes greet me at the door. We talk.

I wish I could remember all Mrs. Parsons' sayings. She says stimulating things that make you think, whether you want to or not. After a little while I tell Mrs. Parsons about our move to Westburgh. She says she will miss me there are so few people who bring her sunshine. Reply that I always find sunshine here, and add that I don't think I am as nice as I used to be. (You can say foolish things like this to Mrs. Parsons.) She smiles and says I only think so because my standard has gone up. Reply that she really does not know me, I am a rebel at heart. ‘The only people who are not rebels are vegetable marrows,' says Mrs. Parsons. Reply that it would be rather nice to be a vegetable marrow never to be discontented or miserable without any reason for being so. Mrs. Parsons laughs and says ‘Perhaps but how dull never to be joyful and happy without any reason for being so!'

We talk about Westburgh and she asks me how I think I will like it. So many people have asked me this, but Mrs. Parsons really wants to know. I reply that I can't tell, but that I hate the idea of leaving Biddington. I get rooted to places and it hurts tearing up roots. Of course, Scotland is not very far away, not like India but all the same it will be a foreign land to me and
everybody
will be strange not like moving with the regiment.

Mrs. Parsons says, ‘I know exactly what you mean but I envy you all the same. I envy you going to new places every few years – meeting new people and making new friends. It is such an interesting thing to study people, to get inside their skins and see life from their point of view. And
you
can do it. Some people travel all over the world and see nothing. They go about clad in a thick fog of their own making through which no impressions can penetrate. I know a girl who went to Africa and all she could tell me when she came back was that the negroes have woolly hair. I learned more about Africa from reading a travel book than that girl learned from living there for three months. You're not like that. You can see things and laugh at them.'

My sense of humour is so obstreperous that it is a mixed blessing, and I tell her so.

‘Nonsense,' she says. ‘Laughter is a plendid disinfectant, take it with you to Westburgh, my dear.'

‘You sound as if you think I shall need it there,' I remark.

‘You will need it wherever you go,' she replies, ‘and just as much if you stay at home. Goodness me, I often wonder how I would get through life without a sense of humour. When things are as bad as they can be you can always find something to laugh at, even if it is only your own gloomy face in the mirror. Wait a moment,' she adds, as I rise to go. ‘There is a passage here I want to find for you. Give me that book, child. R. L. S. has said what I mean better than I could think it.' She turns over the pages as if she loved them and reads in her soft, husky voice:

‘ “The strangest thing in all man's travelling is that he should carry about with him incongruous memories. There is no foreign land; it is the traveller only who is foreign, and now and then, by a flash of recollection, lights up the contrasts of the earth.” '

Her hand lies in mine a shade longer than usual as we say ‘Goodbye' and her eyes are very bright. I say huskily that I will write to her and she replies hastily: ‘Only if you want to, my dear. Don't make me more of a burden than I need be. That is the hardest thing of all for me to bear. Promise only to write when you feel you want to, Hester dear.'

I promise and hurry away. In retrospect I am rather ashamed that we have talked so much about my small troubles and so little about her big ones.

Fourth February

Drive over to Nearhampton to take Bryan out to lunch, this being one of the days appointed by the Parkers for that tantalising performance. (Tantalising both to parents and offspring to meet for a few hours with the shadow of an imminent parting lurking grimly in the background.) As we near the school we see other cars with other parents bent on the same errand (mostly large and expensive cars beside which Cassandra looks like a battered sparrow).

Bryan is at first shy and constrained. Conversation consists of Tim and self asking questions to which Bryan replies in a minimum of words.

We drive to Holehogger's Hotel where we lunch expensively, Bryan choosing the most indigestible dishes offered on the menu. My son is such a stranger to me I quite unable to suggest that he would be wise to content himself with plainer fare. After lunch Bryan becomes more like himself and volunteers scraps of information which are avidly swallowed by Tim and self. I ask after the eldest Carter boy, who has been sent to Nearhampton this term on our recommendation. Bryan replies with relish that ‘Carter gets kicked all right.' Feel rather worried about this revelation, as I have assured Mamie that Bryan will ‘be kind to Edward'.

Several other Nearhampton boys are lunching in the hotel with relatives and friends. Bryan takes no notice of them, nor they of Bryan, and, when asked whether he does not know these boys, Bryan replies, ‘Of course I know them – Paterson is in my dorm,' but vouchsafes no reason as to why they should ignore each other.

It has now started to rain, and neither Tim nor self views with enthusiasm ‘A long drive', which is Bryan's idea of spending the afternoon. We repair to the large billiard room upstairs, where we find the Anstruthers in the same circumstances as ourselves, complete with Nearhampton schoolboy son. Major Anstruther is in the Gunners and is an old crony of Tim's. They are delighted to meet.

Major Anstruther suggests a game of cockfighting (which is played on Mess Guest Nights) to amuse the boys. Tim agrees, and he and Major A. proceed to play at cockfighting with great vigour. They squat on the floor with billiard cues beneath their knees and their arms hooked under the ends and try to knock each other over. The boys look on, Bryan with the mulish look upon his face peculiar to sons whose fathers are behaving in too juvenile a manner.

Sylvia Anstruther and I sit on a sofa near the fire and discuss clothes, servants, the enormities of landladies, and whether it is really worth while preserving eggs when you are liable to be moved before you can use them.

Afternoon seems extremely long and we decide to have tea at four o'clock. The boys eat enormously of bacon and eggs (an amazing feat so soon after lunch).

We then drive Bryan back to Nearhampton and deposit him there.

Sixth February

Tim having got leave, we start off to Westburgh to look for a house. Funds are low – as usual – so we have decided to go in the car as this is cheaper (
on paper
) than our combined railway fares.

It is a fine morning, frosty and bright.

Cassandra at first refuses to start (she evidently has got wind of the long road before her and does not like the idea at all) but at last, for no apparent reason, she thinks better of it and does start, and we are off, somewhat exhausted with long drawn-out farewells to Betty and Miss Hardcastle.

Cassandra races along nobly with only an occasional backfire as a reminder of her incomprehensible behaviour. At one o'clock we begin to look for a suitable spot to eat our picnic lunch. Pass several likely-looking spots because Cassandra is going too fast to stop and Tim says it is not worth while backing as we shall find something just as good farther on. We go on slowly and stop near a wood which proves to be ankle-deep in mud. Go on again and stop near a hillside which is cold and windy. A straggling town intervenes, and when we have run through it we see a gate leading into a field this is obviously ideal were it not for a large manure heap close by.

We are now both hungry and cross. Tim says he does not know why on earth I can't pick out a decent place for lunch, as I have nothing else to do but keep my eyes open. Offer to take the wheel for a bit so as to enable Tim to pick out a decent place for lunch, but the offer is not accepted. Stop again near a wood which combines all the drawbacks possible and decide to eat our lunch in the car.

Tim much soothed by sandwiches and a cup of coffee out of a Thermos. Self rather annoyed because Thermos with hot milk has been leaking and there is none left. (Fortunately this catastrophe does not affect Tim, who likes his coffee black.) We fill Cassandra's water jacket which leaks from a horse-trough and push on.

Soon after this it begins to rain. Tim says the weather forecast was Some Showers Locally and this is one of them, so it is not worth while putting up the hood, as we shall be clear of it in a few minutes. But it is evidently not One of Them because it goes on and on and eventually proves itself to be a Wet Afternoon. Wait until we are quite sure of this and then put up the hood, by which time we are exceedingly cold and wet.

Rain comes down faster. Cassandra surges through the water like a miniature destroyer in a heavy sea. We stop at an inn for tea, by which time it is dark. Continue through wind and water with our lights streaming out before us and cutting through the gloom like steel. The whole thing becomes dreamlike; I feel as if we had been travelling for days with Cassandra's roar in our ears and the water splashing on the mudguards, and would go on for ever and ever.

Tim remarks that he is feeling sleepy, which brings me back to earth with a bump and I start talking of everything that I can think of in a feverish manner to keep him awake.

We run down a steep hill into a village where a small inn stands by the bridge on the banks of a stream. Lights in the window behind red curtains give the place a cosy appearance and we decide to stop here for the night. Fat, pleasant landlady provides a large meal of bacon and eggs and tea, after which I retire thankfully to a large room with a brass bedstead.

The rain has now lessened in violence, and Tim says he ‘must have some exercise after sitting still all day', so he departs to walk round the village with the landlady's son.

Landlady follows me upstairs with small jug of hot water and remains for sometime talking to me. I learn that she has been a widow for twenty years – through no fault of the gentlemen, as she could have her pick of the village. But she does not care for matrimony and likes her bed to herself.

At this point I start undressing, as I feel it is the only way to get rid of her. She goes at last, but not until she has seen and admired my most intimate celanese underwear.

Discover that the mattress of the brass bedstead is evidently stuffed with stones, but am too tired and sleepy to care.

Seventh February

Waken early to hear the river splashing outside my window. Tim still asleep. The sun is shining as if rain were unknown – church bell is ringing in the distance and the birds are twittering on the bare trees. All is very peaceful and Sundayish. It seems an age since last Sunday. Is it
really
only a week since we were living in the lap of luxury at Charters Towers, with footmen dancing attendance on us, fires lighted in our bedrooms, and baths full of scented water all ready and waiting for our convenience? Last but not least, the difference in the beds is beyond belief, for whereas the bed at Charters Towers seemed to be made of clouds, that on which I am now reposing is – as I suspected last night – stuffed with stones. Decide that this must be one of the incongruous memories Mrs. Parsons spoke of, which light up the contrasts of the earth.

We push off early and find the road smooth as glass. Cassandra is unrecognisable beneath her coating of mud, but going bravely. There is something very beautiful in the tracery of the bare black branches of the trees against the pale blue sky. As we go northward it becomes much colder; we see patches of snow on the fields, ugly, forsaken-looking patches, which look for all the world like heaps of dirty washing left out overnight.

We stop for lunch at a small town, after which the road becomes snowy and yet more snowy. Here and there it is frozen into ruts and we skid in and out of them in a manner which reminds me forcibly of the bygone cab when its wheels stuck in the tram lines. Snow begins to fall in thick flakes and Cassandra's windshield wiper sticks. We stop to clear the glass, as Tim cannot see to drive. While we are doing so a car comes in opposite direction and slows down; voice asks cheerfully if we have chains, as otherwise we shall not get through. Tim replies that we have no chains, but we must get through somehow. Voice says facetiously, ‘Eh, well, if the worst comes to the worst I suppose you can put the thing in your pocket and walk.' We are so tired of this kind of joke about Cassandra that it has ceased to enrage us.