The Wooden Shepherdess (48 page)

Mary guessed that this rudely staring girl was in fact ill-at-ease and why. Had it been anyone else she'd have inwardly laid back her ears, for she hated reminders that her way of life was not quite the normal one; but now resentment was drowned in pity: “How lost the poor creature must feel, plonked down in somewhere so strange and faced with an apparition like me!”

“I hope you'll be happy here,” said the apparition.

“Yes Ma'am.... And the same to you!” Norah burbled on, too addled to know what to say (and it's hard to know what you
can
say when talking to only a face). But Mrs. Wadamy stretched out her hand, and took hold of hers in what felt like a friendly prize-fighter's grip.

“Parliament 'usband's a right pig!” thought Norah, “Leaving 'er all on 'er own like this!”

Even when Parliament goes in recess the Whitehall Departments don't. Moreover when Cabinet Ministers leave their desks (summoned to Chequers or Number Ten, or to shoot with a Duke, or merely to sort things out with difficult wives or go on the razzle), this doubles a Junior Minister's work; for you can't let your Civil Servants go taking decisions which ought to be left to their Masters—or not if you're conscientious, like Gilbert.

Twice he'd been moved, and though neither move really carried promotion one day promotion
must
come: one day he would indeed walk in the Corridors of Power, like Simon himself (whose thirty-five Liberal-National followers' seats had earned him the Foreign Office). A dog's life, meanwhile?—Perhaps; but a heady, responsible one. Even now he chaired committees where everyone called him “Minister,” found himself rising to speak in the House armed with a departmental brief instead of spouting whale-like out of his head; and it's strange what a sense of power it gives you when somebody else has composed the words you speak and written the Minutes you sign. Gilbert was now forty-one, but felt at least ten years younger: Office had done for him all the advertisements tell you their Pep Pills will do (but don't).

Most of his women friends these days were political wives or Society hostesses. None of his London acquaintances however had half the beauty and charm of long-ago Joan, that young half-sister of Archdeacon Dibden who'd been such a friend to them both when Mary was first brought home. He hadn't seen her for years; and the news of Joan's unexpected return to Dorset brought Gilbert hurrying back to Mellton the first time in months. He traveled that same Friday night: for he'd heard she was only in England for two or three days, collecting some books which her brother wanted in France....

Six weeks ago, Archdeacon Dibden (father of Jeremy, one of Augustine's oldest friends) had been getting ready to die. He had passed Man's allotted span. Each Tottersdown Monachorum winter bronchitis had laid him low, and each winter the bouts got worse. This year he had only been properly well at the height of summer; and now already the wheezing and hubble-bubble were starting again in his chest. When the cold weather came he would have to take to his bed, with a pile of folio volumes under the mattress to raise the upper part of his trunk: then must follow the doctor's new-fangled injections of manganese
and
his housekeeper's (old-fangled) steam-kettle filling his room with steam. How he hated the smell of her Friar's Balsam! He hardly could hope to live to enjoy the smells of another Spring; not unless....

Kind Lord Tottersdown (bless him!) had tried to persuade him to go to the South of France, and had offered to foot the bill. A Jew, a man of a different faith with no obligation whatever towards his Cloth: it seemed ungenerous to refuse. But frankly, was it worth while? Whether he died or not, his
useful
life would be over: he'd have to resign as Archdeacon, and even his Cure of Souls.

A bronchitic's death is seldom an easy one: unless his heart suddenly fails he slowly drowns in the fluids flooding his lungs. But if that was God's Will, surely a priest would be better employed preparing to meet his Maker than running away from Death.... And imagine his isolation, cooped up in a Pension—say, in some suburb of Nice—if he went there alone! “If only dear Joan had been keeping house for me still—or even had married Jeremy's friend Augustine, as once we hoped!” But no, Joan had married that nice Southern boy and gone to live in the States....

Such had been the state of play those six weeks ago, when a letter had come from Joan in South Carolina heavily edged in black. Anthony Fairfax's foible of building his own automobiles himself by hand had come to a sorry end: the latest one had exploded, killing him dead. The widow was coming home, “for she felt sore need of a brother's comfort....” His poor bereaved Joan! This intimation that God still had a use for him here on Earth tipped the scales: if a warm winter climate would help, the Archdeacon made up his mind not to die after all....

*

This same news of Joan's reappearance which galvanized Gilbert had greatly disturbed Augustine: fond as he'd been of her once, he had hoped he need never see her again. He felt that resentment we all tend to feel towards somebody once very close we suspect we have treated badly, and therefore had hoped to forget. Surely at least she'd have the good sense to steer clear of Mellton while he was there? But Gilbert so took it for granted his wife and everyone else were as anxious as he was to see Joan again that he broached it almost while crossing his doorstep: “Ask her to dinner tomorrow: we can't put it off because the Archdeacon has started abroad already and Joan is to join him almost at once.”

Gilbert was greatly astonished to find his wife most unkeen to ask the girl to the house. “Not after the way she treated Augustine,” she said; for they both believed it was
she
who had turned
him
down.

“But surely a girl has the right to refuse a man?”

“Not after leading him on the way Joan did.”

“But all that was seven or eight years ago: it's Ancient History now. Or do you insist on a blood-feud, with Dibdens and Wadamys shooting each other on sight? What about Jeremy: isn't he still very much your brother's friend instead of them drawing beads on each other?—Not that
I
care of course,” he went on, “it's just that asking her seemed the civil thing.... And I seem to remember you used to be rather fond of her once, yourself.”

Mary sighed. He was so transparent.... But jealousy wasn't a trait in herself to encourage—not someone in her condition: she'd better give in. “Very well then, ask her tomorrow night if that's what you want.”

Gilbert was tempted to take out a car and deliver the invitation by word of mouth; but that might be going too far, so he wrote a note on Mary's behalf and sent it over by hand. Joan was perfectly well aware of Augustine's presence but saw no reason in this for avoiding Mellton, since this was the very “comfort” the widow had crossed the wide Atlantic to find. So the answer Young Trivett brought back was “Yes.”

Augustine might almost have fled to his home in Wales then-and-there, were it not for Norah. Having only just brought her here he ought at least to hang on till he saw how she settled in, and how this tapestry-work experiment shaped.... Already there'd been one row in the Servants' Hall over someone so plainly out of the bottom drawer taking her meals in the “Room”—where she had to be waited on, eating with Mrs. Winter and Wantage. Mrs. Winter was solving this one by finding her village lodgings; but that left her even more to her own resources if he himself wasn't there to see she got a fair deal. She was more-or-less under his wing, and he'd just have to face meeting Joan again this once....

He had his reward when he heard that Jeremy—now taking a rare weekend from Whitehall to visit this aunt only four years older than he was himself—would be coming too. For Augustine loathed going to London, and saw his friend so seldom now that Jeremy worked in the Admiralty.

When Jeremy joined the Civil Service in 1924, post-war contraction had led to terrible overcrowding upstairs: his first promotion was bound to be slow, a minimum thirteen years—a third of his whole career before setting foot on even the second rung. If he weren't to die of boredom before the reigning upper echelons came to retiring age and the rat-race really began, Jeremy had to opt for whichever Department of State seemed the most entertaining one for a junior marking time to explore.

Here the Admiralty seemed unique. A living organism rather than man-made organization: an organism moreover (as Jeremy told Augustine once) which resembled such Siphonophores as the jellyfish commonly called a Portuguese Man-of-War, where what appeared to the layman's eye a single creature consisted in fact of independent medusas and polyps clubbing together and each developing into different useful organs (say an inflatable float, or a sting or a stomach or swimming-bell). For this symbiotic conglomerate too was largely composed of departments with independent histories (“Naval Stores” dated back at least to 1514) which had only coalesced in the last hundred years. Some still offered their own complete civilian careers, with no transmigration of even non-technical staff: some were staffed in whole or in part by Naval Officers serving short-time shore appointments. Each had its own Magna Carta, its “Board Instructions”—for here again this jellyfish was unique, in that supreme authority lay with Their Lordship's Board and not with a Minister (vested in it by Royal Prerogative, not by Parliament: Patents of Board Appointment had to be signed by the Monarch himself). In a Constitutional sense this Board was a single “person”—the Lord High Admiral put In Commission: in token of which not even the First Lord himself might fly the Foul Anchor flag unless he'd a fellow-commissioner with him. Thus, if a First Lord ever determined to overrule the others he'd have to do it not as “First Lord” at all, but wearing his Cabinet hat and so representing the Crown—as the King overruling his Lord High Admiral ...

No one will feel much surprise that this was the place where Jeremy's lively inquiring mind should elect to serve: for the Secretary's Department, to which he'd belong, had a finger in every other department's pie—including links with the latest accretion of all, the Naval Staff (which didn't exist until 1911). What may surprise the reader more is how well on the whole he found this strange polymorphic conglomerate seemed to work —but so, after all, does the Portuguese Man-of-War.... This jellyfish seemed well adapted to meet the incredibly diverse fields of work and skills involved in building, arming, maintaining, recruiting and fighting the largest navy on Earth. Up above, each Superintending Lord had his own allotted sphere where he ruled supreme in the name of the Board as a whole: down below, each man seemed to know his own particular job and did it. The Secretariat's Function, apart from financial control, was chiefly providing articulate lines of communication between that Below and Above as well as links with the rest of Whitehall.

Jeremy'd been on the job ten years before that September Saturday night when Joan and he came to dine at Mellton. He rather enjoyed the work, on the whole. He had learned early two important lessons. A Civil Servant must often choose between getting something done and getting the credit for it: he can't have both. Again, that officials don't understand officialese: you can put the most outrageous proposals across the high-ups cocooned in officialese which would raise the roof if proposed in plain English. “Joan and Jeremy, Gilbert and me and Augustine,” thought Mary; “that's one girl short. You can't ask somebody in at a moment's notice, it's much too rude: Miss Penrose must dine, for a sixth.” Miss Penrose normally supped in her room, but a governess fits into any old fold—at a pinch.

So Miss Penrose had taken her place at dinner on Gilbert's left: though only her other neighbor (the charming young Mr. Jeremy Dibden—how sad about that paralyzed arm!) seemed to talk to her much, Mr. Wadamy being too taken up with his Guest of Honor.

That Guest of Honor had greatly surprised her old friends by the Southern drawl she'd acquired, till Mary reminded them all how Augustine himself had been teased for his Yankee twang after just a few months—whereas Joan had been there seven years: “After all that time you've a right to your South Carolina accent.” Gilbert warmly assented: he found it delightful.

“Honey, you-all's bein' jest too dandy to poor little me!” said Joan in self-parody, raising a general laugh.

Champagne hinted at celebration: yet not even Gilbert had dared make this a white-tie affair. To lend it sartorial sparkle he had to make do with a new-fangled hybrid fashion launched by the Prince of Wales: he was wearing a double-breasted white waistcoat under his dinner-jacket. In contrast, Augustine—as if to ignore the presence of Joan altogether and just en famille in his sister's house—was revolting against starched linen and wearing a soft silk shirt with his dinner-jacket and black bow-tie. Only Jeremy's evening clothes were strictly correct, and as soon as the men were left to their port he took up cudgels: no wonder Hitler thought England had gone to the dogs when gentlemen showed no respect for the Laws which their Fathers had graven forever on granite! Augustine's sloppy soft shirt was as sorry a sign in its way as the Oxford Union's refusal to fight for King and Country. He even criticized Gilbert's waistcoat.... Oh yes, he knew it had Royal Assent; but so gross a misuse of Prerogative surely raised doubts of the Prince's future fitness to reign ...

Augustine felt ill-at-ease: Gilbert was born to be teased, and this pair always fought; but Jeremy seemed tensed-up, and personal rudeness like this wasn't up to his usual form.

Not only did Gilbert look pained, he remarked in an acid voice that no Minister of the Crown could allow attacks on the Heir to the Throne at his own dinner-table; now it was Jeremy's turn to look wounded: “As one of the Crown's most loyal, obedient servants.... Well, here's to the Prince—God bless him!”