The Fox in the Attic (36 page)

This had been Mrs. Winter's second visit to Penrys Cross: she had gone to the funeral (sole family mourner thereat), and after had called on the coroner to learn all she could. So now she went straight to the one person she knew at the Cross. Luckily this was one of Dr. Brinley's “good” days: when she showed him how hopeless it was to think of Gwilym and Nellie he promised to fix it. “A bit funny, you say? Then it means finding suitable lodgings.” He would find the old lady somewhere in Flemton (a place where no one thought anyone
inside
the community odd).

On the orders of Dr. Brinley, therefore, Alderman Teller, who combined a moribund sweets-and-drapery business with marketing prawns, agreed to let her a room; and there Mrs. Winter installed her. After that, Mrs. Winter had to go home.

The room was lofty, and paneled, and musty, with an elegant marble mantelpiece (gone a trifle rhomboidal); and for company, plenty of mice. The mice had shocked Mrs. Winter; but the old lady took to them and started a war at once to protect them from cats. For at Alderman Teller's (all former High Stewards had this courtesy-title of “Alderman”) the cats of the town roamed in and out as they liked. They seemed to find Teller mice extra-desirable—because (she supposed) of some special bouquet these acquired from their diet of prawns; and soon it was war to the knife between her and the cats. Thus the mice were in clover at Alderman Teller's: what with unlimited prawns, and with snippets of velvet to upholster their holes, and now the old lady's protection; and she too was in clover—what with the mice, and the Tellers couldn't be kinder, and even in bed she could hear the roar of the sea which she loved and the far-off occasional
ping
of the cash-till as sixpence went in.

True, she couldn't see out much unless the window was open; for the glass was frosted with salt and scratched and pitted by a century's driving sand. Some days it had to be tight shut, for at times she felt she was floating and might float out of it. But the days she felt stable enough to risk it she kept the window wide open—to harass the cats, whose favorite way into the house was a broken pane in the window directly below hers. At first she was able to check them by waving her arms out of the window and cursing; but in time they got used to that, and ignored her and still went in and out as they chose. However, someone had left a salmon-rod in her wardrobe. So she plugged up the hole in the glass downstairs, and went back to her room. There she waited till a queue of frustrated cats had formed on the sill underneath her, then leaned right out and swept them all off with the rod (two tabbies, three tortoiseshells, one semi-demi-Persian, and the old red tom with one ear).

After that, as the cats grew warier she too grew warier: she developed her sport to an art. As for Flemton, Dr. Brinley was right: at the spectacle of an old lady fishing for cats all day with a salmon-rod from a second-floor window not even the children looked twice.

To get back to the railhead at Penrys Cross Mrs. Winter had traveled by carrier's-cart on top of the Alderman's prawns; and His Worship the driver was Tom, the present High Steward himself. From a lifetime of lifting weights, Tom's bull-neck and shoulders were prodigious: he was solider far than his horse. His manner was always laconic: he drank like a fish: his schooling had been kept to a minimum: but Tom was no fool. Tom's brother George owned the “Wreckers,” Hugh fattened store cattle on the Marsh and together these three were the power in Flemton, with the “Worshipful Court” and all that in their pockets (there was a fourth brother too but he didn't count. Aneurin was a coasting-smack skipper whose ships always sank and who now had set up as a dentist—or so his brass plate described him, but no one had ventured inside).

Jogging along the lanes Tom had given Mrs. Winter some news which surprised her: Newton was going to be sold! Oh yes, Tom was sure of it: the young squire had decided to sell (Tom glanced at her sideways) and any day now the bills would be out for the auction ... though some said the place had been sold already—a war-profiteer it was who had bought it, one who Lloyd George had turned into a Lord. After all, why wouldn't he sell? Nice welcome he'd get if he ever come back here (Tom glanced at her sideways again). “But some say it's entailed and mustn't be sold.”

When Tom wanted to find something out he never asked questions: he formed working hypotheses, announced them like this and observed the effect. But although Mrs. Winter hadn't known this and was taken by surprise, Tom's “method” had at last met its match in her habitual discretion: she listened politely but gave him no shadow of lead. Tom lashed at his willowy dawdling horse and lapsed into silence. The point was that just now Tom was thinking of buying a bus and this made it vital to know whether Newton was going to be sold, for when an estate like Newton comes under the hammer there are pickings which mustn't be missed. If Newton was up for sale, then the brothers would need all the cash they could raise and the bus would be better postponed.

“After all,” he resumed, “now Young Squire has turned Roman Catholic and settled in Rome ... bought a very fine house there they tell me, next door to the Pope ...”

*

“P.S.,” wrote old Mrs. Hopkins, “and better send pellets.”

“Proper mad-house indeed!” thought Mrs. Winter again as she buttered her toast.

At Nine, Mellton's day really began: for at Nine the Master came down.

Gilbert's post was a large one, but today he gobbled his breakfast and left his letters to read in the train. He had to get up to Town in a hurry. The election was over last Thursday, but no one knew yet who had won: the cards had been dealt but the hands had still to be played.

Baldwin had gone to the country on “Protection”: Liberals and Labour alike had stuck to Free Trade. Clearly the country rejected Protection since less than five and a half millions had voted for it while more than eight and a half voted against; but there all clarity ended, for the “defeated” Protectionists were still the largest party in a House where no single party had a majority (and where Labour had now somehow got thirty-three more seats than the Liberals had). Suppose, then, that when Parliament met in January the Tories were forced to resign, who ought to succeed them? The party second in strength, the Socialists? But if eight and a half million votes had rejected Protection,
nine
and a half must be reckoned as anti-Socialist votes! Only the Liberals opposed
both
policies the country rejected: thus in a true sense only the Liberals represented the popular will. The Liberals themselves then? No doubt some Tories would have supported them to keep the Socialists out: all the same, since the popular will had made them the smallest group in the House ...

(Mary's post was more moderate in size than Gilbert's, but the German stamp was on top and she wanted to read Augustine's letter at leisure: she would wait till Gilbert was gone.)

... The practical answer of course was simple in principle. Since a Liberal administration was really out of the question and the very word “Coalition” these days was something which stank, either the Protectionists must stay in office but at the price of forswearing Protection, or the Socialists must forswear Socialism and step into their shoes. In either case Centrist policies would have to be carried out—by n'importe qui, provided it wasn't the Centrists. So the Liberals though the smallest were today the most powerful group in the House, having absolute power to decide who should govern (provided that wasn't themselves), and how they should govern, and for how long ...

(Without opening the envelope Mary pinched it with her fingers: it was certainly bulky.)

... Well then, which should it be? Should the two elder parties combine to “save the country from Socialism,” or shall we let Labour in on Liberal leading-strings? “In such a dilemma,” said Gilbert, “Ethics must guide us not Interest. I abhor Socialism—at the very thought of a Socialist government my being revolts. But I see this as just a plain question of right and wrong, Mary: whatever the pretext it would be morally indefensible to cheat Labour of the prize their electoral victories have earned them.”

For a moment Mary looked puzzled. After all, whichever party was forced into office on such miserable conditions must cut a pretty poor figure there: at the next election
they
'd be bound to be out for the count ... In other words, which did the Liberals hate most? “‘Electoral victories?'” she queried: “Oh, I see what you mean: put them in because
they
're the ones who've been pinching rightful Liberal votes!”

But Gilbert was gone. Now his mind was made up he was off to London post-haste.

*

(Mary wondered if Mr. Asquith would listen to Gilbert: he'd better, this was jolly ingenious!)

(Jeremy had once defined “political instinct” as “letting one's transparent nobility of character compel one to some highly profitable course of action.”)

(Jeremy's an absolute pig!)

With the tail of her eye, through the window Mary caught sight of a groom walking her horse up and down (Heavens, she was supposed to be riding up to the Hermitage this morning!). She had better stop now and get changed. She would take the letter upstairs and read some more while she dressed. But she mustn't be long or the horse would get cold (and Nellie might want to go out).

Nellie had been at the Hermitage for more than a month by now, and somehow—with Mrs. Wadamy's help, and Maggie's —a whole new rhythm of living for Nellie had bit by bit grown up.

Milk had seemed an insuperable difficulty at first, since there were no farms in the chase. But Mrs. Wadamy had evolved an ingenious plan whereby a farm-lad on his way home from work every evening left it in a hollow oak only half a mile from the house: from there Nellie lantern in hand fetched it as early as she could fit in the time (though sometimes this wasn't till near midnight, after the baby's last feed). As for the water, each bucket took seven minutes to draw (it was lucky that Nellie for all her book-learning was strong as a horse). There was one advantage in well-water, though: there were no pipes to freeze, now that even in England it had turned really cold (especially up here in the chase).

In short, things weren't easy for Nellie. Some people find even a baby a whole-time job, while Nellie had the constant care of an invalid as well and on top of all that the shopping. In the past, Nellie's housekeeping had been of the town kind which includes constant poppings round the corner for little things forgotten, the matching of rival shop-windows for bargains—a penny off this or that at So-and-so's this week. But Mellton village had only one shop-of-all-sorts, and here the prices were uniformly higher than town prices: all the pennies were on, not off.

Mrs. Wadamy rode her horse over three times a week to see all was well and generally she brought something in her saddle-bags, but these little presents were “extras”—calves'-foot jelly and the like: the shopping still had to be done. Maggie had lent her sister her bicycle, and this was an enormous help; but even then Mellton, nearly five miles away, was a major expedition to be made as seldom as possible and loads were heavy in consequence. Wheeling the old machine all hung round with stores (and with its tattered dress-guard of lacing that kept catching in the spokes till Nellie took it right off) it was a long pull up the hill to the chase gates; and Nellie was always in a hurry to get home, for she was acutely anxious every minute she had to leave Gwilym in his bed alone. Already the disease had begun to attack his spine and he had bad bouts of pain.

Whenever Nellie went out, Gwilym insisted on having the baby's Moses-basket put in his shed with him where he could look after the little fellow and talk to him. Gwilym couldn't get out of bed unaided so there was nothing he could do about it if the baby did cry: this distressed Gwilym, so Nellie made plentiful use of a soothing-syrup if ever she had to go out. Thus, mostly they enjoyed undisturbed their long conversations together, the father and his sleeping poppied son: conversations adapted to whatever age the son was supposed to have reached that morning.

“That's it, Syl: hold onto my finger ...” (for today he was teaching little Syl to walk). Another day he would be sitting by a four-year-old's cot at bedtime, telling him Bible-stories—the infant Jesus, and Joseph with his many-colored coat. “Well, what did they teach you today, Syl?”—for now a bright-cheeked boy had just run in from school. His father heard him his three-times, and (a few years later) helped with his prep ... while the baby lay all the while in his basket and bubbled.