The Matchmaker
Uprooted from war-torn London, Alda Lucie-Brown and her three daughters start a new life at Pine Cottage in rural Sussex. Unsuited to a quiet life, Alda attempts to orchestrate – with varying degrees of success – the love affairs of her neighbours. Her unwilling subjects include an Italian POW, a Communist field-hand, a battery-chicken farmer and her intelligent friend Jean.
Stella Gibbons was born in London in 1902. She went to the North London Collegiate School and studied journalism at University College, London. She then spent ten years working for various newspapers, including the
Evening Standard
. Stella Gibbons is the author of twenty-five novels, three volumes of short stories and four volumes of poetry. Her first publication was a book of poems,
The Mountain Beast
(1930), and her first novel
Cold Comfort Farm
(1932) won the Femina Vie Heureuse Prize in 1933. Amongst her works are
Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm
(1940),
Westwood
(1946),
Conference at Cold Comfort Farm
(1959) and
Starlight
(1967). She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1950. In 1933 she married the actor and singer Allan Webb. They had one daughter. Stella Gibbons died in 1989.
ALSO BY STELLA GIBBONS
Cold Comfort Farm
Bassett
Enbury Heath
Nightingale Wood
My American
Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm
The Rich House
Ticky
The Bachelor
Westwood
Conference at Cold Comfort Farm
Here Be Dragons
White Sand and Grey Sand
The Charmers
Starlight
To Enid Gibbons and The Blue Idol – affectionately,
peacefully
The Matchmaker
ON THE JOURNEY
from London down into Sussex, Major Ronald Lucie-Browne was entrapped into conversation by an elderly gentleman, who lost no time in revealing that he had once been a Captain, and went on to relate that he was an expert in the science of firing a revolver. This (as you would of course be aware) was no easy performance; none of your shutting one eye and taking aim at the target; no, it was a highly complicated operation; it was a science; but neither in the war that was just over, nor in the one before that, had he found it properly accepted as such. There will just be time, before we reach your station, to explain it.
Ronald Lucie-Browne listened in silence, not once letting his eye stray towards the satchel upon his knee containing reports from the Liberal Party’s office in the constituency which he hoped to contest
during
the next General Election. Born and educated as a gentleman, he had earned his living during the fourteen years since coming down from Oxford as Reader in French Language and Literature at one of the older provincial universities, but his nature was not completely suited to the calm of modern academic life in England (which lacks the excitement of intellectual speculation characterising such life in the great American universities) and also—like so many of his generation—he was cursed with a sense of social responsibility. It had seemed to him, after much uneasy and earnest thought, that it was his duty to try to enter politics. His voluntary enlistment during the first months of the war and his subsequent military service had interrupted this plan, but now that the date for his demobilisation was in sight, he hoped to enter seriously upon it.
He had intended to study the reports during the journey into Sussex because he knew that he would have neither the time nor the inclination to read them after he got there, but he had not the ruthlessness necessary in dealing with elderly gentlemen who explain to us about revolvers, being a kind, grave, affectionate young man who proposed, thus handicapped, to enter the political sewers for the good of his fellow beings.
It appeared that
you fired at the chap
’
s stomach when you intended to hit him in the heart
. There! It was out! The elderly gentleman relaxed; he leaned back; he repeated the secret several times in a lulling diminuendo which seemed to marvel at the simplicity and infallibility of the method just revealed; and then, having accepted one of Ronald’s cigarettes, he became silent, as if exhausted by his efforts, and gazed rather glassily out of the window.
As it was now too late to begin upon the reports, Ronald also looked out of the window. The scanty copper and bronze leaves of late November burned along the hedges and far down in the brown and purple woods under a breaking grey sky, and the autumn landscape, that for six years had seemed to be watchfully, patiently submitting itself to darkness and danger and cold, was now settling into its natural winter sleep. There was relief in the very air, but his thoughts always became sad when he found himself alone, and presently, as he watched the woods gliding past, the familiar despair with the state of the world began to invade his mind—until it was suddenly banished by the realisation that in a few moments he would be with his family.
“Nearly there; yours is the next station,” observed the elderly gentleman, coming out of a reverie-doze. “Ah yes, this is where
we
began to get
our
luggage down when
we
lived at Sillingham.”
He went on to inquire if Ronald himself lived there? (having
asked
no personal questions during the journey because he had been busy explaining about the revolvers).
“My wife has just taken a furnished cottage down here,” was the answer.
“Oh, really? She was lucky to get it. I wonder if I know it?” with a gleam of reviving, but this time purely civilian, interest.
“It’s called Pine Cottage. It’s about two miles out of Sillingham on the Froggatt road, near a small farm called Naylor’s.”
“In-deed! Pine Cottage! Yes, I do know it; I know it
well
, and so does my wife.”
His tone was far from encouraging; indeed, it combined dismay with commiseration in a manner that would have alarmed Ronald, had not his anticipations about Pine Cottage already been coloured by knowledge of the tastes and habits of his wife, to whom he had been married for twelve years. He forbore to comment, merely remarking that Pine Cottage stood in the fields, about a quarter of a mile from the Froggatt road. That (added Ronald, deliberately inviting comment) would be a disadvantage in winter weather, he feared.
But the elderly gentleman suddenly went into his shell; he said no more; he only nodded and gazed out of the window with his lips portentously compressed, rather as Bottom’s may have been when hinting marvels to honest Snout. Ronald had his luggage ready and was waiting by the door for the train to stop.
They were now passing low-lying meadows, mounting into hills crowned with the leafless woods of winter through which evening light was shining, and both travellers simultaneously became aware of a row of faces confronting them along a white gate in the hedge below. There was a woman in a gay plaid coat, with bright hair blowing about, and three little girls, one a mere baby, all cheering and waving as the train went by. It looked quite a party of pleasure in the midst of the silent fields under the fading light, and even above the noise of the train they could hear the children’s shrill voices; blankets were scattered
about
on the grass, and there was an old pram in the background, and bunches of autumn leaves were being waved above the laughing faces.
“Evacuees,” announced the elderly revolver expert, settling his tie with a well-kept hand. “We have suffered greatly from them down here, poor things. Both sides have done their best, but there
is
a fundamental difference in outlook, so why not be a realist and admit it? Is your wife meeting you by car?”
Ronald, smiling for the first time that afternoon, shook his head.
“We hope to have ours in use again next week and damned glad I shall be, too. Well, here you are. Good-day; give my love to the Ruhr. It’s twenty-five years since I was there in the last Army of Occupation.”
“I will, sir. Good afternoon.”
A moment later he was hurrying down the platform, looking nowhere but towards the ticket-barrier, and some ten minutes later (the train having been most irritatingly delayed over some matter of eggs) the elderly gentleman had the shock of seeing him walking along the road arm in arm with the bright-haired woman in the plaid coat.
“Married beneath him, poor fellow,” he thought, as the train moved away.
Alda Lucie-Browne pushed the pram with one hand and clung to her husband with the other, while the two little girls skirmished on the outskirts and the baby twisted herself round to join in the conversation. They all talked at once except Ronald.
“—and we shall just have time to see the cottage before it gets dark, darling,” said Alda.
“We always have high tea at Pagets, Father, and it’s sausages to-night. Every night we have something different. To-morrow it’s macaroni cheese,” said Jenny, the girl of eleven. “They’re going to save you some sausages, too.”
“Will there be remartoes for Meg’s tea?” demanded the baby, who was aged three and a half, in a clear, precise voice.
“
To
-matoes,” muttered Jenny.
“Don’t pick on her, Jenny, you know mother likes to hear her,” whispered Louise, who was ten, as Alda turned the pram aside through a gate which Ronald swung open.
“Thank you, dear. We go across this meadow and the next one, and there we are,” she said.
“It’s getting very dark.” He glanced doubtfully across the still, damp fields where mist was already rising. “Is Meg well wrapped up?”
“Oh yes, she’s got her winter vest on to-day.”