Busman’s Honeymoon (42 page)

  ‘Oh, hullo. Cousin Matthew!’ cried Peter, heartily, clapping the old gentleman smartly on the shoulder. ‘Come and be introduced to my wife. This is my cousin, Mr Matthew Wimsey, who keeps Gerald’s books from falling to pieces with age and neglect. He’s writing the history of the family from Charlemagne downwards, and has just about got to the Battle of Roncevaux.’

  ‘How do you do?’ said Cousin Matthew. ‘I—I hope you had a pleasant journey. The wind’s rather chilly today. Peter, my dear boy, how are you?’

  ‘All the better for seeing you. Have you got a new chapter to show me?’

  ‘Not a
chapter.
’ said Cousin Matthew. ‘No. A few more pages. I’m afraid I got rather led away upon a sideline of research. I
think
I have got upon the track of the elusive Simon—the twin, you know, who disappeared and was supposed to have turned pirate.’

  ‘Have you, by jove? Sound work. Are these muffins? Harriet, I hope you share my passion for muffins. I meant to find out before I married you, but the opportunity never arose.’

  Harriet accepted the muffin, and said, turning to Cousin Matthew: ‘I made a silly mistake just now. I met somebody in the library and thought it must be you, and addressed him as Mr Wimsey.’

  ‘Eh?’ said Cousin Matthew. ‘What’s that? Somebody in the library?’

  ‘I thought everybody was away,’ said Peter.

  ‘Perhaps Mr Liddell came in to look up the
County Histories,
’ suggested the Duchess. ‘Why didn’t he ask them to give him tea?’

  ‘I think it was someone living in the house,’ said Harriet, ‘because he was in his dressing-gown. He’s sixty-ish and a little bald on top, with the rest of his hair very short, and he’s rather like you, Peter—side-face, anyhow.’

  ‘Oh. dear me,’ said the Duchess; ‘it must have been Old Gregory.’

  ‘Good lord! so it must,’ agreed Peter, with his mouth full of muffin. ‘Well, really now, I take that very kind of Old Gregory. He doesn’t usually venture out so early in the day—not for a visitor, at any rate. It’s a compliment to you, Harriet. Very decent of the old boy.’

  ‘Who is Old Gregory?’

  ‘Let me see—he was some sort of cousin of the eighth—ninth—which duke was it. Cousin Matthew?—the William-and-Mary one, anyway. He didn’t speak, I suppose? No, he never does, but we always hope that one day he’ll make up his mind to.’

  ‘I quite thought he was going to, last Monday evening,’ said Mr Wimsey. ‘He was standing up against the shelves in the fourth bay, and I was positively obliged to disturb him to get at the Bredon Letters. I said, “Pray excuse me, just for one moment,” and he smiled and nodded and seemed about to say something. But he thought better of it, and vanished. I was afraid I might have offended him, but he reappeared in a minute or two in the politest way, just in front of the fireplace, to show there was no ill feeling.’

  ‘You must waste quite a lot of time bowing and apologising to the family spooks,’ said Peter. ‘You should just walk slap through them as Gerald does. It’s much simpler, and doesn’t seem to do either party any harm.’

  ‘You needn’t talk, Peter,’ said the Duchess. ‘I distinctly saw you raise your hat to Lady Susan one day on the terrace.’

  ‘Oh, come. Mother! That’s pure invention. Why on earth should I be wearing a hat on the terrace?’

  Had it been possible to imagine either Peter or his mother capable of discourtesy, Harriet would have suspected an elaborate leg-pull. She said tentatively:

  ‘This sounds almost too storybook.’

  ‘Not really,’ said Peter, ‘because it’s all so pointless. They never foretell deaths or find hidden treasures or reveal anything or alarm anybody. Why, even the servants don’t mind them. Some people can’t see them at all—Helen, for example.’

  ‘There!’ said the Duchess. ‘I knew there was something I meant to tell you. Would you believe it?—Helen’s insisted on making a new guests’ bathroom in the west wing, right in the middle of where Uncle Roger always walks. So stupid and thoughtless. Because, however well one knows they’re not solid, it
is
disconcerting for anyone like Mrs Ambrose to see a captain of the guard step out of the towel-cupboard when she’s in no state either to receive him or retreat into the passage. Besides, I can’t think that all that damp heat is good for his vibrations, or whatever they call them—last time I saw him he looked quite foggy, poor thing!’

  ‘Helen is sometimes a trifle tactless,’ said Mr Wimsey. ‘The bathroom was certainly needed, but she could quite well have put it further along and given Uncle Roger the housemaid’s pantry.’

  ‘That’s what I told her,’ said the Duchess; and the conversation took another turn. Well, no! thought Harriet, sipping her second cup of tea; the idea of being haunted by old Noakes was not likely to worry Peter much.

  ‘... because, if I’m interfering, you know,’ said the Duchess, ‘I had much better be put in a lethal chamber at once. like poor Agag—not in the Bible, of course, but the one before Ahasuerus, he was a blue persian—and why everybody shouldn’t be if they feel like it, I don’t know, when they get old and sick and a nuisance to themselves—but I was afraid you might find it a little worrying the first time it happened, so I mentioned it ... though being married may make a difference and it may not happen at all ... Yes, that’s Rockingham—one of the good designs—most of it is too twopence-coloured, but this is one of Brameld’s landscapes.... You wouldn’t think anyone who talked so much could be so inaccessible, really, but I always tell myself it’s that absurd pretence that one hasn’t got any weaknesses—so silly, because we all have, only my husband never would hear of it.... Now isn’t this bowl amusing? ... You can see it’s Derby by the glaze, but the painting was done by Lady Sarah Wimsey, who married into the Severn-and-Thameses—it’s a group of her and her brother and their little dog, and you can recognise the funny little temple, it’s the one down by the lake.... They used to sell the white china, you know, to amateur artists, and then it went back to be fired in the factory. It’s sensitive work, isn’t it? Wimseys are either very sensitive, or not sensitive at all, to things like painting and music.’

  She put her head on one side and looked up at Harriet over the rim of the bowl with bright brown eyes like a bird’s.

  ‘I thought it might be rather like that,’ said Harriet, going back to what the Duchess had really said. ‘I remember one time, when he’d just finished up a case, he came out to dinner and really seemed quite ill.’

  ‘He doesn’t like responsibility, you know,’ said the Duchess, ‘and the War and one thing and another was bad for people that way.... There were eighteen months ... not that I suppose he’ll ever tell you about that, at least, if he does, then you’ll know he’s cured.... I don’t mean he went out of his mind or anything, and he was always perfectly sweet about it, only he was so dreadfully afraid to go to sleep ... and he couldn’t give an order, not even to the servants, which made it really very miserable for him, poor lamb! ... I suppose if you’ve been giving orders for nearly four years to people to go and get blown to pieces it gives you a—what does one call it nowadays?—an inhibition or an exhibition, or something, of nerves.... You needn’t sit holding that tea-pot, my dear, I’m so sorry—give it to me, I’ll put it back.... Though really I’m chattering away quite in the dark, because I don’t
know
how he takes these things now, and I shouldn’t think anybody did, except Bunter and considering how much we owe Bunter, Ahasuerus should have known better than to scratch him like that. I do hope Bunter isn’t being difficult or anything.’

  ‘He’s a marvel—and quite amazingly tactful.’

  ‘Well, that’s nice of the man,’ said the Duchess, frankly, ‘because sometimes these attached people
are
rather difficult ... and seeing that if anybody can be said to have pulled Peter round again it was Bunter, one might have to make allowances.’

  Harriet asked to be told about Bunter.

  ‘Well,’ said the Duchess, ‘he was a footman at Sir John Sanderton’s before the War and he was in Peter’s unit ... sergeant or something eventually ... but they were in some—what’s that American word for a tight place?—jam, isn’t it?—yes, some jam or other together, and took a fancy to one another ... so Peter promised Bunter that, if they both came out of the War alive, Bunter should come to him.... Well, in January 1919, I think it was—yes, it was, because I remember it was a dreadfully cold day—Bunter turned up here, saying he’d wangled himself out ...’

  ‘Bunter never said that, Duchess!’

  ‘No, dear, that’s my vulgar way of putting it. He said he had succeeded in obtaining his demobilisation, and had come immediately to take up the situation Peter had promised him. Well, my dear, it happened to be one of Peter’s very worst days, when he couldn’t do anything but just sit and shiver.... I liked the look of the man, so I said, “Well. you can try—but I don’t suppose he’ll be able to make up his mind one way or the other.” So I took Bunter in, and it was quite dark, because I suppose Peter hadn’t the strength of mind to switch the lights on ... so he had to ask who it was. Bunter said, “Sergeant Bunter, my lord, come to enter your lordship’s service as arranged”—he turned on the lights and drew the curtains and took charge from that moment. I believe he managed so that for months Peter never had to give an order about so much as a soda-siphon.... He found that flat and took Peter up to Town and did everything.... I remember—I hope I’m not boring you with Bunter, my dear, but it really was rather touching—I’d come up to Town one morning early and looked in at the flat. Bunter was just taking in Peter’s breakfast ... he used to get up very late in those days, sleeping so badly ... and Bunter came out with a plate and said, “Oh, your Grace! His lordship has told me to take away these damned eggs and bring him a sausage.” ... He was so much overcome that he put down the hot plate on the sitting-room table and took all the polish off.... From those sausages,’ concluded the Duchess, triumphantly, ‘I don’t think Peter ever looked back!’

  Harriet thanked her mother-in-law for these particulars. ‘If there is a crisis,’ she said, ‘when the Assizes come on, I’ll take Bunter’s advice. Anyway, I’m very grateful to you for warning me. I’ll promise not to be wifely and solicitous—that would probably put the lid on.’

  ‘By the way,’ said Peter, the following morning, ‘I’m terribly sorry and all that, but could you possibly bear being hauled off to church? ... I mean, it’ll be kind of well-thought-of if we turn up in the family pew ... gives people something to talk about and all that sort of thing. Not, of course, if it makes you feel
absolutely
like Saint Thingummy on the gridiron—all hot and beginning to curl at the corners—only if it’s a comparatively mild martyrdom, like the little-ease or the stocks.’

  ‘Of course I’ll come to church.’

  It felt a little odd, all the same, to stand virtuously in the hall with Peter, waiting for a parent to come and shepherd one away to Morning Service. It took, for one thing, so many years off one’s age. The Duchess came down putting on her gloves, just as one’s mother had always done, and saying, ‘Don’t forget, dear, there’s a collection today,’ as she banded her prayer-book to her son to carry.

  ‘And oh!’ said the Duchess, ‘the vicar sent up a message that his asthma’s rather bad and the curate away; so as Gerald isn’t here he’d be very grateful if you’d read the Lessons.’

  Peter said amiably that he would, but hoped it wouldn’t be anything about Jacob, whose personality irritated him.

  ‘No, dear. It’s a nice gloomy piece out of Jeremiah. You’ll do it so much better than Mr Jones, because I was always very careful about adenoids, making you breathe through the nose. We’ll pick up Cousin Matthew on the way....’

  The small church was packed. ‘Good house,’ said Peter, surveying the congregation from the porch. ‘The peppermint season has begun, I notice.’ He removed his hat and followed his female belongings up the aisle with preternatural decorum.

  ‘... world without end, amen.’

  The congregation sat down with a creak and a shuffle, and disposed itself to listen with approval to his lordship’s rendering of Jewish prophecy. Peter, handling the heavy red-silk markers, glanced round the building, collected the attention of the back pews, clasped the brass eagle firmly by either wing, opened his mouth, and then paused, to direct his eyeglass awfully upon a small boy sitting just beneath the lectern.

  ‘Is that Willy Blodgett?’

  Willy Blodgett became petrified.

  ‘Now, don’t you pinch your sister again. It’s not cricket.’

  ‘There,’ said Willy Blodgett’s mother in an audible whisper, ‘sit still! I declare I’m ashamed of you.’

  ‘Here beginneth the Fifth Chapter of the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah.

  ‘Run ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now, and know, and seek in the broad places thereof, if ye can find a man, if there be any that executeth judgement ...’

  (Yes, indeed. Frank Crutchley in the local gaol—was he listening to execution and judgement? Or didn’t you have to attend Divine Service until after you were tried and sentenced?)

  ‘Wherefore a lion out of the forest shall slay them, and a wolf of the evening shall spoil them, a leopard shall watch over their cities ...’

  (Peter seemed to be rather enjoying the zoo. Harriet noticed that the family pew had crouching cats in place of the ordinary poppy-heads, in compliment no doubt to the Wimsey crest. There was a chantry at the east end of the south aisle, with canopied tombs. Wimseys again, she supposed.)

  ‘Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes and see not ...’

  (To think how they had looked on while that pot was wiped clean! The reader, untroubled by this association of ideas, had passed happily on into the next verse—the exciting one, about waves tossing and roaring.)