Good Behaviour (4 page)

They took Hubert off to Cork that same night, and he had an appendix and tubes and nearly died. I prayed night and day for
his recovery and that he might get a reprieve from pain. Constantly with me was the thought of his black hair, peaked on his
forehead, smooth on his head as if painted on an egg. As I cleaned out his budgies and his mice his eyes haunted my work –
his eyes that never lit and sparkled as blue eyes should, as I knew mine would, if only they were big and blue.

When at last he came home he was a very great disappointment to me. The nuns in the nursing home had spoiled him so that he
was really unbearably demanding, sending me
in all directions and inventing tasks for me while he lay on a chaise longue under the cedar tree with lemonade constantly
at his elbow. In those days thrombosis had not been heard of, and invalids, young and old, were allowed a comfortable rest
after their operations. Hubert even had a po in the bushes ‘in case.’ Another thing those kind nuns had done was to teach
him to say ‘the toilet’ when he meant the po or the lavatory, which was a vulgarity no one seemed able to straighten out.
If circumstances forced Mrs Brock to mention it she called it the Place. ‘Have you been to the Place, dear?’ or ‘Have you
been
?’ Or else ‘Hubert, shouldn’t you run along the passage?’ when Hubert was fidgeting frighteningly from foot to foot.

When Mrs Brock succeeded our last, drunk nannie I was seven and Hubert was four. With her in the schoolroom there came to
us a daily security in happiness, and with it the delightful prospect of such a state continuing into an untimed future –
a future when the budgerigar would speak his first word, when Magical Nature would create a family for the newly married mice,
when I would sing ‘Two Little Girls in Blue, Dears’ in perfect tune. And, exceeding in interest even these prospects, were
Mrs Brock’s stories of her past pupils, their parents and their way of life – stories as graphic and truly coloured as the
Caldecott illustrations to John Gilpin.

Even the servants, who had skirmished endlessly with the nannies, loved Mrs Brock and served her willingly, and at any hour,
with cups of tea. She was smallish and on the fat side, but neat as a bird. Perhaps she had more of a flowerlike quality,
a tidy pink-tipped daisy. Her cheeks were firm and pink, her hair was crisp and more blond than grey, her false teeth gleamed
fresh as dew every morning of her life. She was the widow of an organist who had saved very little
money before he died at a medium sort of age, leaving her (fortunately childless, though she longed for kiddies of her own)
to drag a living from a world out of which she had been cosily embedded in a nice little house with a nice little man who
had a nice and not so little job in a large London parish. Mrs Brock was musical too; just how musical I don’t know, but she
had sung in her husband’s choir, and when she came to us the Bechstein upright piano shuddered deeply under the full treatment
which she gave the ‘Indian Love Lyrics,’ with the ‘Rustle of Spring’ never very far behind.

Her first job after her husband died was that of governess in a bishop’s family, where, with the help of Mrs Markham’s
History of England
and Gill’s
Geography
, she gave every satisfaction until schooldays closed her employment in that family. Her next pupils, Richard, Sholto, and
Raymond, were the sons of Papa’s great friend Wobbly Massingham, a master of foxhounds and lord of the manor of Stoke Charity.
Here Captain Massingham pursued, in a now legendary sort of splendour, a life of hunting, shooting, fishing, cricketing weeks,
Epsom, Ascot, Goodwood, Newmarket, and Doncaster – a life which rather depleted the inheritance to be expected by Mrs Brock’s
three pupils. But at least they were down for Eton, and you can’t take Eton away. Mrs Brock’s task was to prepare them for
their preparatory school. This was not difficult, as Entwhistle’s was only too ready to accept the right sort of boy; and
if his father and uncles were Old Boys he could be the right sort of moron and welcome. Of Mrs Brock’s pupils, Sholto was
the most likely to succeed. A child of few words, greedy in a jolly way, and brutally determined with his pony, he would go
further with less effort than his elder brother, Richard.

Richard was Mrs Brock’s favourite, and years afterwards she was to be my first intimate link with him. His curiosity about
her held a privacy as exciting to Hubert and me as the shared tree houses or the secret rude rhymes of childhood. We would
piece her together; it was a game in which our memories inter-locked or contradicted recollections. He could say oddly unkind
things about her, and I could deny her too. But I never told about the mice. What nice girl would?

Richard was a beautiful child and, despite a proper interest in and aptitude for all the importances of outdoor life, there
were times when he would lean in silence against Mrs Brock as she played the piano, or even join her in singing ‘Speed Bonnie
Boat,’ ‘Yip-i-addy,’ or ‘Now the Day Is Over.’ He preferred Mrs Tiggywinkle to the mildest comic, and liked to dwell on the
idea of her transference from the washerwoman to the wild. He liked dressing up, too, but Mrs Brock felt that such games were
not quite the thing for little boys. Sometimes she allowed herself to read him her favourite pieces from
The Children’s Golden Treasury of Verse
, when they would charge with the Light Brigade, or even lean from the gold bar of heaven with the Blessed Damozel.

Raymond was the youngest of the boys and the least likeable. He was a delicate child, and Nannie’s darling. He hated his pony.
He kicked the dogs when he could do so without being observed or bitten. There was nothing nice or open about him. He in no
way resembled his elder brothers. Although he only touched the fringes of schoolroom life – simple Bible stories and an hour
of picture bricks – he usually carried some whining tale back to the nursery, where Nannie sat, brooding and mending the linen
– spinning in her tower. Nannie was old enough to have been Lady Grizel
Massingham’s nannie and she had never been sympathetically inclined towards governesses.

Mrs Brock conceived a senseless star-struck passion for Lady Grizel. Her eyes and her ears absorbed the sight and sound of
this cool, contented lady, whose language differed from Mrs Brock’s in being as natural as a peasant’s. She looked downwards
and spoke rather like a child. Quite simple, grownup words, such as ‘gardening’ got lost. Lady Grizel (and now Mrs Brock,
of course) would say instead, ‘She’s diggin’ up the garden.’ I can’t think why Mrs Brock had never ascertained from her the
definitive name for W.C.

When Lady Grizel gave Mrs Brock not one, but two grey flannel suits, Nannie made no secret of her disapproval. But Mrs Brock’s
acceptance of the gifts was simple and delighted. They had been made, she told us, by Busvine – that holy tailoring name in
the holy hunting world – made three and five years previously, of course, but classical tailor-mades never go out of fashion.
Other kind gifts included a pair of indestructible and eternally right shoes from Peter Yapp. For some unknown reason these
shoes, although made on Lady Grizel’s own last and all that, were never entirely comfortable, and old Yapp could never improve
their fit. They were never entirely comfortable on Mrs Brock’s feet either, but she wore them with persistence and courage
until at last they became docile friends.

A strange thing about those shoes was the way in which, when she was wearing them, Mrs Brock, who was a heavy treader by nature,
planted her feet and walked with the same long steps as Lady Grizel, and stood in the same careless, rather flighty way. A
lovely sort of fantasy possessed Mrs Brock as she moved in this new pretty way, this confident way. Part
of herself became Lady Grizel – she absorbed Lady Grizel and breathed her out into the air around herself, and the air around
was a far less lonely place in consequence.

All that Mrs Brock’s grateful heart and tiny brain could contrive in return for these favours was to knit – and for knitting
she had true flair and genius. In the schoolroom she would sit alone in a loving glow as frail clouds of wool grew through
her clever fingers into wraps and misty bedwear for Lady Grizel’s birthday or Christmas presents.

Nannie showed nothing but cold amusement when asked to admire these voluptuous clouds knitted with such speed and skill. She
felt Mrs Brock’s time would be better employed in organising wholesome outdoor sports for the boys. Nannie herself still bowled
to them with a hard ball and had often been heard to shout above any childish uproar: ‘Now, now,
do
stop this quarrellin’, boys, and let’s have a nice talk about huntin’.’

There came a day when every soul in the big house was alerted in the search for a ring which Lady Grizel had lost – her engagement
ring – star sapphire and diamonds. But sapphire and diamonds were as nothing compared to its romantic value. No one had stolen
it. No one suspected anybody else of stealing it, and everybody longed and burned to find it.

Nobody was more filled with longing and burning than Mrs Brock, and she set about the business of the search with meticulous
generalship. She plotted every step Lady Grizel had taken on the day of her loss, living the day vicariously and minute by
minute. And on this day more than on any other she projected herself into the absolute life of Lady Grizel.

We too shared in the day’s life, and a very long and dull day it was, until the paradisaical moment when, in the evening
dusk of the flower room, where, besides doing the flowers, Lady Grizel faithfully composed, from a selection of goodies sent
daily from the kitchen, the dogs’ dinners, Mrs Brock found the ring hanging, its glitter downwards, its gold unremarkable,
on the brass tap of the flower-room sink. Here Lady Grizel – now she remembered – had washed her hands after pinching her
way through the Peke’s dinner, eliminating the danger from chicken bones. How Lady Grizel loved that dog. ‘Oh, Changy, why
do your little feet smell of mice?’ she would ask him with tears in her eyes.

But to return, as we so often did, to that extraordinary day, that May evening when Mrs Brock made her unexpected appearance
in the library. The library was unfamiliar and fearful territory not to be enjoyed by her. It was, as Richard described it
to us, an ordinary room of its date and kind, arranged without any feeling that went further than expensive comfort. There
was a great dullness about the crowding pictures, as if ignorance of their interest and worth had fogged them. The eighteenth-century
gentlemen in their Tailor of Gloucester waistcoats retreated sulking into their century. Only racehorses, of the School of
Herring, faithful dogs, and a famous stallion hound were given full importance. Hung where they could be seen and enjoyed,
they shared the best light with amusing Spi cartoons. Hepplewhite sofas and love-seats had all been expelled. The present
furniture had an assured, comfortable permanence. On club fender and sofas dark red leather was buttoned firmly into place.
Low armchairs bulged tidily under their thick, starched covers. Brass-bound tubs of flowers from the greenhouses stood in
appropriate spaces, gardeners’ prides in plenty, but no exotics. Romantically invading all that was prosaic, the scent from
sheaves of lilies of the valley (arranged in silver vases, tulip shaped, by Lady Grizel herself) throbbed and drifted on the
after-tea air.

This was the hour when the men had disappeared into the smoking room and the women gossiped and yawned, and the dogs turned
and yawned in their baskets. Two of Lady Grizel’s best friends, Mrs Gladwyn-Chetwynd and Lady Skendleby, were together on
the leather sofa. A haze of frilled blouses rose up from their belted waists to frail high collars, boned to the chin line.
They sat in a drowse of consideration over their day’s off-course betting, no results known till the next morning’s papers.
They were a bit uncertain whether or not Mrs Brock was to be introduced to them, so picked up
Racing Form
and the last
Calendar
and went back to Newmarket or Doncaster or Epsom – Mrs Brock was not quite clear on the meeting.

The group could hardly have been further removed from Mrs Brock standing in the doorway. Lady Grizel got up and went towards
her, scolding and cuffing the dogs back into their baskets while at the same time agreeing with them that this was something
of a surprise, an intrusion.

‘Quiet, quiet,
will
you be quiet – heavens, you know Mrs Brock – yes, Mrs Brock?’

A query must have hung visibly on the air, the scented air, the distant air of Lady Grizel’s life among her own friends. But
Mrs Brock broke through the restraints and skipped the distances. ‘I believe you lost something, Lady Grizel’ was all she
said as she held out the ring.

‘Mrs Brock – how divine! How wonderful!’ All the dogs barked again. The air rang with excitement. Lady Grizel glowed with
gratitude. The diamonds sparkled hugely. The
best friends jumped up from the sofa and entered into the drama – ‘But how too clever.’ ‘And what made you look in the dogs’
dinners?’ they exclaimed, getting the facts wrong at once, and handing the ring to each other without praising it.

Then Mrs Brock had the inspiration that was to be her joy and her undoing. That was when her feet left the ground and she
soared into unreality. She ignored all remembrance of her day of exhaustive detective work, the hours she had spent tracing
every move Lady Grizel had made, as she answered dreamily: ‘I really don’t know myself. I just closed my eyes and let a picture
float up into my mind.’

‘Ha-ha, doggie dindins floatin’ about. Too funny.’

‘Chang-Chang heard you say “dindins” – didn’t you, boy?’

‘I say, Mrs Brock, would it work out over racing? Would the winner of the 3.30 tomorrow float up to you?’

‘Don’t be silly, Violet—’

‘It’s such an open race – her guess is as good as mine – look – I’ll read out the runners – you shut your eyes and float …
Peeping Thomas … ’

Peeping Thomas, something told her. And told her correctly, miraculously; for this outsider’s win was to remain for ever one
of the most mysterious upsets to form, embarrassment to the handicapper and legendary boon to bookmakers, as indeed it was
to Lady Grizel, her best friends, most of the domestic staff at Stoke Charity, and many of those employed on the estate. Taken
together with the discovery of the ring, this triumph put Mrs Brock in the class of visionaries. Hubert and I would implore
her to try out her powers at Limerick Junction or Mallow races. ‘No,’ she would say firmly, ‘not again. That time I heard
the drumming hooves. I saw the flash of colours … ’