Good Behaviour (6 page)

But it was to the schoolroom that Richard went, very quietly, almost creeping in. He stood still, lost for a reason, for anything
to say, a guilty embarrassed person.

‘Forgot to do my history,’ he muttered.

‘History, Richard? We don’t have history this week.’ Mrs Brock turned back to the piano, where, when he came in, she had been
playing and softly singing ‘Abide with Me.’ Now her throaty animal voice filled the whole air in the room, as a smell takes
over the senses. As the air throbbed round him, all proper rules escaped Richard’s control. When Mrs Brock, crying too, twisted
her piano-stool round towards him, he forgot all the stiff-upper-lipmanship and threw himself, sobbing wildly, into her arms.
Mrs Brock folded him to her breast where he burrowed his head into the dark comfort of that strictly clothed bosom. For ever
afterwards he remembered the smell of security in an embrace where Rimmel’s toilet vinegar and
papier poudré
fought a losing battle with warm, merciful human flesh. He sobbed on in measureless relief.

It had to be then that Nannie, high priestess of correct behaviour for little boys, made her entrance and stood for a minute,
holding on to the door handle for support, as she saw with unaffected horror the pair enlaced on the piano-stool. Speechless
for once, she turned away, shutting the door sharply on the scene, and lost not a moment in imparting her triumphantly unhealthy
news to Lady Grizel.

So Mrs Brock was next in the gunroom, summoned by a shaking Walter. He had heard Richard’s cries and wondered what more could
be in store for his schoolroom friends.

‘Mrs Brock, do sit down. I asked you to come and have a talk with me because, actually, his mother and I aren’t too happy
about Richard. Frankly, he’s getting a bit, er, well …
first reading poetry when he ought to be getting his pony ready for the Bath and County next Thursday, then lying to his mother
– took his beating in a very, well, cowardly way, then, am I right? howling on your, in your,
in the schoolroom
,’ the Captain finished desperately.

‘Oh, Captain Massingham, the child was so upset. I don’t usually cuddle him. Never, in fact.’

‘Don’t let’s discuss it. I’m sure it won’t happen again.’

‘Oh, no.’

‘And another thing I must tell you, Mrs Brock – we’ve decided that the boys are to start at Entwhistle’s this autumn, so I’m
afraid we shan’t be needing you, much as we’re going to miss you.’

‘Raymond?’ she questioned desperately. The chill of reality circling her, curdling the rich air of the gunroom.

‘I suppose Raymond’s Nannie’s boy for a year or so, don’t you think? Only five, after all.’

‘I see.’ Mrs Brock looked round the room. Foxes’ masks (neatly labelled:
FOUND —— KILLED —— THE POINT —— THE DATE ——
) were grouped, memories of glorious moments, on the walls. Some stood out sharply on their wooden shields, small pricked
ears and deathly snarls; others hung down on faked leather couples, ears back, tongues lolling and curling. All the pictures
were of foxhunting, foxhounds, or masters of foxhounds. The living terriers, snoozing in their baskets, had their backs turned
to her. Everything in the room belonged to a different and more glorious race from Mrs Brock. ‘It’s hard to believe,’ she
said. ‘I’ve been so happy—’

‘So glad. So glad,’ the Captain shut her up at once. ‘And another thing, we’d like you to have a cheque for this term’s salary,
and next, and a little present in token, if that’s the
word, sounds funny, of our, h’m … ’ He pushed a thick blue envelope across the writing table. She took it up, overcome by
twin floods of regret and gratitude.

‘We’ve put in an excellent what you call a reference, I believe, too.’ The Captain’s voice was easing into a more usual tone
now that the back of the situation was, as it were, broken.

Mrs Brock was stupefied by so much kindness: ‘It’s not the end of the term for six weeks, Captain Massingham.’

‘I know. But we’ve rather decided to let you go immediately. Seems the best idea.’

‘I don’t understand—’

‘Neither do I, damnit.’ The Captain got to his feet, longing to end the whole horrible business. ‘Anyway, I’m afraid now I
must say goodbye, Mrs Brock, and the very best of luck to you. Have to get the seven-forty-five up to town, and by Jove, I’ll
hardly make it.’ He laughed heavily, as he had after Richard’s thrashing. Then he held the door open for her before he went
charging across the hall, in the opposite direction from the schoolroom, nursery, and servants’ wing, whistling to the dogs
and making an enormous racket.

Mrs Brock did not delay. She was in a panic which hurried her through the hall, her heels chattering and muttering alternately
as she stepped from whitened flags to spread tiger-skins. How the dogs loved to pee on the latters’ heads; generations of
dogs, beaten and fed and cloistered in this family; it was just a thought which came to her before she opened and passed through
the door dividing the hall and its staircase from the other side of the house.

Mrs Brock went straight to the schoolroom lavatory, where she was overtaken by a violent diarrhoea. When she got off
the mahogany seat to lift the D-shaped hand-fitting which swirled out the blue-flowered basin, she sat down again at once
‘in case,’ that tiny euphemism that covered so much so usefully. The exhaustion of physical necessity calmed her. She washed
her hands and blew her nose and decided to follow her usual habit – a cheery goodnight to the boys before Walter brought up
her supper.

But at their bedroom door she was met by a brisk Nannie. ‘Oh, there you are Mrs Brock. I’ve just packed those two into their
beds. Shouldn’t disturb them if I was you. Richard’s settled down nicely now and Sholto too – what an imp that boy is.’ She
stood with her back to the door until Mrs Brock, again defeated, passed on towards the schoolroom. She felt, rightly, that
she was betraying Richard. She had not spoken a word to the Captain in defence of
The Children’s Golden Treasury of Verse.
The lie involving
Robinson Crusoe
she could neither defend nor understand. She had not attempted any protest or defence of herself either. The whole affair
was left in a polite miasma of unspoken suspicions, a net that held her helplessly ignorant and servile. Nothing had been
stated, so what charge could she answer in this polite world?

‘Oh, Mrs Brock—’ Walter fluttered and hovered over her supper tray. ‘It’s not true you’ve –’ he brought it out with difficulty
– ‘you’re leaving us?’

‘Well,’ she said with brittle valour, ‘the best of friends must part, mustn’t they, Walter?’

‘But tomorrow—’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘Yes. Tomorrow – we heard in the hall the Captain had ordered the car for the early train.’

‘Yes, yes, of course. I’d forgotten that was the arrangement.
My suitcases will be ready for you by nine o’clock, Walter.’ She sat down neatly behind her supper tray: hot soup, a glass
of wine, a wing of chicken under a silver lid. Strawberries. Walter still hovered.

‘Everything all right, Mrs Brock?’

Oh, if he would only go before he saw her frightened tears. ‘Yes, thank you, Walter. Everything. Absolutely perfect, thank
you.’

‘Thank
you
, Mrs Brock.’

So neither of them cried. No convention was embarrassed. She would eat her supper, keep up her strength before setting into
the business of her packing. It would be a struggle to fit in all Lady Grizel’s gifts. She decided to wear the bulkier of
the Busvine suits; a bit hot perhaps for the time of year, but that other gift, the hat, Tagel straw and roses, would produce
quite the right summery effect.

By midnight, all her belongings packed and parcelled up, the anaesthetic busy-ness yielding to the horrid truth of her expulsion,
she stood and shivered in the tidied emptied schoolroom. Relief from something near to despair and exhaustion came through
her own practical reservation of the glass of wine from her supper tray – port wine too. Walter must have considered the sad
occasion merited something more fortifying than the usual glass of hock or Beaujolais.

Mrs Brock sipped, and gradually warming from her stunned and wounded state to a livelier interest in future possibilities,
she decided to open the Captain’s envelope and assess her financial situation. Counting bank notes is never less than reviving.
Captain Massingham and Lady Grizel had been wildly, uncalculatingly generous. But after a recount and
another sip or two of port her appeasement and relief were transposed into a new doubt. Perhaps all this overpayment was only
compensation for a meagre and demeaning testimonial? She unfolded the thick blue writing paper with its tiny printed heading,
and she read avidly: she read how kindly, how adorably kindly, they thought of her … patient and understanding … interested
in racing … a strong swimmer … musical … tactful … highly recommend … leaving us as our sons go to their preparatory school.

Mrs Brock lifted her bowed head and looked radiantly about her. She was back in those days when her schoolroom, besides being
a seat of happy and simple learning, had been (warm in its own mystique) a refuge and sorting house for lost and treasured
objects, as well as a bureau of inspired racing information. That was before her study of the wretched form book and her reliance
on misinformed correspondents had upset her daemon. Unforgettable happy female hours had passed here, while exquisite knitting
flew through her busy hands. A pile of Shetland froth and floss still waited, unfinished, for Lady Grizel’s birthday. Slightly
tipsy now, her gratitude for the encomium and her frenzy for loving and giving decided Mrs Brock to sit up, all night if necessary,
to finish this last tribute to Lady Grizel.

It took her three hours to complete her masterwork, then damp and pin it, through sheets of paper, to the carpet, stretched
out for the careful, cool spirit-iron. Sighing with pleasure, she left it, airing and floating across the back of a bentwood
chair, while she went away to undress.

Wearing her blue flowered kimono and with her hair neatly twisted round steel and elastic curlers, she came back to the schoolroom.
Crisp tissue paper and a length of narrow blue
ribbon in her hand, she delayed the parcelling while she satisfied her eyes on the faultless beauty of her work. When she
had taken off her wedding ring and slipped the shawl effortlessly through it, the elation, the need for praise known to all
creators, overcame her. Unshared and without praise such moments can never live entirely; they are an uncompleted act of love.
She knew now a raving desire for that moment when Lady Grizel’s thanks and delight would overwhelm and satisfy her.

Romantically light-headed and uplifted, Mrs Brock took her terrible decision. Fortified by Walter’s inspired glass of port
no less than by the glorious written testimony to herself as a teacher, as a tactful personality, even as a strong swimmer,
she would go, before these magical certainties escaped her, to Lady Grizel’s bedroom. She would carry her offering with her,
no wrapping to crush or conceal it, and would fling it, a great cobweb spun of love, over Lady Grizel’s feet. So lucky that
the Captain had gone up to London; even in her present state of mind she could not picture his reaction under such a cloud.

Nothing stirred in the long distances of the big house as Mrs Brock set out on her adventure. Her slipper soles slapped gently
along the black-and-white linoleum tiles of the schoolroom passage before sinking to carpeted silences when she had passed
through the heavy door preserving the calm and distance of that other world in Stoke Charity. The house contained different
worlds, each designed for its particular occupants: owners, guests, nannies, governesses. To the housekeeper her room, to
the butler his pantry, to the servants their hall – a proper setting and place for each and everyone. The least proper place
for Mrs Brock – and at four
A.M.
on a summer’s morning – was Lady Grizel’s bedroom. This room
was a vestry for Lady Grizel’s hidden hours. There clothes and under-clothes were laid out with careful ceremony. Corsets
were unlaced here and, sighing, thrown aside. It was a place uninvaded except for proper service and for love.

This setting for privilege had ravished Mrs Brock on the few occasions when – in Lady Grizel’s absence – Julia had brought
her here to stare and exclaim in unjealous appreciation of the loved one’s luxuries. ‘Everything straight from Waring and
Gillow,’ Julia had commented as she indicated the great armoury of a wardrobe, allowing generous provision and perfectly appointed
spaces for every imaginable garment. Mrs Brock had nodded in agreement – and turned her attention to the grand altar of the
dressing-table, so profligate of vast surfaces and small shelves – Malmaison carnations and, in wintertime, violets in christening
mugs stood here between tortoiseshell and gold hairbrushes and photographs of the boys as babies – lush cherubs with folds
of muslin dropping off eatable shoulders. She had found it difficult to imagine the originals of these pictures growing into
replicas of their father. His lightly tinted photograph – jaw set and huntsman’s cap well down over his eyes (he had been
sincerely immortalised by Keturah Collins) – stood, silver framed and cater-corner, between the pictures of his flowerlike
children. Captain Massingham’s picture, with its suggestion of coverts full of foxes, kennels full of hounds, and stables
full of horses, was in provocative contrast to all the soft and pretty comforts of his wife’s bedroom.

Here – Mrs Brock had breathed it in – scent was present in a perpetual warmth. On the chaise longue (to every bedroom its
chaise longue) fat cushions in their fresh muslin covers were piled together with smaller head cushions, pale narrow
ribbons sometimes threading a sly way through a lace insertion. Neither Julia nor Mrs Brock had looked long at or questioned
the validity of the great brass bedstead, unabsolved in ugliness, its springing perfect for love-making or for sleeping. But
tonight, the spells of distance and of sanctity broken through, Mrs Brock was to find Lady Grizel sleeping here alone. She
would wake her to accept her present, as though to the pleasure of a Christmas stocking.