The Daughters of Mrs Peacock (25 page)

‘So it does. Thank you, my dear, for being so helpful. We must find another young lady. Your friend Ellen Skimmer, Catherine. That will be very nice and suitable.'

‘And with whom is
she
to sleep?' inquired Mr Peacock.

‘If necessary, we can engage rooms at the Waggon and Horses. As for Captain Beckoning, he'll go back to the Manor, of course. There's no problem there.'

‘Let's hope the weather keeps fine for him. Not much fun turning out on a cold December night. But a soldier should be accustomed to rough living, so I daresay he'll make nothing of it.'

‘We must do everything we can,' said Mrs Peacock, ‘to make the day a great success, for dear Catherine's sake. Our one thought—isn't it, Edmund?—is to give her a happy birthday. You know that, don't you, Catherine?'

All eyes turned to Catherine.

‘In that case, Mama, may I speak? I'd really sooner we didn't give a dance. What I'd like best is a little dinner party. Quite small. Just family and a few friends.'

Mrs Peacock made a gesture of despair. Her patience was being sorely tried.

‘Very well, Catherine. If that's your wish. So I've had all my trouble and thought for nothing.'

‘Not for nothing, my love,' said Mr Peacock, ‘if by trouble you mean this conversation. For my part I've greatly enjoyed it.'

‘I must say it seems unnatural in a young girl. But never mind. There shall be no dancing. I must think again, it seems.'

‘Come, Emily, let us swallow our disappointment, you and I. Let us even concede, since it is Kitty's choice, that a dinner party would be rather more manageable.'

‘Very well, Edmund, Let us take that view.'

Catherine looked at Sarah, as if to gather courage from her. Then with an effect of reciting a prepared speech she said:

‘And, as it will be
my
birthday party, Mama, I would like, if you please, to invite Mr Crabbe.'

Silence and consternation. Catherine had gone deathly pale. Julia and Sarah held their breath. Mr Peacock, with a covert look at his wife, cleared his throat noisily.

‘That, my dear,' said Mrs Peacock with exaggerated gentleness, ‘is quite out of the question. What is more, I don't wish to hear that name again. How can you be so foolish, so wilful, Catherine?' she continued after a pregnant pause. ‘We quite thought, your father and I, that you'd got over that nonsense.'

Catherine looked to her father, but he would not meet the look.

‘It isn't nonsense, Mama. And I shall
never
get over it.' She rose and moved to the door. ‘Thank you for planning a happy birthday for me. It was very kind.' Her voice trembled, on the verge of breakdown. ‘But you needn't have troubled. I don't want a birthday.
I don't want any presents either. I don't want
anything
if I can't have Robert.'

She was gone. The door slammed behind her.

‘A good exit-line,' said Mr Peacock. ‘She has quite a sense of theatre, our Catherine.'

‘She gets it from you, Papa,' said Sarah, returning the ball.

She was not misled by his airy manner into supposing him undisturbed by Catherine's outburst, and was willing to help him evade its discussion. Nevertheless, and not for the first time in this context, she was disappointed in him. Was it possible that he agreed with Mama? Remembering Olive Stapleton she had to admit that it was more than possible. Or was he merely, as usual, pursuing his lazy man's policy, anything for a quiet life?

She herself had her own private reasons for preserving an appearance of neutrality. Mrs Peacock, to everyone's surprise, maintained a severe silence. When at last she opened her tight-shut mouth it was to speak of other things.

‘Very well, Mama,' answered Julia. ‘I'll see about it at once.'

Sarah, making her escape, went in search of Catherine.

Preparations for the birthday continued, and with Catherine's co-operation, as if nothing untoward had happened. Within an hour of the storm's breaking the skies had cleared and sweet reason resumed its sway. A talk with Sarah persuaded the sinful girl to change her tactics, make a formal apology to dear Mama, and be
reinstated yet again in the maternal bosom. Convinced that her defiance had been premature, she became once again the contrite, dutiful daughter, whose mother knew best.

Even had she persisted in her naughtiness it would have availed nothing. With or without her consent the birthday would have been celebrated: the alternative was too preposterous to be considered. Family decency required that the child should be made to enjoy herself, whether she would or no. And now, mercifully, she gave every sign of accepting her destiny with a good grace: in return for which Mrs Peacock generously agreed that there should be only a simple dinner party instead of the threatened dance. On that point Catherine was immovable. After a series of conferences a list was at last drawn up and the invitations dispatched.

Uncle Tom was the first to arrive, and characteristically, having made a muddle about the date, he arrived ten days too soon, wearing a deerstalker cap and an Inverness cape. Everyone rejoiced in the mistake, both because it was so like him and because he was a general favourite. Tom Peacock, fifteen months younger than his brother Edmund, looked several years older by reason of his baldness and spareness and his untidy grey moustache which was apparently his chief source of nourishment since he was for ever chewing it. He and Edmund had been Cambridge undergraduates together for two of their three academic years; but Tom, unlike his easygoing brother, had taken ferociously to scholarship, won high honours, secured a Fellowship, and ever since had been the delight and despair of the young gentlemen who
sat at his feet—slippered feet as often as not, though sometimes, on high ceremonial occasions or in wet weather, he would wear a pair of ancient down-at-heel boots, laced with the nearest piece of string or whatever came handiest. He was preternaturally tall, lean, angular, with a long stringy neck, jutting ears, small blunt nose, innocent blue eyes, a high narrow dome of forehead not unlike a human knee, and a small prominent chin with which he pointed his more emphatic remarks. He lived most of his time in the Middle Ages, could tell you with confident particularity how many people succumbed to the Black Death in the parish of Little Puddlington, yet had surprising flashes of modernity. The bicycle upon which during two laborious days he had transported himself and his bulging haversack from Cambridge was the very latest model, as he never wearied of declaring. He had violent political opinions and combined with his habitual absentmindedness a passionate belief in the strenuous life. Every morning, summer and winter alike, he took a cold bath and rejoiced in his suffering, convinced that it did him a world of good: the daily ritual cost Jenny and Alice much labour, pumping and carrying water and mopping up the residual flood from his bedroom floor. In fine he was stubborn, learned, goodnatured, and affectionate, and so far as could be discerned utterly without humour. In a somewhat puzzled fashion he enjoyed being laughed at, especially by Edmund, but whether he ever saw the joke was a point much debated in the family.

Being unmarried and celibate (that he should be anything else was unimaginable), he was free to devote
himself to a series of inanimate loves, the latest being his new bicycle—‘my machine' as he proudly called it. This super-glorious object, a marvel of applied science, was accommodated in a convenient outhouse; and there he could often be found, by one or another of his nieces, perched in the saddle, fondling the handle-bars, happily dreaming of rides accomplished and others still to come. He did indeed take it out for a ‘spin' every day, as though it had been a favourite dog, until an untimely fall of snow made the going too hazardous even for him.

‘My machine, Sarah,' he would say reverently. ‘Isn't she a beauty?'

‘I'm Catherine, Uncle Tom. But never mind.'

‘Ah! Catherine is it? Of course. So it is.'

‘What are you doing, Uncle, out here in the cold by yourself?'

‘Just sitting, my dear. Just sitting. She's a Phantom, that's what they call her. A Reynolds and Mays model. She made her first appearance last year, at the Crystal Palace. Rubber tyres, you see. Not like your old boneshakers. And suspension wheels, with wire spokes in tension.'

‘I'm afraid I don't know what that means, Uncle. But I'm sure it's something very nice.'

Three days after his arrival he burst into the breakfast-room clad in cap and cape and carrying his bundle which he dumped in a corner before taking his seat.

Mrs Peacock stared in wonder. Her daughters smiled happily.

‘Feeling cold, Tom?' said Edmund.

‘Just a cup of tea,' said Uncle Tom, ‘before I take the
road. No time for more. And thank you, Julia my dear,' he continued warmly, beaming upon his sister-in-law, ‘for my delightful visit.'

‘But, Thomas,' Emily protested, ‘you're not thinking of leaving us so soon!'

‘Must make an early start, don't you know. Long way to go before nightfall.'

‘But the birthday, Uncle Tom!' cried Julia. ‘It's not for a week yet, and that's what you came for.'

‘Catherine's birthday,' said Sarah. ‘Her twenty-first.'

‘The Catherine they allude to, Tom,' explained Edmund, ‘is a niece of yours, and our youngest daughter.'

‘This one, Uncle,' said Catherine, pointing at herself. ‘Me. The redhead.'

Mrs Peacock corrected her. ‘Auburn, my dear.'

‘Ah yes,' said Uncle Tom. ‘Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain. That reminds me. I've something for you, Catherine. With my best love. Now where did I put it? He jumped up, pushing back the chair, and after a surprisingly brief search in his pockets produced a cheque. ‘There you are, my dear. Buy yourself a trinket.'

‘Oh, Uncle! How kind of you!' All joined in the chorus of thanks. ‘But you
will
stay for my birthday, won't you?'

‘Of course. Of course. Wouldn't miss it for the world.' Divesting himself of his outdoor coverings, and dropping them on the floor, he resumed his seat and settled down to enjoy his breakfast.

That was Uncle Tom. Everyone rejoiced in him: even the servants to whom his untidiness gave so much trouble,
and even Emily, shocked though she sometimes was by his unconventional manners. To the girls and their father his elderly innocence was a continual feast.

And what of Mrs Peacock? Was not
her
side of the family to be represented at the dinner party? Indeed it was. There was her brother, Uncle Richard Bartlow, and there were the Druids. Uncle Richard was a dried-up but genial little man who, having no taste or talent for farming, had gravitated to London. He now occupied a commanding position, monarch of all he surveyed, in Threadneedle Street: according to his brother-in-law Edmund, no one dared approach him without murmurings of apology and ritual genuflexions. Having no nearer kin, for he was married only to his career, he duly arrived on the morning of the great day. So, a little later, did Uncle Druid, garrulously explaining, with the support of many a sagacious proverb, why Aunt Bertha, his son Barnabas, and his daughter Patience, who sent their fondest love, were unable to accompany him. So too did Edward Linton, his perverseness in proposing to the wrong girl now fully forgiven. The Claybrook brothers, who though not family might some day become so, were expected in the evening.

Laden with gifts and good wishes, the guests arrived. Catherine by now was unbearably excited. But for one circumstance, which she hardly dared think about but could not for a moment forget, the birthday promised to be all she could wish for.

They were eleven at table, a predominantly male party. The seven men included Edmund and three uncles, all of whom, being unmarriageable, were nothing to Mrs Peacock's purpose. Sarah's Edward being already bespoken, her only hope, and that a slender one, was the Claybrooks. She observed with satisfaction that dear Catherine, in her new evening gown, was looking prettier than ever, her cheeks delicately flushed, her eyes sparkling. As for the absence of aunts, that could not be helped and was anyhow no great matter. She was annoyed with Bertha Druid for not coming, and still more for sending Mr Druid in her place, for she had difficulty in accepting him as belonging to the family; but Jane and Clara, who were elderly and ailing, the only other survivors of a numerous brood, she had not expected; and Edmund-it had been part of his attraction for her—possessed no sisters. She gazed upon her guests with a benign complacency, only regretting that she had allowed herself to be talked out of sending an invitation to the Manor. Such a handsome fellow, Arthur Beckoning, and so well connected. The very thing for Catherine.

Seven tall candles—it had been Edmund's whim to leave the lamps unlit—created a glowing island of intimacy. Their soft lustre, reflected in silver and glass, lit up the eleven expectant faces. Elsewhere in the room firelight contended with the surrounding shadows. In the centre of the long table stood a bowl in which, bedded in moss, Christmas roses bloomed: emblem, thought Mrs Peacock, recalling something she had read, of that purity
by which she set so much store. They had been Julia's idea: Julia, the one daughter on whose loyalty she could utterly rely. She did not know what a pang it had cost Julia to refrain from proposing that Dr Witherby should be invited.

‘The festive board,' said Uncle Druid, rubbing his hands together, ‘maketh glad the heart of man, as the Good Book says. And woman too, eh Emily? Woman too,' he repeated, feeling within him the birth-pangs of a new thought. ‘Male and female,' he announced triumphantly, ‘created he them. That's how it is. Am I right, Edmund?'

‘Incontestably, my dear sir. It's an eccentric arrangement, but it has its advantages. Our Catherine, for example. Here's wishing you joy, my love.' He raised his glass.

‘Joy!' echoed a chorus of voices.