The Feast Read online

  ‘Don’t be silly, dear,’ said Mrs. Siddal.

  ‘Silly? Am I being silly? I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to be. I hoped, for once, to be useful.’

  ‘You couldn’t possibly …’

  ‘Why not? Is it so difficult?’

  ‘It would upset the guests.’

  ‘You mean that Mesdames Paley, Gifford and Cove might not like it if I burst into their rooms and burrowed under their beds …’

  Robin hooted with laughter, and Mrs. Siddal exclaimed:

  ‘Dick! Really! That’s quite enough about that.’

  Mr. Siddal relapsed into a brow-beaten silence, and Duff changed the subject by asking how long they could count upon keeping Nancibel.

  ‘Only for the season, I’m afraid,’ sighed his mother. ‘Of course she’s worth a much better job. But she wanted to be at home for a while after she got out of the A.T.S. And according to her mother … is Fred in the scullery?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Robin, leaning back to look through the scullery door.

  ‘According to Mrs. Thomas, there’s been an unhappy love affair, and she’s taken quite a time to get over it. She was engaged to some young man, had her trousseau all ready and everything, and he threw her over at the last moment. It seems he thought himself too good for her. His people were auctioneers in the Midlands, and they didn’t like it and persuaded him to break it off. He can’t have been much loss, but she cared for him, poor child. Such nonsense I never heard. How any family could think their son too good for Nancibel!’

  ‘You would,’ said Siddal, returning to the fray. ‘If Gerry wanted to marry her you would be very much put out.’

  Mrs. Siddal looked so much terrified that all three of them burst out laughing.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he consoled her. ‘He won’t. Unless, of course, you tell him to.’

  ‘He could do worse,’ said Mrs. Siddal, recovering. ‘I don’t know of a nicer girl anywhere.’

  ‘Then why did you look so scared?’ asked Duff.

  ‘It wasn’t the idea of Nancibel which scared her,’ said his father. ‘It was the suggestion that Gerry might marry anyone at all. He can’t afford to marry. We want his money, all of it, in order to send you to Oxford, my dear boy. Gerry mustn’t look at a girl for the next seven years: not until you’ve been called to the Bar and got a few big briefs. That’s why your mother won’t do anything to cure his spots. She’s always worrying about those little bits of nurses at John’s on the catch for a young doctor. She hopes those spots may put them off.’

  This came so very near to the truth that nobody could think of anything to say.

  6. The Meditations of Sir Henry Gifford

  A policeman to see Lady Gifford. That’s enough about that. If I think about that any more I shall drive into a tree. I can do nothing about it. I can only wait. No use asking her. I mustn’t be upset, Harry. My heart specialist made me promise not to get upset. And she goes very quietly out of the room. If we want to get to Pendizack to-night we must go right on. We’ve no time to make a detour of fifty miles because she’s heard of a little inn where you get Cornish cream and lobsters. A divine little place. Divine my backside. They never are. She reads these ridiculous advertisements. That’s how we lost mileage yesterday. A policeman … I will not live in Guernsey. When we come to the turning I shall run straight past it. Very sorry, Eirene, but I’m afraid I must have missed it. Too late to turn back now. If we want to get there to-night we must go right on. She’s rustling the map back in the car there. Determined we shan’t miss it. But she can’t read a map. Too stupid. Not stupid at getting what she wants. If she really wants to go to that inn she’ll be able to read the map. If she really wants anything … but not Guernsey. I won’t live in Guernsey. She will only understand what she wants to understand. If we want to get there we must lunch in Okehampton. Filthy lunch I daresay. Can’t help it. We must go right on. Must get there soon after the children do. Can’t have them arriving in a … they got off all right, anyway. A policeman … I rang up. Oh Mathers! Did the children get off all right at Paddington this morning? Oh yes, Sir Henry. And a policeman called to see Her Ladyship. No, he wouldn’t say. I told him she’d left for the country and he took the address. Darling … a policeman called to see you. A police man? Why, how odd! No, darling. I haven’t the faintest idea. What does a policeman call about? Wouldn’t she have looked frightened if it was … no! She’s never frightened. She promised never to be upset, and she never is. And besides, she doesn’t believe that anything disagreeable could possibly ever be allowed to happen to her. Perhaps it’s nothing…. Seventy-five pounds. Did she really stick to her allowance? But I’ve worked it all out a hundred times. If she was really staying with the Varens…. I can’t think why you should call them collaborationists, Harry! As Louise said: The brutes were there and one had to be civilized. But they don’t seem to have suffered any hardships. Sat pretty all through the war; sitting pretty now. Really the French … and what hardships did we suffer? Eirene and I? Didn’t she and the children sit pretty in Massachusetts? And now she wants to sit pretty in Guernsey and nothing to stop her except me. This war was fought by the poor and it’s being paid for now by the poor … but if she really stayed with the Varens and had no hotel expenses she could have done it on seventy-five pounds. She promised she would. I made her promise before she went. I explained the currency regulations. I told her that if she broke them and it was found out I’d have to resign. A judge can’t … surely even Eirene would understand that? But she only understands what she wants to understand.

  Oh Lord! Sheep! If I have to crawl along behind a flock of sheep for miles it’ll put us right back. It’ll give her time to … oh no! They’re going through the gate. That’s better. I can’t help it if she’s bought a house in Guernsey. Couldn’t stop it. She can do what she likes with her own money. But I won’t live there, and she can’t escape income tax unless I do. What about my work? But Harry, why should you work? If you lived in Guernsey and paid no income tax you would be a rich man. She doesn’t understand. She was in America. She wasn’t in the blitz. I was. All that suffering, all that sacrifice, all that heroism…. I saw it. I’m not going to Guernsey. If only she wasn’t so ill. I wish to God they could find out what’s the matter with her. One must make allowances for her, poor thing. I believe this is the turning. She’s very quiet back there. Asleep? She had a bad night. Now we’re past it. Yes, she had this neuralgia. I oughtn’t to get so impatient. She has a lot to contend with. But I must stick to my guns about Guernsey. And if we want to get there to-night we must go right on. Lunch in Okehampton. A policeman….

  7. A Windfall

  Gerry Siddal’s boils were always worse when he was at home. They afflicted him as they afflicted Job; they were the stigmata of a patience tried to its utmost limits.

  He was an affectionate creature. He loved his mother, and he had only very recently left off loving his father. He was fond of his brothers. But things at Pendizack had got to such a point that he would do anything, invent any job, to avoid his family at meal times. With each of them separately he could still get on very well, but he could no longer bear them as a group.

  So he tinkered with the electric light machine until he could be sure that breakfast was safely over and his father back in the boot hole. Then he went into the kitchen and ate congealed porridge while his mother cut the Paleys’ sandwiches. To his astonishment she gave him all the cream which she had been saving for Lady Gifford. She was suffering from one of her spasmodic fits of remorse.

  ‘You need more fats,’ she declared. ‘I’m sure that’s why you get those spots. I’m determined to do something about it. Darling … are you going over to Porthmerryn this morning?

  ‘I could, if you want anything got there.’

  ‘I’ve a list of things…. I don’t know if I’ll have time … but before you go, will you help Nancibel to put up those extra beds in Mrs. Cove’s room?’

  ‘I do hope you’ll be firm with Mrs.
Cove,’ said Gerry. ‘It’s quite obvious from her Jetter that she expects you to make a reduction because they all sleep in one room.’

  ‘Well … if the children are quite small….’

  ‘You’ll make a reduction, anyway. You mustn’t come down further.’

  ‘She seems to be so terribly hard-up. She won’t have a car ordered, and said they’d wait for the station bus.’

  ‘So are we terribly hard-up. She doesn’t have to come here.’

  ‘I’m glad to get her. We’ve no other bookings.’

  ‘I know. But there’s always the chance of a windfall, now that the Porthmerryn hotels are so full. People who can’t get in there …’

  ‘That isn’t the type I want. Not like those awful Bergmans. I want nice quiet people I know something about.’

  She began to wrap up the sandwiches and Gerry took his dishes into the scullery so as to save Nancibel the trouble of collecting them. She was there, washing-up, and she thanked him with her warm, sweet smile. He yearned for warmth and sweetness, but he would never have dreamt of looking for them in his mother’s scullery so he continued to plod his anguished way through a world which offered him none. He put up the extra beds in the big attic, collected the list of errands in Porthmerryn, and started the steep climb up the drive.

  At the second turn of the zigzag road he met a tall thin woman coming down who asked him timidly if this was the way to the hotel.

  ‘Pendizack Manor?’ he said. ‘Yes. Can I help you? It’s my mother’s hotel.’

  She hesitated and murmured:

  ‘Oh well … perhaps I’d better … I only wanted … I wasn’t sure … they said there might be rooms….’

  ‘Did you want rooms?’

  ‘Oh yes … that is … I don’t suppose … I thought I’d walk down just on the chance … but of course I quite understand….’

  ‘How many rooms?’

  To answer this was quite beyond her. Indeed, all direct questions appeared to fill her with panic. He began to wonder if she was entirely sane, for she trembled a little as she spoke and would never look at him. She kept her eyes averted and her head ducked a trifle sideways, a symptom which he had observed in lunatics.

  ‘I’ll take you down to see my mother,’ he suggested at last.

  At this she rallied and gave him a quick glance. Her eyes were beautiful, but a little mad.

  ‘Oh …’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

  They started back down the drive, and Gerry adopted an indirect method of getting information.

  ‘We have three rooms vacant at present. One double, on the ground floor, and two small single on the first floor.’

  ‘Two single? Oh … thank you.’

  ‘You want two single,’ he told her. ‘We can have them ready at once if you’d like.’

  ‘Oh yes. Oh, thank you.’

  ‘Our terms are six guineas a week each.’

  ‘Oh, thank you.’

  There was a pause. Glancing at her he discovered that she was really quite young, but so thin, so worn, that her youth was not at first apparent. And she had the walk, the voice, the fidgety movements, of an ageing spinster.

  ‘You’ve left your friend,’ he suggested, ‘over in Porthmerryn.’

  This startled her greatly. She gave him a scared glance and then said:

  ‘I … I have no friends.’

  ‘But you want two rooms.’

  ‘Yes … one for me as well … I mean it’s for my … my father… he wants a room … and one for me as well.’

  ‘Oh? Your father. You want two rooms. One for yourself and one for your father.’

  ‘Oh yes. Thank you.’

  ‘And your father is in Porthmerryn.’

  ‘Oh no. He … he’s here.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘In the … at the top of the … at the top of the … at the top. In the car.’

  ‘Your car?’

  ‘Oh yes. I mean … his car.’

  ‘Then you’ll want garage room.’

  ‘Oh yes. Thank you.’

  They had reached the house by now, and he took her to the office. She seemed to become a good deal more sensible and collected when talking to his mother. She explained that her name was Wraxton; her father was a Canon Wraxton. They had been staying at the Bellevue in Porthmerryn, but had not liked their quarters there and had left that morning. They wanted two rooms for a week. Her father was waiting in the car at the top of the hill while she enquired about accommodation.

  ‘I’ll go up and tell him we have rooms,’ volunteered Gerry, who thought that the poor girl really did not look fit to climb that hill again.

  But she seemed to be so much disturbed at this idea, so sure that she must go back herself, and so averse from his company, that he had to let her go alone.

  ‘I’m astonished they weren’t comfortable at the Bellevue,’ said Mrs. Siddal. ‘It’s a very nice hotel. I wonder if they’re all right.’

  ‘Ring up and find out, before they come,’ suggested Gerry.

  ‘I could do that. I could ask Mrs. Parkins, in confidence … one doesn’t like to turn away a windfall….’

  She rang up the Bellevue, but got no further than the name of Wraxton when a torrent of squeaks from the telephone interrupted her. Mrs. Parkins had a great deal to say about the Wraxtons.

  ‘Well?’ asked Gerry, when the colloquy was over.

  ‘They’re all right as regards money. They paid for a week in advance, though they only stayed two nights. But she says he has the most awful temper; he quarrelled with everybody and objected to cards and dancing in the lounges. And he was very rude to the staff.’

  ‘Oh Mother … don’t let’s have them.’

  ‘If he’s a Canon they must be respectable. We can’t afford to have rooms standing empty….’

  ‘But if he’s that sort of man….’

  ‘We don’t have cards or dancing … or much staff for him to be rude to. And it’s only for a week.’

  ‘You said yourself that you don’t want windfalls.’

  ‘It’s twelve guineas.’

  Outside there was a sound of wheels crunching on gravel. They looked out of the window and saw a large car cautiously nosing its way round the last bend, between the rhododendrons. It drew up before the front door.

  Miss Wraxton was driving, and the Canon sat behind. He was so exactly what they had expected that both the Siddals were startled. They had imagined a man with a large nose, bushy brows, small red eyes, purplish complexion and a controversial lower lip; and here he sat. His priestly garments only made him more formidable, for they threatened eternal punishment to anyone so rash as to disagree with him.

  ‘Oh dear …’ whispered Mrs. Siddal. ‘Oh dear. I can’t …’

  She went to the front door, supported by Gerry, and determined to say that she had no rooms after all.

  But the Canon, who had got out of his car and was standing in the porch, was so very civil and affable, and she felt it to be so great a concession that he did not seem to be angry with her, that in a burst of gratitude she let him the rooms at once. It was, she felt, so very, very kind of him to be in such a good temper. Nothing seemed to put him out; he was positively glad to hear that there would be a number of children in the house, he did not object to small rooms, and he offered to pay for the week in advance. The bargain was concluded in a blaze of sunshine, and the only cloud came from the awkwardness of his silly daughter who could not give an intelligible answer to Gerry’s question about the luggage. She twitched and muttered and grimaced until her father’s attention was drawn down upon her. He gave her a glance of deep disgust and said:

  ‘Since my daughter chooses to behave like a half-wit I must answer you myself, Mr. Siddal. The small blue suitcase is hers. All the rest of the luggage is mine.’

  And he cut short further incoherencies by adding:

  ‘That will do, Evangeline. If you can’t talk sense, don’t talk at all.’

  Nothing else occurred to ruffle
him except a little unpleasantness in the hall, where he encountered the Paleys just setting off on their day’s picnic. Mrs. Siddal introduced them, and the Canon, in his sunny mood, was ready to shake hands. But they merely bowed and marched out of the door. Mrs. Siddal had become so inured to their habitual haughtiness, to the fact that they never smiled at any one, that she did not at first estimate the impression it must make on the Canon. He stood staring after them, unable for a moment to speak.

  ‘What intolerable insolence,’ he said, after a while. ‘Who is Mr. Paley?’

  ‘He’s an architect. You must have heard of him. He did the Wessex University buildings.’

  ‘Oh? That man! Yes. I’ve heard of him. Is he always as offensive as this?’

  ‘He … they’re very reserved people,’ quavered Mrs. Siddal. ‘I don’t think they meant to be rude.’

  ‘Oh, don’t you? I do. I’ve never been treated like that in my life.’

  He continued to discourse upon the incivility of Mr. Paley while she took him upstairs and showed him his room. And the sight of the offending couple, as they crossed the sands, kept him for some time at his window, drumming on the glass and muttering:

  ‘I foresee that I shall have a word or two to say to Mr. Paley unless he mends his manners.’

  Gerry, when she went downstairs again, was reproachful.

  ‘What have you done?’ he said. ‘Why did you do it?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I was so frightened of him. And he was so nice, when he asked for the rooms. I couldn’t face upsetting him.’

  ‘He wasn’t so amazingly nice,’ said Gerry. ‘Just normally polite. What did you expect him to do? Break all the furniture?’

  ‘I’m sure I’ve seen him before somewhere. I wish I could remember … and I seem to know his name….’

  Gerry took the Canon’s baggage up in two journeys, and then carried the little blue suitcase along to Miss Wraxton’s room. The girl was sitting on her bed when he went in, quite still for once, and staring straight in front of her. She did not move or thank him when he put down her suitcase. But as he went out she smiled, not at him but at something behind him. It was a very odd smile indeed, and it sent a chill down his spine.