Read Cold Comfort Farm Page 23


  But when once their journey was over, Flora’s worries were over as well. Seated opposite Dr Müdel and Judith at a quiet table near a window at Grimaldi’s, she watched, with a feeling of relief, Dr Müdel taking command of the situation.

  It was one of his disagreeable duties as a State psycho-analyst to remove the affections of his patients from the embarrassing objects upon which they were concentrated; and focus them, instead, upon himself. It was true that they did not remain focused there for long: as soon as he could, he switched them on to something harmless, like chess or gardening. But while they were focused upon himself, he had rather a thin time of it and earned every penny of the eight hundred a year paid to him by a judicious Government.

  And Flora, observing how soon Judith began to glow darkly and do the slumbering volcano act in Dr Müdel’s direction, could not help admiring the practised skill with which he had effected the transference in the course of the commonplace conversation throughout lunch.

  ‘She will be oll right now,’ he murmured, soothingly, to Flora, in an undertone, when lunch was over, while Judith was gazing broodingly out of the window at the busy street below. ‘I shall take her to the nursing home, and let her talk to me. There she will stay for six months, perhaps. Then I send her abroad for a little holiday. I make her interested in olt churches, I think. Yes, olt churches. There are so many in Europe, and it will take her the rest of her life to see them all. She has money, yes? You must have money in order to see all the olt churches you want. Well, that is oll right, then. Do not distress yourself. She will be quite happy. Oll that energy … it is a pity, yes. It oll turns in instead of out. Now I turn it out … on to the olt churches. Yes.’

  Flora felt a little uneasy. It was not the first time she had seen a distraught patient grow calm beneath the will of the analyst, yet she had never grown used to the spectacle. Would Judith really be happier? She looked doubtfully at her cousin. Certainly Judith looked happier already. Her eyes followed every movement of Dr Müdel as he paid the bill for the lunch; Flora had never seen her look so animated and normal.

  ‘I understand that you are going to stay with Dr Müdel for a while, Cousin Judith?’ she said.

  ‘He has asked me. He is very kind … There is a dark force in him,’ returned Judith. ‘It beats … like a black gong. I wonder you do not feel it.’

  ‘Oh, well, we can’t all strike lucky,’ said Flora amiably. ‘But really, Judith, I do think it would be quite a sound scheme if you went. You need a holiday, you know, after all the – er – fuss there’s been at home lately. It will do you no end of good. Set you up, and what not. And then after a bit you might go abroad and see some of the sights of Europe. Old churches, and all that. Don’t worry about the farm. Reuben will look after that for you, and send you a fat piece out of the takings every month.’

  ‘Amos …’ murmured Judith. She looked as though the threads which bound her to her old life were snapping one by one, yet still held her in a frail tenure.

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t fuss about him,’ said Flora, easily. ‘He’s gone off to America with the Reverend Elderberry Shiftglass by now, I shouldn’t wonder. He’ll let you know when he’s coming back. Don’t you bother. You enjoy yourself while you’re young.’ And this was what Judith evidently decided to do, for she drove off with Dr Müdel in his car looking quite content: at least, she looked illumined and transfigured and reft out of herself and all the rest of it, and even when allowances were made for her habit of multiplying every emotion she felt by twice its own weight, she probably was feeling fairly chirpy.

  Before they said goodbye Flora arranged to send on to the nursing home the five dirty red shawls and sundry bundles of hairpins which seemed to make up the greater part of Judith’s wardrobe; and also a comfortable sum of money which should pay for her pleasures during the next six months. Dr Müdel could, of course, be trusted to see that her funds were properly administered.

  So that was all settled; and Flora watched the doctor’s car drive away with feelings of considerable satisfaction.

  It was with a feeling of satisfaction too, and with something strangely like affection, that she caught her first glimpse of the farmhouse on her return that night to Cold Comfort.

  It was a mild and lovely evening. The rays of the sun looked heavy, as they frequently do towards the approach of a summer sunset, and lay between the tunnels of green leaves like long rods of gold. There were no clouds in the blue sky, whose colour was beginning to deepen with the advance of night, and the face of the whole countryside was softened by the shadows which were slowly growing in the depths of the woods and hedgerows.

  The farmhouse itself no longer looked like a beast about to spring. (Not that it ever had, to her, for she was not in the habit of thinking that things looked exactly like other things which were as different from them in appearance as it was possible to be.) But it had looked dirty and miserable and depressing, and when Mr Mybug had once remarked that it looked like a beast about to spring, Flora had simply not had the heart to contradict him.

  Now it looked dirty and miserable and depressing no longer. Its windows flung back the gold of the sunset. The yard was swept clean of straws and paper. Check curtains hung crisply at most of the windows, and someone (as a matter of fact it was Ezra, who had a secret yen for horticulture) had been digging and trimming up the garden, and there were already rows of beans in red flower.

  ‘I,’ thought Flora, simply, as she leant forward in the buggy and surveyed the scene, ‘did all that with my little hatchet.’ And a feeling of joy and content opened inside her like a flower.

  But then she looked upwards at the closed, blank face of the window immediately above the kitchen door, and her face grew pensive again. Aunt Ada’s room. Aunt Ada was still there, fighting her losing battle. Aunt Ada, the spirit of Cold Comfort, was hard pressed, but still undefeated. And could she, Flora, really congratulate herself upon her work at the farm, and flatter herself that the end of that work was in sight, while Aunt Ada Doom still brooded aloft in her tower?

  ‘Yer supper’s on the table, duck,’ said Mrs Beetle, opening the gate to let Reuben lead Viper into the yard. ‘Cold veal and salad. I’m off ’ome now. Oh, and there’s a blamonge. Pink.’

  ‘Lovely,’ said Flora, with a sigh of pleasure, as she climbed down from the buggy. ‘Thank you, Mrs Beetle. Miss Judith won’t be back tonight. She is going to stay in London for a while. Has everything been all right?’

  ‘She took on something awful about Miss Judith going off ’smorning,’ said Mrs Beetle, lowering her voice and glancing significantly upwards at the closed window. ‘Said she was all alone in the woodshed now, and no mistake. She says she don’t count Reuben. (She wouldn’t, of course –’im bein’ the pick of the bunch.) Still, she keeps ’er appetite, I will say that for ’er. Three ’elpings of veal and two of suet roly for ’er dinner today. Can you beat it? Well, this won’t buy the baby a new frock. Good night, Miss Flora. I’ll be ’ere eight sharp tomorrow.’

  And off she went.

  Flora went into the kitchen, where a lamp already burned on the table. Its soft light fell into the hearts of a bunch of pink roses in a jam-jar. There was a letter from Charles propped against the jar, too, and the roses threw down a heavy, rounded shadow on to the envelope. It was so pretty that Flora lingered a moment, looking, before she opened her letter.

  *

  The serene weather held; and Flora and everybody was hoping that it would last until Elfine’s wedding reception at the farm on the fourteenth of June, which was Midsummer Day.

  The preparations for this reception were now Flora’s chief care. She was anxious that the farm should not disgrace Reuben and his sister; so she went frankly to the former and told him that she must have money to buy decorations and a feast for the wedding guests. Reuben seemed pleased at the idea of holding the reception at the farm, and gave her thirty pounds with which to do her damndest, but, he added, glancing meaningly up at the ceiling:

 
‘What about the old ’un?’

  ‘Leave her to me,’ said Flora, decidedly. ‘I am thinking out a plan for coping with her, and in a few days I am going to try it out. Well, thank you so much for this money, my lamb. I will see about decorations and food at once. Oh, and need we have all the pictures wreathed with that smelly sukebind? I am afraid it might have a bad effect on Meriam and Rennett. They’re so easily upset.’

  ‘’Tes no choice o’ mine. ’Tes grandmother’s choice. Do as you please, Cousin Flora. I niver wants to see a sprig of it again.’

  So, armed with his permission, Flora began her preparations.

  The days passed pleasantly. She had plenty to do, and even paid three visits to Town, for she was having a new dress made for the reception and it had to be fitted. Mrs Smiling was still abroad; she was not expected home until the day after the wedding, so 1, Mouse Place was shut up. Julia was in Cannes; Claud Hart-Harris at home in Chiswick, whence he repaired every summer, for a month, because he said he could at least be sure of meeting no one he knew there. But Flora could amuse herself; and dined and lunched in pleasant solitude.

  In the intervals of fitting her dress, and of superintending a simply colossal spring cleaning of the farm (the first it had received for a hundred years), Flora kept a weather eye upon the affair of Mr Mybug and Rennett. She thought it would be best, of course, if they got married; but she was well aware that marriage was not the intellectual’s long suit, and she did not want Rennett landed with a shameful bundle.

  Mr Mybug, however, did ask Rennett to marry him. He said that, by god, D. H. Lawrence was right when he had said there must be a dumb, dark, dull, bitter belly-tension between a man and a woman, and how else could this be achieved save in the long monotony of marriage? As for Rennett, she accepted him at once and was perfectly happy choosing saucepans. So that was all right; and they were to be married at a registry office one week-end in Town and have a share in Elfine’s reception on the fourteenth.

  As the evenings grew longer towards Midsummer Day, Flora would sit alone in the little green parlour, where the scent of the may-tree came in through the open window, reading in ‘The Higher Common Sense’ the chapter on ‘Preparing the Mind for the Twin Invasion by Prudence and Daring in Dealing with Substances not Included in the Outline’.

  It would help her, she knew, to deal with Aunt Ada Doom. Those long words in German and in Latin were solemn and cragged as Egyptian monoliths; and when the reader peered more closely into the meaning of their syllables that rang like bells, backwards and backwards into Time, they were seen to be frosted with wisdom, cold and irrefutable. Before them, Passion, awed, slunk back to its lair; and divine Reason and her sister Love, locked in one another’s arms, raised their twin heads to receive the wreath of Happiness.

  Aunt Ada was most emphatically one of the Substances not Included in the Outline. As Flora read on, evening after evening, she was aware that a conviction was growing in her mind that this was one of the cases (the chapter warned the student that such might exist) in which she must meekly await the help of a flash of intuition. The chapter would help her to prepare her mind for the invasion, but it could do no more. She must await the moment.

  And on an evening of more than common peace and beauty the moment came. She had put aside ‘The Higher Common Sense’ for half an hour while she partook of her supper, and had opened ‘Mansfield Park’, at random, to refresh her spirits.

  ‘It was over, however, at last; and the evening set in with more composure to Fanny …’

  And suddenly – the flash! It was over indeed: her long indecision and her bewilderment about how to deal with Aunt Ada Doom. In a few seconds she had her plan clearly in her head, with every detail as distinct as though the scheme had already been carried through. Calmly she detached a leaf from her pocket-book and wrote the following telegram:

  ‘Hart Harris,

  ‘Chauncey Grove,

  ‘Chiswick Mall.

  ‘Please send at once latest number vogue also prospectus hotel miramar paris and very important photographs fanny ward love Flora.’

  Then she summoned Mark Dolour’s Nancy, who had come in to help with the spring cleaning, and sent her down to the post office in Howling with the telegram.

  As Nancy ran off through the clear summer twilight, Flora reverently shut the covers of ‘The Higher Common Sense’. She needed it no longer. It could remain closed until the next time she encountered a Substance not Included in the Outline. And she retired to bed that night in the calm confidence that she had found the way to deal with Aunt Ada Doom.

  There was now only a week to go before the wedding, so Flora hoped very much that Claud would send at once the papers for which she had asked. It would probably take time to deal with Aunt Ada, and no time must be wasted if her aim was to be achieved by the day of the wedding.

  But Claud did not fail her. The papers arrived by air-mail at noon the next day. They were dropped neatly into the great field by the air-postman, and were accompanied by a plaintive note from Claud asking her what in heck she was up to now? He said that except for the fact that she was larger, she reminded him of a mosquito.

  Flora undid the parcel and made quite sure that all the things for which she had asked were there. She then re-coiled her hair and put on a fresh linen dress, and (as it was luncheon time) directed Mrs Beetle to give to her the tray upon which was arranged Aunt Ada’s lunch.

  ‘Go on. You’ll strain yerself,’ said Mrs Beetle. ‘It weighs about ’alf er ’undredweight.’

  But Flora quietly took the tray and (under the awed eyes of Mark Dolour’s Nancy, Reuben, Mrs Beetle and Sue, Phoebe, Jane and Letty) she arranged upon it the copy of ‘Vogue’, the prospectus of the Hôtel Miramar in Paris and the photographs of Fanny Ward.

  ‘I am going to take her lunch up to Aunt Ada,’ she announced. ‘If I have not come down by three o’clock, Mrs Beetle, will you kindly bring up some lemonade. At half-past four you may bring up tea and some of that currant cake Phoebe made last week. If I am not down by seven o’clock, please bring up a tray with supper for two, and we will have hot milk and biscuits at ten. Now, goodbye, all of you. I beg of you not to worry. All will be well.’

  And slowly, before the fascinated gaze of the Starkadders and Mrs Beetle, Flora began to mount the stairs which led to Aunt Ada’s chamber, bearing the tray of lunch steadily before her. They heard the light sound of her footsteps receding along the corridor; they paused; and the listeners heard, in the airy summer stillness of the house, her tap on the door and her clear voice saying: ‘I have brought your lunch, Aunt Ada. May I come in? It is Flora.’

  There was a silence. Then the door was heard to open, and Flora and the tray of lunch passed within.

  That was the last that anyone heard or saw of her for nearly nine hours.

  At three o’clock, at half-past four and at seven o’clock Mrs Beetle took up the refreshments as she had been instructed. Each time she returned she found the empty plates and cups packed neatly outside the closed door. From within there came the steady rise and fall of voices; but though she listened for many minutes she could not distinguish a word; and this disappointing piece of information was all she had to carry back to the eagerly waiting group downstairs.

  At seven o’clock Mr Mybug and Rennett joined the band of watchers, and after waiting until nearly eight o’clock for Flora to come downstairs, they decided that it would be best to begin without her, and made their supper off beef, beer and pickled onions, pleasantly spiced by anxiety and speculation.

  After supper they settled down once more to watch and wait. Mrs Beetle wondered a dozen times if she should not just run up with a few sandwiches and some cocoa at nine, in order to see whether there were any developments to be observed. But Reuben said no, she was not to; she had been told to take up hot milk at ten o’clock, and hot milk at ten she should take; he would not have Flora’s instructions disobeyed by the tiniest detail. So she stayed where she was.

  They all g
ot very cosy, sitting round the open door in the lingering twilight; and presently Mrs Beetle made them all some barley water flavoured with lemon, and they sat sipping it comfortably, for their throats were quite sore with talking and wondering what on earth Flora could be saying to Aunt Ada Doom, and recalling details of the farm’s history for the past twenty years, and reminding each other what a nuisance old Fig Starkadder had always been, and wondering how Seth was getting on in Hollywood and whether he would run into Amos there, and saying how lovely Elfine’s wedding was going to be, and wondering how Urk and Meriam would get on when they were married, and speculating as to what on earth Judith was doing in London, and, if so, why, and who with? It grew slowly dark and cooler outside, and the summer stars came out.

  They were talking away so hard that they never heard the clock strike ten, and it was not until nearly a quarter past that Mrs Beetle suddenly made them all jump by leaping from her chair and saying loudly: ‘There now! I fergot the milk! I’ll ferget me own name next. I’ll take it up at once.’

  And she was just going over to the range to put wood on to the ashes, when a sound outside made them all start, and turn their heads in the direction of the dark doorway of the kitchen.

  Someone was coming slowly downstairs, with light steps that dragged a little.

  Reuben stood up and lit a match, which he held above his head. The light slowly grew, and into it, through the dark doorway, walked Flora … at last.

  She looked composed enough, but rather pale and sleepy, and a curl of her dark gold hair hung loose against her cheek.

  ‘Hullo,’ she said, pleasantly, ‘you’re all here, then? (Hullo, Mr Mybug, surely it’s time you were in bed?) Can I have that milk now, please, Mrs Beetle? I’ll drink it down here. You need not take any up to Aunt Ada. I’ve put her to bed. She’s asleep.’

  There was a gasp of wonder from everybody.

  Flora sank into Reuben’s empty chair, with a long yawn.

  ‘We was feared for ’ee, soul,’ said Letty, reprovingly, after a pause in which lamps were lit and the curtains drawn. Nobody liked to ask any questions, though they were all pop-eyed with curiosity. ‘Dunamany times we near came up to fetch ’ee down again.’