Laughing House by Warwick Deeping (grave mercy .txt) 📕

memories rise up and haunt me. I am thinking more of the two lads whom I lost, and of their mother.

So, the War goes on, and the House grows shabbier and shabbier. It will soon be an old beggar of a house, standing by the roadside and pleading for impossible things. It both hurts and worries me. I lie awake at night, thinking of ways and means, and feeling rather like a fly in a spider’s web, if a fly does any thinking. This vast global horrid word catastrophe makes one appear no more than a midge involved in a complex transformation scene that is pure Hardy. One’s little struggles emphasize man’s helplessness. One might be no more than a speck of cosmic dust whirled about im personal and soulless space.

Perhaps I was rather proud of that last sentence, but when I re-read it a month later I saw myself posing in prose. Pompous old ass! And I have mixed up my pasts and my presents. Well, this is the hectic time of the year, seed-sowing and all that, with broody hens at a premium. I had managed to buy two secondhand oil incubators and a foster-mother, and I have scores of chicks on my hands.

The modern motto is “Get on with the job,” and every hour of the day one is getting on with something, though I still allow myself an hour’s nap after lunch, and in fine weather I take it in a hammock slung between two old apple trees in the Rose Cottage orchard. Well, I am up soon after half past five, lovely hour, secret with the stealth and the slow sweet radiance of the daybreak. Also, would you believe it, I have taken to a bike. It saves petrol in my journeys to and fro, though I have to foot it up hills. And I mount in the old-fashioned way, from the step, and with some wobbling, and sit down with a bang on the saddle.

Well, let us cut the cackle.

D.-Day, and then the Doodle.

One of the dastardly things lands on poor Hooper’s poultry farm near Framley. It blows Hooper and his wife and his bungalow to bits, and leaves dead fowls, feathers and debris all over the place. Why did the damned devil-machine land just there?

But our lads are ashore, and I feel rather a proud and cocky old gentleman and good English. We have unrolled the Bayeaux Tapestry. I have an old Union Jack and I hoist it on a chestnut pole near one of my huts. Tails up! Even if the old house must die this island lives now and in history. Our “Monty” is the Iron Duke redivivus.

VIII

DAMN these Doodles!

One of the things rattled over us last night, while I lay listening and sweating, and hoping the bloody contraption would not cut out. Surely an old fellow should not be so afraid for his own skin, but fear is organic. It exploded some distance away, but I had a nasty feeling that it had come down near the House.

It had.

It crashed in the wood just above the Upper Mead, and the blast pushed over a part of the fruit-wall, and finished off the glass in the poor greenhouses. And worse than that. A whole section of slates at the back of the house slid off and crashed in a shaly mess in the yard.

Old Potter knocked me up at five in the morning. He was in a sanguinary mood. He had been hoping to get back to his glass-houses, and now they were past present hope. I hurried into my clothes and joined him.

He had hiked down, and I mounted my own machine and we rode up to the House. For an old countryman who was laconic, Potter Senior was admirably eloquent. He would have taken pleasure in disembowelling fat Goering. And why didn’t the Army get on with it and cut Germany’s throat, including that of Lord Haw-Haw? I agreed with old Potter’s forceful declamation, but when I saw the mess the damned Doodle had made, my stomach seemed to drop. I was profoundly depressed and discouraged.

Not that the damage done was serious so far as structure was concerned. The piece of roof could be re-slated, and the mess cleared up, the fruit-wall re-built, and the greenhouses re-glazed. Yes, some day! I could obtain a certificate for the repair of the roof, or it might be the Army’s business, but the mess and the mutilation of the poor trees in Upper Wood put me down in the doldrums. I could neither chuckle nor shrug cynical shoulders. The whole ruinous business appeared to be cumulative, piling up day after day in every sort of guise and detail, and reducing me to a feeling of forlorn finality.

Poor old place! I wanted to get away from people. I went and sat on a bin in one of the farm sheds, and I blubbed. Old men are not supposed to shed tears, but I felt lost and lonely and somehow convinced that the only corner in the world that I loved was being taken from me. I should be a homeless old potterer, unwanted by anyone, superfluous, finished, ignored by the young. In fact I felt like a small boy who was being pushed out into some strange school where no one knew him or cared.

A figure darkened the doorway. It was old Potter. He caught me blowing my nose. He must have seen, and known, but with a kind of innate niceness he never appeared to observe my silly emotion, nor made any comment upon it. He went and rummaged in another bin, and ladled corn into a half bushel measure. I saw his creased neck, and fringe of grey hair, and the patch on the seat of his trousers.

I blew my nose again. I was heartily ashamed of myself.

Old Potter went out with his chicken feed, but he turned back in the doorway.

“I’ll get ‘ee a mug o’ hot tea, sir. The lads have got a brew goin’ over yonder.”

A mug of hot tea! Old Potter was to give me more than that; loyalty and hard labour in the days that were to come. Maybe he had been shocked and moved by the sight of another old man’s emotion.

The Army shovelled the broken slates into a corner of the courtyard, and rigged up a tarpaulin on the roof. My friend the O.C. reminded me that I could claim war damage. He was a fatherly sort of fellow, and I think he divined my profound depression.

“It may be a rather interesting job, sir.”

“What?” said I.

“Getting the old place back into shape.”

“I’m afraid it won’t be my job. I shan’t be able to afford it.”

I climbed to Upper Wood and saw the devastation there. The F.B. had burst in the tree tops, and shattered the trees over a radius of some fifty yards. Torn stumps, scorched foliage, branches hanging, the ground a tangle of debris. And the wood had been in its full June beauty, rich and radiantly green. And now this!

I stood on a fallen tree and looked down at the House and its garden. What a mess! Huts, dumps, the lawns like mangy pelts and spread with wire netting and chestnut fencing to give grip to the lorry wheels. Windows plugged up with black panels. Walls peeling. Oddments of broken brickwork, rotting sandbags. I felt my belly drop as I looked at it all. No, I couldn’t cope with all this ruin. I was too old, too tired. And what would be the use? One old man trying to confront the new world in a house that was out of date and dying.

The decision came to me as I walked back down the field. I should have to sell the place. There was nothing else for it, and even as I made this decision the blind eyes of the old house seemed to reproach me.

“You are deserting me, master, leaving me to strangers.”

I blew my nose once again.

The House and I would have to part.

I had some cases of eggs to deliver that afternoon. My old “Morris” now pulled a light trailer, and after I had done the job I parked the car in Melford and called on a firm of estate agents. I saw the manager, and put my case.

Would a sale be easy? He was a very tired man, and overworked, and he was not optimistic. He questioned me about the condition of the property, and I had to confess that a great deal of money would have to be spent upon it. Moreover, the date of its derequisitioning was problematical.

He advised me to wait. The demand was for small houses which could be run by the tenants. A house like mine might prove a white elephant, and not so white, poor dear.

I trundled home even more depressed. I sat down to tea, and I’ll confess to having a tot of rum in it. Then the telephone rang. I have managed to get a wire laid to Rose Cottage.

Now, I hate the telephone. Invariably it seems to produce fuss or bad news. I went to answer the ring, and heard a voice I did not recognize.

I and the voice were at cross-purposes, and I was feeling cross.

“How’s everything?”

“Who is speaking?”

“Army still with you?”

“Very much so. Who is it? I can’t hear you.”

There was a little laugh.

“Don’t you know who is speaking?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea.”

“It’s Peter.”

“Good God,” said I. “Well, I’m damned! Where are you, my lad?”

“ln London. Two months’ leave. Can I come down, Uncle?”

“By Jove, yes. Come along. We can manage, though rations may be a little thin.”

“What about to-morrow?”

“Come along. That will be fine. Wire the train and I’ll meet it.”

I went and called to Ellen.

“Mr. Peter is home and coming down. We’ll kill a chicken.”

Peter’s voice had lifted me up and made me feel years younger.

How pleasant it is to break the law, and I broke it when I took the car to pick up Peter. In fact, the breaking of laws may become a civic duty if Bumble tries to stick to the seat of authority and to exasperate us to tears or fury with eternal interference. I parked the car in the station yard and in full view of one of the War Police, and went in to meet the train. It was late.

I had a picture qf Peter in my mind, a tall, slender, agile lad, but the Peter whom I met was very different.

I saw a first-class compartment door swing open and an officer emerge backwards. He was helping somebody, steadying another man. I had a glimpse of two crutches making contact with the platform, one leg, and a neatly pinned-up trouser. Peter was on crutches!

“Thanks awfully.”

“Good luck. Can you manage?”

“Yes. I’m getting quite handy on stilts.”

Then he saw me, and his eyes lit up in a face that looked so much older. He came swinging to meet me, and I well I felt suddenly ashamed of being a puling pantaloon, and infinitely glad to see him. He stood poised on his crutches, smiling, and I just patted his shoulder. We said hardly a word.

He had a small kitbag with him in the van. The guard had put it out on the platform, and I picked it up. “You shouldn’t have to do that, Uncle.”

“Nonsense,” said I, “the old gentleman has cast walking-sticks and all that, and grown into a labouring man.”

He grinned at me.

“You do me good.”

We found the reserve policeman standing ominously by my car. Well, if the idiot wanted to make trouble.