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

old Potter and Tom had the Auto-Culto and truck out when I heard a voice hailing me.

“Hi, you there.”

I was in blue overalls and wearing a battered old hat, and facing about I saw a figure at the gate. Now, I was not in a temper to be shouted at or to waste my time walking to the gate. I went on with my job. If the fellow wanted anything he could come to me.

“Hallo, my man, are you deaf?”

He had climbed the gate and trudged across the stubble. I gave him a leery look. He was a youngish, cocky looking amateur-gent with yet another of those fish-faces favoured by officials.

“No,” said I, “I am not deaf.”

“Sir John Mortimer anywhere about?”

“You are speaking to him.”

After that he called me sir, and became polite in a casual sort of way, and his very casualness struck me as being an attempt to get even with me and cover up his faux pas. He told me that he was the official valuer and had come to inspect and assess dilapidations. He looked quite fit to be in the army, but I imagine he was one of the spry and agile souls who jump into safe corners.

I left my work and took him to the house. I saw a small car waiting. He collected a notebook and some official papers, and then stood and looked at the house. He was one of those fellows who made a kind of nasal noise whenever you ventured a remark.

“Thinking of turning the place into an hotel?”

“Yes,” said I.

He made one of his nasal noises, and it gave me to feel that he put me down as an old fool.

“Shall I leave you to it?”

“Got some problems here what?”

“I have,” said I, “just a matter of initiative, you know.”

He bleated: “Quite,”

I unlocked the house and left him to it, for I was convinced that we should not be sympathetic to each other, and that if I did any prompting it would make him less sympathetic to the House. I guessed that he would be that any way, and that he was one of the bright spirits who uttered the magic word “Planning,” and expected the world to become angelic over night. And probably he believed in planning all owners of property out of existence.

We went on with our work, for the sheaves were drying well in the wind and sun, and we wanted to rush as much under cover as we could, using a kind of improvised Dutch barn. In fact I almost forgot the fellow, and when we knocked off I found that his car had gone. Courtesy had not persuaded him to come and report to me, and it seemed that his inspection had been as casual as his manners. Not only did the incident irritate me, for I was tired, but it left me depressed and bothered, and obsessed by the feeling that the new world was to be a mass of negation.

My pessimism was justified.

Peter came down for a weekend, and he was depressed poor lad. He had been fitted with an artificial limb, and it hurt him. Moreover, he was being messed about by authority, boarded, reported upon, told that he would have to report at his depot, which was in Yorkshire. It appeared that he might be given administrative work, and be vetted from time to time. What he lusted for was his freedom, freedom to get on with constructive work.

He said: “This chit-pushing business will get me down.”

I tried to cheer him up, but I was not feeling too cheerful myself. I think we both of us needed a dose of Sybil.

It was Sybil who acted.

She claimed special leave, made Peter do the same, and she married him in London.

They spent a short honeymoon with me, only to be told that all progress seemed stuck.

I remember what Sybil said.

“All the world’s a wangle, Uncle.” Shakespeare with adaptations!

There were other frustrations.

My friend Wicks came to look at the two huts on what had been lawns, and decided that the job of moving them would be too big for him. He asked me if the War Office had quoted me a price. They had not as yet, nor did I want to buy the damned things.

Did he know anything about it? He shrugged his big shoulders.

“No, afraid not, sir. Get enough bumph of my own.”

Nor could I find any firm in the neighbourhood who would or could take on the reconditioning of the house. They all pleaded shortage of labour and materials.

And had I applied for a certificate entitling me to spend much money on the house?

I had not as yet.

Nothing could be done without it.

Next, my old car began to give trouble. The solitary expert at my local garage diagnosed a senile back axle and an engine that needed reboring.

A new back axle? It might take months.

Secondhand cars were scarce and incredibly costly.

I could not buy a new car without a licence.

I remembered sardonically that one could not be buried without a certificate.

Well, I determined to try for a reconstruction permit. I approached the necessary authority and my application was turned down. I could spend ten pounds on having the damaged piece of roof re-slated. If the house was weatherproof I had no grouse. Nor had I when I thought of the mess in London, and the poor wretches who would have been glad of my army huts.

I received an official notice of the sum in compensation I was to receive.

Two hundred and fifty pounds.

Well well well!

Lastly the war seemed to have gone stale on us. After all that brilliant sweep across France and Belgium, we had got stuck. Supplies I suppose.

I began to foresee another war winter and black-out.

Oh, my God!

In fact everything seemed so hopeless that I seriously considered abandoning the whole project. I was tired, and all these difficulties had got me down. The more I thought about it, the more mad and reckless the adventure appeared to me. I an old fellow, and a lad with one leg, and a girl to put the place in order and run it as an hotel!

But what should I do? Sell the house, and stay on at Rose Cottage? Yet, I could not get myself to hoist the white flag and abandon the House to its fate. More over, I should be letting those two young things down, and I had grown fond of them.

I had yet another fear, that if I left the house empty it might be requisitioned again, especially so with the war dragging on.

Should I move in, occupy a part of it, and picnic there?

I could not make up my mind.

The one person who adopted a positive attitude was old Potter. He snatched every hour that he could spare in clearing weeds and digging and cutting rough grass. I found him working overtime and looking cheerful and rosy about it. In fact old Potter was gloating over being back in his garden, and I could divine pride and an innocent vanity in him. If the house was to become an hotel the garden would be very much his show, and much more a show than it had been. His flowers and his fruit and his vegetables would be in spected and admired by an interested and ever-changing crowd. Old Potter would be painting a picture that would always be on show.

I said to him: “Jim, don’t you overdo it.”

He chuckled and waggled his backside.

“I be enjoying myself, I be. Getting the old place to rights. I ‘ad a letter from Bill yesterday. He’s mad to come back.”

Bill was young Potter.

“Glad to hear it,” said I, and I had not the heart to take the shine off old Potter’s face.

I decided to write to Sybil and put the case to her, for poor Peter was still very depressed, and I discovered that I had a good deal of faith in that sturdy little person. I was quite frank with Sybil, and I confessed that I had met with nothing but frustration, and that I had begun to doubt the sanity of our scheme.

Sybil wrote by return.

She was trying for a release from the service, her case being that she had a crippled husband to look after, but the authorities were not being sympathetic. “Yes, damn them,” wrote she, and I could hear her saying it. Peter was still stuck at a desk, and the two young things were separated. But Sybil was full of fight. She asked me to postpone any immediate decision, and said that she would try and get leave, though she had had a lot of leave of late.

“Would you write me a letter, Uncle, saying that you want me for a business consultation, and I can stuff it into them. Peter is so keen on the adventure. Thinking of it helps to keep him going. I believe he will be a new man when he has something constructive to do. As it is, you seem to be having all the trouble, poor lamb. I’m tough, and I might help.”

I felt rather cheered by her fighting spirit. Nelson in petticoats! Sybil might be wise as to the potentialities of a blind eye. I wrote her a letter, and she wired me.

All serene. Got a week. Expect me to-morrow.

She turned up in uniform, looking very natty, her hair curled, her little hat cocked, and her complexion perfect. I sensed something roguish in her eyes. Sybil was out for piracy. It happened to be fine, and we had tea in the garden.

She said: “Who is the blightqr who turned down your application to put the house in order?”

“Oh, the local authority.”

“I’ll go and see it,”

“You?”

“Yes, me. I’ll tell him I’m a working partner and that we want to get on with the job. Will you give me authority?”

I looked at her, especially at her pretty head with its curls, and those solemn eyes with traces of a naughty gleam in them, and I chuckled.

“Good idea. Even officials are human.”

“Just how, Uncle?”

“Oh, you know, all right. Well, try it, and cock your hat.”

“You are a very naughty old man.”

She went, was seen, she talked and she triumphed. She came back with a little swagger of the hips, threw her hat on the sofa, and came across and kissed me.

“Got it. Or, I think so. He’s coming to inspect.”

“You have?”

“Really quite a nice bloke. I rubbed it in that we were out for social service. He said he might give us a certificate to spend five hundred pounds.”

“Well, I’m—”

“No you’re not. We could do quite a lot of decorating for five hundred pounds. Painting and distemper.”

“I should say so. But what about basins and all that?”

“Buy them, Uncle, and say nothing. Who’s to know? Besides if anybody made trouble we could play inno cence and say we thought we had the right to buy a bath or two.”

“You minx,” said I.

“Sez you!”

“But, damn it, now we may have to find someone to take on the job.”

Authority came to inspect us, and authority was more sympathetic than we had dared to hope. Sybil had begun the good deed, and the House completed it. Mr, Sur veyor stood and surveyed the scene.

“It is’ an extraordinary thing, sir, but I often used to pass this house in the old days, and I used to think—”

He paused and rubbed his nose. It was a rosy and a human nose, and I gather that he