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

“She’s in the kitchen, cooking the week’s joint all at one go. And she has found a Christmas pudding.”

I looked at the wine glasses.

“Something lacking.”

I got the cottage key from Ellen, and hiked down and collected a bottle and a half of champagne. The black out had gone, and instead of it we had a dim-out, but not so far as the dinner was concerned.

Peter gave us a toast,

“To you, Uncle, and High Beeches Hotel.”

We clinked glasses, and then I went and fetched Ellen, and made her drink champagne.

“I’m sure it will go to my head, sir.”

“Let it,” said I, “we’ll all see you home.”

I confess that we went home singing, after locking up the house. We were to move in next day. And just above Rose Cottage we met the local policeman, and it was dark.

“Hullo, what’s all this?”

“Good old England, Saunders,” said I.

He recognized my voice.

“Good old England it is, sir, I hope.”

I had assigned to myself the library and the big bed room which had been Sibilla’s, and into the library I moved my more intimate things, Sibilla’s portrait and pieces of furniture that were associated with her. The bedroom too was as much sitting-room as sleeping place, and being at the end of a short corridor it was apart and quiet. Experiences in other hotels had taught me much about bedrooms. Never be near the lift, never over the bar or the bridge-room. It is extraordinary how much gabble can rise from bridge-tables, and continue till past midnight. I had cursed people who played cards.

Peter had taken over the small study as a temporary office, and from somewhere he produced a roller-top desk and ledgers and files. He printed a notice for him self “Office,” and for me a defensive “Private.” Ellen was vastly busy in the kitchen; we had screened off a part of it as a temporary sitting-room, one of the large pantries was to be the staff dining-room and par lour, and it was to possess armchairs. Sybil was busy sorting out the linen and checking it. Peter had asked her to take a census of the blankets, sheets, pillow-cases, towels, dishcloths and glass-cloths. As he had told me, he had a supply of his own stored in London.

I was very busy with home food production, raising young chicks. I bought in ducklings, goslings, and rabbits, but I was shy of turkeys. Geese and ducks can do much foraging on their own. Potter and Tom were hard at it getting in early crops, beans, potatoes, peas, parsnips, carrots, beet, onions and early lettuce and radishes in frames. The fruit had had a winter wash, and was waiting for lime sulphur and lead arsenate. Wild old gooseberry bushes had been pruned, and so had the apples and pears in the winter, and there had been much cutting back and tying in of straggling plums. Wicks had ploughed and harrowed for us, and sown our field crops, and rolled them in.

There was one point we had to decide, the problem of gates, and in the end we chose to leave the drive open for the time being,

Mr. Brown was painting us a sign in black and white:

“High Beeches Hotel.”

XVIII modern problem of problems confronted us A Labour. Emily had come back to us, but we had no adequate staff, and we could not put up our board and begin to advertise until we had waitresses and maids. I advertised and visited the Labour Exchange. One or two condescending ladies called on us and said they were willing to oblige at three pounds or so a week for keep and limited hours.

Why oblige? What we needed was enthusiasm and hard work. And when I had looked the ladies over and gauged their complacent and condescending sterility, I dismissed them, or turned them over to Sybil.

Sybil had a tart tongue. I believe she said: “Why oblige? Shouldn’t we be obliging you by over-paying you for diddling around for a few hours each day?”

To me she said: “This damned country needs shocking. Some of them have had bombs,, but they want their dashed conceit exploding. I object to paying scarcity value for scrub-service.”

I always had a feeling that Sybil had something up her sleeve. She had. She announced to us one morning after V-Day, when we had lit up the whole house, that Jean and Marie would be with us in a month, Jean and Marie? Yes, Sybil’s devoted henchwomen who were escaping from the Wrens.

Then it was my turn.

I received a letter from an unexpected source with an equally unexpected request. It came from my friend the surveyor. He said that his wife had a widowed sister who had had a pretty rough passage during the war, and who had been acting as under-housekeeper in a London hotel. She loathed London and wanted work in a home in the country, and she did not mind what she did, provided that it was not mere brainless drudgery. She could cook, and had something of a passion for cooking. Her age was forty-seven, she had one daughter who was in the A.T.S., and a minute income of her own. Could I consider employing her? If so she would come and see me.

Now, I had begun to realize that our show was going to be a very new-world affair run by enthusiastic amateurs who would in all probability put the professionals to shame. We were a composite crowd, and I wanted people of some culture and character who had shed snobbery, and developed a sense of humour and of finding fun in the job, and who had some feeling of service, and would not hold us up to ransom.

Sybil was pretty wise as to the “Bits” who might have exploited us, and who would go hoity-toity if dirty silver was shown to them, and leave you in the lurch without the slightest compunction.

My idea was the team-spirit, and to render for good and kindly service a home that was human and friendly. We should all be friends together. Every worker should have a day off once a week, and do with it what he or she pleased. There should be no tipping, but ten per cent on the bill, and I proposed to found a staff-fund out of profits, if and when my team earned profits. We were not mere commercialists, even though the profit motive is legitimate and necessary. Our hotel should be much more than an hotel.

Peter was in complete agreement with me. He was much more than Monte Carlo.

So I wrote to Mrs. Hobson and asked her to come and see me. She was staying for a few days with her sister and brother-in-law.

A tall, pale and rather tragic looking woman arrived, who suggested both the Russian Ballet and a Whistler portrait. Her black hair was drawn back austerely from her forehead. I should have said she had been starved both in body and spirit, and she sat before me with hands clasped, her eyes on my dead wife’s portrait. I had just come in from work, tieless and in blue overalls.

I apologized. I said: “We all work here. It is every body’s show.”

Her eyes met mine.

“Then it should be a happy house.”

She rose, went to the window, and looked out, and when she turned again I thought her eyes were blurred.

She said: “It is very lovely here. I have had some experience of hotels. I don’t mind what I do.”

“Would you help in the kitchen, and perhaps in the bedrooms? We are going to be short of staff for a while.”

She nodded.

“And in the garden if I might? I used to have a garden.”

I spoke of terms and conditions and she listened with interest. Our ideas seemed to appeal to her, especially the notion of our waiting upon everybody and upon each other. She said that she would be glad to come to us.

Peter has been up to town to call on a friend who is also a wine merchant, and this friend has agreed to allocate to us a monthly ration, champagne, Burgundy, claret, sherry, whisky and gin. I was astonished. I did not know there was any wine left in the country.

“Oh yes,” said Peter, “they have been holding on to it. Why should they chuck their vintage stuff on the market when E.P.T. and income and surtax make trading a farce?”

“Yes,” said I, “I see the point, and perhaps waste old wine on vulgar fools who would not know the difference between Chambertin and Algerian vinegar.”

“Quite. One need not be patriotic by wasting a vintage wine on proletarian politics.”

I thought this rather good.

I was leaving all the technical details to Peter, such as rations and hotel supplies, and insurance. I was spending capital, but that did not worry me, for parsimony seemed without flavour. Now we faced the question of when we should open. As to staff we should have two in the kitchen, two waitresses, and one chambermaid, enough we thought to begin with, for we were agreed upon mutual assistance. Sybil was quite ready to help with the rooms, and Peter saw himself as an assistant waiter in emergencies. Jean and Marie were coming in a few days, and Peter suggested that we should open on May Day. Well, why not? A propitious occasion. He proposed advertising in the Times and elsewhere, and I agreed. He produced a sample.

Beech Hill Hotel will open on May ist. Lovely country, peaceful and informal atmosphere. Home produced food. Large garden and farm. Book now. Fromley Greeny Surrey. Taxis arranged. Garage accommodation available.

I thought Peter a bit of an optimist in advertising garage accommodation, but he winked at me, and I suppose he must have been given the tip about the return of basic petrol. And why all this secrecy? Why must officialdom treat us like a lot of nitwits or silly children, and not tell us the why and the when and the where fore? One might almost suspect that Bumble was interested in the secondhand car market, and was unloading or even hanging on for a rise.

I had applied for a licence to purchase a new car, for an hotel car was necessary. It had been refused me. I applied again, and put in a strong letter, only to be fobbed off with the usual inhuman chit. I looked around for a reliable secondhand car, and could not find one at a price that was not monstrous. Once again I dared to write to Bumble, stating that I had a case and that I in tended to make a case of it, and did not mean to be fobbed off by the office-boy or a junior clerk.

Would you believe it, they sent a representative to inspect both me, and the hotel! The gentleman was polite and I was caustic.

“I suppose you doubted my word?”

“Oh, well, sir, we have to be rather sceptical.”

I got my licence to buy.

But enough of controversy. I was pretty sure that the world was going to be a very unpleasant place, howls, sneers, strikes, demagoguery, scrambles for more pay, much bilge talked about service. I was one of the few who believed that at the next election the New World would chuck Churchill. Benign cynicism and the urge to get on with one’s particular job while the politicians screamed clap-trap. I would try and make it a gentleman’s job in spite of Comrade Slop in a surplice.

For, Nature is always with one, and Nature was being very kind at the moment. We had all of us been working like blazes, and suddenly our stage was set and garnished, and we sat down