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

a man who was starved both in the spirit and the flesh.

“Yes, this is for dinner* And new potatoes.”

“New potatoes!”

“Yes, a specialty of ours.”

For I had stuffed the orangery and the glass-houses with early potatoes in big pots and boxes.

“How wonderful,” said she. “This wretched war has starved us in all sorts of ways.”

I took the spinach in to Ellen and Mrs. Hobson, and then met Peter with a handful of ration books.

“How did you get on, Uncle?”

“I got found out.”

“Serve you right. They seem nice people.”

“The very people we want.”

I saw it all clearly at the moment. The Manners were a kind of happy omen for us, even in their surname, the very people whom the House would welcome, gra ciously and with a promise of peace. And I had a sudden inspiration. I turned back into the kitchen.

“Oh, Ellen, give our guests boiled eggs for break fast.”

For, I will confess that we had been guilty of a little wangle as to eggs. It had seemed to me absurd that we should not be allowed to feed our eggs to our guests, but had to sell them for strangers. I did only what scores of other people were doing. I had presented twenty birds to Potter, and twenty to Peter and Sybil, to be kept in separate pens, on the understanding that two-thirds of the eggs came into the house. The rest of our produce went to the world at large,

I remember seeing Mr. Manners’ breakfast tray going up next morning. We were giving them breakfast in bed. I winked at Marie and followed her up to the bedroom door. I waited, and I heard a voice. “What, a boiled egg!”

“Our special, sir.”

To such simplicities and poor austerities had the folly of mechanical man reduced us!

For it exasperates me when I read letters from pedants in the Press, claiming the high caloric value of our diet and declaring that the country is adequately fed. They prate of averages and average persons, and allow nothing for aesthetics and individual taste. They are as dull as the diet they advertise. I always visualize these learned gentlemen as what I would describe as Laboratory Dyspeptics, people who could exist on fish and pills and tabloids. They have tabloid minds.

I would like to condemn them to hours of queueing, searching for the fish which they claim is so prevalent. I would like to stuff them for a fortnight on nothing but the dreadful war buns and cake which suggest to me yellow, saccharined sawdust.

Our diet adequate! Damn the prosy pedants and their equally prosy palates!

XX

JOY in a boiled egg, and in a dish of early potatoes! What shocks for those uncomfortable people with hydrocephalic heads!

I could feel the House laughing, not riotously, but with gentle humour. So many good things were with us, the passing of the black-out, and the deaths of Doodle and of Rocket, and of Germany herself. The House could open its eyes at night and look at the moon and the stars. And the world was flowery and the woods green, and plums and apples were setting, and even our old cherry May Duke promised a bumper crop, but that would go to the blackbirds. These handsome thieves sang to us at daybreak, orange bills tremulous, and so did the thrushes. Yes, we had set our stage and drawn up the curtain when the earth was young again and pulsing with sap, and jocund with colour and per fume. How different might it have been had we opened our doors in suicidal November when the grey gloom of fog brings melancholy to man. That which may not seem worth while in November, rises to dance and sing in May.

I remember hearing sudden music in the house. Someone was playing Chopin on the drawingroom piano. I looked in and found Mary Manners on the stool, and her husband lying on the sofa, eyes closed, pale face serene.

She paused for a moment.

“Do you mind?”

“Mind! Music in a house that has been sad.”

“But not sad now.”

“No, so give it music.”

We are alive, yes very much alive.

Six guests, including Mr. Surveyor and his wife, came to us during the following week, mostly elderly people, and as yet thank God we have not received a bore. The hotel bore can be the most pernicious of creatures, stuffed with a garrulous egoism which empties rooms. Poor Mrs. Surveyor is a very tired woman, and when I looked at her bent back I knew why. Washing-up, and making fires, and cleaning house, and no help. We put her to bed for three days, and Mrs. Hobson took up all her meals.

I happened to meet Mrs. Hobson coming down with a tray — her eyes were wet. I hesitated. Should I?

“I hope nothing is wrong?”

“Oh no,” said she, “poor Bertha has been having a weep because it’s so good here, and everybody is so kind.”

I did understand. Women who have been tied up for months and tired out, may enjoy the happy relaxation of tears.

“Well, we seem to be doing not too badly. Are you —er—satisfied?”

She gave me a wet smile.

“I haven’t felt so good for years.”

But, believe me, our business was not being all jam, and the problems cascaded on poor Peter. He was having difficulty with fuel, food, and what not, but he was a persuasive and a persistent creature, and his quiet young dignity seemed to produce results. You could not be curt and rude and a curmudgeon to a lad with one leg. He borrowed my old car and me as driver, and we toured around and made personal contacts. The various controls became sympathetic, and gave us what they could.

I remember the day when Sybil rushed out to me.

“Oh, Uncle, the butcher’s failed us.”

“Dear, dear!”

“It isn’t dear-dear, it’s damn! Nothing for dinner.”

“Nothing at all?”

“But macaroni. Can’t you kill something?”

“The butcher! But it would be rather tough! Well, I’ll see what I can do.”

I will confess that I purloined two dozen eggs from those that had to be marketed and took them in to Ellen, and suggested poached egg on macaroni, and I thought Ellen would kiss me. She took her job with a kind of glowing seriousness. As a matter of fact poached egg a la macaroni proved extremely popular, and no apologies were needed.

Two problems paraded for solution, and Peter, Sybil and I held a conference.

We had a wireless set, but we had not put it into action. Did our guests want the news, or were they sick of war news, so sick of it that they would prefer a sylvan silence?

We decided to take a Gallup poll, and I put the question to our guests during dinner.

Without exception they said that they would rather be without the damned thing, so the BJB.C. was relegated to the kitchen.

The second problem was far more complex. Should we take children? That very morning we had received an application from parents with two children. We talked it over this way and that, upside down and round about. My feeling was that the kind of tired people we were getting would prefer to be left in peace. Children can be such restless, noisy little beggars, and the modern cult of not saying no is not conducive to discipline. Sybil was rather for taking children, but Peter agreed with me.

He said: “If and when we have another wing built we could make it a family affair. I think the house as it is is too intimate for kids. Besides there are kids and kids.”

So Sybil was out-voted, and we decided regretfully not to accept children. I dare say many people will cry “Shame,” but we were serving the old and the weary rather than the obstreperous young. This war has been unkind and unfair to the old. Youth has its youth, and its milk and its vitamins and its oranges. To the old life has become very much a sucked orange.

Peter’s optimism was proving itself valid. This first post-war summer, miserable as it was as to weather and bothersome in its political prospects, was like an open garden gate to many tired old children. Hotel gossip came to Peter and he could tell me that there was frustration everywhere so far as holiday accommodation was concerned. Any dirty, casual, English third-rate place could fill itself. Well, we were full, and I knew that Peter was coveting the empty top floor. With only half our bedrooms in action we were losing money, but we were creating a clientele, with the top floor occupied he said that we should be making a profit, in spite of moderate charges, good wages, and the scarcity value of everything.

Now, many of the people who were coming to us were folk whose homes had been bombed, and who still were hoftieless, people who had voyaged from hotel to hotel and were sick of it, poor dears. Many of them came to us because our new clientele had recommended the place. Some of them, to begin with, were a little peevish and exacting, but I must confess that the House had a wonderful way of smoothing them out. You could watch the gradual transfiguration, and chuckle benignly over it, as I am sure the House did. It talked to them like some comely, gracious mother.

“Now, now, my dears, go and play croquet or bowls, or potter about or sit in the sun, if there is any. Go and look at the pigs and the poultry, and the fruit.”

This simple life suited our people. It got them back to a sweet sense of reality. Its rhythm was as old as time. I used to find some of them looking at our fruit, for the May frost had not harmed us greatly. The old orchard up above had set pears, apples and plums. Williams and Commice, Blenheims and Bramleys, Vic torias, Purple Pershore, and Giant Prune. We had a good crop of bush fruit, and we gave our folk fruit at nearly every meal, and they lapped up the juice like children.

Our staff was working very well. We all gave a hand, here, there and everywhere. There was no snobbery -about it, no grudging “That isn’t my job.” The only one I had doubts about was Marie, not because she wasn’t a good creature, but because of her temperament, and the very way she moved. Graceful, vibrant restless ness, but I was to be wrong about Marie. She stuck at it. I must mention June ist and “Basic.” A few people actually came to us in cars, but that was not the problem.

Passing motorists, especially at weekends, pulled in and asked for lunch or tea, so much so that we had to put up a notice:

We are sorry. Owing to the food shortage we cannot serve non-Residents. We regret having to make this decision, but you will agree that our Residents come first.

Mrs. Hobson’s sister, “Mrs. Surveyor,” was still with us, for the rest was doing her much good. Her husband came over to see her at weekends. I think he was grateful to us, and that he appreciated the job we were doing.

He asked me how we were progressing, and I told him about our top floor. Peter was thinking in terms of old-fashioned jugs and basins, but it would mean carrying up hot water, and the main problem was the lavatory, and the bath. There was only one bath.

“May I have a look?”

I took him up, and he inspected every room.

“Could you get the work done, sir?”

“I think so.”

“I might pass it. I’d put it