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

and issued in duplicate, and I was to acknowledge the receipt of the notice.

I did so. I knew there was no appeal, but I wrote a letter asking for a date to be fixed, and I also asked what I was to receive in payment. And should I have the right to inspect my own property from time to time?

I received a curt reply. I was to be out in three weeks. I could not be given authority to enter my own gates. The place would be the property of the War Office.

Well well!

A representative would call on me for a valuation.

The official gentleman arrived. He was brisk and impersonal, and to me he had the face of a fish.

I was informed that I should receive two hundred pounds a year, paid quarterly.

I could renew the fire insurance, but the company would demand a higher premium.

I should say so!

Well, in the modern parlance “That was That.”

If I tried to pass through my own gates I could be treated as a trespasser.

I realized that all this was inevitable, but I was angry and flustered, for at my age adaptations were not easy. I was being hustled out of my home, ruthlessly and without ceremony. There was no suggestion of help or of sympathy. I was just ordered to get out instanter with all my belongings.

I was a little more fortunate than Gibson, in that I was given three weeks in which to clear out, and how hectic were those twenty-one days. Even my fore thought complicated the crisis for I had all my reserve stores and wine to deal with. I could hear people saying: “Serve you bloody well right.” Ellen agreed to move with me to Rose Cottage, while Emily took a temporary place.

The obvious moral was that too many possessions can be a curse, and that the man who has nothing to lose has less to worry about, but all my old furniture, china and glass, pictures and carpets were heirlooms and part of the house. They were even part of myself, and I hated the idea of their going to strangers. I managed to get transport, and a few of the more precious things were transferred to Rose Cottage. We crammed two unwanted bedrooms full of linen and blankets, and reserve stores. The cottage happened to possess a small cellar, and I moved the most precious of my wines into it. I was lucky in finding a firm of furniture removers at Melford who could store all the rest of my belongings, and we managed to clear the House two days before the Army arrived. Our circular saw and machines I locked for the time being in the garage, and gave Potter the key. The authorities had agreed to allow him to remain in his cottage to work upon the growing of vegetables and fruit.

Property, property, property! The new world might pretend to despise it and its possessions, but all this mass of material was to prove itself constructive and useful in the lean period after the war. Beauty has its own blessing, and its right to survival. That which I had salved from destruction was to become of supreme value in a future that I did not yet foresee. Without it we should have been helpless.

I remember that evening before the House and I were separated.

I had kept my particular treasures to the last, pieces that were associated so poignantly with Sibilla. I had seen the rest of the house cleared, and my particular treasures collected in the drawingroom for the last journey to Rose Cottage, the William and Mary black and gold lacquer cabinet which my wife had loved, her winged armchair with its French embroidery in faded blue and Rose du Barry, her piano, six Sheraton chairs and a sideboard by the same artist, her china cabinet with its lovely things packed in cases, a Chinese carpet, two painted trays, a flower piece by Baptiste, a Constable, and Sibilla’s portrait. I sat in the midst of these familiar things, and felt forlorn, yet somehow glad, for I think it would have broken Sibilla’s heart had she been driven from the House. I could see the marks on the walls where the pictures and mirrors had hung, and I wondered what those walls would look like six months hence.

I heard the big van crunch up to the house. The men came in, and I asked them to be very careful with these last pieces. No doubt they thought me a foolish old fusspot. The emptying of that familiar room so saddened me that I left them to the job and went wandering over the empty house. My footsteps echoed through it, and I think it felt as forlorn as I did. I stood for a while at one of the windows of our bedroom, and suddenly I felt like some lost and forgotten child, crying: “Mother mother.”

For, to an old man like myself, as to a child, there were so many intimate things about the house, its tricks and mannerisms, its moods and familiar features, that I should feel lost without them in a new home. There was the mark on the polished handrail where I set my hand on beginning to climb the stairs, the radiator in the hall which I touched in winter to see how the furnace was behaving, the Persian rug on the landing which had a playful way of curling up and trying to trip you. Each window had a particular picture of its own. Even the bath-taps were individual, and the cistern of the lower lavatory less willing to work than its fellow up above. There was the pattern on the hall wall where the barometer had hung, to be tapped and cursed on occasions. It seemed so strange to see the library empty of its books, and minus my desk and chair, and the place where the waste-paper basket had stood. The House’s lower windows had white shutters, and some one had left one of them hanging half open in the drawingroom. I went and closed it, and the sound was as familiar as some friendly voice, a plaintive voice. “Why must you leave me to strangers?”

And suddenly I felt that I could not bear to linger here any longer. I locked the great white front door after me, and went to hand the key to old Potter. I found him smoking a pipe and cleaning his boots outside the cottage.

We two old men were laconic.

“Here’s the key, Tom. I’ve locked up.”

He did not look at me, but took the key and pocketed it. He was feeling no more welcoming to the Army than I was.

I walked out of the lower gate and closed it after me. I did not look back, for the eyes of the House might be those of a deserted dog. The valley road brought me to Rose Cottage. The men were carrying in the last of my belongings and I went and sat in the little orchard. It was a homely little house in old red brick and tile, its garden full of flowers, and its white fence neat and obvious. Sad and forlorn I might be, but this little place was a bit of England, the England that I knew. I should be near the House.

Then Ellen came out to me, plump, rosy, capable Ellen.

“Dinner, sir. I’ve laid it in the little back room.” Dinner! I blessed Ellen.

III

IN MY unwisdom I went up to the high beech wood next morning to watch for the invasion. It would have been much better if I had kept away.

It was a perfect summer morning, with the sun full on the House, and it looked white as a swan on a nest, peaceful and unsuspecting. I had brought a pair of glasses with me, and I sat at the foot of a beech tree and waited. The pool gleamed below me, and there was no wind in the rushes.

About half-past ten I heard the noise of a motor bike. It came from the direction of Framley Green, and it stopped outside the lower gate. I could see a brown figure in its hideous crash helmet. The fellow nosed the machine up against one leaf of the blue iron gates and pushed it open, and rode up to the house. He dismounted and propped his machine against one of the white portico pillars.

I said: “Damn him!”

A small car followed and drew up outside the house. Three brown figures emerged. Officers. I had my glasses on them. The car moved on and parked itself on the tennis lawn. Why on the tennis court?

Then the invasion arrived in full strength, a long convoy of lorries, brown backed beasts filling the valley with the noise of their engines. One of the officers came down to the lower gate and swung both leaves wide open. The first lorry pulled in with careless rapture, and I saw the gate crash and stone come crumbling from the pillar.

Clumsy brute! I was angry. I got on my feet, but sat down again. I told myself that I would go and have a word with those fellows later. Lorry after lorry roared in, to park on the turf of the tennis court. Why there, damn them! When the lawn was full of them, they lined up on the drive, while some of them rolled round to the stable yard. Brown figures began to swarm everywhere. I heard their loud voices, ugly, common voices. The lorries were being unloaded, blankets, mattresses, stores and what not. The white porch was piled high, and the stuff began to hide the pillars. I thought it about time for me to go down and register a protest.

And what a reception I got, and what a lesson! I went by the field path to the gate just above the pool, nor did I know then that the pool was to become the receptacle for all the Army’s rubbish, old tins, bottles and what not. I made for the upper of the two gates, and was about to enter when a brown figure intervened. It was a man on guard, and he stopped me.

“What d’yer want?”

Had it occurred to me that I might be forbidden to enter one of my own gates?

I said: “I’m the owner of this house.”

The soldier had an unpleasant and unfriendly face.

“War Office property. What’s yer business?”

I felt hot about the ears.

“I think I told you that I am the owner of the house. I want to see your CO.”

He gave me a leery, hostile look, and I can only sup pose that he was one of those to whom a man of property was an offence.

“The Major’s busy. Better buzz off, old lad.”

I stood my ground. I said: “My man, the Army does not seem to have taught you manners. I think you had better take my message. I prefer to deal with gentlemen.”

That brought me an ugly look, but he took my message. He marched up the drive and I heard him shout:

“Hi, Sarge there’s an old toff wants to see the Major.”

Old toff indeed! The atmosphere of this unit did not suggest discipline, but a casual and slap-you-on-the-back familiarity.

The sergeant came down to the gate. He was a clean, tall, fair lad, and superior as a human product to his private. He even called me sir. I explained that I wanted to see the CO. and that though the house was requisitioned I did retain some interest in it.

“Have you your Identity Card, sir?”

I produced the card, and he examined it.

“O.K., sir. The Major is somewhere about. Will you come with me.”

It was