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

a strange experience being conducted up my own drive to my own door by a lad I had never seen before. The place was a turmoil of men unloading and carrying in stores and equipment. I could smell them, for it was a sweating day, and the smell of human bodies was like a hang-over from the last war. The hall was piled high with stores, and I saw that the walls had begun to suffer, and it hurt me, I was beyond being angry, for I think this moiling mass of crude, strong humanity made me shrink and feel like an unwanted dog. One fellow bumped into me with a roll of blankets, and grinned, and I gave him a feeble smile.

My sergeant paused near the library door.

“Mind waiting a moment, sir?”

I nodded, and got out of the stream of traffic. Youth was strong and urgent, and esfrit de corps was in my nostrils. The sergeant half closed the door, but I could hear what was said.

“Excuse me, sir, an old gentleman wants to see you.”

A turgid voice answered him.

“What for?”

“It’s the owner, sir.”

“Oh, all right, Mills, show the old blighter in.”

Such was my introduction! I found myself in the familiar room, confronting three officers who were sitting on cases with a central case for a table. I saw a whisky bottle, a syphon, glasses. The crown upon a shoulder-strap marked out the Major for me. He was a florid, stout young man with a fleshy nose and unpleasant blue eyes. Arrogance oozed from him.

“Yes?”

That was all he said, and it was a curt if casual challenge.

“Are you in charge?”

He nodded over the glass in his hand.

“I am the owner of the house.”

“Sorry. Not quite correct.”

I smiled at him.

“I was and may be again. May I suggest that I regard unnecessary damage as—”

He took me up at once.

“There’s a war on, my dear sir. We don’t go about in kid gloves.”

“No,” said I, “but is that any excuse for clumsy driving, and a complete lack of consideration. Why park your lorries on the lawns?”

He had lit a cigarette and was at his leisure.

“Look here, we have a job to do, sir, and may I remind you that you have no right here. And where do you think we are going to park all our lorries? In the billiard room?”

There was a giggle from one of the juniors, and I felt hot and helpless.

I said: “Thank you for your courtesy. I think that any complaint I have to make had better be made to higher quarters.”

He flicked the ash from his cigarette.

“It will come to me, and I’ll put it where waste paper goes.”

Another giggle, and I turned about and walked out of the room. I heard laughter ‘behind me, and a voice that said “Got the old geezer in the guts, what!” The incredible rudeness with which I had been met had shocked me. Had I done anything to provoke such florid insolence? I edged my way out of the house which was like a stewpan boiling with brown fat, telling myself that I had been a fool to trespass. Trespass! And was that turgid and offensive young man a symbol of the new world? I did not believe it, could not believe it. I had been unfortunate in having been bounced off by a lusty young cad full of whisky and the loud grease of authority. I went out by the lower gate, the one which the lorry had crashed, and I did not look at it. Something that was mine had been mauled, and maybe I was too full of the business of possessions. Well, reality had been rubbed into me, and was to be rubbed in yet more forcefully. I was just a superfluous old man, and I felt it.

Rose Cottage seemed to be a little haven of peace after what I had experienced, but I did not feel at peace. Moreover, I had not’ been back more than ten minutes when I saw old Potter at the gate, a hot and seething Potter.

I went out to him.

“Well, Potter?”

He took off his hat and mopped.

“I’d like you to come up, sir, and see—”

I smiled wryly.

“I’ve been, Potter. Not much use.”

“But, sir, they be all over the old place. Broken one of the gates they have, and the coach-house doors. There be lorries on the lawn.”

I felt very tired.

“I know, Potter. I have seen. The young gentleman in charge isn’t exactly friendly. Nothing to be done, I’m afraid.”

“D’you mean, sir, they can smash about as they ruddy well please?”

“I’m afraid that is the situation, Potter.”

“Well I be danged,” said he.

And then he rubbed his hands reflectively on the seat of his trousers.

“I don’t know, sir, as I want to stay up there and see the ol’ place knocked to pieces.”

“Just as you please, Potter. I am feeling just as you do.”

So, Potter and his wife found lodgings with a brother who rented a lonely cottage in the woods on the way to Roman Heath, though I persuaded him to go on working in the glass-houses and fruit garden. These had been graciously assigned to us, but as for the fruit, it did not come our way. Potter locked up the glass houses, but the Army broke in and purloined every peach and nectarine, and in grabbing grapes tore the vines to pieces. He reported the thefts to me and I wrote a letter of protest, and put in a claim for the value of the fruit.

I received a reply from the O.C. of the Unit.

Dear Sir,

Yours to hand. Men will be men. May I remind you that but for men neither you nor your fruit might be here. I will pass your claim to the proper authority.

It came to my ears later that much of the glass-house fruit reached the Officers Mess. I should not have minded had their manners been less unripe. In satisfaction of my claim I ultimately received the sum of thirty-one shillings and sixpence.

And that, I suppose, was what authority thought I was worth.

IV

BUT this rough treatment stung me like a bunch of nettles. I had been humiliated, treated as of no account, and the reaction in me was positive. I would try to show the world’s young men that I have some guts and initiative left in me. I had land and some equipment, and I could command the services of two other old men who were both hard workers. For hard and steady labour give me a man over forty.

I took Potter off the garden, for I realized from what he told me that any work there was so much waste. Even the green apples were going, and Potter picked less than a bushel of plums. Vegetables, too, were plun dered, and the position there was hopeless.

Potter called the Army “A plague of ruddy brown emmets,” and I put it to him that we had land which could be farmed, land which if growing food crops the plundering of which could be severely punished. We could grow cereals, potatoes and perhaps fancy crops for marketing, and keep poultry and ducks. Potter was sceptical about poultry. They two-legged foxes would steal both birds and eggs. But he was ready to fall in with my idea, for his life was the land and growing things, and the destruction and frustration up yonder had got his dander up.

Yes, we old men would show these youngsters that we could do a thing or two, and were not quite finished. I arranged with a farmer friend to plough for us in the autumn, and I managed to buy two secondhand wooden buildings. Restrictions were not as yet so completely thwarting as they were to become later.

But speaking of huts. The whole countryside seemed to spawn huts, and also those horrible black corrugated contraptions which looked like headless elephants cpuchant. From High Wood and Valley Meadow I could observe the splurge of the hutment world about the House. Some of the lorries were removed from the lawns and parked in the pinewoods towards Roman Heath, and in their place wooden huts were erected. One morning I saw that the old yews by the service gate had been hacked down, and that a large black Nissen was being put up. This so angered me that I drove into Melford to see my lawyer and discover if this destruction could not be halted. I took my agreement with me,

Lawton was not encouraging. He pointed to a certain vague clause one of those cunning paragraphs beloved of officials and pointed out that the clause gave the Army the right to do much as it pleased. Yes, I might protest, but it would be like prodding a rhinoceros with a meat skewer.

I did not protest, for I realized that some of these things had to be. They were the wounds inflicted upon a country that had been cowardly and feckless, and thought of nothing but pleasure and safety first. More over, the bombing attacks upon the ports and London were in full blast and the position looked pretty desperate. Those horrid black beasts crouching under tree cover all the way to Roman Heath were necessary for the storing and concealing of munitions. Invasion was in the air, and though the old House was suffering dreadful things, it was sharing in the country’s tragedy.

Yes, the orangery housed the army’s latrines, its glass and woodwork had been splodged over with black paint.

I could see broken glass in the House’s windows and in the glass-house. The army had fitted wooden black out panels, but why break the glass? A vast dump of corrugated iron and barbed wire, etc., decorated the semilune between the House and the road. The stable clock had given up the ghost when its hands had stood at seven minutes past three. Its voice ceased to fill the valley. Using my glasses one day I saw that the gilded clock-hands had gone, and that the clock-face was scarred. Some of the lads had amused themselves by throwing stones at it,

As for the garden it was ceasing to be a garden, and becoming a wilderness, rank grass, weeds, broken shrubs. I missed three of the fine Lawsons on the upper terrace. They had been cut down for fuel. There had been a big fig tree in a corner of the walled garden. and that too had gone. What idiocy! Of what use would green logs be when a coal dump decorated part of the tennis-court? I could understand that old Potter did not want to watch the death of a garden.

But I had plenty more to worry me.

Finance. Income tax at ten shillings in the pound, some of my investments gone to pot. Wages and the cost of living rising. The future looked pretty black, even if we were to survive the war.

I had been told that if I was to be a farmer I should have to register, otherwise I should not be recognized, and supplies, etc., would be denied me. I knew that this portended official interference, but there seemed to be no help for it. My farmer friend put me wise as to all this. The Agricultural Committees were in being, and the land being surveyed, and we were to be directed as tb props we should grow. Restrictions would be numberless. We might be ordered to do all sorts of silly things, and some wise ones. Also I was worried about High Beech Wood. I feared that the Army might requisition it for lorries and munitions, and make another sanguinary mess there,