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

not a little.

Moreover, I have become more and more scared of finance, and one evening I made myself sit down and do what I had funked doing set credit and debit down on paper.

Firstly, what would it cost to put the house in repair and re-decorate it, also cottage and outbuildings? A thousand pounds I thought at post-war prices.

What should I claim and receive for dilapidations?

Probably about half the sum I should have to spend.

What would happen to the hutments?

Would they be offered to me at a price?

I did not want the damned things.

Who would remove them, and when?

But my future income was the problem.

Some of my investments had gone phut, or been re-converted at a lower rate of interest. Rubber was non-existent and even if the companies recovered if we beat the Japs, it might be years before they paid a dividend.

Even with income tax reduced to eight shillings in the pound my invested net income would have fallen to some twelve hundred pounds a year.

And what could I make? Perhaps two hundred pounds or so a year on eggs, poultry and fruit.

What of my expenses?

Rates, light, fuel. Say 200.

Two maids at 2 los. each a week or more, say 300 a year.

Two gardeners at 4 each or so a week. Some 400.

Living for three at thirty bob a head a week, a conservative estimate, 4 IDS. a week. 234 a year.

Personal expenses?

Subscriptions and Insurance, 150.

Car, tax, etc., 70.

Doctors’ and dentists’ bills?

Help to two old cousins, 200 at least.

Repairs and replacements, 100.

Travelling?

Roughly my expenses would amount to 1,800 or more a year.

I should be hundreds of pounds on the wrong side. And what would have to be done about it? Spend capital? Or sell the House?

VII

WHEN I was faced with the possibility of having to sell the House, I was rather like a man who has walked into a lamp-post on a dark night.

I recoiled. I felt my forehead. Ought I not to have been wise as to the presence of the lamp-post? Where was my torch of prescience?

I’ll confess that I was shocked. I and the House to be parted, a place that held all my memories, both happy and bitter? To be dug up and replanted at my age would be like trying to move an old tree. I was rooted here. All my interests and affections were here. All through these war years I had been labouring and enduring because I loved the place, and lived in the thought of returning to it. It was not a mere matter of possessions. The House and I were in each other’s blood!

And what was the alternative? Rose Cottage, a series of hotels, or some damned villa at a place like Bourne mouth where I should have nothing to do but read the paper, potter round the town and play a little bad golf. Such a prospect appalled me, especially so now that I had become a man of my hands, I should be nothing but a peripatetic corpse procrastinating outside the crematorium. Besides, all my old, lovely things, Sibilla’s treasures, were waiting to go home. I wanted to see them in their accustomed places, and lie in my own bed and possess that immemorial vista of the steep valley and the high wood.

I was concentrating on cash, and for the moment I did not foresee those other complications, the ageing of my staff, their possible unfitness for the work such a house would entail, the almost complete dearth of domestic service and its dearness or its dishonesty, the rise in prices, the shortages, the hostility political and otherwise that might marshal themselves against me and mine. In fact, given an adequate income, I still saw myself back in the house with Ellen and Emily, and the two Potters in the garden, and Billy lying between the two white pillars of the porch and watching the road. I had planned all kinds of reconstructive adaptations and changes, a Thujia hedge where the railings had been, oak gates in place of iron, a simplification of the garden, oil for the furnace in lieu of coke and an thracite, one small car, a cutting down of all casual expenses. I proposed to keep on the poultry farm, and engage an ex-Land-Girl to help me with it. On paper, or in fancy, my plan seemed practicable.

But I continued to be haunted by the hiatus between future income and expenditure, and as time went on and the post-war difficulties and disharmonies began to manifest themselves I became more and more worried.

Peter is doing well, thank God! He is being sent home for further treatment and an artificial leg, but he is not to be discharged. They appear to think that he will be fit for some office job at home.

Poor Peter, he won’t like being tied to a chair. He is much too active for such a job, but it will mean security for a time, and he and Sybil may be able to marry. I find that I am looking forward greatly to seeing the lad again.

They say that this is to be the last winter of the war. God grant it may be, for we are getting shabbier and shabbier and more and more tired. One is sick to death of the black-out and restrictions and official fuss. The mean beasts tried to cut down my allowance of petrol, but I protested and asked them if they expected me to carry boxes of eggs on my back. Clothes are becoming both patchy and picturesque. I go about in an old flannel shirt, a shooting jacket and corduroy trousers. I spent some of my coupons on such trousers.

Ellen has been fussing about my wardrobe. Moths have been at my dinner-jacket and black trousers. Damn them! But shall I need such clothes again? Will Labour Ministers deign to wear dinner-jackets? Maybe they will become more dinner-jacketed than the King!

The poor old House is sharing in the increasing shabbiness, peeling and flaking, with its chimneys shedding mortar. The latest crowd expect to go before long, with Invasion in the air. They have been a good crowd, but you cannot have scores of men about a place without wear and tear, and life looking like a moribund sack. Nature’s rubbish and man’s accumulate. Leaves lie in great drifts. Trees and shrubs get tangled up. Fences rot, paint flakes away, tiles and slates slide down, and drains get blocked. Yes, the old House is looking very sad.

I have had more shocks.

I hear that Emily may not be coming back to us, and Ellen talks of retiring, or taking an easier place, and old Potter is feeling the strain.

How can I carry on without these valued helpers? Shall I be able to get substitutes, and at what a price? I am feeling more and more gloomy about the future.

If I were twenty years younger! One cannot take knocks like the young. Yes, oh for youth, strong urgent youth, ready to leap fences and laugh in the face of finality.

A wire from Sybil. Can she come to me for the weekend? By Jove, yes, Sybil is the medicine I need, a tonic in curls and black stockings. I wire her “Delighted,” and I am.

We kill a chicken for Sybil. She can have eggs and my bacon.

I have just come back from work, and am bending down to pull up a sow-thistle in a flower bed when I hear a voice.

“What posh trousers, Uncle!”

Sybil has caught me bending. She has tramped from Melford with her haversack. I straighten up and take one look at her pretty, solid face and those straight-shooting blue eyes. I am glad of Sybil. She is all sorts of things to a tired and depressed old man. She swings the gate open, and I kiss her, and she gives me back my kiss with affection. I feel better than I have felt for days. My old blood needs warming, and a dose of youth.

“Had tea, my dear?”

“No.”

Sybil goes up for a wash and a tidy, and we have tea in the garden. Sybil pours out. Thank God she doesn’t stain her finger-nails and make them look as though she had been dabbling in blood. Wrens don’t. But Sybil is wearing a solemn face, and she is smileless.

“What news of Peter?”

Peter is doing well. He expects to be home before long, but that is not the end of the story, I can divine other developments, other compassions.

“I am going to marry him, Uncle. Peter wants helping. Besides—”

I light my pipe.

“That means that you will be released.”

“Perhaps.”

She takes out her cigarette case.

“I’m worried about Peter.”

“You mean his health?”

“No the afterwards. You remember the last war, Uncle. I don’t. But I’ve heard tales. Ex-officers on the rocks, no jobs, going about trying to sell gramophones, or doing insurance touting. They got rather a raw deal, didn’t they?”

“I’m afraid some of them did.”

She taps her cigarette on her case.

“Pretty bloody after you have done a job and lost a leg doing it. I suppose Peter will get some sort of pension. Just enough to tie him by the other leg. And then even if he got an office job he’d hate it.”

What a little mother-woman is this! I have always understood that the modern young woman is tough, and all bald forehead, lipstick and plucked eyebrows, and a gold-digger in her philosophy.

“Yes. Peter wouldn’t like a cage. I think he had adventure in his blood.”

For the first time she smiles.

“You are a pet, Uncle.”

I feel coy and pleased.

“Well, I don’t know about that. But, adventure.”

“With only a fake-leg. Peter has a little capital, but I haven’t a bean.”

“You’ve got much more than cash, my dear.”

“Oh well I don’t mind wiring in. But one ought to be awfully careful about capital. Don’t you think so, Uncle?”

“I do.”

“You see I’m not Red. All this tosh about equality and easy-osy makes me sick. Brains are going to count and guts, and taking risks.”

I smile upon her.

“Fancy Sybil among the die-hards.”

“Oh I’m not that. I believe in a new sort of world, but not the world of the idiots who think everything is going to be oranges and bananas and no sweat.”

Sybil does me good. She seems to be a symbol of the new world in its pragmatical and generous sanity. On Sunday she helps me with the poultry. And what do you think her passion is? Cooking. Well, well, well!

Yes, I suppose that in spite of all our beneficent babble things will be much the same as after the last war, strikes, and disgruntled men who have lost the habit of work, shouts for more pay, political programmes which promise Utopia and deliver boiled rice, officers searching for jobs, much bad alcohol on the market. And yet I think we may profit by our past mistakes. There has been a fairer spirit abroad during this war; we have shared the danger and the rations, and if that spirit continues we may make less of a mess.

When Sybil had gone, Peter’s problem remained with me. I was to see it as my problem, for Peter and I might be in Queer Street together. I am beginning to think that the war has cured me of much of my curmudgeonry. I have had my life, a good life, even if it has had gashes of anguish in it, but these lads go out to die or to be maimed before life has flowered for them as it had flowered for me. My own