Cold Comfort Farm (30 page)

As Nancy ran off through the clear summer twilight, Flora reverently shut the covers of ‘The Higher Common Sense’. She needed it no longer. It could remain closed until the next time she encountered a Substance not Included in the Outline. And she retired to bed that night in the calm confidence that she had found the way to deal with Aunt Ada Doom.

There was now only a week to go before the wedding, so Flora hoped very much that Claud would send at once the papers for which she had asked. It would probably take time to deal with Aunt Ada, and no time must be wasted if her aim was to be achieved by the day of the wedding.

But Claud did not fail her. The papers arrived by air-mail at noon the next day. They were dropped neatly into the great field by the air-postman, and were accompanied by a plaintive note from Claud asking her what in heck she was up to now? He said that except for the fact that she was larger, she reminded him of a mosquito.

Flora undid the parcel and made quite sure that all the things for which she had asked were there. She then re-coiled her hair
and put on a fresh linen dress, and (as it was luncheon time) directed Mrs Beetle to give to her the tray upon which was arranged Aunt Ada’s lunch.

‘Go on. You’ll strain yerself,’ said Mrs Beetle. ‘It weighs about ’alf er ’undredweight.’

But Flora quietly took the tray and (under the awed eyes of Mark Dolour’s Nancy, Reuben, Mrs Beetle and Sue, Phoebe, Jane and Letty) she arranged upon it the copy of ‘Vogue’, the prospectus of the Hôtel Miramar in Paris and the photographs of Fanny Ward.

‘I am going to take her lunch up to Aunt Ada,’ she announced. ‘If I have not come down by three o’clock, Mrs Beetle, will you kindly bring up some lemonade. At half-past four you may bring up tea and some of that currant cake Phoebe made last week. If I am not down by seven o’clock, please bring up a tray with supper for two, and we will have hot milk and biscuits at ten. Now, goodbye, all of you. I beg of you not to worry. All will be well.’

And slowly, before the fascinated gaze of the Starkadders and Mrs Beetle, Flora began to mount the stairs which led to Aunt Ada’s chamber, bearing the tray of lunch steadily before her. They heard the light sound of her footsteps receding along the corridor; they paused; and the listeners heard, in the airy summer stillness of the house, her tap on the door and her clear voice saying: ‘I have brought your lunch, Aunt Ada. May I come in? It is Flora.’

There was a silence. Then the door was heard to open, and Flora and the tray of lunch passed within.

That was the last that anyone heard or saw of her for nearly nine hours.

At three o’clock, at half-past four and at seven o’clock Mrs Beetle took up the refreshments as she had been instructed. Each time she returned she found the empty plates and cups packed neatly outside the closed door. From within there came the steady rise and fall of voices; but though she listened for many minutes she could not distinguish a word; and this disappointing piece of information was all she had to carry back to the eagerly waiting group downstairs.

At seven o’clock Mr Mybug and Rennett joined the band of watchers, and after waiting until nearly eight o’clock for Flora to come downstairs, they decided that it would be best to begin without her, and made their supper off beef, beer and pickled onions, pleasantly spiced by anxiety and speculation.

After supper they settled down once more to watch and wait. Mrs Beetle wondered a dozen times if she should not just run up with a few sandwiches and some cocoa at nine, in order to see whether there were any developments to be observed. But Reuben said no, she was not to; she had been told to take up hot milk at ten o’clock, and hot milk at ten she should take; he would not have Flora’s instructions disobeyed by the tiniest detail. So she stayed where she was.

They all got very cosy, sitting round the open door in the lingering twilight; and presently Mrs Beetle made them all some barley water flavoured with lemon, and they sat sipping it comfortably, for their throats were quite sore with talking and wondering what on earth Flora could be saying to Aunt Ada Doom, and recalling details of the farm’s history for the past twenty years, and reminding each other what a nuisance old Fig Starkadder had always been, and wondering how Seth was getting on in Hollywood and whether he would run into Amos there, and saying how lovely Elfine’s wedding was going to be, and wondering how Urk and Meriam would get on when they were married, and speculating as to what on earth Judith was doing in London, and, if so, why, and who with? It grew slowly dark and cooler outside, and the summer stars came out.

They were talking away so hard that they never heard the clock strike ten, and it was not until nearly a quarter past that Mrs Beetle suddenly made them all jump by leaping from her chair and saying loudly: ‘There now! I fergot the milk! I’ll ferget me own name next. I’ll take it up at once.’

And she was just going over to the range to put wood on to the ashes, when a sound outside made them all start, and turn their heads in the direction of the dark doorway of the kitchen.

Someone was coming slowly downstairs, with light steps that dragged a little.

Reuben stood up and lit a match, which he held above his
head. The light slowly grew, and into it, through the dark doorway, walked Flora … at last.

She looked composed enough, but rather pale and sleepy, and a curl of her dark gold hair hung loose against her cheek.

‘Hullo,’ she said, pleasantly, ‘you’re all here, then? (Hullo, Mr Mybug, surely it’s time you were in bed?) Can I have that milk now, please, Mrs Beetle? I’ll drink it down here. You need not take any up to Aunt Ada. I’ve put her to bed. She’s asleep.’

There was a gasp of wonder from everybody.

Flora sank into Reuben’s empty chair, with a long yawn.

‘We was feared for ’ee, soul,’ said Letty, reprovingly, after a pause in which lamps were lit and the curtains drawn. Nobody liked to ask any questions, though they were all pop-eyed with curiosity. ‘Dunamany times we near came up to fetch ’ee down again.’

‘Too nice of you,’ said Flora, languidly, with one eye on the preparation of the milk. ‘But it was quite all right, really. Everything’s settled now. You need not worry, Reuben; there will be no fuss at the wedding or anything. We can go right ahead with the food and the decorations. In fact, everything ought to be rather good, in one way and another.’

‘Cousin Flora, no one but ’ee could have done it,’ said Reuben, simply. ‘I – I suppose ’ee wouldn’t tell us how ’twas done?’

‘Well,’ said Flora, diving into the milk, ‘it’s a long story, you know. We talked for hours. I can’t possibly tell you all we said. It would take all night.’ Here she repressed a vast yawn. ‘You’ll see, when the time comes. On the wedding day, I mean. You wait. It will be a surprise. A lovely surprise. I can’t tell you now. It would spoil things. You just wait and see. It will be simply lovely. Surprise!’

Her voice had been growing sleepier and sleepier towards the end of her speech, and just as it finally dwindled into silence, Mrs Beetle darted forward and was just too late to catch the glass of milk as it fell from her hand. She was asleep.

‘Like a tired child,’ said Mr Mybug, who, like most of your brutal intellectuals, was as soft as a cheese underneath. ‘Just like a little tired child’, and he was just reaching out in a dreamy,
absent kind of way to stroke Flora’s hair when Mrs Beetle gave a sharp dab at his hand, exclaiming:

‘Paws off, Pompey!’ which so much upset him that he marched off home, pursued by the wailing Rennett, without pausing to make any farewells.

Mrs Beetle then shoved Susan, Letty, Phoebe, Prue and Jane off to their own chambers, and with the assistance of Reuben roused Flora from her slumber.

She stood up, still very sleepily, and smiled at Reuben as she took her candle from his hand.

‘Goodnight, Cousin Flora. ’Twere a good day for Cold Comfort when first ’ee came here,’ he said, looking down at her.

‘My dear soul, don’t name it. It’s been the most enormous diversion to me,’ said Flora. ‘Just you wait until the wedding day, though. That
is
going to be fun, if you like. Mrs Beetle, you know how I dislike making complaints, but the cutlets Mrs Starkadder and I had for supper were slightly underdone. We both noticed it. Mrs Starkadder’s, indeed, was almost
raw
.’

‘I’m sorry, I’m sure, Miss Poste,’ said Mrs Beetle. And then everybody went sleepily up to bed.

Midsummer Day dawned with a thick grey haze in the air and a heavy dew on the meadows and trees.

Down among the little gardens of the still-sleeping cottages of Howling an idyllic procession might have been observed making its way from flower-bed to flower-bed, like ravaging bees. It was none other than the three members of Mrs Beetle’s embryo jazz-band, shepherded by the patriarchal form of Agony Beetle himself.

They had been commissioned to pick the bunches of flowers which were to decorate the church and the refreshment-tables up at the farm. A lorry load of pink and white rose-peonies, from Covent Garden, had already been discharged at the gates of the farm; and, even now, Mrs Beetle and Flora were crossing and re-crossing the yard with their arms full of sleeping flowers.

Flora noted the heat-haze with joy. It would be a day of heat; brilliant, blue and radiant.

Adam Lambsbreath had been even earlier astir, making wreaths of wallflowers with which to garland the horns of Feckless, Pointless, Graceless and Aimless. It was not until he actually came to affix the decorations that he observed that none of the cows had any horns left, and had been forced to fasten the wreaths round their necks and tails instead. This done, he led them forth to their morning pasture, singing a smutty wedding song he had learnt for the marriage of George I.

As the day emerged from the heat-haze, and the sky grew blue and sunny, the farm buzzed with energy like a hive. Phoebe, Letty, Jane and Susan were whisking syllabubs in the dairy;
Micah carried the pails of ice, in which stood the champagne, down into the darkest and coolest corner of the cellar. Caraway and Harkaway were fixing the awning across from the gate of the yard to the door of the kitchen. Ezra was putting his rows of beans under a net to protect them from damage during the festivities. Mark and Luke were arranging the long trestle tables in the kitchen, while Mrs Beetle and Flora unpacked the silver and linen sent down in crates from a London store. Reuben was filling with water the dozens of jars and vases in which the flowers were to be arranged. Mark Dolour’s Nancy was superintending the boiling of two dozen eggs for everybody’s breakfast. And upstairs on her bed lay Flora’s new dress, a wonder of frilled and quilted, ruffled and tucked, pinked and shirred green batiste, and her plain hat of white straw.

At half-past eight everybody sat down to breakfast in the dairy, for the kitchen was being prepared for the reception, and could not be used for meals today.

‘I’ll just take up ’
er
breakfast,’ said Mrs Beetle. ‘She’ll ’ave to ’ave it cold today. There’s ’alf an ’am and a jar of pickled onions. I won’t be a jiff.’

‘Oh, I’ve just been in to see Aunt Ada,’ said Flora, looking up from her breakfast. ‘She doesn’t want anything for breakfast except a Hell’s Angel. Here give me an egg. I’ll mix it for her.’ She rose, and went over to the newly-stocked store cupboard.

Mrs Beetle stared, while Flora tossed an egg, two ounces of brandy, a teaspoonful of cream and some chips of ice in a jam-jar, and everybody else was very interested, too.

‘There,’ said Flora, giving Mrs Beetle the foaming jam-jar. ‘You run along upstairs with that.’

So Mrs Beetle ran; but was heard to observe that it would take more than a mess like that to keep
her
stomach from rumbling before one o’clock. As for the other Starkadders, they were considerably intrigued by this dramatic change in Aunt Ada’s diet.

‘Is the old ’un gone off again?’ asked Reuben, anxiously. ‘Will she come down and upset everything after all, do ’ee think, Cousin Flora?’

‘Not on your sweet life,’ said Flora. ‘Everything will be all
right. Remember, I told you there was going to be a surprise. Well, it’s just beginning.’

And the Starkadders were satisfied.

Breakfast over, they all fell to work like demons, for the ceremony was at half-past twelve and there was much to be done.

Agony Beetle and the jazz-band arrived with their arms full of nasturtiums, sweet-william and cherry-pie; and were sent off on a second journey for more.

Reuben, obeying a request from Flora, pulled out from the cupboard in which it was usually kept the large carved chair in which Aunt Ada had sat on the night of the Counting; and Mark and Luke (who were so stupid that they could have been relied upon to lay a mine under the house without commenting upon it) were told to decorate it with wreaths of rose-peonies.

It was half-past ten. The awning was up, looking immediately festive, as awnings always do. And in the kitchen the two long trestle tables were decorated and ready.

Flora had arranged two kinds of food for the two kinds of guests she was expecting. For the Starkadders and such of the local horny peasantry as would attend there were syllabubs, ice-pudding, caviare sandwiches, crab patties, trifle and champagne. For the County there was cider, cold home-cured ham, cheese, home-made bread and salads made from local fruit. The table from which the County were to feed was rich with cottage flowers. The rosy efflorescence of the peonies floated above the table from which the peasantry would eat.

Wreaths of cottage flowers, like chains of little gems, hung from the rafters. Their reds, oranges, blues and pinks glowed against the soft, sooty-black of the ceiling and walls. The air smelled sweet of cherry-pie and fruit salad. Outside the sun flamed in glory; and inside the kitchen there were these sweet smells and cool, delicious-looking food.

Flora took a last look round, and was utterly satisfied.

It was eleven o’clock.

She went upstairs to Aunt Ada’s room, knocked at the door, and in response to a crisp: ‘Come in, my dear’, entered and shut the door carefully behind her.