Cold Comfort Farm (4 page)

Flora considered.

‘Well – first of all, I used to stand quite still and stare at the trees and not think about anything. There were usually some trees about, for most games, you know, are played at in the open air, and even in the winter the trees are still there. But I found that people
would
bump into me, so I had to give up standing still, and run, like the others. I always ran after the ball because, after all, Mary, the ball
is
important in a game, isn’t it? until I found they didn’t like me doing that, because I never got near it or hit it or did whatever you are supposed to do to it.

‘So then I ran
away
from it instead, but they didn’t seem to like that either, because apparently people in the audience wondered what I was doing out on the edge of a field all by myself, and running away from the ball whenever I saw it coming near me.

‘And then a whole lot of them got at me one day after one of the games was over, and told me I was
no good
. And the Games Mistress seemed quite worried and asked me if I really didn’t
care
about lacrosse (that was the name of the game), and I said no, I was afraid I didn’t, really; and she said it was a pity, because my father was so “keen”, and what
did
I care about?

‘So I said, well, I was not quite sure, but on the whole I thought I liked having everything very tidy and calm all round me, and not being bothered to do things, and laughing at the kind of joke other people didn’t think at all funny, and going for country walks, and not being asked to express
opinions
about things (like love, and isn’t so-and-so
peculiar
?). So then she said, oh, well, didn’t I think I could try to be a little less slack, because of Father, and I said no, I was afraid I couldn’t; and after that she left me alone. But all the others still said I was
no good
.’

Mrs Smiling nodded her approval, but she told Flora that she talked too much. She added:

‘Now about this going to live with someone. Of course, you can stay here as long as you like, darling; but I suppose you will want to take up some kind of work some time, won’t you, and earn enough to have a flat of your own?’

‘What kind of work?’ asked Flora, sitting upright and graceful in her chair.

‘Well – organizing work, like I used to do.’ (For Mrs Smiling had been an organizer for the L.C.C. before she married ‘Diamond’ Tod Smiling, the racketeer.) ‘Do not ask me what that is, exactly, for I’ve forgotten. It is so long since I did any. But I am sure you could do it. Or you might do journalism. Or book-keeping. Or bee-keeping.’

Flora shook her head.

‘I’m afraid I couldn’t do any of those things, Mary.’

‘Well … what, then, darling? Now, Flora, don’t be
feeble
. You know perfectly well that you will be
mis
erable if you haven’t got a job, when all your friends have. Besides, a hundred pounds a year won’t even keep you in stockings and fans. What will you live on?’

‘My relatives,’ replied Flora.

Mrs Smiling gave her a shocked glance of enquiry, for, though civilized in her tastes, she was a strong-minded and moral woman.

‘Yes, Mary,’ repeated Flora firmly, ‘I am only nineteen, but I have already observed that, whereas there still lingers some absurd prejudice against living on one’s friends, no limits are set, either by society or by one’s own conscience, to the amount one may impose upon one’s relatives.

‘Now I am peculiarly (I think if you could see some of them you would agree that that is the word) rich in relatives, on both sides of the family. There is a bachelor cousin of Father’s in
Scotland. There is a sister of Mother’s at Worthing (as though that were not enough, she breeds dogs). A female cousin of Mother’s lives in Kensington. And there are also some distant cousins, connections of Mother’s, I believe, who live in Sussex …’

‘Sussex …’ mused Mrs Smiling. ‘I don’t much like the sound of that. Do they live on a decaying farm?’

‘I am afraid they do,’ confessed Flora, reluctantly. ‘However, I need not try them unless everything else fails. I propose to send a letter to the relatives I have mentioned, explaining the situation and asking them if they are willing to give me a home in exchange for my beautiful eyes and a hundred pounds a year.’

‘Flora, how
insane
!’ cried Mrs Smiling; ‘you must be
mad
. Why, you would
die
after the first
week
. You know that neither of us have ever been able to
abide
relatives. You must stay here with me, and learn typing and shorthand, and then you can be somebody’s secretary and have a nice little flat of your own, and we can have lovely parties …’

‘Mary, you know I hate parties. My idea of hell is a very large party in a cold room where everybody has to play hockey properly. But you put me off what I was going to say. When I have found a relative who is willing to have me, I shall take him or her in hand, and alter his or her character and mode of living to suit my own taste. Then, when it pleases me, I shall marry.’

‘Who, pray?’ demanded Mrs Smiling, rudely; she was much perturbed.

‘Somebody whom I shall choose. I have definite ideas about marriage, as you know. I have always liked the sound of the phrase “a marriage has been arranged”. And so it should be arranged! Is it not the most important step a mortal creature can take? I prefer the idea of arrangement to that other statement, that marriages are made in Heaven.
My
marriage, Mary, will be arranged
into
Heaven.’

Mrs Smiling shuddered at the compelling, the almost Gallic, cynicism of Flora’s speech. For Mrs Smiling believed that marriages should arise naturally from the union of two loving
natures, and that they should take place in churches, with all the usual paraphernalia and hugaboo; and so had her own marriage arisen and been celebrated.

‘But what I wanted to ask you was this,’ continued Flora. ‘Do you think a circular letter to all these relatives would be a good idea? Would it impress them with my efficiency?’

‘No,’ returned Mrs Smiling, coldly, ‘I do not think it would. It would be
too
putting-off. You must write to them, of course (making it an
entirely
different letter each time, Flora) explaining the situation – that is, if you really are going to be so insane as to go on with the idea.’

‘Don’t fuss, Mary. I will write the letters tomorrow, before lunch. I would write them tonight, only I think we ought to dine out – don’t you? – to celebrate the inauguration of my career as a parasite. I have ten pounds and I will take you to the New River Club – angelic place!’

‘Don’t be silly. You know perfectly well we must have some men.’

‘Then you can find them. Are any of the Pioneers-O home on leave?’

Mrs Smiling’s face assumed that brooding and maternal look which was associated in the minds of her friends with thoughts of the Pioneers-O.

‘Bikki is,’ she said. (All the Pioneers-O had short, brusque nicknames rather like the cries of strange animals, but this was quite natural, for they all came from places full of strange animals.)

‘And your second cousin, Charles Fairford, is in town,’ continued Mrs Smiling. ‘The tall, serious, dark one.’

‘He will do,’ said Flora, with approval. ‘He has such a funny little nose.’

Accordingly, about twenty minutes to nine that night Mrs Smiling’s car drove away from Mouse Place carrying herself and Flora in white dresses, with absurd little wreaths of flowers at the side of their heads; and opposite sat Bikki, and Charles, whom Flora had only met half a dozen times before.

Bikki, who had a shocking stammer, talked a great deal, as people with stammers always love to do. He was plain and
thirtyish, and home on leave from Kenya. He pleased them by corroborating all the awful rumours they had heard about the place. Charles, who looked well in tails, spoke hardly at all. Occasionally he gave a loud, deep, musical ‘Ha! Ha!’ when amused at anything. He was twenty-three, and was to be a parson. He stared out of the window most of the time, and hardly looked at Flora.

‘I don’t think Sneller approves of this excursion,’ observed Mrs Smiling, as they drove away. ‘He looked all dim and concerned. Did you notice?’

‘He approves of me, because I look serious,’ said Flora. ‘A straight nose is a great help if one wishes to look serious.’

‘I do not wish to look serious,’ said Mrs Smiling, coldly. ‘There will be time enough to do that when I have to come and rescue you from some impossible relations living in some ungetatable place because you can’t bear it any longer. Have you told Charles about it?’

‘Good heavens, no! Charles is a relation. He might think I wanted to go and live with him and Cousin Helen in Hertfordshire, and was angling for an invitation.’

‘Well, you could if you liked,’ said Charles, turning from his study of the glittering streets gliding past the windows. ‘There is a swing in the garden and tobacco flowers in the summer, and probably Mother and I would quite like it if you did.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Mrs Smiling. ‘Look – here we are. Did you get a table near the river, Bikki?’

Bikki had managed to do that; and when they were seated facing the flowers and lights on their table they could look down through the glass floor at the moving river, and watch it between their slippers, as they danced. Through the glass walls they could see the barges going past, bearing their romantic red and green lights. Outside it had begun to rain, and the glass roof was soon trickling with silver.

In the course of supper Flora told Charles of her plan. He was silent at first; and she thought he was shocked. For though Charles had not a straight nose, it might have been written of him, as Shelley wrote of himself in the Preface to ‘Julian and Maddalo’, ‘Julian is rather serious.’

But at last he said, looking amused:

‘Well, if you get very sick of it, wherever you are, ’phone me and I will come and rescue you in my ’plane.’

‘Have you a ’plane, Charles? I don’t think an embryo parson should have a ’plane. What breed is it?’

‘A Twin Belisha Bat. Its name is Speed Cop II.’

‘But really, Charles, do you think a parson
ought
to have a ’plane?’ continued Flora, who was in a foolish mood.

‘What has that to do with it?’ said Charles, calmly. ‘Anyway, you let me know and I will come along.’

Flora promised that she would, for she liked Charles, and then they danced together; and all four sat a long time over coffee; and then it was three o’clock and they thought it time to go home.

Charles put Flora into her green coat, and Bikki put Mrs Smiling into her black one, and soon they were driving home through the rainy streets of Lambeth, where every house had windows alight with rose, orange or gold, behind which parties were going on, card or musical or merely frivolous; and the lit shop windows displayed a single frock or a Tang horse to the rain.

‘There’s the Old Diplomacy,’ said Mrs Smiling, interestedly, as they passed that ludicrous box, with baskets of metal flowers tipping off the narrow sills of its windows, and music coming from its upper rooms. ‘How glad I am that poor Tod left it to me. It
does
bring in such a lot of money.’ For Mrs Smiling, like all people who have been disagreeably poor and have become deliciously rich, had never grown used to her money, and was always mentally turning it over in her hands and positively revelling in the thought of what a lot of it she had. And this delighted all her friends, who looked on with approval, just as they would have looked upon a nice child with a toy.

Charles and Bikki said goodnight at the door because Mrs Smiling was too afraid of Sneller to ask them in for a last cocktail, and Flora muttered that it was absurd; but all the same she felt rather subdued as the two wandered to bed up the narrow, black-carpeted staircase.

‘Tomorrow I will write my letters,’ said Flora, yawning, with
one hand on the slender white baluster. ‘Goodnight, Mary.’

Mrs Smiling said ‘Goodnight, darling.’ She added that tomorrow Flora would have thought better of it.

Nevertheless, Flora wrote her letters the next morning. Mrs Smiling did not help her, because she had gone down into the slums of Mayfair on the track of a new kind of brassière which she had noticed in a Jew-shop while driving past in her car. Besides, she disapproved so heartily of Flora’s plan that she would have scorned to assist in the concoction of a single oily sentence.

‘I think it’s
degrading
of you, Flora,’ cried Mrs Smiling at breakfast. ‘Do you truly mean that you don’t ever want to work at
anything
?’

Her friend replied after some thought:

‘Well, when I am fifty-three or so I would like to write a novel as good as “Persuasion”, but with a modern setting, of course. For the next thirty years or so I shall be collecting material for it. If anyone asks me what I work at, I shall say, “Collecting material.” No one can object to that. Besides, so I shall be.’

Mrs Smiling drank some coffee in silent disapproval.

‘If you ask me,’ continued Flora, ‘I think I have much in common with Miss Austen. She liked everything to be tidy and pleasant and comfortable about her, and so do I. You see, Mary’ – and here Flora began to grow earnest and to wave one finger about – ‘unless everything is tidy and pleasant and comfortable all about one, people cannot even begin to enjoy life. I cannot
endure messes
.’

‘Oh, neither can I,’ cried Mrs Smiling, with fervour. ‘If there is one thing I do detest it is a mess. And I do think
you
are
going to be messy, if you go and live with a lot of obscure relations.’

‘Well, my mind is made up, so there is no purpose in arguing,’ said Flora. ‘After all, if I find I cannot abide Scotland or South Kensington or Sussex, I can always come back to London and gracefully give in, and learn to work, as you suggest. But I am not anxious to do that, because I am sure it would be more amusing to go and stay with some of these dire relatives. Besides, there is sure to be a lot of material I can collect for my novel; and perhaps one or two of the relations will have messes or miseries in their domestic circle which I can clear up.’