THE PROVINCIAL LADY SERIES - All 5 Novels in One Edition (Complete Edition). E. M. Delafield
from the children, and realistic drawing from Robin entitled "Ill person being eaten up by jerms".
(Query: Is dear Robin perhaps future Heath Robinson or Arthur Watts?)
Soon after this all becomes incoherent and muddled. Chief recollection is of hearing the doctor say that of course my Age is against me, which hurts my feelings and makes me feel like old Mrs. Blenkinsop. After a few days, however, I get the better of my age, and am given champagne, grapes, and Valentine's Meat Juice.
Should like to ask what all this is going to cost, but feel it would be ungracious.
The children, to my astonishment, are up and about again, and allowed to come and see me. They play at Panthers on the bed, until removed by Nurse. Robin reads aloud to me, article on Lord Chesterfield from pages of Time and Tide, which has struck him because he, like the writer, finds it difficult to accept a compliment gracefully. What do I do, he enquires, when I receive so many compliments all at once that I am overwhelmed? Am obliged to admit that I have not yet found myself in this predicament, at which Robin looks surprised, and slightly disappointed.
Robert, the nurse, and I decide in conclave that the children shall be sent to Bude for a fortnight with Nurse, and Mademoiselle given a holiday in which to recover from her exertions. I am to join the Bude party when doctor permits.
Robert goes to make this announcement to the nursery, and comes back with fatal news that Mademoiselle is blessée, and that the more he asks her to explain, the more monosyllabic she becomes. Am not allowed either to see her or to write explanatory and soothing note and am far from reassured by Vicky's report that Mademoiselle, bathing her, has wept, and said that in England there are hearts of stone.
May 12th.—Further interlude, this time owing to trouble with the eyes. (No doubt concomitant of my Age, once again.) The children and hospital nurse depart on the 9th, and I am left to gloomy period of total inactivity and lack of occupation. Get up after a time and prowl about in kind of semi-ecclesiastical darkness, further intensified by enormous pair of tinted spectacles. One and only comfort is that I cannot see myself in the glass. Two days ago, decide to make great effort and come down for tea, but nearly relapse and go straight back to bed again at sight of colossal demand for the Rates, confronting me on hall-stand without so much as an envelope between us.
(Mem.: This sort of thing so very unlike picturesque convalescence in a novel, when heroine is gladdened by sight of spring flowers, sunshine, and what not. No mention ever made of Rates, or anything like them.)
Miss the children very much and my chief companion is kitchen cat, a hard-bitten animal with only three and a half legs and a reputation for catching and eating a nightly average of three rabbits. We get on well together until I have recourse to the piano, when he invariably yowls and asks to be let out. On the whole, am obliged to admit that he is probably right, for I have forgotten all I ever knew, and am reduced to playing popular music by ear, which I do badly.
Dear Barbara sends me a book of Loopy Limericks, and Robert assures me that I shall enjoy them later on. Personally, feel doubtful of surviving many more days of this kind.
May 13th.—Regrettable, but undeniable ray of amusement lightens general murk on hearing report, through Robert, that Cousin Maud Blenkinsop possesses a baby Austin, and has been seen running it all round the parish with old Mrs. B., shawls and all, beside her. (It is many years since Mrs. B. gave us all to understand that if she so much as walked across the room unaided, she would certainly fall down dead.)
Cousin Maud, adds Robert thoughtfully, is not his idea of a good driver. He says no more, but I at once have dramatic visions of old Mrs. B. flying over the nearest hedge, shawls waving in every direction, while Cousin Maud and the baby Austin charge a steam-roller in a narrow lane. Am sorry to record that this leads to hearty laughter on my part, after which I feel better than for weeks past.
The doctor comes to see me, says that he thinks my eyelashes will grow again—(should have preferred something much more emphatic, but am too much afraid of further reference to my age to insist)—and agrees to my joining children at Bude next week. He also, reluctantly, and with an air of suspicion, says that I may use my eyes for an hour every day, unless pain ensues.
May 15th.—Our Vicar's wife, hearing that I am no longer in quarantine, comes to enliven me. Greet her with an enthusiasm to which she must, I fear, be unaccustomed, as it appears to startle her. Endeavour to explain it (perhaps a little tactlessly) by saying that I have been alone so long...Robert out all day...children at Bude...and end up with quotation to the effect that I never hear the sweet music of speech, and start at the sound of my own. Can see by the way our Vicar's wife receives this that she does not recognise it as a quotation, and believes the measles to have affected my brain. (Query: Perhaps she is right?) More normal atmosphere established by a plea from our Vicar's wife that kitchen cat may be put out of the room. It is, she knows, very foolish of her, but the presence of a cat makes her feel faint. Her grandmother was exactly the same. Put a cat into the same room as her grandmother, hidden under the sofa if you liked, and in two minutes the grandmother would say: "I believe there's a cat in this room," and at once turn queer. I hastily put kitchen cat out of the window, and we agree that heredity is very odd.
And now, says our Vicar's wife, how am I? Before I can reply, she does so for me, and says that she knows just how I feel. Weak as a rat, legs like cotton-wool, no spine whatever, and head like a boiled owl. Am depressed by this diagnosis, and begin to feel that it must be correct. However, she adds, all will be different after a blow in the wind at Bude, and meanwhile, she must tell me all the news.
She does so.
Incredible number of births, marriages, and deaths appear to have taken place in the parish in the last four weeks; also Mrs. W. has dismissed her cook and cannot get another one, our Vicar has written a letter about Drains to the local paper and it has been put in, and Lady B. has been seen in a new car. To this our Vicar's wife adds rhetorically: Why not an aeroplane, she would like to know? (Why not, indeed?)
Finally a Committee Meeting has been held—at which, she interpolates hastily I was much missed—and a Garden Fête arranged, in aid of funds for Village Hall. It would be so nice, she adds optimistically, if the Fête could be held here. I agree that it would, and stifle a misgiving that Robert may not agree. In any case, he knows, and I know, and our Vicar's wife knows, that Fete will have to take place here, as there isn't anywhere else.
Tea is brought in—superior temporary's afternoon out, and Cook has, as usual, carried out favourite labour-saving device of three sponge-cakes and one bun jostling one another on the same plate—and we talk about Barbara and Crosbie Carruthers, beekeeping, modern youth, and difficulty of removing oil-stains from carpets. Have I, asks our Vicar's wife, read A Brass Hat in No Man's Land? No, I have not. Then, she says, don't, on any account. There are so many sad and shocking things in life as it is, that writers should confine themselves to the bright, the happy, and the beautiful. This the author of A Brass Hat has entirely failed to do. It subsequently turns out that our Vicar's wife has not read the book herself, but that our Vicar has skimmed it, and declared it to be very painful and unnecessary. (Mem.: Put Brass Hat down for Times Book Club list, if not already there.)
Our Vicar's wife suddenly discovers that it is six o'clock, exclaims that she is shocked, and attempts fausse sortie, only to return with urgent recommendation to me to try Valentine's Meat Juice, which once practically, under Providence, saved our Vicar's uncle's life. Story of the uncle's illness, convalescence, recovery, and subsequent death at the age of eighty-one, follows. Am unable to resist telling her, in return, about wonderful effect of Bemax on Mary Kell-way's youngest, and this leads—curiously enough—to the novels of Anthony Trollope, death of the Begum of Bhopal, and scenery in the Lake Country.
At twenty minutes to seven, our Vicar's wife is again shocked, and rushes out of the house. She meets Robert on the doorstep and stops to tell him that I am as thin as a rake, and a very bad colour, and the eyes, after measles, often give rise to serious trouble. Robert, so far as I can hear, makes no answer to any of it, and our Vicar's wife finally departs.
(Query