Laughing House - Warwick Deeping (good books to read for 12 year olds .TXT) 📗

out a hand to me.

“Oh, Uncle, let’s play with it; let’s think.”

I do not know whether it was his enthusiasm that lit up both me and the landscape, but as I sat beside him and looked at the shabby old house, it and its wild garden seemed to take on a strange glamour. I might have been seeing it anew, or for the first time, and the old place was pure fantasy. It made me think of the work of a master like William Nicholson, so complete, so touched with the brilliance of a super-consciousness, rich and mysterious and yet so vividly real. My feeling for landscape seemed to quicken, the soft shapeliness of trees, and the waywardness of some particular tree, and the more wayward waywardness of water. In this green and crumpled valley with its knolls and hollows—the light was caught and held and etched with secret shadows. I saw more colour in the scene than ever I had seen before.

I must have gone into a sort of dream, for Peter’s voide brought me back to actuality.

“You’ve gone fey, Uncle.”

“My lad, it was you who started it.”

He gave a little laugh, and nursed his stump.

“Crackers, what! Maybe when’ the office-boy thinks you a bit balmy creation’s in the aif.”

“Could it be done? Could I—?”

And then he broke loose and began to talk inspired reality. The thing would be to get a plan down on paper, how many bedrooms, how many bathrooms and W.C.‘s, how many cars could be garaged, what staff would be needed, what cutlery.

I gave him credit for the W.C.‘s!

“It seems to me, my lad, that we are both of us balmy. But, my God, where are towels and sheets and what-not to come from?”

“You once told me you had a pretty good stock.”

“I have.”

“So have I.”

“You!”

“Yes, it must have been inspiration. Put some of my cash into equipment. All safe, too.”

And then I asked him a most pregnant question.

“What about Sybil?”

“Sybil. She’d simply love it.”

I wondered about Sybil!

After dinner and a bottle of Burgundy Peter lay on my sofa with a writing-pad on his thigh, while I sat by the window and smoked a pipe. He appeared almost as familiar with the lay-out of the House as I was, but before we began the game of planning I had several questions to put to him.

“Let’s be ruthless, my lad, and do catechisms.”

“Righto, Uncle.”

“Firstly, you and Sybil have to live. Secondly, would this show offer you sufficient scope? I thought your idea was rather on the Dorchester-Mayfair scale.”

He gave me a solemn grin.

“Country for me, Uncle. I don’t want to be a Monte Carlo dude, complete with corsets and mascara eye lashes. Besides, our own show. Always one’s own show.”

“I should have to pay you both a salary.”

“Would you? Well, we shouldn’t be greedy. Just enough to carry on with while we got going.”

“Yes, my dear, but would there be sufficient scope?”

Again he grinned at me, but I had the feeling that he was vetting my mood, and its possible implications.

“Couldn’t we build, sir, if the results justified it?”

“Build?”

“Yes, extra bedrooms, out at the back, without spoiling the atmosphere?”

“I suppose we could. But when?”

“Well, that would be in the future, and when we felt it would be justified.”

“And the staff?”

“I have ideas about staff. It might be a kind of ama teur show to begin with, but dash it our class has the guts and the brains to do as well or better than the so-called pros.”

“Yes, why not?”

“Then, Uncle, you’ve got the land. You’re a bit of an expert on food. Grow our own fruit and vegetables, and provide our own eggs and poultry.”

“That’s an idea. You seem to bristle with ideas.”

He laughed.

“Initiative, Uncle. There is so damned little of it, these days. Why shouldn’t our show be the most posh place in Surrey?”

X

I SLEPT on the proposition, and was surprised to find on waking that it piqued me. Maybe it was the sunlight on my window, and the feeling of youth in the house, and the consciousness of comradeship that saved me from playing the old buffer and resenting alarms and excursions. Moreover, as I lay there I realized that I was not the old potterer of four years ago, and that I was touched and perhaps flattered by the offer of youth’s partnership. And if I had changed, so had the House. In spite of multitudinous problems I felt that Peter’s plan was not mad-cap, and that in the new world the House might play a part.’ As Peter had said, it would give service, and succour and beauty to the tired and the homeless.

It was my custom to go downstairs and brew my own early morning tea, for I was up soon after six, and I made tea for two, and knocked at the parlour doon The young sleep late and I found Peter sleeping, one arm under his head, and his young face strangely serene. I stood holding the tray and looking at him; his sleeping dreamy face did me good.

I touched him on the shoulder.

“Tea, my lad.”

He came awake with a startled stare.

“Hullo, Uncle.”

“Tea.”

He sat up.

“I say, you shouldn’t do this.”

“Why not? I like it. Not virtue.”

I had jobs to do between early tea and breakfast, and I took my bike and rode up to what I now called the farm. I’ll confess that I was taken with the idea of being a provider of food and of fruit, for it would give me a definite part in the adventure, especially so since food might be short for many years. As I rounded the corner below the pool I came” upon a scene of crowded activity} lorries were being loaded, and brown figures jostling in and out of the house. What was in the air? I saw the CXC. standing near the portico, with map in his hands, and I left my bike against the farm gate and went to speak with him.

“Are we losing you?”

He gave me a satirical grin.

“Will you be sor’ry, sir?”

“Well, you have been a good crowd.”

“Thanks. Yes, sudden orders. Move for embarkation.”

I could see that he was busy, but I had a question I wanted to ask.

“Do you know who is following you in?”

“No one. We have had no orders to hand over to a new crowd.”

“You mean the house will be empty?”

“As far as I can tell. You might even get it derequisitioned, sir.”

“Well, I’m damned,” said I.

I rushed through my jobs and trundled back at full speed with the news, to find Peter leaning on the garden fence with his crutches beside him.

“I’ll give you a guess, my lad.”

I was hot and I had dismounted most ungracefully.

“What’s the excitement?”

“Guess?”

“Hitler has chucked?”

“No, not quite that. The troops are moving out, and no one seems to be coming in.”

He straightened up on his one leg.

“Gosh, it’s an omen! And we can go and prowl just as we please.”

We did.

I had not been inside the House for the best part of two years, and I will admit that I was scared, fearing what we should find. Those gentlemen who spend their lives debauching all sentiment and lifting their legs over the cleanliness of human behaviour might have chortled over my reactions, for I had a feeling of eeriness and of ghostliness as we stood and looked at the house. Shabby it was, and sad, and now strangely silent, almost a dead house. Its shutters had been closed and they sug gested the bleached closed eyelids of a corpse.

Peter was poised on his crutches.

“Not too bad,” said he. “Oceans of paint needed, and glass.”

Oh, sanguine youth! But I was glad of his youthfulness and its significance. We crossed the weedy gravel, and I saw that some careless or thoughtful soul had left the key in the great white door, though its surface was like a desquamating skin.

I unlocked the door and pushed it open, and its hinges gave a pathetic squeak. An unhappy omen this!

Said Peter: “Perhaps you would like to go over by yourself.”

Now, how had he come by so sensitive and valid a thought?

“Yes, I think I will, and see the worst.”

“I’ll potter round the garden.”

There was a surprise in store for me. The old place was dark, and the first thing I did was to drop the bars and open the shutters. Light, and the light was more cheering than I could have believed. The hall was clean, surprisingly clean. I turned into what had been the drawingroom and let in light, and stood staring. The room looked as though it had been scrubbed, floor, skirting boards and window frames. The old Jacobean-patterned paper was scarred and faded, but it still gave to the room its pleasant, tapestried effect. I ventured into the other rooms, dining-room, library, study, billiard-room, and found them equally dean. By Gemini, this unit and its C.O. must have had consideration and a conscience.

But if these rooms reassured me, I was to be aston ished when I explored the kitchen. In the old days it had been a great barrack of a place, with stone floors, and in my wife’s time we had reconstituted it, boarded the floor, and partitioned off a part of it as a storeroom. The Army had removed the partition to give the cooks more scope. But believe it or not, the whole place had been distempered and the ceiling whitewashed. The big Agar cooker was as bright as a new pin, and the old grate, which had been left in place, was no rusty ruin, but dean black lead. A first-class, house-proud cook might have been in charge here, a woman to whom squalor and the septic male were anathema. I screwed up my eyes. Yes, the thing was true. This Unit must have been well and cleanly fed by cooks who had fastidiousness and conscience.

Well well well! The scullery and butler’s pantry were equally clean, and when I looked out of a window I saw an incinerator smoking in the yard. The Army had collected and set fire to its rubbish. I was to discover later that old tins and jam jars had been buried in a neat grave behind the stables.

Greatly reassured I climbed the stairs. No obscene emblems, no lewd scribbles! The many bedrooms had suffered wear and tear, but they were clean, and some of the wallpaper was still passable. The seat of one lava tory had been broken and repaired. The baths were still baths, even if the taps were tarnished. Going below again I looked into the furnace-room and breathed a sigh of relief. The furnace was not rusty scrap-iron, and someone had smeared it over with motor oil.

I remember taking off my hat and scratching my head, a human and primitive gesture.

What a different crowd had this one been from the first lot. Decent fellows, and more than that. I very much doubted whether there was another house in the whole country which could show such cleanliness and consideration. My first thought was that I would write to’ the CO. and express my wonder and thanks, and that I would enclose a cheque for the benefit of the men’s regimental fund.

I went out to find Peter sitting on a patch of rough grass, and I was aware of his eyes questioning me.

“Not too bad, sir?”

“It’s a perfect marvel,” said I, “the place has been cleaned up from top to bottom, and even the bath-taps