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

window in one of the coach-houses and in an empty stable. Logs we had in plenty from the woods, and a circular saw which Grylls operated. He and the gardeners had their share of logs.

I was shrugging my shoulders at the war. This fierce winter seemed much more with us. Hitler had his plunder and his gangster pact with Russia, and our helplessness was obvious, though I was worried about our shipping.

What a spring 1940 gave us! It was both lovely, and disastrous in the havoc it revealed. In spite of their protecting bracken many precious things were dead, withered and dry and oftly asking for the bonfire. Lavender, rosemary, santolina, and our cistus bushes had to go up in flames. The grass had a grizzled greyness until rain and sunshine set it growing. Never had a spring been more welcome and more lovely, though it was to be a harbinger of the blackest days this country has ever had to face. Oh that month of May, with the apple blossom falling, and the thorns in flower, bluebells thick and scented under the beeches, black birds singing, and then Dunkirk! A strange sense of unreality was with us. Surrey in the spring, and disaster so very near! Even the blackbird’s song had a note of tragedy.

Then the collapse of France!

My men were mute. There was dumb dread in them. Grylls, the most conversational of creatuires, did not utter a word as he drove me into Melford. I too had been shocked out of my country calm. We were alone, utterly alone. What was to be done? I felt in me a desperate urge for action, but I was an old man and useless.

Food? Yes, one could grow food. We might be in desperate need of it.

I remember strolling up to Beechhanger Wood that June evening, with Billy at my heels. Even the dog seemed sobered. Grylls and young Potter had gone off to Framley Green to be enrolled in the new Home Guard. I sat on a root of one of the beeches, and looked down at the House, so white and solid and calm, with the stout legs of the portico defiant and unyielding. A poignant feeling of unreality possessed me. It did not seem credible that this English scene was under the edge of tragedy, with the evening sunlight on the woods and valley. I could hear the moorhens on the pool. A little plume of smoke rose placidly from a chimney. I could see old Potter in the fruit garden, busy with the sprayer, though he should have knocked off two hours ago. He, too, was restless and trying to comfort himself with doing things.

I remember thinking “I have a couple of guns, a rook rifle and an old service revolver. We could make some sort of futile fight of it. And then? If a German bullet had not got one a bullet through one’s own head.”

What a prospect on a summer evening such as this, with the English scene so peaceful and perfect! I looked at the dog, and I looked at the house. To do the job thoroughly I should have to shoot poor little Bill, and set fire to the house before shooting myself. How his tory repeated itself! I could picture a Romano-British country gentleman having to make that choice when the barbarians swarmed butchering and burning into these British valleys.

Yet, there was a strange illusion of peace pervading our landscape. The sun rose and set; Emily and Ellen were busy about the house; chickens were fed; we picked strawberries, and Ellen made jam. The two Potters were digging up part of the valley field for war-crops, winter greens and garden swedes, etc. Never had I seen them sweat so hard. I was drawing out plans upon paper for turning much of the grass land into arable. The Home Guard paraded on Framley Green with seven shot guns, my rook rifle, and one old service rifle. I heard that one or two families had fled for prolonged holidays in Devon or Scotland. I was told that trenches and anti-tank ditches were being dug along the Downs, and strong-points built, and I walked up to Roman Heath one morning, and was able to see the white chalk-scars in the green hillsides. Somehow it seemed incredible. Always, at the back of one’s mind was that strange feeling of unreality.

For weeks I did not see a single figure in khaki. The local territorials had gone, no one knew whither. Conscription was with us, and I began to realize that I might lose two out of three of my men. I did, Grylls, grown restless, went off to munitions, and young Potter disappeared as a volunteer for the army.

Yet I continued to cherish the illusion that I and the House would be one. We should stand the siege together and tighten our belts, and confront whatever fate might have in store for us. Old Potter, Emily and Ellen were all of an age that would not render them liable to war service, and I managed to engage another old man who had been left derelict by one of the fugitive families. I was getting out nice plans on paper, and taking off my own coat and handling tools that were more potent than trowels and secateurs. I was proposing to plant more fruit, get the South Mead ploughed by one of my farmer friends, and grow corn and potatoes. I would buy in more poultry, and lay in a reserve store of grain. Geese would do well in the Valley Meadow if part of it was wired against foxes, and I had several hundred yards of wire netting in store. Mrs. Grylls had gone factorywards. I bought in bottles for fruit, an Auto-Culto with reaper attachment, and a small hand-mill for grinding meal. I even managed to purchase a small portable thresher, and installed it in an empty loose-box. I will confess that I enjoyed all this planning. It took my mind off the war, and made me feel somewhat useful. In my innocence I did not foresee how futile all my planning would prove, and that the House and I were to be parted.

Oh, by the way, I have forgotten to mention our evacuees. The authorities scheduled us for ten children, but when I put it before them that my maids were elderly and determined to leave should children come, my complement was altered to three nursing mothers. So, in place of Emily’s “Dirty little beasts,” we had three very unclean, prospective mothers, one of whom got drunk at “The Crooked Billet” at Framley on her first night. These good ladies remained with us for a little over three weeks. It appeared to be a very crooked billet so far as they were concerned, and bored and quarrelsome and utterly unhelpful, they all sneaked back to London. I cannot say that we were sorry.

For, let us be candid. I could be classed as a selfish, and unpatriotic old curmudgeon, but when we have cut the sentimental cackle, one has to confess that you cannot mix classes that are as different as chalk and cheese. These women from the East End were much less clean than animals, and far less likeable. They were lazy lumps of flesh, coarse, vulgar, noisy, ignorant. You could hear their hideous voices and their obscene laughter all over the house. And you could smell them. Blame our social scheme, if it pleases you, but the fact was incontestable, they were no better than unclean savages in our lovely house.

I think it must have been in August that I received my first warning. I had gone shopping in Melford, and I met Gibson in the ironmongers. He was looking worried and cross.

“Been requisitioned yet?”

“Requisitioned?”

“They are taking my place over next week. I expect you will be.”

I think I gaped at him.

“Turning you out?”

“Yes, lock, stock and barrel. The Army, you know.”

I was staggered. Somehow, it had never occurred to me that such upheavals could happen in our quiet world. To be driven out of the house in which one had lived all one’s life, and for an indefinite period! And what of the House? I felt shocked and scared. The magnitude of the disaster grew as I contemplated it, for a disaster it would be both to me and the House. I was pretty wise as to what such an invasion would mean, for pack men into a herd and they are apt to develop the habits of a herd. It was as though the House was to become a whore at the beck and call of any half-educated lout.

I should have no home. I should lose my loyal staff. I should have to move all my furniture and gear, my wine and stores, and house them somewhere. All my nicely conceived plans would go to pot, and no doubt there were people who would chuckle and say that I had received rough justice.

“There’s a war on, you old hoarder. Get out. Pantaloons like you don’t matter.”

Which was true.

But I was frightened for the House. It would become a casual billet for a succession of casual men, most of whom would have no feeling for beauty, and some of whom might take pleasure in doing wanton damage. Dirt and devastation-might be the House’s lot, broken windows, walls scribbled on, paint worn away, floors and woodwork damaged. It might become a derelict house, unloved and uncared for. And what of the garden? I saw it as worse than a wilderness, trees broken, plants trampled on, huts stuck here and there, lorries sitting on the lawns, the accumulating mess of casual man smearing the whole place.

Yes, I was scared. That which had happened to Gibson might very well happen to me.

Lawton & Smith of Melford had done legal work for me, and I turned in for a talk with Lawton. If I received a requisition, notice could I do anything about it? He was benignly cynical, and almost I could hear him saying: “My dear old idiot, don’t you realize the inevitableness of all this? Once you let the machine loose it smashes and crashes through everything. A country that has played the fool as ours has done, must take the consequences.” But he gave me one hint. “You might try to find other accommodation for yourself — that is if you wish to stay in the neighbourhood.” I did wish to stay. It might prove a painful experience, but I was not going to desert the House.

I was lucky I found an emergency home, “Rose Cottage” on the outskirts of Framley. Its owner had been called up, and his wife had joined one of the women’s corps, and the cottage was for sale. In fact, Lawton put me on to it, and I bought Rose Cottage. It was less than a mile from Beech Hill.

The blow has fallen.

I found an ominous looking envelope on my break fast table, and when I had opened it and unfolded the official form I knew that I was to be homeless.

To the owner and occupier of the land and buildings described on the reverse hereof:

I, Major General So and So, being one of a class of persons to whom the Secretary of State as a competent authority for the purpose of Part IV of the Defence Regulations, 1939, has in exercise of the powers contained in that part of the said Defence Regulations delegated the necessary authority, give notice that I, on behalf of the Secretary of State, take possession of the land and buildings described on the reverse hereof.

AJB. C. So and So. Lieut. Colonel.

Quartering Commandant.

What verbiage! It would have been much simpler to say “Get Out.”

The form was dated