Conference at Cold Comfort Farm Page 5

  Phoebe stared at it apathetically, but finally put it in her pocket.

  Flora then drew from her some account of the other female Starkadders. They seemed in a pretty low way, but fortunately it was negative rather than positive lowness, and she was pleased to hear that they derived most of their pleasure in life from going to church. Having made a note to suggest to the vicar a sermon upon ‘Proud Hearts and Idle Hands’, she directed Phoebe to bring up to her a tray of supper, for she had decided not to attend the communal dinner on the first evening: the delegates were more than capable of entertaining themselves, and Phoebe and the others would cook and wait at table. She wished to be alone, to think over what she had learned that afternoon.

  Evening passed into twilight while she was doing so, and when at last she went downstairs it was night, and the summer moonlight shone through many open windows into the farm. A distant roar, like the Cornish surf only more self-conscious, came from the Greate Laundrie, where the delegates were drinking their coffee, but otherwise all was quiet.

  By the bright moonlight Flora wandered from room to room. Her first hours there had been so fully occupied that she had not been able to receive more than a general impression of snowy walls where once rude words had leered out from sooty surfaces, and gleaming floors that were formerly dull and scored by hobnailed boots, and that everything was labelled in wrought iron Greate or Lytel; the Greate Scullerie, the Lytel Rush-dippe Roome, the Greate Staircasee, the Lytel Stille-Roome, the Greate Bedderoome, the Lytel Closete, and so on. But now, observing at her leisure, she hardly recognized some of the shocking old cupboards and filthy cobwebbed alcoves, fitted up as they were with window-seats and oak chests. There were typical farmhouse grandfather clocks ticking all over the place, and where there could have been an expanse of bare wall, it was filled up with a Welsh dresser all over peasant pottery. In the Lytel Scullerie there were fifteen scythes arranged in a half-moon over the sink; there were horse-brasses all round the Greate Inglenooke and all round the Lytel Fireplaces, and Toby jugs and spotted dogs all over the windowsills. The air in the rooms smelt faintly of warm, damp grass: otherwise it was exactly like being locked in the Victoria and Albert Museum after closing time.

  Flora ended her tour in that small parlour with faded green wallpaper which had been her favourite refuge during her first visit. She sat down on an oak settle (the tubby little armchairs covered in green repp, the one without arms intended for a lady in a crinoline and the one with arms for a gentleman, had of course gone) and gazed about her. Her spirits felt rather low. The green wallpaper had gone, too, and on the oak panelling thus revealed hung a perfect rash of samplers, with enough alphabets, arks, numerals and cross-stitch trees to stock the entire basement of The Needlewoman.

  Is it a judgement on the Starkadders because they kept the place in such a mess? she wondered.

  Gradually her thoughts were interrupted by a sound like that of someone engaged in eating something, under the open window. Rising, she tiptoed across to it and looked out.

  A little elderly man in shabby clothes was sitting immediately beneath the sill with a packet of sandwiches, gazing out across the moonlit Downs. On Flora’s giving a cough he turned round, and scrambled to his feet.

  ‘Just havin’ a bite. No ’arm intended,’ he said in a weak, apologetic voice.

  ‘And no harm done,’ Flora replied reassuringly. ‘Er – are you on a visit here? Or perhaps you have relatives in Howling?’

  She had observed that Mdlle Avaler and Greetë Grümbl, the Swedish Existentialist delegate, wore valuable jewellery, and unidentified visitors must therefore not be permitted to hang about the farm.

  ‘I did ’ave, madam, but ’e must ’ave Moved On. He never answered me p.c.’

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Rumbottom, madam. He worked ’ere fourteen years ago, and I thought ’e might still be ’ere. Helping with the spring ungyun harvest, he was. So me first holiday for ten years bein’ due to me, I sends Rufie –’

  ‘?’

  ‘Rufus Rumbottom was his full name, madam – a p.c. sayin’ I was comin’ an’ might look ’im up. But if he ain’t here, he ain’t. Rufie always was a one for change.’

  During a pause, Flora observed him more closely – though indeed he was so weedy and meek and small that only his being solitary in the moonlight made him noticeable at all; in a crowd, he would have been part of the background. It occurred to her that the Starkadder maidens might be glad of extra help.

  ‘Would you like to stay here for a week and Help Out?’ she asked. ‘A lot of very clever ladies and gentlemen are staying here until the 25th, holding a sort of – a kind of –’

  ‘Kind of a Brains Trust,’ he nodded, not looking as pleased at her suggestion as she had expected.

  ‘Exactly. We shall need help with the washing-up and things. We can offer seven shillings a day and all found?’

  The roar of voices and the snapping of electric switches advancing through the rooms, preceded by odours of cigars and coffee, now warned her that the delegates were about to settle themselves by the Greate Inglenooke in the Greate Laundrie to make a night of it, and she became anxious to make her escape to her bed.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ she said, for the little man had muttered something.

  ‘I says, I come ’ere for a ’oliday.’

  ‘And you will have one, if you stay to Help Out. The work will not be hard, you will have plenty of time off, and the food is ample. If you go to that building labelled the Greate Barne one of the Miss Starkadders will engage you. Tell her that I sent you,’ concluded Flora firmly.

  The little man touched his bowler and wandered off, still looking rebellious, and then all the delegates (including the scientists, who were very argumentative and noisy) streamed into the Greate Laundrie, which was situated, as may be remembered, next to Flora’s favourite parlour and opened into it.

  As she crossed the Greate Laundrie to have a dutiful last word with Mr Mybug before retiring, Flora glanced up at the lintel of the green parlour door. Yes, it was labelled the Quiete Retreate.

  Mr Mybug was sitting in a corner with his back to the brilliant throng, sipping boiling black coffee with his eyes shut.

  ‘Mr Mybug,’ said Flora in his ear, ‘everybody seems to be well entertained and comfortable –’

  ‘Comfortable! God!’

  ‘So I am going to bed. I suggest that you do the same. You seem unwell.’

  ‘You see How It Is with me,’ interrupted Mr Mybug, ready, as Flora saw with dismay, for one of his nice long talks all about him. ‘How was I to know that This would happen? I didn’t want it to happen. It’s my accursed Susceptibility. It’s not so much that I’m Highly-Sexed –’

  ‘I have no doubt that things will seem very different to-morrow,’ soothed Flora, retreating from him so slowly that he did not observe (for he had re-shut his eyes) that she was going, ‘Joy cometh in the morning, you know. Good night.’

  Having dodged round Riska and Peccavi, who were drawing black magic symbols on the floor of the dim Greate Kitchene and gibbered absently at her as she passed, she made her way upstairs to her room, which smelled of cool leaves, and retired to rest.

  Some hours earlier Reuben’s Nancy, opening the back door of their hut to pour away the tea-leaves and show little Nan the rising moon, was startled to see a tall, half-naked form seated beside a flickering fire on the doorstep. A smaller, squatting dark figure instantly extended to her an empty bowl.

  ‘Evenin’ to ee,’ said Nancy at last, as neither figure spoke.

  ‘Peace,’ replied the Sage, without raising his eyes.

  The follower did not speak but continued to hold out the bowl.

  ‘Thou wilt give this one,’ touching his breast, ‘and that one,’ indicating the follower, ‘their evening meal, daughter,’ said the Sage at last, ‘oil and fruit and rice are required.’

  The follower’s eyes glittered like cut-steel beads, and he pushed the bowl nearer, only
to be rebuked by a look from his master.

  ‘That I wull,’ Nancy answered cheerfully. ‘Nan, lovey, run in an’ get th’ butter off th’ table, an’ a handful o’ cobs out of th’ nut basket, an’ two o’ ee’s liddle fists full o’ barley from th’ crock. Put un in th’ bowl as th’ gennelman be holdin’ out to ee.’

  When Nan returned with the full bowl, the follower snatched it, then scooped up the tea-leaves from the earth with a scallop shell from the garden border and set it aside as if for himself.

  ‘Don’t ee, now don’t ee eat that mook, dear soul; ’twill give ee th’ goodness-knows!’ exclaimed Nancy. ‘Nan, run in agen an’ bring un out a slice o’ bread an’ th’ beef dripping.’

  But no sooner had the follower held the bread to his nose, which he did eagerly enough, than he swooned. An expression of horror was fixed upon his face, and his feet were almost in the fire.

  His master took no notice, so Nancy, having removed his feet to safety, tried to revive him with the tea-leaves and water; when this proved useless, all the children, who had crowded to the door, began to cry, and Reuben, who had just returned home, rushed out in a rage.

  They slapped the follower’s feet, they waved his arms up and down, they burned feathers under his nose: in vain. At last Reuben, who wanted his supper, addressed the Sage:

  ‘I be wounded to disturb ee, sir, but perhaps ee could bring un’s friend round?’

  At the third repetition the Sage looked up. ‘All is illusion,’ he said, and looked down again.

  ‘Holy thoughts be all very well while un’s friend is dyin’, belike,’ muttered Reuben, but at that instant the follower uttered a deep sigh, sat up, and, pouring out the barley, began to grind it in a little hand mill which he drew from a recess within his scanty robes.

  ‘Be danged to ee for a chap,’ said Reuben crossly, and went in and slammed the door.

  5

  In the morning, when Nancy opened it, she found a third figure seated upon the step – a small man in dark clothes and bowler hat.

  ‘Just havin’ a bit of a warm. No offence meant,’ he said, and touched the hat. ‘The young lady up the farm give me a posh bed, but it suits me better down ’ere, don’t it, chum?’ to the follower, who salaamed, but did not answer.

  ‘And welcome,’ answered Nancy.

  She thought that Reuben might send all three of them packing, but meanwhile she was too kind to do it herself, and there was the breakfast to cook, so she went indoors.

  This was Monday, and the Conference officially opened to-day. A programme of activities had been prepared by Meutre, President of the International Thinkers’ Group, and a copy given to each delegate and to Mr Mybug and Flora: the latter’s breakfast had been rendered tastier by the news, conveyed to her by Mr Claud Hubris, that Mrs Ernestine Thump had contacted him by telephone late last night and was coming down for the inside of the week and would want a bed.

  The morning was to be devoted to Individual Discussions between the delegates, and the afternoon to the promulgation of a Bill of Human Rights, drawn up after the delegates had suggested what such rights should be, and promulgated by Mr Claud Hubris at a meeting in the Greate Kitchene.

  There was a rather painful scene after breakfast with the very old Liberal delegate, Mr Gonn. He became breathless with excitement on hearing about the Bill of Human Rights, freely using the words ‘superb’ and ‘epoch-making’, and at one point crying and having to be supplied with a handkerchief by Flora, as he was too poor to possess any of his own. He seemed to be suffering from the delusion that the promulgation would have practical results, and it took Flora and Mr Jones almost an hour to convince him that so far as Mr Claud Hubris and the other people with the power were concerned, it was not even a parlour game.

  ‘He says that when he was young, such expressions as “Bill of Human Rights” were not used except with “high seriousness and practical intent”,’ said Flora, as she and Mr Jones watched Mr Gonn tottering sadly away in the aimless, unplanned style that was already irritating the Managerial Revolutionaries.

  ‘Why wasn’t there honey for breakfast?’ demanded Mr Jones, dismissing Mr Gonn and his intentions. ‘I crave for honey. It stimulates certain glands in me.’

  Flora refrained from suggesting that in a previous incarnation he might have been a bear, though in her opinion more than vestigial ursine traces still lingered in him.

  They were seated upon a bench under the windows in the yard, to which sunny place Flora had retired with ten pounds of peas to shell for luncheon; an occupation she had chosen for herself as being most likely to keep her away from delegates.

  Mr Jones now sank down upon the warm stones, put his head on his arms in silence, and began to turn grey in the face.

  This will never do, thought Flora.

  ‘Will you help me with these?’ she said, holding up a pod.

  ‘My dear girl,’ gritted Mr Jones, with an awful laugh, ‘I am a poet, not a suburban helot.’

  ‘I am sure you could, if you tried; it is not difficult,’ replied Flora, unruffled, and after a minute and a half or so, filled with snortings and caracolings suggestive of a self-conscious horse, Mr Jones did scoop up some peas and make a start.

  ‘Who is that?’ asked Flora in a lowered tone, as a large red scientist walked by, bellowing with laughter in the ear of a small yellow scientist.

  ‘The big one? Farine, the Inconceivable Frameworks man. In the lab. he works with incredibly delicate instruments, and out of it he relates incredibly indelicate anecdotes.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘As husband and father, if you care to know, he is chancy. He has also discovered a gas which is absolutely no use at all.’

  ‘What a shame. And who is that with him?’

  ‘O. E. Cumulus. Nothing he has ever discovered is any use, either.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘There was a suggestion at one time that Cumulus should be made President of the Milk Nature Dry Society –’

  ‘I don’t think I remember?’

  ‘Dear Flora Fairford, where have you lived? It was a movement to wrench the Old Girl’s last secrets out of her and force her to make us all comfortable and happy – you must have heard about it on the air. But the Committee decided that he hadn’t enough empirical drive for the job.’

  ‘Who did get it, then?’

  ‘W. W. R. Token. He went slap through chemical fertilizers and artificial insemination, and came out the other side in the middle of Virgil’s Georgics. It’s all there, he said. Everything we want to know.’

  ‘I seem to remember the posters.’

  ‘Yes. Farmers! Let Publius Vergilius Maro tell you how! But it didn’t work. Nothing ever works. Why? Why? All we want,’ said Mr Jones, rolling listlessly over and crushing half a pound of perfectly sound peas, ‘is to be comfortable and happy, curse us all. But none of us are. Why?’

  ‘Well,’ began Flora – cautiously, for this was delicate ground – ‘surely some people –’

  ‘Yes, the mother-fixation boys with bank balances typifying their anal neuroses, the tillers of worm-deserted suburban plots, the growers of piddling lettuces and obscene tomatoes, the sly, shapeless bodies on which the sun never strikes!’

  ‘Some of them do belong to bicycling clubs –’

  ‘Darting like gutless fish through the dim poisoned sluices of the cities!’ cut in Mr Jones – rather neatly, Flora thought, but she only added –

  ‘And swimming clubs, too.’

  ‘And bowls and half-pints and darts! God, how I loathe darts!’ shrieked Mr Jones, leaping up and shedding peas in all directions. ‘The rats with Post Office Savings books! The lice with families! The smug weazels who become doctors and bishops and admirals!’

  ‘Well, really, Mr Jones, if nothing and no one existed, what would you write poetry about?’ said Flora with decision. ‘I do not wish to distress you further, but the world is here, you know, and you are in it. You may not like it –’

  ‘Like it! Hah
ahahaha! Do you know’ – shaking a blue finger at her – ‘that when Peccavi (now he is a free spirit) heard that O. E. Cumulus is “devoted” to his wife and family, he burst a BLOOD-vessel?’

  ‘Was it a large one?’ There was an uncontrollable note of hope in Flora’s tone.

  ‘No. Quite a small one,’ answered Mr Jones sulkily, after a pause.

  ‘I hope he is better now,’ said Flora, recollecting herself. ‘He must be, or he couldn’t always be jumping into the duck pond with Hacke.’

  Mr Jones only nodded moodily and lounged away, leaving Flora to finish the peas.

  This she did undisturbed, except for one occasion when Mr Mybug passed by, saying earnestly to the old psycho-analyst Frau Dichtverworren:

  ‘But surely analysis would help Mdlle Avaler to control the fearful power which she has over m-er-over men?’

  ‘Your young friendt likes to be as she iss,’ replied Frau Dichtverworren, with a smile which overwhelmingly suggested to Flora the Wolf Paddock at Whipsnade. ‘Zo, we cannot help. Before God died (your young friendt iss Existentialist, und she vould say that He iss dead) He would sometimes help peoples against der vill. Or so dey said. Ve are not God. Ve cannot do zo. Ve can only help dem to do little zings with what dey haf. For mostly,’ ended Frau Dichtverworren, settling her stiff linen cravat with another Whipsnade smile, ‘dey haf not much.’

  Flora listened with interest. For her part she was inclined to like Mdlle Avaler, who displayed in her blouses of fragile snowdrop lace and her combs of pale tortoiseshell the adorable French genius for elegant detail, and who had not so far embarrassed Flora with confidences or complaints. She was gifted with two slightly projecting teeth which lifted her upper lip like a pink bud, and, as if this were not enough, Heaven had dowered her with a difficulty in pronouncing the letters ‘th’.

  Luncheon was served in the Greate Laundrie, and Flora, who thought it only polite, as well as her duty, to put in an occasional appearance at the meals and the symposia and conversazioni, was present. A portable microphone had been installed in the Greate Laundrie for the benefit of those delegates whose importance in the Scheme of Things made it impossible for them to be kept in ignorance of each day’s toll of smashes, crashes and bashes, and Flora’s enjoyment of her first forkful of peas was tempered by an announcement, made in a silky, disdainful voice, about the remains of two eighty-year-old female twins who had flown the Pacific at four hundred miles an hour having been hauled out of a coral lagoon by a Samoan fisherman. No one took any notice except, presumably, the relatives of the eighty-year-old female twins.