Christmas at High Rising: A Virago Modern Classic (VMC) Read online

  VIRAGO

  MODERN CLASSICS

  594

  Angela Thirkell

  Angela Thirkell (1890–1961) was the eldest daughter of John William Mackail, a Scottish classical scholar and civil servant, and Margaret Burne-Jones. Her relatives included the pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones, Rudyard Kipling and Stanley Baldwin, and her godfather was J. M. Barrie. She was educated in London and Paris, and began publishing articles and stories in the 1920s. In 1931 she brought out her first book, a memoir entitled Three Houses, and in 1933 her comic novel High Rising – set in the fictional county of Barsetshire, borrowed from Trollope – met with great success. She went on to write nearly thirty Barsetshire novels, as well as several further works of fiction and non-fiction. She was twice married, and had four children.

  By Angela Thirkell

  Barsetshire novels

  High Rising

  Wild Strawberries

  The Demon in the House

  August Folly

  Summer Half

  Pomfret Towers

  The Brandons

  Before Lunch

  Cheerfulness Breaks In

  Northbridge Rectory

  Marling Hall

  Growing Up

  The Headmistress

  Miss Bunting

  Peace Breaks Out

  Private Enterprise

  Love Among the Ruins

  The Old Bank House

  County Chronicle

  The Duke’s Daughter

  Happy Returns

  Jutland Cottage

  What Did it Mean?

  Enter Sir Robert

  Never Too Late

  A Double Affair

  Close Quarters

  Love at All Ages

  Three Score and Ten

  Non-fiction

  Three Houses

  Collected stories

  Christmas at High Rising

  COPYRIGHT

  Published by Virago

  978-0-3490-0431-0

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © the Estate of Angela Thirkell 1928, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937, 1940, 1942

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Copyright in the collection © the Estate of Angela Thirkell 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  VIRAGO PRESS

  Little, Brown Book Group

  100 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DY

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  CHRISTMAS AT HIGH RISING

  Table of Contents

  VIRAGO

  MODERN CLASSICS

  594

  By Angela Thirkell

  COPYRIGHT

  Pantomime

  Christmas at Mulberry Lodge

  St Valentine’s Holiday

  High Voltage at Low Rising

  The Private View

  Shakespeare Did Not Dine Out

  The Great Art of Riding

  A Nice Day in Town

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  Pantomime

  George Knox, the celebrated biographer, who was incapable of doing things by halves, and indeed capable only of overdoing them, suddenly felt that as a grandfather he ought to take a large family party to the theatre. In vain did his wife point out to him that his granddaughter, being barely six months old, would certainly not be allowed to come and could not appreciate it if she did, and that the rest of his family, which consisted of his married daughter Sibyl Coates and her husband Adrian, would far rather stay in warmth and comfort in his house at Low Rising where they were staying on a visit. George Knox, who had already begun to dramatise himself as Famous Author Loves to Gather Little Ones Round Him, was so dejected by her words that she had to give in, only stipulating that he should consult their neighbour, Mrs Morland, before doing anything rash.

  ‘Because, as far as I can see, George,’ she said, ‘Tony is the only child we can get hold of, unless you wanted to take the Vicarage girls. You had better go over to High Rising and talk to Laura about it.’

  So George Knox dressed himself in a large hat and muffler as Famous Author Takes Country Walk, and went over to High Rising. Here he found Mrs Morland at tea.

  ‘Sit down, George, and have some tea,’ said Laura, ‘because you won’t have any peace in a few moments. Tony and Rose and Dora Gould insist on acting charades to me, which is terribly dull. Luckily, they take about ten times as long to get their scenes ready as they do to act them, so you can talk between whiles.’

  George Knox gratefully accepted a cup of tea and began to develop his plan for a family pantomime party, but before Laura had even begun to have the faintest idea of what he was talking about, the door burst open, and Rose was pushed in by unseen powers whose voices could be heard whispering encouragement to her from the hall. Rose advanced diffidently to Mrs Morland and twisted herself about in embarrassment.

  ‘Well, what is it, Rose?’ said Laura.

  ‘Please, Mrs Morland,’ said Rose in a painful whisper, ‘Tony says can we have Mr Knox’s hat for our next scene?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Laura.

  The unseen powers suddenly became silent.

  ‘You have all got hats of your own,’ said Laura. ‘Use one of them.’

  ‘Of course,’ said one of the unseen powers in a voice remarkably like Tony’s, ‘if we can’t have the hat it’s all absolutely no good. People don’t seem to understand that one must have proper hats to do acting properly.’

  ‘But, my dear Laura,’ said George Knox, ‘why this curmudgeonly attitude towards property which, after all, is not yours and for which, therefore, you need feel no responsibility? If at this festive season a hat more or less, be it mine, be it whose you will – or would it perhaps be more correct, if less euphonious, to say whose you will’s, but a truce to these idle questions – if, I say, a hat can give pleasure to man, bird, or beast, why should this pleasure be denied?’

  ‘Well, George,’ said Laura, ‘you can’t exactly call Tony and the girls men or birds or beasts, but if you don’t mind them having your hat, that’s your look out. All right, Rose, then you can have the hat.’

  Rose retired in speechless confusion.

  ‘This will be the whole word,’ said Laura to George Knox. ‘They have done three syllables and there is no doubt that they were Core and Lie and Flower, so the whole word will be “cauliflower”, but don’t guess at once, because they will be so disappointed. I couldn’t help guessing the other syllables because Tony won’t let the girls say them and when he says them himself he says them so loud that one simply can’t help knowing, however hard one tries not to.’

  The final scene of the charade exceeded Laura’s worst expectations. Rose and Dora were supposed to keep a vegetable shop and Tony to be a regular customer, though attired as he was in Rose’s coat with a little fur collar and George Knox’s hat, which was only prevented by his bat-like ears from extinguishing him entirely, he had a sinister appearance which would have made any nervous shopkeeper suspect him at once. After a long pointless conversation conducted almost entirely by Tony,
who, to his mother’s horror, pretended to be drunk in a very lifelike way, he took off his hat, made a sweeping bow to the audience, and left the room.

  ‘Tony, Tony,’ shrieked the two little girls, ‘the word!’

  Tony returned, full of calm confidence, and approaching the temporary counter said, ‘I happen to have forgotten another vegetable that I wanted.’

  ‘I know what you want,’ said Dora, ‘a cau–’

  ‘You can’t know what I want, because I haven’t said it,’ interrupted Tony quickly. ‘And I don’t suppose your shop has it, so it isn’t much use my asking for it. It would have been a CAULIFLOWER. That’s the end. Do you know what the word is?’

  ‘Is it “potato”?’ asked the weak-minded Laura.

  ‘Oh, Mother!’

  ‘Or “asparagus”?’

  ‘Mother! “Asparagus” has four syllables.’

  ‘I know it, my boy, I know it,’ said George Knox with eager complacency. ‘In fact, none but a moron, and such I flatter myself I am not, though I make no pretension to intellect, could have been in doubt as to the word. It was – and I shall make no bones – a phrase, Laura, as to whose provenance I am in doubt – no circumlocutions, about telling you the conclusion at which I have arrived, a conclusion which —’

  ‘It was a jolly good charade, sir, wasn’t it?’ said Tony with honest pride. ‘I invented it all. Rose and Dora haven’t much idea of acting, but I acted in the school play, so I know all about acting, and I trained them. They haven’t much idea of talking yet, but I can do the talking. I have a kind of gift for talking.’

  ‘To tell me that fact,’ said George Knox, ‘is a work of supererogation, my boy. But as I was saying, the word which it is, I gather, my part in this entertainment to guess, that word is —’

  ‘George!’ interrupted Laura reproachfully.

  At the same moment George Knox’s hat came right down over Tony’s face, causing him to stumble over the counter and all the vegetables to fall on the floor. Tony got up and removed himself from the hat.

  ‘The word was “cauliflower”,’ he said, picking up the scattered potatoes and onions and putting them into George Knox’s hat. ‘I should have thought you would have guessed that, sir. I made it easy on purpose for you, because you aren’t very practised. I would have guessed it at once.’

  ‘But I did guess it,’ cried George Knox, much annoyed. ‘But for you and your mother, who make it impossible for me, a man of taciturn humour, ever ready to put himself in the background, to get a word in edgeways, I should long ago have told you the word. And take those onions out of my hat at once,’ he added in fury.

  ‘Yes, take them out at once, Tony,’ said Laura. ‘Mr Knox is going to take us all to the pantomime on Saturday.’

  ‘Oh, Mother! That’s the day the hounds meet near Southbridge and Dr Ford has promised to take me. Need I?’

  ‘It can’t be helped. Mr Knox has determined to take us all to the pantomime,’ said Laura rather ungratefully, ‘and there it is.’

  ‘I dare say Rose and Dora will enjoy it,’ said Tony. ‘It’s rather a treat for kids, of course. Can I wear my trouser suit, mother? And shall I have my school tie or the one I bought for myself for one and sixpence halfpenny? It’s a jolly good tie, sir,’ he said, turning to George Knox. ‘If you want to know a good shop for ties, come to me, sir.’

  Laura now had to apply herself to pacifying George Knox, suppressing Tony, and calming Rose and Dora. Luckily, the Vicarage cook arrived to fetch the girls, and as she was on extremely bad terms with Stoker the maid, she had her young charges out of the house in no time.

  ‘Now, George,’ said Laura, ‘this is an awful treat that you want to give us, but I suppose we shall have to give in. I know Anne and Adrian and Sibyl don’t want to come. Couldn’t I and the three children be a sacrifice for the rest? After all, you can’t take five grown-ups and three children even in your luxurious Rolls Royce, and I am certainly not going to drive my car up to London and back on Saturday, besides all the parking difficulties. And you are not going to hire another car, which is what I see in your eye, so we will do as I say. And after all you will look much more like a grandfather if you have three children with you than if you have a lot of grown-ups. I wouldn’t come myself, because I hate pantomimes, but I feel you need help with the children.’

  George Knox submitted and seats were procured. On the evening of Friday, Mrs Gould rang up Low Rising to say that Rose had not slept all night, had been violently over-excited all day, and was now in bed with a temperature and the beginning of one of her bad colds. Anne Knox then implored her stepson-in-law, Adrian Coates, to take Rose’s place, so that George Knox might not be disappointed of a guest.

  ‘Sibyl and I would so hate to go,’ said Anne, ‘that words could not express it. So will you be a sacrifice, Adrian?’

  Accordingly, at eleven o’clock on Saturday the Rolls Royce collected George Knox (carrying a plaid and walking stick in his self-appointed role as grandfather), Adrian, Dora, Laura and Tony from their separate abodes and took them all to London, where Adrian proposed to give them lunch at his club. As they entered the club, Tony, who had been made by common consent to sit beside the chauffeur, to whom he had given a good deal of valuable if erroneous information about racing motors and their engines, assumed the devil-may-care attitude of a man of the world and, having given his coat and school cap to the attendant, walked off nonchalantly in the wrong direction, followed by Dora.

  ‘Hi, Tony, come back,’ Adrian called after him, ‘that’s for members only.’

  Tony gave Adrian a glance of passionless scorn and followed him to the dining-room. Here, the conversation not unnaturally turned on the pantomime which they were to see.

  ‘What is it, by the way, George?’ asked Laura, in whom want of curiosity almost amounted to a vice.

  ‘Aladdin,’ said Tony. ‘Mother, didn’t you know it was Aladdin? Mother, Dora hadn’t ever read it, so I was sorry for her being so uneducated and I told her the story.’

  He broke open a large roll, put four pats of butter into it, shut it up again, and began to devour it.

  ‘You won’t have any appetite left if you eat all that bread to begin with,’ said Adrian.

  ‘But, sir, I’m hungry.’

  ‘Is there any reason, Adrian, why my child should not eat if he is hungry?’ said Laura majestically.

  Adrian was so quelled by this remark that he did not like to protest when Tony, having put about an ounce of pepper into his soup, sneezed until his friends began to despair of his recovery, nor when he took his chicken’s wishbone in his fingers and gnawed it as clean as Bishop Hatto. But when, to impress Dora, he put a whole mince-pie into his mouth at once, his mother, who had been talking earnestly to George Knox, suddenly became aware of him.

  ‘No, Tony. Not all in your mouth at once,’ said she in a voice which immediately commanded the attention of all the neighbouring tables. But it was too late, and Tony was obliged to do a great deal of violent masticating before he could get enough mouth-room to exculpate himself.

  ‘But, Mother, Dora is rather sad because Rose can’t come, aren’t you, Dora? So I was amusing her. I thought you liked me to be kind to people, Mother. Can I have another mince-pie, because I’m hungry?’

  When Laura looked round the second mince-pie had vanished with such celerity that she expected to see her son burst before her eyes, but as he appeared to be quite well, and Dora was giggling with admiration, she only told Tony to wipe some of the pastry crumbs off his mouth, a request which he took in very bad part, flapping his face with his table napkin as one who was being taken upon and overdriven by Egyptian taskmasters. Just then, George Knox discovered it was high time to be off, so the children were hustled into their coats and the party got into the car. Tony asked to be allowed to drive inside.

  ‘I thought you liked driving with the chauffeur,’ said Laura.

  ‘Well, Mother, that’s all very well in the country, but in London it’s r
ather different. One of the chaps who was up for the hols might see me.’

  Laura was prepared to be unsympathetic, but Adrian, who remembered how tremendously the opinion of one’s school friends mattered at that age, kindly squashed him into the car.

  ‘If there had been more of us, I should have taken the front row of the dress circle,’ said George Knox sadly, ‘but as things are, I have got a box.’

  At this news Tony and Dora gasped. Neither of them had ever been in a box before and this represented the most romantic of their dreams. Tony was the first to recover his poise.

  ‘Of course, I always sit in the Royal Box in my Morland theatre,’ he said carelessly, ‘but I just happen not to have been in one in London. You can’t have been in one in Dorland,’ he added hastily to Dora, ‘because your Dorland theatre hasn’t got any boxes, only stalls and dress circle.’

  But when the full glory of the best box with a private sitting-room behind it burst upon his view, Tony was for once entirely silenced. In a holy rapture he wandered from one to the other, drinking in their glories, their red satin curtains, their gilded chairs with red plush seats. Finally, with a sigh of satisfaction, he established himself in an armchair, assuming the world-weary expression of one who is satiated with the gayer side of life. Laura and Adrian sat behind, putting George Knox, as professional grandfather and founder of the feast, in front with the two children. George enjoyed every moment with loud and violent appreciation. Laura was bored nearly to distraction, but found pleasure in watching her son’s profile, silhouetted against the dazzling lights of the stage, immobile except for an occasional twitch. It was evident that he considered any outward manifestation of pleasure as beneath his dignity. Even tea and cakes in the private sitting-room could not break down his stoical attitude, and he returned to his seat without having committed himself by a single word.