Morgan le Fay had always been his room since he left the night nursery. He had been put there so that he would be within calling distance of his parents, inseparable in Guinevere; for until quite late in his life he was subject to nightmare. He had taken nothing from the room since he had slept there, but every year added to its contents, so that it now formed a gallery representative of every phase of his adolescence — the framed picture of a dreadnought (a coloured supplement from Chums), all its guns spouting flame and smoke; a photographic group of his private school; a cabinet called `the Museum,' filled with a dozen desultory collections, eggs, butterflies, fossils, coins; his parents, in the leather diptych which had stood by his bed at school; Brenda, eight years ago when he had been trying to get engaged to her; Brenda with John, taken just after the christening; an aquatint of Hetton, as it had stood until his great-grandfather demolished it; some shelves of books, Bevis, Woodwork at Home, Conjuring for All, The Young Visitors, The Law of Landlord and Tenant, Farewell to Arms.
All over England people were waking up, queasy and despondent. Tony lay for ten minutes very happily planning the renovation of his ceiling. Then he rang the bell. “Has her ladyship been called yet?”
“About quarter of an hour ago, sir.”
“Then I'll have breakfast in her room.”
He put on his dressing gown and slippers and went through into Guinevere.
Brenda lay on the dais. She had insisted on a modern bed. Her tray was beside her and the quilt was littered with envelopes, letters and the daily papers. Her head was propped against a very small blue pillow; clean of makeup, her face was almost colourless, rose-pearl, scarcely deeper in tone than her arms and neck.
“Well?” said Tony.
“Kiss.”
He sat by the tray at the head of the bed; she leant forward to him (a nereid emerging from fathomless depths of clear water). She turned her lips away and rubbed against his cheek like a cat. It was a way she had.
“Anything interesting?”
He picked up some of the letters.
“No. Mama wants nanny to send John's measurements. She's knitting him something for Christmas. And the mayor wants me to open something next month. Please, needn't I?”
“I think you'd better, we haven't done anything for him for a long time.”
“Well you must write the speech. I'm getting too old for the girlish one I used to give them all. And Angela says will we stay for the New Year?”
“That's easy. Not on her life, we won't.”
“I guessed not … though it sounds an amusing party.”
“You go if you like. I can't possibly get away.”
“That's all right. I knew it would be `no' before I opened the letter.”
“Well what sort of pleasure can there be in going all the way to Yorkshire in the middle of winter …”
“Darling, don't be cross. I know we aren't going. I'm not making a thing about it. I just thought it might be fun to eat someone else's food for a bit.”
Then Brenda's maid brought in the other tray. He had it put by the window seat, and began opening his letters. He looked out of the window. Only four of the six church towers were visible that morning. Presently he said, “As a matter of fact I probably can manage to get away that week-end.”
“Darling, are you sure you wouldn't hate it?”
“I daresay not.”
While he ate his breakfast. Brenda read to him from the papers. “Reggie's been making another speech … There's such an extraordinary picture of Babe and Jock … a woman in America has had twins by two different husbands. Would you have thought that possible? … Two more chaps in gas ovens … a little girl has been strangled in a cemetery with a bootlace … that play we went to about a farm is coming off.” Then she read him the serial. He lit his pipe. “I don't believe you're listening. Why doesn't Sylvia want Rupert to get the letter?”
“Eh? Oh well, you see, she doesn't really trust Rupert.”
“I knew it. There's no such character as Rupert in the story. I shall never read to you again.”
“Well to tell you the truth I was just thinking.”
“Oh.”
“I was thinking how delightful it is, that it's Saturday morning and we haven't got anyone coming for the week-end.”
“Oh you thought that?”
“Don't you?”
“Well it sometimes seems to me rather pointless keeping up a house this size if we don't now and then ask some other people to stay in it.”
“Pointless? I can't think what you mean. I don't keep up this house to be a hostel for a lot of bores to come and gossip in. We've always lived here and I hope John will be able to keep it on after me. One has a duty towards one's employees, and towards the place too. It's a definite part of English life which would be a serious loss if …” Then Tony stopped short in his speech and looked at the bed. Brenda had turned on her face and only the top of her head appeared above the sheets.
“Oh God,” she said into the pillow. “What have I done?”
“I say, am I being pompous again?”
She turned sideways so that her nose and one eye emerged. “Oh no, darling, not pompous. You wouldn't know how.”
“Sorry.”
Brenda sat up. “And, please, I didn't mean it. I'm jolly glad too, that no one's coming.”
These scenes of domestic playfulness had been more or less continuous in Tony and Brenda's life for seven years.
Outside, it was soft English weather; mist in the hollows and pale sunshine on the hills; the coverts had ceased dripping, for there were no leaves to hold the recent rain, but the undergrowth was wet, dark in the shadows, iridescent where the sun caught it; the lanes were soggy and there was water running in the ditches.
John Andrew sat his pony, solemn and stiff as a Life-Guard, while Ben fixed the jump. Thunderclap had been a present on his sixth birthday from Uncle Reggie. It was John who had named her, after lengthy consultation. Originally she had been called Christabelle which, as Ben said, was more the name for a hound than a horse. Ben had known a strawberry roan called Thunderclap who killed two riders and won the local point-to-point four years running. He had been a lovely little horse, said Ben, till he staked himself in the guts, hunting, and had to be shot. Ben knew stories about a great many different horses. There was one called Zero on whom he had won five Jimmy-o-goblins at ten to three at Chester one year. And there was a mule he had known during the war, called Peppermint, who had died of drinking the company's rum rations. But John was not going to name his pony after a drunken mule. So in the end they had decided on Thunderclap, in spite of her imperturbable disposition.
She was a dark bay, with long tail and mane. Ben had left her legs shaggy. She cropped the grass, resisting John's attempts to keep her head up.
Before her arrival riding had been a very different thing. He had jogged around the paddock on a little Shetland pony called Bunny, with his nurse panting at the bridle. Now it was a man's business. Nanny sat at a distance, crocheting, on her camp stool; out of ear shot. There had been a corresponding promotion in Ben's position. From being the hand who looked after the farm horses, he was now, perceptibly, assuming the air of a stud groom. The handkerchief round his neck gave place to a stock with a fox-head pin. He was a man of varied experience in other parts of the country.