O Lord, how manifold are thy works!
Later, in bed, I turned out the light and listened for a while to the distant sounds of people moving about, making last-minute preparations for the morning. Somewhere in the west wing they would still be adjusting their spotlights; somewhere Phyllis Wyvern would be boning up on her script.
But at last, after what seemed like a very long time, the day’s work was done and, with a last few reluctant creaks and groans, Buckshaw slept in the silence of the falling snow.
• SIX •
I AWAKENED TO THE sound of shoveling. Crikers! I must have overslept!
Leaping out from under the eiderdown, I struggled into my clothing before my flesh could freeze.
The world outside my bedroom windows was the sickly shade of an underdeveloped snapshot: a bruised black and white, under which lay an ever so slightly menacing tinge of purple, as if the sky were muttering “Just you wait!”
A few taunting flakes were still sifting down slowly like little white warning notes from the gods, shaking their tiny frozen fists as they fell past the window.
Half the film crew, it seemed, were at work clearing a maze of pathways between the vans and lorries.
I dug quickly through a pile of gramophone records (Daffy told me I had pronounced it “grampaphone” when I was younger) and, picking out the one I was looking for, dusted it on my skirt.
It was “Morning,” by Edvard Grieg, from his Peer Gynt suite: the same piece of music that Rupert Porson (deceased) had used at the parish hall last September to open his puppet performance of Jack and the Beanstalk.
It wasn’t my favorite piece of morning music, but it was infinitely better than “Let’s All Sing Like the Birdies Sing.” Besides, the disk had that lovely picture of the dog, his head tilted quizzically as he listens to his master’s voice coming out of a horn, not realizing that his master is behind him painting his picture.
I gave the gramophone a jolly good cranking and dropped the needle onto the surface of the spinning disk.
“La-la-la-LAH, la-la la-la, LAH-la-la-la,” I sang along, even putting the little hitches in the right places, until the end of the main melody.
Then, because it seemed to suit the bleakness of the day, I adjusted the control to reduce the speed, which made the music sound as if the entire orchestra had suddenly been overcome with nausea: as if someone had poisoned the players.
Oh, how I adore music!
I flopped limply round the room, sagging with the slowing music like a doll whose sawdust stuffing is pouring out, until the gramophone’s spring ran all the way down and I collapsed on the floor in a boneless heap.
“I hope you haven’t been getting underfoot,” Feely said. “Remember what Father told us.”
I let my tongue crawl slowly out of my mouth like an earthworm emerging after a rain, but it was a wasted effort. Feely didn’t take her eyes from the sheet of paper she was studying.
“Is that your part?” I asked.
“As a matter of fact, it is.”
“Let’s have a dekko.”
“No. It’s none of your business.”
“Come on, Feely! I arranged it. If you get paid, I want half.”
Daffy inserted a finger in Bleak House to mark her place.
“ ‘In BG, OOF, a maid places a letter on the table,’ ” she said in a matter-of-fact tone.
“That’s all?” I asked.
“That’s it.”
“But what does it mean?”
“It means that in the background, out of focus, a maid places a letter on the table. Just as it says.”
Feely was pretending to be preoccupied, but I could tell by the rising color of her throat that she was listening. My sister Ophelia is like one of those exotic frogs whose skin changes color involuntarily as a warning. In the frog, it’s trying to make you think that it’s poisonous. It’s much the same in Feely.
“Caramba!” I said. “You’ll be famous, Feely!”
“Don’t say ‘Caramba,’ ” she snapped. “You know Father doesn’t like it.”
“He’ll be home this morning,” I reminded her. “With Aunt Felicity.”
At that, a general glumness fell over the table and we finished our breakfasts in stony silence.
The down train from London was due at Doddingsley at five past ten. If Clarence Mundy had been picking them up in his taxicab, Father and Aunt Felicity would be at Buckshaw within half an hour. But today, allowing for the snow and the practiced funereal pace at which the vicar usually drove, it seemed likely to be well past eleven before they arrived.
It was, in fact, not until a quarter past one that the vicar’s Morris pulled up exhausted at the front door, piled like a refugee’s cart with various peculiarly shaped objects projecting from the windows and lashed to the roof. As soon as they climbed out of the car, I could tell that Father and Aunt Felicity had been quarreling.
“For heaven’s sake, Haviland,” she was saying, “anyone who can’t tell a chaffinch from a brambling ought not to be allowed to look out the window of a railway carriage.”
“I’m quite sure it was a brambling, Lissy. It had the distinctive—”
“Nonsense. Bring my bag, Denwyn. The one with the large brass padlock.”
The vicar seemed a bit surprised to be ordered about in such an offhanded manner, but he pulled the carpetbag from the backseat of the car and handed it to Dogger.
“Clever of you to think of winter tires and chains,” Aunt Felicity said. “Most ecclesiastics are dead washouts when it comes to motorcars.”
I wanted to tell her about the bishop, but I kept quiet.
Aunt Felicity bore down on the front door in her usual bulldog manner. Beneath her full-length motoring coat, I knew, she would be wearing her complete Victorian explorer’s regalia: two-piece Norfolk jacket and skirt, with extra pockets sewn in for scissors, pens, pins, knife, and fork (she traveled with her own: “You never know who’s eaten what with strange cutlery,” she was fond of telling us); several lengths of string, assorted elastics, a gadget for cutting the ends off cigars, and a small glass traveling container of Gentleman’s Relish: “You can’t find it since the war.”
“You see?” she said, stepping into the foyer and taking in the jungle of motion picture equipment at a glance. “It’s just as I told you. The ciné moguls have their hearts set on laying waste to every noble home in England. They’re Communists to the last man Jack. Who do they make their pictures for? ‘The People.’ As if the people are the only ones who need entertaining. Pfagh! It’s enough to make the heavenly hosts bring up their manna.”
I was glad she hadn’t said God, as that would have been blasphemous.
“Mornin’, Lissy!” someone called out. “Tryin’ to go straight, are you?” It was Ted, the same electrician Desmond Duncan had spoken to. He was occupied on a scaffold with an enormous light.
Aunt Felicity stifled an enormous sneeze, rummaging in her purse for a handkerchief.
“Aunt Felicity,” I asked incredulously, “do you know that man?”
“Ran into him somewhere during the war. Some people never forget a name or a face, you know. Quite remarkable. In the blackout, I daresay.”
Father pretended he hadn’t heard, and made straight for his study.
“If it was in the blackout,” I asked, “how could he see your face?”
“Impertinent children ought to be given six coats of shellac and set up in public places as a warning to others.” Aunt Felicity sniffed. “Dogger, you may take my luggage up to my room.”