Love Among the Ruins

by Angela Thirkell

Genres: Classics; Humor & Satire

Synopsis

'You read her, laughing, and want to do your best to protect her characters from any reality but their own' New York Times

It's the summer of 1947, and peacetime has brought new challenges to Barsetshire. Beliers Priory, once a military hospital during the War, has now become a flourishing preparatory school for boys run by Leslie and Philip Winter.

When Charles Belton is hired as the new school master, six young people are thrown together in a web of flirtations and misunderstandings: Charles and his elder brother, Naval Captain Freddy Belton; Susan Dean, now Red Cross Depot Librarian, and her glamorous sister Jessica, an actress in thrall to the theatre; pragmatic Lucy Marling and her brother Oliver. And with the old social order in ruins, the scene is set for a delicious summer of comic - and romantic - possibilities.

Love Among the Ruins is a delightful, clever and wryly poignant classic, and the 17th novel in Angela Thirkell's beloved Barsetshire series.

Release date: March 7, 2024

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 496

Sample

Beliers Priory, as all East Barsetshire knows, is a very large and unmitigatedly hideous house, the property of Sir Harry Waring. During the war it had been a military hospital while Sir Harry and Lady Waring retired to the servants’ wing, finding themselves there far more warm and comfortable than they could ever be in the main house. So when the blight of peace descended upon Barsetshire they decided to stay where they were and to hand over the unwieldy mansion, which just fell short in the county’s estimation of being a seat, to their niece Leslie and her husband Philip Winter who wished to start a preparatory school for little boys.

To this end they had waited till Leslie’s brother, Lieutenant Cecil Waring, R.N., was on leave and summoned him for a weekend, an invitation which the gallant lieutenant accepted with great reluctance. Not that he disliked his uncle and aunt, but as his professional life was spent at sea he naturally counted every moment of leave wasted that was not spent at a very uncomfortable angle in a small sailing boat, or cooking sausages and coffee on an oil stove with waves bursting over it. Still, he was his uncle’s heir, and a Nelson-like sense of duty made him feel that he must go and see what the old man wanted, so he left the friends with whom he was spending his leave at Bosham and drove at a mostly illegal speed across country to Beliers. Here his uncle and aunt received him with the affection that always embarrassed him because, as he said to his sister Leslie Winter, it stood to reason that if your only son had been killed in 1918 you couldn’t really feel as loving as all that to a nephew that was standing in a dead man’s shoes; to which his sister Leslie merely replied not to be so silly.

Leslie, who had lived for some time during the war with her uncle and aunt and was very fond of them, knew that they still preferred to discuss matters of business with the leisurely calm of a past age and in any case would look upon such discussion during dinner as quite out of the question. So, aided by her husband who had recently been demobilised, she managed to keep the conversation on such general subjects as whether old Jasper the gamekeeper, son of a professional witch well known by all to have spent a good deal of her life in the shape of a black hare, would allow himself to be pensioned and whether it was a good moment to sell the near-Lawrence of Sir Harry’s grandfather.

A fellow at the Club, Sir Harry said, had told him now was the time to sell. And when Sir Harry said the Club, he did not mean The Club, nor Boodles, nor the Athenaeum, for to Barsetshire these two words denote the County Club in Barchester. Most of its members have a club in London, but that is merely a suburban affair compared with the County Club. Who the fellow was, said Sir Harry, he couldn’t at the moment remember. It wasn’t Belton and it certainly wasn’t Pomfret and it couldn’t have been Stoke.

Lieutenant Waring asked why it couldn’t have been Lord Stoke; not that he cared in the least, but if Uncle Harry wanted to talk like that he was ready to help him.

‘Pictures aren’t in Stoke’s line,’ said Sir Harry. ‘Tumuli and Viking’s bones and that kind of thing, but not pictures. You remember the dreadful daubs he has over at Rising Castle, my dear,’ he added, turning to his wife. ‘He used to buy a couple regularly every year at the Royal Academy. Sort of pictures you see in a dentist’s waiting-room,’ which remark led to a discussion on Waiting Room Art, Lady Waring saying that her mother’s dentist had nothing but Highland Cattle with steam coming out of their noses, while Leslie upheld the merits of a picture, indissolubly connected in her mind with having her front teeth straightened, of the Lady of Shalott looking like Ophelia’s mentally defective sister in a kind of medieval punt. Philip Winter said he used to squint on purpose so that his mother would take him to an oculist who had a picture of a little boy asleep between the front paws of a large dog of nondescript breed and sphinx-like appearance. Lieutenant Waring was about to expatiate on a picture of a little girl in a poke bonnet and crinoline called Blue Eye Beauty, with which simulacrum he had been violently in love while waiting to have a tooth stopped in Portsmouth while he was a midshipman, when Sir Harry cut across the conversation and said it had all come back to him.

His nephew and niece and niece’s husband dutifully stopped talking and his wife sympathetically asked him to explain.

‘It was Stoke,’ said Sir Harry. ‘And the reason I remember it is because Adams was lunching at our table and he was telling us about a picture he had bought, one of these newfangled pictures by some fellow with a foreign name.’

Lady Waring expressed interest, but her thoughts below the surface were running on different lines. This was how times had changed. Ten years ago, perhaps five years ago, Sam Adams of the Hogglestock Rolling Mills would not have belonged to the Club, would not have met Sir Harry and Lord Stoke at lunch and most certainly would not have been buying pictures by people with foreign names. Now, in the whirligig of time and the fortunes of war and the misfortunes of peace, Sam Adams, M.P., was a figure that counted, elected to the County Club, liked and respected by the hundreds of workers he employed, liked and respected by the best of the City and the Close, and not particularly popular with the Party Committee in Barchester. For though he had stood for Parliament as a Labour candidate, he had announced from the beginning of the campaign his intention to vote as he thought fit and in so doing had scandalised many of his supporters.

‘That’s right,’ said Sir Harry, encouraging himself as it were. ‘Adams was telling us about this foreign artist, I’d never heard the fellow’s name, and Stoke said now was the time to sell anything you wanted to sell. He said he had sold that picture of three cardinals eating lobsters to some man in St James’s for more than he gave for it.’

Lieutenant Waring said he adored pictures with cardinals in them, especially if they were eating, and he was willing to bet that the man who bought it would sell it at a profit at once.

At this point Lady Waring took her niece Leslie away to the drawing-room so that the men could get on with the job, which was to discuss whether Lieutenant Waring as his uncle’s heir would be agreeable to the Winters’ plan of turning the Priory into a prep. school.

‘But you know they won’t talk about it, Aunt Harriet,’ said Leslie Winter. ‘Anyone can get Uncle Harry to the point, but twenty men can’t make him stick to it.’

‘I know exactly what they are talking about,’ said Lady Waring thoughtfully.

‘So do I,’ said Leslie. ‘The war.’

‘And the last war – or first war or whatever you please to call it,’ said Lady Waring, rather unfairly laying the responsibility on Leslie, for no one has yet invented an accurate method of distinguishing between the two World Wars, or Wars to End War, and the more wars we have the more difficult it will be to know which is which, ‘and other wars.’

And then she was quiet. She did not sigh, for she was not demonstrative, but her thoughts went back as they still often did to the war that now seems to us so small, in which her only child had been killed long ago. Leslie knew what was in her aunt’s mind and knew that her aunt did not wish to obtrude her quiet undying grief, so she said perhaps it would be simpler if she and Aunt Harriet had a talk before the men came in.

So the two ladies discussed very fully the possibilities and probabilities of Sir Harry agreeing to the school and Leslie’s brother joining his assent to Sir Harry’s, and Leslie produced suggestions and figures, for she was a very capable woman and had considered the affair seriously with her husband. And by the time the men came in the whole plan was settled by the ladies and nothing wanting but the mere formality of the men’s opinion being asked.

Conversation was then on general topics. The near-Lawrence was examined and hopefully appraised, the prospects of some shooting were discussed, various plans made for the benefit of the tenants and an allusion made to the difficulty of getting a good man for the kitchen garden whose produce the Warings sold quite advantageously to a large firm called Amalgamated Vedge. But of the proposed school nothing was said and the ladies let the subject rest. As bedtime approached, Philip Winter began to show signs of restiveness, for the temper that went with his flaming hair was not altogether extinct, though subdued now by him to good purposes.

‘By the way, sir,’ he said to Sir Harry, though what way he would have been hard put to it to say, ‘about the Priory. I hope you don’t mind my bringing up the question, but Cecil and I have had a talk about it and I’d be very glad to know if you feel like discussing it.’

Sir Harry, a soldier and a man of great physical courage, gave a life-like representation of a horse putting its ears back and showing the whites of its eyes and digging its fore-feet firmly into the ground.

‘Yes, yes, Winter,’ he said. ‘A splendid idea. Let’s talk about it some time. To-morrow perhaps. Your aunt will be wanting to go to bed and, by Jove, I’m ready for bed myself and I expect you are.’

He looked round for support and was dashed by receiving none.

‘I’m sorry to press you, sir,’ said Philip Winter. ‘But it really matters a good deal to Leslie and myself. If you could spare half an hour, sir—’

‘Right!’ said Sir Harry, seeing a chance of escape. ‘To-morrow morning let us say. No; that won’t do. I’m on the Bench to-morrow morning. Well, say to-morrow afternoon; late afternoon because I have to go to Winter Overcotes earlier. Then we’ll have a good talk. Good night, Leslie.’

‘No, Uncle Harry,’ said Leslie firmly. ‘Cecil has given up his leave to come here and talk about the school and you promised to consider it.’

Sir Harry said, rather weakly, that Rome was not built in a day, to which his nephew Cecil very sensibly answered that even the old Romans had to make a beginning somewhere and if Romulus and Remus had gone to bed instead of getting down to work, Rome wouldn’t have even begun to get built.

‘Now, look here, Uncle Harry,’ said Lieutenant Waring. ‘Leslie and Philip want to have a school. Well, that’s all right by me if it’s all right by you, sir. Of course I love the place and all that and I’d always try to do my duty here, sir, but I’m not likely to be at home for years to come. That is unless this Government scrap the Navy as they always do after a war. If only Beliers were on the coast – but it isn’t, you see, and you can’t sail on the Dipping Ponds. If you want to know what I think, Uncle Harry, I say a school would be a jolly good thing. And that’s really about all. So that’s settled, sir, if you agree.’

It is very probable that Sir Harry did agree, for he was very fond of his nephew and his niece and the alternative to a school might be a sanatorium, or a lunatic asylum, or even worse a branch of a Government department. But to be asked to make a decision was almost more than he could bear. His wife recognised the symptoms and came to his assistance.

‘I have been talking it over with Leslie,’ she said, ‘and the whole plan seems to me very reasonable. Cecil approves and I think we shall all be happier to have some young life here. What do you feel, my dear?’

Never had a woman appealed to Sir Harry in vain.

‘Just as you say, my dear,’ he replied. ‘If you approve, I approve. Have a talk with Leslie and Philip and Cecil and thrash it all out. So that’s all settled. Good night.’

He went quietly out of the room. Leslie and her brother began to laugh.

‘It reminds me,’ said Lady Waring, ‘of the time during the war when that very nice Major Merton and his wife were billeted on us. He and Harry spent a whole evening together and were too shy or too silly to discuss terms, so Lydia and I had to do it and of course we arranged everything in a few moments. Now I am going to bed. To-morrow we will have a talk after breakfast and then, Cecil, you can get back to Bosham by lunchtime. Good night.’

‘A fine, sensible, upstanding woman, my Aunt Harriet,’ said Lieutenant Waring when the door had closed. ‘I’ll catch the tide nicely about two o’clock to-morrow. And if you want me to break the entail or anything, Leslie, a letter to the Admiralty will always find me. I’m off to bed too.’ Leslie and her husband, very happy and a little overawed by the fulfilment of their hopes, sat for half an hour or so talking of the future, with a thousand hopes and plans. Next morning Sir Harry was caught and cornered and agreed to all the suggestions that the Winters and Lieutenant Waring put forward. He then said that he was a very old man and would not trouble anyone much longer, mounted his horse and rode off to visit old Jasper the gamekeeper, after which he was out until half-past five and came home in very good spirits.

‘A capital idea to make the Priory into a school for little boys,’ he said to his wife. ‘I wonder it never occurred to any of you before. It’s the obvious thing to do.’

‘Your ideas are always good, my dear,’ said his wife, pouring out a belated tea for him. Something in her voice may have struck him, for he looked at her with a faint enquiry, but as she went on pouring out tea he laid the thought to rest.

This scene from domestic life had taken place about two years previously and Beliers Priory was already a flourishing prep. school in a small way. As the Priory had been a military hospital during the war it had central heating and very adequate plumbing and was altogether far more comfortable than it had been since the days of Sir Harry’s grandfather who had fourteen indoor and twelve outdoor servants let alone the hangers-on and odd-jobbers. One cannot say whether the change was an improvement. It depends on what you like. When there are no servants you are grateful for central heating and perpetual hot water and fixed basins. But some of us are still unregenerate enough to think wistfully of bedrooms with a fire crackling when you went up to dress for dinner and the same fire being relaid and lighted by a print-dressed housemaid when she drew the curtains in the morning; of capacious washing stands with a large jug and basin and a small jug and basin (whose use was always a matter of conjecture) and below its frilled chintz front a china slop-pail and a large foot-bath; of a hip bath before the fire, with thick bath towels warming beside it, for no lady would have used the one bathroom which was tacitly appropriated by the hunting men; of roaring fires in hall and dining-room and living-rooms with footmen replenishing the huge baskets of wood and the massive coal scuttles; of valets and ladies’ maids waiting till their masters and mistresses chose to go to bed; of weekend luggage which would now seem rather too much for an expedition to the Far East; of roast partridge and boiled pheasant; of church on Sunday morning with a positively irreligious display of hats and toilettes and the regulation visit to the stables or the conservatories afterwards; of a life now dead and appearing to the younger generation, if any of them were interested in it, the baseless fabric of a vision.

Luckily for Philip and Leslie Winter they were young enough and intelligent enough to take the new world as it came and to bury their nostalgia. To be busy is one of the best cures for regrets, and very busy they had been. An efficient matron had been found through the matron at Southbridge School. The question of a cook had been more difficult and Leslie Winter had begun to consider seriously whether she would have to do the cooking herself, when Providence took the whole matter out of her hands by directing her (for even Providence uses to-day’s jargon we suppose) to have a baby.

‘Oh dear,’ said Leslie to the vicar’s wife, Octavia Needham, youngest daughter of the Dean of Barchester, ‘it is all very nice and of course I am enchanted, but now I will have to find a cook.’

‘Of course you will,’ said Octavia. ‘You don’t want a fallen one, do you? I could do you quite a nice one if you don’t mind two children. I don’t think she knows who either of the fathers are, but she is a really devoted mother.’

Leslie, who never ceased to marvel at Octavia Needham’s competent and practical view of life, said rather doubtfully that it would be very nice to have a good cook, but mightn’t it be a bad example for the boys, to which the vicar’s wife, whose imagination was practically non-existent, said boys of prep. school age wouldn’t be in the least affected, and that as they would be growing up in a world where Ishmael would see no difference between himself and Isaac, it might be quite a formative influence. Which mixture of Biblical allusion and current jargon so confused Leslie that she said they would go and see her Aunt Harriet.

Accordingly they went through to what used to be the servants’ wing of the Priory, where Sir Harry and Lady Waring lived. In the drawing-room they found Lady Waring sitting at her tea-table in talk with a plump, pretty, middle-aged woman.

‘Hullo, Selina,’ said Leslie. ‘You remember Selina, Octavia, old Nannie Allen’s daughter who married Sergeant Hopkins who was a hospital orderly here. How is Hopkins, Selina?’

‘Very well, thank you, Miss Leslie,’ said Selina. ‘You know old Mrs Hopkins died, poor old lady. Hopkins was quite upset and so was I, miss. She just passed away in her sleep quite peaceful and I said to Hopkins I hoped it would be given to me to go the same way when my time came,’ and Selina’s lovely dark eyes filled with effortless tears which did not ravage her face in the least.

Octavia Needham said whatever is suitable for a vicar’s wife to say under these circumstances, and if she said it with more brisk efficiency than deep sympathy, even a vicar’s wife must be allowed some armour and protection against her unprotected position as helper and sympathiser in general. And as her husband had lost an arm in North Africa during the war, she found her official veneer of manner an additional shield for him when parish matters pressed too hard. But she had a truly kind heart, even if she preferred to give her kindness rather to the ninety-nine black sheep of this horrible new world than to the one sheep that stays quietly at home and does its job.

Leslie Winter then enquired after the greengrocery business which Sergeant Hopkins carried on in Barchester.

‘That is exactly what Selina came to see me about,’ said Lady Waring. ‘Hopkins finds the difficulty of collecting and delivering getting worse and worse and he is thinking of selling the business to Amalgamated Vedge.’

There was silence. To hear of yet another private enterprise being sucked into the insatiable and unfeeling maw of a big company made the tea-party quiet and sad. Probably it was inevitable, but that didn’t make things any better.

‘So Hopkins says we’ll go to Chaldicotes and he’ll go in with his brother who has a dairy farm,’ said Selina. ‘I daresay it’s all right, my lady, but I can’t see Hopkins with cows. It’s the green stuff his heart is in. You should see the vegetables we get off our allotment, my lady. You never saw nicer stuff.’

And in proof of the niceness of the stuff Selina shed several diamond tears.

Lady Waring, Leslie Winter and Octavia Needham were each in her own way extremely intelligent and practical women. The same thought struck them almost simultaneously. Their eyes met.

‘I should like to speak to your husband, Selina,’ said Lady Waring. ‘He must not do anything without consulting Sir Harry. Will you tell him to come over and see us as soon as he can and not to do anything about selling the business till Sir Harry has spoken to him?’

‘Hopkins is in the kitchen, my lady,’ said Selina. ‘Him and me came over to see mother, so we all came up to see cook, and then your ladyship was kind enough to send for me, so I left mother and Hopkins in the kitchen.’

Lady Waring, who rather enjoyed the patriarchal hospitality exercised by her kitchen, a hospitality which, we may add, was often its own reward in the shape of odd presents of homegrown food, or odd jobs done after a cup of tea, told Selina to go and tell her husband to come up to the drawing-room. And even as Selina shut the door behind her, the conspirators’ tongues were loosened.

Octavia was the first to speak, as indeed she usually was, having an exalted though quite impersonal idea of the status of the parson’s wife. Not that she would ever have thrust herself before Lady Waring or interrupted her, for she was well bred, but being one of those lucky women whose belief in themselves is secure, she felt it was for the general good of the community that she should make her influence felt.

‘It seems,’ said Octavia, fixing Lady Waring with the eye that controlled Women’s Institutes, ‘as if it were Meant.’

‘I suppose you mean, my dear,’ said Lady Waring, somehow infusing a tone of kind though condescending majesty into her words, ‘that Hopkins might do for the kitchen garden.’

Octavia admitted the soft impeachment.

‘It might be possible,’ said Lady Waring, ‘but where could they live? Our man lived with his old mother and there isn’t a cottage to be had anywhere.’

‘But, Aunt Harriet,’ said Leslie, suddenly rushing in ahead of Octavia, ‘perhaps Selina would cook for the school. Then she and Hopkins could sleep here. There are those rooms at the back that the hospital turned into a flat for the matron, with a kitchen and a bathroom.’

Lady Waring, though struck by the idea, cautiously said that it required thought. But before her younger friends could begin to chafe at this reasonable suggestion, or in Octavia’s case to argue about it, a knock at the door heralded the return of Selina with her mother and husband.

‘Well, Nannie, how are you?’ said Lady Waring. ‘Good afternoon, Hopkins. I am sorry to hear that you are thinking of leaving these parts.’

‘Hopkins is a fool, my lady,’ said Nannie Allen, her black jet bonnet trembling with just indignation. ‘To take Selina over to Chaldicotes. I never heard such a thing in my life. He’d do better to mind his own business, my lady. I don’t want Selina away among the foreigners in West Barsetshire. I’m used to having Selina come over twice a week and see me, my lady, and I don’t intend to be left alone at my time of life. Why, if Selina was at Chaldicotes the Lord might see fit to take me any day, and then who would look after my lodgers?’

For Nannie Allen since her retirement on pension from the Warings had taken specially selected lodgers, preferably from among the children or grandchildren of her ex-babies, and her rooms were in constant demand.

‘I’m sure I don’t want to neglect mother, my lady,’ said Selina, her bright eyes raining tears, ‘but if Hopkins says it’s Chaldicotes I’ll have to go, like it says in the Bible about cleaving.’

‘If you read your Bible properly, Selina,’ said Nannie severely, ‘you’d see what it says about honouring your father, not that you ever knew him nor that it would have done you any good if you had, and your mother. I won’t hear of you going to Chaldicotes, and I’ve told Hopkins as much and I’ll tell him again.’

The unfortunate Hopkins, too shy to open his mouth, sat red-faced and wretched while this conversation was going on, twisting his cap in his hands, as he had once twisted Sir Harry’s muffler when discipline forbade him to take his cap off his head.

‘Well, Hopkins,’ said Lady Waring. ‘What do you think about it?’

The ex-sergeant was understood to say that he’d done his best, he had, but no man could do more than a man could do, and these big firms they fair knocked the heart out of a man. What, he said, was the good of building up a nice little business in green stuff when the big fellows could undersell you everywhere? It would have been better for all concerned, he added, if he had stopped one in the war, at which remark his wife’s effortless tears flowed afresh.

‘You know Crammer has left us,’ said Lady Waring. ‘His father wanted him back to help on the farm. Sir Harry doesn’t know what will happen to the kitchen garden.’

‘I’ve nothing against Crammer,’ said Hopkins slowly. ‘His early peas were always a treat and his strawberries. But there’s one thing he didn’t understand, my lady, and that’s celery. Sometimes when I was at the hospital here I’d go and look at his celery trench and I could have cried. Cruel it was.’

‘Well, you had better wait and see Sir Harry when he comes in,’ said Lady Waring.

‘And say thank you to her ladyship,’ said his formidable mother-in-law sharply. ‘And now, Selina, we’ll have no more nonsense about Chaldicotes. There’s plenty you can do to help me with my lodgers. Anyone’d think you were ungrateful.’

‘Oh dear, no, mother,’ said Selina. ‘I’m ever so grateful to her ladyship. I was only thinking I’ll miss my little kitchen,’ to which Mrs Allen replied that there were plenty of other kitchens in the world.

Leslie then said that she thought she heard Uncle Harry coming in, so Hopkins had better go to the study and consult him and she would take Selina over the school, which she did from dormitories to offices. Here, in a large well-lighted kitchen, for the basement was only a couple of steps below ground level, they found the little boys’ high teas being cooked by a pleasant-faced elderly woman in a white apron.

‘Cook, this is Mrs Hopkins who used to be my aunt’s maid,’ said Leslie. ‘This is Mrs Trotter, Selina. She came as a temporary, but she has to go on to another job now and I really don’t know what we shall do without her. The boys do enjoy her cooking so much.’

‘Well, it’s a pleasure to cook for young gentlemen,’ said the cook. ‘I was at the Deanery for twenty years, Mrs Hopkins, and that was a family it was a pleasure to cook for, with all the young ladies and gentlemen and their children coming and going. But I’m past that now and I only take temporaries. I’ve a nice little house of my own in Barchester.’

Selina expressed deep admiration of the sausage rolls that were keeping warm on a hotplate and she and the cook fell into professional talk, while Leslie listened and wondered whether the fish would rise to the bait. Then she took Selina away and showed her the little flat with bathroom and kitchen where the cook lived, and so they walked back along the passage to the Warings’ quarters. When they were in the little hall, Selina stopped and began to cry.

‘Cheer up,’ said Leslie, entirely unmoved by Selina’s peculiar habits.

‘It’s not that, miss,’ said Selina, who as an old retainer stuck to Leslie’s spinster status. ‘I was just thinking what lovely teas cook was sending up for those dear little boys. If there’s one thing I like, miss, it’s seeing young gentlemen eat, and mother is just the same.’

‘Well, I’m needing a cook for the school,’ said Leslie.

‘You’re joking, miss,’ said Selina reproachfully.

‘Indeed I’m not,’ said Leslie. ‘Cook is going at the end of the month and I can’t hear of another, and I’m expecting a baby in the spring or I’d take on the cooking myself.’

‘Indeed you mustn’t do no such thing, miss,’ said Selina. ‘I’ll come and cook for you myself, miss. I’d sooner do that than go to Chaldicotes. Hopkins is a good husband, but his sisters I can’t abide. They haven’t got no appetite, miss, they just peck at their food, and that’s what I can’t get used to. Flying in the face of Providence I call it.’

‘It might be an idea,’ said Leslie. ‘We’ll see what your husband has to say and your mother. Of course I’d love to have you here, and the little flat would be very handy for you and your husband.’ And without waiting for an answer she went into the sitting-room where Lady Waring and Octavia were having a delightful conversation with Nannie Allen about Marigold, the village problem girl, who used to be general help to Nannie.

‘The films, that’s all she’s fit for,’ said Nannie darkly. ‘Airs and graces and nylon stockings. It all comes of those Americans we had at the camp. Though I must say for them they were more sinned against than sinning. The way that Marigold used to make up to them! “Marigold,” I used to say to her, “you’ll wake up one fine morning with a black baby,” but you might as well have talked to Mr Attlee if that’s his name.’

Then Sir Harry and a sheepish Hopkins came in from the study and Sir Harry announced that he had given Hopkins a good talking to and told him he had better take over the Priory kitchen garden as soon as possible.

‘I believe Adams has an interest in Amalgamated Vedge,’ said Sir Harry. ‘Or if he hasn’t, he’ll know somebody that has, and we’ll see that you get a fair deal, Hopkins.’

‘Then,’ said Leslie in a matter-of-fact way, though inside she was trembling with excitement, ‘Hopkins and Selina can move into our flat and Selina will cook for the boys.’

Whether Mr and Mrs Hopkins had any doubts as to the high-handed ordering of their affairs we cannot say. We think not, for they had grown up in a world where the gentry were ex