The Complete Short Stories of Evelyn Waugh - Evelyn Waugh [91]
Under their stone-tiled roofs the villagers derived substantial comfort from all these aliens. Foreign visitors impressed by the charges of London restaurants and the splendour of the more accessible ducal palaces often express wonder at the wealth of England. A half has not been told them. It is in remote hamlets like Much Malcock that the great reservoirs of national wealth seep back to the soil. The villagers had their Memorial Hall and their club. In the rafters of their church the death-watch beetle had been expensively exterminated for them; their scouts had a bell tent and silver bugles; the district nurse drove her own car; at Christmas their children were surfeited with trees and parties and the cottagers loaded with hampers; if one of them was indisposed port and soup and grapes and tickets for the seaside arrived in profusion; at evening their menfolk returned from work laden with perquisites, and all the year round they feasted on forced vegetables. The vicar found it impossible to interest them in the Left Book Club.
“God gave all men all earth to love,” Mr. Metcalfe quoted, dimly remembering the lines from a calendar which had hung in his office in Alexandria, “but since our hearts are small, Ordained for each one spot should prove, Beloved over all.”
He pottered round to the engine-house where his chauffeur was brooding over batteries. He popped his head into another outbuilding and saw that no harm had befallen the lawnmower during the night. He paused in the kitchen garden to nip the blossom off some newly planted black-currant which must not be allowed to fruit that summer. Then, his round finished, he pottered in to breakfast.
His wife was already there.
“I’ve done my round,” he said.
“Yes, dear.”
“Everything coming along very nicely.”
“Yes, dear.”
“You can’t see Pilbury Steeple, though.”
“Good gracious, Beverley, why should you want to do that?”
“It’s a sign of rain when you can.”
“What a lot of nonsense. You’ve been listening to Boggett again.”
She rose and left him with his papers. She had to see the cook. Servants seem to take up so much time in England; she thought wistfully of the white-gowned Berber boys who had pattered about the cool, tiled floors of her house in Alexandria.
Mr. Metcalfe finished his breakfast and retired to his study with pipe and papers. The Gazette came out that morning. A true countryman always reads his “local rag” first, so Mr. Metcalfe patiently toiled through the columns of Women’s Institute doings and the reports of a Council meeting on the subject of sewage, before he allowed himself to open The Times.
Serene opening of a day of wrath!
II
Towards eleven o’clock Mr. Metcalfe put aside the crossword. In the lobby by the garden-door he kept a variety of garden implements specially designed for the use of the elderly. Selecting from among them one which had newly arrived, he sauntered out into the sunshine and addressed himself to the plantains on the lawn. The tool had a handsomely bound leather grip, a spliced cane handle and a head of stainless steel; it worked admirably, and with a minimum of effort Mr. Metcalfe had soon scarred a large area with neat little pits.
He paused and called towards the house, “Sophie,