Free Unconditional surrender by Evelyn Waugh Page B

trees were dropping their leaves in ones and twos; they twisted and faltered in the descent as their crumpled brown shapes directed, but landed under the boughs on which they had once budded. Guy thought for a moment of Ludovic’s note-book, of the ‘feather in the vacuum’ to which he had been compared and, by contrast, remembered boisterous November days when he and his mother had tried to catch leaves in the avenue; each one caught insured a happy day? week? month? which? in his wholly happy childhood. Only his father had remained to watch the transformation of that merry little boy into the lonely captain of Halberdiers who followed the coffin.
    On the cobbled pavements the villagers whose work had kept them from church turned out to see the cart roll past. Many who had come to the church broke away and went about their business. There was not room for many to stand in the little burying ground.
    The nuns had lined the edges of the grave with moss and evergreen leaves and chrysanthemums, giving it a faint suggestion of Christmas decoration. The undertaker’s men deftly lowered the coffin; holy water, incense, the few prayers, the silent Paternoster, the Benedictus; holy water again; the De profundis. Guy, Angela, and Uncle Peregrine came forward, took the sprinkler in turn and added their aspersions. Then it was ended.
    The group at the graveside turned away and, as they left the churchyard, broke into subdued conversation. Angela greeted those she had not met that morning. Uncle Peregrine made his choice of those who should come to the house for coffee. Guy encountered Lieutenant Padfield in the street.
    ‘Nice of you to have come,’ he said.
    ‘It is a very significant occasion,’ said the Lieutenant: ‘Signifying what?’ Guy wondered. The Lieutenant added, ‘I’m coming back to the Hall. Reverend Mother asked me.’
    When? How? Why? Guy wondered, but he said nothing except: ‘You know the way?’
    ‘Surely.’
    The Lord Lieutenant had hung back, remaining in the public, Anglican graveyard, Box-Bender with him. Now he said: ‘I won’t bother your wife or your nephew. Just give them my sympathy, will you?’ and, as Box-Bender saw him to his car, added: ‘I had a great respect for your father-in-law. Didn’t see much of him in the last ten years, of course. No one did. But he was greatly respected in the county.’
    The funeral party walked back along the village street. Opposite the Catholic church and presbytery, the last building before the gates, was the ‘Lesser House’, a stucco facade and porch masking the much older structure. This was not in the convent’s lease. It had fulfilled various functions in the past, often being used as a dower house. The factor lived there now. The blinds were in the windows, drawn down for the passing of the coffin. It was a quiet house; the street in front was virtually a cul-de-sac and at the back it was open to the park. It was here his father had suggested that Guy should end his days.
    The convent school was prosperous and the grounds well kept even in that year when everywhere in the country box and yew were growing untrimmed and lawns were ploughed and planted with food-stuffs.
    A gate tower guards the forecourt at Broome. Behind it lie two quadrangles, medieval in plan, Caroline in decoration, like a university college; as in most colleges there is a massive Gothic wing. Gervase and Hermione had added this, employing the same architect as had designed their church. At the main door stood the Reverend Mother and a circle of nuns. In the upper windows and in the turret where the Blessed Gervase Crouchback had been taken prisoner appeared the heads of girls, some angelic, some grotesque, like the corbels in the old church, all illicitly peeping down on the mourners.
    The Great Hall had been given a plaster ceiling in the eighteenth century. Gervase and Hermione had removed it revealing the high timbers. In Guy’s childhood the walls above the oak wainscot