Free Hare Sitting Up by Michael Innes

For people’ – Judith added with proper humility – ‘still at baby school, that’s to say.’
    ‘Well, it’s really not bad.’ The small boy offered this as one who considers a large complexity of balanced factors. ‘Only get some of their friends – small boys they know quite well, and who won’t frighten them – to toss them in a blanket a bit before you send them. It makes the first night easier. All the chaps whose families are in the know about Splaine arrange for that.’
    ‘Thank you,’ Judith said. She was much encouraged by this glimpse of savagery. ‘And is your headmaster a really nice man?’
    The small boy frowned. He probably doubted this question’s being quite good form. Nevertheless he answered with continued frankness. ‘He’s terribly decent, really. Of course, he does seem a disappointed man. It makes him restless. We think he must have been frightfully ambitious. And, of course, it didn’t come off.’
    ‘Ambitious?’ Judith found this interesting.
    ‘He was a Rugger Cap, you know, which ought to satisfy any man. But, at the same time, he had this natural leg break. So he hoped to play for England as a cricketer too. It would have been unique, almost. But he just didn’t bring it off.’ Judith’s informant shook his head seriously. ‘We think that’s what messed him up.’
    ‘Messed–’ Judith checked herself as she saw the boy, for the first time, shift rather uneasily from one foot to the other. ‘But look, you’re getting frightfully wet. Do just take me in to Miss Grimstone.’
     
    Left in charge of Splaine Croft, Miss Grimstone received visitors in the drawing-room. Judith looked round it with interest. It was the sort of entirely feminine and decidedly old-fashioned apartment which some bachelors think proper to keep about the house in pious memory of a mother.
    But it was a pleasant room in itself – and no doubt there would be prospective parents over whom its selling-power could be considerable. Gentlefolk have to be on the job for a good many generations, Judith reflected, to build up just this sort of everything-good and everything-faded effect. The bits and pieces of French furniture had really come from France – and already long ago local carpenters had had to be called in to remedy unfortunate disintegrations. The few watercolours were really by Girtin and Paul Sandby and the elder and the younger Cozens, and they had been acquired by Junipers when such things cost a good deal less than they do now. The whole room was much of a piece – the only odd note being struck by a modern portrait-bust in bronze. Judith, being a sculptor herself, saw at a glance who it was by. Fifteen hundred guineas, she said to herself. And then Miss Grimstone entered the room.
    Judith shook hands and then turned to the large bay window. It looked out on the rose garden. ‘Peace!’ she said enthusiastically.
    Miss Grimstone peered at her intently through thick lenses. ‘It is,’ she admitted, ‘a secluded situation.’
    ‘No – those roses. The large yellow ones with the faint pink flush. Peace. Such a beautiful name for a rose. Do you know’ – and Judith turned impulsively to Miss Grimstone – ‘I am quite, quite sure that Kevin and Jerry would be very, very happy here!’
    ‘And they might even learn something, if that is judged to be of any importance.’ Miss Grimstone, who regarded Splaine Croft not as a refuge from the miseries of the world but as a place at which there were standards to keep up, clearly had no scruple about snubbing gush. ‘And how curious, Lady Appleby, that your sons would appear to be named out of Finnegans Wake .’
    Judith felt a sinking sensation inside. She was the more disconcerted because Miss Grimstone had so unmistakably the appearance of one whose literary studies are unlikely to have proceeded beyond Eric, or Little by Little . Irresponsible humour, clearly, ought not to be cultivated by those who would assist Scotland