Dorothy Sayers - Busman’s Honeymoon

‘So he said , Miss Twitterton.’

He folded his lips firmly, as though, in the vicar’s presence, he preferred not to make the comments he might have made, and retired into the window with his watering-pot.

‘But he isn’t here ,’ said Miss Twitterton. ‘It’s all a terrible muddle. And poor Lord and Lady Peter-’

She embarked on an agitated description of the previous night’s events, in which the keys, the chimneys, Crutchley’s new garage, the bed-linen, the ten o’clock bus, and Peter’s intention of putting in an electric plant were jumbled into hopeless confusion. The vicar ejaculated from time to time and looked increasingly bewildered.

‘Most trying, most trying,’ he said at length, when Miss Twitterton had talked herself breathless. ‘I am so sorry. If there is anything my wife and I can do. Lady Peter, I hope you will not hesitate to make use of us.’

‘It’s awfully good of you,’ said Harriet. ‘But really, we are quite all right. It’s rather fun, picnicking like this. Only, of course. Miss Twitterton is anxious about her uncle.’

No doubt he has been detained somewhere,’ said the vicar. ‘Or’-a bright thought occurred to him-‘a letter day have gone wrong. Depend upon it, that is what has happened. The post-office is a wonderful institution, but even Homer nods. I am sure you will find Mr Noakes at Broxford safe and sound. Pray tell him I am sorry to have missed him. I had called to ask him for a subscription to the concert we are getting up in aid of the Church Music Fund; that explains my intrusion upon you. I fear we parsons are sad mendicants.’

‘Is the Choir still going strong?’ inquired Harriet. ‘Do you remember once bringing it over to Great Pagford for a great combined Armistice Thanksgiving? I sat beside you at the Rectory tea, and we discussed Church music very seriously Do you still do dear old Bunnett in F?’

She hummed the opening bars. Mr Puffett, who all this time had remained discreetly withdrawn and was, at the moment, assisting Crutchley to sponge the aspidistra leaves, looked up, and joined in the melody with a powerful roar. ‘Ah!’ said Mr Goodacre, gratified; ‘we have made a great deal of progress. We have advanced to Stanford in C. And last Harvest Festival we tackled the Hallelujah Chorus with great success.’

‘Hallelujah!’ warbled Mr Puffett, in stentorian tones, ‘Hallelujah! Hal-le-lu-jah!’

‘Tom,’ said the vicar, apologetically, ‘is one of my most enthusiastic choirmen. And so is Frank.’

Miss Twitterton glanced at Crutchley, as though to check him if he showed signs of bursting into riotous song. She was relieved to see that he had dissociated himself from Mr Puffett, and was mounting the steps to wind the clock.

‘And Miss Twitterton, of course,’ said Mr Goodacre, ‘presides at the organ.’

Miss Twitterton smiled faintly and looked at her fingers.

‘But,’ pursued the vicar, ‘we sadly need new bellows. The old ones are patched past mending, and since we put in the new set of reeds they have become quite inadequate. The Hallelujah Chorus exposed our weaknesses sadly. In fact the wind gave out altogether.’

‘So embarrassing,’ said Miss Twitterton. ‘I didn’t know what to do.’

‘Miss Twitterton must be saved embarrassment at all costs,’ said Peter, producing his note-case.

‘Oh, dear!’ said the vicar. ‘I didn’t mean… Really, this is most generous. Too bad, your very first day in the parish. I-really-I am almost ashamed to-so very kind-so large a sum-perhaps you would like to look at the programme of the concert. Dear me!’ His face lit up with a childlike pleasure. ‘Do you know, it is quite a long time since I handled a proper Bank of England note.’

For the space of a moment, Harriet saw every person in that room struck into a kind of immobility by the magic of a piece of paper as it crackled between the vicar’s fingers. Miss Twitterton awestruck and open-mouthed; Mr Puffett suddenly pausing in mid-action, sponge in hand; Crutchley, on his way out of the room with the step-ladder over his shoulder, jerking his head round to view the miracle; Mr Goodacre himself smiling with excitement and delight; Peter amused and a little self-conscious, like a kind uncle presenting a Teddy bear to the nursery; they might have posed as they stood for the jacket-picture of a thriller: Bank-Notes in the Parish .

Then Peter said meaninglessly, ‘Oh, not at all.’ He picked up the concert-programme which the vicar had let fall in clutching at the note; and all the arrested motion flowed on again like a film. Miss Twitterton gave a small ladylike cough, Crutchley went out, Mr Puffett dropped the sponge into the watering-can, and the vicar, putting the ten-pound note carefully away in his pocket, inscribed the amount of the subscription in a little black notebook.

‘It’s going to be a grand concert,’ said Harriet, peering over her husband’s shoulder. ‘When is it? Shall we be here?’

‘October 27th,’ said Peter. ‘Of course we shall come to it. Rather.’

‘Of course,’ agreed Harriet; and smiled at the vicar. Whatever fantastic pictures she had from time to time conjured up of married life with Peter, none of them had ever included attendance at village concerts. But of course they would go. She understood now why it was that with all his masquing attitudes, all his cosmopolitan self, all his odd spiritual reticences and escapes, he yet carried about with him that permanent atmosphere of security. He belonged to an ordered society, and this was it. More than any of the friends in her own world, he spoke the familiar language of her childhood. In London, anybody, at any moment, might do or become anything. But in a village-no matter what village-they were all immutable themselves: parson, organist, sweep, duke’s son and doctor’s daughter moving like chessmen upon their allotted squares. She was curiously excited. She thought, ‘I have married England.’ Her fingers tightened on his arm.

England, serenely unaware of his symbolic importance, acknowledged the squeeze with a pressure of the elbow. ‘Splendid!’ he said, heartily. ‘Piano solo, Miss Twitterton-we mustn’t miss that, on any account. Song by the Reverend Simon Goodacre, “Hybrias the Cretan”-strong, he-man stuff, padre. Folk-songs and sea-shanties by the choir…’

(He took his wife’s caress to indicate that she shared his appreciation of the programme. And, indeed, their minds were not far apart, for he was thinking: How these old boys run true to form! ‘Hybrias the Cretan’! When I was a kid, the curate used to sing it-‘With my good sword I plough, I reap, I sow’-a gentle creature who wouldn’t have harmed a fly… Merton, I think, or was it Corpus?… with a baritone bigger than his whole body… he fell in love with our governess…)

‘Shenandoah’, ‘Rio Grande’, ‘Down in Demerara’. He glanced round the dust-sheeted room. ‘That’s exactly how we feel. That’s the song for us, Harriet.’ He lifted his voice:

‘Here we sit like birds in the wilderness-’

All mad together, thought Harriet, joining in:

‘Birds in the wilderness-’

Mr Puffett could not bear it and exploded with a roar:

‘birds in the wilderness-’

The vicar opened his mouth:

‘Here we sit like birds in the wilderness,

Down in Demerara!’

Even Miss Twitterton added her chirp to the last line.

‘Now this old man, he took and died-a-lum,

Took and died-a-lum,

Took and died-a-lum,

This old man, he took and died-a-lum,

Down in Demerara!’

(It was just like that poem by someone or other: ‘Everyone suddenly burst out singing.’)

‘So here we sit like birds in the wilderness,