Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

It was an ornamental stationery business that Miss Bocker first purchased, and it flourished so well that the enterprising woman was able to expand it to address everyday stationery needs as well and to acquire several other businesses in comfortable succession, such as a tobacconist shop and a wax chandlery and a millinery and dressmaking establishment, which put my landlady’s dress shop well nigh out of business and earned that lady’s consistent enmity. Miss Bocker had even run for a seat in the Petit-Parliament, and would have won and become the first woman in the history of Dingley Dell to do so had she not confessed upon the hustings a staunch belief in social Darwinism, which carried with it a denial of the beneficence (or even, indeed, the existence) of God. For this egregious public trespass Antonia Bocker lost the votes of every appalled Christian in her district. Still she was successful in nearly everything else she did, this fact giving her license to be forthcoming with the most obstinate opinions about all that there was to venture an opinion on (in polite company), including the minor matter of how one should behave at tea, and then the much more important matter of the tumbled Mrs. Pyegrave.

“I have a long-standing association with Richard Pyegrave. He has upholstered furniture in all of my shops, and I will tell you this, sisters, and you as well, Trimmers: that if I had been married to a man who shewed so little concern for me in my final extremities as to spend time bartering my jewellry at a shop — let alone in one of our more middling establishments…”

Miss Bocker paused here to allow time for Rose Fagin of Fagin Fine Jewellry and Plate to take and demonstrate offence at having had her own family business so economically denigrated, but to Rose’s credit, she merely waved her hand, unperturbed, thus giving Antonia Bocker leave to continue. “I should, if I were Janet Pyegrave,” Miss Bocker went on, “rouse myself from my inconvenient coma, rise straightaway from my bed and, regardless of my dress, drag my bedraggled body down to the Inn-of-Justice to file a bill of divorcement. I would not put it past that brute — and yes he is a brute, sisters: a base, hairy-knuckled ape — I’ve seen the way he orders his workmen about with animal-like grunts and snorts — would not have put it past that brute to have decanted her from that height himself in a fit of domestic rage.”

“Antonia!” cried Mrs. Potterson, her cheeks suddenly ruddling themselves in shock over the accusation.

“I stand by it,” replied Miss Bocker, folding her arms resolutely and making her assertion a literal one by rising from her chair.

“Still — oh my dear Antonia . You cannot go saying such things. Insulting Frederick because he is hungry was nothing compared to making this hideous charge against Richard Pyegrave — an upstanding member of our community. A pillar. It is too much, Antonia.”

“Yet I have no intention of taking it back. Is it your desire, then, that I should go?”

“What I wish for you to do, my dear, is behave. ”

“Stuff and nonsense! Shall I go or shall I stay? Do I have leave to speak or no?”

Antonia was answered by a flurry of placatory pats and susurrant palliations on the part of every woman in the parlour with the exception of the exasperated hostess. Even the child-woman Betty Potterson, who had been wakened suddenly from her most recent nap by the sound of heightened voices, pointed with the others to the vacated chair, signalling that Miss Bocker should sit herself down in it, and then indulged in a private smile as if it had all been pure rapture to take the side of one who opposed her mother.

Miss Bocker stood for the moment in seething silence, unplacated and unpalliated, angered not so much, as was my guess, by the difference of opinion between herself and Mrs. Potterson over how one should comport oneself at a commemorative tea, than by the cold verity of there being a man about whom she had every right to vent her animosity — a man who, whilst reputed to be a fine and worthy member of the Petit-Parliament, and arguably the most accomplished upholsterer and draper in Dingley Dell, was also in her considered opinion a felonious “hairy-knuckled ape.”

“I have had my fill,” Antonia resumed in a low and choleric tone, “of the men of this Godforsaken vale who rule with one fist poised to punch an opposing face or clout an adversarial gut (such as the combative situation demands), and the other fist closed round chinking bags of coin, because from each orangutan fist devolves one form or the other of this duality of power which has tyrannised the Dell from its earliest beginnings. If guns had not been withdrawn long ago from these environs, I have no doubt that half of the hot headed men in Dingley Dell — that larger number comprising nearly every man in the Dell — for nearly all of them — do not deny it, Trimmers — tend to lose their highly combustible tempers over the most insignificant of matters — it is the male beast in them, and the reason for our resembling, at times, the proverbial caged rats all quartered together and gnawing and chewing upon each other’s tails—”

“Oh have pity upon our poor ears!” interposed Mrs. Venus in a flutter of spirits.

Antonia Bocker did not leave off, but merely took a pause to fetch her breath and to cast about for a closing consequent to her dangling antecedent. “Then we should all be dead, ladies and gentleman. We should all be riddled with holes like eye-cheese, and Dingley Dell should come to its end.” And with this, Antonia Bocker sat down.

“For the love of our Lord and Savior, Antonia!” exclaimed Malvina Potterson in another exasperated appeal to dignified discourse. Addressing her most outspoken guest, she continued: “Your disquisition is wildly inappropriate for a tea party and almost certainly a tea party that seeks only to do honour to the memory of our dear departed friend Euphemia. We will entertain no further outburst from you whatsoever.”

Again Miss Bocker rose to her feet and again did she ask her hostess if she should take her leave. “For I will most assuredly go if you desire it. Although I came to speak in quiet, respectful tones of memorial sentiment for that dear woman who bore our friend Frederick, yet I’ve heard nothing since my arrival but a description in the most mind-numbing terms of what we have worn this past year and what we have put into a pudding and who said what to whom behind the back of whomever else — you see, Trimmers, this was the lay of the land before your own arrival, this mindless female chitter-chatter that makes me want to reject everything I’ve just eaten by way of the very same portal through which it was originally admitted.”

“Oh Antonia, must you!” This from Mrs. Lavinia Blight, who stomped her tree-trunk legs upon the floor and unsettled both the teacups and the harmonica goblets set upon the escritoire, and for a brief moment made one to think that the musical glasses were about to give a tune. “And if we are to continue along this line another moment, I shall begin to pull out all of my hair!”

Mrs. Potterson nodded to Mrs. Blight in support of the second woman’s support of Mrs. Potterson’s side.

There was one woman in the group who had yet to say a word, as was her wont. In fact, Miss Georgianna Milvey generally spoke little at all — not here nor, really, anyplace else — and could be largely counted upon to nod her head politely and to smile approvingly at everything that was uttered which wasn’t too divisive, even if what had just been uttered controverted that which had previously been uttered. But now the woman was set to do that very thing which never would have been expected of her. This woman, who wore a squeezed bonnet fastened so tightly about her head that one was hard-pressed to recall what colour was her hair (or even if she had any), actually spoke an opinion . The opinion came with such conviction as to put the habitually opinionated Miss Bocker totally off her guard. “Antonia, my dear, let us not merely stop ourselves outside the door to Malvina’s home. If there is so much that you find disagreeable with the men of Dingley Dell— and let us agree that without the men of Dingley Dell, there should be no Dingley Dell, for like it or no, it is they who have borne the heavier burden in the raising up of this valley to its present state of relatively civilised existence — why simply do you not leave — the Dell, that is? Why don’t you just quit this beastly valley altogether, my dearest?” The normally sedate and taciturn Miss Milvey smiled. It was a cutting smile, and one that took a rather good measure of itself.