It had been my turn to have luncheon with the Lawrences. When we were drinking our coffee in the room like a conservatory where the birds lived, Aunt Lawrence abruptly broke off a discussion she was having with my uncle about selling some horses to the police force and turned to Mother accusingiy to say: ‘What is all this about Frances driving about in an open car with that mad Italian woman?’
I was on the point of leaving the room with Grace to look at some hurdles that had been put up for her to practise jumping over, but we paused at the door to hear Mother’s reply. ‘Has she?’ she said, Opening her eyes wide. ‘Oh yes, of course; Mrs Alexander. The child enjoys listening to her playing the piano, you know. I don’t think the woman's mad, only eccentric.’
Aunt Lawrence put down her coffee-cup and said firmly: ‘I have never met the woman, but I have seen her driving about in a tin-pot motor-car looking as mad as a hatter. Wears a turban, doesn't pay her bills, plays at being a nurse. keeps unlimited monkeys and paints her slippers gold. Of course the woman isn't sane.’ Mother bit her lip and started twisting her handkerchief like a child
and
and
Every morning a tutor called Mr Derbyshire came to teach me for about three hours. I enjoyed the lessons. At last I seemed to be learning; things that I had never understood be fore became clear. It was as if my mind had been tightly clenched against lesson books. In the afternoons there was the pony to ride, and on Saturday mornings an athletic young woman came and taught us to play tennis. There was, some talk about us having French conversation with a nun, but fortunately Mother forgot about this.
I should have been pleased that the chairs were to be banished to the loft, but I wasn't. Now they were doomed, I felt sorry for them, and the rumbling and grumbling at night seemed to become louder. If I sat up in bed and listened, it wasn't there, but, as soon as I lay down, it started again and sometimes I thought there was a kind of chanting. I asked Esmé if she heard noises during the night, but she said she slept like a stone and I didn’t like to ask the little ones in case it made them afraid.
One night, as I lay in bed listening to a rumbling, rattling sound, I sat up and could still hear it distinctly. I was only safe from it when I put my head under the clothes. I imagined all the chairs moaning and groaning together because they were to be shut away in the loft and had lost their bodies and souls. As I lay suffocating under the clothes, I remembered Esmé's joking remark about giving the chairs a Christian burial. The more I thought about it, the more the idea pleased me, until I knew it was the only thing to do. I couldn’t actually bury the chairs, because they would need such an enormous grave, but I could read the Burial Service over them, and the loft, when they were taken there. would serve as a kind of tomb.
In spite of the sound, I switched on the light, put on my Harrods dressing-gown, not bothering about slippers because it always took so long to find them. slipped my school prayerbook in my pocket and opened the door. As I did so, the rumbling-grumbling noises stopped and I seemed to hear a great sigh. I had to walk down the two flights of stairs in the darkness, because I did not want to disturb anyone by showing a light under their bedroom door. I felt extraordinarily brave until I reached the library door, but I dared not open it for fear I might see something so fearful that I’d never be the same again. It was completely quiet except for the halI-clock ticking, no groans or rumbles. I tried looking through the keyhole, but there was a key in it. Then I opened the door a little way with my back to it, so that if anything came out I could run quickly. I sIowly turned round and felt for the light-switch, and under the hard electric light I saw the chairs dismally gathered round the table, perfectly still and quiet, but glowering. I had not realized how cold my feet were until I stepped on to the thick Turkey carpet and felt the long pile between my toes. I opened the prayer-book at the Order for the Burial of the Dead and was dismayed to see how long it was, almost six pages. As I skimmed through it, I saw there was nothing much I could leave out except the two Psalms, which seemed a pity, because there were some beautiful words in them and a lot of wisdom: ‘I will keep my mouth as it were with a bridle, while the ungodly is in my sight” (something to remember when I was with the Lawrences), or ‘For man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain: he heapeth up riches, and cannot tell who shall gather them.’ There was even a homely mention of a moth fretting a garment.
As I was about to start the service I read in small italics that people who have not been baptised cannot have a Christian burial. Now I was faced with two complete services, besides having to choose six suitable Christian names. I thought of kings’ names at first, but there seemed nothing but Georges and Edwards and Henrys. Then I noticed a leather~bound volume of collected poems. It would be nice for the chairs to be called after poets. It took some time to choose names that suited the chairs and appealed to me, but I eventually decided on Percy Shelley. I didn't care for the name Percy. but I loved Shelley and decided that the chair with the lighter skin should be called after him. George Byron was a chair with something slightly wrong with one foot so that it wobbled a bit. Edgar Poe had a mysterious mark running across his skin, as if from a scar. The last three chairs had no distinguishing marks. I called one Alfred Tennyson because it was a good sound name, another William Yeats because he was still alive and I had only recently discovered him, and the third Anon. Circa, who seemed to have died a very long time ago. I read the Baptism of Such as are of Riper Years and used water from a flower-vase to cross each chair with as I read: ‘I baptise thee in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.’
By the time the Baptism Service was over I was feeling terribly tired and my voice had become husky from reading. I sank into Percy Shelley and started on the Burial Service. singing the first part, because it said “say or sing’ and singing made a change. But then there was that long part all about fishes and birds and the twinkling of an eye and the last trump. I only hope I finished the whole service before I fell asleep, leaning forward in Percy Shelley with my head on the table.
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