The Sunny Side (2 page)

“
Ou est
Cooks's
homme
?” he cries.

III. S
ETTLING
D
OWN

The villa was high up on the hill, having (as Simpson was to point out several times later) Mentone on its left hand and Monte Carlo on its right. A long winding path led up through its garden of olives to the front door, and through the mimosa trees which flanked this door we could see already a flutter of white aprons. The staff was on the loggia waiting to greet us.

We halted a moment out of sight of the ladies above and considered ourselves. It came to us with a sudden shock that we were a very large party.

“I suppose,” said Archie to Simpson, “they do expect all of us and not only you? You told them that about half of London was coming?”

“We're only six,” said Myra, “because I've just counted again, but we seem about twenty.”

“It's quite all right,” said Simpson cheerfully. “I said we'd be six.”

“But six in a letter is much smaller than six of us like this; and when they see our luggage—”

“Let's go back,” I suggested, suddenly nervous. To be five guests of the guest of a man you have never met is delicate work.

At this critical moment Archie assumed command. He is a Captain in the Yeomanry and has tackled bigger jobs than this in his time.

“We must get ourselves into proper order,” he said. “Simpson, the villa has been lent to
you
; you must go first. Dahlia and I come next. When we arrive you will introduce us as your friends, Mr. and Mrs. Mannering. Then turning to Myra you say, ‘Mr. Mannering's sister; and this,' you add, ‘is her husband.' Then—er—Thomas—”

“It will be difficult to account for Thomas,” I said. “Thomas comes at the end. He hangs back a little at first; and then if he sees that there is going to be any awkwardness about him, he can pretend he's come on the wrong night, and apologize and go home again.”

“If Thomas goes, I go,” said Myra dramatically.

“I have another idea,” I said. “Thomas hides here for a bit. We introduce ourselves and settle in, and have lunch; and after lunch we take a stroll in the garden, and to our great surprise discover Thomas. ‘Thomas,' we say, ‘
you
here? Dear old chap, we thought you were in England. How splendid! Where are you staying? Oh, but you must stop with
us
; we can easily have a bed put up
for you in the garage.' And then—”

“Not after lunch,” said Thomas; “before lunch.”

“Don't all be so silly,” smiled Dahlia. “They'll wonder what has happened to us if we wait any longer. Besides, the men will be here with the luggage directly. Come along.”

“Samuel,” said Archie, “forward.”

In our new formation we marched up, Simpson excited and rehearsing to himself the words of introduction, we others outwardly calm. At a range of ten yards he opened fire. “How do you do?” he beamed. “Here we all are! Isn't it a lovely—”

The cook-housekeeper, majestic but kindly, came forward with outstretched hand and welcomed him volubly—in French. The other three ladies added their French to hers. There was only one English body on the loggia. It belonged to a bull-dog. The bull-dog barked loudly at Simpson in English.

There was no “Cook's homme” to save Simpson this time. But he rose to the occasion nobly. The scent of the mimosa inspired him.

“
Merci
,” he said, “
merci. Oui, n'est ce pas
! Delightful. Er—these are—
ces sont mes amis
.
Er—Dahlia, come along—er,
Monsieur et Madame Mannering
—er—Myra,
la soeur de Monsieur
—er—where are you, old chap?—
le mari de la soeur de Monsieur.
Er—Thomas—er—” (he was carried away by memories of his schoolboy French), “
le fr re du jardinier
—er—” He wheeled round and saw me; introduced me again; introduced Myra as my wife, Archie as her brother, and Dahlia as Archie's wife; and then with a sudden inspiration presented Thomas grandly as “
le beau-p re du petit fils de mes amis Monsieur et Madame Mannering
.” Thomas seemed more assured of his place as Peter's godfather than as the brother of the gardener.

There were four ladies; we shook hands with all of them. It took us a long time, and I doubt if we got it all in even so, for twice I found myself shaking hands with Simpson. But these may have been additional ones thrown in. It was over at last, and we followed the staff indoors.

And then we had another surprise. It was broken to us by Dahlia, who, at Simpson's urgent request, took up the position of lady of the house, and forthwith received the flowing confidences of the housekeeper.

“Two of us have to sleep outside,” she said.

“Where?” we all asked blankly.

We went on to the loggia again, and she pointed to a little house almost hidden by olive-trees in a corner of the garden below us.

“Oh, well, that's all right,” said Archie. “It's on the estate. Thomas, you and Simpson won't mind that a bit, will you?”

“We can't turn Samuel out of his own house,” said Myra indignantly.

“We aren't turning him; he wants to go. But, of course, if you and your young man would like to live there instead—”

Myra looked at me eagerly.

“It would be rather fun,” she said. “We'd have another little honeymoon all to ourselves.”

“It wouldn't really be a honeymoon,” I objected. “We should always be knocking up against trippers in the garden, Archies and Samuels and Thomases and what not. They'd be all over the place.”

Dahlia explained the domestic arrangements. The honeymooners had their little breakfast in their own little house, and then joined the others for the day at about ten.

“Or eleven,” said Thomas.

“It would be rather lovely,” said Myra thoughtfully.

“Yes,” I agreed; “but have you considered that—
Come over this way a moment, where Thomas and Simpson can't hear, while I tell you some of the disadvantages.”

I led her into a quiet corner and suggested a few things to her which I hoped would not occur to the other two.

Item
: That if it was raining hard at night, it would be beastly.

Item
: That if you suddenly found you'd left your pipe behind, it would be rotten.

Item
: That if, as was probable, there wasn't a proper bathroom in the little house, it would be sickening.

Item
: That if she had to walk on muddy paths in her evening shoes, it would be—

At this point Myra suddenly caught the thread of the argument. We went back to the others.

“We think,” said Myra, “it would be perfectly heavenly in the little house; but—” She hesitated.

“But at the same time,” I said, “we think it's up to Simpson and Thomas to be English gentlemen. Samuel, it's your honour.”

There was a moment's silence.

“Come along,” said Thomas to Simpson, “let's go and look at it.”

 

After lunch, clean and well-fed and happy, we lay in deck-chairs on the loggia and looked lazily down at the Mediterranean.

“Thank you, Samuel, for bringing us,” said Dahlia gently. “Your friends must be very fond of you to have lent you this lovely place.”

“Not fonder than we are,” said Myra, smiling at him.

IV. B
EFORE
L
UNCH

I found Myra in the hammock at the end of the loggia.

“Hallo,” I said.

“Hallo.” She looked up from her book and waved her hand. “Mentone on the left, Monte Carlo on the right,” she said, and returned to her book again. Simpson had mentioned the situation so many times that it had become a catch-phrase with us.

“Fancy reading on a lovely morning like this,” I complained.

“But that's why. It's a very gloomy play by Ibsen, and whenever it's simply more than I can bear, I look up and see Mentone on the left, Monte Carlo on the right—I mean, I see all the loveliness round me, and then I know the world isn't so bad after all.” She put her book down. “Are you alone?”

I gripped her wrist suddenly and put the paper-knife to her throat.

“
We
are alone,” I hissed—or whatever you do to a sentence without any ‘s's in it to make it dramatic. “Your friends cannot save you now. Prepare to—er—come walk up the hill with me.”

“Help! Help!” whispered Myra. She hesitated a moment; then swung herself out of the hammock and went in for her hat.

We climbed up a steep path which led to the rock-village above us. Simpson had told us that we must see the village; still more earnestly he had begged us to see Corsica. The view of Corsica was to be obtained from a point some miles up—too far to go before lunch.

“However, we can always say we saw it,” I reassured Myra. “From this distance you can't be certain of recognizing an island you don't know. Any small cloud on the horizon will do.”

“I know it on the map.”

“Yes, but it looks quite different in real life. The great thing is to be able to assure Simpson at lunch that the Corsican question is now closed. When we're a little higher up, I shall say, ‘Surely that's Corsica?' and you'll say, ‘Not
Corsica
?' as though you'd rather expected the Isle of Wight; and then it'll be all over. Hallo!”

We had just passed the narrow archway leading into the courtyard of the village and were following the path up the hill. But in that moment of passing we had been observed. Behind us a dozen village
children now trailed eagerly.

“Oh, the dears!” cried Myra.

“But I think we made a mistake to bring them,” I said severely. “No one is fonder of our—one, two, three…I make it eleven—our eleven children than I am, but there are times when Father and Mother want to be alone.”

“I'm sorry, dear. I thought you'd be so proud to have them all with you.”

“I
am
proud of them. To reflect that all the—one, two…I make it thirteen—all these thirteen are ours, is very inspiring. But I don't like people to think that we cannot afford our youngest, our little Philomene, shoes and stockings. And Giuseppe should have washed his face since last Friday. These are small matters, but they are very trying to a father.”

“Have you any coppers?” asked Myra suddenly. “You forget their pocket-money last week.”

“One, two, three—I cannot possibly afford—one, two, three, four—Myra, I do wish you'd count them definitely and tell me how many we have. One likes to know. I cannot afford pocket-money for more than a dozen.”

“Ten.” She took a franc from me and gave it
to the biggest girl. (Anne-Marie, our first, and getting on so nicely with her French.) Rapidly she explained what was to be done with it, Anne-Marie's look of intense rapture slowly straightening itself to one of ordinary gratitude as the financial standing of the other nine in the business became clear. Then we waved farewell to our family and went on.

High above the village, a thousand feet above the sea, we rested, and looked down upon the silvery olives stretching into the blue…and more particularly upon one red roof which stood up amid the grey-green trees.

“That's the Cardews' villa,” I said.

Myra was silent.

When Myra married me she promised to love, honour and write all my thank-you-very-much letters for me, for we agreed before the ceremony that the word “obey” should mean nothing more than that. There are two sorts of T.Y.V.M. letters—the “Thank you very much for asking us, we shall be delighted to come,” and the “Thank you very much for having us, we enjoyed it immensely.” With these off my mind I could really concentrate on my work, or my short mashie shots, or whatever
was of importance. But there was now a new kind of letter to write, and one rather outside the terms of our original understanding. A friend of mine had told his friends the Cardews that we were going out to the Riviera and would let them know when we arrived…and we had arrived a week ago.

“It isn't at all an easy letter to write,” said Myra. “It's practically asking a stranger for hospitality.”

“Let us say ‘indicating our readiness to accept it.' It sounds better.”

Myra smiled slowly to herself.

“‘Dear Mrs. Cardew,'” she said, “‘we are ready for lunch when you are. Yours sincerely.'”

“Well, that's the idea.”

“And then what about the others? If the Cardews are going to be nice we don't want to leave Dahlia and all of them out of it.”

I thought it over carefully for a little.

“What you want to do,” I said at last, “is to write a really long letter to Mrs. Cardew, acquainting her with all the facts. Keep nothing back from her. I should begin by dwelling on the personnel of our little company. ‘My husband and I,' you should say, ‘are not alone. We have also with us Mr. and Mrs. Archibald Mannering, a delightful
couple. Mr. A. Mannering is something in the Territorials when he is not looking after his estate. His wife is a great favourite in the county. Next I have to introduce to you Mr. Thomas Todd, an agreeable young bachelor. Mr. Thomas Todd is in the Sucking-a-ruler-and-looking-out-of-the-window Department of the Admiralty, by whose exertions, so long as we preserve the 2 Todds to 1 formula—or, excluding Canadian Todds, 16 to 10—Britannia rules the waves. Lastly, there is Mr. Samuel Simpson. Short of sight but warm of heart, and with (on a bad pitch) a nasty break from the off, Mr. S. Simpson is a
litt rateur
of some eminence but little circulation, combining on the cornet intense wind-power with no execution, and on the golf course an endless enthusiasm with only an occasional contact. This, dear Mrs. Cardew, is our little party. I say nothing of my husband.'”