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    The Old Man's Birthday
    The Old Man's Birthday
    The Old Man's Birthday
    Ebook281 pages4 hours

    The Old Man's Birthday

    By Richmal Crompton

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    About this ebook

    Richmal Crompton's adult novels are an absolute delight and every bit as charming as her beloved Just William series. The Old Man's Birthday is both a nostalgic treat for fans of the gentler brand of interwar fiction, and a dry satire of British village life.

    Matthew Rowston is turning ninety-five. A lovable rogue approaching his dotage, he has very little time for the high moral standards and rigid ideas of propriety espoused by his spinster daughter. Things get interesting when he invites his estranged son, the bright and lively Stephen, and his beautiful partner to his celebratory dinner. Over the course of the day, Matthew walks around the village, introducing the pair to his large and varied clan, from the aging Jolly-hockey sticks granddaughter who is considering a torrid affair of her own, to his elderly bookish bachelor son and the lovely great-granddaughter struggling to find her place in the world, doomed to work as a clerk in her dull and dismal father's firm. Teeming beneath the calm surface of village and family life, lies a whole world of secrets and desires, hopes and dreams.

    Mrs Dalloway with a dash of dry humour, Mapp and Lucia with a slightly melancholy tone, this is the perfect heritage read for fans of 1930s fiction at its best.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPan Macmillan
    Release dateAug 27, 2015
    ISBN9781509810277
    The Old Man's Birthday
    Author

    Richmal Crompton

    Richmal Crompton was born in Lancashire in 1890. The first story about William Brown appeared in Home magazine in 1919, and the first collection of William stories was published in book form three years later. In all, thirty-eight Just William books were published, the last, William the Lawless, in 1970 after Richmal Crompton’s death.

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    • 5/5
      I had not come across Richmal Crompton's adult stories before reading this!
      It is a gentle story set in the interwar years when there is a birthday party planned.
      The invitees add some spice and it is all very jolly and lighthearted.
      Highly recommended.
      I was given a digital copy of this book by the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest, unbiased review which I am very happy to give.

    Book preview

    The Old Man's Birthday - Richmal Crompton

    *

    Chapter One

    OLD Matthew Royston opened his eyes, stretched his long lean frame, then sat up in bed with a jerk.

    Mellow golden sunlight poured through the slats of the Venetian blind, gleaming on the polished surface of the mahogany wardrobe, dancing along the rows of little brass knobs that decorated the old-fashioned bedstead, playing around the framed texts that broke at intervals the trellised pattern of the wallpaper, blazing with its full force on the enlarged photograph of Matthew’s wife that hung over the bed.

    The photograph had been taken shortly before Harriet’s death, and it showed with relentless fidelity the tight mouth and severe humourless eyes that had spoilt her good looks.

    The old man glanced round the room, and his lips, under their raggy, drooping, white moustache, curved into a faintly ironic smile. It always amused him to wake up in this Victorian bedroom, which had hardly been altered in any detail since Harriet had arranged it as a bride more than sixty years ago. The thick white mats that she had crocheted before her marriage still lay on wash-hand-stand, chest of drawers, and bedside table. On the mantelpiece stood photographs of their children at various stages of growth—Catherine and Charlotte as little girls in long-waisted dresses with enormous sashes round their hips and tall black button boots; Margaret, an elaborately trimmed hat perched above a curled fringe, standing stiffly upright holding a muff; George in a knickerbocker suit with curls down to his shoulders; Richard as a baby, his dimpled arms bare, his chubby cheeks half hidden by huge shoulder bows. . . .

    Between the photographs was massed a heterogeneous array of the curios that Matthew had sent home during his wanderings—coral from Corsica, cloisonné and ivory from Pekin, a jade Buddha from Ceylon, grass fans from the South Sea Islands, and some gleaming black figures carved patiently and elaborately by an unknown Japanese craftsman out of coal. These were flanked, on one side by a lustre of Bristol glass, on the other by a tall vase, whose surface Catherine and Charlotte in their childhood had covered with used postage stamps, an artistic achievement of which Harriet had been very proud.

    In Harriet’s lifetime a case of stuffed birds had stood in the centre of the chest of drawers. Its removal was the only change the old man had made in the room since her death. He loved birds and had always disliked the dusty lifeless little figures perched so unnaturally on the branch of dead wood.

    The door opened, and Gaston, his valet, entered. He was an incongruous figure in the smugly conventional bedroom—short, stocky, with a round, closely cropped head, and so bow-legged that his legs, in their tight black trousers, seemed to form an almost complete circle. One eye was permanently closed, and from it a long scar ran down his cheek to the corner of his mouth.

    Matthew was never quite sure at what point in his adventurous career Gaston had attached himself to him. Gaston said that Matthew had saved his life. Certainly the two had gone through many vicissitudes together, and, when Matthew had returned to England and settled down to respectability, Gaston had accompanied him.

    He drew up the Venetian blinds with a rattle, adjusted the Nottingham lace curtains, then, walking with his curious straddling gait to the marble-topped wash-hand-stand, placed on it a can of hot water.

    Harriet’s photograph seemed to gaze down at him in prim disapproval, and her expression seemed to be reflected on the faces of the two faded angels who presided in stiff attitudes over the text Watch and Pray, above the mantelpiece.

    The contrast between himself and his surroundings never struck Gaston as in any way odd. Surroundings meant nothing to him; he had always taken them for granted. Had he been articulate enough to put his thoughts into words, he would have said that his job here was to protect his master, as he had protected him on the diamond fields and the African veld—there against thieves and murderers, here against a highly respectable family who wished to take charge of the old man and order his life for him; there with knives and fists, here with lies, stubbornness, and a servility of manner that was his most trusted and unfailing weapon.

    He took down the old man’s clothes from the wardrobe and laid them out in silence. Gaston never wasted time in greetings or comments on the weather. Finally he turned to the bed.

    Will you get up for your breakfast? he asked.

    He spoke English well but with a slightly foreign accent. He spoke several languages well but none without a slightly foreign accent. He was not sure himself what his nationality was, though he believed that he was partly Spanish. His earliest memory was of being kitchen-boy in a not very reputable inn in Marseilles.

    Of course, said Matthew rather sharply. Why shouldn’t I?

    Gaston shrugged. Last night—— he began.

    Old Matthew interrupted him curtly.

    Go and get my bath ready.

    Gaston went out.

    Old Matthew lay in bed, his straggling white eyebrows drawn into a scowl. Gaston’s reference to last night had irritated him. It always irritated him to be treated as if he were an invalid. He was perfectly well except for slight attacks of—wind round the heart it was called, he believed. The attacks of late had been rather frequent and severe, but so far, with Gaston’s help, he had succeeded in hiding them from his daughters, managing always to reach his room before the acute stage of the attack came on.

    Matthew was not afraid of pain. In the old days he had often cauterised his own wounds, holding the red-hot metal in the flesh till it sizzled and steamed. It was not the pain that frightened him. It was the thought of his daughters’ discovering the attacks and getting their claws into him. That was how he always thought of it. Getting their claws into him. Taking possession of him, invading his privacies, ordering his life, making him lie in bed and consult doctors. . . . One of his boasts was that he had never consulted a doctor in his life. He hated the whole tribe of them.

    He had held out so far, but could he hold out to the end? He was ninety-five to-day. Old age lay before him, old age with its degrading helplessness, its intolerable dependence. A chill crept over his spirit at the thought. Then his fighting instinct came to his aid, and he threw back his head with a defiant snort like an old war-horse sensing battle. Let them do their damnedest. He was still a match for all of them.

    He got out of bed and studied his reflection carefully in the full-length mirror of the wardrobe. He stooped a little more than he used to, but he had never carried his lean wiry figure very erect. His lackadaisical appearance had misled many people who had failed to reckon with the alertness of his blue eyes. Those eyes were now as alert as ever, though the lids sagged and long white eyebrows curled over them. His head was almost bald, his wrinkled skin of a greyish but not unhealthy colour. Beneath a raggy white moustache his mouth was grim, humorous, somewhat sensual. He looked an old man, feeble and stooping, but in the eyes and mouth and even in the frail bent figure there lurked something indomitable.

    He had his bath, dressed, then went into the adjoining room, which had once been his dressing-room and was now his sitting-room. Neither Catherine nor Charlotte nor any of the maids were allowed to enter his rooms without his permission. Gaston alone dusted, tidied, and cleaned them. That again was a constant grievance of his daughters’. They would hover about the open door, trying to discover signs of neglect that would give them excuse for insisting on the right of entry.

    But Gaston was too clever for them. Even Catherine’s keen eye could not find a speck of dust or so much as a mat out of place, for Gaston, despite the lawless life he had led, had a cat’s love of cleanliness. Charlotte was easy-going, and, left to herself, would have established friendly relations with Gaston, but Catherine and Gaston had hated each other from the moment they met. Gaston’s very appearance was in Catherine’s eyes an affront to the whole household. She prided herself generally on her servants’ appearance. Her maids were comely without achieving actual prettiness (Catherine distrusted actual prettiness in maids), studiously correct and respectful in manner. Her father’s valet should have been a neat, submissive little man, who would have co-operated with her in managing Matthew for his own good, not this monstrosity who encouraged the old man’s obstinacy and, as she frequently complained, gave her the creeps whenever she looked at him.

    Indeed, their first sight of him always astonished visitors, and Catherine’s thin lips would tighten as she explained shortly: An old servant of my father’s.

    Charlotte, on the other hand, had a habit of sentimentalising everything around her.

    He’s a dear old man, she would say. My father saved his life in Africa, and he refused to leave him afterwards. He’s most pathetically devoted to us all.

    And she would actually see him as a dear old man, most pathetically devoted to them all, till she next met him, and his one eye would shoot a gleam of malicious triumph at her from its drooping lid. For his continued presence in the house was a triumph, and they were all aware of it. Catherine had fought unavailingly for years to get rid of him. She frequently gave him notice, more to relieve her own feelings than with any other object, for she knew that he would blandly disregard it. Occasionally she tried to provoke him to some open insolence, which her father could not overlook, but she never succeeded in breaking down his defences of ironic suavity.

    As Matthew entered the room, Gaston was taking the breakfast tray from a housemaid at the door. He never permitted any of the other servants even to set foot in the room, and his anger, if he found that they had done so, was the more terrifying as it was expressed by hideous grimaces and unintelligible curses.

    He straddled back to the room, set the dishes upon the table, and pulled out the old man’s chair. Then he whipped off the dish-covers and, seeing that the sun fell on his master’s face, went over to the window to draw the curtains slightly forward. His clumsy bow-legged figure moved with astonishing silence and agility about the room.

    It was a formidable meal to which the old man sat down—steak and tomatoes, bacon and eggs, hot roll, toast, butter, marmalade, and coffee.

    In the days of his wanderings he had often lived contentedly on coarse biscuits and tinned beef—and at times on little enough of those—but all his life, when circumstances allowed, he had been gourmand and gourmet combined. On returning home to settle down, he had dismissed Harriet’s cook, whose professional horizon was bounded on all sides by rice pudding and shepherd’s pie, and had set to work to find one more to his own liking. He had finally engaged a thin dyspeptic woman who had been trained by a well-known French chef, and who gave even to the preparation of an ordinary family dinner an almost fanatical zeal.

    Harriet was aghast when she heard how much salary he had arranged to pay her, but she shrugged her shoulders and said nothing. Beneath Harriet’s intolerance and narrowness of outlook was a certain shrewdness, and from the beginning some instinct had taught her to avoid conflict with her husband.

    The old man ate voraciously for a few minutes, drained his coffee cup, then leant back in his chair to survey the room.

    The warm sunshine and the strong coffee had given him an exhilarating sense of well-being and confidence. Gone were the vague fears of old age that had troubled him a few minutes ago. He was an old man, but he wasn’t the sort of old man they could relegate to the chimney corner. Everyone who knew him was slightly afraid of him, in spite of—or perhaps because of—the fact that he seldom lost his temper. And he was hale and hearty enough. He had never had a day’s illness in his life. . . .

    Gaston poured out another cup of coffee, but the old man still leant back in his chair, surveying the room. It was the only room in the house that failed to conform with the Victorian ideal. It was devoid of all superfluous ornaments, swept clean—despite Catherine’s protests—of the table-covers and vases and antimacassars that broke out like a rash over all the other rooms. The furniture consisted of the battered mahogany table on which the old man was breakfasting, his shabby leather arm-chair, its once smooth brown surface worn to a fawn fluffiness, another less shabby arm-chair that the old man never used, a leather sofa, and a writing-table. Along the walls ran low bookcases with open shelves, containing a strange assortment of books—books on travel, technical books on gold prospecting, biographies, a few books of poetry, a large number of French novels of the less reputable kind.

    These last were prominently displayed, chiefly for Catherine’s benefit, lying on top of the bookcases, on the window sill, and on the writing-table. The old man took a mischievous delight in shocking his eldest daughter.

    He lived mostly in this room, seldom appearing in the elaborately furnished drawing-room downstairs, over which Catherine and Charlotte presided. Here he would read, dream, smoke, or play backgammon or poker with Gaston.

    This last shocked Catherine more than anything.

    Father, dear, she said reproachfully, "there’s no need for you to play games with a servant. If you’d like a game of cards any time, we can ask the Vicar in and have a nice quiet game of whist."

    Catherine, who was aggressively churchy, was continually trying to bring Matthew into the fold of St. Adrian’s, on whose Council she was a redoubtable figure. Once indeed she had managed to inveigle him into a private interview with the Vicar, which she had vaguely hoped would transform him into a regular churchgoer. Matthew found his visitor a quiet, likeable little man, obviously ashamed of Catherine’s manoeuvre and determined not to presume on it. They had talked together on impersonal topics quite amicably for an hour or so, but the meeting had never been repeated.

    Gaston was bringing in his post now. Nothing of much interest. Bills, receipts, his copy of Le Journal. He detested English newspapers but read Le Journal through every day.

    As he was opening it, there came a knock at the door, and Gaston stepped into the corridor, holding the door almost closed behind him. The old man could hear his daughters’ voices, arguing, expostulating; then Gaston’s, suavely respectful. Gaston returned, his one eye gleaming triumphantly.

    It was Mrs. Moreland and Miss Charlotte, he explained. They wanted to see you. I said you had not yet finished your breakfast.

    To his master, whom he adored, Gaston spoke curtly, seldom even according him the conventional sir, but to his master’s daughters, whom he hated, he was always obsequiously respectful.

    Matthew nodded.

    A moment later he heard their voices in the garden, and, though he had not yet finished his breakfast, he rose from the table on an impulse and went over to the window to look at them. Charlotte was scattering crumbs upon her bird table on the lawn (it was typical of Charlotte that she fed the birds in midsummer because it was pleasant to go into the garden to do so, but generally omitted it in winter because then it was cold and wet), while Catherine, standing by, gave voice to her grievances in sharp clear tones. Matthew caught the words father . . . that man . . . intolerable. . . .

    He stood watching them. . . .

    Strange that Charlotte, fat, imperturbable, absorbed in her domestic routine of jam-making, fruit-bottling, pickling, preserving, tradesmen’s books, and spring cleaning, should be the spinster; and that Catherine, tall, angular, prim, and intolerant, should be the married woman. Catherine, however, despite her primness and angularity, was good-looking, with well-turned features, a slightly Roman nose, and fine brown eyes. Her mouth spoilt her, of course. It was small and pinched, as if in constant disapproval.

    At the thought of Catherine’s marriage a grim smile flickered beneath old Matthew’s raggy moustache. Her husband, James Moreland, had been dominated from childhood by his mother, a woman after Catherine’s own heart, narrow, unimaginative, rigidly self-righteous. His mother and Catherine had tacitly arranged the match between them. His mother had considered Catherine a suitable wife for James, and Catherine had considered James a suitable husband for herself. James had had no say in the matter. For twenty years he was as completely under Catherine’s thumb as he had been under his mother’s. For twenty years he remained to all appearances the pious youth who had been handed over by a dominating mother to a dominating wife. He had figured largely upon all the local committees connected with good works. He never smoked or drank or used bad language. Like Catherine he frequently expressed disapproval of the loose tendencies of modern times. Then he had had a stroke, and for the next five years he had lain in bed, his limbs paralysed but his tongue loosened. For the stroke had apparently destroyed, not only his fear of Catherine, but also the inhibitions that had formerly held him in bondage. And thereupon James Moreland, churchwarden, member of various societies for the suppression of ungodliness in every form, an authority upon correct procedure in all matters ecclesiastical, showed himself suddenly the most lewd and ribald of libertines. Lying helpless in bed, he would pour forth an apparently inexhaustible flow of stories that made Catherine turn purple with ineffectual rage. James, who had once trembled at her displeasure, now merely laughed at it. His face lost its narrowness and sharp contours, becoming rotund and jovial.

    Matthew had formerly avoided his son-in-law, but now he began to cultivate him. For James, with his inhibitions gone, was good company. It afforded the old man sardonic amusement to imagine by what subterfuges he had acquired his secret store of knowledge during those long years of apparent subjection to his wife’s rule. Business trips to Birmingham and Manchester had, of course, often cloaked visits to Paris. He had not infrequently sat, he told Matthew, under Catherine’s very nose, reading French novels inside the binding of the Parish Year Book. Matthew lent him such French novels of doubtful repute as he had not already read, and the two of them passed many hilarious hours together. Then, to Catherine’s secret relief, James died, and Catherine, suffering from that feeling of frustration that assails a managing woman when there is no one at hand to manage, decided to return to what she called the shelter of her father’s roof. Old Matthew, with only the easy-going Charlotte in attendance, was indeed the obvious outlet for her energy. She returned in the role of disconsolate crêpe-hung widow that she had assumed upon James’s death. The role was not consciously insincere, for, with that strong-mindedness which had always been her most marked characteristic, she had completely wiped the last five years of James’s life from her memory. She remembered the quiet little man who had obeyed her implicitly for twenty years, not the ribald libertine who had outraged her sense of decency for five.

    Her possessiveness, thwarted for so long by the transformed James, turned with renewed force upon Matthew. But Matthew was a match for her. And James was his chief weapon. At a reference to James’s later period Catherine would retreat promptly and in good order from any position she had taken up. To do Matthew justice, he never made such a reference till Catherine had deliberately opened hostilities.

    He returned to his breakfast and Le Journal. Gaston had cleared away the bacon and eggs, and had placed before him one of Cook’s freshly made rolls, warm from the oven. Fresh roll, golden country butter, home-made marmalade. . . . Old Matthew savoured them with lingering enjoyment.

    At last he had finished, and Gaston cleared the table, putting the tray on the service wagon in the corridor outside. Almost immediately came Catherine’s sharp imperious tap at the door.

    Let ’em in, Gaston, said old Matthew.

    Chapter Two

    GASTON opened the door, and Catherine entered, followed by Charlotte.

    Many happy returns of the day, father, said Catherine, kissing the air near his right ear. You slept well, I hope?

    Matthew, grunting affirmation, presented his left ear to Charlotte, who pressed a full moist kiss upon his cheek.

    "Dear father! said Charlotte. This is a very happy day for us all."

    She smiled mistily upon him, seeing him as a lovable old man, mild, affectionate. So vivid was the picture in her mind that she almost saw a patriarchal white beard covering his aggressive chin and descending to his waist. The phrases the evening of his day, the sweet serenity of old age, the gentle radiance of a well-spent life, flashed through her mind. She continued to smile mistily. . . .

    Now, father—— began Catherine.

    Sit down, my dear, old Matthew interrupted her, drawing forward his own arm-chair, though he knew quite well that she never sat in arm-chairs. He had exquisite manners and frequently used them to keep his eldest daughter at bay. She took her seat on the upright chair at the table where he had breakfasted. Charlotte stood by the window, looking down at the garden, her thoughts a lush tangle of sentimentality.

    An old-world garden (Charlotte adored the expression old-world) . . . the dear old home in which they had all grown up . . . the home in which dear father had lived (with intervals) ever since he married dear mother . . . and now he had reached a serene old age, the evening of life. . . .

    Father—— began Catherine again, rather sharply.

    Again he interrupted her, moving a chair forward for Charlotte.

    "My dear .

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