And we are grateful… (A Footman for the Peacock)

The field is dead. A single snap. A soundless photograph. An inverse of the bustle of summer. The grass has stopped growing. A black-and-white picture too with this lifeless mist. "December" Meadowland: the private life of an English field by John Lewis-Stempel published by Transworld Publishers (Penguin Random House)

This could be an exact description of the Marsh and the fields thereabout at the end of the year.

But the "very inverse" of "the inverse of the bustle of summer" in the shop: it was packed this morning, mostly villagers but some new faces as well. Despite the demand for seating, the corner table by the window remained empty. Every time someone, usually and incomer or a tourist--the marsh and environs is quite a draw--Nic or Millie would say, "oh, that's reserved." There was always the possibility that Old Billy would show up, but really the reason for not seating anyone there had more to do with that area which received a coating of bird shit every day as well as a fug of old-man-unwashed-clothes smell. And no matter how clean Nic and Millie keep it when Bill isn't around, they couldn't bring themselves to sit anyone there. "I dread to think what would happen if anyone from Sanitation or Health and Safety visited. All it would take is just one word from an incomer..." Nic's voice trailed off.

"Yes, people are so particular nowadays," said Mrs Bloodworth, a lady who one would have thought would be just as particular as any of the worst of the incomers or tourists. But she would never complain explicitly, did not come from the generation of complainers. That didn't mean she didn't complain at all, or complain about complainers, or point out to all and sundry the fact that she, herself, was not complaining. Elena, the lodger in the Old Surgery Flat, or what used to be Dr Bloodworth's office attached to the house, was often the recipient of Mrs Bloodworth's non-complaining. But Elena was a good-natured sort, an Italian studying at the nearby university. Elena had said when last I saw her in the coffee house that Mrs Bloodworth reminded her a little of Mrs Fisher in The Enchanted April, the book she was currently reading. According to Elena, Mrs Fisher "in remembering great men forget for a moment the trivial and barren young people who still, in spite of the war, seemed to litter the world in such numbers..."

Von Arnim had written this novel soon after WWI, although, Mrs Fisher's thoughts aside, the book did not make much reference to the war, what effect it had on women or men for that matter. According to Mrs Bloodworth, Elena had become somewhat 'disenchanted' by the novel in the end. In the end, it seemed to advocate nothing so much as the romantic as the cure for all ills, kind of a comedy ending in the Shakespearean vein. "Nothing about the war or how hard it was afterwards," sighed Mrs Bloodworth. Still, according to Elena, Mrs B had borrowed the book...

"Unlike the book I am currently reading," I said to Elena and Jo, Nic's daughter, when I last saw them in the coffee shop. A Footman for the Peacock written in 1940 by British author, Rachel Ferguson, has the same arch, sardonic tone of Von Arnim's book, but very firmly placed its events in the run-up to the declaration of war, this time the second world war. "One issue covered is evacuation, only more from the perspective of those taking in evacuees." "Wasn't Old Billy an evacuee?" asked Jo as she took cautious sips of her tea (another one!). "I don't know," Elena replied. "I'd have to ask Mrs Bloodworth. As her husband was the village doctor, she seems to know at least a little bit about everyone."

"So not romantic, then," said Jo. "No, or not at least in the same way as The Enchanted April. It harkens back to a broken romance which left a bit of devastation in its wake and how it gets resolved decades later. But the main action in the present time of the story focuses on the run up to the war, what effect it had on people in the villages. It centers around one manor house family, and the book I have says on the back cover 'Controversial when first published in the early days of World War II, due to its treatment of a loathsome upper crust family dodging war-time responsibility...' That's a reference to their trying to get out of taking evacuees, among other things. But it is all told in a sardonic, satiric tone. It's essentially a farce."

"So, not unlike this place," Millie said as she passed by to deter another set of tourists from sitting at Old Bill's table....

Submitted by LJ Gormley