Conference at Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

Author:Stella Gibbons
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House

7

Wednesday was to be occupied by a Reading Party. The delegates were to drive through a stretch of breezy, open country to a wooded valley, where they would partake of luncheon, and afterwards each one would read aloud from some vital volume dealing with an important coeval activity. Flora was to accompany the party to supervise the serving of luncheon. (No one had suggested that she should read anything aloud; she owed this escape to Mr Mybug’s low opinion of her taste in books, for although he had muttered something about ‘getting Flora Fairford to read something – why shouldn’t she – do her good, she’s always Dodging Reality’, he had immediately afterwards shaken his head and decided that it would only be a waste of precious time to listen to the sort of twaddle Flora would be likely to choose. Besides, he wanted to secure as much time as possible for his own reading from The Dromedary, the beastly little work before referred to.)

At the appointed time the delegates assembled in the Greate Yarde, where a brake drawn by two horses waited to convey them to the chosen valley. Everyone seemed satisfied with the method of conveyance except Frau Dichtverworren, who admitted with a bass laugh that she had a fixation on fast cars, adoring to rush through the burning summer air until all sense of time, place, personality and public safety had vanished; and Peccavi. He of course, had discovered an old bicycle among some junk in a shed. It had a trailer, and he and Riska proposed riding it in turns, and Riska wore shorts with a hole in and a very tight jumper in anticipation of this feat. Mr Mybug pointed out to Flora how enviously the other delegates watched their gay, childish absorption in their new toy. Flora herself was to ride in a converted jeep with the luncheon baskets, a portable steel bar, and the drink.

Mr Jones was grumbling that there would be flies in the woods and no champagne.

‘Yes, there will, a magnum of it. The President of the French Republic sent it over this morning. That was the aeroplane we heard about six o’clock,’ said Flora to him, as she and the helper-out staggered across the yard with a hamper of delicacies.

‘Ah! La belle France! Magnifique!’ cried Mr Jones, and kissed his fingers to Mdlle Avaler, who now sauntered up smiling, with Ruggieiro on Existentialism under one arm and the new number of Chiffons under the other.

Flora and the helper-out were half-way across the yard with the second hamper when the helper-out, moistening his lips, said hoarsely:

‘Beggin’ your pardon, mum. The gentleman.’

‘I know whom you mean. What about him?’ said Flora encouragingly. There could be only one person at the Conference thus identified in the minds of both the helper-out and herself, and that was the Sage, though he did have no clothes and apparently no bank balance.

‘’E was a-wishin’ ’e could go on the picnic, mum. I ’ears ’im. Then ’is

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