A Glass of Blessings (20 page)

I went on looking at the patterns, comparing the expressions, and finding that though most were smiling and jolly, the sort of men one could imagine pottering about in the garden at the weekend or playing a round of golf, some were a little shamefaced, as if they hoped nobody they knew would come upon them posing for knitting patterns. None seemed to me to have Keith’s air of romantic detachment. Was he thinking of French verbs, dreaming of the day when he could read Baudelaire with ease, I wondered? Or was his mind a blank, in the way that the minds of beautiful people are sometimes said to be? I began to want to know more of his origins and history. I thought he might be a colonial, perhaps a New Zealander; I remembered clever moody passionate girls, like Katherine Mansfield, striving to break away from the narrowness of their environment, almost nineteenth-century Russian in their yearnings, hating the traditional English Christmas in the middle of summer and the sentimental attitude towards the Mother Country. They would come to London and live wretchedly, perhaps starving in an attic, exulting in their freedom, and yet keeping underneath everything their innate primness and respectability. Was Keith like this, or did he just come from Fulham or Brixton or some dreary English provincial town? I supposed that if I kept my promise to ask him to tea I should be able to find out all about him.

I closed the knitting book and took a sleeping pill. I was just conscious of Rodney coming in very much later, but I did not open my eyes or speak to him.

Chapter Eighteen

I was glad in the days that followed to have Mary with me. Her companionship was soothing and at the same time a kind of discipline, for there could be no question of discussing Piers or my feelings about him when I was with her. Our conversation was either about her immediate future or, of course, about church matters. She was to take up residence at the retreat house as a kind of housekeeper at the beginning of June. We had quite an interesting time choosing clothes for her—summer dresses that might be regarded as suitable for greeting parties of devout men and women (mostly women, we suspected) arriving to make a retreat.

‘Perhaps it’s one’s demeanour rather than one’s dress that matters,’ I suggested, as we walked to church for the Corpus Christi evening service. ‘I’m sure you would know how to greet the retreatants, whatever you wore, whereas I should be quite hopeless.’

‘Of course you wouldn’t,’ said Mary warmly. ‘You’re always belittling yourself lately.’

‘Meaning that I used not to?’

‘Well, you seem different since I came out of the convent’ She hesitated. ‘As if—well—you’d been disappointed in some way about something, perhaps lost confidence in yourself a bit. And yet I don’t see how that could be.’

No, she would not see, and I could hardly tell her. It was funny to remember that Harry had once said something rather like it when we had been having lunch together, but he had seen my air of sadness as something appealing. To have Mary notice it made me feel dreary and depressed.

‘Life isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be,’ I said rather frivolously. ‘And then sometimes you discover that you aren’t as nice as you thought you were—that you’re in fact rather a horrid person, and that’s humiliating somehow.’

‘What nonsense—that couldn’t possibly apply to you!’ Mary took my arm in an affectionate gesture. ‘And even if it did, I suppose a person would be even nicer if they could make a discovery like that and admit the truth of it.’

I was glad that at this point we reached the church, for I was beginning to fear that I might go too far in talking about myself.

‘It’s very crowded already,’ Mary whispered. ‘We shall have to go rather near the front.’

The service had attracted quite a number of strangers, for there was to be a procession with candles, followed by refreshments in the church hall. It had been advertised in the
Church Times
, with a list of buses, not strictly accurate, which were said to pass the door. It would be Father Thames’s last public appearance before leaving for his holiday in Italy, but the preacher was a stranger to me—Father Julian Malory, the vicar of a church in Pimlico—and I supposed that he would draw some of the congregation from his own parish. No doubt it was they who were occupying our usual seats, making us go uncomfortably near the front.

The church was looking very beautiful, and Mary and I had helped with the decorating of it in the morning. Her presence had made it easy for me to enter the charmed circle of decorators, and I had even been allowed to help to lay down the carpet of leaves and flowers which covered the nave and looked almost as striking as the altar with its many candles embowered in green leaves, lilies and carnations.

Julian Malory was a dark, rather good looking man in his late forties. There was something about him that reminded me a little of our own Father Ransome, though perhaps it was nothing more subtle than the angle of his biretta. While he was preaching I found myself wondering whether he was married or not, until I remembered Miss Prideaux having said that he lived with his sister.

The procession round the church with lighted candles reminded me of a scene from an Italian opera—
Tosca
, I suppose. There was something daring and Romish about the whole thing which added to one’s enjoyment. It should have been followed, I felt, by a reception in some magnificent palazzo, where we would drink splendid Italian wines with names like Asti Spumante, Lachryma Christi and Soave di Verona. That it seemed to go equally well with the tea and sandwiches and cakes in the church hall was perhaps a tribute to the true catholicity of the Church of England.

‘So beautiful, all those candles,’ said Miss Prideaux, as we found ourselves standing together in the crush waiting to get into the hall, ‘but rather dangerous. I am always so afraid of fire, and Sir Denbigh’s candle was burning dangerously low.’

‘Now, Augusta, that remark might be taken in more ways than one,’ said Sir Denbigh, with his hollow, diplomat’s laugh.

‘I do want to have a word with Father Malory,’ said Miss Prideaux. ‘I thought his sermon was splendid, so very much to the point. I suppose I could hardly tell him that in so many words.’

‘He would not mind if you implied that other clergy seldom do preach to the point,’ said Sir Denbigh. ‘He seems to be surrounded at the moment. I wonder if everybody is telling him that.’

‘I think clergymen always are surrounded at functions like these,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ Sir Denbigh agreed. ‘It makes one wonder whether it would really be proper to admit women to Holy Orders. Is it likely that a woman would be surrounded by men at a parish gathering and would it be seemly if she were?’

‘I suppose one visualizes rather plain-looking middle-aged and elderly women taking Orders,’ said Miss Prideaux.

‘Surrounded by men of the same type or perhaps not surrounded at all?’ said Sir Denbigh. ‘Yes, I see your point—perhaps it would be like that. What do you think, Miss Beamish?’

‘Oh, I don’t think women should be admitted to Holy Orders,’ said Mary. ‘Perhaps I’m old-fashioned, but it wouldn’t seem right to me. Now, Sir Denbigh, I’m going to get you and Miss Prideaux some tea. You sit and wait here and Wilmet and I will bring it to you.’

‘I might have taken Orders,’ said Sir Denbigh regretfully. ‘One often hears of an elderly man retiring into the church—particularly an army man—but I don’t think I should have been able to manage the singing.’

Mary and I pushed our way as gently as we could through the crowds to the table where the refreshments were. Mrs Greenhill, looking quietly triumphant, was dispensing tea assisted by Mrs Spooner. Mr Bason stood near them, a scornful expression on his face.

‘He’s imagining how much better he could have done it,’ I whispered to Mary. I still felt a slight awkwardness on meeting him, but his jaunty wave to me indicated that he felt none himself which was all to the good. After all, it was he who had stolen the egg, not me.

‘A good thing Sir Denbigh likes it stewed,’ he whispered to me, as I passed with a cup of tea in my hand, ‘though it beats me why somebody who must have passed his life in the
highest
circles should have such taste.’

After we had taken tea and cakes to Sir Denbigh and Miss Prideaux, I found myself standing next to Mr Coleman, whose smile was rather more embarrassed than Mr Bason’s had been.

‘I just wanted to tell you that it was all right about the egg,’ I said, lowering my voice. ‘I daresay you heard? Mr Bason put it back where it belonged.’

‘I’m glad to hear it, Mrs Forsyth—that
is
a relief. I hope Father Thames will keep it locked up in future.’

‘I hope the Husky is well?’ I asked, feeling rather foolish.

‘Yes, thank you, Mrs Forsyth.’ His tone grew warmer. ‘You’d hardly know where that scratch had been now. I didn’t have to have the whole side resprayed after all. Eddie Fowler—he was thurifer tonight—works in a garage and he fixed it for me.’

‘I’m so glad,’ I said. ‘You must be tired after all your exertions in the Sanctuary this evening. Everything seemed to go very well. And such a lot of strangers here, too.’

‘Yes, this kind of service is very popular,’ said Mr Coleman, rather in the manner of a salesman recommending some particular line of goods. ‘I think some people come to see the procession; it’s really something of a spectacle.’

If only I had had the courage to ask Piers, and perhaps even Keith, to come this evening, I thought. They might have enjoyed it. And what a beautiful acolyte Keith would make! And yet his world was probably too far removed from that of the church to make it feasible. It was both exciting and frightening to think how many different worlds I knew—or perhaps ‘had knowledge of’ would be a more accurate way of putting it. I could not say that I really
knew
the worlds of Piers and Keith, or even of Mr Coleman and his Husky if it came to that. It seemed as if the Church should be the place where all worlds could meet, and looking around me I saw that in a sense this was so. If people remained outside it was our—even
my
—duty to try to bring them in.

‘Won’t you have a sandwich before they all go?’ A voice at my side interrupted my noble thoughts.

It was Father Ransome.

‘I’m afraid our guests have taken the best of the food,’ he said. ‘I suppose we ought to feel gratified.’

‘They do seem to be tucking in,’ I said, looking over to a corner where a stout woman in a grey uniform, presumably a sort of deaconess, sat crouched with two other ladies over a large plate of sandwiches. ‘I suppose they feel less shy among strangers.’

‘Sister Blatt wouldn’t be shy anywhere,’ said Mary. ‘She’s a splendid person and such a great help to Father Malory, I believe.’

‘Is his parish a particularly difficult one?’ I asked.

‘Not more than most,’ said Father Ransome, a little jealously, I thought. There is a rowdy element; of course, as there must inevitably be wherever one tries to bring in the young people,’ he added in a professional tone. ‘Poor Edwin had a good deal of trouble with that sort of thing.’

‘That’s your friend who became a Roman Catholic, isn’t it?’ asked Mary.

‘Yes. Poor Edwin, that was a great blow to me.’

‘What is he doing now?’ I asked.

‘He’s gone to Somerset for a holiday. He will take long walks over Exmoor and try to think out his future,’ said Father Ransome seriously.

I wondered, though luckily I did not ask, whether he would be taking out a packed lunch every day; for I had remembered Professor Root and his sister and her friend who had apparently been doing this for ten years.

‘That may bring him some peace and consolation,’ said Mary. The country is so very lovely in that part of the world.’

‘It will be a change from London,’ said Father Ransome tritely.

‘Where was he received?’ Mary asked.

‘At Westminster Cathedral, which seems a little less sinister than Farm Street, don’t you think?’ said Father Ransome, recovering his usual manner. ‘I met him afterwards and—oh
dear
, it was so difficult to decide what to
do!’
He wrung his hands as if reliving the embarrassment of the occasion. ‘One couldn’t very well suggest the pictures, and yet the idea of going back to the vicarage to pack up his things was somehow
too
depressing.’

‘What
did
you do?’ I asked.

‘Well, in the end we went and had tea at some rather ghastly help-yourself place. We had egg and chips, I remember.’

‘It seems difficult to suggest a suitable meal for such an occasion,’ I said.

‘Yes, life has to go on, and I suppose a cup of tea does make it seem to be doing that more than anything,’ said Father Ransome.

‘Couldn’t the Romans have welcomed him with a party, or at least some kind of refreshment?’ I suggested.

‘They’ve been coming so thick and fast lately—the converts, I mean—I suppose they couldn’t welcome each one individually.’

He was interrupted by a banging on the floor, and I saw that Father Thames had mounted the platform. He looked very distinguished in a caped cassock, the waist encircled by a wide band of moiré silk.

‘My friends,’ he began, ‘how very glad I am to see so many of you here this evening. As some of you know, I am shortly leaving for a holiday in Italy. There seems something a little unsuitable, does there not, about a clergyman going for a holiday in Italy in these difficult days? When we hear about such a thing perhaps we remember our
Barchester Towers
—the older ones among us, that is.’ He seemed to be looking at Sir Denbigh Grote and Miss Prideaux as he said this, perhaps feeling that they alone were old enough to remember a century ago or literate enough to have read Trollope. ‘We think of Canon Vesey Stanhope and his villa on the shores of Lake Como—or was it Maggiore?
Not
Garda, I think—I forget the details. As I was saying, we remember that, and it might be thought that there was a parallel there.’ Father Thames paused for laughter, which came a little uncertainly, though one elderly choirman clapped his hands and guffawed perhaps too heartily for such a gathering. Father Thames held up his hand and went on, ‘But, and this will surprise you, who can say that there might not be something in it after all?’ His hearers were now mystified and awaited his next words with considerable interest. ‘I am an old man,’ he went on. ‘Oh yes, you may protest and say that you have seen older priests carrying out their duties perfectly capably—indeed Father Fosdick, who has sometimes assisted us here at holiday times, is nearly ninety, and a great joy it has always been to have him with us—but I have passed my threescore years and ten, and it may be that the time has come for me to make way for a younger man.
It may be.’
He paused impressively, then went on in a more confidential tone, ‘I was talking to the Bishop at luncheon the other day—he knows full well the rigours of this parish. Now
you
know, most of you, that I have friends—kind friends they are—near Siena whom I visit every year for rest and refreshment, to enable me to
carry on
, as it were.
Well,’
—there was another impressive pause – ‘what do you think? A villa has fallen vacant there!
Da affittare!
A small villa with just four bedrooms and a delightful garden—the Villa Cenerentola. What a delightful name that is, and perhaps not altogether inappropriate.’

Mary sighed and turned to me. ‘What
is
he talking about?’

‘He plans to retire in the autumn,’ whispered Father Ransome.

‘Cenerentola—Cinderella, isn’t it,’ said Miss Prideaux. ‘I don’t see how that is at all appropriate.’