A Glass of Blessings (23 page)

I began idly to plan a sort of retreat tea, with everything in dark colours; but the darkest, greyest food I could think of was caviare, which seemed unsuitable, so I got no further.

‘One train should be in now,’ said Mary, looking at her watch. ‘I daresay most of them will come on this one.’ She stood up and folded up her deckchair. ‘I think I’ll just go into the drive and see if they’re coming.’

She left me, but I could no longer lie back and enjoy my laziness, so I put away my chair and began to stroll round the garden. I was walking among the vegetables when I suddenly saw an agitated figure gesticulating and running towards me. It was one of the village women who came in to help with the cleaning.

‘Miss—Madam—come quickly!’ she cried. The bees are swarming!’

‘But what can
I
do?’ I called out, looking around me helplessly. ‘I don’t know anything about bees. Isn’t the gardener here?’

‘Oh Madam, he’s digging a grave!’ came the agitated answer.

‘Perhaps Miss Beamish will know what to do,’ I suggested hopefully. ‘She’s gone down the drive to meet the priests.’

A sound like a snort—though perhaps it can hardly have been that—came from the woman, and we ran together down the drive. We had not gone very far before we saw Mary rounding a bend by some rhododendron bushes, accompanied by the priests. There seemed to be a great many of them carrying small suitcases and canvas holdalls.

‘Mary,’ I called, ‘the bees are swarming! What does one do?’

‘Goodness, I don’t know! Isn’t the gardener anywhere about?’

‘Somebody will have to take the swarm, madam,’ said the woman who had first told me about the bees. She glanced around her in a challenging manner.

At her words an elderly bent shabby priest, carrying a very old Gladstone bag, stepped forward out of the little throng surrounding Mary.

‘I can do it,’ he said quietly. ‘Have you a veil and smoke gun? I am afraid I did not bring mine with me’—he indicated the Gladstone bag apologetically. ‘I did not really expect—of course one
does
not, does one?’ He smiled a sweet absent sort of smile, as if he really
ought
to have expected bees to swarm at a retreat ‘Perhaps you will show me where they are?’

So we all trooped down into the bottom of the garden to the part where the beehives stood. They had swarmed in the gnarled trunk of an old apple tree.

The elderly priest put on the hat and veil, and a pair of thick gloves, and started to manipulate the smoke gun.

‘He is the conductor of the retreat,’ Mary whispered to me, ‘a very saintly old man.’

‘Fancy his knowing about bees,’ I said. ‘I can imagine it might be a test of saintliness—certainly of patience.’

Standing there watching the old man, I amused myself by wondering how the St Luke’s priests would have dealt with the situation. I could not see Father Thames or Father Ransome as being very efficient, but I felt that Father Bode might manage it.

‘They must find the queen, that is the thing,’ said one of the priests, ‘then they will follow her to the hive.’

I saw him take out a little note book and jot something down. It pleased me to think that here in this pagan part of the garden he might have found an idea for a sermon.

Chapter Twenty-one

It was, one might say, a far cry from the garden of the retreat house and the saintly old priest taking the swarm of bees to the Cenerentola coffee bar, where Piers’s friend Keith worked in the evenings. And yet, in a way, it was not such a very far cry. For the Cenerentola, with its dim lighting and luxuriant greenery, reminded me of that part of the garden where the compost heap stood in the mysterious green twilight under the apple trees, and where the bees had swarmed. I was not prepared to go further with the analogy, or even quite as far as this comparison might suggest. The people sitting or standing around us were all in the fresh bloom of youth; they were the young people one saw and read about but seldom met. They made a person who was only ten or so years older feel very old indeed.

‘Good heavens,’ said Rodney in a low voice, ‘this
is
life, isn’t it! I always felt we should perhaps get out and about more, but I hadn’t realized
quite
how out of touch we were.’

Sybil and Professor Root had been married that morning at Caxton Hall, a simple pagan ceremony not without its own dignity and beauty. After the quiet family luncheon, which had consisted of ourselves and Professor Root’s sister Dorothy, the newly married couple had taken a plane to Lisbon—Sybil armed with her Portuguese grammar and Arnold with a sheaf of introductions to professors in Lisbon and Coimbra. Piers had given them letters to some of his friends, who would be able to take them to places that the learned professors might not care to visit, as he put it.

After they had gone, and the effects of the champagne had worn off, Rodney and I had hung about aimlessly until it was time to go to the theatre to see a fashionable gloomy play; after which I, feeling in need of amusement and cheering up, had suggested a visit to Keith’s coffee bar.

‘I suppose all this keeps young people from doing worse things,’ said Rodney, brushing aside a trail of greenery as we squeezed ourselves into two vacant places.

I looked eagerly for Keith and soon caught sight of him, his dark eyes peering, as in my imagination, through a screen of leaves. He was wearing a tangerine-coloured shirt and looked very animated. On seeing us he let out a little squeak of pleasure.

‘Ooh, Wilmet, how lovely!’

I introduced Rodney, and Keith hurried away to get us some coffee.

Rodney began to laugh. ‘So
that
is Piers’s “colleague”! Now I can see what Mother meant. Is Piers himself here this evening? Perhaps he’s helping behind the scenes with the washing up.’

‘Is Piers here?’ I asked, when Keith brought the coffee.

‘He’s just come in now,’ said Keith. ‘Look—in the doorway by that lady in the lemon jumper. Shall I make room for him at your table? I expect he’d like to sit with you,’ he said cosily. ‘I’ll fetch another chair.’

I looked over to where Piers was standing, a little older and more careworn than most of the young people around him but so much more distinguished and interesting. The sight of him gave me a pang, the very slightest twinge of pain around the heart.

‘Hullo, Piers,’ I said. ‘Do come and sit with us.’

‘Gloomy, isn’t it,’ he said, ‘sitting drinking non-alcoholic beverages with people of a younger generation. There’s really nothing for people of our age but the pubs, and they’re closed now.’

‘Yes,’ said Rodney, looking at his watch in an academic sort of way, ‘I suppose they must be.’

‘Keith seems to be very busy,’ I remarked. ‘It must be rather tiring work.’

‘He loves fussing round after people. His energy is too exhausting—for other people, I mean. When I got home this evening, I found that he’d scrubbed the kitchen floor and washed all the drying-up cloths, and everything else he could lay hands on.’

‘Yes, I boiled them in Tide,’ said Keith in a satisfied tone. ‘Now, Wilmet, would you like something to eat? We have some very nice sandwiches, or would you prefer a pastry? Danish pastries, we call them.’

I was just hesitating before making up my mind when Rodney clutched me by the arm.

‘Oh my God, do you see who’s standing in the doorway now?’ he muttered.

I looked and saw Mr Bason, his egg-face beaming, casting around for a vacant seat or a person on whom he could fasten himself for a chat. It was inevitable that he should see us, and I waited for the raising of the eyebrows and the surprised look of recognition as he made his way over to where we were sitting.

Rodney groaned.

‘Ooh,’ said Keith, bringing up another chair, ‘
everybody
seems to be here tonight. Hullo, Wilf! I wondered what had happened to you—you’re later than usual.’

Mr Bason hit Keith playfully on the side of the head with his rolled-up evening paper.

‘So you two know each other,’ I said, rather taken aback at hearing Mr Bason addressed as ‘Wilf.

‘Oh yes, Wilf’s a regular,’ said Keith. ‘He keeps house for a lot of clergymen.’

‘Yes, I know,’ I said, thinking how odd it was that all the time I had been wondering about Piers’s domestic life such an unlikely person as Mr Bason could probably have told me all about it.

‘One gets a really good cup of coffee here,’ said Mr Bason confidentially, ‘almost as good as I make myself.’

‘I should think so indeed,’ said Keith cheekily. ‘Isn’t it nice, you all knowing each other. Now you’ll be able to have a nice chat.’

‘Yes, I think we shall,’ I said, for I could see that Mr Bason had a kind of secret bursting look about him, as if he had something to tell and could hardly wait to get it out. Here in the Cenerentola, its hissing coffee machine tended by two handsome young men who seemed as devout as any acolytes, it would not be inappropriate to speak of church and clergy house matters.

‘I suppose Father Thames will be back any day now,’ I began.

‘Oh, he came this afternoon—quite bronzed, he was, and things going
very
well at the villa. He’s having an extra bathroom put in, with a bath of Carrara marble—quite an elaborate thing, I gather. He was full of it! It seemed a shame that Ransome had to spring
his
bit of news on him the first evening he was back.’ Mr Bason paused and took a sip of coffee.

If he had expected any response from Rodney or Piers he must have been disappointed, and he could not have been very pleased when I said, ‘You mean the news of his engagement to Miss Beamish?’

‘So you knew then?’ The egg-face fell.

‘Yes, I’ve been staying with Miss Beamish and she told me about it.’

‘Well, you can imagine what a shock it was to
us
at the clergy house.’

‘I suppose it was.’

‘We had hardly envisaged such a thing,’ said Mr Bason grandly. ‘Celibacy of the clergy has always been
our
motto.’

I heard Piers utter a stifled sound, and his eyes met mine for a moment in agonized amusement.

‘But why shouldn’t Father Ransome marry Mary Beamish?’ asked Rodney in a casual layman’s tone. ‘I should think it will be a very good thing for both of them.’

‘Ah, my dear Forsyth,’ said Mr Bason. ‘You don’t quite get the point, if I may say so.’ And then, having dismissed Rodney, he went on, The way Ransome broke it to him—casually, before dinner, and with the door wide open!’

This sounded promising.

‘I suppose Father Ransome took the first opportunity he could find,’ said Piers. ‘No doubt he wanted to get it over—one knows the feeling so well.’

‘Yes,’ I agreed, imagining him rehearsing the interview, going over his opening sentence like an actor practising an entrance. ‘What did he say?’

‘That is perhaps hardly for me to let out here and now, in such a place as this,’ said Mr Bason, glancing around him at the absorbed groups of young people glimpsed dimly through the greenery.

‘I don’t see why not,’ said Rodney smoothly.

‘You could give us the general gist of the conversation,’ said Piers, ‘though such accounts are usually improved by an imaginative retelling.’

‘Oh, there will be no necessity for
that,
I can assure you!’ said Mr Bason, his voice becoming shrill with indignation. ‘I heard every word, as I could hardly have failed to. Father Thames likes his glass of Tio Pepe before dinner—as who does not? And I was about to take the decanter in to him, having cleaned it—not
washed
it, I hasten to add—during his holiday, when I became aware of voices coming through the open door of the study.’

‘Whereupon you became rooted to the spot, as one naturally would,’ Rodney suggested.

‘Well, I could hardly move, could I, or my presence would have become known and general embarrassment would have ensued. I
had
to stand there outside the door with the decanter in my hand. Ransome must have slipped into the room without my realizing it, for the first thing I heard was his voice saying, “Father, I feel I ought to tell you that I have decided to get married.” Father Thames is a little deaf in the right ear, you know, and Ransome’s tone was of such a loudness that I judged him to be standing on Father Thames’s right “Married, did you say?” Father Thames repeated. “Yes,” said Ransome. Then there was silence for a minute, during which Father Thames must have made some gesture of surprise or disgust, for he then said, “Well, Ransome, this
is
a shock, I must say. No sooner is my back turned than this happens. It is really
too
bad. First it was the South India business and doubts about the validity of Anglican Orders, and now
this.
Oh, it is
too
bad,
too
bad.”’ Mr Bason paused and waited as if for applause.

I felt he had been rather overacting the part of Father Thames, though I could believe that the conversation had in general been faithfully reported.

‘I could tell that Father Thames was upset,’ Mr Bason went on, ‘and when Ransome told him that it was Miss Beamish he was going to marry, he said, “I blame myself for this. Had I been able to have you to live here at the clergy house, this would never have happened.” ‘

‘There’s some truth in that,’ I said. ‘Poor Father Ransome was rather pushed about, wasn’t he? First living at the Beamishes, then with his friend Father Sainsbury, and now in the guest room at the clergy house.’

‘But surely,’ said Rodney, ‘if people are going to marry, they will. He would have met Mary Beamish, anyway, in the course of his work.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Mr Bason. ‘But one does feel it is letting the side down, to use a slang expression.’

‘How did the interview end?’ I asked.

‘Unfortunately just at that moment I heard Bode coming downstairs so I had to move, though it was extremely awkward. I shouldn’t have liked Father Thames to feel that I’d been listening at the door. So I didn’t hear the end. But the atmosphere at dinner was a little strained. Bode was gassing away about parish matters—oh, the most trivial things, hiring a coach for the social club outing to Runnymede, and getting the piano in the church hall tuned, or something—I don’t believe any of them noticed what they were eating.’

‘What had you given them, Wilf?’ asked a flat little voice, and I realized that Keith had come back to our table.

‘Eggs in aspic and a dish of lasagne verde—in compliment to Father Thames’s Italian holiday, you know—but I might just as well not have bothered.’

‘What a shame,’ I said.

‘I’m not staying there when Father Thames goes, I can tell you,’ said Mr Bason indignantly. ‘Bode can have Mrs G. back and welcome to her—tea after every meal with two spoons of sugar in it, except in Lent. It’s a real penance for
him
to give up sugar, I can tell you.’

‘Then it seems a praiseworthy thing to do,’ said Rodney evenly. ‘I suppose you’ll be looking for another job, then?’

‘Yes, and I think I’ve found it,’ said Mr Bason. ‘Antique shop in Devon that does teas as well in the season. I’m going down there at the end of the month.’

‘You’ll find it ever so tiring being on your feet all day, won’t you, Wilf?’ asked Keith. ‘I’m just about worn out now, I don’t mind telling you, and I haven’t got your corns.’

‘I’m not sure that I shall be doing
that
kind of work,’ said Mr Bason grandly, ignoring the reference to corns. ‘I see myself more on the antique side.’

‘You will be surrounded by beautiful things,’ said Rodney, with a sideways glance at me, ‘which is just what you like, isn’t it?’

‘Let’s hope they really
will
be beautiful,’ said Piers. ‘So many antique shops seem to have nothing but junk in them these days, especially in seaside towns:

‘Oh, this is a most reputable and old-established business,’ said Mr Bason. ‘They tell me that Queen Mary often used to pop in—in the old days, of course.’

‘That does sound reassuring,’ I said. ‘Any connection with royalty is that, don’t you think?’

‘With
our
royal family certainly,’ Mr Bason agreed, ‘though some one could mention wouldn’t inspire quite the same confidence.’

‘Will your mother be joining you?’ I asked.

‘No, Mother prefers to stay in Harrogate, and of course it’s useful for me to have a pied-à-terre up there.’

‘Well, Bason, you do seem to have fallen on your feet as far as jobs go,’ said Rodney. ‘How did you hear of this one?’

‘An advert in the
Church Times
. One does feel that if one sees something
there
it will be all right, and so it has proved to be. Very convenient all round—A.-C. Church two minutes,’ he added chirpily. ‘Reservation.’

‘Ooh, I
am
tired,’ said Keith petulantly.

‘If you’ve finished we can go home,’ said Piers, looking up at him.

‘Do we leave him a tip?’ Rodney whispered to me.

‘I don’t see why not,’ I said. ‘I suppose we should be going home now.’ I turned to Piers. ‘You must come and see us some time,’ I said lamely.

‘He’s generally here in the evenings nowadays,’ said Keith rather bossily. ‘So you must pop in and have a chat.’

I could not quite see myself doing that, but perhaps at this time of night and after the exhausting day we had had I could not imagine myself doing anything.