Complete Short Stories (VMC) (89 page)

His rhythm was infectious, and she fell easily into it.

‘I shall not say very much to you,’ she continued, ‘for there is so little to be said. Our hearts have their own knowledge, and there we must strive to keep alive all that went on here – even when we see another building standing where this one stood, and others working in it.

‘It has been a great thing to all of us, I know; but may I for a moment be personal? For this place has been my life.’ (One of her juniors thought it strange that the word ‘shop’ had not been mentioned all evening.) ‘And I have never wanted another. I remember the great days. It has been my privilege to serve – and to have for friends – the highest in the land. It has been a – a very glamorous life.’

She stepped back, and the clapping began again. Mr Wakelin thanked her quietly, obviously much moved, conversation broke out and the trays were being carried round.

Five minutes after Mr Wakelin left, Miss Smythe decided, was her time to go. She did her rounds, put on her Persian lamb coat and her paisley turban and went down in the lift for the last time.

The street had a golden, dusty look; there were flowers on barrows, and the smell of them in the air. The rush hour was over.

She repeated in her mind, as she went towards the Underground, the words of Mr Wakelin’s speech. So many had flown away for ever, but a few phrases she captured and imprisoned. All the way to Marylebone station she was in a strange state, as if the two glasses of sherry had gone to her head.

It was an unfamiliar train she got into, and none of her regular friends was on it – all gone homewards long ago. Strangers got in and sat in silence. In one day her friends had vanished. And those years of coming on the train from Denham had made many friends for her – even gentlemen friends, the only ones of that kind she had ever had. ‘Good-morning, Miss Smythe, and how are we this morning? Now, can you help me with nine across? Animal wrongly chained. Seven letters,
h
the third.’

After a while of looking at her own
Daily Telegraph
, she could say, ‘Echidna,’ and blush at her erudition.

‘Miss Smythe, you are a genius.’ Perhaps, she thought, she had had too much praise all her life, and nothing else. Or might have been praised so much,
because
she had nothing else.

And her train friends, even if not – all of them – gentlemen, had been so gentlemanly. Mr Parkinson, so gallant; Mr Taylor, so serious-minded; Mr Westropp, that great rose-grower, a little flirtatious, but nothing objectionable – leaning out of the carriage window, lifting his folded
Times
to signal to her as she came on to the platform. ‘We can’t take off without Miss Smythe.’

And sometimes he brought those bouquets of roses from his garden in Gerrards Cross over which the juniors – Miss Smythe’s girls – had conjectured; or, much earlier in the year, bunches of what he called ‘daffs’. He was well-intentioned and Miss Smythe, deploring ‘daffs’, forgave him although none of her clients, from whom she took her standards, would have allowed the word (or non-word) to pass their lips.

Now she opened her large handbag and looked at the beautifully wrapped package. She knew what it was and had one already, but would treasure it none the less. She would have liked to have shown it to Mr Parkinson and the others, but would probably never see them again.

‘Too much praise?’ she wondered again. But it would have to last her for the rest of her life, and she had to remember it. She wished that she had refused the second glass of sherry, for her head ached and she kept recalling a jarring note among the praises.

When she had told them of her glamorous life, one of the women from the alterations room had smothered a laugh – or pretended to try to smother it. For Miss Smythe had had her battles. It had not been, all of it, a bed of roses without thorns.
That
woman had been a thorn. ‘A
thorn
,’ Miss Smythe repeated to herself, glancing muzzily out at fleeting houses and gardens.

There had been, lately, enemies up there in the alterations room. That one especially. The chief thorn, kneeling in the fitting room, going round a hemline, flicking pins out of the black velvet pad on her wrist, spitting out measurements. For she resented criticism. And workmanship was a thing of the past, of the days of shoulder-paddings and moulded bustlines. Now they had nothing to do but take up a straight skirt an inch.

The Persian lamb was too warm for this evening; but she wore it because she had it. And it was the slowest journey she had ever made along that line – stopping at every station. Coming out of London in this sunset, on this last day, everything looked new to her – she noted men working in blossoming gardens, stretches of water with sea-gulls on them, and silver birches, her favourite tree.

The stations at which they stopped were like sets in an old Western film, ramshackle with wooden buildings, and pointed slat fences and platform shelters. And no one about. No streams of dark-suited men hastening, with their evening papers, towards the ticket barriers.

She sat back idly, her hands clasped over the bag on her lap, and looked out of the window at the evening scene as if for the first time, not the last.

Kitty Miller, wearing a new red hair-ribbon, bounced along the vicarage drive, skipping across ruts and jumping over puddles.

Visiting took up all of her mornings in the school holidays. From kitchen to kitchen, round the village, she made her progress, and, this morning, felt drawn towards the vicarage. Quite sure of her welcome, she tapped on the back door.

‘Why, Kitty Miller!’ said the Vicar, opening it. He looked quite different from in church, Kitty thought. He was wearing an open-necked shirt and an old, darned cardigan. He held a tea-towel to the door-handle, because his fingers were sticky. He and his wife were cutting up Seville oranges for marmalade and there was a delicious, tangy smell about the kitchen.

Kitty took off her coat, and hung it on the usual peg, and fetched a knife from the dresser drawer.

‘You are on your rounds again,’ Mr Edwards said. ‘Spreading light and succour about the parish.’

Kitty glanced at him rather warily. She preferred him not to be there, disliking men about her kitchens. She reached for an orange, and watching Mrs Edwards for a moment out of the corners of her eyes, began to slice it up.

‘What’s new?’ asked the Vicar.

‘Mrs Saddler’s bad,’ she said accusingly. He should be at that bedside, she meant to imply, instead of making marmalade. ‘They were saying at the Horse and Groom that she won’t last the day.’

‘So we are not your first call of the morning?’

She had, on her way here, slipped round the back of the pub and into the still-room, where Miss Betty Benford, eight months pregnant, was washing the floor, puffing and blowing as she splashed grey soapy water over the flags with a gritty rag. When this job was done – to Miss Betty’s mind, not Kitty’s – they drank a cup of tea together and chatted about the baby, woman to woman. The village was short of babies, and Kitty visualised pushing this one out in its pram, taking it round with her on her visits.

In his office, the landlord had been typing the luncheon menus. The
keys went down heavily, his finger hovered, and stabbed. He often made mistakes, and this morning had typed ‘Jam Fart and Custard’. Kitty considered – and then decided against – telling the Vicar this.

‘They have steak-and-kidney pie on the set menu today,’ she said instead.

‘My favourite!’ groaned the Vicar. ‘I
never
get it.’

‘You had it less than a fortnight ago,’ his wife reminded him.

‘And what pudding? If it’s treacle tart I shall cry bitterly.’

‘Jam tart,’ Kitty said gravely. ‘And custard.’

‘I quite like custard, too,’ he said simply.

‘Or choice of cheese and biscuits.’

‘I should have cheese and biscuits,’ Mrs Edwards said.

It was just the kind of conversation Kitty loved.

‘Eight-and-sixpence,’ she said. ‘Coffee extra.’

‘To be rich! To be rich!’ the Vicar said. ‘And what are
we
having, my dear? Kitty has caused the juices to run.’

‘Cold, of course, as it’s Monday.’

He shuddered theatrically, and picked up another orange. ‘My day off, too!’

Kitty pressed her lips together primly, thinking it wrong for clergymen to have days off, especially with Mrs Saddler lying there, dying.

The three of them kept glancing at one another’s work as they cut the oranges. Who was doing it finely enough? Only Mrs Edwards, they all knew.

‘I like it fairly chunky,’ the Vicar said.

When it was all done, Kitty rinsed her hands at the sink, and then put on her coat. She had given the vicarage what time she could spare, and the morning was getting on, and all the rest of the village waiting. She was very orderly in her habits and never visited in the afternoons, for then she had her novel to write. The novel was known about in the village, and some people felt concerned, wondering if she might be another little Daisy Ashford.

With the Vicar’s phrases of gratitude giving her momentum, Kitty tacked down the drive between the shabby laurels, and out into the lane.

‘The Vicar’s having cold,’ she told Mrs De Vries, who was preparing a
tajine
of chicken in a curious earthenware pot she had brought back from Morocco.

‘Poor old Vicar,’ Mrs De Vries said absent-mindedly, as she cut almonds into slivers. She had a glass of something on the draining-board and often took a sip from it. ‘Do run and find a drink for yourself, dear child,’ she said. She was one of the people who wondered about Daisy Ashford.

‘I’ll have a bitter lemon, if I may,’ Kitty said.

‘Well, do, my dear. You know where to find it.’

As Kitty knew everything about nearly every house in the village, she did not reply; but went with assurance to the bar in the hall. She stuck a plastic straw in her drink, and returned to the kitchen sucking peacefully.

‘Is there anything I can do?’ she enquired.

‘No, just tell me the news. What’s going on?’

‘Mr Mumford typed “Jam Fart and Custard” on the menu card.’

‘Oh, he didn’t! You’ve made me do the nose-trick with my gin. The
pain
of it!’ Mrs De Vries snatched a handkerchief from her apron pocket and held it to her face. When she had recovered, she said, ‘I simply can’t wait for Tom to come home, to tell him that.’

Kitty looked modestly gratified. ‘I called at the vicarage, too, on my way.’

‘And what were
they
up to?’

‘They are up to making marmalade.’

‘Poor darlings! They
do
have to scrimp and scratch. Church mice, indeed!’

‘But isn’t home-made marmalade nicer than shop?’

‘Not all
that
much.’

After a pause, Kitty said, ‘Mrs Saddler’s on her way out.’

‘Who the hell’s Mrs Saddler?’

‘At the almshouse. She’s dying.’

‘Poor old thing.’

Kitty sat down on a stool and swung her fat legs.

‘Betty Benford is eight months gone,’ she said, shrugging her shoulders.

‘I wish you’d tell me something about people I
know
,’ Mrs De Vries complained, taking another sip of gin.

‘Her mother plans to look after the baby while Betty goes on going out to work. Mrs Benford, you know.’

‘Not next door’s daily?’

‘She won’t be after this month.’

‘Does Mrs Glazier know?’ Mrs De Vries asked, inclining her head towards next door.

‘Not yet,’ Kitty said, glancing at the clock.

‘My God, she’ll go up the wall,’ Mrs De Vries said with relish. ‘She’s had that old Benford for years and years.’

‘What do you call that you’re cooking?’

‘It’s a
tajine
of chicken.’

‘Mrs De Vries is having
tajine
of chicken,’ Kitty said next door five minutes later.

‘And what might that be when it’s at home?’

Kitty described it as best she could, and Mrs Glazier looked huffy. ‘Derek wouldn’t touch it,’ she said. ‘He likes good, plain, English food, and no messing about.’

She was rolling out pastry for that evening’s steak-and-kidney pie.

‘They’re having that at the Horse and Groom,’ Kitty said.

‘
And
we’ll have sprouts.
And
braised celery,’ Mrs Glazier added, not letting Mrs De Vries get away with her airs and graces.

‘Shall I make a pastry rose to go on the top of the pie?’ Kitty offered. ‘Mrs Prout showed me how to.’

‘No, I think we’ll leave well alone.’

‘Do you like cooking?’ Kitty asked in a conversational tone.

‘I don’t mind it. Why?’

‘I was only thinking that then it wouldn’t be so hard on you when Mrs Benford leaves.’

Mrs Benford was upstairs. There was a bumping, droning noise of a vacuum-cleaner above, in what Kitty knew to be Mrs Glazier’s bedroom.

Mrs Glazier, with an awful fear in her heart, stared, frowning, at Kitty, who went on, ‘I was just telling Mrs De Vries that after Mrs Benford’s grandchild’s born she’s going to stay at home to mind it.’

The fact that next door had heard this stunning news first made the blow worse, and Mrs Glazier put a flour-covered hand to her forehead. She closed her eyes for a moment. ‘But why can’t the girl look after the little – baby herself?’

Kitty took the lid off a jar marked ‘Cloves’ and looked inside, sniffing. ‘Her daughter earns more money at the Horse and Groom than her mother earns here,’ she explained.

‘I suppose you told Mrs De Vries that too.’

Kitty went to the door with dignity. ‘Oh, no! I never talk from house to house. My mother says I’ll have to stop my visiting, if I do. Oh, by the way,’ she called back, ‘you’d better keep your dog in. The De Vrieses’ bitch is on heat.’

She went home and sat down to lamb and bubble-and-squeak.

‘The Vicar’s having cold, too,’ she said.

‘And that’s
his
business,’ her mother said warningly.

A few days later, Kitty called on Mrs Prout.

Mrs Prout’s cottage was one of Kitty’s favourite visits. Many years ago, before she was married, Mrs Prout had been a school-teacher, and she enjoyed using her old skills to deal with Kitty. Keeping her patience pliant, she taught her visitor new card games (and they were all educational), and got her on to collecting and pressing wild flowers. She would give her pastry-trimmings to cut into shapes, and showed her how to pop corn and
make fudge. She was extremely kind, though firm, and Kitty respected the rules – about taking off her Wellingtons and washing her hands and never calling on Mondays or Thursdays, because these were turning-out days when Mrs Prout was far too busy to have company.