Excellent Women (21 page)

P
ERHAPS
there can be too much making of cups of tea, I thought, as I watched Miss Statham filling the heavy teapot. We had all had our supper, or were supposed to have had it, and were met together to discuss the arrangements for the Christmas bazaar. Did we really
need
a cup of tea? I even said as much to Miss Statham and she looked at me with a hurt, almost angry look, ‘Do we
need
tea?’ she echoed. ‘But Miss Lathbury …’ She sounded puzzled and distressed and I began to realise that my question had struck at something deep and fundamental. It was the kind of question that starts a landslide in the mind.

I mumbled something about making a joke and that of course one needed tea always, at every hour of the day or night.

‘This teapot’s heavy,’ she said, lifting it with both hands and placing it on the table. ‘You’d think one of the men might help to carry it,’ she added, raising her voice.

Mr. Mallett and Mr. Conybeare, the churchwardens, and Mr. Gamble, the treasurer, looked up from their business, which they were conducting in a secret masculine way with many papers spread out before them, but made no move to help.

‘I see it is done now by the so-called weaker sex,’ said Mr. Mallett. ‘I think Miss Statham has got everything under control.’

‘Come on now,’ she said, ‘make room for your cups of tea. You’ve got the table so cluttered with papers and your elbows on it too. You’ll be knocking something over. Anyone would think you weren’t interested in having a cup.’

‘Oh, we are that, all right,’ said Mr. Conybeare. ‘Just you pour it out, Miss Statham, and we’ll soon make room.’

Miss Statham and I served the men and the other ladies and then sat down ourselves. Winifred Malory was at home with a bad cold and Julian had not yet arrived, which added considerably to the enjoyment of all present, as the broken engagement could be discussed freely and without embarrassment. It was the first time since it had happened that there had been any kind of parish gathering.

‘Of course a man can carry it off with more dignity, a thing like that,’ said Miss Statham, putting a knitted tea-cosy on the teapot. ‘Anyone who wants a second cup can help themselves. A man doesn’t feel the shame that a woman would.’

‘After all, he can easily ask somebody else-after a decent interval, of course,’ said Miss Enders.

‘Once bitten, twice shy,’ said Mr. Mallett. ‘I should say he was well out of it. Not that she wasn’t a charming lady in her way. But if he’s got any sense Father Malory won’t go asking anyone else in a hurry. He’ll know when he’s well off.’

‘Really, Mr. Mallett, it’s a good thing your wife isn’t here,’ said Miss Statham indignantly. ‘Whatever would she think to hear you talking like that?’

‘My good lady leaves the thinking to me,’ said Mr. Mallett, amid laughter from the men.

‘What does the vicar want with a wife, anyway?’ asked Mr. Conybeare. ‘He’s got his sister and you ladies to help him in the parish.’

‘Oh, well, what a question!’ Miss Statham giggled. ‘He’s a man, isn’t he, and all men are alike.’

There followed some rather embarrassing badinage between Miss Statham and the two churchwardens in which I was quite unable to join, though I envied her the easy way she had with them. Their joking was broken up by the arrival of Sister Blatt, looking very pleased with herself.

‘Well,’
she said, sitting down heavily and beaming all over her face, ‘it’s a disgrace, I never saw anything like it.’

We asked what.

‘The way Mrs. Gray left that kitchen in the flat. You know the remover’s men have been in today to take away her furniture. Oh, my goodness, there was food in the larder, been there weeks! And dishes not washed up, even!’

‘She left in rather a hurry,’ I pointed out. ‘I don’t suppose she thought of washing up before she went.’ People did tend to leave the washing up on the dramatic occasions of life; I remembered only too well how full of dirty dishes the Napiers’ kitchen had been on the day Helena had left.

‘But, Miss Lathbury, dear, that wouldn’t account for the mess there was. Tins half used and then left, stale ends of loaves, and everything so
dirty. … I
never thought she was the right wife for Father Malory and I often said so too. I’m afraid she was a real viper.’

‘In sheep’s clothing,’ added Mr. Mallett. ‘Now, is the vicar going to honour us with his presence tonight or is he not?

‘I dare say he’s forgotten and is playing darts with the boys next door,’ said Miss Statham. ‘Would anyone like to go and see?’

I said that I would, and, bracing myself to meet the pandemonium went into the main part of the hall, where Julian, surrounded by a crowd of lads, was playing darts. It seemed a pity to interrupt the game and drag him off to our dull meeting and the cold stewed tea and he seemed to come rather unwillingly.

‘What is it, Mildred?’ he asked. ‘The bazaar meeting? Good heavens, I’d forgotten all about it!’

He took his place at the head of the table and accepted a cup of the stewed tea absent-mindedly. Everybody was quiet now as if out of respect for Julian’s new status brought about by the broken engagement.

‘I’m sorry to have kept you waiting,’ he said. ‘Now, what exactly is the purpose of this meeting?’

‘It might have been to decide on a wedding present from the parish,’ whispered Sister Blatt to me. ‘What a good thing we hadn’t started to collect the money!’

The treasurer cleared his throat and began to explain.

‘Ah, yes, the Christmas bazaar,’ said Julian lightly. ‘Well, I suppose it will follow its usual course. Do we really need to have a meeting about it?’

There was a shocked silence.

‘He’s not himself,’ whispered Miss Statham.

‘Why not let us decide about the bazaar?’ I suggested boldly. ‘Why don’t you go back to the boys? I could see that you were having a very exciting darts match with Teddy Lemon.’

‘Yes, I was beating him for once, too,’ said Julian. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I think I will go back.’ He got up from the table and went off, leaving his tea unfinished.

‘Well, really, I’ve never heard of such a thing,’ said Miss Statham. ‘The vicar has always presided at the meeting to arrange about the Christmas bazaar—it’s been the custom ever since Father Busby’s time.’

‘Well, Miss Statham, if you can remember what went on in the eighteen-seventies when Father Busby was vicar, the rest of us must retire,’ said Sister Blatt genially.

‘But it’s so irresponsible,’ protested Miss Statham, ‘especially when you consider how important the bazaar is in these days.’

‘I am reminded of nothing so much as the Emperor Nero fiddling while Rome is burning,’ said Mr. Mallett.

‘Now then, Mr. Mallett, who said anything about Rome,’ said Sister Blatt. ‘We’re not there yet, you know.’

‘Not like poor Mr. and Mrs. Lake and Miss Spicer,’ said Miss Enders.

There was a short silence as is sometimes customary after speaking of the dead, though in this case the people referred to might have been thought to have met with a fate worse than death, for they had left us and been received into the Church of Rome.

‘Oh, well, I was speaking metaphorically, as is my wont,’ said Mr. Mallett.

‘One might say that Father Malory’s conduct this evening reminds us of the behaviour of Sir Francis Drake, going on playing bowls when the Armada was sighted,’ suggested Mr. Conybeare.

‘But that was supposed to be a good tiling, a brave thing,’ said Miss Enders.

‘I think perhaps Father Malory is doing a good thing, I said.

‘But he didn’t even finish his cup of tea,’ protested Miss Statham.

‘Well, it was rather stewed,’ said Sister Blatt.

‘Perhaps this unfortunate affair has turned his head,’ said Miss Statham mysteriously. ‘We shan’t know what to expect now.’

‘He might take it into his head to enter a monastic order or to become a missionary,’ said Miss Enders, almost gloating at the prospect.

‘People often do strange things when they’ve had a disappointment,’ agreed Miss Statham. ‘He might ask the Bishop to put him in the East End.’

‘Or in a country parish,’ said Miss Enders.

There seemed to be no end to the things that Julian might do, from making a hasty and unsuitable marriage and leaving the Church altogether to going over to Rome and ending up as a Cardinal.

‘Well, ladies,’ said Mr. Mallett at last, ‘what about this bazaar? Isn’t it the purpose for which two or three are gathered together?’

‘Oh, well, as Father Malory said, it can just follow its usual course,’ said Miss Statham rather impatiently. ‘I imagine the stall-holders will be as usual?’ There was a note of challenge in her voice as she looked round the table, for it was known that she herself had always taken charge of the fancy-work stall, which was considered to be the most important.

‘Oh, yes, we leave it to you ladies to fight all that out,’ said Mr. Mallett, recoiling in mock fear. ‘We men will just do all the hard work, eh?’

‘Of course we could ask Father Greatorex to preside,’ said Miss Enders doubtfully.

‘Oh, that man! A fat lot of good he’d be,’ said Sister Blatt. ‘I think we’ve really done quite well on our own.

‘Without benefit of clergy,’ said Mr. Conybeare.

‘But we don’t really seem to have
decided
anything,’ I said. ‘When is the bazaar to be? Have we settled the date?’

‘Oh, well, it will be when it always is,’ said Miss Statham.

‘When is that?’

‘The first Saturday in December.’

‘Is it always then?’

‘Oh, yes, it always has been as long as I can remember.’

‘Since the days of Father Busby, eh?’ said Mr. Mallett jovially.

Miss Statham ignored him, perhaps she was tired of his joking or considered the date of the bazaar to be no matter for joking.

‘It is not a movable feast, then?’ asked Mr. Conybeare.

‘Well, there isn’t any better date, is there?’ said Miss Statham sharply. ‘It must be on a Saturday and a week or two before Christmas.’

We agreed that no better date than the first Saturday in December could be imagined, and I felt rather guilty for having raised doubts in anybody’s mind. But I still felt dissatisfied, as if the evening had been wasted. Surely there was something we could discuss, some resolution we could carry?

‘What stall shall I help with?’ I asked.

They looked at me with such surprise that I began to think that perhaps I had been infected by Julian’s strange behaviour.

‘Why surely you will help me with the fancy stall?” said Miss Statham. ‘Like you did last year and the year before. Unless you’d prefer to do anything else?’

I hesitated, for there was an uneasy feeling in the air, as if umbrage were about to be taken. ‘Of course I will help you. Miss Statham,’ I said quickly. ‘I was only wondering if there was anything else that needed doing. The hoop-la or the bran-tub,’ I suggested feebly.

‘But Teddy Lemon and the servers will look after that sort of thing,’ said Miss Statham, as if it were beneath our dignity; ‘they always do.’

‘Yes, so they do. I’d forgotten.’

‘Money needs to be spent,’ said Mr. Gamble, making himself heard for the first time. ‘You must bring some of your rich friends, Miss Lathbury.’

‘I dare say that Mrs. Napier could afford to spend a bit of money on us,’ said Miss Statham.

‘I’ve often seen her smoking cigarettes in the street
and
going into the Duchess of Granby,’ said Miss Enders, in a mealy-mouthed sort of way.

‘Well, why shouldn’t she?’ I burst out. ‘You can hardly expect her to come and spend money at our bazaar if that’s the way you feel about her.’

‘Oh, I didn’t say anything, Miss Lathbury,’ said Miss Enders huffily. ‘I’m sure I didn’t mean to offend.’

‘I suppose these cups should be washed,’ I said, standing up.

‘Oh, yes, and the big urn ought to be refilled. The lads will want something,’ said Miss Statham.

The men went on smoking and chatting while we gathered the cups together and struggled to fill the heavy urn between us. They belonged to the generation that does not think of helping with domestic tasks.

‘Poor Father Malory. I suppose it was all for the best,’ said Sister Blatt, waiting with a drying-cloth in her hand. ‘We are told that everything happens for the best, and really it does, you know.’

‘When one door shuts another door opens,’ remarked Miss Statham.

Yes, of course. Perhaps a door will open for Father Malory.’

At that moment a door did open, but it was only a group of lads headed by Teddy Lemon coming out of the hall. When they saw that we were washing up they withdrew hastily, with some scuffling and giggling.

‘Perhaps he will throw himself into the boys’ club,’ suggested Sister Blatt. ‘After all, it is a splendid thing to work among young people.’

I found myself beginning to laugh, I cannot think why, and turned the conversation to Sister Blatt’s friend, who was to share the vicarage flat with her.

‘I wonder if Father Malory will get engaged to her?’ said Miss Statham in a sardonic tone.

‘Oh, no, my friend isn’t at all the type to attract a man,’ said Sister Blatt with rough good humour. ‘There won’t be any nonsense of that kind.’

‘Well, well, then everything will be as it was before Mrs. Gray came, then.’

‘Nothing can ever be really the same when time has passed,’ I said, more to myself than to them, ‘even if it appears to be from the outside. And didn’t I tell you, the Napiers are leaving? So there will be new people in my house and things won’t be at all the same.’

‘Oh, I wonder who they will be?’ asked Miss Statham eagerly.

‘I don’t know yet. Somehow I think they will be women who will come to our church.’

‘Then there might be danger there,’ said Sister Blatt in a satisfied tone. ‘I shall have to keep my eye on Father Malory.

‘That’s right, Sister,’ said Mr. Mallett, overhearing the tail-end of our conversation. ‘Where would we be, I’d like to know, if you ladies didn’t keep an eye on us?’

IT was easier saying goodbye to Rocky the second time. He and Helena seemed almost sorry to be going and were very nice to me. They asked me down to their flat the evening before they were to go and Rocky opened a bottle of wine. Seeing them together, gay, frivolous and argumentative, made me feel smug and dull, as if meeting them had really made no difference to me at all.

‘You
must
look after poor Everard Bone,’ said Helena. ‘Oh, how he needs the love of a good woman!’

‘I’m glad you are not claiming that your love was that, darling,’ said Rocky flippantly. ‘Personally, I can’t imagine anything I should like less than the love of a good woman. It would be like—oh—something very cosy and stifling and un-glamorous, a large grey blanket—perhaps an Army blanket.’

‘Or like a white rabbit thrust suddenly into your arms,’ I suggested, feeling the glow of wine in me.

‘Oh, but a white rabbit might be rather charming.’

‘Yes, at first. But after a while you wouldn’t know what to do with it,’ I said more soberly, remembering that I had had this conversation about white rabbits with Everard Bone.

‘Poor Mildred, it’s really rather too bad to suggest that the love of a good woman is dull when we know that she is so very good,’ said Helena.

‘And not at all dull,’ said Rocky in his expected manner. ‘But Mildred is already pledged to the vicar, and after his unfortunate experience you must surely agree that he has first claim.’

‘Oh, he’s surrounded by good women,’ I said.

‘I think he’s nice,’ said Helena, ‘but it always seems to be his boys’ club night, so one would never get taken out for a drink.’

‘He and I had a drink together once,’ said Rocky. ‘We had a long talk about Italy.

Because it is the day of Palms,
Carry a palm for me,
Carry a palm in Santa Chiara,
And I will watch the sea….’

He began pacing round the room, touching the bare walls and looking out of the uncurtained windows. ‘I wonder who will be sitting in this room a month from tonight?’ he mused. ‘I wonder if they will feel any kind of atmosphere? Should we carve our names in some secret place? One longs to have a bit of immortality somewhere.’

‘You were going to give a memorial stained-glass window to the church,’ I reminded him.

‘Yes, but that’s rather an expensive way of doing it. Besides, I feel it would be such a very hideous window.’

‘Well, then you said you would give some money to buy incense.’

‘Good heavens, so I did.’ He took out his wallet and handed me a pound note which I put away quickly in my bag.

‘That won’t make you remembered,’ said Helena; ‘it will go up in the air and be lost. I suppose we should write something on a window-pane with a diamond ring. Here, Rocky,’ she took a ring from her finger, ‘try with this.’

‘ When my grave is broke up again
Some second guest to entertain,’

chanted Rocky, ‘but perhaps a line of Dante would be better, if I could remember one.’ ‘I only know “abandon hope all ye who enter here,”’ I said, ‘which doesn’t seem very suitable, and that bit about there being no greater sorrow than to remember happiness in a time of misery.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Rocky clapped his hands together, ‘that’s it!

Nessun maggior dolore,
Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Nella miseria.’

‘It seems an unkind way to greet new arrivals,’ I said doubtfully.

‘Oh, don’t you believe it—people love to recall happiness in a time of misery. And anyway, they won’t know what it means.’

‘Quite a lot of people who were in Italy during the war must have learnt Italian,’ I pointed out.

‘But not Dante! The noble Allied Military didn’t get much further than a few scattered imperatives, but they might have got as far as asking if dinner was ready and they probably knew the names of a few wines.’

‘Unless they had Italian mistresses,’ said Helena.

‘Oh, then they domesticated them and taught them English,’ said Rocky coolly.

‘I don’t suppose the new tenants will understand it anyway, I mumbled quickly.

‘Of course I haven’t the patience to do this really properly,’ said Rocky, looking at what he had written, ‘the lettering isn’t very good, but at least we shall feel we’ve left something to be remembered by.’

‘But you don’t need to. People aren’t really forgotten, I said, not wanting to be misunderstood but certain that I should be.

Rocky gave me one of his characteristic looks and smiled.

‘What will you
do
after we’ve gone?’ Helena asked.

‘Well, she had a life before we came,’ Rocky reminded her. ‘Very much so—what is known as a
full
life, with clergymen and jumble sales and church services and good works.

‘I thought that was the kind of life led by women who
didn’t
have a full life in the accepted sense,’ said Helena.

‘Oh, she’ll marry,’ said Rocky confidently. They were talking about me as if I wasn’t there.

‘Everard might take her to hear a paper at the Learned Society,’ suggested Helena. ‘That would widen her outlook.’

‘Yes, it might,’ I said humbly from my narrowness.

‘But then she would get interested in some little tribe somewhere and her life might become even more narrow,’ said Rocky.

We discussed my future until a late hour, but it was hardly to be expected that we should come to any practical conclusions.

The next day I saw them off and turned back a little sadly into the quiet empty house, wondering if I should ever see them again. Of course there had been the usual promises to write on both sides and I was invited to visit them whenever I liked.

It seemed that husbands and wives could part and come together again, and I was glad that it should be so, but what happened after that? It is said that people are refined and ennobled by suffering and one knows that they sometimes are, but would Helena have learned to be neater in the kitchen, or Rocky to share her interest in matrilineal kin-groups? It seemed as if this was at once too little and too much to expect from the experience they had been through, and I felt myself incapable of looking into their future. All I could do was to be prepared to receive Helena if she should ever appear on my doorstep with a suitcase, though perhaps that was Esther Clovis’s privilege.

In the meantime, I began to think about Everard Bone and even to wish that I might cook his meat for him. I had a wild idea that I might join the Prehistoric Society, if only I knew how to set about it. It would probably be easier to belong to this than to the Learned Society, whose members must surely have some knowledge of or interest in anthropology. But anybody could scrabble about in the earth for bits of pottery or wander about on moors looking for dolmens, or so it seemed to me in my innocence. Then a more practical idea came into my head. I was supposed to keep Everard up-to-date with news about the Napiers; perhaps he did not know that they had become reconciled and left London to live in the country. Why had he not telephoned me? Was it possible that he had gone away, or was lying ill, alone in his flat with nobody to look after him? Here my imaginings began to follow disconcertingly familiar lines. Well, at least I should see him in Lent, I told myself sensibly, at the lunchtime services at St. Ermin’s. I remembered that there was a poem which began
Lenten is come with love to town,
and with a feeling of shame I hastened to look it up in the
Oxford Book of English Verse.
But it was one of the very early ones,
‘c.
1300’, and although there was a glossary of unfamiliar words at the bottom of the page, the poem did not really comfort me.

Deowes donketh the dounes,
Deores with huere derne rounes
     Domes forte deme;

I read; that would teach me not to be so foolish.

Some days later I was walking near the premises of the Learned Society; in other words, I was doing what I had so often done in the days of Bernard Hatherley. The walk along Victoria Parade in the gathering twilight, the approach to ‘Loch Lomond’, the quick glance up at the lace-curtained window, the hope or fear that a hand might draw the curtain aside or a shadowy form be seen hovering behind it… is there no end to the humiliations we subject ourselves to? Of course, I told myself, there was no reason why I shouldn’t be walking past the premises of the Learned Society, it was on the way to a dozen places. So I did not bow my head in shame as I approached the building but even looked up to see a bearded man step out on to the balcony, and Everard Bone and Esther Clovis coming out of the front door.

Esther Clovis… hair like a dog, but a very capable person, respected and esteemed by Everard Bone, and, moreover, one who could make an index and correct proofs. I felt quite a shock at seeing them together, especially when I noticed Everard taking her arm. Of course they were crossing the road and any man with reasonably good manners might be expected to take a woman’s arm in those circumstances, I reasoned within myself, but I still felt very low. I decided that I would go and have lunch in the great cafeteria where I sometimes went with Mrs. Bonner. It would encourage a suitable frame of mind, put me in mind of my own mortality and of that of all of us here below, if I could meditate on that line of patient people moving with their trays.

‘Mildred! Didn’t you see me?’

Everard sounded a little annoyed, as if he had had to hurry to catch me up.

‘I didn’t think you’d seen me,’ I said, startled. ‘Besides, you had somebody with you.’

‘Only Esther Clovis.’

‘She’s a very capable person. What have you done with her?’

‘Done with her? I happened to come out with her and she was meeting a friend for lunch. Are you going to have lunch? We may as well have it together.’

‘Yes; I was going to,’ I said, and told him where I had thought of going.

‘Oh, we can’t go there,’ he said impatiently, so of course we went to a restaurant of his choice near the premises of the Learned Society.

Naturally the meal did not come up to my expectations, though the food was very good. I found myself wondering how I could have wanted so much to see him again, and I was embarrassed at the remembrance of my imaginings of him, alone and ill in his flat with nobody to look after him. Nothing more unlikely could possibly be imagined.

The conversation did not go very well and I began telling him about the people with their trays in the great cafeteria and suggesting that it would have done us more good to go there to be put in mind of our own mortality.

‘But I’m daily being put in mind of it,’ he protested. ‘One has only to sit in the library of the Learned Society to realise that one’s own end can’t be so very far off.’

After that things went a little better. I told him about the Napiers and he invited me to go to dinner with him at his flat. I promised that I would cook the meat and I felt better for having done so, for it seemed like a kind of atonement, a burden in a way and yet perhaps because of being a burden, a pleasure.

Just as we were leaving the restaurant two men came and sat down at a table near us. I did not need to be told who they were.

‘Apfelbaum and Tyrell Todd,’ said Everard in a low voice. ‘I dare say you remember who they are.

‘Oh, yes, you and Helena met them once at one o’clock in the morning and you were all so surprised. I often think of that—it makes me laugh.’

‘Well, nothing came of it,’ said Everard rather stiffly. ‘I suppose it was amusing, really. I expect they will be more interested to see me with somebody they don’t know. You must come and hear Todd talking about pygmies some time.’

‘Thank you—I should like that very much,’ I said.

I went home rather slowly, imagining myself having dinner with Everard at his flat; then I saw myself at the Learned Society, listening to Tyrell Todd talking about pygmies. I was just getting up to put an extraordinarily intelligent and provocative question to the speaker, when I realised that I was nearly home and that there was a furniture van outside the door. As I approached it I was able to take note of some of its contents which were lying forlornly in the road. There were some oak chairs and a gate-legged table, an embroidered fire-screen and a carved chest, the kind of ‘good’ rather uninteresting things that people of one’s own kind might be expected to have. I guessed that the owners were probably a couple of women like Dora and myself, perhaps, though I had no means of knowing if they were older or younger.

I walked quietly up the stairs, not wanting to meet them yet, but I was just passing what I shall always think of as the Napiers’ kitchen when a sharp but cultured woman’s voice called out, ‘Is that Miss Lathbury?’

I stood transfixed on the stairs and before I had time to answer a small grey-haired woman, holding a tea-caddy in her hand, put her head out of the door.

‘I’m Charlotte Boniface,’ she announced. ‘My friend Mabel Edgar and I are just moving in—as you can see.’ She gave a little laugh.

Another pair of women, I thought with resignation, feeling a little depressed that my prophecy had come true, but telling myself that after all they were the easiest kind of people to have in the house.

‘Edgar!’ called Miss Boniface into the other room. ‘Come and meet Miss Lathbury, who lives in the flat above us.’

A tall grey-haired woman holding a hammer in her hand came out and smiled in a mild shy sort of way.

‘Come in and have a cup of tea with us, Miss Lathbury,’ said Miss Boniface.

I went into the sitting-room which had a carpet on the floor and a few pieces of furniture spread about in an uncertain way.

Miss Edgar was standing on a step-ladder hanging pictures, dark-looking reproductions of Italian Old Masters.

‘Do excuse me,’ she said. ‘I always have to hang the pictures because Bony can’t reach. These walls don’t seem to be very good, the plaster crumbles when you knock nails in.’

‘Oh, dear,’ I said conventionally, feeling relieved that there was nothing I could do about it. ‘I hope you will like this flat.’