Miss Hargreaves (15 page)

‘I wasn’t there,’ I said, ‘I left before that.’

‘Where did you pick her up, my child?’

‘Oh, Archie!’ I groaned. ‘If you only knew!’

‘Rescue her from drowning?’

‘No.’

‘Runaway horse?’

‘No.’

‘
Matrimonial Post
?’

‘Don’t be a fool.’

‘All right, dear. Cheer up. The flowers that bloom in the spring have nothing to do with
this
case.’

‘Absolutely not.’

Meakins, the Dean’s verger, came up and tapped on the door with his wand. It was half a minute to ten. Under the tattered Crimean flags the boys were filing from their practice-room. The south door slammed and Dr Carless hurried in. Catching sight of me, he beckoned me over.

‘I’ve had a complaint from Canon Auty,’ he said. ‘It really is too bad, Huntley. It reflects on me, you know.’

‘I’m awfully sorry, Doctor.’

‘The Precentor tells me you had some eccentric old woman up there. You know it’s strictly against rules to take strangers up the loft.’

‘I honestly couldn’t help it. She came up of her own accord and–’

‘No excuse. You should lock the transept gate. In future you’re to confine yourself to the use of the Choir stops. I won’t have you showing off the organ to strangers like this–’

‘I wasn’t showing off the organ–’

‘You roar away on the full Great and imagine yourself to be an organist. Playing hymns–so the Precentor tells me! Haven’t you got beyond the hymn-stage by now?’

Baker, that wretchedly supercilious solo-boy, was standing just inside the practice-room, adjusting his ruff in the mirror and listening to every word the Doctor said. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so mortified.

The Doctor looked at his watch. ‘Meakins early as usual,’ he muttered, hurrying away moodily towards the transept gate.

Everybody was lined up and I went to my place. I saw Baker whispering to young Hann. Devils, those boys are; absolute devils.

The canons, like bees crawling out from a queenless hive–the Dean was absent–emerged from the Chapter Room. Old Canon Auty came last of all, fixing everybody–including old Bishop Creighton in his alabaster tomb–with a Mosaic stare and trundling his fist about in his enormous white beard.

‘The Lord is in His Holy Temple,’ intoned the Precentor.

‘Let all the earth keep silence before Him,’ answered we.

‘The Lord be with you.’

‘And with thy spirit.’

‘Let us pray. Wurra-wurra-wurra-wurra-wurra-wurra, world without end.’

‘A-men.’

Slesser’s velvet tone rang the major third down the aisle. We wandered in–boys with hands clasped in front of them; men with hands clasped behind them; clergy with hands unclasped. The Doctor trailed a sinuous tune from the Choir Gamba. Meakins ostentatiously closed the gates. There was a shuffling of knees upon kneelers. Matins began.

We had a busy morning at the shop. Father had bought up a large country-house library, very cheap, and we spent all day sorting the stuff out. The place was in the devil of a mess; no room to step anywhere.

‘Put up the back-in-twenty,’ ordered father. ‘We can’t have people coming in with wet boots and walking all over these books–not that most of them wouldn’t best serve as doormats.’

Squeen demurred. He hates putting up that notice. I must say it’s not particularly good for business.

‘Do as I tell you, you withered jackanapes, you troll!’ bawled father. ‘And get some new strings for your violin, too. I’m arranging a concert. Back-in-twenty. Go on, you fool.’

Squeen sighed, hung up the notice and locked the door. Outside, the rain was pouring down, the wind howling. Winter seemed to have come in a night. For the first time in the season we had a fire in the shop. Cosy it was. I liked it. I was sitting on the floor under a table going through a pile of Caroline homilies in yellow binding. Squeen was very active, slithering up and down steps quicker than a piece of soap, and trying to find room for some of the new stuff.

‘Alchemy,’ said father, lifting up a massive octavo, leather-bound volume, very old. ‘No,’ he said, ‘astrology. That’s head bumps, isn’t it? Catch, Squeen. Oh, you fool!’

He hurled the book at Squeen who tottered on the steps and came crashing down.

‘My idea,’ said father, ‘is a quartet. Clarionet, two violins and piano. You’ll have to practise, Squeen. I’ll give you some time off.’

‘Oh, Mr Squeen is no violinist.’

‘I know that. But we can write an easy part for you. Don’t know any music for the combination. We might arrange that tune of mine. I’ve always wanted somebody who could play the clarionet.’

‘Who do you reckon
is
going to play it?’ I asked.

‘Now, here’s Paley’s
Natural Laws
; twelve volumes and leaves uncut. Might give it to Jim and Henry if they ever get married. They could use them as door-stops, I suppose. Clarionet? Miss Holway, of course.’

‘If you mean Hargreaves, she doesn’t play the clarionet.’

‘This woman you met in Wales, Squeen, polish up this Surtees with some Ronuk and put it in the window with a notice, “Rare Copy”. It’s no value, but some fool of an American’ll probably buy it.’

‘Mr Squeen would like to remark that a lady is trying to get into the shop.’

‘Pull the blind down then.’

I heard the yapping of a dog. Father went himself and pulled the blind down, blowing cigarette smoke over the glass. I stayed under the table. There could be no doubt as to the identity of that dog; I knew perfectly well whose stick it was that tapped so impatiently on the pavement.

‘Must have that sign printed larger,’ said father. ‘Fools can’t read it. Squeen, make a note. Why can’t the damn woman see we’re not back?’

Still the stick went on tapping; still the wretched little Bedlington continued to yap. She would get in; I knew she would get in somehow. Kneeling there under the table, a sudden insane feeling of rage came over me. Very strong it was; overpowering. I think I might have killed her had she come in at that moment. The whole thing was becoming too much for me. I can stand a good bit, but this was going too far. I’ve got a temper, as I dare say you’ve noticed, and when it’s roused, well, it’s roused, it’s alive and awake, active and destructive. It wasn’t that I actually
disliked
the old tea-cosy; no, not that. I liked her in a way. And that was just why I wanted to get rid of her; she was too powerful an influence over me. I could see my whole life being upset by her. Already she’d caused a rift between me and Marjorie, got me talked about in the Swan and brought trouble upon me in the Cathedral. ‘Damn her!’ I muttered. ‘Damn the old witch! Dog, cockatoo, harp, bath and all!’

But she was still standing outside.

‘Yes,’ father was saying, idly tearing a page out of Colley Cibber to make a spill for his cigarette. ‘Time we had a bit of music. Wouldn’t be a bad plan to give lunch-time concerts in the shop.’

‘Go away. Go away,’ I muttered. My face was turned to the floor. I saw a large, greasy, overfed spider crawling over one of the books. Black hate was in my heart. Flattening my hand upon the spider (a thing I couldn’t ordinarily do), I savagely saw in it the face and form of Constance Hargreaves. ‘Serpent!’ I hissed. ‘Depart from Cornford, serpent! Depart and trouble me no more.’

Squeen oiled his way round to a pile of books intended for display in the window.

‘The lady’s gone,’ he remarked. ‘Hobbling up the street. Mr Squeen thinks it a pity to have turned her away. Business, he thinks, should be as usual.’

‘Stop talking,’ said father, ‘and take these Miltons up to the dump room. Nothing but Milton, always Milton in these country houses.’

I went cautiously to the window. Disappearing up Wells Street, almost lost under her umbrella, becoming fainter and fainter in the driving rain, went Miss Hargreaves. She looked so horribly lonely. I wanted to open the door, run out into the street and call her back into the shop. But she turned the corner just past Rawley’s, the tobacconist, and I lost sight of her.

‘Put some more coal on the fire,’ said father. He thrust a red-calf Browning over to Squeen. ‘Fuel,’ he said.

‘Browning, Mr Huntley,’ said Squeen, fingering the book delicately.

‘Fuel!’ snapped father. He loathes Browning.

‘That was Miss Hargreaves,’ I said. ‘You’ve missed her now.’

‘Plenty of time,’ he said vaguely. ‘Yes,’ he added reminiscently, ‘only three words. There was old Tennyson, muttering bits from
In Memoriam
, skulking by a pillar in the retro-choir. He was tearing the band from his black felt hat, I remember. They were singing Parry’s “Blest Pair of Sirens”. It sounded more like a battalion of sirens to me. Never could bear Parry.’

‘What were those words?’

‘Damned if I can remember.’

Marjorie, as I told you, works in a cake shop. Not ordinary cakes. Special cakes, with walnuts, orange and coffee flavours, and a don’t-you-dare-cut-me-with-anything-but-a-silver-knife sort of air. Jams, too; all arranged neatly on shelves with labels in their maker’s handwriting. Autographed preserves.

I went round after lunch. I knew Marjorie would be pretty mad about last night. A spot of appeasement was indicated.

‘Marjorie,’ I said humbly, ‘I’m damn sorry about the dance.’

‘Oh, yes?’ She was high-hat, you could see that; on a level with the cakes and fondants. I felt like slab-cake at seven-pence the pound.

‘I honestly couldn’t help it. You don’t know what I went through. A wet bathing costume in a mangle goes through nothing to what I suffered last night.’

‘They tell me you had a nice little dinner together. I suppose you bathed her and fed the dog and tucked her up in bed and gave her her bed-socks?’

‘I shall kill myself if you go on like this, Marjorie.’

‘Do. Here’s a knife. It’s quite sharp.’

‘You don’t seriously believe I’m in love with a woman that age who plays the harp, do you?’

‘She plays the organ too, I hear. Did you spend the night with her in the loft?’

‘You’re a toad, Marjorie! That’s what you are. A foul toad!’

‘Don’t call me names. I won’t stand it.’

‘I can’t make out why you’re like this. Miss Hargreaves is nothing to me.’

‘She means enough to you to make you cut a dance I was specially looking forward to. Not that I missed you one little bit! Pat Howard thought my new dress was very nice.’

‘I couldn’t
help
it. Have you ever had a flea?’

‘You needn’t be rude.’

‘Well, if you ever had a flea you’d know something of what I feel like. A sort of itching in the mind. I think I’m going balmy.’

‘So does everybody else. I expect we shall get used to it.’

‘I made her up. Can’t you try to believe me? Henry was in it too.’

She sniffed and walking to the window started to fuss some honey pots. ‘Perhaps it’d interest you to hear what Henry said last night?’

‘Yes. It would.’

‘He said you’d known this woman all along and wanted to hide her from us for some reason of your own.’

‘Suppose it was true?’ I cried. ‘Would that be sufficient reason for behaving like a toad?’

She was silent.