Miss Hargreaves (36 page)

‘I don’t
want
it,’ I protested feebly.

‘Naughty! Tch! Come now–you mustn’t excite yourself again. I abominate scenes! Let me put a cushion behind your head. There–there!’

Vaguely I realized that somebody was knocking at the front door.

Mollie showed father in.

‘Hullo,’ he said. ‘Am I interrupting ? You said something about coffee.’

‘Come in, my dear Mr Huntley. Mollie, take Mr Huntley’s coat; and beard Oh! he has no beard. Then bring some coffee–and a bottle of cognac. Sit down, Mr Huntley. Your son and I were having a little tête-à-tête. I was about to read him my sonnet sequence, “The Nine Owls”.’

‘Owls, eh? H’m.’ Father wandered about in his usual large manner, picking up things and looking at pictures. ‘Nice place you’ve got here,’ he said. ‘Oliver Goldsmith used to live here, you know. Or was it Grinling Gibbons? Never can remember. Their style’s very alike.’

He sat down. ‘I suppose you two have settled everything about the concert?’ he said.

‘Well–’ began Connie.

Father nodded. ‘Good. Now we can have a nice little chat about books and things. One or two stories I should like to tell you. Ever met Conrad?’

Lady Hargreaves screwed up her face. ‘I cannot
quite
remember,’ she said.

‘I didn’t,’ said father. He lapsed into an unusual silence.

‘
Such
an age–
such
writers–’ began Connie.

‘You remember Henry James’ story about the owl?’ asked father.

‘I think not.’

‘Never can be sure of it myself. But it seems he kept an owl–an albino bird it was–in his bathroom. Well, one evening he took up the sponge, see–and it bit him and said, “Lovely-lovely-lovely”. Like that. Of course, he’d picked up the owl by mistake. But this is the interesting part. The owl saying “lovely” gave him the idea for one of his best lines. Dare say you know it. “Lovely are the curves of the white owl sweeping, wavy in the dusk lit by one large star.” Beautiful poetry, Lady Marston. You and I couldn’t write like that, not even if we kept ten white owls in our bathrooms.’

‘But surely, Mr Huntley, George Meredith wrote those lines?’

Father nodded. ‘So everybody thinks. Actually he stole them from Henry James. Happened to be lighting his pipe outside the bathroom. They had a cottage at Winchelsea. My aunt lived there later. Funny, really.’

Mollie came in with the coffee, cognac, and three balloon glasses.

‘Ah!’ Father rubbed his hands together. ‘I like brandy. My father was a smuggler, y’ know. Practically lived on brandy. Nice life, really. Thanks.’

I waited, wondering whether I should be offered any. But I was not. Father pushed his coffee aside and closed his palms round his glass. He looked over to me. ‘Put it to your nose, boy,’ he said. ‘Get the bouquet.’

I looked down at my empty hands and shook my head slowly.

‘Norman is a little unwell,’ explained Lady Hargreaves. ‘It would be most unwise for him to take brandy.’

‘Unwell? How do you expect the boy to be well without brandy? Here, boy–’ He poured out a stiff glass for me and passed it over. I took it. Lady Hargreaves frowned and tapped her stick on the floor. I drank quickly before she should snatch it away from me. ‘Here,’ cried father, ‘you mustn’t drink brandy at that speed. What’s the matter with you?’

‘I told you,’ Lady Hargreaves said coldly, ‘he is unwell.’

‘H’m,’ said father. ‘H’m.’ He drank, and we were all silent for a little while.

‘I’ve brought my tune,’ remarked father presently. ‘Here it is.’ He drew a postcard from his pocket. ‘Doesn’t look very long, but I always add bits as I go along. Norman’ll have to write out the accompaniment.’

Lady Hargreaves, glancing at the tune briefly, rose and went over to a Sheraton cabinet in a small boudoir adjoining the hall. She returned with some manuscript paper which she gave to father.

‘This is the
Canzona
I spoke of,’ she said. Father glanced at it cursorily.

‘The great thing about my tune,’ he said, ‘is
cantabile
. I’ll run over and get my fiddle and play it for you.’

‘You see,’ Lady Hargreaves was saying, leaning over father’s shoulder and pointing to a bar in the manuscript on his lap, ‘you see how skilfully the tune leads into the variation, without a break. I hope you will bring that out, Mr Huntley. This
appoggiatura
here is, of course, the willow-wren. You must bring that out too.’

‘H’m. Yes. Like that bit,’ said father vaguely. He sipped his cognac and casually dropped the manuscript on a chair by his side.

Stifled by the great fire, feeling almost incapable of speech or movement, I struggled up from my chair.

‘I’ll leave you to discuss the concert,’ I said wearily.

‘Yes. It would be as well for you to retire early,’ said Lady Hargreaves. ‘By the way, before you go–what was the name of that most interesting young man–a friend of yours who came to the station with you? Henry–something. I cannot remember.’

‘Henry Beddow,’ I said.

‘Beddow. Ah, yes! I must make a note of it.’ She turned to father again, taking her manuscript from the chair and holding it out before him. I wandered out to the coat-cupboard.

‘
This
bar,’ I heard her saying, ‘is very subtle. Observe how the theme, now inverted and accelerated, creeps in to–’

‘And it ends
niente
, you see,’ said father. ‘And by
niente
I mean
niente
. Want you to notice how–’

I took the beard, the hat, skull-cap and coat, closed the door behind me, crossed the road and wearily went home to bed. I felt that years had been added to me.

Destructive thought destroys. But it had failed to destroy. What I realized was this; it is a thousand times more difficult to destroy than to create. You will laugh and say I am mad; that destroying is far easier. But it isn’t so. Try to destroy anything try to annihilate it. Burn it and consider the ashes. Then consider how easily you create. Every time you open your mouth you create something. The chord of D flat major sounding to infinity from father’s little Bord. How do you destroy that? What was Miss Hargreaves? She was the embodiment of my lie. It was no good my just trying to will that lie away. It was, that lie; it absolutely
was
. Some formula had to be found; something that would cancel the lie from the very beginning. Could it be done in Lusk church? Could it? And what was the formula?

Those were my thoughts as I lay on my bed that night.

About midnight father came in without knocking. Father never knocks.

‘My God!’ he said, ‘she’s a grand woman! Congratulations, my boy! If I had my time over again, I’d–I’d be damned if I’d stop at lizards.’ (I wondered how much of that cognac was left.) ‘What the devil do you mean,’ he snapped suddenly, ‘wearing beards and skull-caps? She says she’s going to put a specialist on to you. Better wait till after the concert. She’s agreed to let you play. We’ve got to practise this damned fugue of hers. Funny. Found we’d both known Hardy quite well. She says she comes in one of the novels and, of course, as anybody knows he put me in “Far from the Trumpet Major”. Must read the others and see where she comes in. Hope she’s not Tess. Don’t want to see her hanged. Good night, my boy. Congratulations. She’s no ghost.’

Over the tankards in the Happy Union:

‘I ’ear tell as ’ow th’ ’ole bitch’ve bin sent ’ere by those I.R.A. devils . . .’‘

She’m no woman at all. All that ’obbling about on sticks never did take me in . . .’

‘Serve the old Dean bloody well right if the Cathedral was blown sky ’igh. . . .’

Over the teacups in the Close:

‘My
dear
Mrs Auty, I wouldn’t say a word against her. But the most extraordinary story is . . .’

‘Of course, Miss Linkinghorne, these Irish titles are
most
remote and . . .’

‘Nonsense, my dear! Women of that age don’t carry bombs about . . .’

‘But, my dear Mr Dean, I saw her
myself
, making
plans
of the Cathedral and . . .’

In the lay-clerks’ vestry:

‘Always knew she was a bloody Guy Fawkes ever since I saw that ’at . . .’

And in the choir school:

‘Say, chaps, have you heard? Old Hargy’s an anarchist. Fact!’

‘Go on! How do you know? . . .’

‘What’s an anarchist, anyway? . . .’

‘Old Meaks says he saw her trying to get down into the crypt with a black bag. It was ticking too, he swears to it . . .’

So the tale flickered, from a spark to a cinder, from a cinder to a flame. Within a week, whenever Connie went abroad, she was the victim of curious and resentful eyes. God–how I suffered! More, I swear, than she did. Innocently sketching the Cathedral from Meads one fine autumn afternoon, a lout from the town threw a clod of earth at her and quickly disappeared. With great dignity, Connie brushed her clothes, gathered up her sketching materials and returned home. For three days she did not leave the house. The flame of rumour grew to a bonfire of fact. There was an Irish maid at Lessways. Yes, that settled it. Hargreaves must go. The town spoke as one man.

On the fourth day she dropped her bomb. It appeared in the form of a letter in the
Cornford Mercury
.

‘To the Editor.

‘SIR,–Recently you were good enough in your columns to welcome me to the ancient Cathedral town of Cornford whither I had come to reside. I was proud to become a resident of Cornford and I looked forward to many happy years here. But what has happened? You, sir, must know only too well. I have become the victim of a cruel and malicious rumour which threatens to undermine my very existence here. I am not deaf. I have heard what is being said about me. I am, I understand, associated with bombs. Ridiculous as I regard this, there are apparently some people who believe it. I can no longer, therefore, be expected to remain silent.

‘I know full well how this wicked rumour arose. I am able to refute it and I shall take immediate steps to do so. Let the lying tongues cease before hot burning coals fall upon them.

‘Meanwhile, the honour of Cornford is at stake. Is it to be said that she drove an old lady beyond her ancient walls because of the wickedness of a deceitful pen?

‘The poison of asps is under her lips, sir. The poison of asps is under her lips.

‘HARGREAVES.’

Mother ran up to father’s room early one evening with the paper in her hand. We were rehearsing for the concert, only a few days ahead now.