The Naylors (13 page)

‘Oh Hilda, how particularly nice to run into you! To have the opportunity, I mean, of saying what a delightful dinner that was. Do tell your mother how much Christopher and I enjoyed it. In my own mother’s time – do you know? – one wrote little notes, or at least left cards, after dining with friends. It’s a pity, in some ways, that such punctilios have died out. And yet our own casual informalities have their merit. Don’t you think?’

Hilda allowed herself to agree that casual informalities are to be commended. It was rather a line of Edith Prowse’s, she remembered, to hint at small grandeurs in her family background.

‘My uncle and his friend Father Hooker,’ she said in the correct Plumley chit-chat manner, ‘were delighted to make the acquaintance of your nephew. Am I right that his name is Simon? I didn’t quite catch it.’ This untruth surprised Hilda in the utterance.

‘Yes – Simon. A delightful young man. Quite an acquisition, indeed. And so totally unexpected!’

‘Unexpected, Edith?’

‘Well, we hadn’t heard from him for a long time. Indeed, Hilda, I don’t believe we had ever heard from him
at all.
Except, of course, for Christmas cards.’

‘There are lots of people like that – who feel that a card at Christmas is a sufficient link with relations.’

‘I suppose so. Christmas
does
mean something to everybody, don’t you think?’

‘Well, yes—I suppose it does.’

‘So Simon’s proposal turned up quite out of the blue: that he should come to the vicarage and that Christopher should help him with his exam.’

‘It seems a very good idea.’

‘Yes, but Christopher has become a little uneasy about it. I don’t mean about his own ability to coach Simon. Christopher keeps up his scholarship very well.’

‘I’m sure he does, Edith. Even although he’s so busy a man.’

‘Yes, indeed. Well, only this afternoon he persuaded Simon to produce his books, and they looked at them together. And Christopher felt that Simon has a long way to go.’ Edith Prowse hesitated for a moment here. ‘He doesn’t feel that Simon can really have been doing any serious work at all.’

‘But doesn’t that make Simon Prowse’s decision to have some coaching all the more sensible?’

‘I suppose, Hilda, one can look at it that way.’ Mrs Prowse glanced cautiously round Mr Rudkin’s shop. But they were now the only customers, and Mr Rudkin himself was helping with the shutters. Even so, Mrs Prowse lowered her voice. ‘We have even begun to wonder whether there may not be a
romance
.’

‘A romance?’ Hilda repeated a shade coldly.

‘A lady in the case – and in the neighbourhood.’ Mrs Prowse now glanced at Hilda as with a suddenly inspired suspicion. ‘Simon does a great deal of telephoning. But not from the vicarage. He says he doesn’t want to muck up our account. He telephones from the kiosk outside this shop.’

‘Well, he doesn’t telephone to
me,’
Hilda said tartly.

‘My dear Hilda!’ Mrs Prowse seemed overwhelmed with confusion. ‘I’d never dream . . .’

‘Of course not, Edith. But do you really suspect that Mr Prowse may be carrying on—well, an intrigue of some sort from the shelter of your house? It would be most dishonourable.’ Hilda was about to add, ‘And wholly unworthy of him’. But she stopped herself, reflecting that as she had appeared to be uncertain even of the young man’s Christian name she was not in a position to make so bold a statement. ‘Perhaps,’ she suggested ingeniously, ‘Mr Prowse has been bitten by what they call the turf, and comes down here to telephone his bets.’

‘Oh, dear! That would be just as bad. But we must simply hope for the best.’ Edith Prowse was now looking at a single fatigued lettuce lingering in one of Mr Rudkin’s boxes, and she might almost have been referring to it. Hilda felt that perhaps their conversation was over, and she walked across to another box and possessed herself of four quite healthy lemons. But Mrs Prowse followed her.

‘Christopher and I both felt,’ she said, ‘that Dr Naylor is looking a little strained. Settlement work must be so exhausting! I hope he has come to you on quite a substantial visit?’

‘I hope so too.’

‘And Father Hooker – such an interesting man! Christopher looked him up in Crockford. Are they friends of long standing?’

‘Uncle George and Father Hooker? I haven’t inquired, Edith. I’m afraid I haven’t the trick of asking questions.’ Hilda was conscious that this had been an unkind and unnecessary barb to direct upon a harmless woman. ‘I think they have concerns in common.’

‘Of course they all do, don’t they?’ Mrs Prowse was here referring, a shade archly, to the cloth in general. ‘Do you know? Christopher has had such a bold idea! I hardly venture to mention it. But perhaps I may be allowed to take soundings.’ Mrs Prowse made a pause on this, but elicited no response.

‘Christopher is wondering whether he might venture to ask Father Hooker to preach next Sunday.’

‘Oh, I see.’ Hilda remembered there had been family anxiety lest the vicar should make this request of Uncle George, with possibly an embarrassing result. But the Prowses now had their eye, it seemed, on what they conceived to be superior talent. Hilda wasn’t pleased. ‘I don’t know why not,’ she said. ‘The man should be flattered at being asked, I suppose. And he needn’t accept if he doesn’t want to.’

‘Yes, of course. But we could put up such an attractive notice if he did! And congregations have been so very poor recently that it’s really quite disheartening.’

Hilda saw that it must be that, and was conscious that she herself had of late been doing little in the way of church-going.

‘We have had considerable hopes,’ Edith Prowse went on, ‘from that new place at Nether Plumley, which has to do with being very scientific about animals – although we don’t quite know how. A government department – is it Health and Social Security? – has bought up a lot of houses round about to provide accommodation for the staff. Very highly qualified university people for the most part, we understand. So, naturally, we might have hoped. . .’

‘Certainly, you might.’ Hilda had interrupted simply because she found this innocence about the drift of the modern scientific mind rather alarming. ‘Look,’ she said impulsively. ‘If you like, I’ll ask Father Hooker for you this evening. Take soundings, as you call it.’

‘Christopher will be
so
grateful! And I must fly.’ Mrs Prowse, deciding to reject the lettuce, hurried over to settle her affairs with a respectfully impatient Mr Rudkin. Hilda, feigning to meditate a further purchase, gave her a couple of minutes to be clear of the shop. She then paid for the lemons and went out to her bicycle.

Encounters like that, she told herself, make me feel like a character in Barbara Pym. Perhaps that’s what I am:
anima naturaliter Pym.
Having succumbed to an unacknowledged passion for Christopher Prowse, I shall become his most assiduous parishioner, never absent from any of the goings-on in his church. I shall preside over tea-urns and embroider hassocks – or perhaps even slippers for the adored one – as a Victorian lady would do. I shall make an edifying end, and Edith Prowse will particularly mourn me as having been, next to herself, her husband’s staunchest stay. Such is to be the destiny of Hilda Naylor, who for a brief span in youth gave promise of larger things. At the moment, out of mere good nature, I have engaged myself to ask Father Hooker to preach a sermon in St Michael and All Angels. Angelic of me, is it not.

But seriously – she asked herself as she began to pedal – might something not be done with the parish as
mise en scène
? It would be territory a little less contracted than the family, but still eminently compassable.
Cranford
stuff. Her tutor had once told her to read a book called
Annals of the Parish
by a certain John Gait. Of course she had failed to do so. But what about
New Annals of the Parish,
by Hilda Naylor? Or – to be quite splendidly old-world –
by Miss Naylor?
Or, yet again and with a splendid fantasy,
by
(some equivalent of)
Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell?

The church was at the head of a short rise, and Hilda changed gear: she had rather a developed bicycle, much less elderly than her car. It was tiresome to own so flippant a mind. The hopeless snag about
New Annals
would be having to accept as a datum the fact that in the parish nothing ever happens. It takes a Chekhov to get along on nullibiety (
marvellous
word) and even Chekhov takes a break: a shot is fired and a man senselessly dies; another shot achieves comic futility; there is the sound of an axe biting into a tree. No such resources in Plumley.

She was now abreast of the vicarage. It was still broad daylight on this summer evening, but there was a light in an attic window. Had a reformed Simon, inspired by his studious uncle, symbolically turned up the lamp and applied himself to his books? Even that would be quite something in this obscure village. But where are the eagles and the trumpets? Where that eruptive, that equipollent thing?

There was no light in the church, since it wasn’t business hours. Hilda glanced at the familiar notice-board.
Vicar: The Revd C. Prowse M.A.
There was still the announcement about the autumn bazaar. But now there was another notice, balancing the first one on the other half of the board. Perhaps just because Edith Prowse had made a remark about putting up a notice, Hilda’s attention was caught by this. It was something brief and boldly lettered, but she couldn’t quite read it as she rode. So she dismounted and took a closer look. What the thing said was:

BAN THE BOMB

‘What the bloody hell!’

Startled by this exclamation close to her left ear, Hilda turned her head. Simon Prowse was standing beside her. He was staring at the notice-board, and clearly in a state of considerable indignation.

‘Oh, good evening,’ Hilda said.

‘Hallo, Miss Naylor. Sorry if I made you jump.’

‘You didn’t make me jump.’ Hilda resented being aspersed as a nervous female. ‘It is a little odd, isn’t it? That printed sticker, I mean. One sees them here and there. But I haven’t seen one on a church notice-board before.’

‘And you won’t see it on this one for long.’ Simon took a step forward and reached up an arm. It was obvious that he intended to rip the thing away.

‘Hold hard, Simon!’ Hilda said – and was momentarily confused. She ought to have said ‘Mr Prowse’ for one thing. And, for another, ‘Hold hard!’ was surely a peculiarly mannish expression. It had probably originated among jolly Jack Tars hauling on ropes. She ought to have managed a pleading ‘Do wait a moment, please’, or something like that.

‘What do you mean – hold hard?’ Demanding this, Simon did, however, lower his arm.

‘Don’t you think it may have been put up by your uncle? Or at least been approved by him in some way?’

‘Put up by Christopher? By a
parson
? Don’t make me laugh.’

‘I don’t care whether I make you laugh or not, Mr Prowse.’ Hilda was enraged by this improper contempt and – as she conceived it – puppyish ignorance. ‘Don’t you know that it’s a very live issue among the parsons, as you call them? There was a terrific to-do not all that long ago – surely you remember? – with letters in
The Times,
and I don’t know what. Bishops and people all at jar together and by the ears.’ Hilda paused for breath – and also because again in trouble with the craft of words. ‘At jar together and by the ears’ was hopelessly archaic and literary. ‘Whether to retain the bomb or not,’ she said. ‘It’s the most overwhelmingly important issue of our time.’ She paused on this. ‘And so,’ she added, ‘when one is beginning to think of growing up one ought to be keeping a cool head about it, and not go bloody-helling and flying off the handle.’

The effect of this outburst on Simon Prowse was marked but perplexing. He seemed at a loss for words, and even for an attitude. When he did speak, it was while eyeing her narrowly. Hilda didn’t mind being eyed, simply as something that even well-conducted young men went in for in a quiet way. But she disliked what she seemed to detect as a certain intensity of regard in Simon. Perhaps he was working out just what her clothes concealed – much as a judge at a dog show (she had been told) endeavours to discern precisely what musculature underlies one or another woolly canine integument. Perhaps he was impertinently speculating about how far this simple village maiden would let him go.

‘Yes, of course,’ he said. ‘You’re no doubt right about the bomb in a general way. But I’m sure that poor old Christopher wouldn’t go out on a limb about it at his own front gate. So having put up this thing
is
bloody cheek – and in a place like placid Plumley won’t do any good anyway. Contrariwise, in fact. Spotlight the thing. Set people talking. Silly little bitch!’

‘Mr Prowse!’

‘I beg your pardon!’ Very properly, Simon was much confused. ‘You didn’t think I was saying that to
you,
did you? I was just thinking it must be some fool of a girl who’s going round advertising herself and her lofty beliefs by sticking up these things at random. That’s all.’

Hilda was mollified by this, but felt at the same time that Simon Prowse was an oddly incoherent young man. She could make very little sense of his attitude.

‘All the same,’ she said firmly, ‘I think we’d better leave the thing as it is.’

‘Very well.’ Simon was suddenly good-humoured again. ‘It’s your stamping ground, I suppose – your father being lord of the broad estates and the hall.’

‘There aren’t any broad estates.’ Hilda had felt Simon’s Tennysonian crack to have been in doubtful taste, but she was now determined not to appear censorious. So she laughed as if at a good joke, and at this the young man brightened at once.

‘I say!’ he exclaimed impulsively. ‘May I ask you something?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Just how far would you be prepared to go?’

Fortunately – as it immediately turned out – Hilda didn’t rise to another outraged ‘Mr Prowse!’ She merely stared at him in complete astonishment.