The Scent of Water (6 page)

He strode from the room. Walk was not a word that could be used to describe his mode of progression. He was a tall Scot, lean but with large bones, and moved always as though over his native heather, with long steady strides. Yet only his youth and his holidays had been spent in Scotland. All his working life had been passed in Oxford, where he had been Fellow and Tutor at the same college where he had been an undergraduate, with only a few years’ break as a schoolmaster in between. For many years he had lived in rooms in college in wonderful comfort and seclusion, cared for by an excellent and devoted scout, Arthur Brewster, writing scholarly books, lecturing superbly, dining well, one of the institutions of the place and utterly contented with his mode of life. Then his mother had died and to his intense annoyance and dismay Jean had come upon his hands. But he had not shirked her, for he was not a shirker. He had taken a house in North Oxford, installed Jean and prevailed upon Arthur and his wife Gladys to come and look after them both. This had worked reasonably well except that Jean had been very miserable in Oxford. She had not been able to keep hens in the little garden and she had been terrified of her brother’s friends; old men, sarcastic and brilliant, who knew their own abstruse subjects inside out but did occasionally profess ignorance upon other subjects, and even more brilliant young men who knew everything. Young and old, they had been alike equally incomprehensible to Jean. She had grown more frail, more muddled, and would not leave the house and garden because the traffic frightened her.

Then had come the time for retirement and it had been borne in upon James Anderson that for Jean’s sake he must leave Oxford. The prospect, for him, had been appalling, for the roots he had put down in the place had gone under the very walls of the buildings like the roots of a poplar tree. Nevertheless, grim-faced, he had decided to hack them out, for that was his duty. But where should he go? It must be the country for Jean’s sake, and not too far from Oxford for his, so that he could go back now and again and gently comfort the torn remnants of those root ends that still remained under the buildings. But where? It was in this dilemma that a friend had suggested to him that he should seek ordination and a country living. He had been all his life a convinced Anglican but this suggestion had taken him by surprise. He had felt unworthy. Later, after thinking it out and discussing it with those best qualified to help him, he had come to see it as God’s will for himself and Jean. By taking a country living he would be setting a younger man free for an industrial parish, or one of the new housing estates into which the hordes of the heathen English were now pouring in their thousands, or the mission field. He had good health and private means. He would be able to take a living with a small stipend, would not find the work too much for him and would have leisure for the writing of his books. So he had gone to a theological college for a year, leaving Jean still in North Oxford in the care of the Brewsters but much happier when he was away. After his ordination they went to Appleshaw, the devoted Brewsters going with them.

How fortunate he was in the Brewsters James Anderson did not perhaps sufficiently consider, for he belonged to a generation that had taken good service and comfortable living for granted, but he was grateful for the small dignified Georgian house in which he lived, his garden, his study and his peace. As a parish priest he was thankful to find that he got on reasonably well. The glorious church gave him profound satisfaction and to administer the sacraments within it, as so many other men had done before him, shook him as nothing had shaken him yet. For a man who had been lecturing all his life preaching only needed a little readjustment, and he barked out short scholarly sermons twice a Sunday with no trouble at all. He got on famously with the indigenous countryfolk, men like Joshua Baker and Bert Eeles. He found that he understood them as well as liked them, and they on their side liked his Scottish integrity and forthrightness. But the women! Not the countrywomen, whom he liked nearly as well as their husbands, but the Hepplewhite and those like her, and that appalling woman Valerie Randall. He had never liked women. They had souls to be saved, he knew, but his knowledge remained purely academic. But there were those in the parish whom he loved with a steady and reverent affection, Colonel and Mrs. Adams, Mrs. Croft the district nurse, Dr. Fraser, a gruff and sensible fellow Scot, and Paul Randall, and to them he humbly hoped that he was sometimes of use. If he was then he could be glad that he had come here.

At work at his study table he was aware of the vicarage thrush singing at the bottom of the garden. The cadences of his song seemed to intensify the silence and deepen the blue of the spring evening. He laid down his pen and listened, not so much to the song as to the silence, and found it hard to believe that anything existed within it except himself and the thrush. He was Adam, in those days of blessed solitude before Eve came. Since he came to Appleshaw he had tasted solitude with more understanding than in his Oxford days, and for this knowledge also he was glad that he had come.

M
ARY too, as she left her bedroom, was aware of the depth of the country silence, but it was now her duty to turn her attention to her bathroom. “Baker and I distempered it,” said Mrs. Baker. “We felt we couldn’t let you see it like it was.”

The bathroom was over the kitchen and looked out over the kitchen garden. The walls were shocking pink and the ceiling sky blue. Tact was one of Mary’s strong points and as she smiled her appreciation there was no sign upon her face of her inward recoil. The bath was an old-fashioned one poised on four legs, with the enamel peeling off. It was extremely small but on the other hand the mahogany throne was approached by two steps. It seemed to Mary that there was no washbowl, towel rail, chair or cupboard, but the light was growing dim and she put out her hand for the switch. There did not seem to be one. “There’s electric light?” she asked.

“Oh no,” said Mrs. Baker. “Lamps and candles. We’ve only had the Rayburn the last two years. Those bills I told you of are in the kitchen, and the bills for the tea and sugar and eggs and that. I thought you must have something to start you off, and I took bread and milk for you. It’s all in the larder.” They were at the bottom of the stairs now and Mary had gone down them stepping carefully in the center of the worn treads, as she had done as a child. “The parlor and dining room are clean but they’ve not been lived in for some while, for Miss Lindsay was bedridden at the last. They smell a bit damp and I laid a fire in the parlor just in case you should wish to put a match to it.”

In the kitchen she gave Mary the bills and put on a shrunken coat that hung behind the door. It must once have been a child’s and was as much too tight for her as Baker’s coat was too large for him. “I’ll be around in the morning at ten o’clock,” she said. “You won’t be nervous all on your own?”

“I don’t think I’ve got a nerve in my body,” said Mary. “I’ve been terrified, in the blitz, but never nervous. I slept alone in my London flat.”

“Ah, you’re used to it,” said Mrs. Baker. “Good night, dear,” and she banged the door behind her and was gone.

Now I’m alone in my house, thought Mary. Now it’s beginning.

She went upstairs again and in the last of the sunset light unpacked her things, folding them carefully away in the drawers that Mrs. Baker had lined with clean white paper, stopping sometimes to look at the room and get the feel of it, for she was one of those women to whom the privacy of her bedroom is as important as his shell to a snail. It was always a matter of astonishment to her that those religious who slept not in cells but in dormitories could retain their sanity. She supposed they abandoned their shell for love of God and in prayer found the sheltering of His hand instead. Mary herself came of an agnostic family but she had been confirmed at school, under pressure from her head mistress, had enjoyed singing hymns in chapel and still went to church at Christmas and Easter, finding herself deeply moved by the beliefs that were the rock beneath the charming traditions and practices. But where had she heard the phrase that had come into her mind, the sheltering of God’s hand? She couldn’t imagine. It had seemed to come from the room.

The light had nearly gone but she had taken possession of her shell. Many other women had called it theirs but they had passed and now it was hers. Her Chinese dressing gown with the golden dragons lay on the bed and the silver-backed brushes and silver-topped bottles from her dressing case, miraculously not smashed when Mr. Baker dropped it, sparkled on the grave Victorian mahogany dressing table. John’s photograph was on the mantelpiece and a volume of Jane Austen was by her bed. She liked Jane. She liked her cheerful sanity. She had expected no very great things of human nature, yet she had loved it, and in Mr. Knightley and Jane Bennett she had portrayed a quiet steady goodness that had been as lasting in literature as it would have been in life. And she had lived in a house much like this, in a village hidden in a quiet fold of green and rural England, and found her existence entirely satisfying. That’s why I’ve come, thought Mary. To have a look at the few last fragments of her England before it is too late; that and to keep faith with Cousin Mary.

She groped her way down the stairs and struggled with the oil lamp that Mrs. Baker had put ready for her in the kitchen. She succeeded in lighting it at last and by its soft light ate a supper of cold ham, bananas and tea. By the time she had finished, it was quite dark and she could see three stars in the windowpane. She was, she found, dreadfully tired and her limbs felt like lead as she washed up and stoked the Rayburn. But there was something she had to know before she went to bed. All day the surface of her mind had been obsessed with practical problems but all the time, in her heart and at the back of her mind, had been the little things. Were they still here?

Putting off the moment of knowing, she took the lamp and went first to the dining room. A blast of cold air met her face as she opened the door. It was a small room filled to capacity with the oak table, sideboard and chairs, one of them with a high carved back, that she remembered. A dingy Morris wallpaper was peeling off the wall and the brown linoleum on the floor was full of holes. There was a scurry of mice and the smell of them. Mary shut the door again hastily and went on to the parlor. She stood with her hand on the door handle afraid to go in. She remembered the mossy carpet strewn with roses, the sea-green light shining through the vine leaves and the table with the plush cover. Then she summoned her courage and opened the door.

It was not so changed as the dining room, for the beautiful paneled walls were untarnishable by time, and the carpet must have been well looked after, for though it was faded it was still pretty. As Mrs. Baker had said, a fire was laid in the basket grate. There were a couple of spindly chairs with gilt legs, an escritoire against the wall and the table with the plush cover still standing in the window. But the little things were not there.

Mary was awakened at five the next morning by the birds and felt it to be incredible that such small creatures could make such a row. She got out of bed to see what could be singing with such abandon, like one of the beloved music hall stars of the old days, and it was two blackbirds in the lilac opposite her east window. Their wide-open crocus-colored beaks looked like the jaws of crocodiles and from them song poured forth. Leaning out of the window with her dressing gown around her shoulders, she could distinguish the heavenly music of the seraph thrush singing in the copse, and when the blackbirds paused for a moment she could hear the lark singing high overhead and the cuckoos calling in the distant woods. These songs woven together were an almost visible web of music lifting the earth from darkness to light.

She went back to bed and lay watching the movement of shadows on the wall, shadows of the branches, of birds’ wings, of her curtains swaying, and listened to the striking of the church clock, the rustle of trees, and cows lowing in the distant fields. For these things were a part of her room and she must learn them by heart. When she went away she would come back to them as surely as she came back to John’s photo on the mantelpiece and Jane Austen beside her bed, and would find in them a measure of her peace. The light grew stronger and the birds went about their business but she could not sleep again and she stretched out her hand for
Persuasion
. It was one of the loveliest love stories ever written, she thought, quiet and yet exciting. Although she practically knew it by heart yet upon each rereading she recaptured that first deep anxiety lest Captain Wentworth should not come up to scratch. Yet anxiety was not a word one ought to use in connection with Jane, who was so eminently trustworthy. Perhaps it was a measure of her genius that she could arouse it. Would you have found me trustworthy had you married me? she asked the man in the photo opposite. I should have found you so. You had honor and fire with gentleness. I liked you, admired you, wanted to love you more and know you better. Would you have made me love you as I wanted to love you? Was I capable of knowing you? And if not then, am I now? Can you teach me? There was no answer in the great emptiness of death and she got up feeling suddenly cold and weary. She had never known what she believed about death, whether it was the end or whether it wasn’t. She knew there could be no certainty, only faith. Could she find faith? Was there anyone here who could help her?

She washed and dressed, and on her way downstairs looked into the two bedrooms that Mrs. Baker had told her were uninhabitable. They had dry rot in the floorboards, fungus growing in the corners and not a stick of furniture in either of them. What had happened to the furniture? What had happened to the oak chest and the little things? Feeling now thoroughly discouraged she went downstairs to the kitchen and found the Rayburn out. Her stoking the night before could not have been to its taste. Looking into the larder she found milk and cereal, bread and marmalade for breakfast, but her whole being ached for hot tea. She must have an oil stove, or calor gas, or something that would ensure a cup of tea when she wanted it, and eventually she must put in electricity. But it was not a priority. There were things far more pressing in this house than electricity.

After breakfast she fetched her writing case and went into the little parlor to make a list of these priorities. It was a lovely day but she was cold after a tealess breakfast and put a match to the fire. She sat down beside it with her blotting pad on her knee. There was a small window beside the chimney breast that looked west into the kitchen garden, and she saw to her delight that just outside it was a blossoming apple tree. The light of the flames was warmly reflected in the paneling and the sound of them was a voice murmuring of pleasant things beside her. She began to feel more cheerful. Like all women she enjoyed making lists, and even a list of her lists, and she lost track of time noting down repairs to the house in order of priority. Then she made another list of those of her possessions in storage in London which would be suitable here, and another of those that would not. She was hard at it when Mrs. Baker’s head came around the door.

“The Rayburn’s out, dear. Now that’s a funny thing. It never goes out. You made it up?”

“Yes, Mrs. Baker. I’m sorry.”

“It’s your riddling that’s at fault. I’ll show you before I go. Now I’ll light it again and bring you a cup of hot tea. But first I must get the fowl on for your lunch. A boiler, and should eat soft. Baker took the liberty of killing one of ours for you. Give you a good start, we thought, with soup from the bones. And he also took the liberty of inquiring of Jack Beckett at the pub if you could keep your car there, seeing as you’ve no garage. You’re welcome, Jack says. There’s plenty of room in the barn where he keeps his. We hope you don’t mind, dear.”

“Of course not, Mrs. Baker. Thank you very much.”

Tired and cold, she felt near to tears. Strong and self-reliant woman that she was, no one had looked after her since John had died. Mrs. Baker looked at her. “A cup of tea is what you need, dear. And I’ll get Baker to bring you down my little spirit stove and kettle. Then whether the Rayburn’s out or in you’ll always be able to get yourself a cup of tea.”

The tea when it came in the beautiful Staffordshire teapot was placed beside her on the little plush-covered table. “Mrs. Baker, can you tell me of a good builder and decorator?” she asked.

“Well, there’s Roundham in Westwater. But he’ll charge you a pretty penny. And there’s my husband’s nephew Bill Baker in Thornton. He’s a good worker, Bill is, and employs good men. Not so classy as Roundham but more reliable.”

“I’ll have Bill Baker,” said Mary. She looked around. “Is there a telephone?”

“Telephone? No, dear. What would poor old Miss Lindsay have been doing with a telephone? Drop Bill a line. Twelve Mount Street, Thornton. Say I told you of him and he won’t keep you waiting.”

Mary put down her teacup and said hesitantly, “Mrs. Baker, when I was a little girl, and came here to see my cousin, a glass case was on this table and under it a whole host of little treasures. My cousin showed them to me and I loved them. Did she give them away?”

“No, they’re here. I packed them away in one of the drawers in the escritoire, for safety. The glass case is in a cupboard in one of the spare rooms. Miss Lindsay would never have parted with the little things. They were for you. She’s told me time and again how you loved them as a child.”

“Did she part with many things?” asked Mary.

“She had to, dear. As time went on, her money didn’t go so far. She sold a lot of silver and valuable china, and the furniture in the spare rooms, and the chest in the hall.”

“Didn’t her lawyer get her an annuity?”

“He wanted to, but she wouldn’t have it.”

“But why not?” Mrs. Baker hesitated and with pity and compunction Mary answered her own question. “Because she wanted to leave something to me, a child she’d only seen once. I’m ashamed, Mrs. Baker.”

“Well, dear, don’t take on. It’s a queer thing, but when I came to look at the little things, before I put them away, it seemed to me that there were a few missing. I couldn’t say which they were, for I’ve never got the little things rightly in my head, but I thought there were one or two gone. It worried me.”

“Perhaps Miss Lindsay gave them away.”

“It wouldn’t have been like her to do that, when she was keeping them for you.”

There was a curious twanging sound, fumbling and a little eerie, and both women looked at each other. Then light dawned on Mrs. Baker. “Someone trying to ring the bell,” she said. “That bell needs seeing to,” and she left the room.

Mary followed her, for the weak twanging had almost sounded like a cry for help, and together she and Mrs. Baker dragged the screeching garden door back over the paving stones. Outside on the steps stood the woman whom she had seen coming out of the post office yesterday. She was dressed in the same clothes and carried a very large basket in which reposed a very small pot of blackberry jelly, and she was trembling so violently that the pot rattled in the basket. “It’s Miss Anderson from the vicarage, come to see you,” said Mrs. Baker in encouraging tones, adding very low for Mary’s private enlightenment, “Poor dear.”