Little of What You Fancy, page 16
‘Well, I just – I just – I felt I ought to sort of drop in and see you. About a little matter –’
Perfick, Pop said. He expected it was the Cause?
Mr Candy, who hadn’t thought of the particular matter on his mind as being exactly a cause, but rather an effect, supposed that that was one way of putting it, though he didn’t say so.
‘Thought as much,’ Pop said. ‘I talked it over with the Miss Barnwells.’
Mr Candy, hitherto merely nervous, now seemed to become exceedingly flaky and fragile. With difficulty he dabbed sweat from his brow.
‘Got very excited about it, the pair of ‘em,’ Pop said. ‘Told people in the village it was a miracle.’
Mr Candy immediately went paler still.
‘Said you might be preaching a sermon about it.’
Oh! dear no, Mr Candy said. That was – no, he didn’t think that was the appropriate thing at all. It was the most unlikely subject for a sermon.
‘No? Anyway, got to give it as much publicity as we can. That’s what we all feel.’
Once again Mr Candy, in rather a limp voice, said that he didn’t on the whole think the idea a very good one. He murmured something about how he thought they were treading on sacred ground.
‘Oh?’ Pop said. He couldn’t see how What was sacred about it?
Mr Candy had no time to answer this interesting question before there was a tap at the bedroom door and Ma came in preceding Edith Pilchester, whom she announced with the cheerful words:
‘Well, here’s your girl friend. I’m just off to the village with Mariette. Be back in about an hour. Like a lift, Mr Candy?’
Mr Candy seemed delighted at the opportunity of a lift and the escape it offered and immediately got up to shake hands with Pop and Miss Pilchester, who in contrast to Mr Candy’s extreme paleness was rather red in the face.
Ma then said that Sister Trevelyan would be bringing tea up and then, rather to Pop’s surprise added:
‘Well, I’ll leave you two to it. You’d better get into bed.’
Pop, not sure if this was an indirect invitation to have five minutes under the sheets with Edith or not, gave one of his ringing laughs and in his best innocent voice said:
‘Why?’
‘Because Sister says so. That’s why. She says you’ve sat out long enough for this afternoon.’
Pop dutifully took off his dressing-gown and got back into bed. Ma said goodbye, not to worry, she wouldn’t be back for a good hour or more, and then left with Mr Candy, only to reappear a few seconds later to say:
‘Oh! by the way, there was a note from Angela by the afternoon post. Her father can’t make it on Sunday. Playing golf or something after all. It’ll have to be the Sunday after.’
Left alone with Edith and finding the first moments with her somehow rather uneasy, not to say embarrassing – she was still very red in the face and seemed unaccountably nervous – Pop sought to relieve the tension by asking in characteristic fashion if she would take a nip, a snifter or something before tea?
The subject of alcohol being a highly unfortunate one, Miss Pilchester went even redder in the face and rapidly declined the offer, confessing that she’d long since given it up. The memory of that dreadful morning at The Hare & Hounds, though she didn’t dare mention it, still lay on her soul like an accusatory, leaden cross. Nor had the sight of Pop after so many weeks made it any easier to bear.
‘Well, how have we been?’ Pop said, wondering at the same time if there was any need to ask. Edith, though much thinner than before, looked as red as a hen about to lay.
Well, on the whole she was fairly well, Miss Pilchester said, lying without much conviction, knowing that for weeks she had been feeling absolutely ghastly. What was more important, how was Mr Larkin?
‘Perfick,’ Pop said. ‘Perfick. Feeling better every day. Eating well. Sleeping well. Doctor says the heart’s mended perfickly.’
For the first time Miss Pilchester smiled, secretly telling herself that she only wished hers had. There were times when she thought it was irrevocably broken. Then to her infinite dismay Pop suddenly said:
‘Got a bone to pick with you.’
The prospect of having to pick a bone with Pop was yet a further means of agitation for Miss Pilchester and she tremulously murmured Oh! had he, why?
‘Never been to see me.’
‘Oh! but I –’
‘Nice thing. Lay here thinking about you every day. All the time. And you never come near. Out of sight, out of mind. I know.’
‘Oh! but I –’
He had been cut, Pop said, to the quick. It was bad. Terrible. Worse than awful. He couldn’t bear it when his best girl friends deserted him.
Miss Pilchester became quite speechless. She didn’t at all know what to say. Impossible to acquaint Pop with the awful paradox that she hadn’t been to see him first of all because she had heard that he was dead and she had taken to drink instead of prayer as a result of it, and then because of her consequent guilt and shame. The total confession would be altogether too ghastly.
Unaware of this remorseless torture, Pop went on to tease her still further by saying something about fair-weather friends and his hour of need and all that and how it had shook him to the – he was about to say ‘to the tits’ and then rapidly changed it to ‘the bottom of his heart’.
In answer to all this Miss Pilchester gave a loud sniff. A moment later Pop knew there was a tear in her eye.
‘Now, now, now,’ he said. ‘This won’t do, Edith. Can’t have this. Can’t have you turning the tap on.’
Miss Pilchester sniffed even more loudly, crying openly now.
‘Here, here, come, come,’ Pop said. ‘Dry them eyes. First time you come to see me and you start tuning. Here, come over here and sit by me a minute.’
Needing no second invitation, Miss Pilchester went over and sat on the bed beside Pop.
Pop took her hand. Even in circumstances so ghastly the very touch of Pop’s hand on hers was enough to make her tremble even more, so that without further warning she began sobbing hopelessly. This was an excellent excuse for Pop to take her by the other hand, at which she sobbed even more loudly still.
Ever willing to give comfort when and where it was most needed Pop now took her in his arms, stroked her hair and even gave a consolatory kiss in the region of her left ear. Her response to this was to palpitate, very rapidly, all over. The distressing thought even crossed her mind that Pop was about to ask her to give all she’d got and that unhappily she might not be in a position to do so.
The very same thought, at the very same moment, crossed Pop’s mind. Having lately been in the unfortunate position of a man lacking practice it suddenly occurred to him that here was a good opportunity to get some in. A trial run with Edith, taken steady, in low gear sort of, might do no harm and might, into the bargain, do Edith a bit of good.
Pop’s first excursion in this matter was to stroke her hair again and then give her a slightly more prolonged kiss under the left ear. His second was to fondle her neck, now so constrained from sobbing that it was as taut as a piece of hose-pipe. His third was an attempt to hold her more closely somewhere in the region of the left bosom.
To his infinite surprise there was no bosom there. This apparently unfortunate oversight on the part of nature was in fact merely the result of her having lost a great deal of weight in purdah, a fact that left him so astonished that he found himself, for once, with no other trick to play. This omission was however promptly remedied by Miss Pilchester, who suddenly stopped weeping, gave a great sigh and lay down with him on the bed, greatly comforted, her head on his shoulder.
At this point another immense sigh went through her, causing further spasms of palpitation that went down as far as her feet. This interesting development immediately caused Pop to think that there was, after all, one further trick he could play. No harm in trying, he told himself. After all, practice made perfick.
His execution in this further manoeuvre was however halted by the abrupt arrival of Sister Trevelyan who, seeing her patient in a position of some compromise on the bed with Miss Pilchester, didn’t turn a hair. She had already been warned by Ma that she might well find Pop and Edith having what she called ‘a bit of custard and jelly’ when she took the tea up, but not to worry, she’d been letting Edith get it out of her system for years.
‘Carry on Mr Larkin,’ Sister Trevelyan said in the serenest of voices, ‘nothing like a little therapy.’
So that’s what they called it now, did they? Pop thought. Therapy. He’d often wondered what therapy was and always had a vague idea that it was something to do with the study of bones. This was perfickly true as far as Edith was concerned. Plenty of material there.
‘Of course I can draw the curtains,’ Sister Trevelyan said. ‘The sun is rather bright.’
These words had the effect of bringing Miss Pilchester, briefly sunk into a state of spongy solace on Pop’s chest, back into a world of blinding reality. Hopelessly ashamed, she sat bolt upright, almost fell backwards off the bed, then recovered with groping but elated indecision and the sudden information that she was admiring the scenery.
Sister Trevelyan said she was glad to hear it.
‘Anything else you’d care for?’ she said, most sweetly, setting down the tea-tray. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I brought up a pot of the lemon curd you kindly came along with.’
‘Oh! no, not at all –’
Edith had come, that afternoon, not only as a visitor but as a bearer of gifts: as it were, almost, offerings of restitution. Besides the pot of lemon curd she had brought jars of damson cheese, green tomato chutney, blackcurrant jam, a very special white-currant jelly and a bottle of elderflower wine.
‘Of course Mr Larkin can’t enjoy all you have to offer all at once,’ Sister Trevelyan said, again with the sweetest serenity. ‘He has got to get his appetite back.’
In further confusion Miss Pilchester could think of nothing to say in answer to this before Sister Trevelyan was ready again with her next light, sweet question.
‘Shall I pour? Or will you be mother?’ she said. ‘Before it gets cold?’
Miss Pilchester, torn between elation and dire confusion, immediately decided it was best to be mother before it got cold.
Sipping sweet strong tea, she gradually recovered composure, even so far as to say, at last:
‘You don’t really, really think I neglected you, do you?’
Of course he did, of course, Pop said. He was cut to the quick. Left cold on the doorstep.
‘But it was all so ghastly I was absolutely mortified when I first heard about it. Absolutely mortified.’
Pop told himself he knew the meaning of the word mortified.
‘So was I. Prit near.’
‘Oh! Mr Larkin, don’t talk of it. I can’t bear it. I couldn’t bear it – not all over again.’
After that, Pop having decided that he’d had enough of therapy for one day and Miss Pilchester having rejected all thought of further solace in Pop’s arms, on the bed, the talk turned on what Miss Pilchester had been doing lately, apart from making jams and curds and being in purdah and things of that sort.
‘As a matter of fact I’ve been delving into a little local history.’
Oh? Pop said. He hadn’t realized she was interested in that sort of thing.
‘Oh! yes, it’s quite one of my secret passions.’
Secret passions, eh? Pop thought. He’d always suspected it.
‘Well not exactly passion. I mean it’s one of my pet hobbies. It’s all so fascinating. I mean to go back in time. To the moon –forward – to Mars – no, that’s not for me. But back – yes. To think of Caesar and his legionaries camping just up there on the hills. A Roman villa just behind the village. And vineyards perhaps. And the Pilgrims going to Canterbury. I mean we’re so absolutely steeped in it, aren’t we?’
Further marvels of what education could do, Pop thought. He only wished he’d had time for it.
‘The Pilgrims especially – I like to think of them coming through here on some spring morning, “When that Aprille with her showers swote –”’
Here Pop was saved the trouble of asking what the pipe Edith was talking about by the unexpected arrival of Phyllida and little Oscar – little Oscar singing a hymn he had learnt at school:
Through all the Changing Gears of Life
Through Hell and Toll and Pain,
a version that struck Pop as not inappropriate to all that had been happening to him for the past several weeks, so that Pop patted the boy with paternal approval on the head and said:
‘Hullo, what do you two monkeys want?’
The monkeys had brought him a frog, Phyllida said, and some fish for his supper.
The frog was nestling in a wet hemlock leaf and the fish, two sticklebacks, a very small gudgeon and a dead minnow, in a jar together with a water snail.
Well knowing that Ma didn’t approve of such things in the bedroom, they had sneaked up with these precious offerings in her absence. Pop was very touched by the gesture, especially the thought of fish for supper.
‘Oh! you are so lucky, having all these many children,’ Miss Pilchester said. ‘I sometimes wonder how you and Mrs Larkin manage it.’
She did? Pop thought. Perfickly simple, he was about to explain to her, then realized that it was scarcely the time and place, when Miss Pilchester said:
‘And where did you get those lovely, lovely fishes from?’
Phyllida and little Oscar said they got the fish out of the little brook behind where the well was and the frog out of the bulrushes. Like Moses.
Sweet things, Miss Pilchester said. And what well was that?
Pop proceeded to explain that it wasn’t a well exactly. More a sort of spring, coming out of an old stone grotto down at the bottom of the yard, behind the pigsties. The spring came up out of the ground and then overflowed into a brook and then the brook went across the medder into the river proper. Very good water in the spring, very pure. Never failed in the driest summers.
‘And cold,’ little Oscar said. ‘Like ice lollies.’
‘And all covered over with moss,’ Phyllida said. ‘I mean the stones. All covered with moss and old. Very like you are.’
Far from being either insulted or upset by such descriptive candour Miss Pilchester suddenly seemed to experience a moment of revelatory joy. She leapt up from where she had been sitting by the window, spilt tea in her saucer, dropped a cucumber sandwich on the carpet and exclaimed with jubilation:
‘Great God, I believe I’ve uncovered it!’
Had she really? Pop thought. Uncovered what? He couldn’t wait to have a look.
‘I mean this is It. This is the missing link I’ve been trying to find. This is the Secret Bit.’
If he hadn’t seen Edith drinking tea with his own eyes, Pop thought, he’d have sworn she’d been at the parsnip or elderberry or somethink like that.
‘You see,’ she went on, ‘on all the old maps there’s the teeniest, teeniest cross marked where your house stands and I’ve always wondered what it meant.’
And what did it mean? Pop wanted to know.
‘Well at the moment it’s a mere surmise – I’m only guessing – but I think this may well have been a resting place for Pilgrims on their way to Canterbury. I mean it might be a Holy Well.’
Well you could have knocked him down with a nine-gallon barrel o’ beer, Pop said. Holy? In his yard?
‘Consecrated. Hallowed. I mean we may well be on Sacred Ground.’
Ah? Sacred Ground – now, Pop told himself, he knew what Mr Candy had been driving at, and proceeded to tell Edith so too.
‘Oh! splendid. It may well be a case of two great minds thinking alike,’ she said, laughing with excited gaiety. ‘But you know what it means, don’t you – what it may mean?’
Pop said no, he didn’t quite, he hardly snagged on.
‘It may mean – I only say may – it may well mean – that if this is consecrated ground they may never be able to drive that awful, ghastly road through here.’
It was now time for Pop himself to give a great sublime sigh of delight.
‘Edith I could kiss you. Come over here. I could kiss you.’
With alacrity, needing no second invitation, Miss Pilchester went over to the bed where Pop, with that velvety authority of his, enfolded her in his arms and proceeded to get in a short spell of much-needed practice. Edith, free at last of shame, guilt and the long tortures of purdah, responded by giving all she’d got and, she told herself, a bit more.
Truly, as the Miss Barnwells themselves had said, the age of miracles had not yet passed. It was almost as if the frog, the gudgeon, the two sticklebacks and the dead minnow had been turned, like the three loaves and the five little fishes, into a feast for a multitude.
‘Edith,’ Pop said, ‘I never knew history was so important.’
‘Oh come on, let’s go fishing again,’ little Oscar said and went away with Phyllida, singing ‘Through All the Changing Gears of Life’ again.
‘No,’ Pop said, ‘I never realized history was so important.’
Ah! but there are far, far more important things than history,’ Miss Pilchester said, ‘don’t you think?’ and suffered herself to be kissed again, giving more, and with more palpitation, than she’d ever given before.
Long after she had gone Pop remembered that he’d forgotten to ask her what she’d won her medal for. Surrender, he shouldn’t wonder. Then he decided no, it was probably, or ought to have been, for history; and was once again inspired to much thought on the wonders of education.
10
There were three reasons why Ma was glad that the visit of Angela Snow’s father, the Queen’s Counsel, had been postponed.
First of all it gave her more time to go out and buy a new outfit proper to the occasion – after all you couldn’t wear just any old thing for the visit of somebody as posh as a Queen’s Counsel – then it gave her a chance to give a bit more thought to the food. After rejecting, reluctantly, the thought of a roasted ox as being too difficult in case the weather turned funny one way or the other, she was finally down to a choice between geese, turkey, pheasants and roast pork on the one hand, a baron of beef on the other. She finally decided on the baron of beef: it was after all in the titled class so to speak and not all that far removed from royalty, and it would also, she thought, go a long way.
