A Wreath Of Roses (12 page)

Upstairs, feeling vaguely ruffled, she walked about her bedroom. From below, in the kitchen, came the sound of Mrs Parsons’s laughter, of her rich and Guinness-lined voice.

Frances was busy displaying a natural and looked-for curiosity, which Camilla would have concealed. She asked all the questions which Mrs Parsons required her to ask, the practical questions such as when and who and what next. Mrs Parsons herself had brightened. In the discussion of trouble lies the comfort for it, and of this she sensibly made the most she could.

‘She thinks it was the man who came to read the meter.’

‘She
thinks!’
Frances protested.

‘Well, of course, it could be Ernie.’ Ernie was her fiancé, but his claims seemed less than those of a casual stranger.

‘It would be better if it were Ernie,’ Frances suggested.

‘In many ways, no doubt. But Ernie is only a labourer, the other has a profession at the back of him.’

‘But will he recognise his responsibility?’

‘It’s getting hold of him in the first place, madam.’

‘Poor Euniss. Yes, of course.’

‘We can’t afford to wait until the next half-yearly reading.’

‘What is his name?’

‘She remembers him as mentioning either Roy or Ken. Quite a short name, she says. She was to have met him the next evening, only it rained. Whether he turned up himself or not we don’t know. As things have happened, it would have been better for her to have slipped on her mac and gone, only Ernie came round after tea and that put the tin lid on it together with the rain. We had a listen to the wireless instead.’

‘What would Ernie say to all this?’

‘He wouldn’t stand for it, madam. And quite right too he
is
so touchy. Her dad won’t stand for it, either, forgetting how he carried on hisself.’

‘Do you mean he’ll turn her out?’ Frances asked, her knowledge of such situations based on Edwardian melodrama.

Mrs Parsons was astonished. ‘Turn his own daughter out, madam! I’d like to see him try. Whatever do you think they’d say at the Flowers if I let him behave like that? And where, poor girl, could she go?’

Seeming not to have heard of the streets of London, her imagination travelled no farther than the pub and her own position in the Ladies’ Darts Team. ‘No, when I said he wouldn’t stand for it, I meant he’d carry on, the same as what Ernie will.’

‘Poor Euniss,’ Frances said again, and with the prospect of saying it much more.

‘Yes. None of us are saints, madam, but some of us are luckier than the rest.’

She took cigarettes and matches from her skirt pocket and lit up. ‘Well, the work’s gone to the wall this morning and no mistake,’ she said, rinsing cups at the sink.

Liz came past the kitchen-window with Arthur, carrying the baby between them in a Moses basket. She opened the kitchen door and put her finger to her lips. Harry slept beautifully, his mouth parted, his veined eyelids still.

Arthur tiptoed away to fetch the luggage from the car. When he had gone, Mrs Parsons whispered to Frances: ‘Say nothing for the time being, madam, him being a parson.’

‘Say nothing about what?’ Liz asked.

‘Tell you later,’ Mrs Parsons promised gaily. She had wrought a great change upon herself since her arrival. Stimulated by company, drama quickened the tempo of her life, lifted her up, and made this a red-letter day.

Liz went creaking upstairs with the cradle and put Harry into
his little room among the stacked canvases. Camilla was dusting their dressing-table.

‘What’s going on downstairs that must be kept from Arthur?’ Liz enquired.

‘Hallo Liz. It’s Euniss Parsons, I expect.’

‘I thought it must be something like that. It is usually sex that clergymen mustn’t hear about. Poor Euniss. How far gone is she?’

‘How far gone! No, really Liz! I’m not going to talk that sort of language to you. You’ll be telling me next about what a had time you had with Harry.’

‘Well, so I did. It’s that Ernie, I suppose.’

‘I don’t know who that Ernie is.’

‘The lad at the farm. Brings the milk. She’s engaged to him.’

‘Well, perhaps it is. It’s their own affair and I don’t know them and can’t be interested.’

She polished the mirror furiously and Liz saw her reddened face reflected in it. She said meekly, changing the subject: ‘I had a nice time at home after all.’

‘I’m glad.’

‘What have
you
been doing?’

Camilla’s hand slowed over the mirror and then dropped to her side. For a second, she seemed to relax, her lips formed the word ‘I’; but it was as if her mind were too clouded to form a sentence. Then she said crisply: ‘I never question you about your comings and goings.’

‘That’s the trouble with you. You wait for people to tell you things. So they feel you don’t care.’

‘It isn’t that. You are like a newly-married wife with your anxious curiosity … “and
then
what did you do?” … “and after
that
where did you go?” You must leave me alone.’

‘You don’t want to be left alone. You want to tell me, but you are too much afraid of behaving badly; or rather, behaving like other people. And you will tear that duster to shreds.’

Liz sat down on her bed and began to strip off her stockings. ‘I know you went out with that man,’ she continued. ‘I guessed you were going to. You were half-relieved to send me off with Arthur, so that you could.’

‘You try to be so perceptive, but you are quite wrong.’

‘You
did
go out with him.’

Camilla sat down at the dressing-table. She felt an icy paralysis creeping over her, even her lips seemed frozen.

‘Do you know where my sandals are?’ Liz asked.

‘The bottom shelf of the cupboard.’

Liz pottered about the room and Camilla sat staring in front of her at the dressing-table. When Liz was ready to go down, she went over and put her hand on Camilla’s shoulder, rather timidly, because she was shy of touching her.

‘Frances is furious with me,’ Camilla said. ‘Yes, I did go. And I came back very late. She had waited up for me, and I believe thought I was drunk. Which I was not.’

‘You are not a girl in your ’teens, Frances forgets.’

‘But my behaviour as a guest!’

‘Remember her conventionality and her genteel ways are an exaggeration she goes in for deliberately, a brake she imposes on herself, because of her painting, and perhaps because she fears she might so easily become quite otherwise.’

‘I know all that. Heaven knows, I keep telling myself. But by any standards …’

‘It isn’t this which has upset you.’

‘Don’t ask me any women’s questions,’ Camilla said quickly.

‘No, I won’t. But not because I don’t care.’

‘From the first I thought this holiday would be terribly different from all the rest.’

‘Go home then! Come home with me! Let us go together. I can tell Frances that Arthur needs me, as indeed he does.’

‘No, I have to stay.’

‘But why?’

‘I just do have to.’

‘There is some mystery. He is not your sort of man.’ Liz walked about the room disarranging things.

‘Arthur is not
your sort
of man,’ Camilla said sharply. Then she sighed, as if she were unbearably oppressed. She stood up and looked out of the window. ‘Yes, there is some mystery,’ she admitted. ‘I don’t understand either.’

‘Perhaps if we were not so
clever
we’d understand,’ Liz laughed.

They went downstairs. Arthur was drinking rhubarb wine in the parlour. His life was full of such little duties and, since he was obliged to drink the wine, he did so always with this good grace; with relish, even. He could afford to seem over-occupied with little worldly pleasures. He seemed to display this minor trait in such a way that it indicated more clearly the great spiritual side of his nature lying in the shadow.

He and Frances were studying the cacti, half-empty glasses in their hands.

‘Stockings off already?’ he said, turning as Liz and Camilla came in. Then he added to Frances, as she began to fill two more glasses: ‘She runs in as fast as she can, and goes round and round like a cat, until she is comfortable. As if this were her real home.’

‘Cups of tea, glasses of wine!’ Camilla said. ‘One way and another it
is
being a morning.’

‘Push Liz Barrett off the sofa, Arthur, and sit down,’ his wife said.

He did not in time stop himself from glancing round.

‘It is an absurd game they play,’ Frances apologised. Did you enjoy your trip, Elizabeth?’

‘Yes, I did, thank you.’

‘You sound so surprised,’ Arthur said.

‘Well … I didn’t know people would be so nice to me …’

‘People are always nice to one if one does one’s duty,’ Frances said.

‘Frances, don’t be so superb!’ Camilla protested. ‘And you could not have been more tactless to Arthur.’

‘I am afraid Camilla is right,’ he said sadly, but sad rather because he was forced to agree with her than for his tragic conclusion about humanity. ‘We are persecuted for doing our duty more often than not.’

‘Then I must thank my stars it went off as well as it did for me,’ said Liz. ‘Are
you
much persecuted then, Arthur?’

‘Perhaps I am,’ he said, smiling mysteriously, and he put his hand under her hair and clasped the back of her neck. ‘Darling!’ he added. A little awkwardness fell over them all.

In the kitchen, Mrs Parsons, not quite spontaneously, sang ‘Rock of Ages Cleft For Me’, her voice loud and serious; as if this were the last hymn before the boat went down.

‘Well, somebody is happy,’ Arthur remarked. He unclasped Liz and stood up from the arm of her chair. ‘I must go. Be safe and happy, pet.’ He saw Camilla look scornfully into her wine-glass.

‘When shall we see you again?’ Frances asked, with a vague attempt at hospitality. ‘You must come to tea.’

‘Yes, I should like to come to have tea with my wife. And, of course, with you.’

Liz went out with him and at the door he looked back and said: ‘You would have been proud of her, Miss Rutherford. She managed very well. Very naturally. Just as I knew she would.’

‘Natural behaviour always goes down well,’ Frances said happily.

‘I wish He would
let
her to His Bosom flee,’ Camilla said restlessly, for in the kitchen, the hymns continued above, appropriately, the sound of running water. She watched Liz and Arthur going down the path. At the gate, they kissed.

‘Frances!’ Camilla began, turning quickly away from the window. But Frances had gone back to her painting.

Mrs Parsons came in to collect the glasses. ‘That’s a lovely wine madam makes,’ she said, lingering by the decanter. She replaced the stopper sadly. ‘As fresh as port,’ she added. ‘Though I’m not a great wine-drinker.’ She debated the point within herself. ‘No. I shouldn’t say I was a great wine-drinker,’ she concluded.

‘What’s all this about Euniss?’ Liz asked briskly, coming back into the room.

Mrs Parsons set the tray down again.

‘I’m afraid Euniss has been a naughty girl,’ she said sternly.

‘Would you like a glass of this stuff?’ Liz asked her.

Mrs Parsons sat down humbly before the rhubarb wine, as if it could not be taken standing up.

‘I expect you’re very worried,’ Liz suggested.

‘Here’s good health to you, madam, and many thanks! Yes, I am worried and there’s no mistake. She’s a very wilful girl and always was. Never one to sit down quiet with a book, but restless and on the go the minute she gets indoors. Glance at the paper, peck at her supper, fiddle with her hair, turn on the wireless and then don’t listen to it. This is lovely and warming. Yes, she’s been engaged to Ernie the twelve-month now and I’ve never once seen her bring out a piece of fancy-work or crocher a mat, not like we did when we were girls, for our bottom drawers. And she’s funny with Ernie, very sarky sometimes the way she answers him back – “So what?” and “You don’t say!” and all that. He takes it too meek and mild. Her dad would have knocked me down, if I’d spoken like that to him.’

‘Perhaps the sooner she marries Ernie the better,’ Liz suggested optimistically.

‘If he will. Now,’ Mrs Parsons said simply. She stared in front of her, her hands folded on her apron.

‘But it is Ernie who …?’

‘It’s a possibility, madam, certainly.’

Mrs Parsons stood up and pushed her chair under the table again. ‘Yes, I wonder what will become of the girl. I lie awake at night sometimes and wonder. Well, thank you, that was lovely. I enjoyed that.’

‘If there’s anything I could do,’ Liz began. ‘I, or my husband …’

She was suddenly, as she linked Arthur’s name with her own, conscious of Camilla standing very quiet and aloof by the window.

‘Oh, madam, I hope you’d say nothing to the gentleman. Please, if you don’t mind, it’s just between ourselves and mustn’t go no further. But thank you for the wine.’