Excellent Women (13 page)

‘Mother will be in the drawing-room,’ he said, opening a door.

I found myself in a room with two women, one of whom was standing by the fireplace while the other was sitting on the edge of a chair with her hands folded in her lap.

‘This is my mother,’ said Everard, leading me towards the standing woman, who was tall with a long nose like his own, ‘and this is—er . . he glanced at the nondescript woman sitting on the edge of her chair who might really have been anybody or nobody, and then back to his mother.

‘It’s Miss Jessop, dear,’ she said.

‘Oh, yes, of course.’

Miss! I remembered my telephone conversation with Mrs. Bone and looked at the nondescript woman with new interest.
If it’s Miss Jessop, I can only hope you’re ringing up to apologise…
. She did not look the kind of person who could possibly do anything for which an apology might be demanded. What
had
she done? I supposed I should never know. Presumably all was now well between her and Mrs. Bone.

We all murmured politely at each other and Mrs. Bone did not seem to be at all eccentric. I was beginning to think that Everard had misjudged his mother when she suddenly said in a clear voice, ‘Miss Jessop and I are very much interested in the suppression of woodworm in furniture.’

‘I should think it’s very important,’ I said. ‘I know a lot of our furniture at home got the worm in it. There didn’t seem to be anything we could do about it.

‘Oh, but there is a preparation on the market now which is very effective,’ said Mrs. Bone, clasping her hands together almost in rapture. ‘It has been used with excellent results in many famous buildings.’ She began to enumerate various Oxford and Cambridge colleges and well-known churches and cathedrals. ‘It has even been used in Westminster Cathedral,’ she declared.

‘Not Westminster Cathedral, surely, Mother,’ said Everard. ‘The wood isn’t old enough.’

‘Westminster Abbey, perhaps?’ I suggested.

‘Oh, well, it was something to do with Westminster,’ said Mrs. Bone. ‘Wasn’t it, Miss Jessop?’ She turned towards her with a rather menacing look.

Miss Jessop seemed to agree.

‘I think we had better have some sherry,’ said Everard, going out of the room.

I thought I had better revive the conversation which had lapsed, so I commented on the animals’ heads in the hall, saying what fine specimens they were.

‘My husband shot them in India and Africa,’ said Mrs. Bone, ‘but however many you shoot there still seem to be more.’

‘Oh, yes, it would be a terrible thing if they became extinct,’ I said. ‘I suppose they keep the rarer animals in game reserves now.’

‘It’s not the animals so much as the birds,’ said Mrs. Bone fiercely. ‘You will hardly believe this, Miss—er—but I was sitting in the window this afternoon and as it was a fine day I had it open at the bottom, when I felt something drop into my lap. And do you know what it was?’ She turned and peered at me intently.

I said that I had no idea.

‘Unpleasantness,’ she said, almost triumphantly so that I was reminded of William Caldicote. Then lowering her voice she explained, ‘From a bird, you see. It had
done
something when I was actually sitting in my own drawing-room.’

‘How annoying,’ I said, feeling mesmerised and unable even to laugh.

‘And that’s not the worst,’ she went on, rummaging in a small desk which stood open and seemed to be full of old newspapers. ‘Read this.’ She handed me a cutting headed
OWL
BITES
WOMAN
, from which I read that an owl had flown in through a cottage window one evening and bitten a woman on the chin. ‘And this,’ she went on, handing me another cutting which told how a swan had knocked a girl off her bicycle. ‘What do you think of
that?’

‘Oh, I suppose they were just accidents,’ I said.

‘Accidents!
Even Miss Jessop agrees that they are rather more than
accidents,
don’t you, Miss Jessop?’

Miss Jessop made a quavering sound which might have been ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ but it was not allowed to develop into speech, for Mrs. Bone broke in by telling Everard that Miss Jessop wouldn’t want any sherry.

‘The Dominion of the Birds,’ she went on. ‘I very much fear it may come to that.’

Everard looked at me a little anxiously but I managed to keep up the conversation until Mrs. Bone declared that it was dinner time. ‘You had better be going home, now, Miss Jessop,’ she said. ‘We are going to have our dinner.’

Miss Jessop stood up and put on her gloves. Then, with a little nod which seemed to include all of us, she went quietly out of the room.

I eat as many birds as possible,’ said Mrs. Bone when we were sitting down to roast chicken. ‘I have them sent from Harrods or Fortnum’s, and sometimes I go and look at them in the cold meats department. They do them up very prettily with aspic jelly and decorations. At least we can eat our enemies.

Everard, dear, which was that tribe in Africa which were cannibals?’

‘There are several thousand tribes in Africa, Mother,’ said Everard patiently ‘and many of them have been and probably still are cannibals.’

‘But surely the British Administration have stamped it out?’ I asked.

‘Certainly they have attempted to,’ said Everard. ‘And the missionaries have also done a lot to educate the people.’

‘Yes, I suppose that would make them see that it was wrong,’ I said feebly, wondering whether anthropologists really approved of these old customs being stamped out.

‘Missionaries have done a lot of harm,’ said Mrs. Bone firmly. ‘The natives have their own religions which are very ancient, much more ancient than ours. We have no business to try to make them change.’

‘My mother is not a Christian,’ said Everard, perhaps unnecessarily.

‘The Jesuits got at my son, you know, Miss—er—‘ said Mrs. Bone, turning to me. ‘They will stop at nothing, those Jesuits. You would hardly believe the things that go on in their seminaries. I can lend you some very informative pamphlets if you are interested.’

I was by now in a state of considerable confusion and wished that Everard would make some attempt to lead the conversation into normal channels, though I realised that this would probably be quite impossible. It occurred to me that I had been bearing the full burden of the evening, and at half-past nine I began to feel both tired and resentful and decided that I would go home.

You seem to have made a favourable impression,’ he said, as I stuffed some pamphlets about woodworms and Jesuits into my string bag with Cardinal Newman and the loaf. ‘Most people are quite incapable of carrying on a conversation with my mother. I admired the way you did it.’

‘Oh, but I’m used to coping with people,’ I said. ‘Being a clergyman’s daughter is a good training.’ It was only people like the Napiers who were beyond my experience. ‘It is splendid that your mother should have so many interests in her life,’ I said. ‘So often elderly people think only of themselves and their illnesses.’ Birds, worms and Jesuits … it might almost have been a poem, but I could not remember that anybody had ever written it.

‘Yes, her life is quite busy, I suppose, but she is getting rather difficult now.’

‘Who is Miss Jessop?’ I asked.

‘Oh, I don’t know; just some woman who comes to see my mother sometimes,’ said Everard vaguely. ‘She is quite often there.’

‘But does she never speak?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. It would be such a help if you could say something to Helena. You remember what we were talking about earlier in the evening.’

It seemed to have been a very long evening, but I did remember and the memory depressed me.

‘A sensible person, with no axe to grind,’ Everard was saying, almost to himself.

I accepted this description of myself without comment. ‘But what could I say?’ I protested. ‘The occasion may not arise and even if it did I still shouldn’t know.’

‘Oh, surely, words would come,’ said Everard impatiently. ‘You said you were used to coping with people.’

I did not attempt to explain that my training had not fitted me for this kind of a situation. But I saw myself, having no axe to grind, calling in on the Napiers as I went up to my flat and making the attempt. But Rocky would be there, so of course it wouldn’t do. And when I passed their door their voices seemed to be raised as if they were having an argument. I am afraid it was impossible not to hear some of the things they were saying, but I cannot bring myself to record them here. I think I hurried up to my kitchen and made a cup of tea and then went to bed trying to take my mind off the situation by thinking about Miss Jessop and her curious relationship with Mrs. Bone. I wondered if I should ever hear her speak or know why an apology had been demanded from her.

T
HE
next day I worked until lunchtime and came home at about half-past one. This was the only time when the offices on the ground floor of the house where I lived seemed to show any signs of life. Typewriters were clacking, telephones ringing, and a man was dictating a letter, weighing each word, or so it appeared, though the words that came to my ears through the open door seemed to be hardly worth such ponderous consideration.

Above this it was very quiet, so I guessed that the Napiers must be out, but when I passed their kitchen I could hear the gas hissing and there was a smell of something burning. I knocked on the half-open door but there was no answer, so I went in. I found one of the gas rings full on and on it a saucepan of potatoes which had boiled dry and were now sticking to the bottom in a brownish mass. I dealt with them quickly but the saucepan was in a very bad state. I ran some water into it so that it could soak. I noticed with distaste and disapproval that the breakfast things and what appeared to be dishes and glasses from an even earlier date were not washed up. The table by the window was also crowded; there were two bottles of milk, each half-full, an empty gin bottle, a dish of butter melting in the sun, and a plate full of cigarette stubs. I felt very spinsterish indeed as I stood there, holding the burnt saucepan in my hand.

‘The potatoes—I forgot them.’ Rocky was standing behind me in the doorway.

‘Yes, you did,’ I said rather sharply. ‘The gas was full on and they boiled dry. I’m afraid the saucepan’s ruined.’

‘Oh, the saucepan,’ Rocky said, passing his hand over his brow with a gesture of weariness that seemed to me rather theatrical. ‘There have been other things to think about besides saucepans.’

‘Oh. Is anything the matter?’ I asked, moving towards him, still holding the saucepan in my hand.

‘Yes, I suppose so. Helena has left me.’ He went into the sitting-room and sank into an armchair. I stood helplessly by him, trying to think of something to say or do, but he took no notice of my faltering words of sympathy. I looked round the room and saw that another saucepan had evidently been put down on a polished walnut table, where it had burnt an unsightly mark.

‘That was the last straw, the table,’ he said. ‘She put a hot saucepan down on the table. Such a trivial thing, I suppose you might think, but typical of her lack of consideration. And all the washing-up left for days sometimes until Mrs. Morris came… .’ He rambled on, cataloguing her faults while I sat by him not liking to interrupt. At last I was conscious of a feeling something like hunger stirring in me, for it was now about two o’clock, and I began to wonder whether Rocky had had any lunch.

‘Lunch? I haven’t thought about it,’ he said. ‘Perhaps one doesn’t on these occasions.’

‘I m sure you should eat something,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you come up to my flat, which is tidier than this, and I will clear up these things afterwards.’

He followed me apathetically and began to tell me what had happened. It appeared that they had had a quarrel when he was getting lunch and that Helena had run out of the house, saying that she was never coming back.

‘I went after her,’ Rocky said, ‘but she must have got into a taxi, because there was no sign of her. So eventually I just came back here.’

‘But surely she will have to come back? Did she take anything with her, any luggage?’

‘I don’t know. I shouldn’t think so.’

‘But where could she have gone?’ I persisted, feeling that somebody ought to be practical.

‘To Everard Bone, I suppose,’ said Rocky indifferently.

‘No, surely not!’ I exclaimed. That must not happen. The irrelevant and unworthy thought crossed my mind that he would think I had failed in my duty and I should be blamed. But I had really had very little time in which to tell Helena that Everard did not love her; I had been meaning to say something at the first opportunity. And yet, in a way, I could not help feeling that it would serve him right if she did arrive on his doorstep and cause him embarrassment. ‘If she
has
gone to him,’ I said, ‘she will have arrived by now. I will ring up his fiat and find out.’

I was a little taken aback when Everard himself answered me, though I don’t know who else I had expected, and could only stammer out the news and ask if Helena had come to him.

‘No, she certainly has not,’ he said, his voice full of alarm. ‘In any case, I am leaving for Derbyshire immediately.

‘Derbyshire?’ I repeated stupidly. It seemed such an unlikely place.

‘Yes, the Prehistoric Society is holding a conference there,’ he said quickly.

‘You will be able to hide in a cave,’ I said, giggling in the nervous way one does sometimes at a moment of crisis. I composed myself before going back to Rocky, who was still reclining in a chair.

‘She isn’t with Everard Bone,’ I said, ‘so perhaps she will be back soon, unless there are any friends of hers I could ring up for you?’

‘Oh, no, don’t bother. One can’t go ringing up people all over London.’

Well, I may as well get lunch,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid it will be something very simple, but you must eat.’

Rocky followed me into my kitchen and stood under the line of washing, which I noticed with irritation had become too dry to be ironed comfortably. He began pulling down the garments and making jokes about them, but I felt that this was not the time for coyness or embarrassment, so I took no notice of him.

I washed a lettuce and dressed it with a little of my hoarded olive oil and some salt. I also had a Camembert cheese, a fresh loaf and a bowl of greengages for dessert. It seemed an idyllic sort of meal that ought to have been eaten in the open air, with a bottle of wine and what is known as ‘good’ conversation. I thought it unlikely that I should be able to provide either the conversation or the wine, but I remembered that I had a bottle of brandy which I kept, according to old-fashioned custom, for ‘emergencies’ and I decided to bring it in with the coffee. I could see my mother, her lips slightly pursed, saying, ‘For medicinal purposes only, of course…’ But now respectable elderly women do not need to excuse themselves for buying brandy or even gin, though it is quite likely that some still do and perhaps one may hope that they always will.

Rocky began to eat with a show of appetite, but the conversation he made was not ‘good’ conversation.

‘She couldn’t even
wash
a lettuce properly,’ he said, ‘let alone prepare a salad like this.’

I did not know what answer to make and we continued to eat in silence on my part. The brandy seemed to rouse him a little further, though to no great heights, but what he said was pleasing to me personally.

‘Mildred, you really are the most wonderful person,’ he said, turning his gaze on me. ‘I don’t know
what
I should do without you.’

You do very well without me, I thought, with a flash of impatience, and will continue to do well.

‘To think that you should have come in just at this moment, this awful crisis, and given me a delicious lunch.’ He closed his eyes and lay back in his chair. ‘I really couldn’t have borne to have got lunch myself.’

‘Oh, it was nothing,’ I said, feeling that no other answer could be given. ‘Anybody else would have done the same.’ And perhaps even a less attractive man than Rocky would have a devoted woman to prepare a meal for him on the day his wife left him. A mother, a sister, an aunt, even … I remembered an advertisement I had once seen in the
Church Times
—‘Organist and aunt require unfurnished accommodation; East Sheen or Barnes preferred’. Rather fishy, I had thought it, probably not his aunt at all, though surely the kind of people who expressed a preference for East Sheen or Barnes could hardly be anything but highly respectable?

‘What are you smiling at?’

I started guiltily, for I had temporarily forgotten the dreadful thing that had happened. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t realise I was smiling.’

‘You are almost cheering me up,’ said Rocky resentfully. ‘I suppose everyone must have a friend to comfort them at times like this.’

‘Not everybody,’ I said, thinking of the many rejected ones who lived in lonely bed-sitting-rooms with nobody to talk to them or prepare meals for them. I told Rocky of my thought.

‘They could always wash stockings or something,’ he said callously. ‘Assuming of course, that they are women, and it’s usually women who live in bed-sitting-rooms.’

‘And are rejected,’ I added.

‘Well, yes, it all hangs together somehow, doesn’t it? Of course my position is hardly the same. You mustn’t think that I have been rejected.’

We sat there almost bickering until the church clock struck a quarter to four.

‘Tea,’ said Rocky, ‘I think I should like some tea now.’

‘Yes, of course,’ I said, going meekly to the kitchen. I was just filling the kettle when my bell rang. ‘Oh, dear, who can that be?’ I asked.

‘Perhaps Helena has also come to you for comfort,’ said Rocky. ‘I think it would be more suitable if you answered the door, just in case, you know.’

He continued to loll in the armchair, so there was nothing for me to do but hurry downstairs, feeling rather flustered and irritated. I’m afraid my dismay must have shown in my face when I opened the front door and found Julian Malory standing there, for his expression altered and he hesitated before coming in.

‘I was just going to make some tea,’ I said, as we walked upstairs, ‘so you’re just in time.’

‘Ah, tea,’ he said. ‘I had hoped to be in time for that.’

I did not tell him that Rocky Napier was with me and the expressions of the two men when they saw each other was something that made me smile, Rocky frowning and sulky and Julian puzzled and dismayed. Rocky rose rather ungraciously and offered Julian his armchair, though in a half-hearted manner. Julian accepted it. Rocky then flung himself down on the sofa. At this point I hurried out to see if the kettle was boiling and by the time I had come back with the tea the two men were engaged in some sort of a conversation about Italy. Julian was asking about the church of Santa Chiara in Naples and quoting a poem about Palm Sunday, but Rocky said that the church had been destroyed by bombs and the poem always depressed him anyway.

I began to pour out tea. As so often happens at a moment of crisis, there was something wrong with it. It seemed much too weak and flowed in what a poet might call an amber stream from the imperfectly cleaned spout of the silver teapot. Mrs. Morris had been neglecting her duty and I should have to speak to her.

‘Ah, what a treat, China tea!’ Julian exclaimed.

I have often wondered whether it is really a good thing to be honest by nature and upbringing; certainly it is not a good thing socially, for I feel sure that the tea-party would have been more successful had I not explained that the tea was really Indian which I had unfortunately made too weak. Thus, instead of feeling that I had provided a treat for them the two men seemed resentful and embarrassed, almost as if I had done it on purpose. I stirred the pot despairingly and offered to go and make some more, but neither of them would hear of it. Rocky was polite but impatient and Julian polite but disappointed, almost grieved.

It seemed to me that both men appeared at their worst that afternoon, as if they had the effect of bringing out the worst in each other, unless it was that I had never before had the opportunity of observing each of them dispassionately. Rocky seemed shallow and charming in an obvious and false way, and his sprawling on the sofa seemed to me both affected and impolite. Julian, on the other hand, appeared to have no charm at all, not even of an obvious kind. By the side of Rocky he seemed pompous and clerical, almost like a stage clergyman, his voice taking on an unctuous quality which it did not usually possess. ‘She worships at St. Mary’s…. The other morning, after I had said Mass…’ even his conversation seemed stilted and unnatural. This had the effect of making Rocky flippant, so that although Julian made an effort to respond to his little jokes about the best quality incense and glamorous acolytes, there was a kind of hostility between them, and I felt almost as if I were the cause of it. It was unusual, certainly, for me to be alone with two men even when each of them was the property of some other woman, but I could not make anything of the opportunity.

I fussed over the weak tea, regretted that I had not bought another cake or some tomatoes or a cucumber to make sandwiches, wished passionately that I had been a more brilliant conversationalist. As it was, Rocky had now lapsed into silence and Julian was looking around him with frightened, suspicious glances. What was the matter with him? I wondered. There was surely nothing compromising or embarrassing about the situation? And then I saw what it was that was upsetting him—the brandy bottle was still on the mantelpiece, looking very large and shocking among my small ornaments and the picture postcards of Exmoor and North Wales, where Mrs. Bonner and another woman from my office respectively were spending their holidays. I supposed that on all the occasions when Julian had visited me before he had never seen a brandy bottle on the mantelpiece.

‘Have you made any plans for your wedding?’ I asked, anxious to make light conversation.

‘Oh, yes, we are hoping to be married quite soon,’ said Julian gratefully. ‘And we do want all the congregation of St. Mary’s and all our friends to come to the wedding.’

‘I suppose you mean what are known as “regular communicants”?’ asked Rocky. ‘Mildred may have told you that I can’t do with religion before breakfast. Would those who have just been to Evensong be eligible? They might surely count as friends?’

‘Oh, anybody, really, all well-wishers, of course,’ said Julian in an embarrassed but jocular manner. ‘We want everybody to rejoice with us.’

‘I should certainly like to do that,’ said Rocky. ‘You see, I
do
wish you well, and as my wife has just left me the very least I can do is to hope that yours will not do the same.’

Julian dropped half of the slice of cake he was holding on to the floor and stooped quickly to pick up the fragments.