Miss Hargreaves (5 page)

Mother’s awfully fond of that phrase, ‘settling down’. I don’t like it much; makes me feel like a sort of powder.

‘Marjorie and I have joined the Keep Fit Class,’ said Jim. ‘Pity you don’t do something like that; keep that paunch down.’

‘Don’t be rude, Jim,’ I said. I cut myself some cake.

‘I hope this winter,’ said mother, ‘you’ll really settle down and work for your A.R.C.O. and not spend so much time playing the piano for father’s silly old violin.’

‘That reminds me,’ I said. ‘Where are Claribel’s kittens?’

‘In your old tuck-box,’ said Jim. ‘Rather a mixed brew.’

‘Henry says he can dispose of two for us,’ said mother. ‘By the way,’ she added–I noticed she glanced at Jim–‘who’s this friend of yours he keeps talking about? Somebody you met in Ireland, I suppose. What was the name, Jim?’

‘Hargreaves, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, that’s right. Who is she, Norman?’

‘Oh, she’s really a friend of his.’ I laughed a little uneasily. ‘This is topping cake. Did Janie make it?’ (Janie’s our maid.)

‘Henry quite clearly said
your
friend. How did the name come up, Jim?’

‘Oh, we were talking about Mrs Pankhurst and votes for women, and–’

‘Oh, yes, I remember. We were arguing about the date of Mrs Pankhurst’s death and Henry said we’d better ask Norman’s great friend, Miss Hargreaves. He said she had known Mrs Pankhurst.’

‘So
I
said,’ said Jim, ‘Miss Hargreaves? Never heard of her. And old Henry got quite worked up about her. Norman’s guiding light, he called her.’

‘We got quite curious about her, didn’t we, Jim? You can’t have known her very long, can you, Norman?’

I was growing a bit uncomfortable. Mother’s so interested in all my friends; she’s what you might call modern in that way; likes to say that she keeps an ever-open door. I wished Henry hadn’t carried on the ridiculous joke. I knew it wouldn’t be easy to convince mother that there wasn’t such a person. They don’t understand the Spur of the Moment, mother and Jim.

‘Henry’s been pulling your leg,’ I said. ‘There’s no such person.’ (Do you remember Mrs Gamp’s fury when Betsy Prig said of Mrs Harris, ‘I don’t believe there’s no sich a person!’ Queer it was; I felt like that.)

‘Of
course
he wasn’t pulling our leg.’ Mother sniffed contemptuously. ‘Why
should
he? I always know when I’m being fooled. He spoke with great respect of her.’

‘Honestly, mother,’ I said, ‘the whole thing was a joke. We made her up.’

Mother laughed. And when mother laughs it generally means trouble. ‘If you
want
to conceal your friends from us, by all means do so. We shan’t complain.’

I saw it was no use arguing about it. The best thing to do was to avoid the subject and later on get Henry to come round and bear me out.

‘I can’t help it if you don’t believe me,’ I said.

Mother looked at me oddly. ‘You really don’t
know
a Miss Hargreaves?’

Again I noticed a quick glance pass between her and Jim.

‘See that wet,’ I declaimed, ‘see that dry!’ I slid my finger from my tongue to my throat. ‘I swear I’ve never met any such woman in my life.’

‘Then–’ And mother has a way of making a long pause after the word ‘then’ which makes you tremble at the thought of what’s coming. But this time she didn’t say anything at all. She merely swooped something from the mantelpiece to the table.

I can only tell you this. It was one of the Graver moments of my life. All sorts of ideas about Time and Relativity and Matter and what-not floated to me as, with blurry eyes, I looked at what mother was holding out to me. It was a telegram. It was addressed to me. I read it.

‘A thousand thanks for welcome invitation sent from beloved Lusk hoping arrive stay with you Monday Hargreaves.’

I read it a dozen times. It had been handed in at Hereford that morning at ten. I read it a dozen more times, held it up to the light, shook it, smelt it, and finally spilt some tea over it. Then I staggered to the window.

I felt bad. I felt rocky. I felt the sky coming down and the earth going up. Then suddenly I felt better. This was a trick of Henry’s. Obviously. Sort of mad thing he would do.

Father was coming up the steps to the door. Mother and Jim were standing behind me. Deadly silence. Awful.

I swung round. ‘Don’t you
see
,’ I cried, ‘this is a trick? Henry’s behind the whole thing. He never did know where to stop a joke. I’m going round to see him at once.’

Father came in. I heaved a sigh of relief. I can always cope with father. He hasn’t that strict sense of orderliness that mother and Jim have.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. I suppose we were all standing about in critical attitudes. ‘Oh, I bought a new teapot,’ he added. ‘That one never would pour.’ He put the new pot on the table.

‘
Well
, Norman,’ sighed mother with a dreadful sort of sinister gentleness, ‘I shall be very glad if Henry
is
able to explain. I don’t like to catch my son out in telling lies.’

‘Don’t you worry,’ I said. ‘You’ll see.’

Father was pouring out the tea from the old pot into the new, then pouring it back again into the old to see how the new worked. He seemed satisfied.

‘That’s what I call a teapot,’ he said. ‘Oh do you remember–that book I was trying to find?’

‘The Kelmscott
Shakespeare
?’

‘Was it? Anyhow, I found it. Here it is. Jim, tea’s half cold.’ He pulled a slim, green, rather worn-looking volume from his pocket and flung it at me.

‘That’s not the Kelmscott
Shakespeare
, surely?’ I said.

‘No. Not
that
. The other book.’

‘The other book?’

‘Yes. The poems.
Wayside Spindle
, or something. Not bad, some of them. Run through the Kreutzer with me tonight?’

The little green book was lying on the floor. I had failed to catch it. I could not pick it up.

‘Mother,’ said father, ‘did you get me a new A string?’

‘Yes, I did, Cornelius.’

‘Father,’ I said, ‘
what
poems did you say?’

‘Oh, don’t keep bothering! Some book by a woman Henry was interested in. Friend of yours, he said.’

Mother suddenly darted down, snatched up the book, glanced at it, then shoved it before me without a word. I took it hopelessly. I shuddered. Its title was
Wayside Bundle
. Verses by Constance Hargreaves. They were dedicated to Philip Archer, M.A. ‘A small craft,’ declared the authoress in a foreword, ‘and now for the first time launched upon the sea of criticism.’

‘Holy God!’ I moaned.

‘And now,’ said mother grimly, ‘perhaps you’ll be kind enough to tell us the truth about this Miss Hargreaves. Don’t misunderstand me, Norman; I’m very glad to welcome any friend of yours to the house. All I expect is that we should know a little about them first.’

‘Mother,’ I said, and I spoke with feeling, ‘if that dove flew out of that picture and fluttered about over the table, you’d be surprised, wouldn’t you? You’d be bowled over?’

I pointed to a picture in a gilt frame of Greuze’s girl with the dead dove.

‘Yes, I certainly should be bowled over,’ agreed mother.

‘I’ve always maintained that dove
isn
’
t
dead,’ said father.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘you couldn’t be more bowled over than I am by–by this. So have a little mercy.’

‘For a change,’ suggested Jim, ‘try telling the truth. Just try. People do. It doesn’t kill them, as a rule.’

‘You bitch, Jim!’ I cried.

‘That’s enough, Norman!’ snapped mother. ‘I won’t stand words like that–’

‘Well, she is a bitch–’

‘Do you hear what he is saying, Cornelius?’

‘I don’t know what you’re all arguing about,’ said father. ‘Is it the new teapot? That’s what I call a teapot, that is.’

He sat down and helped himself to some tongue. The volume was open in my hands. I read:

‘O, bring me the flute and the alto bassoon,

     The mustard, the cress, and the water!

The high and the diddle; the fiddle; for soon

     Must I go to make love to your daughter.’

It was from a poem called ‘The Unwilling Suitor’.

‘Father,’ I said, ‘where did you find this book?’

‘They’re rather nice little verses,’ he said. ‘Nice feeling. Remind me of–who is it? Christina Rossetti. She was a poet, if you like. Met her once and she–’

I laid the book on the table. Jim took it up.

‘Your fancy friend must be pretty old,’ she said. ‘This was published in 1893. Listen to this: what on earth does it mean?’

She read another verse:

‘My life was complete before Agatha came:

     The rosemary, dapple and fawn;

The carraway petal, the Holloway flame,

     The gingham, the gallows, the dawn.’

‘H’m. That’s good,’ said father. He took the book from her and read silently for a few moments. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘she’s a poet right enough. You have to work to get at the meaning. Sure sign. That’s fine, you know:

‘Oh, why must I go with my green tender grace

     To lay all my eggs in one basket?

If I were a mayor I could carry a mace;

     My card and address in a casket.’

‘Fine!’ he said.

‘Sounds pure nonsense to me,’ said mother.

‘She’s no chicken,’ said Jim. ‘If that book was published in 1893, she must be at least sixty.’

‘Sixty!’ I laughed scornfully; suddenly plunged deep into the pit. ‘She’s nearer ninety–that is–damn it! Hell!’ I shouted. I was getting more and more tied up. ‘I made her up,’ I cried. ‘I’ve never met her, I tell you!’

I really hardly knew what I was saying.

Father, taking not the slightest notice of my outburst, began to read again from the book.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Here’s depth. Real depth:

‘All this goeth on and my mind is a blank,

     A capriciously prodigal hostage.

What
care
I when comforters tell me the Bank

     Will pay death-duties, homage and postage?’

Father walked round the room, waving the volume up and down in the air and murmuring the words ‘capriciously prodigal hostage’.

‘Music,’ he said, ‘pure music. Reminds me of Tennyson. Did I ever tell you, by the way, how I met–’

I couldn’t stand much more.

‘Father,’ I shouted, ‘where did you find this bloody book–’

‘How
dare
you use language like that!’ cried mother.

‘On my desk,’ said father. ‘Just like that. Under my nose. Funny, wasn’t it? Friend of yours, Henry says. You must bring her round. I like authors. This woman can write too. You might set it to music, Norman.’ Again he read:

‘The world is so shallow, the shoes are so tight,

     The moon is so faithful to fortune;

The cherry is ruddy, the asp is alight,

     The warrior whistleth his war-tune.’

‘ “Asp is alight,”’ murmured father. ‘H’m. True, you know. She gets to the heart of things. Realist, too. Notice how she says the warrior
whistleth
his war-tune. Observation there.’

I grabbed the book from him and went to the door.

‘I can’t explain all this now,’ I said, ‘except that I know that devil Henry’s behind it.’

I opened the door and rushed into the hall.

‘Glad the boy’s making some nice friends,’ I heard father say as I went out.