Quartet in Autumn (16 page)

'That's good. Well, cheerio, I must be on my way.' Norman began to move off.

'Aren't you going in to see her now you're here?' Janice asked

'Oh, I have seen her,' said Norman, some distance away by now. And of course, in a sense, that was true. That sight of her with the milk bottles surely counted as seeing and it had been enough. Once seen never forgotten, he thought. But at least he would be able to tell Edwin that although Marcia's house looked a bit grotty, as the modern expression had it, a brisk young social worker was keeping an eye on her. It didn't necessarily follow, though, that he would tell Edwin about this evening — he didn't want to have to explain what he had been doing in that part of London, what sudden impulse had sent him there. It had been just one of those things and Edwin probably wouldn't understand that.

In the house Janice was saying in her brightest tone, 'I see you had a visitor just now.'

Marcia stared in the disconcerting way she always met any comment or question.

'The gentleman I saw in the road'

'Oh,
him!'
Marcia was scornful. 'That was just somebody I used to work with. I don't want anybody like
that
coming to see me.'

Janice sighed. Better leave the subject of the gentleman visitor, that funny little man. 'And how have you been getting on?' she asked. 'Been shopping today, have you?'

Seventeen

W
ALKING
IN
THE
wood Letty came upon a sheet of wild garlic. 'Oh, how lovely!' she exclaimed.

'You should have seen the bluebells,' Marjorie said, with the enthusiastically proprietary air of the country dweller. 'They were wonderful this year, but they're nearly over now. You should have come a fortnight ago when they were at their best.'

You didn't ask me then, Letty thought, for it was only now, when David was away on a visit to his mother (in her ninetieth year, Letty recalled), that Marjorie had suggested that she might like a few days in the country.

'This is almost like old times, isn't it?' Marjorie went on.

'Yes, in a way,' Letty agreed, taking note of the 'almost', 'but so much has happened.'

'Yes, hasn't it! Who would ever have thought ... that first time I met David, I really had no idea...' Marjorie proceeded to recall that first meeting and the subsequent development of her relationship with the man she was about to marry. Letty allowed her to ramble on while she looked around the wood, remembering its autumn carpet of beech leaves and wondering if it could be the kind of place to lie down in and prepare for death when life became too much to be endured. Had an old person — a pensioner, of course — ever been found in such a situation? No doubt it would be difficult to lie undiscovered for long, for this wood was a favourite walking place for bustling women with dogs. It was not the kind of fancy she could indulge with Marjorie or even dwell on too much herself. Danger lay in that direction.

Marjorie still had the idea that Letty might find a room at Holmhurst and that evening they were to have supper with Miss Doughty, the resident warden.

Beth Doughty was a smartly dressed woman in her middle forties, with a rigidly controlled hairstyle, sharp eyes, and heavy make-up which gave her a curiously old-fashioned look. She poured generous tots of gin, explaining that in her job you really needed what she rather oddly described as 'moral support'. Letty found herself wondering if she really liked old people, but perhaps efficiency was more important than liking and she certainly gave the impression of being highly capable.

'Do you think Letty could find a place at Holmhurst?' Marjorie asked. 'You thought there might be another vacancy soon.'

'You wouldn't like living here, not after living in London,' Beth declared. 'Just look at them now — come to the window.'

Letty stood looking out, glass in hand. Three old ladies — an uncomfortable number, hinting at awkwardness — were walking slowly round the garden. There was nothing particularly remarkable about them except their remoteness from any kind of life. Suddenly Letty felt indignant with Marjorie for supposing that she would be content with this sort of existence when she herself was going to marry a handsome clergyman. It was all of a piece with that life of forty years ago, when Letty had always trailed behind her friend, but there was no need to follow the same pattern now. As Beth Doughty topped up her glass, she resolved that a room in Holmhurst was the last thing she'd come to — better to lie down in the wood under the beech leaves and bracken and wait quietly for death.

'This is one of Father Lydell's favourite dishes,' said Beth, bringing a covered casserole to the table.
'Poulet niçoise
— I hope you
like it.'

'Oh, yes,' Letty murmured, remembering the times she had eaten
poulet niçoise
at Marjorie's house. Had David Lydell gone all round the village sampling the cooking of the unattached women before deciding which one to settle with? Certainly the dish they were eating this evening was well up to standard.

Afterwards Marjorie said, 'It was rather funny about the
poulet niçoise
and the way Beth had to let us know that she had asked David in to meals — she made a dead set at him, you know.'

'And that wine we had — Orvieto, wasn't it?'

'Yes — another of David's favourites. It's really quite amusing, isn't it?'

Letty was doubtful about this, for the ridiculous little episode had given her a glimpse of something deeper that she did not particularly want to probe.

'I do wonder how Beth Doughty manages to rise to all that gin,' Marjorie went on, 'so expensive now. Luckily David doesn't care for spirits.'

'Well, that's a blessing, isn't it,' Letty agreed, feeling that there was something obscurely wrong about this juxtaposition of spirits with blessing, but unable to supply an appropriate modification.

That evening Marcia paid a visit to the doctor. She had not made an appointment and was not even sure which of the three doctors she would be seeing, but it did not really matter since none of them was Mr Strong. She was content to sit for anything up to two hours, not even glancing through the tattered magazines but just observing the other people waiting. Most of these, in her opinion, need not have been there at all. She wondered how many of them, if any, had undergone 'major surgery', as she had. The majority were young, as if they had just come from work, and appeared to have nothing whatever the matter with them. All they wanted was a certificate. Wasting the doctor's time, she thought — no wonder the National Health Service was in such financial trouble.

When her name was called she was still indignant, and had it been the young woman doctor or the honey-voiced Middle-Eastern one behind the desk she would have gone on seething. It was neither of these but the one she called her 'own' doctor, a middle
-
aged man with a kindly, anxious expression. This was the doctor who had sent her into hospital in the first place, who had seen that lump on her breast.

Well, Miss Ivory...' his hands moved among a sheaf of papers. 'And how's the world treating you?' Mastectomy, he thought. Odd, difficult; a glib but accurate diagnosis of this particular patient. 'How have you been?'

Marcia needed no more encouragement but proceeded to tell him. What she said was not altogether coherent or even relevant, but the doctor was given a decided impression that all was not quite as it should be. She grumbled about the social worker, her neighbours who wanted to mow her lawn, her inability to locate the grave of her dead cat and the suspicion that 'somebody' might have moved it, the difficulty of keeping a check on her collection of milk bottles, a man she used to work with who had come spying on her, the closing of a branch of Sainsbury's near her old office — it was all jumbled up in a great flood of complaint The doctor was used to patients going on in this way, so he only half listened while examining her and taking her blood pressure and wondering what on earth to do with her. She told him that she was due for another check-up at the hospital soon, so that rather took things out of his hands. No doubt Strong's boys would suggest something. In the meantime he urged her to look after herself and to get more to eat — she was much too thin.

'Oh, I've never been a big eater,' Marcia declared with her usual pride. 'But nobody can say that I don't keep a good table. You should just see my store cupboard.'

'I'm sure you're an admirable housekeeper,' said the doctor diplomatically, 'but you must promise me that you'll go home and cook yourself a really good meal. Not just a cup of tea and a bit of bread and butter, Miss Ivory. I don't know what Mr Strong is going to say when he sees you looking so thin.'

The mention of Mr Strong's name had the desired effect and Marcia assured the doctor that she would go back at once and cook something. All the way home she thought of Mr Strong and the kind of meal the surgeon would most likely be having this evening — steak, perhaps, or a nice bit of fish, salmon or halibut, with fresh vegetables from his garden. She was sure there were vegetables in that garden although she had not been able to see the back of it when she had gone to look at his house last year. It might be possible to catch a glimpse of beans and lettuces or cabbages and broccoli — Marcia's gardening days were so long past that she had no clear recollection of what vegetables would be in season. Should she go there now on a bus and make sure? Perhaps there was a side entrance to the house which would give her a view of the back garden
...

It was beginning to get dark and while she hesitated a bus drew up at the stop, illuminated like some noble galleon waiting to take her on a voyage of discovery. Inside the brilliantly lit interior, women who had come from late-night Thursday shopping in the West End chatted and compared the things they had bought — wasting their money, Marcia thought, choosing an empty seat in the front and holding herself aloof from the chattering women.

When she got to the stop for Mr Strong's house, she realized that even if she could see the vegetable garden it was now too dark to discern what was growing there, and anyway she had forgetten why she had wanted to see them in the first place. And perhaps there wasn't a vegetable garden, just a lawn with a herbaceous border or even a tennis court. But it didn't matter, she thought, as she approached the house, for now she saw that it, like the bus, was brilliantly lit up — resembling a great liner in mid-ocean rather than a galleon, what she imagined the
Queen
Mary
might have been — and that elegantly dressed people were alighting from cars and walking up the drive. The Strongs were obviously giving a party.

Marcia stationed herself on the pavement opposite, instinctively choosing a dark corner under a tree, away from the street lamp. Was it a dinner party or an evening party? She did not feel capable of guessing what kind of an evening party, for she could only think of 'wine and cheese', which seemed altogether unworthy of Mr Strong.

When she had been in hospital, there had naturally been talk in the ward about the various consultants when they came on their rounds, and speculation as to their wives and families. Some of them, of course, had married other doctors or nurses, women they had met in the course of their work, but it was always said that Mr Strong had done rather better than that. It was rumoured that he had married the daughter of a 'diplomat' who had a house in Belgrave Square. Marcia had never quite believed this, not wishing to speculate overmuch on Mr Strong's wife anyway, but now, watching the guests arrive, she was prepared to believe that there might be something in it. In a kind of dream, she stood watching until there was a gap in the cars arriving and it seemed that no more would come.

Then suddenly she found herself thinking about Norman and the way she had seen him standing on the pavement opposite her house when she was putting milk bottles into her shed. She had resented his being there, resented what seemed his prying curiosity into her affairs. Could it be that her standing outside Mr Strong's house would be seen in the same way?

She looked up at the house and then crossed the road, so that she could hear voices and laughter coming from a room on the ground floor. Then she moved slowly on, making her way back to the bus stop. As luck would have it, the right number bus was just coming up to the stop and she had to run to catch it.

The exertion was almost too much for her and she collapsed on to the nearest seat, unable to collect her wits for a moment to ask for her ticket But after a while she recovered, partly out of self-defence and resentment at the loud patronizing voice of the conductress's 'All right, dear?'

'Of course I'm all right,' she said stiffly.

But when she got home she realized that going to the doctor and then on to Mr Strong's house had made her more tired than usual. Well, it would stand to reason ... she found herself thinking of the kind of thing Norman said. And 'it takes it out of you' — that was another of his expressions.

Sitting down at the kitchen table, she remembered that she had promised the doctor that she would go home and get herself a good meal but the thought of having to cook was too much for her. Elderly people didn't need much food, anyway — surely the doctor must realize that? A cup of tea, of course; that was a stimulant, and now that she had discovered tea bags it was so much less trouble. At the supermarket she had bought a packet of 144 tea bags which she reckoned ought to last her about seven weeks all but one day. But long before that she would be at the hospital; the card indicating the date of her appointment at Mr Strong's out-patients' clinic was on the mantelpiece. Not that she needed reminding, especially not after what she had just seen.

The thought of it impelled her to go to the store cupboard to fetch a suitable tin of something. There was still a tin of pilchards left over from Snowy's larder, but perhaps luncheon meat would be better? It had a little key to open it, but before she had gone very far the metal tab broke off and she lacked the strength to manoeuvre it any further. So she abandoned the half-opened tin on the draining board and contented herself with a couple of digestive biscuits, which was really all she wanted.