Crampton Hodnet (14 page)

Lady Beddoes was talking so volubly to Anthea that it was some time before she noticed the other women in the room. Anthea had to interrupt her gently so that they could be introduced. She shook hands with them all and said what a good thing it was that it was fine and how glad she was to be coming to open the garden party. She loved doing things like opening garden parties, but now that poor Lyall was dead nobody asked her, because she wasn’t important enough by herself. She then turned to Mrs. Cleveland and said what lovely lupins she had in her front garden and how she wished she had a garden in Chester Square.

Miss Doggett, who had imagined herself having the monopoly of Lady Beddoes, decided that it was time to make a move. ‘I think we should be going across to the vicarage,’ she said. ‘Time is getting on.’

‘Yes, isn’t it,’ sighed Lady Beddoes, who seemed to have heard only Miss Doggett’s last remark and was evidently taking it in a rather different way from that which had been intended, it seems only the other day since Simon was a little boy going to Eton for the first time, and look at him now, he’s taller than I am.’

Simon began talking rapidly about something else. If they weren’t careful, Mama would really get going and begin to tell them about that time in Warsaw when Marshal Pilsudski had taken him on his knee and asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, and how Simon had said ‘Prime Minister of England’ and everyone had thought it so wonderful that a child should know what a Prime Minister was, at an age when most boys though’t only of being engine drivers. She never told this story quite correctly, Simon felt, and although he liked nothing better than to be the centre of interest, he realised that as people were waiting for her to open the garden party, they would hardly be able to give the story the attention it deserved. He would save it for another time when they had nothing else on their minds.

The Wardells and Mr. Latimer were waiting at the vicarage.

‘Oh, Lady Beddoes, how
good
of you to come!’ exclaimed Mrs. Wardell, rushing forward to greet her. ‘Ben, isn’t it good of her?’

‘Yes, indeed it is,’ said the vicar, although he was thinking that, as she had been invited and had promised that she would, it was hardly so good of her to have come. As always on these occasions he was fussing about, watch in hand, thinking of the last-minute things that ought to be done.

Those chairs, Agnes, for the tea garden,’ he called out in an agitated voice. ‘Did you send Lily upstairs to bring some down from the bedrooms? I don’t think there are going to be enough.’

‘Oh, I expect everything will be all right,’ said his wife vaguely. ‘Why, Miss Morrow’s wearing a new dress!’ she exclaimed suddenly. ‘What a pretty shade of green.’

‘This is only the second time I’ve worn it,’ said Miss Morrow, casting down her eyes demurely.

‘I think you will probably be too hot,’ observed Miss Doggett. ‘It is a woollen material, isn’t it?’

i’m sure it’s going to rain,’ said Mr. Latimer gloomily.

‘Oh, well, it will do the garden good,’ said Mrs. Wardell, ‘and we’ve several pairs of galoshes here and an old mackintosh of Ben’s that he uses for fishing. I shan’t mind getting wet,’ she said, indicating her costume of green shantung, which was too long in the skirt. ‘I love the rain. I sometimes walk for miles in it.’

‘Now, now, it’s nearly time,’ said the vicar. ‘We shall go out onto the lawn through the french windows, Lady Beddoes. I shall open the proceedings with a prayer; it is customary, you know,’ he added, as if in apology. ‘And then one of the church wardens will introduce you.’

‘And then you’ll make your speech, darling,’ said Simon. ‘And remember it mustn’t be too long, because people can never hear things in gardens anyway.’

‘Well, I’m sure nobody would ever want to hear anything I have to say, even if they
could
hear it,’ said Lady Beddoes obscurely.

‘Let us pray,’ said the vicar in a voice that was intended to be sonorous but succeeded only in being harsh and startling. ‘O Lord God Almighty, look down and bless our humble endeavours and the cause for which we are working. Grant that we may be successful in our enterprise and that we may have fine weather, so that we may enjoy the fruits of the earth, which Thou in Thy mercy hast vouchsafed to us. Amen.’

Much safer to have used one of the orthodox prayers for such occasions, thought Mr. Latimer scornfully; the vicar’s efforts at extemporising were rarely successful. What fruits of the earth were they hoping to enjoy this afternoon? Early potatoes? There was certainly nothing else in the garden yet. His mouth twitched at the corners and he bent his head in a lower and more devout attitude, fixing his eyes on the root of a plantain which had been turned brown by weed-killer.

‘I do hope Mama remembers what it’s in aid of,’ whispered Simon, as his mother got up to make her speech. ‘She’s so hopelessly vague.’

But everyone agreed that it was a lovely speech. She looked so gracious, standing there in her pretty hyacinth-blue dress and her elegant hat, and her voice was so attractive, that people hardly noticed what she said. If they had not been so charmed by her manner and appearance, they might have realised that she had almost given the impression that the garden party was in aid of the poor in Poland, about whom she spoke with great feeling for nearly ten minutes. And then, perhaps realising that she had wandered from the point, for she had quite forgotten to refer to her written speech, she ended up by saying that there were really a lot of poor people everywhere who needed our help, especially in London—in the East End, she added, frowning a little, for London to her meant Belgravia and she had not really seen much sign of poverty there. We ought therefore to buy as many things as we could. She herself was certainly going to buy a
great
many things.

After the votes of thanks, Lady Beddoes was led round the various stalls by Miss Doggett, who seemed to have taken possession of her, so that the vicar was compelled to follow at a respectful distance with the crowd of less important people. He walked along with his head bent, his eyes on the little holes which Lady Beddoes’s high heels were making in the lawn.

Lady Beddoes and Miss Doggett kept up a running flow of conversation during their walk round the stalls. Miss Doggett was gratified to find that Lady Beddoes spoke to her quite unreservedly about all kinds of things. Simon was always saying how unwise it was to let his mother travel anywhere alone because she always began telling her life story to the most impossible people, but Miss Doggett did not know this, and even if she had known it she would have assumed that it was a natural sympathy between two gentlewomen of Belgravia and North Oxford which made their conversation flow so easily.

They even began talking about the late Sir Lyall Beddoes.

‘My husband would have liked these,’ said Lady Beddoes, fingering a pair of hand-knitted blue bed-socks. ‘It was always so cold in Poland in the winter, and he didn’t like a hot water bottle. Blue was his favourite colour.’

‘How you must miss him,’ said Miss Doggett in a mournful tone.

‘Well, I do in a way,’ said Lady Beddoes doubtfully. ‘I mean, it seems
odd
without him, though I’ve got used to it now. When you’ve been married to somebody for nearly twenty years, you get so used to seeing them about the house. When they’ve gone it’s as if you’d moved a piece of furniture and left only a blank wall to look at, if you see what I mean,’ she added.

Of course Miss Doggett agreed that she did see, but she could not help being surprised that Lady Beddoes should compare the death of her husband to the removal of a piece of furniture. It was not, somehow, what one expected.

‘Funnily enough,’ Lady Beddoes went on, ‘we had a large mahogany sideboard in Warsaw that Lyall was very fond of, but we didn’t bring it to England with us, and Lyall only lived in Chester Square for eighteen months. Perhaps it was an omen, though Lyall wasn’t a large man. He was quite small, not really as tall as I am in high heels.’

‘I’m sure you were devoted to him,’ said Miss Doggett, doing the best she could, for she hardly knew what to make of this talk about sideboards. It was not the usual way in which widows spoke of their late husbands.

‘Oh, yes, I grew to be very fond of him,’ said Lady Beddoes casually, ‘and I tried to be a good wife, though I’m afraid I didn’t always succeed very well. But of course one only
really
loves once in one’s life, I think,’ she added with a sigh.

And then there they were at the cake stall, so that it was impossible to continue a conversation about so intimate a matter. While Lady Beddoes bought several cakes, ones which Simon would like because she was
sure
he didn’t get enough to eat, Miss Doggett pondered over the conversation they had had.

Could it be that Lady Beddoes hadn’t really cared very much for her husband? She had almost implied that there had been Someone Else. Miss Doggett pursed her lips and shook her head. She was remembering what Anthea had told her of Lady Beddoes’s origins. She had been nothing at all, just the daughter of an English Professor teaching in Warsaw, and she herself spoke Polish fluently. Perhaps in Warsaw, one never knew… . Miss Doggett began to imagine all sorts of rather dreadful things, but then she suddenly remembered that, after all, Lady Beddoes lived in Chester Square, and she visualised the smooth, unbroken line of the houses, all joined together, so that their inhabitants must be like one huge family, united in respectability, morality and the perfection of the upper classes. This was England, Miss Doggett’s England, and it would have been a great shock to her if she had detected any crack in its facade. For one terrible moment she had imagined that Lady Beddoes might be a crack, but when she looked at her, so calm and elegant, talking so charmingly to the stall-holders, she was ashamed of her suspicions. No doubt she had had several proposals of marriage since her husband died but had never been able to care for anybody else. She must have meant that when she had said that one only really loves once in one’s life.

‘Anthea is a
sweet
girl, isn’t she,’ said Lady Beddoes to Miss Doggett. ‘I always wish I could have had a daughter.’

Miss Doggett was just going to say that perhaps she soon would have when a heavy spot of rain fell on her nose. ‘Come quickly, Lady Beddoes,’ she said. ‘It’s going to rain. We must shelter.’

A crowd of people was soon hurrying into the vicarage, stalls were covered up and tea things hastily abandoned to the fury of the downpour.

‘What a pity, what a pity,’ said the vicar, flapping his hands in confusion. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he added, as if feeling that the inadequacy of his prayers was to blame for the break in the weather. ‘We’d all better go into the house.’

But Miss Morrow, who had somehow got separated from Miss Doggett, made for a little tool shed, which offered a nearer shelter than the crowded vicarage dining-room and drawing-room.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ said a voice from among the lawn-mowers and rakes and spades.

Miss Morrow peered into the gloom and made out the red hair and clerical collar of Mr. Latimer. ‘I didn’t follow you,’ she said ingenuously. ‘It seemed the nearest place to shelter.’

‘Quite,’ said Mr. Latimer.

‘Conversation in a tool shed,’ went on Miss Morrow, in a pleasant, babbling tone. ‘That would be a nice title for a poem, wouldn’t it? A modern one, I think, something rather obscure. Mr. Auden or Mr. MacNeice might be equal to it.’

‘You do talk a lot of nonsense,’ said Mr. Latimer quite kindly.

‘Well, I thought nonsense was better than nothing. I feel there’s something awkward about a silence in a tool shed, and I hate silences if they’re awkward.’

‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ Mr. Latimer said. ‘I’ve bought a car.’

They looked at each other. It was as if he had announced his return to sanity after the madness of the proposal.

Now, thought Miss Morrow, we shall behave like normal beings again. He won’t rush out of the room after Miss Doggett rather than be left alone with me. So ends a Great Love. In a tool shed. She found the idea rather pleasing and began to laugh.

‘Why is it funny?’ he asked.

‘Oh, the car? I don’t really know,’ she said, ‘but I was just hoping that it might be rather an old-fashioned car, a high two-seater Morris-Cowley, perhaps.’

‘As a matter of fact it is something like that.’

‘Open cars are very draughty,’ said Miss Morrow gravely. ‘You must be careful not to catch cold when you go out in it.’

‘It will be convenient for visiting people,’ said Mr. Latimer.

‘I expect you will often be popping over to see your friend the vicar of Crampton Hodnet,’ said Miss Morrow.

‘Look, it’s stopped raining,’ said Mr. Latimer. ‘I think we might venture.’

‘Perhaps we had better not be seen emerging
together
from the tool shed,’ suggested Miss Morrow. ‘I’m becoming quite a woman of the world, you see.’

She picked her way across the sodden lawn and slipped quietly into the drawing-room, where Lady Beddoes, Miss Doggett and all the more important people were having tea. The conversation was dominated by Simon, who was explaining in a loud, clear voice and simple, non-political language the points he proposed to make in his speech at the Union on Thursday.

What a dull young man, thought Miss Morrow, who had managed to find an empty chair near Miss Doggett. Imagine being married to somebody like that. But of course Simon would never marry Anthea, she realised, with a sudden flash of worldly insight. He wanted to do things that people would remember, great things, and making a woman happy could hardly be called that. It was something that any man might do, a dull don, a bank clerk, a seller of vacuum cleaners, a clergyman, an undergraduate who had never made a speech at the Union. And of course one would hardly expect a person like Simon to be content with that. He probably didn’t want to get married at all. Why should he? Young men of twenty-one didn’t usually think about being husbands. They wanted a fine, romantic love to fill in the time when they were not busy with more important things, like making speeches or writing clever political pamphlets. But women, poor things, wanted more than that.