Excellent Women (5 page)

I
WAS
formally introduced to Mrs. Gray at the jumble sale on the following Saturday afternoon. She was behind one of the stalls with Winifred, who was looking very pleased and animated, rather reminding me of a child who has asked ‘Will you be friends with me?’ and has been accepted.

Mrs. Gray was, as I had supposed from my first brief glimpse of her, good-looking and nicely dressed, rather
too
nicely dressed for a clergyman’s widow, I felt, remembering many such whom I had met before. Her quiet manner suggested self-sufficiency rather than shyness and there was something secret about her smile, as if she saw and thought more than she would ever reveal.

‘You will have to tell me what to do,’ she said, addressing Winifred and me, ‘though I suppose jumble sales are the same the world over.’

‘Oh, we get a tough crowd,’ said Winifred gaily. ‘This isn’t a very
nice
part, you know, not like Belgravia. I’m afraid a lot of the people who come to our sales never put their noses inside the church.’

‘Do you think they have jumble sales in Belgravia?’ asked Mrs. Gray; ‘that hadn’t occurred to me.’

‘I believe St. Ermin’s has one occasionally,’ I said.

‘One likes to think of Cabinet Ministers’ wives attending them,’ said Mrs. Gray, with what seemed to me a rather affected little laugh.

Winifred laughed immoderately and began rearranging the things on the stall. She and Mrs. Gray were in charge of the odds-and-ends or white elephant stall. The stuffed birds made a magnificent centre-piece, surrounded by books, china ornaments, pictures and photograph frames, some with the photographs still in them. Winifred had removed the Edwardian lady and the young clergyman, but others had escaped her and now seemed to stare out almost with indignation from their elaborate tarnished settings, an ugly woman with a strained expression—perhaps a governess—a group of bearded gentlemen in cricket clothes, a wayward-looking child with cropped hair.

‘Oh, look,’ I heard Winifred exclaiming, ‘those poor things! I thought I’d taken them all out.’

‘Never mind,’ Mrs. Gray said in a soothing tone as if she were speaking to a child, ‘I think the people who buy the frames don’t really notice the photographs in them. I remember in my husband’s parish …’

So her husband had had a parish, I thought. Somehow I had imagined him an Army chaplain killed in the war. Perhaps he had been elderly, then? After this I could hear no more, for Mrs. Gray’s voice was quiet and Sister Blatt was upon me. I was glad that I should have her help at the clothing stall, always the most popular. Each garment had been carefully priced, but even so there would be arguments and struggles among the buyers and the usual appeals for one of us to arbitrate.

The sale was being held in the parish hall, a bare room with green painted walls, from which an oil painting of Father Busby, the first vicar, looked down to bless our activities. At least, we liked to think of him as doing that, though if one examined the portrait carefully it appeared rather as if he were admiring his long bushy beard which one hand seemed to be stroking. A billiard table, a darts board and the other harmless amusements of the boys’ club stood at one end of the hall. Behind the hatch near the door Miss Enders, Miss Statham and my Mrs. Morris, apparently no longer troubled about birettas and Popes toes, were busy with the tea urns. Julian Malory, in flannels and sports jacket, supported by Teddy Lemon and a few strong ‘lads’ waited near the doors to stem the rush when they should be opened. Father Greatorex, wearing a cassock and an old navy blue overcoat of the kind worn by Civil Defence workers during the war, stood uncertainly in the middle of the room.

Sister Blatt looked at me and clicked her teeth with irritation. ‘Oh, that man! How he gets on my nerves!’

‘He certainly is rather useless at jumble sales,’ I agreed, ‘but then he’s so good, saintly almost,’ I faltered, for I really had no evidence to support my statement apart from the fact that his habitual dress of cassock and old overcoat seemed to indicate a disregard for the conventions of this world which implied a preoccupation with higher things.

‘Saintly!’ snorted Sister Blatt. ‘I don’t know what’s given you that idea. Just because a man takes Orders in middle age and goes about looking like an old tramp! He was no good in business so he went into the Church—that’s not what we want.’

‘Oh, come now,’ I protested, ‘surely you’re being rather hard? After all, he
is
a good man….’

‘And Mr. Mallett and Mr. Conybeare, just look at them,’ she went on in a voice loud enough for our two churchwardens to hear. ‘It wouldn’t do them any harm to soil their hands with a little honest toil. Teddy Lemon and the boys put up all the trestles and carried the urns.’

‘Yes, Sister, we found everything had been done when we put in an appearance,’ said Mr. Mallett, a round jolly little man. ‘It was quite a blow, I can tell you. We had hoped to be able to help you ladies. But they also serve who only stand and wait, as the poet says.’

‘You certainly came early enough,’ said Sister Blatt with heavy sarcasm.

‘The early bird catches the worm,’ said Mr. Conybeare, a tall stringy man with pince-nez.

‘Now, Mr. Conybeare, I hope you’re not suggesting that they’re any worms here,’ giggled Miss Statham from behind the hatch. ‘You’ll catch something else if you don’t get out of the way. And don’t think I’m going to give you a cup of tea till you’ve earned it….’

But at that moment, Julian, watch in hand, ordered the doors to be opened. The surging crowd outside was kept in check by Teddy Lemon and his supporters, while Julian took the threepences for admission; but once past him they rushed for the stalls.

‘Talk about landing on the Normandy beaches,’ said Sister Blatt, ‘some of our jumble sale crowd would make splendid Commandos.’

The next few minutes needed great concentration and firmness. I collected money, gave change and tried at the same time to rearrange the tumbled garments, settle arguments and prevent the elderly from being injured in the crush.

Sister Blatt was free with advice and criticism. ‘You’ll never get into that, Mrs. Ryan,’ she called out derisively to a stout Irishwoman, a Roman Catholic incidentally, who was always in the front of the queue for our sales.

Mrs. Ryan laughed good-humouredly and clutched the flowered artificial silk dress she had picked up. Her soft brogue beguiled me, as always, so that I listened, fascinated, not knowing what she said. I just caught the words ‘a lovely man’ as she went off with her dress.

Sister Blatt was laughing in spite of herself. ‘Well, really, that woman has a nerve, inviting me over to
their
jumble sale next week and telling me that their new priest, Father Bogart, is a lovely man! As if that would attract me!’

‘Oh, but think how it does and how it has done, that kind of thing. Where would the Church be if it hadn’t been for a “lovely man” here and there? It’s rather nice to think of churches being united through jumble sales,’ I suggested. ‘I wonder if the Methodists are having one too?’

‘Churches united through jumble sales?’ said Julian, coming up to our stall. ‘Well, we might do worse.’ He glanced round at the crowd, less struggling than it had been half an hour ago, with satisfaction. ‘You didn’t persuade your friends the Napiers to come?’ he asked me.

‘I’m afraid I didn’t try,’ I admitted. ‘They sent some things but somehow I just couldn’t imagine them here. It wouldn’t be the right kind of setting for them.’

Julian glanced round at the dingy green walls. ‘Well, I suppose we all of us think that we’re worth a better one.’

‘Except for Father Greatorex,’ said Sister Blatt spitefully. ‘He’s quite in his place here. He hasn’t done a thing all afternoon. And why doesn’t he take his coat off? He must be boiled.’

‘Oh, look,’ I said, ‘he’s taking tea to Miss Malory and Mrs. Gray.’

‘Well, that’s completely out of character,’ said Sister Blatt.

‘You can hardly blame him for wanting to do it,’ said Julian, watching the little group with interest. ‘I wonder if they have cakes? He would hardly be able to carry everything at once. I think I had better go and help.’

I saw him go to the hatch, come away with a plate of brightly-coloured iced cakes and then offer one to Mrs. Gray.

Sister Blatt and I looked at each other.

‘Well,’ I began rather doubtfully, ‘the vicar is always charming to new parishioners, or he ought to be. That’s a known thing.’

‘But
we
hadn’t got any tea,’ she pointed out indignantly. ‘I think it was extremely rude of him to ignore us like that. All because of a new face.

Make new friends but keep the old,

One is silver, the other gold…’

she recited. ‘Perhaps we shouldn’t value ourselves as highly as that, but all the same …’

‘Yes, I think he did rather forget his manners,’ I agreed. ‘Of course, Mrs. Gray is going to live in his house, you know, so perhaps he feels that the relationship between them should be especially cordial.’

‘Oh, rubbish! I never heard such far-fetched excuses.’

‘Oh-ho, jealous are you, Sister?’ said Mr. Mallett roguishly. ‘You’d better go and get your tea before all the cakes go.’

‘You mean before you and Mr. Conybeare eat them all,’ said Sister Blatt. ‘I expect you’ve been tucking in for hours.’

‘Now you ladies, run along. I’ll look after the stall,’ said Mr. Mallett, picking up a dress and holding it up against himself in a comic manner. ‘I’ll guarantee that business will look up now that I’m in charge.’

‘Yes, I think we can safely leave the stall now,’ I said, with a backward glance at the tumbled garments lying on the bare boards of the table. An old velvet coat trimmed with moth-eaten white rabbit, a soiled pink georgette evening dress of the nineteen-twenties trimmed with bead embroidery, a mangy fur with mad staring eyes priced at sixpence—these things were ‘regulars’ and nobody ever bought them.

At the tea hatch, too, trade had slackened and we were able to talk as we ate and drank. Mrs. Morris’s sing-song voice could be heard above the others: ‘Lovely
antique
pieces they’ve got. I said what about giving them a bit of a polish and
he
said oh yes a good idea, but
she
said not to bother, it was the washing up and cleaning that was the main thing.’

I knew that she was talking about the Napiers, but though my natural curiosity would have liked to hear more, I felt I could hardly encourage her. Is it a kind of natural delicacy that some of us have, or do we just lack the courage to follow our inclinations? ‘Of course he’s been in the Navy,’ said Mrs. Morris. ‘Yes, Lieutenant-Commander Napier was in Italy,’ I said in a rather loud clear voice, as if trying to raise the conversation to a higher level.

‘How nice,’ said Miss Enders. ‘My sister once went there on a tour, my married sister, that is, the one who lives at Raynes Park.’

‘Such a nice young man, he is, Mr. Napier,’ said Mrs. Morris. ‘Too good for her, I shouldn’t wonder.’

My efforts had obviously not been very successful but I did not feel I could try again.

‘The Italians are very forward with women,’ declared Miss Statham. ‘Of course it’s unwise to walk about after dark in a foreign town anywhere when you’re alone.’

‘Pinch your bottom they would before you could say knife,’ burst out Mrs. Morris, but the short silence that followed told her that she had gone too far. Strictly speaking, she was socially inferior to Miss Enders and Miss Statham; it was only her participation in parish activities that gave her a temporary equality.

‘Of course my sister had her husband with her,’ said Miss Enders stiffly, ‘so there couldn’t be anything like that.’

Sister Blatt let out a snort of laughter.

‘Excuse me …’ Julian came up behind us with some empty cups and saucers which he put down on the hatch.

‘Did you get some of my home-made sandwich cake, Father?’ asked Miss Statham anxiously. ‘I particularly wanted you to try it.’

‘Yes, thank you, delicious,’ he murmured absently.

‘I don’t think he did, you know,’ said Miss Enders to me in a low tone. ‘He only took a plate of fairies and iced buns.’

‘Perhaps Father Greatorex did,’ I suggested.

‘If you ask me, I think Mr. Mallett and Mr. Conybeare had most of it. They were the first to have their tea. And I did see Teddy Lemon take a piece.’

‘I’m sure he deserved a good tea,’ I said. ‘He worked very hard.’

‘Oh, yes, Mr. Mallett and Mr. Conybeare didn’t do a hand’s turn. Just got in everybody’s way as usual.’

The group started to break up and we went back to the stalls to tidy them. Another jumble sale was over.

Winifred came up to me, her eyes shining. ‘Oh, Mildred,’ she breathed,
‘what
do you think her name is?’

I said I had no idea.

‘Allegra!’ she told me. ‘Isn’t that lovely? Allegra Gray.’

I found myself wondering if it was really Mrs. Gray’s name, or if she had perhaps adopted it instead of a more conventional and uninteresting one ‘Wasn’t Allegra the name of Byron’s natural daughter?’ I asked.

‘Byron! How splendid!’ Winifred clasped her hands in rapture.

‘I’m not sure that it was splendid,’ I persisted.

‘Oh, but Byron was such a splendid romantic person,’ said Winifred, ‘and that’s the main thing, isn’t it?’

‘Is it really?’ I asked, still determined that I would not be forced to admire Mrs. Gray. ‘Doesn’t one look for other qualities in people?’

‘Oh, Mildred, you’re so practical,’ laughed Winifred. ‘Of course I’ve always been silly and romantic—it’s just how you’re made.’

I thought of the Christina Rossetti in its limp green suede cover.
When I am dead, my dearest .
. . when there had perhaps never been a dearest. Weren’t we all a little like that? I began to consider the people I knew in terms of splendour and romance. I had certainly known very few who could be described as splendid and romantic. Clergymen could and should be left out of it straight away, I felt, and that didn’t leave many others. Only Rocky Napier and Everard Bone, perhaps, who were both good-looking in their different styles. Rocky had charm, too, and must have seemed a splendidly romantic person to a great many women.