Miss Hargreaves (20 page)

‘Is that you, Archer?’ she murmured.

‘Wandering,’ said Meakins, tapping his head unkindly.

‘You hold your tongue!’ I hissed again.

She was looking at me as though she had never seen me before.
As though she had never seen me before
.

‘Where am I?’ she murmured. And, looking at me as though struggling to remember, ‘Who–are you?’

‘Why,’ I said, ‘I’m Norman Huntley. You know me, Miss Hargreaves?’

The words were out of my mouth before I realized what I had said. Escape had been offered to me; I had rejected it. To this day I always believe that if I had not told her my name then; if I had been hard and denied all knowledge of her–she would never have troubled me again. Without my realizing it, the opportunity had been put into my hands; and I had thrown it away.

It was no good now. The moment she heard my name the bright expression came into her eyes; the old unquenchable spirit was returning.

‘Norman!’ she cried. ‘Norman’–then, suddenly with a burst of recognition–‘oh, my dear, dear boy! My head is throbbing so! Oh, for a cup of tea!’

‘Poor lady!’ said Meakins, no doubt remembering her half-crown. ‘Poor lady! You’d better help her home, Mr Huntley. You can see how she depends on you.’

Yes, one could see that; one did not need to be reminded of that.

‘Come along,’ I said to her. ‘You–you’d better take my arm.’

She rose slowly and came towards me. ‘Thank you, dear. I feel better now. Forgive me. I am an old woman. I get confused. It is the music in my brain; there is always music in my brain. How strong your arm is, dear! Where should I be–where
should
I be–without the life you put into me?’

‘I’d very much like to know,’ I said grimly.

We went out by the south door and walked slowly along the Cloisters towards the Close.

‘The beautiful autumn air,’ she explained. ‘What power it has to revive one!’ We came out into the Close. ‘This exquisite September sun,’ she murmured. ‘Ah, Michael, Michael! What fire you pour upon the old!’ She was as light as a leaf on my arm. ‘You know poor Agatha has gone?’ she said.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said lamely.

‘Ah, me! A lovely soul! So simple! So faithful to me! I have no friends left, Norman except you. Remember that, dear: always remember that.’

‘All right,’ I muttered. Did she realize that it wouldn’t be long before I had no friends left except her?

Suddenly she came out of this contemplative mood.

‘And now,’ she said briskly, ‘let us meet your dear parents. I called upon your father at the shop on my way to Evensong. What a truly
charming
man! One can easily see, dear, where you get your brains from. Such taste such a flow of eloquence! He asked me to come and have tea with you and your mother. Shall we walk or take a cab? Is it far? Yes? Yes? Don’t walk
quite
so fast, dear; and speak up, I beg you; I am a
little
hard of hearing in one ear, I cannot remember which. Look at the rooks! Oh, that I might flee away and be at rest!’

‘It would be nice,’ I said.

‘How often have I longed for it! But, alas, we are called into the world by the power of the Creator and must needs play our appointed part before the time comes for departure.’

We passed the Dean and Archdeacon Cutler. They stared at us for a moment, then hurriedly resumed their conversation.

‘A beautiful evening!’ observed Miss Hargreaves, as we passed.

The Archdeacon frowned at her.

‘No, of course’–he went on talking to the Dean–‘we can’t use the funds for–’

‘The fire of Michael is upon us all,’ remarked Miss Hargreaves to everybody in general.

‘What–what? Michael? Oh, yes–yes. I suppose so.’

We passed on. ‘Who on earth
is
that woman?’ I heard the Archdeacon mutter. ‘Relation of Huntley’s?’

The Dean laughed. ‘I really don’t know. But I thought she made quite a passable bishop, didn’t you?’

I heard them both laugh. Then we came to the north gate and Miss Hargreaves stopped by the trunk of a large elm that had just been felled.

‘Let us sit down for a moment,’ she suggested.

‘You’ll catch cold,’ I said.

‘Fiddlesticks! Colds are not caught; they are begged.’ She sat down and beckoned me to sit beside her. In the distance I could see the Dean and the Archdeacon looking at us. ‘Ah the autumn leaves,’ she exclaimed, ‘spinning earthwards, to their common home! Ah me, life is strange! Would–you care to hear my triolet on the leaves?’

‘Later,’ I said.

‘No, here. I would like the leaves to hear it too. A simple little thought, but expressed, I tell myself, not unworthily. Thought cannot be new, Norman; it is the expression that matters.’

She rested her chin in one of her hands, gazed dreamily at the leaves, and declaimed:

‘Sweet little leaves so brown and thin,

Sycamore, beech, oak, elm and lime;

Soon will your year again begin,

Sweet little leaves so brown and thin.

Sycamore, beech, oak, elm and lime,

Victims of winter, weather and time–

Sweet little leaves so brown and thin,

Sycamore, beech, oak, elm and lime.’

We took a taxi home. Apart from the fact that she was very tired, I really couldn’t bear walking down the High Street with that hat. As we came to number 38 I saw mother and father sitting at the tea-table. Jim wasn’t there, for which I was glad.

I unlocked the door and ushered Miss Hargreaves in. Owing, perhaps, to her interminable stream of talk, a curious stupefied feeling had overcome me. I didn’t much care about anything. Let it happen, I thought; whatever it is, let it happen. I don’t care.

I opened the dining-room door. Mother rose hastily, gulping down her tea when she saw Miss Hargreaves and the hat. Father looked up for a moment, said nothing at all, dropped three lumps of sugar into his tea, then looked down to the evening paper again.

‘I’ve brought Miss Hargreaves,’ I said. ‘I understand father asked her to tea.’

Mother forced a smile as Miss Hargreaves sailed valiantly forward.

‘So glad,’ she cried, extending her hand cordially, ‘to meet you! I have already had the pleasure of a chat with Mr Huntley amongst all the books. Books–books! My dear Mrs Huntley, where should we be without them?
You
, I can see at once, reverence literature as I do.’

‘Oh, yes. I like a good book,’ said mother shortly, fussing cushions into shape in her usual tea-party way and looking into the teapot. ‘I wish you’d told me you were bringing Miss Hargreaves,’ she said to me, ‘then we would have waited tea.’

‘Didn’t father tell you?’

‘Of course not.’

Father spoke for the first time. ‘Miss Holway, isn’t it?’

He offered her his hand which she took warmly. ‘How do you find the weather in your part?’

‘Oh, very fair–very fair!’

‘Let me see, you play the clarionet, don’t you? Now I’ve always thought that the clarionet wants very special handling. I’m thinking of giving a concert, and ’–

‘Oh, but the harp is my instrument, Mr Puntley.’ (I couldn’t make out whether she got his name wrong on purpose.) ‘I toy also with the piano and the organ. But I fear a clarionet is rather beyond me. I am always ready to learn, of course.’

‘H’m.’ Father munched a cream bun. ‘Can sell you a book on the clarionet, very cheap. Don’t think much of these buns, mother. Not enough cream in them. Are they Dumper’s?’

Miss Hargreaves sat down in father’s special old leather chair with the ash-trays on the arms. Her eyes caught an old photograph of me, taken when I was two. Full of curls and petulance. I hate it.

‘Norman?’ she murmured.

My mother nodded and rang the bell for Janie. Miss Hargreaves had taken the photograph from the mantelpiece and was studying it closely.

‘What
extravagant
curls! How proud you must have been!’

‘Yes,’ said mother shortly. ‘Not a bad baby.’

‘Children are
quite
certainly the arrows in the hand of the giant. Eh, Mrs Huntley?’

‘Could tell you a thing or two about giants,’ put in father, looking rather anxiously over to mother, who always scotches his yarns if she can. ‘Knew a giant once. Strange case. Grew every time he stretched. Melancholy chap, too. Said he’d eaten something from the garden, some weed, and that did it. It started with his legs one night when he stretched, feeling very tired. Then he yawned and he could never quite close his mouth after that. Positive chasm, that chap. He was a gamekeeper. Some weed, he said. Wife ate it, too. She died when she’d reached fourteen feet. Went on tour in a circus. Funny things happen. You never know, Miss Holway.’

‘Oh,
do
tell me what the weed was, Mr Puntley!’

‘Nothing in particular. Just a weed. Have some salad?’

He pushed a bowl of lettuce and cucumber towards her.

‘We’re waiting for some fresh tea,’ explained mother. ‘And don’t take any notice of Cornelius’ stories, Miss Hargreaves. Are you staying long in Cornford, by the way?’

‘I think of coming to live here. It would be an excellent place in which to spend the twilight of my days, near your dear boy, yourself, and that splendid cathedral. I shall give a few little musical parties. But one or two matters have to be arranged with Grosvenor first.’

‘We close at one on Thursdays,’ remarked father. ‘Norman, pass Miss Harton the anchovy paste.’

Janie came in and mother ordered some more tea rather curtly.

‘Talking about twilight,’ said father, who seemed to be in a very communicative mood that evening, ‘did you ever go to Norway?’

Miss Hargreaves, instead of answering, looked over to me. ‘I cannot remember,’ she said. There was an expression of uncertainty in her face. ‘
Did
I ever go, Norman?’ she asked.

I paused. How the hell should I know? But supposing ‘I think you did,’ I said, plunging wildly and hopefully.

‘Of
course
,’ she said instantly. ‘It all comes back to me now! Those beautiful fjords–the midnight sun–the folk-tunes on the long pipes and all the icy glamour of the Scandinavian
geist
! Shall I ever forget how–’

‘I was just going to say,’ continued father, ‘that before I was married–did you hear me, Dorothy?’

‘Yes, I heard you, Cornelius. Before you were married.’ She smiled indulgently as she took up some needlework. All the things that happened to father were before he met mother.

‘Before I was married I spent some time in Oslo. Now, there isn’t any twilight to speak of in those parts; you go from one thing to another. I found that this curiously affected one’s behaviour. Did you, Miss Harton?’

‘Oh–decidedly!’ She nodded her head rapidly.

‘How did it affect you especially?’ asked father.

‘Ah!’ she said. No more. But father seemed to understand.

‘H’m,’ he said. ‘Funny things go on. Have some salad?’

One of the most surprising things about Miss Hargreaves was the way she immediately took to my father and he to her. For what seemed hours they talked, neither paying much attention to the other, of course. Mother and I spoke hardly a word.

‘Yes, I should like to start an archery club,’ father lit his fifth cigarette. ‘Ever tell you, Miss Holton, how the poet Swinburne took to archery?’

‘I think not, Mr Hunkin. My name is Hargreaves, by the way.’

Mother sighed.

‘Amazing!’ said father. ‘He made his own arrows, you know, and used them to write with as well.
Atalanta in Calydon
was written entirely with arrows, Miss Hargreaves. He’d take the manuscript, pin it to the board, and fire at it. Any words that the arrows pierced, he’d take out. Like that. You know the verse:

O, thy luminous face

     Thine imperious eyes,

O the grief, O the grace,

     As of day when it dies!’

‘Ah, yes,’ she said. ‘I remember. Beautiful!’

‘Well, before Algernon Charles aimed at that verse, it ran:

O thy lustrous and luminous face,