Poor Caroline (41 page)

'But, Miss Denton-Smyth, I think I must suggest that
really it is no use now, just at present, while trade is so bad,
trying to go on.'

'I intend to go on, Mr. Guerdon.'

'But the vote of the Board has gone against you; Macafee
and I both think it wiser to dissolve - write off our debts -
and so on.'

'Well, of course, gentlemen. You can both resign. But I
don't believe that you can prevent me from reconstituting
the company. I shall have to take legal advice, because I
am not quite sure
of exactly
what are the proper steps at this
moment. But I can assure you of this, that whether we call it the Christian Cinema Company or something else, and
whether you choose to go or to remain, the work goes on.
I'm not going to give up now. If you won't help me, I shall
carry on alone. That is all I have to say.'

Unnerved by open defiance, Mr. Guerdon looked round
the room. But Macafee was wriggling into his shabby coat
and gave him no help. Mr. Guerdon clung to the formula with which his position had supplied him.

'There being no further business, the meeting is now adj
ourned,' he said.

§2

Caroline breathed hard as she climbed the stairs. They
always seemed to grow steeper while she was at the office.
She sat down for a minute on the bottom step of the third
flight.

From the basement came the shrill tuneless voice of Mrs.
Hales singing 'The Church's One Foundation.' Caroline
shivered. She wondered why she had ever thought of Mrs.
Hales as a nice woman. Why she had even left her some
thing in her will! But then you could never really trust any
one in that class. Not really. In the old days in Yorkshire, of course, it had been different. She remembered Martha
Whiting, who had been with her mother's family for twenty-
nine years, a really faithful soul. People used to have faithful souls. Nowadays they watched instead to see how they
could take advantage of you.

Her old friends were dead. Whoever said that old age
was a happy time? Death and sickness lay in wait, not for
oneself, but for one's whole generation. The 'Deaths' column
in
The Times
became like a casualty list. One never knew
who would fall next in the long-drawn war with Time. The
only security lay in young friends - like Father Mortimer.

The thought of Father Mortimer lent her strength, so that
she climbed the last steps quite quickly and entered her
room. Once inside she looked round suspiciously. She was sure that Mrs. Hales had been there, spying on her, reading her papers, and perhaps trying on the hats that the girls had
sent her from Marshington. Breathing heavily, she crossed
to her desk, and looked to see whether the paper-weight she had placed over her letters had been moved. When she left that morning, she had set it down with the words 'A Present
from Bridlington' towards the bed. Now they faced the fireplace. Mrs. Hales had been upstairs, then, spying and ferret
ing. 'She wants to know about my will, I expect,' Caroline muttered. The thought of her landlady's curiosity exasper
ated her.

She ought to look for other rooms.

'I mustn't allow this to get on my mind,' Caroline told
herself. It was absurd to let one's landlady become a terror.
'Oh, Lord, make us all charitable to one another, and give
me a sense of humour, even about Mrs. Hales,' she prayed.
Still, that paper-weight had been a good idea. It was as
well to know where you were.

The evenings were growing milder. It was really extrava
gant to light the fire. And now that she was not paying for
service and had to tidy the grate for herself in the morning,
that was a consideration. Besides, she loathed having to
carry down the ashes through Mrs. Hales's kitchen. It was humiliating, after having been on such different terms as a
lady lodger.

She slowly removed her heavy feathered hat, and fluffed out the curls along her forehead. There always seemed to be
much to do when she came in at night. She took off her
coat and stretched it carefully on a hanger behind the door.

She unfolded her scarf and replaced her shoes by bedroom
slippers. She set the kettle to boil, and produced
from the
cupboard a loaf, a jagged lump of margarine in a smeared
saucer, a small pot of pinkish chicken-and-ham paste, and a
small slice of stale Madeira cake, saved from a sixpenny tea
for which she had reluctantly paid at a recent meeting. It
had seemed a pity to waste the cake. After a nice cup of tea, she would feel less tired.

All the t
ime she made her preparations and spread her
paste across the bread and margarine, she held back by a
desperate effort of will-power the memory of the Board
meeting. She would not think about the company. When
she had eaten and rested she would turn to face her future.
Just now, she must rest, she must be tranquil.

It was the time of day she usually liked best. After an
hour's rest she would pull herself together and go to her
desk and mark the names of possible shareholders in a re-
port sent her by the Evangelical Reform Association. But
now she could sit and dream. She could think about her
Friend.

The knowledge of his existence provided her with a con
stant solace and occupation. Whenever she had nothing
else to think about she could re-live the memory of their last
meeting, embellishing it with small added joys invented by
her fancy. That time she went to see him in hospital, for
instance, and he had come swinging down the long ward on
his crutches, he had looked so happy, so young, just like a boy with his rebellious hair and his flapping blue dressing-gown. She had brought him a twopenny bunch of violets,
and he had seemed so delightfully pleased. He was a person
easily pleased by little things. He told her that his foot was
out of plaster of Paris and that he was to be allowed to walk
with a stick next day, and on Easter Eve he could go back to
the Clergy House to help Father Lasseter on Easter Day.

They were friends. She had said to him: 'I wish I could
do something to
help
you,
Father, as you've helped me,' and
he had suddenly looked so strange, as though he were happy
and excited and yet in some way sorrowful, and said, 'Why,
you have helped me, Miss Denton-Smyth. You've given me
a lovely thing.' So that was what he thought of her. She
had given him a lovely thing. She was getting old, but her spirit was still young. Age, after all, affected matter, not spirit. In spirit they belonged to the same generation. He realized that. Did he ever dream of her as she dreamed of
him? Ab
é
lard and H
é
loise were lovers. They too were
parted by fate's cruelty, yet from her nunnery Héloise cried
out to Abelard. She, Caroline, was trapped in the nunnery of old age, and he, like Abelard, was a priest bound by his
duty; yet they could give each other lovely things.

She hurried over the thought that what he actually had
given her was a little wad of four ten-shilling notes screwed
together. She had not meant to ask for money, but some
how, finding herself confronted by his sympathy, she could
not help telling him about Mrs. Hales, and the lack of
imagination displayed by her Marshington relatives, and the
increasing parsimony of Eleanor, who had even asked her
why she did not draw a salary from the C.C.C., Eleanor was

effici
ent, but rather hard. She believed in competence and
order and asking for one's rights. It had been a comfort to tell Father Mortimer all about her. Even the most charit
able Christians had to relieve their feelings sometimes.

Of course it did not matter accepting an occasional small loan from Father Mortimer, because one day she was going
to make him rich. For each pound that he had lent her, she
could repay him back a hundredfold. He would be a bishop,
perhaps an archbishop, before she had finished with him.
How wonderful he would look in lawn sleeves with a swing
ing gold cross and an episcopal ring.

But even before then, she would make him happy. He
loved beautiful things. She took pride in her discernment
of his tastes. No wonder he was attracted by Rome, she
thought, when he found such pleasure in deep rich colours,
and heavy fabrics, and stately rooms. She would take a
house for him in Little College Street. She knew the house
exactly, an old house with high, beautifully proportioned
rooms and an uneven roof.

She had found a new occupation. On her wanderings
through the City she house-hunted for her friend. She knew
of a labour-saving flat at Kensington, looking across the
open spaces of Holland Park. He should have a study there warmed by central heating, and a drawing-room where he
could give her tea - China tea, in delicate Crown Derby
cups, with bread and butter, thin as wafers.

He should have chambers in the Temple, up queer creak
ing wooden stairs, with a double door on which former
tenants had carved their initials, and oak panelling round
an oval sitting-room. There would be deep window-seats in his study, on which one could sit among piles of crimson cushions, looking out to Fountain Court, watching the sparrows scattering water from their wings, and spring coming
up the green gardens behind.

Sometimes she chose for him a country cottage. An old
number
of Country Life
had given her splendid pleasure. She
found Tudor Cottages and Elizabethan Farm Houses, Old
Timber, Walled Gardens, and excellent Trout Fishing. She was not certain if he liked trout fishing, but the sport was at
least suitable for the dignity of a priest. She would have
walled gardens where William pears could grow. Her father
had said that to eat a William pear properly you ought to
sit all night to catch it at the moment of its perfect flavour. She could go down to visit him there, and there would be
bees blundering among the hollyhocks and clarkia and
lupins, and a rock garden, frothing with white arabus. She
rocked backwards and forwards in her creaking chair, pic
turing the garden of his country cottage.

She must have fallen asleep, because she heard as though
from very far away the tap-tap-tapping that might have
been a woodpecker in the plantation at the end of the
garden, but which was really Eleanor at the door.

She woke up with a shock of dismay to find the girl stand
ing looking down at her.

'Hullo, Cousin Caroline,' cried Eleanor. 'Can I come in?'

Eleanor seemed younger and prettier than Caroline had
ever seen her look before. Into the lapel of her tweed coat
were pinned three perfect, slender, tightly rolled pink rose
buds. Her cheeks were flushed to match her flowers, and her breath, coming a little fast after her run upstairs, in
creased her appearance of
youth and eagerness.