Some Tame Gazelle (3 page)

‘Yes, in a way I am, but I find it fairly easy to remember them so far. I came across Miss Liversidge this afternoon in the village and have persuaded her to address a meeting of the Mothers’ Union. She seems to have had a great many interesting experiences.’

Belinda smiled. The idea of Edith Liversidge addressing the Mothers’ Union amused her. One never knew what she might say to them and she would hardly set them a good example of tidiness. Dear Edith, she was always such a mess.

‘She’s a kind of decayed gentlewoman,’ said Harriet comfortably, helping the curate to trifle.

‘Oh
no
, Harriet,’ Belinda protested. Nobody could call Edith decayed and sometimes one almost forgot that she was a gentlewoman, with her cropped grey hair, her shabby clothes which weren’t even the legendary ‘good tweeds’ of her kind and her blunt, almost rough, way of speaking. ‘Miss Liversidge is really splendid,’ she declared and then wondered why one always said that Edith was ‘splendid’. It was probably because she hadn’t very much money, was tough and wiry, dug vigorously in her garden and kept goats. Also, she had travelled abroad a good deal and had done some relief work after the 1914 war among refugees in the Balkans. Work of rather an unpleasant nature too, something to do with sanitation. Belinda hoped that Harriet wouldn’t mention it in front of Mr Donne. ‘Of course she has made a home for poor Miss Aspinall, who’s a kind of relation,’ she said hastily. ‘I always thinks it’s very unselfish to have a comparative stranger to live with you when you’ve been used to living alone.’

‘Ah, well, we ought to share what we have with others,’ said Mr Donne with rather disagreeable unctuousness.

‘Oh, Mr Donne, I can’t imagine you sharing your home with Connie Aspinall,’ Harriet burst out, ‘she’s so dreary.’

Mr Donne smiled. ‘Well, perhaps I didn’t mean to be taken quite literally,’ he said.

‘Now she’s a decayed gentlewoman if you like,’ said Harriet. ‘She can talk of nothing but the days when she used to be companion to a lady in Belgrave Square who was a kind of relation of one of Queen Alexandra’s Ladies-in-Waiting.’

‘She plays the harp very beautifully,’ murmured Belinda weakly, for poor Connie was really rather uninteresting and it was hard to think of anything nice to say about her.

‘Let’s have coffee in the drawing-room,’ said Harriet rather grandly. At one time she had wanted to call it the lounge, but Belinda would not hear of it. She had finally won her point by reminding Harriet of how much their dear mother would have disliked it.

In the drawing-room they arranged themselves as before, Harriet on the sofa with the curate and Belinda in one of the armchairs. Belinda took out her knitting and went on doing it rather self-consciously. It was beginning to look so very much like an undergarment for herself. The curate’s combinations must be ‘Meridian’, she thought. It was nice and warm for pyjamas, too, in fact Harriet herself wore it in the winter. The close fabric fitted her plump body like a woolly skin.

While they were drinking their coffee, Harriet went to the little table by the window and took up the bowl of pears which Belinda had noticed earlier in the evening.

‘Now you must have a pear,’ she insisted. ‘Do you know, when we were children our mother used to say that we could never keep fruit on the sideboard.’

Belinda would have liked to add that they couldn’t now, and that it was only because they had been having the curate to supper that there had been anything more than a withered apple or orange in the bowl this evening. Harriet’s appetite was just as rapacious in her fifties as it had been in her teens.

The curate helped himself to a pear and began to peel it. He seemed to be getting rather sticky and there was some giggling and interchange of large handkerchiefs between him and Harriet.

Belinda went on quietly with her knitting. The evening promised to be just like so many other evenings when other curates had come to supper. There was something almost frightening and at the same time comforting about the sameness of it all. It was odd that Harriet should always have been so fond of curates. They were so immature and always made the same kind of conversation. Now the Archdeacon was altogether different. One never knew what he might say, except that it was certain to be something unexpected and provocative. Besides, it was really more suitable to lavish one’s affection on somebody of a riper age, as it was obviously natural that one should lavish it on somebody. Indeed, one of Belinda’s favourite quotations, taken from the works of a minor English poet, was

Some tame gazelle, or some gentle dove:

Something to love, oh, something to love!

Belinda, having loved the Archdeacon when she was twenty and not having found anyone to replace him since, had naturally got into the habit of loving him, though with the years her passion had mellowed into a comfortable feeling, more like the cosiness of a winter evening by the fire than the uncertain rapture of a spring morning.

Harriet’s tittering laugh disturbed Belinda’s quiet thoughts. ‘Oh, Mr Donne, I’m not quite as stupid as you think! I used to know some Latin.
Ah quotiens illum doluit properare Calypso
,’ she retorted, flinging at him triumphantly the last remnants of her classical education.

Can she be hinting at me to go? he wondered, but then decided that she had probably long ago forgotten the meaning of the line. All the same it was getting late. He mustn’t outstay his welcome and the elder Miss Bede had yawned once or twice, although she stifled it very politely.

Despite protests from Harriet, they were soon in the hall and the curate was putting on his overcoat. Harriet was fussing round him like a motherly hen.

‘Why, of course, it’s the garden party tomorrow,’ said Belinda, suddenly feeling very tired. ‘There will be such a lot to do.’

The curate sighed with an affectation of weariness. ‘I shall be almost glad when it is over,’ he said. ‘These functions are always very tiring for us.’

Harriet smiled understandingly, as if including herself in the select brotherhood of the clergy. ‘Never mind,’ she said, ‘there will be the coconut shies. I always love them. And you’ll get a good tea.
I
am in charge of the tea garden.’

‘Oh,
well
, Miss Bede …’ the curate moved towards the front door and Belinda was able to slip quietly into the background. She went into the drawing-room and began to tidy it, plumping up the cushions and removing the remains of the pears they had eaten. She put her knitting into its cretonne bag and took the parish magazine to read in bed. There was a nice new serial in it, all about a drunken organist and a young bank clerk, who was also a lay reader and had been wrongfully accused of embezzlement. And of course the Archdeacon’s letter was always worth a second reading.

CHAPTER TWO

Although the Misses Bede had a maid they were both quite domesticated and helped her in various small ways, clearing away the breakfast things, dusting their own bedrooms and doing a little cooking when they felt like it. On this particular morning, however, which was the day of the vicarage garden party, Belinda decided that she could miss doing her room with a clear conscience, as there were so many more important things to be done. It was unlikely that Miss Liversidge would be visiting them and putting them to shame by writing ‘E. Liversidge’ with her finger, as she had once done when Emily had neglected to dust the piano. Typical of Edith, of course, going straight to the point with no beating about the bush. Not that she could talk either, with dog’s hairs all over the carpet and the washing-up left overnight.

This morning, as she went about humming
God moves in a mysterious way
, Belinda wondered what to do first. She had to arrange for some deck-chairs they had promised to be taken over to the vicarage. The cake she had made to be raffled – the Archdeacon was broad-minded and didn’t disapprove of such things – must be finished off with its mauve paper frill. The seams of Harriet’s crêpe de Chine dress had to be let out, as Harriet seemed to have grown stouter since she had last worn it. Perhaps that was the most important thing of all, for Harriet intended to wear it that afternoon.

While she was sewing, Belinda began to wonder what everyone would be wearing at the garden party. Agatha Hoccleve would of course wear a nice suitable dress, but nothing extreme or daring. As the wife of an archdeacon she always had very
good
clothes, which seemed somehow to emphasize the fact that her father had been a bishop. Then there was Edith Liversidge, who would look odd in the familiar old-fashioned grey costume, whose unfashionably narrow shoulders combined with Edith’s broad hips made her look rather like a lighthouse. Her relation, Miss Aspinall, would wear a fluttering blue or grey dress with a great many scarves and draperies, and she would, as always, carry that mysterious little beaded bag without which she was never seen anywhere. Undoubtedly the most magnificent person there would be Lady Clara Boulding, who was to perform the opening ceremony. It was of course fitting that this should be so, as she was the daughter of an earl and the widow of their former Member of Parliment, an excellent man in his way, although he had never been known to speak in the House except on one occasion, when he had asked if a window might be opened or shut.

By now Belinda had tacked the seams of the dress and was fitting it on her sister, who twitched about impatiently, while Belinda ran round her with her mouth full of pins.

Harriet was having one of her tirades against the Archdeacon.

‘All that nonsense in the parish magazine about him needing a holiday,’ she stormed. ‘If that’s so, why doesn’t he go to Karlsbad with Agatha? Unless she wants a holiday away from him – you could hardly blame her if she preferred to go alone.
I
certainly would.’

‘But surely Agatha isn’t going to Karlsbad
alone
?’ asked Belinda eagerly.

‘Well, their Florrie told Emily that she and cook aren’t looking forward to managing the Archdeacon by themselves, so it looks as if he isn’t going with her. I think it would be nicer if he went too, then we might have a good sermon for a change. I never heard anything so depressing in my life as that horrid thing he read last Sunday – all about worms, and such stilted language. Edith Liversidge walked out in the middle, and’ – Harriet chortled at the memory of it – ‘one of the churchwardens ran after her with a glass of water, thinking she felt faint or something.’

‘But Harriet,’ said Belinda gently, ‘Henry was reading a passage from
Urn Burial
, I thought he read it magnificently,’ she sighed. Of course the real truth of the matter was that poor Henry was too lazy to write sermons of his own and somehow one didn’t think of him as being clever in a theological kind of way. That is, no scholarly study of any of St Paul’s Epistles had as yet appeared under Archdeacon Hoccleve’s name, although he had once remarked to Belinda that he thought the Apocalyptic literature remarkably fine.

Harriet continued her tirade. ‘If it weren’t so far to walk,’ she said, ‘I should certainly go to Edward Plowman’s church; he does at least preach good homely sermons that everyone can understand. He works systematically through the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes, I believe; much the most sensible thing to do. Besides, he’s such a nice man.’

‘But Harriet,’ said Belinda anxiously, ‘he
is
rather high. He wears a biretta and has incense in the church. It’s all so – well –
Romish
.’ Broad-minded as she was, Belinda was unable to keep a note of horror out of her voice.

Harriet became defiant. ‘Edward Plowman is such a fine-looking man, too,’ she declared. ‘Like Cardinal Newman.’

‘Oh, no, Harriet,’ protested Belinda. ‘Cardinal Newman had a much bigger nose. And besides, he really did go
over
, you know, and I’m sure Edward Plowman would never do that.’

‘Oh, then I must have been thinking of somebody else,’ said Harriet vaguely. ‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘Mr Donne could certainly preach better sermons than the Archdeacon, I’m sure.’ She pulled the dress off over her head. ‘You needn’t bother to oversew the seams – they won’t show.’

When Belinda had finished the sewing she decided that she had better go over to the vicarage to see if she could help Agatha in any way. It did not take her long to reach the vicarage gate, as it was very near her own house. When they had finally decided to spend their old age together, Harriet had insisted that they should be well in touch with the affairs of the parish. Belinda had not felt so strongly about it, although when Archdeacon Hoccleve had been made vicar she was naturally glad that their house was so near his. She imagined friendly poppings in and out but somehow, dear Henry not being quite like other clergymen, it hadn’t worked out like that. And then of course there was Agatha. It was difficult to be completely informal with her, either because of her father having been a bishop or for some more subtle reason, Belinda had never been quite sure which.

She walked up the vicarage drive. The Archdeacon had a hankering after the picturesque and would have liked a haha, a ruined temple, grottoes, waterfalls and gloomily overhanging trees. He fancied himself to be rather like one of those eighteenth-century clergymen suffering from the spleen, but Agatha was a practical woman, who liked neat borders and smooth lawns, flowers in the front garden and vegetables at the back. So the vicarage garden, as Belinda saw it on this September morning, was admirably suited to a garden party but there were no grottoes.

Belinda walked up to the front door, but before she had time to ring the bell Agatha appeared, carrying many bundles of brightly coloured paper. She was wearing a plain but well-cut dress of striped Macclesfield silk and looked rather harassed.

‘How are you, Agatha?’ asked Belinda. ‘I’ve come to see if there’s anything I can do to help and I must see the Archdeacon about the Sunday School children’s recitations.’

‘Henry is having a bath,’ said Agatha shortly.

Surely rather late? thought Belinda. It was past eleven and oughtn’t an archdeacon to rise earlier than that?

‘So of course you can’t see him now,’ continued Agatha in the same tone of voice, which implied that she had the privilege not allowed to Belinda of seeing an archdeacon in his bath. ‘You will have to wait,’ she concluded, with a note of something like triumph in her voice.

‘Why, of course,’ said Belinda meekly. Agatha always seemed to be most formidable in the mornings. In the evenings she was often quite affable and would talk about begonias and the best way to pickle walnuts.

‘You seem very busy,’ said Belinda, moving towards Agatha as if to help her. ‘Can’t I do something while I’m waiting for the Archdeacon?’

Agatha nodded reluctantly. ‘I was going to arrange the garden-produce stall,’ she said, thinking that Belinda Bede was rather a nuisance although she no doubt meant well. ‘You might help me to pin the coloured paper round it. I thought green and orange and perhaps red would show off the vegetables rather nicely.’

‘What lovely marrows!’ exclaimed Belinda, catching sight of them among a heap of miscellaneous garden produce. They were gleaming yellow and dark green, with pale stripes. Surely the poor soil of the vicarage garden could not have produced such beauties?

‘Yes, they are fine,’ agreed Agatha. ‘They are from Count Bianco’s garden. He brought them round himself early this morning.’

‘Poor old Count Bianco,’ said Belinda gently. Ricardo Bianco was an Italian count, who for some unexplained reason had settled in the village many years ago. He was a gentle melancholy man, beloved by everyone for his generosity and courtly manners and he had admired Harriet Bede for more years than could now be remembered. He had the habit of asking her to marry him every now and then, and Harriet, although she always refused him, was really very fond of him and often asked his advice about her gardening problems. Gardening and his childhood in Naples were his chief topics of conversation, though he would occasionally enjoy a melancholy talk about his old friend John Akenside, who had been killed in a riot in Prague, when he had just been sitting at an open-air café taking a glass of wine, as was his custom in the evening, doing no harm to anybody. ‘Ricardo is so
devoted
to Harriet,’ said Belinda, giving the words a full meaning which was not lost on Agatha Hoccleve.

Agatha went rather pink and said angrily, ‘Count Bianco comes of a very old Italian family. I always think he and Lady Clara Boulding would be very suited to each other, but of course her father’s earldom was only a nineteenth-century creation,’ she mused.

Belinda was rather annoyed at this. ‘I don’t think Lady Clara and Ricardo would be at all suited to each other,’ she said, repeating his Christian name with triumph. ‘Harriet and Ricardo have a great many tastes in common, especially gardening. Why, whenever he comes to our house he nearly always brings with him some roots or seeds …’ here Belinda broke off, aware that this sounded rather ridiculous, but Agatha did not seem to have noticed. She was just opening her mouth to say something else, when their attention was diverted by somebody calling out in a loud voice.

Belinda recognized the voice as that of the Archdeacon. He was leaning out of one of the upper windows, calling to Agatha, and he sounded very peevish. Belinda thought he looked so handsome in his dark green dressing-gown with his hair all ruffled. The years had dealt kindly with him and he had grown neither bald nor fat. It was Agatha who seemed to have suffered most. Her pointed face had lost the elfin charm which had delighted many and now looked drawn and harassed. She had rheumatism too, but Belinda realized that she would have to have something out of self-defence and perhaps with the passing of the years it had become a reality. One never knew.

The voice went on calling. It seemed that the moths had got into the Archdeacon’s grey suit and why had Agatha been so grossly neglectful as to let this happen? The tirade was audible to anyone in the garden or in the road beyond.

Belinda turned away from the window and began to hang festoons of green paper along the top of the stall. The gardener, who was weeding one of the flower beds nearby, also turned away. He could not bear the Venerable Hoccleve, as the servants called him. He was a bit mad in his opinion, wanting yew trees on the lawn and something he called a ha-ha, which no gardener had ever heard of.

Eventually Agatha returned to the business of decorating, looking extremely annoyed, but not mentioning the incident. She began to take down all Belinda’s decorations and arrange them another way. Belinda thought it better to say nothing, so they went on with their work in silence. At last Belinda, who felt rather uncomfortable, drew Agatha’s attention to the arrangement of the marrows.

‘I think they would look rather effective in a kind of pyramid, if it could be managed,’ she suggested, thinking to herself that it would obviously be better if Agatha were to humour dear Henry a little more. But of course Belinda could hardly give an archdeacon’s wife a few hints on how to manage her husband.

At that moment one of the marrows fell over and the pyramid had to be rebuilt. While they were doing this, the Archdeacon came out on to the lawn.

‘Good morning,’ he said, ignoring his wife. ‘I see that I have kept you waiting, but so many annoying things have happened that it was quite impossible to be ready any sooner.’ He darted a quick, angry glance at Agatha.

Belinda spoke hastily in order to change the subject.

‘I’ve brought a list of the recitations the children have learnt, so you can choose which ones you think best from it,’ she said, knowing perfectly well that he would find fault with the pieces and ask why they had not been taught more Middle English lyrics or passages from Gower and Chaucer.

He smiled with an affectation of weariness and then sighed. ‘Ah, yes. There is so much to be done before this afternoon. I haven’t been able to sleep for thinking about it. Nobody can possibly know how much I have to do,’ he went on, with another meaning glance at Agatha.

‘Perhaps if you had got up earlier, Henry,’ she said sharply. ‘Florrie called you at eight. I was up at
seven
.’

The Archdeacon laughed and began to pace about the lawn with his hands in his pockets. Belinda was embarrassed and began to walk slowly towards the house. Eventually the Archdeacon followed. They walked together into his study. He was smiling to himself in a sardonic way that Belinda found very disconcerting. It was unsuitable for a clergyman to look sardonic. Perhaps Harriet was right to prefer the more conventional Mr Plowman and Mr Donne.

There was an awkward silence and to break it Belinda descended weakly to flattery.

‘I did enjoy hearing you read
Urn Burial
last Sunday,’ she said. ‘It is so
very
fine and you read it so well.’