Summer at the Haven (13 page)

Next Miss Blackett summoned Tom to her. “Tom,” she said, “you know when you came first, you were told it would probably only be for the summer, as I always intended to find someone older and more experienced when I could. Well, now I have found someone. She is a widow lady who wants a home, and she is coming quite soon, but you can stay your month out. You have been a good boy on the whole and worked well, and you can tell your grandmother I said so.”

“He can make himself useful till Mrs Smith settles in,” she thought.

Tom showed neither dismay nor pleasure at the news. He looked at her with his wide impersonal stare and said nothing. He could stand still and silent sometimes for quite long periods, as an animal will do, without any need to make himself felt, yet felt he inescapably always was.

“Do you understand what I am saying, Tom?” said Miss Blackett sharply.

“Farmer Jackson's Clover, she calved last night, Lady Miss Blackett, 'tis a fine little heifer, as like Clover as can be,” said Tom, and went out of the room.

Everyone except Miss Blackett and Leila Ford were sorry to hear that Tom was going. “But he doesn't seem to mind at all,” said Miss Brown to Mrs Thornton, “I don't understand it, he has always seemed so fond of us and so happy.”

“I think it's just because he doesn't look before and after and pine for what is not.”

Dorothy Brown looked blank. She had taken to a hearing aid but it was not always very helpful.

“I mean,” said Mrs Thornton hastily, “that he just lives in the present moment. When it comes to the point I expect he'll show he's sorry; but I shouldn't count on it. He probably just accepts that things happen to him, some of them good, some of them bad, and that's that, as we used to do, didn't we, when we were children?”

“Did we?” said Dorothy vaguely. “Well, anyway, I was wondering if we could give Tom a parting present before he goes. It's nice when one leaves a job to be given a present, don't you think?”

“What a good idea,” said Mrs Thornton warmly. “Had you thought of anything in particular?”

“I wondered if a new pullover might be welcome,” said Dorothy, “the weather's getting colder and he's still got only his old patched thin one.”

Miss Brown's proposal caught on; the pullover, a nice bright green one, was bought at Darnley's wool shop, and The Haven's champion knitters, Mrs Perry and Mrs Nicholson, worked hard at producing a pair of socks and scarf to go with it. In the end everyone except Leila contributed towards a whole new outfit. Miss Blackett's feelings were again confused. She could hardly do less than fall in
with the old ladies' charitable plan, she thought, nor did she grudge Tom the clothes exactly, but she felt too much fuss was being made of the boy. She decided it would be best to give the things to him as quietly as possible, and although he was staying on till the end of the month, to give them before the Treasure arrived. So, the evening before this arrival, which she was keenly anticipating, Miss Blackett called Tom into the sitting-room after supper where the ladies were all assembled and where, laid out on the table, were the pullover, socks, scarf and, besides, a pair of stout jeans and some strong shoes, also a large glaring check handkerchief contributed by Gisela.

Mrs Thornton was feeling a little nervous. It occurred to her that Tom might resent being given clothes. She wished it had been a drum, yet it was certain that he needed them.

“Tom, said Mrs Blackett, “the ladies and I are giving you a present, or rather several presents, because you are to leave us soon and you have done your work here well. I hope you will take care of these nice clothes, for you are a very lucky boy to have them given to you, you know.”

“Oh, dear,” thought Mrs Thornton, “why need she have put it like that? And she sounds as if she were scolding him instead of giving him a present, yet I know that it was she who bought him these very good shoes.”

Tom simply stood and stared – motionless he stood, and Mrs Thornton held her breath until at last he stretched out a hand and very gently touched the soft wool of the jersey, but otherwise he still did not move or speak.

“Go off and put them on and let us see you in them,” said Mrs Perry, and gave him a little push.

At that he hooted with delight, gathered up everything and bounded out of the room, Mrs Thornton gave a sigh of relief.

“He might have said ‘Thank you',” said Miss Blackett.

“Oh, he will,” said Mrs Perry, “dear Miss Blackett, he was so excited – that was really his thank you.”

When he came back, it was seen to the ladies' satisfaction that the clothes fitted well. He had tied the scarf crossways over his chest and knotted Gisela's hideous handkerchief round his neck. He moved as in a trance and, going up to Mrs Thornton, took her by the hand and led her to the old piano. She thought she knew what it was that he wanted and, after a little hesitation, she struck up the opening bars of the Mazurka from
The
Gondoliers.

And then Tom began to dance round the room, lifting his feet in their new shoes high in the air, clumsily but always in time. At this point Leila Ford got up noisily and stumped over to the television.

“It's time for ‘Dallas',” she said loudly, and switched on, not waiting for the warden's permission.

Miss Blackett, however, took no notice of this infringement of her rules. She felt she had had enough of the evening, and of Tom in particular, and, leaving the room, she sought the solitude of her office and shut the door upon everyone and everything.

In the sitting-room the double entertainment continued – Leila squatting huge and central before the horrific goings on across the ocean, and Tom, wrapt in his grotesque yet somehow rather beautiful dance, circling round her. The idea suddenly occurred to Mrs Thornton that he and Leila were the only two completely unselfconscious people in the room, and that this constituted a sort of bond between them. Leila, with her dreadful perverted innocence, was a caricature of Tom. This thought disturbed her and she brought the dance to an end with a final chord, and closed the piano.

Then Tom shook hands twice all round, except of course for Leila who, ignorning him, continued to glare at “Dallas”. When he came to Gisela she said wistfully:

“The handkerchief, it is from me, is it not very, very pretty?”

“It be
lovely
!” said Tom with great feeling. It was the
first time he had spoken and Gisela felt satisfied. He turned towards the door and Mrs Thornton got up to go with him, but he rushed away without waiting for her, and she just caught a vanishing sight of him doing a handturn on the landing. It was the last she saw of him, for in the morning he was nowhere to be found.

Miss Blackett was angry. That Tom should take it into his head to disappear when he was still needed and after having had such kindness shown him appeared to her to be thoughtless, ungrateful and again most unreliable behaviour. She was not placated by Mrs Perry who said: “He'll have run home to show his Granny his new clothes, he'll be back before very long. I'm certain.” She was right in the first supposition but not in the second.

As the day wore on and no Tom appeared, Miss Blackett grew angrier – Mrs Smith, the Treasure, was due to arrive in the late afternoon and the warden resented the fuss and distraction Tom's absence was causing.

Gisela was in tears. “That poor Tom,” she cried, “he will have been over run and killed in the road, I think!”

“Nonsense, Gisela,” said Miss Blackett, “stop being so foolish, if an accident had happened, we should have heard about it from the police.” But she rang up the vicar and explained the situation.

“I am so sorry to trouble you, Vicar, but I think we should know what has happened to the boy, and I have no one else to turn to. We think he has most probably run home. If so, perhaps you could make him see how irresponsibly he has behaved and that unless he comes back at once and apologizes, it may affect the reference I can give him – that is, of course, if you should have any time to spare and can get over to Sturton.”

The vicar, who still felt some responsibility for Tom, promised to investigate. He himself had no doubt but that Tom had gone home; as to the efficacy of Miss Blackett's threats and reproaches, he was much more doubtful. He
found old Mrs Hobb sitting close to her little log fire with her hands, usually so busy, folded placidly in her lap.

Yes, Tom had come home, but was now off again on an errand for herslf, she informed him quietly. She offered no further details.

“But he should not have run off like that, Mrs Hobb, Miss Blackett is very cross about it. He had caused anxiety and everyone is so surprised that he should have disappeared without warning and without saying goodbye. He was supposed to be staying the month out, you know.”

“I be sorry, sir, that the lady be put out, but 'tis a wonder to me that it should be so. Tom said as there was a party and music and handshaking and, beyond all, those good new clothes as a present for his leaving, and so, to be sure, he left.”

There was a little silence, then the vicar said, “I see.”

He felt he could not give Miss Blackett's message as she had worded it, but that it was only fair to suggest that Tom should come back for the stipulated time.

“Maybe yes, maybe no,” said the old woman. “'Twas a saying when I was young that ‘fine clothes foretell a flitting' – Tom had the fine clothes and the flitting's done, and happen can't be undone and, sir, I be thinking I be for a flitting myself soon, it'll be further afield than the lad's and the fine clothes for it be laid ready in the press yonder.”

She looked up at the vicar and saw that he knew what she meant.

“I'll be glad to have Tom by me till the time comes for it won't be long now, but if the lady
truly
wants him, maybe he'll go.”

“She seemed to know quite simply and certainly that death was coming to her and when it would come,” said the vicar afterwards to his wife, “and I believed her, and I wish you could have heard the way she said, ‘If the lady
truly
wanted him.' I couldn't really convey it to Miss Blackett, though I tried.”

But the warden would only have Tom back on her own terms, and he did not come. She felt justifiably aggrieved, and resolved to think no more of him. Yet an aggravating wish to see him once again persisted, a sense of something unresolved that might have been straightened out to some unspecified advantage – though whether to him or to herself, was not clear. She put away such muddled unprofitable feelings, but in the days to come caught herself thinking of the boy with a sort of dull regret.

Tom's unconventional departure was viewed wistfully by Mrs Perry, Mrs Nicholson and Dorothy Brown, emotionally by Gisela and pleasurably by Leila. Mrs Thornton, thinking it all over, with the memory of his dance and that last handstand on the landing, acknowledged to herself that she was not at all astonished.

“There was nothing ordinary about Tom,” she said to Meg Norton.

“No,” assented Meg, “and yet nothing extraordinary either, he always reminded me of a character out of one of our plays.” Mrs Thornton thought that Meg often said rather surprising things.

“‘My gentle Puck,' are you thinking of him?”

“Oh, no, not Puck,” Meg said and said no more. She had never told anyone of the time when Tom had rescued her from despair down by the copse.

“A mixture of Puck and Ariel, perhaps, together with a bit of one of the clowns or rustics to humanize him,” laughed Mrs Thornton. “Anyway, a timeless natural being and therefore you're right, Meg – certainly to be found in Shakespeare, though, now I come to think of it, considering how he left us, I can't help remembering the tales my old nurse used to tell me about Brownies –

‘Brownie has got a cowl and coat

And never more will work a jot.'

I wonder what will become of him.”

“He'll be all right,” said Meg with conviction, “we need not worry about Tom, but I shall miss him.”

“I think we all shall in our different ways,” said Mrs Thornton.

MRS SMITH
, the Treasure, was a small wisp of a woman with quick mouselike movements. She was everything that Tom had not been, completely predictable and amenable and anxious to do what was required, and Miss Blackett told herself that she was very pleased with her. She had, it must be admitted, one annoying habit. When spoken to she almost always repeated the last few words of the speaker like an irritating echo.

“I would like you to go to Darnley this morning to do the shopping.”

“To do the shopping.”

“You will remember that Miss Brown is decidedly deaf.”

“Decidedly deaf.”

This habit proved a barrier to any prolonged conversation and, besides, Mrs Smith was always on the move. If asked to sit down she was the sort of person who always sits on the edge of her chair, ready to pop off again. But undoubtedly she was a treasure and seemed only too eager to be ordered about by everyone from the warden downwards.

“That Mrs Smith, she is no better than a commuter,” remarked Gisela gloomily to Mrs Perry who looked puzzled.

“What do you mean, Gisela?' she asked.

“You put in the words – so, and out come they again – so, and always she does what she is told.”

“Oh, you mean a computer,” said Mrs Perry, “well, computers are very useful, but I see they may not be very good company.”

“Me, I am not staying,” said Gisela, “now that I know my English so well, I go home. I go perhaps before Christmas comes.”

“Oh, dear! said Mrs Perry. “That is some time before your year is up, do stay with us until the spring.”

“Yes, yes, I go, Mrs Perry, it was OK while Tom was here, but with a commuter – NO.”

The successor to Miss Dawson's room arrived soon after Mrs Smith, Miss Long was a protégé of Mr Martin's. She was only in her early seventies, a retired secretary and still active and there seemed no very good reason why she should have come to The Haven. Miss Blackett privately thought that it was because Mr Martin found it convenient to have her there since she sometimes helped him out when he was particularly busy. Indeed she was seldom actually in the Home for she appeared to have many acquaintances in the district and she was inclined to adopt a patronising air towards the other residents. Mrs Thornton had hopes of her at first, for she noticed a row of rather beautifully bound volumes of poetry on a shelf in her room. But Miss Long, seeing her eyeing them, laughed and pulled one out. It was merely a box with the lid made to open like a book cover.

‘My last employer gave them to me when he took up a post abroad, for he knew I had always admired them. He used them like files; bills went into Browning, circulars into Chaucer, letters into Longfellow, and so on. I do the same and I find it most convenient.”

Mrs Thornton went away intrigued but sorrowful.

Even St Luke's little summer was now over, the leaves were still mostly thick on the trees but autumn colours were
rife. The first autumn gale had blown down Lord Jim's cross – the ground had been too hard for Tom to have fixed it in securely. Miss Blackett let it lie and soon the little yellow leaves from the thorn tree would cover it up.

“The warden seems to have aged lately, don't you think?” remarked Lady Merivale to Miss Bredon after the autumn committee meeting was over. “Really she looks older than some of her charges, certainly than Mrs Perry.”

“Shrivelled up, rather than old,” said Honor Bredon. “You'd have thought that now she has Mrs Smith to take a good share of the work off her shoulders, it would have been the opposite.”

The same thought struck Dorothy Brown one evening. She had lately managed it that if there was a travel film on television she would cajole Leila into going to bed early, never actually a very difficult task. Then she would slip downstairs again to enjoy herself. This particular evening there was a lovely film about Petra, “the rose red city”, and she had it to herself which she preferred, for then she could think herself right into the scenes before her without disturbing interruptions. She had discovered – alas, far too late – what she would have liked to have done with her life. She would have been a traveller, even perhaps an explorer or an archaeologist, for she gloried especially in the ruins of ancient cities. She secretly collected select travel brochures over which she pored with a wistful pleasure. She was lost in excitement over this film when Miss Blackett came in at the regulation time to turn it off. Luckily it was just about to finish. There was something about the way the warden plodded across the room, not even noticing that Dorothy was there, that caught her attention. On a sudden impulse, for she always had been and still was an impulsive creature, Dorothy Brown said:

“I've been watching such a wonderful travel film, Miss Blackett, don't you ever want to go abroad? I'm sure you deserve a good holiday, and now that Mrs Smith has come,
once she is thoroughly settled in, couldn't you take one?” She really felt full of pleasure at the idea. “Do, do think about it,” she added.

Miss Blackett was quite startled. “How very odd of Miss Brown to spring this upon me so eagerly,” she thought. “Could she want to get rid of me for any reason?” The suggestion that The Haven could get on perfectly well without her she found particularly displeasing.

“It's quite out of the question, Miss Brown,” she said, “besides I've never liked foreign places.” Actually she had never been out of England except for a day trip across the Channel years ago.

“But their faces are so interesting,” said Dorothy, “so different from ours, at least they were in Greece, I remember.”

“I said
places
not
faces
,” shouted Miss Blackett.

Really, it was too tiring to have to talk to Miss Brown at the end of a long day. But Dorothy continued, for she could hardly bear it that anyone who could travel should not do so. “I'm sure it could be managed,” she said, “why not just send for some brochures – there are marvellous tours to be had nowadays and really quite reasonable.” But Miss Blackett shook her head and left the room, shutting the door behind her with what was almost a slam, so that Dorothy felt the vibrations, which affected her disagreeably. She sighed with pity. This vehement negation of a possible joy depressed her.

As for Miss Blackett, the gust of annoyance aroused by Dorothy Brown's proposal soon died down. She dismissed her suggestion as she had dismissed the memory of Miss Dawson, Mrs Perry's offer of a kitten and any further encounter with Tom. She thought instead that it was time to prepare for winter and winter at The Haven presented problems, as to how to keep the old ladies warm and the bills down, with lofty Victorian rooms built for large coal fires, long passages, wide landings and outside pipes that easily froze.

“Don't forget to put your watches back,” she announced on the last Saturday in October. “Christmas will be here before we know where we are.”

“Before we know where we are,” echoed Mrs Smith. Gisela snorted. She knew where
she
would be by Christmas.

The announcement was received gloomily by all the ladies except Leila and Mrs Nicholson. Leila alone welcomed an extra hour of night and the difference between summer and winter really meant little to her now – she could sleep and eat during both, but perhaps rather more so when the days were short and cold. But the others disliked the prospect of the long dark evenings and penetrating winds and damp, and cruel frosts and snow. Only Mrs Nicholson did not really mind much, for the prospect of winter at The Haven had its compensations. She could go to bed early if she liked, with her lovely hot water bottle and her books. Carol and Bob had given her an electric blanket, of which she was much afraid, and had said: “Now, Granny, you'll be beautifully warm all over and you won't need a bottle, in fact it's not quite safe to have one with the blanket.” But you can't cuddle a blanket. And now she could read as late as she liked without Carol bustling in with exclamations and offers of a hot drink. She usually had two books on hand, a good story and a holy book, that was besides her Bible, of course, Nevil Shute, Georgette Heyer and Monica Dickens were among her favourite storytellers. But she was always faced with a dilemma. If she left her Bible reading and her holy book to the last, she was apt to fall asleep over them, yet, on the other hand, to end the day with a novel did not seem either quite reverent or comfortable. This night, which was a little solemn because it was the last night of summer time, she read her story first, but resolutely laid it aside before she had even begun to feel drowsy.

Mrs Perry had been planting her bulb bowls that day and
now, before she went to bed, she patted down the fibre once again lovingly. “Sleep well for the next two or three weeks,” she said to them, “and then get on with your growing.” She did not like to think of the cold damp weather ahead, for she knew it was certain to bring her those tiresome bronchial attacks which got a little worse every year and, unlike her bulbs, she could not at her age look forward to much of a renewal of life in the spring. But, she told herself, the less she thought about that the better, and she was planning a winter knitting marathon for her family.

Mrs Thornton had by now reached
The
Tempest
in her Shakepeare reading to Meg Norton and, like Austen, Elizabeth, Nell and Jake, she was filled anew with amazement at its all-embracing richness. She had just read Prospero's most famous speech and paused to look up and share the wonder of it with her friend, but saw that she was asleep. She looked frailer and older when her eyes were shut. There was no colour in her face, and this emphasized the still beautiful bone structure. She looked like a carved figure on a tomb, and at the thought Mrs Thornton felt a sudden pang. Mrs Langley and Miss Dawson had gone from their little company so recently – was Meg to be the next? “We are such stuff as dreams are made on. And our little life is rounded with a sleep.” She repeated the lines to herself but the lovely words had lost their power to please. They now seemed menacing and dreary and she closed the book and gently left the room.

Behind her own door a deep depression engulfed her. She made no effort tonight to count her blessings. She did not feel at home yet in Mrs Langley's room but missed her attic with its sense of seclusion, and yet with the pleasant feeling of Tom just across the landing. Yes, she missed Tom curiously much and pervasively. Here, in this room, she was not immune from Mrs Nicholson's radio next door, and their tastes did not coincide. She could even hear Miss
Brown's too, for this was always turned up loudly because of her deafness, and Mrs Thornton did not like to complain. Not that this was distracting her now, for both radios were silent as it was growing very late, yet she did not feel in the least like bed. She looked from the window after a little while and saw that Meg's light had been extinguished. Had it not been, she would have gone to her again. She felt anxious about her, or rather she supposed it was for herself, as if death should come to Meg soon she knew that she would not grieve for
her
as she was almost sure that she would welcome it. No, it was for herself she feared. She could not afford to lose Meg whom she had come to love. The years had robbed her of too much. It seemed another life, a different, incredibly rich world in which she had once lived among so many friends and, above all, where she had been supported and enlivened day in, day out, by the love, companionship and need of her husband. Compared to that lost solid world, existence at The Haven was poverty-stricken and flickering – here, where this little group of premature ghosts shuffled round waiting for the end. There was no comfort at all in the realisation that this slow dissolution was natural and to be expected by the majority. What sentimental rubbish was sometimes talked about old age – at its best it could only be called a bad job.

She had been standing by the window where she had gone to look for Meg's light and now she turned away but without drawing the curtain. A chill late autumnal fog had risen and it seemed so in tune with her present mood that she almost welcomed it. She switched on the radio for the World Service to distract her thoughts, but this only made her fearful and miserble on a wider scale. She had longed for children once, but now she felt glad she had no close personal ties with the future. She often wondered how people like Mrs Perry and Mrs Nicholson, with grandchildren, were not more anxious and alarmed at what
appeared to be in store for them. But she supposed that the temperamental optimism of the one and the simple faith of the other supported them. Mrs Thornton, who possessed neither, gave herself up to black despondency. She began to get ready for bed.

By now everyone else was asleep and it must be confessed that the inhabitants of The Haven did not look their best at such a time. Had one been able to see them, only Meg Norton and Mrs Perry could have been viewed with pleasure. Meg, in her spotless plain white nightgown, lying very straight and still beneath a similarly spotless white coverlet, was more than ever like a medieval effigy. Mrs Perry, propped up with fat pillows to help her breathe more easily, was comely still, her cheeks faintly tinged with pink that matched her fluffy bedjacket. Leila Ford had replaced her wig with a mustard-coloured knitted cap, which had slipped sideways, exposing part of her shining bald pate. She lay on her back and snored with her thick lips hanging loosely open revealing two or three old fangs of teeth. Her skin was wrinkled, leathery and grey, from the constant application of heavy make-up. She looked grotesquely ugly and pitiful, like some mythical monster.

Dorothy Brown next door was smiling in her sleep, the frowning strain of deafness gone from her neat pale face. Actually she was wandering among great red cliffs beneath a brilliant sky. Her thin grey hair lay across her flat chest in a childish plait, her cheeks were hollow and, with her teeth removed, her mouth was pinched and sunk. No one would have guessed that she was, almost every night, engaged in intrepid exploration.