A Few Green Leaves (10 page)

‘I wonder what significance the festival has had in the cycle of village life,’ Emma muttered, with a quick

glance at the old men sitting like some group of primitive sculpture.

‘I suppose it can’t have the same impact as a West African festival or even a European peasant fiesta,’ said Robbie. ‘I should guess it has had no effect whatsoever on this group assembled here.’

‘But on the other women living here, the middle-class ladies, the rivalry and all that,’ said Tamsin.

‘Especially anything connected with the church,’ Graham pointed out.

He began to talk sociological shop with the Barracloughs, teasing Tamsin in an almost flirtatious way, so that Emma found herself considering the festival and its significance in a different, less scientific, light. Flowers in a beautiful setting and a meeting with an old lover suggested a romantic novel rather than a paper for a learned society. But she had never thought of writing fiction, had, indeed, tended to despise her mother’s studies of the Victorian novel. Now, however, she found herself wondering how the evening was going to end.

‘I’m sorry,’ Graham said when they were back in the cottage, ‘I seem to have left it a bit late to get back tonight.’

Surely he was not afraid to drive in the dark? Or was it inconvenient in some other way? How was she to interpret his meaning?

‘Would it cause a scandal in the village if I stayed here? I suppose I should have asked at the pub – they probably have rooms?’

‘I don’t know if anyone ever stays there. I do have a spare room.’

‘Oh, fine – if you don’t mind.’

‘Of course not – would you like a drink?’ Emma had almost said ‘nightcap’, the kind of thing associated with milkiness and a generally more cosy atmosphere than that obtaining between them at this moment.

‘Nothing for me, thanks.’

They were standing in the spare room, side by side, not touching. Emma realised that Graham was not quite as tall as she was –had it always been like that or had he shrunk, diminished, in some way?

He made no move towards her but stroked the cover of the divan bed admiringly. ‘William Morris, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, Golden Lily I think it’s called. Goodnight then.’

‘Goodnight.’

Nothing more was said and it was only as she lay in bed, going over the events of the day, that Emma wondered what he would do about a toothbrush or pyjamas.

Next day he went off early, after coffee and a piece of toast, as if ashamed of having come at all. He thanked Emma for her ‘hospitality’ but did not kiss her goodbye. No further mention was made of his marital difficulties and no further meeting promised.

The Sunday evening of the festival Tom preached about heaven, or what people’s idea of heaven might be. It seemed a bold and imaginative, perhaps even appropriate, subject to choose, with all the flower arrangements still surrounding the congregation, as if they were already translated into that blessed state.

Emma noticed Sir Miles sitting in the usual manor pew, or rather the pew that would have been the usual one had he attended the church more often. He had a party with him, two women in smart flowered silk summer dresses, a girl wearing a long Laura Ashley pink-and-white print skirt, and a young man with fair wavy hair, gazing around him as if he had never been in a church before.

‘We each of us have our own idea of heaven,’ Tom declared, and immediately Emma’s own picture came into her mind, dating from school days – the Almighty, a nebulous figure, and seated on his right her headmistress, eyes gleaming but kindly behind rimless glasses which in an earlier age would have been pince-nez. This reminded her that her mother was coming to stay next week, bringing with her an old college friend who was a headmistress, so the whole idea of ‘heaven’ took on a different aspect. Not that one thought about heaven all that much now – certainly the events of the previous evening had done nothing to turn Emma’s thoughts towards it.

‘What a pity we can’t have flowers like this in the church
always
,’ people were saying as they said goodnight to Tom, with a hint of reproach, as if he should have seen to it.

Emma slipped past him, not wanting to have that kind of conversation. She wondered why she had come to church, for it had not been to have another look at the flowers.

Emma never felt completely at ease with Isobel Mound, her mother’s old college friend, for in spite of 1 her friendly manner there was about her just a suspicion of the stern glint of eyes behind pince-nez, even though she wore modishly shaped glasses whose light brown frames toned perfectly with her soft, carefully tinted hair. Perhaps any headmistress, however up to date, would inevitably remind Emma of her first one, seated on the right hand of the Almighty in heaven.

Isobel was to sleep in the spare room where Graham had spent the night of the flower festival, with Morris wallpaper and matching bedspread – the golden lilies rioting (unsuitably, as it turned out) – a carafe of fresh water on the bedside table, and a selection of paperbacks with covers that could offend nobody. The room looked out over the garden and beyond that to a field where, in the days when no one bothered about such things, a regrettable corrugated-iron structure had been erected by the owner to house livestock. Now, of course, it spoilt the view, though age and decay had given it a certain antique interest as a relic of the thirties when the village had been poor and tumbledown.

Emma’s mother Beatrix would be in her usual room, with the bookshelves filled with novels by Charlotte M. Yonge and other lesser Victorians and the desk in the window looking out over the village street. Beatrix liked to sit here hoping to witness the kind of events that might have taken place a hundred years ago, but more often than not she was disappointed.

A small supper party had been planned for one of the evenings when Isobel would be there, and Tom and Daphne had been invited. Then, feeling that Tom might not be completely at ease with
four
women, even though he was a clergyman and one of the women was his sister, Emma invited Adam Prince to join the party. His inclusion meant that the choosing of the menu caused her more anxiety than usual, though she did not know whether he was as critical of food eaten in private houses as of that offered to him in the course of his ‘work’. As the party was to be on a Friday, there was the possibility that fish might have to be provided. Were the clergy, or Roman Catholic laymen, still obliged to eat fish on a Friday? Emma wondered.

‘Fish is now regarded as a luxury,’ Beatrix said. ‘I’m sure Tom would be the last person to expect fish on a Friday.’

‘But Adam Prince – a Catholic convert, an Anglican turned Roman,’ said Emma uneasily, ’
and
an inspector of high-class eating places – he might well look on fish as no more than his due.’

‘What is the rule for Roman Catholics these days?’ Isobel asked. ‘One wouldn’t want to be shown up as ignorant, not knowing….’

‘Not
au fait
with what the form is in Rome,’ Emma prompted, ‘though
we
could hardly be expected to know the secrets of the Vatican kitchens.’

‘Still, it might be a graceful compliment to Adam to provide a fish dish of some kind,’ said Beatrix.

But what kind of fish? The usual pie made of coley would hardly do, though it could no doubt be disguised in a suitable sauce, mushroom or shrimp. In the end Emma made a tuna fish mousse, and a French onion tart with a salad, to be followed by various cheeses and ice cream from the village shop. After all, it was only supper, and lobsters – which Adam might have expected at some of the places he visited – were not easily obtainable in a West Oxfordshire village.

Entering Emma’s sitting-room with his sister, Tom found himself confronted by the three women, not one of whom — in his eyes – looked immediately attractive, though he was of course aware that he must look below the surface. He did not take in as much detail as a woman would have done, but the general effect was unpleasing.

Emma was in a drab black and grey cotton which reminded him of a servant’s morning dress of the old days – the sort of thing she would do the fires In or the front doorstep. Beatrix wore a dress of dark brownish-patterned silky material, its small collar pinned with a heavy Victorian brooch set with an ugly pebble-like stone. Isobel was in a beige crepe two-piece, in rather boringly good taste – she must have chosen it for speech day or some other school function – she wore a necklace of seed pearls and small earrings to match, also new shoes that looked as if they might be uncomfortable. As for Daphne, Tom had long ceased to regard his sister as a woman whose clothes might be worthy of notice, sometimes he hardly even thought of her as a human being. In fact she was wearing a pink-flowered cotton dress, rather too short by present standards, but she was saving her better clothes for her Greek holiday.

The offering of sherry was achieved before Adam Prince arrived, with apologies for being late, if he was late. His way of putting it made Tom feel that he and Daphne had been a little too early, but he was used to Adam’s ways, and he was not surprised that when they sat down to eat it should be Adam who complimented Emma, rather too fulsomely it seemed for such a detail, on the exquisite thinness of the sliced cucumber with which she had decorated the tuna mousse.

‘It is an art all too seldom met with,’ Adam declared, ‘the correct slicing of cucumber. In Victorian times there was – I believe – an implement or device for the purpose.’

‘I just used a sharp knife,’ Emma said.

Tom had stayed silent, remembering the foolish way he had quoted Leigh Hunt to Emma when she had been picking roses for the flower festival. Adam had, as usual, outdone him.

‘In Greece cucumber is cut in chunks, thick chunks,’ said Daphne. ‘It makes a lovely salad, with tomatoes and
plenty
of oil.’ She cast about in her memory for the Greek word for this particular salad, failed to remember it, but then decided that nobody would have been interested anyway.

‘Greek food is
not
one of my favourites,’ said Adam, smiling. ‘One would hardly go to Greece for the cuisine – just as one wouldn’t go to some churches for the music. A beautiful country, of course,’ he smiled again as if at some private joke, ‘but
not
a treasury of gastronomic memories.’

‘Well, no, that isn’t what you’d go to Greece for, as you said,’ Tom agreed. The sight of the mousse – the ‘shape’ – in its flowered dish had brought a memory of another kind, the picture of Emma as he had seen her some months ago now, holding that same dish in her hands as she stood in the window when he passed by.

Still on the same subject, Adam now invited them to guess where he had once enjoyed ‘a most memorable sole nantua’.

His hearers were not familiar with the most celebrated fish restaurants, so there were no informed guesses. Only Beatrix ventured to suggest that it must have been somewhere in France at some unexpected place, perhaps a shabby little bistro or quayside café, with oilcloth on the tables, the sort of place where lorry drivers went.

‘The decor was unpretentious, certainly,’ Adam said, ‘you’d hardly expect it to be otherwise – in a clergy house.’ He turned to Tom. ‘I don’t know whether you ever visited Oswald Thames and his set-up at St Luke’s? They had a quite remarkable housekeeper in those days.’

‘I knew about St Luke’s, of course,’ said Tom, rather stiffly, ‘though I never went to the clergy house.’

‘This housekeeper was a man – Wilf Bason – and by no means a good plain cook,’ Adam smiled, obviously remembering another private joke. ‘I was only a fledgling curate then, but my tastes were already formed.’

‘Sole nantua,’ said Isobel, firmly bringing the conversation back to the point. ‘That’s a sauce, is it?’

‘Yes, made with crayfish,’ Adam explained. ‘You would poach about a dozen small crayfish in a
court-bouillon
with white wine and herbs.’

‘Mortlock and his friends caught crayfish in Somerset,’ said Tom but nobody took up the reference, Adam remarking that the flavour of Somerset crayfish would hardly be up to a nantua sauce.

Emma served the next course and poured Liebfraumilch, hoping that Adam would refrain from comment on the wine and the possible origin of its name. She now wished she had not invited him, not having realised how he would monopolise the conversation. Even when the subject of food was abandoned, Adam turned to her with a coy reference to her ‘visitor’, the gentleman who had been seen with her at the flower festival.

Beatrix shot a quick glance at her daughter on hearing this, but the subject was not developed. Emma brushed it off with the information that he had been ‘only an anthropologist’, somebody she had known for a long time, as if this could dispose of any romantic possibilities.

‘No doubt he was studying village life and the interaction of its inhabitants in a festival situation,’ said Adam sarcastically. ‘One knows the kind of thing.’

‘It’s such a pity to bring that kind of thing into the country,’ said Isobel obscurely. ‘There’s so much else to be studied – history, for example’ – here she glanced hopefully at Tom, who instinctively drew back – ‘and
natural
history, wild life. I always love a walk in the woods.’

‘We must remember that,’ said Adam gallantly.

‘Do you see many foxes here?’ Isobel asked.

‘Oh yes – and you can find their traces in the woods,’ said Daphne eagerly. ‘Did you know that a fox’s dung is grey and pointed at both ends?’

Nobody did know and there was a brief silence. It seemed difficult to follow such a stunning piece of information.

‘How fascinating!’ said Adam at last. ‘That’s something I did
not
know. I must look out for it when I next take a walk in the woods.’

‘Do you often?’ Tom asked, for it was difficult to imagine,

‘When the spirit moves me – and in my job one must take exercise.’

‘Well, next time you do you might keep a look-out for the remains of the deserted medieval village,’ said Tom. ‘Heaps of stones, even the foundations of buildings.’

‘Oh, I prefer to let the past remain hidden,’ said Adam, laughing. ‘No good can come of all this delving.’