A Few Green Leaves (19 page)

‘Good heavens!’ he said. ‘A poultry house – apparently deserted, abandoned, but the smell certainly lingers on.’

‘Of course, I remember now,’ Emma said. ‘Daphne Dagnall once told me – Mrs Dyer’s son had a broiler house somewhere up here – this must be it.’

‘The business failed, did it?’

‘I suppose so, you could imagine … so he turned to the second-hand junk trade and now has what he calls an antique shop.’ Deceased Effects Cleared, she remembered, but did not say the words out loud. It seemed curiously, even bitterly, appropriate to the walk she and Graham were now taking, to their whole relationship now fizzling out at the end of summer.

‘Chickens…. Chickens seem to be associated with failure and disaster, don’t they?’ he remarked in an idle, making-conversation sort of way. ‘In literature, I mean – those stories of unsuccessful chicken farms at the end of the First World War.’

‘But this is a different sort of chicken farming. There’s something not natural about it. The confinement of the birds,’ she declared, and then wondered why she had used such a ridiculous phrase.

‘No, of course it’s different. Not free range.’

She wondered if he was remembering the boiled eggs, that time he had arrived in the church on the day of the flower festival. But no more was said on the subject of chickens or eggs as they walked on in silence away from the smell.

‘Of course I’ll be leaving here now,’ he said. ‘Now that the book’s virtually finished.’

‘Your stay here has been profitable then,’ she said, pondering on his use of the word ‘virtually’.

‘Oh yes – I’m not displeased with the results.’

‘The house in Islington will be ready to receive you,’ she said.

‘I certainly hope so! Otherwise I should have to stay here longer.’

They had made a kind of circle and were nearly back at the cottage now. Graham asked Emma to come in for a drink. He had decided not to work this evening.

Perhaps he has decided to make love to me, she thought, but when she saw that with the bottle of Scotch he had produced four glasses she realised that she was obviously mistaken in her imaginings. She commented on the number.

‘Yes, I’m expecting the Barracloughs – they’re back, you know.’

‘And they’ve been to…,’ she began, but at that moment they appeared, full of their overland trip to Afghanistan and the various ‘projects’ it would lead to. Robbie’s beard was rather longer and bushier than before, but Tamsin’s frizzy hair and long bedraggled cotton skirt seemed much as usual. They started to talk academic shop with Graham, for Robbie was to take up a new appointment in the autumn and various personalities in the department where he would be working were discussed or torn to pieces, whichever seemed to be applicable. Emma began to wish she had not stayed for a drink – it would have been better to go quietly home and watch television, engage in some useful household task or even get on with her own work. How often must this kind of thought or reflection have occurred to a woman on such an occasion when, having been faced with alternative courses of action, she has obviously chosen the wrong one! For now the tedious process of making bramble jelly seemed infinitely preferable to this arid academic chat and she found herself wondering whether Graham had deliberately engineered this situation and had invited Robbie and Tamsin in because he didn’t want to be alone with her.

‘And how’s your own work going?’ Robbie asked politely, turning to Emma.

‘It seems to be changing direction,’ said Emma, thinking as much of the bramble jelly as of the notes she had made on the village. ‘There are various other lines that could be explored.’ That was certainly one way of putting it.

‘I’ve often thought one could do a.study of this village,’ said Tamsin innocently. ‘But I suppose it’s such a well-worked field that there’d be nothing new to say.’

‘Emma would find something new,’ said Graham in a rather possessive way. ‘Even if she had to make it up.’

‘Well, one can’t really do that,’ said Robbie. ‘After all, we’re not novelists,’ he added, smiling in a superior way into his beard.

Suddenly Emma felt unbearably irritated by the whole situation and got up to go.

‘So soon?’ Graham asked. ‘Won’t you even have another drink?’ Then, when she refused, he got up too, with the evident intention of accompanying her through the woods. This irritated Emma even more, his formal politeness and the idea that a woman must be accompanied on a country walk in the dark. Yet she realised that had he not made the gesture she would have been even more annoyed. Women were not yet as equal as all that.

‘Please don’t bother,’ she said. ‘I shall be quite all right. It’s not a particularly dark evening, anyway.’

‘Maybe, but that’s hardly the point,’ said Graham uneasily.

‘Somebody might leap at her out of the undergrowth,’ said Robbie, secure in the knowledge that he had no obligation in the matter.

‘Please don’t disturb yourselves,’ Emma repeated. ‘I’ll be quite all right.’

She and Graham walked down the front path of the cottage, Emma still protesting. Certainly it was not particularly dark, as there was a full moon. A lovely night for a walk, given the right circumstances, she felt, but Graham could hardly leave his guests.

At that moment a figure loomed up in the half darkness, a tall shape, approaching slowly. Emma saw that it was Tom.

‘Why, it’s the rector,’ said Graham. ‘Were you coming to call here?’

Tom seemed startled. Obviously he had not intended to call and the suggestion seemed to touch on some source of guilt, as if he was conscious of a failure in this direction. ‘It hardly seemed a suitable time,’ he said lamely. ‘I was merely taking an evening walk in the woods.’

A kind of joke situation, Emma felt, and was on the point of suggesting that he must have been looking for the deserted medieval village. ‘I’m just going home,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you’d be kind enough to walk back with me – just through the woods, of course.’

‘With pleasure,’ said Tom.

‘If you would accompany Miss Howick,’ said Graham formally. ‘She has to get back….’

‘Did you really have to get back?’ Tom asked when they were alone.

‘I got bored with the Barracloughs’ conversation and I have to make bramble jelly.’

Tom expressed polite interest and the hope that some might be available for the next church sale. Emma did not reveal that she intended to give him a pot, for it might not be successful and it would not do to raise his hopes. ‘Do you often walk in these woods?’ he asked.

‘Oh, sometimes – like Miss Vereker.’

Tom laughed. ‘Oh, Miss Vereker. Miss Lee never tires of telling us what Miss Vereker did.’

‘Will you come in for a minute?’ Emma asked at her cottage door.

Tom hesitated, not because of the lateness of the hour or for any fear of scandal but because he was afraid that Emma might be going to offer him a cup of weak coffee or even tea.

‘We could have a drink,’ she said, wondering if tea or coffee would be expected. But she brought out a bottle of vermouth and they sat down with the bottle between them on a small table. Emma was feeling depressed, for this was not the sort of ending she had imagined for this particular evening. The blackberry juice had not yet finished dripping through its bag, so there was nothing for it but to sit down and drink with Tom, ‘the rector’, making whatever kind of conversation came to mind. She thought of asking about Wood’s visit to the manor in sixteen seventy something, but in the end fell back on Daphne and the usual question about how she liked living in Birmingham.

A cloud seemed to come over Tom’s face – people were always asking him that. ‘Her friend Heather is rather bossy’, he said, ‘with the dog’s regimen and that kind of thing. Daphne mentioned some disagreement they’d had about whether to give the animal tinned or fresh meat or something that apparently looks and tastes like fresh meat but isn’t….’ He frowned, adding, ‘What could
that
be?’ as if it were important that he should know.

Emma mentioned a substance she had seen advertised on television – dogs eating from various dishes, unable to tell the difference.

‘Ah, that would be it.’ Tom seemed relieved.

‘Your sister shared a flat with her friend before, didn’t she?’

‘Yes, so she knows her failings. Heather was a librarian,’ he added, as if this might explain the failings.

‘I suppose she’s used to making decisions, taking action – that sort of thing?’

‘About a dog’s diet?’ said Tom, and they began to laugh. The tension and irritation, beginning with Graham and the walk in Sangreal Copse, seemed to go out of the evening.

‘Sangreal Copse,’ Emma said. ‘An ideal setting for the end of summer, don’t you think?’

Tom was inclined to go into the historical niceties of the area, and even to quote something from Wood, when Emma would have preferred an account of the decline and fall of Mrs Dyer’s son’s broiler house. But when she expressed a rather conventional regret about it being the end of summer, he was reminded of the brief holiday he would be taking – a few days in London, mid-week, staying with Dr G.’s brother in his clergy house – and he began to tell Emma about it.

‘I shall be spending some time in the British Museum.’

‘Oh yes?’ Emma did not ask what he would be doing. It might be enough for him to sit in the reading room, just for the change. ‘You could have stayed in one of those hotels nearby, but I suppose even those are ruinously expensive now.’

‘Yes, they are. Actually it was Christabel G.’s idea that I should stay with her brother-in-law the first time I wanted to go to London some years ago.’

‘How strange! I wouldn’t have expected….’

‘No, you wouldn’t.’ Tom smiled. ‘London to her is Onslow Square and Harrods, of course – though she’s rather less respectful about Harrods these days – so it was quite a leap of the imagination for her to think of anyone staying in any other district. And Father G., as they call him, is very kind….’

If there was a slight hesitation in Tom’s manner, a subtle lack of enthusiasm at the prospect of staying with Father G., it was only because he was remembering certain material discomforts of the clergy house, and also the danger that he might be called upon to assist at a weekday evening Mass. But, consulting the Kalendar, he had made sure that there was no likelihood of that happening in the week he had chosen – still nothing but the green vestments and all those long hot Sundays after Trinity. No Saints’ Days at all.

Summer was also ending for Adam Prince, in disagreeable, even disquieting, experiences. The first, in a motorway café where, surrounded by eaters younger and less fastidious than himself, he sampled (in the course of duty) a kind of ‘high tea’ that was not at all to his liking. The second, in the impersonal surroundings of a motel or ‘Post House’, where his bodily needs were adequately catered for but there was a chilling lack of human contact. No charming elderly lady (and Adam frequently enjoyed conversations with such on his travels) knitting in the lounge after dinner; no cordial ‘
Buon giorno, signore
’ from a smiling young waiter, bearing his breakfast on a tray high on his shoulder, as nostalgically recalled in some Roman
pensione
not too far from the Spanish Steps. Adam’s plastic ‘continental’ breakfast appeared early and mysteriously outside his door as if brought by computer, which it may well have been. That last might be a suitable note to introduce into his report which he would be writing when he got home.

But his desire for human contact, wasn’t that the most disquieting thing of all? Could it be that he was getting old?

Even though the days were shortening, the dahlias round the mausoleum made quite a show in the late summer sunshine.

‘Quite a show,’ Magdalen remarked to her son-in-law as they sat at lunch, ‘those dahlias round the mausoleum – such brilliant colours.’

‘Were you in the churchyard this morning, mother?’ Martin asked. He did not want to suggest that being in the churchyard was morbid or undesirable in any way. He had developed his own sensible approach to death, which he tried to impart to his patients and any old person with whom he came into contact. It was good to have a relaxed approach to the proximity of gravestones – perfectly O.K. to walk in the churchyard (indeed, it could often be a useful short cut to somewhere else, the pub, for example) – but was it to be encouraged, this
frequenting
of the place, walking round studying the gravestones, as his mother-in-law appeared to be doing?

‘Yes, I’ve been there – the rector wants us to make some notes on the graves – I mean, what kind of stone is actually used, as well as reading and transcribing the inscriptions where we can. Of course it’s not always possible – some of them are rather worn, the old ones, and some of the stones seem to have sunk into the ground so that you can’t make anything out. You have to crouch down on all fours to get a look at them!’ Magdalen laughed. ‘I expect people wonder what we’re doing – if anyone sees us, that is.’

‘The rector expects you to do this? He expects elderly people to crouch on damp ground, just for a whim of
his
?’ Martin seemed indignant.

‘Oh, it isn’t just a whim of his – it’s for the county historical record of graveyards, and you know how keen the rector is on that.’

‘Well, I think it’s most unsuitable,’ Martin grumbled. ‘He should get some of the younger ones to do it – or even do it himself.’

‘There aren’t enough younger ones – and I find it interesting, getting to know who’s buried where and what kind of stones they have. Some of Miss Lee’s family’s there, you know. Did you have a good surgery this morning, dear?’

‘Well, perhaps “good” isn’t the way to describe it. A busy one, certainly, as always.’

‘Keeping them out of the churchyard?’ said Magdalen chirpily. ‘Though there’s still plenty of room in the newer part. But you really ought to see those dahlias by the mausoleum, they’re a picture….’

Martin got up from the table. Conversation with his mother-in-law, though no doubt therapeutic for her, was so often a waste of time for him. ‘A walk in the woods or fields would do you more good than crouching in a damp graveyard,’ he warned finally, ‘whatever the rector may say.’