An Unsuitable Attachment (16 page)

The woman lowered her voice so that Ianthe could hardly hear it above the noise of the train. 'I don't think they ought to let them out, walking about like that in those black clothes. It gives me the creeps and I know it frightened the kiddies. I mean it's
not very nice
, is it.'

'Oh, I didn't mind,' said Ianthe. 'She's somebody I know.'

'How dreadful for you, somebody you know being like that.'

Ianthe was glad when the woman and her child got out at the next station, for not only did she find the conversation embarrassing but she also wanted to think about the moments before her unexpected meeting with Agnes Dalby—moments which she had so far had no chance of reliving or considering.

That John should have kissed her like that—in the way she had quite often seen boys kiss girls on their way home—and that she should not have minded, apart from the slight awkwardness of the people surging around them, would have seemed incredible to her a few months ago. One did not behave like that in a public place with a young man, suitable or otherwise, and John was so very much otherwise. It was not surprising that at this moment the image of her mother—the canon's widow in the dark flat near Westminster Cathedral—should rise up before her.

But there was obviously nothing she could do about it
now,
she decided, and the holiday in Rome would no doubt put him out of her mind. Resolutely, and determined to think no more than she could help about it, she opened her new copy of the
Church Times
which normally she would have looked forward to reading on her journey home. Yet she reached the station where she got out without having progressed any further than the first page.

Walking past the vicarage, she wondered whether to call in to see Mark and Sophia, but judged that they were probably busy doing their packing. When she got into her house she poured herself a glass of sherry and stood looking into the garden, not wanting any supper.

'You must be in love or something,' she heard John saying, then she remembered the unaccustomed poached egg and was glad to have found a sensible reason for her lack of appetite.

***

'Two men and five women—er—ladies,' said Mark rather despondently, as he and Sophia were doing their packing. 'Still, I suppose I can always creep off somewhere by myself.'

'Aren't most parties made up like that?' said Sophia consolingly. 'And the odd thing is that of all the people who complained to you after that sermon that they'd never been to Rome only Sister Dew has taken advantage of this opportunity to go there.'

'The others prefer to go to Broadstairs and Ilfracombe as usual. Where they'll have the usual bad weather so that they can go on complaining.'

'Yes, of course,' said Sophia, 'and I suppose we didn't really ask them to come with us, did we. As it is, I don't know how Sister Dew is likely to fit in. And I can't help feeling a
tiny
bit worried about leaving Faustina with both Edwin and Daisy away. Though Daisy's tightened up the rules at the Cattery—did I show you her new brochure?'

Mark took from Sophia the cyclostyled leaflet—hardly a 'brochure' he felt—and read through the rules starting with 'Sex (undoctored . . . and Siamese cats
cannot
be accepted)', going on to invite owners to bring bedding but 'no bowls, please', and ending with the injunction 'This year we must ask you to leave your cat at the house and
not
go down to the Cattery. We find that the cats already in the Cattery become unsettled with the noise that is made when settling new cats.'

'I suppose
you
could go down,' he said soothingly. 'After all you are such an old friend.'

'Yes, but one doesn't want to unsettle the other cats, and Faustina herself might become upset.'

'I'm sure Jim Mangold will look after her splendidly. You've often said yourself how good he is with her, and he has such a reassuring name.'

'Oh, certainly—Jim loves Faustina. I shan't worry really, but she's all I've got.'

For a moment Sophia was afraid that Mark was going to speak sternly to her, for his eyes had their rather distant look and his mouth was in a firm line. But when he spoke again it was only to express some anxiety about the conduct of services while he was away. Father Anstruther, the former vicar who lived rather too near, was to do duty for the time of Mark's absence—not an entirely satisfactory arrangement but the best that could be made.

'Now indeed the dog will return to his vomit, as he so happily put it,' said Sophia.

'I only hope he won't upset anybody,' said Mark anxiously.

A party of people sets out on a journey with all its different components like the jumbled up pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, Sophia thought, waiting for something—some event or just the passing of time—to fit them together into a whole. In the bus going to the airport she looked around her to see what sort of people went to Rome in April. She was not surprised to see two or three elderly ladies and nondescript middle-aged couples, but where were all the priests and nuns she had expected, the real glory of a flight to Rome?

The answer to this question was that they had other means of transport. As the bus arrived at the airport a shooting brake drew up and a party of nuns got out of it. Sophia commented on this to Ianthe who was sitting in front of her.

Ianthe was reminded of her meeting with the nun in the Underground the day before and Sophia remarked that nowadays some of them seemed hardly to be cloistered at all.

'But it doesn't seem right for them to drive about like that,' said Sister Dew. it always gives me a bit of a turn to see a nun driving a car.'

Now priests and even a couple of bishops appeared and Sophia felt a sense of relief, as if their presence were some sort of guarantee of a safe flight.

'Don't you feel a slight envy of the Roman Catholics when it comes to making a trip like this?' said Edwin Pettigrew to Mark.

'Ah yes,' Mark sighed. 'The English College, the Irish College—there's a sort of cosiness about it all. It must be like a homecoming to them. An Anglican feels almost an intruder.'

'Darling, you mustn't say such things,' said Sophia indignantly. 'You who so often preach about the catholicity of the Anglican Church, and believe it too.'

'Oh yes, Father,' said Sister Dew unctuously, 'we always say that's one of your little hobby horses.'

'We', the stupid, ignorant, umbrage-taking members of Mark's congregation, thought Sophia, moving closer to her husband as if to protect him from them. Now she took care to change the subject and what could be more natural than to talk to the vet and his sister about Faustina and to speculate on what she might be doing at this moment. But Faustina's remoteness, now of distance also, made it difficult to guess. Mark, too, after the slightly disquieting observations about Roman Catholic priests, seemed to have removed himself from her. Looking for Ianthe and Penelope, Sophia saw that they were deep in conversation, which she welcomed as a good sign.

The two unattached women seemed to have been drawn together perhaps by their very unattachedness but more certainly by Rupert Stonebird's dinner party and the idea that they might meet him in Rome.

'Perugia,' Sophia heard Penelope murmur. 'Is that far from Rome?'

'It isn't really very far,' said Ianthe. 'I looked it up on the map as a matter of interest.'

'But distance is only relative,' said Sophia. Love will find out the way, she thought, though it was a little difficult to picture Rupert like the lover in the poem, galloping over the earth and swimming the seas to reach the loved one, especially as he had not yet shown much sign of loving either of the two women.

The presence of the two bishops, not to mention the priests and nuns, gave confidence to everybody as the plane rose into the air.

Sister Dew, who had not flown before, let out a cry at seeing fields and houses beneath her.

'Jim Mangold will be feeding them now,' said Daisy Pettigrew comfortingly, 'and I expect Faustina will be getting her share. I can almost hear them crying out for their dinner. Look, dear,' she opened her capacious shopping bag and invited Sophia to peer into its depths.

Sophia saw some tins of a well-known brand of cat food, neatly packed into the bottom of the bag.

'For those poor deprived ones in Rome,' Daisy murmured.

'I hope you remembered to bring a tin-opener,' said Sophia, in confusion, for the idea of taking food to the deprived Roman cats had set up in her head a muddled train of thought, which had something to do with Anglo- and Roman Catholicism, as if the latter had need of nourishment from the former.

When the stewardess came round with cigarettes and miniature bottles of spirits and liqueurs, the St Basil's party bought them eagerly. Cigarettes, so cheap and in such large numbers, were snapped up even by non-smokers, who regarded them as some new kind of currency; and the little bottles, so exquisitely miniature, 'twee', as Sister Dew put it, could have nothing wicked about them even for teetotallers.

'Of course
I'm
thinking of the bottle stall for the Christmas Bazaar,' said Sister Dew virtuously, tucking the little bottles into her bag.

Sophia noticed that the tall handsome priest sitting over the other side from her also bought a great many of the little bottles.

In what seemed a very short time the plane began to come down and bits of northern Italy could be seen below. Sophia, who had not made this flight before, was disappointed that it did not look more like the Italian landscape she remembered from the ground. This greenish greyish land with patches of dark trees might have been anywhere.

The Italians, and indeed all foreigners, are known to be cruel to animals, thought Daisy, looking down to see if she could catch some peasant beating a horse or kicking a dog.

Now there is a whole ocean between John and me, Ianthe thought, but soon she was caught up in the bustle of landing. Groups of priests and nuns, the latter waving handkerchiefs and carrying bunches of flowers, came into view. It was almost as if they had been hired to give the tourist a suitable first impression of the Eternal City.

'Look,' said Edwin Pettigrew to Mark, 'our Roman Catholic friends are being whisked through all the formalities,' and Mark saw that the priests had been gathered into a little group under the leadership of a jolly-looking, curly-haired Irishman with a strong brogue. 'Did ye get the little bottles?' Mark heard him ask.

Leonardo da Vinci, thought Penelope, seeing the curious angular statue from the bus. Presumably this identified the place as being Italy, but it might have been anywhere. Depression had descended on her, hemmed in by all these people, driving along a straight dreary road. Where were all the handsome Italians of good family? The only Italian she might have got an introduction to—and though elderly he might have had a son—had dropped down dead in the Vatican Square. And Rupert Stonebird was in Perugia, which was
miles
away. He had not said definitely that he would be coming to Rome, only that he
might
. . .

Italy, thought Sister Dew, well it doesn't seem very romantic so far. She was beginning to wish she had gone to the toilet again on the plane—it had been so nice and clean, and who knew when she would get another chance? Tea, too—that was what she wanted now, a good cup, and where was she going to get
that
? Yet she was not downhearted. With a vicar's wife and a canon's daughter in the party she had faith that somehow all her wants would be taken care of.

Ruins, thought Mark, as the bus wound up the road by the Colosseum, the glory that was Rome. 'Have we not all,' he heard himself saying from the pulpit, 'as we have gazed on the ruins of the mighty Colosseum . . .' Well, a few more of his congregation would have done that by then. They should have a sermon about Rome when he got back. Perhaps another 'Why I am not a Roman Catholic' would be salutary from him as well as for them. Again he heard the strong Irish voice ring out—'Did ye get the little bottles?'—and knew that however cosy it might seem in imagination he would never be one of the party hurried through the customs to the English or Irish or Scottish College. He was too old now and the whole thing was altogether too complicated. There was Sophia too, his beloved wife, and even Faustina who was, he felt sure, fiercely Protestant.

Turning to Sophia he touched her hand. She was looking tired and a little sad. The journey had been too much for her, he thought apprehensively, but when she spoke it was in a cheerful raised voice.

'I think we'll go first to the pensione and leave our luggage and then
straight
to Babbington's,' she said. 'I'm sure we could all do with a good cup of tea.'

When they got to the pensione Sophia prayed quickly to whatever saint arranged such things—one of the less well known women saints, she felt—that it was going to be all right about the rooms. She and Mark would of course be sharing a room; Ianthe and Penelope had also expressed their willingness to share. Edwin Pettigrew would have a single room, but it had not been possible to get more than one, which meant that Daisy would have to share with Sister Dew. Fortunately neither had raised any objection to this arrangement, but Sophia could not help fearing that there might be difficulties.

The pensione was of the reassuringly old-fashioned type which was used to catering mainly for parties of middle-aged English, American, German or Scandinavian women, though a few men in the shape of clergymen and husbands were also accommodated. But women always seemed to be in the majority and the proprietor and his wife, both of whom spoke excellent English and German, could be seen at every hour of the day advising parties of determined-looking women in sensible shoes how to get to St Peter's or the Piazza Venezia or the English church, or which were the best shops to buy presents and souvenirs to take home.

Sophia had stayed here several times before, which was one reason why it had been chosen as suitable for the St Basil's party. She greeted the proprietor in her careful Italian and was welcomed by him in his careful English.