Crampton Hodnet (4 page)

‘What’s this engraving?’ said Mr. Latimer, going to the wall.

‘Oh, that’s one of the Bavarian lakes,’ explained Miss Morrow. ‘Miss Doggett has a whole set of them. This is the biggest.’

‘What a very dry-looking lake it is,’ said Mr. Latimer thoughtfully. ‘One can’t imagine that the water could ever be wet.’

They both laughed. Mr. Latimer sat down by Miss Morrow on the bed. They were still laughing when Miss Doggett came in. The sound of their laughter was the first thing that she heard before the shameful sight met her eyes: the sight of Miss Morrow—painted like a harlot—sitting laughing on the bed with a handsome clergyman whom she had just met for the first time, the new curate whose welcome Miss Doggett had planned so carefully. It was too bad. Miss Doggett cast about in her mind for words strong enough to describe Miss Morrow’s perfidy and deceit, but could find none.

It was certainly a bad beginning, and nobody was more conscious of this than Miss Morrow. But Mr. Latimer leapt up entirely without embarrassment. His natural, easy manners made the washstand, its rose-garlanded china and the large double bed seem no more out of place than the ordinary furniture of a North Oxford drawing-room. Miss Doggett, who had so far said nothing but a rather cold ‘Good evening’, was completely pacified by his profuse apologies for having arrived earlier than was expected. He very tactfully made no reference to Miss Morrow, thus giving the impression that although he had indeed arrived, he had not yet been welcomed. And so Miss Doggett found herself with something definite to do and began showing him the rooms all over again.

Miss Morrow slipped away to her bedroom and began scrubbing at her cheeks and lips with the already ruined handkerchief. Completely indelible, it had said in the advertisement; won’t come off when you’re eating, smoking or being kissed. I suppose if I had suddenly kissed Mr. Latimer, she thought detachedly, it would have left no mark. She went to the washstand. Surely soap and water would remove it? Ten minutes later she went downstairs, her face flushed and shining, but flushed only because she had had to rub so hard with her soapy face flannel. She hoped Miss Doggett hadn’t noticed.

But Miss Doggett was quite taken up with Mr. Latimer and did not see her companion until she was sitting in a chair on the edge of the room.

‘Ah, Miss Morrow, I was wondering where you were,’ she said, turning her head. ‘I wanted you to hold my wool.’ She produced a rough navy skein, which was to be knitted up into a balaclava helmet for a seaman.

Fierce was the wild billow,

Dark was the night,

thought Miss Morrow, as she arranged the wool on her hands.

Wail of the hurricane

Be thou at rest.

Some versions had “Wail of Euroclydon”, which was much grander. Surely Mr. Latimer ought to be holding the wool? Wasn’t it one of the chief functions of curates, or had she been misinformed? It was just another of those small disillusionments which make up our everyday life on this earth, she decided.

‘Do you like a hot water bottle at night, Mr. Latimer?’ asked Miss Doggett. ‘And do you prefer China or Indian tea? A fire will be lit in your room every morning, of course.’

But it’s only the twenty-eighth of October, thought Miss Morrow indignantly. So this is how it’s going to be. She glanced at Mr. Latimer, who sat like a handsome, complacent marmalade cat, telling Miss Doggett all his little fads. I’m certainly not going to fuss over him, thought Miss Morrow, jerking the wool vigorously round her thumbs; I won’t wait on him.

While Miss Morrow was steeling herself to resist Mr. Latimer’s charms, Miss Doggett was telling him about the inhabitants of North Oxford and her own relations in particular. She became quite coy and skittish about Anfhea’s romance.

‘I happened to go into the drawing-room yesterday evening,’ she said, ‘and there were the young people sitting on the sofa, very far apart and
rather
pink in the face. Of course
I 
knew what they’d been up to. We’re only young once, aren’t we?’ She wagged her finger at Mr. Latimer, who seemed to draw back a little.

Miss Morrow, too, was surprised. Miss Doggett usually disapproved of young people, especially of girls who ‘made themselves cheap’, as she called it. But of course, reflected Miss Morrow, it all depended on who was at the other end of the sofa, so to speak. If it was the only son of a sometime British Ambassador in Warsaw, whose mother lived in Belgravia, who took you to expensive restaurants and bought you orchids and whose college battels each term would have kept somebody like Miss Morrow clothed for many years, then Miss Doggett adopted a come-kiss-me-sweet-and-twenty attitude and observed that we are only young once. But supposing it had been a young man from one of the poorer colleges, who came from Huddersfield and had a state scholarship and wouldn’t wear suede shoes even if he could afford them? Supposing they had been sitting together, holding hands by the light of a gas-fire in a dreary room in one of the more remote streets leading off the Cowley Road, talking seriously about their future? Miss Morrow could see the room, the gas-fire flickering and popping, the table with its red or green baize cloth piled high with mathematical textbooks or Latin authors, while in Simon’s rooms in Randolph College, the table was strewn with bills, invitations to luncheons and sherry parties, and even love letters. Or so Miss Morrow, who was highly imaginative, pictured it.

‘… son of the late British Ambassador in Warsaw,’ she heard Miss Doggett saying to Mr. Latimer. ‘A brilliant young man. I think dinner is ready now. I hope you can take veal?’

They walked into the dining-room, talking happily about dyspepsia. Miss Morrow followed, feeling rather young and sprightly.

After dinner there was more wool-winding and some general conversation about Italian churches, central heating, ravioli, the unemployed, winter underclothes, plainsong chants and various other subjects, which seemed to follow each other quite easily. At ten o’clock they retired to bed.

Good, thought Mr. Latimer, as he climbed into the high, wide bed, laden with far too many bedclothes; there was a bedside lamp. He had so often in his life had to patter across cold linoleum in bare feet to turn off a light by the door. He believed that he was going to be very comfortable here. Of course Miss Doggett made a fuss of him, as all women did, but he rather liked this, as long as he wasn’t expected to give anything in return except the politeness and charm which came to him without effort. And, after all, what else could he be expected to give to an old woman of seventy? He liked the companion too, an amusing, sensible little woman, who wasn’t likely to throw her arms round his neck, for poor Mr. Latimer had experienced even that. His last thought before he went to sleep was that he liked Leamington Lodge.

In the Clevelands’ house nobody was asleep, although they were all in bed. Francis Cleveland was shouting through the communicating door to his wife’s room that he had a new pupil called Barbara Bird, who had written a remarkably fine essay on the love poems of John Donne.

Mrs. Cleveland made some suitable remark and then went back to her calculations about eggs for pickling. They seemed to get through such a lot of everything with these young men always coming to the house. And even when they were in love with Anthea they seemed to have enormous appetites.

Anthea was lying in bed on her stomach, with her face buried in the pillow. She was, as usual, thinking about Simon, with whom she had been out that evening. She was wide awake and it was no use trying to go to sleep, because even in the dark she saw his bright eyes looking at her. She tossed and turned and then lay on her back, regretting that these romantic evenings with much wine always made one so frightfully thirsty afterwards. She gulped down two glasses of water, then went to the window and leaned out. ‘Is he thinking about me?’ she whispered to the night, solemnly blowing kisses in what she imagined was the direction of Randolph College, but which was actually, and most unsuitably, the nearest way to a seminary for Roman Catholic priests.

Simon was not thinking about her. He was lying happily awake in his college bedroom, going over a speech he hoped to make at the Union debate on Thursday. Of course he adored Anthea, but “Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart”, especially when he is only twenty and has the ambition to become Prime Minister.

‘Now, Miss Morrow, you ought to be in your place at the stall,’ said Miss Doggett sharply, moving about the room giving orders. Every year she made herself the chief figure at the winter Sale of Work, although she did little to help in the preparations beyond knitting a few garments out of inferior wool or sending a quantity of junk out of her house.

This afternoon she was a regal figure in maroon with a skunk cape, quite alarming in her magnificence, although every woman had smartened herself up a little for the occasion. Even Miss Nollard and Miss Foxe, two dim North Oxford spinsters, were wearing new hats, and Miss Nollard’s hair looked suspiciously as if it had been waved. Only Mrs. Wardell remained reassuringly the same. Everyone knew that the curiously out-of-season straw hat she wore was only her old garden hat trimmed with a bunch of cherries from Woolworth’s, and some with sharper eyes were able to notice that the cherries had been sewn on with greenish darning wool, probably left in the needle after she had finished darning the vicar’s socks.

This year Mr. Latimer was the chief attraction at the sale, and his presence helped them to forget that they had not been able to get anybody distinguished to open it and so had been obliged to fall back on Mrs. Cleveland, who was always very ready to do anything she could, and whose husband
looked
very distinguished, even though he was only a Fellow of Randolph College.

She performed the opening ceremony swiftly and competently. As she had forgotten to ask what the sale was in aid of and there seemed to be no clues anywhere, she was not able to give any really convincing reasons why people should spend their money on the not very attractive things displayed on the stalls. But she was a conscientious woman and did her best, and when she had made her speech she walked round in her best lizard-skin shoes, which hurt her com, and bought a great deal of jam and cake—always useful for the Sunday tea parties—and as many other things as she thought could possibly be used in any way. But no crowd of obsequious church workers followed her, as is usual on such occasions. All the women who were not serving at the stalls were occupied elsewhere. They were clustering round Mr. Latimer.

Miss Morrow, who was somewhere at the outer edge of the throng surrounding him, watched him with dispassionate interest. His smooth remarks came as easily as if he had put on a gramophone record, she thought. He praised everything on every stall, tasted every different variety of home-made cakes, sweets and even jam, and had a compliment ready for every lady who asked him, as many did, how he liked her dress.

Miss Morrow would never have dreamed of asking a man such a question, she had for so long now worn the sort of clothes about which nobody could possibly say anything complimentary without telling lies. Her clothes were no more than drab coverings for her body. How do you like this grey jumper suit, Mr. Latimer, with its sagging cardigan and dowdy-length skirt? How do you like this felt hat of the sort of grey-beige which goes with everything and nothing? How do you like this blouse which I bought in Elliston’s Sale two years ago because it was, and still is, that shade of green which even the prettiest girl can’t get away with?

But Mr. Latimer was glad when, by some movement of the crowd, he found himself next to Miss Morrow. If he had analysed his feelings he would have realised that he turned to her with relief, as one does to a person with whom one need not make conversation. But there was no personal quality in his feeling for her. He regarded her simply as a man might regard a comfortable chair by the fire, where he can sit with his slippers on and a pipe in his mouth.

Miss Morrow felt this, but it did not worry her. Inanimate objects were often so much nicer than people, she thought. What person, for example, could possibly be so comforting as one’s bed? And although she hardly dared to imagine that he thought as highly of her as of his bed, she was nevertheless conscious of a certain easy relationship between them which pleased her. She knew that they both had the same opinion of Miss Doggett, although they never actually spoke of her. Mr. Latimer’s coming to Leamington Lodge had certainly brought pleasure into their lives, and Miss Doggett had less time to nag at her companion now that she had a curate to dote upon.

‘How much longer will it last?’ he asked in a low voice. ‘It’s five o’clock now.’

‘It will last as long as you stay here,’ said Miss Morrow. ‘Surely you can see that?’

Mr. Latimer heaved a scarcely perceptible sigh. ‘Do you think that if a thunderbolt suddenly fell out of the sky onto this hideous embroidered tea cosy it would end then?’ he asked.

‘The tea cosy would be spoilt and nobody would be able to buy it, but why should the Sale of Work end?’ said Miss Morrow.

‘Are there no sick people I ought to visit?’ asked Mr. Latimer hopefully.

‘There are no sick people in North Oxford. They are either dead or alive. It’s sometimes difficult to tell the difference, that’s all,’ explained Miss Morrow.

‘Oh, Mr. Latimer,’ said an eager don’s wife, ‘you must have a pair of these bed-socks. They’ll save your life if you ever sleep in a cold, damp bed.’

‘Or in a cold, open field with the raggle-taggle gipsies O?’ laughed Mr. Latimer, putting on his gramophone record. ‘They are beautifully knitted.’

‘Are you interested in Morris dancing?’ asked somebody else.

‘Have you tried my chocolate cake?’

‘You
must
come to supper on Sunday night!’

And so it went on. Mrs. Cleveland decided to go home. She would be conferring no honours on the eager church workers by making conversation or taking tea with them, and nobody minded or even noticed when she hurried away to change her uncomfortable shoes and have tea in her own drawing-room.