No Fond Return of Love (19 page)

Dulcie was relieved that this appeared to be a sufficient reason. With quiet persistence, she asked, ‘And where is he now; Father Forbes, I mean.’

‘Oh, in the West Country, of course. Gone to his mother. She has a hotel in Taviscombe, you know.’

‘A hotel? In Taviscombe?’ Dulcie tried to keep the excitement out of her voice. ‘No, I didn’t know that.’

‘Eagle House Private Hotel,’ said the housekeeper. ‘Quite a little goldmine, I should think.’

‘And Miss Spicer;’

‘Well, she’s still here, of course – can’t leave her mother. Old Mrs Spicer’s over eighty now and getting a bit difficult. Keeps falling out of bed,’ said the housekeeper, with a callous little laugh. ‘So she couldn’t be left.’

‘How dreadful,’ said Viola in a faint tone, seeing the whole pathetic picture – spinster tied to elderly mother and falling in love with handsome celibate priest.

‘Of course it was a pity it all had to blow up now in Lent,’ the housekeeper went on. ‘It couldn’t have happened at a worse time, with all the Easter services coming on. He
has
left us in a hole.’

‘It seems odd that he had to leave,’ said Dulcie. ‘One would have thought he could have coped somehow.’ Unless he wanted to spare poor Miss Spicer’s feelings – could it have been that? ‘I suppose he’ll come back;’ she added.

‘We don’t know. He can’t very well just go off like this or the Bishop would have something to say – I mean, if he’s gone for more than a week or two. We get these odd priests to help out but they’re not really satisfactory.’ She lowered her voice and looked quickly round the hall. ‘This one now, for instance, he stays out till all hours, wasn’t in till after midnight last night, goodness only knows what he was doing.’

‘That does seem strange,’ Dulcie murmured, wondering as she said it if it really was strange. After all, a grown man could surely stay out after midnight without exciting comment – there might be many reasonable explanations.

‘And one we had used to go down to the larder in the night and forage around,’ the housekeeper continued. ‘He ate up some cold brussels sprouts – would you believe it!’ she laughed derisively. ‘
And
he tampered with the heating apparatus in church – couldn’t seem to leave it alone.’

‘That seems to point to some dreadful kind of frustration – eating cold brussels sprouts in the middle of the night and tampering with the heating,’ said Viola thoughtfully, but the idea was beyond the range of the housekeeper’s imaginings, so that it was not developed as fruitfully as it might have been.

‘Well, I do hope Father Forbes will come back to you before Easter,’ said Dulcie, putting on her gloves. ‘I really think we ought to be going now – thank you so much for the tea. It’s been a most interesting evening,’ she added, somewhat obscurely.

‘Oh, you must come again,’ said the housekeeper. ‘Perhaps when Father Forbes is back – I’m sure you’d like
him
’

‘Yes, I’m sure we should,’ said Dulcie to Viola, as they hurried away down the ill-lit road past what she thought of as ‘mean’ little semi-detached houses. ‘But what a rich evening!’

‘Yes,’ Viola agreed, ‘even
you
could hardly want more than that. It seems a bit late for you to go and see your uncle and aunt now, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes, perhaps it is, and anyway I don’t feel in the mood for seeing them now. Shall we go and have a meal somewhere so that we can get used to the idea of the Eagle House Private Hotel and all that?’

‘Yes, let’s do that. There’s something strange about that church,’ Viola said. ‘Did you notice the way that churchwarden kept creep-ing up behind us. Yet he didn’t speak to us afterwards.’

‘No, there was no sign of him in the hall. He disappeared – into the vestry, I suppose – to count the money. It’s like a church in a Graham Greene novel, or even an early John Buchan – the kind of place that might be a cover for some sinister activities. And this Father Neville Forbes-Joes he really exist? What proof have we that he does?’

‘Only the housekeeper’s word, and Aylwin’s, of course. I suppose if we were to go to this place where his mother has the hotel…’ Viola suggested tentatively.

‘You mean to Taviscombe – for Easter, perhaps…’ Dulcie stopped in the middle of the pavement, her eyes shining with excitement.

‘Hush, Dulcie,’ said Viola sharply. ‘People are looking at us.’

They had now reached a street of shops where the buses went.

‘That man there, arranging things in that shop window,’ Viola went on. ‘He’s smiling at you. Do you know him? I should hardly imagine so.’ Viola made as if to hurry on, but Dulcie stopped her.

‘Why, it’s Bill Sedge,’ she exclaimed. ‘He’s the brother of my aunt’s housekeeper.’

‘What’s he doing in a shop window at this time of night?’

‘Oh, he’s the knitwear buyer for this chain of shops. I suppose he’s arranging the window ready for Monday morning. It would be only polite to stop and speak to him for a minute.’

The dapper shirt-sleeved figure of Bill Sedge, wearing felt over-shoes and carrying a bough of artificial cherry blossom, now appeared in the shop doorway.

‘Miss Dulcie, what a pleasant surprise! I have just finished arranging my display of spring knitwear from Florence and Vienna. I felt I had to do it
myself
  –  
this is a very special collection, a real
scoop
.’

‘It looks very nice,’ said Dulcie feebly. ‘Viola, this is Mr Sedge – his sister works for my aunt.’

‘Viennese cooking, you know,’ said Bill Sedge, taking Viola’s hand and bowing low. ‘I hope you ladies will join me for a cup of coffee? There is quite a good little place near here. Excuse me a moment, I will get my coat and lock up.’

‘Just look at those petticoats,’ said Viola self-consciously, as they waited by the shop window, ‘all those frills and frou-frou – not quite
us
, somehow.’

‘A New Temptation,’ Dulcie read from a card fixed to a black lace strapless brassiere. ‘For whom, one wonders.’

‘Perhaps we ought to be looking at Mr Sedge’s knitwear,’ said Viola, going to the other side of the window, ‘that will be more suitable. I suppose we couldn’t very well refuse to have coffee with him.’

‘No, hardly – and he is quite an amusing little man. He and his sister have had a hard time of it, but of course they are all right
now
,’ said Dulcie firmly.

‘Andiamo!’ cried Bill Sedge gaily, propelling them across a zebra crossing. ‘You have had your evening meal? No, I think not! Then we need more than coffee.’

They protested mildly, but he obviously enjoyed ordering Wiener schnitzels and a bottle of wine, joking with the waitress in German, for all the world like an English businessman in a City restaurant.

He seemed to be rather taken with Viola, who, much to Dulcie’s surprise, was listening to his conversation with every appearance of interest.

‘One of my spring colours is just your colour,’ he was saying. ‘How can I describe it – a shade of blue, almost violet, I might say.’

‘How strange,’ Viola murmured, looking at him rather intensely. ‘I was christened Violet.’

‘Ein Veilchen auf der Wiese stand

Gebückt. in sich und unbekannt,’

quoted Bill Sedge softly.

Really, the ridiculousness of men! thought Dulcie, wondering now why she had been surprised that Viola should be listening to his conversation with every appearance of interest. I suppose if somebody quoted poetry at me I should have just such an expression on my face, she thought, looking away from Viola. Aloud she said, ‘That must be a sort of German version of “A violet by a mossy stone”.’

‘Well, hardly’ said Viola with a superior little smile. ‘And it does sound rather better in a foreign language,’ she admitted.

‘I really ought to be going home now,’ said Dulcie, when they had finished their coffee. She did not quite know what to do about Viola, who could perhaps follow later, escorted by Bill Sedge. Dulcie herself was quite prepared to slip quietly away and humbly join the nearest bus queue.

But Bill Sedge’s manners were equal to the occasion.

‘You must allow me to escort you both,’ he said firmly. ‘It is not very nice for you to be out alone at night like this.’

‘Oh, but one so often is,’ said Dulcie in confusion, and then wondered what kind of an impression she had created. ‘We had been to church.’

‘And was there no man at this church to take you home? If you had not met me, what might have happened!’

What might
not
have happened! Dulcie thought, plunging still deeper into confusion. ‘I don’t think one expects men to escort one home from church,’ she said. ‘I didn’t really notice anyone there who could have done.’

‘Except the churchwarden who crept up behind us,’ laughed Viola, ‘and he was busy counting the money.’

‘We will take a taxi, I think,’ said Bill Sedge masterfully.

When they were comfortably installed in one, Dulcie allowed her thoughts to wander to the Eagle House Private Hotel. She had as yet had no opportunity to meditate on the richness of the name or to consider in detail the possibility of going to Taviscombe for Easter. Tomorrow she would write for the tariff. Did one have to enclose a stamped addressed envelope, she wondered.

‘We like to cater for ladies of taste as well as for young girls,’ Bill Sedge was saying. ‘I think you will be just crazy about some of our spring knitwear.’

The phrase ‘just crazy’ did not seem to suit Viola, but after he had gone she said to Dulcie that she had liked him very much.

‘Shall you go and look at the spring knitwear?’ Dulcie asked with a sparkle of amusement.

‘Oh, that’s not the point,’ said Viola impatiently. ‘How often does one meet an Englishman with such charming manners – who makes one feel – well –
a woman
?’ she brought out at last.

‘Well, not often, I suppose,’ Dulcie agreed. ‘He certainly is very charming, but he makes me feel slightly ill at ease – almost as if I were a woman
manquée
, if there could be such a thing – you know, something lacking in me.’

‘Oh, well, that’s hardly
his
fault.’

‘No,’ Dulcie agreed. ‘Mine, of course.’

IT WAS generally on Palm Sunday that the cloths were put on the tables in the dining-room at the Eagle House Private Hotel, ready for the Easter visitors. Having a clergyman son, Mrs Forbes found that it was easier to have the kind of routine that went with the Church’s year. At the same time the big stuffed eagle in the hall – from which the hotel took its name – was given its annual cleaning with one of the Hoover attachments. The fierce-looking king of birds submitted himself to various indignities at the hands of a bustling woman. There were, of course, many other things to be seen to, the refurbishing of the residents’ lounge being perhaps the most important. The picture in the brochure, ‘A Corner of the Residents’ Lounge’, gave little idea of the true flavour of the room, which visitors discovered for themselves, when a wet day or an idle moment after a meal gave them the opportunity of savouring it.

This year, however, the routine had been a little upset. To begin with, it was not till the middle of Lent that Mrs Forbes discovered that the table-cloths in the dining-room had not been removed since the end of the summer season. This was because they were new plastic ones and so did not need to be sent to the laundry. Then, like a kind of omen in classical literature, the eagle had seemed to resent his annual cleaning and had ‘attacked’, as it were, the woman wield-ing the Hoover attachment and given her a nasty scratch with one of his claws. The third unusual happening was the arrival of Mrs Forbes’s son Neville, coming up to the door in the dusk one evening, his black clerical raincoat over his arm and a small suitcase in his hand. For a clergyman to leave his parish, even though it could hardly be described as ‘a busy London parish’, in the middle of Lent was surely most unusual. Mrs Forbes found herself wishing that it had been Aylwin, who would at least have made himself more use-ful about the place, as well as being her favourite son. Neville could hardly even be called upon to wait at table, for he insisted on wearing his cassock all the time, and even had he worn only an ordinary dark suit and his clerical collar he would still have looked a little unusual, taking the dishes from the hatch and bringing them to the tables. Besides, people just did not like a clergyman wandering about in a hotel; it was to be hoped that he would have gone back before the Easter visitors arrived.

He did not at first tell his mother why he had come home so suddenly. Every morning he was out early, murmuring something about having ‘the use of an altar’, just when Mrs Forbes had thought it would be a good chance for him to have a nice lie-in. She gathered that he was taking some of the weekday early services – Masses, he called them – at one of the town’s churches, the one people described as having been ‘spoilt’ because of the present vicar’s Romish tendencies. But although he had said nothing about his reasons for coming, Mrs Forbes guessed that it must be, in her own words, ‘trouble with a woman’, for it had happened before. What began as a pleasant friendship between priest and parish worker all too often blossomed – or should one say degenerated? – into love on the woman’s part. And even now Neville seemed quite unable to deal with it. He should either marry or go into a monastery, thought Mrs Forbes firmly, though even marriage would not prevent the female members of his flock from falling in love with him. Still, a strong-minded woman could be a powerful deterrent to all but the most determined. It was a pity that Aylwin had not chosen a more suitable wife. Marjorie was a sweet girl but totally unfitted to be the wife of a man in Aylwin’s position, and now that marriage seemed to be going wrong.

Mrs Forbes picked up a letter from Marjorie’s mother, Mrs Williton, and hesitated a moment before opening it. She was sitting in the little office where the business of the hotel was conducted, a small cosy room behind the reception desk. She was a gaunt-looking woman, with a large nose and piercing eyes; her handsome sons did not seem to take after her. This morning she was still wearing her usual winter costume of tweed suit and fur-lined boots on her thin, white, old woman’s legs, which today were stockingless. When she went out she would put on the ankle-length musquash coat and deerstalker-type hat which hung behind the door. She was a well-known figure in the town and was often to be seen walking on the moors. Indeed, people used to wonder how the cooking at Eagle House could really be ‘under personal supervision of Resident Proprietress, Mrs Horatia M. Forbes’ (as it said in the brochure), when she was so often not there at meal-times.