Palladian (20 page)

Tom thought: ‘We have certainly had our fair share of funerals.’ This was the second time his better nature had induced him to come and uphold Marion, although he saw no sense in any of it and thought uncivilised all the unnecessary and
heartrending funeral-trappings, the pitiful little box with its bronze chrysanthemums and bits of brass. For whose sake was it done? he wondered. Not Sophy’s, surely? And was it not prolonged misery to those who deserved best to be considered? Marion, for instance. Why should everything be done to please the old women – his mother so easily weeping, Nanny in her mauve gloves with the black lines on the back and her correct funeral clothes – she even had, she once confided to Tom, correct apparel for her own funeral, a lawn nightgown with valenciennes lace given to her by Violet’s mother and so beautiful that she could not bring herself to wear it while she was still alive.

Why do people die so often from funerals? he wondered. Old people tempted out in poor weather bent upon lugubrious pleasures, their resistance lowered by thoughts of mortality, the graveside turf so damp beneath their feet. Not a drink inside them, either. ‘We shan’t go to a funeral smelling of spirits,’ as Nanny had said. Marion had ignored her and began to pour a whisky for Tom. But he had not drunk for four days, and refused. He felt neither better nor worse for this abstinence, merely lived on a different plane. He thought he would never drink again. Not because of Sophy, not because it mattered; a little, perhaps, to free himself from Mrs Veal and a little, also, because it was too much trouble. He could not be like Marion with a drink here and there for the drink’s sake. Marion revered wine, was well on the way, Tom considered, to being an affected fool about it, one of those who use farfetched adjectives, such as flamboyant, authentic, forthright and so on – (for a few verses of the Psalm, he amused himself inventing other improbable epithets). Whereas I, he continued, call it all ‘the booze’ and despise it because it never does what it promises.

The white chrysanthemums were richly curled and green
shadowed. About this time of year they had had the other funeral. Another poor show. Violet would have arranged it better herself. (By moonlight, purple plumes bunched on the horses’ heads, the black horses sequinned, glittering under the moon, the narrow carriages plunging down through the steepsided lanes, a white owl flying above the hearse and, in the blanched churchyard, a gravedigger waiting with a skull in his hand and his spade silver from the flinty soil.)

‘Comfort us again now after the time that Thou hast plagued us: and for the years wherein we have suffered adversity.’

‘Some hopes!’ thought Tom. Marion stood very stiff and straight, the tips of his fingers resting on the pew before him. ‘Chief mourner. He is always that,’ Tom thought. ‘Comfort
him
, he has been plagued enough.’ ‘Who’ll be chief mourner? I, said the Dove, I’ll mourn for my love.’ The flowers, the coffin, the family waited. For what? So that Saint Paul should set himself questions and then answer them inadequately, inventing dupes to sharpen his wits upon, that contemptible trick of the argumentative. ‘I asked a civil question and I expect a civil answer, as Nanny used to say.’ Not ‘Thou fool!’ ‘We did not come here to be insulted.’ ‘I shan’t like the bit outside,’ he thought, trying to brace himself. ‘I didn’t like it with Violet. I won’t look at Marion. I will look at little Cassandra this time.’

Between two pillars was the tomb of a Lord of the Manor from those times before any Vanbrughs had lived there, when bread was baked in the bake-house, and the front of the house showed its own skeleton of wood, had no pediment, no frivolities, no eighteenth-century folly, no cumbersome luxury. The effigies lying on the tomb were painted, the features blunted, man and wife stretched side by side, their hands which had once pointed upwards in prayer were broken from the wrists. At the man’s feet lay a little curled dog with a face like a lion, and
at the woman’s feet was a baby criss-crossed with swathing bands. They had died together, leaving no heir. The young man, with his chipped beard and narrow face, had not watched first a wife go into the grave and then his only child. They had been struck down in the medieval way, thought Marion. A plague, perhaps, or the well-water at the end of a hot summer full of visible creatures. The infant had been hastily baptised (it bore the mark of the chrism) and the father had weakly scratched out his instructions for the tomb, the inscription (in Gothic letters, as befits the dead) and, his living hand among the curls of the little dog and tears starting to his eyes in the English fashion when animals are to be parted from – ‘my little dog …’ he had perhaps written – his last words … Marion turned his thoughts away. He must not be moved, not by a dog dead three hundred years ago. He looked at Cassandra, who waited wretchedly to follow the coffin out of the church, Saint Paul having had his say.

With immeasurable dignity, Nanny lifted a white handkerchief, bordered with grey, and touched one cheekbone, then the other. Tinty snivelled still into the screwed-up pink affair. The next time Nanny would use her handkerchief would be as the earth struck the coffin-lid. Adams’s boots rang hollowly over the stone and gratings as he clanked down the aisle.

Cassandra walked with Nanny behind the family. Mrs Veal approved of that. She was smoothing on her gloves, ready to slip out of the South Door, not daring to let Tom see her.

Outside, the sun was like gold dust in the air. Cassandra stood on the clay-daubed turf and tried, by breathing slowly and regularly, to unknot her throat. The living most often remember with a sense of guilt their past relationships with the newly dead and Cassandra could not forget her last hour or so with Sophy, and her own impatience and the hostility which had sprung up between them, like a gust of wind on a calm day.
Sophy was the sort of child about whom one felt confidently that a little later on she would become happier, better adjusted, less driven to morbid secrecy. It was always a little later on that it would happen, and it is painful to think of the dead whose future promised what the past had not given.

Mrs Veal was detained in the porch by one of the villagers, so that she could not see that Marion had taken up his proper place at the head of the grave. When she had shaken off her washerwoman, she hurried down the path, brushing carelessly through the Michaelmas daisies and keeping well out of sight. Out in the lane, Margaret was sitting in a car, waiting. When she saw Mrs Veal, she blew her nose, turning her head away. She was shivery and her nostrils were red and pinched. ‘I felt as if I had “flu” coming on,’ she would say to her mother later. Margaret never had colds like other people – either ‘flu’ or nothing.

Mrs Veal hastened away down the hill. ‘Why
did
I come?’ she asked herself, feeling upset and flurried.

Tom stared at his feet steadily, not at Marion, not even at Cassandra. If he raised his eyes at all it was to look across the churchyard, at the yellow leaves turning in the still air and falling over the grass and gravestones. ‘In the midst of life we are in death.’ He would never allow himself to remember the little caved-in ribs and the stain spreading upon the yellow dress, so ‘Where is Margaret?’ he quickly asked himself. Had she let herself give in at last, and what excuse would she set forth and elaborate at tea-time – if one
does
have tea after a funeral?

Nanny lifted her handkerchief again and shortly after they began unevenly mumbling the Lord’s Prayer. As they came away from the graveside, Marion walked beside Cassandra. He had said nothing to her for days, no word since the evening in the library. Now, looking straight ahead, he said stiffly: ‘I should like to thank you for all the kindness you gave to Sophy. And to
me.’ He waved his hand before his eyes, brushing away some threads of cobwebs of which the early autumn air seemed full, then he opened the car door and very civilly bade her get in.

At tea, Margaret drank warm milk. The draughts in that church,’ she began. ‘My back was
icy
. I knew I was in for it. Odd how it comes so suddenly. And I shake it off suddenly, too.’ Tom smiled at Marion.

‘Most anti-social of me, I know,’ Margaret went on. ‘Casting germs in all directions. As soon as I’ve had this drink, I’ll remove myself and take my temperature to bed.’

As she passed Tom’s chair, she said in a lower voice partially muffled by handkerchief: ‘That Mrs Veal was at the church.’ He looked at her and waited, as if what she had said was not enough. ‘I cut her,’ she added.

‘What an odd thing to have done,’ he said evenly, watching her go, seeming sunk in his chair, his coat still lapped round him as if he were an old man, refusing to stir.

Marion stood by the window with an empty cup in his hand. Cassandra went out as soon as she thought Margaret had been given time to get into her bedroom. When she reached her own room, she began to pack her small case. The old trunk was filled and strapped down. Now she gathered up the photographs and brushes from the dressing-table. The
Classical Tradition
, she thought, taking the little book from a drawer. What in heaven’s name was it all about? She had never read it, and Mrs Turner would expect her to have done so. She put it into the case and unhooked her coat from the great wardrobe where one or two peacock-butterflies hung with wings folded in a winter sleep.

Soon she was ready. She had only her letter to compose. She put her coat on and took her writing things to the window-seat. In the yellowing rose-garden the goose wandered, sedate and forlorn. She dipped her pen into the ink and was about to write
when she realised that she had no way of addressing Marion. She had never used his Christian name and could not now. She looked out at the garden, remembering his kiss and its promise of tenderness and intimacy, then dipping the pen in the ink once more wrote very slowly ‘Dear Mr Vanbrugh …’

‘I like a nice Sunday film myself,’ said Nanny, ‘but as things are I couldn’t go.’

‘Technicolor,’ said Mrs Adams, peeling potatoes at the sink.

‘I can never settle down to technicolor. Some of those blue skies are cruel. An artist wouldn’t paint pictures like that. If he did he’d be disqualified.’

‘It gives more idea of the dresses.’

‘That I’ll grant you. Most of those potatoes seem to be going into the chickens’ food. It reminds me of Mrs Courage and the way she used to go into the kitchen every morning to have a look round. “These potato-peelings!” she used to say to the kitchen-maid, “I shall want to see them thinner to-morrow.” It was as much as the girl’s position was worth to throw away any of the trimmings and peelings before they were inspected. Not that I’m saying Madam was right going over Cook’s head in that way, and in the end Cook left, but she’d have had a word to say about that lot there.’

Mrs Adams resented being likened to a kitchen-maid. She was a married woman and not in service. Besides, she was sick and tired of hearing about Mrs Courage, a woman who was not
even titled, or only an Honourable, which was no use in conversation.

Nanny straightened things on the dresser, re-arranged the cups so that they all faced the same way and counted the pile of coppers on the shelf.

‘All serene,’ she announced.

‘It looks rather pointed it stopping as soon as she leaves. What did he say?’

‘He shields her. If she took anything worth while with her when she went he’d not let on. After the way he laughed at me I’ll never mention it again. I was waiting for
him
to ask about that cameo-brooch. If he’d of said anything to me, “Well, sir!” I’d have answered, “I saw it plain as daylight on her dressing-table, but I didn’t care to broach the matter, not after the attitude you took up before.”’ She savoured the grandeur of this speech for a moment and then went on: ‘Of course, I didn’t know she was going to hop it like she did. He said she was upset. Upset! Much she ever cared for that poor child. If she could leave her on my hands, that suited her. I suppose he posted her money on.’ (‘He s daft enough for anything,’ she added to herself.)

‘For people in their position it was a poor funeral,’ said Mrs Adams.

‘All the colours of the rainbow,’ Nanny agreed.

‘Not many wreaths.’

‘If you choose to cut yourself off from society it’s not much use expecting a lot of flowers at your funeral.’

‘Although I say it as shouldn’t, Fred was dressed as well as any. He had that suit when he was one of the bearers when the old lady died. He said she was that soaked with port she was as heavy as the spongecake at the bottom of a trifle.’

‘Perhaps you’ll be good enough to get the hall swept,’ said Nanny. The trouble with Mrs Adams was the old trouble of her
taking a yard when she was given only an inch. With the slightest encouragement she became vulgar and had used, on more than on occasion, some very terrible words.

‘I’ll just run me hands under the tap and put the chickens’ food on the boil.’

In the hall Tinty was standing on an oak settle underneath which sat the kitchen cat with one paw on a live but paralysed mouse.

‘A woman’s fear of these little creatures has a strange origin,’ said Margaret coming downstairs and, taking the mouse from the cat’s jaws, threw it out of the front door, showing herself to be either less or more than other women. The cat rolled lightheartedly on its back as if freed from a boring duty.

Tinty climbed down shamefacedly as her daughter had intended.

While she was deprecating her cowardice, Mrs Adams came in and began to wrench rugs from under the legs of furniture and throw them on to the terrace outside. Dust rose in clouds and settled in the carved oak.