Passing On (17 page)

‘Enough,’ said Helen. ‘You have no right. Nor ever did. From now on I’ll be mine own executioner.’

‘Whatever have you done to the cloakroom?’ complained Edward.

‘Cleared it out.’

‘I liked it the way it was.’

‘We’ve still got nine raincoats and anoraks between us. And eight different hats and an alpenstock and a flywhisk and four walking-sticks.’

‘I used to enjoy the way you never knew what you’d come across next.’

‘I don’t share your feelings,’ said Helen.

She considered making a ceremonial pyre. She would burn Peter Datchett’s letter and that dress in one fine condemnatory blaze.

There you are, mother — there they go, properly disposed of at last. A few years too late. Or did you always think they had been? Were you careless or calculating? And what did you do it for? Were these sins of omission, or a devilish scheme? I can’t know if you succeeded in changing the course of my life, but it’s possible. And for a person in a somewhat delicate emotional condition, as I believe myself to be, this is hard to contemplate.

She did not believe that marriage, or pairing, or however you cared to define a sexual relationship, was the key to happiness and fulfilment; you only had to look around you to see that this was not so. Which was worse — to have tried and failed or never to have tried at all?

She thought of her father — that grey and distant figure associated only with anchovy paste and a rustling newspaper. It was not comfortable to consider her parents’ intimate life; she could recall no demonstrations of affection or indeed even of much displayed interest in one another. Usually, Dorothy had been engaged in shifting her husband around like an inharmonious piece of furniture. His own image was one of compliant self effacement. He went out to work by day, conveniently, at a firm of accountants; in the evenings and at weekends he made himself as unobtrusive as possible. God knows what went on at night.

In the end she pushed the letter into the drawer of her desk and left the dress where it was, in the corner of the wardrobe.

All in good time.

Edward, practised in self-deception, forgot about the guests until Sunday morning and was therefore surprised to discover Helen, at ten-thirty, wearing unexpected clothes and straightening cushions in the sitting room. She was also flushed and evidently in a state of unrest, which made him feel chivalrous and sympathetic.

He decided to be nice about the whole business, though he still could not see the point of it, and offered to put the little biscuity things into bowls. He gave some of them to Tam in the process.

It was not so much that he had anything against people in general, more that he saw no purpose in deliberately setting up occasions on which you stood around trying to think of something to say. Moreover, the whole process was self-perpetuating; the guest became the host in an act of social revenge and thus it

went on for ever. The only sensible course was never to start it in the first place. He could not think what had got into Helen, normally as rational as himself about all this, or so he had thought.

Nevertheless, when the doorbell rang he was ready and waiting, with an agreeable expression and a fluent command of what to offer by way of drink. He had been feeling a bit better for the last few days. He had repaired the fence between the Britches and Ron Paget’s yard, filled two black plastic sacks with rubbish and had embarked on a vigorous assault upon dead and decaying trees. It all felt very positive and forward-looking.

The visitors arrived. There were not enough of them to make the large Greystones sitting room look as though much was going on; people stood in small clumps, eyeing one another; awkward silences broke out. I told you so, thought Edward, ploughing valiantly around with a bottle in each hand. Tam scrabbled at each pair of legs in turn, remembering the biscuits; the more uninhibited guests kicked, furtively. Apart from the doctor and his wife and Giles Carnaby they were all people from the village who had not had an opportunity for a good look at the inside of Greystones for quite a while and were busy taking note. ‘I s’pose you may be thinking of selling the Britches now, Edward?’ asked a neighbour. ‘Oh no,’ said Edward. ‘There’s no question of that.’

He couldn’t remember her name; her face was as familiar to him as the frontage of the village shop or outline of the church tower; he had always been hopeless at names. The solicitor detached himself from another group and joined them. ‘Giles Carnaby — we haven’t met. Your sister is busy hostessing so I’m introducing myself.’ Oh,’ said Edward. ‘Yes. Hello. This is Mrs …’ He gazed wildly at the neighbour who said crossly, ‘Jean Powers.

Actually Edward’s known me for ten years, but there we are.

You live in Spaxton, don’t you?’ Edward, thinking with relief that he could leave them to it now, began to withdraw, clutching the bottles that gave him a certain exemption, free to come and go. The solicitor laid a hand on his arm, making Edward wince: he didn’t like to be touched. ‘Were you talking about the famous Britches? Helen’s told me so much about the place. May I have a conducted tour sometime?’ No you certainly can’t, thought Edward, and what’s all this ‘Helen’ stuff? He said, ‘There’s absolutely nothing to see and it’s awfully full of nettles’; at the same moment Jean Powers was saying noisily that not a solitary soul had been into the Britches in years and the village wondered what Edward got up to in there — ha ha! — some people said he must be into black magic, or maybe he was growing cannabis.

Edward laughed politely, slid from Carnaby’s grip and edged towards the group by the window, who were talking about hedges in tones of some desperation. As he did so Helen passed him; her neck was red, a sure sign of agitation. She hissed, ‘Do do something about the Taylors and old Mrs Phipson. They’ve been stuck together for hours.’ How?’ enquired Edward; he meant it — he had absolutely no idea of the mechanics involved.

Helen gave him a look of fury. The group by the window turned to him anxiously: ‘Is that hedge yew, Edward? None of us can decide.’ Really, thought Edward, people must be out of their minds, submitting themselves to this sort of occasion quite voluntarily.

Kill or cure, Helen had thought. As soon as she set eyes on Giles Carnaby again she knew that whatever it was it was not a case of cure; her heart thumped, she felt unstable. There he was. Here he was. Smiling at her over people’s shoulders while she could not move because someone was telling her at length how much she must be missing her mother. And then she saw him talking to Edward and Jean Powers and then someone had mislaid their glass and she had to find another and then there was the problem of the Taylors and old Mrs Phipson. And then eventually she could cross the room towards him. ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘I have been most restrained — I could see you had your hands full.

But I have met your brother at long last and Mrs Powers has been regaling me with the most fascinating pieces of village gossip.’ This set Jean Powers off on a torrent of exclamations and denials so that Helen could not have got a word in had she wished to; she stood and looked at Giles Carnaby and tried to be calm. She tried to see him dispassionately as a grey-haired solicitor rather too well endowed with easy charm; indeed, she saw him thus, but she also saw him otherwise, and could not help herself. When he turned to look intently at Jean Powers she felt a twinge of jealousy; his arm, brushing momentarily against hers, made her tingle all over. This sort of thing was bad enough at eighteen, she thought; at my age it is ludicrous and humiliating.

Jean Powers moved away. Giles said ‘Dear me, what a demanding woman. She’s not a great friend, I hope? Anyway, now that I’ve got you to myself for a moment can we make some plans? First of all, am I going to be able to persuade you to. . ‘Oh Helen!’ cried the doctor’s wife, appearing at their side, ‘We’re going to have to rush off, I’m afraid. John’s on call today.

But first I must just have a word with you about. .

She attended to the doctor’s wife. She got the doctor and his wife into their coats and saw them out of the front door. She returned to the sitting room and struck Tam, who had knocked the bowl of biscuits from the table and was wolfing them off the carpet. She refilled three glasses. She went into the kitchen to gee if there was another packet of biscuits. I am not enjoying myself, she thought — but then I was never supposed to, was I?

She sought biscuits in the bread bin, the vegetable rack, on the dresser. No damn biscuits.

Giles appeared. ‘Is there anything I can do? You look harassed.’ ‘I am harassed,’ said Helen. ‘Edward’s wretched dog has eaten the biscuits.’ People can live without biscuits.’ I know,’ she replied. ‘But it doesn’t seem so at this moment.’ I just may burst into tears, she thought. I just might, appallingly, sit down on the kitchen chair and start to weep… Giles put his hand on hers: ‘Stop worrying about the biscuits and talk to me. We were interrupted. I was in the middle of trying to find out if you’ll come and have dinner with me next week. At home. I’m not much of a cook but I do a passable roast. Thursday? Friday?’

She subsided onto the chair. She was not, she found, going to burst into tears after all. The biscuits became unimportant, and the guests. ‘Thursday,’ she said. ‘I’m not doing anything on Thursday.’ The kitchen became a warm and friendly place; she sat in it smiling at Giles Carnaby. I’m happy, she thought in surprise, at this precise moment I am happy.

NINE

Hemp agrimony — Eupatorium cannabinum — flourished in the Britches, as it happened; Jean Powers was not so wide of the mark. Edward of course was unaware of its connotations and encouraged it as a handsome and relatively uncommon plant. It grew in a boggy area where there was a spring and a small stream which flowed in a desultory way after the autumn rains but almost dried up in summer. Other water-loving species turned up here from time to time also — Mimulus and forget-me-not and Water Speedwell. The Mimulus was in fact a garden escape, but he allowed it all the same, while conceding that a purist would not. Once there had been kingcups, but none had been seen now for at least ten years. The whole area was much dryer than it used to be, and Edward suspected that something had interfered with the water table; there had been nesting moorhens at one time — now only the occasional toad was left. But the hemp agrimony continued to grow strongly, rather swamping the more genteel species, indeed. Now and then he was obliged to curb it in order to give a chance to the bluebells and the wood anemones, which were both getting sparse to the point of extinction. He sometimes had the feeling that all the more delicate growths were being quenched and ousted by the rougher stuff, if one did not intervene. He saw himself as a wise and benign deity, presiding over his kingdom and seeing to it that evil did not always prevail; a hollow symbolism of course and anyway he rather liked hemp agrimony and ground ivy. The real war was waged against nettle and bramble — now there you really could persuade yourself that some malign force was at work, set upon reducing the whole place to a rank and thrusting wilderness, in which the weakest went to the wall.

Edward felt that he and the malign force were fairly evenly matched. In a few hours of concentrated assault he could destroy months of determined surreptitious growth; but then he would discover some other, overlooked area where things had been going to the dogs unheeded and some valiantly struggling patch of wood anemone or bluebells had been choked to the last gasp.

One thought, of course, in such terms: malign, surreptitious, struggle, valiant. He was well aware of the anthropomorphism and indeed found it satisfying; it was as though, in the Britches, thigh-deep in lashing nettle and octopus strands of clutching bramble he was coming to grips at last with a great many things and, as often as not, getting the upper hand.

He spent the afternoon in the Britches, as soon as the last of the party guests had departed. Half of a perfectly good Sunday had been wasted, but there were still several hours till dark. He was working in a thicket of briar, elder and dead wood from a fallen tree. From time to time he resorted to the saw; the noise he was making deafened him to Ron Paget’s approach. When he spoke Edward jumped so violently that the saw fell from his hand.

‘You’re not getting far with that, are you?’ said Ron. ‘Tell you what, I’ll have one of the men come over with some proper equipment. Have that lot out in no time.’

Edward picked up the saw. ‘Thanks, but I can manage perfectly well.’ And get out, he fumed, you’ve no business marching in here like this. Through the gap in the fence, I suppose, the place I didn’t wire up.

Ron gave him a look of amusement. ‘You do like to do things the hard way, don’t you, Mr Glover? I heard you at it so I thought I’d pop in and pass the time of day. How’s Miss Glover, then?’

‘She’s very well,’ said Edward.

‘I’m glad to hear it. I’ve a lot of respect for your sister. Quiet but got a mind of her own, know what I mean?’

Edward stared coldly.

‘I’ve lost track of how long it is now we’ve been neighbours. I was saying to Pauline the other day, there’s some people you

grow old with, willy-nilly, without noticing it — not that we aren’t all wearing pretty well.’ Ron laughed.

Edward thought of the previous, discarded Mrs Paget. He made no comment.

‘You remember my first wife, of course. Well, these things happen, don’t they? You pick yourself up and soldier on, don’t you? Of course, you’re not a family man yourself . . — Ron’s eyes flickered momentarily — ‘… but we all have our ups and downs, I daresay life’s dealt you out one or two, one way or another.’

Shut up, thought Edward. And go away.

‘Anyway — it’s nice to have a word from time to time. I miss your mother, I really do — we had our differences but we’d got the measure of each other, as you might say. I often think of her.

Gary doing his stuff all right in your vegetable garden?’

‘I think so,’ said Edward. ‘It’s my sister’s preserve.’

Ron’s glance had fallen upon the huge mound of nettle roots and bramble stems that was the product of Edward’s afternoon.