Quartet in Autumn (15 page)

When she got home, Letty found Mrs Pope standing in the hall with a leaflet in her hand.

'Help the Aged,' she declared. 'Good, serviceable clothing is needed for the aged overseas.'

Letty could think of nothing to say.

After they had parted from the women, Norman turned to Edwin. 'You must let me know the damage and I'll settle with you.'

'Oh, that's all right. I used mostly luncheon vouchers — the extra hardly amounted to anything — you must let me do this,' said Edwin quickly, for he was sometimes haunted by a picture of Norman in his bedsitter while he himself occupied a whole house.

'Well, thanks, chum,' said Norman awkwardly. 'It wasn't so bad, really, was it.'

'No, it passed off quite well — better than I expected in some ways, but I don't like the look of Marcia'

'You're telling me! I should say she was going right round the bend. Still, she is under the doctor, that's something. And that social worker goes to see her.'

'Yes, rather too often, she said. People do seem to be keeping an eye on her.'

With this they left the subject, but Edwin did say something to the effect that they must do it again some time, repeat the lunch invitation to Letty and Marcia. But it was a comfort to feel that this need not be for some time to come and that for the moment they had done their duty.

Sixteen

A
LTHOUGH
HE
HAD
been dead for some years, Marcia still missed the old cat, Snowy, and one evening she found herself particularly reminded of him when she came across one of his dishes in the cupboard under the sink. She was surprised and a little upset to notice that it still had some dried-up fragments of Kit-e-Kat adhering to it. Had she then not washed it up after his death? It would seem not. This might not have surprised an observer, but Marcia regarded herself as a meticulous housekeeper and she had always been especially careful with Snowy's dishes, keeping them, in her own words, 'spotlessly clean'.

The finding of the dish gave her a desire to visit the cat's grave which was somewhere at the bottom of the garden. When Snowy had died, Mr Smith, who had lived next door before Nigel and Priscilla came, had dug a grave and Marcia had laid Snowy in it, his body wrapped in a piece of her old blue ripple-cloth dressing gown which he used to sleep on. In the midst of life we are in death, she had thought, feeling the significance of the cloth and its associations. She had not marked the grave in any way, but she remembered where it was, for when she walked down the path she would think, Snowy's grave; but as time went on she forgot the exact spot and now, in the season of high summer with the weeds flourishing, she could not find it at all. That part of the garden was so overgrown that she could hardly tell where the path and flowerbed met. There was a sprawling bush of catmint, so the grave must be somewhere near there because Snowy had loved to roll in the plant, but it was quite indiscernible now, though Marcia parted the covering of leaves and weeds with her hands. Then it occurred to her that if she were to dig in that bit of the garden, she would surely come upon the grave, perhaps uncover a fragment of the blue ripple-doth and then even find the bones.

She went to the shed and fetched a spade, but it was very heavy and if she had ever wielded it in the past, she was certainly unable to now. After my operation of course, she thought, trying once more to move the earth and the thick clotting of weeds — dandelions, thistles and bindweed, plants with strong matted roots.

It was thus that Priscilla saw her, crouched at the bottom of the garden. What was she
doing,
trying to dig with that heavy spade? It was worrying and upsetting, for the old — especially Miss Ivory — were perpetually nagging at her conscience. Not only was she a neighbour but also what Janice Brabner called 'disadvantaged' and that, whatever it might mean — Priscilla wasn't absolutely sure — was certainly something to worry about. Of course, Nigel had asked Miss Ivory if she wanted her lawn cut but she had preferred it the way it was and one couldn't bully the elderly, their independence was their last remaining treasure and must be respected. All the same, one could perhaps offer a little gardening assistance, digging, for example ... but not now, when Priscilla had people coming to dinner, the avocados to prepare and mayonnaise to make. Perhaps it was a fine enough evening to have drinks outside on the little patio they had made, but the view of the neglected garden next door would detract from the elegance of the occasion, and if Miss Ivory was going to go on digging in this disturbing way something would have to be done about it. But now, to Priscilla's relief, she was going back towards the house, dragging the heavy spade behind her. One had to cling to the hope that she knew what she was doing.

Back in the kitchen, Marcia couldn't remember what she had gone out for, then the sight of the cat's dish soaking in the sink reminded her. There had been no trace of the grave and she was not strong enough to go on digging for it. She supposed she should have something to eat, but it was a bother to cook anything and she didn't want to disturb her supply of tins. So she just made a cup of tea and put plenty of sugar in it, like the tea at the hospital. 'Cup of tea, Miss Ivory? Sugar, dear?' It gave Marcia a warm feeling to remember those days and that nice woman — Nancy, they called her — coming round with the tea.

On that same summer evening Letty was helping Mrs Pope and little furry Mrs Musson to sort out clothes that had been sent in response to the appeal for aged refugees.

'What would you think if somebody gave you this?' said Mrs Pope, holding up a bright red mini-skirt People have no idea of what is needed.'

'Some oriental women are very small,' said Letty doubtfully. 'So I suppose they could wear it Of course one doesn't really know what they need — it's so difficult to visualize...' The horror of the pictures on Mrs Pope's television screen seemed so totally unconnected with the heaps of unsuitable garments piled on the floor of Mrs Musson's dining room. Mrs Pope had refused to receive the clothes in her own house. 'Nobody would expect a woman in her eighties...' she maintained, and of course she had a point there, even if it was not absolutely clear what it was. Letty suspected that it might be an old deep-rooted fear of 'fevers and diseases' that made her avoid too close contact with other people's cast-off clothes. As for nobody expecting a woman in her eighties to house this jumble of old garments, that really had nothing to do with it, for Mrs Pope did exactly those things that she wanted to do which made Letty realize that perhaps getting older had some advantages, few though these might be.

During the months since her retirement, Letty had tried conscientiously to enter into the life around her in the north-west London suburb where she now found herself. This meant, as Edwin had imagined her, taking part in the activities of the church, sitting rather far back, trying to discover what church-going held for people, apart from habit and convention, wondering if it would hold anything for her and if so what form this would take. On a bitter cold evening in March she joined a little group, hardly more than the two or three gathered together, shuffling round the Stations of the Cross. It was the third Wednesday in Lent and there had been snow, now hard and frozen on the ground. The church was icy. The knees of elderly women bent creakily at each Station, hands had to grasp the edge of a pew to pull the body up again. 'From pain to pain, from woe to woe.. .' they recited, but Letty's thoughts had been on herself and how she should arrange the rest of her life. Easter was of course better, with daffodils in the church and people making an effort with their clothes, but Whitsun was bitterly cold, with a leaden grey sky and the church heating turned off. Did people then only go for the light and warmth, the
coffee
after the Sunday morning service and a friendly word from the vicar?

Once Edwin had come to the service and Letty had greeted him so warmly that he must have taken fright, for he had not appeared again. 'Oh, he goes round to a lot of churches, as it takes his fancy,' somebody had pointed out and of course Letty knew that this was true. Not even Father G. had his undivided allegiance. 'He's a widower,' Mrs Pope had said, 'but of course you know that, working with him. And he took a lot of trouble finding a room for you when that black man bought the house you were living in. He must think a lot of you — he spoke very warmly.' For Mrs Pope this was going far, but the doubtful prospect of Edwin's warmth' did nothing to warm Letty's cold heart.

Now at least she felt that she was doing something useful, helping to sort out and pack clothes for aged refugees. She would have preferred something a little nearer home, people she could have pictured actually wearing the clothes, even the scarlet miniskirt, but it was not to be. Everything at all suitable was just bundled into black plastic bags, while the less suitable was cast aside for jumble.

'You'll be giving the room a good clean out after this, of course,' said Mrs Pope and Mrs Musson had to agree, feeling bound to point out that she cleaned the room every day anyway.

'I suppose the clothes could have been sent to the church hall?' Letty suggested.

'Oh, that wouldn't have done at all,' said Mrs Pope, but Letty, even with her newly acquired experience of parish affairs, did not yet possess the particular item of esoteric knowledge that would enable her to solve this problem. All was never as it might seem to be.

'What a lovely evening,' Letty said, looking out of the window. 'All that laburnum!'

Norman, coming back from work, did not notice the laburnums in full flower in the square garden, but his heart lifted when he saw that an old car, which had been dumped there for over a week, appeared to have been removed. He had got on to the police and the council about that, and the fine summer evening gave him a sense of achievement, an unusual and agreeable sensation for him. This gave way to a feeling of restlessness, so that after he had fried bacon and tomatoes and opened a small tin of his favourite butter beans, it did not seem quite enough to settle down in his bedsitter with the
Evening Standard
and the radio. He felt he wanted to go out, take a bus somewhere to another part of London, any bus, the first one that came, if one ever
did
come, he added sardonically.

A bus did come and he got on it and took a ticket to Clapham Common, realizing after he had done so that Edwin lived in that direction, but of course it was most unlikely that he would run into him. He was probably at some fancy service at one of his many churches.

On top of the bus, Norman settled down for the long ride — it cost enough anyway, he thought. He sat on the front seat, like a visitor to London, observing the scene around him, sights passing before his eyes — well-known landmarks, buildings, the river; then gardens and people in them doing things to lawns and hedges, and in the roads men engaged in the rituals concerned with the motor car. When he got to a suitable stopping place he climbed down from the bus and began to walk aimlessly. Now he was not at all sure why he had come or what he was going to do when he got there, wherever 'there' might be. Turning off the common he came to a side road, and just as Edwin had done some time ago he realized that he was looking at the name of the road where Marcia lived. But unlike Edwin he did not turn away but began to walk down it, though with no clear plan in his mind. He certainly did not intend to call on her, he didn't even remember the number of her house. But wouldn't it be easy to pick it out, he asked himself, wouldn't it stand out as being different from the smartly tarted-up suburban semi-detached Victorian villas with their pastel-coloured front doors, carriage lamps, paved patios and car-ports?

Of course he was right. Marcia's house, with its flaking green and cream paint, dusty laurels and dingy curtains, was unmistakable. He stood on the opposite side of the road and gazed in stunned fascination, very much as he had gazed at the mummified animals in the British Museum. The house looked deserted, the curtains half drawn, and although it was a warm evening there was no crack of window open. The garden, as far as Norman could see, was totally neglected, but a magnificent old laburnum tree was in full flower. Its branches drooped over a ramshackle little garden shed, and as he stood there he saw Marcia coming out of the shed with her arms full of milk bottles. Her hair was quite white and she was wearing an old cotton dress patterned with large pink flowers. It was such a strange sight that he was as if rooted to the spot He had a feeling that she had seen him and for an instant they seemed to stand staring at each other — again it was like the British Museum encounter with the mummified animals — giving no sign of mutual recognition. Then Marcia disappeared from view, presumably going into the back of her house, he thought
.

Norman crossed the road with no clear idea of what he should do. Ought he to go up to the door and ring the bell, make himself known? His instinct was to run away, but before he could make up his mind he saw that a young woman was approaching the house from the opposite direction. She walked purposefully and when she saw Norman, loitering in front of Marcias house, she said sharply, 'Going to see somebody here, are you?'

'Oh no, just taking a walk,' said Norman quickly.

'I've been watching you,' Janice went on. 'Do you know somebody in this house?'

'What's that got to do with you?' Norman snapped.

'We have to be on the lookout — everybody has to. There've been some break-ins round here lately.'

'Charming, I must say!' Norman burst out. 'I shouldn't think Marcia Ivory's got much worth stealing.'

'You know her then? I'm sorry, but you know how it is — one gets so suspicious.' Janice smiled. 'As a matter of fact I was just going to call on Miss Ivory — I'm a volunteer social worker.'

'Keeping an eye on her, are you?'

'That's it
.
I pop in every now and then.'