The Gate of Angels (14 page)

‘I don't know why you laugh at me all the time,' said Fred. ‘I'm in deadly earnest.'

Daisy sat down and stretched herself luxuriously inch by inch against the hard back of the settle. What would she like? Half a pint of milk stout, but The Fenny Inn couldn't supply that, so half a pint of Cambridge Ale.

‘It's very nice,' she said.

‘But it's not what you asked for.'

Daisy sipped and talked. ‘You know the nurses did a bit of dram drinking at the hospital, at least the older ones did. It was the backache when you were coming off the wards, you couldn't blame them. It was like a saw. They just kept a lump of sugar ready and then they kept the gin in a surgical spirit bottle. Gin is surgical spirit, really.'

‘Daisy, will you marry me?'

She looked down at her glass.

‘I know you don't say what you don't mean, Fred.'

‘Will you think about it?'

Daisy would have given the world to tell him, down to the bottom, what she truly felt. All her life she had been at a great disadvantage in finding it so much more easy to give than to take. Hating to see anyone in want, she would part without a thought with money or possessions, but she could accept only with the caution of a half-tamed animal.

‘I don't say I won't, Fred.'

16

Mr Wrayburn took alarm. For something which was as good as going on under his own roof he might, in retrospect, be blamed. His wife told him that it was absurd that he should have put himself out in any way, and that as far as his own roof was concerned, Fred, except on the first occasion, had never come any farther than the hall. He had taken Daisy out, and brought her back. Subsequently he had invited Herbert himself to dine at Angels, where they had had some odd music and some very good Madeira, ‘according to your own account, Herbert.' Where could any blame lie? Mr Wrayburn did not explain, but said that he believed Fairly came of quite decent people.

A word to Daisy might, perhaps, be all that was necessary. But he had never spoken to her before at any length. How to begin? She didn't (Venetia told him) come back from the mental hospital until after seven. Then she went straight to the kitchen, where he knew he did best not to set foot. But there was no help for it, so he stood there while Daisy sorted out the washing. Every now and again his own shirts and undergarments passed before his eyes.

‘Miss Saunders, have you ever happened to hear Verdi's opera,
La Traviata?'

‘I know a song out of that,' said Daisy. ‘It's in my Vocal Gems selection.'

‘In
La Traviata
the hero, a simple, honourable young man of good family, becomes obsessed with Violetta, a woman of light reputation. Don't, please, think that I am pressing the comparison. However, the hero's father arrives in Paris and
pleads with him to go back to old Provence, where, as a matter of fact, he came from in the first place.'

‘Why is it “old” Provence?' asked Daisy.

‘The son at first refuses. Perhaps you'll wonder why I'm telling you all this.'

‘I'm not wondering at all,' said Daisy. ‘You'll think I'm too thick to understand if you say what you mean straight out.'

‘The father, you see, is distressed because he fears that if his son cannot be separated from the Traviata, his life and career will be, to all intents and purposes, ruined. He explains this to Violetta.'

Daisy had intended her last remark to silence Mr Wrayburn, but she had a weakness for a good story. ‘Well, what happens next?'

Wrayburn floundered. ‘In the sense that you mean, nothing happens. The problem solves itself. Violetta dies of consumption.'

‘We don't call it that now,' said Daisy. ‘But anyway, what does she have to say about it?'

‘She says, I want to live.' Wrayburn searched his memory. ‘The old father regrets his harshness, but that is scarcely the point.'

‘You want to tell me that I am no good for Fred,' said Daisy calmly. ‘But I'm quite healthy, I never heard of anything like that in my family.'

‘You've quite misunderstood me. I mean that if Fairly marries you, or indeed any other young woman, he will have to give up his position as Junior Fellow of his college. That was a condition of his taking up the appointment, as he must very well have known. There are no married fellows at St Angelicus. In addition, no woman is allowed to set foot in the college. The Master and Fellows, in short, are celibates.'

‘So are Father Haggett and the Curate at the church I used to go to,' said Daisy. ‘But there's women round at the Presbytery all day and half the night asking him for something or other.'

‘Miss Saunders, I don't want you to be disappointed by what I have been saying. It was, in a sense, my duty to speak to you.'

‘In what sense?' Daisy asked. ‘Fred could have told me himself if he'd wanted to.'

‘He is very unlikely to want to. That is my drift.'

 

Fred took her to
Cox and Box
, given by the Cambridge University Society and on another evening, to see Rupert Brooke as Mephistopheles in the second production of the Marlowe Society's
Doctor Faustus
. This Daisy did not care for quite so much, but her capacity for enjoying herself and being pleased was astonishing. So was her ready sympathy, both for the characters and for the amateurs who played them. She had been to the theatre a good deal more often than Fred, but it was usually the halls, where if words deserted the half-drunk comic, the half-drunk audience were ready to supply them. Of
Doctor Faustus
, however, she did not know the words.

She asked Fred straight out about what Mr Wrayburn had said to her, though without mentioning
La Traviata
, and he told her that it was true. When they married he wouldn't be able to go on where he was. On the other hand, if she wouldn't have him, he didn't see that he would be able to go on at all.

 

Suddenly the whole Fairly family were in Cambridge. Hester telephoned the Cavendish. ‘Look Hester, I'm not really supposed to—'

‘I know, but the man at your college pretended not to know where you were.'

They were not at a hotel. That would be much too expensive. They were at the Anglican Hostel for Women of Limited Means, which also let in, said Hester, some Evangelicals.

‘What have you done with Father?'

‘He's staying in great comfort at Trinity Hall. He's to go to some dinner. That's really why we're here. It only happens every twenty-five years.'

‘We told him we didn't grudge him anything,' Julia interrupted at full pitch. ‘We said God grant you find some face, lad, you knew when all was young.'

‘Is Mother there?'

‘Freddie, my dear,' his mother said. ‘I'm on my way to London. Rather an indirect route, you'll think, but we hope to get a glimpse of you. I have some prison visiting to do in London if we can get permission, and some clerical work, I daresay, for the Conciliation Bill. We are asking for votes for all women who pay more than ten pounds a year rent, provided the married ones don't vote in the same constituency as their husbands. That's just to keep Mr Asquith quiet. But please don't think that your mother is going to undertake anything spectacular.'

‘Are the girls going with you?'

‘No, Hester could be of some use, but Julia couldn't, and she is quite ready, you know, to admit it. Hester has offered to go back to Blow and look after both of them while I am away.'

‘Mother, what have you been doing to my sisters? Their characters have changed.'

‘Please don't distress yourself, Freddie.'

‘Does Father know about all this?'

Julia came onto the line. ‘We thought we would tell him tomorrow, when the dinner was over. He'll have indigestion by then and he'll have fallen out with all his friends, arguing about Christian Socialism. He'll be longing to come back to Blow with his two understanding daughters.'

‘Julia, who is paying for this telephone call?'

‘It's all written up on a notice. The hostel pays seven pounds a year for unlimited calls to subscribers within half a mile and one pound five shillings extra a year for every additional mile or fraction thereof. So, it's left to you, and you have to put whatever you think right in the mission box. They're profiteers, Freddie.'

‘I'll be round as soon as I can.'

At the Anglican Hostel, where no-one might stay out later than nine o'clock, Fred told them that he had fallen in love. He spoke quietly, but caused uproar. Even Mrs Fairly raised her voice. The warden reminded them that from six to seven was supposed to be respected as a quiet hour and that guests were asked at all times to avoid controversial and unacceptable subjects.

‘Who is she? Do we know her? Is she somebody's sister? Where did you meet her? When can we see her?'

‘She doesn't have much time.' But Fred arranged, although it was so early in the year, to take them all out in a punt the following afternoon.

 

It was a day of thin sunshine. They met at the Chesterton boathouses and launched out on the shallow, placid Cam, the easiest punting, surely, in the world. Mrs Fairly sat with Hester, Julia with Daisy. Fred could see his mother's face and the back of Daisy's head. Recklessly he told himself that he loved them all. Let them find a way to love each other.

‘We were delighted to have a chance of meeting you, Miss Saunders,' said Mrs Fairly, as they sat down. ‘We have heard so very little about you.'

Hester frowned at her mother and said that Cambridge seemed very cold compared with their part of the country.

Fred punted slowly upstream. In telling them that Daisy was a nurse and came from London, he had told them pretty well all that he knew. Mrs Fairly tried again.

‘Do you go much on the river in London, Miss Saunders?'

‘Yes, I love the water,' said Daisy. ‘You can have a good time on the Gravesend Ferry'. She added, ‘Please do call me Daisy.'

Mrs Fairly said: ‘I don't think my son mentioned your age?'

‘I shall soon be twenty.'

‘And you are a hospital nurse?'

‘Really, Mother, do stop asking Daisy all these questions,' said Hester. ‘You might be interviewing her for a vacancy.'

‘I suppose she is in a way,' said Julia.

‘Julia, that was quite ridiculous,' said Mrs Fairly sharply. ‘I hope Miss Saunders is simply enjoying the fresh air, as I am.'

Fred had determined not to interfere. Pushing gently along up the bright spring river, he felt weightless, and almost careless. Now they were in the Backs, where from long habit, he began to call attention, to describe, and to point out—that willow overhanging the water, near the Wren Library, of course it will look better later in the year (Mrs Fairly nodded, as she would have done in her own garden), that's John's, the Bridge of Sighs, then Clare, King's Bridge, King's of course, that red brick one is Queen's, rising straight out of the water, right out of its own reflection. How many times had his mother and sisters seen this stretch of the river and these buildings, on previous visits, before? But Daisy had never seen them and the rectory family, veterans of many parish outings, knew how to enjoy things unfamiliar to their guests as though for the first time.

Taking tea at the hostel after Fred had gone back to his lab and Daisy to her duties, Mrs Fairly returned to what Julia had said, ‘or rather to the way you put it, Julia. A vacancy! Surely Fred can't even for a moment be thinking of leaving St Angelicus. And as to the girl herself—'

‘Well, what about the girl herself?' Hester asked.

‘You know I'm no respecter of persons, but can you imagine her in the parish?'

‘I don't have to imagine her in the parish,' said Hester. ‘I can imagine her selling
Votes for Women.'

Julia told her mother that she was like the father in that opera.

‘Which opera, Julia?'

Julia couldn't remember the name, which weakened the comparison, but she had thought Daisy looked splendid. Mr Fairly was not consulted on any of these points. Fred had asked him to dinner in hall that night and he had sat next to Professor Flowerdew who, with his melancholy smile, had
told him that he could not hold out any great hopes for the future of the material universe. On the other hand, he had spoken very highly of Fred.

 

 

 

 

17

Since the meeting of the Disobligers' Society Dr Matthews had been pondering over Fred's accident, and had come to regard it as much more mysterious than it really was. Wrayburn could tell him so little, but then Wrayburn (though he worked conscientiously) was a fool. He made a series of notes.—
The carter who was responsible for the accident has disappeared
.—One would assume that, having seen what he had done, he ran away. Not down the road, but into the open country.
What kind of country is it?—
Open, hedgeless country, with lines of willows marking the streams, such as you find in our inland fen country.
Where to hide?—
Very hard to say. We must assume that the carter either wanted to get to his home, or since that would hardly be the best place for someone being enquired for by the police, let us say to a safe friend. He was a local man, the farmer said, and our local men are not great travellers. He may have lodged in a barn, or between two potato clumps, but in the end he would have had to go back to the road, and proceed on foot.
But he was not seen on the road
.

What is to be done?
If we want to find a man who has been seen on the road and has very positively been driving a cart, and has caused material damage to two bicycles, a man and a woman—but here I have to pause a while.
Was there not a third bicyclist?
And has he not too disappeared? And are we not told by our scientists and rationalists—who are perhaps not always the same people—that if we do not trust our senses, we have nothing left to trust? Those same five senses which are anointed by the Roman priest on a man's exit from this world
and dismissed, so to speak, as having done their best for us (though we might ask, I think, do we always do our best for them? I met a man lately, a scientist, who had never smoked a pipe.)