AND YET they were not at all alike. George she remembered always in relation to some object: a cricket bat, a football, a saw, a bicycle, a gun, a car. Alex she saw as a figure in a void. Even as a little boy he seemed lacking in the common acquisitive factor.
“What do you do with your pocket money?” she had once asked him curiously.
“He mostly gives it to me,” said Naomi.
“Then you shouldn’t let him.”
“But I need money so much more than he does,” expostulated Naomi.
“Alex has too big a bump of altruism,” she complained to Charles. “I don’t know how he’ll manage in life; he’ll never dream of feathering his own nest. I doubt if he’d recognize a feather if he saw it.”
Well, after all, he hadn’t done so badly – it is seldom the things we worry about in the future that prove to be the real trials. He was good at his job and people liked him, though she suspected that they thought him an odd fellow; but they trusted him, just because he so queerly didn’t want to feather his own nest first and foremost, and Clare saw to it that he didn’t give quite all the pocket money to his causes. Patrick was turning out to have inherited George’s practical turn, which was a comfort.
The phone rang. Roberta got up from the floor, where she had been kneeling to read the titles on the lower shelves, and saw that her hands were covered with dust. That just shows, she thought ruefully, I’m afraid Kitty was right, I am letting things go. Heaven knows when all my shelves last had a proper spring clean.
It was Alex on the phone. “How often that happens,” exclaimed Roberta.
“What happens?”
“I was thinking of you and then you rang.”
“Oh,” said Alex, “then I must think of too many people, Clare says the phone’s always at it. Well, anyway how are you getting on?”
“Not too well,” said Roberta, rashly, as she afterwards acknowledged. “I’ve begun to try and tackle the books. I never dreamt there were so many; they are all over the house besides the study.”
“Yes,” said Alex, “Clare was saying she thought they’d be a problem. Now, Granny, she and I have had a good idea.” Roberta steeled herself.
“You remember Clare’s cousin Morris, don’t you? He’s just retired from his librarian’s job and he’s at a loose end and we’re sure he’d be very glad to come and help you. He knows all about books. He could list them for you and that would make it a much quicker business for a valuer – you’ll be selling nearly all of them, I suppose.”
“I suppose so,” said Roberta sadly, and paused. She did indeed remember cousin Morris, a great talker, one who told you in detail about many things in which you were not interested. She supposed that if he were to list her books she would have to have him to stay, perhaps for some days. She quailed at the thought.
“It’s very considerate of you both, my dears,” she said at last, “but really I can manage quite well if I take it slowly.”
“But why should you tire yourself out unnecessarily? Anyway, you don’t quite know how much time you can allow yourself, do you, dear? A buyer may turn up any day and besides you’ll be doing a really good turn to Morris; he’d love to be of use.”
“Well, I’ll think it over,” said Roberta. “Are you sure there aren’t any books you want for yourself? You didn’t look at them much when you were here. At least take some for the children – I’ll put some aside.”
“None for me,” said Alex firmly. “I get all I want from the library; but I’ll run down soon again and we’ll see about the children. And let us know soon about Morris, won’t you?”
“Very well,” said Roberta, “it’ll be lovely to see you.” She rang off rather abruptly.
It was typical, she thought, both annoyed and amused, for Alex could never resist a good turn and if he could bring off two at once was really happy. If she let Morris come it would probably be quite difficult to get rid of him. She was also conscious of the fact that she disliked the idea that Alex and Clare thought the job of dealing with the books too much for her. This decided her on walking to the village and back to see about some packing-cases she wanted to order from old Benson, the carpenter. It was the longest walk she had taken since her fall and, feeling tired on the way back, she turned aside to rest on a favourite seat in the churchyard, her mind busy with the problems of finding a good reason for declining Morris’s help. The good reason was miraculously at hand.
Roberta had a weakness for churchyards. It was one of the attractions of Coleridge Court that it was close to old Highgate churchyard, through which she and her friend Rose and little Kitty used to walk together to school. They each had their favourite among the tombstones. Hers was a large family one – all those children, one after the other, fascinated her: John and Edith, Alfred and Frederick, Maria and Henry, Florence and Alice, Hester and Arthur and baby Samuel. She pictured all the children sitting at a huge dining-table with the father, John William, late of this Parish, at one end, and Edith, beloved wife of the above, at the other. Rose favoured an earlier headstone with a skull and crossbones carved on it and Roberta remembered Kitty, who always lagged behind, calling out suddenly: “This is mine – oh, Berta, look! This one didn’t die at all, she just fell asleep.” Death was too far away, too alien to cast any shadow over the three little girls among the tombstones and even now the elderly Roberta at the back of her mind still thought of a churchyard as peopled with a quiet assembly of peaceable companionable folk. She never felt lonely in one and this village churchyard was a pretty place, well kept, with all its flowers of love bright upon the calm graves.
Thinking these thoughts, she felt put out by seeing her seat already occupied by a man, a stranger who, stretched out on it, was apparently dozing in the sun; but she was not going to give up her rest. She coughed. The man opened his eyes and at once made room for her. He was rather shabbily dressed – But this means nothing nowadays, she thought – a middle-aged man, rather good-looking, though he had boot-button eyes of that sort of opaque blackness which is singularly inexpressive.
“Good morning,” he said, and his voice was educated and pleasantly pitched. “You caught me napping – it is so peaceful here. There is nothing like an English country churchyard for peace, is there?” As she sat down, he gave her a quick glance, smiled and continued.
“Beneath these rugged elms, that yew tree shade,
Where leaves the turf in many a mouldering heap
Each in his narrow cell forever laid
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.”
Roberta started, the quotation fell in so aptly with what she had been feeling, it was spoken sensitively too.
“Oh, yes,” she responded, “the ‘Elegy’. I often think of it myself here. The elms all gone, alas! But the yew is still with us and the forefathers, of course.” Then she added with some hesitation, although they seemed to have made friendly contact so naturally, “You are fond of poetry?”
He laughed, “I set out to be a poet once but I found I wasn’t one, so I made it my stock in trade instead: poetry and other books. I had a bookshop – until quite recently, in fact.”
Again Roberta gave an inward start. She prided herself on a sensible view of life; coincidence, she held, was just chance, not “sent” or “meant” or whatever fanciful people like her mother liked to take it for. But there did seem something unusual, to say the least, in this meeting; first that quotation chiming in so exactly with her mood and now a book business. Her mind raced on, could it be that this stranger was the very excuse she was looking for to confound Alex and Clare?
She found herself asking all about his shop and hearing that it had been in Folkestone but now was no more. He had knocked about the world a bit, he said, but then wanted to settle down and had sunk all his capital in this shop in partnership with a friend.
“We were at school together and had scarcely met since. It was bad luck for me running across him again because, as it turned out, he was no good, a gambler who had cleared off with all he could lay his hands on, leaving nothing, but bad debts. Oh, well! That’s how it is. I’m sorry to bore you with my troubles but you asked for it, you know. My old car’s broken down and I just dropped in here to look at the church while the garage is patching it up, but it’s locked up.”
“Yes,” said Roberta, “we’ve had vandals.”
“You can’t trust anyone nowadays,” said the stranger.
Roberta had liked both his frankness and his lack of self-pity.
“You can get the key at the Vicarage,” she said.
“It’s rather late now,” he said, “I’d better be pushing off. Well, it’s been a pleasure to meet you.”
And then Roberta heard herself saying, “But you know, it is rather extraordinary, meeting you here just now, I mean,” and she began to tell him of her move and how the worst problem was the books. Now she wondered whether, knowing about them as he did, he could recommend anyone who could list and value her books for her.
“Arnold Hathaway,” said the stranger with a little bow, “that’s the fellow for you, at a loose end this very week and at your service. I could come over tomorrow if you liked and have a preliminary look at them anyway.”
Roberta went home a little breathless but elated. She had of course hoped that he might offer to come himself. Arnold Hathaway – an unusual name and a pleasing one she thought, with two poetic associations. She had definitely taken to the man and hoped that evening that it wasn’t all a dream and that he would actually turn up as arranged.
He did so, arriving at the time fixed and, after having looked round, said the listing and valuation would take about three days. He gave her the phone numbers of two references and having named what seemed to her a very reasonable quotation for the job, proposed, if she were satisfied, to begin the very next day. After he had gone Roberta made two phone calls, the first to a Folkestone doctor for the reference, which was satisfactory. I shan’t bother about the second one, she thought and rang Alex.
“There’s no need to trouble Morris,” she said, “I’ve found someone locally,” well, that was nearly true, “who is experienced and not at all expensive. I think it’s really better to have it done professionally, Alex.”
“Oh, very well.” said Alex, “if you’ve made up your mind, though Clare will be disappointed. Who is this chap?”
“You’d approve, dear, he’s down on his luck – a bankrupt bookseller but it’s not his fault. He’s a nice man and he loves poetry.” I sound just like Mama, she thought suddenly and rang off.
“I can’t think who this fellow can be,” said Alex to Clare afterwards, “she never mentioned him before but she seems absolutely decided.”
“Then there’s nothing to be done – you know your grandmother,” said Clare. “Bertram, if you go on hugging Boffin so tightly he’ll scratch you.”
“No, no,” said Bertram. “He’s a good cat, he’s a nice cat.” A moment later he dropped Boffin with a loud roar.
“What did I tell you?” said Clare.
Bertram stopped roaring in mid-yell. “No, no,” he said in his ordinary voice, “it was an accident, he thought I was a tree.”
Clare, annoyed at Roberta’s summary dismissal of her cousin, and struck again by a certain resemblance between her youngest and his great-grandmother, said with an unusual firmness:
“It wasn’t an accident, Bertram, he scratched you because you were squeezing him.”
“A very normous tree,” said Bertram.
Roberta, at the end of Arnold Hathaway’s first day’s work, was well pleased with her bargain. He had arrived punctually and had seemed to know his job. He had at once picked out some rare editions from her mother’s collection of poetry.
“Yes,” said Roberta, “my father delighted in procuring these for her – this little Donne, for instance. Are you interested in this?”
“Indeed, yes,” said Arnold Hathaway.
They had a pleasant lunch together. He was a good raconteur and had travelled widely. Roberta congratulated herself that it was not Clare’s boring cousin sitting opposite her. She had opened up the dining-room for his benefit (when alone she took her meals in her sitting-room) and he admired her view and was enthusiastic over her Georgian candlesticks and other silver.
“Forgive me,” he said quite anxiously, “but I hope you have these valuable pieces well insured. I came across a case only the other day of carelessness in that respect and in these degenerate times thefts are so deplorably common.”
She reassured him.
The second day they discussed their favourite authors; he confessed to an unfashionable liking for eighteenth-century poetry, “Including the Churchyard School,” he said, smiling.
Roberta found him most knowledgeable. That afternoon she had visitors who stayed late and she was not surprised that, by the time they left, Mr Hathaway’s old car had disappeared from beside the dining-room french window where she had told him to park it. She glanced into the study and saw the neat lists lying on the table. I shall quite miss him when he has finished, she thought.
But the next morning he did not turn up and, rather put out at receiving no explanation, she went to lunch alone in the dining-room. There she found her explanation. What she did not find was the Georgian candlesticks, nor the cream jug, nor the salver, nor any of her spoons. The note Arnold Hathaway had left she read with incredulous horror. It said:
Dear Mrs Curling,
You have been very kind to me, I have enjoyed our talks and I am sorry to have to take your silver but my need is greater than yours. It was indeed a happy chance that brought me to your churchyard, where I was feeling so desperate when you found me that I actually wished myself with our rude forefathers beneath the sod; but your silver should save the situation. You see, it is a case of exchanged identity, such as was dear to the heart of the Elizabethan dramatists. My tale was true but it is my partner who is Arnold Hathaway and I am the bad lot and the gambler. I have nearly finished your inventory and you will not find any of your books missing, though I was sorely tempted to slip that little Donne into my pocket. Why I didn’t, I don’t quite know – perhaps you do. I don’t much care for my own name so will once more borrow one.
“Autolycus”
As a child Roberta’s worst dreams were of familiar and loved faces suddenly turning into mocking masks: the ultimate horror of any frightening fairy story was that of the witch or wizard or wicked stepmother disguised as a harmless peasant or beautiful Queen. Now her first reaction to this outrageous letter was not anger but a bewildered fear. Trust was betrayed and the foundations of a bearable world trembled. But she must ring the police. She had little hope, however; the thief had had twenty-four hours’ start and was no fool – of that she was sure. Not that this excused her for being his dupe. Fury with herself now possessed her. How could she have been so credulous! She admitted with shame that it was more to get a rise out of dear good Alex and Clare than to escape Morris that she had leapt at this rascally stranger. She must indeed humble herself before them now and the worst of it was that they would be so kind. She was right.
“Don’t mind so much, Granny,” Alex said, “don’t blame yourself so. I’ve been taken in many a time; but, you know, I think that’s better than never taking a risk with people.”
“Yes, Alex,” said Roberta sadly, “for you it may be I can’t feel like that. You see, it’s like robbing you and Clare.”
“Oh, Georgian silver doesn’t really fit our way of life,” said Alex, “so don’t worry about that.”
She felt still more humbled as she put the receiver down. It was a relief to be scolded thoroughly by Kitty and to be able therefore at last to find excuses for herself.
“But, Kitty, he really did like poetry, I’m sure of that. I think that’s why he didn’t take the Donne or any of the other books. He respected my liking it too; but, oh, how could anyone who loves Grey’s ‘Elegy’ have stolen my silver?”
“Well, Hitler loved Beethoven and I dare say Nero played the fiddle quite well, and how many great poets and painters have been unfaithful to their wives – tell me that.”
Roberta acknowledged once more to herself that the marriage of Heaven and Hell was an inescapable fact and it then seemed to her that the foundations of the world were steadying again. She had thought the “Elegy” would be spoilt for her but this was silly. Its beauty was undimmed. Light remained light and darkness darkness, though here on earth so often interwoven. There was one thing, however, that she would have liked to have known. If her silver had not been insured would it have affected Mr Hathaway? (She still thought of him by this name.) He had enquired so anxiously about this. She was very much afraid it would not, though she believed that he might have sincerely regretted it.
As she had feared, the police failed to trace the thief or her things. She grieved now over the personal loss – it was their vanished beauty, not their value that she minded and missed. Charles would have understood this but she thought he might have done what no one else did. He might have laughed. The thought of his possible amusement chased away bitterness. After all, she reminded herself, she had always had a soft spot for Autolycus and if this were not simply sentimentality it ought not to harden when she herself was a victim. It occurred to her too that really she had little or no right to the silver herself, for she had neither worked for it nor particularly deserved it and it was probably true that Mr Hathaway’s need was greater than hers. “To each according to his need,” and, though of course she knew theft was wrong, somehow a little of Alex’s attitude to possession seemed to have rubbed off on her. It no longer appeared a matter of life and death which of them she should keep. “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth where moth and rust corrupt and where thieves break through and steal.” She suspected though, that she might not be able to feel like this for very long, and meanwhile the practical necessities of the move must be attended to. Certain treasures, whether rightly or wrongly, had been acquired and were her responsibility and must be dealt with. She must continue with her lists.
Piano, she wrote down firmly, for, although it was seldom used and she knew the Village Hall was badly in need of one, she was not prepared to give up the piano.