THE property which Florence had determined to buy had not been given its name for nothing. Although scarcely any of the houses, until you got out to the half-built council estate to the north-west, were new, and many dated from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, none of them compared with the Old House, and only Holt House, Mr Brundish’s place, was older. Built five hundred years ago out of earth, straw, sticks and oak beams, the Old House owed its survival to a flood cellar down a flight of stone steps. In 1953 the cellar had carried seven foot of seawater until the last of the floods had subsided. On the other hand, some of the seawater was still there.
Inside was the large front room, the backhouse kitchen, and upstairs a bedroom under a sloping ceiling. Not adjoining, but two streets away on the foreshore, stood the oyster shed which went with the property and which she had hoped to use as a warehouse for the reserve stock. But it turned out that the plaster had been mixed, for convenience sake, with sand from the beach, and sea sand never dries out. Any books left there would be wrinkled with damp in a few days. Her disappointment, however, endeared her to the shopkeepers of Hardborough. They had all known better, and could have told her so. They felt a shift in the balance of intellectual power, and began to wish her well.
Those who had lived in Hardborough for some time also knew that her freehold was haunted. The subject was not avoided, it was a familiar one. The figure of a woman, for example, could sometimes be seen down at the landing-stage of the ferry, about twilight, waiting for her son to come back, although he had been drowned over a hundred years ago. But the Old House was not haunted in a touching manner. It was infested by a poltergeist which, together with the damp and an unsolved question about the drains, partly accounted for the difficulty in selling the property. The house agent was in no way legally bound to mention the poltergeist, though he perhaps alluded to it in the phrase unusual period atmosphere.
Poltergeists, in Hardborough, were called rappers. They might go on for years, then suddenly stop, but no one who had heard the noise, with its suggestion of furious physical frustration, as though whatever was behind it could not get out, was ever likely to mistake it for anything else. ‘Your rapper’s been at my adjustable spanners,’ said the plumber, without rancour, when she came to see how the work was going forward. His tool bag had been upended and scattered; pale blue tiles with a nice design of waterlilies had been flung broadside about the upstairs passage. The bathroom, with its water supply half connected, had the alert air of having witnessed something. When the well-disposed plumber had gone to his tea, she shut the bathroom door, waited a few moments, and then looked sharply in again. Anyone watching her, she reflected, might have thought she was mad. The word in Hardborough for ‘mad’ was ‘not quite right’, just as ‘very ill’ was ‘moderate’. ‘Perhaps I’ll end up not quite right if this goes on,’ she told the plumber, wishing he wouldn’t call it ‘your rapper’. The plumber, Mr Wilkins, thought that she would weather it.
It was on occasions like this that she particularly missed the good friends of her early days at Müller’s. When she had come in and taken off her suede glove to show her engagement ring, a diamond chip, there had been a hearteningly long list of names on the subscription list for her present, and it was almost the same list when Charlie had died of pneumonia in an improvised reception camp at the beginning of the war. Nearly all the girls in Mailing, Despatch and Counter Staff had lost touch; and even when she had their addresses, she found herself unwilling to admit that they had grown as old as she had.
It was not that she was short of acquaintances in Hardborough. At Rhoda’s Dressmaker’s, for example, she was well liked. But her confidence was hardly respected. Rhoda – that is to say, Jessie Welford – who had been asked to make her up a new dress, did not hesitate to speak about it freely, and even to show the material.
‘It’s for General and Mrs Gamart’s party at The Stead. I don’t know that I’d’ve chosen red myself. They’ve guests coming down from London.’
Florence, although she knew Mrs Gamart to nod to, and to be smiled at by, after various collections for charity, had never expected to be invited to The Stead. She took it, even though none of her stock had arrived as yet from London, as a compliment to the power of books themselves.
As soon as Sam Wilkins had fixed the bath to his own satisfaction, and the tiles were re-pegged on the roof, Florence Green moved out of her flat and boldly took up residence, with her few things, at the Old House. Even with the waterlily tiles firmly hung, it was not an altogether reassuring place to live. The curious sounds associated with the haunting continued at night, long after the ill-connected water pipes had fallen silent. But courage and endurance are useless if they are never tested. She only hoped that there would be no interruption when Jessie Welford brought the new dress in for a fitting. But this particular ordeal never arose. A message came, asking her to try on at Rhoda’s, next door.
‘I think perhaps it’s not my colour after all. Would you call it ruby?’ It was a comfort when Jessie said that it was more like a garnet, or a deep rust. But there was something unsatisfactory in the red, or rust, reflexion which seemed to move unwillingly in the looking-glass.
‘It doesn’t seem to fit at all at the back. Perhaps if I try to stand against the wall most of the time …’
‘It’ll come to you as you wear it,’ the dressmaker replied firmly. ‘You need a bit of costume jewellery as a focus.’
‘Are you sure?’ asked Florence. The fitting seemed to be turning into a conspiracy to prevent anyone noticing her new dress at all.
‘I dare say, when all’s said and done, I’m more used to dressing up and going out in the evening than you are,’ said Miss Welford. ‘I’m a bridge player, you know. Not much doing here – I go over to Flintmarket twice a week. A penny a hundred in the mornings, and two-pence a hundred in the evenings. We wear long skirts then, of course.’
She walked backwards a couple of steps, throwing a shadow over the glass, then returned to pin and adjust. No change, Florence knew, would make her look anything but small.
‘I wish I wasn’t going to this party,’ she said.
‘Well, I wouldn’t mind taking your place. It’s a pity Mrs Gamart sees fit to order everything from London, but it will be properly done – no need to stand and count the sandwiches. And when you get there, you won’t have to bother about how you look. Nobody will mind you, and anyway you’ll find you know everyone in the room.’
Florence had felt sure she would not, and she did not. The Stead, in any case, was not the kind of place where hats and coats were left about in the hall so that you could guess, before committing yourself to an entrance, who was already there. The hall, boarded with polished elm, breathed the deep warmth of a house that has never been cold. She caught a glimpse of herself in a glass much more brilliant than Rhoda’s, and wished that she had not worn red.
Through the door ahead unfamiliar voices could be heard from a beautiful room, painted in the pale green which at that time the Georgian Society still recommended. Silver photograph frames on the piano and on small tables permitted a glimpse of the network of family relations which gave Violet Gamart an access to power far beyond Hardborough itself. Her husband, the General, was opening drawers and cupboards with the object of not finding anything, to give him an excuse to wander from room to room. In the 1950s there were many plays on the London stage where the characters made frequent entrances and exits out of various doors and were seen again in the second act, three hours later. The General would have fitted well into such a play. He hovered, alert and experimentally smiling, among the refreshments, hoping that he would soon be needed, even if only for a few moments, since opening champagne is not woman’s work.
There was no bank manager there, no Vicar, not even Mr Thornton, Florence’s solicitor, or Mr Drury, the solicitor who was not her solicitor. She recognized the back of the rural dean, and that was all. It was a party for the county, and for visitors from London. She correctly guessed that she would find out in time why she herself had been asked.
The General, relieved to see a smallish woman who did not appear to be intimidating or a relation of his wife’s, gave her a large glass of champagne from one of the dozen he had opened. If she was not a relation of his wife’s there were no elementary blunders to be made, but although he felt certain he had seen her somewhere before, God knew who she was exactly. She followed his thoughts, which, indeed, were transparent in their dogged progress from one difficulty to another, and told him that she was the person who was going to open a bookshop.
‘That’s it, of course. Got it in one. You’re thinking of opening a bookshop. Violet was interested in it. She wanted to have one or two of those words of hers with you about it. I expect she’ll have a chance later.’
Since Mrs Gamart was the hostess, she could have had this chance at any time, but Florence did not deceive herself about her own importance. She drank some of the champagne, and the smaller worries of the day seemed to stream upwards as tiny pinpricks through the golden mouthfuls and to break harmlessly and vanish.
She had expected the General to feel that his duty was discharged, but he lingered.
‘What kind of stuff are you going to have in your shop?’ he asked.
She scarcely knew how to answer him.
‘They don’t have many books of poetry these days, do they?’ he persisted. ‘I don’t see many of them about.’
‘I shall have some poetry, of course. It doesn’t sell quite as well as some other things. But it will take time to get to know all the stock.’
The General looked surprised. It had never taken him a long time, as a subaltern, to get to know all his men.
‘“It is easy to be dead. Say only this, they are dead.” Do you know who wrote that?’
She would dearly have liked to have been able to say yes, but couldn’t. The faltering light of expectancy in the General’s eyes died down. Clearly he had tried to make this point before, perhaps many times. In a voice so low that against the noise of the party that sipped and clattered round them she could only just hear it, he went on:
She realized at once that Sorley must be dead.
‘How old was he?’
‘Sorley? He was twenty. He was in the Swedebashers – the Suffolks, you know – 9th Battalion, B Company. He was killed in the battle of Loos, in 1915. He’d have been sixty-four years old if he’d lived. I’m sixty-four myself. That makes me think of poor Sorley.’
The General shuffled away into the mounting racket. Florence was alone, surrounded by people who spoke to each other familiarly, and some of whom could be seen in replica in the silver frames. Who were they all? She didn’t mind; for, after all, they would have felt lost in their turn if they had found their way into the Mailing Department at Müller’s. A mild young man’s voice said from just behind her, ‘I know who you are. You must be Mrs Green.’
He wouldn’t say that, she thought, unless he was sure of being recognized himself, and she did recognize him. Everybody in Hardborough could have told you who he was, in a sense proudly, because he was known to drive up to London to work, and to be something in TV. He was Milo North, from Nelson Cottage, on the corner of Back Lane. Exactly what he did was uncertain, but Hardborough was used to not being quite certain what people did in London.
Milo North was tall, and went through life with singularly little effort. To say ‘I know who you are, you must be Mrs Green’ represented an unaccustomed output of energy. What seemed delicacy in him was usually a way of avoiding trouble; what seemed like sympathy was the instinct to prevent trouble before it started. It was hard to see what growing older would mean to such a person. His emotions, from lack of exercise, had disappeared almost altogether. Adaptability and curiosity, he had found, did just as well.
‘I know who you are, of course, Mr North,’ she said, ‘but I’ve never had an invitation to The Stead before. I expect you come here often.’
‘I’m asked here often,’ said Milo. He gave her another glass of champagne, and having expected to be left indefinitely by herself after the retreat of the General, she was grateful.
‘You’re very kind.’
‘Not very,’ said Milo, who rarely said anything that was not true. Gentleness is not kindness. His fluid personality tested and stole into the weak places of others until it found it could settle down to its own advantage. ‘You live by yourself, don’t you? You’ve just moved into the Old House all by yourself? Haven’t you ever thought of marrying again?’
Florence felt confused. It seemed to her that she was becalmed with this young man in some backwater, while louder voices grew more incoherent beyond. Time seemed to move faster there. Plates that had been full of sandwiches and crowned with parsley when she came in now held nothing but crumbs.
‘I was very happily married, since you ask,’ she said. ‘My husband used to work in the same place as I did. Then he went into the old Board of Trade, before it became a Ministry. He used to tell me about his work when he came home in the evenings.’
‘And you were happy?’
‘I loved him, and I tried to understand his work. It sometimes strikes me that men and women aren’t quite the right people for each other. Something must be, of course.’
Milo looked at her more closely.
‘Are you sure you’re well advised to undertake the running of a business?’ he asked.
‘I’ve never met you before, Mr North, but I’ve felt that because of your work you might welcome a bookshop in Hardborough. You must meet writers at the BBC, and thinkers, and so forth. I expect they come down here sometimes to see you, and to get some fresh air.’
‘If they did I shouldn’t quite know what to do with them. Writers will go anywhere, I’m not sure about thinkers. Kattie would look after them, I expect, though.’
Kattie must certainly be the dark girl in red stockings – or perhaps they were tights, which were now obtainable in Lowestoft and Flintmarket, though not in Hardborough – who lived with Milo North. They were the only unmarried couple living together in the town. But Kattie, who was also known to work for the BBC, only came down three nights a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, which was thought to make it a little more respectable.
‘It’s a pity that Kattie couldn’t be here tonight.’
‘But it’s Wednesday!’ Mrs Green exclaimed, in spite of herself.
‘I didn’t say she wasn’t down here, only that it was a pity that she couldn’t come. She couldn’t come because I didn’t bring her. I thought it might cause more trouble than it was worth.’
Mrs Green thought that he ought to have had the courage of his convictions. Her notion was of a young couple defying the world. She herself was older, and had the right to anxiety.
‘At any rate, you must come to my shop,’ she said. ‘I shall rely on you.’
‘On no account,’ Milo replied.
He took her by both elbows, the lightest possible touch, and shook her by way of emphasis.
‘Why are you wearing red this evening?’ he asked.
‘It isn’t red! It’s garnet, or deep rust!’
Mrs Violet Gamart, the natural patroness of all public activities in Hardborough, came towards them. Although her back had been turned, she had noticed the shake but felt that it was suggestive of the freedom of the arts and therefore not out of place in her drawing-room. The moment, however, had come for her to have a few words with Mrs Green. She explained that she had been attempting to do this all evening, but had been repeatedly spirited away. So many people seemed to have come, but most of them she could see at any time. What she really wanted to say was how grateful everyone must feel about this new venture, such foresight and enterprise.
Mrs Gamart spoke with a kind of generous urgency. She had dark bright eyes which appeared to be kept open, as though by some mechanism, to their widest extent.
‘Bruno! Have you been introduced to my husband? Come and tell Mrs – Mrs – how delighted we all are.’
Florence felt a muddled sense of vocation, as though she would willingly devote her life to the service of Mrs Gamart.
‘Bruno!’
The General had been trying to call attention to an abrasion on his hand, caused by the twisted wire on one of the champagne corks. He went up to every group of guests in turn, hoping to raise a smile by referring to himself as walking wounded.
‘We’ve all been praying for a good bookshop in Hardborough, haven’t we, Bruno?’
Glad to be summoned, he halted towards her.
‘Of course, my dear, no harm in praying. Probably be a good thing if we all did more of it.’
‘There’s only one point, Mrs Green, a small one in a way – you haven’t actually moved into the Old House yet, have you?’
‘Yes, I’ve been there for more than a week.’
‘Oh, but there’s no water.’
‘Sam Wilkins connected the pipes for me.’
‘Don’t forget, Violet,’ the General said anxiously, ‘that you’ve been up in London a good deal lately, and haven’t been able to keep an eye on everything.’
‘Why shouldn’t I have moved in?’ Florence asked, as lightly as she could manage.
‘You mustn’t laugh at me, but I’m fortunate enough to have a kind of gift, or perhaps it’s an instinct, of fitting people and places together. For instance, only just recently – only I’m afraid it wouldn’t mean very much to you if you don’t know the two houses I’m talking about –’
‘Perhaps you could tell me which ones you’re thinking of,’ said the General, ‘and then I could explain it all slowly to Mrs Green.’
‘Anyway, to return to the Old House – that’s exactly the sort of thing I mean. I believe I might be able to save you a great deal of disappointment, and even perhaps a certain amount of expense. In fact, I want to help you, and that’s my excuse for saying all this.’
‘I am sure no excuse is needed,’ said Florence.
‘There are so many more suitable premises in Hardborough, so much more convenient in every way for a bookshop. Did you know, for example, that Deben is closing down?’
Certainly she knew that Deben’s wet fish shop was about to close. Everybody in the town knew when there were likely to be vacant premises, who was in financial straits, who would need larger family accommodation in nine months, and who was about to die.
‘We’ve been so used, I’m afraid, to the Old House standing empty that we’ve delayed from year to year – you’ve quite put us to shame by being in such a hurry, Mrs Green – but the fact is that we’re rather upset by the sudden transformation of our Old House into a shop – so many of us have the idea of converting it into some kind of centre – I mean an arts centre – for Hardborough.’
The General was listening with strained attention.
‘Might pray for that too, you know, Violet.’
‘… chamber music in summer – we can’t leave it all to Aldeburgh – lecturers in winter …’
‘We have lectures already,’ said Florence. ‘The Vicar’s series on Picturesque Suffolk only comes round again every three years.’ They were delightful evenings, for there was no need to listen closely, and in front of the slumberous rows the coloured slides followed each other in no sort of order, disobedient to the Vicar’s voice.
‘We should have to be a good deal more ambitious, particularly with the summer visitors who may come from some distance away. And there is simply no other old house that would give the right ambience. Do, won’t you, think it over?’
‘I’ve been negotiating this sale for more than six months, and I can’t believe that everyone in Hardborough didn’t know about it. In fact, I’m sure they did.’ She looked for confirmation to the General, who stared fixedly away at the empty sandwich plates.
‘And of course,’ Mrs Gamart went on, with even more marked emphasis, ‘one great advantage, which it seems almost wrong to throw away, is that now we have exactly the right person to take charge. I mean to take charge of the centre, and put us all right about books and pictures and music, and encourage things, and get things off the ground, and keep things going, and see they’re on the right lines.’
She gave Mrs Green a smile of unmistakable meaning and radiance. The moment of confusing intimacy had returned, even though Mrs Gamart, in the course of her last sentence, had withdrawn, with encouraging nods and gestures, into her protective horde of guests.
Florence, left quite alone, went out to the small room off the hall to begin the search for her coat. While she looked methodically through the piles, she reflected that, after all, she was not too old to do two jobs, perhaps get a manager for the bookshop, while she herself would have to take some sort of course in art history and music appreciation – music was always appreciated, whereas art had a history – that, she supposed, would mean journeys over to Cambridge.
Outside it was a clear night and she could see across the marshes to the Laze, marked by the riding lights of the fishing boats, waiting for the low tide. But it was cold, and the air stung her face.
‘It was very good of them to ask me,’ she thought. ‘I daresay they found me a bit awkward to talk to.’
As soon as she had gone, the groups of guests reformed themselves, as the cattle had done when Raven took the old horse aside. Now they were all of the same kind, facing one way, grazing together. Between themselves they could arrange many matters, though what they arranged was quite often a matter of chance. As the time drew on for thinking about going home, Mrs Gamart was still a little disturbed as what seemed a check in her scheme for the Old House. This Mrs Green, though unobtrusive enough, had not quite agreed to everything on the spot. It was not of much importance. But a little more champagne, given her by Milo, caused her mind to revolve in its giddy uppermost circle, and to her cousin’s second husband, who was something to do with the Arts Council, and to her own cousin once removed, who was soon going to be high up in the Directorate of Planning, and to her brilliant nephew who sat for the Longwash Division of West Suffolk and had already made his name as the persevering secretary of the Society for Providing Public Access to Places of Interest and Beauty, and to Lord Gosfield who had ventured over from his stagnant castle in the Fens because if foot-and-mouth broke out again he wouldn’t be able to come for months, she spoke of the Hardborough Centre for Music and the Arts. And in the minds of her brilliant nephew, cousin, and so on, a faint resolution formed that something might have to be done, or Violet might become rather a nuisance. Even Lord Gosfield was touched, though he had said nothing all evening, and had in fact driven the hundred odd miles expressly to say nothing in the company of his old friend Bruno. They were all kind to their hostess, because it made life easier.
It was time to be gone. They were not sure where they or their wives had put the car keys. They lingered at the front door saying that they must not let in the cold air, while the General’s old dog, which lived in single-minded expectation of the door opening, thumped its tail feebly on the shining floor; then their cars would not start and the prospect of some of them returning to stay the night grew perilously close; then the last spark ignited and they roared away, calling and waving, and the marsh wind could be heard again in the silence that followed.