The next few weeks passed uneventfully. Rocky was as charming as ever, but I was careful to say to myself ‘Italian girl friend’ or ‘rather a shallow sort of person’ whenever I saw him, so that I might stop myself from thinking too well of him. He and Helena had managed to acquire some kind of a country cottage and were now spending quite a lot of time there. He told me that he had started to paint again but I could not make anything of the specimens of his work that he showed me. I did not see Everard Bone at all and soon forgot all about him and my efforts to like him. Dora went back to school with her brown woollen dress and I settled down to my gentlewomen in the mornings and the routine of home and church for the rest of the day. It seemed that the spring had unsettled us all but now that summer had come we were our more sober selves again. I did not see Julian Malory and Allegra Gray holding hands anywhere, although it was obvious that she was very friendly with both Julian and Winifred, and Winifred continued to be enthusiastic about her.
‘Allegra’s going to help me about my summer clothes,’ she said. ‘She has such good taste. Don’t you think so, Mildred?’
I agreed that she always looked very nice.
‘Yes, and she’s even smartening Julian up. Haven’t you noticed? She’ll probably start on Father Greatorex next.’
‘Are you all getting on well together in the house?’ I asked. ‘You don’t find that you have lost any of your independence having somebody living above you?’
‘Oh, no, it’s really like having Allegra living with us. We’re in and out of each other’s rooms all the time.’
It was a Saturday morning and we had assembled in the choir vestry before decorating the church for Whit-Sunday. It was the usual gathering, Winifred, Sister Blatt, Miss Enders, Miss Statham and one or two others. The only man present, apart from the clergy, was Jim Storry, a feeble-minded youth who made himself useful in harmless little ways and would sometimes arrange the wire frames on the window-sills for us or fill jam jars with water.
The vestry was a gloomy untidy place, containing two rows of chairs, a grand piano and a cupboard full of discarded copies of Hymns Ancient and Modern—we used the English Hymnal, of course—vases, bowls and brasses in need of cleaning.
‘Well, well, here we all are,’ said Julian in a rather more clerical tone than usual. ‘It’s very good of you all to come along and help and I’m especially grateful to all those who have brought flowers. Lady Farmer,’ he mentioned the only titled member remaining in our congregation, ‘has most kindly sent these magnificent lilies from her country home.’
There was a pause.
‘Is he going to say a prayer?’ whispered Sister Blatt to me, and as nobody broke the silence I bent my head suitably and waited. But the words Julian spoke were not a prayer but a gay greeting to Allegra Gray, who came in through the door at that moment.
‘Ah, here you are, now we can start.’
‘Well, really, were we just waiting for her?’ mumbled Sister Blatt. ‘We’ve been decorating for years—long before Mrs. Gray came.’
‘Well, she is a newcomer, perhaps Father Malory thought it more polite to wait for her. I dare say he will help her.’
‘Father Malory help with the decorating! Those men never do anything. I expect they’ll slink off and have a cup of coffee once the work starts.’
We went into the church and began sorting out the flowers and deciding what should be used where. Winifred, as the vicar’s sister, had usurped the privilege of a wife and always did the altar, but I must confess that it was not always very well done. I had graduated from a very humble window that nobody ever noticed to helping Sister Blatt with the screen, and we began laboriously fixing old potted-meat jars into place with wires so that they could be filled with flowers. Lady Farmer’s lilies were of course to go on the altar. There was a good deal of chatter, and I was reminded of Trollope’s description of Lily Dale and Grace Crawley, who were both accustomed to churches and ‘almost as irreverent as though they were two curates’. For a time all went peacefully, each helper was busy with her particular corner, while Julian and Father Greatorex wandered round giving encouragement, though no particular help, to all.
‘That’s it!’ said Julian as I placed a cluster of pinks into one of the potted-meat jars. ‘Splendid!’
I did not feel that there was anything particularly splendid about what I was doing and Sister Blatt and I exchanged smiles as he passed on to Miss Statham and Miss Enders at the pulpit. It was at this point that I heard Winifred and Mrs. Gray, who were both doing the altar, having what sounded like an argument.
‘But we always have lilies on the alter,’ I heard Winifred say.
‘Oh, Winifred, why are you always so conventional!’ came Mrs. Gray’s voice rather sharply. ‘Just because you’ve always had lilies on the altar it doesn’t mean that you can never have anything else. I think these peonies and delphiniums would look much more striking. Then we can have the lilies in a great jar on the floor, at the side here. Don’t you think that would look splendid?’
I could not hear Winifred’s reply but it was obvious that the flowers were going to be arranged in the way Mrs. Gray had suggested.
‘Of course she’s been a vicar’s wife,’ said Sister Blatt, ‘so I suppose she’s used to ordering people about and having her own way with the decorations.’
‘I suppose it’s really a question of whether a vicar’s sister should take precedence over a vicar’s widow,’ I said. ‘I don’t imagine that books of etiquette deal with such refinements. But I didn’t realise Mrs. Gray’s husband had been a vicar—I thought he was just a curate and then an Army chaplain.’
‘Oh, yes, he had a parish before he became a chaplain. They say he was a very good preacher, too, very slangy and modern. But I have heard,’ Sister Blatt lowered her voice as if about to tell me something disgraceful, ‘that he had leanings . . .’
‘Leanings?’ I echoed.
‘Yes, the Oxford Group movement. He had tendencies that way, I believe.’
‘Oh, dear, then perhaps . . .’
‘You mean that it was just as well that he was taken, poor man?’ said Sister Blatt, finishing my sentence for me.
‘Do you think Mrs. Gray will marry again?’ I asked craftily, wondering if Sister Blatt had seen or heard anything.
‘Well, who, that’s the point, isn’t it? She’s an attractive woman, I suppose, but there aren’t really any eligible men round here, are there?’
‘What about the clergy?’
‘You mean Father Greatorex?’ asked Sister Blatt in astonishment.
‘He did give her a pot of jam.’
‘Well, well, that’s certainly news to me.’
‘And Father Malory gave her a hearth-rug,’ I went on, unable to stop myself.
‘Oh, that moth-eaten old thing out of his study? I shouldn’t think that means anything. Besides, Father Malory wouldn’t marry,’ said Sister Blatt positively.
‘I don’t know. We have no reason for thinking that he wouldn’t. Anyway, widows nearly always do marry again.’
‘Oh, they have the knack of catching a man. Having done it once I suppose they can do it again. I suppose there’s nothing in it when you know how.’
‘Like mending a fuse,’ I suggested, though I had not previously taken this simple view of seeking and finding a life partner.
It was just as well that we were interrupted here by Miss Statham, asking if we had any greenery to spare, for our conversation had not been at all suitable for church and I really felt a little ashamed.
The church looked as beautiful as its Victorian interior would allow when we had finished decorating. The altar was striking and unusual and the lilies stood out very well, so that even if Lady Farmer had been present, which she was not, she would not have thought that they had been overlooked.
The next morning we were all singing Hail Thee Festival Day, as the procession wound round the church, and the smell of incense and flowers mingled pleasantly with the sunshine and birdsong outside. The Napiers were away and I was feeling peaceful and happy, as I had felt before they came and disturbed my life. As I walked out of the church Mrs. Gray came up to me. We were both wearing new hats for Whitsuntide, but I felt that hers with its trimming of fruit was smarter and more unusual than mine with its conventional posy of flowers.
‘Oh, dear, that is a difficult hymn,’ she said, ‘the one we had for the procession.’
‘But so beautiful,’ I said, ‘and well worth singing even if one falters a little in the verse part sometimes.’
‘I was wondering if you’d have lunch with me one day,’ said Mrs. Gray suddenly and surprisingly.
‘Lunch?’ I asked as if I had never heard of the meal, for I was wondering whatever could have induced her to want to have lunch with me. ‘Thank you, I should like to very much.’
‘Of course tomorrow is Whit-Monday, so perhaps we had better say Tuesday or Wednesday—if you’re free, that is?’
‘Oh, I’m always free,’ I said unguardedly. ‘Tuesday would suit me very well. Where shall I meet you?’
She named a restaurant in Soho which I had often seen from the outside. ‘Would that be convenient for you? At one-fifteen, say?’
I went back to my flat puzzling a little about this friendly overture. I was sure that she did not really like me, or at best thought of me as a dim sort of person whom one neither liked nor disliked, and I did not feel that I really cared for her very much either. Still, this was no doubt an interesting basis for social intercourse and we might even become friends. The people I was going to become friendly with! It made me laugh to think of them and I began playing with the idea of bringing them together. Everard Bone and Allegra Gray—perhaps they might marry? It would at least take her away from Julian, unless he was really determined to have her. Did the clergy display the same determination in these matters as other men? I wondered. I supposed that they did. And who would win if it came to a fight—Julian or Everard Bone?
On Whit-Monday I decided to tidy out some drawers and cupboards and possibly begin making a summer dress. I always did these tidyings on Easter and Whit-Mondays, but somehow not at any other time. It seemed to be connected with fine weather rather than the great Festivals of the Church—a pagan rather than a Christian rite.
I started with the pigeon-holes of my desk, but I did not get very far because I came upon a bundle of old letters and photographs which set me dreaming and remembering. My mother in a large hat, sitting under the cedar tree on the rectory lawn—I would be too young to remember the exact occasion but I knew the life, even to the shadowy curate who could be seen hovering in the background, his features a little blurred. Then there was one of Dora and me at Oxford, on the river with William and a friend. Presumably the friend, a willowy young man of a type that does not look as if it would marry, had been intended for Dora, as William was regarded as my property. But what had happened that afternoon? I could not even remember the occasion now.
I opened a drawer and came upon a large and solemn-looking studio portrait (in sepia) of the young man with whom I had once imagined myself to be in love, Bernard Hatherley, a bank clerk who occasionally read the Lessons and who used to be included with the curates in Sunday evening supper parties. The face reminded me a little of Everard Bone, except that the features were less striking. It seemed incredible to remember now how often at nineteen I had pressed my cheek against the cold glass, and I found the recollection embarrassing, turning from it quickly and from the remembrance of myself hurrying past his lodgings in the dusk, hoping yet fearing that I might see his face at the window, his hand drawing aside the lace curtain of his first floor sitting-room. ‘Loch Lomond’, Victoria Parade . . . I could still remember the name of the house and street. He had given me the photograph one Christmas and I had given him an anthology of poetry, which seemed an unfair exchange, my gift being so much more revealing than his. It had all seemed rather romantic, hearing him read the Lessons at Evensong, seeing him by chance in the town or through the open door of the bank, and then the long country walks on Saturday afternoons and the talks about life and about himself. I did not remember that we had ever talked about me. Eventually he had gone on a holiday to Torquay and things were not the same after that. I had suffered, or I supposed that I had, for he had not broken the news of another attachment very gracefully. Perhaps high-principled young men were more cruel in these matters because less experienced. I am sure that Rocky would have done it much more kindly.
I got up stiffly, for I had been crouching uncomfortably on the floor. I bundled the letters and photographs back and decided that it would be more profitable to make tea and cut out my dress. Tidying was over now until next Easter or Whitsuntide.