Bramton Wick

by Elizabeth Fair

  “Auchinleck?” Jocelyn said helpfully.

  “No, dear, I’m talking about the last war. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, but he told me that Curtis was a most methodical man, quite unusually methodical. Practical people are always methodical, you must remember that. So as I was saying—”

  But the negotiation of the narrow turn into the gateway of Tor Quay silenced Mrs. Worthy, and then Jocelyn had to get out to open the garage doors. The discussion of his future must wait, for Major Worthy was standing at the door of the house and one glance showed her that something had happened to upset him.

  Leaving Jocelyn to take the parcels out of the car she hurried towards Curtis. As she approached he looked twice at his watch, the second glance serving as it were to confirm his suspicions about the first.

  “Here we are!” Mrs. Worthy cried brightly. “Such a tiresome afternoon—”

  “Dentist take all your teeth out?”

  “No, dear, that was this morning, but it was only a stopping.”

  “Thought you must have gone back for another dose.”

  “I’m afraid we are a little late, but I had to call at Box Cottage and Lady Masters was there, and—”

  “Do I get any tea?”

  Mrs. Worthy fled into the kitchen. They were not really very late; experience told her that this was something more than the justifiable annoyance of a man who has been kept waiting for a meal. She was not surprised when Major Worthy appeared in the doorway and waved a small printed ticket at her.

  “Know anything about this?”

  “What is it? If you could put it down, Curtis, and let me look—no, my glasses are in my bag. Could you read it to me, dear, and then I’ll know if I know. Or wait, I’ll just finish the bread and butter and then I’ll get my glasses.”

  “Some charity!” said Major Worthy. He snorted. Mrs. Worthy said, “Oh, dear!”

  If there was one thing Curtis disliked more than another it was a charity appeal. It was bad enough when they came by post, but then he could assuage his anger by tearing them in pieces and throwing them into the waste-paper basket. But sometimes people with tickets or little flags to sell, for missionary whist drives or church-school dances or other deserving objects, came to the house, and then it was her place to act as a buffer between Curtis and these well-meaning but misguided individuals.

  Usually she bought tickets without telling him, for she did not like him to be thought grudging. Nor did he enjoy meeting the sellers of tickets, for it was one thing to express his feelings about a printed appeal and another to express them to some insistent woman jangling a collecting-tin. In such a case the feelings had to be restrained until he could release them on Mrs. Worthy, and it was clear that this was what had happened this afternoon.

  “Oh, dear, who was it? What is it for?”

  “Charity,” Major Worthy repeated, as if all charities were equally opprobrious. “Some damned dance as usual.”

  “Is it in the village?”

  “Can’t even garden in peace. Said to her: ‘It may be all right for you, but do I look as if I wanted to bumba?’” He laughed triumphantly. Jocelyn, who had come in with the parcels, laughed too. Major Worthy believed that his nephew had no sense of humour, and the discovery that he could see a joke after all put him in a better temper.

  “What did she say?” Jocelyn asked with unusual interest.

  “Said it was for a good cause. Phui!” exclaimed Major Worthy, blowing this last comment down his nose like an impatient horse.

  “Well, it was kind of you to buy tickets, dear, and I’m sure she will be very pleased. Who was it?” Mrs. Worthy saw that the kettle was just coming to the boil. Tea would be ready in a minute, and after a cup of tea Curtis would feel much better. She was grateful to Jocelyn for laughing at the right moment, grateful but surprised, for, like her husband, she had thought poor Jocelyn had no sense of humour.

  “One of the Coles, never know them apart. Tea ready?”

  “Just give it a minute to draw properly. I expect it would be Laura Cole. The other one, Mrs.—dear me, what is her name? Anyway, the one who was Gillian Cole—doesn’t do much in the village.”

  Hearing this, Jocelyn gloomily resigned himself to the probability that the girl he had seen in the garden was the married one. That was the way life treated him.

  “Is the dance in the village?” repeated Mrs. Worthy. She was used to repeating her questions. Major Worthy believed that all women were much too inquisitive and should be discouraged, and since he was a methodical man he stuck to the rules even when the subject was a trivial one.

  “Bramworthy,” he answered tersely.

  “Oh,” said Mrs. Worthy, “now I remember! It should be very good, I forget what it’s in aid of, but Mrs. Walker told me all about it. They’ve got a band coming from Bramchester and Malleys are doing the catering, and I promised her I’d take tickets because—oh yes, it’s to help the Conservatives, so I knew it would be all right. Not that you and I will need to go, Curtis. I told her that. Our dancing days are over, I said. But Jocelyn can go—you can take the car, Jocelyn, and I must think of someone to ask as your partner. Let me see—”

  “There’s only one ticket,” Jocelyn pointed out.

  “Only one!” said Major Worthy. “One’s enough, isn’t it? D’you expect me to send the whole village? Come along, Gwennie. Do I get any tea, or don’t I? Phui!”

  Chapter Seven

  Marly House, which everyone denounced as both hideous and uncomfortable, stood on high ground on the Bramworthy side of the valley. The drive joined the Bramworthy road nearly opposite Box Cottage, and Wick Lane formed the southern boundary of the park. It was not a large park, and since some of the fine old trees had been blown down and others felled during the war, the house was easily visible from the lane.

  It was a large, dilapidated, and perfectly plain house, rather like a child’s drawing except that there were more windows. The door was exactly in the middle and the windows were spaced at equal intervals. The roof was hidden behind a parapet; and although this made it look as if the roof had been forgotten it also made the house look too tall and rather topheavy. The third story and the parapet had been added by Miles’s great-great-grandfather; he it was who rebuilt the outside of the house, making all the windows the same size and removing various excrescences which offended his tidy mind. Unfortunately he neglected the interior, which remained much as it had been in the mid-eighteenth century.

  Miles’s grandfather had modernized it to the extent of installing a bathroom, drains, and an extravagant hot-water system. This had been done round about 1885, and since then civilizing influences had left Marly House untouched; for old Mr. Corton, Miles’s father, believed that what was good enough for his ancestors was good enough for him. Miles was less rigid, but, as everyone knew, he had no money. So at Marly House there were still candles in the bedrooms and oil lamps downstairs, rats in the cellars, a Chinese paper in the drawing-room, and draughts everywhere.

  Miles Corton would have been surprised to know that he was thinking of selling Marly at last. The Misses Cleeve were his nearest neighbours, but he was not in the habit of telling them his plans. However, he was forced to see a good deal of them, for not only was he their landlord, but he supplied them with milk and vegetables and took them to church on Sundays and sometimes to Bramworthy on market days. Or rather, he always took Miss Myrtle Cleeve to church and he never took her to Bramworthy if he could possibly avoid it. The other Miss Cleeves could please themselves.

  On this Sunday, Miss Myrtle and Pussy Cleeve accompanied him. The parish church was at Bramton. Two generations ago the inhabitants of Bramton Wick had wished to have a church of their own and had got as far as erecting an ugly temporary building of corrugated iron, known as the Tin Church, where a curate from Bramton officiated on alternate Sundays.

  But since the decline in church-going and the increase in cars and bicycles, the Tin Church had become redundant, and nowadays no one except Miss Myrtle tho
ught that Wick needed a separate church. She, who as a child had read The Daisy Chain and pictured herself as a ministering angel, still hoped that one day through her efforts a new building would rise up, a stone building in the ornate Puginesque-Gothic style she so much admired. To this end she badgered the Vicar of Bramton, kept a collecting-box in the dining-room at Box Cottage—since her sisters would not allow her to keep it in the drawing-room, where visitors might be embarrassed—and wrote, whenever she thought of it, to the Bishop.

  The Vicar of Bramton was new to the living, and at the end of the service he came to the door of the church and shook hands with his parishioners as they filed out. An old rector whom he had served as curate had told him that this was a good way of getting to know their faces.

  It may be that the old rector had a brusquer manner than his imitator, or perhaps his parishioners were not so garrulous. The vicar soon found that this method of getting to know people took much longer than he had expected, and inside the church there was a certain amount of shuffling impatience among the people clustered about the door. The chattier members of the congregation lingered in the porch where the vicar had taken his stand, thus preventing the exit of those who would have been quite content with a brief handshake.

  It was a fine chance for Miss Myrtle. The previous vicar had been difficult to talk to; he had developed a wonderful knack of avoiding, without seeming to avoid, her; he had always had meetings, visitors, or Boy Scouts requiring his instant attention. Of course he had done his duty, calling at Box Cottage once a month, but at Box Cottage her sisters had no compunction about interrupting or overruling her, and it had been hard to gain his interest.

  Now as she came out into the porch she saw the face of the new vicar turned towards her, and she grasped at his outstretched, welcoming hand. Pussy, who had dropped her hymn book, was a little way behind.

  “Good morning,” the vicar said heartily. “Now this is—? I know your face already, but I can’t put a name to it yet.”

  He laughed to fill in the gap, waiting to hear what her name was.

  “Wick is a godless place,” said Miss Myrtle. “How can the people worship if they have no church?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The people of Wick have no church. They walk in darkness. We must labour to build them a church. The Bishop approves of it, but it is for us to bring it to pass.”

  Wick, thought the vicar. Wick, Wick. Where was it? He had been taken by surprise, and he was still so new to the district that he thought of Bramton Wick as being just a part of Bramton, so it did not occur to him that this was where the church was to be built.

  “An appeal should be launched,” said Miss Myrtle.

  She had a compelling stare. Also, she still clasped him by the hand and he could not very well shake himself free.

  “We must see about that,” he replied, temporizing; for after all, she had said that the Bishop approved of this scheme and he was the last man to wish to offend a bishop. “Perhaps you would come and talk to me about it one day.”

  But she had heard that delaying phrase before.

  “The work will not wait. The need is urgent. How can the godly rest when misery, want, and ignorance are at the very gates?”

  “Quite, quite,” he put in, with an ill-advised attempt to combine his two manners, the sacred and the secular. It was not successful, and she paid not the least attention.

  “For years I have laboured at this task.”

  Two or three people squeezed past her and escaped from the porch, and some new faces appeared at the church door. But the vicar was still imprisoned by the firm handclasp and the unwavering stare. By now he had realized that she must be a little eccentric; if she had laboured at the task for years it could not be a new foible of the Bishop’s. He felt defrauded and aggrieved.

  “Let me tell you the story of Wick,” she said. “Many years ago . . .”

  There was a small disturbance at the back of the porch, a murmur of apologies as Pussy forced her way to the front. Miss Myrtle had a high-pitched voice, easily recognizable; it had penetrated to Pussy’s ears and Pussy had come to put a stop to it.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “May I pass? Oh, thank you, Mrs. Walker.” She arrived at Miss Myrtle’s side and gripped her elbow. “Come along, Myrtle. Mr. Corton is waiting for us.” So easily, so quickly, did she detach her that the vicar wondered why he had not done it himself. Automatically he extended his hand again, but she ignored it and with a brisk little nod she swept Miss Myrtle away. They are remarkably alike, he thought with dismay, foreseeing that he would have to be doubly on his guard in the future.

  Miles Corton, who had been one of the first to leave the church, waited in the sunshine of the broad, empty street. Bramton, a sleepy place at any time, was now so quiet that it might have been under an enchantment. Only the voices and footsteps of the departing congregation broke the spell. Pigeons cooed in the churchyard elms; in the yard of the Cleeve Arms, across the street, an old man sat on a bench puffing at his pipe and watching the congregation with a superior air. Presently some people came to the cars parked in the middle of the street and drove away. Soon only Miles’s car was left, and three or four bicycles leaning against the railing round the Cleeve Monument.

  Laura Cole appeared at the lych-gate. She saw Mr. Corton standing by his car and came across to speak to him.

  “Are you waiting for the Miss Cleeves?” she said. “They’ll be ages. Everyone is having a nice chat with the vicar. I suppose he wants to get to know us.”

  “He should do it at some other time.”

  “Yes, think of all the Sunday joints. What about yours? I suppose Mrs. Epps is there—and I’m all right, it’s Gillian’s day for cooking. Oh, dear—” she broke off with a change of voice.

  “Why, ‘oh dear’?”

  “Because I made a vow I would not talk about food or cooking or housework. Have you noticed how everyone talks about them all the time?”

  “Not to me,” Miles replied gravely. Laura laughed to herself. He was not a man from whom one would demand sympathy for domestic troubles.

  “Then you’re lucky and I won’t break your luck.”

  But having said this she could think of nothing else to say. Everything seemed to be related to the banned subjects. She looked back at the lych-gate. A few more people came out, but not the Miss Cleeves.

  “Well,” she said, “I’d better be getting on.”

  “Are you alone?”

  “Yes, I’ve got my bicycle.”

  “Then I can give you a lift to the corner of Wick Lane. It will save you the hill.”

  “But I’ve got my bicycle.”

  “Plenty of room on the back. You needn’t worry about the car,” he said, smiling. “It’s quite used to bicycles.”

  Gillian would have said frankly that it was not the car she was worried about, but Laura was too kind-hearted to say this. They walked across to the Monument to fetch the bicycle. She hoped it would not get scratched.

  The Monument was a square pedestal bearing the statue of a man in robes and a curly wig, holding in his hand a model of the New Bridge. On the side of the pedestal was an inscription.

  In Pious and Honoured Memory

  Of

  Sir Alexander James Cleeve, Bt.,

  Of

  Cleeve Manor in this County.

  A Just, Sagacious and Humane Man

  Who

  By his Liberal hand

  And

  By the exercise of his Abundant talent:

  By draining the Marshes:

  By building the New Bridge:

  Brought prosperity to Bramton

  And

  Earned the Gratitude of his fellow men.

  This Monument was erected by the inhabitants of Bramton

  And

  The Gentry of the Surrounding District.

  Although both Laura and Miles were familiar with this inscription they lingered to read it again. The time-worn stately tribute to Si
r Alexander James Cleeve never failed to touch Laura’s heart, and now, forgetting the difficulties of talking to Miles, she said impulsively:

  “When I read that and think of Pussy and Miss Myrtle and old Miss Cleeve I want to cry.”

  Miles grunted, not unsympathetically. She felt that he had understood her, though her words seemed to hang in the air like a foolish parody of her thoughts. He was still studying the Monument, standing with his head thrown back in the full sunlight of the empty square. Looking at him, Laura found herself matching him against the figure on the pedestal. Cleeve and Corton, dead benefactor and living man. The comparison, she thought, was not ridiculous. Miles was a tall man, he had strong features and an expression which, if not exactly sagacious or humane, suggested authority and intelligence. It was a face that could have looked out from the frame of a family portrait. Or perhaps . . .

  At this instant Miles, conscious of her scrutiny, turned his head and asked why she was staring at him. Before she could stop herself she continued her musing aloud.

  “I was just thinking you would look very well as an effigy on a tomb.”

  These arresting words, spoken slowly and clearly by the demon who sometimes prompted her, reduced her to unexpected blushes. Miles appeared considerably startled and stared at Laura as closely as she had stared at him.

  “I mean”—she struggled to explain—“I mean, I was looking at the statue, and then I was looking at you—comparing you with the statue—” The explanation was hopeless; she looked neither at Miles nor at the statue, but gazed miserably at the ground, feeling the blush burning her cheeks, wishing she could seize her bicycle and hurry away from the accursed spot, but, as in a dream, rooted to the place where she was standing.