Miss Hargreaves

by Frank Baker

  He swivelled his pipe from one side of his mouth to the other; he always does this when he’s rather pleased with himself. ‘Should like to take her on the tiles,’ he added.

  ‘She’s better where she is,’ I said. ‘Safely tucked away in her creator’s mind.’

  ‘What about my mind?’

  ‘Your mind?’

  ‘Yes, she’s in mine too. You’ve parted with her, you know. She’s no longer your exclusive property.’ The guard waved his flag. ‘Anyway,’ he added, ‘she’s probably on her way to Bath by now. So long! See you in a day or so.’

  The train steamed out. Henry shouted to me:

  ‘I should think she’s the only person left who travels with her own bath, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘You mean,’ I cried, ‘the one given her by Mr Archer sixty years ago?’

  Henry laughed and withdrew his head.

  I went to find my Doncaster train, wondering just why Mr Archer should have given Miss Hargreaves a bath–I mean, of course, presented her with a bath, not bathed her; though, for all I knew, he might have bathed her. Rather extravagant. But still, if Miss Hargreaves was anything she was certainly eccentric.

  No need to tell you anything about my Aunt Flossie, who doesn’t come into the story at all. Two days later I travelled south, arriving at Cornford about seven. It was a superb September evening and Cornford was looking its best, full of red brick and sunset with the bells from the parish church playing ‘Home, Sweet Home’, as they always do on Saturday nights, when the crowd’s thickest and nobody seems to want to have anything to do with home. I suppose it’s a sort of warning to exuberant laddies, flung out by the Church at the most crucial moment of the week–for anyone who lives in a provincial town knows that Saturday evening is that.

  Yes, it was lovely that evening; the market stalls full of dahlias, asters and Michaelmas daisies. Everybody was happy except a pinched-nosed-looking female in a stall selling political pamphlets something about Marx, not the–Brothers, but the German fellow who started all that Russian stuff. I felt sorry for the girl; she wanted a good steak and a little less hot air, you could see that. There were hordes of chaps and girls lounging up and down, some of them thronging round a black fellow selling medicine for the feet in Disraeli Square. From the bars of the Swan people were overflowing into the road, spilling their beer. Above all this tapered the Cathedral spire, indulgent and kind, as much as to say, ‘I know all about you, my children; centuries ago you wandered up and down on Saturday nights. You’re just the same; no different.’ I was awfully glad to be back. There’s no place like home, you can say what you like, but there isn’t. In the air was a feeling of autumn; not a sad feeling, but a mellow richness over everything. I like autumn; it doesn’t depress me. I like to think of winter evenings evenings when the great coke stoves will be burning in the Cathedral and only about two people will wander in to hear the anthem.

  I called into the shop, thinking I’d like to see father before I went to number 38. We don’t live over the shop, of course. It’s far too full of books.

  Father was working out a chess problem in his favourite corner. Nobody else was in the shop. It’s a funny thing, but people don’t buy books on Saturday night.

  ‘Hallo, Dad,’ I said.

  He didn’t look up or answer for some time. I sat down and waited, noticing how, in a month, the sun had shifted from the theology shelves, below the staircase, to topography, nearer the fireplace. Beautiful rich colour it was; it made you want to look at the books.

  Presently father said, ‘Hallo, Norman. Have we got a copy of the Kelmscott Shakespeare anywhere about?’

  ‘I had a jolly good holiday.’

  ‘Did you? I always liked Ireland.’

  ‘Didn’t know you’d been there.’

  ‘Read about it. Who’s that fellow–Moore, is it? Or Scott. I know it pretty well from maps. Hand me that pawn, will you? Do you know where the red queen’s got to? I’m having to use a clothes-peg and it’s awkward.’

  ‘Aunt Flossie was well,’ I said.

  ‘Yes? I’ve been playing the violin a good bit since you’ve been away. And what do you think? That fool Claribel’s had kittens.’

  ‘Go on!’

  ‘Yes, the Kreutzer Sonata. It’s fine work. I like the rondo.’

  ‘She had five only last April.’

  ‘But I’m damned if I can manage that tricky bit in the slow movement. By the way, have we got a copy of the Kelmscott Shakespeare?’

  ‘Have you looked on the top floor?’

  ‘No. Not yet. I’ll put that devil Squeen on to it.’

  Squeen’s father’s assistant. On Saturday he always goes home early.

  ‘Had a good holiday?’ asked father.

  ‘Oh, topping! Ireland’s wonderful.’

  ‘Henry looked in last night.’ Father scratched his moustache with the white queen. ‘Asked me whether I’d got a volume of poems by–who was it?–Harton, or something; Constance Harton. Called Wayside Bundle. Or was it Puddle? Published in ’95. I haven’t had time to look for it yet.’

  ‘Oh, Henry’s pulling your leg.’

  ‘Is he? Funny way to pull it. If I find the book I shall charge him for it.’

  ‘You’ll never find it. Well, I’ll be getting home. See you later, I suppose?’

  ‘So long, boy. Join me in skittles later at the Happy Union.’

  The Happy Union is a little place up Candole Street, not far from our house. Father goes there quite a lot.

  ‘So long, Dad,’ I said.

  Rather silly of Henry, I thought, as I walked down the High Street homewards. Futile to prolong jokes like the Hargreaves. Very nice in Lusk, but now back in Cornford no, it lacked reality. As far as I was concerned, she was dead.

  I reached 38 London Road. It’s an old-fashioned house, tall, with a flat, plain frontage, yellow bricks and large windows with a lot of steps up to the front door. Rather a grand house in a way; you couldn’t blow it over like you can a lot of modern ones. But certainly it is plain. I thought so especially that evening, comparing it with the fine Queen Anne house, bang opposite, standing in several acres of ground, with a dense triangle of rhododendrons in the front garden, and two gates. Lessways was its name; property of the Dean and Chapter. It had been empty for a long time, and there was often talk of pulling it down. Once there’d been some diocesan offices in the lower rooms; but now they’d moved and it was empty.

  Mother and my sister Jim were just sitting down to supper as I came in. They were a bit off-hand to me, I thought. There wasn’t that warm welcome one expects after a month’s holiday; not really wholehearted. Of course, they’re both rather casual in a way; very brisk, too; not a bit like father. Mother’s tall and stoutish with hair going grey and what you might call an eagle eye; Jim’s tall and not stout; but she’s got the same eagly eyes. In fact, they’re both rather eaglish people. Pouncers. Nice oh, awfully nice! But a bit too up to the mark for father and me. They’re both fond of games and organizations; clubs, committees and conversations. They belong to everything, and they keep diaries crammed with appointments. Father, of course, doesn’t belong to anything–except mother and the shop; he doesn’t like going out very much, apart from the Happy Union. Quiet, my father is. So we’re rather a divided family. Personally, I like it that way; you don’t get so bored with each other.

  I had to tell them all about the holiday, of course, and I went through everything, from beginning to end. I left out Miss Hargreaves; knew they wouldn’t understand that sort of joke.

  ‘And now,’ said mother, ‘you’ll have to settle down to some work, Norman.’

  Mother’s awfully fond of that phrase, ‘settling down’. I don’t like it much; makes me feel like a sort of powder.

  ‘Marjorie and I have joined the Keep Fit Class,’ said Jim. ‘Pity you don’t do something like that; keep that paunch down.’

  ‘Don’t be rude, Jim,’ I said. I cut myself some cake.

  ‘I hope this winte
r,’ said mother, ‘you’ll really settle down and work for your A.R.C.O. and not spend so much time playing the piano for father’s silly old violin.’

  ‘That reminds me,’ I said. ‘Where are Claribel’s kittens?’

  ‘In your old tuck-box,’ said Jim. ‘Rather a mixed brew.’

  ‘Henry says he can dispose of two for us,’ said mother. ‘By the way,’ she added–I noticed she glanced at Jim–‘who’s this friend of yours he keeps talking about? Somebody you met in Ireland, I suppose. What was the name, Jim?’

  ‘Hargreaves, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. Who is she, Norman?’

  ‘Oh, she’s really a friend of his.’ I laughed a little uneasily. ‘This is topping cake. Did Janie make it?’ (Janie’s our maid.)

  ‘Henry quite clearly said your friend. How did the name come up, Jim?’

  ‘Oh, we were talking about Mrs Pankhurst and votes for women, and–’

  ‘Oh, yes, I remember. We were arguing about the date of Mrs Pankhurst’s death and Henry said we’d better ask Norman’s great friend, Miss Hargreaves. He said she had known Mrs Pankhurst.’

  ‘So I said,’ said Jim, ‘Miss Hargreaves? Never heard of her. And old Henry got quite worked up about her. Norman’s guiding light, he called her.’

  ‘We got quite curious about her, didn’t we, Jim? You can’t have known her very long, can you, Norman?’

  I was growing a bit uncomfortable. Mother’s so interested in all my friends; she’s what you might call modern in that way; likes to say that she keeps an ever-open door. I wished Henry hadn’t carried on the ridiculous joke. I knew it wouldn’t be easy to convince mother that there wasn’t such a person. They don’t understand the Spur of the Moment, mother and Jim.

  ‘Henry’s been pulling your leg,’ I said. ‘There’s no such person.’ (Do you remember Mrs Gamp’s fury when Betsy Prig said of Mrs Harris, ‘I don’t believe there’s no sich a person!’ Queer it was; I felt like that.)

  ‘Of course he wasn’t pulling our leg.’ Mother sniffed contemptuously. ‘Why should he? I always know when I’m being fooled. He spoke with great respect of her.’

  ‘Honestly, mother,’ I said, ‘the whole thing was a joke. We made her up.’

  Mother laughed. And when mother laughs it generally means trouble. ‘If you want to conceal your friends from us, by all means do so. We shan’t complain.’

  I saw it was no use arguing about it. The best thing to do was to avoid the subject and later on get Henry to come round and bear me out.

  ‘I can’t help it if you don’t believe me,’ I said.

  Mother looked at me oddly. ‘You really don’t know a Miss Hargreaves?’

  Again I noticed a quick glance pass between her and Jim.

  ‘See that wet,’ I declaimed, ‘see that dry!’ I slid my finger from my tongue to my throat. ‘I swear I’ve never met any such woman in my life.’

  ‘Then–’ And mother has a way of making a long pause after the word ‘then’ which makes you tremble at the thought of what’s coming. But this time she didn’t say anything at all. She merely swooped something from the mantelpiece to the table.

  I can only tell you this. It was one of the Graver moments of my life. All sorts of ideas about Time and Relativity and Matter and what-not floated to me as, with blurry eyes, I looked at what mother was holding out to me. It was a telegram. It was addressed to me. I read it.

  ‘A thousand thanks for welcome invitation sent from beloved Lusk hoping arrive stay with you Monday Hargreaves.’

  I read it a dozen times. It had been handed in at Hereford that morning at ten. I read it a dozen more times, held it up to the light, shook it, smelt it, and finally spilt some tea over it. Then I staggered to the window.

  I felt bad. I felt rocky. I felt the sky coming down and the earth going up. Then suddenly I felt better. This was a trick of Henry’s. Obviously. Sort of mad thing he would do.

  Father was coming up the steps to the door. Mother and Jim were standing behind me. Deadly silence. Awful.

  I swung round. ‘Don’t you see,’ I cried, ‘this is a trick? Henry’s behind the whole thing. He never did know where to stop a joke. I’m going round to see him at once.’

  Father came in. I heaved a sigh of relief. I can always cope with father. He hasn’t that strict sense of orderliness that mother and Jim have.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. I suppose we were all standing about in critical attitudes. ‘Oh, I bought a new teapot,’ he added. ‘That one never would pour.’ He put the new pot on the table.

  ‘Well, Norman,’ sighed mother with a dreadful sort of sinister gentleness, ‘I shall be very glad if Henry is able to explain. I don’t like to catch my son out in telling lies.’

  ‘Don’t you worry,’ I said. ‘You’ll see.’

  Father was pouring out the tea from the old pot into the new, then pouring it back again into the old to see how the new worked. He seemed satisfied.

  ‘That’s what I call a teapot,’ he said. ‘Oh do you remember–that book I was trying to find?’

  ‘The Kelmscott Shakespeare?’

  ‘Was it? Anyhow, I found it. Here it is. Jim, tea’s half cold.’ He pulled a slim, green, rather worn-looking volume from his pocket and flung it at me.

  ‘That’s not the Kelmscott Shakespeare, surely?’ I said.

  ‘No. Not that. The other book.’

  ‘The other book?’

  ‘Yes. The poems. Wayside Spindle, or something. Not bad, some of them. Run through the Kreutzer with me tonight?’

  The little green book was lying on the floor. I had failed to catch it. I could not pick it up.

  ‘Mother,’ said father, ‘did you get me a new A string?’

  ‘Yes, I did, Cornelius.’

  ‘Father,’ I said, ‘what poems did you say?’

  ‘Oh, don’t keep bothering! Some book by a woman Henry was interested in. Friend of yours, he said.’

  Mother suddenly darted down, snatched up the book, glanced at it, then shoved it before me without a word. I took it hopelessly. I shuddered. Its title was Wayside Bundle. Verses by Constance Hargreaves. They were dedicated to Philip Archer, M.A. ‘A small craft,’ declared the authoress in a foreword, ‘and now for the first time launched upon the sea of criticism.’

  ‘Holy God!’ I moaned.

  ‘And now,’ said mother grimly, ‘perhaps you’ll be kind enough to tell us the truth about this Miss Hargreaves. Don’t misunderstand me, Norman; I’m very glad to welcome any friend of yours to the house. All I expect is that we should know a little about them first.’

  ‘Mother,’ I said, and I spoke with feeling, ‘if that dove flew out of that picture and fluttered about over the table, you’d be surprised, wouldn’t you? You’d be bowled over?’

  I pointed to a picture in a gilt frame of Greuze’s girl with the dead dove.

  ‘Yes, I certainly should be bowled over,’ agreed mother.

  ‘I’ve always maintained that dove isn’t dead,’ said father.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you couldn’t be more bowled over than I am by–by this. So have a little mercy.’

  ‘For a change,’ suggested Jim, ‘try telling the truth. Just try. People do. It doesn’t kill them, as a rule.’

  ‘You bitch, Jim!’ I cried.

  ‘That’s enough, Norman!’ snapped mother. ‘I won’t stand words like that–’

  ‘Well, she is a bitch–’

  ‘Do you hear what he is saying, Cornelius?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re all arguing about,’ said father. ‘Is it the new teapot? That’s what I call a teapot, that is.’

  He sat down and helped himself to some tongue. The volume was open in my hands. I read:

  ‘O, bring me the flute and the alto bassoon,

  The mustard, the cress, and the water!

  The high and the diddle; the fiddle; for soon

  Must I go to make love to your daughter.’

  It was from a poem c
alled ‘The Unwilling Suitor’.

  ‘Father,’ I said, ‘where did you find this book?’

  ‘They’re rather nice little verses,’ he said. ‘Nice feeling. Remind me of–who is it? Christina Rossetti. She was a poet, if you like. Met her once and she–’

  I laid the book on the table. Jim took it up.

  ‘Your fancy friend must be pretty old,’ she said. ‘This was published in 1893. Listen to this: what on earth does it mean?’

  She read another verse:

  ‘My life was complete before Agatha came:

  The rosemary, dapple and fawn;

  The carraway petal, the Holloway flame,

  The gingham, the gallows, the dawn.’

  ‘H’m. That’s good,’ said father. He took the book from her and read silently for a few moments. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘she’s a poet right enough. You have to work to get at the meaning. Sure sign. That’s fine, you know:

  ‘Oh, why must I go with my green tender grace

  To lay all my eggs in one basket?

  If I were a mayor I could carry a mace;

  My card and address in a casket.’

  ‘Fine!’ he said.

  ‘Sounds pure nonsense to me,’ said mother.

  ‘She’s no chicken,’ said Jim. ‘If that book was published in 1893, she must be at least sixty.’

  ‘Sixty!’ I laughed scornfully; suddenly plunged deep into the pit. ‘She’s nearer ninety–that is–damn it! Hell!’ I shouted. I was getting more and more tied up. ‘I made her up,’ I cried. ‘I’ve never met her, I tell you!’

  I really hardly knew what I was saying.

  Father, taking not the slightest notice of my outburst, began to read again from the book.

  ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Here’s depth. Real depth:

  ‘All this goeth on and my mind is a blank,