by Frank Baker
Before she could say ‘fuss’ I rounded on her.
‘Are you crazy?’ I shouted. I was mad to get out of the house in case the Major should return. He might have gone for an early dip in the river, for all I knew.
She ignored me completely. ‘Where is the toilet?’ she asked. ‘And why is there no tea? What a place!’
‘Look here,’ I said, ‘you’ve got us into this fix–’
‘Fix?’ she said. ‘I do not understand. Who is in a fix?’
‘You’ve got us into it,’ I went on, ‘and you’re going to let me get us out of it in my way, not yours.’
Very slowly she walked to the shelves, returned the book to its place, took off her spectacles, put them away in her bag, and finally addressed me.
‘Mr Huntley,’ she said gravely, ‘it seems that I had the misfortune to spend an entire night in this room with you. Do not assume–do not assume that such close proximity to my person for so long a period entitles you to any sort of familiarity. Kindly ring the garage and instruct me as to the geography of the house–if such a poor place has any geography. There need be no argument.’
‘Upstairs. First floor,’ I said savagely. I was so angry I could hardly trust myself to speak.
Slowly she walked up. I went to the phone in the hall, took up the receiver, hesitated, hooked it back again. No, I was damned if I’d be browbeaten like this! Fuming impatiently I strode up and down the hall. After an intolerable time she came down.
‘Is the car ready?’ she asked.
I lied quickly. ‘It’ll be waiting for us on the road,’ I said. I led her out through the drawing-room.
‘Appalling taste!’ she muttered. ‘All this strawberry colour. So morbid! Atrocious!’
I hurriedly led the way down the garden. Farther along the orchard was a bridge which led to the meadows, and thus to the main Cornford road, a hundred yards away.
‘I cannot understand all this hurry,’ she said breathlessly.
‘No. Neither can I,’ I said. I could see the Cornford bus just crossing the bridge. Obviously we could never catch it. Suddenly, also, I had remembered my bicycle. I couldn’t leave it on Cookham Bridge.
‘Mr Huntley,’ said Miss Hargreaves, ‘wait one moment, if you please. I wish to have a word with you.’
‘Go on,’ I said bitterly. ‘I can bear it.’
‘I should take it as a courtesy if you were to tell nobody about our–what can I call it?–mad frolic of last night. I blame you entirely, of course. But I dare say a little of the blame rests upon me. That is all. Where is this car you keep talking about?’
I couldn’t stand any more of this. Could you have?
‘You’re insufferable!’ I cried. ‘I spend the whole night doing my damnedest to get you safely home–I trespass on other people’s property–I behave generally like a madman–and then you treat me like this! It’s absolutely shameful, Miss Hargreaves.’
Coldly, critically, she surveyed me through her lorgnettes. In a few hours she seemed to have lost all the affection she had once had for me. It was heart-breaking.
‘Mr Huntley,’ she said, ‘you once came to my assistance at a critical moment in a bookshop. Do not suppose–do not suppose this gives you leave to address me as though you were my equal. A cat may look at a king. Oh, yes! There is little offence in that. But I have yet to learn that a cat may–to employ one of your own vulgar expressions–hob-nob with a king.’
‘My God !’ I said. For a moment I stared at her. I think there were almost tears in my eyes. Then I hurried on towards the bridge, far more hurt than angry.
My bicycle was still where I had left it.
‘I hope,’ she said, ‘I am not expected to travel on the step.’
‘No,’ I said bitterly, ‘you can find your own way home.’
‘I would prefer it. Where is this car?’
‘You can get it yourself. I didn’t order it.’
‘This is intolerable. I have never been so insulted. Leave me!’
‘I’m going to. You can do what you like from now on. I’ve finished with you–finished with you.’
I swung my leg over the saddle.
‘My bag!’ she exclaimed. ‘I have left it in that ridiculous house. Kindly run back and get it.’
‘I’m damned if I will. I’m sick and tired of you. I never want to see you again.’
I rode off in such a state that I only just escaped being run down by a lorry. If I’d stayed on that bridge another second with her, I honestly believe I’d have picked her up and thrown her into the river.
I went straight to the Cathedral, played the organ desultorily, then returned home for breakfast. Nobody knew I had spent most of the night out. After Matins I saw the Cornford Mercury with Archie’s picture of the swan in it. ‘Coincidence,’ I muttered, ‘pure coincidence.’ To this day I force myself to believe that.
So ends the first part of the history of Miss Hargreaves. I wish to God that were all; I wish to God there were no second part to write. But there is, and it’s got to be done.
7
FOR more than a fortnight Cornford saw nothing at all of Miss Hargreaves. It was not a very happy fortnight for me. Not for one moment did I suppose that I had seen the last of her that September morning on Cookham Bridge. Instinctively I knew she would return. Even if I hadn’t known that in myself, I had practical evidence of it. Where did she go in that fortnight? I don’t know; I shall never know. All I knew was that she had left Mrs Beedle’s, retaining her rooms for an indefinite period. Her luggage, her harp, Dr Pepusch–all were left behind. I never went to the house openly to make any inquiries for her; I got the news in a roundabout way–and you can always get news in a roundabout way in Cornford, if you’ve got an efficient spy-system. I used sometimes to scout up Canticle Alley after dark, thinking that perhaps I might see a familiar shadow against the blind of the downstairs sitting-room. But I saw nothing. Once I heard Dr Pepusch croaking away in a minor key; it was a sound that saddened me and filled me with apprehension. I slunk home, wondering how long it would be before she returned with renewed vigour.
Meanwhile, the most sinister development of all stared me day by day in the face. I mean Lessways. The house that had for so long stood empty and neglected was now the scene of tremendous activities. Ironically I used to think how glad I should have been to witness this in more ordinary circumstances, because I loved the place and could not bear to see it fall into decay. And yet–all those gallons of white paint, all those hods of cement, all those ladders–how could I rejoice over them as I should have liked? Gardeners with wheelbarrows, the sweep with his sack of soot, the sanitary experts, glaziers, the telephone men–all these swarmed to Lessways. Still there was no sign of Miss Hargreaves. Hour by hour I expected her to come and criticize the work that was going on, to walk round from room to room, from shrub to herbaceous border, tapping everything with her stick and making innumerable notes in her note-book. It seemed to me wrong that she didn’t come. Often I felt like going over to Lessways myself in order to make certain that all the work was properly carried out.
The only person I ever told about our night on the riverside was Henry, and him I swore to secrecy. If that tale got round Cornford I knew it would be about the end of me.
‘And now,’ I said, ‘I’m through with her. I’m finished. She can do what she damn well likes for all I care.’
Do what she likes. I paused and considered this sentence. Was it wise?
‘What made you go up the river in search of her?’ asked Henry. So then I had to tell him about the swan mystery. I fancied he’d already heard the first part of the tale from Marjorie, but he was nice enough to pretend it was new to him. He seemed, I thought, rather embarrassed by it.
‘Of course,’ I said, ‘there’s no proof I turned her into a swan. I don’t say I did, Henry. I shall probably never know. But it does look funny, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘it does look very funny.’
We were s
itting by his fire in the half light, and I noticed he was looking at me rather anxiously, almost nervously. But I was getting used to that from everybody.
Slowly, endlessly, the days passed. I drilled myself to a firm resolution. Never again should I try to explain Miss Hargreaves to anybody; never again make up stories about her. If, in truth, she was subject to my will, my will must never more be exercised. I spent long evenings in my room, supposedly working for my examination in the spring, actually making a lot of notes which later I used in writing this book. Most carefully I wrote down what was supposed to be the truth about my friendship with Miss Hargreaves. How it had started in Blackwell’s shop (in spite of the fact that I had told Marjorie this was a lie, it was pretty generally believed. I am afraid I never tried to deny it). How we had later met at the Albert Hall and had an amusing little adventure together on the Serpentine. I wrote down all the facts so as I shouldn’t again get confused. I learnt the story like a book and almost convinced myself it was true. There was nothing to my discredit in thus commencing a friendship with an old lady. If I kept calm and stuck to it, people would get sick of talking to me about her; slowly she might drift completely out of my life. And, after all, she might never come back, in spite of the work that was going on at Lessways.
But she did come back. And true to her perhaps unenviable–fate she came back accompanied by a distinction that–I had unknowingly bestowed upon her.
October the tenth. I quote from my diary. ‘Furniture at Lessways.’ I don’t think I need add much to that. It was pouring with rain. I watched from my window as the enormous van drew up on the other side of the road; for two hours I watched the men struggling up the wet drive. Grandfather clocks, tallboys, Chippendale chairs, a four-poster bed, crate after crate of crockery, bureaux, Sheraton cabinets, sideboards, pictures innumerable . . .
That night smoke rose from the chimneys.
October the eleventh. I was walking back with Archie Tallents from the Cathedral. It was still miserably wet, but Archie was in his usual gay spirits, humming a tune from a rather absurd anthem we had sung at Matins–all about Aaron’s beard and the ointment that ran down from it to the skirts of his clothing. Comic eighteenth-century stuff. Nares or Weldon.
As we went up the High Street–I on my way to the shop, Archie to his studio–Archie pointed to a magnificent Rolls-Royce waiting outside Truscott’s, the drapery and furnishing store. It was a Rolls-Royce with more than the usual consciousness of pedigree; you almost heard the cogs and plugs (do Rolls-Royces have plugs?) and cylinders chatting to one another about their family trees.
‘My friend the Duchess,’ remarked Archie. ‘I should recognize her crest anywhere.’
As we came nearer, the chauffeur–a smart, tall fellow, very brisk in all his movements–leapt from his seat. I immediately recognized him; he had been supervising the move yesterday afternoon at Lessways. Taking an umbrella, he opened the passenger door and stood waiting, the umbrella held out before him.
I began to feel a little sick.
‘Take off your shirt, Norman,’ said Archie. ‘Lay it on the pavement and I’ll believe you’re a gentleman.’
I felt mesmerized. I made some sort of effort to move away, to cross the road, but there were a lot of people bustling about on the pavement; tweedy women all hot on elevenses, waterproofed women hot on Truscott’s bargain basement. Both Archie and I were held up for a moment.
Slowly Miss Hargreaves emerged from the car. Hideously fascinated, as always, I watched her. She had changed; in a subtle way she had changed very greatly. Her expression was different; the old impish gaiety seemed to have left her. Her clothes were very much quieter; you could not imagine her now wearing a tall hat. Her little head was raised to a higher angle, pushed up, perhaps, by the high neck of her dress. Pausing for a moment, one foot on the running-board, one foot on the pavement, she sniffed fastidiously. Almost instinctively people moved to make way for her. Shivering a little, she drew her cape round her shoulders, adjusted a pair of dark horn spectacles (she no longer used lorgnettes) and addressed the chauffeur.
‘You had better come in with me, Austen. There may be one or two things I shall want to take away.’
‘Very good, your ladyship.’
I realized she was looking at me. Wrinkling her face into a peevish frown as though she were making an effort to remember me, she said in a cold, distant voice: ‘Mr Huntley, is it not? What appalling weather!’
The chauffeur, lipping me superciliously, loomed above her, steering his umbrella over her head. They disappeared into Truscott’s.
‘My God!’ I said to father, rushing into the shop. ‘She’s back!’
‘Never did approve of women playing football.’
‘I’m not talking about football. Miss Hargreaves, I mean; large as life in a Rolls-Royce. She’s come into a title. Chauffeur called her her ladyship. What do you think of it?’
‘Funny things, titles. No law of gravity about them. You can never be certain where or when they’re going to fall. Take my Cousin Terence. He collected stamps. He’d never have found out otherwise that he was descended from Bonnie Prince Charlie. It was like this. We–’
I felt I couldn’t stand father that morning. I went round to Beddow’s to tell Henry the tremendous news. It was some days since I’d seen him.
‘You’ll never guess what’s happened,’ I said.
‘Lady Hargreaves?’
‘Oh, how the devil did you know? What a bore you are!’
‘She’s in the Court news,’ he said. He went to the office and came back with a copy of the Cornford Mercury, which he showed to me. I read:
‘Lady Hargreaves will shortly be in residence at Lessways, the fine old Queen Anne mansion in the London road. We take this opportunity of welcoming her ladyship to Cornford society. Many will be glad to know that Lessways–once the scene of so many distinguished gatherings–will again throw open its doors to the elect. Lady Hargreaves–a keen amateur musician and a poet of distinction–comes of an old Irish family and was, until recently, residing at Oakham.’
‘You were a fool to give her that title,’ said Henry.
I laughed uneasily. ‘Oh, I wasn’t serious about that,’ I said. ‘We were in rather an awkward fix. I told you. I thought Major Wynne would be impressed if I called her Lady Hargreaves.’
‘Well, I hope you’ll enjoy hobnobbing with a countess–or whatever she is.’
‘Do you know, Henry, the old devil looked at me as though I were a tramp. It makes my blood boil.’
‘Hers has boiled blue, old boy. That’s the trouble. Yours hasn’t. Anyway, she might leave you alone now.’
‘I don’t care what she does,’ I said lightly. But I was far from feeling it.
‘I hear she’s been buying up half Truscott’s. Carpets, bedding, curtains. I expect we shall see quite a lot of life at Lessways in a few days.’
‘You can do what you like from now on. I’ve finished with you.’
Bitterly did I remember those idle words, spoken in anger on Cookham Bridge. Not only had I unwittingly raised her rank; I had madly endowed her with autonomy.
Lessways was the seat of government. In a very short while people forgot that the Lady Hargreaves who now flung open her doors to the elect was the Miss Hargreaves who had trespassed upon the sanctity of the Bishop’s Throne; who had worn a pantomime hat; questioned the reputation of the Swan Hotel and, in a score of ways, been the biggest joke of the town since old Canon Featherstonehaugh married Miss Roma Noam, the novelist. (I’ll tell you about that one day.) Miss Hargreaves was no longer a joke. From the moment when the Dean called and left his card at Lessways, Lady Hargreaves’ position as a fixed star in the brilliant little firmament of Cornford was secured. Archdeacon Cutler called. Canon Auty was reputed to be going to call–and this was almost unprecedented, since the old man never left the Close. Years ago he had been a familiar figure in Truslove’s, the barbers, where once a week he had gone to have his beard trimmed; b
ut the opening of a department for ladies in the same establishment had greatly discouraged him: nowadays Mr Truslove himself, every Saturday morning, with scissors, tapers and combs, visited the Close to attend upon what was felt to be the best beard Cornford had known in this century.
Miss Linkinghorne, ever on the scent of Debrett and his offshoots, almost daily lingered by the gates of Lessways. Old Colonel Temperley was another early caller. And there were many more. Not a new visiting-card was printed in those days but it hoped for a day when it might repose upon the silver plate on the Tudor chest in the panelled hall of Lessways.
Let it not be thought that Lady Hargreaves kept herself within the doors of her new home. Oh, no! There was plenty to be done outside and she did it. She attended the chrysanthemum show in the Town Hall and had a terrific argument with old Countess Mumphry about the best method of raising the flowers. ‘No coddling,’ she was heard to say, rather critically. ‘You must never coddle a chrysanthemum, my dear Countess.’ Everybody said that they felt the Countess had spent her entire life misguidedly coddling chrysanthemums.
Towards the end of October the Choral Society gave their usual concert. Lady Hargreaves occupied a prominent position, following Verdi’s Requiem from a splendidly bound full score (full score, mark you) embossed with the letter ‘H’ on the cover. Following this with a red pencil, she sat right below the doctor, whose beat suffered considerably in consequence. I’m not surprised. Even Beecham might have been intimidated.
She was asked to open a Conservative bazaar and she opened it damn well; I wandered in there after she had left and I had the strongest feeling that it was the best-opened bazaar I had ever been to. Not a bit of it was closed, you could see that.
Another matter brought her bang into the middle of Cornford, between the ‘n’ and the ‘f’ as you might say. For some time there had been a controversy waging upon the question of changing the time of closing the Cathedral. The Mayor, who had the impertinence to have a Roman Catholic daughter, had suggested to the Dean and Chapter that, in summer, the Cathedral ought to be kept open until sunset, instead of the usual hour, six-thirty. His idea was that shop people had too little opportunity of visiting the place. The idea was anathema to both Archdeacon Cutler and Canon Auty, particularly as the Mayor had used the expression ‘the people’s Church’. The Dean was for a compromise, but up to date the matter had not been settled. Letters poured into the Mercury, mostly supporting the Mayor. Almost at the same time there was a by-election and the Labour candidate, D. Howlsby-Skitt (who also wrote books on eagles which father sometimes put in the window), polled, according to the Nationalist supporters, a good two thousand more votes than he would have done, because he had used the Cathedral-closing-hour controversy in the course of his platform campaign. He didn’t get in, but he was near the door, so to speak. They were critical days in Cornford, I can tell you. A nearly Roman Catholic mayor combined with a Labour member–I doubt whether the Cathedral could have stood up to it. In the height of the argument, Lady Hargreaves stepped in, writing to the editor of the Mercury a terse, crisp letter in which she poured fine and subtle scorn upon the attitude of trippers who treated the holy building as a super-museum piece. The Cathedral, she maintained, was the property of the Church, not of the ‘people’. (And she wrote that word in inverted commas, too.) Coming down so firmly on the Close side of the fence, she so impressed Canon Auty that he declared for the tenth time to his wife that he would call at Lessways; he even went so far as to quote in a sermon two lines of a sonnet from Constance Lady Hargreaves’ pen which appeared in the Mercury:
