Before Sylvia left Dee said, ‘You can come and change into your glad rags here, if you like. Save you arriving chez Bell covered in mud, and you’re welcome to a berth afterwards, if that’s any use to you.’
Later that afternoon, Sylvia cycled back to Dee’s. Dee welcomed her and sent her off to the spare room to change.
‘Very classy,’ she said when Sylvia emerged, feeling self-conscious. ‘They say green’s unlucky but I like it on you. Your knicker line’s showing, though. Haven’t you got a roll on? You’re skinny as a rake but, if ever a frock needed a roll on, it’s that one.’
‘I don’t like being constricted.’
‘You’d do best to take your knickers off then. They’re ruining the line.’
Sylvia resisted Dee’s offer to back-comb and lacquer her hair.
‘No, Dee. I don’t want to look tarty.’
‘You need a touch of rouge or you’ll look pasty.’
She was turned round, inspected and had the seams of her stockings straightened. ‘You’ll do.’ Dee patted her bottom. ‘Now go and show up Lady Muck next door with her la-di-dah ways.’
The Bells’ house, a pebble-dash semi with a neat front garden, stood at the end of a cul-de-sac. The kind of neighbourhood her mother aspired to, Sylvia thought, not really the environment she had envisaged for Hugh. She stood some minutes on the doorstep before nerving herself to ring the bell. Marigold opened the door.
‘I’m reading Gigi. I’m half through it already.’
‘Marigold, stop chattering and bring our guest through.’
A tall, statuesque woman, her copper-coloured hair – Marigold’s hair – in a French pleat, came forward. ‘How do you do? Jeanette Bell, Marigold’s mother. And you must be our librarian. Your reputation has gone before you. Marigold hangs on your recommendations for books.’
‘Marigold hardly needs my recommendations,’ Sylvia said. ‘She has very sophisticated tastes for a girl her age.’
‘So we are told.’ Hugh’s wife smiled graciously and took Sylvia’s coat. ‘Marigold, take Miss Blackwood’s coat upstairs to our bedroom.’
‘She’s Sylvia,’ Marigold said. ‘We all call her that.’
‘Not here.’ Jeanette Bell turned her smile back on Sylvia. ‘I’d rather we kept to the formalities, if you don’t mind. I gather it has become fashionable to treat children like little adults but Hugh and I prefer to preserve the forms. You’ve met my husband at the library?’
‘Yes,’ Sylvia said. ‘He’s very conscientious about bringing Marigold. It must be a nuisance sometimes, him bringing her every week after the surgery,’ she added, discovering in herself a surprising diplomacy.
Jeanette’s smile became more gracious. ‘He’s a very devoted father,’ she observed.
Hugh appeared through a door to the kitchen. ‘Can I get you a drink?’ He avoided, Sylvia noticed, using her name. ‘We have almost everything – Scotch, G and T, sherry, French vermouth or there’s orange or tomato juice, if you’d prefer something soft.’
‘I’ll have a G and T, please. I’ve recently acquired a taste for them.’
‘Pour me one too, would you, Hugh?’ Jeanette Bell said. ‘I’m taking Miss Blackwood through to meet the vicar.’
She escorted Sylvia into a room decorated with a large Christmas tree. Little coloured lights had been hung around the door frames.
‘I like your decorations,’ Sylvia attempted.
Mrs Bell ignored this. ‘Father Austin, I’d like you to meet our new librarian, Miss Blackwood. Father Austin is a great reader. We think he must be related to the famous novelist.’
The Reverend Austin was a balding, genial-looking man who pumped Sylvia’s hand. To her relief, he didn’t enquire about her church-going but once Jeanette Bell had moved away began to deny any link with the famous author. ‘It’s a different spelling. I’d adore to bask in the reflected glory of the divine Jane but I’m afraid the notion is pure moonshine.’
‘I’m Blackwell, actually,’ Sylvia said. ‘Not Blackwood. Sylvia Blackwell.’
The Reverend Austin smiled. ‘In East Mole it doesn’t do to kick against the pricks.’
For a second Sylvia wondered if he had winked at her but his head was turned towards a grey-haired woman nodding vigorously at a tiny woman who was saying, ‘It’s not as if we didn’t make money on the tombola.’
‘That’s my wife, Audrey, talking shop with one of her WI cronies. A far more influential body here than the church, aren’t you, my dear?’
The vicar’s wife was used to her husband. ‘Miss Blackwell, you remember Ivy Roberts, our treasurer. Mrs Brent, our Chairwoman, sadly couldn’t make it but Mrs Wynston-Jones you’ll recall.’
She indicated a woman in a royal-blue cocktail dress whom Sylvia recognised as Mrs ‘Packard’.
‘Is my landlady, Mrs Bird, here?’
Audrey Austin looked uncomfortable and the vicar raised an eyebrow and said, ‘Not quite out of the right drawer, for our hostess,’ so that Sylvia forgave him the ‘divine Jane’.
Over the course of the evening Sylvia was introduced to a number of East Mole notables who, she surmised, must have come from the right drawer. She swerved around Mrs ‘Packard’, who, luckily, seemed to have forgotten the invitation to her ‘soiree’, and discovered the headmaster, Mr Arnold, nibbling from a tray of cocktail biscuits.
‘Do have one before I consume the lot. They’re not half bad.’
Sylvia, who was feeling the effects of only the second gin and tonic she had ever drunk in her life, helped herself to cheese straws.
‘I hear congratulations are in order over your success with Lizzie Smith.’
‘It was Lizzie’s success, not mine.’
‘I’ll be frank with you, it gives one pause. We don’t take enough account of a certain kind of background. Marigold here is exceptional but she has, let’s be honest, advantages.’
‘It’s not all background, though, is it?’ Sylvia suggested. ‘My neighbours’ son Sam Hedges is bright as paint and his parents, like mine, in fact, though very bright too, aren’t’ – she hesitated, not wishing to be disloyal either to her parents or the Hedges – ‘especially well educated. But he’s a dead cert for the Grammar.’
‘No, no, I see that. And the Grammar School is there to see that lads like Sam from – how shall we say? – modest backgrounds get on.’
Sylvia was wondering how she could do as his note had suggested and snatch a private moment with Hugh. To her relief his wife, after her brief introduction, seemed to be busy at the far side of their drawing room and Sylvia, who had been waiting for a moment to signal to Hugh, reckoned that it was time to make a move.
As she was deciding this there was loud rapping at the front door.
‘Sorry to be tardy, dear lady,’ Mr Booth said, greeting Jeanette Bell as she hurried into the hall. His hair under the hall light gleamed with an evil-smelling pomade. ‘My other half’ – he gestured at a depressed-looking woman in a headscarf beside him – ‘kept me waiting.’
‘Mrs Booth?’ Jeanette proffered a manicured hand.
Mrs Booth presented their hostess with a mildewy pot plant. ‘It’s an African violet.’
‘How kind,’ Jeanette said, putting the pot down and brushing crumbs of soil from her hands.
Mr Booth was making a play of noticing a bunch of mistletoe hanging from the lampshade. ‘May I?’ He stepped forward as if to kiss his hostess but she swerved in time to avoid him. ‘Hugh will take your coats upstairs. Hugh!’
Mr Booth, who had caught sight of Sylvia witnessing this brush-off, flushed. ‘You’ve met our Assistant Librarian, Dr Bell?’
Hugh, who had been helping Mrs Booth off with her coat, turned so that only Sylvia could see him and mouthed, ‘The philistines are upon us,’ and added aloud, ‘One for the road?’
‘I won’t have another drink, thank you. I was just going,’ Sylvia said loudly. ‘How do you do, Mrs Booth?’
Mrs Booth offered a nervous hand and then glan
ced up at her husband to check that she hadn’t done the wrong thing.
There were sounds of barking from the kitchen. ‘Fetch down Miss Blackwood’s coat while you’re up there, Hugh,’ Jeanette Bell commanded. ‘I’d better see to the dog.’
‘I wonder if I could use your bathroom?’ Sylvia asked.
‘It’s upstairs. Hugh will show you.’
‘You found my note? I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to grab a chance to do this,’ Hugh said, holding her close. ‘I’ve been circling you all evening like a buzzard after its prey.’
‘I’m not sure I know what a buzzard is like but I think I’d rather you weren’t one.’
‘Not a buzzard then.’ He held her out again, surveying her. ‘You look like a young larch tree in that dress. Oh, this is more like it,’ pulling her to him again. ‘Sylvia, darling girl …’
‘I’d better let you go before the philistines come rampaging upstairs,’ he said a little later.
‘Wasn’t that a bit dangerous of you down there?’ She smoothed the bedspread. ‘Isn’t this?’
‘You make me want to be dangerous. By the way, thanks for the mistletoe. I take it that was you.’
For the first time in their acquaintance Sylvia felt a blow of annoyance.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I’m sorry.’ He looked confused. ‘We found a bunch of mistletoe on our doorstep. Rather vaingloriously, I supposed it had come from you. Sorry if I’m being an ass.’
‘Good heavens, I wouldn’t dream of doing such a ridiculous thing.’ It was as if he didn’t, after all, know her.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, and looked dejected. ‘When can I see you?’
‘Isn’t it more when you can see me?’
‘Tomorrow? At the foundry? Five thirty? I can use Plush for cover.’
‘OK.’
‘Only OK? Are you annoyed with me about the mistletoe? I’m sorry, I was imagining kissing you under it, Sylvia.’
And hadn’t she, in truth, been doing the same? ‘Of course I want to see you, Hugh. As soon as soon.’
Coming downstairs to the hall, conscious of his body behind hers, Sylvia was grateful that his wife was not there to see her out. She heard her in the next room, talking to Mr Booth. Her boss was saying, ‘She’s very young and inexperienced still, plenty to learn, but I’m gradually training her.’
Dee was waiting for her in her dressing gown. ‘Come on then, spill the beans, tell me what it was like. There’s some left-overs in the oven if you’ve room.’
After the strain of the party and the encounter with Hugh, Sylvia suddenly felt famished. ‘D’you know, Dee, I could eat a horse.’
‘The end of my shepherd’s pie’ll have to do. I’ll heat up the peas.’
In the kitchen Sylvia tried to find tactful words. ‘It wasn’t much fun, Dee, pretend grand.’ She felt slightly disloyal to Hugh saying this.
‘What was Lady Muck wearing?’
Sylvia strove to be generous to her lover’s wife and only partly failed. ‘She looked a bit like a dressed-down Alma Cogan.’
‘Mutton dressed as lamb, more like. Who else was there?’
‘Well,’ Sylvia said carefully, ‘quite a few of the WI, some I’d met before, the vicar, whom I quite liked.’
‘He’s not too bad,’ Dee agreed. ‘He’s fond of his drink.’
‘He was kind about Mrs Bird. I liked him for that.’
‘It’s his job, isn’t it? Christian charity. How about Himself? Did he show up?’
‘Mr Booth? He came as I was leaving.’
‘Alone?’
‘No, actually.’
Dee banged down the saucepan of peas on the draining board. ‘Damn and blast his bloody eyes.’
‘If it’s any comfort, Dee, his wife seemed a sad creature.’ She had felt sorry for meek-looking Mrs Booth.
But one of Dee’s qualities was a surprising sense of fair play. ‘I bet he bullies the life out of her, poor cow.’
‘What do you want with a bully, Dee?’
‘At my age anything in trousers is a bonus.’
‘Not if he’s a bully, surely.’
‘There’s worse things than bullies,’ Dee said gloomily.
‘What, for example?’
‘Bloody child-molesters, like Cyril. Do you want ketchup with the shepherd’s pie?’
19
The approach of Christmas was a matter that Sylvia had mentally tried to avoid, which meant it was always simmering below the surface of her thoughts. Her father would be eager for her return and she could hardly bear the thought of the assumed bravado with which he would greet another dereliction. But to contemplate being out of reach of Hugh …
They had met, the day after the drinks party, at the foundry but Marigold had chosen to accompany her father and the encounter was tantalisingly guarded. At one point Hugh had touched her hand and Marigold had turned, and for a horrifying moment had seemed to notice the swift gesture of intimate exchange, but had then chatted cheerfully with her, so it seemed the girl had noticed nothing.
Then for a whole long week there had been no sight or word.
Mrs Bird popped into the library with a package which proved to be a calendar with colour photographs of the countryside and quotations to mark each month. Sylvia, who had opened the parcel in order to judge what level of gift she might be expected to give in return, read, under a photo of some ponies huddled together on a snowy Dartmoor, January brings the snow, makes our feet and fingers glow.
Sylvia had calculated that she had fifteen shillings and sixpence to spare for Christmas presents. This money had to include her fare home. She spent the Saturday afternoon wandering round the town in search of suitable cheap gifts. She settled on a box of Coty’s Black Rose bath salts for Dee, for Mrs Bird a set of coasters depicting the sights of London and for the twins, hair slides. June and Ray were to have a tin of biscuits with a pair of Scottie dogs on the lid and two packets of runner-bean seeds. Sam, she knew, craved the latest Beano annual and by tradition she always gave her father a book. This left only her mother – a perennial problem – and Hugh.
The former was the easier problem to solve. In the end, she selected a pale blue scarf to match her mother’s eyes. This left her time to consider the most incalculable purchase because perhaps Hugh would buy her nothing at all and then any gift from her would simply look foolish.
Pondering this, she ran into him in the High Street.
They swapped stilted politenesses. ‘Oh, hello there.’
‘Hello.’
‘You doing your Christmas shopping?’
‘I’ve almost done it all.’
‘I was wondering,’ Hugh said after a few more stiff exchanges, ‘if you might lend me a hand with Marigold’s present. I’d like to buy her a book,’ he said more loudly, so that Mrs ‘Packard’, who was passing, could hear, ‘and I could do with your literary expertise.’
Trying not to sound eager, Sylvia said, ‘I have to look for a couple of books myself.’
‘Perhaps I could give you a lift to Salisbury in return for your advice about Marigold?’
‘Phew,’ he pronounced later as they were on the road to Salisbury in the grey Hillman. ‘That was well improvised.’
In the bookshop Sylvia hesitated between Churchill’s Wartime Speeches and The Bridge over the River Kwai for her father.
‘Which do you think?’ she asked Hugh.
‘I’d go for Churchill, personally, but then I’m biased. That voice was one of my lifelines as a POW.’
‘Dad’s too. He doesn’t talk much about the war but I have the chess set he inherited from a Czech pilot who was shot down.’
‘I was with some Czechs in one of the camps. One taught me a bit of the language.’
‘Really?’
‘We taught each other a lot in the camps. Most of what I know about Shakespeare comes from the plays a chap called Michael Langham put on there. He’s a theatre director now. I put on a couple of Gilb
ert and Sullivans myself. We all chipped in, pooling what we knew. It helped to pass the time.’
He stood, apparently pondering, turning in his hands the Churchill book. Long-fingered hands. ‘It was an education, in more ways than one.’
Fearful of crossing some shadow line, she changed the subject. ‘Might Marigold be ready for Jane Austen?’
‘I’m sorry to have to tell you I’m a Jane Austen ignoramus.’
‘So long as you don’t call her “the divine Jane”, like the vicar.’
They settled on Churchill and Pride and Prejudice and Sylvia bought a new children’s book for the twins that she had read good reports of in the trade magazine.
Hugh squeezed her arm. ‘Now, lunch.’
‘What about your wife? Shouldn’t you get back?’
‘She has a friend staying, a frightful woman who can’t stand me. Frankly, the feeling’s mutual. Jeanette will be only too glad to have me out of the house. Where shall we go? Not the George this time.’
They found an Italian restaurant near the cathedral, hung about with fishing nets in which plastic vines bearing purple plastic grapes and Chianti bottles were improbably entwined. They ate veal escalope and drank wine and for afters Hugh ordered zabaglione.
‘This is delicious,’ Sylvia said, ‘but it’s making me tipsy. What’s in it?’
‘So long as it makes you tipsy you don’t need to know.’
Over coffee, he produced from his pocket a small box. ‘This reminded me of you in your green dress.’
‘Oh, but I haven’t –’
‘Don’t. I would have to conceal anything you gave me. You can wear this and say your mother gave it to you.’
‘Hardly my mother,’ Sylvia said, pinning to her blouse a beaten-silver brooch in the shape of a slender leaf. ‘She’s never given me anything half as lovely.’
‘Lovely people should have lovely things.’
‘Hugh,’ Sylvia said, ‘what’s going to happen? I mean …’ But she herself didn’t really know what she meant.
‘About you and me?’
‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t ask.’
He stretched across the table to squeeze her hand. ‘It’ll all be Sir Garnet Wolseley.’
For a moment she was irritated. ‘Who’s he when he’s at home?’
The Librarian Page 14
