The Anniversary

by Ann Swinfen

  At each mention of the word 'walk', Harry's excitement became more intense. He licked her chin, then bounded ahead of her across the garden, his tail aloft like a flag of victory. When Frances paused under the copper beech, he became anxious, and brought sticks for her to throw, to retain her interest. This had always been one of her special places at St Martins – this, and the den she had made under the rhododendrons, and the Ludbrook which ran on the far side of the meadow, and where she was now headed.

  One of her earliest memories was of coming to St Martins when she was four. She had only the haziest recollection of their previous home in London, later flattened in the blitz. But she remembered being met at Stanway station, on one of the many pretty little rural branch lines that had been destroyed with the stroke of a pen twenty years later. A man had met them at the station with a horse and cart, because of the petrol rationing, and she had been enchanted, having seen few horses in London – only the brewers' dray horses, the milkman's horse and the poor sway-backed creature that belonged to the rag and bone man.

  * * *

  'Come on, Franny!' shouts Hugh, jumping down from the cart, ducking under Mummy's arm and tearing away across the lawn.

  Frances allows the man to lift her down. The cart is miles above the ground and she is not as brave as Hugh. Natasha and Grandad kiss her. She is surprised to see them here, because she last saw them in London. Hugh is now rushing about on the grass, with his new grey shorts, bought big for school, flapping about his knees. He has his arms stretched out straight and is wheeling in great circles, making aeroplane noises.

  She does not like aeroplanes. They remind her of the terror of air-raids, when they have to hide under the stairs or down in the hot, smelly underground station. She walks away from Hugh, across the lawn and under a huge tree that stretches up and up into the sky. Its branches reach out like a roof above her head, and its leaves aren't green, like the plane trees in their street in London, but a mysterious colour, like purple grapes. She walks on and on, and nobody tries to stop her. If she walked this far in the park, Mummy would get cross and shout at her. She looks back, a bit afraid. Miles away, Hugh is still racing about, and the grown-ups are taking the luggage from the cart into this strange house, which looks a bit like a castle and a bit like the pictures in her book of the Pied Piper.

  Beyond the big tree there is a thicket of bushes with fat leaves, shiny and stiff like lino. Crouching down, she sees that there are hollows and tunnels amongst the bushes. She burrows in, and finds a perfect clearing in the centre, hidden from everywhere except the small circle of blue sky high above.

  * * *

  'So your Greek is not coming?' Natasha looked gravely at Anya.

  'He isn't my Greek,' she returned crossly. 'I wish everyone would stop calling him that. He is just a friend I've been going out with, and he happens to be Greek.'

  'Ah,' said Natasha. 'You have quarrelled.'

  They were walking in the sunken garden, where Mr Dawlish was giving the flower beds a final quick hoe.

  'I didn't say that.'

  'It does not need the wisdom of a Solomon to deduce this. You are cross and unhappy. Your Spiro does not come with you. You wish you had not come.'

  Anya seized her great-grandmother's arm and squeezed it.

  'Of course I am glad I've come. If Spiro doesn't come, that is his loss.'

  She looked earnestly at Natasha, who was walking briskly without her stick and looked very bright-eyed and cheerful.

  'Could I talk to you, Natasha?'

  'Of course, my child. Come, let's sit on the old wooden seat under the arbour.'

  When they were seated, well out of Mr Dawlish's hearing – although the rhythmic scratch, scratch, of his hoe sounded in the background – Anya poured out the jumble of Spiro's proposal and his idea that they should open a Greek restaurant. She contained her anger with difficulty. Natasha, listening, was struck not only by Anya's passion, but by the fact that she did not tell her story in her usual logical, structured way, but jumped about from one idea to the other. As she talked she picked off flakes of old paint from the seat.

  'I see,' said Natasha at last. 'And it does not appeal to you, this idea of a restaurant?'

  Anya raised angry eyes. 'Isn't that what I've just been saying?' She bit her lip. 'Sorry, Natasha, I've no right to take it out on you.'

  'And you feel, I suppose, that because Frances never managed to pursue her academic career you must do it for her. Prove to her that it can be done.'

  'I didn't say that. I never mentioned Mum.'

  'Doushenka, I have known you all your life. You despise your mother. You feel she has thrown her life away.'

  'I don't despise her,' said Anya miserably.

  'Well – despise – this is perhaps too strong a word. But you feel she has wasted her life, and you do not want to do the same.'

  Anya nodded mutely.

  Natasha stared across the sunken garden to the edge of the lawn, where the school children would be giving their concert later on.

  'Whether Frances has wasted her life or not is something only she can judge. You must remember that much of her time for the last thirty-five years has been devoted to you five children. Motherhood is not something mechanical, you know, as so many people suppose. In its way it is as much a creative art as painting or sculpture. Frances has always been an artist in people. And I know she would not be without you. Children are an enrichment of life. I always regretted that I had only one.'

  'Life's so unfair.'

  'Yes. But neither you nor Frances has ever suffered tragedy.' As Anya opened her mouth to speak, Natasha raised her hand. 'No, of course I do not wish you had. Only those who have not suffered talk about the nobility of suffering.'

  She laid her hand on Anya's, and gazed thoughtfully out over the garden. 'Tell me, are you certain you want to go on as you are? You live on the fringes of the academic world, like a hungry child looking in through a window at a feast. Do you feel, truly, that the banquet is worth waiting for, perhaps many years, while your life stays – how shall we say? – suspended, holding its breath?'

  Anya gulped unhappily. 'I don't know. I really don't know. I used to be so sure, but – somehow the meaning, the truth of it, seems to have vanished. The universities are starved of funds, and put under tremendous pressure to be "vocational". Everyone seems to have lost sight of their real raison d'être, as places where the human mind is exercised to its fullest capacity, regardless of material considerations.'

  She began to wave her arms about. 'Nowadays it's all cost centres and quality audit and how many students you can process quickly through the machine. And instead of major, long-term research – things that really matter, things that will be remembered in the future – university staff are forced to focus on turning out lots of little bits of superficial things. It's just turned into a numbers game.'

  She sighed. 'I'm not sure it is my world any more. Not the world I thought it was, anyway. But what else can I do? It's what I'm trained for. Where else can an academic economic historian find employment?' She tried to make of joke of it, but simply sounded sorrowful.

  'Now that is no way to speak,' said Natasha firmly. 'What was I trained for? A life of parasitic ease. When that was taken from me, I looked about for what interested me. I had been taught to paint a little, as part of my education. I thought, I will make my hobby into a career!'

  'You were younger than I am.'

  'That is quite irrelevant, Anya. Don't make excuses. Of course, for me the need to eat was a wonderful spur. Imagine, please, that you are in a foreign city, without money, without friends, and you do not wish to starve to death. What will you do?'

  Anya laughed. 'Take in pupils, I suppose.'

  'This is what you wish to do?'

  Instead of answering, Anya jumped up and began to stride about in front of the seat.

  'No,' she said at last. 'No, I don't think I do. Some students I enjoy teaching, the ones I can fire with enthusiasm or who rea
lly care about learning for themselves. But they are very much in the minority. In the last year or so I've found teaching most of my students so dispiriting.'

  She sat down again and took Natasha's hand. 'What do you suggest?'

  'Let us review your talents. You have an artistic eye, but you have only used it, as far as I can remember, for embroidery.' Natasha pointed to the skirt Anya was wearing, with its twelve-inch deep band of embroidered wild flowers about the hem.

  'I couldn't make a living by embroidering!'

  'Perhaps. Perhaps not. Sally has a friend who produces the most beautiful work – done mostly on a sewing machine for speed, of course, but very original. She specialises in modern ecclesiastical embroidery. Why don't you talk to her? Find out more about it?'

  Anya shook her head, 'Natasha, you are incorrigible. Every artistic goose is a swan in your estimation.'

  'You are not a goose. Now, concentrate. What other interests have you?'

  'Well – I like listening to music, but I'm no performer, as you know. I used to potter about in the garden when I was in Reading, but I suppose I'm not that committed to it because I haven't tried to rescue the wilderness behind the house in Oxford. You see, I'm quite useless.'

  'You enjoy cooking.'

  'No, Natasha,' said Anya warningly. 'Now you are trying to manipulate me. I do not want to open a restaurant with Spiro. It would be so – demeaning. Such a waste of all our years of education.'

  'I think this could be great fun. Such fun as Edmund and I had in planning St Martins together. To make good food, for people to sit around a table and enjoy the company and the conversation and the eating – this is one of the oldest celebrations in civilisation. Not as important as motherhood, of course.' She smiled. 'But it, too, is one of the creative arts. And to work with the man you love, to build something together – you do love him, don't you, lyubushka?'

  'Yes,' said Anya sadly. 'Yes, I do.'

  * * *

  Frances was sitting beside the Ludbrook, with one arm round her knees, and throwing sticks with the other hand for Harry, who was so grateful to her that he was exerting all the charms he possessed to keep her amused. He even dared the brook (he was not a brave dog) when the stick fell into it, and swam back like an intrepid explorer, keeping his nose well up. He presented it to her with anxious pride, and waited, tense, for it to be thrown again.

  'The thing is, Harry,' said Frances, tousling his dripping ears so that the water from the brook spattered her skirt, 'the thing is, that I don't know what to do.'

  Harry sat down, and looked at her attentively.

  'Giles doesn't need me any more – holding him up, nursing his frail ego, protecting him.' She sighed. 'He's got what he wants now, success of a sort. He's a household name on the telly. Not what he originally hoped for, you know, but more than he has expected for some time now. And he has all his young women that he finds so attractive. I had a purpose, when the children were younger, he needed me for that as well, but even Katya is almost grown-up.'

  Realising from the tone of her voice that the time for games was over, Harry lay down with his chin in her lap, and gazed seriously into her eyes.

  'The trouble is, Harry, I think it is too late.' She laid her cheek on her knees and began to cry. She did not know what it was that she was too late for; she just felt an overwhelming sense of the void. The brook ran briskly over the stones, and the meadow grasses whispered behind her, until the tears dried up and she blew her nose crossly.

  'I'm a fool, Harry, that's what I am. Time we got back to the party.'

  * * *

  Across the garden, from the door of the chapel, Peter Kaufmann saw Natasha and Anya talking. The small tables and chairs were now all arranged around the edges of the big lawn and some long trestle tables borrowed from the village hall were set up under the horse chestnut tree to hold the food. The green Scout tent had been erected at last, and leaned over drunkenly, waiting to provide shelter if it should rain. More than two hundred people were coming to the celebration, counting the school choir and the village drama group who were performing A Midsummer Night's Dream in the evening. By tomorrow the garden would be trampled and sorry-looking, but at least it was at its best now. It was a pity it was too early for any but the very earliest roses, delayed by the long cold winter and late spring, because over the years he had managed to build up a collection of old scented varieties that would fill the garden with fragrance in a month or so.

  Before long he would have to put in an appearance for coffee in the drawing room, and from then on every minute would be filled. He felt the need for a time of quiet first. The chapel behind him was one of the oldest parts of St Martins, dating back to the days when the site had been occupied by a small hospice for travellers, under the care of a Norman priory twenty miles away. At that time the chapel had been a church, dedicated to St Martin, patron saint of innkeepers – the Roman soldier who had cared for the destitute. For years the priory hospice had provided safe lodging for those travelling along the old Roman road which lay north and south parallel to the Welsh border.

  This road ran down from St Martins to become the main street of Clunwardine Priors, which had grown up around the old Roman thoroughfare as a huddle of Saxon cottages and eventually acquired its own church in the thirteenth century. With its rights of market and an annual fair paying dues to the priory, the village had prospered in the Middle Ages. Later, after the dissolution of the monasteries, the secular owners of St Martins, the Devereux family, had been both farmers and innkeepers, but gradually the travellers had taken themselves off to the better inns in the village, which provided staging posts for coach travel, and St Martins had grown from a farm to a small manor.

  The railways had passed the village by, however, and it had fallen into decline throughout the nineteenth century, until the market and fair had been abandoned, and nearly a quarter of the half-timbered houses had either fallen in or been pulled down. In the last thirty years the fortunes of the village had changed again. A small and well-designed council estate had been built, screened by trees from the older part of the village, which was now a recognised stop on the black-and-white heritage trail. It had managed to retain its half-dozen shops, its bus service and its primary school. With the young married couples staying on in the village it was coming back to life.

  It was fitting, Peter thought, that the St Martins community had been set up in such a place. From the bronze-age barrow on a nearby hill down to the new village community centre opened five years ago, this was a place that bore the imprint of history, without becoming frozen and dead, one of those model villages just for tourists and well-heeled couples retiring from London. He rather resented the tourists who came, as they did, to wander about its crooked lanes and photograph the old houses. But the tour coaches still had to yield to tractors backing into the working farmyards next to these houses, and manoeuvre their way with difficulty around the awkward corner with Trevor Davies's agricultural machinery yard on one side and the gates of the market garden on the other.

  It was fitting, too, that St Martins had taken up again its old role as a provider of shelter and safety. He had never counted up how many people had stayed here. Some for just a few weeks, others – like Birgit and himself – for the remainder of their lives. The travellers who had come to St Martins in the last fifty years had been following a different road – a path within themselves, instead of the old Roman border road – but he found the metaphor satisfying.

  Natasha had repaired the old chapel along with the rest of St Martins, and had it rededicated. It was now used occasionally for services – mostly interdenominational – and was particularly in demand for weddings and christenings. Those monks would not have welcomed me, thought Peter, wheeling his chair in over the threshold and allowing the heavy old door to sigh closed behind him. Infidel that I am, Jew, unbeliever. But he thought it cheerfully because he had always felt welcome here. The building was a simple nave and chancel, with no transept, and the squa
t tower over the west door held a single bell. Once used to ring the church offices throughout the day, it was now no longer robust and was used only for special occasions, like today.

  The wheels of his chair made a soft swishing sound on the sisal matting that lay along the aisle, as he moved forward towards the altar. Most of the glass in the chapel was plain, but a small portion of a Virgin and Child, found when the rubble in the chapel was cleared, had been carefully fitted into the east window, otherwise unadorned. The south wall near the front pew held a simple brass plaque in memory of Edmund. Peter sat looking up at it, remembering the kindness of the older man before the war, when he and Natasha had kept open house in their London flat, always full of hopeful young artists and musicians. He recalled Irina as a gawky girl in her teens, stumping about, awkward and uncomfortable with her parents' friends, and following him around like an unlovely puppy.

  'Fifty years of St Martins, Edmund,' he said. 'Wherever you are, you should be proud of Natasha. And I'm sorry I was so arrogant and high-handed when you offered Birgit and me a home with you both in London, back in the thirties. I would go my own way, wouldn't I? Thinking I must prove to the world that I could have as great a success in Berlin as in London. Well, I paid for it, my friend, I paid for it.'

  * * *

  Richard Lacey, coming quietly into the chapel to check that everything was ready for the service of thanksgiving at half-past eleven, did not at first notice Peter. He left his cassock and surplice in the tiny vestry, a curtained-off corner beside the door, where the bell rope also hung. A pile of service sheets had been laid out on the small table behind the back pews, and simple arrangements of the cottage flowers that Natasha preferred had been placed on the windowsills and in front of the plain oak pulpit.