Is There Anything You Want?

by Margaret Forster

  She cleaned all the surfaces thoroughly, thinking what a fine piece of furniture the mahogany dressing-table was, and wishing she had some polish worthy of it, her own polish, instead of the spray stuff in her basket. And then she went in search of sheets and pillow-cases for the bed. She found them in an airing-cupboard in the bathroom, but the last thing they were, was aired. They felt damp and smelled musty. She draped them over the bedroom window-sill while she cleaned the bathroom. Big, solid bath on claw feet, awkward for someone as small as herself to reach into. The walls were painted a shiny blue and the ceiling a darker blue. A gloomy room, functional and unattractive. She hurried out of it and cleaned the other two bedrooms. The children of the previous vicar had slept here and she could see the evidence in the marks on the walls, never properly cleaned off. She had a go herself, but the scribblings wouldn’t budge. The walls needed a coat of paint. The whole house needed a coat of paint. Returning to the main bedroom, she hauled the sheets up and made the bed. She was enjoying herself, though her heart was racing and she was a little breathless.

  Dot perched on the bed she’d just made and gave herself a moment to think about the new vicar. All that was known about him was that he was a bachelor and that he’d been ill. No one knew what kind of ‘ill’ though, and fears had been expressed that the parish was being treated as a convalescent home and that this man would be altogether too delicate to be of much use. His predecessor, the Rev. Paul Barnes, had been anything but delicate – a big, bull-like man with a loud voice and personality to match. Dot, as a general rule, liked everyone but she hadn’t been a big fan of the Rev. Barnes, though he’d been popular. His wife hadn’t interested herself much in parish affairs, but then she’d had four wild boys to look after, boys she could barely control. The Barneses had been moved to Liverpool (to the delight of the Liverpool F.C.-obsessed sons). Most parishioners had been sorry to see the Rev. Barnes go – he liked a joke, and took the occasional drink, and was an asset at any social function. It was going to be hard for the new vicar to follow him. All he had going for him was his single status. Mary Hibbert, who was not a churchgoer, had said she felt sorry for the poor man, knowing, as she did, how his eligibility would fuel speculation. ‘Jane Austen knew all about it,’ Mary had said. ‘She knew that he will be considered to be in need of a wife even if he is poor.’ This comment had rather mystified Dot, though she’d understood its underlying implication. People would want to marry him off. Unless he turned out to be gay, and the parishioners of St James’s were not so unworldly as not to have considered this possibility.

  Dot could hear Ida downstairs. There was a lot of banging going on. Ida Yates was a noisy and rough worker, always knocking chairs over and dragging tables across floors instead of working round them or asking for help to move them. But she was a lovely singer. Still sitting on the bed, and surveying with satisfaction the room she had cleaned – it was being useful she liked, that was what made her happy – Dot smiled as she listened. Ida was singing hymns in her deep, contralto voice. ‘Oh God, our help in ages past’ she was on to now. Dot marvelled at the sound, and wondered how it could come out of Ida’s lumpen body. She felt guilty, labelling Ida in her mind as ugly, but even Dot had to concede that she was. Nobody who had known Ida as a young woman, as Dot had, would be able to recognise her now if they hadn’t seen her for twenty years – there was nothing of the young Ida about her. Dot liked to think that in spite of the lines on her own face and her white hair she herself looked much the same at 70 as she had done at 20, but then that was because her shape was much the same. She’d never put on weight. Ida had put on at least 3 stone. She was vast, and lop-sided. She’d told everyone about her operation, and how much breast tissue had been cut away, and she’d said she wasn’t going to disguise how they’d hacked her about. Worse than that, she’d invited other women to look at it. There had been one terrible afternoon, after she started attending Women’s Fellowship meetings again, when she had unbuttoned her blouse and unfastened her bra and exposed her scarred breast. Every eye had been riveted, everyone had been shocked, and urged her to get dressed, but Ida had been defiant. ‘People should know,’ she’d said, ‘people should see what’s been done to me. Why should I hide it? If it was my arm or leg, you’d all see it.’

  They’d appreciated, of course, that she was distressed and hardly, at that time, responsible for her actions, but mixed up with their sympathy was a touch of disapproval. Nothing as strong as contempt or disgust, but nevertheless a feeling that Ida had not behaved as they themselves would have behaved (or liked to think they would have). But Ida was like that. She talked openly about her cancer and, it was quite clear, she expected a certain sort of reaction and response. Dot always tried to be kind, but sometimes it was difficult. Ida was shouting now that she’d put the kettle on and that Dot would hear it whistle in a minute and should come down. When it did, Dot descended and went into the big kitchen. It was a bare, draughty room with old-fashioned appliances – huge stone sink, old cast-iron cooker – and not a touch of colour anywhere except for the picture of roses on a calendar hanging on the back of the door. Dot peered at it. She turned over three leaves of the calendar. ‘What are you fiddling with?’ Ida asked. Dot said she was just correcting the date. ‘Here’s your cuppa,’ Ida said. Dot took it, saying nothing about the milk in it. Ida knew she didn’t take milk. ‘Sugar?’ Ida asked. Dot shook her head. Ida knew she didn’t take sugar either, and for some reason resented the fact. Ida put two heaped spoonfuls into her own tea and stirred it vigorously. ‘Enjoy life while you can, I always say,’ she commented. Dot supposed the sugar was the enjoyment. They sat at the kitchen table drinking their tea in silence. It was a small, spindly table, and looked peculiar in that enormous kitchen, which called for a large, solid farmhouse table. Dot couldn’t imagine how on earth the entire Barnes family had ever managed to sit round it. They must have had to eat in relays. ‘You’re very quiet,’ Ida suddenly said. ‘You’ve not much chat today, Dot.’ Dot thought about replying that Ida hadn’t much chat either, but of course she didn’t. Ida was trying to provoke her and she didn’t rise to it, but just smiled. ‘Well,’ Ida said, ‘I wonder what he’ll be like, eh? They say he’s good-looking, but we’ll be the judge of that.’ Dot coughed. ‘What?’ said Ida. ‘Nothing,’ Dot said. ‘I was just thinking, it isn’t his looks that matter really, is it?’ Ida laughed. ‘You’re a caution,’ she said. ‘Looks not matter? Of course they matter. I could tell you a thing or two about how they matter. Believe me, I know. I know what happens when you lose them. Then you realise looks matter.’ Dot got up, carried her mug over to the sink and washed it out. ‘Best get back upstairs,’ she murmured.

  She wasn’t frightened of Ida but she didn’t like being with her. Ida made her nervous in a different way from Mary. Ida always seemed to be about to attack her, or at least to trap her into saying things which Ida could then scorn. With Mary, it was more a matter of impatience, but, behind her impatience with unpunctuality and indecision, Mary was kind and Dot knew it. She pondered on this difference as she washed the window-sills, and wondered how she had come to be bossed about by everyone she knew, even her own daughter. She knew she shouldn’t always put up with it. Ironically, it was bossy Mary who was forever telling her this. ‘It is one thing to let your husband dominate you, Dot, but really it is the limit to let Sarah do it too.’ She’d tried to explain to Mary that Sarah didn’t mean to act as she often did but that she wasn’t always in control of herself. She was a strange girl, as nervous as Dot herself. She’d been given to awful attacks of panic as a child, she’d shaken and shivered with fright over terrors she couldn’t describe. She worried all the time, over quite trivial things, and was regularly overcome by fears hard to understand. A lot of them were to do with health. She only had to feel hot and sweaty to be convinced she had some terrible fever, and as an adolescent a cough to her was a sign of the consumption she read about in the nineteenth-century novels she was studying at school. Dot had more
than sympathised, she’d empathised (which, said Adam, was their daughter’s undoing). When Sarah was little, she’d been able to calm her simply by holding her tight, but after she’d grown up this kind of soothing embrace had been impossible, partly because Sarah had turned out so tall. For Dot to hold her had meant clasping her somewhere around her waist. She’d started telling her mother please not to touch her, to stop it, and Dot hadn’t known what else to do. Adam had said the girl needed to be disciplined. Her over-active imagination should be curbed, he’d said, as though imagination was like a horse. He hadn’t understood that, unlike her parents, Sarah was artistic and that having a vivid imagination was part of her creative nature. Adam saw this as a curse whereas Dot marvelled at it. It made her feel humble, but then humility was part of her nature anyway. She could never get over the fact that out of what she felt was such ‘poor stuff’ (as she put it) as herself and Adam the gifted Sarah had emerged.

  Once the window-sills were as clean as they could be – she couldn’t do anything about the chipped paint – Dot gathered her cleaning materials together and put them at the top of the stairs. Then she had a last look in the bedrooms, hesitating over whether to leave the windows open in the main bedroom where the new vicar would sleep. Odd to think of him taking over this room, all on his own, beginning a new life. All vicars, she supposed, were used to it, forever being moved on by their bishops.

  There was a pleasant, dreamy feeling to all these meandering thoughts, with no one to jar her back to more pressing matters. She shook her head slightly, and bent to pick up a duster she’d dropped from her basket. Fluffy and bright yellow when she’d started and now a grey and grimy rag. Then she began walking along the landing towards the stairs but stopped, transfixed, before she got there. There was a long window on the staircase, above the front door, and through it she could see that a car had stopped and a man had got out and was looking at the house, a man wearing a clerical collar and vest stock under his linen jacket. Below her, Ida was singing again, not a hymn this time. Dot knew the tune but couldn’t remember the name and couldn’t quite catch the words. The new vicar was walking towards the front door and she urged herself to hurry down the stairs to alert Ida. She scurried along to the kitchen and called, ‘Ida!’ but Ida had her back to her and was singing – it was ‘Oh for the Wings of a Dove’ – and at the same time running water into a metal bucket, so she didn’t hear her. Dot touched Ida’s arm and repeated her name. Ida jumped and turned round and put a hand on her heart. ‘Oh!’ she gasped. ‘Creeping up on me like that!’ ‘Ida,’ whispered Dot, ‘it’s the new vicar, he’s here!’ The doorbell pealed just as she spoke, and Ida’s expression changed from one of surprise to excitement. ‘Well!’ she exclaimed, struggling to take her apron off and at the same time fussing with her hair, running her fingers through it to fluff it out. ‘Go and open the door, Dot, while I put the kettle on.’

  Dot didn’t want to go and open the door but, because she was so used to obeying orders, she went to do it. The bell had rung again before she got there and she called ‘Coming’, though doubted that her little voice could be heard. The stiff catch wouldn’t move. She wrestled with it, trying desperately to turn the knob, using both her hands and standing on tiptoe. At last, she managed, and the door swung open so suddenly that she almost fell backwards. There he was, the new vicar, smiling and holding out his hand. ‘Stiff old door, I see,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to oil it. But good afternoon. I’m Cecil Maddox. Can I come in?’ Dot nodded and stood aside. Meanwhile, Ida had appeared (her hair, Dot noted, newly brushed) and was booming a greeting, her arms outstretched as though to embrace the new arrival. ‘Vicar! Welcome! You’ve caught us on the hop, we’re still trying to make this place spick and span, but come in, come in, sit yourself down, have a cup of tea.’ The vicar seemed a little taken aback, Dot thought, but followed Ida into the kitchen, apologising for being early and explaining that he’d made such good time it hadn’t seemed worth staying the night somewhere near just to arrive on the right day. He didn’t sit down while Ida poured the tea. He took the proffered mug (Dot felt pleased that he, too, took tea without milk and sugar) and prowled around, Ida tracking his every move, and chattering away about the vicarage and how big it was, then asking would he like a tour of the rest of it. The vicar said no, he’d bring his luggage in first.

  They all went outside to the car, with the vicar protesting that he needed no help, but both Ida and Dot insisting that they could surely carry something in. He gave Ida an umbrella, a big golfing sort, and Dot a camera in a canvas case. He himself hauled out a large suitcase and a holdall and deposited them just inside the front door. He had some boxes of books in the boot, he said, but they could stay there for the time being. Then he stood on the steps and held out his hand and thanked Dot and Ida for their help in such a way that Dot realised he wanted them to go. She said she’d just get her coat and bag and her basket, and the vicar moved aside to let her pass. Ida stayed stock-still until Dot reemerged, coat on, bag and basket over her arms, and the vicar said, ‘Can I get your coat, Mrs . . . Good heavens, I haven’t even asked your names.’ There was some confusion for a moment while they told him their names, and Ida had to accept that she was being dismissed. Then the vicar retreated into the house and the door was closed. He seemed to close it rather quickly. ‘You were in a hurry to leave,’ Ida snapped, as they walked down the drive. ‘Very rude of you, and it wasn’t very friendly.’ Dot said she’d picked up the hint that the vicar wanted to be left in peace to settle in. ‘Rubbish!’ Ida said. ‘You’re imagining it, hint indeed.’ They walked in silence to the gates, Ida now groaning and saying she’d hurt her back carrying that damned heavy bucket and that she would pay the penalty. ‘And I was told at the clinic,’ she complained, ‘not to lift anything heavy, not after what I’ve been through. I was told to look after myself.’ Dot tried to make noises of sympathy but Ida would not be placated. She hardly said goodbye as they parted to go in different directions.

  Dot knew that Ida would go straight home and start ringing other parishioners to boast about having met the new vicar. Once Ida had given her description to the other women they would want to check it out, distrusting her judgement as they were bound to. They would ring Dot. Well, what would she tell them? She thought she had better practise. She would say he seemed nice. Would that do? No, it would not. She tried to think what she would actually be asked: was he good-looking? Well, he had a nice face and a nice smile. She would say that. But was he tall, was he fat or thin, did he have blue eyes or brown, what colour was his hair? Dot stopped walking. Ida would have had all the answers. She tried hard to remember: no, he wasn’t very tall, he was definitely thin, but she had no idea what colour his eyes were or his hair, except that it was vaguely dark and plentiful. Another certain question would be: was he posh? No. Yes. Was he? She strained to recall his accent: faintly southern, but where? He was pale, she’d noticed that, quite strikingly pale. But then he’d been ill so, of course, he would be pale.

  Dot was still standing there, a mere few yards along the road from the vicarage gates, when Mrs Hibbert saw her and pulled up, giving a light toot of her car horn. ‘Dot!’ she called. ‘Can I give you a lift?’ Dot looked startled, and then gathered herself together and trotted eagerly to the car. As she drove along with Mrs Hibbert, glad they were friends again, she related what had happened and tried her best to describe the new vicar. Mary wasn’t interested in how he looked or in his age or accent, which was a mercy, but more in his previous experience and his education. Dot knew nothing about either, nor had she sounded him out on his views regarding women priests or the marrying of divorcees in church. Mary had strong opinions on these matters. She wasn’t on the parochial church council, but she seemed to know a great deal about what had gone on at the meeting when the Rev. Maddox had been accepted. According to Mary, the bishop had more or less instructed the council to take him, and they hadn’t liked this one bit. The other information she had mysteriously collected w
as that Maddox was an Oxford man and very clever. Dot wondered why, in that case, he had ended up coming to St James’s, but she said nothing.

  *

  Cecil Maddox, prowling round his new home, was wondering much the same thing. Those two women had depressed him. He had known the moment the little one opened the door and stared at him with what looked like awe that he was not the sort of vicar she needed and wanted. He couldn’t stand the thought of being depended upon. Trying to cope with the effusiveness of the fat one was worse. He was no good at being jolly and hearty, he couldn’t respond to matiness. These were people with expectations he’d never be able to satisfy and he’d tried to explain this to the bishop when this parish had been suggested, but his objections had been brushed aside, and he’d been told that after his illness the simple, good folk of St James’s would be balm to his soul. He would be able, he was assured, to repair his damaged nerves once removed from the large inner-city parish where he had come to such grief in spite of his splendid efforts (it was the bishop who referred to them as ‘splendid efforts’). But the bishop had missed the point. It was ‘simple, good folk’ who terrified him. He couldn’t deal with either their simplicity or their goodness – both made him feel exposed and inadequate. If he had to work with people – well, of course he had to – he was best working with people like himself, neurotics, tortured minds, uneasy people. He liked to lose himself in big cities, too, and dreaded small towns or country villages. The bishop had said that he would be ready for the greater challenge of a city again when he had spent some soothing years at St James’s.