The Cruellest Month

by Hazel Holt

  Rupert was very dashing and knew all the most interesting and fashionable people in Oxford and I followed happily along in his wake, marvelling that I, Sheila Prior, the daughter of a clergyman from an obscure seaside town, with no great beauty or wit to commend me, should be loved by such a god-like creature. One of the best things that Rupert did for me, and the thing that had the most profound effect on my Oxford days, was to introduce me to the Fitzgerald Circle.

  Arthur Fitzgerald was a don at Trinity, whose influence and reputation as a scholar and critic ranked with those of C.S. Lewis and Lord David Cecil. He was known not only for his brilliant intellect but also for his wit and his eccentric manner. I had been to his lectures on Browning, of course, and had revelled in their mordant humour, such a delightful contrast to the bland treatment of English literature then prevalent in most girls’ schools. He was reputed to loathe female undergraduates and his biting comments if any wretched girl crept into his lectures when he was in full flow were certainly terrifying.

  I had once wrung a grim smile of approval from him when I sat in the front row at one of his lectures on The Ring and the Book with an unwrapped birthday cake with ‘Memento Mori’ written on it in icing, but I had never expected to meet him.

  He had gathered about him a band of – well, I suppose one might say apostles, whose social (he was a tremendous snob) as well as whose intellectual brilliance was impeccable. They met every Sunday lunchtime at his house in North Oxford to drink Madeira and wittily tear to pieces all the books, plays and pictures that had come to their notice during the previous week. Although I was thrilled I was absolutely terrified when Rupert took me along that first time, but Fitz (he despised the name Arthur and was always known by this abbreviation of his surname) was unexpectedly pleasant to me. He remembered my cake and praised my eccentricity, though I had brought it to his lecture only because I hadn’t time to take it back to college, and it was unwrapped because in those days of austerity shops didn’t wrap things up! Perhaps it was my obvious vulnerability, like a puppy rolling defensively with its paws in the air, that brought out his carefully hidden kindness. Anyway, from that day onward he treated me with a grave courtesy, which I found very pleasing. After Rupert’s death, when I was still drowned in grief, he replied to my brief heartbroken note with a beautiful and moving letter – I have it still – which helped me through that terrible time. A few years later he moved abroad – Harvard, I think, or it may have been Columbia – and we lost touch.

  It had been spring when I first met Rupert and now, as I parked my car by Lady Margaret Hall and walked through the Parks towards the Bodleian, I had that idiotic smile on my face again. There were bluebells under the young trees and branches of blossom silhouetted against a blue sky. Even before ten o’clock there was warmth in the sun as I walked round the roped-off ground where, years ago, I had proudly watched Rupert playing cricket for the university. The benches round the pitch were empty, but one of the first matches of the season against a county side was due to start at eleven. I very much wished that I could stay and watch, but promised myself that I would leave the library early and try to catch half an hour of the match on my way home.

  As I pushed my way round the revolving doors of the New Bodleian I was pleased to see that George was on duty behind the sort of counter, glass partition drawn back, checking readers’ cards with his usual military precision, relieving people of their bags and handing out those cumbersome wooden tags in exchange. He has a fantastic memory for faces, though I am (I pride myself) an old friend, and of course he knows that Tony is my godson.

  ‘Hello, George. How are you? No bronchitis, I hope?’

  He gave me a broad smile and the ghost of a salute.

  ‘Very nice to see you back again, Mrs Malory. Yes, I did have a touch of the old trouble on my chest, but, you know my motto, best remedy for anything is hard work! And how long will we have the pleasure of seeing you in the library?’

  ‘Oh, several weeks, I think. I’ve got quite a lot to do.’

  ‘A new book is it, or an article?’

  George had an encyclopaedic knowledge of his regulars’ works.

  ‘Oh, just an article. It will be lovely to be working in Room 45 again with Tony.’

  ‘Yes, poor Mr Stirling. He had a very unpleasant experience – I expect he’s told you about it.’ ‘Yes, indeed. What a terrible thing to happen. You must all have been very shocked.’

  ‘It is not the sort of thing we are used to in the Library.’ he replied severely. ‘We had the police here and everything. Of course, no blame was attached, as they say, but it shouldn’t have happened. The lady was getting on, you see. Should never have been allowed on a ladder at her age. But there’s no telling some people.’

  I got the impression that Gwen Richmond had offended him in some way and couldn’t help probing a little.

  ‘What was she like?’

  ‘The sort of lady who was used to getting her own way, you might say,’ he said with heavy restraint. ‘Used to bossing foreigners about, I shouldn’t wonder, when she was abroad.’

  George, the old soldier, would not have taken kindly to what had obviously been an imperious manner. I wondered who else had found her unpleasant.

  ‘She was always ordering Mr Stirling about, which was quite wrong, you know, Mrs Malory, since he is Staff and she was only Temporary…’

  Here he had to break off since quite a little queue had built up behind me.

  I handed over my shopping bag and said, ‘I mustn’t hold you up now, George.’ I stuffed the wooden tag into my handbag and crammed the catch shut with some difficulty. ‘We’ll have a proper chat later.’

  I paused for a moment to juggle my handbag and folders into a more comfortable position, inhaled deeply that marvellous library smell that seems to be equally composed of dust, books and central heating and made my way along the corridor to Room 45.

  It is a large room with high ceilings and tall windows all along one side and bookshelves along the other. There are reading desks, divided up into separate places with bookrests, in two long rows down the middle of the room, and card-index catalogues and desks for the library staff at either end. There is a general impression of lightness and pale wood and peace, and I find it womb-like and comforting.

  There weren’t many readers, so I was able to have my usual desk, near the door at Tony’s end of the room, with my back to the windows. I put down my folders and looked about me. Tony wasn’t there, so I found the catalogue number for the manuscripts I wanted to look at, filled in my green slip and took it up to the two girl assistants at the desk at the other end of the room. I knew one of them slightly – a short, jolly girl called Felicity who greeted me with a smile.

  ‘Hello. It’s Mrs Malory, isn’t it. Tony will be back soon, he’s just having his coffee break – he always goes early because he gets here at crack of dawn!’

  She looked at my green slip and said reassuringly, ‘These won’t be long, they’re in the stack room just down the corridor. Pamela will bring them to you.’

  She gave the slip to the other girl whom I hadn’t seen before. She was tall and very thin with straight brown hair cut in that rather depressing sort of fringe that barely clears the eyebrows. Unlike Felicity who was wearing a long cotton skirt and fringed top (what my friend Rosemary calls really dreechy clothes) she was dressed very conventionally. Indeed, her grey pleated skirt, white blouse and grey pullover, together with her generally youthful appearance, made her look like a schoolgirl. She seemed very nervous and shy and I wondered how Tony (also nervous and shy) coped with her.

  I sat down at my desk and got out the Bodleian postcards I had bought the day before, spreading them out to decide which to send to an old colleague of my husband who was in hospital with a perforated ulcer. I was absorbed in my task and startled when I was addressed by the man sitting at the next desk.

  ‘Pardon me.’ The accent was American and the voice quiet, as befitted someone carrying on a conversat
ion in a library. ‘Pardon me for asking – but is it possible to buy those postcards actually here in the Bodleian Library?’

  I turned and saw a tall, broad-shouldered man, probably in his middle sixties. He was almost bald but had a pleasant, rather square face, and his eyes were deep-set under heavy eyebrows and surrounded by laughter lines. I must say that, like many of my generation brought up on Hollywood movies, I am disposed to like Americans and fascinated by anything transatlantic, and I have several dear American friends, made in the course of my work. One of these, Linda Kubelik, once divided American scholars into the White Hats (those who, in spite of a long sojourn in the academic world, have retained their sense of humour and an ability to write readable English) and the Black Hats (who are all desperately earnest and only seem able to communicate in a sort of pseudo-sociological jargon). For no real reason I decided that this particular American was definitely a White Hat – practically, I thought, looking at his sun-tanned face, John Wayne himself.

  ‘Yes – there’s a Bodleian shop in the main building, through the quadrangle, by the statue of the Earl of Pembroke.’

  Something – perhaps it was his rather attractive smile – made me add, ‘Actually, I’m going across there myself at lunchtime – I could show you where it is.’

  Well, I told myself defensively, I do need another refill for my pen.

  ‘That is very kind of you, I would be most grateful. What time had you in mind?’

  ‘Oh, I usually go to lunch at about a quarter to one, is that OK?’

  ‘That will be fine.’

  The thin girl, Pamela, put the box of diaries I had ordered on my desk and I set to work. They were quite absorbing and I was absolutely immersed until I felt a light touch on my shoulder. It was Tony.

  ‘Did you get everything you wanted?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, thank you. Pamela – is it? – was very quick. I hardly had to wait at ah.’

  He smiled and moved away to his desk.

  A little later I came up for air again and happened to glance down the room. Felicity had disappeared and Tony and Pamela were deep in a murmured conversation. Somehow I had the feeling that it was not about work but of a more personal nature. Pamela was seated at her desk, her head twisted round, looking up at Tony who was standing beside her. Something in her pose suggested a sort of desperation and Tony was bending over her protectively, almost as if he were shielding her from some danger. They were talking urgently together and I wondered very much what it was all about, but when the telephone rang and Tony picked it up and answered some query about photo-copying quite normally I told myself that my imagination was running away with me as it so often does. Then I noticed Pamela get up and go quickly out of the room. After a few minutes I too got up and went into the ladies’ cloakroom just down the corridor. She was there, leaning on a washbasin, and had obviously been crying. I pretended not to see her and went quickly into one of the cubicles. When I came out she had gone. So I hadn’t imagined things, I told my reflection.

  I put on some more powder and lipstick and combed my hair, looking at myself critically in the cloudy mirror, and found myself glad that I was wearing a reasonably smart jacket and skirt and a new blouse in a shade of blue that does quite a bit for me. Then I shook myself mentally and went back to the problem of what was going on between Tony and Pamela. There seemed to be affection there – certainly on Tony’s side – but the girl had looked more frightened of him than anything else, though I couldn’t imagine how anyone could be frightened of Tony. Per-haps it was something about her work. Perhaps it had something to do with why he had seemed so upset the night before. My curiosity was now thoroughly aroused and I determined to find out what was going on.

  Just before a quarter to one I gathered up the papers I was reading and put them neatly in their box, laid my folder and pencil on top and picked up my bag and gloves. My neighbour took a raincoat – I noticed with approval that it was an old but expensive Burberry – from the back of his chair and we went out together into the spring sunshine. Outside he stopped and said, ‘I guess I should introduce myself. I’m Chester Howard. I used to teach at Harvard – still do the occasional class, though I retired last year.’

  ‘Chester Howard?’ The name was familiar. ‘Oh, of course, you wrote that book on Edith Wharton – Society and Sensibility – really splendid!’

  ‘That’s kind of you to say so! Is it your period?’

  ‘I more or less overlap. Though I’m not in your league – not an academic – strictly part-time. My name is Sheila Malory, by the way, though you won’t have heard of me.’

  ‘Actually, that is not so. I have read your book on Charlotte M. Yonge with great pleasure. I was delighted to learn so much about a writer too little known in the States, and was very interested in the comparisons you made with Ivy Compton-Burnett.’

  He broke off suddenly and grabbed my arm just as I was about to step off the pavement. ‘Watch out!’ A rogue cyclist, jumping the traffic lights, had swung round the corner from the Broad and nearly mown me down.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘it gets worse every day. It’s those cycle lanes – they all seem to think they’re on some sort of racetrack.’

  We negotiated the crossing with some circumspection and stood by the gates leading to the Sheldonian.

  ‘I don’t think Max Beerbohm would have cared greatly for those very restored Emperors.’ Chester Howard remarked, gazing at them critically. ‘They look like they were put there yesterday.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘they’ve managed to make the stone look like plastic – very sad. Much nicer really to have them worn away and crumbling.’

  We crunched our way across the gravel and walked through the arch into the Schools quadrangle. I always have a little glow of pleasure whenever I read the inscriptions over the various doorways: ‘SCHOLA VETUS IURISPRUDENTIAE’, ‘MORALIS PHILOSOPHIAE’, ‘SCHOLA MUSICAE’, ‘SCHOLA VETUS MEDICINAE’.

  We approached the main entrance to the Proscholium and went into the shop.

  ‘There you are,’ I said. ‘Everything the heart could desire from postcards and wall-planners to Bodleian T-shirts. I always try to do some of my Christmas shopping here.’

  ‘A veritable treasure trove,’ he replied gravely. ‘What are you doing for lunch? Would you care to join me?’

  ‘That’s very kind of you, but I’m just having a quick sandwich – I’ve got quite a lot of shopping to do. But thank you all the same.’

  ‘Another day perhaps.’

  ‘That would be lovely.’

  ‘Well – see you back at the ranch!’

  I smiled and went to buy the refill for my pen and he turned towards the racks of postcards.

  As I made my way along the Turl I felt flustered and confused. There was no reason why I shouldn’t have had lunch with Chester Howard, I had nothing else to do – the shopping was the usual convenient female excuse – but although I had instinctively liked him (perhaps because I had liked him) I had this urge to rush away.

  ‘You are an idiot.’ I told myself crossly, ‘he only asked you to lunch, for heaven’s sake.’

  Now, because I didn’t know where he was going for his lunch and I didn’t want to be caught out in a lie, I felt obliged to make for the Cornmarket and do some shopping after all. As I surged uncomfortably round Boots, jostled by lunchtime crowds, I thought it served me right for being so irrational. I ended up having a hasty ham sandwich and cup of coffee at a cafe in the Market and went back to the Bodleian in a state of irritation.

  Chester Howard did not return to his desk for quite a while, since his lunch had presumably been more leisurely and substantial than mine.

  ‘Was your shopping successful?’ he asked politely.

  ‘Oh – yes – fine.’

  I bent over my work again and was soon ready for the next box of documents. Usually Tony got things out for me, but I wanted a closer look at Pamela so I filled in my new green slip and approached her. She was wearing reading
glasses so I couldn’t see if her eyes were still red from crying but she certainly looked uneasy and upset. I gave her my bright reassuring smile – the one I use for confused, elderly ladies when I do Meals on Wheels – and it seemed to work, since she gave me a half-smile in return as she took one box of documents and handed me another.

  As I turned to go back to my seat I saw that Tony was watching us both rather anxiously. I gave him a bright smile too and he turned away in confusion as if he hadn’t wanted me to know that he had been watching. I wondered if Betty knew about Pamela. Tony had had several girlfriends but I always had the feeling that they had been found for him, as it were, by Betty and Harriet. They were cheerful and rather bossy – what Michael calls ‘save-the-whalers’ – all obviously determined to ‘make something’ of him. I had watched with amusement Tony’s quiet determination to remain ‘unmade’ and none of them had lasted for very long. Perhaps it was better, I thought with approval, that he should find someone that he could look after, someone even more tentative than himself – that might be the making of him! Pamela certainly filled the bill in that respect, but it didn’t really seem to be a very jolly relationship.

  About five o’clock I decided that I would indulge myself with half an hour’s cricket in the Parks and packed up my things. I murmured a brief goodbye to Chester Howard, waved my hand cheerfully at Tony and retrieved my bag and shopping from George.