5

THREE weeks passed without a sign of Miss Hargreaves. Not even a letter came from her. Henry held his tongue; so did I. But I don’t mind telling you I never found a tongue so hard to hold.

Mother was really very nice about it all. I overheard her talking to Jim one day.

‘Jim, I think we’d better not say anything more about Miss Hargreaves to Norman. The poor boy goes quite pale when I mention her.’

‘It’s a funny business, mother.’

‘It is. Very funny. But I’m sure Norman wouldn’t do anything dishonourable. From all I can hear of Miss Hargreaves, she was a pretty terrible old woman.’

‘You don’t think she’s blackmailing him?’

‘My dear Jim, what a horrible suggestion! No! Norman’s like his father. He gets himself muddled up with all sorts of ridiculous people and tells stories he hardly knows are true or not. Cornelius is just the same. He used to tell me he spent his boyhood in Canada; then, one day, it was New Zealand. I shall never know the truth. But there–he’s made like that. We mustn’t judge people.’

‘Yes, but all this talk of “making up” Miss Hargreaves. It’s quite mad, mother.’

‘Of course it is. But we must try to forget it. I suppose the boy isn’t bound to take us into his confidence if he doesn’t want to. I do wish he’d settle down, though.’

Mother sighed and I felt quite sorry for her. After all, father and I are a rum pair.

In a sort of way I did settle down; told myself that I would never be able to solve the Hargreaves mystery and that somehow I had stumbled upon something out of time. I’d read Dunne’s books on the past, present and future; and though I couldn’t follow half of what he said, it did seem to me there was a quality about time which had nothing whatever to do with clocks and calendars. But thinking only muddled me. So I stopped thinking. If I decide to dismiss a matter from my mind, I can do it. So can father. We’re not the brooding sort.

I suppose now is the place to tell you something of the daily routine of my life. It centres round the Cathedral, of course. Matins every morning, except Mondays and Wednesdays; Evensong every afternoon, except Wednesdays, at four. ‘Plain day’, we call Wednesdays, which means that the services are said, not sung. On Sundays–Matins at eleven, when all the County big-wigs swarm up in their cars; Evensong, without sermon, at three-thirty, attended solely by people who come to hear the anthem; then an extra Evensong at six-thirty, which is what you might call a town service, when we have a lot of hymns, tubas from the organ and a straight-from-the-shoulder sermon.

I only had to go to the Sunday evening service every other week. It always bored me. What were called supernumeraries flowed into the choir stalls; dreadful people who hadn’t a note of music in them. As the Dean was hardly ever there, nobody cared how they behaved. The boys used to read bloods or play tip-up during the lessons and sermon. Once there was a craze for cards. A pack of cards came sliding down one evening from Rapley’s stall and lay scattered about on the ground in front of King John’s dark old tomb in the centre of the choir. Meakins was leading Canon Padge up to read the lesson. It was a dreadful moment. Old Padge looked stonily before him as though nothing had happened. I remember he trod on the ace of spades. Nobody had the courage to remove them or could even look at them directly while the lesson was being read. Meakins wisely waited till the Magnificat had started.

If I hated that Sunday evening service, I hated the stuffy Sunday morning service almost as much. The truth is, cathedrals aren’t meant for crowds. The less people you have in them, and the less chairs, the better. Even if you don’t find people and chairs, you find tombstones and monuments to old generals or bishops nobody has ever heard of. It’s all a great mistake. If I were a dean I’d do something about it. But deans aren’t what they were.

The times when I really loved the Cathedral were weekdays when you could look right down the great nave, seeing perhaps only one tripper creeping from pillar to pillar with a guidebook, a vigilant verger stalking him and ready to net him if he so much as sneezed. In winter you’d see nothing at all except the light from one gas-globe plunged smokily into the remote and vast darkness of the nave roof. Then you really felt that Evensong and the Cathedral meant something. Heralded by old Dyack and his pitch-pipe, Tallis in the Dorian Mode would float down the aisles; a motet by William Byrd weave its intricate pattern upon the dark silence. At such times I believe we all felt, even the boys, a relationship to the great roof that soared away above us and to the wonderful old monks and people who’d built it all, and wrote that glorious music, centuries ago.

The usual handful of queer people regularly haunted the Cathedral. Amongst them was Colonel Temperley, who had a very roving face and a very purple nose. The boys called him the Purple Emperor. He loved music, this old buffer; particularly jammy things like the oboe solo in Stanford’s Nunc Dimittis in A major. At such moments he would weep; you expected him to roll right down the nave in his ecstasy. Afterwards, he’d tip any of the boys who cared to dog his footsteps, a half-crown or two.

Then there was Miss Linkinghorne. I am told by a friend that you can find a Miss Linkinghorne in every cathedral in the United Kingdom. But I like her so much I am going to put her in. She was an elderly lady whose outstanding eccentricity was to dress always in the colours of the Church’s seasons. During Advent and Lent she would wear purple, which was very suitable; but then would occur Whitsun or a Martyr’s day, and lo–she would appear in scarlet. In the long Trinity period, from about June to November, she was decently garbed in shades of green; at Easter, Christmas, All Saints and such major festivals, she blossomed out in white or cream. At Easter, adorned also with primroses, actual and artificial (I believe she somehow connected Lord Beaconsfield with the Resurrection), this purity of costume did not appear incongruous. But I never thought the effect was so happy on Christmas Day when she contrived somehow to make herself look like a snowman. She was very thorough in all her colour schemes, carrying it down to such details as gloves, handbag, even handkerchief. In the hall-stand in her house were five parasols: white, purple, green, red and black (for Good Friday, not rain). She talked excessively of Jerusalem, and once a year had the choristers to a party which had become the season’s best joke.

Dear Miss Linkinghorne! My heart goes out to you–and to other persons, less noteworthy–canons, minor canons, choristers, vergers, bedesmen and lay-clerks–who almost daily were to be found in Beauvais’ ancient building. I could tell stories of all of them; stories that would not be believed. How old Canon Hepple, for example, wandered up to read the Litany with a mouse-trap trailing from his cassock. But this is the history of Miss Hargreaves, not of Cornford Cathedral.

One Saturday afternoon towards the end of September, I came out of a cinema with Henry, Marjorie and Jim. Marjorie and I had patched up our quarrel and I was in a very light-hearted mood. The film had been a comic, and we were all talking about an absurd hat which one of the female characters had worn.

‘Nowadays,’ I said jokingly, as we turned into Dumper’s for tea, ‘girls haven’t the courage to wear something out of the way like that. You’re all fettered by fashion.’

‘If we did wear such hats,’ said Marjorie, taking me seriously as usual, ‘you men wouldn’t be seen dead with us.’

‘On the contrary,’ I said, ‘I’d be proud to be seen out with you in something really original for a change. Girls are all too much alike.’

I winked at Henry, who was ordering crumpets and tea.

‘That’s right,’ he agreed cheerily. ‘You want to learn to brighten things up a bit, you girls. That’s what you’re here for, anyway. Pity you didn’t study Miss Hargreaves more.’

There was an uncomfortable silence. I glared at Henry and studied the menu card. Connie’s name hadn’t once passed our lips in the last week or so. It was mad of him to revive her again just when people were beginning to forget her.

‘How about having some meringues,’ I began.

But Jim, who really never could get her knife out of Miss Hargreaves, said bitterly, ‘To hell with Miss Hargreaves!’

Of course that set me off. Certainly, to hell with her; but not at Jim’s behest.

‘There’s not the slightest need to be unkind about the poor old thing,’ I said.

The tea and crumpets came. In a few minutes the conversation had swept me along against my will and we were all arguing hotly. It was utterly maddening. I didn’t want to talk about Miss Hargreaves. But I never could bear to hear her attacked.

It broiled up to a proper row.

‘You’re absolutely potty about her,’ said Marjorie. ‘I call it rather indecent the way you went on. I was sorry for her.’

‘I don’t need you to be sorry for her!’ I snapped. ‘Anyway, I’m not a little bit potty about her.’

‘Oh, yes, you are! Just because you won’t talk about her that doesn’t mean to say you’re not always thinking of her. I know perfectly well when you’re thinking of her. A sort of soppy air comes over you.’

‘You screamed her name in your sleep last night,’ said Jim.

‘It’d be a good thing if you kept your ear away from my bedroom door.’

‘Of course,’ remarked Marjorie airily, ‘you’re really peeved to death because she’s gone away and not written to you.’

I laughed scornfully.

‘What piffle! Why, if I wanted her back, she’d come back. I don’t want her back. I’m glad she’s gone. I made her go, anyway. And as I did it solely for your benefit, I’d be grateful if you’d stop nagging.’

‘Oh, so I nag, do I?’

‘Nag! You’d nag the wool out of the woolsack.’

‘I wish you two would shut up,’ complained Jim. ‘Everybody’s looking at you.’

So they were. And listening. When we stopped talking the room was as quiet as the North Pole. Henry rose and went to the pay-desk to settle the bill. I followed him moodily.

‘You do get sizzled up about Connie,’ he said irritably.

‘It was mad of you to bring her name up like that,’ I told him.

‘It slipped out. Anyway, that was no reason for you to get so worked up. You just don’t seem able to keep calm where Connie is concerned. It’s ridiculous.’

‘I can’t help it, Henry. Somehow, I simply can’t bear her to be attacked. I believe I’d give anything to see her again. Just once so as I could know she was really real.’

‘Whistle and she’ll come to you, my lad,’ remarked Henry lightly.

We all went out into the street and stood watching a flame of sunset over the market buildings. It made me feel rather ashamed of myself. Sunsets always do.

‘I’m sorry, Marjorie,’ I said.

But she was chillily silent as we walked home. I tried to talk lightly; to pretend we hadn’t really quarrelled. I stuck my hands in my pockets and whistled casually in the way one does when trouble is near at hand. I sometimes think that that fellow who faced the fat bulls of Bashan closing in on him must have known a thing or two about whistling.

I shan’t forget Michaelmas Day that year. It was a beautiful afternoon, very warm. The great west doors were wide open at the bottom of the nave, and through them, firing the thousands of chipped colours in the mighty window that Cromwell had smashed, streamed the sun, dark gold and growing deeper as Evensong went on. I was feeling happy, loving the Cathedral, loving everything. From one of the little windows high up in the choir clerestory a ray of sun struck upon King John’s tomb. The Doctor started quietly to play the introduction to the Magnificat (it was Stanford in A), increasing his registration bar by bar until that thrilling moment came when we all crashed in at the words ‘My soul doth magnify the Lord’. Colonel Temperley clung to the wooden pillars of his Miserere seat, dabbing his eyes with a check handkerchief. Miss Linkinghorne, veiled in warm tones of red, gently waved her fingers to the beat of the music. A stray honorary canon tried to look over Archdeacon Cutler’s copy, but receiving no encouragement, turned aside petulantly. The Precentor, as usual, was writing something in his diary. Archie Tallents turned to Slesser, bowed and cooed sweetly. Meakins, always on time and never caring how long the Gloria was, approached the Dean’s door and, undoing it, waited with his wand over his shoulder. The Dean rather wearily snapped his horn glasses into their case, blew his nose with an enormous silk handkerchief, and followed Meakins up, past the pool of sunlight, to the lectern.

We sat down for the second lesson, and I studied my copy of the anthem. And I saw another Angel ascending in the East, having the sign of the living God.

Wonderful words. Almost automatically I looked east, up the choir to the great reredos.

The sign of the living God?

Well, I don’t know whether you could call a hat a sign, but I certainly never had seen a hat like that before.

Archie Tallents, who missed nothing that went on in the Cathedral, wrinkled his brow and gazed up to the Bishop’s Throne, near the south door to the choir.

‘The Angel has ascended in the east,’ he murmured.

It was true. Reposing calmly in the rich cushions under the carved canopy of the throne, sat Constance Hargreaves. On her head was a truly remarkable hat; a strange and very wonderful hat. It was cylindrical in shape, taller than a topper, with barely any brim, made of some smooth cream-coloured fur and softened by many veils. On anyone else it would have looked quite ridiculous. But somehow, as usual, Connie got away with it. You couldn’t laugh; you could only hold your breath and wonder. Sublimely unconscious of the attention she was attracting (the Bishop’s Throne is the most conspicuous seat in the Cathedral; more than a seat, it is really a house, with its own door, roof, and stalls for chaplains, amply furnished with octavo leather-bound prayer-books and tasselled cushions) sublimely unconscious of the–attention she was attracting, Miss Hargreaves sat in this sacrosanct place, idly gazing through her lorgnettes at the emblems of Our Lord’s Passion in the roof.

‘Ye gods!’ exclaimed Slesser.

‘And fishes great and small!’ added Archie.

‘That ’at,’ said Dyack, ‘would ’old about ten bloody pints.’

And I heard Baker, the solo-boy, say, ‘Mr Huntley’s friend’s come back again. Won’t he be pleased?’

A chorister giggled; the four probationers tittered. The clatter of a lozenge tin was heard; a service-book came tumbling out of Baker’s scob. The Dean hesitated, looked round sharply, then hastily went on with the lesson. Meakins stared up to the throne, half rose, sat down again, frowned and importantly adjusted his gown.

The lesson ended. We rose for the Nunc Dimittis. So did Miss Hargreaves. It was now clear that Meakins was prepared for action. Rushing the Dean home again, he gave a twist to his white moustache and set off at almost a sprint for the episcopal quarters. The boys, all eyes turned upon him, struggled weakly to reach the top F sharp in the Nunc Dimittis. Meakins had got to the throne; we could see they were arguing, though we couldn’t, of course, hear what they said. After a few seconds Miss Hargreaves, looking very angry, limped ostentatiously down the choir, making far more noise than was necessary with her sticks, and finally seated herself in the Canonry stalls, bang in front of Miss Linkinghorne. In order to advertise her disapproval for all of us, she sat down during the rest of the Nunc Dimittis; she did not even rise for the Gloria, only slightly bowed her head. And I can tell you, it’s not easy to remain seated for the Gloria in Cornford Cathedral. People don’t like it at all.

Archie turned his large head to me and cooed, ‘Lord now lettest Thou Miss Hargreaves?’

‘Depart in peace,’ I sang. But I couldn’t see her doing that.

I suffered afterwards in the lay-clerks’ vestry. Archie had no mercy. Everything was brought up. Dr Pepusch, Sarah, the Duke of Grosvenor, the harp, the bath, the visit to the organ-loft. I was spared nothing.

‘Always knew you were one for the girls,’ said Slesser, ‘but old ladies–that’s vice, Huntley! Pure vice!’

‘Don’t you take any notice of these nasty remarks, dear,’ said Archie; ‘remember you have to live up to a nine-foot hat and be brave.’

‘Might ’a’ been a mitre from the size of it,’ buzzed Peaty. He is a little alto with a voice like a starving fly in a bottle. Sir Hugh Allan, who once attended Evensong, mistook him for a bassoon.

Archie put his head round the door and looked out into the transept.

‘The Queen of the May is waiting for my Norman,’ he said.

At this point Pussy Coltsfoot, one of our ancients, who always made the same sort of noise, whether he sang or spoke, asked whether we had observed the woman with the queer hat sitting in the Bishop’s Throne. Being deaf, he had heard nothing of the talk.

‘Huntley’s girl-friend,’ shouted Slesser above the organ. (The Doctor was wallowing in an endless Rheinberger sonata.)

‘I didn’t notice a bend,’ murmured Pussy. ‘It seemed quite straight to me. Like a drainpipe in the snow.’

‘Concubine,’ hummed Peaty right in his ear. ‘Huntley’s concubine.’

‘You needn’t be disgusting,’ I said. I don’t know about you, but I loathe that word ‘concubine’.

Wadge, the other tenor, a pleasant fellow who has a habit of putting in aspirates in unlikely places (he has a favourite solo in which he sings ‘Thou crownest the h-year’) turned and patted me on the back. ‘A faithful female friend is very nice for a h-young man,’ he said.

‘Wonder if that bloody ’at folds up?’ growled Dyack.

The voluntary had finished; it was time to go into choir for the full practice. Already the boys were trooping in with piles of music. I peered round the door. There she was, prowling up and down, tapping the pavement tiles critically with her stick. You immediately felt they were second-rate tiles; you would have said that she had always been used to walking on the best Roman tiles.

The Precentor came in. ‘Hurry up, gentlemen,’ he said. He looked at me with a slight smile. ‘Friend of yours waiting for you, I imagine.’ He went out, giving the others a vile leer. I don’t like that man.

Archie was just going out. I called him back. ‘Look here,’ I said, ‘there’s been some ghastly mistake. I want you to understand, Archie, that I do not know this damned woman. Somehow she’s managed to hook herself on to me.’

‘Hook, dear? You supplied the eye?’

‘Don’t joke. It’s terribly serious. If she comes up and tries to talk to me, I’ve simply got to ignore her. I want you to help me, Archie. Walk out with me and talk loudly all the time. I shan’t look her way.’

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Blow out your chest. Scowl and be a man. Take a deep breath and look at her boots. Glare critically at her boots and you’re safe. Come on, dearie.’

Together we left the vestry and started to cross the transept. She was standing by Bishop Creighton’s tomb, examining some alabaster cherubs, and for a moment didn’t notice us.

‘Quick!’ I hissed. ‘Quick!’

But she was too sharp for me. Whipping round, she cried out and tottered towards us.

‘Dear Norman!’ she cried jubilantly. ‘It is so nice to see you again. What a truly beautiful anthem! Though I cannot imagine why you were not given the solo. Surely–’

‘No talking allowed in the transepts,’ said Archie severely. ‘Haven’t you seen the notices?’

‘Notices? What notices?’

Archie looked round him. ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Meakins has taken them away to be cleaned. But the order still stands. Nothing but singing allowed in the transepts. Come along, Huntley.’

‘Ridiculous! Ridiculous!’ exclaimed Miss Hargreaves, flushing angrily. She followed us, talking all the time. ‘I have been in a score of cathedrals and never yet have I been told not to talk in the transepts. I shall report the matter to the Dean.’

‘The Dean himself made the transept by-law,’ said Archie, ‘and he will not tolerate it being broken.’

‘I shall write to Grosvenor about it,’ she snapped.

I bit my lip and said nothing.

‘My dear lady,’ said Archie, allowing her to catch up with him for a moment, ‘transept talk is strictly forbidden, even to royalty. Read the notices when they have been cleaned.’

‘We are now in the aisle,’ she said triumphantly.

‘Aisles, too,’ said Archie. ‘Except on Sundays.’

Slesser joined us, blithely humming ‘h-where did h-you get that hat?’

‘Norman,’ panted Miss Hargreaves, in a voice that broke my heart, ‘Norman–how can you–’ God! How unbearable it was! I hurried on, loathing myself.

‘We are all very busy now,’ said Archie. ‘The music of the Cathedral must come first.’

Baker was standing by the choir gates, his hands in his cassock pockets, an insolent smile on his face. Still she followed us. At the gates she was stopped by Meakins. Hurriedly we went inside.

‘Now, now,’ we heard Meakins saying, ‘we’ve had enough of you.’ (Oh, it was intolerable to hear her spoken to like that.) ‘No, you can’t come into choir. Sitting in the Bishop’s Throne–never heard of such a thing!’

‘I had no intention of trespassing upon the dear Bishop’s Throne,’ we heard. ‘I have never willingly sat on a throne, and I never will. Here is my card. I am a friend of Mr Huntley’s; a close friend. Kindly move. I abominate fuss.’

‘There’s a practice on, Ma’am. You can’t come into choir.’

‘Tut! All these absurd restrictions–! Why do you not have a notice forbidding one to use this ridiculous throne? Unless you are cleaning those notices too–come, come,my good fellow–perhaps–ah, I see we understand one another!’

We heard the jingling of money. Baker came sauntering in and pushed his way up decani side to his place.

‘Tipped old Meakins half a dollar,’ he said.

‘We shall have to get the Doctor’s permission,’ I heard Meakins say. I saw him take her arm and lead her gently round to the north transept.

Baker turned and spoke to me gravely.

‘Did you make that hat, sir?’

‘You turn round!’ I snapped. ‘And give out the music, you brat!’

‘Really, sir!’ said Baker.

A moment later the Doctor came into choir; he looked very irritable. ‘Huntley,’ he called. I left my seat and went down to him with a sinking heart.

‘This–er, lady friend of yours–she wishes to come into choir for the practice. Of course, you understand–’

‘But, Doctor,’ I began, ‘she is not –’

‘–you understand we can’t start a precedent like that. For years I’ve been fighting to keep people out of choir while the practice is on. Go and tell her, if you please. Of course she’s at liberty to wait in the nave.’

Anger mounted in me. I suppose because I loathe being made to look ridiculous. As I marched out on to the dais, I heard Collins say, ‘Mr Huntley didn’t half look furious, didn’t he?’

I stamped across to her.

‘Miss Hargreaves,’ I said, ‘nobody is allowed into choir during the practice. Dr Carless says you may wait in the nave.’

For a moment she said nothing; only looked at me reproachfully. I turned my head away.

‘What have I done,’ she said, ‘to deserve such treatment from you?’ Her voice rose; I felt that every ear in the choir was straining to hear her. ‘What have I done? If you knew what trouble I had been through lately’–her voice broke–‘Agatha–gone!’ She buried her face in her hands for a moment; her shoulders shook. ‘Dr Pepusch suffering from psittacosis,’ she continued. ‘And now–I return to my beloved Cornford, expecting to be greeted by my old friend, and–’

The choir had started on ‘O, where shall wisdom be found,’ by Boyce; I was supposed to be singing in the verse.

‘I’ll see you presently,’ I muttered, avoiding looking at her directly. It was no good. The moment she turned that heart-rending expression on me, I knew I was beaten.

The practice was misery. I generally never make mistakes (I’m an utter fool, but I’m not an utter fool at music), but that evening there were two tricky bars in Boyce’s anthem which for the life of me I could not get right. Carless kept running along the loft like a trapped and angry beast, shouting down at me: ‘Whatever is wrong with you, Huntley? Take it again.’ I would take it again, and again take it the wrong way. ‘Stop! Stop!’ The Doctor clapped. And when the Doctor clapped it didn’t mean applause either. For the sixth time he jammed his white face through the brick-coloured curtains.

‘Wadge, you take it!’ he snapped.

It was dreadful. I had never been disgraced like this before. The boys, heartless creatures, turned and looked at me with a new sort of interest. Baker wrote something on a bit of paper and passed it down to that lout Tonkin at the bottom of decani; Tonkin burst into laughter. ‘Silence, boys!’ cried Carless. I looked down the darkening nave as Wadge went on with the solo I ought to have been singing. One lonely, forlorn-looking figure was sitting in the front seats, apparently writing something in a note-book. The practice dragged endlessly on; still that lonely figure sat in the empty nave.

The Precentor said the Grace; the boys rushed from their stalls as though unchained from a prison. The men went out. Slowly I wandered towards the gates with Archie.

‘Now, Norman,’ said Archie, ‘take a pinch of snuff and go to it.’ He offered me his little black box, but I pushed it aside. What’s the use of snuff when you’re in trouble?

‘I can’t face her,’ I groaned. For she had risen now and was slowly coming up the dais steps. ‘Archie,’ I begged, ‘tell her I’ve got an appointment. Say I’m ill. Anything. I shall slip out by the north door.’

Quickly I went up towards the reredos and thus out into the retrochoir. But luck was against me that evening. I saw Meakins disappearing along the south aisle, jingling his keys; he had locked the north door, the little door near the Lady Chapel. To run after him now would probably mean meeting Miss Hargreaves and Archie in the transept. Yet if I stayed up here, I might be locked in for the night.

Unable to make up my mind about anything, I sat down on a seat near Cardinal Beauvais’ Chantry. My eyes wandered to his opulent figure, lying stretched out in his magnificent red hat, a green ring, like an eye that sees all things, watching me from his finger. He’d have sent her to hell-fire, that’s what he’d have done; sent her to hell-fire as a witch and thought nothing more about it. Nowadays one couldn’t even arrest her. She could wear a hat like a wedding-cake, lounge about in the Bishop’s Throne, and there was nothing you could do about it. If that throne had been the Cardinal’s, she wouldn’t get away with it so easily.

It was getting dark. One by one I heard the boys and the lay-clerks slam the south door. In a few minutes Meakins would be locking up. I couldn’t stay here all night. Already that damned Cardinal was beginning to make me twitch. They said he came out from his chantry at night. I could believe it. I could fancy he was studying me, knowing that I was caught up in some vast spiritual problem utterly beyond me, and amusedly wondering what I would make of it.

I went to the aisle gate, peering down the steps to see if anyone were there. Not a soul. Except for the footsteps of Meakins far away at the end of the nave, all was quiet. Perhaps Archie had been able to get rid of her. Slowly I walked down the steps, pausing and listening and looking. I passed the Saxon kings; the tomb of Thomas Weelkes. I was in the south transept. I had only to skim round Bishop Creighton’s tomb and I should be out by the little south door.

Suddenly I remembered my hat in the vestry. It was rather a special hat: green, with a nice tilt to it, a Bing Boys air and a feather in the band. I was going round to see Marjorie that evening. I knew I wasn’t in her good books and that hat would help me. The sort of hat Churchill wouldn’t mind having.

Well–all I can say, vanity gets its right reward.

Miss Hargreaves was kneeling on the floor in the vestry, studying the lettering on the tomb of Jacob Burton, the fisherman and naturalist.

She rose slowly to her feet.

‘Fishing,’ she observed, ‘must, in those days, have been such a noble pastime.’

There was a long and awful silence. I breathed heavily. I knew we were heading for a crisis.

‘Grosvenor,’ she added, ‘was fond of trout. Cooked with a little orange-juice, it was his opinion that no fish could be more succulent.’

‘This is no time for talking of fishes,’ I said.

She sighed. ‘They are very soothing creatures,’ she remarked. ‘Very bloodless.’ She sat down by the table and toyed with a pencil hanging on the chain round her neck. ‘I once wrote a few lines that would seem to be appropriate to this moment.’

‘I haven’t time for poetry,’ I warned her. Neither I had.

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I would not pretend that my poor lines were poetry. Mere verse. Nothing more. They ran like this:

‘I talk to them of candlesticks and pears,

Of clothes lines, postal orders, wheelback chairs,

Of plants (in pots), of pans, e’en polar bears–

        To hide my woe.’

‘Yes, very nice,’ I began. ‘But–’

She held up her hand. ‘Wait. There is more.

‘They talk to me of coal and china tea,

Of politicians, fonts and kedgeree,

Of saucers, sheets, hemp and the honey-bee–

       ’Tis better so.’

‘That’s all very well,’ I said.

Suddenly this pensive manner changed. She rose and wrung her hands. She started to talk passionately.

‘I come back after having buried poor Agatha. I look forward to meeting my dearest, my oldest friend again. What does he do? What does he do? He ignores me. Nay–more! He is actually rude to me! Norman–I can bear much. But not this–not this!’

‘The time has come,’ I said sternly, ‘to get things straight.’

‘Explain, I beg you!’

‘Why’–I burst out the words–‘do you follow me about like this? I don’t know you. I never did know you. I never met you before in my life.’

‘Stop! Stop!’ She tottered forward and clutched on to a chair for support. ‘Not know me–never met me–how can you, how can you say these wicked, wicked things? Much have I travelled in the realms of gold but never suffered such a bruise as this!’

Her voice rose and echoed in the silent building. Far away I heard Meakins locking the west doors; then his footsteps along the nave.

‘Do you’–she tapped her stick menacingly on Burton’s grave–‘do you deny that you wrote to me while I was at Hereford? Dare you deny that?’

I gulped. ‘No. I can’t deny that. But all I can tell you is that I never knew of your existence before I wrote. I wish you’d put that whistle down.’ She was shaking a little silver whistle at me; it lived on her chain with the pencil and the lorgnettes.

She stared at me. ‘Tell me frankly. Is your mind wandering, my dear boy? Or perhaps I have offended you in some way. Tell me quite frankly. Is it my–hat?’

‘Well, it is pretty awful!’ I mumbled.

‘I wore it for you, too!’ Tears came into her eyes. ‘I thought that you, with your love of the bizarre, would appreciate it.’

‘Don’t cry. For heaven’s sake, don’t cry!’

‘I did not know it was a bishop’s throne! There is no notice. I went to the first seat I saw. Heaven forbid, Heaven forbid, Norman, that I should in any way make myself conspicuous.’

This wouldn’t do. We were getting away from the point. I was determined, once and for all, to make her see the truth.

‘I don’t care about your hat,’ I cried untruthfully, ‘or your sitting in the Bishop’s Throne. I don’t care what you do–so long as you don’t drag me into it. That letter I wrote to you from Lusk–it was a joke, Miss Hargreaves; nothing more than a joke. It may have been a mean joke, and I’m sorry for it. We’ve never met before. You know perfectly well that–’

Her sticks clattered to the floor. I stopped, suddenly appalled at the effect my words had had on her. She had almost collapsed. Clutching the table for support, her head was lolling from side to side, her mouth open as though she wanted to speak and had no power to do so. It was terrible to see her like that. I rushed towards her and helped her gently into a chair. Weakly, she sat down, her fingers fumbling at a service list on the table and twisting it up into a ball.

‘A joke,’ she muttered, ‘a joke –’

Shrilly, almost hysterically, she laughed. It was a laugh that made me go dead inside so contemptuous, so ironical, yet so pitifully forced.

‘Don’t–don’t, Miss Hargreaves!’ I begged. ‘I’m sorry for what I said. Awfully sorry.’

A deathly silence fell over us. She sat there with a fixed stare, looking at the crumpled-up service paper in her hand.

Meakins would, of course, choose that particular moment to come into the vestry. ‘Well, I never!’ he said. ‘Her again!’

‘You shut up!’ I hissed. ‘Can’t you see she’s ill?’

Still she said nothing at all; did not move an inch.

‘Well, I’m just locking up,’ said Meakins, taking off his gown.

‘Miss Hargreaves,’ I said gently, ‘we must go.’

‘Water water’she whispered in a funny, sad, faraway little voice.

I filled a glass from the carafe on the table and handed it to her. For the first time she saw Meakins. A slow, bewildered smile broke over her face.

‘Is that you, Archer?’ she murmured.

‘Wandering,’ said Meakins, tapping his head unkindly.

‘You hold your tongue!’ I hissed again.

She was looking at me as though she had never seen me before. As though she had never seen me before.

‘Where am I?’ she murmured. And, looking at me as though struggling to remember, ‘Who–are you?’

‘Why,’ I said, ‘I’m Norman Huntley. You know me, Miss Hargreaves?’

The words were out of my mouth before I realized what I had said. Escape had been offered to me; I had rejected it. To this day I always believe that if I had not told her my name then; if I had been hard and denied all knowledge of her–she would never have troubled me again. Without my realizing it, the opportunity had been put into my hands; and I had thrown it away.

It was no good now. The moment she heard my name the bright expression came into her eyes; the old unquenchable spirit was returning.

‘Norman!’ she cried. ‘Norman’–then, suddenly with a burst of recognition–‘oh, my dear, dear boy! My head is throbbing so! Oh, for a cup of tea!’

‘Poor lady!’ said Meakins, no doubt remembering her half-crown. ‘Poor lady! You’d better help her home, Mr Huntley. You can see how she depends on you.’

Yes, one could see that; one did not need to be reminded of that.

‘Come along,’ I said to her. ‘You–you’d better take my arm.’

She rose slowly and came towards me. ‘Thank you, dear. I feel better now. Forgive me. I am an old woman. I get confused. It is the music in my brain; there is always music in my brain. How strong your arm is, dear! Where should I be–where should I be–without the life you put into me?’

‘I’d very much like to know,’ I said grimly.

We went out by the south door and walked slowly along the Cloisters towards the Close.

‘The beautiful autumn air,’ she explained. ‘What power it has to revive one!’ We came out into the Close. ‘This exquisite September sun,’ she murmured. ‘Ah, Michael, Michael! What fire you pour upon the old!’ She was as light as a leaf on my arm. ‘You know poor Agatha has gone?’ she said.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said lamely.

‘Ah, me! A lovely soul! So simple! So faithful to me! I have no friends left, Norman except you. Remember that, dear: always remember that.’

‘All right,’ I muttered. Did she realize that it wouldn’t be long before I had no friends left except her?

Suddenly she came out of this contemplative mood.

‘And now,’ she said briskly, ‘let us meet your dear parents. I called upon your father at the shop on my way to Evensong. What a truly charming man! One can easily see, dear, where you get your brains from. Such taste such a flow of eloquence! He asked me to come and have tea with you and your mother. Shall we walk or take a cab? Is it far? Yes? Yes? Don’t walk quite so fast, dear; and speak up, I beg you; I am a little hard of hearing in one ear, I cannot remember which. Look at the rooks! Oh, that I might flee away and be at rest!’

‘It would be nice,’ I said.

‘How often have I longed for it! But, alas, we are called into the world by the power of the Creator and must needs play our appointed part before the time comes for departure.’

We passed the Dean and Archdeacon Cutler. They stared at us for a moment, then hurriedly resumed their conversation.

‘A beautiful evening!’ observed Miss Hargreaves, as we passed.

The Archdeacon frowned at her.

‘No, of course’–he went on talking to the Dean–‘we can’t use the funds for–’

‘The fire of Michael is upon us all,’ remarked Miss Hargreaves to everybody in general.

‘What–what? Michael? Oh, yes–yes. I suppose so.’

We passed on. ‘Who on earth is that woman?’ I heard the Archdeacon mutter. ‘Relation of Huntley’s?’

The Dean laughed. ‘I really don’t know. But I thought she made quite a passable bishop, didn’t you?’

I heard them both laugh. Then we came to the north gate and Miss Hargreaves stopped by the trunk of a large elm that had just been felled.

‘Let us sit down for a moment,’ she suggested.

‘You’ll catch cold,’ I said.

‘Fiddlesticks! Colds are not caught; they are begged.’ She sat down and beckoned me to sit beside her. In the distance I could see the Dean and the Archdeacon looking at us. ‘Ah the autumn leaves,’ she exclaimed, ‘spinning earthwards, to their common home! Ah me, life is strange! Would–you care to hear my triolet on the leaves?’

‘Later,’ I said.

‘No, here. I would like the leaves to hear it too. A simple little thought, but expressed, I tell myself, not unworthily. Thought cannot be new, Norman; it is the expression that matters.’

She rested her chin in one of her hands, gazed dreamily at the leaves, and declaimed:

‘Sweet little leaves so brown and thin,

Sycamore, beech, oak, elm and lime;

Soon will your year again begin,

Sweet little leaves so brown and thin.

Sycamore, beech, oak, elm and lime,

Victims of winter, weather and time–

Sweet little leaves so brown and thin,

Sycamore, beech, oak, elm and lime.’

We took a taxi home. Apart from the fact that she was very tired, I really couldn’t bear walking down the High Street with that hat. As we came to number 38 I saw mother and father sitting at the tea-table. Jim wasn’t there, for which I was glad.

I unlocked the door and ushered Miss Hargreaves in. Owing, perhaps, to her interminable stream of talk, a curious stupefied feeling had overcome me. I didn’t much care about anything. Let it happen, I thought; whatever it is, let it happen. I don’t care.

I opened the dining-room door. Mother rose hastily, gulping down her tea when she saw Miss Hargreaves and the hat. Father looked up for a moment, said nothing at all, dropped three lumps of sugar into his tea, then looked down to the evening paper again.

‘I’ve brought Miss Hargreaves,’ I said. ‘I understand father asked her to tea.’

Mother forced a smile as Miss Hargreaves sailed valiantly forward.

‘So glad,’ she cried, extending her hand cordially, ‘to meet you! I have already had the pleasure of a chat with Mr Huntley amongst all the books. Books–books! My dear Mrs Huntley, where should we be without them? You, I can see at once, reverence literature as I do.’

‘Oh, yes. I like a good book,’ said mother shortly, fussing cushions into shape in her usual tea-party way and looking into the teapot. ‘I wish you’d told me you were bringing Miss Hargreaves,’ she said to me, ‘then we would have waited tea.’

‘Didn’t father tell you?’

‘Of course not.’

Father spoke for the first time. ‘Miss Holway, isn’t it?’

He offered her his hand which she took warmly. ‘How do you find the weather in your part?’

‘Oh, very fair–very fair!’

‘Let me see, you play the clarionet, don’t you? Now I’ve always thought that the clarionet wants very special handling. I’m thinking of giving a concert, and ’–

‘Oh, but the harp is my instrument, Mr Puntley.’ (I couldn’t make out whether she got his name wrong on purpose.) ‘I toy also with the piano and the organ. But I fear a clarionet is rather beyond me. I am always ready to learn, of course.’

‘H’m.’ Father munched a cream bun. ‘Can sell you a book on the clarionet, very cheap. Don’t think much of these buns, mother. Not enough cream in them. Are they Dumper’s?’

Miss Hargreaves sat down in father’s special old leather chair with the ash-trays on the arms. Her eyes caught an old photograph of me, taken when I was two. Full of curls and petulance. I hate it.

‘Norman?’ she murmured.

My mother nodded and rang the bell for Janie. Miss Hargreaves had taken the photograph from the mantelpiece and was studying it closely.

‘What extravagant curls! How proud you must have been!’

‘Yes,’ said mother shortly. ‘Not a bad baby.’

‘Children are quite certainly the arrows in the hand of the giant. Eh, Mrs Huntley?’

‘Could tell you a thing or two about giants,’ put in father, looking rather anxiously over to mother, who always scotches his yarns if she can. ‘Knew a giant once. Strange case. Grew every time he stretched. Melancholy chap, too. Said he’d eaten something from the garden, some weed, and that did it. It started with his legs one night when he stretched, feeling very tired. Then he yawned and he could never quite close his mouth after that. Positive chasm, that chap. He was a gamekeeper. Some weed, he said. Wife ate it, too. She died when she’d reached fourteen feet. Went on tour in a circus. Funny things happen. You never know, Miss Holway.’

‘Oh, do tell me what the weed was, Mr Puntley!’

‘Nothing in particular. Just a weed. Have some salad?’

He pushed a bowl of lettuce and cucumber towards her.

‘We’re waiting for some fresh tea,’ explained mother. ‘And don’t take any notice of Cornelius’ stories, Miss Hargreaves. Are you staying long in Cornford, by the way?’

‘I think of coming to live here. It would be an excellent place in which to spend the twilight of my days, near your dear boy, yourself, and that splendid cathedral. I shall give a few little musical parties. But one or two matters have to be arranged with Grosvenor first.’

‘We close at one on Thursdays,’ remarked father. ‘Norman, pass Miss Harton the anchovy paste.’

Janie came in and mother ordered some more tea rather curtly.

‘Talking about twilight,’ said father, who seemed to be in a very communicative mood that evening, ‘did you ever go to Norway?’

Miss Hargreaves, instead of answering, looked over to me. ‘I cannot remember,’ she said. There was an expression of uncertainty in her face. ‘Did I ever go, Norman?’ she asked.

I paused. How the hell should I know? But supposing ‘I think you did,’ I said, plunging wildly and hopefully.

‘Of course,’ she said instantly. ‘It all comes back to me now! Those beautiful fjords–the midnight sun–the folk-tunes on the long pipes and all the icy glamour of the Scandinavian geist! Shall I ever forget how–’

‘I was just going to say,’ continued father, ‘that before I was married–did you hear me, Dorothy?’

‘Yes, I heard you, Cornelius. Before you were married.’ She smiled indulgently as she took up some needlework. All the things that happened to father were before he met mother.

‘Before I was married I spent some time in Oslo. Now, there isn’t any twilight to speak of in those parts; you go from one thing to another. I found that this curiously affected one’s behaviour. Did you, Miss Harton?’

‘Oh–decidedly!’ She nodded her head rapidly.

‘How did it affect you especially?’ asked father.

‘Ah!’ she said. No more. But father seemed to understand.

‘H’m,’ he said. ‘Funny things go on. Have some salad?’

One of the most surprising things about Miss Hargreaves was the way she immediately took to my father and he to her. For what seemed hours they talked, neither paying much attention to the other, of course. Mother and I spoke hardly a word.

‘Yes, I should like to start an archery club,’ father lit his fifth cigarette. ‘Ever tell you, Miss Holton, how the poet Swinburne took to archery?’

‘I think not, Mr Hunkin. My name is Hargreaves, by the way.’

Mother sighed.

‘Amazing!’ said father. ‘He made his own arrows, you know, and used them to write with as well. Atalanta in Calydon was written entirely with arrows, Miss Hargreaves. He’d take the manuscript, pin it to the board, and fire at it. Any words that the arrows pierced, he’d take out. Like that. You know the verse:

O, thy luminous face

     Thine imperious eyes,

O the grief, O the grace,

     As of day when it dies!’

‘Ah, yes,’ she said. ‘I remember. Beautiful!’

‘Well, before Algernon Charles aimed at that verse, it ran:

O thy lustrous and luminous face,

     Thine inclement, imperious eyes.

O the grief, O the gall, O the grace

     As of darkening day when it dies!

Algy killed about three million adjectives with those arrows. He used to say, “the pen that writes them in can shoot them out”.’

‘How very remarkable! Then, we might say, had not the poet indulged in this archaic sport, many gems might not have been lost to English poesy?’

‘H’m. It depends, Miss Holgrave. Depends what your idea of a gem is.’

‘Ah. Yes. True. I myself, Mr Puntley, have–

’Father rose quickly. ‘Must go now. Got some microscope slides to go through. You must come up to my den one day, Miss Halton. Bring your harp.’

Almost immediately father had left the room, mother put down her needlework and asked the question I knew would come sooner or later.

‘And how long have you known Norman, Miss Hargreaves?’

She smiled. ‘Ask him,’ was all she said. Stretching out her hand to a cigarette box, she took one and asked me for a light.

‘An occasional vice!’ she murmured.

‘Oh–we’ve known each other for a–long time,’ I said vaguely to mother.

‘Really? And where did you first meet, then? It’s funny, Miss Hargreaves, but Norman has kept us quite in the dark concerning his friendship with you.’

‘In the dark? Tut! I do not care for that!’

‘There’s an ash-tray on the arm, there.’

‘Thank you; thank you.’ She smiled and blew a puff of smoke towards me. ‘I really cannot remember a time,’ she said, ‘when I did not know Norman. We are such very old friends.’

‘Well, fancy! I thought I knew all Norman’s friends.’ Mother laughed a bit petulantly. ‘I do think you might let me into the secret now that Miss Hargreaves is here,’ she said to me.

It was a critical moment. What should I say? Could I say I didn’t remember? Should I again try to tell the extraordinary truth? No. It was too dangerous. She would probably collapse in her chair, even die, and we should have the frightful task of burying her, advertising in all the papers for a possible Duke of Grosvenor who would, if he ever came to light at all, be as difficult to get rid of as his niece. The hat would be kept as a relic to be stowed away in the theatrical chest on the landing; every time I saw it I would choke a sob and remember my villainy.

Hastily I searched my mind for an answer vague and yet satisfactory. Where does one meet people? From what sort of a place might one begin a friendship with an old lady? Church? Theatre? Cinema? (She might have been grovelling for her gloves in the darkness.) Concert hall? Pleasure gardens? Bookshop–

‘In Blackwell’s, at Oxford,’ I said, hardly realizing the words were out of my mouth. Mother looked at me quickly. It was a plausible lie, of course, because I often had to go to Blackwell’s to buy or sell books for father.

‘Ah, me!’ murmured Miss Hargreaves, heaving a reminiscent sigh and spilling ash down her blouse. ‘Ah, me! What a memorable day that was! You know Blackwell’s, Mrs Huntley? Yes? Yes? You remember the little iron spiral stairway which leads up to foreign books? I had been up there referring to some Norwegian literature it must have been shortly after I returned from the Land of the Midnight Sun. Shall I ever forget the dreadful moment when I lost my footing and fell crashing to the bottom? Ah, well, Mrs Huntley we are sent many a blessing in disguise. For, without that catastrophe, I should never have met your good son.’

‘Really? What did he do?’

‘Everything, my dear Mrs Huntley. Everything! A compound femoral fracture could not, I am sure, have met with wiser treatment. Oh, those splints, Norman! Oh, dear, dear, dear!’

She burst into little peals of delighted laughter. Did I remember ‘those splints’? I shifted about uncomfortably in my chair.

‘The ones I made from the newspapers?’ I suggested, knowing that, once again, I was on the Spur; once again, could not turn back.

‘Precisely!’ she said. ‘Nobody, my dear Mrs Huntley–except perhaps my dear Uncle Grosvenor–could have handled a critical situation with keener presence of mind. If it were not for your brave son, I doubt whether I should be here–I very much doubt it.’

‘Well, fancy! Who’d have thought it! Fancy Norman never telling me!’

Mother stared at me, half admiringly, half suspiciously. I smiled sheepishly. ‘Oh, well,’ I said, ‘one doesn’t talk about such things, you know.’

‘Not alone flowers,’ declared Miss Hargreaves, ‘but many good deeds were born to blush unseen. Not that this is desert air, Mrs Huntley–not that this is desert air, indeed!’

‘After that,’ said mother, ‘I suppose you saw quite a lot of each other?’

There was a tense silence. I was aware that Miss Hargreaves was leaning forward towards me, almost impatiently waiting for me to open the game.

‘I met her again’–I gulped–‘in the–in the–Albert Hall.’

I sank back in my chair, pleased. I didn’t care a damn now. Nothing mattered. You had to go on at this game.

‘You mean when you went up for that big Choir Festival?’

‘Oh–the heat that day!’ cried Miss Hargreaves.

‘Shall I ever forget,’ I murmured, ‘those’–(raspberries?)–‘strawberries?’

Miss Hargreaves clapped her hands.

‘Oh, how happy we were! Happy–and foolish! There was an interval, you see, Mrs Huntley, between the rehearsal and the actual festival. Norman and I suddenly felt we must have strawberries; nothing but strawberries it must be! So we bought a little punnet and set out for the park. Norman suggested it would be pleasant to eat our fruits on a boat in the Serpentine. So off we set, Norman handling the oars most awfully well. And then’–she raised her hands–‘the catastrophe!’

She paused and looked at me. It was my move.

‘The strawberries fell overboard,’ I ventured.

‘And you stretched out your hand over the side–’ she continued.

‘And you did the same–’ I said.

‘And–’

‘The boat turned turtle–’

‘And there we were,’ she said, crying mate as it were, ‘floundering about in the Serpentine!’

‘Good heavens!’ exclaimed mother. ‘You might have caught your death, to say nothing of drowning!’

‘It is such incidents,’ remarked Miss Hargreaves, ‘that link Norman and me very closely together. Very closely.’

The door opened and Marjorie came in. I wasn’t prepared to face her, leave alone Jim. Suddenly my courage deserted me; I felt the ground slipping away from under my feet. Excusing myself vaguely, I rushed out and went up to father’s room.

He was seated before his roll-top desk, examining a water-beetle under his ’scope.

‘My God!’ I groaned. ‘I’m going mad!’

I fell down on the sofa by the window. Horace, the penny-coloured Tom, spat at me and leapt on to a pile of George Eliot stacked on the floor.

‘You wouldn’t believe these things had so many legs,’ said father. ‘I’ve counted eighteen already. Or are those whiskers? Come here and have a look. What’s the matter with you this evening?’

‘That woman. She mesmerizes me. What am I to do? I went crazy. Made up tales about us both, and she confirmed them all–even added to them.’

‘Women are like that. Dare say the female of this species here are constantly saying they’ve got more legs than they really have. Wish I knew which were whiskers.’

‘Damn your water-beetles! There she is downstairs, probably spinning the most ghastly yarns. I wanted to make it up with Marjorie this evening, too. What am I to do?’

‘Have a drop of whisky. There it is, on The Times Gazetteer.’

‘I honestly believe,’ I said bitterly, ‘that if I was to say I’d been up in a balloon with her, she’d agree with me.’

‘I was impressed with that story of hers about Norway,’ said father. ‘Wonder if she ever met–who’s that fellow? Wrote plays–ah, Gynt, that’s the chap. Lord Gynt.’

‘I never heard a story about Norway.’

‘You never do listen. I say–look at this–this beetle’s not dead. It moved.’

‘Why shouldn’t it move if it wants to?’

‘But it’s dead. Remarkable. Pity we can’t get your Miss Molway under this thing. No knowing what we might not see.’ Jim suddenly came in. I could see she was cross.

‘Oh, there you are, Norman!’ she said. ‘What the devil do you mean, leaving us stranded with this wretched woman?’

‘I’m sorry, Jim. She got too much for me.’

‘Well, she’s certainly too much for us. Looks as though she’ll stay all night. Come down and get rid of her.’

‘She hasn’t said anything about a balloon, has she?’

Jim looked puzzled. ‘Balloon?’

‘Oh, all right,’ I said hurriedly. ‘I’ll come.’

When we got downstairs Miss Hargreaves was still holding forth. Marjorie looked at me coldly as I came in; poor mother was stifling her yawns.

‘Oh, yes!’ Miss Hargreaves was saying. ‘Norman and I have had many adventures together. And I have no doubt but that we shall have many more. Old I may be, but I am still ready for–’

I interrupted. I didn’t want to hear what she was ready for.

‘Isn’t it time Dr Pepusch was covered up?’ I suggested.

She looked up. ‘Ah, there you are, dear! Yes. Perhaps I had better go. Will you see me to my lodgings? Yes? I am temporarily staying in Canticle Alley, Mrs Huntley. My furniture is in store, of course. But as soon as I find a suitable property, I hope to get settled. Then you must all come and dine with me. I look forward to many musical evenings, many feasts of reason. By the way, my dear Mrs Huntley, I completely forgot. Are you quite recovered from this unfortunate fever?’

‘Fever?’

‘Scarlet, I believe.’

This wouldn’t do at all.

‘Come along, Miss Hargreaves,’ I said very loudly.

‘Who on earth told you I had scarlet–’ began mother. But I interrupted with a shout.

‘Look!’ I cried. ‘A stag-beetle! Mind out, Marjorie–’

Marjorie, who is really soft about the mothiest moth, screamed and waved her hands round her head. I flew to the curtains and poked about noisily.

‘Must catch it!’ I said. ‘Always wanted to breed them. Mother, call father. He’d be furious to miss this.’

‘Oh, what nonsense–’

‘Go on! Get father, I tell you.’

‘Wait!’ cried Miss Hargreaves. ‘Let us be calm. Close all the windows and place this screen before the chimney. I will get my butterfly net–’

‘Too late!’ I screamed. ‘He’s escaped. All your fault, Marjorie. Miss Hargreaves, run out and see if you can shoo him back.’

‘Father!’ mother was crying from the hall. ‘There’s a stag-beetle here.’

For a few moments the wildest confusion prevailed. Fever, scarlet or otherwise, was forgotten.

‘No good getting father now,’ I said.

Miss Hargreaves returned from the front door. ‘It has often occurred to me,’ she said a little breathlessly, ‘that since there exists a beetle who resembles a stag, there may possibly exist a stag who resembles a beetle. The frolics of nature tend often to mimicry.’

While she spoke she went to the mirror and adjusted her hat which, in all the sudden rushing about, had sustained a slight list. We all looked at her wonderingly as she patted it more to one side and carefully arranged the veils.

‘That’s a–’ Mother paused, then smiled and spoke. ‘That’s a very original hat, Miss Hargreaves.’

‘You like it?’

‘Well–’ Mother pursed up her lips thoughtfully. ‘Yes, I think it suits you, really. Not everyone could wear it, of course.’

‘I made it myself, Mrs Huntley. It is Lapland beaver.’

Marjorie giggled.

‘Really?’ said mother. ‘Lapland beaver! Well, fancy!’

‘Hats,’ remarked Miss Hargreaves, ‘were getting so abysmally dull. I felt a gesture had to be made to the world. Of course, you will understand’–her voice sank reverently–‘while dear Agatha was alive, it was not possible for me to appear in anything but the most sober apparel. But now that she rests–we hope – in peace, I do feel I am more free to express my true nature.’

There was a moment’s silence. Everybody was wondering, of course, who Agatha was; nobody liked to ask.

‘So,’ continued Miss Hargreaves, ‘I feel the time has come for me to strike a new note in the harmony of the trivial round. You girls are not going to have all the fun! Oh, no! The hat–of course–is a mere symbol–worthy enough, I trust, to be flung over the windmill, if there are any windmills left in the modern world.’

‘You can always tell a person by their hat,’ said Marjorie rather spitefully.

Miss Hargreaves looked her up and down in one second, from tip to toe. It was like the look she had given Henry on the night of her arrival, as though she were weighing the value of an object offered for sale at an auction. A devastating look. Marjorie coloured.

‘Precisely!’ remarked Miss Hargreaves. ‘I abominate the commonplace!’

She walked rather stiffly to the hall. I followed her uneasily. ‘Good-bye, my dear Mrs Huntley,’ she said, ‘and you, dear Miss Huntley. So you are called Jim? How quaint! A family version of Jemima, I presume. Yes? No? Goodbye. Good-bye!’

She ignored Marjorie. As I opened the door for her she said to me, loudly enough for the others to hear, ‘Is there something wrong with that poor girl’s finger-nails, dear? I noticed they were a most extraordinary colour.’

It was a rapturously beautiful night. By the gate she stopped and pointed with her stick up to the sky.

‘The Seven Stars and Orion!’ she declaimed. ‘I feel I could seek Him who made them. But not in one of these dreadful aeroplanes. No! Balloons for me!’

‘What–did–you say?’

‘Balloons, dear! Balloons!’

‘What made you think of balloons, especially?’

‘How can I tell, dear? A floating thought. No more.’

Uneasily I suggested calling a taxi, thanking God there wasn’t such a thing as a balloon-rank. ‘It’s too far for you to walk,’ I said.

‘No, dear! I prefer to walk on such a night. Give me your arm.’

Slowly we crossed the road. Here, again, she stopped, right under the board which announced that Lessways, ‘this highly desirable property’, was for sale. Little did I realize how dangerous a place it was to stop at.

Pensively she looked up to the starry sky.

‘We are breath from the mouth of God,’ she stated. ‘For a time we remain anchored in the harbour of this little planet, but somewhere, beyond the starry oceans, lies our true home. Do you not sometimes feel you could sail there, dear?’

‘You can go if you like,’ I said brusquely.

‘Shall we,’ she continued, ‘like the beautiful picture of Lord Leighton–a distant connection of mine, by the way–together twine heavenwards? Ah, me! What would I not give to shatter this sorry scheme of things and–’

Instead of shattering the sorry scheme, she shattered, with her stick, in a histrionic gesture, the agent’s board above her.

‘What is that?’ she snapped. ‘What hit my stick?’

‘You hit the board.’

‘What board?’ She turned, looked up at it and read, in the light of the street lamp, ‘This highly desirable property for sale’.

‘Oh, I must take a note of the agent’s name!’ she cried. Out came the little ivory diary. ‘Dictate to me, dear!’

I did so, never guessing what would be the consequences. I was glad to find anything to distract her mind from heavenly excursions. ‘H. Carver & Co., Larkin Street, Cornford,’ I read.

‘And now’–she snapped her diary sharply into her bag, and grabbed my arm tightly–‘let us proceed. Do not hurry, dear; do not hurry.’

Ashamed to be seen with her–frankly I admit it–I avoided the High Street and led her by many side streets towards Canticle Alley. Over and over again she would stop, treating me to a long semi-metaphysical discourse. Once she stopped in Dome Place where some urchins were playing marbles.

‘Ah!’ She pointed over to them. ‘The working classes at play. How very charming!’

‘Hi, Alf !’ I heard a shout. ‘Got your catapult?’

‘Come on,’ I muttered, almost dragging her along, ‘otherwise these brats will get difficult.’

‘Let them, dear. Let them! Why not?’

A marble whizzed past her hat, missing it by one inch. Four ragged pairs of legs went scuttling round a corner; four heads popped out by the shelter of a faggots-and-peas shop.

‘Dear me!’ she murmured, mildly surprised. ‘Did somebody throw something?’

‘Yes, a marble. Come on. I shan’t be responsible for your safety if you insist on standing here.’

After the longest and most tiring walk in my life we reached her lodgings, one of the stucco houses in Canticle Alley where every other window displays a notice ‘room to let’. She made me go in with her. She had taken two rooms, a sitting-room and a bedroom. It was very dowdy and close and smelt rather of stale food.

‘A dreadful place!’ she said. ‘But there are times, Norman, when I like to taste the dregs of life. I was perhaps too strictly brought up. I remember, even as a small child, I was constantly finding my way into Grosvenor’s stables. All my life I have been too restricted, Norman. Now that Agatha is dead, I mean to sow what has long been unsown. It is a little withered, perhaps; but it is still an oat.’

‘I shouldn’t if I were you,’ I said. I jumped back. Sarah had flopped down from a chair and was scratching ambiguously at my legs. ‘Down, doggie, down!’ I kicked the brute furtively; I always have loathed dogs who sniff and scratch at your legs.

‘Where’s Dr Pepusch?’ I asked.

‘Oh, in my bedroom. He always stays by my bed. You must come in and say good night to him.’

‘No, thanks. I must be going now.’

‘I would ask you to play to me, dear. But the piano–I see it is a Wade and Meggitt–is really only fit for firewood.’

She took off her hat and rang the bell for her landlady, Mrs Beedle. Then she sat down by the fire and warmed her hands while Sarah cowered defensively at her feet, showing her teeth at me. ‘I wonder,’ murmured Miss Hargreaves pensively, ‘why my mind turns upon balloons?’

‘I shouldn’t think of things like that,’ I said uneasily, edging back to the door.

‘Those dreadful finger-nails!’ she murmured. And louder, ‘Who was that young woman, dear? No friend of yours, I hope?’

This was too much for me. I left the house without saying good-bye to her. The rest of the evening I spent alone in the Happy Union, drinking tastelessly. I was filled with foreboding.