A Few Green Leaves

by Barbara Pym

  19

  Walking through the woods to the cottage, Emma decided that she couldn’t always be carrying food to Graham. Sometimes he would have to be content with her company only, her conversation, and whatever else he might be prepared to ask and she to give. With this in mind, she had decided to wear a new dress, in colours possibly more becoming to her than her usual drab greys and browns. For it was impossible not to remember her meeting with Claudia and the contrast between them. So she had chosen a dress with a flowery pattern in shades of blue and green, in a more youthful and fashionable style than she usually wore. She did not feel entirely happy in it, especially when she met Adam Prince on her way and he greeted her almost with the equivalent of a wolf-whistle. She hoped that Graham wouldn’t think she had made a special effort because she was coming to see him, but realised that there was no way of disillusioning him if this was what he was determined to think.

  When she came up to the cottage, however, and saw that he was in the front garden reading a newspaper (it looked like The Guardian), it was obvious that something had caught and held his attention and that he was not in a mood to notice what she was wearing. When he looked up from the paper and saw her all he said was, ‘Did you know Esther Clovis had died?’

  ‘Miss Clovis, dead? No, I certainly didn’t know. Is it there? Has somebody written about her?’

  ‘Yes, a rather fulsome bit.’

  Emma sat down on the grass beside him, conscious of a shared ritual silence, a meditation on the passing of a formidable female power in the anthropological world of their youth. Esther Clovis, with her tweed suits and dog-like hair, was no more.

  ‘Of course there’ll be a memorial service,’ Graham said. ‘I’ll get Claudia to go.’

  Could one make this kind of use of one’s estranged wife? Emma wondered, but did not comment. ‘I suppose I might go,’ she said. ‘Miss Clovis did help to get me a grant once. But won’t you go yourself?’ She had not mentioned meeting Claudia and now the moment seemed to have passed.

  ‘I can’t spare the time – just look at all this.’ Graham indicated a stack of folders and an untidy bundle of typescript.

  Emma bowed her head. She ought to have noticed. ‘How’s the book going?’ she asked, conscious of a somewhat naive approach.

  ‘It isn’t exactly going’ he said, ‘so you see I can’t be popping up to London for all and sundry.’

  ‘You’d hardly call Miss Clovis “all and sundry”.’

  ‘Well, you know what I mean. Anyway, that was the whole point of my coming here and taking this cottage – so that I could get on with my book. You’re looking very fetching today,’ he said, suddenly noticing her. ‘New dress?’

  ‘Newish’, said Emma. She was not particularly pleased to be described as ‘fetching’ and, remembering Adam Prince’s reaction, perhaps the dress had not been a good idea after all. She must remember to explain to her mother when she reverted to her old drab servant’s morning-dress cotton. I’m thinking of writing a book – about this village,’ she said, to change the subject, ‘making a kind of survey. There’s quite a lot to be observed, more, really, than in my new-town study.’

  ‘That sort of thing has been done,’ said Graham in an idle, uninterested tone, coming to sit beside her on the grass. ‘Do people pass along this way? Will anybody see us?’ He started to kiss and fondle her in a rather abstracted way. Emma found herself remembering Miss Lickerish and the goings-on in the ruined cottage during the war. ‘I hope we should have some warning,’ she said, ‘see them coming through the trees.’

  ‘This is rather pleasant, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘I feel I deserve a break from my work,’ he added, as if being with her could be no more than that.

  Adam Prince, taking an afternoon stroll (strictly for his health, he was not fond of walking), came up to the cottage and saw Graham and Emma ‘canoodling’, as he put it, on the grass. The sight filled him with distaste. One would not have expected this sort of behaviour from Miss Howick, though it was obvious now why she had appeared in a new dress. An upsetting sight in the woods was how he thought of it as he turned back and went home to solace himself with a cup of Lapsang.

  Emma’s old grey cotton dress was eminently suitable for Miss Clovis’s memorial service, and as the hot weather had broken she was wearing a raincoat, another appropriate garment which, unknown to Emma, had been the uniform of the male anthropologist of the fifties. She spent the time before the service looking round to see if there was anyone she knew rather than admiring the austere beauty of the eighteenth-century church. She recognised Professor Digby Fox, who was to give the address, with his wife Deirdre, old Dr Apfelbaum, rather bent now but still as cantankerous as ever, and a gaunt white-haired woman (could it be Miss Clo vis’s friend Gertrude Lydgate?) sitting with an elderly clergyman. Various others, less distinguishable in the crowd, were obviously feeling the need to honour Esther Clovis in death as they had feared her in life. But where was Claudia Pettifer? Emma had so far been unable to find her, but she had a further opportunity to look around her when she was listening to the address, only half hearing what Digby Fox was saying – how you might think that this elegantly formal setting was not what Esther would have chosen, but that it was in another sense appropriate as typifying the high standard she expected and demanded from all those whose work she was called upon to sponsor … few would forget her advice to young researchers about to enter on a period of fieldwork, the comments that must often have seemed harsh, as was her criticism of written work that fell short of the high standard she demanded…. Here Digby seemed to falter, to repeat himself and stammer nervously, as if he expected Miss Clovis to be looking over his shoulder at the address he had prepared or to be listening somewhere up above. Emma felt sorry for him but as he floundered her attention wandered, and she saw that Claudia was sitting almost directly opposite her, at the end of a row. She was wearing a black coat of a silky material, a small close-fitting hat concealing her frizzy hair, and dark glasses.

  ‘One thing we can be sure would have pleased her,’ Digby continued, ‘and that was the manner of her going – suddenly, you could almost say brusquely, reminding us of her own manner, that sense of bringing something to an end which, in her opinion, had gone on long enough…

  Here the address did end. The congregation stood up and sang ‘He who would valiant be’, their voices rising in thankfulness and relief.

  It might be possible to speak to Claudia on the way out, Emma thought. Would she remember that they had met at the college wine-party? She was standing alone, perhaps waiting for somebody, and when Emma went up to her the blank gaze of the dark glasses was disconcerting, but she persevered.

  ‘We met at that summer wine-party,’ Emma reminded her.

  ‘Of course! Red or white on the sunburnt lawn. Rather different from today.’

  It was raining heavily and the two women put up umbrellas. Then, to Emma’s surprise, Claudia took her arm and hurried her away from the church and into a side street where there were several small restaurants.

  ‘Would you have a drink with me or a bite of lunch?’ she asked. ‘It must be lunch-time now. Shall we go in here?’ She almost pushed Emma into a doorway where a smiling Greek was waiting to show them to a table. ‘I hope you can bear Greek food,’

  Claudia said. ‘I just had to get in somewhere and this seemed the nearest place.’

  ‘You saw somebody you didn’t want to meet?’

  That’s right! I spotted him in the church – you really did me a good turn, coming up to me like that. Sherry? I don’t think it’s a day for ouzo, somehow. Did you know Esther Clovis? I was sent to the service by my husband.’ She made a face and took off her dark glasses – it must have been almost impossible to see anything in the dim light of the restaurant – and smiled at Emma in an almost conspiratorial way. ‘This weather makes my hair go all frizzy,’ she said, taking off her hat. ‘I mean even more frizzy than usual.’

  So the fashionable hairstyle was natu
ral – her hair really was like that. Emma had not been prepared for this friendly approach, but perhaps Claudia was like that with everyone and did not regard Emma as a person to be treated differently. Was it reassuring or humiliating? She hardly knew, for, in spite of their dalliance on the grass, weren’t she and Graham no more than ‘just good friends’?

  ‘Shall we have moussaka or do you like those little meat balls or kebab or something?’ Claudia was saying.

  Emma was reminded of Daphne, perhaps even now preparing a Greek meal on the outskirts of Birmingham or picnicking on the ‘delightful wooded common’ (though not on a day like this), and found herself smiling. ‘Our rector’s sister goes to Greece every year,’ she said, as if in explanation, ‘but now she’s living with a friend near Birmingham.’

  ‘Birmingham,’ Claudia repeated. ‘Graham was once offered a job in Birmingham. Should we have a glass of wine?’

  Emma was not surprised that Claudia appeared to make little of her conversational opening. Mention of ‘our rector’s sister’ would be enough to put anyone off. But Birmingham had obviously struck a chord somewhere and she began to wonder if Claudia was the kind of woman who would turn everything into some personal reference.

  The food arrived – moussaka (‘safer’, perhaps) – with a glass of red wine.

  ‘Dear old Digby Fox,’ said Claudia, beginning to eat, ‘not exactly an inspired address.’

  ‘I suppose he said what most people felt about her,’ said Emma. ‘Miss Clovis was rather terrifying, I always thought.’

  ‘That must have been in the days when you and Graham were at L.S.E,’ said Claudia in an easy tone. ‘How’s he getting on in the cottage?’

  ‘Oh fine, I think,’ said Emma, as if she didn’t really know. ‘I’ve been to see him once or twice.’

  ‘Should we have a pudding? I don’t suppose there’s much to choose from – vanilla ice-cream or tinned fruit and custard, that’s usually the kind of thing. Or “baklava” – shall we risk the baklava?’

  ‘Nothing more for me, thank you,’ said Emma. It was disconcerting that Claudia appeared more interested in what pudding she was going to eat than in Emma’s possible relationship with her husband.

  ‘What is the baklava?’ Claudia asked the hovering waiter.

  ‘Very nice,’ he said unhelpfully.

  Claudia peered around her to see if anyone else was having it. In the end she decided to give it a try but when it was brought she began to regret it. ‘It looks exactly like the moussaka,’ she complained. ‘Don’t you think so? It probably is the moussaka, with a different filling. This has been rather a mistake,’ she said, in a jolly all-girls-together sort of way.’ How wise you were not to have anything else! Are you wise –generally, I mean?’

  Emma had the feeling that Claudia wouldn’t wait for her answer even if she was prepared to give it – she was only making conversation, hardly interested in whether Emma was ‘wise’ or not. After a pause Emma said, ‘I haven’t married, so you can draw your own conclusions,’ but Claudia wasn’t really interested in Emma’s unmarried state either and immediately turned the conversation to fit her own experience. ‘I sometimes think I married too young,’ she said. ‘It would have been better to have started off on a career and then married…. I suppose it’s easier to go shares,’ she added, studying the bill. ‘After all, we did have the same.’

  You had the baklava and I didn’t, Emma .felt like saying, but of course they ended up by a scrupulous division of the bill and the working out of an appropriate tip.

  It was still raining when they stood in the doorway with their umbrellas. It appeared that they were going in opposite directions, so they separated with polite mutual murmurings. It had been ‘so nice’, this unexpected meeting. Emma realised that she had done Claudia a good turn in helping her to avoid somebody she didn’t want to see, but she herself had gained very little from the encounter. But had she really imagined that they would be able to have a serious talk about Graham?

  It was not until she had gone too far along the street to turn back that Emma realised that, possibly in the stress of some obscure emotion, she must have taken Claudia’s umbrella in mistake for her own. And it was an umbrella of inferior quality. She wondered what the possible significance of that could be.

  20

  ‘Hunger lunch, did you say?’ Martin Shrubsole was addressing his mother-in-law. ‘Today, is it?’

  ‘Yes, at Miss Lee’s house, where I went for that coffee morning,’ said Magdalen. ‘I’m looking forward to the lunch – she always does things so nicely.’

  ‘Well, I hope not too nicely today,’ said Martin in a pleasant, even tone, only very slightly reproachful. ‘After all, it is supposed to be in aid of the starving people of the Third World, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, of course, but it will be just homemade bread and cheese, fruit and coffee – a very simple meal.’

  ‘One of my favourite lunches,’ said Martin smoothly. ‘A good deal more than they’ll be having in some parts of Africa or India.’

  ‘Oh Martin, we’ve got to eat something,’ said Avice, who was also going to the lunch. Martin did not always feel so strongly about the Third World and was obviously going on like this for her mother’s benefit. ‘And we do pay for it.’

  ‘Yes, we put money in a bowl,’ Magdalen explained. ‘Miss Lee has to take her expenses out of it – that’s only fair.’

  ‘You really ought to have a mush of beans or rice and drink water,’ Martin went on boringly, but Avice pointed out that you probably wouldn’t be able to get the right sort of beans.

  When they got to Miss Lee’s cottage, however, the lunch was not quite as delicious as usual. For some unspecified reason she had been unable to bake her own bread and a shop-bought white sliced loaf was provided, certainly unlike anything that would have been eaten by the starving peoples of the Third World, yet the nastiness of its soft, moist, cotton-wool-textured slices was in some way curiously appropriate.

  The bread was taken without comment, and then somebody asked if there was any news of Daphne – had she settled down well in her new house with her friend?

  ‘We must hope so,’ said Miss Lee. ‘I suppose we shouldn’t know if she hadn’t.

  ‘Miss Blenkinsop is rather bossy, isn’t she?’ said Avice. ‘She’d want to have things her own way.’

  ‘But Daphne is the kind of person who’d give in to her,’ said Miss Grundy, obviously speaking from personal experience of a similar situation. ‘It makes life so much easier.’

  ‘But at least she’ll be able to stand on her own feet,’ said Avice. ‘She did need to be independent, get away from the rectory.’

  ‘Living with the rector in that big house – it might not have been all she’d hoped for from life,’ said Magdalen, feeling that as a newcomer she was justified in offering a general comment on the position. ‘Of course, I don’t really know the circumstances – but what will he do, the rector, now that she’s gone?’

  ‘Well, he’s coming here to this lunch, so that’s one meal settled,’ said Miss Lee. ‘Only a hunger lunch, I know, but that’s one less for him to think about.’

  ‘That letter in the parish magazine,’ said Magdalen. ‘I wonder if anyone….’

  At this moment Tom entered the room, followed by Emma and ‘that man living in the cottage in the woods’.

  Two men,’ Avice murmured to her mother. ‘We could have persuaded Martin to come if we’d known. Good heavens,’ she exclaimed, for now Dr G. and his wife Christabel came in, turning what had promised to be the usual gathering of village women into something of a social occasion. The senior doctor, the rector, the academic stranger….

  ‘Martin not here?’ Dr G. asked Avice.

  ‘No. He has his ante-natal clinic this afternoon and I always feel he needs a good lunch before that, so I’ve left him a casserole in the oven.’

  ‘Christabel thought it would do me no harm to have a hunger lunch,’ Dr G. said. ‘How are you managing without y
our sister?’ he asked Tom.

  ‘Quite well, thank you,’ said Tom. ‘People have been so kind,’ he added mechanically, feeling that he ought to say this even if they hadn’t been. There had not as yet been any response to his plea in the parish magazine.

  ‘I suppose it’s not really so different for you to eat this kind of thing,’ said Dr G. conversationally, ‘bread and cheese for lunch. We pay for it, don’t we?’ he asked, rather too loudly. ‘Put something in the kitty?’

  ‘There’s a bowl by the door,’ said Miss Lee in a lower tone. ‘We usually make a charge of twenty-five pence which covers expenses and leaves something over for the good cause.’

  ‘Twenty-five pence?’ said the old doctor. ‘That would be five bob in proper money, wouldn’t it? That seems a bit steep for a slice of pappy bread and a sliver of mousetrap.’

  ‘It’s not supposed to be a proper meal,’ Christabel said sharply. ‘And you’ll be having your dinner tonight,’ she added, as if speaking to a child.

  ‘Do you have to join in all these village activities?’ Graham asked Emma. They were standing a little apart and took the opportunity to move out from the open doorway into the garden, where others were already standing or sitting with their sliced bread and mug of weak coffee.