A Few Green Leaves

by Barbara Pym

  ‘Yes, of course, I’ve seen them.’ Daphne wondered what the evening entertainment in a Greek village would have been. Presumably not a Tupperware party, though the Greeks were by no means unaware of the advance of modern technology. All those plastic bags on the seashore and she had once seen a priest carrying a blue plastic bag, but all that seemed very far away now, as if it had never been.

  30

  Christmas brought Beatrix and Isobel to the cottage, and Emma resigned herself to a quiet female celebration of the festival with decorous eating and drinking. There seemed little prospect of any other form of entertainment.

  ‘We could have asked that friend of yours, Ianthe Potts,’ Beatrix said, when it was too late to do anything about it. ‘Would you have liked that?’

  ‘No,’ said Emma, remembering Ianthe’s summer visit.

  Beatrix did not improve matters by asking Emma whether she thought Graham and Claudia would be spending Christmas together in their new house in Islington. Christmas was the time when people tended to come together, was it not, she declared, in her usual dry way.

  The post that morning had brought a card from Graham. ‘With love’ had been added in his handwriting to the printed message. Emma stood fingering the card, wondering if there was any significance in the fact that he had chosen to send her a woodland scene (in aid of the Foresters’ or Gardeners’ Benevolent Fund). Could it be regarded as a subtle reminder of the time he had spent in the cottage in the woods? But men were not usually subtle in that way – women were too apt to read into their actions things that were never even thought of, let alone intended.

  ‘That’s an attractive card,’ Beatrix said. ‘Not entirely suitable for Christmas, perhaps, but an agreeable picture. Did Claudia choose it?1

  Emma now saw that it probably was so. Wives did buy cards for their husbands, even sent them out.

  ‘He might have sent you a present, considering all you did for him,’ Beatrix said.

  Emma had thought of this too but preferred not to put it into words. ‘I didn’t do all that much,’ she said.

  ‘You helped him find the cottage, which helped him to finish his book – you consoled him when he was estranged from his wife –I’m sure you did some cooking. I think that’s a good deal.’

  ‘And yet it’s all relative – look how much more Miss Vereker did for Tom by stumbling on the site of the D.M.V., quite unconsciously,’ Emma said.

  ‘Of course he knows such a lot about these things,’ said Isobel dutifully. ‘Was his wife interested in history when she was alive? It must have been a bond between them.’

  ‘I suppose it could have been, though one hopes there was more than that between them. Perhaps he only took to history after her death, but we hardly know anything about poor Laura, do we?’ Beatrix turned to Emma.

  ‘I don’t know anything more than you do,’ said Emma, almost indignant. ‘She died such a long time ago – I think he hardly remembers her now.’

  ‘That seems rather a lot to know,’ said Beatrix, ‘as if you had talked about it.’

  ‘Oh, I think we did just mention it one evening,’ said Emma casually.

  ‘Just mention…,’ Beatrix repeated.

  ‘I should have thought it was a mistake his sister leaving him like that,’ said Isobel. ‘A clergyman does need a woman about the place to see to things, in the parish as well as in the house. It isn’t as if he would ever marry again, is it?’

  ‘Who are we to know that?’ said Beatrix. ‘When Laura died, Daphne was on the spot so quickly that he didn’t have a chance to think what he wanted to do, but now it might be different.’

  Isobel looked almost embarrassed, as if she might be somehow involved, but said nothing.

  ‘After all, widowers usually do marry again,’ Beatrix went on.

  ‘I haven’t really known many widowers,’ Emma said, appearing to dismiss the subject. Graham did not come into that category and Tom, being the rector of the parish, hardly seemed in her eyes to count as an eligible man. Yet in some respects there was no doubt that he might be regarded as such.

  ‘You must have nearly finished your writing-up now,’ said Isobel firmly, as if interviewing Emma about her future, ‘so I dare say you’ll be going back to London to start another project?’

  Emma said nothing. It seemed too much to have to think beyond Christmas and to consider anything as unattractive-sounding as ‘another project’. But she must never forget that Isobel was a headmistress of the old-fashioned type – there was still the hint of the stern but kindly gleam behind the pince-nez.

  ‘If you don’t want to stay here after Christmas,’ Beatrix said, ‘there is one of my old students who might be glad to rent the cottage. She’s recovering from an unsatisfactory love affair and writing a novel.’

  Emma laughed.’ Just the kind of person to come and live here,’ she said. ‘And if Daphne comes back from Birmingham, they could get together and compare notes on blighted hopes.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think we want that to happen – not Daphne coming back,’ said Beatrix firmly. ‘Tom’s life must go in some other direction now.’

  Looking round the church for the midnight service (he did not dare to call it ‘Mass’) Tom was pleased to see that there was a larger congregation than usual. He was especially glad about this because one of his Christmas cards had taken the form of a ‘newsletter’ from an old friend which, with its catalogue of achievements of himself, his wife and their five children, had made Tom feel more than usually inadequate. And now the entry of Sir Miles and his party from the manor coincided with a magnificent burst of sound from the organist playing Messiaen. In spite of being a church organist, Geoffrey Poore was not a believer, but he appreciated the opportunity of playing on a fine instrument, like some Jane Austen heroine, Jane Fairfax, perhaps, and her gift of a pianoforte. Tom, feeling the Messiaen engulf him, wondered if it could be the effect of the apricot brandy which he had laid on the organist’s doorstep as a Christmas present. Certainly the building was filled with unusually splendid sound which gave a grandeur to the occasion.

  Emma, taking note of the party from the manor, wondered if they had earlier welcomed carol singers with mulled wine and mince pies. No doubt Miss Lee would know what had been done in the old days. Emma, sitting between her mother and Isobel, found herself wishing that she had a man with her, though the idea of the man being Graham did not appeal to her. Some nebulous, comfortable – even handsome – figure suggested itself, which made her realise that even the most cynical and sophisticated woman is not, at times, altogether out of sympathy with the ideas of the romantic novelist.

  ‘Of course you’ll be wanting to go to church,’ Heather said in an accusing tone.

  ‘Well yes, I think so,’ Daphne agreed, but with a marked lack of enthusiasm. Naturally she would want to go to church at Christmas but she was not particularly attracted to either of the nearby churches, both of which she had attended on various occasions. One was unashamedly high, with stifling clouds of incense and the service conducted in a rapid mumble that she found difficult to follow, while the other was excessively evangelical, too light and too bright, with a welcome from the smiling vicar that was more than she could stand. This vicar also had a dog and was sometimes seen on the common, tweedily dressed but instantly recognisable as a clergyman. So going to church was not as easy as might appear. In the end she chose the dark crowded Midnight Mass of the higher church, while Heather waited up rather grimly in her housecoat and hairnet, complaining that she couldn’t possibly sleep until Daphne came in. She would lie awake listening for her key in the lock, and of course Bruce would bark.

  On Boxing Day Daphne wondered, not for the first time, whether it had been a mistake leaving Tom, ‘to his own devices’, as she put it, especially at a time like Christmas. Was it not her duty as an elder sister to keep an eye on him, even if not to help him in the parish? She began to plan a visit, after the New Year when the weather improved. Bruce could safely be left with Heather
for a few days.

  31

  Daphne’s New Year visit coincided with a Friday evening meeting of the history society which Tom had arranged to take place at the rectory. His first thought on her arrival was not so much pleasure at seeing his sister again as relief that she would be able to make the coffee which was usually provided on these occasions.

  Daphne’s first thought on entering the rectory was how cold it seemed after the kindly warmth of centrally heated Birmingham. And why hadn’t Tom switched on the radiator in the hall?

  ‘You’ll have to get it warmer than this for the meeting tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Who’s the speaker?’

  ‘Dr G.,’ said Tom.

  ‘Whatever can he have to say?’

  ‘He’s promised to give an informal talk about the history of medicine, starting in the seventeenth century and working up to date – and he’s got quite a good collection of old surgical instruments.’

  ‘I don’t think people will like that,’ said Daphne doubtfully. ‘What gave you the idea?’

  ‘I was visiting the hospital and that set me thinking about death and how people died in the old days.’ Once, during such a time, even when he was at the bed of a patient, he had found his thoughts going back to Anthony á Wood and his total suppression of urine – ‘if thou canst not make water thou hadst better make earth’…. He had spoken before now with Dr G. about this and speculated on the nature of Wood’s complaint. Dr G. had seemed pleased to be invited to give a talk to the society – it seemed to emphasise his rightful place in the village in a way that Tom had not acknowledged before.

  Adam Prince was one of the first to arrive for the meeting and chose a good seat near the fire which Daphne had lit in the drawing-room. Next came Beatrix with Isobel and Emma, then Miss Lee and Miss Grundy and the usual group of elderly women from a nearby village, Tom’s devoted helpers and copiers of parish registers. Magdalen Raven came rather late – there had been some last-minute crisis with the children – but Dr G.’s wife Christabel came even later, arriving with her husband and sitting in the front of the room. As the only woman wearing a long skirt (of wine-coloured velvet), she felt justified in looking around her critically, not so much at what the other women were wearing as at her surroundings in the rectory drawing-room. There was some good furniture (though in need of polishing), but the bowl of hyacinths, now a little past their best, seemed to her an inadequate flower decoration for the time of year. Beech leaves could have been preserved in glycerine and there was so much in the autumn gardens and hedgerows that could have been gathered and dried for winter use. But Daphne had been away – though she must have started the hyacinth bulbs before she went – there had been no woman at the rectory these last months, apart from the doubtful ministrations of Mrs Dyer. It showed, the absence of a woman of taste, though poor Daphne had never been that….

  Beatrix had temporarily forgotten that Daphne was returning for a visit to her brother, and the sight of her in one of her baggy jumble-sale tweed skirts, standing awkwardly in the doorway, welcoming people as if she were still hostess at the rectory, filled her with dismay. This was not how things should be….

  Now Tom stood up and introduced Dr G. (who of course needed no introduction), and Dr G. began his talk.

  Looking around at his audience, he saw that it was predominantly elderly, the kind of audience that should have been addressed by Martin Shrubsole, who he noticed was not present tonight. But he was glad not to have to answer possible questions from the younger doctor, not to have to ‘cross swords with him’, as he put it, on certain areas of disagreement. For the talk, contrary to Tom’s hopes, was not so much a history of medical practice from the seventeenth century as a harking back to the ‘good old days’ of the nineteen thirties before the introduction of the National Health Service – before the days when everybody had a motorcar and would even walk to the surgery from the next village. If only people would walk more – Dr G. emphasised his favourite topic – get out into the country, go into the woods, the surgery would be practically empty! He was glad to notice that some younger men were taking up the practice of ‘jogging’, as he believed it was called – it was a fine sight to see them trotting along on a winter morning. Ladies could do it too, no harm in that, but under medical supervision, of course. We couldn’t have ladies dropping down dead, could we…?

  There was a ripple of laughter from his audience, Emma observed, and it occurred to her that Dr G. might joke about elderly people dropping down dead because, being an old man and nearer his own end, he was obliged to make light of such things.

  ‘So, ladies, only rather cautious jogging for you,’ Dr G. repeated, and on that joking note he concluded his talk and invited questions.

  Adam Prince got up to ask the first. He liked the idea of himself jogging – weather permitting, of course – but he knew better than to expose himself to ridicule by putting a question on the subject. Instead, he asked about diet in the old days and Dr G. was launched on another of his favourite topics, though it was difficult to gather from what he said whether diet was better then, with no frozen or ‘convenience’ foods, or worse because of lack of variety.

  Tom tried to lead Dr G. back into earlier times, even Victorian medicine would be more appropriate to an historical talk, but Dr G. was not to be drawn. He had noticed Daphne and Miss Lee doing something with cups at the back of the room and suspected that it was time for coffee. People could examine his collection of surgical instruments if they wished. They were spread out on the table in the window and he would be happy to demonstrate their use if required. There was more laughter, and cups of coffee and plates of biscuits began to be handed round.

  'Not quite all I’d hoped for,’ said Tom to Beatrix, ‘but I think people enjoyed it and I suppose that’s the main thing. Isn’t that what life’s all about?’ he added, hardly expecting an answer.

  Beatrix felt herself unequal to making any comment on this observation and left it to Isobel to remark that Tom must be glad to have his sister here.

  ‘Glad?’ Tom seemed to consider the meaning of the word before he answered quickly that yes, of course he was glad to have Daphne here. But he hardly knew what his feelings were at seeing his sister in her old place. They had not as yet spoken much about the purpose of her visit or gone more deeply into her life in Birmingham, though she had described the two churches to him and even asked his advice about which one he thought she should attend. That sounded as if she intended her stay in the house by the delightful wooded common to be a permanent one, as he had always understood. Yet at the back of his mind was the uneasy suspicion that people in the village expected Daphne to return one day. Also, he couldn’t help remembering that she had not taken her bed with her.

  ‘And how do you find the village?’ Beatrix asked Daphne. ‘In February it must seem bleak after Birmingham.’

  ‘Oh, there can be bleakness in Birmingham,’ said Daphne. ‘I suppose February is a dreary month anywhere – except perhaps in warmer climes.’ She used the deliberately stilted poetic phrase half jokingly, but it concealed her determination not to go to the cottage near Tintagel this summer but to have a holiday in Greece again.

  ‘I expect the rectory strikes cold,’ said Beatrix, also using an emotive phrase. ‘You have central heating in your new house, I imagine?’

  ‘Oh, yes, but…,’ Daphne hesitated, ‘there’s something rather lovely about winter here – the light on the grey stone houses and cottages.

  ‘Would you call it grey exactly?’ Beatrix said. ‘Cotswold stone is said to be more honey-coloured, isn’t it, though perhaps in a winter light….’

  ‘And do you know,’ Daphne went on, ‘the iris stylosa are out in the garden. I always look out for them every year.’

  ‘I expect there are some pretty gardens where you live now,’ Beatrix ventured.

  ‘Yes, people are great gardeners, but it’s not the same, somehow. It’s sort of…,’ she hesitated, then said in a lower tone, ‘suburban, if you see
what I mean.’

  ‘But there’s the common opposite your house, isn’t there? All those dogs bounding….’

  Daphne’s expression softened and she smiled. ‘Ah yes, the common. Bruce does so love the common – he has two or three walks a day. But of course here….’ She seemed about to enumerate the advantages of village life for the dog, but Beatrix was quick to point out what a lot of traffic there was going through the village.

  ‘I could take him in the woods,’ Daphne said.

  ‘But you’d have to keep him on a lead. Remember Sir Miles’s game birds.’

  ‘Yes, I’d forgotten that.’

  ‘And then of course there’s the problem of sheep and lambs.’

  Beatrix persevered, trying gently to discourage Daphne from any idea that she might be happier living at the rectory again. The feeling she had experienced on seeing Daphne at the start of the evening had strengthened and now she knew that she was prepared to do all in her power to prevent Daphne from coming back to the rectory. Like a character in a Victorian novel, a kind of female villain, she might even take violent action, though she was uncertain as yet what form this could take. An idea had been germinating in her mind ever since Christmas, perhaps with the arrival of Graham’s Christmas card and the possibility that Claudia might have chosen it for him, that it was more than ever her duty to ‘do’ something for Emma, since she seemed to be incapable of doing anything for herself. Having, as she saw it, failed with Graham (and had he really been worth the effort?), could she not do something to bring Emma and Tom together, unlikely though such a union might seem?