by H. E. Bates
Williamson called from the car: ‘Excuse me, sir, but does Mrs Craxton still live here?’
‘Yes, she does.’
‘Does she happen to be in?’
‘Afraid not. Gone into King’s Lynn to do some shopping.’
‘Any idea when she’ll be back?’
‘Not till after lunch. She’s having lunch there with some friends.’
Williamson was quiet. A few faint light beads of rain were now falling on the wind-screen of the car. He was suddenly conscious of a new growth of pain in his leg.
‘Anything I can do? Any message or anything. I’m her husband.’
‘No. Thanks all the same. No.’
‘Garden’s in a damn mess. Like a jungle. Take me six months to trim it into anything like decent shape. Spent the whole of my war in Cairo. Damn dull sometimes. But cushy, I suppose you could call it, cushy. Did you get around?’
‘Here and there. Here and there.’
He drove the ancient Austin back up the road. Rain was falling faster now, leaving a tender sparkle on fields of young oats, on hedgerows breaking into an early summer miracle of elderflower, honeysuckle and wild rose.
The rainy air was very still. The oat-fields were also very beautiful and far above them, invisible in the gloom, skylarks were singing what seemed to be their endless, heart-breaking song.
Oh! Sweeter Than The Berry
Miss Shuttleworth, who much preferred to worship birds, and indeed animals, rather than God, believing them to be much nearer the Kingdom of Heaven, gazed with irritated dismay at a letter that had just arrived by the Friday afternoon post.
‘The Reverend H. Sloane Arrowsmith will be calling on you at 8.30 p.m. on July 16. If this is for some reason inconvenient to you he would be greatly obliged if you would let him know.’
‘Hell,’ Miss Shuttleworth said. ‘The cheek. The confounded impudence. The old suet-head. Who in the name of sanity does he suppose I am?’
It further annoyed her that the letter had arrived in the middle of the highly essential task of bottling off and racking last year’s elderberry wine, a task for which she had arrayed herself in a blue-and-white striped butcher’s apron, her garden hat, a floppy red straw, and a heavy three-string row of scarlet glass beads. She was particularly pleased with the wine, which at not infrequent intervals she tasted. Beyond all doubt it promised to be of vintage quality. Clearly the long hot summer had put more than a little pep into the berries. Yes, she told herself as she tasted it yet again, this was the true, the blushful, the real McCoy.
Suddenly she found cause for even further, greater irritation.
‘Holy grasshoppers and cockroaches,’ she exclaimed aloud, ‘the nut-head. Today is the 16th. Typical parsonic twittery. What a man. I always said his brain was covered with goose pimples.’
Her annoyance was now so great that for some moments she was quite incapable of further action. When she did move at last it was to look at the kitchen clock.
‘Good grief! Twenty past eight already! I suppose I could disappear. Yes, I could. I will. I’ll lock up and go watercressing. Or mushrooming. Or some damn thing. Anything but that – that – Oh! in the name of John and Joshua I can’t even find words.’
She had no sooner muttered all this aloud to herself than she looked out of the window and down the garden path. Tall hollyhocks, silken, in shades of pink and red and cream and yellow, lined the path on either side, the evening sun lighting up the many spires until they were positively lamplike.
Suddenly this ethereal summer picture was darkened by the figure of the Reverend H. Sloane Arrowsmith (‘What a name, what a name,’ she told herself), tall, black-habited, slightly stooping, looking very much like a pall-bearer suffering from acute dyspepsia.
‘Great cod-fish,’ she told herself, ‘not even time to offer a blessed prayer.’
‘Am I a little premature?’
He probably had been at that, Miss Shuttleworth told herself, betting at the same time that his mother must have been damn glad to get rid of the burden.
‘The Misses Thompson were not at home. I’d allowed half an hour for them. Hence the slight dislocation of plan.’
It always struck Miss Shuttleworth that the voice of the Reverend H. Sloane Arrowsmith hadn’t been oiled for a very long time. It grated, both on the nerves and on the teeth.
‘You did of course expect me? This is a new idea of mine. You see I felt I ought to get a little closer to my family.’
Miss Shuttleworth sharply resented the idea of being part of a parsonic family so much that she was on the verge of choking. She managed to swallow hard instead and said:
‘Of course, of course. Won’t you come in?’
The dark, cadaverous figure of Mr H. Sloane Arrow-smith entered the low-ceilinged kitchen, stooping still more.
‘Ah, I see I’ve caught you in the middle of domestic tasks.’
‘Wine. Last year’s crop. Going to be the best vintage since ‘59. Have a drop?’
‘Well, if you’ll excuse me I think not. I had a cup of tea with old Mrs Sanders only an hour ago.’
Miss Shuttleworth couldn’t think what on earth difference that made and at the same time urged the Reverend H. Sloane Arrowsmith to remember the Biblical injunctions ‘take a little wine for thy stomach’s sake’, and ‘Wine which makyth glad the heart of man’.
‘That, I fear, is my trouble. It doesn’t makyth glad in my case. It merely gives me chronic indigestion. Anyway I see you know your Bible.’
‘Suckled on it. Took it in with me mum’s milk. I can quote till the cows come home. Nice bits and dirty bits alike.’
‘Which, if I may say so, makes it all the more extraordinary that we never see you in church.’
‘There are other altars.’
The Reverend H. Sloane Arrowsmith, not quite understanding what this implied, looked puzzled.
‘You mean you belong to some other faith?’
‘Naturally. The faith of the sun, the sky, the moon, the earth and the waters under the earth. The fish, the butterflies, the foxes that have no holes and all the fowls of the air. ‘And smalle fowles maken melodie and slepen all the nicht with open eye”.’
‘That last quotation is surely not Biblical?’
‘Not on your nelly. Chaucer. Great man Chaucer. So rich and earthy. I always thought I wouldn’t have minded being Chaucer’s lady-friend.’ Miss Shuttleworth helped herself to another glass of elderberry, took a sublime swig at it and belched ever so slightly.
‘You know,’ she said, ‘you really should try a drop of my wine. I have varieties other than elderberry. Red currant, white currant, parsnip, potato, lemon, orange, elderflower, blackberry. Golden Berry. May I tempt you?’
Successive glasses of elderberry had by this time brought a slight flush to Miss Shuttleworth’s cheeks, so that she looked almost ready for the role of temptress. The Reverend H. Sloane Arrowsmith was, however, not immediately to be tempted.
‘Golden Berries? I don’t think I am familiar with them.’
‘Cape Gooseberries. Those Chinese lantern things. Mr Shawcross up the road grows them for Covent Garden. Now and then he has a surplus and brings me a box. Quite, quite superlative. You really must try a drop. I insist. I really insist.’
‘Well, the merest modicum.’
What bloody silly language, Miss Shuttleworth told herself. Typical parsonic bull.
She rose to fetch and pour out, into a tall thin glass, the Golden Berry wine. It glowed with purest gold. She held the glass to the light, so that even the Reverend H. Sloane Arrowsmith was moved to remark that it looked to be ‘something of a distillation.’
‘Nectar,’ Miss Shuttleworth assured him. ‘Nectar. Purest nectar. Those loaves and little fishes would have gone even further with a drop of this. Come on, try it, drink up.’
The Reverend H. Sloane Arrowsmith drank up. His face too glowed.
‘Delicious. Quite delicious, I must say.’
‘You know what I was thinki
ng the other day? I mean about these Golden Berries?’ Miss Shuttleworth, like Pilate, did not stay for answer. ‘I was wondering why we don’t have collective names for fruits. After all we have a gaggle of geese, a skein of swans, a murmuration of starlings, a pride of lions, a covey of partridges and so on and so forth. Why not fruit? A plume of plums, for example, a Corinth of currants, a perrydown of pears. So for these Golden Berries. Why not a guild of Golden Berries?’
The Reverend H. Sloane Arrowsmith was familiar with the fact that Miss Shuttleworth, with her downy moth-like appearance, was universally considered eccentric if not plain crazy, but this, it seemed to him, was rather much. Thus slightly put off balance he was unprepared both for the fact that Miss Shuttleworth was generously replenishing his glass and was at the same time expanding her theory of collective names.
‘And if for animals and birds and fruit why not for people?’ Miss Shuttleworth let out several light joyous peals of laughter. ‘I thought some up. A licence of publicans. A lie of lawyers. A mumbling of magistrates. A jaundice of judges. Like them? Then a curry of curates and a boggle of bishops. But you know the one I like best?’
No, the Reverend H. Sloane Arrowsmith confessed, he didn’t.
‘Well, drink up and I’ll tell you.’
Mr Arrowsmith drank, slightly deeper than before – the very sweetness and gold of the wine was inducive to deeper sipping – and Miss Shuttleworth told him.
‘A surplice of parsons! How’s that? Short spell of inspiration, I thought. Got it late one night after three or four glasses of my red currant. Not only delicious but quite potent. Try some? Knock the Golden Berry back and I’ll fetch a bottle of the red currant. It’s got a certain something, a je ne sais quoi—’
‘No, really, Miss Shuttleworth, really—’
‘Bunkum. It’s a source of inspiration – a positive candle to the soul. You’ll probably compose the sermon of your life after it.’
The Reverend H. Sloane Arrowsmith wasn’t sure if he needed a candle for his soul but there was no time in which to say so before Miss Shuttleworth was out of the room, gaily laughing, in search of a bottle of red currant.
‘Hold that up to the light.’ On her return she held the bottle up to the brilliant light of the evening sun. ‘There’s a beacon for you. There’s nature showing her altar lamp. Worship in front of that – that’s my motto.’
Miss Shuttleworth found a cork-screw and pulled the cork with the loudest of pops, smelt of it delicately and with a certain professional air and then proclaimed that you wouldn’t find a better in the celestial spheres.
‘Take a good slow draught of it. It needs treating with circumspection, if not reverence. I never made better. In vino felicitas, that’s what I say, and this is the absolute felicitas.’
Miss Shuttleworth suddenly whirled the heavy three-string row of red glass beads round and round, as if to celebrate her triumph with the wine, so that it was as if the wine had leapt from the bottle and solidified into purest crystal scarlet drops.
‘Like it? Approve? Find it good?’
The Reverend H. Sloane Arrowsmith confessed he did. Exceedingly good.
‘Splendid. I’ll let you have a few bottles for early communion.’
‘Now steady, Miss Shuttleworth. I mustn’t get all my communicants tipsy.’
‘Why ever not? Splendid way to start the day. Come winter time I often have a good stiff swig of parsnip before I get to grips with my sausage and bacon.’
Miss Shuttleworth took a long deep draught of wine, at the same time urging Mr Arrowsmith to do likewise.
‘I must say it strikes me as being a degree potent – I – I—’
‘I also make cherry brandy. None of your shop branded stuff but the real thing. Nothing but morello cherries, from my own garden, and V.S.O.P. Remy Martin. Splendid brandy. That’ll warm up your gills.’
Several minutes later the Reverend H. Sloane Arrow-smith, who by this time felt that his gills had already been considerably warmed up, found himself amazingly acquiescing to a by no means miniature glass of cherry brandy. He was obliged to confess that that too had a degree of excellence. After several sips he felt, in fact, constrained to use the word superlative, which he repeated warmly, several times.
‘By the way,’ Miss Shuttleworth said, entirely and irrepressibly changing the subject, ‘there was something I wanted to ask you. Of course I don’t attend church service regularly but only at christenings, weddings and funerals. But tell me this. Why have you gone and mucked about with the Lord’s Prayer?’
‘But have we? I wasn’t aware—’
‘Appallingly and illogically balled it up.’ Miss Shuttle-worth fortified herself with a good deep draught of cherry brandy, at the same time taking the opportunity to replenish Mr Arrowsmith’s glass. Mr Arrowsmith, slightly pained by the thought that the church had mucked up the Lord’s Prayer, hardly noticed and had no word of protest.
‘Mucked it up. Good and proper. And shall I tell you how? You lot no longer say the most powerful and glorious words in it, do you? For thine is the Kingdom the power and the glory. Good grief, if the Kingdom isn’t the power and the glory what in the name of all the saints is it? I reckon you’ve murdered the doxology.’
‘Miss Shuttleworth, I think there are cogent reasons—’
‘There’d better be. Good, solid, logical ones too. And do you use that appalling modern version of the New Testament?’
‘Yes, we do.’
‘Codswollop. Reads like a batch of Urban Council Minutes from the backwoods somewhere.’
‘Miss Shuttleworth, I think perhaps I ought to be trotting along—’
‘You know what that wretched version needs? A drop of this. A drop of wine in its shaky soul and bones.’
For a moment the Reverend H. Sloane Arrowsmith wasn’t quite sure that his own soul and bones weren’t the slightest bit shaky. The room seemed to spin ever so slightly. Miss Shuttleworth again twirled her beads and again they looked like drops of purest scarlet crystal.
‘Oh! must you? But you must finish up your red currant and your brandy first. One simply can’t waste nectar of that sort. Drink up, do.’
The Reverend H. Sloane Arrowsmith drank up. Ten minutes later he was making his way down the garden path, between the glowing silken hollyhocks, by no means steadfastly. Miss Shuttleworth went as far as the garden gate with him to say good-bye and he shook her effusively by the hand, at the same time saying how beautiful her garden looked, the hollyhocks especially. In answer she broke off a deep pink hollyhock and tucked it into his buttonhole.
He afterwards proceeded down the road in a certain state of more than slight confusion. A curry of curates, a boggle of bishops? A surplice of parsons? or was it a surplus of parsons? Either way he found it unamusing. He even had a sneaking suspicion that it contained an element of mockery.
He paused to rest and reflect for a few moments by a field gate. He wasn’t quite sure if Miss Shuttleworth needed prayer or if she was past praying for. He finally decided that she did indeed need prayer and that this was as good a moment as any to offer some.
Long experience had always insisted that he knelt for prayer. His knees wobbled. Faintly he sank down on them in the grass. For some moments, eyes shut, he tried to find words of prayer to fit the illogical, eccentric, crazy character of Miss Shuttleworth, but nothing of a remotely original or appropriate nature came.
The only words he could think of, since by now he was feeling more than slightly dazed and sick, were ‘Help her, Oh! Lord. Help her. For thine is the Kingdom, the power and the glory. For ever and ever—’
And as he said the words the hollyhock, pink as the setting sun, fell slowly, pure silk, from his buttonhole, and seemed to blossom in the grass.
Bonus Story
Music for Christmas
First published in 1951, ‘Music for Christmas’ is a comic portrayal of provincial rivalries, involving a musical snob with London tastes, a north Midlands woman favouring local tale
nt, and, relaying gossip and innuendo between the two, a grocery deliveryman.
For several weeks before Christmas Miss Peploe had been run off of her feet, organizing the concert. It was to be a very special concert. Her ears felt almost bruised by the telephone.
Nowadays, in these bad times, even at Christmas, it was very hard to get people interested in good music, especially in good, live music; radio and television had killed so much of that. It was very hard to raise the necessary funds to get the right people to take tickets and above all to get the committee to see that one must have decent artists. Almost everything depended on one’s being bold enough to get decent artists; on one’s ability to give the affair, as it were, a London tone.
It was hardest of all to find out from day to day what was going on, what people felt, what they thought and what their reactions were. Miss Peploe was aware always of the gathering, even at Christmas-time, of vague clouds of local prejudice.
‘You see, they don’t know,’ she would say. ‘It’s not London. How can they know?’ And sometimes, when she did not know herself, she would say, too: ‘Sometimes I think it’s something psychological. It must be psychological.’ It was always the way in a little town, she thought, and sometimes she felt she would never have been able to keep in touch with things at all if it had not been for Mr Parr. Miss Peploe called Mr Parr her little Gestapo.
Miss Peploe’s house of Edwardian brick stood in the upper, residential part of the town. Deep old shrubberies of laurel and fir and guelder rose hid from the street a garden in which the principal feature was a large summer-house thatched with mouldering straw. In this summer-house Miss Peploe had once held two concerts of music for small strings, but they were not appreciated. There had been an elusive smell of arsenical weed-killer in the air. A violinist had complained that it was not possible to tell if he were playing on strings or cobwebs and afterwards there were some very pointed remarks.
Mr Parr arrived two or three times a week on a large delivery bicycle with a deep wicker-work basket, taking and delivering orders for groceries.