Miss Hargreaves

by Frank Baker

  ‘Out, out bold Beauvais, thrust thy ancient sword

  ’Mongst those who never Magnify the Lord . . .’

  (Nobody hated visitors to the Cathedral more than Canon Auty. He had once rudely turned out a gang of Colonials who wandered into the south transept just as the choir was lined up for Evensong. Amongst them was a retired bishop of the Windward Isles who, it is said, spent the rest of his windy life disputing in various papers the Canon’s well-known and somewhat un-Anglican views upon the liturgies of the Eastern Church.)

  I saw a good deal of Lady Hargreaves. But did she ever vouchsafe to me more than the flicker of a perfectly bred eyelid? The old devil did not. Upon one occasion when I happened to come across her making a sketch of the Norman font, there was not even a flicker. I was always running into her. Popping in and out of the Deanery; exercising Sarah along Meads (Sarah never yapped now, and not a tree did she sniff at); writing verses in unexpected corners of the Cathedral; soaring at thirty-five–never more–up and down the High Street in the Rolls-Royce. I did my best to avoid her. But even if I didn’t see her I was constantly being tormented by the smoke that rose from the chimneys of Lessways. Once, when the wind blew a lot of soot over my music paper, I stood at the window and cursed her, shaking my fist at the house and watching the smoke, knowing I was powerless to do anything. You knew it was expensive smoke, fired from the very best household coal. I watched it in a gloomy reverie as it plumed away into the saffron evening sky and floated serenely round the Cathedral spire.

  They were wretched days for me. When you make something, make it well as I had, endow it with a title and send it out into the best society, do you sleep easily in your bed when it spurns you and treats you like dust? Do you? If you do you’re a stronger man than I am.

  For some time at least I kept my vow not to have anything more to do with her. Of course, she helped me to keep that vow in a way. But I don’t mind telling you it was torture–pure torture, made the more unbearable because everybody used to ask me why I wasn’t friendly with her any more. Jim was particularly impossible in that way. It was a funny thing. Before, when she’d been merely Miss Hargreaves, mother and Jim had practically accused me of snobbery. Now, when she was Lady Hargreaves, Jim, at any rate, reproached me for not calling upon her.

  ‘You ought to go and see her,’ she kept saying. ‘After all, she owes her life to you–she told us so herself.’

  ‘Oh, she’s far too grand for me now,’ I said. ‘I reckon I know where I’m not wanted. She’s too high-up for me, Jim. I’m not in that Close set and never will be.’

  ‘How stupid you are! She’s probably offended because you haven’t been to see her. It’s your duty to go.’

  ‘I agree with Norman,’ said mother unexpectedly. ‘I think he’s quite right not to go there. If she wanted to see us she’d come here, but she doesn’t want to. It’s been a very unfortunate friendship for the boy, and the less he has to do with her the better. Personally I should hate to see him making up to her as everybody else does, just because she’s a ladyship.’

  ‘Thank you, mother,’ I said. I thought it jolly sporting of her.

  You’ll want to know what the position was between me and Marjorie. Well, I’m sorry to tell you (or am I sorry?) that she’d quite given me up. She’d started to go round with Pat Howard. No, I can’t honestly say I was sorry. There was a lack of imagination about that girl which had always worried me. She never quite came to life, somehow, though she looked pretty enough. I mean . . . Pat Howard! Greasy hair, padded shoulders, check plus-fours and a stinking little three-wheeler that belched blue smoke at you from an exhaust like a ship’s siren . . . No! Pat Howard no doubt had his points. But I never liked him. I can’t say I’d trust my money to the bank he works in.

  And that brings me to the question of Connie’s money. Where had she got it all from? She’d given five thousand for the house alone and a rumour had it that she’d paid Mr Carver, the agent, the entire sum in bank-notes. I knew in a roundabout way, via Pat Howard as a matter of fact, that she had no account at the Metropolitan and I’d never seen her going in or out of any of the other banks in the town. Had I (and this was only one of many such questions which I could never answer) made the bank-notes too? Suppose they turned out to be duds? A nice kettle of fish that would be–my kettle of fish as well as hers, for I hadn’t the slightest doubt she would, in some ingenious way, plunge me directly into it. I should get boiled; not she.

  On the other hand, imprisonment would at least mean the end of her in Cornford. It would be nice to visit her in jail and gently point out to her that I was still master of the situation. I toyed with the idea a good deal; perilously I approached a peak. It got possession of me. Whisperings round Cornford: Lady Hargreaves is a common crook: marked coldness from the Close: the Dean is twice out when she calls: discovery–by me–of a printing-press for turning out bank-notes in the vast cellars of Lessways: headline–‘Lay clerk discovers criminal plot in Cathedral City’: the Trial: ten years: visits to Connie in prison: I appeal to the Governor to allow her to play the Chapel organ. Safely locked up I at last have her under strict control. No more high aristocratic jinks.

  ‘My God!’ I said, ‘I’ll scotch her!’

  The plot thickened in my mind, in my room late at nights. She was climbing too damn high. Some rungs, if not all, must be wrenched from her ladder. Get the rumour round, get the tatty trotty tongues of Cornford wagging, and it would be the beginning of the end of her. She was not popular with the townsfolk after the Cathedral-closing incident, and the weather in the Close is as fickle as any April day can offer. I didn’t suppose, of course, that the bank-notes were forged; I never carried the plot so far as trial and imprisonment. But it would be good enough if some such rumour got round.

  It’s no good your reading this and condemning me and saying I’m horribly malicious. I had to do something about it. I couldn’t sit back for ever and watch Connie capering in her Cloud-Cuckoo-Land of Deans and Archdeacons. One kind word from her, one smile in her old fashion, one wink of recognition–and I would not have acted as I did.

  It was easy enough. I sent an anonymous letter to Mr Carver the house-agent, choosing him because I knew that once a typed letter gets filed in a business house, it’s as good as placarded on the town walls. And I wanted the story to buzz from the town, not from the Close. Nobody believes stories that start in the Close, everybody believes what they hear in the barber’s shop, over the counter of the Happy Union, or what the office boy tells the messenger boy from the bank.

  I was very careful about it all. If you’re going to be Anon you’ve got to do it well; otherwise you’ll end up by merely being incognito. I went to town one plain day and spent half a crown in a typewriting office in St Martin’s Lane. This is what I wrote:

  ‘Sir. This is a warning to you. Do not trust the woman who calls herself “Lady Hargreaves”. Neither her title nor her money are genuine. She is a dangerous member of the I.R.A. If you value Cornford Cathedral, keep an eye on her.’

  I signed it ‘Ulsterman’.

  How well I remember that afternoon. I was standing in Charing Cross post office with crowds of busy people buzzing about me. The letter had just been dropped into the country box. I stood there, biting my fingers and wondering how I could get it out again. I knew at once that I had done a mad thing. But the whole trouble with me, as you’ll have found out, is that I never realize I’ve done a mad thing until I have done it.

  The evening after that I was in the Happy Union, sitting alone in the corner by the fire. The wind was wailing outside, the rain pouring. I was sad. Bitterly I regretted sending that letter, the first and the last anonymous letter of my life. I don’t know whether you’ve ever tried it, but sending anonymous letters gives you a kind of thin, mean feeling inside, as though in trying to hide your own personality, you’d only succeeded in giving birth to a new and detestable one. I’ve always hated that fellow Anon whose poems appear in so many anthologies; now, sne
aking into the seclusion of the Happy Union under his name, I hated myself.

  The swing-door opened suddenly, and I heard Henry’s voice, talking to somebody with him. I was in the public bar (father and I hate the saloon lounge) and I was expecting Henry to come in. But he didn’t. I heard him go through to the saloon, and then I heard Pat Howard’s voice. I sighed. If Henry went into the saloon with Pat Howard, we might just as well not be friends any more, I thought.

  Well, I eavesdropped. Anon would; it’s in character. Anyhow, I couldn’t very well help overhearing what they said which is the typical sort of excuse Anon would make.

  ‘What’s the matter with Huntley, these days?’ I could hear Pat saying. I guessed they were drinking pink gins.

  ‘God knows!’ So Henry. And I could hear his shoulders shrugging. ‘He’s miserable to death over this Hargreaves woman.’

  ‘Most extraordinary yarns are going round. Marjorie thinks he’s quite dotty, you know.’

  ‘Oh, he’s not dotty,’ said Henry. (I knew Henry felt uncomfortable.) ‘Of course, it’s been a frightful blow to him the–way the Hargreaves has cut him dead.’

  ‘There always was something a bit odd about Huntley,’ said Pat, ‘even as a kid. Too damned introspective, you know. As for the old man, well, of course, he’s quite mad.’

  I got up. I couldn’t stand that. No. That was too much.

  I went into the saloon and walked up to the bar. Henry and Pat were the only people there.

  Henry went a flaming red when he saw me; and he does go very red, Henry does, right up to the roots of the hair. I felt sorry for him in a way.

  ‘Look here,’ I said to Pat, ‘you may say what you like about me and we shan’t quarrel. But if you say anything more about my father, Pat Howard, I’ll wipe your nose on the floor.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t mean anything,’ he began quickly. ‘Have a drink, old man. I–’

  ‘Of course Pat didn’t mean anything,’ said Henry. ‘Have something to drink and be nice to us, old boy.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I won’t drink with you. As for you, Henry, I hope that bath will stick in your throat and choke you. You can drown yourself in it–’

  ‘Here, old boy, don’t go on like this.’

  ‘I will go on like this.’

  But instead of going on like that, I turned suddenly and went out of the bar. In the street I hunched up my coat miserably from the driving rain. I felt suicidal. I’m very fond of old Henry, and it did seem to me that he’d let me down terribly. The whole of the Hargreaves business suddenly mounted up like a cloud over me. I felt I couldn’t breathe.

  While I stood there the side door of the Happy Union opened and a man came out, fumbling with the catch of his umbrella. ‘Now,’ I heard him saying, ‘I shall really expect to see you at Mass on Sunday, Mrs Paton. I know it’s very difficult for you, but you must try to come. Good night.’

  ‘Good night, Father.’

  It was Father Toule. I remembered that Mrs Paton, who runs the Happy Union, was a Roman Catholic. For a moment I stood lost in thought, watching him walk up the hill towards the presbytery in Bethany Lane. Then I ran after him.

  ‘Father Toule!’ I called, a few yards behind him. He turned.

  ‘Yes? Who is that, please?’

  ‘It’s me. Norman Huntley. Huntley’s bookshop. You remember–’

  ‘Of course. How are you, Mr Huntley? And how is your father? Very wintry, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m all right, thank you. At least, I’m not–not really. I awfully want to have a talk with you, that is, if you’ve got time.’

  ‘Oh? Certainly. Come and have a cup of cocoa with me at the presbytery. Dear me! What a night!’

  So it was a night. We struggled against the wind, up to the top of Candole Street, round the corner by the Northgate, and eventually down into Bethany Lane, by the recreation park. It was impossible to talk in the driving wind and rain. Father Toule insisted on my sharing his umbrella, which I thought kind but silly of him, as I only got the drips from it down my neck.

  We went into the presbytery and he lit a small gas-stove in the parlour. I had been in once before to bring some books round. It was, I thought, a terribly dreary room, with much the same atmosphere as a dentist’s waiting-room. It was full of sacred pictures and dried flowers, with a lot of blotting-pads and penny pamphlets on the walnut oval table in the middle. It seemed a little more cheerful that evening with the gas-fire alight. Father Toule kept skimming round me, making me comfortable, offering me cigarettes and going in and out of the room to some mysterious kitchen down a dark staircase to see about the cocoa. There was an awful draught from one of the opened windows, but I didn’t like to tell him. After some time the cocoa was ready and I sat with the steaming cup before me, stirring it vigorously and wondering how on earth I was going to say what I wanted to say. It was getting on for ten. Father Toule didn’t try to make me talk; just said a few things about the weather and books. He’s a very small man, quite young, with the most extraordinarily innocent expression and grave blue eyes. He’s got rather a comic little laugh and he tries so hard to make you comfortable that you can’t help feeling uncomfortable.

  ‘Well’I choked over the boiling cocoa. How much easier it would all have been if he’d offered me sherry! ‘The fact is–’ There was no sugar in the cocoa. I wondered whether to tell him.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Father Toule,’ I said, putting the cocoa on the table and determining to plunge into my story, ‘Father Toule, suppose I told you something fantastic, such as that I’d been swallowed by a whale? If I swore it was the truth, you wouldn’t laugh at me, would you?’

  He did laugh. But not at me, which was kind.

  ‘I expect everybody laughed at poor Jonah, don’t you? And he must have found it hard to put up with. No, Mr Huntley, I’ll try not to laugh. What is the matter?’

  ‘I’d better get it out at once. I’m terribly worried. I’ve created something. I’ve created a woman. She’s alive now in this town. Her name is–Lady Hargreaves.’

  There was a long silence. Not a shadow of a smile crossed his face. It was quite expressionless. Then–‘Would it be better for you to tell me all about it, Mr Huntley?’

  I told him everything, right up to the swan affair. The only thing I left out was about our night on the river. I couldn’t bear the idea of that getting round, and even presbyteries have ears.

  ‘Do you believe me?’ I asked.

  ‘I believe,’ he said, ‘that you believe you are telling a true story. Nobody could come and make up a story like that.’

  ‘I could,’ I said.

  ‘Ah!’ he smiled. ‘Yes. You could. But I don’t think you’d walk up Candole Street all the way to Bethany Lane on a wild night just to pull my leg, would you, Mr Huntley?’

  I shook my head. ‘You believe me, then?’

  ‘I said I believed you believed you were telling a true story. But whether you have the true explanation–ah! That’s another matter.’

  ‘I’m positive!’ I cried. ‘I feel it in my bones. There can’t be any other explanation, there can’t be. Everything fits in with what I made up from the first.’

  ‘Well, if you are certain you have–made this woman, Mr Huntley, why do you come to me?’

  ‘Because–because–Well, I haven’t got proof, have I? And I don’t know what to do about her.’

  ‘Ah. You haven’t got proof. Then you are not quite certain?’

  ‘I see. You’re another one who doesn’t believe me,’ I said bitterly. The rain beat against the windows; a calendar was flapping on the wall from a partly opened window.

  ‘No, no!’ he said quickly. ‘After all, none of us can know what is in the mind of God, can we, and–’

  ‘That’s it!’ I cried. ‘That’s just it! I felt you’d–there was that saint you were interested in. That’s what made me come to you. The saint who flew.’

  ‘Oh, you mean St Joseph of Cupertino? Yes. You must
not take such stories too seriously. There is very little evidence but do have another cigarette that he actually flew.–– He was supposed to be suspended above the ground. But even that is not known for certain.’