by Barbara Pym
She knew all Jessie’s clothes, the sage green jumper-suit, the grey tweed overcoat and the skirt that didn’t quite match it, the blue marocain ‘semi-evening’ and the flowered crepe which had been her ‘best’ summer dress for some years now. It had a band of plain colour let into the skirt to lengthen it which dated it as having been new some time before 1947. Miss Doggett’s hands moved idly among the fabrics, jersey, tweed, crepe, wool, cotton, until they suddenly touched velvet. Had Jessie a velvet dress? She tried to remember one, but failed, and so took down the hanger and brought the dress out. It was a blue velvet, long, with a square neck and tight-fitting sleeves. But when had she bought it? It was a good material, better than Jessie could have afforded. Constance Driver had once had one very like it, made specially for her at Marshall’s. Surely it was this very dress! Jessie had shortened it and altered the neck in some way.
Miss Doggett stood with the dress in her hands, trying to think what this discovery could mean. Jessie must have hidden it away when they were sorting out poor Constance’s things. Well, perhaps there was nothing much in that. She may have had a secret longing to possess a velvet dress, though she did not usually show any interest in clothes at all. Nevertheless, it gave Miss Doggett an uneasy feeling, which made her go over to the dressing-table and open the drawers. The bottom one was full of underclothes and stockings, quite unremarkable, nothing at all daring or unsuitable. There was a new pair of nylon stockings in a cellophane envelope, but everybody had those nowadays. The left-hand top drawer held handkerchiefs, gloves and one or two scarves. Miss Doggett lifted the pile of handkerchiefs and took out a larger one from the bottom. It was a man’s handkerchief, the kind a woman might use when she had a cold. It was neatly marked with the initials, F.C.D. Fabian Charlesivorth Driver … with an agitated movement Miss Doggett tugged at the handle of the right-hand drawer, but it would not open. It was locked.
She sat down rather heavily on the bed, still holding Fabian’s handkerchief in her hand. The locked drawer, she thought, what could be in it? And why should Jessie have one of Fabian Driver’s handkerchiefs? Had he dropped it accidentally when he was visiting them, or had it come into Jessie’s possession in some other way? Could it be that there was something between him and Jessie?
Miss Doggett was now in a state of considerable agitation. She was angry at what seemed to be Jessie’s deceit and yet excited at the same time. She went downstairs and made herself a pot of tea, hardly knowing that she did so. She longed to confide her discovery to somebody, to discuss, and brood over it, and began to consider the suitability of people she knew in the village. Most were married women too busy with their children and household cares; Mrs. Crampton and Mrs. Mayhew were stupid fluttering creatures; widows, she thought scornfully, with a silly, sentimental view of life. Mrs. Cleveland seemed to be the only person who might be at all suitable, and, who indeed, could be more so than the vicar’s wife? One should always be able to take one’s troubles, hopes and fears to the vicarage.
Miss Doggett finished her tea and took the tray into the kitchen, leaving it on the draining-board. Then she put on her mackintosh and a top-heavy-looking maroon felt hat, took her umbrella from the stand and set out.
It was raining heavily as she opened the vicarage gate and the laurels outside Nicholas’s study window were dripping wet. The garden wasn’t what it used to be in the Pritchards’ time, she thought. The grass was ragged and there was nothing in the front beds but a few straggling asters and nasturtiums.
Jane Cleveland herself came to the door. She was wearing an apron, and hastened to explain this unusual circumstance by telling Miss Doggett that she was bottling plums.
‘Or, rather, trying to,’ she added. ‘Nicholas is doing most of the work. The jars are just due to come out of the oven and have the boiling syrup poured into them. Then the tops must be put on — it’s all very nerve-racking.’
Miss Doggett, who knew all about bottling plums, was hardly listening to what Jane said. It was most disconcerting to find her doing anything at all, and she wondered whether it might not be better to postpone the real object of her visit and come back at a more propitious time.
‘I really wanted to ask your advice about something,’ she began.
‘Ask my advice?’ Jane’s face brightened. ‘But how splendid! Do come in. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind sitting with us in the kitchen while we finish these bottles? They won’t take long!’
Miss Doggett followed Jane rather unwillingly down the long stone passage that led to the kitchen.
‘It’s Miss Doggett, dear,’ said Jane, flinging open the door.
‘She wants to ask my advice about something.’
Really, thought Miss Doggett irritably, this is most unsuitable. For not only was the table covered with all the paraphernalia of bottling — jars, metal caps, rubber rings, plums, jugs, kettles, and sheets of newspaper — but the kitchen itself seemed to be festooned with enormous green leaves which hung down from everywhere that things could hang down from, the mantelpiece, the dresser, the clothes airer and the hooks in the ceiling which had once held hams and sides of bacon. Miss Doggett held her hands up to her hat, feeling as if she were in some Amazonian jungle and that poisonous snakes and insects might drop on to her from the great hanging leaves. To make matters worse, the vicar now emerged from behind a screen of leaves, his usual mild expression betraying that there was nothing at all extraordinary about the situation. He too was wearing a flowered apron which somehow took away from the dignity of his clerical collar, Miss Doggett felt.
‘Ah, Miss Doggett, how nice to see you.’ He advanced towards her with his hand outstretched. ‘My wife has probably told you that we are bottling plums. And I am trying to dry some of my tobacco leaves — ideally it should be done outside, in the sun, of course.’
Miss Doggett was quite unable to think of anything suitable to say. There did not even seem to be anywhere to sit down until Jane had removed a plate of plum stones from one of the kitchen chairs, and she found herself forced to chatter about trivialities, while the jars were being taken from the oven, filled up with boiling syrup and sealed.
‘There now,’ said Jane, screwing up the last cap. ‘I wonder if I shall have the courage to test these to-morrow. It seems to require such a very great deal of faith to lift them up just by their glass tops. I suppose it is like going over to Rome — once you see that it works you wonder how you could ever have doubted it.’
‘Really, Jane ..protested her husband, ‘I hardly think ..
‘But of course they don’t always work,’Jane went on. ‘Sometimes the top comes away in your hand.’
‘Personally, I find the other method more satisfactory,’ said Miss Doggett. ‘I don’t think I have ever had a failure.’
‘Well, well. We must try that next year,’ said Nicholas. ‘But it seemed rather more complicated.’
‘I always think it’s worth taking that little extra bit of trouble,’
said Miss Doggett complacently.
‘Oh, my leaves,’ said Nicholas anxiously, putting up a hand to touch them. ‘I wonder how dry they are or how dry they should be?’
Neither of the ladies seemed able to answer his question, and Jane suddenly turned to Miss Doggett and reminded her that she had wanted her advice on some matter. ‘I think you said you wanted to ask me?’ she added.
‘Well, there is no objection to the vicar hearing what I have to say,’ said Miss Doggett.
‘I feel I can almost count as another woman,’ said Nicholas, perhaps rather too lightly, for he was still thinking more of his tobacco leaves than of Miss Doggett’s mission.
‘The matter concerns a man and a woman,’ said Miss Doggett obscurely, for she hardly knew how to begin. The plums and tobacco leaves and the general scene of disorder in the vicarage kitchen had taken words away from her. She had imagined herself coming out with it on the doorstep, almost. It was to have been the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings rather than emotion recollected in
tranquillity.
‘Has there been some trouble in the village?’ Jane asked.
‘Some girl in the family way?’
Miss Doggett shuddered. She had certainly not thought of that. And yet who could tell where Jessie’s behaviour might have led her?
‘No; it isn’t that,’ she said firmly. ‘I may as well say quite plainly what it is.’
‘Yes, it doesn’t really help to know what it is not,’ said Jane seriously.
There was a short pause, and then Miss Doggett said in a kind of burst, ‘I think there may be something between Jessie and Mr. Driver.’
‘Between Fabian and Miss Morrow?’ repeated Jane, not quite echoing her words. ‘But what could there be?’
‘An understanding, a friendship, something more than that, perhaps. I hardly know — I feel I hardly wish to know.’ This last sentence was not strictly true. There was nothing Miss Doggett wished to know more.
‘Well, I suppose they could be friends,’ said Jane doubtfully. ‘But he is engaged to Miss Bates — unofficially, of course, but I think it is generally understood.’
‘My dear, I don’t think so,’ interposed Nicholas. ‘I think that was an arrangement you and Prudence made between yourselves. I don’t think it is in Driver’s mind at all.’
‘But how do you know what is in his mind?’ Jane asked indignantly. ‘How can you?’
‘We had some conversation the other evening when he was here to dinner. I understood then that he was not thinking of marrying again.’
‘So that is what men talk about when they’re alone together,’
said Jane angrily. ‘While Prue and I were struggling with the washing-up for six people you and Fabian were planning that he should not marry again!’
‘Well, dear, hardly that…’
‘I suppose he decided that once was enough and you encouraged him by pointing out that the Church frowns on the remarriage of widowers?’
‘My dear Jane, I could hardly have done that. You know quite well that there can be no objection to a widower remarrying. In any case, I feel we are getting off the point. After all, Miss Doggett hasn’t yet told us her reasons for supposing that there is an — er —understanding between Driver and Miss Morrow.’
Miss Doggett was in a difficulty here, for she did not feel that she could admit to having found one of Fabian’s handkerchiefs among Jessie’s. So she had to content herself with vague hints, indicating that she had had a ‘feeling’ for some time, that she had ‘noticed things,’ which were not really very convincing.
Nobody could quite see what was to be done at the moment. Jane was concerned only with Prudence, and the effect the news — if it was news — might have on her. Nicholas, perhaps unconsciously taking the part of men against women, felt that it was hardly anybody’s business to interfere at this stage. In any case there was nothing that he could do.
‘After all, I’m not an intimate friend of Driver’s,’ he pointed out. ‘Jane really knows him better than I do. I could, of course, say something if it appeared to be necessary, though I hardly know what…
‘Don’t you worry about that!’ said Jane vigorously. ‘I shall have no hesitation in facing him with it, if I feel that he has been trifling with Prue in any way. And why shouldn’t we go now?’ she turned to Miss Doggett. ‘The sooner the better, I think. Perhaps you would come with me, Miss Doggett?’
‘I should be very careful what you say, dear,’ said Nicholas in a warning tone. ‘After all, it isn’t really any of our business, …’ But the women were out of earshot by this time, and he turned back to his tobacco leaves with a feeling of relief. The whole thing seemed to be of very little importance, the kind of mountain women were apt to make out of what was hardly even a molehill. He went to the window and saw that it was still raining. He wondered whether Jane had remembered to take a mackintosh.
She had snatched up the first one she saw hanging in the hall, which happened to be Nicholas’s black clerical one and came nearly down to her ankles. She wore nothing on her head, but having naturally curly hair she seldom did, and brushed aside Miss Doggett’s offer of a share of her tartan umbrella. Miss Doggett could have wished that she did not look quite so odd, almost ridiculous. There must be nothing comic about the scene that was about to be enacted. It was altogether a most serious business, she had not until now stopped to consider its possible implications. ‘Something between Jessie and Mr. Driver . . something disgraceful, that possibility immediately sprang to mind when remembering Jessie’s strange personality and her mother’s unsuitable marriage. On the other hand, it might be something depressingly respectable and above-board, no more than a friendship… .
‘Prue will be so upset,’ murmured Jane, tramping through the rain in the long black mackintosh. ‘Miss Doggett, I’m sure you must be mistaken. Is Miss Morrow at home? Couldn’t we ask her? Though,’ she went on, ‘it might be better to ask Fabian right out. Women do occasionally get the wrong idea — imagine that there is more in a man’s feelings for them than there really is.’ As perhaps poor Prudence had done. But then she remembered ‘Miss Bates and her love affairs’… . Surely she could not have been mistaken?
‘Jessie has had her half-day to-day,’ said Miss Doggett. ‘She usually goes to the cinema. I doubt whether she will be back yet.’
‘Then perhaps we had better call on Fabian,’ said Jane, faltering a little, for even her courage was beginning to ebb. What were they going to say to him? Wouldn’t he regard them as a couple of interfering busybodies and be perfectly justified in so doing?
Fabian’s house looked very quiet and unoccupied as they approached it. Mrs. Arkright would have gone by now, leaving him a cold supper, with perhaps some soup that he could heat up himself. Jane and Miss Doggett were not to know that Fabian and Jessie were in the drawing-room having an argument about how Prudence should be told and who should do it. It was almost a relief to Fabian when the front-door bell rang and he saw Jane and Miss Doggett standing on the doorstep in the rain.
‘Ah, come in,’ he said, almost in a welcoming tone. ‘It’s a horrid evening to be out.’
He showed them into the drawing-room. Miss Doggett let out a kind of cry on seeing Jessie there.
‘So it’s true,’ she said, sinking down into a chair. ‘There is something between you!’
Jessie did not answer, and Fabian, who had his back to them, was busy with glasses and bottles which he took out of a corner cupboard. He supposed that the occasion was one which called for a drink; indeed, in his life there was hardly any occasion which did not.
‘Sherry or gin?’ he asked in a rather neutral voice, ignoring Miss Doggett’s question.
‘Oh, gin, thank you,’ said Jane indignantly.
Miss Doggett did not answer, so he placed a glass of sherry near her.
Jane took a great gulp of her colourless drink and then gasped and coughed. She had forgotten how unpleasant it was.
‘Fabian and I are going to be married,’ said Jessie calmly.
‘We were going to tell you, but you seem to have forestalled us.’
‘Yes, we are to be married,’ said Fabian. ‘It seems to have come to that.’
For an instant Jane bridled indignantly on Jessie’s behalf. It seems to have come to that! What a way to announce that you loved a woman and were going to marry her! Could men do no better than that these days? Then she remembered Prudence in her red velvet housecoat and her evasive answers to the questions Jane had put to her about her relationship with Fabian.
‘And what about Prudence?’ she asked. ‘You seem to have forgotten her.’
Fabian clasped his hands together in a despairing gesture. ‘Oh, what am I to do,’ he moaned, pacing about the room. ‘I haven’t had the courage to tell her yet. I blame myself for this.’
‘Yes, I think you should probably shoulder this burden,’ said Jane. ‘It is better to finish with one thing before you start another.’ And yet, she thought, how hopeless to say a thing like that; it was like
telling a child to put away one toy before he took out a new one to play with.
‘It was not much really between Prudence and me,’ said Fabian lamely; ‘perhaps less than you thought. We had dinner together once or twice and went to a few theatres. I certainly thought her very attractive and charming, but she could never take Constance’s place.’
‘So Jessie has done that?’ asked Miss Doggett in an interested tone. ‘And yet in many ways they are so unlike. Who would ever have thought… ?’
‘Prudence would have wanted so much/ Fabian went on, pacing about the room and giving the impression that he was talking to himself. ‘Her letters, wonderful letters in a way, but so difficult to answer. And then she would have wanted to change everything here. She used to go to Heal’s and look at curtain materials — she even chose a new wallpaper for Constance’s old room.’
Poor darling Prue, thought Jane, how sure she must have been. ‘I suppose I could tell her what has happened,’ she said. ‘I could write to her.’
Fabian stopped his pacing and stood in front of Jane.
‘Could you?’ he said gratefully. ‘That would be such a help. I shall of course write as well. I feel that I must do that.’
‘Yes, Fabian, you must,’ said Jane firmly. ‘Men can’t expect women to do quite everything for them.’
‘Poor Miss Bates,’ said Miss Doggett perfunctorily.
‘Oh, she has plenty of admirers,’ said Jane brusquely.
‘Then she will soon get over this,’ went on Miss Doggett, for she had now lost interest in Prudence and was already planning Jessie’s wedding from her house. There could be no possible objection to a church wedding, for although Fabian had not always behaved very well when poor Constance was alive, there had been no question of divorce or anything disgracefullike that. Obviously, Edward Lyall and his mother would expect an invitation to the wedding. It would be quite an event in the neighbourhood.