by Angela Huth
‘Prudence. Prudence Lumley.’
‘Such a lovely name. I fear it’s destined to go out of fashion. My sister-in-law was a Prudence – very aptly in her case. Over-Prudence, I called her . . .’ She smiled.
As Prue had no idea how to respond to this observation, she kept quiet. She hoped the Hon. Ivy’s questions would not be too hard to answer.
A bent old woman came through the door carrying a tray of clattering china. The chances of her crossing the room without it crashing to the floor, Prue reckoned, were small. She leapt up, hurried to take it from her.
‘Thank you so much. Put it here.’ Ivy patted a brocade ottoman. Prue put the tray on a copy of The Times, wondering if that was the right thing to do. Perhaps she should have moved the newspaper. Her heart was battering. Never had a room made her so uncertain. But the Hon. Ivy looked on with approval, so she guessed she had done the right thing. Blimey, relief. The cups and plates, the coffee pot and milk jug were almost transparent in their thinness – they made Barry’s ‘best’ china look thick, clumsy. They weren’t decorated with prissy roses, like Barry’s: there was just a thin gold line round the rims. Ivy turned to Alice, who swayed like a statue poorly soldered to its base, her mouth open, indignation stiffening her clenched hands. She was not accustomed to having her tray snatched away by some young whipper-snapper with a film-star bow in her hair. ‘Thank you, Alice,’ said Ivy. ‘This is just what we need. I said, thank you.’
Alice, further affronted, shuffled out.
Ivy leant back in her chair, ignoring the tray. It occurred to Prue that a companion’s job would be to pour the coffee. This she suggested.
Ivy, whose tiny eyes had glazed, brightened. ‘Would you be a darling? That would be so kind.’
Not that kind, really, Prue thought. All she said was ‘Cripes’. As Ivy did not question this, she imagined she should explain. ‘Your house, this room . . . everything,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid I’m overwhelmed. It’s perfect—’
‘Now, now,’ Ivy interrupted. ‘It’s just an ordinary old rectory filled with some nice things my husband Edward and I collected over the years. He was in the diplomatic service. We moved about all over the world. I insisted we take all this clutter everywhere, so a bit of each foreign embassy would feel like home. Most of the places were so hot it all looked a bit heavy. I can’t tell you how grateful I was to get back here. I’ve always loved England better than anywhere. Give me just a speck of milk, would you mind? And help yourself. But I want to know about you. Tell me all about yourself. Tell me why such a pretty young thing as you – oh, I do love your shoes, I’ve always loved red shoes – would like to be a companion to a very old lady like me.’
Prue settled deeper into the cushions. It was like being on a firm cloud. Had she not been juggling in her mind how to start, she might have fallen asleep, lulled by the scent of the hyacinths. She was about to begin, having drunk her fragile cup of coffee very fast, and returned it to the saucer where it skidded about, when the clock in the hall struck eleven: each note echoed, and the echo thinned till the next strike took its place. Prue waited for absolute silence to return.
‘OK,’ she said at last. ‘I’ll try to explain.’
She began her story.
Chapter 12
Occasionally, during the hour that Prue recounted (most, but not quite all of) the events in her life, the Hon. Ivy flicked at specks of invisible dust on her skirt. Occasionally she moved her deep-set eyes towards the hyacinths and gave the beginnings of a smile, which never matured. For the most part she sat absolutely still, seeming to listen with her whole being. When Prue judged she had nothing left to tell this stranger, on whose grand sofa she sat, she shrugged, and fell silent.
Ivy sighed. She tipped back her head, closed her eyes. ‘Well, well, dear Prudence,’ she said, ‘what a life in so few years. So much of it sounds familiar. I felt I knew so many of those people. You’re a wonderful raconteur.’
Prue didn’t know what a raconteur was, and did not like to ask. But she took it as a compliment, given it was preceded by ‘wonderful’. ‘Thanks,’ she said. She wondered which way the interview – which didn’t feel like an interview – would go now.
Ivy opened her eyes. ‘Oh, that land-girl life. What would we have done without you? My sister, you know, joined the Land Army just as it was starting up at the end of the First World War. It lasted such a short time because, of course, the war ended. So fortunate it was reinstated for this war, though by then Maud was too old to join up.’
Maud? Maud and Ivy? The Hon. Mrs Lamton and her sister plainly came from another world. Prue felt a strange keenness to know more about it just as, coming from Manchester, she had been keen to discover about the Lawrences’ rural life.
‘Now,’ Ivy was saying, ‘there must be some questions you’d like to put to me.’ The pale eyebrows rose and fell.
Prue hesitated. The question she had in mind might be considered cheeky, but she was convinced Ivy wouldn’t be offended. ‘What exactly is a Hon.?’ she asked. ‘I’ve never met one before.’
Ivy laughed. ‘Well, how can I best explain it? It’s all to do with the weird English system of titles and so on. My father was a viscount. The children of viscounts, who are themselves the children of earls – oh, it’s all too complicated to go into. Pretty silly, not to say confusing, really. It’ll all come to an end one day. But I’ll tell you another silly thing.’ She clasped her hands, working out how best to put it. ‘A Hon isn’t actually pronounced . . . the H is silent. Daft, I know.’
‘You mean you’re an On, really?’
‘That’s it.’
‘Cripes. Can’t wait to tell my mum all this. She’ll never believe it – me meeting the daughter of a whatever . . .’ Prue giggled.
‘But what I actually meant, when I said had you any questions, was have you any questions about the job I’m offering?’
‘You’re offering?’
‘I don’t see why not. I’m not quite clear in my mind the exact nature of the job, but I’m sure we could work it out once you’re here.’
‘I’m sure we could.’
‘It would just be sharing a few hours of my day, really. Two or three times a week, perhaps. We could see how it goes.’
With surprising agility Ivy, suddenly scorning her cane, now rose from her chair as easily as someone half her age. She looked, it occurred to Prue, exactly as she imagined the ghost of an old lady would look. For a second she wondered if she was a ghost, and this whole peculiar visit was no more than a dream. But Ivy was speaking very firmly: nothing insubstantial about her.
‘One little idea came to me while you were telling me about Johnny and his bad luck,’ she said. ‘A couple of stable doors in the yard are completely rotten and the wonderful old carpenter who lived in the village died last week. I wonder if your friend Johnny could make two new ones?’
‘I’m sure he could. He’d be thrilled.’
‘That would be such a relief. I didn’t know where to turn.’
Prue felt that she, too, ought to stand now. But Ivy had picked up one of the silver-framed photographs and handed it to her. ‘If you ever fancy another husband, you could do worse than Gerald, my nephew.’
‘What?’ Prue had no notion of how to respond to this extraordinary idea.
Ivy was laughing, enjoying her joke. ‘Awfully clever. Scholar at Eton, classics at New College, Grenadier Guards, and now the City.’
None of this meant anything to Prue: a different language was used at the Old Rectory, which she found hard to understand.
‘What City?’ she asked.
‘The City of London, dear girl. Banking. Bores him stiff. Still, once I’ve gone, he’ll take over all this. He loves it here.’
As Prue got to her feet she studied the photograph of an impossibly handsome man in soldier’s uniform. Gerald. Wow. ‘How old is he?’ she dared herself to ask.
Ivy waved a hand vaguely. ‘I don’t know – thirty-five, forty, maybe.’<
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‘Bit old,’ said Prue.
‘What? For marriage? Older husbands are a darn good idea. Of course, they usually die first, but by then the wife has got used to the idea. Edward was fifteen years older than me, looked after me wonderfully well, gave me good advice about what I should do once I was a widow. And I don’t want you thinking, Prudence, that because I fancy a little companionship I’m a lonely old thing. For I absolutely am not. I love living alone. I’ve never been lonely for a moment. There’s so much to do.’ The beginning of this declaration had been made in a firm voice, which was now petering out.
‘I can imagine,’ said Prue, though in truth she couldn’t. ‘In this house no one could be lonely for a moment.’
‘Quite. There are all the books. The piano. The gramophone. The garden. Are you a reader, Prudence?’
Prue felt herself blush. ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘There were no books at home, though there were lots at Hallows Farm – but not much time for reading, there.’
‘Of course not. All that farm work. Still, I dare say you managed a few pages of Hardy, from time to time, as you were in Dorset?’
‘I didn’t, no. I sometimes looked at Mr Lawrence’s copy of the National Geographic magazine. And Mrs Lawrence’s Picture Post.’
‘Oh my dear girl, you’ve got a long and exciting road to travel.’ Ivy moved to the bookshelves, took a leatherbound volume from a row of identical ones. ‘Dickens?’ Prue shook her head. ‘Well, then, I think you should begin with the master. Great Expectations. Here, take it. Bring it back when it’s finished, and we’ll replace it with something else.’
Prue looked at the tooled leather, the gold writing. ‘I’d be terrified of something happening to it,’ she said. ‘I’ve never seen such a beautiful book.’
‘Books are for reading. If it falls on Johnny’s kitchen floor, well, that’s not important.’ She took the photograph from Prue, returned it to its place on the table. ‘I’ll try to get Gerald over one day when you’re here. You might find him quite amusing.’
‘Thank you so much.’ Prue’s sudden flare of great expectations concerning Gerald seemed to be far stronger than those for the book.
‘And please mention my stable doors to your friend.’
‘Of course.’
Ivy held out a papery hand, which Prue took care to shake gently.
‘Come on Monday morning, why not? We won’t talk about money, wages, that sort of tedious thing now. We’ll see what happens.’
When Prue went through the hall to the front door, the grandfather clock struck twelve. As she wrote to both Stella and Ag later, it was the weirdest, maddest morning of her life. Although the nature of the work remained not quite clear, she found herself looking forward to it with peculiar excitement.
Johnny was pleased by the idea of the Hon. Ivy’s job: he liked making doors. He did not show much interest in Prue’s descriptions of the house, or of its elderly owner, and spent most of the weekend in his shed. From time to time Prue went in with cups of tea or coffee, but really to check that he wasn’t drinking. He had convinced himself he had given up, at least for the time being, and was happy with the quantities of ginger beer she provided.
The weekend, for Prue, went very slowly. She was bored by now with housework and reduced it to half an hour every morning after breakfast. She was impatient to start working for Ivy, and tried to imagine what the job would entail. A restlessness came over her: there was no reply to her letter from Rudolph. On the occasions she thought of him, she still felt uneasy about her decision, but the pictures of him grew more distant.
Johnny, she quickly realized, with his fluctuating moods and his evident unhappiness, was not going to be easy to lodge with. She had constantly to guess what best to do for him. He seemed to be a different man from the neighbour she had known in Manchester – but then, of course, she had seen him only from time to time. She knew that it would be much better to live alone than with an imperfect man, though she wasn’t sure she was ready just yet for solitude.
She paced about, made a bread-and-butter pudding to use some of the many eggs and in the hope of disguising the hard bread (Johnny was appreciative of her cooking). She went for a walk, but in a state of such agitation that, for once, the swooping Downs and hovering skylarks were no comfort. When she returned to the cottage, cross with herself for such unreasonable discontent, she went to the sitting room and picked up Great Expectations.
At first Prue just held the book, turning it in her hands, in some awe. She ran a finger along the gold-tooled patterns inset in the claret-coloured leather with its soft smell of . . . what? she wondered. Rain, perhaps? A lighter smell than the rough leather of Noble’s harness, but a reminder. She turned over a few of the thick, cream pages with their rough edges, as if they had been gently torn. She had not held a book, let alone read one, for a very long time. This beautiful volume made her oddly nervous, but she was determined to have a go. She could not possibly go back to Ivy and say, no, she hadn’t tried it. She glanced at the print – very small. Very dense paragraphs. She was going to have to try very hard.
Within a moment she was in the churchyard with Pip – amazed that a writer could make her see a picture so clearly. The marshes were just a long black horizontal line . . . and the river was just another horizontal line, not nearly so broad or so black . . . and the sky was just a row of angry red lines and dense black ones intermixed . . . She could see it all, feel the cold, the damp. She was there.
Prue read for the rest of the day, stopping only to eat. Her enthusiasm for Dickens seemed to please Johnny. He said she should try David Copperfield next. And there was much more to come. Dickens would keep her going for a long time. Prue read most of Saturday night, and much of Sunday. On Monday morning, tired but exhilarated, she took the book back to Ivy, pleased at the thought of surprising her, and longing for the next one.
Johnny followed her to the Old Rectory in his van so that he could get back to the cottage and start work once he had measured up for the stable doors. He parked in front of the house, beside the Sunbeam, and came over to Prue. ‘Nice house,’ he said, fighting against extravagant praise. He took Prue’s elbow with a tense hand.
She had the fleeting thought that, were he a husband, he would be good about keeping to his wife’s side. Then she realized he only kept close to her on this occasion because he was nervous about meeting Ivy.
Ivy opened the front door even before they were climbing the steps. She stretched out both hands in greeting and Johnny, on reaching her, took both her hands in his with all the ease of one who is used to unusual handshakes. Prue smiled. She and Ivy did not shake hands. ‘How lovely of you to come,’ she said to Johnny. ‘I can’t tell you how much I need a master carpenter. The stables are falling to pieces. Wasn’t it lucky, Prue being your friend?’
She led them into the sitting room. Johnny glanced surreptitiously about him, trying to disguise his interest.
‘Now, why don’t Johnny and I go and look at what’s to be done? Then we can all have a cup of coffee. Oh, Prue, my dear girl, you’ve brought back the book. How quickly you’ve read it! And what did you think?’
‘I was astonished, overwhelmed,’ said Prue, unable immediately to come up with more literary praise.
‘That’s marvellous! Why don’t you go and choose yourself another Dickens?’
‘I recommended David Copperfield,’ said Johnny. He seemed pleased to show he shared his new employer’s literary knowledge.
‘Good idea, dear boy,’ said Ivy. ‘And when I come back I’ll get you, Prudence, to run me to the post office.’ Her eyes twinkled. ‘You know what? I rather fancy a little run in your lovely red car.’
‘It’s terrific,’ said Johnny.
When they had gone, Prue replaced the book in the shelf and took out David Copperfield. She sat on her old place in one corner of the sofa, and looked about her. She wanted to check it was all just as magical and extraordinary as it had appeared on her first visit. Though
as she was in a calmer state, she was able even better to enjoy the room. She realized that, amazingly, she felt almost at home here. She could imagine living in this house. Arranging the flowers on the desk. Drawing the curtains on winter evenings. Coming down in the mornings to find sun on the fragile carpet, which must have come from one of the eastern countries Ivy had lived in. Boldly, as these sensations swept over her, Prue picked up the silver-framed photograph of Gerald. She stared at it for a long time, consigning every inch to memory. Gerald. Very distinguished name. ‘Prue and Gerald’, she said to herself, for she always liked trying out her own name with other possibilities. They went well together. One day, perhaps, there could be thick white invitations propped up on the mantelpiece, ‘Prue and Gerald’ in fine handwriting at the top . . . Somehow, she must subtly remind Ivy that she’d be very interested to meet her nephew.
Prue had no idea how much time went by caught up in her day dreams. She was conscious of an almost tangible happiness – the sort of happiness she used to sense sometimes when she was ploughing Lower Pasture, and the chimes from the hall clock scarcely interrupted her thoughts.
When eventually Ivy came back, she seemed thrilled by the promises Johnny had made. ‘What a talented young man,’ she said. ‘I dare say I can find all sorts of jobs for him on the estate. There’s always so much repair work that needs doing. He wouldn’t even stay for a cup of coffee – said he wanted to get going straight away. He’s gone off to order the wood. So: how about you and I making a small trip to the post office? Only a mile or so. I usually walk it, but . . . Edward and I loved fast cars. Once, we had a Lagonda.’
Prue took the precaution of not driving at speed along the narrow lanes, but Ivy did not object. She moved about in her seat like an excited child. At the post office Prue saw her reluctance to get out, so offered to post the letter for her.
‘You’re a good girl,’ Ivy said. ‘We must go for a proper drive one day. I only have a tiny Ford. Not much more than a perambulator – no fun at all.’ Suddenly she fell silent. Then she said, ‘You know, I’ve been taxing my mind about this job I’ve asked you to do, and I’m still not quite sure what it should be. Still, we’ll see what comes up. This afternoon we could perhaps attack the linen cupboard, and when that gets boring, well, you could begin David Copperfield while I have my rest . . .’ She trailed off, uncertain of the appeal of her idea.