‘I want you to put off the library today,’ she would say. ‘I need help with bottling the plums.’ In bad weather she would watch Helen’s preparations for departure with contempt: ‘It’s completely ridiculous to go out in this. I can’t imagine why you don’t leave it till tomorrow.’ During her final illness, when Helen took unpaid leave, she had announced to visitors, with satisfaction, in moments of clarity: ‘At least I’ve been able to make Helen see sense about trailing off to that wretched library day after day.’
Edward, on the other hand, had always been accorded a mysterious potency: ‘They do so depend on him at Croxford.’
This was curious; in all other areas she treated — always had treated — Edward as negligible. If he embarked on a task she stepped in and took it from him; she interrupted him when he spoke. ‘Let him do it!’ Helen had raged, time out of mind ago, aged fifteen, eighteen, twenty-one. ‘Leave him alone. Let him finish what he’s saying.’ He’ll only break it,’ would come the reply. Or do it wrong: too fast, too slow, not in the prescribed way. And he doesn’t know what he’s talking about: he’s too young, too inexperienced, too Edward.
When, in his thirties, he took driving lessons and passed his test Dorothy refused to go out in the car with him: ‘I intend to live to a ripe old age, thank you very much.’
In fact, Edward was a good driver, if somewhat decorous.
Dorothy waited patiently and had her moment of triumph when someone went into the back of his car at a traffic light — clearly his fault for not getting a move on quicker.
Helen worked because she needed the income, quite apart from anything else. Her mother had never understood that, either. ‘You’ve got Daddy’s money,’ she would say. ‘I can’t think why you want to go grubbing around for more.’ Helen’s dividends, like her own, had dwindled to smaller and smaller sums; even for someone as uncommitted to possession or luxury as Helen was it had become necessary to top them up.
But the library was a refuge, most importantly of all. It was an impersonal sanctum that was not Greystones. There, Helen became someone else; she became brisk efficient well-liked Helen. Helen who had been there years and years, knew all the ropes, could be relied on to deal tactfully with difficult customers, with the intransigence of the county library system, with errant books and tiresome children. Helen who evinced endless patient interest in others, who remained politely anonymous herself. Her colleagues came and went; they had got younger and younger, it seemed, as time went by; those who were career minded departed for lusher pastures, more Susies and Karens took their places, giggling in the cloakroom, muddling up the reservation cards. Only the senior librarian remained constant, Joyce Babcock, a contemporary of Helen’s, stuck as far as she would get on the ladder of professional advancement, suspicious of the girls but tolerant of Helen, who offered no threat. Part timers did not become senior librarian, however highly regarded.
She was a woman without vision or curiosity; her distaste for books was equalled only by her dislike of people. She sat out her days behind the central desk, complaining of her superiors, of technological innovation, and of the weather. Helen, marvelling at Joyce’s capacity for self-protection, often wondered at her choice of career. It had something to do with order, she decided; Joyce mistrusted books for their content, but liked the way they could be marshalled. The readers were simply an unlooked-for hazard.
Now, she sensed a shift in Joyce’s attitude towards her. ‘I suppose,’ Joyce said, with studied carelessness, ‘you may think of going full-time now you haven’t got your mother.’
Helen understood. Joyce feared potential rivalry; her status might be threatened if Helen, a favourite of the county librarian, were more available. ‘Possibly,’ she replied. With an uncharacteristic spurt of mischief she added that she was considering the matter. Joyce flipped feverishly through a reference book; her neck had gone red with emotion. Helen, relenting, said ‘I daresay not, in the end. I rather like the idea of some time to myself.’
‘I should think so!’ cried Joyce. ‘I mean, if anyone deserves it you do. Oh, I don’t think you should take on any more, definitely. You want to spoil yourself a bit, that’s what.’ Restored to normal confidence, she gave Helen a sharp look. ‘You’ve had your hair cut differently. It suits you. Was it that place on Market Street? They’re pricey, mind, but good if you want something a bit out of the ordinary.’
‘I’m glad you approve,’ said Helen, applying herself to the acquisitions file. The library was empty except for an elderly man pottering in Biography and a couple of schoolchildren in the reference section; there was opportunity for what Joyce called a natter, and no escaping it.
‘You’ll miss your mother,’ stated Joyce. ‘I know. Paul wasn’t himself for months after his went.’ Paul was her husband. ‘It’s a shock, however much you know it’s coming. It’ll take you time to adjust, you’ll find.’
‘Mmm,’ said Helen. Comment was neither possible nor invited.
‘Of course, you’ve got your brother. Let me see now, I always forget — is he older or younger?’
‘Younger.’
‘It’s funny he’s never married either — funny coincidence, I mean.’
‘Isn’t it,’ said Helen. This was familiar ground. Joyce, frustrated, moved on to consideration of yesterday’s weather, complaints about the new trainee and an attempt to enlist Helen’s support in resisting the county librarian’s enthusiasm for a local history section at Spaxton. Joyce had a special hatred for history.
She was interrupted, however, by a schoolchild in search of a reference and had to break off to give grudging and limited assistance. Helen returned to the new acquisitions. She had been noting various titles during Joyce’s discourse; there was a new book about bats that Edward would want, and one or two things she would like to get hold of herself — the sole perquisite of this trade was a surreptitious early pick of incoming titles before they went on the shelves.
Helen read a great deal. The feel of a book in her hands was an ancient solace — not, originally, because of what lay between the covers but as a screen, a defence, a shield. The book she was reading had once been the physical barrier between her and her mother. ‘Head in a book as usual,’ Dorothy would say with contempt. ‘You should be doing something, not just sitting there.’ Helen had drawn Edward into this sheltered place, and read aloud to him. And presently what was within the books became significant also — quite small books would do, she discovered, because of what they said, one did not always have to get behind Bartholomew’s atlas or the bound volumes of Punch that lurked in the bottom of the sitting-room bookcase. She read her way through what was in the house — not a daunting process, given her mother’s resistance to the printed word — and then resorted to libraries. Her choice of occupation, she realised, had perhaps been fore-ordained, written into the scheme of things like some genetic prescription, laid down by her mother’s inclinations.
Dorothy did not care for books, so Helen became a librarian.
She read anything; she read in all directions. She read to learn and she read to experience. She identified areas of special interest — Greece and Rome, popular science, cathedral architecture,
arctic exploration — and burrowed happily away; she reconsidered herself and others through the lens of that well-constructed lie that is a good novel. She became book dependent, for better or for worse.
‘Anyone would think we were some kind of free education service,’ grumbled Joyce, having disposed of the child and returned to her central eyrie.
‘That’s just what we are,’ said Helen.
Joyce shot her a look in which surprise and indignation were nicely fused.
Edward, at the same time and eight miles away, was dispensing some moderately expensive education to the Lower Fourth at Croxford House. The Lower Fourth numbered eighteen ten-and eleven-year-olds, sagging over their desks in assorted attitudes that were meant to indicate intense attention, dreadful weariness, shrewd insight or rapt admi
ration. Most of them weren’t listening.
Some of them were whispering to each other. Edward was talking about the Galapagos finch. This was a new series of lessons, rather grandly called Biology, in which he wandered happily around various special fascinations of his own and tried to tell the children something about natural selection and the origin of species. He had brought along several exhibits, including a portrait of Darwin he had found in a junk shop and an assortment of feathers and fossils that the children were passing from hand to hand. None of them took any notice of Darwin, but the feathers and fossils aroused mild interest. Edward was now drawing a diagram of a feather on the board — with some difficulty and much rubbing out — to illustrate its complexity and lead up to a discussion of the evolution of birds.
Sandra Willmot put up her hand. Edward was not fond of Sandra; she was a prissy little girl, always fastidiously turned out and given to exclamations of disgust and revulsion. Her parents were prominent local business people; her mother was chairperson of the Parents’ Association.
‘Yes, Sandra?’
‘Please, Mr Glover, my mother says things like feathers prove there must be a God.’
‘Really?’ said Edward, stalling.
‘Yes. Because they’re so complicated. Somebody must have made them.’ Sandra stared smugly at the blackboard. ‘I mean, they couldn’t just happen, could they? So someone must have made them.’
‘Who?’ enquired Edward with resignation.
‘God, of course,’ said Sandra, buffing her fingernails on her sweater. She looked round piously for support and approval.
Edward knew that he was on treacherous ground. Those of the children who were not squabbling over fossils or sticking feathers in their hair gazed expectantly at him. He said carefully that while everyone was entitled to feel and believe what they liked about God it really wasn’t possible, given what we now know, to say that His existence is proven by feathers or fossils or by anything else in the world. He continued in this vein for a couple of minutes, tripping himself up several times. The trouble was that imprinted in Edward’s own mind was a charming array of creatures like a Noah’s Ark procession, from ant to man, that sprang from the illustration in a fatally misconceived nature book he had had himself as a child. An image of the Great Chain of Being was at the very heart of him; he often had considerable difficulty in marshalling the arguments for apostasy. It must be a bit like being a lapsed Catholic, he thought; you knew you were right but felt you were wrong. He waxed vehement about dinosaurs and extinction, about continental drift and the good old Galapagos finch. He concluded by saying that if you believe in God you have to find other ways to convince people that He exists, and that was not something to be discussed in this lesson.
Sandra Willmot listened — or appeared to listen — with an icy stare. Several hands shot up.
‘Yes?’ said Edward unwarily.
‘Please, Mr Glover, don’t you believe in God, then?’
‘No,’ said Edward, after a moment. A rustle of interest ran around the classroom. One or two people announced that they didn’t either; others declared loudly that they did. Croxford House was given to morning prayers and all the outward
trappings of Church of England belief; it even had a chapel. Now that he came to think of it, Edward was surprised this point had never cropped up before; Biology was obviously a dodgier area than English and History.
‘Anyway,’ he said firmly, ‘what I believe or don’t believe is neither here nor there. We were talking about feathers. I want you all to get out your exercise books and copy what is on the board . .
The children subsided, more or less. Most of them applied themselves to their exercise books, their faces contorted with intellectual effort. Some continued to daydream. Sandra Willmot was whispering urgently to her neighbour, with occasional furtive glances in Edward’s direction. ‘Would you please get on with your work, Sandra,’ said Edward with unusual severity.
She was a peculiarly unlikeable child, he thought; the sort of child — or person — who refuted any notion that homo sapiens is the pinnacle of creation. The Galapagos finch was a darn sight more valuable than Sandra Willmot.
When Helen arrived at the hall in which the choir concert was to be held she could not at first see Giles Carnaby. There were a great many people milling around, the cream of Spaxton society, indeed, many of whom she knew or recognised. She was about to find herself a seat when she caught sight of him, in conversation with a rather pretty dark young woman, both of them laughing a lot. Looking at them, she experienced a curious sense of exclusion; she wondered who the woman was; she wondered how well Giles knew her. And then he looked in her direction, smiled and waved over the woman’s shoulder, continued to talk to her for a few moments, then laid a hand on her arm for an instant and moved towards Helen.
Later, she saw the woman among the sopranos, and noted her.
She noted everyone in the choir, indeed, as part of a determined effort not to gaze all the time at Giles Carnaby, who was in the back row, in the middle of the tenors, straight ahead of her, where she could consider him in detail — silvery hair, grey herring-bone tweed jacket, greenish shirt, paisley patterned silk tie (so much for not gazing…)
And then there was the wine and cheese, in an adjoining room where tables were laid out and choir and audience enabled to mingle. Giles seemed to know everyone. Indeed he seemed to have to keep rushing off to have a word with this person and that; Helen found herself on her own a good deal of the time, glimpsing him across the room in spirited conversation. She saw a lot of his back, of his distinctive head moving from one group to another. She talked to various acquaintances. One woman asked curiously ‘Do you know Giles Carnaby well?’ Helen, faintly ruffled, replied that she didn’t — not all that well. ‘He’s very charming, of course,’ said the woman.
The room thinned out. Giles returned to her side. He seemed cheerful and stimulated. ‘Oh dear — I kept getting caught by people. Have you had enough to drink? Are you all right? And there hasn’t been a chance to talk … You will come back for a cup of coffee, won’t you? Or the tea — the famous Earl Grey.’
He took her arm, shepherded her out of the building, into the street. ‘You’ve got your car? Bother — so have I. We shall have to go in a convoy — it’s only five minutes away. Sunderland Road.’
The house was unexceptional, one of those in Spaxton’s prosperous Edwardian suburb. Within, there was an atmosphere of chintzy comfort. Helen, thinking of the wife, sat almost apologetically on a plump sofa. On the mantelpiece was a photo of a pleasant-looking woman, fair hair, not beautiful, not glamorous, quite ordinary really.
Giles went to the kitchen to make coffee, refusing offers of help — ‘I should get in a fuss and make a fool of myself if watched.’ Helen inspected the room. Other people’s houses always intrigued her by the contrast they offered to Greystones; she would see suddenly — with detached interest and quite without envy or criticism — the extent to which other people’s preoccupations differed from her own. Here, someone had gone to considerable lengths to get the cushions toning in nicely with the curtains. There was a fireplace with realistically, glowing coals and the cosy flicker of flames around them that was, she soon realised, a gas fire, no bother with cleaning it out, then. The pictures were unprovocative landscapes or flower paintings that neatly fitted the spaces allotted to them. The books were all behind glass. A low table carried some tidily arranged journals and newspapers; letters on the desk top were pinned down by a silver paper knife. She felt again the presence of the wife, looking kindly and securely at her from the photograph; don’t resent me, said Helen, I am really neither here nor there, I very much doubt if I signify, you needn’t mind.
Giles returned. There was a bottle of brandy on the tray as well as the coffee. ‘You will, won’t you? We need warming up — that hall is arctic, I perish every Monday evening.’ He poured out, sat back at the other end of the sofa, looked at her. ‘Thank you so much for coming,
Helen. Did you enjoy it? I kept taking quick glances but you always looked inscrutable. It went quite well, I thought — a bit shaky at points in the Britten. Good fun, anyway — but oh dear, people do nobble one, don’t they? It was wonderful having you as a defence. Provincial life is very demanding, don’t you find? All these nice people wanting you to join things. But of course you’ve known Spaxton for so long.’
‘Yes,’ said Helen. ‘I’m generally regarded as a lost cause by now.’
He laughed. ‘I wish I were! Anyway, you have your village to cope with — that must be quite enough. Except that you’re regarded as eccentric — is that right? You and your brother — I do want to meet your brother, by the way. I think I must cultivate eccentricity — would I make an eccentric?’ He beamed at her.
Charmingly. Helen gazed at him. The room lurked at the edges of her vision — chintz, pictures of woodlana or roses, that paperknife. No, she thought. Something else brooded, indefinable, padding doggily around; she tried to ignore it.
They drank the coffee, the brandy. Giles talked of Spaxton acquaintances, of a visit to the opera, of an entertaining incident in his office: bland impersonal discourse, given somehow an edge of intimacy. It seemed to Helen that the room became very warm and enclosed: she basked, as she later thought of it. And then suddenly it was midnight, a clock delicately chiming outside in the hall, and she was getting up, with him protesting — really quite fervently protesting. ‘No, I must,’ she said. ‘Edward will wonder where on earth . .
‘Then if you must, you must. Please drive carefully. I’m inclined to ring in half an hour to see you’ve got there safely, but I suppose I’d have your brother hopping out of bed.’ He helped her into her coat; again, his arm lay on her shoulders after he had done so. He escorted her out into the street, held the car door open for her, leaning in the window as she started the engine, exhorting caution. His hand closed on hers as it rested on the wheel: ‘Thank you again, my dear, God bless.’ And he turned and was gone, briskly, into the house.
*****Passing On***** Page 8