Starlight (Vintage Classics)

by Stella Gibbons

  She threw away the piece of rag that had been used for nearly a year to mop up burnt milk and spilled tea-leaves.

  She also banished a pensioner known to Mr Geddes and Gerald simply as ‘the cat’, which for nearly as long had held insolent and unshakeable squatter’s right over the kitchen.

  But, where a lesser woman would have had it put to sleep and then suffered retrospective qualms of conscience, Mrs Geddes’s triumph lay in her dispensation of justice with mercy; she banished it from the kitchen, indescribable saucers and all, but made for it a home in the ruined air-raid shelter at the end of the garden, where it had its saucers and its horrid old bed and was happier than it had ever been, and felt such gratitude towards Mrs Geddes that it haunted the back door in the hope of having her scratch its ears or call it Pussy, though all she ever said to it while doing so was: ‘Go away, you know I don’t like cats.’

  She then began, naturally, to cook the kind of meals she had always cooked for her parson husband and the little only son who had also taken Orders; in the huge primitive kitchens of huge, icy rectories up and down England; potato soup and treacle tart, fruit cakes, kedgeree for breakfast and pot roasts.

  Gerald Corliss, who had always taken this kind of food for granted, did not realize how much his system and spirits had been suffering from the lack of it until they began to revive on its return.

  He had intended to mention old Mr Fisher’s story about his new landlady’s alleged trance. But, dazed with the reinstallation of comfort and eatable food at the Vicarage, he simply forgot.

  One morning towards the end of February, when they were seated at lunch, Mrs Geddes said:

  ‘A funny old man called to see you this morning, Robert. He had some little straw dolls on a tray that he wanted to show you.’

  ‘Very old? With a face like a sheep?’

  ‘He has, now you come to suggest it.’

  ‘That’s Mr Fisher … dolls on a tray?’

  ‘Yes, rather nicely made. I don’t think he was selling them.’

  ‘I do know him – though he isn’t a church-goer,’ said the Vicar.

  ‘I thought you’d want me to do something about it, so I gave him a shilling. He showed me the dolls, and then, though he didn’t say anything, I think he expected me to give him something.’

  ‘That was all right; remind me to give it to you.’

  There was a pause, while Mrs Geddes served a perfect apple tart.

  ‘Oh, by the way,’ put in Gerald, ‘I’ve been meaning to tell you only it completely slipped my memory – I found him asleep in the church – on – Christmas Night, it was.’ He paused, looking guilty. ‘Nearly six weeks ago – I’m so very sorry, I ought to have mentioned it before.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, you know we get homeless people in there from time to time. It’s part of our job to keep the church open, I expect he was just having a rest.’

  ‘No, I didn’t think you’d mind that. But he told me something about his landlady that was worrying him, and I said I’d tell you.’

  ‘Trouble there, is there?’ Mr Geddes said resignedly, ‘well, it did strike me it was all a bit too rosy to last.’ He checked an impulse to add that when people were all over each other in the first few days, it seldom did. ‘Let’s have it.’

  ‘No, it isn’t the usual kind of trouble these peop – that … er … seems to crop up with landladies. He said she – Mrs Pearson – suffers from trances.’

  ‘Suffers from trances? What on earth …?’

  ‘She had one on Christmas Night – if one can talk about someone “having” a trance – she fell into one, apparently, and “talked in another voice”, he said. And he said she seemed like a lost soul.’

  There was a silence. Cold February light looked in through the tall, shrub-darkened windows at the three faces; Mrs Geddes’s calm as usual, the curate’s earnest and a little disturbed, the Vicar’s perplexed, with pursed lips.

  ‘In one sense of course that’s our business,’ said Mr Geddes at last, ‘because she is a parishioner. But in another it isn’t at all. She hasn’t asked for our help. This is just a report from a neighbour, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. And he’s such an extraordinary old creature – a little unbalanced, wouldn’t you say –’

  ‘Eccentric. Eccentric, not unbalanced. He’s like a child,’ said the Vicar impatiently. He had to go to tea with his tiresome ex-parishioner in Hampstead, and had much in the way of deskwork to fit in before he left … ‘What did you say he said – “a lost soul”? Extraordinary – he really is a queer old boy.’

  ‘A lost soul. It made – an impression on me at the time. I don’t know how … I came … to forget it for more than six weeks.’

  ‘There’s a lot on, here,’ Mr Geddes said dryly. ‘It isn’t exciting, but there’s always plenty of it. Lost souls don’t often come our way. The small things smother the big ones, I suppose.’

  ‘What C. S. Lewis called “the bustle, the notices, the umbrellas”,’ said Mrs Geddes in a low tone.

  ‘Suppose you try to tell me exactly what he said,’ Mr Geddes went on.

  Gerald, now feeling thoroughly guilty, brought his excellent brain, which had found no difficulty in co-ordinating the minute details of exegesis or in mastering Greek, to bear on recalling what Mr Fisher had said.

  Yet it was a version, rather than a report, because his own articulacy gave to the old man’s vague phrases a clarity they had lacked. However, it left the Vicar with a strong feeling that something must be done, though all he said was, ‘He may be exaggerating. Most people love a bit of drama.’

  ‘Shall … do you think … ought I to go?’ said Gerald hesitatingly. ‘I suppose, that is … the thing to do is to visit her.’

  ‘I’ll go. It may be a case for a psychiatrist, though I have small confidence in them, as you know.’

  ‘Yes, I thought that at the time.’ Gerald let the matter drop, hoping his relief did not sound in his voice.

  The Vicar went off to his study and the curate lingered for a moment, to see if Mrs Geddes needed help in the kitchen.

  ‘Thank you, I’d be glad of it,’ she said, and he busied himself with stacking plates on to the trolley while she went to the kitchen to see if the huge, wasteful boiler had hot water to offer.

  Gerald carefully folded three starched white table napkins with a vague sensation of pleasure. He had noticed their appearance at the vicarage table without wondering how they came to be starched, accepting them as part of the general improvement under the Rule of the Vicar’s mother.

  Now he began to wheel the laden trolley out of the room and across the hall and down a paved corridor which echoed hollowly to its passing. He had spent all his childhood and boyhood in lofty, spacious places, and the heights and breadths of the vicarage’s rooms provided one of the few familiar sensations in this new world.

  ‘Put them in that drawer; thank you,’ commanded Mrs Geddes, seeing out of the corner of her eye that he was moving the napkins absently up and down in one hand, ‘and will you open the door to the cat; it wants its lunch.’

  Gerald opened the door and the cat strolled in, glancing at him balefully.

  ‘Go away,’ Mrs Geddes observed, moving so that it could rub itself against her ankles. ‘Gerald, give it its fish on the dresser, will you. Half will do.’

  He shrinkingly obeyed, and the cat began to toy with the white wet flabby stuff in languid style. Some proud remark about its daintiness would have been called forth from any natural person; Mrs Geddes continued to clean plates with a mop and hand them to her helper in silence; presently the cat stopped assing about, and ate its portion with appetite.

  ‘Let it out, Gerald, will you.’

  He opened the door and stood expectant. The cat walked over to Mrs Geddes and gazed up at her passionately, waving its meagre tail and purring in a kind of croak.

  ‘You know very well I don’t like cats,’ said Mrs Geddes, stooping to manipulate – the action does not merit the word fondl
e – its ears.

  Gratified, and taking its time, the cat strolled past Gerald and out into the garden.

  ‘That’s all; thank you; that was a great help,’ said Mrs Geddes, beginning to open a packet of old-fashioned starch, and, glad at heart, he followed the cat’s example and went off on his own affairs.

  20

  Mr Geddes was cycling across Hampstead Heath.

  Bicycling, at least, was better than hanging about for buses or stifling in the Underground, though – his practical eye considered the landscape as he wheeled swiftly along – the winter-bleached grass looked dirty and there was a dismal scatter of litter everywhere.

  But the children of the age of affluence could not spoil the trees. Some forty feet above the marred earth there were bare silver branches, robust and thewed as the arms of giants, massive trunks, delicate tracery of leaf skeleton and twig.

  He recalled his straying thoughts. What was to be done during the rest of the day?

  Tea with Mrs Lysaght; Evensong; the list of his Lenten sermons to sketch out; the Men’s Group at eight-fifteen; an hour or so after that with Sunday’s sermon … what a waste of time these teas with poor Helen were.

  Mrs Lysaght herself opened the door to him. Her flat was in a solid Edwardian block lifted up on one of Hampstead’s numerous baby hillocks above the unceasing hell of noise in Heath Street. She was rather tall, and rather pretty. She was a widow, and she did not have to worry about money.

  ‘How sweet of you to come early, Robert. Do come in, I’ve had some flowers sent me from the country, and I do so want you to see them before they go quite off. Let me take your coat – there!’

  She laid the coat tenderly on a chair with one hand while with the other waving towards a bowl of wild daffodils, now well advanced in the process of ‘going off’.

  ‘I just wanted you to have one glimpse of them before I threw them away. You and I share a passion for flowers, don’t we?’

  Cheered by a glimpse of a laden tea-trolley lurking in a corner, he nodded, and expressed admiration of the daffodils, while being pressed into a chair near the fire – electric, and too hot; he always found Helen’s rooms too hot.

  ‘Now! What have you been doing since we last met?’ Mrs Lysaght began, ‘Do tell me about my dear old friends at Saint James’s and all your news.’

  ‘Well, everything’s much the same as usual, I think. Mrs Peters is in hospital, had to have an operation.’

  ‘Now which is Mrs Peters? Is she the old dear who always wears a blue and white spotted scarf?’

  ‘No, I think you must mean Miss Cuthbert. Mrs Peters lives alone, in one of those houses on Hill Drive.’

  ‘Of course, I remember now … And Miss Rogers – and Mrs – I forget her name but I know who I mean – she always brings a red shopping bag to church.’

  ‘That’s Mrs Miller. I’m glad she does – before she started doing that she left something in the pew after every service – gloves or specs or handkerchiefs or something.’

  Mr Geddes spoke with firmness. He disliked Mrs Lysaght’s habit of identifying the members of his faithful band of elderly ladies by their items of dress.

  ‘I’ve really brought you here to make a confession,’ said Mrs Lysaght suddenly, perhaps feeling some rebuke in his tone, and leaving the ladies of Saint James’s, ‘I hesitated about telling you – and then I thought – why not? He’ll always be my spiritual guide – my guru – and – he’ll … understand. I’m leaving the Church.’

  Her large bright eyes beamed with pleasure, like a small girl giving someone a sweet. She gazed at him, upright and expectant. All Mr Geddes found to say was a mechanical, ‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,’ followed by the thought, confound the woman. Shocked at himself, he leant a little forward and said hastily:

  ‘I’m sorry. But – er – what’s happened? I always believed – hoped – you were settled at last, you know. Safe and sound in the Church of England.’

  He uttered a short laugh. He hoped it did not sound irritable; at least it was a laugh. But with so much waiting to be done at home!

  ‘I did think I was, for a few years, and I did try. But what finally defeated me, Robert, was the narrowness.’

  ‘I’m not attacking Christianity,’ Mrs Lysaght added with an access of energy, ‘please never think that – or the character of Jesus. It’s the Church I’m – well, not exactly attacking, but accusing – if you know what I mean –’

  ‘I expect I do,’ Mr Geddes said.

  ‘– and particularly the Church of England – dear old ‘C. of E.’, as it’s called – and I always think that’s so significant – Rome doesn’t invite that sort of nickname.’

  ‘Are you thinking of “going over”?’

  Mr Geddes experienced some satisfaction at the thought. Let her try on this kind of thing with a Roman Catholic priest and see what she got. He checked himself again.

  ‘Of course not. Rome is even narrower, and dogmatic and superstitious into the bargain – that stuff about the Virgin Birth – no, I could never join Rome. I’m afraid I’m far too fond of thinking for myself.’

  I’m afraid you are very silly, Mr Geddes was thinking.

  ‘What’s suddenly brought you up to this?’ he asked, feeling that he could not go on another moment without tea. ‘I didn’t hear anything about it last time we met.’

  ‘No, I’ve been sitting on my little secret, I wanted to think it all out with absolute clearness and make up my mind quite coldly. Oh – half-past – excuse me – it’s Gretl’s free afternoon, I must just go and boil the kettle.’

  She fluttered away, contriving somehow to do it in a sweater and skirt, returning shortly with the teapot and a silver kettle, the latter perilously poised over a live flame in a tiny silver lamp.

  ‘I thought we’d use this old thing; isn’t it pretty; it belonged to an aunt of mine; will you help me?’

  In a few moments, the first sips of tea had refreshed Mr Geddes. He set down his cup, bit into an excellent piece of bread and butter, and began suavely:

  ‘You haven’t answered my question, you know; why are you leaving us?’

  ‘Dear Robert, I thought I’d made it clear. The Church of England takes a very narrow view of the Cosmos. For the last three years I’ve read widely, very widely indeed, I’ve really stretched my brains, and oh what an inrush of knowledge and light –’

  ‘Can you really call it knowledge?’ pounced Mr Geddes, as his hostess paused to drink her tea.

  ‘Well – not knowledge in the accepted sense –’

  ‘In what sense, then?’

  ‘In a higher sense, Robert. Much of what these very gifted people write is intuitive knowledge – revealed to them by spirits from other worlds who are guiding them and inspiring them.’

  ‘But to get back to you leaving the Church of England,’ said he, firmly, ‘what do you suggest we should do about what you call our narrowness?’

  ‘Well – I hadn’t got as far as thinking what you should do, Robert … besides …’

  ‘Suppose all of us – we parish priests – wrote up in a body to our Bishops suggesting we should abandon the forms of prayer and worship that we’ve used for five hundred years – some of them for close on two thousand years – because they had become “narrow” and “out-dated”, what form of service do you suggest should replace them?’

  ‘Well … something more universal … I think something about reincarnation and each person’s Karma, their predestined life-pattern –’

  ‘And what effect do you suppose that would have on old Miss Jones, who has been going to Saint James’s for fifty years and looks after her ninety-year-old mother in a two-room flat? Is it going to help Miss Jones to hear about her Karma?’

  ‘You’re so hopelessly practical, Robert. Of course I’m not in a position to talk about details –’

  ‘Suppose it’s God’s will that the Church of England should go on offering the “narrow path” that Jesus spoke of, the “straight and narrow wa
y”? Straight, He said; straight, not wandering off in all directions. Most people just can’t take the kind of thing you’ve been amusing yourself with.’

  ‘Robert! That’s not kind!’

  ‘You’re very happily placed for research into funny religions, you know, Helen – I’m speaking plainly now because I’m angry that you’re deserting us – you’ve got leisure, and proper domestic help, and friends, a pretty home – I know you’re lonely sometimes – most people are – but on the whole you’re one of the lucky ones, aren’t you. Well, aren’t you?’ as she sat looking at him with obstinacy on her soft, unlined face.

  ‘I don’t like being told I’m deserting you,’ she said at last.

  ‘Well, I think you are. We need every soul we can get; every living one of you, to bear witness! What are you going to do, where will you go to worship God – I suppose you’ll still need to do that – when you’ve left us?’

  ‘Oh I shall read and meditate.’

  ‘If you haven’t a church to go to that’ll soon turn into day-dreaming. You need a special type of mind to keep that up, and you haven’t got it.’

  ‘Oh if you knew how I often long just to go into permanent retreat – silence, and peace, and … prayer …’

  ‘You could enjoy all that in a good hotel in Bournemouth,’ Mr Geddes said. ‘(May I have another cup, please.) I thought you were rather worried about your prayers, by the way? (Thank you.)’

  ‘I don’t find it easy,’ Mrs Lysaght confessed, ‘my mind wanders. It seems worse lately.’ The last words came out with a little reluctance.

  ‘Everybody’s mind wanders. And yours will, while you’re stuffing your head with all this.’ He tapped a pamphlet he had taken up. ‘You aren’t a Hindu. You aren’t a Hindu,’ he repeated. ‘You were born in England and you’ve taken in Western thought all your life. It may not attract you as much as all this,’ tapping the booklet again, ‘but it’s moulded your way of thinking. Of course your mind wanders worse than ever while you’re trying to pray.’ He looked at the booklet inimically.