1
As Cecilia had said nothing to me of her visit to Gray’s Inn, no more did I to her of mine. Indeed, I would have preferred to avoid her altogether, though in the circumstances this was manifestly impossible; and was glad, taking tea at the Vicarage that afternoon, not to find her there. It was a small party—the only guests besides myself Honoria Packett and Major Cochran and Mr. Pyke: quite like old times!
We always have very interesting conversations at the Vicarage. On this occasion, I remember, after we had all paid renewed tribute to Doctor Alice, it turned on ends justifying means, such as a crime committed to prevent a worser.
“Such as if I, witnessing a rapist in the act, leaped upon and strangled him,” proposed Mr. Gibson.
Times change, and vicars with them. His predecessor would no more have pronounced the word rapist in mixed company than he’d have unbuttoned his fly. But none of us pretended not to hear.
“You’d probably get off,” said Major Cochran.
“Don’t be obtuse,” said the Vicar. (Another change: he was addressing one of his most substantial parishioners.) “We’re considering the moral aspect. Would my conscience let me off?”
“Mine would,” said Honoria. “Mine would let me off for strangling a man I saw kneeing his horse.”
“Then you’d be for it,” said Major Cochran. “Not even justifiable homicide.”
“Entirely justified!” neighed Honoria.
“What’s your own standard,” asked Mr. Gibson, “of justifiability?”
“If a chap broke into my house with a shotgun,” said the Major readily, “and I chucked him downstairs and he broke his neck.”
“Accident,” snapped Mr. Gibson. “Not deliberate. Someone justify me a deliberate killing. What about it, Pyke? Think!”
—Again, even if I am repetitious, what a change, to be required to think, on any social occasion! But Mr. Pyke, thus adjured, did so. The process always takes him a little time, but he generally arrives at some sensible conclusion, and we waited as patiently as for the local bus.
“Maltreating the helpless,” said he at last. “If there’s no other way to stop it …”
For a moment no one spoke, as I suppose we all at the same instant remembered his father’s reputation as a flogger. Then Mrs. Gibson remarked rather incoherently that of course he was quite right, anyone’s conscience would be clear, and she only hoped they’d be undiscovered. I always took something home to think about, after tea at the Vicarage!
19
1
At the beginning of October East Anglia often enjoys its best weather of all: the air, after the equinoctial winds are blown out, peculiarly still, and the sun putting forth its last strength. If there has been no unusual rain the sea is as warm as in August, or even warmer; at Aldeburgh bathing-dresses have been observed hanging out to dry as late as mid-month. So it was now, and there was general pleasure that Cecilia’s last days amongst us should be even exceptionally fine, even though it made it from her point of view all the harder to leave. “If that old airline suddenly cancels the flight,” Cecilia told Mrs. Gibson (and the Cockers and the Pennons and the Amorys and the butcher and baker) “I honestly don’t know whether I’d be glad or sorry!” But Pan-Am remained faithful to its word, and Cecilia was far too conscientious to disarray them by a cancellation of her own.
“Only I’ve still just got to have a last swim!” declared Cecilia.
Why not? The estuary water was even warmer than the sea; only she should have thought of it sooner, that evening two days before she and Antoinette were due to leave. The sun in early October for all its strength sets very quickly—at six, all still light, at half-past darkness; and it must have been well after five before she suddenly commandeered the Pennons to drive her to the pool and the Pennons (with a spare seat) kindly insisted on stopping for me too. “There’s going to be such a sunset!” called Janice as their car halted outside my gate, I in the garden in my gardening boots. “Even if you won’t swim, come and see it across the estuary!”
Connoisseur of weather as I am, I always feel a sunset reflects the entire day—redly striated, like a bullock’s eye, after a windy buffeting, angelic with small pink cherubs’ wings, or, as now, a calm wash of rose misted over with grey. So I was lured. Mrs. Brewer was still in the house, whom I knew wouldn’t go, leaving Antoinette alone, till my return. But though the air was so mild, I still scented a nip of autumn, and put on a good thick coat.
The spare seat was next to Janice in the back. Cecilia leaned over from her place beside Peter to say how glad she was I’d come.—“Even though you left Tony behind again!” she chided. With no young Cockers to impress, I merely pointed out that it would soon be dark. “Don’t tell me she’s still afraid of the dark!” cried Cecilia. I said no, not if I was with her. “Darling, you’ve simply cosseted her like an infant!” complained Cecilia. “Just wait till I have her to myself!”
It being under two miles to the estuary, there was scarcely time for more; and once again I admired the speed and ease with which a younger generation takes to water. My three companions were out of their slacks and sweaters, and ready bathing-dressed, within a matter of moments. I was still glad of my coat, however, as I got out of the car to watch not only the swimmers but the sunset.
I had been right to come. Across the estuary, above a band of pearly grey a broader band of pale rose melted upwards into first bluer grey, then into a grey verging on heliotrope, for the sun was already on the point of disappearing below the horizon—in this case (the further side of the estuary being rather well wooded), a dark jagged line as of battlements; which was why there was so much pink left in the sky—the sun not entirely set, only seeming so because the battlemented fringe of trees masked its subsiding disk …
Naturally neither the Pennons nor Cecilia had any use for the pool, but the estuary, though still glowing under a reflection of rose, was evidently colder than it looked. Peter and Janice were out almost as soon as in, and toweling down and dressing again; only Cecilia, doing her butterfly-stroke, receded farther and farther. As the Admiral had said, it was a wonderfully poetical sight, to see her slim arms rise and fall as if swan-plumaged with spray; when she paused to rest and float a moment, the lovely image was of Ophelia. Janice as well as Peter watched enchanted; it was only myself, always more engaged by nature than by any added point of human interest, who perceived the sudden shiver across the estuary’s surface that presaged the turn of the tide: where the channel was deepest a few ripples drifted seawards. There was never anything spectacular about the turn of the tide in the estuary; mostly it was a matter of undertow.—“Tweed said tae Till, whit gars ye rin sae still?” “Though ye rin fast, and I rin slaw,” says Till, “for aye mon ye droon, I droon twa!” My mind is all too well furnished with such scraps of verse, and I could have equally well reminded the young Pennons of Keats’ To Autumn, season of mists besides of mellow fruitfulness, as suddenly the sun set and night descended and I nearly drowned.
One moment, Peter and Janice told me, they saw me shade my eyes with my hand (as though bedazzled by too long watching of the sunset), the next suddenly totter and take a step backwards into the pool.—It is supposed to be whilst coming up for the third time that the events of a lifetime flash through one’s mind: in my own case, it was during that moment as I hid my eyes that my thoughts raced back—and not over a lifetime, just the last five years; I also, simultaneously, recalled the conversation at the Vicarage and looked ahead to what Antoinette’s future would be in New York. But my mind remained perfectly clear: and I see it as but a quirk of morality that impelled me to put my own life also at hazard, by stepping back into the pool’s not shallower but deeper end, where weighed down as I was to the bottom by my heavy coat and my heavy gardening boots—eyes and throat full of water, bron-chitic lungs barely pumping—so hampered and old and strengthless I floundered, I should have drowned indeed had not Peter instantly jumped in and pulled me out. That is, he dragged me to the shallow end, where Janice
helped him; I remember coughing up water, and then coughing and coughing again, and shivering uncontrollably, while those two kind young people squeezed my clothes and slapped my hands, and then bundled me into their car because it was no use.
(Fragmentarily, my ears so waterlogged—
“It’s no use!” I heard Janice wail.
“Then we’ve got to get her back, but go on rubbing!”—this was Peter.
“But Cecilia—?”
“For God’s sake, can’t she walk?”—this was Peter again.)
For a little way I felt Janice’s hands chafing, then nothing more …
2
They delivered me, those two kind young people, not at my home but absolutely at the Cottage Hospital, which was probably just as well; I was dried out as thoroughly as a Yarmouth bloater and treated for shock—that is, given a sedative, despite which it seems I continued extremely restless, talking of and wanting Antoinette until the Matron, with admirable disregard for rules, had the child sent for and bundled in a blanket and put into a cot beside my bed; and apparently I said something to her about for always, and then we both slept the clock round.
3
Cecilia’s body was washed up next day some three miles down the coast. Lamentably enough, East Anglia is hardened to such tragedies: at the necessary inquest no blame was attached to anyone, least of all to the young Pennons, whose swift action in succouring one of the oldest and most respected members of the community was in fact highly praised: the Coroner only regretted that those un-native to our shores took no more heed of the tide tables on view to all outside any Coast Guard station.
The day of Cecilia’s funeral, as I have said, for early October had a curious touch of spring in the air; and now that I think again this cannot have been entirely subconscious on my part, since Mr. Hancock, who most kindly came from London to sit beside me in a front pew, remarked that he scarcely needed an overcoat.
Busy man as he was, he also gave me an hour afterwards—though this I suppose necessarily; for it appeared that Antoinette Guthrie was as kinless as a child could well be, and he himself, in a legal way, more or less in loco parentis.
“Which poses a certain problem,” said Mr. Hancock.
I reminded him that Antoinette had always been a problem.
“Which you yourself, if I may say so, have handled with extraordinary understanding,” said Mr. Hancock.
I thanked him.
“And success,” added Mr. Hancock. “In fact, the best thing I could wish for the bairn is that she might continue in your care. There isn’t a great deal of money—”
This was in fact the only thing I had been afraid of, and I told him so.
“No,” said Mr. Hancock. “Less than could have been expected. Robert Guthrie indeed earned a great deal, but so did his wife spend a great deal. There is still enough, quite ample, for Antoinette’s needs so long as she lives. If you will accept a legal guardianship, she will be very fortunate.”
“That’s of course,” said I.
Mr. Hancock made me a little bow.
“As I say, I can think of no one more suitable.”
“Except on the point of age,” I observed. “I’m over three score years; another ten and by biblical statistics I’ll be a goner already. And though my health is excellent but for an occasional touch of bronchitis, neither of my parents reached eighty; and Antoinette is only nine. Do you know a Guthrie connection, a Thomas Guthrie connection, Janet?”
Mr. Hancock thought a moment.
“There was no Janet in his Will?”
“Which I think a shame,” said I. “But he put her through Veterinary College and she came to his funeral, and now she has a practice in Caithness. I admit I’ve seen her only once since, but it was here, in this house, for several hours, just with myself and Antoinette; and Antoinette took a liking to her.”
“And Miss Guthrie took a liking to Antoinette?”
“I’ve the impression she did,” said I. “What is more important, she accepted her. And it’s apparently very quiet and peaceful in Caithness.”
“You’re a remarkably sensible woman,” said Mr. Hancock.
I knew I could safely leave it to him to get in touch with Janet, and also felt sure Janet would accept to be my successor; but before I could say so, in stumped Antoinette.
“Hello! In my rucksack I have vermin, pepper and a tureen,” remarked she. “Delhi, Simla, Ootacamund?”
About the Author
Margery Sharp (1905–1991) is renowned for her sparkling wit and insight into human nature, which are liberally displayed in her critically acclaimed social comedies of class and manners. Born in Yorkshire, England, she wrote pieces for Punch magazine after attending college and art school. In 1930, she published her first novel, Rhododendron Pie, and in 1938, she married Maj. Geoffrey Castle. Sharp wrote twenty-six novels, three of which, Britannia Mews, Cluny Brown, and The Nutmeg Tree, were made into feature films, and fourteen children’s books, including The Rescuers, which was adapted into two Disney animated films.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1972 by Margery Sharp
Cover design by Mimi Bark
ISBN: 978-1-5040-3431-9
This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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The Innocents Page 13