by Patrick Gale
The house in the cathedral close was a traditional perk of the post of Organist. Mike took over Tony’s job. He had five children as well as a wife. Gently, shamefacedly, Bee was evicted. She had finished her teacher’s training after meeting Tony, but had done no work since their marriage. The task of teaching the Baby Form at the choir school had recently fallen vacant and it came with a half-share in a pretty, Regency house just outside the Close gates. It was widely known that Bee got on well with children, probably because she was unable to have any of her own, poor thing, so the headmaster’s wife was approached to approach the headmaster, who subsequently approached Bee who, to everyone’s relief, accepted his kind offer. As the sole woman on the teaching staff, Baby Mistress shared number eight, Chaplain’s Walk with the Assistant Matron. Jennifer was a cheery, horsy type, who lived happily alongside Bee for two years before following the custom of her post, getting herself impregnated by Stephen Simkins (PE) after being seen swimming with him in the moonlight and the buff. They were still on their honeymoon and Bee had the house to herself until Jennifer’s replacement arrived.
She handed Mrs de Vere her coffee, then retraced the smell of hot lemon and spices to the kitchen. Her twenty-three-year-old brother, Reuben, was using a fish slice to slide some newly baked biscuits onto a wire tray. The frown of concentration and faint baker’s flush only enhanced his vulpine charm.
‘That’s the last batch,’ he said. ‘How many d’you think’ll come?’
‘Oh, Christ. It could be forty. There are fifty local members. Twenty of them are in homes or bed-ridden, but the others all promised to bring friends. Oh Christ.’
‘Have a gulp of my gin.’
‘Rube, it’s only ten-thirty!’
‘So? Have a gulp of my gin.’
‘Thanks.’
She took the flour-dusty glass, perched on the kitchen stool and gulped. He had descended on her five days ago, tanned, penniless and suggesting, by his echoing want of a future tense, that the stay was indefinite. The tan was Indian. He had been out there for nearly a year, making a small, shady fortune as a jewel dealer.
‘I still don’t understand why,’ he said, arranging cupcakes in rings of alternating colours on a vast, borrowed plate.
‘Because it’s usually run by Miranda Cotterel, but she fell off her bike and did in her hip.’
He had woken one morning to find himself relieved of every worldly possession, save the sleeping bag around him and a quantity of Marks and Spencer underwear. His copy of India on a Dollar a Day had also been left behind, apparently on a whim of superstitious benevolence. His escape involved a Foreign Office ex of his from school, then a certain amount of murkiness in Bangkok. Dear Rube was nothing if not resourceful.
‘You’re not on the committee, are you, though?’
‘No. But Miranda Cotterel has some very persuasive friends who are.’
‘An offer you couldn’t refuse?’
‘Sort of, only they think they do it to give me something to occupy my poor, bereaved soul. Rube, you’re a saint. Can I do anything?’
‘Don’t you dare.’
He had dropped out of school at seventeen to enrol in life’s university as, variously, masseur, waiter, singing telegram and escort; all activities pursued under the generic carapace of travel writer.
‘Bee, do you even know where Borneo is?’
‘No. But then, neither do they.’
‘Have you read the charity’s magazine?’
‘Lot of smiley black nuns, isn’t it? Look, let me take those through. I hate feeling spare.’
‘Don’t drop them.’
‘I’m not incapable.’
She bent forward to kiss his gilded cheek and brushed her twinset on a plate of sieved icing sugar.
‘Dolt.’ He dusted her down and pushed her gently from the room.
The clock on the dining room mantelpiece struck eleven. In the kitchen, Reuben had two kettles, a preserving pan and a pressure cooker full of steaming water at the ready. The two thirty-cup teapots on loan from the WI had been scrubbed and contained equal heaps of Gold Blend. He poured himself another generous gin. Interleaved biscuits and radiating rings of small cakes waited on the sideboard.
‘Will you have a biscuit, Mrs de Vere? Those ones are lemon. Very good. Freshly baked.’
Mrs de Vere lowered her busy hands to her lap and gave Bee a stare. Her lenses were thick, full of milky eye.
‘I must not be eating biscuits or cake neither. They cause me to choke. I had an unpleasant experience as a child and have been prone to choking ever since. But you must have one, thank you all the same.’
‘Oh dear. Yes. I think I shall.’
Bee bit off a piece of biscuit. It was still faintly warm and crumbled delightfully on her tongue, but the doorbell rang and she had to swallow the rest in a rush.
‘Bee. Anyone here?’
‘Dinah.’ Dinah Stapleton, friend with cups and saucers. ‘Thank God. No. They’re all late.’
Dinah was the school secretary. Urbane and discreetly pagan, she survived on an illusory sense that her every pleasure was illicit. She conducted her friendship along conspiratorial lines, making a point of arriving among the first, whenever Bee was entertaining, so as to enjoy a snatched conversation, sotto voce, in the hall. She heaved her basket-on-wheels up the steps, scowling at each clatter of the school crockery within, then stopped dead and pointed at the alien coat hanging on a hook.
She mouthed her enquiry: ‘Whose is that?’
Bee grinned and beckoned her into the kitchen.
‘Hello, Dinah.’
‘I say. Home is the sailor. Hello, Reuben. Have you been terribly busy? Don’t answer that. Bee, who?’
‘Mrs de Vere.’
‘What? Why?’
‘Quite. She’s not meant to be here, but she didn’t realize that the Bandage Girls were cancelled for this week, and she lives right up on Priory Hill so I couldn’t very well turn her away.’
‘Well no. Of course not.’
‘Bless you for bringing all that.’
‘Yes. We must shove it on trays for you. Come on. No rush, though; they’ll be at least another ten minutes. Oh yes. I’ve got something horrid for the Bring and Buy —’
‘Damn! The stall. I still haven’t —’
‘It’s all right,’ soothed Reuben, placing a slightly unsteady hand on her shoulder. ‘I did it while you were boiling Dame Vermeer’s milk.’
‘Thanks.’
Dinah was clattering out a third trayload.
‘Your stalls are always so well stocked, Bee,’ she said. ‘I don’t know where you manage to find so many unwanted Christmas presents. Don’t you ever get any you want to keep?’
‘Not often. What did you mean about ten minutes?’
‘They’re all at the Deanery.’
‘Why the hell? They know they’re meant to be here.’
‘Didn’t anyone tell you? You picked an appalling day. She invited everyone to a rival do about a week before you did. Boat People.’
‘Why didn’t she invite me?’
‘The crib gaffe.’
‘I only gave it a bit of a dust and changed the dead flowers. You’d think she made the thing by hand, she’s so prickly about it.’
‘She did.’
‘It was one of those plaster-cast kits.’
‘Well, she made the manger.’
‘Excuse my butting in,’ said Reuben, ‘But they’re here.’
He had seen them walking up the drive. Bee hurried into the hall and opened the door as Mrs Clutterbuck reached for the bell-push.
‘Daphne, how lovely.’
‘Hello, Bee. You know Mrs Thomas. And this is my cousin, Jane.’
‘Hello.’
‘How d’you do.’
‘Come in.’
‘Hello, Dinah.’
‘You’ve been terribly busy.’
‘Is that the errant brother out there?’
‘Look at all the biscuits.’<
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‘Marvellous spread, Bee.’
‘Oh. Mrs de Vere. How nice.’
‘What are you doing with that sheet?’
‘Rag-rugs? Oh I see. It’s bandages. Lovely.’
‘Milk, no shug. Perfect.’
‘Wonderful bikkies, Bee.’
‘Reuben’s actually. Coming! Hello. Come in. I’m Bridget Martin,’ said Bee.
‘Hello.’
‘Hello.’
Miss Trott. Miss Deakin. Mrs and the Misses Hewlings. Penny Friston. Marge Brill. Reverend and the Mrs Pyke. Reverend Yeats. Sister Veronica and Mother Lucy from that strange community at Perton Bagshawe. Rapidly the dining room filled and the temperature rose. The hooks were laden with tweed and scarves and a pile of coats began to form at the foot of the stairs. Bee stopped answering the door and left it propped open with the umbrella stand. She realized that she should have served coffee from a table in the hall for the dining room, and by degrees the drawing room as well, were becoming so crowded that it was difficult to manoeuvre a coffee pot, cream jug and sugar bowl simultaneously. Dinah had manned the Bring and Buy stall and was therefore cut off at the far end of the room. Bee stood, helpless, outside the dining room door, tray in hand, and made explanatory faces at Miss Wodding and Mrs Lloyd-Mogg who were staring mournfully at their empty cups.
‘Could you? Excuse me…er…Could you…?’ she tried a few times, but went unheeded by the stockade of rounded backs.
Reuben appeared at her elbow. ‘You’ll have to shout,’ he said. ‘They won’t mind.’
‘I can’t’
‘Coward.’ He faced into the room and called out, ‘Ladies. Ladies.’ The din in both rooms dissolved at once into mildly indignant question mark noises. A score of puffy faces turned and stared. He was quite unabashed. ‘It’s rather hard for us to get to you, so if you’d like some more coffee — and there is plenty — would you like to step out into the hall?’
They stepped out with a vengeance. Reuben set up a pouring station at the hall table, as a queue formed, thrusting the second jug onto Bee. She toured the drawing room, seeing to the less mobile. These sat on sofas and chairs, sticks at their sides, offending wrists or legs laid, ostentatious, before them. Miss Coley. Barbie Sears. Miss Rossington and Miss Pidsley. They showed no sign of enjoying themselves or guilt at being waited on. The room was just large enough for each to stare without encountering the eyes of the others. Bee exchanged a few words with each in turn, asking after their health and less healthy friends, checking that each had secured a copy of the magazine, watchful for any anxiety about where they could powder their noses. Then she crossed the hall, with muttered thanks to Reuben en route, and endeavoured to teeter through the suffocating room to Dinah.
The latter was counting a wad of notes into a shortbread tin.
‘Dinah, are you all right?’
‘Fine.’
‘You’ve taken loads.’
‘Always the same. You do a roaring trade in the first ten minutes. Everyone brings a thing, buys a thing, dumps it, and there an end.’
‘Yes.’ Bee recognized a jar of rhubarb chutney she had made two years ago, which had evidently been doing the benevolent rounds ever since. All her original horrors had been sold, and replaced with not dissimilar fare. There were a dry-looking sponge with thin pink icing, two tins of lychees and some elderly paperbacks. There were also some quite passable lavender bags, which she would pocket if no one else did. ‘How’s Mrs de Vere?’ she went on. ‘I couldn’t reach her.’
‘Oh, she’s okay. Ripping and rolling away. There was a lull after Reuben summoned them into the hall, and I managed to get over and have a chat. Someone had given her a collection of those heavenly biscuits, and she was quite cheerful for once.’
‘But she’s not allowed biscuits. She said so!’
‘Well she was munching away. Said how good they were. Hang on. The cake, Mrs Friston? Oh, I dunno. What do you think for the cake, Bee? I haven’t had time to price it.’
‘How about fifty pence?’
‘Fifty pence it is.’
‘But is it fresh?’ asked Mrs Friston, giving the article a sharp poke.
‘Oh I should think so, wouldn’t you?’ Dinah used her school dinners tone, and took the customer’s uncertainly proffered coin. ‘Thanks. There we are. Have a good tea.’ She dropped the takings into the tin with a clatter. ‘Her Nibs won’t be pleased.’
‘Why not? They all went to her first.’
‘But that’s just it. You always go first to the thing you’re going to leave. I think the old trouts are here to stay.’
‘Now now. We’ll be among them before long.’
‘Don’t,’ said Dinah, who was several years her senior. She looked across the bobbing tussocks of grey hairs and blue much as she would survey the field at the boys’ football matches. She addressed Bee in an undertone without turning. ‘Is he coming, then?’
‘Dick Greville? Yes, but he’ll be late.’
‘Not him, you ass. You know. Him. Is he?’
‘Teddy?’
Bee smiled involuntarily as she spoke the name and Dinah laughed aloud. ‘Well,’ Bee felt herself redden. ‘He said he’d try. Now I must go and help Reuben.’
Teddy Gardiner had kissed her all over her sofa. Over six foot, with dark, leonine hair and eyes of unexpected blue, he had arrived on the teaching staff the year before she did. He was a lay clerk in the cathedral, singing bass, taught English and coached the first fifteen. His body might have devastated were it not for the sense that it was the unconscious creation of wholesome pleasure, not an effortless endowment of birth. She had noticed him at once, but had stilled her interest with the reflection that, while no great beauty, Tony was blessedly indolent. Dinah had taken an immediate shine to him, but had passed unnoticed and so recovered. Just three weeks into Bee’s widowhood, he had come, grave of face, to express his sympathy. He had said how sorry he was to hear, she had said not at all, then they had sat side by side on the sofa talking about the Dean’s latest sermon and the tummy bug epidemic. The talk had flagged and, after a finger-itching silence, they had slid into a wild embrace. Things would certainly have progressed had he not kicked over the sherry bottle. Jennifer had come home in the middle of the mopping-up and he had fled in confusion to supervise the boys’ prep. Over the twenty-four months that ensued, his sporadic courtship had not gone unremarked.
Bee made her way back to the kitchen, pausing only long enough to be told that the rival do at the Deanery had been the usual dour affair and that most, if not all, of the guests had come on to hers. She found Reuben sitting on the draining board swinging his legs. He was not alone. He was nose to nose with the young Precentor.
‘Hello, Dick.’
‘Bee. How splendid.’
Did she fancy that guilty start?
‘I had no idea you two knew each other,’ she said. Dick Greville, who sang like an angel, was teaching the choristers plainsong technique and was rumoured to be a favourite at Clarence House, coughed and said, ‘Well…er…yes.’
‘Mrs Hewlings just introduced us,’ said Reuben sharply. ‘But actually we’d met once before at the Brills’. How is everything?’
‘Oh, fine. Fine. Nothing left to do now but chat. Reuben’s been a wonder, Dick. He took over all the baking for me.’
‘Oh really? How splendid.’
‘Yes, well, I was just saying I’d show our Precentor the old wasps’ nest in the summer house.’ So saying, Reuben opened the kitchen door and stepped out into the back yard. Dick, who had a reputation for purity, hovered on the doormat, wrinkling his brow.
‘Are you…er?’ he asked Bee.
‘No thanks. I’d better take the jug again.’ She beamed.
‘Oh. Right. Bye.’
He shut the door behind him. Bee leaned on the kitchen stool and heard Reuben’s laugh around the corner. Then she watched the two of them cross the lawn and, after a hasty look round, vanish into the gloom of the summer house. She had fou
nd a dried-out wasps’ nest in there, glued to the rafters. Reuben had never seemed particularly interested.
She made a fresh jug of cofee and set out to refill cups. Everyone said how much they were enjoying themselves. No one had left, although a few had deserted the main body to go upstairs on an explore. Sister Veronica’s stout-booted form was trotting across the half-way landing as Bee crossed the hall. She saw Bee in a mirror and stopped, turning with a twitter, a smile and a sparrow flap of her hand. A deeper voice barked from further up, ‘Come on, Knickers. You’ll get left behind,’ at which Veronica hesitated minutely before scampering round the corner, out of sight. Bee saw Dinah surreptitiously collecting cups and saucers from behind drinkers’ backs. Her friend caught her eye and gave her a wink. She turned into the drawing room.
‘More coffee, girls?’ she called, feeling suddenly tired.
‘Rather. White and two shugs. Isn’t that naughty of me?’
‘Oh but no, I think there comes a time when…’
‘Black, please. Yes. That’s lovely.’
‘Whichever’s easiest…Oh, well, darkish brown, then, please.’
She met the chorus with bland smiles. She reached Miss Rossington, whose leg was stretched out on a pile of cushions and a footstool and found that she was fast asleep. Slowly she lifted the cup and saucer from off the woman’s lap and slid them onto her tray. She turned and saw Teddy. Everyone else saw her seeing Teddy, too, and carried on chatting with eyes and minds in suspension.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I’m late, aren’t I?’
‘Yes, but it’s sweet of you to come at all.’
‘Oh nonsense. I mean…Borneo and things are…Well. Let me help you with that. Are you going to the kitchen with it?’
‘Yes.’
He took the tray in his great hands and swung out the way she had come. She watched his shoulder blades beneath the Harris tweed and wished again that he were not quite so sporty. In the kitchen she took the tray from him and opened the basement door.