‘A pity she isn’t going to cook for the students,’ said Bertram. ‘She does boiled baby to perfection, though only on a small scale.’
Mrs Sedge, who must surely have been listening outside the door, came into the room at that moment with the tea. It was not often that she condescended to leave her basement, but she must have decided that Dulcie’s visit was worth the ascent.
‘Good afternoon, Miss Mainwaring,’ she said. ‘My brother has told me the good news. It is good, yes?’
‘News — you, Dulcie?’ said Hermione. ‘Have you been keeping something from us?’
‘No — I mean, it isn’t me the news is about,’ said Dulcie. ‘My friend, Viola Dace, is going to marry Mrs Sedge’s brother.’
‘Your friend to marry Mrs Sedge’s brother?’ repeated Bertram, in a puzzled tone. ‘But how can that be? Do they know each other?’
‘Now, Bertram, don’t be silly,’ said Hermione sharply. ‘Obviously they must know each other. Thank you, Mrs Sedge, I think we can manage now. Please congratulate your brother from me on his good fortune. Now Dulcie,’ she went on, when Mrs Sedge appeared to be safely out of earshot, ‘what is this nonsense? How can your friend be going to marry Mrs Sedge’s brother?’
Dulcie explained how it had come about.
‘Well,’ said Hermione, when she had finished, ‘one can only hope that they’ll be happy. It all sounds most unsuitable.’
‘But love isn’t always suitable,’ said Dulcie, a little impatiently. ‘Viola is a difficult sort of person, and not all that young. Isn’t it better that she should take this chance of happiness even if it does seem to be a rather incongruous match in some ways?’
‘Well, as long as he can give her a comfortable home,’ said Hermione complacently, no doubt thinking of the power points about to be installed at the vicarage.
‘But we should be talking about you,’ said Dulcie more warmly. ‘How sensible of the vicar to realize what a good wife you would make,’ she began, and then wondered if it had perhaps been more romantic than that.
‘It was after Maisie went back to Nottingham,’ said Hermione, smiling. ‘She had been a tower of strength, as you may remember, but when that tower was taken away …’
‘Removed to Nottingham,’ interposed Bertram.
‘I gave him a week or two — poor man, he soon got into a fine old muddle! Then one day I thought I’d take him by surprise, so I popped round one morning and what do you think he was doing? Trying to wash his surplices! He was worried because they didn’t seem as white as they ought to be.’
Here was a new line for the washing-powder manufacturers who advertised on television, Dulcie thought. She must ask Miss Lord whether they had yet got round to the worried clergyman, shamed by the whiteness of a visiting preacher’s surplice. It would not be practical to do the famous ‘window test’ in a church or cathedral.
‘So what did you do?’ Dulcie asked, unable to imagine her aunt actually washing them herself.
‘I advised him to send them to the laundry. He couldn’t remember what his sister Gladys — the one who died, you know — had done about it. Well, after that, one thing led to another, in the way things do.’
Dulcie listened to her aunt’s voice going on and on, and thought how trivial the beginnings of love often seemed to be. The marriage between her aunt and the vicar — older people with interests in common — was at once satisfactory and depressing, just the kind of ‘suitable’ marriage she had advised Aylwin Forbes to make and which he obviously never would.
When she got home there was a letter lying in the hall. She recognized Maurice’s handwriting on the envelope. He suggested that they should meet for lunch one day. ‘I do feel’, he wrote, ‘that we should remain friends, and it could be such a pleasant relationship — you’ve no idea how I sometimes long to have somebody to tell my troubles to, and if she were a charming and sympathetic woman, so much the better!’
Dulcie stood for a moment with the letter in her hand, remembering other letters in that extravagant writing, and then rejected the idea of herself in this role. She wrote back rather vaguely, saying that she was too busy at the moment but would get in touch with him some time.
So that was another tie broken, and in a day or two Viola was leaving to spend the few weeks before her marriage at her parents’ house in Sydenham.
‘It does seem rather conventional,’ Viola said apologetically, ‘but you know what men are. Bill would expect it. We shall just have a quiet wedding at the registrar’s office.’
‘And what they call a small family luncheon afterwards?’
‘Yes, just family, really.’
‘I hope it won’t be cooked by Mrs Sedge,’ Dulcie couldn’t resist saying. ‘It would have been nice if you could have been married at Neville Forbes’s church, or even at Father Benger’s, but I suppose it wouldn’t be legal in the flower-decorated upper room near Harrods. Anyway, I hope everything goes well.’
‘We are to live in Neasden,’ said Viola. ‘You must come and see us.’
‘I’d love to,’ said Dulcie, wondering if she ever would go. ‘Will you still do indexes and odd bits of research in your spare time? No, obviously not. But just think — if it hadn’t been for that conference last summer, you’d never have met me and, through me, Bill Sedge.’
‘No, I suppose I shouldn’t,’ Viola agreed. ‘Strange, isn’t it, the turns life takes — all that misery over Aylwin Forbes — how one wastes one’s emotions!’
Are they wasted, Dulcie wondered. She asked herself the same question the next day, when she and Miss Lord were tidying out Viola’s room. For there in the wastepaper basket, not even decently torn up, was a signed off-print of one of Aylwin Forbes’s articles, just cast out with all the other rubbish. Dulcie retrieved it, telling herself that it should at least gather dust respectably in her own bookshelves.
‘Untidy, wasn’t she, Miss Dace,’ said Miss Lord in an elegiac tone, as she gathered some torn-up papers out of the fireplace. ‘And it looks as if she’s put down a hot cup or something on this little table — it’s made quite a nasty mark. I’d like to see what her home is like, Miss Mainwaring, I don’t mind telling you.’
‘I expect all the tables will have marks from hot things put down on them,’ said Dulcie absently. ‘Though people do sometimes change when they marry. Perhaps Mr Sedge …’
‘Oh, he’ll be house-proud all right,’ said Miss Lord vigorously. ‘I know the type.’ She went downstairs muttering something about ‘respect for other people’s property’.
Dulcie was expecting Laurel to come to tea, and went into the kitchen to make a cake, as if Laurel were still a child for whom treats must be prepared. But when she saw her coming along the road she realized how much she had changed in less than a year in London. Now she wore high heels and a tight narrow skirt; her hair no longer hung loose on her shoulders but was swathed round her head into a sort of beehive shape, which seemed to be the latest fashion. She looked like a young girl of the very early ‘twenties, before short hair was thought of.
‘You’ll never guess who I had lunch with today,’ said Laurel.
Dulcie could guess, but allowed herself to be mystified.
‘Dr Forbes!’
How odd it sounded, to hear Aylwin described like that, Dulcie thought.
‘How nice of him to ask you,’ she said. ‘Where did you go?’
‘To a club — the ladies’ annex, he said it was. I suppose it would be — a lot of elderly men — some clergymen, even — having lunch with girls. It was rather funny, really.’
‘Goodness!’ said Dulcie, wondering if it had been the Athenaeum. ‘I hope the food was good?’
‘It was all right, but I’m not used to eating much for lunch. And we had a lot of wine. I felt I was getting rather red in the face,’ she added disarmingly.
‘And what did you talk about?’
‘Oh, this and that,’ said Laurel, irritatingly cool. ‘Has Miss Dace gone yet?’
‘
Yes, she’s getting married next week, you know,’ said Dulcie, annoyed at the change of subject.
‘She rather fancied Dr Forbes, didn’t she? That evening when he came to dinner. You could tell somehow — one always can…’
‘Can one?’ said Dulcie, rather alarmed; but then she realized that one’s aunt, whatever her age, would probably be regarded as too old to have any such feelings.
‘A good thing she found somebody else,’ said Laurel. ‘I think he found her rather a bore.’
Dulcie was silent, disconcerted by Laurel’s frankness. She felt she ought to change the subject, and yet she wanted to go on talking about Aylwin. She could also sense that Laurel had something more to say about the lunch. Could it be that Aylwin had hinted at his love for her, or even declared his feelings more strongly? If so, it had been very wrong of him, especially after their conversation at Taviscombe. Had it meant nothing to him, because it had taken place in a holiday resort, looking down at the sea — the kind of setting in which promises — romantic ones, at least — were made only to be broken?
‘He told me … Oh, I hardly know how to say this, it was so in-credible !’ Laurel burst out. ‘He told me he loved me and hoped to marry me one day! It was when we were having coffee in a sort of lounge with leather armchairs and little tables — talk about the time and the place and the loved one all together! What a place for a proposal!’ She laughed, looking very pretty in her merriment.
‘He wanted to marry you?’ questioned Dulcie sternly. ‘But my dear Laurel, he has a wife already — you know that perfectly well. And so does he,’ she added lamely, for it seemed as if he had temporarily forgotten; perhaps it was the kind of thing men did forget at such times.
‘Oh, I know. But she has behaved shockingly to him — even you must admit that.’
‘She left him, certainly,’ Dulcie agreed. ‘But I imagine she had some provocation. He must have — well, driven her to it — by his behaviour.’ Libertine, she thought, remembering the lady at the jumble sale in aid of the organ fund.
‘Yes, but he did ask her to go back to him — at least, he said he did. But now that she’s gone off with this man — you must admit he never went as far as that. I was really quite sorry for him.’
‘But what man” asked Dulcie, when she had recovered from the shock of the news she had just heard. ‘I didn’t know anything about this. Not the organist, surely?’
‘No — a man she met in the train coming back from Taviscombe — in the dining car, I think. Apparently her mother didn’t feel like having lunch and Mrs Forbes went by herself. Quite romantic, really,’ said Laurel, in a detached tone. ‘It only happened about a week ago. I should have thought Dr Forbes — Aylwin — might have waited a bit longer before looking round for another wife.’
‘Perhaps his mind was a little unhinged by shock and grief,’ said Dulcie unconvincingly. ‘Though I do know,’ she added hastily, ‘that he is very fond of you. He must have been so much in need of comfort, and felt that you could give it. I don’t think we should ever be too hard on people at times like this — one just never knows…’
‘Yes, I realize that, and of course I’m sorry for him — though he didn’t seem to be particularly grieving, if you know what I mean. But the idea of me marrying him! Why, he’s older than Daddy!’
‘Yes, I suppose he is. Still, older men often make better husbands than younger ones,’ said Dulcie, almost, in her selflessness, urging Laurel to reconsider Aylwin’s proposal.
‘But I could never marry him,’ said Laurel firmly, ‘and I told him so.’
‘Was he very upset?’
‘I suppose so, in a way. It was hard to tell, when we were in such a public place. I felt rather a fool. You know,’ — she giggled — ‘I — couldn’t help wondering if all the other old men having lunch with girls were asking them to marry them.’
‘Oh, I shouldn’t think so,’ said Dulcie, rather shocked. ‘Poor Aylwin,’ she went on, still unable to adjust herself to the situation. ‘Fancy Marjorie doing a thing like that — who would ever have thought it! And poor Mrs Williton, what a shock it must have been to her.’
‘I never met his wife,’ said Laurel, ‘though I did see his mother-in-law once. A little woman in a pink felt hat — funny, isn’t it, how you remember people.’
‘And are you seeing much of Paul?’ asked Dulcie, in a brighter tone.
‘Oh yes, off and on,’ said Laurel casually. ‘He’s rather sweet really. Marian and I had a party and he did the flowers.’
They went on to talk of various things, Dulcie giving only a small part of her attention to the conversation. She was wondering if she should perhaps write to Aylwin. But what could she say? Did one write to people when things like this happened? It might be more appropriate to write to Mrs Williton; and yet, sorry though Dulcie felt for her, she decided she could hardly find the necessary words to grieve with her over her daughter’s fall.
And yet, she felt, perhaps because of the conversation by the sea at Taviscombe, there was some kind of bond between Aylwin and herself, and after Laurel had gone she sat down to compose a letter. It was a vague kind of letter, referring to ‘this sad news’ and ‘your trouble’, almost as if he were bereaved. Obviously, she thought, as she opened the gate to take it to the post, it wouldn’t do at all.
The evening air was sweet with the scent of wallflowers and laburnums, and it seemed sad to think of Mrs Williton, such a true suburban dweller, sitting alone in her house facing the com-mon. Perhaps a visit might bring her some comfort? Dulcie saw herself approaching the house. ‘I was so sorry to hear about Marjorie,’ she would say. Or, better, ‘I thought you might be in need of company now that you’re on your own …’
‘You look sad, Miss Mainwaring,’ said Mrs Beltane, who was taking Felix for his evening walk. ‘Has something upset you?’
‘I’ve just heard some rather bad news,’ said Dulcie, too much taken by surprise to weigh the accuracy of her words. ‘I’ve been writing a letter to a friend — I mean, the friend to whom it’s happened.’
‘Father Benger brings wonderful comfort to the bereaved,’ said Mrs Beltane, her eyes shining. ‘I know people who have lost their loved ones — yes, and animals, too — who have been so much helped by him.’
‘Yes, I’m sure,’ said Dulcie, looking down and meeting the fierce beady-eyed stare of Felix.
‘Why don’t you come along with me on Sunday, Miss Mainwaring? I’m sure you’d find the service most comforting, and Father Benger would have a special word with you afterwards.’
‘Thank you,’ said Dulcie sincerely, ‘it’s very kind of you to suggest it, but there’s another church I ought to go to.’ She patted Felix, and then went on her way to the post box.
But when she reached it she saw that the last evening collection had gone, and as she stood uncertainly with the letter in her hand she knew what she had known all the time — that she could not possibly send it. So she went slowly home and tore it up.
Chapter Twenty-Five
THE UNEXPECTED news about Marjorie Forbes had made Dulcie realize how completely out of touch she was with the worlds of Aylwin and Neville and of Taviscombe. She did not even know whether Neville had returned to his church to brave the hazards of Miss Spicer and her love. It was difficult to know how best to start her inquiries, until she remembered that she had told Neville that she would visit his church some time and that he had seemed to accept this as inevitable. And if he were not there, that nice friendly housekeeper would be sure to know the latest news of
As she sat waiting for the evening service to begin, Dulcie felt that she merged almost too well with the congregation. But this was in some ways an advantage, for she was able to look around her for signs of Miss Spicer and the housekeeper and anything else that might indicate whether the clergyman who ate cold brussels sprouts in the middle of the night was still taking the services. There were several women who looked something like Miss Spicer, though as Dulcie had seen her only once, and
then very briefly and in tears, a definite identification was impossible. She came to the conclusion that all churches must have in their congregations several Miss Spicers, though it was to be hoped that not all of them would fall in love with the vicar.
As the time for the service approached, a kind of hush fell on the congregation. The housekeeper entered, smiling at people around her and almost bowing, as if she were the leader of an orchestra, the last person to enter before the maestro himself. When she saw Dulcie, she gave her a broad wink.
The service began, and now Dulcie realized the full beauty of Neville Forbes in church — not so splendid, certainly, as he would have been in vestments for a High Mass, but the light and sympathetic atmosphere of an evening service lent a peculiar grace and dignity to his appearance. At Taviscombe he had seemed slightly ridiculous, wandering about the hotel in his cassock, and only for that brief moment among the tombstones in the cemetery had Dulcie glimpsed how he might really look in his proper setting.
Neville did not seem to be a particularly good preacher, though Dulcie did not set herself up as a judge of sermons. What he said was simple and obvious, almost too much so. At one point it seemed to her that his glance rested on her. She wondered how many other women had felt the same.
After the service was over, the housekeeper was quick to come over to Dulcie and ask if she would join them for a cup of tea in the hall.
‘Father Forbes is back, dear,’ she said, almost digging her in the ribs.’What did I tell you!’
Dulcie was not sure, nor could she decide whether she ought to reveal that she had already met him. She decided to let things ‘take their course’, whatever that might be.
In the hall the loud music, the dancing and the cups of tea seemed to invite the exchange of confidences, if only because they would be unlikely to be overheard.
‘My dear,’ the housekeeper began characteristically, ‘such goings-on since you were here last!’