'Well, she seems to be about the same,' I said to Sybil. 'I suppose Father Thames will be praying for her at Mass this morning.'
'I never know what it is that Christians expect or want when they pray for the sick,' said Sybil. 'Obviously death is greatly to be desired for believers, and yet they never quite like to pray for that - at least not publicly.'
'Mother, you can hardly know what is done, when you never go to church,' Rodney reminded her.
'But one hears what goes on,' said Sybil. 'And Arnold has told me a good deal, you know. He frequently has to attend funeral and memorial services in an official capacity.'
I remembered then that Professor Root was to take Christmas dinner with us, and the thought depressed me rather. Nevertheless when the time came and I saw the interesting- looking little parcel he had brought for me I felt more warmly towards him, and began to look forward to the time when we should open our presents.
The little parcel turned out to be a charming early Victorian mourning brooch, a lock of auburn hair delicately framed in gold. I was delighted with it.
'I hope you are not superstitious — and perhaps some relic connected with death is not the happiest of thoughts for this time. But I believed it was the kind of thing you might like, and certainly it seems to be appropriate to your own style of beauty, which, if I may say so, is happily not quite of this age,' said Professor Root, flushing a little as he hurried over these last words.
We had all been drinking champagne, otherwise I suppose he would not have had the courage to say what he did. I was touched by his compliment and the tears came into my eyes.
'I think it's charming,' I said, 'and just the kind of thing I like best.'
I was curious to see what his present for Sybil would be, for she was in some ways so very unfeminine that I always found it difficult to know what to get for her. But Professor Root's choice of a warm mohair stole seemed brilliant, and Sybil was obviously very pleased with it. I tried to imagine Professor Root going into a shop and buying it, but this was difficult and I concluded that his sister or housekeeper must have chosen it for him.
I had given books to Sybil and Professor Root, and a wallet to Rodney. His present to me was always money, but there was generally some small token as well; and this year he had bought me a pair of pearl earrings in a pretty unobtrusive setting unlike so much of the vulgar modern jewellery which I dislike.
'Darling, I hope you don't think real pearls vulgar,' he said teasingly, 'but I thought you needed something for those innumerable parish occasions you seem to be attending lately.'
'They're lovely,' I said, feeling for some obscure reason that I hardly deserved them. 'Do you think they will be suitable for tea with Mr Bason tomorrow?'
'Not unless he asks us to stay on for sherry,' said Rodney, 'and that hardly seems likely. Good heavens - is that what Rowena gave you!' he exclaimed, taking up a prettily packed box containing two bottles. 'Moon Drops — what on earth can those be? - and White Sable - what extraordinary things even reasonably intelligent women will put on their faces. What results do you expect to achieve? One hardly likes to conjecture from these rather odd names!'
'They just help to preserve our beauty,' I said lightly, gathering up the pieces of Christmas wrapping paper which littered the carpet.
'There's another little parcel you seem to have forgotten,' said Sybil, pointing to a little soft square package wrapped in holly paper.
'Oh dear, it's two handkerchiefs from Mary,' I said, 'and I didn't give her anything. We've never exchanged presents before.'
'It seems suitable that Mary should be the more blessed one, giving rather than receiving,' said Sybil drily. 'But never mind, you may very well be able to make it up to her in the future.'
'I do hope so,' I said. But I was really thinking of that other present for which I had as yet made no return - the little box with its provocative inscription. I was not at all sure how I was supposed to make it up to Piers.
Chapter Nine
'I think we had better be five or ten minutes late for tea, don't you?' said Rodney the next day.
We were settled comfortably with books in front of the fire, and I could tell that he did not really want to turn out on a cold afternoon.
'Yes,' I agreed, 'but not more. I feel Mr Bason is the kind of person who might take umbrage easily, and we don't want to make it look as if we had forgotten his invitation or that we thought it didn't matter.'
'Should we go in the car?'
'Well, that is making rather a business of it, don't you think? After all it's only a quarter of an hour's walk - less really.'
We set out at ten to four, Rodney grumbling a little; but my step was eager, for I had not seen inside the clergy house before. I wondered whether we should meet Father Thames on the stairs, or hear Father Bode practising a sermon behind closed doors.
As we came up to the clergy house I saw the notice about not ringing unless on urgent business. But there was hardly time to consider whether we should ring or not, for the moment we set foot on the doorstep I noticed a curtain at a ground floor window being flicked aside and heard footsteps within. Evidently Mr Bason had been watching for our arrival in a rather Cranfordian way.
The door was flung open.
'Ah, just on the dot,' he called out.
'I think we are just a little late, aren't we?' said Rodney, consulting his watch. 'We didn't leave home till nearly four.'
'Well, perhaps you are fashionably late by just a minute or two,' Mr Bason agreed. 'Now do come in.'
I entered eagerly, looking about me with interest and curiosity. The hall was quite large, with a parquet floor not as well polished as it might have been. The paint was green and the walls cream, but both were dingy looking. Against one wall stood a massive oak chest flanked on either side by chairs with high carved backs. There was a large umbrella and hat stand of Victorian type, suitably hung with birettas, clerical mackintoshes and other dark garments that might have been cassocks. One or two pictures hung on the walls and were of the kind I always think of as oleographs, though I have never been sure exactly what oleographs are. They were of vaguely holy subjects - buildings and people in ancient dress - and there was also a brightly coloured reproduction of the Sistine Madonna in a gilt frame.
'The dining-room and parish meeting-room aren't particularly interesting, but you might like to see the room Mrs Greenhill had,' said Mr Bason, opening a door leading off the hall.
'But how dark it is!' I exclaimed. 'And right up against the church wall. I should think it would be damp. Father Thames said it was a storeroom, didn't he?'
'A repository for old copies of Crockford,' said Rodney, poking at one with his umbrella. 'I always thought you could sell them.'
'Perhaps he likes to keep them for a special reason,' I said, opening a volume. I saw that against some entries Father Thames had made his own notes, '† d. 1952.' I noticed against one, 'St Alphege, Harvist Road, N.W.6. ? 1941' against another, while a third had simply been crossed out altogether in heavy ink lines.
'Well, Bason, I hope you have a better room than this,' said Rodney.
'Yes - mine is really delightful. I thought you might like to have just a peep at some of the other rooms too,' Mr Bason called over his shoulder as we mounted the stairs. 'Everyone is out at the moment Father Thames is having tea with Sir Denbigh Grote. Father Bode has gone to the pictures.'
'Do you think we should?' asked Rodney doubtfully.
I am afraid that I made no protest though I also felt that it was perhaps not quite the thing. Still, as Mr Bason was our host it seemed only polite to accept the programme he offered.
'Father Thames loves showing people over the house,' he went on.
'To emphasize how few rooms there are?' I suggested, remembering that this had been his defence for not having Father Ransome to live at the clergy house.
Mr Bason burst into a peal of laughter. There's plenty of room really, you know. Now this is the oratory - quite charming do
n't you think? I really don't know what it was built for, originally.'
'It could have been the nursery,' I said. 'We know that the first incumbent had five children.'
'It would hardly have had that stained glass window,' Rodney objected. 'I think it was a bathroom.'
We paused in the doorway, silent for a moment as if in recognition of the sacred purpose for which the room was now used.
'Now,' said Mr Bason moving us on like a guide. 'I think we might take the merest peep into Father Thames's study. I expect you would like to see that.'
He had already opened the door before we could express any opinion and I crept forward rather guiltily as if expecting some kind of retribution to fall on me.
The first impression was of a rather crowded museum, for there seemed to be a great many objects arranged in glass- fronted cabinets and on the mantelpiece. The room was dominated by an enormous desk of some dark rich-looking wood. This rather surprised me, for I had not hitherto had the impression that Father Thames was the scholarly type of clergyman; though, on thinking it over, I supposed that every parish priest must have a large desk, if only to answer his correspondence and prepare his sermons. Books I had expected to see, and there were certainly a great many including some well bound sets of the English poets, and Dante and Goethe. I wondered whether in his youth Father Thames had been one of those preachers who adorn their sermons with quotations, like a certain Archdeacon Hoccleve who had been a distant cousin of my mother's and who even sometimes took as his text a phrase from one of our greater English poets. Such sermons seemed to have gone out of fashion, for all we got from Father Thames now was ten minutes' rather dry teaching on such topics as 'The Significance of Evensong', or little nagging perorations about why we ought to go to confession. No doubt the modern way was better, but I could not help regretting the passing of the old.
'He seems to have some nice objects,' said Rodney. 'A whole cabinet full of Dresden, and that Fabergé egg is particularly charming, don't you think?'
'Yes, delightful,' I agreed. 'But what on earth is this?'
We were looking at a piece of statuary which stood on a little table in a corner. It was of a young boy, the features blunted with wear and age, but very pleasing none the less.
'He brought that back from Italy, he told me,' said Mr Bason. 'Apparently it was dug up somewhere near Siena, I think he said - he was staying with friends at the time in their villa. He brought it back in the hope of being able to put it somewhere in the church, but when he got it home it didn't seem suitable.'
'Yes, it has a very pagan look,' I agreed. 'I can't quite see it in a church here, though it might look well in a Roman church abroad.'
'Yes, in one of those rather dark side chapels,' said Rodney.
We left the room and passed another door, which I assumed must be Father Thames's bedroom. I was glad that Mr Bason was showing enough delicacy to draw the line somewhere - I really had been beginning to wonder whether he would show us quite everything.
As we ascended to the second floor I noticed that the thick red stair carpet gave way to an inferior kind of drugget, and that the walls were hung with old faded sepia groups of the kind one sees in junk shops or at jumble sales. I scanned them eagerly, and was rewarded by seeing a young Father Thames in a rowing group, and again at an even earlier stage with three women who might have been elder sisters or young aunts having tea on a lawn by a large monkey-puzzle tree.
'Now we must get Wilmet away from brooding over these old photographs,' said Rodney. 'She gets very melancholy over things like that.'
'I hadn't realized he was a rowing man. It all seems such a long time ago, doesn't it - from that to this, whatever it may have been or is now,' I said thoughtfully. 'One can see it all - that tall splendid figure, the enthusiastic spectators on the tow- path...'
'Come, darling,' said Rodney, taking my arm. 'We are to see Father Bode's study now.'
'Well, there's nothing to see really,' said Mr Bason, flinging open the door with a gesture of contempt 'He hasn't got any nice things of his own.'
'No, I can see that,' I said, for the room we were now looking at was quite disconcertingly bare, and such personal touches as I noticed were of the simplest and cheapest - a lampshade decorated with an ugly pattern of orange leaves, an old greenish-brown rug on the worn beige linoleum in front of the gas fire, a pipe rack made in fretwork, and a Goss china jar full of paper spills. On the table, for there was no desk, stood a framed photograph of a church - perhaps the one he had attended as a boy or served his first curacy at, I decided.
'Of course he hasn't Father Thames's artistic tastes,' said Mr Bason, perhaps unnecessarily.
'Or his private means,' added Rodney in a dry tone.
'And this is the guest room!'
We now found ourselves on the threshold of a room of quite startling austerity. An iron bedstead covered with a white honeycomb quilt, a yellow deal chest of drawers, a washstand and a strip of worn carpet, was all it contained. There was also, however, an ugly ornate crucifix on the wall and a pile of green-covered Penguin thrillers on the chest.
'Do you have many guests?' I asked doubtfully.
'No. The room seems to be used only in an emergency,' said Mr Bason. 'If somebody misses the last bus or train, or is stranded for any reason. Most of the visiting priests who come to preach seem to be from near-by churches, don't they?'
'I suppose Father Ransome could have had this room,' I said disloyally. 'He could have brought his own things - I daresay he has some, and after being in the East End and North Kensington he should be used to austere living.'
'Yes, I suppose it could have been arranged,' Mr Bason agreed. 'But he and Father Thames are in some ways too much alike - they would have vied with each other.'
I smiled at the quaintness of the expression and imagined the two priests feverishly amassing Fabergé objects and Dresden china. I had not, of course, seen Father Ransome's rooms at the Beamishes', but from what I had seen of him I guessed that Mr Bason would not be far wrong.
'And now we are to see your room,' I said, feeling that some such remark was expected of me, but my 'But this is charming!' came perhaps a little too soon - almost before I could really have taken in the rather chintzy prettiness of the room we were now entering.
'Mother made these covers,' said Mr Bason, 'and I always like to have fresh flowers in the room.' He indicated a jar of white chrysanthemums and a red cyclamen in a pot 'I'm afraid I must have beautiful things around me. I'm like Father Thames in that,' he added complacently.
Tea was already laid on a low table in front of the gas fire, and Mr Bason busied himself with the kettle on a gas ring in the hearth.
'Did your mother make this lace tablecloth?' I asked.
'Yes, she is always doing crochet,' he said. 'She can't get about much now, but her eyes are still very good.'
'It's beautifully fine work,' I said, picking up a corner of the cloth to examine it.
'How different people's mothers are,' said Rodney. 'It's difficult to imagine mine doing any kind of fancywork.' He flinched a little over the last word as if he had not really meant to say it, but it had come out regardless, as words appropriate to situations sometimes do.
'I am assuming that you both like Earl Grey,' said Mr Bason, his hand poised over the tea caddy, 'though I have Lapsang if you would prefer it.'
We both murmured appreciatively. The tea was made and we started to eat little sandwiches made of gentleman's relish and crab-meat.
'Goodness, this is a bit different from tea at the Ministry, isn't it, Bason?' said Rodney in a robust tone.
'Yes - I suppose people still queue up with their mugs for that dreadful brew they used to call tea. How one ever endured it I don't know! And the atmosphere of that place.' Mr Bason glanced round the room complacently, or it seemed that he did, and he would certainly have been justified in calling attention to the difference between his chintzy elegance and the starkly utilitarian setting of the Ministry.
>
'I'm afraid you weren't very happy there,' said Rodney, perhaps resenting Mr Bason's air of superiority. 'You are lucky to have found your niche, as they say.'
'Well, my talents - such as they are - are rather out of the ordinary, perhaps. Now, Mrs Forsyth, do try some of my sponge. I think you will find it very light.'
It was certainly an exquisite cake, and I was just complimenting Mr Bason upon it when the telephone was heard ringing in a near-by room.
'Oh bother, I wonder who that is,' said Mr Bason. 'I suppose I must answer it.'
'It might be something urgent,' said Rodney, 'I suppose people do telephone the clergy about things like that - matters of life and death.'
'Yes, of course,' Mr Bason's face brightened. 'I'll take the call in Bode's study.'
Rodney and I sat together in an awkward silence, as people do when their host or hostess is called from the room.
'A lovely tea,' I said stiffly. 'Do you think he made these meringues too? I think I shall try one.'
'Yes, he would like us to help ourselves, I'm sure. I suppose that is his mother in the photograph?' Rodney took down a silver frame from the mantelpiece and we examined the photograph of an elderly woman with Mr Bason's egg-shaped face and a mass of white hair.
'He's being a long time,' I said uneasily. 'I hope nothing has happened to his mother.'
'Darling, you're too imaginative,' said Rodney soothingly. 'That kind of dreadful thing could happen in life - indeed it does, but we'd rather it happened in fiction. But he seems to be coming back - we shall soon know.'
We could hardly help glancing up expectantly as Mr Bason came back into the room, for he was obviously the kind of person who would not keep things to himself. His demeanour seemed to be a mixture of pleased self-importance and distress with a hint of exasperation, if such a thing can be imagined. We waited for him to speak.
'Oh dear,' he said, 'that was Ransome.'