‘Nonsense, you beat me last time. We play even.’
She surprised herself. Once she would have given way. It was a small act of self-assertion and she saw him smile as with his stiffened fingers he began to set out the pieces.
6
Miss Blackett went home every night to Weaver’s Cottage in West Marling in Kent where, for the past nineteen years, she had lived with her older widowed cousin, Joan Willoughby. Their relationship was affectionate but had never been emotionally intense. Mrs Willoughby had married a retired clergyman and when he died three years after the marriage, which Miss Blackett privately suspected was as long as either partner could have borne, it had seemed natural for his widow to invite her cousin to give up her unsatisfactory rented flat in Bayswater and move to the cottage. Early in these nineteen years of shared life a routine had established itself, evolving rather than planned, which satisfied them both. It was Joan who managed the house and was responsible for the garden, Blackie who, on Sundays, cooked the main meal of the day which was always eaten promptly at one o’clock, a responsibility which excused her from Matins although not from Evensong. It was Blackie who, rising first, took early-morning tea to her cousin and made their nightly Ovaltine or cocoa at half past ten. They holidayed together, for the last two weeks in July, usually abroad, because neither of them had anyone with a stronger claim. They looked forward each June to the Wimbledon tennis championship and enjoyed the occasional weekend visit to a concert, theatre or art gallery. They told themselves, but did not say aloud, that they were lucky.
Weaver’s Cottage stood on the northern outskirts of the village. Originally two substantial cottages, it had in the 1950s been converted into one dwelling by a family with definite ideas about what constituted rural domestic charm. The tiled roof had been replaced with reed thatch from which three dormer windows stared out like protruding eyes; the plain windows were now mullioned and a porch had been added, covered in summer by climbing roses and clematis. Mrs Willoughby loved the cottage and if the mullioned windows made the sitting-room rather darker than she would ideally have liked, and some of the oak beams were less authentic than others, these defects were never openly acknowledged. The cottage with its immaculate thatch and its garden had appeared on too many calendars, had been photographed by visitors too often for her to worry about small details of architectural integrity. The main part of the garden was in the front, and here Mrs Willoughby spent most of her spare hours, tending, planting and watering what was generally admitted to be West Marling’s most impressive front garden, designed as much for the pleasure of passers-by as for the occupants of the cottage.
‘I aim for something of interest throughout the year,’ she would explain to people who paused to admire, and in this she certainly succeeded. But she was a true and imaginative gardener. Plants thrived under her care and she had an instinctive eye for the placing of colour and mass. The cottage might be less than authentic but the garden was unmistakably English. There was a small lawn with a mulberry tree which in spring was surrounded by crocuses, snowdrops and later the bright trumpets of daffodils and narcissi. In the summer the heavily planted beds leading to the porch were an intoxication of colour and scent, while the beech hedge, trimmed low so as not to obscure the view of the glories beyond, was a living symbol of the passing seasons from the first tight, tentative buds to the crisp gold and reds of its autumn glory.
She always returned from the monthly PCC meeting bright-eyed and invigorated. Some people, Blackie reflected, would have found the fortnightly skirmishes with the vicar about his partiality for the new liturgy over the old and his other minor delinquencies dispiriting; Joan seemed to thrive on them. She settled herself, plump thighs parted, stretching the tweed of her skirt, feet firmly planted, before the pie-edged table and poured the two glasses of amontillado. A dry biscuit cracked between the strong white teeth, the cut glass, one of a set, with its delicate stem looked as if it would snap in her hand.
‘It’s inclusive language now, if you please. He wants “Through the Night of Doubt and Sorrow” at next Sunday’s Evensong, but we’re supposed to sing “Person takes the Hand of Person, Marching Fearless through the Night”. I soon put a stop to that, supported by Mr Higginson, thankfully. I can forgive that man the price of his bacon and the way he lets that mangy old cat of his sit in the window on the cornflakes when he acts with sense at the PCC which, to do him justice, he usually does. Miss Matlock suggested “Sister Takes the Hand of Sister”.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘Nothing, except it’s not what the author wrote. Had a good day?’
‘No. It hasn’t been a good day.’
But Mrs Willoughby’s mind was still with the PCC.
‘I’m not particularly fond of that hymn. Never have been. I can’t think why Miss Matlock’s so keen on it. Nostalgia, I suppose. Childhood memories. Not much doubt and sorrow about the congregation at St Margaret’s. Too well fed. Too well-off. Still, there will be if the vicar tries to cut out the eight o’clock 1662 Holy Communion on Sundays. There’ll be plenty of doubt and sorrow in the parish then.’
‘Has he suggested it?’
‘Not in so many words, but he’s keeping an eye on the size of the congregation. You and I must keep up our attendance and I’ll see if I can stir up some of the villagers. All this trendiness is Susan, of course. The man would be perfectly amenable if he weren’t egged on by his wife. She’s talking of going off to be trained for the diaconate. Next thing they’ll be ordaining her priest. They’d both do better in a large inner-city parish. They could have their banjos and guitars and I dare say the people would quite like it. What was your journey like?’
‘Not bad. Better tonight than this morning. We were ten minutes late at Charing Cross, a bad beginning to a bad day. It was Sonia Clements’ funeral. Mr Gerard didn’t go. Too busy, so he said. I suppose she wasn’t important enough. Naturally that meant I felt I had to stay.’
Joan said: ‘Well that was no hardship. Cremations are always depressing. You can get some satisfaction out of a well-conducted funeral, but not out of a cremation. Which reminds me that the vicar actually proposed using the Alternative Service Book when he buries old Merryweather next Tuesday. I soon put a stop to that. Mr Merryweather was eighty-nine and you know how he hated change. He wouldn’t think he’d had a proper Christian burial without the 1662 book.’
When on the previous Tuesday Blackie had returned home with the news of Sonia Clements’ suicide, Joan had taken it with remarkable composure. Blackie told herself that she oughtn’t to be surprised. Her cousin frequently confounded her by an unexpected response to news and events. Small domestic inconveniences would provoke outrage, a major tragedy was taken with stoic calm. And this tragedy, after all, couldn’t be expected to touch her. She had never known, not even met, Sonia Clements.
Breaking the news, Blackie had said: ‘I haven’t gossiped with the junior staff, of course, but I gather that the general feeling in the office is that she killed herself because Mr Gerard sacked her. I don’t suppose he did it tactfully either. Apparently she left a note but it didn’t mention losing her job. People take the view, though, that she’d still be here if it wasn’t for Mr Gerard.’
Joan’s response had been robust. ‘But that’s ridiculous. Grown women don’t kill themselves because they’ve been sacked. If losing your job was a reason for suicide we’d be having to dig mass graves. It was very inconsiderate of her, very thoughtless. And if she had to kill herself she should have done it somewhere else. After all, it might have been you who’d gone to the little archives room and found her. That wouldn’t have been at all pleasant.’
Blackie had said: ‘It wasn’t very pleasant for Mandy Price, the new temp, but I must say she took it very coolly. Some young girls would have had hysterics.’
‘No point in getting hysterics over a dead body. Dead bodies can’t harm you. She’ll be lucky if she sees nothing worse in life than that.’
Blac
kie, sipping her sherry, looked across at her cousin from under lowered lids as if seeing her dispassionately for the first time. The solid, almost waistless body, the firm legs with the beginnings of varicose veins above surprisingly shapely ankles, the abundant hair, once a rich brown, still thick and only slightly grey, worn in a heavy bun (a fashion which hadn’t changed since Blackie had first known her), the cheerful, weather-coarsened face. A sensible face, people might say. A sensible face for a sensible woman, one of Barbara Pym’s excellent women but with none of the gentleness or reticence of a Barbara Pym heroine, applying a ruthless kindness to the problems of the village from bereavements to recalcitrant choirboys, her life as regulated in its pleasures and duties as the liturgical year which gave it shape and focus. And so had Blackie’s life once had shape and focus. It seemed to Blackie that she had no control over anything, her life, her job, her emotions, and that in dying Henry Peverell had taken with him an essential part of herself.
Suddenly she said: ‘Joan, I don’t think I can go on at Peverells. Gerard Etienne is getting intolerable. I’m not even allowed to deal with his personal calls. He takes them on a private line in his office: Mr Peverell used to leave our door ajar, propped open with that draught-excluder snake, Hissing Sid. Mr Gerard keeps it shut and he’s had a high cupboard moved against the glass partition to give himself more privacy. It’s not very considerate. It cuts off even more of my light. And now I’m expected to house the new temp, Mandy Price, although all the work for her has to be routed through Emma Wainwright, Miss Claudia’s PA. She ought to be sitting in with Emma. Now that Mr Gerard has had the partition moved my office is cramped even for one. Mr Peverell would never have agreed to a partition that cut the dining-room across the window and the stuccoed ceiling. He hated the partition and fought against it when the alterations were first made.’
Her cousin said: ‘Can’t his sister do something? Why not have a word with her?’
‘I don’t like to complain, particularly not to her. And what could she do? Mr Gerard’s the managing director and the chairman. He’s ruining the firm and no one can stand up to him. I’m not even sure that they want to, except perhaps for Miss Frances, and he’s not going to listen to her.’
‘Then leave. You don’t have to work there.’
‘After twenty-seven years?’
‘Long enough for any job, I’d have thought. Retire early. You joined their pension scheme when old Mr Peverell set it up. I thought at the time that was very wise. I advised it, if you remember. You won’t get a full pension, of course, but there’ll be something coming from that. Or you could take a nice little part-time job in Tonbridge. That wouldn’t be difficult to find with your skills. But why work? We can manage. And there’s plenty to do in the village. I’ve never let the PCC make use of you while you’re at Peverells. As I told the vicar, my cousin is a personal secretary and spends all her day typing. It’s unfair to expect her to do it in the evenings and weekends. I’ve made it my business to protect you. But it would be different once you were retired. Geoffrey Harding is complaining that acting as secretary to the PCC is getting too much for him. You could take that on for a start. And then there’s the Literary and Historical Society. They can certainly do with some secretarial help.’
The words, the life they so succinctly described, horrified Blackie. It was as if, in those few ordinary sentences, Joan had pronounced a life sentence. She realized for the first time how unimportant a part West Marling played in her life. She didn’t dislike the village; the rows of rather dull cottages, the shaggy green beside a malodorous pond, the modern pub which tried unsuccessfully to look seventeenth-century with a gas-fired open hearth and black-painted beams, even the little church with its pretty broach-spire evoked no emotion as strong as dislike. This was where she lived, ate, slept. But for twenty-seven years the centre of her life had been elsewhere. She had been glad enough to return at night to Weaver’s Cottage, to its comfort and order, to her cousin’s undemanding companionship, to good meals elegantly served, to the sweet-smelling wood fire in winter, the drink in the garden on warm summer nights. She had liked the contrast between this rural peace and the stimulus and challenges of the office, the raucous life of the river. She had to live somewhere since she couldn’t live with Henry Peverell. But now she realized, in an overwhelming moment of revelation, that her life at West Marling would be insupportable without her job.
She saw that life stretching before her in a series of bright disjointed images projected on the mind’s screen in a clicking, inexorable sequence; hours, days, weeks, months, years of unfulfilled predictable monotony. The small household chores which would give her the illusion of usefulness, helping in the garden under Joan’s supervision, acting as secretary or typing for the PCC or the WI, shopping in Tonbridge on Saturdays, Holy Communion and Evensong on Sundays, planning the excursions which would provide the highlights to the month, not rich enough to escape, with no excuse to justify escape, and nowhere to escape to. And why should she wish to leave? It was a life her cousin found satisfying and psychologically fulfilling, her place in the village hierarchy secure, the cottage her acknowledged property, the garden her continued interest and joy. Most people would think that she, Blackie, was lucky to share it, lucky to live rent-free (they’d know that in the village, that was the kind of fact they knew by instinct), a beautiful home, her cousin’s companionship. She would be the less regarded of the two, the less popular, the poor relation. Her job, imperfectly understood in the village but magnified in importance by Joan, had given her dignity. Work did bestow dignity, status, meaning. Wasn’t that why people dreaded unemployment, why some men found retirement so traumatic? And she couldn’t find herself what Joan described as ‘a nice little part-time job’ in Tonbridge. She knew what that would mean; working in an office with half-trained girls fresh from school or secretarial college, sexually on the make, resented for her efficiency or pitied for her all too obvious virginity. How could she lower herself to a part-time job, she who had once been confidential personal assistant to Henry Peverell?
Sitting immobile with a half-drunk glass of sherry before her and staring into its amber glow as if mesmerized, her heart was in tumult, her voice crying wordlessly, ‘Oh my darling, why did you leave me? Why did you have to die?’
She had hardly ever seen him outside the office, had never been invited to his flat at number 12, and had never invited him to Weaver’s Cottage or spoken to him of her private life. Yet for twenty-seven years he had been central to her existence. She had spent more of her waking hours with him than with any other human being. To her he was always Mr Peverell, and he had called her Miss Blackett to others, Blackie to her face. She couldn’t remember that her hands had ever touched his since that first meeting twenty-seven years ago when, as a shy seventeen-year-old fresh from secretarial college, she had come to Innocent House for her interview and he had risen smiling from his desk to greet her. Her typing and shorthand skills had already been tested by the secretary who was leaving him to get married. Now, looking at the handsome scholarly face and into his incredibly blue eyes, she had known that this was the ultimate test. He had said little about the job – but then why should he? Miss Arkwright had already explained in intimidating detail what would be expected of her – but he had asked her about her journey and had said: ‘We have a launch which brings some of the staff to work. It can pick you up at Charing Cross pier and bring you to work by the Thames – that is unless you’re afraid of water.’
And she had known that this was the test question, that she wouldn’t get the job if she disliked the river. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m not afraid of water.’
After that she had spoken little, almost incoherent with the thought of coming each day to this glittering palace. At the end of the interview he had said, ‘If you think you can be happy here, suppose we both give each other a month’s trial.’
At the end of the month he had said nothing, but she knew there was nothing he need say. She had be
en with him until the day he died.
She remembered the morning of his heart attack. Was it really only eight months ago? The door between their offices had been ajar as it always was, as he liked it to be. The velvet snake with its intricately marked back, its red forked flannel tongue, had been curled at the foot. He had given one call, but in a voice so harsh and strangled that it was hardly recognizable as human and she thought she was hearing some waterman shouting from the river. It had taken, her a couple of seconds to realize that this disembodied, alien voice was calling her name. She had leapt from her chair, hearing it skid across the floor, and was at his desk, staring down at him. He was still in his chair, rigid, as if seized by rigor, not daring to move, grasping the arms with white knuckles, his eyes bulging beneath a forehead on which the sweat had started in glistening globules thick as pus. He gasped, ‘The pain, the pain! Get a doctor!’
Ignoring the telephone on his desk, she had fled to her own office as if only in that familiar place could she cope. She fumbled with the telephone book, then remembered that his doctor’s name and number were in the small black reference book in her desk. She yanked open the drawer and plunged in her hand to find it, trying to remember the name, wanting desperately to return to that horror in the chair yet afraid of what she might find, knowing that she must get help and get it quickly. Then she remembered. Of course, the ambulance. She must call an ambulance. She punched at the telephone keys and heard a voice, calm, authoritative, and gave her message. The urgency, the terror in her voice must have convinced them. The ambulance would be on its way.
She recalled what happened afterwards, not in sequence but in a series of disconnected but vivid pictures. At the door of his office she had just time to glimpse Frances Peverell standing impotently at his side before Gerard Etienne came towards her and, firmly closing the door, said: ‘We don’t want anyone else in here. He needs air.’