“Will you be quiet, Mother?” gritted Sandra, turning to the rear of the car a face of real ferocity.
“Never mind, my dear, you won’t have us for much longer. It has been a stony row, I know, but tomorrow this time you will be en route for Ibiza—”
Philip, who had been weaving thoughtfully through the parking lot, eyes veering sharply this way and that, now whipped his Algonquin neatly into a just-vacated gap close to the main entrance.
Inside, at this time of day, the Quick-Snak cafeteria was half empty; most customers were up on the top floor having the Three Course Special.
“You sit here.”
Philip edged his parents alongside a glass-topped table by the window.
“Sandra and I will forage at the counter. What’s it to be? Buttered toast?”
“A rock cake,” sighed Mrs. Logan. “Just a rock cake. To remind me of our honeymoon in Lynmouth.”
Mr. Logan said he wanted nothing but a cup of tea. He placed a careful hand to his side. Mrs. Logan noticed this and sighed again, but said nothing.
Their table was littered with crumby plates, crumpled napkins, half-empty cups, and, on the windowsill, a grease-smeared, dog-eared paperback.
“Why, look, my dear,” said old Mr. Logan, turning it over. “It’s one of yours. The Short Way Back. Now, isn’t that a remarkable coincidence. A good omen, wouldn’t you say?”
They gazed at each other, delighted.
“I was only twenty-five when I wrote that one,” sighed his wife. “Philip already on the way. . . . How could I do it? What came into my head? Now, I couldn’t. . . .”
She handled the book gently, affectionately, smiling at the absurd picture on the front.
“Nothing to do with what’s inside. But then, whatever is?”
A small old man, limping, passed by their table. His heavy metal tray held a glass of stout, black, froth-topped, and a shiny Bath bun.
“That looks good,” said Mrs. Logan to him confidentially. “Now I’m sorry that I didn’t ask for stout. And a Bath bun. . . . Do you know what? We found, we actually found a book I once wrote, lying here on a windowsill. Now isn’t that a thing!”
“Well, I never!” The man with the stout beamed at her. “So you’re a book writer, are you?” His voice held a slight regional burr. Welsh? Wondered Mrs. Logan. Or Scottish?
“Was once. In those jeunesse dorée days. Do re me, lackaday dee—” she sang softly.
“He sipped no sup and he craved no crumb,” joined in the old man with the tray, “as he sighed for the love of a lady.”
“Why!” exclaimed Mrs. Logan in astonished pleasure. “Now you remind me—you remind me of somebody I once knew—”
“I was just thinking the very same thing!” said her husband. “But who—?”
All three looked at one another in excitement and suspense.
“Now when was it, where was it?” murmured Mrs. Logan.
But at this moment Philip came back with a tray, followed by Sandra, with another.
“Excuse me,” he said with brisk chill, and the old man with the stout moved quickly on his way.
“Really, Mother,” snapped Sandra, “must you get into conversation with all and sundry?” and she thumped down in front of her mother-in-law a thick china plate on which lay a flat pale macaroon, ninety-percent gray pastry, with a flat wan dob of fawn-colored substance in the middle.
“Oh, but I asked for a rock cake. This isn’t—”
“No rock cakes. Only jam tarts, buns, or macaroons.”
Mrs. Logan drank her tea but declined the macaroon. “Too hard on my teeth. You have it, love.” So Philip ate it, after his ham roll, with the harassed air of doing so only because it had been paid for and must not go to waste. Sandra nibbled a salad which was largely cress. She looked repeatedly at her watch.
“Philip, we should be getting on. Need the Ladies, Mother? You’d better, you don’t know what there will be at—”
Rather reluctantly Mrs. Logan rose to her feet and followd her daughter-in-law to the pink boudoir, peppered over with hearts and cupids.
“Sandra,” she said—and for the first time a slight tremor entered her voice—“Sandra, will it be frightening, do you think—where we’re going?”
Sandra angrily banged at her nose with a makeup puff and skated a comb through her perm. “Frightening? Why should it? Everyone’s got to go through it sometime, haven’t they? Not just you. We’ll have to, too, Philip and me, when our turn comes. There’s nothing frightening about it. Come along—the others will be waiting. Hurry up!”
Philip and his father waited at the window table. Philip had impatiently piled together all the used cups, plates, napkins, and the paperback book, without observing its title.
“Women take so long, always,” he muttered. “Can’t think what they get up to.”
The limping old man passed their table again and nodded in a friendly way at Mr. Logan.
“On the way to Last House, are you?”
“Why should you ask that?” said Philip sharply.
“Many who stop here are going that way. There’s a bad greasy patch at the S-bend going over Endby Hill—you’ll want to watch it there. Quite a few have come off at that corner.”
“Thank you,” said old Mr. Logan. “We’ll remember.”
Philip gave a curt nod, as if he needed no lame old strangers to teach him about careful driving, and Mr. Logan added cheerfully,
“It’d be a piece of irony, wouldn’t it, if just when you were taking us—there—we all went off the road and ended up together!”
“Father! Really!”
“Little Kevin would have to go into an orphanage.”
“Here come the girls,” said Philip, with a jocularity he did not feel.
“What’s that about an orphanage?” inquired his mother, who, her husband noticed, had a drawn and anxious look on her face. She plunged into the conversation as if trying to distract her own mind. “They say many a home is worse than an orphanage. Remember, some also agree that impatience is the worst sin. I suffered from it myself, to an extreme degree, when I was young. . . .”
“Come along, let’s go,” said Philip, showing signs of suffering from the worst sin himself.
A frail dusk had begun to fall as they resumed their journey. The landscape became ghostly, wreathed in layers of mist. Trees loomed, fringed by creepers, then swung past; the road wound uphill through forest.
“I wonder if there will be a view?” murmured old Mrs. Logan, more to herself than to her companions. Her husband took her hand, holding it close and firmly. She went on, still to herself, “He was always delighted with your comments on landscape, chaffinches, and so forth; I wonder if he would be still? That was a curious encounter, a curious coincidence. Candied apple, quince and plum and gourd . . . I wonder what candied gourd would be like? Not very nice, I’d think. But then the whole of that picnic sounded decidedly sickly—lucent syrups tinct with cinnamon; not what one would wish on one’s bed in the middle of the night.”
“Please be quiet, Mother,” said Philip edgily. “There’s a bad place along here, we were warned about it; I don’t want any distraction, if you would be so kind.”
“Of course, Philip, of course. I am so very sorry, I know I am a nuisance to you.”
The bad place was negotiated, and passed, in complete silence. The elderly pair at the back drew close together in the darkness until they seemed like one person. The headlights in front converged to a sharp white V through the foggy murk.
At last the car rolled to a stop.
“Is this the place?” Mrs. Logan’s voice quavered a very little.
“This is it.”
Philip, relieved at having completed the outward trip, stamped to get the stiffness out of
his knees; his voice was rather too cheerful. “Come along, Mother, Dad; we’ll just get you registered, then we must be on our way; we’re going to have to hurry to get home by the time the sitter wants to leave—”
The old people crept awkwardly out from the back of the car.
“One thing, there’s no luggage to bother about,” muttered Sandra. “But you would think they’d make these places more accessible—”
The small group of persons passed inside a building which was so closely surrounded by creeper-hung trees of large size that, in the foggy dark, no architectural detail was visible; it was like walking into a grove, Mrs. Logan thought.
The elderly people clung together, hand clasped tightly in hand, while forms were filled out at the desk.
Then—
“Well, we’ll be leaving you now, then, Mum and Dad,” said Philip, falsely hearty. “Cheerio! Take care! All the best. Bon voyage, and all that.” He gave them each a peck on the cheek. Sandra muttered something inaudible, and the younger pair walked hastily out through the front entrance.
“Whooo!” Philip muttered, after a moment, slamming the car into gear. “Wouldn’t want to go through that again in a hurry.”
“Now,” hissed his wife, “now will you please drive at a reasonable speed? No more dawdling, if you please. There’s a whole lot to do when we get home.”
“All right, all right—” and he accelerated so sharply that the engine let out a squawk of protest.
Old Mr. and Mrs. Logan were led in different directions.
“But can’t we be together?” she protested.
“No. We are very sorry, but that is an absolute rule. There is nothing to worry about, though—”
They gave each other a cold, steady kiss, aged cheek against soft aged cheek.
“Now, then, where?”
Mrs. Logan was taken to a kind of garden room. One wall was totally lacking; darkness, trees, and mist lay beyond the area of dim illumination.
“If you wouldn’t mind just waiting here. . . . He won’t be long.”
“Will it be Ted’s turn first, or mine?”
No answer came back. Or had the guide perhaps said, “Both together?” as the door closed?
Mrs. Logan sat on a bench, looking out anxiously into the dark.
It isn’t very cold, she thought. Not as cold as you’d expect. Not cold at all, really. Cold blows the wind tonight, true love. . . . Wasn’t that queer, though, finding that book? Then tell to me, my own true love, when shall we meet again? When the autumn leaves that fall from the trees, are green and spring again. Yes, but do they spring again? Leaves, like the things of man you with your fresh thoughts care for, can you? Always dwell as if about to depart, they say in Yorkshire. Do they depart so easily, up there, in Yorkshire? Questions are better than answers, for they lead you on, like signposts, whereas answers pin you down, like javelins. Will Ted remember to tell them about his diet?
Somebody was approaching through the darkness, walking slowly and carefully; the sound of the footfalls came with an irregular beat, as if the person limped.
Vulcan, thought Mrs. Logan; Richard III. “Beware the lame king, for then shall Sparta fall. But the lame god is kind, he knows our frailties all . . .” that line does not scan as it should. One foot too many, like a three-legged stool. Or too few . . .
“There you are, then,” said the old lame man. “I brought you a glass of stout; and a Bath bun.”
“So it was you, all along?”
She gazed at him in amazement.
“All along.”
“All along,” she echoed happily, “down along, out along lee.”
“That’s it!”
And they began to sing together, their voices combining gently in old, remembered graceful cadences. Oh, I hope Ted is as happy as this! she thought.
Far away, from Endby Hill, the sound of a long-drawn-out crash came faintly through the foggy dark. But neither of the singers paid it any heed.
The Last Specimen
The Reverend Matthew Pentecost, aged seventy, had a regular monthly habit. On his way to conduct Evensong in the tiny church of St.-Anthony-under-the-Downs, he invariably parked his aged Rover for ten minutes by the side of a small patch of woodland about ten minutes’ drive from the church.
Services at St. Anthony’s took place only once a month; for the rest of the time the isolated building with its Saxon stonework, Douai font, willful hand organ, and two massive yew trees, drowsed undisturbed, save by casual tourists who occasionally wandered in, looked around, dropped a ten-pence piece into the box that begged help for the fabric of the roof, and inspected the small overgrown churchyard with its nineteen graves.
At the monthly services the congregation seldom exceeded half a dozen, and in wet weather or snow Mr. Pentecost and Miss Sedom, who played the organ, had the place to themselves. St. Anthony’s lay three quarters of a mile from any house; the mild slopes of the Berkshire Downs enfolded it as sometimes after a falling tide a cup of sand will hold a single pebble.
One of the rector’s favorite views was that of the church’s swaybacked stone roof, bracketed between its two majestic dark yew trees, with the leisurely gray-green of the hillsides beyond. This was one reason for his pre-Evensong period of meditation beside the little wood. The second reason was the tactful desire to allow his parishioners time to assemble, sit down, and rest from their cross-country walk for a few minutes before he appeared among them. Except for the trees on his left, the countryside thereabouts lay bare as an open hand, so that the members of the congregation could be seen from a great distance, making their way along the footpath that led to the church from Compton Druce, the nearest hamlet.
On this evening in mid-April Mr. Pentecost sat in his rusty Rover with an especially happy and benign expression on his face. After a rainy afternoon the sky had cleared: thrushes, larks, and blackbirds were singing in fervent appreciation of the sun’s last rays, which turned the greenish-white pearls of the budding hawthorn to a silvery dazzle. In this light the Down grass and young wheat shone with an almost luminous intensity of color.
“Interesting,” mused Mr. Pentecost, “how these early greens of the year, dog’s mercury and elder leaves, and the green of bluebells, contain such a strong mixture of blue in their color.”
Mr. Pentecost’s hobby was painting delicate watercolor landscapes, and he was minutely observant of such niceties.
“Then, later in the spring, in May and June, the brighter, more yellowy greens appear: young beech and oak leaves with their buttery rich color; doubtless the extra degree of light from the sun has something to do with it.”
Mr. Pentecost watched fondly as Ben Tracey, the farmer who owned the enormous pasture on his right, arrived in a Land-Rover with sacks of feed for the sheep. The spring had been an unusually cold one, and the grass remained unseasonably scanty. Sighting Ben, the sheep and lambs, well acquainted with the object of his daily visit, began purposefully making toward him from all corners of the vast field, lambs following their mothers like iron filings drawn to a magnet in regular converging lines, only broken at one point by the presence of a massive oak tree covered with reddish buds that grew toward the middle of the field. Mr. Pentecost eyed the tree thoughtfully. Was it not unusually advanced in its growth for such a cold season? And why had he not noticed it last month?
Farmer and rector waved to one another, then Mr. Pentecost, observing the last of his congregation pass through the churchyard and enter St. Anthony’s porch, was about to start his motor again, when, in the rearview mirror, he noticed a girl, who had been slowly riding her pony along the road behind the car. At this moment she dismounted, tethered the pony to a tree, and vanished through a gate into the little wood.
Normally such a sight would have aroused no particular curiosity in Mr. Pentecost, but two
unusual factors here caught his attention. First, neither girl nor mount were familiar to him; yet Mr. Pentecost was certain that he knew every girl and every pony within a ten-mile radius. So where had she come from? Second, the girl carried a trowel and a basket.
Without apparent haste, yet acting with remarkable calm and dispatch for a man of his age, Mr. Pentecost backed the Rover a hundred yards to the point where the pony stood tethered to a young ash tree. The rector got out of his car, studied the pony thoughtfully for a moment, then walked into the wood. The gate stood open: another factor worthy of note. Slightly compressing his lips, Mr. Pentecost closed it behind him and took the path that bisected the wood. The girl ahead of him was easily visible because of her bright-blue anorak; she was, in any case, walking slowly, glancing from side to side as if in search of something.
Mr. Pentecost could easily guess at the object of her quest. He caught up with her just as she had reached it: a patch of delicate spindly plants, each of them nine inches to a foot high, growing in a small sunny clearing. They had bell-shaped flowers the size of small, upside-down tulips—odd, elegant, mysterious flowers, white, with a pinkish-purple tracery over the fluted petals.
The girl knelt beside them and took her trowel from the basket.
“No, no. You mustn’t,” said Mr. Pentecost gently behind her. The girl gasped and spun around, gazing up at him with wide, frightened eyes. “My dear child, believe me, you mustn’t,” repeated the rector, the seriousness of his tone mitigated to some degree by the mild expression in his blue eyes. The girl gazed at him, nonplussed, embarrassed, temporarily speechless, it seemed.
She was, he noticed, a very pretty girl, about seventeen, perhaps, in the accustomed uniform of jeans and T-shirt and riding boots. On her head, though, she sported a slightly absurd and certainly unusual article of headgear—not a crash helmet, but a strapped furry hat with a cylindrical top, like the shakoes worn by cavalry in the Crimean War. Could she have inherited it from some great-great-grandfather? Or perhaps, thought the vicar indulgently, it was a prop borrowed from some local theatrical venture; the young loved to dress up in fancy dress. But, now that he saw her close to, he was certain that he did not know this girl; she was a total stranger. Her eyes were a clear beautiful greenish gold—like the color of the young oak leaves he had been thinking about earlier. Her hair, what could be seen of it under the shako, was the same color, with a decided greenish tint; punk, no doubt, thought Mr. Pentecost knowledgeably. The children nowadays dyed their hair extraordinary colors; green was nothing out of the common. He had seen pink, orange, and lilac.