A Few Green Leaves (26 page)

There was a ripple of laughter from his audience, Emma observed, and it occurred to her that Dr G. might joke about elderly people dropping down dead because, being an old man and nearer his own end, he was obliged to make light of such things.

‘So, ladies, only rather cautious jogging for you,’ Dr G. repeated, and on that joking note he concluded his talk and invited questions.

Adam Prince got up to ask the first. He liked the idea of himself jogging – weather permitting, of course – but he knew better than to expose himself to ridicule by putting a question on the subject. Instead, he asked about diet in the old days and Dr G. was launched on another of his favourite topics, though it was difficult to gather from what he said whether diet was better then, with no frozen or ‘convenience’ foods, or worse because of lack of variety.

Tom tried to lead Dr G. back into earlier times, even Victorian medicine would be more appropriate to an historical talk, but Dr G. was not to be drawn. He had noticed Daphne and Miss Lee doing something with cups at the back of the room and suspected that it was time for coffee. People could examine his collection of surgical instruments if they wished. They were spread out on the table in the window and he would be happy to demonstrate their use if required. There was more laughter, and cups of coffee and plates of biscuits began to be handed round.

'
Not
quite all I’d hoped for,’ said Tom to Beatrix, ‘but I think people enjoyed it and I suppose that’s the main thing. Isn’t that what life’s all about?’ he added, hardly expecting an answer.

Beatrix felt herself unequal to making any comment on this observation and left it to Isobel to remark that Tom must be glad to have his sister here.

‘Glad?’ Tom seemed to consider the meaning of the word before he answered quickly that yes, of course he was glad to have Daphne here. But he hardly knew what his feelings were at seeing his sister in her old place. They had not as yet spoken much about the purpose of her visit or gone more deeply into her life in Birmingham, though she had described the two churches to him and even asked his advice about which one he thought she should attend. That sounded as if she intended her stay in the house by the delightful wooded common to be a permanent one, as he had always understood. Yet at the back of his mind was the uneasy suspicion that people in the village expected Daphne to return one day. Also, he couldn’t help remembering that she had not taken her bed with her.

‘And how do you find the village?’ Beatrix asked Daphne. ‘In February it must seem bleak after Birmingham.’

‘Oh, there can be bleakness in Birmingham,’ said Daphne. ‘I suppose February is a dreary month anywhere – except perhaps in warmer climes.’ She used the deliberately stilted poetic phrase half jokingly, but it concealed her determination
not
to go to the cottage near Tintagel this summer but to have a holiday in Greece again.

‘I expect the rectory strikes cold,’ said Beatrix, also using an emotive phrase. ‘You have central heating in your new house, I imagine?’

‘Oh, yes, but…,’ Daphne hesitated, ‘there’s something rather lovely about winter here – the light on the grey stone houses and cottages.

‘Would you call it
grey
exactly?’ Beatrix said. ‘Cotswold stone is said to be more honey-coloured, isn’t it, though perhaps in a winter light….’

‘And do you know,’ Daphne went on, ‘the iris stylosa are out in the garden. I always look out for them every year.’

‘I expect there are some pretty gardens where you live now,’ Beatrix ventured.

‘Yes, people are great gardeners, but it’s not the same, somehow. It’s sort of…,’ she hesitated, then said in a lower tone, ‘
suburban
, if you see what I mean.’

‘But there’s the common opposite your house, isn’t there? All those dogs bounding….’

Daphne’s expression softened and she smiled. ‘Ah yes, the common. Bruce does so love the common – he has two or three walks a day. But of course here….’ She seemed about to enumerate the advantages of village life for the dog, but Beatrix was quick to point out what a lot of traffic there was going through the village.

‘I could take him in the woods,’ Daphne said.

‘But you’d have to keep him on a lead. Remember Sir Miles’s game birds.’

‘Yes, I’d forgotten that.’

‘And then of course there’s the problem of sheep and lambs.’

Beatrix persevered, trying gently to discourage Daphne from any idea that she might be happier living at the rectory again. The feeling she had experienced on seeing Daphne at the start of the evening had strengthened and now she knew that she was prepared to do all in her power to prevent Daphne from coming back to the rectory. Like a character in a Victorian novel, a kind of female villain, she might even take violent action, though she was uncertain as yet what form this could take. An idea had been germinating in her mind ever since Christmas, perhaps with the arrival of Graham’s Christmas card and the possibility that Claudia might have chosen it for him, that it was more than ever her duty to ‘do’ something for Emma, since she seemed to be incapable of doing anything for herself. Having, as she saw it, failed with Graham (and had he really been worth the effort?), could she not do something to bring Emma and Tom together, unlikely though such a union might seem?

‘I hear Miss Vereker paid a surprise visit,’ Daphne was saying. ‘I’d have liked to have met her, having heard so much about her. Tom said she was discovered wandering in the woods, somewhere near the site of the deserted medieval village.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘Of course that’s all he thinks about, especially when he’s by himself. I can’t help wondering how he’s been getting on without me. I suppose that’s” why I sometimes feel I ought to come back – for Tom’s sake.’

‘Oh, do you really?’ said Isobel, coming back into the conversation. ‘I think it’s a great mistake to go back to a place. It would be like living your life backwards, wouldn’t it? We must go
on
and
up!
' She gesticulated to that effect. She was evidently speaking in her role of headmistress, though her meaning was not altogether clear.

‘But Tom has always been so helpless,’ Daphne protested.

Beatrix produced a rather exaggerated laugh, as if to dismiss any idea of Tom being in need of any kind of help that Daphne might be able to give him. ‘I shouldn’t worry about your brother,’ she said firmly. ‘Men aren’t nearly as helpless as women like to think,’ she added, to strengthen her case. ‘I think you’ll find that Tom has….’ She had been going to say ‘other fish to fry’, but rejected the culinary analogy as inappropriate, and substituted ‘plans of his own.’

‘Plans?’ Daphne echoed in disbelief. ‘Tom never has
plans
, except for medieval fields or villages. He hasn’t said anything to me about any
plans
.”

‘Beatrix thinks he may be thinking of marrying,’ Isobel declared, bringing it out into the open.

‘You don’t mean he’s asked
you
to marry him?’ Daphne burst out in a way that could hardly be interpreted as flattering to Isobel.

Isobel flushed but said nothing, and again Beatrix wondered if she had entertained hopes of Tom for herself. On the other hand, perhaps she was beginning to realise what was in Beatrix’s mind. The three women – Beatrix, Isobel and Daphne – stood in silence, looking over to where Tom was standing with Emma. They appeared to be laughing together over one of Dr G.’s antique surgical instruments.

Beatrix wondered how Emma was going to react to the plans that were about to be made for her. And, of course, how Tom would react, for that must also be taken into consideration. But he was less important and more easily manipulated, she felt –manipulation might not even be necessary.

As well as Dr G.’s antique surgical instruments, a few ‘bygones’ had been displayed on the table by which Tom and Emma were standing-examples of treen, such as a wooden apple-scoop and a dish and platter, and a collection of faded sepia photographs depicting groups of country people engaged in various rural activities that could apply to any region.

‘Did your friend Dr Pettifer finish that book he was working on?’ Tom asked. ‘I was wondering whether we might ask him to give a talk to the society sometime.’

Emma hesitated for so long and seemed so doubtful that Tom feared that he might have said something ‘out of turn’ or dropped a brick in the way he knew the clergy sometimes did. Was the thought of Graham Pettifer still painful to her?

‘I don’t think he’d be likely to give a very suitable talk,’ said Emma stiffly. She took up one of the sepia photographs and began to peer at it. ‘People in front of the manor,’ she said, ‘on some nameless, long forgotten social occasion?’

‘Oh then, perhaps you yourself,’ Tom said, as if suddenly inspired, ‘you’ve been in the village some time now and must have made notes on certain aspects of our life here, come to your own conclusions. You could relate your talk to things that happened in the past’ – he indicated the photograph she was studying –‘or even speculate on the future – what
might
happen in the years to come.’

‘Yes, I might do that,’ Emma agreed, but without revealing which aspect she proposed to deal with. She remembered that her mother had said something about wanting to let the cottage to a former student, who was writing a novel and recovering from an unhappy love affair. But this was not going to happen, for Emma was going to stay in the village herself.
She
could write a novel and even, as she was beginning to realise, embark on a love affair which need not necessarily be an unhappy one.