A Judgement in Stone (9 page)

Eunice had never been in such a place in her life. A cow with a face like a great white ghost stuck its head over the hedge and lowed at her. In a sunny patch, where there was a gap in the trees, a cock pheasant with clattering feathers lolloped across in front of her, all gilded chestnut and fiery green. She marched on, head up, alarmed but resolute, knowing she was going the right way.

And so, at last, to Greeving. Into the heart of the village itself, for the lane came out opposite the Blue Boar. She turned right, and having passed the terrace of cottages inhabited by various Higgses and Newsteads and Carters, the small Georgian mansion of Mrs. Cairne, and the discreet, soberly decorated neonless petrol station kept by Jim Meadows, she found herself on the triangle of turf outside the village store.

The shop was double-fronted, being a conversion of the ground floor of a largish, very old cottage, whose front gable was half-timbered and whose roof was badly in need of rethatching.
Behind it was a garden which sloped down to the banks of the Beal that, at this point, curved out of the meadows to run under Greeving Bridge. Greeving Village store is now efficiently run by Mr. and Mrs. Mann, but at that time the two large windows held a dusty display of cereal packets, canned fruit, and baskets of not very fresh-looking tomatoes and cabbages. Eunice approached one of these windows and looked inside. The shop was empty. It was often empty, for the Smiths charged high prices while necessarily stocking only a small selection of goods. Greeving residents with cars preferred the supermarkets of Stantwich and Colchester, availing themselves only of the post office facilities of their village store.

Eunice went in. On the left the shop was arranged for self-service with wire baskets provided. On the right was a typical subpost office counter and grille with, beside it, a display of sweets and cigarettes. At one time there had been a bell which rang each time the door was opened, but this had gone wrong and the Smiths had never had it mended. Therefore, no one heard her enter. Eunice examined the shelves with interest, noting the presence of various commodities she well knew from shopping expeditions in South London. But she couldn’t read? Yet who does
read
the name of a product or its manufacturer’s name on a packet or tin? One goes by the colour and the shape and the picture as much if one is professor of etymology as an illiterate.

It was a month since she had tasted a sweet. Now she thought the most desirable thing in the world would be to have a box of chocolates. So she walked up to the counter on the left of the grille and, having waited in vain for a few seconds, she coughed. Her cough resulted in a door at the back of the shop opening and in the appearance of a woman some few years older than herself.

Joan Smith was at this time fifty, thin as a starved bird, with matchstick bones and chicken skin. Her hair was the same colour as Jacqueline Coverdale’s, each aiming, of course, at attaining Melinda’s natural fine gold by artificial means. Jacqueline was more successful because she had more money to spend.
Joan Smith’s coiffure, wiry, stiff, glittering, had the look of one of the yellow metal pot scourers displayed for sale on her shelves. Her face was haphazardly painted, her hands red, rough, and untended. In her shrill voice, Cockney overlaid with refinement, not unlike Annie Cole’s, she asked Eunice what she could do for her.

For the first time the two women looked at each other, small blue eyes meeting sharp grey ones.

“Pound box of Black Magic, please,” said Eunice.

How many thousands of pairs of people, brought together into a partnership for passion, for pain, for profit, or for disaster, have commenced their relationship with words as mundane as these?

Joan produced the chocolates. She always had a sprightly manner, coy, girlish, arch. Impossible for her simply to hand an object to anyone and take the money. First must come elaborate flourishes, a smile, a little hop that almost lifted her feet out of her Minnie Mouse shoes, her head roguishly on one side. Even towards her religion she kept up a familiar jolly attitude. The Lord was her friend, brutal to the unregenerate, but matey and intimate with the chosen, the kind of pal you might take to the pictures and have a bit of giggle with afterwards over a nice cuppa.

“Eighty-five p,” said Joan, “if you
please
.” She rang it up on the till, eyeing Eunice with a little whimsical smile. “And how are they all enjoying their holiday, or haven’t you heard?”

Eunice was amazed. She didn’t know, and was never really to know, that very little can be kept secret in an English village. Not only did everyone in Greeving know where the Coverdales had gone, when they had gone, when they were coming back, and roughly what their trip cost, but they were already aware that she herself had paid her first visit to the village that afternoon. Nellie Higgs and Jim Meadows had spotted her, the grapevine was at work, and her appearance and the motive for her walk would be discussed and speculated about in the Blue Boar that night. But to Eunice that Joan Smith should recognise her and know where she worked was little short of magical
divination. It awoke in her a kind of wondering admiration. It laid the foundation of her dependence on Joan and her belief, generally speaking, in the rightness of everything Joan said.

But all she said then was, “I haven’t heard.”

“Well, early days yet. Lovely to get away for three weeks, isn’t it? Chance’d be a fine thing. Ever such a nice family, aren’t they? Mr. Coverdale is what I call a real gentleman of the old school, and she’s a real lady. Never think she was forty-eight, would you?” Thus Joan added six years to poor Jacqueline’s age from no motive but pure malice. In fact, she heartily disliked the Coverdales because they never patronised her shop, and George had been known to criticise the running of the post office. But she had no intention of admitting these feelings to Eunice until she saw how the land lay. “You’re lucky to work for them, but they’re lucky to have you, from all I’ve heard.”

“I don’t know,” said Eunice.

“Oh, you’re being modest, I can see that. A little bird told me the Hall’d never looked so spick and span. Makes a change, I dare say, after old Eva giving it a lick and a promise all these years. Don’t you get a bit lonesome, though?”

“I’ve got the T.V.,” said Eunice, beginning to expand, “and there’s always a job wants doing.”

“You’re right. I know I’m run off my feet with this place, it’s all go. Not a churchgoer, are you? No, I’d have spotted you if you’d been to St. Mary’s with the family.”

“I’m not religious. Never seemed to have the time.”

“Ah, you don’t know what you miss,” said proselytising Joan, wagging a forefinger. “But it’s never too late, remember. The patience of the Lord is infinite and the bridegroom is ever ready to welcome you to His feast. Lovely weather He’s sending us, isn’t it, especially for those as don’t have to sweat their guts out slaving for others.”

“I’ll be getting back now,” said Eunice.

“Pity Norm’s got the van or I could run you back.” Joan came to the door with Eunice and turned the notice to
Closed
. “Got your chocs? That’s right. Now, don’t forget, if ever you’re at a
loose end, I’m always here. Don’t be afraid of putting me out. I’ve always got a cup of tea and a cheery word for a friend.”

“I won’t,” said Eunice ambiguously.

Joan waved merrily after her. Across the bridge went Eunice and along the white lane to Lowfield Hall, She took the box of chocolates out of the paper bag, threw the bag over a hedge, and munched an orange cream. She wasn’t displeased to have had a chat. Joan Smith was just the sort of person she got on best with, though the hint of getting her to church smacked a little of interference in her life. But she had noted something exceptionally soothing about their talk. The printed word or anything associated with it hadn’t remotely come up.

But Eunice, with her television set returned and as good as new, wouldn’t have considered seeking Joan Smith out if Joan Smith had not first come to her.

This birdlike, bright-haired, and bright-spirited little body was as devoured with curiosity about her fellow men as Eunice was indifferent to them. She also suffered from a particular form of paranoia. She projected her feelings onto the Lord. A devout woman must not be uncharitable, so she seldom indulged her dislike of people by straight malicious gossip. It was not she who found fault with them and hated them, but God; not she but God on whom they had inflicted imaginary injuries. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord: I will repay.” Joan Smith was merely his humble and energetic instrument.

She had long wanted to know more about the interior of Lowfield Hall and the lives of its occupants—more, that is, than she could gain by occasionally steaming open their post. Now was her chance. She had met Eunice, their initial chat had been entirely satisfactory, and here was a post card come from Crete, from Melinda Coverdale, and addressed to Miss E. Parchman. Joan kept it back from the regular postwoman’s bag and on the Monday she took it up to the Hall herself.

Eunice was surprised and not a little put out to see her. She recoiled from the post card as from an insect with a sting and muttered her usual defence:

“I can’t see that without my glasses.”

“I’ll read it to you, shall I, if I won’t be intruding? ‘This is a super place. Temperature in the upper 80s. We have been to the Palace of Knossos where Theseus killed the Minotaur. See you soon. Melinda.’ How lovely. Who’s this Theseus, I wonder? Must have missed that in the paper. There’s always a terrible lot of fighting and killing in those places, isn’t there? What a lovely kitchen! And you keep it like a new pin. Eat your dinner off the floor, couldn’t you?”

Relieved and gratified, Eunice came out of herself enough to say, “I was just going to put the kettle on.”

“Oh no, thank you, I couldn’t stop. I’ve left Norm all alone. Fancy her writing ‘Melinda’ like that. I will say for her, she’s no snob, though there are sides to her life distressing to the Lord in His handmaiden.” Joan uttered this last in a brisk and practical way as if God had given her His opinion while dropping in for a natter. She peered through the open door into the passage. “Spacious, isn’t it? Could I just have a peep in the drawing room?”

“If you want,” said Eunice. “
I’ve
no objection.”

“Oh, they wouldn’t mind. We’re all friends in this village. And speaking as one who has been a sinner herself, I wouldn’t set myself above those who haven’t found the strait gate. No, you’ll never hear me say, ‘Thank God I am not as other men are, even as this publican.’ Beautiful furnishings, aren’t they, and in the best of taste?”

The upshot of all this was that Joan was taken on a tour of Lowfield Hall. Eunice, somewhat overawed by all this educated talk, wanted to show off what
she
could do, and Joan gratified her by frequent exclamations of delight. They went rather further than they should have done, Eunice opening Jacqueline’s wardrobe to display her evening gowns. In Giles’s room, Joan stared at the cork wall.

“Eccentric,” she said.

“He’s just a bit of a boy,” said Eunice.

“Terrible, those spots he has, quite a disfigurement. His father’s in a home for alcoholics, as of course you know.” Eunice didn’t, any more than anyone else did, including Jeffrey Mont.
“He divorced her and Mr. Coverdale was the co-respondent, though his wife had only been dead six months. I don’t sit in judgement, but I can read my Bible. ‘Whosoever shall marry a divorced woman, committeth adultery.’ What’s he got that a bit of paper stuck up there for?”

“That’s always there,” said Eunice. Was she at last to discover what Giles’s message to her said?

She was.

In a shrill, amazed, and outraged tone, Joan read aloud:

“ ‘Warburg’s friend said to Warburg, of his wife who was ill, “If it should please God to take one or other of us, I shall go and live in Paris.” ’ ”

This quotation from Samuel Butler had no possible application to anything in Giles’s life, but he liked it and each time he read it it made him laugh.

“Blasphemous,” said Joan. “I suppose it’s something he’s got to learn for school. Pity these teachers don’t have more thought for a person’s soul.”

So it was something he had to learn for school. By now Eunice felt quite warmly towards Joan Smith, sent by some kindly power to enlighten her and set her mind at rest.

“You won’t say no to that cup of tea now, will you?” she said when, the carpet, bathroom, and television set having been admired (though not, according to Joan, good enough for a superior housekeeper like yourself, more a companion really), they were once more in the kitchen.

“I shouldn’t, not with Norm all on his own-io, but if you twist my arm.”

Joan Smith stayed for a further hour, during which time she told Eunice a number of lies about the Coverdales’ private life, and attempted unsuccessfully to elicit from her hostess details of hers. Eunice was only a little more forthcoming than she had been at their first meeting. She wasn’t going to tell this woman, helpful as she had been, all about Mum and Dad and Rainbow Street and the sweetshop, not she. Nor was she prepared to go with Joan to some prayer meeting in Colchester on the following
Sunday. What, swap her Sunday evening spy serial for hymn singing with a lot of cranks?

Joan didn’t take offence.

“Well, I’ll say thanks for the magical mystery tour and your generous hospitality. And now I must be on my way or Norm’ll think I’ve met with an accident.”

She laughed merrily at this prospect of her husband’s anxiety and drove off in the van, calling “Cheeri-bye” all the way down the drive.

The relationship between Eunice Parchman and Joan Smith was never of a lesbian nature. They bore no resemblance to the Papin sisters who, while cook and housemaid to a mother and daughter in Le Mans, murdered their employers in 1933. Eunice had nothing in common with them except that she also was female and a servant. She was an almost sexless being, without normal or abnormal desires, whose vague restlessness over the Eu-nicey, mother of Timothy, business had long ago been allayed. As for Joan Smith, she had exhausted her sexual capacities. It is probable that, like Queen Victoria in the anecdote, Eunice, for all her adventurous wanderings, did not know what lesbianism was. Joan Smith certainly knew, had very likely experimented with it, as she had experimented with most things.