No Fond Return of Love (12 page)

DULCIE’S sense of duty did not often drive her to visit her Uncle Bertram and Aunt Hermione, but it was getting near enough to Christmas for her to invite herself to supper and to take her presents with her to save posting them. If she went early – they had their evening meal punctually at seven – and left early, there would surely be a chance to walk past Neville Forbes’s church, which a study of the map had told her was not so far away as she had feared. Her uncle and aunt were both churchgoers. Bertram was an Anglo-Catholic and had once held a position as lecturer at a teachers’ training college; Hermione was more evange-lical in her tastes – to be different from her brother, Dulcie always felt – and had never had to earn her living. During the war she had worked in the Censorship, and now occupied herself by sitting on various committees and doing parish work.

It was a slightly foggy November evening when Dulcie got off the bus and turned into a road of Victorian houses approached by steep flights of steps. The one where her uncle and aunt lived had thick bushes of variegated laurels growing on either side of the front door. Dulcie rang the bell: but she knew that in the basement the cook-housekeeper, Mrs Sedge, would be preparing the evening meal and therefore unable to come to the door – and even if she had not been thus occupied it is doubtful whether she would have deigned to climb the stairs. After what seemed a rather long time the door was opened by Dulcie’s Aunt Hermione, wearing her winter coat and a teacosy-shaped hat trimmed with brown fur.

‘I’m so sorry, dear,’ she said. ‘I’m just in the middle of a telephone call. Do take off your coat and go into the drawing-room. There’s a nice fire in there.’

Hermione returned to the telephone, which was in the hall, and Dulcie heard her say in a clear loud voice, as if she were speaking to somebody very far away, ‘You are very much in our thoughts at this sad time. What a blessing that Maisie is with you – she will be a
tower of strength
…’

Dulcie went into the drawing-room, picturing Maisie as a tower of strength and wondering why her aunt had bothered to say the conventional thing about there being a nice fire in the drawing-room. She crouched down on the hearth rug by the sad smoking coals and began to look at some old copies of
The Field
which were lying in a heap on a brown leather pouf. She turned to the ‘Answers to Correspondents’ and read how to feed hamsters. She agonized with one who cried, ‘Why do white maggots appear in the stems of my brassica plants”, but the query of a correspondent from – of all places – Montevideo, who wanted to know how he could stop a mat in his lounge from curling up at the edges, baffled her, and she found herself quite unable to picture either the ‘lounge’ or the mat in such an exotic setting.

‘That was our vicar I was speaking to.’ Hermione came into the room and began taking off her coat. ‘His sister passed away very peacefully this afternoon.’

‘Oh, I see,’ said Dulcie.

‘Fortunately his
other
sister, the older one who lives in Nottingham, is with him.’

‘You mean Maisie?’ said Dulcie.

‘Yes, and she will be a
tower of strength
, a real
tower
.’

‘In a way it’s better to be left with one’s grief, to be allowed to indulge it, I mean. Was he fond of his sister?’

‘Of Gladys? Oh, they were devoted,
quite devoted
.’ Hermione gave these last words a particular emphasis as her brother Bertram entered the room.

He was a small, busy-looking man, shorter than his sister, with closely cropped grey hair.

‘Hullo, Dulcie, my dear,’ he said. ‘May I ask who were quite devoted?’

‘Why, the Vicar and his sister, of course,’ said Hermione rather impatiently. ‘He has just telephoned to say that the end has come.’

‘You mean, his sister has died? Requiescat in pace,’ said Bertram, crossing himself.

Hermione took off her hat with an angry movement and went to tidy her hair at the mirror over the mantelpiece. ‘This looking-glass is so awkward,’ she grumbled. ‘Much too high up. And yet it seems hardly worth having it moved now, if we are going to leave this house.’

‘Are you thinking of leaving?’ asked Dulcie rather alarmed, for she saw them coming to live with her in their old age and the prospect appalled her.

‘Well, the house has always been too big for us and it would certainly be too big for me alone.’

‘Alone? But what’s going to happen to Uncle Bertram?’

Bertram looked rather self-satisfied but said nothing.

‘Oh, it’s those monks of his or whatever they are,’ said Hermione impatiently. ‘They’ve agreed to take him in.’

‘What, as a monk?’ asked Dulcie incredulously.

‘No, into their guest house or something like that.’

‘I might eventually enter the community – take my vows, you know,’ said Bertram. ‘I should have to see how things went. But the guest house is very comfortable – I’ve stayed there before, of course – good food, central heating, no women …’ He smiled at his sister and niece.

‘No, I suppose there wouldn’t be. Would you do some kind of work?’

‘I suppose I could work. The abbey is famous for its pottery: obviously that must be made by somebody.’ Bertram looked down at his hands doubtfully. ‘Then there are the grounds to be looked after – acres of beautiful grounds with some very fine cedar trees.’

‘I don’t think those would need much attention,’ said Hermione scornfully. ‘Cedars live for hundreds of years.’

‘Well, there is the vegetable garden. Weeds grow, even in a religious community. Or I could serve in the shop that sells the pottery and garden produce. Somebody has to do that.’

There was a rattling sound outside the door.

‘I think Mrs Sedge is ready for us,’ said Hermione, getting up. ‘Shall we go into the dining-room?’

‘Better not keep her waiting,’ said Bertram. ‘She doesn’t like that.’

The meal was already on the table when they entered the room. A dish of mince with tomato sauce spread over the top seemed to be the main dish; boiled potatoes and ‘greens’ were on the trolley. Mrs Sedge, who had come to England twenty years ago from Vienna, had apparently retained little knowledge of her country’s cuisine, if she had ever possessed it; Dulcie was always surprised at the thoroughness with which she had acquired all the worst traits of English cooking.

‘Ah,’ said Bertram, unfolding his table napkin from its carved wooden ring, ‘boiled baby.’

Hermione stood tight-lipped, the spoon and fork poised above the dish. ‘Dulcie, may I give you some mince?’

‘Thank you – just a little.’

‘That’s what the lads always used to call it,’ Bertram explained, perhaps unnecessarily.

‘I should have thought that young men training to be school-masters would have been above such puerile jokes,’ said Hermione tartly. ‘You can hardly wonder that there is all this juvenile delinquency when the teachers themselves have so little sense of responsibility. Quis custodiet…’ she began, but either the rest of the quotation evaded her or she thought it unnecessary to continue one so well known.

‘Oh, they were up to every prank,’ said Bertram complacently.

‘I always think men are like a lot of children when they get together,’ said Hermione. ‘I suppose the monks will be just as bad.’

‘I think people aren’t always at their best when they are together in large numbers,’ said Dulcie smoothly. ‘I noticed at this conference I went to in the summer that everybody got rather childish. By the way – ‘ she turned to her uncle – ‘one of the lecturers there has a brother who is vicar of a church somewhere near here. The name was Forbes – I wondered if you knew hime’

‘Ah, yes. That must be Neville Forbes of St Ivel’s,’ said Bertram.

‘Yes, I think his name is Neville. But isn’t St Ivel a kind of cheese?’

‘Why, yes, so it is. Then perhaps it couldn’t also be the name of a saint in the Kalendar.’ Bertram looked puzzled. ‘Yet we have St Martin, an excellent marmalade, if I remember rightly.”

‘Oh, I suppose St Ivel’s could very well be the name of one of the sort of churches
you
like,’ said Hermione childishly.

Dulcie sighed and took a sip of water. She had so often heard her uncle and aunt going on like this, bickering about unimportant things. Is this what growing old with somebody does to one? she asked herself. Would it come to this with anybody, perhaps even with Aylwin Forbes? She saw again the fluffy little woman in the mauve twin-set, wrapping up the pottery donkey … yes, certainly, even with Aylwin Forbes. But not, perhaps, with Maurice? There had been only rapture and misery there – impossible ever to tie him down to the breakfast table and the laundry list, or other fruitful occasions for bickering. Then she realized that it was herself, rather than other people, that she had been unable to imagine in such petty squabblings. She had forgotten the recent little disagreements with Viola, about clothes left dripping in the kitchen, the bathroom light left on all night, lack of co-operation in household tasks, even the merits of calf’s – as opposed to lamb’s – liver. Now she remembered them and felt humbler, for these were not even academic bickerings which one could regard afterwards with detached amusement.

The second course was stewed apple and semolina pudding, dishes which Mrs Sedge had mastered to perfection.

‘I wonder what Maisie will be giving the Vicar this evening,’ said Hermione thoughtfully. ‘He will hardly feel like eating, of course. Nor will she.’

‘No, but they will be urging each other to take something, as people do in these circumstances,’ said Dulcie. Bereavement was in some ways the most comfortable kind of misery, for there would always be somebody to urge; the unhappiness of love was usually more lonely because so often concealed from others.

‘Macaroni cheese, perhaps,’ Hermione went on, with what seemed unnecessary persistence. ‘I know he likes that, and it is easily digested if there is not too much cheese.’

‘I should think you know his likes and dislikes better than Maisie does,’ said Bertram quite amiably. ‘It’s a pity that
you
can’t be looking after him.’

‘Oh, well, Maisie came at once – there was no question of anybody in the parish being asked.’ Hermione had risen from the table and begun to assemble the dishes for clearing.

‘I’ll just go down and have a word with Mrs Sedge,’ said Dulcie, picking up the dish of stewed apple.

‘Yes, do, dear – she would like that,’ said Hermione.

She would expect it, Dulcie thought, and take it out on Aunt Hermione afterwards if I did not go. She was something of a tyrant without having acquired the qualities of a ‘treasure’. There was a graciousness in her manner as she rose to greet Dulcie and to accept her thanks for the delicious meal.

The kitchen was warm, and comfortable in a rather old-fashioned style, with deep basket chairs and a round table covered with a red plush cloth. The dominating feature of its decoration, apart from the television set, was a large highly-coloured print of the Duke of Edinburgh – the eyes stern-looking and of a brilliantly improbable blue. ‘The light that never was, on sea or land’, Dulcie always thought when she saw it. Its presence in the room was another indication of Mrs Sedge’s ‘Englishness’, like her cooking and her acquisition of the traditional cook’s title of ‘Mrs’, when she had never been married.

Lily Sedge – had the name originally been Lilli Segy, or Söj, or what? Dulcie wondered – had never really cared for cooking, if the truth were known. She had no idea how to make the strudels, torte and schnitzels for which her native land was famous; but twenty years ago, with her bad English, it had seemed easier to become a cook than a typist. As time went on she had made herself very comfortable, and even achieved a certain amount of power over her various employers. It seemed to be taken for granted that a Viennese woman would be a good cook, and it had not taken her long to learn the kind of easy dishes English people were accustomed to.

‘You have met my brother, I think?’ said Mrs Sedge, and Dulcie now saw that Bill Sedge (Willi Segy?) was standing in a corner of the room, bowing rather lower than an Englishman would have done and rubbing his hands together as if asking what her next pleasure might be. He, like his sister, had been fortunate in finding a comfortable niche for himself as the knitwear buyer in a chain of shops whose brilliant crowded windows were to be seen in many parts of London. ‘I know what ladies like,’ he would say, and he always made Dulcie in her subdued greys and browns feel rather drab and unfeminine. At least, though, one did not have to
worry
about the Sedges; there was nothing sad about them. Indeed, they were a great deal less pathetic than many English people, and that was something of a relief.

‘The evenings are drawing in,’ said Bill Sedge.

‘Yes, they are. I think they’ve really
drawn
in by now, haven’t they?’ said Dulcie. ‘One is now almost thinking of .them drawing out again.’

‘In Vienna we did not notice such tilings,’ said Mrs Sedge.

‘But in Finchley Road one is always talking of the weather,’ said her brother.

‘Well, a merry Christmas to you both,’ said Dulcie, feeling that they had in some way got the better of her.

‘And the same to you, Miss Dulcie,’ they echoed.

Back in the drawing-room Dulcie exchanged Christmas presents with her uncle and aunt. A tea cosy and a tin of shortbread from them to her, and a bed jacket and a book about religious orders in the Anglican church from her to them.

‘This is “just the job”, as they say,’ said Bertram, glancing through the book. ‘I shall spend many happy hours with this book.’

‘I think I ought to be going now,’ said Dulcie, her thoughts on Neville Forbes’s church. ‘I know you like to get to bed early.’

‘Yes, dear, but I think I shall telephone the Vicar again, just to find out if there is
anything
I can do.’

Dulcie hoped that he would find something, even if it was a thing he didn’t really want doing at all. It was sad, she thought, how women longed to be needed and useful and how seldom most of them really were. It reminded her of Viola and Aylwin Forbes.

Once outside the house she broke into a run, both because of the coldness of the evening and the lateness of the hour – nearly nine o’clock. Was it likely that the church would be open now or that she would be able to glean anything from looking at the outside of it?