Crampton Hodnet (18 page)

‘I never feel the cold,’ said Mrs. Killigrew uncompromisingly. ‘I have never given in to self-indulgence; that is why I am so healthy. You would never think that I was older than Olive Fremantle, would you?’

‘No, you certainly wouldn’t,’ said Mrs. Cleveland. She felt that she ought to make some remark about ‘Mr,s. Killigrew’s being wonderful for her age, but as she could not think of any more tactful way of putting it, she said nothing. ‘Tea will be coming in soon,’ she went on quickly. ‘I hope you will stay and have a cup?’

‘Thank you, no,’ said Mrs. Killigrew. ‘I came only for a certain purpose. I have something to tell you, and as it can be said quite quickly I had better get it over. Mrs. Cleveland, I have come to warn you.’ She paused impressively.

Mrs. Cleveland stared at her. There was something sinister, even alarming, about the old woman, sitting so straight in her dark foreign-looking ulster and stiff straw hat, which had a whole stuffed bird perched on the front of it.

‘To warn me?’ she said, when she had recovered from the first shock of surprise. ‘What about?’

‘About your husband,’ said Mrs. Killigrew simply.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Mrs. Cleveland, rather stiffly, for it had now occurred to her that Mrs. Killigrew might have heard some of this ridiculous gossip about Francis and Barbara Bird.

‘He is going about with a young woman,’ said Mrs. Killigrew baldly. ‘That is what I mean.’

‘But there’s nothing—‘

Mrs. Killigrew held up a black-gloved hand. ‘Yes, there is something between them,’ she said, i am afraid you do not know everything.’ And then, before Mrs. Cleveland could protest, she began to tell the story of what her son had seen and heard in the British Museum.

There was silence when she had finished. Mrs. Cleveland’s first impulse was to laugh. The British Museum! How like an Oxford don to choose such an unsuitable place to declare his love! But then it suddenly occurred to her that she hadn’t even known that Francis was taking Barbara Bird up to London that day. He hadn’t mentioned it; indeed, he had rather implied that he was going alone.

‘What does the poet Shakespeare say?’ asked Mrs. Killigrew, breaking the silence with this rather surprising remark.

‘Shakespeare?’ echoed Mrs. Cleveland.

‘Yes. The poet Shakespeare says that men were deceivers ever,’ said Mrs. Killigrew. i can see that you have had cause to know the truth of that,’ she said in a satisfied tone.

‘What makes you think so?’ said Mrs. Cleveland, suddenly hot with anger. She was angry, not because Francis had deceived her, but because he had put her in such a humiliating and ridiculous position. She shot a glance at Mrs. Killigrew, sitting there so smug and splendid for her age, and there came over her a desire to squash down her stiff straw hat, to tear the bird off it and fling it into the unseasonable fire.

‘You knew about it?’ said Mrs. Killigrew indulgently. ‘Well, well, that may be. If I have told you something you already knew, then I have been an interfering old woman.’ Again a sudden sardonic grin came over her face. ‘I do not flatter myself that everything I do is right,’ she went on. ‘I thought I was doing my duty in coming here this afternoon, but it may be that I was mistaken.’

‘Won’t you stay and have a cup of tea?’ said Mrs. Cleveland, who had now recovered from her jungle impulse and was a polite North Oxford hostess once more.

‘No, I do not think I deserve your hospitality,’ said Mrs. Killigrew, getting up. i have not done good this afternoon. I believe I may even have done harm. I must face that. It will be a burden for me to bear, the knowledge that I may have done harm,’ she added, in a surprisingly light tone.

Mrs. Cleveland stared at her, not knowing how to respond to her curious conversation.

‘Husbands need to be watched,’ continued Mrs. Killigrew. ‘I am an old woman and I have had some experience of husbands. I have seen two of them go to their graves. I have attended both their funerals.’

Mrs. Cleveland looked a little startled. She had not realised that Mrs. Killigrew had been twice married.

‘One must be watching them always when they are alive,’ went on the old woman reminiscently. ‘When I was first married I lived in Dresden. We were walking in the Grossergarten one afternoon, Leopold and I—it must be nearly fifty years ago since then—‘

She broke off and looked out of the window.

‘Here is Agnes Wardell; she is carrying a basket of greens.’

‘A basket of greens?’ said Mrs. Cleveland absently. ‘But we have plenty in the garden.’ She felt an unreasonable desire to hear the rest of the story about Mrs. Killigrew and Leopold walking in the Grossergarten fifty years ago. Now she would probably never know what had happened, or even whether anything had happened at all.

‘Well, Margaret, I’ve brought you some plants,’ said Mrs. Wardell, appearing in the doorway unannounced.

‘Oh, I see,
plants
,’ said Mrs. Cleveland, who had imagined cabbages and purple sprouting broccoli. ‘How nice of you!’

‘I am just going,’ said Mrs. Killigrew, ‘but I have not done any good.’ She walked away with a firm step. Evidently she did not find the burden of having done harm a very heavy one.

‘What on earth was she talking about?’ asked Mrs. Wardell.

‘I hardly know,’ Mrs. Cleveland said evasively. ‘Some involved library scandal. You know what Edward is.’

‘Yes I certainly do. It’s really the fault of the Bodley’s Librarian,’ declared Mrs. Wardell surprisingly. ‘There he is in the library, with a lot of idle assistants who have nothing to do but gossip.’ And then to Mrs. Cleveland’s relief, she went on to talk about the plants and when they should be put in.

She had evidently heard nothing. Well, that was something. Indeed, when one remembered how fond of gossip dear Agnes was, it was really a great deal.

‘We’re just going to have tea,’ said Mrs. Cleveland. ‘Do stay and have some.’

‘I’d love to,’ said Mrs. Wardell. ‘I’ll take off my hat if you don’t mind. I expect my hair’s like a bush.’

Mrs. Cleveland stood in the middle of the drawing-room in a state of unhappy bewilderment and indecision while Mrs. Wardell made some attempt to tidy herself. What was she going to do about it? she wondered. Hope for the best and let things slide? Tell Francis that she knew? But that she knew
what
? It wasn’t, after all, very much that she knew, only one ‘I love you’ that Edward Killigrew might or might not have heard him say in the British Museum. Tax him with his deception? Tell him that people were starting to gossip? But she hated nagging and jealousy; she had never
been
like that.

‘Is it safe to come in again?’ said Anthea, butting her head round the door. ‘Has Mrs. Killigrew gone?’

‘Yes, she couldn’t stay to tea,’ said Mrs. Cleveland absently. Anthea mustn’t hear anything of this gossip, she thought; it must be kept from her at all costs. It was quite a relief to be able to put her problem aside for the moment and make ordinary conversation with Anthea and Mrs. Wardell while they had tea.

‘Did you know that old Mrs. Killigrew has had two husbands?’ she said, making a rather unfortunate beginning.

‘How do you know?’ said Mrs. Wardell.

‘Oh, it just cropped up in the course of conversation.’

‘You must have had a funny sort of conversation,’ remarked Anthea. ‘Why were you talking about husbands with her?’

‘Oh, my dear child. They’re the sort of things that
do
crop up in conversations between married women,’ said Mrs. Wardell cheerfully. ‘We have so little else to talk about.’

Anthea laughed. ‘Don’t I know it!’ she said. ‘And not only between married women. Simon’s mother and I had the most intriguing conversation about husbands. Do you
know
,’ she said impressively, ‘she told me that she was in love with someone else when she married Lyall Beddoes!’

‘How awkward,’ said Mrs. Wardell. ‘Though by what I’ve seen of her I shouldn’t think she’d ever be certain about anybody.’

‘Oh, but one’s always certain about a thing like that,’ said Anthea confidently.

‘It must have been awkward for her poor husband,’ said Mrs. Cleveland rather feebly.

‘Oh, he didn’t know about it,’ said Anthea. ‘He seems to have been rather frightful, as far as I can gather. Much older than she was and caring far more about Anglo-Polish diplomatic intrigues than about her happiness.’

‘Well, poor man, I don’t see what you could have expected him to have done,’ said Mrs. Wardell.

‘He ought to have given her a divorce or something so that she could have married this other man,’ said Anthea firmly. ‘Only of course I probably shouldn’t have met Simon then,’ she added irrelevantly.

‘But she was quite happy with her husband, wasn’t she?’ said Mrs. Cleveland hopefully.

‘Oh,
yes
,’ said Anthea impatiently, ‘she was
fond
of him, but she
loved
somebody else. That’s the point. Just think how frightful one’s married life must be if it’s like that. I couldn’t bear it.’

Of course people of Anthea’s age couldn’t be expected to know much about marriage, Mrs. Cleveland thought. How could they when they had no experience? They talked so glibly about divorce and remarriage, as if it were nothing more complicated than mincing up the cold beef and making it into a shepherd’s pie. But of course, she told herself stoutly, there was nothing really wrong between her and Francis, just some silly gossip. Still, she found herself thinking about it when he camc in to supper. If he was in love with somebody else, she though as she watched him eating plum tart with great enjoyment, she would have to give him his freedom, according to Anthea’s philosophy. That was what it amounted to. But the whole idea was so fantastic. Francis simply hadn’t got it in him to fall in love with somebody else and break up a comfortable home. If people wanted to gossip they would just have to. She wasn’t going to interfere. She had always been broad-minded and tolerant; she hated to think that she might make a perfectly harmless friendship seem something else by adopting the attitude of a jealous wife.

‘You must bring Barbara Bird to supper sometime,’ she said, trying to sound casual, ‘if she’s still in Oxford. It’s quite a long time since we saw her.’

That would show people, she thought. She must try and let it be known that Barbara was coming to supper with them. She must make a point of bringing it into any conversation she had with anybody. ‘Oh, by the way, Barbara Bird is coming to supper tonight.’ Of course that was much too blunt. She tried another way. ‘How empty Oxford seems in the vacation, doesn’t it? There are a few undergraduates still here, though: one of my husband’s pupils, Barbara Bird… .’

She walked up the Banbury Road next morning practising this conversation, so much so that her first instinct on going into Sainsbury’s to order some bacon was to say, ‘Oh, Barbara Bird is coming to supper tonight.’ She was sure that the assistant would have been quite equal to the occasion. ‘Oh, yes, madam?’ he would say. ‘Perhaps you would care for a chicken? We have some nice young ones for roasting. Or perhaps you would prefer a boiler… .’

But Mrs. Cleveland had nearly finished her shopping before she met anyone that she knew well enough to stop and speak to. She was just coming out of Elliston’s when she saw a little, bent figure in a shantung costume hurrying towards her. It was Olive Fremantle. She was almost running in her eagerness to prevent Mrs. Cleveland’s getting away.

‘Oh, you
must
come in and see my new colour scheme,’ she said breathlessly. ‘It won’t take a minute.’

Mrs. Cleveland was caught off her guard, and as she walked across the road to the Master’s Lodgings she began to realise how odd it was that she should be asked to see Mrs. Fremantle’s drawing-room in the middle of the morning, especially when, as she stood in it, she saw that it was really no different from what it had always been. It was still greenish, gloomily magnificent and dominated by the frowning portrait of Dr. Fremantle, which hung by itself on one wall.

‘The room is charming,’ said Mrs. Cleveland, doing her best.

Mrs. Fremantle did not seem to have heard and went on fussing nervously round the room, with one eye always on her husband’s portrait, obviously as frightened of it as of the reality. At last she stood still by a tall jar of dried bullrushes and fingered them absently, as if ready to use them as weapons if necessary.

The room isn’t really any different,’ she blurted out at last. ‘I wanted to say something to you privately. Herbert won’t be in till lunchtime,’ she added, glancing furtively towards the door. ‘I don’t suppose he would approve of me speaking to you like this.’

Like what? thought Mrs. Cleveland, sitting on the sofa clutching her shopping basket and waiting patiently for Mrs. Fremantle to throw some light on this curious situation.

‘He thinks I don’t know anything of what goes on in the world,’ continued Mrs. Fremantle in an aggrieved tone. ‘I may be an old woman and not very clever, but I have some experience of life. I’m not blind. I knew all about that time in Florence. A woman always does know, doesn’t she?’

It began to dawn on Mrs. Cleveland that Mrs. Fremantle was leading up to something more definite than general reflections on what goes on in the world; she was going to talk about Francis and Barbara Bird. She felt helpless, trapped in the great, dark drawing-room, but she just sat there feeling rather sick and clutching her shopping basket a little tighter while Mrs. Fremantle went on.

‘I just wanted to warn you not to listen to what people say,’ she said, laying a thin, spidery hand on her arm. ‘If you find your husband out in some little indiscretion, you mustn’t at once think of divorce. They all have little lapses, and it isn’t worth breaking up one’s home for the sake of a little lapse, is it? You must think of your child, you know. The only way is just to pretend not to notice,’ she added rather hopelessly.

‘But I wasn’t contemplating divorce,’ said Mrs. Cleveland, feeling that her voice sounded a little surprised, as well it might.

‘Oh, but you must have thought of it,’ said Mrs. Fremantle, sounding disappointed. ‘When I found out about Herbert and that American woman, my first thought was divorce. I know it was a wicked thought, because of course I don’t really believe in divorce, do you?’