Crampton Hodnet (7 page)

‘Oh, Father, come and sit on the sofa,’ said Anthea impatiently, moving her knitting. ‘There’s plenty of room.’

‘It’s only three o’clock,’ said Mrs. Cleveland. ‘Why don’t you go along to the Bodleian until teatime? You might see Arnold Penge or Edward Killigrew or somebody. That would be nice.’

‘Very nice, to listen to Arnold Penge droning on about Virgil, or to Edward Killigrew saying that Mother doesn’t like him to be late for tea,’ said Mr. Cleveland coldly.

‘Well, you could be alone and work,’ persisted his wife. ‘Or perhaps you’ll find a nice young woman working there and take her out to tea,’ she added brightly.

‘You certainly seem to want to get rid of me,’ said Mr. Cleveland, ‘so perhaps I
will
go to the Bodleian. It’s a comfort to know that there is at least one place left in Oxford where scholars and elderly people can spend a peaceful afternoon.’

‘Take your overcoat, dear,’ Mrs. Cleveland called after him. ‘Remember how cold it is there.’

Francis is so much better when he has something definite to do, she thought contentedly. If he walked it would take him twenty minutes to reach the library. He might spend twenty minutes talking to somebody or looking up books in the catalogue and then, by the time he had walked home again, it would be teatime and his afternoon would have been nicely filled in. Only of course if he took a bus he would get home sooner.

Francis Cleveland, hunched in his grey overcoat, walked gloomily into the Bodleian quadrangle and up the stairs into Duke Humfrey’s library. There was something he had meant to look up, but he had forgotten now what it was. TALK LITTLE AND TREAD LIGHTLY said the notice. Mr. Cleveland trod as heavily as he could and would certainly have talked much, had he seen anyone to talk to. When he looked in at his usual seat by the hot water pipes, he found it occupied by a young clergyman, who gave him a startled glance but who stood his ground and offered no apology. Mr. Cleveland sat down in the empty and more draughty seat beside him and with unnecessary fuss began to move his books from the young clergyman desk onto the new one. When he had got them all together he decided that he did not want to read any of them, so he got up and began walking about until he came across Edward Killigrew, a senior assistant in the library, who was always ready for a good gossip.

Edward Killigrew sat at his desk, wearing a leather golf jacket and grey hand-knitted mittens. He was a tall, vague man of uncertain age, with a fussy, petulant voice. He lived with his old mother in the Woodstock Road. He was reading a catalogue of second-hand books and marking certain items, but he did not in the least mind being interrupted in his work. He kept Mr. Cleveland entertained with spiteful bits of gossip about various members of the University and the library staff until nearly four o’clock. Then he stood up and said, ‘Well, I must go now. Mother will be annoyed if I’m late for tea. She always likes it punctually at half past four.’

Left to himself once more, Mr. Cleveland wandered through the Upper Reading Room, brushed aside the dark, mysterious curtain leading to the Tower Room, and hovered indecisively by the bookcase where the dictionaries and encyclopaedias were kept.

Oh, supposing he comes in here, thought Barbara Bird in a panic. So great was her agitation that she hardly knew whether she wanted him to come or not. She crouched in her seat by the radiator, with her fur coat around her shoulders, trying desperately hard to concentrate on her work.

Mr. Cleveland went on hovering in the entrance to the Reading Room, peering inquisitively among the desks. He was bored, and it was always rather a comfort to watch other people working. And then he saw Barbara and realised that she was just what he needed. He wanted to be with somebody who appreciated him. He went up to her desk with an ingratiating smile on his face.

‘Do come out and have some tea with me,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you’ve been working quite long enough this afternoon.’

He could see her hands trembling slightly as she looked up from her book. They were pretty hands with long, rose-coloured nails. Unacademic-looking hands, he thought.

‘I’d love to,’ she said, looking up at him with eyes which Mr. Cleveland might have described even more warmly.

She stood up and arranged her books neatly on the desk, looked at her face in a small mirror and put on her gloves. She was purposely taking her time so that she could compose herself and think of what she should say to him when the time came for intelligent conversation.

They walked out of the Reading Room and down the stairs.

‘Don’t you get depressed working in that place after the end of term?’ said Mr. Cleveland. ‘I should have thought you’d rather go home.’

Go home with the chance of seeing you in Oxford? thought Barbara. Why, if I’d gone home this wouldn’t be happening to me. ‘It’s impossible to work at home,’ she said. ‘One simply can’t get any peace.’

‘Where do you live?’

‘In North Wales, by the sea.’

‘Oh, do you? We often go to Llanfaddyn in the summer. We sometimes take reading parties there,’ said Mr. Cleveland. ‘I dare say you may have seen us.’

‘Yes, I have, but that was before I knew you properly, and before you knew me at all,’ said Barbara, remembering one day when she had gone into the village shop to buy something and had found him standing there, wrestling with a long list of groceries. ‘It was such a surprise to see you.’ She laughed. ‘I’d always thought of you as you were lecturing at the Schools, and then I saw you in shorts, buying tins of baked beans and spaghetti. It made you so much more human.’

‘Well, I am human, quite human,’ said Mr. Cleveland, rather pleased at the idea of himself being anything else. ‘And now we seem to be at the door of Fuller’s. Shall we go in here?’

‘Yes, I think it’s a very suitable place,’ said Barbara. ‘Quite the right sprt of place for a tutor to take his pupil.’

‘His favourite pupil,’ said Mr. Cleveland, with rather stiff gallantry. ‘I shall expect you to eat a lot of cakes.’

They went upstairs and looked around for a table. ‘Do you like the new part down the steps?’ asked Mr. Cleveland. They stood at the top of them, looking down at the groups of North Oxford spinsters, dons’ wives and families, who were taking some refreshment after their Christmas shopping.

‘I think the other part is nicer,’ said Barbara.

‘Yes,’ agreed Mr. Cleveland. ‘Less full of chattering women.’

‘Let’s sit by the window,’ said Barbara.

When the tea came she found that he liked his with milk and two lumps of sugar, just like so many other people: Peter, her brother, or that dull young man from St. Wilfrid’s Hall, who was always asking her to go out with him. It was a wonderful thing for Barbara to have found out how Francis Cleveland liked his tea. She began to pour hot water into the teapot, trying at the same time to appear intelligently interested in what she was saying. But really she was taking in her surroundings, so that she could have many details stored away in her memory, each of which might have the power to bring this afternoon back to her. She noticed the big pink chrysanthemums with heads like mops, the cakes in their cellophane coverings, even the people sitting at the tables near them. There was a tall, handsome woman, perhaps the wife of a don, with her three little boys, chattering about Christmas presents and fingering the cakes. One day those little boys would grow up, and although they would never know it, they would somehow all be linked together by this experience. Barbara suddenly felt a warm, all-embracing love for everybody in Fuller’s that afternoon, even for the chattering dons’ wives and North Oxford spinsters, who were sitting in the other part of the cafe, anxiously wondering whether they had bought the right things or whether that cushion cover that Ella had given them last year could possibly be used as a present for anybody else without fear of discovery.

But if most of them were thinking more prosaic thoughts than Barbara, two at least were in some way sharing in her experience.

‘Of course,’ said Miss Morrow rather timidly, ‘Mr. Cleveland is her tutor. It seems to me that it’s quite an ordinary thing for a tutor to take his pupil out to tea.’

‘I am not denying that,’ said Miss Doggett, ‘but the circumstances here seem to me to be
quite
different. It would be a perfectly natural thing for a tutor to ask a pupil to tea at his house, where his wife or housekeeper or some elderly person could act as hostess. But to sneak off to a cafe in the town, and then to rush off so unceremoniously when he sees somebody he knows … well, Miss Morrow, you can hardly say that that is quite an ordinary thing.’

Miss Morrow was silent for a moment, silent in admiration at Miss Doggett’s capacity for twisting the facts of a situation so that it appeared to be something completely different. ‘But, Miss Doggett,’ she persisted, ‘I don’t think they
did
see us. I don’t think either of them did. They came here to look and found that it was crowded, so they went into the other part of the cafe. It seems to me perfectly simple.’

‘Miss Morrow,’ said Miss Doggett in a warning tone, ‘you are not a woman of the world. You cannot possibly know what goes on
outside
Leamington Lodge.’

Miss Morrow went rather red, not so much from mortification as from a desire to giggle. She was thinking that if she did not know what went on outside Leamington Lodge, Miss Doggett was just as ignorant of what went on inside it. For she obviously had no idea of the conspiracy between her and Mr. Latimer, the secret of the walk on Shotover, the vicar of Crampton Hodnet, the splendid bath and the sherry. Thinking of these things, Miss Morrow bent her head and said nothing. The last thing she would ever claim to be was a woman of the world.

Encouraged by Miss Morrow’s silence and bent head, Miss Doggett went on to speak of what she thought they ought to do. i believe it may be my duty to speak to Margaret about it,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Don’t think for a moment that I’m suggesting that there could possibly be anything in it,’ she said, turning to the unworldly Miss Morrow, ‘but you know what I mean. There are some things that one cannot let pass without comment. It is a duty one has to other people, not always a pleasant or an easy duty, but one which must be performed. Will you have another cake, Miss Morrow?’ she asked, putting on her skunk cape, fastening the buttons on her gloves, and obviously preparing to get up from the table.

‘No, thank you, Miss Doggett,’ said Miss Morrow virtuously.

‘Well, then, we may as well go home,’ said Miss Doggett, standing up. ‘I don’t like leaving Mr. Latimer alone; I feel he needs company.’ She turned suddenly to Miss Morrow. ‘When we pass Francis and that young woman,’ she said, ‘I shall merely nod, and you must do the same. Just an acknowledgement, simply that. We don’t want to be either cold or effusive.’

They walked up the steps into the other part of the cafe. Miss Doggett took out her lorgnette and looked round. Then, fixing it on Barbara and Francis Cleveland, she gave a curt nod and passed on.

Miss Morrow, struggling with gloves, handbag, umbrella and a great many parcels, made an odd sort of dipping movement with her whole body, as if she were genuflecting before an imaginary altar. She hoped that this expressed neither coldness nor effusiveness, but she suspected that it merely looked ridiculous and expressed absolutely nothing. And in any case Mr. Cleveland and the young woman were so deep in conversation that they hadn’t even noticed that they were being acknowledged.

‘Do let me walk back to your college with you,’ said Francis, as he and Barbara were preparing to go their different ways.

‘Well… .’ Barbara hesitated. ‘I had been going to do some work, but it hardly seems worth it now before dinner. But I’ve left all my books in the Bodleian.’

‘We can go round that way. I’ll wait while you get them.’

Barbara ran up the wooden stairs, leaving Mr. Cleveland to wait for her at the bottom. He sat down on one of the broad window-sills and absentmindedly took out his cigarette case.

‘Now, now, no smoking here, Cleveland,’ said the playful, slightly petulant voice of Edward Killigrew, who was just coming down the stairs at that moment. ‘What are you doing here lurking in the shadows?’ he asked.

‘I’m waiting for somebody,’ said Mr. Cleveland shortly.

‘Oh,
ho
,’ said Mr. Killigrew with ridiculous coyness.

‘Here I am.’ Barbara came running down with her books.

‘Well, I must be off,’ said Mr. Killigrew, raising his eyebrows.

When he had gone out of earshot, Barbara began to laugh. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but I always think he’s such a funny young man.’

Young man
, thought Mr. Cleveland, remembering that he himself wasn’t much older than Edward Killigrew. He began to feel quite sprightly. ‘Let me carry those books for you,’ he said.

‘Well, it isn’t part of a tutor’s duty to be so polite to his pupils,’ said Barbara.

‘Yes, but I’m not your tutor now.’

There was a pause, as if both were considering their new relationship, whatever it might be. They walked on in silence over Magdalen Bridge. Barbara tried hard to think of some intelligent remark to make. He’ll think I’m so stupid if I don’t say
anything
, she thought desperately, and I may not get another opportunity to be with him like this again.

How sympathetic she is, thought Francis. She doesn’t spoil the magic of a beautiful evening—it happened to be a particularly raw December evening
—by making conversation. One could enjoy it in peace. She seemed to know one’s feelings. If he went for such a walk with Margaret she would be chattering all the time about unimportant things, something they ought to get done in the house or some trivial bit of North Oxford gossip. One somehow couldn’t imagine Barbara talking about things like that. He began to see himself as a sensitive, misunderstood person, who had at last found a soul-mate.

‘Well, here we are,’ he said with real regret in his tone, as they came to the gates of her college.

‘I must go,’ she said, lingering by the gate and not going.

Francis put out his hand and daringly touched her dark, furry sleeve. It was really just the right moment for a kiss, he thought, and he was sure that she felt it too.