Such Visitors Page 13

  But down by the canal her hopes of a peaceful walk were ended by the presence of a distant figure walking towards her. Helen could see, as he bounced under the bridge, hands in pockets, it was the Reverend Arnold Ludgate, vicar of the parish, a man who in the past had made many a visit to the Judsons to urge them to seek the light of his church, but who had eventually been forced to realise they would never become part of his flock. Spot barked eagerly, alerting the vicar. He looked up, recognising Helen at once, and waved cheerily. It was too late for Helen to turn in the opposite direction. She set her face into an expression of intense preoccupation, hoping it would discourage the vicar from too long a conversation. They approached each other in very different spirits.

  A yard or so from the exact spot where the rescue had taken place they met, and stopped. The Reverend Arnold Ludgate was a man of considerable bounce: his enthusiasm, the balls of his feet and his Adam’s apple all bounced in constant unison. Now, at rest physically, an almost visible bounce of spirit danced within him. He smiled his very distinct smile: God had chosen teeth for the vicar that should be his particular cross, and the vicar bore them well, smiling more in a single day than most people manage in a week.

  ‘Ah! Miss Judson.’ Smile, smile. Helen noticed his sandy hair was turning grey. ‘It must be the good Lord’s will we should meet like this. It was my intention to call upon you this evening and offer my humble congratulations. That was a most brave and courageous act you committed, and we in the parish are proud – ’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Helen. ‘But it was nothing. It’s been exaggerated out of all proportion.’

  ‘Just hereabouts, was it?’ The vicar bounced his small hand in the general direction of the canal.

  ‘Just about here,’ Helen agreed. Scanning the offending patch of water, the Reverend Arnold remained for a few moments in silent contemplation.

  ‘Very tricky place,’ he said at last. Thank God you were here. He certainly moves in mysterious ways.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Helen.

  ‘His wonders to perform,’ added the vicar.

  They stood looking at each other, the wind blowing their rather similiar auburn and grey hair. Helen hoped God might now perform the wonder of releasing her from this unwanted encounter: but He did not oblige.

  ‘As a matter of fact, Miss Judson, I had it in mind to make you a little suggestion. There’s to be a most interesting talk at the vicarage on Tuesday the fifth: one of our missionaries back from India. I was wondering if you would care to come along? I think I can guarantee quite a little gathering.’ The vicar was all smiles again. He looked at Helen with such suffering expectancy of an acceptance that she judged it easier to agree than to go through the dreary mechanics of being persuaded.

  Since her old schoolfriend Jenny had died of cancer five years ago she had not been out for an evening: such invitations that came her way she had refused with such constancy that they were now rare. And anyhow, the fuss of arranging a companion for her mother was too much to contemplate. The idea of a talk at the vicarage was the last thing to tempt her to break her pattern: but the fact was the canal episode had shifted normality in a most disagreeable fashion, leaving her ungrounded, shaken, curiously lost. It was for this reason, perhaps, her normal, strong resolve to decline all invitations was weakened. Unwillingly, she accepted.

  ‘Good, good, good,’ trilled the vicar, bouncing a little on the path. ‘I shall take the liberty of dropping by with some reading matter about the whole subject before then: and in the meantime I shall look forward with immense pleasure, quite immense pleasure, to your joining us.’

  Helen nodded briefly, looking at her watch with undisguised impatience. The idea of anyone anticipating pleasure in her company was a responsibility she did not care for, but she knew she stood a poor chance of quelling his enthusiasm.

  ‘I must be off,’ she said, grateful for the first time in her life to Spot’s impatient barking. ‘The dog needs his run.’

  The Reverend Arnold arrived with his first lot of reading matter that evening, much to the delight of Mrs Judson who, although not a woman of religious inclination herself, regarded any vicar as a high-class visitor. Small glasses of clouded sherry were produced, and the pattern of a normal evening shattered.

  Perhaps the vicar judged his welcome at the Judsons to be a warm one, for he ventured to repeat the visit, armed with more missionary reading matter, some days later. He then took the liberty of dropping round most evenings, with some impeccable excuse, and the bottle of sherry, untouched for years, was soon finished.

  On the occasions of his visitations Helen sat quietly listening to the conversation between her mother and the Reverend Arnold, resenting every moment of the old, lost tranquillity. The intrusion of this visitor continued to play havoc with the room as she knew it: the horrible magic of change unnerved her very soul.

  It had quite the opposite effect upon Mrs Judson to whom, in her mind’s eye, the vicar was already a son-in-law. She refrained from putting this idea to Helen in too crude a fashion, but could not contain a small hint of the ambitions in her heart.

  ‘If Arnold’s courting, Helen, and I don’t say he is, then we ought to get in some more Assorted Creams.’

  She was curiously enthusiastic at the thought of Helen’s night out at the vicarage, even volunteering to spend the evening on her own, provided Helen was in by eleven. This was a promise Helen was able to make with great ease. She left her mother, settled in rugs for an evening of television, with a lack of enthusiasm that seemed to slow her limbs, making the walk to the vicarage a long one.

  The Reverend Arnold was an eager host, and had obviously taken great trouble with preparations for the evening. Twelve assorted chairs were placed in rows in his large, cold sitting-room – into which a collection of feeble electric fires had been scattered: there was sherry, tea and assorted cream biscuits on a table (‘inspired by my visits to the Judsons,’ he whispered to Helen) and the screen for the slides was set up at the end of the room. After a long wait scarcely filled with small, awkward talk, it seemed that only five others besides Helen had decided to give up their evening to the missionary’s talk. The spare chairs were left, however, to give the illusion of a larger audience, and in the darkened room, punching away at the slides, the gallant missionary disguised any disappointment he may have felt at the lack of audience, booming his message across as if addressing a packed Albert Hall.

  The lecture over, the pale lamps lit again, the vicar’s guests now at least had something positive to talk about over their biscuits and tea. But the discussion petered out quickly as a chill wind rattled through the windows, making the thin curtains shudder, and the small patches of warmth from the fires evaporated in the cold air. They made their excuses, the guests, and left. Even the missionary had to be on his way. Helen’s inclination was to leave with the others, but something in the vicar’s face, behind his bouncing smile, touched her conscience. So when he suggested she might like a nightcap in his study before the journey home, she agreed.

  The study, it was true, was warm: a small brown room, bookshelves to the ceiling, a disorganised desk, two armchairs whose life seemed almost spent.

  ‘Only real warm spot in the house,’ said the vicar. ‘I more or less live in this room.’ He poured two minute glasses of thick dark sherry, gave one to Helen, and took the chair opposite her. ‘Trouble is, this is a vast house, falling to pieces, and much too big for one man. They’re considering pulling it down and building a nice modern box instead, but I don’t know when that will be. So meantime I rattle around.’ He smiled, uncomplainingly. ‘Would that I had a relation to accommodate in one wing – it could be very nice with a lick of paint and a few gas fires. But sadly my dear mother departed from this world in 1947, so there’s no one …’

  ‘No,’ said Helen.

  They listened to the wind.

  Helen sipped the horrible sweet sherry. She did not want to be sitting here in the vicar’s study wearing her polite fac
e. Were she at home she would be in the silent privacy of her own room by now, shawl about her shoulders, Persuasion in her hand, the clamps of dull routine an inestimable pleasure. Until the time came that her mother died, and dreaded freedom was thrust upon her, she wanted no change.

  The Reverend Arnold had dragged a duster from the skirts of his armchair and was polishing the toe of an already shining shoe with some fervour. His head cast down, Helen was unable to observe his expression as he spoke.

  ‘My dear Miss Judson – may I take the liberty of saying this? I hope I have not alarmed you by my attentions since your great act of heroism. But perhaps it will come as no great surprise to you when I admit it was not merely to deliver papers pertaining to our missionary’s work that I called upon you quite so frequently …’

  Rub, rub, rub at the shoe. ‘I have grown to feel we are kindred spirits, you and me. Lonely souls, despite the love of our Father.’ He ceased polishing at last, returned the duster to its hiding place, and with great effort met Helen’s eye. ‘You understand? This huge house, ridiculous for one: the Granny wing – dear Mrs Judson, I could not but help thinking …’He blushed, fervent, but without bounce. ‘I mean, there is work to be done, children to be raised, partners to be chosen. I cannot help thinking that God in his mercy has guided me …’

  Helen stood up, face impassive. The vicar leapt up too, wringing his small hands.

  ‘Forgive me, dear Helen, if I’ve intruded into areas – ’

  ‘I must go,’ said Helen. ‘I promised Mother I’d be home by eleven.’

  The vicar followed her through cold dark passages to the front door.

  ‘Perhaps, at least, you would not reject my suggestion as totally out of hand.’ Helen pulled on her gloves. The vicar winced at her small, impatient frown. ‘Perhaps you would think it over? I don’t want to rush anything: you must forgive me if I’ve been too hasty – I’m not a man practised at courting.’ He managed the faintest smile. ‘But unless you give me firm orders not to, I shall take the opportunity of visiting you further, see how things go from there …’

  Helen looked at him. He shivered in the doorway, Adam’s apple bouncing up and down on the dog’s collar in silent fear.

  ‘Mr Ludgate,’ she said, voice so tight she feared he might hear the cracks, ‘thank you for a very pleasant evening. If you’d like to drop round, sometimes, I’m sure my mother and I would be very pleased to see you. But please, I ask you this: don’t speak to me again of such things as you have mentioned tonight. You may find it hard to understand, but it’s not in my nature to want change. My mother and I are happy as we are.’

  ‘I shall be there,’ said the vicar, hope rising like mercury through his body and causing him a familiar bounce of joyous expectation, ‘and we shall see what the Good Lord has in store for us.’

  They shook hands. Helen, scarf pulled tight round her neck, set off on the walk home, down by the canal where a full moon floated on the still, black water, where the huge trees crackled in the wind. Above the roofs of the town the dark sky was pink as a sore, its edges puffed with cloud. Ruined evenings, blasted life, bitter cold: Helen walked fast, not thinking.

  Such Visitors

  Miranda Wharton did not agree with the widely held opinion that it is a foolish thing for those in the same profession to marry. She had heard all the pessimistic theories many times: the endless shop talk, the narrowness of vision, the rivalry, and believed them to be nonsense. Indeed, she and her husband Jim, who had been married for seventeen happy years, were proof of their inaccuracy.

  Miranda and Jim were both teachers of English, though it has to be said that their special periods were divided by a century. For a couple of years they had even taught in the same university, with no ill effects. They rarely discussed their work at home – not a conscious decision, this; it was just that Jim seemed keener to talk about canoeing (a long-time hobby) and Miranda was too busy with running the house, experimenting with Italian cookery, and being a conscientious mother to their fifteen-year-old daughter, Sally.

  As far as they could tell, there was no rivalry between them either. Friends sometimes put this – the most obvious of the assumed disadvantages – to them. How had Miranda felt, they asked, when Jim was made a senior lecturer? Delighted, Miranda had replied laughingly, and meant it. She herself, at present Writer in Residence at a college in Southampton, was much in demand to lecture all over the country on the Romantic poets and, her real love, Thomas Hardy. Her many published papers had received acclaim in academic circles: she enjoyed the writing, she enjoyed the lecturing – in a word, she was more than happy in her work. Jim was equally satisfied with his post in the university, though continually incredulous at the shockingly low standard of literacy among his pupils. ‘They can’t construct a simple sentence, let alone an essay,’ he sometimes grumbled to Miranda, and often contemplated the return to being a school teacher so that he could try to inculcate the basic principles of English into their heads at an early age. He vaguely kept an ear open for some suitable post at a school, but so far nothing had come up. So life for the Whartons continued on its contended way, their good fortune appreciated by both. That was a subject often discussed: not smugly, heaven forbid, but with gratitude to God for their blessed lot. (They were both practising Christians, though had to travel fifteen miles every Sunday, now, to find a church with a 1662 service. Not for them the bastardised language, and all that embarrassing hand-shaking, of the misguided New Way to attract worshippers.) In a word, and without wishing to seem complacent, Miranda Wharton often thought that she and Jim must be one of the luckiest married couples of their acquaintance.

  One Tuesday morning in mid-May, Miranda sat alone in a first-class compartment of an inter-city train bound for Bristol. She was to speak at a college of adult education about The Dark in Hardy’s Poems, a talk she had given on several occasions and which had gone down very well. To be honest, she would have preferred to talk about the light in his poems: that would have taxed her harder, meant something to struggle with. But The Dark had been especially requested, so the only challenge would be to make it sound as fresh and vibrant as the first time she had given it.

  But for the moment she was thinking neither about the dark nor the light in Hardy, but about the wisdom of Tom Stoppard. The night before, the Whartons had gone to London to see The Real Thing – a trip to the theatre, with a modest dinner afterwards, was a treat they afforded themselves once a month. They were both much impressed by the play, decided to see it a second time. Jim loved the famous cricket bat speech – marvellous stuff, he declared: Stoppard was wizard at enlightening the ordinary. Who else had ever before pointed out that a cricket bat is sprung like a dance hall? ‘“What we’re trying to do is to write cricket bats”,’ he quoted, chuckling, on the way home.

  Miranda, although she did not mention it to Jim, was more taken by another speech. She had tried to remember it, but was annoyed to find, later that night, she could only recall a few words – something about politeness. Henry’s explanation to Annie about not wanting anyone else had given Miranda what she called her entry-into-a-cathedral feeling: goose pimples, and a tingling down the spine. And then, this morning, she had left the house extra early so as to have time to stop in at the bookshop on the way to the station. Jim hadn’t noticed her premature start, but all the same she felt curiously guilty, as if she harboured a secret whose nature she did not quite understand.

  She had bought a copy of the play, finished it by Reading. After that she tipped her head back, letting her eyes glide over the rapid fields emerald with early May, lilac trees buxom in cottage gardens, clumps of flame-yellow broom. She had found the passage, read it several times. It had made her cold again – physically, excitingly cold. She picked it up again – for the last time, she told herself. The words, by now, she had almost by heart:

  ‘This extract has been removed due to copyright issues’.

  ‘Someone else’s possibility,’ Miranda repeated to herself. H
er heart was beating against the hum of the train. She had never experienced any such thing, but she thought she could imagine it.

  Shortly before arriving in Bristol, Miranda found herself indulging in a moment of rare self-assessment. She looked down at her skirt, her jersey: the one, khaki twill, the other white cotton. She had never dressed in order to be anything but comfortable – the world of fashion was a remote one in which she had no interest or aspirations. But this sudden, critical look at herself brought a twinge of dissatisfaction. How, today, in her workmanlike beige and white, would she strike a stranger, a possibility, striding down the train? Not very forcibly, she thought.

  To double check, she looked at herself in the small mirror of her powder compact. The slight, scornful smile caused a surprising amount of wrinkles at the corners of her pale mouth. She moved on up to the eyes, preparing herself for further disappointment. Jim had once told her that it was the mischief of her pretty eyes that had first drawn him to her. Where had all the mischief gone in middle age, she wondered? And were they still pretty? Striving for honesty, it was hard to say. She snapped shut the compact, ran her hand through her thick, bouncing hair which seemed to lead a turbulent life of its own. She wondered if the habitually vain were ever immune to the truth.

  Miranda sat on the narrow bed in the sliver of a room that had been assigned to her with little ceremony. Its walls were whitewashed breeze block. The light was a single central bulb with a raffia shade shaped like a coolie. As always, Miranda wondered who could be behind such design. What was he like, the architect who woke up one morning and decreed that whitewashed breeze block and a ceiling light would be agreeable for students and visiting lecturers? She was familiar with such places, having stayed in them all over the country – jerry-built buildings, circa 1960, with their miles of sour neon lighting, and cheerless lecture halls where chairs screamed on synthetic floors. But she had never managed to become impervious to their ugliness.