Eternity Ring (2 page)

Monica and Frank took their way down the Lane. It was deep dusk now and would be very dark. They came out into the village street, turned to the right and, passing a row of cottages and the Rectory, arrived at the church. Miss Alvina’s cottage lay a little beyond the Rectory and was the last in the village. It was old, the once black beams of its living-room not much more than six foot above the flagstones of the floor. Miss Alvina, considering them gloomy, had painted them a good bright rose, performing this act of desecration with great gusto from a precarious perch upon a kitchen chair. The result fully justified her boast that the room was now much brighter. She had not actually painted the window seat, but it was heaped with pink cushions. Roses as large as cauliflowers bloomed on the sofa and three chintz-covered chairs, whilst the curtains, cut down after long service in the Rectory drawing-room, had preserved to a surprising extent the vigour of a cerise stripe upon rather a bright blue ground. There was not really room upon the walls for all the treasured pictures which had once had a more spacious home, but Miss Alvina had done her best. An overmantel in poker-work assisted the mantelpiece in its task of supporting as many photographs and knick-knacks as possible. The month being January, the fine scarlet geraniums in pink and blue glazed pots which adorned the room in summer were now replaced by bunches of orange everlastings grown very successfully in Miss Alvina’s little back garden.

She herself wore a pink blouse with her grey coat and skirt, and some rather tired pink cotton roses pinned to the lapel. Her bushy grey hair bulged in every direction under the black felt hat which was, like the curtains, a survival from the past. None of the young people in Deeping had ever seen her in any other hat. Cicely could remember it looking just as it did now when she was seven or eight years old and was given pink sweets for being a good little girl in church. The hair it was supposed to cover had rebelled against it then as it rebelled against it now. Under the hat and all that hair there were neat little features, very bright blue eyes, and so small a mouth that one wondered how Miss Vinnie managed to eat with it.

Frank took all this in as he shook hands, taking care not to straighten up again too suddenly in case the pink beam should be a trifle under a six foot. With some relief he subsided into a chair, whilst Miss Alvina twittered on a theme to which he should by now have been accustomed, but which always induced a feeling of savage boredom.

“So very interesting to think that you are at Scotland Yard. We must all mind our p’s and q’s, mustn’t we, or you will be arresting us.” She gave the little clear laugh which went with the high, birdlike voice, and then changed it suddenly to a cough, because, well as she knew the Abbotts, it was the first time their nephew had come to tea and at close quarters there was something a little daunting about his slim elegance—fair hair mirror-smooth, eyes of pale unchanging blue, and, oh dear, such beautiful clothes. Miss Alvina had an eye for detail. She noticed the socks, the tie, the handkerchief, the impeccable cut of the coat, and the really beautiful shoes. Not in the least like a policeman. A vision of Joseph Turnberry, the village constable, entered her mind upon heavily clumping feet. A very worthy young man of course, and a good baritone voice for the choir. She had a high esteem for Joseph, whom she had taught in Sunday school, but for the moment he added to her slight confusion. Her colour rose and she turned with relief to Mrs. Abbott, who was excusing her husband with the smoothness of long practice.

“The Clothing Accounts, Miss Vinnie—he has left them to the last moment again. I am sure you will understand.”

Miss Alvina understood perfectly. Everyone in Deeping knew that Colonel Abbott would not go out to tea-parties. “A pack of rubbish! And you’ll take away each other’s characters much more comfortably without me.” Most people had heard him say it, but the conventions continued to be observed. He was always invited, and if it wasn’t the Clothing Club accounts which prevented him from coming, it would be the autumn clearing-up in the garden, the winter pruning, or the spring planting-out. There were also dogs who had to be exercised and a number of other useful refuges from hospitality. Mrs. Abbott rang the changes on them with amiability and charm.

When Colonel Abbott had been disposed of, Cicely’s “I simply won’t go out in a gang” had to be softened into “She was afraid we’d be too much of a party for you.” After which Miss Vinnie addressed herself to the tea-table and poured a straw-coloured liquid out of a very large Victorian teapot into her best eggshell china teacups, which had no handles and were quite terribly difficult to drink out of. If the tea was hot, you burned your fingers. If you didn’t burn your fingers, it meant that the tea was at that horrid lukewarm stage when it not only looked like straw but tasted like it too. Frank, like every other male visitor, was torn between a horrid conviction that it would be impossible to get through without crushing or dropping his fragile cup and an inexcusable urge to precipitate the crash and get it over.

Miss Alvina informed him that the tea-set had come from China as a present to her great-grandmother—“Only she didn’t marry the gentleman who sent it, because just about then she met my great-grandfather at a Hunt Ball. They were married in exactly a month to the day, which wasn’t considered at all the thing, but my great-grandfather was so impetuous. And they were married for sixty years and had fifteen children, and never a cross word between them. You can see their tombstones if you look out of the little window at the end of the room—at least you could if it were not so dark. I do hope you don’t mind sitting like this with the lights on and the curtains not drawn. It’s a thing I used not to care about myself, but now I enjoy it because it means that the war is over and one can think about that horrid black-out and be so glad that you don’t have to do it any more. And then, of course, being right on the outskirts of the village, I think it’s rather nice for anyone coming down the path off the Common—such a lonely road, especially where it runs through Dead Man’s Copse.”

Frank Abbott put himself out of temptation by setting down his empty cup.

“Who was the dead man?” he asked.

Miss Alvina pressed a home-made bun upon him and dispensed more straw-coloured tea. The bun was stuck full of caraway seeds and iced over all with a layer of soft pink sugar.

“Well, it’s rather a horrid story, Mr. Frank, but of course it’s so long ago, they would all have been dead anyway. He was called Edward Brand, and he was some sort of connection of the Tomalyns who were the family that owned Deerhurst Park on the other side of the Common. They’ve quite died out now, but you can see their tombs in the church. They owned all the land right up to the path across the Common, and they let this Edward Brand go and live in what they called the Forester’s House, right in the middle of the wood. No one knew where he came from, or why they let him live there. He was very tall and thin, with long coal-black hair tied back with a riband. It was in the eighteenth century and most people wore wigs with powder on them, but Edward Brand wore his own long black hair. He lived quite alone in the Forester’s House, and in a little while nobody would go near the place, especially after dark. It was said that he practised witchcraft. People were very superstitious in those days—My dear Mrs. Abbott, do let me fill your cup. And you really must taste my strawberry jam. Ellen Caddie made it a new way this year and it has really turned out very well.”

Mrs. Abbott said, “It’s delicious. I think Ellen really is a witch. I can’t get my jam to taste like this. But go on—tell Frank how Edward Brand became the Dead Man.”

“If you think it’s a suitable subject for the tea-table—” said Miss Alvina. She turned to Frank. “Well, the stories got worse and worse. Even on the path along the Common people said bats swooped on them and they heard owls shrieking, and some of them said it sounded more like human beings, and they got to think dreadful things went on in the Forester’s House. In the end there was some story about a girl who disappeared, only it turned out afterwards she’d run away from home because she didn’t get on with her step-mother. Everyone thought that Edward Brand had something to do with her disappearing like that. She was quite a young girl, not more than fourteen. They thought none of their children would be safe, so they went up into the wood to burn the Forester’s House. My father said that when he was a boy the old sexton who used to have this house told him his grandfather was one of the men who went up from Deeping to call Edward Brand to account. He said they found the house quite empty, with all the doors and windows wide open and no sign of anyone there. There were a great many looking-glasses in the rooms, and they broke them, and pulled the doors from the hinges, and came away. There was no path up to the house, only as much track as anyone would make going to and fro. The Common path is quite a long way off. When they got back to it where it runs between the trees they came suddenly on the body of Edward Brand hanging from a long straight branch. And they buried him at the cross roads where the path comes down off the Common just outside the churchyard wall. That’s what they did with suicides in those days. The Forester’s House is still up there in the wood, but nobody’s lived in it since and nobody likes going near it. And the place between the trees where they found Edward Brand hanging has been called Dead Man’s Copse ever since.”

Frank Abbott’s attention was caught not so much by the story as by the fact that whilst she was telling it her small twittering personality seemed to have receded into the background. He had the strongest impression that the story itself was being passed on to him as it had been received—no absorption had taken place. He had no doubt that it came to him as it had come to her, and to her father, from the old sexton whose grandfather had seen Edward Brand hanging in Dead Man’s Copse—all in the true line of oral tradition, a thing not uncommon in village life, though not as common as it used to be. He thought Miss Silver would be interested, and put it away to tell her.

The tea-party went on as tea-parties do. Half past five struck, and a quarter to six. Monica and Miss Alvina seemed to have a great deal to talk about. Frank reflected that there always was a lot to talk about in a village, because sooner or later everything that happened got into circulation and was passed on vigorously until something else took its place. Of course sometimes the thing hadn’t happened at all. A pleasing element of doubt and mystery was then added to the gossip. As a good many of the people in Deeping were only names to him, he found it difficult to feel any marked degree of interest, though some of it was to come back to him afterwards. Maggie Bell and the way she listened in on the party line—Miss Alvina’s indignant, “Everyone knows she does it, and I think it’s high time someone spoke to her or to Mrs. Bell,” and Monica’s indulgent “Poor Maggie—she has so few pleasures. If it amuses her to hear me ordering the fish from Lenton or making an appointment with my dentist, I should hate to snatch it away.”

Miss Alvina had become a little heated, and it was perhaps to change the subject that Monica Abbott began to talk about Mrs. Caddie, whom he identified with the Ellen responsible for their superlative strawberry jam, and who appeared to be Miss Vinnie’s daily help.

“Cicely met her in the Lane when she was coming back from giving the dogs a run this afternoon—I thought she stayed all day. And Cis said she looked terrible, as if she’d been crying her eyes out. Is there anything wrong?”

The twitter returned in full force.

“That’s just what I said to her, Mrs. Abbott. You know she comes at nine—I get my own breakfast—and the minute I saw her I said, ‘Dear me, Ellen, what’s wrong? You look as if you’d been crying your eyes out.’ My exact words, and so she did. And all she would say was she’d got a headache. So then I told her she’d better go back and lie down. She said she’d rather work, so I told her to make herself a good cup of tea. But after lunch she looked so bad I sent her home. And you know, she may say what she likes about a headache—and I daresay she had one, because there’s nothing like crying to bring them on, is there—but it isn’t the first time she’s looked as if she’d been crying all night, and quite between ourselves, I’m afraid there is something wrong at home. Albert Caddie may be a very good chauffeur—and I believe he is—but it was very foolish of her to marry him—so much younger, and really quite a stranger here. However, we mustn’t gossip, must we?” She turned to Frank with unsolicited information. “Her husband is chauffeur to Mr. Harlow at the Grange, and he gets his dinner up at the house. That is to say, he was old Mr. Harlow’s chauffeur after he was demobilized, and when Mr. Harlow died last year and his nephew Mr. Mark came into the property, he stayed on. Mr. Mark doesn’t much care about driving himself, which seems strange, because he’s quite a young man. Do you know at all why it is, Mrs. Abbott? He’s a friend of Cicely’s, isn’t he?”

Monica Abbott felt the sharp anger which always came up in her when anyone bracketted Mark Harlow’s name with Cicely’s. What made it a great deal worse was that she must on no account let anyone see that she was angry. She smiled now and said in her most amiable tone,

“I don’t know if he is a friend—he is a very pleasant acquaintance. He is away so much that we all see less of him than we should like. I’m afraid I have no idea why he doesn’t drive, but you could ask him, couldn’t you?”

The church clock was striking six. Miss Alvina became a little flustered.

“Oh, I wouldn’t dream! It would seem so—so intrusive.”

“It might,” said Monica Abbott.

Miss Alvina pursued the theme.

“I did ask Ellen Caddie—I don’t mean to say that she would talk about Mr. Harlow’s affairs, but I did happen to ask her whether she knew if he suffered from—night-blindness, I think they call it. Because he does drive himself in the day, and of course sometimes at night too. Ellen said she didn’t think there was anything to stop him driving if he wanted to, but I just wondered whether it could be that. Old Mr. Tolley had it—his wife always had to drive if it was after dark, and he had very good sight in the daytime. Mr. Harlow certainly has very fine eyes—don’t you think so? And so good-looking.”