Mrs Jim, as she was always called in the district, looked round the drawing-room with a practised eye. She herself had ‘turned it out’ that morning and Mrs Foster had done the flowers, picking white japonica with a more lavish hand than she would have dared to use had she known that McBride, her bad-tempered jobbing gardener, was on the watch.
Mrs Jim, pulling herself together as the chairwoman, using a special voice, said she knew they would all want to express their sympathy with Mrs Black in her recent sad loss. The ladies murmured and a little uncertain woman in a corner offered soundless acknowledgement.
Then followed the competition. You had to fill in the names of ladies present in answer to what were called cryptic clues. Mrs Jim was mildly amused but didn’t score very highly. She guessed her own name, for which the clue was ‘She doesn’t work out’. ‘Jobb-in’. Quite neat but inaccurate, she thought because her professional jobs were, after all, never ‘in’. Twice a week she obliged Mrs Foster here at Quintern Place, where her niece, Beryl, was a regular. Twice a week she went to Mardling Manor to augment the indoor staff. And twice a week, including Saturdays, she helped Miss Preston at Keys House. From these activities she arrived home in time to get the children’s tea and her voracious husband’s supper. And when Miss Preston gave one of her rare parties, Mrs Jobbin helped out in the kitchen, partly because she could do with the extra money but mostly because she liked Miss Preston.
Mrs Foster she regarded as being a bit daft; always thinking she was ill and turning on the gushing act to show how nice she could be to the village.
Now the vicar, having taken a nervy look at the Vatican City, was well on his way to the Forum. Mrs Jobbin made a good-natured effort to keep him company.
Verity Preston stretched out her long corduroy legs, looked at her boots and wondered why she was there. She was fifty years old but carried about her an air of youth. This was not achieved by manipulation; rather it was as if, inside her middle-aged body, her spirit had neglected to grow old. Until five years ago she had worked in the theatre, on the production side. Then her father, an eminent heart-specialist, had died and left Keys House to her with just enough money to enable her to live in it and write plays, which she did from time to time with tolerable success.
She had been born at Keys, she supposed she would die there, and she had gradually fallen into a semi-detached acceptance of the rhythms of life at Upper Quintern which, in spite of war, bombs, crises and inflations, had not changed all that much since her childhood. The great difference was that, with the exception of Mr Nikolas Markos, a newcomer to the district, the gentry had very much less money nowadays and, again with the exception of Mr Markos, no resident domestic help. Just Mrs Jim, her niece Beryl, and some dozen lesser ladies who were precariously available and all in hot demand. Mrs Foster was cunning in securing their services and was thought to cheat by using bribery. She was known, privately, as the Pirate.
It was recognized on all hands that Mrs Jim was utterly impervious to bribery. Mrs Foster had tried it once and had invoked a reaction that made her go red in the face whenever she thought of it. It was only by pleading the onset of a genuine attack of lumbago that she had induced Mrs Jim to return.
Mrs Foster was a dedicated hypochondriac and nobody would have believed in the lumbago if McBride, the Upper Quintern jobbing gardener, had not confided that he had come across her on the gravelled drive, wearing her best tweeds, hat and gloves and crawling on all fours towards the house. She had been incontinently smitten on her way to the garage.
The vicar saw himself off at the Leonardo da Vinci airport, said his visit had given him much food for thought and ended on a note of ecumenical wistfulness.
Tea was announced and a mass move to the dining-room accomplished.
‘Hullo, Syb,’ said Verity Preston. ‘Can I help?’
‘Darling!’ cried Mrs Foster. ‘Would you? Would you pour? I simply can’t cope. Such arthritis! In the wrists.’
‘Sickening for you.’
‘Honestly. Too much. Not a wink all night and this party hanging over one, and Prue’s off somewhere watching hang-gliding’ (Prunella was Mrs Foster’s daughter), ‘so she’s no use. And to put the final pot on it, ghastly McBride’s given notice. Imagine!’
‘McBride has? Why?’
‘He says he feels ill. If you ask me it’s bloody-mindedness.’
‘Did you have words?’ Verity suggested, rapidly filling up cups for ladies to carry off on trays.
‘Sort of. Over my picking the japonica. This morning.’
‘Is he still here? Now?’
‘Don’t ask me. Probably flounced off. Except that he hasn’t been paid. I wouldn’t put it past him to be sulking in the tool shed.’
‘I must say I hope he won’t extend his embargo to take me in.’
‘Oh, dear me no!’ said Mrs Foster, with a hint of acidity. ‘You’re his adored Miss Preston. You, my dear, can’t do wrong in McBride’s bleary eyes.’
‘I wish I could believe you. Where will you go for honey, Syb? Advertise or what? Or eat humble pie?’
‘Never that! Not on your life! Mrs Black!’ cried Mrs Foster in a voice of mellifluous cordiality. ‘How good of you to come. Where are you sitting? Over there, are you? Good. Who’s died?’ she muttered as Mrs Black moved away. ‘Why were we told to sympathize?’
‘Her husband.’
‘That’s all right then. I wasn’t overdoing it.’
‘Her brother’s arrived to live with her.’
‘He wouldn’t happen to be a gardener, I suppose.’
Verity put down the teapot and stared at her. ‘You won’t believe this,’ she said, ‘but I rather think I heard someone say he is. Mrs Jim, it was. Yes, I’m sure. A gardener.’
‘My dear! I wonder if he’s any good. My dear, what a smack in the eye that would be for McBride. Would it be all right to tackle Mrs Black now, do you think? Just to find out?’
‘Well –’
‘Darling, you know me. I’ll be the soul of tact.’
‘I bet you will,’ said Verity.
She watched Mrs Foster insinuate herself plumply through the crowd. The din was too great for anything she said to be audible, but Verity could guess at the compliments sprinkled upon the vicar, who was a good-looking man, the playful badinage with the village. And all the time, while her pampered little hands dangled from her wrists, Mrs Foster’s pink coiffure tacked this way and that, making towards Mrs Black, who sat in her bereavement upon a chair at the far end of the room.
Verity, greatly entertained, watched the encounter, the gradual response, the ineffable concern, the wide-open china-blue stare, the compassionate shakes of the head and, finally, the withdrawal of both ladies from the dining-room, no doubt into Syb’s boudoir. Now, thought Verity, she’ll put in the hard tackle.
Abruptly, she was aware of herself being under observation.
Mrs Jim Jobbin was looking at her and with such a lively expression on her face that Verity felt inclined to wink. It struck her that of all the company present – county, gentry, trade and village, operating within their age-old class structure – it was for Mrs Jim that she felt the most genuine respect.
Verity poured herself a cup of tea and began, because it was expected of her, to circulate. She was a shy woman but her work in the theatre had helped her to deal with this disadvantage. Moreover, she took a vivid interest in her fellow creatures.
‘Miss Preston,’ Mr Nikolas Markos had said, the only time they had met, ‘I believe you look upon us all as raw material,’ and his black