Janet said, You must stay for a while.
Only if you let me pay something. And if you let me help you around the house.
You havent got any money.
Ive got one or two little bits of jewellery.
Youre not to sell them.
Then Ill have to go.
We glared at each other. She began to cry. So did I. While we finished laying the table we shared a brief companionable weep. By the time wed dried our eyes, hugged each other and cleared the draining board we both knew that I would stay.
11
The first Saturday of my visit was cold but sunny. David took Janet and me up the west tower of the Cathedral. We climbed endless spiral staircases and edged along narrow galleries thick with stone dust. At last he pushed open a tiny door and we crawled out on to an unbearably bright platform of lead.
There was no wind. I swear it was colder and sunnier up there than it had been on the ground. I leaned against one of the walls, which were battlemented like a castles. I was gasping for breath because of too many stairs and too many cigarettes.
I looked out. The tower went down like a lift in a horror film. The ground rushed away. I held on to the parapet, the roughness of the stone scouring my hands as I squeezed it more and more tightly.
Below me was the great encrusted hull of the Cathedral and the tiled and slated roofs of Rosington. Around them as far as the eye could see were the grey winter Fens. They stretched towards the invisible point where they became one with the grey winter sky.
For an instant I was more terrified than I had ever been in my life. I was adrift between the sky and the earth. All my significance had been stolen from me.
Then Janet put her hand on my arm and said, Look, theres Canon Osbaston coming out of the Theological College. She lowered her voice. If tortoises waddled theyd look just like him.
In those days Rosington was a small town perhaps eight or nine thousand people. Technically it was a city because it had a cathedral, so its sense of importance was out of proportion to its size. It was also an island set in the black sea of the Fens, a place apart, a place of refuge. It was certainly a place of refuge for me. Even if he wanted to, Henry would hardly follow me to the town where he had made such a fool of himself.
David told me that in the Middle Ages the Isle of Rosington was largely surrounded by water. It was a liberty, almost a County Palatine, in which the abbots who preceded the bishops wielded much of the authority usually reserved for the king. Here the Saxons made one of their last stands against the invading armies of the Normans.
The city still felt a place under siege. And the Cathedral Close, a city within a city, was doubly under siege because the town around it nibbled away at its rights and privileges. The Close was an ecclesiastical domain, older than the secular one surrounding it, and conducted according to different laws. Its gates were locked at night by an assistant verger named Gotobed who lived beside the Porta with his mother and her cats.
Rosington wasnt like Bradford or Hillgard House or Durban or any of the other places Id lived in. The past was more obvious here. If you glanced up at the ceiling while you were sitting in Janets kitchen you saw the clumsy barrel of a Norman vault. The Cathedral clock rang the hours and the quarters. The Close and its inhabitants were governed by the rhythm of the daily services, just as they had been for more than a thousand years. I had never lived among religious people before and this was unsettling too. It was as though I were the one person capable of seeing colours, as if everyone else lived in a monochrome world. Or possibly it was the other way round. Either way I was in a minority of one.
When we were at school Janet and I used to laugh at those who were religious. Now I knew she went to church regularly, though it was not something we had talked about in our letters.
On my first Sunday morning in Rosington I stayed at home. Janet and Rosie were going to matins at ten thirty. The pair of them looked so sweet dressed up for God in their Sunday finery.
If you dont mind I wont come to church, I said to David at breakfast. Id already made this dear to Janet but I wanted to say it to him as well. I didnt want there to be any misunderstandings.
He smiled. Its entirely up to you.
Im sorry, but Im not particularly godly. Id rather do the vegetables.
Thats very kind of you. But are you sure it isnt too much trouble?
I dont know how, but he made me feel like the prodigal daughter a long way from home.
I suppose you have to go to church, I said to Janet as we were washing up after lunch. Part of your wifely duties.
She nodded but added, I like it too. No one makes any demands on you in church. You can just be quiet for once.
I was stupid enough to ignore what she was really saying. Yes, but do you believe in God?
I didnt want Janet to believe in God. It was as if by doing so she would believe a little less in me.
I dont know. She bent over the sink and began to scour the roasting tin. Anyway, it doesnt really matter what I believe, does it?
During my first fortnight in Rosington the five of us settled into a routine. Given how different we were, you would have expected more friction than there was. But David was out most of the time either at the Theological College or in the Cathedral. Rosie was at school during the week she was in her second term at St Tumwulfs Infant School on the edge of the town. Old Mr Treevor I thought of him as old, though he was younger than I am now spent much time in his bedroom, either huddled over a small electric fire or in bed As far as I could see his chief interests were food, the contents of The Times and the evacuation of his bowels.
The house itself made co-existence easier. The Dark Hostelry was not so much large as complicated. Most of the rooms were small and there were a great many of them. David said the building had been in continuous occupation for seven or eight hundred years. Each generation seemed to have added its own eccentricity. It was a place of many staircases, some of which led nowhere in particular, small, crooked rooms with sloping floors and thick walls. The kitchen was in a semi-basement, and as you washed up you could watch the legs of the passers-by in the High Street, which followed the northern boundary of the Cathedral Close.
Although the Dark Hostelry was good for keeping people apart, it was not an easy house to run. A charwoman came in three mornings a week to do the rough. Otherwise Janet had to do the work herself. And there was a lot of it this was 1958, and the nearest thing Janet had to a labour-saving device was a twin-tub washing machine with a hand mangle attached. The last time the place had had a serious overhaul was at the turn of the century when the occupants could probably have afforded two or three servants.
In some ways I think Janet would have preferred to be a paid servant. She loathed the work but at least she would have been getting a wage for it. A simple commercial transaction has a beginning and end. It implies that both parties to it have freedom of choice.
Janet had the worst of both worlds. There was a dark irony in the fact that as well as running that ridiculous old house she also had to pretend to be its mistress, not its slave. Janet was expected to be a lady. When the Byfields came to Rosington she had visiting cards engraved. Ive still got one of them yellowing pasteboard, dog-eared at the corners, the typeface small and discreet.
Mrs David Byfield
The Dark Hostelry
The Close
Rosington
Telephone: Rosington 2114
When the Byfields arrived at the Dark Hostelry, the ladies of the Close and the ladies of the town called and left their cards. Janet called on them and left hers. It was a secular equivalent to what David was doing every day in that echoing stone mountain in the middle of the Close. A ritualistic procedure which might once have had a purpose.
I doubt if David knew what a burden hed placed on her shoulders. Not then, at any rate. Its not that he wasnt a sensitive man. But his sensitivity was like a torch beam. It had to be directed at you before it became effective. But it wasnt just a question of him being sensitive or not being sensitive. Everyone thought differently. This was more than forty years ago, remember, and in the Cathedral Close of Rosington.
Nowadays I think David and Janet were both in prison. But neither of them could see the bars.
12
It became increasingly obvious that something would have to be done about Mr Treevor.
He and I, a pair of emotional vampires, arrived on the same February afternoon and more than three weeks later we were still at the Dark Hostelry. I flattered myself there was a difference, that at least I did some of the housework and cooking. I sold my engagement ring, too. Id never liked the beastly thing. It turned out to be worth much less than Henry had led me to expect, which shouldnt have surprised me.
Mr Treevor did less and less. He took it for granted that we were there to supply his needs regular meals, clean clothes, bed-making, warm rooms and a daily copy of The Times, which for some reason he liked to have ironed before he would open it.
He never used to be like that, Janet said to me on Thursday morning as we were snatching a cup of coffee. He hardly ever read a paper, and as for this ironing business, Ive no idea where that came from.
Isnt it the sort of thing they used to do in the homes of the aristocracy?
He cant have picked it up there.
Perhaps he saw it in a film.
Its a bit of a nuisance, actually.
A bit of a nuisance? Its a bloody imposition. I think you should go on stroke.
I think his memorys improving. Thats something, isnt it?
I wondered whether it would ever improve to the point where he would be able to remember who I was from one day to the next.
He told me all about how he won a prize at school the other day, Janet went on, sounding as proud as she did when describing one of Rosies triumphs at St Tumwulfs. For Greek verses. He could even remember the name of the boy he beat.
Hes getting old, I said, responding to her anxiety, not what shed said. Thats all. Itll happen to us one day.
Janet bit her lip. Yesterday he asked me when Mummy was coming. He seems to think shed gone away for the weekend or something.
Whens he going home?
On Saturday, Janet said brightly. Davids offered to drive him back.
Early on Friday morning all of us realized that this would have to be postponed. Even on the top floor I heard the shouting. By the time I got downstairs everyone else was in the kitchen. Even Rosie was huddled in the corner between the wall and the dresser, crouching to make herself as small as possible.
Mr Treevor was standing beside the table. He was in his pyjamas, but without his teeth, his slippers and his dressing gown. He was sobbing. Janet was patting his right arm with a tea towel. David, also in pyjamas, was frowning at them both. There was a puddle of water on the table, and the front of Janets nightdress was soaked. The room smelled of singed hair and burning cloth.
Afterwards we reconstructed what had happened. Mr Treevor had woken early and with a rare burst of initiative decided to make himself some tea. He went downstairs, lit the gas and put the kettle on the ring. It was unfortunate that he forgot you had to put water in the kettle as well. After a while, the kettle started to make uncharacteristically agitated noises so he lifted it off the ring. At this point he forgot two other things to turn off the gas, and to cover the metal handle of the kettle with a cloth. The first scream must have been caused when the metal of the handle burnt into his fingers and the palm of his hand.
David stared at me. We must have a first-aid box somewhere, mustnt we?
Phone the doctor, I said to him. Quickly.
But surely its not a
Quickly. Mr Treevors had a bad shock.
He blinked, nodded and left the room.
I pulled a chair towards the sink, and with Janets help drew Mr Treevor down on to it. I turned on the tap and ran cold water over his hand and arm.
Janet, why dont you take Rosie back to bed and fetch a blanket? Have you got any lint?
Yes, its
Youd better bring that as well. And then what about some tea?
Theres a side of me that derives huge pleasure from telling people what to do. No one seemed to mind. Gradually, Mr Treevors sobs subsided to whimpers and then to silence. By the time the doctor arrived, all four adults were huddled round the kitchen boiler drinking very sweet tea.
The doctor was Flaxman. I recognized his name from Janets letters he had been helpful when she was pregnant. Later I came to know him quite well. He had a long, freckled face, flaking skin and red hair. He examined Mr Treevor, told us to put him to bed and said he would call later in the day.
In the afternoon, Flaxman returned. He spent twenty minutes alone with Mr Treevor and then came down and talked to us in the sitting room. David was still at the Theological College.
How is he? Janet asked.
Well, the burns arent a problem. Hell get over those. It could have been worse if you hadnt acted promptly.
Weve Mrs Appleyard to thank for that. Janet smiled at me.
Flaxman sat down. He didnt look at me. He began to write a prescription.
Would you like a cup of tea? Or some sherry? Its not too early for sherry, is it?
No, thanks. He tore off the prescription and handed it to Janet. These will help Mr Treevor sleep, Mrs Byfield. Give him one at bedtime. If he complains of pain, give him a couple of aspirin. Tell me, where does he live?
He has a flat in Cambridge.
Does he live alone?
Theres a landlady downstairs. She cooks for him.
How long will he be staying with you?
Janet wriggled slightly in her chair. I dont really know. My husband was going to take him back tomorrow but in the circumstances, I suppose
Id advise you to keep him here a little longer. Id like to see him again over the next few days. I think his condition needs assessment. Perhaps youd let me have the address of his GP.
He wasnt properly awake this morning, Janet said, clutching at straws. Hes not been sleeping well.
The sleeping tablets will help that. But the point is, he needs looking after. I dont mean he needs to be hospitalized, but he needs other people around to keep an eye on him.
Is is this going to get worse?
It may well do. Thats one reason why we need to keep an eye on him, Mrs Byfieldto see if he is getting worse.