Compulsory Games Page 5

  The three figures were now differently related to one another: two very near, the third considerably more distant. Colin strained his eyes to identify this further figure. In the end there was no need for strain. The far figure was himself, smiling broadly. This was what would survive of him for ever: if “survive” was at all the word; if there was a word.

  It was hard to say how much time passed, but into the buzz was now entering a cold, ear-destroying, but still quasi-human, shriek.

  Then the pilotless red Moth, its proper size as uncertain as ever, hurtled across and down, absorbing and dissolving and slaying; grotesquely beyond all question that Colin could formulate or answer that he could accept.

  New, smiling Colin would have no need for either; and, what is more, no use.

  HAND IN GLOVE

  . . . that subtle gauzy haze which one only finds in Essex.

  —SIR HENRY CHANNON

  WHEN MILLICENT finally broke it off with Nigel and felt that the last tiny bit of meaning had ebbed from her life (apart, of course, from her job), it was natural that Winifred should suggest a picnic, combined with a visit, “not too serious,” as Winifred put it, to a Great House. Millicent realised that there was no alternative to clutching at the idea, and vouchsafed quite effectively the expected blend of pallor and gratitude. She was likely to see much more of Winifred in the future; provided always that Winifred did not somehow choose this precise moment to dart off in some new direction.

  Everyone knew about Millicent and Nigel and took it for granted, so that now she was peacefully allotted an odd day or two off, despite the importance of what she did. After all, she had been linked with Nigel, in one way or another, for a long time; and the deceptively small gradations between the different ways were the business only of the two parties. Winifred, on the other hand, had quite a struggle to escape, but she persisted because she realised how much it must matter to Millicent. There are too many people about to make it sensible to assess most kinds of employment objectively. In one important respect, Winifred’s life was simpler than Millicent’s: “I have never been in love,” she would say, “I really don’t understand about it.” Indeed, the matter arose but rarely, and less often now than ten or twelve years ago.

  “What about Baddeley End?” suggested Winifred, attempting a black joke, inducing the ghost of a smile. Winifred had seldom supposed that the Nigel business would end other than as it had.

  “Perfect,” said Millicent, entering into the spirit, extending phantom hands in gratitude.

  “I’ll look on the map for a picnic spot,” said Winifred. Winifred had found picnic spots for them in the Cévennes, the Apennines, the Dolomites, the Sierra de Guadarrama, even the Carpathians. Incidentally, it was exactly the kind of thing at which Nigel was rather hopeless. Encountering Nigel, one seldom forgot the bull and the gate.

  “We’d better use my car,” continued Winifred. “Then you’ll only have to do what you want to do.”

  •

  And at first, upon the face of it, things had all gone charmingly as always. Millicent could be in no doubt of that. It is difficult at these times to know which to prefer: friends who understand (up to a point), or those who do not understand at all, and thus offer their own kind of momentary escape.

  Winifred brought the car to a stand at the end of a long lane, perhaps even bridle-path, imperfectly surfaced, at least for modern traffic, even though they were no further from their respective flats than somewhere in Essex. She had been carrying a great part of their route in her head. Now she was envisaging the picnic site.

  “It’s a rather pretty spot,” she said with confidence. “There’s a right of way, or at least a footpath, through the churchyard and down to the river.”

  “What river is it?” enquired Millicent idly.

  “It’s only a stream. Well, perhaps a little more than that. It’s called the Waste.”

  “Is it really?”

  “Yes, it is. Can you please hand me out the rucksack?”

  In hours of freedom, Winifred always packed things into a ruck-sack, where earlier generations would have prepared a luncheon basket or a cabin trunk.

  “I’m sorry I’ve made no contribution,” said Millicent, not for the first time.

  “Don’t be foolish,” said Winifred.

  “At least let me carry something?”

  “All right, the half-bottle and the glasses. I couldn’t get them in.”

  “How sweet of you,” said Millicent. Potation was normally eschewed in the middle of the day.

  “I imagine we go through the kissing gate.”

  From even that accepted locution Millicent slightly shrank.

  The iron kissing gate stood beside the wooden lych-gate, opened only on specific occasions. With the ancient church on their right, little, low, and lichened, they descended the track between the graves. The path had at one time been paved with bricks, but many of the bricks were now missing, and weeds grew between the others.

  “It’s very slippery,” said Millicent. “I shouldn’t like to have to hurry back up.” It was appropriate that she should make a remark of some kind, should show that she was still alive.

  “It can’t really be slippery. It hasn’t rained for weeks.”

  Millicent had to admit the truth of that.

  “Perhaps it would be better if I were to go first?” continued Winifred. “Then you could take your time with the glasses. Sorry they’re so fragile.”

  “You know where we’re going,” responded Millicent, falling into second place.

  “We’ll look inside the church before we leave.”

  Though ivy had begun to entangle the mossy little church like a stealthily encroaching octopus, Millicent had to admit that the considerable number of apparently new graves suggested the continuing usefulness of the building. On the other hand, the plastered rectory or vicarage to their left, behind a dangerous-looking hedge, was stained and grimed, and with no visible open window on this almost ideal day.

  Whatever Winifred might say, the churchyard seemed very moist. But then much of Essex is heavy clay. Everyone in the world knows that.

  At the far end was another kissing gate, very creaky and arbitrary, and, beyond, a big, green, sloping field. There were cows drawn together in the far, upper corner: “a mixed lot of animals,” as Millicent’s step-father would have put it in the old days—the very old days they seemed at that moment.

  Down the emerald field ran no visible track, but Winifred, with the dotted map in the forefront of her mind, pursued a steady course. Millicent knew from experience that at the bottom of Winifred’s rucksack was a spacious groundsheet. It seemed just as well.

  Winifred led the way through an almost non-existent gate to the left, and along a curious muddy passage between rank hedges down to the brink of the river.

  Here there were small islands of banked mud with tall plants growing on them that looked almost tropical, and, to the right, a crumbling stone bridge, with an ornament of some kind upon the central panel. Rich, heavy foliage shaded the scene, but early dragonflies glinted across vague streaks of sunlight.

  “The right of way goes over the bridge,” remarked Winifred, “but we might do better on this side.”

  Sedgy and umbrous, the picnic spot was romantic in the extreme; most unlikely of discovery even at so short a distance from the human hive, from their own north side of the Park. After the repast, one might well seek the brittle bones of once-loitering knights; or one might aforetime have done that, when one had the energy and the faith. Besides, Millicent had noticed that the bridge was obstructed from end to end by rusty barbed wire, with long spikes, mostly bent.

  In repose on the groundsheet, they were a handsome pair: trim; effective; still, despite everything, expectant. They wore sweaters in plain colours, and stained, familiar trousers. In the symphony of Millicent’s abundant hair were themes of pale grey. Winifred’s stout tow was at all times sturdily neutral. A poet lingering upon the bridge might have felt
sad that life had offered them no more. Few people can pick out, merely from the lines on a map, so ideal a region for a friend’s grief. Few people can look so sensuous in sadness as Millicent, away from the office, momentarily oblivious to its ambiguous, paranoid satisfactions.

  It had indeed been resourceful of Winifred to buy and bring the half-bottle, but Millicent found that the noontide wine made no difference. How could it? How could anything? Almost anything?

  But then—

  “Winifred! Where have all these mushrooms come from?”

  “I expect they were there when we arrived.”

  “I’m quite certain they were not.”

  “Of course they were,” said Winifred. “Mushrooms grow fast but not that fast.”

  “They were not. I shouldn’t have sat down if they had been. I don’t like sitting among a lot of giant mushrooms.”

  “They’re quite the normal size,” said Winifred, smiling and drawing up her legs. “Would you like to go?”

  “Well, we have finished the picnic,” said Millicent. “Thanks very much, Winifred, it was lovely.”

  They rose: two exiled dryads, the poet on the bridge might have said. On their side of the shallow, marshy, wandering river were mushrooms as far as the eye could see, downstream and up; though it was true that in neither direction could the eye see very far along the bank, being impeded one way by the bridge and the other by the near-jungle.

  “It’s the damp,” said Millicent. “Everything is so terribly damp.”

  “If it is,” said Winifred, “it must be always like this, because there’s been very little rain. I said that before.”

  Millicent felt ashamed of herself, as happened the whole time now. “It was very clever of you to find such a perfect place,” she said immediately. “But you always do. Everything was absolutely for the best until the mushrooms came.”

  “I’m not really sure that they are mushrooms,” said Winifred.

  “Perhaps merely fungi.”

  “Let’s not put it to the test,” said Millicent. “Let’s go. Oh, I’m so sorry. You haven’t finished repacking.”

  •

  Duly, the ascent was far more laborious. “Tacky” was the word that Millicent’s stepfather would have applied to the going.

  “Why do all the cows stay clustered in one corner?” asked Millicent. “They haven’t moved one leg since we arrived.”

  “It’s to do with the flies,” said Winifred knowledgeably.

  “They’re not waving their tails about. They’re not tossing their heads. They’re not lowing. In fact, they might be stuffed or modelled.”

  “I expect they’re chewing the cud, Millicent.”

  “I don’t think they are.” Millicent of course really knew more of country matters than Winifred.

  “I’m not sure they’re there at all,” said Millicent.

  “Oh, hang on, Millicent,” said Winifred, without, however, ceasing to plod, and without even looking back at Millicent over her shoulder, let alone at the distant cows.

  Millicent knew that people were being kind to her, and that it was an unsuitable moment for her to make even the smallest fuss, except perhaps a fun-fuss, flattering to the other party.

  They reached the wilful kissing gate at the bottom of the churchyard. It made its noise as soon as it was even touched, and clanged back spitefully at Millicent when Winifred had passed safely through it.

  Millicent had not remembered the gate’s behaviour on their outward trip. Probably one tackled things differently according to whether one was descending or ascending.

  But—

  “Winifred, look!” Millicent, so carefully self-contained the entire day, had all but screamed.

  “None of that was there just now.”

  She could not raise her arm to point. Ahead of them, to the left of the ascending, craggy path through the churchyard, was a pile of wreaths and sprays, harps wrought from lilies, red roses twisted into hearts, irises concocted into archangel trumpets. Commerce and the commemorative instinct could hardly collaborate further.

  “You didn’t notice it,” replied Winifred upon the instant. She even added, as at another time that day she certainly would not have done, “Your mind was on other things.” She then looked over her shoulder at Millicent and smiled.

  “They weren’t there,” said Millicent, more sure of her facts than of herself. “There’s been a funeral while we were by the river.”

  “I think we’d have heard something.” replied Winifred, still smiling. “Besides; you don’t bury people in the lunch hour.”

  “Well, something’s happened.”

  “Last time you just didn’t notice,” replied Winifred, turning away, and looking ahead of her at the weedy path. “That’s all.”

  The challenge was too much for Millicent’s resolutions of mousiness. “Well, did you?” she enquired.

  But Winifred had prepared herself. “I’m not sure whether I did or didn’t, Millicent. Does it matter?”

  Winifred took several steps forward and then asked, “Would you rather give the church a miss?”

  “Not at all,” replied Millicent. “Inside there might be an explanation of some kind.”

  Millicent was glad she was in the rear, because at first she had difficulty in passing the banked-up tributes. They all looked so terribly new. The oblong mound beneath them was concealed, but one could scarcely doubt that it was there. At first, the flowers seemed to smell as if they were unforced and freshly picked; not like proper funerary flowers at all, which either smell not, or smell merely of accepted mortality. But then, on second thoughts, or at a second intake of Millicent’s breath, the smell was not exactly as of garden, or even of hedgerow flowers either. After a few seconds, the smell seemed as unaccountable as the sudden apparition of the flowers themselves. Certainly it was not in the least a smell that Millicent would have expected, or could ever much care for.

  She noticed that Winifred was stumping along, still looking at the battered bricks beneath her feet.

  Millicent hesitated. “Perhaps we ought to inspect some of the cards?” she suggested.

  That must have been a mischievous idea, because this time Winifred just walked on in silence. And, as a matter of fact, Millicent had to admit to herself that she could in any case see no cards attached to the flowers, and whatever else might be attached to them.

  Winifred walked silently ahead of Millicent right up to the church porch. As she entered it, a sudden bird flopped out just above her head and straight into Millicent’s face.

  “That’s an owl,” said Millicent. “We’ve woken him up.”

  She almost expected Winifred to say that for owls it was the wrong time of day, or the wrong weather, or the close season; but Winifred was, in fact, simply staring at the wooden church door.

  “Won’t it open?” enquired Millicent.

  “I don’t really know. I can see no handle.”

  The awakened owl had begun to hoot mournfully, which Millicent fancied really was a little odd of it in the early afternoon.

  Millicent in turn stared at the door.

  “There’s nothing at all.”

  “Not even a keyhole that we can look through,” said Winifred.

  “I suppose the church has simply been closed and boarded up.”

  “I’m not sure,” said Winifred. “It looks like the original door to me. Old as old, wouldn’t you say? Built like that. With no proper admittance offered.”

  Gazing at the door, Millicent could certainly see what Winifred meant. There were no church notices either, no local address of the Samaritans, no lists of ladies to do things.

  “Let’s see if we can peep in through a window,” proposed Winifred.

  “I shouldn’t think we could. It’s usually pretty difficult.”

  “That’s because there are usually lookers-on to cramp one’s style. We may find it easier here.”

  When they emerged from the porch, Millicent surmised that there were now two owls ho
oting, two at least. However, the once-bright day was losing its lustre, becoming middle-aged and overcast.

  “God, it’s muggy,” said Millicent.

  “I expect there’s rain on the way. You know we could do with it.”

  “Yes, but not here, not now.”

  Winifred was squeezing the tips of her shoes and her feet into places where the mortar had fallen out of the church wall, and sometimes even whole flints. She was adhering to ledges and small projections. She was forcing herself upwards in the attempt to look first through one window, and then, upon failing and falling, through another. “I simply can’t imagine what it can look like inside,” she said.

  They always did things thoroughly and properly, whatever the things were, but it was not a day in her life when Millicent felt like any kind of emulation. Moreover, she did not see how she could even give assistance to Winifred. They were no longer two school-girls, one able to hoist up the other as easily as Santa Claus’s sack.

  Unavailingly, Winifred had essayed two windows on the south side of the nave and one on the south side of the chancel; which three offered clear glass, however smudgy. In the two remaining windows on that side of the church, the glass was painted, and so it was with the east window. Winifred went round to the north side, with Millicent following. Here the sun did not fall, and it seemed to Millicent that the moping owls had eased off. En route the churchyard grasses had been rank and razory.

  But here the masonry was further gone in decomposition and Winifred could jump up quite readily at the first attempt.

  For a surprisingly long time, or so it seemed, Winifred stared in through the easternmost window on the north side of the nave, but speaking no word. Here many of the small panes were missing. Indeed, one pane fell into the church from somewhere with a small, sharp clatter even while Winifred was still gazing and Millicent still standing. The whole structure was in a state of moulder.