Minnie Larcombe recognised me by the back of my head. I was standing outside a shop comparing the prices of two lamps, and she came up behind me and said that if I was still taking half an hour to choose between things I must be Eleanor Marsh.
No one had called me that for twenty-five years.
I turned so quickly that my shoulder struck the glass. Minnie caught my elbow, began apologising to the lamp behind it, and I knew her before I had properly looked at her face.
“You haven’t changed,” I said.
“I have changed in every particular. Don’t be lazy.”
She had put on weight and cut her hair shorter than I would have dared. A red feather stood at the side of her hat, small and defiant. Her face was fuller, her mouth the same quick shape it had when we went to school together in Reading. I took her by both hands.
“What are you doing here?”
“Buying stockings. Looking at women who may turn out to be old friends. What are you doing?”
“Buying a lamp.”
“Which one?”
“I haven’t decided.”
“Then have tea with me. It won’t decide while you’re standing here.”
I had meant to be home before four. Mrs Clegg was coming the following morning, the fish had been ordered, and Nell was at Mr Abel’s until five. I found I could not produce a single person who required me at that instant.
We went to a tea shop where Minnie had already established a claim to the table by the window. The girl who served us smiled when she saw her and asked whether she wanted the usual. It had not occurred to me that an old friend might have become a familiar presence in a London room without my knowing it.
Her husband was alive, well and presently visiting his mother in Bristol, where she declined to accompany him because his mother believed every woman needed an occupation immediately after tea. They had two grown sons. One was engaged, the other wrote seldom and visited when he required a clean shirt. Minnie described these matters with affection and very little reverence.
I told her about Thomas. Her face changed. She remembered him bringing me home from a church outing and standing beside the gate with his hat in his hands while I tried to make a conversation last until someone lit the lamp in the hall.
“You liked him very much,” she said.
“I did.”
“I’m sorry.”
I had been widowed long enough for most people to begin with at least, as though the years gave them permission to reduce what happened. Minnie said no more until I chose to.
I told her about Nell, the house and the talks. She listened to the last with the most attention, asking which books before asking the dates.
“Mrs Hesketh mentioned Persuasion.”
“Oh, I should like to argue with her about that.”
“You don’t like it?”
“Most of it. There is a mother in it whom Miss Austen treats disgracefully.”
“Anne’s mother is dead.”
“Another mother. Mrs Musgrove. Don’t look so alarmed; I’m not going to tell you who gets married. I only mean I should like to know why being a large woman makes you less entitled to miss your child.”
She spoke lightly, but her thumb was pressing the edge of the saucer. I remembered her two sons, the one who wrote seldom and came home with shirts. I had just been enjoying the ruthless pleasure of Sir Walter’s absurdity; I was not ready for an objection to the woman who had given it to me.
“Perhaps she means something else.”
“Perhaps. Find the place. Then you can explain it to me, if you wish.”
“Bessie has my copy.”
“Then Bessie may explain it. I don’t insist on a particular opponent.”
I laughed. Minnie picked up her spoon and inspected the last bit of cream in the dish. “I shouldn’t like a whole evening of agreeing how excellent the book is. We could do that without putting on our hats.”
When I explained about the subscribers she asked whether she could have two places, one for her and one she would offer to someone who might actually come.
“Don’t put that second one down as certain,” I said.
“I meant to pay for it.”
She opened her purse, counted the money and put it beside the dish.
“The series begins in June,” I said. “Six evenings, with a break for Coronation week.”
“What will you do while the woman speaks?”
“Listen.”
“And before?”
“Welcome people. Introduce her.”
Minnie sat back. “Will you indeed.”
“It won’t be much. Her name and a few words.”
“I should like to see it.”
Her smile was warm enough to make me feel both proud and exposed. She knew the girl who had taken half an hour over a purchase, who had once allowed Ada to accept an invitation on her behalf because she could not bring herself to say yes while anyone was looking. She did not know the woman who could send a man back to his coal yard or settle a dispute between lodgers before breakfast. I wanted to introduce them without having one apologise for the other.
We talked until the girl began clearing tables round us. Outside, Minnie bought the stockings she had come for and made me try on a hat with a red feather smaller than hers. I looked in the glass and immediately began to take it off.
“Too young.”
“For the feather?”
“For me.”
“It is a feather, Eleanor, not a proposal.”
The shop assistant pretended to examine a drawer. I began laughing and could not stop. Minnie held the hat out of my reach until I had agreed to look properly.
I did not buy it. I bought a narrow red ribbon to put on the old straw hat at home, and the modesty of the purchase did not spoil the pleasure of having chosen it. Minnie walked me as far as the corner and asked me to write her full address in my book.
“Don’t wait for some large occasion. I’ve missed enough of your small ones.”
I promised. She went away with her stockings, leaving me to choose the lamp alone.
The cheaper one was perfectly serviceable. The dearer threw a better light and had a shade which made the brass look warmer than it was. I stood before the window with Minnie’s money in my purse and imagined the second lamp on the table beside Joan Hesketh’s books.
At home Nell took out the subscription book. We had eleven paid places, including Minnie’s two, and a handful of names beneath perhaps. Ruth’s single evenings were entered separately. I had wanted the list to be longer before I told her about the lamp.
“Did you order it?”
“Not yet.”
“Then don’t until we know.”
“We shall need a better light.”
“We can borrow one for the first night.”
She was right. I disliked the borrowed lamp before it had been offered to me.
Upstairs I unwrapped the red ribbon. There was enough to go round the hat once and make a small bow. I put it against the old straw, held it at different angles and imagined wearing it when I introduced the speaker. Then I thought how foolish it was to plan the hat before the evening could be paid for.
I left it on the bed and went downstairs.
Mrs Keene sat in the dining room sewing black braid onto a sleeve. I had paid her bill for a little work Nell could not finish, and she was in the good humour which came over her after a fair transaction.
“You’re late,” she said.
“I met an old friend.”
“Good.”
“We had tea.”
She looked up. “I had begun to suppose the friend might be alive.”
I sat opposite her. She told me about a woman she knew who had gone to a seaside boarding house for a fortnight and liked it so much that she stayed for six weeks, writing home that she was recovering from a cough she had never possessed. It was not a story of great rebellion. The woman’s husband had sent more money and asked her to bring back a particular kind of rock for a nephew. Still, I wanted to know what the woman did with the long afternoons.
“Walked,” Mrs Keene said. “Sat down. Got up if she wished to. I dare say she was bored at times.”
“Did she go again?”
“Every year.”
I looked at the black braid, the way it made the plain sleeve deliberate. “Would you put a ribbon on a hat for me?”
“Gladly. Or show you how.”
I fetched it. She laid it against the straw, made a tuck I would not have thought of, and handed it back for me to pin. We worked without speaking for a little while. From upstairs came the sound of Nell and Grace moving something in the front room. They stopped, laughed and began again.
When the hat was finished I tried it in the little glass above the sideboard. Mrs Keene turned her head.
“That suits you.”
“It isn’t too much?”
“It is precisely enough.”
I wore it to market the following morning. No one turned to look. The fishmonger asked about the usual order, the boy at the greengrocer’s gave me the wrong change, and a woman with a pram refused to make room on the pavement. I went home with the hat on my head and the same work waiting for me, pleased beyond reason that the street had survived the alteration.
Nell saw me from the kitchen door.
“Oh, Mother.”
“What?”
“Nothing. It’s lovely.”
She came forward to feel the ribbon, then kissed my cheek. I took the basket from her hand and told her about Minnie.