They had knocked twice on the front door before it swung open and they were faced by a short, elderly woman leaning heavily on a walking stick. It was not an elegant cane with a silver tip, but a plain, stout wooden affair, such as a man would use to bear his weight. Her face was set in irritation, and her frizzy white hair was pinned up in a style twenty years out of fashion. Her black skirts brushed the floor and looked as if she had inherited them from someone at least three inches taller.
“If yer lookin’ for the Taylors, they moved six months back, an’ Oi dunno where to,” she said abruptly. “An’ if it’s anyone else, ask Porky Andrews at the shop. He knows everythin’ an’ll likely tell you, whether you care or not.” She ignored Judith and looked Joseph up and down curiously.
“Mrs. Channery?” he asked. His days as a parish priest came back to his mind with cutting clarity. How often he had called on resentful people who were raw-tongued from pride, guilt, or the need to guard some pain they could neither accommodate nor share. “I’m Joseph Reavley, and this is my sister Judith. I believe you were a great friend of our mother’s.” He did not make it a question.
“Oh!” She was taken by surprise. The tart remark she had been going to make died on her lips. Something inside her softened. “Yes . . . well . . . well Oi suppose Oi were. Terrible thin’. Oi’m rale sorry. We’ll all miss her. Not much point in tellin’ you my sympathies. Won’t do no good.”
“I’d be glad to accept a cup of tea.” Joseph was not going to be put off.
“Then you’d better come on in,” Mrs. Channery responded. “Oi don’t serve on the doorstep.” And she turned around and led the way into a remarkably pleasant sitting room, beyond which lay a small, overcrowded garden backing onto the churchyard. He could clearly see a pale carved angel above the hedge, neatly outlined against the dark mass of yew trees.
Mrs. Channery followed his glance. “Humph!” she snorted. “On good days Oi think he’s watching over me . . . most times Oi say as he’s just snoopin’!” She pointed to the couch and another chair. “If you want tea, Oi et to put the kettle on, so you’d best sit down whoile Oi do. Oi’ve got biscuits. Oi’m not cuttin’ cake at this toime in the mornin’.”
Judith swallowed her temper with an effort that was visible, at least to Joseph. “Thank you,” she said meekly. “May I help you carry anything?”
“Great heavens, choild!” Mrs. Channery exclaimed. “What d’you think Oi’m bringin’? It’s only elevenses.”
Anger flushed up Judith’s face, but she bit back her response.
Mrs. Channery swiveled on her heel and disappeared into the kitchen.
Judith looked at Joseph. “Mother deserves to be canonized for putting up with her!” she said in a savage whisper.
“I can see why Father loathed her,” he agreed. “I wonder why he came.”
“With a sword, in case it was necessary, I should think!” Judith retorted. “Or a packet of rat poison!”
Joseph’s mind worried at the question. Why had John Reavley come here? Judith could quite easily have driven Alys, and Alys would consider it a useful lesson for her in charitable duty. John tended to avoid unpleasant people, and his tolerance of rudeness was low. He admired his wife’s patience, but he had no intention of emulating it.
Mrs. Channery returned, staggering a little under the weight of a large and very well set tea tray. She had kept her word that there was no cake, but there were three different kinds of biscuits, and homemade raisin scones with plenty of butter.
Joseph leaped to his feet to help her, taking the tray before she dropped it, and setting it down on the small table next to a floral jug filled with sweet williams. The ritual of pouring, accepting, passing around the food and making appropriate remarks was all observed to the letter. It was several minutes before Joseph could broach the subject for which they had come. He had given it some thought, but now it seemed foolish. The only thing to be gained by this visit was the time spent with Judith. On the way over they had spoken of odd, unimportant things, but she had seemed to be easier, and once or twice she had actually laughed.
“You have a lovely garden,” Joseph remarked.
“It’s all over tossled,” Mrs. Channery retorted. “Oi can’t be frabbed doin’ the work, an’ I can’t be payin’ that daft man what does Mrs. Copthorne’s. She pays him twice what he’s worth, the more fool her! An’ it’s still full o’ meece! I seen ’em!”
Joseph could sense Judith biting her tongue. “Perhaps that’s why I like it,” he replied, refusing to be put off.
“Makes yours look good, do it?” Mrs. Channery demanded.
“Yes, it does,” he agreed, smiling at her. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Judith’s expression of disgust. He noticed an enormous borage plant overtaking its neighbors. “And you have quite a few herbs.”
“Gardener, are you?” Mrs. Channery said drily. “Thought you was an airy-fairy sort o’ man up at the university.”
“One can be both,” he pointed out. “My father was, but I expect you know that.”
“No idea,” she responded. “Scarce saw him. Long enough to be civil, an’ then he were off again like Oi’d bit him.”
Judith sneezed—at least it sounded something like a sneeze.
“Really?” Joseph said, his attention suddenly held as if in a vise. “He didn’t stay with Mother the last time she was here?”
“Din’t even stay for tea.” She shook her head. Chocolate cake, Oi had. An’ Madeira, both. Looked at it loike he hadn’t eaten for a week, then went straight out o’ the door an’ got into that great big yellow car of his. Smelly things, cars,” she added. “An’ noisy. Dunno why a civilized man can’t use an horse an’ carriage. Good enough for the queen, God bless her memory.” Her lips thinned, and she blinked several times. “Don’t get horses goin’ mad an’ runnin’ all off the road into the trees an’ killing good folk!”
“Yes, you do!” Judith contradicted her. “Hundreds of horses have taken fright at something and bolted, taking carriages off the road, into trees, hedges, ditches, rivers even. You can’t spook a car. It doesn’t take fright at thunder, or lightning, or a flapping piece of cloth.” She drew in her breath. “And wheels fall off carriages just as often as off cars.”
“Thought you’d lost your tongue,” Mrs. Channery said with satisfaction. “Found it again, have you? Well, nothin’ you say’ll get me into one of them machines!”
“Then I shan’t try,” Judith answered, exactly as if it had been the next thing she had intended. “Do you know where he went?”
“Who? Your father? Do you think Oi asked him, Miss Reavley? That would be very ill-fatched up o’ me, now wouldn’t it?”
Judith’s eyes widened for a moment. “Of course you wouldn’t, Mrs. Channery. But he might have said. I imagine it wasn’t a secret.”
“Then you imagine wrong,” Mrs. Channery pronounced with immense pleasure. “It were a secret. Your dear ma asked him, an’ he went four wont ways about answerin’. Just said he’d be back for her in an hour . . . an’ he weren’t! Took him an hour and a half, but she never said a word.” She fixed Judith with an accusing eye. “Good woman, your ma was! No one left like her no more.”
“I know,” Judith said quietly.
Mrs. Channery grunted. “Shouldn’t have said that,” she apologized. “Not that it ain’t true. But it don’t do no good cryin’. Not what she’d have wanted. Very sensible woman, she were. Lots o’ patience with others what was all but useless, but none for herself. An’ she’d have expected you to be like her!”
Judith glared at her, angry not only at what she had said, but that she, of all people, should have known Alys well enough to have understood so much about her.
“You were very fond of her,” Joseph observed, to fill the silence more than anything else.
Mrs. Channery’s lips trembled for a moment. “O’ course Oi were!” she snapped at him. “She knew how to be kind without lookin’ down on folks, an’ there ain’t many what can do that! She never come by without askin’ first, an’ she ate my cake. Never brought any of her own, like needin’ to keep score. But she brought me jam now an’ then. Apricot. An’ Oi never told her as how the rhubarb jam was horrible. Like so much boiled string, it were. Oi gave it to Diddy Warner, her with the toddy-grass all up in the air like a gummidge. That surprised her. Should have seen the look on her face.” She smiled with satisfaction.
“With the hair like a scarecrow?” Judith clarified.
“In’t that what I just said?” Mrs. Channery asked.
