It was during the past four years, since the death of her husband, penniless, that Louisa had revealed, by small tokens and bit by bit, an aptitude for acquiring alien impenetrable luxuries.
Manders’ Figs in Syrup, with its seventy-year-old trademark — an oriental female yearning her draped form towards, and apparently worshipping a fig tree — was the only commodity that Louisa was willing to accept from her daughter’s direction. Louisa distributed the brown sealed jars of this confection among her acquaintance; it kept them in mind of the living reality underlying their verbal tradition, ‘Mrs Jepp’s daughter was a great beauty, she married into Manders’ Figs in Syrup.’
‘Tell your father,’ said Louisa, ‘that I have not written to thank him because he is too busy to read letters. He will like the Bulgarian cigarettes. They smell very high. Did he like
‘Oh yes, he was much amused.’
‘So your mother told me when she wrote last. Did he
‘Loved them, I’m sure. But we were awfully tickled.’
Louisa, in her passion for pickling and preserving, keeps up with the newest methods. Some foods go into jars, others into tins sealed by her domestic canning machine. When Louisa’s own figs in syrup, two cans of them with neatly pencilled labels, had arrived for Sir Edwin Manders, Helena had felt uneasy at first.
‘Is she having a lark with us, Edwin?’
‘Of course she is.’
Helena was not sure what sort of a lark. She wrote to Louisa that they were all very amused.
‘Did they enjoy the figs?’ Louisa pressed Laurence.
‘Yes, they were lovely.’
‘They are as good as Manders’, dear, but don’t tell your father I said so.’
‘Better than Manders’,’ Laurence said.
‘Did you taste some, then?’
‘Not actually. But I know they were most enjoyable, Mother said’ (which Helena had not said).
‘Well, that’s what I sent them for. To be enjoyed. You shall have some later. I don’t know what they are talking about — “much amused”. Tell your father that I’m giving him the cigarettes for enjoyment, tell him that, my dear.’
Laurence was smoking his Bulgarian. ‘Most heady,’ he said. ‘But Mother takes a fit when you send expensive presents. She knows you have to deny yourself and —’
He was about to say ‘pinch and scrape’, using his mother’s lamenting words; but this would have roused the old lady. Besides, the phrase was obviously inaccurate; his grandmother was surrounded by her sufficiency, always behind which hovered a suspicion of restrained luxury. Even her curious dishes seemed chosen from an expansive economy of spirit rather than any consideration of their cost in money.
‘Helena is a sweet girl, but she does deceive herself. I’m not in need of anything, as she could very well see, if she took the trouble. There is no need for Helena to grieve on my account.’
Laurence was away all day, with his long legs in his small swift car, gone to look round and about the familiar countryside and coastline, gone to meet friends of his own stamp and education, whom he sometimes brought back to show off to them his funny delicious grandmother. Louisa Jepp did many things during that day. She fed the pigeons and rested. Rather earnestly, she brought from its place a loaf of white bread, cut the crust off one end, examined the loaf, cut another slice, and looked again. After the third slice she began at the other end, cutting the crust, peering at the loaf until, at the fourth slice, she smiled at what she saw, and patting the slices into place again put back the loaf in the tin marked ‘bread’.
At nine o’clock Laurence returned. The sitting-room which looked out on the village was very oblong in shape. Here he found his grandmother with visitors, three men. They had been playing rummy, but now they were taking Louisa’s refreshments, seated along each side of the room. One was in an invalid chair; this was a young man, not more than twenty-four.
‘Mr Hogarth, my grandson; my grandson, Mr Webster; and this is
‘Heard you last Saturday.’ This was Mr Webster, the oldest guest, almost as old as Louisa.
‘Saw you this morning,’ Laurence said.
Mr Webster looked surprised.
‘With the baker’s van,’ Laurence added.
Louisa said, ‘Laurence is very observant, he has to be for his job.’
Laurence, who was aglow from several drinks, spoke the obliging banality, ‘I never forget a face’, and turning to the elder Hogarth he said, ‘For instance, I’m sure I’ve seen your face somewhere before.’ But here, Laurence began to lose certainty. ‘At least — you resemble someone I know but I don’t know who.’
The elder Hogarth looked hopelessly at Louisa, while his son, the boy in the invalid chair, said, ‘He looks like me. Have you seen me before?’
Laurence looked at him.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I haven’t. Nobody at all like you.’
Then, in case he should have said the wrong thing, considering the young man was a cripple, Laurence rattled on.
‘I may take up detective work one of these days. It would be quite my sort of thing.’
‘Oh no, you could never be a detective, Laurence,’ Louisa said, very seriously.
