I've hardly seen you.
The trains aren't very good on Sundays.
The best leaves at five-forty-five and gets up about nine.
It stops a lot and there's no restaurant car.”
“That'll do fine.”
“Sure you can't stay until tomorrow?”
“Quite sure.”
The church bells were ringing across the park.
“Well I'm just off to church.
I don't suppose you'd care to come.”
Beaver always did what was expected of him when he was staying away, even on a visit as unsatisfactory as the present one.
“Oh yes. I should like to very much.”
“No, really I shouldn't, if I were you.
You wouldn't enjoy it.
I only go because I more or less have to.
You stay here. Brenda will be down directly.
Ring for a drink when you feel like it.”
“Oh, all right.”
“See you later then.”
Tony took his hat and stick from the lobby and let himself out. `Now I've behaved inhospitably to that young man again,' he reflected.
The bells were clear and clamorous in the drive and Tony walked briskly towards them.
Presently they ceased and gave place to a single note, warning the village that there was only five minutes to go before the organist started the first hymn.
He caught up nanny and John also on their way to church.
John was in one of his rare confidential moods; he put his small gloved hand into Tony's and, without introduction, embarked upon a story which lasted them all the way to the church door; it dealt with the mule Peppermint who had drunk the company's rum ration, near Wipers in 1917; it was told breathlessly, as John trotted to keep pace with his father.
At the end, Tony said,
“How very sad.”
“Well I thought it was sad too, but it isn't.
Ben said it made him laugh fit to bust his pants.”
The bell had stopped and the organist was watching from behind his curtain for Tony's arrival.
He walked ahead up the aisle, nanny and John following.
In the pew he occupied one of the armchairs; they sat on the bench at his back.
He leant forward for half a minute with his forehead on his hand, and as he sat back, the organist played the first bars of the hymn.
“Enter not into judgment with thy servant, O Lord. …” The service followed its course.
As Tony inhaled the agreeable, slightly musty atmosphere and performed the familiar motions of sitting, standing, and leaning forward, his thoughts drifted from subject to subject, among the events of the past week and his plans for the future.
Occasionally some arresting phrase in the liturgy would recall him to his surroundings, but for the most part that morning he occupied himself with the question of bathrooms and lavatories, and of how more of them could best be introduced without disturbing the character of his house.
The village postmaster took round the collection bag.
Tony put in his half-crown; John and nanny their pennies.
The vicar climbed, with some effort, into the pulpit.
He was an elderly man who had served in India most of his life.
Tony's father had given him the living at the instance of his dentist.
He had a noble and sonorous voice and was reckoned the best preacher for many miles around.
His sermons had been composed in his more active days for delivery at the garrison chapel; he had done nothing to adapt them to the changed conditions of his ministry and they mostly concluded with some reference to homes and dear ones far away.
The villagers did not find this in any way surprising.
Few of the things said in church seemed to have any particular reference to themselves.
They enjoyed their vicar's sermons very much and they knew that when he began about their distant homes, it was time to be dusting their knees and feeling for their umbrellas.
“… And so as we stand here bareheaded at this solemn hour of the week,” he read, his powerful old voice swelling up for the peroration, “let us remember our Gracious Queen Empress in whose services we are here and pray that she may long be spared to send us at her bidding to do our duty in the uttermost parts of the earth; and let us think of our dear ones far away and the homes we have left in her name, and remember that though miles of barren continent and leagues of ocean divide us, we are never so near to them as on these Sunday mornings, united with them across dune and mountain in our loyalty to our sovereign and thanksgiving for her welfare; one with them as proud subjects of her sceptre and crown.”
(“The Reverend Tendril `e do speak uncommon high of the Queen,” a gardener's wife had once remarked to Tony.)
After the choir had filed out, during the last hymn, the congregation crouched silently for a few seconds and then made for the door.
There was no sign of recognition until they were outside among the graves; then there was an ex-change of greetings, solicitous, cordial, garrulous.
Tony spoke to the vet's wife and Mr. Partridge from the shop; then he was joined by the vicar.