Sarah Caudwell: The Sibyl in Her Grave

So we spent the day frantically digging up plants in the Rectory garden and running back with them to Griselda’s potting shed. Fortunately, it was one of the days when Mrs. Tyrrell comes to clean for me, so there were three of us to do it, and by midnight we’d rescued pretty well everything that we minded most about — all the rose trees, and the plants from the physic garden. We shared them out between the three of us and gave some to Maurice. At fifty pounds they were really rather a bargain — some of them were quite valuable — but of course it didn’t make up for the garden being destroyed.

The next day they flattened it completely, and began to put up something that involved concrete posts and a lot of wire mesh. We couldn’t work out what it was — Griselda said it looked like a cage.

Two or three weeks later there were signs of someone being in occupation, though no one had actually seen her arrive — not even Maurice, whose study looks straight out onto the front drive of the Rectory. But there were lights on in the evening, and the postman said he’d started to deliver letters there.

We’re very informal down here in Haver — we don’t go in for visiting cards and so forth — but when someone new moves in we usually put a note through the door, introducing ourselves and inviting them to ring us if they need help with anything. So I wrote a short letter along those lines — no, Julia, it was not mere curiosity — and walked across to the Rectory to deliver it. And just as I was putting it in the letter box, the door suddenly opened and I found myself facing a fat, pale woman with fat, black ringlets.

When I say that she was fat, I don’t so much mean that she was of enormous size but that she gave the impression of being made of fat, all the way through, with no underlying framework of bone or muscle — which, of course, isn’t actually possible. She had a rather ugly, squashed button sort of nose — I suppose when she was young people would have called it retroussé—and very small black eyes, like currants in a suet pudding. She was wearing a long black velvet caftan, of the kind one can buy cheaply in Tangier or expensively in Knightsbridge — it might have been rather elegant, if it hadn’t shown so many signs of her being a rather careless eater.

“Good morning, Mrs. Sheldon, how nice of you to call,” she said. “Won’t you come in and have a glass of sherry?”

That looks, when one writes it down, like quite a normal and pleasant thing to say, but it didn’t sound like that. There was something gloating, almost sinister, about the way she said it — as if my name were a secret she’d been very clever to find out and could use against me in some way.

I accepted, naturally, and she led me through to the conservatory. As we went in, she said, “I hope you don’t mind birds?”

Well, as it happens, I do rather. When they’re flying about in the open air, I don’t mind them at all, but in a confined space with them I get an absurd sense of panic, like you with spiders. I know it’s completely irrational, but that doesn’t stop me feeling it.

But of course I said, “Not in the least,” and followed her into the drawing room.

She had had it entirely redecorated, no doubt at great expense. The walls were covered with a heavily embossed wallpaper — black. The ceiling and woodwork had been repainted — black. There were thick black velvet curtains, and the floor was tiled in black marble. Poor woman, I suppose she’d expected it to look very dramatic, but of course, with nothing there to provide contrast, the effect was simply dreary.

I saw at once that Griselda had been perfectly right about the cage. The conservatory and the area beyond it had been turned into an aviary, now occupied by a flock of ravens — I don’t know how many exactly, but there must have been at least a dozen. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the French windows had been closed, with the ravens safely on the far side — but they were open, and the horrible creatures were flapping and hopping about the drawing room as if they owned the place. The worst of it was, though, that when they weren’t moving they were more or less invisible against the black background — I thought that at any moment I might accidentally brush against one. I began, I’m afraid, to feel rather sick, and almost to wish I hadn’t come.

She poured me a tumblerful of sherry — such an excessive amount that I couldn’t think of it as generous, but more as a device to make me stay longer than I might have chosen — and invited me to sit down. Which I did, with considerable caution, on one of three chaises longues — I need hardly say, upholstered in black — which provided the seating accommodation.

The room was quite sparsely furnished — I couldn’t tell whether from choice, or because she hadn’t finished unpacking. There were no pictures or ornaments or books. Or, rather, just one book — it looked like one of those old family Bibles, so big you can hardly lift them. Isabella seemed to regard it as an object of interest, or even veneration — she’d put it on its own in a display cabinet at the far end of the room from where we were sitting. I resisted the temptation to ask for a closer look at it — the rest of that end of the room was in deep shadow, which I suspected of harbouring still more of the beastly ravens.

She asked me what I thought of her colour scheme. I said that it was interesting.

“Ah,” she said, “I didn’t think it would be quite to your taste.” She said it with a smile which suggested that her taste was bold and adventurous, while mine was timidly conventional.

“Black’s such a difficult colour,” I said, “if one isn’t an experienced designer.”

“Ah, yes,” she said, “I know you’re the village expert on design.”

“That’s a far too flattering description,” I said. “I haven’t worked seriously as a designer since I lived in Paris.”

Our conversation might have been more memorable if my attention hadn’t been distracted all the time by the flappings and cawings of the birds. Not much more memorable, though, because Isabella is one of those tiresome people who enjoy being mysterious about themselves. Trying to show a polite degree of interest in her, I asked if she had any special reason for choosing Parsons Haver for her retirement — she seemed of the sort of age to have recently retired, though from what profession one wouldn’t have cared to speculate.

“Oh,” she said, “I haven’t exactly retired.” And she gave a wouldn’t-you-like-to-know little smile, as if knowing her occupation were my dearest wish and I would beg her to tell me.

In case you happen to be tormented by curiosity on the subject, I found out later that the profession from which she had “not exactly retired” was what I would call fortune-telling, but I gather is nowadays called psychic counselling. On this occasion, though, I didn’t ask her any more questions about herself but simply invited her to ask me anything she’d like to know about shops and buses and so forth. I did also mention that if she wanted anyone to clean for her, I could thoroughly recommend Mrs. Tyrrell — Mrs. Tyrrell is a single mother, and I thought she might be pleased to do a few extra hours.

“Oh no, thank you,” she said. “Women of that class are such gossips, aren’t they?” Women of that class indeed — some people are enough to turn anyone Socialist. “Anyway, I have my niece to do that sort of thing.”

“Oh really?” I said, rather surprised to hear that there was another member of the household, and wondering where she was. “How nice for you to have such a devoted niece. I’m afraid mine’s far too busy with her practice at the Bar to come and do my housework for me.”