Sarah Caudwell - The Sibyl in Her Grave

“Oh yes, I’d heard you had a clever niece,” said Isabella. “Daphne’s not clever. She isn’t really my niece, she’s my cousin’s daughter. Still, her mother was more like a sister to me than my damn sister’s ever been, so when she died I had to take over Daphne.” She talked as if the girl were a servant — not that anyone has servants nowadays and even when they did no well-bred person would have talked about them like that — as if she were some kind of object which Isabella owned.

I said that, whatever the relationship, I looked forward to meeting her.

“Oh, you can see her now, if you like,” said Isabella, and shouted “Daphne, come here,” like a man calling a dog. A man one wouldn’t much like, to a dog he enjoyed ill-treating.

There was a noise of something breaking in the kitchen, and a girl came in — an awkward, skinny little thing, all knees and elbows, somewhere in her early twenties. Not, I have to say, at all a pretty girl — lank brown hair, a poor complexion, a rather receding chin and overprominent front teeth. She had quite large brown eyes, which should have been her best feature, but very listless and watery looking — do always remember, Julia, that the expression “bright with unshed tears” is a most misleading one. Still, I’ve seen women with fewer natural advantages persuade half London that they were irresistible — a little makeup and a little animation can do wonders.

“Daphne,” said Isabella, “this is Mrs. Sheldon, who’s kindly come to see how we’re getting on — say ‘How do you do’ to her.”

The poor girl obediently stammered the words out and then stood jiggling about from one foot to the other, pushing down her skirt with the palms of her hands as if she were hoping to make it cover her knees. It was certainly far too short — I mean, the sort of length one should only wear if one has very nice legs and is wearing pretty underwear — and looked like something she had had in her teens and grown out of. As her hands were moist and not very clean, all she achieved was to make the skirt even grubbier than it already was.

I was trying to think of something kind and encouraging to say to her when something moved in the shadows at the far end of the room. And screeched. And flapped its wings. Something much larger than a raven.

I do strongly advise you, Julia, to try to conquer your feelings about spiders — one really never knows what embarrassments these ridiculous phobias can get one into. As you’ll have gathered, I was already more disconcerted than I would have liked by finding myself in the same room as a dozen or so ravens. When I realised that I was also sharing it with a vulture, I came closer to screaming than I care to admit.

“Oh,” said Isabella, “this is my friend Roderigo. I do hope he didn’t startle you?”

It was all I could do to say “What a handsome creature” and remember an urgent appointment at the Vicarage. And I wouldn’t want you, Julia, to find yourself at a similar disadvantage in a situation involving a tarantula.

3

IT WAS CANTRIP, misguidedly in my view, who chose at this juncture to refer to the spider episode. I have always refrained, and I hope shall always refrain, from offending the sensibility of my readers with the details of that regrettable incident: I mention merely that it conclusively marked the end of what some would term the more intimate relationship formerly existing between Cantrip and Julia.

“I bet your aunt Reg’s thing about birds isn’t really as bad as your thing about spiders. I mean, if she’d ever woken up on April Fool’s Day and found some witty chap she was chums with had put a stuffed parrot—”

“Cantrip,” said Julia, “although the spider episode has left scars on my psyche for which a litigious woman could undoubtedly recover an enormous sum in damages, I have tried for friendship’s sake to erase it from my memory. Do you really want to remind me of it?”

“There you are, you see — it was simply ages ago, and you’re still miffed about it. So what I’m saying is, your aunt Reg can’t be anything like as bad about birds as you are about spiders. Because let’s face it, if someone took you into a room crawling with spiders, you wouldn’t hang about drinking sherry and making small talk, you’d be out in nought seconds flat, screaming like a banshee on bath night.”

“I cannot imagine,” said Ragwort, “that Mrs. Sheldon would in any circumstances allow herself to leave the drawing room of a new acquaintance in the unladylike and precipitate manner you describe.”

“No,” said Julia, “I’m sure she wouldn’t, but that’s simply a question of character. I think, as a matter of fact, that she’s just as frightened of birds as I am of spiders.”

Maurice, of course, also had to call on Isabella — apart from anything else, he’s her nearest neighbour. He came round afterwards to tell me about it, shaking like a leaf and needing a stiff gin.

This wasn’t because of the vulture, it was because she’d told him that he was a true priest and a man of great spiritual authority. Poor Maurice, he’d been terribly embarrassed — he kept saying “Oh, my God, what would the Bishop say?” and needing more gin every time he thought of it.

She’d also told him that he’d think her a very wicked person and perhaps denounce her as a heretic and blasphemer. He’d tried to explain that he didn’t go in for that sort of thing, but she didn’t take any notice. She seems to imagine herself as the high priestess of some kind of alternative religion — that’s how she claims to have the gift of prophecy. Maurice thought she’d probably got the idea from reading something about the Albigensians.

“And I’m not saying a word against the Albigensians,” said Maurice, “who I’m sure were very good people and extremely badly treated. And no one’s sorrier than I am about it, so I don’t see why I should be cast as some appalling character like St. Dominic. Who was a ghastly man, Reg, really perfectly ghastly, and with all my faults I don’t think anyone can say I’m like him.”

Whatever religion it is, the big leather book seems to be a central feature of it. Maurice asked her if he could have a closer look at it, but she wouldn’t let him—”I know, Father Dulcimer, that it is lawful for me to read in your Book, but it is forbidden for you to read in mine.” He thinks it’s probably part of her fortune-telling paraphernalia — there’s a very old form of prophecy, he says, where you open a book and point to a line at random and it tells you what you want to know. It has to be a very important and serious book, of course — the Bible or Virgil’s Aeneid or something of that sort. What Isabella’s is there’s no way of knowing — one thing we’re pretty sure of is that it isn’t the Bible.

She’d ended by saying that though she and Maurice were destined to be adversaries, they were adversaries who respected each other and could perhaps be friends. Poor man, no wonder he needed gin.

“Ragwort,” said Julia, pausing in her reading, “we look to you for enlightenment on questions of a religious nature. Why should a clergyman object to being called a true priest and told he had great spiritual authority?”

“He would have felt, I imagine,” said Ragwort, “that such expressions savoured of the charismatic — happy-clappy music and the Toronto Blessing. People don’t much care for that sort of thing in Sussex — not in West Sussex, at any rate.”