The Enchanted April

Chapter 7

From the high wall, the four women watched Lady Caroline with quiet admiration. Though she appeared utterly absorbed in the view and took no notice of their cheerful waves, they could not have known they had been snubbed. There was disappointment, certainly, in finding she had arrived unannounced, robbing them of the pleasure of watching her face as she first took in the beauty of San Salvatore. But there was still Mrs. Fisher to attend to, and they would concentrate their attentions on her instead, watching her face as eagerly as they had hoped to watch Lady Caroline’s.

Deciding that since Lady Caroline had spoken of breakfast, they had better have theirs, they turned away from the wall, only to find the elderly parlour-maid Francesca had approached silently behind them in cloth slippers with string soles. Francesca, the owner had assured them, had been with him for years and made inventories unnecessary. After wishing them good-morning, she informed them, in rapid Italian, that breakfast was ready in the dining-room below. They understood not a single word, but the gesture was clear enough, and they followed her down the stairs and along the broad hall to a room with glass doors at its end.

There, sitting at the head of the table having her breakfast, was Mrs. Fisher.

Even Mrs. Arbuthnot exclaimed, though her exclamation was only “Oh.” Mrs. Wilkins was more expansive: “Why, but it’s like having the bread taken out of one’s mouth!” she cried.

Mrs. Fisher stretched out her hand across the table. “How do you do. I can’t get up because of my stick.” They advanced and shook it, murmuring that they had had no idea she was already there.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Fisher, calmly removing the top of her egg. “Yes. I am here.”

Mrs. Wilkins plunged on undiscouraged, declaring it a dreadful disappointment, that they had meant to give her such a welcome. Mrs. Fisher, glancing briefly at her, remembered this was the woman who at Prince of Wales Terrace had claimed to have seen Keats. She must be careful with this one, curb her from the beginning. So she ignored Mrs. Wilkins entirely and addressed Mrs. Arbuthnot gravely, “I arrived yesterday with Lady Caroline.”

Mrs. Wilkins persisted as if she had not been snubbed, declaring she felt thwarted, that the bread had been taken out of her mouth just when she was about to be happy swallowing it. Mrs. Fisher turned pointedly to Mrs. Arbuthnot and asked where she would sit. Mrs. Arbuthnot sat down rather suddenly, and Mrs. Wilkins took the place opposite.

As Mrs. Fisher presided over the coffee and tea, touching the small gong on the table as though she had been using it all her life, Mrs. Arbuthnot reflected that, morally, she and Lotty were the ones who had found San Salvatore, arranged it, and chosen to admit Mrs. Fisher. Without them, Mrs. Fisher would not have been there. There was no hostess in this party, but if there were, it would not be Mrs. Fisher, nor Lady Caroline—it would be either herself or Lotty. There was a curious air about Mrs. Fisher of being in possession, and if Mrs. Arbuthnot had not been so happy she would perhaps have minded.

Mrs. Wilkins noticed it too, but happiness had dissolved her shyness entirely. She was serene, completely at her ease. Disappointment was impossible in heaven, and she no longer minded Mrs. Fisher behaving as hostess. You did not mind things in heaven. The sun poured through the eastern windows, the door stood open onto the garden, and the fragrance of freesias—freesias everywhere, in armsful quantities, carpeting the rose-beds—floated in around her enraptured nostrils.

“I suppose you realise, don’t you, that we’ve got to heaven?” she beamed at Mrs. Fisher with all the familiarity of a fellow-angel.

“They are considerably younger than I had supposed,” thought Mrs. Fisher, “and not nearly so plain.”

Mrs. Fisher inquired whether Mrs. Arbuthnot would have tea or coffee, offered her more, then asked if she would like an orange. Both declined, as did Mrs. Fisher. Mrs. Arbuthnot asked if her room was comfortable, and Mrs. Fisher mentioned she had had one of the two beds removed. Mrs. Wilkins was illuminated: that was why she had a second bed in her little cell. Mrs. Fisher explained she had given Francesca no directions, merely asked for the bed’s removal. Mrs. Arbuthnot confessed she had two beds too, and Mrs. Fisher informed her Lady Caroline had ordered hers removed.

“But we haven’t got any husbands here either,” said Mrs. Wilkins cheerfully, “and I don’t see any use in extra beds if one hasn’t husbands to put in them. Can’t we have them taken away too?”

“Beds,” said Mrs. Fisher coldly, “cannot be removed from one room after another. They must remain somewhere.” Loose talk about husbands, in Mrs. Fisher’s circle, had never been encouraged. In the ’eighties, when she chiefly flourished, husbands were taken seriously, as the only real obstacles to sin, and beds, if mentioned at all, were approached with caution; a decent reserve prevented them and husbands ever being spoken of in the same breath.

Mrs. Fisher inquired about lunch. “Lunch,” she said, “is at half-past twelve.” Mrs. Arbuthnot offered to tell the cook, mentioning the struggle of communication and her little dictionary. “The cook,” said Mrs. Fisher, “knows. Lady Caroline has already told her.” Lady Caroline spoke the kind of Italian cooks understood, and Mrs. Fisher, prevented by her stick from going into the kitchen, could not have managed it herself.

“But—it’s too wonderful,” Mrs. Wilkins finished for her friend, radiant at this unburdening. “Why, we’ve got positively nothing to do here, either of us, except just be happy. You wouldn’t believe how terribly good Rose and I have been for years without stopping, and how much now we need a perfect rest.”

And Mrs. Fisher, going without answering her out of the room, said to herself, “She must, she shall be curbed.”