Read Online A Glass of Blessings by Barbara Pym - Free Book Online Page B

Mrs Beamish, large and black, at the same time brooding and quietly triumphant, presumably because Father Ransome was to live under her roof. She was surrounded by various elderly ladies in yellowish-brown fur coats, one of whom I recognized as Miss Prideaux. Mary Beamish, wearing a woollen dress of a rather unbecomingly harsh shade of blue, was hovering near her mother. I was glad that I had decided to wear black in which I always feel right. Near this group I saw Mrs Greenhill, the clergy’s late housekeeper, in close conversation with her friend and crony Mrs Spooner the little verger in her familiar peacock blue hat which had a large paste replica of the bird pinned to the front of it. It seemed almost as if they might be murmuring together against the clergy, for I saw them glance in Father Thames’s direction once or twice. I also noticed two well-dressed middle- aged women with a young girl, whom I remembered having seen in church sometimes. All three were chinless, with large aristocratic noses. Near them stood a thin woman with purple hair and a surprised expression, as if she had not expected that it would turn out to be quite that colour. She wore a good deal of chunky jewellery, and I felt she had gone a little too far in showing that churchgoers need not necessarily be dowdy. She was rather surprisingly in conversation with a group of nuns from the convent in the parish. The nuns were of two kinds, short and motherly looking, or tall and thin with steel- rimmed spectacles, pale waxy complexions and sweet remote smiles that had something a little sinister about them.
    It must not be supposed that there were no men present, but my first overwhelming impression was that, as at so many church gatherings, the women outnumbered the men. There seemed to be a kind of segregation of the sexes, though various young girls and boys moved about freely between all the groups. The largest male group was that dominated by Mr Coleman, the good looking fair-haired master of ceremonies, with his cronies, some of whom I recognized as fellow servers, but one of whom—a tall youngish man with a high dome- shaped forehead—I guessed to be Mr Bason, the new housekeeper at the clergy house. The two churchwardens and the secretary and treasurer of the parochial church council were together in a corner, looking rather important. In the middle of the room stood the three clergy. Father Thames and Father Bode were evidently leading Father Ransome round and introducing him to the various groups of people. When I entered the hall Father Ransome had his back to me, and it was not until later that I was able to form any definite impression of him. This first sight told me only that he was tall and dark.
    Being alone I felt that I had to attach myself to some group, and as nobody noticed my entry nobody came forward to greet me. The obvious and dreary course would have been to join Mary Beamish and the old ladies, but something in me rebelled against this and I found myself walking over to where Mr Coleman and the presumed Mr Bason were talking together. As so often happens, I caught the tail end of a rather esoteric conversation.
    ‘…wouldn’t believe the trouble we had over them,’ Mr Bason was saying.
    ‘It’s really simpler when you haven’t got any,’ said Mr Coleman in his low voice with its slightly north country accent ‘There were only four Sundays in Advent last year, I remember, so it can be a bit of a problem to know when to use them.’
    ‘Good evening,’ I said, feeling more at ease interrupting a men’s conversation than a women’s.
    But they did not react in quite the way I was accustomed to. Mr Coleman gave me a slightly hostile stare from his intensely blue eyes. Mr Bason looked a little surprised.
    ‘I’m Mrs Forsyth,’ I explained, ‘and I think you must be Mr Bason. My husband was so glad to hear that you had settled in at the clergy house.’
    ‘Oh, then I really owe the job to you?’ said Mr Bason. He