A Few Green Leaves by Barbara Pym Read Free Book Online Page B

But Daphne insisted and Emma was bound to admit that it might improve the day. The last time she had sipped sherry with somebody sitting opposite her had been when Graham Pettifer had called to see her, she reflected, wondering why she was remembering it now in these very different circumstances. She was obviously not going to see him again and there was nothing memorable about the occasion. It was only the position of a table and two chairs and two people drinking sherry that had brought it into her mind again….
    ‘The new doctor, as we call him still,’ Daphne was saying, ‘Martin Shrubsole’ – she lingered almost lovingly on the name – ‘ not Dr G.’
    ‘Oh, I think I should go to Dr G.,’ Emma said. ‘It seems the obvious thing and my mother’s always said how nice he is. One does have confidence in an older man, somehow – luckily I’m never ill, though.’
    ‘I find Dr Shrubsole so sympathetic,’ Daphne said. ‘He knew just what my trouble was. I do think it’s so important in a village to have a good doctor you have confidence in – the doctor’s really the most important person, isn’t he?’
    Emma expressed surprise. If there was no active Lord of the Manor, surely the rector was the most important person rather than the doctor?
    ‘Well, the rector’s my brother, so I suppose you can’t expect me to see it that way, being an older sister. There was a rhyme we used to say when we were children, when we were playing games, and I can’t help remembering that, 

Each a peach, a pear, a plum,
Out goes old Tom….’

    ‘Oh, a kind of eeny, meeny, miney, mo,’ said Emma. ‘I don’t know that one.’ She repeated it to herself, smiling. ‘Out goes old Tom….’
    ‘His wife died, you know,’ Daphne said, as if explaining something. ‘Oh, it was very sad – he never got over Laura’s death, in a way. And of course I’ve had to cope, given up everything, really. I’ve always wanted to have a dog.’
    Emma looked at her, again surprised. ‘But surely you could have a dog? Living in the country, no problem about exercising it and all that, no pathetic face at the window of the flat when you went out to work….’
    It was Daphne’s turn to look surprised, her imagination unable to keep pace with Emma’s. ‘It wouldn’t have to be shut up,’ she explained. ‘I can’t think why I’ve never had one – I’m fifty-six next birthday….’
    Looking at her Emma could see that the sherry, besides loosening her tongue to reveal these intimacies, had made her rather red in the face. Presumably older women shouldn’t drink, she thought, or women of a certain age. But what might that age be?

    ‘I think I shall get a dog,’ Daphne said, when Tom came back to lunch.
    ‘A dog? Whatever for?’
    ‘Oh, you know I’ve always wanted a dog,’ she burst out.
    ‘Have you? You’ve never said so.’
    ‘Oh Tom, you know how passionately fond of animals I am – always have been.
    Tom considered this statement in silence, his memories going back to the pets of their childhood, rabbits and guinea pigs and, yes, there had been a dog once. But a child thrusting lettuce leaves through the bars of a rabbit hutch, passionately fond of animals…? He wondered about that. And all these years, if he was to believe her, Daphne had been deprived – in his selfishness he had prevented her from fulfilling her heart’s desire!
    Wandering into the drawing-room, where they sometimes had coffee after their meal, he came upon the box of jumble with ‘Thy Servant a Dog’ lying on top of it. Again his thoughts went back to childhood with some obscure memory of Daphne’s confirmation, though he could not have said why this particular object had brought it to mind. But it did make him think about the confirmation candidates of his own village and the arrangement that was to be made with the vicar of a neighbouring village to combine the two sets of classes. Tom knew in advance how it would work out – he