On Friday afternoon, Vivienne intercepted me outside the school carrying three empty shopping bags.
“You don’t happen to be going past the hall?”
It was a question whose answer seemed to have been settled by the bags.
Poppy peered into one.
“Cake?”
“Eventually,” Vivienne said.
“That’s not as good.”
We were going in that direction, although I had intended to pass the hall rather than acquire responsibility for it. Vivienne gave me two bags and kept the lightest.
“Old books for tomorrow. They’re in the entrance. I’m trying to find someone to collect them before the chairs arrive.”
“I can carry them as far as the sorting table,” I said.
She blinked, then nodded.
It was a small experiment, giving a favour an end point. Nobody collapsed.
The hall stood at the mouth of the crescent, a low brick building with a glass entrance and a side passage running towards the rear garden. A man was taping a sign to the window.
“Morning, George,” Vivienne called.
He looked at his watch.
“You’ve lost most of the day.”
“Haven’t we all?”
George Vale, she explained, helped with bookings and locking up. He shook my hand with fingers sticky from tape and offered Poppy the end of the roll. This was apparently sufficient to establish friendship.
Inside the entrance, cardboard boxes stood beneath a noticeboard. Some contained books. One contained approximately forty crocheted eggs.
“Left over from Easter,” George said.
Poppy inspected them gravely.
“You could put faces on them.”
“That was the original problem.”
Vivienne and I carried books towards a long table in the main room. On the wall above it hung photographs from previous events. I recognised the enormous cheque from her sitting room, this time surrounded by more people.
Beth stood at one end, holding a balloon by its string. Priya had her eyes shut. Celia was laughing. Beside Vivienne stood a red-haired woman in a florist’s apron.
“Was that last year?” I asked.
“The summer before.”
“It looks successful.”
“It was.”
Vivienne pulled a newer photograph from a folder and handed it to George.
“Could we have this one up instead? It’s more current.”
The same group, mostly. The red-haired woman was missing.
Before George could answer, someone knocked the open door with the edge of a metal bucket.
“Where do you want these?”
The woman from the older photograph stood outside carrying greenery. Her hair was shorter now, her apron marked with damp patches.
“Helen,” Vivienne said.
She sounded as though a parcel had arrived that she did not remember ordering.
“You asked for foliage.”
“Of course. The side room, please.”
Helen looked at the photograph in George’s hand, then at the one still hanging on the wall.
“Good idea. Nobody wants outdated information.”
George became absorbed in a drawing pin.
I introduced myself, partly because the silence seemed to require furniture.
“Number Six?” Helen asked.
“Yes.”
“How’s the pear tree?”
“We have a pear tree?”
“Against the back wall. The previous owners thought it was dead every winter. It disagreed in spring.”
Poppy looked delighted by this evidence of a secret garden.
“Do the pears belong to us?”
“If you can reach them.”
Helen put down the bucket. Unlike Vivienne, she seemed quite comfortable letting it stand where people had to step around it.
“You used to come on Thursdays?” I asked.
Vivienne moved a pile of books.
“Helen has rather a lot on.”
“Most people do,” Helen said.
“Her shop keeps her busy.”
“It does.”
Helen removed a receipt from her apron and placed it beside the bucket.
“This batch is a donation. It says so there.”
The paper slid towards me. Helen had written the date, a description of the foliage and the words NO CHARGE in capitals.
“Do I put that with the books?” I asked.
“Leave it for the event papers,” George said. “There should be a tray.”
He searched behind a stack of programmes and found two trays, neither labelled. Helen waited while he chose one. It was a small administrative delay, hardly worth remembering, except that nobody else seemed to want to look at her.
Poppy offered to make labels. George found a marker, and soon there were signs for RECEIPTS and OTHER THINGS. The second struck me as ambitious.
“We understand,” Vivienne said.
“Just making it clear.”
She crouched to show Poppy a rosemary branch, rubbing a leaf between her fingers. Poppy sniffed it, then announced that it smelled of dinner.
The conversation resumed around that useful observation. Helen told us where her shop was. George offered to move the bucket. Vivienne found another job that needed doing on the far side of the room.
As Helen left, I carried my empty bags to the entrance.
“I hope I didn’t ask anything awkward.”
“About Thursdays?”
“Yes.”
She considered me, not unkindly.
“You asked an ordinary question.”
Outside, a van waited with its hazard lights blinking.
“Did you stop going because of the shop?”
Helen took her keys from her pocket.
“No. I stopped going because I asked one too.”