by Barbara Pym
'Mark is in his study,' Sophia explained. 'A young couple called about putting up their banns and he has to talk to them, but he won't be long. Shall we have a glass of sherry? And now Faustina is with us — come along, darling.'
Faustina walked slowly into the room and Daisy Pettigrew stooped to pick her up. The cat crouched uneasily in her arms, then uttered a curious low cry and struggled free.
Penelope turned away from the little scene, to avoid the inevitable explanations and interpretations of Faustina's behaviour and found herself facing Rupert Stonebird. She had been disappointed in her first sight of him, but she gave him an amused smile, hoping that he was not one who doted on cats.
'Have you any animals?' she asked.
'No, I haven't really got round to it,' he said, frowning a little, as if he ought to have done.
'I suppose studying the human animal is enough for you,' said Penelope.
'Yes, it does take up most of my time — that and moving into a new house.' Rupert was surprised that Penelope appeared to know what he did, with no jokes about measuring skulls. It was rather a relief.
'Shall we go into the dining room?' said Sophia. 'I think everything's ready now.'
'Beer or cider?' asked Mark, a shade unconfidently.
After they had been served, Rupert found himself under fire again.
'I hear that you have worked in Africa,' said Daisy, fixing him with an accusing stare.
'Yes, my field work has been in Africa, mostly,' he said patiently.
'What work did you do, exactly?' she continued.
'Oh, nothing much, really,' he said feebly. The eyes of four respectable women, bright with friendly interest, were looking eagerly towards him and somehow he found himself unable to explain that he had been making a study of extra-marital relations, detached and scientific though this had of course been. 'I mean it was merely a study of kinship,' he added, seeing before him now the outraged faces of his colleagues at his letting the side down by describing such work as 'nothing much, really'.
'A very complicated subject, I imagine,' said Edwin Pettigrew.
'I hoped that perhaps you had been doing something for the welfare of these poor peoples,' persisted Daisy.
Rupert hesitated, unwilling to admit that anthropologists did no good, yet for the moment unable to think of a positive example that would convince her.
'Are you settling down well in your house?' she asked, feeling that a change of subject was now called for.
'Quite well, thank you, though as the weather gets colder, heating becomes rather a problem,' he said.
The conversation now became highly technical, touching on the advantages of electric and paraffin convector heaters, oil fired central heating, open fires, boilers, and the like.
Penelope felt rather bored and irritated and began to speculate on whether Rupert had a car and would offer to run her home. She laid great stress on these little courtesies, the formal acts of politeness that women in their emancipated state seemed to be in danger of losing.
They rose from the table with Daisy stressing the need for a heater that could not be knocked over by cats. 'The man who can invent that will make a fortune,' she declared.
Once in the drawing room the party seemed to divide, Ianthe talking to Edwin Pettigrew about dogs, Mark rather nobly taking on Daisy, and Sophia and Penelope plying Rupert with questions about himself, his life, and his work, probing to find out without actually asking whether he had a mother, wife, fiancée, or 'friend' in the background.
'I did wonder,' said Sophia at last in desperation, 'whether I had committed a grave social error in asking you to dinner alone when you may very well have a mother, wife or fiancée who should have been invited too.'
Rupert laughed. 'I can assure you that I have none of those — er — appendages.'
'Then you are without female dependants,' said Sophia, almost like a chairman summing up at a meeting.
'Well, I have a sister,' he admitted.
'A sister?' But that was nothing.
'Yes, married and living in Woking.'
'Ah yes, Woking,' said Sophia thoughtfully. 'There's a mosque there, I believe.'
'A mosque?' Rupert sounded surprised, as he had every right to.
'It's funny how one associates places with irrelevant things,' said Penelope, who had been listening to Sophia's probings with a kind of fascinated horror.
At that moment the telephone rang in the hall. The call was for Edwin Pettigrew, who seemed to be expecting it.
'A very nervous poodle having her first puppies,' he explained. 'I thought it would be some time tonight.'
'I really ought to be going home,' said Penelope, 'what with having a long journey and work tomorrow.' She waited, but without much hope, for Rupert to offer to run her home in the car they did not know he possessed.
'Oh, darling, I thought you'd stay the night,' said Sophia. 'You know you can if you want to.'
'Well, if you must go I'll run you back in the car,' said Mark, much to Penelope's disappointment.
'And Ianthe and Mr Stonebird' — 'Rupert' did not quite come out — 'live so near that I dare say they can escort each other,' said Sophia. She had sensed her sister's disappointment but realized that nothing could be done about it. And if she flung Rupert and Ianthe together they would probably take a dislike to each other.
They walked away from the vicarage in silence.
'I hear that you are a canon's daughter — and I am an archdeacon's son,' said Rupert lightly, trying to make conversation. 'So we must have something in common.' His tone faltered a little and he stared in front of him into the darkness.
'Yes, a vicarage upbringing, I suppose,' said Ianthe. 'But somehow that can lead people into such different paths.'
'Yes, sons of the clergy often go to the bad, and daughters too. At least, one hears of it occasionally,' he added hastily, afraid that Ianthe might misunderstand him.
She did not answer him because at that moment they came to her house. There was a light in the hall and Rupert commented on this.
'I always leave the hall light on when I go out,' Ianthe explained. 'I feel it discourages burglars and it seems more welcoming when one comes back to an empty house.'
Oh, this coming back to an empty house, Rupert thought, when he had seen her safely up to her door. People — though perhaps it was only women — seemed to make so much of it. As if life itself were not as empty as the house one was coming back to. And now he too was returning to an empty house. Groping for the light switch, whose position he had not yet memorized perfectly, he saw the evening's post still lying on the table in the hall where he had put it before he came out. There was a fat envelope, probably the proofs of an article he had written for an anthropological journal. There would be time to look at it before he went to bed.
Rupert opened the envelope and unfolded the bundle of galleys. 'SOME ASPECTS OF EXTRA-MARITAL RELATIONS AMONG THE NGUMU', he read. Not strikingly original as anthropological titles go, but it looked well with his name set out underneath it in italic capitals. The sketch map and kinship diagrams had come out well, also, and the French summary, with its cosy phrase 'chez les Ngumu', seemed adequate. How many offprints did he want — would the usual twenty-five free ones be enough? asked the letter accompanying the proof. Better make it fifty, he thought, seeing himself distributing them like Christmas cards. Then he remembered the eager questioning eyes of the four women he had met that evening — it would hardly be suitable for them. And his colleagues would have read it in the journal anyway. It seemed that he was like the poet with his nosegay of visionary flowers:
'That I might there present it — O! to whom?'
All the same, he thought, better make it fifty. When he was an old man the younger generation might clamour for it.
4
'Miss Broome, this is John Challow.'
Ianthe looked up from her work to see Mervyn Cantrell standing at her elbow, with a tall, dark young man of about thirty hovering defe
rentially a pace or two behind him.
'How do you do, Miss Broome?' he said. 'I must say all this is rather terrifying for me — these card indexes and things — or should one say indices? — I never know.' He laughed, a rather confident, charming laugh.
'How do you do?' Ianthe murmured, not quite knowing what to say.
'I thought it would be best if Mr Challow were to help you for a bit, Miss Broome,' said Mervyn, 'while he's getting settled down, that is.'
'Why, of course,' said Ianthe politely, wondering what she was going to do with him, and wishing, as she had before, that Mervyn had engaged a comfortable middle-aged woman to fill Miss Grimes's place.
'I'll leave you to it then,' said Mervyn. 'Just ask Miss Broome anything you don't understand and she'll explain it.'
Left by themselves Ianthe and John made a wary appraisal of each other. She saw a young, rather handsome man, whose brown eyes looked at her in a way she found slightly disturbing, though this was not the kind of thing she would have admitted to anybody but herself. He saw a rather pretty woman, not very young, with an air of good breeding that somehow attracted him. A woman rather shy of men, whose eyes did not quite meet his when he looked at her.
'Fancy me working in a library again,' he said, one hand resting idly on a card index.
'Why, haven't you been doing this sort of work?' Ianthe asked.
'No, I've been freelancing the last couple of years.'
'Oh, I didn't know one could do that in libraries.' She looked puzzled. 'You mean part-time work?'
'No, not in libraries. You might be rather shocked if I told you.'
'Shocked? Do you think so?' Ianthe smiled uneasily, feeling that some kind of guessing game was being played between them and that she ought to play her part by making a suggestion as to what the work could have been. 'People do so many unusual things nowadays,' she said lamely.
'Well, this was film work, actually — crowd work and that sort of thing. Dancing in a night club scene at eight o'clock in the morning — TV commercials too, sometimes.' John smiled and glanced quickly at Ianthe, as if to see how she was taking it.
'How interesting,' she said brightly, 'and what a change from this sort of work. What made you decide to come back to this?'
'Well, film work's very precarious, of course — so I thought I'd better get a steady job for a bit, especially when my money ran out.'
Ianthe's smile was becoming a little forced now. She was just trying to think what she could say to bring John back to the subject of the library and its workings when Shirley came in with two cups of tea.
'Well, I can't say that I've really earned this,' said John, taking a cup, 'but perhaps I can be forgiven my first day. Is it China tea?'
'China tea? No, I don't think so, but it certainly does look rather weak.'
'I should imagine you would like China tea?' he said looking at her intently.
'I do, very much,' Ianthe admitted, 'but somehow it doesn't seem to go with work. Now, shall I show you what I'm doing here?'
For a few minutes she explained the system on which the cards were arranged, then let him try to select some for a bibliography she was compiling on nutrition in underdeveloped countries.
'Nutrition,' John said, after he had been working for a short time. 'That doesn't really sound like food, does it. At least not the kind of food one would like to eat. By the way, what does one do about lunch? Are there any good places round here — not too expensive of course?'
'Well, there's Lyons and the ABC and a coffee bar, where Shirley sometimes goes, and various pubs, of course.'
'Where do you go?'
Ianthe hesitated. Today she had brought sandwiches, as she wanted to spend her lunch hour writing personal letters, but she felt reluctant to reveal to this young man the name of the little restaurant near Westminster Abbey, run by gentlewomen, where she often lunched. 'I quite often bring sandwiches,' she said. 'But I believe the pub on the corner's quite good.'
'I can't imagine you in a pub,' said John, 'or Mr Cantrell, for that matter.'
'No, he usually brings his own lunch and eats it here.'
For some reason Ianthe felt tired by so much talking and was glad when half-past twelve came and John suggested tentatively that he might go out. Left to herself she unpacked her sandwiches and got out her writing things. She was absorbed in a letter when Mervyn Cantrell came into the room.
'Oh good, you haven't finished your lunch yet,' he said. 'I've just been brewing some coffee — I expect you'd like a cup. What's in your sandwiches?' he asked cosily, lifting the corner of one. 'Cold meat,' he declared, sounding disappointed. 'That's not very interesting.'
'No. I just had a bit of my Sunday joint left over,' said Ianthe apologetically.
'Have you ever tried a cold egg-and-breadcrumbed veal cutlet eaten in the fingers — holding it by the bone of course?'
'And with a paper frill?' asked Ianthe. 'It sounds lovely, but somehow I never seem to have time to make things like that and as you know I usually go to the Humming Bird for lunch.'
'I can't bear those two who run it — English gentlewomen with a vengeance, I always think — the kind that have made England what she is.'
'I think Mrs Harper and Miss Burge do a very good job under rather difficult conditions,' said Ianthe, 'after all the whole place is very small and the kitchen especially so.'
'Quite. And who but two women like that would be pigheaded enough to try and run a restaurant there?'
'Miss Burge's brother was an admiral, and Mrs Harper is the widow of a cathedral organist. I can't remember which cathedral.' Ianthe frowned, trying to recall the name.
'You imply that she is used to producing a four-course dinner on a primus in the organ loft,' said Mervyn, then, losing interest in the subject, he went on 'How do you think John Challow's shaping?'
Ianthe hesitated. She certainly had not thought of him as 'shaping' at all in any direction. 'It's rather early to tell,' she said. 'I suppose he's used to this kind of work and will be able to do it once he gets into our ways.'
'Our ways — and what ways they are!' Mervyn sighed and prepared to go back to his work. 'Perhaps he isn't quite what we've been used to, but I thought we might give him a trial. All the other applicants seemed so highly qualified, I thought they'd probably turn up their noses at what — between ourselves, Ianthe — is really rather a stooge's job. Besides, one gets so tired of willing gentlewomen of uncertain age,' he laughed rather cruelly, 'just when we'd succeeded in getting rid of old Grimes too.'
Ianthe said nothing. She felt guilty that she had not yet been to visit Miss Grimes in her bed-sitting room somewhere off the Finchley Road, really within easy distance of where she lived, so there was really no excuse. She made a resolution to go before Christmas.
When John returned from lunch — very punctually, just before half-past one — Ianthe found herself studying him and taking in the details of his appearance. She could find no fault with his dark grey suit, red patterned tie and white shirt. Only his shoes seemed to be a little too pointed — not quite what men one knew would wear. He was less talkative now and settled down to work quietly, only occasionally asking her a question about what he was doing.
When tea was brought he took out a book he had been reading over his lunch. It turned out to be — most improbably, Ianthe thought — a paperback selection of the poems of Tennyson.
'You read poetry?' she asked rather formally.
'Oh, yes — do you?'
'Yes,' she said hesitantly, wishing that now she had not commented on the book, for one did not talk about poetry with chance acquaintances. It was a precious thing to be kept to oneself. She felt she did not know where to begin with Tennyson, imagining him plodding through In Memoriam, though perhaps Maud was more likely. Then she remembered that it was only a selection of the poems he had been reading and she did not need to speculate further, for — much to her surprise — he began to read
'Now lies the earth all Danäe to the stars
And all my heart lies open unto thee . . .
I like that,' he said. 'How do you pronounce Danäe, by the way?'
'I don't know,' she said in confusion, for she felt his eyes upon her.
'Anyway,' he said, closing the book, 'I suppose I'd better get on with my work now or I'll get the sack. But you wouldn't tell Mr Cantrell, would you.'
Ianthe bent her head over her work and said nothing. This was not at all what she had imagined when Miss Grimes left. It would be better, she felt, if John were to work with Shirley, the typist, as he was only going to do odd jobs. He might even be a suitable 'boy friend' for her. She would mention it tactfully to Mervyn some time. Altogether she was rather relieved when it was time to go home.
'I hope there's a post office still open,' said John, as he got up to go.
'They stay open quite late,' said Ianthe.
'I'll need to draw something to keep me going till pay-day,' he said, taking a post office savings book from an inner pocket.
Somehow the sight of this touched Ianthe, who had never herself been in the position of having to wait till pay-day. There must be many people who knew this state of financial insecurity but she found that she did not want to think about them. She looked forward rather selfishly to a quiet evening at home surrounded by familiar objects, perhaps reading or listening to a concert on the wireless. Her first impulse, therefore, when she saw the vicar's sister-in-law, Penelope, walking from the underground station just in front of her was to hurry past and pretend she hadn't seen her. But her natural good manners got the better of her and she found herself saying 'good evening' and reminding Penelope that they had met at the vicarage.
'Yes, of course I remember,' said Penelope. 'You live in one of those sweet little houses, like Mr Something-bird the anthropologist.'
'Mr Stonebird,' said Ianthe seriously, as if Penelope had really forgotten his name.
Penelope laughed. 'Does he take an active part in the life of the parish? Will he be at this meeting tonight?'
'Oh, of course — the meeting to discuss the Christmas bazaar,' said Ianthe, remembering now that it would have been impossible for her to have had the quiet evening she had planned. 'I shouldn't think he'll be there. Men don't usually take much part in these things,' she added, more from experience than from cynicism. 'And are you coming to help?'