An Unsuitable Attachment

by Barbara Pym

  'This is my aunt,' she said firmly, as a tall thin elderly woman came out on to the terrace to greet them.

  'How do you do,' said Ianthe, taking the hand extended to her. Sophia's aunt had rather mad-looking dark eyes and was dressed in black. There was a family likeness between her and Sophia. After so many years in Italy she spoke English with a trace of foreign accent.

  Ianthe was relieved to be shown to her room and left to unpack. She stepped out onto the little balcony rather nervously, for it did not seem to be very safe, and looked down over acres of lemon groves. The trees were covered with matting so that the fruit was almost hidden, but Ianthe could feel that there were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lemons hanging there among the leaves. All those lemons, she thought, Sister Dew would say that they almost gave one the creeps. Beyond the lemon groves she could see the sea which she found more reassuring because beyond it lay England, her little house, the library, and John.

  She began to unpack, taking out the photographs of her father and mother and placing them almost defiantly on the dressing table. Again she was reminded of the governesses of a hundred or even fifty years ago, coming to a strange country to live and work, and felt grateful that she would never have to experience the loneliness of that kind of life. A canon's daughter, left alone in the world but with enough money to live comfortably in her own house — it seemed a contradiction in terms.

  She sat down on the bed and looked around her. The room had a blue and white tiled floor and was sparsely, almost meanly, furnished. 'Spotlessly clean' was how one usually described such rooms, particularly if they were 'abroad', but this did not seem to be all that clean. Ianthe began to wonder why she had come here and her strangeness and homesickness returned in full force. Rome had seemed almost like England in a curious way, but here even Sophia seemed different — not the vicar's wife but a stranger who appeared to be quite at home, and could speak and understand the harsh unmusical Italian of the south. 'You must see the lemon groves,' she had said and Ianthe had been glad of an excuse to prolong her holiday, perhaps not to have to return to London just yet to face Mervyn's curiosity and questions.

  There was a knock on the door. Ianthe started up guiltily, unable to remember what one said in Italian.

  'It's only me,' said Sophia's voice. 'We're having drinks on the terrace when you're ready to come down. My aunt has a guest — an old friend of hers.'

  On the terrace chairs were set out and a dilapidated little white table, on which stood a bottle of vermouth, four glasses and a plate of sliced lemon. It looked like a picture in a glossy magazine, but there was something subtly wrong with it, for the terrace was shabby, the little statue too much broken, and the oleander not quite out. The people were not right, either — Sophia's aunt, black and sinister — almost raffish, with hair that was surely dyed; Sophia herself, thin and awkward, holding a capacious brown plastic handbag; Ianthe, neat and timid and too English-looking, in a blue-flowered cotton dress and a white orlon cardigan. A fourth person now joined them, and there were introductions and kissing of hands. Signor — Professore — Dottore — Ianthe could not quite make out which he was — perhaps all three — was a good-looking solid sort of man about sixty, tall for an Italian, wearing a suit of a particularly foreign-looking tweed, striped in such a way that it looked like the distinctively marked skin of some wild animal.

  'The Dottore has been much in Ethiopia,' declared Sophia's aunt, 'where he has made a study of Konso funeral statues.'

  Ianthe was used to meeting strangers and trying to put them at their ease. She had often introduced somebody at a parish function with a descriptive phrase, so that conversation might be encouraged. 'Mrs Noakes lives in Haslemere and does Jacobean embroidery' was perhaps only a little less daunting an introduction than the mention of Ethiopia and funeral statues. Ethiopia surely conjured up a good deal; there ought to be something for conversation there.

  She had no idea what Konso funeral statues were, but she could at least ask intelligent questions about them.

  'Miss Broome is an English lady from north-west London,' went on Miss Grandison precisely. 'She attends the church where my niece's husband is vicar.'

  So they confronted each other — Ianthe and the Dottore — north-west London and Ethiopia, 'the church where my niece's husband is vicar' and Konso funeral statues.

  'North-London,' said the Dottore. 'Highgate? No? Kensal Green, perhaps — a fine cemetery, I have heard, but alas I have never been there.'

  'Yes,' said Ianthe eagerly, relieved that a link had been established so easily. She had forgotten about Kensal Green, and had never dreamed — for who indeed would — that it could be useful to her socially in Italy.

  'You go there often, perhaps?' he asked.

  'Well, I have been,' Ianthe hesitated, 'but I don't go there very often.'

  'No,' said Sophia, breaking into the conversation. 'One could go — oh, every day — and yet one doesn't. Why doesn't one?' she asked extravagantly.

  'Well, we have our work to do,' said Ianthe a little reproachfully.

  'Yes, I suppose that's why. We have to spend our days doing dull unnecessary things rather than wandering about cemeteries — but that's what life is,' said Sophia.

  Ianthe looked at her in surprise and perhaps disapproval. Life surely was and ought to be 'doing dull necessary things rather than wandering about cemeteries' and Sophia, as a vicar's wife, should not speak as if she regretted it. Disconcerted, Ianthe sipped her vermouth, savouring the slight bitterness under the aromatic taste as if it were a medicine.

  'You like our weak Italian drinks?' asked the Dottore politely.

  'Oh, I do — this is delicious,' said Ianthe. it makes one feel really in Italy, somehow.'

  'More so than drinking "Scotch" in a bar in the Via Veneto,' said the Dottore scornfully.

  'But we didn't spend our time in Rome doing that,' said Sophia indignantly. 'We hardly saw the Via Veneto. Our Rome was very different, wasn't it, Ianthe.'

  Ianthe agreed it had been. Rome for her was a confused mixture of St Peter's and other churches, fountains, flower stalls and cafés, cats slinking in dark underground places and priests dashing along on scooters — perhaps no more the ideal picture of Rome than what one saw from the bar in the Via Veneto, where the Dottore imagined all the English tourists drinking whisky.

  After taking another glass of vermouth he left them. Ianthe wondered if he had patients to see to, though it seemed unlikely.

  'Has your aunt known him long?' she asked Sophia.

  'Oh, years — they were — perhaps still are . . .' she hesitated, thinking that Ianthe would not need her to go further.

  'Great friends, I suppose,' said Ianthe uncertainly.

  'The most, as Penny would say.' Sophia smiled and drained her glass.

  'And they have never thought of getting married?' Ianthe asked.

  'Who knows what their thoughts may have been,' said Sophia. 'Come along—I think we're going to eat now and I believe Anna has done us a fritto misto.'

  ***

  The next day Sophia took Ianthe for a walk. There was a villa she wanted her to see which had wonderful gardens and had once been the setting for an illicit love affair between well-known persons, now long dead. As they strolled among the cypresses Ianthe found herself remembering Sophia's aunt and the Dottore — surely Sophia could not really have meant that anything like that was going on between them. Yet why, otherwise, should the aunt have dyed her hair? In her confusion it was a relief to think of John, so far away in the library, perhaps even at this moment compiling a bibliography or assisting a reader with a sociological query.

  'Of course this magical setting is almost too obvious,' Sophia was saying. 'One can imagine the lovers strolling here only too well, but it amuses me to think of totally unsuitable and incongruous people here — parties of English schoolgirls or priests from a seminary, or even Basil Branche and his two elderly ladies. Of course in the season people like that do come here, but this morning
we seem to have it to ourselves. Perhaps the flowers are really at their best now — all the roses and these apricot pansies.'

  'Yes, they are most unusual,' said Ianthe a little stiffly.

  'Shall we sit down here?' asked Sophia, 'I always love this marble lion licking its cub — don't you find it charming and touching, somehow?'

  Ianthe was unequal to the marble lion and its cub, but she was glad to sit down and look down at the sea.

  'The "panorama" is almost too much at times, isn't it,' said Sophia in a slightly mocking tone.

  'Yes, it's overwhelming,' Ianthe admitted. 'In England we're starved of this kind of scenery — at least in our everyday lives — and I suppose not many Italians see this view, when you come to think of it.'

  'No — or they don't notice it,' Sophia agreed. 'Life everywhere is lived on a lower more humdrum plane. It's only when one comes to Italy that one imagines — oh such things!' She flung out her arms in an exaggerated gesture as if she would gather the sea and the lemon groves to her bosom. Then she laughed. 'I did hope that you and Penelope might find romance in Rome — perhaps in a sense you have.'

  'It's such a beautiful city — one couldn't help finding it romantic,' said Ianthe evasively.

  'Now you know that wasn't what I meant,' said Sophia, 'though I was surprised that you didn't want to stay longer in Rome, for quite another reason.'

  'Well, of course one could spend months in Rome and still find plenty to do and see.'

  'I expect Basil is missing you,' said Sophia.

  'Basil, missing me?' said Ianthe in surprise. 'I don't think he'll miss me in particular, though I think he enjoyed meeting our party.'

  'But you do like him, don't you?' Sophia persisted.

  'How funny you should ask that,' said Ianthe, 'because Penelope asked me almost the same question.'

  'Oh?' Penny never told me, Sophia thought. 'You must think we're a couple of matchmakers, like . . .' she paused, thinking she might bring in some respectable literary allusion to make the whole thing somehow 'better'. But Ianthe did not give her time for this because she said quickly, 'You surely couldn't imagine that I should want to marry Basil Branche?'

  'No?' said Sophia doubtfully. 'But then how can another person ever tell — you might have been in love with him or wanted to marry him.'

  'Well, as it happens you've guessed the wrong person,' said Ianthe.

  Sophia realized that she had been snubbed, but remembering her duty to her sister she was determined to persevere.

  'Then there could be a right person?' she went on. 'I mean, there is someone you love?'

  They were leaning on a stone balustrade, looking out towards the sea. Why shouldn't she tell Sophia, Ianthe thought, the beauty of the view and its unreality overwhelming her.

  'Yes, there is someone,' she said. 'Somebody at the library.'

  'But how suitable — that librarian, I suppose, the one who came to the Christmas Bazaar?' Sophia sounded almost jubilant with relief that it was not Rupert Stonebird Ianthe loved.

  'Mervyn Cantrell? Oh no — not him!'

  'That's a blessing, in a way,' said Sophia. 'I didn't think it could be him. Librarians aren't really very lovable sort of people, are they.'

  'Oh, I don't know — I suppose some of them are, must be, when one comes to think about it,' said Ianthe, feeling that Sophia's generalization was difficult to comment on. 'And this — er person is a sort of librarian.' Ianthe's lips curved into a smile.

  'A sort of librarian,' repeated Sophia dubiously, for that sounded somewhat disturbing, almost sinister.

  'Yes, he was at the Bazaar too — it's John Challow.'

  Ianthe experienced the relief and pleasure of having spoken his name which is familiar to women in love.

  'Oh, the other one — the good-looking dark young man? But surely . . .' Sophia broke off.

  'Surely what?'

  'He isn't the sort of person one would marry?'

  'I don't know . . .' stammered Ianthe, 'I haven't... it hasn't ... I mean, got to that stage yet, and I don't suppose it ever will.'

  'Oh, I see,' said Sophia. 'You just love him.' Of course, she thought, Ianthe might well love somebody in a sort of general Christian way. She remembered some lines from a hymn

  For the love of human kind

  Brother, sister, parent, child . . .

  There was no mention of unrelated handsome young men there, indeed it had always seemed hard to Sophia that one's love was to be limited in this way. Yet for Ianthe it seemed ideal.

  'I rather feel that you're one of those women who shouldn't marry,' Sophia said.

  'I don't suppose I shall now,' said Ianthe. 'But of course one never knows — people do marry quite late in life.'

  'I always think that's such a mistake,' said Sophia. 'You seem to me to be somehow destined not to marry,' she went on, perhaps too enthusiastically. 'I think you'll grow into one of those splendid spinsters — oh, don't think I mean it nastily or cattily — who are pillars of the Church and whom the Church certainly couldn't do without.'

  Ianthe was silent, as well she might be before this daunting description. Yet until lately she too had seen herself like this.

  'What about your sister,' she said at last, 'will she marry?'

  'Oh, Penny will marry,' said Sophia confidently, 'she's made for it. In fact,' she added, with a laugh, 'I've arranged that she shall marry Rupert Stonebird.'

  Ianthe looked surprised. 'But she may not want to — or he may not. I don't think one can — or should — arrange people's lives for them like that.'

  'No, you're right — one shouldn't. Do you know, I often ask myself, did I do wrong to deprive Faustina of the opportunity of motherhood? You knew that she'd had the operation?'

  'The operation?' repeated Ianthe stupidly. 'Oh, you mean your cat can't have kittens.' Somehow the mention of Faustina had turned her against Sophia; she remembered another time when the cat had been brought into a serious discussion. On occasions like this she found herself disliking Sophia; such lack of proportion, frivolity almost, were highly unsuitable in a vicar's wife.

  They turned away from the view as if by mutual consent and began to walk out of the gardens. Ianthe suddenly realized the full significance of having told Sophia of her love for John. Perhaps it had been a mistake to confide in her.

  'Of course you won't say anything about . . .' she began.

  'What you've told me? Oh, my dear' — Sophia took her arm impulsively — 'Of course I won't.'

  Nevertheless her thoughts returned to Ianthe later that day when, at the end of their evening meal, she untied one of the little bundles of lemon leaves and began to remove leaf after leaf until the fragrant raisins were revealed at the centre. This process surely had something in common with uncovering the secrets of the heart, as Ianthe, aided by Sophia's probings, had uncovered hers. This would not have happened in north-west London over a cup of tea, Sophia felt. Perhaps it had taken Italy to show Ianthe that she loved this young man, though — since she was destined not to marry — it was a love that could hardly find fulfilment.

  Having settled Ianthe, Sophia turned her thoughts to the others. What had the visit to Italy done for them? she wondered. Sister Dew had tasted osso buco and Chianti and found them as good as savoury rice and Wincarnis; she had also been carried shoulder-high by Italians. Edwin and Daisy Pettigrew had studied the life and conditions of Roman domestic animals and brought sustenance to some of them. Penelope had 'seen more' of Rupert — had even had some kind of a quarrel with him, which was surely better than going on in a neutral humdrum way. As for Mark and herself, she supposed people might say that they had had a 'second honeymoon', away from the cares of the parish. And now here she was alone, unwrapping another little bundle of lemon leaves to reach the deliciously flavoured raisins at the heart, and feeling that this trivial delight was almost enough to have brought away from a visit to Italy.

  18

  This Library is for the use of bona fide Scholars and may only be
used at the discretion of the Librarian.

  Ianthe stared at the repressive new notice which confronted her on her first morning back at work. It was written in red ink in Mervyn's italic hand and made her realize as nothing else could have done that she was now back in the closed world of the library after the open promise of life in Italy. And yet, when she was feeling homesick, this was the world she had thought of so longingly.

  Mervyn was in one of his bad moods and his first words to her could hardly have been less welcoming.

  'Nobody need think they're indispensable,' he declared, 'especially in a library. The work just has to go on and it does go on. Books are written and published; they find their way into libraries and are catalogued,' he continued, as if he were reciting a psalm.

  'Then they're put on the shelves and forgotten,' said John sarcastically.

  'Well, some books are destined never to be read,' said Mervyn. 'It's the natural order of things.'

  Like the women who are destined never to marry, thought Ianthe, remembering Sophia's words to her in the gardens at Ravello.

  There had been something almost cruel in the way she had spoken and Ianthe felt that she had left Italy liking Sophia a little less than before. Yet a kind of defiance had risen up in her as if she might yet prove her wrong.

  'I'm sure you and John and Shirley managed perfectly well without me,' she said quietly. 'And after all I haven't been away very long.'

  'You've put on a bit of weight, haven't you,' said Mervyn cattily, it must be the pasta you've eaten-all that cannelloni.'

  'It suits her to be fatter,' said John. 'She was a little too thin before.'

  His tone sounded almost fond which gave Ianthe a glow of pleasure and made up for the rather off-hand way he had greeted her when they had first met that morning. Not that she should have expected anything else, for if there had been any change it had been in her own feelings towards him and he was not to know how much she had looked forward to seeing him. Yet that first sight of him had been a shock to her, for she had forgotten not only how good-looking he was but how different from the men she had been seeing on her holiday and indeed all her life — different from Mark Ainger and Basil Branche, from Edwin Pettigrew and Rupert Stonebird, and from all the ranks of clergymen and schoolmasters stretching back into the past like pale imitations of men, it now seemed.