An Unsuitable Attachment

by Barbara Pym

  When lunchtime came she hoped that he might ask her to go out with him, but he made no move and hurried off at half-past five saying that he was going to see a man about a second-hand car — the kind of thing that sounded almost as if it might not be true. So, feeling rather cast down, she began to pack up her work and prepare to go home. Just as she was ready to leave Mervyn came into the room and asked if she had any plans for the evening.

  'I was just going home,' she said flatly.

  'But have you planned your evening meal?' Mervyn asked.

  'Not really — there's a tin of pork luncheon meat I opened yesterday,' she said. 'I thought I'd finish that up with salad.'

  'Pork luncheon meat and salad — ugh . . .' Mervyn shuddered. 'In that case I think it's my duty as well as my pleasure to take you out for a meal tonight.'

  Ianthe was so taken aback — for Mervyn had never before asked her out for a meal — that it was a few seconds before she could answer him.

  'That would be nice,' she said, 'but aren't you going home this evening as usual?'

  'No — Mother is spending a few days with a friend at Sittingbourne, so I'm on my own and making the most of it.'

  Ianthe supposed that she ought to feel flattered that he had thought of asking her out to dinner, but just as some women rate themselves too highly so she undervalued herself and thought only that it seemed pathetic that 'making the most of it' could mean something as dull as taking a woman colleague out to dinner. But of course his pleasure would be in the food rather than in her company, she thought.

  'I suppose these clothes will be all right?' she said. 'I hadn't expected to be going out.'

  'Oh, a woman always looks suitably dressed in a grey costume,' he said, in a way which did not add to her feeling of gaiety. 'Anyway, we're not going to the Caprice or the Savoy. I'm afraid I can't quite rise to that, but a friend of mine has opened a new restaurant in South Ken. and I think the food should be worth eating there.'

  They took the Underground and arrived at the restaurant at about half-past six.

  'Of course, it's unfashionably early to eat, I know,' said Mervyn, 'but they start serving dinners from six o'clock onwards, life being what it is. Shall we go to this table in the corner?'

  They sat down and Ianthe took off her gloves and looked around her a little apprehensively. The room was papered in a design of fishing boats and nets which did not seem altogether appropriate for the early diners scattered at the tables round the walls. The tablecloths were dark green and the china white. Ianthe commented on this rather striking arrangement.

  'Oh, a friend of Eric's did the décor,' said Mervyn. 'At least he was a friend but they've split up now.'

  'How sad,' she said, then felt she had expressed herself too strongly.

  'Well, these things happen, don't they,' said Mervyn, studying the menu. 'Now I can recommend the pâté because Eric makes it all himself from pig's liver and fat bacon.'

  Ianthe felt sickened by this description and chose soup instead. Afterwards they were to have some special lobster dish.

  'Fish is one of his things,' Mervyn explained. 'Of course he's a Catholic — a convert — very devout, so that may have something to do with it.'

  'Oh, surely not,' said Ianthe, rather shocked.

  'As a matter of fact it was he who got that bouillabaisse flown over from Marseilles on Ash Wednesday for that clergyman I was telling you about.'

  'An Anglican clergyman?' asked Ianthe. 'It sounds rather unlikely.'

  'Well, I can't remember now,' said Mervyn impatiently. 'I expect Eric'll come and have a word with us later on, so you can ask him if you like.'

  The food was certainly very good and Ianthe was surprised to find herself enjoying the meal, for she had not imagined herself being able to eat anything at all. Conversation was not difficult because Mervyn kept up a continuous commentary on the food itself and recalled dishes he had eaten on other occasions. While Ianthe listened to him it occurred to her that Mervyn was one of the few people to whom she could talk about John and she was just planning how she could introduce his name into the conversation when a man in a white coat and chef's hat came up to their table and Mervyn introduced him as his friend Eric. He was about Mervyn's age, rather fat and wearing a gold bracelet on one wrist, which struck Ianthe as unusual for a man. He had a slight Cockney accent and was not quite Mervyn's 'class', she felt. He did not look at all like her idea of a devout Catholic convert. After he had received their compliments on the dinner he leaned over towards Mervyn and said in a confidential tone, 'I was sorry to hear about your mum.'

  'My mum?' Mervyn repeated the word — unsuitable surely, when applied to a man of his age.

  'Yes — I heard she's passed on. I am sorry, knowing how devoted you were to her.'

  'But my mum hasn't passed on,' said Mervyn, with a rather inappropriate little laugh, 'she's very much with us — staying with some spiritualist friends at Sittingbourne at the moment.'

  'Sittingbourne? Well, I never! Then it must have been somebody else's mum that passed on. Now whose mum could it have been?'

  They were all three silent before the ridiculous question.

  'Oh well,' said Eric at last, 'it'll come to me whose mum it was — probably in the middle of the night. Does that ever happen to you?' he asked suddenly, turning to Ianthe.

  'Yes, one does sometimes remember things then,' she said. 'Forgotten names or quotations do seem to come back.'

  When Eric had left them to talk to friends at another table Mervyn said, 'Funny him saying that about my mother, wasn't it. I hope it isn't a portent or anything.'

  'Oh, don't be silly,' said Ianthe briskly, for she had had the same feeling. 'Things like that don't happen. Besides, your mother is at Sittingbourne.'

  'Yes, of course she is.' Mervyn took up the bottle of hock they had been drinking and refilled their glasses.

  'I like this wine,' said Ianthe politely.

  'Yes, I thought you might. I hoped you would — that's why I chose it.'

  He was talking almost like John, she thought. Yet it was only natural that a good meal with a pleasant wine should soften his usual sharpness. Had he really chosen it to please her, though? Ianthe sat with her head bent, fingering the stem of her glass, uncertain how to take this implied compliment.

  'Of course,' Mervyn went on, 'my mother won't live forever. I shall have to face up to that.'

  'Yes, of course,' said Ianthe, 'but she's in good health, isn't she.'

  'Oh yes, Mother's as right as a trivet,' he said awkwardly, 'but after all death comes to everyone.'

  'Of course . . .'

  'I mean, your mother died — passed on,' he added, as if the expression needed to be softened for a woman.

  'Yes, but she wasn't very strong and older than your mother, I think.'

  'I expect you were very lonely at first, until you got your lovely little house and all your nice things around you.'

  Ianthe hardly knew what to say to this. 'I suppose we're all alone, in a sense,' she brought out at last.

  'If my mother died, we should both be alone,' Mervyn declared.

  'Yes, I suppose we would be,' said Ianthe in a puzzled tone. 'But people's parents are dying all the time — people of our age, I mean — there must be quite a lot of us living alone.'

  'Supposing we were to join forces,' said Mervyn almost eagerly, it would be silly keeping on two houses.'

  'Do you mean we should live together?' she asked, thinking that she must have misunderstood him.

  'Well, not in sin — I wasn't suggesting that.' He giggled. 'Get married — that's what I meant, of course.'

  Ianthe felt herself go hot and cold with surprise and horror. That Mervyn of all people should make such a suggestion!

  'But I couldn't marry you!' she burst out.

  'And why not, might I ask?' he said petulantly, almost nastily.

  'We don't love each other.'

  'Perhaps not, but there's marriage and marriage, if you see what I mean.
'

  Ianthe thought she did see but there was no comment she could make.

  'We get on well together,' Mervyn continued, 'and we've many interests in common, after all. The library . . .' He paused, for that indeed was something to contemplate in solemn silence. 'And we both like nice furniture.'

  'Whose house would we live in?' asked Ianthe.

  'Oh, yours!' he answered without hesitation. 'Ours isn't at all nice and besides it's only leasehold.'

  Ianthe sat in a dismayed silence. Then she remembered that the whole idea was a fantasy, for his mother was still comfortably alive in Sittingbourne. There was no cause for alarm or the slightest agitation.

  The waiter came to the table with more coffee.

  'I like this restaurant,' said Ianthe in a relieved tone, grateful to be able to change the subject.

  But Mervyn was not to be diverted yet. 'You said you couldn't marry me,' he persisted, 'as if you had somebody else in mind.'

  'Oh, I didn't mean anything like that — you misunderstood me,' she said quickly. 'I don't suppose I shall ever get married.'

  She nerved herself to look at him sitting opposite to her — fair-haired with distinguished-looking features, light-coloured horn-rimmed glasses, neat clothes . . . She supposed she must regard him differently now; her feelings towards him could never be quite the same again. Had he always loved her? she wondered. No — she was honest enough not to flatter herself in that way. It was after seeing her house and furniture — the Hepplewhite chairs and the Pembroke table — that his feelings had changed. She only hoped this evening wasn't going to make any difference to their relationship at the library, which had always been quite a pleasant one.

  'That's not what John thinks,' said Mervyn, much to her surprise for she had not expected any further comment on her statement. 'He's determined that if anyone marries you it shall be him,' Mervyn went on, in a way that might have been serious or joking. 'I suppose he sees himself in your house too.'

  Was it only for her house and furniture that she was to be loved? Ianthe wondered, hardly knowing how to feel about Mervyn's revelation of John's intentions. She had not imagined him coveting the Hepplewhite chairs.

  'Seriously though, you want to be careful of John,' he said.

  'I shall behave just as I always do,' she said stiffly to hide her feelings of disquiet. 'Oh, hullo, Penelope,' she said, seeing Penelope Grandison and another girl sitting at a table near the door. 'I didn't realize you were here.'

  'No, I didn't see you either,' said Penelope gruffly, for she felt deeply the shame of being caught dining out with a woman friend when Ianthe was with a man. To make matters worse, the restaurant had turned out to be rather more expensive than she had bargained for. Her friend Jocasta had suggested it as she had thought it would be 'fun'. It was disconcerting to meet Ianthe of all people under such circumstances.

  'I expect we'll be meeting at St Basil's some time,' said Ianthe in a perfunctory social way, for she did not want to stay and make conversation with Penelope and her friend. She wanted to go home and brood over what Mervyn had said about John. Could it be that he really did want to marry her, and what did Mervyn mean by saying that she should be careful of him.

  It was not until the small hours of the morning when she was lying awake that she remembered something. Perhaps at this moment Eric was also remembering whose mum it was who had passed on. Ianthe remembered that she had lent John some money when he was ill and that he had never paid her back.

  19

  Rupert Stonebird stood in the hall looking at the invitation which had just come by post. It was to a garden party, to be held in the grounds of the anthropological research centre of which his friend — if such she could be called — Esther Clovis was the secretary. 'Dr R. Stonebird and guest', it said. 'Dress optional'. This last would be one of Esther's touches, he decided, with its implication that anything from nakedness upwards would be acceptable.

  And guest, he pondered, going into his study. Little Penelope Grandison, perhaps; here would be a chance to atone for whatever he had done to make her cry on the Spanish Steps that evening some weeks ago. The stupid thing was, though, that he hadn't been in touch with her since the visit to Italy. Several times he had thought of asking her out to dinner but something had always happened to prevent it. He had not seen Ianthe either, except to say good-morning in the road. She, of course, would be another person he might ask to the garden party, an easier and more suitable choice than Penelope. And yet, need he ask either of them? Couldn't he go alone or break away from St Basil's and ask somebody unconnected with the parish? He toyed with the idea for a moment, but the uncomfortable conscience he seemed to have developed lately would keep returning to Penelope, and in the end he found himself calling in at the vicarage to ask Sophia for her sister's telephone number.

  He found Sophia in the garden with Faustina. The cat was lying stretched out in the sun, her creamy underside exposed for stroking. Sophia was beside her in a deckchair, a piece of petit-point on her lap though her hands were idle.

  'Was she glad to see you back?' Rupert asked, wishing he could remember the cat's name.

  'I like to think so,' said Sophia, 'but one can't assume anything with Faustina. And have you recovered from Italy?'

  'Recovered? I suppose so. I managed to do some useful reading in the Vatican Library,' said Rupert, more primly than he had intended.

  'That's very good then,' said Sophia. 'I was just thinking the other day that we must all have brought something away — impossible to go to Italy and not do that — but your benefit does seem to have been rather more tangible — to have been in the Vatican Library and read all those books.'

  Was she making fun of him? he wondered, glancing at her quickly. But Sophia, lying back in her chair, her eyes closed against the evening sun, looked perfectly serious, even a little sad.

  'I came to ask for Penelope's telephone number,' he went on. 'So stupid — I don't seem to have it. I wondered if she'd come to an anthropological garden party with me.'

  'I'm sure she'd love to,' said Sophia. 'The only thing is though that she probably wouldn't be able to get away from work if it's a weekday.'

  'Oh, I hadn't thought of that. Still, I can try — if she can't manage the garden party perhaps she'd have dinner with me one evening,' he said quickly, feeling Sophia's eyes on him. Did she know about the tears on the Spanish Steps? he wondered. He could not meet her glance but looked instead at Faustina, who glared at him disconcertingly.

  Sophia gave him the telephone number and he hurried away, not wishing to reveal his alternative plan to her, for it seemed now as if he would have to ask Ianthe. Yet she also worked, and it was just as likely that she too would be unable to get the afternoon off. The whole scheme was turning out to be more complicated than he had bargained for, perhaps too difficult to be carried out. All the same later that evening he went to the telephone and dialled Penelope's number, not sure what he was going to say.

  She did not recognize his voice and when he announced himself there was a perceptible stiffening in her manner, almost a chilling of the air that he could sense coming at him over the wires all the way from South Kensington to north-west London.

  'I can't get an afternoon off in the middle of the week,' she said brusquely.

  'Oh, I'm sorry — I'd hoped perhaps you might be able to . . .'

  'No, I can't, and I've just had this holiday in Rome.'

  'Yes, of course.'

  The conversation flagged. Ask her out to dinner, he told himself, but somehow he could not get the words out and then the line started to crackle as if it were a long distance call over oceans and continents.

  'We must have a talk sometime,' he said, trying to be cosy, but she did not hear properly and put the receiver down thinking he had said 'walk'. She saw herself tramping over Hampstead Heath or Richmond Park in unsuitable shoes — for one just didn't have shoes for that kind of thing. He was like an old-fashioned undergraduate, she thought in disgust, offering
her that kind of entertainment. He might at least have asked her out to a meal. In her disappointment and misery Penelope flung herself on the divan among the rose-coloured velvet cushions and lay sulkily eating a Mars bar she had happened to find conveniently to hand among the jumble of things on her bedside table. She was too depressed to reflect that his having asked her to the garden party was better than nothing.

  Ianthe, rather to Rupert's surprise, was able to come to the garden party with him. She was glad to be taken out of herself, to get away from the library and her own thoughts which were a miserable confusion of Mervyn's proposal, John's possible feelings for her and the remembrance of the money he had borrowed and not paid back. It was a fortunate coincidence that she should have been entitled to take an afternoon off because she was due to work the next Saturday morning.

  Rupert called for her at her house. It was a fine afternoon, and Ianthe's blue and white silk dress and jacket and large-brimmed blue straw hat brought back to him memories of his mother at parish garden parties of his childhood. But was this quite as it should be? he asked himself anxiously — that Ianthe should remind him of his mother? It was a comforting rather than a promising beginning to the afternoon.

  'I'll ring for a taxi,' he said.

  'Oh, do we need a taxi?' said Ianthe. 'It's such a fine afternoon and a bus will take us all the way, surely?'

  'Yes, of course — but I thought . . .' he began, then realized that, on the whole, women should be encouraged not to take taxis.

  'I always like riding on the top of a bus in the middle of the afternoon,' said Ianthe. 'It seems like a holiday when one's usually working.'

  'Yes, I suppose it does. I don't have any set hours, except for lectures and seminars.'