by Barbara Pym
‘This place is rather good,’ she said, stopping outside a reasonably modest-looking restaurant which had a menu up outside. Reading it, Digby noticed with relief that some of the prices were modest too. He hoped Mark would have the sense to order Chipolata Sausage Toad (2,‘2) or Braised Tripe (2,’-) and not go off the deep end with Steak and Chips (5,‘6). He supposed Clovis and Lydgate would want that; they looked like the kind of women who would eat red meat, he thought resentfully.
Inside, the restaurant was full of business men who were joking with the waitresses. Mark cunningly chose a table served by a particularly pretty girl, in case, he thought vaguely, there was any difficulty about the bill. She might let them go away and bring the money back later.- He could leave his watch as security.
‘Now,’ said Miss Clovis, a little too quickly for Digby, who had been going to say the same thing, ‘ what are we all going to have?’
‘I expect you’d like some soup or hors-d’ceuvres first, wouldn’t you?’ suggested Mark smoothly.
‘Well, I don’t know, really. What artyou going to have?’ She turned to Mark who had been studying the menu intently. He had done even better than Digby and had discovered, right at the bottom, Macaroni Cheese (1,‘9). ‘I don’t eat meat or fish,’ he said, ‘so my choice won’t be very helpful.’
Digby looked a little surprised.
‘Are you a vegetarian?’ asked Miss Lydgate in an interested tone. ‘I have great sympathy with those who are, though I am not one myself.’
‘No, not exactly,’ mumbled Mark. ‘I have eaten meat. I am not what you’d call a big eater, really.’
fOh, we are,’ said Miss Clovis cheerfully. ‘I think I should like the steak and chips and perhaps another vegetable too, runner beans, I think.’
‘Yes, so will I,’ said Miss Lydgate. ‘What is the secret of making CHIPS?’ Her normally loud voice seemed to have increased in volume so that it could be heard throughout the restaurant. ‘Potatoes are OVAL or ROUND. Chips are RECTANGULAR. I don’t see at all how it is done.’
‘I think you cut the potatoes in thick slices and then into strips,’ said Digby. ‘I have watched my mother do it.’
‘So that is it. I must remember that—first in thick slices, then in strips. Now what arejou going to eat?’
‘Oh, braised tripe for me,’ said Digby hurrying over the words distastefullv.
‘Well, I really think you boys ought to have something more nourishing after the hard work you had moving that sofa,’ said Miss Clovis, ‘bat I suppose you know best. Now, what about something to drink.’
‘Oh, yes, what would you like?’ asked Digby politely.
‘Guinness is very strengthening, let’s have that.’
‘I think I should prefer a glass of lemon squash,’ said Miss Lydgate.
This was a relief, if only a slight one, Digby felt, as he assured Miss Clovis that he and Mark never drank in the middle of the day.
‘I feel one shouldn’t go into learned sociétés or libraries smelling of drink,’ said Mark, at his most prim. ‘It might create the wrong impression.’
‘Oh, I hadn’t thought of that,’ said Miss Clovis, sipping her dark foamy drink. ‘I don’t suppose anyone would notice. Of course it’s all right for librarians to smell of drink,’ she added jovially.
‘Of course,’ said Digby enthusiastically. ‘But you see we are in a different position, more on show, as it were. We feel that we must be on our best behaviour.’
‘I am sure you are always well-behaved,’ said Miss Clovis with unusual warmth. ‘You were most helpful to me this morning.’
The young men looked pleased. They all finished their first course and ordered the next. Miss Clovis and Miss Lydgate had Apple Pie with Ice Cream; Mark and Digby declared that they were passionately fond of Jelly. Afterwards the ladies had coffee but the young men declined it.
‘It might keep us awake in Dr. Vere’s lecture,’ joked Digby.
‘Oh, that would never do!’ chortled Miss Clovis.
The bill was brought and Digby took out his pound note, but Miss Clovis pushed it back into his hand and snatched the bill from him.
‘I shouldn’t dream of letting you pay,’ she said indignandy. “This is to be our treat, isn’t it, Gertrude?’
‘Certainly,’ said Miss Lydgate. ‘Young men shouldn’t be expected to take middle-aged women out to lunch.’
‘Well, it’s very kind of you,’ said Digby, not quite knowing what attitude to take.’
‘We have had the pleasure of your company,’ said Mark with an effort. ‘But we really did mean to take you out,’ he added, thinking of the three shillings in his pocket.
They walked out into the street together. It appeared then that Miss Clovis and Miss Lydgate had some shopping to do, so that Mark and Digby were soon left alone.
‘Quite a new side of you came out today,’ said Digby, turning to his friend with a laugh. “The abstainer from drink and flesh foods. A rather noble character, I feel.’
‘Yes, things didn’t go quite as we’d meant them to, did they? Still, it wasn’t really our fault and I think we left quite a good general impression. I felt almost that a joking relationship had been established.’
‘Yes, there could be such a thing between a young man and a middle-aged woman, but it would need careful handling. I rather wish I had known beforehand that they were going to pay for the lunch, though.’
‘Yes, I don’t think I should have chosen macaroni cheese and jelly, if I’d known that.’
‘Well,’ said Digby, pausing outside the decorated glass door of a saloon bar, ‘we’ve still got the money we should have spent on our lunch if we’d had any.’
They were soon swallowed up into the warm smoky atmosphere, and decided, half an hour later, that perhaps it wasn’t worth going to Vere’s lecture after all.
CHAPTER NINE
Tom, the bay leaf I’m putting in this bœuf à la mode was plucked from a tree growing in the garden of Thomas Hardy’s birthplace,’ Catherine called from the kitchen. She did not really expect an answer and indeed none came from Tom, sitting hunched over his typewriter, so she went on, almost to herself, ‘I wonder if it’s wrong of me to use it for cooking? Perhaps I ought to have pressed it in Jude the Obscure, or the poems, that would have been more suitable. Those sad couples he writes about seem to me a bit like us, sometimes. I wonder if, when I’m old, you’ll offer me the hand of friendship down life’s sunless hill, or whatever it was. Will you?’ she raised her voice.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, sweetie,’ said Tom in an abstracted tone.
Catherine turned back silently to her beef. Oh, what joy to get a real calf’s foot from the butcher, she thought, and not to have to cheat by putting in gelatine. The small things of life were often so much bigger than the great things, she decided, wondering how many writers and philosophers had said this before her, the trivial pleasures like cooking, one’s home, little poems especially sad ones, solitary walks, funny things seen and overheard. Tom’s long absence abroad had turned her in upon herself and her own resources which had always been considerable. Their eighteen months apart had made them grow more like themselves, so that now they seemed almost more like strangers than when they had first met.
She took a glass of sherry to him. ‘There’s something to encourage you,’ she said. ‘How does it go?’
‘Not very well.’
‘I’m sorry. It seems like some dreadful elderly relative doesn’t it, your thesis, always writh us. Won’t it be lovely when it’s finished? We can say it’s dead—Called to a Higher Sphere, perhaps—and give it a splendid funeral.’
‘Catty, must you always make everything into a joke?’
‘No, I’m very naughty,’ she said seriously. ‘I do sympathize really, you know.’
Tom got up from the desk and began to walk about the room. ‘The worst of it is that I think I’ve lost my faith,’ he said.
Immediately there sprang into Catherine’s
mind the picture—surely a sepia daguerrotype—of a high-collared, bewhiskered Victorian clergyman, his beliefs undermined by Darwin and the rationalists. But she tried to shut it away and said reassuringly, ‘I didn’t think you had any faith, at least not the kind one loses, so I shouldn’t worry if I were you.’
‘I mean my faith in anthropology,’ he said rather impatiently.
‘Oh, that’ The words were out before she could stop them. ‘But what is faith in anthropology -I didn’t know it was the kind of thing people had.’
‘Well, perhaps not quite in the usual sense. But I just wonder sometimes what’s the use of it all. Who will benefit from my work, what exactly is the point of my researches? Are my people out there going to be any happier because I happen to have found ouc that they have a double descent system? Who will be any better off for my having discovered new facts about the importance of the mother’s brother?’ Tom stopped in his pacing and stood over Catherine almost accusingly.
She felt then the general uselessness of women if they cannot understand or reverence a man’s work, or even if they can.
‘You make me feel like something in Milton,’ she said defiandy. ‘Towering over me like that. It’s like—oh, what? Paradise Lost, I suppose. Adam and Eve.’
‘You’ve never even fried to understand,’ he said in a detached tone, which was more hurtful than if he had sounded angry.
‘Oh, Tom,’ she protested. ‘You know I tried to read those books, but I couldn’t get through them. I suppose I was too stupid,’ she added on a surprised note. ‘But obviously it’s the right thing for you.’
‘I’m not so sure any more. I sometimes feel I should have stayed at home and helped Giles and my mother to run the place. That would at least have been useful.’
They sat down on the divan together and Catherine put her arms around him, wondering what Victorian wives and mothers had done with their menfolk who had lost their faith. What had they said to them? Matthew Arnold, she thought idly, the last lines of Dover Beach coming into her mind.
‘Ah love, let us be true to one another’ she said softly.
Tom looked down at her, a little startled. He had certainly been seeing a good deal of Deirdre lately but nothing had really come of it so far.
‘What makes you say that?’ he asked.
‘I was quoting. You probably remember how it goes on, something about the world having neither joy nor love, nor peace, nor help for pain, And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where igporant armies clash by night,’
‘Oh, I see,’ he said inadequately. ‘But I don’t think your Victorian poets are much help these days.’
‘That’s not a comfortable poem, though,’ she said impatiently. ‘It isn’t meant to be. People have so many wrong ideas about the Victorians.’
‘All right, then,’ he smiled, ‘tell me the right ones.’
‘Shall we go out and have a meal?’ Catherine suggested, feeling that the Victorian wives and mothers would surely have provided a good meal for their doubting men, if nothing else ‘The bœuf à la mode won’t be ready for a few hours.’
‘Yes, a good idea. A lot of food and drink.’
It was a successful and pleasant meal, eaten at the little Cypriot restaurant in the street opposite. Catherine found herself remembering it a few evenings later, when she was coming home, walking slowly because her string bag was laden with exotic foods she had bought in Soho. She decided to go into the restaurant for a bottle of wine. It was early for an evening meal and the room was nearly empty except for some dark-haired women with gold teeth talking Greek, and a couple, deep in conversation, sitting at the table she and Tom usually had.
‘Good evening, Mrs. Katerina,’ said the old fat waiter. ‘Mr. Tom is here early tonight.’
‘Yes, isn’t he,’ said Catherine. Now that she had recognized Tom and Deirdre over in the corner, she felt almost calm and not really surprised. She had suspected that they did sometimes have meals together, and why shouldn’t they? She stood very still, waiting for her bottle of wine to be brought, noticing Tom’s hand on the checked table-cloth stained with other people’s meals, with Deirdre’s lying comfortingly on top of it.
He is telling her about his lost faith, Catherine thought, and she, poor child, is wondering what on earth she can say to him. How awful if she too is quoting Dover Beach—Tom will think all women are alike. But did girls of nineteen know Matthew Arnold—was he much read nowadays?
The waiter brought à bottle of the cheap red wine Catherine usually had. She took it absent-mindedly and offered him a ten-shilling note.
Deirdre’s hand still lay on Tom’s; their moussaka would be getting cold, Catherine thought, and then pulled herself up, horrified at the sardonic detachment with which she had been watching them. When her change was brought, she hurried away and back into the flat, where she put down her shopping and the wine and then ran out again with no very clear idea of where she was going. I’m not one of those excellent women, who can just go home and eat a boiled egg and make a cup of tea and be very splendid, she thought, but how useful it woulu be if I were! She thought wistfully of herself like this. But surely there was, or ought to be, some cosy woman friend, some old school contemporary to whom she could run? Somebody who lived in a bed-sitting-room, who would bustle about making scrambled eggs and coffee on the gas-ring and then sit ready to receive confidences? Catherine thought regretfully of all the people she had meant to keep in touch with, and rather shamefacedly of others whom she had rejected as being dull. Somehow the women she met in connection with her work weren’t the cosy, coffee on the gas-ring type, and they were nearly all married anyway. She imagined that Deirdre’s mother and aunt would be comforting sort of people, but she could hardly go there. The best she could do was to turn her steps towards a vast eating-place where people were helping themselves to a curious variety of foods, for it was really too late for tea and too early for supper. And yet how many souls—she thought of them in this hymn-like phrase—seemed to be eating here at this unusual time.
Catherine got herself a tray of oddments, welsh rarebit and bread-and-butter and a little cake shaped like a boat, and sat down at a table with two women. She allowed herself to get carried gently along on the flow of their conversation, which was unceasing.
They evidently worked in the same office, for they began by discussing the boss, how he came in and expected something to be done by half past five, which was naturally impossible. Catherine imagined that bosses were always discussed like this; she was more interested in the shortcomings of somebody who had just left and whose filing system was impossible for anybody else to understand.
‘Just you guess what she’s filed it under,’ said one in a tone of triumphant anticipation.
‘I really can’t think,’ said the other, pandering to her friend.
‘M. M for Miscellaneous, I suppose! Did you ever hear anything so silly?’
‘I always believe in plenty of cross references. When I leave there won’t be the slightest difficulty in finding things,’
Ah, but there will, Catherine thought. Understanding somebody else’s filing system is just about as easy as really getting to know another human being. Just when you think you know everything about them, there’s the impossible happening, the M for Miscellaneous when you naturally assumed it would be under something else.
Now, she realized, they had gone on to another subject, an ecclesiastical matter, it seemed.
‘The minister’s quite ayoung man and doesn’t always dress like a clergyman.’ This came from the woman Catherine had christened black-beede; the other was leopard-hat.
‘Of course,’ black-beede went on, ‘the other church, that’s the Anglo-Catholic one, has an old man as vicar. It’s a pity the Church of England doesn’t get some of these young men, they all seem to be old, haven’t you noticed.’
‘Well, youth isn’t everything,’ saia leopard-hat. ‘The young ones are sometimes
a bit awkward. And even the old ones must have been young once.’
‘Oh, yes, I’ll grant you that. They must have been young. What I want to know is, what happens to the ones who’ve just been ordained? Who gets themV Black-beede’s voice had risen indignantly.
An electric organ, which Catherine had not noticed before, now began to be played by a capable-looking woman in a tailored suit. The sounds which came out of it, purring, treacly and at the same time bouncy, mingled with the flat voices of black-beede and leopard-hat in a nightmarish way.
Catherine could bear it no longer and she seemed to have no coffee either. ‘Do we get coffee brought to us?’ she asked black-beede.
‘Oh, yes, they bring it round. But it won’t be coffee till seven o’clock,’
Catherine pondered over the strangeness of this for a moment. So it wasn’t even seven o’clock yet. What was she going to do with the evening? Would Tom and Deirdre go to her flat? she wondered. It might seem to be the obvious place to go if they wanted to go on quiedy holding hands. Men appeared to be so unsubtle, but perhaps it was only by contrast with the tortuous delicacy of women, who smothered their men under a cloud of sentimental associations—our song, our poem, our restaurant—till at last they struggled to break free, like birds trapped under the heavy black meshes of the strawberry net, she thought, changing her metaphor. Yet she had regarded that little restaurant as being hers and Tom’s, and it only now occurred to her that it had happened to be near and cheap and that perhaps that was all there was to it.
A young man in a white coat was pouring some rich fragrant liquid into her cup. She accepted it with gratitude and resignation, for it was strong and bitter, almost medicinal, and as she drank she was conscious that it was doing her good. Tea is more healthy than alcohol and much cheaper, she reflected, and there must be thousands of people who know this.
‘A nice cup you get here,’ said black-beetle in a rather friendly tone.