Less Than Angels

by Barbara Pym

  ‘What about Catherine?’ he said suddenly. ‘Will anybody have told her? Perhaps we should try to comfort her.’ He did not mention the comforting of Deirdre, feeling that Mark’s presence would be unnecessary here.

  It was the middle of the afternoon when they went to her flat. She came to the door, her hair rough and wild, and with no make-up on her face, and offered them beer from a quart bottle which had been opened but not corked up again. It tasted flat and sour. A teapot and cup stood on the table and there was a sheet of paper in her typewriter. Mark craned his head round to read what she had been writing; it seemed to be an article about how to give an ‘inexpensive’ cocktail party.

  ‘Yes, darling, “inexpensive” or cheap, really,’ said Catherine brightly. ‘Don’t get the best French vermouth and put more and more ice with the drinks so that as time goes on people will be drinking coloured melted ice-water and they won’t even know! And if they suspect, then they’re horrid people and not the kind you’d want to have at your party anyway. Writing is such a comfort, isn’t it, that’s what people always say—it really does take you out of yourself. I sometimes feel it lets you more into yourself, though, and really the very worst part.’

  ‘Catty, dear, we’re so very sorry,’ said Digby helplessly. ‘We came to see if there was anything …’

  ‘Bless you both, but what can anyone do? It seems a noble way to die, doesn’t it, fighting for an oppressed people’s freedom against the tyranny of British rule? You can see now that it was all really justified, the breaking-away from his upbringing, the great house, the public school … the last time he went home he was so upset—he thought he had done the wrong thing, leaving it all.’

  ‘But surely it wasn’t quite that, was it?’ said Mark a little impatiently. ‘He got involved in this crowd purely by accident. I don’t think he intended to set himself up in opposition to anyone or anything, he just happened to be there, as any other anthropologist might have been.’

  ‘Any other anthropologist!’ said Catherine scornfully. “The others would all have been hiding in their huts behind their files of notes. You were always jealous of him, all of you, because you knew you could never hope to equal him in anything . . ,’ she burst into tears and ran from the room. They heard her go into her bedroom and then leave the house, slamming the front door after her. Digby hurried to the window and saw her jump on to a bus which was just leaving the stop.

  ‘I suppose she knows where she’s going,’ he said uneasily. ‘Perhaps she’ll just go for a ride till she’s calmed down. It was a pity you had to argue with her, we should just have humoured her, whatever she said.’

  ‘But it’s going to be so tiresome if Tom is going to be built up into a kind of Lawrence of Arabia figure,’ said Mark. ‘I didn’t mean to be unkind, but it seemed so very far from the truth.’

  ‘I wonder if your regard for truth will be helpful to you in your business career,’ said Digby sarcastically. ‘It might even be a hindrance.’

  They began to bicker in a senseless way and then left the flat. Digby had telephoned Deirdre to meet him and began anxiously to rehearse what he was going to say to her. Mark went back to his room rather sulkily. He was sorry about Tom but in his experience it was only elderly and distant relatives who died. All this, as he put it to himself, was a bit much. By going to such extremes Tom had gone too far.

  On the bus Catherine had time to calm down and even to feel sorry that she had spoken so sharply to Mark. She sank now into a kind of peace and began to think about Tom. But she found herself remembering not the things they had shared but the things that had kept them apart, and mixed with spontaneous grief for him was a more selfish and personal sorrow at the failures in their relationship which had been her fault. How annoying she must sometimes have been with her wild fancies and her quotations! She remembered the first and only time they had walked along this suburban road together, the house called ‘Nirvana’ and the stone lions with their blunted paws and noses. The gardens were bare and wintry now, the little front lawns dull and rough-looking; bulbs would be pushing up under the earth but she could not see them yet. Inside the houses all was cosiness and security. In one, a woman bent down over a fire and toasted crumpets; Catherine imagined them charred at the edges but deliriously dripping with butter. In another, a child sat at a table with a green baize cloth, drawing in brightly coloured chalks. Some rooms already had their curtains drawn and she could only guess at the scenes inside. When she had nearly reached the Swans’ house she happened to glance across the road and was in time to see a movement of the rust-coloured curtains and old Mrs. Dulke’s head come peering out between them.

  ‘Catherine! How nice to see you!’ Rhoda came to the door in answer to her ring. ‘ You’re just in time for tea.’

  Obviously, then, they didn’t know about Tom.

  ‘Is Deirdre in?’ Catherine asked, after she had acknowledged Rhoda’s welcome in a suitable way.

  ‘Well, no, she’s just gone out—I’m surprised you didn’t see her on your way from the bus-stop. You can only just have missed her. One of her boy friends rang up and wanted her to meet him for tea.’ Rhoda’s tone was full of satisfaction.

  ‘Do you know who it was?’

  ‘Let me see, now … really, she seems to know so many boys and of course she doesn’t always tell her aunt or even her mother who she’s going out with, but I did just happen to hear her on the telephone, and I think it was Digby, that nice tall fair young man.’

  ‘I’m glad she is with him,’ Catherine said, ‘I’m afraid we have had a piece of tragic news—Tom has been killed in Africa.’

  ‘Oh, no… how terrible! By natives?’

  Catherine saw past Rhoda’s shocked face into her thoughts, the shouting mob of black bodies brandishing spears, or the sly arrow, tipped with poison for which there was no known antidote, fired from an overhanging jungle tree.

  ‘No, there was apparently some rioting at the time of the elections and the police had to open fire. Tom was mixed up in the crowd. It was an accident, of course—they couldn’t have seen him.*

  ‘But, surely, a white man among all those natives …’ Rhoda protested, and again Catherine saw her picture of Tom, the British anthropologist in immaculate white shorts and topee, note-book and pencil in hand.

  ‘I’m afraid it wouldn’t be quite like that,’ she said. ‘He was probably wearing a native robe—he often used to.’

  ‘Oh, what a mistake! ‘ Rhoda burst out. ‘ No good can come of lowering oneself like that.’

  ‘Well, he used to say it was more comfortable,’ said Catherine lamely, feeling that they were getting off the point.

  They had been standing in the hall, but now Rhoda led Catherine into the drawing-room. There was some light tinkling music on the wireless and the sound of it, together with the bright fire, chintz-covered chairs and sofa, and Mabel Swan sitting with her feet up on a pouffe reading the latest work of a best-selling female novelist, gave Catherine a feeling of safety and comfort, for she had seen no domestic interior that day but the desolation of her own flat. She was glad to sit for some minutes making small talk with Mabel while Rhoda went out to make the tea. Mabel had evidently been dozing over her book so Catherine said nothing about Tom. It was not until Rhoda came back into the room that the news was broken to her.

  Rhoda adopted a firm manner as if fearing that Mabel might become hysterical. ‘You mustn’t cry, dear,’ she said to her sister, who showed no signs of doing so. ‘We must be strong for Deirdre’s sake.’

  ‘He was a nice young man,’ said Mabel vaguely. ‘I can’t say that he made much more impression on me than that. He seemed just like Malcolm or Bernard, but to Deirdre he was something special.’ She sat with her hands round her teacup as if to draw warmth from it. ‘He was her first love and that isn’t easily forgotten.’

  “There will be other young men in her life,’ said Rhoda sensibly. ‘We must encourage her not to brood too much.’

  ‘You must all
ow Deirdre her grief,’ said Mabel almost sharply. ‘You don’t know what it is to lose somebody you love.’

  ‘You’ve no right to say that, of course I do …’ Rhoda’s voice trembled and she began to refill the teacups in an agitated way.

  Catherine noticed her confusion and wondered if she were trying to justify herself, to think of some kind of compensation for the shame of not having lost lover or husband, but only parents and others who had died at their natural and proper time. If women could not expect to savour all the experiences that life could offer, perhaps they did want the sad ones—not necessarily to have loved or been loved, but at least to have lost, she thought simply and without cynicism. She felt sorry for Rhoda and tried to turn the conversation away from Tom.

  Shortly afterwards Malcolm came in with his flat brief-case and evening paper and the news was broken to him. He stood awkwardly in the doorway, not knowing what to say, darting embarrassed glances at Catherine. Then he went away and came back with a decanter of sherry and some glasses.

  ‘This may make us feel better,’ he said apologetically.

  ‘I suppose it would be quite hot in Africa now,’ said Mabel uneasily ‘though I suppose it’s always hot there, really.’

  ‘Yes, the harmattan begins about now.’

  ‘What is that?’ Rhoda asked, a strained look of interest on her face.

  ‘A hot dusty wind, isn’t it?’ Malcolm offered.

  ‘I suppose the funeral will be out there, said Rhoda. ‘They could hardly…’

  ‘No, I expect there’s an English cemetery or something,’ said Catherine. ‘Like Keats and Shelley in Rome, or Fielding in Lisbon. Yet Richard Burton is buried in Mortlake.’ She paused, then went on quickly, ‘Many Englishmen have died in Africa, you know, explorers and pioneers. Mostly they died of fevers or were killed by natives. Of course people manage to keep much healthier now, though there are still lots of unpleasant diseases people can get, Tom used to tell me. A little worm that races about all over your body and the only time you can catch it is when it goes careering across your eye-balls …’

  Rhoda threw a distressed glance at her sister. If only she had not mentioned the funeral, but she had a horror of silence at the best of times and this was surely one of the worst.

  ‘You’ll stay and have supper, won’t you, dear?’ she said, putting her hand on Catherine’s.

  ‘Thank you, I’d like to very much.’

  Rhoda went out to the kitchen and Mabel followed.

  ‘We could have some soup and open those lambs’ tongues,’Rhoda said. ‘Or the jar of chicken breasts. Or there’s the cold beef. Do you think Deirdre will bring Digby in to supper with her?’

  ‘I don’t suppose she or Catherine will feel like eating,’ said Mabel, ‘and I’m not hungry myself, are you?’

  ‘No, but the men must be fed,’ said Rhoda firmly, holding on to the idea as something stable and comforting. Perhaps in some ways Martha’s was the better part, she thought, as she bustled round the kitchen. Certainly there was satisfaction to be had from being able to do something practical in a time of sadness. ‘Do you think we should ring up Father Tulliver?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, I hardly think so,’ said Mabel. ‘I don’t know Catherine’s religious views, but she is talking rather wildly and one doesn’t know how she might receive him.’

  ‘No, and it’s choir practice tonight, anyway,’ said Rhoda sounding relieved.

  ‘Oh, there’s the front door,’ said Mabel. ‘Deirdre must have come back.’

  Deirdre and Digby stood blinking under the hall light. Digby was so tall that his head knocked against the imitation lantern and set it swinging. Deirdre seemed to cling to him and at supper hardly took her eyes off him. She was too bewildered with the confusion of having lost one love and apparently found another all at once to be able to say very much.

  Catherine was quite gay and Malcolm did his best, so that it was almost like one of the little supper parties Rhoda loved to arrange. This nice Digby did seem to be devoted to Deirdre. Tom or Digby, what did it really matter to her, as an aunt?

  Later it was arranged that Catherine should stay the night, and she sat up in bed in the spare bedroom, wearing one of Mabel’s nightdresses which was so much too long for her that she could wrap her feet in it. Deirdre stood by the bed or walked about the room, apparently trying to find words to say something.

  ‘Oh, Catherine, I can talk to you? she burst out at last. ‘I know you won’t be too shocked when I say that I can’t really feel anything about Tom. Perhaps I’m stunned and the feelings will come later, but I think I used them all up when he went away. That was like a kind of death—people say parting is, don’t they-and I was so worn out with crying then and being miserable and now I can’t seem to feel any- thing. It seems so dreadful …’ she covered her face with her hands and began to cry.

  ‘I shouldn’t be too upset about that,’ said Catherine. She felt she ought to say something about Tom not wishing her to be sad, the kind of things people say with such confidence about the dead as if they knew their feelings better than when they had been alive. But sometimes, she thought, grief was all one had to give them and even then one was conscious of the poverty of one’s feelings as if there were some lack in oneself that prevented one from suffering as deeply, as splendidly almost, as people did in the works of sensitive female novelists.

  ‘I’m only twenty, after all,’ said Deirdre, ‘and though I did love Tom terribly, of course, I just don’t feel like a tragic figure and I’m sure Mother and Rhoda will expect me to be.’

  ‘No, they won’t,’ said Catherine soothingly. ‘They’ll be glad that you’ve got Digby to comfort you.’

  ‘Oh, yes, Digby …’ The thought of him started Deirdre crying again but after a while she controlled herself and said, ‘Do you remember when we were having lunch you said something about Elaine, about the memory of one’s first love being very sweet?’

  ‘Yes, I remember. And one’s second love is perhaps even more sweet, but in a different way. And last love is supposed to be the best of all,’ said Catherine almost merrily.

  ‘I suppose you know when it is the last,’ said Deirdre rather hopelessly.

  ‘People say that you do,’ Catherine reassured her. ‘And now we’d better try to get some sleep, hadn’t we?’

  Deirdre went to her own room and Catherine got out of bed and stood by the window for some time, looking into the darkness of Alaric Lydgate’s garden. Was there some movement there—did a masked figure on stilts move swiftly along the hedge—was that the low hum of a bull-roarer or only the wind in the apple trees? The Swans had asked her to stay with them for a little while and she thought that she might enjoy it, entering into the comfortable kind of life which she had only seen from the outside. She would be able to keep an eye on Alaric too, for she felt somehow responsible for him since the evening when they had burned his notes. Like so many men, he needed a woman stronger than himself, for behind the harsh cragginess of the Easter Island façade cowered the small boy, uncertain of himself.

  She grew cold at last and crept back into bed. She did not think she would be able to sleep so she setded herself down to read the books on the bedside table, mostly paper-backed thrillers and novels and a selection of poetry. Tom hadn’t liked poetry, except Housman when he had been at school, but he used to let her recite or read it just as he would endure the extracts from the wine lists. She skimmed through the book from the beginning until she came to Vaughan, where she read,

  He that hath found some fledgd bird’s nest, may know

  At first sight if the bird he flown;

  But what fair Well, or Grove he sings in now,

  That is to him unknown.

  She remembered the church she had gone into and the candle she had lit for Tom, then the meeting with the two pleasant- faced women and the clergyman who had mistaken her for somebody else. Did they know, she wondered?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  One morning a few we
eks later, Miss Clovis and Miss Lydgate sat at breakfast, reading their letters.

  Miss Lydgate opened an envelope, snorted contemptuously, and flung down on the table a sheet of foolscap paper which Miss Clovis then took up. On it had been duplicated, rather badly and smudgily, a kind of circular letter, which began, ‘Dear Colleague, I wonder if you are interested in the origins of the word hyaena?’ Then followed a string of sentences in English and various African languages.

  ‘The hyaenas have stolen the beer-strainers of the bad sons of the good women,’ read Miss Lydgate in a derisive tone. ‘Really!’

  Miss Clovis was not sure whether her friend’s scorn was directed at some point in the sentence itself which, though certainly a little unusual and stilted, did not seem to her any more so than many others she had read in grammars of African languages, or whether it was the signature at the end of the letter-‘Egidio Gemini’—which had so enraged her.

  ‘It seems to be rather badly done,’ she commented, examining the paper more closely. ‘I believe there is a kind of fluid you can get to cover up mistakes in the stencil. Evidently the fathers do not know of it, but of course they live out of the world.’

  ‘I can just see them,’ said Miss Lydgate angrily, ‘turning the handle of the machine, wiping their inky hands on their cassocks, in the damp basement of that great barn in Kensington—well, North Kensington to be more accurate and, as we know, that is not really Kensington at all.’

  ‘Well, are you interested in the origins of the word hyaena?’Miss Clovis asked.

  ‘That’s neither here nor there. If that’s the way they’re going to squander Mrs. Foresight’s money, I think it’s absolutely disgraceful.’

  ‘Now listen to this,’ said Miss Clovis soothingly, ‘such a nice letter from Everard Bone, who’s just back from the field; he asks whether anybody has thought of collecting together a volume of essays to celebrate Felix’s seventieth birthday which will soon be upon us.’