by Barbara Pym
‘There is tea over here,’ said a voice at Dulcie’s elbow, and she found Miss Wellcome standing by her. ‘You take a plate and choose what you want, then pay for what you have — a good idea, I think.’
‘Yes, isn’t it — and rather like life,’ said Dulcie. ‘Except that there you can’t always choose exactly what you want.’
‘That’s a very clever saying,’ said Miss Wellcome playfully. ‘You young women nowadays are so much cleverer than we were.’
‘And yet,’ said Dulcie, feeling that she knew what was coming, ‘you were probably happier than we are.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that. But life was simpler then. “We made our own pleasures. Perhaps in some ways we were more serious — felt our responsibilities more.’
‘Is that Mrs Williton’s daughter talking to her now;’ asked Dulcie, feeling her way.
‘Yes, in the mauve twin-set. A lovely shade, isn’t it.’
‘Terribly difficult to wear, but it suits her. Does she live at home?’
‘Not really — you see … ‘ Miss Wellcome glanced around her and drew Dulcie aside into a corner. Then, lowering her voice to a rather melodramatic whisper, she went on, ‘ … she has left her husband.’
‘Oh. Did he … was he …?’
‘Oh, yes. Quite a libertine, I believe.’
Dulcie’s first impulse was to burst out laughing at the use of such an old-fashioned word, permissible, surely, only in the English synopsis of an Italian opera. The Duke in Rigoletto might have been so described, she thought. ‘What did he do;’ she asked. ‘I mean,’ she emended quickly, ‘what was — or is — his profession?’
‘Something in the literary world, I think. Not surprising, really, the kind of life they seem to lead there. I had a very interesting book out from the library not long ago — all about Lord Byron.’
‘But surely he was rather exceptional?’ Dulcie protested.
‘Would you like a ticket for this raffle?’ said Mrs Williton, appearing disconcertingly from nowhere. ‘It is for a hand-embroid- ered duchesse set.’
‘Thank you,’ said Dulcie, taking a sixpence out of her purse, ‘though I’m never lucky in these things.’
‘But I must have your name and address, so that I can let you know if you do win — you never know!’
‘Oh, well then … it’s Miss Lamb, 17 Byron Road, S.W.19,’ said Dulcie. She was surprised at her own fluency in deceit: but it might be embarrassing if she really did win the duchesse set. ‘And now I really must be going. I do hope you’ve made a nice lot of money.’
‘It was good of you to drop in,’ said Mrs Williton.
‘Goodbye,’ said Dulcie to Miss Wellcome, and hurried out into the hall, where she lingered for a moment, hoping to see ‘something interesting’, as she put it to herself. But there was only the evening paper stuck through the letter-box and a bill from the London Electricity Board lying on the purple-and-ochre tiled floor. It was greedy of her to expect any more when she had already received so much.
Outside it was already dark. Dulcie decided that it would be wiser not to walk across the common alone, and so turned up a road which she thought might lead to a bus stop.
Had she been a minute later in her turning she would no doubt have recognized the hurrying figure of Aylwin Forbes, coming along from the other end of Deodar Grove. He was carrying a bunch of chrysanthemums, which he had bought hastily at the flower shop by the station, feeling, with the force of some primitive taboo, that he must not enter the house of his mother-in-law empty-handed. The flowers were stiff and unnatural-looking, like washing-up mops, and each ‘bloom’ had cost one-and-three. Marjorie would have preferred a bunch of violets or a miniature cactus, but it had seemed more in keeping with his dignity to carry something large, and he had the feeling that it was his mother-in-law who needed to be propitiated. He supposed that he had behaved badly, or at least unwisely, and that it was up to him to make the first move. After all, he had known from the beginning that Marjorie could never enter into his work with him, but he had been touched and flattered by her show of interest and by the way she had listened when he talked. And the way she had looked — so fragile and appealing with her fluffy curls, almost a ‘girl wife’ — had been such a refreshing change from the frightening elegance, frowsty bohemianism, or uncompromising dowdiness, of those women who could really have entered into his work and would probably in the end have elbowed him out of it altogether. It was particularly ironical that it should have been Viola Dace, of all of them, who had brought about the break between him and Marjorie — the tears and protestations, the hurried packing of suitcases, even the grumbling taxi-driver, who doubted whether he could go ‘all that way’.
One could hardly blame him, Aylwin thought, as he made his way along Deodar Grove. The stultifying oppression of the suburbs seemed particularly heavy on this early winter evening, with the darkness coming too quickly, and what light there had been scarcely able to filter its way through the layers of net curtains. Another ironical aspect of the situation was that Aylwin himself had been named after the title of the famous novel by Theodore Watts-Dunton, and it was near here that the poet Swinburne had been incarcerated by this friend in his later years. ‘The brown bright nightingale amorous,’ thought Aylwin angrily, seeing himself as that nightingale and blaming the whole thing on his mother-in-law, Mrs Williton.
As he approached the house he looked automatically for the stone squirrel, one of their now painful early little jokes, but it was too dark to see if it was still in the garden of the house next door. He noticed that the house was for sale, and wondered if the squirrel would be thrown in with the linoleum in the hall and what the house agents called ‘f. & f.’
And then, just as Dulcie had been, he was approached by a stranger, but a youngish, good-looking man with fair curly hair, who asked him in a rather prim voice, if number thirty-seven Deodar Grove was at this end of the road.
‘It’s this next house, with the particularly fine deodar in the front garden,’ said Aylwin.
The young man laughed rather uncertainly, for he saw only a laburnum and what might have been a kind of prunus or almond tree. ‘I hope I’m not too late,’ he said. ‘It’s nearly five o’clock.’
‘Too late?’ Aylwin asked. ‘For tea, do you mean?’ What was this young man doing, going to the house at tea-time, as if he had been invited? A friend of Marjorie’s, perhaps — but he could not place him among the youths at the tennis club who had been her suitors before he married her.
‘Well, that and the sale,’ said the young man, and then Aylwin saw what he meant. He read the notice on the front door — jumble sale — in aid of the organ fund*. This was really too much! The things women did to men! Had anybody ever really made a serious study of the subject, of the innumerable pinpricks and humiliations endured by men at the hands of women? How could he enter the house with flowers for his wronged wife when the place was crowded with women buying and selling jumble in aid of the organ fund!
‘You see,’ the young man explained, ‘I’m the organist, and I feel the ladies will expect me to put in an appearance.’
‘I’m sure they will,’ said Aylwin, faintly ironical. He could imagine the entrance the young man would make, the pleased cries that would greet his appearance, the fresh tea that would be made, and his complacent acceptance of their tributes. No doubt, like all men connected with the Church — his own brother Neville included — the organist would be At Ease With Ladies. He could see the phrase — At Ease with Ladies — as the title of a novel or even a biography.
Aylwin wished the young man good-night and walked on past the house, holding the flowers awkwardly in front of him. What should he do with them now? Was there anybody living in the district to whom he could give them, unobtrusively, of course, hardly seeming to do so? He thought for a moment, and then remembered that Viola Dace, who had so embarrassingly insisted on making the index for his book, had recently moved into the neighbourhood. He even had her address w
ritten in his diary. He would find a taxi at the station and take the flowers to the house — a landlady or servant would doubtless open the door, so there need be no embarrassing encounter.
Dulcie, walking from the bus stop and seeing the taxi stopping in the road, had no idea that it was coming to her house. Taxis usually meant Senhor MacBride-Pereira, or Mrs Beltane returning from a particularly exhausting shopping afternoon in Harrods. It was not until she reached her front gate and saw Aylwin Forbes standing on the doorstep that she realized the situation. And even then she did not, of course, know everything. Her one thought was that she must not meet him, so she walked quickly down the road past the house, an anonymous scurrying figure, just like a tired businesswoman returning home after a day’s work.
Aylwin, meanwhile, had rung the bell and was waiting confidently for the landlady or servant who would appear and relieve him of the flowers. After what seemed a long time — especially as the taxi was ticking away in the road — the door was opened by a tall dark girl wearing tight-fitting black trousers and a yellow sweater.
‘Oh …’ Laurel exclaimed, obviously taken aback at the sight of such a good-looking man and such a very large bunch of flowers. ‘I’m afraid my aunt isn’t in yet.’ But surely, she thought, he’s come to the wrong house?
‘Actually I brought these for Miss Dace,’ said Aylwin, confused by the unexpected encounter with a pretty young girl and wretchedly encumbered by the flowers. ‘But perhaps she doesn’t live here? So stupid of me …’
‘Oh, she does live here, but she isn’t in either. Won’t you come in? I don’t suppose she’ll be long.’
‘Well, if I could just write a message …’ He stepped into the hall and took a card from his wallet. What should he write? Something non-committal — the sort of thing one wrote to a woman who was undertaking the arduous and thankless task of making an index to a book. ‘With many thanks for all you are doing for me — A.F.’, he scribbled. Really, it was the least he could do, he thought, quite forgetting what had been the original purpose of the flowers. He wished now that he had insisted on paying her for the work.
Laurel stood holding the flowers. ‘I’ll give them to her as soon as she comes in,’ she said.
How charming she looked, holding the flowers like that! It seemed now as if this was why he had bought them — to see them held in her arms. A l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs … would she know what he was driving at if he were to quote that, or would it seem stupid and affected in the dark suburban hall, with the macintoshes and old shoes huddled together in the peculiarly unaesthetic hat stand?
‘Thank you,’ he said lamely. ‘Good night!’
‘Good night!’ said Laurel, closing the door after him.
She put the flowers down on a chair and examined the card. So this was the famous Aylwin Forbes! He had seemed to her in their brief meeting the perfect ‘older man’, with whom young girls fell in love. ‘5, Quince Square, W.11’, she read on the visiting card. And soon, when she had broken the news to her aunt, she was going to live in Quince Square herself! The prospect was so exciting that she nearly forgot to put the card back with the flowers. What on earth could Miss Dace, of all people, have been ‘doing’ for him, she wondered. Then she remembered — making an index for his book — it was at once comic and pathetic.
Dulcie, now scurrying back in the direction of her own house, nearly bumped into Aylwin as he was coming out of the gate, but he did not appear to recognize her. Just as well, she thought, remembering the strange and rather deceitful way in which she had spent the afternoon.
Chapter Ten
IN the days that followed, Dulcie found herself drinking endless late cups of coffee and accomplishing yards of knitting while Viola speculated on the significance of Aylwin having sent her flowers at that particular point in their relationship. Dulcie felt that she had become a kind of confidante, as in the plays of the great French classical dramatists, Racine and Corneille, which she had read in the sixth form at school. She supposed that it must be a role filled by many women, even today. Naturally she said nothing about her own feelings — her unworthy jealousy at the idea that Aylwin might be attracted to Viola as something more than a competent woman who could make a good index. For why else should he have sent her flowers’ Gratitude for the work she was doing hardly explained this lover-like gesture. One could not blame Viola if she thought otherwise.
Yet Viola and Aylwin did not appear to meet very often. In spite of the flowers — or perhaps because of them — he made no move to seek her out. Viola’s evenings were spent in her room surrounded by proofs and index cards, and, as far as Dulcie knew, he did not telephone her.
Dulcie had said nothing about her meeting with Marjorie Forbes, though she had admitted having seen the outside of the house. Viola would not understand her intense curiosity about all aspects of Aylwin’s life and might easily be shocked to hear how she had managed to worm her way into the jumble sale.
One morning, about a fortnight after; Aylwin had called with the flowers, Dulcie was sitting in the kitchen, waiting for Miss Lord to finish doing Viola’s room, so that they could have their coffee. When Miss Lord eventually came down she was carrying the chrysanthemums with her.
‘I think it’s about time these were thrown away,’ she said. ‘Don’t you, Miss Mainwaring?’
Dulcie hesitated. The flowers were certainly past their best, though, in the curious lingering way that chrysanthemums have, they were not exactly dead. Most of the leaves had withered, but some of the flowers might still pass, arranged with fresh leaves or massed together in a bowl. ‘I don’t think Miss Dace would like it if we were to throw them away without asking,’ said Dulcie. ‘You might change the water, though — it does look rather slimy.’
‘I think it’s very unhealthy to have flowers in a room where you sleep,’ said Miss Lord rather huffily. ‘Miss Dace is very untidy, isn’t she. I wouldn’t presume to put her clothes away for her, but it’s difficult to do the room when they’re lying all over the place.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. I must speak to her about it,’ said Dulcie apologetically. ‘Have one of these Abbey biscuits with your coffee. I know you like them. Where are you going for your lunch today?’
‘Well, I might call in at the cafeteria in the High Street,’ said Miss Lord, sounding a little brighter at the thought of lunch. ‘I like it there. It’s warm but not too squashed up — there’s plenty of room between the tables. The only thing is that I have been unlucky there lately.’
‘Unlucky?’
‘Yes, with the beans — baked beans, you know. They didn’t have any last time I went, and it rather upset me, what happened.’
‘Oh?’
‘The man. in the queue after me asked for baked beans and he got them. He was laughing and joking with the girl who was serving — you know the way they do — I didn’t say anything, but I was quite upset.’
‘Yes, I know, that’s what life is like. And it is humiliating. One feels a sense of one’s own inadequacy, somehow, almost unworthiness,’ said Dulcie thoughtfully. ‘But then life is often cruel in small ways, isn’t it. Not exactly nature red in tooth and claw, though one does sometimes feel… And what will you have for pudding today?’ she asked, jerking herself back to reality by a sudden aware-ness of Miss Lord’s pitying look at her vague philosophizings. If this is what education does for you … she seemed to imply. Well might one ask, ‘But what will it lead to?’
‘Deep apricot tart,’ said Miss Lord, suiting her tone to the words.
The mid-morning post had brought two letters. They lay in the hall face downwards, waiting to be picked up. As always — and perhaps the feeling is universal unless one is expecting or hoping for a love letter — the thought of them gave Dulcie a slightly uneasy feeling. Then she saw to her relief that one of them was only Pontings’ catalogue, and she rejoiced in the prospect of looking through it and marvelling at the splendid bargains to be had in the White Sale or in the buying up of fabulous stock
s from some failed manufacturer. She saw also that the other letter was a tucked-in printed thing, so that could be nothing troublesome either.
But when she opened it she found that it was an invitation to attend the Private View of the works of a painter whose name was unknown to her, but which was to be held at the gallery off Bond Street where Maurice, her former fiance, worked. Did he imagine, she wondered with a sudden rush of indignation, that she would find such an occasion at all congenial? That she could even bear to go to it at all? Life was at its tricks again, but this was a sharper cruelty than Miss Lord’s discomfiture over the baked beans. She stood with her invitation in her hand, wondering why she did not immediately tear it up. But then reason took over and suggested to her that in all probability the invitation had been sent automatically because her name was on the gallery’s list. It was possible that Maurice didn’t even work there now.
When Viola came in she showed her the invitation and asked her if she would like to use it. ‘I don’t really want to go myself,’ she added.
‘Why not? I always think Private Views are rather amusing. Couldn’t we go together?’
‘Yes, perhaps I will come,’ said Dulcie, imagining herself either plodding round in flat, comfortable shoes, or in more elegant agony, sitting on one of those round sofas in the middle of the room. Perhaps there was some kind of pattern in life after all. It might be like a well-thought-out novel, where every incident had its own particular significance and was essential to the plot. Seeing Maurice again, even if it were painful to her, might do something important to her self-confidence, even if only to make her ask herself, ‘How could I ever have loved such a person?’
She felt quite excited when the time came and they were actually pushing open the red-handled swing doors of the gallery and stepping on to the soft black carpet that covered the passages and floors.