by Barbara Pym
‘By the green gate?’
‘Yes, that’ll do.’ He was certainly not going to arrive on the doorstep at the same time as one of the other guests, especially when he had been able to see that it was a good-looking man, some years younger than himself — the niece’s boy friend, no doubt. He paid off the taxi driver and walked a little way down the road before turning back to the house with the white gate:
Maurice, standing on the doorstep about to ring the bell, was surprised and a little disturbed at the painful sensations he experienced at being once again on this particular doorstep. It was as if he had gone back in time to those days when he had loved Dulcie for her simple goodness, as he saw it — that goodness which he had decided he could not endure to live with all his life. He had not felt this when he saw her in the art gallery. There he had been conscious of her discomfiture, and irrelevant details like her thin legs and sensible shoes.
He rang the bell, wondering who would come to the door. His first thought, when it was eventually opened, was that he had come too early, for he saw the head and shoulders of a dark girl, apparently wearing only a vest, and was about to make some kind of apology when he saw that the ‘vest’ was a white dress of some knitted material, very bare about the neck and shoulders.
‘Good evening,’ Maurice said. ‘I’m Maurice Clive.’ Girls as young as this one seemed to be were of no interest to him; he found their freshness and exuberance exhausting and preferred ‘mature’ women, as he called them, whose knowledge of the world and of life matched his own. And yet Dulcie had not been one of these exactly; for although she knew life from her own rather odd angle, in other ways she had been as vulnerable and unsophisticated as a girl of eighteen.
‘Do come in,’ said Laurel. ‘Would you like to hang your coat here?’
Maurice remembered the hatstand and his own reflection in the narrow looking-glass, placed for a man slightly taller than himself. He touched his soft brown hair and would have liked to do more to it, but Laurel was waiting, in her vest as he now thought of it, to show him into the drawing-room.
‘I’m Miss Mainwaring’s niece,’ she said in a curiously formal way.
Miss Mainwaring’s niece! he thought, as he entered the familiar suburban drawing-room with the comfortable, rather ugly furniture, rose-patterned loose covers, watercolour paintings in gilt frames, and rather too many china ornaments and jugs. Two women in black dresses were standing by the fire as if waiting for something to happen, as, indeed, they were. One was Dulcie, looking almost fragile and appealing in the paradoxical way that tall people sometimes can, the other a dark woman with trailing hair and a pink Spanish shawl draped uncertainly about her shoulders.
‘Ah, Maurice, have some gin!’ said Dulcie in a bright, nervous voice.
‘Well…’ he paused, confronted by what was obviously a new bottle bought specially for the occasion, ‘what are you drinking?’
‘We’re having sherry,’ said Dulcie. ‘You remember Viola Dace, don’t you,’ she added, and was then conscious of her social error in having made the introduction the wrong way round. ‘Viola, you remember Maurice Clive at the exhibition, don’t you… those clever pictures… Cat with Lemon… and the abstract shapes. Were they all sold — or a good many of them? Do help yourself to some gin.’
Maurice helped himself rather generously and added a dash of water from a glass jug which stood on the tray.
He likes his gin, thought Aylwin, coming into the room just as Maurice was in the act of pouring.
‘Good evening,’ said Dulcie, ‘so glad you were able to come. I think you know everybody except Maurice Clive. This is Dr Aylwin Forbes,’ she explained to Maurice.
‘I should think you must be pretty busy at this time of year,’ said Maurice, ‘with all this flu about.’
‘Oh, he’s not that kind of a doctor,’ Dulcie explained. ‘Do help yourself to a drink.’
Aylwin, feeling all eyes upon him, poured himself a rather smaller gin than Maurice had given himself.
‘Ah, I see. Then you must be one of the learned variety,’ said Maurice.
‘Yes, perhaps you might call it that. Learned but useless,’ said Aylwin with a little laugh. ‘I don’t heal the sick, I’m afraid,’ he added, almost as if he despised those who did.
‘But you do such really worthwhile work in your own way,’ said Viola fussily. ‘It’s so vitally important that the standard of true scholarship should be kept up, when you think of all there is to be contended with nowadays.’
‘You mean television and the general lowering of standards everywhere?’ said Maurice politely.
‘Yes, that, among other things,’ said Viola rather darkly. ‘ Ayl-win’s book on Edmund Lydden will be the definitive study.’
‘Edmund Lydden,’ Maurice repeated. ‘Ah, yes.’
‘Who is he?’ asked Laurel, feeling that she was the only person young or old enough — in her case young — to ask such a question.
‘Edmund Lydden is — I suppose we should say was — one of that little band of neo-metaphysical poets of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries who have been curiously neglected by posterity,’ said Aylwin, beaming at Laurel and wondering if he ought to explain the term ‘neo-metaphysical’. He would have liked to very much, but through the open door he had just seen a woman in a green nylon overall tiptoeing along the passage with what looked like a tureen of soup. It would be a pity if his explanation were to be broken into by the voice of a servant announcing that dinner was served. He decided to keep it till they were settled at the table or back in the drawing-room drinking their coffee.
‘I shouldn’t have thought Edmund Lydden had left enough poetry for it to be worth writing about him,’ said Dulcie. ‘There surely can’t be very much?’
‘That may be,’ said Aylwin, ‘but what remarkable stuff it is! The “Winter” sonnets — unfinished, admittedly — and the three Epithalamia, not to mention the fragments
‘Ah, yes, the fragments,’ murmured Viola, throwing him an intimate glance.
‘I suppose your book is to be published by one of the University presses?’ asked Maurice.
‘Yes, by the Oxford University Press,’ said Aylwin, in a full, satisfied tone.
‘They’ve been simply clamouring for it,’ said Viola eagerly.
Dulcie smiled at the idea of any body so dignified as she imagined the Oxford University Press to be, ‘clamouring’ for a book on a poet nobody had ever heard of. Then, suddenly, she remembered the house in Deodar Grove and poor Marjorie Forbes. Would not Aylwin have been better employed in putting his marriage to rights than in collating variant readings in the works of this same poet that nobody had ever heard of?
‘And I am doing the index,’ said Viola with simple pride.
Aylwin was glad that the news of dinner being served interrupted this particular bit of conversation or he would have felt himself obliged to pay Viola some public tribute, to anticipate, as it were, the formal acknowledgment which would appear in cold decent print. The expression on his face as he looked at her was one of distaste, as if he were asking himself how he could ever have … and yet, really, when he came to think of it, he had not. There had been only that unfortunate evening when he had discovered her in tears in the British Museum reading room — the day before his wife Marjorie had gone home to her mother. He had taken her to his house for a drink — she had confided a vague unhappiness which did not by any means seem to justify tears in a public place — he had said something about Marjorie. ‘We are two lonely people,’ she had said, and he had been forced to agree. Then he had kissed her and put her into a taxi. That was all. Afterwards there had been the meeting at the Summer School and his unwise acceptance of her offer to make the index for his book.
‘That must be an exacting task,’ said Maurice primly.
There was a short silence. Dulcie began wondering whether she should offer another drink or get them into the dining-room, towards which she too had seen Miss Lord tiptoeing with th
e soup tureen.
‘I think Dulcie wants us to go and eat,’ said Maurice. ‘Don’t you?’ he added in a lower, more intimate tone.
‘Well, dinner is ready,’ she said uncertainly. ‘But do have another drink.’
‘No, thank you, let us eat,’ said Aylwin, feeling himself taking command of the situation. Had he known exactly where the dining-room was he would have led the way there.
Dulcie sat at one end of the big mahogany table, with Aylwin on her right and Maurice on her left. Laurel sat next to Aylwin and Viola next to Maurice. There should have been a man, or some male presence, at the other end of the table to make things even, Dulcie felt. A clergyman would have served the purpose excellently, and she thought what a pity it was that she did not know the vicar of the parish well enough to have asked him.
‘My niece is going to live quite near you,’ she said to Aylwin. ‘Do you know a house in Quince Square which is turned into flats, or rooms for students and young people?’
‘Ah, yes — that would be number six or number eight-just opposite my house. I often see young girls coming and going through the trees — A l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs,’ he added, bringing out the tag of Proust he had wanted to use when he had seen Laurel for the first time. So she was going to live in the house opposite with the young girls! ‘We may meet some time,’ he added. He had wanted to ask her if she would come and cheer a lonely old man some evening, but could think of no way of expressing it that might not be misunderstood. Besides, he was only forty-seven and did not want to make himself sound ridiculous.
‘Did you see the exhibition of Proust relics” asked Maurice, showing that he had recognized the quotation. ‘Such a jumble of things and yet so fascinating. It made one want to preserve one’s own relics, just in case.’
‘I think the relics of any woman could be just as interesting,’ said Dulcie thoughtfully. ‘Particularly if she had been unhappy, and who hasn’t, and if she had kept things…’
‘When my grave is broke up again,
Some second guest to entertain …”
said Viola.
Laurel looked at the two women scornfully. If only they could realize how ridiculous and embarrassing they were! She began to clear away the soup plates rather noisily. There was something dreadfully depressing about the culture of middle-aged people.
‘Would you like me to carve?’ asked Aylwin when the duck was brought to the table.
‘Well, thank you, but I think I can manage,’ said Dulcie, seeing that Maurice was looking rather annoyed. ‘Perhaps you would all start an animated conversation and not watch me too closely.’
‘You would like me to pour the wine, wouldn’t you,’ said Maurice, rising from the table.
‘Laurel is a charming name,’ said Aylwin, obeying Dulcie’s instructions. ‘Women have such a choice of names. Literature, flowers, precious stones — one envies them.’
‘You have no need to,’ said Viola. ‘Yours is most unusual. I suppose it came from Watts-Dunton’s novel of that name?’
‘Yes,’ said Aylwin quickly. For the second time that evening he was reminded of the lounge of his mother’s hotel and the odd selection of tattered-looking books in the glass-fronted bookcase in the lounge. As well as Every Woman’s Encyclopaedia there had been — indeed, there still was — Aylwin, by Theodore Watts-Dunton. ‘And yours,’ he added rather spitefully, ‘is not Viola, with her willow cabin, but the Violet by a mossy stone. How sad Wordsworth’s women are — Alice in her tattered cloak — Lucy, in her grave, and oh the difference!’
‘And Barbara in the churchyard, with the rain plashing, was it, upon her stone,’ said Maurice. ‘Though of course that’s not Wordsworth,’ he added hastily.
The duck was well cooked, Dulcie noticed with relief, as she sliced the rich brown meat and crisp skin. Viola had suggested that it might be stuffed with ohves, but Dulcie had preferred the conventional sage and onions and the traditional accompaniment of apple sauce and green peas to anything more exotic.
‘This reminds me of home,’ said Aylwin, looking down at his plate with pleasure.
‘Home?’ Dulcie echoed. Did he mean his home with Marjorie, or something more remote — little-grey-home-in-the-west kind of thing? And he did come from the West Country, too. She bent her head to hide a smile, for home was no laughing matter.
‘Yes, duck was my favourite dinner when I was a boy,’ he explained.
‘When you were a boy,’ Viola repeated with a kind of wonder.
‘Yes, I was once a boy,’ he admitted. He did not feel that he need go into the hotel background or reveal that his family had had much better food than the guests. That was only to be expected, when you came to think of it, but no good could come of such frankness.
‘A splendid wine, Dulcie,’ said Maurice. ‘I must congratulate you on your choice.’
‘The wine merchant helped me,’ Dulcie admitted.
‘Good! I don’t think women should be too knowledgeable about wine,’ said Aylwin.
‘I only like white wine,’ said Laurel.
‘Imperial Tokay or a delicate Liebfraumilch,’ said Aylwin, thinking what a pleasure it would be to initiate her into the joys of drinking. ‘Or perhaps a Bernkastler Doktor …’
‘Well, as long as it’s sweet and not too heavy,’ said Laurel indulgently.
‘You’ll soon grow out of liking sweet wines,’ said Viola rather waspishly. She was embarrassed and disgusted by Aylwin’s behaviour towards Laurel. One could see now why he had married somebody like Marjorie. She remembered the evenings she had sat up, her eyes dazzled and exhausted by the little slips of paper when she was making the index for his book. He would never realize what hard work it had been. She could feel her eyes filling with tears of self-pity. What would happen if they began to course down her cheeks? she wondered. Nobody would notice except Dulcie and she would offer some homely remedy or ask if she was getting a cold. She looked up and saw that Maurice was watching her with a half-smile on his hps.
‘I’ll take some of these things out into the kitchen,’ she said quickly. She stood up with a dish of peas, the pink shawl slipping from her shoulders.
In the kitchen Miss Lord was sitting at the table, polishing some little glass dishes.
‘Dainty, aren’t they,’ she said. ‘Just the thing for the sweet. That orange mousse will look lovely in them. Oh, Miss Dace, your shawl! It must’ve dipped in the soup. Give it to me and I’ll wash the fringe.’
Viola returned to the dining-room.
‘… Easter in Tuscany,’ she heard Aylwin say.
‘How I should love to go to Italy!’ Laurel sighed.
After the mousse they had cheese and a bottle of her father’s port, which Dulcie had found in the cellar and decanted into one of the decanters which had stood empty on the sideboard since his death.
‘I suppose we should leave the gentlemen to it,’ she said, in her naive way.
‘No, we will help you to clear the table,’ said Aylwin, getting up.
‘I’d really rather you went into the drawing-room and then I will bring the coffee in there,’ said Dulcie.
Aylwin, Viola and Laurel did this, but Maurice stayed behind.
‘I remember where some of these things go,’ he said, opening a drawer and putting the table mats into it.
‘Can they still go in the same place after all this time;’ said Dulcie.
‘It doesn’t seem so long to me, now that I’m here again,’ said Maurice. ‘I’ve been putting mats away in spirit so many times.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Dulcie frowned, trying to find room for another dish on the trolley.
He came up to her and put his arms around her. She stood there without moving, the dish still in her hand, but his nearness was disturbing and she turned her head away when he made as if to kiss her.
‘Oh, Dulcie, perhaps it was a mistake, our breaking it off like that!’
Perhaps? she said to herself. He might have sounded a little mor
e sure. After all, it was he who had done the breaking — he who had said that he was unworthy of her love. Did he now consider that he was worthy? Or that her own standard was less high?
‘It was all for the best,’ she said stiffly. ‘We shouldn’t have been happy together.’
‘Not then, perhaps. But now it might be different
‘It’s too late now.’
‘You mean there’s somebody else. This Dr Forbes? Aylwin ‘ he said mockingly.
Dulcie smiled at the idea. She remembered ‘Some problems of an editor’ and herself rushing forward with the smelling salts; then her researches in the public library and the dark walk to Neville Forbes’s church.
‘I shall never marry now,’ she said.
‘Oh, come Miss Mainwaring, I wouldn’t say that,’ Miss Lord’s voice rang out in the hall. ‘Oh, I beg your pardon,’ she said, backing out of the doorway. ‘I didn’t realize you had anybody with you. I thought you were just talking to Miss Dace. I shouldn’t like you to think that I was eavesdropping in any shape or form.’
‘That’s all right, Miss Lord,’ said Dulcie, feeling for her embarrassment but not knowing what to say to improve matters.
‘There you are,’ said Maurice, when Miss Lord had left the room. ‘Quite hopeless, aren’t you.’
Dulcie smiled, but there was really no pleasure in feeling that he might be persuaded to come back to her. She had only to encourage the idea to lose him again, and the second loss might well be more painful than the first.
‘There are plenty of girls,’ she began, not really wanting him to agree that there were, but of course he did.
‘It’s only that you’re different, somehow,’ he added.
Yes, she thought, older and duller and with the added interest of being somebody to be won back again.
‘The others will be wondering if they’re ever going to get any coffee,’ she said, hurrying out to the kitchen.
Maurice went back to the drawing-room, where Aylwin had started his little dissertation, postponed before dinner, on what he called ‘the neo-metaphysicals’, but only Viola seemed to be listening, and now the arrival of the coffee interrupted him yet again.