No Fond Return of Love

by Barbara Pym

  Mrs Forbes tossed the letter aside and opened another.

  ‘Dear Madam,’ it ran, ‘I should be obliged if you would send me a copy of your tariff, for which I enclose a stamped addressed envelope. Yours faithfully, Dulcie M. Mainwaring.’

  Mrs Forbes put her hand into one of the pigeon-holes of her untidy desk and took out the little folded card which described the hotel and gave a list of charges, now out of date. As she put the tariff into the envelope she noticed that it had a threepenny stamp on it. No need for such extravagance, she thought — a piece of wet blotting paper or the steam of a boiling kettle would soon deal with that. ‘Printed matter only needs a twopenny stamp,’ she murmured to herself. Her voice had a soft West Country burr which, having lived all her life in Taviscombe, she had never lost.

  She then turned her attention to Mrs Williton’s letter. It would be quite convenient for them to come after Easter — indeed, they could have come for Easter without any great inconvenience. The visitors who came to Taviscombe to see the sea, the primroses, or whatever delights it happened to offer, did not all flock to the Eagle House Private Hotel, which was rather inconveniently situated for the beach (‘Close to sea and shops’ the tariff said, but it could have been closer to the former), and did not have bathing costumes hanging from its windows in summer or drifts of sand and buckets and spades in the hall. Mrs Williton and Marjorie could have one of the back rooms looking out over the recreation ground, which would be suitable to them as relations who could not be expected to pay much. Aylwin would, of course, not have thought of their paying at all, but Mrs Williton’s independent spirit made her insist on at least a token payment. ‘After all,’ she would say to Mrs Forbes, ‘it is your liveli-hood. Marjorie and I wouldn’t feel comfortable if we didn’t pay you anything.’ Not that they were much more comfortable paying, but of course one could only think that kind of thing — it was the feeling of moral rather than physical satisfaction that Mrs Williton needed.

  ‘Well, Mam,’ said Neville, appearing in the doorway. The childish abbreviation sounded strange coming from a cassocked priest, but Mrs Forbes did not notice it. ‘What are you up to now?’ he asked indulgently.

  ‘I was just wondering what room to give Marjorie and Mrs Williton.’

  ‘Well, there’s plenty of choice surely at this time of year, isn’t there?’ he said with a little laugh.

  ‘Yes, there’s choice all right. What do you want to go about in that old black cassock for?’ she asked rather irritably.

  ‘It’s the uniform of a priest you know,’ he said seriously. ‘You’d find many in London who went about in their cassocks.’

  ‘Oh, London …’ She made a contemptuous gesture. ‘You look like some old monk. Still, I suppose it saves your other clothes — like wearing an overall. Nev, I wish you’d have a talk with Aylwin. He and Marjorie don’t seem to be getting on at all well, and she’s a nice girl, really.’

  ‘It was a most unsuitable marriage,’ said Neville primly. ‘I’m afraid Aylwin didn’t really consider whether she would share his interests — he fell in love with a pretty face.’

  ‘Like that woman falling in love with you, dear!’ said Mrs Forbes with a sudden hoot of laughter.

  Neville flushed. He could not help knowing that he was exceptionally good-looking, but he did not like to be called ‘pretty’, even by his mother. Perhaps unconsciously — though who can be sure of this? — he glanced over towards the mirror and saw a face similar in features to that of his brother Aylwin, but less care-worn, the hair fairer and curling round the temples like an angel in an Italian Renaissance painting. ‘Miss Spicer didn’t — er — fall in love’ — he brought out the words with difficulty — ‘with my appearance.’

  ‘Oh, don’t you go stuffing your old Mam with that kind of rubbish! Women are all alike in the spring,’ said his mother with a chuckle. It seemed for a moment as if some ribald West-Country proverb or quip was about to come out, but perhaps the sight of the cassock silenced her, for she contented herself by pulling him towards her and telling him that one of the buttons was loose.

  ‘You look just like your Dad,’ she said affectionately, ‘though I sometimes think Aylwin’s more like. What a pair you are, the two of you, with your women!’

  ‘Mam, really! You make it sound so much worse than it really is.’ Neville smiled protestingly.

  ‘Just to think that I should have two hoys like you — one a professor and the other a clergyman. Who would’ve thought it!’

  ‘Aylwin isn’t really a professor,’ said Neville pedantically.

  ‘Oh, well, whatever he is — Doctor of Philosophy or something. I’m sure he ought to be a professor and will be one day,’ she said lightly. ‘And you’ll be a bishop — fancy that!’

  ‘I should think that’s most unlikely.’

  ‘Just look and see if that coffee’s boiling, will you dear? I like it to boil a bit.’

  Neville went over to the-gas ring in the hearth on which a saucepan of coffee was standing. ‘You don’t need to boil it,’ he said, ‘just heat it up.’

  ‘Boiling makes it stronger,’ said Mrs Forbes obstinately.

  ‘No, it doesn’t really,’ said Neville. ‘I hate boiled coffee.’

  ‘Well, I always boil it for the visitors — it seems to look a bit darker when it’s boiled. You have to think of these things, you know.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Having been brought up in the hotel business Neville saw nothing unusual or even dishonest in trying to make little, or almost nothing, go a very long way.

  ‘Will you be here for Easter, Nev?’

  ‘Yes — I’ve arranged with the Bishop not to go back till afterwards. He was most understanding.’

  ‘What — you didn’t tell him? Not about Miss Spicer coming at you like that?’ Mrs Forbes’s hooting laugh rang out somewhat discordantly to her son’s sensitive ears.

  ‘No, I didn’t tell him all the details, of course. I implied that I was in a rather overwrought nervous and mental state, without going into exactly what happened.’

  ‘Mental! You be careful, Nev, or they’ll be taking you up Dene Vale.’

  Neville shuddered when she named the big mental hospital which served the district. It had always been a place of dread since childhood, when he had heard grown-up people talking in hushed tones about somebody being ‘up Dene Vale’ without knowing what it really meant.

  He had imagined, when he made his decision to leave London for a while, that coming to his mother would be calming and soothing, and so, in a sense, it was. Her very lack of understanding of his problem had a quality of restfulness about it.

  ‘It may be that I shall have to marry her,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘We could have her mother at the vicarage, of course, there’s plenty of room.’

  ‘Have to marry her?’ echoed Mrs Forbes, and Neville realized that for a countrywoman the phrase might have a very definite and in this case totally misleading significance. ‘Nev, what’ve you been up to?’

  Neville smiled uncertainly, resenting her tone — as if he were a boy of seventeen instead of a grown-up man and a priest at that. ‘I meant that it might make things easier all round, and I dare say she’d make quite a good wife,’ he said doubtfully.

  ‘I thought you didn’t hold with marriage.’

  ‘I don’t really, for a priest, but there could be situations where one might have to sacrifice one’s principles for the happiness of another person.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know, I’m sure. Isn’t that old coffee boiling yet? I expect it’ll all come out in the wash,’ she laughed. ‘If you’re going out, you might post this letter for me — a lady in London, wanting to see the tariff’

  ‘All right.’ Neville took the letter and turned it over to read the address. ‘Miss Dulcie Mainwaring, 149 Lincoln Road, London, S.W.13,’ he read. A rather pleasing handwriting. Presumably she had sent a stamped addressed envelope — otherwise his mother would not have sent her a copy of the tariff.

&nb
sp; Chapter Seventeen

  WHEN Aylwin kissed Laurel — and he had at last managed to achieve this one night after he had taken her to the theatre — it was different from when Paul did. Aylwin murmured romantic phrases and his hands moved with practised skill. He has done this many times before, she thought, wondering if she would tell Marian afterwards, or whether things had reached the stage when one no longer confided everything to one’s girl friend but preserved an enigmatic silence. He had said something about his wife as they drove home in the taxi — not that she didn’t understand him but that he didn’t understand her, which was a new line and rather effective. It seemed as good a reason as the more hack-neyed one for him to demand Laurel’s sympathy. And next week he was going to Tuscany. She must think of him, a lonely man going round looking at churches. Laurel saw him in her mind’s eye as a tiny figure against one of those miniature brownish Italian landscapes, glimpsed through casements in the works of the great masters.

  When she got back to the hostel she found Marian in her room. Her face was white and ghastly-looking from the masklike prepara-tion she had painted over it ‘to draw out impurities’ and, in addition, wore a look of resentment under the mask.

  ‘Your friend Paul rang up,’ she said. ‘I was just leaving you a message. That’s the third time you haven’t been in.’

  ‘Oh, I must go and see him some time,’ said Laurel smiling vaguely.

  ‘You and your men,’ said Marian, half scornful and half jealous. It was annoying that Laurel, the country mouse whom she had initiated into the sophistications of London life, should have two such good-looking admirers while she herself had only the constant and boring devotion of the young bank clerk who lived on the top floor. ‘Was the play good?’ she asked.

  ‘Not really. He hasn’t got anything new to say and one gets so tired of the same old hates and bees in the bonnet being trotted out all the time.’

  ‘Does one?’ asked Marian rather acidly. ‘I’m afraid I wouldn’t know. I filled your hot water bottle,’ she pointed out, lingering in the doorway.

  ‘Oh, thanks.’ Laurel started to take off her black dress, first tying a chiffon scarf over her face.

  ‘Did he kiss you?’

  ‘Of course!’ The answer was muffled because Laurel was now halfway out of her dress.

  ‘Well, people don’t always. I thought you didn’t want him to, anyway.’

  ‘One can change one’s mind. He’s rather sweet and I feel sorry for him.’

  ‘Because his wife doesn’t understand him?’ mocked Marian.

  ‘I expect she does,’ said Laurel, not revealing what he had said. ‘Surely no man seriously claims that sort of thing nowadays?’

  Marian left the room, her curiosity unsatisfied. She had thought of offering Laurel a hot drink, but perhaps it was not the appropriate beverage to round off an evening of illicit kisses from a married man, she thought sanctimoniously, climbing into bed with her mug of Bournvita. She sat upright, drinking it, a virtuous and rather comic little figure, with her white masked face and her hair neatly bound up in a blue turban.

  Laurel fell into bed in a confused state, her hair unbrushed and her face only very sketchily washed. While Aylwin was in Tuscany would be a good time to see Paul, she thought.

  The next day she decided to combine a visit to the flower shop with going to supper with her aunt Dulcie. It was really the only place where she could be sure of seeing him, she thought, as the bus took her from the best part of Kensington to the not-so-good, where mourners ordered bleeding hearts of red and white carnations for their departed loved ones.

  As she approached the shop she began to feel nervous. Somebody else might be there, which would be embarrassing, though if he were alone she would have to think of conversation straight away and that might be worse.

  The window was full of daffodils and irises, with a few early tulips and presumably late chrysanthemums. The barrage of dwarfs and stone animals was still there, as were the white-painted pot-holders and other objects whose purpose was more obscure. The shop was empty. She could see dimly that Paul was at the back making a wreath or a bouquet.

  ‘A North Kensington wedding, I suppose, with all that fern,’ said Laurel gaily, but he did not seem to hear, and as that kind of remark is difficult, if not impossible, to repeat, she was reduced to silence, and he said rather formally, ‘Good evening. What can I do for you?’

  ‘Oh, nothing, really.’ Laurel glanced around nervously at the massed yellow of the daffodils. Could this be the young man who had seized her in his arms and kissed her so forcefully? ‘I only came to say I was sorry I wasn’t in last night when you rang up,’ she mumbled.

  ‘Why last night particularly?’ he said unhelpfully, taking up a white carnation and thrusting a piece of wire through its heart.

  ‘Well, I mean the other times too, when I haven’t been in.’

  ‘You never do seem to be in.’

  ‘I’ve said I’m sorry,’ said Laurel rather indignantly. ‘It just so happened that I was out those particular evenings when you rang.

  Once it was something I had to go to. Miss Mickleburgh’s presentation,’ she finished defiantly.

  For the first time a smile played around the corners of his mouth.

  ‘Who’s Miss Mickleburgh?’

  ‘She was headmistress of my old school — but she lives in London now, so we had the presentation here.’

  ‘And what did you present her with?’

  ‘A Wedgwood dinner service and a travelling clock.’

  ‘Heavens! Will she be doing all that dining and travelling in her retirement?’

  ‘She isn’t retiring, exactly. Well, she is, but she’s getting married.’

  ‘Surely that’s rather unusual?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it is. She’s rather old — about fifty — but she’s marrying a retired admiral, so that’s all right.’

  Paul stuck what seemed to be the last carnation into the bouquet. ‘Are you going home to see your aunt?’ he asked. ‘We might travel together.’

  It was the rush hour and they got separated on the bus, coming together again like lovers after a long parting. They walked hand-in-hand down the road and were seen by Senhor MacBride-Pereira to stop and kiss rather indiscreetly near one of the street lamps, which cast a sickly glow over their young fresh faces. Then they parted and went into their respective houses.

  Orpheus and Eurydice? thought Senhor MacBride-Pereira. Now what have I seen — an end or a beginning? Romeo and Juliet, Paolo and Francesca, or just two young lovers of today, a suburban idyll? He had been sitting in his top-floor front room, reading Eija de Queiroz and eating grilled almonds from a bag at his side, dipping absent-mindedly but steadily into it until the bag was empty. In the summer he would ect sugaredjordan almonds, delighting especially in the mauve ones.

  Yesterday evening, at about the same time, he had come home with a parcel from the Scotch House, containing the kilt in the MacBride tartan which he had ordered, to be worn secretly in his room at first before he ventured outside in it. He had long wanted to possess such a garment and was eager to parade before his looking-glass in it, but first it would be prudent to draw the curtains, he decided. Going to the window, he had seen the lady from next door with the fish’s name — Miss Dace — being handed out of a taxi by a gentleman who had kissed her hand in the Continental fashion. The things I see! he said to himself. With a young girl and a boy perhaps it is nothing or of little importance, but with a by-no- means-beautiful woman getting on in years, who knows what it might not be!

  Inside her house Dulcie was in the kitchen making lemon marmalade. The window was open at the bottom and the outside sill held several saucers in which sticky deposits of the marmalade at various stages of the boiling had been placed. Dulcie took up the latest one and tilted it anxiously to see if the surface wrinkled.

  ‘Not yet,’ she sighed rather tragically. ‘Last year it was twenty-five minutes. Why is it taking longer now?’

 
‘Of course,’ said Viola, who had been sitting at the kitchen table reading Encounter, ‘I’m not a great marmalade eater at the best of times.’

  Not a great marmalade eater… Dulcie repeated to herself in a kind of despair. ‘And when would the best of times for eating marmalade be?’ she said aloud.

  Viola did not answer.

  Another five minutes passed and the marmalade was again tested. It really seemed as if the setting point had been passed now. It would go like a kind of syrup.

  ‘People blame one for dwelling on trivialities,’ said Dulcie, ‘but life is made up of them. And if we’ve had one great sorrow or one great love, then who shall blame us if we only want the trivial things?’

  Viola murmured something, but Dulcie knew that she did not really understand. Lately she had begun to admit to herself that Viola had turned out to be a disappointment. In a sense, Dulcie felt as if she had created her and that she had not come up to expect-ations, like a character in a book who had failed to come alive, and how many people in life, if one transferred them to fiction just as they were, would fail to do that! So perhaps it was not so surprising after all. Viola was just a rather dull woman, wanting only to be loved. Presumably Bill Sedge would marry her — for things seemed to be going that way — and take her to live in Finchley Road, and she would forget all about making an index and searching for facts in libraries and correcting proofs of other people’s books.

  ‘You are coming to Taviscombe for Easter?’ she asked uncertainly.

  ‘Oh, yes. Bill thinks I ought to get away.’

  ‘I expect he said the sea air would put roses in your cheeks,’ she said, absent-mindedly rather than cattily.

  ‘Yes, he did,’ said Viola rather coldly, raising a hand to her cheek. ‘And I have been feeling a bit off-colour lately.’