by Barbara Pym
‘Not more trouble, I hope,’ said Dulcie.
‘Well, I suppose you might call it that in a way. To begin with, Father Forbes came back unexpectedly when the other man was still here — just as if nothing had happened. I’d just made a cauliflower au gratin and there wasn’t really enough for two. Oh, I know it’s a trivial detail’ — she laid her hand on Dulcie’s arm for a moment — ‘but those are the things that make up life, aren’t they — Father Forbes back and no supper for him. I was upset, I can tell you.’
‘Was he?’ Dulcie asked.
‘Oh, he’s good — said he’d just have bread and cheese, and there wasn’t even all that much cheese.’
‘Didn’t the other clergyman feel he should have given up his cauliflower au gratin?’ asked Dulcie simply.
‘He didn’t know! That was the point. I’d kept them apart. Father Smith was in the dining-room, and I gave Father Forbes a tray in the study. Oh, the time I had! Sugar, dear?’ She thrust the pink plastic apostle spoon towards Dulcie.
‘So what happened in the end?’
‘Well, Father Smith went, of course. But he was a bit put out. I think the two of them had words of some kind in the study, but of course’ — she lowered her eyes virtuously — ‘exactly what was said I don’t know.’
‘And what’s happened to Miss er — Spicer?’
‘Oh, very good news.’
‘Is she married, then?’ For that seemed the only thing that could really be good news.
‘No, dear. She and her mother have bought a house in Eastbourne.’
‘That does sound splendid,’ said Dulcie. ‘Eastbourne. I believe the air is very good and there are sure to be lots of churches.’
‘Yes. Old Mrs Spicer has taken on a new lease of life. We shall all be popping down to Eastbourne for our holidays.’
‘I hope you won’t forsake Taviscombe, Miss Mainwaring,’ said Neville’s pleasant voice. ‘How nice to see you here. And how is Miss Dace?’
‘Oh, she’s getting married soon.’
‘Married?’ said the housekeeper eagerly. ‘The friend who came with you that other evening?’
‘Other evening?’ asked Neville. ‘Then you’ve been here before?’
‘You never told me you knew Father Forbes,’ said the housekeeper accusingly.
‘I didn’t know him then,’ said Dulcie, covered with confusion, hardly able to remember whether she did or not. ‘We actually met at Taviscombe.’
‘Oh, I see.’ The housekeeper nodded, apparently satisfied.
‘She knows my brother,’ Neville explained.
‘Yes,’ said Dulcie firmly. ‘We met at a conference last summer.’ That, at least, was true.
‘Fancy your friend getting married,’ said the housekeeper rather cryptically. ‘Are you living on your own now, then?’
‘Yes. I’ve got quite a big house that used to belong to my parents — too big for me, really.’
‘Are you thinking of moving?’
‘I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought about it. I find one gets rather into a rut,’ said Dulcie apologetically.
‘A nice unfurnished flat is what you want,’ said the housekeeper. ‘With a bit of garden.’
‘Yes, I should like to have a garden,’ said Dulcie. She had a dreadful feeling that something was about to be arranged for her against her will.
‘There is such a flat vacant near here,’ said Neville. ‘It might suit you very well. The lady who used to live there with her mother is moving to Eastbourne.’
Miss Spicer’s flat — oh, the horror of it! Dulcie thought. And perhaps the same story happening all over again-herself seen by another prying stranger, running into the church in tears. And yet nothing was ever quite the same, and would Neville have suggested it if he had thought that there was any possibility that it could be? But men were so naive and insensitive; he would see it only as a practical proposition for her, not realizing that she knew Miss Spicer’s story.
Afterwards, when she had said she must go, he walked out of the hall with her.
Dulcie wanted to ask him about Marjorie Forbes, but did not know how to begin.
‘I hope your brother is well?’ she said tentatively. ‘I haven’t seen him lately.’
‘Oh, there’s been trouble there,’ said Neville. ‘Marjorie, his wife…’
‘Yes, I did hear that,’ said Dulcie.
‘It was all very distressing; and most unexpected, but you know what women are.’ He sighed rather absent-mindedly, and once again Dulcie felt as she had with Bill Sedge, that she was somehow a woman manquee, who could not be expected to know what women were. She could not decide what answer to make, so said nothing.
‘Poor Mrs Williton — I tried to do what I could, which was little enough. She — Marjorie — was quite determined to do this thing. Father Tulhver — her parish priest — and I both tried to dissuade her. But there you are — ‘ He sighed again — ‘She wouldn’t listen to us.’
‘I wonder if she’ll regret it,’ said Dulcie rather smugly. ‘Was your brother very upset?’
‘Surprisingly so, all things considered. I suppose it was the last thing he expected.’
‘And your mother?’ said Dulcie, feeling slightly ridiculous.
‘Oh, Mother took it all in her stride. She’s a strange woman, with her own ideas. Things of that kind often happened in Taviscombe, she said.’
Dulcie could imagine her saying it.
‘And now I suppose’ — Neville sighed for the third time — ‘my brother will divorce Marjorie and make another unsuitable marriage.’
Dulcie, startled at his frankness, did not know what to say. Obviously he was right. Not Laurel, of course, but there were so many other young girls.
‘Really he has been rather troublesome lately,’ said Neville, using the words Aylwin had used of him. ‘Are you thinking seriously of taking Miss Spicer’s flat?’ he went on. ‘Because if you are I could put in a word for you. The landlord is one of my churchwardens and is anxious to get a congenial tenant, I know. It would be very pleasant to have you living in the parish.’
Dulcie looked up at him quickly, but his face revealed nothing.
‘I don’t think I should be much of an asset,’ she said. ‘I’ve never done any parish work or even been to church very much.’
‘Oh, we’d soon have you in the thick of things,’ said Neville, with rather alarming heartiness. And Dulcie could see how it would be. Apart from the occasional kind word and fair distribution of favours he would be impersonal and aloof-as a celibate priest must be. And might she not find herself falling in love with him — unlikely though it seemed at the moment? All that church work, with so little reward, might well become an intolerable burden — a thankless task, indeed.
‘I must think it over,’ she said. ‘I hadn’t really any idea of moving.’
‘A change does everyone good,’ said Neville.
‘Well, yes, but there are changes and changes,’ said Dulcie. ‘Goodbye!’
‘Goodbye, and I expect we shall meet again quite soon. I can somehow see you in that flat!’
Dulcie made her way to the bus stop, feeling at once elated and depressed. Elated at the idea that life could change so completely, but depressed because she too saw herself in the flat, becoming another Miss Spicer. Yet, after all, would it be so very different from her present situation? — unrequited love for Aylwin or Neville might amount to much the same thing, a kind of choice of brothers. But at least she need not see Aylwin — Neville would be always on view.
As the bus slowed down in Ladbroke Grove, Dulcie was struck by the face of a man walking on the pavement — a familiar face, she would have said, and yet she could think of nobody she knew who lived in those parts. Then it came to her — the man was one of her beggars, a particularly ragged one for these days, who shook with a kind of ague and offered matches for sale in Oxford Street. She had often given him money, though she had not seen him lately. Now he walked briskly in the evening sunshine, wearing a good s
uit and smoking a cigarette, not shaking at all.
Surely this was an omen of some sort? But of what sort she hardly knew. Letting herself into the house, she realized that she was alone. Viola had gone, and Laurel too; she had rejected Maurice’s offer of friendship, and even the comfort of Father Benger and his church. It only remained now for her to turn away from the life that Neville Forbes had seemed to offer her.
But she still had her work. She was in the middle of making an index for a complicated anthropological book, and this would occupy her for some weeks. And now that she really was alone she might well consider letting rooms to students — perhaps Africans, who would fill the house with gay laughter and cook yams on their gas-rings. Then there was a summer holiday to be planned, perhaps in Dorset with her sister and brother-in-law at their cottage, or at another learned conference, if there was one.
This last thought must have brought Aylwin Forbes even more vividly into her mind, so that when the telephone rang she was not surprised to hear his voice.
‘Miss Mainwaring — Dulcie. It’s Aylwin — Aylwin Forbes. I was wondering if you could help me with a piece of work.’
‘An index?’ Dulcie managed to bring out.
‘Well, not exactly.’ He sounded so vague that Dulcie said rather sharply. ‘Surely an index either is or isn’t?’
‘Perhaps I could come over and discuss it with you.’
‘Why, certainly — that might be best. Come to tea this afternoon.’
Better to get it over quickly, whatever it was. It would be nice to work for him, more satisfying than living in Miss Spicer’s flat and getting involved with Neville’s church. Perhaps, in his loneliness, he was ‘turning’ to her, or whatever had been the expression Viola had used when talking about him at the conference to describe what he had not done to her. She began to wonder what, if anything, she could say about Marjorie.
Leaning forward in the taxi — for he had still not worked out how to get to Dulcie’s suburb by public transport — Aylwin wondered how he was going to convince her of this curious change in his feelings, when such a short time ago he had foolishly confided in her his love for Laurel. Obviously the pretext of having some work that she might do for him was the best way of arranging to see her, though surely she would not have refused a word of comfort to a lonely and deserted man, he thought, seeing himself now as this character, which was not unlike the lonely old man whom Laurel was to have solaced.
As for his apparent change of heart, he had suddenly remembered the end of Mansjield Park, and how Edmund fell out of love with Mary Crawford and came to care for Fanny. Dulcie must surely know the novel well, and would understand how such things can happen. What a surprise it would be, not least to his family and to Dulcie herself, who had so often urged him to make a ‘suitable’ marriage, if, when he was free, this very marriage should come about! Yet here he was being true to type after all. For what might seem to the rest of the world an eminently ‘suitable’ marriage to a woman no longer very young, who could help him with his work, now seemed to him the most unsuitable that could be imagined, simply because it had never occurred to him that he could love such a person. It was all most delightfully incongruous. Just the sort of thing Aylwin Forbes would do.
Who will run down to greet him and be gathered to his heart, Dulcie asked herself, as she had in Taviscombe, the last time she had watched Aylwin arriving in a taxi. Obviously only she could do it, but in her shyness she opened the door cautiously, wondering why he had brought a bunch of flowers when she had so many in the garden.
Senhor MacBride-Pereira, watching in his window, had heard the taxi, but was not quick enough to see who got out. He took a mauve sugared almond out of a bag and sucked it thoughtfully, wondering what, if anything, he had missed.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five