by Barbara Pym
‘So glad you’ve enjoyed it. We must do it again some-time.’
They parted outside the snack bar—Meg to return to her office, Leonora to wander round Harrods. She was tempted, being so near, to pay James a surprise visit at the antique shop, but she restrained herself and was rewarded when she returned home by a telephone call from him, arranging a meeting for lunch next day in ‘their’ little restaurant near the shop.
That evening Leonora was having supper with her neighbour Liz. It seemed that her whole day had been spent with women less fortunate than herself, she thought, as she sat in Liz’s back room listening to the cats crying and wailing in their pen in the garden.
They would settle themselves down for one of Liz’s long drinking sessions before there was any hope of anything to eat, Leonora knew from experience. The cats would be in and out of the room and Leonora would try to avoid getting one on her lap, kneading at her skirt with its claws. Liz’s own clothes were of course so much plucked by cats that the pulled threads gave an almost bouclé effect to everything she wore. Eventually Liz would embark again on the subject of her unhappy marriage. ‘All that love, wasted’ she would say. This was one of the rare occasions when Leonora would feel inadequate, having no experience of her own to match it. She had never been badly treated or’ rejected by a man—perhaps she had never loved another person with enough intensity for such a thing to be possible-whatever the reason she would keep silent, only observing that perhaps love was never wasted, or so it was said. Liz for her part would be equally bored by Leonora and her reminiscences of her Continental girlhood and later attachments mysteriously hinted at which never seemed to have come to anything. Yet at the end of the evening each woman would feel a kind of satisfaction, as if more than just drink and food had been offered and accepted.
VIII
James hardly knew whether his visit to Phoebe had been a success or not. Their awkward love-making in the cottage bedroom seemed very far removed from the world of Humphrey and Leonora, and while he was not particularly anxious to repeat the experience he liked to think that he could if he wanted to. It gave him confidence to feel that he had a girl hidden away in the country that nobody knew about. Humphrey even made it easier for him by sending him round to country sales, which he himself found boring, to see if there was anything worth buying.
One afternoon he had called for Phoebe to take her to a sale and they were going into a house to view the contents.
‘It seems so awful,’ she said, ‘all these people tramping through the hall with their muddy feet.’
James looked at her in surprise. It was the sort of remark Leonora might have made, with her fastidiousness and feeling for atmosphere. He had always imagined from the untidiness, almost squalor, of her cottage that Phoebe was incapable of noticing muddy footmarks on tiled floors. It gave him an uneasy feeling, as if the two women in his life were merging together in some curious way.
He explained to Phoebe that the house had belonged to an old lady, now dead, so that there could be nothing personal about it.
‘All the same, a relative might be lurking,’ she said. ‘You never know.’
James led her off to look at some china—there were good pieces of Coalport and Worcester and something that might have been Dresden, but she preferred a crude pair of Staffordshire dogs.
James was examining a figurine when a man and woman came up and greeted him.
‘Hallo, James, what are you after?’ asked the man.
‘Oh, my uncle thought there might be something,’ James mumbled.
‘But you’re not letting on what it is,’ said the woman, in a light brittle voice.
‘Those flowered bedroom sets might be worth going for,’ said the man, indicating a ewer, basin and chamber pot patterned with purple irises.
James looked round furtively. Phoebe was some distance away, as if she had removed herself purposely. Perhaps it would not be necessary to introduce her. James hoped not, for she was—as so often—looking somewhat unworthy of him in a very short cotton dress and sandals. The couple—Richard and Joan Murray—were friends of Leonora’s and sold Victoriana at their shop in the King’s Road, hence, perhaps, Richard’s affectation of interest in the bedroom china. James was glad to learn that they had only dropped in to have a look and did not intend staying for the sale.
Phoebe had been pretending to examine some bundles of old books as she watched James talking. Jealousy flared up in her as she realised how little she knew of his world.
‘Anything you like there?’ said James awkwardly, as he came back to her.
‘I always feel I’d like to collect old books,’ said Phoebe, ‘but then when I look inside them I’m repelled.’
James wondered if perhaps there was a little flower book he could get for Leonora but there was no time to examine them for the sale was starting. The auctioneer mounted the rostrum and with evident enjoyment began to play his role.
The larger things, garden effects and most of the furniture, had already been sold in the morning and now the more interesting smaller lots came up, glass and china, books and other oddments. James began bidding for a Coalport basket of flowers but there were two dealers against him and he became discouraged. Eventually a set of plates was knocked down to him but the comparative lack of opposition made him nervous of his uncle’s comments in case there should be something ‘not quite right’ about them.
‘Shall we go now?’ he whispered to Phoebe. ‘We can find somewhere to have tea.’
In the village a Trust House stood back from the wide main street, but for some obscure reason James did not suggest going into it. And yet the reason was not so obscure, for it seemed the kind of place where the Murrays might have stopped and he did not wish to risk another encounter. Fortunately Phoebe did not suggest it either and it was not until they had reached the next small town that she exclaimed, ‘This might do—if you can park here.’
‘You mean the Leopard Dining Rooms?’ asked James doubtfully.
‘Yes, it looks the kind of place where you might get a strong cup of tea to restore you after all that bidding.’
‘All right, then—there doesn’t seem to be anywhere else.’
‘Oh, this is fabulous,’ said Phoebe with uncharacteristic enthusiasm. ‘Shall we sit in the window?’
There were a few other people in the cafe, some looking rather uneasy, as if regretting that they had not entered the Trust House.
At least it looked fairly clean, James thought. Was this Phoebe’s setting—plastic tablecloths, artificial flowers and bottles of sauce? he wondered, for she seemed happy and relaxed. Certainly it could never be Leonora’s.
When the tea came it was of a strength and darkness that reminded one more of meat extract than of some delicate infusion of leaves from India or Ceylon. James sipped his cautiously as if afraid that it might poison him.
‘I suppose we could have had fish and chips, like those people at the table in the corner,’ Phoebe whispered, passing him the plate of thick bread and butter.
‘Would you have liked that?’ he asked, not quite sure if she was joking.
‘No, of course not. Won’t you try one of these op art cakes?’
James declined and felt as if he were being prim and fussy, seeing her apparent enjoyment. He felt almost resentful towards her, for while in a way she was ‘sending him up’ she also seemed to be dragging him down by her easy acceptance of the place. In a way he was enjoying it too but it was the sort of thing that only seemed to be fun at the time. Afterwards he would be ashamed of having had tea with her in the Leopard Dining Rooms.
‘Are you happy?’ she asked with disconcerting suddenness when they were driving back to the cottage.
‘What a question!’ he said, hoping that she would interpret his answer in the way that pleased her most.
‘I’ll go and get out the drinks,’ she said, running ahead of him.
‘You’ve got some new cushions,’ said James, following her into the room. Th
ey were bright and garish, not at all the sort of thing anyone one knew would choose, yet Phoebe looked almost exotic reclining among them, like a vamp in an old film with her heavily made-up eyes and inviting expression. Making love to her was like an amusing unreal game, so far removed from his everyday life that he could not feel his usual guilt.
When after some time Phoebe sat up and said with a rather distressing lack of purpose, ‘I suppose we ought to have something to eat,’ the image of Leonora returned, and even more of the delicious ‘little something’, always ready or made in a moment, that she invariably produced whenever one called on her.
James noticed a cold joint standing on the table by the open window, very much exposed to wandering animals, and he had seen a cat prowling around outside. There was also a bowl of lettuce from which he surreptitiously removed a few inedible-looking leaves which seemed to have earth adhering to them. Phoebe was obviously not at her best in the kitchen. It was a mistake to assume that all women were. The kitchen itself was not very clean either. There was the washing-up from lunch or breakfast or both, two unrinsed milk bottles, eggshells not thrown away, paw marks on the sink and cats’ hairs floating in the atmosphere. James began to feel that he was not so hungry after all.
All the same, he managed to eat what was provided— Phoebe’s rough red wine helped it down—and afterwards lay happily with her among the bright cushions. He wondered whether he should stay the night, then he remembered the encounter with the Murrays at the sale and a feeling of uneasiness came over him. Waking up next morning in the Bohemian discomfort of the cottage would certainly not be agreeable, he decided.
Going back into the room after he had gone, Phoebe made ineffectual attempts to tidy it and even to clean up the kitchen, for she had sensed his disapproval,” but in the end she became bored. One of the village cats had come into the room and jumped up on top of the big old-fashioned radio set which Phoebe turned on, making music for herself and warmth for the animal. A symphony was being played and as Phoebe lay watching the cat she had the fancy that its spreading body was like a great empty wineskin or bladder being filled with Mendelssohn. She began to think of a poem she would write for James.
It was a pity he couldn’t tell Leonora about the cat filled with music, James felt, as he smiled over the poem Phoebe had sent him. That was the only bit he really understood and it might have been appropriate for this afternoon when he had promised to take Leonora to a cat show, where Liz was exhibiting some Siamese kittens. Although he didn’t particularly want to go — there were many pleasanter ways of spending an afternoon, he felt—it seemed a good opportunity to appease his conscience for the lie he had told Leonora about having come straight back from the sale and spent the evening with one of his useful old school friends.
‘Just kittens and neuter cats,’ said Leonora, reading from the programme, ‘that sounds so cosy, doesn’t it?’
‘Shall I be the only grown-up male thing there, then?’ James asked, not altogether joking.
‘Probably, darling — though one doesn’t think of you as male, exactly. Not all tweedy and pipe-smoking and doing carpentry at weekends.’
‘No …’ James could appreciate the accuracy of her distinction but there were other, more attractive, aspects of maleness, he felt, that Leonora might have mentioned.
The hall where the show was being held was hot, crowded and noisy. James looked around him with dismay at the prospect of having to spend the afternoon there. It is a truth now universally acknowledged that owners grow to look like their pets, and it was certainly impressed upon him as he and Leonora pushed their way through the crowds surrounding the cages in their search for Liz and her brood of Siamese.
‘There you are, Liz darling!’ Leonora proffered her cheek to the little dark woman who stood before them with a tray of cat litter in her hands. ‘I’ve brought James, as you see.’
She might have put it the other way round, James felt, seeing that he had brought her in his car. He was conscious of Liz’s critical eyes on him and wondered, as always, what she was thinking. He always felt a little uneasy in her presence, perhaps because, as a divorced woman, she was known to have a great contempt and dislike for men. But if, as he remembered, he was not to be thought of as male he need have no fear.
‘Lovely to see you, James,’ she said, ‘and what do you think of my babies?’
Two litters of kittens, making ten in all, were sleeping in the cage, twined and curled up into a great clot of cream and brown, with a blue eye studding it here and there like a jewel.
‘Very pretty,’ said James. ‘Have the judges been round yet?’
‘They’re on their way.’ Liz indicated two stout women in white coats followed by a girl acolyte bearing a yellow plastic bowl of milky-looking disinfectant. ‘I’m pretty confident of this lot. Wouldn’t you like to buy one?’
‘Yes, James, you ought to have a cat,’ Leonora urged.
‘I don’t think I could cope,’ said James weakly, imagining the malevolent creature ruling his life that the kitten might become. ‘Besides, I’m going away soon.’
‘James is going on a tour of Spain and Portugal,’ Leonora explained, as if he were a child. ‘Humphrey thought it would be a good thing for him to have a look at the Continental stuff.’
‘Oh, that reminds me,’ said Liz, ‘Joan Murray’s here. You know how she dotes on cats. She got Dickie to bring her but he didn’t stay.’
Rather sensible of Dickie, James felt, wondering if he should mention having met the Murrays at the country sale. It might be easier to say something before Joan did.
‘Leonora! How heavenly to see you—and James too!’Joan Murray was upon them before he could get out his carefully casual sentence. ‘Don’t tell me Humphrey’s here? No—men must work, obviously—Dickie just dropped me here and fled.’
James looked down at the ground, feeling even less manly than before.
‘Wasn’t it funny seeing James at that sale?’ said Joan.
‘You didn’t tell me,’ said Leonora, with a hint of reproach in her tone.
‘No, I must have forgotten,’ said James lamely.
‘Well, that is flattering,’Joan protested. ‘I obviously made no impression.’
James joined uncertainly in the general laughter. Had she seen him with Phoebe? he wondered. As far as he could remember Phoebe had been some distance away when Joan and Richard had come up to him. To his relief Joan now left the subject. Apparently there had been another sale with much more amusing things.
‘Dickie found the most marvellous old flowered loo,’ she prattled. ‘So we’re going to put it in the window and fill it with bulrushes and pampas grass.’
Leonora promised to visit their shop, though, as she admitted afterwards, she thought Joan and Dickie rather tiresome and silly. ‘You never told me you’d met them,’ she repeated to James, as they were walking round the show, and now perhaps ftiere was more than a hint of reproach in her tone, what with the heat and noise and her feet hurting a little.
‘I’m afraid Joan was right—it just didn’t make that much impression,’ said James rather crossly.
They had stopped in front of a cage where a cat-like shape shrouded in a cloth lay fast asleep. How much wiser to contract out altogether, James felt, as this creature had evidently done. Or to Sit stolidly in one’s earth tray, unmoved by the comments of passers-by. Yet too often, like some of the more exotic breeds, one prowled uneasily round one’s cage uttering loud plaintive cries.
Leonora looked up at James anxiously and saw that he was frowning. This characteristic sign of displeasure made her realise that she had gone too far. It had been a mistake to repeat her complaint; obviously James couldn’t be expected to tell her every detail of his life and secretly she was pleased that meeting Joan had made so little impression on him. ‘Do you think Liz would mind if we slipped away?’ she said.
‘No—let’s do that. I’ll give you tea at my place.’
‘I should like that. And we
might go through your things.’
‘Are you sure you can cope with all this?’James asked as they were having tea. ‘Mrs Jelly did offer, you know, and she’s on the spot.’
But, darling, she doesn’t know your things like I do-besides she’s much too busy.’ Leonora smiled as she remembered how she used to feel almost jealous of the woman who lived in the flat below James, until she had met the excellent Mrs Jelly, cosy, motherly, but thoroughly unattractive and much occupied with her job as corset buyer for one of the big stores.
‘Well, of course I’d much rather you did it, if you really feel you can,’ said James. ‘I’ll take my personal stuff or leave it with Humphrey.’
Leonora’s glance strayed to the photograph of his mother and rested there awhile. No doubt he would be taking that. It always disturbed her to think that this young woman, with the curly hairstyle and dark lipstick of the early fifties, so well remembered by Leonora herself, should be James’s mother. They had talked about her in the early days of their acquaintance, when James had told her of their closeness and of her sudden tragic illness and death, but now she was taken for granted and aroused no more interest than the rather bored reverence accorded to Humphrey’s dead wife Chloe in her ATS uniform. All the same, how fresh and young she looked now when Leonora was feeling the effects of an exhausting afternoon.
‘I’m rather tired, darling,’ she said. ‘Please, James, would you take me home?’
‘But of course,’ he said, ‘we’ll go now.’ Trailing round that cat show had been too much for her, obviously, and he could see that she was tired. He noticed for the first time some new lines on her beautiful neck, and he took her arm rather gently, as if she were some old fragile object that needed careful handling.
IX
One morning some days later James arrived at the shop to find his uncle and Miss Caton in a state of considerable agitation. It appeared that the premises had been broken into during the night and a number of things stolen.