by Barbara Pym
Humphrey was wringing his hands as he sat on a Hepplewhite chair in the room at the back of the shop, recounting the losses in a tone of lamentation.
‘Those quails,’ he moaned, ‘ah, those quails!’
‘You don’t mean …’
‘Yes, my dear boy, I do mean … those quails.’
They had been Chinese and rather valuable, James remembered. He was a bit vague about their provenance and altogether rather nervous about the Chinese things, not knowing much about them and not really liking them, though he had never dared confess this to his uncle.
‘I’ve just made a cup of tea,’ said Miss Caton, who was crouching near the gas-ring. ‘This will do you good — a strong cup of tea with plenty of sugar. I learnt that when I was doing first aid during the war—treatment for shock.’
Humphrey glanced distastefully at the tan-coloured liquid in the thick white cup and waved it aside. ‘No, thank you, Miss Caton — I really couldn’t drink it—and where did you get that terrible cup?’
‘It’s the one I have my elevenses and my tea out of every day,’ she said briskly.
Humphrey took his mid-morning coffee elsewhere if he was not at a sale and was seldom on the premises in the afternoon either, so he had probably never noticed his typist drinking from the thick serviceable cup.
‘Well, Miss Caton,’ he said, ‘I can only hope that nobody has ever seen you drinking from such a monstrosity. It would hardly be a good advertisement, would it?’
‘I take my tea in the back,’ she said, on the defensive, ‘so no customer could have seen me.’
‘And you, James—do you drink from such a cup?’ asked his uncle sternly.
‘I don’t know,’ James mumbled. ‘I suppose I may have done on occasion.’
Humphrey exclaimed in horror.
‘Perhaps a cup of China tea,’ Miss Caton persisted, ‘though it wouldn’t have the same reviving effect, and without milk or sugar it might well be too acid for you in your present condition.’
James felt they were wasting time, though he was not sure what they ought to be doing. He felt ineffectual and guilty at having arrived after the others, as if he could have prevented the theft by having come ten minutes earlier. Now Miss Caton pressed the rejected cup of strong tea on him and he found himself drinking it almost as a punishment. It was not at all nice and by now not even hot. The tea at the Leopard Dining Rooms had been better than this.
‘What about the police?’ he suggested.
‘Oh, I’ve done all that,’ said Miss Caton. ‘I discovered the theft, you see, when I arrived. At quarter past eight,’ she added a little smugly. ‘The CID came immediately in response to my 999 call. Two most charming men, in plain clothes, of course. They told me I’d done quite right not to touch anything. It’s so horrid to think of those burglars touching our lovely things with their nasty rough hands.’
‘It’s quite likely that the thieves were men of taste,’ said Humphrey, ‘or at least of some knowledge. They took the very best netsuke, you know. That ram …’ He moaned again. ‘So they would probably not have had rough hands.’
‘Perhaps Miss Caton didn’t mean it literally,’ James suggested.
‘Well, no, perhaps not in the literal sense of labouring men who work with their hands. In any case they would have been wearing gloves—such delicate objects as those quails would require most careful handling.’
There was a call from the shop. ‘Anyone here?’
‘Good heavens, is the door open?’ said Humphrey. ‘Go and see who it is, James, while I get on with this inventory. Miss Caton, will you take dictation on to the typewriter, please.’
James hurried guiltily into the shop, for it was he who had forgotten to lock the door when he arrived. A florist’s delivery boy was standing gaping at a bronze of two naked human figures in a complicated embrace. A sheaf of white roses and carnations tied with mauve ribbon had been put down on an inlaid rosewood table. James picked them up hastily. ‘Are these for us?’ he
asked. ‘Are you sure you’ve got the right address?’
‘That’s what it says,’ said the boy, now on his way out.
James saw that the flowers were indeed addressed to his uncle. Remembering to lock the door this time, he went back with them.
‘How exquisite!’ said Humphrey, taking a card from the little envelope attached to the sheaf. ‘And isn’t that just like dear Leonora —who but she would have thought of sending flowers at a time like this? She must have done it immediately after I telephoned her with the dreadful news.’
‘What has she put on the card?’ James asked.
“‘With kind thoughts and deepest sympathy in your sad losses,’” Humphrey read out. ‘So right, somehow.’
James wanted to smile at the words but did not like to. ‘Unusual to send flowers,’ he remarked. Who but Leonora, indeed.
‘I’ll arrange them in that blue and white vase,’ said Miss Caton.
‘Ah, yes, the Worcester,’ said Humphrey.,
‘Shall you be going to Sotheby’s this morning?’ she asked.
‘Oh, no-it’s only “Valuable Printed Books”,’ he picked out the words scornfully, ‘today. There’s far too much to be seen to here.’
Nevertheless Humphrey left for an early lunch and declared that he would not be back until late in the afternoon. He was gratified to see that there was a small paragraph in the early editions of the evening paper about the robbery. The reporter had quoted his own words about the thieves evidently being men of taste.
‘Don’t you think a lot of people may come in this afternoon?’James asked, realising that he was to be left on his own.
‘One hopes that people won’t come out of vulgar curiosity,’ said Humphrey, ‘but if any do the prices are clearly marked. It must be business as usual,’ he added, as he left the shop.
Which would mean that he would have to sit in the front, on view to passers-by, James realised, for if he did not sit in the shop he would have to be in the back with Miss Caton and hear about her friend who was receiving instruction in the Roman Catholic faith, which was her latest topic of conversation. (‘And she said to the priest, “But supposing it’s Friday and I’ve got some liver to finish up?” That floored him, I can tell you!’) Even with the relaxation of the fasting rules Miss Caton would still have too much to say, so James chose to sit in the shop.
It was a rather hot afternoon, the sort of time when work of any kind seems disagreeable. James was tired from the events of the morning and from the-effort of sorting things out in his flat to be put into storage or lent to Phoebe and Leonora. He was inclined to be sleepy and even nodded into a doze once or twice. Two American ladies passed the window and he could hear them speculating as to the prices in dollars. As four o’clock approached he wondered if he could slip out to the patisserie round the corner for a cup of coffee rather than endure Miss Caton’s tea, but decided he had better not. After a while he went to the window and removed a little tortoiseshell and silver box he had earmarked for Leonora’s birthday. He took it back to the desk where he had been sitting and began to examine it more closely. Seen in this way it appeared to be not quite perfect, as he had at first thought; there was a slight flaw where a bit of the silver inlay had come away. It was really more the kind of thing Phoebe might appreciate. Leonora liked things to be flawless, expected them to be. He began to wonder if so exquisite a person was really capable of packing up the things in his flat and dealing with the removal men. It seemed too much to ask of her and yet he must not forget that she had offered to do it—he had not even had to hint at it. She would take one or two things for herself and the rest would go to the furniture depository. Then Phoebe could go and choose what she wanted, apart from the things he had already suggested for her.
The hot afternoon dragged on. Then a man entered the shop quickly, almost stealthily, and asked the price of a paperweight in the window. James recognised him as the man who had watched him at the sale where he and Humphrey had fi
rst met Leonora, and on various other occasions. This was the first time they had met at close quarters. He told the man the price of the object and they made some perfunctory conversation. Then the man made a suggestion which brought a not unbecoming blush to James’s cheek, though it was not the first time such a proposition had been put to him. If his suitor had been more attractive, and if Miss Caton had not come in at that moment, who knows what might have happened. As it was the man mumbled something about a friend being interested in the paperweight and left the shop as quickly as he had entered it.
‘Oh, that man —he’s always hanging round here,’ said Miss Caton, with an impatient gesture as if she were brushing away an insect. ‘You don’t want to have anything to do with people like that.’
Even though he was inclined to agree with her James resented her nannyish attitude and the tea in the thick white cup which she now brought him. He drank it hurriedly, now particularly conscious of its unsuitability in such surroundings.
Suddenly, as if the day had not already held more than enough, he saw Phoebe standing looking into the window, obviously nerving herself to come in.
His first feeling was one of panic. A man sitting in a shop, perhaps especially in an antique shop, is in a vulnerable position. It had not occurred to James that Phoebe would ever come to London uninvited. He had always thought of her in the country, in the dark little cottage rooms, or sitting under the vine in the back garden, not here, near Sloane Square, where Leonora might appear at any moment. For an instant he imagined the horror of their meeting—Leonora, cool, poised and exquisitely dressed, Phoebe, shy, on the defensive and in her odd clothes, and he unhappily in between. What would they say to each other? Obviously it must never happen. As Phoebe opened the door and came in he remembered with relief that Leonora was dining out this evening with an old admirer, one of those respectable pick-ups in the great gardens of Europe, so she would be safely out of the way. He could take Phoebe to his flat and out to dinner and then put her on to a train at Waterloo.
Humphrey did not encourage ‘followers’, so James’s greeting of Phoebe was a little constrained. He did not kiss her, but took her hand and murmured something vaguely affectionate.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.
‘Oh, I couldn’t bear the country and Anthea Wedge’s journal any longer, so I decided to come and see you, then go and stay the night with Mother.’
In Putney, he remembered she had once told him and he had thought it was perhaps not where one would care to have one’s mother live.
Phoebe looked even more skinny and droopy than usual in a rather unbecoming beige crepe dress which was in the fashion of that summer but yet reminded him dimly of his mother at some unspecified period of his early life. The dress was obviously new and he noticed that she had put silver varnish on her nails. Her appearance was touching and upsetting and he found himself longing to make love to her.
It was five o’clock—time to leave the shop, but too early for dinner. He decided to take her to his flat for a drink.
His sitting-room was depressingly untidy with piles of books and objects on the floor. When they were inside they kissed awkwardly, as if for the first time.
‘I like your dress,’ he said, ‘very fashionable.’
She glanced at him suspiciously. ‘But the colour doesn’t suit me.’
‘No?’ Of course it didn’t, or she needed different make-up or something. Leonora always knew what suited her, almost boringly so. James would have liked to advise a woman what to wear but didn’t know where to start with Phoebe.
She wandered round the room, seeming ill at ease.
‘This is nice,’ she said, picking up a gilded wooden figure from a Spanish church. ‘Can I borrow this?’
‘My uncle will probably want to have it in the shop,’ he lied, knowing that Leonora wanted to keep it for him.
‘Oh. Couldn’t I choose the things I’d like to have now?’
‘Well, it’s a bit complicated. You won’t mind going to get them out of the furniture depository, will you? You’ll rather enjoy it, I should think,’ he added, imagining her in those gaunt surroundings.
‘How do you expect me to enjoy anything when you won’t be here?’
‘Oh, Phoebe, I’m not going to be away all that long,’ said James, wishing she wouldn’t be so intense.
‘Is that woman who lives below going to pack up your things?’
James did not answer.
‘It’s so sad to think of your flat being empty and you far away,’ she persisted.
‘The flat would have been empty anyway because the lease runs out,’ said James sensibly, ‘and I want to find another when I get back.’
‘Where will you go till you do?’
‘To my uncle’s—he has plenty of room.’
‘You won’t have to live over the shop?’ she asked, suddenly in a joking mood. ‘Or with Miss Caton?’
‘No, I won’t.’
Phoebe had taken up the photograph of James’s mother and was examining it. ‘I can’t believe this is really your mother—she looks so young.’
‘Well, she was—comparatively.’
‘That black lipstick and matching nail varnish and those rows of pearls — it all looks remoter now than the Victorian age. Poor girl, she never lived to see you grown up.’
‘I think it’s time we went and had something to eat,’ said James, fearing, not for the first time, the power of Phoebe’s imagination. ‘Where shall we go?’
‘Oh, anywhere—you decide.’
The restaurant James chose was one of the many Italian trattorie, small and crowded with tables rather too close together, and decorated with strings of Chianti bottles. The young waiters darted about, responding with charming politeness to the halting holiday Italian some of the diners felt obliged to practise on them. The hot summer evening was made even hotter by the flames heating up various dishes which also gave a spurious air of distinction to the restaurant, as if exotic concoctions were being created at the tables when it was often no more than a portion of frozen peas being warmed up.
James picked up the menu. ‘What do you feel like?’ he asked.
‘Nothing, really,’ she said unhelpfully.
‘That isn’t much good,’ he said, running his eye down the list of Italian specialities.
‘I meant that it was enough just to be with you.*
‘Thank you,’ he said gracefully, wishing that he had thought of saying it.
‘I can’t expect you to share the feeling,’ she burst out in her frank way. ‘AH I really want is a glass of water and a roll—it’s that sort of day.’
James, looking back over his day, decided that the end of it at least could be improved and that he deserved rather more than that. Afterwards they went for a walk, strolling hand-in-hand down Kensington Church Street, looking in the windows of the antique shops. In one he pointed out to her a pair of vases he admired and would like to possess.
‘Perhaps I could give them to you,’ she said.
‘They cost rather a lot of money,’ he said, laughing. ‘I went in and asked.’
‘I suppose somebody could afford to give them to you,’ she said. ‘Your uncle, perhaps?’
‘No doubt—but he doesn’t value me quite as highly as that. And now I suppose I’d better take you home.’
‘I love your old-fashioned manners,’ she said, mocking. ‘You surely don’t mean to come all the way to East Putney?’
‘But of course,’ said James, a little daunted, but hailing a taxi none the less. It might have been better to have gone back for his car, but a close embrace in a taxi would make it easier to tell her that this would be their last meeting before he went away. But of course it was not easier and they finished the long ride still with nothing said. At least he had given her a good dinner.
‘I’ll ring you,’ he said, uttering that useful goodnight formula.
He had made the taxi wait, intending to allow himself the luxury of taking
it all the way home, and he stayed only long enough to give her a last quick kiss on the doorstep before the door of the quiet suburban house opened and a grey-haired woman, who looked as if she had been waiting for this moment, drew Phoebe inside.
Frowning a little, as if at something vaguely unsatisfactory, James settled down for the ride back, watching the figures tick up on the clock.
In bed Leonora held the telephone receiver in her hand and heard James’s number go on ringing. Obviously he was out. She had been obliged to put off her dinner engagement because she had felt she was getting one of her headaches, a sort of migraine she occasionally suffered from. Probably the heat and the prospect of a not very interesting evening had brought it on. Now she longed for James to come and see her, to sit quietly by her bed, perhaps laying a cool hand on her forehead or reading aloud to her in his beautiful voice.
She put the receiver down, disappointed and a little annoyed. Now that James was going away she felt the need to spend as much time with him as possible. She thought he would have wanted it also, then she remembered that she had had an engagement for this evening and he was not to know that she had put it off. Perhaps he had gone to the cinema, which she disliked anyway, so that was ‘all right’. She lay back again and was nearly asleep when the telephone rang. She snatched up the receiver, but it was only Meg. Evidently she was alone too, Leonora thought, not realising that for an instant she was making an absurd comparison between herself and James and Meg and Colin.
Meg just wanted an excuse to go on about Colin and what hard work it was for him at the snack bar. She really thought he would have to give it up if things went on like this. Now they were short staffed in the kitchen and he had to cut up raw vegetables —’you should just see his hands, all stained and brown, it’s really too bad’—and how was Leonora? she enquired belatedly.
Leonora did not feel inclined to go into that and brought the conversation to an end. She was awake now and Miss Foxe’s radio, playing something unsuitable, made sleep impossible. What a relief it would be when her lease ran out and she could get rid of her! The thought of it did much to relieve Leonora’s headache and she found herself sufficiently recovered to sit up and re-do her nail varnish. But those brown spots on her own hands—unlike the stains on Colin’s—were surely a sign of age? The headache began to return and she lay down again, the tears trickling slowly down her cheeks.