by Barbara Pym
X
James left for his tour of Spain and Portugal full of advice and letters of introduction from his uncle and warnings from Leonora as to what he should or should not eat and drink. Once in the plane he not unnaturally experienced a sensation of freedom, almost of escape, at the thought of being on his own for several weeks. Nevertheless, such was his nature, the first thing he did on arriving in Spain was to send postcards to Leonora and Phoebe, telling the former that he had arrived safely and that everything was wonderful but that he missed her, and the latter that everything was wonderful and that he had written to the furniture depository, telling them that she would be coming to choose the pieces he had promised to lend her for the cottage. He did not say that he missed Phoebe, feeling that she would not expect it.
To be involved with a man’s furniture, especially to have some of it in one’s possession, even if only temporarily, adds considerably to one’s prestige, which was perhaps why Phoebe had asked her friend Jennifer to go with her to the depository which was situated in north-west London, somewhere beyond Cricklewood.
Phoebe had talked a great deal about James and the antique shop and what beautiful things he had in his flat, so that Jennifer expected something rather special to be revealed when a tea chest was opened for them and Phoebe began to delve inside. It seemed to contain a great many newspaper-wrapped bundles. The first one she chose to investigate was an awkward but promising shape, as if it might be a figurine or small statue, or even a carefully padded piece of glass.
‘Oh . .’ The unwrapped newspaper disclosed some old cork table mats, a bottle opener with a comic head and a number of spoons and forks with the plating worn off. ‘Perhaps this.’ Phoebe took out another, larger bundle. It turned out to be a lamp made from a Portuguese wine bottle. ‘He always despised mine so,’ she said in a puzzled tone, ‘and yet it looks as if he had one himself. I don’t remember noticing it.’
‘I expect he hid it away somewhere. It wouldn’t go with all those beautiful antiques.’
‘Yes, I suppose that was it. I wonder what this is?’
It proved to be another wine bottle lamp, this time a straw-covered flask.
Jennifer tried not to smile. James’s wonderful ‘things’ were not living up to expectations, so that she now began to doubt other aspects of the affair that Phoebe had told her about.
‘This tray,’ Phoebe went on, ‘art nouveau, isn’t it?’ That at least was respectable. ‘And here’s a little glass bird.’
Italian tourist stuff, thought Jennifer; she had brought one back herself from a holiday in Venice.
‘I wonder where his other things are,’ said Phoebe, unwrapping three undistinguished ashtrays. ‘I remember seeing all kinds of objects that don’t seem to be here.’
‘Perhaps his mother has them,’ said Jennifer, in a rather bitter tone.
‘But his mother’s dead—he’s an orphan.’
‘Poor James.’
‘He was very devoted to his mother.’
‘He would be! Perhaps some other relation, then—his uncle or a friend.’
There was an uneasy silence.
‘That doesn’t seem very likely,’ said Phoebe uncertainly, for how did she know?
A man now approached from the far end of the gallery carrying some small articles of furniture.
Phoebe’s face brightened. ‘Oh, look, here’s the little table and the Victorian chair—but where’s the fruit-wood mirror with the cupids? I thought I was going to have that.’
‘I think Miss Eyre took it, Miss,’ said the man stolidly.
‘Jane Eyre?’ asked Jennifer. ‘I don’t like the” sound of that.’
‘Miss Leonora Eyre,’ said the man. ‘Unusual isn’t it, that name, Leah-Norah.’
‘Those Leonora overtures,’ went on Jennifer gaily. ‘I never did like Beethoven. The mixture of that and Jane Eyre is rather disquieting, don’t you think?’
‘Oh, don’t be silly. It’s probably the woman who lives in the flat below James — an old thing about sixty. I once met her on the stairs. She was always fussing over him and I suppose he thought she might like to have something. All the same, I should hardly have thought that fruitwood mirror was her style. I wish I could remember her name though,’ she added a little uneasily. ‘I don’t think I ever knew it.’
‘Well, we can’t do anything about it now,’ said Jennifer impatiently. ‘I expect you’ll find out sooner or later.’
Phoebe arranged with the man for the furniture to be sent to her at the cottage and then the two girls went off to have tea with Jennifer’s mother at a teashop in Wigmore Street. Jennifer speculated on the idea of Jane Eyre supervising the packing of Mr Rochester’s furniture and from there went on to imagine other heroines in similar situations. Phoebe listened perfunctorily, for she was preoccupied with the idea of Leonora Eyre and wondered how she could find out for certain who she was.
XI
The fruitwood mirror was, of course, very much Leonora’s style. The glass had some slight flaw in it, and if she placed it in a certain light she saw looking back at her the face of a woman from another century, fascinating and ageless. It might be a good idea to use it when she made up her face, to spare herself some of the painful discoveries she had lately been making—those lines where none had been before, and that softening and gradual disintegration of the flesh which was so distressing on a spring or summer morning.
Today she had to go to the dentist, Mr Lambe, an old friend who admired her even under the difficult circumstances of their twice yearly encounters. He was a spare, handsome man who collected netsuke—perhaps there was something tooth-like about the little discoloured ivory carvings which could explain their attraction for him. He spoke enthusiastically of his latest acquisition as he stuffed Leonora’s mouth with cotton wool and inserted the draining tube before filling a tooth.
‘A wooden wasp in a rotten pear!’ he chanted. ‘Now wouldn’t that description attract any collector! Unfortunately I was unable to get to the sale—now how does that feel? Just clench your teeth together, please, Miss Eyre—is that quite smooth? And would you believe it, it went for two-fifty! Two-fifty! Luckily I was able to acquire it off the dealer who’d bought it. Wasn’t that a tragedy, the burglary at the gallery! Poor Mr Boyce!’
Mr Lambe also attended to Humphrey’s teeth and had lately been visited by him, so he had heard all about the loss of the quails. Leonora closed her eyes as he began to drill for another small filling. Two fillings at one visit—even her beautiful teeth were going now. ‘Those quails,’ she heard Mr Lambe droning, ‘such exquisite objects. The thieves must have been men of considerable discernment. Such a robbery is in a different category altogether from the petty thefts one hears about in the suburbs.’ Mr Lambe came from one of these himself, though he did not see himself as doing so.
‘I suppose a thief of discernment might steal netsuke even in the suburbs,’ Leonora remarked, ‘though a petty thief wouldn’t know their value.’
‘No, a small-minded person wouldn’t necessarily be attracted to small objects,’ said Mr Lambe. ‘He’d be more likely to steal a television set or a canteen of cutlery.’
Leonora closed her eyes again. It was a hot afternoon and the discomfort of the fillings combined with Mr Lambe’s conversation had made her feel rather faint. When the receptionist appeared with her scarf and gloves, Leonora could sense the girl watching her critically as she arranged the scarf carefully around her neck.
‘You look rather pale, Miss Eyre,’ said Mr Lambe. ‘I should go and have a cup of tea. There are several delightful places in Wigmore Street.’
Of course Leonora knew several such places where elegant women like herself and a few idle elderly gentlemen could pass an hour drinking coffee or tea and eating cakes. How fortunate that Mr Lambe had not forbidden eating and that she would be able to have one of her favourite cakes, delicate worms of chestnut puree and cream on the lightest of foundations. It was surely for times like these that such de
lights had been concocted, for she was hardly in her usual spirits after an exhausting time at the dentist and no James to cherish her. While waiting for her tea to be brought she took out the postcard he had sent her, so affectionate and tender and missing her, writing soon and of course all his love.
‘This is the place,’ said Jennifer, ‘and there’s Mother. She looks as if she’s been waiting ages.’
‘I’m sorry we’re late,’ said Phoebe, looking around her suspiciously. This was not at all her kind of place, but she brightened up when the waitress approached their table with a tray of cakes, her tongs hovering.
Leonora from her corner looked annoyed, for she had been there longer and should have been served first. Still, she had her tea and that was a comfort.
‘I’m going to have one of those marron things,’ said Jennifer. ‘Oh, but there seems to be only one—would you like it, Phoebe?’
‘No, you have it. I’d rather have a strawberry tart.’
The waitress went over to Leonora’s table. ‘I’m sorry, madam,’ she said in answer to her request, ‘that young lady over there had the last marron gateau.’
‘Oh, but this is really too annoying,’ said Leonora petulantly. ‘I’ve just been to the dentist—I can’t eat anything hard.’
‘None of the gateaus is hard, madam,’ said the waitress reproachfully. ‘They’re all fresh today.’
‘Well, then, a coffee eclair.’ Leonora glared—and even a person as lovely and gracious as Leonora could do this when the occasion demanded it — in the direction of the table where Phoebe and Jennifer and her mother were sitting. But the undistinguished-looking women, the older one inelegantly surrounded by shopping, the younger ones dressed most unsuitably for town and carrying flower-patterned paper carrier bags, seemed hardly worthy of her attention and she soon forgot them in the pleasure of the eclair, which was almost as delicious as the marron confection would have been.
Only a retired Brazilian diplomat, the type of man who could spare the time for afternoon tea, sitting at a table midway between the protagonists, noticed the little drama, if such it was. Now what have I seen? he asked himself. Something or nothing? A beautiful woman disappointed over a cake, a mere triviality, really, and yet who could tell …?
Leonora finished her tea and took a taxi home. As she approached her house she noticed with irritation Miss Foxe’s dingy ‘Jacobean’ chintz curtains blowing out of an upper window. How wonderful it would be when the house was all her own! As she prepared a light supper, Leonora found herself imagining what she would do with those extra rooms. Then the telephone rang. It was Humphrey, asking if he might come round and see her as he was afraid she might be lonely.
How kind people were, Leonora thought, setting out a tray of drinks and preparing to receive her visitor. Coffee and brandy, perhaps? She herself preferred creme de menthe; she had changed into a green chiffon dress which gave her a feeling for that drink.
Humphrey had brought a china plate for her—something he had picked up in Portobello last week—just a trifle, but he thought it might amuse her. Leonora was delighted with the Victorian scene of ladies under a tree; a cedar tree, they decided.
‘Oh, to have lived in those days,’ she lamented.
‘My dear Leonora, you’d have found it most disagreeable,’ said Humphrey firmly. ‘You have this romantic view of the past—and of the present, too,’ he added.
‘Yes, I suppose one feels that life is only tolerable if one takes a romantic view of it,’ Leonora agreed. ‘And yet it’s wicked, really, when there’s all this misery and that sort of thing, but one feels so helpless—I mean, what can one do? As it is, one tries to lead a good life… .’ She paused, dissatisfied with the phrase, for somehow it conjured up a picture of Miss Foxe going out to church early on a Sunday morning and that had not been at all what she meant. ‘One enjoys the arts and gives something to charity, of course, and’—here she bowed her head over her creme de menthe—’one loves people to the best of one’s ability …’
Humphrey let her refill his glass in the pause that followed. He did not quite know how to say what was in his mind. ‘You mean, you love James,’ he said, which was not how he had meant to put it.
‘Yes, of course one adores darling James,’ she said, with more than her usual affectation.
‘But it’s so unreal, my dear, this loving James. Surely you must know that nothing can come of it?’
‘One would hardly expect anything to “come of it”, as you put it.’
‘It’s such an unnatural relationship,’ Humphrey went on, ‘an attractive woman of your age and James …’ He was uncertain what to say about his nephew whose sexual inclinations had never been quite clear to him. ‘So much younger than you are’ — that at least was true — ‘and one day he’ll want to get married to a girl of his own age, no doubt, and then where will you be?’
‘One doesn’t look so far ahead,’ said Leonora faintly, ‘but of course I should be the last person to stand in James’s way if he ever wanted …’
‘But I want,’ said Humphrey suddenly. ‘You know that.’ He moved nearer, his bulk looming over her.
He is going to kiss me, Leonora thought in sudden panic, pray heaven no more than that. She tried to protest, even to scream, but no sound came. Humphrey was larger and stronger than she was and his kiss very different from the reverent touch on lips, cheek or brow which was all James seemed to want. One couldn’t lose one’s dignity, of course, Leonora told herself, for after all one wasn’t exactly a young girl. Surely freedom from this sort of thing was among the compensations of advancing age and the sad decay of one’s beauty; one really ought not to be having to fend people off any more. But this was of little comfort in the present situation, and now Humphrey’s hand, that hand so accustomed to appraising objects of art and of vertu, had strayed inside the neck of her dress and would certainly have torn the delicate chiffon, if nothing worse, had not a gentle knocking on the door caused its hasty withdrawal.
Miss Foxe’s way of tapping, so very genteel and apologetic, had often irritated Leonora in the past. And even now, though her main feelings were of relief and gratitude for the interruption—almost Divine intervention—she could not entirely control her usual annoyance at Miss Foxe’s stupidity. For surely she must have known that Leonora had somebody with her when Humphrey’s car was so obviously standing outside the house and the hall filled with the smell of his cigar.
Humphrey had sprung up from the sofa and was standing looking out of the window when Leonora opened her door, so that Miss Foxe did not see him immediately. When she did, her apologies were profuse—of course she had had no idea … what must Miss Eyre think of her interrupting like this, it was quite unpardonable, she would not dream of troubling her now …
‘Come in, Miss Foxe,’ said Leonora impatiently. ‘Have you met Mr Boyce? Humphrey, this is Miss Foxe who has the flat at the top of the house. Is there anything wrong, Miss Foxe?’
‘Only that the water is coming through my ceiling,’ she replied, ‘but it is nothing, really.’
‘Oh, is it raining?’ Leonora glanced towards the window. The hot day had broken in thunder without her having realised it; so much for the power of love, or lust, as one might well call it. ‘Yes, so it is. Well, now, what can we do?’
‘I thought perhaps if you had a bucket …,’ Miss Foxe began.
‘A bucket?’ Leonora echoed. Really, did one look the sort of person who would have a bucket?
‘Something to catch the water in,’ suggested Humphrey, amused at the ideas of two gentlewomen without buckets. ‘Let’s go up and see, if Miss Foxe doesn’t mind.’
They followed her up the stairs and into her sitting-room. Humphrey noticed one or two good pieces of furniture and china and made a mental note of them. The rain was dripping through a corner of the ceiling into a large Chinese vase.
‘My dear Miss Foxe, that is quite a valuable piece,’ he said.
‘Is it valuable?’ she asked casually.
‘We had two of them at home—they used to stand in the drawing-room with pot-pourri in them. I believe a great-uncle brought them back from the East.’
‘You have some charming things here,’ said Humphrey, peering through the glass front of a corner cupboard. ‘If you should ever feel the need to —er . . He did not like to go further.
‘Mr Boyce is a dealer in antiques,’ Leonora explained, ‘and would give you the best advice if ever you wanted to sell anything.’
‘Oh, I hope I shall never have to do that,’ said Miss Foxe. ‘I like to have my treasures around me. Why, it doesn’t seem to be dripping so much now.’
‘No, the rain has stopped,’ said Humphrey. ‘I tell you what I’ll do,’ he turned to Leonora, ‘I’ll send my builder round in the morning. He’s a good man and won’t overcharge you.’
‘Oh, that would be kind,’ said Miss Foxe rather too effusively, considering that it was for Leonora rather than her that the builder was being sent.
Humphrey and Leonora went down to her flat. There was still a little brandy left in his glass, but it was obvious that the evening had come to an end. Nothing was said about the scene that had preceded Miss Foxe’s interruption, but Humphrey got the impression from Leonora’s almost exaggeratedly cool and affected manner that he had made rather a fool of himself. She kissed him on the cheek as usual when they said goodnight and he reiterated his promise to send the builder round in the morning. Perhaps that practical deed would be more appropriate than some too carefully chosen object or a rather obvious sheaf of flowers. And anyway, what had he done that he should apologise to her? Only shown that he found her attractive, and surely all women wanted that reassurance occasionally?