by Barbara Pym
James had automatically laid his arm over the sheet of paper which was so far virgin except for the date and the beginning, ‘My dearest Phoebe’.
‘A difficult letter?’ Leonora asked in her most sympathetic tone.
He sighed. ‘An impossible one, really.’
‘Yes, some letters do seem to be that, don’t they? And what a shame you should have to be writing letters on your birthday—surely tomorrow will do?’
James murmured something.
‘Perhaps this one isn’t really necessary,’ Leonora went on. ‘Silence is sometimes best, you know.’
‘Yes, I suppose it is.’ He would leave it for now, anyway. If Phoebe loved him she would understand, and if she didn’t what did it matter? He crumpled up the page and put it in his pocket. Better, perhaps, not to leave it lying around.
‘Are we ready to start the birthday celebrations, then?’
‘Yes, let’s.’James got up and they went into the house together.
‘Here’s your present—I do hope you’ll like it.’
Leonora’s air of sparkling excitement communicated itself to him as he undid the wrappings. And then there they stood, those exquisite objects he had admired in the shop window that evening when he had walked past with Phoebe, and of course on an earlier occasion with Leonora.
‘You’re so much too good to me— I just don’t know how to thank you,’ he said after a pause.
‘Just give me a dutiful kiss,’ said Leonora lightly.
He bent to kiss her cheek, his hands touching her
stiffly lacquered hair, the feeling of which gave him a slight shock as if she were made of some brittle unreal substance. ‘Darling,’ he said, ‘they’re so beautiful. Did Humphrey go with you to buy them?’
‘No—I wanted it to be our secret,’ she said. ‘You know how it is with dear Humphrey. One wouldn’t wish to be disloyal, of course, but he’s so obsessed with trying to knock down the price of everything—being a dealer himself, I suppose—one sometimes finds it a little embarrassing.’
And of course he probably knew the owner of the shop anyway, James thought. It was almost frightening to realise that Leonora was willing to spend so much money on his birthday present. For now that he saw the vases again he felt that perhaps after all he didn’t like them as much as he had remembered. There was something sickly in their colouring and over-elaborate in their design. Looking at them he felt like somebody—a child, of course—who has eaten too many cream cakes or whatever would be the equivalent nowadays. Saddened, he sat down at the table and prepared to enjoy his delicious birthday dinner.
XVII
‘Hello, Jimmie—guess who!’
‘Ned, of course,’ said James in a rather subdued voice, for his uncle was in the shop and the telephone call had interrupted a lecture Humphrey had been giving his nephew on the advisability of settling down to serious study of some particular aspect of the antique trade.
‘I know one learns a good deal by going round the sale rooms,’ he said, ‘but you should try to specialise in something—bronzes or porcelain or even furniture — not netsuke, I think,’ he added, perhaps remembering his visits to Mr Lambe, the dentist.
James had just been going to say ‘porcelain’, in view of Leonora’s birthday present to him, when the telephone had rung.
‘See who that is,’ said Humphrey crossly. ‘If it’s Mrs Hirschberg about that bronze, I’ll speak to her.’
‘Are you busy?’ Ned asked.
‘Yes, in a way,’ said James cautiously.
‘Okay, I’ll make it short then. I’m coming up to the British Museum for a few days, so I’ll look in on you at the weekend.’
‘Oh, but …’James was confused, both by his uncle’s presence and by the idea of Ned calling to see him at Leonora’s house.
‘You’ll be away?’
‘Possibly—can I let you know?’
‘No time for that and I’m not sure where I’ll be—I’ll just take a chance. If you’re there, I’ll see you—if not, not. That sounds beautifully simple, doesn’t it, Jimmie?’
‘Yes, simple. I must rush off now.’ But was anything about Ned ‘simple’?
‘Who was that—your girl friend?’ asked Humphrey without much interest. ‘I hope you’ve made it all right with her about that furniture. I didn’t like having to snatch it away so unceremoniously, but Leonora was upset and seemed to think you’d want it and you know what she is—women do fuss so,’ he added, but without disloyalty since it was a generalisation.
‘Yes, they do,’ James agreed. All the same, Leonora was being marvellous and he had settled down very comfortably in the flat. He had been afraid she would be always in and out wanting to know what he was doing but she didn’t bother him at all. Occasionally when he came back in the evening he noticed that fresh flowers had appeared in his sitting-room, and of course she always saw that his milk was put in the fridge and his rubbish emptied and all those practical things that helped to make life run smoothly but that one didn’t want to have to think about oneself.
Tonight she was dining with him and James hurried back, remembering to call at Harrods on the way for some of Leonora’s favourite lemon water-ice. He spent some time arranging the flowers, not quite as artistically as she would have done them, he felt. Then he had to ‘arrange’ himself and was only just ready when she tapped on his door.
‘Not too early, I hope?’ she said.
‘As if you could ever be.’
If the compliment was a little too glib Leonora gave no sign of noticing. ‘I’d intended to be just a fashionable few minutes late,’ she admitted.
‘I’m glad you weren’t—I’ve been longing to see you,’ he said, and really it was true. He was much more at ease with her than with Phoebe or even Ned.
It was almost as if they were meeting for the first time or in the very early days of their knowing each other, Leonora felt with delight. All that wretched business about Phoebe Sharpe and the furniture seemed like a kind of nightmare, if that wasn’t putting it too strongly. When the evening had advanced some way she planned to say just a little about Phoebe, to clear things up as it were. The position was not entirely satisfactory—the episode needed just a few touches to tidy it up before it was put away for ever.
‘Lemon water-ice—clever James!’
‘I was terrified it was all going to melt before I could get it home.’
She was touched to think of him going to so much trouble, when of course she could perfectly well have phoned Harrods to deliver it. Still, that wouldn’t have been at all the same.
‘Shall we draw the curtains to have our coffee?’ he asked. ‘Or would you like to sit in the gloaming with just one lamp on in the corner?’
‘Oh, in the gloaming, I think. What a lovely word that is—do you suppose it’s Anglo-Saxon or what?’
‘I don’t know, darling.’
‘That clever friend of yours probably would—didn’t you say she had a degree in English or something equally formidable?’
‘You mean Phoebe Sharpe?’ said James, frowning over the coffee percolator. He was puzzled that Leonora should appear to want to cast this shadow over what was being such a perfect evening.
‘Yes, Phoebe Sharpe.’
‘What about her?’ asked James uneasily.
‘Oh, nothing at all—she just came into my mind when I was thinking about the derivation of “gloam-ing”.’
James poured out the coffee.
‘Darling, I don’t want to go on about it, but I do hope you weren’t too unkind to poor Miss Sharpe.’
‘Of course I wasn’t,’ said James indignantly. ‘Miss Sharpe’ didn’t sound like Phoebe, anyway.
‘Don’t get cross with me—but she did look rather the kind of girl who might not find it very easy to attract a man.’
‘She’s not elegant or glamorous, certainly. It was just … Oh, why do we have to talk about her? I’m not going to see her again.’
‘You are not going to see
her again,’ Leonora repeated slowly, not so much asking a question as stating a fact.
‘No. I had this letter from her thanking me’for those cigarettes, and she said she was leaving the cottage and going to Majorca for the winter on the money she’s earned—to write a novel or something.’
Leonora smiled in the half darkness. This was most satisfactory news. ‘One doesn’t like to see people hurt,’ she said gently.
‘Oh, Phoebe will be all right—please don’t let’s talk about her anymore.’
‘We won’t, then. I only wanted you to know that I do understand about everything. And you mustn’t think that I’d stand in your way if ever at any time … Some beautiful cultured girl, about twenty-two or three,’ Leonora mused. ‘Darling, I should positively throw you together. Interested in the arts and antiques, of course …’ Here she stopped, for it had suddenly occurred to her that such a girl might very well be working in Christie’s or Sotheby’s at that very moment.
‘Would you like some creme de menthe with your coffee?’ asked James, eager for a change of subject.
‘Crème de menthe,’ Leonora echoed with exaggerated emphasis, ‘of all things.’
‘I thought it was your favourite liqueur.’
‘Darling, it was and is. I was just thinking of the last time I drank it.’
‘When was that?’ asked James suspiciously.
‘One evening when Humphrey dropped in and the rain came through Miss Foxe’s ceiling—your ceiling, now—what ages ago it all seems.’ How Humphrey had loomed over her. Looming in the gloaming—she couldn’t really share the joke with James.
‘Well, nothing like that’s going to happen this evening,’ said James.
‘No? But of course not.’ Again Leonora smiled in the darkness. Would she have minded if it had been James? she asked herself, not for the first time. ‘Come and sit by me,’ she said.
‘I’ll sit here on the floor,’ said James, getting a cushion.
‘Then I shall stroke your hair. How curly it is! Like golden wires or whatever the Elizabethan poets said.’
No English literature, please, said James to himself; for having disposed of Phoebe, he did not at this moment want to be reminded of Ned.
XVIII
The next day was Saturday, but the promised visit from Ned did not materialise. He would hardly bother to come all this way, James decided, and certainly not without telephoning first. Once the phone did ring, but it was a wrong number. When evening came James tried to settle down with a book, but he couldn’t concentrate; there was a prickly feeling in the back of his throat and he began to wonder if he was getting a cold.
On Sunday morning he woke to the sound of a church bell ringing for the eight o’clock service. It was the church Miss Foxe used to go to, Leonora had told him. He could see its spire without getting out of bed. He turned over again and slept heavily, with vivid dreams of himself and Ned in Portugal, until half-past nine. He realised now that he had got a cold and lay pitying himself and wishing that somebody would bring him a cup of tea. But Leonora would not disturb him, he knew, and if he wanted tea he must get out of bed and make it himself. He lay for a while longer looking round the room, admiring the way Leonora had arranged his furniture and objects, better than he could have done himself. The only thing missing was the fruitwood mirror. Had he lent it to Phoebe and had she kept it? He puzzled over this but could not remember and in his weak state it seemed not to matter. When he sat up his head swam and he felt dizzy; perhaps it was something worse than a cold. He was sure he had a temperature.
Leonora, preparing her Sunday lunch, was conscious of the silence up above as she was of any sound, or lack of it, that came from the flat. No doubt James was having a nice long lie-in, she thought indulgently. He was still young enough to be able to sleep late in the mornings, which she never could now. How delightful it would have been to take breakfast up to him—she imagined the artistically laid tray—and to discuss the Sunday papers. But she mustn’t bother him or he might fly away. All she had done was to creep up very quietly at about half-past eight to lay his papers outside his door. Perhaps he would call on her later in the day for a drink or a little supper. In the meantime—well, one had one’s own Sunday routine which, for Leonora, included a little sleep in the afternoon with the papers or a book. One really needed it at one’s age if one was to appear fresh in the evening.
Just after four o’clock she woke up and put on the kettle for tea. There was still no sound from James’s flat; perhaps he had crept quietly out of the house while she was dozing. How odd it was, she thought, the way each of them crept about, so very careful not to intrude on or disturb the other. Surely this was the secret of their perfect relationship?
She was drinking her tea when the front door bell rang. Humphrey, perhaps, or her friend Liz? Whoever it was, she took out her powder compact and applied fresh lipstick before going to the door.
A stranger stood on the doorstep, a fair-haired young man—perhaps not all that young, she decided on a second glance, but younger than she was and certainly most attractive and personable.
‘You must be Miss Eyre,’ he said, ‘Leonora—that’s how I always think of you, I’m afraid—you don’t mind, do you? Jimmie’s told me so much about you.’
Leonora was instantly on her guard, she could not have said exactly why—perhaps hearing James called ‘Jimmie’, though it was more likely that the young man’s appearance and air told her that this friend of James’s was not quite like Jeremy or Simon, his old schoolfellows.
‘I’m sorry, he isn’t in,’ she heard herself saying, and this wasn’t exactly a lie because now that she came to think of it she was certain she had heard him go out while she was resting.
‘Oh, that’s a pity — I suppose I should have called him first to make sure. I did say I’d be in London this weekend. Never mind.’ Ned made as if to go. ‘Perhaps you’d just tell him it was Ned.’
‘Ah, then you must be the American James met on his travels.’
‘The same.’
‘Won’t you come in and have a cup of tea?’ Leonora asked. She had the feeling that Ned mustn’t be allowed to slip away and that she must take this opportunity—perhaps the only one she would ever have —of finding out more about him.
‘Thank you—that would be nice.’ Ned stepped into the hall, his glance moving towards his reflection in the fruitwood mirror and resting there for a moment.
The antagonism between them was of the coolest and most polite, almost like the feeling between herself and the woman in the shop where she had bought James’s birthday present, but here there could be no happy compromise. It was to be a confrontation in daylight and at the tea table, Leonora realised, dealing as calmly as she could with the business of getting an extra cup and saucer and pouring tea. The word that had suggested itself to her—’confrontation’—was not one she would normally have used, but it seemed peculiarly appropriate as she listened to the quiet American voice, polite and charming, making the most agreeable small talk.
‘How my mother would adore this room,’ he said, gazing around him. ‘She just loves everything English. What pretty china you have—and this is Earl Grey tea, isn’t it?’
Talk of mothers and tea was reassuring but Leonora’s feeling of uneasiness persisted. She knew instinctively that Ned was far more of a danger than Phoebe could ever have been. This was something she had always been afraid of in her relationship with James, and it seemed ‘unfair’ that she should have to face it on a Sunday afternoon, when few women past their youth feel at their best.
And now Ned was looking at her in a most curious way. His eyes moved from her face, down over her body and legs; even her feet did not escape his scrutiny. She was reminded of the way a certain type of man, particularly, perhaps, a ‘foreigner’, would ‘undress you with his eyes’, as the old-fashioned saying put it, except that Ned’s appraisal was completely lacking in sexuality or desire. But after a while Leonora realised what he was doing—simpl
y calculating the cost of her clothes and everything about her, including her hairstyle, make-up, jewellery, and even her shoes.
He must have been aware that she knew this for he smiled and, leaning forward, touched the sleeve of her blouse with the tip of one finger.
‘Wild silk?’ he enquired, the soft questioning note in his voice giving the words a sinister implication.
‘Yes, it is,’ said Leonora, drawing away from him.
‘Jimmie always said you had beautiful clothes and I can see that he was right.’
The words were flattering and Leonora loved compliments; but however charming he might appear this young man wanted to take James away from her and she was not going to let him.
‘How convenient that you had this apartment for Jimmie to move into,’ Ned went on smoothly. ‘It’ll be so handy for him. He told me all about your charming house.’
Leonora did not like to think of the two young men discussing her, as she supposed they must have done. She would never know if James had been loyal to her.
‘You’ve come to do some research in the British Museum, I believe?’ she asked.
‘Oh, my wretched thesis!’ Ned was a charming enfant terrible for the moment. ‘I wonder if I’ll ever get it done.’
‘What’s the subject?’
‘A study of some of Keats’s minor poems.’
‘Ah, Keats,’ said Leonora, feeling on safer ground. But Keats was not a favourite poet of hers and she couldn’t for the moment recall any of the minor poems.
Ned had picked up from the mantelpiece an alabaster dove, a present James had once given her, and was stroking it. She noticed what small hands he had.
‘I guess you must know his poem about the dove,’ he said.
‘The dove, of course.’ But again the poem eluded her. Ned began to quote,
‘I had a dove and the sweet dove died; And I have thought it died of grieving …’
‘Ah, yes, of course, that sad little poem.’ Leonora was relieved that it was something so simple and harmless. Whatever had she expected? ‘It died,’ she said rather foolishly. ‘Would you like some more tea?’