by Barbara Pym
James smiled, more relaxed now that he and Ned were alone together. ‘I haven’t got all that much of one, really,’ he said, ‘but Leonora’s fond of me.’
‘So am I fond of you. We can’t go on like this. The first thing you must do is to get out of her house.’
‘I know. I’ve been looking for another flat. It was only temporary, my staying with Leonora.’
‘Does she know that?’
‘Yes, of course.’
Ned smiled. After a while he said, ‘Well, that’s something. When you move away it’ll be much easier to drop her.’
James looked startled.
‘You just don’t bother to call her,’ Ned went on. ‘She’ll soon get the message.’
James made a movement of protest but no words came.
‘Will she call you?’
‘I don’t know, probably not. She’s always been very good . . He hesitated, for it seemed wrong to be discussing Leonora like this.
‘I can imagine that. She’s the proud type who preters to suffer in silence. Like a wounded animal crawling away to die.’ Ned laughed in a light cruel way. ‘Jimmie, don’t look like that—what’ve I said?’
Ned’s words had taken James back to his childhood. They had had a much-loved cat who had been run over. He and his mother had found her in a wood where she had crawled after the car had hit her, dried blood on her mouth, her beautiful fur all dull.
‘You don’t understand,’ he said.
‘Believe me, Jimmie, I do.’ Ned was suddenly gentle, there were even tears in his eyes. It would have taken the most cynically dispassionate observer to discern any hint of complacency in his tone when he added, ‘Life is cruel and we do terrible things to each other.’
‘Yes, that’s the worst of it.’
‘It’s something you just have to accept—I’ve hurt people too and I’ve suffered terribly because of it, lain awake nights —oh, all that.’
‘Perhaps Leonora will understand,’James began, but Ned was bored with the subject now.
‘Gee, I’m hungry,’ he said, standing up and pacing about the room. ‘Let’s go out and eat.’
Leonora went to bed at eleven, determined to be ‘sensible’. She read for a little while then dropped off to sleep, the book—a large volume of Victorian memoirs—falling heavily to the floor. After some time she woke with a start—there had been a noise somewhere. James going up to his flat, surely. Or had a burglar got in and was he even now creeping up the thickly carpeted stairs? She put on her dressing-gown and slippers, opened her door and stood, listening. All was silent with the dead quiet of the middle of the night. Perhaps it had been James coming in; she would just tiptoe up and see if there was a light showing from his flat. But when she got there she saw that a parcel and some letters she had put there earlier still lay outside his door.
‘James?’ she called softly, but she knew that he was not there. It was three o’clock in the morning and he was with Ned. Was that better or worse than if he had been with Phoebe? she asked herself, trying to look at the situation calmly. Of course in those days when he had had his own flat she hadn’t known where he was at night. Would it perhaps have been better not to have that knowledge now?
Suddenly a piercing cry rang out. Frightened, she huddled beneath the bedclothes, until she realised that it was only one of Liz’s cats. Now she was wide awake for the second time and there seemed nothing for it but to go down and make tea, a drink she did not much like because of the comfort it was said to bring to those whom she normally despised. Yet there was something by no means disagreeable about being in bed with the electric blanket on and the tray of tea on the bedside table. She sat up, with a pleated chiffon bedjacket round her shoulders, and thought she might read a little Browning, ‘Two in the Campagna’, perhaps. The memory of its remote beauty and pleasing images comforted her, though she lacked the strength to open the book and find the poem. After a while she began to see things more steadily; had there been anyone to hear her she might have said ‘I am Leonora Eyre’, as she had at Vine Cottage. Things would be ‘better’ in the morning. She decided to say nothing to James about his not coming in. She had tried to be understanding about Phoebe; she would be even more so about Ned.
XX
James put down the telephone and returned to his study of Christie’s catalogue of porcelain to be auctioned at a forthcoming sale, but he could not concentrate. He had just told Leonora a deliberate lie, and it had been so easy. ‘Say you’ll be out of town for the weekend,’ Ned had suggested, and she had accepted it without question, just as she had accepted the other half lies he had been obliged to tell to conceal some of the practical arrangements of his new life with Ned. Of course she knew what was going on, he could sense that, and she was being deliberately ‘good’ and ‘understanding’ about it so that sometimes he almost wished she would forget her dignity for a moment and make a scene.
‘Was that Leonora?’ Humphrey asked, when James did not volunteer the information. ‘Have you told her you’ve found a new flat?’
‘She knows I’ve been looking,’ said James, ‘but I thought I’d wait until the lease was signed and all that before I said anything to her.’
‘I’m dining with her this evening. Would you like me to say a word?’
James hesitated. He would have been glad to accept his uncle’s offer as being the easiest way out, but he supposed he must face up to Leonora himself. How was he to do it?
‘Leave it to me,’ said Humphrey. He got up and began humming a popular tune of the moment. He was in good spirits these days for he was of course seeing more of Leonora than usual, and although he was too tactful to say much to her about James and his new attachment it was obvious that she was grateful to him for planning little excursions into the country, visits to historic houses, and peculiarly delicious meals to take her mind off what was happening, ‘and in her own house,’ Humphrey told himself. For James’s frequent absences must be as painful to her as if he had actually brought Ned to the flat. ‘Would you believe,’ Humphrey went on, ‘that it’s nearly a year since we met at that book sale. It seems like yesterday.’
To James it seemed a much longer time, for his year had been crowded with events and people, as the year of a man of twenty-five is likely to be in contrast with the year of a man of sixty. Leonora, Phoebe, Ned—such varied experiences—and he had loved them all, still did, in a way. But now, strangely, it was Ned who claimed all his attention in a way that the women never had.
‘You said you’d be out of town for the weekend?’ Humphrey asked.
‘Yes,’ said James shortly, for he had not yet prepared the lie for his uncle and had no idea what further explanation he could provide. Luckily none was called for; Humphrey went out, still humming his tune, and James was left alone with Miss Caton.
‘The country can be very nice in November,’ she remarked, ‘and we’ve had very mild weather lately. But I should take warm clothes with you, just in case.
James agreed politely, amused at the idea of needing warm clothes in Ned’s fiercely centrally heated flat. He returned to his work and tried to put Leonora out of his mind. He was glad that Humphrey was having dinner with her this evening. It was the thought of her alone and waiting for him that he couldn’t bear. He decided to apply Ned’s remedy: when you can’t bear to think about something, then don’t; and after a while it worked.
Humphrey was not arriving till eight o’clock and the food was all ready, but Leonora was not in the mood for Meg who had asked if she could drop in for a chat on her way home from the office. Any kind of dreary influence was to be avoided if one was to look and feel one’s best and Meg was going on about her present state of health and the difficulties experienced by women of’their’ age, not the most propitious of subjects. Tentatively at first, then with growing confidence, she described her own case—a sympathetic woman doctor had explained so much. Everything, it seemed, tiredness, depression, tears, feeling of inadequacy, regrets for wasted life, coul
d be satisfactorily accounted for.
Leonora listened with mounting indignation. She had never been conscious of feeling inadequate, and while she could hardly deny that she too was a woman it was intolerable that she and Meg could have this in common.
‘Apparently it’s really good to interest yourself in a younger person, a sort of child substitute,’ Meg went on, ‘everyone needs to love. One should just let one’s love come flowing out, Dr Hirschler said’ — here Meg gesticulated with her arms — ‘not bottle it up or be ashamed of it.’
‘That might be embarrassing at times,’ Leonora observed wondering if she had given Meg too much to drink.
‘So we must all fulfil ourselves in our own way,’ Meg went on, ‘and if things seem to go wrong sometimes we mustn’t stop loving, that’s the point as I see it.’
Leonora wondered if she had somehow given Meg the impression that she hadn’t been seeing so much of James lately, for now Meg seemed to be almost sympathising with her, as if suggesting that James had been neglecting her in some way. Even now she could not bring herself to admit, least of all to Meg, that there was anything ‘wrong’ between her and James.
‘It was just’the same when Colin first met Harold,’ said Meg. ‘At first it was very hard for me, but now that they’re no longer together… .’
‘Really? I didn’t know that.’ Leonora’s tone brightened a shade.
‘Oh, yes—I thought I’d told you. It didn’t work out as we’d hoped.’ She made it sound almost cosy, the three of them and their hopes.
‘What happened?’
‘The usual thing. Harold met somebody at the surgery—this person brought in a poodle —or was it a Pekingese …?’ Meg frowned, trying to recall what seemed to Leonora a totally irrelevant detail, ‘a small dog, I know, some dental trouble … anyway Harold and the dog’s owner took a liking to each other and now they’ve set up house together.’
‘How convenient,’ Leonora murmured.
‘Colin was very upset, of course, but he knows he’s always got me. I’m the only person who never changes,’ Meg declared stoutly, and she looked it, Leonora thought, sitting there in that same old sheepskin coat which seemed to be her only winter garment. Some might have seen a touch of pathos, even nobility, in her, but not Leonora.
‘I’m sorry, Meg,’ she said, ‘but I’m going to have to turn you out. Humphrey is dining with me and he’s due at eight.’
‘You ought to marry Humphrey,’ said Meg, doing as she was told. ‘I can’t think why you’ve never married, Leonora.’
Leonora smiled enigmatically. Obviously one had had one’s chances, Meg must be well aware of that.
She saw her out, then lingered by the fruitwood mirror. It gave back the usual flattering reflection and she knew that at the candlelit dinner table she would be looking at her best in a black lace dress that Humphrey liked. Perhaps she would let him kiss her tonight. She had cooked his favourite dishes: chicken with tarragon and chocolate mousse. It was not until she offered the latter and Humphrey refused it that she remembered that he hated anything chocolate. It was James who loved chocolate mousse.
‘A little cheese, my dear, if you have it —that would round off the meal perfectly.’
Of course one had cheese, several different kinds, Leonora thought, as she went to get it. In the larder misery came over her. She leaned against the edge of a shelf, her forehead resting on the tins—prawns and lobster, asparagus tips, white peaches—that she always kept in case James should call unexpectedly for a meal. It was so long since he had done that now. If only, when she went back into the dining-room, James could be sitting there instead of Humphrey!
Humphrey chose this moment, when she stood there with the Stilton in her hands, to inform her that James had found a new flat and would shortly be moving into it.
‘Where is it?’ she asked, perfectly in control now.
‘Fulham, though they call it Chelsea these days. Property values have appreciated considerably in that area during the last few years and I think it should be quite a good investment for him. After all, if—as one supposes he will —James should one day decide to marry and buy a house, he can always sell the remainder of his lease …’
She let him drone on, remarking that it would be convenient for the shop. Then she began to make the coffee.
Humphrey watched her with more detachment than usual. She looked tired, he thought, not quite at her best in the black lace dress. Women of Leonora’s generation had the idea that black always suited them but often they were mistaken. He would leave soon and let her get a good night’s sleep. He refused the brandy she offered and was on his feet taking his leave of her at what seemed to Leonora an unusually early hour. He kissed her lightly on the cheek and patted her on the shoulder, murmuring something that sounded like ‘there, there,’ as one might to a child or an animal.
She felt now as if she had been cheated of something, a warmer show of affection, the kiss she had expected and had decided to allow him. They might even have ended up in bed and it could have been cosy and comforting for her.
‘I suppose James will be wanting to move his furniture, then,’ she said, as they were saying goodnight.
‘Well, I suppose so.’ Really, that furniture would soon be falling to pieces at this rate, Humphrey thought. First from James’s Notting Hill Gate flat, then into store, then out of store to that cottage in the country, then to Leonora’s house, and now to Fulham. ‘Don’t let it upset you,’ he added. ‘I can arrange everything.’
‘One would hardly let the moving of a few pieces of furniture upset one,’ said Leonora at her coldest.
‘Well, my dear, if you should need me for anything …,’ said Humphrey, a little deflated. Again he patted her shoulder and she went back into the house, feeling that -the evening had not been a success.
XXI
‘Jimmie, you really have the most beautiful feet—did anyone ever tell you?’
James shook his head; nobody had ever paid him that kind of compliment before.
‘Do you go about barefoot much? That could be the reason.’
‘Well, not in England.’
‘But this doesn’t feel like England, does it …?’ Ned stretched himself out on the synthetic black fur rug.
‘No, it doesn’t feel like anywhere,’ James agreed.
‘And yet it’s everywhere.’ Ned was about to quote Donne until he remembered that James was totally uneducated in English literature and that with him there could be none of the pleasure of flinging quotations back and forth at each other.
‘You know,’James said after a while, ‘I think I’ll have to go and see her.’
‘Oh, you mean Leonora. But surely she knows? Your uncle will have told her.’
‘Yes, he has. But I can’t just have the furniture moved out and not say anything to her. After all, I’m still very fond of her and I don’t want to hurt her more than I need.’
‘Oh, Jimmie, that conscience again! So you’re still fond of her—what does “fond” mean? So you hurt her—but that’s what loving is, hurting and being hurt. Believe me, I know.’
They had had this conversation before and it had occurred to James more than once to wonder whether Ned had ever been hurt himself or whether he had always been the one to do the hurting.
‘I’ve had to hurt people so many times,’ Ned went on. ‘Oh, Jimmie, it tears one apart!’
‘It might tear the other person apart too,’ James observed, with a cynicism unusual in him. ‘I’ll go and see her tomorrow.’
For a moment Ned looked almost anxious but the shadow soon passed from his face. James would be no exception to the rule that nobody tired of Ned before he tired of them.
James felt nervous standing on the doorstep, waiting for Leonora to open the door. He had left his keys at the shop, otherwise he could have slipped up to the flat and taken a drink to give him courage. But it was four o’clock in the afternoon and it might have seemed odd to her if he appeared to have been dri
nking at that time of day.
‘Darling James!’ she exclaimed.
‘Oh, Leonora …’ There had been only a split second’s hesitation before they embraced and for a moment it seemed as if everything was going to be all right again.
But when they started to talk it was obvious that things were not as they had once been. Conversation was sticky. Leonora asked politely after Ned and was told that he was well; she inquired after the progress of his thesis about which James seemed less sure. Then James supposed that Leonora must know that he had found a new flat, which of course she did. She also guessed that he had come to arrange with her about when his furniture should be moved out.
While all this was going on they hardly looked at each other. James could see that Leonora had just had her hair done and was wearing a dark blue dress that was new to him. A Georgian paste and enamel brooch—his last present to her—was pinned to the collar. Leonora noticed that James’s hair needed cutting—or was he wearing it longer now?—and that he had round his neck a silk scarf she had given him in the early days of their friendship. All this had been gathered from the quick, almost suspicious glances they had stolen at each other. They had not looked into each other’s eyes to see what lay there. Neither seemed equal to that.
‘Humphrey said he would arrange things,’ said Leonora, ‘on the day, that is.’
‘I’m perfectly capable of arranging my own move,’ said James, glad to be able to take out his guilt on his uncle.
‘I stopped your milk some time ago,’ said Leonora, ‘but at first, when it kept coming, I didn’t know what to do.’
‘I’m sorry, I should have let you know or something,’ James mumbled. It seemed to him that only a woman could think of a trivial thing like stopping the milk when one was in the middle of an affair.
‘Oh, it was all right. Liz can always use plenty of milk for the cats. She paid me for it.’