by Barbara Pym
I took care to be up before eight o’clock on the Saturday morning, but it was after half-past nine when the remover’s men arrived. There were three of them, two cheerful and strong-looking, and the third, perhaps as befitted his position as foreman, wizened and melancholy and apparently incapable of carrying anything at all.
He shook his head when he saw the big desk.
‘We’ll never get that round the corner of the stairs,’ he declared.
I pointed out that it could be taken to pieces, but he had his moment of triumph when the bottom half of the desk was pulled away from the wall and a fine powdering of sawdust was revealed on the carpet.
‘Worm,’ he said. ‘I knew it as soon as I set eyes on it.’
‘Oh, dear,’ I said feebly, feeling that it might almost be my fault. ‘I wonder if Mr. Napier knows about that.’
‘I shouldn’t think he does. You never know what goes on at the back, unless you’re an expert. I’ve been handling furniture for over forty years, of course.’
‘I suppose there’s nothing we can do about it now?’ I asked, thinking of Everard Bone’s mother but feeling that it would hardly be any use to telephone her now. I should have to mention it to Rocky in a letter.
‘Hundreds of them,’ said the foreman, tapping the little holes with his finger and watching the fine dust pour out. ‘We shall be lucky if it doesn’t fall to pieces. It rots the whole piece, madam. It’s probably riddled with them.’
‘Amazing how those little insects get in, boring all those neat little holes,’ I commented fatuously.
‘Ah,’ he smiled for the first time, ‘that’s just what they don’t do, madam. It’s surprising the number of people that think that. The holes are made when the beetles come out—that’s what it is.’
‘Oh, really? That’s interesting,’ I murmured.
‘Slowly, now,’ he called, as the two strong men lifted the base of the desk as easily as if it had been made of cardboard. I was relieved to see that it did not fall to pieces, but the episode had disturbed me. It was disconcerting to think that worms or beetles could eat their way secretly through one’s furniture. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. . . . Men have died and worms have eaten them, but not for love. . . . ‘Perhaps you would like a cup of tea?’ I suggested.
This proved to be a good idea and the rest of the things were taken away smoothly and without incident. The foreman was able to carry a cushion downstairs but otherwise took little part in the proceedings. After I had seen the van go away I went upstairs to my flat to eat a melancholy lunch. A dried-up scrap of cheese, a few lettuce leaves for which I could not be bothered to make any dressing, a tomato and a piece of bread-and-butter, followed by a cup of coffee made with coffee essence. A real woman’s meal, I thought, with no suggestion of brandy afterwards, even though there was still a drop left in the bottle. Alcohol would have made it even more of a mockery.
I had just finished when the telephone bell rang. It was Miss Clovis, asking if I would care to take tea with her and Mrs. Napier.
‘No doubt you will have something to report?’ she asked eagerly.
‘Oh, yes, the furniture has just gone.’
‘What, all of it?’ she asked in alarm.
‘Oh, no, just Mr. Napier’s own things. The flat is quite habitable now for Mrs. Napier whenever she likes to come back.’
A snorting noise came down the telephone.
‘That man! I think it’s the limit. Anyway, Miss Lathbury, I shall expect you about four o’clock.’
I was a little apprehensive at entering the premises of the Learned Society alone and felt quite nervous as I pushed open the heavy door, whose dark carvings might have been the work of some primitive sculptor. On the stairs I met an old bearded man, and I thought for a moment that it was the old President, until I remembered that he was dead. He stood aside courteously for me to pass and said, beaming and nodding, ‘Ah, miss, er—hard at work, I see.’
‘Oh, yes,’ I beamed and nodded back at him.
‘It would be pretty hot in New Guinea now, eh?’ he chuckled as I mounted the flight of stairs above him.
‘Yes, it certainly would be,’ I called out, confident that this was a safe answer to make.
‘Oh, good. I was just going to make tea.’ Miss Clovis emerged from a door with a kettle in her hand. ‘Do go on into the sitting-room—it’s the door in front of you.’
I went into the room indicated, but then drew back, thinking that I had entered a library or store-room by mistake, for the floor was littered with books which seemed to have overflowed from the tall shelves which lined three of the walls. There were also several dark wooden images, some with fierce and alarming expressions. In the middle of the books and images sat Helena Napier, wearing a crumpled cotton dress and apparently busy sorting a mass of notes in typescript and sprawling handwriting.
We greeted each other stiffly, for I could not help feeling selfconscious at being, as it were, the last person to see her husband, and she may have had something of the same feeling.
‘You look busy,’ I began.
‘Has he taken the furniture?’ she asked bluntly.
‘Oh, yes; it went this morning.’
Miss Clovis came in with a teapot which she put down on a low table on which a rough attempt at laying tea had been made, with three odd cups and saucers, a loaf of bread, a pot of jam and a slab of margarine still in its paper. Helena must feel quite at home here, I thought spitefully.
‘Dig in,’ said Miss Clovis. ‘I’ve got a cake somewhere, left over from the Society’s last tea-party.’ She produced a tin from behind one of the images. I wondered whether there had been a tea-party since the one I had been to in the spring, for the cake, when it was put out, looked weeks or even months old. Fortunately, however, it was a shop cake made of substitute ingredients and I had learned from my own experience that such cakes would keep almost indefinitely.
‘I met such a nice old man on the stairs,’ I said. ‘He had a grey beard and looked very much like the old President, the one who died.’
‘Oh, that would be old Hornibrook—New Guinea, 1905,’ said Helena shortly.
‘How sad that was, the old President dying,’ I said.
‘Oh, well, in the midst of life we are in death,’ said Miss Clovis casually, cutting a thick slab of bread.
‘Yes, of course, he went so suddenly.’
‘Suddenly with meat in his mouth,’ said Miss Clovis.
‘Oh, surely . . .’
‘Ah, I can see you aren’t an antiquarian, Miss Lathbury,’ said Miss Clovis triumphantly, ‘or you would know your Anthony à Wood better. In the beginning of this month I was told that Henry Marten died last summer, suddenly with meat in his mouth, at Chepstow in Monmouthshire,’ she quoted. ‘But that’s the way they go. The President was standing in the library and was just reaching up to take Dynamics of Clanship among the Tallensi out of a shelf, when he fell.’
‘What a splendid title for a book,’ I remarked. ‘Perhaps not a book for an old man to read, though. Who is to be the new President?’
‘Tyrell Todd,’ said Helena. ‘You may remember him at our do.’
‘Oh, yes, he talked about pygmies.’
‘He is a young man,’ said Miss Clovis. ‘New brooms sweep clean, or so they say.’
The conversation now turned into an exchange of views about various personalities whose names meant nothing to me. I am afraid Miss Clovis brought out little tit-bits of scandal about them and she and Helena seemed to be enjoying themselves very much. I began to wonder why I had been asked to tea as they made so little attempt to entertain me.
At last there was a pause and I made a remark about the books and images, asking if they belonged to Miss Clovis.
‘Good Heavens, no,’ said Miss Clovis. ‘The late President’s widow gave them. She could hardly wait to get them out of the house. I suppose they were just so much junk to her.’
‘Oh, yes; I think I remember her.’ The old w
oman nodding in her chair and falling asleep over her knitting. How she must have disliked those images, nasty malevolent-looking things, some with dusty unhygenic raffia manes. Perhaps they had even come between her and the man she had married. I wondered if she had had to have them in her drawing-room, though even if they had been relegated to his study they must have been a continual worry to her, especially at spring-cleaning time. ‘I suppose you are glad to have his relics,’ I said. ‘Will his wife’s name go up on the board among the list of benefactors?’
‘I suppose it will have to,’ said Miss Clovis, ‘though I doubt if she will ever have the pleasure of seeing it there. I’m sure she won’t attend any of our meetings now that her husband is dead.’
‘I wonder if she feels a great sense of freedom,’ I said, more to myself than my companions. ‘Perhaps she never really understood the papers and wasn’t interested, and now she need never come again. Or perhaps she feels lost without the discipline of sitting through them and will find nothing to take its place.’
‘Well, she certainly hasn’t got your church-going and good works,’ said Helena quite genially.
‘Oh, did he take even that from her?’ I asked, shocked by the idea that she could now have been the backbone of some parish, one of the invaluable helpers of some overworked vicar, had not her husband made her an unbeliever. ‘Oh, the wicked things men do, leaving her nothing for her old age, not even anthropology!’
‘You put yourself too much in other people’s places,’ said Helena. ‘I believe she is quite happy pottering about her garden and reading novels. To be free and independent, that’s the thing.’
‘But surely you don’t want that when you’re old?’ I protested. ‘Would you know what to do with freedom and independence if it came so late in life?’
‘Well, all I can say is that I’m thankful I never got myself tied up with any man,’ said Miss Clovis.
Helena looked at her doubtfully, perhaps wondering, as I was, whether Miss Clovis had ever had the opportunity of entering into this bondage.
‘You will do better work without your husband,’ said Miss Clovis. ‘You will now be able to devote your whole life to the study of matrilineal kin-groups.’
I could not help pitying Helena, condemned to something that sounded so uninteresting, and she may have pitied herself a little as she said bitterly, ‘You should have said higher things. Isn’t that what one usually devotes one’s life to? Come along, Mildred, it’s time we were going now.’
I thanked Miss Clovis, who seemed unwilling to let Helena go, and we went down the stairs with Helena’s suitcase and a small evil-looking image, which was given to me to carry. I felt awkward when people in the bus started to stare and giggle and I had to sit with it in my lap, trying vainly to cover it with my gloves and handbag.
As we approached the house Julian Malory came towards us. I had imagined that the sight of Helena would frighten him away, but he stood his ground.
‘I am sorry to hear of this trouble between you and your husband, Mrs. Napier,’ he said. ‘I think you should go back to him and talk things over.’
We were all—even Julian, I think—so taken aback at his boldness that for a moment nobody said anything. I myself was full of admiration for him, for I had not expected that he would speak so frankly. I had imagined he would make some trivial social remark and that our encounter would end with remarks about the weather.
‘Well, he has gone into the country,’ said Helena, without her usual self-possession. ‘And there are difficulties, you know.’
‘There are always difficulties in human relationships,’ said Julian. ‘You won’t think I am trying to interfere, I hope, but I do think you should see him. And if there is anything I can do for you, please let me know.’
Helena thanked him in an embarrassed way and we went into the house. I felt almost as if I ought to apologise for Julian’s boldness, as if he and all the clergymen were my personal responsibility, and perhaps they were when I was up against unbelievers. I could not help feeling glad that he had spoken.
‘I suppose he felt he ought to say something,’ said Helena in a detached way. ‘It must be a bore having to go about doing good, saying a word here and there. I didn’t realise they ever did anything like that, though.’
‘Oh, yes, Julian certainly has the courage of his convictions,’ I said. ‘I believe he and Rocky had a drink together the other night. I saw them going into the pub at the end of the square.’
‘Really, Mildred, the things you see happening! Is there anything that escapes you?’
‘Well, I couldn’t help seeing them. I just happened to be passing. I expect they had a talk and Rocky would feel more at ease talking to a man than he would to me. I suppose there must be times when men band together against women and women against men. You and Miss Clovis against Julian and Rocky, and I like the umpire in a tennis match.’
Helena laughed, but when we reached her sitting-room she exclaimed angrily, ‘But my chairs have gone! Really, this is too bad. And the desk too! Mildred, why did you let them go?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said meekly. ‘Rocky gave me a list of the furniture that was to go and I just followed his instructions.’
‘Oh, you were always on his side!’ she burst out. ‘Anyway, those chairs were a wedding present to both of us. He had no right to take them.’
‘Yes, it is difficult, when something is given as a wedding present,’ I said. But how could people foresee the separation of a happy pair and always give presents that could if necessary be easily divided? Surely that was too cynical a view for even the most embittered giver to take of marriage?
Helena darted here and there in the flat, missing objects which she claimed as hers. ‘Mildred, you’ll have to write to him,’ she declared, sitting down in the one armchair that was left.
‘I write to him? Wouldn’t it be better if you did?’
‘Oh, I certainly couldn’t do it myself. You know him and he might take more notice of a letter from you. Otherwise I might ask Esther Clovis to do it, or even Everard.’
‘Oh, I don’t think you should ask him,’ I burst out, suddenly remembering that I had never had the opportunity of telling Helena, as he had bidden me to, that he did not love her. But it hardly seemed to matter now. ‘Anyway,’ I went on, ‘he’s at a conference of the Prehistoric Society in Derbyshire, so it wouldn’t be much use.’
‘Oh, that,’ said Helena impatiently. ‘I can’t think why he bothers with archaeology. All this dabbling won’t get him anywhere.’
‘I shouldn’t have thought he dabbled,’ I said. ‘He gives me the impression of being a very definite kind of person.’
‘How do you mean?’ asked Helena suspiciously.
‘Well, he knows what he wants or doesn’t want,’ I floundered. ‘I should think he has—er—very high principles.’
‘Oh, he doesn’t believe in divorce, if that’s what you mean,’ said Helena in a light tone. ‘And naturally he imagined that if I quarrelled with Rocky I should go rushing to him. That’s why he went to Derbyshire, of course.’
I was a little taken aback at her summing-up of the position and must have shown it in my face, for she laughed and said, ‘Oh, yes, men are very simple and obvious in some ways, you know. They generally react in the way one would expect and it is often rather a cowardly way. I should think Everard was most alarmed when he heard that Rocky and I weren’t getting on very well. He doesn’t really care twopence about prehistory, you know. He always uses the society as an excuse, just because I don’t happen to be a member myself.’
This seemed to me rather a waste of a subscription and there was something altogether comic about the thought of a man hiding from a woman behind a cloak of prehistory.
‘I met his mother,’ I said, hoping to change the subject. ‘She seems rather odd.’
‘Yes, she is odd, but then people’s mothers usually are, don’t you think?’ said Helena. ‘I suppose there’s really no reason why Everard and I s
hould ever meet again, except at the Society. It would be more dramatic, really, if we didn’t for about ten years, and then we should be like the pair in that sonnet that people always think of when they part from somebody,
Be it not seen in either of our brows,
That we one jot of former love retain.’
‘I dare say you wouldn’t still love a person after ten years,’ I suggested, ‘so you wouldn’t retain one jot of former love, anyway, and that would spoil the excitement of the meeting.’
‘Yes, one would have nothing to conceal and would probably wonder how one could ever have felt anything at all. It would be better if I forgot all about Everard, I suppose, since he obviously doesn’t intend to have anything more to do with me.’
‘Yes, of course, it would. But forgetting isn’t very easy,’ I said doubtfully.
‘I suppose you have perhaps had to forget somebody too?’ asked Helena, equally doubtful.
‘Oh, yes,’ I said cheerfully, thinking of Bernard Hatherley, but unwilling to bring such a poor thing out into the open after so many years. ‘I suppose everybody does at some time in their lives.’
‘I was wondering if you were rather fond of Rocky,’ said Helena, with what seemed to me unsuitable frankness. ‘People do fall in love with him, you know.’