by Barbara Pym
‘I often go out for a walk and come back carrying trailing things,’ said Miss Morrow calmly. ‘In any case Florence will have gone out, and old Maggie never notices anything. Just be quite calm about it,’ she added reassuringly. ‘I don’t suppose Maggie will see us anyway. We can slip upstairs.’
Mr. Latimer rather disliked the idea of slipping upstairs. It sounded almost as if there were something immoral about it. But he said nothing. Miss Morrow, thank goodness, seemed to be behaving sensibly after all. Perhaps she was not trying to catch him. He felt almost annoyed.
The front door of Leamington Lodge was of the old-fashioned kind, which can be opened from the outside without a latch key, and so Miss Morrow and Mr. Latimer were able to do their slipping upstairs very successfully. Old Maggie, who was sitting in the kitchen, reading a story about a girl who was a Mother but not a Wife, did not even hear them come in.
‘Well now, that’s all right,’ whispered Miss Morrow, when they were standing under the stained-glass window on the landing. ‘You’d better go and have a bath, or you’ll catch cold.’
Why, she’s quite a nice-looking woman, thought Mr. Latimer suddenly, and, indeed, Miss Morrow looked not unpleasing in the dim light. The rain and the exercise of walking had freshened her complexion and brightened her eyes, and such hair as showed under her unbecomingly sensible felt hat had curled itself into little tendrils. When her hair was tidy it was so tightly scraped back that one would never have suspected that it could curl. If she were decently dressed, thought Mr. Latimer … but then pulled himself up. What on earth was he thinking about?
‘Yes, I think I ought to have a bath and take some aspirins,’ he said seriously. ‘I don’t want my rheumatism to come on.’
‘And perhaps you ought to put some mustard in the bath and have a hot drink,’ suggested Miss Morrow.
Could it be that she was making fun of him? he thought, glancing quickly at her. But her expression was perfectly serious, and she even told him that there was some mustard in the bathroom cupboard.
Miss Morrow went into her bedroom. She felt that she wanted to laugh, a good long laugh because life was so funny, so much funnier than any book. But as sane people don’t laugh out loud when they are alone in their bedrooms, she had to content herself with going about smiling as she changed her clothes and tidied her hair. She went to the wardrobe to get out her brown marocain with the beige collar, but as she was looking among the drab folds of her dresses, her eye was caught by the rich gleam of her blue velvet. It had been bought to attend a wedding. Miss Doggett had thought it an extravagance. The brown marocain with a new collar would have done just as well. Nobody would expect Miss Morrow to be grandly dressed. It had been quite a success at the wedding, but Miss Morrow had never worn it since. She felt happier in the brown marocain, which Miss Doggett’s eye would regard with approval, if it regarded it at all.
I’ll wear the blue velvet tonight, thought Miss Morrow, it’s silly to keep things. It would give her pleasure to wear it, and she wouldn’t be embarrassed by any comment from Mr. Latimer. Men never noticed things like that.
At twenty minutes to eight she was down in the drawing-room. With sudden recklessness she went to the fireplace and piled more coal on the fire. They would be coming out of church any time now. Supposing the vicar were to call to find out why Mr. Latimer hadn’t been at evensong? What should she say? She hoped he would soon come down, so that he could deal with the situation in his own way.
She took her knitting out of its cretonne bag and examined it to see when she could start casting off for the armholes. She was in the middle of a row when the front door bell rang. Oh, dear, she thought, that must be the vicar. She flung her knitting onto the sofa and ran swiftly to the window to see if she could catch a glimpse of whoever it was, but all she could see was a dark shape that looked more like a woman than a man. Where was Maggie? Why wasn’t she answering the door? At last, after what seemed a very long time, Miss Morrow heard her shambling old footsteps in the hall. Then the drawing-room door was opened.
‘It’s Mrs. Wardell,’ said Maggie.
‘Oh, Mrs. Wardell, good evening. How are you? Do sit down.’ Miss Morrow began scurrying about the room, picking up her knitting and putting it down again, clearing imaginary objects off chairs and sofas.
‘Well, well,’ said Mr. Latimer, coming into the room rubbing his hands and looking very pleased. ‘I had a splendid bath.’ When he saw Mrs. Wardell he stopped in the middle of the room, his hands suspended in mid-air. ‘Oh, good evening, Mrs. Wardell, how nice to see you,’ he said in a hurrying tone. Then, evidently feeling that some explanation was needed as to why he had been having a bath when he should have been assisting at evensong, he plunged into a long and complicated story about how he had suddenly received a message from a friend who was vicar of a distant parish in the Cotswolds, asking him to go over and take evensong. ‘I went on my bicycle,’ he said, ‘and got rather wet coming back, so I thought it would be wise to have a hot bath.’
Miss Morrow listened to this story in amazement. She wondered if it showed in her face, for she had never before, as far as she could remember, heard a clergyman telling what she knew to be deliberate lies. And what a hopeless story! she thought pityingly. If Mr. Latimer had thought it necessary to give some explanation of his splendid bath, surely he could have done so without involving himself in such an account, the falseness of which could easily be proved by judicious enquiries. Why couldn’t he have said that he had a bad cold and leave it at that? Mrs. Wardell might have accepted a cold, but, as it was, she would probably go asking awkward questions about this friend and his parish in the Cotswolds, which Mr. Latimer might find difficult to answer. Nor was Miss Morrow mistaken; before she could think of anything to say, Mrs. Wardell was asking in an interested tone the name of the place where he had been.
‘Crampton Hodnet,’ said Mr. Latimer glibly.
Was there such a place? Miss Morrow wondered. She was sure that there was not. She waited nervously for Mrs. Wardell to make some comment and sat rapidly knitting purl instead of plain, not daring to look at anybody.
‘What a nice name,’ said Mrs. Wardell. ‘I don’t think I’ve been there. Ben wondered what had happened to you, if you were ill or something, so I thought I’d better just slip in and see.’
‘I think I’ve managed to stave off a cold,’ said Mr. Latimer, in a high, rather sickly voice. He clutched at his collar and gave a determined cough.
‘It’s a pity you weren’t in church, Miss Morrow,’ went on Mrs. Wardell pleasantly. ‘Old Lady Halkin had one of her turns and had to be taken out. It was really quite exciting.’
‘Miss Morrow has a cold,’ said Mr. Latimer quickly.
Mrs. Wardell suddenly burst out laughing. ‘You poor things,’ she said, ‘I think I’d better say that you both had colds. Ben’s very understanding, and I haven’t forgotten what it’s like to be young myself.’
‘But I’m not young,’ protested Miss Morrow in agitation.
Mrs. Wardell wagged her finger and stood up to go. ‘But you’re looking very nice in your blue velvet,’ she said. ‘I must rush off now. Old Dr. Fremantle and his wife are coming to supper. So depressing.’ She sighed. ‘Reminiscences of Oxford in the eighties, with a few daring little academic jokes. And poor Olive’s so dreary.’
They went out into the hall together.
‘What pretty berries,’ said Mrs. Wardell, examining the ones Miss Morrow had picked in the afternoon, and which lay on a chair in the hall, waiting to be put in water.
‘Yes, aren’t they?’ agreed Miss Morrow. ‘I got them on Shotover this afternoon.’
‘Oh, did you go there this afternoon?’ said Mr. Latimer, in a ridiculously casual voice. ‘I’ve heard it’s a very nice walk.’
‘Particularly when it’s raining and you ought to be assisting at evensong,’ said Miss Morrow, when they had got Mrs. Wardell safely out of the door.
‘Oh, what an experience!’ said Mr. Latimer,
flopping down on the sofa.
‘Well, I really think you made it worse,’ said Miss Morrow. ‘Your story was ridiculous. Heaven knows what Mrs. Wardell thinks we’ve been doing. She spoke almost as if … well, you know what I mean.’ Miss Morrow, although unworldly, had a natural delicacy which would not allow her to speak plainer than that. But Mr. Latimer understood and felt that it was an uncomfortable situation.
‘I really feel quite exhausted,’ he said, slipping out of it easily. ‘Is there by any chance any sherry in the house?’
‘I don’t keep a secret bottle in my bedroom,’ said Miss Morrow, ‘but there is some in the sideboard. Miss Doggett only brings it out when we have company or when she feels she needs reviving.’
‘Well, we have just had company, and we certainly need reviving,’ said Mr. Latimer.
‘All right, I’ll get some. I too have undergone a shattering experience,’ said Miss Morrow, thinking that the first time one heard a clergyman telling deliberate lies could surely be called that. ‘Luckily the glasses are in the sideboard, but I shall have to hide them and wash them myself, otherwise Maggie and Florence might think things. Florence is such an intelligent girl,’ she added.
Miss Morrow came back with the sherry.
‘You must let me propose a toast,’ she said. ‘I think we should drink the health of your friend, the vicar of Crampton Hodnet.’
Mr. Latimer looked at her uneasily. He was beginning to realise that he had put himself completely in her power. Could he trust her? He disliked the idea of depending on her for his good reputation—or his bad one, for that matter. He felt he ought to say something but he hardly knew what, and, as the sherry brought warmth and contentment to his body, his mind grew lazy, so that he said something which, although it was the first thing that came into his head, was not perhaps a very wise choice. ‘What a pretty dress you’re wearing,’ he said. ‘Blue is my favourite colour.’
VI. An Afternoon in the Bodleian
‘Well, this is a cosy sight,’ said Francis Cleveland, coming into the drawing-room on a cold December afternoon. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Well, Anthea’s reading and I’m mending your socks,’ said Mrs. Cleveland patiently. ‘What have you been doing all the afternoon?’ she asked.
Mr. Cleveland came and stood in front of the fire, thus shielding it from everyone else. ‘Oh, I’ve been doing some work,’ he said vaguely. ‘I don’t know how you can sit about all afternoon doing nothing.’
‘Well, dear, you can come and mend your own socks, as you seem to think it less arduous than what you’ve been doing,’ said Mrs. Cleveland placidly. ‘What are you going to do now?’ she asked. Francis seemed to be in what she called one of his ‘loose-endish’ moods this afternoon.
‘Why do you always ask that whenever I come into the drawing-room?’ he said rather irritably. ‘Can’t I stand in my own drawing-room and talk to my family? Isn’t that doing something?’
Anthea looked up from the romantic novel, which she was finding more sympathetic reading than the dull book on economics she had hoped to get through. ‘I know what you’re doing,’ she said. ‘You’re keeping all the fire off me.’
‘Oh, then I suppose I’d better go and sit down somewhere,’ said Mr. Cleveland in an offended tone. He went to the farthest edge of the room and sat down on a hard chair in a direct draught.
‘Oh, Father, come and sit on the sofa,’ said Anthea impatiently, moving her knitting. ‘There’s plenty of room.’
‘It’s only three o’clock,’ said Mrs. Cleveland. ‘Why don’t you go along to the Bodleian until teatime? You might see Arnold Penge or Edward Killigrew or somebody. That would be nice.’
‘Very nice, to listen to Arnold Penge droning on about Virgil, or to Edward Killigrew saying that Mother doesn’t like him to be late for tea,’ said Mr. Cleveland coldly.
‘Well, you could be alone and work,’ persisted his wife. ‘Or perhaps you’ll find a nice young woman working there and take her out to tea,’ she added brightly.
‘You certainly seem to want to get rid of me,’ said Mr. Cleveland, ‘so perhaps I will go to the Bodleian. It’s a comfort to know that there is at least one place left in Oxford where scholars and elderly people can spend a peaceful afternoon.’
‘Take your overcoat, dear,’ Mrs. Cleveland called after him. ‘Remember how cold it is there.’
Francis is so much better when he has something definite to do, she thought contentedly. If he walked it would take him twenty minutes to reach the library. He might spend twenty minutes talking to somebody or looking up books in the catalogue and then, by the time he had walked home again, it would be teatime and his afternoon would have been nicely filled in. Only of course if he took a bus he would get home sooner.
Francis Cleveland, hunched in his grey overcoat, walked gloomily into the Bodleian quadrangle and up the stairs into Duke Humfrey’s library. There was something he had meant to look up, but he had forgotten now what it was. TALK LITTLE AND TREAD LIGHTLY said the notice. Mr. Cleveland trod as heavily as he could and would certainly have talked much, had he seen anyone to talk to. When he looked in at his usual seat by the hot water pipes, he found it occupied by a young clergyman, who gave him a startled glance but who stood his ground and offered no apology. Mr. Cleveland sat down in the empty and more draughty seat beside him and with unnecessary fuss began to move his books from the young clergyman desk onto the new one. When he had got them all together he decided that he did not want to read any of them, so he got up and began walking about until he came across Edward Killigrew, a senior assistant in the library, who was always ready for a good gossip.
Edward Killigrew sat at his desk, wearing a leather golf jacket and grey hand-knitted mittens. He was a tall, vague man of uncertain age, with a fussy, petulant voice. He lived with his old mother in the Woodstock Road. He was reading a catalogue of second-hand books and marking certain items, but he did not in the least mind being interrupted in his work. He kept Mr. Cleveland entertained with spiteful bits of gossip about various members of the University and the library staff until nearly four o’clock. Then he stood up and said, ‘Well, I must go now. Mother will be annoyed if I’m late for tea. She always likes it punctually at half past four.’
Left to himself once more, Mr. Cleveland wandered through the Upper Reading Room, brushed aside the dark, mysterious curtain leading to the Tower Room, and hovered indecisively by the bookcase where the dictionaries and encyclopaedias were kept.
Oh, supposing he comes in here, thought Barbara Bird in a panic. So great was her agitation that she hardly knew whether she wanted him to come or not. She crouched in her seat by the radiator, with her fur coat around her shoulders, trying desperately hard to concentrate on her work.
Mr. Cleveland went on hovering in the entrance to the Reading Room, peering inquisitively among the desks. He was bored, and it was always rather a comfort to watch other people working. And then he saw Barbara and realised that she was just what he needed. He wanted to be with somebody who appreciated him. He went up to her desk with an ingratiating smile on his face.
‘Do come out and have some tea with me,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you’ve been working quite long enough this afternoon.’
He could see her hands trembling slightly as she looked up from her book. They were pretty hands with long, rose-coloured nails. Unacademic-looking hands, he thought.
‘I’d love to,’ she said, looking up at him with eyes which Mr. Cleveland might have described even more warmly.
She stood up and arranged her books neatly on the desk, looked at her face in a small mirror and put on her gloves. She was purposely taking her time so that she could compose herself and think of what she should say to him when the time came for intelligent conversation.
They walked out of the Reading Room and down the stairs.
‘Don’t you get depressed working in that place after the end of term?’ said Mr. Cleveland. ‘I should have thought you’d rather go home.’
Go home with the chance of seeing you in Oxford? thought Barbara. Why, if I’d gone home this wouldn’t be happening to me. ‘It’s impossible to work at home,’ she said. ‘One simply can’t get any peace.’
‘Where do you live?’
‘In North Wales, by the sea.’
‘Oh, do you? We often go to Llanfaddyn in the summer. We sometimes take reading parties there,’ said Mr. Cleveland. ‘I dare say you may have seen us.’
‘Yes, I have, but that was before I knew you properly, and before you knew me at all,’ said Barbara, remembering one day when she had gone into the village shop to buy something and had found him standing there, wrestling with a long list of groceries. ‘It was such a surprise to see you.’ She laughed. ‘I’d always thought of you as you were lecturing at the Schools, and then I saw you in shorts, buying tins of baked beans and spaghetti. It made you so much more human.’
‘Well, I am human, quite human,’ said Mr. Cleveland, rather pleased at the idea of himself being anything else. ‘And now we seem to be at the door of Fuller’s. Shall we go in here?’
‘Yes, I think it’s a very suitable place,’ said Barbara. ‘Quite the right sprt of place for a tutor to take his pupil.’
‘His favourite pupil,’ said Mr. Cleveland, with rather stiff gallantry. ‘I shall expect you to eat a lot of cakes.’
They went upstairs and looked around for a table. ‘Do you like the new part down the steps?’ asked Mr. Cleveland. They stood at the top of them, looking down at the groups of North Oxford spinsters, dons’ wives and families, who were taking some refreshment after their Christmas shopping.
‘I think the other part is nicer,’ said Barbara.
‘Yes,’ agreed Mr. Cleveland. ‘Less full of chattering women.’
‘Let’s sit by the window,’ said Barbara.
When the tea came she found that he liked his with milk and two lumps of sugar, just like so many other people: Peter, her brother, or that dull young man from St. Wilfrid’s Hall, who was always asking her to go out with him. It was a wonderful thing for Barbara to have found out how Francis Cleveland liked his tea. She began to pour hot water into the teapot, trying at the same time to appear intelligently interested in what she was saying. But really she was taking in her surroundings, so that she could have many details stored away in her memory, each of which might have the power to bring this afternoon back to her. She noticed the big pink chrysanthemums with heads like mops, the cakes in their cellophane coverings, even the people sitting at the tables near them. There was a tall, handsome woman, perhaps the wife of a don, with her three little boys, chattering about Christmas presents and fingering the cakes. One day those little boys would grow up, and although they would never know it, they would somehow all be linked together by this experience. Barbara suddenly felt a warm, all-embracing love for everybody in Fuller’s that afternoon, even for the chattering dons’ wives and North Oxford spinsters, who were sitting in the other part of the cafe, anxiously wondering whether they had bought the right things or whether that cushion cover that Ella had given them last year could possibly be used as a present for anybody else without fear of discovery.