Crampton Hodnet

by Barbara Pym

  ‘Well, well, what a lot of things seem to have happened this afternoon.’ She sighed. She started to ask Mr. Latimer about how he had met Mr. Cleveland and to tell him about Anthea and the letter from Simon, but he was so obviously not taking in a word she said that she gave it up and began to wonder how he would ever be able to write his Sunday sermons. Then she started to wonder what was going on elsewhere in the house. Poor Mrs. Cleveland would have her hands full now, with her husband and her daughter to deal with, she thought.

  At that moment Ellen came into the room bringing tea, and Miss Morrow ventured upstairs to tell the others it was ready. Halfway up she met Mr. Cleveland coming down. He looked rather disgruntled.

  ‘Anyone would think the world had come to an end,’ he muttered. ‘She hasn’t even noticed I’ve come back.’

  Miss Morrow effaced herself into the shadows by the Gothic umbrella stand, which had been a wedding present from Miss Doggett. Tea’s ready,’ she said in a neutral tone.

  ‘Tea!’ he called loudly.

  Miss Doggett and Mrs. Cleveland hurried into the room.

  ‘Anthea doesn’t feel like coming down,’ said Mrs. Cleveland to nobody in particular. ‘I’ll just take her a cup of tea.’

  ‘Oh, dear, this is a tragedy. Poor Anthea, I’ve never seen anybody so broken,’ wailed Miss Doggett. ‘He seemed so devoted. I really cannot understand it.’

  ‘She says she might fancy a piece of walnut cake,’ said Mrs. Cleveland, coming back with a plate.

  ‘Will somebody tell me exactly what has happened?’ asked Francis mildly. ‘I’m quite in the dark. Is Simon dead or something?’

  ‘Worse,’ said Miss Doggett, shaking the cyclamen birds vigorously. ‘It would almost have been better if he had been.’

  ‘A fate worse than death?’ said Francis frivolously. ‘I thought that was usually reserved for young girls.’

  ‘Like my cousin Bertha in Paris,’ said Miss Morrow, unable to stop herself.

  Francis suddenly looked very embarrassed and began offering cake to everybody, although they all had something on their plates.

  ‘A brilliant match,’ Miss Doggett intoned. ‘It would have been such a splendid thing for Anthea.’

  ‘Well, to tell you the truth,’ said Mrs. Cleveland, coming back into the room, i don’t think it would have been a very good thing. They were both so young, and Anthea will meet lots of other people. But poor child, she has cried so much. It’s terrible not being able to do anything for her.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Miss Morrow, ‘and it’s such cold comfort to say that Time is a Great Healer.’

  ‘There are some sorrows that Time can never heal,’ said Miss Doggett. ‘And to think,’ she added in the same breath, ‘that she might have had a house in Chester Square!’

  Poor Miss Doggett, thought Miss Morrow, watching her. She feels it as much as Anthea does. The shock of Simon’s letter had put the other affair completely out of her mind. Indeed, nobody was taking any notice of Francis Cleveland, not even his wife, who seemed much more concerned over the weakness of the tea and whether Anthea could have managed a bigger piece of cake.

  ‘She always has such a good appetite,’ she said. ‘I do hope she won’t fret too much. It’s lucky we’re going to the sea soon. A holiday is just what she needs.’

  ‘Yes, a holiday can make a great difference,’ said Mr. Latimer from his corner. ‘I had a marvellous time in France.’

  ‘I’m so glad,’ said Mrs. Cleveland politely. ‘Did you meet some interesting people?’

  ‘Oh, yes, as a matter of fact I did… .’

  And so for the third time that afternoon he told his story. It seemed to gain a little in the telling, Miss Morrow thought. This time they were actually engaged, there was nothing unofficial about it.

  ‘Well, well!’ Miss Doggett seemed unable to decide what attitude to adopt towards this unexpected news. ‘What did you say her name was?’

  ‘Pamela,’ said Mr. Latimer rapturously, taking a chocolate biscuit. ‘Pamela Pimlico.’

  ‘Not a relation of Lord Pimlico?’ said Miss Doggett hopefully. ‘It’s an uncommon name.’

  ‘As a matter of fact she’s his youngest daughter,’ said Mr. Latimer modestly.

  ‘Well, this is splendid. I believe she is a charming girl.’ Miss Doggett was all smiles. The cyclamen birds bobbed about so vigorously that nobody would have been surprised to see them leave the hat and fly away.

  ‘Oh, look,’ said Miss Morrow, ‘here come the vicar and Mrs. Wardell. Are you going to tell them the news?’

  ‘Why, of course,’ said Miss Doggett, who had at once taken charge of everything. ‘Agnes, what do you think, Mr. Latimer is engaged to one of Lord Pimlico’s girls. Isn’t it splendid?’

  ‘Have you got the ring yet?’

  ‘Well, no, not yet,’ Mr. Latimer admitted, ‘but I’ve been thinking about it.’

  Diamonds and platinum, thought Miss Morrow, it was inevitable. A platinum ring set with a moderate-sized solitaire diamond. Miss Morrow was sure that in the matter of engagement rings he would have conventional taste, and as he was only a curate, the size of the diamond could hardly be more than moderate, if that. It might even be very small, like the head of a pin, the sort of ring the poorer undergraduates gave their girl-friends. But it would be a diamond.

  ‘I’d thought of getting a solitaire diamond set in platinum,’ said Mr. Latimer, fulfilling Miss Morrow’s expectations. ‘I think she’d like that.’

  ‘If I were ever engaged I should like a large, semi-precious stone, like an amethyst or a topaz,’ said Miss Morrow.

  Miss Doggett seemed to think this very amusing. ‘Well, Miss Morrow, we must let Mr. Killigrew know that. I’m sure he would oblige.’

  ‘Do you know,’ said Mrs. Wardell, suddenly gripping Mr. Latimer’s arm, ‘I’d got quite the wrong idea. I actually thought there was something between you and Miss Morrow!’

  Miss Morrow joined as heartily as anyone in the laughter which followed this amazing admission. Everyone seemed to think it was very funny, although Mr. Latimer’s laughter sounded a little forced.

  ‘Agnes gets such odd ideas,’ said Mr. Wardell proudly. ‘Indeed, I think we all do at times,’ he added in a more serious tone, shooting a glance at Mr. Cleveland as if to make sure that his eyes had not deceived him. ‘We sometimes get hold of the wrong end of the stick. Indeed, we may even imagine that we have got hold of a stick which turns out not to be a stick at all.’

  ‘Oh, Ben, you are getting involved,’ said his wife. ‘I’m sure nobody knows what you’re talking about.’

  The babble of conversation went on and grew so lively that Mrs. Cleveland began to wonder whether her uninvited guests would ever go. It seemed so ridiculous to think that at an important time like this one’s house should be full of people who refused to go. She felt she would like to stand up and clap her hands and say ‘Shoo!’ as if they were all a lot of chickens. But being a polite woman she urged them to eat more bread and butter and more cake, and even made pleasant conversation, when she wasn’t peering into the teapot or ringing for more hot water.

  Francis watched her dispassionately. He supposed it was too much to expect her to notice him, even when they had so much to talk about and he had come back at what he imagined was an unexpected time. He had a headache from shaking about in that wretched little car, and he felt so hot, with cold shivers running down his back at the same time. Perhaps there were some aspirins in the medicine cupboard. He crept unnoticed from the room and went upstairs. And when everybody had at last gone, Mrs. Cleveland found him sitting on his bed, looking bedraggled and pathetic.

  ‘Why, Francis dear, I don’t believe you’re well,’ she said, hurrying towards him and catching hold of his hand. ‘You look quite funny.’

  ‘I feel hot and shivery and I’ve got a headache,’ he said gratefully, i think I’ve caught a chill.’

  ‘I’ll take your temperature,’ she said, i expect you ought to be in bed.’

>   ‘Listen,’ he said, when she returned with the thermometer, i didn’t go to Paris.’

  ‘I know you didn’t, dear,’ she said soothingly, popping the thermometer into his mouth.

  Muttering sounds came from him; he was trying to say something.

  ‘Hush, Francis, you’ll break it,’ she said. ‘You can tell me when it’s over.’

  There was a silence, during which Mrs. Cleveland looked round the room and noticed that the mantelpiece needed dusting. And why, she wondered, was there an unopened bottle of wine on the dressing-table? Whatever had Francis been doing with himself during her absence?

  ‘Now, we’ll see.’ She took the thermometer out of his mouth and examined it. ‘Oh, dear, it’s up a little,’ she said. ‘You must go straight to bed. I’ll get you a hot water bottle.’

  ‘Wait, Margaret, you must listen,’ he said petulantly. ‘I didn’t go to Paris. I only went as far as Dover.’

  It sounded rather silly like that, he thought weakly.

  ‘I didn’t go to Paris. I only went to Dover,’ he repeated, but she had gone out of the room, and when she came back she seemed so concerned about whether the bottle might be too hot, whether they had any quinine in the house, and even whether he might not be going to get pneumonia, that the fact of where he had been and where he had not been slid naturally into the background. There was nothing Mrs. Cleveland liked better than looking after an invalid.

  XXIII. Old friends and New

  Anthea was in her bedroom, applying a deep fuchsia-coloured varnish to her nails. It was the beginning of term again, and Simon’s friend Christopher, who was still up, had asked her to lunch. It was important that she should look nice. She had been reading an article in Woman and Beauty which said that you shouldn’t let yourself go just because your young man had fallen in love with somebody else. You should go out and get some new clothes, a new hairstyle, a new lipstick, even a new young man. You would soon begin to feel better. Indeed, after the first shock had worn off and her wounded vanity had recovered a little, Anthea seemed to be no different from her usual self, except that she now had an excuse to buy a great many new clothes and to appear with her lips and nails painted in rather bold and alarming colours.

  It was a lovely October day, and Oxford was full of hopeful young freshmen, smoking new-looking pipes, fighting their way through Woolworth’s and emerging triumphant with kettles and lampshades. Groups of chattering young women, some plain and spectacled, others with some degree of beauty and elegance, crowded into Blackwell’s to buy second-hand copies of the Pass Moderations set books. The entrance to the front quadrangle of Randolph was blocked by a group of rich young men newly arrived from town. Suede shoes, pin-striped flannels, teddy-bear coats and check caps—Anthea knew the uniform so well. Any one of them might have been Simon. They stood aside for her to pass and their blank faces lighted up for a moment as they watched her making for Christopher’s staircase.

  ‘I’ve never been in this part of Randolph before,’ said Anthea, making conversation.

  ‘These are my new rooms,’ said Christopher. ‘Rather nicer than my others, don’t you think?’

  Anthea, who had noticed very little difference, made some polite comment. Have I got to eat my lunch with this enormous photograph of Simon facing me? she wondered. It was one she particularly disliked. His charming, usually rather childish face had assumed for the occasion an expression which had in it something of Napoleon and something of Sir Oswald Mosley and almost nothing of Simon Beddoes.

  Christopher saw her looking and cursed his tactlessness. He ought to have put it away. Simon would never have made a faux pas like that. That was why he had always got everything he wanted.

  ‘You look marvellous,’ he began and was just going to pay her a pretty compliment when his elderly scout came creaking into the room with lunch.

  ‘I hope you’ll like what I’ve ordered,’ he said anxiously. It occurred to him that as she must have had so many meals in Randolph it would perhaps have been better to take her to the George. This luncheon party wasn’t going to be a success, he thought unhappily.

  But somehow it was. It seemed that Anthea liked chicken better than anything else in the world, that she adored Liebfraumilch above all wines, that the chocolate mousse was the most marvellous she had ever tasted. And when the old, creaking and, one felt, rather disapproving scout had cleared away the things, it seemed perfectly right and natural that Christopher should kiss her.

  ‘Did you know, that I loved you too?’ he said earnestly. ‘But Simon always had everything.’

  Anthea felt she wanted to giggle. He kissed just like Simon. He might have been Simon, except that he was slightly taller and had fair hair. She felt curiously comforted as she laid her head against his rough tweed shoulder.

  ‘You’ve always got me, darling,’ he said.

  Yes, thought Anthea philosophically, and if I hadn’t got you I’d have Freddie or Patrick or somebody else. Everything went on just the same in Oxford from year to year. It was only the people who might be different. The pattern never varied.

  When she got home just before teatime she found her father talking about a class of eight young women he had promised to take for Donne and Dryden.

  ‘It’s nice that term has begun,’ said Mrs. Cleveland. ‘The long vac. always seems so very long doesn’t it?’

  After two months, it was difficult to realise that there had ever been such a person as Barbara Bird. Even Edward Killigrew seemed to have forgotten all about it and was now full of a new and very exciting scandal about an old clergyman who had been reading in the library during the long vacation.

  Mrs. Cleveland was sometimes inclined to congratulate herself on her handling of what might have been a very awkward situation. She had managed things very cunningly, she thought. And then she would remember that really she could hardly be said to have managed things at all.

  This year, she thought, there will be eight young women to deal with, but everyone knew that eight were less dangerous than one.

  ‘Who shall we have to tea on Sunday?’ she asked. ‘We must get going straight away.’

  Anthea groaned. ‘Oh, dear, on it goes! All these hopeful young men coming up every year, and I suppose it will never change. There will always be North Oxford tea parties as long as there’s any University left.’

  ‘I shall get some large, solid cakes,’ said Mrs. Cleveland thoughtfully. ‘After all, people don’t really notice what they eat.’

  ‘No, they come to see us,’ said Anthea quite happily. ‘I shall wear my new red dress.’

  The life of Oxford went on in so much the same way that she would hardly be surprised to see Simon coming to tea on Sunday as he had come on that first Sunday of term a year ago. And if he did not come, surely there would be somebody among their guests who looked and talked like him and who would fall in love with her. It was a melancholy thought, she decided, glad that one can never live the past over again.

  ‘Let’s have Christopher,Lshe suggested rather self-consciously. ‘He said he was free this Sunday.’

  Mrs. Cleveland smiled but made no comment. ‘And we’d better ask the good old steadies like Henry and Jock and Edgar Cherry, and perhaps Michael and Gabriel. Or will Aunt Maude be wanting them? I always feel that they’re more hers than ours.’

  ‘Michael and Gabriel of course,’ said Miss Doggett. ‘They would be so disappointed not to be asked.’

  ‘And you said something about Canon Teep’s nephew,’ said Miss Morrow, who was making a neat list.

  ‘Oh, yes, and we might ask Mr. Bompas too. I’ve always been meaning to ask him about his aunt. And‘ — Miss Doggett paused impressively — ‘Viscount St. Pancras. I have discovered that I was at school with a relative of his. He is coming up to Randolph this term. I believe he did brilliantly at Eton. They have a delightful town residence in Belgrave Square. I thought he might be a nice friend for Anthea,’ said Miss Doggett, putting her intentions rather mildly.

 
Of course it had been a terrible tragedy for Anthea, losing Simon—as far as Miss Doggett was concerned he might just as well have been dead and buried—but perhaps God was all-wise after all, she thought reverently. One knew that He moved in a mysterious way His wonders to perform. Might it not be that what had happened was part of some Divine Plan to set Anthea free for even Higher Things than the son of a sometime British Ambassador in Warsaw? Chester Square was very desirable, but Belgrave Square … Miss Doggett’s imagination stopped short, as it might have done in trying to form a picture of Heaven.

  ‘It is a good thing that Anthea likes young men,’ she said aloud, ‘because he is only eighteen.’ Oswald William Robert FitzAuber, Viscount St. Pancras. b. 1919. That had been a little disappointing, Miss Doggett felt, regretting that undergraduates had to get younger every year. Still, it could not be helped, and where there was life there was hope, so to speak.

  Miss Morrow tried to look intelligent, but she found it all too confusing. ‘We shall miss Mr. Latimer when he’s married,’ she remarked.

  ‘Yes, indeed we shall.’ Miss Doggett sighed heavily. ‘I dare say he will get a living soon.’

  Crampton Hodnet would be nice, thought Miss Morrow. Such a pretty village.

  ‘And that will mean another curate,’ said Miss Doggett, as if this consoling truth had just dawned on her.

  ‘Why, yes,’ said Miss Morrow brightly, ‘so it will.’

  Miss Doggett would get another Mr. Latimer, and Anthea would get another Simon. There was really nothing in this world that could not be replaced. If I were suddenly taken,

  Miss Morrow thought, a substitute could easily be found. A dim, obedient woman, who would wind Miss Doggett’s wool and put the buns into the Balmoral tin, as I shall be putting them on Saturday.

  The days of the week slipped by, and at last it was Sunday. Viscount St. Pancras had written to say that he would be delighted to come to tea, and so Maggie had been told to make some rather more elaborate cakes than were usually given to the undergraduates.