The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym

by Paula Byrne

  CHAPTER XXI

  In which Sandra tries to renounce Lorenzo

  Pym was having tea with Harry Harker in Elliston’s, when, to her shock and amazed delight, in came Henry with a friend and sat down on the next table. He spoke to her at once, asking her why she was wearing a black mackintosh identical to his own. ‘Why, because I think it’s so charming,’ she answered. They carried on chatting, Pym worried about Harry and what he would think. Though Henry looked very handsome, his skin deliciously smooth and creamy brown, she felt that her feelings towards him were becoming less intense. Later, he saw her in the library and told her that he was moving into a half-furnished flat in Banbury Road with Jock. He was much friendlier and he asked her to visit him sometimes. Pym was unconvinced by this overture: ‘Oh yeh – to use a very un-Lorenzaic expression.’[1]

  In the Tower Room, where she applied her lipstick and brushed her hair, she saw Henry looking ‘beautiful’, with a ‘snurg’ on his face. She loved the way that he turned his head to one side when he smiled; he gave her another ‘snurg’ as he left. She was determined not to visit him, but was always pulled back: ‘Life is for me a half furnished flat with Gabriel in it.’[2] His friends, the Count and Jock, were becoming more friendly, but Henry ignored her. She thought his returning to Oxford was ‘the unkindest cut of all’. She chided herself for feeling depressed – ‘Oh Sandra cheer up – you’ll forget one day’ – and told herself that beauty fades and that there would come a day when she would laugh at her own infatuation, ‘when his brown eyes – head on one side – snurge – will cease to thrill’, when he would no longer affect ‘the open ulcer of my heart’.[3]

  Henry had promised to send her a poem that he thought she’d like, but he did not get round to it: ‘Oh my cruel Lorenzo, why can’t you send me the poem – or be kind to me in some small way? – OH why can’t the gods let me meet someone new whom I can love? Why oh Why?’ She wrote letters to him, to which he failed to respond. He was never a good correspondent. And although she was still drawn to his physical beauty (‘My Lorenzo is so beautiful … the shape of his face and the line of his cheek fill me with rapture’), she could see his less attractive side: ‘He grows more affected – his smile of self-conscious fatuity is sweet – but one day may seem silly.’[4] Sometimes she went into the Bod with the excuse that she needed to sharpen her pencil, in the hope of getting a glimpse of him. Many days, she would go back to her room and weep.[5]

  In her second attempt to renounce Henry, Pym let Harry Harker kiss her properly, giving up on the pose that she should not be kissed because her last kiss was from ‘Gabriel’. She planned on sending a note to Henry saying, ‘thank you for sending me back my heart’, but the fates intervened again and she met him in the Bod where he asked her to visit him in his flat the next day. She implied that she would go, but when she got home she wrote him a long letter, pouring out her grief and saying that she would not. He responded by writing to her imploring her to change her mind, told her not to be mean and to please come and see him. She didn’t go. By the end of the week, she was once again depressed: ‘This evening I reached my lowest ebb of misery for the term – I wish terribly that I’d gone to see Lorenzo … why do I make such a mess of things?’[6]

  The rest of the term was disappointing. Her spirits were low, only temporarily restored by the news that her sister had been accepted at Lady Margaret Hall. Pym was pleased too that she had also done well in her end of term ‘collections’ (oral examination and reports from her tutors) and had an especially good report from Rooke, her English lecturer. She longed for a note from Henry, but none came. The day she left for the Christmas vacation to stay with her cousins in Hatch End, she wrote him a goodbye letter. As she left on the train for London, she saw the dreaming spires glowing ‘in the twilight of a December evening – romantic time to leave’.[7]

  CHAPTER XXII

  A Pet Kangaroo

  London with the Selway cousins was always a restorative to her spirits. There were the usual cinema visits: Barbara was unimpressed with Mae West in I’m No Angel (‘fat and unattractive’). She dressed in her fur coat and fez. They went Christmas shopping at Liberty, where she saw ‘lovely stuff’. A trip to Selfridges was planned, where she spotted a kangaroo for sale in the zoological department. It had brown eyes and a pointed nose, very much like Henry’s, she thought. She stroked its neck and ‘it closed its eyes in ecstasy’.[1] She wanted to buy it, but it was already sold – ‘anyway what would I have done with it?’[2]

  At home, she shopped for Christmas cards and began reading Daniel Defoe’s racy novel, Moll Flanders. She found it ‘simply and convincingly written’ and wished she could write a book like it. Shropshire she found as dull as ever: ‘one day is almost exactly like the other’. She was honest enough to admit to herself that boredom was part of her problem with men: ‘how empty my life would be without a consuming passion’.[3]

  Faithful Harry Harker sent her a book for Christmas and the next day, a card finally arrived ‘From Lorenzo to Sandra’. On it was a reproduction of Saint Barbara. The card was addressed in Jock’s handwriting, so she wondered if it was a joint card, or even Jock’s idea rather than Henry’s. However, it helped to make for a good Christmas Day. In the morning the Pyms went to church and then unwrapped presents after breakfast. Barbara was given a blue woollen jumper, a pyjama case, silk stockings and a black quilted evening bag with ‘Sandra’ embroidered across the front in blue silk. It is not clear what her parents thought of her adoption of an alternative name.

  In the new year, she decided that she would not make a resolution to renounce Lorenzo, but would just wait to see what happened. Jock Liddell seemed to be playing on her mind too. She vowed to get to know him more when she returned to Oxford. She knew that Jock was homosexual and that he was said to favour men a little younger than himself, such as Bill Ireland, who was descended from the aristocratic de Courcy family.[4] Pym was intrigued by same-sex relationships. The previous November she had attended a lecture on Shakespeare’s sonnets in which the lecturer had said ‘there was no ignoble sex perversion about Shakespeare’s love for Mr W[illiam] H[erbert]’.[5] Her recent reading of Richard Rumbold and Oscar Wilde fed her curiosity. Later, she would write brilliantly about same-sex relationships between men.

  Jock and Harry seemed to be inextricably linked, as Miles and Rupert once were: ‘I love Gabriel and think about him and Jockie all day and night.’[6] Pym was making Henry a stuffed kangaroo out of pipe cleaners and grey wool. It had brown eyes and a slightly protruding red tongue. She longed to make stuffed animals for Jock, too.

  Pym went lingerie shopping in Marks and Spencer in Shrewsbury, and ‘bought a peach coloured vest and “trollies”, with insertions of lace. Disgraceful I know but I can’t help choosing my underwear with a view to its being seen!’ She also bought a new red dress: ‘crimson jersey – with a collar of red and white crochet which makes me say Lo the poor Indian, for some obscure reason’.[7] The colour reminded her of Gabriel’s red pyjamas, which rather begs the question of how she knew about such intimate garments. Their relationship may have already become sexual. There are several torn-out pages in her Michaelmas diary, which was her habit when recalling embarrassing or distressing incidents.

  Another lasting love affair began in earnest – with Shakespeare. She quoted Keats: ‘I read Shakespeare and I never quite despair.’[8] Passionate as she was, she felt that Shakespeare inspired a ‘hectic rush feeling’. This was partly a joke, as she was reading him in a hurry before returning to Oxford, but Shakespeare did indeed fire her imagination. She was also reading Ronald Knox’s The Belief of Catholics and mused ‘not yet far enough into it to know whether I shall become a Catholic or not’.[9]

  Thoughts of returning to Oxford were complicated. On the one hand, melting languor; on the other, misery. ‘It means Gabriel and Jockie and probably some unhappiness – and haven’t I been made enough miserable over this? Anyway, I’m getting hardened and I expect nothing. I only hop
e.’[10]

  CHAPTER XXIII

  Sandra returns to Oxford and resumes her Affair with Lorenzo

  Pym returned to Oxford, determined to stay away from the Bodleian Library, thus avoiding Henry and Jock. She was thrilled to be reunited with her girlfriends, Sharp and Pedley, but shocked her English tutors by her bright red nail lacquer.[1] Several of the more racy characters in Pym’s novels can be distinguished by their red nails.

  As usual, Pym was surrounded by admirers, but was still preoccupied with ‘the brute’ Henry. She tried hard to engage with other men, but in comparison with Henry found them dull in appearance and in themselves. She purchased a stuffed grey kangaroo, which she doted on, and called it Starky.

  Pym went on ‘beauty walks’ with her girlfriends, to windy Port Meadow and Wolvercote, and vowed to cure herself of her sentimental attachment to the Trout, the scene of the passionate embrace with Henry. But her resolution to keep away from the Bodleian didn’t last. She saw Jock Liddell, ‘looking adorable – his golden curls all ruffled!’ But she was in low spirits: ‘Coming down the Broad I was struck anew with the hopelessness of this life.’[2]

  Harry Harker was still keen and he took her to the cinema to see the recently released Blue Angel. Marlene Dietrich had been discovered in the backstreets of Berlin by the director Josef von Sternberg and he had been instantly mesmerised. His plan was to film The Blue Angel in both English and German. The movie was about a repressed, elderly professor who falls in love, becomes obsessed by and is brought down by a crude showgirl. The dazzling Dietrich crooned ‘Falling in love again, never wanted to’, which would become her signature song. Propelled into box office stardom, she left Berlin for Hollywood as soon as she had finished filming, concerned about her country’s new chancellor, Adolf Hitler, who seemed not only power mad, but mad. Hers seemed almost to be a lone voice at the time, as most people in Berlin thought him a saviour. Pym’s reaction to the film was lukewarm: ‘a horrid, depressing flick and Marlene Dietrich revolting – but it was interesting’.[3] Her reaction to Hitler, however, would be very different from Dietrich’s.

  After the picture, she caught a glimpse of Henry’s back and quickly made her excuses to Harry so that she could tail him, but lost him when he jumped on a bus: ‘I still feel the same hopeless desire … I must be sensible about him.’[4]

  Pym continued to hang around the Bod desperate for a glimpse and also stalked him at lectures. She discovered the times of the lectures he attended and then arranged things so she would ‘accidentally’ bump into him. She timed it all ‘beautifully’ and was rewarded by the occasional smile and hello. Henry later recalled that she would go to great efforts to stalk him and then be tongue-tied when she finally got his attention. In her diary, she was painfully aware of this and explained that it was because she felt intellectually inferior and wanted to say things that were witty and dazzling. She had always relied on her native wit and sense of humour, but in his presence she was rendered dumb.

  Finally Henry cracked, came to sit next to her at the Bod and asked her to tea. When he left, she picked up the scrap of paper he had left on her desk (‘it seemed to say will you have tea with me today?’). She kept it amongst her ‘Harvey–Liddell relics (of which I now have 3)’.[5]

  By the end of January 1933, things had quickly progressed with Henry in ways that not even she had foreseen but that were bittersweet. Pym cut out five pages of her diary. The relationship had now become sexual. Henry’s treatment of her, however, was unkind and uncaring and she felt that he was using her for sex. But she could not stop herself from loving and wanting him and, as a result, she suffered miserably.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  The Saga of Sandra and Lorenzo, continued …

  Below the cut-out pages of Pym’s diary is a sad line: ‘I am with him. I’m not happy about it.’[1]

  Piecing together the narrative is not easy, with pages of deleted information, but there is a strong sense of bitterness. Lent was about to begin and as Pym was giving up Gold Flake, she smoked her last cigarette. She resolved that from now on she would call Lorenzo by his real name. She still felt low: ‘Tired of life – and everything.’ She wrote to him, a part witty and part serious letter, but he didn’t write back. She was made wretched by the fact that he never seemed to treat her with kindness: ‘If only he would just take the wee bit of trouble required to be kind – it’s so easy to be nice to people … I wish he needed me or wanted me a little.’[2]

  In March, there was a student protest in favour of communism. Pym joined the demonstration, though felt a little ludicrous as she shouted: ‘1-2-3-4 who are we for? We are for the working classes. Down with the ruling classes.’ The leader was Hilary Sumner-Boyd, dressed in green velvet trousers. Pym thought he looked like a girl; ‘somehow one doesn’t associate him with Communism’.[3] She also admitted that she disapproved of much that communism stood for.

  Her interest in Jock Liddell, meanwhile, continued unabated. She looked up his brother in the Cambridge University Calendar, discovering that he was called Donald.[4] Jock and Donald were extremely close brothers. They had lost their beloved mother to cancer when they were very young. Their father had remarried and their stepmother was cruel and unloving towards the boys. Jock would write about their miserable upbringing in his extraordinary novels, Kind Relations and Stepsons. He would turn out to be a prolific writer of biographies, poetry, novels and travel books. But for now he was still a young librarian – though admittedly, at one of the greatest libraries in the world. Donald, who would also become a great champion and friend of Pym, was a talented musician.

  It seems probable that Henry had confided in Jock about his physical relationship with Pym. Jock, at this time, was protective of Henry and irritated by Pym and her hero worship. She noted that Jock gave her a ‘most concentrated look of loathing’.[5] She wrote in her diary of her longing and need for Henry: ‘what else is there in life?’ Meeting him later, he again asked her to go to tea with him. But she knew what he really wanted and refused: ‘I will not be treated in this rude and casual fashion.’[6] Pym wrote him a long letter explaining her feelings. She knew at some level that she was bringing a lot of misery on herself: ‘I do seem to mess things up so hopelessly and there is no one to help me.’[7] One day, she cut him in the street and when he came to the Bod she ignored him, but when he left she nearly burst into tears.

  In early March, she agreed to go back to his digs for ‘tea’. They both knew what was expected, but at least she felt that he was nicer to her than before: ‘He took my clothes off by sheer physical force before tea and I eventually had tea clad in his black flannel.’[8] More pages of the diary are scissored. She then wrote an account of Henry flirting with a pretty girl in the library, right in front of her eyes. Pym was livid and felt deeply humiliated. He smiled at her, but she got up and left, with the words: ‘Goodbye you hound.’[9]

  Agonised, Pym confessed: ‘I want him and love him.’[10] She did some research and discovered that her love rival was a young woman called Alison West-Watson. She was very attractive, ‘with the same colouring as Henry, though not made up, or particularly well-dressed’.[11] Henry’s behaviour towards Pym was caddish. He began comparing her to Alison unfavourably and seemed to enjoy making her jealous. It was cruel, knowing how much she was in love with him. Nor did he ever pretend that he was in love with her.

  One day when she was setting out for ‘tea’, Henry picked her up in his car with Barnicot and another friend, Edward Gardiner. Henry was cruel and teasing and again she felt deeply humiliated. The two friends were charming, but Henry continued being horrid; he talked about Alison and said ‘rude things’.[12] Gardiner and the Count left the two of them alone:

  We sat in silence and I was miserable, then into his room where the usual procedure was gone through. He was not kind to me and his attitude towards me was made so cruelly obvious – and he would not stop talking about WW. All the time I was getting more and more unhappy, until suddenly I burst into
tears and cried more than I’ve done for years. It was as if I had felt it coming for days – my love for him, his indifference to me, the mess I’d made of my affair with him and the fact that I was leaving him probably for another woman to have, was simply too much for me.[13]

  Henry clearly realised that he had gone too far and was repentant. He promised her that they would be good friends next term and go out on the river together. She began to get dressed and as she did so, Jock suddenly appeared: ‘By the time I was more or less clothed and in my right mind Jockie came in. I was terribly glad to see him. His niceness was such a relief and seemed to make up for Gabriel’s brutality.’[14]

  Jock and Pym made supper, whilst Henry sulked in his room and listened to Wagner’s Tannhäuser on the gramophone. She felt that although Jock did not seem to have very deep feelings, he was capable of compassion and understanding. During supper, Henry was mutinous, barely said a word and was rude to Pym. She left at 10.30 to go back to St Hilda’s to pack for Shropshire. She felt so exhausted that she could barely feel anger towards Henry and his outrageous, callous behaviour. Yet again, she felt used and humiliated.

  Pym was correct about Jock’s capacity for compassion. Though he could be sneering and catty, he had a deeply sensitive side and an abhorrence of real cruelty – a legacy of the vicious treatment he had suffered at the hands of his German stepmother. Despite his strong friendship with Henry, he saw his flaws and he was distressed by the way Pym was being treated. During the supper preparations, Jock had confided in her about Henry and his faults, telling Pym he knew Henry was a ‘terribly difficult person’. She liked Liddell very much; especially his funny turn of phrase and the way he wrinkled up his eyes when he was amused. Jock advised her to drown her sorrows in hard work.