by Barbara Pym
When she reached the vague cultural organisation where she worked for him, she found that Miss Trapnell and Miss Clothier, who worked in the same room, had already arrived. Miss Trapnell was putting on her mauve office cardigan, while Miss Clothier arranged some leaves of an indefinite species in a jar on top of the filing-cabinet. Miss Trapnell’s garment was shrunken and not altogether clean, but she did not believe in wearing ‘good’ clothes for the office. Prudence often wondered when she blossomed out in these so-called ‘good’ clothes which she was reputed to possess and what company was considered special enough to deserve them. Both Miss Trapnell and Miss Clothier were of an indeterminate age, though it was rumoured that Miss Clothier had passed her fiftieth birthday. There existed between the three of them a kind of neutral relationship and they banded together against the inconsiderateness of their employer and the follies and carelessness of the two young typists. Besides the three women and the two girls there was also a young man, Mr. Manifold, a kind of ‘research assistant’ who had a little room to himself and kept to his own mysterious business.
Prudence sat down at her table and wished as she always did that she could have a room of her own. Her status, though somewhat indefinite, was higher than that of Miss Trapnell and Miss Clothier, but they had been there longer, which gave them a slight advantage. If one were asked point-blank it would really be difficult to say what any of them, even Dr. Grampian, actually did; perhaps the young typists’ duties were the most clearly defined, for it was certain that they made tea, took shorthand and typed letters which did not always make sense. However, on this Monday morning Prudence put on her pale-blue-rimmed interestingly-shaped spectacles, took a bundle of proofs and a typescript from a wire tray, and began to apply herself to them. Miss Trapnell went to the filing-cabinet and put some pieces of paper into a file, and Miss Clothier drew a small card index towards her and began moving the cards here and there with her fingers, as if she were coaxing music from some delicate instrument.
‘I wonder if we might have one bar of the fire on?’ asked Miss Clothier at last.
‘Oh, it isn’t cold,’ said Miss Trapnell. ‘Do you find it cold, Miss Bates?’
Prudence disliked being called ‘Miss Bates’; if she resembled any character in fiction, it was certainly not poor silly Miss Bates. And yet how could Miss Trapnell and Miss Clothier call her anything else? And how could she call them Ella and Gertrude?
‘No. It doesn’t seem cold,’ she said.
‘Well, of course I have been sitting here since a quarter to ten,’ said Miss Clothier. ‘So perhaps I have got cold sitting.’
‘Ah, yes; you may have got cold sitting,’ agreed Miss Trapnell. ‘I have only been here since five to ten.’
Prudence, who had arrived at ten past ten, made no comment and indeed none was necessary. The hours of work were officially ten till six, but Prudence considered herself too highly educated to be bound by them. Her fine brain, which was now puzzling over a misplaced footnote, could not be expected to function under such stupidly rigid conditions. She always expressed herself as very willing to stay long after six o’clock should Dr. Grampian want her to, but he very seldom did, being only too anxious to hurry away to his club or even to his home.
And yet it had been on one of those rare late evenings, when they had been sitting together over a manuscript, that Prudence’s love for him, if that was what it was, had suddenly flared up. Perhaps ‘flared’ was too violent a word, but Prudence thought of it afterwards as having been like that. She remembered herself standing by the window, looking out on to an early spring evening with the sky a rather clear blue just before the darkness came, not really seeing anything or thinking about very much; perhaps an odd detail here and there had impressed itself upon her mind — she liked to think that it had — the twitter of starlings, a lighted window in another building — and then suddenly it had come to her Oh, my love … rushing in like that. And as there had been at that time a temporary emptiness in her heart she had let it rush in, and now here it was with her always, a constant companion or a pain like a rheumatic twinge in the knee when one neared the end of a long flight of stairs. It was also on that occasion that Arthur Grampian had for a moment laid his hand on hers and said for no apparent reason, ‘Ah, Prudence …’ She had thought at the time that he might be going to kiss her, but it had not come to that; he had merely taken his hand away and said in his usual flat tone, ‘Well, thank you, Miss Bates, I’m afraid I’ve kept you rather late. You’d better run along home now.’ And so she had gone through these last months with nothing more than this ‘Ah, Prudence …’ to hug to her heart and take out and brood over numerous times a day. For nothing had happened since and he had never again even called her by her Christian name. He had gone to his club and home to his wife Lucy and his children Susan and Barnabas, and Prudence, for want of better material, had built up the negative relationship of which she had spoken to Jane at the Old Students’ week-end, the negative relationship with the something positive that must surely be there underneath it all.
‘Surely it must be tea-time, or is the milk late again?’ said Miss Clothier. ‘I had a very early breakfast this morning and I’m just dying for a cup of tea.’
‘You can hardly call it the cup that cheers,’ said Miss Trapnell. ‘If only those girls wouldn’t pour it all out at once and then leave it standing for about ten minutes. I’ve told them I don’t know how many times.’
‘It would be better if we made the tea ourselves,’ suggested Prudence.
‘But, Miss Bates, we couldn’t do that,’ said Miss Clothier in a shocked tone. ‘It wouldn’t do at all.’
‘No; I suppose it wouldn’t,’ Prudence agreed.
But at that moment a sound was heard outside the door and a pretty girl of about seventeen dressed in the height of fashion pushed her way through the door carrying a tray from which poured a stream of weak-looking tea.
‘Oh, Marilyn, why don’t you put the cups and saucers separately on the tray?’ said Miss Clothier fussily. ‘Then you wouldn’t slop it all into the saucers.’
‘Sorry, Miss Clothier,’ said the girl cheerfully. ‘I was hurrying to get tea over before He came in.’
‘But Dr. Grampian will want a cup when he comes,’ said Miss Clothier.
‘He’s had it, then. We’ve run out of tea; that’s why I had to make it so weak. I couldn’t add any more water to what’s left in the pot.’
‘I’m sure that shouldn’t have happened,’ said Miss Trapnell sharply. ‘It isn’t the end of the ration period yet. We can’t have used all the tea.’
Somebody was heard walking past the door.
Marilyn threw up her hands in a comical gesture. ‘What did I tell you? There he is!’
‘But surely there’s some Oxo or Nescafé or something,’ said Prudence in a faint voice. She had no wish to become involved in this trivial controversy, but the thought of Arthur having to go without his elevenses was quite unbearable. Not that the tea was even drinkable.
‘Mr. Manifold has a tin of Nescafe, but he always makes it himself and keeps it locked up in his cupboard.’
‘Then somebody must go and ask Mr. Manifold if he would mind Dr. Grampian having a little of it,’ persisted Prudence.
Miss Trapnell and Miss Clothier turned away and busied themselves with their files and card-indexes with an air of it being none of their business.
‘Oh, Miss Bates, I couldn’t ask Mr. Manifold,’ giggled Marilyn. ‘I don’t mind making it if you’ll ask him, Miss Bates.’
‘Very well, then.’ Prudence rose from her table and followed Marilyn out of the room.
Miss Trapnell and Miss Clothier exchanged glances.
‘Would you like a biscuit, Miss Clothier?’ asked Miss Trapnell in a rather ceremonial voice. She opened a little tin and offered it to her companion. ‘These are Lincoln cream. My grocer always saves them for me.’
‘Thank you,’ said Miss Clothier. ‘I wonder if Dr. Grampian would like one?’
‘I shan’t offer them. He gets a good lunch at his club and I expect he had a good breakfast.’
‘Miss Bates might not like it if you were to give him biscuits,’ said Miss Clothier obscurely.
‘There would be nothing in it if I did,’ said Miss Trapnell.
‘I believe I have offered him one before now when the occasion called for it. Naturally, I shouldn’t go out of my way to do it.’
‘Oh, no. I certainly wouldn’t take the trouble that Miss Bates does. Dr. Grampian isn’t really the kind of man I should fancy for myself.’
‘You’d think Miss Bates could do better. After all, she’s very good-looking and smart. Besides, Dr. Grampian is married.’
‘Well, what is there for her here?’ asked Miss Clothier. ‘She obviously thinks herself too good for Mr. Manifold.’
Prudence knocked at Mr. Manifold’s door, and then was annoyed at herself for doing so. After all, it wasn’t his bedroom; she had a perfect right to walk straight in.
He was a thin, dark young man in the late twenties who kept himself very much to himself, either because he was naturally of a retiring disposition or because he felt his position as the only man in the office apart from Dr. Grampian. It was thought that he sometimes unbent with the typists, but Prudence did not like to imagine what form this unbending could take.
At Prudence’s entry he looked up from his table, where he seemed to be sorting out sheets of paper covered with his spidery writing.
‘I hear you have a tin of Nescafe,’ she began rather aggressively.
‘Yes, I have,’ he said unhelpfully.
‘Well, I was wondering if you would lend it for Dr. Grampian to have some.’
‘But isn’t he going to have tea? The girls have only just made it.’
‘No, there isn’t enough tea. The ration was used-up and no more water could be added to the pot. You see, there wasn’t enough tea to begin with and it would be impossibly weak if water was added,’ said Prudence, despising herself for going into such a long, tedious explanation.
‘Well, personally, I like weak tea,’ said Mr. Manifold, ‘when I drink it at all, which isn’t often. Still I suppose Gramp should have some coffee to keep him awake,’ he added on a sarcastic note, opening a drawer in his table and taking out a tin. ‘Mind you return it, though.’
‘Of course,’ said Prudence scornfully. ‘Thank you very much.’ She didn’t like the way Mr. Manifold called Arthur Grampian ‘Gramp’. It was just the kind of silly, obvious name he would think of, and she suspected that the girls also used it among themselves.
She took the tin to Marilyn, who made the coffee and went to Dr. Grampian’s door with it. Prudence heard her go in and presumably place the cup on his desk, but she was not to know that it lay there untouched until it was removed by the cleaner who came in that evening, and she returned to her proofs with the feeling of having done something more worthwhile than emending footnotes and putting in French accents.
The morning wore on and Dr. Grampian did not send for her. At twelve Miss Clothier got up to go to her lunch, again remarking that she had been here since a quarter to ten and really felt quite hungry. Some time after that Miss Trapnell produced a packet of sandwiches from her hold-all and took out the green openwork jumper she was knitting. At half-past twelve Dr. Grampian was heard to leave the office. At a quarter to one Prudence went out for her own lunch.
On her way to the restaurant she passed Arthur Grampian’s club, with its noble portals, into which undistinguished-looking but probably famous men could be seen hurrying. She imagined Arthur himself in conversation with professors and bishops. But did they talk? she wondered. Wasn’t it quite likely that they concentrated solely on the business of eating? Men alone, eating in a rather grand club with noble portals — and women alone, eating in a small, rather grimy restaurant which did a lunch for three and sixpence, including coffee. While Arthur Grampian was shaking the red pepper on to his smoked salmon, Prudence was having to choose between the shepherd’s pie and the stuffed marrow.
While she ate she turned the pages of a book of Coventry Patmore’s poems; the Blackbird was breaking the Young Day’s heart as her fork toyed with her food. But the book remained open there, and after a while she stopped reading and became conscious of herself sitting alone at a table that could have held two. She was still young enough — and when does one become too old? — to wonder if people were looking at her and asking themselves, ‘Who is that interesting-looking young woman, sitting alone and reading Coventry Patmore?’ But it was altogether unlikely in this kind of restaurant, she realised, where it was obvious that people were eating seriously and with too much concentration to notice anybody else.
‘Is this seat taken?’ asked a man’s voice.
Prudence looked up suspiciously. ‘No,’ she said in rather a nervous tone.
The man took off his raincoat and sat down. He was middle-aged with a small moustache. Prudence handed him the menu without looking at him. She felt she couldn’t bear it if he should begin to talk to her.
‘You must have a good lunch,’ said a woman’s voice from the next table. They were evidendy together, but had failed to find a table for two. ‘It’ll be pretty late before you get your supper.’
‘Well, I don’t feel much like eating. Seven-thirty to eight the visiting hours are. I suppose I could get a snack before that.’
‘Madge will be looking forward to seeing you,’ said the woman. ‘But you mustn’t expect to see her looking too grand, you know.’
‘No, it’ll be a shock to the system, won’t it, the operation?
She won’t feel like much, but I thought I’d take her a few grapes…
The lump in Prudence’s throat made it difficult for her to speak, but she managed to offer to change places so that the man and woman could be at the same table. They thanked her and the change was made. Prudence sat for the rest of the meal, listening to her neighbours’ conversation, her eyes full of tears. Disliking humanity in general, she was one of those excessively tender-hearted people who are greatly moved by the troubles of complete strangers, in which she sometimes imagined herself playing a noble part. The man sitting at her table, who had at first appeared to be a bore or even a menace, was now proved to be an object of interest. There was both nobility and pathos about him.
She was just walking to the cash desk to pay her bill when she noticed a young man sitting at one of the tables. It was Mr. Manifold. He was eating — perhaps ‘tucking into’ would describe it better — the steamed pudding which Prudence had avoided as being too fattening. She had never seen him eating before and now she averted her eyes quickly, for there was something indecent about it, as if a mantle had fallen and revealed more of him than she ought to see. Of course the women in the office had known that he lunched somewhere — indeed, they had even speculated on where he went; perhaps the vastness of the Corner House swallowed him up or the manly security of a public-house lapped him round. Prudence hurried out of the restaurant feeling disturbed and irritated. Had he ever been there before, she wondered? She hoped he wasn’t going to make a habit of frequenting the places she went to. It would be annoying if she had to change her own routine.
When she got back into her room, Miss Trapnell and Miss Clothier were sitting virtuously in their places, occupied with the same rather indefinite tasks as before lunch. Prudence settled down to her proofs again and began to feel sleepy; she even took a few minutes’ nap, covering her eyes with her hand. Outside all was quiet; Dr. Grampian did not come in again. No visitors called. At a quarter to four Miss Trapnell and Miss Clothier began to speculate on the possibility of tea — whether it would be punctual or not. Eventually the clatter of the tray was heard and Gloria, the other typist, brought it into the room. Miss Trapnell opened her tin of biscuits, Miss Clothier took a slice of homemade cake from a paper bag; Prudence ate nothing, but lit a cigarette. And so the hours went on until it was a quarter to six.
‘I think I am justified i
n leaving a little before six tonight,’ declared Miss Clothier. ‘I arrived here at twenty to ten this morning and was sitting down to work at a quarter to.’ She looked at Prudence and Miss Trapnell as if challenging them to contradict her.
‘Oh, certainly,’ said Prudence in a bored way.
‘Well, I think I shall stay till six,’ said Miss Trapnell, ‘although I was actually here between ten and five to ten this morning, so I could really leave a little before six. But I think I’ll just finish what I am doing; it’s rather unsatisfactory to leave a piece of work half-done.’
‘I quite agree! But sometimes one has to make a break if a thing can’t be finished within a reasonable time,’ said Miss Clothier. ‘I shouldn’t at all mind staying until half past six if I thought I could finish what I’ve been doing, but to do that I should have to stay until about eleven o’clock’ — she gave a little laugh — ‘and I’m sure Dr. Grampian wouldn’t expect me to do that.’
Prudence swallowed down her irritation. How could they presume to know what he expected?
‘He seems to expect little and yet much,’ said Miss Trapnell obscurely. ‘One wouldn’t like to fall short.’
‘He has never complained about my work,’ said Miss Clothier in rather a huffy tone.
‘Oh, I didn’t mean to suggest anything like that,’ said Miss Trapnell with a look at Prudence; they both found Miss Clothier a little ‘difficult’ at times.
‘Won’t you miss your train if you don’t hurry?’ suggested Prudence.
‘There are other trains,’ said Miss Clothier. ‘I shouldn’t like anyone to think I was a clock-watcher.’
‘But surely we are all that to some extent,’ said Prudence.
‘We should hardly be human if we didn’t notice when it was tea-time or feel glad when the end of the day came.’
‘Well, I am certainly going now,’ said Miss Trapnell, gathering her things together. ‘Don’t stay too late, Miss Bates,’ she added in a jocular tone. ‘We shouldn’t like to think of you being here till eleven.’