by Barbara Pym
At last they had both gone. Prudence finished the page she was reading and then began to prepare to go home. But she did it rather slowly. Sometimes Dr. Grampian came in at six o’clock and worked quietly by himself until dinner-time. But tonight was evidently not to be one of those evenings. Prudence had given up hope as she went out of the door and heard a step behind her.
‘Did you enjoy your lunch, Miss Bates?’
It was Mr. Manifold. There was a hint of roguishness in his tone. So he had noticed her after all.
‘Neither more nor less than usual,’ said Prudence. ‘It isn’t the kind of place where one gets an enjoyable meal.’
‘Well, I thought I’d try it,’ said Mr. Manifold, walking by her side. ‘But I could have eaten it all twice over.’
‘You men have such enormous appetites,’ said Prudence, conscious of being rather kittenish.
‘You seemed more interested in your book than in the food,’ said Mr. Manifold. ‘What were you so deep in?’
‘Just Coventry Patmore,’ said Prudence coldly.
‘Ah, Coventry Patmore. Just your cup of tea, I should think.
‘My heart was dead,
Dead of devotion and tired memory …
Look, that’s my bus and I think I can get it if I run. Do excuse me, won’t you. Goodbye!’
Prudence remained rooted to the spot; really, there was no other way to describe it. That he should even have heard of Coventry Patmore! And then to quote those lines, those telling lines. What was it he had said? Just your cup of tea, I should think…. What exactly did he mean by that? It sounded almost as if he had studied her and thought about her and what her tastes were likely to be, as if he had noticed things about her, perhaps even her feeling for Arthur Grampian. It was most annoying and disturbing. She pushed her way angrily on to a bus and stood huddled with the others inside.
She had calmed down by the time she arrived at her flat. As if it mattered what Geoffrey Manifold thought about her! He was a dull young man who kept his private tin of Nescafe locked in a drawer. It was impertinent of him to ask her what she had been reading. She wished now that she hadn’t told him.
There was a letter on the mat when she got in. It was from Jane, a bubbling, incoherent sort of letter full of underlinings.
‘Dearest Pru, such richness here! I suppose you would say that we are really getting settled, though I still don’t seem to have unpacked all my clothes and have just been burrowing in a trunk to find Nicholas a clean surplice! If only they could have made them of paper and just throw them away when they’re dirty — or even of nylon — I dare say American clergymen do. I always remember when I went to Dresden as a girl and attended the American church there, it was the best heated building in the town and there were little gold stars on the ceiling! Anyway, such richness! The secretary of the parochial church Council is called Mr. Mortlake; he is a tall dignified gentleman with the look of an eagle about him and he is also a piano tuner. There seems to be a kind of feud between him and a young man, a bank-clerk who simetimes reads te Lessons. Flora finds him rather attractive, I believe. Oh, to be young again! Then there is Mr. Fabian Driver, a disconsolate widower but very fascinating. I believe he eats the hearts of his victims en casserole. He looks more like a lion, or lyon, so we are surrounded by the noblest of God’s creatures’
Prudence read on, for there was much more in the same strain. At the end she managed to disentangle the news that Jane hoped to come up to Town soon ‘ostensibly to visit Mowbrays and buy holy books’, but she insisted that Prudence should meet her for lunch somewhere, when she would tell her all about everything.
She put the letter back into its envelope and poured herself a gin and French. She always enjoyed getting home in the evening to her pretty little flat with what Jane called its ‘rather uncomfortable Regency furniture’. When she had finished her drink she went to the kitchen and started to prepare her supper. Although she was alone, it was not a meal to be ashamed of. There was a little garlic in the oily salad and the cheese was nicely ripe. The table was laid with all the proper accompaniments and the coffee which followed the meal was not made out of a tin or bottle.
It had been a trying day, Prudence decided, though she could not have said exactly why. No sign of Arthur Grampian, the slightly upsetting lunch — that poor man would be sitting at Madge’s bedside now, leaning slightly forward in his chair, waiting for her pale lips to move in speech — the impudence of Mr. Manifold, the perpetual irritation of Miss Trapnell and Miss Clothier — any one of these things would have been enough and she had had them all. So she decided to go to bed early and read a book. It was not a very nice book — so often Miss Trapnell or Miss Clothier asked her ‘Is that a nice book you’ve got, Miss Bates?’ — but it described a love affair in the fullest sense of the word and sparing no detail, but all in a very intellectual sort of way and there were a good many quotations from Donne. It was difficult to imagine that her love for Arthur Grampian could ever come to anything like this, and indeed she was hardly conscious of him as she read on into the small hours of the morning to the book’s inevitable but satisfying unhappy ending.
Chapter Five
JANE kept the thought of a day in London as a treat to buoy her up as she went about doing those tasks in the parish that seemed within her powers. She kept thinking of all the things she would tell Prudence when she saw her and even began to speculate on where they should have lunch and what they should eat. The day after she had written to Prudence, Mrs. Glaze was, for some mysterious reason which Jane did not dare to ask, unable to come, so that the problem of meals had to be solved by Jane herself, as Flora had gone out for the day to visit a school-friend.
‘I think, darling, ‘ she said, going into Nicholas’s study just before lunch-time, ‘it would be better if we had lunch out to-day. ‘
Nicholas looked over the top of his spectacles with a mild, kindly look, obviously not having heard what she said.
Mild, kindly looks and spectacles, thought Jane; this was what it all came to in the end. The passion of those early days, the fragments of Donne and Marvell and Jane’s obscurer seventeenth-century poets, the objects of her abortive research, all these faded away into mild, kindly looks and spectacles. There came a day when one didn’t quote poetry to one’s husband any more. When had that day been? Could she have noted it and mourned it if she had been more observant?
‘What doth my she - advowson fly
Incumbency?’
she murmured. Unsuitable, of course, but she loved the lines.
‘What, dear?’ said Nicholas, not looking up this time.
‘I don’t know,’ said Jane. ‘I’ve forgotten what I wanted to say.’
‘You did say something. Something about going out.’
‘Yes, lunch. I really think it would be better if we went out to-day.’
‘Why to-day especially?’
‘Well, you see, Mrs. Glaze isn’t here and neither is Flora, and I really don’t know what we should have,’ said Jane a little desperately.
‘Couldn’t we open a tin or something?’
‘A tin of what? That’s the point.’
‘Oh, meat of some kind. Spam or whatever you call it.’
‘But, darling, there isn’t Spam any more. It came from America during the war and we don’t get it now.’
‘Then there isn’t anything to eat in the house? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?’ asked Nicholas quite good-humouredly.
‘Yes, that is the position. Mrs. Glaze did say something about there being sausages at the butcher if one went early, but I’m afraid I forgot, and now it’s nearly half-past twelve,’ said Jane guiltily.
‘Well,’ said Nicholas, standing up, ‘we may as well go out.
Should we go now?’
Jane put on an old tweed coat which hung in the hall — the kind of coat one might have used for feeding the chickens in — and they went out together. They stood uncertainly outside the front gate, wondering which dir
ection to go in, and then wandered off past the church with no clear idea of where they were to have their meal.
‘I know,’ said Jane suddenly. ‘Mrs. Crampton and Mrs. Mayhew! They run a cafe, don’t they? The Spinning Wheel, I think it is.’
‘The Spinning Wheel,’ repeated Nicholas doubtfully. ‘That doesn’t sound as if it would provide us with lunch. Are you sure it isn’t just one of those places that sells home-spun scarves and things like that?’
‘No, I’m certain they do provide meals as well. In fact, I had a conversation with them about it in church when they were doing the Harvest Festival decorations.’
Eventually they came to the Spinning Wheel, and although there were a number of homemade-looking objects of an artistic nature in the window, there was also a menu written in a gentlewoman’s flowing hand pinned up at the side of the door.
‘It looks very quiet,’ said Jane as they stood on the threshold; ‘there’s nobody here at all.’
‘Perhaps people don’t lunch till one,’ Nicholas suggested.
‘No, that may be it. Shall we sit in the window? Then we shall be able to see what happens.’
They chose a table in the window and sat down to look out at the deserted street.
‘I expect they were all early at the butcher’s and got sausages,’ said Jane, ‘and now they are all eating toad-in-the-hole.’
‘I don’t think I should like that,’ said Nicholas in a more definite tone than his usual one.
There was a movement behind them, and Jane looked up to see Mrs. Crampton herself standing by the table.
‘Good morning, vicar, and Mrs. Cleveland,’ she said. ‘What would you like?’ She handed them a menu which offered them a choice between toad-in-the-hole or curried beef.
‘Oh, dear,’ Jane burst out, I’m afraid I don’t like curry and my husband can’t take toad, so could we just have the soup and a sweet, perhaps?’
‘How would you like an egg and some bacon?’ said Mrs. Crampton, lowering her voice.
‘That would be fine,’ said Nicholas.
‘Could you really manage that?’ asked Jane.
‘Oh, yes, we can sometimes, you know, but not for everyone, of course. And you’d like the soup, would you?’
They said that they would, and Mrs. Crampton hurried away behind a velvet curtain at the far end of the café.
‘Why did you say, “my husband can’t take toad”?’ asked Nicholas, shaking with suppressed laughter. ‘It sounded so very odd.’
‘I don’t know. I think I wasn’t conscious of having said it until I did. I must have thought she would expect me to say something like that.’
Mrs. Crampton brought the soup, which they finished, and there was a long silence. Neither Jane nor Nicholas spoke and nobody came into the cafe. After a time Jane heard sounds from behind the velvet curtain, the low mumbling of voices and the hiss of frying. At last Mrs. Crampton emerged from behind the velvet curtain carrying two plates on a tray. She put in front of jane a plate containing an egg, a rasher of bacon and some fried potatoes cut in fancy shapes, and in front of Nicholas a plate with two eggs and rather more potatoes.
Nicholas exclaimed with pleasure.
‘Oh, a man needs eggs!’ said Mrs. Crampton, also looking pleased.
This insistence on a man’s needs amused. Jane. Men needed meat and eggs — well, yes, that might be allowed; but surely not more than women did? Perhaps Mrs. Crampton’s widow-hood had something to do with it; possibly she made up for having no man to feed at home by ministering to the needs of those who frequented her cafe.
Nicholas accepted his two eggs and bacon and the implication that his needs were more important than his wife’s with a certain amount of complacency, Jane thought. But then as a clergyman he had had to get used to accepting flattery and gifts gracefully; it had not come easily to him in the early stages. Being naturally of a modest and retiring nature, he had not been able to see why he should be singled out.
‘This is delicious,’ said Jane, hoping that Mrs. Crampton wasn’t going to stay and watch them eat their meal.
‘Do you find that many people come here for lunch?’ asked Nicholas.
‘Well, we have a few regulars, you know, and “casuals” as we call them. Mr. Oliver is one of our “regulars” — he always comes at a quarter past one. He works in the Bank, you know, and I don’t think his landlady does lunch for him; just breakfast and an evening meal.’
‘Poor Mr. Oliver,’ said Jane, scenting pathos. He certainly looked very pale reading the Lessons on Sunday evenings, but perhaps that was just a trick of the lighting. She hurried to finish her egg and bacon in case he should come in and see them at it without being able to have it himself.
‘Ah, here he is.’ Mrs. Crampton opened the door with a gesture of welcome and Mr. Oliver took his seat at a small table in the corner. He nodded and poured out a glass of water. She then disappeared behind the velvet curtain.
‘Good morning, vicar,’ said Mr. Oliver, ‘or good afternoon, perhaps, though it always seems morning until one has had lunch.’
Nicholas introduced Jane to Mr. Oliver and they began a rather stilted conversation across the cafe. Jane was embarrassed because Nicholas had not yet finished his last egg, and hoped Mr. Oliver wasn’t noticing.
‘You must come and have tea with us one Sunday,’ said Jane. Flora would certainly like to meet him, though she might be a little disappointed in him. He did not appear to have much to say for himself and his suit was of rather too bright a blue to be quite the thing, Jane felt. Still, tea would be quite easy to manage, and they arranged that he should come the very next Sunday.
Mrs. Crampton now returned and set down before Mr. Oliver a plate laden with roast chicken and all the proper accompaniments. He accepted it with quite as much complacency as Nicholas had accepted his eggs and bacon and began to eat.
Jane turned away, to save his embarrassment. Man needs bird, she thought. Just the very best, that is what man needs.
‘Does Mr. Fabian Driver ever come here, I wonder?’ she said to her husband.
‘Fabian Driver? How on earth should I know?’ said Nicholas indulgently.
They ate their sweet — stewed plums and rice pudding — and drank a cup of surprisingly good coffee. Then Nicholas called for the bill. ‘I do hope you are coming to the whist drive,’ said Mrs. Crampton. ‘I can sell you some tickets.’
‘Whist drive?’ asked Nicholas. ‘Is there going to be a whist drive? I haven’t heard anything about it.’
‘Oh, not a Church whist drive,’ said Mrs. Crampton, smiling. ‘This is just in aid of Party funds, you know. It is not until early in December, but there will be a big demand for tickets. Mr. Lyall himself has promised to be there and even Mrs. Lyall, if she can. It will be quite an occasion.’
‘We should like to come,’ said Jane. ‘I haven’t met our Member yet. May we have four tickets, please?’
‘Miss Doggett is organising it, and Mrs. Mayhew and I are to be in charge of refreshments.’
‘That is certainly an inducement for anyone to come,’ said Nicholas in his best manner. They said goodbye and went out, leaving Mr. Oliver to his bird.
‘If only I could get Prudence to come for that week-end,’ said Jane. ‘It might be just the thing for her.’
‘I hardly think a village whist drive could do much for Prudence,’ said Nicholas. ‘I’ve often wondered why she doesn’t take up social work of some kind.’
‘Now you are talking like a clergyman, or like Miss Birkinshaw, our old tutor,’ said Jane crossly. ‘You imagine Prue “fulfilling herself” by sitting on some committee to arrange amenities for the “poor”.’
‘She doesn’t go to church at all, does she?’ asked Nicholas tentatively. ‘That seems a pity.’
‘Well, I suppose it does,’ said Jane; ‘especially in London, when you think what a choice there is.’
Nicholas sighed and left the subject.
Fabian Driver, doing his pre-lunch drinking in
the bar of the Golden Lion, looked out and saw Nicholas and Jane walking home. He had a confused feeling of irritation and envy as he watched them. It must have been Jane’s smiling up at her husband and the awful old coat she was wearing, the kind of coat a woman could wear only in her husband’s presence, he thought. For a moment he was tempted to call out to them, to invite them in for a drink, even. But the moment passed, and anyway it was half-past one, time for Fabian to go home to what he called his ‘solitary meal’.
‘That was the new vicar and his wife,’ he remarked to the lady behind the bar. ‘I might have asked them in for a drink.’
‘Oh, Mr. Driver!’ she giggled.
‘Well, what would have been so funny about it?’
‘I was just thinking of the Canon and Mrs. Pritchard. You wouldn’t have had them coming in here.’
‘No, certainly not. Perhaps the Clevelands wouldn’t have come either. I dare say they’ve been having lunch at the Spinning Wheel.’
There was nobody left in the bar now except Fabian. He sat idly, contemplating his reflection in the looking-glass framed with mahogany and surrounded by bottles.
‘Mrs. Arkright’ll be giving you what for if you don’t hurry home to lunch,’ said the lady behind the bar good-humouredly.
‘I expect she’s got something tasty for you.’
Fabian put down his glass. ‘Well, yes, I may as well go.’
‘That’s it,’ she said comfortably. ‘I don’t like to think of your dinner spoiling.’
No, Fabian thought, it wouldn’t do for it to get spoilt. It did not occur to him that perhaps she was wanting to get her own meal.
He walked slowly down the main street, past the collection of old and new buildings that lined it. The Parish Church and the vicarage were at the other end of the village. Here he came to the large Methodist Chapel, but of course one couldn’t go there; none of the people one knew went to chapel, unless out of a kind of amused curiosity. Even if truth were to be found there. A little further on, though, as was fitting, on the opposite side of the road, was the little tin hut which served as a place of worship for the Roman Catholics. Fabian knew Father Kinsella, a good-looking Irishman, who often came into the bar of the Golden Lion for a drink. He had even thought of going to his church once or twice, but somehow it had never come to anything. The makeshift character of the building, the certain discomfort that he would find within, the plaster images in execrable taste, the simplicity of Father Kinsella’s sermons intended only for a congregation of Irish labourers and servant-girls - all these kept him away. The glamour of Rome was obviously not there.