by Barbara Pym
There remained only the Church of England, and here there was at least a choice between the Parish Church and Father Lomax’s church — in the next village, but still within reasonable distance. It was natural to Fabian’s temperament to prefer a High Church service, incense and good music, vestments and processions, but Father Lomax discouraged idle sightseers and expected his congregation to accept the less comfortable parts of the Faith — going to Confession, and getting up to sing Mass at half-past six on a winter morning. So there was really nothing for it but to go to the Parish Church, where, even if the service was less exotic, the yoke was easier. Also, the Parish Church was older and had some interesting wall tablets and monuments. Fabian often imagined a tablet to himself put up in the church, though he never stopped to consider who should put it up or why.
His own house was one of several standing round the little green with its chestnut trees and pond which formed the real centre of the village. As he pushed open the gate and walked up the path, bordered now with fine pompom dahlias, he saw that Mrs. Arkright in her hat and apron was standing in the open doorway.
‘Oh, Mr. Driver,’ she said reproachfully, ‘I was wondering what had happened to you. I’ve a piece of steak for you and I didn’t want to start grilling it until you came. We can’t afford to spoil meat nowadays, can we?’
Fabian went into the little hall and then out of the drawing-room french windows into his garden, which was a long stretch of grass with a fine walnut tree in the middle of it, and at the end a vegetable patch and a group of apple trees.
Next door to him on one side was the doctor and on the other Miss Doggett and Miss Morrow. Miss Morrow was in the garden now, cutting early chrysanthemums which grew near to the fence separating the two gardens.
‘Ah, cutting flowers,’ said Fabian.
‘Yes, cutting flowers,’ said Miss Morrow, in a bright tone.
Yes, she was undeniably cutting flowers, thought Fabian irritably. He wished he hadn’t come out into the garden, for he found it difficult to make conversation with her. When his wife had been alive he had hardly noticed Jessie Morrow; indeed, if possible, he had noticed her even less than he had noticed his wife. Miss Doggett he knew, of course, but Miss Morrow had appeared always in her shadow, a thing without personality of her own, as neutral as her clothes.
Lately, however, he had become more conscious of her, though he could not have said exactly why or in what particular way. She did not seem to speak to him more than she ever had, but when he was with her he felt uncomfortable, as if she were laughing at him, or even as if she knew things about him that he didn’t want known.
‘Would you like some apples?’ he asked, to break the silence. He glanced vaguely up at a tree.
‘Thank you, but we really have plenty,’ said Miss Morrow, indicating their own apple trees with a gesture.
Fabian felt rather foolish, for indeed Miss Doggett’s garden had far more apple trees than his.
‘Perhaps you would like some quinces when they are ripe?’ she suggested. ‘Our tree always does very well. You haven’t a quince tree, have you?’
‘Alas, no. Constance was so fond of quinces,’ said Fabian sadly.
Constance was so fond of quinces! thought Miss Morrow scornfully. As if Fabian had known or cared what Constance was fond of — why, Miss Doggett had several times offered her quinces and she had always refused them!
‘Mr. Driver! Mr. Driver!’ Mrs. Arkright came out on to the lawn calling. ‘Your steak’s ready!’
‘Ah, my steak.’ Fabian smiled. ‘You will excuse me, Miss Morrow?’
‘Of course. I shouldn’t like to keep you from your steak. A man needs meat, as Mrs. Crampton and Mrs. Mayhew are always saying.’ She waved her hand in dismissal.
Fabian hurried away, conscious of his need for meat and of the faintly derisive tone of Miss Morrow’s remark, as if there were something comic about a man needing meat.
The dining-room was in the front of the house and was furnished with rather self-conscious good taste, a little too carefully arranged to be really comfortable. The general effect, as might have been expected, was Regency.
The steak was tender and perfectly cooked, as were the potatoes and french beans. Constance had not appreciated good food. She had been a gentle, faded-looking woman, some years older than Fabian. She had been pretty when he had married her and had brought him a comfortable amount of money as well as a great deal of love. He had been unprepared for her death and outraged by it, for it had happened suddenly, without a long illness to prepare him, when he had been deeply involved in one of the little romantic affairs which he seemed to need, either to bolster up his self-respect or for some more obvious reason. The shock of it all had upset him considerably, and although there had been several women eager to console him, he had abandoned all his former loves, fancying himself more in the role of an inconsolable widower than as a lover. Indeed, it was now almost a year since he had thought of anybody but himself. But now he felt that he might start again. Constance would not have wished him to live alone, he felt. She had even invited his loves to the house for week-ends, and two women sitting together in deck-chairs under the walnut tree, having long talks about him, or so he had always imagined, had been a familiar sight when he happened to be looking out of an upper window. In reality they may have been talking of other things - life in general, cooking or knitting, for the loves always brought knitting or tapestry work with them as if to show Constance how nice they really were. But they would be talking a little awkwardly, as two women sharing the same man generally do; there would inevitably be some lack of spontaneity and frankness.
After lunch Fabian went upstairs and into the room which had been Constance’s. It was almost like a room in a Victorian novel, where nothing belonging to the departed had been touched, but it was laziness and lack of enterprise rather than sentiment which had left clothes still hanging in the wardrobes and the silver-backed brushes and mirror still on the dressing-table. Perhaps he would ask somebody to help him to sort out these things and give them away. The new vicar’s wife, Mrs. Cleveland, might do it. She seemed to be a sensible sort of person. He could not ask Miss Morrow or anybody who had known Constance and his behaviour towards her to help him. He made up his mind to ask Jane Cleveland about it the next time he saw her.
By now he had moved over to the window and was looking out. Miss Morrow was still at the bottom of the next door garden. Surely she couldn’t have been cutting flowers all this time? Suddenly, to his astonishment, he saw her glance up at his house and wave her hand, but the next time he looked she was gone, so that afterwards he was not sure whether she had really waved to him or whether he had imagined the whole incident.
Chapter Six
‘MOTHER,’ said Flora the following Saturday, ‘don’t forget that Mr. Oliver is coming to tea to-morrow. You said you’d asked him when you saw him having lunch the other day.’
‘Why yes, so I did,’ said Jane. ‘Well, I suppose Mrs. Glaze might make a cake or we might get some from the Spinning Wheel.’
Mrs. Glaze seemed a little uncertain about whether she would be able to make a cake and Jane thought she detected some unwillingness in her manner.
‘I don’t suppose he gets very good food at his lodgings,’ she said, to encourage Mrs. Glaze. ‘I always feel so sorry for young men living in lodgings, especially on a Sunday afternoon. I wonder if he has a sitting-room with an aspidistra on a bamboo table in the window and a plush table-cloth with bobbles on it,’ Jane mused, forgetting her audience, ‘and some rather dreadful pictures, perhaps, even photographs of deceased relatives on the wall.’
‘Mrs. Walton has given him a very nice front room,’ said Mrs. Glaze, ‘and there is a plant on a table in the window — an ornamental fern it is, a beautiful thing, better than he deserves.’
Jane changed the subject hastily. Perhaps it was not quite the thing to ask Mr. Oliver to tea. Nicholas had seemed a little uncertain after she had done it. ‘Are you going t
o ask all of them separately?’ he asked rather fearfully. ‘Shall we never have a Sunday afternoon in peace?’
‘Of course, but Mr. Oliver seemed quite a nice young man and as he lives by himself in lodgings I thought it would be a kindness,’ said Jane. ‘I certainly don’t intend to ask all the Parochial Church Council, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Well, dear, I suppose you could hardly do that,’ said Nicholas, ‘I don’t want Mortlake and Whiting and the others to feel in any way slighted, though.’
‘Oh, we’ll have a cup of tea and some buns after the next P.C.C. meeting,’ said Jane airily; ‘that will make up for it.’
‘Can you eat and drink in the Choir Vestry?’ asked Flora.
‘We could have the meeting here, I suppose,’ said Nicholas; ‘there’d be plenty of room. Though,’ he added doubtfully, ‘it might be unsuitable to be lolling about in armchairs.’
‘Well, they needn’t loll,’ said Jane; ‘and there would probably be fewer disagreements and less unpleasantness if they were more comfortable. People don’t realise the importance of the body nowadays — oh, I know the seventeenth-century poets did,’ she added hastily, ‘but not quite in the way I mean.’
‘No, not quite,’ said Nicholas, darting a fearful glance at her, for indeed he was not sure what she might quote, and with Flora in the room one must draw the line somewhere. ‘Anyway,’ he concluded, ‘we shall have to see how things go.’ He ambled off into his study conscious of having taken an easy way out, if it was a way out at all.
The next day after lunch Flora got out the best tea service and began washing the cups and plates, for it was some time since they had been used. Lovingly she swished the pink-and-gold china in the hot soapy water and dried each piece carefully on a clean cloth. Tea could be laid on the low table by the fire, she decided, with the cloth with the wide lace border. Mrs. Glaze had eventually been persuaded to make a Victoria sandwich cake, there were litde cakes from the Spinning Wheel and chocolate biscuits, and Flora intended to cut some cucumber sandwiches and what she thought of as ‘wafer-thin’ bread and butter. It would be a much better tea than was usually served at the vicarage; she only hoped her mother wouldn’t spoil it all by making some facetious comment. She got everything ready, went up to change her dress and tidy herself, and then setded down by the fire with a nice Sunday afternoon kind of novel from the library. Jane was sitting on the other side of the fire with her feet up on a pouffe; there was a book open on her lap and the Sunday papers were spread out at her side, but she was not reading; she had ‘dropped off’, as she frequendy did on a Sunday afternoon, and her head was drooping over against the back of the chair; her mouth was slightly open too. She had just been reading the review of a novel where a character was said to ‘emerge triumphantly in the round’, and somehow this had set her nodding. She was conscious of Flora coming into the room and she seemed to remember that she had said something about having cleaned the bath. ‘But surely Mr. Oliver won’t want to have a bath at four o’clock in the afternoon,’ she had said. After that all was blessed oblivion until the cruel shrilling of the front-door bell startled her into uttering a cry and sitting bolt upright in her chair.
‘That must be him,’ said Flora, her tone betraying signs of agitation also, ‘but it’s only half-past three.’
‘Quickly, let me get out of the room,’ cried Jane. Diana and her nymphs bathing could not have felt more embarrassed when surprised by Actaeon as Jane did at this moment. She gathered up the Sunday papers and fled from the room.
Flora hurried to the front door and found Mr. Oliver standing there. He was wearing a dark suit, either in honour of tea at the vicarage or perhaps in anticipation of reading one of the Lessons at Evensong. Seen at close quarters, he was naturally rather less pale and spiritual-looking than he had appeared in the kinder light of the church.
‘I’m afraid I’m rather early,’ he said. ‘Mrs. Cleveland just said tea and I wasn’t quite sure what time to come.’
‘Oh, you’re not at all too early,’ said Flora enthusiastically. ‘Do come in. Perhaps you’d like to leave your raincoat in the hall.’
‘Yes, thank you. I thought it safer to bring it. The sky looked rather overcast as I was leaving my lodgings, and I thought I felt a drop as I came up the drive.’
Flora looked up at the ceiling. ‘I expect we need rain for the harvest,’ she said.
‘But the harvest is gathered.’
‘Yes, of course, it must be. We’ve had Harvest Festival, haven’t we?’ And Mr. Oliver had looked so beautiful against the autumnal background — the sheaves of wheat, the great jars of Michaelmas daisies and chrysanthemums, the grapes on the lectern.
Flora led the way into the drawing-room. It was empty.
‘I’m afraid it looks rather untidy,’ she said, going over to Jane’s chair, plumping up a cushion and gathering up an odd sheet of one of the Sunday papers. ‘I’m afraid my father isn’t in yet — he’s taking the Boys’ Bible Class.’
There was a pause. What could she say next? Flora wondered. Mr. Oliver did not seem to be very easy to talk to. She almost wished that her mother would come back; at least there would not be silence then.
Mr. Oliver was looking round the room hopefully. He had noticed the table laid with a lace-edged cloth and a rather pretty tea-set, so there would be tea, and perhaps quite soon. He had not imagined himself alone with the vicar’s schoolgirl daughter; in fact, he had hardly realised her existence until she came to the door. He had hoped to have a profitable talk with the vicar and perhaps with Mrs. Cleveland too; otherwise he would have preferred to be in his lodgings, looking over the Lesson he was to read that evening and perhaps practising some of it aloud. Mrs. Walton, his landlady, always had her wireless on very loudly on Sunday afternoons, so that he could raise his voice without fear of being heard or of making himself ridiculous.
‘I am going up to Oxford next week,’ said Flora, to break the silence.
‘Really, Miss Cleveland? Have you relatives there?’
‘No. I mean I am going to the University.’
‘Ah, to study. What subject, may I ask?’
‘English Literature,’ said Flora rather stiffly.
‘Oh, I see.’ Mr. Oliver did not appear to have anything to say about English Literature and Flora was glad when there was a sound at the door and Jane came into the room.
‘Mr. Oliver, how nice! I’m so glad you were able to come.’
Flora looked at her mother in astonishment. She had spent the time that had elapsed between her rushing from the room and her meeting with Mr. Oliver in improving her appearance, or rather in altering it, for it was difficult to say whether the garments she now appeared in were any more suitable for the occasion than those she had been wearing before. Her dress, a patterned navy foulard with long sleeves, was really too light for October and was a little crushed, for, as Flora rightly guessed, it had been put away in a drawer since the last warm weather. She had also taken the trouble to change into silk stockings and a pair of very uncomfortable-looking navy shoes with pointed toes and high heels. Her face had been hastily dabbed with powder of rather too light a shade.
Mr. Oliver rose to shake hands.
‘I do hope my daughter has been entertaining you,’ said Jane easily. ‘I was suddenly called away,’ she added, thinking as she said it that this was the kind of thing some clergy wrote in parish magazines when people had died. Called away or called home, they said.
‘I expect you’re very busy, and the vicar too,’ said Mr. Oliver.
‘Ah, here is Nicholas coming in now,’ said Jane, stepping carefully to the window in her tight shoes. ‘Now we can have tea. Darling, go and put the kettle on, will you? I think everything else is ready.’
Flora went quietly from the room and Nicholas came in, rubbing his hands together and looking vaguely benevolent.
‘Ah, good afternoon, Oliver, very glad to see you,’ he murmured. ‘Tea not ready yet?’ he said, in the way men do, not pau
sing to consider that some woman may at that very moment be pouring the water into the pot. ‘Teaching those lads is thirsty work.’
‘Flora is just making it, dear,’ said Jane, soothingly. ‘Here she is.’
Mr. Oliver sprang up to help her with the tray and soon they were comfortably settled round the fire.
Conversation did not flow very easily at first. There was too much passing of sandwiches and enquiries about who took sugar. Jane hardly ever remembered what even her own family’s preferences were in this respect. When she had discharged her duties, she began to ask Mr. Oliver about his work. It must be so interesting working in a bank, she thought.
‘Interesting?’ he echoed. ‘Well, yes, it is in a way, I suppose.’
‘I always think of the medieval banking houses in Florence; great times those must have been,’ went on Jane rather wildly.
‘I should think there have been a good many changes since then, observed Nicholas dryly. ‘What department do you work in?’
‘I’m in the Executor and Trustee Department at the moment,’ said Mr. Oliver.
‘How that must put you in mind of your own mortality!’ said Jane, clasping her hands under her chin in rather an affected way. ‘You must see the worst and the best sides of people too - I believe it always comes out over money. Are you shut up in a room at the back of the bank, then? We shouldn’t be able to go in and peer at you over the counter.’