by Barbara Pym
At last Prudence looked at her watch and said she must be getting back to her office.
‘Are you supposed to take only an hour for your lunch?’ Jane asked.
‘Good Heavens, no,’ said Prudence impatiently. ‘I can take as long as I like — Arthur never minds and I’m not answerable to anyone else.’ It gave her a peculiar pleasure to speak of Dr. Grampian casually by his Christian name — Jane was the only person with whom she could do it.
‘Funny how I thought his name was Adrian,’ said Jane, as they walked out into the street. ‘Won’t the other women who work with you be jealous, though, if you take a longer lunch-time than they do?’
‘I don’t know. I’m not really interested in what they think.’
‘I’m sure I should be horribly conscious of it,’ said Jane rather complacendy. ‘I should feel their eyes on me. I should pretend I’d been in the lavatory or something.’
‘One has to have the courage of one’s convictions,’ said Prudence.
‘I suppose they are like the weaker brethren,’ said Jane. ‘One ought perhaps to think of them like that, being led astray by one’s own actions or example.’
‘Really, Jane, you talk as if I were doing something wrong,’ said Prudence crossly. ‘And anything less like the weaker brethren than Miss Trapnell and Miss Clothier couldn’t possibly be imagined. They certainly wouldn’t like to hear themselves described like that.’
They stopped outside the building where Prudence worked and made some final arrangements about the week-end. They were just about to part when a man came up to them and said ‘Good afternoon’ to Prudence.
‘Jane, I don’t think you’ve met Dr. Grampian,’ she said rather nervously. ‘This is a friend of mine, Mrs. Cleveland,’ she explained.
Jane said ‘How do you do’ and shook hands, her glance resting with interest on the man before her. So this was Arthur Grampian. Certainly, now that she saw him, she realised that the name Adrian, with its suggestion of tall, languid elegance, would have been entirely unsuitable. He was of middle size, almost short, and gave an impression of greyness, in his clothes and face and in the pebble-like eyes behind his spectacles. Whatever did Prue see in him? she wondered, conscious as she asked herself of the futility of her question. Arthur Grampian and his wife Lucy — one mustn’t forget his wife Lucy, though it was obvious that Prue did. But this insignificant-looking little man … Oh, but it was splendid the things women were doing for men all the time, thought Jane. Making them feel, perhaps sometimes by no more than a casual glance, that they were loved and admired and desired when they were worthy of none of these things — enabling them to preen themselves and puff out their plumage like birds and bask in the sunshine of love, real or imagined, it didn’t matter which. And yet Prudence’s love didn’t seem to have had any very noticeable effect on Arthur Grampian; he made nervous conversation about the weather, and smiled and nodded in a rather vague way, as if he didn’t really know who either of the women really were.
At last Jane broke away and went off in search of suitable books for Confirmation presents. Prudence stood in the lift with Arthur Grampian, holding herself rather stiffly apart from him as if afraid that their sleeves might touch.
‘Getting on all right, Miss Bates?’ he asked as the lift stopped and they got out at their floor.
No, no, nothing is all right, everything is wrong, Prudence wanted to call out, but instead she merely answered, ‘Yes, I think so. Do you want to see me about anything?’
Perhaps a note of hope had sounded in her tone, for he looked startled and seemed to clasp his briefcase to his breast and step backwards and away from her as he said, ‘Want to see you about anything? No, I don’t think so. I’m sure everything is going all right.’
And so he hurried into his room and Prudence into hers.
Miss Trapnell and Miss Clothier were in their places, their appointed places it seemed, like something in a hymn, or the wise virgins in the Bible. Not much hope of them sparing any oil from their lamps.
O, happy servant he,
In such a posture found,
thought Prudence with irritation, noticing Miss Clothier’s casual glance at her watch.
‘I was meeting a friend I haven’t seen for some time,’ she heard herself say weakly, ‘so I’m afraid I’m rather late. I shall have to stay on a bit to make up for it.’
‘Oh, meeting a friend is rather different,’ said Miss Trapnell with excessive geniality. ‘I’m sure Dr. Grampian would have no objection to any of us taking a longer lunch-hour for a reason like that.’
‘As a matter of fact, I met him coming in,’ said Prudence, ‘so I was able to introduce my friend.’ She disliked the way she kept referring to Jane as ‘my friend’, almost as if she hoped to give the impression that she had been lunching with a man.
Jane, in the meantime, was wandering round a religious bookshop, glancing at their selection of new novels; so absorbed was she that half an hour passed by like a minute and then it was time for her to go to the station for the train back. It would have been nice to have tea in the Corner House or gone, rather wickedly, to a Solemn Evensong with lots of incense, she thought. But as it, was, she hadn’t even time to buy the Confirmation presents. Really, except for looking at the jars of foie gras, having lunch with Prudence and seeing Dr. Grampian for the first time, her day had been wasted.
Chapter Eight
PRUDENCE WAS in the train on her way to spend the week-end with the Clevelands. It was Friday evening and she sat rather crushed up in her corner, for the half-empty carriage which she had chosen so carefully for herself had filled up at the last moment with men in bowler hats and overcoats, carrying despatch-cases and evening papers. Prudence looked at them with resentment, almost with loathing; she wished she had a spray of freesia or lily-of-the-valley to hold under her nose so that she wouldn’t smell their horrible pipe smoke — she hated men who smoked pipes. As it was, she had drenched her handkerchief in expensive French scent, for going to stay with Jane always drove her to extremes, and she would take her best clothes rather than her most suitable. Besides, there was this whist drive at which they were supposed to appear, with its promise of a young Member of Parliament and an eligible widower; presumably one would have to dress up for that.
Although she disliked going away in the winter, it was a relief to be leaving London and her flat. The blankness of the last few weeks, with Arthur Grampian taking even less notice of her than usual, combined with the approach of winter, had brought her down to a rather low state. I have given him the best years of my life, she thought, and he doesn’t even know it. He was immersed in his work and his club and going home every evening — or so one imagined — to his wife Lucy, and she was saying, ‘Well, dear, had a good day?’ or whatever it was that wives said to their husbands when they returned home in the evening.
The train slowed down and Prudence gathered her things together rather fussily, for this was the junction where she had to change. She stood up and prepared to lift her suitcase down from the rack, but before she could do so the man sitting next to her had jumped up and taken it down for her. Prudence thanked him, experiencing that feeling of contrition which comes to all of us when we have made up our minds to dislike people for no apparent reason and they then perform some kind action. Now she gave him her most charming smile and thought of him enjoying a pipe in the train on his way home, a good husband and father. She noticed that he had some cakes in a white cardboard box — taking them home for the children, she supposed; she could hardly bear it… she left the carriage, her eyes full of tears.
Jane was to meet her at the junction, ostensibly to ‘show her the way’, but really because she loved an excuse to go on a little journey. She peered at the people stepping down from the train and then ran forward to greet Prudence and to hurry her over the bridge.
‘The train won’t be a minute,’ she said. ‘How lovely it is to see you and how lovely you smell. “What is it?’
Pruden
ce murmured the name a little self-consciously, for she knew that her French accent was not good and the name was of an amorous kind that sounded a little ridiculous when said out loud. Anyway, it would convey nothing to Jane. She gritted her teeth for Jane’s peal of laughter, which came almost before she had finished speaking.
‘What names they think of! And really they’re all made from coal-tar. Does Dr. Grampian like it?’
‘I don’t know —I don’t use it in the office, really.’
‘No, of course not, just a little eau-de-Cologne or a light toilet water — you see, I read the women’s magazines when I go to the dentist. How is Dr. Grampian?’
‘Oh, just as usual,’ said Prudence evasively.
‘Which seems to be rather sad and shy, unless he was frightened of me,’ said Jane.
‘Wasn’t he as you’d imagined him?’ asked Prudence in a stifled voice.
‘No, but of course people never are. It reminds me of that poem about two men looking out through prison bars, one seeing mud and the other stars — do you know it?’
‘Yes.’ Prudence couldn’t help smiling at Jane’s absurdity. ‘But it doesn’t seem very appropriate.’
‘Well, perhaps not, but it conveys the general idea. Obviously you see him quite differently from me — I’d imagined a big, tall, dark man, a sort of Mr. Rochester.’
‘He is rather good-looking, though, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, in a way, but if you think him so that’s the main point after all. Some hollow in the temple or a square inch of flesh on the wrist that’s all it need be, really…
A little train came puffing along the platform, and Jane and Prudence got in.
‘The vicarage is some way from the station,’ said Jane, ‘but I’ve asked one of Nicholas’s lads to meet the train and carry your case for you.’ The boy took hold of the case, swung it up on to his shoulder and ran off with it at a great pace. Jane and Prudence followed more slowly, picking out landmarks, or rather Jane enthusiastically pointed them out while Prudence dutifully peered through the moonless darkness at the shapes of buildings — the gasworks, the Golden Lion where Fabian Driver did his pre-lunch drinking, the chapel with the Temperance Hotel next to it and the Spinning Wheel Cafe opposite; then on to the older part of the village with the church, the village green, the pond and the more picturesque houses, and at last to the vicarage with its green-painted gate and the laurels in front of Nicholas’s study window.
‘Here we are,’ said Jane. ‘It’s quite a nice house, though not as old as the church. Of course, it’s enormous, with too many rooms, impossible to heat adequately.’
Prudence shivered. She was wondering if there would be a glass of sherry or a drop of gin waiting; she was so used to that little comfort at the end of a day’s work and one seemed to need it even more in strange surroundings.
They were in the hall now with the old coats hanging up and the piles of parish magazines waiting to be delivered. The place felt damp and chill. Nicholas came out of his study with his spectacles pushed halfway down his nose and greeted Prudence.
He used to be so attractive, she thought, but being a clergyman and a husband had done their worst for him, rubbed off the bloom, if that was the right word. He murmured something conventional about the journey and the shortening days so that Prudence was reminded of the silly old joke about winter drawers on.
‘You’ll want to see your room,’ said Jane. ‘We haven’t put you in the proper spare room — it seemed so very vast and cold — but in one of the smaller ones. Here we are.’ She flung open the door of what seemed to Prudence, who was used to a boxlike, centrally-heated flat, a very large, bare-looking room with a bed in one corner, a chest of drawers, a chair and an old-fashioned marble-topped washstand. There were a few books on a little table by the bed, but no reading lamp, Prudence noticed quickly, just a light hanging rather too high up in the middle of the room. The floor was covered with shabby linoleum on which two small rugs had been placed in strategic positions, one by the bed and the other before a little looking-glass which hung on one wall.
Darling Jane, thought Prudence, noticing a rather rough arrangement of winter flowers in a little jar on the bedside table, a solitary rose, a few Michaelmas daisies and a dahlia.
She lit a cigarette and began to Unpack her case. She felt happier with her own possessions around her, her hot-water bottle in its pink cover, her turquoise blue wool housecoat, her bottles and jars on the chest of drawers and Arthur Grampian’s photograph, cut from some learned periodical, on the bedside table.
‘Prue,’Jane’s voice called, ‘supper will be ready in a minute!
I’ve just been trying to open a bottle of sherry, but the cork-screw’s gone in all crooked — do be an angel and help me with it.’
Prudence ran downstairs with a lighter heart. It was a good sherry, too, the kind one would hardly have expected Jane to buy.
‘I remembered you liked it like this,’ said Jane, ‘so I asked the man for a very pale sherry and he said, “You mean very dry, madam” — of course, I always forget these things.’
‘Aren’t you going to have any?’ asked Prudence, seeing Jane fill glasses only for herself and Nicholas.
‘No, I don’t really like it, you know. I’ve got out of the way of drinking. It seems rather terrible, really.’
‘Not at all, my dear,’ said Nicholas conventionally.
‘I’ve been such a failure as a clergyman’s wife,’Jane lamented, ‘but at least I don’t drink; that’s the only suitable thing about me.’
‘Well, clergymen’s wives don’t really drink, do they?’ said Prudence, contemplating the topaz colour of her drink under the light. ‘That doesn’t seem to be one of their vices.’
‘So even my not drinking isn’t an advantage,’ said Jane. ‘I might just as well take to it, then.’ She poured herself a full glass of sherry.
‘I shouldn’t have it if you don’t like it,’ said Nicholas in an anxious tone. ‘It seems a pity to waste it.’
Jane flashed him a look which Prudence caught. She supposed that marriage must be full of moments like this. She looked round the large, cold drawing-room, inadequately furnished, and imagined what she would do to such a room.
‘These curtains aren’t quite long enough,’ said Jane, following her glances, ‘and they don’t really meet across the windows.
Canon Pritchard was rather a wealthy clergyman — they had long crimson velvet curtains and a curtain over the door too; of course, they would keep the draughts out, but luckily we don’t feel the cold.’ Prudence remembered other houses where Jane and Nicholas had lived and the peculiar kind of desolation they seemed to create around them. They certainly did not appear to feel the cold, but she was glad that her black dress had a tartan stole to wrap round the shoulders.
‘Ah, there is supper,’ said Jane. ‘I can hear Flora taking it in. Mrs. Glaze doesn’t oblige us in the evenings.’
‘Flora is shaping very well as a cook,’ said Nicholas. ‘I don’t know where she gets her talent — certainly not from either of us. She will make a good wife for somebody one of these days.’
‘But men don’t want only that,’ said Jane, ‘though perhaps the better ones think they do. I was talking to Miss Doggett in the train the other day …’ Her sentence trailed off vaguely, for perhaps she too had difficulty in remembering what it was that men wanted.
‘How has Flora enjoyed her first term at Oxford?’ Prudence asked.
‘One hardly knows,’ said Jane in rather a flat tone. ‘I had expected her to be so enthusiastic. The new work, the wonderful atmosphere of Oxford in the autumn, the walks up to Boar’s Hill and Shotover and all those lovely berries we used to gather, and then going to St. Mary’s on Sunday evenings … Oh, it was all so thrilling!’
‘But, darling, it’s probably different now,’ said Nicholas.
‘Yes, I suppose it’s a mistake to think one can live one’s youth over again in one’s children,’ said Jane sadly.
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br /> ‘Has she fallen in love?’ Prudence asked.
‘She doesn’t say. Of course, she’s met a lot of young men, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone special yet.’
Prudence smiled a little complacently, remembering her own first term. Why, the very first week somebody had fallen in love with her, poor Cyril, saying rather pompously, ‘Male and female created He them,’ when she had refused to kiss him good-night. And after that, barely a month later, Philip, sending flowers every day …
‘Well, shall we go in to supper?’ Nicholas suggested. ‘Prudence, you had better sit with your back to the fire. Only one of the bars seems to be working, I’m afraid. Something must have gone wrong with the other, but I have no idea what it can be.’
Flora had prepared a very good meal, a chicken casserole with rice and french beans followed by a lemon meringue pie. Prudence had hardly seen her apart from a brief greeting on the doorstep, and was surprised to find her attractive-looking and nicely dressed, almost a grown-up person. She did not join very much in the conversation, but was busy with the food. Prudence could see that she was growing away from Jane, leading her own secret life. Afterwards the women went into the kitchen to wash up, leaving Nicholas in his study, preparing Sunday’s sermon. At least Prudence supposed he must be doing this, for her imagination was unequal to the task of penetrating behind the closed door of a clergyman’s study.
Later, when she was in her hard bed, reading by the light of a candle which Jane had given her, she heard the murmur of him and Jane talking together in their room, which was next to hers. Husbands took friends away, she thought, though Jane had retained her independence more than most of her married friends. And yet even she seemed to have missed something in life; her research, her studies of obscure seventeenth-century poets, had all come to nothing, and here she was, trying, though not very hard, to be an efficient clergyman’s wife, and with only very moderate success. Compared with Jane’s life, Prudence’s seemed rich and full of promise. She had her work, her independence, her life in London and her love for Arthur Grampian. But to-morrow, if she wanted to, she could give it all up and fall in love with somebody else. Lines of eligible and delightful men seemed to stretch before her, and with this pleasant prospect in mind she fell into a light sleep.