by Barbara Pym
‘I shall have a dark, lonely journey home,’ said Fabian softly. ‘It seems very sad that we have to part.’
‘Yes, it does,’ said Prudence thoughtfully; ‘but evenings have to come to an end.’
‘They need not,’ Fabian began, but then he remembered that Prudence could not be quite like all the others. There was the complication of her being a friend ofjane Cleveland’s. Somehow one did not play fast and loose with the friend of one’s vicar’s wife, he thought solemnly.
‘Perhaps some other time …’ said Prudence uncertainly.
‘I’ll see about getting you a taxi, then.’
While Prudence was waiting in the foyer, a tall young woman in a tweed suit came up to her.
‘Hullo, Prue! I saw you in the distance, but you wouldn’t look at me.’
‘Why, Eleanor, what are you doing here?’
‘My dear, I’ve been having dinner with J.B. He’s off to the Middle East to-morrow. We didn’t leave the Ministry till after nine - there were things to see to, you know.’
Eleanor’s tone, mysteriously important as always, made Prudence a little envious. How wonderful it must be to work for somebody who really needed you, who couldn’t get off to the Middle East unless you were there to see to things. J.B. couldn’t do anything without Eleanor. She stood now, beaming, tweedy and efficient, while J.B., a tall worried-looking man with an excessively bulging briefcase, got his coat from the cloakroom.
‘We must lunch one day,’ said Prudence rather feebly.
‘Oh, yes, let’s. Give me a ring some time.’
Going home by herself in the taxi, Prudence thought of Eleanor and her other contemporaries at Oxford, all neatly labelled in Miss Birkinshaw’s comfortable classification. ‘Eleanor, with her work at the Ministry, Mollie with the Settlement and her dogs, and Prudence …’ Well, what about Prudence? Prudence with her love affairs, that was what Jane used to say, and perhaps, after all, it was true. She would put the red roses in a glass on her bedside table and take them into the office in the morning.
Chapter Eleven
NOW THAT there was a feeling of spring in the air, Fabian decided that he really ought to do something about ‘poor Constance’s things’. Also, the entry of Prudence into his life made it seem unsuitable that nothing should have been done about them before.
It was Mrs. Arkright who managed to spur him to some definite action. She was always saying to her friends what a shame it was that all those good things of poor Mrs. Driver’s should be still lying in the drawers and wardrobes, and now that another spring with its attendant cleaning and tidying was approaching it really did seem as if she ought to say something to Mr. Driver. Last spring it had been different, of course; the bereavement was too fresh in his mind, poor man, but now it really was time that he pulled himself together.
Jane Cleveland heard all about this from Mrs. Glaze.
‘It’s just over the year now,’ she said. ‘I was looking in the paper last week to see if there’d be anything, but there wasn’t.’
‘In the paper?’ Jane asked. ‘But why should there be?’
‘In Memoriam,’ said Mrs. Glaze rather stiffly. ‘It’s nice to put something.’
‘Oh, in the local paper, of course,’ said Jane, remembering the long column of pathetic, limping verses commemorating Gran and Dad and the rest of the dear departed.
‘You’d have thought there might be something,’ went on Mrs. Glaze. ‘Mrs. Arkright passed the same remark to me only yesterday. You’d think he’d remember her.’
‘I don’t suppose he forgot,’ said Jane, ‘but people don’t always show their feelings in the same way, do they.’ And sometimes, she added to herself, they don’t have the feelings one would expect.
A long sad year has passed today
Since my dear Connie was taken away
Was that the kind of thing Mrs. Glaze and Mrs. Arkright would have found suitable, nodding their heads and saying it was ‘nice?’
‘That sort of thing shouldn’t really be necessary for Christians,’ she began firmly; ‘if we believe, as we should …’ But then, she thought, weren’t we all, even the most intelligent of us, like children fearing to go into the dark, no better than primitive peoples with their ancestor cults, the way we went to the cemetery on a Sunday afternoon, bearing bunches of flowers? But she couldn’t say all this to Mrs. Glaze, standing at the kitchen table in her hat and apron, making pastry.
‘At least he’s going to get her things sorted out; that’s something,’ said Mrs. Glaze. ‘Mrs. Arkright said why not let Miss Doggett and Miss Morrow do it — they’re nice ladies and they were friends of poor Mrs. Driver.’
‘Or Mrs. Crampton and Mrs. Mayhew,’ suggested Jane, ‘though they might be too busy at the Spinning Wheel.’
‘Well, four ladies might be a bit too much even for Mr. Driver,’ said Mrs. Glaze with a laugh. ‘Perhaps there should be a married lady, though. He might have asked you, but I told Mrs. Arkright, I didn’t think you would be much of a one for tidying.’
Jane hung her head. ‘No, not for tidying, perhaps,’ she agreed. But was her status as wife of the vicar of the parish to count for nothing? She could hardly add that her insatiable curiosity might also render her eligible for the position. ‘When are they going to do it?’
‘On Saturday afternoon — that seemed the best time.’
‘I should have thought a morning might be better,’ said Jane.
Mrs. Glaze looked a little shocked. ‘We have our work in the morning, madam,’ she said importantly. ‘Mrs. Arkright will be there to do the tea, of course.’
‘So tea is to be provided?’
‘Well, they’ll need tea. There’s a lot of things to be sorted.’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Jane slowly, her mind on plans for being there herself. A casual call? A request to borrow a lawn-mower in the depths of winter? How was she to manage it? No doubt something would occur to her when the time came.
On the chosen Saturday afternoon Miss Doggett and Miss Morrow left their house at about a quarter past two. Miss Doggett had considered the occasion important enough to give up her afternoon rest and was rather more grandly dressed than a call next door seemed to warrant, in a skunk cape and large hat of the type known as ‘matron’s’, trimmed with brown velvet and little tufts of feathers. Miss Morrow wore her grey tweed coat and had a plaid scarf over her head.
They went up to Fabian’s front door and rang the bell. Mrs. Arkright in her apron and a purple turban opened the door and showed them into the dining-room, where Fabian was still at the table drinking his coffee. He sat with his head bowed, gazing into his cup, one cheek resting on his hand. It seemed a suitable position for him to be in, making it appear that a mere week or two and not a whole year had elapsed since poor Constance’s death.
‘You will forgive me if I don’t join you,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I should find it…’
‘Oh, very painful, of course. We quite understand,’ said Miss Doggett briskly. ‘We’ll get to work straight away.’
‘Most of the things are upstairs,’ said Fabian in the same low voice. ‘In the large room overlooking the garden and some in the room next to it. I shall stay here …’ He drew towards him a bowl of white hyacinths which stood on the table and began to sniff at the flowers absent-mindedly.
Miss Doggett and Miss Morrow went quietly out of the room. Once out of his presence, however, their steps became noticeably brisker and there was an eagerness about their bearing which they did not attempt to conceal.
‘Now for it,’ said Miss Morrow, almost running up the stairs.
‘Really, Jessie,’ said Miss Doggett, whose step was slower than her companion’s only because she was a much older and heavier woman. ‘I wonder if Mr. Driver would object to our lighting the gas-fire,’ she said as they opened the door and sensed the chill of the big room overlooking the garden. ‘It’s rather cold in here. Poor Constance always used to say this room was damp.’
‘He�
�d jolly well better not object,’ said Miss Morrow, lighting the fire and then removing her coat and scarf. ‘On what principle are we to sort out these things? Distressed gentlewomen and jumble? Or should there be more and subtler distinctions?’
‘No. I should think that is what Mr. Driver would wish, and what poor Constance herself would have wished,’ said Miss Doggett, opening the wardrobe. ‘Oh, dear, here is her musquash coat! She never had it remodelled, though I often suggested to her that she should. Mr. Rose could have done it for her as he did my cape.’ She stroked the strands of skunk which still hung from her shoulders, for the room had not yet warmed up in spite of the flaring and popping gas-fire.
‘I can just see her in that coat,’ said Jessie, looking at the long brown coat with its narrow shoulders and old-fashioned roll collar. She remembered Constance’s long, pale face with the worried grey eyes and the fair, wispy hair drawn back into a rather meagre little knot on the nape of the neck. ‘And, oh dear, here are all her shoes, long and narrow and of such good leather. Just the thing for the gentlewomen.’
‘She was much too good for him,’ said Miss Doggett, taking a pair of the shoes into her hand. ‘I often wondered how they ever came to be married. These lizard courts — they cost eight guineas, I remember Constance telling me. She had to have them specially made, such a very narrow foot she had.’
Miss Doggett was still holding the shoes when Jane came into the room carrying a khaki canvas hold-all.
‘I came round on the offchance of getting a bit of jumble,’ she said, bringing out the words she had been rehearsing on her way from the vicarage. She had decided to appear in the simple role of a vicar’s wife seeking jumble, and hoped it sounded convincing. Mrs. Arkright, who had opened the door, had looked a little suspicious, but Miss Doggett and Miss Morrow appeared to accept her without question.
‘Jumble’s on the bed,’ said Miss Doggett. ‘We have put the things we think might do for the distressed gentlewomen on the chaise-longue.’
‘How very suitable to put them there!’ Jane burst out. ‘I suppose this was Mrs. Driver’s room?’
‘Yes, and she had the little room next door as a kind of workroom — she kept her sewing machine there and her embroidery things.’
‘These were her hooks?’ Jane asked, going over to a small bookcase which was fixed on to the wall near the bed.
‘I suppose so,’ said Jessie, ‘though Constance didn’t seem to be much of a reader. She had a novel from the library sometimes.’
‘Or a good biography,’ added Miss Doggett.
‘You mean a life of Florence Nightingale or the memoirs of some Edwardian diplomat’s widow,’Jane murmured. ‘But these are mostly books of poetry. Was this what she read secretly, I wonder?’
‘Oh, I don’t think Constance was the kind of person to go in for that sort of thing,’ said Miss Doggett in a shocked voice.
‘People do seem to be ashamed of admitting that they read poetry,’ said Jane, ‘unless they have a degree in English — it is permissible then. It has become a kind of bad habit, but one that is excused. I wonder what she made of Mr. Auden and Mr. MacNeice? Perhaps the seventeenth century was more to her taste, as it is to mine. Odd to think that we may have had that in common.’ She took a book from the shelf and began to examine it in the hope of finding an interesting inscription on the fly-leaf. Nor was she disappointed, for on it was written in a fine, intelligent-looking hand
F. from C., 18th April, 1935
My Love is of a birth as rare
As ‘tis for object strange and high …
She closed the book quickly and slipped it into the canvas hold-all. This must not go to the jumble sale. Marvell — A Definition of Love — had poor Constance’s love been begotten by Despair upon Impossibility? Jane wondered. But then of course when writing an inscription one did not always consider the appropriateness or otherwise of the rest of the poem. 1935 — Fabian would have been in his early twenties and Constance some years older — it must have been at some moment during their courtship. Jane wondered when she had taken her gift back, if it had been a conscious action performed on some special occasion, perhaps after some particularly painful infidelity on Fabian’s part, or whether the book had just got into the shelf of its own accord, as it were, as books do when they are no longer particularly treasured.
‘Do you suppose he really wants any of these books?’ she asked in a rather rough tone.
‘Well, perhaps we had better ask him,’ said Miss Doggett, ‘though he did say he’d rather we used our own judgment.’
‘I’ll go and ask him if you like,’ said Jessie, hurrying from the room.
She found Fabian downstairs huddled over the fire in the drawing-room. He did not seem to be doing anything in particular, though The Times was folded back at the crossword and there were a few words filled in. It was difficult, Jessie thought, for him to know what he ought to be doing while she and the others were upstairs. There was rugby football or dance music on the wireless, but neither of these would be suitable listening, and the Third Programme had not yet started. Perhaps some Bach on the radiogram or a little work in the garden, but the earth was still bare and hard and it did not look as if anything would ever grow again.
‘Mrs. Cleveland wants to know about the books,’ she began.
‘What books?’
‘On the shelf by the bed.’
‘Oh, let her do what she likes with them — take them herself or have them for a jumble sale — I don’t care.’
‘Poor Fabian. What are you doing?’ Jessie laid a hand on his head and looked down into his face. ‘Just brooding?’
‘I don’t know what to do,’ he said. ‘The whole thing is most painful to me.’
‘Yes, you are having the pain now,’ Jessie said. ‘Women are very powerful — perhaps they are always triumphant in the end.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, you wouldn’t understand!’ She dropped a light kiss on his brow and hurried away.
If Fabian was surprised by her action he gave no indication of it. After all, it was by no means the first time that a woman had paid him a little spontaneous tribute; it might be considered as no more than his due. He stood up and looked at his face in the mirror framed in a design of gilded cupids which hung over the mantelpiece. Its dim surface gave back an interesting, shadowy reflection. He began to think about Jessie Morrow — more in her than met the eye—a deep one —his thoughts shaped themselves into conventional phrases. She had an unexpectedly sharp tongue; there was something a little uncomfortable about that. She was so badly dressed, usually in tweeds that had never been good. It would be interesting to see her transformed in the way that the women’s magazines sometimes glamorised a dowdy woman. No doubt Prudence would be able to make some suggestions… . Fabian’s thoughts now turned to her, but his evenings in her company, though delightful, seemed to have little reality at the moment. Wine, good food, flowers, soft lights, holding hands, sparkling eyes, kisses … and upstairs those three women were sorting out poor Constance’s things. Altogether he was glad when Mrs. Arkright announced that she had laid tea in the dining-room.
‘I thought the ladies would prefer to sit round the table,’ she explained.
They were summoned from upstairs and came down eagerly enough. Jane began to wonder if they were to have a meat tea or fish and chips as a reward for their hard work, but she was quite satisfied when she saw the hot buttered toast and sandwiches and several different kinds of cake.
‘We’re nearly through,’ said Miss Doggett briskly. ‘There are one or two small personal trinkets, we thought perhaps …’
‘Oh, no …’ Fabian bowed his head into his hands, ‘not that …’
‘Somebody had better pour out tea,’ said Jane sensibly, wondering when Fabian would raise his head.
‘You, of course, Mrs. Cleveland,’ said Miss Doggett.
‘I always do it rather badly,’ said Jane. ‘The ability to pour tea gracefully didn�
�t come to me automatically when I married. I wish you would do it, Miss Doggett.’
‘Very well, if you wish,’ said Miss Doggett.
Fabian had by now raised his head and was taking a piece of hot buttered toast.
Mrs. Arkright came into the room bearing an iced walnut cake on a plate. ‘Mrs. Crampton and Mrs. Mayhew have just called,’ she explained. ‘They thought Mr. Driver might like this cake. It’s his favourite, I know.’
‘How kind,’ said Fabian, rousing himself. ‘Are they at the door? Do ask them to come in so that I can thank them.’
‘No, sir. They hurried away,’ said Mrs. Arkright.
Jane reflected how much more delicate their behaviour had been than hers and bowed her head. Still, she had perhaps done some good by saving poor Constance’s gift from prying eyes, and she had certainly collected a lot of useful jumble.
Miss Doggett and Jessie too could feel that they had done something both for Fabian and for the distressed gentlewomen, and Jessie had privately earmarked one or two garments for herself and planned to alter them suitably and add them to her wardrobe.
Conversation at tea was not very brilliant. Jane was thinking too much about Constance and the book, Jessie about Fabian, and Fabian himself about the oppressive presence of three not particularly attractive women at his table, and also about Jessie’s strange behaviour earlier in the afternoon. He hoped she wasn’t going to become a nuisance in any way. They still had a little more sorting out to do, but he decided against offering them sherry when they had finished. It might go to their heads, he decided, and then they might all behave foolishly. He could easily make it understood that he was really too much upset to prolong the painful business any longer. He would have a half bottle of St. Emilion with his dinner, and after that he might write a letter to Prudence.