by Barbara Pym
Nicholas appeared just before lunch and Jane told him of her eventful morning, They had a good laugh about the soap animals.
‘I wonder if he will tell the Bishop,’ said Nicholas.
‘It would be rather ominous if he kept it to himself,’ said Jane; ‘it would seem as if he considered it rather important, not a matter for joking.’
‘Oh, Pritchard has no sense of humour. I’m glad I managed to avoid him.’
‘Yes, it was rather heavy going,’ Jane agreed. ‘I suppose he just came to have a look at things. Perhaps they would peep into the church when they were sure we weren’t looking to see if they could detect any smell of incense or other Popish innovations.’
‘I saw their car outside just as I was coming through the gate,’ Nicholas admitted, ‘so I slipped into the tool-shed till they’d gone. In any case, I had to see to my tobacco plants,’ he added, looking a little ashamed.
‘Well, really, Nicholas,’ Jane protested, ‘you might have come and helped me out.’ But secretly she was rather pleased to have managed so well on her own.
Chapter Seventeen
WHITSUNTIDE came and went, the weather grew printed silk dresses; Miss Trapnell and Miss Clothier in cottons or rayons of rather dimmer patterns. The conversation began to be about holidays. Even Dr. Grampian raised the subject one morning when Prudence was in his room, and asked her when she would be taking hers.
‘Not that it matters,’ he added vaguely. ‘I was wondering if it would coincide with mine. That is sometimes easier.’
A year ago Prudence would have seized on his words and twisted them into an ‘Ah, if only we were really going on holiday together!’ She had often imagined herself with him in the South of France or the Italian Lakes — she in the most elegant beach clothes and he wonderfully bronzed and mysteriously Chapter Seventeen Prudence appeared at her office in improved in looks and physique. But to-day, looking at him in his grey suit and dark tie, his shoulders hunched narrowly over his desk, it seemed quite fantastic to imagine him lying on a beach stripped to the waist.
‘My wife wants to go to St. Tropez in September,’ he said, as if reading her thoughts. ‘We both feel the need for sun.’
‘Oh yes, sun,’ Prudence agreed. ‘I haven’t really fixed my holiday yet. I can go any time that suits you.’
‘Well, the summer is a slack time,’ he said, as if other times were busy, ‘so please yourself.’ Then he turned to a file of papers on his desk and Prudence felt that she had been dismissed.
She went into her own room, where she found Mr. Manifold talking to Miss Trapnell and Miss Clothier.
‘… walking in the Pyrenees,’ he was saying. ‘In late September — otherwise it will be too hot.’
‘It sounds fascinating,’ said Prudence in what seemed to him a cold, scornful tone, ‘but terribly energetic.’
‘I don’t like luxurious holidays,’ he said rather fiercely. ‘I haven’t any use for that kind of thing. I like to be on the move, seeing different places.’
‘My idea of a holiday is just to sit somewhere in the sun drinking,’ retorted Prudence, aware as she said it that she was being rather ridiculous.
‘Oh, I like drinking too,’ said Mr. Manifold, ‘but not in chromium-plated bars and hotels.’
Prudence felt anger rising within her, but could not think of anything to say.
‘I’m very fond of Torquay myself,’ said Miss Trapnell in an even tone. ‘You always meet nice people and there’s plenty to do if it rains.’
‘I can’t bear meeting people on holiday,’ said Prudence childishly.
‘Then you must be a lone wolf, like Mr. Manifold,’ said Miss Clothier.
The idea of Mr. Manifold being any kind of a wolf made Prudence want to giggle, and she feared that he also had seized upon the vulgar meaning of the word, which was probably unknown to Miss Trapnell and Miss Clothier.
‘I dare say that both Prudence and I have had our moments,’ he said, leaving the two older ladies somewhat mystified.
Prudence! He had dared to call her by her Christian name! Had it just slipped out, she wondered, or was it deliberate?
‘Really, he gets more insufferable every day,’ she said, when he had gone out of the room.
‘He’s a nice young man, really,’ said Miss Trapnell. ‘And he’s so good to his aunt. I happen to know that. I do think it’s nice when a young man considers older people.’
‘Good to his aunt?’ Prudence asked, a little annoyed that Miss Trapnell should have this unlikely information about Mr. Manifold.
‘He lives with his aunt,’ Miss Trapnell explained. ‘His parents are dead, you see.’
‘Oh?’ Prudence was curious in spite of herself.
‘He is an orphan,’ interposed Miss Clothier by way of explanation.
‘The poor little poppet!’ said Prudence in a light, offhand tone. Of course, lots of people of his age were orphans, she told herself. There was really nothing pathetic about it. She took out some work, determined to dismiss him from her mind, but Miss Trapnell seemed disinclined to return to her card index and would not leave the subject.
‘Miss Manifold is a great one for church work,’ she was saying. ‘And she’s very artistic. I’ve never seen the flowers looking so lovely as they did on Whit-Sunday. She’d put red and pink flowers on the pulpit, rhododendrons and peonies with some syringa and greenery. Red is the colour for Whitsuntide, of course.’
‘But how did you see them?’ Prudence asked. ‘Do you live somewhere near?’ She tried to imagine Miss Trapnell’s North London suburb, and Geoffrey Manifold and his aunt living somewhere near.
‘Yes, quite near,’ said Miss Trapnell. ‘A threepenny bus ride away. I’m not actually in the same parish — St. Michael’s, that is — but I’m on the electoral roll there. I’m afraid St. Jude’s, that’s the church whose parish I’m really in, is much too high for me. They have Asperges and all that kind of thing, and the vicar hears Confessions.’ She lowered her voice.
‘Does Mr. Manifold go to church?’ Prudence asked.
‘Well, no, Miss Bates, and that is a great grief to his aunt, I happen to know. But you know how these young men are, think they know the answer to all life’s problems. But he is so good to her, so I suppose you can’t have it all ways.’
‘He’s had a hard life too,’ Miss Clothier interposed. ‘You’d think he might have found consolation in going to church.’
‘A hard life?’ Prudence asked.
‘Both his parents were killed in a motor accident when he was eighteen,’ said Miss Trapnell, almost with a hint of triumph in her tone.
‘Oh, no .. said Prudence in a strained voice. ‘The poor boy …’
‘Just when he was starting out on his University career,’ said Miss Trapnell, piling it on.
‘Well, I suppose he had scholarships and things,’ said Prudence rather roughly. ‘People usually do.’
‘Yes, he was clever, of course. But it was a hard struggle.’
‘Didn’t his aunt help him?’
‘Yes, I’m sure she did, but it was difficult for him.’
‘He seems to have got over it now,’ said Prudence, forcing herself to remember his rather bold manner and the fact that he had called her Prudence. But obviously he wasn’t the kind of person to show his feelings … it was all over and done with, about ten years ago, she supposed; there was certainly nothing pathetic about him now. And no doubt he had had his moments — he had as good as told her so. All the same, the conversation had left an uneasy feeling at the hack of her mind. She felt that she might wake up in the middle of the night and remember it. She would see him in his raincoat with the collar turned up, going to have lunch in Lyons, standing in the queue reading the New Statesman.
‘Have you fixed your holidays yet, Miss Bates?’ asked Miss Trapnell.
‘I expect I shall go somewhere with a friend,’ Prudence answered rather evasively.
Naturally, her holiday plans now included Fabian, bronzed and hand
some, lying on a beach or drinking on a terrace, and this required less of an effort of imagination than when her companion bad been Arthur Grampian. But so far Fabian had said nothing definite about it. His last letter, indeed, had been unsatisfactory, perfunctory almost — it was difficult to describe exactly what was wrong. It had begun affectionately enough, but after that it had meandered on about nothing very much, the weather, even, and then come to an abrupt end, with half a sheet left blank. But then Fabian was not at his best as a letter-writer. Prudence had been uncomfortably conscious for some time that her letters were much better written and fuller of apt quotations than his were. She remembered one of his some weeks back in which he had started to quote Oscar Wilde and then evidently thought better of it and crossed it out. This seemed a little ominous, for Wilde had said so many things that one would hardly have wished said to oneself. Perhaps the truth was that Fabian was a man of deeds rather than words, though he was certainly very slow in coming to the point.
This next week-end she was to go and stay with Jane. Perhaps things would come to a head then. The country would be looking at its best; there would be the long evenings, the lanes with wild roses and meadowsweet, and above all Prudence herself, adorning Fabian’s house and garden and looking so perfect there that he would surely wonder how he could ever imagine the place without her.
The guest-room at the vicarage was more attractive now than it had been in November; its very bareness gave it a cool, almost continental look. Prudence’s summer housecoat, a white cotton patterned with roses and frilled at the neck and elbows, seemed less out of place than her turquoise blue wool or crimson velvet. Jane had put a vase of roses on the little table by the bed, but this time there was no photograph of Arthur Grampian to set it off. Prudence had as yet no photograph of Fabian and she felt that it would somehow have been in bad taste to flaunt him there at the vicarage, when he was to be seen in the flesh, walking about the village. So the table held only the roses, a book of poems that Fabian had given her and a novel of the kind that Prudence enjoyed, well written and tortuous, with a good dash of culture and the inevitable unhappy or indefinite ending, which was so like life.
It was the end of the Oxford term and Flora and her young friend Paul, who was to spend a few days with them, were expected in time for supper on the Friday evening. Jane, or rather Mrs. Glaze, had provided a boiled chicken, and Prudence offered to make a salad and see to the finishing touches.
‘We mustn’t treat this young man as if he were a curate,’ Jane explained, ‘but I don’t want Flora to feel ashamed of her home.’ She burst into a peal of laughter, ‘Isn’t that just the sort of thing they say in the answers to correspondents in a woman’s magazine?’
‘Have you some garlic?’ Prudence asked.
‘Garlic?’ echoed Jane in astonishment. ‘Certainly not! Imagine a clergyman and his wife going about the parish smelling of garlic!’
‘But it does improve a salad.’
‘Let the lettuce leaves be well washed,’ said Jane airily; ‘that’s the main thing. I should have liked the kind of life where one ate food flavoured with garlic, but it was not to be. I don’t suppose Flora’s young man will mind. Geography and garlic don’t seem to go together somehow. Of course Fabian may not be satisfied, but it should be enough pleasure for him to see you, without bothering whether the salad bowl has been rubbed with garlic.’
‘You’ve asked Fabian? You didn’t tell me.’
‘Yes; I thought it would make up the numbers,’ said Jane rather grandly. ‘And he promised to bring some wine — I hope he won’t make too much fuss about it — the wine, I mean. We do happen to have a bottle of sherry, not the very best, but I have poured it into the decanter, so nobody will know. The decanter at least is a good one.’
When they had finished their preparations they went into the drawing-room, which in summer appeared to be a pleasant, airy room with french windows opening on to the lawn and the winter’s draughts turned to cooling breezes most refreshing on a hot evening.
Fabian advanced over the lawn with the bottles in his arms, carrying them as carefully as if they had been new-born babies.
He saw Jane and Prudence sitting inside the room before they saw him. Jane was in a kind of ‘best’ summer dress of indeterminate pattern and cut, the kind of thing worn by thousands of English women, but Prudence wore something black and filmy, chiffon perhaps, which looked deliciously cool and elegant.
‘Why, there is Fabian!’ exclaimed Jane. ‘Now he will make his entrance just like a character in one of those domestic comedies that have french windows at the back of the stage. I wonder what his first words will be.’
‘Good evening,’ said Fabian, bowing slightly over his bottles.
Jane sprang up to take them from him, while Prudence raised her hand in a rather languid gesture and smiled up at him.
‘Hullo, Fabian,’ she said.
‘Prudence, how nice to see you,’ he replied. ‘Now, do be careful of those bottles,’ he said, turning to Jane. ‘They don’t Want to be shaken up too much — and put them in a cool place, if you can.’
‘Give him some sherry, Prue,’ said Jane. ‘I must take these away.’
‘Well, darling,’ said Fabian, bending down to kiss Prudence, but rather gingerly, as if afraid of disturbing her face and hair, ‘you’re looking very lovely tonight.’
He always says that, thought Prudence with a flash of irritation. But of course it might be that it was always true.
They sat a little awkwardly sipping their sherry until Nicholas came in, and then the sound of a car was heard and Jane’s exuberant greeting to Flora and Paul.
The beginning of the meal was a little awkward, but Jane soon carried them forward on a rush of conversation.
‘Paul is reading Geography,’ she explained. ‘It must be a fascinating subject. All those tables of rainfall and the other things — vegetation, climate, soil , . .’ She waved her hands about, seeming unable to go any further into the delights of Geography.
Paul, who was a quiet, mousy-looking young man with very blue eyes — a typical undergraduate, Prudence thought — did not appear to be at all embarrassed at having attention drawn to himself. Geography was a fascinating subject to him and he was able to discourse at some length about what he was doing. Flora gazed at him with obvious devotion and occasionally made an intelligent comment as if to draw him out still further.
Oh, the strange and wonderful things that men could make women do! thought Jane. She remembered how once, long ago, she herself had started to learn Swedish — there was still a grammar now thick with dust lying in the attic; and when she had first met Nicholas she had tried Greek. And now here was her own daughter caught up in the higher flights of Geography! He seemed a nice young man, but that was only the least one could say. Was it also the most?
Prudence regarded the young couple with something like envy. To be eighteen again and starting out on a long series of love affairs of varying degrees of intensity seemed to her entirely enviable. She began to recall some of her own past triumphs, at Oxford and afterwards, and to compare them with her present state. Had there perhaps been a slight falling off lately? When Paul looked at her a kind of startled expression came into his eyes, so that she wondered whether she had overdone her make-up and the elegance of her dress and appeared formidable rather than feminine and desirable. Fabian and Nicholas, however, showed their appreciation by their glances and the wine soon put everybody into a more mellow mood.
If only we could have wine at the Parochial Church Council meetings,’ said Jane. ‘We have tried tea and sandwiches and more comfortable chairs, but somehow it didn’t make much difference. Wine is really what maketh glad the heart of man, isn’t it?’ She raised her glass to Fabian rather gaily.
Flora looked at her mother a little anxiously. Indeed, the younger members of the party seemed altogether more solemn than the older ones. It was difficult to keep Paul away from the higher flights of Geography, but eventually
they were all recalling their Oxford days and Fabian his Cambridge ones, and it seemed that life had been much gayer then.
‘Ah, we flung roses riotously!’ said Jane. ‘Nicholas, do you remember that evening when we serenaded the Principal from a punt on the river? Of course, when she came to the window we all moved on!’
Prudence smiled rather enigmatically as if she had subtler memories of the river, as indeed she had.
‘Is there a strong revival of religion among the undergraduates to-day?’ Nicholas asked, turning to Paul. ‘One hears that there is.’
‘I’m afraid I wouldn’t know about that,’ said Paul quite politely. ‘Naturally, my interests he in other fields.’
‘But haven’t you observed?’ said Jane.
‘People might like to keep it to themselves,’ said Prudence.
‘My friends are mostly geographers and anthropologists,’ said Paul.
‘Anthropologists,’ echoed Fabian on a puzzled note. Prudence wondered if he were going to ask what they were and felt irritated with him for the small part he was playing in the conversation. If only Arthur Grampian had been there! she thought suddenly, hearing his rather flat, measured tones discoursing. Or even Geoffrey Manifold being rather aggressive about bars and holidays and his ‘material.’
After dinner they had coffee, and then Flora said she would show Paul the village. Nicholas and Fabian began talking about gardening, so that Jane and Prudence somehow found themselves at the kitchen sink, faced with the washing-up for six people.
‘Of course, I could leave it for Mrs. Glaze,’ said Jane rather vaguely, scraping some bones from one plate to another. ‘You certainly can’t wash up in that pretty dress, Prudence. Wouldn’t you like to go back and talk to the men?’
‘No; I’ll dry, if you can lend me an apron,’ Prudence said.