by Barbara Pym
‘I don’t, dear,’ said Mrs. Lyall. ‘I get very flustered, as you know.’
‘Well, it has a certain meaning, sometimes,’ said Miss Doggett archly, with a glance at Prudence.
‘Miss Bates shouldn’t undertake it,’ said Jessie brusquely. ‘She might spill something on that pretty dress.’
‘I’m sure Miss Bates would manage admirably,’ said Edward.
‘There is no need to spill anything, unless the teapot drips,’ said Prudence.
‘And we know that teapot,’ said Miss Doggett in a warm, sentimental tone; ‘it has never dripped in its life.’
Oh, we can’t bring the dead into this, thought Jane, imagining Constance Driver presiding over the tea things. ‘Our teapots always drip,’ she said cheerfully. ‘They are china ones with broken spouts.’
Mrs. Arkright handed round cups of tea and cucumber and tomato sandwiches, and then seemed to melt away. It was as if she had somehow changed into a bush or plant to efface herself from the company, and then miraculously become herself again just at the moment when cups needed refilling and plates were empty.
‘What a fine walnut tree!’ said Edward, looking up into its branches. ‘It is so deliciously restful here. I can’t think how long it is since I sat lazily in a garden, and it’s really one of my favourite ways of spending time.’
‘Don’t you often have tea on the terrace at the House of Commons?’ Jane asked. ‘I’ve always thought that sounded very pleasant.’
Edward gave her one of his charming, weary smiles. ‘One is usually entertaining constituents,’ he said, ‘and can’t really relax.’
‘Well, I do hope you will relax here‘ said Miss Doggett vigorously.
‘We are your constituents,’ said Nicholas, ‘but you need not feel that you must entertain us. Rather, we should entertain you’. He paused and a worried expression came on to his face. For how was it to be done? Country vicars are perhaps not used to entertaining Members of Parliament. Still, the women would see to it, he thought, relaxing again in his deck-chair.
‘If only we knew how to,’ said Fabian, with a smile only a shade less weary than Edward’s.
‘Edward just likes to sit quietly,’ said his mother. ‘That is really a change and a treat for him.’
‘Yes, one does find it a great relief just to be able to relax in a garden,’ said Fabian. ‘I find the bustle of the City quite intolerable.’
‘What is your work?’ asked Mrs. Lyall.
‘Oh, it is quite unspeakably dull,’ said Fabian. ‘I really couldn’t discuss it here. I suppose it is the dullness of it all that makes me feel so exhausted.’
‘Exhausted?’ said Jessie rather sharply.
‘Yes, exhausted.’ Fabian closed his eyes for a moment.
‘Life is certainly tiring these days,’ Nicholas observed.
There was silence.
‘A gloom seems to have fallen on the party,’ said Jane. ‘Perhaps it would be better if we all sat in silence. If the men find life so exhausting, our chatter might disturb them.’
The women made a gallant attempt to carry on the conversation among themselves. Mrs. Lyall talked all the time about her son and how she was hoping that he could be persuaded to take a real holiday. Miss Doggett listened sympathetically and recommended a guest-house in the Cotswolds which seemed to Jane hardly the kind of place for a Member of Parliament as exquisite as Edward, though, had he been of another party, perhaps, he might have considered it. Certainly he would be surrounded by doting middle-aged women, and perhaps that is not unpleasant to a member of any party or indeed to men in general, whether politicians or not.
The conversation about the guest-house became general among the women, for Prudence and Jessie had been unable to think of anything to say to each other, Prudence having no idea that they had anything at all in common and Jessie finding herself incapable of making any suitable use of her superior knowledge.
Fabian and Edward seemed to be trying to outdo each other in weariness, and even Nicholas was making some attempt to compete, detailing the number of services he had to take on Sundays and the many houses he had to visit during the week.
Suddenly there was a diversion. Jessie Morrow, getting up to pass a plate of cakes to Mrs. Lyall, knocked against the little table on which Prudence had put her cup of tea, so that the cup upset all over the skirt of her lilac cotton dress.
‘Oh, Jessie, how could you be so clumsy!’ stormed Miss Doggett. ‘You have ruined Miss Bates’s dress—that tea will stain it!’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Prudence, stifling her first impulse of anger towards Miss Morrow’s clumsiness. ‘It’s only cotton — it will wash.’
‘You must take it off at once and soak it in cold water,’ said Miss Doggett.
‘Yes, come into the house,’ said Fabian.
‘She had better come into my house,’ said Miss Doggett, ‘and then I can lend her something to wear.’
‘I have my car outside,’ said Edward. ‘We could easily drive to The Towers.’
‘I think it would be more practical if she went back to the vicarage,’ said Jane, ‘and then she could change into one of her own dresses.’
Prudence felt foolish and irritated at being the centre of so much fuss. Edward and Fabian were perhaps a little annoyed at having attention diverted from their weariness, and it seemed inevitable now that the party should break up, especially as Nicholas began murmuring about it being time for Evensong.
‘Yes, I suppose I should go,’ said Jane.
‘Well, we shall be meeting again in church,’ said Miss Doggett.
‘I am to read one of the Lessons, I believe,’ said Edward with a touch of complacency. ‘Thank you, Driver, for a most pleasant afternoon. An interlude for rest and refreshment.’
‘I am worried about Miss Bates’s dress,’ said Miss Doggett to Jane. ‘If you don’t put it to soak in cold water at once that tea will stain. I’m very much afraid it may leave a mark/
‘It seems to be leaving a mark already,’ said Jessie in an unsuitably detached tone for one who had been responsible for the disaster; ‘rather the shape of Italy. I wonder if that can have any significance?’
‘We shall consult Enquire Within about removing the stain,’ said Jane. ‘It is sure to have a good remedy — something to do with ox-gall or wormwood, so practical.’
‘Well, Prudence,’ said Fabian, rather at a loss, ‘I expect I shall be seeing you soon in Town.’
‘Oh, possibly,’ said Prudence casually. ‘Ring me up some time.’
Not a very satisfactory leave-taking, thought Jane. There seemed to be some want of enthusiasm, some lack of proper sadness, unless their casual manner was merely a way of disguising their deeper feelings.
‘That silly little woman,’ said Prudence crossly as they walked home, ‘upsetting my tea like that. And then everyone made such a fuss. I don’t think I shall come to Evensong, Jane. I really don’t feel in the mood.’
‘Oh, don’t you? What a pity,’ said Jane. ‘I love Evensong.
There’s something sad and essentially English about it, especially in the country, and so many of the old people are there. I always like that poem with the lines about gloved the hands that hold the hymnbook that this morning milked the cow. We have the old hymns here, you know. Ancient and Modern. Sun of my Soul, thou Saviour dear… the congregation love it and Nicholas wouldn’t change it for the world.’
But Prudence did not want to be made to feel sad, and offered to stay at home and get the supper ready. After she had changed her dress she sat in the drawing-room, hoping that perhaps Fabian would telephone or call. But then she realised that of course he too would be at Evensong. A melancholy summer Sunday evening is a thing known to many women in love, she thought, seeing herself as rather illused, left alone in the big, untidy vicarage kitchen, opening a tin of soup and preparing things to go with spaghetti. Jane hadn’t even any long spaghetti, she thought, the tears coming into her eyes, only horrid little broken
-up bits. Oh, my Love, she said to herself, sitting down at the scrubbed kitchen table, thoughts of Fabian and Arthur Grampian and others, Philip, Henry and Laurence from the distant past, coming into her mind. Then she thought of Geoffrey Manifold and how good he was to his aunt, and a sense of the sadness of life in general came over her, so that she almost forgot about Fabian refusing to walk with her in the twilight in case it should prejudice his chances of being elected to the Parochial Church Council. When Jane and Nicholas came back from Evensong they found her crouching on the floor in the dining-room, delving in the dark sideboard cupboard among the empty biscuit barrels and tarnished cruets for the sherry decanter.
Chapter Nineteen
THE TUESDAY following that week-end the weather broke, and on Wednesday it was still raining when Jessie Morrow set out for her afternoon off.
‘I shall go to the pictures,’ she said in answer to Miss Doggett’s enquiries, ‘and have a high tea at the Regal Cafe.’
‘Why not call and see Canon and Mrs. Pritchard?’ Miss Doggett suggested. ‘You know we have an open invitation to visit her house any time.’
‘The kind of invitation that includes everybody in the parish and means nobody,’ said Jessie scornfully.
‘I’m sure Mrs. Pritchard would give you a cup of tea.’
‘But not plaice and chips, which is what I usually have after the pictures — plaice and chips, a fancy cake or two and a pot of good strong tea.’
‘Mrs. Pritchard always had her own special blend, something between Earl Grey and Orange Pekoe,’ said Miss Doggett rather wistfully. ‘I suppose she still has it there, in those exquisitely thin cups. Poor Constance was fond of China tea, too.’
But Fabian likes Indian and a good strong cup, thought Jessie gleefully. Now that they had spent several of her half-days together he even enjoyed the fish tea which he had at first thought rather vulgar and had got over his anxiety lest anyone they knew might see them together. He still ate his plaice and chips a little furtively, though, and did not help himself to tomato ketchup as liberally as Jessie did.
‘Well,’ she said when she had poured out their second cups of tea, ‘have you told her yet?’
‘Told who?’ asked Fabian nervously, glancing round the cafe. Perhaps it was not such a bad place to choose for a clandestine meeting after all. It was certainly not the kind of place where one was likely to meet Canon and Mrs. Pritchard or Edward Lyall and his mother.
‘Why, Prudence, of course. You said you would break it to her this week-end.’
Fabian sighed heavily and plunged his fork into his cake with a dramatic gesture, so that a piece of it shot on to the floor.
‘No, I’m afraid I didn’t. What can I say to her? She’ll be so hurt.’
‘Hurt? And would it be the first time you’d ever hurt a woman?’
‘Well, no; one has had to hurt people, I suppose,’ said Fabian, tilting his head to one side. He had just realised that the distinguished-looking man sitting at that distant table was himself reflected in a mirror at the far end of the room. No wonder one had had to hurt people, he thought, resting his forehead on his hand.
‘Now stop trying to look like Edward Lyall with his burden,’ said Jessie sharply. ‘Do you mean to tell me that you have said nothing at all to her?’
‘We had very little conversation about anything. After dinner on Saturday we stood outside the vicarage gate, I remember, and she was frightened by a bat. I think she would have liked a walk in the twilight if it hadn’t been for the bats. And then I felt I really couldn’t suggest it. She would have expected me to kiss her, and one can’t do that in the village.’
‘Only behind locked doors,’ said Jessie mockingly. ‘It doesn’t matter what you do in the privacy of your own home.’
‘Oh, my dear … don’t speak of that here. It isn’t a worthy setting.’ He pushed aside the vase of dusty pink paper artificial flowers and took hold of her hand.
‘You had better not hold my hand,’ said Jessie in a low voice. ‘Flora Cleveland and that young man of hers have just come in. I suppose they’ve been to the pictures too. He is not holding her hand. Perhaps middle-aged lovers are more sentimental — a beautiful thought.’
‘I wonder if we could slip out another way without them seeing us?’ asked Fabian anxiously. ‘After all we don’t want the news to get about too soon.’
‘Not before you have finished with Prudence. Quickly, now, Flora has gone to the ladies’ cloakroom and the young man will not recognise us, or certainly not me.’
‘I will write to Prudence tonight,’ said Fabian firmly as they hurried along the street. ‘This deception is intolerable. Poor Prudence, she has always been loved. It will be a sad blow to her pride.’
‘Look,’ Jessie stopped outside an antique shop and looked in the window. ‘I wonder if you would perhaps buy me some little token?’ she said, feeling perhaps that Fabian was not likely to suggest it himself.
‘This is rather an expensive shop, my dear,’ he said cautiously. ‘I have kept one or two of Constance’s rings, and I was thinking …’
‘Certainly, since I am to take her place I should have one of her rings,’ said Jessie. ‘Perhaps you have even kept her wedding ring with the inscription she told you to have engraved inside it?’
‘Well, yes; I did not feel I could sell it. But I think you would probably prefer to have a new wedding ring,’ said Fabian seriously. ‘In any case, it might not fit you. But let me buy you some little trinket here. To-day seems to have been rather a special day, doesn’t it? Look, there is a tray with an interesting assortment of things. Is there anything there you would like?’
‘All on this tray,’ Jessie read. Well, that was something, to have him spend fifteen shillings on a useless sentimental object for her. ‘That little brooch with Mizpah on it. I think I should like that.’
‘It’s rather ugly, isn’t it?’ said Fabian doubtfully. ‘Mizpah has a depressing Biblical sound about it.’
‘But it has a meaning. And it might be quite appropriate for us. It means “The Lord watch between me and thee when we are absent one from another.”’
‘Well, yes,’ Fabian smiled.
They went into the shop and Fabian bought the brooch, which the shopkeeper wrapped in a piece of tissue paper, evidently not thinking it worthy of a box. When they had got outside, Jessie unwrapped it and pinned it on to her mackintosh.
‘Thank you, dearest,’ she said, taking his arm. ‘Now I really feel somebody.’
It had always been their custom to leave and return to the village by different trains so that they should not be seen at the station together, but this time, perhaps because of Mizpah, they decided to return together and, if necessary, to pretend that they had met accidentally.
But now, although they were not to know it yet, it did not really matter what they did, for Miss Doggett, alone in the house, had come upon the truth about them. Stumbled on it, was how she put it to herself.
Ever since the week-end when Jessie had upset the tea on Prudence’s dress, she had had a feeling that there was something different about Jessie. She had noticed her smiling to herself and had several times caught her at the window, looking down into Fabian’s garden.
After Jessie had gone out for the afternoon, Miss Doggett felt restless and dissatisfied. She put her feet up as usual for her after luncheon rest and listened to a woman’s programme on the wireless, but somehow its competent little talks about breast feeding, young children’s questions, and a housewife’s life in Nigeria did not seem to be planned for an elderly spinster. Her library book also failed to hold her attention, for although, according to the mystifying jargon of the publishers, its fourth large impression had been exhausted before publication, its effect on her was that of exhausting without granting the blessing of sleep. When at three o’clock, therefore, she had. not managed to drop off, her thoughts turned to Jessie. Why had she deliberately upset a cup of tea over Miss Bates? For it seemed now as if the action had been del
iberately calculated. What could she have hoped to gain by it? Miss Doggett pushed away her foot-stool, flung her book down on the floor and walked upstairs.
Jessie’s room was without any definite character apart from that given to it by the miscellaneous pieces, unwanted in other rooms, with which it was furnished. In all the years that she had lived with Miss Doggett, Jessie had not succeeded in stamping it with her own personality. One would have imagined that a gentlewoman would have her ‘things,’ those objects — photographs, books, souvenirs collected on holiday — which can make a room furnished with other people’s furniture into a kind of home. But Jessie seemed to have none of these. The only photograph was of her mother — Miss Doggett’s Cousin Ella — a plain-looking woman with an unsuitably sardonic expression for a Victorian. She had married late and had made an unfortunate marriage — Miss Doggett’s thoughts lingered with satisfaction on this theme for a few minutes, for Aubrey Morrow had left his wife and child after a few years — and then continued her examination of the room. The only books to be seen were the library book Jessie happened to be reading at that moment, a paper-backed detective novel that anybody might have and, rather oddly, an old A.B.C. There were no books of devotion, not even a Bible or a prayer-book, which one might certainly expect a spinster to possess. The ‘objects’ were even more un-promising — an ugly little china dog of some Scottish breed attached to an ash-tray, an old willow-pattern bowl with no apparent purpose, some dusty sea-shells in a box — it seemed almost as if Jessie had been at pains to suppress or conceal her personality. For there was no doubt that she had personality of an uncomfortable kind; she had inherited her mother’s sardonic expression, and who could tell how much of her father there might be in her? These things always came out eventually. It was quite likely that she herself might make an unsuitable marriage. But who was there for her to make an unsuitable marriage with? That was the point. Miss Doggett’s thoughts ranged rather wildly from the man who delivered the laundry and was rather free in his manner, to the Roman Catholic priest of the little tin church, whom Jessie had once admitted she thought handsome. Certainly the latter would be quite disgraceful. He would be unfrocked, no doubt… . Miss Doggett moved over to the wardrobe and opened it.