Jane and Prudence

by Barbara Pym

  ‘Well, Jessie,’ she said in a satisfied tone, ‘I think Constance would have been pleased at this news.’

  ‘Yes, wouldn’t she,’ said Fabian, also with some satisfaction. ‘I think it would have been just what she would have wished. Perhaps she does know and is giving us her blessing in some way. I feel very strongly that perhaps, in some way …’ His sentence petered out rather feebly. Perhaps he was conscious of Jane’s eyes upon him, and she now stood up, pushing aside her unfinished glass of gin with an impatient gesture. She had no sympathy with Fabian’s sentimental theology, and indeed felt that her part in the proceedings was over. Nobody took much notice of her as she said goodbye and let herself out of the house.

  When she reached home she found that Flora and Paul had returned and were in the kitchen getting supper. Nicholas was wandering about among his tobacco leaves, occasionally fingering one to see if it was drying well.

  ‘How did it go?’ he asked anxiously.

  ‘We found them both at Fabian’s house. Miss Doggett seems to have been right. Fabian and Jessie are to be married, apparently.’ Jane sat down wearily, still wearing Nicholas’s black mackintosh.

  ‘Are you talking about Mr. Driver and Miss Morrow?’ called Flora from the gas stove. ‘We saw them having tea at the Regal Cafe, didn’t we, Paul?’

  ‘Did we? I remember your saying something about a man and a woman sitting there. Wasn’t it that man who came to dinner the other evening who didn’t seem to know what an anthropologist was?’

  So that was how Fabian was to be known to Paul, thought Jane with a flash of amusement. He would hardly have been very pleased.

  Supper was rather a gloomy meal. Nicholas and Jane did not say much, for Jane was brooding about what she should say to Prudence, and the young people spoke in low whispers, as if there were a death in the house. After the meal was over Jane retired to write her letter and Nicholas to his study for some unspecified purpose.

  Paul and Flora settled themselves to the washing-up and could be heard singing in the back kitchen.

  ‘Poor Prudence,’ said Flora. ‘We did hope that this time …what did you think of her?’

  ‘Rather attractive in a way, but she looks about thirty, you know,’ said Paul solemnly.

  ‘I wonder if I shall get like that,’ Flora mused.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Oh, falling in love with people and casting them off and then being cast off myself in the end.’

  ‘But need it be the end for her?’

  ‘Well, the supply of suitable men isn’t inexhaustible when one reaches her age — not like it is at Oxford.’

  Paul, who was nineteen and had already had several romances, made no comment. ‘Do you think this Fabian man attractive?’ he asked at length.

  ‘Yes; I suppose so, in a rather used-up, Byronic sort of way. But he’s rather middle-aged, really.’ Flora squeezed out the dish cloth and draped it neatly over the papier-mache washing-up bowl.

  ‘Let’s go into the garden,’ said Paul; ‘it’s stopped raining now.’

  Looking through her bedroom window, biting the end of her pen, Jane saw them walking hand-in-hand down the path between the clumps of Michaelmas daisies. She remembered noticing the title of a play on the wireless, Love and Geography. She had wondered at the time what possible connection there could be between the two. Well, it was a nice evening now that the rain had stopped, she thought absently, turning back to the blank sheet of paper before her.

  In the damp, earwig-infested summer-house, which was an old-fashioned wooden structure with diamond-paned windows of crimson, orange and royal blue stained-glass, Paul put his arms around Flora and began quoting Donne,

  O my America!

  My new-found-land…

  as Prudence had suggested that he might. But Jane, the anxious mother, was now deep in her letter and the sentences were flowing quite easily.

  Chapter Twenty

  SO PRUDENCE had not been Fabian’s mistress, after all.

  This was the thought that seemed uppermost in Jane’s mind as she sat trying to think of what she could say to Prudence, and she was displeased with herself that it should be so. But thinking over Prudence’s guarded answer when she had put the question to her plainly and Fabian’s remarks of a few hours ago, it did seem as if the worst — which was what Jane called it in her own mind — had not happened. This should certainly make the situation easier. Prudence’s feelings would be less deeply involved and there could be no chance that she might be going to have a baby. Though it seemed, Jane thought, as if that kind of thing didn’t happen nowadays. It would have been a help if she could have known what Fabian was going to say in his letter, but he had given no indication, beyond promising that he ‘would write a line’. Yet his whole bearing, hand clasped to brow, tragic eyes and ruffled hair, pointed to his taking the attitude that this would hurt him more than it hurt Prudence. Jane felt that he would write from the depths of a wretchedness that would not necessarily be insincere because its outward signs were so theatrical. Presumably attractive men and probably women too must always be suffering in this way; they must so often have to reject and cast aside love, and perhaps even practice did not always make them ruthless and cold-blooded enough to do it without feeling any qualms.

  Of course, Jane told herself, in an effort to relieve her own misery and her feeling of guilt for the part she had played in bringing them together, Prue hadn’t really been in love with Fabian. Indeed, it was obvious that at times she found him both boring and irritating. But wasn’t that what so many marriages were — finding a person boring and irritating and yet loving him? Who could imagine a man who was never boring or irritating? It had all seemed so very suitable, so very much the thing for a woman of twenty-nine, and there was no doubt that Prudence’s pride would be seriously wounded when she realised that it was plain, mousy Jessie Morrow who had taken Fabian away from her. Perhaps this was after all what men liked to come home to, someone restful and neutral, who had no thought of changing the curtains or wallpapers? Jessie, who, for all her dim appearance, was very shrewd, had no doubt realised this. A beautiful wife would have been too much for Fabian, for one handsome person is enough in a marriage, if there is to be any beauty at all. And so often there isn’t, Jane thought, drawing little houses on the blotting-paper, remembering the grey and fawn couples one saw so often in hotel lounges, hardly distinguishable, men from women, in their dimness.

  Difference of sex no more we knew,

  Than our Guardian Angels do…

  she thought, suddenly smiling to herself at the way a not quite appropriate quotation would come into her mind on nearly every occasion.

  Then she returned resolutely to the matter in hand, and after marshalling her confused thoughts succeeded in writing a loving and sympathetic letter which brought the tears to Prudence’s eyes more readily than Fabian’s scrawl, stressing his wretchedness and how much better off she would be without him.

  Both letters had arrived by the same post, when Prudence, in her rose-patterned, frilled summer housecoat, was preparing breakfast in her neat little kitchen.

  The blow was none the less shattering for being not entirely unexpected, for although Prudence had noticed a falling off in Fabian’s affection the last time she had seen him, she had attributed it to his preoccupation with the Parochial Church Council and what people would think if he were seen walking in the village with her at night. She had not really doubted that they would meet again in London and that all would then be well.

  She stood holding Jane’s letter in one hand, while the other automatically moved the toaster from under the grill.

  ‘You know so much more than I do about the making and breaking of love affairs,’ Jane had written, ‘so I hope you will not long be unhappy over this, or not too long. But on the morning when you get this letter you will be alone, darling Prue, so be sure and give yourself a good breakfast, if you possibly can…

  Dear Jane, Prudence smiled; it was real
ly unlike her to be so practical. Well, the toast was not burnt and the coffee was just starting to bubble up into the top of the percolator, there was no reason why she should snatch it off the gas before it had had a chance to get as strong as she liked it. She would have some orange-juice, too, and perhaps even a boiled egg. Later she might not feel like eating.

  It was a hot day. Prudence dressed with her usual elegance and painted her face and eyes with almost more than her usual care. It was at once force of habit and a kind of defiance. But as she stood waiting to cross the road to the bus she felt curiously detached, as one sometimes does in a time of great happiness or misery, and began to wonder whether she would even be able to negotiate the traffic safely.

  She arrived at the office without mishap, however. Miss Clothier was on holiday, and although Miss Trapnell seemed in some way incomplete without her, the conversation was exactly the same as if they had both been there.

  ‘Such a lovely day!’ said Miss Trapnell. ‘I always find I wake earlier on these fine mornings. In fact, I was here and had started work at a quarter-past nine this morning.’

  ‘Then you will be able to go at a quarter-past five,’ said Prudence absently.

  She turned to her work almost with relief, hoping to lose herself in it. She even began to type out some tables of figures, work which she normally considered beneath her, and found it very soothing. Occasionally, however, other thoughts broke through the careful barrier she had put up. What was she going to say to Fabian when she answered his letter? Who would go with her on her summer holiday now?

  At about a quarter to eleven Miss Trapnell looked at her watch and remarked, ‘I hope Dr. Grampian hasn’t called Marilyn in for dictation this morning.’

  ‘Why? What difference can it make to us?’

  ‘Well, don’t you see, Miss Bates, with Gloria on holiday there is only Marilyn to make the tea, and if Dr. Grampian is dictating to her it may be delayed. He would not realise that it was getting to be time to put the kettle on.’

  ‘No. I suppose he would consider that he had a mind above such things,’ said Prudence.

  ‘Well, Miss Bates, it’s hardly a question of being above them.

  They are very important, vital, you might say. Somebody must be thinking about them or we should soon notice it, and men would be the first to complain.’

  ‘I’ll go and make the tea if Marilyn is with Dr. Grampian,’ said Prudence apathetically.

  ‘You, Miss Bates? Well, I hardly think you could, you know. It isn’t your place to, or mine, for that matter. It’s rather difficult, really.’

  ‘It seems impossible,’ said Prudence.

  They went on with their work in silence for a few minutes and then Miss Trapnell said, ‘I think I’ll just go and see what’s happening. I might perhaps put the kettle on.’

  When she had gone out of the room Prudence’s control seemed to give way. She leaned her forehead down on her typewriter and felt the cold metal against her brow.

  The door opened and Geoffrey Manifold came in.

  ‘Well, and how is Prudence to-day?’ he asked in a rather jaunty tone.

  Prudence did not answer, but began to cry.

  Perhaps she was hardly conscious of him standing there by her table and would have cried anyway, but if she had expected to find his arms around her, consoling her, she was disappointed. He just stood by awkwardly, embarrassed as men often are at the sight of a woman in tears.

  ‘You’ll spoil your make-up,’ he said in what seemed a callous tone. ‘Gramp will probably summon you in any minute now, and it will be rather difficult to repair the damage, won’t it? Doesn’t that stuff come off your eyelashes when you cry?’

  ‘It’s supposed not to,’ sniffed Prudence, taking out her handkerchief and mopping her eyes very gingerly. ‘But I believe you’re right; it has run.’ She looked up at him and noticed with a slight shock that the expression of his eyes did not match the indifference of his tone.

  ‘Is there anything I can do?’ he asked.

  Do? thought Prudence, rather wildly, contemplating his plaid shirt and tie. ‘Well, you might help me with these tables. I don’t seem able to get them right somehow.’ They sat quietly side by side, until Miss Trapnell, rather flustered, came in carrying a tray with three cups on it.

  ‘Marilyn is still in there with him,’ she said, ‘so I had to make the tea myself, there was nothing else for it. Most inconsiderate of him, I think. I went in with his cup and he didn’t even look up to say thank you.’

  ‘Well, we’ll say thank you,’ said Mr. Manifold, putting on a certain amount of charm. ‘We’re most grateful, aren’t we, Miss Bates?’

  ‘Yes, we certainly are.’

  ‘I don’t know whether I’ve made your Nescafe as you like it, Mr. Manifold,’ said Miss Trapnell fussily. ‘I wasn’t sure how much milk you liked, so I brought it separately in a jug.’

  ‘Thank you. That’s very kind of you, but I usually have it black.’

  Miss Trapnell sat down in her chair and sighed, exhausted with the exertions of tea-making.

  ‘Dr. Grampian did say that he wanted to see you, Miss Bates, when you were free.’

  ‘When I was free?’ asked Prudence. ‘It isn’t like him to be so considerate.’

  She went upstairs and paused outside his door. His voice droned on, dictating endless sentences without verbs.

  Prudence tapped on the door.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ he said crossly, for he was not feeling very well this morning. Lucy had given a party the evening before which had gone on rather too long; the company had been boring and the drink strong and abundant. They could not really afford to give parties on such a scale… . ‘Go away now,’ he said, dismissing Marilyn, ‘and bring that back to me when you’ve typed it. Now, Miss Bates, what is it?’

  ‘I thought you wanted me,’ said Prudence, feeling utterly forlorn. She was too much wrapped up in her own desolation to realise that he had a hangover. A year ago, she would have thought: Ah, one of Lucy’s parties. Poor darling, I must humour him. But to-day it was she who must be humoured.

  ‘Well, I don’t think I did,’ he said brusquely. ‘Unless you’ve got anything to show me?’

  ‘No, I haven’t. But you told Miss Trapnell. .’

  ‘Oh, whatever it was, I’ve forgotten now.’ Her heavy expensive scent, totally unsuitable for the office, reminded him of the party last night. He was only very slightly gratified to notice, when he looked up to dismiss her, that her eyes seemed to be full of tears. But over lunch at his club, the high, querulous voice of a Bishop complaining because there was no more Camembert left made him smile. And all because the tears in Miss Bates’s eyes proved that he still retained his old power over women.

  Prudence had hurried into the lavatory, where she had cried noiselessly for a few moments and then gone out to what she felt must be a solitary lunch. She chose a restaurant which was rather expensive, but frequented mainly by women, so that she felt no embarrassment at being alone. Here, she knew, she could get the kind of food she deserved, for she must be more than usually kind to herself to-day. A dry Martini and then a little smoked salmon; she felt she could manage that. There was a certain consolation in the crowds of fashionably dressed women, especially as Prudence felt that she could equal and even excel some of them. Had they too suffered in love? she wondered. Were some of them suffering even at this moment? Or had they passed through suffering to something worse, the blankness and boredom of indifference? It was impossible to tell from their smooth, well-groomed faces, and Prudence wondered whether she too looked as indifferent. Or might somebody ask, ‘Who is that interesting-looking young woman, with the traces of tears on her cheeks, eating smoked salmon?’

  ‘And what would you like to follow, madam?’ asked the waitress. ‘I can recommend the chicken.’

  ‘Well,’ Prudence hesitated, ‘perhaps just a slice of the breast, and a very few vegetables.’ No sweet, of course, ufiless there was some fresh fruit, a really rip
e yellow-fleshed peach, perhaps? And afterwards, the blackest of black coffee.

  There was Saturday to come and Sunday, she thought. Jane had offered to come up and spend the week-end with her if it would be any help, but she felt that having to cope with Jane might be too much for her. She would have to face her loving questions; she might even be asked again whether she had been Fabian’s mistress.

  Fabian had not been so much to Prudence’s flat as to have left behind any particularly poignant memories. He had admired the rose-coloured curtains, they had sat together on the rather uncomfortable little Regency sofa and he had kissed her there, but he had never stayed for a night, pottered about in the kitchen, put up a shelf or mended a flex. Indeed, with his own elegance, he had seemed to fit into the general scheme of furnishing rather too well, like a turbaned blackamoor holding a lamp, so that he might have been no more than just another ‘amusing’ object.

  In the evening Prudence wrote to him, a sad, resigned letter, a little masterpiece in its way, which he was to shed tears over as he stood in his garden reading it, with the first leaves beginning to drop down from the walnut tree.

  Life with Jessie suddenly seemed a frightening prospect, unless it could be like life with Constance all over again, with little romantic episodes here and there. But Jessie was too sharp to allow that. It was as if a net had closed round him. He went into the house and put Prudence’s letter away in a secret drawer of his desk, where, years later, he might come upon it, and either wonder which of all his many loves she had been, or brood regretfully over it as a wonderful thing that had come into his life too late.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  SATURDAY PASSED somehow for Prudence in a rather fanatical tidying of her flat, in much polishing and dusting, and in buying herself all the nicest things she could think of to eat and drink. In the evening she had asked her contemporary, Eleanor Hitchens, to dinner, and quite enjoyed herself, hinting at tragedy, while Eleanor, her good-natured face beaming, said with a kind of rough sympathy, ‘Oh, Prue, you and your men and all these emotional upsets! Doesn’t it make life very wearing? Still, you were just the same at Oxford, I remember. Whoever was it then — Peter or Philip or Henry or somebody?’