by Barbara Pym
‘Goodbye, then,’ she said. ‘I’ll pop in again some time.’
When she had gone Marcia took her shopping bag to unpack it in the kitchen. Every week she bought some tins for her store cupboard and now she spent some time arranging them. There was a good deal of classifying and sorting to be done here; the tins could be arranged according to size or by types of food—meat, fish, fruit, vegetables, soup or miscellaneous. This last category included such unclassifiable items as tomato puree, stuffed vine leaves (this was an impulse buy) and tapioca pudding. There was work to be done here and Marcia enjoyed doing it.
Then, as the day was fine, she went into the garden and picked her way over the long uncut grass to the shed where she kept milk bottles. These needed to be checked from time to time and occasionally she even went as far as dusting them. Sometimes she would put out one for the milkman but she mustn’t let the hoard get too low because if there was a national emergency of the kind that seemed so frequent nowadays or even another war, there could well be a shortage of milk bottles and we might find ourselves back in the situation of ‘No bottle, no milk’, as in the last war. As she moved among the bottles Marcia was irritated to discover one of an alien brand among the United Dairy bottles—‘County Dairies’, it said. Wherever had that come from? She didn’t remember noticing it before and of course the milkman wouldn’t take it back—they only collected their own bottles. She stood with it in her hand, frowning at the effort of trying to remember where it could possibly have come from. Then it dawned on her. Letty had given her some milk one day at the office. She had been staying with that friend of hers in the country and had brought back a pint of milk, had drunk some of it for her lunch, then given the rest to Marcia. So that was it. Marcia felt suddenly annoyed with Letty for having foisted this alien bottle on her. She must be made to take it back.
Seeing her coming out of the shed with a milk bottle in her hand, Nigel, the young man next door, told himself that here was a chance to show neighbourly friendliness, as his wife Priscilla was always urging him to. .
Would you like me to cut your grass, Miss Ivory?’ he asked, going to the fence. ‘I’ve got the mower out’ Though really, seeing its length, a scythe would be more appropriate.
‘No, thank you,’ said Marcia politely, ‘I prefer the grass as it is,’ and went into the house. She was still feeling annoyed with Letty about the milk bottle. There was certainly no question of her offering Letty a room in her house now; that was not at all the sort of person one wanted under the same roof.
That evening Letty crouched in her room, listening. It wasn’t even a rowdy party, these bursts of hymn-singing and joyful shouts, for Mr Olatunde, her new landlord, was a priest of a religious sect. ‘Aladura,’ Miss Embrey had murmured, but the name meant nothing, only the coming and going in the house and the noise. Now perhaps Letty really did feel like a drowning man, with the events of her past life unrolling before her, those particular events which had led her to this. How had it come about that she, an Englishwoman born in Malvern in 1914 of middle-class English parents, should find herself in this room in London surrounded by enthusiastic, shouting, hymn-singing Nigerians? It must surely be because she had not married. No man had taken her away and immured her in some comfortable suburb where hymn-singing was confined to Sundays and nobody was fired with enthusiasm. Why had this not happened? Because she had thought that love was a necessary ingredient for marriage? Now, having looked around her for forty years, she was not so sure. All those years wasted, looking for love! The thought of it was enough to bring about silence in the house and during the lull she plucked up the courage to go downstairs and tap—too timidly, she felt—at Mr Olatunde’s door.
‘I wonder if you could make a little less noise?’ she asked. ‘Some of us find it rather disturbing.’
‘Christianity is disturbing,’ said Mr Olatunde.
It was difficult to know how to answer this. Indeed Letty found it impossible so Mr Olatunde continued, smiling, ‘You are a Christian lady?’
Letty hesitated. Her first instinct had been to say ‘yes’, for of course one was a Christian lady, even if one would not have put it quite like that. How was she to explain to this vital, ebullient black man her own blend of Christianity—a grey, formal, respectable thing of measured observances and mild general undemanding kindness to all? ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, drawing back, ‘I didn’t mean…’ What had she meant? Confronted by these smiling people she felt she could hardly repeat her complaint about the noise.
A handsome woman in a long brightly coloured dress and head tie stepped forward. ‘We are having supper now,’ she said. ‘You will join us?’
Letty was reminded of Norman as a rich spicy smell was wafted towards her. She thanked the woman politely, saying that she had already eaten.
‘I’m afraid you would not like our Nigerian cooking,’ said Mr Olatunde, with a touch of complacency.
‘No, perhaps not.’ Letty withdrew, embarrassed by the crowd of smiling faces that seemed to be pressing in on her. We are not the same, she thought hopelessly. She wondered what Edwin and Norman and Marcia would have done in the circumstances, but came to no conclusions. Other people’s reactions were unpredictable and while she could imagine Edwin entering into the religious aspect of the evening and even taking part in the service, it might well be that Norman and Marcia, usually so set in their isolation, would in some surprising way have been drawn into the friendly group. Only Letty remained outside.
Eight
THERE HAD ALREADY been a good deal of talk in the office about Letty’s situation and what she ought to do about it, and as time went on the question became more urgent, especially when Marya found a living-in job as housekeeper to a family in Hampstead, and Miss Spurgeon made arrangements to go into an old people’s home.
‘You’ll be alone in the house now,’ said Norman gleefully. ‘It’ll seem strange, won’t it?’ Perhaps this was the third misfortune he had prophesied, proving that disasters always went in threes.
‘Your new landlord is a clergyman, isn’t he?’ said Marcia.
‘Yes, in a manner of speaking.’ Letty had a vision of Father Lydell leaning back in Marjorie’s armchair, eyes closed, sipping Orvieto, so very different from Mr Olatunde. Obviously there were clergymen and clergymen, she thought ‘I wouldn’t want to hurt his feelings,’ she said, ‘by anything I said about the people living in the house. He seems to be a very nice man.’
‘Isn’t there some friend you could live with?’ Edwin suggested. ‘Apart from the one who’s getting married?’ A woman like Letty must have many friends, a whole army of nice women like the WRVS or some—though not all—of the female congregation of his church. Surely there were plenty of such women? One saw them everywhere.
‘The best thing is to have a relative,’ said Norman. ‘Then they’re bound to do something for you. After all, blood is thicker than water, however distant the connection—you can bank on that.’
Letty considered some of her cousins, not seen since childhood, now living somewhere in the west of England. She could hardly expect any of them to offer her a home.
‘Have you ever thought of taking a lodger?’ Edwin asked, turning to Marcia.
‘The money might be useful,’ Norman chipped in, ‘when you’re retired.’
‘Oh, I shan’t need money,’ said Marcia impatiently. ‘There won’t be any need for me to take in lodgers,’ ‘Unthinkable’ was the word that came to her at Edwin’s suggestion, the idea of offering a home to Letty, especially when she remembered that milk bottle. But Letty wouldn’t like it either. Even now she was protesting, obviously embarrassed for Marcia as well as for herself.
‘There are organizations and people wanting to help ladies,’ said Edwin quaintly.
‘There’s a young woman who comes round to see me sometimes—seems to think I need help.’ Marcia laughed in a mirthless way. ‘It’s the other way round, if you ask me.’
‘But you have been in hospital,’ Edwi
n reminded her. ‘I expect that’s why they like to keep an eye on you.’
‘Oh, yes, but I go to Mr Strong’s clinic for that.’ Marcia smiled. ‘I don’t need young people telling me not to buy tinned peas.’
‘Well, it’s good to know that people do care,’ said Letty vaguely, feeling that it might go rather beyond tinned peas. ‘I expect something will turn up when I retire—after all, I haven’t retired yet.’
‘But you soon will,’ said Norman, ‘and you won’t get much of a pension from here to add to what the state gives you. And then there’s inflation to be considered,’ he added unhelpfully.
‘Inflation isn’t exactly the kind of thing you can consider,’ said Letty. ‘It just comes on you unawares.’
‘You’re telling me,’ said Norman, and delving in his pocket he produced the checkout payslip from his latest visit to the supermarket. Just listen to this,’ and he proceeded to read it out. It was the increase in the prices of tinned soup and butter beans that seemed to anger him most, giving a strange insight into his daily diet.
Nobody commented or even listened. Marcia thought complacently of her well-stocked store cupboard and Letty decided she would have an early lunch and then take a bus to the Oxford Street shops. Only Edwin, perhaps seeing himself as a person wanting to help ladies, went on thinking about Letty and her problem.
All Saints’ Day, the first of November, fell on a weekday. There was an evening Mass, quite well attended, and on the next Sunday Edwin was present at the ceremony of coffee and biscuits after the morning service of Parish Communion at a church he sometimes went to because he had once lived in the neighbourhood. It was not his regular church but he had chosen it especially with Letty in mind.
The making of coffee was in itself a ritual entrusted to various women members of the congregation, all of whom knew Edwin from his occasional visits to the church, and as he entered the hall, a bleak room garishly decorated by members of the youth club, he heard the voice of an old woman raised in a protest about biscuits.
‘It is quite unnecessary to have biscuits with the coffee,’ she said. ‘A hot drink is all that anyone needs.’
‘I like to have something to nibble with my coffee,’ protested a little furry woman in a grey coat. ‘We all know that Mrs Pope is wonderful for her age but the elderly don’t need much to eat If it had been known beforehand that the biscuit tin was empty something could have been done about it—it could have been replenished—biscuits could have been bought’
Into the middle of this controversy Edwin inserted himself with what seemed like a brutal attack. ‘I believe one of you ladies has a spare room,’ he declared.
There was silence, an awkward silence, Edwin felt, and both the women began to make excuses like the guests bidden to the marriage feast—the room was hardly more than a cupboard, it had all the things for the church bazaar in it, it might be needed for a relative. This last was the trump card but Edwin persevered. He had not thought out what he would do next, and he now realized that it might have been better if he had begun by describing Letty and outlining the nature of her problem, emphasizing her need for a room, so that consciences might be played upon and hearts touched. But how should he describe Letty? As a friend? She was hardly that and being a single woman might arouse gossip. A lady I know? That sounded too arch and coy. A woman who works in my office? Surely that would be best. The words woman, work, office, presented a reassuring picture of somebody of the preferred sex, who would be out all day and might even be a congenial companion on the occasions when she was in the house.
So Edwin went on, adopting a confidential tone, ‘You see, it’s like this. A woman who works in my office is in a difficulty. The house where she lives has been sold with the tenants in it and the new landlord and his family aren’t quite what she’s been used to, rather noisy, in fact.’
‘Blacks?’ asked Mrs Pope sharply.
‘That’s about the size of it,’ Edwin admitted in a genial way.
‘Mind you, Mr Olatunde is a very good man—a priest, in a manner of speaking.’
‘How can he be a priest in a manner of speaking?’ asked Mrs Pope. ‘He must be either a priest or not a priest. There can be no qualification.’
‘He is a priest of an African religious sect,’ Edwin explained. ‘And of course the services are not quite like ours—there’s a lot of noisy singing and shouting.’
‘And this woman—lady—she is that, I assume?’
‘Oh, certainly. There would be no difficulty on that score,’ said Edwin casually, feeling that Letty was in every way superior, if that was the criterion to be applied.
‘She finds the noise too much where she is living?’
‘Yes, she does, being a very quiet person herself.’ That was something to be emphasized.
‘Of course there is my large back room, and it might be useful to have another person in the house.’
Edwin recalled that Mrs Pope lived alone.
‘If one fell downstairs or tripped over a rug and was unable to get up…’
‘You might lie for hours before anyone came,’ said the little furry woman eagerly.
‘One’s bones are so brittle,’ said Mrs Pope. ‘A fracture could lead to serious complications.’
Edwin felt that they were getting off the point. He wanted the business to be settled, with Letty in the room. Of course Mrs Pope was old, but she was active and independent and he was sure that Letty, being a woman, would be very helpful in case of illness or accident. Now he could see the whole pattern emerging, with Letty’s life governed by the soothing rhythm of the Church’s year. All Saints’ today, then All Souls’; everybody could share in the commemoration of the saints and the departed. Then would come Advent followed closely—too closely, it often seemed—by Christmas. After Christmas came Boxing Day, the Feast of St Stephen, hardly observed as such unless it happened to be one’s patronal festival; then the Innocents, St John the Evangelist and Epiphany. The Conversion of St Paul and Candlemas (where one usually sang one of Keble’s less felicitous hymns) were followed all too soon by the Sundays before Lent, but the evenings were drawing out. Ash Wednesday was an important landmark—evening Mass and the Imposition of Ashes, the black smudge on the forehead, ‘dust thou art and to dust shalt thou return’—some people didn’t like that, thought it morbid’ or ‘not very nice’.
‘There is a basin with hot and cold water in the room and she could use the bathroom occasionally. She wouldn’t need a bath every night, would she?’ Too much washing was bad for the skin, the constant immersion in hot water dried out the natural oils … Mrs Pope was coming round to the idea of Letty while Edwin was taking her through the Church’s year, but he would hardly be able to answer questions about how often she would want a bath.
Everybody knew about Lent, of course, even if they didn’t do anything about it, with Palm Sunday ushering in the services of Holy Week—not what they used to be, certainly, but there was still something left of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday with the ceremonies, the prelude to Easter Day. Low Sunday always seemed a bit of an anticlimax after all that had gone before but it wasn’t long before Ascension Day and then Whit Sunday or Pentecost as it was properly called. After that you had Corpus Christi, with a procession out of doors if fine, and then Trinity Sunday, followed by all those long hot summer Sundays, with the green vestments and the occasional saint’s day … That was how it had always been and how it would go on in spite of trendy clergy trying to introduce so-called up-to-date forms of worship, rock and roll and guitars and discussions about the Third World instead of Evensong. The only difficulty was that Edwin wasn’t at all sure that Letty ever went to church. She had never mentioned it when he talked about such things in the office. Still, when she was settled in Mrs Pope’s back room and when she had retired, there was no knowing how her life would change.
Nine
So YOU ARE Miss Crowe.’
It was not the most friendly greeting, Letty felt, but the
re was nothing for it but to repeat that she was indeed Miss Crowe and to assume that the woman peering through the barely opened door must be Mrs Pope. And why should she have expected friendliness when the relationship between them was to be that of landlady and tenant? Friendliness was by no means to be taken for granted. Obviously she should have expected little in the way of warmth, with the taxi taking her what seemed so very far north, though the postal address was only NW6.
It was not long before Christmas—St Lucy’s Day, Edwin had reminded her, though the saint seemed to have no particular significance for the move. Norman, of course, made much of it being the shortest day. ‘Get there in good time,’ he advised. ‘You don’t want to be wandering about in a strange district after dark.’
‘One has to be careful,’ Mrs Pope went on, opening the door a little wider. ‘There are so many impostors these days.’
Letty had to agree, though she felt that Mrs Pope was not the sort of person to be taken in by an impostor. While Edwin’s impression and description of her had been merely that of a woman in her eightieth year who was ‘wonderful for her age’, Letty now saw that she was an imposing figure with noble almost Roman features and a mass of thick white hair, of the kind that is sometimes described as ‘abundant, arranged in an elaborate old-fashioned style.
After the vitality and warmth of Mr Olatunde’s house Mrs Pope’s seemed bleak and silent, with its heavy dark furniture and ticking grandfather clock, the kind of tick that would keep one awake until one got used to it. Letty was shown the kitchen where she could prepare her meals and a cupboard where she could keep her food. The bathroom and lavatory were indicated with gestures, being not the kind of rooms into which one would show people. The lavatory window, Letty saw when she went in, looked out on to back gardens, with blackened stumps on the frosty earth, and beyond them the railway, where trains rattled by in a kind of hinterland which marked their first emergence from the Underground. Not really the kind of district where one would choose to live, but of course it was only temporary and ‘beggars can’t be choosers’, as Norman lost no time in reminding her.