by Barbara Pym
The room itself was quite pleasant, sparsely furnished, which was a good thing, and there was a basin with hot and cold water, as Edwin had said. Letty felt like a governess in a Victorian novel arriving at a new post, but there would be no children here and no prospect of a romantic attachment to the widower master of the house or a handsome son of the family. Her own particular situation had hardly existed in the past, for now it was the unattached working woman, the single ‘business lady of the advertisements, who was most likely to arrive in the house of strangers. Letty had often found herself doing this, arranging her clothes in the drawers and wardrobe provided and putting out her personal possessions, the things that might give some clue as to what sort of person she was. There were her books—anthologies of poetry, though nothing later than Poems of Today. Second Series—her current library book; her transistor radio, a bowl of hyacinths nearly in flower, her knitting in a flowered cretonne bag. There were no photographs, not even of her friend Marjorie or of her old home, her parents, a cat or a dog.
At least Mrs Pope was leaving her to herself this first evening, Letty thought, as she prepared a poached egg on toast in the silent kitchen. Later, as she lay in bed, unable to sleep on her first night in a strange bed that would soon become as familiar as her own body, she realized that she had taken action, she had made the move, she had coped. In the sleepless hours she heard footsteps on the landing and a sudden thump. Supposing Mrs Pope had a fall? She was an elderly person and heavy—lifting her would be difficult. Letty hoped she wasn’t going to have to do that kind of coping, but eventually she fell asleep and heard nothing more.
Next morning in the office there was an air of expectancy, almost of excitement. They all wanted to know how Letty had got on in her new room. Edwin had a proprietary attitude towards the move—after all, he was entitled to it as he had found the room for her, and the others felt that he had done something pretty good in, as it were, delivering her from Mr Olatunde. ‘I only hope it won’t be a case of frying pan into fire,’ Norman observed. ‘You must watch out that you don’t get landed with an elderly person and all that entails.’
‘Oh, Mrs Pope is very independent,’ Edwin said quickly. ‘She’s a member of the parochial church council and a very active one.’
‘That’s as may be,’ said Norman, ‘but it doesn’t necessarily follow that she’s got perfect control over her legs—she might fall, you know.’
‘Yes, that thought came to me in the night,’ said Letty, ‘but it might happen to anyone. We could all fall.’
Nobody seemed inclined to go into the deeper implications of what Letty had just said, but Edwin repeated now what he had thought when he first broached the subject to Mrs Pope. ‘Oh, a woman can deal with these things easily enough,’ he reminded Norman in a rather sharp tone. ‘There’s no need to make the kind of fuss you or I would make if we were faced with such a situation.’
‘Equal opportunities!’ said Norman. ‘That’s one of the things we men prefer to leave to the ladies. Anyway, what is one’s responsibility in that kind of thing—answer me that?’
Just the ordinary responsibility of one human being towards another,’ said Letty. ‘I hope I should do whatever was best.’
‘But sometimes it’s unwise to move a person who has fallen,’ Norman persisted. ‘You could do more harm than good.’
‘You should ring for the ambulance,’ said Marcia, making her first contribution to the discussion. ‘The ambulance men know what to do. Are you able to use the kitchen when you want to?’ she went on, still feeling the very smallest tinge of guilt at not having offered to take in Letty herself, but of course, as she repeatedly told herself, it would not have done. And once again she had forgotten to bring that milk bottle to the office.
‘Yes, that seems to work all right I cooked supper and breakfast—there’s an electric cooker and I’m used to that, and plenty of room for me to keep my own things.’
‘It’s so important to have plenty of room for tins,’ said Marcia. ‘You should insist on that. You wouldn’t want to keep everything in the room where you sleep.’
‘I have to keep everything in the one room,’ said Norman.
‘Well, beggars can’t be choosers, as you’re so fond of reminding us,’ said Edwin. ‘I only hope this move will turn out to be a good thing,’ he added. ‘I shall feel responsible for it if anything goes wrong.’
‘You mustn’t feel that,’ Letty reassured him. ‘It’s up to oneself, to adapt to circumstances.’
‘Up to you to make a go of it,’ said Norman chirpily. ‘That’s the ticket.’
Mrs Pope waited until Letty had left the house before she went upstairs from her ground-floor sitting room. She will walk down to the bus stop or take the Underground, she thought, as she entered Letty’s room, knowing that she would not be back before half past six.
Letty had not asked for a key to the room and Mrs Pope felt that she had a duty to see that everything was in order. It would also be just as well to judge from her possessions what kind of a person her new lodger was.
The first thing that struck Mrs Pope was tidiness and order. This was a slight disappointment for she had hoped to find interesting things lying about in the room. Naturally she would expect somebody recommended by Mr Braithwaite—she did not think of him as ‘Edwin’—to be respectable, even a churchwoman, but she was surprised to find that there was no devotional book on the bedside table, not even a Bible, just a novel from the Camden library. Mrs Pope would have respected a biography but she was not interested in novels and did not give the book a second glance. Turning her attention to the washbasin she noted talcum powder and deodorant, a jar of skinfood and a tube of Steradent tablets besides toothbrushes and paste and a new flower-patterned face flannel. The little cupboard over the basin held only aspirins and vegetable laxative tablets, no exotic drugs of any kind, though she might well carry tablets in her handbag. The dressing table had a selection of cosmetics on it, all neatly ranged. Glancing over her shoulder towards the door, Mrs Pope opened the top drawer. It contained several neatly folded pairs of stockings or tights, gloves, scarves and a small leather jewel box. In the jewel box were a small string of pearls, obviously not real, two or three strings of beads, a few pairs of earrings and two rings, one gold with a half-hoop of small diamonds (her mother’s engagement ring?), and the other a cheap butterfly-wing in a silver setting. Nothing of value or interest there, Mrs Pope decided. The chest of drawers held underwear, immaculately clean and folded, and jumpers and blouses, equally neat and clean. The contents of the wardrobe were more or less what might have been expected from the rest of the room and Mrs Pope did no more than glance at the hanging dresses, suits and skirts. There was a trouser suit, too, the kind of thing women of Letty’s age had taken to wearing, and that too was as respectable and appropriate as the rest of the garments. Only one item caught Mrs Pope’s eye, a rather gaily patterned cotton kimono, which seemed not to be in character with the rest of Miss Crowe’s things. Had it perhaps been a gift from somebody in the mission field, a relative out there? There were some things one could hardly ask but no doubt she would see Miss Crowe coming out of the bathroom wearing it one day. Dissatisfied, Mrs Pope went downstairs again. The most one could say, and it seemed hardly enough, was that Miss Crowe seemed to be the ideal lodger or at least nothing could be gleaned to the contrary.
Ten
‘Christmas cames hut once a year;
And when it comes it brings good cheer…’.’
NORMAN RECITED THE tag with a touch of sarcasm in his voice. Nobody disputed the fact or took exception to his tone, for Christmas is a difficult time for those who are no longer young and are without close relatives or dependents, and each one in the office was thinking of the particular trials and difficulties the so-called festive season would bring with it. Only Edwin would be spending Christmas in the traditional and accepted way in his role as father and grandfather. ‘Christmas is a time for the children,’ people were apt to
say, and he was prepared to accept this and go along with it, though he would much have preferred to spend the festival alone at home, with no more than a quick drink with Father G. between services to mark the secular aspect of the occasion.
Norman himself had been invited to eat his Christmas dinner with his brother-in-law Ken and his lady friend, the woman who was presumably to replace his dead wife, Norman’s sister. ‘After all, he has nobody,’ they said, as they had when they allowed Norman to visit Ken in hospital. ‘Might as well help them get through their turkey,’ was the way Norman regarded the invitation, and as there was no public transport on that day Ken would call for him and bring him back by car so there would be no difficulty there. The hated motor car did occasionally have its uses.
It was the women—Letty and Marcia—who were the real worry, or posed something of a problem’, as Janice Brabner put it. They had no relatives they could spend Christmas with and the season had for many years now been an occasion to be got through as quickly as possible. Letty had often spent the holiday with her friend in the country but this year Marjorie had Father Lydell, forever fixed in Letty’s memory as leaning back in a comfortable chair sipping an appropriate wine, no doubt a burgundy or even a mulled claret to suit the season, but whatever it was she felt she would be an intruder this year and in any case no invitation had been forthcoming. In this lack Letty was conscious of Marjorie’s embarrassment at having to withhold it, so the season would not be one of unmixed happiness and relaxation for Marjorie either. In war there are no victors, as the saying went, and inappropriate though the idea might be there was still something applicable in it.
Marcia worried less about Christmas as the years went on. When her mother had been alive it had been a quiet time, marked only by the cooking of a larger than usual bird—their butcher usually recommended ‘a nice capon’ as being suitable for two ladies spending Christmas alone—and the provision of special food as well as titbits from the bird for Snowy, the old cat. After her mother’s death Snowy had been enough company for Marcia, and when he had gone there was no special point about Christmas Day and it tended to merge into the rest of the holiday until it was no different from any other part of it.
‘We must do something about Miss Ivory,’ Nigel and Priscilla were agreed on that Christmas was the time for ‘doing’ something about old people or ‘the aged’, as the nobler phrase described them, though that, in Priscilla’s mind, conjured up pictures of tiny frail oriental ladies rather than people like Miss Ivory.
‘It’s the loneliness that’s the worst part—or so one hears,’ Priscilla said. ‘The poor souls just long for somebody to talk to.’ One evening she had met Janice Brabner trying to call on Marcia but getting no answer to her ringing and knocking. ‘No joy whatsoever,’ as she put it, though ‘joy’ was hardly the word. Janice was going away for Christmas and was worried about Marcia, so Priscilla had promised to keep an eye on her, even to ask her in for a meal, and what more suitable occasion than the turkey on Christmas Day?
Nigel had been a bit doubtful about this. ‘She isn’t all that old,’ he had objected. ‘She’s independent enough to go out to work even though she’s so odd. I suppose it would be kind to ask her but I can’t quite see her fitting in with your grandparents.’
‘Perhaps she’ll refuse the invitation,’ said Priscilla, ‘but I feel I must ask her.’
‘She didn’t want me to cut her lawn that time when I offered,’ said Nigel hopefully.
‘But Christmas is a bit different,’ Priscilla said, and evidently this was what Marcia felt too for she even managed to smile when she was asked.
Of course the grandparents were terribly nice to her, so thankful were they not to be the kind of old people who needed to have something ‘done’ about them. Priscilla’s grandmother was so elegantly pink and white, with her beautifully coiffed hair and neat, pastel-coloured clothes, such a contrast to Marcia, with that crudely dyed hair and a peculiarly awful dress in a most unbecoming shade of bright blue. The grandparents led such useful and busy lives in their retirement in Buckinghamshire—every day for them was so full and interesting and their stay with Priscilla in London would be filled with worthwhile activities, visits to theatres and art galleries. What did Marcia do, or rather what would she do when she retired next year? One hardly liked to speculate and the question, politely and kindly put, brought forth the sort of answer that got one nowhere. Nor did Marcia really do justice to the traditional Christmas fare. The discovery that she didn’t drink had cast the first slight gloom on the proceedings and the hope that she would eat well was disappointed by the way she left most of her small helping on the side of her plate. She murmured something about being a very small eater but Priscilla thought she might at least have had the manners to make a show of eating when so much trouble had been taken. But then that was what Janice had warned her about—these people weren’t necessarily rewarding, one just had to plod on. Perhaps it would have been easier if Marcia had been that much older, really ancient.
After lunch they sat round the fire for coffee and chocolates were handed round. Everyone felt comfortably sleepy and would have liked to flop down and close their eyes, but the presence of Marcia was inhibiting. It seemed impossible to drop off with that beady glance fixed on them They were all relieved when she suddenly got up and said she must go.
‘How will you spend the rest of the holiday?’ Priscilla asked, as if she were determined to punish herself further. ‘Have you something arranged for Boxing Day?’
‘Boxing Day?’ Marcia did not seem to understand what was meant by Boxing Day, but after a pause she declared rather grandly, ‘We who work in offices do value our leisure time, so we don’t need to make elaborate plans,’ and of course everyone had to respect this, while thankful that they need not do anything more about her Christmas.
Next day Marcia rose late and spent the morning tidying out a drawer full of old newspapers and paper bags, something she had been meaning to do for a long time. Then she checked the contents of her store cupboard but did not eat anything until the evening when she opened a small tin of pilchards. It was one left over from Snowy’s store, so it was not really breaking into her reserves. She had heard or read somewhere that pilchards contained valuable protein, though this was not the reason why she had opened that particular tin. She did not even remember that the young doctor at the hospital had told her that she ought to eat more.
Letty had made up her mind to face Christmas with courage and a kind of deliberate boldness, a determination to hold the prospect of loneliness at bay. It wasn’t really as if she minded being alone for she was used to it; it was rather the idea that people might find out that she had no invitation for the day and that they would pity her. She endured the newspaper articles and radio programmes pandering to the collective guilt-feeling of those who were neither old nor lonely nor fortunate enough to have an odd relative or neighbour they could invite into their homes at Christmas, telling herself that at least she needn’t feel guilty at this festive season. Marjorie seemed to have none of these feelings either, Letty reflected, for she had made no mention of Letty joining her for Christmas, and had sent her card and present (bath foam and hand cream done up in a fancy package) particularly early, so that there could be no misunderstanding on that score. I wouldn’t have wanted to go there anyway, Letty told herself stoutly, not with David Lydell there. Even with the heavy load of Christmas services he would no doubt find plenty of time to be with his fiancee and, remembering the picnic, Letty did not fancy herself in the role of gooseberry.
Letty therefore prepared to spend Christmas alone, for she understood that Mrs Pope would be going to stay with her sister who lived in a village in Berkshire. But at the last minute there was a change of plan, various telephone calls were made, and in the end Mrs Pope announced that she was not going away after all. The change of plan was the result of an argument about heating, Mrs Pope’s sister apparently being too mean to switch on the storage heaters before J
anuary, and the cottage being not only cold but damp and poky as well.
‘I shall not go, neither now or ever,’ Mrs Pope declared, standing militant by the telephone in the full dignity of her eighty-odd years.
‘Warmth is so important,’ Letty said, remembering the office conversations about hypothermia.
‘Have you anything special for your Christmas dinner?’ Mrs Pope then asked.
It had not occurred to Letty that Mrs Pope might suggest any kind of festive sharing or pooling of resources, for they had not so far eaten together, though they had met in the kitchen preparing their individual breakfasts and suppers. She did not at first like to admit that she had bought a chicken, for it seemed almost brutish to contemplate eating even the smallest bird all by herself, but when she realized what was in Mrs Pope’s mind she had to confess.
‘I have some ham and a Christmas pudding, one I made last year, so it will be best if we have our meal together,’ Mrs Pope said. ‘It is ridiculous to think of two women in the same house eating separate Christmas dinners. Not that I really make any difference in what I eat at Christmas—it’s most unwise for old people to gorge themselves at any time.’
So Letty had no alternative but to listen to Mrs Pope discoursing on her favourite topic of the excessive amount of food most people ate. It was not conducive to an enjoyable meal and Letty could not help feeling that on this occasion she might have done better if she had stayed in her room in Mr Olatunde’s house. A jolly Nigerian Christmas would surely have included her, and not for the first time she began to wonder if she had done the right thing by moving. Still, Christmas Day had been lived through and was now nearly over, that was the main thing.