Quartet in Autumn

by Barbara Pym

  The radio offered a choice of comedy, with a braying studio audience, which she did not feel in the mood for, or carols, with their sad memories of childhood and the days that can never come back. So she took up her library book and sat reading, wondering what sort of a Christmas the others in the office had spent. Then she remembered that the Kensington sales started the day after Boxing Day and her spirits suddenly lifted.

  Pushing the boat out, aren’t you?’ said Norman, with unusual jollity, as Ken topped up his glass.

  ‘Well, I always think a really good meal like the one we’ve just eaten deserves all the trimmings,’ Ken said.

  ‘I only hope you’re not going to suffer for it.’ Norman could hardly resist casting this small gloom on the festivities. After all, the last time he’d seen Ken he’d been lying prone in the men’s surgical ward, feeling pretty sorry for himself. But now he seemed to have fallen on his feet all right with this girlfriend—Joyce her name was, shortened to Joy—who was not only quite good-looking and an excellent cook but had a bit of money of her own and had even passed the test of the Institute of Advanced Motorists, whatever that might mean. So Ken had good reason to push the boat out.

  Still, let them get on with it, all lovey-dovey at the kitchen sink doing the washing-up, Norman thought, sitting by the fire, as they had insisted when he made a half-hearted offer of help.

  ‘You put your feet up,’ Joy said. ‘Have a bit of a rest—after all, you’re one of the world’s workers.’

  Norman supposed they all were, come to that, though he and Ken spent most of their working life sitting down anyway, Ken stuck in the passenger seat of a car on test and he, Norman, at his desk doing damn all. Still, he wasn’t averse to a bit of a rest, especially after a good meal, and it was always nice to see a coal fire and not to have to worry about having the right coins for the meter.

  ‘Where exactly does he live?’ Joy was saying, her pink rubber-gloved hands plunged in the washing-up water.

  ‘Norman? Oh, he’s got a bedsitter—Kilburn Park way.’

  ‘On his own all the time, is he? It must be a bit lonely.’

  ‘Lots of people live on their own,’ Ken pointed out.

  ‘Still, at Christmas … it does seem sort of sad.’

  ‘Well, we’re having him here today, aren’t we? I don’t see what more we can do.’

  ‘You’ve never thought of sharing?’

  ‘Sharing? You have to be joking!’

  ‘Oh, I don’t mean now. But when your wife, when Marigold .. ,’ Joy brought out the name tentatively for she could never get used to it or believe that Ken’s wife had really been christened so, ‘when she passed on and you were left on your own…’

  Ken waited in grim silence. Let her put into words what she was thinking, that he might have asked Norman—the brother-in-law with whom he hadn’t a thing in common apart from having been married to his sister—to come and live in his house, was that it? Imagine sharing a house with Norman! The very idea of it was enough to give him the creeps, and thinking about how it might be made him smile, even want to laugh, so that the grim silence was relaxed and he playfully flicked a tea towel at his intended second wife.

  Larking about in the kitchen, Norman thought, hearing the sound of laughter, but he wasn’t really envious, his attitude being ‘sooner him than me’. When Ken had deposited him on his doorstep from his brand new buttercup-yellow motor car, Norman returned to his bed-sitting room—quite well satisfied with his lot. This Christmas had certainly brought a bit of good cheer, but today’s jollifications had been enough for him and he quite looked forward to getting back to the office and hearing how the others had got on.

  In the train coming back from staying with his daughter and her family, Edwin felt drained and exhausted, but relieved. They’d wanted him to stay longer, of course, but he’d pleaded various pressing engagements, for after Christmas Day, with a somewhat inadequate ‘Family Communion’ as the main service (no High Mass), and Boxing Day with a surfeit of cold turkey and fractious children, he felt he’d had enough. His son-in-law dropped him at the station while the family went on to a pantomime where they were to be joined by the other grandparents and another lot of children. All a very jolly family party but not exactly his ‘scene’, as Norman might put it.

  Taking out his diary, Edwin considered the days after Christmas. Today, December 27th, was St John the Evangelist and there should be a good High Mass this evening at St John’s over the other side of the common—it was their patronal festival, of course, and the priest there was a friend of Father G.’s. Then there was the day after, December 28th, Holy Innocents—he’d try to get over to Hammersmith for that. People didn’t seem to realize what a lot there was going on after Christmas, quite apart from the day itself.

  Eleven

  THE FIRST DAY they were back in the office was the second of January. None of them had really needed New Year’s Day to recover from the celebrations of the night before because none of them had been to a party, but there had always been grumblings when in the past they had been obliged to work on the day. Now, of course, the extended holiday had seemed a little too long and they were all glad to be back to work.

  ‘Or what passes for work,’ as Norman remarked, tilting back in his chair and drumming his fingers on his empty table.

  ‘It’s always a bit slack at this time,’ Letty said. ‘One tries to get things done before Christmas.’

  ‘To clear one’s desk,’ said Marcia importantly, using a phrase from long ago that had little or no reality in their present situation.

  ‘And when you get back there’s nothing on it,’ said Norman peevishly. He was bored now that the first interest of hearing about other people’s Christmases had evaporated.

  Well, this has come in,’ said Edwin, holding up a cyclostyled notice. He passed it to Norman who read it out.

  ‘A Memorial Service for a man who retired before we came,’ he said. ‘What’s that got to do with us?’

  ‘I didn’t know he’d died,’ said Letty. ‘Wasn’t he once chairman?’

  It was in The Times, Edwin pointed out. ‘One feels that perhaps this department ought to be represented.’

  ‘They couldn’t expect that if nobody knew him,’ said Marcia.

  ‘I suppose they’d send round a notice in case anybody wanted to go,’ said Letty in her usual tolerant manner. ‘After all, there might be some who’d worked with him.’

  ‘But it’s today,’ said Norman indignantly. ‘How could we go today, at such short notice? What’s going to happen to the work?’

  Nobody answered him.

  ‘Twelve noon,’ Norman read out scornfully. ‘I like that! What do they think we are?’

  ‘I think I shall go,’ said Edwin, looking at his watch. ‘I see it’s at the church used by the university—rather a suitable setting for a Memorial Service for an agnostic.’

  ‘I suppose you know the church, you’ve been there before?’ Letty asked.

  ‘Oh, yes, I know it all right,’ said Edwin casually. ‘Pretty undenominational, you might say. They have to cater for all sorts there, but I suppose there’ll be somebody who knows what to do.’

  ‘Let’s hope so! Unless you feel like taking the service yourself,’ said Norman sarcastically. He was irritated at Edwin taking what seemed to him like an unfair advantage, though where the advantage lay he could hardly have said.

  The church was still decorated for Christmas, with stiff-looking poinsettias and sprigs of holly on the window ledges, but an expensive florist’s arrangement of white chrysanthemums had been placed at the side of the altar, as if to emphasize the dual purpose of the church’s present function.

  Memorial services were not much in Edwin’s line, particularly not when they commemorated persons with whom he had little or nothing in common. It wasn’t as if they were like funerals, of which he had experienced his fair share—father, mother, wife and various in-law relatives. And it wasn’t as if this was a proper Requiem Mass,
more like a social gathering, with the smartly dressed women in hats and fur coats and the dark-suited men in good, heavy overcoats. They seemed very far removed from the little huddle of mourners Edwin associated with funerals he had attended. Of course the time of mourning had passed and this service was being held to celebrate the deceased’s life and achievements, so there was a difference. Another noticeable difference was the warmth of the church on this January day. Reassuring wafts of hot air circulated round Edwin’s feet and he noticed the woman in front of him loosening the collar of her fur coat.

  The hymns chosen were ‘He who would valiant be’, and another with modern words that might seem to have been specially written so as not to offend the most militant agnostic or atheist, set to a tune that nobody seemed to know. There was a reading from Ecclesiastes and a short eulogy, delivered by a younger colleague of the deceased, quietly triumphant in the prime of life. Edwin had seen this person once or twice at the office, so he felt that his presence at the service was justified. After all, he was representing Norman, Letty and Marcia, and that was entirely fitting.

  As he filed out with the congregation, Edwin noticed that some of them, instead of going out through the church door, seemed to be slipping into a half open side door into a kind of vestry. Not everyone was doing this, so it looked as if those who did were in some way favoured and Edwin soon saw why this was. Inside the vestry he glimpsed a table on which were ranged glasses of a drink that looked like sherry (it would hardly have been whisky, he felt). It was easy for Edwin to insinuate himself among the slippers-in and nobody questioned him; he looked very much the kind of person who had the right to be there, tall, grey and sombre.

  Taking a glass of sherry—there was a choice of medium or dry, sweet evidently not having been considered appropriate to the occasion—Edwin looked around him, storing up impressions to tell them back in the office. His own observations took in the usual paraphernalia of the Anglican church that made this vestry much like any other of his experience—flower vases and candlesticks, an untidy pile of hymn books with the covers torn and no doubt pages missing inside, and a discarded crucifix of elaborate design, probably condemned by the brass ladies as impossible to clean. A crisp-looking terylene surplice was suspended from a hook on a cleaner’s wire hanger and there were red cassocks and a few dusty old black ones hanging on a rail. But these details would probably not interest Norman, Letty and Marcia. They would want to know who was at the service and how they were behaving, what they were saying and doing.

  ‘Well, at least we’ve given him some kind of a send-off,’ said an elderly man at Edwin’s side, ‘and I think he’d like to think of us here drinking sherry.’ He put down his empty glass and took another.

  ‘People always say that,’ said a woman who had joined them. ‘And it’s certainly convenient to suppose that anything we do is what they would have liked. But Matthew never entered a church in his life, so perhaps the drinking would be all he’d approve of.’

  ‘I expect he was baptized and attended church when he was young,’ Edwin observed, but the others moved away from him, making him feel that he had gone too far, not only by this observation but by attending the service at all. Yet he was undeniably a member of the staff, even if only a humble one, and had as much right as anyone to be paying his tribute to a man he had never known personally.

  Edwin drained his glass and put it down carefully on the table. He noticed that it had been covered with a white cloth and wondered idly if it was of ecclesiastical significance. He decided not to help himself to another glass although he could easily have done so. It might not be fitting. Also a thing like that ‘might get back’—you never knew.

  Now the problem of lunch presented itself. Edwin had a sandwich in the office but he was not quite ready to face the others, so decided to go to a coffee house in Southampton Row, where he sat brooding in a curtained alcove, drinking strong Brazilian coffee.

  A pair of lovers sat opposite him but he did not notice them He was thinking about his own funeral—he would hardly rate a ‘Memorial Service’—a proper Requiem, of course, with orange candles and incense and all the proper ceremonial details. He wondered if Father G. would outlive him and what hymns he would choose … A clock struck two and he realized that he ought to be getting back.

  Norman looked up sourly as Edwin entered the room. Something had apparently ‘come up’ and Norman was having to deal with it.

  ‘Nice work if you can get it—going to a Memorial Service at twelve and staying out three hours,’ Norman commented.

  ‘Two hours, twelve minutes,’ said Edwin, consulting his watch. ‘You could have come too if you’d wanted to.’

  ‘Was it a beautiful service?’ Letty asked. As an infrequent churchgoer she had the impression that services of this type were always beautiful.

  ‘I wouldn’t say that exactly,’ said Edwin, hanging up his overcoat on a peg.

  Marcia caught a mingled whiff of coffee and alcohol as he passed her to go to his table. ‘What’ve you been up to?’ she asked, but did not expect an answer.

  Twelve

  THE ORGANIZATION WHERE Letty and Marcia worked regarded it as a duty to provide some kind of a retirement party for them, when the time came for them to give up working. Their status as ageing unskilled women did not entitle them to an evening party, but it was felt that a lunchtime gathering, leading only to more than usual drowsiness in the afternoon, would be entirely appropriate. The other advantage of a lunchtime party was that only medium Cyprus sherry need be provided, whereas the evening called for more exotic and expensive drinks, wines and even the occasional carefully concealed bottle of whisky or gin—‘the hard stuff, as Norman called it, in his bitterness at being denied access to it. Also at lunchtime sandwiches could be eaten, so that there was no need to have lunch and it was felt by some that at a time like this it was ‘better’ to be eating - it gave one something to do.

  Retirement was a serious business, to be regarded with respect, though the idea of it was incomprehensible to most of the staff. It was a condition that must be studied and prepared for, certainly—‘researched’ they would have said—indeed it had already been the subject of a seminar, though the conclusions reached and the recommendations drawn up had no real bearing on the retirement of Letty and Marcia, which seemed as inevitable as the falling of the leaves in autumn, for which no kind of preparation needed to be made. If the two women feared that the coming of this date might give some clue to their ages, it was not an occasion for embarrassment because nobody else had been in the least interested, both of them having long ago reached ages beyond any kind of speculation. Each would be given a small golden handshake, but the state would provide for their basic needs which could not be all that great. Elderly women did not need much to eat, warmth was more necessary than food, and people like Letty and Marcia probably had either private means or savings, a nest-egg in the post office or a building society. It was comforting to think on these lines, and even if they had nothing extra, the social services were so much better now, there was no need for anyone to starve or freeze. And if governments failed in their duty there were always the media—continual goadings on television programmes, upsetting articles in the Sunday papers and disturbing pictures in the colour supplements. There was no need to worry about Miss Crowe and Miss Ivory.

  The (acting) deputy assistant director, who had been commanded to make the presentation speech, wasn’t quite sure what it was that Miss Crowe and Miss Ivory did or had done during their working lives. The activities of their department seemed to be shrouded in mystery—something to do with records or filing, it was thought, nobody knew for certain, but it was evidently ‘women’s work’, the kind of thing that could easily be replaced by a computer. The most significant thing about it was that nobody was replacing them, indeed the whole department was being phased out and only being kept on until the men working in it reached retirement age. Yet under the influence of a quick swig of sherry, even this unpromisin
g material could be used to good effect.

  The deputy assistant director stepped into the middle of the room and began to speak.

  ‘The point about Miss Crowe and Miss Ivory, whom we are met together to honour today, is that nobody knows exactly, or has ever known exactly, what it is that they do,’ he declared boldly. ‘They have been—they are—the kind of people who work quietly and secretly, doing good by stealth, as it were. Good, do I hear you ask? Yes, good, I repeat, and good I mean. In these days of industrial unrest it is people like Miss Ivory and Miss Crowe’—the names seemed to have got reversed, but presumably it didn’t matter—‘who are an example to us all. We shall miss them very much, so much so that nobody has been found to replace them, but we would be the last to deny them the rewards of a well-earned retirement. It gives me much pleasure on behalf of the company and staff to present each of these ladies with a small token of our appreciation of their long and devoted service, which carries with it our best wishes for their future.’

  Letty and Marcia then came forward, each to receive an envelope containing a cheque and a suitably inscribed card, the presenter remembered a luncheon engagement and slipped away, glasses were refilled and a buzz of talk broke out Conversation had to be made and it did not come very easily once the obvious topics had been exhausted. As the party went on, people divided most easily into everyday working groups. It was the most natural thing then for Letty and Marcia to find themselves with Edwin and Norman, and for the latter to make some comment on the speech and to suggest that from what had been said he supposed they would spend their retirement setting the motor industry to rights.

  Marcia was glad to be with people she knew. When she met other members of the staff she was conscious of her breastlessness, feeling that they must sense her imperfection, her incompleteness. Yet on the other hand she liked to talk about herself, to bring the conversation round to hospitals and surgeons, to pronounce in a lowered, reverent tone the name of Mr Strong. She could even, if it came to that, take some pleasure in saying ‘my mastectomy—it was the word ‘breast’ and the idea of it that upset her. None of the speeches and conversations dealing with her retirement had contained any references to breast (hope springing eternal in the human) or bosom (sentiments to which every b. returns an echo), as they might well have done had the deputy assistant director’s speech been more literary.