Quartet in Autumn

by Barbara Pym

  It was of course generally known that Miss Ivory had undergone a serious operation, but the dress she was wearing today—a rather bright hyacinth blue courtelle—was several sizes too big for her skinny figure, so that very little of her shape was visible. People at the party who did not know her were fascinated by her strange appearance, that dyed hair and the peering beady eyes, and she might have provided unusual entertainment if one had had the courage to attempt a conversation with her. But one never did have quite that sort of courage when it came to the point. Ageing, slightly mad and on the threshold of retirement, it was an uneasy combination and it was no wonder that people shied away from her or made only the most perfunctory remarks. It was difficult to imagine what her retirement would be like—impossible and rather gruesome to speculate on it.

  Letty, by contrast, was boringly straightforward. Even her rather nice green-patterned jersey suit and her newly set mousy hair were perfectly in character. She had already been classified as a typical English spinster about to retire to a cottage in the country, where she would be joining with others like her to engage in church activities, attending meetings of the Women’s Institute, and doing gardening and needlework. People at the party therefore talked to her about all these things and Letty’s natural modesty and politeness prevented her from telling them that she was no longer going to share a country cottage with a friend but would probably be spending the rest of her life in London. She knew that she was not a very interesting person, so she did not go into too much boring detail with the young people who enquired graciously about her future plans. Even Eulalia, the black junior, gave her an unexpectedly radiant smile. Another, whose thick, smooth straight neck rose up like a column of alabaster, the kind of girl it was impossible to imagine engaging in any of the mundane office jobs like typing or filing, suggested brightly that she’d be able to watch the telly in the afternoons, and Letty began to realize that things like this were, after all, one of the chief joys of retirement. She could not admit to this kind girl that she hadn’t even got a television set.

  Inevitably everyone had to get back to work and eventually Letty and Marcia found themselves in their own office with Edwin and Norman.

  The two men seemed pleased with themselves. In their time they had attended a good many retirement parties and this one apparently came up to the standard which was measured by the number of times the sherry bottle went round.

  ‘Of course sherry’s a bit livery midday,’ said Norman, ‘but it’s better than nothing. It does have its effect.’ He swayed slightly in a comic manner.

  ‘I find two glasses quite enough,’ said Letty, ‘and I think my glass must have been refilled when I wasn’t looking because I feel quite…’ She didn’t really know how she felt or how to describe it; she was certainly not drunk but neither tiddly nor tipsy seemed suitably dignified.

  Marcia, who had taken nothing but a small glass of orange juice, gave a tight-lipped smile.

  ‘At least you won’t have a drinking problem when you retire,’ Norman teased.

  ‘I hate the stuff,’ she declared.

  Letty found herself thinking about the lonely evenings ahead of her in Mrs Pope’s silent house. Perhaps it would be as well not to have a bottle of sherry in her room … She had got on quite well with Mrs Pope so far, when she was out all day, but would it be the same when she retired? Obviously the arrangement could only be temporary. One did not relish the idea of spending the rest of one’s life in a north-west London suburb. There was no reason why she shouldn’t find a room in a village somewhere near where Marjorie and her husband would be living—Marjorie had hinted in her last letter that she would welcome something of the kind, she didn’t want to lose touch after all these years … Or she might go back to the west of England where she was born. She told herself, dutifully assuming the suggested attitude towards retirement, that life was still full of possibilities.

  Letty began clearing out her office drawer, neatly arranging its contents in her shopping bag. There was not much to be taken away—a pair of light slippers for the days when she needed to change her shoes, a box of paper handkerchiefs, writing paper and envelopes, a packet of indigestion tablets. Following Letty’s example, Marcia began to do the same, muttering as she did so and stuffing the contents into a large carrier bag. Letty knew that Marcia’s drawer was very full although she had never seen inside it properly, only caught glimpses of things bulging out when Marcia opened it. She knew that there was a pair of exercise sandals in which Marcia used to clump around in the days when she had first bought them, but she was surprised to see her take out several tins of food—meat, beans and soups.

  ‘Quite a gourmet feast you’ve got there,’ Norman remarked. ‘If only we’d known.’

  Marcia smiled but said nothing. Norman seemed to be able to get away with these teasing comments, Letty thought. She had turned aside, not wanting to see what Marcia was taking out of the drawer. It seemed an intrusion into Marcia’s private life, something it was better not to know about.

  ‘It will seem funny without you both,’ said Edwin awkwardly.

  He did not really know what to say now that it had come to the point. None of them knew, for it was the kind of occasion that seemed to demand something more than the usual goodbye or goodnight of the end of an ordinary working day. Perhaps they should have given the women a present of some kind—but what? He and Norman had discussed it, but decided in the end that it was altogether too difficult ‘They wouldn’t expect it—it would only embarrass them,’ they had concluded, ‘and it’s not as if we were never going to see them again.’ In the circumstances it was much easier to assume this but without going into too much detail about it. For of course they would all meet again—Letty and Marcia would revisit the office, ‘pop in’ some time. There might even be meetings outside the office—a kind of get-together for lunch or ‘something’… even if it was beyond imagining what that something might be, at least it made it easier for them all to go on their separate ways assuming a vague future together.

  Thirteen

  ‘YOU’LL BE RETIRING,’ Janice Brabner had said. ‘Have you thought at all what you’re going to do?’

  ‘Do?’ Marcia stared at her blankly. ‘What do you mean?’

  Well…’ Janice faltered but, as she afterwards recounted, pressed on regardless. ‘You’ll have a good deal of time on your hands, won’t you—time that you gave to your job?’ Marcia had never revealed what exactly her job was but Janice guessed that it hadn’t been particularly exciting. After all, what kind of job could somebody like Marcia do? She wished she wouldn’t keep staring at her in that unnerving way, as if she had no idea what was meant by Janice asking what she was going to do when she retired.

  ‘A woman can always find plenty to occupy her time,’ Marcia said at last. ‘It isn’t like a man retiring, you know. I have my house to see to.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ And it could do with seeing to, Janice thought. But was Marcia capable of doing what was necessary? Physically she seemed able to do housework so that there was no question of getting a home help for her, even if one could be found, but keeping a house in order needed a certain attitude of mind and it was here that Marcia seemed to be lacking. Did she not notice the dust or care about it? Perhaps she needed new spectacles—a word here might be in order … Janice sighed, as she so often did when considering Marcia. There seemed to be nothing she could do at the moment beyond keeping an eye on her and calling in occasionally to see how she was coping.

  The first Monday morning Marcia woke at the usual time and began getting up and preparing to leave the house before she remembered that it was the first day of her retirement. ‘Roll on,’ people used to say in those days when it had seemed an impossibly remote event, as unlikely as winning the pools or having your number come up on Ernie. Well, now it had rolled on, it was here. A woman can always find plenty to occupy her time.

  Marcia took down the tray she had used for her early morning tea, but she left th
e cup behind on the dressing table where it would remain for some days, the dregs of milky tea eventually separating into sourness. As she was not going to the office, she changed the dress she had put on for her old Saturday morning skirt and a crumpled blouse which needed ironing, but there was nobody to notice it or to criticize and no doubt the warmth of her body would soon press out the creases. Downstairs at the sink she was about to wash up yesterday’s dishes when she was diverted by the sight of a plastic bag lying on the kitchen table. How had that got there and what had been in it? So many things seemed to come in plastic bags now that it was difficult to keep track of them. The main thing was not to throw it away carelessly, better still to put it away in a safe place, because there was a note printed on it which read To avoid danger of suffocation keep this wrapper away from babies and children’. They could have said from middle-aged and elderly persons too, who might well have an irresistible urge to suffocate themselves. So Marcia took the bag upstairs into what had been the spare bedroom where she kept things like cardboard boxes, brown paper and string, and stuffed it into a drawer already bulging with other plastic bags, conscientiously kept away from babies and children. It was a very long time since any such had entered the house, children not for many years, babies perhaps never.

  Marcia spent a long time in the room, tidying and rearranging its contents. All the plastic bags needed to be taken out of the drawer and sorted into their different shapes and sizes, classified as it were. It was something she had been meaning to do for such a long time but somehow she had never seemed to have a moment. Now, the first day of her retirement, she had eternity stretching before her. It amused her to remember Janice Brabner asking in that rather mincing, refined voice of hers, ‘Have you thought at all what you’re going to do?’

  The task took until what would in the office have been lunchtime and Marcia did wonder for a moment what Edwin and Norman would be doing, but of course it would be just what they always did, eating whatever lunch they had brought with them, Edwin with his finicky things and Norman making himself coffee from the big shared tin she had left behind. Then Edwin visiting some church to see what was going on there and Norman perhaps strolling as far as the British Museum to sit in front of the mummified animals. Or perhaps he wouldn’t get any further than the library and a look at the papers, and thinking of the library reminded her that she still hadn’t done anything about that milk bottle which Letty had foisted on her. If the worst came to the worst she could always leave it at the library, or any library, as she wouldn’t be going to that particular one any more…

  Marcia gave no thought to her own lunch and it was evening before she had anything to eat and then only a cup of tea and the remains of one of the bits of bread she found in the bread bin. She did not notice the greenish mould fringing the crust, but she wasn’t hungry anyway and only ate half the slice, putting the remainder back for future consumption. Of course she would go out shopping some time, perhaps tomorrow, but not today even though the Indian shop would still be open. There were plenty of bits and pieces to finish up and she had never been a big eater.

  Letty had imagined herself sleeping late on that first morning, but she woke up at the usual time, in fact earlier because Mrs Pope was up at six o’clock and clattering out of the house, no doubt to observe some obscure saint’s day with a service at the church. Letty would probably have woken up anyway, so strong was the habit of forty years. And older people are said to wake up earlier, she thought, so perhaps the habit would never be broken.

  ‘What are you going to do when you retire?’ people had asked her, some in a genuine spirit of enquiry, others with ghoulish curiosity. And naturally she had made the usual answers—how nice it would be not to have to go to the office—how she would now have time to do all those things she had always wanted to do (these ‘things’ were unspecified)—and read all the books she had never had time to read before—Middlemarch and War and Peace, perhaps even Dr Zhivago. And really, when it came to retiring, she could have said, as Marcia had, ‘A woman can always find plenty to occupy her time’—that was the great thing, being a woman. It was men one felt sorry for in retirement Of course in one respect she was different from Marcia, she had no house to see to, only this room in another woman’s house, and there was a limit to what one could do in it or to it. All the more opportunity to devote herself to some serious reading, and that would mean a visit to the library. It would be good to get out on this first morning, to have an object for a walk.

  By the time Letty had decided to go down to the kitchen to get her breakfast, Mrs Pope had come back from church. She was very brisk and virtuous. It was a chilly morning but the walk had done her good. There had been three people at the early service, five if one counted the priest and his server. Letty did not know what comment to make, for she had always understood from Edwin that these very early services were rather old-fashioned now and that an evening Mass was the thing. Still, the thought of Edwin gave her a conversational opening and she was able to ask Mrs Pope about his connection with her church.

  ‘Oh, he’s not a regular member of our congregation—he only comes if there’s something special going on,’ Mrs Pope said, fiercely scraping a piece of burnt toast.

  ‘We’re not nearly high enough for him—no incense, you see.’

  ‘No incense?’ Again Letty was at a loss.

  ‘It doesn’t agree with everyone, you know. If you’re at all bronchial … Do you not get dressed for breakfast, Miss Crowe?’

  Letty, who had come down to the kitchen in her respectable blue woollen housecoat, felt that she was being criticized. ‘It’s the first day of my retirement,’ she explained, feebly, she felt, as if that was enough justification.

  ‘But I think you will find it better not to allow yourself to get slack. So many people go to pieces in retirement—I’ve seen it so often. A man may be in a responsible position, then he retires…’

  ‘But I am a woman and I was not at all in a responsible position,’ Letty reminded her. ‘And this morning I’m going to the library—I shall at last have time to do some serious reading.’

  ‘Oh, reading.. ,’ Mrs Pope did not seem to have much use for reading, and the conversation, if it had been that, languished. Mrs Pope had gone to church fasting and now prepared to enjoy her bacon and scraped toast, while Letty went back to her room with a boiled egg and two slices of crispbread.

  Later she dressed, more carefully than Marcia had done on her first day of retirement. It was an opportunity to wear a new tweed suit which had been considered too good for the office, and to spend more time than usual in choosing the jumper and scarf to go with it. So far her day was being different, but when it came to the next part of it she realized that she would be going to the library near the office where she had a reader’s ticket, and that the journey to it would be the one she had taken every day. But now, two hours later, the train was less crowded and when she got out at her station people let themselves be carried up on the escalator rather than walking up.

  To reach the library she had to pass the office, and naturally she glanced up at the grey monolithic building and wondered what Edwin and Norman were doing up there on the third floor. It was not too difficult to picture them at coffee time, and at least there would be nobody installed in her and Marcia’s places, doing their work, since nobody was to replace them. It seemed to Letty that what cannot now be justified has perhaps never existed, and it gave her the feeling that she and Marcia had been swept away as if they had never been. With this sensation of nothingness she entered the library. The young male assistant with the shoulder-length golden hair was still in his place, so that at least was reassuring. Confidently she went over to the sociology shelves, determined to begin on her serious reading. The idea and the name ‘social studies’ had attracted her and she was eager to find out what it was all about.

  ‘I wonder what the girls are doing now,’ said Norman.

  ‘The girls?’ Of course Edwin knew perfectly well
whom he meant but he was not used to talking or thinking of Letty and Marcia in this way.

  ‘A nice lie-in, then breakfast in bed, elevenses in town and a wander round the shops—lunch in Dickins & Jones, perhaps, or D. H. Evans. Then back home well before the rush hour, then I…’ Norman’s imagination failed at this point and Edwin was not capable of filling in the gaps.

  ‘That’s quite likely for Letty,’ he said ‘but I can’t see Marcia spending her day like that.’

  ‘No, she wouldn’t want to go round the shops,’ said Norman thoughtfully. ‘Letty was the one who used to go to Oxford Street in the lunch hour—didn’t even mind waiting for a bus.’

  ‘No—we sometimes used to meet in the queue when I was going to All Saints, Margaret Street.’

  ‘You never persuaded her to join you,’ said Norman sardonically.

  Edwin seemed embarrassed, almost as if he had tried and failed, but Norman did not press the point. ‘It seems funny without them,’ he said.

  ‘Perhaps they’ll pop in some time,’ Edwin suggested.

  ‘Yes, they did say they’d pop in.’

  ‘Not that I can really imagine them doing that—they’d have to come up in the lift, wouldn’t they, and that’s not quite the same.’