Quartet in Autumn

by Barbara Pym

  ‘Not as if we were on the ground floor and could be seen from the street,’ said Norman, almost wistfully.

  ‘At least we’ve got a bit more room now,’ Edwin began to arrange his lunch on what had been Letty’s table, spreading out slices of bread, a tub of polyunsaturated margarine, cheese and tomatoes. Taking out a packet of jelly babies he had a sudden and vivid picture of Letty, but why this should have materialized at this particular moment and with such intensity he could not have said. Surely nothing to do with the jelly babies?

  It had been a long day and in a curious way a tiring one, as tiring as a working day, Letty felt. Perhaps it had been the early waking and the longer than usual evening, beginning with a period between tea and supper which she did not remember as having existed before. She had made a determined effort to read one of the books she had brought from the library, but it had been heavy going.

  Obviously it would take some time to acquire the knack of serious reading and perhaps it would be better to go on with it in the morning when she was feeling fresher.

  Marcia’s day seemed to have gone in a flash, though speed was not a concept in her life. She had no sense of time passing and was surprised when darkness came. Her most conscious thought was irritation at the idea that the do-gooding social worker might call, so she did not put the light on but sat in darkness, listening to the mindless chatter and atavistic noise of Radio 1 turned down low. She had no memory of having experienced the first day of her retirement.

  Fourteen

  LETTY HAD BEEN retired for a week and had drawn the first payment of her pension before she found herself coming to the conclusion that sociology was not quite all that she had hoped for. Perhaps she had chosen the wrong books, for surely ‘social studies’ must be more interesting than this? She had imagined herself revelling and wallowing—perhaps these words were too violent to describe what she had imagined—in her chosen subject, not frozen with boredom, baffled and bogged down by incomprehensible jargon, continually looking at her watch to see if it could be time to make a cup of coffee. It must be that she was too old to learn anything new and that her brain had become atrophied Had she indeed ever had a brain? Going back over her past life, she found it difficult to remember anything she had ever done that required brain work, certainly not the job from which she had just retired. She seemed to be totally unfitted for academic work, yet people older than she was were taking courses at the Open University. Mrs Pope knew a woman in her seventies who was in her second year. But Mrs Pope, it seemed, always knew somebody who was doing something wholly admirable, and as time went on Letty found herself avoiding her and choosing to cook her meals when she knew that Mrs Pope would not be using the kitchen.

  She would crouch in her room listening for sounds, trying to detect the smell of cooking, though this was often difficult as Mrs Pope seldom had anything fried except bacon. Letty would find herself pouring a second glass of sherry while she waited for Mrs Pope to leave the kitchen. But she still kept to her rules—one did not drink sherry before the evening, just as one did not read a novel in the morning, this last being a left-over dictum of a headmistress of forty years ago.

  When the sociology books were due to be returned to the library, Letty took them back, feeling guilty and dissatisfied. But you were supposed to enjoy retirement, at least the first weeks of it. Have a good rest, do all those things you’ve always wanted to do, people had said. Why shouldn’t she just read novels and listen to the radio and knit and think about her clothes? She wondered what Marcia was doing, how she was getting on. It was a pity she wasn’t on the telephone for it would have been so much easier to have a chat or arrange a meeting that way.

  ‘You could travel,’ people had said and Letty had to agree with them, though it was not easy to imagine the kind of travelling she would do, alone on a package tour now that Marjorie was so much occupied with David Lydell. Listening to a phone-in programme on the radio she had heard a question about holidays for people on their own, and the answer conjuring up a picture of a crowd of congenial middle-aged and elderly people of both sexes with interests in common—botany and archaeology or even ‘wine’ (as opposed to solitary drinking). In the end her courage failed her and she got no further than studying the brochure, like Norman diving for buried treasure in Greece. Her attempts at ‘travel’ ended in a weekend visit to a distant cousin living in the West Country town where she had been born.

  The cousin, a woman of about Letty’s age, was friendly and welcoming and they sat cosily knitting together in the evenings. Letty had long since accustomed herself to being without a man in her life and, as a result of this lack, to having no children. The cousin was a widow and did not make Letty feel in any way inadequate. All the same, it was when she was staying here that Letty began to realize another way in which she had failed. It was not something that had previously occurred to her, but looking through the cousin’s photograph album she saw clearly what it was—she had no grandchildren.’ That was it. How could she ever have imagined such a thing, all those years ago?

  Returning from her weekend, she thought again of getting in touch with Marcia. She decided to write her a note, suggesting that they might meet for lunch or tea in town. It was perhaps a little early to compare notes about their retirement but at least they could talk about old times at the office.

  Janice’s next visit to Marcia was some weeks after her retirement—time for her to have settled down and to have worked out some kind of a pattern for her days, Janice thought. No doubt she missed the companionship of the office—‘they’, the retired ones, often mentioned that—and the routine that even a boring occupation provides. Still, as Marcia herself had said, a woman can always find plenty to occupy her time and she had her house to see to. She had a garden, too, and that could have done with a bit of attention, Janice considered, as she waited on the doorstep and contemplated the dusty laurels whose overgrown foliage almost concealed the downstairs front window.

  When Marcia reluctantly opened the door to admit her, Janice was startled by the change in her appearance. It was some seconds before she realized what the difference was. Since her retirement, Marcia had not bothered to touch up the roots of her hair which now stood out snowy white against the stiff, dark brown of the rest. Perhaps she was deliberately letting the dye grow out so that she might achieve the soft white curls of the majority of the pensioners visited by Janice, though, knowing Marcia, this seemed doubtful. She really ought to have the dyed part cut out, creating a short neat style of the white part, as many elderly people did. Janice wondered if she could tactfully convey the information about reduced charges for pensioners at some of the local hairdressers. But why bother to be all that tactful? You had to be a bit forthright with people like Marcia, and there was no time like the present.

  ‘I suppose you do know that you can get your hair done at a reduced price at Marietta’s if you go between nine and twelve on Mondays and Tuesdays?’ Janice said, in her sweetest manner. So many of them don’t know what they’re entitled to, how people are falling over backwards to help them, was the social workers’ wail.

  ‘I got a leaflet from the library telling me all that sort of thing,’ said Marcia impatiently, and Janice felt that she was being dismissed.

  ‘Don’t forget that you can always come along to the Centre,’ she said, going out of the front door. ‘We get quite a lot of retired people there and they seem to like to have a chat with others in the same boat.’ Perhaps that hadn’t been the happiest way of putting it, and really it was rather comic, the picture of all these retired people in some kind of boat Sometimes you almost felt it wouldn’t be a bad idea to shove them off all together somewhere. Tony, Janice’s husband, used to joke about it but of course old people were no joking matter, as she kept reminding herself. And Marcia hadn’t smiled at the idea of the boat, hadn’t even replied to the suggestion that she might go along to the Centre. Janice sighed.

  Marcia watched her getting into her car and driving a
way. Young people couldn’t walk a step these days, she thought And what was all that about hairdressers? Janice’s own hair was streaked all different colours, so she couldn’t talk. Marcia didn’t like going to the hairdresser, anyway, she hadn’t been for years. Not like Letty, who went every week. No doubt she would be taking advantage of the reduced charges for pensioners … Marcia stood in the hall, a feeling of dissatisfaction creeping over her at the idea of Letty. It was that business of the milk bottle, chiefly, but there was something else too. Letty had sent her a postcard, suggesting that they might meet some time—as if she would want to do that! There was no knowing what Letty might foist on her, given the chance. She was certainly going to ignore the card.

  Letty had expected some kind of an answer from Marcia to her suggestion of a meeting, but she was not altogether surprised when none came. One could very quickly grow away from people and that life at the office, where they had never been close friends, now seemed utterly remote. Instead, though it was in no way comparable, she received a letter from Marjorie, announcing that she was coming to London to do some shopping and asking Letty to have lunch with her.

  They met in the restaurant of an Oxford Street store, rather as Norman had pictured Letty lunching on her first day of retirement. It appeared that Marjorie had come to London to buy clothes for her trousseau, which seemed to Letty not only an old-fashioned idea but an inappropriate one for a woman in her sixties. Yet Marjorie had always been of a romantic nature, getting the most out of unpromising circumstances. Even Marcia, Letty recalled, had an ‘interest’ in the surgeon who had performed her operation, so that a visit to hospital was something to be looked forward to. Only Letty, it seemed, was without romance in her life, and the prospect of Marjorie’s marriage was something beyond her imagining. If she had now got over any disappointment she may have felt at the cancellation of her retirement plans, she was still not able to enter fully into Marjorie’s rapture. But she could offer suggestions about clothes and perhaps that was something.

  ‘I shall be wearing a blue crêpe dress,’ Marjorie was saying, ‘and I thought of getting a small, matching hat.’

  ‘You could wear a wide-brimmed hat,’ Letty said. A woman of their age could do with a few becoming shadows cast on the face, she thought.

  ‘Oh, do you think so? Yes, I suppose it’s not like Royalty—people don’t necessarily expect to see one’s face - or want to,’ Marjorie laughed. ‘And of course there won’t be crowds of people—it’s going to be very quiet.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’ The weddings of older people usually were.

  ‘You don’t mind, do you, Letty?’

  ‘Mind?’ Letty was surprised at the question.

  ‘At not being asked to be a bridesmaid, I mean.’

  ‘Of course not! I never thought of it.’ Older women attending each other in this way seemed highly unsuitable and she was surprised that Marjorie had suggested it. In any case, Letty had been a bridesmaid at Marjorie’s first wedding. She wondered if Marjorie had forgotten this but was too tactful to remind her of it.

  ‘And we shan’t even be having any guests—just my brother to give me away and a friend of David’s, a fellow priest, as best man.’

  ‘Has he any relations?’

  ‘Just his mother—he’s an only child.’

  ‘But his mother won’t be at the wedding?’

  Marjorie smiled. ‘Well, she’s in her ninetieth year, so I would hardly expect it. She is living in a religious community—the nuns have taken her in.’

  ‘To end her days? It seems a good arrangement.’ Letty saw that churchgoing might have some unexpected advantages and wondered if Mrs Pope had arranged to be taken in by nuns one day.

  ‘And how are things with you, Letty?’ said Marjorie, when there was a pause in the conversation. ‘You like your new arrangement—the room in NW6. Hampstead, is it?’

  ‘Well, more West Hampstead,’ Letty admitted. If it had been genuine Hampstead she would have said so.

  ‘I still think you might have been happier at Holmhurst in the village, as I suggested. I could still put your name down, you know. There’s sure to be a vacancy in the near future.’

  ‘Yes, you said that before—somebody might die—but I suppose that vacancy has been filled now.’

  ‘Oh, yes—but somebody else is sure to die—it’s happening all the time,’ said Marjorie brightly.

  They had some coffee and Letty said that she thought she would stay where she was for the time being.

  ‘Yes, it does seem very satisfactory,’ said Marjorie, who obviously wanted to find it so. ‘Mrs Pope seems a splendid sort of woman.’

  ‘Yes, she is wonderful for her age,’ said Letty, repeating what people always said about her. ‘She’s very active in the parish. I suppose you’ll have to be that when you’re married.’

  ‘Oh, I shall enjoy it. To be able to help somebody, don’t you think that’s the main purpose of life, what everybody…’ Marjorie hesitated and Letty realized that she did not like to go further, to emphasize the contrast between her own enviable position, that of being a helpmate to a man, and Letty’s state of useless retirement.

  ‘I sometimes think I ought to get another job,’ Letty said, ‘part time, perhaps.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be in too much of a hurry to do that,’ said Marjorie quickly, unwilling to give up the luxury of having a friend less useful than herself. ‘Enjoy your leisure and all the things you can do now. If only I had time to do some serious reading, I often think.’

  Letty remembered the books on social studies which she had returned to the library, but Marjorie was already on to another subject—a pair of warm bedroom slippers for her future husband.

  Should they go to Austin Reed’s? As they walked out of the restaurant together, Letty contemplated the ample shape of her friend and wondered where in all these years she, Letty, had failed.

  Fifteen

  IT’S NOT THE money,’ Norman was saying. ‘Goodness knows, I don’t grudge the old dears a lunch.’

  Edwin noted that Letty and Marcia, previously ‘the girls’, were now ‘the old dears’. Neither description seemed entirely suitable, but as he had nothing better to add he made no comment. ‘We did say we’d keep in touch,’ he reminded Norman, ‘and they’ve been gone some time now.’

  ‘Yes, time to’ve settled down—it was best to leave it for a bit. Of course we could use luncheon vouchers, if we went to the Rendezvous, that is.’

  ‘Luncheon vouchers? Do you think so? It doesn’t seem very.. ,’ Edwin hesitated.

  ‘Gracious, you mean? You don’t imagine it’s going to be a gracious occasion, do you?’ Norman was at his most sarcastic. ‘That was what I meant—just the whole idea of it, not the money. I’m quite willing to fork out 50p for their lunches.’

  ‘I think you’ll have to fork out a good deal more than 50p,’ said Edwin, ‘though we could use some luncheon vouchers. I’ve got quite a few saved up and after all they’d never know. You pay at the cash desk at the Rendezvous, so one of us could do the necessary without them seeing.’

  It’s the awkwardness,’ Norman went on. ‘We’ve never had a restaurant meal with them before. Can you see the four of us sitting at a table?’

  ‘You’re not suggesting we should have sandwiches in the office? They’d hardly thank us for that.’

  ‘But what are we going to talk about, once we’ve asked them how they are and all that?’

  ‘Oh, we’ll manage,’ said Edwin, with a confidence he did not altogether feel, though he was so used to sticky church occasions that a lunch with two former colleagues should have been well within his powers. And after all, it had been his idea to invite Letty and Marcia to lunch. His conscience had been nagging at him and in the end he had written to them—in office time, of course, as it really counted as ‘work’—extending the invitation. Letty had replied promptly, saying that she would very much like to see them again. Marcia’s answer had taken longer to come and her acceptance gave th
e impression of conveying a favour, for she was so very busy. Edwin and Norman wondered what she could be doing that kept her so occupied. Perhaps she had taken another job, unlikely though this seemed.

  ‘Anyway, we shall soon know,’ said Edwin, as the time drew near. He had heard from Mrs Pope at the church (he had gone over for their dedication festival) that Letty seemed to have settled down well but that she was inclined to ‘keep herself to herself’, as if this was a bad thing. Nobody had heard any news of Marcia since her retirement, though Edwin occasionally passed the end of the road where she lived and had more than once thought of calling on her unexpectedly. But something, he wasn’t sure what, had always held him back. The parable of the good Samaritan kept coming into his mind and making him feel uncomfortable, though it wasn’t in the least appropriate. There was no question of him ‘passing by on the other side’ when he didn’t even go anywhere near the house, and for all they knew, Marcia was perfectly happy.

  Of course Edwin did not know that she was, but for some obscure reason he felt that if anyone was to blame for not having kept in touch it was Norman.

  It had been arranged that Letty and Marcia should come to the office and that they should all go on to lunch from there. Letty was the first to arrive, wearing her best tweed suit and carrying a new pair of gloves. ‘So nice not to have to bother with a shopping bag,’ she said, her eyes taking in not only Edwin and Norman, who appeared very much the same, but the changes that had taken place in the room.

  ‘I see you’ve spread yourselves out a bit,’ she said, noticing that the men now seemed to occupy all the space that had once accommodated the four of them Again she experienced the feeling of nothingness, when it was borne in on her so forcibly that she and Marcia had been phased out in this way, as if they had never existed. Looking round the room, her eyes lighted on a spider plant which she had brought one day and not bothered to take away when she left. It had proliferated; many little offshoots were now hanging down until they dangled over the radiator. Was there some significance in this, a proof that she had once existed, that the memory of her lingered on? At least nature went on, whatever happened to us; she knew that.