Quartet in Autumn

by Barbara Pym

  ‘Yes, it’s grown, that plant,’ Edwin said. ‘I’ve watered it every week.’

  ‘You left a bit of yourself behind,’ said Norman, in his chatty way, but then, as if by mutual consent, they left the subject, each perhaps fearing a deeper significance. ‘Marcia knows the time we arranged?’ Norman asked sharply. It’s best to go early to get a table.’

  ‘Yes, I said 12.30, and it must be nearly that now,’ said Edwin. ‘Is that someone at the door now?’

  It was Marcia, making something of an entrance because of her strange appearance.

  When she had received the invitation from Edwin she had at first told herself that it was ‘out of the question’—she could not possibly spare the time to come up to town for lunch. Then it occurred to her that it would be a golden opportunity to return the alien milk bottle to Letty, so she wrapped it in plastic and put it in her shopping bag. Unlike Letty she had brought one with her, as she intended to go to Sainsbury’s to replenish her supply of tinned foods.

  It took the others a moment or two to recover from the apparition standing before them. Marcia was thinner than ever and her light-coloured summer coat hung on her emaciated body. On her feet she wore old fur-lined sheepskin boots and a pair of much darned stockings, and on her head an unsuitably jaunty straw hat from which her strangely piebald hair straggled in elflocks.

  Edwin, who was not particularly observant, did realize that she was wearing an odd assortment of garments but did not think she looked much different from usual. Norman thought, poor old girl, obviously going round the bend. Letty, as a clothes-conscious woman, was appalled—that anyone could get to the stage of caring so little about her appearance, of not even noticing how she looked, made her profoundly uneasy and almost conscience-stricken, as if she ought to have done something more about Marcia in her retirement. But then of course she had suggested a meeting and Marcia hadn’t answered her letter … And now she was made to feel ashamed because she felt embarrassed at the idea of sitting in a restaurant with Marcia.

  Luckily the Rendezvous was fairly empty and they found a table in a secluded corner.

  ‘This place lives up to its name for once,’ said Norman, making bright conversation as they studied the menu. ‘It really is a rendezvous for…’ He did not say ‘friends’, for they were not exactly that, and ‘colleagues’ sounded too formal and slightly ridiculous.

  ‘A meeting place for people who haven’t seen each other for some time,’ Letty suggested, and the men were grateful to her; but she had not seen it like this in the days when she used to lunch alone here. It had always seemed full of solitary people eating lonely meals.

  Now, what are we going to eat?’ said Edwin, turning especially to Marcia who looked most in need of food, or sustenance, one could almost say.

  ‘You look as if you could do with a square meal,’ said Norman bluntly. ‘What about some soup to start off with and then the roast or chicken?’

  ‘Oh, just a salad for me,’ said Marcia. ‘I never eat a heavy meal in the middle of the day.’

  ‘Well, I think the rest of us will want more than that,’ said Edwin heartily.

  ‘Yes, it doesn’t seem quite the weather for salads,’ Letty agreed.

  ‘I should’ve thought you’d be a salad enthusiast,’ said Norman. You’ve put on a bit of weight, haven’t you.’ His tone was teasing but Letty detected the hint of malice in it. She knew that he was right, for since her retirement eating had been one of her main interests and enjoyments. ‘Some elderly people do enjoy their food,’ Norman went on, hardly improving matters, for even now Letty did not think of herself as elderly. ‘Others couldn’t care less.’

  ‘Now come on, all of you,’ said Edwin, who was conscious of the hovering waitress. ‘What’s it to be?’

  In the end, Letty had the chicken ‘forestière’, Norman the roast pork and Edwin, whose vegetarianism did not exclude fish, the plaice and chips. Marcia was not to be ‘tempted’, as Norman put it, and insisted on a small cheese salad. When it came to drink, the men had lager while Letty was persuaded to take a glass of white wine. Marcia, of course, had nothing and made rather a feature of her abstinence, much to the amusement of two young men at the next table.

  ‘Well now…’ Edwin’s relief at the safe arrival of the food was evident in his more relaxed manner, for as he had suggested it he regarded himself as responsible for the success of the enterprise. ‘Everything to your satisfaction? Wouldn’t you like a roll and butter with your salad?’ he suggested to Marcia.

  ‘I never eat bread with my meals,’ she declared.

  ‘You’ll get so that you can’t eat if you’re not careful,’ Norman pronounced. ‘Anorexia nervosa, they call it—there was a talk about it on the radio.’

  ‘It’s young girls who get anorexia nervosa,’ said Marcia, correcting him from her superior medical knowledge. ‘I’ve never been a big eater.’

  ‘I hope your chicken is all right?’ said Edwin to Letty. As if he should care about Letty’s food, he thought, amused at himself, but one had to play the host on this occasion.

  ‘Thank you, it’s quite delicious,’ said Letty politely.

  Vegetables and that,’ said Norman, ‘I suppose that’s what “forestière” means—things from the forest. Though you wouldn’t really get vegetables in a forest, would you?’

  ‘This has mushrooms in it,’ said Letty, ‘and you might certainly find those in a wood or forest.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t fancy them,’ said Norman, not out of the forest.’

  ‘Of course now most mushrooms are cultivated,’ Edwin suggested. ‘I believe it’s quite a lucrative thing to take up in one’s retirement.’

  ‘Hardly in a bedsitter,’ said Norman. ‘You and Marcia could go in for it, though, in your houses, if you’ve got a basement or a shed in the garden.’

  Marcia looked up at him suspiciously. ‘My shed is used for quite another purpose,’ she said.

  ‘Dark secrets,’ said Norman, but Marcia did not seem to be amused.

  ‘I don’t think Edwin was suggesting that any of us should go in for mushroom cultivation,’ said Letty, ‘though I believe people make quite a success of it.’

  ‘Do you know of anyone who has gone in for it?’ Edwin asked ‘Oh no,’ said Letty hastily.

  That seemed to kill off that particular topic of conversation and there was a short silence which was broken by Edwin asking what they would like to eat next, ‘sweet, pudding or dessert, as the Americans say’.

  ‘Nothing more for me, thank you,’ said Marcia firmly. Having messed her salad about in an unattractive way, she had left most of it on the side of her plate.

  Letty, remembering Norman’s remark about her weight, decided that she might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb and make the most of the meal. She could have a low-calorie supper tonight. ‘I’d like apple pie and ice cream,’ she said.

  ‘Aunt Betsy’s apple pie,’ Norman pointed out. I think I’ll have that too.’

  Edwin decided to have caramel pudding and tried to persuade Marcia to change her mind, but he was unsuccessful.

  ‘We haven’t really asked what you two are doing with yourselves in your retirement,’ Norman said, ‘what you’re getting up to.’

  That way of putting it added a lighter touch and Letty told them about her efforts to take up social studies and her ignominious failure to get through the books.

  ‘I don’t wonder,’ said Norman. ‘You don’t want to bother with that kind of thing. You want to get a good rest. After all the work you did here you deserve it.’

  Letty wondered again what that work had been that it had left so little mark on anybody, and added, ‘I seem to fill my time quite pleasantly.’ She must never give the slightest hint of loneliness or boredom, the sense of time hanging heavy.

  ‘What about that friend of yours—the one who was going to marry the vicar?’ Edwin asked.

  ‘Oh, she hasn’t married him yet. I had lunch with her the other day.’


  ‘I suppose there wouldn’t be any hurry,’ said Edwin, unconscious of any possibility of misunderstanding, which Norman seized on.

  ‘I should hope not!’ Norman said. ‘And anyway, marry in haste and repent at leisure.’

  ‘There surely wouldn’t be any question of that,’ said Edwin.

  ‘Well, no,’ Letty agreed. ‘The saying doesn’t really apply to people in their sixties.’

  ‘It could apply,’ said Norman, ‘why not, indeed? And I think you told us that the lady is some years older than her intended.’

  ‘Did I tell you? I don’t remember that.’ Letty hoped she had not been uncharitable about her friend.

  ‘And what have you been doing with yourself)’ Edwin turned to Marcia with an air of kindly enquiry which hardly deserved the fierceness of her reply.

  ‘That’s my business,’ she snapped.

  ‘Been to the hospital again?’ Norman asked, humouring her. ‘Still under the doctor, aren’t you?’

  Marcia mumbled the name of Mr Strong then, raising her voice, began to complain about the interfering visits of the social worker.

  Letty drained the last drops of her wine with a feeling of regret. It had not been a very large glass. ‘No social worker has ever visited me,’ she said.

  ‘You haven’t had a major operation, have you,’ said Marcia, rather too loudly. The same young men at the next table were again amused.

  ‘Well, that does say something for the National Health Service and the after-care,’ said Edwin, ‘that they should keep an eye on the people who’ve been in hospital. I find that very encouraging.’

  ‘Don’t tell us you’re planning to have a major operation—the same one as Marcia had,’ Norman joked.

  There was a feeling that he had gone a little too far and Edwin hastily asked if he should order coffee for all of them.

  ‘Not for me,’ said Marcia, I really must be going. I have a lot of shopping to do.’

  ‘Oh, stay till we’ve had ours,’ said Norman, coaxing her. ‘It isn’t often we get the chance of a chat.’

  A curious expression, which only Letty appeared to notice, came over Marcia’s face. It could almost have been said that she softened. Had she some feeling for Norman, then? But it was only a momentary change, and while the others were drinking their coffee she was again impatient to go.

  ‘I suppose you two ought to be getting back to the grindstone,’ said Letty, when it seemed that the lunch hour could not be prolonged.

  ‘If you can call it that,’ said Edwin.

  It certainly seems like that sometimes,’ said Norman. ‘Roll on retirement.’

  Letty wondered what he would do in his bed-sitting room when he retired, and had an impulse to talk to him about it, but of course there was no time for that kind of thing—work, or what passed for work, had to be done and the two men had already been out of the office longer than usual. Still, it was a special occasion, not the kind of thing that happened every day, and if they had been challenged Edwin and Norman would have been prepared to defend themselves. But nobody questioned them and they slipped back to their room unnoticed.

  Marcia hurried into a side street where there was a small branch of Sainsbury’s. As she delved into her shopping bag, preparing it to receive the various tins she intended to buy, her hand came upon the wrapped milk bottle she had forgotten to return to Letty. What a nuisance! For a moment she wondered if she could catch the others up but although she hurried back along the street they had gone too far and there was no sign of them. She turned away, frustrated.

  When she reached Sainsbury’s there was a curiously empty look about the building and nobody was coming out or going in. Had she forgotten that it might be early closing? But surely that was Saturday? She went nearer and peered in at the door. A shocking sight met her eyes—the place was swept and garnished, almost razed to the ground. It was indeed closed, and forever, as from a date some weeks ago, and nobody had told her. That branch of Sainsbury’s was abandoned, it was no more, and she could not buy the tins to take back for her store cupboard. Unreasonably, she blamed Edwin and Norman for not having informed her of the fact. There was nothing for it but to go to the library.

  Letty, after leaving the two men, had gone in there too, and Marcia crept up behind her as she browsed among the biographies.

  ‘This is yours, I think,’ said Marcia in an accusing tone, thrusting the wrapped milk bottle towards her.

  ‘A milk bottle?’ Of course Letty did not remember the occasion and Marcia had to explain it which she did, loudly, so that other people turned round and the young blonde-haired library assistant seemed about to make some kind of protest.

  Letty, conscious of tension in the air, accepted the bottle without further question, and Marcia walked away quickly, feeling that although coming up to town for lunch had been a waste of time, at least it had had a satisfactory outcome. Letty, encumbered with the bottle and having no shopping bag with her, left the library without choosing a book and deposited the bottle in a crate outside the grocers shop near the office. Marcia could perfectly well have done this herself, she reflected, but obviously her mind did not work that way. She preferred not to dwell on how it might work, not to speculate. Although the encounter had been an upsetting one, almost as disturbing as seeing that woman slumped on the Underground platform, on that morning which seemed so long ago now.

  When she got home, Letty found Mrs Pope standing in the hall with a leaflet in her hand.

  ‘Help the Aged,’ she declared. ‘Good, serviceable clothing is needed for the aged overseas.’

  Letty could think of nothing to say.

  After they had parted from the women, Norman turned to Edwin. ‘You must let me know the damage and I’ll settle with you.’

  ‘Oh, that’s all right. I used mostly luncheon vouchers—the extra hardly amounted to anything—you must let me do this,’ said Edwin quickly, for he was sometimes haunted by a picture of Norman in his bedsitter while he himself occupied a whole house.

  ‘Well, thanks, chum,’ said Norman awkwardly. ‘It wasn’t so bad, really, was it.’

  ‘No, it passed off quite well—better than I expected in some ways, but I don’t like the look of Marcia’

  ‘You’re telling me! I should say she was going right round the bend. Still, she is under the doctor, that’s something. And that social worker goes to see her.’

  ‘Yes, rather too often, she said. People do seem to be keeping an eye on her.’

  With this they left the subject, but Edwin did say something to the effect that they must do it again some time, repeat the lunch invitation to Letty and Marcia. But it was a comfort to feel that this need not be for some time to come and that for the moment they had done their duty.

  Sixteen

  ALTHOUGH HE HAD been dead for some years, Marcia still missed the old cat, Snowy, and one evening she found herself particularly reminded of him when she came across one of his dishes in the cupboard under the sink. She was surprised and a little upset to notice that it still had some dried-up fragments of Kit-e-Kat adhering to it. Had she then not washed it up after his death? It would seem not. This might not have surprised an observer, but Marcia regarded herself as a meticulous housekeeper and she had always been especially careful with Snowy’s dishes, keeping them, in her own words, ‘spotlessly clean’.

  The finding of the dish gave her a desire to visit the cat’s grave which was somewhere at the bottom of the garden. When Snowy had died, Mr Smith, who had lived next door before Nigel and Priscilla came, had dug a grave and Marcia had laid Snowy in it, his body wrapped in a piece of her old blue ripple-cloth dressing gown which he used to sleep on. In the midst of life we are in death, she had thought, feeling the significance of the cloth and its associations. She had not marked the grave in any way, but she remembered where it was, for when she walked down the path she would think, Snowy’s grave; but as time went on she forgot the exact spot and now, in the season of high summer with the weeds flourishing, s
he could not find it at all. That part of the garden was so overgrown that she could hardly tell where the path and flowerbed met. There was a sprawling bush of catmint, so the grave must be somewhere near there because Snowy had loved to roll in the plant, but it was quite indiscernible now, though Marcia parted the covering of leaves and weeds with her hands. Then it occurred to her that if she were to dig in that bit of the garden, she would surely come upon the grave, perhaps uncover a fragment of the blue ripple-doth and then even find the bones.

  She went to the shed and fetched a spade, but it was very heavy and if she had ever wielded it in the past, she was certainly unable to now. After my operation of course, she thought, trying once more to move the earth and the thick clotting of weeds—dandelions, thistles and bindweed, plants with strong matted roots.

  It was thus that Priscilla saw her, crouched at the bottom of the garden. What was she doing, trying to dig with that heavy spade? It was worrying and upsetting, for the old—especially Miss Ivory—were perpetually nagging at her conscience. Not only was she a neighbour but also what Janice Brabner called ‘disadvantaged’ and that, whatever it might mean—Priscilla wasn’t absolutely sure—was certainly something to worry about. Of course, Nigel had asked Miss Ivory if she wanted her lawn cut but she had preferred it the way it was and one couldn’t bully the elderly, their independence was their last remaining treasure and must be respected. All the same, one could perhaps offer a little gardening assistance, digging, for example … but not now, when Priscilla had people coming to dinner, the avocados to prepare and mayonnaise to make. Perhaps it was a fine enough evening to have drinks outside on the little patio they had made, but the view of the neglected garden next door would detract from the elegance of the occasion, and if Miss Ivory was going to go on digging in this disturbing way something would have to be done about it. But now, to Priscilla’s relief, she was going back towards the house, dragging the heavy spade behind her. One had to cling to the hope that she knew what she was doing.