Quartet in Autumn

by Barbara Pym

  Back in the kitchen, Marcia couldn’t remember what she had gone out for, then the sight of the cat’s dish soaking in the sink reminded her. There had been no trace of the grave and she was not strong enough to go on digging for it. She supposed she should have something to eat, but it was a bother to cook anything and she didn’t want to disturb her supply of tins. So she just made a cup of tea and put plenty of sugar in it, like the tea at the hospital. ‘Cup of tea, Miss Ivory? Sugar, dear?’ It gave Marcia a warm feeling to remember those days and that nice woman—Nancy, they called her—coming round with the tea.

  On that same summer evening Letty was helping Mrs Pope and little furry Mrs Musson to sort out clothes that had been sent in response to the appeal for aged refugees.

  ‘What would you think if somebody gave you this?’ said Mrs Pope, holding up a bright red mini-skirt People have no idea of what is needed.’

  ‘Some oriental women are very small,’ said Letty doubtfully. ‘So I suppose they could wear it Of course one doesn’t really know what they need—it’s so difficult to visualize…’ The horror of the pictures on Mrs Pope’s television screen seemed so totally unconnected with the heaps of unsuitable garments piled on the floor of Mrs Musson’s dining room. Mrs Pope had refused to receive the clothes in her own house. ‘Nobody would expect a woman in her eighties…’ she maintained, and of course she had a point there, even if it was not absolutely clear what it was. Letty suspected that it might be an old deep-rooted fear of ‘fevers and diseases’ that made her avoid too close contact with other people’s cast-off clothes. As for nobody expecting a woman in her eighties to house this jumble of old garments, that really had nothing to do with it, for Mrs Pope did exactly those things that she wanted to do which made Letty realize that perhaps getting older had some advantages, few though these might be.

  During the months since her retirement, Letty had tried conscientiously to enter into the life around her in the north-west London suburb where she now found herself. This meant, as Edwin had imagined her, taking part in the activities of the church, sitting rather far back, trying to discover what church-going held for people, apart from habit and convention, wondering if it would hold anything for her and if so what form this would take. On a bitter cold evening in March she joined a little group, hardly more than the two or three gathered together, shuffling round the Stations of the Cross. It was the third Wednesday in Lent and there had been snow, now hard and frozen on the ground. The church was icy. The knees of elderly women bent creakily at each Station, hands had to grasp the edge of a pew to pull the body up again. ‘From pain to pain, from woe to woe…’ they recited, but Letty’s thoughts had been on herself and how she should arrange the rest of her life. Easter was of course better, with daffodils in the church and people making an effort with their clothes, but Whitsun was bitterly cold, with a leaden grey sky and the church heating turned off. Did people then only go for the light and warmth, the coffee after the Sunday morning service and a friendly word from the vicar?

  Once Edwin had come to the service and Letty had greeted him so warmly that he must have taken fright, for he had not appeared again. ‘Oh, he goes round to a lot of churches, as it takes his fancy,’ somebody had pointed out and of course Letty knew that this was true. Not even Father G. had his undivided allegiance. ‘He’s a widower,’ Mrs Pope had said, ‘but of course you know that, working with him. And he took a lot of trouble finding a room for you when that black man bought the house you were living in. He must think a lot of you—he spoke very warmly.’ For Mrs Pope this was going far, but the doubtful prospect of Edwin’s warmth’ did nothing to warm Letty’s cold heart.

  Now at least she felt that she was doing something useful, helping to sort out and pack clothes for aged refugees. She would have preferred something a little nearer home, people she could have pictured actually wearing the clothes, even the scarlet miniskirt, but it was not to be. Everything at all suitable was just bundled into black plastic bags, while the less suitable was cast aside for jumble.

  ‘You’ll be giving the room a good clean out after this, of course,’ said Mrs Pope and Mrs Musson had to agree, feeling bound to point out that she cleaned the room every day anyway.

  ‘I suppose the clothes could have been sent to the church hall?’ Letty suggested.

  ‘Oh, that wouldn’t have done at all,’ said Mrs Pope, but Letty, even with her newly acquired experience of parish affairs, did not yet possess the particular item of esoteric knowledge that would enable her to solve this problem. All was never as it might seem to be.

  ‘What a lovely evening,’ Letty said, looking out of the window. ‘All that laburnum!’

  Norman, coming back from work, did not notice the laburnums in full flower in the square garden, but his heart lifted when he saw that an old car, which had been dumped there for over a week, appeared to have been removed. He had got on to the police and the council about that, and the fine summer evening gave him a sense of achievement, an unusual and agreeable sensation for him. This gave way to a feeling of restlessness, so that after he had fried bacon and tomatoes and opened a small tin of his favourite butter beans, it did not seem quite enough to settle down in his bedsitter with the Evening Standard and the radio. He felt he wanted to go out, take a bus somewhere to another part of London, any bus, the first one that came, if one ever did come, he added sardonically.

  A bus did come and he got on it and took a ticket to Clapham Common, realizing after he had done so that Edwin lived in that direction, but of course it was most unlikely that he would run into him. He was probably at some fancy service at one of his many churches.

  On top of the bus, Norman settled down for the long ride—it cost enough anyway, he thought. He sat on the front seat, like a visitor to London, observing the scene around him, sights passing before his eyes—well-known landmarks, buildings, the river; then gardens and people in them doing things to lawns and hedges, and in the roads men engaged in the rituals concerned with the motor car. When he got to a suitable stopping place he climbed down from the bus and began to walk aimlessly. Now he was not at all sure why he had come or what he was going to do when he got there, wherever ‘there’ might be. Turning off the common he came to a side road, and just as Edwin had done some time ago he realized that he was looking at the name of the road where Marcia lived. But unlike Edwin he did not turn away but began to walk down it, though with no clear plan in his mind. He certainly did not intend to call on her, he didn’t even remember the number of her house. But wouldn’t it be easy to pick it out, he asked himself, wouldn’t it stand out as being different from the smartly tarted-up suburban semi-detached Victorian villas with their pastel-coloured front doors, carriage lamps, paved patios and car-ports?

  Of course he was right. Marcia’s house, with its flaking green and cream paint, dusty laurels and dingy curtains, was unmistakable. He stood on the opposite side of the road and gazed in stunned fascination, very much as he had gazed at the mummified animals in the British Museum. The house looked deserted, the curtains half drawn, and although it was a warm evening there was no crack of window open. The garden, as far as Norman could see, was totally neglected, but a magnificent old laburnum tree was in full flower. Its branches drooped over a ramshackle little garden shed, and as he stood there he saw Marcia coming out of the shed with her arms full of milk bottles. Her hair was quite white and she was wearing an old cotton dress patterned with large pink flowers. It was such a strange sight that he was as if rooted to the spot He had a feeling that she had seen him and for an instant they seemed to stand staring at each other—again it was like the British Museum encounter with the mummified animals—giving no sign of mutual recognition. Then Marcia disappeared from view, presumably going into the back of her house, he thought.

  Norman crossed the road with no clear idea of what he should do. Ought he to go up to the door and ring the bell, make himself known? His instinct was to run away, but before he could make up his mind he saw that a y
oung woman was approaching the house from the opposite direction. She walked purposefully and when she saw Norman, loitering in front of Marcias house, she said sharply, ‘Going to see somebody here, are you?’

  ‘Oh no, just taking a walk,’ said Norman quickly.

  ‘I’ve been watching you,’ Janice went on. ‘Do you know somebody in this house?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with you?’ Norman snapped.

  ‘We have to be on the lookout—everybody has to. There’ve been some break-ins round here lately.’

  ‘Charming, I must say!’ Norman burst out. ‘I shouldn’t think Marcia Ivory’s got much worth stealing.’

  ‘You know her then? I’m sorry, but you know how it is—one gets so suspicious.’ Janice smiled. ‘As a matter of fact I was just going to call on Miss Ivory—I’m a volunteer social worker.’

  ‘Keeping an eye on her, are you?’

  ‘That’s it. I pop in every now and then.’

  ‘That’s good. Well, cheerio, I must be on my way.’ Norman began to move off.

  ‘Aren’t you going in to see her now you’re here?’ Janice asked

  ‘Oh, I have seen her,’ said Norman, some distance away by now. And of course, in a sense, that was true. That sight of her with the milk bottles surely counted as seeing and it had been enough. Once seen never forgotten, he thought. But at least he would be able to tell Edwin that although Marcia’s house looked a bit grotty, as the modern expression had it, a brisk young social worker was keeping an eye on her. It didn’t necessarily follow, though, that he would tell Edwin about this evening—he didn’t want to have to explain what he had been doing in that part of London, what sudden impulse had sent him there. It had been just one of those things and Edwin probably wouldn’t understand that.

  In the house Janice was saying in her brightest tone, ‘I see you had a visitor just now.’

  Marcia stared in the disconcerting way she always met any comment or question.

  ‘The gentleman I saw in the road’

  ‘Oh, him!’ Marcia was scornful. ‘That was just somebody I used to work with. I don’t want anybody like that coming to see me.’

  Janice sighed. Better leave the subject of the gentleman visitor, that funny little man. ‘And how have you been getting on?’ she asked. ‘Been shopping today, have you?’

  Seventeen

  WALKING IN THE wood Letty came upon a sheet of wild garlic. ‘Oh, how lovely!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘You should have seen the bluebells,’ Marjorie said, with the enthusiastically proprietary air of the country dweller. ‘They were wonderful this year, but they’re nearly over now. You should have come a fortnight ago when they were at their best.’

  You didn’t ask me then, Letty thought, for it was only now, when David was away on a visit to his mother (in her ninetieth year, Letty recalled), that Marjorie had suggested that she might like a few days in the country.

  ‘This is almost like old times, isn’t it?’ Marjorie went on.

  ‘Yes, in a way,’ Letty agreed, taking note of the ‘almost’, ‘but so much has happened.’

  ‘Yes, hasn’t it! Who would ever have thought … that first time I met David, I really had no idea…’ Marjorie proceeded to recall that first meeting and the subsequent development of her relationship with the man she was about to marry. Letty allowed her to ramble on while she looked around the wood, remembering its autumn carpet of beech leaves and wondering if it could be the kind of place to lie down in and prepare for death when life became too much to be endured. Had an old person—a pensioner, of course—ever been found in such a situation? No doubt it would be difficult to lie undiscovered for long, for this wood was a favourite walking place for bustling women with dogs. It was not the kind of fancy she could indulge with Marjorie or even dwell on too much herself. Danger lay in that direction.

  Marjorie still had the idea that Letty might find a room at Holmhurst and that evening they were to have supper with Miss Doughty, the resident warden.

  Beth Doughty was a smartly dressed woman in her middle forties, with a rigidly controlled hairstyle, sharp eyes, and heavy make-up which gave her a curiously old-fashioned look. She poured generous tots of gin, explaining that in her job you really needed what she rather oddly described as ‘moral support’. Letty found herself wondering if she really liked old people, but perhaps efficiency was more important than liking and she certainly gave the impression of being highly capable.

  ‘Do you think Letty could find a place at Holmhurst?’ Marjorie asked. ‘You thought there might be another vacancy soon.’

  ‘You wouldn’t like living here, not after living in London,’ Beth declared. ‘Just look at them now—come to the window.’

  Letty stood looking out, glass in hand. Three old ladies—an uncomfortable number, hinting at awkwardness—were walking slowly round the garden. There was nothing particularly remarkable about them except their remoteness from any kind of life. Suddenly Letty felt indignant with Marjorie for supposing that she would be content with this sort of existence when she herself was going to marry a handsome clergyman. It was all of a piece with that life of forty years ago, when Letty had always trailed behind her friend, but there was no need to follow the same pattern now. As Beth Doughty topped up her glass, she resolved that a room in Holmhurst was the last thing she’d come to—better to lie down in the wood under the beech leaves and bracken and wait quietly for death.

  ‘This is one of Father Lydell’s favourite dishes,’ said Beth, bringing a covered casserole to the table. ‘Poulet niçoise—I hope you like it.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Letty murmured, remembering the times she had eaten poulet niçoise at Marjorie’s house. Had David Lydell gone all round the village sampling the cooking of the unattached women before deciding which one to settle with? Certainly the dish they were eating this evening was well up to standard.

  Afterwards Marjorie said, ‘It was rather funny about the poulet niçoise and the way Beth had to let us know that she had asked David in to meals—she made a dead set at him, you know.’

  ‘And that wine we had—Orvieto, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes—another of David’s favourites. It’s really quite amusing, isn’t it?’

  Letty was doubtful about this, for the ridiculous little episode had given her a glimpse of something deeper that she did not particularly want to probe.

  ‘I do wonder how Beth Doughty manages to rise to all that gin,’ Marjorie went on, ‘so expensive now. Luckily David doesn’t care for spirits.’

  ‘Well, that’s a blessing, isn’t it,’ Letty agreed, feeling that there was something obscurely wrong about this juxtaposition of spirits with blessing, but unable to supply an appropriate modification.

  That evening Marcia paid a visit to the doctor. She had not made an appointment and was not even sure which of the three doctors she would be seeing, but it did not really matter since none of them was Mr Strong. She was content to sit for anything up to two hours, not even glancing through the tattered magazines but just observing the other people waiting. Most of these, in her opinion, need not have been there at all. She wondered how many of them, if any, had undergone ‘major surgery’, as she had. The majority were young, as if they had just come from work, and appeared to have nothing whatever the matter with them. All they wanted was a certificate. Wasting the doctor’s time, she thought—no wonder the National Health Service was in such financial trouble.

  When her name was called she was still indignant, and had it been the young woman doctor or the honey-voiced Middle-Eastern one behind the desk she would have gone on seething. It was neither of these but the one she called her ‘own’ doctor, a middle-aged man with a kindly, anxious expression. This was the doctor who had sent her into hospital in the first place, who had seen that lump on her breast.

  Well, Miss Ivory…’ his hands moved among a sheaf of papers. ‘And how’s the world treating you?’ Mastectomy, he thought. Odd, difficult; a glib but accurate diagnosis of this p
articular patient. ‘How have you been?’

  Marcia needed no more encouragement but proceeded to tell him. What she said was not altogether coherent or even relevant, but the doctor was given a decided impression that all was not quite as it should be. She grumbled about the social worker, her neighbours who wanted to mow her lawn, her inability to locate the grave of her dead cat and the suspicion that ‘somebody’ might have moved it, the difficulty of keeping a check on her collection of milk bottles, a man she used to work with who had come spying on her, the closing of a branch of Sainsbury’s near her old office—it was all jumbled up in a great flood of complaint The doctor was used to patients going on in this way, so he only half listened while examining her and taking her blood pressure and wondering what on earth to do with her. She told him that she was due for another check-up at the hospital soon, so that rather took things out of his hands. No doubt Strong’s boys would suggest something. In the meantime he urged her to look after herself and to get more to eat—she was much too thin.

  ‘Oh, I’ve never been a big eater,’ Marcia declared with her usual pride. ‘But nobody can say that I don’t keep a good table. You should just see my store cupboard.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re an admirable housekeeper,’ said the doctor diplomatically, ‘but you must promise me that you’ll go home and cook yourself a really good meal. Not just a cup of tea and a bit of bread and butter, Miss Ivory. I don’t know what Mr Strong is going to say when he sees you looking so thin.’

  The mention of Mr Strong’s name had the desired effect and Marcia assured the doctor that she would go back at once and cook something. All the way home she thought of Mr Strong and the kind of meal the surgeon would most likely be having this evening—steak, perhaps, or a nice bit of fish, salmon or halibut, with fresh vegetables from his garden. She was sure there were vegetables in that garden although she had not been able to see the back of it when she had gone to look at his house last year. It might be possible to catch a glimpse of beans and lettuces or cabbages and broccoli—Marcia’s gardening days were so long past that she had no clear recollection of what vegetables would be in season. Should she go there now on a bus and make sure? Perhaps there was a side entrance to the house which would give her a view of the back garden…