Quartet in Autumn

by Barbara Pym

  ‘I think you and I had apple pie and ice cream,’ Letty said.

  ‘That’s right—Aunt somebody’s apple pie. Edwin had the cream caramel and he tried to get Marcia to have some but she wouldn’t.’

  There was silence and for a moment nobody could think of anything else to say. They may all have been aware that at a time of bereavement it is best not to bottle things up. Marcia’s name had not been mentioned up to now and perhaps it was fitting that Norman should be the one to bring it out.

  ‘She always had such a small appetite,’ Letty said at last.

  ‘Never a big eater,’ Norman’s voice seemed as if it might break on these words but he controlled himself.

  I must ask him round to a meal one evening, Edwin thought, give him a chance to talk about her if he wants to. He did not much look forward to the prospect but things like this had to be done and one couldn’t expect always to enjoy doing one’s Christian duty.

  ‘What is going to happen to Miss Ivory’s house?’ asked Father G., as if the mention of property might bring the conversation up to a higher level. I suppose it will be left to that—er—relative?’

  ‘The young man in the bead necklace or his mother, I suppose,’ said Edwin. I believe those were her only relatives.’

  ‘If it were smartened up a bit it would be quite a desirable property,’ Father G. said, in a condescending estate-agent’s tone.

  ‘What do you mean, if it was smartened a bit?’ Norman asked aggressively.

  Father G. smiled. ‘Well, you know, it could have done with a lick of paint—that was my impression. Now, what about some ice cream?’ he asked in a soothing tone, feeling that ice cream might act like oil on troubled waters and pacify the angry Norman more effectively than any words of his.

  ‘We finished off with ice cream,’ Letty said. ‘There were so many different kinds, it was like being a child again. Even Norman said he’d always liked strawberry ice. I think it cheered him up in a sort of way.’

  ‘I couldn’t decide whether you’d be hungry or not,’ Mrs Pope said. ‘One never knows after a funeral.’

  Letty was surprised and obscurely comforted to realize that Mrs Pope had been thinking of her to the extent of wondering whether she would need a meal. The time—just after five o’clock—was an unpromising one for anything except a ‘high tea’ and that seemed inappropriate.

  ‘Edwin seemed to know this restaurant quite near, so that was very convenient,’ Letty explained.

  Mrs Pope had been waiting expectantly, so Letty had to tell her what they had eaten. Steak for Father G. had seemed suitable, for after all he had taken the service and in some way, Mrs Pope commented, the clergy appeared to relish meat and even to need it. Oeufs Florentine, Letty’s choice, sounded frivolous and unfeeling, on a par with wearing something in ‘French navy’ to the funeral. What was it about the French, or the idea of the French? Surely now that we were a part of the EEC things would be different, attitudes would change? Or would we be infected by their supposed frivolity? So Letty just said that she had had ‘an egg dish’.

  ‘Well, eggs are as nourishing as meat in their way,’ Mrs Pope pronounced, ‘so you probably won’t feel like another egg now.

  ‘I think just a cup of tea…’ There was something to be said for tea and a comfortable chat about crematoria.

  Twenty-two

  NORMAN WENT INTO Marcia’s house, using the front door key which had been handed over to him by the solicitor. He entered ‘the dwelling of Miss Marcia Joan Ivory, deceased’. That was how he put it to himself and how, shocked into his usual flippancy, he had discussed with Edwin the astonishing news that Marcia had left her house to him. The will had evidently been made just after her operation, at a time when she had been forced to face up to the future. Her money, such as it was, had been left to her cousin, with a legacy for the son. ‘He’ll be able to buy himself another string of beads,’ was Norman’s comment.

  ‘Norman, the Man of Property,’ Edwin teased, and it seemed to redress the balance between them, now that Norman also had a house and need no longer be an object of pity, alone in his bedsitter. Yet it would really have been more suitable if Marcia had left her house to Letty, also alone in a bedsitter though she did have the company of Mrs Pope. ‘Are you going to live in it?’ Edwin asked, remembering the state the house had been in when he and Father G. had gone in that time. It’ll need a bit doing to it,’ he couldn’t resist adding. ‘I shouldn’t be surprised if the roof leaked.’

  ‘Oh, so what!’ said Norman. ‘Who cares about the roof?’

  ‘Well, water might come in—rain and snow.’

  ‘We don’t get much snow in London, not south of the river, anyway.’

  ‘Did you know about this—had you any idea?’

  ‘What do you think? Of course I hadn’t.’

  ‘She used to make coffee for you, remember,’ Edwin persisted.

  ‘That was only because she thought it cheaper to share the large economy tin, as you’ve already pointed out more than once,’ Norman retorted angrily.

  They had parted slightly annoyed with each other, and the next day Norman had taken a day off to go and look at the house. He had a few extra bits of leave still owing to him, so there was no difficulty about that. Who would ever have thought that one of those extra days would have come in useful on this sort of occasion? God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform, and you could certainly call this a wonder.

  The key fitted easily in the Yale lock and there was a mortise lock too. Marcia had been careful about burglars, especially when she was out all day. Standing in the hall, Norman noticed the solid Edwardian furniture—hatstand, table and chairs—rather than the dust over everything, for of course it would be dusty after all this time, stands to reason, he said to himself. He wandered from room to room, seeing not himself in possession but Marcia as she must have been in the time he had known her but never been invited here. If she had invited him, would things have been any different? But she never would have invited him—that was the essence of their relationship. So it had been a relationship, had it? He remembered that time she had followed him into the BM, and he had been trapped in front of those animals, gaping at them with a crowd of school kids, stuck there until it was safe to go. She thought he hadn’t seen her, but he had, and after that he hadn’t gone to the museum again, just trotted off to the library. Then there had been the making of the coffee, that Edwin was always going on about—there hadn’t really been much in that…

  Norman ascended the stairs. He came into a room that might have been her bedroom. It had shabby, rose-flowered wallpaper and a faded patterned carpet. There was a table by the bed, and on it some books, an anthology of poetry, which surprised him, and a collection of pamphlets, the sort of thing you got in the library, giving details of services available for the retired and elderly. There was an old, rather dirty white candle wick cover over the bed and the sheets and pillows were still on it, just as they had been. This was the bed where she had slept, where she had dreamed, and where she had reached the point of death, though she hadn’t actually died in it. Edwin and Father G. had found her downstairs, sitting at the kitchen table.

  Norman advanced to the dressing table, with its swinging mirror, which stood in the window. So she had wanted a good light to see her face in, a cruelly revealing light, showing every line? Yet Marcia hadn’t been one to look much at herself in the glass, he suspected. She hadn’t seemed to care much about her appearance at the best of times, even with the dyed hair. At the end, Sister had said something about her lovely white hair, so perhaps the dye had grown out by then and somebody had cut off the dark ends. She had looked quite beautiful, Sister said, so calm and peaceful, but no doubt they always said that to the relatives, they must have to do quite a lot of what he thought of as soft-soaping in hospitals—Marcia looking beautiful—that would be the day! Yet, now that he knew that she had left him the house, he was prepared to believe that she might have been almost beautiful
.

  There was a chest of drawers, presumably containing her clothes and her bits and pieces. He didn’t particularly want to see those but he was drawn by curiosity. Tentatively, as if he were violating the sanctity of her secret office drawer, he opened one of the drawers. To his surprise, it was full of plastic bags of various sizes, all neatly folded and classified by size and type. There was something almost admirable about the arrangement, unexpected and yet just the sort of thing he could imagine Marcia doing.

  He closed the drawer and stood in the middle of the room, wondering what to do. Surely he couldn’t be expected to cope with all her mess, it was a woman’s job. Letty ought to be here, sorting out the things, deciding what to do with the clothes. Perhaps he should get in touch with her, that was the obvious thing, unless the distant cousin could be approached; perhaps as a relative she had a prior claim. She had been too upset to attend the funeral but a few perks, like clothes and the odd stick of furniture, might work wonders on her sensibility.

  Thinking about this, Norman moved into another room and stood looking out of a side window. From here he had a view of well-maintained and painted houses and neat gardens, the residences of his future neighbours, should he decide to live in the house himself.

  ‘There’s a man looking out of the window,’ said Priscilla. ‘He’s in Miss Ivory’s house. Do you suppose it’s all right?’

  ‘Perhaps we ought to investigate,’ said Janice. She and Priscilla were sitting on the patio, drinking coffee. It was a marvellously sunny October day, a real Indian summer. Janice had been going to visit one of her cases in a nearby street, but the old person had been taken off for a drive by one of the enthusiastic amateur do-gooders from the church—annoying, the way social-services wires sometimes got crossed, though it meant that she had an unexpectedly free morning. So she had dropped in on Priscilla for a welcome cup of coffee and a gossip. Not exactly gossip, more to speculate on what might happen to Miss Ivory’s house, what sort of neighbours Nigel and Priscilla might be getting.

  ‘It looks like one of those men who were at the funeral,’ Priscilla said ‘You know, the men who worked in that office place.’

  What would he be doing in the house?’ Janice asked. ‘He never came to see Miss Ivory when she was alive.’ Her tone reflected some of the indignation she felt at the idea that Miss Ivory might have had friends who were perfectly capable of visiting her but never did. Yet wasn’t it her job, her justification, her raison d’être, the loneliness of people like Miss Ivory? You couldn’t have it all ways, as her husband sometimes reminded her. If the friends and relatives did their stuff, Janice might well be out of a job.

  ‘Why don’t we go over and see,’ said Priscilla boldly. We can always say we noticed somebody in the house and wondered if it was all right. After all, we don’t know him from Adam, do we?’

  That social worker and her friend, the woman who lives next door, Norman thought, as he saw them coming to the house. What do they want?

  ‘Yes?’ he barked in a brusque, unpromising way, as he opened the front door an unfriendly crack.

  Such an odd little man, thought Priscilla, preparing to assume her coolest social manner, but Janice got in first.

  ‘I’m Janice Brabner,’ she said, ‘and I used to look after Miss Ivory.’ Rather a pointless thing to say, she realized, as it might appear that she hadn’t been all that successful. ‘We saw somebody at an upstairs window,’ she went on quickly.

  ‘Yes, me,’ said Norman. ‘It’s my house now. Miss Ivory left it to me in her will.’

  Norman was prepared for the gasp of unflattering astonishment that met his announcement. It seemed as if they hardly believed him. The one called ‘Priscilla’ was a tall blonde, wearing velvet trousers, and the other (I’m Janice Brabner, he mimicked to himself) was shorter and squatter, a real bossy social-worker type. She was the first one to speak, after he had dropped his bombshell.

  ‘Are you sure?’ she said.

  ‘Sure? Of course I’m sure!’ Norman retorted indignantly.

  ‘Oh, that is nice,’ said Priscilla. She was not so stupid as to imagine that gushing social insincerity would get her anywhere with Norman, but it had occurred to her that if this person was going to be their new neighbour it would be just as well to get on to good terms with him. All the same she very much hoped that he wasn’t going to be. What she really wanted was a young couple of about the same age as herself and Nigel, perhaps with children, so that they could do mutual baby-sitting when she and Nigel decided to start a family. The sort of people one could ask to dinner, which this odd little man, and whatever friends he might have, hardly seemed to be.

  But Janice, with no stake in the future, could afford to be blunter. ‘Are you going to live here?’ she asked, straight out.

  ‘I haven’t made up my mind,’ Norman said. ‘I might decide to live here, and again I might not.’

  At this stage the two women moved away, leaving Norman feeling that he had got the better of them. He did not go into the house again but began to explore that garden - ‘explore’ was the word, he decided, when you almost had to hack your way through the undergrowth. There was a garden shed, the kind of thing that might come in useful, and he saw himself arranging his tools and his ‘gear’ there. Perhaps Marcia had a lawn mower, a fork, a spade and a hoe, though it didn’t look as if she had made much use of them lately. He pushed open the door of the shed. There were certainly some tools in one corner, but most of the space was taken up with rows of milk bottles stacked on shelves; there must have been over a hundred of them.

  At this point Norman felt he couldn’t cope any more. The small-scale stuffiness of his bedsitter seemed suddenly very cosy and attractively safe, so he decided to go back to it, ‘home’ as it still was. All the same, he was now a house owner and it was up to him to decide what to do with the property, whether to live in it himself or to sell it, and houses in that street were fetching a tidy sum judging by the others he had seen there. The fact that the decision rested with him, that he had the power to influence the lives of people like Priscilla and her husband, gave him a quite new, hitherto unexperienced sensation—a good feeling, like a dog with two tails, as people sometimes put it—and he walked to the bus stop with his head held high.

  That same evening, on the other side of the common, Edwin returned from the office, wondering what sort of a day Norman had spent in what he still thought of as ‘Marcia’s house’. In other circumstances he might have strolled over there but tonight, being the 18th of October and St Luke’s day, he was hoping to find an evening Mass somewhere. The lunchtime churches had yielded nothing, a sad contrast to the days when Father Thames, and later Father Bode, had attracted a crowd of office workers. Edwin also thought regretfully of another church where he had often gone in the past, which would have provided a splendid service, but that church was no more. A scandal in the early fifties—Edwin remembered it well—had put an end to the splendid services, the congregation had fallen away and in the end the church had been closed as redundant. An office block now stood on the spot where the air had once been filled with incense. It was a sad story, but the upshot of it was that there would be no St Luke’s day evening Mass there. Luke, the beloved physician. You would have thought that the church opposite the hospital where Marcia had died would be filled with devout consultants—surgeons and physicians—housemen and nurses, on this day, but not a bit of it. The St Luke’s there was the kind of church that had only the bare mimimum of Sunday services and nothing on weekdays. Now that he came to think of it, Edwin had grave suspicions that Mr Strong, Marcia’s surgeon, was not any kind of churchgoer. Something he had said, some disparaging remark he had made about the chaplain … Still, that didn’t solve the problem of the St Luke’s day service and eventually the idea had to be given up.

  Then it occurred to Edwin that he might give Letty a ring. At the funeral he had got the impression that she was a bit lonely, even living with Mrs Pope. After all, though it had been a good
idea for her to go there as a lodger, was the company of a woman in her eighties quite enough for Letty? With this idea in his mind, he went to the telephone and dialled the number, but it was engaged. He decided to leave it for today and try again tomorrow or whenever he happened to remember it. After all, there was no hurry.

  Twenty three

  LETTY HAD AN old-fashioned respect for the clergy which seemed outmoded in the seventies, when it was continually being brought home to her that in many ways they were just like other men, or even more so. The emphasis on humanity, in which we all share, had been the burden of a sermon she had recently heard at Mrs Pope’s church, as if the preacher were preparing his congregation for some particularly outrageous piece of behaviour. In his case it had been no more than the removal of some of the pews at the back of the church to provide a space where the younger children could be accommodated during the service, but of course it had been greeted with indignant opposition by some.

  ‘He is determined to ride roughshod over us,’ Mrs Pope declared.

  Letty, shocked by the violence of Mrs Pope’s concept, had been about to say a word in the vicar’s favour, when the telephone rang. Had it been a moment earlier (or later) it would have been Edwin, prompted by a friendly gesture towards Letty’s supposed loneliness, but as it happened it was Marjorie, ‘that friend of yours who’s going to marry that clergyman’, as Mrs Pope sometimes put it. But now, it appeared, Marjorie was not going to marry him. What Letty gathered from the incoherent outburst was that for some reason—it was a bad line, and she could not gather exactly what the reason was—the engagement had been broken off.

  ‘Beth Doughty,’ Marjorie wailed. ‘And I had no idea…’

  For a moment Letty couldn’t remember who Beth Doughty was, then it came back to her. The warden of Holmhurst, the home for retired gentlefolk, that was Beth Doughty—the efficient woman with the rigid hairstyle, who poured such generous gins, who knew the kind of food David Lydell liked and remembered his passion for Orvieto. There was something shocking in the idea of two women competing for the love of a clergyman with the lure of food and wine, but the whole pattern slotted into place. Humanity in which we all share…