Excellent Women

First published 1952

TO
MY SISTER

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

‘A
H
, you ladies! Always on the spot when there’s something happening!’ The voice belonged to Mr. Mallett, one of our churchwardens, and its roguish tone made me start guiltily, almost as if I had no right to be discovered outside my own front door.

‘New people moving in? The presence of a furniture van would seem to suggest it,’ he went on pompously. ‘I expect
you
know about it.’

‘Well, yes, one usually does,’ I said, feeling rather annoyed at his presumption. ‘It is rather difficult not to know such things.’

I suppose an unmarried woman just over thirty, who lives alone and has no apparent ties, must expect to find herself involved or interested in other people’s  business, and if she is also a clergyman’s daughter then one might really say that there is no hope for her.

‘Well, well,
tempus fugit
, as the poet says,’ called out Mr. Mallett as he hurried on.

I had to agree that it did, but I dawdled long enough to see the furniture men set down a couple of chairs on the pavement, and as I walked up the stairs to my flat I heard the footsteps of a person in the empty rooms below me, pacing about on the bare boards, deciding where each piece should go.

Mrs. Napier, I thought, for I had noticed a letter addressed to somebody of that name, marked ‘To Await Arrival’. But now that she had materialised I felt, perversely, that I did not want to see her, so I hurried into my own rooms and began tidying out my kitchen.

I met her for the first time by the dustbins, later that afternoon. The dustbins were in the basement and everybody in the house shared them. There were offices on the ground floor and above them the two flats, not properly self-contained and without every convenience. ‘I have to share a bathroom,’ I had so often murmured, almost with shame, as if I personally had been found unworthy of a bathroom of my own.

I bent low over the bin and scrabbled a few tea leaves and potato peelings out of the bottom of my bucket. I was embarrassed that we should meet like this. I had meant to ask Mrs. Napier to coffee one evening. It was to have been a gracious, civilised occasion, with my best coffee cups and biscuits on little silver dishes. And now here I was standing awkwardly in my oldest clothes, carrying a bucket and a waste-paper-basket.

Mrs. Napier spoke first.

‘You must be Miss Lathbury,’ she said abruptly. ‘I’ve seen your name by one of the door-bells.’

J
ULIAN
M
ALORY
was about forty, a few years younger than his sister. Both were tall, thin and angular, but while this gave to Julian a suitable ascetic distinction, it only seemed to make Winifred, with her eager face and untidy grey hair, more awkward and gaunt. She was dressed, as usual, in an odd assortment of clothes, most of which had belonged to other people. It was well known that Winifred got most of her wardrobe from the garments sent to the parish jumble sales, for such money as she had was never spent on herself but on Good—one could almost say Lost—Causes, in which she was an unselfish and tireless worker. The time left over from these good works was given to ‘making a home’ for her brother, whom she adored, though she was completely undomesticated and went about it with more enthusiasm than skill.

‘If only I could paint the front door!’ she said, as the three of us went into the vicarage after Evensong. ‘It looks so dark and drab. A vicarage ought to be a welcoming sort of place with a bright entrance.’

Julian was hanging up his biretta on a peg in the narrow hall. Next to it hung a rather new-looking panama hat. I had never seen him wearing it and it occurred to me that perhaps he had bought it to keep until its ribbon became rusty with age and the straw itself a greyish yellow. My father had worn just, such a hat and it always seemed to me to epitomise the wisdom of an old country clergyman, wisdom which Julian could not hope to attain for another twenty or thirty years.

‘A welcoming sort of place with a bright entrance,’ Julian repeated. ‘Well, I hope people do get a welcome even if our front door is dark and I hope Mrs. Jubb has got some supper for us.’

I sat down at the table without any very high hopes, for both Julian and Winifred, as is often the way with good, unworldly people, hardly noticed what they ate or drank, so that a meal with them was a doubtful pleasure. Mrs. Jubb, who might have been quite a good cook with any encouragement, must have lost heart long ago. Tonight she set before us a pale macaroni cheese and a dish of boiled potatoes, and I noticed a blancmange or ‘shape’, also of an indeterminate colour, in a glass dish on the sideboard.

Not enough salt, or perhaps
no
salt, I thought, as I ate the macaroni. And not really enough cheese.

‘Do tell me about this anonymous donation,’ I asked. ‘It sounds splendid.’

‘Yes, it’s really most encouraging. Somebody has sent me ten pounds. I wonder who it can be!’ When Julian smiled the bleakness of his face was softened and he became almost good-looking. There was usually something rather forbidding about his manner so that women did not tend to fuss over him as they might otherwise have done. I am not even sure whether anyone had ever knitted him a scarf or pullover. I suppose he was neither so handsome nor so conceited as to pretend a belief in celibacy as a protection, and I did not really know his views on the matter. It seemed a comfortable arrangement for the brother and sister to live together, and perhaps it is more suitable that a High Church clergyman should remain unmarried, that there should be a biretta in the hall rather than a perambulator.

‘I always think an anonymous donation is so exciting,’ said Winifred with adolescent eagerness. ‘I’m longing to find out who it is. Mildred, it isn’t you, is it? Or anyone you know?

I denied all knowledge of it.

Julian smiled tolerantly at his sister’s enthusiasm. ‘Ah, well, I expect we shall know soon enough who has sent it. Probably one of our good ladies in Colchester or Grantchester Square.’ He named the two most respectable squares in our district, where a few houses of the old type, occupied by one family or even one person and not yet cut up into flats, were to be found. My flat was in neither of these squares, but in a street on the fringe and at what I liked to think was the ‘best’ end.

‘It doesn’t seem like them, somehow,’ I said. ‘They don’t usually do good by stealth.’

‘No,’ Julian agreed, ‘their left hand usually knows perfectly well what their right hand is doing.’

‘Of course,’ said Winifred, ‘a lot of new people have moved here since the war ended. I’ve noticed one or two strangers at church lately. It may be one of them.’

‘Yes, it probably is,’ I agreed. ‘The new people moved into my house today and I met Mrs. Napier for the first time this afternoon. By the dustbins, too.’

Julian laughed. ‘I hope that isn’t an omen, meeting by the dustbins.’

‘She seemed very pleasant,’ I said rather insincerely. ‘A bit younger than I am, I should think. Her husband is in the Navy and is coming home soon. He has been in Italy.

‘Italy, how lovely!’ said Winifred. ‘We must ask them in. Don’t you remember, dear,’ she turned to her brother, ‘Fanny Ogilvy used to teach English in Naples? I wonder if he met her.’

‘I should think it very unlikely,’ said Julian. ‘Naval officers don’t usually meet impoverished English gentlewomen abroad.’

‘Oh, but his wife told me that he spent his time being charming to dull Wren officers,’ I said, ‘so he sounds rather a nice person. She is an anthropologist, Mrs. Napier. I’m not quite sure what that is.’

‘Really? It sounds a little incongruous—a naval officer and an anthropologist,’ said Julian.

‘It sounds very exciting,’ said Winifred. ‘Is it something to do with apes?’

Julian began to explain to us what an anthropologist was, or I suppose he did, but as it is unlikely that any anthropologist will read this, I can perhaps say that it appeared to be something to do with the study of man and his behaviour in society—particularly among ‘primitive communities’, Julian said.

Winifred giggled. ‘I hope she isn’t going to study
us
.’

‘I’m very much afraid that we shan’t see her at St. Mary’s,’ said Julian gravely.

‘No, I’m afraid not. She told me that she never went to church.’

‘I hope you were able to say a word, Mildred,’ said Julian, fixing me with what I privately called his ‘burning’ look. ‘We shall rely on you to do something there.’

‘Oh, I don’t suppose I shall see anything of her except at the dustbins,’ I said lightly. ‘Perhaps her husband will come to church. Naval officers are often religious, I believe.’

‘They that go down to the sea in ships: and occupy their business in great waters; These men see the works of the Lord: and His wonders in the deep,’ Julian said, half to himself.

I did not like to spoil the beauty of the words by pointing out that as far as we knew Rockingham Napier had spent most of his service arranging the Admiral’s social life. Of course he might very well have seen the works of the Lord and His wonders in the deep.

We got up from the table and Julian went out of the room. There was to be some kind of a meeting at half-past seven and I could already hear the voices of some of the ‘lads’ in the hall.

‘Let’s go into the den,’ said Winifred, ‘and I’ll make some coffee on the gas ring.’

The den was a small room, untidily cosy, looking out on to the narrow strip of garden. Julian’s study was in the front on the same side, the drawing-room and dining-room on the other side. Upstairs there were several bedrooms and attics and a large cold bathroom. The kitchen was in the basement. It was really a very large house for two people, but Father Greatorex, the curate, a middle-aged man who had been ordained late in life, had his own flat in Grantchester Square.

‘We really ought to do something about letting off the top floor as a flat,’ said Winifred, pouring coffee that looked like weak tea. ‘It seems so selfish,
wrong,
really, just the two of us living here when there must be so many people wanting rooms now. I do hope this coffee is all right, Mildred? You always make it so well.

‘Delicious, thank you,’ I murmured. ‘I’m sure you’d have no difficulty in getting a nice tenant. Of course you’d want somebody congenial. You might advertise in the
Church Times’
At this idea a crowd of suitable applicants seemed to rise up before me—canons’ widows, clergymen’s sons, Anglo-Catholic gentle-women (non-smokers), church people (regular communicants) … all so worthy that they sounded almost unpleasant.

‘Oh, yes, we might do that. But I suppose you wouldn’t think of coming here yourself, Mildred?’ Her eyes shone, eager and pleading like a dog’s. ‘You could name your own rent, dear. I know Julian would like to have you here as much as I should.’

‘That’s very kind of you,’ I said, speaking slowly to gain time, for fond as I was of Winifred I valued my independence very dearly, ‘but I think I’d better stay where I am. I should be only one person and you’d really have room for two, wouldn’t you?’

‘A couple, you mean?’

‘Yes, or two friends. Something like Dora and me, or younger people, students, perhaps.’

Winifred’s face brightened. ‘Oh, that would be lovely.’

‘Or a married curate,’ I suggested, full of ideas. ‘That would be very suitable. If Father Greatorex does get somewhere in the country, as I believe he wants to, Julian will be wanting another curate and he may very well be married.

‘Yes, of course, they don’t all feel as Julian does.

‘Does he?’ I asked, interested. ‘I didn’t realise he had any definite views about it.’

‘Well, he’s never actually said anything,’ said Winifred vaguely. ‘But it’s so much nicer that he hasn’t married, nicer for me, that is, although I should have liked some nephews and nieces. And now,’ she leapt up with one of her awkward impulsive movements, ‘I must show you what Lady Farmer’s sent for the jumble sale. Such
good
things. I shall be quite set up for the spring.’

Lady Farmer was one of the few wealthy members of our congregation, but as she was over seventy I was doubtful whether her clothes would really be suitable for Winifred, who was much thinner and hadn’t her air of comfortably upholstered elegance.

‘Look,’ she shook out the folds of a maroon embossed chenille velvet afternoon dress and held it up against her, ‘what do you think of this?’

I had to agree that it was lovely material, but the dress was so completely Lady Farmer that I should have hated to wear it myself and swamp whatever individuality I possess.

‘Miss Enders can take it in where it’s too big,’ said Winifred. ‘It will do if people come to supper, you know, the Bishop or anybody like that.’

We were both silent for a moment, as if wondering whether such an occasion could possibly arise.

‘There’s always the parish party at Christmas,’ I suggested.

‘Oh, of course. It will do for that.’ Winifred sounded relieved and bundled the dress away again. ‘There’s a good jumper suit, too, just the thing to wear in the mornings. How much ought I to give for them?’ she asked anxiously. ‘Lady Farmer said that I could have anything I wanted for myself, but I must pay a fair price, otherwise the sale won’t make anything.’

We discussed the matter gravely for some time and then I got up to go,

There were lights in Mrs. Napier’s windows as I approached the house, and from her room came the sound of voices raised in what sounded like an argument.

I went into my little kitchen and laid my breakfast. I usually left the house at a quarter to nine in the morning and worked for my gentlewomen until lunchtime. After that I was free, but I always seemed to find plenty to do. As I moved about the kitchen getting out china and cutlery, I thought, not for the first time, how pleasant it was to be living alone. The jingle of the little beaded cover against the milk jug reminded me of Dora and her giggles, her dogmatic opinions and the way she took offence so easily. The little cover, which had been her idea, seemed to symbolise all the little irritations of her company, dear kind friend though she was. ‘It keeps out flies and dust,’ she would say, and of course she was perfectly right, it was only my perverseness that made me sometimes want to fling it away with a grand gesture.

Later, as I lay in bed, I found myself thinking about Mrs. Napier and the man I had seen with her. Was he perhaps a fellow anthropologist? I could still hear their voices in the room underneath me, raised almost as if they were quarrelling. I began to wonder about Rockingham Napier, when he would come and what he would be like. Cooking, Victorian glass paper-weights, charm… and then there was the naval element. He might arrive with a parrot in a cage. I supposed that, apart from encounters on the stairs, we should probably see very little of each other. Of course there might be some embarrassment about the sharing of the bathroom, but I must try to conquer it. I should certainly have my bath
early
so as to avoid clashing. I might perhaps buy myself a new and more becoming dressing-gown, one that I wouldn’t mind being seen in, something long and warm in a rich colour. … I must have dropped off to sleep at this point, for the next thing I knew was that I had been woken up by the sound of the front door banging. I switched on the light and saw that it was ten minutes to one. I hoped the Napiers were not going to keep late hours and have noisy parties. Perhaps I was getting spinsterish and ‘set’ in my ways, but I was irritated at having been woken. I stretched out my hand towards the little bookshelf where I kept cookery and devotional books, the most comforting bedside reading. My hand might have chosen
Religio Medici,
but I was rather glad that it had picked out
Chinese Cookery
and I was soon soothed into drowsiness.