Excellent Women (20 page)
Authors: Barbara Pym
After a few formal preliminaries, during which each asked how the other was, and gave and received an answer, there was a pause. What does he want? I wondered, and waited for him to say.
‘I rang up to ask if you would come and have dinner with me in my flat this evening. I have got some meat to cook.’
I saw myself putting a small joint into the oven and preparing vegetables. I could feel my aching back bending over the sink.
‘I’m afraid I can’t tonight,’ I said baldly.
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ His voice sounded flat and noncommittal, so that it was impossible to tell whether he really minded or not. ‘Perhaps some other time?’ he added politely.
‘Yes, that would be nice,’ I said. But perhaps then he wouldn’t have any meat. Although there was a telephone line between us, I felt embarrassed and ashamed at my lie and was convinced that he must know from my voice that I was not telling the truth.
There was another pause. He did not suggest any other evening but said he would ring again some time.
‘Thank you for the postcard,’ he added.
‘Oh, it was nothing,’ I said foolishly, for indeed it was nothing. ‘There isn’t any news,’ I added.
‘News?’ he sounded puzzled. ‘What kind of news?’
‘About the Napiers.’
‘Oh, would there be?’
‘Well, there might have been. …’
Our conversation seemed about to trail off very miserably and then I blurted out, ‘Our vicar has broken off his engagement.’
‘Oh, that’s rather a good thing, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, I suppose it is, really.’
‘I imagined you would think so.’ His voice sounded as stiff and unfriendly as in the days when we had first met.
‘I’m sorry about the meat,’ I said, trying to infuse life into our now nearly dead conversation.
‘Why should you be sorry about it?’
‘Do you know how to cook it?’
‘Well, I have a cookery book.’
There can be no exchange of glances over the telephone, no breaking into laughter. After a few more insincere regrets and apologies we finished and I hung up the receiver, thinking that the telephone ought never to be used except for the transaction of business. I paced about my sitting-room, feeling uneasy and yet not quite knowing why. I had not wanted to see Everard Bone and the idea of having to cook his evening meal for him was more than I could bear at this moment. And yet the thought of him alone with his meat and his cookery book was unbearable too. He would turn to the section on meat. He would read that beef or mutton should be cooked for so many minutes per pound and so many over. He would weigh the little joint, if he had scales. He would then puzzle over the heat of the oven, turning it on and standing over it, watching the thermometer go up… . I should have been nearly in tears at this point if I had not pulled myself together and reminded myself that Everard Bone was a very capable sort of person whose life was always very well arranged. He would be quite equal to cooking a joint. Men are not nearly so helpless and pathetic as we sometimes like to imagine them, and on the whole they run their lives better than we do ours. After all, Everard knew quite a lot of people he could ask to dinner and was probably even now ringing them up. If I could not come, no doubt somebody else would be only too glad to. But then another thought came into my mind. Why had I assumed that I was the first person he had telephoned that evening? I might very well have been the last. There must be many people whom he knew better than he did me and with whom he would rather spend an evening. For some reason that I could not understand, for I believe I have always had a modest opinion of myself, I found this a disturbing thought. It seemed as if it was necessary for me to know that I had been the first choice, but I did not see what I could do about it. I did not look forward to my evening at home, and all the useful and half-pleasant things I had planned to do, like ironing and sewing and listening to the wireless, seemed uninteresting and unnecessary. In the end I decided to go over to the vicarage to see if there was anything I could do there.
‘M
ILDRED
,
darling . .
. how wonderful to see you!’
I was quite unprepared for Rooky’s effusive greeting and embrace. I was unprepared for his appearance at all at that moment, for I had had no answer to the letter I had written to him some time ago, and I had begun to think that I had offended him by my well-meaning efforts to bring him and Helena together again. It is a known fact that people like clergymen’s daughters, excellent women in their way, sometimes rush in where the less worthy might fear to tread.
‘Hullo, Rocky,’ was all I could say.
‘You don’t seem very pleased to see me.’
‘Oh, I am, but it’s so unexpected….’
‘Surely nice things always are?’ He stood looking at me, confidently charming. I noticed that he was holding a bunch of chrysanthemums.
‘These are for you,’ he said, thrusting them at me. I saw that the stems had been broken very roughly and that they were not tied together at all.
‘Are they out of your garden?’ I asked.
‘Yes; I snatched them as I was hurrying for the train.’
Somehow they seemed a little less desirable now. He had not chosen them, had not gone into a shop for that purpose, they had just happened to be there. If he had gone into a shop and chosen them … I pulled myself up and told myself to stop these ridiculous thoughts, wondering why it is that we can never stop trying to analyse the motives of people who have no personal interest in us, in the vain hope of finding that perhaps they may have just a little after all.
‘Helena said that I must bring you some flowers and these happened to be in the garden,’ he went on, leaving me in no doubt at all.
‘Thank you, they’re lovely,’ I said. ‘Is Helena with you, then?’
‘Yes, of course. After getting your letter, I wrote to her and we met.’
‘I hope you didn’t think it interfering of me?’
‘Of course not. I know how you love contriving things,’ he smiled. ‘Births, deaths, marriages and all the rest of it.’
Perhaps I did love it as I always seemed to get involved in them, I thought with resignation; perhaps I really enjoyed other people’s lives more than my own.
We were standing in one of our usual talking places, the entrance to my kitchen. I could feel Rocky looking at me very intently. I raised my eyes to meet his.
‘Mildred?’
‘Yes?’
‘I was hoping …’
‘What were you hoping?’
‘That you might suggest making a cup of tea. You know how you always make a cup of tea on “occasions”. That’s one of the things I remember most about you, and surely this is an “occasion”?’
So he did remember me like that after all—a woman who was always making cups of tea. Well, there was nothing to be done about it now but to make one.
‘Oh, certainly,’ I said. ‘And anyway it is nearly teatime, I mean, the conventional hour for drinking tea.’
‘You never came down to visit me at my cottage. Why?’
‘Well, you didn’t ask me.’
‘Oh, but people mustn’t wait to be asked. Other people came.’
‘Did any of the Wren officers come?’ Had they had luncheon in the wild garden with a bottle of some amusing little wine? I was very much afraid that they might have done.
‘Wren officers?’ Rocky looked puzzled for a moment and then laughed. ‘Oh, yes, one or two. But of course they weren’t in their uniforms, so one regarded them as human beings. Oh, lots of people came. I was very social. Had you imagined me there all alone?’
‘I don’t know, really. I didn’t think.’ I was unwilling to remember or to tell him how I had imagined him. ‘Of course, men don’t tend to be alone, do they? I think we talked about it before some time.’
‘Oh, surely! Haven’t we tired the sun with talking on every possible subject?’
The tea was made now and it was as strong as it had been weak on the day Helena had left him. I wondered why it was that tea could vary so, even when one followed exactly the same method in making it. Could the emotional state of the maker have something to do with it?
We sat in silence for a while, brooding over our strong tea, and then I began to ask him about the furniture which had been moved and whether he was going to have it all brought back again.
‘Oh, no, we have decided to settle in the country,’ he said. ‘We don’t really like this place very much.’
‘No; I suppose the associations…’
‘The rest of the stuff can quite easily be packed up and sent after us, can’t it?’
‘Oh, yes, that can easily be arranged,’ I said in a consciously bright tone. ‘I wonder who will take your flat?’
‘Somebody respectable, I hope, as you have to share the bathroom. Couldn’t you advertise in the
Church Times
for a couple of Anglo-Catholic ladies? That’s really what you want.’
‘Yes, I suppose it is.’ I hoped I did not show how depressed I felt at the idea of this future. But then I remembered that it was not within my power to decide who the new tenants should be. The landlord would arrange that, though I supposed that had I known anyone in need of a flat I could put in a word for them.
‘What news?’ asked Rocky, taking the last chocolate biscuit. ‘Has anything exciting happened in the parish?’
‘Julian Malory has broken off his engagement,’ I said. ‘I think I told you that when I wrote.’
‘Oh, of course, the vicar,
your
vicar. But that’s splendid; now he can marry you. Isn’t that just what we wanted?’
‘If he had wanted to marry me he could have asked me before he met Mrs. Gray,’ I pointed out.
‘Oh, not necessarily. It often happens that a person is rejected or passed over and then their true worth is seen. I always think that must be very romantic.’
‘It could be romantic if you had been the person to do the rejecting, but one doesn’t like to be the person to have been rejected,’ I said uncertainly, feeling that I must be giving Rocky the impression that I really did want to marry Julian. ‘Anyway, there has never been any question of anything more than friendship between us.’
‘How dull. Perhaps you could marry the other one, the curate?’
I explained patiently that Father Greatorex was not really suitable, not the kind of person one would want to marry.
‘Let me stay as I am,’ I said. ‘I’m quite happy.’
‘Well, I don’t know. I still feel we ought to do something,’ said Rocky vaguely.
I got up and took the tea tray into the kitchen.
‘Have you seen our friend Everard Bone at all?’ Rocky called out.
Immediately he asked this, I realised that there had been a little nagging worry, an unhappiness, almost, at the back of my mind. Everard Bone and his meat. Of course it sounded ridiculous put like that and I decided that I would not mention it to Rocky. He would mock and not understand. It made me sad to realise that he would not understand, that perhaps he did not really understand anything about me.
‘I had lunch with him some time ago,’ I said. ‘He seemed very much as usual.’
‘I imagine he will be both relieved and disappointed when he knows that Helena and I have come together again,’ said Rocky complacently. ‘I think he found the situation a little alarming.’
‘It was rather awkward for him,’ I said. ‘Or it might have been.’
‘Poor Helena, it was one of those sudden irrational passions women get for people. She is completely disillusioned now. When he should have been near at hand to cherish her she found he had fled to a meeting of the Prehistoric Society in Derbyshire! Do you know how that happens?’
‘You mean being disillusioned? Yes, I think I can see how it could. Perhaps you meet a person and he quotes Matthew Arnold or some favourite poet to you in a churchyard, but naturally life can’t be all like that,’ I said rather wildly. ‘And he only did it because he felt it was expected of him. I mean, he isn’t really like that at all.’
‘It would certainly be difficult to live up to that, to quoting Matthew Arnold in churchyards,’ said Rocky. ‘But perhaps he was kind to you at a moment when you needed kindness—surely that’s worth something?’
‘Oh, yes, certainly it is.’ Once more, perhaps for the last time, I saw the Wren officers huddled together in an awkward little group on the terrace of the Admiral’s villa. Rocky’s kindness must surely have meant a great deal to them at that moment and perhaps some of them would never forget it as long as they lived.
Rocky stood up. ‘Well, thank you for my tea. Helena is coming back at the week-end. I must go and do some shopping at the Army and Navy Stores before they close. What are you doing this evening?’
‘I have to go to a meeting in the parish hall to decide about the Christmas bazaar.’
‘To decide about the Christmas bazaar,’ Rocky mimicked my tone. ‘Can I come too?’
‘I think it would bore you.’
‘Why do churches always have to be arranging bazaars and jumble sales? One would think that was the only reason for their existence.’
‘Our church is very short of money.’
‘Perhaps I should give it a donation as a kind of thank-offering,’ said Rocky lightly. ‘Though I should really prefer to give something more permanent. A stained-glass window—the Rockingham Napier window—I can see it, very red and blue. Or some money to buy the best quality incense?’
‘I’m sure that would be most acceptable.’
‘Well, perhaps I will. I must hurry now—goodbye!’
After he had gone I stood looking out of the window after him. I seemed to remember that I had done this before, and not so very long ago. But my thoughts on that occasion, though more melancholy had been somehow more pleasant. Now I felt flat and disappointed, as if he had failed to come up to my expectations. And yet, what had I really hoped for? Dull, solid friendship without charm? No, there was enough of that between women and women and even between men and women. Of course, if he had not been married … but this suggested a situation altogether too unreal to contemplate. In the first place, I should probably never have met him at all, and I should certainly not have enjoyed the privilege of preparing lunch for him on the day his wife left him or of making all those cups of tea on ‘occasions’. This thought led me to worry again about Everard and his meat and how I had refused to cook it for him, and it was a relief when the church clock struck and I realised that it was time to go to the meeting in the parish hall.