Less Than Angels (10 page)

Of course if you had to go to church at all, Deirdre told herself, this kind of service was much the most interesting and worthy to be compared with the religious ceremonies of the peoples she read about in her anthropological studies. Strangers often carne to the church, which had never happened in the old days when Mr. Law was vicar. Even now a stranger was walking up the aisle looking for a seat, for Father Tulliver had done away with the old system of cards in the pews to mark the sittings of the regular worshippers and subscribers to church finances. Usually Mr. Diprose, the verger, showed strangers to a suitable pew, but this one seemed to have evaded him and when the footsteps came past Deirdre she saw that it was Jean-Pierre le Rossignol, dressed all in pale grey and carrying a pair of yellow gloves. He deliberated for a moment and then walked into a pew near the front, which he must have judged likely to command a good view of the proceedings.

‘That man’s in the Dulkes’ pew,’ whispered Malcolm to Deirdre. ‘I wonder if I ought to ask him to move?’

But before he could do anything the Dulkes themselves had approached and were seen to hesitate in the aisle at the sight of the stranger. There are few things more disconcerting or even upsetting for a regular worshipper at a church which is not normally very full than to find his usual seat occupied by somebody else. Perhaps such a thing had never happened to the Dulkes in all their forty years at the church. There was indeed an empty pew in front and another behind, but that was not quite the same thing. Their pew was exactly opposite that spot where in winter the hottest blasts of air came up out of the grating set in the encaustic tiles. Today it was summer, but that was irrelevant.

 What will they do?’ whispered Rhoda to Deirdre.

For a moment there was real tension in the air, then Mrs. Dulke seemed to recover herself and made as if to enter the pew. Jean-Pierre, with a charming smile, moved up to make room and then unhooked a kneeler for Mrs. Dulke with a courteous gesture. She removed her gloves and fox fur, and knelt for a moment in flustered prayer. Mr. Dulke hardly even attempted this for at that moment the tinkling of a little bell was heard, the organist started to play some indefinite music and the procession came in.

As it was a Festival the servers were in their lace-trimmed cottas and Father Tulliver was wearing a particularly splendid cope. Jean-Pierre could hardly have chosen a better occasion to visit the church and he appeared to be following the proceedings intently. There was no sermon as such, that is, Father Tulliver did not actually enter the pulpit, but stood in the chancel and said a few words, touching on the significance of the Festival with a note on the meaning of the word ‘Paraclete’. The service was beautifully conducted and there was perhaps nobody who did not feel in some way the better for having been present at it.

Deirdre had been worrying a little about Jean-Pierre, remembering her rash invitation or half-invitation to Sunday lunch when they had been talking at the party. She had never imagined that he would really turn up. Perhaps he would just slip quietly away now and there need be no embarrassment, but they all seemed to come out of church together and it was impossible to avoid talking to him.

‘So you came after all,’ she said lamely. ‘Did you like the service?’

‘I found it enchanting,’ Jean-Pierre bowed.

Hardly the right word, Deirdre felt, though she saw what he meant.

‘Of course I felt almost at home, though there were some interesting differences in the ritual.’

‘You are a Roman Catholic, then, Mr. er…’ Rhoda looked appealingly at Deirdre who had not so far introduced the good-looking young man.

Deirdre always forgot introductions or did them the wrong way round, but eventually it was made clear who Jean-Pierre was, and there was a perceptible brightening in Rhoda’s manner.

‘You must stay and have lunch with us,’ she said. ‘We are always so glad to meet Deirdre’s friends. My sister, Deirdre’s mother, that is, will be delighted. She is at home cooking the meal-of course things are not as they were,’ she added obscurely.

Deirdre supposed that she must be remembering the old days when they would have had a cook.

‘There has been quite a social revolution in England, I believe,’ said Jean-Pierre politely. ‘The dynamics of culture change.’

‘Such a pity,’ said Rhoda, puzzling over the end of his sentence. ‘In some ways, that is. Of course one
does
want things to be shared more equally, that is good …’

‘Provided one gets the larger share oneself,’ said Jean-Pierre, rushing forward to open the gate. ‘What a delightful house!’

‘It is detached, of course,’ said Rhoda, ‘which is an advantage.’

‘Yes, detachment is a good thing. But one can be
too
detached, perhaps?’

‘How about a drink?’ Malcolm suggested, and Rhoda was a little relieved when the ‘young people’, as she thought of them, carried their gins and tonics into the garden. She herself hurried to the kitchen to break the news to her sister.

‘I knew you wouldn’t mind my asking him to lunch,’ she said. ‘It looked such a large piece of veal, and we do want to encourage Deirdre’s friends here, don’t we. Of course he is a Frenchman and he does seem to be rather foreign, those yellow gloves, but he speaks English perfectly and seems very charming. Now, have we done enough vegetables, do you think?’ she went on rather fussily. ‘I’d better see about laying the table. He sat in the Dulkes’ pew by mistake, but he moved up when they came in, so it was all right. He unhooked a kneeler for Mrs. Dulke -I don’t suppose you’d find an Englishman doing that. It’s still only twenty past twelve—what a good thing Father Tulliver didn’t give us a proper sermon, just a little talk about the meaning of Pentecost.’

‘What
is
the meaning?’ asked Mabel, who had been sitting at the kitchen table, listening to the happy sound of the meat sizzling in the oven. ‘I’ve often wondered.’

‘Oh, it is Jewish or Greek in origin,’ said Rhoda in a flustered tone, ‘and Paraclete, that is Greek too.
Come thou Holy Paraclete
, you know the hymn. I think we’d better have the
lace
mats, don’t you?’

‘By all means.’ Mabel was thinking that Rhoda, after her morning in church, seemed more of a Martha than she herself who had spent the morning quiedy in the kitchen. It was nice for Deirdre to have a friend to lunch, but she hoped her sister wouldn’t make too much of it. Deirdre had been so moody and difficult lately, they would have to be very tactful.

The meal was highly successful and everyone liked Jean-Pierre, who put his questions about English suburban life so charmingly that nobody could possibly have taken offence. After they had finished eating Mabel and Rhoda went to wash up while the others took coffee into the garden. It was a hot afternoon and the Sunday quiet was broken only by the sound of a distant lawnmower.

‘I must not keep you from your sleeping,’ said Jean-Pierre politely. ‘I suppose it will be outside in the summer?’

Malcolm leaned back in his deck-chair. ‘It’s only elderly and middle-aged people who sleep after lunch,’ he explained. ‘I usually go along to the club for a game of tennis.’

‘Are you going today?’ Deirdre asked, wondering how she was going to sustain a conversation if she were left alone with Jean-Pierre.

‘Yes, I expect I’ll go along about three o’clock. Perhaps you’d like to come?’ He turned to Jean-Pierre.

‘Alas, I am not the type for outdoor sport,’ he said simply. ‘And I have another engagement at three o’clock. There is a meeting in Bayswater, a message from the Other Side. I could perhaps take a bus from here?’

‘Oh, yes, of course,’ said Deirdre. ‘I’ll show you.’

‘I must say good-bye to your mother and aunt, if I am not disturbing them?’

‘I expect they’re still in the kitchen washing-up.’

‘I see; the older female relatives work in the kitchen when there are no servants. The mother and the father’s sister?’

‘No, Aunt Rhoda is my mother’s sister.’

‘Ah, yes, I understand. Women more closely linked would work better together—they would not fight.’

After he had gone Deirdre settled down in the garden, waiting rather apprehensively for Tom and Catherine to arrive for tea. Mabel and Rhoda were still in the house, either resting in their rooms or getting out the best tea-set. Deirdre’s offer of help had been refused and she felt rather sulky. She sat in a deck-chair with an anthropological book and a volume of poetry on her knee, but she opened neither. She lay with her eyes closed thinking about Tom, trying to remember his face. After a few minutes of concentrated meditation, she had recalled all his features separately but had failed to fuse them together so that the result was like a Picasso head, the brilliant grey eyes and the sharp nose appearing in unexpected places. Then she began to have the feeling that somebody was watching her through the hedge which separated the garden from the Lovells’ next door. She opened her eyes but was at first too dazzled by the sun to be able to see anything. At last she discerned what were undoubtedly two bright dark eyes peering intently through a small gap in the leaves. She realized that it was one of the Lovells’ children, a little girl of about five. For a moment she returned the stare but was forced to turn away before its unwavering intensity. She picked up one of her books and opened it.

‘What are you doing?’ The words came in a hoarse whisper.

‘Nothing,’ said Deirdre in a dignified tone.

‘Why?’

Deirdre could think of no reasonable answer to this that a child of five might appreciate and began to wish that she felt more at ease with children. Wordsworth, she thought, remembering with distaste poems she had read at school, might have made something of this situation, but it was beyond her. She turned the pages of the anthropological book, a slender green volume, rather badly written and with too many footnotes. Not the most congenial kind of reading for a fine Sunday afternoon.

‘You were
asleepV
The voice rose triumphantly now and ended in a gurgle of laughter. ‘I
saw
you!’

‘I wasn’t asleep. I was thinking,’

‘
Why?
9

This exchange could have gone on all afternoon if Rhoda had not at that moment come out into the garden carrying a wickerwork cakestand.

‘I think we could have tea in the garden,’ she said. ‘I expect your friends would like it,’

‘Yes, it would be pleasant. Shall we have it over the other side, under the apple tree?’

‘Yes, I think that’s the best place,’

Rhoda was glad that Deirdre had suggested it for she had secretly wanted to have tea on Mr. Lydgate’s side of the garden which she felt to be more interesting than the Lovells’. Mr. and Mrs. Lovell, the children, Roy, Jenny and Peter, and Snowball, the old sealyham, were dull and familiar. Who knew what they might hear or see through the hedge on Mr. Lydgate’s side?

Catherine, walking with Tom along the road from the bus stop, was delighted with the tranquil beauty of the Sunday afternoon scene, the tree-lined road, the neat colourful front gardens, some empty in the sunshine, others being vigorously tended by men in open-necked shirts or women in cotton dresses and sandals. Through it all came the pleasant sounds of children, dogs, birds, lawnmowers and hedge clippers.

‘I suppose this is what you call suburbia,’ said Tom. ‘It seems rather pleasant.’ He had lived in London himself and had occasionally visited his aunts in Kensington and Belgravia, but he was totally ignorant of that territory in which a vast number of people pass their lives.

‘Oh, look!’ Catherine cried out. ‘This house is called Nirvana!’

‘Hush, Catty, they might hear,’ said Tom in a low voice. She was in what he thought of as one of her worst moods this afternoon, the kind that he found most difficult to cope with. The less encouragement he gave her, the more wild and frivolous would her fancies become. Now, to his horror, she began to sing, something about lotus flowers and finding Nirvana within his loving arms.

‘As the river flows to the ocean
,

My soul, my soul shall flow to thine!’

she concluded in triumph, clinging on to him affectionately.

They walked in silence for a few seconds but then Catherine’s attention was again caught by a row of houses whose gateposts were ornamented with stone lions. She stopped in front of them in delight and began to stroke their heads and bodies.

‘Poor things,’ she said, ‘their noses and paws are all worn down, like soap lions might be after the first time of using. You know my
favourite
Shakespeare sonnet, don’t you?
Devouring time
y
blunt thou the lion’s paws
… do you think
he
could have seen a worn stone lion and that gave him the idea? On the gate-post of some noble house, perhaps?’

‘I really don’t know,’ said Tom impatiently. ‘Do hurry up, we mustn’t be
too
late.’

‘Of course he didn’t really
mind
about devouring time blunting the lion’s paws,’ she continued thoughtfully, ‘or even about the long-lived phoenix burning in her blood. The point was that time mustn’t touch his
love’s
fair brow.
Nor put no lines there with thine antique pen
… do you remember that?’ She glanced up at him but he did not answer. ‘You do seem to have a few little lines that I hadn’t noticed before,’ she said rather maliciously. ‘But then so have I, oh, lots of them! They add character to a face, that’s what I always say when I’m writing articles for the over-forties. If your face is smooth you can’t really have experienced joy and sorrow and love….’

‘I think this must be the house,’ said Tom rather coldly. ‘ Oh, yes, I’m sure it is. How much nicer the houses are at this end of the road, larger and nobler. Do you suppose the late Mr. Swan was a prosperous merchant, something in Mincing Lane, perhaps?’

‘Look, there is Deirdre in the front garden,’ said Tom quickly.

‘And the snowball tree you told me about,’ said Catherine, hurrying forward to greet her. ‘What a lovely tiling it is!’

‘I hope you were able to get here without too much fuss,’ said Deirdre. ‘ I always think it’s rather a bore having to uproot oneself on a Sunday afternoon.’