Less Than Angels (11 page)

‘Oh, the bus ride was lovely and Tom was delighted to be dragged away from his thesis writing,’ said Catherine gaily. ‘He’s been moaning about it all day.’

‘Poor Tom,’ said Deirdre softly.

‘Men seem to have so little will-power and concentration at times,’ Catherine went on, as they sat in the garden waiting for tea. ‘Why is that?’

Deirdre had never given much thought to the problem and she felt that Catherine was being rather disloyal to talk about Tom in this way. She was as yet too young and inexperienced to be quite sure that one can love and criticize at the same time. ‘It must be very difficult writing a thesis,’ she ventured.

‘Of course it is, but he chose to do it. He shouldered the burden of his own accord.’

‘Perhaps he needs …’ Deirdre began.

‘Somebody who really understands him?’ Catherine laughed, flashing a glance between the two of them.

‘Yes, Deirdre, that’s exactly what I
do
need,’ said Tom, giving her a rather special look.

‘Oh, here are my mother and my aunt,’ said Deirdre, jumping up from her chair.

Two middle-aged ladies in neat summer dresses, coming through french windows on to a lawn and carrying trays of tea-things, is a most pleasing and comforting sight, Catherine thought, envying Deirdre who must see it so often.

Introductions were dealt with and they arranged themselves under the apple tree. Mabel began to pour out. The tea fell in a wide arc from the spout of the silver teapot. Rhoda looked on anxiously, for she considered herself to be a better pourer than her sister, but she managed to control her fears and turned to Catherine with a polite question.

*So you write? Stories, Deirdre told us.’ Her tone was a little uncertain for she had never met a writer before. She had heard that either they hated you to mention their profession or were offended if you didn’t and she could not decide which class Catherine was likely to belong to.

‘Yes, trite little stories for women, generally with happy endings,’ said Catherine, adopting the rather derogatory tone behind which writers sometimes hide from the scorn and mockery of the world. ‘I manage to earn my living that way.’

‘I’m so glad you write
happy
endings,’ said Mabel. ‘After all, life isn’t really so unpleasant as some writers make out, is it? she added hopefully.

‘No, perhaps not. It’s comic and sad and indefinite—dull, sometimes, but seldom really tragic or deliriously happy, except when one’s very young.’

‘
Rarely
,
rarely comest thou
,
Spirit of Delight
,’ murmured Deirdre with brooding intensity, for the thought of Tom and Catherine and their cosy life together had suddenly come upon her.

‘We must look out for your stories,’ said Rhoda politely. She was a little disturbed by Catherine’s conversation which was not quite what she had expected. Catherine, as if realizing this, began to praise the home-made cakes and soon they were comparing recipes quite happily, while Deirdre and Tom began a little conversation of their own about anthropological personalities. Mabel and Rhoda were each thinking what a nice girl Catherine was, and how glad they were that Deirdre had found a sensible woman friend who would probably do her a lot of good.

‘
They
seem to be having tea out of doors too,’ said Rhoda casually, with a gesture towards Alaric Lydgate’s garden, and indeed a woman’s voice, unusually loud and clear, was heard declaiming, almost like a station announcer, ‘… Ealing train, not stopping at South Kensington and Gloucester Road. Father Gemini was quite distracted—just think of it, he was carried right on to Earl’s Court!’

‘That’s Miss Lydgate,’ whispered Deirdre.

‘He protested, but the train went on. It
would not stop
at Gloucester Road.’

‘A Richmond train would have been safer,’ said another loud female voice, belonging unmistakably to Miss Clovis. ‘Or even Hounslow, though there is something about a Hounslow train that I don’t like and I generally feel that a Wimbledon train should be avoided…’

‘It was an experience,’ said Father Gemini’s milder voice, ‘and I have learned a lesson by it. I shall take a bus in future.’

The men’s voices were softer than the women’s and the rest of the conversation was less easy to hear, especially as it was felt that the Swans could not really give themselves up to listening to all of it. Catherine asked about Alaric Lydgate and was given a rather highly coloured description by Rhoda.

‘He walks in the garden at night, wearing an African mask,’ she whispered, ‘and nobody ever comes to see him, as far as I know, apart from his sister, that is. He seems to be a lonely kind of person.’

‘I always think the loneliness of men is so sad,’ said Catherine. ‘Those advertisements you sometimes see from a man wanting a companion to go on holiday, in such respectable papers too, like the
Church Tims
. I can’t really bear them.’

‘Oh, come, Catty, lots of women are lonely too, far more than men,’ said Tom with a touch of complacency.

‘Yes, but that isn’t so bad somehow. Loneliness can often be a kind of strength in women, possibly in men too, of course, but it doesn’t seem to show itself so much.’

‘Would you say that Mr. Lydgate had that kind of strength?’ asked Mabel.

‘It is an inner thing, really,’ said Rhoda. ‘One thinks of hermits …’ she paused, for perhaps one did not think of hermits in the suburbs.

‘Oh, Mr. Lydgate’s just a rather bad-tempered man who writes slashing reviews of books,’ said Deirdre impatiently. ‘There’s nothing noble or hermit-like about him.’

‘Don’t forget all those trunks of material he has in his attic,’ said Tom. ‘Wasn’t that what Miss Clovis told us?’

‘Yes, I suppose you ought to meet him,’ said Deirdre.

‘Oh, but I have met him,’ said Tom. ‘Europeans out there can hardly avoid running into each other.’

‘And you never told me,’ said Deirdre. ‘I wasthinkig…’

‘That you’d have to make love to him as Clovis suggested?’ said Tom laughing.

‘Wouldn’t it be nice for you to renew your acquaintance?’ said Rhoda hopefully. ‘Perhaps if Mr. Mallow were to stand up, his head might be seen over the hedge.’

Tom stood up obediently, feeling rather ridiculous.

‘Why, look, it’s Mr. Mallow,’ shouted Miss Clovis. ‘Now Alaric, you two really must get together.’

Soon everybody was standing up and talking over the hedge. Tom and Alaric were like suspicious animals, eyeing each other doubtfully. Tom said that his thesis was nearly finished anyway, and that he didn’t think he would be able to use any more material. Alaric hurried to point out that his notes dealt almost entirely with religion and material culture and would therefore be of very little use to anyone writing a thesis on social and political structure. The ladies talked among themselves and Father Gemini held himself aloof, then suddenly divested himself of two layers of his fusty black garments as if he were performing a strip-tease act.

Catherine, who had been observing Alaric closely and with the frank interest and curiosity which any new male acquaintance aroused in her, thought, why, he’s rather attractive! So tall and rugged, and that rough-hewn face with its grim expression reminds me of those images from Easter Island, once seen in the British Museum. Poor old Easter Island man, bullied by his sister and her masterful friend—what things men have to put up with!

Rhoda felt that they had definitely ‘made progress’, though it was obvious that Alaric was not a socially ‘easy’ person. ‘I suppose we shall
really
get to know him one of these days,’ she said rather wistfully, when the parties had returned to their respective tea tables. She saw again the odd scene on the other side of the hedge, the tall brother and sister, stocky Miss Clovis, and Father Gemini with his wispy beard, suddenly taking off his clothes in that disconcerting way. She had noticed too the primitive tea, the uncut loaf, the butter still in its paper, and the pot of jam. Surely Mrs. Skinner could have left things more ready than that? Later, when it was beginning to get dark, and Rhoda was sitting at the window in her room, she saw the remains of the tea still there on the little bamboo table, looking strangely forlorn. Why had nobody taken the things in? she wondered. She had heard Miss Lydgate and Miss Clovis and Father Gemini leaving earlier, but what was
he
doing now? In her imagination she entered Alaric Lydgate’s study.

He sat at his desk, doing nothing. It would have been a good time to start writing up some of the material in his tin trunks, for he had no book to review at the moment, but he lacked the energy to go upstairs and do anything about it. Instead he found himself thinking about the tea-party next door, the two girls and the young man, and the older women in their pretty light dresses, so different from Esther Clovis and his sister Gertrude, dowdily dressed and full of anthropological gossip and interfering suggestions. Why had he not asked them round to have a drink? Because he didn’t do things like that—presumably that was why. It was too hot to hide in a mask this evening and he felt defenceless, as if people passing could look in through the window and see him sitting there idle. His hand strayed to the side of his desk where he had hung the publication lists of various learned societies and institutes, and also the wine-lists of one or two stores. He would read from each according to his mood, to refresh himself in different ways. At this moment, with the dusk falling, there was something distasteful and galling about the outpourings of anthropological works by others, so he turned to a wine-list and soothed himself with the magical name,
Deidesbeimer
Kennpfad Riesling Auslese …
per bottle
67,‘6. That seemed to go with the girls in the garden, the voices and laughter floating over the hedge. He could find no wine appropriate to his own ungracious tea, and his sister and Father Gemini demonstrating something they called “breathy voice’to each other.

As the summer went on Esther Clovis began to feel that it was high time Professor Mainwaring did something about awarding the research grants from the Foresight fund. There was a slight air of irregularity about the whole thing and she sometimes found herself wondering whether there was really enough money for the purpose. The vagueness and untidiness of the arrangement was displeasing to her and as she sat at the research centre, waiting for the Professor to arrive, she determined to get some definite information from him. While she waited she turned over some of the application forms and began to feel an unaccustomed tenderness towards the young applicants which she found rather disturbing. The details of their education seemed pathetic, the outlines of their proposed research pitiful. She had never felt like this before; it seemed to date from that day when she had been sorting out her offprints and remembered poor Hermann Obst and the episode in the Spanish garden. It occurred to her to wonder whether her friend Gertrude had ever experienced a tender human feeling. One evening they had squabbled about who should get supper ready, and Esther had found herself saying that she didn’t care tuppence about aspirated ‘k’, *t’, and ‘b’, an interesting feature of the language Gertrude happened to be studying at that moment. Of course they had made it up, in their gruff way, but it had happened and that was the surprising thing.

Professor Mainwaring came into the room waving a letter in his hand. He was elegantly dressed in a lightweight suit of American design and his beard was newly trimmed.

‘What do you think about
this?
’
 he asked. ‘What is it? Ah, I see, a letter from Minnie Foresight. Is she getting anxious about her money?*

‘No, it isn’t quite that. She has taken exception to an article Fairfax has written in one of the learned journals. I sent it to her because that number had an account of our little party in it,’ ‘Really?’ Miss Clovis looked puzzled. ‘I wonder which article it can have been? I can’t
remember
any tiling that could have offended her,’

‘Oh, it is nothing personal-it is just that she considers Fairfax’s article obscene,’

‘
Obscene?’
Miss Clovis spat out the word indignantly. ‘But it’s a perfectly straightforward account of the initiation ceremonies of the tribe he studied—the seclusion of the boys and girls in the bush—the coming forth—the dancing, and the licence allowed in certain forms of behaviour, with a rough translation of the songs they sing .. ,’

‘Evidently Fairfax’s translation was
too
rough,’ chuckled Professor Mainwaring. ‘ We must remember that our patroness is not an anthropologist.’ ‘What does she say?’

Professor Mainwaring handed over the letter, and Miss Clovis read such phrases as ‘ deeply distressed ‘, ‘most shocking ‘, ‘unpleasant details’.

‘Well, she obviously has no idea how important it is that
every
detail should be known,’ said Miss Clovis bluntly.

‘Quite, but I do feel that Fairfax has perhaps been a little
over-it
alous on this occasion. And what a pity he is such a poor Latinist!’

“There seem to be some Latin phrases here,’ said Miss Clovis, turning the pages of the article.

‘Yes, he knows
ad hoc
and even
primus inter pares
—that much he will have imbibed at his red brick university.’ Here the Balliol man in the Professor could not help coming out and showing itself for a moment. ‘He is not an Oxford man, you know, or even a Cambridge man. Everything that has offended poor Minnie could have been put into Latin and she would have been quite satisfied. Some women have a great veneration for the classical tongues. Yes,’ Professor Mainwaring plucked at his beard and paced round the room, ‘ the Latin of Petronius Arbiter or another of the great
Silver
Latin poets .. ,’ He gave an extravagant sigh, as if his thoughts were back in those elegant days of decadence. ‘I could have turned this very prettily into Latin if only Fairfax had consulted me, but of course he did not. I’m afraid it would not have occurred to him to do so. Gervasc is a dear boy, but humility is
not
one of his virtues.’