Less Than Angels (16 page)

‘Why not? Men do know
something
about women or at least like to form their tastes for them.’

‘I suppose you’ll write an article called “After he’s gone”, and make use of all this.’

‘That might be a good title—do hurry, the taxi’s ticking away, you know.’

Tom hovered in the doorway still. ‘ I expect I’ll go home for a bit later in the summer,’ he said.

‘Yes, do ; it would be a change for you. And ring me up sometime to let me know how you are. We might have lunch together or something.’

Tom’s face brightened. ‘Yes, that would be nice.’

‘I’ll carry down your typewriter. You’re not going so very far away, you know—only ten minutes’ walk. Give my love to Mark and Digby, and do be careful of that geyser in the bathroom.’

Catherine did not restrain her tears when she was alone and realized the truth of the saying that one felt better for a good cry. She washed up the breakfast things and then paced through the rooms, hoping and fearing that Tom might have forgotten something or that she might find some little unconscious relic to remember him by. The wastepaper basket was full of crumpled pages, rejected bits of his thesis, and there was an old typewriter ribbon, all mangled and twisted. So he had put a new ribbon into his typewriter before leaving her, Catherine thought, touched and amused, but the old one was hardly a reiic to be cherished. That would surely have been excessive sentimentality. She poked about idly among the papers and then drew out a sheet covered with large and rather childish handwriting.

‘My own darling,’ she read, ‘this is going to be a silly sort of letter when I only said good-bye to you ten minutes ago, but whenever I’m not with you I feel like Scheherezade, if that makes sense, and so that’s why I’m writing now,’

Poor Tom, Catherine thought, it had evidently
not
made sense to him, until he had asked her who Scheherezade was. She read through to the end of the letter with critical detachment, as if she were considering it as a piece of literature, then stood with it in her hand, not liking to crumple it up and throw it away again. She had known that men did not always keep letters as women did, but Tom was in some ways rather sentimental and she had the feeling that perhaps he had not meant to destroy it but had thrown it away by accident with his old bits of thesis. Well, there was nothing she could do about it now; it was not the kind of relic she would have cared to keep for herself, so she put it back into the wastepaper basket and then went to get ready for her luncheon.

The editor she was meeting was a good-looking fussy young man, who immediately noticed Catherine’s eyelids, swollen with crying, imperfectly disguised with too much green eyeshadow. But her conversation was brittle and quite witty, and he judged that her approach would be detached and unsentimental which was the tone he aimed at in his magazine. He was pleased that she ate a good lunch, for he was fond of food and had taken trouble with the ordering of it. After they had discussed the articles she was to write, they talked about Siamese cats, cooking, and Victorian poetry.

‘I’ve enjoyed this,’ Catherine said.

‘May I get you a taxi somewhere?’ he asked, just like somebody in one of her stories.

‘No, thank you, I shall meditate on top of a bus. I like doing that and I’m not in a hurry.’

The good lunch with cocktails and wine had given her the courage to go home, and she began to look forward to taking oflf her high-heeled shoes and making a good strong pot of tea.

She sat on the bus, almost contented, looking out of the windows. It passed the Law Courts and she noted with interest the little groups of people standing there, the wronged wife with a sensible-looking woman friend, the knot of relatives embittered over a disputed will. Then the bus stopped by a travel agency, its windows full of bright tempting posters. Spain, Portugal, Italy—dangerous, romantic, un-English: then Norway and Sweden-so clean and healthy: then France—which was just France, and Lourdes—a Pilgrimage by Luxury Coach. The bus moved away, leaving Catherine puzzling over this last announcement. A pilgrimage by luxury coach seemed a contradiction in terms. The bus gathered speed now, and they rushed past a church where a large poster announced what she hastily read as HOLY GHOST FATHERS—GRAND CENTENARY DANCE. But could it really have been this? Coming after the luxury pilgrimage, it was disturbing; the foundations of life seemed to be slipping. Am I imagining it, or is my mind unhinged by grief? she wondered. The bus began to crawl now, stopping at stops where nobody got on or off and waiting for the traffic lights to turn red; then it hurried again so that when she started to go down the stairs to get off it was like a perilously rocking ship and she nearly fell in her high-heeled shoes.

Nothing had happened since she went away. The rooms were tidy as she had left them. She took off her shoes and filled the kettle, then went to the window and stood looking out.

She had been there some time before she became conscious of a woman walking rather slowly along the opposite side of the street, peering at the houses as if looking for a particular number. When she saw Catherine she stopped and made as if to cross the road. Catherine drew back into the shadow of the curtain. A minute or so later her door bell rang. When she opened the door she found the woman she had seen waiting outside. She was in the middle fifties, well-dressed and good-looking, but with a worried, nervous expression and manner.

‘Good afternoon,’ she began. ‘I wonder if you could tell me whether Mr. Mallow is in?’

‘No, I’m sorry, he isn’t here,’ said Catherine, very much taken aback.

‘Oh, I see. Well.. ,’ the woman hesitated.

‘I wonder if
I
could help you?’

‘Are you Miss Oliphant, by any chance?’

‘Yes, I am. Won’t you come in?’

‘It was really you I wanted to see, in a way.’

‘Oh, do come in, then. I was just making some tea. I dare say you’d like some?’

‘Thank you, that’s very kind.’

They walked up the stairs together and Catherine indicated her front door. ‘My flat is in there.’

‘You will wonder what I have come for,’ said the woman.

‘Well, yes,’ Catherine smiled. ‘I don’t think we’ve ever met before, have we?’

‘No.’ She paused and seemed to take a deep breath. ‘You see,’ she declared. ‘I am Tom Mallow’s aunt.’

Catherine’s first instinct was to burst out laughing. She wondered why there was something slightly absurd about aunts; perhaps it was because one thought of them as c’ear, comfortable creatures, somehow lacking in dignity and prestige.

‘Oh, yes, he told me about you,’ Catherine ventured.

‘I am Mrs. Beddoes. I live in Belgravia,’ she explained.

‘Yes, of course, I should have guessed that.’ Tom’s other aunt, his father’s eldest sister, was a spinster who lived in a hotel in South Kensington. Clearly Mrs. Beddoes was the superior one—Belgravia and the married state had raised her up.

Tea was made and Catherine produced bread-and-butter and a plate of biscuits. She had no cake, especially not at a time like
this,
she told herself. Nobody could expect it.

Mrs. Beddoes complimented her on her china. She seemed surprised to find that it was so nice, ‘Oh, dear, it’s all such a pity,’ she burst out. ‘I suppose I shouldn’t be sitting here drinking your tea.’

‘I have plenty, and you must have needed a cup—it’s such a hot tiring afternoon. Do have a biscuit. I hope you like Bourbons. They always remind me of exiled European royalty, and that’s one of those sad but comforting thoughts that one likes to have. Do you suppose they sit around in their villas at Estoril eating Bourbon biscuits?’

Mrs. Beddoes threw Catherine a startled glance but took a biscuit.

‘There’s something rather good about Osborne biscuits too, don’t you think,’ Catherine went on. ‘Dull, solid and good—the Old Queen, I suppose.
Were
they named after the royal residence, do you think?’

‘I suppose they may have been,’ said Mrs. Beddoes unhappily.

‘But I must stop my frivolous talk,’ said Catherine, relenting. ‘You came to see me about something.’

‘Yes, I came here with a purpose.’ Mrs. Beddoes put down her cup and seemed to gather up her courage. ‘My sister, Tom’s mother, asked me to call on him and report on his circumstances.’ She lowered her voice and added, as if she were talking to a contemporary who was in no way concerned in the matter, ‘You see, we had heard that he was living in rather a poor part of London with some—er—young woman, and it did seem such a pity.’

‘Yes, I suppose it would seem like that.’

‘He has been a great disappointment and worry to his family, you know. Taking up such a very
odd
career—we’ve never had such a thing in the family before. Going out to Africa and living in such a strange way…’

‘And living equally oddly in London,’ added Catherine sympathetically. ‘Believe me, I do feel for you. Perhaps that hasn’t happened before in your family, either?’

‘Well, of course, one does not—cannot—know about that,’ Mrs. Beddoes looked worried and Catherine remembered Tom telling her that she had a son about his own age. ‘You see, Miss Oliphant, the whole thing is rather a surprise. You are not at all what I expected,’

‘No, I dare say not. But women who live with men without being married to them aren’t necessarily very glamorous, you know. They can be faded and worried-looking, their hands can be roughened with housework and stained with peeling vegetables . . ,’ Catherine, looked down at her own, which were in this state. She had tried to keep them hidden during her luncheon with the editor, for she had not had time to improve them or put on nail-varnish.

‘Yes, we had naturally envisaged.. ,’ Mrs. Beddoes stopped, either because she was surprised at herself for producing such a curious word or because she did not like to say just what they had envisaged.

Catherine decided that it was perhaps unfair to let her go floundering on like this, so she refilled her cup and said in a friendly tone, ‘Well, it hardly seems to matter now. Tom isn’t living here any more. He left this morning,’

Mrs. Beddoes appeared confused, as indeed she was. Uppermost in her mind was a feeling of natural and understandable disappointment. The young woman seemed to be almost respectable and there was nothing in it, or no longer anything in it, after all. Then she noticed Catherine’s swollen eyelids and had the feeling that she was intruding on a private grief and that it was concerned with her nephew. It was difficult to know what to say next.

‘You sent him away?’ she ventured.

‘Not exactly—though women always like to think that they have taken the initiative in ending a love affair. But I may as well be honest. I think he waited to go.’

‘My dear, I am sorry, believe me when I say that. But it was very wrong of you, you know, to live with him without being married. Don’t you realize that?’

Catherine smiled. ‘I see you are thinking the very worst.’

Mrs. Beddoes seemed uncomfortable again, and took up her furs and gazed into the bright glass eyes of the little animals’ heads, as if they might help her.

‘Well, one does usually think something of the kind, surely,’ she said, on the defensive now.

‘Yes, of course women do think the worst of each other, perhaps because only they can know what they are capable of. Men are regarded as being not quite responsible for their actions. Besides, they have other and more important things on their minds. Did you know that Tom was writing a thesis, for his Ph.D.?’

‘How splendid,’ said Mrs. Beddoes uncomprehendingly. ‘He was always a clever boy. But he’s been very naughty—I don’t myself think that there should be different codes of behaviour for men and women, though of course that view
was
held, and in the highest circles.’

‘Yes, it does come out in some of those Edwardian memoirs,’ said Catherine thoughtfully. ‘But I can see that I was perhaps wrong. I’m afraid one doesn’t always think whether one is doing the right thing at the time.’

There was a short silence and then Catherine went on, ‘All this has been a bit like
Traviata
, don’t you think? You coming to see me and begging me to give Tom up, but of course it’s too late.’

‘
Traviata}
Oh, I see.’ Mrs. Beddoes seemed relieved and would indeed have welcomed a cosy talk about opera. Before the war they had always had a box at Covent Garden during the season. She remembered
Traviata
as one of the less boring ones. But she still had her duty to do, so she went on to ask Catherine where Tom was living now.

‘He has taken a room in a flat with two other young anthropologists,’ Catherine told her, ‘not very far from here. It’s near the railway, not very salubrious I’m afraid, but I think he’ll be able to work better there. I can give you the address, or you could telephone him, of course.’

‘Oh, I don’t think I shall go to see Tom now. It was you I really wanted to see.’

‘Had you hoped to make me see reason?’ Catherine asked in her frank way. She even wondered whether Mrs. Beddoes had been prepared to offer her money, as in an Edwardian novel, and whether she could have brought herself to accept it. She almost believed that she could.

‘Well, I wanted to tell Naomi, my sister, how he was,’ said Mrs. Beddoes rather lamely, ‘but that seems to be unnecessary now’. She stood up and arranged her furs round her shoulders. ‘I have often asked Tom to visit us but he has always made some excuse. Now, I wonder . .she paused for a moment, and then her tone seemed to change on to a bright social note. ‘I am giving a small dance for my daughter, Lalage, you may have seen the announcement in
The Times
. Do you think I could persuade Tom to come to it—and perhaps the friends he is lodging with, if they are nice young men?’

Catherine imagined the bored distaste or derisive laughter which might greet such an invitation. She had often wondered why it was that anthropologists seemed to explore only the lower strata of their own society. Perhaps it was a kind of hidden fear that they might prove unworthy in some way, for she was sure that the experience of a debutante dance in Belgravia would be as rewarding for them as any piece of native ceremonial.