Less Than Angels (2 page)

‘Ah, Felix!’ shrieked Miss Clovis, as Professor Mainwaring entered the room, ‘so glad to see you nice and
early!’

‘My dear Esther, I have only just beaten the others to it. Academic toilers do not understand the art of being fashionably late. If it says six o’clock on the invitation cards you can be sure that my colleagues will arrive at that time.’

His forecast was accurate and the hands of the library clock were barely pointing to six when a mass of people seemed almost to hurl itself through the door. First came Professor Vere and Dr. Fairfax, still talking loudly. They were followed closely by Father Gemini, a missionary and linguistic expert, whose bushy beard and layers of fusty black garments seemed too much for the warm April evening. Behind him came others, too numerous to describe separately, men, and women too, who had all achieved some kind of eminence in their particular sphere. A few stood out by reason of their odd appearance, but the majority were reassuringly ordinary, the kind of people one might see any day on a bus or in the underground. Bringing up the rear were a small benevolent-looking man, bowed down by the weight of two suit-cases which appeared to be filled with lead, and a tall thin man walking with a catlike tread. After them there was a pause and a gap in the procession of guests, and then a worried-looking man in dark jackct and striped trousers, who was something in the Colonial Office, came in, peering from side to side. He disliked sherry which he thought ‘livery’, was rather frightened of Miss Clovis, and was most anxious to get back to his garden in North Dulwich, but he had never ignored the call of duty.

‘Well, well, Comus and his rabble rout!’ cried Professor Mainwaring, clapping his hands. The man from the Colonial Office dived quickly into a corner, but the Professor did not seem to expect any comment on his remark. ‘What a pity a
ll
our friends cannot be with us today,’ he went on, almost in a sarcastic tone. ‘My dear friend Tyrell Todd is at this very moment, perhaps, hacking his way through a Congo forest in search of the ever elusive pygmy. Apfelbaum is standing on his head in the Antipodes .. ,’ here his invention failed him and he drained his glass of sherry with a gesture. Then he was back at the door, welcoming the guest of honour, Mrs. Foresight.

‘Ah, Minnie,’ he said, bringing out the name almost as if he were savouring its comic flavour, ‘this is a great occasion!’

Mrs. Foresight, a little plump fair-haired woman dressed in pale blue, entered the room, blinking at the sight of so many people. After she had been welcomed and introduced, she allowed herself to be placed in one of the small easy chairs which had been arranged at strategic points for the older and more distinguished guests. She found herself near Miss Lydgate and began to make what she hoped was suitable conversation.

‘And are you just back from the—er –
field?’ ‘
she brought out, trying to remember if ‘field’ was the right word and what exactly it was that people did there. Of course she knew that, really. Felix had explained so clearly what it was that anthropologists did, or it had seemed clear at the time, whirling through High Wycombe in the dining-car, giggling a little over the difficulty of pouring out tea elegantly. They went out to remote places and studied the customs and languages of the peoples living there. Then they came back and wrote books and articles about what they had observed and taught others how to do the same thing. It was as simple as that. And it was a very good thing that these languages and customs should be known, firstly because they were interesting in themselves and in danger of being forgotten, and secondly because it was helpful to missionaries and government officials to know as much as possible about the people they sought to evangelize or govern.

These thoughts did not arrange themselves quite in this order in Mrs. Foresight’s head, and they were interspersed with irrelevant reflections on the people round her, but she believed that she had remembered most of what Felix had told her that afternoon in the train and at their meetings afterwards. Her expression as she listened to Miss Lydgate’s plans for the writing up of her linguistic researches, was one of rather strained interest. Women must so often listen to men with just this expression on their faces, but Mrs. Foresight was feminine enough to feel that it was a little hard that so much concentration should be called for when talking to a member of her own sex. It seemed, somehow, a waste of effort.

‘It is nice for Miss Clovis to be able to share a flat with you,’ she said politely.

‘Oh, it all happened
most
conveniently. When Esther resigned from her post at the Learned Society of course she had to leave her flat there and the new one was rather too big for one person. So I filled the gap, stepped into the breach, as it were.’

‘That is a good thing for both of you,’

‘Yes, we jog along quite happily together. Neither of us knows much about cooking and we’re both untidy people but it doesn’t seem to matter.’

‘I suppose common interests are the main thing,’ said Mrs. Foresight doubtfully, thankful that
she
did not have to live with Esther Clovis or Gertrude Lydgate, for she was fond of her food and liked to have ‘nice things’ around her. ‘How do you manage about cooking?’

‘We live out of tins and on frozen stuff, don’t we, Gertrude,’ said Miss Clovis, who had now joined them. ‘ And we always choose the kind of meat you can fry—chops and things like that.’

‘Braised meat can be delicious, and it isn’t difficult to cook,’ Mrs. Foresight began, but she was interrupted by Father Gemini, who came almost running up to Miss Lydgate, his beard dipping into his sherry glass, waving a sandwich in his hand.

‘Oh, Miss Lydgate, I must apologize for that vocabulary I sent you,’ he wailed. ‘It was
immensely
unfortunate, but the language is spoken by only five persons now, and the only informant I could find was a very old man, so old that he had no teeth.’

‘I appreciate your difficulty,’ said Miss Lydgate gruffly.

‘Yes, and at the time he was drunk, also. It was
most
difficult.’

‘I was interested in what appeared to be something
quite new
,’ said Miss Lydgate, drawing Father Gemini almost by his beard into a more secluded part of the room. ‘Was it
this
?’ A very curious sound, which it is impossible to reproduce here, then came from her. Had she been in the company of ordinary people, it might have been supposed that something had gone down the wrong way and that she was choking, but here nobody took any particular notice of her or of Father Gemini when he cried excitedly, ‘No, no, it is
thisV
and proceeded to emit a sound which would have appeared to the uninitiated exactly the same as Miss Lydgate’s choking noise.

‘Now they’ll be happy for hours,’ said Miss Clovis indulgently. ‘I sometimes think what a pity it is that Gertrude and Father Gemini can’t marry.’

‘Oh?’ said Mrs. Foresight. ‘Is it so impossible?’

‘Well, he is a Roman Catholic priest, and it is not usual for them to marry, is it?’

‘No, of course, they are forbidden to,’ Mrs. Foresight agreed. ‘Still, Miss Lydgate is much taller than he is,’ she added irrelevandy.

‘That hardly seems to matter in the academic world,’ said Miss Clovis. ‘ It is, of course, the marriage of true minds that counts.’

‘But that beard is so untidy,’ said Mrs. Foresight distastefully. ‘A wife would make him trim it-I always think Professor Mainwaring’s is so becoming, a silver imperial, I suppose you’d call his.’

‘Yes, Felix is a fine-looking man; he seems to dominate every gathering, and not only because of his height.’

He stood now in the centre of the room, sipping his sherry, and thinking as he did so that if it was not quite the best sherry it was certainly good enough for the occasion. Esther had been wise not to spend the Foresight money on the very best, he decided ; the women would not have appreciated it and his colleagues would have been unworthy of it. Many of them, as he put it to himself, were ‘not quite out of the top drawer’, an old-fashioned expression but one that conveyed his meaning perfectly. He was wise enough not to use it indiscriminately in these enlightened days, however, and his manner to the up-and-coming young men who still gathered round him was gracious and often kindly. After all, it was not his fault that his father had been able to educate him at Eton and Balliol, or that his youth had been passed in the spacious days of the Edwardian era. Indeed, in his own way he had shown courage in defying the wishes of his parents, who had intended him for the Diplomatic Service, to take up a profession that nobody had ever heard of and that involved going to the remotest parts of the Empire not to govern, which would have been natural and proper, but to study the ways of the primitive peoples living there.

‘There really is something rather splendid about him,’ said Melanie Pirbright. ‘ I can imagine he’d have a strong appeal in the States to some of the women’s clubs, you know. I wonder if he’s ever thought of doing a lecture tour? Doesn’t it seem odd that he’s never married?*

‘Yes, there seems to be no reason for it,’ said her husband. ‘One wonders whether there might be something between him and Minnie Foresight. Perhaps he feels the burden of his middle name, though. It might be tough to be called Byron- it would certainly take some living up to,’

‘You think so?’ said Jean-Pierre le Rossignol with his demure smile.

‘Perhaps not so difficult for a Frenchman,’ said Melanie seriously.

‘The name really makes no difference—a man can have many love affairs whatever he is called.’

Did you ever hear that Professor Mainwaring had had many?’ Melanie asked, in the tone of one seeking scientific information. ‘These things might get around.’

Jean-Pierre shrugged his shoulders and the corners of his mouth turned down in a grimace that suggested a wealth of secret knowledge. But he said nothing.

‘On the whole it seems to be English
women
who don’t marry,’ Melanie went on. ‘It would be interesting to know just why that is.’

‘Do you need to ask?’ said Jean-Pierre, glancing round the room. ‘ To begin with, there are too many.’

‘Yes, that is a problem. There is a good deal to be said in favour of polygamy, I always think.’

‘But some women one would hardly want, even as secondary wives,’ said Brandon.

‘Aren’t you using the term “secondary wife”, in the wrong sense, dear?’ said Melanie. ‘It can have a rather specialized meaning, you know.’

‘Listen to her,’ said Digby, turning aside to whisper to his friend Mark. “Can’t she ever relax? I was just wondering if we ought to say a word to Prof. Mainwaring.’

‘Say a word to him? What could we talk about? I should have thought that no three people could have had less in common than we have.’

‘Oh, I just meant social talk—making ourselves known and that kind of thing. After all we’ve got to get money from somewhere to do our field-work.’

‘How sensible you are—let’s go then.’

‘You say something,’ said Digby, giving Mark a sharp push forward.

‘Good evening, Professor,’ said Mark. ‘We just wanted to tell you how much we enjoyed that last paper of yours at the Learned Society,’

‘Most stimulating it was,’ mumbled Digby.

‘Let me see now, which paper was that—” Anthropology- what now?” Or was it “Anthropology-what-ho!”,’ chuckled the professor. ‘One gets confused, you know. I don’t remember noticing you in the audience.’

‘We were sitting at the back,’ said Mark quickly.

‘Ah, yes, so that you could slip out easily. Those chairs by the door are always very much in demand. I hope you slipped out quietly? I cannot recollect that there was any disturbance. I often wonder why it is that people
do
slip out as much as they do. With women it is understandable, I think-a casserole to be seen to or some such thing; perhaps men have trains to catch, or young ladies to meet.’

‘We have essays and seminar papers to prepare,’ said Digby stolidly.

‘And you hope to go out to the field?’ said Felix, fixing them with a shrewd glance.

‘Well, yes, we do,’ said Mark.

‘It is difficult…’ Digby began, but he was interrupted by the arrival of Professor Fairfax who pushed his way into the group crying, ‘Now, my dear Felix, I hope you haven’t forgotten that you are lunching with me at my club tomorrow?’

‘Gervase, my dear boy, certainly I have not forgotten. I am actively looking forward to it.’

‘Good evening, Professor Fairfax,’ said Mark and Digby, almost in unison.

‘Ah, Mr. Fox and Mr. Penfold, how-do-you-do,’ said Professor Fairfax in a perfunctory tone.

Even Mark and Digby, inexperienced as they were in the subtler gradations of social meaning, were perceptive enough to realize that Professor Fairfax was not in the least desirous of knowing how they did, so they edged away and back into their corner.

‘Dear boy! My
dear
Felix, my
dear
Gervase,’ said Mark scornfully. ‘All this bandying about of Christian names disgusts me.’

‘We haven’t yet acquired the status of being known by ours,’ said Digby more mildly. ‘ It’s an interesting study, when you come to consider it. The lower you are in status, the more formal the type of address used, unless you’re a servant, perhaps.’

‘Still, Fairfax does
know
our names, which is something.’

‘But does he know which of us is which?’ asked Digby anxiously.

‘We can see that he does later. To get the names into their heads—that’s the main thing at the moment.’

‘Not the most brilliant of your ideas, picking on that paper of his,’ said Digby. ‘You might at least have chosen some occasion when we really had been present and he might have seen us.’

The young men began bickering among themselves until one of them picked up a decanter of sherry and boldly refilled their glasses. This encouraged them still further and they began to devour plates of sandwiches and little savouries.

They certainly know how to make themselves at home, thought Deirdre Swan, curling her hand round her empty glass and wishing that she had the courage to go home. At nineteen she was still young and sensitive enough to be conscious that she was standing alone and had nothing to drink and to mind about it. Everybody except her seemed to be talking to somebody. She knew Miss Clovis slightly and had spoken to Mark and Digby once or twice, but they were in their third year at the University and she was only in her first. Soon they would be going out to Africa or some other suitable place and then even they, ordinary as they were, would acquire the glamour of those who had been ‘in the field.