Less Than Angels (24 page)

‘We’ve time for a cup of coffee,’ said Digby sensibly. ‘That might be a good idea.’

They sat drinking and talking until a disembodied female voice announced that the passengers for that particular flight should take their places in the bus to go to the airport.

Tom’s travelling companions—a number of smartly dressed African business men, a dried-up-looking elderly man and woman and a few other more nondescript persons-were already climbing into the bus. Except for the Africans, there was really nothing unusual or remarkable about any of them. But at the last minute, just as Tom himself was about to get in, a party of four black-clad priests came hurrying towards the bus.

‘Now be sure and tell Father O’Halloran and Father Kinsella that I was asking for them,’ called out a strong Irish voice belonging to another priest who was seeing them off.

‘We will too,’ said one of them.

‘And you have the
Limerick Times
with the account of the hurling? That way I’ll be after saving the postage,’ he chuckled. ‘A grand match it was, a
grand
match, do you be sure and tell Father Kinsella …’

‘Well, old boy,’ said Digby, grasping Tom by the hand and feeling as if he were acting the part of an Englishman seeing off a friend, ‘all the best.’

Mark shook hands too. Then Catherine stretched up and kissed Tom lightly on the cheek but he seized her in his arms and embraced her more warmly. He then did the same to Deirdre, seeming to make no difference between them.

Surely he ought to have made some distinction? thought Mark in his detached way. And does one kiss girls in public like that? Only if one comes from Tom’s stratum of society; ours is so much more inhibited when it comes to questions of love and sex.

‘Look,’ said Catherine in her brightest tone, ‘Tom is sitting by one of the priests. I feel he’ll be all right now.’

They all waved and the bus drove away. Digby and Mark would then have gone home, but the women wanted to watch it out of sight so they all stood there rather stiffly as if they were at some kind of military ceremony.

‘He hasn’t really gone yet,’ said Deirdre in a stifled voice, ‘not
really
gone, that’s what makes it worse.’

‘No, I suppose there’s about an hour and a half before he will actually rise into the air,’ said Mark.

‘But in a way he will have gone the moment he left us,’ Deirdre persisted. ‘His thoughts will be fixed on the future and we shall be the past.’

‘Only where he is concerned,’ said Digby. ‘We are still ourselves, you know.’

He had taken her arm and was attending to her with great kindness and solicitude. Catherine was glad to see this and made no attempt to take upon herself the role of comforter, which is often regarded as a kind of female monopoly though it can be admirably filled by the right kind of man.

‘Good-bye, Catherine,’ said Deirdre absently. ‘We must meet some time for lunch or you must come home to tea or supper.’

‘I’d love to,’ said Catherine, seeing the greyness of these future meals through Deirdre’s eyes. She did not particularly want to be left alone with Mark and for him to feel under any obligation to buy her a drink or a meal and was relieved when he excused himself, saying that he was lunching with the girl he had met at Tom’s aunt’s dance.

Catherine got on to the first bus that came and let it take her where it would. Her thoughts seemed to be in three layers. On the top layer she was saying over to herself like a chant two lines of verse which often, though for no apparent reason, came into her mind at moments of stress or emotional upheaval

What was he doing.
,
the great god Pan
,

Down in the reeds by the
river
…

It was a jingle, perhaps with some long forgotten comic significance, but it persisted, over and over again like a bluebottle buzzing in a closed room. The middle layer was a preoccupation with a series of beauty articles she was writing for one of her magazines. Having dealt with the problem of acquiring a good sun tan and then bleaching away its last traces, she was now thinking of winter beauty treatments, getting the arms and shoulders nice for New Year parties, softening those rough elbows. Try sitting with your elbows cupped in halves of lemon, she thought derisively, advice she would never have dreamed of following herself. And on the shoulders try cucumber peel, one of grandmother’s recipes for whitening the skin. Underneath all this, in the bottom layer of her thoughts, was a dark and confused sadness about Tom which she did not attempt to bring out and analyse.

She got off the bus and entered a large restaurant with a noble foyer thronged with people, none of them seeming to know which direction they were going in. They wandered, bewildered
,
rudderless, in need not only of someone to tell them which of the many separate cafés would supply their immediate material wants, but of a guide to the deeper or higher things of life. While a glance at the menus displayed or a word with an attendant would supply the former, who was to fulfil the latter? The anthropologist, laying bare the structure of society, or the writer of romantic fiction, covering it up? Perhaps neither, Catherine thought. And why should she assume that these people, temporarily confused and wandering, were in greater need of guidance than she was herself?

She passed counters laden with chocolates and dishes of brilliant hors-d’oeuvres, and walked out of another door. What was he doing, the great god Pan … and still Tom wouldn’t quite have left the country. She ought to be in some church, praying for his safety.

In common with many people who are not regular churchgoers, Catherine sometimes felt the need to enter a church at special times, but she did not know of any in this area and wandered for quite a long time before she came upon one that seemed ‘suitable’. Unsuitable ones she regarded as those with a bright welcoming message outside and presumably a light and unsympathetic interior. The one she eventually chose seemed to her just right, with its mysterious dimness pierced by a red light hanging before an altar in a side chapel, and its lingering fragrance of incense. She thought it must be a Roman Catholic church, especially as there was a little table with candles on it, some of which had already been lit, standing in front of a statue. Attached to the table was a box with a slit in it, presumably for money. But what did one pay? she wondered. She looked in her purse and found a shilling, which seemed about right, then placed a candle in one of the little holders and lit it. At first the flame was very feeble but then suddenly it seemed to shoot up and burn brightly. Obviously this was a good omen, though she was not sure of what. She knelt for a moment in one of the pews, making up prayers in the rather stilted language she remembered from childhood. Was it necessary always to address God as ‘Thou’ and to use such archaic grammatical forms? she wondered, deeply conscious of her ignorance in these matters. Perhaps she had come to a stage in her life when she should begin going to church and then she might learn. After a while it seemed easier just to sit and let some kind of peace flow over her and she did this for some minutes, until she heard a movement outside the door. She stood up quickly and made her way out, fearful of being pounced upon by a dark swift-moving figure in cassock and biretta, who might ask her what she was doing there. But the voices, when they came, were women’s voices, and the snatch of conversation she heard was not really very alarming, showing as it did the universal concern of women for men.

‘… will wear himself out. If only he would let Father Amis take the early Mass sometimes. The trouble is that one can do so
little
oneself, one feels so helpless.’

Two middle-aged women came out of a door, one of them carrying a small electric bowl fire. They glanced at Catherine with friendly but restrained curiosity.

‘Can we help you at all?’ asked one of them pleasandy. ‘Father Summerhayes will be here soon, if you want to see him.’

‘Oh, no, thank you,’ said Catherine quickly. ‘I was only just…’ she had been going to say ‘looking round’ as if she were in a shop but stopped herself in time. What
had
she been doing? Lighting a candle for Tom or for herself? Anyway, nothing that these good women would be able to help her with.

‘The church is always open for private prayer,’ said the other woman. ‘We did have to lock it at one time because a valuable carpet was stolen, but now we arrange for somebody to be here so that it can be open all the time.’

‘Well, thank you, I shall remember that,’ said Catherine, managing a suitable sentence. Then, smiling at them, she hurried out of the door, nearly colliding in her haste with a dark swift-moving figure in cassock and biretta.

‘Hullo, Miss DewsburyP he called out. ‘Still keeping up the good work?’

He had gone before Catherine could disillusion him. She walked away, smiling to herself, amused and disconcerted to feel that she could so easily be mistaken for a church worker. Was there a place for her there, perhaps? She imagined herself worrying over Father Summerhayes, who had not, from her brief glimpse of him, looked at all worn out. But of course there would be more to it than that, even she knew something of what it would involve and she did not feel she could face it yet. Like one of the saints—she couldn’t remember which it had been—but it seemed an irreverent comparison and she pushed it quickly away.

It
was a cold sparkling Saturday morning in early November when Professor Mainwaring and Miss Clovis stood in the morning-room of his house in the country, watching the candidates for the Foresight research grants coming up the drive.

‘Well, they have surmounted the first obstacle,’ declared Professor Mainwaring, smiling and tweaking at his beard.

‘And what was that?’ asked Miss Clovis, trying to remember whether there was a water jump in the lane or savage dogs to be overcome at the gates.

‘They have come on the train I told them to take,’ he chuckled.

‘
That
can’t have been very difficult. It doesn’t show much intelligence on their part to have caught the train.’

‘Ah, perhaps not, but there was a catch in it. Only the
front
portion of the train comes here. The rear portion goes in
quite another direction!’
His voice ended up on its highest note and he stood rubbing his hands. ‘I deliberately omitted to give them that information.’

‘Then I suppose the ticket collector must have told them when he punched their tickets.’

‘You think so?’ Professor Mainwaring sounded disappointed. ‘But I have known many-and anthropologists among them—who have taken the wrong turning, as it were.’

The drive was long and straight, so that the four candidates, Mark and Digby with the two young women Primrose Cutbush and Vanessa Eaves, had been visible for some time.

Professor Mainwaring looked at the pretty French clock on the mantelpiece. ‘It seems as if they have walked from the station, and that’s the best part of a mile, carrying their luggage, too. How very little they have brought,’ he commented. ‘The ladies are carrying their own-that is a good sign. I should not feel inclined to offer a research grant to a lady who expected a man to bear her burdens for her. In my young days it was different, of course; things are so very much changed now. I should hardly have been surprised to see the young ladies carrying the young
men’s
luggage. I see that they are wearing their raincoats.’ He moved across the room and tapped at a small barometer. ‘Well, perhaps they are wise. There may be some rain and they have come prepared.’

‘They have no overcoats, that’s why they are wearing raincoats,’ said Miss Clovis sharply, noting that Felix was evidently in one of his rather tiresome rambling moods this morning. It was certainly cold enough to be wearing overcoats; could it be that they were unable to afford them? She had also seen that Digby Fox was wearing what looked like hand-knitted gloves and the sight had disturbed her with its pathos.

‘This is a week-end they will remember,’ declared the Professor. ‘I think a glass of sherry in here, first, and then luncheon. Henry will announce it, of course. They will appreciate that little piece of ceremonial.’

‘We are getting very near now,’ said Mark. ‘I can see Esther and Felix standing at a window watching us.’

‘Isn’t the house romantic-looking,’ said Vanessa. ‘A noble
pile
y
the term really seems to be justified here.’

‘It’s much too big for one person to live in,’ said Primrose. ‘It could be turned into a school or a home for unmarried mothers.’

‘What things you think of, dear,’ said Mark, giggling.

‘I think it’s hideous,’ said Digby bluntly. “Those red gothic turrets and lancet windows or whatever they are.’ He wished that Deirdre could have come too, but she was as yet too young to apply for a research grant. In the weeks that had passed since Tom’s going, he had seen her as often as he judged to be politic, guessing that she would not appreciate too much of his company at this stage. He had sometimes observed her from a distance, sitting alone in the college canteen, reading a blue air letter which could only be from Tom. Sometimes the letter looked as if it were falling apart at the folds, which made him think that she must be reading the same letter over and over again and wonder whether Tom wasn’t writing to her as often as he should. He longed to ask her and to comfort her and even to rush out to Africa with a horse-whip should it be necessary. He was experiencing that difficult stage of love which seems to consist only of patient waiting, but his nature was better suited to it than some would have been.

‘Do we ring the bell?
,
asked Primrose blundy. ‘Or will they come running out to meet us?’

‘I suppose we pull this,’ said Mark. ‘Look, it’s a friar’s head and you pull out the tongue.’

‘What a quaint ideal’ said Vanessa. ‘Did dear old Felix think of that himself, I wonder? No, I suppose the house is older than he is. What a loud pealing! Iwonder who will come?’