Less Than Angels (31 page)

The next morning she was at her typewriter, wrestling with the ‘inexpensive’ cocktail party, when the telephone rang. It was a brisk ‘good-class’ woman’s voice, the kind that might be accustomed to giving orders at Harrods or Fortnums.

‘You don’t know me,’ it said, ‘ but I’m Josephine Coningsby, Tom Mallow’s sister. My aunt, Mrs. Beddoes, gave me your address, I believe you’ve met her.’

‘Yes, certainly, we …’ Catherine’s sentence tailed off, for it was difficult to know how to describe that curious meeting the day Tom had left her.

‘Well, look,’ said the voice briskly. ‘I was thinking it would be nice if we could all meet together for lunch or something.’

‘All? I don’t quite see, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh, I meant you and me and Elaine and this other girl—Deirdre I think her name is—could you get hold of her? I thought we could have a sort of talk about Tom, you know.’

‘Oh, yes, that would be so -right, I think,’ said Catherine falteringly, for everything today seemed to defy description. ‘When shall we meet?’

A day was fixed and the place, which was to be Josephine’s club somewhere near St. James’s Street. Catherine looked forward to the occasion with a certain amount of apprehension, her lively fancy leaping forward and picturing all sorts of awkwardnesses and embarrassments. She had a long telephone conversation with Deirdre, whose chief worry had been about her clothes. Would black or grey—colours which she never wore-be expected, or would her tweed coat do? And must she buy a hat? Catherine did not think it would matter very much how they dressed since it would be most unlikely that they would attain the standard set by Josephine and Elaine.

When Catherine and Deirdre entered the lounge of the club, Catherine’s suppositions were proved correct, for they had hardly set foot on the soft carpet before two women, both wearing well-cut grey suits, small hats and pearls, and carrying fur wraps, stood up and advanced towards them. It was perhaps humiliating, Catherine felt, that she and Deirdre should be so easily recognized, hatless, in loose tweed coats and flat shoes. Deirdre had scraped back her loose and flowing hair into a kind of tail and darkened her eyebrows so much that she looked quite fierce. Catherine was just herself, but had made an effort to be neater than usual.

Introductions were made and they all sat down rather nervously. Elaine was the fairer of the two and looked younger. Josephine, Catherine noticed with a shock of surprise, once you got past the neat formality of her clothes was exactly like Tom. She had his wide-open grey eyes, delicate nose and sweet smile, but lacked Tom’s gentle rather diffident manner. The effect was strangely disturbing.

‘Well, now, what about a sherry?’ said Josephine briskly, as if there were no other drink. ‘ A medium dry for everyone?’

The drinks came and were gratefully seized upon. It was difficult, perhaps impossible, to name a toast, so each woman took a rather furtive sip and then set down her glass.

‘I thought it was a good idea for us to meet together like this,’ said Josephine, as if beginning to fear that it might not be after all.

‘Yes, we were all fond of Tom,’ said Catherine, rising to the occasion. ‘I suppose in a way we represent all the different aspects of his life.’

‘Yes. I have known him the longest, of course,’ said Josephine, ‘but Elaine has known him since childhood too. We all went to children’s parties together, just imagine it.’ She smiled Tom’s smile.

‘He always hated them,’ said Elaine gently. ‘He was so shy,’

‘I knew him for less than a year,’ Deirdre broke in abruptly. ‘I was sitting in the anthropology department one morning and he came in wearing his old blue corduroy jacket, and we went out and had a drink …’ her voice faltered and she turned her head away.

‘Shall we go in to lunch now?’ said Josephine. ‘The dining- room is through this way,’

They got up and walked slowly, in a kind of procession, into a large well-proportioned room, whose walls were hung with oil-paintings of middle-aged and elderly women. Catherine wondered who they were, for she was not clear as to the function of the club, the particular kind of tie that bound its members together. It must, she thought, be something to do with the Empire or politics, and must surely be rather more than the wearing of good clothes and furs and real pearls and accounts at the best London shops.

‘Who were these women?’ she asked brightly. ‘What did they do?’

‘Do?’ Josephine seemed puzzled. ‘I’m not sure that they
did
anything particular, they were just people who belonged in the past, the more distinguished members, I suppose.’

‘Did they ride to hounds, perhaps?’ Catherine asked.

‘Perhaps they did,’ said Elaine with her pleasant smile. ‘It could be that. You see, this is a club for country women up in London. My mother used to belong,’

‘Now, what shall we eat?’ Josephine was studying the menu.

Another was placed before Catherine who read down the list of dishes in a daze, seeing only in a kind of horror that braised heart was five shillings.

‘I’m not really very hungry,’ Deirdre murmured.

‘But it’s a cold day and we ought to have a good meal,’ said Elaine sensibly. ‘I should think soup to begin with and then perhaps roast lamb or boiled chicken,’

The others accepted her suggestions gratefully, glad to have the choice made for them.

‘The District Officer has very kindly sent all Tom’s papers back by boat,’ said Josephine, ‘but they haven’t actually arrived yet. Elaine and I were wondering whether you or Deirdre would like to have them. Of course we shouldn’t really know what to do with them or even understand what they were,’ she said comfortably. ‘It seems a pity that we should have them if there’s anything of value to anthropology in them.’

‘You could send them to Miss Clovis,’ Deirdre suggested. ‘She would know what to do with them or who would be able to make use of them. Or perhaps Professor Fairfax might be better.’

‘You wouldn’t like to have them yourself?’

‘Oh, no, please, I …’ Deirdre stammered in confusion, overcome with dismay at the picture of herself and Digby starting their life together with the burden of poor Tom’s field notes upon them.

‘Of course I could get Harrods to store them,’ said Josephine practically. ‘I believe there are seven or eight large wooden chests. To think of Tom writing all that I ‘ she laughed.

‘Some of them probably contain carvings and sculpture,’ said Catherine.

‘You mean African carvings?’ said Josephine. ‘Well, I suppose that would be very crude stuff wouldn’t it, not the kind of thing one would want to have in one’s house?’

‘Oh, some of them are positively
rude
I ‘ said Catherine, temporarily forgetting herself. ‘Of course they wouldn’t go very well in some rooms,’ she added quickly. ‘ I believe you have some lovely dogs,’ she went on, turning to Elaine. ‘Tom often spoke about them.’

‘Yes, my golden retrievers, they are rather sweet. Tom told us that you wrote stories and were a very good cook,’ said Elaine simply.

Catherine wondered if that was all Elaine knew. She hoped that she had perhaps been spared the full knowledge of what their relationship had been, but she felt that even had she known all she might have understood and forgiven.

‘Tom’s grave is in the cemetery out there,’ said Josephine rather gruffly, ‘and we shall have a tablet put up in the church at home. We thought you and Deirdre might like to know. It will be something quite simple, of course.’

‘Thank you,’ said Catherine, wondering why people always said things like ‘quite simple, of course’. Presumably they had not in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and she felt now that she would have liked Tom’s memorial tablet to have weeping cherubs and a wealth of beautifully tortured marble surrounding it. As it was, she supposed it would be a flat piece of stone or brass with dull simple lettering, possibly outlined in red; the kind of thing for which some rather cowardly diocesan official could grant a faculty without any fear of criticism.

After coffee and some more general conversation it seemed to be time for them to go their separate ways.

‘I’m going to see my aunt in Belgravia,’ said Josephine. ‘My cousin has just managed to get herself engaged—in her first season, too. Good show, isn’t it.’

‘Oh
yes’
said Catherine sincerely. ‘Your aunt seemed anxious because she was so tall.*

‘Well, Guards’ officers are the answer to that,’ laughed Josephine. Then she became serious and, drawing Catherine aside, said in a low voice, ‘I don’t suppose anybody told you, I suppose nobody would, really, but a half-written letter to Elaine was found on the table in Tom’s hut. The District Officer sent it with some small personal things. It was a nice chatty letter, you know, but at least she is able to know that he was thinking of her so very shortly before the end.’

‘Yes, that is nice, I’m very glad,’ said Catherine. She was feeling tired now and wanted to get away.

‘That’s what I feel. You see she has always loved Tom, there has never been anybody else,’

‘Apparently there has never been anybody else,’ said Catherine to Deirdre as they walked away from the club. ‘You can imagine it somehow, can’t you, that sweet girl, and really so unsuitable for Tom. Oh,
look?
she exclaimed, for they were passing a pavement artist who was drawing dogs’ heads, ‘those dogs! You can see it all, can’t you, so solid and brown and faithful. What
I
wanted to ask was if Josephine ever visited the
other
aunt, the one who lives in a hotel in South Kensington. I have a feeling she’s rather old and neglected and pathetic somehow.’

‘Catherine, are you all right, would you like to go and have a cup of tea somewhere?’ asked Deirdre solicitously.

‘Yes, let’s have a cup of tea, but first I must find a coin for the dog-man.’

‘You won’t be lonely, will you?’ Deirdre asked. ‘You can always come and stay with us, you know.’

‘Thank you, Deirdre, but I never mind being alone. And my life isn’t quite over yet, you know,’ said Catherine a little fretfully. For a moment she almost fancied that life, that tiresome elderly relative, had tweaked at her sleeve in a playful manner. ‘I shall come and see you, of course, and I shall probably visit next door, too.’

‘You mean Mr. Lydgate? I suppose he is rather intriguing, in a way.’

‘It will be an interest, and it will take me out of myself to study somebody equally peculiar.’

‘You sound so very detached. Won’t it be any more than that?’

‘Who knows!’ Catherine called out in a gay tone as they parted outside the teashop.

Deirdre remembered these words when, some time later, she went up to her aunt’s room to ask her for something and found Rhoda and Mabel at the window. Rhoda was giving what appeared to be a running commentary on Alaric Lydgate’s doings in his garden.

‘All the masks out on the lawn,’ she said, ‘and now-oh, my goodness—he’s got a great big shield and two spears and some moth-eaten old feather thing, I can’t quite see what it is. I should think those things attract the moth terribly and will be all the better for a good airing. Now he’s gone into the house again.’

‘But he’s come out again and with Catherine too,’ said Mabel.

‘Oh, yes, and he’s got a knife in his hand. They’re going right to the bottom of the garden. Now he seems to be cutting something and Catherine is helping him-what
can
they be doing? Why, now she’s standing up and her arms are full of rhubarb! What a strange girl she is—first burning all those papers on the bonfire and now this. What odd turns life does take!’ And how much more comfortable it sometimes was to observe it from a distance, to look down from an upper window, as it were, as the anthropologists did.

‘We could have given her some rhubarb,’ said Mabel mildly. ‘We have plenty. She needn’t have troubled Mr. Lydgate.’

‘Oh, I don’t suppose he would regard it as being any trouble,’ said Rhoda. ‘Besides, it might not be quite the same thing, having it from our garden.’

This last point, she felt with some complacency, was of a subtlety that perhaps only an unmarried woman could fully appreciate. But oh dear, she thought, if ever Catherine and Alaric should marry, what a difficult and peculiar couple they would make!