Less Than Angels (6 page)

When she arrived at the school of anthropology, or rather the corner of some other building which was all that the college authorities could allow to the study of this new and daring subject, she found two third-year students, Vanessa Eaves and Primrose Cutbush, preparing to go to a seminar. This barbarous ceremony, possibly a throwback to the days when Chrisdans were flung to the lions, took place every week.

Somebody prepared and read a paper on a given subjcct, after which everybody else took great pleasure in tearing it and its author to pieces and contributed their own views on various matters not always entirely relevant.

Deirdre listened with a certain amount of awe to the conversation of the two girls. Primrose, a tall fair Amazon, had strong political views, while Vanessa, who was dark and languorous, was generally in the throes of some desperate love affair. Today, it seemed, she had a hangover and was due to read a paper at the seminar.

‘I feel
exquisitely
brittle,’ she moaned, ‘as if I were spun out of Venetian glass and the merest
breath
would shatter me,’

‘If you really haven’t finished your paper you can expect some rough handling from Fairfax,’ said Primrose brusquely.

‘I know—just think of the exquisite agony of it! The heavy sarcasm of that special voice he puts on—do you suppose he
practises
it? I wronder if he’ll be wearing his rough tweedy suit—so
manly
, isn’t it,’

‘I can’t think what you see in Professor Fairfax,’ said Primrose sensibly. ‘He isn’t even good-looking,’

‘I know, bless him,’ murmured Vanessa in a fond silly tone, ‘but ugly people can be so
desperately
attractive, I always think.’

Deirdre listened scornfully now. She had thought that only female undergraduates at Oxford talked in this affected way, but then she remembered that Vanessa lived in Kensington from wrhich anything might come. She settled herself down to work in the dark depressing room, which had many tattered books in shelves round the walls and some moth-eaten African masks, put there either to inspire the students in their work or because no museum really wanted them. There was even the skeleton of a small animal, a relic of the days when the room had been used for the study of Zoology.

As the morning went on, Deirdre was not alone in her work, for the room, as well as being a general dumping-ground for unwanted anthropological specimens, was also regarded as a kind of no-man’s land, where former students of the department, who had nowhere else to go, might find a corner in which to write up their field-notes. There were one or two tables spread with papers and these were spasmodically occupied by these shabby hangers-on. They lived in the meaner districts of London or in impossibly remote suburbs on grants which were always miserably inadequate, their creative powers stifled by poverty and family troubles. It would need the pen of a Dostoievsky to do justice to their dreadful lives, but they were by no means inarticulate themselves, often gathering in this room or in a nearby pub to talk of their neuroses and the pyschological difficulties which prevented them from writing up their material. Some of them had been fortunate enough to win the love of devoted women—women who might one day become their wives, but who, if they were thrown aside, would accept their fate cheerfully and without bitterness. They had learned early in life what it is to bear love’s burdens, listening patiently to their men’s troubles and ever ready at their typewriters, should a manuscript or even a short article get to the stage of being written down.

On this particular morning one pale wretched-looking young man sat in a corner, murmuring a strange language into a kind of recording machine, while another banged furiously at a typewriter for a quarter of an hour, then tore out the sheet of paper, crumpled it up on the floor and hurried out of the room, his hand to his brow in a stricken gesture. Nobody took any notice of Deirdre, but she found it hard to concentrate and was glad when lunch-time came. She was just gathering her books together when the door opened yet again and another young man came in. He was of about the age of the desperate ones—twenty-eight or nine—but Deirdre could not remember that she had ever seen him before. He was tall and dark, with thin aristocratic features and brilliant grey eyes—or this was how Deirdre always described him afterwards. Perhaps at the time she was conscious only of the shabby raincoat and the battered brief-case, and the fact that he stood over her rather disconcertingly, as if he expected a welcome.

‘I suppose we don’t know each other,’ he said at last, smiling at her. ‘I’ve been away nearly two years and feel like Rip Van Winkle,’

Deirdre was so astonished that he should take notice of her that she could think of nothing to say and at the best of times she was always too shy to have a quick reply ready. ‘I think most people are at the seminar,’ she ventured.

‘Of course-the Friday seminar I One might just as well come back on the Judgment Day and expect to find things normal and I believe one would. I’m Tom Mallow, by the way,’ He began walking about the room, taking books out of the shelves and making derogatory comments on them, as if he could not decide whether to go or stay. ‘And what’s your name?’ he asked.

‘Deirdre Swan,’ she mumbled, thinking what a silly name it was.

‘Deirdre of the Sorrows,’ he said, but somehow she did not mind the old joke from him. ‘And you do look rather sad sitting here all by yourself. Shall we go and have a drink?’

‘Oh, thank you, that would be nice . . ,’ She hardly knew what to say, being unused to drinking in general and in the middle of the day in particular. She hoped she hadn’t appeared too eager to go with him; the male students in her year never asked her to drink with them, though there were one or two of her contemporaries who were more favoured as they were thought to be ‘good value’, whatever that rather sinister phrase might imply.

‘Drinking alone is rather depressing, I always think.’

So he had been going to have a drink anyway, she noted.

But of course he had. He had expected to find a crowd of people he knew. She supposed it might be some kind of a compliment to herself that he had not waited for them to come out of the seminar. Unless, of course, he had been so eager for a drink that he just couldn’t wait.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever tried drinking alone,’ she said. The idea of it made her want to laugh. She imagined herself in her room at home with a bottle of gin and her mother or aunt calling out, ‘What are you doing, dear?’ Or Mr. Dulke watching her from his front garden.

Tom smiled at her and said, ‘ No, I suppose you’re too young to have done much drinking of any kind.’

‘I’m nineteen,’ she said rather coldly.

‘Oh, much too young,’ he mocked. ‘This is the usual place, I believe, unless you prefer one of the others?’

They had stopped outside one of the many pubs in the area. Deirdre didn’t know whether it was the usual place or not. One pub seemed very much like another to her, except that some were of the old cosy type, while others, like the one by the river at home, all new and gleaming. This was of the cosy kind, with round tables and shabby horsehair benches. The bar was crowded with what Deirdre thought of vaguely as ‘business men’, all laughing excessively loudly at what must have been a joke made by the fat elderly woman who was serving them. Though perhaps it did not always need a joke to make a group of men laugh loudly in a pub.

‘We shall have to drink beer,’ said Tom rather apologetically. ‘I hope that’s all right?’

‘Oh, lovely,’ she said, taking a large brave gulp of the tepid bitter. ‘ I simply adore it.’

There was a silence and Tom began to wonder why he had asked this strange girl to drink with him instead of waiting for Mark and Digby or somebody else that he knew to come out of the seminar. He had left Catherine busy finishing a story and seeming to have no time for him, so it was both soothing and gratifying to have Deirdre beside him, her great brown eyes fixed on his face, an occasional interested or sympathetic murmur her only interruption to his account of himself and his work. Tom had never had to make much effort with women, who took a natural and immediate liking to him, so he did not lay himself out to be particularly interesting to Deirdre or to ask her anything about herself.

Love at first sight can hardly ever be mutual, though it may seem to have been when discussed and remembered later. Tom was certainly not aware of Deirdre as anything much more than a satisfactory audience, but with her it was very different. She felt such a rush of happiness that she could have listened for ever to his voice going gently on about the complications of lineage segmentation. Something of what she felt must have shown itself in her face, for when she turned towards him with a smile on her lips and an uncomprehending starry-eyed look, he smiled too, said something about being a bore and went to get another drink.

With the second bitter they looked at his photographs. Dark-skinned figures, dressed in white robes, bits of cloth or nothing, crowded together in various unidentifiable activities, mostly seen from a distance. Sometimes, for a change, there was a close-up of a menacing figure in a mask or a dress of leaves, or a beautiful girl, naked to the waist and wearing a lot of beads, which Deirdre stared at dutifully but with some embarrassment, not quite knowing what to say. The last photograph seemed to be of Tom himself, standing outside a hut with a pointed thatched roof.

‘I think I like that one best,’ she said shyly, hoping that he might give it to her, but he just laughed and said that it was in the worst possible taste to show photographs of oneself in the field, and then gathered them back into their wallet.

Deirdre looked at the clock. She saw to her amazement that it was after two. ‘I must go,’ she said. ‘I told my mother I’d be home early this afternoon,’

‘Oh, I hope she won’t worry, then. Mothers do tend to, I find.’

Could it be that he too had a mother? thought Deirdre in wonder. ‘Does your mother worry?’ she asked, emboldened by the bitter.

‘She certainly does. She’s bought herself a book about tropical diseases and has rather a horrid time reading about everything I might get. I hope you aren’t awfully hungry,’ he went on, as they walked along the street. ‘I should have bought a sandwich for you, but I’ve had a meal myself so I’m afraid I forgot.’

Deirdre wondered what meal it could have been. An early lunch seemed unlikely, so perhaps it was a very late breakfast? She was able to ponder about this on the bus home, remembering the whole wonderful experience and his friendly, if too casual, ‘see you again, sometime.’ But
when
, she had wanted to ask, wondering how she was going to endure her evening with Bernard Springe and all the days ahead with the uncertainty of her next meeting with Tom lying over them.

There are few experiences more boring and painful for a woman than an evening spent in the company of one man when she is longing to be with another, and that evening Bernard’s dullness seemed to have a positive quality about it so that it was almost a physical agony, like the dentist’s drill pressing on a sensitive tooth. And yet Bernard was tall and well-dressed, better-looking than Tom Mallow, and his conversation, if one were to analyse it, was perhaps more interesting than Tom’s had been. He took Deirdre to a play she had been wanting to see and gave her a good supper afterwards. What was more, he had a car, which meant that the ride home to the suburb was done in comfort, with no anxiety about the last bus or tiring journey in crowded stuffy tube.

The wine she had drunk had put Deirdre into a silent brooding mood and they drove without speaking for some time. She was trying to imagine what an evening with Tom would have been like. Of course he hadn’t any money, so they would just have gone somewhere cheap to eat or perhaps just sat in a pub drinking beer and talking about his work. Segmentation of the lineage, fission and accretion, she thought, desolately and without humour.

‘What are you thinking about?’ Bernard asked gently.

They could have ridden on top of a bus together, but of course she didn’t yet know where he lived. Perhaps somebody at college would know—surely she could bring the conversation round to Tom Mallow somehow without it seeming too obvious?

‘You
are
in a dreamy mood,’ Bernard persisted. ‘I feel as if you were miles away.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I was thinking about the play. It was so sad.’

‘Shall we stop and look at the river for a minute?’ he suggested in a rather shaky voice.

‘All right,’ said Deirdre indifferently. People who didn’t live here always thought the river looked so beautiful at night, but to her it was just the place where Mr. Dulke and Mr. Lovell took their dogs and the young men from the club walked with their girl friends. Looking out of the car she could see Mr. Lovell now, walking rather too briskly for Snowball, his old sealyham, who lolloped along like a little rocking-horse in his efforts to keep up with his master.

‘Not unhappy about anything, are you, dear?’ Bernard asked.

‘Oh, no, thank you, just not very gregarious, I’m afraid,’ said Deirdre. She hated to be called ‘dear’ and Bernard’s arm had now crept round her shoulders and his hand was straying further than she wished. But suddenly it stopped and withdrew quickly as if it had touched an asp or a scorpion. He must have come upon the bone of her strapless bodice which made her such an odd shape. He would hardly have expected to find a bone
there
, she thought, stifling her laughter.

‘I’m not really that shape you know,’ she said suddenly in a gay tone. ‘It must feel like a chicken’s carcase-so unexpected I ‘

Bernard was perhaps a little embarrassed for he had no ready answer, so she went on in the same uncharacteristic way ‘A chicken’s carcase is all hollow inside and domed like the roof of a cathedral, so noble! ‘

‘What strange things you think of,’ he said reverently. ‘I suppose I ought to take you home now—it’s after midnight.’

After midnight—then it was tomorrow! And she might see Tom. She turned to Bernard, her eyes shining, and thanked him for a lovely evening. Gready relieved, for he had been disturbed by her strange talk, he kissed her and she did not seem to object, as she so often did. A funny girl, that was how he summed her up in his own mind. Next time they might go and see a musical show which would have been his own choice rather than the gloomy problem plays she seemed to prefer.