Some Tame Gazelle (23 page)
Authors: Barbara Pym
The champagne was having a different effect on Belinda, who was now gazing very sentimentally at the Archdeacon, thinking how nice he looked and what a clever speech he was making, not at all obvious or vulgar as wedding speeches so often were. She had really no idea what he was talking about, but there were a great many quotations in it, including one from Spenser which really seemed to be quite appropriate, something about love being a celestial harmony of likely hearts
Which join together in sweet sympathy
,
To work each others’ joy and true content
…
He was not saying anything about Burdens or sudden calls to the Mission Field.
The curate replied very nicely after the health had been drunk and was followed by the Professor of Middle English, who made an unintelligible but obviously clever little speech about
The Owl and the Nightingale
, embellished with quotations from that poem. Agatha and Olivia were smiling knowledgeably at each other, and Belinda turned away to meet Harriet, who was moving towards her through the crowd. Her face radiated joy and happiness. How nice it is that Harriet is entering so whole-heartedly into their feelings, thought Belinda, for she had been so afraid that her sister might be made unhappy by the curate’s marriage and departure.
‘The third from the left,’ whispered Harriet eagerly.
Belinda looked about her, rather puzzled. Then she saw what her sister meant, for in a corner she saw five curates, all young and all pale and thin, with the exception of one, who was tall and muscular and a former Rugby Blue, as she afterwards learned.
The third from the left. How convenient of the curates to arrange themselves so that Belinda could so easily pick out Harriet’s choice. He was dark and rather Italian-looking, paler and more hollow-cheeked than the others. Now Belinda understood her sister’s joy and suddenly she realized that she too was happier than she had been for a long time.
For now everything would be as it had been before those two disturbing characters Mr Mold and Bishop Grote appeared in the village. In the future Belinda would continue to find such consolation as she needed in our greater English poets, when she was not gardening or making vests for the poor in Pimlico.
Harriet would accept the attentions of Count Bianco and listen patiently and kindly to his regular proposals of marriage. Belinda did not go any further than this in her plans for the future: she could only be grateful that their lives were to be so little changed. It was true that the curate on whom Harriet had lavished so much care and affection was now a married man and lost to them, but another had come in his place, so like, that they would hardly realize the difference, except that he was rather Italian-looking and had had a nervous breakdown.
Then she fretted, ah, she fretted
,
But ’ere six months had gone past
,
She had got another poodle dog
Exactly like the last
…
thought Belinda frivolously, but the old song had come into her head and seemed appropriate. Some tame gazelle or some gentle dove or even a poodle dog – something to
love
, that was the point.
‘I think I’ll ask him after the reception, although it’s rather soon. But we do want to make him welcome
at once
, don’t we?’ Harriet was speaking eagerly to her sister.
Belinda smiled. ‘Of course, dear.’ Asking the new curate to supper seemed a particularly happy thought.
‘I knew you would agree,’ said Harriet, making boldly for the curates’ corner.
Belinda was looking round the room to see if she could find some sympathetic person to whom she could say that Dr Johnson had been so right when he had said that all change is of itself an evil, when she saw Harriet approaching with the new curate.
She smiled and shook hands with him, but before either of them could utter a suitable platitude, Harriet had burst in with the news that the young man was coming to supper with them on his first Sunday evening in the village, which would be in about a fortnight’s time.
‘He says he is fond of boiled chicken,’ she added.
Belinda laughed awkwardly and hoped that the new curate would not be embarrassed by Harriet’s behaviour.
But he seemed completely at ease as Harriet confided to him that she always liked to eat chicken bones in her fingers.
‘Like dear Queen Victoria used to,’ she sighed.
‘Now, I’m sure
you
don’t remember Queen Victoria,’ he said gallantly.
‘We older people remember a great deal more than you think,’ said Harriet coyly.
‘Oh,
come
, now,’ laughed the curate, and although his voice was rather weak as a result of his long illness, Belinda was overjoyed to hear that it had the authentic ring.
Barbara Pym
‘Barbara Pym is the rarest of treasures; she reminds us of the heartbreaking silliness of everyday life’ Anne Tyler
If Jane Cleveland and Prudence Bates seem an unlikely pair to be walking together at an Oxford reunion, neither of them is aware of it. They couldn’t be more different: Jane is a rather incompetent vicar’s wife, who always looks as if she is about to feed the chickens, while Prudence, a pristine hothouse flower, has the most unsuitable affairs. With the move to a rural parish, Jane is determined to find her friend the perfect man. She learns, though, that matchmaking has as many pitfalls as housewifery …
‘Over the years, as Barbara Pym replaced Nancy Mitford, Georgette Heyer, even Jane Austen, as my most loved author, I devoured all her books, but
Jane and Prudence
remains my favourite. Even an umpteenth reading this weekend was punctuated by gasps of joy, laughter, sympathy and wonder that this lovely book should remain so fresh, funny and true to life’ Jilly Cooper
Barbara Pym
‘She has a unique eye and ear for the small poignancies and comedies of everyday life … [her novels] are miniatures, perhaps, but will not diminish’ Philip Larkin
Dulcie Mainwaring is always helping others, but never looks out for herself – especially in the realm of love. Her friend Viola is besotted by the alluring Dr Aylwin Forbes, so surely it isn’t prying if Dulcie helps things along? Aylwin, however, is smitten with Dulcie’s pretty young niece. And perhaps Dulcie herself, however ridiculous it might be, is falling, just a little, for Aylwin. Once life’s little humiliations are played out, maybe love will be returned, and fondly, after all …
‘One of her very best – comic, heartrending, brave; in short, like life itself’ Shirley Hazzard
‘A splendid humorous writer’ John Betjeman
OUR SPOONS CAME FROM WOOLWORTHS
Barbara Comyns
Marry in hast, repent at leisure.
Sophia is twenty-one years old, carries a newt – Great Warty – around in her pocket and hastily marries a young artist called Charles. Swept into bohemian London of the thirties, Sophia is ill-equipped to cope. Poverty, babies (however much loved) and her husband conspire to torment her. Hoping to add some spice to her life, Sophia takes up with the dismal, ageing art critic, Peregrine, and learns to repent her marriage – and her affair – at leisure.
But in this case virtue is more than its own reward, for repentance brings an abrupt end to a life of unpaid bills, unsold pictures and unwashed crockery …
‘An off-beat humour’ Graham Greene
Muriel Spark
‘One of Muriel Spark’s most liberating, liberated and meditative novels. Spark is a writer who can take the meditative and make it mercurially funny, playful and mischievous’ Ali Smith
When Mrs Hawkins tells Hector Bartlett he is a ‘pisseur de copie’, that he ‘urinates frightful prose’, little does she realise the repercussions. Holding that ‘no life can be carried on satisfactorily unless people are honest’ Mrs Hawkins refuses to retract her judgement, and as a consequence, loses not one, but two much-sought-after jobs in publishing. Now, years older, successful, and happily a far cry from Kensington, she looks back over the dark days that followed, in which she was embroiled in a mystery involving anonymous letters, quack remedies, blackmail and suicide.
‘The divine Spark is shining at her brightest … Pure delight’
Claire Tomalin,
Independent
‘An outstanding novel …
A Far Cry from Kensington
has an effortless, translucent grasp of the spirit of the period’
Observer
‘Wonderfully entertaining – full of absurd, comical, engaging characters and written with typical wit, elegance and aplomb’
Sunday Telegraph