Civil to Strangers and Other Writings

by Barbara Pym

  Half an hour passed, and Mr Paladin was still meditating in the cold and darkness. He had found that his thoughts were inclined to wander from the theme he had set himself, which was ‘O worship the Lord in the Beauty of Holiness’. Holiness. What did it mean? What was Holiness? He believed in beginning very simply, with a definition wherever possible, and then working gradually upwards and outwards, taking his congregation with him, he hoped, to a broader and yet more subtle interpretation. Mr Paladin’s dictionary gave him five definitions of the word Holy, three of which he proposed to use in his sermon: ‘pure in heart; free from sin; set apart to a sacred use’. The first two he found he could explain quite simply, but the third was more difficult. ‘Set apart to a sacred use’: God’s ministers, of course, were set apart in this way. Miss Gay ought to realize this. Mr Paladin’s meditations were interrupted at this point by the ringing of the front door bell. He felt suddenly colder. Would he be safe? he wondered. He could hear Mrs Roberts open the front door, shut it, and then tap at his door. He crouched in his corner, almost holding his breath. He was beginning to wish that he had been braver now. He would feel so foolish if Miss Gay were to discover him like this.

  Mrs Roberts had opened the door now and he could hear her fumbling about for the light switch. Why need she stay so long? he wondered. Couldn’t she see that he wasn’t in? Suddenly the room was flooded with light, or so it seemed to Mr Paladin, who had been sitting for more than half an hour in the darkness, though in reality the light at Arlington House was very poor.

  Mrs Roberts advanced into the room, and looked around.

  ‘Why, Mr Paladin,’ she exclaimed, ‘what are you doing there cowering in the darkness?’

  Her stilted phrase, which would otherwise have amused him, now made Mr Paladin feel even more embarrassed. ‘Cowering in the darkness’. He supposed that it described his state very well.

  He rose to his feet with as much dignity as he could muster and said, ‘Ah, yes, Mrs Roberts, I find the darkness conducive to great thoughts.’

  Mrs Roberts stared at him uncomprehendingly. ‘Somebody brought this for you,’ she said, holding out a square parcel.

  Mr Paladin knew by its shape that it was Paradise Lost. He opened it, and saw that there was a note inside. It was very short. ‘Dear Mr Paladin,’ it ran, ‘here is the book. I am sending Amy with it, as I find I shall not have time to bring it myself. Isn’t this weather lovely? Yours sincerely, Angela Gay.’

  Mr Paladin crumpled it up and threw it into the waste-paper basket. Why had Miss Gay sent the maid? he wondered. Could it be, he asked himself tentatively, hardly daring to hope, that she had grown tired of him? He speculated on this interesting subject for the rest of the evening, and forgot all about his meditations on Holiness.

  The explanation of Miss Gay’s conduct, had he known it, was very simple. That morning, when she had been doing her shopping, she had been approached by a tall and handsome stranger in a black hat.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said, bowing as nobody in Up Callow ever did, ‘but could you perhaps tell me, is there here an ironware shop?’

  ‘Ironware?’ Miss Gay looked puzzled, and then, ‘Oh, I expect you mean ironmonger’s,’ she said. ‘Yes, there is one, but it’s rather out of the way.’ She looked about her doubtfully.

  ‘Thank you so much. Perhaps you will tell me how I can go there?’

  ‘Well, it’s rather difficult.’ Miss Gay hovered a little, and then said suddenly, ‘But I happen to be going there myself, so I can go with you.’

  ‘Oh, but I cannot trouble you so much, you are really too kind.’ All this was said with a brilliant smile, and much bowing and flourishing of the black hat.

  ‘But I assure you it’s no trouble,’ said Miss Gay eagerly.

  They started on their way, he taking long strides, and Miss Gay pattering along beside him in her high heels.

  ‘Are you sure I do not trouble you?’ persisted the stranger.

  ‘It’s no trouble at all,’ Miss Gay assured him. ‘As a matter of fact I have to go there myself to see about a spare part for a Primus stove.’

  ‘Very strange,’ said the stranger, his deep foreign voice making this exchange sound far more exciting than it really was. ‘I too wish to buy a Primus stove.’

  ‘Such useful things,’ murmured Miss Gay, thinking that this was a real bond between them, if not a romantic one. While she was speaking her glances were darting about from one side of the street to the other, to see whether any people she knew were anywhere near to watch her walking with this distinguished-looking stranger. She saw Mrs Gower’s broad back disappearing into the fish shop, and they came face to face with Janie Wilmot as they rounded the corner into Market Street, but otherwise the walk was a little disappointing.

  ‘What a charming little town,’ said the stranger, ‘and everyone is so gemütlich.’

  ‘Pardon?’ said Miss Gay, surprised to think that the inhabitants of their dull town could possibly be anything that needed a foreign word to describe them.

  ‘Kindly, friendly, what would you say? But how stupid I am. You don’t know German, perhaps? You look so much like a Parisian.’

  Miss Gay smiled complacently. Her tight black costume and little hat with an eye-veil had at last, for they were both nearly a year old, produced the effect she had hoped for. He wouldn’t be saying such things to Cassandra Marsh-Gibbon in her tweeds and brogue shoes. ‘My mother was French,’ she declared proudly.

  ‘You are very like her, I think,’ said the stranger with rather surprising certainty.

  ‘That I cannot say. She died when I was five years old and I can hardly remember her.’

  ‘Oh, how sad for you.’ The dark eyes expressed real sympathy. ‘My mother also died when I was five.’

  Miss Gay was silent, thinking that here was yet another bond between them, and a more beautiful and permanent one than a Primus stove. Perhaps it was a little too much to hope that they would be able to comfort each other for the deaths of mothers long since forgotten, but at least they might be something to each other.

  Her dreams were interrupted by the stranger remarking that he was sure that this was the shop, yes? Miss Gay looked up, then sighed and shrugged her shoulders, as if she had been jerked away from the contemplation of a beautiful vision by the sight of the buckets and watering cans and Aladdin lamps. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘this is the shop.’

  ‘It was indeed kind of you to come with me,’ he smiled.

  ‘I hope you are settling down in your new house,’ said Miss Gay.

  ‘Oh, it is charming!’ he declared enthusiastically. ‘But how did you know I am coming to live here?’

  ‘News travels quickly in a small town.’

  ‘Specially good news, yes?’

  Miss Gay fluttered her eyelashes at him. ‘I hope we may call it that,’ she said.

  ‘You will see,’ laughed the stranger, and having thanked her again, he walked into the shop, and was soon lost in its gloomy interior.

  Miss Gay walked away feeling very sprightly, and quite forgetting that she herself was supposed to be buying something.

  When the evening came, she remembered that she had intended calling on Mr Paladin to return his book. What a dull book it was, she thought. Why did Mr Paladin like such stupid things?

  ‘Amy,’ she called, ‘bring me some brown paper and string, and then get your hat and coat on. I want you to take a parcel round to Mr Paladin’s lodgings.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ‘Come Inspiration! from thy hermit seat,

  By mortal seldom found …’

  ‘What’s all this about a foreigner coming to live at Holmwood?’ said Adam Marsh-Gibbon to his wife one evening.

  It was about ten days after Miss Gay had shown the stranger the way to the ironmonger’s shop. The weather had suddenly become much warmer, and Adam and Cassandra were in the garden. He was sitting on a seat under the cedar tree, while she was weeding a flower-bed nearby.

  ‘Really, Adam,’ laugh
ed Cassandra, ‘haven’t you heard about Miss Gay and the handsome stranger, and how they found they were soul-mates because of something to do with Primus stoves and their dead mothers? It was really most entertaining. Mrs Gower told me, and she heard it from Mr Gay, so it must be quite genuine.’

  ‘I have better things to do than to listen to a lot of women talking,’ said Adam loftily. ‘It sounds rubbish to me.’

  ‘Of course it does,’ said Cassandra, ‘but I think it’s true, that’s what makes it all the more delightful.’

  Adam had done practically nothing during the last ten days but pace about the house and garden, complaining about his inability to write, dust on the piano, buttons off his shirts and pyjamas, beef too much or mutton too little cooked at dinner, too hot or too cold weather, and anything else he happened to think of at the moment.

  ‘I think you ought to come and help me with these weeds,’ Cassandra went on. ‘You can’t expect to get at the soul of your gardener if you have no practical experience of gardening. Besides, you aren’t doing anything at present.’

  No, Adam had to admit that he wasn’t doing anything at present, but he felt bound to justify himself, and proceeded to do so at some length. ‘Why must you always be bothering me?’ he said peevishly. ‘You bustling women would do well to read Wordsworth. Surely you remember “Expostulation and Reply”?’ he demanded, and began to recite in a defiant voice which did not accord very well with the sense of the poetry.

  Cassandra was silent. Adam had an unfair advantage over her by being able to finish off so many of their little arguments by quoting suitable poetry to support his point of view. What could she say after two stanzas of Wordsworth? Sometimes she almost wished that Wordsworth had never been born. She felt that he was almost entirely responsible for this tiresome gardener about whom Adam was finding it so difficult to write. If it weren’t for Wordsworth, she told herself, we wouldn’t be bothering about the beautiful and permanent forms of Nature, and wise passiveness, which, in Adam’s case, was simply another name for being lazy and doing nothing.

  Cassandra stopped grovelling among the dandelions and looked up at Adam and saw that there was a look of intense concentration on his face. He was very laboriously making paper boats out of the last chapter of his novel. Much the best thing for it, thought Cassandra, suddenly loving him very much indeed.

  After working on the dandelions for about ten minutes, she got up, for her back was aching, and sat on the seat beside her husband.

  ‘Adam, dear,’ she said tentatively, ‘don’t you think we might give some sort of a party and ask this foreigner and various other people. It’s ages since we saw anybody, and I’m sure it would do you good.’

  ‘How do you mean “do me good”?’ said Adam uncompromisingly, still making paper boats.

  ‘Well, take you out of yourself.’

  ‘But my dear child, why should I want to be taken out of myself? It’s impossible anyway. How can I become any other self but my own self? Tell me that.’

  Cassandra sighed. She felt that she was hardly equal to the strain of a philosophical argument at this moment, but she did her best by saying, ‘Everyone should occasionally have his attention distracted from a too profound contemplation of his own self.’

  Suddenly Adam laughed, and put his arm round her shoulders. ‘My poor Cassandra, that was a very nice sentence,’ he said.

  ‘Well, Adam, you know you like meeting people, really you do. And I should like to give a party.’

  ‘A sherry party, I suppose?’ he said indulgently.

  ‘When would be the best day, do you think?’ Cassandra asked.

  ‘Oh, any day will suit me,’ said Adam surprisingly. ‘What about this foreigner, who is he anyway?’

  Cassandra proceeded to give as full an account as she could, for she had not yet seen him herself. By dinner-time Adam was in quite a good temper, and even kissed her in the dining room, saying that he thought perhaps he might have seemed a little irritable of late and had she noticed it? To which Cassandra replied that he had certainly been preoccupied but, of course, that was to be expected, and that if he had sometimes been irritable, it was probably her fault. Indeed, when Adam was so nice and good-tempered, Cassandra found herself thinking that perhaps she was to blame for those times when he wasn’t.

  ‘Well,’ said Adam benevolently, as they were drinking their coffee in the drawing room, ‘what would you like to read tonight?’

  ‘I think it would be nice to go on with “The Seasons”,’ said Cassandra meekly, thinking that it would really be nicer not to have any reading at all, but how much better the reading would be than to have another of those gloomy evenings, with no sound but Adam pacing about the room and into the hall and back again.

  ‘You shall begin, Cassandra,’ said Adam. ‘You read so nicely.’ Cassandra opened the book and began to read:

  ‘Still let my song a nobler note assume,

  And sing the infusive force of Spring on man.’

  She hurried a little over these lines, and glanced anxiously at Adam, for she was afraid that he might be reminded of his novel and that wretched gardener. But her fears were soon set at rest. He was lying back in his chair with his eyes closed and a pleased smile on his face. Darling Adam, he isn’t even listening. The words pass over him like the waves of the sea, or roll off him like the water off a duck’s back, she thought affectionately. When she had read to the end of the passage she stopped.

  ‘Adam,’ she said gently, ‘I believe you’re asleep.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ he answered drowsily. ‘I was just thinking.’

  ‘What about?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘How nice,’ said Cassandra. ‘It’s so good for you to think of nothing. I wish you could do it more often.’

  ‘Unfortunately you have to have thought a great deal about something first of all to make such a pleasant state as thinking of nothing possible,’ said Adam intelligently.

  Cassandra waited, but he made no reference to the gardener. Perhaps, she thought, he will burn it or tear it up in the morning, or even lay it aside. That would be something.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘… the herds

  In widening circle round, forget their food,

  And at the harmless stranger wondering gaze.’

  Stefan Tilos considered himself a very ordinary man. He was genuinely surprised when so much interest was shown in his coming to live at Holmwood. After thinking about it, he came to the conclusion that it must be because the English were naturally gemütlich. They welcome a poor foreigner – Mr Tilos sometimes had rather ridiculous ideas about himself – into their midst as if he were one of themselves, he thought, not realizing that he was not, and never could be, anything so dull as one of themselves. He overlooked the importance of his being a foreigner and a Hungarian. Foreigners are rare in Shropshire, particularly Hungarians. For the inhabitants of Up Callow, Stefan Tilos had about him all the glamour of Budapest, against a background of mediaeval castles, tzigane bands and vampires. Above all, he was a single man, so far as anyone knew.

  On the morning when he received the invitation to Adam and Cassandra’s party, Mr Tilos was sitting at breakfast in his dining room. From his window he could see a group of fir trees. He might almost be living in the middle of a thick forest, a Hungarian feudal lord in the heart of Shropshire. His friends in Budapest had thought he was mad to go and live in England. It was cold, they said, and always raining. London was nice, but the nightclubs were very expensive, though he must be sure to visit Quaglino’s. They had heard that Scotland was beautiful, but Shropshire, where was that? There must surely be many wolves in such a wild region. It was unfortunate that his business (something to do with importing and exporting commodities) should have made it necessary to leave the safety of the capital. Stefan would soon be back, they told themselves.

  ‘I’m beginning to wish we hadn’t asked this man,’ said Cassandra to Adam as they were getting ready for the party.
‘After all, we don’t really know anything about him.’

  ‘It is really very inconvenient to have invited anyone at all,’ said Adam. ‘I am so busy, I really ought not to spare the time.’

  Cassandra sighed. ‘Well, you can always rush out to your study if you’re suddenly inspired,’ she said, for Adam’s inspiration was now coming very irregularly, and one never knew when to expect it. He had laid aside the novel about the gardener, as she had hoped, and was now at work on an epic poem, which was nearly as bad.

  The first people to arrive were Mr Gay and his niece. When she greeted them Cassandra could not help exclaiming how well he looked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr Gay, ‘I have never felt better in my life.’

  ‘It’s the spring,’ said Miss Gay, who knew nothing of Mrs Gower’s wonderful tablets. ‘Isn’t the weather lovely?’

  ‘It is lovely,’ Cassandra agreed, ‘and all the flowers are coming out so beautifully.’

  Miss Gay seemed very sprightly. Had there been other meetings between her and the romantic stranger? Could it be that they had discovered that they had other things in common besides Primus stoves?

  ‘What a delightful frock!’ said Miss Gay, taking Cassandra aside and speaking in a confidential feminine whisper. ‘That shade of blue suits you so well,’ she added, thinking how insipid it was.

  ‘When will this man arrive?’ asked Adam, coming up to them. ‘Will he be in native costume?’

  ‘Oh, Mr Marsh-Gibbon, how charming! But I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed. Stefan is really quite English in his appearance.’ She brought out the Christian name with self-conscious pride. In fact, Mrs Gower had told her that she had seen his name on a trunk that was being taken into Holmwood, and Miss Gay had decided to use it. She felt that as she was the only person who had really spoken to him, she was justified in calling him by some more intimate name.