by Barbara Pym
This morning she was dusting books in the reading room, which was so far empty of readers.
'And how's his nibs this morning?' she grunted in her slightly Cockney voice. It was this voice and expressions like 'his nibs' which jarred on Ianthe. Indeed, Miss Grimes was sometimes altogether jarring. She was a squat, dusty-looking woman on the threshold of sixty, who had been taken on in the library during the war and whom Mervyn had tried unsuccessfully to dislodge ever since he had become librarian. But now the passage of the years was doing it for him. 'Time like an ever-rolling stream', Mervyn had said, 'bears even Miss Grimes away.' But Ianthe did not like jokes about hymns.
'I'll help you with the books,' she said.
'It's not your day, is it, dear?'
'No, but they've got to be done, and Shirley's making the tea.' Ianthe had not told her mother that she sometimes had to dust the books in the library.
Later when she was drinking her tea Mervyn came into the room with a card in his hand.
Ianthe realized from his triumphant expression that he had caught her out in a mistake and waited with resignation to hear what it was.
'Government in Zazzau,' he declared. 'The place of publication is London, not Oxford. It was published by the Oxford University Press for the International African Institute — do you see?' From behind his back he now produced the book itself, open at the title page.
'Of course — how stupid of me. I'm so sorry, I'm afraid I do make mistakes sometimes.'
'But there is no need to make that kind of mistake,' he said rather obscurely and left the room with a springy step.
So Ianthe's day passed, punctuated by cups of tea and a lunch of welsh rarebit and trifle at a café run by gentlewomen. It was not much different from other days. At five minutes to five, Shirley, the typist who had been helping Ianthe to file some cards, covered up her typewriter, put on the black imitation leather coat she had just bought, and hurried away singing. Ianthe herself stayed until nearly six o'clock to avoid the rush-hour crowds. She was still not completely used to the journey northwards to the small empty house, when for so long she had gone southwards to the big flat near Westminster Cathedral, where her mother had waited, eager to hear every detail of her day.
As she walked from the Underground to St Basil's Terrace Ianthe noticed that curtains had appeared in the windows of the house nearly opposite to hers where the new arrival had moved in. Perhaps they might become friends, she thought doubtfully, or at least neighbours, passing the time of day if they met in the road.
It was sad coming back alone to an empty house, Ianthe thought, but how much worse if it had been a single furnished room, like poor Miss Grimes. Ianthe had always wanted a house of her own and as soon as she had shut the door behind her she forgot the lonely home-coming in the pleasure she still felt at seeing her furniture and possessions in their new setting. Here were the Hepplewhite chairs and the Pembroke table, coveted by Mervyn Cantrell, portraits of her grandparents and of her father in cope and biretta, the corner cupboard with the lustre jugs collected by her mother, the old silky Bokhara rugs on the polished parquet floor of the sitting room, the familiar books in the white-painted bookshelves, and the china ornaments she remembered from childhood.
Ianthe was not the type to pour herself a glass of sherry or gin as soon as she got home after a day's work, nor yet to make a cup of tea. One did not make tea at half-past six in the evening like the 'working classes', as her mother would have called them. Instead she set about cooking herself a suitable supper in the almost too perfect little kitchen. The grill was heated for a chop, tomatoes were cut up, and a small packet of frozen peas tipped out of its wrapping into a saucepan. 'We have come to this,' her mother used to say, 'eating frozen vegetables like Americans.' She had been deeply conscious of her position as a canon's widow. Frozen vegetables were, somehow, a lowering of standards, but they were quick and convenient and really fresher than anything one could get in the London shops.
When the meal was ready Ianthe ate it in the dining room, which opened on to the garden now piled with drifts of sycamore leaves. While she ate she read, another thing her mother would have disapproved of, but her 'book' was the parish magazine and somehow that made it better. It gave her a comfortable glow to think of the church and the life that went on around it, dear and familiar and with the same basic pattern everywhere. During their years in London together Ianthe and her mother had not attached themselves to one church, Mrs Broome liking to hear a good preacher and fine music. Sometimes they had to attend the fashionable church in Mayfair where Canon Broome's brother-in-law was rector. Now that she was free to choose, Ianthe looked forward to going to the same church every Sunday and finding her place in the congregation. Indeed, one of the reasons why she had liked this house was because it was near St Basil's which appeared to be a 'suitable' church for her.
She was just about to make some coffee, when the front door bell rang. She went into the hall a little nervously, her eye on the chain which could be hooked across the door to guard against burglars, but it seemed silly to put it up. Opening the door a crack she saw a man in a clerical collar and a woman beside him. The vicar and his wife, of course.
'We do hope you've finished your supper — dinner,' said Sophia, uncertain what form Ianthe's evening meal might have taken.
'And that you aren't in the middle of watching your favourite television programme,' said Mark conscientiously, for his parochial visiting now made this question automatic.
'I have finished my supper and I haven't got a television set,' said Ianthe, smiling. 'How nice of you to come.'
In the hall Sophia looked around her with unconcealed curiosity. It had been of course her suggestion that Mark's pastoral visit should be no longer delayed. 'And she may be lonely,' Sophia had added, 'wanting to meet people of her own kind, if we can be called that.'
'Those were painted by my grandmother,' said Ianthe, seeing that Sophia was examining the water-colours of Italian scenes which hung in the hall. 'People seemed to stay abroad so much longer in those days and to have time to do things like that.'
'Yes, they were leisured days,' said Mark a little uncomfortably, feeling that he should say that things were 'better' now when great coachloads of people could whirl round the Italian lakes in an eight-day tour. But he found himself unable to say it, especially not to this so very obvious gentlewoman. A friend for Sophia? he wondered, following the ladies into the sitting room. He always felt slightly guilty that there were so few suitable for this role in the parish.
Now Sophia was interested in the furniture and objects, and it was not until they had finished their coffee that the talk turned to parish matters.
'We are having our Harvest Thanksgiving next week,' said Mark, glancing without much hope towards the leaf-filled garden.
'Oh, then I must bring some flowers or fruit,' said Ianthe. 'I know how difficult it is in London — I suppose tropical fruits would be allowed?'
'Certainly — they're really most appropriate here,' said Mark.
'What though the spicy breezes
Blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle,'
Sophia quoted. 'How one longs for the days of Bishop Heber sometimes!' It was an inconsequential remark but she hoped it might lead to some interesting revelation on Ianthe's part, that Bishop Heber had been an ancestor or that she loved Victorian poetry, for, looking at the bookshelves, she was sure that she did.
But Ianthe seemed not to know how to answer Sophia's remark and soon they were on to another topic — the strangers in the parish and whether it was likely that they would come to church.
'Well, you come,' said Sophia, 'and last Sunday I noticed the man who lives opposite you sitting at the back.'
'You mean the television producer?' asked Ianthe, puzzled. 'That seems rather unlikely doesn't it?'
'Ah, but he isn't — he's not in television at all. Sister Dew had it all wrong. His name's Rupert Stonebird and he's an anthropologist.'
'Darling, how do you
know this?' asked Mark, but without much surprise, for Sophia knew many things.
'Stonebird,' said Ianthe. 'What an interesting name. It sounds like a character in fiction. And you say he's an anthropologist.'
'Yes, Daisy Pettigrew told me. I suppose he goes around measuring skulls and that kind of thing.'
'Measuring skulls — here? said Mark solemnly. 'Whatever would he want to do that for?'
The three of them dissolved into laughter at the idea of it, and Ianthe went to make some more coffee.
3
'Measuring skulls and that kind of thing . . .' Rupert Stonebird would have sighed inwardly, for he was used to this particular joke, but explained politely — if anyone was still listening — that he was actually a lecturer in social anthropology, which was concerned with the behaviour of men in society rather than with the size and shape of their skulls. But probably by this time nobody would still have been listening. People were not really very interested in what one did, and a quick classification was all that was needed to distinguish an academic type from a farmer or stockbroker.
Rupert was a quiet sort of person who disliked pushing himself forward and was therefore well fitted to observe the behaviour of others. Nevertheless, now that he had come to live in this new house he was aware that he would probably be an object of interest to his neighbours. He was thirty-six years old and not yet married, mainly because his trips to Africa — where most of his work had been done — had not left him much time to find a suitable wife, though others in similar positions seemed to have achieved wives and marriages, whether suitable or not. He was quite good-looking, of medium height with dark hair and brown eyes. He wore glasses for reading.
His coming to live in this particular house had been preceded by a change in his life which he was finding a little difficult to accept. For it had been on a cold Sunday evening in the spring, after he had been looking over the house with the idea of buying it, that he had happened out of curiosity to 'pop in', as fashionable Anglo-Catholics said, to Solemn Evensong and Benediction at St Basil's at the end of the road. The service was no novelty to him for his father had been a High Anglican vicar in another part of London and Rupert had not lost his boyhood faith until his first year at Oxford — late really, he had thought, for a clergyman's son. And now, eighteen years afterwards, in a poorly attended North London church of hideous architecture and amid clouds of strong incense, he seemed to have regained that faith. It had been an uncomfortable and disturbing sensation and he was still wondering whether it hadn't been only the incense, the spring evening, and nostalgia for his boyhood. He had almost considered not buying the house, but it was what he wanted, and how was he to know that things would be any different in another district?
So far he had attended Mass at St Basil's only once, sitting at the back and hurrying out after the service before anyone could speak to him. He had not been to any of the social functions advertised — it would have seemed like living his life backwards to enter voluntarily a church hall full of women and cups of tea — he could see his mother at the urn and himself as a boy handing round those very cups. He did not think that anyone at St Basil's had even noticed him so far.
He could not know that Sophia was taking a keen interest in him and had even been considering him — provided he were not divorced or otherwise unsuitable — as a husband for her sister. The next time he went to church she waylaid him after the evening service, and tried to persuade him to enter the hall, where — as he had guessed — a cup of tea was about to be made. He had murmured some excuse but had been unable to refuse an invitation to supper at the vicarage during the coming week.
'My sister will be there and perhaps one or two of our parishioners, so I hope it won't be too dull for you,' Sophia said.
'Oh, I'm sure it won't be,' said Rupert politely.
'You won't expect anything too elaborate — I mean, in the way of food,' said Sophia in her most sensible tone.
'Well, I was brought up in a vicarage myself and know how things are or can be,' he said confusedly. He wondered if he had sounded discourteous, though 'things' could have a wider meaning than just food. 'One does not go out for a meal just for the food,' he added, hardly improving the situation.
Sophia laughed. She was at once amused and happy at his vicarage connections which seemed to bode well.
'You're a clergyman's son, then?' she asked.
'Yes.'
'Oh, how splendid!' Sophia's face seemed to light up and her tone to brighten. Most unlikely that he would be divorced, she thought, taking this naive and optimistic view of the sons of the clergy. But he did go to church, so perhaps she was right. She decided not to probe any more deeply for the moment.
Sophia then invited Ianthe Broome and Edwin Pettigrew, thinking that they might 'do' for each other, at least as partners for the evening. Then it seemed unkind to leave Daisy out, so she was invited too. A woman of Daisy's age would hardly expect to have a man invited for her, Sophia decided. And anyway an extra woman was useful when it came to bringing things from the kitchen and clearing dishes.
Sometime before the guests were due to arrive, Mark went down to the cellar to bring up the wine. He peered in the half darkness at the metal rack in which two bottles, the remains of an Easter present from Sophia's mother, sat in lonely dignity for each was a good wine of its kind.
'Red or white, darling?' he called, seeing that there was one of each.
'Red, I think,' said Sophia. 'It's a sort of casserole or beef stew we're having.'
Mark picked up the dark-looking bottle to read the label.
'This seems to be port,' he said, 'so it will have to be the white. Oh, but this is the Niersteiner, the last bottle, and it wouldn't go very well with beef.' He had been saving it for Sophia's birthday.
'Well, let them drink beer or cider,' said Sophia. 'Neither Edwin nor Daisy drinks much and I don't suppose Ianthe Broome does.'
'So it's only Mr Stonebird we're considering — as a clergyman's son and an anthropologist he might drink a great deal.'
'Is his name really that?' said Penelope, who had just come into the kitchen. 'He sounds quite interesting.'
'Yes, I think he may be,' said Sophia. 'He's about thirty-five — dark and not bad looking.'
'And not married?'
'No, I don't think so. He seems to be living alone in one of the little houses in St Basil's Terrace.'
'Are you sure he isn't living with his mother?'
'I haven't seen a mother but I suppose there could be one in the background.' Sophia looked worried for a moment. 'I suppose I ought to have made more enquiries when I was inviting him — I mean, it would seem discourteous to ignore her, if she exists. But he didn't mention her.'
'Then perhaps we can assume that she doesn't exist,' said Penelope. 'But of course there may be other ties.' She had now reached the age when one starts looking for a husband rather more systematically than one does at nineteen or even at twenty-one.
At that moment the front door bell rang and Sophia went to answer it. Penelope could hear a woman's voice talking to her sister in the hall. Who could this be? She wondered rather crossly, not having realized that there was to be another woman there. Then she realized that it must be Ianthe Broome, the canon's daughter they were always talking about, and perhaps in some way a kind of 'rival' for the affections of a man she had not yet seen. Even Penelope realized that it was a somewhat farcical situation.
But she was reassured when Ianthe came into the room, and her observant eye took in every detail of Ianthe's ladylike but hardly fashionable appearance — the hair smooth and neat, gathered into a little roll at the back — the dress of a rather uninteresting shade of blue, with the skirt a good two inches too long by Penelope's standards — the stockings with seams, and the shoes with sensible heels and rounded toes. The jewellery, consisting of a small aquamarine and pearl pendant on a gold chain, and a gold bracelet with a turquoise clasp, was obviously real.
'This is my sister Pen
elope,' said Sophia. 'Penny, this is Miss Broome — or perhaps we may call you Ianthe? It's such a pretty name.'
'Please do,' said Ianthe, who was temporarily a little bewildered at Penelope's appearance and unconventional clothes.
Conversation between strange women at the beginning of a party is often strained and this occasion proved to be no exception.
After a pause Penelope said, 'I hear you've just come to live in one of those little houses in St Basil's Terrace — they look so pretty.'
'Yes, I'm very pleased with mine,' said Ianthe.
'She has it most elegantly furnished,' said Sophia enthusiastically.
'It's really no credit to me,' said Ianthe. 'All the furniture came from my old home — I was lucky to have it.'
'I think I can hear Edwin and Daisy at the door,' said Sophia in a relieved tone, going out into the hall. 'Oh, and Mr Stonebird too. Now we're all here.'
Rupert Stonebird entered the room a little shyly. He had changed into a dark suit as a kind of protective colouring, so that he could sit quietly observing rather than being observed. He had noticed Ianthe coming out of her house and now saw her as a woman of about his own age, nicely dressed, worthy no doubt, quite pretty but not particularly interesting. The sisters — Sophia and Penelope — made a stronger impression. Sophia, with her long neck and auburn hair, looked like a figure in a minor Pre-Raphaelite painting, her velvet dress a deep peacock blue. But there were hollows in her cheeks and she was too thin for beauty. Penelope had the same colouring and generally romantic air, but was shorter and dumpier with rather fat legs. She wore a black sacklike dress, a large silver medallion on a chain, black nylon stockings and flat-heeled shoes. Her hair was dressed in a 'beehive' style, which was now collapsing at one side. The Pre-Raphaelite beatnik, Rupert thought, wondering if anybody had ever called her that.
