by Barbara Pym
'That's the annoying thing — books that nobody ever asks for,' said Mervyn, perhaps illogically. 'Some old-fashioned monographs on African marriage and that sort of thing.'
Ianthe nerved herself. 'Talking of marriage,' she began, for really they almost had been, 'I want you to know that John and I are going to be married — quite soon.' Her voice died away on a kind of gasp. There was a silence. 'Perhaps you guessed,' she went on nervously.
'Oh come now, dear,' Mervyn exclaimed, 'you can't expect me to have guessed anything as fantastic and unlikely as that! Whatever next!'
'But it's true — one doesn't usually joke about such things.'
'Doesn't one? I should have thought it was one of the most popular subjects for joking.'
Ianthe was disconcerted by the unexpected way Mervyn was taking her news. She wished that John would come in, but she knew that he was in the library helping a reader with a query.
'John and I are going to be married,' she repeated, beginning to wonder if it could be true.
'Well, even if you are you're certainly cradle-snatching, aren't you?' said Mervyn spitefully. 'John must be a good ten years younger than you are.'
'Only five years,' said Ianthe, wishing she could have maintained a dignified silence. 'That's not much of a difference.'
'You wait till you're over forty, my dear, and he's still in his thirties.'
Ianthe was silent, for she too had thought of this.
'So that was why you didn't fancy the idea of marrying me,' Mervyn went on.
'I didn't know then that John and I . . .'
'You mean he hadn't popped the question?'
'No, he hadn't asked me, but I . . .' the door opened before Ianthe could finish her sentence and she was relieved to see John coming into the room.
'What's this I hear about you and Ianthe getting married?' said Mervyn truculently. 'It isn't true, is it?'
'Of course it is,' said John, going over to Ianthe and taking her arm. 'Aren't you going to congratulate me?'
'I might congratulate you but I certainly won't congratulate her.'
'Well, I don't have to get your permission to marry her,' said John.
'No, but you'll need a job if you're going to support a wife, won't you,' said Mervyn in a threatening tone.
'And I'm not at all sure that I'm going to have you working here.'
'Then I'll work somewhere else,' shouted John, approaching Mervyn as if he were about to strike him. 'I suppose you wanted to marry her yourself — that's what it is!'
None of the actors of the little scene realized that the door between the reading room and the library office had been left open when John came in, so that the raised voices were plainly audible to the three readers who sat at the long working table. One, a moon-faced sociologist, went on reading as if he had heard nothing, nor was a bearded Dutchman in the least disturbed, for his understanding of the English language did not go beyond a knowledge of written sociological jargon. Only the third reader, a youngish woman of about thirty-five who had come in to shelter from a heavy shower of rain, pricked up her ears and looked away from the book she had not been reading. To realize that two men could apparently be quarrelling almost publicly over a woman in this unchivalrous age sent her on her way with a new hope.
The rain had stopped and the sun shone brilliantly as Ianthe and John walked arm-in-arm out of the library. Mervyn, who had decided that this was not the occasion for a packed lunch however delicious, had strode out in front of them and dramatically hailed a taxi, with no clear idea of where he wanted to go. Then he remembered his friend's restaurant in South Kensington and asked to be driven there, leaning forward irritably all the time to make sure that the driver was not taking him a roundabout way.
Ianthe and John were going to an antique shop to buy the engagement ring, for Ianthe had expressed a preference for something 'old-fashioned'.
Supposing he can't afford it, she wondered in a sudden moment of panic, for the scene with Mervyn had shaken her confidence a little. And supposing the man in the shop laughed when he saw a middle-aged woman being bought a ring by a young man.
But the jeweller was more interested in his wares than in the couple trying on the garnet and amethyst rings, and he thought that the amethyst set in a circle of pearls which they eventually chose looked very well on the lady's pale hand. It was such a very pale hand that he found himself humming one of the Indian Love Lyrics as he made out the bill.
Afterwards, when he had slipped the ring on to her finger, John would have liked to go to an expensive restaurant to celebrate, but Ianthe reminded him, gently but firmly, that they must not take too long over lunch, since Shirley was not very good at helping the readers and they didn't know when Mervyn would be back.
So they went into a humbler, nastier place than John would have chosen, which emphasized its lowliness by being in a basement. Ianthe sat down at a table for two, fortunately vacant at that moment, while John went up to the counter and fetched poached eggs, Danish pastries and coffee.
Daisy Pettigrew, also coming away from the counter, did not see John and Ianthe. Whenever she entered a café she always felt obliged to choose a table where a coloured man or woman was already sitting, so that they should not feel slighted in any way. Looking around her, she saw a table for four with an African already at it. Then she noticed that a clergyman, also bearing a tray, was making for the same table, but she managed to get there before him and put her bag down on the chair next to her to prevent him from sitting down. One never knew — he might be a Roman Catholic or Oxford Group; it did not occur to her that he too might be trying to show the black man that there was no colour bar here.
He gave her a somewhat hostile stare as she crashed her tray down on the table.
'Anyone sitting here?' she asked brightly.
He made a slight movement of his head and went on reading his book which had an abstruse legal title.
That woman looks much too old and fragile to be clearing tables, Daisy thought, noticing a shambling elderly figure gathering up the used dishes and piling them on to a tray, and her legs are bad. 'Bad leg' was an old-fashioned complaint for which one used to see remedies advertised in the cheaper newspapers. Did people not suffer from it now? she wondered.
Daisy put on her reading glasses, examined her welsh rarebit and opened a novel by Angus Wilson, taking a deep breath as if she were about to taste some liquid unfamiliar to her which might not be altogether to her liking. The title, something to do with a zoo, had attracted her, with her great love of animals, but she had not read more than half a page before something made her look up and she saw the blurred image of a woman apparently signalling to her. Exchanging her glasses once more, she saw that it was Ianthe Broome with a young man.
'Miss Pettigrew — Daisy — I want to introduce my fiancé, John Challow,' she said, coming up to the table.
'I think I remember seeing you at the church bazaar,' said John, shaking hands, for indeed she had been unforgettable at her stall behind the piled-up tins of cat food.
What a nice-mannered young man, thought Daisy, and how pleasant it was to see two young people so obviously happy together, especially in these days when it seemed the fashion to make fun of sentiment. And of course Ianthe was not really all that young which made it even nicer that her fiancé should be gazing at her with such obvious devotion.
'Now, let me see, you work at Ianthe's library, don't you,' she said.
'Yes, I do at the moment,' said John. 'But Mervyn Cantrell — he's the librarian — hasn't taken our news too well, so I may have to leave.'
'Oh, what a shame!' said Daisy indignantly. 'I suppose he's jealous. Jealousy is a very powerful emotion,' she declared. 'Of course I've had more experience of it in cats than in human beings. Some cats are of a very jealous disposition. Now take Faustina — Sophia Ainger's cat — she would hate it if Sophia ever thought of getting a companion for her. I have strongly advised her against it.'
Ianthe hoped they were not going to have to
listen to an account of Faustina's psychological difficulties and was glad when John turned the conversation back to himself.
'I don't see how I'm going to be able to go on working at the library if Mervyn's going to be like this,' he said.
'Oh, you will easily find something else,' said Daisy. 'I suppose you know all about card indexes?'
'Yes.' He laughed. 'And I know the alphabet too.'
'Very useful,' said Daisy seriously. She had been wondering whether he might like to work for her brother Edwin and help to keep the records of the animals and their treatments. It was an idea worth considering and she decided to speak to her brother about it. 'Will the wedding be at St Basil's?' she asked.
'I'm not sure,' said Ianthe. 'My uncle is a clergyman, so perhaps . . .' she broke off uncertainly, for she had not yet told Sophia of her engagement and the idea of it embarrassed her a little, especially after their talk in Italy. 'As a matter of fact, you're the first St Basil's person I've told,' she went on.
'Oh, is it a secret, then?' Daisy looked childishly pleased. 'I won't tell anyone.' All the same, she might sound Edwin about that job.
'We'd better get back, darling,' said John to Ianthe. 'I expect Mervyn will be champing.'
***
As it happened Mervyn was still out. He had felt he deserved a good lunch and Eric's coq au vin had done a good deal to restore his spirits and heal his wounded pride, if it had been wounded. The restaurant was now beginning to empty and Eric was wandering about talking to his guests, finally coming to Mervyn's table.
'What did you think of it?' he asked.
'Oh, excellent — it's done me a lot of good,' said Mervyn. 'I had a bit of a shock this morning, a sort of let-down, if you get my meaning. A certain person I'd been thinking rather a lot of — well, it's turned out they prefer somebody else, though they'll find out their mistake,' he added ambiguously.
'And there's other good fish in the sea, don't forget,' said Eric, who delighted in culinary metaphors. 'Oh, I knew there was something I had to tell you,' he went on, laying a hand on Mervyn's sleeve. 'I hope your mum's well, by the way?'
'Very well, thank you, the change at Sittingbourne did her good.'
'I'm so glad — I felt awful making that silly mistake. Whatever must you've thought! And now I've just remembered whose mum it was that passed on — at least I remembered after you'd gone — it came to me in the middle of the night, like I said it would.'
'Oh — whose then?'
'Wilf Bason's.'
'Wilf Bason? I don't think I know him,' said Mervyn somewhat testily.
'Oh, you remember Wilf Bason — he had a job at a clergy house and then he went to some seaside place to work in a café — home-made cakes and that. Well, now he's back and it's his mum . . .'
How Eric did go on, thought Mervyn wearily. 'I suppose I must be getting back,' he said, standing up.
As he passed an antique shop on his way to the Underground — for the passion that had driven him into a taxi had now cooled — he saw a Pembroke table very much like Ianthe's — that table would never be his now. On a closer glance, however, he saw that it was an even finer specimen than hers.
22
After some hesitation Ianthe and John decided that it would be proper to announce their engagement in The Times. 'What your mother would have wished,' John declared rather piously, and Ianthe agreed with this, though she preferred not to dwell in too much detail on what her mother's feelings might have been.
'It will tell our friends who wouldn't otherwise know,' she said, but a little doubtfully, for it was difficult to imagine that John could number among his friends people who regularly read The Times. Yet the announcement did have some results. John received a letter from a former girl friend, which he concealed from Ianthe, while she received three letters from old friends of her parents which it seemed pointless to show to him. A fourth letter was from Basil Branche, delighted to hear her good news, and was her fiancé one of the Berkshire Challows — or was that just a railway station, the sort of place one's host met one at with a car on a Friday evening? Puzzled, Ianthe read on and came to his own news which was that he had 'got a church' of his own — 'St Barbara-in-the-Precinct — a very old, almost moribund church, just off High Holborn, very convenient for Gamages — how would you like to be married there — I mean at my church, not Gamages!!!'
For a moment or two Ianthe considered the idea seriously. How nice it would be to slip away quietly, early one morning as Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett had done, and be married at eight o'clock or whatever was the earliest legal hour, with two witnesses brought in from the street! Then she dismissed the idea as quite impractical. Her uncle and aunt and Mark Ainger would be hurt if she did not choose one of their churches, and, worst of all, it might look as if she was ashamed of John if she did not have a wedding at a conventional time of day with all the St Basil's parishioners at the reception. In any case, it was most unlikely that Basil Branche would be equal to performing a wedding ceremony as early as eight o'clock in the morning. At lunchtime one day she went to look at his church and found it locked. The notice board told her that there were no weekday services earlier than Holy Communion at 10.30 A.M. on Saints' Days — who in all the new blocks of offices would be able to attend a service at that time of day, she wondered — and that the Vicar (Rev. B. Branche) lived at an address in Kensington. A paper pinned to the board further informed her that the church would be closed from 27 July to 1 September. Ianthe wondered if he was going abroad again with his elderly ladies, though surely August in Italy would be too hot even for Miss Bede.
She turned away from the church feeling cheated, for she had not even been able to go inside it and say a prayer. She knew that St Barbara was the patron of miners and artillery and though it seemed at first sight unlikely that the saint could have much in common with an Anglican clergyman's daughter, Ianthe remembered that she had decided to visit Miss Grimes that evening to tell her the news, and goodness only knew what help she might need there.
Later that day Ianthe left the library alone and set off for the Finchley Road and the steep side street where Miss Grimes lived in her bed-sitting room. She carried with her a bottle of medium dry Spanish sherry of reasonable but not the best quality. If there was a toast to be drunk — and surely Miss Grimes would insist on it — it would be preferable in a decorous sherry which did not have the raffishness of the Spanish Burgundy, now for ever associated in Ianthe's mind with Miss Grimes.
She reached the house and began looking among the cards under the bells for Miss Grimes's name, but it did not seem to be there. Ianthe was taken aback and slightly alarmed, then stricken with remorse, for perhaps Miss Grimes had died in the months that had gone by since her last visit, or perhaps she had been unable to afford the rent and. had to move to somewhere cheaper.
Hesitating on the doorsteps of houses which may have seen better days must be regarded as one of the occupational hazards of being a gentlewoman, but Ianthe felt it had been too much a part of her life lately and she resented Miss Grimes for having moved or even died — she should not have done anything so inconsiderate. What was Ianthe to do now? Who could she ask about Miss Grimes and which of the many bells should she ring for information?
Luckily at that moment a woman came up to the door and Ianthe was able to ask her if Miss Grimes still lived there.
'Miss Grimes . . .' The woman was tall and stooping, encumbered with a heavy shopping basket and out of breath from climbing the hill.
'Yes — I came to see her.'
'Miss Grimes, yes.' She fumbled for her keys, opened the door and then stared at Ianthe with her pale eyes. 'You'd better come in,' she said.
Ianthe followed her rather apprehensively into the hall, where the woman put down her shopping basket with a groan of relief. Ianthe was glad that she did not ask her to go into her room.
'Has something happened to Miss Grimes?' she asked. 'I couldn't find her name by any of the bells.'
'No, you wouldn't find it — she isn't here. But nothing has happened to her, at least not in the way you mean.'
The woman paused for dramatic effect, or so it seemed when she spoke again. 'Miss Grimes has married Mr Slaski and gone to live in Ealing.'
'Goodness, then something has happened,' said Ianthe, taken aback. 'Marrying and going to live in Ealing . . .' She felt shaken almost as if she were suffering from shock and would have liked to sit down had not the woman put her shopping basket on the only chair.
'Yes, we were surprised too, in a way,' said the woman. 'She met Mr Slaski in a public house — the Four Feathers or whatever the name was where she used to go — they were each alone and got talking. Mr Slaski is Polish. He had just lost his wife. One can see how it came about — life can be very lonely for a man.'
'And for a woman too,' Ianthe murmured.
'Yes, of course. That's why it's better to marry when one has the chance — or perhaps I should say if one has the chance.' She laughed rather flutily. 'Well, I'm sorry you've had this journey all in vain — it's quite a walk up from the Finchley Road, isn't it.' Her eyes lighted on the unmistakably wrapped bottle Ianthe was holding. 'And you'd brought a present for her too, what a pity. It looks as if it would be difficult to post. Or perhaps you'll be going to Ealing one of these days — I've got the address somewhere.'
'Thank you, but I shan't be able to go there at the moment. Perhaps . . .' Ianthe hesitated, changing the position of the bottle in her arms. 'It's quite a good sherry, I believe, if anyone would like it here, I mean, it seems a pity to . . .'
'Ah, that is kind.' The woman's face lit up. 'This time of the evening too, just what one needs, and so seldom has, something to revive . . . though for what one is being revived one sometimes wonders, doesn't one.' She laughed her fluty laugh again and disappeared into a doorway.
Ianthe fled, not wishing to be invited in for a drink. On the way down the hill she realized that she had forgotten to get Miss Grimes's address. Still, no doubt a letter would be forwarded. Miss Grimes married — and to a Pole she had picked up in a pub. Somehow the news disconcerted Ianthe, as did the picture of the other woman drinking sherry alone in her room. At that moment life seemed very dark; Ianthe was perhaps too rigid in her views to reflect that a woman might have worse things to look forward to than the prospect of marriage to a Polish widower and a life in Ealing, or even of a quiet drink in one's own room at the end of a hard day.
