Less Than Angels

by Barbara Pym

  He leapt up from his desk and hurried from the room. His housekeeper Mrs. Skinner, who was a light sleeper, woke suddenly and turned on her bedside lamp. Then she realized that it was only Mr. Lydgate going up to the attic, and although this seemed an odd thing to be doing in the middle of the night, she was used to him by now and composed herself for sleep again.

  Alaric pushed open the door and turned on the light. The room was filled with tea-chests, containing masks and pottery and other relics of his life in Africa; there were also several black tin trunks and wooden boxes, filled with his tropical kit and the accumulation of eleven years’ note-taking. He pulled at the lock of one of the tin trunks. It was rusty and came away in his hand. The hinges too were eaten away writh rust and it was not difficult to open the box. Inside were piles of note-books and loose papers which gave off a dank musty smell. He picked up a wad of foolscap; the corners had been eaten away. Mice or white ants had been more diligent than he had. One day, he thought, I’ll get somebody to type all this stuff and then it will be manageable. But now it was nearly two o’clock. The exhilaration he had felt on finishing his review had given way to an intense weariness. He went rather sadly to bed and, although there was no particular reason for it, set his alarm clock for six o’clock.

  ‘Do you know,’ said Rhoda at breakfast next morning, ‘I almost thought I heard Mr. Lydgate’s alarm clock going off this morning. About six o’clock, it must have been. I had been awake some time.’

  ‘Did you have a good evening with Bernard, dear?’ Mabel asked Deirdre.

  ‘Oh, not bad. He’s rather a dull old thing but I enjoyed the play.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad about that,’ said Mabel, ‘though when I was your age I think I should have felt embarrassed at going to see that kind of play with a man. It doesn’t sound at all nice. Still perhaps it’s a good thing really, being able to see plays like that, I mean.’

  But why was it a good thing? she wondered, unable to answer her own question. People did not seem to be any better or happier now than they had ever been, nor were the relations between men and women any more satisfactory. Of course in the early nineteen-twenties, when she had been Deirdre’s age, there had been some very daring plays but she had not known the kind of young men who would have taken her to see them. Gregory Swan had liked Rose Marie and No, No, Nanette, and in her circle it was the men who formed the women’s tastes. Now, perhaps, it was the other way round.

  ‘I suppose Bernard would have preferred a musical, like that thing at Drury Lane,’ went on Deirdre, answering her mother’s question, ‘hut musicals are so boring. I doubt if I could sit through it,’

  ‘The Dulkes enjoyed it very much,’ said Rhoda, ‘and Malcolm is going to take Phyllis for her birthday,’

  ‘There you are,’ said Deirdre, ‘it just isn’t my kind of thing, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I should think Bernard is a high-principled young man,’ said Mabel, continuing in her own line of thought.

  ‘He hasn’t had much opportunity to be anything else as far as I’m concerned,’ said Deirdre rather pertly.

  ‘No, dear, but he is a good type,’ said Mabel. One of the minor public schools, then he had done well in the army and now had a very safe position with his father’s firm … ‘I mean, he always sees you home and in good time.’

  ‘Oh, yes, and only the mildest of good-night kisses. He’s not so bad really. I must go now.’ Deirdre stood up. ‘All this talk about Bernard’s high principles has delayed me.’

  ‘Have you many lectures today?’ asked Rhoda.

  ‘Not till the afternoon. I thought I’d spend the morning at Felix’s Folly.’ And perhaps she might see Mark and Digby there and they might be able to tell her something about Tom Mallow. She hardly dared to hope that she might see Tom himself.

  On the bus she wondered whether Tom had high principles, like Bernard. She was sure, somehow, that he had a delightful lack of them.

  When she arrived at the research centre she found nobody there and setded down rather grimly with a pile of books. She had been working for about an hour when the door opened and Professor Mainwaring came in.

  ‘Miss Clovis not here?’ he asked of nobody in particular.

  ‘Ah, then she has hidden herself away in her sanctum, far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife.’

  Deirdre, who was sitting alone at a table, while one of the library assistants worked at a card index, thought the implication a little unfair, but she did not think any answer was required from her and she certainly would not have felt capable of providing one.

  ‘I hope I may have arrived in time for a cup of tea?’ continued Professor Mainwaring, addressing the library assistant.

  She assured him that it was just made. He then went to Miss Clovis’s room, where a young woman presented him with a cup.

  ‘Ah, a fair tea-maker I ‘ he exclaimed. ‘Wasn’t it De Quincey who described her thus?’ He plucked at his beard and glanced at her quizzically, making her giggle and leave the room hastily.

  ‘Young men nowadays cannot afford to take opium,’ said Miss Clovis briskly, perhaps anxious not to dwell on the subject of tea, which had once nearly proved disastrous for her.

  ‘No, even the Foresight grants will hardly be generous enough for that,’ laughed Professor Mainwaring. ‘Have you received many applications yet?’ Miss Clovis was acting as secretary to the selection committee and enjoyed the work which was congenial to her natural curiosity about people and her desire to arrange their lives for them. The revelations of age, background and education were sometimes most surprising. Who would ever have thought, for instance … she smiled at some reminiscence.

  ‘They are coming in,’ she said. ‘Have the committee decided yet when they will hold the interviews?’

  Professor Mainwaring tweaked at his beard with an almost pizzicato gesture. ‘Ah, that I have a new plan this year and one which I think Fairfax and Vere should approve. I will reveal it to you in due course,’

  ‘It seems difficult to introduce any novelty into the ways of selecting holders for the grants. Are the young people to be made to sing for their supper, or entertain the board in some unacademic way?’ suggested Miss Clovis, hoping to draw out some details.

  But the Professor would not give anything away, and soon afterwards he left her, brooding among her collection of offprints which she was sorting out.

  These single articles, detached from the learned journals in which they have appeared, have a peculiar significance in the academic world. Indeed, the giving and receiving of an offprint can often bring about a special relationship between the parties concerned in the transaction. The young author, bewildered and delighted at being presented with perhaps twenty-five copies of his article, may at first waste them on his aunts and girl friends, but when he is older and wiser he realizes that a more carefully planned distribution may bring him definite advantages. It was thought by many to be ‘good policy’ to send an offprint to Esther Clovis, though it was not always known exactly why this should be. In most cases she had done nothing more than express a polite interest in the author’s work, but in others the gift was prompted by a sort of undefined fear, as a primitive tribesman might leave propitiatory gifts of food before a deity or ancestral shrine in the hope of receiving some benefit.

  Most of the offprints bore inscriptions of some kind- ‘with best wishes’, grateful thanks’, ‘cordial greetings’, ‘warmest regards’—every degree of respect and esteem short of the highest emotion was represented. Love itself had not been inspired; perhaps it was hardly likely that it would have been or that the author would have thought it fitting to express it even if it had. Some of the inscriptions were in foreign languages and one even had a photograph of its African author pinned to it.

  Each article, and some were now yellowed with age, had its memories, and Esther turned the pages thoughtfully, sometimes half smiling at the persons and incidents they recalled. Mit bestem Grüssen, Hermann Obst… This offprint, in heavy Ger
man script, was one of the first she had ever received and its auther was dead. Poor Dr. Obst… once, many years ago, at some learned conference abroad, they had been walking together one evening after dinner and he had taken hold of her in a most suggestive way. Not to put too fine a point on it, he had made a pass at her. Miss Clovis smiled; she was older and more tolerant now, and wondered if she need have slapped his face with quite such outraged dignity. Why had she done it? Had she been thinking of her rights as a woman, the equal of man and not to be treated as his plaything, or had it been because she had not found Dr. Obst particularly attractive? Would she have slapped Felix Mainwaring’s face if it had been he who had made the pass? The question hung in the air, unanswered. Her German was rusty now, but she could make out the title—Blutfreundschaft, Blood brotherhood—and perhaps it was pathetically appropriate. She was back in the warm velvety darkness, hearing the soft splash of fountains and seeing dimly the broad sword-shaped leaves of some exotic plant with huge red flowers-‘It is canna, I sink’, in Dr. Obst’s gentle foreign voice-and then the ‘incident’. Madrid, 1928 or 1929, she couldn’t remember the exact year. Such a thing had not happened to her since and it would not again. She put the offprint back into its folder and turned to the next one.

  ‘With all good wishes from Helena Napier and Everard Bone’. That had been a most promising partnership which had never come to anything. Two gifted young people, who had worked together, but Helena Napier had a husband and Miss Clovis’s efforts in the cause of anthropology had been in vain. After a short estrangement the Napiers had been reunited and Helena had retired to the country. Everard had married a rather dull woman who was nevertheless a great help to him in his work; as a clergyman’s daughter she naturally got on very well with the missionaries they were meeting now that they were in Africa again.

  ‘Esther Clovis from Alaric S. Lydgate.’ The next offprint bore this curt and characteristic inscription. Esther could not like her friend Gertrude’s brother, especially when she thought of those trunks full of notes which he would not let anybody else make use of. Dog in the manger, she thought angrily, most unChristian. She was not herself a Christian, and she doubted whether Alaric was either, in spite of being the son and brother of missionaries, but it seemed a useful standard to judge people by, though perhaps it hardly applied in rationalist circles. Most unethical, was perhaps what she should have said. Her hand moved over to the telephone and she dialled Alaric’s number. The bell went on ringing but there was no answer. Surely that ineffectual Mrs. Skinner could at least answer the telephone? No wonder Gertrude was not particularly anxious to live in his house, but he should certainly have asked her to. Esther let the bell go on ringing a little longer and then slammed down the instrument in disgust. She had been feeling in just the mood for an angry little talk, perhaps as an antidote to the slightly disturbing memories aroused by Hermann Obst’s offprint. Frustrated, she stumped off into the library to see if she could disturb any of the readers.

  She was disappointed to find only two people there, and at first sight they looked unpromising, a lanky dark young man in a shabby corduroy velvet jacket and a young girl, making what Esther scornfully described as ‘sheep’s eyes’ at him. Then she looked more closely and saw that the girl was Deirdre Swan, who lived next door to Alaric Lydgate, and the young man Tom Mallow, one of the most promising of the younger anthropologists, who had been working among the tribe which Alaric had administered for so many years.

  ‘Ah, Miss Swan and Mr. Mallow!’ she called out in her terrifying genial voice. ‘You are just the two people who should get together. I wonder if you know why?’

  Because I love Tom? Deirdre thought, but obviously that couldn’t be the answer. The wonderful surprise of meeting him here now seemed to be enhanced and the whole thing made respectable by Miss Clovis’s apparent approval.

  Tom looked puzzled and was unable to supply any answer even of a superficially gallant nature, so Miss Clovis triumphantly enlightened him.

  ‘Miss Swan lives next door to Alaric Lydgate,’ she said meaningly.

  ‘Oh, you know him, then?’ said Tom, turning to Deirdre.

  ‘Well, not really. I mean, he’s only just come to live next door.’

  ‘Oh, but you must have spoken over the garden fence,’ said Miss Clovis confidently. ‘Borrowing a lawn-mower and that kind of thing.’ She knew life in the suburbs even if only at secondhand, people were always talking over garden fences and borrowing things from each other.

  ‘He doesn’t seem to bother much about cutting his lawn,’ said Deirdre, feeling that they were getting off the point whatever it might be.

  ‘Do you know what he has hidden away in his attic?’ Miss Clovis asked.

  ‘His African girl friend?’ suggested Tom quickly, without thinking.

  ‘Oh, you naughty young man!’ Miss Clovis let out a bark of laughter. ‘No, I was of course referring to his eleven years work on your tribe. He has this silly idea about not letting anyone see his notes till he’s written his book, but I know he’ll never write it. He might have some material that would be useful to you*

  ‘Well, he might,’ said Tom doubtfully. ‘ But these people are usually rather weak on social structure, you know. They haven’t had the proper grounding.’

  ‘You mean Professor Fairfax’s seminars,’ said Miss Clovis in what might have been a sarcastic tone. ‘Well, that may be so, but I do know Alaric was a glutton for land tenure. You must ask Miss Swan to make love to him for you,’ And with that rather horrifying suggestion she stumped out of the room in high good humour.

  Deirdre turned to Tom with an expression of dismay on her face. ‘But he wouldn’t listen to anything I said,’ she protested..

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he reassured her. ‘Esther Clovis always has these little plots. And now,’ he looked at his watch, ‘I really must go.’

  ‘Good-bye, then.’ Deirdre could think of nothing to say that might detain him. There seemed no reason why they should ever meet again unless Tom wished it; perhaps she would have to do something about Alaric Lydgate after all.

  Tom stood up and gathered his books together. In her eyes he had read the unspoken question, that was so often in women’s eyes, ‘When shall I see you again?’ His first impulse had been to ask ‘Are you any good at typing?’ for Catherine seemed to have so much work of her own to do at the moment, but his country upbringing had made him kind-hearted and fond of animals, and Deirdre was rather sweet, really, like a puppy or a colt. So what he did say was rather different.

  ‘Are you free on Saturday evening?’ he asked. ‘A friend of mine is giving a party—perhaps you’d like to come?’

  CHAPTER SIX

  Catherine poured herself rather a large glass of gin. ‘I need some inspiration in the kitchen,’ she explained, ‘and cooks in literature are always drunken, aren’t they?’

  Tom looked up from the desk where he sat at his typewriter. ‘Where did this gin come from?’ he asked. ‘We usually have beer and cider at these parties, don’t we? It might create a precedent if we offered gin.’

  ‘Yes, of course. This is only for private drinking, so that we shall be able to face our guests. I had a cheque for a story today, so I went out and cashed some of it and then I suddenly found myself in St. James’s Street, standing in front of one of those very grand wine merchants with no bottles in the window. I was quite astonished to find that they sold low ordinary things like gin. And the man was so nice—he gave me another little wine book.’

  Catherine collected wine lists and booklets and was liable to read aloud from them to anybody who would listen.

  Tom, feeling that such a reading might be imminent, turned quickly again to his work, but he could think of nothing to type, and so was forced to listen to her babbling away about something, port he supposed, ‘very old in wood and of great delicacy’.

  ‘It sounds like something out of the Psalms, doesn’t it,’ she said. ‘Long-suffering and of great goodness, is that what I mean? And w
hen you’ve finished your thesis, Tom, we’ll have a bottle of Pouilly Fuissé.’

  ‘A bottle of what?’ he asked, amused but exasperated, for Catherine was sometimes very trying and, for an intelligent woman, remarkably frivolous at times.

  ‘Oh, I can’t say it again! Anyway, it’s only twelve shillings a bottle. Now what shall I make to eat? They’re always hungry, unfortunately. I sometimes wish we moved in the kind of circles where people just nibble at salted almonds and potato crisps….’ Catherine was standing in the kitchen now, for it led out of the sitting-room and she was able to carry on a conversation while she worked. Or rather she talked while Tom sat at the desk, brooding over his typewriter, as if by looking at it long enough he could make it write words that would turn themselves into a thesis.

  We’re just like an old married couple, Catherine thought, a little depressed, for she meant it in the worst sense, where dullness rather than cosiness seemed to be the keynote of the relationship. Not much rapture now, but it was nice to have him about the place again, the bathroom all untidy and pages of typescript lying on the floor in the sitting-room.

  ‘I can only make a really smooth sauce when I’m a little drunk,’ she called out gaily. ‘I can stir it more like a madman then, less inhibited.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have thought you were ever that,’ said Tom rather dryly, giving up his attempt to work and coming into the kitchen. He stood behind her and leaned his cheek against hers. She seemed very small because she was wearing flat shoes, slopping about in espadrilles like an old Frenchwoman—so bad for the feet, she had often written articles on this subject for her magazines. Even when she was dressed up there was usually some detail of her appearance that was not quite right, but although she was often conscious of this it did not disturb her unduly. She was too much aware of herself as a personality to make much effort to change, and she had become so used to writing about such things that she could have summed herself up very quickly in her bright, magazins style-‘red skirt and black top (could be velvet), long jet car-rings (not if you’re five feet two or under), and (oh dear I) those shabby blue espadrilles bought in the market in Perigueux on a fine June morning,’