Civil to Strangers

by Barbara Pym

  Flora began to laugh; she seemed quite herself again. ‘Poor Gervase,’ she said, ‘but there is one thing you can do. Give me a cigarette, please.’

  Gervase took out his case and offered it to her.

  ‘Now go home. It’s very late. Aunt Emily will think you have been proposing or something! Give my love to Ingeborg.’

  Gervase smiled. ‘I will,’ he said. He stood looking at her for a moment before he turned and went out of the room.

  When he had gone Flora went up to her room and began to undress for bed. She hung up her white dress, put the carnations in water and the new watch in its velvet case. She removed all the make-up from her face, brushed her teeth, set her hair and put out the clothes she was going to wear in the morning. Then she knelt by her bed and prayed rather mechanically for all the things she had been taught to pray for when she was a child – parents, relations, people she liked – this was a long list constantly being revised and added to. She prayed for the work of foreign missions, peace in countries where there was war and many other things. Finally she prayed for herself, that she might be good and kind and helpful and unselfish and self-controlled and brave. That was plenty, she thought with a sigh.

  Her prayer finished, she stood up and, going to the dressing table, she tied a ribbon round her hair and rubbed some skin-food into her face. And now what, she asked herself. A good cry was supposed to make things better. There was something almost soothing about the idea of being drowned in a flood of warm tears. But then she was firm with herself. If tears came spontaneously and couldn’t be avoided, that was one thing, but it was not right to work yourself up into such a state. Perhaps if she put her misery away at the back of her mind and left it there she might one day be able to bring it out into the light and smile at the idea of its ever having had the power to hurt her.

  She got into bed, holding in her hand the letter she had had from Ooli that morning.

  ‘This is the first letter I ever wrote to you, darling Flora. I know you would like me to say this because women make so much of beginnings and endings and even you cannot deny that this is the beginning of something … ’

  She stretched out her hand and turned off the light. Then she curled over on to her side still holding the letter. She rested her cheek on it, but the paper was stiff and crackly, so she laid it lovingly to rest under her pillow. That was the traditional place for a love-letter, and like so many traditional things, it was the most comfortable.

  Home Front Novel

  Note on the Text

  This unfinished novel (195 pages) was written mostly in 1939 while the events it depicts were actually happening in Oswestry, where Barbara was living at home, engaged in voluntary War Work like so many unmarried girls of her age and class. She wrote in her diary:

  October 1st. Church full of evacuees and some soldiers. Made notes for a war novel.

  October 9th. Busy in the morning sewing sheets sides to middle. Wrote quite a lot of my Home Front novel.

  October 10th. Cross with the children [evacuees] – they were all running about like Bears in the kitchen. Too tired to write my novel.

  November 22nd. Did about 5 pages of my novel. Very dogged and slow.

  She then seems to have left it for a while and gone back to revising her North Oxford novel, Crampton Hodnet .She took it up again briefly in 1940 but then started her spy novel, leaving this one unfinished.

  Certain characters are echoed in other novels: Amanda Wraye is another version of Lady Beddoes and Agnes and Connie had already made their appearance (as Edith and Connie) in Some Tame Gazelle .Flora Palfrey, however, although she shares the same name, is an entirely different character from the heroine of the Finnish novel.

  In the late 1960s, feeling that a novel about the war might be more acceptable to publishers, she took the manuscript out again. But she became involved in writing The Sweet Dove Died and did no more work on it. It is tantalizing to think what she might have made of it if she had worked over the carefully observed wartime detail (supplemented by very full diary entries for the period) at the height of her mature powers as a novelist.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Canon Palfrey walked up the vicarage drive and looked in through his drawing-room window, hardly knowing what he might see there. He had learned to expect anything on a Monday evening between the hours of six and eight when the ladies of the parish had their Red Cross lectures. He remembered the first occasion very vividly and his shock at seeing a skeleton dangling in front of the large still life painting of the Dutch school, which had been given to them by an aunt of his wife. But this evening an even more alarming sight met his eyes. Miss Connie Aspinall was lying in a bed in his drawing room. As he watched, the door opened and his wife Jane came in carrying a blanket over her arm. Her pleasant face was flushed and her fair hair untidy. She hurried towards the bed and gave the blanket to Nurse Stebbings who seemed to be in charge. Then Miss Agnes Grote and Miss Beatrice Wyatt began to roll the clothes off the bed, leaving Miss Aspinall exposed to full view, tugging ineffectually at her shapeless grey flannel skirt which was riding up to reveal a pink celanese slip. Her helpless body was rolled from side to side while Nurse Stebbings briskly demonstrated different ways of changing sheets.

  Excellent women, thought Canon Palfrey, always busy doing something. At present they were preparing for the war that everyone prayed would not come.

  ‘Have they finished yet?’

  The canon turned to see his curate, Michael Randolph, standing behind him. The two clergymen stood looking into the big, shabby, comfortable drawing room.

  ‘There’s something very soothing about watching a lot of busy women,’ said Michael. ‘It’s like reading Jane Austen.’

  At that moment Jane Palfrey saw them and waved. ‘Come in!’ she shouted. ‘We want to practise bandaging.’

  The vicar sighed. ‘Oh well,’ he said, ‘we can’t expect to be detached from it all. But I will not be bandaged by Miss Grote,’ he added firmly.

  As they went in Agnes Grote advanced remorselessly, holding a bandage. ‘I’m going to do a capeline on you, Vicar,’ she said. ‘It ought to be easier on a bald head.’

  The vicar looked helplessly about for his wife but she was still busy by the bed, where another woman was lying now, Connie Aspinall being occupied in bandaging her own leg in a corner of the room.

  Michael Randolph sought out Beatrice Wyatt, a pleasant woman in her early thirties. She was practising hospital corners with the sheet and he tapped her on the shoulder.

  ‘Do bandage me,’ he said. ‘I should like one of those elaborate cap things that Miss Grote is doing on the vicar.’

  Beatrice laughed. ‘Oh, I haven’t got to that yet,’ she said. ‘Miss Grote is quite an expert, she’s done a lot of this before.’

  ‘Agnes always knows everything,’ said a long-suffering voice from the corner of the room. Connie Aspinall was Agnes Grote’s cousin and lived with her in a neat little house near the church.

  ‘Well, do another one,’ said Michael. ‘You shall choose what you do.’

  ‘I shall do you a broken jaw,’ said Beatrice seriously. ‘Sit down here and shut your mouth firmly.’

  How nice she is, he thought, feeling her cool capable hands on his jaw, tall and fair and amusing and yet somehow appealing and shy.

  ‘How is your mother?’ he asked when the bandage had been completed and then removed.

  ‘Oh, as well as she ever is.’ Which is perfectly well, selfish old woman, thought Michael savagely.

  ‘Poor Mrs Wyatt,’ said Jane Palfrey vaguely. ‘I must come and see her some time. Beatrice, do tell your mother that I’m coming to see her.’

  ‘Yes, I will,’ smiled Beatrice, ‘thank you.’ Mrs Palfrey had been coming to see her mother ever since she could remember.

  ‘There, Vicar! You won’t be able to get that off very easily,’ said Agnes Grote triumphantly. ‘Come and look, everybody.’

  How like Agnes to behave as if she were the one giving t
he lecture, thought Connie, staying obstinately in her corner.

  ‘I expect you will be glad to have Flora back,’ she said to Mrs Palfrey, who didn’t seem very interested in the bandaging either. ‘Is it tomorrow that she comes?’

  ‘Yes. She’s been staying with my sister-in-law, who has a rather depressing house in Bayswater,’ said Jane. ‘Still, young people like being in London.’

  ‘Come along, Connie, it’s time to go!’ Agnes’s strident voice cut into the conversation.

  ‘And I must go too,’ said Beatrice. ‘Mother will be getting impatient for her supper.’

  ‘Poor thing,’ said Jane, ‘I suppose meals are all there is to look forward to when you are an invalid. Well, Tom,’ she addressed her husband, who had finally managed to free himself from the bandage, ‘perhaps you and Michael will help to move this bed. I don’t want it cluttering up the drawing room.’

  The two clergymen stood uncertainly at either end of the bed while the women collected their belongings and trickled out of the room in little groups.

  ‘I do think that the men might take some part in Red Cross and ARP preparations,’ said Agnes Grote rather loudly as they walked down the drive.

  ‘They do seem to stand about and mock,’ laughed Beatrice.

  Agnes and Connie disappeared into Balmoral Lodge and she went on to her own house further down the road. As she took off her coat in the hall a querulous, rather guttural voice called out from upstairs.

  ‘All right, Mother, I’m just coming,’ she said, trying to put into her voice a brightness that she did not feel.

  Mrs Wyatt lay in bed reading. She was handsome and hard-faced, with complicated plaits of grey hair swathed about her head. She had been a good-looking, lively woman, but after her husband’s death ten years before, she had adopted the role of an invalid and now spent most of her time in bed, having decided that there was no longer anything worth getting up for. Beatrice was an only child, who had been born late in their married life. Although not without personality of her own, she had somehow drifted into a sort of subjugation to her strong-minded mother.

  ‘Well,’ demanded Mrs Wyatt, ‘tell me all about it. Who was there?’

  ‘Oh, it was only the usual Red Cross class. The same people who are always there. The vicar and Mr Randolph came in later.’

  ‘Mr Randolph, he was there?’

  Beatrice found herself going rather red and was glad that Alice, their maid, came in at that moment with her mother’s tray.

  ‘Look,’ she said quickly, ‘here’s your supper! I wonder what Alice has brought you.’

  ‘Cook thought you might fancy some cold chicken,’ said Alice, ‘and there’s some mushroom soup.’

  ‘I think I will have a glass of wine,’ said Mrs Wyatt, making no comment on the rest of the meal. ‘Now,’ she said, through a mouthful of cold chicken, ‘tell me the gossip.’

  Beatrice racked her brains. ‘Flora Palfrey’s coming home tomorrow,’ she said at last. ‘She’s been staying with an aunt in London.’

  ‘She will be getting married soon, I think,’ said Mrs Wyatt.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ said Beatrice doubtfully. ‘Who could she marry? There isn’t anybody here.’

  ‘Mr Randolph, the curate,’ said Mrs Wyatt, with a sharp look at her daughter. ‘He is a nice young man.’

  ‘He isn’t very young,’ said Beatrice, hardly knowing why she didn’t want him to be so described. ‘He is quite old for a curate. He must be thirty-five or -six.’

  Mrs Wyatt took up her chicken bone in her fingers and began to gnaw it. Her manners were Victorian, even eighteenth-century. There was a knock at the door and Alice put her head round.

  ‘Please, Miss Beatrice, there’s a gentleman here to see about the evacuees,’ she said disapprovingly.

  ‘I’ll come down,’ Beatrice said.

  ‘No, no, bring him up here,’ said Mrs Wyatt, still busy with her chicken bone. ‘I want to see him.’

  ‘It will be Mr Bonner, the history master from the High School,’ said Beatrice. ‘I believe he is the billeting officer.’

  Alice came back into the room followed by a pale, nervous young man with an untidy sheaf of papers.

  ‘Good evening,’ he said, shooting a terrified look at Mrs Wyatt in bed. ‘Good evening,’ he said to Beatrice as if appealing to her for support. ‘I’m sorry to bother you like this, but I wonder if you will be able to take any evacuees.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure we could manage somebody,’ said Beatrice cheerfully. ‘I don’t think we could manage children, though. It is rather difficult with my mother being an invalid.’

  Mrs Wyatt smiled complacently and dug her spoon into a quivering mound of orange jelly.

  ‘We will take one grown-up person,’ she said.

  ‘Splendid,’ said Mr Bonner. ‘I will put you down for one of the school teachers. There will be a certain number coming with the children.’

  ‘Yes, that will be easier,’ said Beatrice. ‘We have quite a nice room for her.’

  Mr Bonner thankfully made his escape and paused outside to consult his list. Balmoral Lodge next, Miss Grote and Miss Aspinall. He walked up to the front door and rang the bell.

  Agnes and Connie were in the kitchen washing up the supper things. As usual Agnes was washing while Connie dried. Connie would have liked to wash sometimes but Agnes never suggested that she should. Somehow they had just got into a routine and it seemed impossible to make even small changes. Agnes was a positive virago at the sink this evening, bending over the hot soapy water with the usual cigarette jutting from her square jaw.

  ‘Hurry up, Connie!’ she said. ‘You’re so slow!’

  Connie seized another dripping plate, but for every one that she dried three or four more appeared on the draining board. It was hopeless, like Hercules and the dragon’s teeth, she thought vaguely. It had been like this four times a day for the twenty years she and Agnes had lived together. Connie began to calculate in her head how many times that would have been, when the door bell rang.

  ‘Bother!’ said Agnes. She wiped her hands, soft and red from the hot water, and strode out into the hall. Connie followed her, feeling a little defiant, for she knew that Agnes would have expected her to finish drying the dishes first.

  ‘Oh, Mr Bonner, do come in,’ Agnes led him into the small chintzy drawing room, furnished in an arty-crafty way with too many barbola-framed mirrors, wool embroideries and water-colour landscapes. Agnes was talented in many directions and liked to have evidence of it around her. Connie was no good at anything like that, though she had rather a pretty singing voice which Agnes regarded with good-humoured contempt.

  ‘Have you come about the children?’ asked Connie eagerly.

  ‘Yes, about four hundred are to be evacuated here, you know.’

  ‘Poor little things,’ said Connie sentimentally.

  ‘How many spare rooms do you have, Miss Grote?’

  ‘Two,’ said Agnes, ‘not counting the boxroom.’

  ‘Would you be able to take four, then?’

  ‘Four children, no teachers. I’m good with children. Know how to manage them. If necessary Connie could move into the boxroom, couldn’t you, Connie? She has a nice big room that could easily take two.’

  Connie’s enthusiasm for the children diminished.

  ‘If it comes to that, you could move into the boxroom, Agnes. After all, my room’s just been done up.’

  ‘My dear Connie, you could hardly expect me to have children on my Turkey carpet!’ retorted Agnes sharply.

  ‘Well, I’m sure you will be able to make the necessary arrangements,’ said Mr Bonner, rising hastily. As Connie went with him to the door, Agnes’s voice came from the kitchen, strident and irritable. ‘Why, Connie, you haven’t finished drying the dishes!’

  Connie went meekly back to her uncompleted task.

  ‘It will mean a lot of extra work, having evacuees here,’ said Agnes. ‘I think I’ll tell Dawks tomorrow to dig up the front law
n.’

  ‘Whatever for?’ asked Connie.

  ‘To plant vegetables, of course. Now, let me see. The vicarage has a very big lawn and there is that herbaceous border at the Wyatts’.’

  By the time they had finished their work in the kitchen, Agnes had already, in imagination, commandeered all the gardens in the village and planted them with vegetables. ‘Oh, God,’ prayed Connie that night, ‘don’t let there be a war.’ But at the back of her mind was the thought that a war might be rather exciting. It would certainly make a difference to the days that were so monotonously the same.

  CHAPTER TWO

  When Beatrice Wyatt woke up on the morning of September 1st she had her ‘anything can happen’ feeling. She often had it at the beginning of a new day, especially, she did not know why, on a Friday. She had first met Michael Randolph on a Friday. And today was a Friday too, and the beginning of a new month. September was a lovely month, neither summer nor autumn, and it had begun with brilliant sunshine. She allowed herself to think about Michael Randolph. Their friendship had progressed considerably lately, especially in August when most people had been away. They had had some walks together and he had even taken her to the pictures once. Not wearing his dog-collar. Beatrice smiled as she remembered it. And they had lent each other books – there were some of his on the shelves in her room. Novels by Miss Compton-Burnett, mixed up with the blue Phoenixes, the Aldous Huxleys of her youth.

  After breakfast she read the papers, trying hard not to be depressed by them, but they left her feeling the need for some occupation to take her mind off the news they brought. I’ll do some ironing, she thought.

  The sun was streaming through the windows of the morning room where she did her dressmaking and ironing. The iron slid smoothly over the surface of her pale blue nightdress in the most satisfactory way. When that was finished she took up a vest of flowered artificial silk and tried the iron tentatively on the lower edge. Immediately the stuff frizzled up and stuck to the iron in a brown sticky mass. The room was filled with the smell of treacle toffee.