Civil to Strangers

by Barbara Pym

  Connie stood helplessly in the doorway, rubbing her hands together in a nervous gesture. ‘We’ll have to send them away,’ she said. ‘No one could expect to have children who were not clean in the house.’

  ‘Send them away!’ Agnes stood in the middle of the room, a magnificent figure with a newly lighted cigarette jutting aggressively from her mouth. ‘My dear Connie, this is wartime. Go and get the Lysol out of the bathroom cupboard – I shall wash the children thoroughly in the scullery and their clothes must be dealt with too. And on the way up go and see if Mrs Dobbs is getting up – she may be tired after her journey, but she’s certainly not going to spend the morning in bed.’

  Connie walked upstairs with an attempt at briskness, but when she reached Mrs Dobbs’s bedroom door she hesitated and the knock she gave was a very timid one.

  ‘Come in,’ called a loud unabashed voice. ‘Oh, it’s you, dear,’ said Mrs Dobbs. ‘I’m quite cosy, thanks.’

  She certainly looked cosy, sitting up in bed in a pink nightgown of shiny artificial satin. She was a youngish woman, with a bold face and bleached hair, done up in a complicated arrangement of curlers. Connie looked down at the dark rug by the bed and saw that it was littered with cigarette ash.

  ‘Yes, I was just having a smoke,’ said Mrs Dobbs, producing a hand from underneath the bedclothes and revealing a cigarette, which she had evidently hidden on hearing Connie’s knock. ‘I thought you was the other one,’ she said with an ingratiating smile.

  ‘Wouldn’t you like some breakfast?’ Connie began, not liking to say what she had to say straight out.

  ‘Well, that’s an idea,’ said Mrs Dobbs brightly. ‘It would be ever so kind of you. A nice cup of tea and a bit of toast and I daresay I could fancy a nice boiled egg. You get nice fresh eggs in the country.’

  ‘Well, if you like to get up, you can go down into the kitchen and cook yourself something,’ said Connie ineffectually.

  ‘Rightyho, dear, just as you like,’ said Mrs Dobbs, settling herself comfortably among the pillows and obviously with no intention of getting up.

  Connie stood there wishing she had Agnes’s forceful personality. She lingered uncertainly in the doorway and went out of the room, murmuring words that sounded more like an apology for having disturbed her guest than a command to get up.

  Later that morning when the children had been expertly dealt with by Agnes and Mrs Dobbs had reluctantly got up and gone out with the children to meet the other mothers and do some shopping (‘I see you’ve got a Woolworth’s,’ she said condescendingly as she went out of the door), Agnes and Connie were tidying the kitchen when Beatrice Wyatt called. She sank on to one of the bentwood chairs at the kitchen table.

  ‘I felt I had to come and see how you are getting on with yours,’ she said.

  ‘We’re just taking it in our stride,’ said Agnes heartily. ‘A mother who won’t get up in the morning and two children with vermin. I’ve just spent the morning bathing them and baking their clothes.’

  Beatrice shuddered. ‘Agnes, you are marvellous. I wouldn’t know what to do at all. At least there’s no danger of that with our teacher.’

  ‘What is she like?’

  ‘Very dainty,’ said Beatrice. ‘She’s called Madge, by the way, and insists on Christian names. She’s so thoroughly at home and somehow patronizing. And then, of course, she has to be with me all the time. I almost wish we’d had children.’

  ‘Ours are sweet but not quite clean,’ said Connie.

  ‘Mrs Palfrey’s got five – the vicarage is so big. I saw her in the town. Apparently they were up at six o’clock this morning running all over the house and garden, even in the vicar’s study.’

  ‘Well, we must get into town and do our shopping,’ said Agnes briskly.

  ‘I’ll come with you as far as Woolworth’s,’ said Beatrice. ‘I want to see if I can get any black paper.’

  ‘Oh, there’s not a sheet of that left in the town,’ said Agnes confidently. ‘Come along, Connie.’

  Connie crammed a beige felt hat on to her head, pushed up a few wisps of hair and hurried after them. ‘I feel such a mess,’ she fluttered. ‘Everything seems to have been such a rush this morning.’

  ‘Oh well, nobody’s going to look at us,’ said Agnes, taking an old beret with a moth-hole in it from the hall stand and putting it on at a straight, uncompromising angle.

  There was something almost comforting in the thought that she might be their contemporary, Beatrice decided. If I were that age, she thought, I shouldn’t be thinking about Michael Randolph all the time.

  Agnes marched into Woolworth’s and made for the biscuit counter. Connie and Beatrice followed her more slowly. Agnes was thinking only of cheese biscuits at 3d a half-pound, but they had other things to occupy their minds. While Beatrice was trying to imagine herself in twenty years’ time, Connie was darting furtive glances at herself in the mirrors by the door. She looked awful, such a mess, but, of course, they were hardly likely to meet anyone who mattered in Woolworth’s.

  ‘Oh, look, what pretty silk handkerchiefs,’ she said, plucking at Beatrice’s elbow. ‘They look quite good. I think I will buy one.’ She looked round furtively for Agnes, who would certainly have disapproved of such a purchase. She chose a pink one and was handing it to the girl with her sixpence when a voice behind them said, ‘Good morning, Miss Wyatt, Miss Aspinall,’ and there was Edward Wraye, looking unexpectedly older in khaki uniform. Beatrice and Edward were making general conversation about the war and what Edward was doing when Connie became aware that Amanda Wraye had come up behind them. She was accompanied by a tall, beaky woman.

  ‘Oh, Miss Wyatt, I don’t think you have met my sister-in-law Lady Nollard,’ said Mandy in her usual vague way. ‘I don’t think you can have done because she hasn’t been down here much, have you, Eleanor?’

  ‘No,’ said Lady Nollard rather grimly. ‘I left London on account of the war.’

  ‘How dreadful it must have been for you, Lady Nollard,’ murmured Connie respectfully. ‘You must feel like a refugee.’

  Edward choked with laughter and Beatrice found herself smiling, too. But Lady Nollard saw nothing comic in this pronouncement.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, with emphasis, ‘it has been dreadful. I have had to leave everything behind, of course, absolutely everything.’

  ‘Well, Eleanor, you seemed to bring a great deal of luggage with you,’ observed Mandy.

  ‘I meant my furniture,’ said Lady Nollard coldly. ‘All my beautiful things.’

  Mandy began an aimless conversation with Beatrice about the evacuee children and how sweet they were and how they must go now because she wanted to see them having their dinner. Meanwhile, Lady Nollard had found a most sympathetic listener in Connie and seemed reluctant to return to her unappreciative relations.

  ‘I hope we shall meet again,’ she said, smiling graciously.

  ‘Oh, here you are! I wondered where you’d all got to.’ Agnes came hurrying up to them holding two bulging bags of biscuits.

  ‘Good morning, Lady Wraye. How do you do,’ she said casually when she was introduced to Lady Nollard. ‘Have you tried these Woolworth cheese biscuits – they’re really marvellous.’

  Connie felt that she must be quite scarlet all over with shame and mortification. It was just like Agnes to come and spoil everything. Coming crashing along and telling the whole world that she had been buying biscuits here. Whatever would Lady Wraye and Lady Nollard think?

  But Mandy was enthusiastic and cried, ‘What a marvellous idea! I never thought of it. Lyall is always saying that we must economize, especially now. I shall go and get some. I think it’s marvellous,’ she repeated, as though buying biscuits at Woolworth’s was as extraordinary as picking up a Schiaparelli model at the local draper’s.

  ‘Well, darling, people do buy things at Woolworth’s, that’s what it is for. And anyway, you came in to buy some embroidery thread.’

  ‘Oh, yes, dear, I know, but biscuits … ’
and Mandy darted off purposefully towards the biscuit counter followed by Edward and, more slowly, by Lady Nollard.

  ‘Of course,’ she said to Connie, ‘one can hardly expect the biscuits to be of such good quality as Romary’s, but I suppose we shall have to put up with that sort of thing in wartime. Fortnum’s may not be able to deliver,’ she added. ‘We must all make sacrifices.’ She nodded graciously at Connie and moved after Mandy and Edward.

  ‘Fancy Lady Wraye not knowing about Woolworth’s biscuits!’ said Agnes when they were on their way home. ‘She’ll be glad that I gave her the tip.’

  Connie was lost in her usual daydreams, but this time a definite figure had come into them. Lady Nollard was talking to Connie and saying that she had dreaded coming into the country and what a comfort it was to have found a really sympathetic friend. And in the winter perhaps they might go to a health resort together, Bournemouth or Torquay would be nice. And in the hotel there would be crowds of Lady Nollards and other people too, retired Army men, even Bishops …

  ‘We’ve just been round to the fish and chip shop,’ Mrs Dobbs was saying. ‘I was quite surprised that you had one here … ’

  ‘Connie! Connie!’ Agnes called. ‘You’ve forgotten the side plates.’

  ‘All right, dear,’ said Connie mildly. ‘I couldn’t get everything on the tray.’

  You must call me Eleanor, Lady Nollard was saying.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘Well, Beatrice, you must go down to your supper now. Miss Stoat will not like to be kept waiting. It would not be polite to keep one’s guest waiting … ’ There was a gleam of amusement in Mrs Wyatt’s eye as she lay back on her pillows anticipating her own meal, which was due to appear at any moment now.

  ‘Oh, Mother,’ Beatrice sighed. ‘If only you knew what it’s like to have her sitting opposite one at every meal!’

  ‘I thank God I need not see her,’ said Mrs Wyatt simply. ‘But there is a war and we must all do our duty.’

  Beatrice wondered how her mother proposed to do her duty.

  The supper was brought, liver and bacon, with rich brown gravy, new potatoes and peas. Mrs Wyatt gripped her knife and fork firmly.

  ‘I think I should like some Burgundy,’ she said. ‘Water is not much of a drink for an old woman. We must keep up our strength in wartime. It really is our duty to be as healthy as we can.’

  ‘Miss Wyatt! Supper is ready!’ a fluty voice came drifting up the stairs.

  In the dining room Beatrice noticed that there was a pink blancmange on the sideboard, a sweet she particularly disliked, with its cold flannelly texture and indefinite taste, but her mother was fond of it and she still ordered the meals – it was the one household task that she continued to do.

  Miss Stoat pulled a pink angora cardigan round her shoulders. ‘It’s quite nippy this evening, isn’t it?’ she said.

  Beatrice got up from the table. ‘Perhaps it is,’ she said. ‘I’ll go and get an electric fire.’

  ‘Oh, don’t bother for me,’ said Miss Stoat. ‘I’m as warm as toast in my woolly.’

  Beatrice sat down again.

  ‘Do you think the children are settling down well?’ she began hopefully. ‘It must be so different for them, living in the country.’

  ‘I’ll say it is,’ said Miss Stoat, with a surprising attempt at an American accent. ‘Do you go up to town much?’

  ‘To London? Yes, sometimes. Not as much as I used to.’

  ‘Oh, I love London,’ said Miss Stoat. ‘I’m fond of a bit of gaiety.’

  ‘I’m afraid you won’t find much gaiety here,’ said Beatrice, not without satisfaction.

  ‘Oh, well, I like the country too,’ said Miss Stoat complacently. ‘I’m sure I shall find plenty to do.’

  They went on making rather strained conversation throughout supper. Miss Stoat was very fond of blancmange. She praised all the food and said how lucky she was to have such a good billet. Beatrice began to feel ashamed of her unkind thoughts and made a resolution to be more friendly and try to look for the good in Miss Stoat. After supper she went up to her room to get some sewing. After all, the war would probably last for years and Miss Stoat with it. They might even be good friends by the time it was over, she thought without enthusiasm.

  ‘You haven’t got a special chair, have you?’ asked Miss Stoat as she came into the drawing room.

  Beatrice had a special chair and Miss Stoat was in it. She had her feet up on a footstool and was settled in such a way that even the most outspoken and selfish person would have hesitated before asking her to move.

  Beatrice remembered her resolution of a few minutes before and sat down in an unfamiliar and therefore uncongenial chair. She put her sewing on the floor. The little table she usually used was over by Miss Stoat. The light was wrong, too.

  ‘I never mind where I sit,’ said Miss Stoat comfortably, picking up a bundle wrapped in a silk square and unrolling it. It was the body – or rather the torso, for it had no legs – of a china doll.

  ‘Whatever is it?’ asked Beatrice, fascinated. ‘What are you going to do with it?’

  ‘I’m making a nightdress case. It’s rather a cute idea, isn’t it? A Victorian lady with the case in her skirt,’ she explained. ‘The mauve silk is for the skirt, a sort of crinoline really. I love mauve, don’t you? I think it’s so dainty in the bedroom.’

  ‘Dainty?’ said Beatrice. ‘Oh, yes it is.’

  ‘I wore a lot of mauve after Mother died. After the black, of course.’

  There was a ring at the door and Beatrice went to open it. Outside was the muffled figure of Mr Bompas the Air Raid Warden. He was so confused and apologetic that it took Beatrice some time to realize why he had come, but at last she gathered that a bright unshaded light was blazing in one of the upstairs rooms.

  ‘I wouldn’t have troubled you, Miss Wyatt,’ he said apologetically, ‘but somebody happened to point it out to me, and you know how people are.’ Mr Bompas was their local grocer and the Wyatts were good customers whom he did not want to offend.

  ‘Of course,’ said Beatrice. ‘I’m so sorry – I’ll see to it right away.’

  She shut the door and ran upstairs to her mother’s room, for she could guess where the light was coming from.

  ‘Didn’t Alice draw your curtains, Mother?’ she asked, hurrying to the window and dragging them across. ‘I told her to be specially careful.’

  ‘She came to do it,’ said Mrs Wyatt, ‘but I did not allow it. It is more pleasant to have the air coming in.’

  ‘But Mother, there’s a war on. We aren’t allowed to show lights. Mr Bompas, the Warden, came to tell me about it.’

  ‘Mr Bompas must be civil,’ said Mrs Wyatt grimly, ‘or we shall change our grocer.’

  Beatrice sighed. ‘I’m sorry, Mother, but they must be drawn. Now then, are you quite comfortable?’

  ‘I think I should like some cocoa and some biscuits.’

  Beatrice went into the kitchen to tell Alice that on no account should she leave the curtains undrawn and to take some cocoa upstairs. As she came out of the kitchen she heard voices in the drawing room, Miss Stoat’s shrill giggle and the deeper tones of a man. It was Michael Randolph.

  She ran lightly up to her room, tidied her hair, powdered her face and made her entrance looking fresh, neat and suitably surprised.

  ‘I didn’t hear the bell,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know you were here.’

  ‘I’m afraid I startled Miss – er,’ said Michael. ‘I came round and tapped on the french windows.’

  ‘Yes, he gave me quite a turn,’ Miss Stoat said.

  ‘Would you like some tea?’ Beatrice asked.

  Miss Stoat gathered up her doll’s torso and the mauve silk.

  ‘Well, I’ll leave you two good people alone,’ she said coyly. ‘I expect your mother would like some company. She must be lonely up there by herself. So long!’

  ‘Poor Beatrice,’ Michael said, when the door had closed behind her.

  �
�She’s only been here a day,’ she said. ‘I shall get used to it.’

  ‘But, surely you don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to.’

  ‘Oh, really, how could I possibly leave Mother? After all, she is an invalid.’

  The most unclergymanlike snort came from him and she found herself laughing.

  ‘But you do see how it is?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, yes, I see quite well. You like to imagine yourself as an Edwardian unmarried daughter sacrificing her life to look after her invalid mother.’

  ‘I wonder how Miss Stoat is getting on with Mother,’ said Beatrice, changing the conversation awkwardly. ‘I should love to hear their conversation.’

  The conversation, in fact, consisted of a long monologue from Miss Stoat and occasional protests from Mrs Wyatt as pillows were whisked from underneath her, shaken up and put back in a new and uncomfortable way.

  ‘I know all about invalids,’ said Miss Stoat brightly but firmly. ‘My mother was bedridden for ten years before she passed away last year.’

  ‘What was her illness?’ asked Mrs Wyatt with interest.

  ‘Now, now, we don’t want any depressing talk about illness, do we? I’m going to read to you. I always used to read to Mother. It’s a nice little book, I shouldn’t be surprised if it sent you off. It’s little pieces, like poetry, only they don’t rhyme. They’re called Fragrant Thoughts.’

  Mrs Wyatt lay back on her pillows and made a feeble gesture that Miss Stoat took for assent.

  Miss Stoat opened the book with its pale yellow cover and began to read. She read ‘Helping Each Other’, ‘Patience’ and ‘Tea by the Fireside’ in her mincing voice. Mrs Wyatt groaned faintly. ‘“Catkins,”’ announced Miss Stoat in a high, rather surprised tone. ‘“Have you seen the golden catkins, the dainty fairy bells ringing in the springtime in the shady woods and dells. Each catkin has a message of hope for you and me …”’

  ‘I want to go to the lavatory,’ interrupted Mrs Wyatt.