Civil to Strangers

by Barbara Pym

Miss Stoat stopped reading and blushed. She was not used to such plain speaking. Mother had always managed to convey such a request in a more delicate way.

  Miss Stoat looked about the room for something she did not name but indicated by a fluttering wave of the hand.

  ‘Let me help you,’ she said. ‘I am used to invalids.’

  ‘I will get out of bed and go to the lavatory,’ said Mrs Wyatt, and, before Miss Stoat could stop her, she had swung her legs out of the bed, pushed Miss Stoat away with an impatient gesture and walked slowly but surprisingly firmly towards the door.

  ‘Oh, do lean on me,’ cried Miss Stoat. ‘Your legs will be all wobbly!’

  ‘My legs are not at all wobbly. I am not in my grave yet!’

  ‘Mother, what are you doing?’ called Beatrice from the hall. She ran up the stairs. ‘What can you be thinking of, getting out of bed like this?’

  Mrs Wyatt said nothing but indicated the door through which she proposed to go, went in and slammed the door resolutely. Beatrice stood on the stairs too surprised to say anything.

  ‘I was in the middle of reading to her,’ explained Miss Stoat, ‘and she suddenly said she wanted to spend a penny.’

  Beatrice’s eyebrows rose. That certainly seemed out of character, but then, Mother getting out of bed in such a way was out of character too.

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘we would all like a cup of tea.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Miss Stoat, ‘that would be ever so nice.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  Flora woke up with a sinking feeling. Something unpleasant had happened. And then she remembered. It was the war. She thought it must be morning but her room was dark. The pretty rose-patterned curtains had been roughly lined with black casement cloth. In her mind’s eye, Flora could see the long dark whiskers which hung down from the raw edges where she hadn’t even had time to hem them. I must do that, she thought. It looks so untidy, it spoils the room. It must be time to get up. She became aware of noises outside her door – Mrs Palfrey calling to her husband that she had finished in the bathroom, Gladys using the Hoover somewhere, the voices of the children singing.

  ‘Angels never leave Heaven,

  Angels like you … ’

  sang the children, but then, evidently unable to remember any more, turning to the more familiar ‘Lambeth Walk’.

  She put on her dressing gown and went to the bathroom. Outside the door she met two of the children.

  ‘Good morning,’ she said uncertainly.

  They stared at her, giggled and returned her greeting.

  From the bathroom Flora could hear the sound of the little boys rushing about in the garden shouting and quarrelling. When she went into the dining room she found her mother alone, sitting wearily at the table.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said, ‘Jimmy opened the little gate and let the chickens out. They’re all over the garden. Your father’s trying to catch them.’

  ‘Little beasts,’ said Flora.

  ‘Oh, that’s nothing,’ said Jane. ‘Something else has happened. Much worse. I was expecting it, but still … ’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘One of them has wet the bed.’

  ‘Oh, Mother!’

  ‘Gladys is very upset. I’m afraid we will have to do most of the housework to pacify her. She’s talking about munitions factories in a very sinister way.’

  ‘Oh, Mother!’

  ‘I know, dear. It’s not much fun for you. Still, I believe Edward Wraye is here,’ she said brightly. ‘Perhaps he will come and see you.’

  There had been a mild romance between Edward and Flora for some years, but since he had been away at Oxford he seemed to have become more sophisticated and Flora had felt that she was no longer dashing enough for him. But she still believed herself in love with him since there was really nobody else to be in love with.

  ‘Is he here? Who told you?’

  ‘Gladys told me, as a matter of fact. She said he was in khaki.’

  ‘Oh, he won’t come and see me,’ said Flora drinking up her unpleasantly lukewarm coffee. ‘I suppose I’d better wash up.’

  She carried the tray with the breakfast things out into the kitchen, where Gladys was cleaning shoes with a martyred expression. Jane and Flora hardly liked to have any conversation of their own and it was well known that it was useless to attempt to make conversation with Gladys when she was in one of her moods, so the work went on in silence.

  At the sink Flora thought how ugly the orchid nail polish looked against her hands, which had become red with the toohot water. It was chipping too. She would have to give up using it ‘for the duration’ – that was the phrase that people were using now. Gladys stumped out of the kitchen with her arms full of newly cleaned shoes. At that moment there was a brisk knocking at the back door. Flora dried her hands and went to open it.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Agnes Grote. ‘I thought I might find you in the kitchen so I came round the back.’

  ‘You do indeed find us in the kitchen,’ said Jane, who was peeling apples rather too thickly. ‘How are yours?’

  ‘Oh, I’m managing them quite well. I had a busy morning yesterday. We discovered the children had lice.’ She gave the word its full emphasis.

  ‘Oh,’ said Flora faintly, ‘how awful. I hope ours haven’t any.’

  Agnes advanced further into the kitchen and surveyed the scene, absently tracing the letters A. M. Grote on the dusty surface of the dresser. ‘I was thinking,’ she said, ‘that something should be done about these children.’

  ‘Oh, I agree,’ said Jane, ‘but what? We really don’t seem to be very good at coping with them.’

  Agnes made an impatient movement with her hand. ‘Communal meals,’ she said, ‘that’s what they ought to have.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Jane, ‘but who would organize it?’

  ‘It’s up to us,’ said Agnes firmly. ‘I shall go and see all the hostesses and we must approach the school people together.’

  Jane was silent in admiration. How useful Agnes’s managing qualities were in wartime.

  ‘I must go and see Lady Wraye,’ went on Agnes. ‘She has quite a few evacuees there. I saw her in Woolworth’s yesterday. Edward was with her,’ she added with a glance at Flora, ‘looking quite the soldier. I believe he is going off today.’

  Flora bent over the sink and washed an already clean plate. Going today. Perhaps never coming back, and he hasn’t even come to say goodbye. She hardly heard Agnes go, she was too busy working herself up into a fine state of emotion in which she had killed off not only Edward but all other eligible men of her generation and had doomed herself to a life of lonely spinsterhood, when her mother’s voice cut across her thoughts.

  ‘The children are supposed to have made their own beds – I’ve changed the one that was – well – wet, but you’d better go and tidy the others. I don’t like to ask Gladys.’

  The day passed in various tedious household tasks punctuated by noisy and messy meals with the children, and at three o’clock Flora had sunk exhausted into a chair in the drawing room, too tired to do more than idly turn the pages of her Boots’ Library book, while Jane was frankly asleep in her chair. They were disturbed by the front door bell.

  ‘Go and answer it, Flora,’ said Jane, starting out of her sleep, ‘but don’t bring anybody in here.’

  Flora opened the door and there was Edward holding a rather roughly put together bunch of flowers in his hand.

  ‘Hallo,’ he said, manipulating the flowers and something in a large envelope.

  ‘Edward … ’

  ‘I’ve come to say goodbye. I brought you these flowers.’ He thrust them towards her and she saw that they had been hastily plucked from the garden and were not bought ones.

  Flora took the flowers. ‘Shall we go into the garden?’ she said, and led the way round the front of the house, round the side and towards the lawn. She glanced quickly back at the house and through the window saw Jane, looking agitated and dishevelled. She
hoped that her mother would be able to organize something in the way of tea. She tried to remember if there was a fresh cake.

  ‘You look surprised to see me,’ said Edward, quite forgetting those times in the past months when he had avoided Flora.

  He took her hand and they walked up to the end of the garden and a large patch of cabbages. The sight of them seemed to inspire him for he suddenly burst out, ‘I couldn’t go away without saying goodbye to you. It’s such a comfort to know one is leaving behind somebody who cares! I know we will think about each other a lot while I am away.’

  Flora laughed. ‘Oh, yes!’ she cried fervently. It was as gratifying as it was surprising, this sudden change on Edward’s part, especially when she remembered how obviously bored he had been with her in July. It was altogether just the situation she had always dreamed of between them, and yet, now that it was happening, she was conscious of a feeling of anti-climax. Surely he was not as tall as she had always thought him. He had a spot on his forehead and his manner was really rather affected.

  He was now taking something out of the envelope he had been holding.

  ‘I’ve had my photograph taken,’ he said importantly. ‘I thought you might like to have one. Actually, I think it’s quite good,’ he said casually, and Flora could feel him waiting for her opinion. She looked at the photograph.

  ‘Oh, Edward, it’s lovely!’ she cried. And indeed it was. The clever Mayfair photographer must have known just how Edward wanted to look, a handsome young man in uniform with a stern, rather sardonic expression on the face that was normally boyish and smiling. The cunning shadows emphasized good points and concealed the weak.

  ‘I expect you would like me to write something on it,’ he said, looking very pleased at her response. ‘Let’s go and sit on this seat.’

  Edward got out his pen and sat frowning with concentration as he wrote.

  ‘There,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid the inscription is rather simple – I couldn’t think of anything witty.’

  ‘To Flora with love from Edward,’ he had written in a large, rather childish hand.

  He screwed the top on to his fountain pen and put it back in his pocket. Now there would be somebody in England loving him, he thought, somebody minding if anything happened to him.

  ‘Let’s go in to tea,’ said Flora, who had seen Jane making signs from an upper window. They walked decorously back to the house, Flora carrying the flowers rather awkwardly and the photograph by a corner.

  In the drawing room there was a very respectable display of food and Jane was sitting bolt upright in an armchair. She had changed into her best garden party dress, a navy crêpe patterned with indeterminate flowers, and was even wearing her new court shoes which Flora knew were too tight for her.

  ‘Well, it is nice of you to come and see us,’ Jane said warmly.

  Flora murmured an excuse and disappeared. She returned shortly with her hair brushed, her nose powdered and a new, fiercely orchid mouth.

  ‘I do hope your mother is well,’ Jane was saying.

  ‘Oh, yes, thank you. She’s really very happy. She seems to enjoy having the house full of children,’ said Edward distastefully.

  ‘Edward has given me his photograph,’ said Flora.

  ‘Oh?’ said Jane in a high surprised tone. ‘That is nice. My husband will be so sorry to have missed you,’ she added, as if following up a natural train of thought. ‘But I hope you will be back home again before long.’

  Edward shrugged his shoulders dramatically. ‘One can’t say – one can’t make any plans for the future now … ’

  ‘Then live in the present and have another bun,’ said Jane, rather spoiling the effect. Edward took one. Indeed, he ate so much tea that Jane wondered if the poor boy got enough to eat. She could easily believe that Amanda Wraye might be a little vague about meals.

  After tea Flora and Edward walked to the gate. Edward would have liked to kiss her but he was a little doubtful about the orchid mouth, which did not look entirely indelible, so instead he kissed her hand, which Flora rather preferred, thinking it very charming and continental.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Lady Nollard looked up from the Obituaries in The Times.

  ‘Lavinia, Viscountess Hinge,’ she read aloud. ‘Of course she had been ill for a very long time so it was not unexpected.’

  Mandy looked up from her simple boiled egg. It was really splendid how economical they were now. Every time she came to breakfast and noted that the lavish dishes of kidneys and bacon and fish were no longer on the hotplate she felt quite a thrill of pleasure and satisfaction. It was only one of the many small but meaningful differences that the war had made in her life.

  ‘I see that Lord Calyx’s sister has died as well,’ said Lady Nollard with gloomy relish. Eleanor’s friends, thought Mandy, all had two things in common; they were all of aristocratic families and were all either dead or dying.

  ‘I think I shall give a party,’ said Mandy suddenly.

  ‘A party!’ Eleanor looked startled, as if she had suggested something disgraceful, or at least unsuitable.

  ‘Yes, people need cheering up – all of them: Miss Grote and her cousin, Canon Palfrey and his family – Flora is a sweet girl – that nice curate … ’

  Eleanor’s expression softened when she heard that the clergy were to be invited.

  ‘I’ll have it at the weekend when Lyall’s down here. People would find it more interesting and he will like telling people all about the war. We’ll have bridge and sell tickets for comforts for the troops.’

  Eleanor marvelled, as she often did, that her brilliant brother should have married someone as silly as Mandy.

  ‘Oh, I can hear the children,’ said Mandy, her face lighting up. ‘Eleanor, can you hear?’

  ‘I could hardly fail to,’ replied Eleanor with a shudder.

  ‘I love Saturday morning when they don’t go to school. I like to hear them laughing and singing about the house.’

  ‘I doubt whether you would be quite so enthusiastic if you had to look after them yourself,’ observed Eleanor drily.

  ‘But I do help to look after them. I take them for walks and give them their tea and bath them and put them to bed. And I always say goodnight to them. They are so sweet – it’s almost like having Edward a baby again. Better, really, because Nanny never let me do anything for him.’

  ‘All this evacuation will only make them dissatisfied with their own homes,’ said Eleanor severely. ‘There was certainly no obligation on your part to purchase clothing for them.’

  ‘It wasn’t an obligation!’ Mandy said. How could she convey to Eleanor that one of the happiest mornings of her life had been the one when she had taken the children shopping in the nearest large town. She had bought coats and shoes and trousers and dresses and berets and all the other clothes they needed, and even some that they didn’t need – just for fun.

  ‘Do you realize,’ she said, ‘that Jenny had never had a new coat before. Always something handed down or from a rummage sale! Imagine!’

  But, of course, Eleanor could not imagine and Mandy was only just beginning to do so. She sprang to her feet.

  ‘I must go and see the children,’ she said. ‘I promised to show them how to play Snakes and Ladders.’ She went out of the room humming what anyone but Lady Nollard would have recognized as a rather silly song about the Siegfried Line.

  Sir Lyall Wraye got out of the train, looking back into the first-class carriage to make sure he had all his belongings – his despatch case, his umbrella and his gas mask in a brown leatherette case. He wished now that he had telephoned for the car to meet him, as he seemed to have several things to carry and it was beginning to rain. It was dark, too, so that it was unlikely that anybody would see him setting a good example to his constituents – saving petrol and carrying his gas mask.

  As he passed along the High Street, he noticed several chinks of light through the curtains. Really, things down here were very slack.

&nb
sp; Oh, how marvellous! thought Connie Aspinall, hurrying along to the wool shop to get another ounce of wool for Agnes to finish her seaboot stockings. I shall meet him if he doesn’t cross the road.

  ‘Good evening, Sir Lyall,’ she called out, shouting a little in her anxiety not to be ignored. ‘It seems to have stopped raining, doesn’t it? I was afraid it was going to be a nasty evening.’

  Lyall switched on his politician’s smile, even though she couldn’t really see it in the darkness. The voice was familiar, though he couldn’t put a name to it. Doubtless one of the many admirable women who had helped at the last Conservative Tea.

  ‘It was raining in London,’ he said. ‘There was quite a heavy shower as I walked from my Club to the House this afternoon.’

  ‘Oh … ’ Connie was almost speechless at being given this glimpse of life at the highest level.

  ‘Everyone will be so glad that you will be back for the party,’ she ventured.

  ‘The party?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, yes, Lady Wraye has very kindly asked some of us to a party at Malories tomorrow evening. It is in aid of comforts for the soldiers,’ she explained, in case he thought it was simply a frivolous occasion.

  Suppressing a feeling of irritation with his wife, Lyall said smoothly that he hoped he would have the pleasure of seeing Miss Aspinall – he brought out her name triumphantly from the recesses of his memory – among the company.

  ‘Oh, yes!’ Connie breathed, hardly able to contain her rapture.

  He raised his hat and murmured good night, striding on in the darkness. She realized that she had turned round and, trotting along beside him, had come right out of her way. Now the wool shop would be shut. Whatever would Agnes say? But after the joy of her conversation with Sir Lyall she didn’t care. Agnes ought to have got it herself, she thought. I don’t care – I don’t give a damn! she told herself defiantly.

  A party, thought Lyall as he trudged up the drive; whatever was Mandy thinking of.

  ‘Why, Lyall, I didn’t expect you until tomorrow,’ said Mandy, who was standing aimlessly in the hall. ‘I hope there will be enough for dinner.’