Civil to Strangers

by Barbara Pym

After Agnes and Miss Moberley had gone, Harriet and I sat and drank a cup of tea and talked of old times. She gave me news of Adrian, my love of 1912, whom I had not seen for many years. He was now a very important man in the Government.

  ‘He is very well thought of,’ said Harriet. ‘If you had married him you would have had quite a position. Would you have liked to be a politician’s wife?’

  ‘I wanted to be his wife,’ I said. ‘But, of course, he wasn’t a politician then. And,’ I added, for I had always been truthful with Harriet, ‘he never asked me, you know.’

  ‘I feel you should have married,’ Harriet said, ‘although you make a very suitable spinster. You know, I sometimes envy you and your life.’ For a moment she looked serious then we both laughed, for the idea of Harriet spending her life in a quiet village did seem most unlikely.

  Harriet went up to bed and I went around the room, tidying up as I always do. I like to see that the doors are properly locked and that all lights are out, and never trust anyone but myself to do it. It has become doubly important since the war, especially as our Air Raid Warden is the grocer with whom I am not registered. As I went along the landing to the bathroom, I saw outside Harriet’s door the vase of delphiniums.

  The next morning was beautifully sunny and we were able to have breakfast on my little verandah.

  ‘I don’t know what you like to eat these days,’ I said to Harriet. ‘I always have some sort of cereal – though they’re becoming difficult to get.’

  Harriet picked up the packet of All-Bran.

  ‘“For constipation”,’ she read. ‘How very outspoken we are now!’

  I laughed and told her about Miss Moberley, who had pasted a strip of paper over the indelicate words when she had a young clergyman staying with her.

  ‘She’s asked us to tea tomorrow,’ I said. ‘I hope it won’t bore you to go.’

  ‘No, I’m here to be bored, if you see what I mean,’ said Harriet. ‘I want a complete change. What I also want is to get my hair done. Have you got a good hairdresser here?’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘we have a hairdresser. I don’t know how good she is because I only have mine cut and marcelled. Would you like to ring up? You might just get an appointment for this afternoon.’

  Harriet went to the telephone and came back saying recklessly, ‘I’m going to risk everything and have a perm! They said they could do me at two o’clock.’

  ‘Oh, I have to be at the canteen this afternoon.’

  ‘That’s all right – I don’t expect I’ll be back until about five or half past – it does take rather a time. I must take lots of things to read.’

  ‘I don’t know what is suitable reading for an afternoon at the hairdresser’s,’ I said after lunch when we were looking at books.

  ‘Not poetry,’ said Harriet, ‘though Swinburne might go well with the scented hothouse atmosphere. Something light and romantic is best. Or short stories.’

  I handed her Saroyan’s Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze in a Penguin edition. ‘You might like that,’ I said.

  She looked through it. ‘Yes, I might. It doesn’t look like your sort of book, Cassie.’

  ‘No,’ I agreed. ‘I was really attracted by the title. I bought it when I was shopping in Oxford one day. And I read it on the train coming back. And, after I had read the first story, I closed the book and sat clasping my shopping basket on my knee, saying to myself, “Oh dear Mr Saroyan – how well I understand you!”’

  Harriet looked at me quizzically.

  ‘But in some ways he is so like me,’ I said.

  We walked along to the hairdresser’s together, Harriet with her books and knitting in a despatch case and I with my blue canteen overall on my arm. When we got there Harriet stood for a moment looking somehow indecisive, unusually so for her. She regarded me earnestly as if she was about to say something, but then she hitched her despatch case more securely under her arm and said, ‘Don’t wait tea for me if you’re back first.’

  The canteen and club for soldiers was housed in our local assembly rooms, where in happier days dances and whist drives used to be held. The long room with its gold-framed mirrors at one end was now crowded with tables and chairs. But even when full of khaki, the rooms kept their old atmosphere, and there was a dim, greenish look about the air as if it was full of ghosts. Archdeacon Glossop, Rector 1892–1911, still looked down from the walls. Nobody had thought of removing his portrait; it was so large and cumbersome in its elaborate frame. I walked in, moving towards the mirrors. Whenever I did this I always expected to come upon my own reflection as it had been at my coming-out dance in 1912, with my hair piled up precariously and wearing the white flounced dress which Miss Dace had finished only an hour before the dance was due to begin, so that I sat waiting in my bedroom, my combinations tucked in all ready.

  I had hardly got inside the door before Agnes was calling to me.

  ‘Cassie, do come here. You’re the only person who can cut the bread thin enough for sandwiches. We’ve got some lovely tomatoes the vicar sent from his greenhouse, and, of course, there’s always lettuce.’

  I have never been able to understand about meals in the Army. The men always seemed to be ravenous at any time of day. We were soon having to cut more sandwiches and put out more trays of cakes. I was feeling particularly hot and flustered when I saw that Mr Ballance, our vicar, had come in and was moving among the men, most of whom looked rather sheepish, though a few stopped eating and grinned in a friendly way.

  ‘I have brought another helper with me,’ he said. ‘Mrs Nussbaum, an Austrian lady, unhappily exiled far from her native land.’

  We all smiled rather stickily and Miss Gatty, the little dressmaker, voiced the thoughts of us all when she said, ‘I’m afraid Mrs Nussbaum will find Distington very different from Vienna. Though, of course,’ she added, ‘we will do our best to make her feel at home.’

  ‘Naturally,’ said Agnes, who was rather annoyed that Miss Gatty had been so presumptuous as to speak first. ‘I am sure,’ she said graciously, ‘we will all be very interested to hear about Vienna.’

  ‘Cup of tea and two cakes, please, miss,’ said a voice at the counter, and as I went forward to serve him I saw that Agnes was somewhat officiously showing Mrs Nussbaum how to make sandwiches. Mr Ballance was hovering about with a rather pleased smile on his face and, as we were very busy, I suggested that he might refill some of the rapidly emptying trays with buns, but he was so slow that eventually I did it myself.

  When I went into the kitchen Agnes came up to me, carrying a lettuce.

  ‘I’m afraid Miss Gatty is offended,’ she said. ‘She’s gone home.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ I said, ‘too many people have turned up.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Gatty said that she could see she wasn’t wanted and she had a lot of work to do at home.’

  I sank into a chair. ‘It will be too late to run after her, I suppose. When I go to try on that skirt tomorrow I’ll have a word.’

  But as I was walking home I met Miss Gatty coming out of the draper’s so I stopped and made a remark about there being such a crowd of people in the kitchen that I had decided to come away.

  ‘Yes, Miss Swan, that was just what I felt.’ She looked up at me. ‘It was that Mrs Nussbaum. She pushed me out of the way when I wanted to get at the toaster. Well, I wasn’t going to stand for that. Not from a foreigner.’

  ‘I wonder if I could postpone the fitting of my skirt,’ I said hastily turning to more congenial topics. ‘I have a friend staying with me and I don’t need it very urgently.’

  Miss Gatty said that it would be quite all right, and I wondered if I dared tell her not to add the two inches to the hips which she always did, regardless of the client’s measurements. But I decided that as I had managed to smooth her down about the canteen I would be content with that. It would be so awful if she sniffed and suggested that I might perhaps prefer to get it made in Oxford – at Elliston and Cavell, pronounced with as much scorn as if
it had been as out of my sphere as Worth or Molyneux.

  It was Agatha’s day out so I started to prepare tea myself. I filled the kettle and cut some sandwiches (Harriet would need something fairly substantial to eat after her perm), singing, as I usually do when I am alone, ‘Immortal invisible, God only wise’. By the time I had finished it was nearly six. I covered the sandwiches with a plate and listened to the headlines of the news on the radio. Then I began to read the parish magazine, which had just come. I turned first of all to my favourite page of queries. Can a lay reader officiate at a christening? What is the origin of wafers at Holy Communion? Should cars be parked on consecrated ground? I became quite absorbed and came to with a start to find that it was half past six and Harriet had not yet returned.

  Four and a half hours, I thought. What tortures women endure to be beautiful. I decided to ring up and see if she had left, but the line was engaged, so I thought I would go out and meet her. I hardly admitted it to myself, but I was beginning to feel uneasy. I got to the hairdresser’s when they were just closing. One of the assistants was sweeping up and the air was hot with the smell of ammonia, perfume and singed hair. Harriet must still be in there, for one of the cubicles still had its green curtains drawn.

  I recognized the girl sweeping up. Her name was Gladys Price and she had, some years ago, been in my Sunday school class.

  ‘I’ve come to see if my friend Miss Jekyll has finished yet, Gladys,’ I said.

  ‘I think everybody’s gone,’ the girl said, looking around her.

  ‘She was having a permanent wave,’ I said. ‘She must still be here. She hasn’t come home and I didn’t meet her on the way.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Miss Swan, but there’s nobody here now. We haven’t done any perms this afternoon.’

  ‘But you must have done. She had an appointment for two o’clock.’ I felt that my voice was rising and I made an effort to be calm.

  ‘Her name is Miss Jekyll,’ I said firmly. ‘She is tall and rather stout, with dark hair going grey. She was wearing a striped silk dress and camel-coloured coat … ’

  ‘I’m sorry, Miss Swan,’ the girl repeated, staring at me curiously, ‘but there hasn’t been anyone like that here. We haven’t done any perms,’ she repeated as if this would convince me.

  ‘Harriet!’ I called. ‘Are you there?’ I stumbled about among the driers and the permanent waving machines until I reached the cubicle with the drawn curtains. I ripped them aside. I don’t really know what I expected to see, but the cubicle was empty. I stood there, leaning against the chair, my eyes fixed unseeing on the various objects – a bottle of shampoo, curling tongs on a little stove, a box of hairpins, two combs, a tattered copy of Vogue, a paperback book with an orange cover. A Penguin edition of The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze.

  I turned to the girl. ‘Now, Gladys,’ I said sternly, in my best Sunday school manner, ‘you’re quite sure you didn’t see Miss Jekyll?’

  ‘Oh, no, Miss Swan. I came on at half past two and she wasn’t here then. Marion might know. She was here before that, but she’s gone home now. You know her, Marion Phillips.’

  ‘I see,’ I said. ‘Is there a back way out of here?’

  ‘Oh, yes. It goes out into the yard at the back of Hughes’s.’

  I looked out of the doorway – just an ordinary, empty yard with long shadows across it and the glint of the evening sun.

  ‘Well, Gladys,’ I said smoothly, ‘I am so sorry to have kept you. I expect Miss Jekyll changed her mind and will be waiting for me at home.’

  As she turned to open the door for me I snatched up the book and, concealing it under my coat, I left the shop.

  When I got home the house was very still and silent. I took the kettle off the hob. It had almost boiled dry, but Harriet would not be wanting any tea now. I had no idea what I ought to do. Harriet obviously knew her own business. I couldn’t imagine her being taken anywhere against her will. She was a big woman and there were other people about. I wished I had some sensible, sympathetic person to advise me. That nice police sergeant who had given us our ARP lectures and had advised us to be ‘as prone as possible’ in a gas-filled room would have been a comfort. Perhaps I should telephone the police, but then, if Harriet turned up with a perfectly reasonable explanation, she might not be best pleased. She might, I thought, with a flash of indignation as I remembered the large smoked haddock I had bought for supper, at least have left me some sort of message. I went to the kitchen and absently began to eat the sandwiches I had cut for Harriet. After I had finished them I felt better able to cope, as Agnes used to say.

  I turned the pages of the Saroyan book, my only link with Harriet. To my surprise, I found at the bottom of one of the pages a scribbled note in Harriet’s writing. My first reaction was one of irritation. I cannot bear anyone writing in a book, even a bookstall paperback.

  ‘Cassie,’ it read, ‘keep quiet about this. Very important. Oxford – Sunday afternoon. Upstairs in small drawer.’ That was all. I was so excited at having found this that for some minutes I imagined that the whole thing was over: I shouldn’t have to ring up the police after all. Then I realized that there was still something for me to do and I went into the hall. As I was about to go up to Harriet’s room, Agatha returned from her day out. She had been to see her sister in Oxford.

  ‘Did you have a nice day?’ I asked her dutifully.

  ‘Oh, yes, Miss Swan, ever so nice. And what do you think, we saw Miss Jekyll on Oxford station. I was surprised. I said to my sister, Freda, I said, there’s Miss Jekyll. She’s been staying with us and Miss Swan didn’t say anything about her going. Only just come she has.’

  ‘What time was this?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, it must have been about half past three, because I had just said to Freda that I could do with a nice cup of tea and what about going to Boffin’s and she said Boffin’s isn’t there any more, so we had to go to Lyons.’

  ‘Miss Jekyll was called away suddenly,’ I explained, ‘something to do with her job.’

  ‘Jobs!’ Agatha sniffed. ‘Freda’s youngest is going to be a bus conductress if you please!’ She went into the kitchen shaking her head.

  I ran upstairs and into Harriet’s room. There was only one small drawer in the dressing table. I opened it and found, under some handkerchiefs, a few letters and a long foolscap envelope. One of the letters was from me, inviting Harriet to stay, another was a bill for books from Blackwell’s. The third read as follows:

  Dear Miss Jekyll,

  Any Sunday afternoon in term-time. We shall be so pleased to see you. We have tea-parties for undergraduates and anyone else who likes to come. Do drop in. Mark is always here.

  Yours in haste,

  Edith Kennicot

  The address, embossed in heavy Gothic letters, was Gladstone Lodge, Banbury Road, Oxford.

  That must be it, I thought. I felt relieved. I could certainly cope with a North Oxford tea-party. Maybe there I would find out what I could do to help Harriet.

  As an afterthought, I opened the envelope. It contained several sheets of thin paper typewritten in a strange language which I imagined might be Russian. I supposed it must be important and I hoped I would not have to do anything about it.

  The next day was Saturday and I decided to go up to Oxford a day early and stay overnight with my friend Jessie Cantripp, who was a don at one of the women’s colleges. I spent the morning packing a few things and letting it be known that Harriet had been recalled to London and that I was going away for the weekend. Fortunately I managed to find someone to take over my canteen duties, though Agnes was rather scornful about people who did not take their responsibilities seriously in wartime.

  I was a little worried about what to do with the Russian papers. I felt I ought to take them with me and yet I did not feel, somehow, that they would be really safe in my handbag. My glance fell upon a photograph of Bishop Moberley, which he had once given to us and which had to be displayed in a prominent position whene
ver his sister came to supper. It was not large and it was easy to remove the back, insert the papers between the photograph and the backing and reassemble it. It would look like a photograph of my father, for certainly nobody could have been expected to have loved this thin, sheep-faced clergyman unless he was a relation.

  When I arrived at St Margaret’s Jessie seemed glad to see me and fortunately vague about my reasons for wanting to stay with her. We made general conversation about Oxford in wartime and I commented on the curious dress of the Slade students who had been evacuated there, and the fact that half the College lawn had been dug up and planted with potatoes. I was glad to go to my room, one of the small guest rooms overlooking the gardens and the Chapel, a corrugated iron building rather like a garage.

  I always like Oxford on a Sunday morning. The first church bells begin early and there are so many places of worship to choose from. I always find the University sermon rather heavy going and I was relieved when Jessie suggested that we should visit a North Oxford church.

  ‘Mr Unthank doesn’t even preach about the war,’ Jessie said. ‘His wife doesn’t let him.’

  The church was a notable example of Oxford’s Gothic revival, with variegated brickwork and an interior of yellowish-brown woodwork and bright stained glass. I felt that there was an atmosphere of devotion, accumulated over long years. The outside world with all its violent happenings seemed far away. The congregation consisted mostly of elderly people and the sermon was, as Jessie had prophesied, a pleasant change from some of the fierce political perorations I have heard from Mr Ballance’s pulpit.

  After lunch, I sat in the College garden in the sunshine and must have fallen into a doze, for I woke with a sudden feeling of dismay to find that it was half past three.

  ‘I’ll be back for supper,’ I said to Jessie and hurried to catch the bus that went up the Banbury Road.

  Gladstone Lodge was also Victorian Gothic, with a small tower and slit windows. The front garden was overgrown with laurels and other sooty shrubs and the whole place seemed dark and uninviting. I stood with my hand on the gate when I heard a voice behind me say, ‘Hello, are you going in too?’