Civil to Strangers

by Barbara Pym

  I regained consciousness to hear familiar words.

  ‘You’ve had a nasty turn … ’ But the voice was the reassuring one of Nurse Dallow and all around me were friendly faces: Lady Harringey, Nurse Dallow, Sir Gervase and hovering anxiously in the background, Julian and his sister Mildred.

  ‘Well, you gave us quite a fright, going off like that!’ Sir Gervase said and Lady Harringey passed a glass of water to Nurse Dallow who held it to my lips.

  ‘Poor thing,’ she said, ‘you must be quite worn out, you really need a good night’s rest. Better come back with me.’

  ‘We can easily have a bed made up here,’ said Lady Harringey helpfully.

  ‘We reserved you a room at the Lamb,’ Julian said. ‘We thought you might be coming back.’

  Everyone looked at me, waiting for me to speak, but it was Nurse Dallow who broke the silence.

  ‘Well, just as you like, dear,’ she said. ‘I know Lucy will have made up a bed for you, but that doesn’t matter …’

  It was clear to me where my duty lay. Nurse Dallow showed all the signs of a person about to take umbrage. It was the same old story – Miss Gatty being pushed away from the toaster, Nurse Dallow’s bed not being good enough to receive Cassandra Swan’s weary body.

  ‘Of course I am going with Nurse Dallow,’ I said. ‘But thank you very much for your kind offer, Lady Harringey. I feel I’ve given you enough trouble as it is.’

  ‘Oh, no trouble,’ said Sir Gervase. ‘You’ve done an excellent job of work. I shall commend you to Grampian when I see him.’

  ‘Don’t do that,’ I said. ‘But do, please, do something about that man I told you about.’

  ‘Kennicot,’ said Sir Gervase. ‘I’ll make a note of it.’

  I turned away discouraged and followed Nurse Dallow into the hall.

  ‘I have ordered the car to take you back,’ said Lady Harringey. ‘After all it is practically war-work, so I think we are justified in using the petrol. I will send Frost down with your bicycle in the morning.’

  We all got into the Daimler, Nurse Dallow ostentatiously getting into the front with the chauffeur while I sat in the back with Julian and his sister. The events of the evening seemed to have reduced them to temporary silence. As we progressed regally down the drive, Nurse Dallow suddenly gave a cry.

  ‘Look! It’s him, in those bushes!’

  We all twisted round, but could see nothing in the darkness.

  ‘Who?’ I asked, knowing in my heart that she could only mean Mark Kennicot.

  ‘That dreadful man who came after you! But never mind, dear,’ she added soothingly. ‘Don’t worry, it’s all over now.’

  I supposed it was. But the thought of Mark Kennicot prowling around the house and the casual way that Sir Gervase had laid the papers to one side aroused my apprehensions once again. But that was Grampian’s business, or Sir Gervase’s; nothing to do with me. I leaned back comfortably and listened to Julian’s amusing conversation, thinking how nice it would be to be back home again, when suddenly I sat bolt upright, jerking poor Mildred to one side and startling her considerably.

  ‘It’s Harriet!’ I cried. ‘I still haven’t found her!’

  And then I had to explain who Harriet was and how she had led me into this adventure and how worried I was about her disappearance.

  ‘Oh, I expect she’ll turn up, dear,’ said Nurse Dallow, in that flat, reassuring voice which must have soothed so many patients.

  Miss Boulding shuddered. ‘Poor soul, I do hope she is not undergoing any unpleasant experiences.’

  ‘Oh, come, Mildred,’ said her brother, ‘I imagine she is perfectly capable of taking care of herself. My dear Cassandra, you have done everything possible. You must just let things take their course.’

  The car drew up at the little wool shop and Julian helped me out of the car. How kind everyone was, I thought. And he had called me Cassandra too. He was using my name again.

  ‘Goodnight, Cassandra. I do hope you sleep well. Perhaps you will come round to the Lamb and see us tomorrow morning. Or perhaps we will call on you. It would be a pity to lose touch.’

  Nurse Dallow hurried me into the house and Lucy soon had the kettle boiling. She was already prepared for bed and wore a blue ripple cloth dressing gown and her hair down in a plait.

  The sight of her nightwear reminded me that my luggage was by now at the Lamb, but Nurse Dallow produced a blue cotton nightgown with a sprinkling of hand-sewn embroidery at the neck.

  ‘Lucy’s made up a bed for you in my room, dear,’ she said, ‘I thought it would be better for you to have company.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said gratefully, ‘I shall be glad to get to bed.’

  I got quickly into bed and Nurse Dallow came in, dressed in a pink wool dressing gown, but still looking somehow as if she was in uniform. She carried a glass of water and a parish magazine.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ll feel much like reading, though,’ she said.

  I lay down and closed my eyes. I was so very tired but it did not seem that I could ever sleep with so much to think about. I ran through Eaton Square, I was face to face with Adrian again, I talked to the Bouldings on Paddington station, I had lunch at the Ritz with Hugh, I walked along a dusty lane with tall grasses and vetch … and dark tunnels of rhododendrons … and I rode on a bicycle and then I rode a tandem … and there was a walk between pillars to a big house and the noise of dogs barking behind a closed door. They barked and they howled and wailed in a most frightening manner, going up and down, so that I woke in a fright and called out.

  ‘It’s all right,’ came the reassuring voice. ‘What a pity it woke you up. It’s only the siren.’

  ‘What time is it?’ I asked, struggling to sit up.

  ‘Half past one. They would come tonight. We haven’t had a raid for over a week. Lucy and I have got to go to the First Aid Post,’ she continued. ‘I don’t know if you would rather come with us or stay here.’

  ‘Oh, do let me come,’ I said. ‘I’ll only be a few moments getting ready.’ I was soon ready in my Red Cross uniform as was Nurse Dallow, who also wore a large tin hat which wobbled a bit on her head.

  ‘I’ve got the food, May,’ said Lucy, coming into the room. She too was wearing a tin hat and, rather surprisingly, navy slacks. ‘But I’m not putting that block of chocolate in. You know what Miss Gurney’s like. Never brings anything of her own and expects us to provide things for her.’

  We went out into the street. It was a beautiful night, except for the sinister purr of enemy planes up among the stars.

  ‘I expect it’s Merseyside they’re after,’ said Lucy. ‘It’s terrible the damage. They say there’s nothing left of Church Street … ’

  ‘Liverpool, oh, it’s dreadful,’ said a breathy female voice behind us.

  ‘Oh, Miss Gurney, I’ve got that wool for you,’ said Lucy. ‘I brought it along with me so you can start it tonight.’

  ‘Oh, thank you, Miss Dallow. I will knit if I can … it may be a help to me. One can do so little … ’

  ‘She never does anything,’ said Lucy in an aside to me. ‘Never offers to make tea or cut sandwiches. Thinks herself above things like that.’

  By this time we had reached the First Aid Post, which was in a sort of annexe to the hospital where I had been once already today. It was surrounded by sandbags, which seemed to be filled with anything but sand, to judge by the dark, rich earth that was bursting out of many of them. Nurse Dallow opened the door into a hall which had two or three doors leading out of it. These smaller rooms were brightly lit and hazy with cigarette smoke and there was an air of cheerfulness and bustle. Everyone seemed to be laughing and talking as they went about their tasks. Women, in voluminous blue cotton overalls with ARP embroidered on the bosom in scarlet letters, hurried to and fro carrying large bottles and boxes of dressings. Men in navy blue boiler suits were filling water bottles and fetching blankets. A stout, good-looking woman nursed a long sandwich loaf in her arms and anot
her followed her with a packet of margarine and two jars of potted meat.

  We went through a door labelled Women’s Treatment Room. There was a long scrubbed table covered with dressings and bottles and in one corner a conglomeration of crutches, wire mattresses, metal splints and other objects which I could not identify. It did not seem as if there would be much room for casualties.

  ‘Now, dear,’ said Nurse Dallow, ‘make yourself comfortable.’ And she handed me a couple of pillows in rather dirty white jaconet covers. Several people came into the room and made up makeshift beds – Miss Gurney, engaging in a complicated piece of knitting, a Mr Mariner and a Mr Long, both very jolly and full of jokes. After a while we heard the hissing of a Primus stove and smelt hot paraffin fumes.

  ‘Ah, good,’ said Mr Mariner, ‘that means tea.’

  Someone appeared carrying a tray with mugs of tea and thick triangles of bread spread with margarine and fish paste.

  When we had finished eating we fell into a kind of lethargy. Miss Gurney leaned her head uncomfortably against a wall with an expression of martyrdom on her face and closed her eyes. Nurse Dallow and her sister sat bolt upright knitting and I wound some wool for Lucy. From the other rooms we could hear the hum of voices and the occasional laugh or a cry of ‘Double four spades’ or ‘Having no hearts, partner’. But after a time there was almost complete silence so that when a plane came over everyone heard it and sat up. ‘That’s one of ours,’ said Nurse Dallow triumphantly. ‘It sounds as if it’s chasing a Jerry.’

  She had hardly finished speaking when the whole place seemed to shake and the glass rattled. Mr Mariner sat up and said, ‘That was a near one!’

  Everyone seemed to wake up now. Excited voices could be heard and great activity was going on in the hall.

  ‘It fell somewhere near Cuckoo Grange … there may be casualties … ’ The stout woman burst into the room. ‘The ambulance people have gone now.’

  ‘Everything ready in here?’ enquired a voice, which I recognized as belonging to one of the bridge players.

  ‘Doctor Finn,’ said Nurse Dallow, ‘I do wish you would ask the authorities for more pillows. These are disgraceful!’

  ‘Excuse me, Nurse,’ said the doctor backing out of the room, ‘I think I’m wanted.’

  ‘You see – it’s always the same. Impossible to get anything.’

  ‘You should ask Mrs Moat,’ said Miss Gurney.

  There was a grim silence.

  Nurse Dallow sniffed. ‘I shan’t ask Mrs Moat for anything,’ she said shortly. ‘After the way she treated me over that oilcloth.’

  There was a great bustle outside and a man burst in to say that a casualty was being brought into the Men’s Treatment Room. We looked out into the entrance hall, trying not to appear curious, but all we could see was a muffled form on a stretcher. Nurse Dallow went out of the room with the light of battle in her eye.

  ‘He’s pretty badly hurt, unconscious,’ somebody said.

  ‘They ought to have taken him straight to the hospital if he’s really badly hurt,’ said Lucy. ‘Oh, here’s May, she’ll be able to tell us.’

  ‘Miss Swan, dear,’ she said, sitting down beside me. ‘It’s someone we know.’

  My heart leapt and began to beat sickeningly.

  ‘It’s that man,’ said Nurse Dallow, ‘you know … ’

  ‘I know,’ I said, feeling shamefully relieved. ‘Mark Kennicot.’

  ‘Strange it should be him. It seems rather like vengeance, doesn’t it?’ said Lucy.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said rather miserably, ‘it’s certainly very strange. I wonder how it happened.’

  ‘From what I hear, a bomb fell on Cuckoo Grange – that’s a house near here. It’s been empty but we heard that strangers had rented it. It must have been him. And he was outside when the bomb fell in the grounds.’

  ‘What was he doing outside at half past two in the morning?’ Lucy demanded.

  I could imagine only too well what he might have been doing.

  ‘Was anyone else hurt?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, they’re bringing someone in – a lady,’ said Nurse Dallow.

  ‘Oh, they’ll be bringing her in here,’ cried Miss Gurney. ‘We must be ready.’

  Suddenly, from outside the door I heard a firm voice protesting, ‘This is ridiculous. I can walk perfectly well.’

  I flung the door open and there, on a stretcher, sitting up and waving her arms in protest, was my dear Harriet.

  I don’t suppose Nurse Dallow and Lucy ever knew a more triumphant moment than the one in which, under the eyes of everyone, they took me and Harriet away to the little wool shop. We were driven in state in the ambulance.

  ‘Mrs Moat wanted to put you up,’ said Nurse Dallow jubilantly, ‘when she found out who you were!’

  ‘But I’m not a celebrity,’ protested Harriet. ‘Cassie is the heroine of this story. And don’t say, Oh, I did nothing,’ she warned me, ‘because I shan’t believe you. We’ll have the whole story in the morning.’ And with that she dismissed us all to our beds – Lucy was going to sleep on the sofa and give Harriet her bed – like a queen finishing an audience.

  In the morning, over breakfast, I asked Harriet the one question that had been nagging away at me from the beginning.

  ‘Why did you disappear from the hairdresser’s like that?’

  ‘Because I saw someone coming in who had been following me. I caught a glimpse of her in the mirror and slipped out the back way.’

  ‘Frau Nussbaum!’ I exclaimed. ‘There are so many things I don’t understand.’

  ‘God moves in a mysterious way,’ said Harriet, ‘and the Foreign Office moves even more mysteriously, when it does move!’

  ‘The Foreign Office!’ breathed Lucy. ‘And now That Man is very badly injured, so he won’t cause any more trouble.’

  ‘What about Edith Kennicot?’ I asked Harriet. ‘Will they pick her up? I must say Sir Gervase was very casual about it all – I mean, he couldn’t know that Mark Kennicot would be immobilized by a bomb. I expect he will say that capturing Edith Kennicot and the others is Grampian’s affair!’

  ‘Oh, Grampian!’ Harriet laughed. ‘He will be furious when he hears that Kennicot was struck down on Sir Gervase’s doorstep, so to speak.’

  I smiled. It seemed that some form of umbrage could be taken even in the higher reaches of Whitehall.

  ‘What day is it?’ I asked suddenly. ‘So much seems to have happened that I’ve lost track.’

  ‘It’s Wednesday,’ said Nurse Dallow vigorously. ‘And my clinic is due to open in half an hour.’

  ‘And I must go down into the shop, I suppose,’ said Lucy reluctantly.

  ‘And Cassie and I must go home,’ said Harriet. ‘I hope,’ she said, turning to me, ‘that it will be all right for me to finish my holiday with you.’

  ‘Oh, Harriet, of course! I’m so glad you don’t have to go back straight away. It would have been so flat just to have gone home on my own!’

  We said goodbye to the Dallows with repeated thanks for their kindness. There seemed no way we could repay them. Money was obviously out of the question. In any case I had very little left and Harriet, after all she had been through, had been hardly able to carry her handbag with her. But we felt sure that the excitement of the adventure they had experienced with us would probably be reward enough in itself.

  We left Nurse Dallow on her way to the clinic where she would be weighing babies and distributing rose hip syrup with the calm efficiency for which I had been so grateful. Our last glimpse of Lucy was of her attempting to pile up unwieldy skeins of oiled wool and balance on them a notice saying NO COUPONS.

  We called in at the Lamb and I left cordial messages for the Bouldings who were with Sir Gervase and Lady Harringey, presumably giving the comfort which they had been unable to give the day before. I hoped I might see them again. Julian had had a very amusing turn of phrase and was quite unlike any other clergyman I had ever met. I hoped, too, that I mig
ht see Hugh again, although he would probably soon be too busy. Nevertheless it seemed that I had made several new friends in the course of my travels.

  But I was not to be allowed to forget my old friends, for when we reached home at last, there was Agnes on the doorstep.

  ‘Cassandra,’ she said sternly, ‘we expected you back on Monday. It was very awkward at the canteen. Miss Brewer did the money and you know how flustered she gets. So now we are five and sixpence out!’

  Short Stories

  Note on the Text

  ‘So Some Tempestuous Morn’ (probably written in the early 1950s) and ‘The Christmas Visit’ (1977) are both examples of the way Barbara ‘salvaged’ characters from her unpublished novels and used them in short stories. The first takes Anthea, Miss Morrow and Miss Doggett from Crampton Hodnet and presents them in slightly different circumstances, though their characters remain the same. The Aingers and Faustina were taken from An Unsuitable Attachment when Barbara was asked to write a Christmas story for the Church Times .This commission gave her great pleasure since she enjoyed quoting items from this publication in her novels. It was, in fact, a mutual admiration, since the Church Times ,which did not normally review novels, made an exception for hers.

  ‘Goodbye Balkan Capital’ was written in 1941, inspired by a news item. From her diary: ‘Heard on the six o’clock news that Mr Ronald Campbell and the staff of the Belgrade Legation are nowhere to be found! I wonder if J. is with them?’

  23rd April. After tea began writing a story about the Balkans and me (perhaps) which I thought might do for Penguin New Writing.

  25th April. I finished the first draft of a short story Goodbye Balkan Capital .23rd May. Finished my grey suit also the typing of Goodbye Balkan Capital.

  July 4th. Three weeks have passed and I have heard nothing. Shall I ever succeed – I begin to doubt and now is a hopeless time to try … It seems that the best stories nowadays are more atmospheric than anything else – incomplete rather than rounded off – anyway they mustn’t be too long as my things generally are.