Civil to Strangers

by Barbara Pym

  ‘She must be quite old?’ Daisy asked, thinking that even Sophia could hardly go to the length of having the cat buried in the churchyard.

  ‘Yes, sixteen, which is over a hundred in animal terms. So different from a young girl of that age!’

  ‘We both like this view,’ Mark said. The old tombstones, some carved with cherubs and skulls, with their worn lettering impossible to decipher, gave him a feeling of timelessness – life passing, going on and then renewing itself. One would hardly be surprised in this place and at this time to discern among the stones a figure from the past – the seventeenth century would have been Mark’s choice – George Herbert, his favourite poet; Henry King, poet and Bishop; Anthony à Wood, crabbed antiquarian … How many Bishops now were also poets?

  It seemed ridiculous, impossible, of course, but there was a figure moving among the tombstones, stumbling a little, as if impeded by the uneven ground, walking over the older unmarked graves in the dark. But there could hardly be anybody there now, unless it was vandals or even practitioners of black magic … Mark was instantly on the alert. He opened the kitchen window and called out in a stern voice, ‘What are you doing there? You know this is consecrated ground?’

  ‘Of course I know,’ came a querulous educated voice. ‘I’m trying to find the vicarage – we were told this was a short cut.’

  Mark now realized that the figure was not alone. Behind him hovered what looked very much like a bear, on closer view a tall woman in a dark bushy coat. Of course, it was Edmund and Isabel.

  ‘We left the car round by the church,’ said the woman. ‘Edmund wanted to inspect the graves.’

  In the lighted kitchen Mark and Edmund, the old college friends, greeted each other. Mark saw that Edmund was still a handsome man, who had kept both his hair and his figure. He was certainly better-preserved than Mark who, although not fat, had a worn look about him, with thinning hair and an anxious expression – distinguished remains rather than conventional good looks. Isabel was large and expensively dressed, but their undignified entrance through the churchyard had put them at something of a disadvantage. A brilliant career, Mark thought, but now a rather ridiculous pair. He despised himself for feeling slightly pleased.

  The midnight service went well. There was a large congregation and afterwards they all had soup and sandwiches in the vicarage kitchen. It was early morning before they got to bed. Mark had to go off at seven to take the first service of Christmas Day at the most remote of his three churches where he could expect no more than a handful of communicants.

  In her room Daisy lay uneasily trying to get to sleep. It was not a good idea to leave one’s own bed in winter, especially at Christmas, but Sophia’s invitation had been so pressing that she had not liked to refuse it. She and Mark must miss their London parish and it was the least she could do to attempt to cheer them at this time. But whose need was greater, theirs or Father Spode’s?

  In the other spare room Edmund and Isabel talked in low voices. He had been dismayed at how Mark had aged and how poorly he and Sophia were living in this gaunt country vicarage, with that dreadful cat getting into everything. How did they endure that? Isabel wondered. She hadn’t really wanted to come to Edmund’s old friend at Christmas and regretted that unfortunate approach through the churchyard, another of Edmund’s misguided ideas. Still, it was the least they could do, and she had unpacked her ruby-red velvet dress to wear for the festivities.

  A splendid dress, Sophia thought, as she contemplated Isabel, positively upholstered in the ruby velvet, like some magnificent armchair. Daisy too was dressed – one could quite appropriately even say ‘clad’ – in a garment of flowered brocade, almost ecclesiastical in design, which looked as if it might have been material left over from an altar frontal she had been making for Father Spode. Sophia herself felt altogether inadequate in her dark flowered cotton, but it was the only long dress she had. How good it was to sit here, not in the kitchen for once, preparing to enjoy their Christmas dinner, Mark able to relax after the labours of the day, Faustina safe in her basket, anticipating titbits from the bird!

  ‘Which church is your favourite of the three?’ Edmund asked. He did not yet know which one was associated with his ancestors so was unprejudiced.

  Mark smiled. ‘I can’t have a favourite. It would be too obvious to choose St Mary’s, with just a handful of farming folk gathered together in the early morning; or St Luke’s, which is the best architecturally; or even All Saints’, with its larger congregations and superior singing – I like them all in their different ways.’ But, he reflected, he was not required to pick out his favourite people among the three congregations – that might well be another matter.

  Boxing Day, St Stephen, of course. ‘Double of 2nd Class with Simple Octave’, Daisy read from her missal, but she feared there would be no service here. It would be good to be back in London again with Father Spode, and she couldn’t help worrying about him. The services would have been splendid, but it was so cold in the clergy house, even with the paraffin stove in his study, and he was so ineffectual domestically that one did sometimes wonder if the celibacy of the clergy was altogether a good arrangement, and nowadays, with even Roman priests marrying, there was no knowing …

  ‘Where in London do you live?’ Isabel was asking, as she and Daisy took a Boxing Day walk over the sodden fields.

  ‘West Hampstead,’ Daisy told her.

  ‘Ah, West Hampstead, I don’t think I’ve ever … ’ Isabel was at a loss. She had heard of Finchley Road, could even picture it, but anything the other side of it was beyond her imagining. Almost Kilburn, that would be? ‘We have a flat near Victoria Station when we’re in London,’ she declared, suddenly remembering, as she glanced at the leafless trees, that comforting glimpse of Westminster Cathedral from her sitting-room windows. She was not a great lover of the country, but Edmund had insisted. This desire to revisit the homeland of his ancestors, ‘roots’, you might call it, almost like that television series …

  ‘Victoria Station,’ Daisy repeated. ‘That must be convenient.’

  ‘Yes, in the days when we used to go on the Golden Arrow, but now of course one flies everywhere.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Daisy, who had never been in an aeroplane.

  They walked on in silence for a while. ‘Are you fond of cats?’ Isabel asked at last.

  ‘I must confess I’m really more of a dog person,’ said Daisy. Her small flat had never been soiled, fouled or besmirched by any kind of animal, but there was something pleasing about the idea of a dog. ‘Do you like cats?’

  ‘No, I do not. If I had known – but how could one? I think I’m allergic to them. I’m the sort of person who knows when there’s a cat in the room, even if I can’t see it.’

  This seemed a matter for congratulation and Daisy nodded sympathetically in the cold air. ‘That cat is always in the kitchen, it seems to sleep there, and I do wonder if its hairs don’t get into things. You’ll be going back to London tomorrow, will you?’

  ‘Yes, we have to get back. You too, I imagine?’

  ‘Yes, I must. Though I’ve retired now and live alone I have a lot of things to do.’ And Father Spode will need me, she thought confidently. ‘The Aingers are very kind and of course Christmas in the country is delightful … ’

  Daisy sounded so very doubtful that there was no need for Isabel to comment further.

  ‘We can go back over the churchyard – a short cut,’ said Mark, smiling. ‘Remember – the way you surprised us on Christmas Eve? I didn’t recognize you at first – for one wild moment I thought it was the Bishop – you’re not unlike him, you know – about the same height, and he also has a good head of hair … ’ Mark felt he was talking almost excessively, chattering in a way he normally despised, but in this instance conversation of any kind seemed better than silence. As long as he avoided the subject of the parish registers and that shouldn’t be difficult. Such a disappointment and a surprise – Edmund’s ancestors not even gentlemen
! And he had always understood that they had been connected with the manor house. Well, in a sense, they might have been, as gardeners or agricultural labourers; they had probably tilled the soil in some way, and even if it wasn’t quite what Edmund had expected, what could be nobler than that?

  ‘I think we shall have to start back this afternoon,’ Edmund said, as they sat at lunch. What could it possibly be but cold turkey, with that cat eating all the best bits, crouched over what looked like a Crown Derby saucer laid on an old copy of the Church Times?

  ‘In that case, I wonder … ’ Daisy began.

  ‘We could perhaps give you a lift back to town,’ Isabel suggested, an offer that was taken up with quiet satisfaction.

  ‘Well, it would certainly be more comfortable for you, Daisy,’ said Sophia, her heart bounding with most unsuitable joy, ‘though of course you can stay here as long as you like. But I know what a busy person you are … ’ All that fussing over Father Spode, she said to herself.

  It was dusk when they finally packed themselves into the car, Edmund and Isabel in the front and Daisy in the back with some of the suitcases. As they drew nearer to London, passing through suburban roads with lighted Christmas trees in the uncurtained windows, their stilted conversation began to flow more easily.

  ‘You found what you wanted in the church registers?’ Daisy asked.

  ‘Oh, yes – some interesting facts came to light. I’ve often thought I’d like to have been a country parson,’ Edmund said. ‘A worthwhile job, that, meeting country people – the best type, after all.’

  ‘And having three churches and a choice of vicarages,’ said Isabel.

  ‘I wonder if they made a wise choice,’ said Daisy, ‘that kitchen looking over the churchyard, and that cat playing among the gravestones.’

  ‘That cat,’ said Isabel feelingly.

  The three did not know each other well enough to lapse into open disloyalty to their host and hostess, so they sat in a comfortable silence until the time came to drop Daisy at her flat. They had not taken to her sufficiently to suggest keeping in touch, but if they ever did chance to meet again, they would have quite a lot in common.

  ‘I suppose it was a good idea,’ Mark said doubtfully, ‘but I can’t help feeling there might have been other more suitable people we could have asked.’

  Faustina slept in her basket, replete with cold turkey, and Sophia was beginning to wonder about supper. ‘Oh, Daisy is a dear,’ she said firmly, ‘and Edmund and Isabel are probably dears too when you get to know them better.’

  Of course Mark was right, they were not the kind of people she had imagined inviting for Christmas, not what one thought of as deprived or ‘disadvantaged’, even with the revelation about Edmund’s ancestors, but perhaps it was selfish to expect people to be at the receiving end of a benefit, as if wanting to feel good oneself, surely not the true spirit of Christmas at all.

  ‘Boiled eggs and coffee and more Christmas cake? Will that do for supper?’ she suggested. The cake had been cut into on Christmas Day so that King Lear now seemed to be standing on the edge of a precipice.

  ‘I really will get some new decorations for the cake next year,’ Sophia said.

  Across a Crowded Room

  The hall was candlelit, as might have been expected on the occasion of this anniversary dinner, this ‘feast’, held every year in this particular Oxford college, to commemorate the seventeenth-century worthy who had left his bones in the college chapel. The candles, the portraits of past Rectors and benefactors high up on the walls, and then the Latin grace (how much had she remembered of her Latin?), rendered by the fresh young voices of the singers in the gallery, contrasted with the scene below, which was not, on the whole, fresh and young.

  She had been invited as a guest, one of a scattering of five or six women among eighty or so men. It was certainly an occasion, the kind of thing that might have demanded a new dress had not her sense told her that something dark and unobtrusive would be the most appropriate wear for a woman of her age in such a setting. So she was in her old black with a gauzy Indian stole round her shoulders, the whole thing blending in with her surroundings.

  Avocado pears, cut up and dressed in some special way, was the first course awaiting them, with a glass of dry sherry. On her left was the man whose guest she was, ‘dear old George’, kind and bumbling, who had thought she might like an evening out, given her rather dull life in the country. And of course she was an Oxford graduate, might even have become a person of distinction had her life taken a different direction. But George, having invited her, needn’t bother to make much conversation with her, but would be talking shop – he was a professor of history – to the man sitting on his other side. She would have to concentrate on the person on her right, a youngish fair-haired American (perhaps not quite so young as he appeared at first sight), a professor of English Literature at a small respectable New England college. She had read English too, all those years ago, so perhaps as the evening progressed they might find that they had something in common.

  The avocado was replaced by a clear dark soup; perhaps it might even be turtle, but, not wanting to put her glasses on, she had not studied the menu.

  ‘Turtle soup,’ said the gnat-like voice of her American neighbour. ‘How very English that seems! The Lord Mayor’s Banquet and that kind of thing.’

  ‘Yes, one doesn’t have it every day,’ she agreed.

  ‘I’m lucky to be sitting by one of the few ladies here tonight,’ he went on.

  She glanced at him in surprise. It was so very much a mechanical compliment from one who, as was evident from his whole demeanour, was interested only in women of his mother’s generation. But of course she was of his mother’s generation and long past the age when she might have expected a real compliment.

  ‘Do you know many people here tonight?’ she asked formally.

  ‘A few. I’m a sort of visiting professor; you know the kind of thing.’

  ‘I believe your subject is English Literature?’

  ‘Oh, have people talked about me? Have I been singled out?’

  ‘Well, my friend who invited me tonight did tell me something about you.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  She was hardly a match for his eager enquiry, for George hadn’t said all that much, only that her neighbour would be an American who was here doing something connected with Eng. Lit., he wasn’t sure what.

  ‘That I was an American called Ned and that my subject was Keats?’ He took advantage of her hesitation to fill in the gap.

  ‘Keats,’ she repeated, hoping she could do something with that. Keats, the young girl’s poet, as she had read somewhere, but perhaps hardly appropriate as a subject of conversation here. She could only think of the ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, ‘Isabella’ (or ‘The Pot of Basil’?), and a poem about a dove which seemed totally unsuitable. But then she remembered Keats’s house in Hampstead and a visit there, one day long ago with somebody she had been in love with (or fancied she had been in love with). ‘Of course you must have been to Keats’s house,’ she said. ‘Very charming and sad, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, I remember the first time I went – 1968 or ’69 it must have been – a wet day and certain tensions in the air.’ He smiled.

  It was difficult to do much with that, she felt, the kind of remark accompanied by an intimate smile that hinted at things she couldn’t possibly know about. She could hardly ask him what the ‘tensions’ had been. ‘We did have some wet summers in the late sixties,’ she ventured. ‘When I went there, it was spring and the blossom was out.’ In April, the cruellest month, immortalized by a great American poet …

  ‘How very suitable,’ he said, in a mocking tone that made her wish she hadn’t said it, spring and blossom being inappropriate to a woman of her age.

  The next course came. It was salmon, and a white wine was poured into one of the tall glasses on her right. She turned her attention to the fish, enjoying it. After all, salmon, like turtle soup
, was not a food of every day. The young American – must she think of him as Ned? – was talking to the man on his other side.

  ‘All right?’ George asked kindly.

  ‘Fine, thank you,’ she said, and finished her salmon in contented silence.

  Now a meat course was brought to the table. Venison, George informed her; otherwise, without her glasses, she wouldn’t have known. The dark rich meat was unfamiliar to her. A picture came to her mind – deer leaping in the Wychwood forest, or Wordsworth’s poem ‘The White Doe of Rylstone’, such was the effect of Eng. Lit., but she remembered nothing of the poem. Ned had turned to her again, and there was an expectant silence. ‘I live near a forest,’ she began.

  He inclined his head politely. Her remark must have seemed a total non sequitur. ‘I was thinking of deer and forests because of the venison,’ she explained.

  ‘It’s venison – this meat?’ There was a kind of horror in his tone. He put down his knife and fork, for he had not yet started to eat it, in what she thought of as the American fashion, cutting up the meat and then eating it with the fork.

  ‘Perhaps it came from the Wychwood forest, which is near here,’ she said, but this was evidently no encouragement or recommendation. Perhaps Americans couldn’t cope with things like venison, she thought. She was about to make a remark on these lines, bringing in something about Red Indians and hoping it would come out as light, frivolous and witty, but by the time she had finished framing it in her mind he had turned away, and as George was talking to the man on his other side she was temporarily abandoned, as it were, though this seemed too violent a way of describing her situation. She took advantage of this lull to look around the hall, to glance towards the high table even, to see whether there was anyone she knew – unlikely though this seemed – for she had not studied the guest list. George had guided her to her place, and she knew that when they changed their places for dessert he would guide her again.