by Barbara Pym
It was beginning to get dark and while she hesitated a bus drew up at the stop, illuminated like some noble galleon waiting to take her on a voyage of discovery. Inside the brilliantly lit interior, women who had come from late-night Thursday shopping in the West End chatted and compared the things they had bought—wasting their money, Marcia thought, choosing an empty seat in the front and holding herself aloof from the chattering women.
When she got to the stop for Mr Strong’s house, she realized that even if she could see the vegetable garden it was now too dark to discern what was growing there, and anyway she had forgetten why she had wanted to see them in the first place. And perhaps there wasn’t a vegetable garden, just a lawn with a herbaceous border or even a tennis court. But it didn’t matter, she thought, as she approached the house, for now she saw that it, like the bus, was brilliantly lit up—resembling a great liner in mid-ocean rather than a galleon, what she imagined the Queen Mary might have been—and that elegantly dressed people were alighting from cars and walking up the drive. The Strongs were obviously giving a party.
Marcia stationed herself on the pavement opposite, instinctively choosing a dark corner under a tree, away from the street lamp. Was it a dinner party or an evening party? She did not feel capable of guessing what kind of an evening party, for she could only think of ‘wine and cheese’, which seemed altogether unworthy of Mr Strong.
When she had been in hospital, there had naturally been talk in the ward about the various consultants when they came on their rounds, and speculation as to their wives and families. Some of them, of course, had married other doctors or nurses, women they had met in the course of their work, but it was always said that Mr Strong had done rather better than that. It was rumoured that he had married the daughter of a ‘diplomat’ who had a house in Belgrave Square. Marcia had never quite believed this, not wishing to speculate overmuch on Mr Strong’s wife anyway, but now, watching the guests arrive, she was prepared to believe that there might be something in it. In a kind of dream, she stood watching until there was a gap in the cars arriving and it seemed that no more would come.
Then suddenly she found herself thinking about Norman and the way she had seen him standing on the pavement opposite her house when she was putting milk bottles into her shed. She had resented his being there, resented what seemed his prying curiosity into her affairs. Could it be that her standing outside Mr Strong’s house would be seen in the same way?
She looked up at the house and then crossed the road, so that she could hear voices and laughter coming from a room on the ground floor. Then she moved slowly on, making her way back to the bus stop. As luck would have it, the right number bus was just coming up to the stop and she had to run to catch it.
The exertion was almost too much for her and she collapsed on to the nearest seat, unable to collect her wits for a moment to ask for her ticket But after a while she recovered, partly out of self-defence and resentment at the loud patronizing voice of the conductress’s ‘All right, dear?’
‘Of course I’m all right,’ she said stiffly.
But when she got home she realized that going to the doctor and then on to Mr Strong’s house had made her more tired than usual. Well, it would stand to reason … she found herself thinking of the kind of thing Norman said. And ‘it takes it out of you’—that was another of his expressions.
Sitting down at the kitchen table, she remembered that she had promised the doctor that she would go home and get herself a good meal but the thought of having to cook was too much for her. Elderly people didn’t need much food, anyway—surely the doctor must realize that? A cup of tea, of course; that was a stimulant, and now that she had discovered tea bags it was so much less trouble. At the supermarket she had bought a packet of 144 tea bags which she reckoned ought to last her about seven weeks all but one day. But long before that she would be at the hospital; the card indicating the date of her appointment at Mr Strong’s out-patients’ clinic was on the mantelpiece. Not that she needed reminding, especially not after what she had just seen.
The thought of it impelled her to go to the store cupboard to fetch a suitable tin of something. There was still a tin of pilchards left over from Snowy’s larder, but perhaps luncheon meat would be better? It had a little key to open it, but before she had gone very far the metal tab broke off and she lacked the strength to manoeuvre it any further. So she abandoned the half-opened tin on the draining board and contented herself with a couple of digestive biscuits, which was really all she wanted.
‘You didn’t go in then, or make yourself known?’ Edwin asked Norman.
What do you take me for! Can you imagine the sort of reception I’d have got! She was standing by the shed with a pile of milk bottles in her arms and she must have seen me.’
‘Yes, and knowing what she’s like I can imagine you wouldn’t want to intrude,’ Edwin agreed.
‘Intrude!’ Norman gave his bitter little laugh. ‘That’s a nice way of putting it. I met that social worker and she thought I was casing the joint.’
‘Well, she’s right to be careful—there’s always a risk of that these days,’ Edwin said. ‘I’ll stroll past there one evening and see if there’s anything I can do.’
But of course Edwin was not at all sure what there would be, if anything. The idea of being able to ‘do’ something for Marcia was so improbable that he had only said it to ease his conscience a little. After all, he and Norman had worked with her and it would no doubt seem to an outsider that they might be just the people to be in a position to help her or at least to offer help, to show willing, as Norman might say. This particular evening, being Corpus Christi, Edwin had a service at his own church, with an open-air procession, which started at eight o’clock and would probably last for at least an hour. After that he would go to the pub with Father G. so there wouldn’t really be time to visit Marcia. Perhaps the weekend would be better, Saturday afternoon or Sunday before Evensong. Then he wouldn’t have to stay too long.
‘Of course, I’m not often down that way,’ Norman pointed out. ‘Not exactly my stamping ground, Clapham.’
‘You’re really nearer to Letty,’ Edwin said.
‘So what? You’re surely not suggesting I should drop in on her?’
For some reason the idea of this caused the two men to break into laughter, so that what had started out as a serious attempt to deal with a social problem turned into a kind of joke. But there was no reason why, as Norman put it, they should fall about laughing at the prospect. It wasn’t all that funny. Nervous reaction, perhaps, but why nervous, Norman wondered. Something in the subconscious, Edwin suggested, but that set them off into more laughter, the idea of Letty and Marcia being somehow mixed up in their subconsciousnesses. It was not an area they were in the habit of discussing or even thinking about.
Eighteen
‘MISS IVORY, AREN’T you going to let me in?’
As she stood on the doorstep, Janice wondered whether anyone else had been to see Marcia during her fortnight in Greece. This seemed unlikely because it wasn’t as if Marcia was an invalid or unable to cope, even if she was a bit eccentric. And anyway she was Janice’s special pigeon, if you could put it like that.
There was a fine display of late summer flowers in the gardens along the road—dahlias and asters, early chrysanthemums and a second flowering of roses, and even Marcia’s garden had some tall yellow daisies clustering round what Nigel and Priscilla called the milk-bottle shed. They had never been inside it but had often seen Marcia going in and out with the bottles. It seemed a curiously dotty occupation, but harmless enough—just the kind of thing Marcia would spend her time doing, but no more to be condemned than other people’s preoccupation with collecting matchboxes or cigarette cards. One must respect people as individuals—her acquaintance with Marcia had taught Janice that, if nothing else. All the same, she felt that she really must try to persuade Marcia to take a holiday. Not Greece, of course, or indeed anywhere abroad’—one could hardl
y imagine Marcia in a taverna, eating octopus or anything that wasn’t meat and two veg—but a few days in Bournemouth or a coach tour of the Cotswolds would be just the thing to set her up for the winter.
‘Miss Ivory!’ Janice rang the bell again and banged on the door. It was most unlikely that she was out, though perhaps it was just possible. Should she try the door to see if it was open? Janice did try it and it was locked. Perhaps if she went round to the back she would be able to get into the house, though if Marcia had gone out she would surely have locked the back door as well. If only Nigel and Priscilla were here she could ask them, but Janice knew that they were in Sardinia, lying on some beach, not even thinking of their fashionable little house in that up-and-coming district by the common and their peculiar next-door neighbour. One certainly got completely away from that kind of thing on holiday, Janice thought, not without bitterness.
It was then that she noticed several bottles of milk, not on the front step but in a little wooden container round the side, no doubt an arrangement made for milk to be left when Marcia went out to work, to keep it out of the sun or safe from thieves. This sight alarmed her, and she hurried round to the back door—perhaps Marcia was lying ill in bed, unable even to get downstairs to take in her milk. If she could get into the back of the house she could call to her, and if she was in bed Marcia would answer. Or she might have had a fall and be unable to move or get to the telephone. Did Marcia have a telephone? Probably not. With neighbours away she could lie for hours, helpless … Janice knew in theory every kind of situation that could arise, but when she peered through the glass panel of the back door she was not prepared for the sight of Marcia sitting at the table, slumped into unconsciousness, possibly even death.
Janice noticed the cup of tea and the tin of biscuits (‘Family Assorted’) on the table, as she knocked feebly on the door, calling ‘Miss Ivory’ in a half-fearful tone, hardly expecting or wishing for an answer. Then she tried the handle of the door. It opened and she realized that it was perfectly possible for her to go in.
‘Of course she’s not in my parish,’ said Father G., with a hint of impatience. ‘You know what these parish boundaries are—one road’s in, the next one isn’t.’
‘I know that,’ said Edwin. ‘I was just going to stroll along that way and I thought you might like to come too—after all, it’s a nice evening for a walk. She’s a funny sort of woman, as I told you, we may not even be invited in.’
‘Who is my neighbour?’ Father G. mused, as he and Edwin came to the road where Marcia lived. ‘Surely one has preached often enough on that text? Perhaps that’s where we go wrong—obviously it is—when my reaction to your suggestion is that the person in question isn’t in my parish.’
‘Well, she must be in somebody’s parish,’ Edwin pointed out.
‘She certainly is,’ said Father G. promptly, and he named a well-known local vicar, ‘but I don’t think he goes in much for parochial visiting. Trendy Tony,’ he added, unable to resist the uncharitable comment. ‘Rock-and-roll and extempore prayers.’
‘Of course there’s a social worker who goes to see her regularly, keeps an eye on her, as the saying is, but when I saw her earlier in the year—we all had lunch together, you see—I thought perhaps I ought to do something about her, make more of an effort.’
‘What about this other woman you were telling me about, there was another who worked with you, wasn’t there? I should have thought…’ Father G. suggested, with the comfortable assumption of so much that could be left to the women.
‘Yes, in a way you would have thought…’ Edwin smiled. ‘But then you don’t know Marcia—Miss Ivory. Come to that, who does know her?’
‘Who does know anyone?’ said Father G., hardly contributing to the solution of the problem of Marcia.
‘Well, this is it, I believe—the house where she lives. You can see how different it looks from the others and that tells its own story.’
Father G. was used to visiting shabby houses, but he had to admit the contrast between Marcia’s and the other houses in the road. ‘You’d better go up to the door,’ he said. ‘You know her, and if she’s a difficult woman the sight of me might put her off. She might refuse to open the door.’
Janice, coming round the side of the house, was encouraged rather than put off by the sight of Father G., in his priestly cloak, standing behind Edwin. Although she had little use for the Church of England, or indeed for any organized religion apart from a mild, superstitious veneration for what she thought of as ‘Catholics’, she could not deny that it sometimes had its uses. The fact that this respectable-looking stranger—for so Edwin appeared to her—was accompanied by a clergyman was reassuring. They would certainly know what was the best thing to do.
‘If you’ve come to see Miss Ivory,’ she said, ‘I’m afraid something’s happened. She seems to be ill, or…’ She did not like to say ‘dead’. ‘She’s sitting at the table in her kitchen, not moving—I saw through the window. I was just going to find help…’
As it happened, Janice could not have met at this moment with two persons better able to assist her. Edwin had come home one evening some years ago to find his wife Phyllis unconscious in the kitchen, about to put a shepherd’s pie in the oven; Father G. was often obliged to enter houses where people were on the point of death or had already died; indeed he preferred this type of situation to normal parish visiting, with its awkward conversation and the inevitable cups of tea and sweet biscuits. Both the men were prepared to take control.
The main thing was that Marcia was not dead. She even smiled faintly at Janice who was fussing about packing a case of suitable things for hospital while they waited for the ambulance.
‘It was amazing,’ Janice said afterwards. ‘When I came to look out her things, there was a drawer full of new Marks and Sparks nighties—not at all what you’d imagine Miss Ivory wearing, judging by the rest of her clothes. All brand new and never worn—she must have been saving them up for something.’
After the ambulance had gone, with Marcia and Janice in it, the two men were left alone in the house. They had all been sitting in the kitchen where Janice had made tea. Edwin felt awkward, now that Marcia had been removed, as if he had no right to be sitting in her house when he had never been in it before.
‘It’s a strange relationship, working with women like that,’ he said. ‘The curious intimacy of the office is very definitely not repeated outside it—one would not presume…’ He remembered how he and Norman had been overcome with laughter at the idea of Norman visiting Letty or of any kind of social contact between the four of them. Visiting Marcia had always seemed an awesome prospect, hardly even to be contemplated.
‘You never thought of coming to see her, living as near as you do, just a few steps across the common?’ Father G.’s tone was enquiring rather than reproachful.
‘I thought of it—once or twice I came near to it—but I never did.’
Father G. finished his tea and stood up, holding the cup in his hand. ‘Do you think we should…?’
‘Wash up? Oh, I think Mrs Brabner, the social worker, will probably see to that. I don’t think we should get involved.’
So the men left the house, remembering to lock up behind them. Neither had commented on the state of the kitchen and hall, the dust and other evidences of long neglect. Father G. genuinely did not notice such things and Edwin, with a general impression that all was not quite as it should be, still preserved the same detachment towards this as towards other aspects of Marcia’s life. What he did carry away with him was an irrelevant detail, the sight of a half-opened tin of luncheon meat still on the draining board. It had always surprised him how ineffectual women were when it came to opening a perfectly simple tin.
It was natural for them both to feel the need of a strengthening and reviving drink when they found themselves some distance away from Marcia’s house. They had undergone an unexpectedly upsetting experience. Little had Edwin imagined that a casual stroll across
the common in the direction of Marcia’s house could have such an outcome. Yet what had the outcome been? Marcia had been found in a distressed condition, but she had been taken away in an ambulance to hospital where she would receive the best possible care. There was nothing further that anyone could do. All the same, the need for a drink was uppermost in his mind, and then supper—the events of the last hour had delayed the evening meal and it was well known that an upsetting experience had unexpected results, not necessarily the most suitable or desirable ones. There was a hollow feeling in his stomach and he remembered that he had not eaten since lunch.
‘You’ll stay and take pot luck with me?’ he said to Father G., knowing that there would be little cheer at the vicarage. He at least had the remains of a casserole in the larder.
‘That’s good of you—I’m quite hungry.’
Edwin poured sherry. Had it been the kind of upsetting experience that called for brandy? he wondered. On the whole he thought not, for it did not touch him personally. All the same, he ought to get in touch with Letty, who would no doubt want to visit Marcia in hospital. Come to that, he supposed they all ought to; the three of them should cluster round her bed. Again he found himself wanting to smile, almost to laugh, and if Norman had been with him at that moment instead of Father G. he felt that the smile might have turned most regrettably into laughter. It was disconcerting the way this happened—any idea of the women now seemed to be a subject for comedy. But with Father G. it was different. In the midst of life he was so continually in death…
