Author: Barbara Pym
Category: Humorous
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I am not used to going into public-houses, so I entered rather timidly, expecting a noisy, smoky atmosphere and a great gust of laughter. But either it was too early or the house was too near the church, for all that I saw and heard was two elderly women sitting in a corner together talking in low voices and drinking stout, and a young man, whom I recognised as the curate of St. Ermin’s without his clerical collar, having what seemed to be an earnest conversation with the woman behind the bar. I could not call her a barmaid, for she was elderly and of a prim appearance. I felt that she probably cleaned the brasses in St. Ermin’s when she wasn’t polishing the handles of the beer pumps.
‘Good Heavens,’ murmured Everard, ‘isn’t it quiet? I suppose it’s early.’
‘Yes, I expect most people hurry away from this district at this time.’
‘Well, we needn’t stay long. What would you like to drink?’
‘Beer,’ I said uncertainly.
‘What kind of beer?’
‘Oh, bitter, I think,’ I said, hoping that it wasn’t the kind that tasted like washing-up water, but not being certain.
When it came I found that it was and I was a little annoyed to see that Everard himself had a small glowing drink that looked much more attractive than mine. He shouldn’t have asked me what I wanted just like that, I thought resentfully; he should have suggested various things, as Rocky would certainly have done.
I took a sip of my bitter drink and looked round the room. Being so near St. Ermin’s gave it an almost ecclesiastical air, especially as there was much mahogany, and I was fanciful enough to imagine that I even detected a faint smell of incense. A few more people had come in now and were drinking very quietly and soberly, almost sadly, sitting on a black horsehair bench or at one of the little tables. I stared into the fireless grate, filled now with teazles and pampas grass, and wondered why I should be sitting here with Everard Bone. He was silent too, which did not help matters, and the other people in the bar were so quiet that it was difficult to think of having a private conversation, assuming that we had anything private to talk about, which seemed unlikely.
‘I’m reading a biography of Cardinal Newman,’ I began, feeling that I could hardly have chosen a more unsuitable topic of conversation for a convivial evening’s drinking.
‘That must be very interesting,’ he said, finishing his drink.
‘Yes, it is really,’ I faltered. ‘One has great sympathy for him, I think.’
‘Rome, yes, I suppose so. One can see its attraction.’
‘Oh, that wasn’t what I really meant,’ I said, with really very little idea of what I had meant. ‘More as a person . . .’ my sentence trailed off miserably and there was now complete silence in the room.
Everard stood up holding his glass. ‘You don’t seem to like that drink,’ he said, suddenly becoming less withdrawn. ‘What do you really like?’
‘What you had looked nice.’
‘I rather doubt if you would like it. I’ll get you something like gin and orange or lime—they’re quite harmless.’
I felt somewhat humiliated but was glad when he came back from the bar with a gin and orange for me, and after I had taken a sip or two I felt quite cheerful.
‘Why did you say you wanted bitter when you obviously don’t like it?’ Everard asked.
‘I don’t know, really, I thought it was the kind of thing people did drink. I’m not really used to drinking much myself.’
‘Well, you stay as you are. It isn’t the kind of thing one wants to get used to,’ he said, in what I thought was rather a priggish way. ‘You’re better off reading about Cardinal Newman.’
I laughed. ‘When I was at school we were sometimes allowed to choose hymns, but miss Ridout would never let us have Lead, kindly light—she thought it was morbid and unsuitable for schoolgirls. Of course we loved it.’
‘Yes, I can imagine that. Woman are quite impossible to understand sometimes.’
I pondered over this remark for a while, asking myself what it could be going to lead up to, and then wondered why I had been so stupid as not to realise that he wanted to say something about Helena Napier. It was not for the pleasure of my company that Everard Bone had asked me out this evening—or rather not even asked me and given me the chance of appearing better dressed and without my string bag, but had waylaid me in the street.
‘I suppose each sex finds the other difficult to understand,’ I said, doing the best I could. ‘But perhaps one shouldn’t expect to know too much about other people.’
‘One can’t always help knowing,’ said Everard. ‘Some things are so obvious and stand out even to the most imperceptive.’
I reflected that we could not go on indefinitely in this cryptic way, it was altogether too much of a strain. I took a rather large sip of my drink and said boldly, ‘I feel perhaps that women show their feelings for men without realising it sometimes.’
‘Have you noticed that too?’
‘Why, yes,’ I said, rather at a loss. ‘It’s often a difficult thing to conceal.’
‘But it ought to be concealed,’ he said irritably, ‘especially when the whole thing is quite impossible and the feeling isn’t returned in the same way. If they are really going to separate, the whole thing may become most awkward and unpleasant.’
‘What are you talking about?’ I asked, startled.
‘Oh, you must know that I mean the Napiers. Helena has been behaving in a most foolish and indiscreet way.’
‘I’m afraid I haven’t seen much of her lately,’ I said, as if I could somehow have prevented her.
‘She came to my flat the other night after ten o’clock, alone, and stayed for nearly three hours talking, although I did everything I could to get her to go.’
I felt I could hardly ask what methods he had employed.
‘Of course I had to go out with her eventually to find her a taxi—you will agree that I could hardly have done less than that,’ Everard continued. ‘By that time it was nearly one o’clock and naturally I didn’t expect to see many people about, let alone anyone who knew both of us.’
‘And did you?’ I asked, feeling that the story was really getting quite exciting.
‘Yes, it could hardly have been more unfortunate. We were just coming out of the house when who should walk by but Apfelbaum and Tyrell Todd—the last two people I should have expected or chosen to see.’
‘Oh, Tyrell Todd’s the man who gave the paper on pygmies, isn’t he?’ I asked, in an honest effort to place him. ‘And Apfelbaum kept asking questions after your paper.’
Everard looked annoyed at this irrelevant interruption, so I said soothingly, ‘I don’t see why you should worry about seeing them. I am sure they would think nothing of it. Anthropologists must see such very odd behaviour in primitive societies that they probably think anything we do here is very tame.’
‘Don’t you believe it. Tyrell Todd revels in petty gossip.’
I stopped myself from making the facetious observation that possibly it was his work among the pygmies that had made him small-minded and petty, and went on to ask reassuring questions.
‘But what were they doing together so late? It may well have been something disgraceful. Did they speak to you?’
‘No, they just said “Good evening” or words to that effect. I think we were all a little surprised.’
‘Four anthropologists meeting unexpectedly in a London square at one o’clock in the morning,’ I said. ‘There does seem to be something a little surprising about that.’
‘You make everything into a joke,’ said Everard resentfully, but with the suspicion of a smile.
‘Well, I think the whole things sounds slightly ridiculous. If you can see it like that perhaps you won’t worry about it.’
‘But Helena is so indiscreet and from what I’ve seen of Rockingham I shouldn’t imagine he would be likely to behave in a very sensible way, either.’
‘No,’ I murmured, ‘I don’t think you would exactly call
him sensible.’
‘On the other hand, it is unlikely that he would want a divorce,’ said Everard thoughtfully.
‘Oh, no,’ I exclaimed, shocked out of the pleasant haze into which the drink had lulled me, ‘and I suppose you would not want to marry Helena even if she were free. I mean, divorce would be against your principles.’
‘Naturally,’ he said stiffly. ‘And I don’t love her, anyway.’
‘Oh, poor Helena. I think she may love you,’ I said rashly.
‘I’m sure she does,’ said Everard in what seemed to be a satisfied tone. ‘She has told me so.’
‘Oh, no! Not without encouragement! Do women declare themselves like that?’
‘Oh, yes. It is not so very unusual.’
‘But what did you tell her?’
‘I told her that it was quite impossible that I should love her.’
‘You must have been rather startled,’ I said. ‘Unless you had expected it, and perhaps you had if it can happen. But it must have been like having something like a white rabbit thrust into your arms and not knowing what to do with it.’
‘A white rabbit? What do you mean?’
‘Oh, if you don’t see I can’t explain,’ I said. I gathered my string bag to me. ‘I think I had better be going home now.’
‘Oh, please don’t go,’ said Everard. ‘I feel you are the only person who can help. You could perhaps say something to Helena.’
‘I say something? But she wouldn’t listen to me.’
We stood up and went out together.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Everard. ‘Why should you be brought into it, really? I just thought you might be able to drop a hint.’
‘But men ought to be able to manage their own affairs,’ I said. ‘After all most of them don’t seem to mind speaking frankly and making people unhappy. I don’t see why you should.’
We walked on in silence.
‘I should be very distressed if I thought I had purposely made anybody unhappy,’ said Everard at last.
There seemed to be nothing more to say. I was to tell Helena that Everard Bone did not love her. I might just as well go home and do it straight away.
We came to St. Ermin’s. ‘I wonder if anybody is making coffee on a Primus in the ruins?’ I asked idly.
‘Do people do that?’
‘Oh, yes, that little woman who plays the harmonium.’
‘Yes, she looks as if she might.’
We had suddenly forgotten about Helena Napier and were talking quite easily about other things.
‘I promised to go and have dinner with my mother tonight,’ said Everard. ‘Perhaps you would like to come too?’
I decided that I might as well put off telling Helena that Everard did not love her for an hour or two at least, so we got into a taxi and drove to a dark red forbidding-looking house in a street of similar houses.
‘My mother is a little eccentric,’ he said as we got out of the taxi. ‘I just thought I should warn you.’
‘I don’t suppose I shall find her any more odd than many people I have met,’ I said, feeling that it was not perhaps a good beginning to the evening. ‘I’m sorry I’m not more suitably dressed. If I had known . . . only, things do seem to happen so unexpectedly.’
‘You seem to be very nicely dressed,’ said Everard without looking. ‘And my mother never notices what anybody is wearing.’
An old bent maidservant opened the door and we went in. There was a good deal of dark furniture in the hall and a faintly exotic smell, almost like incense. The walls were covered with animals’ heads and their sad or fierce eyes looked down on us.
‘Perhaps you would care to wash your hands, miss?’ said the maid in a hushed voice. She led me upstairs and into a bathroom, with much marble and mahogany and a stained-glass window. I began to think that it was perhaps suitable that I was carrying a biography of Cardinal Newman in my string bag, and as I washed my hands and tidied my hair I found myself thinking about the Oxford Movement and the architecture associated with it. But then I was seized with a feeling of alarm, waiting outside the bathroom door on a dark landing, then creeping down the stairs and wondering where I should go when I got to the bottom. I was surprised to see that Everard was standing in the hall waiting for me, turning over a heap of old visiting cards that lay in a brass bowl on an antique chest.
‘Mother will be in the drawing-room,’ he said, opening a door.
I found myself in a room with two women, one of whom was standing by the fireplace while the other was sitting on the edge of a chair with her hands folded in her lap.
‘This is my mother,’ said Everard, leading me towards the standing woman, who was tall with a long nose like his own, ‘and this is—er . . .’ he glanced at the nondescript woman sitting on the edge of her chair who might really have been anybody or nobody, and then back to his mother.
‘It’s Miss Jessop, dear,’ she said.
‘Oh, yes, of course.’
Miss Jessop! I remembered my telephone conversation with Mrs. Bone and looked at the nondescript woman with new interest. If it’s Miss Jessop, I can only hope you’re ringing up to apologise. . . . She did not look like the kind of person who could possibly do anything for which an apology might be demanded. What had she done? I supposed I should never know. Presumably all was now well between her and Mrs. Bone.
We all murmured politely at each other and Mrs. Bone did not seem to be at all eccentric. I was beginning to think that Everard had misjudged his mother when she suddenly said in a clear voice, ‘Miss Jessop and I are very much interested in the suppression of woodworm in furniture.’
‘I should think it’s very important,’ I said. ‘I know a lot of our furniture at home got the worm in it. There didn’t seem to be anything we could do about it.’
‘Oh, but there is a preparation on the market now which is very effective,’ said Mrs. Bone, clasping her hands together almost in rapture. ‘It has been used with excellent results in many famous buildings.’ She began to enumerate various Oxford and Cambridge colleges and well-known churches and cathedrals. ‘It has even been used in Westminster Cathedral,’ she declared.
‘Not Westminster Cathedral, surely, Mother,’ said Everard. ‘The wood isn’t old enough.’
‘Westminster Abbey, perhaps,’ I suggested.
‘Oh, well, it was something to do with Westminster,’ said Mrs. Bone. ‘Wasn’t it, Miss Jessop?’ She turned towards her with a rather menacing look.
Miss Jessop seemed to agree.
‘I think we had better have some sherry,’ said Everard, going out of the room.
I thought I had better revive the conversation which had lapsed, so I commented on the animals’ heads in the hall, saying what fine specimens they were.
‘My husband shot them in India and Africa,’ said Mrs. Bone, ‘but however many you shoot there still seem to be more.’
‘Oh, yes, it would be a terrible thing if they became extinct,’ I said. ‘I suppose they keep the rarer animals in game reserves now.’
‘It’s not the animals so much as the birds,’ said Mrs. Bone fiercely. ‘You will hardly believe this, Miss—er—but I was sitting in the window this afternoon and as it was a fine day I had it open at the bottom, when I felt something drop into my lap. And do you know what it was?’ She turned and peered at me intently.
I said that I had no idea.
‘Unpleasantness,’ she said, almost triumphantly so that I was reminded of William Caldicote. Then lowering her voice she explained, ‘From a bird, you see. It had done something when I was actually sitting in my own drawing-room.’
‘How annoying,’ I said, feeling mesmerised and unable even to laugh.
‘And that’s not the worst,’ she went on, rummaging in a small desk which stood open and seemed to be full of old newspapers. ‘Read this.’ She handed me a cutting headed OWL BITES WOMAN, from which I read that an owl had flown in through a cottage window one evening and bitten a woman on the chin. ‘And this,’ she
went on, handing me another cutting which told how a swan had knocked a girl off her bicycle. ‘What do you think of that?’
‘Oh, I suppose they were just accidents,’ I said.
‘Accidents! Even Miss Jessop agrees that they are rather more than accidents, don’t you, Miss Jessop?’
Miss Jessop made a quavering sound which might have been ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ but it was not allowed to develop into speech, for Mrs. Bone broke in by telling Everard that Miss Jessop wouldn’t want any sherry.
‘The Dominion of the Birds,’ she went on. ‘I very much fear it may come to that.’
Everard looked at me a little anxiously but I managed to keep up the conversation until Mrs. Bone declared that it was dinner time. ‘You had better be going home, now, Miss Jessop,’ she said. ‘We are going to have our dinner.’
Miss Jessop stood up and put on her gloves. Then, with a little nod which seemed to include all of us, she went quietly out of the room.
‘I eat as many birds as possible,’ said Mrs. Bone when we were sitting down to roast chicken. ‘I have them sent from Harrods or Fortnum’s, and sometimes I go and look at them in the cold meats department. They do them up very prettily with aspic jelly and decorations. At least we can eat our enemies. Everard, dear, which was that tribe in Africa which were cannibals?’
‘There are several thousand tribes in Africa, Mother,’ said Everard patiently, ‘and many of them have been and probably still are cannibals.’
‘But surely the British Administration have stamped it out?’ I asked.
‘Certainly they have attempted to,’ said Everard. ‘And the missionaries have also done a lot to educate the people.’
‘Yes, I suppose that would make them see that it was wrong,’ I said feebly, wondering whether anthropologists really approved of these old customs being stamped out.
‘Missionaries have done a lot of harm,’ said Mrs. Bone firmly. ‘The natives have their own religions which are very ancient, much more ancient than ours. We have no business to try to make them change.’
‘My mother is not a Christian,’ said Everard, perhaps unnecessarily.
‘The Jesuits got at my son, you know, Miss—er—’ said Mrs. Bone, turning to me. ‘They will stop at nothing, those Jesuits. You would hardly believe the things that go on in their seminaries. I can lend you some very informative pamphlets if you are interested.’