Author: Barbara Pym
Category: Humorous
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Belinda frowned and looked embarrassed when the curate asked, with his usual eager interest, what poems those were.
‘I am afraid they are rather naughty,’ said Dr Parnell. ‘We have had to lock them away in a special place, together with other books of a similar nature. All the same, they are quite often asked for by our readers.’
‘Oh, well, I suppose people have to study them,’ said Belinda, handing round cigarettes and wondering how she could change the subject.
‘We should not like to think that they ordered them for any other reason,’ said Dr Parnell, chuckling and rubbing his hands in front of the fire.
Belinda was greatly relieved when Miss Liversidge and Miss Aspinall arrived and she was able to introduce them. She was so afraid that Nicholas and Edith would discover their common interest in sanitary arrangements too soon, that she resolutely kept them apart. It was all very difficult and she wished Harriet would hurry up and come in. Only the curate was making what Belinda considered to be suitable conversation for the awkward interval between arriving and sitting down to eat.
‘Do you know,’ he was saying eagerly, ‘there was quite a nip in the air this evening? I shouldn’t be surprised if we had frost.’
‘And the later the frost the harder the winter,’ said a cheerful voice in the background. ‘I do hope you’re all wearing warm underclothes.’
It was Harriet, ready far sooner than Belinda had hoped was possible, looking splendid too, in her brown velvet and gold ornaments.
The curate laughed heartily and assured her that he had his on.
Harriet was in excellent form and soon had everybody laughing, except for the Archdeacon, who went on reclining in the armchair, not speaking.
‘Well, what did you preach about this evening?’ asked Harriet. ‘I haven’t heard any comments on the sermon yet.’
The Archdeacon roused himself. ‘It was a continuation of this morning’s, brought up to date as it were,’ he explained.
‘Oh, it was beautiful,’ gushed Connie Aspinall, ‘I did so enjoy it.’
The Archdeacon looked pleased. ‘I had feared it might be rather too obscure,’ he said. ‘Eliot is not an easy poet.’
Belinda gasped. Eliot! And for the evening congregation! But it must have been magnificent to hear him reading Eliot. ‘Perhaps you will give the sermon again,’ she suggested timidly, ‘for the benefit of those who were not at Evensong.’
‘Perhaps I will,’ said the Archdeacon, ‘perhaps I will.’ He paused. ‘I have been considering giving a course of sermons on Dante,’ he mused. ‘Not of course in the original – Carey’s translation, perhaps.’
‘It would be a fine and unusual subject,’ said Belinda doubtfully.
‘Well, you can count me out,’ said Edith bluntly. ‘I couldn’t make much of the sermon this morning. Too full of quotations, like Hamlet.’ She gave her short barking laugh.
‘I think people prefer the more obvious aspects of the Christian teaching,’ said Nicholas regretfully. ‘I mean, I am afraid that they do. Simple sentiments in intelligible prose. A great pity really. I can see how it limits the scope of the more enterprising clergy.’
‘Sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo,’ said the Archdeacon. ‘Yes, one appreciates that, and yet, why shouldn’t Eliot express those sentiments?’
‘Do the bosoms of people nowadays return any echo?’ said Mr Mold. ‘One wonders really.’
‘Well, if they do, it certainly isn’t as loud as the echo made by the Apes of Brazil,’ chortled Harriet, and in response to a very pressing appeal by Mr Mold, she began to explain it all over again.
‘Can the sound really be heard two miles away?’ said Connie, whose voice held just the same note of rapt awe as when she had praised the Archdeacon’s sermon. ‘Isn’t that wonderful?’
The Archdeacon looked rather annoyed. ‘Oh, it is nothing very unusual,’ he said shortly, so that Belinda began to wonder whether he was about to embark on some tale of his own. But he lapsed into silence again, so that she was forced to continue the conversation with a bright and rather insincere remark about Agatha, and what a pity it was that she was not with them that evening.
‘I had a postcard from her yesterday,’ said the Archdeacon. ‘She says she is getting on quite well speaking Anglo-Saxon and Old High German in the shops.’
‘Ah, well, Agatha is so clever,’ said Belinda, without bitterness. ‘I’m afraid I’ve forgotten all my Anglo-Saxon. But surely the vocabulary is rather limited?’
‘Yes, quite ridiculous,’ said Edith shortly. ‘Like trying to talk Latin in Italy.’
‘Why, Ricardo isn’t here yet,’ said Belinda. ‘What do you say to a glass of sherry while we are waiting?’
‘I say yes,’ said Mr Mold promptly.
‘Yes please, Nathaniel,’ Dr Parnell reminded him. ‘We should not like it to be thought that an official of our great Library was lacking in manners.’
‘I feel that I have been lacking in manners for not offering it sooner,’ said Belinda quite sincerely, thus taking upon herself the blame for all the little frictions of the evening. But it was so obvious that women should take the blame, it was both the better and the easier part, and just as she was pouring out the sherry, Ricardo arrived, with such profuse and gallant apologies for being late that everyone was put into a good humour. He was a little encumbered by a magnificent pot of chrysanthemums, which he presented with a ceremonious gesture.
Shortly after this they went into supper, Edith and Harriet followed by Mr Mold and the curate, making for the dining-room with what Belinda considered indecent haste. But even those who followed more slowly moved with confident anticipation. Belinda had taken care to arrange the table so that Harriet should sit between Ricardo and Mr Mold, when she might see how superior dear Ricardo was. Belinda herself sat by the Archdeacon and Dr Parnell, while Miss Liversidge and Miss Aspinall were fitted in where there happened to be spaces.
‘Why, the table is groaning!’ exclaimed Dr Parnell. ‘I like that expression so much, but one is hardly ever justified in using it or even expecting it. Certainly not at Sunday supper.’
Belinda looked pleased. ‘I hope everything will be nice,’ she said. ‘I never see why Sunday supper should be the dreary meal it usually is. I mean,’ she added hastily, remembering that they had had just such a dreary Sunday supper at the vicarage a few weeks ago, ‘that it can sometimes be.’
‘We always have cold meat with beetroot and no potatoes,’ said the Archdeacon, as if reading her thoughts. ‘Nothing could be more unappetizing.’
‘Of course the servants are often out on Sunday evening,’ said the curate, ‘and one likes to feel that they are having an easier time.’
‘I don’t feel that at all,’ said the Archdeacon. ‘I like to feel that somebody has taken a little trouble in preparing a meal for me. I think we deserve it after the labour of Sunday.’
‘Especially after that magnificent sermon this morning,’ murmured Belinda loyally, giving him some of the best of the chicken.
‘All that reading must be very tiring,’ said Dr Parnell spitefully.
‘It was some very fine poetry,’ said Ricardo vaguely, for he had not grasped much of the sermon apart from the bare fact that it was supposed to be about the Judgment Day.
‘We certainly thought it magnificent, didn’t we, Harriet?’ said Belinda, turning towards her sister rather urgently. It was tactless of Harriet not to have made any comment. But then she herself was rather to blame for introducing the subject when they had already discussed it once. It was a pity that her loyalty had got the better of her.
‘Oh, splendid,’ said Harriet, rather too enthusiastically. ‘But of course I’m not a theologian,’ she added, with a brilliant smile.
Mr Mold laughed at this and so did Dr Parnell, but the Archdeacon looked rather annoyed.
‘Few of us are true theologians,’ said the curate sententiously. ‘But after all, the real knowledge comes from within and not from book
s.’
Belinda looked at him rather apprehensively. She hoped the wine wasn’t beginning to have its effect on him. White wine wasn’t really intoxicating and he had only had one glass of sherry.
‘That is rather a disconcerting thought,’ said Dr Parnell. ‘You are preaching sedition. I maintain that the true knowledge comes from books. It would be a poor prospect for me and for Nathaniel if everybody thought as you do.’
‘Ah, but it is true what Mr Donne says,’ said Ricardo thoughtfully. ‘My dear friend John Akenside used to say that he learned more about the political situation in central Europe in those quiet moments with a glass of wine at a café table than by all his talks with Pribitchevitch’s brother.’
‘Oh, yes, I can believe that,’ said Edith Liversidge, ‘John liked his glass of wine.’
‘But surely the intrigues of Balkan politics can hardly be compared with the true knowledge that comes from within?’ Dr Parnell protested. ‘I hardly think it is the same thing.’
Belinda too, thought Ricardo’s remarks hardly relevant, but one could not argue the point. Perhaps it was a mistake to have any kind of serious conversation when eating, or even anywhere at all in mixed company. Men took themselves so seriously and seemed to insist on arguing even the most trivial points. So, at the risk of seeming frivolous, she turned the conversation to something lighter.
‘I can never think of Belgrade without thinking of the public baths,’ she said.
Mr Mold looked across the table expectantly. Perhaps this would be more amusing than the knowledge that comes from within.
‘Why does it remind you of public baths?’ said the Archdeacon. ‘It seems most unlikely.’
‘Oh, well,’ said Belinda, who hadn’t really a story to tell, ‘I once heard somebody describing them and I thought it was rather funny. A lot of old men all swimming about in a pool of hot water,’ she concluded weakly, hoping that somebody would laugh.
Most of them did, especially the Archdeacon, who seemed to be in a good temper again.
‘I never heard of there being any hot springs in Belgrade,’ said Ricardo seriously.
‘Oh, I expect the water was artificially heated,’ explained the curate, turning earnestly to Belinda for further information on this interesting point.
Belinda felt rather flustered at the interest which everyone was taking in her silly little story. ‘I don’t really know,’ she said. ‘I’ve never been to Belgrade myself, and even if I had I don’t suppose I should have visited the public baths.’
‘Not the ones with the old men in them, we hope,’ said Mr Mold, with almost a wink.
Belinda was rather taken aback. She didn’t think she liked Mr Mold very much. Of course one didn’t want to be snobbish, but it really was true that low origin always betrayed itself somewhere.
‘Oh, Belinda never remembers where she’s been,’ said Harriet, hardly improving the situation. ‘Now, Mr Mold, do have some more trifle,’ she said, favouring him with a brilliant smile.
‘Perhaps I may have some too,’ said the Archdeacon. ‘It really is delicious. I don’t know when I’ve tasted anything so good.’
But Belinda hardly noticed his praise. She was thinking indignantly that Nicholas had always encouraged Mr Mold too much as a boy, although one would have thought that moving in a cultured intellectual society would have cured him of any tendency to make jokes not quite in the best of taste. And yet, she thought doubtfully, the Library, great though it was, did not always attract to it cultured and intellectual persons. Nicholas himself, obsessed with central heating and conveniences, was perhaps not the best influence for a weak character like Mr Mold. Belinda began to wish that she were in Karlsbad with dear Agatha, helping her to get cured of her rheumatism. She imagined herself in the pump-room, if there was one, drinking unpleasant but salutary waters, and making conversation with elderly people. Perhaps taking a gentle walk in the cool of the evening with an old clergyman or a retired general…
All around her the conversation buzzed pleasantly. Mr Mold’s little lapse was quite forgotten, if indeed it had ever been noticed by anyone except Belinda. Harriet was asking Ricardo if it was true that the fleas on the Lido were so wonderful. She had heard that they bounced balls and drew little golden carriages.
‘Indeed, they are,’ said Ricardo gravely. ‘I have seen them myself.’
The curate leaned forward eagerly. ‘It is wonderful what things animals and even insects can be made to do if they are trained with kindness,’ he said, his face aglow with interest.
Everyone agreed with this very just remark. Dr Parnell even went so far as to observe that it was also true of people.
‘I should love to go to Venice,’ said Belinda. ‘I think there is something very special about Italy. It is so rich in literary associations.’
‘Ah …’ Ricardo put down his spoon and was obviously on the point of bursting into a flow of Dante, but the Archdeacon was too quick for him and got in first with Byron.
I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs
A palace and a prison on each hand:
he quoted, and remarked that he had thought of visiting Italy in the spring, but that of course it was almost impossible for him to take a holiday however much he might need it.
‘Oh, but I don’t see why you shouldn’t,’ said Harriet, loudly and tactlessly. ‘It isn’t as if you had a frightful lot to do, and I’m sure Mr Donne could manage perfectly well when you were away.’
There was an uncomfortable silence.
‘You know, you really should take a holiday,’ said Edith Liversidge. ‘A change does everyone good. Everyone would benefit.’
‘You would feel you were doing good to others as well as yourself,’ said Dr Parnell, ‘so you would have a double satisfaction.’
‘I doubt whether I could allow myself that luxury,’ said the Archdeacon quite good humouredly. ‘Of course a change can sometimes be a good thing. I have often wondered whether I ought to have a town parish. There is more scope for preaching.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Connie Aspinall broke in eagerly. ‘I remember when Canon Kendrick was rector of St Ermin’s there wasn’t a vacant seat at Evensong – you had to be there half an hour before it started. He said some very shocking things.’
‘Well, of course people like that,’ said Dr Parnell. ‘Kendrick was a contemporary of mine. He got a very poor degree, I believe, but he found out what his line was and made a success of it.’
‘What a cynical way to talk,’ said Harriet indignantly. ‘He was probably a very sincere man.’
‘Oh, he was,’ said Connie, ‘but I suppose he thought it his duty to say those things, unpleasant though they were.’
‘Yes, there is evil even in Belgravia,’ said Dr Parnell.
‘There is evil everywhere,’ said the curate.
Belinda looked around her uncomfortably as if expecting to find the devil sitting at the table, but by the time they were drinking their coffee in the drawing-room that solemn subject had somehow been forgotten and Ricardo, talking about the picturesque costume of the ancient Etruscans, was the centre of the little group. Belinda marvelled at the way conversation rushed from one subject to another with such bewildering speed, but decided that this was one which could give offence to nobody and was therefore to be encouraged. So she appeared interested although she knew nothing whatever about the ancient Etruscans. It was hardly the kind of thing one would know about, unless one had had the advantage of a classical education, as Nicholas and Ricardo had.
‘Was their dress anything like that of the Germanic tribes?’ she asked. ‘I mean the ones Tacitus described in his Germania,’ she added vaguely, for it was a long time since she had taken her first University examination in which it had been one of the set books.
Ricardo paused and looked thoughtful, but before he had time to answer, Harriet let out a cry of joy, as if she had suddenly come upon something which she had long ago given up for lost.
Locupletissimi veste distinguuntur,
non fluitante …
she paused appealingly, and waved her plump hands about, searching for the rest of the quotation. While she did so, Belinda and Dr Parnell began to laugh, the curate and Miss Aspinall looked amazed and expectant, while the Archdeacon smiled a little doubtfully, for he was not a very good Latinist, nor had he known his Tacitus very well as an undergraduate. Mr Mold looked frankly bored, although he could not help thinking that Harriet looked very attractive, waving her hands about in the air.
Ricardo was frowning, but only for a moment. How terrible it would be if he were to fail her! He cleared his throat…
non fluitante sed stricto et singulos artus exprimente,
he recited.
Really, reflected Belinda, Ricardo’s faculty for quoting Tacitus is quite frightening!
‘I suppose veste means vest,’ said the curate earnestly, with an expression of painful intelligence on his face.
‘Hardly in the modern sense, perhaps,’ said Ricardo thoughtfully, ‘although it was a tight-fitting garment, as you hear from the description.’
‘More like men’s long pants,’ said Edith Liversidge bluntly. ‘They must have looked rather comic.’
‘Yes, it is strange that the rich men should have been distinguished by the wearing of underclothes,’ said Belinda thinking that the conversation was getting more than usually silly. She was herself smiling, as she could not help thinking of the curate’s combinations. It was a good thing, she felt, when Ricardo suggested that Harriet might honour them by playing something on the piano.
‘How very talented your sister must be,’ said Mr Mold, who was sitting on the sofa by Belinda. ‘She would be an asset to any household,’ he declared pompously.
Belinda tried to think of something to say which would put him off, but could think of nothing without being disloyal to her sister. Certainly she looked very splendid sitting at the piano; it was not surprising that he should admire her.
The first chords of The Harmonious Blacksmith jangled forth. Belinda wondered why Harriet had chosen this particular piece, and began to be a little anxious about the later variations, which she knew were rather tricky. But Harriet avoided this difficulty by playing only the first two variations.