Excellent Women (2 page)

IT was several days before I saw Mrs. Napier again, although I heard her going in and out and there seemed to be voices coming from her room every evening. I had an idea that I might ask her in to coffee sometime but hesitated about it because I did not quite know how to convey the impression that it was not, of course, to become a regular thing. I wanted to appear civil rather than friendly. One day a new roll of toilet paper of a rather inferior brand appeared in the lavatory, and I also noticed that an attempt had been made to clean the bath. It was not as well done as I should have liked to see it; people do not always realise that cleaning a bath properly can be quite hard work.

‘I suppose
she
did it,’ said Mrs. Morris, my ‘woman’, who came twice a week. ‘She doesn’t look as if she could clean anything.’

Mrs. Morris was a Welshwoman who had come to London as a girl but still retained her native accent. I marvelled as always at her secret knowledge, when, as far as I knew, she had not yet set eyes on Mrs. Napier.

‘Kettle’s boiling, miss,’ she said, and I knew that it must be eleven o’clock, for she made this remark so regularly that I should have thought something was wrong if she had forgotten.

‘Oh, good, then let’s have our tea,’ I said, making the response expected of me. I waited for Mrs. Morris to say, ‘There’s a drop of milk in this jug,’ as she always did on discovering the remains of yesterday’s milk, and then we were ready for our tea.

‘I was cleaning at the vicarage yesterday, those rooms they’re going to let,’ said Mrs. Morris. ‘Miss Malory was saying how she wanted you to go there.’

‘Yes, I know, but I think it’s really better for me to stay here,’ I said.

‘Yes, indeed, Miss Lathbury. It wouldn’t be right at all for you to live at the vicarage.’

‘Well, Father Malory and Miss Malory are my friends.’

‘Yes, but it wouldn’t be right. If Miss Malory was to go away now…’

‘You think it wouldn’t be quite respectable?’ I asked.

‘Respectable?’ Mrs. Morris stiffened, and straightened the dark felt hat she always wore. ‘That isn’t for me to say, Miss Lathbury. But it isn’t natural for a man not to be married.’

‘Clergymen don’t always want to,’ I explained, ‘or they think it better they shouldn’t.’

‘Strong passions, isn’t it,’ she muttered obscurely. ‘Eating meat, you know, it says that in the Bible. Not that we get much of it now. If he was a
real
Father like Father Bogart,’ she went on, naming the priest of the Roman Catholic Church in our district, ‘you could understand it.’

‘But Mrs. Morris, you’re a regular churchwoman. I thought you liked Father Malory.’

‘Oh, yes, I’ve nothing against him really, but it isn’t right.’ She finished her tea and went over to the sink. ‘I’ll just wash up these things.’

I watched her stiff uncompromising back which hardly seemed to bend even though the sink was a low one.

‘Has something upset you?’ I asked. ‘Something about Father Malory?’

‘Oh, miss,’ she turned to face me, her hands red and dripping from the hot water. ‘It’s that old black thing he wears on his head in church.’

‘You mean his biretta?’ I asked, puzzled.

‘I don’t know what he calls it. Like a little hat, it is.’

‘But you’ve been going to St. Mary’s for years,’ I said. ‘You must have got used to it by now.’

‘Well, it was my sister Gladys and her husband, been staying with us they have. I took them to church Sunday evening and they didn’t like it at all, nor the incense, said it was Roman Catholic or something and we’d all be kissing the Pope’s toe before you could say knife.’

She sat down with the drying-cloth in her hands. She looked so worried that I had to stop myself smiling.

‘Of course,’ she went on, ‘Evan and I have always been to St. Mary’s because it’s near, but it isn’t like the church I went to as a girl, where Mr. Lewis was vicar. He didn’t have incense or wear that old black hat.’

‘No, I don’t suppose he did,’ I agreed, for I knew the seaside town she came from and I remembered the ‘English’ church, unusual among so many chapels, with the Ten Commandments in Welsh and in English on either side of the altar and a special service on Sunday morning for the visitors. I did not remember that they had expected or received ‘Catholic privileges’.

‘I was always church,’ said Mrs. Morris proudly. ‘Never been in the chapel, though I did once go to the Ebenezer social, but I don’t want to have anything to do with some old Pope. Kissing his toe, indeed!’ She looked up at me, half laughing, not quite sure if Gladys and her husband had been joking when they said it.

‘There’s a statue in St. Peter’s Church in Rome,’ I explained, ‘and people do kiss the toe. But that’s only
Roman
Catholics,’ I said in a loud clear voice. ‘Don’t you remember Father Malory explaining about the Pope in his Sunday morning sermons last year?’

‘Oh, Sunday morning, was it?’ she laughed derisively. ‘That’s all very fine, standing up and talking about the Pope. A lot of us could do that. But who’s going to cook the Sunday dinner?’

No answer seemed to be needed or expected to this question, and we laughed together, a couple of women against the whole race of men. Mrs. Morris dried her hands, fumbled in the pocket of her apron and took out a squashed packet of cigarettes. ‘Let’s have a fag, any road,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I’ll just tell Gladys what you said, Miss Lathbury, about it being some old statue.’

I did not feel that I had done as well as I might have in my attempt to instruct Mrs. Morris in the differences between the Roman Church and ours, but I did not think that Julian Malory could have done much better.

After she had gone I boiled myself a foreign egg for lunch and was just making some coffee when there was a knock on the kitchen door.

It was Mrs. Napier.

‘I’ve come to ask something rather awkward,’ she said, smiling.

‘Well, come in and have a cup of coffee with me. I was just making some.’

‘Thank you, that would be nice.’

We went into the sitting-room and I switched on the fire. She looked around her with frank interest and curiosity.

‘Rather nice,’ she said. ‘I suppose this is the best from the country rectory?’

‘Most of it,’ I said, ‘and I’ve bought a few things from time to time.’

‘Look,’ she said abruptly, ‘I was wondering if your woman, the one who’s been here this morning, could possibly do for me at all? Perhaps on the mornings when you’re not here?’

‘I daresay she would be glad to have some more work,’ I said, and she’s  quite good. She does go to the vicarage occasionally.’

‘Oh, the vicarage.’ Mrs. Napier made a face. ‘Will the vicar call?”

‘I can ask him to, if you like,’ I said seriously. ‘He and his sister are friends of mine.’

‘He isn’t married then? One of
those
… I mean,’ she added apologetically as if she had said something that might offend me,

‘One of the kind who don’t marry?’

‘Well, he isn’t married and as he’s about forty I dare say he won’t now.’ I seemed to have spent so much time lately in talking about the celibacy of the clergy in general and Julian Malory in particular that I was a little tired of the subject.

‘That’s just when they break out,’ laughed Mrs. Napier. ‘I always imagine that clergymen need wives to help them with their parish work, but I suppose most of his congregation are devout elderly women with nothing much to do, so that’s all right. Holy fowl, you know.’

I felt that I did not like Mrs. Napier any more than I had at our first meeting, and she was dropping ash all over my newly brushed carpet.

‘Will your husband be coming back soon?’ I asked, to break the rather awkward silence that had developed.

‘Oh, soon enough,’ she said casually. She stubbed out her cigarette in a little dish that wasn’t meant to be an ash-tray and began walking about the room. ‘I know it sounds awful’, she said, standing by the window, ‘but I’m not really looking forward to his coming very much.’

‘Oh, that’s probably because you haven’t seen him for some time,’ I said, in a bright sensible tone.

‘That doesn’t really make any difference. There’s more to it than that.’

‘But surely it will be all right once he is here and you’ve had a little time together?” I said, beginning to feel the inadequacy that an unmarried and inexperienced woman must always feel when discussing such things.

‘Perhaps it will. But we’re so different. We met at a party during the war and fell in love in the silly romantic way people did then. You know… .’

‘Yes, I suppose people did.’ In my Censorship days I had read that they did and I had sometimes wanted to intervene and tell them to wait a little longer, until they were quite sure.

‘Rockingham is rather good-looking, of course, and everyone thinks him charming and amusing. He has some money of his own and likes to dabble in painting. But you see,’ she turned to me very seriously, ‘he knows nothing about anthropology and cares less.’

I listened in bewildered silence. ‘Why, ought he to?’ I asked stupidly.

‘Well, I did this field trip in Africa when he was away and I met Everard Bone, who was in the Army out there. He’s an anthropologist too. You may have seen him on the stairs.’

‘Oh, yes, I think I have. A tall man with fair hair.’

‘We’ve done a lot of work together, and it does give one a special link with a person, to have done any academic work with him. Rockingham and I just haven’t got that.’

Did she always call him Rockingham? I wondered irrelevantly. It sounded so formal, and yet it was difficult to know how to abbreviate it unless one called him Rocky or used some other name.

‘Surely you and your husband have other things in common, though, perhaps deeper and more lasting than this work?’ I asked, feeling that I must try to take my part in this difficult conversation. I hardly liked to think that she might also have these other things with Everard Bone. Indeed, I did not think that I liked Everard Bone at all, if he was the person I had seen on the stairs. His name, his pointed nose, and the air of priggishness which fair men sometimes have, had set me against him. Also, and here I was ready to admit that I was old-fashioned and knew nothing of the ways of anthropologists, I did not think it quite proper that they should have worked together while Rockingham Napier was serving his country. Here the picture of the Wren officers in their ill-fitting white uniforms obtruded itself, but I resolutely pushed it back. Whatever he may have had to do, he had been serving his country.

‘Of course,’ Mrs. Napier went on, ‘when you’re first in love, everything about the other person seems delightful, especially if it shows the difference between you. Rocky’s very tidy and I’m not.’

So he could be called Rocky now. Somehow it made him seem more human.

‘You should see my bedside table, such a clutter of objects, cigarettes, cosmetics, aspirins, glasses of water,
The Golden Bough,
a detective story, any object that happens to take my fancy. Rocky used to think that so sweet, but after a while it maddened him, it was just a mess.’

‘I suppose it does get like that,’ I said. ‘One ought to be careful of one’s little ways.’ Dora’s beaded cover on the milk jug, her love of bakelite plates, and all the irritating things I did myself and didn’t know about… perhaps even my cookery books by my bed might drive somebody mad. ‘But surely that’s only a detail,’ I said, ‘and it ought not to affect the deeper relationship.’

‘Of course you’ve never been married,’ she said, putting me in my place among the rows of excellent women. ‘Oh, well…’ she moved towards the door. ‘I suppose we shall go our own ways. That’s how most marriages turn out and it could be worse.’

‘Oh, but you mustn’t say that,’ I burst out, having all the romantic ideals of the unmarried. ‘I’m sure everything will be all right really.’

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Thank you for the coffee, anyway, and a sympathetic hearing. I really ought to apologise for talking to you like this, but confession is supposed to be good for the soul.’

I murmured something, but I did not think I had been particularly sympathetic and I certainly had not felt it, for people like the Napiers had not so far come within my range of experience. I was much more at home with Winifred and Julian Malory, Dora Caldicote, and the worthy but uninteresting people whom I met at my work or in connection with the church. Such married couples as I knew appeared to be quite contented, or if they were not they did not talk about their difficulties to comparative strangers. There was certainly no mention of them ‘going their own ways’, and yet how did I really know that they didn’t? This idea raised disquieting thoughts and doubts, so I turned on the wireless to distract me. But it was a women’s programme and they all sounded so married and splendid, their lives so full and yet so well organised, that I felt more than usually spinsterish and useless. Mrs. Napier must be hard up for friends if she could find nobody better than me to confide in, I thought. At last I went downstairs to see if there were any letters. There was nothing for me, but two for Mrs. Napier, from one of which I learned that her Christian name was Helena. It sounded rather old-fashioned and dignified, not at all the kind of name I should have imagined for her. Perhaps it was a good omen for the future that she should have such a name.

IT was certainly unfortunate that Helena Napier should be out when the telegram came. Wives ought to be waiting for their husbands to come back from the wars, I felt, though perhaps unreasonably, when a few hours by aeroplane can transport a husband from Italy to England.

I heard her bell being rung and then mine, and when I opened the door and saw the boy standing there with the telegram I knew at once as if by instinct what its news must be. The question was, when would he arrive? It sounded as if it might be that very evening and I had heard Mrs. Napier go out about six o’clock. She was probably meeting Everard Bone somewhere. Ought I to try to find out where she was and let her know? I felt that I ought to make an attempt and began searching through the telephone directory to see if I could find his number. If I couldn’t, so much the better—I should be saved from interfering in something which didn’t really concern me. But there it was, a Chelsea address—there could hardly be two Everard Bones. I dialled the number fearfully and heard it ring. ‘Hello, hello, who is that?’ a querulous elderly woman’s voice answered. I was completely taken aback, but before I could speak the voice went on, ‘If it’s Miss Jessop I can only hope you are ringing up to apologise.’ I stammered out an explanation. I was not Miss Jessop. Was Mr. Everard Bone there? ‘My son is at a meeting of the Prehistoric Society,’ said the voice. ‘Oh, I see. I’m so sorry to have bothered you,’ I said. ‘People are always bothering me—I never wanted to have the telephone put in at all.’

After a further apology I hung up the receiver, shaken and mystified but at the same time relieved. Everard Bone was at a meeting of the Prehistoric Society. It sounded like a joke. I could hardly be expected to pursue my enquiries any further, so I decided that I was an interfering busybody and went upstairs to get my supper. I opened a tin of baked beans, thinking that it would be easy and quick, for I could not rid myself of the feeling that Rockingham Napier might arrive at any moment and that I might have to go down and open the door. He would certainly have no latch-key and he might not have had supper. I now began to feel almost agitated; I hurried about the kitchen, eating the baked beans in ten minutes or less, quite without dignity, and then washing up. I had made a cup of coffee and taken it into the sitting-room when I heard a taxi draw up and then Mrs. Napier’s bell ringing.

I hesitated at the top of the stairs, feeling nervous and stupid, for this was a situation I had not experienced before, and my training did not seem to be quite equal to it. Also, I suddenly thought of the parrot in a cage and that was distracting.

I opened the door rather timidly, hoping that he would not be too disappointed when he saw that I was not his wife.

‘I’m afraid Mrs. Napier is out,’ I said, ‘but I heard the bell and came down.’

It was a good thing he began talking, for I am not used to meeting handsome men and I am afraid that I must have been staring at him rather rudely. And yet it was his manner that charmed me rather than his looks, though he was dark and elegant and had all those attributes that are usually considered to make a man handsome.

‘How very nice of you to come down,’ he said, and I could see, though it is impossible to put it into words, exactly what Helena had meant when she talked about him putting the awkward Wren officers at their ease. ‘It’s lucky for me you were in. I think you must be Miss Lathbury.’

‘Yes, I am,’ I said, surprised. ‘But how did you know?’

‘Helena mentioned you in a letter.’

I could not help wondering how she had described me. ‘Yes, we have met once or twice,’ I said, ‘I live in the flat above you.’

We were going upstairs now, I leading the way and he following with his suitcases. Fortunately the doors of their flat were unlocked and I showed him into the sitting-room.

‘Oh, my things, how good it is to be with them again!’ he exclaimed, going over to the bookcase and picking up one of the paper-weights which were arranged on the top. ‘And my chairs, too. Don’t you think they’re beautiful?’

‘Yes, they are lovely,’ I said, hovering in the doorway. ‘Do let me know if there’s anything I can do, won’t you?’

‘Oh, please don’t go, unless you have to, that is …?’ He turned his charming smile full on me and I felt a little dazed.

‘Have you had anything to eat?’ I asked.

‘Yes, thank you. I had dinner on the train. It isn’t wise to drop in on Helena and expect to find a meal ready or even anything in the larder. I’m afraid we don’t always agree about the importance of civilised eating.’ He looked round the room. ‘Quite pleasing, isn’t it? I rather feared the worst when Helena told me where we were going to live.’

‘I’m afraid it isn’t one of the best parts of London,’ I said, ‘but I’m fond of it.’

‘Yes, I believe it may have a certain
Stimmung.
If you live in an unfashionable district you have to find at least that to make it tolerable.’

I was not quite sure what he meant. ‘I like to think of it when it was a marsh and wild boars roamed over it,’ I ventured, remembering something I had read in the local weekly paper. ‘And Aubrey Beardsley lived here once, you know. There is a plaque marking his house.’

‘Oh, perfect!’ He seemed pleased. ‘That does make things rather better. Those exquisite drawings.’

Personally I thought them disgusting, but I made a noncommittal reply.

‘It’s going to be very cold after Italy, though.’ He shivered and rubbed his hands together.

‘I don’t know whether you would like to come up to my flat for a while?’ I suggested. ‘I have a fire and was just going to make some coffee. But perhaps you’d rather unpack?’

‘No, I should love some coffee.’

‘What a charming room,’ he said when we were in it. ‘You are obviously a person of taste.’

I could not help being pleased at the implied compliment but felt bound to explain that most of the furniture had come from my old home.

‘Ah, yes,’ he paused, as if remembering something, ‘from the old rectory. Helena told me that, too.’

I went into the kitchen and busied myself making more coffee.

‘I hope you’ve had your meal?’ he said, coming in and watching me. ‘I’ve arrived at rather an awkward time.’

I explained that I had just finished supper and added that I found it rather a bother cooking just for myself. ‘I like food,’ I said, ‘but I suppose on the whole women don’t make such a business of living as men do.’ I thought of my half-used tin of baked beans; no doubt I should be seeing that again tomorrow.

‘No, and women don’t really appreciate wine either. I suppose you wouldn’t dream of drinking a bottle of wine by yourself, would you?’

‘Of course not,’ I said, rather primly, I am afraid.

“That’s what’s so wonderful about living out of England,’ he said, pacing round the small kitchen, ‘such a glorious feeling of well-being, sitting at a table in the sun with a bottle of whatever it happens to be—there’s nothing to equal that, is there?’

‘Yes, I like sitting at a table in the sun,’ I agreed, ‘but I’m afraid I’m one of those typical English tourists who always wants a cup of tea.’

‘And when it comes, it’s a pale straw-coloured liquid …’

‘And the tea’s in a funny little bag …’

‘And they may even bring
hot
milk with it…

We both began laughing.

‘But even that has its own kind of charm,’ I said stubbornly; ‘it’s all part of the foreign atmosphere.’

‘The English tourists certainly are,’ he said, ‘though there weren’t any in Italy, of course. I think that was what was lacking, what made life so unnatural. The sightseers were all in uniform, there were no English gentlewomen with Baedekers and large straw hats. I missed that.’

We went on talking about Italy and then somehow I was telling him about the neighbourhood, Julian Malory and his sister and the church.

‘High Mass—with music and incense? Oh, I should like that,’ he said. ‘I hope it is the
best
quality incense? I believe it varies.’

‘Yes, I’ve seen advertisements,’ I admitted, ‘and they have different names. Lambeth is
very
expensive, but Pax is quite cheap. It seems as if it ought to be the other way round.’

‘And have you dozens of glamorous acolytes?’

‘Well …’ I hesitated, remembering Teddy Lemon, our Master of Ceremonies, with his rough curly hair and anxious face, and his troop of well-drilled, tough-looking little boys, ‘they are very nice good boys, but perhaps you should go to a Kensington church if you want to see glamorous acolytes. I hope you will come to our church sometimes,’ I added more seriously, for I felt that Julian would expect me to ‘say a word’ here.

‘Oh, yes, I shall look in. I’m very fond of going to church, but I don’t like doing anything before breakfast, you know. That’s always seemed to me to be the great snag about religion, don’t you agree?’

‘Well, one feels that a thing is more worth doing if it’s something of an effort,’ I attempted.

‘You mean virtue goes out of you? Ah, yes, how it does, or rather how it would if there was any to go out of me,’ he sighed. ‘I’m sure you have so much.’

I did not altogether like his frivolous attitude, but I could not help liking him. He was so easy to talk to and I could see him at any social gathering, using his charm to make people feel at home, or rather not consciously using it, for the exercise of it seemed natural to him as if he could not help being charming.

We were still talking about churches when we heard voices on the stairs.

‘Do excuse me,’ he said, ‘that must be Helena. Thank you so much for being so kind to me. I hope we shall be meeting often. He ran out on to the landing and down the stairs.

I put the coffee cups on to a tray and took them into the kitchen. It was a pity, I felt, that Everard Bone should intrude on the Napiers’ reunion. Still, Helena would no doubt be capable of managing the two of them and it was to be hoped that Everard Bone would have the tact to go away quickly and leave them alone. I was just starting to wash the cups when there was a knock at the door. Rockingham stood there with a straw-covered flask of wine in his hand.

‘We feel this is an occasion,’ he said, ‘and should like you to join us. That is, if you approve of drinking wine at this hour.’

‘Oh, but surely you’d rather be by yourselves …’

‘Well, the anthropologist is with us, so it seemed a good idea to make it a party,’ he explained.

I began taking
off
my apron and tidying my hair, apologising as I did so, in what I felt was a stupid, fussy way, for my appearance. As if anyone would care how I looked or even notice me, I told myself scornfully.

‘You look very nice,’ said Rockingham, smiling in such a way that he could almost have meant it.

Helena and Everard Bone were in the sitting-room, she putting glasses out and he standing over by the window. I was able to study his profile with its sharp-pointed nose and decide that I disliked it, until he turned towards me and stared with what seemed to be disapproval.

‘Good evening,’ I said, feeling very silly.

‘You do know each other, don’t you?’ said Helena.

‘Yes, at least I’ve seen Mr. Bone on the stairs,’ I explained.

‘Oh, yes, I do remember meeting somebody on the stairs once or twice,’ he said indifferently. ‘Was it you?’

‘Yes.’

‘How marvellous that you were here when Rocky arrived,’ said Helena in a quick nervous tone, ‘too awful for him, coming home to an empty house, but he said you were marvellous and I don’t believe he’s missed me at all, have you, darling?’

She did not wait for him to answer but ran back into the kitchen to fetch something. Rockingham was pouring the wine, so that I was left standing awkwardly with Everard.

‘I believe you’re an anthropologist,’ I said, making what I felt was a brave attempt at conversation. ‘But I’m afraid I don’t know anything about anthropology.’

‘Why should you?’ he asked, half smiling.

‘It must be fun,’ I floundered, ‘I mean, going round Africa and doing all that.’

‘“Fun” is hardly the word,’ he said. ‘It’s very hard work, learning an impossibly difficult language, then endless questionings and statistics, writing up notes and all the rest of it.’

‘No, I suppose it isn’t,’ I said soberly, for he had certainly not made it sound fun. ‘But there must be something satisfying in having done it, a sort of feeling of achievement?’

‘Achievement?’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘But what
has
one done really? I sometimes wonder if it isn’t all a waste of time.’

‘It depends what you set out to do,’ I said rather crossly, feeling like Alice in Wonderland. I was doing very badly here and was grateful when Rockingham came to the rescue.

‘Oh, they hate you to think they get any enjoyment out of it,’ he said rather spitefully.

‘But I do enjoy it,’ said Helena; ‘we aren’t all as dreary as Everard. I simply loved it. And now we’ve got to do all the writing up; that’s what we’ve been discussing this evening. We’re to give a paper before one of the learned societies. Miss Lathbury,’ she turned to me with unnatural animation, ‘you simply must come and hear it.’

‘Yes, Miss Lathbury, you and I will sit at the back and observe the anthropologists,’ said Rockingham. ‘They study mankind and we will study them.’

‘Well, the society is in many ways a primitive community,’ said Everard, ‘and offers the same opportunities for fieldwork.’

‘When is it to be?’ I asked.

‘Oh, quite soon, next month even,’ said Helena.

‘We must
get on,’
said Everard in an irritable tone. ‘The thing will never be ready if we don’t hurry.’

‘It must take a lot of work putting it all together,’ I said. ‘I should be very nervous at the thought of it.

‘Oh, well, it isn’t that. Our stuff is quite new but one wants it to be good.’

‘Oh, certainly,’ I agreed.

‘Well, darling …’ Helena looked at her husband and raised her glass. ‘Isn’t it lovely to have him back again?’ she said to nobody in particular.

Everard said nothing but raised his glass politely, so I did the same.