Less Than Angels (27 page)

‘I can’t quite see myself taking a dozen of this excellent claret into the bush,’ said Mark lightly, but inwardly he was cast down, for it seemed that he was not to be awarded one of the grants.

‘And you,’ he turned now to Vanessa, ‘are an impressionable young lady, who will look for the romance of life. Perhaps you would find it difficult to take the detached view necessary for successful fieldwork.’

‘Oh, dear,’ Vanessa cried out, ‘that means I haven’t got a grant, then.’

Digby awaited his turn with a certain amount of complacency. It looked as if it was going to be Primrose and himself. All the same, he thought Mark’s character reading much more interesting than his own which Professor Mainwaring was now giving out.

‘I think you are a worthy young man,’ he declared. ‘You will not, perhaps, set the Thames on fire, or even the Niger or Zambezi,’ he added with a chuckle, ‘but you are very conscientious and will probably make an excellent husband and father.’

Mark shot a malicious glance at Digby, who was annoyed to feel himself blushing.

‘I wonder how many of you have read Shakespeare’s
Timon of Athens
?’ asked the Professor. ‘Not one of the
great
plays, but there are some fine passages in it, and it may be appropriate here…’

‘Felix, this is intolerable—you will have to tell them. You can’t keep them in suspense any longer,’ Miss Clovis burst out.

‘Could not
you
tell them, my dear Esther? It might come better from a woman.’

‘I? Certainly I will tell them.’ She paused and took a gulp of wine, then began speaking in short gruff sentences. ‘It is this. There is
no
money. And there are no research grants. Father Gemini has
stolen
it. We heard last night.’

Nobody knew what to say.

‘Oh, dear,’ Digby ventured, feeling that the feebleness of his utterance accorded well with the character he had just been given.

‘Sire, this is grievous news,’ said Mark, the shock making him flippant.

The girls did not say anything at first, but after a while Vanessa asked what Father Gemini had to do with it and how could he have ‘stolen’ the money.

‘Somehow, perhaps we shall never know how,’ said Miss Clovis, ‘he persuaded Mrs. Foresight to let him have the money she had promised to us for a research project of his own. Gertrude—Miss Lydgate—telephoned me last night to tell me. I am not sure that she herself is entirely guikless, though I cannot believe that she can have been a party to such a dastardly plan,’ she concluded dramatically.

‘Then Mrs. Foresight had not actually given the money?’ asked Mark.

‘Well, no,’ Miss Clovis sounded flustered, ‘but she had promised it. Isn’t that so, Felix?’

‘Yes, certainly she had promised it,’ he said in a casual, almost uninterested tone. ‘Now, I wonder if you can see why I am reminded of
Timon of Athens
? You have forgotten the play? Let me refresh your memory of the banquet scene. When the dishes are uncovered they are found to contain nothing but warm water.’

‘Well, that certainly doesn’t apply here,’ said Digby, magnanimously, he felt.

‘Afterwards,’ continued Professor Mainwaring, ‘Timon retires to a cave, but I don’t think I can carry the parallel as far as that. I am very sorry that this has happened. Naturally I shall do all I can to see that you get grants for field research from somewhere, though really,’ he mused, ‘I often wonder whether the whole business of going out into the field to study a primitive tribe isn’t vasdy overrated. Heat, discomfort, illness, frustration … and at the end of it all-what?’He faced his hearers almost challenging them to answer him, but his sentence fell into silence. ‘And now,’ he went on, ‘I shall retire to my—er—
cave,
there to meditate on the machinations of Minnie—Mrs. Foresight,’ he added quickly. ‘Henry will order a taxi to take you to the station as I have no motorcar of my own.’

The young people stood up rather sheepishly, then Vanessa went forward and shook his hand, thanking him for his hospitality; the others followed her example. Miss Clovis stayed with them and they had coffee together in the smoking- room.

‘I can’t help feeling that the Jesuits are behind this,’ she said.

‘But Father Gemini isn’t a Jesuit, is he?’ asked Mark.

Miss Clovis snorted. ‘No, he isn’t. The Jesuits are men of
intellect
, even their enemies must allow that. But he is known to have visited one of their establishments several times this year. I can imagine the plotting that went on there. Father Gemini is weak —he would be as wax in their hands. And Mrs. Foresight has taken him for a drive in her motor-car on more than one occasion. Who can tell what may have passed between them then?’

‘It might have been interesting to have heard their conversation,’ said Digby mildly.

‘
Interesting
!
I should think so indeed.’

‘If I may venture a criticism,’ said Mark. ‘I think it would have been better if Professor Mainwaring had been sure of the money before he attempted to award the grants.’

‘I feel rather sorry for him,’ said Vanessa warmly. ‘This whole thing must have been a blow to his prestige. I think you can see by his rather odd behaviour that he is feeling it very deeply.’

‘Oh, he will do another tour in the United States,’ said Miss Clovis. ‘He has not yet lost the power of persuading elderly ladies to part with their money.’ There was a touch of contempt in her tone.

‘It is a power we should all like to have,’ said Mark. ‘I wonder if a young man would have any chance of acquiring it?*

‘Oh, you will go far, Mr. Penfold,’ said Miss Clovis. ‘That is obvious.’

‘But in what direction?’ asked Digby.

‘We none of us know at the moment,’ said Mark. ‘I suppose we’d better see to our packing.’

‘I hope this unfortunate affair doesn’t mean that I shan’t be seeing you at the research centre,’ said Miss Clovis as they waited by the taxi.

‘Oh, no, we shan’t hold it against you,’ said Mark almost insolently, but he might perhaps be excused for feeling that their relationship had undergone some subtle change which justified the tone.

‘I think Miss Clovis was very upset,’ said Digby, when they were in the train. ‘After all it was rather a dreadful thing to happen-it will take some living down. Can’t you just see Fairfax and Vere, yes and Todd and Apfelbaum too, rubbing their hands with glee, jumping for joy in the Antipodes? It will give
us
a kind of power, too. I think our status will be definitely improved now.’

‘The whole system is wrong,’ said Primrose indignantly. ‘This being dependent on wealthy individuals for the money to do essential work.’

‘A brave young lady with Bolshevist views,’ chanted Mark, in mocking imitation of Professor Mainwaring’s manner. He put his arms around her and attempted to kiss her, but she pushed him away and a good-natured struggle followed. Now that they were free from the strain of the week-end their conversation and behaviour became frivolous, almost licentious, and it was perhaps fortunate that the train was not crowded and they had a carriage to themselves.

Digby did a passable imitation of Miss Clovis breaking the news; they concocted a plot to kidnap Professor Mainwaring and imprison him in a cave, and were just deciding which of the learned societies would be likely to provide the highest ransom when they arrived at Victoria Station.

Their high spirits continued throughout their evening meal which they had all together in a Corner House, but eventually they flagged and went their separate ways, Vanessa to her home in Kensington, Primrose to her lodgings in West Hampstead, Mark and Digby to their flat in Camden Town.

‘I think,’ said Digby with a self-consciously casual air, Til just ring up Deirdre and tell her what’s happened. I hope it isn’t too late—I shouldn’t like to disturb the household.’

Rhoda answered the telephone. Deirdre was upstairs in her room, writing, or trying to compose, a letter to Tom. She was beginning to experience the difficulties of correspondence with a person for whom one feels infatuation rather than love or friendship. When she had finished telling him her rather meagre bits of news there seemed little else to say. She loved him, she missed him, she still felt like Scheherezade trying to keep his love and interest, but she could not go on saying these things. She even found herself wondering what Catherine would have said, but then Catherine was a writer of fiction and might look upon a letter as a piece of literature composed by herself to suit a particular person, rather than a spontaneous outpouring of the feelings. Deirdre had her own ideas, for who has not, of how to write a love letter, but Tom was the first person on whom she had ever practised the art, and somehow he did not seem to fit with the person who should receive the kind of letters she could write. His own were full of a variety of news which she could barely comment on intelligently, let alone equal—political intrigues, elections, local gossip-but once he wrote ‘Do you remember that evening we went walking by the river and sat on the seat by the elderberry bushes? The smell of them reminded me of childhood-a moment out of Proust.’ Deirdre had not remembered the flowers particularly, only that she had declared her love for the first time and he had seemed to accept it. Must I then read Proust? she asked herself despair- ingly, seeing the twelve blue volumes with red labels in Catherine’s bookshelves, for she was not much of a reader at the best of times.

Her aunt’s tap on the door and subsequent appearance in the room were almost a relief, though she looked annoyed at the interruption.

‘Telephone for you, dear, a
man’s
voice,’ Rhoda could not resist adding, for it was not Bernard and she was curious to know who could be telephoning her niece at this late hour.

Deirdre approached the instrument suspiciously but her manner warmed when she heard Digby’s voice. They had a very long conversation which Rhoda was able to hear through the drawing-room door which she had left ajar. Deirdre sounded indignant and tender by turns and said that she would meet whoever it was for lunch next day.

‘I wonder if Tom would like that,’ said Rhoda to her sister, who was mending one of Malcolm’s shirts and listening to a religious talk on the Light Programme.

‘What? Deirdre having lunch with another young man? But why shouldn’t she?’ asked Mabel in her usual mild tone ‘After all, they aren’t engaged, you know.’

‘That was Digby Fox,’ said Deirdre coming into the room ‘Isn’t it a shame, there’s no money for the Foresight research grants after all. Father Gemini has pinched it for his linguistic research.’

‘What, that little priest who is a friend of Miss Lydgate’s?’ asked Mabel. ‘Fancy that I Such a funny-looking little man, too.’

‘Digby Fox is a friend of Tom’s isn’t he?’ asked Rhoda, adjusting the situation to her own satisfaction.

‘Yes, and a friend of mine, too,’ said Deirdre. ‘I must go and tell Tom about this—I was just in the middle of writing to him.’

She still had a half sheet of air-letter to fill up and the news Digby had told her brought her nicely to the end of it. There was hardly even room for an affectionate ending. She read the letter through, kissed it, and then sealed it up. It would be nice having lunch with Digby tomorrow, she thought; it was the first time since Tom had gone away that she had consciously looked forward to anything.

Digby came away from the telephone smiling and humming a little indefinite tune. He saw himself, perhaps as Professor Mainwaring had described him, worthy, painstaking and biding his time. Perhaps it would be like the tortoise and the hare-Tom, with his narrow aristocratic face and brilliant grey eyes, and Digby—he paused to look at himself in the glass above the umbrella-stand—mousy fair hair, blue eyes, good teeth…

‘Do you realize,’ said Mark coming out of the kitchen, ‘that we have absolutely
nothing
for breakfast tomorrow morning?’

‘No, I didn’t,’ said Digby absently.

‘We ate what there was yesterday, and haven’t had a chance to do any shopping,’ Mark explained. ‘I think I shall ring up Catherine, she may be able to help us. Perhaps she’ll invite us round for a glass of beer.’

But Catherine’s telephone went on ringing in her empty flat while she sat drinking bitter with Alaric Lydgate in a nearby public house. She had taken the bold step-which she would hardly have advised her magazine readers to imitate—of inviting him round for Sunday evening supper, knowing what a depressing meal this can be for anyone who lives alone. Afterwards she had thought he might like to visit the local, and so here they sat at a little round wet taole and Catherine listened to Alaric talking about the trunks of notes he had up in his attic.

‘Tom Mallow didn’t approach me about them,’ he said, ‘and if he had, I should luve felt bound to refuse him access to them until I had written up the material myself.’

Catherine was too tactful to inform him that Tom hadn’t thought the notes would be of any use to him. ‘Yes, I can appreciate that’, she said. ‘But…’ she looked up at him, her eyes rather wide and soft-looking with hardly a trace of their usual sardonic merriment, ‘do you
have
to write up the material? I mean,’ she went on, ‘wouldn’t it be rather a bother to have to do it?’

Her suggestion was so outrageous that he could think of absolutely nothing to say. Ever since he could remember, almost, he had been going to ‘write up his material’. He felt as if the ground were slipping away from under his feet and it was quite an effort to stand up and walk to the bar for some more drinks.

When he came back Catherine noticed that he carried two double whiskies. Oh, dear, she thought, he looks terribly Easter Island, or even like Mr. Rochester in
Jane Eyre.

‘And what is going on in your head now?’ he asked, a little sarcastic.

‘I was thinking,’ said Catherine slowly, ‘that it isn’t only we poor women who can find consolation in literature. Men can have the comfort of imagining themselves like Heathcliff or Mr. Rochester. I wonder if they often do?’

‘What rubbish you talk,’ he said brusquely. But suddenly the sun broke through on the grim surface of the carved rock and he smiled.