Less Than Angels Part 13

Deirdre's eves filled with tears.

'Good heavens, what is happening at the counter,' said Catherine brightly, 'such a fuss!'

'It seems to be Father Gemini and Miss Lydgate,' said Deirdre. 'They're linguists, you know and do a lot of work together.'

Catherine and Deirdre were near enough to be able to hear what was going on. Father Gemini seemed to be in some difficulty with the ordering of his meal.

'With croquette?' asked the woman behind the counter, in an almost threatening tone.

'What does she mean?' he asked.

'She is asking if you want a potato croquette with your mince,' shouted Miss Lydgate in a clear impatient tone.

'I do not know. How should I know? I do not understand this,' said Father Gemini testily. 'I do not like this place,'

'Well, go and sit down and I'll bring yours,' said Miss Lydgate roughly.

Father Gemini left the counter sulkily, seeming almost to drag his feet like a petulant child, and sat down at a table very near to Catherine and Deirdre. Eventually Miss Lydgate joined him and put food-mince on toast with carrots- before him. He looked at it suspiciously and then began to prod it with his fork before conveying some to his mouth.

Catherine wondered again as she so often did why it was that so-called 'well-bred' people had such very penetrating voices. It could not be thought, in these days, that they were accustomed to giving orders to servants. Miss Lydgate could be heard all over the room and Father Gemini matched Iiis tone to hers. It was perhaps a good thing that Deirdre should be diverted from too much brooding over Tom and Elaine, and she and Catherine were virtually compelled to give up their own conversation and listen to that of Miss Lydgate an('Father Gemini.

'Well, this is a better lunch than you'd get at St. Anthony's,' declared Miss Lydgate, naming the London house of the missionary order to which Father Gemini belonged.

'We do not trouble there about what we eat,' he replied, still rather sulkily. 'There the matters of the spirit are of more importance.'

'That may be, but you have to eat,' retorted Miss Lydgate 'Even the saints had to take food. Locusts and wild honey, you remember St. John the Baptist.'

"There are not locusts in Kensington,' said Father Gemini, perhaps irrelevandy.

'No, of course there aren't. What I meant was that if you're going to have food you may as well prepare it in the best way,' she said, but did not enlarge upon this point, perhaps remembering the ramshackle household arrangements of Miss Clovis and herself and possibly, even, some rather dreadful meal which Father Gemini had eaten at their table.

'I do not think you have eaten with us at St. Anthony's?' asked Father Gemini in a sarcastic tone. 'No, I do not think so. No woman has eaten there.'

'Oh, well? shrugged Miss Lydgate, as if she would hardly count herself as being a woman, 'I don't see how that affects my point.'

There was silence between them for a few moments, during which they finished their mince and went on to trifle.

'I shall not be here much longer in London,' said Father Gemini at last. 'It will be good to go back again to Africa.'

'Well, you will be here until Christmas.'

'It is possible that I go before that. My plans can change themselves.'

'What do you mean? How can you afford to go out again until the money comes from America?' asked Miss Lydgate impatiently.

Father Gemini smiled secretively into his beard. 'It could come from another place. America is not the only country from which money can come. And there may be enough for me to take Father Serpentelli with me.'

Miss Lydgate snorted. 'I can imagine what results you'll get from him. Why, he can't even distinguish an open 'e Where will you get this money?' she asked, curiosity getting the better of her.

'I cannot say. I must not say-yet.'

'Oh. Then where will you go when you do get it? To the same place as before?'

'No, no-I have covered that ground most carefully. For the rest are living there only pygmies.' He gave the words a contemptuous emphasis. 'It would waste time to study them. I shall go to the hill tribes.'

'The hill tribes!' Miss Lydgate shouted, banging her spoon on the table. 'A few hundreds living on each hill and each group speaking a different language, totally unrelated to that of any of the others!' She seemed about to burst with excitement. ' Magnificent! You know, of course, that Fairfax was there in the thirties?'

'Yes, I know it.' If he had been familiar with the expression Father Gemini would no doubt have answered 'so what?' at this point. Instead, he declared rather smugly, 'But I have not been there.'

'No, of course not. And Fairfax himself would be the first to admit that he was no linguist.'

'Do you think he would be the first to admit it?' asked Father Gemini smoothly. 'I do not think so, not the first: Catherine began to giggle and turned to Deirdre with some apt comment, but she laughed only in a half-hearted way.

'You know, I suppose,' she began tentatively, 'that Tom will be going back quite soon, after he's been to see his mother?'

'Is it really coming to that again?' said Catherine with studied vagueness. 'I hadn't realized it would be so soon.'

'He says he's going to fly,' said Deirdre. 'I shall feel so nervous.'

Catherine felt that she ought to allow Deirdre the first claim to anxiety and did not add that she herself, and probably Elaine too, would also be feeling nervous.

'He is longing to get back,' said Deirdre. 'I don't think he's really happy in England. Oh, Catherine,' she burst out, 'you don't think there's anyone out there, do you, and that that is why he wants to go back so much?'

'He never mentioned anyone,' said Catherine, 'and he is usually rather open about these things. I think it's just the love of his work, though, of course, the women there are very attractive. I don't think we can ever hope to know all that goes on in a man's life or even to follow him with our loving thoughts, and perhaps that's just as well. You know how you say to yourself sometimes, "I wonder what he's doing now?" You can't always know that.'

'Tom has usually been working on his thesis when he hasn't been with me,' said Deirdre, doubt clouding her face.

'Yes, writing a thesis is an excellent alibi and a good way of keeping out of mischief,' Catherine agreed. 'But one evening, when I thought he was doing just that, he was holding a young woman's hand in a restaurant.' She threw Deirdre one of her bright sardonic glances.

'Oh, Catherine, I'm sorry ... I didn't know what to do. You see, I love him so much.'

Her words seemed to ring out among the peac.o.c.ks, making Catherine wonder if they often heard or witnessed the deeper pa.s.sions. The gossipy office chatter, the dreary female conversation, the quiet furtive hand-holdings, would be more what they were accustomed to, she felt.

'How am I going to bear it when he goes away?' Deirdre went on.

'Oh, people do bear these things,' said Catherine a little impatiently. ' You must get out and about with your friends more,' she added in her women's magazine tone, ' or learn a foreign language in the long winter evenings. But I was forgetting, you'll have your anthropological studies, just think how useful they'll be to Tom. In two years or less he'll be back again. The time will soon go.'

Deirdre wanted to ask Catherine if she was very unhappy because Tom had left her; she even wanted her forgiveness for her own part in the affair, but Catherine seemed to discourage further conversation by looking at her watch and suggesting that it was time they moved, 'I hope you enjoy the thesis,' she said, 'but don't expect too much. I'm afraid you'll be disappointed if you hope to find all sorts of deliriously revealing little bits, but of coursejw won't read it for such a frivolous reason. You may even have to understand it, or pretend that you do.'

In the bus going home, Deirdre wondered if Catherine had been just the tiniest bit spiteful in her remarks about the thesis. Even the nicest people could be catty, and Catherine had been as good as jilted by Tom, when one came to think of it. It was quite possible that Catherine wouldn't have understood it or would at least have missed its finer points. Deirdre entered the house quietly, hoping to sneak up to her room undisturbed to begin her own reading of it.

But her aunt's voice came from the kitchen. 'Is that you, dear? Have you had tea?'

Deirdre opened the kitchen door but could not at first see Rhoda because the whole room seemed to be filled with voluminous white garments hanging from the clothes-airer and dripping on to the floor.

'What on earth have you been doing?' she asked.

'Oh, it's Father Tulliver's albs,' said Rhoda fussily. 'I washed them after lunch and now it's come on to rain. I don't know how I'm going to get them dry.'

'But why mustyou do them?'

'Oh, I offered to help when Mrs. Tulliver was ill, you know. It did seem as if one ought to do all one could.'

'But that was quite a long time ago. She's better now, surely?'

'Yes, she is, but I dare say she may still be feeling rather weak. An operation takes it out of you.'

'Why couldn't Father Tulliver send them to the laundry then?'

'I don't know, dear,' said Rhoda, for this disloyal thought had also occurred to her earlier, as she bent over the sink with her hands in the hot soapy water when she would normally have been sitting quietly reading her library book.

'Well, I certainly wouldn't do that for a man,' said Deirdre scornfully, forgetting or perhaps putting into a higher category the typing she had sometimes done for Tom.

'I expect you would for Tom,' said Rhoda in her coyest tone. 'Do you think it's too early for tea? I could really do with mine. Your mother is out, you know; she and Phyllis's mother have gone on a little shopping spree. There was an advertis.e.m.e.nt of some household linen bargains at Robinson and Cleaver,' she added cosily. 'Double-bed sheets, very much reduced, with pillow-cases to match.'

In the drawing-room Rhoda switched on a bar of the electric fire. The rain had made it rather chilly and tea always seemed to her the kind of meal that ought to be cosy.

'I suppose you and Tom will be looking around for that kind of bargain one of these days,' she said brightly.

'Will we?' said Deirdre unhelpfully.

'You'll miss him when he goes back to Africa,' went on Rhoda, taking refuge in a statement of the obvious. 'Perhaps poor Bernard will get a look-in then.'

'Whoever I go out with when Tom's gone, it certainly won't be Bernard.'

'Do you think Tom will mind if you go out with other young men?' asked Rhoda in a frank interested tone.

'He won't have to.'

'I was just wondering,' Rhoda began, emboldened by her second cup of tea, 'will you get officially engaged before he goes?'

'I should think it's most unlikely. What would be the point?'

'Well, young men and women do get engaged,' said Rhoda rather defiantly, 'look at Malcolm and Phyllis.'

Deirdre smiled. 'I don't think Tom and I have much in common with them,' she said in a superior tone, but inwardly she was wis.h.i.+ng that they had just a little more. Enlightened though she was, Deirdre couldn't help glancing a little enviously sometimes at Phyllis's conventional engagement ring-a medium-sized sapphire with a diamond on each side-and wis.h.i.+ng that Tom might suggest that they became engaged before he went back to Africa. Then, when he came back again, they could get married. It seemed so simple, really, but she would never admit this to her aunt. Rhoda had hoped that an aunt might win confidences denied to a mother, but in this she was disappointed. Indeed, when they had finished tea and Deirdre had gone upstairs to her room, she was left with the impression that Deirdre didn't really care whether she married Tom or not. If this were so, then poor Bernard might yet have a chance, and if not Bernard, then others. Letting her imagination play on this fancy, Rhoda could hardly fix any limit to the romantic possibilities of her niece's life.

When she had washed up the tea things, she left Father Tulliver's albs dripping sadly in the kitchen and then she too retired to her room, taking with her some mending. She stationed herself comfortably in the arm-chair by the window and proceeded to look out into Alaric Lydgate's garden.

He was in the vegetable part at the back, apparently digging up potatoes. Then Mrs. Skinner came out in her ap.r.o.n, holding an umbrella over her head, and began to cut some runner beans. Ordinary actions, perhaps, the getting of vegetables for the evening meal, but, like Deirdre's reluctance to talk about her feelings for Tom, it seemed as if they must have some strange significance.

When they had gone back into the house, Rhoda turned away from the window and switched on her portable wireless set. The news seemed dull and ordinary by comparison.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

Tom arrived at the railway station of the Shrops.h.i.+re market town at the unpromising hour of half past one in the afternoon. There had been no restaurant car on the train and he had forgotten to provide himself with sandwiches. He hurried off the platform, anxious to avoid meeting anyone who remembered him from youth or childhood and with whom he might have to embark on the difficult business of explaining exactly what it was that he was doing now.

'Good afternoon, Master Tom,' said the ticket collector. 'It isn't often we have the pleasure of seeing you-you've been in foreign parts, I hear?'

'Yes, in Africa.'

'In the army, I suppose.'

'Well, not exactly.' Tom smiled, thinking of the great inquisitive army of anthropologists, the seekers after knowledge. 'I've been studying the-er-customs of an African tribe.'

The man's face brightened. ' Ah, I've heard about some of them,' he ventured. ' You chose a good day to come, you did, what with the carnival and flower show this afternoon.'

'Oh, of course. It's always on a Thursday, isn't it.'

The arrival of other travellers enabled him to escape, and he set out to walk through the 'town' to the house where his mother and brother lived. Thursday was early closing day, wThich was why the carnival and flower show were always held then. Some of the shops had their blinds down, and Tom could see himself reflected in the dark surfaces, a shabby trudging figure, carrying a brief-case and canvas bag. He resented this, and tried not to catch any more glimpses of himself. In the centre of the town there were some signs of what might have been described as festivity. Lines of coloured flags strung across the main street hung limply in the hot afternoon air, interspersed with notices welcoming visitors to the town. Char-a-bancs, or coaches as they were now called, were drawn up in the car-park, and troupes of children dressed in fairy, Chinese and pirate costumes, were to be seen getting out. When he came to the town's park, Tom noticed the big marquee where the flowers and vegetables would be exhibited.

The scene reminded him of the African festivals he used to attend, observing meticulously how this or that old custom of which he had read had died out and been replaced by some new and 'significant' feature, avoiding in his descriptions the least suggestion of vivid or picturesque language, and flattening out the whole thing until it sounded rather less interesting than a flower show and carnival in a small English market town.

Mallow Park, for the house bore the name of the family who had lived in it for several hundred years, lay a little way out of the town on a slight eminence above it. It was a red Victorian house, with a small Georgian bit hidden away somewhere but now almost engulfed by later 'improvements'. There was a long drive leading up to it, bordered on each side by dark shrubberies, now excessively luxuriant after the summer rains.

Tom's brother, Giles, was standing on the terrace. He was a conventionally good-looking young man of twenty-seven, dressed in an old but good tweed suit.

'Well, Tom,' was his greeting, 'so you've come at last.'

'Yes, my thesis is finished now.'

Giles could not be expected to appreciate the significance of this announcement and he certainly gave no sign that he had, merely remarking that if Tom had let them know what time he was coming he would have brought the shooting-brake down to the station to meet him. 'I suppose you left your luggage there?' he added.

'This is all I have,' said Tom, indicating the canvas bag he was carrying. 'We travel light in the bush. Where's mother?'

'In the garden. We're all going to the flower show in a minute. I suppose you'll come?'

'Oh, yes. I'll just go and find her.'

If the shrubberies and lawns seemed overgrown and neglected, the large vegetable garden was well kept, for Mrs. Mallow had a stall in the local market and sold the produce at it, like some African woman petty trader, Tom thought. He expected to find her among the beans or peering at something in a frame. But when he came upon her she was standing very still, looking into the distance. The ma.s.sive grey-clad figure with its rather small head stood out like a great Henry Moore sculpture in a London park. She showed no emotion at seeing her son, merely inclining her stony cheek for him to kiss. Tom was her favourite son and she loved him deeply, indulging his whims and thinking by that to bind him more closely to her. But it was Giles who had stayed behind. Now she worked hard in the garden and found comfort in the things of the earth, even in digging, for she was a strong active woman and the hand that Tom took was rough and not very clean.

'Well, Tom,' she said, 'so you got the nine-ten from Paddington?'

'Yes.'

She remembered this train from the old days when she used to go to town, but it did not occur to her that he would have had nothing to eat. Tom had also forgotten it by this time.

'I'm showing begonias and carnations as well as vegetables this year,' she said, as they wralked back to the house together. 'And what have you been doing? Your aunt tells me that you have been living with a young woman in Camden Town but that you have now abandoned her-is that so?'

'Well, yes, in a way.'

'Surely you must know whether you have or not?' asked Mrs. Mallow sharply.