Less Than Angels Part 19

'But, surely, a white man among all those natives ...' Rhoda protested, and again Catherine saw her picture of Tom, the British anthropologist in immaculate white shorts and topee, note-book and pencil in hand.

'I'm afraid it wouldn't be quite like that,' she said. 'He was probably wearing a native robe-he often used to.'

'Oh, what a mistake! ' Rhoda burst out. ' No good can come of lowering oneself like that.'

'Well, he used to say it was more comfortable,' said Catherine lamely, feeling that they were getting off the point.

They had been standing in the hall, but now Rhoda led Catherine into the drawing-room. There was some light tinkling music on the wireless and the sound of it, together with the bright fire, chintz-covered chairs and sofa, and Mabel Swan sitting with her feet up on a pouffe reading the latest work of a best-selling female novelist, gave Catherine a feeling of safety and comfort, for she had seen no domestic interior that day but the desolation of her own flat. She was glad to sit for some minutes making small talk with Mabel while Rhoda went out to make the tea. Mabel had evidently been dozing over her book so Catherine said nothing about Tom. It was not until Rhoda came back into the room that the news was broken to her.

Rhoda adopted a firm manner as if fearing that Mabel might become hysterical. 'You mustn't cry, dear,' she said to her sister, who showed no signs of doing so. 'We must be strong for Deirdre's sake.'

'He was a nice young man,' said Mabel vaguely. 'I can't say that he made much more impression on me than that. He seemed just like Malcolm or Bernard, but to Deirdre he was something special.' She sat with her hands round her teacup as if to draw warmth from it. 'He was her first love and that isn't easily forgotten.'

"There will be other young men in her life,' said Rhoda sensibly. 'We must encourage her not to brood too much.'

'You must allow Deirdre her grief,' said Mabel almost sharply. 'You don't know what it is to lose somebody you love.'

'You've no right to say that, of course I do ...' Rhoda's voice trembled and she began to refill the teacups in an agitated way.

Catherine noticed her confusion and wondered if she were trying to justify herself, to think of some kind of compensation for the shame of not having lost lover or husband, but only parents and others who had died at their natural and proper time. If women could not expect to savour all the experiences that life could offer, perhaps they did want the sad ones-not necessarily to have loved or been loved, but at least to have lost, she thought simply and without cynicism. She felt sorry for Rhoda and tried to turn the conversation away from Tom.

Shortly afterwards Malcolm came in with his flat brief-case and evening paper and the news was broken to him. He stood awkwardly in the doorway, not knowing what to say, darting embarra.s.sed glances at Catherine. Then he went away and came back with a decanter of sherry and some gla.s.ses.

'This may make us feel better,' he said apologetically.

'I suppose it would be quite hot in Africa now,' said Mabel uneasily 'though I suppose it's always hot there, really.'

'Yes, the harmattan begins about now.'

'What is that?' Rhoda asked, a strained look of interest on her face.

'A hot dusty wind, isn't it?' Malcolm offered.

'I suppose the funeral will be out there, said Rhoda. 'They could hardly...'

'No, I expect there's an English cemetery or something,' said Catherine. 'Like Keats and Sh.e.l.ley in Rome, or Fielding in Lisbon. Yet Richard Burton is buried in Mortlake.' She paused, then went on quickly, 'Many Englishmen have died in Africa, you know, explorers and pioneers. Mostly they died of fevers or were killed by natives. Of course people manage to keep much healthier now, though there are still lots of unpleasant diseases people can get, Tom used to tell me. A little worm that races about all over your body and the only time you can catch it is when it goes careering across your eye-b.a.l.l.s ...'

Rhoda threw a distressed glance at her sister. If only she had not mentioned the funeral, but she had a horror of silence at the best of times and this was surely one of the worst.

'You'll stay and have supper, won't you, dear?' she said, putting her hand on Catherine's.

'Thank you, I'd like to very much.'

Rhoda went out to the kitchen and Mabel followed.

'We could have some soup and open those lambs' tongues,'Rhoda said. 'Or the jar of chicken b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Or there's the cold beef. Do you think Deirdre will bring Digby in to supper with her?'

'I don't suppose she or Catherine will feel like eating,' said Mabel, 'and I'm not hungry myself, are you?'

'No, but the men must be fed,' said Rhoda firmly, holding on to the idea as something stable and comforting. Perhaps in some ways Martha's was the better part, she thought, as she bustled round the kitchen. Certainly there was satisfaction to be had from being able to do something practical in a time of sadness. 'Do you think we should ring up Father Tulliver?' she asked.

'Well, I hardly think so,' said Mabel. 'I don't know Catherine's religious views, but she is talking rather wildly and one doesn't know how she might receive him.'

'No, and it's choir practice tonight, anyway,' said Rhoda sounding relieved.

'Oh, there's the front door,' said Mabel. 'Deirdre must have come back.'

Deirdre and Digby stood blinking under the hall light. Digby was so tall that his head knocked against the imitation lantern and set it swinging. Deirdre seemed to cling to him and at supper hardly took her eyes off him. She was too bewildered with the confusion of having lost one love and apparently found another all at once to be able to say very much.

Catherine was quite gay and Malcolm did his best, so that it was almost like one of the little supper parties Rhoda loved to arrange. This nice Digby did seem to be devoted to Deirdre. Tom or Digby, what did it really matter to her, as an aunt?

Later it was arranged that Catherine should stay the night, and she sat up in bed in the spare bedroom, wearing one of Mabel's nightdresses which was so much too long for her that she could wrap her feet in it. Deirdre stood by the bed or walked about the room, apparently trying to find words to say something.

'Oh, Catherine, I can talk to you? she burst out at last. 'I know you won't be too shocked when I say that I can't really feel anything about Tom. Perhaps I'm stunned and the feelings will come later, but I think I used them all up when he went away. That was like a kind of death-people say parting is, don't they-and I was so worn out with crying then and being miserable and now I can't seem to feel any- thing. It seems so dreadful ...' she covered her face with her hands and began to cry.

'I shouldn't be too upset about that,' said Catherine. She felt she ought to say something about Tom not wis.h.i.+ng her to be sad, the kind of things people say with such confidence about the dead as if they knew their feelings better than when they had been alive. But sometimes, she thought, grief was all one had to give them and even then one was conscious of the poverty of one's feelings as if there were some lack in oneself that prevented one from suffering as deeply, as splendidly almost, as people did in the works of sensitive female novelists.

'I'm only twenty, after all,' said Deirdre, 'and though I did love Tom terribly, of course, I just don't feel like a tragic figure and I'm sure Mother and Rhoda will expect me to be.'

'No, they won't,' said Catherine soothingly. 'They'll be glad that you've got Digby to comfort you.'

'Oh, yes, Digby ...' The thought of him started Deirdre crying again but after a while she controlled herself and said, 'Do you remember when we were having lunch you said something about Elaine, about the memory of one's first love being very sweet?'

'Yes, I remember. And one's second love is perhaps even more sweet, but in a different way. And last love is supposed to be the best of all,' said Catherine almost merrily.

'I suppose you know when it is the last,' said Deirdre rather hopelessly.

'People say that you do,' Catherine rea.s.sured her. 'And now we'd better try to get some sleep, hadn't we?'

Deirdre went to her own room and Catherine got out of bed and stood by the window for some time, looking into the darkness of Alaric Lydgate's garden. Was there some movement there-did a masked figure on stilts move swiftly along the hedge-was that the low hum of a bull-roarer or only the wind in the apple trees? The Swans had asked her to stay with them for a little while and she thought that she might enjoy it, entering into the comfortable kind of life which she had only seen from the outside. She would be able to keep an eye on Alaric too, for she felt somehow responsible for him since the evening when they had burned his notes. Like so many men, he needed a woman stronger than himself, for behind the harsh cragginess of the Easter Island facade cowered the small boy, uncertain of himself.

She grew cold at last and crept back into bed. She did not think she would be able to sleep so she setded herself down to read the books on the bedside table, mostly paper-backed thrillers and novels and a selection of poetry. Tom hadn't liked poetry, except Housman when he had been at school, but he used to let her recite or read it just as he would endure the extracts from the wine lists. She skimmed through the book from the beginning until she came to Vaughan, where she read, He that hath found some fledgd bird's nest, may know At first sight if the bird he flown; But what fair Well, or Grove he sings in now, That is to him unknown.

She remembered the church she had gone into and the candle she had lit for Tom, then the meeting with the two pleasant- faced women and the clergyman who had mistaken her for somebody else. Did they know, she wondered?

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.

One morning a few weeks later, Miss Clovis and Miss Lydgate sat at breakfast, reading their letters.

Miss Lydgate opened an envelope, snorted contemptuously, and flung down on the table a sheet of foolscap paper which Miss Clovis then took up. On it had been duplicated, rather badly and smudgily, a kind of circular letter, which began, 'Dear Colleague, I wonder if you are interested in the origins of the word hyaena?' Then followed a string of sentences in English and various African languages.

'The hyaenas have stolen the beer-strainers of the bad sons of the good women,' read Miss Lydgate in a derisive tone. 'Really!'

Miss Clovis was not sure whether her friend's scorn was directed at some point in the sentence itself which, though certainly a little unusual and stilted, did not seem to her any more so than many others she had read in grammars of African languages, or whether it was the signature at the end of the letter-'Egidio Gemini'-which had so enraged her.

'It seems to be rather badly done,' she commented, examining the paper more closely. 'I believe there is a kind of fluid you can get to cover up mistakes in the stencil. Evidently the fathers do not know of it, but of course they live out of the world.'

'I can just see them,' said Miss Lydgate angrily, 'turning the handle of the machine, wiping their inky hands on their ca.s.socks, in the damp bas.e.m.e.nt of that great barn in Kensington-well, North Kensington to be more accurate and, as we know, that is not really Kensington at all.'

'Well, are you interested in the origins of the word hyaena?'Miss Clovis asked.

'That's neither here nor there. If that's the way they're going to squander Mrs. Foresight's money, I think it's absolutely disgraceful.'

'Now listen to this,' said Miss Clovis soothingly, 'such a nice letter from Everard Bone, who's just back from the field; he asks whether anybody has thought of collecting together a volume of essays to celebrate Felix's seventieth birthday which will soon be upon us.'

'Festschrift for Felix!' boomed Miss Lydgate. 'What a splendid idea I We must cook up something really good.'

They left the table busy with ideas about the birthday tribute, turning over the names of those who should be asked to contribute and, almost as important, those who should not. Everard Bone would perhaps edit it himself; Miss Clovis would 'do the work', as she put it, rounding up and bullying the contributors and harrying the printers; Everard's wife Mildred would of course do the typing. Perhaps they could even think out an arresting tide, the sort of thing that might make people buy it, in the hope that it was something new instead of a ragout of sc.r.a.ps which the contributors had had lying around for years and never done anything about. Of course it was possible that they might get some new or exciting stuff. Gertrude's work on the post-prandial fricatives, or whatever it was, would be most stimulating, Esther thought.

She arrived at the research centre later than usual and, glancing in at the readers in the library, noticed a good many new faces among them. So they come and go, she thought, perhaps a little tritely, hoping for much and sometimes receiving a little, or expecting nothing and getting more than they bargained for ... she smiled and nodded vaguely at the two lumpish undergraduates, the dapper little priest and the three young women who had looked up at her entrance.

Then she moved on to the little room next door wondering if anybody had made use of the hat-stand there.

Inside, sitting rather far apart on the horsehair sofa, were Digby Fox and Deirdre Swan. They looked up a little guiltily as they said good morning.

'Ah, you find it quieter to work in here, do you?' Miss Clovis beamed. 'I am so glad that you are to have poor Tom Mallow's grant,' she added, turning to Digby. 'I feel that you really deserve it.' He was a nice young man and he had helped to move the horsehair sofa, she remembered. 'Is it true,' she asked, lowering her tone so that it was almost hushed, 'that your friend has forsaken anthropology and gone into business?'

'Yes, I'm afraid Mark's deserted us. It was rather a blow to me, really. He is going to work in the office of his future father-in-law in Leadenhall Street.'

'Leadenhall Street!' hissed Miss Clovis. 'The very sound of it is dreadful. And yet one is reminded even there of the African custom of the suitor giving service to the father of the girl he wishes to marry, but Leadenhall Street '-she seemed unable to leave the name alone-'that's rather different from raising the mounds for the yams.'

'Yes, it certainly is,' said Digby rather feebly.

'And you, my dear,' Miss Clovis turned towards Deirdre, meaning to say something and then realizing that perhaps nothing was necessary. But had she not once, and not so very long ago, either, been discovered on this very sofa with poor Tom Mallow? Perhaps it would be better to have it moved back into her own room after all. Her thoughts flew to the lumpish young men in the libarary, they looked strong and willing, indeed, if she asked them to do it they could hardly refuse ... But then one of those disconcerting waves of sentimentality which she had surprised in herself lately came over her and she thought, no, let the sofa remain where it is and if the young things want to hold hands, why shouldn't they? After feeling a pang of sadness for Tom Mallow, who seemed to have been so quickly replaced, she remembered something she had once read about the beliefs of a certain African tribe. It described how the dead survive only as long as people think of them. When they are forgotten they die a second time and then reappear in the form of small mushroom- shaped anthills in the bush. This time they are thought to be really dead. She began to wonder how long she herself would be kept alive, under these conditions, Gertrude would remember her, perhaps ...

'Ah, Esther, my dear, there you are I ' Professor Mainwaring stood before her, wearing a rich-looking overcoat with an astrakhan collar. 'I have a piece of good news for you.'

'Really? I wonder what it can be,'

'I think I am going to be able to get some money for research grants. And where do you think I am going to get it from?'

'I can't imagine,' said Miss Qovis rather shortly.

'You could easily guess, but it is really so obvious that perhaps you won't be able to,'

'Oh, I don't know. Sweden? China? Brazil?'

'No, you are quite wrong. The United States of America.' he said gleefully. 'So simple, isn't it. I wonder we didn't think of it before.'

'Well, didn't we? I'm sure I did, but all the money seemed to have been snapped up by other bodies.'

'But they didn't know about Mrs. van Heep! She seemed most interested in our work. Cornelia,' he said thoughtfully, 'that is her name, beautiful, isn't it.'

'It's better than Minnie, certainly.'

'Ah, poor Minnie. You knew, of course, about our painful meeting? I am afraid I had to talk to her rather severely. You see, my dear Esther, Minnie is too full of what is known as simple goodness, and goodness is so much better when it is not simple. Can you imagine it, she really thought that as Father Gemini was doing research in Africa too it wouldn't really matter who had the money-that it would comc to the same thing in the end. I tried to make her understand how wrong she was, poor Minnie. I wonder if I succeeded?'

'Oh, I should think so,' said Miss Clovis shortly. 'And now, Felix, I really must get on with my-er-work.'

'And I shall go to meet Cornelia for luncheon. She returns to the United States next week.'

'Well, be sure and get the money before she goes.'

'Yes, I shall do that. This time I shall bring it away with me in a little bag!' He left the room in high good humour, hurried down into the street and hailed a taxi.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.

Catherine stayed nearly a fortnight at the Swans' house, during which she was cosseted and cared for and almost knew what it was like to be one of a family. In that short time she experienced all the cosiness and irritation which can come from living with thoroughly nice people with whom one has nothing in common. She enjoyed breakfast in bed, shopping, reading books from the library after lunch, listening to the wireless and knitting in the evenings. Sometimes it was a morning in the West End followed by lunch and a matinee, with the comfortable rattle of the tea-tray being pa.s.sed over the knees in the dark as the third act began. But after a while she began to feel restless, like a trapped bird who might be safe and happy in a cage but must go out into the cruel world because it is the natural thing. She began to long for her flat and her typewriter and her odd solitary life. All sorts of ideas for stories and articles were bubbling up inside her and she could hardly wait to get back to work.

'Of course you must go, dear,' said Mabel, 'you will want to get back to your flat, though we have so much enjoyed having you here. You could always write upstairs in your room, you know. We shouldn't mind that a bit.'

Catherine imagined herself sitting up at the little desk in the spare room with the gas-fire on and everybody moving with rather ostentatious quiet on the stairs. Her eyes would be sure to light on the dressing-table, with its blue linen d.u.c.h.esse set embroidered with crinoline ladies and she knew that that would upset her.

'We were thinking of asking Mr. Lydgate in to supper tomorrow evening,' said Rhoda hopefully. 'And if Deirdre asks Digby and Malcolm brings Phyllis it could be quite a nice little party.'

'Oh, yes,' Catherine agreed enthusiastically, for she did enjoy the supper parties and the preparation that went with them. But yesterday, over the garden hedge, Alaric had asked her to come out to the pub with him at a quarter to one and she had been forced to say that she couldn't very well because they always had lunch at one, and she couldn't come in late and smelling of beer. His face had gone rather Easter Island and he had turned away as if he had thought she didn't really want to come. She felt she could re-establish the right sort of contact only if she were free and living by herself.

'I shall often come and see you,' she told Mabel and Rhoda when she took her leave of them. 'But of course I must get back to my own squalor, really-you understand, don't you?'

They said that they did, but afterwards Rhoda remarked to Mabel that she couldn't understand why Catherine always referred to her living conditions in such strange terms. Surely it was just as easy to have things nice as not to, and Catherine did seem to be such a home-loving girl.

So Catherine returned to her flat and found her sitting-room just as she had left it, with the sheet of paper still in her typewriter and the cup and teapot still on the table, all untouched since the day she had heard of Tom's death. For she had been back only once to get some clothes and had done no more than open the door of her sitting-room and shut it again.

But now she set to work vigorously, turning on the wireless as she swept and dusted. It was Brahms, really 'n.o.ble' music which seemed to raise her work into a higher sphere, so that she found herself wondering if there were not something after all in the phrase 'dignity of labour' in which even women could share. When she had finished her cleaning she went over to the Cypriot restaurant and bought a bottle of red wine to drink with her evening meal. She cooked herself an oily dish full of garlic, of the kind she had not eaten for a fortnight. Later, as she looked at herself in the gla.s.s in the bathroom, she noticed that her teeth were blackened by the wine, like Queen Elizabeth's were said to have been, she thought.

The next morning she was at her typewriter, wrestling with the 'inexpensive' c.o.c.ktail party, when the telephone rang. It was a brisk 'good-cla.s.s' woman's voice, the kind that might be accustomed to giving orders at Harrods or Fortnums.

'You don't know me,' it said, ' but I'm Josephine Coningsby, Tom Mallow's sister. My aunt, Mrs. Beddoes, gave me your address, I believe you've met her.'

'Yes, certainly, we ...' Catherine's sentence tailed off, for it was difficult to know how to describe that curious meeting the day Tom had left her.

'Well, look,' said the voice briskly. 'I was thinking it would be nice if we could all meet together for lunch or something.'

'All? I don't quite see, I'm afraid.'

'Oh, I meant you and me and Elaine and this other girl-Deirdre I think her name is-could you get hold of her? I thought we could have a sort of talk about Tom, you know.'