Less Than Angels Part 3

'Oh, thank you, that would be nice . . ,' She hardly knew what to say, being unused to drinking in general and in the middle of the day in particular. She hoped she hadn't appeared too eager to go with him; the male students in her year never asked her to drink with them, though there were one or two of her contemporaries who were more favoured as they were thought to be 'good value', whatever that rather sinister phrase might imply.

'Drinking alone is rather depressing, I always think.'

So he had been going to have a drink anyway, she noted.

But of course he had. He had expected to find a crowd of people he knew. She supposed it might be some kind of a compliment to herself that he had not waited for them to come out of the seminar. Unless, of course, he had been so eager for a drink that he just couldn't wait.

'I don't think I've ever tried drinking alone,' she said. The idea of it made her want to laugh. She imagined herself in her room at home with a bottle of gin and her mother or aunt calling out, 'What are you doing, dear?' Or Mr. Dulke watching her from his front garden.

Tom smiled at her and said, ' No, I suppose you're too young to have done much drinking of any kind.'

'I'm nineteen,' she said rather coldly.

'Oh, much too young,' he mocked. 'This is the usual place, I believe, unless you prefer one of the others?'

They had stopped outside one of the many pubs in the area. Deirdre didn't know whether it was the usual place or not. One pub seemed very much like another to her, except that some were of the old cosy type, while others, like the one by the river at home, all new and gleaming. This was of the cosy kind, with round tables and shabby horsehair benches. The bar was crowded with what Deirdre thought of vaguely as 'business men', all laughing excessively loudly at what must have been a joke made by the fat elderly woman who was serving them. Though perhaps it did not always need a joke to make a group of men laugh loudly in a pub.

'We shall have to drink beer,' said Tom rather apologetically. 'I hope that's all right?'

'Oh, lovely,' she said, taking a large brave gulp of the tepid bitter. ' I simply adore it.'

There was a silence and Tom began to wonder why he had asked this strange girl to drink with him instead of waiting for Mark and Digby or somebody else that he knew to come out of the seminar. He had left Catherine busy finis.h.i.+ng a story and seeming to have no time for him, so it was both soothing and gratifying to have Deirdre beside him, her great brown eyes fixed on his face, an occasional interested or sympathetic murmur her only interruption to his account of himself and his work. Tom had never had to make much effort with women, who took a natural and immediate liking to him, so he did not lay himself out to be particularly interesting to Deirdre or to ask her anything about herself.

Love at first sight can hardly ever be mutual, though it may seem to have been when discussed and remembered later. Tom was certainly not aware of Deirdre as anything much more than a satisfactory audience, but with her it was very different. She felt such a rush of happiness that she could have listened for ever to his voice going gently on about the complications of lineage segmentation. Something of what she felt must have shown itself in her face, for when she turned towards him with a smile on her lips and an uncomprehending starry-eyed look, he smiled too, said something about being a bore and went to get another drink.

With the second bitter they looked at his photographs. Dark-skinned figures, dressed in white robes, bits of cloth or nothing, crowded together in various unidentifiable activities, mostly seen from a distance. Sometimes, for a change, there was a close-up of a menacing figure in a mask or a dress of leaves, or a beautiful girl, naked to the waist and wearing a lot of beads, which Deirdre stared at dutifully but with some embarra.s.sment, not quite knowing what to say. The last photograph seemed to be of Tom himself, standing outside a hut with a pointed thatched roof.

'I think I like that one best,' she said shyly, hoping that he might give it to her, but he just laughed and said that it was in the worst possible taste to show photographs of oneself in the field, and then gathered them back into their wallet.

Deirdre looked at the clock. She saw to her amazement that it was after two. 'I must go,' she said. 'I told my mother I'd be home early this afternoon,'

'Oh, I hope she won't worry, then. Mothers do tend to, I find.'

Could it be that he too had a mother? thought Deirdre in wonder. 'Does your mother worry?' she asked, emboldened by the bitter.

'She certainly does. She's bought herself a book about tropical diseases and has rather a horrid time reading about everything I might get. I hope you aren't awfully hungry,' he went on, as they walked along the street. 'I should have bought a sandwich for you, but I've had a meal myself so I'm afraid I forgot.'

Deirdre wondered what meal it could have been. An early lunch seemed unlikely, so perhaps it was a very late breakfast? She was able to ponder about this on the bus home, remembering the whole wonderful experience and his friendly, if too casual, 'see you again, sometime.' But when, she had wanted to ask, wondering how she was going to endure her evening with Bernard Springe and all the days ahead with the uncertainty of her next meeting with Tom lying over them.

There are few experiences more boring and painful for a woman than an evening spent in the company of one man when she is longing to be with another, and that evening Bernard's dullness seemed to have a positive quality about it so that it was almost a physical agony, like the dentist's drill pressing on a sensitive tooth. And yet Bernard was tall and well-dressed, better-looking than Tom Mallow, and his conversation, if one were to a.n.a.lyse it, was perhaps more interesting than Tom's had been. He took Deirdre to a play she had been wanting to see and gave her a good supper afterwards. What was more, he had a car, which meant that the ride home to the suburb was done in comfort, with no anxiety about the last bus or tiring journey in crowded stuffy tube.

The wine she had drunk had put Deirdre into a silent brooding mood and they drove without speaking for some time. She was trying to imagine what an evening with Tom would have been like. Of course he hadn't any money, so they would just have gone somewhere cheap to eat or perhaps just sat in a pub drinking beer and talking about his work. Segmentation of the lineage, fission and accretion, she thought, desolately and without humour.

'What are you thinking about?' Bernard asked gently.

They could have ridden on top of a bus together, but of course she didn't yet know where he lived. Perhaps somebody at college would know-surely she could bring the conversation round to Tom Mallow somehow without it seeming too obvious?

'You are in a dreamy mood,' Bernard persisted. 'I feel as if you were miles away.'

'Oh, I'm sorry,' she said. 'I was thinking about the play. It was so sad.'

'Shall we stop and look at the river for a minute?' he suggested in a rather shaky voice.

'All right,' said Deirdre indifferently. People who didn't live here always thought the river looked so beautiful at night, but to her it was just the place where Mr. Dulke and Mr. Lovell took their dogs and the young men from the club walked with their girl friends. Looking out of the car she could see Mr. Lovell now, walking rather too briskly for s...o...b..ll, his old sealyham, who lolloped along like a little rocking-horse in his efforts to keep up with his master.

'Not unhappy about anything, are you, dear?' Bernard asked.

'Oh, no, thank you, just not very gregarious, I'm afraid,' said Deirdre. She hated to be called 'dear' and Bernard's arm had now crept round her shoulders and his hand was straying further than she wished. But suddenly it stopped and withdrew quickly as if it had touched an asp or a scorpion. He must have come upon the bone of her strapless bodice which made her such an odd shape. He would hardly have expected to find a bone there, she thought, stifling her laughter.

'I'm not really that shape you know,' she said suddenly in a gay tone. 'It must feel like a chicken's carcase-so unexpected I '

Bernard was perhaps a little embarra.s.sed for he had no ready answer, so she went on in the same uncharacteristic way 'A chicken's carcase is all hollow inside and domed like the roof of a cathedral, so n.o.ble! '

'What strange things you think of,' he said reverently. 'I suppose I ought to take you home now-it's after midnight.'

After midnight-then it was tomorrow! And she might see Tom. She turned to Bernard, her eyes s.h.i.+ning, and thanked him for a lovely evening. Gready relieved, for he had been disturbed by her strange talk, he kissed her and she did not seem to object, as she so often did. A funny girl, that was how he summed her up in his own mind. Next time they might go and see a musical show which would have been his own choice rather than the gloomy problem plays she seemed to prefer.

'Look, there's a light next door,' she said, as they approached her house. 'I wonder what Mr. Lydgate's doing?'

'Having a sundowner?' Bernard suggested, for he did not know much about colonial administrators and his ideas about what they might be doing were limited and conventional.

'Oh, no, he's performing some ghastly rite to propitiate his ancestors,' said Deirdre wildly.

'Good heavens! Do you see that?' Bernard pointed to the lighted window where a grotesque silhouette appeared, lingered for a moment, and then moved away.

'It looks as if he's wearing an African mask,' said Deirdre. 'It seems a strange thing to be doing at this time of night-probably the neighbours will complain.'

She said good-night to Bernard and crept quietly up the stairs, but both her mother and her aunt were awake, and her mother called out 'Is that you, dear?' as she always did.

Deirdre rea.s.sured her and then went to her own room and stood in front of the looking-gla.s.s, contemplating herself in the bony-bosomed dress from all angles. Then she took off the dress, flung it carelessly over the back of a chair and knelt by the bookcase in her petticoat. She had remembered a poem, cherished by many schoolgirls for many different kinds of love, the sonnet by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, beginning, When do I see thee most, beloved one? She read it through and then got ready for bed. African Political Systems, her current bedside book, was unopened that night.

CHAPTER FIVE.

The ugly black marble clock on the mantelpiece in Alaric Lydgate's study struck one. It had been his father's, a present from his colleagues at the Mission. It had kept good time for over forty years under the most difficult conditions, being shaken about by his carriers bearing his loads over rough country, and later, when Alaric had inherited it, ticking its way through the hot steamy days and nights of Africa.

At the thought of Africa the expression on Alaric's face might have been seen to soften, had his face been visible, but it was concealed under a mask of red beans and palm fibre, giving him the alarming appearance which had starded Bernard and Deirdre. He often sat like this in the evenings, withdrawing himself from the world, feeling in the stuffy darkness of the mask that he was back again in his native-built house, listening to the rain falling outside. He often thought what a good thing it would be if the wearing of masks or animals' heads could become customary for persons over a certain age. How restful social intercourse would be if the face did not have to a.s.sume any expression-the strained look of interest, the simulated delight or surprise, the anxious concern one didn't really feel. Alaric often avoided looking into people's eyes when he spoke to them, fearful of what he might see there, for life was very terrible whatever sort of front we might put on it, and only the eyes of fche very young or the very old and wise could look out on it with a clear untroubled gaze.

Alaric Lydgate regarded himself as a failure. He had been invalided out of the Colonial Service, where he had not been awarded the promotion he felt he had earned. He had achieved nothing in the fields of anthropology or linguistics, and the trunks of notes up in his attic, which he had never even sorted out, were a constant reproach to him. He felt also that he was disliked by most of his acquaintances because he found himself unable to make small talk or even to bring out the pleasant harmless little insincerities which help everyday life to run smoothly.

In one field, however, Alaric had achieved a mild though limited fame. He was well-known as a writer of sarcastic reviews, and he was engaged this night in completing one for a learned journal. The fact that he had not been able to produce an original work himself was perhaps responsible for his harsh treatment of those who had.

He had been pacing about the room, seeking fresh inspiration, but now he flung off his mask and returned to his desk.

'It is a pity,' he wrote, 'that the author did not take the trouble to inform himself of some of the elementary facts underlying the social structure of these peoples. He would then have been less likely to perpetrate such howlers as "the clan-head" (when there are, in fact, no clans), "the part played by the mother's brother in marriage transactions" (when it is the father's brother who plays the chief role here) ...' He searched the pages of the book to find more howlers, incensed at the idea of 'these anthropologists'-he gave the words heavy scornful quotation marks in his own mind-thinking they could study a tribe in three weeks when his own eleven years of life and work among them had produced nothing more than a few articles on such minor aspects of their culture as incised calabashes and enigmatic iron objects.

In his search he came upon a native word wrongly spelt. His pen gathered speed. ' It is a pitv,' he went on, ' that the proofs were not read by somebody with even a slight knowledge of the language, so that the consistent misspellings of vernacular terms in everyday use might have been avoided.'

In unfavourable reviews it is sometimes customary for the reviewer to relent towards the end, to throw some crumb of consolation to the author, but this was not Alaric Lydgate's practice. His last paragraph was no less harsh. ' It is a pity,' he concluded, 'that such a reputable inst.i.tution should have allowed a work of this nature to appear under its auspices. Its reputation will certainly not be enhanced by unscholarly rubbish of this kind, and it can hardly be gratified to learn that its funds, which are known to be limited, have been squandered to no purpose.'

He drew a heavy line on the paper, folded the sheets and put them into an envelope. In a day or two the editor of the journal, who was a gentle patient man, would set to work to improve the English and tone it down a little. 'It is a pitv,' he would say to himself, 'to have three consecutive paragraphs beginning "It is a pity".' He might even remember that Alaric Lydgate had once been refused a grant from the reputable inst.i.tution whose limited funds had been squandered to no purpose. He might then go on to ask himself whether funds can be squandered to no purpose, whether indeed ihey can be squandered to any purpose. Certainly, as editor, he would feel none of the exhilaration which Alaric felt on finis.h.i.+ng his review.

He leapt up from his desk and hurried from the room. His housekeeper Mrs. Skinner, who was a light sleeper, woke suddenly and turned on her bedside lamp. Then she realized that it was only Mr. Lydgate going up to the attic, and although this seemed an odd thing to be doing in the middle of the night, she was used to him by now and composed herself for sleep again.

Alaric pushed open the door and turned on the light. The room was filled with tea-chests, containing masks and pottery and other relics of his life in Africa; there were also several black tin trunks and wooden boxes, filled with his tropical kit and the acc.u.mulation of eleven years' note-taking. He pulled at the lock of one of the tin trunks. It was rusty and came away in his hand. The hinges too were eaten away writh rust and it was not difficult to open the box. Inside were piles of note-books and loose papers which gave off a dank musty smell. He picked up a wad of foolscap; the corners had been eaten away. Mice or white ants had been more diligent than he had. One day, he thought, I'll get somebody to type all this stuff and then it will be manageable. But now it was nearly two o'clock. The exhilaration he had felt on finis.h.i.+ng his review had given way to an intense weariness. He went rather sadly to bed and, although there was no particular reason for it, set his alarm clock for six o'clock.

'Do you know,' said Rhoda at breakfast next morning, 'I almost thought I heard Mr. Lydgate's alarm clock going off this morning. About six o'clock, it must have been. I had been awake some time.'

'Did you have a good evening with Bernard, dear?' Mabel asked Deirdre.

'Oh, not bad. He's rather a dull old thing but I enjoyed the play.'

'Well, I'm glad about that,' said Mabel, 'though when I was your age I think I should have felt embarra.s.sed at going to see that kind of play with a man. It doesn't sound at all nice. Still perhaps it's a good thing really, being able to see plays like that, I mean.'

But why was it a good thing? she wondered, unable to answer her own question. People did not seem to be any better or happier now than they had ever been, nor were the relations between men and women any more satisfactory. Of course in the early nineteen-twenties, when she had been Deirdre's age, there had been some very daring plays but she had not known the kind of young men who would have taken her to see them. Gregory Swan had liked Rose Marie and No, No, Nanette, and in her circle it was the men who formed the women's tastes. Now, perhaps, it was the other way round.

'I suppose Bernard would have preferred a musical, like that thing at Drury Lane,' went on Deirdre, answering her mother's question, 'hut musicals are so boring. I doubt if I could sit through it,'

'The Dulkes enjoyed it very much,' said Rhoda, 'and Malcolm is going to take Phyllis for her birthday,'

'There you are,' said Deirdre, 'it just isn't my kind of thing, I'm afraid.'

'I should think Bernard is a high-principled young man,' said Mabel, continuing in her own line of thought.

'He hasn't had much opportunity to be anything else as far as I'm concerned,' said Deirdre rather pertly.

'No, dear, but he is a good type,' said Mabel. One of the minor public schools, then he had done well in the army and now had a very safe position with his father's firm ... 'I mean, he always sees you home and in good time.'

'Oh, yes, and only the mildest of good-night kisses. He's not so bad really. I must go now.' Deirdre stood up. 'All this talk about Bernard's high principles has delayed me.'

'Have you many lectures today?' asked Rhoda.

'Not till the afternoon. I thought I'd spend the morning at Felix's Folly.' And perhaps she might see Mark and Digby there and they might be able to tell her something about Tom Mallow. She hardly dared to hope that she might see Tom himself.

On the bus she wondered whether Tom had high principles, like Bernard. She was sure, somehow, that he had a delightful lack of them.

When she arrived at the research centre she found n.o.body there and setded down rather grimly with a pile of books. She had been working for about an hour when the door opened and Professor Mainwaring came in.

'Miss Clovis not here?' he asked of n.o.body in particular.

'Ah, then she has hidden herself away in her sanctum, far from the madding crowd's ign.o.ble strife.'

Deirdre, who was sitting alone at a table, while one of the library a.s.sistants worked at a card index, thought the implication a little unfair, but she did not think any answer was required from her and she certainly would not have felt capable of providing one.

'I hope I may have arrived in time for a cup of tea?' continued Professor Mainwaring, addressing the library a.s.sistant.

She a.s.sured him that it was just made. He then went to Miss Clovis's room, where a young woman presented him with a cup.

'Ah, a fair tea-maker I ' he exclaimed. 'Wasn't it De Quincey who described her thus?' He plucked at his beard and glanced at her quizzically, making her giggle and leave the room hastily.

'Young men nowadays cannot afford to take opium,' said Miss Clovis briskly, perhaps anxious not to dwell on the subject of tea, which had once nearly proved disastrous for her.

'No, even the Foresight grants will hardly be generous enough for that,' laughed Professor Mainwaring. 'Have you received many applications yet?' Miss Clovis was acting as secretary to the selection committee and enjoyed the work which was congenial to her natural curiosity about people and her desire to arrange their lives for them. The revelations of age, background and education were sometimes most surprising. Who would ever have thought, for instance ... she smiled at some reminiscence.

'They are coming in,' she said. 'Have the committee decided yet when they will hold the interviews?'

Professor Mainwaring tweaked at his beard with an almost pizzicato gesture. 'Ah, that I have a new plan this year and one which I think Fairfax and Vere should approve. I will reveal it to you in due course,'

'It seems difficult to introduce any novelty into the ways of selecting holders for the grants. Are the young people to be made to sing for their supper, or entertain the board in some unacademic way?' suggested Miss Clovis, hoping to draw out some details.

But the Professor would not give anything away, and soon afterwards he left her, brooding among her collection of offprints which she was sorting out.

These single articles, detached from the learned journals in which they have appeared, have a peculiar significance in the academic world. Indeed, the giving and receiving of an offprint can often bring about a special relations.h.i.+p between the parties concerned in the transaction. The young author, bewildered and delighted at being presented with perhaps twenty-five copies of his article, may at first waste them on his aunts and girl friends, but when he is older and wiser he realizes that a more carefully planned distribution may bring him definite advantages. It was thought by many to be 'good policy' to send an offprint to Esther Clovis, though it was not always known exactly why this should be. In most cases she had done nothing more than express a polite interest in the author's work, but in others the gift was prompted by a sort of undefined fear, as a primitive tribesman might leave propitiatory gifts of food before a deity or ancestral shrine in the hope of receiving some benefit.

Most of the offprints bore inscriptions of some kind- 'with best wishes', grateful thanks', 'cordial greetings', 'warmest regards'-every degree of respect and esteem short of the highest emotion was represented. Love itself had not been inspired; perhaps it was hardly likely that it would have been or that the author would have thought it fitting to express it even if it had. Some of the inscriptions were in foreign languages and one even had a photograph of its African author pinned to it.

Each article, and some were now yellowed with age, had its memories, and Esther turned the pages thoughtfully, sometimes half smiling at the persons and incidents they recalled. Mit bestem Grussen, Hermann Obst... This offprint, in heavy German script, was one of the first she had ever received and its auther was dead. Poor Dr. Obst... once, many years ago, at some learned conference abroad, they had been walking together one evening after dinner and he had taken hold of her in a most suggestive way. Not to put too fine a point on it, he had made a pa.s.s at her. Miss Clovis smiled; she was older and more tolerant now, and wondered if she need have slapped his face with quite such outraged dignity. Why had she done it? Had she been thinking of her rights as a woman, the equal of man and not to be treated as his plaything, or had it been because she had not found Dr. Obst particularly attractive? Would she have slapped Felix Mainwaring's face if it had been he who had made the pa.s.s? The question hung in the air, unanswered. Her German was rusty now, but she could make out the t.i.tle-Blutfreundschaft, Blood brotherhood-and perhaps it was pathetically appropriate. She was back in the warm velvety darkness, hearing the soft splash of fountains and seeing dimly the broad sword-shaped leaves of some exotic plant with huge red flowers-'It is canna, I sink', in Dr. Obst's gentle foreign voice-and then the 'incident'. Madrid, 1928 or 1929, she couldn't remember the exact year. Such a thing had not happened to her since and it would not again. She put the offprint back into its folder and turned to the next one.

'With all good wishes from Helena Napier and Everard Bone'. That had been a most promising partners.h.i.+p which had never come to anything. Two gifted young people, who had worked together, but Helena Napier had a husband and Miss Clovis's efforts in the cause of anthropology had been in vain. After a short estrangement the Napiers had been reunited and Helena had retired to the country. Everard had married a rather dull woman who was nevertheless a great help to him in his work; as a clergyman's daughter she naturally got on very well with the missionaries they were meeting now that they were in Africa again.

'Esther Clovis from Alaric S. Lydgate.' The next offprint bore this curt and characteristic inscription. Esther could not like her friend Gertrude's brother, especially when she thought of those trunks full of notes which he would not let anybody else make use of. Dog in the manger, she thought angrily, most unChristian. She was not herself a Christian, and she doubted whether Alaric was either, in spite of being the son and brother of missionaries, but it seemed a useful standard to judge people by, though perhaps it hardly applied in rationalist circles. Most unethical, was perhaps what she should have said. Her hand moved over to the telephone and she dialled Alaric's number. The bell went on ringing but there was no answer. Surely that ineffectual Mrs. Skinner could at least answer the telephone? No wonder Gertrude was not particularly anxious to live in his house, but he should certainly have asked her to. Esther let the bell go on ringing a little longer and then slammed down the instrument in disgust. She had been feeling in just the mood for an angry little talk, perhaps as an antidote to the slightly disturbing memories aroused by Hermann Obst's offprint. Frustrated, she stumped off into the library to see if she could disturb any of the readers.

She was disappointed to find only two people there, and at first sight they looked unpromising, a lanky dark young man in a shabby corduroy velvet jacket and a young girl, making what Esther scornfully described as 'sheep's eyes' at him. Then she looked more closely and saw that the girl was Deirdre Swan, who lived next door to Alaric Lydgate, and the young man Tom Mallow, one of the most promising of the younger anthropologists, who had been working among the tribe which Alaric had administered for so many years.

'Ah, Miss Swan and Mr. Mallow!' she called out in her terrifying genial voice. 'You are just the two people who should get together. I wonder if you know why?'

Because I love Tom? Deirdre thought, but obviously that couldn't be the answer. The wonderful surprise of meeting him here now seemed to be enhanced and the whole thing made respectable by Miss Clovis's apparent approval.

Tom looked puzzled and was unable to supply any answer even of a superficially gallant nature, so Miss Clovis triumphantly enlightened him.

'Miss Swan lives next door to Alaric Lydgate,' she said meaningly.

'Oh, you know him, then?' said Tom, turning to Deirdre.

'Well, not really. I mean, he's only just come to live next door.'

'Oh, but you must have spoken over the garden fence,' said Miss Clovis confidently. 'Borrowing a lawn-mower and that kind of thing.' She knew life in the suburbs even if only at secondhand, people were always talking over garden fences and borrowing things from each other.

'He doesn't seem to bother much about cutting his lawn,' said Deirdre, feeling that they were getting off the point whatever it might be.

'Do you know what he has hidden away in his attic?' Miss Clovis asked.

'His African girl friend?' suggested Tom quickly, without thinking.