An Unsuitable Attachment (24 page)

Rupert Stonebird stood in the hall looking at the invitation which had just come by post. It was to a garden party, to be held in the grounds of the anthropological research centre of which his friend—if such she could be called—Esther Clovis was the secretary. 'Dr R. Stonebird and guest', it said. 'Dress optional'. This last would be one of Esther's touches, he decided, with its implication that anything from nakedness upwards would be acceptable.

And guest, he pondered, going into his study. Little Penelope Grandison, perhaps; here would be a chance to atone for whatever he had done to make her cry on the Spanish Steps that evening some weeks ago. The stupid thing was, though, that he hadn't been in touch with her since the visit to Italy. Several times he had thought of asking her out to dinner but something had always happened to prevent it. He had not seen Ianthe either, except to say good-morning in the road. She, of course, would be another person he might ask to the garden party, an easier and more suitable choice than Penelope. And yet, need he ask either of them? Couldn't he go alone or break away from St Basil's and ask somebody unconnected with the parish? He toyed with the idea for a moment, but the uncomfortable conscience he seemed to have developed lately would keep returning to Penelope, and in the end he found himself calling in at the vicarage to ask Sophia for her sister's telephone number.

He found Sophia in the garden with Faustina. The cat was lying stretched out in the sun, her creamy underside exposed for stroking. Sophia was beside her in a deckchair, a piece of petit-point on her lap though her hands were idle.

'Was she glad to see you back?' Rupert asked, wishing he could remember the cat's name.

'I like to think so,' said Sophia, 'but one can't assume anything with Faustina. And have you recovered from Italy?'

'Recovered? I suppose so. I managed to do some useful reading in the Vatican Library,' said Rupert, more primly than he had intended.

'That's very good then,' said Sophia. 'I was just thinking the other day that we must all have brought something away—impossible to go to Italy and
not
do that—but your benefit does seem to have been rather more tangible—to have been in the Vatican Library and read all those books.'

Was she making fun of him? he wondered, glancing at her quickly. But Sophia, lying back in her chair, her eyes closed against the evening sun, looked perfectly serious, even a little sad.

'I came to ask for Penelope's telephone number,' he went on. 'So stupid—I don't seem to have it. I wondered if she'd come to an anthropological garden party with me.'

'I'm sure she'd love to,' said Sophia. 'The only thing is though that she probably wouldn't be able to get away from work if it's a weekday.'

'Oh, I hadn't thought of that. Still, I can try—if she can't manage the garden party perhaps she'd have dinner with me one evening,' he said quickly, feeling Sophia's eyes on him. Did she know about the tears on the Spanish Steps? he wondered. He could not meet her glance but looked instead at Faustina, who glared at him disconcertingly.

Sophia gave him the telephone number and he hurried away, not wishing to reveal his alternative plan to her, for it seemed now as if he would have to ask Ianthe. Yet she also worked, and it was just as likely that she too would be unable to get the afternoon off. The whole scheme was turning out to be more complicated than he had bargained for, perhaps too difficult to be carried out. All the same later that evening he went to the telephone and dialled Penelope's number, not sure what he was going to say.

She did not recognize his voice and when he announced himself there was a perceptible stiffening in her manner, almost a chilling of the air that he could sense coming at him over the wires all the way from South Kensington to north-west London.

'I can't get an afternoon off in the middle of the week,' she said brusquely.

'Oh, I'm sorry—I'd hoped perhaps you might be able to . . .'

'No, I can't, and I've just had this holiday in Rome.'

'Yes, of course.'

The conversation flagged. Ask her out to dinner, he told himself, but somehow he could not get the words out and then the line started to crackle as if it were a long distance call over oceans and continents.

'We must have a talk sometime,' he said, trying to be cosy, but she did not hear properly and put the receiver down thinking he had said 'walk'. She saw herself tramping over Hampstead Heath or Richmond Park in unsuitable shoes—for one just didn't have shoes for
that
kind of thing. He was like an old-fashioned undergraduate, she thought in disgust, offering her that kind of entertainment. He might at least have asked her out to a meal. In her disappointment and misery Penelope flung herself on the divan among the rose-coloured velvet cushions and lay sulkily eating a Mars bar she had happened to find conveniently to hand among the jumble of things on her bedside table. She was too depressed to reflect that his having asked her to the garden party was better than nothing.

Ianthe, rather to Rupert's surprise, was able to come to the garden party with him. She was glad to be taken out of herself, to get away from the library and her own thoughts which were a miserable confusion of Mervyn's proposal, John's possible feelings for her and the remembrance of the money he had borrowed and not paid back. It was a fortunate coincidence that she should have been entitled to take an afternoon off because she was due to work the next Saturday morning.

Rupert called for her at her house. It was a fine afternoon, and Ianthe's blue and white silk dress and jacket and large-brimmed blue straw hat brought back to him memories of his mother at parish garden parties of his childhood. But was this quite as it should be? he asked himself anxiously—that Ianthe should remind him of his mother? It was a comforting rather than a promising beginning to the afternoon.

'I'll ring for a taxi,' he said.

'Oh, do we need a taxi?' said Ianthe. 'It's such a fine afternoon and a bus will take us all the way, surely?'

'Yes, of course—but I thought . . .' he began, then realized that, on the whole, women should be encouraged not to take taxis.

'I always like riding on the top of a bus in the middle of the afternoon,' said Ianthe. 'It seems like a holiday when one's usually working.'

'Yes, I suppose it does. I don't have any set hours, except for lectures and seminars.'

'Seminars,' Ianthe echoed in a wondering tone and was then silent.

Strange and perhaps rather sad, Rupert thought, the way any mention of his work seemed to inhibit her.

They passed along a street of peeling stuccoed houses. Ianthe was reminded of the house where she had been to visit John, except that these were even more decayed. Oh, what was he doing now, she wondered unhappily.

'This is all part of St Basil's parish,' she said quickly, to take her mind off John. 'I suppose Mark has to come visiting along here—it must be a thankless task in many ways.'

'Yes—I expect he meets with as little response as the anthropologist in the field sometimes does,' said Rupert.

'Oh, but that's hardly the same,' said Ianthe, sounding shocked at the comparison.

'Why not?'

'Well, the anthropologist is asking prying, personal questions that people might not want to answer, whereas a parish priest is bringing them something,' she said.

'Something they don't always want.'

'Yes, in a way, but . . .'

'All right then—we won't go any further,' he said lightly. 'Perhaps it isn't a valid comparison after all. Look, we get off here, then it's just a short walk.'

'It's here, then?' said Ianthe, as they came up to a square of large houses.

'Yes, we go through the library and there's a garden at the back,' Rupert explained. 'Oh,' he exclaimed, as they passed through the hall into the library, 'it seems not to be quite as usual today.'

'No, I suppose today is different,' said Ianthe, for at a table, among the piles of learned journals that seemed appropriate to such a library, sat two elderly women hulling strawberries and arranging them in small dishes, counting aloud so that the portions were scrupulously equal. Cut loaves and pats of butter balanced on top of the journals, while African sculptures had been pushed aside to make room for plates of cakes. Bottles of milk stood on shelves half full of books and an urn appeared to be boiling furiously and spurting steam on some valuable-looking old bindings.

'Oh dear,' said Rupert, leading Ianthe quickly through.

'Have we come too early?' she asked.

'I think we shouldn't have come through the library—perhaps we weren't meant to see quite so much. It's a side of things one would rather
not
see, don't you think?'

'Well, one knows that tea must be got ready,' said Ianthe, 'and that people have to do it—like a parish function—only it does seem odd in a library. Perhaps it would have been easier to have left it to a catering firm?'

'Ah, but that would have added to the expense and the place has little money to spare at the moment. Besides, life isn't meant to be easy,' said Rupert. 'Not for
ever
in green pastures, as the hymn reminds us.'

'What a beautiful lawn,' said Ianthe, as they stepped out on to the grass.

'Yes, it is nourished by the bones of former presidents,' said Rupert.

'You mean they are buried here?' asked Ianthe, startled.

'Not exactly buried, but it has been fashionable—perhaps I should say customary—to have one's ashes scattered here. The old rationalist likes to feel that others of similar beliefs will be treading on his earthly remains . . . but let me get you a cup of tea, there does seem to be some now, and strawberries too.'

Ianthe accepted the tea gratefully. She did not feel quite at ease with Rupert's talk of rationalists and their ashes, and the sight of the elderly ladies preparing tea in the library had made her feel slightly uncomfortable, as if she ought to be there helping them. In some ways the garden party was like a parish function for there is a certain sameness about all these occasions. This realization comforted her and she was about to say so to Rupert when he was approached by a short bald man, who began talking about an article Rupert had evidently just written for a journal of which he was editor.

Rupert introduced him to Ianthe as Dr Apfelbaum, but as is often the way in the academic world he made no further effort to include her in the conversation. And indeed, how would it have been possible, she wondered, listening to the snatches of their talk that came over to her—something about a controversy on the introduction of maize into West Africa which had been going on in one of the learned journals for five years—'Digby and Mrs What's-it going at each other hammer and tongs—oh, you mean Digby
Fox
? But I thought he was one of the ethnohistory boys?'

'What's ethnohistory?' she asked, feeling she should make an effort.

To her surprise they both smiled, as if she had said something funny.

'A word we're not supposed to use,' said Rupert kindly.

'You will be glad to know that Rupert doesn't dabble in such dangerous waters,' said Dr Apfelbaum unhelpfully. 'Now what is the length?'

'Sixteen thousand?'

'My dear boy . . .' Dr Apfelbaum flung out his hands in a gesture of despair.

'All right, then—two parts of eight thousand each.'

'We'll see—I'll tell you when I get back from—where is it we're going first?—Prague, Leipzig, Brazzaville . . .'

'Conferences,' Rupert explained. 'We have them every summer.'

'How nice,' said Ianthe.

'Sorry about all that,' said Rupert when they were alone again, 'but as you've probably gathered Apfelbaum is going to publish an article of mine in his journal.'

'Oh, that's good, isn't it,' she said. 'What's the title of your article?'

He hesitated, then thought, why not—no point in mincing matters, it would only be like teaching somebody to swim by throwing them in at the deep end. 'The implication of jural processes among the Ngumu: a structural dichotomy,' he declared.

'Oh . . .' she turned her head away as if she were in pain or distress.

At least she had not been facetious or made some cheaply witty rejoinder, he thought. 'It's quite simple really,' he began, but he knew that it was not. It was the kind of thing that could be, and so often was, the stumbling block between men and women, or, if a relationship had progressed through several stages, the last straw. 'Let's have some more tea,' he said.

'Oh, there's Mrs Fairfax, isn't it—she was at your dinner party!' Ianthe cried out. 'And Professor Fairfax too.' It was a relief to see them, odd though they looked.

'Wild animals in their natural setting,' said Robina Fairfax, approaching them, 'that's what I always say when I come here.'

'Oh, I think we're pretty mild and harmless, aren't we,' said Rupert.

'Tamed and shabby tigers, perhaps,' said Gervase Fairfax, on his usual sarcastic note.

Ianthe did not know what answer to make. People at church garden parties did not make such remarks and she could not imagine that she would ever feel at ease with Rupert's colleagues. Now a short rough-haired woman in a grey suit joined them and was introduced as Esther Clovis, the secretary of the research centre. She began asking Ianthe searching questions about herself, almost as if she were Rupert's fiancée and needed to be 'vetted'.

'Are you a statistician?' she asked gruffly.

'No I'm not,' said Ianthe, puzzled.

'A pity—it's useful when the woman is, but perhaps you're an economist or a social worker?'

This last seemed almost the kind of thing one might be, Ianthe felt, and she ventured to say that she was 'interested' in social work, feeling that she must do her best if only out of politeness to Rupert.

'A vague interest in social work won't get us very far,' said Esther sharply. 'Have you a degree in it?'

'Oh come now, Esther,' said Rupert, detaching himself from Gervase Fairfax with whom he had been discussing the Unesco project, Ianthe is a librarian.'

'Good heavens!' Esther exclaimed, it seems as if I've been barking up the wrong tree.' And with that she turned on her heel and left them.