An Unsuitable Attachment (28 page)

She turned away from the church feeling cheated, for she had not even been able to go inside it and say a prayer. She knew that St Barbara was the patron of miners and artillery and though it seemed at first sight unlikely that the saint could have much in common with an Anglican clergyman's daughter, Ianthe remembered that she had decided to visit Miss Grimes that evening to tell her the news, and goodness only knew what help she might need there.

Later that day Ianthe left the library alone and set off for the Finchley Road and the steep side street where Miss Grimes lived in her bed-sitting room. She carried with her a bottle of medium dry Spanish sherry of reasonable but not the best quality. If there was a toast to be drunk—and surely Miss Grimes would insist on it—it would be preferable in a decorous sherry which did not have the raffishness of the Spanish Burgundy, now for ever associated in Ianthe's mind with Miss Grimes.

She reached the house and began looking among the cards under the bells for Miss Grimes's name, but it did not seem to be there. Ianthe was taken aback and slightly alarmed, then stricken with remorse, for perhaps Miss Grimes had died in the months that had gone by since her last visit, or perhaps she had been unable to afford the rent and. had to move to somewhere cheaper.

Hesitating on the doorsteps of houses which may have seen better days must be regarded as one of the occupational hazards of being a gentlewoman, but Ianthe felt it had been too much a part of her life lately and she resented Miss Grimes for having moved or even died—she should not have done anything so inconsiderate. What was Ianthe to do now? Who could she ask about Miss Grimes and which of the many bells should she ring for information?

Luckily at that moment a woman came up to the door and Ianthe was able to ask her if Miss Grimes still lived there.

'Miss
Grimes
. .
.' The woman was tall and stooping, encumbered with a heavy shopping basket and out of breath from climbing the hill.

'Yes—I came to see her.'

'Miss Grimes, yes.' She fumbled for her keys, opened the door and then stared at Ianthe with her pale eyes. 'You'd better come in,' she said.

Ianthe followed her rather apprehensively into the hall, where the woman put down her shopping basket with a groan of relief. Ianthe was glad that she did not ask her to go into her room.

'Has something happened to Miss Grimes?' she asked. 'I couldn't find her name by any of the bells.'

'No, you wouldn't find it—she isn't here. But nothing has happened to her, at least not in the way you mean.'

The woman paused for dramatic effect, or so it seemed when she spoke again. 'Miss Grimes has married Mr Slaski and gone to live in Ealing.'

'Goodness, then something
has
happened,' said Ianthe, taken aback. 'Marrying and going to live in Ealing . . .' She felt shaken almost as if she were suffering from shock and would have liked to sit down had not the woman put her shopping basket on the only chair.

'Yes, we were surprised too, in a way,' said the woman. 'She met Mr Slaski in a public house—the Four Feathers or whatever the name was where she used to go—they were each alone and got talking. Mr Slaski is Polish. He had just lost his wife. One can see how it came about—life can be very lonely for a man.'

'And for a woman too,' Ianthe murmured.

'Yes, of course. That's why it's better to marry when one has the chance—or perhaps I should say
if
one has the chance.' She laughed rather flutily. 'Well, I'm sorry you've had this journey all in vain—it's quite a walk up from the Finchley Road, isn't it.' Her eyes lighted on the unmistakably wrapped bottle Ianthe was holding. 'And you'd brought a present for her too, what a pity. It looks as if it would be difficult to post. Or perhaps you'll be going to Ealing one of these days—I've got the address somewhere.'

'Thank you, but I shan't be able to go there at the moment. Perhaps . . .' Ianthe hesitated, changing the position of the bottle in her arms. 'It's quite a good sherry, I believe, if anyone would like it here, I mean, it seems a pity to . . .'

'Ah, that
is
kind.' The woman's face lit up. 'This time of the evening too, just what one needs, and so seldom
has,
something to revive . . . though for what one is being revived one sometimes wonders, doesn't one.' She laughed her fluty laugh again and disappeared into a doorway.

Ianthe fled, not wishing to be invited in for a drink. On the way down the hill she realized that she had forgotten to get Miss Grimes's address. Still, no doubt a letter would be forwarded. Miss Grimes married—and to a Pole she had picked up in a pub. Somehow the news disconcerted Ianthe, as did the picture of the other woman drinking sherry alone in her room. At that moment life seemed very dark; Ianthe was perhaps too rigid in her views to reflect that a woman might have worse things to look forward to than the prospect of marriage to a Polish widower and a life in Ealing, or even of a quiet drink in one's own room at the end of a hard day.

***

It was not until she had seen the announcement in
The Times
that Sophia felt able to call on Ianthe and offer her good wishes and felicitations on the news without the fear of revealing that she had already known about the engagement for some weeks. As she walked the short distance to Ianthe's house she wondered what she should say. 'Of course I have seen
The Times
—as one does—and have come to wish you all happiness', or, 'Mark will be delighted to marry you and I'll arrange the reception in the Parish Hall just to show that there's no ill-feeling.' Yet what 'ill-feeling' could there possibly be? Sophia felt that she must not give the slightest hint of having in any way 'taken umbrage' at not being among the first to be told of the engagement. Perhaps, though, in a curious way which she had not recognized at the time, she
had
been told it in the conversation in the gardens at Ravello.

Believing that a clergyman's wife should never call at a house empty-handed, even if she brought only the parish magazine, Sophia had hastily picked a bunch of mixed garden flowers and was still trying to arrange them on the doorstep when Ianthe came to the door.

'I've come to offer my congratulations,' said Sophia, 'and to bring you these.'

'Oh, how
lovely!'
exclaimed Ianthe, a little too effusive in her thanks for ordinary garden flowers, Sophia thought, but she may have felt a slight awkwardness at the encounter.

'John is here, so do come in and meet him properly,' Ianthe went on.

Sophia stepped into the hall, realizing that she had not been inside the house since the occasion when Rupert Stonebird had so surprisingly answered the door-bell with a hot water bottle in his hand. Inside everything looked as charming as Sophia had remembered it—the water colours of Italian scenes in the hall and the china and books in the white bookshelves. There were summery-looking pink and white chintz curtains in the sitting room and a copy of the
Church Times
was rustling gently in the breeze from the open window.

'John is putting up some shelves in the kitchen,' Ianthe explained.

There is a certain type of man who is always putting up shelves, Sophia reflected, thinking how full of shelves some houses must be. 'I'm so glad he can do things like that,' she said aloud. 'Mark is hopeless, but luckily our predecessor at the vicarage was rather good at it and left his shelves behind, so we have all we need. Oh, but of course I remember you,' she said, as John climbed down from the stepladder and shook hands. 'You came to the bazaar and bought . . .' What was it he had bought and did it really matter? It was odd how one found oneself making trivial conversation on important occasions. Perhaps it was because one could not say what was really in one's mind.

'Little did I think then that I should be coming to live here,' said John, isn't it strange the turns life takes.'

Ianthe looked up at him fondly.

'I hope I shall fit into the parish as Ianthe's husband,' said John smoothly.

'Are you a churchgoer?' asked Sophia rather too casually.

'Oh well, not exactly—I mean I haven't been up to now, but I expect I shall come with Ianthe.'

Really, he was very good-looking, Sophia thought, but was he quite the husband for Ianthe? Would it not be wiser to break off the engagement now before it was too late? Yet how was it to be broken? Leaving them together so happy in each other's company, Sophia was shocked to find that she almost wanted something to happen that might expose John as an 'impostor'. She could certainly not have admitted this to Mark—it would not be in his nature to understand such baseness. She wondered if Rupert Stonebird might be a little less noble and if he were at home now so that she could have a talk with him and perhaps explain something of her feelings.

Looking up from reading an offprint of an article entitled 'Steatopygia of the Human Female in the Kalahari', Rupert was surprised to see Sophia coming up to the door. It was a far cry from the protruding posteriors of the Hottentot women to the spare elegance of an English vicar's wife. Of marginal interest to the social anthropologist, he thought, laying the offprint aside, the kind of thing that might give rise to one or two harmless little jokes with his female students, but certainly not relevant to the matter in hand, which was Sophia coming up to his front door.

She seemed almost distressed as she came into the hall and his mind leaped to the various types of restoratives or refreshments he could offer. Leading her into his study he decided on strong tea—it was only ten past four—and murmured something about going to put the kettle on.

Oh, what a haven, Sophia thought, relaxing in an old comfortable chair, after the un-sympathy and alien air of Ianthe's setting.

'You look as if you'd had a shock or bad news,' he said, coming back into the room with cups and saucers.

'Yes—an accident or a bereavement.'

'I hope tea will be all right,' said Rupert. 'I've got other things.'

'Oh perfectly, thank you—just what I need. We do
not
drink alcohol in the middle of the afternoon,' said Sophia, in the tone she used to reprove Faustina.

'No, but we could.'

'Not unless there's
really
been an accident or a bereavement.'

'And there hasn't?'

'No. I've just been to offer my congratulations to Ianthe and her fiancé.'

'Oh, I see. Will you have a piece of cake? Sister Dew brought me this and it's rather good.'

'Not one of her sponges, I see.'

'No—she evidently thought a man would like something more substantial like this excellent plum cake. Tell me about Ianthe and her fiancé,' said Rupert, taking his cup of tea to his desk and sitting down there.

'Well, there isn't much to tell, really. You know
her
,
and he is that good-looking dark young man who was at the Christmas bazaar.'

'Yes, I do remember vaguely. We all had a glass of sherry at her house afterwards—what a long time ago it seems! And now she's going to marry him, or he is going to marry her,' said Rupert rather self-consciously, for he was remembering the little scene in the garden and Ianthe's distress when he had tried to kiss her.

'I never thought of her as getting married—it seems all wrong,' Sophia burst out. 'I wanted her to stay as she was, almost as if I'd created her.'

'No, one had one's own idea of her,' said Rupert rather stiffly, 'and if one did think of her as getting married it wasn't to somebody like this.' He wondered if Sophia would have felt differently if Ianthe had been going to marry
him.

'I suppose it's wrong to have preconceived ideas about people—you as an anthropologist must appreciate the value of an open mind.'

'Yes, in field work, certainly. But meeting people in everyday life in north-west London isn't quite the same as studying a primitive community in Africa. Had you a preconceived idea of
me?
he asked a little nervously.

'A single man probably inspires wider and wilder speculation than a single woman,' Sophia admitted, accepting another cup of tea. 'His unmarried state is in itself more interesting than a woman's unmarriedness, if you see what I mean. We thought of you as somebody who went around measuring skulls, and that was our first wrong assumption,' she said lightly.

Whereas really I go around making nice women cry, thought Rupert, hardly liking to ask what the second wrong assumption could have been. 'This John that Ianthe is going to marry,' he said, seeing a way to turn the conversation away from himself. 'What did you think of him when you saw him just now?'

'Oh, he seems charming and is obviously devoted to her,' said Sophia. 'One wonders whether he can really be as good as he seems to be.'

How understanding Rupert was, she thought, so sympathetic and reliable. It was such a pity that things had not gone as she had hoped between him and Penelope. Perhaps it needed Ianthe's wedding to bring them together. Passing Ianthe's house on her way home she now saw that this marriage was inevitable—it had to be. The lemon leaves had been unwrapped and there were the fragrant raisins at the heart. She imagined John and Ianthe talking happily together and tried to feel glad for them.

Rupert had often attended weddings, or 'marriage ceremonies' as the anthropologists called them, during his field work in Africa, and although Ianthe's wedding was not at all like these he was able to observe the proceedings with the same keen detachment as on those other occasions. Perhaps he was not the person best fitted to give an account of Ianthe's dress, for as he watched her moving slowly up the aisle on the arm of her uncle he had no more than a confused impression of something blue and silky and a large hat—rather like the one she had worn at the anthropological garden party, but trimmed with roses. She did not wear roses for
me,
he reflected rather sadly. In her hand she carried an ivory prayer book which he was sure had belonged to her mother.

As for the bridegroom, Rupert looked on him with a certain amount of prejudice, in the way an only moderately good-looking man will regard one much more handsome. At least he appeared to be 'devoted to her' and he had even heard two ladies in the same pew whispering as much to each other, but it seemed to Rupert only fitting that he should seem to be devoted on this one day if on no other. He had thought for a time that he ought to offer to put John up for the wedding and had seriously considered that it might be his duty. Then he reflected that there was a certain delicacy about the situation, and while he was reflecting Sister Dew had offered, 'come to the rescue', as she put it.