An Unsuitable Attachment (6 page)

'Our ways—and what ways they are!' Mervyn sighed and prepared to go back to his work. 'Perhaps he isn't quite what we've been used to, but I thought we might give him a trial. All the other applicants seemed so highly qualified, I thought they'd probably turn up their noses at what—between ourselves, Ianthe—is really rather a stooge's job. Besides, one gets so tired of willing gentlewomen of uncertain age,' he laughed rather cruelly, 'just when we'd succeeded in getting rid of old Grimes too.'

Ianthe said nothing. She felt guilty that she had not yet been to visit Miss Grimes in her bed-sitting room somewhere off the Finchley Road, really within easy distance of where she lived, so there was really no excuse. She made a resolution to go before Christmas.

When John returned from lunch—very punctually, just before half-past one—Ianthe found herself studying him and taking in the details of his appearance. She could find no fault with his dark grey suit, red patterned tie and white shirt. Only his shoes seemed to be a little too pointed—not quite what men one knew would wear. He was less talkative now and settled down to work quietly, only occasionally asking her a question about what he was doing.

When tea was brought he took out a book he had been reading over his lunch. It turned out to be—most improbably, Ianthe thought—a paperback selection of the poems of Tennyson.

'You read poetry?' she asked rather formally.

'Oh, yes—do you?'

'Yes,' she said hesitantly, wishing that now she had not commented on the book, for one did not talk about poetry with chance acquaintances. It was a precious thing to be kept to oneself. She felt she did not know where to begin with Tennyson, imagining him plodding through
In Memoriam,
though perhaps
Maud
was more likely. Then she remembered that it was only a selection of the poems he had been reading and she did not need to speculate further, for—much to her surprise—he began to read

'Now lies the earth all Danäe to the stars

And all my heart lies open unto thee . . .

I like that,' he said. 'How do you pronounce Danäe, by the way?'

'I don't know,' she said in confusion, for she felt his eyes upon her.

'Anyway,' he said, closing the book, 'I suppose I'd better get on with my work now or I'll get the sack. But you wouldn't tell Mr Cantrell, would you.'

Ianthe bent her head over her work and said nothing. This was not at all what she had imagined when Miss Grimes left. It would be better, she felt, if John were to work with Shirley, the typist, as he was only going to do odd jobs. He might even be a suitable 'boy friend' for her. She would mention it tactfully to Mervyn some time. Altogether she was rather relieved when it was time to go home.

'I hope there's a post office still open,' said John, as he got up to go.

'They stay open quite late,' said Ianthe.

'I'll need to draw something to keep me going till pay-day,' he said, taking a post office savings book from an inner pocket.

Somehow the sight of this touched Ianthe, who had never herself been in the position of having to wait till pay-day. There must be many people who knew this state of financial insecurity but she found that she did not want to think about them. She looked forward rather selfishly to a quiet evening at home surrounded by familiar objects, perhaps reading or listening to a concert on the wireless. Her first impulse, therefore, when she saw the vicar's sister-in-law, Penelope, walking from the underground station just in front of her was to hurry past and pretend she hadn't seen her. But her natural good manners got the better of her and she found herself saying 'good evening' and reminding Penelope that they had met at the vicarage.

'Yes, of course I remember,' said Penelope. 'You live in one of those sweet little houses, like Mr Something-bird the anthropologist.'

'Mr Stonebird,' said Ianthe seriously, as if Penelope had really forgotten his name.

Penelope laughed. 'Does he take an active part in the life of the parish? Will he be at this meeting tonight?'

'Oh, of course—the meeting to discuss the Christmas bazaar,' said Ianthe, remembering now that it would have been impossible for her to have had the quiet evening she had planned. 'I shouldn't think he'll be there. Men don't usually take much part in these things,' she added, more from experience than from cynicism. 'And are you coming to help?'

'Well, Sophia likes me to, you know. But most of these good people are a dead loss when it comes to planning anything unusual or amusing,' said Penelope fiercely. She was hoping very much that Rupert Stonebird would be there. Surely it was his duty to be? she told herself, not realizing that at that very moment he was sitting listening to a paper being read at a learned society, his mind occupied with a particularly tricky question he intended to ask when the speaker sat down.

'I shall see you later then,' said Ianthe, when they reached her house. 'Eight o'clock, isn't it?'

Penelope went hopefully into the vicarage where she found Sophia smiling over a letter which had just come by the evening post.

'Isn't it splendid,' she said, waving the letter at Penelope, 'Mother has persuaded Lady Selvedge to come and open our bazaar. That ought to draw people—the title, you know.'

'But Sophia, would people
here
care about that sort of thing?' said Penelope doubtfully. 'Now if it were Lady—' she named a titled person at that time popular on television—'it might make a difference. But who
is
Lady Selvedge, after all?' she asked on a note of challenge.

'The former wife of Sir Humphrey Selvedge—his relict, but not his widow, I suppose you might say. Oh dear,' Sophia looked depressed, 'perhaps it
isn't
so splendid after all. Sir Humphrey was unfaithful and she had to divorce him—at least she did divorce him so that he could marry again, I believe.'

'But
she
hasn't remarried?' asked Mark anxiously.

'No. One hopes that her principles wouldn't allow it.'

'I don't suppose for a moment that anyone has asked her,' said Penelope. 'She's pretty dreary, as far as I remember.'

'Penny, we do
not
look upon divorce and remarriage in that way,' said Mark sternly, but—Sophia thought—rather in the tone he used when Faustina jumped on to the table and began licking the butter dish. 'I'm sure that Lady Selvedge is a woman of the highest principles.'

'You've met her, dear,' said Sophia. 'She was at that cocktail party the Sheldonians gave—don't you remember?—when we were staying with Mother the summer before last.'

'Well, I suppose I must have met her, then, if you say so, but somehow I can't remember anything about her.'

'No, I don't suppose you do,' said Sophia soothingly. 'And in any case high principles aren't the kind of things one notices at a cocktail party—or perhaps only in a negative way, as when somebody drinks tomato juice rather than gin.'

'And that might be only because of her figure,' said Penelope.

But Mark had now become absorbed in an idea for a sermon that had suddenly come to him. He was quite a forceful preacher, too intelligent for the majority of his congregation, so that the rather dry instructive sermons to which he inclined personally had to be diluted and sweetened to suit their taste. Mark usually achieved this by thinking out an arresting beginning, nearly always of the same type, asking his congregation to imagine themselves standing gazing at the Pyramids or the Acropolis or even the New York skyline, hardly realizing, until Sophia pointed it out to him, that these sights would be unfamiliar to the majority of his hearers. But now these beginnings had become something of a joke between them and the congregation had learned to accept them with amused tolerance. They always made Sophia think how much more Mark would be appreciated in a different sort of parish, though she never said anything about it. If he felt that his work lay here, it was not for her to question his decision, but she sometimes wished that something might happen to make him change his mind.

'People seem to be coming to the door,' said Penelope. She saw with disappointment that Rupert Stonebird was not among the little group that Sophia was now bringing into the room. Ianthe Broome, Daisy Pettigrew, Sister Dew and one or two others whose names she could never remember, now sat down round the table and began to discuss the final arrangements for the bazaar, which had always been exactly the same and always would be, except that from one year to another a pint more or less milk might be ordered for the teas.

Penelope's way home took her along St Basil's Terrace, or if it had not done she would have arranged her journey to include it, even if it had meant a slight detour. In the weeks that had passed since she had met Rupert Stonebird at the vicarage her interest in him had deepened, mainly because she had not seen him again and had therefore been able to build up a more satisfactory picture of him than if she had been able to check with reality. It was therefore important and exciting to notice that there was a light in a ground-floor window of his house and that, by a fortunate piece of carelessness on somebody's part, the curtains had not been drawn.

Walking as slowly as she dared, Penelope was able to see that there were two figures in the room—Rupert himself and a woman, not very tall and wearing a dark, tweedy-looking suit. It was difficult to see exactly what she looked like, for she and Rupert were bending down over a table examining something together. The room looked like the dining room; a sideboard with some bottles and a bowl of fruit on it was visible, and Penelope was now able to see that the remains of a kind of meal—a loaf of bread, a hunk of orange-coloured cheese and two glasses—were set out on one half of the table. Altogether it was a little disturbing—the man, the woman, the Omar Khayyâm-like details—or like a Victorian problem picture in the Royal Academy. What exactly had they been—or were they now—doing?

Penelope walked slowly away from the house, then pretended to be looking at an empty house which was to be sold two doors away from where Rupert lived. As she did so she was conscious of voices by his front gate. Rupert's visitor, whoever she had been, was now leaving and he was giving her instructions how to get somewhere.

'Goodbye, Esther,' he called out, 'and many thanks for bringing them.'

Penelope walked on, thinking, 'Esther', some glamorous Jewess, no doubt. And
what
had she been bringing? The footsteps behind her seemed to be hurrying, almost as if they were trying to catch her up.

'I suppose I
can
get a bus for Baker Street somewhere here?' said a rather gruff voice, addressing Penelope.

Penelope turned round. 'Oh yes, I'll show you.' She smiled for the woman was short and dumpy, with roughly-cut grey hair—in her middle fifties, at least. So it was all right. The appearance of her 'rival' so encouraged Penelope that it was as if Rupert himself had come out of his house and made her a declaration of love.

Lady Selvedge and Mrs Grandison arrived at Victoria Station on the day of the bazaar shortly after noon, and proceeded to look for a place where they might have lunch, or luncheon, as they called it. Mrs Grandison had promised her daughter that they would not inflict themselves on her for a meal—realizing that Lady Selvedge might well be something of an infliction—and had assumed that from Victoria they would take a taxi to some Soho restaurant or perhaps Simpsons in the Strand. Indeed, during the train journey she had been weighing in her mind the advantages of an Italian dish—'something with
funghi'
— as against sole in an exquisite sauce or a cut off a splendid sirloin. She was therefore a little disconcerted to find when they left the station that instead of waiting for a taxi Lady Selvedge began to stride away in the direction of Victoria Street, saying 'I know just the place for us to get a snack. There's a very good tea-shop just near here.'

'Don't you think,' Mrs Grandison suggested, 'that we need a little more than just a snack? After all we have a long and tiring afternoon ahead of us?' But of course, as she now remembered, Lady Selvedge had the reputation of being mean.

'Oh, you can get quite substantial dishes here,' she said. 'I used the word "snack" figuratively.'

Mrs Grandison followed her apprehensively into one of those ubiquitous tea-shops which cater for the multitudes of office workers and others who want a cheap meal at any time of the day, and which, excellent though they are, can hardly be compared with the restaurants Mrs Grandison had been hoping to lunch in.

Fortunately, as it was still only a quarter past twelve, there was no queue and Lady Selvedge and Mrs Grandison were able to walk straight up to the counter and take their trays.

'Do not handle food you do not intend to consume', Lady Selvedge read loudly from a printed notice. 'That seems most sensible and hygienic, don't you think so, Dorothy?'

Mrs Grandison could not but agree with her.

'I will have steak pudding and
masked
potatoes,' said Lady Selvedge. 'And do I see
greens
there? I will have some of those.'

Mrs Grandison chose ham and salad, thinking sadly of the splendid sirloin, for she had decided that it would have been that if she had been given the choice.

They found a table for four occupied by one young man, and arranged their food around them. Perhaps they looked a little incongruous sitting in their smart hats and fur coats, talking more loudly than anybody else. Lady Selvedge was a tall, pale-faced woman, with a camel-like cast to her features—perhaps a Habsburg lip if one took a more kindly view. Because of her husband's matrimonial adventures and the fact that she was by no means the only Lady Selvedge she was usually known as Lady (Muriel) Selvedge. The parentheses gave her a sense of not existing, un-being perhaps was not too strong a word. She would have preferred Muriel, Lady Selvedge, with its dowager-like dignity. Sometimes people addressed letters mistakenly to Lady Muriel Selvedge, and on these occasions she imagined herself as the daughter of an earl, a marquess, or even a duke, comfortably unmarried.

Mrs Grandison, the mother of Sophia and Penelope, had the remains of her daughters' Pre-Raphaelite beauty, now much faded and overlaid with some other quality, which had made her the President of the Women's Institute in the village where she lived but which did not seem to be quite Pre-Raphaelite.