Quartet in Autumn
Authors: Barbara Pym
Barbara Pym
Quartet in Autumn
First published
1977
by Macmillan London Ltd
This edition published
2004
by Pan Books an imprint of Pan Macmillan Led Pan Macmillan,
20
New Wharf Road. London
NI
9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world
ISBN
0 330 32648
I
Copyright
©
Hazel Holt
1977
A QP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
One
T
HAT
DAY
THE
four of them went to the library, though at different times. The library assistant, if he had noticed them at all, would have seen them as people who belonged together in some way. They each in turn noticed him; with his shoulder-length golden hair. Their disparaging comments on its length, its luxuriance, its general unsuitability — given the job and the circumstances — were no doubt reflections on the shortcomings of their own hair. Edwin wore his, which was thin, greying and bald on top, in a sort of bob — 'even older gentlemen are wearing it longer now', his barber had told him — and the style was an easy one which Edwin considered not unbecoming to a man in his early sixties. Norman, on the other hand, had always had 'difficult' hair, coarse, bristly and now iron-grey, which in his younger days had refused to lie down flat at the crown and round the parting. Now he did not have to part it and had adopted a medieval or pudding-basin style, rather like the American crew-cut of the forties and fifties. The two women — Letty and Marcia — had hair as different from each other as it was possible to imagine in the nineteen seventies, when most women in their sixties had a regular appointment at the hairdresser for the arrangement of their short white, grey or dyed red curls. Letty had faded light brown hair, worn rather too long and in quality as soft and wispy as Edwin's was. People sometimes said — though less often now — how lucky she was not to have gone grey, but Letty knew that there were white hairs interspersed with the brown and that most people would have had a brightening 'rinse' anyway. Marcia's short, stiff, lifeless hair was uncompromisingly dyed a harsh dark brown from a bottle in the bathroom cupboard, which she had used ever since she had noticed the first white hairs some thirty years earlier. If there were now softer and more becoming ways of colouring one's hair, Marcia was unaware of them
.
Now, at lunchtime, each went about his or her separate business in the library. Edwin made use of
Crockford's Clerical Directory
and also had occasion to consult
Who's Who
and even
Who Was Who
, for he was engaged in serious research into the antecedents and qualifications of a certain clergyman who had recently been appointed to a living in a parish he sometimes frequented. Norman had not come to the library for any literary purpose, for he was not much of a reader, but it was a good place to sit and a bit nearer than the British Museum which was another of his lunchtime stamping grounds. Marcia too regarded the library as a good, free, warm place not too far from the office, where you could sit for a change of scene in winter. It was also possible to collect leaflets and pamphlets setting out various services available for the elderly in the Borough of Camden. Now that she was in her sixties Marcia took every opportunity to find out what was due to her in the way of free bus travel, reduced and cheap meals, hairdressing and chiropody, although she never made use of the information. The library was also a good place to dispose of unwanted objects which could not in her opinion be classified as rubbish suitable for the dustbin. These included bottles of a certain kind, but not milk bottles which she kept in a shed in her garden, certain boxes and paper bags and various other unclassified articles which could be left in a comer of the library when nobody was looking. One of the library assistants (a woman) had her eye on Marcia, but she was unconscious of this as she deposited a small, battered tartan-patterned cardboard box, which had contained 'Killikrankie oatcakes', at the back of a convenient space on one of the fiction shelves.
Of the four only Letty used the library for her own pleasure and possible edification. She had always been an unashamed reader of novels, but if she hoped to find one which reflected her own sort of life she had come to realize that the position of an unmarried, unattached, ageing woman is of no interest whatever to the writer of modern fiction. Gone were the days when she had hopefully filled in her Boots Book Lovers' library list from novels reviewed in the Sunday papers, and there had now been a change in her reading habits. Unable to find what she needed in 'romantic' novels, Letty had turned to biographies of which there was no dearth. And because these were 'true' they were really better than fiction. Not perhaps better than Jane Austen or Tolstoy, which she had not read anyway, but certainly more 'worth while' than the works of any modern novelist.
In the same way, Letty, perhaps because she was the only one of the four who really liked reading, was also the only one who regularly had lunch out of the office. The restaurant she usually patronized was called the Rendezvous but it was not much of a place for romantic meetings. People who worked in the nearby offices crowded in between twelve and two, ate their meal as quickly as possible, and then hurried away. The man at Letty's table had been there when she sat down. With a brief hostile glance he handed her the menu, then his coffee had come, he had drunk it, left 5p for the waitress and gone. His place was taken by a woman who began to study the menu carefully. She looked up, perhaps about to venture a comment on price increases, pale, bluish eyes troubled about
VAT
. Then, discouraged by Letty's lack of response, she lowered her glance, decided on macaroni au gratin with chips and a glass of water. The moment had passed.
Letty picked up her bill and got up from the table. For all her apparent indifference she was not unaware of the situation. Somebody had reached out towards her. They could have spoken and a link might have been forged between two solitary people. But the other woman, satisfying her first pangs of hunger, was now bent rather low over her macaroni au gratin. It was too late for any kind of gesture. Once again Letty had failed to make contact.
Back in the office Edwin, who had a sweet tooth, bit the head off a black jelly baby. There was nothing racist about his action or his choice, it was simply that he preferred the pungent liquorice flavour of the black babies to the more insipid orange, lemon or raspberry of the others. The devouring of the jelly baby formed the last course of his midday meal which he usually ate at his desk among papers and index cards.
When Letty came into the room he offered her the bag of jelly babies but this was only a ritual gesture and he knew that she would refuse. Eating sweets was self-indulgent, and even though she was now in her sixties there was no reason why she should not keep her spare, trim figure.
The other occupants of the room, Norman and Marcia, were also eating their lunch. Norman had a chicken leg and Marcia an untidy sandwich, bulging with lettuce leaves and slippery slices of tomato. On a mat on the floor the electric kettle was pouring out steam. Somebody had put it on for a hot drink and forgotten to switch it off.
Norman wrapped up his bone and placed it neatly in the wastepaper basket. Edwin lowered an Earl Grey tea bag carefully into a mug and filled it with boiling water from the kettle. Then he added a slice of lemon from a small round plastic container.
Marcia opened a tin of instant coffee and made two mugs of the drink for herself and Norman. There was nothing particularly significant about her action — it was just a convenient arrangement they had. They both liked coffee and it was cheaper to buy a large tin and share it between them. Letty, having had her meal out, did not make herself a drink, but went into the cloakroom and fetched a glass of water which she placed on a coloured hand-worked raffia mat on her table. Her place was by the window and she had covered the window sill with pots of trailing plants, the kind that proliferated themselves by throwing out miniature replicas which could be rooted to make new plants. 'Nature she loved, and next to Nature, Art.' Edwin had once quoted, even going on to finish the lines about her having warmed both hands before the fire of life — but not
too
close, mind you. Now the fire was sinking, as it was for all of them, but was she, or were any of them, ready to depart?
Something of this may have been in Norman's subconscious as he turned the pages of his newspaper.
'Hypothermia,' he read the word slowly. 'Another old person found dead. We want to be careful we don't get hypothermia.'
'It isn't a thing you
get,'
said Marcia bossily. 'Not like catching an infectious disease.'
'Well, if you were found dead of it, like this old woman here, you could say you'd
got
it, couldn't you?' said Norman, defending his usage.
Letty's hand moved over to the radiator and lingered there. 'It's a state or condition, isn't it,' she said, 'when the body gets cold, loses heat or something like that.'
'That's one thing we've got in common then,' said Norman, his snappy little voice matching his small spare body. 'The chance of being found dead of hypothermia
.
'
Marcia smiled and fingered a leaflet in her handbag, one she had picked up at the library that morning — something about extra heating allowances for the elderly — but she kept the information to herself.
'Cheerful, aren't you,' said Edwin, 'but perhaps there's something in it. Four people on the verge of retirement, each one of us living alone, and without any close relative near — that's us.'
Letty made a murmuring sound, as if unwilling to accept this classification. And yet it was undeniably true — each one lived alone. Strangely enough they had been talking about it earlier that morning when something — again in Norman's paper — had reminded them that Mother's Day was upon them, with the shops full of suitable gifts and the price of flowers suddenly going up. Not that they ever bought flowers, but the increase was noted and commented on. Yet it could hardly affect people too old to have a mother still alive. Indeed, it was sometimes strange to reflect that each of them had once had a mother. Edwin's mother had lived to a respectable age — seventy-five — and had died after a brief illness without giving any trouble to her son. Marcia's mother had died in the suburban house where Marcia now lived alone, in the upstairs front bedroom with the old cat Snowy beside her. She had been eighty-nine, what some might think of as a great age but nothing wonderful or to be remarked on. Letty's mother had died at the end of the war, then her father had married again. Shortly after this her father had died and the stepmother had in due course found another husband, so that Letty now had no connection with the West Country town where she had been born and brought up. She had sentimental and not entirely accurate memories of her mother, wandering round the garden snipping off dead heads, wearing a dress of some floating material. Only Norman had never known his mother — 'Never had a mum,' he used to say in his bitter sardonic way. He and his sister had been brought up by an aunt, and yet it was he who inveighed most fiercely against the commercializing of what had originally been the old country custom of Mothering Sunday.
'Of course you've got your church,' said Norman, addressing Edwin.
'And there's Father Gellibrand,' said Marcia, for they had all heard so much about Father G., as Edwin called him, and they envied Edwin the stable background of the church near Clapham Common where he was Master of Ceremonies (whatever that might be) and on the parochial church council (the
PCC
). Edwin would be all right, because although he was a widower and lived alone he had a married daughter living in Beckenham, and no doubt she would see to it that her old father wasn't found dead of hypothermia.
'Oh, yes, Father G.'s a real tower of strength,' Edwin agreed, but after all the church was open to everybody. He couldn't understand why neither Letty nor Marcia seemed to go to church. It was easier to see why Norman didn't
.