Less Than Angels Part 11

'The editors will rewrite them-you must be prepared for that, they are quite unscrupulous you know. Even I have trouble with them sometimes.'

'I should like to read some of your articles, Mr. Lydgate,' said Rhoda. 'Do you think I should enjoy them?'

Alaric laughed shortly. 'I'm afraid one doesn't look for enjoyment in our field,' he said.

'Of course one does get a certain amount from pointing out other people's mistakes,' said Tom. 'That's a recognized sport.'

'Oh, yes,' said Alaric quite genially. 'It reminds me of the ideal hobby for retired anthropologists. Can you guess what it is?'

n.o.bodv could.

'Apiculture,' he said, enjoying their puzzled expressions.

'Bee-keeping,' said Father Tulliver slowly. 'Well, it is healthy and interesting, profitable too, I suppose.'

'Bees in the bonnet,' said Phyllis in her bright little voice. 'Is that it?'

'You're quite right, that is what I meant.'

'Have you hives at the bottom of your garden, Mr. Lydgate?' asked Mabel politely. 'That would be an ideal spot.'

The sentence fell with a thud amid general laughter and then there was a pause and Father Tulliver asked Alaric a question about missions.

'Oddly enough,' he said thoughtfully, as if it were a matter of surprise to him or even some kind of oversight on somebody's part, 'I have not had the call to the Mission Field. I have felt, wrongly perhaps, though I cannot judge that, that my work lay here.'

'Oh, you couldn't leave us, Father, not when you've got everything so nice, the services and all that,' said Rhoda confusedly. 'Whatever should we do?'

'It might be just what you needed,' said Father Tulliver on a stern note. 'It might prove a testing time-to show what you were made of.'

Rhoda, thinking of the heavy wash she was about to undertake for him, felt that he was being a little unfair. Surely he could not feel that she had been found wanting in any way?

'Of course we come of a missionary family,' said Alaric, 'and my sister had the call, at least I suppose it was that. She went out as a missionary originally but found that she was more interested in tongues than in souls. Perhaps the devil stepped in there.'

'But surely a missionary ought to learn the language of the people he is seeking to evangelize,' protested Father Tulliver. 'I should say that the study of linguistics was an admirable thing.'

'We met your sister that afternoon when we were having tea in the garden, didn't we?' said Rhoda.

'Yes, I remember. And wasn't there another young woman with you that afternoon-with dark hair and wearing a yellow dress? Miss Oliphant, I think you said her name was.' Alaric spoke rather quickly as if he regretted having raised the subject.

'Oh, yes, Catherine Oliphant,' said Mabel. 'Deirdre, we could have asked her to come tonight. I wish I'd thought of it.'

'Well, it would have made the numbers wrong,' said Deirdre in confusion.

'We could have asked Bernard to put that right.'

Deirdre broke into nervous laughter.

'Poor old Bernard,' said Phyllis. 'Tom, you've quite put Bernard's nose out of joint, I'm afraid. But I expect you're used to doing that, what with all the glamour of darkest Africa about you.'

'I do hope you won't go to the Mission Field, Father,' said Rhoda, seeming to be brought back to the subject by the phrase Phyllis had used. 'I really feel quite worried at the thought of it,'

'Of course we don't want Father Tulliver to go,' said Malcolm, 'but we ought not to stand in his way if he feels he ought to. You know that hymn.'

'O'er heathen lands afar, Thick darkness broodethyet'

said Mabel.

'I expect that's why the darkness is so thick, because our dear Father Tulliver hasn't had a chance to dispel it,' burst out Rhoda impulsively.

How silly Rhoda is, thought Deirdre, almost as if she were interested in Father Tulliver in a flirtatious way. She was as yet too young to have learned that women of her aunt's age could still be interested in men; she would have many years to go before the rather dreadful suspicion came to her that one probably never does cease to be interested.

'Well, I expect I shall find plenty of work to do here,' said Father Tulliver, feeling that Malcolm's words were almost forcing him to hurry to the U.M.C.A. headquarters. 'And ot course there is Beatrice to consider.'

'Ah, yes, poor Mrs. Tulliver. We were wondering if we could send some flowers or fruit to the nursing-home,' said Mabel.

The talk seemed to quieten down now and was sustained on a more comfortable parochial level until the end of the meal. Alaric found himself with Father Tulliver and the two older women, while the young people went into the garden.

'You should take Tom to see the river,' said Malcolm rather pointedly. 'It's really the chief attraction of the neighbourhood. I expect he'd like a walk.'

'I suppose they wanted to be alone,' said Deirdre apologetically, as she and Tom made their way towards the tow-path.

'That seems fair enough. I like your brother-he's a capital fellow-as they say in Victorian novels,' Tom added quickly, for it was a favourite phrase of Catherine's and seemed to need explanation.

'I can't imagine you reading Victorian novels,' said Deirdre doubtfully.

'No, I don't much. And here is the river, just at the bottom of the road. Isn't that convenient?'

'Well, it's nice for the Boat Race, but it isn't really a very pretty stretch of river. Would you like to walk along a little way?'

'Yes, let's do that.'

They walked in silence over the thick tufty gra.s.s, Deirdre a little in front of Tom as if she were showing him the way. It was beginning to get dark now and lights were showing over the other side of the water, giving a romantic continental atmosphere.

This is the place where the young men and women walk at night and are allowed a certain amount of licence, thought Tom in his detached anthropologist's way. He pulled Deirdre towards him and almost ceremonially led her to a seat under some elderberry trees, covered with sickly-smelling creamy flowers.

'I do love you so much,' she said. 'But women aren't supposed to say that to men, are they?'

'I don't see why not.' Tom had quite often had it said to him and had never been able to see why women had this almost superst.i.tious fear of expressing their feelings in words. It made no difference in the long run, though it could sometimes be a little disturbing in the early stages of an affair, and of course they might well consider it unwise to show their hands so early in the game.

'Because it might not be-reciprocal.' She frowned over the technical term she had used but could feel him smiling in the dark.

'I shouldn't worry about that, if I were you.'

'I suppose it's like that French saying or whatever it is, about there being one who kisses and one who leans the cheek to be kissed,'

'Let me set your mind at rest then,'

She was really very sweet, he thought, uncomplicated and honest; being with her took him back years and reminded him of Elaine, his first girl friend, whom he had known at home when he was eighteen. Catherine, being older, had already been too much of a personality in her own right, always wanting to make him conform to her idea of what he ought to be.

'I suppose we ought to go back now,' said Deirdre, sensing that he had somehow gone away from her.

'Let's stay a little longer,' he said, smoothing her rough chrysanthemum-cut hair. 'Aren't you enjoying it?'

'Oh yes .. ,'

The last time she had been kissed by the river was when she was with Bernard after her first meeting with Tom, she remembered. Poor Bernard, supposing he were to come along now. But it was usually in the daytime that she saw him here, coaching the sports club eight, riding his bicycle and shouting the esoteric rowing language through a megaphone.

The smell of the elder flowers reminded Tom of his childhood. There had been a bush in the garden, he supposed. Proust, he thought, that's what Catherine would say.

They walked back slowly arm-in-arm, Tom talking about his future plans.

'I shall go home at the end of August,' he said, 'and perhaps stay a few days.'

'Yes, your mother will want to see you,' said Deirdre dutifully.

'I suppose she will, but she_isn't the kind of person who shows her feelings, and my brother is there all the time,'

'Which can't be quite the same,' said Deirdre warmly.

Now they were coming back to the house again and that part of the river bank where the residents took their dogs for a short run before turning in. Two figures, followed at some distance by an old fat sealyham, came towards them. They seemed to be talking about the Test Match. Tom suddenly wished he were walking with them, making manly conversation, away from the cloying sweetness of love or, better still, at home with his typewriter, working on his thesis. For the end was in sight and it was going to be finished after all. He gave Deirdre's arm a sudden joyful squeeze and quickened pace.

'That was Mr. Lovell and his old dog and Mr. Dulke who lives opposite,' she said, hurrying too. ' I didn't want to have to stop and talk to them.'

As they turned into the road the sound of a 'cello came over the warm night air, playing a rounded melody, exquisitely satisfying.

'That's Miss c.u.mberledge,' Deirdre explained. 'She plays in an orchestra and you often hear her practising.'

They stood for a few moments listening, looking up at the sky and the television aerials silhouetted against it.

'Almost beautiful, aren't they,' said Tom, pointing to them. 'A symbol of the age we live in.'

'So is Mrs. Lovell putting out the breakfast cereals,' said Deirdre as they pa.s.sed her neighbour's house. They could see her through the uncurtained window, laying the table, placing coloured plastic mugs on it and in the baby's high chair, and taking giant packets of cornflakes from the sideboard.

'Life goes on,' said Tom.

'Yes, I suppose it's comforting to see people going about their humdrum business,' said Deirdre. At home her mother would be laying the breakfast and later her aunt would creep down to see if she had done it correctly. And they would probably go on doing this all their lives.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

Life had been going on for Catherine too, as she knew that j it would. She thought of it as an old friend, or perhaps a tiresome elderly relative, pushing, knocking, clinging, but never leaving her alone, having the power to grant her moments of happiness but being very stingy with them just now. Obviously the spirit of delight in Sh.e.l.ley's poem, which so rarely came, was a being of another order, possibly a beautiful young man whom Catherine could not at the moment visualize. She went about seeing editors, writing stories and articles, and in the evening read her favourite depressing poets, Hardy, Matthew Arnold and the lesser Victorians; she even found the strength to embark on a course of Dostoievsky. Often she felt the lack of that cosy woman friend with whom she might spend an afternoon at a matinee, or shopping with a pleasant gossipy tea afterwards. She seemed to know more men than women and, delightful though their company was, she imagined that they were somehow less comforting than a woman would have been.

One morning she was wandering through a large store, which she liked because of its old and respectable connections, for it was the kind of place where Tom's mother might shop when she came up to town, or where Colonial administrators who had spent long years in the solitude of the bush might gather as in a refuge from the garishness of Oxford Street. It was not very surprising, therefore, that while strolling on the ground floor she should come upon a group of people sitting in basket chairs drinking coffee, and that among them should be Alaric Lydgate. She had thought of him several times since their first meeting, for his oddness and apparent loneliness interested and attracted her. And now here he was, sitting alone, reading a journal which, to judge from its tide, dealt with that part of Africa where he had spent his eleven years.

'Why, it's Mr. Lydgate!' she exclaimed, hovering by his table. Shyness was not one of her faults and she had every intention of joining him.

'Miss Oliphant.' So he had remembered her name. 'This is a pleasure. Won't you sit down and have some coffee with me?' A rather tentative smile was playing over the rocky Easter Island features, Catherine noticed.

More coffee was ordered and some chocolate biscuits. Catherine settled herself comfortably and took out her cigarette case.

'What are you reading?' she asked.

'Oh, an article I have written,' he said. 'There are two misprints, most annoying. But I'm sure you wouldn't be interested.' He closed up the journal and put it down on a vacant chair.

'It depends what it's about,' said Catherine honesdy. 'I think you could probably help me with something I'm writing now.'

'Do you think so?' He glanced at her suspiciously, as if he were thinking of the trunks full of notes in his attic.

'Yes, I'm writing a story about somebody who's just come back from Africa. I've made him a big game hunter, that seems suitable for the type of people who will read it. Naturally I have to make him have thoughts about the country he's been in, and I was wondering if they were too wildly improbable.'

'I'm afraid I should be no judge of that,' said Alaric. 'I shouldn't like to say what thoughts might be in the mind of a big game hunter.'

'Oh, I didn't mean that exactly. You see, I have him sitting in this West Kensington hotel, remembering the noise of the rain splashing down among the mangroves, or the laughing faces of the women as they brought in the yams, and really it's the drizzly English rain and the grey shut-in faces of the elderly ladies in the lounge-do you see the idea?'

'Only too well.' He laughed, but without much amus.e.m.e.nt.

Too near the bone, Catherine thought, for of course it was he who had given her the idea for the story about the big game hunter in the West Kensington hotel. She had at least had the grace to change the basic circ.u.mstances a little.

'And what happens in your story?' he asked politely, half smiling as if he were humouring a child.

'He meets the niece of one of the elderly ladies who comes to visit her.'

'And then?'

Catherine looked surprised, but then realized that it was most unlikely that he would be a reader of romantic fiction. ' Oh, well, that is the end, really,' she said. 'They go for a walk in the rain and he suddenly feels that there's something rather nice about the drizzly English rain-I haven't finished it yet, but you can see the way it will go. But would the rain splash down among the mangroves, and would the women bring in the yams? I do like to get these things right.'

'It is a pity,' he began, using his favourite review phrase, 'that others are not as accurate as you are. Contributors to the learned journals are among the worst offenders. I often find ...'

But at this moment a voice interrupted him, calling his name, and Catherine noticed a leathery-looking man with the Ancient Mariner gleam in his eye bearing down upon Alaric. He was followed by a tweedy little woman of a mild, almost downtrodden, aspect. Alaric introduced the pair as Mortimer Jessop and his sister, Miss Jessop, who did not appear to have a Christian name and took no part in the conversation, which consisted of long reminiscences of events in Africa from Mortimer Jessop, interspersed with short comments from Alaric. Catherine tried to draw Miss Jessop out in the way that she considered one woman might try to draw another, with little remarks on the weather and the display of goods in the store, but it was difficult going and after a time she gave up and listened to the men's conversation. There was a certain fascination about it although it hardly seemed to make sense.

'... att.i.tude of the natives,' boomed Mortimer Jessop. 'You remember the Resident's comments on that one, surely? Short and to the point. To the effect that had he taken the trouble to read Crabbe's Handing-Over report he would have found that the key was precisely where he had said it was-underneath the mat! Government had just sent troops there-that was in '22, of course, before your time. You realize that that was why they couldn't take the railway through? Had to make a detour to avoid the territory, n.o.ble Savage and all that sentimental twaddle. I know what I should have done,'

'Would you have taken the railway through, Mr. Jessop?' asked Catherine, looking up at him.

He seemed a little taken aback. Perhaps he was used only to his sister as an audience and had not expected any comment.

'Well, I'd have had a bash at it, as they say nowadays,' he said with a bark of laughter.

'I suppose we should be going now,' said Alaric with a glance at his watch.

'I hear you're working at the London Office,' said Mortimer Jessop.

'Yes, part-time. It's one of my days off,' Alaric explained.