Less Than Angels

  ‘You know, I suppose,’ she began tentatively, ‘that Tom will be going back quite soon, after he’s been to see his mother?’

  ‘Is it really coming to that again?’ said Catherine with studied vagueness. ‘I hadn’t realized it would be so soon.’

  ‘He says he’s going to fly,’ said Deirdre. ‘I shall feel so nervous.’

  Catherine felt that she ought to allow Deirdre the first claim to anxiety and did not add that she herself, and probably Elaine too, would also be feeling nervous.

  ‘He is longing to get back,’ said Deirdre. ‘I don’t think he’s really happy in England. Oh, Catherine,’ she burst out, ‘you don’t think there’s anyone out there, do you, and that that is why he wants to go back so much?’

  ‘He never mentioned anyone,’ said Catherine, ‘and he is usually rather open about these things. I think it’s just the love of his work, though, of course, the women there are very attractive. I don’t think we can ever hope to know all that goes on in a man’s life or even to follow him with our loving thoughts, and perhaps that’s just as well. You know how you say to yourself sometimes, “I wonder what he’s doing now?” You can’t always know that.’

  ‘Tom has usually been working on his thesis when he hasn’t been with me,’ said Deirdre, doubt clouding her face.

  ‘Yes, writing a thesis is an excellent alibi and a good way of keeping out of mischief,’ Catherine agreed. ‘But one evening, when I thought he was doing just that, he was holding a young woman’s hand in a restaurant.’ She threw Deirdre one of her bright sardonic glances.

  ‘Oh, Catherine, I’m sorry … I didn’t know what to do. You see, I love him so much.’

  Her words seemed to ring out among the peacocks, making Catherine wonder if they often heard or witnessed the deeper passions. The gossipy office chatter, the dreary female conversation, the quiet furtive hand-holdings, would be more what they were accustomed to, she felt.

  ‘How am I going to bear it when he goes away?’ Deirdre went on.

  ‘Oh, people do bear these things,’ said Catherine a little impatiently. ‘ You must get out and about with your friends more,’ she added in her women’s magazine tone, ‘ or learn a foreign language in the long winter evenings. But I was forgetting, you’ll have your anthropological studies, just think how useful they’ll be to Tom. In two years or less he’ll be back again. The time will soon go.’

  Deirdre wanted to ask Catherine if she was very unhappy because Tom had left her; she even wanted her forgiveness for her own part in the affair, but Catherine seemed to discourage further conversation by looking at her watch and suggesting that it was time they moved, ‘I hope you enjoy the thesis,’ she said, ‘but don’t expect too much. I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed if you hope to find all sorts of deliriously revealing little bits, but of coursejw won’t read it for such a frivolous reason. You may even have to understand it, or pretend that you do.’

  In the bus going home, Deirdre wondered if Catherine had been just the tiniest bit spiteful in her remarks about the thesis. Even the nicest people could be catty, and Catherine had been as good as jilted by Tom, when one came to think of it. It was quite possible that Catherine wouldn’t have understood it or would at least have missed its finer points. Deirdre entered the house quietly, hoping to sneak up to her room undisturbed to begin her own reading of it.

  But her aunt’s voice came from the kitchen. ‘Is that you, dear? Have you had tea?’

  Deirdre opened the kitchen door but could not at first see Rhoda because the whole room seemed to be filled with voluminous white garments hanging from the clothes-airer and dripping on to the floor.

  ‘What on earth have you been doing?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, it’s Father Tulliver’s albs,’ said Rhoda fussily. ‘I washed them after lunch and now it’s come on to rain. I don’t know how I’m going to get them dry.’

  ‘But why mustyou do them?’

  ‘Oh, I offered to help when Mrs. Tulliver was ill, you know. It did seem as if one ought to do all one could.’

  ‘But that was quite a long time ago. She’s better now, surely?’

  ‘Yes, she is, but I dare say she may still be feeling rather weak. An operation takes it out of you.’

  ‘Why couldn’t Father Tulliver send them to the laundry then?’

  ‘I don’t know, dear,’ said Rhoda, for this disloyal thought had also occurred to her earlier, as she bent over the sink with her hands in the hot soapy water when she would normally have been sitting quietly reading her library book.

  ‘Well, I certainly wouldn’t do that for a man,’ said Deirdre scornfully, forgetting or perhaps putting into a higher category the typing she had sometimes done for Tom.

  ‘I expect you would for Tom,’ said Rhoda in her coyest tone. ‘Do you think it’s too early for tea? I could really do with mine. Your mother is out, you know; she and Phyllis’s mother have gone on a little shopping spree. There was an advertisement of some household linen bargains at Robinson and Cleaver,’ she added cosily. ‘Double-bed sheets, very much reduced, with pillow-cases to match.’

  In the drawing-room Rhoda switched on a bar of the electric fire. The rain had made it rather chilly and tea always seemed to her the kind of meal that ought to be cosy.

  ‘I suppose you and Tom will be looking around for that kind of bargain one of these days,’ she said brightly.

  ‘Will we?’ said Deirdre unhelpfully.

  ‘You’ll miss him when he goes back to Africa,’ went on Rhoda, taking refuge in a statement of the obvious. ‘Perhaps poor Bernard will get a look-in then.’

  ‘Whoever I go out with when Tom’s gone, it certainly won’t be Bernard.’

  ‘Do you think Tom will mind if you go out with other young men?’ asked Rhoda in a frank interested tone.

  ‘He won’t have to.’

  ‘I was just wondering,’ Rhoda began, emboldened by her second cup of tea, ‘will you get officially engaged before he goes?’

  ‘I should think it’s most unlikely. What would be the point?’

  ‘Well, young men and women do get engaged,’ said Rhoda rather defiantly, ‘look at Malcolm and Phyllis.’

  Deirdre smiled. ‘I don’t think Tom and I have much in common with them,’ she said in a superior tone, but inwardly she was wishing that they had just a little more. Enlightened though she was, Deirdre couldn’t help glancing a little enviously sometimes at Phyllis’s conventional engagement ring—a medium-sized sapphire with a diamond on each side—and wishing that Tom might suggest that they became engaged before he went back to Africa. Then, when he came back again, they could get married. It seemed so simple, really, but she would never admit this to her aunt. Rhoda had hoped that an aunt might win confidences denied to a mother, but in this she was disappointed. Indeed, when they had finished tea and Deirdre had gone upstairs to her room, she was left with the impression that Deirdre didn’t really care whether she married Tom or not. If this were so, then poor Bernard might yet have a chance, and if not Bernard, then others. Letting her imagination play on this fancy, Rhoda could hardly fix any limit to the romantic possibilities of her niece’s life.

  When she had washed up the tea things, she left Father Tulliver’s albs dripping sadly in the kitchen and then she too retired to her room, taking with her some mending. She stationed herself comfortably in the arm-chair by the window and proceeded to look out into Alaric Lydgate’s garden.

  He was in the vegetable part at the back, apparently digging up potatoes. Then Mrs. Skinner came out in her apron, holding an umbrella over her head, and began to cut some runner beans. Ordinary actions, perhaps, the getting of vegetables for the evening meal, but, like Deirdre’s reluctance to talk about her feelings for Tom, it seemed as if they must have some strange significance.

  When they had gone back into the house, Rhoda turned away from the window and switched on her portable wireless set. The news seemed dull and ordinary by comparison.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN
r />   Tom arrived at the railway station of the Shropshire market town at the unpromising hour of half past one in the afternoon. There had been no restaurant car on the train and he had forgotten to provide himself with sandwiches. He hurried off the platform, anxious to avoid meeting anyone who remembered him from youth or childhood and with whom he might have to embark on the difficult business of explaining exactly what it was that he was doing now.

  ‘Good afternoon, Master Tom,’ said the ticket collector. ‘It isn’t often we have the pleasure of seeing you-you’ve been in foreign parts, I hear?’

  ‘Yes, in Africa.’

  ‘In the army, I suppose.’

  ‘Well, not exactly.’ Tom smiled, thinking of the great inquisitive army of anthropologists, the seekers after knowledge. ‘I’ve been studying the—er—customs of an African tribe.’

  The man’s face brightened. ‘ Ah, I’ve heard about some of them,’ he ventured. ‘ You chose a good day to come, you did, what with the carnival and flower show this afternoon.’

  ‘Oh, of course. It’s always on a Thursday, isn’t it.’

  The arrival of other travellers enabled him to escape, and he set out to walk through the ‘town’ to the house where his mother and brother lived. Thursday was early closing day, wThich was why the carnival and flower show were always held then. Some of the shops had their blinds down, and Tom could see himself reflected in the dark surfaces, a shabby trudging figure, carrying a brief-case and canvas bag. He resented this, and tried not to catch any more glimpses of himself. In the centre of the town there were some signs of what might have been described as festivity. Lines of coloured flags strung across the main street hung limply in the hot afternoon air, interspersed with notices welcoming visitors to the town. Char-a-bancs, or coaches as they were now called, were drawn up in the car-park, and troupes of children dressed in fairy, Chinese and pirate costumes, were to be seen getting out. When he came to the town’s park, Tom noticed the big marquee where the flowers and vegetables would be exhibited.

  The scene reminded him of the African festivals he used to attend, observing meticulously how this or that old custom of which he had read had died out and been replaced by some new and ‘significant’ feature, avoiding in his descriptions the least suggestion of vivid or picturesque language, and flattening out the whole thing until it sounded rather less interesting than a flower show and carnival in a small English market town.

  Mallow Park, for the house bore the name of the family who had lived in it for several hundred years, lay a little way out of the town on a slight eminence above it. It was a red Victorian house, with a small Georgian bit hidden away somewhere but now almost engulfed by later ‘improvements’. There was a long drive leading up to it, bordered on each side by dark shrubberies, now excessively luxuriant after the summer rains.

  Tom’s brother, Giles, was standing on the terrace. He was a conventionally good-looking young man of twenty-seven, dressed in an old but good tweed suit.

  ‘Well, Tom,’ was his greeting, ‘so you’ve come at last.’

  ‘Yes, my thesis is finished now.’

  Giles could not be expected to appreciate the significance of this announcement and he certainly gave no sign that he had, merely remarking that if Tom had let them know what time he was coming he would have brought the shooting-brake down to the station to meet him. ‘I suppose you left your luggage there?’ he added.

  ‘This is all I have,’ said Tom, indicating the canvas bag he was carrying. ‘We travel light in the bush. Where’s mother?’

  ‘In the garden. We’re all going to the flower show in a minute. I suppose you’ll come?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I’ll just go and find her.’

  If the shrubberies and lawns seemed overgrown and neglected, the large vegetable garden was well kept, for Mrs. Mallow had a stall in the local market and sold the produce at it, like some African woman petty trader, Tom thought. He expected to find her among the beans or peering at something in a frame. But when he came upon her she was standing very still, looking into the distance. The massive grey-clad figure with its rather small head stood out like a great Henry Moore sculpture in a London park. She showed no emotion at seeing her son, merely inclining her stony cheek for him to kiss. Tom was her favourite son and she loved him deeply, indulging his whims and thinking by that to bind him more closely to her. But it was Giles who had stayed behind. Now she worked hard in the garden and found comfort in the things of the earth, even in digging, for she was a strong active woman and the hand that Tom took was rough and not very clean.

  ‘Well, Tom,’ she said, ‘so you got the nine-ten from Paddington?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She remembered this train from the old days when she used to go to town, but it did not occur to her that he would have had nothing to eat. Tom had also forgotten it by this time.

  ‘I’m showing begonias and carnations as well as vegetables this year,’ she said, as they wralked back to the house together. ‘And what have you been doing? Your aunt tells me that you have been living with a young woman in Camden Town but that you have now abandoned her—is that so?’

  ‘Well, yes, in a way.’

  ‘Surely you must know whether you have or not?’ asked Mrs. Mallow sharply.

  ‘I suppose I don’t like the word “abandoned”’, Tom admitted. ‘We parted by mutual consent. It was leading nowhere.’

  ‘Where did you expect it to lead?’

  5 We didn’t really think of that when we started. It seemed pleasant and convenient …’ he broke off, conscious of the inadequacy of the words he was using to describe his relationship with Catherine. ‘I think I was in love with her in a ourious way and perhaps still am. Then there was Deirdre, a young girl of nineteen …’

  Mrs. Mallow gave a snort of laughter. ‘Oh, there are always young girls of nineteen,’ she said. ‘Giles is to marry Felicity,’ she continued in a different tone. ‘We are all very pleased.’

  ‘Felicity? Oh, of course, Elaine’s youngest sister. I should think that will be very suitable. I wish I could have done what was expected of me. If I had married Elaine…’ he began, but Giles had come towards them and was urging them to hurry.

  ‘Mother is to open the flower show,’ he said. ‘The usual story-they’d hoped to get some actress or television star, but in the end have to fall back on what we can provide. We’ve only twenty minutes before it begins. Surely you aren’t going like that, are you, mother?’ he went on in an exasperated tone.

  ‘I shall wear a hat, I suppose,’ said Mrs. Mallow, ‘my grey one. It is hanging in the hall.’

  They were standing now in the little room which Giles used as a kind of study and from which the business of the estate, such as it was, was conducted. As he looked about him, Tom realized how little it had changed since his father’s time. The old horsehair-covered chair with the stuffing coming out of the seat was still unmended. The desk was stuffed with bills, receipts and forms dating back many years. Giles’s game-book lay open, recording in his sprawling schoolboy hand that he had shot so many pheasants, partridges and pigeons at various dates. The same stuffed hares’ heads, foxes’ brushes and crooked sporting prints looked down from the walls. Tom felt as if he were observing some aspect of a culture as alien to him as any he had seen in Africa. He imagined how Catherine would have enjoyed it, her bright eyes darting here and there, missing no detail. He wished now that he could have brought her to see his home.

  ‘Mother, there is earth on your hands,’ continued Giles in the same exasperated tone. ‘ Surely you are going to wash, at least?’

  Mrs. Mallow glanced down at her hands indifferently. ‘Yes, I suppose I must,’ she admitted. ‘Where is your uncle? Is he ready to come with us, if he is coming?’

  ‘I’ll go and see,’ said Tom.

  ‘You’ll find him in the morning-room,’ said Giles.

  Tom found his uncle sitting in semi-darkness, looking at some sporting event on the television set, which had the cent
ral position in the room like a kind of altar. Green plush curtains had been dragged across the windows, shutting out all but a chink of sunlight which filtered incongruously through on to the elderly man with his military bearing and white walrus moustache.

  ‘Hullo, uncle,’ said Tom cheerfully. ‘Aren’t you coming with us to the flower show?’

  ‘Tom, my dear boy. When did you arrive? I think I shall not accompany you. Hearing Naomi make a speech is not my idea of an afternoon’s entertainment,’ he chuckled. ‘And besides, I don’t want to miss the women’s programme at three o’clock. This week we are to be shown the best cuts of meat to buy, most instructive. Of course it is for young housewives, really, newly-weds, I suppose you might call them, who haven’t had experience of these things.’

  Tom left the room feeling rather sad. He had the impression that his uncle was a kind of prisoner, or a sacrifice laid before the altar of the television set which demanded a constant tribute of victims.

  ‘Hervey is not coming?’ asked Mrs. Mallow as Tom rejoined them. ‘I didn’t think he would. We’d better get a move on.’

  Giles now began to criticize Tom’s appearance; apparently his blue corduroy jacket and grey flannels were not suitable for the occasion. ‘You must remember,’ he said, ‘that many eyes will be upon you. We are still the leading family here whatever else may have changed.’

  Mrs. Mallow had found a shooting-stick in the antlered umbrella stand. ‘ You could carry this,’ she suggested.

  ‘The insignia of rank,’ said Tom, ‘but not a particularly distinctive one. Only the chief is permitted to wear a necklace of leopards’ teeth.’

  ‘Well, it does make you look slightly better,’ said Giles seriously. ‘We shall be seeing Felicity and Elaine, of course. Delia is away. You remember Elaine, don’t you?’

  They were driving in the shooting-brake now, down the road along which Tom had walked less than an hour before.

  ‘Yes, I remember her,’ said Tom. ‘I must congratulate you on your engagement to Felicity. Do you feel you can afford to marry?’