No Fond Return of Love (2 page)

Dulcie and Viola, meanwhile, found themselves at the end of one of the long tables at which a tall comfortable-looking woman was beginning to ladle out soup from a large tureen. She seemed to be enjoying herself, plunging the ladle into the steaming savoury-smelling broth as if she were a medieval nun or friar feeding the assembled poor.

‘It seems that whoever’s at this end has to cope with the grub,’ she said in a loud, jolly voice. ‘Would you mind shoving the plates along?’

Dulcie and Viola did as they were told and the meal began. After the soup a plate of sliced meat and some dishes of vegetables were brought, which they helped to serve.

‘What do you do exactly?’ said Dulcie to Viola rather bluntly. ‘Do you make indexes or sub-edit a journal or what?’

Viola hesitated, then said, ‘I’ve done some research of my own. I was working for a Ph.D. at London University but my health broke down. As a matter of fact’ she added casually, ‘I once did some work for Aylwin Forbes.’

‘That must have been fun.’

‘Well, it was a stimulating experience, of course,’ she said, a little reproachfully. ‘He’s very brilliant, you know.’

‘Yes, and
so
good-looking,’ said the woman who had served out the soup. ‘I always think that helps.’

Dulcie looked at her curiously. The participants in the conference had been asked to wear their names and she now noticed beside a large finely carved cameo brooch of Leda and the Swan a small circle of cardboard, bearing the name jessica foy in block capitals. She recognized it as that of the librarian of quite a well-known learned institution and instinctively drew back a little, unable to reconcile such eminence with this jolly woman serving out the soup.

‘Research, with a good-looking man,’ Miss Foy went on. ‘That’s an enviable lot. What was the subject of your research?’

‘Oh, just an obscure eighteenth-century poet,’ said Viola quickly.

‘You were lucky to find one so obscure that not even the Americans had “done” him,’ commented Miss Foy dryly. ‘It’s quite serious, this shortage of obscure poets.’

‘Perhaps the time will come when one may be permitted to do research into the lives of ordinary people,’ said Dulcie, ‘people who have no claim to fame whatsoever.’

‘Ah, that’ll be the day!’ said Miss Foy jovially.

‘I love finding out about people,’ said Dulcie. ‘I suppose it’s a sort of compensation for the dreariness of everyday life.’

Viola stared at her, astonished that any woman could admit to such a weakness as the need for compensation.

‘You might get married,’ she said doubtfully, remembering the heavy shoes on the thin legs.

‘Yes,’ Dulcie agreed, ‘I might, but even if I did marry I don’t suppose my character would alter much.’

‘You would not allow yourself to be moulded by any man,’ said Miss Foy in a satisfied tone, ‘and neither should I.’

Dulcie turned away to hide a smile.

Viola looked a little annoyed, as if, Dulcie thought, she wouldn’t have minded being moulded. But of course the question didn’t always arise. Sometimes it was the other way round. Maurice,

Dulcie’s ex-fiancé, would be quite incapable of moulding anybody, for he was rather a weak character – could she really admit that now? – and also three years younger than herself.

‘Perhaps other people’s lives are a kind of refuge,’ she suggested. ‘One can enjoy the cosiness of them.’

‘But they aren’t always cosy,’ said Miss Foy.

‘No, and then one finds oneself looking at the horror or misery in them with detachment, and that in itself is horrifying.’

Miss Foy laughed uncertainly. ‘I wonder if you’ll find a subject here.’

‘Probably not. It seems too obvious a hunting-ground, if you see what I mean.’

‘Yes – too many eccentrics,’ said Miss Foy, realizing that her own greatest pleasure in life was a tricky item of classification or biblio-graphical entry. ‘Look, here’s the pud. Shall I serve it or would you like to?’

‘Oh, you do it,’ said Dulcie. ‘I’m not very good at measuring things out.’ She felt that the performance of this simple task might be satisfying a deeply felt need in Miss Foy, which was something more than mere bossiness.

At the end of the meal the tables were cleared; it seemed that nobody could leave without carrying something, even if it was only a jug of custard or an unused fork They then moved over to the conference hall to hear about the programme for the week-end. It was announced that on this, the first, evening there would be no lecture or discussion, but a kind of’social gathering’ so that members could get to know each other better. Coffee would be served.

Viola heard this with dismay, for she was not of a gregarious nature. If she could not talk to Aylwin Forbes she would go to bed and read, but the thought of the little cell-like room was not inviting and she found herself moving with the others into a sort of common-room, crowded with little armchairs and pervaded by the smell of coffee and the clatter of teaspoons.

‘It will be nice to have a cup of coffee,’ said Dulcie.

Viola thought with irritation that Dulcie was just the kind of person who would say it was ‘nice’ to have a cup of indifferent coffee with a lot of odd-looking people. She had already classified her as a ‘do-gooder’, the kind of person who would interfere in the lives of others with what are known as ‘the best motives’. She determined to shake her off as soon as she could. It was unfortunate that their rooms were next to each other. Viola even considered asking that her room might be changed, but it seemed hardly worth while for a week-end. Besides, she did not know whom to ask.

The common-room had glass doors at one end, beyond which there seemed to be a kind of conservatory. Viola contrived to get separated from Dulcie in the coffee queue and to slip through the doors – unnoticed, she hoped.

It was indeed a conservatory, with potted palms and the gnarled stem of a vine breaking out into a profusion of leaves overhead. Viola sat down in a basket chair and looked up at the leafy ceiling from which bunches of black grapes were hanging. It was wonderful to get away from all those dreadful people. What ever had possessed her to come to this conference? She closed her eyes self-consciously, imagining that somebody might come in and find her. But Aylwin Forbes, looking through from the common-room, withdrew hastily at the sight of her, and began an animated conversation with Miss Foy and Miss Randall about mutual acquaintances in the academic world. Eventually, it was Dulcie’s voice, with those of two other women, that broke into Viola’s solitude, saying, ‘Look, here’s a charming conservatory, with a real vine. And grapes too, how lovely! Do you mind if we join you?’

‘Of course not,’ said Viola coldly. ‘Anyone can come in here, I imagine.’

So the evening came to an end, Dulcie and Viola and two women in flowered rayon dresses sitting on the basket chairs, offering each other cigarettes and speculating about the hardness of their beds. It was not long before conversation petered out and Dulcie and Viola retired to their adjacent rooms.

Before she slept, Dulcie thought of the big suburban house where she had lived with her sister and her parents and which was now hers, her parents being dead and her sister married. Outside her bedroom window was a pear tree on which the pears were now ripe; she could almost see them in a Pre-Raphaelite perfection of colour and detail, leaves and fruit. September was her favourite month – the garden full of dahlias and zinnias, Victoria plums to be bottled, pears and apples to be ‘dealt with’, windfalls to be collected and sorted. It had been a good year for fruit and there would be a lot to do. The house was big, almost ‘rambling’, but very soon her niece Laurel – her sister’s child – was coming to London to take a secretarial course and would be living there. Dulcie looked forward to planning her room. She would have liked the house to be full of people; it might even be possible to let rooms. There were so many lonely people in the world. Here Dulcie’s thoughts took another turn and she began to think about the things that worried her in life – beggars, distressed gentlefolk, lonely African students having doors shut in their faces, people being wrongfully detained in mental homes …

It must have been much later – for she was conscious of having been woken – that there was a tap on her door.

‘Who is it?’ she called out, curious rather than alarmed.

A figure appeared in the doorway – like Lady Macbeth, Dulcie thought incongruously. It was Viola, her dark hair hanging loose on her shoulders, wearing a dressing-gown of some material that gleamed palely in the dim light. Dulcie saw that it was lilac satin.

‘I’m so sorry, I must have woken you up,’ Viola said. ‘But I couldn’t sleep. The dreadful thing is that I seem to have forgotten my sleeping pills. I can’t think how it can have happened. I never go
anywhere
without them …’ She sounded desperate, on the edge of tears.

‘I’ve got some Rennies,’ said Dulcie, sitting up in bed.

‘Oh, I haven’t got indigestion,’ said Viola impatiently, irritated at Dulcie’s assumption that it was a stomach upset that had prevented her from sleeping.

‘I always find that if I read a nice soothing book it sends me off to sleep,’ said Dulcie, meaning to be helpful. ‘But is there something worrying you? I think there must be. Is it Aylwin Forbes?’ she asked kindly,

‘Yes, I suppose so.’ Viola sat down on the bed.

‘You love him or something like that?’ Dulcie was not perhaps choosing her words very skilfully, but it was, after all, the middle of the night.

‘I don’t know, really. You see, his wife has left him, gone back to her mother, and I should have thought – all things considered – that he’d have – well,
turned
to me.’

‘Turned to you? For comfort, yes, I see.’

‘We did this work together – we were such friends, so of course I thought…’

‘Perhaps he thinks it’s rather soon – I mean, to turn to anybody.’

‘But comfort – surely one could do so much. I should be so glad to do what I could.’

‘Yes, of course one does like to, perhaps women enjoy that most of all – to feel that they’re needed and doing good.’

‘It isn’t a question of
my
enjoying anything,’ said Viola sharply. ‘I want to do what I can for
him
.’

Dulcie wanted to ask more about the wife’s leaving – had she been driven to it by something he had done? – but she did not feel she could do so yet. From the way Viola was talking it seemed that Aylwin Forbes was the injured one.

‘Perhaps his grief has gone too deep,’ she suggested.

‘But he has come to this conference.’

‘Yes, to take his mind off things. It might well do that.’

‘But I feel he’s avoiding me,’ Viola went on. ‘He was very awkward when we met before dinner, didn’t you notice?’

‘Well, the gong rang almost immediately and everybody started to push forward – it would have been awkward for anybody.’

‘Then afterwards, when I was sitting by myself in the conservatory’ – Viola seemed to be speaking her thoughts aloud – ‘I
think
he looked in through the glass doors and didn’t come in because he saw me there.’

‘He may have thought it would be draughty, or that you didn’t want to be disturbed,’ said Dulcie, becoming increasingly feeble in her reassurances as sleep threatened to overtake her. ‘I’m sure things will be better in the morning,’ she went on, feeling that this was really the coward’s way out. ‘Do you think you will be able to sleep now?’

What a pity we can’t make a cup of Ovaltine, was her last conscious thought. Life’s problems are often eased by hot milky drinks.

NEXT morning Dulcie was conscious of a tramping of footsteps past her door, almost as if the place were on fire and people were hurrying to safety. It was some time before she realized that it was nothing more alarming than enthusiasm for early morning tea. All these people, whose thoughts were normally on learned matters, had shown themselves to be human. Dulcie got out of bed, put on her dressing-gown and combed her hair. She decided to get a cup of tea for Viola, who had probably slept badly after her disturbed night.

Aylwin Forbes lay in his bed listening to the clink of spoons in saucers. In his capacity as a lecturer at the conference he had imagined that a servant – perhaps even in cap and apron – would bring him a tray of tea at a suitable time. He was unprepared for the appearance of Miss Randall, in hair-net and pince-nez and the flowered quilted dressing-gown he already knew, standing in the doorway with a cup and saucer in her hand.

‘You lucky men, lying in bed while we women wait on you,’ she said, in an uncharacteristically arch tone, perhaps to cover her embarrassment at seeing him all tousled and in his pyjamas. ‘Sugar’s in the saucer – I didn’t know if you took it.’

She put the cup down on the bedside table and tiptoed heavily from the room.

‘Thank you so much!’ he called after her. ‘I didn’t realize we had to …’ but she was gone, and anyway he felt at a disadvantage, lying in his bed.

He raised himself on one elbow, pushed aside with the spoon the two brownish sodden lumps of sugar in the saucer, and took a sip of tea. It tasted strong and bitter. Like Life? he wondered. Perhaps like the lives of women – his wife Marjorie, and Viola Dace, reclining in a basket chair in that conservatory with her eyes closed. ‘Some problems of an editor’, he thought, recalling the title of his lecture, did not, or were not generally reckoned to, include women. Marjorie – going back to her mother in that prim house overlooking the common: what was he supposed to do about that? Viola was perhaps a litde easier to deal with: he could try to speak kindly to her in the presence of others – not at breakfast, of course, but before or after some other meal, when people strolled round the gardens admiring the herbaceous borders.

Breakfast was a rather uneasy meal. It seemed as if the strain of being with a crowd of strange people was felt more at this early hour. Conversation flowed less easily, and the absence of Sunday papers seemed to be deeply felt. Even Miss Foy, serving out porridge and then sausages, was rather subdued.

‘Bangers,’ she murmured in a low tone, but her observation was received without comment.