Jane and Prudence

by Barbara Pym

Mr. Fabian...

a...

above the...

Mr. Mortlake and His Friends…A

Lion above the Bird…but these are the titles of new novels still in their bright paper jackets, thought Jane with delight. And they are here in this parish, all this richness.

St. Paul

Flora, who had changed her dress and tidied her hair, made no comment. She knew her mother well enough by now to realise that Mr. Lomax’s understanding and making allowances really mattered very little to her.

Father Lomax

He was not at all the ascetic type of clergyman, and Flora felt a rush of disappointment at the first sight of him, fair and ruddy-complexioned, with the build of an athlete. She liked men to be dark, but in any case he was old, a contemporary of her father’s, and therefore uninteresting and profitless.

He then recalled how Nicholas’s father had opposed his ordination and had even called round to see the Principal of their college to register a protest.

Francis Oliver

Mr. Mortlake.

‘Both Oliver and Mortlake are extremely stubborn,’

a rather good-looking man with a leonine head.

Fabian Driver,

‘Fabian Driver,’ Jane repeated, something about lions and eagles going round in her head. ‘Is his wife recently dead?’

I suppose even a photograph is better than nothing. You see, her husband was more interested in other women than he was in her.

Her death came as a great shock to him—he had almost forgotten her existence.’

He is one for the grand gesture and has no time for niggling details.’

‘Something made me slip away when I saw everybody there in the church,’ said Jane. ‘I’m afraid it’s a fault in me and a great disadvantage for a clergyman’s wife, not to be naturally gregarious. But I should really like to meet them all,’ she added with more confidence than she felt.

Jessie Morrow,’

a “companion”.

Miss Doggett, my employer,

is a vigorous old lady who has no need of my services as a companion but rathe...

We plough the fields and scatter,’

Mr. Driver

‘No, I don’t think I have,’ said Jane, taking in at a glance the rather worn, perhaps ravaged—if one could use so violent a word—good looks, the curly hair worn rather too long and touched with grey at the temples, also the carefully casual tweed suit and brogued suède shoes, which gave the impression of a town-dweller dressed for the country.

Fabian

embarrassed at being confronted by such an excellent likeness of the photograph she had just been looking at on his wife’s grave.

‘Mrs. Arkright?’ ‘Yes, she goes in and cooks Mr. Driver’s meals, and a very good cook

found herself turning her attention to Mr. Driver and wondering, though very faintly, if he might perhaps do for her friend Prudence?

Miss Trapnell

Miss Clothier,

Mr. Manifold,

Prudence disliked being called ‘Miss Bates’; if she resembled any character in fiction, it was certainly not poor silly Miss Bates.

And yet it had been on one of those rare late evenings, when

they had been sitting together over a manuscript, that Prudence’s love for him, if that was what it was, had suddenly flared up. Perhaps ‘flared’ was too violent a word, but Prudence thought of it afterwards as having been like that.

He had gone to his club and home to his wife Lucy and his children Susan and Barnabas,

‘Miss Bates might not like it if you were to give him biscuits,’ said Miss Clothier obscurely.

Coventry Patmore’s poems;

Coventry Patmore, The Unknown Eros, from book one At dusk of dawn, on his dark spray apart; With it the Blackbird breaks the young Day’s heart; In evening’s hush About it talks the heavenly-minded Thrush;

Disliking humanity in general, she was one of those excessively tender-hearted people who are greatly moved by the troubles of complete strangers, in which she sometimes imagined herself playing a noble part.

Prudence swallowed down her irritation. How could they presume to know what he expected? ‘He seems to expect little and yet much,’ said Miss Trapnell obscurely. ‘One wouldn’t like to fall short.’ ‘He has never complained about my work,’ said Miss Clothier in rather a huffy tone.

‘Did you enjoy your lunch, Miss Bates?’ It was Mr. Manifold. There was a hint of roguishness in his tone. So he had noticed her after all.

‘My heart was dead, Dead of devotion and tired memory…

Patmore, Eros Yet, as I have said, My heart was dead, Dead of devotion and tired memory, When a strange grace of thee In a fair stranger, as I take it, bred To her some tender heed, Most innocent Of purpose therewith blent, And pure of faith, I think, to thee; yet such That the pale reflex of an alien love, So vaguely, sadly shown, Did her heart touch Above All that, till then, had woo’d her for its own.

Prudence remained rooted to the spot; really, there was no other way to describe it. That he should even have heard of Coventry Patmore! And then to quote those lines, those telling lines. What was it he had said? Just your cup of tea, I should think….What exactly did he mean by that? It sounded almost as if he had studied her and thought about her and what her tastes were likely to be, as if he had noticed things about her, perhaps even her feeling for Arthur Grampian. It was most annoying and disturbing.

As if it mattered what Geoffrey Manifold thought about her! He was a dull young man who kept his private tin of Nescafé locked in a drawer.

Then there is Mr. Fabian Driver, a disconsolate widower but very fascinating. I believe he eats the hearts of his victims en casserole. He looks more like a lion, or lyon, so we are surrounded by the noblest of God’s creatures.’

It was not a very nice book—so

a good many quotations from Donne.