Jane and Prudence

by Barbara Pym

Was he thinking of Constance or of Prudence? Jessie wondered. He had hurt one and he might be going to hurt the other. How strange their names were, when one came to think of it, Constance and Prudence….Jessie was somehow a more comfortable name, without any reproach in it. Did he love Prudence, anyway, and did she love him? Oh, well, thoug...

The window-cleaners had arrived shortly after breakfast and it was a kind of game trying to evade them. If I go down to the uttermost ends of the earth, Jane thought, seizing a flattened pillow and beating it into roundness, there they will find me.

Oh, the relief of it! He had come not to scold her, but to tune the piano! She wanted to rush in to him, to greet him with some exaggerated mocking gesture, ‘Buon giorno, Rigoletto,’ posturing and bowing low. But he would not appreciate it or understand. So she seized his hat and placing it on her head, pirouetted round the hall singing, O Donna Clara, I saw you dancing last night…

A tango.

Not one of all those ravenous hours, but thee devours?

http://www.bartleby.com/332/45.html To Julia to Expedite Her Promise By John Cleveland (1613–1658) SINCE ’tis my doom, Love’s undershrieve, Why this reprieve? Why doth she my advowson fly Incumbency? Panting expectance makes us prove 5 The antics of benighted love, And withered mates when wedlock joins, They’re Hymen’s monkeys, which he ties by the loins To play alas! but at rebated foins. 1 To sell thyself dost thou intend 10 By candle’s end, And hold the contract thus in doubt Life’s taper out? Think but how soon the market fails; Your sex lives faster than the males; 15 As if, to measure age’s span, The sober Julian were the account of man 2 Whilst you live by the fleet Gregorian. Now since you bear a date so short, Live double for it. 20 How can thy fortress ever stand If it be not manned? The seige so gains upon the place Thou’lt find the trenches in thy face. Pity thyself then if not me, 25 And hold not out, lest like Ostend thou be, Nothing but rubbish at delivery. The candidates of Peter’s chair Must plead grey hair, And use the simony of a cough 30 To help them off. But when I woo thus old and spent I’ll wed by will and testament. No, let us love while crisped and curled; The greatest honours, on the aged hurled, 35 Are but furlows for another world. Tomorrow what thou tenderest me Is legacy. Not one of all those ravenous hours But thee devours. 40 And though thou still requited be, Like Pelops, 3 with soft ivory, Though thou consume but to renew, Yet Love as lord doth claim a Heriot due; That’s the best quick thing I can find of you. 45 I feel thou art consenting ripe By that soft gripe, And those regealing crystal spheres. I hold thy tears Pledges of more distilling sweets 50 Than the bath that ushers in the sheets. Else pious Julia, angel-wise, Moves the Bethesda of her trickling eyes 4 To cure the spittle world of maladies. Note 1. Rebated foins: sham combat with blunted swords. [back] Note 2. Julian were the account of man: The Julian Account refers to the calendar as ordained by Julius Cæsar B.C. 44, which later was corrected in 1582, by Pope Gregory the Thirteenth. [back] Note 3. Pelops: son of Tantalus, king of Syria, who was killed by his father and served at a banquet of the gods of which Ceres alone ate of the dish. Zeus restored him to life, replacing with ivory one shoulder which Ceres had eaten. [back] Note 4. Moves the Bethesda of her trickling eyes: Cf. St. John, v. 2: “Now there is at Jerusalem by the market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five torches.” [back]

Arnold of Rugby,’ Jane murmured.

Conversation flowed more smoothly now. Various people in the village were asked after and discussed, though in not quite such an interesting way as Jane could have wished. Also she was very careful with her own comments, remembering how her tongue and curiosity were apt to run away with her.

‘Have the Clevelands a young child?’ the Canon asked his wife as they drove away. ‘I believe their daughter is about eighteen. She is at Oxford, I think.’ ‘A strange thing that,’ said the Canon, changing gear. ‘One would have thought there was a child about the place. The soap in the wash-basin was modelled in the form of a rabbit, and there were other animals, too, a bear and an elephant.’

I wonder if Mrs. Cleveland put them there; she seems rather an unusual woman.’ ‘Yes, there is something strange about her.’

‘Only the animals, madam.’ ‘Well, I believe it’s quite good soap. I expect the Canon would enjoy using them. Men are such children in many ways.’

‘I was hoping he might think they belonged to Miss Flora,’ said Mrs. Glaze.

Nicholas appeared just before lunch and Jane told him of her eventful morning. They had a good laugh about the soap animals. ‘I wonder if he will tell the Bishop,’ said Nicholas. ‘It would be rather ominous if he kept it to himself,’ said Jane; ‘it would seem as if he considered it rather important, not a matter for joking.’ ‘Oh, Pritchard has no sense of humour. I’m glad I managed to avoid him.’

‘I saw their car outside just as I was coming through the gate,’ Nicholas admitted, ‘so I slipped into the tool-shed till they’d gone. In any case, I had to see to my tobacco plants,’ he added, looking a little ashamed. ‘Well, really, Nicholas,’ Jane protested, ‘you might have come and helped me out.’ But secretly she was rather pleased to have managed so well on her own.

Naturally, her holiday plans now included Fabian, bronzed and handsome, lying on a beach or drinking on a terrace, and this required less of an effort of imagination than when her companion had been Arthur Grampian. But so far Fabian had said nothing definite about it. His last letter, indeed, had been unsatisfactory, perfunctory almost—it was difficult to describe exactly what was wrong. It had begun affectionately enough, but after that it had meandered on about nothing very much, the weather, even, and then come to an abrupt end, with half a sheet left blank.

But then Fabian was not at his best as a letter-writer. Prudence had been uncomfortably conscious for some time that her letters were much better written and fuller of apt quotations than his were. She remembered one of his some weeks

back in which he had started to quote Oscar Wilde and then evidently thought better of it and crossed it out. This seemed a little ominous, for Wilde had said so many things that one would hardly have wished said to oneself. Perhaps the truth was that Fabian was a man of deeds ra...

This next week-end she was to go and stay with Jane. Perhaps things woul...

So the table held only the roses, a book of poems that Fabian had given her and a novel of the kind that Prudence enjoyed, well written and tortuous, with a good dash of culture and the inevitable unhappy or indefinite ending, which was so like life.

‘We mustn’t treat this young man as if he were a curate,’ Jane explained, ‘but I don’t want Flora to feel ashamed of her home.’

The beginning of the meal was a little awkward, but Jane soon carried them forward on a rush of conversation.

‘Paul is reading Geography,’ she explained. ‘It must be a fascinating subject. All those tables of rainfall and the other things—vegetation, climate, soil…’ She waved her hands about, seeming unable to go any further into the delights of Geography.

Oh, the strange and wonderful things that men could make women do! thought Jane. She remembered how once, long ago, she herself had started to learn Swedish—there was still a grammar now thick with dust lying in the attic; and when she had first met Nicholas she had tried Greek. And now here was her own daughter caught up in the higher flights of Geography! He seemed a nice young man, but that was only the least one could say. Was it also the most?

Prudence regarded the young couple with something like envy. To be eighteen again and starting out on a long series of love affairs of varying degrees of intensity seemed to her entirely enviable. She began to recall some of her own past triumphs, at Oxford and afterwards, and to compare them with her present state. Had there perhaps been a slight falling off lately? When Paul looked at her a kind of startled expression came into his eyes,

Flora looked at her mother a little anxiously. Indeed, the younger members of the party seemed altogether more solemn than the older ones. It was difficult to keep Paul away from the higher flights of Geography, but eventually they were all recalling their Oxford days and Fabian his Cambridge ones, and it seemed that life had been much gayer then.

Prudence smiled rather enigmatically as if she had subtler memories of the river, as indeed she had.

‘Anthropologists,’ echoed Fabian on a puzzled note. Prudence wondered if he were going to ask what they were and felt irritated with him for the small part he was playing in the conversation. If only Arthur Grampian had been there! she thought suddenly, hearing his rather flat, measured tones discoursing. Or even Geoffrey Manifold being rather aggressive about bars and holidays and his ‘material.’