Jane and Prudence

by Barbara Pym

‘I suppose old atheists seem less wicked and dangerous than young ones,’ said Jane. ‘One feels that there is something of the ancient Greeks in them.’

‘Do you cook for yourself then?’ ‘I live alone, you know. Since my wife died…’ ‘Yes, of course, Miss Morrow told me.’ ‘Really? What did she say?’ ‘Oh, how sad it was and all that sort of thing,’ said Jane rapidly with her eyes on the ground.

‘You must be Mrs. Cleveland’s friend that’s come to stay,’ said a woman in a dark felt hat trimmed with a bird’s body.

I wonder if he kissed her, Jane thought. She was surprised to hear that they had had what seemed to be quite an intelligent conversation, for she had never found Fabian very much good in that line. She had a theory that this was why he tended to make love to women—because he couldn’t really think of much to say to them—but she could hardly reveal her thought to Prudence.

‘The lines on Rugby Chapel…I wish I could remember some of them now, but English Literature stopped at Wordsworth when I was up at Oxford, and somehow one doesn’t remember things so well that one read since.’

But wasn’t that what so many marriages were—finding a person boring and irritating and yet loving him? Who could imagine a man who was never boring or irritating?

But of course, she remembered, that was why women were so wonderful; it was their love and imagination that transformed these unremarkable beings. For most men, when one came to think of it, were undistinguished to look at, if not positively ugly. Fabian was an exception, and perhaps love affairs with handsome men tended to be less stable because so much less sympathy and imagination were needed on the woman’s part?