Quartet in Autumn

by Barbara Pym

Norman sat down by the side of the bed, averting his eyes from the other patients. Ken seemed a bit low, he thought, but men did not look their best in bed. There was something very unattractive about the average man’s pyjamas.

‘Do you find the country is doing you good?’ Letty asked. ‘I’ve had diarrhoea all this week,’ came the disconcerting reply. There was a momentary – perhaps no more than a split second’s – pause, but if the women had been temporarily taken aback, they were by no means at a loss. ‘Diarrhoea,’ Letty repeated, in a clear, thoughtful tone. She was never certain how to spell the word, but felt that such a trivial admission was lacking in proper seriousness so she said no more.

How had it come about that she, an Englishwoman born in Malvern in 1914 of middle-class English parents, should find herself in this room in London surrounded by enthusiastic, shouting, hymn-singing Nigerians?

A woman can always find plenty to occupy her time.

As for nobody expecting a woman in her eighties to house this jumble of old garments, that really had nothing to do with it, for Mrs Pope did exactly those things that she wanted to do which made Letty realize that perhaps getting older had some advantages, few though these might be.

It was all of a piece with that life of forty years ago, when Letty had always trailed behind her friend, but there was no need to follow the same pattern now. As Beth Doughty topped up her glass, she resolved that a room in Holmhurst was the last thing she’d come to – better to lie down in the wood under the beech leaves and bracken and wait quietly for death.

Letty’s hesitation, her slight feeling that perhaps they ought not to be drinking when poor Marcia had never touched a drop, was taken by Father G. to be womanly modesty or ignorance of what was available. ‘Why not try a dry Martini?’ he suggested. ‘That will pull you together.’ ‘Yes, I do feel as if I needed something like that,’ she agreed, and when the drink came it did seem to achieve a kind of pulling together. There is something in it, she thought, the comfort of drink at a time like this.