Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
'What jewels will you be wearing tonight, Mother?'
The question was typical of Coco and it was equally characteristic of Kitty Jeffreys that she should take it seriously.
'I'd thought of the topaz necklace,' she said, 'but perhaps it's a little too much ... pearls might be better — the ones your father gave me when we were engaged.'
'Not your black pearls, then?' Coco sounded disappointed, excessively so for a man of forty-two. His mother at sixty-two was even better preserved and they made a handsome and interesting pair. I, at twenty-eight, felt old beside them, but then I had never had their self-absorption and passionate interest in what are usually regarded as trivialities.
'Pearls always look right,' I said politely, 'even artificial ones, though of course one can usually tell,' I added hastily, knowing that Kitty's were real. She had managed to bring away all her jewellery, as well as many financial assets, when she and her son had left their island in the Caribbean after the death of her husband and, more importantly, the election of an all-black government. It had seemed suitable at first, though now it was turning out to be less so, to return to the West Country town where Kitty had been born and where her sister still lived. Coco, with his degree from one of the more obscure American universities, had been awarded a research fellowship in Caribbean Studies at the university. The local residents were worried about the influx of West Indians into the town and money had been given for a study.
'I have to make recommendations,' Coco said, his long, useless fingers caressing the side of his glass. He now began to speculate on what he would wear for the party.
Polo shirts were out now, he said regretfully, for that style had admirably suited his tall, elegant figure. The high white polo collar had framed his thin, rather swarthy face like a cravat and this, with his dark curly hair carefully brushed forward, had given him something of the air of a Regency dandy.
'It's only a gathering of provincial academics,' I reminded him. 'Most of them will be wearing dark suits and clean shirts. Professor Maynard always gives this kind of party at the beginning of the autumn term. It's quite a tradition, but he's retiring next year, so I suppose this will be the last.'
Kitty pouted. She couldn't bear anything sad or coming to an end. She was said to have been a great beauty when, at eighteen, she had married the romantic stranger from the Caribbean over on a business trip. Even now she could look very pretty, though it was the prettiness of the twenties rather than the starker beauty of today. Coco had confided to me that she had sent her hair-piece to be styled at the best of the local hairdressers. He asked, a little anxiously I thought, how I was going to do my hair.
'Oh, I'll just wash it,' I said defensively. 'Straight hair is best left as it is.'
'And yours always looks charming,' he said smoothly.
When I got home Inge, our Swedish au pair, and Kate, my four-year-old daughter, were sitting at the table in the kitchen having tea. Both of them, in name and appearance, seemed very suitable, I thought, for a modern couple like Alan and me, reading the Guardian and living in a rather new house with modern furniture that was beginning to look shabby. I suppose I should have been grateful for our relatively affluent lifestyle, made possible by a legacy from my grandmother, but going to see Kitty and Coco always made me dissatisfied with my surroundings. I looked around our red and white kitchen with distaste and wondered how I could ever have chosen the hideous washable wallpaper patterned with fruit and vegetables.
'Kate has been naughty,' said Inge smugly. She was a vast blonde girl, with huge limbs like a piece of modern sculpture. Kate was also on the solid side with blue eyes and Alan's reddish-gold hair.
I did not wait to hear the details of Kate's naughtiness but went upstairs to wash my hair. It was hanging dripping on my shoulders when Alan came in. I began to comb it and in doing so caught a strand of it on my cigarette. There was a smell of burning.
'Do you have to smoke all the time, Caro?' Alan said. 'I should've thought it would be inconvenient — not to mention lung cancer.'
And expense, I thought guiltily, while reminding Alan that he used to smoke once. I still didn't like him to criticise me. Naively I had imagined that he thought me perfect and it had been a shock when he began to find fault with me, even though it was only over unimportant details.
We had first met at a university which, to my mother's grief, was neither Oxford nor Cambridge, and had fallen in love when I was slightly on the rebound from a Byronic-looking cad with political ambitions. Alan's dusty fair eyelashes, grey eyes and slight but fascinating provincial accent had attracted me. He had seemed to be the kind of person who would cherish and look after me and up to a point he was and still is.
I had been christened Caroline, which in my teens I had changed to Caro because of poor Lady Caroline Lamb, who said she was like the wreck of a little boat for she never came up to the sublime and beautiful. At sixteen it had seemed touching and amusing to think of oneself in this way, but as I grew older I could see that it was less admirable. After the misery of the Byronic affair, which had been the inevitable result of this early foolishness, I had tried to forget the Caro side of me, though the name still stuck.
Fiction, journalism and the conversation of other university wives, some of whom had part-time jobs, tended to make me see myself as a frustrated graduate wife though I had married straight from university and had never had anything that might be considered as a proper job, nor was there any particular career that I wanted to follow. I was, however, conscious of lacking any special maternal feeling and this seemed an even greater inadequacy. I loved Kate and worried about her very often, but Inge was so much better with her than I was. Still, I felt proud that I had produced a child, though disappointed that I did not feel more 'fulfilled'.
'Is your hair going to be dry in time?' Alan asked.
'Of course! You don't think I'd go to the Maynards' with wet hair, do you?'
'I never quite know.'
'I've put out a clean shirt for you,' I said. 'Will you be wearing your grey suit?'
'Yes, I suppose so,' he said without interest, so different from Coco. 'I'd like a cup of tea.'
'Inge will make you one when she's finished with Kate.' Alan's liking for cups of tea at all hours had been an endearing trait which now irritated me. Of course he had developed a taste for more sophisticated and suitable drinks, but the love of tea remained.
'Inge doesn't know how to make tea properly. I'll do it myself.'
I did not offer to do it — Alan was as domesticated as I was.
I stood at the open window rubbing my wet hair with a towel. We lived in the higher part of the town and I could see the large old Victorian houses down the hill, some of which were now private hotels, filled with retired people who had settled here because of the mild climate. The town had been a spa in the eighteenth century but nobody came to drink the waters now and the pump room was a sad, deserted building, the subject of letters in the local paper which periodically demanded that something be 'done' with it. The university had grown up from the local technical college and was regarded with dislike and increasing fear and suspicion by the local residents. This summer the students had rioted, though mildly compared with others who appeared to have more worthy grievances. Ours concerned themselves with trivia, ranging from the provision of slot machines for contraceptives to complaints about the food.
Our house was only neo-Georgian, the genuine ones being occupied by people like Crispin Maynard, the head of Alan's department, whose party we were going to this evening. Only a few days ago Crispin and his wife Margaret had returned from their villa in Italy. I had watched them unloading the luggage from their car while Alan remarked scornfully on the ridiculous anachronism of a professor at a provincial university having a villa in Italy, just like something out of Trollope.
'I know,' I had said, 'but in a way that's what one likes about him. While the students were rioting Crispin was already on his way to Lake Garda.'
There was nothing to be ashamed of in having inherited a villa from his family, and it made me glad to realise that not everyone was being whittled down to the same size, as Alan and some of his colleagues would have wished. I had wanted it myself once, but now it seemed dreary. Perhaps that was why I liked Coco and Kitty.
I looked in on Kate before we went out. One sometimes reads in Edwardian memoirs of a child retaining a romantic memory of its mother dressed to go out to a party, coming in to say good night. I wondered how Kate would remember me in my trouser suit which gave little scope for conventional glamour. Perhaps, years hence, a certain scent would bring back the occasion, for the bottle had upset and I was stupefied by the expensive aura.
'Is that the scent I gave you last Christmas?' Alan asked and seemed pleased when I confirmed that it was.
'Unfortunately I spilt it, so it may overpower everybody.'
Alan smiled, as if that would add to his prestige in some way.
'In we go,' said Alan, as we went through the open door into the Maynards' hall, perfectly furnished with all the right kind of things.
Margaret Maynard was waiting to greet her guests with a suitable word for each one. She was a tall, splendid woman with red-gold hair, wearing a green pre-Raphaelite kind of dress which now looked surprisingly up-to-date. She had two sons, two daughters and several grandchildren. She was an excellent housekeeper and cook and did all her husband's typing, this last skill dating from the days when it was regarded as one of the duties of an academic wife. Alan did his own typing and this seemed to cut me off from his work. I did not have the opportunity to suggest an apt phrase or rectify a misplaced footnote — there would be no fulsome acknowledgement of my assistance when Alan published his first book.
Crispin Maynard was in every way as splendid as his wife. Also tall, with white hair, he was in his mid-sixties, with old-fashioned, courteous manners. 'My dear, how charming you look! Let me get you something to eat and drink.'
The food at the Maynards' parties was always good and there was plenty of it so that one didn't have to have supper first. I took a small pizza and stood with it in my hand, hoping to be able to take a bite before anybody came to talk to me. Alan had gone off to talk academic shop with a fellow lecturer and I found myself having to fall back, temporarily I hoped, on Heather Armitage, the wife of the assistant librarian, an anxious-looking woman in her late thirties who seemed never to have recovered from the worries of card indexes and bibliographies in the days when she too had worked in a library and, I presumed, snared George Armitage. Her hair was cut short in one of the fashionable styles of the moment, which exposed her face and neck mercilessly.
Heather had a part-time job in the university library but that, apparently, was not stimulating enough for a graduate wife and she was going on about how she was helping someone with some research, 'not one's own,' she added apologetically, 'but very worthwhile really.'
My eyes were free to rove around the room while I listened, for Heather was one of those people who do not expect their own experiences to be met with an account of one's own. Who does when one comes to think of it? We all like to hold the floor even if we have nothing of general or universal interest to say. I noticed Dr. Cranton, the head librarian, discoursing to a small captive circle, but I could not guess at what he might be saying. His wife was quietly eating in a corner. Two young lecturers, man and woman, were eyeing each other with love or even lust, though I could not help noticing that the girl's left hand was absently toying with a small vol-au-vent as if impatient for the opportunity to carry it to her mouth. On the whole they were a rather dull lot of people and Coco and his mother had not yet arrived. They always made a point of arriving last at everything, like royalty. It was said that they had to rest for at least two hours before a party and it was certainly true that Coco was always 'preserving' himself in the way that Kitty had obviously done all her life.
'Here comes Coco,' said Heather suddenly, 'last as usual. Such a silly name!'
'He was christened Corcoran,' I explained, 'and that's a bit much.'
'Very fashionably dressed, isn't he?' said Heather critically. 'I suppose that's quite the latest.'
'Obviously, if Coco's wearing it,' I said. Evidently a life spent with card indexes did not make for generosity of spirit, I thought. 'Don't you think he looks distinguished?'
'Has he got coloured blood, do you suppose? That very curly hair ... I've always wondered.'
'His father was white, but the family has been settled on the island for many generations, so perhaps way back ...'
'Of course the races should mix,' said Heather stoutly. 'I'm all in favour of that.' Kitty was wearing her black pearls after all. They certainly looked good with her grey dress.
Coco greeted us. 'You look charming, both of you. Were you having a nice catty girls' conversation?'
'Certainly not,' said Heather indignantly.
'We were saying how distinguished you looked,' I said with slight malice.
Heather looked annoyed. 'I must go and find George,' she said.
We watched her go over to a group that included her husband and some grey-looking sociologists and drag him away to talk to the librarian's wife.
'And must you go and find Alan?' Coco asked.
'No — I'll leave him to find me if he wants to.'
'Perhaps he doesn't at the moment,' Coco remarked, with a glance towards Alan, who was talking to a rather striking-looking youngish woman whom I didn't remember seeing before.
'Who's that?' I asked.
'Oh, somebody new — Iris something,' said Coco indifferently.
'She's attractive, isn't she?'
'If you like that sort of thing. Do you mind not being beautiful?'
'Of course not. One doesn't expect to be beautiful. And anyway, I'm not hideous,' I felt bound to point out.
'No, you have quite an intriguing face. Your eyes are good but your nose is too long. You could have it altered.'
'Oh, don't be ridiculous.' This was a conversation Coco and I quite often had, but it seemed frivolous and out of place in this kind of academic gathering.
'I think Mother feels the loss of her beauty,' Coco went on. 'Not the loss exactly, because she'll always be a beautiful woman.'
'But one loses the freshness of youth,' I suggested.
'Yes — but youth is boring, after all.'
'Usually it is only the young who think so,' I pointed out. 'How does Kitty manage to be so splendid anyway?'
'Oh, loving beautiful objects and surrounding oneself with them. Look at her now!'
We joined Kitty and Crispin Maynard, who were examining a small marble head that he had evidently brought back from Italy.
'Oh, I just love it!' Kitty said.
'Then you must have it.' Crispin presented it to her with a bow.
'Goodness knows where we'll put it,' Coco whispered to me. 'Mother just collects objets d'art!'
'I know,' I murmured, remembering the elegant clutter — there was no other word for it — in the Jeffreys' flat. I was beginning to feel tired, and the obligation to admire both Coco and Kitty was beginning to exhaust me as it usually did after a while.
I looked for Alan to suggest that we might go home and found him in Crispin's study, not talking to anyone, just standing with a glass in his hand, looking rather annoyed. There was no sign of the woman he had been talking to earlier. Crispin was sitting at his desk, surrounded by graduate students, including several Africans.
'What's happening?' I asked Alan.
'Crispin's distributing largesse,' said Alan dryly.
'Offprints of his last article, you mean? The one everyone said was so good?'
'Good ...'
I realised that the adjective I had chosen was much too simple, much too loaded with other, more ancient meanings to describe what the article might have been. I should have said 'able', 'provocative', 'controversial', 'sound'.
'Professor Maynard has taught us so much of our history,' said one of the Africans, 'that we didn't know before.'
'A lot of English people don't know their own history,' I suggested.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "An Academic Question"
by .
Copyright © 2013 the estate of Barbara Pym.
Excerpted by permission of Coffeetown Enterprises, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
