Less Than Angels Read online

  As the morning went on, Deirdre was not alone in her work, for the room, as well as being a general dumping-ground for unwanted anthropological specimens, was also regarded as a kind of no-man’s land, where former students of the department, who had nowhere else to go, might find a corner in which to write up their field-notes. There were one or two tables spread with papers and these were spasmodically occupied by these shabby hangers-on. They lived in the meaner districts of London or in impossibly remote suburbs on grants which were always miserably inadequate, their creative powers stifled by poverty and family troubles. It would need the pen of a Dostoievsky to do justice to their dreadful lives, but they were by no means inarticulate themselves, often gathering in this room or in a nearby pub to talk of their neuroses and the pyschological difficulties which prevented them from writing up their material. Some of them had been fortunate enough to win the love of devoted women—women who might one day become their wives, but who, if they were thrown aside, would accept their fate cheerfully and without bitterness. They had learned early in life what it is to bear love’s burdens, listening patiently to their men’s troubles and ever ready at their typewriters, should a manuscript or even a short article get to the stage of being written down.

  On this particular morning one pale wretched-looking young man sat in a corner, murmuring a strange language into a kind of recording machine, while another banged furiously at a typewriter for a quarter of an hour, then tore out the sheet of paper, crumpled it up on the floor and hurried out of the room, his hand to his brow in a stricken gesture. Nobody took any notice of Deirdre, but she found it hard to concentrate and was glad when lunch-time came. She was just gathering her books together when the door opened yet again and another young man came in. He was of about the age of the desperate ones—twenty-eight or nine—but Deirdre could not remember that she had ever seen him before. He was tall and dark, with thin aristocratic features and brilliant grey eyes—or this was how Deirdre always described him afterwards. Perhaps at the time she was conscious only of the shabby raincoat and the battered brief-case, and the fact that he stood over her rather disconcertingly, as if he expected a welcome.

  ‘I suppose we don’t know each other,’ he said at last, smiling at her. ‘I’ve been away nearly two years and feel like Rip Van Winkle,’

  Deirdre was so astonished that he should take notice of her that she could think of nothing to say and at the best of times she was always too shy to have a quick reply ready. ‘I think most people are at the seminar,’ she ventured.

  ‘Of course-the Friday seminar I One might just as well come back on the Judgment Day and expect to find things normal and I believe one would. I’m Tom Mallow, by the way,’ He began walking about the room, taking books out of the shelves and making derogatory comments on them, as if he could not decide whether to go or stay. ‘And what’s your name?’ he asked.

  ‘Deirdre Swan,’ she mumbled, thinking what a silly name it was.

  ‘Deirdre of the Sorrows,’ he said, but somehow she did not mind the old joke from him. ‘And you do look rather sad sitting here all by yourself. Shall we go and have a drink?’

  ‘Oh, thank you, that would be nice . . ,’ She hardly knew what to say, being unused to drinking in general and in the middle of the day in particular. She hoped she hadn’t appeared too eager to go with him; the male students in her year never asked her to drink with them, though there were one or two of her contemporaries who were more favoured as they were thought to be ‘good value’, whatever that rather sinister phrase might imply.

  ‘Drinking alone is rather depressing, I always think.’

  So he had been going to have a drink anyway, she noted.

  But of course he had. He had expected to find a crowd of people he knew. She supposed it might be some kind of a compliment to herself that he had not waited for them to come out of the seminar. Unless, of course, he had been so eager for a drink that he just couldn’t wait.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever tried drinking alone,’ she said. The idea of it made her want to laugh. She imagined herself in her room at home with a bottle of gin and her mother or aunt calling out, ‘What are you doing, dear?’ Or Mr. Dulke watching her from his front garden.

  Tom smiled at her and said, ‘ No, I suppose you’re too young to have done much drinking of any kind.’

  ‘I’m nineteen,’ she said rather coldly.

  ‘Oh, much too young,’ he mocked. ‘This is the usual place, I believe, unless you prefer one of the others?’

  They had stopped outside one of the many pubs in the area. Deirdre didn’t know whether it was the usual place or not. One pub seemed very much like another to her, except that some were of the old cosy type, while others, like the one by the river at home, all new and gleaming. This was of the cosy kind, with round tables and shabby horsehair benches. The bar was crowded with what Deirdre thought of vaguely as ‘business men’, all laughing excessively loudly at what must have been a joke made by the fat elderly woman who was serving them. Though perhaps it did not always need a joke to make a group of men laugh loudly in a pub.

  ‘We shall have to drink beer,’ said Tom rather apologetically. ‘I hope that’s all right?’

  ‘Oh, lovely,’ she said, taking a large brave gulp of the tepid bitter. ‘ I simply adore it.’

  There was a silence and Tom began to wonder why he had asked this strange girl to drink with him instead of waiting for Mark and Digby or somebody else that he knew to come out of the seminar. He had left Catherine busy finishing a story and seeming to have no time for him, so it was both soothing and gratifying to have Deirdre beside him, her great brown eyes fixed on his face, an occasional interested or sympathetic murmur her only interruption to his account of himself and his work. Tom had never had to make much effort with women, who took a natural and immediate liking to him, so he did not lay himself out to be particularly interesting to Deirdre or to ask her anything about herself.

  Love at first sight can hardly ever be mutual, though it may seem to have been when discussed and remembered later. Tom was certainly not aware of Deirdre as anything much more than a satisfactory audience, but with her it was very different. She felt such a rush of happiness that she could have listened for ever to his voice going gently on about the complications of lineage segmentation. Something of what she felt must have shown itself in her face, for when she turned towards him with a smile on her lips and an uncomprehending starry-eyed look, he smiled too, said something about being a bore and went to get another drink.

  With the second bitter they looked at his photographs. Dark-skinned figures, dressed in white robes, bits of cloth or nothing, crowded together in various unidentifiable activities, mostly seen from a distance. Sometimes, for a change, there was a close-up of a menacing figure in a mask or a dress of leaves, or a beautiful girl, naked to the waist and wearing a lot of beads, which Deirdre stared at dutifully but with some embarrassment, not quite knowing what to say. The last photograph seemed to be of Tom himself, standing outside a hut with a pointed thatched roof.

  ‘I think I like that one best,’ she said shyly, hoping that he might give it to her, but he just laughed and said that it was in the worst possible taste to show photographs of oneself in the field, and then gathered them back into their wallet.

  Deirdre looked at the clock. She saw to her amazement that it was after two. ‘I must go,’ she said. ‘I told my mother I’d be home early this afternoon,’

  ‘Oh, I hope she won’t worry, then. Mothers do tend to, I find.’

  Could it be that he too had a mother? thought Deirdre in wonder. ‘Does your mother worry?’ she asked, emboldened by the bitter.

  ‘She certainly does. She’s bought herself a book about tropical diseases and has rather a horrid time reading about everything I might get. I hope you aren’t awfully hungry,’ he went on, as they walked along the street. ‘I should have bought a sandwich for you, but I’ve had a meal myself so I’m afraid I forgot.’

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p; Deirdre wondered what meal it could have been. An early lunch seemed unlikely, so perhaps it was a very late breakfast? She was able to ponder about this on the bus home, remembering the whole wonderful experience and his friendly, if too casual, ‘see you again, sometime.’ But when, she had wanted to ask, wondering how she was going to endure her evening with Bernard Springe and all the days ahead with the uncertainty of her next meeting with Tom lying over them.

  There are few experiences more boring and painful for a woman than an evening spent in the company of one man when she is longing to be with another, and that evening Bernard’s dullness seemed to have a positive quality about it so that it was almost a physical agony, like the dentist’s drill pressing on a sensitive tooth. And yet Bernard was tall and well-dressed, better-looking than Tom Mallow, and his conversation, if one were to analyse it, was perhaps more interesting than Tom’s had been. He took Deirdre to a play she had been wanting to see and gave her a good supper afterwards. What was more, he had a car, which meant that the ride home to the suburb was done in comfort, with no anxiety about the last bus or tiring journey in crowded stuffy tube.

  The wine she had drunk had put Deirdre into a silent brooding mood and they drove without speaking for some time. She was trying to imagine what an evening with Tom would have been like. Of course he hadn’t any money, so they would just have gone somewhere cheap to eat or perhaps just sat in a pub drinking beer and talking about his work. Segmentation of the lineage, fission and accretion, she thought, desolately and without humour.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ Bernard asked gently.

  They could have ridden on top of a bus together, but of course she didn’t yet know where he lived. Perhaps somebody at college would know—surely she could bring the conversation round to Tom Mallow somehow without it seeming too obvious?

  ‘You are in a dreamy mood,’ Bernard persisted. ‘I feel as if you were miles away.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I was thinking about the play. It was so sad.’

  ‘Shall we stop and look at the river for a minute?’ he suggested in a rather shaky voice.

  ‘All right,’ said Deirdre indifferently. People who didn’t live here always thought the river looked so beautiful at night, but to her it was just the place where Mr. Dulke and Mr. Lovell took their dogs and the young men from the club walked with their girl friends. Looking out of the car she could see Mr. Lovell now, walking rather too briskly for Snowball, his old sealyham, who lolloped along like a little rocking-horse in his efforts to keep up with his master.

  ‘Not unhappy about anything, are you, dear?’ Bernard asked.

  ‘Oh, no, thank you, just not very gregarious, I’m afraid,’ said Deirdre. She hated to be called ‘dear’ and Bernard’s arm had now crept round her shoulders and his hand was straying further than she wished. But suddenly it stopped and withdrew quickly as if it had touched an asp or a scorpion. He must have come upon the bone of her strapless bodice which made her such an odd shape. He would hardly have expected to find a bone there, she thought, stifling her laughter.

  ‘I’m not really that shape you know,’ she said suddenly in a gay tone. ‘It must feel like a chicken’s carcase-so unexpected I ‘

  Bernard was perhaps a little embarrassed for he had no ready answer, so she went on in the same uncharacteristic way ‘A chicken’s carcase is all hollow inside and domed like the roof of a cathedral, so noble! ‘

  ‘What strange things you think of,’ he said reverently. ‘I suppose I ought to take you home now—it’s after midnight.’

  After midnight—then it was tomorrow! And she might see Tom. She turned to Bernard, her eyes shining, and thanked him for a lovely evening. Gready relieved, for he had been disturbed by her strange talk, he kissed her and she did not seem to object, as she so often did. A funny girl, that was how he summed her up in his own mind. Next time they might go and see a musical show which would have been his own choice rather than the gloomy problem plays she seemed to prefer.

  ‘Look, there’s a light next door,’ she said, as they approached her house. ‘I wonder what Mr. Lydgate’s doing?’

  ‘Having a sundowner?’ Bernard suggested, for he did not know much about colonial administrators and his ideas about what they might be doing were limited and conventional.

  ‘Oh, no, he’s performing some ghastly rite to propitiate his ancestors,’ said Deirdre wildly.

  ‘Good heavens! Do you see that?’ Bernard pointed to the lighted window where a grotesque silhouette appeared, lingered for a moment, and then moved away.

  ‘It looks as if he’s wearing an African mask,’ said Deirdre. ‘It seems a strange thing to be doing at this time of night—probably the neighbours will complain.’

  She said good-night to Bernard and crept quietly up the stairs, but both her mother and her aunt were awake, and her mother called out ‘Is that you, dear?’ as she always did.

  Deirdre reassured her and then went to her own room and stood in front of the looking-glass, contemplating herself in the bony-bosomed dress from all angles. Then she took off the dress, flung it carelessly over the back of a chair and knelt by the bookcase in her petticoat. She had remembered a poem, cherished by many schoolgirls for many different kinds of love, the sonnet by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, beginning, When do I see thee most, beloved one? She read it through and then got ready for bed. African Political Systems, her current bedside book, was unopened that night.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The ugly black marble clock on the mantelpiece in Alaric Lydgate’s study struck one. It had been his father’s, a present from his colleagues at the Mission. It had kept good time for over forty years under the most difficult conditions, being shaken about by his carriers bearing his loads over rough country, and later, when Alaric had inherited it, ticking its way through the hot steamy days and nights of Africa.

  At the thought of Africa the expression on Alaric’s face might have been seen to soften, had his face been visible, but it was concealed under a mask of red beans and palm fibre, giving him the alarming appearance which had starded Bernard and Deirdre. He often sat like this in the evenings, withdrawing himself from the world, feeling in the stuffy darkness of the mask that he was back again in his native-built house, listening to the rain falling outside. He often thought what a good thing it would be if the wearing of masks or animals’ heads could become customary for persons over a certain age. How restful social intercourse would be if the face did not have to assume any expression—the strained look of interest, the simulated delight or surprise, the anxious concern one didn’t really feel. Alaric often avoided looking into people’s eyes when he spoke to them, fearful of what he might see there, for life was very terrible whatever sort of front we might put on it, and only the eyes of fche very young or the very old and wise could look out on it with a clear untroubled gaze.

  Alaric Lydgate regarded himself as a failure. He had been invalided out of the Colonial Service, where he had not been awarded the promotion he felt he had earned. He had achieved nothing in the fields of anthropology or linguistics, and the trunks of notes up in his attic, which he had never even sorted out, were a constant reproach to him. He felt also that he was disliked by most of his acquaintances because he found himself unable to make small talk or even to bring out the pleasant harmless little insincerities which help everyday life to run smoothly.

  In one field, however, Alaric had achieved a mild though limited fame. He was well-known as a writer of sarcastic reviews, and he was engaged this night in completing one for a learned journal. The fact that he had not been able to produce an original work himself was perhaps responsible for his harsh treatment of those who had.

  He had been pacing about the room, seeking fresh inspiration, but now he flung off his mask and returned to his desk.

  ‘It is a pity,’ he wrote, ‘that the author did not take the trouble to inform himself of some of the elementary facts underlying the social structure of these peoples. He would the
n have been less likely to perpetrate such howlers as “the clan-head” (when there are, in fact, no clans), “the part played by the mother’s brother in marriage transactions” (when it is the father’s brother who plays the chief role here) …’ He searched the pages of the book to find more howlers, incensed at the idea of ‘these anthropologists’-he gave the words heavy scornful quotation marks in his own mind—thinking they could study a tribe in three weeks when his own eleven years of life and work among them had produced nothing more than a few articles on such minor aspects of their culture as incised calabashes and enigmatic iron objects.

  In his search he came upon a native word wrongly spelt. His pen gathered speed. ‘ It is a pitv,’ he went on, ‘ that the proofs were not read by somebody with even a slight knowledge of the language, so that the consistent misspellings of vernacular terms in everyday use might have been avoided.’

  In unfavourable reviews it is sometimes customary for the reviewer to relent towards the end, to throw some crumb of consolation to the author, but this was not Alaric Lydgate’s practice. His last paragraph was no less harsh. ‘ It is a pity,’ he concluded, ‘that such a reputable institution should have allowed a work of this nature to appear under its auspices. Its reputation will certainly not be enhanced by unscholarly rubbish of this kind, and it can hardly be gratified to learn that its funds, which are known to be limited, have been squandered to no purpose.’

  He drew a heavy line on the paper, folded the sheets and put them into an envelope. In a day or two the editor of the journal, who was a gentle patient man, would set to work to improve the English and tone it down a little. ‘It is a pitv,’ he would say to himself, ‘to have three consecutive paragraphs beginning “It is a pity”.’ He might even remember that Alaric Lydgate had once been refused a grant from the reputable institution whose limited funds had been squandered to no purpose. He might then go on to ask himself whether funds can be squandered to no purpose, whether indeed ihey can be squandered to any purpose. Certainly, as editor, he would feel none of the exhilaration which Alaric felt on finishing his review.