Read Online Less Than Angels by Barbara Pym - Free Book Online Page B

It was rusty and came away in his hand. The hinges too were eaten away writh rust and it was not difficult to open the box. Inside were piles of note-books and loose papers which gave off a dank musty smell. He picked up a wad of foolscap; the corners had been eaten away. Mice or white ants had been more diligent than he had. One day, he thought, I’ll get somebody to type all this stuff and then it will be manageable. But now it was nearly two o’clock. The exhilaration he had felt on finishing his review had given way to an intense weariness. He went rather sadly to bed and, although there was no particular reason for it, set his alarm clock for six o’clock.
    ‘Do you know,’ said Rhoda at breakfast next morning, ‘I almost thought I heard Mr. Lydgate’s alarm clock going off this morning. About six o’clock, it must have been. I had been awake some time.’
    ‘Did you have a good evening with Bernard, dear?’ Mabel asked Deirdre.
    ‘Oh, not bad. He’s rather a dull old thing but I enjoyed the play.’
    ‘Well, I’m glad about that,’ said Mabel, ‘though when I was your age I think I should have felt embarrassed at going to see that kind of play with a man. It doesn’t sound at all nice. Still perhaps it’s a good thing really, being able to see plays like that, I mean.’
    But why was it a good thing? she wondered, unable to answer her own question. People did not seem to be any better or happier now than they had ever been, nor were the relations between men and women any more satisfactory. Of course in the early nineteen-twenties, when she had been Deirdre’s age, there had been some very daring plays but she had not known the kind of young men who would have taken her to see them. Gregory Swan had liked Rose Marie and No, No, Nanette , and in her circle it was the men who formed the women’s tastes. Now, perhaps, it was the other way round.
    ‘I suppose Bernard would have preferred a musical, like that thing at Drury Lane,’ went on Deirdre, answering her mother’s question, ‘hut musicals are so boring. I doubt if I could sit through it,’
    ‘The Dulkes enjoyed it very much,’ said Rhoda, ‘and Malcolm is going to take Phyllis for her birthday,’
    ‘There you are,’ said Deirdre, ‘it just isn’t my kind of thing, I’m afraid.’
    ‘I should think Bernard is a high-principled young man,’ said Mabel, continuing in her own line of thought.
    ‘He hasn’t had much opportunity to be anything else as far as I’m concerned,’ said Deirdre rather pertly.
    ‘No, dear, but he is a good type,’ said Mabel. One of the minor public schools, then he had done well in the army and now had a very safe position with his father’s firm … ‘I mean, he always sees you home and in good time.’
    ‘Oh, yes, and only the mildest of good-night kisses. He’s not so bad really. I must go now.’ Deirdre stood up. ‘All this talk about Bernard’s high principles has delayed me.’
    ‘Have you many lectures today?’ asked Rhoda.
    ‘Not till the afternoon. I thought I’d spend the morning at Felix’s Folly.’ And perhaps she might see Mark and Digby there and they might be able to tell her something about Tom Mallow. She hardly dared to hope that she might see Tom himself.
    On the bus she wondered whether Tom had high principles, like Bernard. She was sure, somehow, that he had a delightful lack of them.
    When she arrived at the research centre she found nobody there and setded down rather grimly with a pile of books. She had been working for about an hour when the door opened and Professor Mainwaring came in.
    ‘Miss Clovis not here?’ he asked of nobody in particular.
    ‘Ah, then she has hidden herself away in her sanctum, far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife.’
    Deirdre, who was sitting alone at a table, while one of the library assistants worked at a card index, thought the implication a little unfair, but she did not think any answer was required from her and she certainly