Welcome Barbara Pym Fans!

If you're asking "who's Barbara Pym?" you might want to move on, or read on.

She was an English writer, emphasis on "English" who lived between 1913 and 1980. Her career flourished during the 1950s but withered utterly in the 1960s and '70s.  Her publisher had decided that her style of writing and her subjects; single, unmarried women, living small, intelligent lives, were old fashioned. She had a notable second act in the late 1970s after her friend, the poet Philip Larkin, told the Times Literary Supplement that she was "the most underrated writer of the 20th century."

She went on after this to write a book, Quartet in Autumn, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. She found new admirers then and those that persist are a special lot.  There is a Barbara Pym Society that meets twice a year.  The BPS describes her this way on their website:

[A] shrewd observer of a certain kind of middle-class Englishwoman, no longer young and not quite beautiful, whom society finds it easy to overlook. She is just as shrewd an observer of the people that these women, vigilant and perceptive, themselves observe.

The spinster heroine of Excellent Women, Pym’s most famous novel, says, “I suppose an unmarried woman just over 30, who lives alone and has no apparent ties, must expect to find herself involved or interested in other people’s business, and if she is a clergyman’s daughter then one might really say that there is no hope for her.

The  Pym Society will hold its North American meeting in Boston in March 2019. In conjunction with that meeting, it sponsored a Barbara Pym short story contest.  The assignment: write a  story featuring any Pym character in any setting or time. The only limitation was a 2000 word limit and a deadline of December 3, 2018.

Reader, I entered.

And yes, I planned to win.

I was advised in a polite email in early January that I didn't win. I didn't place. I didn't show.

I decided after a few hours reflection on this entirely foreseeable result that it was actually very Pymian to lose a Barbara Pym writing contest.  And, as further consolation, I enjoyed working on the story (which isn't true for everything to which I put my hand).  Also, I have the story. And here it is for you too.

By way of background, I have read and enjoyed a few Pym books, including Excellent Women.  It features  Mildred Lathbury, who has to be the archetypal Pym character. Miss Lathbury is intelligent, observant, very well brought up, and self-aware to a fault.  In middle age she is a never-married clergyman's daughter. She remains one of the props and stays of her local church. She lives in beleagured post-war London in a flat with a shared bathroom. Her social circle is primarily a group of aging celibates (a school friend, the priest and his sister) and her days are occupied partly with work for a society that aids distressed gentlewomen and for her church. The social circle is broken open by the arrival of a young couple that moves into the flat that shares her bathroom - the husband is ex-military and glamourous, the wife is interesting. Around the same time, her friend the priest meets a tempting widow. These are unsettling events. Her spinster's equilibrium is disturbed.

I kept thinking as I read the book how many of the male characters would today be instantly assumed to be homosexual. There is nothing so frank in EW - although another one of her books (one that I haven't read) A Glass of Blessings, features a female protagonist who develops an interest a gay man, not quite understanding the situation, at least not right away. I wondered how Mildred, with her longings for love just under the surface, would cope with the offer of a union with a man who might make a good mate  - in some ways, at least.  So, here, at last,  for your consideration is the story which didn't take a prize.

Best Laid Plans

“We have left undone those things we ought to have done…” I intoned with the congregation, thinking of poor Mr. Arundel, whom I had left all alone with the Wiggins file. Mr. Wiggins must acquire a corner of east London for his new adhesives factory tomorrow.  Several deeds remained to be prepared. These weighed on my conscience and had made my attendance at Evensong, of all things, feel a guilty indulgence. I popped up from my pew at the first note of the organ voluntary, keen to get back to the office. I was halfway down the aisle, wondering if I should buy some sausage rolls for Mr. Arundel, when an elderly lady blocked my progress.

“Excuse me, it’s Miss Lathbury, isn’t? Is it, still, ‘Miss’ Lathbury?”

She was tidy and smelled of gardenias.

“Yes… I’m sorry, do I know you?”

            “You did once, a little. I appeared before your committee six years ago. I’m so pleased to see you. I went back to the Society to thank you, but it was closed.”

I had a revelatory moment. “Oh yes! You’re Mrs. Brudenell!” She’d been thinner and paler when I’d last seen her. “You’re looking very well.”

“I am well. Thanks in large part to you! I don’t suppose you remember the bus ride we took together after that dreadful interview?”

I remembered it too well. Our chairwoman had informed Mrs. Brudenell -- as all applicants were in informed in that unhappy interval -- that the Society for Distressed Gentlewomen was winding down. By 1960 we’d become an anachronism. Letters to the editor had appeared. A small band of socialists had even protested outside our offices. “You must seek government assistance with all possible despatch,” our chairwoman had pronounced, in that games-mistress way of hers. “Your situation seems quite desperate, Mrs. Brudenell, and the authorities do not always act with alacrity.”

 “Yes,” I said. “I remember… a difficult time for you.”

Her eyes fluttered. “I was at my lowest ebb since the death of my husband. Stones into pockets and into the Thames like Virginia Woolf -- that was my plan, God forgive me. It was your suggestion that saved me.”

“Did I make a suggestion?”

“Indeed!  You asked whether I had any family or friends who might help. I told you I just couldn’t ask my son. He was in America and struggling himself in those days.  And my sister, who’d been such a prop and stay, had just been widowed herself. Her situation was as bad as mine.”

“Yes, I remember now. Your brother-in-law had been in the diplomatic service, in the Caribbean?”

 “That’s right! And in Egypt before that. You suggested that Whitehall might help my sister, under the circumstances.”

“Did I?”

“I should never have thought of that myself. I followed your advice and, what do you know, “ she put her hand on my arm, “before long the Queen herself interceded.”

My thoughts of sausage rolls and Mr. Wiggins’ flew away like the notes of the Bach toccata that was playing.

“Really?”

            “Truly! My sister’s plea resulted in a warrant from the Lord Chamberlain for a Grace and Favour apartment at Hampton Court Palace! We’ve lived there with my sister’s old housekeeper for five years now.”

 “Well, that’s wonderful.”

I hadn’t been to Hampton Court since school days, and I’d never seen the Grace and Favour apartments, but they were famous. I knew they were doled out by the monarch, rent-free and mostly to widows, as a reward for service to the crown. I also knew they had a reputation as the grandest, and dottiest, poor house in England.

“Our apartment is just off the gallery haunted Catherine Howard,” she continued. “It’s not so large as some of them but quite comfortable for us.”

“I’m delighted!” I said. “Not about the ghost, of course, but for you. Thank you for telling me, but I’m afraid I must fly back to work.”

“Oh wait please! We’re planning a little party. We don’t entertain often, but we thought it right to host a kind of thanksgiving. Do say you can come. It’s this Saturday.”

“That’s very kind of you but…”

“Please,” she looked momentarily panicked. “Did you know there are more than 1300 rooms in the Palace? From the roof you get a splendid view of the chimneys, and the Thames, and the gardens.”

“I’m afraid I’m expected to work Saturday mornings...”

“But we aren’t gathering until teatime. Oh, and Lady Baden-Powell will be there!”

“The Lady Baden-Powell? Of the Girl Guides?” I had been a guide once myself.

“The very one!  She’s a neighbor. Let me give you directions.”

*          *          *

Despite the directions I found myself the following Saturday afternoon hunting around the vast Tudor portion of the palace for her apartment.  A helpful guard eventually directed me to the Chapel Courtyard. Once there, I heard a young voice calling my name. I looked up and saw two girls of about 18, one blond, one brunette, leaning out of a second story window. A few moments later I was trailing them up a broad staircase with shallow treads and iron railings. “I’m Sarah Butler,” the brunette said as we climbed. “I’m from Nottingham. Lady Baden-Powell invited me down for the weekend.”

“Sarah’s won the Queen’s Guide Award,” the blond put in. “I’m just a granddaughter, I’m Sylvie.” I was surprised at Sylvie’s tight sweater, given her pedigree. As I thought this, my eye caught on a paper sign reminding residents to switch off lights in the stairways.

“I’m pleased to meet you both. Are you having tea too?”

“Yes. We’re just waiting for you.”

“Am I late?”

“Oh, no. We came early.” The girls giggled, though I had no idea why this was funny.

At the top of the stairs Sylvie barged into the apartment, shouting my arrival. Sarah took my coat and hat and quickly disappeared after her friend. Mrs. Brudenell and her sister, it could be no other, advanced on me.

“Miss Lathbury!” Mrs. Brudenell exclaimed, shaking my hand in both of hers, “We’re delighted to see you. This is my sister, Mrs. Davies.”

“We owe you such a debt of gratitude,” Mrs. Davies said, taking my hand in her turn. “Do come through.”

I protested their gratitude as I followed them down a long, tall corridor where my new heels rang like gunshots on the parquet. I was still protesting when we reached the salon at the end of the hall. The two girls were by then settled either side of a fabulously handsome man. He stood as I entered.

“This is my son, Peniston, from New York.” Mrs. Brudenell was glowing.  “And this is Lady Baden-Powell.”

Lady Baden-Powell shook my hand from her chair and murmured a few words of thanks to my compliments on girl guiding. I turned then to Peniston, who was smiling down upon me like the Caribbean sun.

“Pleased to meet you.” His offered hand was warm and strong. He spoke with an American accent. “I understand you’re the lucky charm that helped my good ladies find this home.” Peniston’s teeth were beautifully white and even. His hair was fair with a touch of grey. He had crow’s feet by his blue eyes, but his waist was trim and his shoulders broad. I wondered about his age and thought of George Eliot’s observation, ‘some men are like lions, you can’t tell how old they are except that they are fully grown.’

“Oh hardly,” I began protesting again.

Mrs. Brudenell gestured for me to sit next to her son, displacing Sylvie. “I hope the train wasn’t crowded,” she said. I caught a look from Sylvie but as it was a case of being rude to her or our hostess, I sat.

“It was fine, thanks, and of course it’s not far.”

At that moment a voice, surely Jamaican, came from a swinging door behind us. “Are you all ready now?”

“Yes, thank you Caroline,” Mrs. Davies said.

The housekeeper came through with a silver tray laden with China tea things. Thin as she was, Caroline’s brown forearms bulged with ropy muscles. She set the tray down gingerly then gave the whole party a long, appraising from behind her black-rimmed glasses. She exited without another word. “She’s a gem, is Caroline,” Mrs. Davies said.

*          *          *

The sandwiches were tolerable. The conversation was bright. It moved quickly from the Hampton Court neighbours to Peniston.  The Brudenell family, it emerged, had lived in Toronto for years.  After completing school there, Peniston had made his way to New York, where he eventually opened an art gallery featuring the work of abstract expressionists. It’d been hard going in the ‘50s but it was finally taking off.

“He’s opening another in London this year,” Mrs. Brudenell said. “I’ve no feeling at all for the art he sells, if that’s what you can call it, but at least it will bring him home.”

“Twice yearly anyway,” Peniston added.

“Oh, I do wish you were moving here for good. Then we could show you around London!” Sylvie said.  Sarah nodded. They both gazed up at him.

Lady Baden-Powell scowled over her teacup. “Stop fawning girls! He’s far too old for you!”

After an uncomfortable moment’s silence, Peniston and the girls burst out laughing. “Oh Grandma. You’re one to talk! Grandpa was 30 years older than you!” Sylvie said.

“Thirty-two, actually,” Lady Baden-Powell replied, as she bit into a potted meat sandwich. “My parents objected, appropriately, as I now understand. But your grandfather and I were singular.”

“I assure you, Ma’am, you need have no fear of me,” Peniston laughed. “I’m a confirmed old bachelor.”

“I meant no offense, sir. It’s just that I hate to see girls making themselves ridiculous over men,” Lady Baden-Powell said.

“Certainly, there’s much to be said for common interests and shared history for binding a couple together,” Mrs. Brudenell chanced.  “Don’t you agree Miss Lathbury?” “What are your interests? Do you like art?”

Every face turned to me. “Yes…. Though I’m no connoisseur. I’m terribly dull, really. I work for a solicitor and I seem to manifest every cliché of a clergyman’s daughter. I do like history, though. I was hoping to see some of the Palace. It’s a marvelous view you have.”

This had the desired effect of turning the faces to the tall windows, and of precipitating the tour that Mrs. Brudenell had promised at Evensong.

*          *          *

The subsequent ramble round the premises was marvelous, though the tea party was, given the unusual company, increasingly putting me in mind of the one in Alice in Wonderland.  When we returned to the apartment, Lady Baden-Powell promptly announced her departure.  “Help Caroline tidy up, girls,” she commanded. Not wanting to appear to shirk, I took some teacups and followed the girls into the kitchen.

“He’s just like Rock Hudson,” Sarah breathed. “Oh no,” Sylvie clucked. “Rock is dark, and Peniston is fair, like Tab Hunter.”

“He certainly is attractive,” I added lamely, rinsing the cups out of force of habit. The girls gave me a polite, pitying look and returned to the salon. Caroline came up behind me then. She’d moved so quietly, I was startled when she spoke.

            “Miss, can I talk to you?”

“Certainly…”

“Miss, I’ve known these ladies here more than 45 years...”

“They told me. They rely on you tremendously.”

“Too true. They do. And for more than they know. They’re good, but they’re not worldly wise. I think you ought to know, Mrs. Brudenell, she’s got designs on you, for Mr. Penisiton.”

I couldn’t suppress a laugh. “He’s hardly for the likes of me!”

“He’s not for any woman, if you take my meaning.” She looked at me knowingly over the top of her glasses.

I understood, though I was shocked by her suggestion. “Really, I don’t think…”

Caroline held up her hand. “Mrs. Brudenell been goin’ round churches all over London lookin’ for you these last few years. She’s settled on you.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” (I didn’t have the presence of mind to consider the implications of this statement.)

“Mr. Peniston is a good man, but he might make a choice to please her ...”

I must’ve looked confused. Caroline sighed.

“Miss, I see you’re an excellent woman, but you got that whiff of the vicarage about you. You might put your heart right under his feet, not understanding how things are.”

“I appreciate your concern, but I’m sure it’s misplaced.” I wiped my hands on my skirt, forgetting I wasn’t wearing an apron.

“Well that’s a relief to me Miss. Thank you.”

I nodded and stepped back into the salon. The others had decamped to the vestibule. I joined them there.

“I’ll be back in London in January, Miss Lathbury,” Peniston said as he helped me with my coat. “Perhaps we could meet again?” He smiled, and I felt something in me lurch in his direction. Mrs. Brudenell beamed. The girls were stone faced.

Caroline leaned out from the swinging door and caught my eye.

What I thought was, ‘Lead us not into temptation.’ What I said was, “Nothing would please me more.”