Free Less Than Angels by Barbara Pym Page A

made a pass at her. Miss Clovis smiled; she was older and more tolerant now, and wondered if she need have slapped his face with quite such outraged dignity. Why had she done it? Had she been thinking of her rights as a woman, the equal of man and not to be treated as his plaything, or had it been because she had not found Dr. Obst particularly attractive? Would she have slapped Felix Mainwaring’s face if it had been he who had made the pass? The question hung in the air, unanswered. Her German was rusty now, but she could make out the title— Blutfreundschaft, Blood brotherhood—and perhaps it was pathetically appropriate. She was back in the warm velvety darkness, hearing the soft splash of fountains and seeing dimly the broad sword-shaped leaves of some exotic plant with huge red flowers-‘It is canna, I sink’, in Dr. Obst’s gentle foreign voice-and then the ‘incident’. Madrid, 1928 or 1929, she couldn’t remember the exact year. Such a thing had not happened to her since and it would not again. She put the offprint back into its folder and turned to the next one.
    ‘With all good wishes from Helena Napier and Everard Bone’. That had been a most promising partnership which had never come to anything. Two gifted young people, who had worked together, but Helena Napier had a husband and Miss Clovis’s efforts in the cause of anthropology had been in vain. After a short estrangement the Napiers had been reunited and Helena had retired to the country. Everard had married a rather dull woman who was nevertheless a great help to him in his work; as a clergyman’s daughter she naturally got on very well with the missionaries they were meeting now that they were in Africa again.
    ‘Esther Clovis from Alaric S. Lydgate.’ The next offprint bore this curt and characteristic inscription. Esther could not like her friend Gertrude’s brother, especially when she thought of those trunks full of notes which he would not let anybody else make use of. Dog in the manger, she thought angrily, most unChristian. She was not herself a Christian, and she doubted whether Alaric was either, in spite of being the son and brother of missionaries, but it seemed a useful standard to judge people by, though perhaps it hardly applied in rationalist circles. Most unethical, was perhaps what she should have said. Her hand moved over to the telephone and she dialled Alaric’s number. The bell went on ringing but there was no answer. Surely that ineffectual Mrs. Skinner could at least answer the telephone? No wonder Gertrude was not particularly anxious to live in his house, but he should certainly have asked her to. Esther let the bell go on ringing a little longer and then slammed down the instrument in disgust. She had been feeling in just the mood for an angry little talk, perhaps as an antidote to the slightly disturbing memories aroused by Hermann Obst’s offprint. Frustrated, she stumped off into the library to see if she could disturb any of the readers.
    She was disappointed to find only two people there, and at first sight they looked unpromising, a lanky dark young man in a shabby corduroy velvet jacket and a young girl, making what Esther scornfully described as ‘sheep’s eyes’ at him. Then she looked more closely and saw that the girl was Deirdre Swan, who lived next door to Alaric Lydgate, and the young man Tom Mallow, one of the most promising of the younger anthropologists, who had been working among the tribe which Alaric had administered for so many years.
    ‘Ah, Miss Swan and Mr. Mallow!’ she called out in her terrifying genial voice. ‘You are just the two people who should get together. I wonder if you know why?’
    Because I love Tom? Deirdre thought, but obviously that couldn’t be the answer. The wonderful surprise of meeting him here now seemed to be enhanced and the whole thing made respectable by Miss Clovis’s apparent approval.
    Tom looked puzzled and was unable to supply any answer even of a