Name: Jane And Prudence
ISBN: 9780349016085

Barbara Pym

Jane And Prudence

Laura Dobie

Prudence Bates was twenty-nine, an age that is often rather desperate for a woman who has not yet married. Jane Cleveland was forty-one, an age that may bring with it compensations unsuspected by the anxious woman of twenty-nine.

One could hardly blame people for classing all university women as frumps, thought Prudence, looking down the table at the odd garments and odder wearers of them, the eager, unpainted faces, the wispy hair, the dowdy clothes; and yet most of them had married - that was the strange and disconcerting thing.

Dr Grampian was some kind of an economist or historian, she believed. He wrote the kind of books that nobody could be expected to read.

'And do you like cooking and looking after yourself asked Jane in a brighter tone.

‘One manages, said Fabian; one has to, of course.’

The use of the third person seemed to add pathos, whic was perhaps just what he intended, Jane thought.

'A casserole of hearts,’ murmured Jane in confusion, thinking of the grave and the infidelities. Did he eat his victims, then? 

'My nephew the butcher had hearts and liver this week, madam, but I didn't know if you liked hearts. Not everybody does.’

Her fine brain, which was now puzzling over a misplaced footnote, could not be expected to function under such stupidly rigid conditions.

Disliking humanity in geneal, she was one of those excessively tenderhearted people who are greatly moved by the troubles of complete strangers, in which she sometimes imagined herself playing a noble part. The man sitting at her table, who had at first appeared to be a bore or even a menace, was now proved to be an object of interest. There was both nobility and pathos about him.

She had calmed down by the time she arrived at her flat. As if it mattered what Geoffrey Manifold thought bout her! He was a dull young man who kept his private tin of Nescafé locked in a drawer. It was impertinent of him to him to ask her what she had been reading. She wished now that she hadn't told him.

Indeed, it was now almost a year since he had thought of anybody but himself.

‘Tea not ready yet?’ he said, in the way men do, not pausing to consider that some woman may at that very moment be pouring the water into the pot.

‘We didn't touch on his war career, either, said Nicholas. ‘That would have been a topic of conversation. 

‘I don't think he served with any particular distinction.’

‘I meant his triumphs with women,’ Jane explained. 'He might have had those, but I suppose they were hardly suitable topics of conversation for a vicarage tea party.’ Even the water-tank in the church hall was more in keeping.

"After all,' Jane had said, 'I don't really feel so very much of a mother, having only one child, and you know how bad I am at presiding at meetings. It would be far more suitable if somebody like Miss Doggett were to do it, though I suppose spinsters aren't eligible, really.’

Whatever did Prue see in him? she wondered, conscious as she asked herself of the futility of her question. Arthur Grampian and his wife Lucy - one mustn't forget his wife Lucy, though it was obvious that that Prue did. But this insignificant-looking little man... Oh, but it was splendid the things women were doing for men all the time, thought Jane. Making them feel, perhaps sometimes by no more than a casual glance, that they were loved and admired and desired when they were worthy of none of these things - enabling them to preen themselves and puff out their plumage like birds and bask in the sunshine of love, real or imagined, it didn't matter which. And yet Prudence's love didn't seem to have had any very noticeable effect on Arthur Grampian…

‘I suppose we should wait to be introduced,’ said Jane, looking over to where Edward Lyall and his mother were waiting, as if to receive presentations. ‘It's a pity they're standing right in front of the refreshments, though. We could at least have made a start on those.’

‘I always think one should have brandy in the house,’ said Mrs Crampton.

‘Does she mean in the house or in the House?’ said Miss Morrow to Jane.

She had a natural distrust of good-looking men, though they seemed to offer a challenge which she was never unwilling to accept.

There was a pause. It's like being at a cocktail party without anything to drink, thought Prudence. 

‘Would you like a sandwich?’ she asked, offering a dejected-looking plate.

But once outside the magic circle the writers became their lonely selves, pondering on poems, observing their fellow men ruthlessly, putting people they knew into novels; no wonder they were without friends.

"Typing a man's thesis, correcting proofs, putting sheets sides-to-middle, bringing up children, balancing the house- keeping budget - all these things are nothing, really' said Jane in a sad, thoughtful tone. 'Or they would be nothing to a man like Fabian Driver. Therefore it is just as well that Prudence is an attractive young woman.’

How much could she remember without the book? A line came into her head. Not one of all those ravenous hours, but the devours.. . If only she were one of these busy, useful women, who were always knitting or sewing. Then perhaps it wouldn't matter about the ravenous hours. She sat for a long time among the faded ink of her notebooks, brooding, until Nicholas came in with their Ovaltine on a tray and it was time to go to bed.

So witty and sharply observed, yet also so tender and sad in places, too.

Jane And Prudence

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