The Complete Short Stories. Muriel Spark

was conducting a weekend liaison with a barrister in London, and with Daphne in the house she found it easier to disappear for longer weekends, and then, sometimes, a week. “Daphne,” she would say on the phone, “you don’t mind holding the fort, honestly? This is so important to me.”

      Daphne went for walks with Uncle Pooh-bah. She had to take short steps, for he was slow. They walked on the well-laid paths to the river which Daphne always referred to as “the Thames”, which indeed, of course, it was.

      “We went as far as the Thames,” Daphne would tell Linda on their return. They ventured no further than the local lock, a walk bordered with green meadows and wonderful sheep.

      Relations of some friends in the Colony invited her to London. She accepted, then told Linda when she would be away.

      “But,” said Linda, “I shall be in London next week. It’s important, you know. Someone’s got to look after Pooh-bah and Aunt Sarah.”

      “Oh, I see,” said Daphne.

      Linda cheered up. “Perhaps you could go the week after?”

      “No, next week,” said Daphne patiently, “that’s when I’m going.”

      “Someone’s got to look after Pooh-bah and Aunt Sarah.”

      “Oh, I see.”

      Linda started to cry. Daphne said, “I’ll write to my friends, and explain.”

      Linda dried her eyes and said, “You can’t imagine how deadly it is living in this awful house year after year with a couple of selfish old people and that helpless Clara.”

      Next weekend, while Linda was away, several Patterson relations arrived. Molly, Rat, Mole and an infant called Pod. Mole was an unattached male cousin. Daphne expressed a desire to see Cambridge. He said it would be arranged. She said she would probably be in London soon. He said he hoped to see her there. Aunt Sarah stuck a pin in the baby’s arm, whereupon Molly and Rat took Daphne aside and advised her to clear out of the house as soon as possible. “It’s unhealthy.”

      “Oh,” said Daphne, “but it’s typically English.”

      “Good gracious me!” said Rat.

      At last she had her week in London with the relations of her friends in the Colony. Daphne had been told they were wealthy, and was surprised when the taxi drove her to a narrow house in a mean little side street which was otherwise lined with garages.

      “Are you sure this is the right place?” she asked the driver.

      “Twenty-five Champion Mews,” he said.

      “That’s right,” said Daphne. “This must be it.”

      Before Daphne had left the country Linda had remarked, “A house in Champion Mews. They must be rather rich. How I would adore a mews house.” Daphne remembered this.

      The interior of the house was very winning. She readjusted her ideas, and at dinner was able to say to her hostess, “What an adorable mews house.”

      “Isn’t it? We were so lucky – literally everyone was after it.”

      Mrs Pridham was middle-aged, and smart. Mr Pridham was a plastic surgeon.

      “I shan’t make the mistake,” he said to Daphne, “of asking you about all the dangers you encountered in darkest Africa.”

      Daphne laughed.

      “You must have a Season of course,” said Mrs Pridham. “Have you arranged anything?”

      “I’m here for two years at least.” Then she remembered about the London Season, and said, “No, I have nothing arranged. But my uncle has written to various friends.”

      “It’s getting a little late in the year,” said Mrs Pridham.

      “Really,” said Daphne, “I just want to see England. I’d like to see London. I’d like to see the Tower, and Uncle Chakata’s friends.”

      “I shall take you to the Tower tomorrow afternoon,” said Mr Pridham.

      He did, and afterwards they went for a spin round Richmond and Kingston. He pulled up at a pleasant spot. “Daphne,” he said, “I love you.” And he pressed his lips of sixty summers to hers.

      As soon as she could disengage herself, she casually wiped her mouth with her handkerchief – casually, for she did not want to hurt his feelings. However, she told him she was engaged to be married to someone in the Colony.

      “Oh dear, I’ve done the wrong thing. Have I done the wrong thing?”

      “Daphne is engaged to a lucky fellow in Africa,” he said at dinner that night. Mole was present. He looked at Daphne. She looked back helplessly. Mrs Pridham looked at her husband, and said to Daphne, “Before you do anything, you must have your London Season. Stay six weeks with us, do. I’ve brought out girls before. It’s too late of course to do anything much but –”

      “Do stay with us,” said Mr Pridham.

      Later, when Daphne explained the tale of her “engagement” to Mole, he said, “You can’t stay with the Pridhams. I know someone else you can stay with, the mother of a friend of mine.”

      Mrs Pridham looked sad when Daphne told her she could not prolong her visit. For the rest of the week she unmistakably cast Daphne into her husband’s way, frequently left them alone together, and often arranged to be picked up somewhere in the car, so that Daphne was obliged to dine with Mr Pridham alone.

      Daphne mentioned to Mole, “She hasn’t the least suspicion of what he’s like. In fact, she seems to throw the man at me.”

      “She wants to hot him up,” said Mole. “There are plenty of women who behave like that. They get young girls to the house simply in order to give the old man ideas. Then they get rid of the girls.”

      “Oh, I see.”

      She went to stay as a paying guest with the mother of Mole’s friend, Michael. It was arranged by letter.

      Michael Casse was thin and gangling with an upturned nose. He had been put to stockbroking with an uncle, but without success. He giggled a great deal. His mother, with whom he lived, took a perverse pride in his stupidity. “Michael’s hopelessness,” she told Daphne, “is really …” During the war, his mother told her, she had been living in Berkshire. Michael came home on leave. She sent him out with the ration book one day after lunch to buy a packet of tea. He did not return until next morning. He handed his mother the tea, explaining that he had been held up by the connections.

      “What connections?” said his mother.

      “Oh, the trains, London, you know.”

      And it transpired that he had gone all the way to Fortnum’s for the tea, it never having occurred to him that tea could be bought in the village, nor indeed anywhere else but Fortnum’s. Daphne thought that very English.

      Michael now lived with his mother in her flat in Regent’s Park. Greta Casse was as gangling as her son, but she gangled effectively and always put her slender five foot ten into agreeable poses, so that even her stooping shoulders and hollow chest, her bony elbows akimbo, were becoming. She spoke with a nasal drawl. She lived on alimony and the rewards of keeping PGs.

      She took vastly too much money from Daphne, who suspected as much, but merely surmised that Greta Casse was, like her son, stupid, living in an unreal world where money hardly existed, and so one might easily charge one’s PGs too much. Daphne frequently slipped out to Lyons for a sandwich, so hungry did she go. She assumed at first that society women were simply not brought up to the food idea, but when she saw Greta Casse tucking in at anyone else’s expense, she amended her opinion, and put Greta’s domestic parsimony down to her vagueness about materialistic things. This was a notion which Greta fostered