Leonora was also going to a party that night, though of a different kind from the one James had been invited to. Hers was just dinner with a woman she had known in the days when she had a job. The only slightly unusual thing about it was that Meg’s young friend or protégé, Colin, would be there, as he nearly always was these days ever since she had taken him under her wing and befriended him in his many troubles. Tonight, a new friend of Colin’s was going to be there as well, which was perhaps why Leonora had been asked to complete the strange foursome of two women approaching fifty and two young men in their twenties.
The name of the friend was Harold and he was of a bull-like handsomeness, towering over fragile little Colin with his delicate beauty. Conversation was sticky at first when Meg was in the kitchen seeing to the meal. It was obvious that Harold was not of their ‘class’, but Colin prattled enough for two, throwing an occasional private joke to Harold, who sat dumb with shyness and apparently impervious to Leonora’s charm. He seemed more at ease when Meg came back, her plain good-natured face flushed from bending over the cooker, and summoned them to the table. He teased her about the way to a man’s heart being through his stomach, and Meg seemed ridiculously pleased. As if the question arose, thought Leonora scornfully. But of course Meg was devoted to Colin and presumably had to put up with his friends as well. There had been quite a number of them over the years – a young man in advertising, a television producer, a civil servant, an Indian, even a curate, once. Leonora could not quite place Harold and wondered what he could be; no doubt she would find out as the evening went on. How different this occasion was from her interesting experience at the book sale and the most agreeable lunch with that charming antique dealer and his nephew! One of these days she would certainly ‘find herself’ near Sloane Square. But not quite yet. She would wait until exactly the right moment arrived, as it surely would.
‘Such a pleasant evening,’ she said, at about half past ten. ‘I have enjoyed it. I’d no idea it was so late.’
‘Now how will you get home?’ Meg wondered in the rather vague way that car drivers do about non-drivers.
‘Oh, I shall manage,’ said Leonora, with an enigmatic smile as if she had a magic carpet waiting.
Neither of the young men made a move so Meg was obliged to offer to take Leonora herself.
‘I can’t think how you manage without a car,’ she said, perhaps irritated at seeing Leonora standing in the doorway in her dark fur jacket, a square of apricot chiffon draped over her head. Nobody could wear a scarf like Leonora.
Leonora shrugged her shoulders. One simply didn’t drive and that was that, but other people were always so kind. And there were taxis. ‘I wouldn’t dream of letting you take me,’ she said. ‘I’ll find a taxi at the rank.’
‘But they always take you the longest way and expect such enormous tips,’ Meg complained.
‘I’ve never found that,’ said Leonora. ‘Taxi drivers are usually sweet little men.’
‘Well, if you really don’t mind . . .’ Meg was obviously reluctant to leave the party. ‘I’ll just come to the rank with you, to make sure there is one.’
She closed the door of the flat carefully behind her. Leonora said something about the lemon meringue pie which had been so delicious.
‘It’s Colin’s favourite pudding,’ said Meg.
Leonora’s smile held pity in it. She imagined Meg rolling out the pastry, mixing the filling, beating the egg whites, and all for silly little Colin.
‘What did you think of Harold?’ Meg asked.
‘I didn’t really form any opinion. Not Colin’s usual type of friend, is he?’
‘No.’ Meg lowered her voice, though they were out in the street now. ‘Most of Colin’s lovers’ – she brought out the word courageously – ‘have been rather different. He’s had such unhappiness, but I think Harold’s going to be very good for him. He works as assistant to a vet.’
‘Good heavens!’ Leonora exclaimed.
‘Yes, really. Didn’t you notice his strong kind hands?’
Certainly the hands had been red and solid-looking, Leonora remembered, through being steeped in hot water and disinfectant, perhaps.
‘And there is a taxi,’ said Meg. ‘Goodbye, dear. We must lunch sometime.
Leonora offered her cheek. She did not like being kissed by women, or indeed by anyone very much. It was good to be leaning back in the cool darkness of the taxi. The driver, she now saw, was a coloured man, but she was sure he would turn out to be as ‘sweet’ as taxi drivers usually were to her.
Meg lived in a somewhat offbeat district, but the tall shabby houses, some of them painted in garish colours, were soon left behind and gave place to discreetly glistening cream or white facades behind one of which Leonora lived. The taxi driver smiled at her large tip and wished her goodnight in a warm soft voice so that she could imagine herself as a beauty of the Deep South being handed from her carriage or as a white settler in the days when native servants were humble and devoted.
She opened her front door and experienced, as always, the pleasure of being home among the pretty Victorian furniture and objects with which she had surrounded herself. She pitied Meg in her rambling untidy flat with those tiresome young men and wondered whether they had stayed to help her with the washing-up. Colin lived in Paddington, she believed, and presumably Harold lived with him. Meg’s flat would seem lonely after they had gone; quite different from her own tranquil solitude.
Leonora liked to think of her life as calm of mind, all passion spent, or, more rarely, as emotion recollected in tranquillity. But had there ever really been passion, or even emotion? One or two tearful scenes in bed – for she had never enjoyed that kind of thing – and now it was such a relief that one didn’t have to worry any more. Her men friends were mostly elderly cultured people, who admired her elegance and asked no more than the pleasure of her company. Men not unlike Humphrey Boyce, indeed.
The wide bed with its neo-Victorian brass headboard was conducive to pleasant thoughts and Leonora arranged herself for sleep. No Bible, no book of devotion, no alarm clock marred the worldly charm of her bedside table. Browning and Matthew Arnold – her favourite poets – took their place with her Guerlain cologne, a bottle of smelling salts, soft aquamarine paper tissues, a phial of brightly coloured pills to relieve stress and strain, and presiding over all these the faded photographs of a handsome man and a sweet-faced woman in late-Victorian dress. Leonora had long ago decided that her grandparents were much more distinguished-looking than her father and mother whose photographs had been hidden away in a drawer. Her father had been in the consular service and Leonora’s childhood and youth had been spent in various European towns of which she retained many personal memories. Indeed, the recounting of these memories, romantic episodes and encounters sometimes made her conversation a little tedious, so that people who knew her tended not to mention Lisbon, Dresden or Vienna if they could avoid it. Her parents had left her enough money to live on, so that she did not have to work unless she wanted to. For a time after the war she had taken a job in the same publisher’s office as Meg, but seeing school textbooks through the press was an unworthy occupation, Leonora felt. The only thing to be said for work was that it gave one less time to brood and it was supposed to be satisfying for its own sake to the middle-aged. Not that one brooded much. Naturally the thought of death came into one’s mind occasionally but one tried to be sensible about it, not getting into a panic, not pushing it away. For a moment Leonora dwelt on the idea of Colin’s friend Harold, imagining those strong kind hands putting animals to sleep. Certainly one didn’t want to think about that. Yet there was no reason why one’s death should not, in its own way, be as elegant as one’s life, and one would do everything possible to make it so.
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From The Sweet Dove Died by Barbara Pym. Used with permission of the publisher, NYRB. Copyright © 2025.
