Less Than Angels by Barbara Pym Page A

just a little talk about the meaning of Pentecost.’
    ‘What is the meaning?’ asked Mabel, who had been sitting at the kitchen table, listening to the happy sound of the meat sizzling in the oven. ‘I’ve often wondered.’
    ‘Oh, it is Jewish or Greek in origin,’ said Rhoda in a flustered tone, ‘and Paraclete, that is Greek too. Come thou Holy Paraclete , you know the hymn. I think we’d better have the lace mats, don’t you?’
    ‘By all means.’ Mabel was thinking that Rhoda, after her morning in church, seemed more of a Martha than she herself who had spent the morning quiedy in the kitchen. It was nice for Deirdre to have a friend to lunch, but she hoped her sister wouldn’t make too much of it. Deirdre had been so moody and difficult lately, they would have to be very tactful.
    The meal was highly successful and everyone liked Jean-Pierre, who put his questions about English suburban life so charmingly that nobody could possibly have taken offence. After they had finished eating Mabel and Rhoda went to wash up while the others took coffee into the garden. It was a hot afternoon and the Sunday quiet was broken only by the sound of a distant lawnmower.
    ‘I must not keep you from your sleeping,’ said Jean-Pierre politely. ‘I suppose it will be outside in the summer?’
    Malcolm leaned back in his deck-chair. ‘It’s only elderly and middle-aged people who sleep after lunch,’ he explained. ‘I usually go along to the club for a game of tennis.’
    ‘Are you going today?’ Deirdre asked, wondering how she was going to sustain a conversation if she were left alone with Jean-Pierre.
    ‘Yes, I expect I’ll go along about three o’clock. Perhaps you’d like to come?’ He turned to Jean-Pierre.
    ‘Alas, I am not the type for outdoor sport,’ he said simply. ‘And I have another engagement at three o’clock. There is a meeting in Bayswater, a message from the Other Side. I could perhaps take a bus from here?’
    ‘Oh, yes, of course,’ said Deirdre. ‘I’ll show you.’
    ‘I must say good-bye to your mother and aunt, if I am not disturbing them?’
    ‘I expect they’re still in the kitchen washing-up.’
    ‘I see; the older female relatives work in the kitchen when there are no servants. The mother and the father’s sister?’
    ‘No, Aunt Rhoda is my mother’s sister.’
    ‘Ah, yes, I understand. Women more closely linked would work better together—they would not fight.’
    After he had gone Deirdre settled down in the garden, waiting rather apprehensively for Tom and Catherine to arrive for tea. Mabel and Rhoda were still in the house, either resting in their rooms or getting out the best tea-set. Deirdre’s offer of help had been refused and she felt rather sulky. She sat in a deck-chair with an anthropological book and a volume of poetry on her knee, but she opened neither. She lay with her eyes closed thinking about Tom, trying to remember his face. After a few minutes of concentrated meditation, she had recalled all his features separately but had failed to fuse them together so that the result was like a Picasso head, the brilliant grey eyes and the sharp nose appearing in unexpected places. Then she began to have the feeling that somebody was watching her through the hedge which separated the garden from the Lovells’ next door. She opened her eyes but was at first too dazzled by the sun to be able to see anything. At last she discerned what were undoubtedly two bright dark eyes peering intently through a small gap in the leaves. She realized that it was one of the Lovells’ children, a little girl of about five. For a moment she returned the stare but was forced to turn away before its unwavering intensity. She picked up one of her books and opened it.
    ‘What are you doing?’ The words came in a hoarse whisper.
    ‘Nothing,’ said Deirdre in a dignified tone.
    ‘Why?’
    Deirdre could think of no reasonable answer to this that a child of five might appreciate and