Less Than Angels by Barbara Pym Page B

began to wish that she felt more at ease with children. Wordsworth, she thought, remembering with distaste poems she had read at school, might have made something of this situation, but it was beyond her. She turned the pages of the anthropological book, a slender green volume, rather badly written and with too many footnotes. Not the most congenial kind of reading for a fine Sunday afternoon.
    ‘You were asleepV The voice rose triumphantly now and ended in a gurgle of laughter. ‘I saw you!’
    ‘I wasn’t asleep. I was thinking,’
    ‘ Why? 9
    This exchange could have gone on all afternoon if Rhoda had not at that moment come out into the garden carrying a wickerwork cakestand.
    ‘I think we could have tea in the garden,’ she said. ‘I expect your friends would like it,’
    ‘Yes, it would be pleasant. Shall we have it over the other side, under the apple tree?’
    ‘Yes, I think that’s the best place,’
    Rhoda was glad that Deirdre had suggested it for she had secretly wanted to have tea on Mr. Lydgate’s side of the garden which she felt to be more interesting than the Lovells’. Mr. and Mrs. Lovell, the children, Roy, Jenny and Peter, and Snowball, the old sealyham, were dull and familiar. Who knew what they might hear or see through the hedge on Mr. Lydgate’s side?
    Catherine, walking with Tom along the road from the bus stop, was delighted with the tranquil beauty of the Sunday afternoon scene, the tree-lined road, the neat colourful front gardens, some empty in the sunshine, others being vigorously tended by men in open-necked shirts or women in cotton dresses and sandals. Through it all came the pleasant sounds of children, dogs, birds, lawnmowers and hedge clippers.
    ‘I suppose this is what you call suburbia,’ said Tom. ‘It seems rather pleasant.’ He had lived in London himself and had occasionally visited his aunts in Kensington and Belgravia, but he was totally ignorant of that territory in which a vast number of people pass their lives.
    ‘Oh, look!’ Catherine cried out. ‘This house is called Nirvana!’
    ‘Hush, Catty, they might hear,’ said Tom in a low voice. She was in what he thought of as one of her worst moods this afternoon, the kind that he found most difficult to cope with. The less encouragement he gave her, the more wild and frivolous would her fancies become. Now, to his horror, she began to sing, something about lotus flowers and finding Nirvana within his loving arms.
    ‘As the river flows to the ocean ,
    My soul, my soul shall flow to thine!’
    she concluded in triumph, clinging on to him affectionately.
    They walked in silence for a few seconds but then Catherine’s attention was again caught by a row of houses whose gateposts were ornamented with stone lions. She stopped in front of them in delight and began to stroke their heads and bodies.
    ‘Poor things,’ she said, ‘their noses and paws are all worn down, like soap lions might be after the first time of using. You know my favourite Shakespeare sonnet, don’t you? Devouring time y blunt thou the lion’s paws … do you think he could have seen a worn stone lion and that gave him the idea? On the gate-post of some noble house, perhaps?’
    ‘I really don’t know,’ said Tom impatiently. ‘Do hurry up, we mustn’t be too late.’
    ‘Of course he didn’t really mind about devouring time blunting the lion’s paws,’ she continued thoughtfully, ‘or even about the long-lived phoenix burning in her blood. The point was that time mustn’t touch his love’s fair brow. Nor put no lines there with thine antique pen … do you remember that?’ She glanced up at him but he did not answer. ‘You do seem to have a few little lines that I hadn’t noticed before,’ she said rather maliciously. ‘But then so have I, oh, lots of them! They add character to a face, that’s what I always say when I’m writing articles for the over-forties. If your face is smooth you can’t really have experienced joy