An Unsuitable Attachment by Barbara Pym Read Free Book Online

to see Mervyn Cantrell standing at her elbow, with a tall, dark young man of about thirty hovering deferentially a pace or two behind him.
    'How do you do, Miss Broome?' he said. 'I must say all this is rather terrifying for me—these card indexes and things—or should one say indices?—I never know.' He laughed, a rather confident, charming laugh.
    'How do you do?' Ianthe murmured, not quite knowing what to say.
    'I thought it would be best if Mr Challow were to help you for a bit, Miss Broome,' said Mervyn, 'while he's getting settled down, that is.'
    'Why, of course,' said Ianthe politely, wondering what she was going to do with him, and wishing, as she had before, that Mervyn had engaged a comfortable middle-aged woman to fill Miss Grimes's place.
    'I'll leave you to it then,' said Mervyn. 'Just ask Miss Broome anything you don't understand and she'll explain it.'
    Left by themselves Ianthe and John made a wary appraisal of each other. She saw a young, rather handsome man, whose brown eyes looked at her in a way she found slightly disturbing, though this was not the kind of thing she would have admitted to anybody but herself. He saw a rather pretty woman, not very young, with an air of good breeding that somehow attracted him. A woman rather shy of men, whose eyes did not quite meet his when he looked at her.
    'Fancy me working in a library again,' he said, one hand resting idly on a card index.
    'Why, haven't you been doing this sort of work?' Ianthe asked.
    'No, I've been freelancing the last couple of years.'
    'Oh, I didn't know one could do that in libraries.' She looked puzzled. 'You mean part-time work?'
    'No, not in libraries. You might be rather shocked if I told you.'
    'Shocked? Do you think so?' Ianthe smiled uneasily, feeling that some kind of guessing game was being played between them and that she ought to play her part by making a suggestion as to what the work could have been. 'People do so many unusual things nowadays,' she said lamely.
    'Well, this was film work, actually—crowd work and that sort of thing. Dancing in a night club scene at eight o'clock in the morning—TV commercials too, sometimes.' John smiled and glanced quickly at Ianthe, as if to see how she was taking it.
    'How interesting,' she said brightly, 'and what a change from this sort of work. What made you decide to come back to this?'
    'Well, film work's very precarious, of course—so I thought I'd better get a steady job for a bit, especially when my money ran out.'
    Ianthe's smile was becoming a little forced now. She was just trying to think what she could say to bring John back to the subject of the library and its workings when Shirley came in with two cups of tea.
    'Well, I can't say that I've really earned this,' said John, taking a cup, 'but perhaps I can be forgiven my first day. Is it China tea?'
    'China tea? No, I don't think so, but it certainly does look rather weak.'
    'I should imagine you would like China tea?' he said looking at her intently.
    'I do, very much,' Ianthe admitted, 'but somehow it doesn't seem to go with work. Now, shall I show you what I'm doing here?'
    For a few minutes she explained the system on which the cards were arranged, then let him try to select some for a bibliography she was compiling on nutrition in underdeveloped countries.
    'Nutrition,' John said, after he had been working for a short time. 'That doesn't really sound like food, does it. At least not the kind of food one would like to eat. By the way, what does one do about lunch? Are there any good places round here—not too expensive of course?'
    'Well, there's Lyons and the ABC and a coffee bar, where Shirley sometimes goes, and various pubs, of course.'
    'Where do you go?'
    Ianthe hesitated. Today she had brought sandwiches, as she wanted to spend her lunch hour writing personal letters, but she felt reluctant to reveal to this young man the name of the little restaurant near Westminster Abbey, run by gentlewomen, where she often