Excellent Women by Barbara Pym Read Free Book Online

to expect Mildred to deal with something that doesn’t concern her at all.’
    ‘I will if you like,’ I said doubtfully, ‘but of course it’s not really my business.’ I did not then know to the extent I do now that practically anything may be the business of an unattached woman with no troubles of her own, who takes a kindly interest in those of her friends.
    ‘We must look out for Mrs. Gray in church,’ said Winifred. ‘I think I know who she is. I believe she sometimes wears a silver fox fur.’
    ‘I thought Julian said she hadn’t much money,’ I said, ‘though of course the fur might have been left over from more prosperous days.’
    ‘It’s a rather bushy fur,’ said Winifred. ‘Perhaps it isn’t silver fox at all. I don’t know much about these things.
    ‘I don’t think she was wearing a fur when I saw her,’ said Julian, ‘but she did appear to be nicely dressed.
    ‘I hope she won’t distract you from writing your sermons, Julian,’ I said jokingly. ‘We shall probably notice a marked falling off in your preaching when Mrs. Gray moves in.’
    Julian laughed and got up from the table. ‘I must go back to my distempering,’ he said, ‘or the place won’t be habitable. I shall enjoy it now that I know the colour dries lighter. I have certainly learnt something this afternoon.’
    Winifred smiled affectionately after him as he left the room. ‘Men are just children, really, aren’t they. He’s as happy as a sandboy when he’s doing something messy. Now, Mildred, perhaps we could get on with pricing these things for the sale?’
    We spent a contented half hour going through the jumble and speculating about Mrs. Gray.
    ‘Julian didn’t really tell us what she was like,’ lamented Winifred.
    ‘No, but I suppose women of my sort and age are difficult to describe, unless they’re strikingly beautiful, of course.’
    ‘Oh, wouldn’t that be lovely,’ Winifred pushed back her untidy grey hair, ‘if she were strikingly beautiful!’
    ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Perhaps it would if she could be nice as well, but one feels that beautiful people aren’t always.’
    ‘But she’s a clergyman’s widow… .’
    ‘Oh, dear,’ I laughed, ‘I’d forgotten that.’ It seemed like a kind of magic formula. ‘So she’s to be beautiful as well as good. That sounds almost too much. We don’t know how her husband died, do we? She may have driven him to his grave.’
    Winifred looked rather shocked, so I stopped my foolish imaginings and went on pricing the worn garments, stuffed birds, old shoes, golf clubs, theological books, popular dance tunes of the ‘thirties, fenders and photograph frames—jumble in all its glory.
    ‘I wonder …’ said Winifred thoughtfully. ‘I wonder what her Christian name is?’

CHAPTER SIX
    LENT began in February that year and it was very cold, with sleet and bitter winds. The office where I dealt with my impoverished gentlewomen was in Belgravia, and it was my custom to attend the lunchtime services held at St. Ermin’s on Wednesdays.
    The church had been badly bombed and only one aisle could be used, so that it always appeared to be very full with what would normally have been an average congregation crowded into the undamaged aisle. This gave us a feeling of intimacy with each other and separateness from the rest of the world, so that I always thought of us as being rather like the early Christians, surrounded not by lions, admittedly, but by all the traffic and bustle of a weekday lunch-hour.
    On Ash Wednesday I went to the church as usual with Mrs. Bonner, one of my fellow workers, who was drawn more by the name of the preacher than by anything else, for, as she confessed to me, she loved a good sermon. We had hurried over our lunch—a tasteless mess of spaghetti followed by a heavy steamed pudding, excellent Lenten fare, I felt—and were in our seats in good time before the service was due to begin. We had made our way through the ruins,