December 2010
28 posts
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It was a Saturday morning and we had assembled in the choir vestry before decorating the church for Whit-Sunday. It was the usual gathering…The only man present, apart from the clergy, was Jim Storry, a feeble-minded youth who made himself useful in harmless little ways and would sometimes arrange the wire frames on the window-sills for us or fill jam jars with water.
— Excellent Women,...
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‘Oh, Dulcie, perhaps it was a mistake, our breaking it off like that!’
Perhaps? She said to herself. He might have sounded a little more sure. After all, it was he who had done the breaking — he who had said that he was unworthy of her love. Did he now consider that he was worthy? Or that her own standard was less high?
— No Fond Return of Love, chapter thirteen
Christmas break
We’re giving Barbara a break for a few days. She’ll be busy at Boxing Day tea with Wilf Bason.
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His hair was cropped very short in the fashionable style of the moment. I noticed that it glistened like the wet fur of an animal.
— A Glass of Blessings, chapter seventeen
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‘I was wondering if you’d have lunch with me one day,’ said Mrs. Gray suddenly and surprisingly.
‘Lunch?’ I asked as if I had never heard of the meal, for I was wondering whatever could have induced her to want to have lunch with me.
— Excellent Women, chapter thirteen
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‘I always think one needs a drink at this time,’ he said, as they approached his front door.
‘A drink?’ said Marian in a surprised tone, and Aylwin realized that they were so much younger than he was that they could have hardly any points of contact between them. Their gay, birdlike little days would not need drinks at the end of them, like some kind of restorative, as the...
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‘The Archdeacon preached a very fine sermon on Sunday, about the Judgment Day. We were all very much impressed by it. You will be glad to hear that he is looking well and has a good appetite.’
Here Belinda paused and laid down her pen. Was this last sentence perhaps a little presumptuous? Ought an archdeacon to be looking well and eating with a good appetite when his wife was away?...
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‘Is your chauffeur waiting down below, Mrs. Foresight, or did you tell him to call back for you?’ broke in Miss Clovis.
‘Oh, I expect he’s waiting,’ said Mrs. Foresight in the vague but confident tone of one who never has to worry about getting to places or to rely on the uncertainties of public transport.
— Less Than Angels, chapter ten
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‘Perhaps it’s better to be unhappy than not to feel anything at all,’ I said.
Oh Love they wrong thee much / That say thy sweet is bitter…
Dora looked at me in astonishment. ‘I think I’d just like to go into the Ladies,’ she said, ‘before we get the bus home.’
I followed her meekly although I did not really want to go myself. It was a...
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‘This reminds me of home,’ said Aylwin, looking down at his plate with pleasure.
‘Home?’ Dulcie echoed. Did he mean his home with Marjorie, or something more remote — little-grey-home-in-the-west kind of thing? And he did come from West Country, too. She bent her head to hide a smile, for home was no laughing matter.
— No Fond Return of Love, chapter thirteen
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‘This is a lodging house, Miss Broome,’ she explained. ‘Are you sure you’ve got the number right? I think it’s mostly Indians and commercial travellers here.’
‘Yes, my friend lives here,’ said Ianthe firmly, feeling almost tempted to add that he was an Indian commercial traveller.
— An Unsuitable Attachment, chapter ten
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I was wearing a dress of deep coral-coloured poplin, very simple, with a pair of coral and silver earrings, and a bracelet to match. I always like myself in deep clear colours, and I felt at my best now and wondered if people were looking at me as I passed them. They seemed to be mostly lovers absorbed in each other, and I did not mind this, but when a drab-looking woman in a tweed skirt and...
Registration for the 2011 North American conference of the Barbara Pym Society is now open. The topic is No Fond Return of Love.
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Harriet was not the kind of person to believe with Marlowe that
Where both deliberate, the love is slight: / Whoever loved, that loved not at first sight?
Obviously that was quite ridiculous. How could one possibly know all the things that had to be known about a person at first sight? Belinda had said she believed Mr. Mold had a very nice house, but then poor Belinda was so vague, and for all...
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‘Is Mrs. Gammon ill as well, then?’ asked Ianthe helplessly.
‘Not that I know of. She’s not at home. It’s her bingo night,’ the vicar explained.
‘Bingo?’ Ianthe gave the word a horrified emphasis, for it sounded unsuitable coming from his pale lips. ‘Tombola’ would have seemed more dignified.
— An Unsuitable Attachment, chapter ten
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‘Well,’ she said, with a hint of triumph in her voice, ‘that’s that.’
‘Yes,’ said Belinda, ‘but what? I hope you didn’t promise him anything for the Library Extension Fund. There are far more deserving causes in the parish.’
‘But, Belinda, surely you guessed why he had come?’ said Harriet patiently, for really her sister was...
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‘I’m beginning to wonder if I wasn’t a bit impetuous offering him the job just like that. But then that’s what I’m like — you ask Mother. One day I bought six pomegranates on the way home — imagine it, six! We didn’t know what to do with them. Of course Mother doesn’t like anything with seeds, or anything foreign, come to that. She doesn’t really...
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‘…I expect you’d enjoy a tea he had prepared himself better than anything else. Women like to see men doing domestic things, especially if they are not done very well — if the tea is too weak or too strong, or the toast burnt.’
— A Glass of Blessings, chapter seventeen
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She opened the drawing-room door quietly. Mr. Mold was standing with his back to her. At Harriet’s entry he turned round, rather startled. He was holding in his hand a copy of Stitchcraft, in which he had been reading how to make a table runner. It is always difficult to know how one ought to be occupied when waiting for a lady in her drawing-room, and he had resisted the temptation to probe...
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‘This instant coffee, made in a moment in the cup with boiling water or milk, is all very well, but it hasn’t got the tone of real coffee, has it. Not that it isn’t delicious,’ she added quickly, as if fearful that the manufacturers might overhear her disloyalty, so close was her contact with them through the waves of commercial television, ‘and of course for people...
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He had called to ask her advice about the small dinner party he intended to give in the next week or so. He had been dismayed, almost horrified, when she had opened the front door a crack and displayed herself pale and ill and obviously in need of cherishing. He had not expected it of her and wished he could have gone away quickly without even asking if there was anything he could do for her.
—...
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‘By the way, I hope Rocky Napier isn’t a bosom friend of yours or a relation? Perhaps I ought not have said what I did.’
‘Oh, not a bosom friend,’ I said. ‘He and his wife live in the same house as I do and he always seems very pleasant.’ After all, what did it matter what this depressing woman thought of him?
— Excellent Women, chapter twelve
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I had gone out to do some shopping at the large store in our neighbourhood which had a self-service grocery department. I sometimes strayed into it, idly and extravagantly filling my basket with any expensive delicacy that happened to catch my eye. Sybil used to call these expeditions ‘Wilmet’s wanderings’, for I never chose really sensible everyday things, which we always had...
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‘I hope you won’t judge our efforts by the standards you expect in your restaurants,’ said Miss Lee, handing him tea in a green plastic cup but not caring in the least what his opinion was. Adam Prince’s ‘work’ was a joke in the village — it seemed hardly credible that people could be paid money to go around eating meals at expensive restaurants.
— A Few Green...
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She had cooked his favorite dishes: chicken with tarragon and chocolate mousse. It was not until she offered the latter and Humphrey refused it that she remembered that he hated anything chocolate. It was James who loved chocolate mousse.
‘A little cheese, my dear, if you have it — that would round off the meal perfectly.’
Of course one had cheese, several different kinds, Leonora...
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I ran downstairs feeling a little confused. Rodney stood in the hall, hesitating, as if he could not decide whether to come up or not. I thought he had probably been drinking a little more than he should and did not feel equal to facing the steely glances of his wife and his mother.
— A Glass of Blessings, chapter fifteen
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Rhoda crouched among the meters, holding a torch to read the little clocks, but whatever she saw there did not seem to solve the mystery. Finally she wrote a sharp note, being as rude as one can only be to an impersonal body, and flinging at them a kind of challenge, which was perhaps irrelevant but which relieved her feelings. ‘I have also noticed,’ she concluded, ‘that the...
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‘I shall hardly be a woman at all, flitting backwards and forwards between the kitchen and the dining-room — looking to see if people have what they want, and all that sort of thing.’
‘You will be playing the most womanly part of all,’ said Viola. ‘Laurel and I will seem insignificant by comparison.’
‘Miss Lord will do the washing up, so perhaps I shall...