Jane And Prudence by Barbara Pym Jilly Cooper

Author:Barbara Pym, Jilly Cooper
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781405514781
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

12

In her early days Jane had once had a book of essays published and had somehow managed to become a member of a certain literary society of which she still sometimes attended meetings. These usually took place in the evenings, and were another excuse for Jane to absent herself from parish duties and to stay a night with Prudence at her flat. This particular meeting was to be a rather special one; it was the centenary of the birth of an author whose works Jane had never read, but who had died recently enough to be remembered by many persons still alive. This seemed a good reason for a literary society to be gathering together, as Jane explained to Nicholas, who had protested, though mildly enough, at her missing a meeting of the Parochial Church Council.

‘I shouldn’t do any good there,’ said Jane guiltily, remembering her intrusion into the choir vestry a few weeks ago of which she had told him nothing.

‘I should have thought the time could be more profitably spent in encouraging young authors rather than in celebrating dead ones,’ Nicholas declared.

‘But it does encourage them,’ Jane said. ‘They imagine that one day such a meeting might be held about them, and I suppose they wonder what will be remembered and hope it won’t be something they’d prefer to be forgotten.’

Nicholas sighed and did not argue further, for he knew it was likely to be as profitable as most arguments with his wife. His poor Jane, he must let her go where she wanted to.

The society met at a house with vaguely literary associations, for it was next door to what had once been the residence of one of the lesser Victorian poets, who is, nevertheless, quite well represented in the Oxford Book of Victorian Verse.

Jane entered the house with rather less awe than on her first visit many years ago, and made her way to a room on the first floor where the meetings were held. It was a pleasant room with the air of a drawing-room about it, though the rows of chairs were set a little too close together for comfort. Jane stood in the doorway, looking to see if anyone she knew had arrived, and soon noticed her old college friend, Barbara Bird (‘Miss Bird has her novels and her dogs,’ as Miss Birkinshaw put it), sitting in the back row. She was wearing a shaggy orange fox fur cape and smoking a cigarette which she waved to Jane, indicating a vacant chair at her side.

‘Freezing cold in here,’ she said. ‘Nice to see you, Jane.’

Jane sat down and looked around her. Here again, as when she went back to her old College, she found that she did not really look any more peculiar than the majority of the women present, most of whom were dressed without regard to any particular fashion. But it was a cold evening, so perhaps they had more excuse than the graduates who met in the summer. Jane herself

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