No Fond Return of Love Read Free

said Miss Foy.
    ‘No, and then one finds oneself looking at the horror or misery in them with detachment, and that in itself is horrifying.’
    Miss Foy laughed uncertainly. ‘I wonder if you’ll find a subject here.’
    ‘Probably not. It seems too obvious a hunting-ground, if you see what I mean.’
    ‘Yes – too many eccentrics,’ said Miss Foy, realizing that her own greatest pleasure in life was a tricky item of classification or biblio-graphical entry. ‘Look, here’s the pud. Shall I serve it or would you like to?’
    ‘Oh, you do it,’ said Dulcie. ‘I’m not very good at measuring things out.’ She felt that the performance of this simple task might be satisfying a deeply felt need in Miss Foy, which was something more than mere bossiness.
    At the end of the meal the tables were cleared; it seemed that nobody could leave without carrying something, even if it was only a jug of custard or an unused fork They then moved over to the conference hall to hear about the programme for the week-end. It was announced that on this, the first, evening there would be no lecture or discussion, but a kind of’social gathering’ so that members could get to know each other better. Coffee would be served.
    Viola heard this with dismay, for she was not of a gregarious nature. If she could not talk to Aylwin Forbes she would go to bed and read, but the thought of the little cell-like room was not inviting and she found herself moving with the others into a sort of common-room, crowded with little armchairs and pervaded by the smell of coffee and the clatter of teaspoons.
    ‘It will be nice to have a cup of coffee,’ said Dulcie.
    Viola thought with irritation that Dulcie was just the kind of person who would say it was ‘nice’ to have a cup of indifferent coffee with a lot of odd-looking people. She had already classified her as a ‘do-gooder’, the kind of person who would interfere in the lives of others with what are known as ‘the best motives’. She determined to shake her off as soon as she could. It was unfortunate that their rooms were next to each other. Viola even considered asking that her room might be changed, but it seemed hardly worth while for a week-end. Besides, she did not know whom to ask.
    The common-room had glass doors at one end, beyond which there seemed to be a kind of conservatory. Viola contrived to get separated from Dulcie in the coffee queue and to slip through the doors – unnoticed, she hoped.
    It was indeed a conservatory, with potted palms and the gnarled stem of a vine breaking out into a profusion of leaves overhead. Viola sat down in a basket chair and looked up at the leafy ceiling from which bunches of black grapes were hanging. It was wonderful to get away from all those dreadful people. What ever had possessed her to come to this conference? She closed her eyes self-consciously, imagining that somebody might come in and find her. But Aylwin Forbes, looking through from the common-room, withdrew hastily at the sight of her, and began an animated conversation with Miss Foy and Miss Randall about mutual acquaintances in the academic world. Eventually, it was Dulcie’s voice, with those of two other women, that broke into Viola’s solitude, saying, ‘Look, here’s a charming conservatory, with a real vine. And grapes too, how lovely! Do you mind if we join you?’
    ‘Of course not,’ said Viola coldly. ‘Anyone can come in here, I imagine.’
    So the evening came to an end, Dulcie and Viola and two women in flowered rayon dresses sitting on the basket chairs, offering each other cigarettes and speculating about the hardness of their beds. It was not long before conversation petered out and Dulcie and Viola retired to their adjacent rooms.
    Before she slept, Dulcie thought of the big suburban house where she had lived with her sister and her parents and which was now hers, her parents being dead and her sister married. Outside her bedroom window was a pear tree on