Less Than Angels by Barbara Pym Page A

supposed it might be some kind of a compliment to herself that he had not waited for them to come out of the seminar. Unless, of course, he had been so eager for a drink that he just couldn’t wait.
    ‘I don’t think I’ve ever tried drinking alone,’ she said. The idea of it made her want to laugh. She imagined herself in her room at home with a bottle of gin and her mother or aunt calling out, ‘What are you doing, dear?’ Or Mr. Dulke watching her from his front garden.
    Tom smiled at her and said, ‘ No, I suppose you’re too young to have done much drinking of any kind.’
    ‘I’m nineteen,’ she said rather coldly.
    ‘Oh, much too young,’ he mocked. ‘This is the usual place, I believe, unless you prefer one of the others?’
    They had stopped outside one of the many pubs in the area. Deirdre didn’t know whether it was the usual place or not. One pub seemed very much like another to her, except that some were of the old cosy type, while others, like the one by the river at home, all new and gleaming. This was of the cosy kind, with round tables and shabby horsehair benches. The bar was crowded with what Deirdre thought of vaguely as ‘business men’, all laughing excessively loudly at what must have been a joke made by the fat elderly woman who was serving them. Though perhaps it did not always need a joke to make a group of men laugh loudly in a pub.
    ‘We shall have to drink beer,’ said Tom rather apologetically. ‘I hope that’s all right?’
    ‘Oh, lovely,’ she said, taking a large brave gulp of the tepid bitter. ‘ I simply adore it.’
    There was a silence and Tom began to wonder why he had asked this strange girl to drink with him instead of waiting for Mark and Digby or somebody else that he knew to come out of the seminar. He had left Catherine busy finishing a story and seeming to have no time for him, so it was both soothing and gratifying to have Deirdre beside him, her great brown eyes fixed on his face, an occasional interested or sympathetic murmur her only interruption to his account of himself and his work. Tom had never had to make much effort with women, who took a natural and immediate liking to him, so he did not lay himself out to be particularly interesting to Deirdre or to ask her anything about herself.
    Love at first sight can hardly ever be mutual, though it may seem to have been when discussed and remembered later. Tom was certainly not aware of Deirdre as anything much more than a satisfactory audience, but with her it was very different. She felt such a rush of happiness that she could have listened for ever to his voice going gently on about the complications of lineage segmentation. Something of what she felt must have shown itself in her face, for when she turned towards him with a smile on her lips and an uncomprehending starry-eyed look, he smiled too, said something about being a bore and went to get another drink.
    With the second bitter they looked at his photographs. Dark-skinned figures, dressed in white robes, bits of cloth or nothing, crowded together in various unidentifiable activities, mostly seen from a distance. Sometimes, for a change, there was a close-up of a menacing figure in a mask or a dress of leaves, or a beautiful girl, naked to the waist and wearing a lot of beads, which Deirdre stared at dutifully but with some embarrassment, not quite knowing what to say. The last photograph seemed to be of Tom himself, standing outside a hut with a pointed thatched roof.
    ‘I think I like that one best,’ she said shyly, hoping that he might give it to her, but he just laughed and said that it was in the worst possible taste to show photographs of oneself in the field, and then gathered them back into their wallet.
    Deirdre looked at the clock. She saw to her amazement that it was after two. ‘I must go,’ she said. ‘I told my mother I’d be home early this afternoon,’
    ‘Oh, I hope she won’t worry, then. Mothers do tend to, I