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Authors: Philip Larkin
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and regrets afterwards. For although Katherine was easily moved by a crowd she was not a person to make friends carelessly, and this was exactly what they had led her to do.
After that day, for some weeks she had gone about in subdued dread, but as no more was heard of the scheme this gradually passed. There were other more immediate things to take her attention, so that when one of her friends arrived at school brandishing the first of the letters it came as a shock. Several correspondences began, and as Katherine listened to the boys’ letters being read aloud at sporadic intervals her alarm returned: she felt herself quite incapable of keeping her end up in this kind of exchange. In the hilarious search for double meanings shesounded as light-hearted as anyone, but inwardly she hoped her application would have gone astray. It was really not her sort of amusement at all.
She need not have worried. When Robin Fennel’s first letter arrived, she was relieved to find it very formal. He described his home and school and daily life as if writing an exercise. Even her friends were hard put to it to find anything funny or thrilling. The only tangible thing he seemed to do was go bicycle rides, and so they called him “the bicyclist”. In every subsequent letter when he innocently began a paragraph “The other day I cycled to” they shrieked with laughter. But the joke passed; other correspondents were far more interesting, and soon no-one bothered about her letters from England unless to say: “Well, and how’s the bicyclist? Still bicycling about?”
Incongruously, her relief changed slowly to disappointment . She felt slightly annoyed with this Robin Fennel for letting her down: she did not mind their laughing at him, but she resented the patronizing verdict that Katherine had drawn a blank. She kept on writing, although the exchange affected her no more than an interminable business correspondence, and after a while began trying to draw him out. She started writing only half her letters in English, and filling the other half with more personal likes, dislikes, and enthusiasms, hoping to lure him into following suit. He did: but the two halves of his letters (divided by a short ruled line) remained equally dispassionate. He had been here, gone there; he had walked, fished, swum; he had read this, heard that. As a last attempt, she had begun writing in diary form, with alternate (and usually shorter) entries in English, wondering if he could be persuaded to adopt this form and so become more intimate. But he stuck to the half-and-half arrangement, starting, invariably, “Dear Katherine” and ending “Robin Fennel ”. This was all very exasperating. Fundamentally, as she knew well, she did not want a close friendship withhim. He sounded harmless but dull. But it would have made the task of writing to him much more interesting, and in any case she disliked failing in anything she attempted.
So after these vain attempts, she gave it up. She got into the habit of leaving the familiar letter with the English stamp lying about unopened for days, or she read half of it before being momentarily interrupted and then forgot to finish it. Her answers were shorter and less prompt. What now became so annoying was that he did not take this hint any more than he had taken her first one: though he could not be drawn on, he could not be shaken off. To Katherine’s disgust, he sent her a card on her birthday—a woodcut, not displeasing. His letters always arrived nine days after hers were posted. From annoyance she passed to alarm: “But I shall never get rid of him!” she thought, panic-stricken. Her friends prophesied a life-time of writing serious letters to England, and receiving in return lengthy descriptions of bicycle journeys: “but perhaps it won’t always be so bad, perhaps he will buy a motor-car one day. Then he will go much faster and much farther, and will have lots more to tell you, and he will write much
After that day, for some weeks she had gone about in subdued dread, but as no more was heard of the scheme this gradually passed. There were other more immediate things to take her attention, so that when one of her friends arrived at school brandishing the first of the letters it came as a shock. Several correspondences began, and as Katherine listened to the boys’ letters being read aloud at sporadic intervals her alarm returned: she felt herself quite incapable of keeping her end up in this kind of exchange. In the hilarious search for double meanings shesounded as light-hearted as anyone, but inwardly she hoped her application would have gone astray. It was really not her sort of amusement at all.
She need not have worried. When Robin Fennel’s first letter arrived, she was relieved to find it very formal. He described his home and school and daily life as if writing an exercise. Even her friends were hard put to it to find anything funny or thrilling. The only tangible thing he seemed to do was go bicycle rides, and so they called him “the bicyclist”. In every subsequent letter when he innocently began a paragraph “The other day I cycled to” they shrieked with laughter. But the joke passed; other correspondents were far more interesting, and soon no-one bothered about her letters from England unless to say: “Well, and how’s the bicyclist? Still bicycling about?”
Incongruously, her relief changed slowly to disappointment . She felt slightly annoyed with this Robin Fennel for letting her down: she did not mind their laughing at him, but she resented the patronizing verdict that Katherine had drawn a blank. She kept on writing, although the exchange affected her no more than an interminable business correspondence, and after a while began trying to draw him out. She started writing only half her letters in English, and filling the other half with more personal likes, dislikes, and enthusiasms, hoping to lure him into following suit. He did: but the two halves of his letters (divided by a short ruled line) remained equally dispassionate. He had been here, gone there; he had walked, fished, swum; he had read this, heard that. As a last attempt, she had begun writing in diary form, with alternate (and usually shorter) entries in English, wondering if he could be persuaded to adopt this form and so become more intimate. But he stuck to the half-and-half arrangement, starting, invariably, “Dear Katherine” and ending “Robin Fennel ”. This was all very exasperating. Fundamentally, as she knew well, she did not want a close friendship withhim. He sounded harmless but dull. But it would have made the task of writing to him much more interesting, and in any case she disliked failing in anything she attempted.
So after these vain attempts, she gave it up. She got into the habit of leaving the familiar letter with the English stamp lying about unopened for days, or she read half of it before being momentarily interrupted and then forgot to finish it. Her answers were shorter and less prompt. What now became so annoying was that he did not take this hint any more than he had taken her first one: though he could not be drawn on, he could not be shaken off. To Katherine’s disgust, he sent her a card on her birthday—a woodcut, not displeasing. His letters always arrived nine days after hers were posted. From annoyance she passed to alarm: “But I shall never get rid of him!” she thought, panic-stricken. Her friends prophesied a life-time of writing serious letters to England, and receiving in return lengthy descriptions of bicycle journeys: “but perhaps it won’t always be so bad, perhaps he will buy a motor-car one day. Then he will go much faster and much farther, and will have lots more to tell you, and he will write much
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