A View of the Harbour

by Elizabeth Taylor

  When he opened the door he looked alarmed. ‘What’s up, Iris? What’s wrong?’ he began, standing back against the wall to let her into the narrow passage.

  ‘It’s Mother,’ she said, putting her hands up over her face.

  ‘Is she worse?’

  ‘No. It’s . . .’ She began to cry in a rather strung-up conventional way.

  ‘Dead?’ he asked, using the forbidden word, at which she shrank back against the wall as if he had physically hurt her.

  Upstairs Mrs Flitcroft padded to and fro: they could even hear her suspenders tinkling as she took up her corsets. Eddie put his arm round Iris to comfort her; although it was beyond his understanding that she should need this.

  ‘I don’t want to go back home,’ Iris cried, looking desperately round the dingy little passage as if it were heaven itself to her.

  ‘I will come with you,’ Eddie assured her.

  Mrs Flitcroft came creaking downstairs now, accompanied by a ring of light from a small hand-lamp which she placed on a bracket in the passage. She had assembled herself, clothes, teeth, mother-o’-pearl brooch, and was all ready. Eddie pulled his navy jersey over his head and opened the front door.

  ‘No call for you to come!’ his aunt said sharply.

  ‘I’ll walk along with you, all the same,’ he said, taking Iris’s arm. They closed the door and set out, the three of them walking along in the middle of the road, their footsteps echoing between the buildings, Mrs Flitcroft a little in front, going eagerly on, her door-key grasped in her hand. Eddie and Iris -followed more slowly, close together, her soft bosom pressed against his arm. Moonlight shone on the roofs, on the water, on the flight of steps: water slapped the sides of the boats in the harbour, made chuckling noises between them; and the lighthouse gave first its fleeting gesture, then its glow, beyond all human interruption, as it seemed.

  Mrs Flitcroft went on ahead, but at the foot of the steps she stopped and looked back towards them, beckoning. As they descended after her, Iris’s bosom moved heavily against Eddie’s arm at each step. He drew her tighter, lacing his fingers in and out of hers.

  ‘That’s funny!’ Mrs Flitcroft whispered as they drew near. ‘I could have sworn I saw Mrs Wilson’s door open and someone go in.’

  ‘What of it?’ Eddie asked, for the gossip of one generation does not always interest the next.

  ‘What of it! I mean it was a man.’

  She stood and marvelled at the look of the place, but the blank façade did not blossom into light.

  ‘Well, we must get on,’ she said crossly, as if they had delayed her.

  At the Braceys’ it was all light. Maisie unfastened the door to them, and at once Mrs Flitcroft hastened through the shop, taking the long steel pins out of her hat as she went.

  Eddie loosened his arm from Iris’s and looked at Maisie. She was tired and untidy and her face was grey in the moonlight.

  ‘Hello, Maisie,’ he said awkwardly.

  ‘Hello, Eddie.’

  Then Iris, shivering a little, seemed to grasp her courage, and walked between them into the shop.

  18

  ‘Dear Mother,’ (Tory read):

  ‘Congrats on you are going to be married. Don’t write to Sir about masstoid. I like boxing now. My lip blead I fell out of a tree. I have a pain in my back because I fell out of a tree. I toled Matron she said get along with you but I still have the pain where I fell out of a tree on to my back. The fur trees are out of bounds the branches break. I hope you will like being married I remain

  Your loving son,

  EDWARD G. FOYLE ESQ.’

  Before she could think this over Bertram had arrived. He kissed her and sat down among the breakfast things with her.

  ‘Here are the first felicitations,’ Tory said, passing the letter. As she sipped her coffee she watched him reading.

  ‘What a delightful letter!’ Bertram said. ‘I do hope the boy has not injured his back.’

  Tory put her cup down. ‘I think Matron sounds a little off-hand. He might easily have jarred his spine.’

  ‘Perhaps we should telephone her,’ he suggested.

  That ‘we’ took a great burden from her. For so long she had been alone in her anxieties, now here was Bertram entering into her difficulties and the relief was so immediate that she felt completely reassured.

  ‘I really don’t think we need. You know what little boys are. He has probably quite forgotten it by now. But I am so very glad that you don’t tell me not to fuss.’

  Bertram, who felt that he was being compared favourably with Teddy, was pleased.

  ‘What about Mrs B.?’ Tory asked, suddenly remembering.

  ‘She died last night,’ Bertram said solemnly. ‘That was why I couldn’t meet your train. I felt I could be sure of your understanding.’

  Tory recoiled a little from him, as if death might still hang about his clothes and person. She resented people dying and made this quite plain to the bereaved. It is the peasant types who draw attention to death, make ritual out of it, she felt. The more civilised one is, the more one returns to the first and natural dignity, the dignity of animals, the concealing of death, the dying creeping into dark corners, decently, ignored discreetly by the living. She rated elegance too highly: when it was overthrown she turned her head.

  Now Bertram further affronted her by asking if she believed in God.

  ‘As if I trouble my head with questions I can’t answer!’ she cried.

  ‘It is curious being beside the dying,’ he continued ‘One moment they are there, the next moment they are not. There’s no summing-up, but a sense of incompleteness. After years of building up each unique personality, in the end there is no moment of putting lines beneath the sum and adding up to see what it all amounts to.’

  ‘Who should do the adding up, but those of us who knew the dead when they were living? It is here,’ Tory said, touching her blouse in the place where she supposed her heart to be. She felt herself perfectly willing to add up Mrs Bracey’s personality and make it come out to some very unpleasant result indeed.

  ‘But we all see our friends and enemies differently. No two answers would be the same,’ he objected.

  ‘Exactly,’ Tory agreed, as if this were a very good reason for not bothering herself.

  ‘It is where God would come in so handy,’ Bertram said, spreading marmalade on an odd piece of toast.

  Watching him, Tory began: ‘The flat is not so bad, Bertram, I think it will do . . .’

  ‘I was just going to ask you about it . . .’

  ‘You were not. You are so full of vague thoughts about death and God that you had completely forgotten the important things.’

  She gave him a malicious and exaggerated account of going over the flat, of her interview with the estate agent. Then, getting up from the table, she suddenly said: ‘I have, in fact, decided to go at once.’

  ‘What do you call “at once”?’

  ‘In a few days. I am nearly packed up.’ She glanced round at the empty shelves.

  ‘But how can you move in so quickly?’ he asked in great alarm.

  ‘The woman wants to go. Death again. Her husband has died and she is going home to Mother. Oh, I hope he didn’t die there,’ she said suddenly. ‘But I expect he was in a nursing-home. There were certainly no traces . . .’

  ‘What traces could there be? Bloodstains? Or a shroud hanging on the hall-stand?’

  ‘Please, Bertram! I thought I would go up to stay with friends and take my time making the flat pleasant. Then we can get married, and soon Edward will be home for the holidays. It will be a nuisance if we have to have him at the wedding. He is so critical of all I do that he makes me quite self-conscious and ill at ease.’

  ‘We can easily be married before the end of term,’ he said soothingly, and once more she felt a sense of relief at his words.

  ‘I am going to do a great deal of telephoning, so I mustn’t waste any more of my time,’ she said.

  ‘And I wil
l put the finishing touches to my picture,’ Bertram said.

  ‘We will have good fun, Bertram, won’t we?’

  ‘If you are quite sure of me.’

  ‘Quite sure.’

  ‘And will never regret . . .’

  ‘Oh, never!’ she said with emphasis.

  ‘Then we shall have a wonderful time,’ he assured her. But he did not see it thus. He imagined himself settled, a home of his own for the first time in his life, pottering about – a hinge to be oiled here, a rawl-plug to be fitted there – contented, finding a new circle of cronies at the local – and in London there is always a local – doing a little painting.

  They both contemplated their different pictures of married life, but neither with any overwhelming excitement. He would have liked to have taken her in his arms and said: ‘I will make you forget him. I will help you to escape.’ He felt tenderness and admiration for Tory, but felt, too, that it was better that she did not love him to distraction. He was more jealous of her old, easy, undemanding relationship with her erstwhile husband than of the ungovernable passion she felt for Robert. He rather relied on this passion keeping their marriage on more placid and companionable lines.

  Maisie pinned a little card to the shop-door blind: ‘Owing to the recent decease of the Proprieteress this establishment will remain closed until further notice.’

  The shop was dark with the blinds drawn, a submarine light filtered through the hanging clothes, shadows passed across continually.

  Maisie gathered up all the half-empty medicine bottles with their dusty shoulders and stained labels and threw them into the dustbin, feeling free and uncluttered when she had done so. She worked feverishly, scrubbing and scouring and turning-out. Iris did not go to work but sat about in the kitchen, afraid to go upstairs, afraid to go to bed at night. The time passed very slowly.

  Bertram glanced at the little notice on the door as he went by on his way to an old shop in Lower Harbour Street where he hoped to buy a frame to fit his picture.

  Mrs Flitcroft carried the news of death up and down the alleyways, the courtyards of the harbour. The Guvnor at the Mimosa Café, whitewashing ‘To-day’s Menu’ on his window, noticed the blinds drawn at the Braceys’ and took the news out to the kitchen. Lily Wilson, peeping from behind her lace curtains for the expected signal, felt suddenly chilled.

  Tory telephoned a woman in London and extracted from her an invitation to stay. They were ‘darling’ to one another a great deal and seemed amazed and entranced at the very sound of one another’s voices. The idea of having her friend to stay apparently threw Christabel into a state of ecstasy; yet they had managed to live for some years without meeting or communicating with one another; not a letter had been written and even the Christmas cards had long since ceased to pass between them.

  When these arrangements had been made, Tory unwrapped her china shepherdess from its nest of cotton-wool and took it in to Beth, who was secretly appalled at the sight of it, calling it an ‘ornament’ in her mind and thinking it would mean more work.

  ‘A little keepsake,’ Tory was saying, standing the china figure on the sideboard in front of the display of tarnished silver, where it looked at once incongruous and lost. Stevie was delighted.

  ‘Why are you not at school?’ Tory asked her.

  ‘I have the quarantine,’ Stevie said, on tiptoe before the sideboard. ‘I love the golden ribbons and the strawberries all over her dress.’

  ‘Yes, she is exquisite,’ Beth said.

  ‘I think she is exquisite,’ Stevie echoed.

  ‘It is very sweet of you, Tory.’

  ‘It will remind you of me in years to come,’ Tory said, laughing carelessly to show that she did not mean this.

  ‘Nothing could remind me better, if I needed reminding,’ Beth began; but tears rushed to her eyes and she could not continue. To bring the conversation to another level she said: ‘I hear Mrs Bracey has died. It is probably what is called a merciful release.’

  ‘Will she be burnt or buried?’ asked Stevie.

  ‘We do not know,’ Beth said, with a look at Tory across the child’s head.

  ‘If she is burnt I am sure she will find it too hot,’ Stevie said.

  ‘She will not find it anything of the kind,’ Tory contradicted, ‘because she is not there to feel warm or cold any more.’

  ‘She is in heaven,’ Stevie said casually.

  ‘It is a depressing morning,’ Beth sighed. ‘Mrs Flitcroft hasn’t turned up either.’

  ‘I am going at the end of the week,’ Tory said, as if she were determined to make matters much worse.

  Beth paled, but had no answer to this.

  ‘I know you don’t agree with me over marrying Bertram,’ Tory continued, ‘but as my mind is quite made up, there is no point in delay.’

  ‘On the contrary, if your mind were really quite made up there would be no point in all this haste,’ Beth argued. ‘You are only afraid that you will change your mind, and I can’t understand why you should so much fear to do that.’

  As the conversation promised well, Stevie sat quietly down on a stool, as much out of sight as possible.

  ‘I am tired of living alone,’ Tory said restlessly.

  ‘But why . . . for God’s sake, why Bertram Hemingway?’

  ‘Perhaps because, like all oldish men who have managed to evade and escape women, his gallantry is still intact.’

  ‘So, I’m afraid, are other qualities less desirable than gallantry.’

  ‘Such as . . . ?’

  ‘Irresponsibility, a dreadful sort of boyishness . . .’

  Tory flushed.

  ‘I am only anxious for your future,’ Beth apologised. ‘Stevie, don’t do that!’ she said sharply. ‘Use your handkerchief!’

  Tory walked over to the window. ‘Where is Robert?’ she asked casually – a thing she had never done before.

  ‘Robert?’ Beth said in surprise. ‘Why, I think he is at the hospital. Your handkerchief, I said, Stevie. Did you want him?’

  ‘Only to ask his advice about something to do with the house.’

  ‘I’ll tell him when he comes. I’ll ask him to look in.’

  ‘Any time will do. Here comes Mrs Flitcroft.’

  ‘Then I can get some writing done,’ Beth said contentedly.

  ‘How is your book going?’

  ‘I have nearly finished,’ she said. But she did not expect this to mean anything very special to Tory; nor, indeed, to anybody but herself.

  Bertram found his picture-frame and went round to do a little carpentry in Tory’s kitchen. When he had propped his canvas up on the kitchen-dresser he stood back, awaiting her praise.

  ‘Yes,’ she said at last. ‘It is very good. Very like. There is only one thing . . . it is quite obvious where it is, but not what time of day . . .’

  Bertram said sadly: ‘In fact, the very thing I most hoped to do I have failed over.’

  ‘But it is a lovely picture, none the less. I am sure everyone would think so. I should like to take it with us . . . to remind us of here.’

  ‘No,’ Bertram said. ‘I painted it to be left behind. I promised it to old Pallister and he shall have it . . . after all the false starts I made and this is all I have finished! It will be a souvenir we shall leave here . . .’

  ‘In the bar-parlour,’ Tory laughed.

  ‘In the bar-parlour. I can always paint another one, especially for you.’

  In the evening Robert came.

  ‘Beth said you wanted me.’

  ‘Yes, I wanted to say good-bye.’

  ‘Your mind is absolutely made up.’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Well . . . there isn’t anything I can do, or say, is there? It means that last night is quite discounted.’

  ‘Not discounted.’

  ‘You promised . . .’

  ‘Well, then, I am breaking my word. It was only a word, and spoken at a time when words mean nothing. All the while, I knew I was going and you k
new it, too. Now, I feel that even days count. I can still hope to rush away with some of my self-esteem, but not if I leave it much longer.’

  ‘Why must you?’

  ‘Prudence comes into the room and walks out without speaking to me. Beth notices. She disappears at night and Beth worries . . . no, I know not much, but still, a little . . . then I have begun to talk about you and she is surprised.’

  ‘Begun to talk about me?’

  ‘I know it sounds incredible, but I cannot help myself. To say your name to her suddenly has a terrifying attraction. “Where is Robert?” I ask casually, having ignored you for years. So it is just about time I went.’

  ‘You have never really loved me. Of course I know that. When you’ve gone away I shall manage to forget, perhaps, that it was always Teddy you loved, could not help loving, I shall forget that you scarcely even liked me, but had only a pathetic need of me. I daresay I’ll concoct a tremendous romance out of all this, something to look back upon when I’m old, secret, couleur de rose, poetic. I’ll forget the quarrels, the pain, the harshness – and your reason for needing me.’

  Tory stood very still. ‘At the very beginning you spoke to me in this way. Then I could bear it. But now, at the end, I find I can’t.’

  ‘I am sorry for this man you are going to marry.’

  ‘Robert, I want you to say good-bye to me and then keep out of my way until I am gone. I have to put on what is called a brave front for Bertram’s benefit and also for Beth’s, and I cannot do that with painful farewells confronting me.’

  ‘Every day, I shall get up and go to the hospital, sit through surgery, eat meals with Beth, and go to bed, and it will be like that for all the rest of my life, a thousand times duller and sadder than ever before, other people perhaps going in and out of this house, and for me nothing but work and thoughts of you married to someone else. We only have one life. Surely we mustn’t throw it away? Surely I shall see you again?’

  Tory looked uneasy.

  ‘You mean we might?’ he asked slowly.

  ‘I don’t know.’