The thought approached the borders of Mrs. Quest’s consciousness that she was writing three, four letters a day to Martha, from the balcony over the sea, and before she got up in the morning, and before she went to sleep at night. Well, wasn’t it natural?
Of course one wrote letters when … her mind went dark.
And so, her mind dark, she wrote the letters, fast, flowing, not thinking, page after page, and sealed them without reading them. She posted them in batches, every morning after breakfast, with the vague thought: Well, that’s taken care of.
She was glad when the time came to leave Cape Town. She was ready and packed two days before. On the day before, she felt bad, did not think she could get out of bed, all her body ached and her legs were like sticks. Milly had not gone to work that day; she stayed, quiet, concerned, affectionate, saying no more than that if Mrs. Quest did not leave by this boat, then there would be another in a couple of weeks’ time. Mrs. Quest lay in bed and looked at the young woman’s gentle, humorous little face; she knew that Milly had quarrelled with her husband because of her: she had heard the quarrel through thin walls. Then Bob came into the room and said that he was going to telephone the doctor. Milly was giving him looks that she seemed to imagine Mrs. Quest did not see: they thought she was stupid, did they? She announced, brisk, that there was no need for the doctor, she would be ready to leave when the time came.
Bob left the room, brisk. Milly kissed the old woman, and held her for a moment in her arms. ‘Poor old thing, ’ she murmured, and Mrs. Quest, almost weeping with gratitude, said briskly that she was not at all a poor old thing! The two women exchanged their grimly humorous understanding, in a long close look-then Mrs. Quest heard herself give a snort, or yelp of laughter.
Milly, nodding, as if to say: Yes, but it won’t do, you know! There’s my husband to consider!-went out of the room, to the bedroom, where a married altercation took place. Mrs. Quest listened to its sense, not to the words, which she could not quite catch.
Ah, she was thinking, these awful, opinionated dogmatic people: well, thank goodness she was leaving tomorrow.
That morning she was up before the light came, to sit on the balcony for the last time. The sun rose over a flat grey sea, painted it purple and green, painted the great ship that was to take Mrs. Quest to England, in candid paint-box colours. The sky reverberated with light. She sat in a brilliant world which tired her badly, and she looked at the sun and said to it: I won’t be seeing you again, thank goodness! as if an entirely different sun, friendly and modest, shone over England.
She was seen off by Milly who gave her a bunch of flowers. In her cabin she found chocolates. She and two other old ladies settled themselves and their many belongings into an over-small space. She went back to the deck which her fare entitled her to cover, to watch Cape Town slide away into smallness. She needed to say good-bye to her Africa, as she had needed to say good-bye to its sun. In a confusion of emptiness she was laying hold of licensed and appropriate thoughts: about time, which passed; about life, which was unexpected; about death, inevitable. She was pleased, supported by the joyful bustle of the departure, by the flowers, the chocolates, a farewell telegram from her son. Checking up on these, and her thoughts, as she would have done the number of wreaths at a funeral, or soldiers at a ceremony, she was aware that behind the gestures and rituals that she was, as always, depending on, her mind lay bare, very quiet. Indeed, she seemed quite extraordinarily clear-headed: perhaps it was because she had got up so early. She took a chair as near the railings as she could get, among people who stampeded about like herds of cattle, hoping that some of the salt spray might reach to where she was. When she had come out all those years ago, had people rushed about like this, made noises, shouted, fought over stewards and places? If so, she had forgotten it.
Reminding herself that she must not get tired enough to be caught talking to herself, she sat on while the confusion settled, and routines became established. Then she descended to find out which part of this great machine she was to fit herself to. She did it with a grim private amusement: on this longed-for sea voyage, she, gallant wayfarer, was going to be an old lady among old ladies. She had forgotten it.
By the end of the first day it was as if all these hundreds of people were obeying rules that had been posted up for them: for one thing they were sorted out into their age-groups. Children ran about in their private world, not seeing the grown-up world, seeing only each other. The young people-and there seemed an incredible number of them, flirted and drank and played games together-seeing each other. Mrs. Quest found their behaviour disgusting, but she kept this to herself: she knew she was old-fashioned. There were the married couples, worried about their children. And these shaded off, shredded away into middle age, and then into old age, which was chiefly old women, with one or two old men. So had the tables been arranged in the dining-rooms, and so they all conformed.
Mrs. Quest, an old lady among old ladies, all of them widows (for women live much longer than men), sat in her deckchair which had been placed well out of the wind. She would much rather have been in it. She had a rug over her knees, and she knitted something or other: they all knitted or sewed, and they watched others at play. When Mrs. Quest had said how much she loved a voyage, a good deal of what she loved was the games: she adored the atmosphere of organized jollity, the jokes, the teasing, the good-sportsmanship of it all. She always had … But, had she, she wondered? Well, she had always been a good sort, of course. Now, a good sort, obeying, as she always had, she played whist and bridge. She played well. She loved whist and bridge. But she did not play all afternoon and evening, as some did, she played for an hour or so every afternoon, paid her due, and went back to the deck. On the deck in the evenings everywhere were kissing couples. More than kissing, she suspected. She tried not to notice them and watched the stars overhead, and held the thought that there would be different stars in England. The old ladies remarked on the Southern Cross, that it would soon leave them, but Mrs. Quest found herself thinking that they were all, every one from the cities, and what did they know about stars and the Cross-or about Africa? She had as little in common with them as with a woman who had never left England at all. Privately, she put her decades in Africa beside theirs and tried not to scorn them: she must not criticize so much, she really must not! They talked the talk of old ladies, and Mrs. Quest paid her dues. Here, one might have thought, was the one place where she might unload the weight of her husband’s long last illness, and her thoughts about her children. But the old women, every one, carried their own loads. It was as if, again, a notice-board printed in invisible ink had been posted up: Thou shalt listen to your old sisters’ complaints about life, as they will listen to yours.
Every one told her story, the others listening. But if Mrs. Quest were to tell, truthfully, the long years of that dragging illness-why, it would last the voyage. And they had all had sons in the last war: and they all had children, grown up, about whom they tended to be dishonest. Mrs. Quest was able to acquit herself well: she had her son, married satisfactorily, on his great farm in the mountains, with his four children. Mrs. Quest had four grandchildren-five. There was Caroline. Mrs. Quest found comfort in the fact that, modern life being what it was, she was not the only one to have a daughter who had come to grief in the divorce courts. But she was the only one whose granddaughter was not being brought up by her mother. She slurred this over, rather, though Caroline could have been her favourite, such a decided, clever, well-brought-up girl she was, if rather alarming. The truth was, Caroline tended to patronize her old granny when she came in from the farm to take her out for the day.
The talk tired Mrs. Quest. She was really very tired. It must be the sea air. She rose late. She napped after lunch. She went to bed early. The noisy meals in the dining-room, where the amount people ate seemed truly incredible, exhausted her. She sometimes stayed on deck and asked the deck steward to bring her a cup of soup.
He was a delightful young man, c
hosen either by the laws of his own temperament or by a percipient management, to wait on old ladies. They all vied with each other, asking this youth, who was like a fantasy ideal son (emasculated and in real life not to be tolerated for a moment, being always obedient, attentive and thoughtful), to bring them their favourite brands of chocolate or a rug or cushions. They followed him, sighing, with their eyes, as he whisked towards them with trays and cups, balancing on the balls of his feet to the sway of the ship, making a joke of his facility. Also, while they smiled and sighed, they might exchange glances: they knew perfectly well why it was this one, and not another, who waited on them. Did people think them fools?
That people should not think them foolish because of this disguise they wore, white hair, graveyard faces, unsightly bodies, was a preoccupation with them all: this was the root of their tetchiness, their bad humours. And it was with their own kind, among each other, that they each stood on her dignity, fought politely over little points of precedence, made little claims of privilege. Who else would allow it?
The voyage was half over. The group tended to dissolve into couples. There was a Mrs. Foster who had spent some years on a farm when she was a young woman. Mrs. Quest was unable to talk to her. They sat talking in the official language about time, life, death; but knowledge gave the barest phrases a depth which made it hard sometimes for them to meet each other’s eyes. One old lady might say to another, as they watched the young people flirting, the young married couples with their children, all those smooth bright bodies:’ Yes, but they don’t know, do they?’ It was like a curse, or a spell.
A group of old women in their jerseys, and their warm scarves, and their hair in nets, with their knitting and their careful exchange of phrase, shed their sorrowful glances on the young people who, glancing that way, might pause, grow silent for a moment, even remove themselves to another part of the ship.
Thirty years ago, on the journey out to Africa, Mrs. Quest had been one of them, a strong young woman with two small children, a handsome husband, and a nurse. Thirty years, she kept repeating, entitled to the words, to the idea-but it would not come to life. She could not make it mean anything. She knew if she said to one of the young women, thirty years, what they would hear was the promise of an endlessness, full of possibility, like an open ticket for a gambling-table. But when Mrs. Quest said thirty years, thirty years, thirty years, she could not fill the words with more than what she felt after a bad night: she had dreamed a lot, she had dreamed of an exile, of heights, and dryness and mountains.
Mrs. Foster and she, choosing each other’s company because they had something in common, in fact said very little. They sat silently in the shelter of companionship, watching the young-but guarding their eyes, as if what must come from them would be too baleful to bear.
Mrs. Quest kept running over the official words, phrases: Empire was one. (She tried to change it to Commonwealth, but it was not the same.) Duty was another. God, another. At the Service on Sunday there had been fifty people present, out of all the hundreds on board. They were all too busy enjoying themselves. Mrs. Quest had always tried to do her duty. She went quietly over the Ten Commandments, and thought that she could honestly say her life had been regulated by them. Mrs. Foster was not religious: she, too, was alone, was off to visit old friends in England she had not seen for twenty years, because, as was clear to Mrs. Quest, her children did not want her. Mrs. Foster had not been to the Service on Sunday. What difference did it all make? And she, Mrs. Quest, was a white settler (once a proud claim, not a stigma), a bloodsucker, an exploiter: Bob had as good as said she was. Her mind rattled with words, phrases, bits of prayer, and hymns, and remarks about life and death which all her life had fed her, supported her. But she was really very tired, very tired. She told herself that two years before she had been working as hard on the farm as her daughter-in-law or her son, and that two years could not have turned her into an old woman who was always tired and who needed to be waited on. But they had.
She had been forced to become an old woman: she had been forced to join this group of old hens with whom she had nothing in common; she was being made to play bridge and to sit out of the wind, knitting and to sleep away time because she had nothing to do.
It seemed to Mrs. Quest that a word, a wave of the magic wand, and she would be a young matron again, all self-reliant competence-like that girl over there, a browned healthy young creature who played deck games all day, with her husband and a group of friends. She was a good sort, ready for anything. The old woman sat watching the young woman. She would make excuses to move her deckchair so as to keep Olive Prentiss in her sight. It seemed to her that there was an understanding between them, that although they had never exchanged a word, they felt for each other. The old lady waited for her to smile. She did once. Then, she said ‘Good morning!’ And the day after, she asked how Mrs. Quest was. Mrs. Quest imagined that Olive came and asked for her advice - ‘with all your experience …’ Mrs. Quest told her not to put off having children too long: children were the only thing in life worth having.
One night Mrs. Quest stood on the deck by the rail watching her sea rushing past. It was dark, with a little light falling from a door. Olive Prentiss came out, alone, a few paces off. She looked harassed-guilty? She turned her back to the rail and looked up and down the deck. She did not see the old lady. She half-squatted, put her hand under a brief white skirt, pulled out a little bloody swab and then tossed it over the rail into the sea. She stood up again, looked quickly about-and saw Mrs. Quest. Mrs. Quest was smothered with emotion. She called it, later, outrage: it was the carelessness of the girl that shocked. A couple of brief glances around, not seeing Mrs. Quest, who was so close (am I invisible then? the old lady asked herself, furious), then the fast, practised half-squat and the disposal of the horrid object. Seeing Mrs. Quest, there was the briefest reaction of surprise. Then she smiled, and said, ‘Plenty of room in the sea.’ She lingered-out of politeness, Mrs. Quest saw, incredulously-smiled again, and went into the Lounge.
Mrs. Quest seethed, raged, suffered. When she was a girl … but she could not, suddenly, bear to remember what now seemed like a long story of humiliation and furtiveness, great soaking bloody clouts that rubbed and smelled, and which one was always secretly washing, or concealing, or trying to burn; headaches, and backaches and all kinds of necessary tact with obtuse brothers and father; and then, her breasts, her first sprouting breasts, about which the family had made jokes and she had blushed-but of course, had been a good sort.
She went to bed early and felt ill. She pushed Olive Prentiss out of her mind, and with it the incident, and the memories it had brought up.
There’s plenty of room in the sea, indeed!
Mrs. Quest, two days away from England, decided not to get up. She felt bad, she told Mrs. Foster, who came to visit her. Mrs. Foster was pleasant, tactful: much too tactful to suggest the doctor, or medicines.
A cabin maid fussed over her. A cabin-mate, an old Mrs. Jones from Johannesburg, offered her own symptoms in exchange; Mrs. Quest was thinking, as she listened, that Mrs. Jones was only doing it to get some attention, there was nothing at all wrong with her.
She lay in her bunk, delighting in the sway and the grind of the ship under her, remembering how she had enjoyed that same sensation on the voyage out. She thought now, not of Martha, but of her girlhood, calling it ‘England’. Through her mind ran phrases, words, her official memory: pain was approaching so fast, with the approach of Martha, that she had to return to old supports.
Say what you like she had enjoyed herself when she was a girl: young people had clean fun in those days-not that one could use that phrase now, it was a joke, apparently! But there had been none of this nasty emphasis on sex all the time: that girl in the swimming pool the other day, you could see her breasts, at one point even her nipples had been visible as she pulled herself out of the pool: it wasn’t nice for the crew; many of them were Coloured, it wasn’t responsible. No, when she and h
er friends and her friends’ brothers met for their musical evenings and their visits to the theatre, and concerts, there was none of that. And it wasn’t as if any of them had had much money: no, in those days people knew how to make their own amusements. They played healthy games, and none of them were morbid. Not like young people now, who only cared for pleasure, they didn’t believe in God, and the girls, nothing but flibbertygibbets, all make-up and drinking and sex … but that was before the war, of course, before the old war …
On the night before the ship docked at Tilbury, Mrs. Quest lay awake and tried not to talk aloud to herself. In the morning, one of the others said: You didn’t have a very good night, dear, did you?’
It wasn’t nicely said-but never mind, thank goodness that awful voyage was over, that was done with: well, things don’t always turn out the way you expect them to.
Before Martha saw her, Mrs. Quest had been watching Martha, first from the ship-someone had a pair of field-glasses, and then from where she waited for her turn in the Customs. With Martha was a man and a small boy of about ten. Martha looked tired. With the man she seemed not to be communicating much, or at least, talking; but with the child she was laughing and animated: at one point was playing a kind of hide-and-seek around some piles of luggage. By the time Mrs. Quest joined Martha, the man and the child had disappeared.
They kissed.
‘Didn’t you have someone with you?’ inquired Mrs. Quest.
‘Yes. Mark came down with Paul-he promised to take Paul around the docks today.’
Mark was the writer: who was Paul?
‘Didn’t I tell you?’ asked Martha. ‘Paul is the nephew, you know.’
Yes, Martha had told her: there had been facts, in letters. The child must then be the son of the communist spy whom Bob had talked of so knowledgeably?
The Four-Gated City Page 34