Friends and Relations

by Elizabeth Bowen

  “I don’t think I’m ambitious,” said Rodney. She guessed that he did not know what ambition meant. He had an idea of worth, virtue, a strong sense of England; he desired to advance something, not for himself, and consolidate something.

  “Whereas at Batts?” she said.

  “I should fruit farm. The present orchards are magnificent, though the apples are never got in in time; they rot in the grass. All the land’s good, though it’s never been developed. I should begin—”

  “Oh, if you know what you’d do, I should consider that settled.” Recollecting that she had offered him nothing to drink, she rang the bell behind her.

  Rodney’s breath was taken away; the future did seem to have adjusted itself. While he was busy with the syphon, she laughed. “You can all be together for Christmases.” Batts had quite decided her in his favour; the life would be perfect for Janet, the place would be perfect for Janet’s children. As for Edward, she thought a good many children would do him good. At the thought of grand-children, she and Considine both sprang up a generation in stature. Though Rodney naturally could not realize how sadly funny it was, her idea of Christmas. For the young Meggatts’ relatives would be an impossible combination; none of the Studdarts or Tilneys would wish to meet Considine, few would for long be easy under a roof with herself. This rueful contemplation of fact, from time to time, was the nearest she ever came to penitence.

  Edward spending a family Christmas would hardly know himself. Her own family seldom “gathered”; herself, she put up the poorest show of festivity. She remembered one Christmas, their last, in his little-boyhood, and the dumb ceremonial look they exchanged, he and she, over a tinselled branch of the tree between blue and pink rickety candles: she lighting the last. Edward, polite from the cradle, had manifested surprise, though he had for days been aware of her preparations— “You shop,” he had said, “while I look in the other direction.” Solitary in velvet, he had attempted to group himself at the foot of the tree. Some tinsel caught fire; for a second his small face had animated.

  “What a lot of presents for one little boy,” he said as she cut down the sixth. Considine had sent him a small stuffed bear that stood by the tree, upright, with brown paper over its head. It was a stuffed real bear, not jointed, not a teddy-bear; Edward, who had wished for a teddy-bear, pulled at its limbs in silence. “It’s a real bear, Edward.” “I know it was once.” It was a dead bear now and appalled him. Prey to this or some other obscure disappointment he soon afterwards wept and asked to be taken to bed early. She had asked Considine not to come, so the evening with its unescapable smell of wax, of charred tinsel, of crackers she had had to pull with herself with both hands because he hated the bang, remained dedicated to futility. She had perceived that night—and the next, when she and Considine too rashly, too moodily met for her consolation—that any failure in pleasure is absolute…Indifference now drew a line of equality through those days. And she had since seen also, loving Edward from a distance candidly and with less alarm, that he had been a quite ordinary child.

  No one had ever thanked Considine for the bear. She now denied herself sensibility, and was surprised when, from some odd angle, someone had once represented him to her as pathetic. As his good friend, however, the best she could wish him was constancy in his absences. He loved gatherings; his hospitality was notable. At Batts Considine would wish to assemble them all; Edward and pretty Laurel, the comfortable Studdarts. To his overbearing capriciousness difficulties would not present themselves. He forgot almost everything. Too plainly she saw the Studdarts perplexed, Edward stiffening; Laurel’s bright head turned in repudiation. She did not care to think of Considine sentimentally wounded. To be rebuffed as an uncle would be disastrous.

  “Will Considine come to your wedding?”

  “We don’t know; he’s still in Greece—” Rodney broke off, wondering if she knew. “Indeed?” she said. “In love?” she wondered.

  “We so seldom meet,” she said naturally. “We meet by chance. There are so few coincidences.”

  “Janet and I were a coincidence,” said Rodney with an engaging egotism. He was younger than she had, for the moment, realized. Then he ever so slightly blushed. For this unhappy mother of Edward’s—now so contentedly tracing her cat’s spine—was for himself and Janet a major, almost a tragic, coincidence. Bearing down, spectacular as an iceberg over the sunny waters of their engagement, she had so nearly wrecked them.

  That night, they dined out late, hilariously: Lady Elfrida, Janet, Rodney, and Lewis Gibson whom they must meet. Janet had met him? That did not count, they must meet again. Lewis was Edward’s best friend. He had understood Edward’s mother perfectly from the first (better, he saw, than Edward) and often felt himself called up to interpret her. The Janet-Rodney development was after Lewis’s own heart. Throughout dinner he disconcerted Janet by a kind, comprehending stare. At the wedding he, the best man, had scarcely seen the bride’s sister: both were abstractions. Now, she was a beautiful creature; in the Meredith tradition but mercifully almost utterly silent.

  Lewis rang up Edward at midnight to tell him everything would be all right.

  7

  Lewis Gibson had a sister, Marise, at Mellyfield, who did not approve of new girls coming at half-term. Polite, she ignored Theodora with noticeable persistence. She was a bleak, fair girl with hair plaited back so tight that her eyes turned up at the corners. Theodora had, however, a certain advantage; she disliked almost everybody’s appearance. She examined with irony the Second Eleven colours pinned to Marise’s chest, her chapped hands that thawed less than half-way even in summer, her shoe from which a button was missing. Theodora was forced to take up a strong position from the very beginning; the first night she discovered that everyone else in her dormitory wore pyjamas. One of the girls had been nearly captured by brigands; one had travelled in Mexico; they all had brothers; none of them were interested in Switzerland.

  They all undressed with their cubicle curtains undrawn, discussing Georgian poetry. When a bell rang they all drew their curtains and said their prayers, except one girl, an agnostic, who got into bed with a pious creak. Marise Gibson was head of the dormitory; when a second bell rang she said: “Lights out,” because it was still June daylight. She said politely to Theodora in the next bed: “I hope you are not homesick?”

  “I have no home at present,” said Theodora.

  “Oh—Excuse me, but we are always supposed to fold our clothes up.” Then she repeated, “Lights out.” An honourable silence fell.

  Theodora put out some interesting photographs on her dressing-table, but for some days no one looked at them. She put out silver brushes, but Marise said she must keep those in a bag. By day, Theodora was not overlooked. She broke her glasses at once and had to be moved to the front row, in algebra, to see the blackboard. She talked so much French in French class that Mademoiselle, unused for years to the language, was confused and became annoyed. In mid-morning break she played the Rachmaninoff prelude in C sharp minor loudly on the gymnasium piano till a mistress looked in to say it was break now and she had better go out and run about. At tea she sat down at the empty end of a table; a girl who was nice to new girls moved up and asked her about her home.

  “I have no home, actually,” replied Theodora.

  “Christine came this term too,” said the kind girl, nodding down the table. “Her father is dead,” she added in a low voice. But Theodora had already distinguished the other new girls and learnt to avoid them.

  She made her first impression on Jenna, who collected tortures. Theodora knew of two new ones, one Chinese, something to do with a rat, and one Italian, with weights. Jenna went green, became quite friendly and asked Theodora if she had ever been into a used vault. Neurosis had quite a high value at Mellyfield; the third night Theodora shrieked with confidence when a bat came into the dormitory. Two of her companions, Jane and Ludmilla, had a fixation ab
out earwigs. Next day, in break, they asked her to walk with them round the garden. But they were “younger ones”; Theodora, looking round in vain for Jenna, replied that she ought to go in and write letters.

  “But we’re not allowed to, in break; we’re supposed to run about.”

  “Where do you all run to?”

  “We sit in the potting-shed mostly, but sometimes we let the guinea-pigs out and chase them. If they’re not caught in time we get excused drill.” Finally, the three strolled down to the kitchen-garden and ate radishes. Theodora moved on and ate carrots, while the others looked on in alarm. “My dear, you must have an inside!” Theodora went in to geometry with earth in her teeth.

  “Theodora,” Miss Milford said plaintively, “what do you keep sucking?”

  “Please, I have earth in my teeth.”

  “You had better go to the bathroom and wash your mouth out….Jenna, it is not amusing…Hester, why need you poke Elizabeth?…Theodora, can you go out quietly?”

  Altogether, she created quite a pleasurable disturbance, and though Marise at the time did not move an eyelid she paused that evening to look at Theodora’s photographs.

  “Why,” she said, “that’s the Tilney wedding!”

  “Oh yes. Why? Do you know them?”

  “My brother was best man.”

  “Oh, in spectacles; I remember. I didn’t see you there.”

  “Measles. Do you know the Tilneys well?”

  “The Studdarts are my oldest friends.”

  “Oh? I don’t know them. Laurel seems quite pretty.”

  “She’s not really my type,” said Theodora. “Janet has more personality; I’m devoted to her.”

  Everyone listened. Theodora pulled off her stockings and threw them about casually. She did not seem to care if she went on. Marise, binding up tightly the end of her pigtail, remarked with authority: “Lady Elfrida’s difficult.”

  “Oh, do you think so?”

  “My brother doesn’t at all,” Marise said quickly. “He understands her. But most people do.”

  “Understand her?”

  “No,” said Marise crossly. At this point the bell rang and they all knelt down to say their prayers. They did not speak again of the wedding for some days. Marise asked Jenna not, in the public interest, to encourage Theodora. Jenna said she hadn’t, she thought Theodora was quite mad.

  “You do,” said Marise. “You laugh at her. And look how she bucks about playing the violoncello. The one thing she oughtn’t to be is taken notice of. She’s been probably sent here to make nice friends. Jenna, I hope you won’t mind my saying, but you do get in with the most awful people through talking horrors. Look at that Harris girl who had young men.”

  “My dear, I don’t mind telling you while we’re on the subject; that girl had the most lurid mind. But you see, Marise, I’m terribly interested in human nature. But I shouldn’t think Theodora had young men.”

  “I should think she’d do anything to make an impression on anybody.”

  The girls at Mellyfield developed very early a feeling for character. They were interested in their own personalities, which they displayed, discussed and altered. They were very much aware of each other and studied each other’s profiles in chapel or during concerts. They read psychology to each other on Sunday afternoons. Everyone knew, for instance, that Jenna’s insincerity arose from a nervous opposition to circumstance; that Marise to live at all would have to break down her overpowering sense of order, that Hester since she was six had ruined all her friendships by her intolerance and that Ludmilla must be ignored when she squeaked at games because of a bad heredity.

  So that Jenna (notoriously over-anxious to put herself in the right) resumed later to Marise: “If we all can’t bear Theodora it must be because she’s aggressive, mustn’t it? I mean it isn’t as if she looked so awful, or smelled or anything, or were at all common. Now I do wonder why she—”

  “She certainly is aggressive. She can’t even do her hair without banging the things on her dressing-table about as though she were cooking.”

  “Perhaps she’s unhappy.”

  “I don’t suppose she’s more unhappy than we are,” said Marise with some annoyance.

  “But we at least do know we’re unhappy.”

  Marise, who saw where this was leading, said: “Well, I don’t think she need be asked about it her first term.”

  “I do think she’s got a good deal of personality,” said Jenna wistfully.

  “Well, you try. You just have her in your dormitory. And besides, she snores.”

  June was kind that year and Mellyfield beautiful. Classes gathered under the trees; girls, stepping in and out of the windows, crossed the lawns from shadow to shadow in fluttering red tunics; lime-flowers dropped on one’s book in French. Theodora warmed a little to the spectacle. She distinguished herself as a young man in one of the Saturday night plays—these improvised, unrehearsed, in the manner of commedie dell’arte.

  “You make a marvellous man,” said Jane and Ludmilla.

  “Men walk with their elbows out, women walk with their elbows in,” vouchsafed Theodora. “I was told that once and it makes all the difference.” She suggested that they should act Don Juan. Jenna, who was influential in these matters, was more than agreeable. She tied up her hair in ribbons over the temples like a Velazquez girl’s. She had always known she had more passion than she could express. Tights gave out and the lords and attendants had to walk on in togas, but Miss Byng said the conception was excellent.

  “How different you are with no spectacles,” said Doña Anna, lingering by the bathroom door.

  “We’ve never had so much love in a play before,” said Hester, joining them. “Generally, we just arrange for lovers to go off tenderly. I mean, I do think Theodora’s extraordinary.”

  “I suppose I can’t imagine feeling self-conscious,” said Theodora, straddling a little.

  “You tickle my ear when you kiss,” Doña Anna said thoughtfully. “I do wish you’d hold your breath next time.” Marise, too thoroughly the Statue, was elsewhere, washing flour out of her ears. Doña Anna said casually: “Let’s walk round the garden before prayers.”

  But next week, Miss Byng rather strongly suggested they should dramatize folk-songs. She said she liked their programmes to vary. So while Marise was excellent as a Spanish Captain, Theodora glowered in a smock. That night Marise said cheerfully in the dormitory:

  “Lewis writes that Janet Suddart’s engagement is broken off!”

  Theodora put up a passionate opposition: “I don’t believe it!” Though she could not help thinking, “This may be where I come in?”

  “Well, ask someone yourself,” said Marise calmly. “I should have thought you’d have heard, as you know her so well. Lewis says there’s been some sort of trouble with the Tilneys.”

  “That beastly Edward!”

  “He’s not; he’s extremely sensitive.”

  Marise understood Edward. Their relationship had been of the nicest; she had even thought, at one time, that when she herself had reached a gracious maturity and Edward had suffered a few years more they might well marry.

  Theodora lay biting her nails in the moonlight. So Rodney, it seemed—as she feared, as she hoped—was not half a man. Next day, Sunday, she cut chapel and, making a guarded approach to the telephone, rang up Lady Elfrida. The Mellyfield Morris wallpapers were alert with daylight, but at Trevor Square morning had only now made a soft-footed entrance between the curtains and the telephone stung an intact silence.

  “What is this I hear?”

  “I can’t think,” said Lady Elfrida from her pillows, blankly. “And I am afraid I have no idea—”

  “Mrs. Alex Thirdman speaking,” said Theodora distinctly.

  “Oh, how nice. But Janet has just gone home. Cheltenham six double-two s
omething—”

  “What about her engagement?”

  “Oh? She has been engaged some time, you know. She has just motored home with Mr. Gibson. He’s wonderful, isn’t he?”

  “Who?”

  “Mr. Gibson. He had a long talk with Edward. I should contradict anything you hear.”

  “I don’t understand—”

  “Oh dear, can I be the wrong number? Perhaps we’re not talking about the same thing? Do forget what I said; I’m so sleepy—Sixtus—I’m so sorry, my cat is walking over my breakfast-tray—No, Sixtus, not in the grape-fruit.—Well, whatever we both mean, it’s all quite all right, Mrs. Thirdman. I have utter confidence in Rodney, haven’t you?…This has been so nice; we must meet again. We did meet, didn’t we? Goo-ood-bye.”

  She rang off pleasantly. Theodora, bruised a little about the initiative, was left contemplating the school wallpaper where orange-trees repeatedly sprang up and widely branched. She brought out her BB pencil and drew a bespectacled monkey, Lewis Gibson, swarming up one. Then she found the matron and said she feared her nose was bleeding, she had been unable to go to chapel. “When it bleeds it bleeds torrents,” she said. “One cannot tell how it may end. I thought I had better take no risks.” The matron sent her to lie down.

  In reply to a letter, Janet wrote from Cheltenham:

  DEAR THEODORA,

  Thank you so much for your letter. I am sorry you worried, especially as you must be so busy and have important things to do. Everything has been all right and I was not unhappy, so please cheer up. I think Mr. Gibson must have exaggerated a little without meaning to; he is so kind and anxious that everything should go off well. He takes so much trouble and even rang up Mother in the middle of the night to tell her not to be worried at me coming home next day. Please tell his sister how much my mother appreciated his kindness; she is so afraid she may have sounded irritable as she had been asleep. And please ask your mother not to worry. I cannot think what she can have heard; Lady Elfrida tells me she rang up in such distress and did not seem herself at all. It was simply that there was a misunderstanding about my settlement. Father had wanted Edward to act as trustee and when the papers were half-way through Edward found he could not. So you see that was all. Laurel was rather worried and perhaps she exaggerated a little to Mr. Gibson, who is so sympathetic.