Friends and Relations

by Elizabeth Bowen

  6

  “I know,” said Janet, and hung up the receiver. She could say nothing more, facts were not in order. Also, Edward came in from the terrace. The position of the telephone here was characteristic: it was for barest communication only, and in the hall.

  Edward did not surprise her; she had heard him halt on the gravel; before that twice he had passed a window. He had gone out for a turn, he said; to pace out the interim. As he came up the steps she had him exposed a moment in full sunshine before in irresolute outline he darkened the doorway.

  Janet said composedly: “Your mother. She’s bringing the children straight back.”

  “Is she? Thank you, Janet…It’s hot out there.”

  “I should think so. But I’m afraid I can’t get them packed in time for the five-thirty-six. Will the seven-five do?”

  “I suppose she thinks I am mad?” said Edward suddenly, glancing at the telephone.

  “—As it is, some of their things will have to be sent after them. Hermione’s maid is out for the afternoon. Shall I write this to Laurel—she may wonder—or shall you remember to tell her?”

  Laurel never expected Edward to control agitation; much had been based on a strong feeling she had for spontaneity. So that he was surprised by the tone of decided reproof in which Janet added: “I can’t think why you should go out without your hat.”

  Had he suffered? He passed his hand over the top of his head.

  She said: “Well, shall we come into the library?” She was so patient, he must be an invalid; so without concern for him, he must be sick from some over-indulgence. As a domestic emergency, he came under control.

  “Won’t Theodora—?”

  “No, I sent her out to find Rodney.”

  “Because I suppose,” said Edward, looking with horror at the library door, “we had better talk.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Or could we walk somewhere—down to those trees?”

  “I should stay still while you can, Edward; you’ve had a tiring day.”

  So he followed her and, with an air of fatality, closed the library door. Standing beside the high mantelpiece she kept her barely ironic formal manner; this was to be an interview. Thus, as a girl, she had enraged him in Trevor Square. Now, more kindly, established, his hostess, she disclaimed her advantage.

  For from the terrace he had viewed the whole mass of her trees, at this season in their magnificence; thoughtless great plants vitally embracing the daylight, exercising upon his distraction a physical dominance. He saw the contours of the land in their whole mild power. She possessed the skyline; the sky, the large afternoon were bounded by her and localized. And narrowly pacing her terrace he had measured the whole of his own territory, the barren and pitted territory of emotion.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “to come down like this and disturb you—and everything.”

  “I suppose you felt you must.”

  “But whatever did you expect?”

  Though she still did not look his way her repose had an absolute candour. “We hoped by now you might let things pass. We’ve respected your—your feeling for quite a long time, Edward.”

  “Yes, I know you…”

  “Yes?” She too willingly paused, and there ensued a contest of silences, during which she did not sir.

  Till he exclaimed: “But why now? What has changed? Why, now should I be less what you all call impossible? Why have my mother here with Considine now, out of all these years, with Anna and Simon here?”

  “It seemed the one thing to do,” said Janet. “It was so fine,” she added, and after some seconds’ reflection produced no amendment.

  “Does nothing seem to you difficult?”

  “I don’t know. This seemed natural.”

  Her unnatural sense of the natural…She remained a dark stranger, too near him. While she assumed—as then in her awkward girlhood—some understanding between them, speechless, fatal without love.

  “But do things like that change?” said Edward who, as she would not look at him, would not look at her, but fixed closely the object at which she too was looking, the pediment of a candlestick.

  “We are all so much older; by now our children are people. Surely we must have arrived—” This became too difficult for her thought, she abandoned it and continued: “I suppose we gave you the benefit of the doubt. We all take up so much more room in this house, or something. Of course, it’s unlucky that Rodney should be Considine’s nephew, but no more so than that you should be Elfrida’s son. I do feel it’s time we thought about something else. It’s unhealthy, surely, don’t you think. Like having to stay indoors with the blinds down because of a funeral always going by.”

  “Which has been, naturally, always my fault,” said Edward stonily.

  “Not quite,” she said simply. “But one has got to be practical. You know this house is not large; our friends like to come here, in summer specially; we like to have them; that is our idea of a home. The summers are really too short, if our friends must not meet. We cannot keep asking Considine to leave here, his own house, and go to his club when he is so little in England anyhow. We cannot expect your mother to stay in London without a cook because she once ruined herself—Yes, I did mean ruined herself; isn’t that how you’ve made her see it?—For that matter, we could not refuse Theodora when her flat was let and it rained so much in Austria, though she does bore your mother and bully Considine. Your mother and Considine amuse each other; I’ve never made friends much; I never knew two people, except sisters, could be so happy. If you do think it shocking for your children to see two people amusing each other who once made each other wretched, of course you are quite right to take them away. Only this, Edward: I don’t know how much Anna and Simon do know, but when they must hear what happened, surely this, what they see here now, would be nice for them to remember? Otherwise, I don’t see how you can bear them to grow up.”

  “I suppose I hardly can,” said Edward involuntarily.

  “Oh Edward, don’t be ridiculous! Then why were they ever born?”

  “But their world—”

  “But after all, there only is one world; and that’s naturally awkward sometimes, like sharing a room.”

  “You talk of amusement—but they were utterly through with each other. You know, we all know; it was wretched: they couldn’t even marry.”

  “Well, they are amused: perhaps you and I couldn’t understand how. They are the same age, they have the same angle, they are comfortable together; I daresay we all seem a shade absurd to them. I wouldn’t mind that, would you? At most times they must have to keep so much to themselves. They are surprised at the same things. They talk…”

  “They had nothing more left to say.”

  “Perhaps not then.”

  “When they were in love?” he cried, incredulous.

  “I can’t tell,” said Janet. “I never have much to say. Have I?”

  “I can’t tell—you’ve never talked to me.”

  “Oh, I don’t think this does much good,” exclaimed Janet. “Do you want me to go on?” She moved the candlestick, then its fellow, a little nearer to the clock. Edward walked away from her down the library, drew up and stared at some shelves. “No, go on,” he said.

  “They talk about…what became of their friends, their investments, what he has done, what she would have liked to do, what they both don’t like. And spas and places, and marriages—”

  “Marriage?”

  “No, whom people married.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ve heard them.”

  “And why should this be specially good for the children?”

  “—I do hope, Edward, we shan’t quarrel again—Because they’re your children!”

  He committed her fully to this, underlining the remark by a complete silence
. She had to turn round: he replaced a book. Nothing further had to be understood; they let the remark remain between them, a sheer awkwardness. “Edward—” she began; this was the first break in her manner; despair came through, so personal, so positive that it was like the carrying-in of a light in which the whole subject wavered a moment, to become smaller and plainer. “This does no good,” said Janet.

  Silence took this again on its surface, a glass wall against which she stood excluded. She stood powerless, looking through at her life, at, not regainable, her whole habit of mind. This, like a house long inhabited without feeling and vacated easily, bore in, revisited in its emptiness, an anguishing sense of her no-presence even in the past. “I am here,” she thought, and pressed the mantelpiece which again in a few months would redden over the firelight. But the marble contact lessened under her hand; either the stone warmed or her hand, chilling, became insensible of coldness. Even the room, this high sober library, green with outdoor reflections, was now empty of Janet and Edward, as though both had turned and gone out by different doors, or had never come in.

  He looked round, possibly to speak. But— “Edward,” she suddenly asked, “what brought you down here today? I mean, why today? They’ve been here a week; it’s more than a week since I told Laurel.”

  “Of course: I remember your letter.”

  “We were beginning to hope you mightn’t mind,” she said naïvely.

  “Were you?” said Edward, curious. “I don’t know if I did mind. I was just entirely taken aback. I suppose I had thought things were understood. But of course if you could do that, I couldn’t do anything. I just let things be. My dear, if you are working nine hours a day nothing is a catastrophe—Oh, I daresay nothing is a catastrophe—Outside work, I haven’t thought of anything for a week. I’ve got back to dinner and walked round the Gardens and gone to bed. We’ve got a beastly little dog now and I take it out. I supposed I must never have trusted you, so it didn’t matter.”

  “Yes, I see,” said Janet. “Then why did it matter today?”

  “We got a letter.”

  “I don’t see…”

  “Laurel got a letter from Theodora.”

  “I didn’t know they wrote to each other.”

  “They don’t.”

  “Then what had she to say?”

  “I can’t tell you,” he said sharply.

  Janet had had no idea that letters of this kind left her house. She thought: “What a pity…How horrid.” Aloud she said: “I think you’d better tell me, if it really worries you. But I shouldn’t take much notice. Theodora is odd; I suppose it’s her sense of humour.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Well, no, naturally. Show me the letter.”

  “No, I couldn’t,” said Edward, appalled. “That would be absolutely impossible!”

  “Nonsense,” said Janet, and held out her hand impatiently.

  “Very well,” said Edward. His voice went up to a cold high note of indifference; he was no longer concerned with her peace of mind. He looked through his pocket-book and passed her some folded sheets of the blue familiar Batts notepaper. “Here you are,” said Edward. It did not matter to him if the house fell.

  Theodora had written:

  “…pleasant, though I am so bored. The days are wobbly and hot, we go up and down to the vicarage. Once we’ve been out to tennis. The nights, though, are perfect fêtes galantes—for all the rest. The window sills don’t cool all night. I sit outside the library—no one for me to stroll with—the children sit out above. They go through their collection of glow-worms and talk about their grandmother—you have no idea! I forget, is Anna a little girl who has been Told, or Not been told? Not, I should think, or she’d hardly be so ingenuous. I think, below, how boringly one really does sin—Though of course, dear Laurel, how should I know? Don’t snub Anna, she’s wonderful. Besides, she is bound to grow up to a disappointment. Meanwhile, the lawn is like a hot promenade in August; people keep passing and smiling. Rodney and Janet pick up more glow-worms for the children’s collection. It’s like Rodney and Janet, who can’t love reciprocally, to have this here for a spectacle.”

  And further on:

  “Innsbrück itself could not be duller. No doubt it’s my fault; I snubbed their last young man. Besides, I asked myself. They were all getting on so nicely—I must say, they are still. So I sit writing letters—even to you, dear Laurel—I could wish you were both here, but I’m afraid you’d find that impossible. I’m afraid it will rain by July; you will all sit indoors at nights and only half know Batts, which is so full of possibilities. But perhaps you may like that better. And Janet must be the perfect sister. Do stop her fussing about the dairy; there is always quite enough butter; I don’t know what more she wants. I brush her hair at nights; I brush well. Never let her cut it.”

  Janet read, at all times, with an annoying slowness. Now, with an utter lack of expression, she re-read the letter. “But I can’t think,” she said at last, “why Laurel bothered to show you this.” And later: “But there’s nothing here at all true that I didn’t know.”

  But on Edward the letter’s appearance, or the very fact of her reading, had renewed the letter’s whole agonizing effect. Janet’s very impassivity seemed to conduct pain to him.

  “But you know,” she said, “that I know Theodora is rather—I suppose really rather a bounder. I can’t think why; the Thirdmans are so nice.”

  “That’s not the immediate point…”

  “Yes, it is the point. I’d no idea she was so bored.”

  “Oh, she’s jealous, obviously—Why do you let her brush your hair?”

  “Do you mind?” said Janet, and intent once more on the mantelpiece once more moved the candlesticks away from the clock.

  “I seem to mind everything, don’t I?” said Edward bitterly. “How impossible I must be.”

  “Not just impossible; jealous.”

  “Of whom?” he said quickly.

  “Your mother; she seems to have such a lovely time. Perhaps we all are.”

  “Speak for yourself, Janet.”

  “I do, always. But you can’t bear anything to be going on that you’re not in. You behave like someone who’s missed a train. You really do, Edward.”

  “I can’t help what happened to me.”

  “Nothing ever has happened to you.”

  “Do you mind?”

  “I suppose so.” She still had the letter; she looked from the letter into the fireplace, but there was nothing but cold, stacked logs. So more or less absently and without ostentation she tore and retore the letter across. There hung heavily, then dissolved in the air between them, the fumes of a potent vulgarity. “All this comes to is this: the children—I daresay Hermione as much as Anna—have been making guesses about what went wrong with your mother. I suppose they’ve heard gossip; I think, if so, they ought to be told. It is hot, so after dinner we walk about out of doors, which is boring for Theodora, because she is odd man out—it is not our fault that she won’t join us. And, of course, we smile, which is more than Theodora or you seem able to bear. She thinks Rodney’s and my marriage dull; I daresay most marriages do look like that. And she did want to get a rise out of you and Laurel. I cannot think why you should both be such idiots as to play into her hands…”

  “…What about the ‘spectacle’?”

  “You know that’s untrue; we can’t deal with that,” she said coldly.

  “But you can’t like it.”

  She said: “I don’t think it’s worth discussing. As it regards me and Rodney, I think it is something you, Edward, might leave alone. The letter’s torn up.”

  Edward, standing closer to her than they were both aware, saw her hands tighten on the mantelpiece. “It’s wretched,” he said, “that you both were ever brought in in this context at all—As you say,
that’s Theodora’s manner: I think you’re mistaken in having her here at all—But because this affects you and you can’t be asked to be clear, it’s unfair to accuse me of distortion. All delicacy is on your side; you can see I can’t speak at all without outraging something: you don’t let a thing pass. I am utterly humiliated by everything you make me say. Nothing I say is myself. I loathe this whole business!” said Edward passionately.

  “You brought yourself here; you need never have come.”

  “I had to see you,” said Edward shortly.

  “You wanted to show me that letter.”

  The cold, mounting excitement under her manner communicated itself to Edward and, like fever, effected a disembodiment. So that his thought, detaching itself from the self in anguish, ranged with delirious boldness; hardly thought at all, detached from feeling. And as when in fever the freed, weightless thought going down street after street or penetrating a forest, halts, finds one house or one tree and fuses with this utterly, becoming the house or tree past hope of escape, Edward’s thought stopped and flared at a point where dread and desire ran round the circle to meet. He was Janet. “If you and I had fallen in love— But I didn’t want that,” he said clearly. He had less than a moment to take up her first full look that passed his almost in flight as she turned to the door.

  7

  “This is very nice,” said Rodney, coming in cheerfully to greet Edward.

  He had, of course, a shrewd idea this was not very nice. Theodora, pursued hot-foot by Hermione, had hurried across the fields to tell him that Edward had just arrived, without warning, furious, in a fly, without a suitcase, to take away his children who were being corrupted. A spontaneity in Theodora’s enjoyment of the crisis made her almost lovable; she frankly glowed. While Hermione, dancing, was naturally in her element.

  “Have you any idea—?” Rodney began to ask Theodora guardedly, as they had all walked back.

  “I can’t think—” confessed Theodora naïvely. And indeed she had never hoped this, even of Laurel.

  Hermione, swinging from Theodora’s arm, put in eagerly: “Uncle Edward looks as though he had had a fit, or come for a funeral. He didn’t pay for the fly—shall we have to? I rushed out, of course, and said ‘Kiss me, Godfather!’ and he said, ‘Not just now, Hermione’—he is always very polite—and sort of patted me, but I wasn’t there. Mother came out and said, ‘My dear Edward!’ That was when he didn’t pay the fly. He said, ‘It’s all right,’ and she said ‘Is Laurel ill?’ and he said, ‘No, I’ve come for the children.’ I said, ‘They’ve gone—they’re having their hair cut with Grandmother and Uncle Considine.’ He said, ‘What do you mean?’ and I said he should just have seen them!—Shouldn’t he just have seen them, Theodora?—Then Mother said to me not to get excited, so I went in and sat in the hall.”