Possession

by Celia Fremlin

  There was no way of knowing. Probably, now, no one would ever know the truth about the tragedy—the double tragedy. All one could do now was to accept the official verdicts. True or false, if the whole massed machinery of the law hadn’t been able to overthrow them at the time, it was very certain that the idle suspicions of an ordinary citizen weren’t going to make much of a dent in them now. There was absolutely nothing that anybody could, or should, do to question or throw doubt on any of it.

  But unfortunately this fact didn’t quite free me from all responsibility. There was still one decision which I had to make, and make quickly, before Sarah came home for the weekend. Should I tell her—should I even give her any inkling—of the uncomfortable questions that Sonja had raised by her revelations? I say I had to make this decision, but I think I am being a little dishonest in putting it in this way: the decision was already made, before I even began thinking about it. The mental process which I described to myself at the time as “deciding” was really, I see now, merely a marshalling of support for the decision which I had, in my heart, already reached.

  I wasn’t going to tell her. Why upset her with a piece of spiteful gossip whose truth there was no way of checking? It wasn’t as if there was the faintest chance that she would change any of her plans as a result of hearing it. No girl of spirit—certainly not Sarah—would dream of letting her trust in the man she loved be shaken by such a tangle of insubstantial gossip. The most it would do would be to make her angry—with Sonja for starting the rumours, and with me for taking any notice of them. It would be a sort of treachery, I told myself, to our whole relationship. There were lots of maxims supporting my decision, and in my mind I ran through the lot of them. “Never repeat unkind gossip.” “Never interfere between husband and wife.” (Well, Sarah and Mervyn weren’t husband and wife yet, but the principle was the same.) “Let your children make their own mistakes.” “Speech is silver, silence is golden”—Oh, lots of them. By telling Sarah of my conversation with Sonja, I would be transgressing the lot. And in a particularly nasty, underhand sort of way, too, just like all those mothers-in-law you read about in the magazine articles. Not the direct attack on the prospective son-in-law, but the spiteful innuendo. That’s what it would look like: that’s what—God help me!—it might be? Is this how it starts, this possessive mother thing? Does it start, in utter benevolence, from a desperate, loving need to protect your child from hurt? From real hurt, I mean; from the real, irreversible hurts that belong to adult status? Was this simple terror about a beloved daughter’s future the beginning of the slippery slope at the bottom of which lies Possessiveness? After a series of such terrors, each worse than the last, do we wake up one morning, we mothers, to find that it has all added up to being an Interfering Mother-in-Law, with all our enlightened friends pointing and jeering? Was this how it had been for Mervyn’s mother, in the beginning? Had she unwittingly let her natural anxieties take a hold, become an obsession, so that by now every movement her son made was fraught with terror for her, lest it should lead him into suffering? For the first time I felt a flicker of something other than scorn towards her; and with it an absolute, rock-like determination never to be like her. Never, ever. How could I, with my long-held principles? And with my emancipated friends all watching?

  And as it turned out, all this spiritual struggle—if struggle it had really been—was by the next day rendered superfluous by a sudden total change in the whole situation. Or what we thought at the time was a total change. Anyway, let me describe to you the events of the next day, exactly as they fell out, so that you can draw your own conclusions, just as we, at the time, had to draw ours.

  It was Sunday, one of those warm, winter days that always fill me with an obscure uneasiness. There you are, settled comfortably into your thickest woollies, the kitchen boiler glowing, and the fire in the sitting room blazing brightly—and then, suddenly, there is this unseasonable sunshine, pouring in at every window, dimming the bright flames, rendering your cosy preparations ridiculous. And yet you can’t at a moment’s notice replace those glowing coals with dried ornamental grass in the grates. It is really winter still, and you go out of your over-heated house into the strange, damp warmth: the still, golden air closes in on you; the lawn is suddenly greener than you ever remember it, like a lawn in fairyland: and in the flower beds the tiny tips of crocuses are already visible, too soon, making a mistake down there in the dark, damp earth that should be asleep. No, I don’t like those mornings, when the year seems to have lost its way, and to be heading back into spring without ever having plunged down into the frost, and the snow, and the long dark nights: and this is just how it was that Sunday morning when Mervyn arrived, in his little red car, to take Sarah for a trip into the country.

  Nothing extraordinary about this, of course. It wasn’t even unexpected. Sarah had told me, as soon as she got home yesterday, that Mervyn would be taking her out for the day today. The winter sun glistened on his sparse hair as he walked jauntily up to our front door; he looked eager, bird-like somehow, with his long nose and the scissor movements of his long legs as he strode up the path.

  “Lovely day, isn’t it, Mrs Erskine?” he called to me—I was leaning out of our bedroom window as he arrived; and of course I had to agree. You can’t—especially out of a top floor window—answer a cheery conventional greeting by explaining exactly how you feel about unseasonable sunshine; so I smiled to him, and waved, and soon I heard him talking to Sarah in the hall. Their voices rose and fell amicably; I imagine they were discussing where to go, where to stop for lunch and so on. I thought they would be setting off any minute; but the voices went on and on, and after a bit I began to feel I had better go down. Janice, I knew, was lurking in her room waiting for them to go—her dislike of Mervyn was still unabated, and she manoeuvred constantly to avoid meeting him. For me to appear to be lurking out of sight as well would be too ridiculous. I had just resolved to go down and make a pot of coffee for everyone when the telephone rang, and I heard Sarah go and answer it. Expecting the summons to be for me—it would be Liz, I thought, wailing some more about the Scouts’ Jumble, and trying to involve me in some terrible network of telephone messages about whose fault it was that the van hadn’t arrived yesterday—I went out onto the landing.

  “Why—yes, of course we will,” Sarah was saying. She sounded anxious and a little puzzled. And then: “No, we’re not in any special hurry. But what is it? Has something happened?” A pause. Then: “Oh. Oh, I am sorry. Would you like to talk to Mervyn himself, though? He’s right here beside me. Perhaps he could meet you at the bus stop, or something?” Another pause. I could imagine Mrs Redmayne’s breathy gabbling voice coming down the wire, and I tried to guess what sort of pretext she had thought up this time for preventing the innocent Sunday outing. Or was she not planning to prevent it, but only to spoil it—to ensure that the young couple should set off late, with Mervyn already irritable, and the best of the sunshine over? Yes, it must be this sunshine that had been the last straw to her. She must have pulled aside her bedroom curtains and stared, bleary and incredulous, into the stunning radiance of the winter morning. It must have struck her like a blow. As well as youth and love, they were to have this! The contemplation of such happiness would be intolerable to her; it must have hurt her shadowed little spirit just as the light was hurting her sleep-filled eyes. So she had dropped back the curtains, and in the safety of her once-more sunless room had scuttled across to the telephone, making up her story as she went.

  Thus I reconstructed the scene at the other end of the line. It was difficult to verify, for Sarah was now answering in anxious monosyllables, with long pauses in between. Presently she rang off, and came slowly up the stairs.

  “Mummy,” she said. “Is it all right? Mother (she already called Mrs Redmayne ‘Mother’, to my deep but secret disgust) wants to come round and see you for a few minutes this morning. She’s on her way now. I’ll go and make some coffee, shall I?”

  “Of cours
e. That would be very nice,” I said guardedly; and then, testing out the situation: “But don’t you bother with the coffee, dear. You and Mervyn want to get off while the weather’s so lovely. Daddy and I will look after Mrs Redmayne. It’s time we old ones got to know each other better.”

  Sarah hesitated. She looked uncomfortable.

  “Thank you, Mummy, but I think Mervyn and I had better wait. She asked us to specially, you see. I think something’s happened to upset her.”

  You bet it has, I thought. The thing that’s happened is that her precious son is going ahead with his plan to spend the whole of Sunday in the company of another woman. He has managed to resist all the nagging and pleading at home, so now she intends to come and make a scene here.

  I went back into the bedroom to finish dressing. If I was to confront this relentless little nuisance of a woman with the coolness and dignity that the situation was going to demand, I must do it in something other than my old woollen housecoat. Ralph was still in bed, reading the Sunday papers. He laid down the colour supplement and regarded me uneasily.

  “You’re dressing,” he accused. “What’s the matter? What’s going on?”

  Briefly, I told him, and he groaned.

  “Too much happens in this house,” he complained. “On Sunday morning, too: why on earth can’t they all stay in bed?” His face darkened as a new and terrible thought struck him. “I don’t have to get up, do I? I haven’t got to come down and talk to the woman?”

  “Well …” I had been going to point out to him his duties as host and prospective father-in-law; and then it occurred to me how much simpler it would all be if he did stay out of the way. There was going to be a scene, obviously, and men are usually as out of place in scenes as women usually are at football matches: they don’t know the rules; they can’t understand the system of scoring, and they are as likely as not to cheer the wrong side. So: “No, of course you needn’t,” I amended. “If there’s any coffee going I’ll try to smuggle some up to you; but it may be just plate-throwing. If so, I’ll let you know who wins.”

  Pointing out that he didn’t care who won, he just wanted them not to do it here, and not on a Sunday morning, Ralph settled contentedly back among the papers; and a moment later the doorbell pealed through the house, loud and urgent.

  It was obvious that Mrs Redmayne had been crying; obvious, too,—at least that’s how it seemed to me—that she had done nothing whatever to conceal the fact. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her cheeks blotchy, and no slightest trace of either rouge or powder suggested that she had made the smallest effort to improve her ravaged appearance. The fact that she was neatly, even meticulously, dressed in a dove-grey suit and freshly-laundered white blouse, only served to enhance the harrowing effect of her neglected face. Personally, I found her appearance utterly repellant; I could hardly bring myself to greet her civilly: but on my kind-hearted Sarah the spectacle had its intended (I imagine) effect. With a little cry of distress, she ran to her future mother-in-law, flung her arms round her neck, and begged her to tell us what was wrong.

  At once Mrs Redmayne went into the brave-little-woman act. She gulped, swallowed back a sob, and smiled a brave little smile.

  “It’s all right, dear; don’t worry. Don’t worry about me. I’m just a silly old woman, that’s all.”

  She waited, eyes alert beneath their lowered lids, for Sarah to break into the appropriate protestations; and of course Sarah did: Mrs Redmayne wasn’t silly; she must tell us what was wrong; we all only wanted to help her, to make her feel happy again.

  You could see Mrs Redmayne soaking it all in, with secret, gluttonous satisfaction. Evidently things were going according to plan. She called Sarah a dear, sweet girl, and kept patting her shoulder; while I looked on, with growing revulsion. Suddenly I hated the sight of those deft little white hands pad-padding about on my daughter’s shoulder. The quick, nervous little pats, which purported to express affection, in fact expressed nothing, they were like a nervous tic, something quite detached from the owner’s will or volition. Brusquely, and I fear almost rudely, I seized Mrs Redmayne’s arm, pulled her away, and piloted her towards an armchair, urging her to sit down, to rest, to relax, to drink a nice hot cup of coffee and just see how much better she’d feel in a minute.

  How much less capable she’d feel of carrying on with her scene, I really meant, and she knew it. She submitted so far as to allow herself to be pushed gently down into the chair; then, immediately, she put her hand to her head.

  “Oh. Oh dear!” she apologised. “I’m sorry I’ve been so stupid—what will you think of me? It’s just—Oh, I don’t know. I had such a bad night last night … such terrible dreams….”

  “Mother!”

  Something in Mervyn’s voice startled all of us. We looked up, and I saw that he had grown pale. For one second a look of extraordinary intensity passed between mother and son: not exactly hostile: more a sort of measuring look, a mutual calculation: and then both simultaneously dropped their eyes, as if they realised, at exactly the same moment, that they were revealing too much.

  Hastily, with the blundering instinct of the hostess for smoothing over any embarrassment, at any cost, I intervened.

  “What a shame,” I said brightly to Mrs Redmayne. “Never mind, though. The thing to do about a bad night is to forget it. Look what a lovely day it is….”

  “A bad night can be forgotten—yes,” agreed Mrs Redmayne. “But it’s the dreams, you see, Mrs Erskine. That’s what upsets me—when I get these dreams. Perhaps you’re not subject to nightmares yourself?”

  “Indeed I’m not,” I agreed. “But if I ever did have a nightmare I can assure you that I’d put it out of my mind as quickly as possible. I’m sure it does no good to dwell on such a thing….”

  “You’re sure? How can you possibly be sure?”

  The odd little question brought my glib preaching to an abrupt halt. I stared at Mrs Redmayne nonplussed; and she went on, in a weak, little-girl sort of voice:

  “You see—I suppose I’m silly, but I do get these silly little ideas sometimes, don’t I Mervyn? Every now and then I get the silly little idea that a nightmare can be—well—a warning. A warning that one shouldn’t—well, that one should—you know—be careful. That’s why I came, actually. To talk to you about being careful, I mean. Oh, dear, you will think I’m a silly-billy!”

  Silly she certainly was; but this affected silliness, superimposed on the genuine article, was almost more than I could bear.

  “What do you mean?” I said stiffly. “Careful about what?”

  “About what? Why, about Sarah, of course. About your daughter. That’s why I came trotting round like this, in such a mad little hurry, to get here before she and my son started on their little trip. You see, my dream was about Sarah and their little trip. It was a terrible dream, shall I tell you what it was?”

  “No!”

  I think we all three spoke at once. Sarah and Mervyn had moved close together on the sofa. I could see that Mervyn was trembling.

  “Stop it, Mother!” he said hoarsely. “Please stop it, you’re frightening Sarah!”

  “Frightening her? But I don’t mean to do that. Of course I don’t. I only want her to be careful. That’s all.” She turned to me: “Don’t be frightened, Mrs Erskine. I didn’t dream that they’d have a car accident, or anything dreadful like that. I didn’t dream that dear Sarah would be hurt in any way; that would be too dreadful. I just dreamed that she turned into a doll. Wasn’t that funny?”—her eyes slid towards her son. “I dreamed, Mervyn, that you came back from your trip with a doll on the seat beside you, instead of Sarah.”

  Mervyn was on his feet. In three strides he was across the room, he had his mother by the shoulders in a grip which—even from where I sat I could see it—whitened his knuckles.

  “Stop it, Mother! STOP IT.”

  His voice choked; and suddenly, to our utter consternation, he began to cry. Like ice melting under some science-fiction heat-ray, h
e collapsed sobbing to his knees beside Mrs Redmayne, and there he was, crying like a baby in his mother’s arms. And now the firm little white hands were patting his shoulder, just as they had patted Sarah’s, and with the same emptiness of meaning; an obsessional movement, involuntary, and sinister in its absence of intention.

  I did not look at Sarah, so I cannot tell you what she was looking like, nor what she was thinking. I know what I was thinking: I was thinking, No one need know! I needn’t tell anyone, ever! Or if I do—if, for some reason, I am compelled to, then I shall make a funny story of it. Yes I shall. Funny. I can, I know I can. I’ll do what Peggy does, I’ll turn my troubles into a funny story before the neighbours can find out how it really was. I rehearsed the way Peggy would tell it: ‘My dear, you won’t believe it, but she had everybody in tears by the time she’d finished, she really did! But literally, in tears! And then, at that very moment, who should walk right into the middle of it but….’ Well, who? The cat? The milkman? Mervyn’s boss? Someone uproariously funny, anyway. Peggy is so amusing, you see, people expect it of her. It’s a marvellous protection, being so amusing, and if she can do it, so can I.

  Mervyn and his mother were standing up now, side by side, facing us. He was in command of himself now. The tears had vanished from his white, strained face, and he looked tall, and strong, a sure protector to the little woman who leaned against him, tear-stained, trembling, and victorious.