by Anna Kavan
‘Shall we walk? It is only a little way,’ he said.
‘Very well,’ she agreed, spiritless.
They went out of the station and began to walk up the street. Presently they turned to the left between some small shops, and crossed a churchyard. The gravestones were like a mouthful of irregular teeth, beginning to decay. Anna was cold and dispirited.
‘It’s not far now,’ Matthew said, scrutinizing her. He seemed slightly anxious. Did he feel her dismay? She stared away bleakly at the doddering stones. ‘We shall soon be there.’
They entered a long alley between high walls. There were gardens behind, with houses looming. Slowly they traversed the long alley. Anna felt like an insect crawling in a narrow crack. They walked fast, but seemed to make no progress. She plodded on – cold – and rather despairing.
At the end of the alley came a road with villas, and a dog barking; they crossed another road, more important, then down a steep little hill beside a tea-house, and out on to another road. They now seemed to have dropped to a much lower level. There was a low-lying mistiness in the air.
‘Here we are,’ said Matthew.
Anna saw a large square building standing on the road, with a row of dark bushes in front, evergreen shrubs and ivy. An old-fashioned bell-pull hung down dejected, beside the door. Matthew gave it a tug.
‘You must take us as you find us, you know,’ he said again. He seemed to expect her to turn up her nose at everything.
The repetition of the stupid phrase was annoying.
‘How else could I take you?’ she snapped at him.
He gave her a sharp look out of his blue eyes, censorious. Then he looked down at his hands and fidgeted. She could not tell whether he was angry or abashed. They waited a little on the bleak doorstep, by the darkly-stirring ivy.
Mrs. Kavan opened the door herself. She was expecting them, but not quite so soon, it appeared. She was one of those people who never quite manage to be in time for anything. She looked as though she had hurried into her clothes at the last minute – while the bell was still ringing. She was flushed, and rather ungainly, and excited, as she ushered them in.
‘So here you are!’ she said to Matthew, kissing him.
She couldn’t resist greeting him first, although it was not good manners. And as if she knew she had been guilty of a lapse, she released him hastily, and kissed Anna too.
‘Welcome to our house,’ she cried, rather effusively, to make up.
‘How do you do,’ said Anna, trying to look affable.
She had only seen her mother-in-law once before, for quite a short time, at the wedding. In a way, Mrs. Kavan reminded her of Rachel Fielding, although there was not the least physical resemblance between them. Matthew’s mother was a tall, sombre, weird kind of woman, lean to hungriness, with Matthew’s brown, dry skin, and the vivid blue eyes of Matthew; but something of her own added, a tense quality which the son altogether lacked. It was this intenseness that was reminiscent of Rachel. It made Mrs. Kavan seem a little creepy. And she spoke with a slight but noticeable brogue.
‘Come and have tea,’ she said, touching Anna’s arm, and scrutinizing her sharply, inquisitively, to see what she had done to her son.
Anna noticed that her hand was not quite clean; there were narrow curves of dirt under one or two of the longish nails. The house was hushed and shadowy. In the waning light, a large, high hall was revealed, very bare, almost unfurnished-looking, with a long bare table at the far end under two tall windows, and a great sweep of staircase, really rather fine, climbing up to the shadows overhead. Anna was surprised and pleased. After Matthew’s ominous apologies, she had prepared herself for something sordidly vulgar. Whatever else you might say about River House, it was neither shoddy or commonplace.
They crossed the hall, their footsteps clattering on the bare floor, and came to a solemn-looking drawing-room, with a grand piano, and three vast windows gaping into the dull afternoon. There was more furniture here, and a fire was burning sedately in the big fireplace. Anna stood in the middle of the room, holding her bag and looking about.
‘What big rooms,’ she said, smiling.
Mrs. Kavan nodded at her brightly. She was dressed untidily in old-fashioned, flowing skirts, which seemed to be hitched up, anyhow, round her meagre waist. And she wore a great number of small adornments, beaten-silver bangles, gold neck-chains, buckles, pendants, gold link bracelets, that clinked against one another every time she moved. She went about in a perpetual faint chime and clash of sound.
‘The house is far too big for us,’ she said, watching the girl closely with her bright blue eyes. ‘But we love it too much to desert it for a smaller one.’
‘It seems very nice,’ Anna murmured.
She wandered uncomfortably to the windows, and looked out. Mrs. Kavan’s intentness made her feel uncomfortable. And so did her voice; her quick, soft, suggestive voice, with the insinuating blurred tones coming and going. The straight-forward Anna edged herself away.
She stared out of the window at the wintry afternoon. There was a stretch of grass in front of her, a long slope of grass running between trees, down to another row of trees which formed the boundary. Beyond, she could see vague shapes of houses and trees, with marshy-looking meadows between. It was neither towny nor quite countrified. A thin mist was rising, creeping stealthily up the garden, towards the house. Suddenly she caught an angry gleam, like metal, between the thin trees.
‘Why, there’s the river,’ she said wonderingly. The glimpse of sullen water pleased her like the sight of an old friend.
‘Yes. Didn’t you know?’ said Matthew, from behind.
She turned and faced them. Mrs. Kavan was still watching her fixedly, with a piercing sharp look, and a suspicion that she did not quite conceal.
‘I didn’t know it was so near – at the bottom of the garden,’ Anna said.
‘Oh!’ cried Mrs. Kavan. ‘It’s almost in the garden.’
She eyed the girl intently.
There was a queer hush in the room. Everyone seemed subdued, a shadow was on them. In the queer half-light – half warm yellow light from the fire, half cold misty light from out of doors – they seemed unreal and a little forlorn. Mrs. Kavan stared, and tinkled her array of jewellery. Anna felt lonely and abandoned. Matthew, a stiff, rather puppet-like figure with a neatly closed face, stood as if waiting to be set in motion by somebody.
Anna tried to think of something to say. But her mind was frozen in blankness. There she stood, clasping her snake-skin bag, and wishing for someone to come to the rescue. Never had she experienced a more unpleasant sensation: as if they were all drowning in the shadowy room.
Suddenly, to her immense relief, she heard a footstep on the boards outside. Matthew’s sister Winifred, whom she had not met before, came in, carrying the tea-tray. Here was the last member of the Kavan trio, a tall, gaunt young woman, rather dowdy in her indeterminate clothes, slovenly. She put down the tray with a clatter, and lighted a brass standard lamp. Faces sprang out sharply at one another, startled, in the new light.
Mrs. Kavan introduced her daughter. Winifred turned to Anna as if reluctant, and held out her lean hand, on which the skin showed roughened. She had wiped it unobserved on the skirt of her dress.
‘How do you do,’ she said. Her voice was harsh and uncompromising; reacting from the soft, insidious voice of the mother, perhaps. She shook Anna’s hand once, and then dropped it. ‘You’d better come to the fire and have tea,’ she said. It sounded hopelessly uninviting.
Anna moved and sat down obediently. As she did so, she glanced at the wooden figure of Matthew standing apart, outside the circle of lamplight. His head was very round against the pale wall, his shoulders very stiff. He watched Anna sitting down beside Winifred in her remote, collected fashion, and he did not make any move until his mother pushed forward a chair for him. Mrs. Kavan was watching.
‘Sit down,’ she said, with geniality. ‘Here we are then. Let us have some tea.’
She had now put a suggestion of warmth into her voice. But her eyes were bright with suspicion. Matthew smiled neatly, the pleased, stupid smile, and sat down beside her.
Mrs. Kavan said nothing as she poured out the tea. Winifred held the cups to be filled and passed them on, in an impatient, slightly aggressive way, as if irritated by her mother’s shiftless movements. The older woman handled everything in a peculiarly inefficient manner, almost like a child.
When the four of them had their cups of tea, she held hers close to her chest, so that her neck-chains twinkled against the saucer. Her face was brown and wrinkled like a gipsy’s, but almost predatorily intent, her eyes were alert and inquisitorial. She watched both Matthew and Anna with her blue, piercing eyes.
‘Isn’t it nice to be all together again?’ she said, smiling genially, under her sharp, mistrustful eyes.
‘Yes. There’s no place like home,’ said Matthew. He was a little relaxed, expanding in the sense of his growing importance, and sitting complacent, drawing in his chin, and smiling contentedly. The pasha among his womenfolk.
‘I hope Anna is going to be happy here,’ said Mrs. Kavan, retaining the same amiable voice, and the contradictory suspicious expression. ‘I hope she is going to look upon River House as her home in England.’
‘You are very kind,’ said Anna uncomfortably.
There came an unexpected demonstration from Matthew. He leaned across his mother’s narrow lap, and patted Anna’s hand which lay limp on her knee. She saw his eyes beaming strangely upon her.
‘Of course it is her home,’ he said, very strange in his beaming importance. ‘If it is mine, it must be hers as well, since we are now one.’
It was repulsive to see his smug face leaning towards her. She wanted to beat him off, to push him back with her hands. But she managed to sit still, rigid with repulsion. And in a moment he drew back and went on with his tea.
During this affectionate passage, Mrs. Kavan sat looking from one to another, a little nonplussed. She felt that there was something not quite right, somewhere. Winifred ate bread-and-butter, and wiped her fingers on her handkerchief. She looked straight ahead, dissociating herself deliberately from the talk.
All the time, Mrs. Kavan was watching Anna. Anna felt it. But she couldn’t quite gather what was behind the old lady’s bright glances; whether it was jealousy, slyness, dislike or simple curiosity. She watched Anna openly and without concealment. She did not mind meeting her eye. She talked to her, and smiled at her, and continually watched her. As Anna saw her sitting over her tea-cup, with her dry, brown, wrinkled skin, her aggravating, ceaselessly-tinkling jewellery, her slightly soiled appearance, her teeth went on edge with repulsion. Mrs. Kavan’s eyes were so blue, that one expected them to be opaque, like Matthew’s. And then one found them pellucid and astute. Like encountering a lynx where one expected a sheep. She was dowdy and not quite clean; but her thin face, and particularly her sharp, thin nose, had a look of refinement. What was she watching for? Anna couldn’t imagine.
The uncomfortable meal came to an end. Winifred packed the tea things on the tray and carried it off. There appeared to be no servant in the house.
Mrs. Kavan rose to her feet and smiled at Anna.
‘Now, my dear, I will take you to your room. You would like to rest.’
Anna glanced at Matthew. He took a brisk step forward to accompany her.
‘I’ll show her the room, mother,’ he said.
‘But I’m not a bit tired,’ said Anna. She did not want to be alone with him, upstairs in the hushed emptiness of the strange house.
Mrs. Kavan smiled with queer, meaning looks.
‘Yes, you are tired; and because you are tired you are not feeling very happy,’ she said. Then, with slightly theatrical emphasis: ‘I know.’ She looked at Matthew, as if for confirmation, with an odd, important smile, suggesting hidden labyrinths of meaning.
‘Mother has second-sight,’ said Matthew proudly.
He smiled, and tilted his round head, but Anna saw that he was quite in earnest. She looked politely, somewhat bewildered, from one to the other.
‘I can read people’s hearts a little,’ said Mrs. Kavan, gazing upon her with significant, peculiar eyes.
Anna wanted to laugh; it sounded so funny. She hoped that Mrs. Kavan, for her own sake, would not peer too deep into this particular heart before her.
‘And do you always like what you see there?’ she asked brightly. For the life of her she couldn’t keep the little tang of mockery out of her voice.
The old lady stiffened at once. The smile went from her face. She stood stiff and disapproving.
‘No, not by any means,’ she pronounced acidly.
Anna felt that the pronouncement had been made against her. The two women looked at one another. There seemed to be a vista of inevitable hostility before them. Anna was depressed and a little disgusted at the prospect.
Matthew escorted her upstairs in silence. He was rather put out because she had not taken his mother’s psychic powers sufficiently seriously. The bedroom was big and cold and looked only half furnished. There was the ominous double bed. Anna was prepared for this.
‘I must have a room to myself,’ she said pointedly.
But Matthew, with a dissembling smile of false reasonableness on his face, was out to assert himself in his own home.
‘Really Anna,’ he said, ‘I think it’s time you gave up this childish whim.’
‘It’s not a whim,’ Anna said, stolid.
He ignored her.
‘I’ve made allowance for the fact that you are very young and inexperienced. I’ve made allowance for your natural shyness’ – strange how he seemed to relish the word ‘natural’ – ‘but now that you have got accustomed to our life together, I think it is time for you to begin to be more reasonable.’
‘What do you mean by being more reasonable?’ asked Anna, coolly, quietly, giving Matthew a straight look. Whilst he glassily stared at her, with accumulating resentment.
‘I mean that you should begin to be a wife to me.’ He fixed his blank blue eyes upon her.
‘No,’ she replied steadfastly. ‘I must have my own room.’
She watched Matthew’s face. The bully was coming up to the surface again. He was trembling with repressed anger. But the spell of chivalry was not quite worn through. It still held him, against his will. He did not want to be chivalrous. He wanted Anna. But still he had to restrain himself.
‘Be sensible!’ he said sharply. ‘My mother will think it so strange if we have separate rooms.’
It was queer to see the struggle behind his neat face – the bully against the gentle knight. Anna wondered which one would win.
‘I can’t help what your mother thinks,’ she retorted. ‘That’s your affair.’
There was a pause. While Matthew rose to magnanimity again.
‘Very well,’ he said, a trifle Christ-like, at last. ‘I’ll get a bed made up somewhere else.’
His tone of voice was so long-suffering, almost martyrized. It was laughable. The victory was with Sir Galahad, for the time being. But the hysterical, brow-beating bully was not far off. His turn would come along soon.
Matthew sighed in a loud, exaggerated fashion as he went out.
Anna sat down on the bed and laughed at that sigh. It sounded too absurd to her – so sanctimonious. The whole situation was simply farcical. She laughed aloud in the cold room. And at the same time, she thought of Sidney and of Oxford, and she wanted to cry. She grew quite hysterical up there by herself.
At supper, Mrs. Kavan was definitely estranged. No doubt on account of the extra room. Anna wondered what Matthew had said to her on the subject. Her mother-in-law eyed her coldly, across the table. And yet she was very affable. All the time her jewellery gleamed and clashed, her blue eyes sent out cold rays, she talked to the girl and praised her dress, and even flattered her a little. But underneath was estrangement.
And Matthew himself gazed at Anna
continually, with a wistful expression. But she would not look back at him.
Anna had fallen into a little trance. She sat in front of her plate, and ate mechanically the queer odds and ends of food that were handed to her. What was she doing in this extraordinary household? The old lady talked and fidgeted and darted cold glances in her direction. And the man, the husband, stared and stared with his reproachful, opaque eyes, and the aggrieved, holy-martyr look, so incongruous on his brown, blank face – like a sentimental ape. She felt a little hysterical. And lost – absolutely at sea.
At bedtime, Mrs. Kavan insisted on coming to her room with her.
‘You will be comfortable here, I hope,’ she said. There was a sudden deprecation in her voice. Her eyes showed a queer obseqiousness. She was almost apologetic. But still hostile and suspicious.
‘Oh, quite,’ said Anna, glancing round the cheerless apartment.
‘But what a big room for one little girl!’ Mrs. Kavan exclaimed, bringing the wheedling, playful, Irish intonation into her voice, rather saccharine. But with a sharp thorn of enmity behind.
‘I always sleep alone,’ said Anna, cutting straight to the heart of the matter. ‘I can’t bear sharing a room with anyone.’
‘Can’t you? Oh, I see. I see.’
Mrs. Kavan sounded a little flustered. She was flustered by Anna’s cold, unswerving grey eyes, with their undisguised glimmer of contempt. This girl, with her reserve of silent indifference, was rather beyond her. Anna seemed in some way fundamentally inimical to her, and to her son. An enemy, come by accident into their camp, and obscurely threatening them. With what threat she did not know.
‘Well,’ she said, smiling falsely-intimate, and staring keenly. ‘I hope you will be wonderfully happy. A happy marriage is the most precious thing in the world.’
She bent and pecked Anna on the cheek. Her chains swung and jangled. The room was cold and gloomy, the bed had not been turned down. Anna started to fold back the coverlet.
‘Let me do that,’ cried Mrs. Kavan. ‘Don’t you bother.’ And she snatched the cotton spread and pulled it over the bedrail.