Poor Denis blushed scarlet at this uncomfortably penetrating diagnosis, and so, I’m afraid, did I, for Mr. Scogan’s idea of “the usual things” for a young man’s novel of the 1920’s was an only too exact description of Denis’s work and mine.
Still, it is something to be in tune with the spirit of one’s age; and to achieve this harmony at such a distance from the literary centre in place and mental climate as the West Riding then was from literary London, showed a certain sensitivity. My characterization was always rather good, and though my reading was undigested, at least it was wide. My mind had, indeed, been to some extent disciplined by the debunking exercises of the post-war period and by the practice of writing. But how self-deluded I still was at that date!
What I thought of as my lofty self-sacrificing subordination at Hilbert Mills was really a shirking of responsibility, and if there was some genuine humility, and some not altogether ignoble pride, in my refusal to ask the opinions of others on my work, this refusal also sprang partly from a fear and dislike of hearing those opinions. It was a malady of the age, to decry first, for fear others should outstrip you and leave you apparently praising what they decried. I did not exactly decry my work, in which I believed with all my heart, but I shrank with morbid sensitiveness from subjecting it to criticism, lest I should have occasion to do so.
Accordingly I am not at all surprised now by my family’s uneasiness and lack of faith about my work. My mother intuitively perceived in advance, my father recognized as it approached, the danger to my future happiness which my writing—of which they saw the present feebleness and not the future promise—constituted. No, when I dip into my early works I am not at all surprised now by my family’s alarm and dismay, though at the time I resented it with all the passion at my command.
I must say, however, that I quite admire the persistence of young Chris in the face of so much failure and discouragement. Should I be so dogged in such circumstances now? I wonder.
7
Flashpoint
1
It was shortly after the publication of my second book that my mother’s health began seriously to fail. It is difficult for the layman to discover what lies behind a doctor’s carefully guarded-words in these cases, but my father and I gathered that the cause of her illness was not now her customary trouble, but an overstraining of the heart which was its consequence. At all events, for some eighteen months my father and I suffered a protracted ordeal as she slowly but not peacefully declined, for as she really required very little actual nursing, we were not able for some months to secure the services of a trained nurse, for these were scarce and in great demand.
By day she was mild and calm, lying quietly in bed and accepting the ministrations offered her with gentle dignity. John’s twins, Muriel and Joyce, proved an unexpected source of strength here. Now in their late teens, addicted to young men and very tired of the local day-school, these girls were florid, hearty, bouncing, not given to shades of feeling and (I thought) thoroughly selfish young women, but they took a good deal of care off our shoulders and those of the cook-generals who passed in rather quick succession through our kitchen at this period. It did not seem to me that the twins felt any personal affection for my mother, but they enjoyed the acts of nursing; with their strong young arms they turned and lifted her easily in bed, and with their strong young legs they ran up and down the Ashroyd stairs all the many times the serving of her meals, medicine, hot-water bottles and so on demanded. As twins, they naturally did everything as a pair, and it was their great desire to nurse her together through the night; but this my father and I forbade, for my mother’s nights were too terrible a spectacle for eyes so young.
At night my mother’s mind wandered; she no longer knew who or where she was and would sometimes spring from her bed and, her long dark hair streaming, rush barefooted from her room in anguished uncertainty, seeking for her home. When I, hearing the disturbance, ran to meet her and with an arm about her tried to coax her back to bed, she fixed her eyes, large, luminous, strangely brilliant, upon me in a wildly pathetic gaze, and appeared to listen to my reassurances with wistful incredulity, as if she longed to believe me but could not allow herself to do so.
“I must go home,” she often said in an angry tone. “You mustn’t keep me here. The children need me.”
This echo of her past “cures” wrung my heart.
“But you are at home, mother,” I assured her. “See! Here’s your dressing-table. Here’s your new eiderdown. Here’s Netta’s photograph with her boy.”
“That’s what you say. But I don’t know who you are at all. You know nothing about it,” replied my mother, glaring at me. “All these strange people about—send them away.” With a vehement gesture she swept her cherished collection of photographs to the floor.
My father with his practical and realistic approach to life seemed unable to understand that my mother was not, as the phrase goes, herself during these wretched nocturnal incidents; he regarded her as fully conscious of her actions, and accordingly scolded her heartily.
“What are you about? Don’t talk such nonsense, Ada! Of course you’re at home—where else would you be at this time of night? Get back into bed at once!” were sentences frequently on his lips, uttered testily and with a frowning countenance.
Sometimes indeed these remarks had the right effect. My mother returned to herself and murmuring: “Oh, are you there now, Edward? I didn’t see you,” dismissed me to my room with a cheerful admonishment not to stay up so late working. But more often my poor mother recognized the voice of authority she had always obeyed, without recognizing the husband who spoke it; then she climbed back into bed with the air of a chidden child, frightened and dismayed, with hanging head. She lay down in silence, drew up the coverings and meekly closed her eyes. Her timid and apologetic air on these occasions stabbed me to the heart, and I could have struck my father for his heartless and insensitive behaviour, his lack of understanding.
Towards the end of this period my resentment once broke out of control. It was evening; my father had been upstairs to see that my mother was comfortably settled for the night. He returned to the sitting-room looking gloomy.
“She’s off again already—we’re going to have a bad night, I’m afraid,” said he.
The callous phrasing of this remark, and my father’s obvious regret at my mother’s condition on his own behalf, revolted me, and I exclaimed in a flare of anger:
“Of course she’s upset if you’ve been scolding her!”
My father stared at me in astonishment. He stood there for a moment as if considering, his head on one side, his pince-nez (askew) and his still-golden beard jutting at opposing angles. Then without a word he turned and left the room. I heard him climb the stairs. In a moment came the murmur of voices, and presently he returned to the sitting-room, looking well-pleased.
This was the first occasion in my life on which I had openly criticized my father. A feeling of triumphant power surged through my veins as I realized that my words had influenced his actions.
My mother grew worse; day and night nurses were now established; Netta was sent for. Unfortunately Netta could not come, for her son Stephen had chosen this moment to develop a bad bout of bronchitis—he was a delicate child, and often ailed. My mother was not perhaps sufficiently in possession of her senses by the time this news reached us to suffer from it as she would have done earlier, but for my part I was made aware of the tragic difference between those whom we love and those who love us. Stephen’s bronchitis meant infinitely more to Netta than her mother’s deathbed.
Early one morning my mother died, her husband and two surviving sons being present. The occasion was not without some of those macabre details which I as a young novelist was so determined to put in place of the sentimental conventions previously accepted as proper to the hour. My mother was in a coma; suddenly her loud breathing sank.
“She’s nearing the end now, Mr. Jarmayne,” murmured the nurse in my fath
er’s ear.
But my father could not accept this stroke of fate. Bending over my mother and taking her hand in his he exclaimed imperiously:
“Ada! Ada!”
Thus recalled from the verge of death my mother opened her eyes and surveyed my father with a smile infinitely ironic. Then snatching her hand from his she threw both arms above her head and in a hardly distinguishable murmur groaned:
“Let me go! Let me go!”
My father, for once abashed, sat back and looked at his dying wife in sad surprise.
“There now!” said the nurse, vexed, as the loud breathing recommenced: “She’ll have it all to do again, now.”
It was, indeed, nearly an hour before my mother’s breathing again sank and she passed quietly out of life.
I had dreaded the funeral, with its ceremonies which appeared to me so foolish and so trivial, but once the actual moment of committal was over, I found myself almost gay. A weight seemed to have rolled from my shoulders. No longer should I have to watch my mother’s ordeal, her unsuccessful attempts to live up to my father’s demands from her; no longer should I have to witness her uncomprehending suffering under my father’s rebukes, no longer perceive the tragic sadness of her life.
The funeral was over; my father and I returned to Ashroyd; John and his family left us. Netta had not made the journey to Yorkshire, and no relative on my mother’s side had appeared.
“Well, here we are alone together, Chris,” said my father, looking at me dubiously across the table. “I don’t know how we shall make out together, I’m sure.”
I gave a vague murmur to the effect that I supposed we should manage somehow. The relief from the long wretchedness and sick suspense of the past few months lent a cordiality which surprised me, to my tone.
2
I did not then understand, as I do now, that my mother’s death had removed the object of the original quarrel between my father and myself. No fresh exacerbations of jealousy over my mother could now arise between us, though the original Oedipean jealousy, with its accretions through past years, of course still remained.
Nor did I understand that, though my love and my compassion for my mother were genuine, there was yet a certain selfishness, a certain egoism, in my relief at her death. Not only was I truly glad that my mother suffered no more; I was also glad that I no longer had the pain of witnessing her sufferings. I no longer had to suffer with her under her own inadequacy and my father’s strictures; the spectacle of her sad life no longer existed to cause me grief.
Surely this is always the case with relief at anyone’s death, even when the relief is justified by the victim’s sufferings; the “happy release” phrase expresses the speaker’s (conscious or unconscious) fulfilled wish. The two motives, of sympathy and self-protection, exist side by side.
For me, these two motives united to produce at my mother’s, death a very real lightening of the spirit, a loosening of the bonds.
3
In 1927 a total eclipse of the sun occurred in the early hours of a June morning. This was to be especially clearly visible, the newspapers informed us, from certain regions in the Pennine Chain, and accordingly a very considerable number of the inhabitants of the West Riding planned excursions to suitable points in the relevant hills. I did not at that time drive a car, my financial resources, and in the opinion of my family my nerve, being insufficient. Accordingly I asked John if he planned to go; if so I should be glad to be included in the party. He was as astonished by my suggestion as I was by his refusal; to spend the night out on a hill in order to see a natural phenomenon seemed to him quite idiotic. However, he returned to the subject on the following day with the news that Edie and Anne wanted to see the eclipse and Robert of course was always ready for an outing, while the twins like their father preferred the comfort of their bed. The Hilbert Mills chauffeur had expressed a willingness to drive for the excursion; accordingly if I wished to go, a party of five could be arranged.
We set off at midnight for Kilnsey Crag. I sat in front beside the driver; Edie with Anne and Robert at the back.
From the first Robert was an intolerable nuisance. A strong restless boy of nine with a loud voice and not very good manners, confined in the small space of a moving car for a couple of hours, can cause a good deal of discomfort. Robert jumped up and down, shouted, complained; he was hungry and insisted on one of the picnic baskets being extracted from the boot and opened, he was sleepy and insisted on lying down (for half a minute) with his head on Edie’s knee. His first excitement over, he became bored with the whole affair and wanted to turn back, reiterating loudly:
“Let’s go home, Aunt Edie! Who wants to see the silly eclipse? Let’s go home.”
The scene outside the windows at this time was one of great beauty. Thousands of cars (as the press next day recorded) were making their way towards Kilnsey from all parts of England; at every turning and crossroads, more joined the stream. The night was dark and very still, so that these cars {their headlights on at full) converging along the twisting Yorkshire lanes, appeared like strings of jewels moving in graceful curves across black velvet; while the trees and grass suddenly illuminated in their beams had that appearance of being cut out of cardboard and painted, which oddly enough is very romantic. The air was cool and fresh; the noise of our own engine drowned all other sound, so that the illusion of starry patterns silently mutating was complete. All this offered me a high aesthetic pleasure, but Robert would not allow me to enjoy it. His demand to return grew increasingly clamorous; when I countered by remarking that I at least wished to see the eclipse, he gave out a sound between a yelp and a groan and subsided for a few moments. But all too soon he revived and commanded Anne to play noughts and crosses with him by the light of his electric torch. The wrigglings and gigglings, the arguments and quarrels, the shovings and at last the slaps, which this game appeared to involve—for Anne being a hefty girl five years older than Robert stood no nonsense from him—entirely prevented any poetic or aesthetic feeling in its players’ vicinity.
We parked in a well-chosen field just beyond the crag, and ate the excellent meal Edie had provided. Robert enjoyed this so heartily that his schoolboy’s greed appeared naïve and endearing; moreover, while he ate he was at least silent, which was a relief. After the meal he fell asleep. Tucked up in a rug with his head pillowed on Edie’s shoulder, his long fair eyelashes—Beatrice’s eyelashes—sweeping his firm red cheeks, he appeared pathetically vulnerable, as sleeping children so often do. At that time I held strongly the view that the boy’s happiness depended upon my power to keep the secret of his birth; his future was in my care; seeing him thus I felt protective towards him.
The darkness began to lift as the sun climbed towards the horizon; in a grey chill light, through grass thick with dew, the four of us climbed the hill, leaving Robert still asleep in the car. Larks began tentatively to sing; lapwings, disturbed from their nests, fled with their wild mournful cry; the sun rose, and with mingled hope and disappointment, we saw that the sky was covered with intermittent cloud. Presently the transit of the moon’s shadow began; in company with the many other sightseers who had chosen the same slope as ourselves, we gazed up earnestly through our square of previously smoked glass, but because of the driving clouds caught only occasional glimpses of the darkening sun. As the moment of total eclipse approached, amid a general cry of disappointment a heavy cloud obscured the relevant portion of the sky. But though the event of totality was thus invisible to us, its moment of occurrence was unmistakable to all our senses; an indigo shadow descended on us like an icy breath; colours faded, birds ceased to sing; the whole wide landscape of dale and fell took on a sinister twilight air, as if the world were about to perish before our eyes; our blood chilled; death seemed near; panic would have been easy. At this strange and terrible moment, when all on the hillside fell silent with awe as we perceived the puny stature of man confronted with the great forces of the cosmos, his temerity in defying those forces, his incredib
le achievement in conquering them to make the earth his serviceable habitation—at this sublime and solemn moment, Robert burst over the brow and shouted in aggrieved (and very Yorkshire) accents:
“What did you leave me for? Is this the eclipse? There’s nothing to see! Daft, I call it.”
Vexed by the interruption on my own account, and ashamed that a lad in my charge should spoil the enjoyment of the other bystanders, I exclaimed forcibly:
“Do stop that awful row, Robert!”
(Not wishing to be too hard on him, I used the word row as a kind of playful substitute for noise.)
Robert gave one of his derisive howls and began to jump up and down, shouting rhythmically scornful variants of the word eclipse.
I lowered my smoked glass and took my eyes from the clouds in order to deal more firmly with the boy. At the same moment Edie said sharply:
“That’s enough now, Bob—you heard what your father said.”
Three experiences fused in a sudden lurid flash. Edie’s words recalled to me that I stood to Robert (in his view) in the relation my father stood to me; I remembered that my father had once used to me precisely the same angry words I now used to Robert; by some trick of light my face was reflected in the glass I held and I saw that I carried on my forehead the vertical frowns I had so dreaded in my father. I am like my father, I perceived; I look like him, I speak like him, I even call Robert by his full name as my father used to call me by mine. My father is a human being, subject to all the human limitations; he is well-meaning, fallible, perplexed, of like passions with myself, subject to nerves and outbursts of temper like myself, yet wishing me well as I wish well to Robert. Why then have I hated him so viciously? What dark motive has tricked me into this sterile fear, this inhibiting passion? Freud has the answer to that, I thought at once, and marvelled that 1 had never applied before to my own case the idea of the Oedipus complex, with which I was all the same sufficiently if vaguely familiar. I didn’t apply it because I didn’t want to, I reflected; I didn’t wish to cease to hate my father.
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