The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot

by Angus Wilson

  ‘Kenton,’ Lady Pirie corrected, ‘Merton’s in South London. I don’t know why you should think it must be dreary,’ she went on, ‘I always think of his house as rather bright – each wall with a different coloured wallpaper, with those modern designs, you know.’

  Meg was not in the imaginative habit of following the people she met back to their homes, so she made no comment.

  ‘Not that I know much about how anybody lives nowadays.’ Lady Pirie was quite mollified now. ‘You’re the one who goes about, Meg, and knows what life’s like today, not me.’

  They were in sight of the dismal converted mid-Victorian house in which Lady Pirie had her flat; looking at it, Meg could not bring herself to say, ‘Well, yes, darling, that is so.’ The teasing somehow seemed too cruel outside that decaying, genteel jail.

  ‘You’ll come early tonight, won’t you, Viola?’ she asked, as Lady Pirie got out.

  ‘Of course. I’m looking forward to it. Though I still think you’re very naughty to tire yourself like that.’ Viola Pirie paused a moment and then added, ‘You’ll forgive Tom if he doesn’t come, won’t you?’

  Meg said quickly, ‘But of course. We know how he hates parties.’

  ‘Oh, he probably will,’ Viola rushed to get it in. ‘You and Bill are such favourites.’

  ‘Well, don’t force the poor darling to come.’ Meg pressed the starter and was gone.

  As she made her slow way along Oxford Street, Meg contrasted her last errand with the next – Aid for the Elderly and Sczekely’s. Few people were lucky enough to have such a range of interests. What would Mr Darlington make of a Meissen dish, or Miss Gorres of Sczekely’s of modern methods in social case work? Detecting once more a note of cosy self-satisfaction in her thoughts, Meg applied the salt of irony – the Old and the Antique, that sort of journalistic phraseology was the price one paid for being under-educated, being brought up as a nice upper-middle-class girl.

  She could not, however, help congratulating herself on her ability to cope with people as she trod the cushiony grey carpet that lined the passage to the showroom at Sczekely’s. Most people found Miss Gorres difficult and abrupt; she conducted her business by successful bullying. But Meg, with her instinctive response to mood and shape of speech, had early adopted a casual yet direct manner with this chic and ageing refugee gamine that exactly fitted her shy, aggressive behaviour. Since she was a regular patroness at Sczekely’s this adaptation had been no more than a convenience, had sprung in fact from her habitual desire to please; but today it promised to be of practical use.

  She still found it strange that Bill should have asked her to cancel her purchase of the Nymphenburg figures. Two hundred pounds was not the sort of sum that he normally questioned; however, questioned he had, and Meg had been in a way pleased to have him deny her something; not only as a novelty, but as an expression of their relative positions in their devoted marriage. She loved Bill as much as anything for his conventional masculinity – or rather for the amalgam of qualities, sexual, emotional, and intellectual, which were implied in that term. His success had become for her a symbol of this masculine strength. She cherished his success and the way he used it – a way both generous and self-willed. A generosity that for her found expression in the allowance, growing as his success grew, that he automatically made to her; a self-will that showed itself in his unspoken demand that she should never inquire into the state of their finances, other than to know that he had been entrusted with this or this lucrative case.

  It was an archaic position for a wife that most of her friends would have found intolerable, but, since it enabled her to lead the life she so exactly wanted, Meg had come to feel it almost an emancipation from the conventional feminine freedoms, certainly an advance over the starved lives that so many of her friends gained from their independent, mutually sharing marriages. When, then, Bill had said: ‘Cancel the order for that bit of Nymphenburg nonsense, lovey, will you? This trip round the world, you know, means refusing a number of rather big cases,’ she had been delighted to accept the request as an order. She had only wished that it had been more peremptory, unaccompanied by any reason.

  So now she approached without concern the desk where Miss Gorres sat in a haze of cigarette smoke, once boyish but now a wrinkling monkey-boy.

  ‘I’ve decided not to have the two pieces I ordered, Miss Gorres,’ she said.

  Miss Gorres’ large brown eyes expressed only a perfunctory surprise; Meg’s decision, they suggested, was so unlikely to be realized that surprise was hardly called for.

  ‘The figures have been sent to you, Mrs Eliot,’ she said patiently, ‘and I believe your cheque has been paid into the bank.’

  ‘I want to send them back,’ Meg announced, ‘and if you’ve paid in the cheque, you can refund the money to me.’

  ‘I don’t think,’ said Miss Gorres, ‘that there was any question of the objects being returned when you bought them.’ Her accent became sterner and more foreign. ‘I don’t think Mr Sczekely will agree to it.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Meg, ‘as to that, I’ll talk to him if you like.’

  ‘Those pieces are not everybody’s taste, you know,’ Miss Gorres observed.

  Meg said nothing, and after a moment’s silence, Miss Gorres remarked casually: ‘We could try to find another buyer for you, if you like.’ She began to sharpen a pencil.

  Meg looked round at the room.

  ‘I can’t think why you show all this inferior late Chinese stuff,’ she said. ‘I’m leaving England for several months tomorrow morning so if you have my cheque, perhaps you’d return it to me now, otherwise you can make a refund. I’ll arrange for the figures to be ready if you’ll send someone to my house for them.’

  For a moment Miss Gorres seemed on the point of arguing, then she asked, ‘Shall I tell them to destroy the cheque?’

  ‘Yes. That will do,’ Meg answered. ‘Maybe when I get back if they’re still unsold …’

  ‘Oh, they won’t be,’ Miss Gorres said.

  ‘No,’ Meg picked on it, ‘I didn’t suppose for a moment that they would be.’ And she laughed.

  Miss Gorres accepted the friendly malice in the same spirit.

  ‘You’re giving us a lot of nuisance, Mrs Eliot,’ she said, ‘but so few people know as you do what they want and want what they should, so we must be indulgent for once.’

  ‘Yes.’ Meg took the compliment flatly. ‘And then, of course, I buy a lot of objects from you.’

  Now Miss Gorres too laughed. ‘We shall miss you here, Mrs Eliot,’ she said. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Oh, all over the place. Australia, South America, probably New York. My husband works so hard. This is a kind of treat for him. Only he’s always so restless on holiday that it’s no good trying to stay in one place.’

  ‘If I had not travelled so much against my will,’ said Miss Gorres, ‘I should envy you. Even so I do envy you the collections you will see. Perhaps I can give you some introductions to collectors and galleries. Look,’ she announced, ‘have you time for a drink?’

  Meg had no time at all to spare and had sworn to herself that she would not be cluttered up with introductions on the trip. To see Miss Gorres so relaxed, however, to be offered a tête-à-tête that was surely given only to very few, and then only for the clearest business motives, was such a tribute to the easy terms she had established as she could not resist.

  ‘Of course. Thank you,’ she said.

  Their heads were bowed almost conspiratorially over letters and visiting cards when a loud, flat drawl echoed through the small showroom.

  ‘Meg! You’re drinking. I do think you’re clever to find drink here. You must be one of those people who get booze out of a stone.’

  Meg turned, as indeed did the few other visitors to Sczekely’s, to see a dumpy figured, middle-aged woman in a grubby black suit smiling vaguely, moonily about the room. Moony, too, was perhaps the adjective to describe her face, for it was heavily made up in the Dutch doll
manner – plump, smooth, and lifeless except for very bright blue eyes, so round that they gave an appearance of perpetual childish fright.

  ‘Poll, how lovely to see you,’ Meg said quietly.

  Miss Gorres replaced the papers in her drawer and disposed of glasses and bottle in a cupboard, although Meg had not finished her drink.

  ‘It isn’t very lovely to see all the beautiful drink put away,’ Poll said, more to the room than to Miss Gorres.

  ‘Why are you going to all those filthy foreign places, Meg? Travelling in aeroplanes and never knowing where your things are. That’s no life for a girl.’

  ‘Bill’s got an important case in Singapore, some big rubber company’s interests. And we’re going to blue the fees on a world trip. He so needs a rest, poor darling.’

  ‘Oh, husbands!’ said Poll, with a crushing emphasis on the first syllable of the word and in the tone of one who had enjoyed great numbers of husbands, which indeed she had.

  ‘Not that Bill doesn’t seem much more like one’s favourite dish than a husband. But then they all do until you marry them. Have you got lots of lovely “mon” for me, Miss Garrish?’ she asked without pausing.

  Miss Gorres referred to a card index as the most appropriate place for Poll’s affairs.

  ‘I’m selling the two bits of Chelsea that my mum left me,’ Poll explained to Meg. ‘It’s all against promises to the dying and so on. But I do think circumstances alter facts, don’t you?’

  To Meg it seemed that Poll was really asking for support. ‘Of course they do, darling,’ she said as warmly as possible.

  Poll seemed to consider for a moment. ‘I think,’ she said with hesitation, ‘I meant that facts altered circumstances. But thank you for agreeing with me.’

  Miss Gorres meanwhile had taken one of the cards from the index drawer and laid it on her desk.

  ‘No sale yet, I’m afraid, Mrs Robson,’ she said.

  Meg could not for the moment connect Poll with the name Robson, and Poll, seeing this, announced:

  ‘You didn’t know I’d gone back to Robson, did you, darling? Well, I have. Only not with everybody. I’m trying it out. But I think I shall, because although Robson was quite ghastly in a lot of ways, he was really better than my others. What do you mean “no sale”?’ she continued, turning to Miss Gorres. ‘I know for a fact that Mrs Chisholm was after one and Lord Morrington said he’d bought the other. Mary Chisholm, Meg,’ she added in explanation, ‘not the old one. I shouldn’t think she’d buy porcelain, would you?’ She burst into a loud laugh at the absurdity of the idea, completing the isolation of Miss Gorres whose tone of voice openly announced that she was not prepared to maintain patience with her as long as she would with most clients. ‘You gave us a reserve price. None of the offers so far have reached that reserve.’

  ‘What do you mean, reached that reserve?’ Poll asked. She made Miss Gorres’ phrase sound like the ultimate hypocritical evasion. ‘I’m sure Lord Morrington would never have offered less than I asked. You don’t seem very good at selling things.’

  ‘You asked rather a high reserve,’ Miss Gorres said.

  ‘I didn’t ask more than I needed,’ Poll said, and then laughed loudly at her own frankness. ‘It’s my bloody trustees,’ she announced to the room.

  Miss Gorres clearly found these personal revelations unpleasantly alien to the reticent decorum her own misfortunes had taught her. ‘I think perhaps you should see Mr Sczekely himself about it.’

  ‘I think I better had,’ said Poll, ‘where is he?’

  ‘He’s away this afternoon.’

  ‘Well, really,’ Poll cried. ‘What was the good of saying I should see him?’ To Meg she appeared to be about to stamp her foot in rage. Miss Gorres walked away ostentatiously to talk to another visitor to the gallery.

  ‘I hope you’re not going to be as cross as this at my party this evening,’ Meg said.

  ‘It isn’t crossness. It’s righteous anger. That beast must have known I wanted the money. I always hate little crop-haired women.’

  ‘Poor thing,’ Meg explained in a lowered voice, ‘I know she’s difficult. But she was in the worst of the concentration camps, Poll, for years.’

  ‘Well,’ said Poll, ‘suffering hasn’t ennobled her, has it?’ However, when Miss Gorres came back, she said, ‘Mrs Eliot says I’ve been jolly cross. Forgive and put it down to aching feet, will you? But do get a good price for them. After all, seeing as how they’ve got the sentimental value, I wouldn’t sell them unless I wanted the money pretty badly, would I?’

  For a moment Meg thought that all Poll’s little efforts to be nice, including the comic cockney of her last sentence, were not going to soften Miss Gorres, so she smiled herself and said, ‘Well, I’m sure my friend couldn’t say fairer than that, could she?’

  It was unlikely that Meg’s cockney appeased Miss Gorres as Poll’s had not, but something did, for she said: ‘I’ll do my very best for you, Mrs Robson.’

  Poll took no more notice of her. M promise I won’t be cross at your party, Meg,’ she said, ‘but I expect I shall cry. I always do when people are going away. Even just for the weekend.’

  After Poll’s departure, Meg could not forbear completing the cordiality. ‘Poor Poll,’ she said. ‘You were wonderful with her, Miss Gorres.’ It was only when she saw that Miss Gorres was accepting the praise with a flush of pleasure that she realized where her mood had led her. She got up hurriedly and left the gallery with only a murmured good-bye.

  She had passed Westminster Abbey and was nearing home, when she remembered that she had not called for the air-sickness pills Doctor Loundes had prescribed for her. And there in the chemist’s shop in Victoria Street was Jill Stokes – poor Jill – her oldest friend whom at Bill’s request she had not invited to the party. ‘Oh, look here, not the Grim Grenadier, you know,’ he had said, when he saw Jill’s name on the list of prospective guests, ‘at least not if my tastes are being consulted.’ And of course, they had been, for it was as much his party as Meg’s.

  Jill, standing so upright by the Toilet Requisites sign, did indeed look the Grenadier. Her red woollen suit was as simple as Meg’s blue one, but the simplicity suggested drabness rather than chic. Meg reflected embarrassedly that this was merely the difference of cost. Jill’s height, too, no greater than Meg’s, seemed gawky rather than graceful; and her regular features – straight nose, high brow beneath swept-up grey hair – had the severity of a ward sister rather than of a Roman matron. Her smile, Meg thought, so perpetual, had become with years the frozen smile of death. Almost unconsciously Meg began to summon all the expressive pantomime of her own mobile irregular face. I do see what Mother meant by the advantages of being a jolie laide, she thought.

  For a moment she was shocked at her instinctive pleasure at outshining poor Jill, but then remembering her youthful jealousy of her friend’s classic looks she felt justified in her present little triumph. One can’t always have kind thoughts, she decided.

  ‘I’m buying some soap and maybe a hot water bottle,’ Jill announced and added, ‘I don’t know why I should tell you. It can’t be of any possible interest. But then, you know, I have no small talk these days.’ She smiled even more brightly as she uttered the last words.

  It was on the tip of Meg’s tongue to say that she was quite up to any big talk in which Jill felt inclined to indulge – that was how she would have answered when they were girls. Then she remembered the significance that attached – had indeed now attached for fifteen years – to the words ‘these days’. The greatest irony that she could permit herself nowadays without offending Jill was to parody her flatness. ‘I’m getting seasick pills for our little trip,’ she said.

  ‘Little trip! That’s quite marvellous, isn’t it?’ Jill laughed. ‘I thought you were going by air anyway,’ she said.

  ‘We are,’ Meg admitted, ‘but I think the pills are the same.’

  ‘Are they? Well, I wouldn’t know. I’ve never flown.’ Jill paused and
then added, ‘I don’t know why I say “never flown” as though I was always going by boat. I haven’t been abroad since nineteen-thirty-nine.’

  ‘I don’t think you’ve missed much.’

  ‘Haven’t I? Well, that of course I can’t tell, Meg.’ She asked the price of the large sized cake of Sandalwood soap and then said, ‘No, the small size will have to do. Isn’t it appalling,’ she remarked to the assistant, ‘how everything goes up?’ She turned to Meg, ‘All this conversation about prices grows on one. It’s one of the worst curses you avoid by not being poor.’

  Meg, in retreat immediately, said the one thing she had determined not to. ‘What have you been doing with yourself lately, Jill?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, I seem to keep busy,’ Jill began in the even, consciously boring voice that Meg had intended not to provoke. Or had she? Why else had she asked the pointless question?

  ‘The flat’s very small of course, but all the same … I only have Mrs Davies once a week now, you know. So there are always a lot of chores to do when I get back from work. I actually went to a film last week. I must say one thing for going out so seldom, I enjoy it like a small child when I do. Evelyn came up on Thursday. She didn’t bring the baby which was naturally a bit disappointing. But I do understand. London’s hardly a pleasure to her if she has to lug babies around. Anyway grandmothers are always a pest. You’re lucky not to be one,’ she laughed. ‘There you are,’ she said, ‘a dismal chronicle. But you asked for it. The truth is I’m just as jealous of the life you lead, Meg, as I sound to be. Beastly, isn’t it? But there it is.’

  Meg strove desperately to meet her friend’s sincerity. ‘I do wish,’ she said, ‘that we saw each other more often, Jill. It’s idiotic to say this, I know, when I’m just off to the ends of the earth. But I’ll be back in the spring and then we’ll meet regularly for lunch as we used to.’

  ‘My dear Meg,’ Jill announced maternally, but not with the gruff affectionate maternalism of Lady Pirie, rather as the mother deliberately carrying out a detachment of affection. ‘Perhaps we may.’ She smiled a little remotely and then added, ‘And perhaps we won’t. Let’s be honest and add that.’