The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot

by Angus Wilson

  Meg didn’t like to say that the newspaper photographer had told her that Poll was a duke’s daughter, so she merely said. ‘He thinks you’re very grand.’

  Poll looked vague. ‘Well, I suppose he’d know,’ she said. ‘He’s tremendously up in things.’

  Meg had believed that she could always tell when Poll was speaking ironically, but in all this she sensed a certain serious estimation, or, if not that, at any rate a refusal to accept last night’s crowd only as funny people who had been collected together. She wondered if perhaps Poll was very reasonably unwilling to treat them entirely as a joke because of some personal affection for them. She selected at random the lady whose lover locked her out, and said, ‘She seemed a very likeable woman.’

  She was snubbed for her dishonesty, however, for Poll said, ‘I wouldn’t know really. I don’t care much about “likeable” do you? She and Garry are an awfully mad pair. And I don’t mind, do you, as long as people are entertaining.’

  As to how they had to entertain in order to win Poll’s approval Meg could get no clear answer. There was a clue, perhaps, in her attitude to the gorilla-like man, Leonard.

  ‘He’s not very funny,’ she said, ‘coming in and saying my party was full of phonies. I suppose he wants me to have all the bores here.’ She named some of the people whom Meg had expected to see there. ‘I don’t have people here just because they’re well known,’ Poll said.

  ‘But they’re not as well known as all that, Poll, and they are old friends of yours.’

  Poll looked suddenly very cross. ‘Well, I don’t have them here. They don’t mix well and they fuss about what one’s doing. If the people I have here aren’t good enough for you and Leonard that’s your look out.’

  ‘But I liked them very much.’

  Poll’s face once more took on a vaguely blissful look.

  ‘Yes, aren’t they amusing?’ she said, then, as though considering, she announced, ‘When one’s young, Meg, it’s all right to collect people. But now I’m older I like people to collect me.’ She poured out more drinks. ‘Don’t let’s go to that little place of yours,’ she said, ‘it’s sure to be scampi or snails or something I couldn’t eat. I’ll make a delicious omelette later. With chives. Don’t you love chives?’ Meditatively she said, ‘I would like it if Leonard didn’t come here. He’s immensely strong.’ Then, ‘And you,’ she said, ‘the beard was terribly put out when you disappeared like that.’

  ‘I was very put out when he found me,’ Meg said. A light tone would allow her to skim over it all quickly if Poll proved unsympathetic. ‘He made a pass,’ she said.

  ‘Well, I suppose so,’ Poll replied. ‘I must say I shouldn’t have minded.’

  ‘Well, I did. I burned him with my cigarette.’

  Poll looked surprised. ‘I’m rather glad he didn’t take to me if that’s what he wants.’

  Meg felt in danger of crying. Poll’s judgement at that moment seemed of the greatest importance to her. If she thinks I’ve behaved stupidly I don’t know what I shall do, she thought. But Poll’s tone changed.

  ‘My dear Meg, surely you haven’t let the beard upset you? Anyone can see he’s in a bad way about sex. You’d better tell me what happened.’

  Meg told the whole story. When she repeated Tom’s remark about Bill, Poll said, ‘Silly little beast! Anyone could see that you and Bill had a marvellous time in bed. He must be in a bad way about you to have said that. Well, you mustn’t go on staying there. He obviously thinks of you as the marble statue he’ll bring to life with his kisses.’ She gave a great raucous laugh.

  Meg said, ‘That’s what’s so awful, Poll, I’d no idea that I went about behaving like the untouchable grand lady.’

  ‘Well, you did rather, dear. But I can’t see why not. You didn’t want anyone except Bill to touch you. And you could afford to be the grand lady.’ She got up. ‘I think we’d better have something to eat,’ she said. As she was heating the omelette pan, she remarked, not looking at Meg, ‘Well, you haven’t to worry about all that now. Being the grand lady, I mean.’ She broke the eggs into a basin. ‘I must say I don’t think you seem to know what you’re doing.’

  ‘I managed things very badly last night, I know.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t mean that. All this typing and shorthand and living at old Lady Thing’s.’

  ‘Living at Viola’s obviously has been a mistake. But I can’t see what you have against the secretarial course. It will get me quite a well-paid job; and if I don’t let myself get stuck in a rut, which I don’t intend to do, I might get involved with all sorts of things I don’t know about. I’ve lived in such a narrow world, Poll.’

  ‘Lucky you,’ Poll said, ‘I can’t think why anyone should want to know about most of the life that goes on in England now. Of course, I do see all those successful middle-class people you had to keep up with because of Bill’s work must have been rather ghastly. But you don’t have to keep up appearances now, Meg. What on earth do you want to go and work in some ghastly little office for?’

  ‘I must have some money, Poll.’

  ‘Well, you won’t get any that way. How much money have you got?’

  ‘A very few thousand pounds. It isn’t quite certain yet …’

  Poll interrupted. ‘But, good God,’ she said, ‘you don’t have very expensive tastes. You can almost live on that for a while. And then you know lots of people to borrow from. That’s what I’ve always done. And as you saw last night I meet masses of interesting people if that’s what you want. And you needn’t do anything. That’s the main thing. Doing things is so awful. I have a heavenly time. Even without breaking the trust, I mean. And anyway that won’t last long.’

  Meg looked at Poll in surprise. It was clear that she meant what she said; she did believe that she had a full, interesting life and it was obvious that she really enjoyed it,

  ‘If one can’t be really rich,’ Poll said, ‘I don’t think it matters how little one has.’

  Meg said, ‘I don’t think I’d be very good at borrowing and so on.’

  ‘You’ll learn, dear,’ Poll replied with mock sharpness. ‘If it’s some silly moral scruple, you’d better get rid of it at once, Meg. Nobody cares about us, why should we care about them?’

  Meg said as tentatively as she could, for she didn’t wish to puncture Poll’s optimism, ‘I really don’t think I should like your life.’

  She was afraid that Poll would be angry. People never liked to have their way of living criticized. But she need not have feared.

  ‘Oh, my dear, you can’t know what it’s like then. It’s absolute bliss, I get up when I want to. And I know where all the people are if I want to find them, and none of the lots of people have anything to do with the other lots unless like last night there’s a special party. And sometimes I just go to pubs I don’t know where there are blissful strangers.’

  She gave Meg a list of all the pubs and clubs she visited and which group frequented which of them. It takes, Meg thought, ‘talking on their own subject’ to make people into bores.

  ‘And they never come here. And if they do I don’t answer the door. And usually I can borrow from them if I’m hard up, or else they can borrow from me, they know when my cheques arrive. Sometimes it’s rather hell and we’re all broke together, but then we can all grumble together.’

  Meg said, ‘I don’t think they’d like me very much.’

  ‘Oh, I should think they would, shouldn’t you? After all you say funny things and look quite nice and there’s no specially awful thing about you like bad breath or any of those things.’ She laughed again loudly. ‘Besides,’ she said with a look of concentrated thought, ‘I should think you’d be wanting sex again some time. And it would be so awful to have one of those office affairs that they have in the women’s mags.’ Meg made no comment on this; Poll said, ‘As a matter of fact you could go on being as grand as you wished. Most of the people that bum around think they’re against everything like that, but they’re tremendo
us snobs really. If any of them get tiresome I just tell them what it was like being a deb and about all the balls and things. Of course, they make a great show of laughing at it, but they lap it up really like any Evening Standard reader.’

  Meg saw that Poll had invented a whole mythology of an aristocratic past. It seemed impossible that she could truly be as euphoric as she seemed. Meg now felt that she must puncture her satisfaction. ‘And you don’t regret giving up painting?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh! I should if I’d been any good. But it’s ghastly to do things you aren’t any good at, like muddling all the papers up in somebody’s office.’ She got up and took a brown paper bag from the kitchen dresser; out of it she produced two very shrivelled chicories. She looked at them closely. ‘I shouldn’t think it would be worth making that into a salad, should you?’ she said and threw them into the sink. ‘I don’t believe you’ve come to terms or whatever it’s called with your new life at all, Meg,’ she said. ‘You’ve got all sorts of ideas about fulfilling yourself and finding a what’s its name for yourself. But there just isn’t any place for women of our age and upbringing who haven’t any money. It’s hell if you don’t accept it, but once you do it couldn’t be more cosy. You just have to settle for being a slut, that’s all. And goodness knows nobody can make a better slut than a lady born and bred if she sets her mind to it.’

  Meg suddenly felt disappointed and annoyed to hear this missionary note in Poll’s voice. She said sharply, ‘It sounds wonderful, Poll. But isn’t it simply what our grandparents called Bohemia?’

  ‘Did they? I never knew mine. Yes, well I suppose it is. Why? Shouldn’t it be?’

  The surprise was so evidently genuine that Meg was forced to consider. She realized that this was simply another of her own prejudices. ‘Bohemia’ like ‘wine and food talk’ had always been stock jokes to her, and rather stale ones at that; yet she liked a little of the sort of life Poll led, just as she shared moderately in Donald’s enthusiasms. It was not an absolute difference only one of degree. Nevertheless there was a depressing emphasis on ‘lady’ in Poll’s gospel that seemed a mad version of her own mother’s views … but there again the criticism was pointless. Poll had created a rather ‘ham’ part for herself as the grand lady down the drain, but in her own mind it was a star part and most of the time she was clearly entirely happy playing it. Such trouble as she gave to other people was no doubt compensated by the entertainment, conscious and unconscious, that she provided. It wouldn’t do for herself, Meg thought, but that was not Poll’s fault.

  She tried to rest content with this ‘live and let live’ view, but it was no good. Puritan or not, she was made differently – made to judge; and at this critical juncture she must make judgements or cease to exist. The truth was that Poll could be as happy as she liked, her life was still a sort of animated death. Behind her clown’s face nothing except perhaps mistrust and hatred. She had, it was true, accepted them, turned them into a kind of punch-drunk bliss. It didn’t make any difference, of course, to her affections for Poll. ‘Loving the woman, yet hating her life.’ Meg mocked at the conclusion she had reached. It was surely the most priggish of standpoints. Yet priggish or not, she knew that she must hold it. She was not looking for punch-drunk bliss or any other sort of plucky death in life.

  She said, ‘Thank you, Poll, it all sounds marvellous. I’ll think about

  She knew that she would not and she guessed – this saddened her – that when Poll saw that her invitation to ‘settle for being a slut’ had been rejected she would find Meg’s company less and less desirable. Wholehoggers were like that Meg’s depression grew on her. She refused an invitation to go to the Antigua Club; and managed to slip into her bedroom at the flat with no more than, ‘I must have an early bed, Viola. You’ll excuse me, I know,’ to Lady Pirie’s call from the sitting room to join the company.

  It was not long, however, before she realized that her relations with Viola could not remain for ever on this evasive footing. Meg had feared that her inefficient management of Tom on the evening of Poll’s party might have seemed inconclusive enough to stimulate him to further ‘passes’; or again she was anxious lest her rejection might, by adding to her ‘haughtiness’, have increased his ardour. They were groundless fears for Tom now treated her civilly but with an off hand, uninterested ease that truly placed her in the aunt-like role she had always supposed herself to occupy. He even seemed willing, though in no way eager, to let her continue to be the friendly, ‘good fun’ aunt she had sought to be. She tried to think he was embarrassed, but he was simply without interest in her. It made things easier; but she still found herself remembering what he had said even if he did not, and she was still determined to leave as soon as she could do so without hurting Viola’s feelings. Indeed she saw that it must be very soon, for, by staying on her own terms, she now risked upsetting Viola anyway.

  Viola, it was clear, had welcomed the secretarial course as a useful bridge by which Meg could cross from sudden tragedy to a sensible life more in keeping with the lively, fashionable young woman of harnessed energy that she had always admired. Now that Meg, depressed by the failure of her sally into ‘life and people’, was more intent than ever on evenings devoted to shorthand, Viola clearly thought that prudent means had become foolish ends.

  ‘Anyone,’ she said, ‘would think you were studying Chinese, Meg, the amount of time you give to that wretched shorthand.’

  ‘I doubt if Chinese would be more difficult.’ Meg gave a laugh which she heard as hollow. Laughing to stave off conflicts of opinion was beginning to prove a tedious and fruitless ruse.

  ‘Nonsense. You’re not going to tell me all these typists spend hours studying in the evening like you do. They’re far too busy gadding about with their boys. And quite right too.’

  Meg thought that she had commented too often already on the difficulties of age and on varying standards of competence, so she only smiled.

  ‘You’ll wear your eyes out. I know it doesn’t sound kind, Meg, but your age is exactly the time when you have to take particular care of your looks.’

  Meg wanted to say ‘and my position too, of course’, but she merely registered the increased necessity for moving.

  A few days later Viola said suddenly at breakfast, ‘Meg, it wasn’t very kind not to answer Donald Templeton’s letter about the compensation.’

  A childlike rage seized Meg, so that she had to put down her cup for fear of spilling the tea. Interfering old bitch, she thought. That Tom was at the table did not help; however, he was apparently entirely absorbed in his newspaper. He even interrupted his mother’s next remark. ‘Here’s another brilliant engineer clearing out,’ he said. ‘He’s had as much as he can take. But I don’t suppose what the younger generation feels seems important to either of you two.’

  As he spoke, Meg had a sudden vision of Sir Herbert, whom she had never known, speaking exactly so – ‘I don’t suppose, Tom, that what the older generation feels interests you,’ he must have said. But Viola was demanding her attention.

  ‘You must know, Meg,’ she was saying, ‘what a jolly busy life a barrister leads and yet you seem to take all Donald does for you for granted.’

  Meg could sense that she was deliberately provoking a quarrel. She answered shortly. ‘The letter simply said, Viola, that the Foreign Office were still hopeful. There was nothing to answer.’ They finished breakfast in silence. But as she was leaving the flat, Viola called after her.

  ‘Oh, Meg, I’ve asked Colonel Randolph and Donald Templeton to dinner a week today. Do you think you could do something to please me? Don’t work that evening. Give us the pleasure of your company.’

  It was the sweet first scolding of a naughty child; soon, Meg thought, she’ll give me ‘what for’. She knew that she should ignore it – accept it for this time and make sure she was gone before there was a next. Illogically, however, the fact that she had to protect Viola from hearing of Tom’s conduct made Meg the more furious at this rebuk
e. She walked back into the dining room, put her bag and her books down on the table, and said, ‘Viola, this has got to stop. You think you’re being kind, I know. But interference of this sort isn’t kindness. No matter how many times I am forced to see Donald Templeton I shall not like him any better, in fact I shall probably dislike him more. I know that I ought to try to like him because he was Bill’s friend, but I can’t. In fact I haven’t any doubt that that’s why I dislike him. I don’t understand why Bill had to choose a pompous bore as a friend, and I don’t understand how a pompous bore like that can have known Bill’s true needs in life better than I, but he did. To see Donald only makes me remember the side of my marriage which was a failure. As I can’t do anything about it now, I don’t see any point in upsetting myself. I don’t intend to do so. I don’t intend to see Donald even to please you.’

  Viola’s thick neck had flushed as Meg spoke, but she only said, ‘Oh, Meg, what stuff and rubbish you clever people think up about yourselves. All this psychology!’ She picked up the tray on which she was collecting the breakfast things and walked towards the door. To her own amazement, Meg found herself shaking and shouting after Viola’s stocky figure.

  ‘You’d do a great deal better if you thought a little more about your own motives. What on earth sort of mess do you think you’ve made of Tom?’ Viola walked straight on out of the room.

  Meg found it difficult to attend to her work that day. To have chosen Viola of all people on whom to release her pent up nervous distress shocked her. It was irrational and cruel; she had always been pleased to think that such cruel feelings as she had were under her conscious control. Viola was being tiresome, but she had always had her silly side. In the past under Meg’s influence she had shed her prejudices and shown only her good sense. Meg saw that she no longer had that influence. Viola was only another of the people who, without realizing it, had adjusted their attitudes to Meg’s changed position. It would have been more tolerable, if she had to hit out at someone, to have attacked Poll or better still Tom. To have considered their feelings and not Viola’s seemed peculiarly cowardly. It would be easy enough to say that stupidity was too heavy a tax on the temper; the fact remained that she made the decision not to criticize Viola’s treatment of Tom, kept to it all the time they had known one another, and now she had broken that resolution in a moment of temper. Everything suggested that she was completely incapable of managing human relationships, unless, as in the past, she could play her part from a position of advantage. All the more reason, she thought, why she should stick to her determination to involve herself with the world around her. Women, after all, were given a likelihood of longer life. She might have thirty years or more ahead of her. She felt increasingly sure that she could only hold on to Bill’s memory if she were fully alive. If she hoarded up her thoughts of him now and curled round them defensively, she would wake up in the end to find them mouldered away.