The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot

by Angus Wilson

  He had no time to say ‘yes’ before Else, her bloodless cheeks suddenly aflame, had shouted, ‘Oh, no, that’s too paltry, Ada. To put your own beliefs before Gordon’s at this time. You will please excuse me from being at the Meeting House.’

  ‘Of course, Else, you must do as you think right,’ Mrs Paget had answered, her gentleness all suppressed aggression now. And there they had sat in the car to Brighton, trembling at each other, refusing to speak, until Mrs Boniface’s tears had united them in admiration for the grief of the simple.

  Yet that very evening, back at Andredaswood, they had cooed away to one another, talking of their activities in the Nuclear Disarmament Campaign. ‘David takes no part in the campaign,’ Else had said sadly; and Mrs Paget, ‘Oh, David, I hope you’ve not lost your pacifist convictions.’

  ‘No,’ he had told her, ‘but I’m afraid I feel more and more that it’s myself I have to pacify.’

  It had been impossible not to sound priggish without a full explanation which he had not wished to embark upon. But he need not have worried, for both women had felt quite equal to understanding and refuting him before he had spoken. Else had cried, ‘Oh, David. If we could make ourselves perfect! I’m afraid, my dear, the hydrogen bomb will have disposed of us all long before that.’

  And Mrs Paget had glibly chimed in, ‘Surely, David, we can only make ourselves ready, “toward”, so that peace can enter into us.’

  ‘But, of course,’ Else had cried, ‘soon the leaves will be showing and spring will bring a new peace to our minds.’

  Mrs Paget had smiled with a little secret amusement. ‘Well, yes, spring is one of its symbols, Else. But meanwhile, David, there is work to do.’

  ‘Oh, yes, Ada, so much work.’ He had left them arguing vigorously about the relative values of large-scale meetings and small groups. He had gone to find some ease in a beer at the local with Tim. All the same he had been disappointed that Gordon’s mother had shown so closed a mind.

  Breaking in on his thoughts came a thumping sound behind the swing door that opened on to the terrace. He turned to see Mrs Paget herself, pushing open the door with her rubber-ferruled stick. Her tiny, thin body was so bent now with rheumatism that she had to twist her head upwards to speak, and her hands were so gnarled and twisted that she used her stick to push her way through wherever she could. With her bony face, mat of untidy white hair and long, shapeless brown dresses, she wanted only a conical cap to make her the conventional fairy story witch. She manoeuvred herself, with long-acquired turns and twists, into the bamboo chair beside him.

  ‘I shall be leaving before supper, David,’ she said.

  Had Gordon been there, he would have said, ‘Supper, mother? When is that?’ for she liked to be teased about the homely language she affected. David hesitated to make the remark.

  Perhaps she unconsciously missed her son’s comment for she seemed put out. Knowing her belief that silence healed, David made no attempt to carry on a conversation. But she was clearly nervous, for she slipped the old-fashioned silk sewing bag down her arm from which it hung by its two bone hoops. Her sewing days were over some time ago, but she was never without the bag, its tasselled end swinging as she walked. It never contained more, as far as David knew, than two packets of Player’s Weights. She lit herself a cigarette and then said, ‘Would you like me to take Else away with me, David?’

  He guessed what she intended, but he preferred to let her say it. He asked, ‘Do you think she should have a holiday?’

  ‘No,’ she answered and she laughed. ‘You know I didn’t mean that, David. Don’t pretend with me after we’ve known each other so long. For good. She’d come if I told her to. She’s fond of me. And I’m fond of her. She’s a good creature for all her fancy talk about Nature. Besides I’ve known her a long time, ever since she came to us as a refugee. She knew my husband. She was an encumbrance I wished upon Gordon, there’s no reason you should take her on. I have the feeling that you and she get upsides of each other at times.’

  ‘No, no,’ he said. He had made up his mind that living with Else was to be one of the Martha tasks of his life so long as she wished to stay there. ‘We get on very well you know. If it hasn’t seemed so, it’s just the strain of the moment.’

  ‘Ah,’ she said doubtfully. ‘Well, if you ever feel you don’t want her, let me know and I’ll say that I need her. She has to be needed, poor thing. I’m going to leave her some of my money when I die. I asked her to take it now. Go back to Germany if she liked. Anyway learn to be independent. You’ll have to be some day, I told her. But she likes to think she’s needed here. She’s frightened you’ll get your sister down to keep house instead of her. It’d be natural enough if you preferred your kin, David, you know.’

  ‘My sister’s got her own life,’ David said, and thinking he saw a glint of contempt in her eye, he added, ‘She offered to come down as soon as she heard the news.’ He was going to stop there, but he reflected that ‘the news’ could not mean Gordon’s death for ever, so he added, ‘of Gordon’s death. Or to go abroad with me for a holiday. But I said no, of course.’

  ‘Why of course? You’re a contrariwise to me, you know. You’ve no faith, yet you’ve got enough puritanism to do for the whole Kirk of Scotland. They say “gloomy atheists”, don’t they? But you’re not that. You love the pleasures of life. At least what I call the worthwhile pleasures – music, books, and so on. Yet you’re always denying yourself things. You’ve got enough people to carry on here while you go abroad for a month or two. Why refuse it?’

  David smiled. ‘It isn’t puritanism,’ he said, ‘I don’t believe that the difficulties of life vanish just because one’s been on holiday.’

  She said, tapping on his knee with the handle of her stick, ‘What are all these difficulties?’

  He raised an eyebrow, and she said immediately, ‘Oh! Good heavens! I don’t mean your private affairs. I’m that nonesuch, you know, an old woman who isn’t inquisitive. I don’t care a jot about other people’s business.’ He reflected that, considering how little she had ever fussed about his friendship with her son, this was probably true. ‘But I am interested in people’s ideas,’ she said. ‘What was all this about pacifying yourself the other night? I didn’t follow it up when Else was there because I thought we’d had as much argefying as was good for us.’

  David hesitated before he spoke. He felt an aversion from expressing his views. Mrs Page was as good a recipient as any other: she was sympathetic, reasonably intelligent, and he had no particular emotional link with her. His aversion was a general one: he felt desperately the truth and importance of what he had to say and yet feared that, voiced, it would sound puerile utopianism. As he phrased his reply, he could hear Gordon saying, ‘I’m not here for a tutorial. Why can’t you talk naturally?’ but a conventional academic form seemed the natural voice to him for the statement of any ideas.

  ‘I think it might be best to begin –’ he said. He could see the same glint in Mrs Paget’s eye that would have appeared in her son’s; but he would make no concession, this was the way in which he found it natural to answer. ‘I think it might be best to begin,’ he repeated it, aware of the pedantic effect of repetition, ‘by saying that if there’s one word widely used today which I really abhor for its evasion and its looseness, that word is “humanist”. But the word has acquired by constant use a compendium significance combining a number of rather ill-linked views about life which, if only by their rather negative nature, it seems sensible to apply to me. I must accept, I’m afraid, being called a humanist. I say that,’ he gestured to the old woman as though she had contradicted him, but she sat attentive, yet looking as though she needed a pad of paper to make notes of points for refutation. She assumes a ‘committee look’, he thought, as easily as I do a don’s. ‘I say that,’ he went on, ‘because the practice of life I’ve been working out over these last years – the “difficulties” you asked about – is, I suppose, more usually associated with people of religi
ous faith.’ His voice rose to an odd falsetto, ‘Gordon, as you know, influenced me deeply, as he did everyone whom he met. I suppose I’ve had to fuse his way of life with my agnosticism. But I remain unconvinced by any transcendental arguments or, even more important, by any transcendental experiences that have been described to me.’

  ‘Gordon, you know, respected your sincerity so much,’ Mrs Paget said. David thought impatiently, I’m afraid she’s more stupid than I’d thought. He wished that, like Humpty Dumpty, he could say that observations were unnecessary and only likely to put him off. He longed to ease the solemnity of her remark.

  ‘I’m glad to say the tribunal took a similar view,’ he said. ‘I was one of the few non-religious objectors whose conscience was taken seriously. I suppose I’m rather proud of that. But I’ve never felt that the pacifist attitude could be confined to physical violence. I think that passivity – I don’t say quietism because that has religious connotations – is an entire way of living. It’s not quite as platitudinous as all that,’ he said, for he could see that she had put down her imaginary pencil. ‘I’m not saying that the passive way of living is an absolute good, right at all times of history. I’m afraid the tribunal would not have cared for that, had they known it. Only in ages like the present one, where violence and self-expression and complication of motive have become so great that we need a détente. It’s the commonplace of the newspapers when they talk of the cold war. But I believe this disengagement should take place inside all of us. We need a simmering down of human personality, of human achievement too if you like, in order that we can start up again. Otherwise all will be lost in the boiling over.’

  She said, ‘You started talking to me like a schoolteacher, David, but you’ve turned into a preacher. I’m glad of that.’

  He said, ‘I’m not. That’s why I was wrong to let you uncork me. It’s a way of living, not a declamation. All this talking to you is a perverse indulgence in self-expression.’

  She said, ‘Many people would say that it’s absurdly utopian.’

  ‘Meaning that you would like to say so?’

  ‘Meaning that I would not like to say so. But perhaps that I think it.’

  ‘It is. But, at the boiling point we’ve reached, no more so than anything else that’s offered. You nuclear disarmament people are always admitting that your scheme runs this or that immediate risk. So do the people who want to hold on to the bomb. Yet neither of them, for all their difficulties, even professes to go very deep. Mine at least is radical. It might take centuries. Extinction may put an end to all man’s schemes. Certainly violence will supervene many times. Violence masked as greatness. But meanwhile if more and more people simmer down we may eventually reach a safety point. On all accounts,’ he laughed, ‘during this age, no more greatness.’

  ‘You don’t have to worry much about that today,’ she said. He saw that his last remark had shocked her.

  ‘Or mediocrity claiming greatness. That makes an even louder noise. We’ve got enough past greatness to feed on for centuries. I shouldn’t even encourage a Beethoven if he lived now.’

  ‘I should think,’ she said, ‘that most folk would put an end to themselves in such a despairing world. No greatness! No God!’

  ‘No,’ he cried, ‘that’s the whole point, the whole difficulty. We must keep alive – but on the simmering level. I offer you a life of Martha daily duties, and of meditation.’ He laughed.

  She too seemed to feel he had said enough. She said rather solemnly, ‘I don’t know how I should live without the power of God’s peace.’ After a moment’s silence, she told him, ‘You seem to have encouraged Else with her fiddle anyway. I’m glad you’ve made that exception.’

  He smiled. ‘That’s been one of the difficult decisions,’ he said. ‘She’s not good. I’m afraid that our cellist, who is really good, will leave the quartet if I encourage Else too much. We can get another cellist, but he’s not good.’

  She said, ‘Oh, David, you mustn’t let Else ruin your quartet. Gordon had such a high admiration for the musical standard here.’

  David said, ‘I shall let Mary Gardner, the cellist, go and keep Else. Now perhaps you see something of the kind of decision I’ve been speaking of. We lower our presumptions and our achievements deliberately.’

  She said, ‘You’re a self punisher. That’s all it is. Or perhaps you’ve sacrificed your music to make living with Else easier.’ She sounded bitter. He answered, ‘No. There’s a double motive in most things, of course. But I know why I made this decision.’

  She sighed deeply as though the very idea of his existence wearied her. She said, ‘I’m glad you have Tim Rattray. Gordon thought he was an excellent man for the nursery. And he was your choice, wasn’t he? It’s so important for you with all this army of women here to have a man to talk to.’

  He said, ‘Yes. I feel that.’ He fell immediately into a depressed silence. Her remark had touched the one difficulty he did not care to consider. Hopeless love had dominated his life for so many years. Only the good fortune of Gordon’s rare personality had saved him from being destroyed by his emotions. If he drifted into another hopeless attachment he would deserve destruction.

  Mrs Paget must have felt this time that the silence was a healing one for she closed her eyes.

  *

  Renewed loneliness cast a sinister bogey shadow before Meg. What she had dreaded on leaving Viola Pirie’s was a return to nights of melancholy and of macabre dreams. That way seemed the short road to some sort of breakdown. It was essential, too, that she should be able to work in the evenings, for although she felt satisfied with her progress, the final test was now only two months ahead, and she had a gnawing fear that if she were beset again by neurotic distraction her memory would lose its grip on the complicated network of symbols she had so laboriously assimilated. The Garsington was becoming tedious to her. She had begun to dislike the faces of the young women and of the teachers, to know too well the patterns made by dust or cracks on the classroom walls, to detest the sardine sandwiches and the tomato-filled bridge rolls. It had served its purpose well; Miss Corrigan had spoken the truth when she said that the course was concentrated, hard, and effective. But Meg had chosen to work there as anonymously as possible. She still thought that she had been right to do so; to have made friends with any of the girls or the teachers would have been a distraction the work could not allow to her, and a meaningless distraction since she would never see them again. On the whole everyone was pleasant to her. Nevertheless her own attitude of polite withdrawal had inevitably left her in isolation, and now that she had returned to evening solitude as well, she would have been glad of some greater social warmth during the day. She began to long for her first job, her first real committal to some new personal relationships.

  Meanwhile to avoid a recurrence of the nightmare life of the Gloucester Road room or of the Victoria hotel, she decided to spend more money than she could really afford in order to live in a hotel that offered at least comfort. She saw it as a temporary expedient until she was through the last weeks of the course and the early difficulties of her first job.

  She chose a large hotel in the borderland between Kensington and Knightsbridge. Her room was small but comfortable in its faded pseudo-Louis Quinze furnishing, unchanged, she imagined, since the nineteen-twenties. The food was quite good. There was a lift, and porter service. The décor in the public rooms was rather more depressing, because newer and pretending to something more chic than the dowdy, once de luxe bedrooms. The lounges and dining room and the hall had all been redecorated after the war in the deadest of gold and white Regency. The management, as though to atone for this glacial, sad decoration, employed an ex-R.A.F. type and his wife to give colour to the rooms with flower arrangements. To Meg’s eyes these splashes of bright tulips or cinerarias seemed never to be in place for more than a few hours before the busy couple were replacing them with other tulips or cinerarias of a different bright shade. She wondered if they worked at p
iece rates. More permanent splashes of colour were provided by the smart hats of the chic old women who lived in the hotel and by tacit agreement always occupied their same chosen chairs. Meg was surprised to find that there were so many rich middle-class old women still in existence. She reflected that, if Bill had died in his sixties and left her rich, she might have been one of them. It was a comforting thought, at least, to know that she had avoided that. Beside the macaw-bright old women the parties of Australians and Americans, who stood disconsolately in macintoshes about the hall waiting for hired cars, seemed very sober. It wasn’t, she thought, a place that she could like, but it would do.

  Loneliness, nevertheless, caught up with her after the first week, not in its old nightmare, hysteric form, but in a strange restlessness. After dinner she would sit in the faded blue satin chair in her room trying to concentrate on tomorrow’s lesson. She would stare at herself in the oval mirror, or wonder why the ovals of satin on the wall had faded to a different shade to that of the chairs. Then she would go down to the bar and drink a whisky and soda she didn’t want. She would sit in one of the lounges and turn over the pages of Country Life or Queen. She would concentrate on the stories of antique-buying American tourists, or on the old ladies discussing hairdressers or bridge or psychic experiences. Once or twice she even started conversations with other lonely residents, but as soon as she saw that the barriers had been broken down she wanted desperately to go away. She would go into the television room and immediately what she saw and heard from the screen weighed upon her like lead. She would go out to the cinema and become physically uncomfortable, simply from a sense of the futility of cinema-going.

  The weekend proved a horror of claustrophobia. Rain made it impossible for her to walk in the streets. At last after luncheon on Sunday she got on a bus and took a ticket to its terminal point at Acton, but as soon as they reached a part of London unfamiliar to her she was reminded that long bus journeys had been her favourite treat at the age of ten. The regression seemed intolerable. She got down and went into a very dirty café, so old-fashioned that it had plates of coconut tarts in the window.