Anglo-Saxon Attitudes

by Angus Wilson

  'Oh it's you,' she cried. 'I thought you were in Vienna or somewhere heavenly.'

  'I was wishing I were still there until the evening rewarded me by meeting you,' he said.

  She took the compliment as though its stilted conventionality had brought her face to face with old Q or Prirmy or some other long-dead satyr. 'Oh, it's just the same here as it always is,' she said. 'Nobody has anything new to say and everybody's going to bed with the same boring people as usual, or, if they aren't, it's worse.'

  He wondered for a moment what the circle of society could be like that failed to entertain her. 'No one I know is going to bed with anyone,' he replied, 'but that's because they're so old.' Then, feeling that perhaps he was being a little comically sophisticated for an old man, he asked, 'How is my son?'

  Elvira paused for a moment as though uncertain of what the words meant, then she cried, 'Oh! Johnnie! I've left him, you know. But I think he's all right. At least, as all right as he'll ever be. He's in the thick of this boring Pelican business still. There's a ghastly article of his about it in this evening's paper.'

  There was a moment's silence, then Gerald said, 'I suppose you're full of engagements this evening.' He regretted the choice of words instantly but knew that any other would have been as bad.

  'Oh! no,' she cried. 'Mondays are one of the evenings when we ...' She stopped and said, 'No, I'm going home to read the new Compton Burnett.'

  The allusion was only vaguely familiar to Gerald. 'Would you care to dine with me?' he asked.

  'I'd love to,' she answered directly, and, when he asked her to choose a restaurant, she said, 'No, you do that thing. I'd much rather it was your choice.' He suggested Scott's, and she said, 'But that sounds absolutely the right thing.' He hoped that she was not going to put him in his place the whole evening. She rejected Larwood's offer of a fur rug and settling herself beside Gerald, she said, 'Do you do a lot of this picking up?' He wondered if this meant what he hoped, but when he looked at her face, her expression was entirely perfunctory. He felt depressed, flattened. 'I don't often get such pleasant opportunities,' he said in a dulled voice.

  'I believe it's usually salesmen,' she said. 'The gowns must get in the way so.' She pronounced 'gowns' in a comic cockney accent. He felt tired at the prospect of an evening's such superior, amusing talk.

  When they got to Scott's, he dismissed Larwood for the evening. 'We can take a taxi,' he said. He saw her look of annoyance and regretted his action. He might, he supposed, have guessed that these intellectually snobbish young women would also be snobbish about money and social superiority.

  'I wish you'd kept the car,' she said, as they sat down at their table; 'I like everything to be as luxurious as it can be. It's such a bore when people do things they don't have to.' Once again he warmed to her.

  She chose oysters and lobster Delmonico. 'I suppose you'd better tell me now what's your attitude to Robin and me,' she remarked, picking at the torn quick of her thumb. Gerald looked blank. 'Oh God!' she cried, 'how boring! That's what I always do. I suppose it's being English. The English are the most ghastly egocentrics, aren't they?' She took the evening paper from where it lay with her bag. 'I think perhaps it would be better if I read Johnnie's article to you in a funny voice. Do you like people imitating? I can do Johnnie rather well.' She began to read: '"I am delighted to hear that some Members of Parliament of both parties are to ask questions of the Government about the unfortunate mishandling of Mr Cressett's market-garden. More power to their elbow, I say."' Elvira read the phrase in a parody of John's schoolboy manner. 'Oh God!' she cried, 'isn't it hell?' She continued reading: '"As a late member of the House of Commons, I welcome any movement that will reduce the danger of the oldest of all representative bodies becoming a mere rubber stamp. But make no mistake, this is not just a party matter. Those Labour members who use this issue as a stick to beat the Government are as much in the wrong, or almost as much so, as those tireless Tories who seek to use it in their selfish battle against nationalization and their self-interested attack on the Civil Service. The British are proud of their Civil Service and they have reason to be so. It is one of the finest instruments of government in the world today, but it is an instrument, not an agent. It is wrong that successive governments should have allowed civil servants the power to order the lives of citizens without redress. It is wrong of the citizens to permit it. It is unfair to the hard-worked civil servants to place them in such a position of power. The redress of Mr Cressett's ills is not an attack on individual civil servants, it is a demand that the Civil Service shall once again return to those traditions of service which have made it so respected. But we must never forget that behind all these matters of principle there lies the story of an individual. Cressett has no wish, I am sure, that his already trampled-upon market-garden should become the battle-ground of party politics. He wants only, in the words of Voltaire's Candide, to cultivate his garden or so much of it as is left to him." Oh! God!' cried Elvira, 'Candide! Isn't it squalid?'

  'I don't care for John's language, certainly,' Gerald replied, 'but as to the rights and wrongs of the case I haven't enough knowledge to judge.'

  'But that's the whole point.' Elvira was almost shouting. 'There isn't any knowledge. It's just one of these awful British occasions for moralizing. You take up something where somebody's in the wrong and make an arbitrary decision about the goats and the sheep and then start making moral noises. It's just an English parlour game,' she said, twisting her hair with her fingers, 'and what's so ghastly is that it's got into our literature. It's all there in Morgan Forster and those people.'

  Gerald noticed that the more vague the content of her words became the more emphasis she laid on them. 'You seem very much against English things,' said Gerald.

  'But of course I am,' she cried. 'Any ordinary person who wants to lead a civilized life and who's even reasonably aware of literature and painting and so on has to be. It may be all right for scholars, I really don't know. And, of course, it's wonderful for geniuses. We all know about English Philistinism forcing geniuses into rebellion, killing Keats, and all that. But for ordinary civilized people like me it's simply ghastly.' She waved her fork at him menacingly. 'It's easy enough to make fun of the intelligentsia of Europe, their earnestness and their cafés, but at least they aren't provincial. Every single English intellectual is provincial and bloody,' she ended savagely.

  She leaned back in her chair, her breasts swelling with indignation. That's the part I like, Gerald thought.

  'Don't let's say any more about it. It's too ghastly,' she said. 'Can we have another bottle of wine?' The arrival of the second bottle seemed a signal for her to relax. She lit a cigarette, turned sideways in her chair, and crossed her legs. Gerald decided that he would at least allow himself the pleasure of staring at them.

  'I think really I'd better tell you all about Robin and me,' she said, blowing a cloud of smoke as though she were retreating in battle. 'You're almost certain to hear sooner or later. Though, goodness knows, I probably only say that because I can't conceive anybody not living on the gossip of my own little circle. It's probably some other reason entirely really - some awful English thing about my needing a father figure to confess it to. Anyhow, I do rather hope we may get to know each other, and there's a limit to hypocrisy, isn't there really?

  At least, I mean, now it's not the nineteenth century, there is, isn't there? The awful thing is that it's almost impossible to say it in English, because the English always divide up sex and love so much that they haven't got any real words that do for both. All the awful people I know would say "going to bed with each other", but it isn't that only, and anyway that's an awful genteelism. In any respectable language I could say I was Robin's mistress and leave it at that, only in English that would mean either something commercial or a lot of nonsense about France and l'amour. Anyhow, that's what I have been for two years.'

  Gerald could find no words but 'I see'.

  'Oh, for God's sake, don't
say silly things,' cried Elvira. 'Of course you can't see. Nobody can unless they're one of the two people concerned.'

  Gerald sought for words. 'I meant,' he said slowly, 'that I've never been very close to my family and therefore I'm not used to confidences about them. What they do is their own concern. I hope you and Robin are happy, and, for the rest, I have nothing to say.'

  Elvira stubbed out her cigarette angrily on a plate. 'I think all that's rather awful, really. That sort of outdated modern thing about parents and children not being connected. I don't see any point in a family if you go on like that.' She paused for a moment, then added, 'I suppose if I really cared about families I should think of Robin's. I would, I believe, if Marie Hélène was a real person, but, thank God, she isn't. But as to being happy, if you mean it as a portmanteau word for all sorts of "goods", then, thank you, yes, we are very happy.'

  Gerald, looking at her profile, could not discern much of this emotion in her tense mouth and the strained look about her rather hysterical blue eyes. He felt that to remain silent would be less friendly than to risk impertinence, though the information had left him with a certain repugnance which he preferred not to define. 'You've met my daughter-in-law, then?' he asked.

  'Oh God! yes. Before I met Robin. She's the most awful lion-huntress, you know; so she was always trying to get Johnnie to her parties, but he saw pretty soon that they were no use to him and then she tried to suck up to me. The woman in Johnnie's life! She's crassly stupid, you see. Actually, poor thing, she's probably quite a good ordinary French bourgeoise, only like all of them she's a colossal snob and money's gone to her head. She gives these ghastly parties and poor Robin has to tag along - British Council people and the most minor politicians and all the bad writers and painters who aren't even best-sellers. She thinks she's a sort of cultural link between England and France, and every now and again she gets hold of some French writer whom nobody would touch over there and does an enormous thing about him. Actually she's just about heard of Montherlant. I do hope you don't like her, but I can't imagine anyone would bother to think about her unless they happened to be in love with her husband. I don't like her at all.'

  Gerald laughed. 'I realized that,' he said.

  'Well, would you in my position?' Elvira cried.

  'No, certainly not,' Gerald replied. 'Robin's very intelligent,' he added.

  'Yes, I suppose he is in a way,' said Elvira, 'only he's awfully badly educated and doesn't know anything about anything worth knowing about. Anyhow, that's not why I'm in love with him, but I think we won't discuss that. The awful thing is that he's so sensible, and with Marie Hélène being a Catholic and a bitch and refusing to divorce him, we have to be sensible. I'm not really very good at it. Because Robin thinks he has a duty to Timothy, and, of course, he's right. So we only meet four evenings in the week and Marie Hélène has to know and give her tacit consent, which means that she can't do anything about it, but one feels she's there all the time. And then what's so awful about me is that when I know it's an evening to be with Robin, I feel I want to do something else; and when it's like tonight and I can't see him, I have the most hellish pain in my stomach and want him awfully. But still that's part of being in love and the price one pays for being so madly happy and so on, isn't it?'

  Gerald looked at her to see if she was speaking ironically, but she was completely serious. He wondered if it was fanciful to hear Dollie's voice once more through all the years in this. Fanciful or not, he decided, it really was his duty to try to help for once. 'I think, you know,' he said, 'that you should tell Robin all this. These sensible arrangements can upset things badly and they can always be rearranged if they have to be. I know something about it because the serious love of my life came to me after I married and it was broken up by things of this sort.'

  'Thank you,' said Elvira, 'but I don't really want any advice. Besides, I've heard about your girl-friend. She was a tennis player, wasn't she? So it's hardly the same thing.'

  Gerald smiled. 'I doubt if such distinctions matter much in love affairs.'

  Elvira gulped down her coffee. 'Oh no, not in the absolute basic part of it, of course,' she cried, 'but it must matter whether you're a person with any real relationship to life or not.' Gerald felt angry at her tone of superiority. 'I'm sorry,' she said. 'I don't mean to be superior. And anyhow, even if I don't want advice, I do really want a father figure, however English and awful it is of one to do so. What I should like is if Robin and I could visit you sometimes.'

  Gerald was appalled at the prospect. However, 'I should be delighted,' he said. 'I doubt if Robin will care for the idea much, though; we've never been on very easy terms.'

  Elvira rather inexpertly brushed some crumbs off her skirt. 'Oh! that!' she said. 'I think all that's rather silly.'

  It seemed to Gerald that he heard a voice condemning the whole complicated machinery of his past life without seeing even the remotest necessity for examining its structure. Nonsense of this sort from an attractive girl had at least the merit of making one try to defend the indefensible.

  Any defence of his conduct as a parent that he intended to make was prevented by Elvira. 'I must go now and get on with the new Compton Burnett,' she said. 'But before I go, since we've got on to this confessional basis, I think I'd better say something about Johnnie. I couldn't go on working for him, you know, because he's got so impossible and bogus, but I am very fond of him. Oh! not,' she added, waving her cigarette in the air, 'because he's a queer. I'm not that sort of a girl. ...' She stopped and looked at Gerald in alarm. 'Oh, my God! You didn't even know that. Well, it's time you did. He is,' she said savagely.

  Gerald stirred uneasily in his chair. 'I'm not quite sure if I know what you mean,' he said.

  'He's homosexual,' Elvira went on in the same angry voice. 'That's what "queer" means. I hope you're not going to be stuffy and difficult about it.'

  Gerald answered slowly. 'I didn't know that John was a homosexual,' he said. 'I know very little about him really, and even less about the subject we're discussing. I've only come across it three or four times in my life, among people I actually knew, that is. It revolts me rather, I think, but I'm not violent about the subject. I'm just not interested.'

  'Well, you should be,' said Elvira, 'or at least, I don't know. Perhaps not. I'm bored stiff with it myself, but that's another matter. Anyhow, I don't want you to think I'm a queer's woman. I don't like a lot of them - all that cosiness and being martyred. But I was very fond of Johnnie. He used to be so discreet - he's that secret kind, you know - but since all this awful publicity-seeking has taken hold of him, he seems to have lost all his sense. His new boy-friend Larrie is the most awful little crook, I'm sure, and I'm worried about it. I think you should do something about it.'

  Gerald raised his eyebrows. 'You have very exacting views of a father's functions,' he said.

  'I suppose I have,' Elvira replied. 'My own father was a very responsible person.'

  'I see,' Gerald observed, 'but I doubt if I can do much. John is hardly likely to listen to me on any subject. And on this one, as you've already heard, I'm ill-equipped to speak. His mother is far closer to him than I am.'

  'Oh her!' Elvira snorted.

  'You know my wife?'

  'No,' said Elvira, 'but I've heard enough about her from Johnnie and Robin. Besides, she's having this awful boy down to her house. He's Irish and he's probably blarneyed her or whatever they call it.' Gerald raised his eyebrows. 'It's no good doing that,' said Elvira; 'you must do something about it.' Her tone was quite governessy. Even later, when he dropped her at her Hampstead flat and, tired, refused the drink she offered, he heard her last words shouted after his departing taxi - 'Promise you'll deal with that Larrie business.'

  That same night was the last that Larrie was to spend at Frank Rammage's before moving to the flat over the stables at Marlow. He was entertaining Frank and Vin Salad now in Frank's large room. As he talked he moved restlessly about, stubbing out half-smoked cigarette
s, whittling a piece of wood with a penknife. Someone had once told Larrie that 'his Irish soul danced through life', and with his histrionic temperament he believed that his restlessness and his untidiness were part of this dance.

  'If it's dreams and visions that could make an artist,' he would say, 'I'd be the greatest poet of them all. But I never had the education ...' and then he would launch into one of the many versions of his 'hard' childhood to which most of his conversation ultimately led. His roguish look, his ever so Irish dancing eyes would change to a sad little urchin look, and then, if the audience proved unreceptive, would settle into the sullen, depressed look which was his natural expression in repose.

  But this evening he was not putting over a story to an untried audience, and his mood, though hectic, was in a different key. For Frank he was defiant, the boy who was blazing a trail through life, his cheeks aflame, his blue eyes glowing at the future before him. But for Vin, there were winks and the tongue stuck in the cheek, the wide boy who wasn't to be taken for a ride by anyone, the boy who knew all the answers and was going places that Mr Vin Salad would only see at the pictures.

  'It's a wonderful house, Frank,' he said, and his nicotine-stained fingers made gestures to try to describe its limitless size and wealth, 'with great gardens ablaze with all the colours in the rainbow.'

  'That's not likely in dead of winter,' said Frank, and his little mouth pursed tightly.

  'Conservatory flowers that come from all the parts of the earth, from Asia,' Larrie said, warming to his subject, 'and Africa and China too. It's a beautiful house for a grand old lady. She's like a queen as she moves about the great rooms, and she treats me like a prince. Nothing's good enough for Johnnie's friend. It's peaches they must bring in and grapes, and if I don't like them, then it's something else. All for little Larrie. There'll be maids to wait on us, and nice little bits of skirt they are, I'll tell you. But I'm not to notice, for I'm the guest in the house. "Get Mr Rourke this and get Mr Rourke that" it is all the time. She's the grand lady all right and speaks to them as if they were no better than the muck in the stables.'