by Angus Wilson
February brought untimely fogs that year, but to Gerald it brought a clarity of mind that he had not known for years. He corresponded and lunched with possible contributors each day. He met young historians from the provinces for the first time and picked up old friendships that he had almost forgotten. He astonished himself with his energy and the lucidity of his expositions. He began a scheme for the editorial preface; he even organized some of his notes for The Confessor. There were, it was true, occasional mentions of Pforzheim's work in Heligoland and some consequent remarks about Melpham which he had to meet. In general, however, the topic awaited a full statement at the forthcoming historical congress at Verona. May seemed in yellow February a long way off. The family, too, had receded from his life after the unwonted intimacy bred of Christmas. At times Gerald had to admit to himself a carefree, even happy temper.
It was in the first week of March, when endless rain had driven off the fogs, that Elvira telephoned him, reminding him of his promise to let her bring Robin round. 'He'll be horribly shy,' she said. 'He's always kept his private life from his family. Not that that matters, but it's bad because he's so conscious of it.'
Gerald reflected that his son Robin's life was getting all too like a parody of his own. 'I shall be shy too,' he said. 'But don't drop in. Come and have a proper dinner.' Somehow an informal visit from his eldest son seemed more unthinkable than a formal invitation to a meal.
Robin, it was true, was shy with his father, but his happy absorption in Elvira's presence overcame it. Gerald was surprised to find how delighted he was to see Robin so happy. His feelings for his children, though equally unsuccessfully expressed, differed greatly. For John he felt a guilty and jealous dislike; for Kay a deep love which made him always criticize her, for he knew that inevitably she would reject his advances; but for Robin he had great respect that was only held from becoming strong affection by a certain awe.
It was soon apparent that Elvira had no such awe. She treated Robin with a little-controlled impatience for his ignorance of the cosmopolitan values reigning in her circle of London intelligentsia. Her awareness that there were other criteria only made her more assertive of those she was accustomed to. Robin, it was clear, did not help himself by trying too hard to please her. It had taken him some years to acquire the brand of cultural talk demanded by Marie Hélène for her parties, it was too late to learn quite another for Elvira.
'This is a lovely room of yours, Father,' he said, looking at Gerald's long dining-room, very plain, formal, and grey, intended primarily to show off the John drawings that were hung there. 'Not quite enough colour for my taste, especially as it's so beautifully proportioned. I like a dining-room to be rather splendid, you know. I should have thought a Regency couch and one of those mirrors with eagles - Empire, aren't they? - would give it a sort of grandeur....'
Elvira said, 'Oh, Robin, please do stop!'
Robin looked surprised. 'Well, don't you think a touch of gold or yellow here and there ..he began.
'No, I don't,' said Elvira. 'I can't think of anything more ghastly than all that fake Regency.'
'I like the Regency style,' said Robin doggedly.
'Yes, darling, you don't know anything about it, but you know what you like. I've told you again and again that's no reason for saying it.' She turned to Gerald. 'It's the awful effect of Freud on the middle classes, you know; they think they've a moral duty to say whatever dirty thing comes into their minds.'
Robin laughed quite happily; nevertheless he persisted. 'Well, what would you have, darling?'
'Oh God!' cried Elvira. 'This awful idea that one has to "have" this or that in a room. The influence of the women's magazines on the business classes!' Then, softening, she said to Gerald, 'I wouldn't bully him like this, only it's the only way to learn. As a matter of fact, he knows it all quite naturally if he didn't get hold of all these awful middle-class ideas. I'm right, aren't I, darling?' she appealed to Robin, who merely smiled. Gerald noted that she did not openly attack Marie Hélène. 'Surely, darling, you see,' Elvira went on, gesturing with wild abandon, but speaking like a headmistress. 'When anyone's got these wonderful drawings,' and she waved her arm round the room, 'they don't want Regency tat.'
Gerald thought, she knows nothing about it. He said, 'I suppose it may be said that I "have" the John drawings. In any case, I'm not sure that I don't fancy a bit of gold to brighten the room up here and there.'
'Oh, don't give way to him,' Elvira cried.
The same pattern of tentative cultural feelers from Robin and snubs from Elvira went on all through dinner. Yet Gerald noticed that she never took her eyes off her lover. She's physically obsessed with him, he thought, and then - a lot of this snubbing is an attempt to get her own back on him for possessing her so. His own feelings rather alarmed him. I should like to beat her for her treatment of Robin, he decided, and yet I'm not jealous of Robin for having her. He's welcome to so much pretension if he wants it.
After Robin had rushed in very unwisely to assert that abstract art, like everything else creative, deserved careful study, Elvira pushed her dessert plate away and, lighting a cigarette, said, 'Let's talk about something we know about. Personalities. Have you done anything about Johnnie and that Larrie yet?' she asked Gerald.
He glanced sideways at Robin, then, smiling at the situation, he said, 'I went down to my wife's to spy the land out. Indeed, I tried to raise objections to the situation, but it was no good. He's Inge's white-haired boy. I agree with you,' he added, 'he's a nasty piece of work.'
'Oh! he's hell. But it's no good just talking about it. After all, we can't just go about having hunches,' she said very fairly. 'You must try and find out something about him. Whether he's just awful - in which case it's John's affair, not ours - or whether he really is a crook, in which case we must do something.'
Once again Gerald suddenly found himself liking her. 'I'm afraid,' he said, 'that he has a criminal record, but neither John nor Inge are prepared to allow that to stand in their way of helping him. And, of course, they're quite right.'
'Oh yes,' said Elvira, 'it's the best thing I've heard about your wife. It's one of those awful cases where one has to save one's friends from doing the right thing because they're the wrong people to do it. At least, John is. In any case, his is a doubtful example of right-doing.
We've got to be the bastards,' she added, 'and to push Larrie out, reformed jail-boy or not. Anyway, I'm sure he's not reformed. If only we could find out that he's still in with some crooks or something,' she said vaguely. She reflected a moment. 'I must be very fond of Johnnie, you know, to argue something so utterly disgusting and against my principles as the persecution of a wretched boy who's been in jail.'
'I don't care for the job,' said Gerald, 'but we ought to know the truth if we can. I have a possible connexion,' he said, 'and I'll follow it up.'
Mrs Salad's mysterious sibyllic words clicked into place. He would write to her and find out if her grandson knew anything to the point.
Robin pushed back his chair noisily. 'Do you mind if we don't discuss John like this?' he said. 'His sex-life is surely entirely his own affair.'
'Don't try to be broad-minded, darling. Nobody supposes it isn't. But if we can't disapprove of our friends' sex-lives these days, at least we can discuss them to our heart's content.' She paused. 'It's the new liberalism,' she said.
That must be a mot she's picked up second-hand, Gerald thought; she's a cultural magpie. He noticed, however, that she made no attempt to continue the discussion after Robin's objection.
'Did you see my letter to The Times?' Robin asked.
'I heard something about it,' Gerald replied.
'I had to do something,' Robin said. 'John's behaved abominably. The ghastly thing is that he's got a lot of M.P.s on their feet, and since they're technically in the right, Pelican'll probably get a large rasgreatlyrry.'
'I've heard something to that effect,' Gerald said, then stopped short. I'm beginning to sound like the
wise old owl, he thought.
'I've got an idea of offering Pelican a directorship if the bloody Civil Service push him around too much,' Robin said, and as he leaned back with his cigar he seemed to Gerald to be once more the usual self-assured man. 'It'll be a bit tricky with my dear brother directors. Pelican'd be the hell of an asset, but they can't see beyond the end of their footling little noses. However, I'm on very good ground there at the moment. They can't eat their words fast enough about Donald. I must say he seems to have been very tactful all round.
His first lecture was a howling success with the shop stewards and with my dear co-director Simpson, who's such an old diehard he makes Sir Waldron Smithers look like a red.'
He paused to savour his brandy. That's all right, Gerald thought, there's a lot of bluff goes with this act; he knows nothing about brandy.
'I wish,' Robin went on, 'that Donald was a bit more tactful with me. He seems to have no sense of time or place. He comes into my office about nothing at all. It's frightfully bad when everyone knows he is my brother-in-law. He doesn't seem to see that there has to be some hierarchy in the place.'
'You must put your foot down, darling.' It was clear that Elvira's admiration for Robin in his business life was unmodified.
'I shall,' he said, 'but I don't want to lose my temper.'
Gerald accused himself afterwards of watching for tension in their relationship. He was very conscious of an ambivalence in his own attitude, yet unable to perceive its exact nature. He tried to dismiss the whole thing by telling himself that this self-analysis was an adolescent activity unsuitable for an old man of his years, yet he knew that this attempt bluffly to dismiss his doubts was only a hypocritical evasion. At any rate the tension came entirely to the surface before the evening ended.
'Are you going abroad this summer, Father?' asked Robin as they sat round the fire after dinner.
'I've got to go to a congress at Verona,' Gerald replied, 'otherwise I shall be too busy. I've agreed to edit the new University Medieval History, you know.'
Robin said, 'Oh?' , and Elvira, 'I suppose those sort of things are fairly stereotyped.'
Gerald smiled to himself. He did not, however, press them to show more interest in his affairs. 'And you?' he asked Robin.
'Oh, Marie Hélène still insists on the usual Arcachon holiday. It's supposed to be for Timothy, though he's bored stiff with it by now. Anyway, this year we're at least to motor down through the Dordogne. By the way, darling,' he said, turning to Elvira, 'have you found those guide-books?'
Elvira looked at him, her round, soft face suddenly heavy and dead. 'No, I haven't,' she said, and then she added violently, 'I'm not going to look for them. I don't see why you asked me to.'
'It was only because Marie Hélène was talking about what we should see and what we shouldn't, and I immediately thought of you because you'd been there. It's perfectly simple.'
'It's simply awful,' cried Elvira. 'I wish you wouldn't talk to her about me.'
'I think it's good for her to face the facts since she's been so bloody about the divorce.'
'Oh, I don't mind about her. I just don't want you to discuss me with her and I don't want to hear about the holiday, not ever, not ever. Not now before you go or when you come back. Oh, I know how you've got to go and how we've got to be sensible. All right, I will be. But that doesn't mean I shan't hate every day of it.'
Robin tried not to look at Gerald. 'Aren't you being a bit unreasonable, darling?' he asked.
'Of course I am,' Elvira shouted. 'Somebody who's obsessed with somebody else always is unreasonable. Oh, can't you explain to him?' she cried, turning to Gerald.
Robin was very embarrassed. 'I really don't think we should drag poor Father into this,' he protested.
'Oh, that's all right,' Gerald said, getting up. He turned to the now weeping Elvira. 'Have a spot of whisky,' he suggested, 'it's a great help at such times.'
Her hair falling over her face, she shook her head, then, 'All right, I will,' she said. 'I'm sorry. It's all this bloody being in love.'
'I'm in love with you too, my dear,' said Robin.
Elvira looked up at him with eyes blazing. 'Oh, for God's sake let's talk about something else!' she cried.
In the end, they got through the rest of the evening with remarkably successful conformity to good manners.
It was some weeks before Gerald got any reply to his letter to Mrs Salad, and when it did come it was not in the form he expected. 'There's a Mr Salad on the telephone for you, sir,' Mrs Larwood said one morning before he had risen from bed.
'Well, I can't speak to him now,' Gerald called to her.
'I told him that, but he says it's very important. It's about his grandmother.'
'Oh very well,' he answered. This comes of refusing to have an extension in my bedroom, he thought, as he pulled on a heavy dressing-gown. March gave no promise of relief from the cold wintry weather.
'Middleton speaking,' he called brusquely into the telephone.
It was obvious that his caller was put out, for an adenoidal voice said in nervous, though carefully refined tones, 'Oh! How do you do? My name's Vin Salad. I'm afraid it's frightfully early.'
'Yes,' Gerald said, 'it is. What do you want?'
'I'm ringing on account of Mrs Salad. She's my grandmother.'
'Yes,' answered Gerald. He was getting angry.
The caller's spirits seemed to be recovering from the original impact of Gerald's tone. The voice changed at a lightning speed from refined to cockney. Gerald could hardly hear the refined words, they were so swallowed; on the other hand, the cockney tones hit his ear somewhat painfully. 'My grandmother's been taken up,' came the cockney.
'Taken up?' Gerald queried. And then refined came the explanation. 'Yes, she's been arrested. On a charge of shop-lifting, it seems.'
Gerald was horrified at the prospect of Mrs Salad in the hands of the law. It hit his sentimental centre very hard. 'Poor old thing,' he whispered. 'Can I be of any help at all?' he asked.
'Well, I think you might be. I'm going up to the court with a friend. We're taking her up there together. But I think it might help if someone respectable was to speak for her. On her behalf,' Vin corrected himself.
Gerald, remembering what Mrs Salad had said, saw that Vin might not be altogether 'respectable'. 'Oh, certainly,' he said. 'I've not been her employer for many years, of course. But I've always kept up with her. Anyway, I'll do anything I can.'
'Well, actually, in my opinion, they'll only fine her. But I think it would do her a lot of good if you Were there.' The combination of the telephone, Gerald's masculinity, and his professorial rank had put Vin on a mettle of refinement that he seldom attempted. 'My friend Mr Rammage saw a solicitor last night and he's talking to one of the Welfare Officers this morning.' Gerald would have been surprised if he could have heard Vin's name for all these assisting people, including Gerald himself.
'Well, that all sounds very good,' said Gerald. 'What about her daughter Gladys? She always seemed to rely so much on her and her husband.'
Vin's voice took on its normal hard, deadly note. 'Oh did she?' he asked. 'Well, that's a mistake she won't make no more. Gladys 'as come out of this a proper cow, as could have been told from the first.' Vin broke into a high-pitched imitation of his aunt: 'Can she say anything on behalf of her mother? Well, no, that she can't. Her living with them was only a convenience like to the old lady, and she doesn't see her way to being able to accommodate her no more, not after this has happened. Respectable neighbours, they've got. As for Mr Health and Strength - he stands by his little woman, which he may well do for no one else can when the wind's set in the wrong direction.'
Gerald recognized Mrs Salad's personality in Vin and felt warmed towards him. 'Do you mean they've turned Mrs Salad out?'
'That's right,' said Vin. 'C____ bitches.'
'It's disgraceful of them,' said Gerald. It was as though stone after stone was being thrown at his life with Dollie, shattering
and breaking the edifice of memories which he had built around Mrs Salad. 'Of course, she can come here until we've fixed up something more permanent.'
'Well, thank you, if I may say so,' Vin replied, 'but there's no need to go to the trouble. My friend Mr Rammage has a room available which will suit the old lady nicely.' And then, surprising Gerald, came that occasional Kensington hostess's swallowed contralto of Vin's. 'I must say, all things considered, I think we shall get along quite marvellously once this little bit of trouble's over.'
'How is she?' asked Gerald.
'Taking things very bad,' said Vin, then he added, 'Well, if you'll pardon the reminder, time's going by,' and he gave Gerald directions to reach the North-West London Court.
The solicitor announced, as Gerald had expected, that it would serve no purpose for him to go into the box. 'As it's a first offence,' he said, 'I think she'll get away with a fine. It'll be a heavy one though, the magistrate'll aim at frightening her. I've persuaded her to plead guilty, though I'm by no means sure that she knows what she's saying. The great thing is to see that this doesn't happen again. I should like to impress that on you,' he said sternly to Vin. 'If she comes up again, they'll send her to prison.'
Vin was a very muted figure in the court-room, despite his chic dark suit. Court-rooms had no happy memories for him. 'I'll do my best,' he said.
Frank fussed and comforted Mrs Salad. Although she seemed hardly to understand what he was saying, she held to his hand tightly. Gerald patted her shoulder. He could find nothing to say but 'Never say die, Mrs Salad. It'll be all over soon.' Vin added, 'And then we'll be quit of this bleeding lot.'
Mrs Salad fumbled with her old vanity bag and her eyes blinked up through her eye-veil. She took in all the four men around her. 'All my gentlemen,' she said. Even through her terror and tiredness, she preserved what she called her 'artful ways'.
She made a little, black, trembling smudge in the prisoner's box. The magistrate was known to Gerald at his club as a professional bon viveur, intelligent and sharp, but given to over-elaborate, unsuccessful witticisms. The glance that he gave Mrs Salad seemed perfunctory, but Gerald guessed that long experience made it sufficient.