Parents and Children

by Ivy Compton-Burnett

  ‘Then go back and shut the door, my boy. Doors do not shut themselves, do they?’

  James was enabled by experience to agree.

  ‘It is a pity they do not,’ said Isabel. ‘It is absurd not to invent one that does, considering how often the process takes place.’

  ‘Well, you have done a good morning’s work,’ said Sir Jesse, disposing of this question for his grandchildren, and pushing a dish towards them, before withdrawing his thought.

  ‘Grandpa means you to help yourselves,’ said Eleanor, in almost disapproving congratulation.

  ‘They are old enough, Mother,’ said Luce.

  ‘If they were not, I should not allow it, my dear. That was a needless speech. James, don’t you want any?’

  James hesitated to say that the delicacy in question upset him, and helped himself.

  ‘Venice looks well, doesn’t she?’ said Eleanor, willing for notice of her daughter’s looks.

  Venice turned her eyes to the wall and struck the ground with her foot.

  ‘What is there on the wall that interests you?’ said her mother.

  ‘I am looking at the pictures of Aunt Lucia and Uncle Daniel.’

  ‘You must know them very well,’ said Eleanor, forgetting that Regan would be moved to emotion, and Sir Jesse to consequent concern, and averting her eyes as the scene took place.

  The portraits of the dead son and daughter were rendered with the simple flattery of mercenary Victorian art, and Regan accepted the improvement not so much because it had come to her to be the truth, as because nothing seemed to her to be too good for the originals. That a portrait of Fulbert had a less honourable place, was due less to its obvious discrepancy with truth, than to the fact that he was not yet dead. Regan carried the loss of her children as she carried her body, always suffering and sustaining it.

  ‘James,’ said Eleanor, taking any chance to end the pause, ‘you must not put things in your pocket to take upstairs. That is not the way to behave. Take what you want and no more. Grandpa did not mean that.’

  ‘Isn’t that the thing that makes him sick?’ said Graham.

  ‘Is it, James? Then why did you take it? You must know when you do not want something. What was your reason?’

  James had several reasons, a reluctance to appear to fuss about himself, a fear lest allusion to his health should in some way expose his morning’s leisure, a purpose of transferring his portion to his sisters, and a hesitation to meet his grandfather’s kindness with anything but gratitude. He did not state them, though some were to his credit, but some of his experience, of which there was enough and to spare, welled over into his eyes.

  ‘You are not crying!’ said Eleanor, honestly incredulous. ‘Crying because you have too many good things! Well, what a thing to do.’

  ‘He has had one thing that is bad for him,’ said Graham.

  ‘If good things bring tears, he is better without them,’ said Eleanor, giving James a sense that a general impotence did not preclude a mental advantage. ‘And I think they had better go to the schoolroom. Perhaps there are fewer there.’

  ‘There are fewer bad ones anyhow,’ said Venice, under her breath.

  ‘What did you say, dear?’ said Eleanor.

  ‘I said we had not been down here very long.’

  ‘No, you have not, dear child,’ said Eleanor, changing her tone. ‘But luncheon is dragging on very late. That is why I am asking you to go. Not for any other reason.’

  ‘Why do you state other reasons, if they do not hold good?’ said Fulbert.

  ‘Because I am a feeble, querulous mother. So my good children will leave us. I am afraid Grandpa will be getting tired of us all.’

  ‘Door for the girls,’ muttered Graham, without moving his eyes.

  ‘What a little gentleman James grows!’ said Regan, as this warning took effect.

  ‘He is really a dear, well-behaved little boy,’ said Eleanor, as if evidence had been accepted for another conclusion.

  ‘A nice, mannerly lad,’ said Sir Jesse.

  James lingered at the door, prolonging his only moment of enjoyment, and free from any sense that he was not responsible for his own success.

  ‘If James could purr, he would,’ said Daniel, and sent his brother from the room.

  ‘You are up very soon,’ said Miss Mitford, raising her eyes from her book.

  Her pupils dispersed about the room without replying.

  ‘A good dessert?’ said Miss Mitford.

  ‘For Venice and me,’ said Isabel. ‘That thing that James does not like.’

  ‘And what did James have?’

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ said Venice, turning her back before she answered.

  ‘I ended up in favour anyhow,’ said James, throwing himself on the sofa and taking up his book.

  ‘It is no good to settle down,’ said Miss Mitford, speaking as though she must reduce him to hopelessness. ‘We have to go for our walk.’

  ‘It is a completely fine day,’ said Isabel, in the same tone.

  James did not move his eyes, for the reason that he was not yet obliged to.

  Eleanor appeared at the door.

  ‘Isabel, don’t you remember anything about this afternoon?’

  ‘No, Mother.’

  ‘Surely you will, if you think.’

  ‘You were going out with your father,’ said Miss Mitford, turning away her head.

  ‘Oh, I was going out with Father!’ said Isabel, in glad recollection. ‘Of course I was. He promised to take me for a walk. I will go and get ready.’

  ‘It was a strange thing to forget, when he has to leave us so soon.’

  ‘Oh, I had not really forgotten,’ said Isabel, on her way to the door, affording her mother satisfaction on her mental process, though no impression of it. ‘I will be ready in a few minutes.’

  ‘Would Venice like to go too?’ said Eleanor, speaking as if this would be almost too much at her daughter’s stage.

  ‘It would be nice for us both to go,’ said Venice, as though this would be the normal arrangement.

  ‘Oh, would it?’ said Eleanor, in half-reproving sympathy, as her daughter left the room.

  James remained upon the sofa, hesitating to draw attention to his recumbent position by relinquishing it.

  ‘And James? What about him?’ said Eleanor, using an almost arch manner, as she made this unparalleled suggestion.

  ‘Yes,’ said James, sitting up straight, and using the movement to hide his book under the cushion. ‘All three of us.’

  ‘Well, run away then. Don’t keep Father waiting. What is that book?’

  James took it up and surveyed it as if for the first time; and indeed it presented a different aspect to him, seen under his mother’s eyes.

  ‘Is it a book to be about in a schoolroom?’ said Eleanor, in a rapid, even tone to Miss Mitford, handing the book to her without seeming to look at it.

  ‘I can keep it in my own room,’ said Miss Mitford, in her ordinary manner. ‘If there is any harm in it, you will not mind it for me.’

  ‘Either schoolroom stories or instructive books are best. But you weren’t reading it, were you, James?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said James, with so much lightness that he hardly seemed to grasp the idea.

  ‘You were reading it, my boy,’ said Eleanor, in a deeper tone, taking a step towards him. ‘There is your penknife in it, keeping the place.’

  James took up the knife, propped it against the book, and moved a piece of cardboard up and down against the blade, as if the arrangement were necessary to his purpose.

  ‘Oh, that is what you are doing,’ said Eleanor, without more idea than James of what this was. ‘But you will spoil books if you do that. Did Miss Mitford know you were doing it?’

  ‘No,’ said James, with an habitual movement of nervous guilt that came in well.

  ‘Give it back to her, and go and get ready to go out with Father. Ah, that sends you off like an arrow from the bow.’

  Ele
anor smiled after her son, whose movement did suggest this simile, and turned to the governess.

  ‘He is developing better now, isn’t he, Miss Mitford?’

  ‘Yes, he is, in his own way,’ said Miss Mitford, meaning what she said.

  ‘It is a pity he is not better fitted for school,’ said Eleanor, unaware that some of her son’s tendencies stood him in good stead there. ‘I wish I understood children as you do. It would be such a help to me.’

  Miss Mitford smiled in an absent manner, thinking of the shocks that Eleanor would sustain if this could be the case, and wondering if she had forgotten her own childhood or had an abnormal one. Eleanor saw her children’s lives as so much fuller and less constrained than her own, that her own early temptations could have no place in them.

  ‘Well, I must go down to my husband. I seem to spend my life in moving from one department of my family to another,’ she said, smiling at Miss Mitford with a suggestion of the difference between their lots. ‘I hope you will do as you like this afternoon, Miss Mitford.’

  Miss Mitford did not reassure her, though she might have done so. She settled herself with a book which she did not leave in the way of her pupils, and a box of sweets which she dealt with in the same manner. She was a fairly satisfied person, with a knowledge of books which was held to be natural in her life, and a knowledge of people which would have been held to be impossible, and was really inevitable. She had a carelessness of opinion which protected her against the usual view of her life, and had pity rather than envy of Eleanor, whom she saw as a less contented being. Her influence over her pupils was not much the worse, that she accepted life as it was, and allowed them to see it. She would not speak to James of his duplicity, but he would derive some discomfort from her silence.

  Eleanor went to the study she shared with her husband, and waited for the latter to join her. He was still at the luncheon table, whence Regan had departed and her grandsons been dismissed. An allowance of talk without boys or women was Sir Jesse’s acknowledged right, and was daily accorded him. When Fulbert left his father for his wife, he was reminded of his promise to his daughter and informed of the extension of the scheme. He took his stand in the doorway, with his watch in his hand, possibly having faith in the theory that the memory is stronger in youth.

  ‘They should not keep their father waiting,’ said Eleanor, moving to the bell. ‘They must not take your attention as a matter of course. Why should you think about them?’

  Fulbert could produce no reason why he should give a thought to his offspring, and the summons brought them running downstairs in a manner that suggested that this was not a mutual attitude.

  ‘Why are you so late?’ said Eleanor. ‘I should have thought you would be anxious to start, when you were to go out with Father.’

  ‘We have been ready for some time,’ said Venice. ‘We did not know when we were to come down.’

  ‘Oh, that is what it was. Well, another time it will be better to be in the hall. Then there will be no question about your being ready and waiting.’

  The capacity for waiting assumed in the children, perhaps without much attention to heredity, was proved for some minutes longer; and then the party set off, with the girls on their father’s arms, and James capering about them in a manner that baulked their progress and brought him steady reproof, but was the only means by which he could join the talk.

  ‘Well, so you are glad to be rid of your father,’ said Fulbert.

  ‘No,’ said Venice, with the strong protest suggested.

  ‘No,’ said Isabel, in a weaker tone and with the tears filling her eyes. She depended on her father and dreaded the house without him.

  ‘No,’ said James, in a tone that seemed an echo of the others.

  ‘We shall write to each other, you and I,’ said Fulbert, pressing Isabel’s arm. ‘Every week a letter will come for you, and nobody else shall read it.’

  Isabel appeared as gratified as if this were a possible prospect, and her sister looked baffled by the comparative failure of her own more normal effort.

  ‘You shall share the letter,’ said Fulbert, with no feeling that his first promise was affected. ‘I shall write a letter to my two middle girls, and it shall be just for themselves. Unless they like to show it to Mother.’

  James curveted in the consciousness evoked by being left out of the attention, which indeed was becoming general.

  ‘It shall be for my boy too,’ promised Fulbert, with a sense purely of further magnanimity. ‘My schoolroom party shall have their own letter, and show it to everyone else at their own discretion.’

  A tendency to frolic indicated the view of this prospect.

  ‘Don’t be always under my boots, my boy,’ said Fulbert, throwing up his feet to render this position untenable, and also slightly painful.

  ‘What is it like in South America?’ said Venice.

  ‘Now you are putting the cart before the horse. This is the wrong occasion for that question. I like to give you that sort of information at first hand.’

  ‘Grandpa knows,’ said James. ‘He said that the trees and flowers were quite different.’

  ‘It can hardly be as it was when he was there,’ said Fulbert, not surrendering the position of coming authority, though the changes might hardly extend to the vegetation. ‘You must wait for my return.’

  ‘Don’t walk in front of me, James,’ said Venice, in an amiable tone.

  ‘Nor of me,’ said Isabel, speaking with more sharpness.

  ‘Keep to the side, my boy,’ said Fulbert. ‘What exactly do you want to know? Tell me and I will remember.’

  James was obliged to return to his place to make this clear, and Fulbert paused and listened with patience, before he allowed the party to proceed.

  ‘What does Isabel want to hear about South America?’ he said, in a gentle tone. ‘That the whole continent is at the bottom of the sea?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Isabel, quickening her pace.

  Fulbert bent and whispered in her ear, and Venice suffered from her failure to produce feelings on the unknown continent on this scale.

  ‘Do countries have the sea underneath them?’ said James. ‘Or does the land go right through?’

  ‘It is the sea above them that Isabel wants,’ said his father.

  ‘But do they really, I mean?’

  ‘People’s thoughts and feelings are just as real, my boy.’

  ‘Yes,’ said James, in a lighter tone.

  ‘Now we will all race to that tree and back,’ said Fulbert, deciding that interest and entertainment should remain in his children’s memory. ‘Take your stand and start fair. We must all run right round it.’

  The children braced themselves for the effort, James in a serious spirit, Venice in a semi-serious one, and Isabel with an appearance of sprightly interest which she could hardly feel, as she was of weaker build than the others, and though unconcerned for success in the contest, counted the cost of her father’s sympathy.

  ‘Well done, Venice!’ said Fulbert, as he reached the goal, second to his daughter and a tie with his son, but prevented from yielding a place to his other daughter by the transparence of the manoeuvre. ‘Well done, my boy. And so my Isabel is last, and tired into the bargain.’

  ‘I am a poor athlete, Father.’

  ‘Are you, my dear?’ said Fulbert, putting his cheek against hers. ‘Your strength has gone into other things, Better ones for your father.’

  Venice again had a feeling that she met the more ordinary kinds of success. It was hardly weakened when Fulbert gave a shilling to each of them, in reward for their respective achievements. When the walk was over, it was found that it had occupied an hour. Fulbert and James would have guessed it an hour and a half, Venice somewhat longer, and Isabel had lost all count of time. Eleanor came into the hall to receive them.

  ‘Why, Father looks quite tired, and so do you, Isabel. He has some reason, with the weight of two of you on him, but you seem to tire very easily.’ Eleanor
was at once moved and vexed by sign of weakness in her children; it seemed to threaten her possession of them. ‘Venice looks as fresh as when she started. I think Isabel is depressed by the thought of your going, Fulbert.’

  Isabel turned at once to the staircase; Venice followed in a rather disheartened manner; and James gave a jump and looked up at his mother.

  ‘We had a race, and Venice won, and I was second, and Father gave us all a shilling.’

  ‘That was a treat, wasn’t it? But all this running and jumping for a little boy who cannot go to school! What does that mean, do you think? And now you had better all be off to the schoolroom. We don’t want tears and tiredness on Father’s last days.’

  The children, uncertain of their mother’s exact leanings, went upstairs, and Fulbert entered his study and threw himself into a chair.

  ‘You know, Eleanor, or rather I suppose you do not, that you treat your children as if they were men and women.’ Fulbert had a right to make this criticism, as he did not fall into the error.

  ‘I am simply myself with them. It is best to be natural with children.’

  ‘You overdo it, my dear. You prevent them from being the same. And each child needs a separate touch and a separate understanding.’

  ‘I doubt the wisdom of making any sort of difference.’

  ‘It needs to be done in a certain way,’ said Fulbert, feeling that there was an example before his wife.

  Eleanor gave a little laugh.

  ‘I wonder you like to leave them with their feeble mother.’

  ‘You are not without support, my dear.’

  ‘I feel I could not leave them for any reason.’

  ‘It is a good thing I can do so for the right ones. I am going for their sakes. I am sure you will give yourself to them. I can only put you in my place.’

  ‘There is no one whom I could leave in mine,’ said Eleanor, believing what she said. ‘No one else would have the nine of them always in her thoughts. I ought to be saying good night to the three youngest at the moment.’

  ‘That is a duty I shall be pleased to share with you. And I do not pity you for being left with it.’

  They mounted to the nursery and found its occupants nearing the end of their day.