Parents and Children

by Ivy Compton-Burnett

  ‘It would be a great waste of our Sunday,’ said Lester, in a startled tone.

  ‘I wonder if we are as odd as we think we are,’ said Susan.

  ‘We can only hope so,’ said her sister, ‘and continue to do our best.’

  ‘There is Daniel’s voice,’ said Susan. ‘And I expect Graham is with him.’

  ‘That would not mean a voice,’ said Lester, in a tone of stating a fact.

  ‘You do not mind my bringing Graham,’ said Daniel. ‘I find it best to keep him under my eye.’

  Graham took a seat.

  ‘Has your father gone yet?’ said Susan.

  ‘No, or I should be at home, taking his place,’ said Daniel.

  ‘I wish I had just enough money to live on,’ said Graham, looking round the room.

  ‘Why do people wish that?’ said Priscilla. ‘Why not wish to have enough and to spare?’

  ‘They mean they do not ask much,’ said Graham. ‘But of course they are asking everything.’

  ‘A thing is more desirable when it is unattainable,’ said Daniel.

  ‘And how reasonable that is,’ said Priscilla, ‘when nothing comes up to expectation!’

  ‘This would,’ said Graham, ‘to anyone brought up as an obligation.’

  ‘We have been brought up like that too,’ said Susan, ‘but it has sat on us more lightly.’

  ‘Sir Jesse seems to have formed the habit,’ said Priscilla. ‘And it is a very useful one.’

  ‘I wish you could sometimes come to the house,’ said Graham.

  ‘Sir Jesse is ashamed of us,’ said Susan. ‘We never quite know why.’

  ‘We will not pretend to see any reason,’ said Priscilla.

  ‘I wonder if we shall ever know,’ said Lester.

  ‘Grandma is the person to ask you,’ said Daniel, ‘and she never welcomes outsiders.’

  ‘Then how do your friends get to the house?’ said Susan.

  ‘They do not,’ said Graham. ‘We have no friends.’

  ‘The iron has entered into the boy’s soul,’ said Daniel.

  ‘Graham and Lester both have a squeak in their voices,’ said Susan.

  ‘Lester must unconsciously try to catch a note from a different and more spacious world,’ said her sister.

  ‘I have very simple tastes,’ said Graham.

  ‘You have had little chance of acquiring others,’ said Daniel.

  ‘That is said to give people expensive ones,’ said Priscilla.

  ‘Has it in your case?’ said Graham.

  ‘No, but we are unusual. It is no good to say we are not.’

  ‘Is that why Hope is uneasy about knowing us?’ said Lester.

  ‘It is only because we are not known,’ said Priscilla. ‘It is nothing personal.’

  ‘There is something second-rate going through Hope,’ said Susan. ‘She thinks she makes it better by joking about it.’

  ‘And so she does,’ said her sister. ‘She makes it very good indeed. You don’t mean you do not like it?’

  ‘I wish the next six months were over,’ said Graham.

  ‘I do not,’ said Lester. ‘It would mean that all three of us had six months less to live.’

  ‘It would mean it for us too,’ said Daniel, ‘and for everyone.’

  ‘I suppose it would,’ said Lester, after a moment’s thought.

  ‘Oh, let me introduce Mother,’ said Priscilla, taking up the photograph. ‘My long struggle to take her place is over. She is here to fill it herself. I almost feel jealous of her, but I suppose that is usual with eldest daughters. Sir Jesse came this afternoon and filled the blank in our lives.’

  ‘Grandpa did not say he was coming,’ said Graham.

  ‘Is it the first time you have not had his confidence?’ said Daniel.

  ‘I am so grateful to Mother for my existence,’ said Priscilla. ‘I believe that is very unusual, but I enjoy existence very much. I do agree that life is sweet.’

  ‘You are more like your mother than you are like each other,’ said Graham.

  ‘She must be in all of us,’ said Lester.

  ‘So she has really been here all the time,’ said Priscilla. ‘That makes me feel rather foolish.’

  ‘Who will miss your father the most?’ said Susan.

  ‘Grandma,’ said Graham, ‘and then I suppose Mother, and then one or two of the girls. But no one will like the house without him. He seems to lift some blight that hangs over us.’

  ‘I hardly know him,’ said Lester.

  ‘You must feel you are beginning to do so,’ said Priscilla. ‘And you must find it a privilege?’

  ‘We shall have to settle down,’ said Daniel. ‘We can’t remain in a state of tension for six months.’

  ‘It does sound dreadful,’ said Priscilla, looking at Graham’s face. ‘To settle down for six months, when youth is such a sad time. Not that I did not find it very pleasant. I always wonder why people cling to it, when they find it so uncongenial. I get to like it more and more. You see I still think I have it.’

  ‘I could like it,’ said Graham, again looking round the room.

  ‘Books and a fire,’ said Priscilla. ‘You can have nothing more. I am not one of those people who belittle the things they have. I daresay you think I do the opposite.’

  ‘People pity us,’ said Lester to Graham, in a tone of information.

  ‘Because we have the bare necessities of life,’ said Priscilla. ‘And that is foolish, when necessities are so important. They would hardly pity us any more for not having them.’

  ‘They pity you and not me,’ said Graham, in an incredulous tone.

  ‘Well, you live in Sir Jesse’s house, and we live here,’ said Susan.

  ‘I have a seat at the table and a room on an upper floor.’

  ‘And what do you do at the table, Graham?’ said Daniel.

  ‘You cannot have pity as well,’ said Priscilla. ‘And it would not be much good to you.’

  ‘We know about it, though we do not mind it,’ said Lester.

  ‘You know nothing of self-pity,’ said Graham. ‘And that is the only sort that counts.’

  Chapter Six

  ‘Does no one want to say good-bye to Father?’ said Eleanor, in a high, incredulous voice from the hall, with her face held towards the upper landings. ‘Do you not want to see the last of him? Or have you all forgotten he is going?’

  ‘Our minds may be so weary of the image that they have yielded it up,’ said Isabel, as her feet kept pace with her sister’s on the stairs.

  ‘Are you just going on with your life in your ordinary way?’ said Eleanor, in the same tone and with her brows raised. ‘Is this day just the same as any other to you?’

  ‘It is an odd person who can suggest that,’ said her daughter. ‘We thought you might want to say good-bye to Father by yourself, that that was perhaps why he came to see us last night.’

  ‘Oh, that is what it was. But I do not want to keep him to myself at this last stage. He will want to remember us all together,’ said Eleanor, with her querulous honesty. ‘I am not the only person he has in his life. Run up and see that everyone is here. He will be going in half-an-hour.’

  Isabel mounted a flight of stairs and raised her voice in a message to Hatton.

  ‘From the way Isabel moves, you would think your father had a month to be here,’ said Eleanor.

  ‘He has almost,’ said Isabel, in a low voice to Venice, as she returned. ‘Thirty minutes, and we have had one!’

  ‘Shall I go and fetch Luce and Daniel and Graham?’ said James, hovering near his mother.

  ‘Yes, tell them all to come. I cannot understand this lackadaisical attitude. You might not have a father. I simply do not feel I can explain it.’

  Eleanor was released from this effort by the appearance of her sons and daughter from their study, with Luce holding her father’s arm, and her brothers wearing the look of the final advice and farewell. Sir Jesse and Regan came from the library, the former resolut
e and almost urbane, the latter ravaged and fierce. Hatton appeared on the landing with the children, put Nevill’s hand into Honor’s, and withdrew round the balusters to await events.

  ‘So we are here to get all we can out of it,’ said Regan. ‘It shows it is not too much for us; that is one thing.’

  ‘It ensures that it shall be,’ said Graham.

  ‘Trouble shared is trouble halved,’ said Fulbert, in a cheerful tone. ‘It will be disappearing amongst a dozen, and I shall leave dry eyes behind.’

  ‘Grandma, Luce, Daniel, Grandpa,’ said Nevill, seeming to follow out his father’s thought. ‘Venice, Father, Graham, Isabel. And he is here too, and Hatton. And Mother and James.’

  ‘Father is the important person today,’ said Eleanor.

  ‘We are all Father’s,’ said her son, supporting her view.

  ‘And he is obliged to leave us.’

  ‘No,’ said Nevill, in a light tone. ‘Father is not going away any more.’

  ‘He has heard too much of it,’ said Fulbert.

  ‘We have all done that,’ said Regan, rapidly blinking her eyes.

  Luce put a chair for her grandmother and stood stroking her shoulders, and Nevill ran to another chair and climbed on to it, and keeping his eyes on Regan, pulled out his handkerchief and retained it in his hand.

  ‘Why are you in out-of-door things, Luce?’ said Eleanor, surprised by any sign of personal pursuits.

  ‘Because I am going to the station, Mother.’

  ‘As well as the boys?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Will there be room in the carriage?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Won’t it upset you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Luce, smiling, ‘but that need not be taken into account.’

  ‘But won’t that be depressing for your father at the last?’

  ‘No, Mother, he will not be conscious of it.’

  ‘But is there any point in your going?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Luce, now with a note of patience. ‘Father will have a woman to see him off, as well as young men.’

  ‘I should find it too much.’

  ‘I am in my way a strong woman, Mother.’

  ‘And I am a weak one, I suppose.’

  ‘It is the first time I have heard a woman make that claim, without any sign of satisfaction,’ said Graham, who had been watching his mother.

  ‘I have no fault to find with the strength or the weakness,’ said Fulbert. ‘They are both after my heart.’

  Luce moved her hands more rapidly on Regan’s shoulders, as if to stave off any impending emotion.

  ‘I hope the occasion may prove a turning point in Graham’s life,’ said Daniel.

  Venice laughed, and Eleanor glanced at her in mute question of such a sound.

  ‘Mother,’ said Luce, in a low tone, ‘let Father leave us in a happy atmosphere.’

  ‘It can hardly be that, my dear, when he is going for six months.’

  ‘Not after he has gone. But while he is here, let us stand up to the test.’

  ‘Isabel looks as if she were at a funeral,’ said Eleanor, as if this were going beyond the suitable point.

  ‘She may be right,’ said Regan.

  ‘I don’t want her father to remember her like that.’

  ‘Why is it assumed that people forget all moments but the last?’ said Daniel.

  Isabel broke into tears; Fulbert put his arm about her; she could not control her weeping, and it became almost loud. Hatton came round the staircase and stood with her eyes upon her, as if debating her course.

  ‘Isabel dear, if you cannot control yourself, Hatton must take you upstairs, as if you were one of the little ones,’ said Eleanor, speaking as though her daughter were nearer to this stage than she was.

  ‘She will come and sit by Grandma,’ said Regan, using the same manner, but also the gift for doing so.

  Isabel sat on the floor at Regan’s feet; the latter began to stroke her hair, and Luce noted the action and glided away, seeing her own ministrations rendered unnecessary by this transference of thought to another.

  ‘What are you doing, Gavin?’ said Eleanor.

  ‘Drawing,’ said her son, continuing the occupation.

  ‘Isn’t that rather a strange way of spending your last half-hour with Father?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What makes you do it just now?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Let me see what you are drawing.’

  ‘No,’ said Gavin, pocketing the paper.

  ‘That is not nice behaviour. But I expect you are upset by Father’s leaving us.’

  ‘No, I am not.’

  ‘He will draw,’ said Nevill, throwing himself off his chair and running to his brother.

  Gavin turned aside.

  ‘Let him do it, Gavin,’ said Eleanor.

  Gavin pursued his way.

  ‘Let him have a piece of paper.’

  ‘I only have the one piece.’

  Nevill stood with his feet apart and his arms at his sides, on the point of surrendering himself to a lament of frustration.

  ‘Will my good, useful girl get him a pencil and paper?’ said Eleanor.

  Venice recognized herself in the description, and was in time to prevent Hatton, who had partly descended the stairs, from coming further. Nevill put the paper on a chair, and stood, pushing the pencil rather violently about it, as if he were unfitted by emotional stress for normal application.

  ‘What is the mystery about Gavin’s drawing, Honor?’ said Eleanor.

  ‘There isn’t one, Mother.’

  ‘What is he drawing?’

  ‘A portrait of Father.’

  ‘Oh, that is what it is; that is very nice,’ said Eleanor, as though finding herself wrong in some surmise to which this adjective could not be applied. ‘That was the right thing to think of, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I didn’t think of it. It was Honor,’ said Gavin.

  ‘Poor little girl, she wanted a portrait to keep,’ said Eleanor, making a statement that was natural to the circumstances, but caused her daughter to fall into such violent weeping, that the services of Hatton were called upon and she was led from sight.

  ‘Here is a dear, bright face for Father to remember!’ said Eleanor, taking Venice’s cheek in her hand.

  Venice stared before her and struck her side, and Eleanor turned to her sons, baffled by her daughter’s various responses to the occasion.

  ‘Have you asked your father if you can do anything for him, as the eldest son?’ she said to Daniel, with her vague note of reproof.

  ‘Yes, I have, and been answered.’

  ‘And you, Graham?’

  ‘Yes, with the same result.’

  ‘I am sure I can depend on my two tall sons.’

  ‘A conviction that seems to be born of the moment,’ said Daniel.

  ‘Mother, you haven’t much hope of your children, have you?’ said Luce.

  ‘I am so used to training and guiding them, that I forget the time has come for results.’

  ‘The results do not remind you, Mother?’

  ‘I wish they could sometimes be allowed to appear.’

  ‘Graham need not be self-conscious about his little efforts at improvement,’ said Daniel.

  ‘Let me see your portrait of Father, Gavin,’ said Eleanor, simply passing from her elder sons.

  Gavin took the paper from his pocket and handed it to Graham, as if in a near enough approach to obedience, and Eleanor looked at it without moving, seeming to accept this method of putting it at a convenient level.

  ‘Anyone can see it is a man,’ said Graham.

  ‘That halves the number of people it may represent,’ said Daniel.

  ‘It is a grown-up man,’ said Gavin. ‘It has wrinkles.’

  ‘Perhaps that quarters them.’

  ‘Let me see myself in my son’s eyes,’ said Fulbert. ‘I admit the wrinkles, both here and in the original. There is a framed photograph in my dr
essing room that may pass into Honor’s possession, if she so desires.’

  Honor, who had been led back in a state of pale calm, raised a lighted face.

  ‘It has the advantage of having no wrinkles, as the less honest artist took them out.’

  ‘If the frame is silver, Honor could sell it for a lot of money,’ said Gavin.

  ‘But she will want to keep it,’ said his mother. ‘It is a picture of Father.’

  ‘Can I have it even after Father comes back?’ said Honor.

  ‘It is your very own,’ said Fulbert, ‘and the lack of wrinkles will become a more and more distinguishing feature.’

  ‘Now you feel quite cheered up, don’t you?’ said Eleanor.

  ‘Yes,’ said her daughter, agreeing that this was a natural result.

  ‘You will feel you have a little bit of Father always with you.’

  ‘It is all of him down to his hands,’ said Gavin.

  Nevill, who had been making rapid but considered marks on the fair side of his paper, now approached and proffered it for inspection.

  ‘It is Luce; it is Grandma,’ he said.

  ‘It is differentiated to about the same extent,’ said Daniel. ‘It indicates age and sex.’

  ‘It does, Daniel,’ said Luce, as if this were an all but incredible circumstance.

  ‘It is Hatton,’ said Nevill, in a settled tone.

  ‘Poor Father!’ said Luce, half to herself. ‘He stands amongst his family on a day when he should be the hero, and everyone seems more in the foreground than he.’

  ‘He is the basis that everything is built upon,’ said Graham. ‘Surely that is enough.’

  ‘Well, it cannot go on much longer, boys.’

  ‘If there were any reason why it should stop,’ said Graham, ‘surely it would have operated by now.’

  ‘The train will become due,’ said Luce.

  ‘I suppose it has always been expected at a certain time,’ said Daniel. ‘Was no account taken of it, when we assembled for the final scene?’

  ‘We could have acted a play in the time,’ said his brother.

  ‘We have done so, Graham,’ said Luce.

  ‘Father’s wrinkles can hardly be getting less,’ said Venice.

  ‘We have stood and striven faithfully,’ said Graham; ‘we have jested with set lips; two of us have wept. Have we not earned our release?’