by Angus Wilson
Nobody spoke of Arthur in the few days before the funeral. Harold said, “Now, Mother, you’ve got to take it very easy.”
Mark said, “There’s a girl, Gran.”
Shirley on the ‘phone said, “You poor, poor darling.”
Ray sent a telegram from Milan (“Ah, that’s why he hasn’t got my letter yet,” was Harold’s comment): “Unable make funeral, with you lovey all the time.”
The De Clamouarts anxiously telephoned that Judy, on a bicycle trip in the Midi, was not to be contacted and might they present their most esteemed condolences to Madame veuve Calvert.
Wreaths came from Sally Bulmer and the Bartleys and the Egans and the Cranstons, from the British Legion and from Arthur’s Regiment. Sylvia in protest, found herself telling stories of Arthur, repeating his stories, desperately keeping his name alive, so that Harold and Mark and some of their friends looked at her once or twice in embarrassment.
At the cemetery, after the coffin had been lowered, Shirley Egan appeared from behind the knot of mourners around the grave and took Sylvia into her arms.
“Don’t mind them, honey. Don’t mind anybody. Just let it go.”
How could Sylvia explain there in public that she had let it go, that it was over? Shirley was such a good girl, but Americans are different, she wouldn’t understand. It was quite a mercy that to Sylvia’s surprise, Priscilla White was also there. All in black, nudged forward by Mark, she led Sylvia away from Shirley to the waiting car. Sylvia could see from Harold’s expression that he shared her surprise at the girl’s quiet invasion of the family. For a while after the ceremony, back at “The Sycamores”, she kept up her chatter about Arthur. She could have kissed Jack Cranston when he said, “Yes, I don’t suppose I’ll ever meet a better sportsman than the old chap.”
At last, battling against the tide of their talk, she gave up her efforts in shame for them and went to her empty bedroom. She lay down and slept for more than three hours.
It was not until two days later that Harold remarked, “It seems sad to say it, Mother, but one can’t help thinking Dad’s was a wasted life. He had genuine ability and considerable personality, but he never settled to anything.”
“Settled to anything! Harold, how can you? A man who went into the war as a normal, healthy young chap and came out with rotten lungs.”
“I didn’t mean to sound hard, Mother. But millions of men were in the war. Not only the First War. We fought a war too.”
“Oh, your war, Harold! Sitting behind a desk! No, forgive me, dear, I shouldn’t have said that. You did very well. But your war sent you to a teacher’s training college, gave you education. Dad’s war gave him disabled officer’s pension and told him to find a gentleman’s occupation even if he wasn’t one. How could he settle down? He didn’t know whether he was coming or going. Oh, I’ve thought about it so much, Harold. We all laughed at Dad, at his tales and his boasting. But what could he be? At least he was a character.”
“It’s very generous of you to say all this, Mother, considering the life he led you.”
“Oh, don’t make any mistake, Harold. I’m not going to pretend. Arthur said that when he was up, I was down. And he was right. I shall be better off without all the worry he gave me. But what a thing to have to say after all those years. And then a lot of it was my fault. I was so pleased with our boarding-house, and he wanted better. You see, I don’t think he ever knew what a great thing it was for me marrying him—an officer—and then to have my own guest-house, when all I’d ever known was washing the front steps and carrying jugs of hot water up four flights of stairs. We started out on different floors, Dad and me, and I’m afraid we always stayed on them. That was our lives. And then they say ‘the good old days’! No, you’re quite right, Harold, to be proud of Carshall.”
Harold took her hands in his. “My dear Mother, it’s extraordinary that you should . . .” He spent some time in filling and lighting his pipe. . . . “But I don’t know why I should be surprised.”
“I sometimes surprise myself, dear.”
Harold looked at her with affection, but the look grew more absent.
“I shall be glad to hear from Ray, or better still to see him. Milan! Beth and I went right up to the parapet of the cathedral. I can’t think why he’s gone there, can you?”
In a few days they knew. Ray’s reply came from London. It was full of gratitudes to his father both for his love and for his understanding, to all of them, especially to Gran at this rotten time for her. He hadn’t expected such affection and confidence, although he ought to have known. . . . His not doing so showed how little he measured up to them. But he did most deeply and gratefully thank them. Yet the answer must be a definite no. It just would not work. Of course he’d been very happy in Carshall. If he were not as he was . . . but he was. And it was no good. Things might run along all right for a while. But there was always the sense that people were talking, the strain of pretending. And in the end what? To have no kick in life except running risks. That was how Wilf had been this last year or two. He couldn’t bear the thought of it. As it was he had a real hope of making a happy life with Geoffrey. Geoffrey had wanted him to join him for the past three years. He was lonely in the Bryanston Square flat, wanted Ray’s skill in the business. That was why they had been in Milan—for a textile exhibition. There were great prospects and new interests. . . . More his own boss. The flat was very posh. Geoffrey said to tell them they were to come and stay whenever they liked. He couldn’t come away yet, for it was a small business and he owed it to Geoffrey. . . . Worked late—nine or even ten some nights. . . . Please, please understand how grateful he was, grateful yet certain. . . .
Sylvia and Mark waited breathless for the storm. And it broke.
Harold took Ray’s letter and very deliberately tore it into small shreds which he then threw into the wastepaper basket.
“I don’t intend to act the Victorian heavy father. But I don’t want another word said about that young man.”
“Oh, Dad, don’t be absurd.”
He wheeled round on Mark and shouted, “Did you hear what I said? If he hasn’t the guts to try to come to terms with life after my letter to him, I wash my hands of him.”
“Oh, Harold, you’re talking about Ray. You can’t wash your hands of someone you love.”
“Someone I did love. You may not be able to, Mother, but I can. ‘So grateful to us, so fond of Carshall.’ It would have at least been more decent if he’d left that sort of pretence out.”
“But, Harold, I’m sure Ray is very fond of Carshall. He fitted in here so well, if he hadn’t been . . . And as to talk, he’s quite right. I’ve heard some already. It wouldn’t be a happy life for him with gossip of that sort.”
“I suppose you agree with your grandmother.”
“Yes, Gran is quite right. Even Pris had heard something, I’m sorry to say. And Ray’s right too. Of course I’d wish things different. My own brother! But he knows whether he can change or not. And if he can’t, we ought to be grateful to him for not running risks in the town where we live.”
“Oh, you may be sure he won’t run risks. A good job and a smart London flat. It makes me sick. No one can say that I’m narrow-minded. I’ve long said the law’s antiquated. But to trade on his abnormalities. Living with some rich old man.”
“That’s nonsense, Dad. This bloke Geoffrey Lawshall can’t be a year older than me, if that. It’s just a small family dress business he’s inherited.”
“I don’t know anything about that. People in that sort of world are old for their years, you know. But for Ray to live on somebody!”
“But, Harold, he isn’t. Why should you object to his getting a good job? I’m a woman and if I can forgive him for not caring about women, I should have thought you ...”
“Your attitude rather disgusts me, Mother. Apparently you don’t care that your grandson’s a little whore. Well, I do.”
“Whore! Really Harold, you’re talking rubbish. How can
a man be a whore? I’ve no patience with you. I’m not staying to listen to any more. But I’ll tell you this, if nobody else goes to stay with Ray, I shall. He’s been a lovely boy to me.”
Nor did Judy’s letter to the family help. It made light of Arthur’s death—’Poor old Granddad. He was one of the old school, wasn’t he? I’ve been thinking of you a lot, Gran, but at least he didn’t linger on. Mrs. Ogilvie’s father lingered on and on for four years’—and rather light of the loss of Goodchild’s Meadow—’Poor Daddy! And you had worked so hard. Oh, do think of moving somewhere where people appreciate your sense of what’s worth fighting for a bit more than at awful Carshall.’ The rest of her letter was full of a young man called Alistair Courtenay who was staying at the De Clamouarts. He was tremendously clever and witty and up at Balliol and one of the Devonshire Courtenays. He spoke simply marvellous French and had written a parody of Chateaubriand that even Madame de C., who was terribly critical, said was brilliant. Oh, and she’d heard from Nottingham and there was a place for her next term, but she wasn’t going to say yes until she heard from Somerville. She did hope so much for Somerville because Alistair Courtenay said it was the only women’s college in Oxford from the social point of view.
Yet the ominous words “Committee” or “meadow” that Sylvia and Mark dreaded to hear remained unspoken. Harold, indeed, was unrecognisable in his moody silence. He got up each day a little later, mooched about the house, sat with an unlit pipe in his mouth and stared into space, often retired to bed before supper. It was like Arthur when his luck was out at racing. Not a second time, Sylvia thought. She remembered Arthur’s phrase—”Not on your nelly!”
But she thought bleakly that Mrs. Milton’s contemptuous prediction to Sally Bulmer might well come true. Then one morning, shopping in Town Centre, she saw Muriel Bartley turn suddenly into a doorway ahead of her. Whatever Muriel’s motive for avoid-ing her she would not let her get away with it.
“Thank you very much for sending that beautiful wreath.”
“Oh! Mrs. Calvert. I didn’t see you. We were so ... Geoff and I felt perhaps . . . but then after all that silly business . . .”
“Arthur was hopeless over money. That’s all there is to say about it. But surely that isn’t why you avoided me just now?”
“I didn’t avoid. I just . . .”
“Now, Mrs. Hartley!”
“Well, all right, I did. I thought after the way I’d messed up things for Harold at the meeting, that I should hardly be the Calvert family’s favourite girl.”
“Oh dear! How these silly misunderstandings grow. We all made a mess of that business, especially Harold. The New Town’s a fine place, but he wants to make an ancient monument of it, I’m afraid. Good heavens, Mrs. Bartley, he’s lucky to have such good friends.”
“Well, I have tried to make up for it. I’ve squashed all these silly rumours as soon as I’ve heard them. And I’ve had a real go at the Board of Governors and the Education Committee in case ...”
“You all spoil him.”
“I think it’s been of some use. Everyone admires him so much. He could have them eating out of his hand again tomorrow. But now I ring the school secretary about his talk to the Parent-Teachers’ Association next week and she tells me he’s not answering the telephone. Is he ill?”
“No. He’s not ill. He’s . . . What is this talk? I haven’t heard anything about it.”
“It’s for the Parent-Teachers’ Association. It’s rather one of my pets. He’s to talk on his work for backward kids. You know all about that/’
“Not very much, I’m afraid.”
“Well, you ought to. Harold’s a genius. A lot of these teenage kids owe it to him that they can read at all. And he’ll tackle a job when everyone else has given up. Parents were coming to this talk of his who normally never show a moment’s interest in their kids’ schooling. If he knew some of the names I’ve had in—the Marleys, who’ve had three kids on probation at one time, and Mrs. Scarfe who can’t read or write herself. ‘My Les wouldn’t have his job if it weren’t for Mr. Calvert. And now he’s bringing our Doris on nicely. My old man said anyone who can bring our Doris on. . . .’ I wish he’d heard her. And now if he doesn’t turn up!” She looked at Sylvia hopefully.
“It’s up to him isn’t it, Mrs. Hartley? You’ve done your best.”
Sylvia sat in her room reading The Blokes at the Back of the Class. It seemed a funny sort of title to give such a highbrow book. She couldn’t make much of it—mnemonics and Gestalt and emotive conceptual barriers—but then it was intended for teachers, not for the blokes themselves. It was so like Harold that —talk like a dictionary and then throw in a bit of slang to show there were no hard feelings. She gave up The Blokes and turned to one of the Readers. She felt rather absurd at first, sitting reading kids’ books with pictures and photos and the words split up. But she read all four Readers at one sitting, with increasing fascination.
Looking at Harold’s pouting miserable face that evening after dinner, she wondered to herself how he could know so much about modern kids. And then she said it.
“I don’t see how you know all that, Harold, about the ton-up boys, Dick and Bill and about the girl who worked at Woolworth’s —I mean about all what they do at the cafés and Meccas and so on. And about that girl Lolo who worked that mixing machine in the chocolate factory?”
“The Readers are designed for Dick and Bill and Lolo and kids like them. That’s why the stories are about their lives. They want to read about the things they know.”
“Yes, I see that, but how do you know about them?”
“They’re my life, Mother. The people I see all day. Or rather the boys and girls I see every day are going to be them. But what on earth’s put you on to the Readers?”
“Oh, just that I ought to have known long ago what you’d written. The pictures are good, aren’t they? When I think of what we had as kids. ‘Pat has my hat.’ ‘Pat is fat.’ ‘That is Pat’s hat.’ No wonder your Uncle Ted never learned to write properly. All his letters home when he was at sea were written for him. And your Aunt Violet! She wouldn’t thank me for telling you, but when I saw her last—she must have been thirty—she was running her finger along each line of Home Chat and mouthing the words. And they weren’t complete fools. But some of the kids you speak of in that book sound more as though they were simple. . . .”
“Yes, a good part of those I’m concerned with in Chapter Four are E.S.N. The core of my work though is with illiterate teenagers —many have low I.Q.s—but their handicaps are primarily emotional or environmental or both.”
As he talked she knew it was no good listening. He turned it all into his usual grand-sounding words. But she knew now why they all admired him. He must have talked for twenty minutes or so with increasing excitement; but it was all theory.
“I’m supposed to talk next week about all this to the parents. Why don’t you come along?”
“I think I’ve had the talk already, dear.”
He took it well. “All right, Mother. Anyway you wouldn’t be allowed in—only parents or teachers.”
The talk was a success, everyone said; and it served its purpose, for Harold started the term with gusto. Muriel Bartley rang Sylvia to congratulate her.
“You’re a dark horse. I thought you weren’t going to do anything about it. Now Harold tells me it was you who roused him into giving his talk. It was a bit over their heads. But he was marvellous with them in the discussion afterwards. It’s easy to see who’s going to hold his hand from now on.”
It was pointless to argue with Muriel, but her heart sank. She hadn’t retired to take on Harold. But she needn’t have worried, for Sally Bulmer was on the scene.
“He’s back at school and in fine form. But he needs more than running a school for his energies. I’m going to get him going on the survey again.”
And so she did.
Soon she was a familiar figure at “The Sycamores” in the evenings. She and Harold h
ad got down to a complete re-thinking of their approach to the questionnaire, she told Sylvia. And indeed it seemed to her that they were exactly doing that. When she joined them for tea and biscuits at bedtime one evening she found that Sally had got down on her knees on the study rug and was busy sketching out what she called the status/emotion chart on a huge sheet of cardboard. How she managed her pencil with her big bosom in the way all the time Sylvia wondered. Harold was on all fours as well, helping, as though they were playing bears.
Sally looked up as Sylvia came into the study.
“Ah! There you are, you dear woman. We’ve got work for you. How would you like to manage the oldies’ questionnaire? A visit out to the eventide home. Matron will have them ready with their little answers. ...”
“I should hate it, Miss Bulmer. I didn’t give up managing hotels to manage people. I want to put my feet up.”
Sally would have answered, but Harold was impatient for her attention. “Look here, Sally, I don’t think question eight will do —it’s altogether unsubtle.”
Down Sally went to wrapt attention, up came her huge tweed bottom to Sylvia’s view.
There’s no room in one house for two big bums. She watched their heads in close discussion. Bears and squirrels!
Now for her last move but one. She only looked forward to finding a place of her own. Somewhere near Town Centre, if she could get it. That would be a good centre for operations. Operations! What a gloom she could be! She chuckled aloud. Harold looked up.
“You’re in good form these days, Mother.”
“Yes, dear, I think I am,” she said.