The next moment after Alec felt he was going to cry he started crying; he could no more have prevented it than he could have prevented himself from gasping if a bucket of icy water had been thrown over him. How did it help the dead to have made the living aware of certain things? What good to anyone were ideas about lovable qualities? What use was it to learn about tenderness? What could you do when you were illuminated about human possibilities, except go round telling yourself how illuminated you were? What was knowing in aid of? And what was it to have loved someone?
‘Here we go, old chap,’ Bob’s voice said. ‘Just let’s take a little stroll together. That’s right, steady as she goes. I was wondering when you were going to crack. I was saying to myself, I wonder when old Mac’s going to crack. That’s your trouble, if I may say so, old stick: you keep things bottled up too much. Far better let ’em come out, like this. Well, you’ve picked the right time. Just a minute.’
Alec became aware of the curious hooting noise he was making, and pressed his hands over his mouth. ‘Nuisance,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t talk unmitigated piffle, old thing. Holler away for a couple of hours if you feel like it. Get rid of it. Emotion has got to come out. Sooner or later it’s got to come out. That’s human nature. Here. Go on, knock it back. Down in one. I’ll join you if I may. I knew these little beggars would come in handy. Expensive way of buying booze, but still.’
‘Thirty years for nothing,’ Alec said, coughing. ‘Wasted my time.’
‘Oh no you haven’t, Mac. People who’ve really done that don’t mind. Here’s the gate.’
‘No, pipe down, I’m doing this,’ Frank said loudly. ‘Mrs Allen – another grapefruit juice? Sure you don’t want anything stronger? Mrs Holmes, what about you? Are you quite sure? Mrs Higginbotham? Ah, that’s more like it. Another for you, darling? Right. Now, Rector . . . large Scotch . . . Bob . . . large brandy and soda . . . Mr Walton?’
Mr Walton, the undertaker, said he would have a pint of black-and-tan with Guinness and best bitter. A tall, vigorous young man in his middle thirties, he had the look of a woodcutter or hedger momentarily in town to get his implements sharpened. Part of this look derived from his heavy tan, which had been acquired, so he explained earlier, during a recent five-week holiday on the Costa Brava. Alec found he could imagine Mr Walton paying for an extra lavish sea-food dinner with one-sixth, say, of the profit on a moderately lavish funeral.
The party, some fifteen strong, was sitting or standing about in the lounge of the King’s Head. Alec had been relieved at this choice of venue, thinking that the saloon bar at the side of the building would have been too full of associations, but a glance inside soon after arrival had shown him that, since his last visit here, the room had been so remodelled that he had been unable even to locate the nook by the vanished fireplace where he and Betty and Jim had drunk their pink gins not five Saturdays ago. All the horse-brasses and sporting prints, the uneven dark woodwork and frosted-glass panels that had given the bar its character had been swept away, and the new bright plastics made it bare and unwelcoming. Alec recognized this as part of a pattern of change. The things with which his life had been furnished – the tennis club, the Liberal Association and its strong social side, keeping up with the new plays, music in the sense he understood it, even such numerically unimportant occasions as George V’s funeral and George VI’s coronation – were no longer there.
The young waiter in the smart white jacket carried his tray over to where Alec was standing in silence with Jim. ‘I wanted to say how sorry I am, sir. We shall all miss Mrs Duerden coming in here. We all liked her very much.’
‘Thank you, Fred, that’s very nice of you. I think this is yours, Mac.’
Alec took the whisky and soda. He had asked Frank for a small one, but its quantity, combined with the darkness of its colour, suggested that it was not very small. This would be his third double, not counting the brandy at the cemetery. Taking a hearty swallow, he tried for a moment to work out how much it was going to cost him to buy a round, then gave up. He could manage it, but it was a good job he had had the foresight to cash that three-quid cheque last night at his local. Much more important was the question of saying something meaningful to Jim, which he had not managed to do so far. He tried again: ‘I know this must seem like the end of everything, but it isn’t really, you must believe that.’
‘Isn’t it? Must I? I’m seventy years old, Mac. What am I supposed to start doing at my age? It’s just a matter of waiting now.’
‘Well, of course, that’s how it seems, but—’
‘No, that’s how it is. Probably in a few months, I don’t know, it’ll look different again, but how, I just can’t—’
‘You’ll find so many things you want to do.’
‘Look, you’re not going to waffle about developing new interests, are you? Spare me that. Did I tell you that part-time job of mine with those varnish and stain people packs up at Christmas? What do I take up then? Chess?’
‘There’s bound to be something.’ Alec was disconcerted by the violence of Jim’s tone and manner. He repressed an impulse to glance over his shoulder. Before he left he would mention to his friend the possibility of their joining forces in London, but now was clearly not the time.
‘Oh yes, I’m sure,’ Jim said bitterly. ‘Wherever you look there’s something. Oh, are you off, Rector? Haven’t you got time for another one?’
‘Unfortunately not.’ The clergyman spoke with feeling so intense as to be unidentifiable. ‘I have to be getting along.’
‘Well, you’ve been very kind and I’m most grateful.’ Jim turned aside to say goodbye to one of the local couples.
The clergyman looked at Alec. ‘Thank you for saying you liked my address,’ he said, blankly this time. ‘It’s the one I . . . You’re not family, are you?’
‘No, just a friend.’
‘It’s the one I use for those who have become members of my flock retroactively, so to speak – a proportion that increases every year.’
‘I see. It was you who—?’
The half-question hung in the air for a second or two while what was arguably a smile modified parts of the clergyman’s face. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘alone and unaided I did it. But of course I was a much younger man then. Goodbye to you.’
Soon afterwards they went in to lunch, just the family and Alec, five adults and two children. They sat at the round table in the window well away from the alcove favoured by the Trio: another relief. Further, Alec considered, it looked as if he were going to get away with not having to go up to the house at all. He wanted never to see it again, marked throughout as it was by Betty’s personality – apart from such details as the oversized TV set Frank had had delivered on the Duerdens’ fortieth wedding anniversary.
Their waiter offered his condolences, then the head waiter and the wine waiter; Frank caught the last named by the sleeve before he could move away and ordered another round of drinks and two bottles of hock off him. The manager came over and chatted for a couple of minutes. He was a new man and had not known the Duerdens well, but, without pushing himself forward, he spoke the language of decent feeling. ‘I had hoped to get to the church this morning,’ he said, ‘but I just couldn’t, with the Business Circle lunch and a christening party out of the blue. But I was thinking about you.’ Before departing he added: ‘Mrs Duerden’ll be missed all over the town. It won’t be the same place without her.’
This moved Alec in a gentle, unagonizing way. Betty would never have wanted to be thought one of the important people in the district, but she had been a well-liked queen of her modest bits of castle. Such reflections occupied him for most of the meal, which soon began to acquire some sort of festive air. A couple of stories from Frank about the difficulties of bringing the laundry business up to date contributed little, Alec considered, apart from additional light on the fellow’s character. When Bob got going, however, with what he called some unofficial law reports, it had to be a
dmitted that he cheered everybody up. Even Jim had to laugh a few times, and the two Gioberti girls, each clutching a glass of pop, seemed spellbound.
While Alec ordered a round of liqueurs, Frank leaned back and lit a cigarette. ‘Fantastic really,’ he said. ‘Here we are, the lot of us, all having a good time, and two hours ago we were all, well, overwhelmed by grief. It just shows you, don’t it? I mean it’s natural, see? The church, the graveyard, the pub. Whoever it was thought up how to run funerals knew his job. I reckoned the service was real nice, didn’t you, Ann?’
Annette kept her eyes on the table. ‘Very nice,’ she said.
‘It was a bit, what shall I say? austere, that’s the only criticism I got. Of course, you don’t want to listen to us, we’re Romans, we go for a bit of, you know, colour and ritual and ceremony and incense and all that jazz. When you’re used to that type of thing the other stuff’s bound to come a bit drab, see what I mean?’
‘Yes, I do,’ Alec said. ‘But you’ve got to remember that’s the way we run things.’ He paused to pick up four of the half-dozen pieces of silver that remained of his two pound notes. ‘We like our religion to be austere, as you call it.’
‘Like I said, it’s what you’re used to.’
Alec’s voice rose. ‘And we don’t like a lot of dressing-up and chanting and bowing and scraping and any tomfoolery of that kind. That’s not what we want in this country. We’ll do things the British way . . .’
‘Who’s we, Uncle Mac? Okay, Ann.’
‘. . . which means we’re not going to take very kindly, necessarily anyway, to any religion that’s . . . and a lot of other things for that matter, that aren’t—’
‘That are foreign, that what you mean?’
‘Yes, if you want to put it like that.’
‘Well, you want to put it like that, anyway, don’t you? It’s all right, Ann, honest. Yeah, the Pope does live in Rome, no getting away from that. There’s no end of foreign things in this country when you get down to it, like the wine we just drunk, and that cigar you’re smoking. And lots of foreign people, too, one sort and another. In fact I remember in my far distant youth they were always going on at us about that – you know, how anyone could come here and carry on pretty well any way he liked, provided he behaved himself. They used to reckon it was one of the big—’
‘It’s no use telling old Mac any of that,’ Bob put in, swivelling his glance round the table: ‘he thinks the English are foreigners really, don’t you, old chap? and the Welsh and the Irish too, of course, and the Highland Scotch, and he’s not too happy about Edinburgh and Glasgow; in fact, unless you come from Peebles you’re a black man as near as dammit, what?’
Everybody laughed loudly, including Elizabeth and Sonia. Alec joined in with the rest. He would not have wanted to withdraw anything he had said to Frank. There was far too much of this sentimentality about nowadays, the idea that you had to be twice as nice to Negroes and Jews and Indians and so on whatever they were like, which the better types among them must surely resent. And he felt that a little opposition from time to time would not do Frank any harm. All the same, Alec realized, he had gone rather far. No need to have got hot under the collar like that – it must have looked . . . Suddenly nauseated, he rubbed his hand across his forehead. He had drunk too much whisky on an empty stomach, and he ought to have remembered that white wine never agreed with him. The notion of a few minutes in the open air abruptly became irresistible.
At the side of the building there was a small walled yard, embellished with a few climbing plants, where people could sit and drink in the summer if they cared to fetch their own orders from the saloon bar. The chairs and tables had been removed, no doubt to protect against his own folly anyone whom the sunshine might have lured into the treacherous autumnal outdoors. Alec perched himself on a low brick wall and was clasping his hands round one knee, pipe in mouth, when he was joined by Annette, who must have followed him more or less straight from the dining-room. She remained standing, a rather dumpy figure without a trace of her mother’s looks.
He took her expression for one of inquiry. ‘I’m all right,’ he said. ‘It was a bit stuffy in there, wasn’t it?’
‘I didn’t like what you said to Frank just now.’
‘I know, I’m sorry, Annette, I didn’t think.’
‘You knew he was in the Army for six years and got captured in North Africa? That makes him as British as anyone else as far as I’m concerned. That and having a naturalized British father and a mother born British and being born in England himself. And who cares anyway? And do you know how many Catholics there are in England? And it was all Catholics here once, before they—’
‘Annette, I really am sorry. I had no intention of—’
‘He’s the best husband and father anyone could wish for. Never looks at another woman even though I know he gets plenty of chances. And then he runs into this kind of muck. He gets it in business all the time.“Mister who? How do you spell that? Oh.” You can tell what they’re thinking, that’s when they don’t come out and say it. I get it too, you see. “How long’s your husband been over here?” It makes me mad. She was always going on about it. Fine Liberal she was.’
‘But she wouldn’t ever have dreamt of—’
‘You didn’t know her. The way she used to go on about Elizabeth. That’s a laugh, isn’t it, “Elizabeth”? That was him – you don’t think I’d have been the one who wanted to name—’
The sunlight suddenly grew more intense and Alec shaded his eyes with the hand that held the pipe. ‘What? I don’t quite—–’
‘Never mind. She’s well developed for her age, I know, but these days a lot of them are, with the diet or whatever it is. She’d never let me alone about it – I’d see her watching the kid, sort of fascinated, and then when we were by ourselves she’d say, “She’s so big, isn’t she?” as if it was . . . nasty or disgusting or something. “She’s so big,” she’d say, as if I’d done it on purpose to spite her. And then she’d say, “Of course, these Italian girls, they’re women at fourteen, aren’t they? Like Jewesses.” Her own granddaughter. Three-quarters English. I don’t think she ever believed Frank isn’t a Jew really and hadn’t taken up being a Catholic as a sort of extra. She never liked him and she didn’t mind showing it, either.’
‘But Annette, it was your father who was against Frank if either of them was; I remember them arguing about it. He said—’
‘You know what Dad’s like, up in the air one minute and forgotten all about it the next, it’s just his way. No, she was the one. It wasn’t like her to come out and say anything; all smiles on the surface and needling away whenever she got the chance. She was the same with Sonia’s eyesight and Chris crying too much according to her. I often say to myself the only grandchildren she’d really like would be if Charlie and I got together and had some. She gave him a hell of a time, I don’t know whether you knew, wanting to know where he was and who he was with all the time. He got away overseas as soon as he could, poor old Charlie.’
Annette stopped, not looking at Alec, who hugged his knees tighter to prevent them from trembling. ‘I didn’t realize you hated her,’ he said.
‘I didn’t hate her, Uncle Mac – been easier if I had, in a way. Oh, she was all right in lots of ways and she did enjoy a laugh. It was the way she wouldn’t ever leave me and my marriage and my kids alone made me mad.’ At the mention of anger, anger itself returned to her voice, which had softened in the last minute or so. ‘She liked baby-sitting when she came to stay because that gave her a chance to snoop around. She kept you on a pretty good string, didn’t she, too, all these years? I felt sorry for you. Dad told me about it once when they’d had one of their rows. He didn’t really mind because it gave her a bit of a kick. Mind you, according to him she let it slip once she thought early on you were going to ask her to go off with you, but then you never did. Why not?’
‘It wasn’t that sort of love,’ Alec said.
‘No, I know t
he sort. That’s the best sort, the sort you don’t have to do anything about or get to know the person, and it was fine for her. The way she used to put on a big tolerant act Sunday mornings when we came back from Mass when we stayed with them. Tolerant.’
Alec thought he saw tears of rage and grief in her eyes. He got up and put his arm diffidently round her shoulders. She went on standing in the same position with her weight on both feet, not stiffening or drawing away, but not relaxing against him either. What she had said had affected him chiefly with apprehension that she might lose all self-control. Whether or not her view of her mother was true, or truer than his, he still felt as if he had spent thirty-two years preparing a gift that had had, and could conceivably have had, no recipient. In return for his trouble he retained, safe against total erosion, Betty’s gift to him of a few ideas about what human nature was like; and the last two or three hours had taught him something of how envy and pride could appreciably distort his judgement of other people. All this amounted to more than a little, without being, of course, anywhere near enough. He dropped his arm to his side.
Annette said: ‘We’d better be getting back in. I’m sorry I came out with some of that. I didn’t want to hurt your feelings – it was just that—’
‘We’ve all been under a great strain.’
‘You come back with us, Uncle Mac, and have some supper, there’s plenty of stuff in. Frank’ll run you home.’
‘That’s very kind of you, but it’s right across London, you know.’
‘Doesn’t matter. We ought to see more of you. Seems silly not to.’
‘It’s a pity it’s such a long way.’
DEAR ILLUSION
I
‘He is good, is he?’ asked Pat Bowes, turning the car out of the main shopping street of the town into a lane that gave a glimpse of distant greenery. ‘I mean I know people go on about him, but who don’t they go on about these days? But he’s supposed to be good in the same way as, I don’t know, Keats and Milton and Christ, you’ll have to help me out, not Shakespeare, Gerald Manley Hopkins. Isn’t he?’
Dear Illusion: Collected Stories Page 15