My Son, My Son

by Howard Spring

  She came to a halt, and gave a restless shake to her body. “Oh, send that blasted car away,” she said. “We can’t talk about these things walking like a couple of fools in front of all this—this ghastly—” She helplessly waved a hand at the monstrous, the monumental, ugliness of the station façade.

  So I sent Martin away, and we walked out into the hardly more inspiring atmosphere of the Euston Road, where the buses roared by and the taxis honked, and we were beset on either hand by that filthy and unco-ordinated thoroughfare. A grey gritty wind was blowing, and a sky of blotched unpolished pewter pressed upon the roofs. We walked towards Marylebone.

  “For the best part of last year,” I said, “I was gallivanting about the loveliest places in Europe. If you had been with me, I could have proposed to you on the pont d’Avignon, or on the ramparts of Montreuil, or in an olive field looking over the Mediterranean, or beside a lake in Sweden, or on the shores of the Bosphorus. As it is, I propose in a gritty January wind in the Euston Road, with those awful caryatides holding up the church across the street.”

  “Listen, Bill,” she said, taking my arm snugly, “cut out all the pretty things, and look at the grisly facts. I wanted to like you from the beginning. You remember—when you were in the nursing-home in Manchester and I motored Maeve up?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, I did like you. I knew your work, and I liked that. You didn’t have much to say that day, you know. You were not brilliant, and I liked that, too. I loathe talking to people who try to make every phrase sound as though it’s the one good thing Oscar Wilde forgot to say to Whistler. I couldn’t live with a person like that.”

  “That’s lucky for me.”

  “But, you see, that was just an elementary first impression. After all, we were only together for a few hours, and then Oliver came along.”

  “And that altered things.”

  “That altered things.”

  “Are you—are you—in love with Oliver?”

  “I think all day about his beauty. I don’t know whether I’m in love with him or not, but he obsesses me.”

  “Have you seen much of him this holiday?”

  “Very little. I’m not so bad as Maeve thinks.” She said that rather bitterly. “I have tried to do without him.”

  We walked on without speaking for a while, and facing into the dour gritty wind I thought suddenly of a night long ago when Dermot and I had sat up late under a swinging lamp in his workshop, arranging the fate of our sons who were not born. “If I have a son,” I said, “I just want him to have everything. I’ll work my fingers to the bone to give him every damn thing he asks for, and seeing him enjoying it, I’ll enjoy it myself and live my life over again.” The words rattled dryly in my memory like the soiled scraps of paper rasping dryly along the gutter in the wind. I found no comfort in them. Now Oliver was asking for Livia, and I was not enjoying it.

  Was he asking for her? Well, here was a point where Give, Give, Give, came to an end, and I began to question the demand. That Oliver was infatuated was clear. That night on the Percuil River. The excited glances that I had caught between him and Livia. But what did it all come to? Calf love. Hay fever. The traditional explanations marshalled themselves obediently to my aid. Let him wait, find a woman of his age.

  Or was this the one thing that mattered? What if the truth were this: that I might with impunity have refused him all those advantages—those superfluities?—he had till now enjoyed, but that here was something come at last which I should refuse him at his peril? At my peril? At the peril of everything there had ever been between us? I wouldn’t allow myself to work it out. Not then. I have worked it out since, walking again in imagination that arid road, with the ghosts of Maeve and Rory and Oliver blowing beside me down the bitter wind. And the ghost of the man I never knew; for if our deeds determine anything, the fourth ghost, too, was predestined from that day.

  It seemed a long time since either of us had spoken. We walked on, with her hand resting on my arm, a contact which I found unbearably dear, unbearably precious. Once she removed it, and I took it and put it back, and patted it, and said: “Let it stay there.”

  She was tall, I think I have told you, and free-striding like a fawn, and that day she was wearing a brown skirt and an astrakhan coat and hat, Russian-looking. The wind had whipped colour into her cheeks, and I suppose the colour was heightened by the agitation of the moment.

  At last she said: “I didn’t know you were so serious about it,” and the words were rather hoarse and strained, as though the constriction of my own throat had communicated itself to her.

  “I have never been so serious in my life,” I said unsteadily. “I’m terribly in love with you, Livia. I’ve never loved a woman before. Do you believe that? I’ve never known any of the things that I imagine marriage to mean.”

  “It’s a hell of a fix,” she said with a shaky laugh. “Why do you think I shall be able to give you the things you’ve lacked?”

  “Oh, don’t ask me to reason about it. My first marriage, believe me, was completely reasonable.”

  “You don’t know me. You don’t know what a bad lot I am.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “I must say it. At least let me be honest. Let me stand up and shout in your fool’s paradise.”

  “No, no. Take me or leave me. I’m willing to take you.”

  “I’m terribly susceptible to men. There! Now I’ve said it.”

  “I didn’t hear it.”

  “The more fool you.”

  “Will you marry me, poor fool as I am?”

  “If I married you, it would be because I liked you and because you were a very distinguished man. I’m vain. But you see, I’m honest. Oh, God,” she added, “I wish you weren’t Oliver’s father!”

  “Can’t you forget Oliver, or think about him differently?”

  “I don’t know how I think about him. Why don’t you wait? We’re in a tangle. It will clear itself up if you give it time. Why don’t you? You see, you offer such tremendous inducements. It’s a pressure upon me. I don’t think it’s fair.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Forgive me.” I called a taxi, and set her down a few moments later at the door of her flat. She looked shaken and excited, standing there waiting to wave to me as I turned the corner into Baker Street.

  *

  Martin drove me down to Heronwater the next day. How different from the first journey! We had gone by train from Manchester. Nellie... Sheila... Dermot... all the children... maids... luggage. What a business! “Good-bye, Belle Vue!” And, of course, it was summertime, holiday-time, time without a care. How different!

  “A bad day, sir,” Martin said, when I came out to the car after a very early breakfast. It was. The Heath was a cheerless place under the rain; the sky seemed to be on top of our heads. All England lay under the weeping; the day got no better, no worse, as we went westward.

  I didn’t sit with Martin, as I usually did; I sat behind, looking through the streaming windows at flooded ditches, and bare dripping trees, and villages that flashed by with their shoulders greyly hunched, and the downs, dull as slate, losing their heads in vast convolutions of creeping mist.

  The whole world seemed inimical, and Cornwall, when we came to it in the last washed-out dregs of daylight, was a forlorn and fabulous province that seemed to resent intrusion. I had wanted to put up at Plymouth, but Martin made it a matter of pride to reach Heronwater that night. His headlights reached out into the gloom and through them the incessant arrows of the rain rushed from darkness to darkness. I pulled down the blind in front of me, wearied by their hypnotic attraction, and then it was as though I were in a dark box, hurtling through chaos.

  The wind got up, strengthened quickly, and hurled the rain against the windows in gusty, pebbly handfuls. I could feel the push of the wind on the car, sudden powerful blows that made me uneasy despite her great strength and weight. I was utterly lost, completely confounded, and when, now and then, the l
ighted window of a cottage or the sparsely scattered lights of a hamlet shone briefly through the dark glass, there was no comfort in them, but only a will o’ the wisp eeriness from which I was glad to be flying.

  I gave it up; I left it to Martin; despite the now bellowing wind and the undiminished ferocity of the rain, I must somehow have slept, for the crunch of the tyres on gravel, the gentle sliding to immobility, jerked me up like a blow. Martin’s face was at the open door of the car—a face that, even after those gruelling hours, seemed unchanged save for a smile of quiet pride. “We’re here, sir,” he announced. “She’s a grand car.”

  “A grand car would have been precious little use without a grand driver,” I said. “I’m glad we didn’t stop at Plymouth. Thank you.”

  The door was open, and Sam Sawle was standing there under the light. “Bring me my gum-boots and oilskin,” I shouted. They were always kept just within the door. Sam brought them out and I stepped into them right away. “Glad to see you, Mr. Essex,” he said.

  “And I’m glad to see you. I’ll be in in a moment. Put the car away, Martin, and get something hot into you.”

  I squelched across the wet lawn to the stone balustrade. I wanted to see my Cornwall on this winter night—the first winter night I had spent there. I rested my hands on the cold stone that I had always known honey-mellow, warm and ripe with summer. The rain pattered on my oilskin. The wind roared through the dark gulf into which I looked: roared through the leafless trees, roared over the dark water that I could not see. I looked up and could see the tortured branches, a darker black against the blackness of the night, lashing and thrashing, and no star shone upon their frenzied dance. But down on the water that I could not see, incredibly calm amid the mad carnival of the elements, two orange squares of light lay side by side, and I wondered what riot of emotion was stirring the brain of Captain Judas this night behind those placid faces.

  I turned to go back to the house, then stood as if rooted to the ground, leaning back, gripping the wet balustrade with both hands thrust behind me. I had seen her looking white and tired, waving to me as I turned into Baker Street. The day’s apocalyptic journey seemed to have set a gulf between that moment and this that could not easily be bridged.

  “It can’t be you!” I said foolishly, and indeed in the hissing of the rain and the howling of the wind, in the intense darkness of that spot on the topmost edge of the falling wood, it was hard to make out the features of the face that glimmered whitely before me.

  “Yes,” said Livia.

  “But, my child—my dear—in such a night! What are you wearing?” I reached out my hand and felt the fragility of the dress, sodden with rain, gummed to her body.

  “I’m being melodramatic.” Her laugh was low and provoking. “I wanted to surprise you. Have I done it?”

  I took her suddenly in both arms and drew her to me, straining her to the creaking armour that I wore. She threw back her head, and I crushed my mouth upon her wet mouth, and upon her hair and her throat. She was dripping like a dryad, and I kissed the rain out of her eyes. Then I picked her up and waded awkwardly in those great boots of mine through the wet grass. She was easy to carry for all her weight. I put her down in the porch and saw that her eyes were starry. “For God’s sake, go and change,” I said. “You’ll catch your death.” The rain had sleeked her like a seal. She kicked off her soaking shoes and ran upstairs.

  I took off my gum-boots and oilskin, and Sawle brought me some slippers. I was dazed by what had happened. I followed Sawle into my study. A log fire roared; the curtains were drawn; I felt elated, like a child that has come on some uncovenanted pleasure.

  “When did Miss Vaynol come?”

  “She’s been here some time, Mr. Essex. She came by train to Truro and then on by car. She’s been having a fine laugh, saying give her trains any day to beat cars on a long run.”

  “You shouldn’t have let her go out, dressed like that.”

  “I don’t have the dressing of her, Mr. Essex, and as for going out, I didn’t know she had gone.”

  “Well—right. You’ve got this place looking very comfortable.”

  “And a bath ready for you, too, but by the sound of things someone’s got it before you.”

  Bless the girl, let her have the bath. I was dry enough. I went up to my room to wash, and while I did so Sawle unpacked my bag.

  “Well, how do you like winter visitors?” I asked him. “You’re not used to this.”

  “I’ll manage, Mr. Essex,” he said confidently, “though I didn’t expect two of you. I thought there’d just be you to look after, and I reckoned Martin and I could do that between us, cooking an’ all. But when Miss Vaynol come, that was a different story. ‘I reckon you can take the cooking off my hands,’ I said to her.”

  “Quite right. And what did she say to that?”

  “She said ‘So long as you cook the breakfast, I’ll do the rest. I’m a poor getter-up.’ Well, that suits me. I reckon I can knock up a bit of breakfast.”

  “I’m sure you can.”

  “As for dinner tonight, I cooked most of it, but Miss Vaynol did some fancy bits.”

  “For example?”

  “Well, I roasted a shoulder of lamb, and she made onion sauce. Then I thought you’d like some bread and cheese, but she said biscuits and cheese, with what she calls Charlotte russ to come first. She’s been a long time messing about with that. She pinched some of the best brandy for it. And she said perhaps she’d better make the coffee. I was surprised to find her so keen on playing about in the kitchen. She wasn’t like that in the summer when she was here—when you wasn’t, you know, Mr. Essex. Mrs. Essex, now—I could understand that. She was always a one for the kitchen.” He looked at me shyly. “I was sorry about that.”

  It was only then that I remembered I had not seen Sawle since Nellie’s death. “She was all right, was Mrs. Essex,” he said. “And didn’t that chap Donnelly know how to bring her out!”

  He hovered round for a while, turned down the sheets of the bed, then made off, announcing that his shoulder of lamb would be just about done.

  I sat down in a chair and listened to the tumult of the storm. Now that Sawle’s slow steady voice was gone there was nothing else to listen to: the rain dashing with an angry hiss at the window, the wind raving in the trees. But now I could listen without disturbance, with comfort even, savouring the rich contrast of the wild weather without and the peace within—the peace and the sure, unobtrusive companionship of Sawle and Martin. And Livia.

  She was already in the study when I went down. She was standing with a bare arm white on the mantelpiece, a foot on the fender, looking into the fire. She was wearing that dress of night-blue fabric sown with silver stars which she had worn in Manchester. The train flowed over the hearthrug in lovely lines.

  When I entered the room she turned, her face lighted by a welcoming smile. “It’s more than a year,” I said, “since I first—and last—saw you in that dress. I’m glad you don’t throw away your clothes too quickly. I shall always love you in that.”

  She kicked her train into position and glanced down her slender body appraisingly, to the tiny slippers peeping from beneath the hem of the dress. “My own design,” she said, “my own make. I think I could earn a living as a dressmaker.”

  “There seem to be so many things you could earn a living at,” I said, passing her a glass of sherry.

  “Yes; and I stick to none of them.” She sighed. “You see, I’m inconstant.” She raised her glass. “Here’s to constancy. There’s nothing I admire more.”

  “Here’s to Livia, and constancy.”

  Sam Sawle entered and announced: “The lamb’s on the table, Mr. Essex. Eat it while it’s hot.”

  “How I love servants who are not flunkeys,” Livia whispered. I agreed with that. We went in to dinner.

  *

  I filled my pipe and settled in a big chair by the study fire. Livia poured out the coffee which stood on a small table between us. A
tall standard lamp with a shade of loose-hanging primrose silk shed a soft light to augment the light of the flames leaping in the chimney. Now and then a sharp hiss of rain upon flame reminded us that the storm was not over, but the wind had ceased to buffet. It had fallen to an occasional rumble in the throat of the night.

  “Ever since I bought Heronwater,” I said, “I have imagined what it would be like to come down here in the winter, work all day long with no one but Sam Sawle to look after me, and to spend long evenings, tired out, sitting alone under this lamp, reading all the books I ought to read. Well, here I am under the lamp. But I am not alone. Why?”

  Livia sipped her coffee. “Of all the men! Didn’t you invite me?”

  “I formed a painful impression that my invitation had been refused.”

  “But I’ve told you, I’m a very inconstant and changeable woman. You must learn never to take me at my word. If I had accepted, you might even now be enjoying your heart’s desire—reading all those books that one ought to read but never does: Grote’s Greece, Gibbon’s Rome, Motley’s Dutch Republics, oh, and those dingy little rows and rows of bound volumes of the Spectator that go for thirty shillings the set in the second-hand bookshops... Poof!” She tossed her fingers at her hair. “May I have a cigarette?”

  I gave her one, and lit it. “Well, now that the preliminary is achieved, tell me—why did you change your mind and come?”

  She drew in the smoke, exhaled it in a slow deliberate plume, considering my face thoughtfully. “You are one of those men who will not accept the accomplished fact. They must have all the reasons. Was that not an accomplished fact, in the garden, when you held me in your arms? Oh, dear! I have never before been hugged by a man in oilskins. I should hate to be a sailor’s bride.”

  “You are not serious,” I said resentfully.

  Livia got up and threw her cigarette into the fire. “Serious!” she cried, suddenly dead white with seriousness. “Why should I be serious? Is there anything to be serious about? Isn’t it self-evident that when a girl has to choose between a schoolboy of sixteen who will probably be nothing, whom she knows to be as conceited as the devil and as greedy as hell—when she has to choose between that and a famous wealthy man, I ask you, isn’t it self-evident that she’ll choose the man? Let her do it without worrying her for reasons. What reasons can there be? One would think you were afraid of what Oliver could do against you. You’re not, are you?”