Mr. Beluncle: A Novel (Modern Library Classics)

by V. S. Pritchett

  David Vogg said: “Fornication: is that Christianity?”

  As soon as she could Mrs Vogg changed the subject.

  VII

  Sunday. The one day of the week when Mr Beluncle was at home, the day his family gave to him.

  The sun went up throwing off early heat like rings round the heart and body. The smells of the garden flowers came in at the open windows drawn in after flies and travelling bees. “The bee, the busy bee,” Beluncle often said, of this moral creature. “Look how he gets his honey. He's a traveller. I was on the road ten years. To be a traveller was my highest ambition when I was a young man, the be-all and end-all.”

  A look of apology and surprise followed this confession.

  Outside, the garden of the semi-detached house, with its six large trees and its well-trodden grass, was lying in the suave, summery silence. Beyond the villa, built in Boystone's yellow period, the suburban road and the red and yellow town round it were held in the same silence too. Later, the main roads would be noisy with traffic and as hot as an iron. The crowds would come out of the churches, the stations, the hospitals.

  The Beluncles woke up; the youngest first. Leslie Beluncle was working on a system of electric bells and his bed was covered with screws, nuts and wires; now and then the boy lifted his head and looked at the poplar tree standing in the garden of the house opposite. He was dreaming. Then his head gave a pretty shake and his eyes opened nervously wide for a second or two and showed a crescent of white above the pupils. The doe eyes of all the Beluncles, except the small fish-grey salty eyes of Mrs Beluncle, displayed this circumflex of hardness and fright. In a moment the eyes became dreaming and tender again.

  There were two beds in the next room. George was lying there dreaming sorrowfully, under the long lashes of his beautiful eyes, of the man at the garage whose wife had been taken suddenly to hospital. George was dissolved in sympathy; a masochist, he wished to be in hospital too. He was running through all the diseases he knew the names of. Henry Beluncle, the eldest of the boys, who was nineteen, was striving to recover the kisses of yesterday, but the memory was transfixed by the lies he had told when he got home and now he waited for eleven o'clock when he would see Mary Phibbs again. Grandmamma Beluncle had been awake since six o'clock and was thinking about her clothes. And, now and then, thought of telling her husband that, except for herself, she knew no woman whose clothes suited her, forgetting he was dead. The garden smells made her think of him.

  Beluncle himself, her son, whose snores had ranged like cowboys through the house all the night in a loud undulating clatter, woke suddenly on a note like a shot. Clear-headed at once, he again set out occupying residences, sold all his furniture, moved new furniture into shooting-boxes, maisonettes and mansions all over England, stopping between each removal at certain hotels he had known when he was a commercial traveller, having old meals over again, recalling the amounts of old orders. After these cavortings of the mind, his soft, large face, which loosened and flattened into outer and inner rings when his head lay on the pillow, hardened: his hand went out to Mrs Parkinson's morocco-bound work, Mind and Matter, on the table beside him. A scented marker, which he smelled before he began to read, showed the place. Mrs Parkinson was quoting Jesus:

  In my father's house [he readj are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare â place for you.

  In the front bedroom which she and her husband had once shared, Mrs Beluncle slept on in her muddled bedclothes, her long hair half over her face, which even in sleep seemed to be shouting out an insult, from the wreckage of a night's tormented, sheet-twisting and weeping dreams.

  At the line: “I go to prepare a place for you,” Beluncle could not wait.

  “Hullo,” he called out from his room in a jolly voice. “Hullo, hullo, hullo,” he called.

  In their rooms, all except Ethel Beluncle looked up and frowned.

  “You boys,” he called. “Are you awake?”

  There was no answer. Beluncle put down his book. There was no doubting the Scriptures: a place had been prepared for him. There were many mansions. Among the many mansions of God's, there was one for him. Where was it?

  “You boys. Get up,” he called.

  It was probably Marbella. If that was the one God had chosen for him-and God would choose the best-then nothing could prevent him having it. What could possibly interfere with the purpose of omniscient, omnipresent God, Good, Mind, Soul, Principle? The voice of Error, the Evil One, might suggest (“Get up, you heard me,” called Beluncle genially. “Ethel, are you asleep?”) that he was on the point of bankruptcy; but who could doubt that if God provided the mansion he would also provide the money to pay for it?

  “I must work for Supply. God is Supply,” muttered Mr Beluncle.

  “You boys! Ethel! I don't want to get angry” he called. “I don't want to lose my temper. Greet the day. It's Sunday. The sun is shining. The birds are singing…”

  “That's a lie,” said Henry in his room, to George. “There are no birds singing.”

  George laughed too loudly.

  “Get up,” said Henry. “There will only be a row.”

  “Get up,” shouted George to the youngest boy.

  Then Ethel appeared in their rooms, with her hair dividing over her cheeks, and looking out from it like a savage peeping in terror from an old tent.

  “Get up,” she said sharply. “You know what your father is. I don't want the day ruined.”

  And she went downstairs in her nightgown with an old coat thrown over it. They could hear her filling the kettle, and presently George was called down.

  “Take him his tea.”

  George carried the rattling tea cup to his father's room. In his pyjamas Bèluncle leaned on one elbow like a large striped Turk.

  “Take a little more care, you are spilling it. How old are you?”

  “Sixteen,” said George.

  “Don't be a fool. I know that,” said Beluncle. “Look what you have spilled. Open the window. Empty this saucer. It is disgusting. Sixteen, and you cannot carry a cup of tea upstairs. When I was sixteen, George, I was earning my living.”

  George's dark eyes gazed appealingly at his father.

  “Dad,” he began, in a choking voice. “What about my job?”

  “Your job?” said Beluncle with astonishment. “Tour job?”

  “Yes, you said when I left school you would see about a job,” said George. “I left at Christmas.”

  Beluncle sipped his tea and frowned.

  “Your job?” said Beluncle. “Why do you ask me about that today. You ask me to get you your job?”

  “Yes,” said George. “You said you would. You told me not to.”

  “There is only one job, one kind of work, George,” said Beluncle kindly. “You ought to know that. You do know it, don't you?”

  George's childish face grew long and sad and obstinate.

  “God has the right work waiting for you when you are ready for it,” said Beluncle. “Hasn't He?”

  “I don't know,” said George. “You said you'd ask Mr Miller.”

  “Now, George,” said Beluncle sharply, “don't irritate me. At your age I found my own job. I didn't go to my father; in any case my father couldn't help me, he was a poor man. You are lucky having a father who is better off, but don't you go getting the idea that just because your father's got a business, you can just have anything you want, because that's the wrong idea. Now go and turn my bath on.”

  “You said yesterday, ask today,” said George.

  George turned away. His eyes shone with tears that did not fall and he walked slowly away, bewildered, carrying his love for his father away with him, like someone sent away with an unwanted load.

  “You're a fool. I heard,” whispered his eldest brother, outside the room. “He won't do anything.”

  “Shut up,” said George, going to the bathroom arid wiping his eyes sadly on his sleeve.

  At half past ten Beluncle came down
stairs. For an hour and a half they heard him bathing, caught a glimpse of him shaving, trying on new shirts, changing from one suit to another, oiling this side of his stiff grey curling hair and then the other, doing his chin exercises. His trousers looked like a pair of striped tigers as he sat taking his breakfast alone. It seemed likely that he was going to church, but it might not be so. He might sit so long over breakfast that he would be too late for church, and then, to their despair, he might spend the morning walking up and down the lawn. Or he might get out the car and drive to another church in London. Or go to see his partner. The boys and Beluncle's wife hung about the door outside the dining-room where he sat eating, waiting for hints and clues,

  Ethel Beluncle had more courage, but not much more, than her sons. The more Beluncle dressed, the less she dressed: their marriage had always been a duel. She had put on an old skirt, her blouse was unbuttoned and her hair still hung over her face and down her shoulders. The more he sat, the more she stood. The more he was the lord, the more she, vindictively, was the slave. The Beluncle boys hovered, waiting to know if they would be free this day, waiting to know what this Sunday would be like, whether Ethel Beluncle, by some small act, would tip the scale the other way from the common Sunday quarrel.

  Presently Beluncle stood up and came out into the small hall into the heat of the morning. Stout and bland, he walked lightly and gravely.

  “Hat, stick, gloves,” he said. He was astonished at the sight of his family hanging about there idle.

  “Get them,” said Ethel, giving one of the boys a push. And she herself went out into the garden and picked him a red rose for his buttonhole. She brought it to him and he held it to his nose.

  “I would like,” he said, “to be surrounded by roses. Everywhere. I want colour, flowers, fragrance, richness.”

  And then his reddened, beard-blue face went suddenly greenish as if he were going to faint and his thick lips went small. His face began to shrivel with disgust.

  “Oh,” he said, holding the rose away from his clothes. “Greenfly.”

  “Give it to me. I'll brush them off,” said Ethel. “You're not afraid of a fly.”

  “I don't want greenfly on my hands. They'll get on my suit. I've only just paid for it; in fact, I haven't paid for it. Are there any on it? I shall have to wash.”

  Three greenfly were brushed off the stem of the rose and Ethel wiped them on her skirt and then she got the brush and, as he turned, she brushed him carefully.

  “Henry,” she said, when her husband's back was turned and she was on her knees brushing the back of his trouser legs. “Henry,” she said, “wants to go out this afternoon.”

  “Out?” said Beluncle. “Henry does? Why?”

  “I don't know. He said he wanted to go out,” said Ethel, picking a piece of cotton off her husband's trousers.

  “Where is Henry?” said Beluncle.

  “You said you wanted to go out this afternoon, Henry,” said Ethel. “Ask your father. You're nineteen years old, you're old enough to speak up for yourself. Don't leave me your dirty work.”

  “Dirty,” George said, putting his hand to his mouth.

  “I don't understand,” said Beluncle. “Maybe my mind is clouded, or I am stupid-but out? Out on a Sunday? Isn't this the day, I don't know, I am just asking what you think, isn't this the day a boy would wish to be with his father whom he has not seen all the week. A father and son-they ought to be friends. I can tell you,” and here Beluncle put his broad, bluish, clean-shaven chin out like a penitent martyr, “I regret every minute I did not spend in my father's company….”

  “Let him go out,” said Ethel, in her tired voice. “He is young. You have only one life.”

  “You speak,” said Beluncle, “as if I was old. I want us to be young together. And I'd like to correct your thought there: life is not finite. It is infinite. If Henry wants to go out, let him go out, but if he feels it would be more loving to be with his father, let him stay. You have got that clear, Henry, I hope. I don't stop you, but you will be sorry later on in life for every moment you do not spend with me. Give me my hat, Ethel.”

  Beluncle took the grey hat and placed it carefully on his head before the mirror.

  Henry, who had stood resolved in the darkness of the passage leading to the kitchen, was now weak, afraid and secretive before his father. Before that warm, full, decided voice, his desires had gone. He had now only one desire, the desire not to burst into tears. Unknown to himself, his eyes glared at his father, but his sulking and vain young lips were uneasy. Tears would come hysterically to his eyes, his voice would waver, and passion, between love and hatred, disordered him. Every year he had been saying, “Perhaps next year I shall not cry when I speak to this male; perhaps next year I shall not feel this ungovernable shame and guilt which burn me up before I know where I am.”

  “Mother is wrong, I don't want to go out,” he said. “I was,” he invented quickly, “thinking we could go out in the car.”

  His victory won, Beluncle turned sharply on his son.

  “The car belongs to the business. You seem to think it is yours. On twenty-five shillings a week you cannot afford to go joy-riding round the country.”

  “Seventeen and six,” said Ethel, who was quick at figures.

  It seemed to Beluncle that he was surrounded by a family who took everything from him and were trying to break him; but what especially he did not like was the physical appearance of his sons. They were growing to be men and he felt this was a sickness that was overtaking them, for their voices were thin, light and nasal, they were pompous and rash in their opinions, their feelings were evidently in a continuous lightheaded flutter, and their shyness embarrassed him. Every time he saw them he thought them half-grown and he could hardly resist striking them in their weak faces in which he could see the garbled lineaments of himself. “I'd like,” he said apologetically, “to knock their blocks off.” He ordered them, he thwarted them abruptly, he shouted at them, his violence growing troubled as they got older, but not from any conscious policy. They had been in him and now like three callow lunatics they were trying to get out.

  “I will go and say goodbye to mother,” he said, changing to a reverent voice, “while Henry and George clean their boots. They can't go to church with boots like that. I suppose. you are going to church?” he said.

  The two boys hesitated and Henry looked at the hot sky shaking on the green tongues of the trees.

  “Make up your minds,” said Beluncle, with detachment. “One either wants God or one don't… doesn't.”

  “No one,” thought Henry, “understands my difficulties.”

  Beluncle went upstairs to his mother's bedroom. It was moving to see a man who loved his mother so much. The house was a small one and a good deal of old Mrs Beluncle's furniture was on the landing and in the rooms. There were two fenders in some rooms, two coal-scuttles, two clocks, two desks, two wardrobes; one carpet would be laid upon another. The furniture was duplicated because the old lady was unwilling to part with it and her son enjoyed having too much. Beluncle used to think that if he sold all his own furniture, there would still be his mother's, and every day he altered what he would sell if his mother died and daydreamed about the prices as he walked about the house.

  Beluncle was a soft and dignified walker, and was able to surprise anyone in the house. The softness of his tread was a pleasure, a kind of virtue. He was a soft walker in his factory and constantly surprised men who ought to have been working. “Who is the master?” his grave face seemed to say when he made one of his quiet apprearances.

  He went into his mother's bedroom. The small old lady was an early riser and was standing between the foot of her brass bedstead and the open door of her wardrobe, lost, as she often was, trying to remember which year of her life this was and which place. In her strong glasses she looked like an ant, rambling over the hummocks of her past life, and looking for the entrance to it, so that she could find where she began and could end. Her white hair
was tightly done and pulled up from the back of her childish neck. The loose skin under her chin was like the skin of a little plucked chicken.

  Downstairs Ethel Beluncle was saying, “Hurry up. He has only gone to show himself to grandmamma.”

  Every day Mr Beluncle showed himself-and by that he meant the clothes he was wearing-to his mother.

  He stepped into his mother's room and glanced into the open wardrobe as he passed it. The shelves and the drawers of this large piece of furniture were filled with house linen of all kinds. Beluncle knew the wardrobe was worth something, but he was never sure about the linen; his mother had stored up an enormous quantity and the embroidery of it represented a lifetime's work with crochet hook and needle. What was it worth? A hundred pounds? Two hundred pounds? Mr Beluncle forced up the price at an imaginary auction, bidding against himself.

  The old lady had grown very deaf and did not hear him come into the room.

  “Eh, Philip,” she said, in a flat and reproachful voice when she saw him. She was reproaching him still for getting married.

  “Well, well,” she said, nodding her head.

  “Well, mother,” said Beluncle.

  These words were exchanged with random emotion, like the idle shots that break up the silence of the slow dog-days of a battle. The old lady had put on a small black silk apron and now she slowly brought her hands together on it and, squeezing them together, seemed to be squeezing a small, hard, electric smile into her face.

  “How do I look, mother?” said Beluncle.

  “Eh,” said the old lady cautiously, “is that a new suit?”

  “I've had it five years, mother.”

  “Well, well, five years. You keep it well. I trained you to keep your clothes. You favour me and not your father. You keep your clothes, like I trained you.”

  “I lay,” said the old lady, “-I lay she doesn't care for your clothes as I cared for them.”

  “There is no one like you,” said Beluncle.