The Great Fire

by Shirley Hazzard

  “I find you neither grey nor puffy. Undernourished, perhaps. Aurora, how are you managing this?” His father’s death.

  She looked at him quite a while, and then away. They both thought that she might cry, but she did not. “There are such fluctuations, you know. Grief, grievance, disbelief. Tenderness. Remorse.”

  “I think you have little reason to feel guilty in this, Aurora.”

  “Not guilt. Remorse. Rightful regret. Responsibility. Don’t try to take that from me, Aldred—one of the ways we come to know ourselves. As I discover. People tell you that time will help—they have to say something. They don’t realise that one dreads time, the diminution. One doesn’t want to get over it.” She said, “He and I—we saw each other less these last years. He didn’t come to town very often, and naturally I could not go there. I resented, more than before, the marginal aspect of my life—his centre having become, more and more, the house in Norfolk, the odd bleak place, your mother.”

  “I don’t know if you ever saw the house.”

  “Yes. Three times. Your mother was away. Once, in fact, and this is shameful, she was in hospital. He wanted me to see it, where he lived and wrote. And I was curious, although not happy about it. It added, obviously, to the sense of exclusion.” She said, “When he came back from Greece two years ago, he was not just older, but aged. I should have been more attentive to that. I felt that he was always the difficult one, we were all anxious for him—whereas I would have liked, by now, to have his concern. The last time—it’s five weeks ago—he was kinder, more loving to me. He came here as usual, and then we went out to lunch—he liked to do that, a little celebration.”

  Came here as usual, and then we went out. They had lain down together, unknowing, for a last time.

  “I went to the train with him, I didn’t usually do that. Small, silly thing to be glad about. But one doesn’t always know what one will be glad about, later on. Or sorry for, or misremember.” She said, “In a minute or two, I’ll get dinner.” Took his hand, and released it. “It seems very natural, to have you here.”

  He had brought a package for her, of Eastern spices and rices. “You used to like these things?”

  She set them in a row, fingering their glossy reds and yellows. “Even the jars are fiery. From the warm side of the world. At the Ministry, we used to play the game of what we’d eat after the war: I said, freshly ground pepper.” In an unlikely episode, Aurora had spent a year at the Ministry of Aircraft Production. “Oh, the Ministry. Oh, the deathliness, the pettiness, the squalor.” She smiled, as one could now smile, at the bare idea. “Others being worse off, you weren’t supposed to complain.” With satisfaction, she added, “I did, though.” She put the spice jars back in their wrapping and blew them a kiss. “It was in the term of Stafford Cripps, at the Ministry. Cripps had been pushed out from higher political ground and was bearing up nobly. And that set the tone of endurance.” She said, “Endurance, our national god, may be running out of steam at last.”

  Leith had also brought her a circlet of carved jade, in the colour called kingfisher. Aurora gave him a small wrapped book. He said, “I walked to St. Paul’s this afternoon.” He got up and, going to the fire, looked into the lovely picture. “What happened to John Bull?”

  “We forgot to pack him, and he got blitzed.” Aurora said, “So you’ve seen the town. The clearing away has made it starker. Has put it in the past. When you were here, in’45, rubble still provided a sort of immediacy.”

  “Or I was too sunk in my own rubble to take things in. The churches, every one of them a ruin.”

  “Yes. Poor God.”

  From Fleet Street he had turned off into the passage for St. Bride’s and sat awhile in the broken churchyard.

  She said, “I suppose it means the end of monuments. Hard to imagine fresh triumphal arches, war memorials, new equestrian statues.”

  “For one thing, we might be backing the wrong horse.”

  She suddenly said, “I hated missing you, when you were here that May.”

  “A weird time all round.”

  “It was when I was at Truro, staying with poor Mummy.” She said, “I never met your wife.”

  “Perhaps you will, one day.”

  She noted but did not take up the ambiguity. She was looking up at him. “You’ve become a bit formidable.”

  “Surely not.” Few men would quite dislike the idea. “Just older.”

  “Older. I’m fifty-one, and should know.” Aurora said, “Jason would be thirty-four.” And: “I’ll bring our dinner now, I was given some woodcocks.” Then, with hand to eyes: “Everything has such bloody sadness.”

  The telephone rang. Aurora signalled herself incommunicado, and Leith picked it up. A hearty voice, male, said, “Hullo hullo hullo. Rory?”

  “Sorry, she’s not available at the minute.”

  “Ah—who’s this?”

  “A relation.”

  Aurora laughed.

  Hanging up, Leith said, “A sporting voice. A donor of woodcock.”

  He went with Aurora to fetch the dinner. The corridor was an icehouse, the light minimal, and their shoes loud on bare board. Her black dress buttoned down the back, like the frock of a child.

  The kitchen itself was cheerful from the hot stove and the smell of cooked birds; and from the sight of a tray laid with silver and glasses and blue napkins, standing on a marble table. Propping his bottom against the stove, Leith could see, in the pantry, a dressing gown and bed socks arranged on a clotheshorse, and a line of small washing strung up. On counter and table, cold candles were scalloped with melted wax. All the trappings of making-do.

  Aurora was dishing up new potatoes and small onions. “And a lettuce, for your return. Did you have any lunch?”

  He felt hunger, telling her about the preposterous chop.

  She was pink, from steam and emotion. “At the end of the month, I’m off to Kenya, to be warm.”

  That she should leave, just as he returned.

  “My husband that was—Jason’s father—left me some money. The oddest thing.”

  “He died, then.”

  “Blown up at Mombasa, my dear, in 1946. It was one of those accidents left over from the war, the explosion of an arsenal.” She said, “Now I have to get to the oven.” He moved aside. “Well, poor Geoff, poor chap. Then I got word that he’d left me this money. I’m advised to get it out of Kenya before some balloon goes up, or bubble bursts, or boom is lowered. On the other hand, if I bring it here, every last farthing goes in taxes. And they talk of devaluing the pound. So I decided to sail out and spend some of it there.” Little upward smile, recalling smiles past: “I’ve never been in the wild.”

  At the fireside, as they ate, Aurora told him, “You’ll find that they keep saying, ‘Britain is finished’—and with such complacency, as if it were a solution.”

  “Such things are said of nations around the globe. As if countries could just sink beneath the waves like scuttled ships.”

  “With all of us lined up on deck, standing to attention as the waters rise. Disdaining lifeboats. I suppose we expected some prize for sticking it out, in the war. Like school. Instead, we find ourselves hungry, cold, broke, and somehow in the wrong.”

  Leith took the Beaujolais from the mantelpiece, where it had stood beside the surviving figurine. Britannia in trouble: poor Mummy. He filled Aurora’s glass and his own. “This is awfully good, Aurora. I haven’t had anything so good in years.”

  “Last year and this, I’m told, are fine years. For wines, anyway. I should lay up, or lay down, some cases before I sail.”

  He was freshly displeased by her departure. “Of course I wish you weren’t going.”

  “Having stayed away for years, you expect to find us all in place, a regiment of Penelopes. I’m going to Africa to be free of hardship for a while.” She lowered her head.

  He went and squatted by her chair. As a youth, he had, on passionate occasion, knelt to her; and was now her elder, touching
her without desire and saying, “Dear Aurora” as he stroked her hair, the unfamiliar gold. Kneeling as one does to comfort a child. He thought, Two weeks ago, this day, the dreadful parting from Helen. Had it been possible, he would have told Aurora then and there: I’m in love and mean to marry. And she would have had to listen and be infinitely kind. When, instead, she needed his attention.

  The spell passed. He went back to his place. He and Aurora talked a little of his work and scratched the surface of his travels. She asked about his possessions, stored for years in his parents’ house.

  “I must arrange all that. I’ll need a place in town. Tomorrow, I go to Norfolk for a few days.” Imagining the bleached country of his home at that season, its web of waters. He would not allow himself to dread that renewal, or his mother’s agitation.

  “Another strong experience. How much high feeling you’re arousing, Aldred.”

  “Cuts both ways.” He asked Aurora to dine with him a week later. She also had tickets for a play, and wrote times and places in a little book, among other scribbles of the kind. He was reminded of Audrey Fellowes and her small green agenda; and her kindness. Pretty women, keeping track of things.

  The lift was out of order. Aurora came down with him, using an electric torch on the stairs: “I have to let you out at this hour.” Shivering, she looked into the silent street. The Underground had closed by now, and Leith would walk back to Piccadilly.

  “Aurora, I haven’t thanked you for the book.” He showed it, still wrapped.

  “It’s a novel, I remember that you read them. You can take it on the train tomorrow.” She said, “I embrace you tenderly”; and did so.

  He heard the door close, and click. Under a meniscus of new moon, walked towards Baker Street in frosty dark, scarcely passing a soul. Feeling comforted; and then stricken for the familiar evening that Helen had not shared, and for the impossibility of imagining, in that moment, her obscure setting or her circumstances while he walked on through the silent wounded city, known to all the world, and thought of her eyes on the last morning, and her far desolation; and found himself near tears. Which could not be accounted for, even by his immense journey and exhausted need for sleep.

  In the hotel room, he unwrapped Aurora’s package. The book, a fresh work by a writer he enjoyed, was called Back. He finished it that night, and fell asleep near dawn.

  18

  HIS MOTHER had arranged for him to be brought from the station by the driver of a van whose route passed near the house. Though all happened with delays, he reached home while it was still light. The land, as yet dun-coloured, was stroked with coming life. The house, as he approached on foot over flat ground, might have been an illusion: that a fine old building should stand there in open country whose smell and story lay seaward, to the east, rather than back in busy England, was, like so many proven facts, improbable. Of light-coloured stone, and fairly tall, the house was conspicuous. After more than two centuries, structure and surroundings were unreconciled.

  His mother was looking out for him, standing at the top of the few stone steps that led to the front door. Leith could not remember her having done this before—unless when he was very small, for some shade of recall did touch him, at that instant, into childhood. He was surprised, too, by his own emotion: compounded of compunction and distress.

  “Dear,” she said. “Dear.” As if she had forgotten his name.

  They embraced, and went indoors. He put his bag down in the hall. Light from an elliptical window—set, as in a church, above the main door—showed a whiteness of walls and stairs more pure, or more austere, than he remembered. The smell of home, which is memory inhaled, was fugitive, as if less paint and wax and potpourri had lately been deployed.

  They sat down together in a big room, by a fire into which his mother tipped, from a laden basket, pinecones and a few spars. A high room, with long windows and many books, a few pictures, and interesting small things on tables. He held her hand. He saw that she had feared never to see him again, not only from his travels and perils, but from his indifference. That he might have chosen never to return. Although they would resume some sociable dissembling, there would be this momentary knowledge binding them. It was mainly with women that this could occur.

  In a suit of scarlet wool, his mother was, as she herself might have said, well turned out—not, like Aurora, in the new romantic fashion, but with fine conventionality. The son remembered the pin of old diamonds, and a gold bracelet like a cord. She had dressed for him as for a visitor of importance.

  A young maid he’d never seen brought champagne; smiled at him. His mother told her, “You ought to set off, Dorothy, before dark.” Consideration struck its own new note. As the girl opened the door again, to leave, a little dog ran in, hurried to the sofa, and made mad motions to leap aboard.

  “It’s never Gussie.” He took the pug dog in his lap, where she squirmed with excitement, licking his wrists and fingers, raising her dark mask to see his face. “Gussie, you old smoocher,” he said, as the dog trod about with ecstatic paws.

  “She’s fourteen. One of the cats, too, would still be from your time.” His mother said, “All that fuss about the dog that knew Ulysses—when any dog in the world will know its master till the end of life.” Iris condescending to Homer.

  Leith put the pug beside him, and poured champagne. “This must be hard to get.”

  “The right kind, yes.”

  That was the tone of the past: a relief, in its way, since change had made a burden on the heart. Over their raised glasses, she met his eyes with enquiring love, but turned aside before this could turn awkward. In her new tact, his mother had the timidity of a person far older.

  Her hair, once dark as his own, was streaked with grey. Dark eyes, like his, seemed larger now, perhaps with candour. He said, “I’m thinking that we look alike. I see myself in you.”

  She was pleased, but said, “You have your father’s head—the form, and the brow.” Intellect to which she laid no claim. She prepared herself to speak of his father. “That morning, he was quite as usual; he walked to the village after breakfast, came back with the papers. Just as always.”

  Here was a novelty: his mercurial father as a creature of local custom, set in his country ways, his end having come as the culmination of an ordered life. Whereas Oliver’s nature had scarcely concealed a streak of contained violence. It had always been possible to imagine his sudden death—though not as the consequence of a sweet habitual rustic outing.

  Iris said, “I don’t know what you mean to do about the place in town.” This was his father’s small flat in Sydney Street, the upper part of an old house: in earlier years, no doubt, a place of rendezvous. His mother had used it on her London visits, probably with a sense of intrusion, insult, and unease.

  Neither mother nor son wished to take it on. It would have to be cleared out. Leith said, “I remember books, but otherwise pretty spartan. I’ll want something in London, but not there.”

  His mother also hoped to have a London pied-à-terre; not proposing that they share.

  “You should sell it, then, Father’s place.”

  “Aldred, it’s yours now.” Seeing him concerned, she said, “You’ll be talking to the lawyers, there’s a lot to look at, to sign. There is more money than anyone had thought. It will take a year to sort it out. Oliver was ingenious in this—in all things, I suppose. There are canny arrangements in this country and uncanny arrangements abroad. After ourselves, and Aurora, there are numerous beneficiaries. He liked to be secretive. I can do what I choose. I’d like to continue here, a headquarters. But also—to be abroad again, places one knew—if they’re still there—and unknown places. To see new people.” She controlled her voice. “It hasn’t always been enough, presiding here on the edge of things, and with the war. And Oliver was often away.”

  It fell to him to say, “I too.”

  “You were at the war.”

  Then, these last three years, by choice.

 
; So she had been bored and lonely, sometimes desperately so. Winter evenings, the dark, frigid, silent house, and lightless land. The bombers droning over. The image, at one time cultivated—of Iris queening it over her kingdom, giving orders, devoting herself, even ostentatiously, to his father; appearing peripherally in interviews as the châtelaine, the fixed point, dedicated, indispensable—had grown illusory. She had felt herself older, taken for granted, insufficiently loved.

  As to a place in town, she had thought of Sloane Street, in a building where she had friends.

  “Are these friends of Father’s?”

  “Oh no. Oliver couldn’t abide them.”

  When Oliver couldn’t abide someone, he made no secret of it.

  She now asked, How did you find Aurora, with whom she spoke regularly in these days.

  “I was so glad to see her.” A change, also, to mention Aurora, whose existence had been long and assiduously concealed from his mother. “She’s on edge, though.”

  “Oliver’s death is peculiarly hard on her. And then, people are exhausted, in the cities. There is the anticlimax that life remains so hard.”

  Leith told her how he had walked through London as through Pompeii.

  “You’ve seen so much destruction, surely, elsewhere.”

  “This is the demolition of my own experience.”

  She lit a lamp. The room was cold. “I only use this room for grand occasions. We can have dinner whenever you like. I had a present of grouse. Conserved, but good.”

  First woodcock, now grouse. England living off its birds.

  “I’m glad,” he said, “to be a grand occasion.”

  Standing, she said, “So you’ve seen Aurora, and now have come to me. I suppose that when a man returns, it is usually to women.”

  “Aurora said, So many Penelopes.” He knew that she longed to ask, Is there someone you love? If she did, he could imagine telling her.

  She said, with her newly tentative look, that she had prepared his father’s room for him. This was a bedroom, adjoining a study, where Oliver Leith had slept after working, as he often did, into the night. The bedroom had a fireplace that, sharing the flue of the fire in the study itself, created a warm apartment. Both rooms had been, of all the house, least congenial to the boy Aldred, and least known.