‘I could be dreaming, Daddy. Couldn’t I be dreaming?’
‘Yes, I suppose you could.’
‘But I’m not, am I?’
I shook my head. ‘No, Anna, you’re not dreaming.’
She sighed. ‘I’m glad. I wouldn’t like to be dreaming. I wouldn’t like to suddenly wake up.’
It was Sunday afternoon and we had driven into the country. We did it almost every Sunday when the weather was fine and warm. The children enjoyed it and so in a way did we, even though the woods we went to were rather tatty, too near London to seem real, too untidy with sweet-papers to be attractive. Still, it was a way of entertaining them.
‘Elizabeth.’
She was sitting on a tree-stump, her eyes half-closed. On a rug at her feet Lisa was playing with some wooden beads. I sat beside her and put my arm about her shoulders.
‘Elizabeth.’
She jumped a little. ‘Hullo, darling. I was almost asleep.’
‘You were thinking about Mr Higgs.’
‘Oh, I wasn’t. My mind was a blank; I was about to drop off. I can do it now, sitting upright like this.’
‘Anna asked me if she was dreaming.’
‘Where is she?’
‘Playing with Christopher.’
‘They’ll begin to fight. They don’t play any more. Why do they perpetually fight?’
I said it was just a phase, but Elizabeth said she thought they would always fight now. The scratching and snarling would turn to argument as they grew older and when they became adults they wouldn’t ever see one another. They would say that they had nothing in common, and would admit to others that they really rather disliked one another and always had. Elizabeth said she could see them: Christopher married to an unsuitable woman, and Anna as a girl who lived promiscuously and did not marry at all. Anna would become a heavy drinker of whisky and would smoke slim cigars at forty.
‘Heavens,’ I said, staring at her, and then looking at the small figure of Anna. ‘Why on earth are you saying all that?’
‘Well, it’s true. I mean, it’s what I imagine. I can see Anna in a harsh red suit, getting drunk at a cocktail party. I can see Christopher being miserable –’
‘This is your Mr Higgs again. Look, the police can arrange to have the telephone tapped. It’s sheer nonsense that some raving lunatic should be allowed to go on like that.’
‘Mr Higgs! Mr Higgs! What’s Mr Higgs got to do with it? You’ve got him on the brain.’
Elizabeth walked away. She left me sitting there with her frightening images of our children. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that Lisa was eating a piece of wood. I took it from her. Anna was saying: ‘Daddy, Christopher hurt me.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. He just hurt me.’
‘How did he hurt you?’
‘He pushed me and I fell.’ She began to cry, so I comforted her. I called Christopher and told him he mustn’t push Anna. They ran off to play again and a moment later Anna was saying: ‘Daddy, Christopher pushed me.’
‘Christopher, you mustn’t push Anna. And you shouldn’t have to be told everything twice.’
‘I didn’t push her. She fell.’
Anna put her thumb in her mouth. I glanced through the trees to see where Elizabeth had got to, but there was no sign of her. I made the children sit on the rug and told them a story. They didn’t like it much. They never did like my stories: Elizabeth’s were so much better.
‘I’m sorry.’ She stood looking down on us, as tall and beautiful as a goddess.
‘You look like a goddess,’ I said.
‘What’s a goddess?’ Anna asked, and Christopher said: ‘Why’s Mummy sorry?’
‘A goddess is a beautiful lady. Mummy’s sorry because she left me to look after you. And it’s time to go home.’
‘Oh, oh, oh, I must find Mambi first,’ Anna cried anxiously. Mambi was a faithful friend who accompanied her everywhere she went, but who was, at the moment of departure, almost always lost.
We walked to the car. Anna said: ‘Mambi was at the top of an old tree. Mambi’s a goddess too. Daddy, do you have to be beautiful to be a goddess?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Then Mambi can’t be.’
‘Isn’t Mambi beautiful?’
‘Usually she is. Only she’s not now.’
‘Why isn’t she now?’
‘Because all her hair came off in the tree.’
The car heaved and wobbled all the way home as Christopher and Anna banged about in the back. When they fought we shouted at them, and then they sulked and there was a mile or so of peace. Anna began to cry as I turned into the garage. Mambi, she said, was cold without her hair. Elizabeth explained about wigs.
I woke up in the middle of that night, thinking about Mr Higgs. I kept seeing the man as a shrimpish little thing, like the manager of the shop where we hired our television set. He had a black moustache – a length of thread stuck across his upper lip. I knew it was wrong, I knew this wasn’t Mr Higgs; and then, all of a sudden, I began to think about Elizabeth’s brother, Ralph.
A generation ago Ralph would have been called a remittance man. Just about the time we were married old Captain Maugham had packed him off to a farm in Kenya after an incident with a hotel receptionist and the hotel’s account books. But caring for nothing in Kenya, Ralph had made his way to Cairo, and from Cairo on the long-distance telephone he had greeted the Captain with a request for financial aid. He didn’t get it, and then the war broke out and Ralph disappeared. Whenever we thought of him we imagined that he was up to the most reprehensible racket he could lay his hands on. If he was, we never found out about it. All we did know was that after the war he again telephoned the Captain, and the odd thing was that he was still in Cairo. ‘I have lost an arm,’ Captain Maugham told him testily. ‘And I,’ said Ralph, ‘have lost the empire of my soul.’ He was given to this kind of decorated statement; it interfered so much with his conversation that most of the time you didn’t know what he was talking about. But the Captain sent him some money and an agreement was drawn up by which Ralph, on receipt of a monthly cheque, promised not to return to England during his father’s lifetime. Then the Captain died and Ralph was back. I gave him fifty pounds and all in all he probably cleaned up quite well. Ralph wasn’t the sort of person to write letters; we had no idea where he was now. As a schoolboy, and even later, he was a great one for playing practical jokes. He was certainly a good enough mimic to create a Mr Higgs. Just for fun, I wondered? Or in some kind of bitterness? Or did he in some ingenious way hope to extract money?
The following morning I telephoned Elizabeth’s sisters. Chloe knew nothing about where Ralph was, what he was doing or anything about him. She said she hoped he wasn’t coming back to England because it had cost her fifty pounds the last time. Margaret, however, knew a lot. She didn’t want to talk about it on the telephone, so I met her for lunch.
‘What’s all this?’ she said.
I told her about Mr Higgs and the vague theory that was beginning to crystallize in my mind. She was intrigued by the Higgs thing. ‘I don’t know why,’ she said, ‘but it rings a queer sort of bell. But you’re quite wrong about Ralph.’ Ralph, it appeared, was being paid by Margaret and her husband in much the same way as he had been paid by the Captain; for the same reason and with the same stipulation. ‘Only for the time being,’ Margaret said a little bitterly. ‘When Mother dies Ralph can do what he damn well likes. But it was quite a serious business and the news of it would clearly finish her. One doesn’t like to think of an old woman dying in that particular kind of misery.’
‘But whatever it was, she’d probably never find out.’
‘Oh yes, she would. She reads the papers. In any case, Ralph is quite capable of dropping her a little note. But at the moment I can assure you that Ralph is safe in Africa. He’s not the type to take any chances with his gift horses.’
So that was that. It made me feel even worse about Mr Higgs
that my simple explanation had been so easily exploded.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘and what did he have to say today?’
‘What did who say?’
‘Higgs.’
‘Nothing much. He’s becoming a bore.’
She wasn’t going to tell me any more. She wasn’t going to talk about Mr Higgs because she didn’t trust me. She thought I’d put the police on him, and she didn’t want that, so she said, because she had come to feel sorry for the poor crazed creature or whatever it was he happened to be. In fact, I thought to myself, my wife has become in some way fascinated by this man.
I worked at home one day, waiting for the telephone call. There was a ring at eleven-fifteen. I heard Elizabeth answer it. She said: ‘No, I’m sorry; I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong number.’ I didn’t ask her about Mr Higgs. When I looked at her she seemed a long way away and her voice was measured and polite. There was some awful shaft between us and I didn’t know what to do about it.
In the afternoon I took the children for a walk in the park.
‘Mambi’s gone to stay in the country,’ Anna said. ‘I’m lonely without her.’
‘Well, she’s coming back tonight, isn’t she?’
‘Daddy,’ Christopher said, ‘what’s the matter with Mummy?’
I’m not very sure when it was that I first noticed everything was in rather a mess. I remember coming in one night and stumbling over lots of wooden toys in the hall. Quite often the cornflakes packet and the marmalade were still on the kitchen table from breakfast. Or if they weren’t on the table the children had got them on to the floor and Lisa had covered most of the house with their mixed contents. Elizabeth didn’t seem to notice. She sat in a dream, silent and alone, forgetting to cook the supper. The children began to do all the things they had ever wanted to do and which Elizabeth had patiently prevented, like scribbling on the walls and playing in the coal-cellar. I tried to discuss it with Elizabeth, but all she did was to smile sweetly and say she was tired.
‘Why don’t you see a doctor?’
She stared at me. ‘A doctor?’
‘Perhaps you need a tonic’ And at that point she would smile again and go to bed.
I knew that Elizabeth was still having her conversations with Mr Higgs even though she no longer mentioned them. When I asked her she used to laugh and say: ‘Poor Mr Higgs was just some old fanatic’
‘Yes, but how did he –’
‘Darling, you worry too much.’
I went to St Albans to see old Mrs Maugham, without very much hope. I don’t know what I expected of her, since she was obviously too deaf and too senile to offer me anything at all. She lived with a woman called Miss Awpit who was employed by the old woman’s children to look after her. Miss Awpit made us tea and did the interpreting.
‘Mr Farrel wants to know how you are, dear,’ Miss Awpit said. ‘Quite well, really,’ Miss Awpit said to me. ‘All things being equal.’
Mrs Maugham knew who I was and all that. She asked after Elizabeth and the children. She said something to Miss Awpit and Miss Awpit said: ‘She wants you to bring them to her.’
‘Yes, yes,’ I shouted, nodding hard. ‘We shall come and see you soon. They often,’ I lied, ‘ask about Granny.’
‘Hark at that,’ shouted Miss Awpit, nudging the old lady, who snappishly told her to leave off.
I didn’t quite know how to put it. I said: ‘Ask her if she knows a Mr Higgs.’
Miss Awpit, imagining, I suppose, that I was making conversation, shouted: ‘Mr Farrel wants to know if you know Mr Higgs.’ Mrs Maugham smiled at us. ‘Higgs,’ Miss Awpit repeated. ‘Do you know Mr Higgs at all, dear?’
‘Never,’ said Mrs Maugham.
‘Have you ever known a Mr Higgs?’ I shouted.
‘Higgs?’ said Mrs Maugham.
‘Do you know him?’ Miss Awpit asked. ‘Do you know a Mr Higgs?’
‘I do not,’ said Mrs Maugham, suddenly in command of herself, ‘know anyone of such a name. Nor would I wish to.’
‘Look, Mrs Maugham,’ I pursued, ‘does the name mean anything at all to you?’
‘I have told you, I do not know your friend. How can I be expected to know your friends, an old woman like me, stuck out here in St Albans with no one to look after me?’
‘Come, come,’ said Miss Awpit, ‘you’ve got me, dear.’
But Mrs Maugham only laughed.
A week or two passed, and then one afternoon as I was sitting in the office filing my nails the telephone rang and a voice I didn’t recognize said: ‘Mr Farrel?’
I said ‘Yes’, and the voice said: ‘This is Miss Awpit. You know, Mrs Maugham’s Miss Awpit.’
‘Of course. Good afternoon, Miss Awpit. How are you?’
‘Very well, thank you. I’m ringing to tell you something about Mrs Maugham.’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, you know when you came here the other week you were asking about a Mr Higgs?’
‘Yes, I remember.’
‘Well, as you sounded rather anxious about him I just thought I’d tell you. I thought about it and then I decided. I’ll ring Mr Farrel, I said, just to tell him what she said.’
‘Yes, Miss Awpit?’
‘I hope I’m doing the right thing.’
‘What did Mrs Maugham say?’
‘Well, it’s funny in a way. I hope you won’t think I’m being very stupid or anything.’
I had the odd feeling that Miss Awpit was going to die as she was speaking, before she could tell me. I said:
‘I assure you, you are doing the right thing. What did Mrs Maugham say?’
‘Well, it was at breakfast one morning. She hadn’t had a good night at all. So she said, but you know what it’s like with old people. I mean, quite frankly I had to get up myself in the night and I heard her sleeping as deep and sweet as you’d wish. Honestly, Mr Farrel, I often wish I had her constitution myself –’
‘You were telling me about Mr Higgs.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘You were telling me about Mr Higgs.’
‘Well, it’s nothing really. You’ll probably laugh when you hear. Quite honestly I was in two minds whether or not to bother you. You see, all Mrs Maugham said was: “It’s funny that man suddenly talking about Mr Higgs like that. You know, Ethel, I haven’t heard Mr Higgs mentioned for almost thirty years.” So I said “Yes”, leading her on, you see. “And who was Mr Higgs, dear, thirty years ago?” And she said: “Oh nobody at all. He was just Elizabeth’s little friend!” ’
‘Elizabeth’s?’
‘Just what I said, Mr Farrel. She got quite impatient with me. “Just someone Elizabeth used to talk to,” she said, “when she was three. You know the way children invent things.” ’
‘Like Mambi,’ I said, not meaning to say it, since Miss Awpit wouldn’t understand.
‘Oh dear, Mr Farrel,’ said Miss Awpit, ‘I knew you’d laugh.’
I left the office and took a taxi all the way home. Elizabeth was in the garden. I sat beside her and I held her hands. ‘Look,’ I said. ‘Let’s have a holiday. Let’s go away, just the two of us. We need a rest.’
‘You’re spying on me,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Which isn’t new, I suppose. You’ve got so mean, darling, ever since you became jealous of poor Mr Higgs. How could you be jealous of a man like Mr Higgs?’
‘Elizabeth, I know who Mr Higgs is. I can tell you –’
‘There’s nothing to be jealous about. All the poor creature does is to ring me up and tell me about the things he read in my diaries the time he came to paint the hall. And then he tries to comfort me about the children. He tells me not to worry about Lisa. But I can’t help worrying because I know she’s going to have this hard time. She’s going to grow big and lumpy, poor little Lisa, and she’s not going to be ever able to pass an exam, and in the end she’ll go and work in a post office. But Mr Higgs –’
‘Let me tell you about Mr Higgs. Let me just remind you.’
‘You don’t k
now him, darling. You’ve never spoken to him. Mr Higgs is very patient, you know. First of all he did the talking, and now, you see, he kindly allows me to. Poor Mr Higgs is an inmate of a home. He’s an institutionalized person, darling. There’s no need to be jealous.’
I said nothing. I sat there holding her two hands and looking at her. Her face was just the same; even her eyes betrayed no hint of the confusion that held her. She smiled when she spoke of Mr. Higgs. She made a joke, laughing, calling him the housewife’s friend.
‘It was funny,’ she said, ‘the first time I saw Christopher as an adult, sitting in a room with that awful woman. She was leaning back in a chair, staring at him and attempting to torture him with words. And then there was Anna, half a mile away across London, in a house in a square. All the lights were on because of the party, and Anna was in that red suit, and she was laughing and saying how she hated Christopher, how she had hated him from the first moment she saw him. And when she said that, I couldn’t remember what moment she meant. I couldn’t quite remember where it was that Anna and Christopher had met. Well, it goes to show.’ Elizabeth paused. ‘Well, doesn’t it?’ she said. ‘I mean, imagine my thinking that poor Mr Higgs was evil! The kindest, most long-suffering man that ever walked on two legs. I mean, all I had to do was to remind Mr Higgs that I’d forgotten and Mr Higgs could tell me. “They met in a garden,” he could say, “at an ordinary little tea-party.” And Lisa was operated on several times, and counted the words in telegrams.’
Elizabeth talked on, of the children and of Mr Higgs. I rang up our doctor, and he came, and then a little later my wife was taken from the house. I sat alone with Lisa on my knee until it was time to go and fetch Christopher and Anna.
‘Mummy’s ill,’ I said in the car. ‘She’s had to go away for a little.’ I would tell them the story gradually, and one day perhaps we might visit her and she might still understand who we were. ‘Ill?’ they said. ‘But Mummy’s never ill.’ I stopped the car by our house, thinking that only death could make the house seem so empty, and thinking too that death was easier to understand. We made tea, I remember, the children and I, not saying very much more.
The Collected Stories Page 29