‘Hullo,’ A.J.L. said, a stringy, sandy man, the opposite of Outsize Dorothy and in many ways the perfect complement. Tichbourne said he often imagined them naked in bed, A.J.L. winding his stringiness around her explosive bulk.
Hands were shaken again. ‘Having a look round?’ A.J.L. said. ‘Staying at the Grand?’
Michael’s mother said she wasn’t staying at the Grand but at Sans Souci, did he know it? They’d been talking about views, she said, it was lovely to have a room with a view, she hoped Michael wasn’t giving trouble, her husband of course – well, ex-husband now – had been to this school in his time, before going on to Radley. Michael would probably go to Radley too.
‘Well, we hope so,’ A.J.L. said, seizing the back of Michael’s neck. ‘Shown her the new classrooms, eh?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Shown her where we’re going to have our swimming-pool?’
‘Not yet, sir.’
‘Well, then.’
His mother spoke of various diseases Michael had had, measles and whooping cough and chicken-pox, and of diseases he hadn’t had, mumps in particular. Miss Trenchard was like a ghost, all in white, still sorting out the junk in Verschoyle’s locker, not daring to say a word. She was crouched there, with her head inside the locker, listening to everything.
‘Well, we mustn’t keep you,’ A.J.L. said, shaking hands again with Michael’s mother. ‘Always feel free to come.’
There was such finality about these statements, more in the headmaster’s tone than in the words themselves, that Michael’s mother was immediately silent. The statements had a physical effect on her, as though quite violently they had struck her across the face. When she spoke again it was in the whisper she had earlier employed.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m ever so sorry for going on so.’
A.J.L. and Outsize Dorothy laughed, pretending not to understand what she meant. Miss Trenchard would tell Miss Arland. Sister would hear and so would Brookie, and the P.T. instructor would say that this same woman had imagined him to be one of the boys. Mr Waydelin would hear, and Square-jaw Simpson – Cocky Marshall’s successor – and Mr Brine and the Reverend Green.
‘I have enjoyed it,’ Michael’s mother whispered. ‘So nice to meet you.’
He went before her down the back stairs. His face was still red. They passed by the staff lavatory and the kitchens, out on to the concrete quadrangle. It was still misty and cold.
‘I bought things for lunch,’ she said, and for an awful moment he thought that she’d want to eat them somewhere in the school or in the grounds – in the art-room or the cricket pavilion. ‘We could have a picnic in my room,’ she said.
They walked down the short drive, past the chapel that once had been the gate-lodge. They caught a bus after a wait of half an hour, during which she began to talk again, telling him more about Peggy Urch, who reminded her of another friend she’d had once, a Margy Bassett. In her room in Sans Souci she went on talking, spreading out on the bed triangles of cheese, and tomatoes and rolls and biscuits and oranges. They sat in her room when they’d finished, eating Rollo. At six o’clock they caught a bus back to Elton Grange. She wept a little when she said goodbye.
Michael’s mother did not, as it happened, ever arrive at Elton Grange at half-term again. There was no need for her to do so because his father and Gillian were always able to come themselves. For several terms he felt embarrassed in the presence of A.J.L. and Outsize Dorothy and Miss Trenchard, but no one at school mentioned the unfortunate visit, not even Swagger Browne, who had so delightedly overheard her assuming the P.T. instructor to be one of the boys. School continued as before and so did the holidays, Saturdays in Cranleigh and the rest of the week in Hammersmith, news of Mr Ashaf and Dolores Welsh, now Dolores Haskins. Peggy Urch, the woman in the flat upstairs, often came down for a chat.
Often, too, Michael and his mother would sit together in the evenings on the sofa in front of the electric fire. She’d tell him about the rectory in Somerset and her father who had received the call to the Church late in his life, who’d been in the Customs and Excise. She’d tell him about her own childhood, and even about the early days of her marriage. Sometimes she wept a little, hardly at all, and he would take her arm on the sofa and she would smile and laugh. When they sat together on the sofa or went out together, to the cinema, or for a walk by the river or to the teashop called the Maids of Honour near Kew Gardens, Michael felt that he would never want to marry because he’d prefer to be with his mother. Even when she chatted on to some stranger in the Maids of Honour he felt he loved her: everything was different from the time she’d come to Elton Grange because away from Elton Grange things didn’t matter in the same way.
Then something unpleasant threatened. During his last term at Elton Grange Michael was to be confirmed. ‘Oh, but of course I must come,’ his mother said.
It promised to be worse than the previous occasion. After the service you were meant to bring your parents in to tea in the Great Hall and see that they had a cup of tea and sandwiches and cakes. You had to introduce them to the Bishop of Bath and Wells. Michael imagined all that. In bed at night he imagined his father and Gillian looking very smart, his father chatting easily to Mr Brine, Gillian smiling at Outsize Dorothy, and his mother’s hair fluffing out from beneath her headscarf. He imagined his mother and his father and Gillian having to sit together in a pew in chapel, as naturally they’d be expected to, being members of the same party.
‘There’s no need to,’ he said in the flat in Hammersmith. ‘There’s really no need to, Mum.’
She didn’t mention his father and Gillian, although he’d repeatedly said that they’d be there. It was as if she didn’t want to think about them, as if she was deliberately pretending that they’d decided not to attend. She’d stay in Sans Souci again, she said. They’d have a picnic in her room, since the newly confirmed were to be excused school tea on the evening of the service. ‘Dinner at the Grand, old chap,’ his father said. ‘Bring Tichbourne if you want to.’
Michael returned to Elton Grange at the end of the Easter holidays, leaving his mother in a state of high excitement at Paddington Station because she’d be seeing him again within five weeks. He thought he might invent an illness a day or two before the confirmation, or say at the last moment that he had doubts. In fact, he did hint to the Reverend Green that he wasn’t certain about being quite ready for the occasion, but the Reverend Green sharply told him not to be silly. Every time he went down on his knees at the end of a session with the Reverend Green he prayed that God might come to his rescue. But God did not, and all during the night before the confirmation service he lay awake. It wasn’t just because she was weepy and embarrassing, he thought: it was because she dressed in that cheap way, it was because she was common, with a common voice that wasn’t at all like Gillian’s or Mrs Tichbourne’s or Mrs Carson’s or even Outsize Dorothy’s. He couldn’t prevent these thoughts from occurring. Why couldn’t she do something about her fluffy hair? Why did she have to gabble like that? ‘I think I have a temperature,’ he said in the morning, but when Sister took it it was only 98.
Before the service the other candidates waited outside the chapel to greet their parents and godparents, but Michael went into the chapel early and took up a devout position. Through his fingers he saw the Reverend Green lighting the candles and preparing the altar. Occasionally, the Reverend Green glanced at Michael, somewhat suspiciously.
‘Defend, O Lord, this Thy child,’ said the Bishop of Bath and Wells, and when Michael walked back to his seat he kept his head down, not wanting to see his parents and Gillian. They sang Hymn 459. ‘My God, accept,’ sang Michael, ‘my heart this day.’
He walked with Swagger Browne down the aisle, still with his eyes down. ‘Fantastic,’ said Swagger Browne outside the chapel, for want of anything better to say. ‘Bloody fantastic.’ They waited for the congregation to come out.
Michael had godparents, but his father had s
aid that they wouldn’t be able to attend. His godmother had sent him a prayer-book.
‘Well done,’ his father said. ‘Well done, Mike.’
‘What lovely singing!’ Gillian murmured. She was wearing a white dress with a collar that was slightly turned up, and a white wide-rimmed hat. On the gravel outside the chapel she put on dark glasses against the afternoon sun.
‘Your mother’s here somewhere,’ his father said. ‘You’d better see to her, Mike.’ He spoke quietly, with a hand resting for a moment on Michael’s shoulder. ‘We’ll be all right,’ he added.
Michael turned. She was standing alone, as he knew she would be. Unable to prevent himself, he wished she wouldn’t always wear head-scarves. ‘Oh, darling,’ she said.
She took his hands and pulled him towards her. She kissed him, apologizing for the embrace but saying that it was a special occasion. She wished her father were alive, she said.
‘Tea in the Great Hall,’ A.J.L. was booming, and Outsize Dorothy was waddling about in flowered yellow, smiling at the faces of parents and godparents. ‘Do come and have tea,’ she gushed.
‘Oh, I’d love a cup of tea,’ Michael’s mother whispered.
The crowd was moving through the sunshine, suited men, the Reverend Green in his cassock, the Bishop in crimson, women in their garden-party finery. They walked up the short drive from the chapel. They passed through the wide gothic arch that heralded the front door, through the vestibule where the croquet set was tidily in place and the deck-chairs neat against a wall. They entered what A.J.L. had years ago christened the Great Hall, where buttered buns and sandwiches and cakes and sausage-rolls were laid out on trestle tables. Miss Trenchard and Miss Arland were in charge of two silver-plated tea-urns.
‘I’ll get you something to eat,’ Michael said to his mother, leaving her although he knew she didn’t want to be left. ‘Seems no time since I was getting done myself,’ he heard his father saying to A.J.L.
Miss Arland poured a cup of tea for his mother and told him to offer her something to eat. He chose a plate of sausage-rolls. She smiled at him. ‘Don’t go away again,’ she whispered.
But he had to go away again because he couldn’t stand there holding the sausage-rolls. He darted back to the table and left the plate there, taking one for himself. When he returned to his mother she’d been joined by the Reverend Green and the Bishop.
The Bishop shook Michael’s hand and said it had been a very great pleasure to confirm him.
‘My father was in the Church,’ Michael’s mother said, and Michael knew that she wasn’t going to stop now. He watched her struggling to hold the words back, crumbling the pastry of her sausage-roll beneath her fingers. The flush had come into her cheeks, there was a brightness in her eyes. The Bishop’s face was kind: she couldn’t help herself, when kindness like that was there.
‘We really must be moving,’ the Reverend Green said, but the Bishop only smiled, and on and on she went about her father and the call he’d received so late in life. ‘I’m sure you knew him, my lord,’ was one suggestion she made, and the Bishop kindly agreed that he probably had.
‘Mrs Grainer would like to meet the Bishop,’ Outsize Dorothy murmured to the Reverend Green. She looked at Michael’s mother and Michael could see her remembering her and not caring for her.
‘Well, if you’ll excuse us,’ the Reverend Green said, seizing the Bishop’s arm.
‘Oh Michael dear, isn’t that a coincidence!’
There was happiness all over her face, bursting from her eyes, in her smile and her flushed cheeks and her fluffy hair. She turned to Mr and Mrs Tichbourne, who were talking to Mrs Carson, and said the Bishop had known her father, apparently quite well. She hadn’t even been aware that it was to be this particular bishop today, it hadn’t even occurred to her while she’d been at the confirmation service that such a coincidence could be possible. Her father had passed away fifteen years ago, he’d have been a contemporary of the Bishop’s. ‘He was in the Customs and Excise,’ she said, ‘before he received the call.’
They didn’t turn away from her. They listened, putting in a word or two, about coincidences and the niceness of the Bishop. Tichbourne and Carson stood eating sandwiches, offering them to one another. Michael’s face felt like a bonfire.
‘We’ll probably see you later,’ Mr Tichbourne said, eventually edging his wife away. ‘We’re staying at the Grand.’
‘Oh no, I’m at Sans Souci. Couldn’t ever afford the Grand!’ She laughed.
‘Don’t think we know the Sans Souci,’ Mrs Tichbourne said.
‘Darling, I’d love another cup of tea,’ his mother said to Michael, and he went away to get her one, leaving her with Mrs Carson. When he returned she was referring to Peggy Urch.
It was then, while talking to Mrs Carson, that Michael’s mother fell. Afterwards she said that she’d felt something slimy under one of her heels and had moved to rid herself of it. The next thing she knew she was lying on her back on the floor, soaked in tea.
Mrs Carson helped her to her feet. A.J.L. hovered solicitously. Outsize Dorothy picked up the cup and saucer.
‘I’m quite all right,’ Michael’s mother kept repeating. ‘There was something slippy on the floor, I’m quite all right.’
She was led to a chair by A.J.L. ‘I think we’d best call on Sister,’ he said. ‘Just to be sure.’
But she insisted that she was all right, that there was no need to go bothering Sister. She was as white as a sheet.
Michael’s father and Gillian came up to her and said they were sorry. Michael could see Tichbourne and Carson nudging one another, giggling. For a moment he thought of running away, hiding in the attics or something. Half a buttered bun had got stuck to the sleeve of his mother’s maroon coat when she’d fallen. Her left leg was saturated with tea.
‘We’ll drive you into town,’ his father said. ‘Horrible thing to happen.’
‘It’s just my elbow,’ his mother whispered. ‘I came down on my elbow.’
Carson and Tichbourne would imitate it because Carson and Tichbourne imitated everything. They’d stand there, pretending to be holding a cup of tea, and suddenly they’d be lying flat on their backs. ‘I think we’d best call on Sister,’ Carson would say, imitating A.J.L.
His father and Gillian said goodbye to Outsize Dorothy and to A.J.L. His mother, reduced to humble silence again, seemed only to want to get away. In the car she didn’t say anything at all and when they reached Sans Souci she didn’t seem to expect Michael to go in with her. She left the car, whispering her thanks, a little colour gathering in her face again.
That evening Michael had dinner with Gillian and his father in the Grand. Tichbourne was there also, and Carson, and several other boys, all with their parents. ‘I can drive a few of them back,’ his father said, ‘save everyone getting a car out.’ He crossed the dining-room floor and spoke to Mr Tichbourne and Mr Carson and the father of a boy called Mallabedeely. Michael ate minestrone soup and chicken with peas and roast potatoes. Gillian told him what the twins had been up to and said his father was going to have a swimming-pool put in. His father returned to the table and announced that he’d arranged to drive everyone back at nine o’clock.
Eating his chicken, he imagined his mother in Sans Souci, sitting on the edge of the bed, probably having a cry. He imagined her bringing back to London the stuff she’d bought for a picnic in her room. She’d never refer to any of that, she’d never upbraid him for going to the Grand for dinner when she’d wanted him to be with her. She’d consider it just that she should be punished.
As they got into the car, his father said he’d drive round by Sans Souci so that Michael could run in for a minute. ‘We’re meant to be back by a quarter past,’ Michael said quickly. ‘I’ve said goodbye to her,’ he added, which wasn’t quite true.
It would perhaps have been different if Tichbourne and Carson hadn’t been in the car. He’d have gone in and paused with her for a minute because he felt pity for her
. But the unattractive façade of Sans Souci, the broken gate of the small front garden and the fishermen gnomes would have caused further nudging and giggling in his father’s white Alfa-Romeo.
‘You’re sure now?’ his father said. ‘I’ll get you there by a quarter past.’
‘No, it’s all right.’
She wouldn’t be expecting him. She wouldn’t even have unpacked the picnic she’d brought.
‘Hey, was that your godmother?’ Tichbourne asked in the dormitory. ‘The one who copped it on the floor?’
He began to shake his head and then he paused and went on shaking it. An aunt, he said, some kind of aunt, he wasn’t sure what the relationship was. He hadn’t thought of saying that before, yet it seemed so simple, and so right and so natural, that a distant aunt should come to a confirmation service and not stay, like everyone else, in the Grand. ‘God, it was funny,’ Carson said, and Tichbourne did his imitation, and Michael laughed with his friends. He was grateful to them for assuming that such a person could not be his mother. A.J.L. and Outsize Dorothy and Miss Trenchard knew she was his mother, and so did the Reverend Green, but for the remainder of his time at Elton Grange none of these people would have cause to refer to the fact in public. And if by chance A.J.L. did happen to say in class tomorrow that he hoped his mother was all right after her fall, Michael would say afterwards that A.J.L. had got it all wrong.
In the dark, he whispered to her in his mind. He said he was sorry, he said he loved her better than anyone.
A Complicated Nature
At a party once Attridge overheard a woman saying he gave her the shivers. ‘Vicious-tongued,’ this woman, a Mrs de Paul, had said. ‘Forked like a serpent’s.’
It was true, and he admitted it to himself without apology, though ‘sharp’ was how he preferred to describe the quality the woman had referred to. He couldn’t help it if his quick eye had a way of rooting out other people’s defects and didn’t particularly bother to search for virtues.
The Collected Stories Page 56