by Angus Wilson
So much, thought Bernard, for the famous private life that’s supposed to differentiate him from other public servants. He felt intensely depressed. It came to him that Charles was about to say that he had an incurable disease, but in fact he only said, ‘Well, I must be going home, Bernard, I’ve some damned papers to look at.’
As they went down the steps of the club, Bernard realized, with amusement, that he had been supplying a suitable, dramatic and literary end for Charles. Charles Swann, that was it, of course. The name had led him to the antechamber of the Guermantes’ house. It was much more likely from the way he felt now that he himself was Charles Swann with death so imminent. Charles, he hoped, would not be as embarrassed at the news as Basin and Oriane. But who could tell? He would certainly think any mention of it very bad form.
*
The evening seemed cooler. Almost everywhere but Leicester Square would have reflected its summer beauty. Here the hot orange and yellow lights only seemed to extend the day unnaturally. Ranelagh, Vauxhall, Cremorne had all faded out in seedy raffishness, but even in their last, gimcrack, stucco peeling hours they could never have had the sheer ugliness, the flat barrenness of Leicester Square or the Place Pigalle.
Bernard, waiting upon Terence’s usual late arrival, noticed automatically, through his thoughts, the passers-by, noted as by habit their costume, walk, speech, and even strayed occasionally from his thoughts into short dramatizations of their lives. Tourists, theatregoers, and prostitutes offered little to stir his imagination. A young man with a mackintosh on his arm stood by one of the telephone booths and Bernard, wondering at his carrying a coat on such a day, registered the deadness of his wooden features. The conversation with Charles had disturbed him from composing the arguments he would use with Terence. He decided to put the future interview out of his head and trust to his intuition. He stared rather vacantly at the passers-by, stretching his neck every now and then to search for an approaching Terence. The young man with the mackintosh was looking at him, he knew, but he disregarded him.
‘Got a light, please?’ He turned to see a thin-faced young man with long dark hair. He offered his box, and as the young man lit his cigarette, he noticed that he was smiling in confident, sexy invitation. ‘Lovely evening,’ he said, but Bernard turned away. This, he thought, is the kind of second-rateness from which Charles’s embittered acceptance of his official station in life has preserved him. He realized that, for Charles, Mrs Curry and her little world of evil, Sherman’s malice, Celia Craddock’s prison-house of discontent, Louie Randall’s pathological politics would be without interest; Charles had accepted the world of real power with its wider implications good and bad, and such second-rate failures were beneath his notice. Bernard began to construct his own defence: by not accepting the world of my position, he asserted, I have kept my imagination free as Charles cannot, and it is perhaps from these little stagnant pools beneath Charles’s notice that the mists and vapours arise, which circle around his head like the bogies in the night he spoke of, like Hitler, like …
Bernard was startled from the wider, historical applications of his essay in self-defence by a firmly enunciating, slightly Cockney voice, ‘Excuse me, sir, I’m a police officer. We are charging this man with importuning. I have had occasion to notice that he approached you a few minutes ago. I should be glad to know if you wish to offer further evidence against him.’ Bernard’s eyes were riveted upon the face of the young man with the long dark hair. His underlip was trembling, his eyes – over-large with terror – were on the point of tears. His arms were held tightly by the speaker. Bernard looked up at him. It was the young man with the mackintosh.
‘Certainly not,’ he said; ‘he only asked me for a match.’
Two figures hovered vaguely in the background – another detective, no doubt, and the man who was charging him. ‘Very good, sir,’ the detective’s tone was angry. As they moved away, the young man’s terror woke into struggle and protest. Bernard stood cold with horror.
‘My dear, whatever was happening?’ Terence came up as the arrested man was led off.
‘They’ve arrested him for importuning,’ said Bernard in a dead voice.
‘Oh God! how absolutely stinking I Couldn’t you do anything to stop it?’ All Terence’s guilt at his desire to leave his louche past behind was being resolved in his fury.
Bernard did not answer. Terence gave him a quick look. ‘Oh, my dear, I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘Taxi!’ he called, ‘Taxi!’ As they rode in the taxi, he put his hand on Bernard’s arm. ‘A drink and bed, I think,’ he said, and when Bernard still did not answer he went on, ‘It’s absolutely beastly, I know, but there’s nothing one can do. And it’s so frightening, frightening for oneself, I mean.’ But it was neither compassion nor fear that had frozen Bernard. He could only remember the intense, the violent excitement that he had felt when he saw the hopeless terror in the young man’s face, the tension with which he had watched for the disintegration of a once confident human being. He had been ready to join the hounds in the kill then. It was only when he had turned to the detective that his sadistic excitement had faded, leaving him with normal disgust. But what had brought him to his senses, he asked himself, and, to his horror, the only answer he could find was that in the detective’s attitude of somewhat officious but routine duty there was no response to his own hunter’s thrill. Truly, he thought, he was not at one with those who exercised proper authority. A humanist, it would seem, was more at home with the wielders of the knout and the rubber truncheon.
BOOK II
CHAPTER ONE
Confidence and Confidences
ELIZABETH said, ‘We all know those little girlish mouse, those restless flutterings of the hands and eager, distorting smiles that are intended to be so captivating. How unbecoming they are and how exhausting for one’s escort! The tragedy of it is that it is all so unnecessary. Nothing can surpass the poise and elegance of the mature and experienced woman, so long as she is content to let the calm detachment that comes with middle years speak through every line and movement of her body. What beauty there is in such calm repose, and how restful for the poor, tired man!’ She ended her dictation and, turning to the secretary, added, ‘And that, dear, should be practised over the sink. It should be done preferably in black velvet off the shoulders and a train. They tell me they’ve had some startling results in Potter’s Bar.’ The secretary, who lived in Finchley, wondered if Elizabeth thought she was the only member of the editorial staff who apologized for her copy by making jokes about the suburbs. Since all the others did so, and all supposed their attitude unique, she imagined that Elizabeth had the same illusions. Alone the editress took up a believer’s attitude; she had so long supported the famous legend that no matter how clever people might be, they could not write for Woman’s Diary if they had their tongues in their cheeks that inevitably she had to advertise her own faith.
The secretary, who was taking a diploma in Psychology, said curiously, ‘Don’t you ever feel split in two by your work here?’ Elizabeth was up to that. ‘Riven from crown to toe,’ she answered, ‘but then Careers Women are, aren’t they, from birth, I mean.’
The secretary answered the telephone. ‘It’s Mr Terence Lambert for you,’ she said, covering the mouthpiece with her hand.
Elizabeth was too surprised to know what to say. Her dramatic instinct came to her rescue. She was, after all, on Mummy’s side. Frowning slightly, she leaned forward and said in a rasping voice, ‘Would you say that I’m too busy to speak to him.’
The secretary reported that Mr Lambert said it was rather urgent. ‘Rather urgent,’ said Elizabeth angrily. She picked up the receiver. ‘Hello,’ she said.
‘It’s Terence Lambert speaking.’
‘Yes, I know. What is it?’
Terence’s tone was businesslike. ‘Your father’s been rather ill. No, no, he’s all right now. Yes, a heart attack. He wants to go down to the country. The doctor says it’s quite all right, but somebody ough
t to go with him.’
‘I see,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I’ll come round at once.’
‘Good,’ answered Terence. ‘I’ll wait here until you come.’ He was, in fact, waiting by the lift-shaft when Elizabeth emerged at the top floor. He looked, as usual, carefully dressed, so carefully as to give almost the effect of having been poured into his suit by machinery; but behind his recent, elaborate facial preparation she noticed that he looked drawn and tired. The fact that he might have been a ‘good thirty’ somehow made her feel less hostile to him.
‘There’s nothing to worry about,’ he said. ‘I made an excuse to come outside because I thought you would want to hear what the doctor said when Bernard was not there. It’s not that there’s anything Bernard hasn’t heard, but only that you might have thought so if I hadn’t told you on my own.’ The incoherence of his speech, the momentary absence of the customary ‘camp’ once again calmed Elizabeth’s hostility. It was the dislike of seeing Terence at the flat more than Bernard’s attack that had possessed her in the taxi. She now felt the guilt of so unorthodox a priority. ‘Did it happen here?’ she asked. It was difficult to frame any questions that would not suggest an unbecoming probe into her father’s intimacies.
‘Yes,’ said Terence, ‘he looked madly tired when I saw him yesterday afternoon, and then he got involved in a squalid “thing” last night which seems to have put him in a terrible way. More than it would have done, I’m sure, if he hadn’t been so overstrained already.’
Elizabeth sought with her look to establish a more definite identity for the ‘thing’ which had put her father in a such a ‘way’.
‘An arrest,’ said Terence, and then added, ‘Nothing to do with him, of course. But he saw it happen, and I suppose on top of everything else …’ His voice faded away in puzzledness. ‘Anyhow,’ he went on, ‘Bernard made me ring for a Dr Silverman, he said he was the family doctor. You must be the oddest family. But then, I don’t know about doctors. Anyhow, he says it’s simply a tired heart. Not angina or anything to worry about. He’s given Bernard some pills and he’s to rest as much as possible. I’m sorry I couldn’t get hold of you sooner, but it was madly late last night when it happened. And I did my best,’ he ended lamely.
Elizabeth found herself liking him now for his note of childishness. She suddenly felt with shame that she had interfered without sufficient forethought in her earlier talk with Bernard. She withdrew sharply, however, from so irrelevant a sentiment. ‘I’m sure we’re all very grateful,’ she said.
Terence’s dark eyes seemed to squint for a moment with anger. ‘The family’s approval for getting the family doctor. Perhaps I could have it all in what’s called black and white from the family solicitor,’ he said.
Elizabeth hastened to repair her error. ‘No, really. Thank you. It was a very kind thing,’ she said.
Terence looked embarrassed by this more sincere approach, though he had clearly wanted it. ‘We had better go back now,’ he said.
*
Bernard seemed very frail and tired. He slept for the first quarter of an hour of the train journey. When he woke, his eyes were brighter. Elizabeth simply smiled across at him, anxious not to disturb his rest. This invalidish treatment clearly decided him to resume authority once more. ‘What about getting luncheon on the train?’ he suggested. ‘I don’t fancy the sort of meal that Ella will have ready when she’s on her own. ‘He insisted on a bottle of wine, ‘however poor’, at luncheon. Elizabeth felt as though she was seventeen again, being taken out to one of those special tête-à-tête at which Bernard was always the charming host, the witty companion and everything was horrible. The artificiality of his approach to his children had been extraordinary in someone so easy and natural with the rest of his acquaintances. With herself and James his overtures had seemed always to savour of the Sorrel and Son sort of behaviour which he would have been the first to ridicule in anyone else. She only prayed that he would not raise his glass to toast her as on those girlhood ‘special’ occasions. His conversation, however, though competent and slightly over-consciously easy, was not apparently designed to bring her out, but rather to keep himself in. He seemed only too happy, when the meal was ended, to spend the last quarter of an hour reading his book.
*
When Ella was alone she always had a pot of coffee and a boiled egg or some cold tinned meat on a tray for her luncheon. She sometimes believed that this ‘scrappy’ way of living only added to the neurotic pressure of her existence. Certainly, the effect of these days of hastily put on clothes, quickly eaten snacks, and briefest possible attention to toilet was to increase her claustrophobic hatred of the little round of her life. Although the house was quite large, she tended to confine herself to one room until, with its accumulation of newspapers and books and unremoved plates, it seemed like a furnished cell provided for the more illustrious type of political offender. But to have enlarged her sphere would have necessitated distracting action. She needed all her concentration to balance on the tightrope between fantasy and reality and to make the decision between which of them was more ‘real’ for her at any moment of the day. She now of purpose walked this tightrope between the two, and walked with physical symptoms of anxiety – tightened stomach, blurred vision, and a mist around her consciousness – that made any unaccustomed action as exhausting and fruitless as the damming of a stream before an oncoming tidal wave. To sit in one room, though it ended as a prison, seemed safer; to sit, and on occasion to find outlet in the mechanical activity of gardening, seemed indeed the only safe means of getting by until the next ‘good period’.
At the moment, however, this routine was broken for her by the unexplained and unexpected prolongation of her brother’s stay. She always made – and it was part of her bargain with her sick self that she should so make – an effort to adapt herself to unusual circumstances, unless they occurred in one of those periods when fog so separated her from reality that all contact with others became impossible. To her brother she conceded such conversation as she could produce through the mist that surrounded her, normal meals, and the organization of an appearance of listening to him which would not insult his intelligence. Had not such palliatives failed before, she might have been tempted, from the little sparks of curiosity and affection which their contact lit in her, to think this ‘taking out of herself’ was in feet the road back to life which she sought. Bill was convinced that it was so; and he gave what time was left to him from racing, Rhodes, and the growing attractions of Mrs Curry’s household to devising means of restoring his sister’s confidence; for, living entirely in himself, he automatically diagnosed his sister’s sickness as his own.
‘People talk a lot about Keats,’ he said as he served the jugged hare. He often began his discourses with such general statements, but Ella, who received all conversation at random, was less surprised by them than most people. ‘But, even if he had lived, it would probably have been to peter out as a five-day wonder. Now the man I envy,’ here came the prepared fillip to Ella’s self-confidence, ‘is William de Morgan. To achieve success suddenly at seventy, produce the rabbit out of the hat, surprise everybody and leave no time for them to see how the trick was done. Imagine his feelings when Alice for Short was published….’
‘Alice for Short!’ echoed Ella. It seemed a curious remark and she thought it only polite to follow it up.
‘Yes,’ began Bill, ‘a brilliant book. Far more brilliant really than the Thackeray he adored.’ Remembering de Morgan’s theme of a wife in Bedlam, however, he stopped short, and made a mental note not to mention Jane Eyre either. ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘that this is the last house left in England where they still serve a decent damson jelly with hare.’ Flatter a woman on her housekeeping, that was the thing. ‘Red currant jelly’s all very well, but it’s a Victorian innovation, you know. It came in with the entrées, or side dishes, as they called them. They always had two – the brown and the white. Now, of course, everyone thinks it’s an old medieval receipt or
some such nonsense. Most of what the common man supposes to be traditional English is nineteenth-century, middle-class invention to make the filthy age they lived in a bit easier to swallow….’ While Bill rambled on, Ella remembered their father prosing in the same manner at the rectory table. Bill had been the rebel of the family and inevitably had ended by assuming his father’s mantle. It was the kind of situation, she reflected, that was the core of the old ‘psychological’ novels she had read as a girl.
‘I can always get you turkey eggs when you want ’em,’ she heard Bill say.
It was difficult to imagine when she would want them, so she only said, ‘Oh? Bill, who do you know who keeps turkeys?’
‘The Rahab of the village,’ replied Bill, ‘Mrs Curry.’
Ella had early emancipated herself from the God of the rectory, but she had replaced him by a personal deity compounded of various aesthetic and hygienic preferences and general sexual coldness which she called Discrimination. It had been, in the twenties and thirties, the common deity shared by herself and Bernard; by its worship they hoped to keep their vision clear for a more sensitive experience of life; on its altar they had sacrificed the intimacy of their children. Mrs Curry’s name and reputation had dimly penetrated Ella’s neurotic absorption as the archetype of blasphemous Lack of Discrimination. ‘Oh, Bill,’ she said, ‘you haven’t got to know that woman. Why! she’s perfectly foul!’ Ella almost lived again as she used this final curse in the commination service of the religion she had shared with Bernard. Joynson Hicks, Patrick Mahon, Lord Baldwin, Jimmy Thomas, Aimée Macpherson, Roehm, Ciano, Kipling, W. J. Locke, Unity Mitford, Al Jolson, all had been in their day ‘perfectly foul’.