by Jane Rogers
Her father looked up from the newspaper and nodded. He had not said a word. Her mother came out and stood at the gate waving until Caro had walked out of sight, and Caro had to force herself not to run to escape that imploring cloying gaze.
Sitting in Clare’s room late that night, Caro and Clare talked about Caro’s mother.
“She always manages to make me feel guilty. Every aspect of me is wrong: the way I look, how I dress, what I eat, what I do . . . I can’t do anything right.”
“Uh huh,” said Clare, who was lying on the floor smoking, with her eyes closed. “That’s because she made you. How would you feel if you knitted yourself a nice little doll, out of the most expensive yarn you could buy, and spent the best years of your life working on it to make it as perfect as you could – then it suddenly got up and walked away and turned into something different?”
There was a silence. She had been at a Women’s Aid conference in London all weekend, and she was tired and depressed.
“You always oversimplify,” Caro said softly. “What a world you live in – all mothers are possessive predators – all men are potential rapists.”
“Yeah,” said Clare without opening her eyes. “Tell me how the world’s different. You missed out that mothers are also oppressed sisters.”
“Well how do you resolve that?” Caro asked innocently.
“I don’t know. I don’t resolve it. I don’t oversimplify. But it helps you make sense of the world, you know, if you have an analysis to hang things on.”
Clare let herself get angry. She sat up.
“It’s so easy, isn’t it, to condemn us? It’s so nice and easy to say we oversimplify, and there are all these examples that disprove this and disprove that – all these nice men, all these women with great careers – isn’t it? If it was left to your subtlety and refinement, nothing would change, ever. You’d never get it together to say ‘this is unfair’, ‘this should be changed’, because you’d be too busy counting the exceptions. You’re not the only person who’s noticed that the world’s complicated and everyone’s different, Caro. But you appear not to have noticed a few glaring facts like that women in general don’t rape men, or beat them up, or design weapons or make the laws and enforce them – or hold enough jobs of influence and authority to make an iota of difference to the way this bloody patriarchal shit-heap is run.”
There was a long silence. Clare lit another cigarette and lay down slowly, closing her eyes.
“All right,” said Caro. “I’m sorry.”
After a long pause Clare opened her eyes and looked at Caro. “No you’re not.” There was an edge of humour in her voice. “You’re a self-opinionated self-righteous little turd.”
“Yes,” said Caro. “I am. Have you stopped being angry? Can I explain about my mother?”
“If you must.” Clare closed her eyes again.
“Well, what I was going to say is, look at her good points.”
“What are they?”
“There are lots. She is a kind and thoughtful provider – of home comfort, food, clean sheets, ironed shirts, fresh bread – all the things you take for granted at home.”
“Yeah.”
“She cares about me and Dad more than anyone else in the world. She’d do anything for us – and we both know that, which means I suppose that we have a sort of shell of security which goes with us everywhere.”
Clare blew a smoke ring.
“She’s prepared to adapt her life to ours in any way.”
“Is she? Isn’t that bad?”
Caro hesitated. “I don’t know.” She paused. “What I was thinking about was Mrs Ramsay.”
Clare rolled over on her stomach. Always (and she always forgot it) came this moment of poignancy with Caro. She wondered if it was how she would define love. When she was most irritated by Caro’s holier-than-thou, most nearly offended by how stupid/insensitive Caro must think her, with her “what a world you live in”, and was thinking “How young, how predictable, how limited you are,” came the twist in the conversation, the unexpected note, that looking back along the line of the conversation, was the note Caro had been heading for all the time. But it almost hurts, she thought, it’s sharp like a knife. You can think you know someone as well as yourself, but then you are caught up, surprised, by something they say. You love them because they’re different, they say the thing you don’t expect. But why is it so poignant? she wondered. Because you see with her eyes for a moment, share her vision, escape yourself – it renews and twists the love, because it reminds you you don’t know her, don’t own her. So in the moment of escape from self comes the reminder of isolation. All our lives, she thought, we are after union; join me, love me, fuck me. Let us be one. And at each instant of its happening, its bitter-sweet wonder is that you know it can’t last. We are all, for nearly always, single. She was very tired; an uncharacteristic wave of sentimentality – of pity, almost, for all living things, brought tears to her eyes and made her want to clasp her arms round Caro. “Mrs Ramsay,” she said.
“I thought you’d gone to sleep.”
“No. I was just thinking. Tell me about Mrs Ramsay.”
“To the Lighthouse . You must have read it. You lent it me.”
“Yes, I’ve read it.”
“Well – look at her. She comes across as wonderful, doesn’t she? She’s the heart of the book – her presence brings order and happiness. She’s kind to everyone, puts everyone before herself, is all things to all people – mother to James, wife to her husband. . . . And I was thinking, do you remember, the wonderful bit about the sheep’s skull in the children’s bedroom?”
“Yes,” said Clare drily. “She covers it up and tells the little girl it’s full of fairies and pretty make-believe so she mustn’t be scared, and she tells the boy it’s really there, dead, under the shawl.”
“I – oh Clare, surely it’s to do with the ages they are, not the sexes?”
Clare shrugged. “Little girls can’t cope with nasty reality.” She was both satisfied and angry with herself for having tripped Caro so neatly.
“Go on, anyway.”
“All I wanted to say was – her life is devoted to serving and servicing others – and the book shows that by playing that role – that that role adds more to human happiness and richness than anything else. And what is it – what is it but, to a better degree, the qualities of my mother? Or anyone’s mother; loving, giving, selflessly. . . .”
There was a silence. Caro thought Clare had not understood her.
“They’re all motherly and wifely things – thinking of others, wanting people to get on together, wanting to provide nice food and pleasant surroundings and calm everyone’s fears. . . .”
“Yes, yes, I know.” Clare sounded impatient. “Are you sure it’s all good? What about Lily Briscoe?”
“I knew you were going to say that,” said Caro.
Did you, Clare thought, did you? Don’t I ever surprise you, and twist a knife in your heart? She spoke harshly.
“All right: firstly, she survives Mrs Ramsay and paints a picture which catches the whole thing. She’s the artist. It’s the book. She makes the thing that lasts. What is it she says – ‘Time stand still’ – something like that – ?” She stood, groping along the shelves for the book.
“It’s here, at the end. I only put it back on Friday. Yes, you’re right.”
“But also – she herself loves Mrs Ramsay, doesn’t she –”
“Yes.”
“But she criticizes her. Doesn’t she say – doesn’t she imply it’s selfish, the way Mrs Ramsay gets everyone to need her so much? Isn’t that the heart of it? That those kinds of women make everyone need them and rely on them, so they foster an array of –of emotional cripples around them. Look at her husband. He’s an emotional cripple. She bolsters him up and feeds his ego and tells him he’s wonderful – is it kind? Is it right?” Clare was turning the pages of the book furiously. “Here,” she said at last. “Remember when she’
s dead? Ramsay’s organizing the trip to the lighthouse at last and Lily’s trying to paint, and he comes up demanding sympathy. Remember? Listen – Lily thinking: ‘That man, she thought, her anger rising in her, never gave; that man took. She, on the other hand, would be forced to give. Mrs Ramsay had given. Giving, giving, giving, she had died – and had left all this. Really, she was angry with Mrs Ramsay.’” She looked up at Caro. “Once she’s dead they fall to pieces. She made herself indispensable. Isn’t that an amazingly selfish thing to do?”
“But –” Caro stammered. “You twist it Clare. You do –”
“No. I don’t think so.” Clare was suddenly full of energy again, harsh, intent. She hated Mrs Ramsay and all she stood for. She thumbed the pages quickly, her eyes running up and down over the print.
“Listen – here, she’s condemned out of her own mouth – going up the stairs after dinner: ‘They would, [Mrs Ramsay] thought, going on again, however long they lived, come back to this night; to this moon; this wind; this house; and to her too. It flattered her, where she was most susceptible of flattery, to think how, wound about in their hearts, however long they lived she would be woven –’ See? And anyway –” Clare sat again, holding the book still before her face but looking over it at Caro “– It’s all very well isn’t it, being the gracious model of womanhood, with a tribe of servants around you. What about the woman who does the cooking? And the one who cleans? And the poor little nanny who spends the whole book upstairs crying for her dying father? Of course Mrs Ramsay can be bloody gracious and beautiful, on the back of everyone else’s hard work. What if she had to do it all herself, like your Mum and mine?”
“Then she’d be that much less gracious and beautiful, as they are!” said Caro, with a triumphant laugh. “You’ve just come out on my side of the argument. All I’m saying is that those motherly qualities are good, and necessary, when you’re dealing with children. Maybe with men too, God knows. And it seems a bit much to suddenly turn round when you’re grown up and say to the mother, ‘No, you shouldn’t be like that. You should put yourself first and not care or be possessive about your children, or about making your husband the breadwinner happy, or making the home a nice place to be.’”
Clare seemed to be studying the cover of the book. Then she let it fall open, and began to read immediately, as if she had known it, “‘Why, [Mrs Ramsay] asked, pressing her chin on James’ head, should they grow up so fast? Why should they go to school? She would have liked always to have had a baby. She was happiest carrying one in her arms.’”
Caro looked down. “I think you have to be like that, to be a good mother,” she said. “It comes back to where I started. My Mum. What I hate in her now, I needed then. But why should I expect her to change just because I have?”
Clare laughed shortly. “If I were you, I should provide her immediately with a clutch of grandchildren to look after, and she can go on being happily the same until the day she dies.”
“I’d like to have children, I think.” Caro was ignoring Clare’s tone. She didn’t want the conversation to end. “I would like to, I think – but I’m afraid I might be like that – I think I would want to be like that. If you care about changing women’s lives you’ve got to consider that Clare, you can’t just throw Mrs Ramsay out –”
“No,” said Clare. “I know, Caro. It’s complicated.”
Her tone was suddenly flat and weary. Looking at her Caro nearly jumped with the shock of remembering that Clare had a child, that Clare had thrown it out.
“Clare?”
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking – I was being awful –”
“No. It’s all right. My son, you mean? I think the trouble is, perhaps, people think Mrs Ramsay is the way to be a mother. And I’m not really prepared to be that. . . . But –” she said, her voice suddenly bitter, “I’m not in a position to talk, since all I could do was run – eh? You should be talking to Sue. I’m tired, Caro. Are you going to bed?”
“Clare – I’m sorry.”
“OK. Goodnight.” Clare’s voice was light, brittle. When she was hurt she put herself out of reach; Caro knew that by now, and she would have given a lot to undo the conversation. She hesitated on the stairs, knowing it would be difficult to sleep – then went down to the kitchen.
Bryony was there, making toasted cheese under the grill.
“D’you want a bit?”
“OK. Thanks.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. What’s the time?”
“Half eleven.” Bryony took the toast out and began to smear it with tomato chutney. The jars had been recycled at last; Caro’s tomatoes had ripened all at once, last September, and she and Bryony had filled sixteen jars with chutney.
“Aren’t you working tomorrow? What time d’you start?”
“Six. It’s OK. I’m getting good at walking in my sleep.”
Bryony had finally found a job she liked, after various bizarre false starts, and months on social security. She was a postwoman, walking on a round that actually included their own street. It seemed to Caro that she had probably discovered the only job in the world which was suited to her strange requirements. She wanted to be out in the open air, but excluded farming and gardening because of the evils of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and hybrid animals/plants which deviated from nature’s intentions. (“Nature intended them all to be small and prickly,” Clare had pointed out unkindly in one animated discussion.) She did not want to be responsible for the reckless consumption of any of the earth’s resources in the shape of fuel, and so a round on foot suited her perfectly. She did not want to be employed by a private, capitalist firm; the GPO was at least nationalized. She did not want to find herself in a hierarchical situation in relation to others at work, thereby creating false barriers and reinforcing the capitalist class structure. Since she did her round alone, this was not a problem. She wanted to wear what she liked, or at least sensible clothes and her everlasting shoes, which she could do. She wanted to have some measure of control over her own productivity – which she could exercise by walking more quickly or slowly. And she wanted to be doing something manifestly useful. Which it was. There were problems about being the carrier of bills, final demands, and offensive advertising material, but as far as Caro knew Bryony overcame her scruples sufficiently to deliver all mail except for a succession of very obvious plain brown envelopes, which were frequently sent to one particular address on her route. These she threw away, rightly assuming that whoever had requested such filthy pornography would be too embarrassed to complain about its non-arrival.
Caro liked Bryony very much, now. It had taken a long time for the initial hostility and suspicion between them to wear off. Bryony was the most definite, dogmatic, and (in the defence of her own ideas) fierce person Caro had ever met at close quarters. She was also absolutely open and honest; her integrity blazed through all the details of cranky behaviour which the execution of her principles in her daily life demanded of her. She was intolerant and contemptuous of the majority of the human race, whom she saw as wasteful, deluded, and politically ignorant. In particular she disliked men, because her political analysis revealed them to be oppressors, and responsible as a sex for many of the worst aspects of our civilization (war, the arms race, the stock exchange, rape, science, motor cars, additives to food, defoliants, hospital management of childbirth, competitions, multinational companies, cosmetics, pornography and vivisection). Because she disliked men, she did not cultivate their friendship. She was intensely loyal and endlessly kind to those (women) she knew well and respected.
They ate their toast in silence. When they had finished Bryony put the kettle on and asked again, “What’s up?”
“Oh – I don’t know. I’ve been talking to Clare.”
Bryony nodded.
“It was my fault. I was talking about children. I always forget – it just doesn’t seem to go with her, having a kid.”
“No. It
does seem odd.”
There was another silence, then Bryony said, “Do you want kids?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Do you?”
“No. Oh no – I wouldn’t want to be responsible for landing someone else in this mess.”
“Well – it’s not – like that, is it? In practice? I mean, you look after it and protect it. . . .”
“For a bit. You’re not going to be able to protect it from radiation, are you? or brain damage caused by lead in the atmosphere? or cancer caused by preservatives in food?”
“No. I suppose not.”
Bryony busied herself making coffee. Her voice softened.
“In a way I would like to very much. But – what right have we got?”
“None. But people do.”
“Yes. People do.” She sat down again.
“There are –” Carolyn hesitated “– there have always been external dangers, anyway. I mean, children used to die of diseases which are stamped out now. Children used to have to work in dreadful conditions, in factories and mines. There have always been wars. If everyone had waited until they could promise their children a safe life, the human race would be extinct.”
“Yes. But – some situations are worse than others. People stop having children when the future they face is too appalling. Look at the Red Indians. If you have a child, OK, you know it may die of illness or accident – but isn’t it different, if you know the whole world might be blown up and poisoned?”
“But you can’t be responsible for the world, Bryony.”
“Who will be then?”
“I don’t know.”
“Even on a small scale – all right? Even the things that are within your scope. A child’s education – they would teach it things I didn’t want it to learn, at school. It would pick up all sorts of violent, sexist ideas from TV –”
“You’d want to control its life.”