by Rebecca West
They looked very young, far younger than they were, and they were laughing, and could not quite sober themselves even when they greeted us and told us how they had grieved over the inundation of the Dog and Duck. The dining-room looked Victorian, for it was dominated by two enlarged photographs, one of Oswald’s father, his handsome features blazing with impatient yet contented evangelism, and the other of Oswald’s mother, she who had been a drunkard and was dead, a pretty woman with smooth hair and an oval face, and troubled, staring eyes, and a tiny mouth, so tiny that it seemed hardly broader than her nostrils. There was an early-Victorian clock, an early-Victorian wall-bracket bookcase, a mid-Victorian mirror over the chimneypiece, none of them very good, but all showing signs of a restrained taste, a provincial nonconformist purity. The rest of the room had been decided by Oswald’s taste, and was garden-suburb. The tables and chairs and sideboard were rough-hewn of unpolished wood, the curtains were hand-blocked linen, the ingenuously designed pottery and glass and the table silver made reference to some sort of peasant in another country. The room exhibited a clash between the generations. There was a brooch at the breast of the woman in the photograph which showed that she would not have understood why her son should have chosen to own any object in this room. It even exhibited a clash within Oswald’s generation, or rather an unresolved harmony. The early-Victorian bracket bookcase was filled with the works of Shaw and Wells, and it was certain any house where the dining-room was furnished in the peasant tradition would contain their works. Yet there was really nothing in the writings of either which would have led anybody to agree with them to think it logical that oak should not be polished or that pottery and textiles should ignore the achievements of the last four centuries. But there was another disharmony. Nancy and Oswald seemed to have at this moment nothing to do with their own room. Surprised in their enjoyment of their secret joke, they were not as I had ever seen them. They were classical, they were idyllic, they might have been outside time, actors inside art, who had no private lives but perpetually performed. They even recalled what was not human, the winter sunlight on the bronze branches of the woodland, the crimson buds of the willows rising from the waters.
‘We’ve had to alter the table, Oswald’s father is coming too,’ explained Nancy, smoothing the laughter from her face. ‘We see a lot of him, now that Brother Clerkenwell has come to live at Haxton. He rang up just after you did, it’s funny, it really is -’ She and Oswald took the flimsy excuse and surrendered to laughter again. ‘Oswald, you look after Uncle Len, and I’ll take the others to get their things off.’
She ran up the stairs lightly before us, giving Oswald a last smile over her shoulder. As we went into the bedroom Aunt Lily pointed a reproving finger and said, ‘Who’s been a careless girl? Tchk, tchk. You should take care of your good things.’ There was a wide Heal bed, with a headboard of unpolished oak running out at each side into bookcases; and on the floor at its foot Nancy’s fur coat lay in a semicircle. ‘I threw it down anyhow when I came in,’ said Nancy, and again broke into laughter. The rest of us gathered round the triple mirror on the dressing-table, and patted our tired faces with our powder puffs.
Nancy’s smiling face floated in the darkness behind our reflections. ‘I threw it down anywhere,’ she said, ‘because I heard Oswald come in, and I had to run down at once to tell him my news. And now I’ll tell you. I’ve been to the doctor and he says I’m all right.’
I slipped my arms round her and we kissed.
‘But here, what’s this?’ breathed Aunt Lily.
‘We thought you wanted one!’ exclaimed Aunt Milly.
‘Well, I’ve got one,’ said Nancy. ‘I’m telling you, that’s what the doctor said. It’s coming in July. Something went wrong at the beginning, so we weren’t sure till now.’
They squealed for joy and hugged her. ‘Forgive us for being stupid,’ said Aunt Milly, ‘but when we were young and a girl went to the doctor and came back saying she was all right it usually meant she hadn’t got a baby. But, oh dear, oh dear, isn’t this lovely?’
‘Won’t Queenie love this?’ cried Aunt Lily.
‘I know, I know,’ said Nancy, ‘she’ll come back to a proper, ordinary family in working order.’
‘Do you want a boy or a girl?’ asked Aunt Milly, while Aunt Lily said, ‘Coo, I’m a grand-aunt. Are you going to have it here or in a nursing home?’ and then both began to sob.
‘You old sillies,’ said Nancy, ‘none of that. I want to cry too, and it’s ridiculous, as there’s nothing to cry about. I am nothing remarkable, but millions and millions and millions of women have had babies since the world began, so presumably I can.’
‘My God, and you so slim,’ marvelled Aunt Lily and broke into sudden panic. ‘And we let you pick up that fur coat yourself.’ She threw it on the floor and picked it up again, and we all laughed at her. But Nancy hushed us with an uplifted finger.
‘Listen, that’s the doorbell. It’ll be Oswald’s father.’ She began to giggle. ‘We’ll be able to tell exactly when he’s heard. Ordinarily you can’t hear in this room what’s said in the room underneath - unless it’s Oswald’s father speaking. It comes up like what you sometimes hear on a cliff by the seaside, when the waves rush into a crack. You know, a sort of booming. Just you wait a minute. It’ll come. Boom, boom-boom, boom-boom-boom boom-boom-boom. That’ll be “Well, I just thought I’d look in and see how the Lord is dealing with this little household”, and then we won’t hear anything, and that’ll be Oswald saying we’re all quite well, but deliberately not bringing the Lord into it, and then there’ll be little booms which will be Mr Bates saying that yes, he will take a glass of tomato-juice, and a bit about may he have his favourite chair that’s big enough for his long legs.’ She paused. ‘That,’ she said coolly, ‘is to make Oswald realise that he’s not as tall as he is, and that is the real reason why Oswald won’t say anything about the Lord.’ Then she went on, ‘After that there’ll be a silence, and that’ll be Oswald telling him about the baby, and then, you listen, there’ll be such a boom.’
She pointed to the floor and we all bent down towards it. Aunt Milly was a little deaf and she cupped her ear with her hand, but said, ‘Well, I don’t need any help to hear this,’ as the rich belling came up through the boards. The little booms went on in the order predicted, and she said, ‘Funny how you can nearly always tell what they’re going to do.’
‘Isn’t it?’ said Nancy, and they exchanged a cynical nod.
‘Funny, I always think they’re so deep,’ said Aunt Lily.
‘Yes, they’re deep,’ said Aunt Milly, ‘but at the same time…’ But the great boom rolled and echoed under our feet, and we clung together in silent laughter as it went on and on, rose and fell, fell and rose.
‘Any idea what he’s saying?’ asked Aunt Milly, drying her eyes. ‘Len will be as pleased over the little fellow as if it was his own grandson but he won’t go on about it like that, thank God.’
‘Oh, it’ll be a great thing for Father Bates,’ said Nancy. ‘It’s a great thing, you know, when a child is born to one of the Heavenly Hostages.’ I listened to her with irritation, for she spoke these words in an affected tone, quite uncharacteristic of her, which I had heard her assume once or twice before. It was borrowed, I think, from her Uncle Mat and Aunt Clara and their friends, for it carried a trace of the Midland accent. But it was nothing so innocent as regionalism. It was a lethargic defence of mediocrity, it indolently ridiculed all acknowledgment of the prodigious, and all attempt at interpretation of the ordinary. She told us that the sect held that membership conferred access to special means of grace. Each Heavenly Hostage could be perfect if he could but keep his mind on it; but nobody ever did. If anyone could he would die; but even in imperfection their members were better than other people and were recognised by God as His best beloved children. ‘So each member is a hostage held by sinful humanity, and it’s a good thing for the world, since God will be more reluctant to destroy the world for
its wickedness if he knows that some of those he specially loves are captive on it.’ She seemed to be speaking with the cheapest irony, and I was about to protest that at least the sect saw that the world was a battlefield of forces not confined to this world, when she smiled timidly and gloriously, and I remembered that she borrowed this horrid way of speaking only when she was very shy. ‘Surely it can’t be like that,’ she said, in her own voice, ‘it seems too far-fetched. But there’s something. There must be something,’ she told us, her eyes wide. ‘It’s all so strange. You can’t think how strange it is having a baby.’
‘I’ve always thought it must be a funny feeling,’ said Aunt Milly.
‘You see, the thing isn’t a bit reasonable,’ Nancy went on. ‘Oswald keeps on telling me how it happens, ovulation and all that, but it doesn’t explain anything. It’s not logical that two little things without any sense can get together and make a third thing, that suddenly gets sense and thinks and feels for itself and gets born and has a will of its own, and is a person. How can there be a person, suddenly, when there wasn’t one before?’
‘It’s a mystery,’ agreed Aunt Milly.
‘Yes, put it like that, it’s against nature,’ said Aunt Lily.
‘And think of it happening all the time,’ Nancy went on. ‘And all these people that come into the world in this extraordinary way clinging on to the earth, which is just a star like any other, and nobody knows how the stars come to exist. It’s all so odd that anything should be here.’
‘I never thought of it before, but it would be more natural if there wasn’t anything at all,’ said Aunt Milly.
‘Yes, it’s all so unnatural that there must be a meaning to it,’ said Nancy, glowing. ‘They always say so in church but you only half-believe it, but having a baby, it’s more extraordinary than anything they tell you in church. I don’t know what it all means,’ she proclaimed, ‘but I feel that I might know any minute now.’
Through the floor came a supreme BOOM boom boom boomboom boom-boom BOOM BOOM BOOM. We laughed so loudly that we had to gag ourselves with handkerchieves. ‘He knows, he ain’t half telling Oswald,’ gasped Aunt Milly, and Nancy begged us, ‘Oh, please hush, there’s someone coming upstairs now, if it’s Oswald he’ll want to know why we’re laughing.’ But Aunt Milly and Aunt Lily said together, ‘No, that’s Len’s tread,’ and presently there was a knock at the door, and a hoarse voice, repelled by the apocalyptic, whispered, ‘For pity’s sake, girls, come down.’
But as soon as we opened the door Uncle Len forgot the distaste that had made his wattles blood-red, and he was with us in our contemplation of Nancy and her exultation, that was faintly bright, like moth-wings. He put his arms round her, but not close, and said, ‘Why, Nancy, what we’ve been hearing downstairs is what we’ve all been hoping and expecting, yet now it’s happened it seems so strange I can’t believe it.’
‘Yes,’ she said looking up at him, ‘that’s what I was telling them. It’s strange.’
It appeared possible that Uncle Len might weep, so I went to the dressing-table and took my comb out of my bag and ran it through my hair. I looked towards the triple mirror, and saw that it was reflecting this room in which there were five persons, and indeed six, if one counted Nancy’s child, as though it were empty. I was kneeling to the right of the mirror, and Aunt Lily and Aunt Milly were far to the left of it, and Nancy and Uncle Len were in the doorway, so the central panel of the mirror saw nothing of them, and the others, loosely screwed, had swung towards it and reflected only its reflections: the images of the broad bed, which was covered with that furrowed material known as candlewick, and a wardrobe of unpolished oak beyond it, and the edge of a green rug and a foot or two of parquet floor. The mirrors reflected my private truth. To me the room was empty. Nobody was real to me, as people had been real to me till then. I saw before me a man and three women whom I had known since my childhood, and I had no direct apprehension of them. I had to tell myself, ‘That is Nancy, she says she is going to have a baby, and from what I remember of her she should be very happy about that,’ but I had to work it out in my head, and when I had deduced her happiness I did not share it. I was in the same wretched state that I had fallen into once or twice before when I had had to play at concerts too soon after I had had influenza, and I found I had to get through the programme entirely on my technique and my recollection of the meaning that the music had had for me when I was well. Though it had been my opinion that music was as important as any other part of my life, I now knew it was better to feel like that when I was playing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto in C minor in the Usher Hall in Edinburgh than when Nancy was announcing that she was going to have a baby; and my present sickness was graver than influenza. This room was empty for me because Rosamund was not here. For me all rooms where Rosamund were not were empty. I could not be sure whether this did not mean that henceforward I was to find all rooms empty. For there could be no room where Rosamund was if there were no Rosamund, and I had reason to doubt whether the Rosamund I had thought I knew had ever existed.
But of course she existed. When I left the house Nancy murmured to me, while the others were busy with their goodbyes, ‘Poor Rose, you have kept up so well. But I know you are hardly able to see or hear, you are so miserable about Rosamund marrying that little man they say is so awful. I was often like that when I lived in Nottingham.’ She was my friend, and it was Rosamund who had given me continued friendship with her, by making my impatience halt and understand how she had feared to expose her fragile happiness to my sweeping judgments; it must have been Rosamund who had told Nancy, herself too timid and too respectful towards my career to make the discovery, that I was impatient because I always feared to be overtaken by the darkness, and was not arrogant but pitiable. Rosamund had existed, and since she had not died must still exist. Nancy came closer to me and whispered, ‘The Heavenly Hostages like all children to have one Old Testament name and one modern one. If we have a girl, it will have to be Janet Ruth, Janet after Oswald’s mother, Ruth because I like that bit about “Intreat me not to leave thee”, though it has nothing to do with the rest of the story which is a dull thing about barley and landed property. But I will have another girl, I will call her Rose Mary. And, Rose, if we have a boy it is to be Richard Adam, Richard after Richard Quin. I think of him so often.’ Her face was glorious because she spoke of him. In my obsession I passed from delight in her love for him to recollection that Rosamund had said that she would have liked Richard Quin to see her necklace. She had sworn by his name. I was nearly happy as I drove my party back to the Dog and Duck, I could laugh with Uncle Len when Aunt Lily, who had been dozing on his shoulder, woke up and said, ‘Salads. She ought to eat plenty of salads now. Perhaps that’s the reason I’ve never been able to abide lettuce, me never being meant to have a family.’ All the rest of the journey he kept on chuckling and saying, ‘Straighten that one out if you can.’ That night I did not go back to London, but slept in one of the stable lofts, for Milly and Lily were fearful of the morning and I felt so well that I was sure I would be able to help them if, as they feared, the river was into the house by morning.
But I woke in wretchedness, and the view from my window was terrible to me. The effacement of the land by the steel-grey waters seemed the confirmation of some bad news I had heard in my sleep. Fortunately I did not need to stay, the Thames had fallen in the night, and Aunt Milly and Aunt Lily had nothing to distract them from the cheerful business of telling the staff and the neighbours the news about Nancy. So I went back to my music-room in London and practising was an effective anaesthetic. But when I was too tired to work any more I again had the illusion that the room was empty; the house was empty; the city was empty; the world was empty. I had thought that I could go on living without my father and my mother and my brother, but now I was not sure that I was right. My power to do so was perhaps conditional. It had perhaps been given me by Rosamund, and might be taken back by Rosamund. For the first time I understood how peo
ple could kill themselves. When Mary came in that night, back from an afternoon concert at Bournemouth, I saw that she too was suffering from the hallucination of solitude. I had left the door of the sitting-room open as lonely people do; so I saw her from my seat by the fire as she came in, put down her attaché case, and laid on the hall table the flowers she had been given. Then she looked up the staircase as one does when one lets oneself into an unoccupied house and thinks, ‘How am I to make a home here? There are only the bare walls.’
When she saw me, she said, ‘Oh, Rose, you love white lilac, a nice woman has given me an armful of it,’ and came over to lay it on my knee. It gave me no special pleasure, though she was right, I liked it best of all the flowers we were given in the winter.
I thanked her and thought to myself, ‘Flowers are no great matter, I may do better for her than she has been able to do for me, by telling her about Nancy’s baby.’ But she could not make herself feel any great interest, though it delighted her to hear that if it were a boy Nancy was going to call it after Richard Quin. We sat for a minute in silence after we had spoken his name. I thought of the stars blazing in the black winter sky above the house. But when I went on to say that if the baby was a girl it was to be called Janet Ruth, she cried out, ‘Not Ruth. I wish she would not call it Ruth.’
‘She likes it,’ I said. ‘It is because of that passage about “Intreat me not to leave thee”.’
‘I hate that passage,’ said Mary. She pulled off her gloves and fell on her knees by the bookcase and pulled out our big Scottish Family Bible, that had Mamma’s people in it up to her great-grandfather, who was born when his parents were on the run after the rebellion of 1745.