by MARY HOCKING
I tremble for them. They are both innocent of the effect they have on males. It sometimes seems to me that our generation, which put on war-paint and then went off to dances in our chaste navy and white, had a far better idea what we were about than they have.
I tremble about many things lately and tears come all too readily. Kathleen says it is the time of life. ‘Women who don’t have hot flushes have a worse time emotionally.’
Enough of this domestic trivia. When are we to see this book of poetry for which, to quote that blurb, ‘women have been waking’? Doesn’t that rather narrow the appeal, or is it that women are the buyers of poetry?
My love - and take things easy if you know how to -
Constance
Sussex
September, 1968
Sheila,
Years ago I wrote to you suggesting we had a holiday together before we became encumbered with children. But the children came fast as snowflakes and we said, ‘It will have to be when they are older and can be left in the care of husbands.’
Last night I had a dream. I seemed to be in the WRNS and involved in some kind of marathon. I panted along, protesting that I hadn’t meant to get caught up in this; but as I looked around me the procession filled the picture. As far as the eye could see there were bobbing heads and moving limbs. There was no way out, no quiet place in the distance, just a mass of people running and me running with them. I realised this had been all I had known of life and I wanted to step outside it.
Sheila, let’s have that holiday in East Anglia and walk together along the lonely pebble beach. Will you, can you?’
Constance
Sussex
November, 1968
My dear Sheila,
Yes, I understood that you couldn’t get away.
What interesting people you are meeting. And how very generous of John Betjeman. That will be a great help to you. Alarming, though, this expectation of a firework display whenever you appear in public.
I am sorry we are unable to come to the launching party, but, as I think Harpo told you, my mother is very ill. We would have liked her to be here, but the house is too noisy and, in any case, she needs expert nursing. Dominic would be delighted to represent the Byrnes, if this is possible? He now has a Spanish girlfriend of great charm and irreproachable morals.
We look forward to receiving the promised copy and shall immediately besiege the local bookshops.
Our love and good wishes,
Constance
Sussex
January, 1969
My dear Sheila,
This should have been written sooner, but my mother’s death has set me back. Your letter was a comfort because you probably understand better than anyone else that ours was not a warm relationship. As you say, she was gallant during her long widowhood and probably got far more enjoyment from my children than from the result of her own child-bearing. Of course I didn’t expect you to come to the funeral. That radio interview was of paramount importance.
The poetry was a surprise. I had not realised how meticulously you had chronicled the ‘days, months, years which are the rags of time’. Some lines plumb depths of despair, yet almost immediately you turn aside, unwilling to prolong pain or joy. You are a sharp observer of the human scene, merciless, one might say.
I’m glad Linnie has this job in the music library, particularly as it will enable her to continue with her orchestral work.
My love to you both,
Constance
Sussex
February, 1969
My dear Sheila,
Yes, I would like to come in April. Fergus will take care of things here. Then he is to have a holiday on his own in Ireland. He is not happy in his work and needs time to think about the future; though with so many children still to educate, I don’t know what options are open to him. He dislikes the man under whom he now works, but, murder apart, what can one do about that?
All sounds a bit wooden, will do better when we meet.
My love,
Constance
Sussex
May, 1969
Sheila -
That was a wonderful time you gave me. This success, so well deserved, has transformed you. All the potential which Miles inhibited has been realised and, as happens when one is happy and rewarded, the gifts flow out to others.
The cottage looked lovely. It must be the best time to see it, with the blossom out and the daffodils. You’re wise to stay there, though I wish you had a more congenial neighbor than your dour farmer, useful though he is as a supplier of eggs.
In haste to catch the post,
Love,
Constance
Sussex
May, 1969
My dear Sheila,
Drat Harpo, the woman talks too much. Yes, I did return home to find a letter from Miles waiting and I have destroyed it; but since you insist you have a right to know the contents, I have little difficulty in remembering.
The publication of your book proved that poetry was what you had always cared about; the driving force in your life was the need to write and he had come a poor second. That is why he had to leave you. There was always something which you withheld from him. As he read the poems he saw that you had used him; he saw himself in every line, even the poems inspired by your school experiences foreshadowed his advent. He must have it that you did not care about him, yet he insists that you are as obsessed with him as he still is with you.
I have confidence, having seen you so recently, that you will be able to put this out of your mind. You are well rid of him.
Fergus goes away next week. I can see he is aching for the moment when he can shut the door on us all. I should have realised long ago that he had this need to be on his own for a time.
I must get down to some housework now.
My love,
Constance
P.S. Dominic is to marry Manuela in September. My mother left him the house in Ealing, so they will at least have a roof over their heads. Not fair on the other children. Fortunately Kathleen and James, who care most about fairness, are not interested in property.
Sussex
July, 1969
My dear Sheila,
Some of my recent letters have sounded stilted? Am I holding something back, you ask. Would that I had something to hold back. The truth is I have begun to fear you may find me rather dull. I am an unconfident person, with small talents. If, just for a time, someone’s attention seems to wander, I am like an actress who has made the mistake of looking at the audience, and has seen someone yawn. You have told me so much about the people you are meeting - a host of new characters introduced at a time when the action begins to flag. I can’t respond in kind. My concerns are with my children and domestic life. Even the characters at my disposal are giving me trouble.
I have a growing fear that Kathleen may become a nun. She has lately developed a certain gravity - not intensity, or anything tiresome, but some profound concern with the spiritual life. I dare not mention it to Fergus for fear that once out in the open the idea will be like a demon released from a box. I look at her when I think she won’t notice, I hardly dare breathe on her. It would be wrong for her, I know it would; but if I gave a hint of how I felt it might kindle something in her. I would sacrifice all my other children - except Stephen - to prevent this. I feel quite pagan, constantly offering them up; take them. Lord, take them, be assuaged.
Fergus seems better for his time in Ireland; but whether it has settled anything or not, I don’t know. We are off to Spain for this wedding at the beginning of September. There! I shall have something different to write about, new place, new people.
My love,
Constance
Tarragona
September, 1969
Sheila,
For a full account of the wedding you must apply to Fergus, or to Kathleen, the representative sibling. I don’t recall a great deal about it - so much wine in all that heat. Fergus and Manuela’s parents ma
de a good job of conversing in Latin while I grimaced and made signs. Dominic made a speech in Spanish - considerably shorter than it would otherwise have been. Manuela looked not the least daunted at the prospect of making her home in our grey little land.
We leave in three days. How fleeting is joy! Time has got clogged with dust here, the heat slows the pace of life. This is the land of mañana - Ireland, too. I prefer it. Somewhere inside this brisk, busy woman I have discovered a lotus-eater.
I like it all. I like the distinctive smell of the place, compounded of heat and drains, garlic and oil and strong tobacco. I like the colour. It is only the lying camera which presents an image of dazzling white walls against a blue sky; the walls are the colour of Cornish cream splashed with the brilliance of bougainvillaea. I like the contrast of light and shadow. I am excited by the grit between my toes, the first stirring of the night breeze in my armpits, sweat cooling in the small of my back. I am excited by Fergus. I said to him as we lay quietly satisfied, ‘Why can’t we stay here for ever?’ He said, ‘Think of the effort of moving.’
The trouble with lotus-eaters is they don’t struggle to get free. No more now. Have just been violently sick. One drawback I forgot to mention - the heat doesn’t suit me.
Love,
Constance
Sussex
September, 1970
My dear Sheila,
How the years fly. Here am I a year and one granddaughter later and there are you with another volume to your credit and a love affair behind you. He came and went rather quickly, didn’t he, this Alistair? I seem only to have glimpsed his receding figure, running for wife and home like a scalded cat. How careless of him to forget to mention that he was a husband and father of three.
I must confess to some trepidation when confronted with Sketches made in the course of a breakdown. (Isn’t it rather a forbidding title, or is the poetry public hooked on breakdown?) I was afraid it would be too tough for me; I hadn’t expected the poems to be so funny, or so understanding of the itches of everyday life. Fergus took our copy to the lab to show to his colleagues - a rapid translation from determined loyalty to active pride.
You should count yourself lucky. Not much pleases him lately. We have a new priest who is hand-in-glove with the Vatican and bent on dismembering the church. Cromwell had nothing in the way of zeal to compare with what Father John is doing to Our Lady of Lourdes. It’s not just the idols which are crashing down along with the Latin Mass - it’s flowers; only the one bunch for the Virgin, who is lucky to have kept a footing in the place. Compared with the austerity of Our Lady of Lourdes, the village church is a pagan shrine. Our young adore this man, but then he has instituted a folk Mass at which James plays the guitar. Fergus thinks the Catholic Church is running out of control.
Poor Fergus, worse is in store for him, did he but know.
Yesterday I was alone in the sitting-room. It was dusk and I was prey to that sadness which comes of waning energy. Enter Kathleen. One might almost say, Kathleen steals in, so gently did she come to me. It was so unlike her that I put out my hand and drew her down beside me as I might have done many years ago. ‘What is it, pet?’
‘I have something to tell you,’ and she rested her head, which is the colour of bronze chrysanthemums and just as ragged nowadays, against my knee. It’s not going to be a broken window this time, I thought, and I waited, my stomach cold. Then she told me she had lost her faith.
I can’t take this loss of faith seriously, not when she has had it for so long; it is only mislaid, she will find it again, perhaps in the questioning later years. I listened to her earnest analysis of the shortcomings of the Catholic Church and the business of the God of the gaps and all the while I was thinking ‘She is not to become a nun, after all.’ When she had finished, I said, ‘Perhaps what you think of as faith . . .’
‘It’s no use trying to wriggle round it, Ma.’
She had freed herself from something which had shackled her young spirit and felt she must be allowed to make her own explorations in the godless world. It will be a long time before we can talk about this with any hope of mutual understanding. Catholics haven’t been encouraged to examine and discuss their beliefs, with the result that only too often they find rejection easier than reassessment. I said, ‘So long as you don’t exchange it for a political faith which is just as dogmatic and which begets bitterness and anger.’
She seemed surprised that more was not asked of her. ‘I’ll try.’
So she is now officially an atheist. I feel I have willed it. I scarcely know how I shall conduct myself in conversation with Fergus, who will take it hard although he will not put any pressure, intellectual or emotional, on Kathleen.
Toby is coming to stay next month. Isn’t it good that he is settled, even though estate management will never pay him very well? Any chance that you, can fit a visit to Sussex into your schedule of lectures? Or is next month a writing month? It is a pleasure to see your script on an envelope, but it would be even better to have a sight of the face. Think on it.
My love,
Constance
P.S. I can’t give you Cuillane’s address as she hasn’t found anywhere to stay in Oxford yet. She seems to imagine that accommodation will be presented to her along with the scholarship.
Sussex
November, 1970
My dearest Sheila,
What can I say? You decree that this is not to be an occasion for sadness. They had had a long life, a good marriage and at the end they were together on that slippery road. I scarcely know what else I can offer at this moment, so overwhelmed am I by loss. In some ways they were my parents, too. I learnt more from them about family life than I ever learnt in my own home. I will try to follow your example and give thanks; but you can tell Linnie to come to me, she may weep as much as she wants here. Of course we shall come to the funeral.
Our love and sympathy and, yes, thanksgiving -
Constance
Sussex
September, 1971
My dear Sheila,
I am in a quandary and you must come to my rescue. What is the situation between Linnie and this Indian, Pavel?
You warned me we should get into difficulties and indeed we have.
Last month Fergus’s boss called on us. We are not on calling terms. Not only does he not figure in the cast of characters with which I delight my friends, he has long been relegated to the void on the rim of my mind. He is a big, gross man of the kind of which masters-at-arms used to be made. Think of any Jaunty you came across in the WRNS and imagine him twenty years on, muscle turned to flab, the boxer’s face with the broken nose now crimsoned with drink, heavy jowls hanging to shoulder level. Imagine, too, that he hasn’t had his teeth straightened. There you have Dr Douglas Marcus. And there we had him on our doorstep, with his lady friend, at nine o’clock of a misty September evening.
The man is unscrupulous as well as shameless. They were on their way to France and there had been trouble with the sailings from Newhaven, so they thought they would look us up. In other words, we were to provide them with a bed for the night. He has been living with this woman for years, so they no doubt regard themselves as being as good as married. ‘You know Marjorie,’ he said. A big, blonde woman, Marjorie is too well corseted to be blowsy, but it is touch and go. She has bold, bulbous eyes which examined me as if judging the amenities of the establishment by its proprietress.
Fergus poured drinks. She had gin and he whisky, which he downed at one gulp and held out his glass to be replenished. We left the bottle by his side while we retreated to the kitchen. Stephen was in his room studying and the walls of the house throbbed to the music so mysteriously essential to his brain processes. Cuillane was reading quietly at the kitchen table wearing ear-plugs. James, Gillian and Peg were walking the dog and Kathleen was ‘out’, which is the only description she is now prepared to give of her activities. I tapped Cuillane on the shoulder. ‘Go into the sitting- room and be sociable to Dr Marcus and
his lady friend,’ I said when she was receiving me.
When she had departed, Fergus said, ‘I suppose we can count ourselves lucky this has never happened before.’ He was not referring to the matter of Marcus calling on us, but to the problem of having to apply our principles to people of our own age. Our children had been remarkably good in accepting our outdated moral stance; how could we change the rules for this couple? Marcus being Fergus’s boss made it more difficult, rather than less, to make an exception. Compromise would be bad enough, but to compromise for what might be seen as personal advancement would really be selling out to Mammon. Fergus thought we should ‘just let the evening wear on’ and as I had no better suggestion, we produced sandwiches and introduced them to the children as and when they appeared.
By eleven o’clock it had become obvious that there was no question of their putting up at an hotel. Marcus had already grumbled about the expense of staying in France and she was no longer bothering to stifle her yawns. One whisky bottle was empty and we were half-way down another. Fergus has never been tolerant of people who make use of him and this behaviour put steel into his heart; I could see he was prepared to sit talking until morning. I was not. So I said, without explanation, that as it seemed late to go on the road again, we could put them up for the night if they didn’t object to separate rooms. She was too startled to object and he was too far gone.
The next morning as they were leaving I asked if they were taking a long holiday. He said, ‘A couple of weeks. We are on our honeymoon.’ He had a gleam in his eyes, but he was not amused. Neither was I, so I said, ‘If you had told us, you could have had the bridal suite.’
You see why I need to know about Linnie and Pavel. How long we shall be able to maintain our balance on this tightrope, I am not sure.
Come and see us soon if you can spare the time.
Love,
Constance
Sussex
July, 1972
My dear Sheila,
The place is the sitting-room; the light is fading. Picture your Constance as she sits alone by the window writing what has become the annual report on the Byrnes. It is one of those dark purple evenings and she knows she should switch on the lamp, the silly woman, because this is the hour and colour of her sadness. But she will sit on as the trees become dark and lose their form, the earth cools and the night-time scent of the flowers is released. She could weep with longing. So why not close the window, turn on the lamp and behave like a sensible woman? Is it bad, Sheila, to submit to this old ache, to allow it room to move in one’s body? Would it be wiser, at fifty plus, to draw the blinds on the dark garden?