by Nina Bawden
Christine said, ‘Of course Lester’s boy has done very well for himself in that way. His girl’s father made a lot of money out of boot polish.’ She smiled. ‘They’re a dull couple, but it may help them to stumble through to bliss together.’
Mary laughed and said with the surprising ease that she could sometimes say such things to Christine, ‘Sometimes I feel very remiss, not having money of my own.’
She said decidedly, ‘Nonsense, dear. Money greases the wheels, it doesn’t make them go round. And nothing could really compensate for marrying Ruth. That moustache and the heavy Jewish nose. The children will probably inherit it.’
It was a joke, the anti-Semitism was veiled, though Mary sometimes felt with Christine, that this was only because it was something that Hitler had made utterly tasteless. Earlier in her marriage, Mary had been deeply shocked to discover that Lester had a great admiration for the German military machine, and that before the war some of his better friends had been high-ranking Nazis.
Christine said, ‘Before the war, Ruth would have been sent out to India to marry a subaltern of good family.’ She settled back against her pillows with a reminiscent look: Lester’s new daughter-in-law was only an excuse to produce some memory that had suddenly attracted her. ‘Though some quite plain young women made surprising matches that way. I had a cousin, Elizabeth, who attracted a disreputable but delightful major—he had what you call nowadays sex appeal—and reformed him entirely. Not for his happiness, though. Her parents belonged to some curious religious sect who delivered long, extemporary prayers not only before the meal but before every course. Eating in their house was positive purgatory. It was bad enough that they had taught their cook to make rice-pudding; it was even worse to have it congealing on your plate while God was invited, in the dullest language, to bless it.’
She delivered this in a bright, amused voice but looked tired when she finished. She said, with considerable effort, ‘I sometimes think it was a pity we gave up India. The life there would have suited Johnny very well.’
‘I suppose it would,’ Mary said, after a pause. There was no point in taking Christine up on what she had said. She was clever, but her mind was no longer fluid. It had been set long ago in well-established grooves, some good, some bad. But in a curious way the goodness triumphed. Mary was not tolerant and had long ago given up admiring Christine for manners of thought that were different from her own, but there was still something about her mother-in-law that she found admirable. Where most people doubted or apologized for their views, Christine was unabashed by hers. She came from a background where you did not have to apologize for your beliefs; she could, without blushing, sigh for the passing of a colonial system because it might have provided her son with an opportunity to fulfil himself.
Mary said, ‘He could still have gone out to Kenya, or somewhere like that.’
‘That wouldn’t be the same thing, dear.’ Her eyes flickered with amusement.
Mary said, ‘You look tired. I’ve stayed too long.’
‘No.’ She smiled with some energy. ‘There aren’t many people I enjoy talking to now. You listen to me so kindly.’
‘I enjoy it,’ Mary said and felt uncomfortably ashamed because she had not come to visit her simply out of affection. She said quickly, ‘Christine—there’s something I want to ask you. What do you think of Julian?’
She seemed surprised. ‘What do I think of him? I don’t know, dear. I hardly know him now though he has been charming to me the few times we have met. Before the war, he stayed at Fitchet once or twice when we were home on leave. A bright, well-mannered boy. He and Johnny were such good friends—such beautiful boys. They were at the age when boys can be beautiful, you know—much more beautiful than girls. A joy to watch. They used to go out for the day on their bicycles and come back looking—as if they had been bathed in gold.…’
Her voice was musically nostalgic, a sad, haunting tune. She glanced at Mary and said gently, ‘You mustn’t be jealous of Julian, dear. It’s hard for women sometimes. Men’s friendships are so deep, they seem to share so many memories.’
‘I don’t think I’m jealous of Julian,’ Mary said and, in the same second, wondered, appalled, whether this was true. She had wanted to tell Christine that she thought Julian dishonest, but her suggestion had made it impossible. ‘He’s intelligent, of course,’ she said reservedly, ‘and charming. His charm is a weapon.’
Christine sank into her pillows. ‘How cleverly you put things, Mary dear.’ Her face was withdrawn, disinterested. Mary realized that she had only once looked really animated, when she had been talking about her cousins in India who had taught their cook to make rice-pudding. It was as if she had suddenly joined the ranks of the exhausted old who can only care about the past and the already dead, as if she hadn’t the energy, any more, to be concerned about the living.
She lay quiet so long that Mary thought she must be asleep. She watched her, conscious how much she loved her and knowing it would be impossible to tell her so. Then Christine opened her eyes. ‘Forgive me,’ she said, and held out her hand. Mary took it, the thin fingers closed on hers with a light, cold pressure. She said, ‘Thank you for coming to see me.’
Mary longed to make some delicately tender gesture. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said awkwardly.
‘You’re very kind. A very kind girl.’
‘Oh no. I’m not kind.’
Christine smiled, a faint ripple on her lips. ‘Why do you always underestimate your good qualities?’
This struck an odd note. ‘I don’t. I think of them all the time.’
‘I wonder.’ She looked at Mary lingeringly, her eyes amused and loving. There was no trace of the veil she usually drew between herself and the world and it worried Mary. Christine must be very ill to have got to the stage where she could speak intimately to another human being; it was something, Mary sensed, that she would only do if she were drunk, which was unthinkable, or dying.
‘You parade your bad qualities,’ she said, ‘as if you were proud of them. Like wearing a hair shirt the wrong way out. You have such a—lively sense of sin.’
‘Have I?’ Mary was startled, almost annoyed.
‘I’m glad you married Johnny,’ she said surprisingly. Then she paused. ‘I hope you will both ask Lester’s advice. About this arrangement with Julian.’ Her eyes twinkled a little. ‘He’ll be doubly interested since it is likely to be such a family concern.’
Her speech was changing all the time, growing stronger and then suddenly fading, like bells on a windy night. Now it was blurred as if she were speaking through cotton wool. Mary thought that she was becoming incoherent. She leaned over her and said distinctly, ‘We’re going down this weekend—tonight—to talk it over with him. Martin’s staying with friends.’
‘Oh good,’ she said. ‘Johnny needs someone to keep an eye on him.’ Her voice quickened and strengthened almost urgently as if there was something she had intended to say for a long time and knew there was not much time left now. ‘I hope you’ll stay with him, dear. Anyway, for as long as you can.’
‘What an extraordinary thing to say.’ Mary’s astonished voice was too loud. Christine shrank away from it and murmured, ‘I’m sorry. Did I upset you? I only meant that you are so much tougher than he is in many ways. More forward looking, I think. It must sometimes be difficult for you.…’
Her voice faded, her eyes nervously searched the ceiling. This was not what she had meant—not even what she had meant to say. Mary saw that her courage had gone and the idea that Christine had needed courage for some reason, frightened and repelled her.
She began to talk rapidly, out of embarrassment. ‘Perhaps you’re right about my sense of sin.’ She gave a strained little laugh. ‘You know, when I was a child, there was a sampler hanging in my room, above my bed. I think my grandmother made it when she was a child. It said, The Eye of the Lord is Upon You. It was the sort of thing that is bound to affect one, don’t you think? It probably gave me a
n ever-present sense of guilt.’
Christine gave a brief, cold laugh. ‘I wish I could remember my childhood so amusingly, Mary.’
The room had darkened, in the last half-hour the fog had come down and pressed like a cushion against the windows. ‘I hope you’re not driving down tonight,’ Christine said.
‘The car’s blown a gasket. We’re going down by train. Clara’s coming too, I think.’
‘I’m glad. The train is so much more reliable.’ Her voice was reserved, she withdrew her hand, gently, into the shadows.
Chapter Eleven
A dark, coughing evening. The station was a yellow cave cut off from the sky by a thick, soupy ceiling through which the announcer’s voice boomed, hollow as a foghorn on the river. The platform was empty. A blackboard by the barrier had a notice scrawled on it in yellow chalk; the train would leave fifty minutes late.
Mary waited by the barrier. Everyone looked pinched, chill, smaller than life, coat collars turned up, lips compressed against the bitter air. Faces had a terrible, grey uniformity, stamped out by cold, by limited failure, by lack of any kind of vivid hope. Mary felt cold and insignificant, nobody and nothing seemed real.
Then she saw Johnny, arm in arm with Clara and Julian. They were laughing and talking, striding long-legged and bare-headed across the grey station as if they were walking on clipped Cumberland turf on a crisp, clear morning. They looked, in that instant, like visitors from a brighter planet. It wasn’t just Mary’s illusion. She noticed that people glanced at them twice, made way for them like courtiers, and felt an absurd gratitude as they bore down upon her, smiling, and swept her up into their sparkling orbit.
‘We’re so terribly sorry. Have you been waiting long? You must be frozen.’
They surrounded her with smiles, with affection, mysteriously full of a bright, secretive gaiety like children who have just been promised an exciting treat. Johnny kissed her, Clara took her arm. ‘Mary, you must hear our news,’ she said.
Her face, golden-pale and angular, shone with a new promise. She looked younger, less diffident, as if life had suddenly offered her something more solid and definite than she had known up to now.
‘Wait till we get a drink,’ Johnny said.
They raced across the station to the buffet, laughing and coughing, crowded against the bar. Their faces swam, handsome and bright with cold in the glass behind the shelves of bottles.
‘Now,’ Clara said. She perched on a high stool, long legs twined round each other, big hands thrust deep into the pockets of the expensive leather coat she had bought in Switzerland just after the war and worn, oblivious of fashion, ever since. ‘Darling, Julian and I are getting married.’
She smiled, a glowing, unguarded smile, perfectly sure that everyone must share her happiness. Mary glanced at Johnny and caught a look that was half guilty amusement, half shy appeal.
She said quickly, ‘I’m so pleased—I do hope you’ll be awfully happy.’ To her own ears the words sounded grudging and stilted though she had not meant them to be and no one else seemed to notice it.
Certainly Clara didn’t. Her happiness was obvious—in the way she smiled at Julian, smiled at everyone as if she loved them, in the way she began every sentence with ‘Julian says …’ Her opinions were his opinions now and she wanted everyone to know it. She laughed at his jokes, her long, pale face shining with an almost awed adoration that was slightly absurd but wholly innocent and entirely in character. It had taken Mary a long time to realize that in spite of her age and terrifyingly Roedean voice, Clara was still a perpetual pupil desperately needing a master to admire. She was quite unable to believe that anything she had done, anything she had known, was of any importance and moved, humble, wondering and faintly ridiculous, on the fringes of other people’s worlds. Her flat in Battersea was always full of people who shared only one common factor—that their lives had been as different as possible from Clara’s own. They drank the drink and smoked the cigarettes she provided—she neither drank nor smoked herself—and largely ignored her. She listened to all comers with the same grave, intent little frown, finding the stupid interesting and the shabby pathetic, not out of deliberate charity, but out of innocence. Mary had once protested that she allowed any throw-out to exploit her but this was just what Clara wanted. She was ashamed because she had money and her friends had not, ashamed because she had been so lucky. Besides, they were such interesting people, she said earnestly: this woman had been in a concentration camp, that man had had a nervous breakdown. There was some reason for relief, Mary thought, in the fact that Julian had none of the usual qualifications for Clara’s attention.
Clara was saying something to Johnny; Julian whispered in Mary’s ear, ‘Don’t you think she’ll be a help to me in my career?’
His mockery was gentle and affectionate. She saw that it would be difficult now to find convincing arguments against Johnny going into business with his brother-in-law, and she was sure, suddenly, that Johnny must have known what was in the wind. He saw Julian often and Clara more frequently than she did—was it likely that they would have hidden their intentions from him? She said through a veil of anger, not with Julian but with Johnny, ‘You mean she’s in such wonderfully good taste?’ He raised his eyebrows at her and she added, ‘I can never tell whether you’re serious or not.’
He smiled. ‘I’ve wanted to marry her for a long time. It’s time she had someone to look after her, don’t you think?’
His tone, almost throbbingly sincere, rebuked her for doubting him and dissolved her anger, leaving her feeling churlish and awkward. The ability to speak of conventional feelings easily, to lay them out on a plate, as it were, seemed the product of a kind of mysterious self-sufficiency that had always confounded her.
Clara turned, looking radiant and handsome and smiled at Julian’s last words with such gratitude that Mary felt emotion heave inside her like a child. ‘Julian thinks I’m incapable of managing my own affairs,’ she said.
‘I never said you were incapable.’ He smiled back, mock-indignant. ‘I only said you were too loosely tethered to the world.’
Her eyes met his with bright invitation as if they were quite alone. ‘Darling, you pinched that from Osbert Sitwell.’
He laughed. ‘Damn it, one can’t always be original.’ He touched her arm. ‘It was a very basic kind of joke. Like your dreadful coat.’
‘Don’t you like it? I’ll get rid of it.’
It was the meaningless cross-talk of lovers. Johnny smiled, acknowledging this as he lifted his glass to them. ‘D’you know,’ he said, ‘nothing has made me as happy as this for a long time.’
His eyes were bright with sentiment, no other consideration seemed to move him except the happy one that two people he loved now loved each other.
‘I’m glad,’ Julian said. He looked at Johnny and Clara looked at them both with a loving pride that was maternal and glowingly uxorious at one and the same time. Affection shone in their three faces like sunlight. It was an affection that was perfectly expressed, not over-emphasized but nothing held back either: here were three people quite content with the moment and with each other. Watching them, Mary felt out—or, rather, shut in, locked up behind the bars of her own mean doubts and suspicions, looking out miserably at the wide fresh air and the happy free.
Then Julian glanced at her. Not triumphantly, but with a kind of academic thoughtfulness. He might have been a film director gauging the emotional response of his audience to a scene he had just finished shooting. Mary wondered why Julian should want to impress her—she felt certain that he did—and then how it was that Johnny and Clara who had been surrounded all their lives by things that were genuine and good, should be so easily taken in by the fake. Julian gave her a queer little smile and suddenly it was like falling off a cliff at the end of a dream. She had just that icy-cold sensation of lurching down into blackness. Then she was back in the chromium bright bar again and Johnny was clicking open the gold hunter he always wore in hi
s waistcoat in winter, narrowing his eyes at it as he always did and saying the train was due just about now, wasn’t it?
They were late, in fact. Whistles were blowing, doors were slamming in the narrow tunnel of smoky light that was all they could see in the fog. Julian said good-bye at the barrier, Clara lingered for a kiss and then ran after them. She thrust her hand beneath Mary’s elbow and squeezed it, saying softly, ‘Darling, I do so hope you’re happier about Johnny now.’
‘Was it Julian’s idea that you should tell me this evening?’
‘You mean to set your mind at rest?’ She had as good as admitted that Johnny had known already. But her laughter was sound and clear as good bells. ‘Darling, no. Tell it not in Gath,’—she giggled like a schoolgirl—‘It was entirely mine.’
Her expression was tranquil in the yellow gloom. Her innocence was disturbing, Mary thought, because you could never be sure how innocent she really was. They found an empty carriage, Johnny swung their suitcases onto the rack. She turned earnestly to Mary. ‘In fact, Julian didn’t want to tell you yet. He wanted—well, things to be settled first.’ She spoke in an undertone, glancing at Johnny’s back, just as if they hadn’t, Mary thought resentfully, already discussed her attitude between them. Then she went on in a louder voice, ‘Julian can’t bear not to be liked. He’s really wretchedly unconfident. If someone dislikes him he feels there must be something dreadfully wrong with him.’
The look in her eyes said please and at the same time shone with an absolute, glowing confidence that you only had to explain what a perfectly awful time someone had had and everyone would automatically place them a few notches higher in their estimation.
‘He had a perfectly miserable childhood, his mother left when he was a baby, you know, and his father was awfully poor.’ She spoke with the reverence of the rich or near-rich for poverty. ‘He went to a terrible private school.…’