Before the War

by Fay Weldon

  ‘His chance will come again,’ said Sherwyn. ‘What about me? No-one takes me seriously any more. I go out to dine with Marjorie and heads turn: once it was for me, now it’s for Marjorie.’

  ‘You’re jealous,’ said Rita. ‘You’re so used to being top dog.’ That surprised him. Could it be true? He certainly felt that the attention the public gave Marjorie was absurd. He, Sherwyn, was acclaimed for his talent and achievement. All Marjorie had to do was waft around and look pretty.

  No, it was not jealousy. It was justified resentment. Quite different. He told her so.

  ‘You always had your eye on the main chance,’ said Rita. ‘That much was always obvious. Writers are so different from artists. Painters just seem to want to destroy themselves.’

  They almost quarrelled. Sherwyn said she shouldn’t worry. Another war would come along and C.R.W. Nevinson would be saved by the bell, and absinthe would run out so E.L.T. would be saved from a nasty death. (He was wrong. The absinthe never runs out.)

  Rita said war was impossible and Hitler was only taking back what had been stolen from the Germans after the last war. That really irritated Sherwyn. He was becoming quite a patriot, to his own surprise. His current intended, the delightful Elvira, model and bookseller, talked politics quite a lot. It must be her influence. Sherwyn complained that Rita was a dull-witted socialist, Rita that Sherwyn was a reactionary little Englander.

  ‘The country is in a very serious mess,’ declared Sherwyn. His voice rose. Ladies who lunched looked in his direction. Hats of all shapes and sizes turned to him – velvet parrots, jaunty feathers, discreet turbans and coquettish little veils, floppy brims – though how anyone ate in them was a mystery.

  ‘Sherwyn, do keep your voice down. Ladies hate to have attention drawn to them.’

  ‘You could have fooled me.’ But he lowered it and the hats turned away. ‘The nation is torn between bourgeoisie-hating socialists – like my own dear prosperous bourgeois publisher – and now apparently you, my dear.’

  ‘Sir Jeremy’s a communist. Don’t you even know the difference?’

  ‘There is precious little, other than that “communism” uses a strong magnetic force to draw every appeaser, every fruit juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, “Nature Cure” quack, pacifist, and feminist in England to its side. The socialist magnet has a slightly weaker draw. As for thesis, antithesis and synthesis, have you ever known a decent working man take the slightest interest in Marxism? Hence the grand old socialist sport of denouncing the bourgeoisie, at which your initialled bed companions so excel.’

  ‘No-one can accuse you of doing that, Sherwyn. And you can only be quoting Elvira. How suggestible you are!’ Good, at least she was jealous.

  ‘Had you not noticed how socialist writers, propagandist writers, dull, empty windbags the lot – ’

  ‘Name them!’

  ‘Shaw, Wells, Nesbit, Blair, Sinclair, Tressel, starting with that bore William Morris. Will that do? Hypocrites the lot. Lashing themselves into frenzies of rage against the class to which they invariably belong. If not by birth by adoption.’

  ‘I was right. You are eaten up with jealousy. You want their reviews. I daresay they want your money. Writers are worse than painters. Can we not talk politics? I was only saying what everyone else is saying.’

  ‘I would expect no more of you, my dear.’ Nor did he. He calmed down. He really must learn that Elvira was an exception. She was not like other women. She had a brain. He was waiting for his navarin d’agneau aux navets and Rita for her coquilles à la crème. Sometimes he thought her costermonger origins showed. Few people ordered fish for both courses. First fish, then meat, was what was customary in the middle class. He had a half bottle of Fleury, she had more champagne, simple girl!

  ‘I have no children. Men never love me. They only want me.’ Time for more tears, it seemed, and a soupçon of self pity. Then she said, surprising him, ‘How clever of you to have reproduced yourself. How are your twins?’

  Of course. The twins. Sir Jeremy’s and Adela’s, alleged children of The Change. Rita knew well enough they were Vivvie’s, not Adela’s – Sherwyn had come back from Austria and told her the whole story, or at any rate the bits that didn’t include his nights with Adela. But apparently she assumed that he, Sherwyn, had been the one to impregnate poor Vivvie. He had been her fiancé, after all, why would she, any more than Adela, think otherwise? Vivvie’s Angel Gabriel story had always been absurd.

  It got so difficult as years passed and one got older to remember exactly who knew what and who didn’t – things slipped out. A great recommendation for telling as few lies through life as one could manage. He should have kept quiet in the first place.

  Rita’s hand crept over onto his, where it lay on the table. You could always tell a woman’s age by her hands, but Rita’s were inscrutable. They were never her best feature at the best of times, always on the large, rough, working-girl side, but so unlike Marjorie’s little white paws he found himself grateful for their touch. They were all promise. He wished Marjorie would let her hand stray to his every now and then, or his to hers, but she’d have had her fingernails painted some new colour and only tell him to be careful not to smudge them, and put him right off. Perhaps he could take Rita home and comfort her? He didn’t like to see women cry.

  Sherwyn did not bother to deny paternity. It would take too long. He told her he liked to see the twins once or twice a year. For their last birthday he had brought them both back a string of pearls from Italy.

  ‘Doesn’t Sir Jeremy find your interest in them rather strange? If he believes he’s the father? You do live a complicated life, Sherwyn!’

  ‘He takes good care not to complicate his own. If there are boats to be rocked, Sir Jeremy is not going to rock them. I am his prize author. I don’t get literary reviews but I keep the firm in business. He trusts his wife, unlike your friend Nevinson. If Adela has gone to the trouble of presenting him with twin girls and says they are his why should he doubt her? They keep her happy and he wants her happy. As for me I am the husband of a disgraced dead and gone daughter, the twins’ brother-in-law, his ex-son-in-law but two.’ Before Marjorie, Sherwyn had had an unfortunate two-year marriage (including divorce) to a dress designer who had turned out to have lesbian tendencies. ‘It keeps the family in touch but not too much in touch. I drop by, see the twins, smile at Adela who smiles back, and go away again. It suits everyone.’

  In truth, he visited the twins to keep an eye on them, to keep his faith with Vivvie as a Joseph to her misbegotten babies, but he was not going to tell Rita this, or anyone. It behoved him as an Englishman to keep quiet about such irrational behaviour. Rita asked if the twins were happy with the pearls. In her experience, she said, young girls rather despised pearls. Sales at Dickins & Jones were right down. It was impossible to tell cultured pearls from the real thing so how could you know if the gift was priceless or shop-girl?

  Sherwyn said he would never give the girls cheap pearls. They had been most appreciative of them. They’d looked lovely on Stella’s neck, delicate translucent little things, but rather hopeless on Mallory, who didn’t have much neck at all.

  ‘Yes,’ said Rita. ‘I hear they’re very different. Of course twins can have two fathers, if the mother has two lovers around the same time. The first one out belongs to the first lover, the next one to the second. One can only hope Stella is yours.’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ said Sherwyn, surprised again. ‘But Vivvie was hardly the kind to have lovers – though how can one ever know anything about women? For all I know Vivvie took after her mother. Everyone but Sir Jeremy knows Adela is a nymphomaniac, and she’s anyone’s.’ He felt bad. He was traducing Vivvie. Horrible how easily one slipped into this kind of disagreeable banter. He never let Delgano do it.

  ‘Yes, tell me about the fabulous Adela,’ said Rita. ‘I always thought you rather fancied her.’ And she complained that he’d always had a thing about titles at the bes
t of times. He was such a snob. A pity the real aristocrats were always out of reach for someone like Sherwyn. He hadn’t been to Eton, only St Paul’s.

  Sherwyn asked for another half bottle of Fleury. She had more champagne. The main course was very slow in coming. Emboldened by her hand in his Sherwyn told her about the nights he had spent with Adela, which was why he hadn’t been there when Vivvie gave birth and so couldn’t tell her which twin was born first. He was ashamed even to remember the occasion, he said, which was true enough. His conduct was the product of high altitude, he said, summer in the Alps, a temporary insanity.

  ‘And abstinence,’ said Rita. ‘I know what that does to men. But Sherwyn, really, your own mother-in-law! How could you!’

  ‘I know, I know,’ he said. ‘But it was all so long ago: mists of time, all that. But Adela will keep quiet. I try not to meet her eye. Nor does she want to meet mine. I know where too many bodies are buried.’

  ‘Supposing she had triplets! Supposing there were three of you. Do you think

  Mungo could have got to her? He always wanted what was yours.’

  That Sherwyn hadn’t thought of. Nor was it a pleasant thought. Mungo was hardly a candidate for the role of the Angel Gabriel, certainly not one to whom he, Sherwyn, would have been willing to play Joseph. Lucifer, possibly. Sherwyn had assumed Mungo kept turning up with trashy presents for the twins because he was still trying to get back into Lady Adela’s knickers. Or more likely these days – since Adela was beginning to look tiny and withered up, not tiny and delectable any more – to annoy Sir Jeremy for years ago turning down Bolt & Crest as his agency. Boring Olive Crest had long departed the scene, sensibly enough; no doubt having discovered that Mungo was a vindictive man who bore grudges. Crest Zippers were doing just fine, though, under the slogan For Speed and Comfort Just Zip & Unzip! Buttoning’s Such a Bother. Vulgar. It was a possibility of course. Mungo was certainly capable of any villainy. He had been buttering up Sir Jeremy for as long as anyone could remember and had probably been going down to Dilberne Court, one step ahead of Sherwyn every inch of the way.

  Really, he thought. Surely Harrods could do better than this. He wanted to eat fast and take her home to bed and dry her tears and shut her up. When at last the food came the navarin turned out to be greasy mutton on a bed of mashed turnip and swede; her coquilles were rubbery.

  ‘Let’s go home and have something at my place,’ she said. ‘We might as well have gone to Dickins & Jones. The food is better.’

  Sherwyn, gratified, asked for the bill. While they were waiting a large lady came up and asked him if he would be kind enough to sign his book for her. She had bought it, his latest, Delgano and The Parisian Affair, in the bookshop on the second floor, and recognised him from a book reading. He thought Rita would be impressed by this evidence of his fame but she sighed and took off her mink and ordered a strawberry ice, which came at once, and settled down to eat. He got rid of the large lady as soon as he could, inscribing on the title page his signature, date, place, and the message ‘Patience and shuffle the cards’ which always seemed to be popular with readers, suggesting as it did that some day Fortune would change their life for them as it had his.

  The strawberry ice seemed to have sweetened Rita and he got her home to her studio – the rent paid for, he gathered, by E.L.T.’s wife Sybil – which was agreeable enough, smelt as ever of paint, turps, anthracite and old knickers, and yes, there was the crushed velvet purple sofa. Sherwyn acquitted himself well enough. Indeed, Delgano would have been proud of him, and he was in Leicester Square, washed and shaved, to meet Marjorie by seven.

  The film was Fire Over England, with Flora Robson as Queen Elizabeth and Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh as juvenile leads. Marjorie said of Olivier, ‘So handsome! So brutal!’ and of Leigh, ‘Not nearly as pretty as everyone says’ and of Flora Robson nothing at all. Sherwyn thought perhaps he might try being more brutal.

  Saturday Morning, March 11th 1938

  It was a Saturday morning, and an eventful day for Adela. It was her fifty-third birthday which was bad enough. War clouds were gathering over England, someone had said on the radio, but there was little sign of that in Belgrave Square, other than that a lad had delivered four gas masks to the front door at eight in the morning when he should have gone to the back, which was easier to open. The front door always stuck. Adela had called and called for Morna to open it but the woman had refused to hear, as so often these days. Morna would have to go. She was idle and rude. The twins would make a terrible fuss but it would have to be done. However, not today. Today was going to be busy. She would ask the music teacher to stay for lunch – a darling lad, so like Tarzan the Ape Man it was amazing that his fingers were so small and deft – she had said as much to him, and he had said ‘If I’m a Johnny Weissmuller then be my Maureen O’Sullivan. Those beautiful grey eyes!’ so he was certainly interested, deserved lunch. His name was Carlo. When she’d looked in the mirror this morning she’d actually been rather pleased. She didn’t look a day more than forty.

  Sex was the most effective beauty treatment of them all, not that this was anything one could say aloud. Sir Jeremy, thank heavens, had always been most attentive, though he was rather falling off these days. He was twenty years older than she. Not of course that she envisaged anything more than lunch. Igor was coming to dinner and it would be just him and her. She had said to Sir Jeremy that the last thing she wanted was her birthday celebrated – people kept looking at one and wondering how old one actually was – and he must go down to Dilberne Court for the weekend as usual. She had never understood this love of horses; horrible, smelly, enormous, oafish things, pooing whenever and wherever the fancy took them. Odd how her life had drawn her to the horse-mad. Perhaps it was something to do with her stars? First Sir Jeremy, now Igor, and of course poor Vivvie and her Greystokes.

  And of course Sir Jeremy had insisted on being there when Vivvie was born, as if they were all in a foaling box, and she’d always thought it was something to do with the way Vivvie had turned out. They said men turned to litigation when the sexual drive left them, but Sir Jeremy’s had turned to horses. But it could be useful. It gave her her weekends free. The Dilberne stud farm had become racing stables, the Grand National was only two weeks away, Mayfair Lights was a keen contender, and the owner Frank Darling would be down to keep an eye on his darling. The least Sir Jeremy could do was to be there too.

  Mayfair Lights was the grandson of Greystokes, long departed this life. Like Vivvie, poor Vivvie. Adela tried not to make the same mistakes with Mallory as she had with Vivvie; let her go to school and tried to focus on her good qualities not her bad, as Mungo had always advised, being so keen on Freud. Freud had suggested that girls who had a low opinion of themselves ended up with an unbalanced ‘id’ and a reduced ‘superego’ which drove them to promiscuity.

  ‘Freud, Adler and Jung,’ Mungo had said, ‘were all of the same opinion.’

  ‘Oh, fried, addled and hung,’ she had replied, thinking herself rather clever. ‘You complain I’m promiscuous but my “id” is in perfectly good order, as you may have noticed. If anything I’m rather vain.’

  Mungo had come back with some nonsense of her having had undemonstrative parents and been orphaned at too early an age. She was still fond of Mungo but really he had to go. At least Sherwyn hadn’t forever been bringing up her past as Mungo loved to, if only, Sherwyn said, in compensation for the inadequacy of his parts: ‘Big nose, small willy.’ Sherwyn could be very catty, but was well endowed. Part, if not all of his attraction. But then she seemed to be so easily attracted to men.

  Those early years were not ones she cared to think about: when as a young orphan everyone thought she was dead and she had been obliged to earn a living pretending to be a spiritualist and healer. But she had even ended up at the Prince of Wales’ sickbed, when his appendix had burst in the nick of time of its own accord, and he was saved from the death everyone expected. The smell of the putrid organ had been a
trocious. But Queen Alexandra had given her a ruby ring in gratitude and she still wore it on special occasions. It had brought her luck. She had worn it on their wedding day when lightning and thunder had split the skies on Monte Verità. Those were the days! She might wear the ring for lunch today. She would choose the pale pink jumper with her white skirt; the jumper was a little tight but that was all to the good: her breasts were as full of promise as they ever were, little perky mounds with pronounced nipples: the deep red of the ruby would flash invitation and promise.

  There may have been some truth in what Mungo said about belief in the self. Adela had done what she could to build up Mallory’s confidence and Mallory showed no signs of being at all easy with her favours the way Vivvie had been. And this was in spite of the misfortune of Mallory’s looks – even worse than Vivvie but at least not so enormous and much, much quicker of thought and tongue. No-one would mistake Mallory for the village idiot. Vivvie had been smart enough, just reluctant to speak before she thought and determined to speak the truth. Mallory had no such ambition. If anything, unlike Vivvie, Mallory was turning out to be a man hater and a bluestocking, insisting that the North London Collegiate inspired by the famous bluestockings the Misses Beale & Buss was the only place for her:

  ‘Miss Buss and Miss Beale,

  Cupid’s darts do not feel.

  How different from us,

  Miss Beale and Miss Buss.’

  Mallory went all the way over on the No 13 bus to Hampstead every day just to study science. She obviously took after her Aunt Rosina, who had been something of an academic and probably, as so many of these women were, a good friend of Sappho. Stella was happy enough to be home tutored: a stream of young tutors came and went, some of them good-looking and all of them in the end half in love with Adela, la belle dame sans merci, and just occasionally, and very prudently, a few of them gratified in that love.