Progress of Stories

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Progress of Stories Page 11

by Laura (Riding) Jackson


  For this transformation involved no drastic change in the character of the place—commercially speaking: it became a place where people went to live permanently because it had never really been a pleasure-colony. The boats that people left behind did not bring the family great wealth, but they gave them a continuity of interest in the place as a centre of events. It takes very little, after all, to make a place interesting to people whose interest in it is purely personal. Some of the boats were useful in enlarging their home on the beach; others they sold to new temporarily permanent residents; many warped and rotted in the sun while waiting to be sold again. In short, there was a slow family activity which, by the time Cards was, at least noticeably, the only one of them left, made him the town's most substantial resident—apart from Lady Port-Huntlady (although 'substantial' is not an adjective that can be appropriately applied to her). In addition to this private substantiality, Cards was also, as has been explained, the official house-agent of Port Huntlady. And he had also come to own a motor-boat in which he took parties to Foolish Island. No one lived on Foolish Island; it was merely a place to go to from Port Huntlady. People went there with lunches and came back. Lady Port-Huntlady and Cards were in business together, and the business had something to do with Foolish Island. This was all people knew, and all there seemed to know.

  Port Huntlady houses were never spring-cleaned, repaired or remodelled, except by their successive occupants. This system, however, maintained them in a reasonable condition of habitability, since people always began living in them with the idea of living in them permanently. Improvements and remodellings were always going on; there were carpenters and masons in Port Huntlady who came and went as the people came and went. It also happened that in going away people left many of their possessions behind. For when they went away it was usually in a hurry, after a sudden tragic-seeming decision that they were not equal to the spiritual demands their exile made on them. They went away in a hurry, ashamed to admit to themselves that they were glad to be going away; and so they left many of their possessions behind, as a penitential offering to their better selves. Perhaps, they told themselves, they would come back again when they were stronger. The truth was, of course, that weakness and not strength was necessary for life at Port Huntlady.

  The sudden decision of people to leave Port Huntlady always came as the climax of a gradually formulated question to themselves: what are they doing in Port Huntlady? Nowhere else could it be prettier than it was there—the flat, low, sea, as near as if they were in a boat upon it, when it was calm, and farther away than the sky when it stormed, foaming up immeasurable black clouds. And the town itself, a bright, self- conscious table of security and intelligence standing over the sea, ready for anything that might happen. Lady Port-Huntlady had just such a look in her eyes—unprejudiced as to the present, curious about the future, wondering what might happen next, yet not doing anything herself to make things happen. And the abrupt, challenging mountains behind—watching, watching: how brave they looked, how brave they made one feel. And the frantic, confused sunsets, so unlike the sedate Lady Port-Huntlady, who understood everything, and so unlike Cards, who let things go over his head for the fun of keeping calm no matter what might happen—the somehow dishonourable sunsets, lying postcards from lying heavens of prophecy. How beautiful! And the twilight before the honest moon came up—full of wicked temptations to do things of no importance whatever; when, indeed, they merely sat on verandas wholesomely alike, with green sun-flaps fluttering and cool cane rockers balancing a trifle in every direction—and laughed, and thought, "What could be prettier than Port Huntlady?" and tried hard not to ask themselves the question: what were they doing in Port Huntlady?

  Lady Port-Huntlady's houses were not very different architecturally from all the other houses in Port Huntlady, and the furniture and fittings were neither conspicuously better nor worse. And yet they were, or gave the impression of being, more desirable houses. People felt in them some homely assurance of occupancy: they were not merely empty houses, which one rented and tried to fill—one did not feel alone in them. It was as if they were already occupied, and, in some not immediately oppressive way, by Lady Port-Huntlady herself. She never visited them—Cards always arranged everything for her; it was merely the insinuating pervasiveness of Lady Port-Huntlady. Everything even faintly associated with Lady Port-Huntlady was charged with her especial fragrance, an unanalysable impression of perfection that easily became, so to speak, one's other self. For a little while the people who lived in Lady Port- Huntlady's houses were Lady Port-Huntlady. They were quite perfect—and, like her, falsely perfect; but the falseness did not matter while the perfection lasted. With Lady Port-Huntlady, the perfection was permanent; and the falseness lay only in the fact that she did not really exist. And with them the falseness only manifested itself when they began to dislike Lady Port-Huntlady, as someone whom they could not equal in falseness—in perfection: when they began to get tired. And at this point they usually quarrelled with her in some matter in which she was, of course, always right, and were obliged to go away, feeling their disappointment with themselves as anger with her. Lady Port-Huntlady's tenants went away from Port Huntlady sooner than the tenants of other houses. And in going they left even more possessions behind than other temporarily permanent residents. Their association with Lady Port-Huntlady made them feel more permanent than the rest and inspired in them more extravagant provisions for permanence; and their departures, besides, always had the quality of secret escapes from Lady Port-Huntlady, with all the accompanying improvidences that characterize secret escapes.

  It has been explained that the people who came to Port Huntlady were distinguished from people in general by a mental eccentricity that may be described as an honourable compunction about—well, about how much they actually understood themselves, other people, things, anything. Lady Port- Huntlady understood everything; she was not, therefore, in her life at Port Huntlady, motivated by any compunction. Her understanding was perfect. She was perfect. And she was at the same time thoroughly insincere. For she never made a false step. It was impossible to find her out in anything. She was always right. She kept up the pretense of a reigning world of perfection all the time; which meant that she must be thoroughly insincere—where was there such a world? Was there such a world in Port Huntlady? And if there was, did it not mean that Port Huntlady was itself false—did it really exist as a place as other places existed? And Lady Port-Huntlady herself, considered as a human being? How to describe her as a physical presence: looking like a permanent invalid who had evaded the mortal toll of illness by dying inwardly, remaining outwardly alive—not large, not small, not young, not old, not beautiful, not ugly, not particularly anything, and yet so decidedly there? Never seeming to say anything—and yet, after one had left her presence, it seemed that she had said a great deal, at least that one had understood a great many things that one did not really understand. As if something poignantly final were happening, or had just happened, or was about to happen, that one could not fail to understand—like the end of the world? Wasn't that all illusion, and wasn't she responsible for the illusion?

  Then Cards. He was fat, spasmodically energetic, always full of jokes. He seemed human enough. His little green eyes shone in a friendly way when one spoke to him about anything, as if to say, "Ah, there's more in it than comes to the surface, but we won't say anything about that" And yet this was uncomfortable too; it made one feel that one was cutting close to the edge of mysteries. And Lady Port-Huntlady made one feel that one was inside the mysteries. And neither was true of one. One was merely extremely interested in something, without knowing exactly what it was. With Cards and Lady Port- Huntlady one had to pretend that one knew what it was, for one's own ease—Cards was so secretive about it, she so open. That was what got on one's nerves and broke down one's good humour—yes, even one's honour. And one went away in a fit of frankness with oneself, a sort of fit of irritation with one's honour. And one left
many of one's possessions behind. And presumably they all went to Cards; for when people took over the houses they did not find in them the kind of things that they could take for their own—to leave behind, in their turn, with other things.

  In Port Huntlady people rose out of the world to an upper ether of truth and clarity that—what was the use of pretending—could not possibly exist. The world was the world, and the things that happened in that world were the realities. And there was no outside to that world, nowhere where the illumination—the understanding—was better. If there was an outside, it was, on the contrary, darker there. In the end Port Huntlady always clapped that dark heavily round them. And they hurried away into the light again.

  2

  On Foolish Island there was only one building, the boat-house, and this was too large for its purpose. It was made of reinforced concrete, whitewashed and then stippled with colour, like all the houses of Port Huntlady; except that several colours had been used in the stippling, which gave the effect, because of the careless spread of the boathouse, of yards of cotton print suitable for children's frocks but not made up into anything in particular. So the houses of Port Huntlady gave the effect of ready-made shirts, blouses, aprons or holiday suits for grownup people, to be had in colours to suit every taste and in all reasonable sizes. And the stuff, like the stuff of the boat-house, of the best—fast colour, everlasting, too good, in fact. The front of the boat-house followed the curve of the shore of Foolish Island; the back, facing the interior of the island, was windowless, as if to say, "That looks out only on Foolish Island." The front of the boat-house looked towards Port Huntlady, but with a smile of insolent disinterest, as if to say, "There's nothing to see, it's all tiresome fancy, but look if you must." When people went to Foolish Island with lunches, they would make themselves cosy in the lounge which ran the length of the curve, opening out folding-chairs and folding- tables near a window; and, perspiring a little from the climb up the boat-house steps and the violence of trying to make themselves cosy in a room that was really too large to be cosy in, would dutifully give themselves up to the uncertain demands of the scenery.

  From Foolish Island Port Huntlady looked like the top of the world. Looking up towards it, people felt that, in theory, they were extremely moved. Ah, the lady-like beauty of Port Huntlady—-looking up from Foolish Island: the sea rolling towards it in slow, punctilious terraces, the cliff rising under the town like a proud heart lifting up a proud head. No, Port Huntlady did not, after all, appeal, although one knew that nothing could be prettier. This was why one respected it and loved it, so to speak, merely platonically. No, there was something repellent about Port Huntlady—as there is something repellent about a woman whose disinclination for sex makes her sexually attractive. From Foolish Island Port Huntlady rose forbiddingly and temptingly above the fictitious emotions it inspired. From Foolish Island one saw Port Huntlady as a place that one had no right to be in because one was not good enough; and yet that one could not resist living in, at least for a time, exactly because one was not good enough.

  Under the lounge, between the cement supports, there were roomy boat-stalls and dressing-rooms. The boat-stalls were empty, the dressing-rooms rarely used. It was here that the cats of the island lived—a ginger race, large, ugly, stupid, affectionate. They did not seem to mind living alone on the island, or to grow wild or unfriendly. When visitors came they were glad to see them. But it never occurred to visitors to take them away for pets, nor would they have been happy in Port Huntlady: Foolish Island was their home. They lived on the remains of the visitors' lunches—perhaps on little else. And they slept and bore their families in civilized privacy and comfort in the lunch-hampers that people were always leaving behind and that somehow found their way to the roomy boat-stalls and dressing-rooms. We all know how lunch-hampers, like honeymoon dressing-cases with silk linings and gold or silver fittings, grow cumbersome and antiquated on their first trip, break a strap or a handle, spill the tightest flask and, regardless of their cost or the sentiment attached to them, are recklessly presented to strangers.

  This observation is irrelevant to our story, except that it presents the ginger cats of Foolish Island in the light of strangers and, in so doing, emphasizes the character of the island itself—its clockishness, let me say. We all know how, on our travels, a sudden sense of the strangeness of strangers makes something in us snap, as if we had just seen a clock for the first time for months: we come back to the present from a lazy delusion of recumbence upon the past. Well, at Foolish Island Port Huntlady people came back to the present from a lazy delusion of recumbence upon the future. Port Huntlady was only a train-journey, only a dream that they dreamed in the world proper. And Foolish Island was a point in the dream where they saw a clock, and got out, and took the train back again, turning the dream round as children manipulate their toy-trains by the laws of impulse rather than of machinery.

  And so the cats under the boat-house at Foolish Island must be interesting to us on account of the effect that they had on the visitors. The cats were not only strangers but the cats of strangers. And who were the strangers whose cats these were? The strangers were the people themselves. We all know the power of cats to make us feel ill at ease, or at least ill at ease in houses whose household gods they are and whose domestic graces they articulate by making them strange to strangers. But we shall leave the cats of Foolish Island for the present and perhaps not speak of them again, as we shall soon be leaving Foolish Island, and, finally, Port Huntlady, and perhaps not be speaking of either again.

  Above the lounge was another floor. No one was ever seen to go up to it except Cards. Lady Port-Huntlady also went up to it, but only on night visits to Foolish Island. People knew that about once a month she and Cards went to Foolish Island alone, returning sometime before dawn, but they did not know that her business with Cards had anything to do with the storeroom above the lounge; they merely knew that it had something to do with Foolish Island. Exactly what this business was has no important bearing on our story. We must treat of it briefly, as we have treated of the cats briefly, in order not to return to the matter again, if possible. Such matters do not carry the story along; on the contrary, they retard the story. They represent rather the weight of the story in words, or the time that the material of the story took to shape itself into a single pathetic impression by which it may be related to other stories, forming with them such a baggage of half-truths as we may carry about with us like an intimate and therefore virtuous vice—something to think about with a perverse possessiveness that cannot, however, lead to much outward confusion, being in its very privacy so unambitious. You know how it is with some half-essential patent article you buy, perhaps a fountain-pen, or a bottle of ink, or a dictionary: you speak of 'my' dictionary, and so on, and it is all rather shadowy. Exactly what the business between Cards and Lady Port-Huntlady was, then, is a matter standing in the way of your ultimate enjoyment of this story as a thing of your own. It is—how shall we say—the pious tediousness of the author, who, in telling a story, must always observe the fiction that to tell a story is to persuade people of something entirely true, or publicly actual; this side of a story is called its verisimilitude.

  It is, of course, obvious that to tell a story is to persuade people of something almost false. We are all aware that there is no such place as Port Huntlady. It may well be that there is a place to which Port Huntlady stands as a lie stands to the truth. In fact, this is not far from being the case. And this is why some matters secondary to the story must be brought in, such as the business between Cards and Lady Port-Huntlady, to make the story seem true as well as, quite frankly, a story. For this true-seeming is the power of the story to keep your interest until you have abandoned, quite frankly, those rational standards of interest with which we all prop up our chins when our thoughts scurry between brain and heart and we can do no better than be proud. It is the moral pretence of the story created by our joint vanity in being conscientious, orderly and
truthful creatures—before we give ourselves up to its gentle idiocy, hypnotized by our physical susceptibility to less exacting notions of what is worthy of our interest. Ah, the indulgent muse of stories, Lady Nonsense, who knows how to hide the severities behind her pale, expressionless, almost silly face and let time become a bland truce between laughing and crying.

  And Lady Port-Huntlady? Who can prove her to be other than Lady Nonsense? Who can prove that Lady Nonsense does not understand everything? Who can prove that Lady Nonsense is not Lady Understanding, and that Lady Understanding is not Lady Nonsense turning up in this particular story as Lady Port-Huntlady, resolved to let other people tire of equivocation before she does? But how to describe the business between Cards and Lady Port-Huntlady in as short a sentence as the charm of the story will permit? For we must not do violence to the charm of the story—that is, to its hospitality (how it makes one sit down and forget the pressure of the severities)—by reminding ourselves too brutally at any point of the nature of this transaction, which is, after all, a cold exchange between your desire, on the one hand, to pay your respects to the really important things without getting actually involved, so to speak, in their family life, and, on the other hand, my desire (or perhaps we should say the desire of Lady Nonsense, or of Lady Understanding, or perhaps we had better say, of Lady Port-Huntlady) to make somewhat light of the really important things before visitors, or at any rate, not to urge anyone to stay longer than he wishes.

  That is, by exercising the limited courtesies possible between us we create between us the charm of the story; we have a tepid fascination for each other that we are each anxious to let run its course without lasting inconvenience on either side. And so we keep the story between us as a substitute for any more profound experience of each other, an emotion-screen in whose making we both co-operate. Besides being a story—something in large part unreal—it is, as well, something in place of reality. Thus you keep your gracefulness and I keep mine: we do not distort our faces with the futile passions of futile adventure. I give you the false excitement you want, without obliging you to inquire exhaustively into the problem of which the story is only a philosophical dilution. And you give me—and what do you give me? Shall we agree that you give me—ah, what is it that I want most? Most of all I want peace, to be left alone, unless there is something to be gained, by you, in breaking my peace, and by me in having it broken. I do not mind giving you a cup of tea, if that is all you want. But I do not like being forced into a conversation about the really important things when all you want is a cup of tea. This is insincerity, if you will, since I am only interested in the really important things: it is insincere of me to give you a cup of tea at all. But that is my way of understanding everything, even a cup of tea. My understanding everything is my way of being alone and yet not locking myself up in my room all day.

 

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