An End to Autumn

by Iain Crichton Smith

  “Are you ready then, Mrs Murphy?” he asked. “I’m so glad you could come,” and again he heard but this time from himself words that seemed superficial and without feeling, because he could think of little else to say to her, the distance between their two worlds was now so great.

  “Yes, I’m ready,” she answered adding, “It was so good of you to have me.” She checked that her key was in her handbag and after she had shut the door they made their way down the stairs, Tom telling her that it was wetter than it had been in previous weeks and she as if for a moment reverting to her early Irish world—but perhaps only repeating the ordinary trivialities of conversation—saying that the farmers would be glad of the rain. It seemed to him that, as he opened the door of the car for her and she stepped into it, clutching her handbag, she looked up at the windows of the tenement briefly as if hoping that some of the neighbours would see her as they peered out from behind their curtains, wondering where she was going and who the toff was that had called on her. But in fact when he followed her brief avid glance he saw no one.

  On the way to the house she chattered away about the weather and he asked her how long she had been in the town and what she thought of it.

  “I don’t mind it,” she said. “I wouldn’t go back to Ireland now. Did your mother tell you that I come from Ireland? Well, I do. But I wouldn’t go back there. The brothers want me to go back but I wouldn’t.” And Tom imagined a whole host of brothers, wearing dungarees and standing on their crofts, pleading with her to return to the land of Erin which she should never have left in the first place while behind it all there was the music of Ireland, and a singer in a green dress repeated some such word as Mavourneen over and over again, at the same time plucking the strings of a harp.

  By the time they had reached the house however she had withdrawn into herself again, clutching her handbag tightly in the seat beside him, as if at any moment she expected that someone would take it away from her. It was darkening appreciably when they stepped out of the car, he opening the door for her: and she remarked, though perhaps she couldn’t make out the object of her compliment very well: “It’s a lovely house you have here.”

  “It’s not bad,” said Tom.

  She paused for a moment below the light which fell over the threshold, her fur coat heavy and dark and her handbag in her hand. Then she turned to him and for the first time a mischievous smile illuminated her face below the white light:

  “Well, into the britch,” she said, surprisingly, and Tom saw her in a sudden flash as she might once have been, a young Irish girl arriving for the first time at the “big house” somewhere in a big city.

  “Up the intellectuals, Mrs Murphy,” he said under his breath as he followed her into the house.

  15

  RUTH DONALDSON WHO did not believe in dressing for dinner—and was wearing black slacks and a yellow jersey—sat in front of the fire, a whisky beside her on the long rectangular coffee table. It was ten minutes to seven and she would leave at twenty past. She felt nervous and unsure, unused to going out, though she had talked to Vera and knew who was going to be there. As she drank her whisky, she wished that she hadn’t agreed to go to dinner at all, and felt more than any anticipation her own clumsiness and resentment. If the others wanted to dress up, let them, she would show them what she was, unadorned and without pretence, an awkward person whom no one much wanted or had wanted up till now. The raw whisky comforted her, and she poured herself another one. Like many other lonely people, she was finding that drink was the only antidote to her ever-present sense of isolation, not the philosophy of Plato, nor even the TV or radio. Without it, she would have felt even more deserted and miserable than she actually was and her imperative desires would have been even more unbearable. Sometimes at night before going to bed, she would remove all her clothes and look in the mirror at her heavy breasts, unused, infertile, as if she were gazing at some other being on whom she had all the pity in the world. Yet she did not know whom, on these barren nocturnal occasions, she was offering herself to: her desire was unfocussed like the eyes of a drunk. All she knew was that her desire was towards some other being who would accept her as she was, her heaviness, her ugliness, her tortured hating mind. For she knew deep within herself that isolation is the worst of fortunes, and that without at least one other person, there was no life at all, only existence.

  She wondered about Vera Mallow? Why had she invited her? Did she have some reason that she hadn’t told her. Her mother-in-law was to be there, as was a Mrs Murphy and Vera’s husband whom she had never spoken to but whom she considered a rather wet liberal type who preened himself on his fastidiousness. Vera, however, was different: she had a colder more realistic mind and did nothing without real motive. She sensed that with Vera she was in the presence of someone not unlike herself, though prettier in a cold nun-like way. But why had she invited her? Her story about material for a Joseph project was clearly suspect for there was little that she could tell her that she did not already know, and in any case what possible time would there be for discussion of such a subject, during a dinner when there were others as well. No, there was more to it than that. And with the second whisky in her hand she speculated.

  It wasn’t simply that Vera had invited her to a dinner where there only would be herself and her husband, for there would also be her mother-in-law and Mrs Murphy. Was there some meaning hidden there? It was as if Vera were trying to tell her something which she did not wish to speak straight out. Did Vera therefore know something of her own history? Had she specially chosen her for some work that she could do, implying that if this work were done then a closer relationship would follow?

  She looked around her at the flat—the sofa and chairs covered in red, the reproductions of Van Gogh and Gauguin on the walls, the opposite ones being papered in red and black respectively; and she imagined Vera sitting in front of her, icy and remote, her hands folded on her lap, and the desire was so strong in her that she felt her chest reddening and her face flushing.

  I need someone else, she almost screamed, I need someone, almost anyone, I cannot go on like this. Without any attachment at all, what are we? Nothing. We are floating about anchorless in the world, ships adrift in the sea, like the ones she could see, if she had drawn the curtains, out in the bay in front of her. We are ghosts walking about the world, bodiless and without weight. If we are not to hate the world, we need someone, if we are not to succumb to violence and evil, and spiritual death.

  She felt herself as a symbol of a definite truth, naked and vulnerable, looking in at the fires of others but condemned to stay outside, snarling in the darkness. I have been given nothing in my whole life, she thought, nothing. I was never loved, not even my mother loved me, she used me but she did not love me. I must break into the circle somewhere somehow. If I don’t break into the circle I shall die.

  But how to break into the circle? That was the question. And as she thought about it, the second whisky finished, and the glass beside her on the table she thought she knew what she had to do, she thought she understood why Vera had invited her. It came to her as in a vision which the whisky had created and clarified, a vision so pure that it illuminated her totally in its light; she saw herself as a weapon being used, a pistol or revolver there on the table, a servant whose obedience is accepted without thought. It was so obvious that she couldn’t understand how she hadn’t thought of it before. It lay manifestly evident before her, as if under the bareness of electric light.

  She debated whether she should take another whisky but decided against it for after all she had to drive her car and though the Mallows’ house wasn’t very far away anything could happen. In any case she hadn’t had much food, and she had learned from experience that too much whisky on an empty stomach wasn’t good for her.

  The clock showed quarter past seven and she rose from her seat, and, coatless, switched off the lights, shut the door and walked to her car. She drove carefully among the multitudes of lights to the Mal
lows, feeling nervous and slightly feverish, though less so than before she had taken her two whiskies. The rain beat steadily on the windscreen, monotonously cleared by the wiper, and the wind was higher than she had realised it was while she was sitting in her flat.

  PART TWO

  1

  THEY SAT AWKWARDLY on chairs and sofa about the living room, Vera, Tom, Mrs Murphy, Ruth Donaldson and Mrs Mallow.

  “Well then,” said Vera brightly, “now that we’re all here I think we should have a drink.”

  She went over to the sideboard and Tom was surprised to see four or five bottles there: she must have bought them the previous day for he couldn’t remember their having been there before.

  “Ruth?” she said.

  “I’ll take a whisky. No water, please.”

  “Whisky. No water,” Vera repeated. And then, “Tom, perhaps you could help me.”

  “Fine,” said Tom. “I always knew bartending was my destiny.” Mrs Murphy laughed, and the others smiled.

  “Mrs Murphy?” said Vera. It occurred to Tom that she had left his mother to the last and this bothered him slightly.

  “I’ll take a drop of Martini if you have it. A small drop.”

  “Lemonade?”

  “That would be all right.”

  Vera handed her the glass and then looked inquiringly at her mother-in-law.

  “Nothing for me,” said Mrs Mallow, turning apologetically to the others. “I don’t drink, you see.”

  “Come on mother,” Tom pleaded, “just for tonight. You don’t have to drive or anything. You don’t have to leave the house. Now if it was Ruth here or even Mrs Murphy.” Finally she was persuaded to take a lemonade, Vera poured out a small Martini for herself, while Tom took a whisky.

  They sat in their chairs with their drinks in their hands and there was a silence till Tom remarked,

  “Well, it’s good to be sitting here and not thinking about school.”

  “You’re perfectly right,” said Ruth. “Mrs Murphy and your mother here don’t know what we have to put up with.”

  She drank her whisky rapidly, nervously, while Mrs Murphy looked at her and thought, “Funny she doesn’t wear a better dress than that. She’s an odd one, that.”

  “What do you do then?” she asked.

  “I teach. That’s what I do. For my sins.”

  “For her sins is right,” said Tom. “She teaches Religious Education. We don’t have her problems.”

  “Oh,” said Mrs Murphy.

  Tom’s mother, as if embarrassed that she had contributed nothing to the conversation so far, suddenly remarked, “Tom teaches English, you know.” The words, so shyly offered, hung nakedly in the room as if unconnected with what had gone before, and Ruth Donaldson who had turned to look at Mrs Mallow turned away again, as if abruptly dismissing her.

  “It’s like this,” she said, “Religious Education is a twilight subject, I’m afraid, Mrs Murphy. No one is interested in it. It is taught as a sop to the consciences of education departments. When I came here first I was offered all sorts of cooperation but when I actually arrived what did I find? I found a dull room with some of the window panes smashed, children who aren’t interested in anything I have to offer, and no money available for buying books or maps or anything else. One would have thought that there would have been enough hypocrisy in existence to provide decent working conditions and material, but no. There’s not even enough of that.”

  She felt quite happy, the centre of attention for the moment, in that room where she had a number of listeners, and at the same time a glass in her hand, the whisky of which she had already drunk.

  “Another?” said Vera, noticing, as she sat slightly apart from the others in her white dress.

  “Well, if you like. If you’re sure it’s no trouble.”

  What sort of woman was this, Mrs Murphy was wondering, a religious teacher drinking whisky all the time. Mrs Mallow sat smiling on them all, saying nothing.

  “I’m sure,” said Tom, “that Mrs Murphy and my mother here will find your problems of interest.”

  “Bugger,” thought Ruth savagely, taking the whisky from Vera, and touching her hand slightly as she did so.

  Vera gazed at her enigmatically.

  “Do you come from Ireland then?” Ruth asked Mrs Murphy. “I thought with a name like that you might come from Ireland.”

  “I do. I come from Connemara.”

  “Do you go back there often?”

  “Not now. I used to go back there but not now.”

  There was another silence and Tom glancing at his mother said,

  “Are you sure that lemonade is all you want?”

  “Yes, Tom, I’m fine.” Her face retained the same fixed smile as if she had decided to put it on with her dress.

  “My mother,” he went on, “my mother and I at one time used to live in a tenement in Edinburgh. We met a lot of Irish people there. Very likeable people too. I remember when my father was in hospital … but mother will tell you.”

  “What was that, Tom?”

  “You remember when my father was in hospital, mother?”

  “Oh yes. They made a collection you see. They brought it to me. Was that it Tom?” she asked anxiously.

  “That’s right mother. But you didn’t tell it all. This tall Irishman, slightly drunk, came to the door with this collection and he said to my mother, ‘It’s just a little drop of money.’ And when we opened the envelope there were fifteen pounds in it. And yet they didn’t have much money themselves. You see, the Irish are very generous—not much respect for law and order, mind you, if you’ll excuse me Mrs Murphy—but warm and generous. My mother loved it there didn’t you, mother?”

  “Yes, Tom.” The centre of attention, she was red with embarrassment, and found it difficult to speak.

  “I would say they are like that,” said Mrs Murphy comfortably. Ruth Donaldson glanced contemptuously at the three of them and then winked at Vera who was saying nothing but watching everybody, the Martini in her glass hardly touched.

  “Bitch,” thought Tom, noticing the wink. “Warm heartedness is a great virtue. Perhaps some of us have lost it, that sense of community. I sometimes wonder whether the middle classes may not have lost it.” He turned to Vera who smiled but didn’t speak.

  “Oh I wouldn’t say that,” said Ruth Donaldson. “Warm heartedness can be found in all classes, I would say.” Her whisky glass was empty again. “It is not an exclusive possession of what we may call, for lack of a better phrase, the lower classes. I would have said that it was a function of the personality who either had or hadn’t got it.” She was puzzled a bit by the end of the sentence which seemed to have got a little out of control and added.

  “I think the other view is a sort of sentimentalism, myself.”

  “Have you ever read O’Casey?” Tom asked furiously, ready for an argument.

  “I have and my opinion remains unchanged.”

  “If you’re saying that the people in the big houses are as warm hearted as the people in the tenements,” Mrs Murphy suddenly intervened,” then you’re wrong, begging your pardon. I clean the stairs for them and I know. They stick to their pennies, the same people. You find a rich man and you’ll find a man who sticks to his pennies, and what’s the end of it all, six feet of earth, that’s what I always say.” She looked around her with satisfaction.

  Ruth Donaldson was about to say something when Vera interposed.

  “If you would all like to go into dinner now. You must be starving. Take your drinks in with you. Ruth? Do you want another one? Anyone else?”

  Without speaking, Ruth handed over her glass to be filled and they went into the dining room.

  Tom sat at the head of the table, Vera and Ruth facing each other, Mrs Mallow and Mrs Murphy also facing each other.

  The shining table had been laid, with two candles in the middle, red napkins in a vase and the best plates and cutlery. The curtains had been drawn but as they were entering Tom heard
the wind and rain beating against the window and said, “There seems to be a bit of a storm. The weather has broken.”

  In the dusk of the room—for the electric light had been switched off—he saw the candles trembling and casting white circles on the table. It occurred to him that tall and pure as they were they would shed grease on the plates below.

  They began with a clear soup which Ruth Donaldson gulped as if she were not at all interested in food while Mrs Murphy and Tom’s mother sipped theirs slowly.

  Tom said, “Vera is a very good cook. But you mustn’t imagine I get this sort of food every day.” There was some laughter in which however Ruth Donaldson pointedly did not join, keeping her large head bent over her plate.

  Now and again Tom would glance at Vera who hardly entered the conversation but attended to her duties as hostess competently and quietly. She never felt embarrassed by her own silence, but thought of it as a demonstration of power: it was the weakest people who talked the most. Tom wondered what she was up to, and couldn’t make up his mind: perhaps if he got a chance between courses he might ask her. Meanwhile, cool and self-possessed as always, she did exactly what was expected of her but at the same time contributed nothing beyond that as if she had carefully measured out what her responsibility was and was adhering to its limits. The thought suddenly came to him, she is saying nothing because whatever happens I shall not then be able to blame her. She will be able to say, “I didn’t cause any of it. I did what was required of me. I was precisely as generous as I ought to have been. And in any case it was your idea that Mrs Murphy should be invited. Or are you suggesting that she isn’t suitable for company.”

  He gazed at the candles as if with a premonition that in some way they were connected with whatever might happen. What I need, he thought, is to get drunk. That’s what I need. Holding all this together is beginning to grow too much for me. The centre is beginning to crack. His mother sat smiling in her chair. She is hating this, he thought, she is hating every minute. She is not at ease, she has nothing to say, she is too embarrassed to speak. And yet we should all be happy round the table, we should feel a communal sense of contentment: why then don’t we? Is it because all human relationships are impossible, the nudge, the sharp points, the egos starving or triumphant, the love that is never sufficient. And at that moment he glanced up and saw Ruth Donaldson’s eyes fixed on his wife with such a naked desire that he almost fainted with the force of it.