by May Sarton
“ ‘Whom I desired above all things to know. Sister of the mirage and echo’?” Peter asked.
“Wait,” Mrs. Stevens said. “Let me consider this. Let me try to get there very gently, will you? It is bound to be painful. When my mother died I experienced desolation, and at the same time (this is odd!) a freedom which had suddenly become pointless. Free for what? She was in a queer way the antagonist, you see, the one who still had to be persuaded. Of course she had capitulated now and then, to my worst efforts, the novel and the Dialogues, those rhetorical arid works. I suppose they did not threaten her. In the ethos where I was brought up, feeling was always the threat,” she said drily. “Even art, when in the family, could be threatening.”
“You suggest a very repressed atmosphere,” Peter said.
“Yes, but,” she interrupted herself. “How hard to make you see her as she was! She should have been an actress.…” Now Hilary turned to Jenny, “She was the woman meant to be an artist who tried to do the right thing!”
“You felt her power?”
“Felt it? Before I was eight it had devastated me, or marked me for a poet. Shall I ever forget that voice reading Arnold’s Forsaken Merman—‘Children dear, was it yesterday?” and the anguish of that cry ‘Margaret, Margaret!’ I still wake sometimes to that lament, to what I heard in my mother’s voice of longing and starvation, wake in tears.… Oh well! You see, the hard thing was that the wound she had herself opened was not acceptable.”
“How not acceptable?” Peter asked.
“You suggest that your mother was susceptible to poetry, to the arts.”
“To the finished product, perhaps, but totally allergic to the chaotic suffering, the elements in life itself which make the poetry—totally allergic! Horrified by me as a person after I grew up! No, I had to fight my parents every inch of the way, from the beginning.”
“Don’t we all?” Jenny asked. “It’s the human condition.”
“But I loved them; that, too, is the human condition, isn’t it? Desperately wanted their approval—so hard to get.” Then she added half to herself, “The price of parents! All that guilt!”
“That is not a word you use very often,” Peter said.
“I don’t use it lightly as it is often used these days,” she said sharply. “For me it was a matter of years of arid struggle. After my mother died I did not go to pieces,” she said as if she might have. “I didn’t because I came and rooted myself here. I see now that as long as she lived I kept fleeing to Europe, and in this sense her death was a liberation. At last I was able to come home and rest my eyes on the sea. Solitude was, for a time, an intoxication; I had been cracked open, and the source was there again. I imagined,” and she laughed her light laugh, “for some years I imagined that solitude would be the Muse, that no human being would ever again come to break the mould, but that is another story,” she added. “I suppose what I had to accept when my mother died was the hardest thing: you quoted the Graves lines ‘Whom I desired above all things to know.’ The other side of the coin, I suppose, is the longing to be known, to be accepted as one is. Up to the very end, I waited for the miracle, for that epiphany which would open a final door between myself and my mother. Day after day I went to the hospital. Sometimes she wanted to talk, and we did talk, but near the end she asked me whether I did not think of marrying again, and I knew she understood nothing, or pretended not to understand, that she would never, never find me acceptable as I am.
The words lay on the air in a frozen chill of desolation. And no one said anything for a while.
“Is there some connection, would you say, between the constant, recurrent image of the ocean in The Silences and some of what you have been saying?”
She frowned, thinking over Peter’s question, turning it over in her mind as she turned a cigarette absent-mindedly in her hands before she lit it “I don’t know …, do you?”
“Only it’s such an obvious symbol, as you use it, for the mother.”
Mrs. Stevens sat up straight, quite pink. “Well, you’ve hit it! You’ve hit it of course. You’re absolutely right! It never occurred to me that that was what I was doing; and the other image in that book is the house—the house and the sea; I could not speak of her as herself (that is what I still have to do before I die), but now I begin to understand what this house is, has been, what it is that gives it for me a particular resonance, why always the silence has been so alive here. It is not that it contains ghosts, but it is in a way, I suppose, a transposed presence itself—how very odd!”
“The Muse, in fact, has any mansions,” Peter said with a smile. “We have not talked about the last book, the new one, the one which has brought us and the critics to sit at your feet. But I at least begin to understand what has gone into its making. So perhaps I begin to understand what you mean about ‘women’s work’ too. At least I think I do.…” He paused and rubbed his forehead with one hand while he glanced back through his notes. “They have to write from the whole of themselves, so the feminine genius is the genius of self-creation. The outer world will never be as crucial for its flowering as the inner world, am I right?”
“You scare me with my own wild hopes!” She turned on him a shy smile. “But … well … yes, a whole self, the creation of it, and perhaps that has very little to do, dear Miss Hare, with whether one marries or not, strangely enough.” Once more Mrs. Stevens held the pause, and they waited for the final word. But she lifted her head then and said simply,
“The interview has come to an end, and you as well as I must begin to feel as if we had made rather a long journey.” Mrs. Stevens had become just a little formal, as if she were suddenly shy before the farewells. “Well,” she said, as Peter and Jenny rose to go, collecting handbags and briefcases, pencils and pads, “I never did answer your question about changes of style, did I?”
“I think perhaps you did,” Peter answered with a smile.
“I shall wake in the night in a sweat, remembering all the nonsense I’ve talked.”
“No you won’t,” he teased. “Now and then I have had the impression that you broke the sound barrier.”
“Did I really?” F. Hilary Stevens asked hopefully. “But I didn’t hear any horrifying boom—no windows broken, I trust?”
“I am stretching out my hand through one,” Peter said, as his hand was firmly clasped in hers, ice cold he noticed. How well she concealed her nerves!
“And Miss Hare,” she turned then a shade anxiously to Jenny, “I hope you have not felt badgered.”
The word was so unexpected that Jenny laughed, “For some odd reason you’ve given me courage,” she said, “courage to be myself, to do what I want to do!”
“Have I really? How pleasant a thought, and how did I do that, I wonder? By rousing The Old Harry, eh?” She looked at Jenny quizzically.
“Maybe—maybe because you have dared so greatly to be your self.”
“Pish tush! You’re a dear girl,” she said, delighted. “Now off with you both before we spoil this minuet of politeness with some rude word!” And with that characteristic send-off, they found themselves outside the blue door, heard it close behind them as the porch light was turned on, and they stood for a moment, circled round by the unfamiliar dark, in its pool of light, and exchanged a look of understanding and triumph.
Epilogue: Mar
During the night, fog crept in.
Hilary woke late to a hushed, milky world, glad to be spared the brilliant light, and to move rather more slowly than usual about the morning chores; even Sirenica felt the change in atmosphere, and had curled herself up in a tight ball in the rocking chair, one paw over her nose. Hilary stood looking down on that pool of peace for a long moment, tasting the silence. Then she went into the big room where it was rather sad and lonely as if the fog had crept in. The daffodils had shriveled at the edges: there was the dead smell of the ash in the fireplace, and bits and pieces of the interview sloshed about in her mind, flotsam and jetsam, not yet absorbed, not
yet settled down. It would take an effort to renew this stale world.
“What now?” young Hilary prodded
“Can’t we just exist for a day?”
“Too depressing. Invent something.”
“The silver needs cleaning. We could go out and do some transplanting.” Even young Hilary was aware that work was out of the question, but the garden, yes.
She pulled on rubber boots and a heavy jacket over corduroy slacks—the comfort of old clothes, the relief of not being “on show” for anyone today!—opened the door, took a deep breath of the chill air, and looked about her.
Amazing how this small world changed in the changing weather. The apple trees loomed up like strangers through the whiteness, their trunks black and sweating. What was so familiar had become mysterious. It might be Japan, she thought, observing with delight the condensation of bright drops of water on a branch of apple blossom. It all seemed to be poised there waiting for a shift in the wind. Very quietly she closed the door and stepped out.
And soon she was on her knees, tearing out weeds, throwing them into the little cart at her side, too absorbed to look up or to notice how often they landed on the ground. Her heart pumped away like a fierce animal inside her. It was good to be alive.
There Mar found her, as he had hoped he would, a streak of mud across her cheek, a cigarette in the corner of her mouth.
“Hi.”
She looked up, startled. The boy could be as silent as a cat “It’s you, is it?” Seeing him, a weight fell away, and with the relief of it, she teased, “Well, is it yesterday or today?”
“I went sailing. When I came back it was dark, but that car was still there. They stayed a long time.”
“They certainly did, but it was my fault. I got on a talking jag, bent their ears back, I expect. When they left I was as empty as the bottle of Scotch we finished off. But I’m all right now. Give me a hand up!”
She stood there, looking at him. “A good day for a walk on the moors—we might get lost in the fog,” she said, “pretend we’re somewhere else, in a different world.”
With Mar’s coming, the tide which had ebbed so low, was rising. She felt actually refreshed; she began to know the relief after a great effort is over. It would never have to be done again.
They walked side by side in a companionable silence, as if that necessary silence were reknitting all the little delicate threads that bound them together, threads that twenty-four hours had torn apart. Every now and then Hilary glanced at the boy, noting that the day alone with the sea had washed away some of the darkness round his eyes.
“Messing about in boats seems to have been good for the soul.”
“Mmm,” he smiled. “And what about the interview? Was that good for the soul?”
She shrugged. “Yes, I think it was,” then threw her cigarette down on a rock, stamped it out, and stood there looking down at it, a frown like a wince crossing her face. “Of course any attempt to utter the truth about art is bound to boomerang. All I can think of now is all I left out, what a blundering mess I made of it, trying to be clear.… Oh well,” she turned back to the road, walking fast. “They did really seem to care. No one’s come along to ask this sort of question before.”
It was Mar’s turn to look quizzically at her.
“I found it exciting. I saw things happen right there. Things happened to them and to me.”
“I bet they did!”
“I doubt if I said anything very illuminating, all told. But in the deeps of the night, I sensed a book rising. I got hold of something about my mother, a flash of recognition. Oh, they stirred me up all right!”
They had come out to the edge of the quarry, where a smooth-topped stone cliff dropped about ten feet to perfectly still dark green water. The other side, where a few thin birches had sprung up among the stones, was just discernible through the fog, as if drawn in pencil.
“You like getting stirred up,” Mar said somberly. “I hate it.” He kicked a pebble over the edge and watched it fall and a concentric ripple widen out where it had struck.
“That depends.…”
“On what?” He stood there looking down at the water with his intense absent-minded look.
Hilary saw it, but she was also entranced by the scene, by the shape of the quarry in this unreal light. “Poussin,” she murmured. “All it needs is a few nymphs.”
“Who’s Poussin?”
“An eighteenth-century French painter who put imaginary classic ruins down in a French landscape and peopled them with classical figures. You’re so illiterate!”
“You can’t expect me to know everything,” he said crossly. “Besides,” he added, thrusting out his chin, “I like to see things as they are. I don’t like the idea of those nymphs of yours. The quarry’s O.K. as it is.”
“If you’re going to be cross, let’s walk.” She had gone quite a piece before she realized that he was not with her, and then turned back, came back to stand beside him, her hands thrust into her pockets. She stood there watching him throw pebbles in one after another, so the circles crossed each other. Finally she stooped to pick up a rock and hurl it into the delicate, interwoven pattern on the surface of the water. It made a great splash.
“Oh well,” Mar turned and left. “Have it your way!”
“Sometimes,” she said, “getting stirred up breaks a pattern. That can be useful. I admit it’s not comfortable, exactly;”
“Ugly and devastating,” he muttered.
They walked up the road toward the moors, and again let the silence take over. Hilary admonished herself to keep still, for an hour if need be. After all, he had held back whatever it was for twenty-four hours. But she was aware, as they left the dirt road and began to climb a narrow path through blueberry bushes and around boulders, Mar taking the lead, that every now and then he shot a glance at her over his shoulder. What was it he found so hard to tell her now, after all they had exchanged in the last weeks? What harm had come to him?
“I’ve got to stop a minute, Mar. I’m out of breath.” She leaned against a huge granite boulder glad of its roughness and strength along her back. They had been climbing fast. For a second everything blurred, then as Mar’s closed face came into focus again, she smiled. There was no response.
“You’re always making dark things light,” he said, tearing off a piece of lichen and examining it with care, “Things are not clear like you make them.”
“What have I made light that is dark?”
“Feeling …, I mean.…”
“Well, come out with it!” she said impatiently. “What’s back of all this? I’m at sea.”
Mar crumpled up the lichen in his hand and threw it away. “Forget it.” He trudged on toward the moors, his head bent. “Let’s walk.”
This time there was no drawing together of the separate threads. It was an empty silence. Hilary walked alone behind him, smelling the dank bitter earth smell, picking a laurel leaf to squeeze between her finger and thumb, to breathe in the aromatic sweetness of it, deliberately leaving Mar alone in his separate silence, pretending not to be troubled by it.
Up here on the moors, a wasteland of bushes and rocks, the fog was thinning. Waves of air moved about; every now and then they caught a glimpse of swollen, metal-gray sea below, a thin line of foam lacing itself against taffy-colored rock, and then it blurred out and all was soft gray nothingness again.
Mar had stopped to watch. He offered Hilary a cigarette, lit it, and took one himself. “Well, …” he let the word float off, but it was clearly an opening.
“Tell me,” Hilary said gently. “Please tell me.” For surely this had been going on long enough, and she had to know what was what. “Tell me about the dark,” she said. “I’d better learn.”
Mar held his breath as if he were going under water. Then it was spoken, quickly in a flat voice. “I went to Gloucester. Got drunk in one of those bars. Spent the night with a sailor in a crumby hotel. When I woke up in the morning, he had gone, and s
tolen my wallet.” When Hilary had nothing to say to this, he added, “Oh, I was stirred up all right!” He imitated her tone with bitter sarcasm.
Hilary knew now that she had expected this. It came as no surprise. But it came nevertheless with the force of shock. She could not like what she had heard. And she was afraid. Feeling his watchful eyes on her, she managed to say, “Well, sooner or later you had to face it.”
“Face what?” His voice sounded like a muffled scream. “Face what, damn it? And don’t say, ‘face yourself’! I’m sick and tired of facing myself. I’ve been doing that for months, and it’s got me nowhere!” He turned on her the force of all he had held back. “You made it all seem so pretty … love, feeling, all that hogwash. What do you know about it, really?”
“Very little, I expect,” she said drily. “But I have my ideas.”
“Love, wholeness, poetry,” he sneered.
“Lust, humiliation, self-punishment. Do you think I know nothing about them? Don’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs! You make a Hell of a mess, and somehow out of it you learn something about your own inner disorder.” The tone was harsh. She could not help it. She was upset.
“Just as I said. You’re an optimist!” He faced her now, ice cold in his rage. “That sailor has been sleeping around, and stealing, I suppose, since he was fifteen. What has he learned? He likes it, Hilary!”