Jerusalem the Golden

by Margaret Drabble

  At the Maughams’, all the light fell brightly in the small square bow-fronted room, from one central plastic-shaded bulb.

  Clara’s next meeting with Gabriel took place upon neutral ground. She was delighted by this fact, for it seemed to add to his authenticity; she was also delighted by the evidence, thus innocently and without contrivance presented to him, of her possession of other friends. She had never managed to dispel the everyday threat and terror of contemptible solitude, and was beginning to see now that it would never be dispelled; she would never be able to take society lightly, and the frantic loneliness of Northam would never leave her. And in some way her acquaintance with Clelia had merely impressed upon her the slightness of all other contacts in her life; it had increased her hunger, as well as satisfying her needs. So she felt curiously gratified to meet Gabriel at a party, at a third party’s party; she felt herself to be represented in a most satisfactory light. She at the same time felt the light to be unrepresentative, though this feeling was without foundation, for she went to many such parties, though she could never believe, as each one came, that she would be invited to another.

  The party was in Swiss Cottage, and it was given by a boy whom Clara had known at college, in conjunction with his elder brother, and it took place about six weeks after her first encounter with Gabriel. When she first saw him, he was talking to a group of his contemporaries, but when he caught sight of her he abandoned his conversation and crossed the room to talk to her. He did not say much; he asked her how she was enjoying education, asked her how she liked her flat, asked her what she thought of Clelia’s gallery’s new exhibition, asked her, most idly, if Clelia still fancied Martin. Clara answered all these questions save the last, for Clelia’s affairs always seemed to be too subtle and delicate and sui generis to repay discussion, but she was flattered by the suggestion that she alone might know. He did not press his query, and shortly went away. But his very withdrawal seemed portentous. Clara looked around for his wife, but did not catch a glimpse of her until an hour or so later: she was dressed, as on her last appearance, in all the splendid, ephemeral glory of instant fashion and she looked more vain than gay.

  She next saw him a week later, at his parents’. She had gone round there to spend the evening with Clelia; all the rest of the family were out, attending a function in South London of some bizarre and dutiful literary nature. Clara and Clelia boiled themselves some spaghetti for supper, and sat eating it in front of the fire; neither of them could cook, and the spaghetti was not quite done, but they did not mind. They talked about their experiences abroad; both had been resolute hitchhikers, and both had covered most of western Europe. Clara had once lived for a month in Spain on fifteen pounds, and Clelia had been attacked and indeed wounded in a ditch by a man with a knife, and both were proud of their adventures; and Clara thought that on such territory at least their past histories converged. She had to fight for those holidays, herself; they had not been offered to her, as Clelia’s had been. But nevertheless, with the excuse of linguistic exploration, and the rigorous saving of and improving on State money, and the precedent offered by that first mild Easter trip, she had managed to convince both herself and her mother of the necessity for such excursions, and she had had them, as much as anyone, she had had them. From the moment of embarkation, each time, there had been nothing to differentiate her from other voyagers. Indeed, her French put that of the middle-aged, middle-class tourist to shame. Such, she reflected and said, was the Welfare State. And Clelia, agreeing, asked whether the alarmingly increased velocity of progress might not perhaps take its toll, some day: whether one person could achieve, in effect, the travelling of many generations. You think I’ll crack up, said Clara, you think they’ll win, you think I’ll go back: you can’t hold back, said Clelia, there is nowhere for you to go. Knowledge cannot be forgotten, no will power can forget knowledge. And then they talked about their affairs abroad, and of the utilitarian, experimental nature of such affairs, and Clelia put forward the view that nowadays girls go abroad for their sentimental education, having nowhere in England to find it, and Clara was just about to put forward her theory about herself, which was that she was incapable of enjoying herself with anyone who had any odour of a long-term, respectable prospect about him, when Gabriel walked in. And Clara’s first thought, upon seeing him, was that he had known she was there, for he did not seem surprised to see her: he could well have known it, for the evening had been arranged some days ago, and she knew that all the family were in daily contact; they would ring each other up constantly, all over the country, at vast expense. It seemed dangerous to assume that he might have wished to see her; it seemed to be a notion that verged on madness, as so many of her notions in the past had done, or if not upon madness, then upon some colossal, crazy, optimistic hope. And yet other hopes just as crazy had in the past been fulfilled, so why not this one? Perhaps he looked at everyone in such a way, but she could not believe it; or if he could, he was but the more remarkable.

  Clelia offered him some supper, in a very inviting manner, but he declined her offer, saying that he had eaten something at home, and that Phillipa’s cooking was marginally preferable to his sister’s. But he poured himself a whisky, and sat down.

  ‘I never know what you mean,’ Clelia said, when he had seated himself, ‘about Phillipa’s cooking. Whenever I’ve eaten anything she’s cooked, it’s always been absolutely delicious.’

  ‘That’s because she always makes a special effort when she knows anyone else is going to eat it,’ said Gabriel. ‘But she doesn’t bother any more for me. She’s so lazy, she hates cutting things up, she always cooks everything whole, in lumps, great lumps of meat, whole huge old potatoes, whole carrots, whole cabbages. I don’t think it occurs to her to chop them up.’

  ‘She probably gets bored with it,’ said Clelia, ‘with all those children.’

  ‘She always has to throw all the meals out,’ said Gabriel, ‘because the children won’t eat them. They won’t eat anything except baked beans, but she goes on cooking these cabbages, and throwing them away. It’s very extravagant. I keep telling her how poor we are, but she doesn’t listen.’

  ‘Gabriel, you must be mad,’ said Clelia. ‘How can you be poor?’

  ‘Anyone with three children is poor,’ said Gabriel. ‘It’s impossible to be rich with three children. I do my best, but it’s still impossible. Bits of the house keep falling down, and I have to keep paying to have them stuck on again. The Macadams had dry rot, did you know? And they’re in the next street but one. What if it spreads? A spell of dry rot would land me in heavy debt, I can tell you. I went to one of these meetings earlier in the evening, one of these meetings about the preservation of Islington, but the best thing that could happen to us would be an eviction order or a demolition order or whatever it is that people get. I’d like to be forcibly rehoused, that’s what I’d like, at the Council’s expense.’

  ‘Television directors aren’t allowed Council houses,’ said Clelia. ‘And I don’t think you ought to go to preservation meetings.’

  ‘That’s what Phillipa says,’ said Gabriel. ‘But I don’t suppose she says it for the same reasons. I shan’t go to any more, I don’t fancy the company.’

  ‘You’re a snob,’ said Clelia.

  ‘So are we all,’ said Gabriel. ‘What else could we expect to be? What do you think, Clara, what else could we expect to be?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Clara. ‘It always seems to me that it must be hard for you, coming from this house, to know where else to go. I mean, what should one do, but try to build it up again somewhere?’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’ said Clelia. ‘Though I don’t bother to do even that, I don’t even bother to move.’

  ‘We don’t try to do it all over again,’ said Gabriel, ‘Phillipa and I. You must come and see our house some time. It’s very near.’

  ‘You go the other way,’ said Clelia, ‘which is worse.’

  ‘Nothing is worse,’ sa
id Gabriel, ‘than living at home, at your age. That’s positively unnatural. Don’t you think, Clara?’

  ‘I don’t know, I always envy her,’ said Clara.

  ‘She certainly couldn’t afford such a nice standard of living anywhere else,’ said Gabriel. ‘And she knows what I come round for, I come round to pinch the drink. Once I even took some Stilton and a packet of cornflakes. And that can’t be right, can it? They shouldn’t lay themselves open to such taking of advantages.’

  ‘They don’t care,’ said Clelia. ‘They don’t notice. They’re too busy to care. You wish they would notice, but they don’t. They don’t count the cornflakes.’

  ‘There has always seemed to me to be something inescapably comic,’ said Gabriel, ‘about the attitude of parents such as ours. All this affectionate uncritical encouragement, it can’t be right, can it?’

  ‘What do you want?’ said Clelia. ‘Do you want someone to tell you what not to think? Ask Clara about how awful that is, she knows all about mothers.’

  And Gabriel did ask Clara, and they discussed, for some time, the effects of parents upon children, and Clara conceded that she might have gained somewhere in her total severance (though at the same time uneasily aware that there is no such thing as severance, that connections endure till death, that blood is after all blood, however fanciful and frivolous such a notion might seem; and that a humble acceptance of this was more elegant than a blunt denial) and then, as it was getting late, Gabriel offered Clara a lift home. Clara had been hoping that he would, and had been enjoying, in anticipation, the ride, for the drawing room of the Denhams, so spacious and so full, left her too much leeway for voluntary evasion; he had come to sit near her, at one point, but she had got up and moved to another chair.

  But in the front of the car there was no opportunity for withdrawal. Their legs were side by side, and there was nothing they could do about it. On the way down to the Archway he did not speak, but Clara from time to time wildly expected that he might grab her knee; she thought she knew the symptoms, but feared that she might be confusing them with her own desires. When he reached her doorway, he stopped the car, but left the engine on, and said, ‘Why don’t you come round now and have a drink?’

  ‘I don’t think I should,’ said Clara. ‘It’s getting so late, won’t your wife have gone to bed?’

  ‘She may have done,’ said Gabriel, ‘but then again she may not have done. But it doesn’t matter, she wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘I’d like to come,’ said Clara. ‘It’s just that it’s late.’

  ‘It’s not very late,’ said Gabriel, and started up the car. As they drove down the Holloway Road and into Islington, Clara wondered whether she ought not perhaps to have asked him in to her flat for a drink instead, and was glad, on the whole, that she had not; for one thing, she remembered that she had no clean cups left, and did not want to start washing up, and for another thing, she wanted to see his house. Judging from Phillipa’s appearance, and from the one other converted house in Islington that she had seen, she was expecting something rather spectacularly gay, some prize and choice specimen of London housing, well stocked with Heal’s furniture and quickly dating wallpapers and gleaming wooden floors and white paint and coloured crockery and pricey paper flowers in white Italian vases; even the children, she was sure, would manifest themselves by smart wooden toys and decorated felt wall-hangings and well-selected beakers and free-expression paintings on the walls. She was not familiar with the genre, as few of her friends, as yet, had children, but she had visited it peripherally, and knew of it from her Colour Supplements; she knew what she expected, and she wanted, very much, to see. And she was, too, incurably mean and lazy; she would rather any day be guest than hostess, she would rather reach out her hand for a drink than wash out a glass and lift up a bottle to pour one. She never entertained, and could not see that she ever would; her resentment of the notion of entertaining was so deep-rooted that she could never decide its primary cause, and laid it from time to time at the charge of avarice, idleness, or sheer social ineptitude, all of them reasons base enough to be true. It never crossed her mind that others might feel a similar reluctance; she expected to be on the receiving end.

  As they drew nearer to Gabriel’s house, they crossed a couple of squares with which Clara was vaguely familiar, squares once thoroughly decayed, and now full of the apparatus of demolition and construction; the area attracted her strongly, in its violent seedy contrasts, its juxtaposition of the rich and the poor, its rejection of suburban uniformity. Anything unfamiliar attracted her; the idea of sleeping six to a room, like the Neapolitans, seemed as charmingly far from the memory of her own small square solitude as did the complex associations of Clelia’s room, with all its thickly peopled corners, and its dense photograph-covered walls. She looked at the peeling, cracked façades, and the newly plastered, smartly painted ones, and she thought that she would like to have lived there, among such new examples.

  She was, however, somewhat surprised by the look of the street in which Gabriel finally came to a halt. She had been expecting, she realized, one of the largest and the smartest of the new conversions; indeed, they had passed, a street away, a house which she had been sure must be his, possessing as it did a lovely corner site, some ornate iron window boxes, and a stone pineapple on its corner gate post. But the street in which they stopped had no such houses. Conversion had not reached it, nor was it architecturally particularly inviting; the terraced houses were tall and dark, the paintwork grim, and the stone lintels cracked and scooped by time, neglect and hard weather. Clara found herself telling herself that it might be all right inside, though why it was any concern of hers that it should be all right she could not think, nor what the term ‘all right’, when used of Gabriel’s house, might signify; but when they got inside, it was not all right. He let them in with a key, and they stood in the hall, lit by an unshaded bulb; she was braced to meet Phillipa, for the light of the front room downstairs was still on, and as soon as they entered the house they heard voices. The hall was amazing; it was squalid, in a way that not even the worst of landladies’ entrances are squalid. A piece of coconut matting covered part of a bare, broken wooden floor; hooks covered the wall, and from the hooks hung clothes of all sizes. A pram and a pushchair stood one after the other, and on top of the pram was a child’s tricycle; underneath them was a heap of shoes, boots and old plastic toys. The wallpaper was of a brown, pale, cheap floral design, and it was very old; in one place it hung in shreds, and the children had peeled it off the bottom of the staircase; in another place it had come away to reveal a large hole in the damp, crumbling plaster. The stairs were uncarpeted. Clara stared at it all, though she tried not to stare, and she felt rising in her a whole flood of Hartley Road emotion, which she was obliged to force herself to reject; she was rather annoyed that she should have been taken so off her guard, she had thought that she had got the Denhams’ measure, she had thought that her expectations had been safe, she had not thought that it was possible that one of Mrs Denham’s daughters-in-law should have kept such a house. Although there was, of course, the mad Amelia: perhaps Amelia’s madness and her strange garb were not so picturesque in reality as they were in narration. However it might be, Clara told herself that she must take it that such a house was the most natural place in the world for such a man as Gabriel to live in: but even as she thought this, even as Gabriel pushed open the door of the living room, she found herself thinking that it might be better inside.

  And it was better inside, marginally better, in that the room was occupied by perfectly recognizable people: Phillipa herself sat there, not as she had feared transformed into some shabby shadow of herself, but as sharply exclusive as ever, and with her sat two other couples, both in their mid-twenties, both dressed in a perfectly unexceptional manner. And they all seemed to sit there quite happily; they did not shrink from contact with the chairs, nor raise their feet delicately from the threadbare, stringy carpet. Gabriel introduced Clara, and a
s she sat down and waited for him to bring her a drink she gathered, from the conversation, that the other couples had dropped in idly, and had been waiting, idly, for Gabriel’s return. ‘If I’d known you were coming,’ said Gabriel, his back to the room, ‘I’d have come straight back from that meeting, but how was I to know?’

  ‘You weren’t to know,’ said Phillipa, speaking for the first time, ‘and anyway, what does it matter? We were all right, we were just talking, we weren’t going to wait.’

  She spoke in an extraordinarily cold and nervous tone, as though Gabriel’s return had been truly the last thing she had expected; and Gabriel looked round from the hatch at her, and they exchanged glances, and Clara, watching, thought that she saw in their looks some sudden evidence of some appalling, exhausting strain. They looked at each other with something like hatred; they looked at each other with despair. Clara looked round the room, at the old broken furniture, at the stained and grimy ceiling, at the rows and rows of books, lonely evidence of culture, and she drank her whisky very quickly, and did not say no when she was offered some more. She could not tell, for sure, but she imagined that Phillipa Denham must have had more than fifty pounds’ worth of clothes on her at that moment, and for an unexpected, an unforeseen evening, if the truth were being told; and yet the carpet must have been bought with the house, and the curtains hung crookedly from old rails, and were a foot too short for the windows.

  It soon became clear that both Gabriel and Phillipa were engaged in a struggle to prevent the departure of their guests. Gabriel’s efforts were spent largely upon a lavish replenishing of glasses, and an equally lavish expenditure of charm; Phillipa made no effort, no apparent effort, but she made no sign of dismissal either, and her cool and formal smile had a retaining authority, so that the others clearly felt they could not go. Clara was glad they did not go, for she wanted to stay; she drank more than she had meant to, through nervousness, and she could not prevent herself from watching Gabriel, though she tried to, and tried all the more because she felt that Phillipa was, however indirectly, watching her. But her eyes kept meeting Gabriel’s across the room.