by Angus Wilson
“Don’t be so absurd, Tom, you know no one around here expects to be in your memoirs. Why should they be? This is only the place we’ve retired to.”
“They may not expect, but they’d give their eyes to be there. County neighbours! I don’t know which I dislike more—the rich or the impoverished. Not a person of real distinction between them. All entirely taken up with parish pump affairs. Just because I’ve given a lead in nature conservation locally, they appear to think that I wish to be involved in every petty affair of the place. I wanted to prevent urban sprawl because I came to live in the country in order to have trees about me instead of buildings. That’s why I led that campaign. And the animals and birds too. Keep ’em alive. Even if you never see ’em, you can hear them or find their traces. And that means fewer people around. Which is also what I came here for. But these fools seem to think I’m giving my last years to altruistic schemes to soothe their nostalgias, like that chap who wanted me to sponsor a ball to redecorate the Assembly Rooms. ‘What on earth for?’ I asked him. ‘There’s acres of second-rate Regency rubbish going to pot in everyone’s attics without restoring that white elephant.’ Build a new palais de danse I told him. And you let him into the library, Lucy, where he promptly slopped a perfectly adequate port over Kingsley Wood’s letters to Hore Belisha.”
“Oh dear! Well, still the memoirs are coming along. Where will you have coffee then?”
“I should think in the drawing-room. Though you should tell us that, my dear. The drawing-room belongs to the lady of the house. A woman’s room. Or so they said in Victorian times. Lot of rubbish. As though women were to be segregated like Turks or battery hens.”
As they passed through the icy hall on the way to the drawing-room, Lady Needham slipped her arm through Alexandra’s.
“There you are, you see, labels! Remind me to discuss that aspect of your problem. It’s so important.”
The drawing-room, though long and sunlit, was yet a sad desert. Dotted about like so many oases too far apart for human communication, were some faded gilded Empire and Regency couches and chairs, and an early Broadwood. On the walls were portraits of the school of Hoppner. But the room rejuvenated Sir Thomas for he began immediately to return to his first relevant remarks.
“Yes, you were right to come to us. The very old have no time for clichés. Clichés are for people who have to keep their end up. They ‘disapprove of modern youth’, or they think ‘modern youth much maligned’, or some other such rubbish. I don’t care twopence about modern youth one way or the other. Nor does Lucy. She sometimes pretends to. But that’s my fault. I forced her to be social for the sake of my career. But I do care about you. And I shall judge your problem dispassionately in relation to your life which is all that matters.”
The old man gulped down his coffee, although Alexandra had burned her lips even in attempting to sip hers. While he was wiping his moustache with a large check silk handkerchief, she thought it only right to explain exactly what she had come for.
“I wanted to ask you about my grandparents, and about Mama.”
She spoke very evenly and carefully, for she was determined to approach this problem of family sanity with the greatest deliberation and, if such were not an impossible paradox, nonchalant seriousness, so that they should be neither offended, nor suspicious of her own mental balance.
“Ah,” said her great-grandfather, “now if you’re talking about the past, that’s different. I can’t be sure of my objectivity there. I’ve got a very good example of that with Neville Henderson. As you know his very name rouses abuse today. Yet I liked the chap, and within his limits I think he did his best. Not that I was ever a Chamberlainite. No, no, like any good civil servant I had no politics, which meant a sort of washy liberalism that didn’t get in the way of competent administration. Of course, Henderson was quite out of his depth with Hitler. But so were all these chaps who criticize him. A decent late-Victorian or Edwardian education didn’t prepare any of us very well for an encounter with Caligula or Genghis Khan. But I simply can’t tell how objective I’ve been about the fellow in my chapter on the lead up to Munich. Yes, yes, what is it?”
Their beloved old parlour-maid bent down and whispered in Lady Needham’s ear.
“Mrs. Hoyland Leach, my lady, about some business or other. Can you spare a few minutes?”
“I’m afraid we can’t see Mrs. Hoyland Leach, Harriet. Say we have visitors. And could she call again.”
“Good God,” cried Sir Thomas, “you can’t send the woman away, Lucy. If you live in the country, you’ve got to behave decently to your neighbours.” Which, thought Alexandra afterwards, she supposed he had meant to do.
However Mrs. Hoyland Leach, a florid, fortyish, go-ahead country lady, did not help by her initial attempts to deal with the old and the eccentric.
“There you are,” she announced when she had been presented to Alexandra and given coffee; this made Sir Thomas snort derisively and even Lady Needham smile a little contemptuously. But their visitor meant more than an observation of the obvious. “I told Angela Frame that you didn’t go in for afternoon naps. I knew I mustn’t interfere with the memoirs, so that meant the morning was out. And I do think tea-time calls, unless they really are that, are an impossibility. And the same with drink time. That leaves the early afternoon. But they’ll be sleeping, Angela insisted. I knew she was wrong. ‘He’ll be writing and she’ll be working in the garden,’ was what I said.”
“Then you were wrong too,” Lady Needham told her.
But Mrs. Hoyland Leach was not put off. “I must say Anne Hedges was on my side. She said, ‘The Needhams are definitely not siesta people.’ ”
“It’s pleasant,” said Sir Thomas, “to feel that everyone is concerned with the exact timetable of our day.”
Mrs. Hoyland Leach laughed, “ ‘Three or four families in a country village is the very thing to work on,’ ” she quoted, twinkling, sure, as she could not always be locally, of her audience’s literacy.
“Yes, yes,” said Sir Thomas impatiently, “and the little bit of ivory and all the rest of it. But it’s by no means certain that Jane Austen wouldn’t have done a great deal better to extend her range. That’s what they’re saying now anyway. No, for novel reading in retirement, I recommend Trollope’s horizons. But you didn’t come here to talk about novels.”
“We don’t know that yet,” Lady Needham observed; she added, “My great-grand-daughter is taking English Literature at her University.”
“Was,” interjected Sir Thomas, to Alexandra’s fury lest he should say more of this silly idea they were trying to force upon her to keep her from everything that mattered. She closed her ears to protect herself from this ludicrous nonsense that was squeezing her life—her life that, since it had happened, had been shot out into space to travel in a time machine through one cruelly absurd irrelevancy after another in a cold outer-space wind of no love, or real human contact. But when she closed her eyes, she saw the row of paperbacks above her head in her second-year room at college, and smelt the faint pot smell that sleepy, loving Ned had left behind in that room, and the sharp, awakening smell of eau-de-Cologne with which thoughtful, protective Rodrigo had sprayed her room after Ned had gone. So astringent, so healthily awakening from the faint of Ned’s dream stories that she opened her eyes even now as though Rodrigo had just sprayed her. How dare they try to separate her from all that, from all she loved? She was going to say to this silly woman, “he’s got it wrong, he’s senile, he’s in the plot,” but Mrs. Hoyland Leach had taken the monosyllable simply for an old man’s noise.
She said, “You’re not so cold after all.” At which Lady Needham drew her fur stole more tightly to her shoulders in protest. “It is about a novelist. What we’re worried about—the few of us that is who care and who have lived here all our lives—is that Mardwick town council or borough council—it seems to change every year now—are actually preparing to pull down Rhoda Broughton’s old house. I know she isn’t
read much now, and of course she never directly wrote about this part of England . . .”
“Why?” asked Lady Needham. Sir Thomas appeared to have dozed off.
“Oh, I don’t really know,” Mrs. Hoyland Leach had not the facts at her fingertips. “She had such a wonderful knowledge of the London scene of those days, the smart set as they called it, the Season and so on, I suppose.”
“Oh dear me. Of course she wrote what she liked. And we don’t read her because we don’t want to. No, I mean why do the council want to pull it down?”
“Oh, you know what they are. No feeling for the past or the place. It’s some sort of housing estate. You can be sure they’ve got a direct financial interest somewhere. Near the Hospital. What a place for a housing estate!”
“I sometimes wish that Tom and I lived nearer to a hospital, but . . .”
“What we hoped was that we could have your names in a letter of protest to the Advertiser. Otherwise it’s the same old list of names, just those of us who were born and bred here and think it’s all far more important than it probably is. The Council will never take any notice of us, and as for the Ministry of Thing, I mean, of course, they’ve never heard of us.”
She would go to Rodrigo’s week-end home. It was not far. Somewhere in this Wiltshire place, in fact. They’d be setting out with the pony club, his small sisters; and his mother to lie down upstairs with trendy women’s magazines and a bottle. If darling, so beautiful Rodrigo was to be believed about it all, which he wasn’t. Oh, the enchanting smile, when he agreed. “Well, I made you laugh, Ally darling. And the reality’s too plain boring, I promise. Not funny-boring like I’ve made it.” . . . “Oh, excuse me, I’ve come because I’m having a baby by your son.” That would make a funny-boring scene for him. No, no, she didn’t want to hurt him, she wanted his eyes tender and loving-mocking, not frightened and hating. I’ll go there and do it, I’ll go there and do it. I’ll make him cry in front of them. “Roddy, who is this terrible girl? What a thing for your sisters to hear!” . . . “Mummy, I’m your new daughter. Yes, and I’ve got another man. And he’s got a beard and sometimes, too, Rodrigo strokes it.” She must do it now before the hate went from her. Was she mad to think of doing such a cruel, senseless thing? And this idiot comedy went on, the absurdity of this woman’s chatter and the old man asleep. At least there was not hate here, only death and absurdity. And then the woman said: “But a distinguished name like Sir Thomas’s, and, of course, yours.”
And the hate of her voice as she said “distinguished”. Alexandra looked to see if her great-grandmother flinched before it, but the old dying forget-me-nots set in the withered parrot’s skin showed no sign of recognition. They had all—the older ones—that thing about not flinching and courage; how could she get any tenderness for her own cowardice from these sort of hard-shelled stoics, from people like them?
“And then if you felt like being pioneer contributors to a fund to save the house, for we feel sure we’ll have to offer to purchase, it would give the whole thing a more serious appearance. To outsiders, I mean. At the moment it’s just us—Freddie Silchester, and Mary Wemyss-White, and Dolly Danby, and the old Marchioness and the usual local names. With your names we might even venture to get Sir James Langmuir, though the old boy is not always easy to get on with. Tycoons, I suppose,” she said vaguely and looked for Lady Needham’s worldly support.
The old lady said, “Do you mean rich people? Naturally they make their own ways more than others. And the others must bend to them.”
Mrs. Hoyland Leach was driven back on the generalized appealing voice she might have used for anyone. “Do help us, won’t you, Lady Needham?”
“Well, Tom, as you see, is snoozing. And I never do anything that involves money without sleeping on it for three nights. I made that rule years ago when I had to entertain Commonwealth Prime Ministers and I’ve kept to it ever since.”
There was nothing for Mrs. Hoyland Leach to do but to go, which she did with such a pantomime of tiptoeing as implied respect not only for the old gentleman’s sleep, but for the old lady’s senility.
Lady Needham said, “We’ll go and talk your little problem over in the garden while Tom sleeps.”
Alexandra had supposed that her great-grandfather’s snoozing was a pretence, but, no, he was fast asleep and snoring. The behaviour of them both confused her so that she thought, now if he wakes up like the Red King, it may well be that I really am merely some part of his dream. She had to force herself consciously not to imitate Mrs. Hoyland Leach’s tiptoe. Lady Needham, putting on felt hat and woollen jacket and arming herself with an ash-plant in the lobby, did the opposite. She clumped her feet on the floor.
“That’s to make sure the old hag knows I’ve gone out. Then if we catch sight of her in the garden we shall know it isn’t chance.”
She didn’t explain this.
Alexandra said, “Why did Mama have no more babies after me?”
The old lady cried, “Labels Now really, Alexandra, you should have reminded me. I’m afraid you’ve got into a lot of this mess through absent-mindedness. It’s the case with most troubles of that sort. Ugh! this beastly garden! Tom never goes out in it and all I can think of is what a prison we’ve landed ourselves in, cut off from our friends in London. Those that are left. But labels! Your mother says you want to have your baby. She seemed most upset at the thought of it, if I understood her properly; but the line crackles so—living in the country! We had a clearer line when Tom was doing the economic survey up-country in Borneo. I can’t think why she doesn’t want to be a grandmother. She wouldn’t have liked it, if I had objected to her birth. I think you’re right. But are you quite sure?”
The old lady stopped suddenly on the lawn and, standing squarely before Alexandra, she took both her hands in her own and pressed them.
“You really want to have the baby?”
Her faded blue eyes stared vaguely out of the puckered parchment of her face; her stance suggested a direct, searching approach to her great-grand-daughter, but her eyes, as Alexandra realized, were gazing furtively into the shrubbery.
“Quite, quite sure, darling.”
“Good. Now you don’t want to marry the young man. He’s not your type. Or you’re not his or something. Lots of people would disapprove of that. But as Tom says we’re too old to bother with what the world thinks. We gave our lives to it and we’ve a right to ignore it now. Of course, Tom only thinks he does. These old memoirs! But I don’t care a hang. No, if you don’t want marriage, I’d be the last to tell you it was unalloyed bliss. The very last. But I am worried about the label you’re giving yourself. It’s difficult enough to be a real person anyway. Look at that woman just now and all the so-called ‘people’ round here. Noises, not human beings, and irritating noises at that. If you fix yourself with a label, it makes it even harder to be yourself. And that’s what it’ll be—‘unmarried mother’! To say nothing of the baby’s ugly label. I don’t want you to do it. Never be a pioneer of anything—first woman this and first woman that. Be yourself. And you can’t be that, if every time you come into the room people are thinking to themselves a whole lot of silly opinions about ‘unmarried mothers’. There’s no end, my dear, to the stupid clichés people get into their heads unless they’re artists or people of affairs. So what I suggest is that you marry this man, if he’s decent. And if he’s not, marry him just the same and then divorce. Then there’ll be none of this stupid ‘unmarried mother’ business. If the man’s treated you badly, he’ll agree to marry as long as he’s paid. And heaven knows your mother’s got enough money. That was the one good result of our son marrying a rich ninny. When they died, they left your mother very comfortable. Not that Tom and I are poor. We can contribute if your mother wants us to. Far better than for some unread novelist’s house. Tom will give the bigger contribution. But I don’t mind giving the young man a cheque for a hundred if that will help. Of course, if he’s the thing, and if you want to marry him, we shall alwa
ys welcome him here. And, if not, much better buy his name until you meet the man you want.”
Alexandra found the advice, in the abstract, rather touching, but she wished that it did not also, of course only by the wildest exaggeration, touch Rodrigo or Ned.
She said, “Thank you, darling. But what I want to talk about is Mama and my grandparents. You see . . .”
But Lady Needham stopped her. “Just go and look behind those lilac bushes, and see if anyone’s hiding there.”
Bewildered, Alexandra returned to say that there was not.
“Hm! I probably did the trick stamping my feet in the hall. But look behind the escallonia, too, dear, over there. No, that’s a potentilla—even a dwarf couldn’t hide behind that. And they haven’t started to use dwarfs yet. They probably haven’t thought of it. Over there!”
When her fears had proved groundless again, she said, “Now, Alexandra, I’ve helped you. I want you to help me. Not now. But I may need your help later, so you must keep in touch with me, dear, whatever you decide to do. You see, I may need somewhere to hide away for a week or two. I don’t want to be down in the country here as I was telling you, but I think if I said I was leaving, they’d keep me here against my will. Or try to bring me back if I went away. Of course, I don’t suppose they could do it because we’re not living in the days of Rhoda Broughton and all those Victorian melodramas. I don’t want you to think I’m fancying things. I can’t prove it because I’ve never tried. But I am definitely being watched. There’s always someone—it’s either Harriet or the gardener or the woman who comes for the rough work, but always someone.”