Surviving

by Henry Green

  But when we tried to get in, the church was so full to overflowing that we sent for the sacristans to ask if we might not be allowed to take our places in the private chapel where the relics are.

  ‘No one is permitted to enter the chapel any more. We have been forbidden to let ladies from the Royal Court go anywhere near the relics. You must surely know that Madame de Créquy last year stole a piece of the True Cross.’

  ‘Madame de Créquy, you say?’

  ‘And no other. She stole a piece of the True Cross from off the altar.’

  I burst out laughing while Madame de Marsan was asking how they knew it had been me.

  ‘There was no mistaking her, Madame,’ they replied. ‘She came in her carriage with six horses, her servants were wearing the yellow livery with red braid; two other servants from Paris were in the church, and they told us who it was. She was at least twice the size of either of you ladies.’

  ‘You see if I’m not right,’ Madame de Marsan said to me in a low voice. ‘It will be Madame the Marshal de Noailles, she is always doing it.’ This was the more likely in that the liveries of our two houses were the same.

  Of course Madame de Noailles was insane, and certain steps had to be taken not long after to restrain her, steps in which your old grandmother took a prominent part. Nevertheless that was the end of our little pilgrimage. But while I am on the subject I must tell you one last story of mistaken identity.

  On a Sunday evening in Paris I was outside the church of Saint-Sulpice waiting for one of the attendants whom my servants had gone to fetch to open the chapel for me, and conduct me through the crowd. There I was sitting in my carriage when a young priest came to the door. He was very thin and very pale, and his hands were so dirty and he was in such rags that I could almost have taken him for a beggar. He held a piece of paper, which he gave me, and which said he was from the late Duchess of Orleans, wife of the Regent. He went on to speak of the admirable way she had died, according to the rites of the Church. He used such unpleasant expressions that I had no difficulty in recognising that he was one of that hateful sect of Jansenists which had got hold of the Duchess as she lay dying.

  This piece of paper, he said, contained a legacy from the Duchess, which he then qualified as an act of conscience on her death bed. It was no more and no less than a recipe for making red cabbage soup. Take two handfuls of Reinette apples, it said, an onion stuffed with cloves, and two glasses of red wine to each average-sized red cabbage. ‘I wanted to send you this as I had so often promised to do,’ the Duchess had written in her own hand on the other side, ‘and I do so now as a mark of my full and sincere reconciliation with the Faith.’

  As I was reading this the sacristan was waiting for me to leave the carriage, and my servants were ready to escort me with my cassock, the bag with my prayer books, and the cushions which were emblazoned with my arms, but no more extravagantly than was the custom at that time. All this upset the young priest, who began to call on me to show a more Christian humility and to flee Satan, on account of my velvet bag with gold thread embroidery. ‘Vain sinner, learn the way of God,’ he wound up.

  ‘Father,’ I said, ‘first things first. Now who do you think I am?’ (For I had read the recipe.) ‘Who do you think, tell me? First of all I am not Madame de Mouchy, and I would advise you another time to take greater care when you deliver the last wishes of the dying. Here it is back so that you can give it to Madame de Mouchy, who is exceedingly greedy. Also I shall never forget what a dying woman’s conscience pricked her to do under your ministrations, because I am very fond of red cabbage, Father, and have always wanted this recipe.’

  At this moment Françoise de Chauvelin, a distant cousin of mine, came up.

  ‘Good heavens,’ she said, ‘what on earth are you doing talking with my idiot of a nephew?’

  ‘Watch your step as you go into the House of God,’ he cried out, most unpleasantly. Then he turned to the servant who was carrying Madame de Chauvelin’s bag and her train. ‘Don’t you tremble at what you are about to do in the Presence of God?’ he shouted, and he struck the train out of the man’s hands with one blow of his fist. It fell in the dust on the church steps.

  ‘The madman,’ she said. ‘Does he want me to drag my dress through all this filth so that I’ll get as dirty as he is?’

  ‘Now then, now then,’ her servants said to him, very indignant at the way he had spoken to their mistress. Particularly the first coachman, who went on, red with fury, ‘if it wasn’t that I’d be excommunicated, seeing that you’re in holy orders, I’d break every bone in your body for speaking to Madame as you’ve just done. ’

  You should know, because you are too young to remember, that Madame de Mouchy was Marguerite-Eugénie de Laval, a lady in waiting to the Regent’s daughter, the Duchess de Berry. It was not so extraordinary, therefore, that the Berry’s mother should think of her at the last, even if only for a recipe, although it could not, at such a moment, speak to the credit of Madame de Chauvelin’s nephew. But how he could ever mistake me for a Laval passes all understanding.

  THE GREAT I EYE

  (Unpublished)

  ⎯

  There is no evidence to suggest that ‘The Great I Eye’ was ever submitted for publication. Clearly dated 1947, the manuscript survives in longhand, and was found carefully preserved amongst other papers. The characters in this story have little in common with those in the novel Concluding, written concurrently, but resemble more closely those in Nothing and Doting.

  ⎯

  He lay in full dress on the unmade bed.

  The stomach he had begun to have began to hide his knees, the waistcoat through an open jacket swelled to blot out his thighs on which black hairs were laid by tweed.

  Head on two pink pillows let his two halcyon eyeballs rest comfortable along his length, to let the potbelly obscure his legs, but the pupils, lenses like a pushbutton always pressed, rang chimes and changes in the brain, allowed his mind to pierce the clothes, to count what he owned in the pockets and see his nakedness.

  A stuffed owl regarded him from out a dome of glass.

  His wife entered with a cup of tea. She placed it smack on a bedside table next the telephone. She seemed to take care not to look at him.

  He called her darling. In reply she said he had been too drunk last night, and waited, eyes averted. He said he knew. She went out. Careful of his head he then leant down and switched his telephone on. Now let the bad news come, he thought.

  He thought there was never an excuse, for drink or anything. And one’s body that did not forgive. Always the same. The feeling it couldn’t go on like it; misery, anxiety, death death death.

  When drunk the trouble one caused spread ripples, several dry walnuts thrown at the same time into a water tank hung with green ferns; and where the ripples met, leering faces of his green friends mirrored in the base over and over again in the repeated Olympic bracelets; linked arms for false amity, a symbol of old games.

  And now it rang. A voice he knew asked for his wife. When he answered she said it was Elvira and how did he feel, then laughed. He laughed in turn, enquired whether he had been dreadful the last night. Elvira explained she felt terrible herself and wanted to know how much she had done?

  He realised, with relief once more, that people think only of themselves, that anyone who gets ashamed is a fool because his folly must be a thin man no one notices; the fellow guests ignore him in their preoccupation with themselves except when insult or embarrassment is offered. This time he could remember little, or rather, because he remembered visually, he could picture almost nothing of last night, he was almost sure he had behaved, had not affronted anyone. So that when Elvira went on about Maud, he wondered how Maud had interfered with Elvira.

  She said Maud (who, as a girl of seventeen in ’Seventeen got engaged to a boy afterwards killed in that war and who had continued faithful to the memory since then, right through the next war, not long concluded, of nineteen thirty-nine) had been
seen to languish under the protracted gaze of Harold Arthur, even to lay her face on his; and had he remarked, Elvira demanded, that they left early as a couple, in that way marooning Esther whom Harold had squired to the party? He said he did not think Esther could have minded. But while Elvira went on at him on the line he invented the picture of Maud with this fellow because he could not remember.

  He built up a cartoon of the party last night, he imagined he had come upon Maud, and Harold with her stood before the seated man, the fingers of one hand thrust into his tight collar, her palm to Harold’s throat, the heel of the hand holding up his chin while Arthur murmured down his nose to the blood pumped through her wrist. And, apart from this couple, in the other corner which he himself did not dare regard, a naked woman lay humped on a sofa, the nudity in wait.

  Meantime, and he was able to listen through his daydream, Elvira continued, these two had left early, so early dear, no one had seen them go, they seemed to have melted off into air. Upon which he saw himself sitting in Harold’s shoes, looking at Maud’s wrist where it came out from under his chin with one bar of wrinkled age there already across her loosening bone-stretched flesh, and his embarrassment as he murmured to it, ‘darling, oh darling, go.’ Because he acutely imagined himself conscious of the naked woman he knew was over to the right, with a camel’s hump of thighs.

  This time he remained quiet to Elvira’s flow so that she broke sharply into her account to ask where his wife could be. He replied he could not tell, he was in bad odour. And so he should, she said at once, quite right. She laughed, but did not add she wished to speak to Angelica because she wanted to celebrate, to praise what was for Maud a unique departure, to mark with soft, wondering approval this first sign that Maud might be in the way to forget as all her friends had prayed she should; nor, of course, did she explain the attitude she had adopted towards Maud in this talk with Angelica’s hungover husband, hero Jim on his bed, although it gave her guilt to be so disloyal about a friend. The fact was, Elvira knew it well, she could not now be fair to a woman in a discussion with a man.

  Faintness swept over him as Jim lay, he shut eyelids and became, in the sun, a man in a world of thick pink through which white spots were quickly rising, his palm sweating on the receiver. Would she not speak to him then, Elvira enquired, and went on that he must tell his wife he was truly sorry. From out of sickness, the chill over his forehead now broken into sweat, he chose to misunderstand. He replied he wished Maud well and was not on those terms with her in any case. At the other end the voice nagged at him, called him a chump, believed that he had not followed a word of what she was saying. Did he feel very bad, then, Elvira asked?

  Upon which he pictured himself at the party again, still in the chair, but this time it was his own girl Jane who had both strong hands either side of his neck round the trembling jawbone. He could even feel her ring on his left cheek. And he was staring into her speechless eyes to promise without a word that he could not even glance at the nudity over on the right which, if he once looked he knew he would find to be his wife Angelica, to his dread.

  Did he feel really bad after all, Elvira asked? She had better ring later perhaps, she said, then wished him goodbye, rang off. He fumbled the receiver back on the stand without opening his lids and fell into a doze, the shut eyes in the head communing with Jane’s eyes, and no word said.

  He snored. The telephone rang to bring him out of a dream which he forgot at once, although he knew it had been as horrible as he now found the dryness of his mouth. His tongue rattled like a box of matches against the palate. ‘Let it ring,’ he said to himself. ‘She’ll answer.’ He scraped at the tongue with a forefinger. But still the bell went on, double tugging till he could have yelled. ‘She must’ve gone out,’ he said of his wife, and the dread was renewed until he lifted the receiver to answer into immediate silence.

  A voice he recognised asked for Angelica, said it was Mary speaking. He explained as unnecessarily this was Jim, and that Angelica must have run out. What was he doing home, then, she enquired? Truant player he replied. He thought, ‘Isn’t Mary the best friend of Harold Arthur’s wife, poor Florence?’ But he said aloud he only dodged the office once in a blue moon. She said there had been a man writing in the paper to announce he had seen three blue moons in six months. He did not reply. She asked if he wasn’t ill. He found this unfriendly, wanted to know why he should be. Her direct answer was to tell him she had rung his wife because she was so worried about Florence. What was it this time, he asked? She said there was nothing in particular, hummed and hawed a bit. When he did not press this woman he got the story. It appeared that Harold Arthur had been receiving presents. Well, there might be nothing to it, her voice went on, but they had been so expensive. He visualised a shaving set in solid gold in its violet silk upholstered case. At first, Mary explained, Florence had been worried because she thought it was Harold’s extravagance again, tickets for the Big Fight, two twenty-guinea ones. And now it was almost worse, did he know, she asked? Because they could not possibly afford what the man had been getting. Why not, he asked? Because they could never hope to cope on such a scale; Florence and Harold couldn’t, Flo was half out of her mind. Such as, he wanted to be told. Various things, she answered, and oh, just recently, she could not say, she couldn’t be sure it was the last, they’d been simply raining, but a pair of ivory-backed hairbrushes with what must, only no one could read them, be his initials on the back, in diamante. ‘Yes of course,’ Jim said to himself. ‘Bedroom stuff.’ And visualised more clearly that wide, luxurious shop window with the latest watchmaker’s masterpiece of a razor to work off any current, dry, to skim his tongue as it was at present; the facial; a tongue reviver maybe?

  As his custom was he now began a scene in his head, vivid and sharp, the imagination louder than this Mary’s uninterrupted flow of talk. He saw himself up, the front door ringing, and, when he had opened it, a postman who wanted him to sign for the registered package. ‘Why does a man have to sign for his wife?’ he asked because he thought it must be something Angelica had had repaired. ‘There’s a deal we have to do without we know the reason,’ the man replied. Back in the house he saw the parcel was for him. Then Angelica came up to ask questions. Accordingly she was present as he undid the string, parted brown paper, raised the lid off a box to find bedded in tulle a pair of pink rubber false breasts so hinged together at one lip as to form a soap holder, or a tiny sponge bag, with pink tapes to close the mouth. ‘A hoax,’ he cried aloud. ‘And no note?’ Angelica demanded. ‘Not a sausage,’ he said. ‘Then that’s the beginning of the end,’ she laughed. ‘If you don’t throw them away Jane might use those. You drink too much,’ she said.

  Too much and too soon, he suggested to Mary down the line to keep her occupied. She answered, tart, it could hardly be too little and too late. He wanted to be told why not, went on to say he could do with a few things of the kind himself. After all, he pointed out, Harold Arthur could always pawn them. At which he immediately saw himself with his own imaginary present in front of a pawnbroker who, even to the eyebrows, was billiard bald.

  ‘Little bit of something here I’d like to hock,’ he was saying to the man. (He expected to get 4/6.) ‘Bit unusual naturally, sentimental of course. Value to me, that is.’ ‘Why, yes sir.’ And did one sell or lease to pawnbrokers. One didn’t know, one couldn’t tell. Meantime there was Mary.

  At which there was a click from somewhere in the house below. He said at once would Mary excuse him just a moment dear, but it was, he felt sure, their burglar: upon which he left the instrument, wallowed to his door on the stairs, and listened. Nothing. Then came a long ring at the front bell. He rushed the stairs, yelling in his head ‘a copper’s seen the basement window forced.’ He saw no one. But, when he got the door open, there, much as he had imagined, was a postman with a registered package. ‘Of course it’s for Angelica,’ he thought, and did not bother with the label while his name was mumbled at him. He signed, parted with his own
pencil without a word, dropped the parcel where they laid their letters, and hurried back to Mary.

  Was she still there, he asked? Should she dial 999 she said, at the same minute? He reassured the woman, a false alarm he explained, just a registered box from Angelica’s jewellers. But if it was what he had seemed to think would she have had to dial for him, Mary demanded, and how terrible to have to listen to all the fight through her receiver. Yet she’d have had to hang up to get the police number, he pointed out. She agreed she’d not thought of that. But then, she went on, perhaps a good burglar was what poor Harold Arthur needed, to spare his embarrassment in simply cleaning him out. If the man did not take all Flo’s things, he objected, to leave them both with only Harold’s adulterous presents. How awful, she agreed. They laughed. To tell sweet Angelica she had rung, Mary sighed, and his line went dead.

  He went down to the mass of letters, unopened because he never looked and mixed with folded daily papers for he did not read these, nor did his wife Angelica except casually once about each three days; he went down at a grave pace as there had been something about that package. He looked. It was indeed addressed in his name. He broke off string and brown paper. Then because it was for him he hid these wrappings behind their electric fire, oval, pink in a black, square grate. He was left with the cardboard box which had once held a well-advertised brand of silk stockings. He opened it in disbelief. He found a notecase of alligator hide: no note, no nothing. But he always kept his cash loose in a breast pocket for fear of sticky-fingered gentry. He was much embarrassed. His initials, he saw, were on the thing in gold.