by Jane Gardam
As time went on I saw that a young man from over the marsh often stepped out from the esplanade shelter to meet her. He held a respectful trilby and after placing it carefully back upon his head, took her arm. There was something familiar about him, but it was a long way off, and I was now most furiously busy with no time at all to brood about love.
For the difficult and miserable outer world had by now receded, and almost disappeared. ‘Thus in two years time I had a thick grove; and in five or six years time I had a wood before my dwelling, growing so monstrous thick and strong, that it was indeed perfectly impassable.’
Only my monthly letter from Maitland at Thwaite pierced a ray or two of ordinary daylight through my trees, and a spotlight broke through with the occasional letter from Mr Thwaite and a short radiance on his annual visit to us.
Lady Celia was gone. She had died in the war, and was buried in the family vault in the church at the end of Thwaite’s old gardens. Maitland minded. Her letters were sad, and sadder because Barker and Mr Thwaite himself did not seem to mourn her as they should. ‘And as for them artists and warblers, for years taking her salt, not a sign from them, though Mrs Woolf and poor little Mr Gertler wrote at the time, Mr Gertler enclosing a very nice drawing of her, showing her good points. “My lady had her place”, I wrote back to Mr Gertler, “in a tawdry world.”’
I answered all Maitland’s letters always at once, even on my bad days, wondering whether I had been right in thinking Lady Celia frightful—vain, cold and full of machinations. She had stopped her brother’s marriage to my beloved Aunt Frances who otherwise would not have gone so conspicuously mad on board the ship to India. No—Lady Celia had certainly, I thought, been filled with sin.
But perhaps it was in analysing Maitland’s letters and Lady Celia’s character that I began at last to come to terms with the idea of sin, though I was, of course, taking a very good general instruction in the subject still, in the great book, Robinson Crusoe.
For Robinson Crusoe is a study of the reality of sin. All his misfortunes spring from it. It is sin which occasioned his first disaster in the Yarmouth Roads to his last shipwreck on the imprisoning island. He sinned from childhood against his father, leaving the good, quiet middle station of life in which it had pleased God to place him. He had sinned in his yearning for the sea which was always his enemy.
Indeed, all his unhappiness was caused one way and another by the sea, it seemed to me, his persistent need for it. Considering this, at the end of each day I took to pacing our own beach and watching the movement of the waters around my boots as they wandered in the red-rusted barbed wire.
‘Young man,’ had said the captain of Crusoe’s first ship, ‘you ought never to go to sea any more. You ought to take this as a plain and visible token that you are not to be a seafaring man.’
And because Crusoe acted against God’s decree, venturing on a mission contrary to his duty, like Balaam, like Jonah, like Job, like Ishmael of Moby Dick, like St Augustine, he foundered. Until his repentance at last.
But why was it a sin for Robinson Crusoe to yearn for freedom, adventure and traveller’s joy? Why was it wrong for him to reject his boring Yorkshire home, the middle-class sensible day-to-day life of Hull? Obey his instinctive longing for the sea?
Because God had said so.
Like Job, when he accepted this, things became better for him, In fact, marvellous. At the end of Book I even more so. And at the end of Book II, Crusoe has achieved nobility.
Oh, I envied him. Oh, I envied Robinson Crusoe not his suffering and his repentance, but his having the powers to put up a fight, and his powers of analysis, his seamanship, for knowing exactly where he was. And his being tempted, proved that he was, at least in God’s eye, God thought he was worth testing.
Yet here was I, totally unregarded by God, sitting out my life at the yellow house.
Oh, I envied.
I envied Crusoe his sin, his courage, his ruthlessness in leaving all he had been brought up to respect; his resilience, his wonderful survival after disaster.
I envied him his conversion, his penitence, his beautiful self-assurance won through solitude and despair.
I envied him his unselfconsciousness, his powers of decision, his self-reliance—he never dreamed after any specific creature—I envied him his sensible sexlessness which he seemed so easily to have achieved. But most of all I envied his being in God’s eye.
I envied.
Seated at my desk, day after day, with only the click of the lodgers’ feet on the tiles, the occasional opening and shutting of a door as Alice went hurrying by; the bottle and the glass in front of me and the shadows of people I had known just over my shoulder out of sight, in the corners of the room, watching me, not greatly concerned for me, I envied him.
‘Miss Gowe’s sister’s here and wants a word with you.’
‘Tell her I’m busy.’
‘I have. She says she’s staying till you come.’
‘What’s she want?’
‘She’s up in arms for her sister.’
‘What’s that to do with me? Alice—can’t you—?’
‘No. I can’t. Miss Polly, come.’
The sister sat with Miss Gowe in Mrs Woods’s old room. Miss Gowe nodding nicely, smiling and waving nervously at a chair.
The sister glared. She had a glossy mouth and fine arched eye-brows painted with a pointed brush and her crossed legs showed a yard of cream silk-stocking. Miss Gowe, in her dowdy woollies, had become a part of my home, but the powdery silky sister made sure that I was aware that I was in Aunt Frances’s old shawl and somebody else’s bedroom slippers and my fingers all ink and that was getting fat.
‘This house is not suitable for my sister,’ said the sister. ‘It is isolated, eccentric and the food inadequate.’
‘Yes, I see. Does she want to go?’
‘She will have to go,’ said the sister.
‘Yes, all right.’
‘Unless,’ she said quickly, ‘there is a reduction of terms.’
‘Yes, all right.’
Alice had come in behind me and gave me a prod in the back. ‘How much?’ she asked.
‘My sister is paying you fourteen shillings a week,’ said the sister. ‘Are you not, Winnie?’
Miss Gowe gave a shy little snigger.
‘Fourteen shillings a week. I suggest ten shillings and sixpence.’
‘Yes, all right.’
‘Twelve shillings,’ said Alice loudly.
They settled for twelve shillings. The sister swept away down the stairs and turned to us at the front door. ‘I have to say this!’ Alice held the door wide for her. ‘There is a certain stigma attached to my sister, living in your house.’
‘Stigma?’
‘Stigma. I hear what I hear. Perhaps I should tell you that the Gowes are Scarborough people. I, myself, now live at Harrogate. In Valley Drive.’
‘Yes, I see.’
‘Alice,’ I asked, ‘bring yourself a glass. Why are we inferior to Valley Drive? And why must we keep Miss Gowe?’
‘We need the twelve shillings if the roof’s to hold up. And as to Valley Drive—Miss Polly, look at you. Look in the glass.’
I looked at my whisky.
‘No, Miss Polly, in the glass.’
But of course I did not. Metaphorically I covered every glass like Paul Treece’s mother when the telegram came so that the spirit should not confront itself.
I returned to the manuscript—I was busy now, since finishing the French and German translations of Robinson Crusoe a year before, in 1930, on an analysis of the book as Spiritual Biography, seeing it in relation to other spiritual biographies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, busy with the red ink, busy with the green, and Mr Thwaite brought me beautiful notebooks to write in every year.
Mr Thwaite’s placing of the brown-paper-parcel of notebooks on the hall table was the first act of his annual visit to us every August 1st. It is quite difficult to describe the pleasure o
f these visits of Mr Thwaite because of any man in the world he must have been the quietest and some might say the most colourless. Yet he had authority of a subtle kind—never once asking if he might come, simply arriving each year at four o’clock on whichever day of the week August 1st might be, and remaining for three weeks. He never rang the bell but was all at once in our midst in knickerbockers and Norfolk jacket looking mildly at us from his light blue eyes, Box- Boagey’s taxis (Mr Box himself and an assistant) waiting patiently behind him on the step with two portmanteaux and a cabin-trunk with brass bands around it. Mr Thwaite loved clothes so long as they were very old. He always changed for dinner and brought a smoking jacket and a great supply of garments for his walks by the sea and his excursions mackerel-fishing or casting for whiting from the pier. He had, after great deliberation, of late years bought outfits suitable for the new boating-lake, though he had not yet embarked on the costume for the penny-on-the-mat at the amusement park. For a motorbus outing to Hinderwell-for-Runswick Bay or Filey he wore deer-stalker or sou-wester depending on the weather. When Alice said, ‘It’s not the old landau, Mr Thwaite. The motorbus has a roof to it,’ he said that he never felt roofed in a motor.
He was the most peaceful of presences. You never heard him move about the house, yet when you opened a door you could always tell if he were in the room by the pleasantness that breathed out of it. At meal-times he ate with small bites and great enjoyment, looking long at Aunt Mary’s lovely spoons, sometimes holding them up to the light, looking out of the window and after clearing his throat a few times, remarking on the weather and the direction of the wind. He needed no conversation and made little. And never once did he criticise a thing about us—the decaying house, the funny lodgers, the plain, plain food, my whisky bottle which now accompanied me to table. Seldom did he praise us, yet we knew that his visits were a precious part of his life.
‘And how is the book coming along, Polly?’
‘Oh coming along. There’s a great deal of work.’
‘Oh, I expect there is.’
Never asked for details, never suggested it might surely soon be finished, never queried its vital importance. I suspected that he might know that in the end no book might materialise at all, that I was clothing myself in armour, hiding in a lair, hiding from pain. He never hinted it though.
‘Tremendous work in a book,’ he would say. ‘We had a great deal of that sort of thing at Thwaite.’
I went out every single day when he was with us, arm in arm with him along the beach, the sea casting down lace shawls before us, then dragging them away. The wind was always cold—even in August it was usually from the North-East—and I would be wrapped up in anything that came my way from the back-kitchen hooks—waddly boots on feet, my hair dragged up in a bun with the filling falling out, sometimes a hat from ages long ago stuck on my head.
Yet I always felt carefree and pretty, walking with Mr Thwaite. On fine days I removed the boots and paddled and he watched me. Once he said, clearing his throat, ‘Polly you are but a child.’
‘I’m over thirty. Nearly forty. I’m just behaving myself unseemly as the nuns used to do.’
‘Nuns,’ he said. ‘Ah. I remember those nuns. Poor Frances. They were after her once I believe.’
‘Oh I’m sure they weren’t. It was Aunt Mary. They just about got her.’
‘No, no. It was her own decision, that holy nursing.’
‘Well, they’ve gone now. All of them. The nuns have moved right up into the slums in the Iron-Works now.’
‘Mysterious women,’ he said. ‘But all women are mysterious.’
‘I’m not mysterious.’
‘No, no. You’re not mysterious, Polly. You’re a very straightforward sort of girl.’
‘Yes. I can’t think why they all go on at me.’
‘Do they?’
‘Alice says I’m wasting my life.’
‘Oh, I’d not say that. You have to get your book done. You have to keep the yellow house—the family home. That must be a great strain. Very glad you know—assist—At any time.’
‘Oh we can manage. Thank you very much though. When the book’s done, of course, I shall have to think—’
He said nothing. Sniffed the breeze, watched the ships along the horizon waiting for the tide, the chimneys belching flames across the sand-hills. ‘Very beautiful place this,’ he said. ‘Part of my youth. You are of course—you know—always welcome to live at Thwaite.’
‘Thank you.’ (Old age, emptiness, even Mr Barker now dead.)
‘Thought maybe of travelling? Cruising?’
‘Travelling!’
‘Just an idea. India, I’ve often thought. West Indies. Should be glad to take you. Good for Maitland, too. Since she’s been widowed and Celia gone she’s finding things a little slow.’
‘I can’t think. I’m so busy. Shall we go home?’
That night the manuscript of the spiritual biography blossomed more wonderfully than ever with coloured inks and various scripts. When Mr Thwaite and I met before bedtime for hot milk we did not speak of cruises but as usual sat hardly speaking at all, listening to the clock tick under its glass dome on the drawing-room chimney-piece between the glass prisms and the photograph of my droll dead father. ‘D’you hear of the Zeits?’ he asked suddenly. ‘I miss old Zeit. I still miss him.’
‘No. I hear nothing.’
‘They went off to Germany. Curious idea. Very—positive—lot, except for the boy. The boy married—not much of a success, I gather. Delphi Vipont. She stayed once—or maybe it was her mother. Couldn’t get on with her, one way and another. Beautiful, of course. Life’s hard on very beautiful people.’
‘Yes. Maybe.’
‘Heard she’d left him. Went off with some German. Something in the German government–or the German army. Not dear. It’s a pity the Zeits chose that sorry country.’
‘Beccy said they felt it was their own country after all.’
‘Poor Zeits. Very mistaken.’
‘Why?’
‘Jews. Not good at present. For Jews in Dusseldorf.’
‘Yes, I see.’
‘I liked the boy. Quiet feller like his father. The sister was a bright spark. The mother was a bit of a—challenge. There were grandchildren, I gather. Theo’s children and the wife, Delphi. Had some children.’
‘Oh?’
‘Two girls. Born after a long time. Delphi hadn’t been very keen. They’re with the father. Well—we’re not likely to see any of them again.’
‘No.’
This was the longest conversation Mr Thwaite ever had with me which he himself had initiated.
How dull he sounds.
‘No letters between you and that family then?’ he said as we switched off the lights (Miss Gowe and the rest had resulted in electricity for the yellow house) and made our way up the stairs. I was clutching the banisters, gripping them every third or fourth step, walking like an ancient. I only needed spoons.
‘Something there I always thought,’ he said, astonishingly keeping on, gazing intently at the belly of the green flowerpot on the landing.
‘Where?’ I examined the pot.
‘Between you and the boy.’
When I said nothing he made his way to his bedroom, turning at his door to say, ‘Talked about you to me once or twice. “Good-looking girl. A stunner,” he said. ‘Appears he once saw you by some river.’ Shutting his door quietly behind him he said, ‘One always somehow hoped it might not be over.’
The next day, the next week, until the end of Mr Thwaite’s visit that year I did no more work upon the book; and I joined him on the motorbus outing to Filey, dressed clean and neat, Aunt Frances’s niece again.
It was the lightening of my heart caused by this particular visit that probably marked the beginning of the great change.
For a long time Alice had been asking me if I would see the silver-fish schoolmaster, Mr Benson, to have a little talk. I knew that she must sometimes discuss me with
him. He had been with us for four years now and once when they were helping me upstairs I remember them acting towards each other with more than the intimacy that occurs between sober people dealing with a drunk. Mr Benson had had quite a brisk way with him on that occasion, not at all as in his sliding, apologetic days. Often nowadays I would sit upon the bottom stair, sometimes with my whisky-glass, sometimes when I had decided to drink no more, but having had to pause for a while to take stock of things on my way to bed. ‘Good evening,’ Mr Benson would always say, flipping past me. Miss Gowe and the businessmen—they were not always the same businessmen and had lately changed into more schoolmasters from The New House School, though I never could tell one from another—Miss Gowe and the other lodgers never spoke to me on these occasions, passing tactfully by.
At last, however, there were no other lodgers but Mr Benson. The businessmen or schoolmasters were gone. Not even Miss Gowe, for she had been taken away on a tempestuous wind of disgust one Saturday afternoon, to a terrace house called Boagey’s Guest House for Business Women, Separate Tables. It had hot and cold in the bedrooms and, according to Alice, doilies and bits of parsley. And no doubt a landlady acceptable to Valley Drive.
Miss Gowe didn’t want to leave us. She had seemed to like the crashing sea outside her bedroom window and the three-handed Bridge with the businessmen and dominies with whom a glass of sherry had not been unknown. I don’t think she even disapproved totally of her landlady, for once or twice I saw a gleam in her eye of what might have been envy as I examined my bare feet on the stairs, my hair loose for the night. Sometimes I sang a bit.
Plod, plod, Miss Gowe’s feet had gone upon the turkey stair-carpets—faded now, beginning to wear thin on the treads, and the brass rods without their lustre, for Alice could not do everything. Once I had tried to help her by polishing these rods and unfastened every one of them and, with Brasso and cloths, set about them on the hall floor. But then I had gone away to look for sustenance and shrieks and hollow cries had assailed my ears. Miss Gowe had fallen heavily on the loose stair-runner and lay in a bulgy heap upon the tiles. She accepted gladly the inch and a half I gave her to pull herself together and we sat for a time pleasantly discussing this and that until Alice came in from shopping and helped us both to bed.