A View of the Harbour

by Elizabeth Taylor

  The afternoon did indeed seem to wear on: only to Beth did it pass quickly, her hand flying over the paper, pain in the muscle above the elbow, but she could not feel it: to Beth – and to the lighthouse-keeper, for whom an hour was a short space merely between the long climb up the stairs to wind the clock in the lamp-room.

  During the afternoon Lily Wilson sent over a cup of veal broth for Mrs Bracey; but it would only stand in the larder until tufts of mould dotted its surface, for Mrs Bracey could no longer take even a sip of milk from a spoon. Utterly alone, she lay and awaited death, cut off, discarded, like a man in a condemned cell. Pain had merged into sensation and there were no longer any definite feelings, nothing firm or decisive or with boundary. She could not be sure even of the bed beneath her, or of Maisie’s two hands clasping her own.

  No one could reach her, she knew, and in that knowledge lay all her helplessness and terror. She was slipping out of their reach into total darkness, as once her husband had slipped away from her. Fold his hands tightly in hers as she might, none the less the ties had loosened and he had gone swimming away from her out of her life. ‘To meet Our Lord,’ she had thought then; but her religion had always been a matter of words, of catchy phrases, and now she had not the strength to form a word or put together a phrase for her own consolation. There was only this strange feeling of floating left to her, her hand something people took up and touched to try to give comfort. But no matter what they did they could not penetrate to the small clot of fear which was the only reality now. All else had gone: her childhood, her married life, the triumphs of birth, the sorrows of death, good, evil, ambition, love; nothing remained but the little centre of fear in her amorphous body, floating on its bed, without weight, without pain, without anchorage.

  She began to breathe through her mouth sharply, and Bertram, seeing this, shook his head slowly at Maisie and got up and began to walk about the room. Iris sat on the edge of a chair, her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide.

  Outside, the trippers passed along the pavement and when some of them began to sing Maisie went to the window and closed it, feeling that it was no longer necessary to do as Dr Cazabon had said. Then there was only the sound of Mrs Bracey’s coarse, irregular breathing and the floorboards creaking softly as Bertram paced up and down.

  At tea-time there was a letter for Prudence from Geoffrey making an assignation in the churchyard and concluding with a short quotation from John Donne.

  Tory, coming home in the train that evening, flew from one extreme to the other in her mind: first, she was elated at the idea of leaving the rather colourless and windswept landscape which hinted already at the proximity of the sea; and then a root here and there tugged unexpectedly at her, making the tearing-up unbearable.

  Being shown over the flat earlier in the day – lacking in response to the present tenant, lukewarm, rather off-hand and non-committal as she went from room to room – she had suffered the same fluctuating emotions. The various rooms only reflected the changing state of her heart as she followed round, peered into cupboards, asked questions. In the kitchen, for some reason, Bertram triumphed; for she could manage to be happy, she thought, with a new life, the married status restored to her and bolstered up by all the dozens of acquaintances who awaited her in London: but in the large living-room, which looked down into the leaves of a lime tree, the thought of Robert struck at her heart: ‘I cannot allow myself to be so hurt,’ she thought; and she stood for a moment watching sparrows in the dust under the tree, and had a prevision of herself standing thus for the rest of her life, time after time coming to look out of this window at the pillar-box at the street corner, the dusty trees in the square, the sparrows. She felt extraordinarily depressed.

  ‘. . . and the curtains at valuation,’ the other woman had been saying, carelessly, as if money could not matter to her. And, quite absent-minded and because of her wretchedness, Tory put out her hand and fingered the woman’s curtains, just as if she were at a market-stall, and then blushed. They both blushed. The woman turned awkwardly aside. ‘When her husband comes home this evening,’ Tory thought, ‘he will bear the brunt of it all. She will pour out stories of my effrontery and insolence.’

  She moved from the window and faced in to the room, which was lofty, its ceiling wreathed with plaster flowers.

  ‘A nice room for parties,’ she said, with her warm, rare smile, which did not enchant this woman, who never gave parties, she explained, her husband being recently dead, and before that for years an invalid.

  When they continued their little tour Tory would not permit herself a glance even at photographs or personal possessions spread on dressing-tables, but quickly surveyed the walls as if taking in space, proportions, lighting, nothing more interesting.

  ‘No,’ her heart said in the bathroom: ‘yes,’ it replied at the landing window. When it was all seen, she suddenly said ‘yes’ to the woman, and saying ‘yes’ was not merely the matter of the flat, but of saying ‘no’ to so much more at the same time.

  No trumpets, however, came thrusting out of the clouds to acclaim this triumph of virtue. On the contrary, the enthusiasm was taken from the moment by the woman saying coldly: ‘I have left everything with the agents. You must communicate with them,’ and she felt that thus she punished Tory for humiliating her over her best chintz curtains. ‘And, of course,’ she added, indulging herself a little more, ‘they may already have made arrangements elsewhere.’

  ‘Yes,’ Tory said, frowning as she smoothed her fingers in her gloves.

  Outside, at the edge of the square, she paused. But so little does the rest of the world seem to care if we act nobly or otherwise that no help came to her, no taxi appeared, nor any encouragement. She was obliged to walk all the way to the estate agents, losing herself several times in the rather crumbling Regency environs of her prospective home.

  Now, in the train going home, her mind reflected the chaos and indecision of the day, and she felt that she was acting extravagantly and absurdly in contemplating such a future.

  ‘It is false and melodramatic to run away because of Robert, still more ridiculous to marry Bertram,’ she told herself, ‘a man I hardly know.’

  The train had run into the cutting, and she began to look for her ticket. ‘Although, curiously,’ she thought, ‘I do seem to know him and seem to have known him for so many years that now it would be indecent almost to marry him, to change the relationship.’

  Rather tense, her ticket in her fingers, she sat on the edge of the seat and waited for the train to slow down into the station. Bertram would be waiting for her, she supposed, and she would be glad of that, for she was tired and it was almost dark. The station was empty and through the smeared and broken glass roof clouds could be seen moving cumbrously over the sky. Dull yellow light filled the refreshment-room, shone on a sandwich inside a glass dome and into the large, cracked cups.

  Robert, not Bertram, came forward to meet Tory. As she paused to hand in her ticket, he walked ahead to the car, his carriage suggesting offence taken. ‘In fact,’ Tory thought, ‘I should call it “stalking”.’ His legs moved stiffly, as if by clockwork.

  ‘What are you laughing at?’ he asked, opening the car door for her.

  ‘Once I saw the ghost in Hamlet walking just like that. I knew I had come across it before. You looked as if you were on the battlements.’

  He sat beside her and slammed the door. Then – rather cleverly she thought – he said, as he pulled at the self-starter: ‘Perhaps it is a walk peculiar to those who have been betrayed.’

  At that the car should have swung forward but did not. He had meant to gather her up from the train and sweep her masterfully away and keep her away until she would see reason, but the car shuddered a little and was silent.

  ‘Oh, damn this battery,’ he said peevishly, and climbed out with the starting-handle in his hand. She watched his reddened face beyond the car bonnet. The car heaved as if it would vomit, but in the end sank back again into a sullen st
illness.

  ‘Look!’ he began in a different voice, coming to the door, ‘would you mind pulling this choke out when I tell you?’

  ‘Certainly,’ Tory said kindly, feeling that she had the whip hand.

  This time the car maintained its shuddering, lapsed at last into a steady pulsing, and Robert could get in and drive off.

  ‘I am furiously angry with you,’ he began, in order to set the conversation on its feet again.

  ‘It was certainly all over your face for all the world to see.’

  ‘What the devil do you think you are doing?’

  ‘I appear to be going in quite the opposite direction from my home.’

  He ignored this.

  ‘You think it was pleasant for me, I daresay,’ he sneered, ‘to have such a fantastic piece of news broken to me by Beth.’

  ‘Why “fantastic”?’

  ‘You can’t ruin your life in this way.’

  ‘It won’t be ruined because I marry an agreeable and gallant person with whom I feel always perfectly at ease, who will always consider me and spoil me, and never quarrel with me or say a harsh word.’

  ‘Whom you don’t love and never could, an old man, and a silly old humbug into the bargain.’

  ‘We shall get on well together,’ Tory said placidly.

  ‘Marriage is more than that.’

  ‘Oh, is it? It is often less. What about your own marriage?’

  ‘I don’t care to discuss it.’

  ‘You seem most intent on discussing mine, though.’

  The car ran up over the cliff, and between the trees they could see the lights of the New Town strung out along the bay in hoops and clusters and the pier dropping ribbons of light down into the water. Robert stopped the car at the side of the road and took his hands from the steering-wheel. (‘Everyone knows this car,’ he reflected bitterly.)

  ‘Shall we get out and walk?’ he suggested.

  ‘Good God, no. I’ve been on my feet all day. And walk where to?’

  ‘I have to talk to you and make you see reason. You’ve avoided me, so I was obliged to do this.’

  ‘It was lucky Bertram was not there to meet me,’ she pointed out, and she felt piqued that he had not been, and tried to hide it.

  ‘He is with Mrs Bracey, I expect. I saw him earlier on. I rather wondered why he was there.’

  ‘He knows them and likes them . . . They do his washing for him.’

  ‘Oh, well, then, of course he must be there. That makes it entirely necessary.’

  After this the discussion obviously withered and died. Both could hear their own hearts and the other’s thundering, but could find nothing more to say.

  ‘No, please!’ Tory gasped, edging away. ‘Please don’t touch me, Robert. I am very tired indeed and should like to go home.’

  ‘Not until you promise me to send that old fool away for ever.’

  ‘I won’t talk about it to you. You are rude and abusive. I only want to be at peace.’

  ‘Surely you can go away without feeling obliged to marry the first doting old man you come across?’

  ‘You want me out of the way, but you want me to be miserable as well. You are intolerably selfish.’

  ‘I don’t want you out of the way. I can’t bear you out of the way.’

  ‘The other night you made no effort to stop me. What about Prudence?’

  He was silent.

  ‘Prudence is an unsurmountable obstacle,’ Tory suggested.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘But not Beth! We could probably rely on deceiving her for years.’

  ‘You are very – hard,’ he said distastefully.

  ‘Oh, that is what the sloppy always say when they cannot bear the truth.’

  ‘Are you posing as a truthful woman now?’

  ‘At least I can always see the truth, even if I don’t tell it or act upon it. I don’t deceive myself, as men always hope to do.’

  ‘You ought to write some of those articles about “Are women more honest than men?” ’ he suggested.

  ‘Yes, I think I will.’

  ‘And while we are discussing hard facts . . . what about money, if you marry this man . . . Has he any?’

  ‘Half-pay, or whatever they call it.’

  ‘That won’t buy you many hats.’

  ‘The two of us can live more cheaply together than separately and we both manage well enough now.’

  ‘That about living more cheaply together is only the wool young people pull over their eyes when they are much in love. Besides that, what money will you have if you marry again?’

  ‘What I have now,’ Tory said slowly.

  ‘So Teddy is to finance your second marriage as well?’

  ‘Don’t laugh in that affected, reckless way. Do you mean he will stop paying me?’

  ‘My dear Tory!’

  ‘Well, whether I marry Bertram or not, I am still being inconvenienced by not being married to Teddy. It is very unfair if he is to evade his responsibilities just because I have the courage to make the best of a bad job.’

  ‘Are you still seeing the truth – steadily and whole?’ he inquired.

  ‘Well, I shall have the money for this house. Teddy had that transferred to me.’

  ‘It won’t be much, you’ll discover. A rather odd locality, ours.’

  ‘An artist might like it.’

  ‘Artists have no money, and they are difficult to find.’

  ‘I think one is always coming up against them. Anyhow, however you seek to depress me, I shall go. I am almost packed up. I shall live with people in London until I am married. I can save a little money in that way, by being a guest.’

  ‘Don’t go!’

  ‘Oh, Robert!’

  ‘My dearest love!’

  He slid one shoulder out of her frock. It was a straight and polished shoulder, like a young girl’s, and when he bent to kiss her he breathed warmth and sweetness from her disturbed clothes.

  ‘Never leave me!’ he murmured, his lips moving against her throat.

  When she made no answer he lifted his head and drew her mouth down to his.

  ‘Say you’ll never go.’

  Instead she kissed him.

  ‘You never will,’ he insisted.

  ‘No, Robert, I never will,’ she said.

  Mrs Bracey took little sips of air, her mouth jagging open as she did so. Iris did not go to work that evening, but knelt at her mother’s side, her suspenders loosened to ease the strain on her stockings. She stroked her mother’s hand with its lizard-like folds of skin, its heavy gold wedding-ring, and sometimes tears fell on to the quilt.

  ‘I thought doctor was coming,’ she said, lifting her tear-furrowed face to Bertram.

  He put his lips into a thin line and shrugged his shoulders as if to say a doctor could make no difference now. Maisie had the air of one who has not taken off her clothes for nights. She sat on a hard chair, her hands in her lap, and her head jerking down from time to time with fatigue. They listened to the breathing with a nervous concentration, for it seemed that each painful rising of the breast would be the last.

  In the end her death was quite simple. She just did not take the next breath. Her mouth was scarcely parted, and her head turned sideways on the pillow. Iris was frightened and drew away, but Bertram held up the little bedroom lamp over Mrs Bracey’s face, which showed no signs of struggle or anguish, and seemed so ordinary that they felt she could not be dead. Maisie looked very closely and laid her hand over her mother’s heart, but it was certain there was no movement.

  As she took her mother’s hands and folded them the light from the lamp shone through her own fingers, outlining them with a rosy transparency, but Mrs Bracey’s showed only dark and opaque, not living fingers any longer. Only Bertram noticed, for Iris had covered her face and was sobbing.

  ‘Iris!’ Maisie said rather sharply. ‘I want you to put your coat on and go and fetch Mrs Flitcroft.’

  ‘Mrs Flitcroft, whatever for?�
��

  ‘Just tell her Mother’s gone, and she’ll come back with you.’

  ‘Why?’ Iris uncovered her swollen face and stared.

  ‘She’ll lay her out,’ Maisie said, and began to go downstairs. Iris was more frightened than ever and cried louder, but Bertram persuaded her into her coat and promised a cup of tea when she returned, for he would not leave Maisie, he said; he thought she looked faint: otherwise he would have gone himself.

  It was quite dark when Iris opened the front door. Boats creaked uneasily in the harbour. The air was warm and full. She walked quickly along close to the walls of the houses, climbed the flight of steps into Harbour Street and, almost running, passed the caverns of shop doorways and rows of cottages each a couple of paces wide. People were in bed. Only here and there light shone from downstairs rooms, printing upon blinds a pot of geraniums or a birdcage.

  Mr Flitcroft’s was in darkness. On the outside window-sill a row of great curled and spiked sea-shells gleamed in the curdy moonlight.

  Iris rapped against the door with her knuckles and stood waiting, feeling set-apart, singled-out, by having been so lately in the presence of death, unable yet to grasp the enormity of this experience.

  Above her a window rattled and was drawn up and, stepping back into the street, she saw Mrs Flitcroft peering out.

  ‘Who’s that?’ she called. ‘What’s the trouble?’

  ‘It’s Iris Bracey,’ she answered. ‘Mother . . .’ she began, but her voice faded at the word, as if grief snatched the very sound of it away. This, Mrs Flitcroft thought, did her credit, and she nodded kindly and shut the window.

  Then Iris heard her calling down the stairs to Eddie, and soon a light shone in the front room, falling across the row of shells on to the pavement of the street. Iris could imagine Eddie blundering from his uncomfortable couch, searching clumsily for clothes to put on, the taste of sleep still in his mouth.