Alfred and Emily

by Doris Lessing

  Mary knew very well why the men were against Ivy. She desisted from making any of the rude remarks that came to her tongue, and said, ‘Alfred, rest yourself. It’ll be all right.’

  The two Tayler boys, no longer boys, had returned from yet another venture into foreign lands, and at once Tom took a fancy to Ivy.

  This conversation took place between father and son. ‘Tom,’ said Alfred, ‘the girl’s not twenty-two yet. And you are almost old enough to be her father.’

  ‘Yes, I know, Dad.’

  ‘Are you so set on her?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘Then I’m going to ask you to wait a year. You and Michael go off on your trip first.’

  ‘Someone else’ll snap her up,’ said Tom, grinning.

  Which was what Alfred was counting on.

  The two wives, having learned that it was their men, as much as ‘those nasty old crows’, the nuns, who didn’t like Ivy, became less belligerent. Even Emily, their embodiment of heartlessness, had been excused by Mary Lane.

  Into this atmosphere came Emily, on that chilly afternoon. Although tousled and reddened, invigorated by the wind, she was in fact pretty tired, having been wrestling with representatives of various Scottish charities all morning.

  ‘Brrrr,’ said Emily, briskly, rubbing her hands together. ‘I’d forgotten how cold Longerfield can get.’

  Emily, who had been on her way to becoming heavy, if not stout, had got thinner nursing Alistair McTaggart and because of tribulations since. She wore a dark-blue costume, with the recently again fashionable fox fur. ‘I wonder if that’s the fox I shot last spring down near the woods,’ said Bert.

  ‘You’ll need a cup of tea.’ Alfred directed his wife, who was already at the tea tray.

  Emily, having taken in the company, understood that the pretty little thing with the baby beside her must be the cause of so much trouble. She said to the girl, smiling, ‘Well, I’m Emily Martin-White. Here is the delinquent.’

  Ivy offered a crisp little nod in return. Alfred said, ‘It’s all right, Emily. Mary has explained.’

  The wives, who had been holding Emily in their minds for weeks now, as everything they must hate, had only recently relinquished her to her usual place, a formidable elderly woman, who had achieved such miracles of organisation.

  ‘Mary told me that those nuns shut you up in a cell, with nothing to eat but bread and water,’ said Emily.

  ‘I gave as good as I got,’ said Ivy, haughtily.

  ‘Yes, she did,’ said Betsy, excitedly.

  ‘Yes,’ enthused Phyllis. ‘The nuns were always telling us how sinful we were,’ said Ivy. ‘They gave us bad food – and it was because we were sinful; they made us wash all the clothes of the convent in cold water because we were sinful. And I told them that parable, you know, the woman taken in adultery.’

  ‘Indeed, I do,’ said Emily, who had been in church every Sunday throughout her childhood.

  ‘Jesus said to the men who were going to stone her, “Let him among you without sin throw the first stone.” And before Jesus said that, he bent and wrote something in the dust with his finger. “Have you ever wondered what that could have been, Sister Perpetua?” And she hit me. And I hit her back. That was why they locked me up.’

  Emily laughed. ‘Good for you.’

  ‘Nothing but bread and cold water, and I was pregnant.’ Ivy introduced what was felt to be an unnecessary addition to an overload of accusation.

  ‘It was very wrong,’ said Emily.

  That word was pursuing her. During the long hours she had been wrestling with the charitable representatives, today Scotland, yesterday Wales, they had repeated how wrong it was that such exemplary schools, like the Martin-White schools, should employ unmarried mothers.

  How very much they had enjoyed themselves, Emily recognized, those representatives of public charity, saying, ‘It was wrong. It is wrong.’

  Wrong, wrong, wrong, agreed Emily now, silently, as one does with words or, for that matter, phrases of tunes, that nag and pester: Now go away. Leave me alone.

  Alfred was saying, ‘I am so glad you are here, Emily. Because we need to pick your brains. We need your advice, you see.’

  Loitering on the lawn, beyond where sat old Mr. Redway, were the twins, still called that, the two Tayler boys. Knowing they were going to be wanted at this discussion, they had waited till their father summoned them, which he now did, waving an energetic arm at them as he sat. In bounced Tom, who at once pulled up a chair to sit himself near the disgraced one, who was shining and replete with the attention she had been getting.

  The baby squawked; Ivy picked it up, and rocked it in her arms, glancing at Tom, smiling.

  She was not altogether sure she wanted to be Alfred’s daughter-in-law. On the plus side, everyone knew that Alfred, when Bert died, would be in charge of the farm, possibly an heir. Bert was not long for this world, Ivy had decided. And there was a question of Tom’s age. Did she really want to marry an old man? – well, he was certainly attractive, full of the strengths he had acquired on his travels. But not young. Not a young man. There was one of the young farmhands she had noted, had fancied, was keeping in her mind…

  Alfred was saying, ‘These two boys of mine, well, you’ve known them since they were born. I don’t have to say any more. They’ve been fighting over there, in more than one war. And then in South America, and in Africa. You tell them…Tom.’ Tom took it up. ‘You see, living here, we are so ignorant about what it’s like over there. We aren’t anything special, Michael and I, just the education we got here, but if you get into a village, let’s say in the Transvaal or in Bolivia, you realize how much we get that others don’t. You go into a village, and you are a wonder, what we know. Michael and I set up classes in all kinds of things. You’d be surprised…

  ‘And if we had a nurse with us, let alone a doctor…’ broke in Michael.

  ‘Yes. And to cut a long story short —’

  Alfred took it up: ‘We are going to set up a battalion. It’s to cut out the recruiters – if a youngster wants to go out of England now the recruiters are waiting for them.’

  ‘The battalion will go, equipped with medics, particularly to the places they can do some good. And that’s where we need your help.’

  ‘Oh, you aren’t going to ask for my signature,’ smiled Emily, who very much liked what she had heard.

  ‘That, too,’ said Alfred. ‘No, it’s your expertise. We have to raise money, you see.’

  Emily said: ‘I can tell you what Cedric told me – he’s our expert. If you can, keep everything under your own control. But that depends on how much money you’ve got.’

  ‘Not much. But we can raise a good bit around here. No one wants their sons going off to their damned wars.’

  ‘You need Cedric,’ said Emily. ‘He’ll fix you up.’ ‘To get the young ones out of England, that’s the thing,’ said Alfred. ‘Did you know what a laughing-stock we are? Our bloody class system, our fits of silly public morality…’

  Emily did not think it worthwhile to say again that she was not responsible for the recent scandal.

  ‘They laugh at us,’ said Alfred. ‘This is a silly, petty, pettifogging little country, and we’re so pleased with ourselves because we’ve kept out of a war. But if you ask me I think a war would do us all the good in the world. We’re soft and rotten, like a pear that’s gone past its best.’

  Here, his sons and his wife began softly clapping at what they had heard too often. They laughed. They were laughing at angry Alfred, who said, ‘Oh, laugh, then. But I’m right. If we did have a bit of a war, I mean, not much of one, we wouldn’t be so insufferably in the right about everything.’

  Emily was not listening to Alfred. The baby, grizzling, was being rocked in those rosy arms. Ivy was smiling, so pretty, in her element, the centre of attention. What a picture, thought Emily, watching how the babe’s tiny hands clutched at Ivy’s woolly jumper.

  So pretty, they are…and h
er heart ached. Why did it? There was no reason for it to, surely.

  The sight of that young mother and her tiny child was going to make Emily cry again, if she wasn’t careful.

  ‘I know I’ve only just come but if you knew what a day I’ve had,’ excused Emily. ‘They wear you out…And you really must get Cedric on to this, Alfred. It’s essential. No, I’m going. I’ll just run along.’

  General embraces and handshakings. Emily was out in the wind again, which could be blamed for her wet eyes and cheeks. She said goodbye to Mr. Redway. She left.

  Emily did not drop in to Mary’s: Daisy was there. Mary and Daisy were not getting on – had they ever? Emily did not want to sit in on a bitter little conversation.

  Daisy was saying that Ivy was being rewarded for wrongdoing. It wasn’t right. She was going to live in this house and be looked after by Mary. Anyone would think that Ivy had done something wonderful and clever. Emily knew that Daisy did not really think like that: she did when she was with her mother. Mary was not really so condemning, as she was now, of her daughter. ‘How can you be so censorious?’ and so on.

  Emily went to the station and into the waiting-room. A few people waited for the London train.

  Emily sat in a corner, and wept.

  When Alistair died she had wept, and thought, Of course, one weeps when a friend dies. But it was very different now. She wept because until Alistair had died, and was gone, she had had no idea how much she cared for him. How was that possible? There was something wrong with her. The man had loved her. Now she admitted she had loved him. In the five years they had known each other he had asked her in a hundred different ways to stay with him, had written her delightful little notes and – here was a fact that did not go away – a hundred times could he and she have gone to bed, but for her this had seemed impossible. Why? She did not know. She did not know herself. To sit miserably crying, your heart broken, well, many people have done that. But to sit weeping full of rage, of real fury, at yourself, well, perhaps that is less common.

  The station master, between trains to and from London, returned to the waiting-room where a girl stood by the urn that held boiling water, and he and she chatted, and sometimes called out greetings to people in the waiting-room they knew.

  Emily, her head in her hands, found a cup of tea sliding towards her and the station master was saying, ‘I know who you are. It is hard to see you so low.’ And he brought out a flask of something – yes, whisky – and offered it, poised over her teacup. She nodded, thank you. ‘My niece was working in your Bristol school,’ went on this kindly man. ‘It did everything for her. It is a wonderful thing you have done.’

  Emily felt redeemed by the tea and the whisky and smiled at her rescuer, who then said that when she heard the train, she must sit right where she was until he came for her. Which he did, taking her out to the platform, his arm around her, until he found the guard, indicated Emily and, with a few whispered words, guaranteed a comfortable journey to London.

  Back in Beak Street, she rang Cedric, who at once said, ‘So, you are back, Emily.’

  And Emily said, ‘Cedric, I need to ask you something.’

  And he said, ‘I know what you are going to ask. I’m psychic – no, it is Fiona. You are going to ask me how much money you have.’

  ‘Yes, that’s it. How did Fiona know?’

  ‘Well, armed with my psychic foreknowledge, I looked up your account. You don’t have as much as when William left you a tidy little sum, but who is your financial manager? Yes, it is I, Cedric, and you have nearly as much as you did then.’

  ‘Thank you, Cedric. I thought there would be much less.’

  ‘And now Fiona and I have been discussing what you want it for. She says you might be thinking of giving every girl who gets herself into trouble a big sum, enough to catch a husband. I, on the other hand, guessed you might be thinking of starting a refuge – am I right? Well, you have enough money for a really good house, staffed comfortably…’

  ‘I’m not having any of those ghastly God-bullies,’ said Emily.

  ‘Quite right. That’s what I told Fiona.’

  ‘I am surprised I am so predictable.’

  ‘Delightfully so, Emily. Like a knight of old, if there is a wrong you are going to right it. Mind you, you don’t have enough money to start an empire, like the Martin-White schools, but you could have, let’s say, three good refuges. I take it you don’t want to go down the road of bishops and debs?’

  ‘Absolutely not. My money, and I’ll be sole arbiter.’

  ‘And who could be better?’

  ‘Did your psychic flair tell you about Alfred Tayler and his Good Samaritan battalion?’ ‘Alfred rang me and asked. If they are going to raise the money themselves, then all he’ll need is an accountant: I shall recommend one. Have you decided what to call your refuges?’

  Emily told him about Ivy Smith, and how she had quoted the parable of the woman taken in adultery, and had hit the nun who hit her.

  ‘Very good,’ said Cedric. ‘Well, you can’t call it the First Stone, which is what instantly springs to mind. Fiona has already suggested Ruined, after the Hardy poem. The trouble is that finding names, particularly for a dodgy enterprise, always leads one into the temptations of happy ribaldry. Are you crying, Emily?’

  ‘Yes, I can’t stop.’

  ‘Have you thought of taking a really good holiday?’

  She could not at once speak: since she had known Alistair, she had gone up to see him, stay with him, if she needed to rest.

  After a while she said, ‘Cedric, I am a very stupid woman and I have only just understood it.’

  ‘Luckily, most of us don’t have our stupidities brought home quite so painfully, poor Emily.’

  ‘I shall be very busy starting off the first refuge. I won’t have time to think about what a silly woman I am.’

  That wasn’t exactly true. Since she had seen that girl Ivy, sitting there cuddling the very new infant, the picture hardly left Emily’s mind, stabbing her to the heart – which was already overblown with grief. She, Emily, had had a mother, but she had died. All her life Emily had been saying, ‘I didn’t really have a mother, she died when I was three.’ Emily Flower, her mother, had been considered such a disaster there wasn’t even a photograph of her. Emily Flower had cared only for frivolity and enjoying herself…Wait a minute – she had had three babies one after another, and died in childbirth with the third. Did that leave much room for frivolity and fun? But here was Emily’s new thought. Had it left much time to cuddle and dandle her first baby, little Emily? Had her mother ever actually held and cuddled and dandled her, as Emily had seen Ivy do with her new infant? Did she want to think about it? At least she must decide if she wanted to think about it. What she did not want was for grief to rush out of the dark pit it lived in and fasten on her heart, as had happened with Alistair.

  She had to admit that, sitting there in Alfred’s house, opposite that girl with her new baby, smiling, defiant, she, Emily, had wanted to kill her. Yes. Why had she? She had certainly never felt anything like that with Fiona and her infants.

  Cedric said, ‘You shouldn’t worry too much about Ivy Smith. If there was ever a girl who could look after herself…’

  ‘She didn’t do too well looking after herself with us, did she?’

  ‘True. She nearly split the Martin-White Foundation down the middle. But surely the fault is with our delightful British public, not with her.’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Why don’t you come and see me in the morning and we will arrange absolutely everything? I don’t mind if you cry. Cry as much as you like.’

  ALFRED TAYLER was a very old man when he died. He came from a long-lived family.

  EMILY McVEAGH saw some boys tormenting a dog and went to remonstrate. They turned on her. It was believed that her shock at this was more the reason for her heart-attack than the blow she received on her head. She was seventy-three years old. Hundreds of people came to her f
uneral.

  Explanation

  You can be with old people, even those getting on a bit, and never suspect that whole continents of experience are there, just behind those ordinary faces. Best to be old yourself to understand, if not one of those percipient children made sensitive by having to learn watchfulness, knowing that a glance, a tiny gesture may mean warnings or rewards. Two old people may exchange a look where tears are implicit, or say, ‘Do you remember…’ signposts to something worth remembering for thirty years. Even a tone of voice, a warmth, or irritation, can mark a ten-year love affair, or an enmity. Writing about parents, even alert offspring or children may miss gold. ‘Oh, yes, that was when I was living in Doncaster that summer with Mavis.’

  ‘You were what? You never mentioned that.’

  Writing about my father’s imagined life, my mother’s, I have relied not only on traits of character that may be extrapolated, or extended, but on tones of voice, sighs, wistful looks, signs as slight as those used by skilful trackers. More than once did my father say, with a laugh, talking about some girl in his youth, ‘But I liked her mother even more.’ From there came Alfred’s intimacy with Mary Lane.

  Bert was his childhood friend, a young man’s mate. They had good times together in boys’ pastimes and when Bert went with my father to the races, ‘Oh, I did so love the horses,’ said my father. Meaning the animals themselves. ‘Bert and I went up to Doncaster when we could. But I was on my guard – I could easily be taken over by it all – those horses thundering down the straight with the sun on their hides, the smell of them, the slippery run of your hand on a rump. But Bert wasn’t so cautious, not in that or in anything. I used to have to watch for Bert. He didn’t care enough about himself.’

  Once in Banket, in Rhodesia, for no reason I can remember, there was a Danish woman visiting. She was a large, laughing, ruddy-faced woman and I remember to this day sitting as a small girl on her lap, in her arms, thinking, She likes me, she likes me better than my mother does. And my father most certainly did like her. From that afternoon so long ago came Betsy, Alfred’s wife: I enjoyed giving him someone warm and loving.