The food had names like ‘Bobby’s Own Stew’, Our Own Bread’, ‘Salade Nikkioise’, ‘Tommy’s Pie’, and was very good, when it came.
The Maynards, two shrunken old people with their strong dark faces gone to bone, in clothes which they could have worn in London fifty years ago, looked out from their corner and made nothing of what they saw.
They ate steak and cheese and drank claret, and said very little to Martha, beyond asking her questions like: ‘Do you travel a lot? ’ and ‘I hear you’ve been having some good weather? ’ In short, they needed help to begin-which fact, naturally, flung Martha into disorder, since it was so difficult for her to believe that this was possible.
She should revive ‘Matty’ perhaps, hard though this was, after such a long time? But striking a note or two of ‘scattiness’, of wilful humour, she was met by long sorrowful stares-not of criticism, but of non-comprehension.
‘Of course, ’ said Mrs. Maynard, petulant, ‘when everything is for the youth, one feels one ought to go off into a corner and die.’
Martha saw that she, middle-aged woman, was being seen by them as ‘youth’.
She therefore made a great deal of small talk, and thought that she was wishing she could put her arms around them both, her old enemies. Yes, here they were, who had had such a very powerful influence on her that, looking back, she could say that of all her educators these had been the most valuable. He, Mr. Maynard, had done her the inestimable service of putting strongly before her, so that she could not possibly mistake it, that most deadly of weapons against what every young person (for a time at least) needs, wants, longs for: he had shown her disbelief, in the shape of an accomplished and withering irony: he had toughened her against ridicule. She, Mrs. Maynard, had shown her power at its ugliest, when it is indirect, subtle, hidden, since she who wielded it knew so perfectly that she must always be in the right and never doubted herself.
Ah, but what a very good job had the drunken cook made of the Maynards, stripped, stripped down to a sullen old age with nothing left of all their years of power. Indeed, one could not easily imagine how much more bitterly and painfully things might have been arranged for them.
Mrs. Maynard had always governed, intrigued, managed, by virtue of Government House, and powerful relatives in England. But now Government House was the enemy for her, must be, although she hated the Government in her country which was composed only of the second and third generations of Zambesians whom she despised, found raw, crude, unfit for responsibility. They had no touch of ‘home’ about them; yet ‘home’ (England) was what both Maynards had repudiated decades ago-and what, revisiting it now, had changed so that they could find nothing in it to admire or like. When their country (theirs, when it was run by yahoos unfit and unable to govern even themselves?) had cut itself off from their country (which was being run by unscrupulous socialist agitators who knew nothing about the blacks); when, looking around the continent of Africa (their home), they could not see one state anywhere, white or black, run in the way they believed states ought to be run-then they had thought (but only briefly and weakly) that perhaps somewhere in England (Devon perhaps, there were cousins there) they might find a sympathetic soil. Therefore had they come to visit with a half-brother, Richie Maynard, large farmer in Devon, and at the first weekend, a granddaughter had arrived from one of the new universities with a West Indian boy-friend with whom (or so it appeared) she had spent the night.
Mr. Maynard had taxed the half-brother, who had replied that his policy was, a tight rein made for a short run; the gal would get tired of it and settle down with someone of her own colour, and luckily Peregrine (the son), father of the girl, ‘had the sense to see it’.
This was putting a coloured boy from a slum in Trinidad on the same plane as once, fifty years ago, he, Mr. Maynard, had been put for Myra. Black sheep from some remote colony, he had courted Myra who had been given a long rein-they were going back home next week, they told Martha.
‘The thing is, ’ said Mrs. Maynard, with a hint of her old trumpet power, ‘people have no idea at all about service now, they are only for themselves. I have been seeing my grandnieces and nephews. They take no thought for the future at all.’
Now Martha found herself watching Mr. Maynard, who was tasting claret as if it, too, could not be what it had been: she was waiting for what, after all, she had always relied on from him, an unfailing urbanity, his need to deflate.
He had subsided back into his chair, head lowered, jowls on his chest, his hand about his claret glass.
‘We are neither of us, ’ said Mrs. Maynard decisively, ‘as young as we once were-my husband has to be careful of his heart, for instance.’
‘Oh, it’s not bad, not bad at all, ’ he said angrily.
‘No, but all the same, my dear …’ Her eyes were on his wine glass, and he sat back and allowed the little waiter to trip away with it and the half-empty wine bottle poised in a wicker basket.
‘I have a touch of arthritis, ’ she said, taking Martha into her confidence. ‘But I don’t do much these days-I garden. Gardening is my exercise.’
The meal was nearly over.
‘How is Maisie-do you see her at all? ’ asked Martha.
The two old people’s eyes met in a look.
‘She is quite deplorable, ’ said Mrs. Maynard. ‘But one would not expect anything else from her.’
‘Yes, yes, yes, ’ muttered Mr Maynard.
Guiltily? It sounded like it; Martha was not sure.
‘And Rita? ’
‘My husband sees her sometimes but she does not appear to care for me, ’ said Mrs. Maynard.
‘Well, my dear Myra, ’ protested Mr Maynard, blowing out his cheeks, protecting some delightful private secret.
‘Yes, ‘ she said. ‘But I hear she is coming to stay with you? ’
‘In a couple of days, ’ said Martha.
‘Well we have been thinking of coming Home for some time and we thought The look she gave Martha was all appeal. Unfair! An old Martha judged it. What right had she? But it was no use: Mrs. Maynard leaned forward with her old command, her white hair falling in wisps about her face, yet her flashing dark eyes and trembling lips made her all gallant, reckless girl.
She was plunging a ringed hand about in her handbag. Wads of notes appeared.
‘We were wondering. Perhaps you could persuade her. A finishing school? ’
A waiter raised eyebrows at a heap of five-pound notes, and brushed crumbs away from around it, in a delightful little play. Out went Mrs. Maynard’s hand to weight the pile until he had finished.
But how old is Rita? ’ asked Martha.
‘That is not the point. She has no idea. None at all. And her accent …’ Mrs. Maynard’s voice, which not even fifty years of colonial vowels had been able to incriminate, rang out.
Martha was silent. She looked to Mr Maynard for help.
‘Does Rita know? ’ she asked, when the old man said nothing.
‘Goodness knows what she knows!’ said Mrs. Maynard, with a look of pathetically brave accusation at her husband. Again he blew up his cheeks and let them deflate, pop, pop, pop, through his lips. His wife disdained the old man’s trick, stared him out.
He reached out his hand for his glass.
‘Brandy, ’ he said to Nikki, or Colin or Bobby, whoever it was now standing with another, a twin, against the wall. Both watched the scene with a frankly humorous interest.
‘Sure, sure!’ cried one; and ‘Mais certainement” the other, materializing brandy bottle and glasses.
‘Me too, ’ said Martha, allying herself with him; while she, Mrs. Maynard, as always in the right, said: ‘If you want another heart attack
‘Alcohol opens the arteries, ’ he said firmly, putting back his head and swallowing the lot. Bobby, or Ivor, refilled his glass.
‘Or if she won’t go to finishing school, ’ said Mrs. Maynard, ‘you could perhaps …’ She pushed a ream or so of money towards Martha.
&nb
sp; Martha said: ‘But what does she want? ’
‘Ah, ’ said Mr Maynard, ‘now you’ve hit it. But Myra won’t see…’
‘I see everything, ’ said she. ‘But we all of us have to do things we don’t like sometimes. But whatever she sees fit to do or not, something must be done about her. Her clothes for instance.’
Here she darted a look at Martha’s clothes, remembered how unsuitable she had invariably thought them, and then that it was Martha or nothing.
‘The life she’s been leading, dreadful, dreadful, dreadful, ’ she cried. ‘Dancing every night, and she’s mad about boys, dreadful.’
‘Myra, she’s well over twenty, well over, ’ said her husband.
Tears washed down Mrs. Maynard’s old face. Nikki, or Colin, standing by with the cognac, went tck, tck with his tongue, and shook his head and sighed in sympathy as he smiled at her with a charm which made her sit up and straighten and glare back.
‘Well, I really don’t know, ‘ said he, in BBC English. Then, in cockney, ‘Reely, Hai don’t knaow. Some people …’
He went off affronted.
‘The most extraordinary people, ’ said Mrs. Maynard. ‘And they’re everywhere you go.’
‘How long have you been here? ’ asked Martha.
‘Two weeks. It’s more than enough. This country is …’ And now, at last, she said what she thought.
‘What is going on here? I mean it isn’t just the clothes, I suppose when I was a gal I wore clothes too. Gals will be gals, but one does feel that… and … and … and …” This went on for some minutes and ended with: ‘And to think you were going to invade us. You invade us.‘
‘And still might, ’ said Mr Maynard to Martha.
‘I somehow doubt it, ’ said Martha.
They looked at her suspiciously: she had perhaps changed? All three decided on diplomacy, and Mr Maynard said quickly: ‘But we’re out of all that. I’m retired you know.’
‘And it’s not only here, it’s everywhere, ’ said Mrs. Maynard, her lips trembling.
‘Go on, have some brandy, do you good, Myra, ’ said her husband. He looked around for a waiter, but saw two pointedly turned backs.
‘No, ‘ she said, and looked for her things, to put an end to the possibility of brandy.
‘The bill please, ’ said Martha to one of the turned backs. He nodded, cold: his charm, his real self, having been refused, he proposed to go on sulking.
Martha pushed the heap of notes back to Mrs. Maynard.
‘No, keep it. Keep it for her.’
‘We can leave it to her in our will, ’ said Mr Maynard.
‘Yes, but let us hope that it won’t be of benefit to her just yet, ’ said Mrs. Maynard.
‘I’m sure she’ll find something to spend it on, ’ said Mr Maynard, defying his wife, who glared at him through tears.
They left the restaurant.
Outside Mrs. Maynard said to Martha: ‘Perhaps you’d like to let us know how Rita does get along? ’ This was an appeal she hated to make; it came out peremptory, but her eyes pleaded and sorrowed.
‘Yes of course I will, ’ said Martha, intending to.
Mrs. Maynard nodded at her husband and they turned themselves about and faced the pavements. An orange-coloured London sun poured down a hot glitter into the gulf between the buildings all selling wigs, clothes, food, jewels, furniture, every item of which had the stamp of the moment, which was not to take itself seriously. The old people kept their eyes straight in front of them, as they went away among throngs of youth who were either wittily-dressed boys and girls who had the world for their bargain counter; or tasteless exhibitionists with over-developed naked thighs, yards of false hair, faces hidden behind dark glasses, or whiskers, or beards-anything that concealed. According to how you looked at it.
The two ex-consuls did not look at all: they fled past as if anything they saw must undo them.
Martha watched them out of sight, and went home with her handbag forced open because of all the money in it. Counted, it turned out there were eight hundred pounds ready for Rita (Maynard’s) education.
Chapter Four
To sit in a house which is going to be pulled down, left derelict, manipulated in some way or another, is the oddest of the forms of patience. Through here, where one’s femur makes a plane with the door handle, will run a shelf? The line from head to left ankle will be that of a dividing wall? Or, floors rising and falling as they do, one walks with one’s feet on air twenty-six inches below this floor (ceiling) existing now which will vanish into dust and bits of lath and plaster.
Particularly dust.
A feverish transcience. This had characterized the eighteen months since Rita Gale’s (Canfield’s?) arrival here; more than ever, and just as Martha remembered feeling before (again, again, again) her life was like a railway platform which served trains departing fast in every direction.
As she sat now on a summer’s afternoon doing final accounts for Mark she could hear people moving in and moving out all over the house.
The flat in North London having been bought by speculators, Francis and Jill were moving in here with their flock. Three children. Gwen, Gwen’s boy-friend. Nick. Nick’s girl-friend. An ex-boy-friend of hers. The ex-boy-friend’s girl-friend’s baby-she having taken an overdose of drugs and died. Jill was pregnant again. This time by Francis. Lynda had said to him: Unless you want to be the father of at least twenty children, none your own (since Jill like a Victorian woman would probably produce yearly until the menopause), you had better be one of the men she doesn’t enjoy sleeping with. Francis had considered this, as was his way, first battering his mother with a kind of anguished ribaldry and anger, but then concluding that, her choice of words apart, there was a good deal in what she said. The two were thinking of getting married. Particularly as Jill had announced that she liked making love with Francis more than with anyone and she might yet get around to seeing that there was something to be said for the activity. She had never before, she said, had sex with a friend.
While this house was compulsorily purchased, or almost, the formalities were likely to drag out, as they do, for some months, and the Francis-Jill household thought that they might as well make use of this space of time before it became an office for the Rates or the Town Planning or before it was demolished altogether.
They all assumed that when they must move on, they would move on together, like a caravan, almost certainly accumulating items of humanity as they went. In short they, like Paul, providing places, havens, and homes for the sad, forlorn, sick, rejected, were also focuses, or growing-places for people who probably would not come to much before a very late maturity but who then … but it was much too early to say.
Paul and Francis, oil and water, never meeting for pleasure or liking or for the sake of their childhood under this roof, met now often because they were considering buying a farm somewhere on which their friends might live, self-supporting and without more reference to society than was essential. Neither used the words ‘socialism’ or ‘community’ or ‘kibbutz’ or ‘collective’.
Francis was to have a share of the money from this house … about five thousand pounds. Paul would provide most of the money. Living for the shine of money, for the making of it, the manipulating of it, the pleasure of it, he was nevertheless ready to risk the lot now. He would not live on the farm himself; the city was his place; but he proposed to sell his share in one of the houses, another house all his, a boutique and a barber’s. After all, said Paul, he had a gift for money; Francis had none; he didn’t see that it mattered: he had no doubt he would be where he was now in five years-probably richer.
Downstairs Lynda was packing to move into a flat with her new friend Sandra, who babied and bossed Lynda as poor Dorothy had done. Sandra, a large sighing blonde, all good-natured freckles, who might very well wear her hair in short plaits with baby bows at the ends if in the mood, was, as Dr Lamb told Mark, ‘very disturbed when she was, but quite adequate for normal
purposes’. Adequate or disturbed, Mark disliked her extremely, and everyone found her an embarrassment: she not only believed in flying saucers from other planets-after all, nearly everyone did-but corresponded telepathically with a demon lover who was captain of one of them. She comforted Lynda that ‘she was not to worry, Algavious’ (she called him Al for short) ‘would take off her, Lynda, with her, Sandra, when it was time.’
Lynda had had another very bad time. She had left Mark and the house to move into the room in Paul’s house, to see if she could be self-sufficient. Mark had taken it very badly-which misery coincided with the arrival of Rita. There Lynda had found not solitude, but many friends. And, since she longed to make up for a life which she saw as totally selfish, and misspent, she was soon busy with Olive’s baby, Bob’s personality clashes, Molly’s and Rose’s breakdowns. She cracked, not under the strain of solitude, but because she wore herself out. Then, by misfortune, she became involved with a crisis of Paul’s. This house he half-owned with a young businessman of good family and orthodox habits, who had flitted into smart young London but then had flitted out again. This excursion had involved him with Paul. He had imagined the house was being let on ordinary business lines. He discovered that half the inhabitants lived there rent-free, others paid very little. He was disturbed by the atmosphere of the place when he dropped in one afternoon. For one thing, he found Lynda in a bad spell, sitting on the floor banging her head against the wall and singing to herself. He diagnosed drugs, and got into a panic because of the police. Paul, on being challenged, said that Lynda was his stepmother. Further, he said that if the house was not earning much in rents, it had doubled in value-so what was he, Percy Dodlington, complaining about? Percy threatened the law. Paul lost his head and wrote a letter: our friendship … trust … in terms of our contract … will sue if… as he had, alas, so often before. Lynda then found herself in the middle of a row that threatened to reach the courts. Paul found her in bed, weeping that she ruined everyone, she was useless, she ought to be dead. Martha was away seeing Nanny Butts about looking after the three babies (Harold Butts had died), and Mark was off on an organized trip with Rita. Paul took Lynda to Dr Lamb. Dr Lamb arranged for her to go into a fine new wing of an old hospital and there Lynda had been very sick indeed. The doctor this time was of the new non-didactic flexible school who refuse to use any of the old jargon; and he supplied her with a drug which he said was new and wonderful. Lynda took it eagerly: she wanted only to get back to trying to be normal, and this drug, said Dr Bentin, would do it. She began having new symptoms which terrified her. Asked what they were, she said she kept ‘seeing things’. She was soothed and comforted; it seemed this drug didn’t suit her, they said, but another new one would. The symptoms continued.
The Four-Gated City Page 71
