Friends and Relations

by Elizabeth Bowen

  Lady Elfrida, who had and desired no sister, was prepared to countenance the relationship only quite superficially. Laurel could guess at her disappointment. There would have certainly been a morning, a today projected for Trevor Square that should admit only Rodney. But her hostess would find Laurel’s sister adamant. Laurel attempted pity. “Elfrida’s like me,” she thought, “she sets her heart on things.”

  At half-past eleven Laurel, posted up at her drawing-room window, watched a tall couple walk down Royal Avenue. She felt some admiration: Rodney. Opposite her door they parted: one had a good view of him. Janet did not look back at her lover; a moment later the bell rang. The sisters met on the staircase. In her dark clothes, with her new assurance, a rose pinned into her coat, Janet appeared more than ever distinguished.

  Surprised by their emotion (for they had hardly missed one another) they drew apart a little but smilingly paced the room. “Look…” Laurel exclaimed. “We have no taste!” She pointed out to her sister a chair, a rug, a green lacquer cabinet where she knew they had erred, sat down in the brightest armchair to cover most of it, and went on to tell Janet how she was a true bride, terrified of the servants—she had planned years ago servants of hers should wear mob caps and cherry-pink in the mornings, but Simpkins and Sylvia (what a name for a cook!) were not to be imposed upon—and changing her new dresses, for very exhilaration, three times a day. She liked London better even than she had expected, and carried (though Edward must never suspect this) a map of it in her handbag, also a guide to the buses. It was still odd to think of a London day not in terms of shopping, and of districts out of relation to Paddington station. Mrs. Bowles had already rung up to ask if there was anything she could do. And the girl Theodora Thirdman had rung up, no one could think why. Laurel confessed: “At the wedding, I asked her to stay. She made me so nervous, I could not think what else to say. But as they are living in London I don’t think she can want to, do you?”

  Janet thought not. It occurred to Laurel, pausing in her talk, how odd it was that Janet should not have mentioned Rodney, though he had come to the very door. With a shade of resentment, Laurel began to talk again, rapidly: Janet seemed quite a stranger.

  Janet looked round her, recognizing the wedding presents. She knew them all too well, better than Laurel; she had unpacked, arranged and re-packed them, wondering how they could all come together to make a home. She was relieved that the room did not look like an exhibition; she said so to Laurel. Sun streamed in generously; from chairs and cushions colour must already be making a ghostly departure.

  “Oh, Janet—”

  Janet, who seldom smoked, took a cigarette from the shagreen box and lit it seriously.

  “—we didn’t spoil your engagement? You didn’t spoil our honeymoon!”

  “It worried Mother and Father. But I knew Rodney and I would marry.”

  “Does Rodney not mind at all?”

  “You see, he is accustomed to Considine. I suppose Considine is impossible. There have been several—I mean there are so many people Rodney could not marry if he let himself look at things that way.”

  Janet did seem cynical. And this was, in a desperate way, funny. Half Laurel’s smiles were against her judgement; one came now, irresponsible as a butterfly. “What a good thing he’s so much in Africa! What’s he like—Considine?”

  “I don’t know: I do like him.”

  “Janet, you are very—? I mean, aren’t you fearfully—? You know I can’t ask.”

  Looking down, at the question about her happiness, Janet landed her ash in the little tray with lotuses. “I’ve never felt like this before,” she said accurately. Laurel’s moment towards her disappeared like a thought, forbidden. Disappointed, she could not help saying: “I don’t think Edward’s going to mind very much any more.”

  “Oh,” said Janet, without irony.

  “But if you had any idea—if you could understand, Janet, how fearful it’s always been for him about Elfrida. I don’t expect I really quite understand, yet. You and I’ve never had to cope with these things.”

  Janet’s eyelids remained inexpressive. Laurel went on, with her new little wise air of having been schooled in humanity: “You know, you do sometimes talk, Janet, as though everything in the world that had happened had happened to yourself and you were resigned to it, so it didn’t matter. But after all, you aren’t Edward. Nobody else is. When he was five they all came…”

  “…Who all came?”

  “His Tilney aunts. They came without any explanation and took him away from his home in a cab, so indignantly. He says that’s what he remembers so fearfully; nobody would explain. A dreadful house in Buckinghamshire appeared from somewhere and bits of the London furniture kept turning up in it; like wreckage coming down on a flood, he thought.”

  “Really, Edward can’t have thought of that when he was five. I do think, Laurel, it’s time you gave him something else to think about. If he had even been nine or ten…”

  “Well, he was five,” said Laurel, annoyed. “When he was six he asked if his mother was dead and they said, ‘Practically.’ You can imagine what he felt about that; he had just seen a skeleton.”

  “Were his aunts unmarried?”

  “Of course. Meanwhile, she was living alone, so reproachfully, over in Paris. Edward says he would not like to say that Considine had deserted her, but it did seem to everyone extraordinary that they did not marry. It really did seem as though she had thought out what she ought not to do, what to avoid, what would hurt people most, and done it all. Then people began to say how unfortunate she was, then how charming, then just when Edward was at the most sensitive age she came back to England for the war and seemed to be everywhere. Edward had grown up always meaning to comfort her and to re-establish her, and when they did meet he was absolutely nonplussed. Then she worked in a hospital in the south of France, and when he had that last year of the war in France, when he was nineteen, he spent his leaves with her. When the war was over and he went to Oxford she took the Trevor Square house. She seemed absolutely contented and talked about Considine as though he were Edward’s uncle, till he had to make her see that he couldn’t bear it. Even then Considine kept turning up with lions and things in the Tatler and the Illustrated London News.”

  “He is very distinguished.”

  “Oh I know, I know; he might so well have been the hero of Edward’s youth.”

  “But he can’t have made Edward a permanent invalid.”

  But Janet was not yet a wife, how could she understand? Her husband had told Laurel all about this in the dark, with his head close to hers and his arms round her. Had he spoken of this before? He said, till now he had not ever let himself think or feel. Once she comforted him so much that he wept. They had designed, wordlessly, that he must re-live his childhood.

  Laurel, spreading out her fingers on the arm of the chair, looked so much oppressed and in face of Janet’s un-sympathy so lonely, that Janet moved over to be beside her. “Darling, I’m sorry. But we must all live somehow. I suppose things are different for me; I don’t feel much, I suppose. I’ve always had to do something, or arrange for something, or answer a letter. I don’t even know what people are like—look how I couldn’t tell you about Considine! I suppose Lady Elfrida is outrageous, but that just seems to be like her living in Trevor Square or never listening or being unpunctual or having dark-red hair.”

  “Dyed,” flickered Laurel.

  “And yet she is so imposing. This afternoon she is going to take me to some of those terrifying upstairs shops that Mother can’t get out of. Really, Laurel, I think it must be a good thing for people to harden.”

  “If people can,” said Laurel. “—Tell me about Rodney.”

  “He is coming to dinner tonight.”

  “But I must know about him!”

  “He came here to the door with me. I thought perhaps
you would see him.”

  “I did,” Laurel admitted.

  “Do you see what I mean?”

  “About marrying him? Of course. But oh, Janet, do try and be less extraordinary! Perhaps when you’re married…”

  “Perhaps,” Janet said gravely. “But I never shall be able to think of anything to say that is what I mean—Laurel, when can we all meet?” Laurel, with some forebodings which increased as she spoke, unfolded Edward’s plan for tomorrow. Janet was touched. She was certain Rodney would be free. He must be free. Laurel said she was certain Edward would like Rodney. They did not again speak of Edward, or Rodney either. There seemed no reason why either topic, during the years ahead in which they were to live with their husbands, should come up again.

  Sylvia the cook looked round the door at the head of the basement stairs. With interest she heard the sisters come downstairs to look at the dining-room. They crossed the hall; she had a good view of them. Now Mrs. Tilney was a pretty little thing and anxious to please, but had no “style.” One could see she was not accustomed to London ways; for instance, she had tried to suggest that Sylvia and Simpson should dress like waitresses in a fancy teashop, and naturally they were not going to stand for that. She was for ever bringing pictures down to the kitchen to make it cheerful; Sylvia understood her to be a clergyman’s daughter. But Miss Studdart had style; it would not surprise Sylvia if she were to marry an Honourable. A wife like that would have been the makings of Mr. Tilney, to get him out of his fanciful ways, which Sylvia did not feel she would be able to stand for more than a month or so, what with this thing and that thing, not to speak of Simpson’s goings on: a girl like that would run after a Chelsea pensioner: anything in trousers. However, the work was light and she and Simpson had given Mrs. Tilney plainly to understand she must not have a dog, children or dinner-parties.

  At this point, a latchkey turned in the lock and Sylvia nearly stepped backwards downstairs with indignation. For here was Mr. Tilney, popping back again when he was not due home till six; when Mrs. Tilney was about to be given a poached egg on a tray and to be grateful for that. “Just a bone,” he would say. “As though,” thought Sylvia, “we were a mortuary.”

  The ladies came out of the dining-room where, by the sound of it, Mrs. Tilney had been repolishing the table (one for Simpson). Mr. Tilney stood blindly, as though the hall were the coal-hole. Putting out a hand to the dining-room door he said: “My darling?”

  And Miss Studdart said in her decided low voice: “Hullo…Edward.”

  4

  Theodora had hoped great things of the wedding. She was disappointed: socially, nothing had materialized. By the time the young Tilneys were back from their honeymoon, she was still at a standstill.

  Theodora had a very clear view of her family’s situation; it was important that the Thirdmans, after long exile, should establish themselves in England. During the train journey to Cheltenham, she had implored her parents to make full use of this opportunity. That desperation might do its full work she had left them, on the return from church, advantageously placed in an archway between the two rooms. Here, however, exposed and fatally passive they had been collected by the Bowleses. While she herself, disqualified by the hat, too anxiously roving, had prepossessed no one. Her failure was written for her in large characters; she satisfied nothing but her appetite and at last, pale from over-indulgence, marzipan and ices, had taken her parents away from the festive house. Returning, third class, knee-to-knee with the Bowleses, she glowered a general disparagement from under her bright hat. Alex and Willa Thirdman could never be made to see life was one’s affair and, at that, desperate. At their most positive, they put up a little mild fortitude. Because of this, perhaps, their daughter had armed herself like a bandit, to hold up anything, anyone, and wreak pillage upon the years.

  Alex and Willa Thirdman were satisfied with their afternoon; having been overlooked with such affability they could no longer regret Switzerland. Wistful, they pressed their faces against the glass while the train’s speed squandered the precious regained fields; by each flashing gable or garden they momentarily dwelt and pondered. Keen inquiries from the Bowleses elicited some recollections of Switzerland—Apart from anything else, Theodora thought the Bowleses were certainly damned, for they talked in trains—Dear Switzerland, cleaner than Italy, kinder than France; Willa extolled the air, milk, honesty, education, arrangement of scenery; there but never too close. Hundreds of English families, dotted in chalets along the lake, had been happy in their translation. There had been pleasures: boating, botany, the dear League of Nations. The Bowleses congratulated Theodora upon being able to speak three languages.

  Theodora glowered. She replied that this was untrue; her spectacles magnifying a horror of that cold lake, of the bleak excellence of her Swiss education. They recollected she was fifteen, a difficult age.

  During those weeks of Laurel’s honeymoon, Theodora became more than ever difficult. The Gloucester Road flat was too small for her, her large feet thundered among the hired bric-à-brac. The telephone became at once her distraction and torture. She would not go out with her parents, but solitary in the flat remained for hours with the directory, hearing the steps, the traffic go east to pleasure. Then, having bolted the door, she rang up several prominent people and, skillfully passing secretary or butler, maintained with each a conversation of some seconds, under the pseudonym of Lady Hunter Jervois. She had a pleasant, mature voice: an asset. Passionately passing along the wire she became for those moments the very nerve of some unseen house. But it was bitterness. She exclaimed once to Willa: “Mother, are we so absolutely superfluous?”

  “It will be nicer, dearest, when you’re at school. But we thought—” They had thought, a term off, a cultural London holiday. From six, the girl had suffered a rigorous education.

  “But don’t we want to matter in this place? Aren’t we ever going to begin? Mother, you’re like someone sitting for always on a suitcase in a railway station. Such a comfortable suitcase, such a magnificent station! Eeooch!” She emitted an indescribable sound.

  “Theodora, you really ought not to bully me.”

  “I’m simply telling you—”

  “Oh hush, Theodora. Father and I are disappointed; we thought you would like London.”

  “What good is London to me?”

  “Father and I are so happy going about on buses looking at all the types.”

  “I hate types! And why does Father always carry a mackintosh?”

  “We thought the galleries—”

  “Entertainments we go to always seem to be free,” said her daughter suspiciously. “Don’t you see no one goes to galleries who has anything else to do?”

  “But the National Gallery is always crowded, Theodora.”

  “That just shows,” exclaimed Theodora. “Can’t you see that’s why life’s so awful?”

  It certainly did seem difficult to be fifteen. Willa could just recall—herself, she had practised the piano a good deal, said, “Very well, Father,” when Father objected; her figure began, she braided her back hair; there had been red-haired Mary and dark Mr. Torrence—perhaps she had even loved? Had one been difficile? Willa could hardly think so. She clearly remembered saying: “I’d really much rather not, thank you,” “Just as you like, really,” and “Indeed, Mrs. X, I have no idea.”

  Theodora improvised but did not practise; she did not seem likely to have a figure at all, so perhaps the soul was delayed also. So Willa said quietly: “I expect Art will come.”

  “I have no idea what you mean,” replied Theodora. At this point Alex Thirdman, coming in with his mackintosh from the South Kensington Museum, told Theodora she must not bully her mother. She went to bed, though it was four in the afternoon. So most discussions ended. She must have lain kicking her heels against the wall, for they heard thump—thump—thump against the thin partition. Mr. and Mrs. Thirdman si
ghed. Two days later they made a mysterious expedition into Surrey.

  Here they interviewed a head mistress of, it seemed to them, striking originality, who set great store by individual development and encouraged her girls to keep pets. She understood at once what they meant about Theodora. “She has a great deal of character,” Willa said, “we can’t help feeling she is a little unusual. She is highly strung and—I don’t know how to explain—sensitive: she cannot be driven.” The head mistress received this calmly. “We think she might write,” Willa added. But Alex—they were in the conservatory with the guinea-pigs—drew his stick softly along the bars of the cages: the guinea-pigs telescoped into their own fat, bumping back into darkness. “She has a brain,” he said, staring into the cages (the brain his son would have had). “But unsteady, variable.” The head mistress, a tall aquiline charmingly dressed woman, approached Willa a little to intimate: “Adolescence.” She had rows of books round her study to this heading. Guinea-pigs, thought Alex, guinea-pigs? He had forgotten—had Theodora missed something? The sun leaned hotly through the conservatory walls, they all flushed. Did Theodora form strong attachments? They hardly knew! Switzerland was so temperate.

  Following Miss Byng from the conservatory to the blue-green drawing-room—where pieces of modern statuary had been put about since Miss Byng feared no influence—they arranged for Theodora to be altogether an exception, to come at half-term, almost immediately. Because London…Miss Byng understood. She held in her ringless, nerveless hands their absolute confidence. There could be nothing she did not know about adolescence. A child running past the window in a scarlet tunic made happiness concrete, the lawns stood solid in sunshine, a piano-study issuing from a floor above built up a diligent self-rewarding pattern over this shining silence of application and still trees.

  They were fortified, on their return to their girl: at last they had life to offer. The flat, darker than they expected, enclosed an ennui they had forgotten: Theodora had more than ever her caged air. She countered any announcement with an announcement: Laurel Tilney was back, Theodora had rung her up. Ring up so new a bride? They were appalled; it was impossible to explain why. And Studdarts really did seem to be in the air tonight, for here was a letter from Cheltenham: Janet, engaged, was to visit London. The situation of this new pair of lovers, so difficult, so perilous (and this time Theodora really had to be told why) engaged the Thirdmans’ attention throughout dinner. Over the cool soup, the warm Canadian salmon, silent between the calm parental faces, Theodora meditated, testing the links of this new relationship. Considine—something came alive, she could perfectly see him: disengaged, blasé, rucking a tiger-skin, backed by the major feline masks, almost visibly shredded—like a fine, up-growing thistle on a cobwebby morning—with feminine reputations. Next morning she rang him up. For Considine, nothing was unlikely; there was nothing to tell him that the re-appearance of Lady Hunter Jervois might not be delightful (they had met, she said, too fleetingly in Cairo). He was charmed by the voice. But alas—she rang off and hurried to join her mother outside the tube station. They were to shop for school. Throughout the morning Theodora, ironically passive, had her teeth looked at, her eyes tested, was measured, revolved before the dispassionate mirrors of less expensive shops. By tea-time she had acquired the boots, the ties, the tasselled cap, the knee-length tunic, the blazer, the “rational” bodices and the dancing-sandals without which it was impossible for her personality to develop at Mellyfield. She sucked a lip, looking elsewhere. She had accepted the prospect of school without interest. “For nothing,” as she said to her mother, disparaging through a window of their arrested bus the portentous delay of Oxford Street, “nothing could be worse than this.”