Friends and Relations

by Elizabeth Bowen

  “I can’t speak for you,” said Janet. “I know it has been dreadful. But none of us all can alter anything: this is how we have grown.”

  Elfrida said hardily: “Of course I am always ruined: one can’t be more. But look what I did to Edward, look how I scared him. He’s fit for no one but little Laurel—”

  “You offend me rather,” said Janet abruptly.

  “Nursery tea,” said Elfrida with, on Janet’s behalf, her full bitterness, an access of her most “impossible” manner. But contemplating that miniature happiness in Royal Avenue she softened, putting out in contrition a hand her Janet recognized but could be relied upon not to take.

  Janet, aware of the hand’s intention, knew that if Elfrida had not adored as a sort of sacred disqualification her Janet’s stupidity, she must have despised Janet. As it was, Elfrida was irritated enough. For she had gone too far, she had relied on today’s explicit awkwardness to precipitate something; perhaps expecting even to find Janet in Edward’s arms—nature as well as circumstance having made her conceive of love as a very high kind of overruling disorder, she hoped much of any break with the amenities. As for Rodney, Laurel, the children begotten in error, finance, position, the two establishments, these did not, clearly, present themselves to Elfrida. For her own part, such attachments had withered too long ago, leaving so many scars along the stem. She had brought up, perhaps, to meet today’s crisis, some nebulous if profound idea of herself as ministering everywhere, consoling, adopting, shedding her own impatient clarity on any possible stupefaction or loss. She was opposed, however, to explanation in any form: this love of Janet’s became an affair of her own passionate continuity. “The trouble is,” thought Janet, “that I cannot think and Elfrida won’t.”

  “You did talk, Janet? Theodora said you and Edward had a long talk in the library.”

  “I said he was so foolish about the children.”

  “The children?—Nonsense, Janet, of course he loves you.”

  Janet, after a pause, said: “You were the reason I married Rodney.”

  Lady Elfrida received this blankly. She made an extravagant gesture of astonishment, which was not enough. Putting her hands up to screen herself from the fire she leaned back and looked round the room behind her, at the cabinets and curtains, for many witnesses. Then returning, speechless, to Janet, she implied a whole range of new curiosity. Her look burnt itself out on those downcast eyelids.

  “Oh, so you had known all the time, from the first, about Considine?”

  “Oh yes, I’d heard once; why should I forget? When I went to stay with Margaret, I thought, ‘This is near where he lives.’ His name was the name of the county to me—written large like that—of course I wanted to come here. It seemed extraordinary Mother and Father should not remember: of course, we had never discussed you.”

  “—I must have been the only possible pity about Edward—”

  “No, Mother and Father don’t talk when they’re comfortable. Why should they ask? They knew nothing was Edward’s fault. But I thought to myself, ‘How can they not remember his name?’ And Batts—it seemed a whole part of England. But they liked me to go to Margaret’s; it was a change, you see.”

  “Yes, it was nice for you.”

  “When we came to Batts to tennis that afternoon I could hardly speak. But it rained, you know. Margaret thought me so stupid, I suppose I was rather. Considine seemed a rather bad host that afternoon; we were not his sort, of course.”

  “What did you think…?”

  “I—he was smaller than I expected.”

  “Yes, he’s smaller than I remember.”

  “He seemed a little…indistinct. Rodney was really more like what—”

  “So you’ve married them both.”

  “It seemed something for me—I wanted to be related. I suppose that seems odd to you—I can see now it was odd,” said Janet, with her calm precision.

  “So you took Rodney—” Her friend re-examined the situation from this angle. “Of course,” she added, “it is extraordinary to me that a woman as little cold as you are should keep so quiet.”

  “It was a question of what I wanted—couldn’t you have kept quiet once?”

  “We’re not speaking of passion,” returned Elfrida impatiently. “This was—determination. Perhaps that’s the only passion you have—Are you guileful, Janet?”

  “I don’t know. Am I?”

  “Had you really forgotten Edward’s—? Didn’t you realize…?”

  “I meant him to notice me.”

  “Did you? I suppose one does—I’d forgotten.”

  “I suppose—if I thought—I knew I should make him angry. I thought we might all feel better afterwards; I didn’t know it would last. You see, I had no experience, nothing outside myself.”

  “They all thought—poor bewildered dears—you were simply perverse.”

  “I know. But all I thought (then at first) was, ‘Here is a place for me.’ You see, what had gone wrong with me about Edward was so difficult to—so unreasonable; it was impossible to understand. I felt at a loss; it was like being idle with a wrist broken or something when I had always been able to use my hands and be so busy. It felt awkward, like not knowing what to do on the stage; like when I was once given a small part in some acting because it was so very small, they thought too small even for me to spoil. No one explained the part to me, so I stood there with no words to say and nothing to do with my hands. Do you see what I mean, Elfrida? It was like that—I don’t suppose that has ever happened to you—so when Rodney came it was like being given directions. And he was so kind. I felt sure I was right—didn’t you, one time?”

  “—No, I felt sure I was happy. That can never be contradicted, even afterwards.”

  “I thought I could do what was natural. I never thought, you know, of being opposed to Edward. I knew we must all be young, though I didn’t feel like that, and that we were bound to grow, and I thought there must be some kind of strength in growing, like a plant has, that pushes things, even paving-stones, out of the way and grows past them. I thought being afraid or angry were like stones; I didn’t see they had a life of their own and made growth too, and could be so strangling—”

  “And I thought you never thought!”

  “This is how I see it now; at the time I did what I had to do; there must have been some reason. When you’re in despair, Elfrida—”

  “By now, how wrong do you think you were?”

  “You see, I haven’t often looked back.”

  “I suppose you’re not good exactly. But you’re certainly at some disadvantage.”

  “I’ve always felt so,” said Janet.

  Elfrida gathered the bright, metallic folds of her shawl in a quick movement. She reconsidered this strange desire of Janet’s to be related. “She is—she’s frightening,” she thought. “I see what Edward—” Herself, loved as she loved: to extinction, she had never exercised this dark power.

  “You see what it is,” she said. “Edward started ahead of us all—from when he was five, from when I—Something was always owed him; no one could ever slap him. For my part, of course, I could not slap anybody; from that point, I lost my hold; I couldn’t even dismiss a servant. Never to be in the right—it’s the only possible ruin, I daresay, if one’s nothing besides a woman. You can have no idea of it, Janet. For instance, when I was first in Paris my money—credit stopped, for a few days: there’d been some mistake. I couldn’t order things at a shop—you have no idea. I used to sit down to meals thinking ‘I ought not to.’ It really was destitution; I’d never been without some kind of a moral privilege. And for some time after I’d been—put away—I hated signing my name on a cheque. You see I wasn’t really a Tilney. I kept out of debt for more than a year, answered letters, felt wretchedly friendly to everyone; I met my cook in one of my own dresses and never said anyt
hing. I was grateful when anyone trod on my toe and apologized. Being shady, Janet—of course in those days I was full of vanity—it was like losing one’s looks.”

  Janet thought: “I wish she wouldn’t—” She exclaimed: “How dark it is!”

  “I suppose it’s midnight—No, look, a quarter to ten. Do you think they’re still in the billiard-room? He really must beat Theodora.”

  “Who must?” Janet said vaguely.

  “Considine, naturally,” Elfrida said in the dark, sharply. “Oh, is it true she wrote such a nasty letter?”

  “Who said—?”

  “She did; she said to me she supposed that must be the matter. How odd she is, poor thing; quite a dark horse. Well, not so dark really, blotchy. But you know Considine’s no good at any game, he doesn’t care enough; bored. I could beat him at billiards, always. He keeps humming and chalking his cue. Those days—at one time—I used to wake up at three o’clock; it was a sort of rendezvous, when the clock struck; I’d rather have been asleep, but anyway, there I always was—to watch him do little silly things over and over again in my head, in the dark. In one’s head, I suppose, or else they had never stopped, somewhere; been going on all the time: something to do with one’s eyes. Fumbly little things, never very well done; a cue being chalked, a cigarette being rolled; ‘God Save the King’ being played with his left hand on the back of his right. Or a hansom being stared at until it stopped; then he’d give the man half a crown and say ‘No, let’s walk.’ Tricks, ways of doing things you know, they madden one at the beginning. They pull something right out taut; one thinks ‘Perfection.’ They’re the most precious exasperations, until exasperation itself sets in. One thinks of them to smile, one can safely smile in the dark; they’re all one has left of oneself, the pleasure one won’t share. Then suddenly—every night—something goes, all the pleasure. ‘I never saw you: I’ll never see you again!’ To get back, you have to remember everything through again, like a lesson. Or like something you’ve once been told—Well, the darkness is changed every night, nothing stays on it. What a mercy, Janet!”

  “I’ve never smiled like that—I never could.”

  “No? Then last thing you turn over, hear your eyelashes on the pillow and something hammering inside the pillow, think, ‘Here I still am.’ Then when you wake next morning the tide’s right out, you could weep. Then there’s a letter—How much too much I do talk, Janet!”

  “Perhaps I don’t understand—Oh, what’s that?”

  “Where?” cried Elfrida, startled.

  “Listen!”

  “Hermione…”

  The call, any call, for which Janet had been alert. She made for the door quickly, drawing shadow after her black dress. Elfrida sighed. Janet’s distance even from love made her enigmatic when indeed she was not enigmatic at all but a plain woman. You pulled her guard away, she appeared to offer herself frankly but was immediately disembodied. Now she was off to comfort a little girl’s night fears. Lady Elfrida had no nervous life, her nerve was the heart; she turned all the lights on in angry solitude. “I’m old,” she thought. “I’m beginning to raven; I can’t bear people to go away.” She sought her own face for reassurance, repaired it, ran a finger-tip over the eyebrows and crossed the hall to seek company. They were coming out of the billiard-room.

  She met Considine, smaller than she remembered.

  Janet found Hermione shivering at a turn of the stairs. “I had a frightful dream; I dreamed I was nowhere.”

  Janet, kneeling, chafed the cold arms that were round her neck. “You know you mustn’t.”

  “The house feels funny. Can’t I stay down here with you?”

  “That would never do.”

  “I’m all inside my head. Can I have Gladys up to sing ‘Abide with me’?—Oh, then you abide with me, Mother; I’d much rather.” They returned to Hermione’s room. “My bed looks nice,” said Hermione, “it’s a wonder I don’t enjoy it more. Doesn’t Anna’s bed look empty!”

  “Curl up tight and think about your dormouse. Think of poor people in trains with nothing to lean on—there’s a train now.”

  “It’s frightfully far away. Do you think it really is a train? Will Anna be home now?”

  “I expect so, and sound asleep.”

  “Oh, go on holding me tight, don’t go; I wish we were the same person!”

  “Let’s tell each other about Friday week, about the Nursing Fête.”

  “You talk, Mother; you tell me.”

  Janet, her arms across the pillow, said: “Well, there’ll be the band. And you know, they’ll be running those blue motor-buses from Market Keaton. There will be hundreds of people there, Hermione. Did I tell you Cousin Dolores was lending her decorations? There will be flags enough to go twice round the tea tent. You must be sure to go down with flowers that morning and help Mrs. Robertson arrange the vases for the tea-tables.”

  “Secretly, the cakes we send are always the nicest, aren’t they? Mrs. Robertson tells me so every year, but I say, ‘Oh no.’ You’ll wear your dark red, won’t you, Mother? How fine do you expect it will be?”

  “I expect, very fine indeed.”

  “And I expect, frightfully fine. But I hope there’ll be wind enough for the flags. I hope there’ll be Japanese flags with heaps of suns, and American flags too. I do think the Union Jack is boring, don’t you, Mother.—Oh, and my goat!—Oh, I wish I could sleep till Friday week!”

  “It’ll soon be Friday.”

  Janet turned the pillow; Hermione, her cheek to the cool new pillow, was practically asleep. Her arms loosened. Her face was close to a shining, slippery stream; she, stirring like that alive thing down in the leaves that she never discovered, shook the flat bright leaves above her to someone else’s astonishment. She was hidden like a corncrake, distant like a cuckoo, close like a nesting swallow under the roof. She came up once through the hollow strong stems, knocking light from the leaves to murmur: “It’s almost next day.”

  Presently Janet could creep away.

  Part III

  Wednesday

  1

  Mrs. Thirdman was in town for the day, for the sales. She arrived a little before Laurel at Laurel’s club, which was remarkably central. The portico was imposing; Willa slipped past the alert maroon pages and chaste bronze grill with a distinct sense of privilege. The house had a past and a name: on the white stone, high-windowed staircase the shadow of a branch raised ducal ghosts for her. Arch after arch, the reception-rooms were extensive, impassive; here a great flood of furniture was arrested. To place oneself was distracting; to be claimed by Laurel one must be well in evidence. Willa side-glanced this way and that at members sitting rather gloomily in abeyance. She slipped off a glove, then slipped it on again.

  Now Alex had for years been urging Willa to join one of these ladies’ clubs. He feared that she might be missing something. She thought, perhaps one was missing something. For here, besides giving lunch and even dinner to friends—and the waiters would be accustomed to taking orders from ladies, would make allowance, no doubt, for some slight hesitation, and there would be gentle curries and nice little egg dishes—she could rest, wash her hands, see the weekly papers and have her parcels delivered. And: “Meet me at my club,” she would be able to say. At some clubs, she had heard, one could exhibit one’s water-colours, there was a strong cultural element, they had debates on subjects and interesting people spoke…This might even attract Theodora.

  Willa got so far as projecting a little lunch party: Mr. Gibson, Alex, herself and the interesting chaplain from Vevey’s kind wife. But she had arrived today a little dishevelled and sticky from pulling dresses on and off over her head at Peter Robinson’s. She knew Laurel would turn up looking like a tea-rose. So directed by a page she went down to wash, among glass and marble. She felt some apprehension, uncertain that the accommodation provided might not be for members alon
e—this brilliant white marble vault, the hinged mirrors reflecting a thousand profiles, the cut-glass bowls of salmon-pink powder, the cut-glass trays of cotton-wool tufts to puff powder on with, the pins, the brushes. So she turned off the hot tap almost at once, just ran the cold tap over her wrists, and made use of a towel left by a clean-looking lady rather than take a fresh one. Meanwhile, two members swung up their feet on to two chaises-longues and, beginning to buff their nails, exchanged medical confidences. Treatment…there seemed to be nothing nowadays you could not get done. Of course they could not know Willa was not a member. But did they even know she was a married woman? One blush, brilliant under the artificial daylight, and Willa fled, with hat, scarf and handbag. Then she had to come creeping back again for her gloves.

  Upstairs again Willa, fresh but chastened, sat down in an armchair broad as an elephant’s back that stared all over with bougainvillea and jade-green jays—one of fifty chairs all so attired. She supposed this would be a modern cretonne, not suitable for a cottage room? It would not have been suitable in Switzerland either, but might have looked well in the South of France. It might look well at Batts, perhaps, but Rodney was said to be so conservative, and Theodora complained that Janet would not oppose him. The jays would not have done, of course, in any room with a parrot. But she could not imagine wanting to keep a parrot. Among the armchairs there were a great many glass-topped tables. Till just now, the Tatler and the Sketch had been spread about on them with a great air of munificence, but a member had come with a fierce look, swept these all up and carried them off with her to a corner divan. There, though she could not look at more than two at a time, she hid the others behind the cushions…This left only the ashtrays: Willa did not smoke.