Friends and Relations

by Elizabeth Bowen

  “Oh,” cried Laurel, “it’s shocking I’m so late! I’ve no idea what becomes of me!” She slid through the chairs in a cool smiling rush and sat down to proclaim her despair. Had poor dear Willa arrived without difficulty? Had she had a frightful morning too?

  “Your club is so central,” said Willa gratefully.

  “But not for anywhere that I ever am—Have you been shopping? How terrible for you. How nice this is! It’s ages—One thing—Mother’s later than I am: she loses her head, you know. And Mrs. Bowles?—Oh, Willa, it is so dreadful about Mrs. Bowles; I hope you will understand,” said Laurel earnestly. “But if you’d been Elfrida herself I still couldn’t have avoided her. You see, we use Mrs. Bowles as a kind of annex when Mother and Father are up, because you see we have no spare room, with all our children and things. And that does have to mean a good deal of pleasantness and at least one lunch. I can’t have her to dinner because of Edward. And yet somehow when Elfrida has Janet with her it’s the other way round, Elfrida feels she ought to be pleasant to me and ask me to lunch and everything and it’s so unnatural. Life is difficult, isn’t it?”

  “Mrs. Bowles?” said Willa.

  “You see, I’m afraid she’s coming to lunch with us.”

  Laurel paused, waved to a page and offered Willa a Bronx. “Though they’re horrid here,” she said, “warm.” Willa, impressed, said she did not think she should care for a Bronx, even a warm one. Laurel did not feel that, under the circumstances, she need ask after Theodora. It was really a wonder, the other day, that Edward had not died. With an ever-recurrent amazement, she eyed dear sensitive Willa. How could she and Alex…? It must have been something pre-natal. Perhaps Willa had been to an unpleasant play. Laurel herself had been most careful, before Anna and Simon were born; she took no chances. She did hope, now, she had been successful with Willa and seemed to establish a kind of a league of youth. She would have hated Willa to think Laurel thought her a “Mrs. Bowles person.” Laurel could not help knowing that had any combination of, say, Elfrida and Mrs. Bowles been really in question, she would have had herself wired for to the country or gone to bed for the day.

  Mrs. Studdart appeared, with Mrs. Bowles who seemed pleased to be with them. Mrs. Studdart expressed surprise at Laurel’s punctuality. “I do wish,” she said affectionately to Willa, “that Sussex were not so far from Cheltenham.” They moved into the dining-room. “Lunch will be beastly,” said Laurel, fanning herself with the menu. “I don’t think there’s anything I can recommend. Shall we all have melon?”

  Sunblinds were dark against the glare of the street and electric punkahs in motion, but it was certainly hot.

  “I always admire your frescoes,” said Mrs. Bowles, looking up at the ceiling wreathed with goddesses.

  “Surely,” said Mrs. Studdart, “frescoes are only frescoes if they are on a wall?”

  “How is Edward?” said Willa to Laurel, with gentle eagerness.

  “Oh, feeling the heat rather. How is Alex?”

  “Gardening; it is so good for him.”

  “I wish Edward gardened.”

  Mrs. Studdart asked: “How is Theodora?”

  “Oh, so well, after her lovely week at Batts! They are all so good,” said Willa expansively.

  “Still studying music?” said Mrs. Studdart vaguely. She had no idea what Theodora did, and as a rule thought it better not to inquire.

  “She hasn’t much time,” said Willa proudly.

  “She’s such an interesting girl,” interposed Mrs. Bowles. “She always seems to me so unusual.”

  “Poor Willa’s been shopping.”

  “Of course, I never shop in the sales,” said Mrs. Studdart. “You can never be sure. I have just come up to go to some theatres. But it’s a curious thing, it’s always the plays I have seen that come to Cheltenham.”

  “I always think this is such a magnificent dining-room,” said Mrs. Bowles, while Laurel waved away the waiter who was trying to bring them soup. “We don’t want soup,” she said. “Do we? How fearful food is: I’m so glad I’ll soon be in Brittany.”

  “Brittany?” exclaimed Willa.

  “I mean, I’m sick of this club.”

  “But we heard you would all be going to Batts,” said Willa.

  “Oh, hadn’t you heard? We thought after all we would take the children somewhere to play on the rocks. Edward hears now Brittany’s too picturesque, but we’d taken our rooms and everything.”

  “Oh, I quite understood you were going to Batts,” said Willa, distressed. “I heard they were all expecting you.”

  “Well, they aren’t expecting us now,” said Laurel cheerfully. “Janet quite understands. We offered to take Hermione, but they thought better not. As it is, we hope Anna and Simon may play with French children.”

  “French has certainly been an advantage to Theodora,” said Mrs. Bowles faithfully. Laurel’s bright quick look went round the table and hung in space a moment with a pensive tilt of the eyelids. Her thoughts fled by like water, as elusive, spinning their own shadow. With a composed movement, a ghost of Janet’s, she once more took up the menu. “Sole, I think?” she said.

  But Mrs. Studdart looked at her sharply. As on that wedding morning when rain tapped and trickled, the ices were uncertain, the lilies had not been delivered, she attributed much to Edward. It had never before rained for one of Laurel’s parties. Mrs. Studdart tried hard to recall some shafts of bitterness, now in full flight. But Laurel’s brilliance worried her, like electric light burnt too extravagantly. She thought happy women dulled a little, something crept over them…Now surely it was reckless of them to be going to Brittany? Batts would have been more human, more economical. “You will have to be careful about the milk,” she said, with the air of reserving much. It became plain to Mrs. Thirdman and Mrs. Bowles, something must have occurred and be still occurring. Estrangement, friction? Was it Rodney, was it Edward? Marriage was always difficult.

  “I hear Batts is delightful,” said Mrs. Bowles.

  “I expect you can swim, Laurel?” asked Willa.

  “You must not miss Mont St. Michel,” said Mrs. Bowles.

  So far, Laurel considered, it had not been a bad day with Mrs. Bowles, but at this point her mother’s friend refilled her water glass, broke up another roll and leaned forward to tell them about her expedition to Mont St. Michel. Laurel’s manner went quite to pieces; she absented herself like a child that has asked, “May I get down?” her chin drooped, her eye wandered, once or twice she looked up at the brim of her hat. Yet as Mrs. Bowles’ story continued, gathering years of such talk on its vigorous dullness as on a running-thread, Laurel’s nostalgia for girlhood became acute. Her ’teens—their exposure to stingless boredom, their extravagant reverie; a home that gave her life colour, taking none of her life’s; the cool ball-dress slipping over her arms; her impatient stitching of summer dresses, their lyric wearing. Janet and Mother tacking roses on to her bodice (it would be a wonder if someone did not propose tonight), Mrs. Bowles’ voice ran on. So the trees drowsed (a dull London sycamore crossed the window now) while Mrs. Bowles talked and Laurel’s reel of pink cotton rolled away underneath the piano; Laurel had to go flat on her stomach: Mr. Bowles, on a visit, talked on: Laurel getting up bumped her head on the underneath of the keyboard and thought suddenly of Edward: Mrs. Bowles’ words like rather old dulled fish gently tipped from a barrow went on slipping and slipping. She loved Edward; delicious uncertainty perished that moment before this voice. She recalled her father’s affection, how he never listened to what she said, how at home, with mounting voices, they all talked for hours at cross purposes; with what ease one burst into angry tears. Quiet plumes of lilac, the band heard far down the Promenade; she relived the perpetual Cheltenham afternoon. At corners of white-walled residential roads, under lamps slung over the avenues, an immoderate pleasure had surprised her. To her share in all thi
s she would, from her too pointed, too explicit relation with Edward, willingly have returned. Sheltering here and there in memories, as in doorways, from the storm of her present anguish—these weeks since Edward’s return from Batts had been unadmittedly frightful—she saw the land behind her shadowless in the unreal light of regret. She was racked, she was extravagant in her sense of loss. A break with her now so ghostly present she did not contemplate. It was a maiden rather than widowed daughter who, in Corunna Lodge, looked out of the staircase window, with only the vaguest sense of having been absent, at the ever-cheerful poplars. All the same—she knew while Mrs. Bowles still talked on—one could never bear it.

  “—So the girls agreed we had better not,” Mrs. Bowles was concluding. “Naturally it was impossible to replace the thermos, but we had a little spirit lamp. A so-called ‘Tommy’s cooker’; they are so practical; I have often made tea on one inside an attaché case on my knees in the train coming back from Italy. However, Angela quite blamed herself and insisted on going back to leave a message. She went back with Mrs. Hamilton; they both went back to explain. You must remember, Laurel, they all speak patois in Brittany; it is not like French at all. Meanwhile Mildred and I were quite anxious; we thought of leaving a message with the stationmaster, but there was no stationmaster. However, just as the train came round the bend, Angela and Mrs. Hamilton came driving up in a fiacre, waving triumphantly. Mrs. Hamilton had taken the fiacre. Even so, they had to run down the platform; poor Mrs. Hamilton quite breathless. I can assure you we were quite a sensation, and there was a good deal of perfectly good-natured fun. The train was packed; Mrs. Hamilton so kindly insisted on paying supplement for herself and me: ‘old bones,’ she said, so we travelled first. The girls love types, they preferred to stand in the corridor. The hotel bus met us as we had arranged, so altogether the day went off splendidly. We hope to see more of Mrs. Hamilton; she knows there is always our little prophet’s chamber. Laurel, you and Edward must certainly come to tea before you go to Brittany; we could show you photographs, and Angela could put Edward up to some little dodges about the hotels. She is always the man of our party.”

  “It all takes me back to Lausanne,” said Willa, sighing. Expeditions were over, Alex’s rucksack was put away; though they went out they would not “set out” any more. “All the same,” she thought, “if I were Gertrude Studdart in London I’d stay at one of those little hotels in the Cromwell Road. They are not expensive.”

  “Mrs. Bowles, it is dreadful for Edward, he can never go out to tea—”

  But a page came between the tables. All four felt some apprehension; Mrs. Bowles, as though dug up from Pompeii, was petrified in the act of wiping her mouth. Laurel pulled a sweet-pea from a vase and sat twirling the gay winged flower. The messenger, like death, approached. A call to the telephone? The dark-gold, Olympic ceiling shut like a trap on some mild large sky, a personal spaciousness into which, under the influence of Mrs. Bowles, they had all ascended, or all been dissolved; they heard the loud hum of the club dining-room. “For you, Laurel, I daresay,” said Mrs. Studdart, who hoped, feared, expected and hardly liked to suppose…Or was it that Edward habitually telephoned at lunchtime?

  “Mrs. Meggatt is on the telephone.”

  “Janet?”

  “She’s not in London?”

  “She may be speaking from Batts.”

  “That’s not like Janet—how can she know where you are?”

  Was this?…Or was this? The three ladies looked away from each other. They looked at Laurel’s empty place with the chair awry, the poor sweet-pea lying across her plate.

  “I had no idea Janet was in town,” said Mrs. Studdart. Less communicative than ever, her dark daughter.

  2

  “Janet?”

  “Laurel? I’m just up.”

  “Oh, lovely—Where are you?” cried Laurel with an unaccountable quaver, shut in with her sister’s voice in the strait little telephone box like a coffin upright.

  “I’m having lunch with Edward, at the Ionides.”

  “Oh, how nice!”

  “I rang up your house and they didn’t know where you were, so I rang up Edward and he said you were giving lunch to Mother and Willa at the club, so we thought he and I’d better lunch.”

  “And Mrs. Bowles is here, too.”

  They laughed even more than this merited and arranged a meeting. Janet went back to Edward, from whom, as she crossed the Ionides under the fans, it was plain that she had already been absent too long.

  The coffee had come; it was cooling. What could she have to say? Why speak now, at all, to Laurel? From now, he and she would not feel alone any more. His mind was no more than a clock where each minute struck like a little hour, with such a reverberation among his senses that the hum of the restaurant was retarded, the indoor light paled or darkened, damask coarsened to canvas as though some magnifying quality were in his touch. This clang of over-charged minutes pointed the irony of those years…Seeing her come, Edward poured out his coffee.

  Janet, sitting down again, smiled across at Edward. She pulled a rose further into her buttonhole, shook her head at a cigarette, poured out her coffee. She appeared for the first time lovely, and infinitely disingenuous. He recalled the occasion—which with a silent naturalness, like a child’s, had already taken its place in their common memory—when she had shown she loved him. He had to find her trustworthy.

  “Was she there? You’ve been a long time.”

  “They looked all over the club: I believe they’re stupid.”

  “Was she surprised?”

  “She knew I wanted to see her before France.”

  “Did she—?”

  “There was no time. We are to meet in an hour, in Royal Avenue.”

  “So after this I shan’t see you.”

  Janet said, with the little derisive smile of someone too idle to think, picking up a refrain: “You should be coming to Batts. You know you will have to come some day.”

  Edward said nothing. They exchanged a glance of extraordinary intimacy which was at the same time, on his part, feverish and unhappy. The naturalness of their interview—throughout lunch, from the moment of meeting till now they had been easily brother and sister—in itself created a sense of emergency, of having been dwarfed into this very naturalness by some large event or presence, like birth or death. There had, it is true, been one or two vital interpolations, she had asked: “But why were you afraid of me?” He had said, later: “But look here; look, Janet, a mistake grows right into one’s life, one can’t attack it.” He more or less plainly confessed to a dread of love in the more searching of its implications, to a more than moral distaste for the cruel inconvenience, the inconvenient cruelty of passion. And meanwhile she looked at him with a terribly mild and profound, a penetrating non-comprehension that was the enemy of his spirit.

  Now she was back he took up one of her gloves, turned it over, attempted something again. “Yes?” she said, and sat with her hands crossed, reflective, sombre but with an air of being entranced. “You were too…good,” he had to say finally.

  “Better than you deserved, or than you wanted?”

  “Than I wanted,” he said, with an agonized deliberation.

  “You let me feel that; it was insulting.”

  “But now that has gone,” he thought—seeing, as she sat there unconscious and immobile, her hands and the poise of her head—“now what are we to live on?” For, never in oversight or confusion but with entire deliberation, what he had not loved had been her integrity. And if that virtue of wholeness had been simply a quality in her behaviour, if her present noble innocence in affection denied her nobility, light went out of the scene instantly; it became indifferent to him, in his groping, where he rested or if this hand he touched in the dark were indeed her own. Her very innocence, her unguardedness, the approach there was to extravagance in her slo
w, dark looking, the directness she brought from her practical life to express passion, seemed in their present triumphant misuse to shadow decay, so that the whole bitterness of an unfruitful autumn was present in this belated flowering.

  “I have never felt good,” she added.

  To her sister, Janet had spoken the truth. Her lunching here with Edward today was an accident, and was without precedent. Duty, affection brought her to town, convention prompted his invitation: having parted, out on the steps at Batts, distracted relations, they met as lovers. For three weeks, since his return from Batts with the indignant children, Edward, hard-worked, distrait, prey to his own and Laurel’s confusion, had thought very little and not been aware in himself of the operation of memory. A sort of emotional famine had set in in Royal Avenue. That glaringly bright afternoon at Batts, like some experiment with colour dabbed on the edge of a palette, was wiped out again. The day remained, with its date, the briefest diary jotting: exasperated by gossip he had hurried to Batts, had an interview with his sister-in-law marked by resentment on her part and some hysteria on his own, been quizzed by his mother and hurried away his children. A sheer expense of time he could ill afford.

  There had been nothing to say, meanwhile: Edward and Janet had not communicated. For her part, Janet sent back, with some smocks of Anna’s and shirts of Simon’s home late from the wash, a glove of Edward’s he had dropped in the hall. Anna wrote thanks to Rodney, Simon to Janet, and Laurel requested, in an inclusive letter of thanks, that if Edward had seemed not himself in any way they would remember he had been overworked for a year. Edward joined, she wrote, in her appreciation of their goodness. They had been angels—Did Janet know Considine gave children so many ices? Would that be likely to agree with Hermione?—And was Theodora still with them at Batts? She supposed, hardly.