Friends and Relations

by Elizabeth Bowen

  “Laurel…”

  “I wish we could just go back.”

  “To being no one but you and I?”

  “Is that what you’d like?” said Laurel, with desolate incuriosity.

  “I don’t know; I can’t remember.”

  “Answer—no, don’t answer. What is the good?”

  “We have never asked each other—”

  “There never was anything—What a long time you’ve waited, Janet. You’ve waited, haven’t you? And how well Elfrida knew. She’s always been seeing something over my shoulder; she’s been my most frightful enemy. No wonder Edward was restless. Funny, I seemed to have everything, didn’t I? And I’ve got no friends really but people like Mother and Willa and Mrs. Bowles. I’ve never been anything but a daughter.”

  “I wish you’d be angry—”

  “Have I seemed very ridiculous all these years? I thought I was doing so well. What a wedding day, what rain, what a frightful mistake! But no one could tell me.”

  Janet realized she had been holding Laurel too long, that any life in the touch had departed; she went back to her chair. The catastrophe was very quiet.

  “When did you know?” she said.

  “When that fool Theodora wrote. First it seemed all silly, but rather exciting; like the beginning of a war. It never struck me not to give Edward the letter. Then I saw he, I saw Edward—It was much more than just his mother. I remembered how you and he quarrelled when you were engaged to Rodney: I saw why I minded so much then. Edward and I never quarrel; we fight. Before he went off to Batts, I said what I’d never dared say, what I’d never even thought: ‘There’s no reason why you should keep minding so much about Elfrida!’ ”

  “He really did mind, Laurel.”

  “Oh, he didn’t—How curious, Janet; you don’t know him! But he had to have something to live on.”

  “You’re saying more than you mean.”

  “I didn’t mind seeing: I love him so much; I do love him. But this idea of Elfrida, what she had, what she was, has been fearful; it’s ruined us all. We’ve been certain of missing something, we’ve all watched the others. Like that game, a ring going round and round on a circle of string under everyone’s hands—you never know where it is, who may have it. It’s been terrible, Janet, it has, it has really. It’s ruined us all.”

  4

  At this inadmissible crisis Lady Elfrida was elsewhere, the Irish side of the Channel, innocently abroad. Edward, that same day, left Whitehall early for home; but, unwilling to arrive, regretted a no-destination: his mother’s shut-up house with paper over the carpets and sheeted furniture. In St. James’s Park, rounding the lake with its screaming water-fowl under the heavy July trees, he recollected a quality in her welcome and that something in her affection, a touch of cheerful ignorance. For a hundred omissions to smile when her smile overruled him, he craved pardon. She was away. For the moment, London was simply a shell to him, stamped with her absence. Could she ever have missed him? Besides some small marks for her irony, he had offered her little enough.

  There was, all at once, nowhere for Edward to go; he felt too old for his world; he had graduated.

  Since Trevor Square was not in existence, he did not doubt that Janet would be returning that day to Batts. She had not said so, she had said nothing; they had hastily parted. Her face with no look, a perfectly blank face after a smile, interposed between himself and his thought: he turned from it.

  There was now nothing not to be done, but part or speak, which both were impossible. They would continue in their two customary directions, prosecuting existence. By this time, the shipping offices round Pall Mall would be closed: he should have called in to confirm the family bookings for St. Malo. For some years, the Tilneys had been anxious to go abroad. They had desired solitude, unlimited time for talk, space, unorganized leisure. But summer after summer, inevitably, they had joined the Meggatts at Batts. Now that they stood committed to villeggiatura, a Brittany beach, could they swim, sleep, eat but not speak? Laugh but not touch? Touch but not look? Laurel made silence her enemy. But perhaps this was her reticence? He had never inquired.

  By half-past six return became less impossible; Edward reached home. Laurel had bought those gay sprigged cotton dresses to take abroad. She was trying them on; she had added more than a touch of make-up—she said, to anticipate sunburn. Edward, seated on the stool by her dressing-table, watched her turn one pretty shoulder and then the other to the long looking-glass. Catching at his reflected half-smile, she quickly turned to him. Sylvia, she said, had taken the children to Kensington Gardens: he and she would have to dine out.—At the Queen’s, perhaps?

  He rather liked the idea. “Let’s ask Lewis.”

  “I think he’s dining with Janet: she’s in town for the night, you know.” She named the hotel.

  “Then let’s ask somebody else.”

  “Oh, Edward? Bother!”

  “All right then, darling.”

  “The fact is, Edward, I’m feeling a little bilious.”

  “Then it seems a pity—”

  “No, I’d like just a little dinner then come home early.”

  “That’s pretty,” said Edward, touching a frill of the pink dress.

  “Not bad,” said Laurel, smiling at her reflection. Re-tying the fichu, she told herself that marriage was a good thing: she had no pride, it was a good thing he should be obliged to love her. Perhaps what she liked was proximity. For look how she had been missing Janet since four o’clock. She powdered her bare arms with orange powder and held them out. “Sun,” she said.

  In the glass, she saw Edward’s eyes on the pink flounce, resolutely expressionless. To his reflection stole her long tender look that her looking-glass only received and perhaps recorded. Too shy to make herself known, she stood smiling in contemplation of her pretty feminine envelope; as though Edward were someone to whom she had already said good-bye, who had left her then slipped back for something forgotten; someone in haste, unwilling to be detained, impossible to accost, so that she must only secretly watch through the crack of a door or over the banisters his ghostly coming and going.

  “What did I say?” said Edward, rousing himself.

  “This day week we shall be in Brittany. Anna is furious. I suppose we do like her to have ideas of her own?”

  So they dined at the Queen’s, discussing Anna, who was a constant surprise to them and, in the incalculable variability of her mulishness, something of an achievement. Laurel finished her peach and said she felt better now but would like to go home. Edward said he would go for a turn. They said good-bye in Sloane Square; Edward put Laurel into a taxi. The night was stuffy; like needles a few stars pierced the density of the sky. Naturally, she did not ask…

  Edward walked a short way up Sloane Street, then directed a taxi to Janet’s hotel. Lewis, of course, would be with her. He had some idea that Lewis and he might walk home. He found the two looking through some manuscript under a high chandelier in a little sitting-room: a bright little dull room with console tables and gilt ferns climbing the mirrors.

  “We are looking at Marise’s novel.”

  “Oh! Do you know about novels, Lewis?”

  “No, I have no ideas. But Marise gave it to me.”

  “We are thinking of something for Lewis to say,” smiled Janet.

  Edward said he considered sending round novels in manuscript a form of exhibitionism, and invited Lewis to walk home with him. Janet sat dazzled under the light, putting the chapters in order; she said mechanically: “Don’t all go.”—By this time she had almost given up Edward, she had begun to think he would never come. She passed him the manuscript to put down somewhere, but did not look up. She wore dark red lace and looked at once more and less than herself; a country lady from home. Lewis declared it was hot, opened the window behind the lace curtains and went out to order Edw
ard a drink. Immediately Janet’s eyes met Edward’s; she said: “You must make him go.”

  “I’ll go away with him and come back.”

  “No, that’s—Very well: anything.”

  Lewis did not lend himself to the subterfuge; he was determined to go without Edward. This idea of his own made him awkward, even abhorrent to both of them. It became plain to Janet, leaning back on the rigid sofa, her eyes shut, protesting she was tired, that she was assisting at some kind of murder. The degree was indifferent to her. Innocence, under repeated blows from them both, kept raising again and again a bloody head as Lewis, hat in the hand that waved off Edward, protesting unsociability, indisposition, a recollected engagement, kept backing towards the door. His look of candid sympathy, of affection, went from Janet to Edward. The sickening conflict ended; disingenuousness, hydraheaded, had many smiles. Edward went off with Lewis.

  Janet, a moment later, went out to tell the porter not to admit Edward again, to tell him to tell Edward that she had gone to bed. But the porter was not there; Janet returned to the sitting-room. When Edward came back, she was on the sofa where he had left her. He shut the sitting-room door.

  She said: “Why couldn’t we let him go naturally?”

  “I thought you…”

  Janet looked at her hands as though they were guilty. Her hands trembled.

  “Is this your own room?”

  “No. Isn’t it ugly? But no one will come in.”

  “Don’t let’s be angry now,” he said gently.

  “No. Edward, do, do let us be quiet or something. Or come near me. Else why did you come back?”

  The window, looped with lace, gave on an unlit courtyard: there were silent windows above, and below voices. Edward took Janet in his arms. He felt her face cold against his; her life unextended, deep in the compass of the moment, at a dark standstill and past astonishment.

  The shock past, there had been no shock; they parted again in silence, Janet trembling. She did not let his hand go but kept feeling along his fingers with a light desperate touch as though she were blind. If she were less or more at peace, she gave no sign. She said at last: “There is nowhere for us to be.”

  “Now?”

  “Ever. We’ve got nowhere.”

  “This afternoon I thought…”

  “Don’t think; not yet. Oh, don’t leave me.”

  “We’re mad, Janet—the window…”

  “I know, I don’t care. Let us for once not mind!”

  “Oh, you beautiful…”

  “No, go now,” she said, drawing away, trembling. “Do go.”

  “I haven’t the strength,” he said. Her fingers paused on the back of his hand.

  “I can’t stay here without you. I can’t live without you. I’ll go home to Batts tonight.”

  “You can’t.”

  “There’s a one-o’clock train,” she said, her face held up, agonized to the light, finding words with difficulty. “I shall be home sometime.”

  “Good-bye?” said Edward.

  She had to face the withdrawal of everything; her look went round his fixed look in a curious wounded way, lost. At a movement he made she smiled, as at something dear and familiar. She searched from feature to feature, learning the mask, almost unaware of him. While she exposed to his eyes her suddenly very young, perplexed, enlightened and very lovely face, he could feel her assemble, give out through her very wound itself some power, dark in the light she had from him, impalpable to the senses, impenetrable by the spirit. They still could not speak or part. His will was not hers, nor hers his; their will like a frozen waterfall seemed to be timelessly standing still.

  “Good-bye?” he asked again.

  “Do we have to say that? Don’t waste my courage at the very beginning.”

  “Janet…?”

  “What am I saying? This is the end.”

  “You don’t know.”

  “We made each other no promises.”

  “You’re right,” said Edward, very white. “How could we?” he added with a kind of exalted bitterness. “What are our promises worth?”

  “As much as Elfrida’s.”

  “She—”

  “Don’t speak of her!” cried Janet; this first identity of their thoughts was horrible. “She was her own; she spent her own life. But you and I—”

  “We’re less free?”

  “No. I mean,” she said with a curious lift of the eyelids, a fixing of her distended pupils upon his own, “we have no—no bitter necessity.”

  “—Don’t move, don’t change: you’re so beautiful. I never guessed what a woman was—If this must be the end, can’t we once comfort each other?”

  “No—I pray you not—I can never be touched again—”

  Drawing apart, they both looked vaguely towards the door. Steps were crossing the corridor. They had in the moment of this retraction so utterly parted that they were lost to each other; each shut up in a confusion of aching senses. The footsteps halted and went away. Janet glanced round at the mirrors, at the prim attentive chairs like a world waiting.

  “What is the time?”

  “Twelve o’clock.”

  “Oh,” she said, “Wednesday.”

  5

  At Batts, Hermione paddled down the lake at a terrific speed, shrieked and leaped from the boat to the bank to take aim. “Bang! Bang!” she exclaimed. She was pursued by a mad swimming buffalo.

  “Now then, Hermione,” said her father from the top of the bank.

  “I’m perfectly calm.”

  “Anyhow, don’t wake your mother.”

  “She can’t hear, right up there.” Hermione could not take her eyes from a spot in the lake where the buffalo sank in fury, in red ripples. “Besides,” she added, “she isn’t asleep, she’s just been to the window.”

  “But the curtains are drawn.”

  “I know, she drew them.”

  “Play some quieter game,” said Rodney. “Fish.”

  “Well, I can’t at present: I’m a trapper.”

  Rodney turned and went restlessly up the banks and lawns to the house. He had no time, he should be getting along. But the strangeness of Janet’s early morning return, a strangeness that still hung over the scene, had communicated itself in all directions. At six that morning, she had telephoned for the car from Market Keaton. Perhaps now she could not sleep; there was some wind. The July trees, glossy, fretted the sky with their disturbance of light; standing under the house he could hear her stiff chintz curtains whisper against the window sill. In the bright midday with its slow hurry of clouds the house rather wearily stared, as though wearily seen. Stepping out of the car she had explained nothing, accounted for nothing; she had forgotten—forgotten, perhaps, to sleep.

  She wanted to be at home, she said. But what unaccountable rashness, her all-night journey! Pitching his voice low, Rodney called up: “Janet?”

  Janet lay with her hands clasped under her head. She could not sleep, she was ashamed to be lying here. Ruled through her thought that was no thought, the unseen skyline behind those billowing curtains sustained the enormous day. She was the earth hooped round with roads and netted with railways, intolerable to itself, afflicted by movement, nightless. From the train, sleepless, not yet delivered from yesterday, she had watched this irresistible new day dawn. On time she had some terrifying overdraft. Where are they all? she thought; what can that be?—hearing a door shut.

  Her door opened soundlessly; Rodney came in. On the draught, to meet him, bright yellow day through the curtains made a wild entrance. “Rodney?”

  “Not alseep?”

  “No: I was going to get up.”

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” He sat down at the foot of the bed. “For Heaven’s sake, Janet, don’t do that again! No day is worth it.”

 
She smiled. “I know, Rodney.”

  He looked at her, not quite like a doctor, more plainly puzzled.

  “The Mothers’ Union are coming today,” she added. “The cakes are made, but I’ve given no other orders.”

  “I thought that was one thing you didn’t belong to?”

  “I ought. Anyhow, they’re coming here for their Day. Can you let me have Sykes and Benson to carry the trestles and benches down from the loft?”

  “I don’t think the loft’s a good place to keep them, do you?”

  “I know; we must reorganize. This evening the men can cover the tables and seats with tarpaulins and let them stay for the League of Nations.”

  “League of Nations?”

  “Coming on Thursday.” In sudden search of darkness she put her hands over her eyes.

  “No, look here, Janet; you must stay where you are.”

  “No, I must have those tables put in the right place.”

  “If you’re really not going to sleep, I’d like to hear about everything,” said Rodney wistfully. “I’ll just stay five minutes. You seem to be hardly back yet. You did have a good day, didn’t you?”

  He liked to be with her like this, she passive in the swaying light from the curtains. Her feet were crossed in their scarlet mules; for company he put a hand beside them. “And so?” he said.

  “Well, it turned out Laurel was giving Mother and Mrs. Bowles and Willa lunch at the club, so I had lunch with Edward. Then—”

  “Where did you lunch? How was Edward?”

  “The Ionides. Edward was quite well. Then I took a taxi to Laurel’s and we—”

  “How was Laurel? What had she done with your mother and Mrs. Bowles?”

  “Quite well—Oh, left them somewhere, I think. There was the usual fuss with Anna and Simon.”

  “Surely it’s time those two went away to school somewhere?”

  “Laurel thinks it would ruin their characters. So then we talked—”

  “Is she looking forward to Brittany?”