Friends and Relations

by Elizabeth Bowen

  He said: “It’s late, isn’t it?”

  They had only to listen; three clocks struck, imperfectly synchronized, deepening the moment.

  “Simon’s been marking off days on his calendar till we go to France. How lovely; we’re going away on Saturday!”

  “Day after tomorrow.”

  “Is it tomorrow now?”

  He was right; it was almost tomorrow. All this time they had been carried along on the smooth stream; they had only to keep still, not rocking their boat.

  8

  At Corunna Lodge, Colonel Studdart’s days were spaced out carefully, without intervals for perplexity. Mrs. Studdart’s were, on the contrary, seldom ideal in size or shape; usually it was at least half an hour later than she could have wished. She had become, she said, her own daughter; typed diligently on Janet’s machine, walked the dog to the post before tea and drove the car into Cheltenham. The couple went out to bridge, entertained at the tennis club and enjoyed, one way and another, a good deal of quiet society. Perhaps the garden, lately, suffered a little: she dreaded sciatica, he did not care to garden for long alone. Two of their poplars came down in the storm the year Simon was born; the Prunus japonica commemorating Hermione reached to the height of the gatepost and branched extravagantly, but never to the height of the porch repainted the year of the two weddings. They did not miss their daughters but they regretted them. After dinner, pulling round arm-chairs to the fire with backs to the empty room, she played patience, the board over her knee; he finished a detective story a night. If he died first, she would stay on here for the grandchildren; if she died first the house would be given up. Once or twice in an evening their eyes met.

  They were fortunate in their sons-in-law. Rodney gave not a moment’s anxiety; on the other hand it was always possible for Mrs. Studdart to organize Edward a little. Besides an interchange of family visits each daughter, disengaging herself from all newer ties, returned solitary as a maid to Corunna Lodge once a year, at one time or another.

  Generally, Janet came in the early autumn. This cherished wife of Rodney’s was not uprooted easily from her soil: she brought Batts in with her from the moment her dressing-case had been carried upstairs. The shell-backed, gold-mounted brushes and mirrors, the gold-stoppered bottles, the photographs in their folding frames, the shagreen clock for her bedside, the rugs and the cushions without which she was not allowed to depart—all set up in the bow-windowed spare-room a minor establishment. The journey had not been carelessly undertaken; her arrival became a grave offering to their love. In return, the distractions of Cheltenham were, the parents observed with delight, delightful to their visiting daughter who lived such a quiet life. Therefore they gave little dinners, took her from house to house, attended concerts, the theatre. Still with her air of tranquil apartness, of having—and these they could not enough respect—attachments elsewhere, she re-entered the life of Corunna Lodge. She was consulted as to the redecoration of the morning-room. The photographs, the anecdotes, the reminiscences came out again for her yearly; she smiled or pondered. She brought her embroidery frame and, sitting on the window-seat in the mornings, the fender-stool at nights, discussed Hermione, Anna, Simon, Edward, dear Willa, queer Theodora, sympathetic Lewis and kind Mrs. Bowles. Her mother led the talk, but Janet withheld no opinion that could be agreeable. She walked with her father—at Batts, alas, she said, one did not walk enough. She balanced Bordighera against Alassio and agreed that it would not have been well to have undertaken the journey to Madeira even could one have afforded it. Colonel Studdart asked what Considine really did do with himself: alas, she replied, too little. “There are fellows even here,” said Colonel Studdart, “who find days too long.”

  It surprised the Studdarts to remember that they had not expected Janet to marry. She was the born married daughter. In youth, they remembered, she had been—though so good—unapproachable: one never knew what she thought. There were still, it is true, moments when Mrs. Studdart became aware another woman was present; or felt constrained, perhaps, by this constant company in which her own daughter Janet, Rodney’s wife or Hermione’s mother remained impossible to discuss. While, once or twice, Colonel Studdart perceived a stranger. Surprising her in a room, or looking up at her from his book—some darkness or turn of the head, an arm crossing the light, a shadow displaced, a dress moving; he had a sigh, a pang, perplexity; here something forgotten stirred—a beautiful woman. He remarked to his wife how Janet’s looks had improved. Though contented on her behalf they would have liked her to shine more widely, and sometimes thought vaguely of diplomatic dinner-parties.

  Laurel Tilney’s coming occasioned far more disturbance. She liked to sleep in her old room, from which tin boxes of Colonel Studdart’s uniforms had therefore to be removed. But then she spread her dresses over the spare-room bed, so that she occupied two rooms, in point of fact. She came with her less imposing luggage for shorter visits; for though her establishment was not large her husband was sensitive. Also, there were the children to be arranged for; they had no Swiss maid: she had to send them across the Park to stay with Mrs. Bowles. Her silver trousseau hairbrushes had dints in their backs. “As though,” she said, “Edward had been beating me.” Laurel drove the car through Cheltenham at immoderate speed and raced the dog to the post. Cheltenham was the country to her after London; she stepped in and out through the windows, hung up the old hammock and often began to mow the lawn. “Your eye is still crooked,” said Colonel Studdart. Her arm was often through his; as of old, she kept pressing into his shoulder her sharp chin. She and her mother so frequently met in London that though she had less to tell than Janet there was for some reason more to say: nothing she began to tell them was ever finished; she was the old undirected talker. She still shook hands too vigorously; she went upstairs two at a time. Mrs. Studdart said: “Do you go upstairs like that in London?” “Mother, I’ve no idea how I go upstairs in London. Do notice next time!” She still tore out photographs of good-looking men from the illustrated weeklies and, for lack of anything else to do with them, sent them to Edward.

  Her old room, her white-painted bed should have seemed very narrow. Once or twice Mrs. Studdart looked in, very late, to find Laurel curled up on her side, staring at the shell-shadow the electric light shade always cast on the ceiling. She could fall asleep from this; light had never affected her. “Poor Edward’s light bill must be tremendous,” said Mrs. Studdart, darkening the room severely. In the darkness there was a movement, as though Laurel held her arms out, as though she were nine years old. Her mother continued: “Does Anna stare at the light?”

  “Anna?”

  Yes, her coming again and again occasioned disturbance; it was like a birth in the house. She affected the very clocks; nothing seemed quite in order. She was there, brilliant, like sun that discovers a picture at five o’clock for a few days only; the accident of a season…On her account, inwardly, they reproached themselves; perhaps reproached even her. If she had not married so young…If there had been money…This way, that way the parents turned from the disconcerting pleasure they had in her, a pleasure they felt to be stolen and not quite honourable. They had married her well, properly, formally, with a marquee; but they had not, somehow, married her off. She remained. But then, she was Edward’s affair. In talk, Mrs. Studdart again and again felt it proper to pick up Laurel’s life, like a piece of unfinished sewing, and hand it back to her. Had she mislaid the pattern? Their house, on these visits, seemed to be littered with snipped muslins. They asked her about the children. But unfortunately, when Laurel spoke of her children she became theoretic, anxious, a shade priggish. She did not see them as funny at all; she had no anecdotes. When Laurel discussed her children she bored her parents.

  Mrs. Studdart, never confidential to friends, had a confidante, an intimate always present, who did not exist. A lady. With her one could be certain of being understood; there prevailed a perfect good taste in
which, while anything could be mentioned, too much had never been said. Someone shrewder than Willa, quicker than Mrs. Bowles, with a perspective beyond Cheltenham’s. In fact, a kind of sublime Mrs. Studdart, with just a touch of one of the royal princesses, so that Mrs. Studdart was always conscious of being seen in a large light and of arousing an agreeable interest in high quarters. This intimate was informed as to Mrs. Studdart’s sciatica, those qualms in the night, her mistakes at bridge, Colonel Studdart’s habit of clicking his teeth while he read. She pressed Mrs. Studdart’s hand when a silence occurred at a dinner party. What could not be explained to her Mrs. Studdart refused to recognize, what could not be described she did not observe. Any sense of guilt became a sense of complicity. Perhaps if she had been a religious woman…? She wondered sometimes about Roman Catholics, whether the Virgin Mary…

  Mrs. Studdart said to her intimate: “We both love Janet’s visits, they make a point in the year. It is delightful to see her so happy and so established. She is invaluable to Rodney, the very daughter we would have wished. (When this house is gone he need not be generous any more.) As a girl, you remember, she was not always so easy. But they say the girl’s marriage brings mother and daughter together; certainly nowadays there is an absolute confidence. (I could not expect her to speak of that, or that, it would not be delicate.) There is no doubt, is there, that she is satisfied? Her lovely house, all those summers and winters: perhaps a son…

  “But Laurel makes it impossible for me to think of dying. I don’t know what I am to arrange. (Oh, we enjoy her visits, we never know where we are, she makes us young!) I wish there were something else she could be, not a woman—you can’t suggest? Now, of course, it is too late—and yet I can’t feel everything has been quite decided. She is certainly married; I saw her myself get into the Daimler with Edward and drive off. They were so happy they never once looked round. It was an anxious day for me. ‘That is that,’ I said to myself, eleven years ago. But was it? (She is still captivating to strangers, her hair is the same colour: ‘Honey-colour,’ my husband remarked at breakfast.) What became of her? She has never been away. When this house goes—I don’t know. (I told you about my heart trouble.) If Edward were ever conceivably, unkind…(He’s devoted: they say difficult men can be so very devoted. I don’t know; I’ve never lived with a difficult man. They have a life in London, they visit…they meet…) I can’t bear life for her! There must be something I could arrange. You will think me foolish!”

  * * *

  —

  That September the Studdarts were truly fortunate; they had both daughters with them at once. Laurel arrived two days before the end of Janet’s visit. This had been Mrs. Studdart’s idea; she knew Janet would love to hear at first hand Laurel’s still fresh account of the time in Brittany. Those two days the house beamed; doors stood open in all directions; the family reconstructed itself with talk and laughter.

  On the first of these happy afternoons, Colonel Studdart walked into Cheltenham with a daughter on either arm; up the Promenade where chestnuts in the afternoon glow lifted five-fingered leaves. To left and right his friends smiled their felicitations, raising their hats; his daughters bowed smiling to left and right. The grand white pilastered house shone; the chestnuts might well have flowered. Leaves falling danced their less than moment on the gold sunshine; spring itself could not have been gayer. A touch of chill on the air made the day brighter. Along a curb, the polished cars were drawn up between white lines, diagonally: everyone was in Cheltenham. Here came the wind and a fine touch of spray: before the colonnades of the Imperial the long willow branches, the fountain blew one way, to meet the Studdarts.

  They had come into Cheltenham for no reason; Colonel Studdart suggested tea. Shop windows reflected the scene and sunshine polished, a tone darker; and the three pausing figures. The tourist season was not yet over: a horn in the street, some alarm of departure brought two American visitors hurriedly down the steps of the hotel where Edward had stayed before the wedding.

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