Possession

by Celia Fremlin

  I sympathised with the poor man, but all the same I was glad he had come; his reluctant presence at least constituted no threat to my morale. Nor did that of Trevor, an ex-boy-friend of Sarah’s who, now that he had left university, seemed to spend his days wearily shifting a grand piano from one set of diminutive lodgings to another. He was always to be found drifting about on the fringes of some social gathering or other trying to scrape acquaintance with someone who owned a van, or had two or three muscular unemployed friends, and I guessed that he was here tonight less to yearn over his lost Sarah than to see if her new boy-friend was of tough enough physique and feeble enough moral courage to be enlisted in his reluctant team. The Hardwicks were all right too, though Liz Hardwick had been insufferable once, in the days when her three sons were one after the other sailing through O-levels in ten or more subjects and being accepted by the university of their choice. But now that they have all come down, or dropped out, as the case may be, and the whole thing has subsided into a welter of chucked jobs and sobbing daughters-in-law, Liz has grown more humble, and dares not patronise the rest of us with the old buoyancy.

  My anxious gaze roved on past Liz and her husband, past the innocuous and self-absorbed couple from over the road, and came to a horrified stop just by the tray of drinks.

  Anna! What had possessed me to invite Anna, on this evening of all evenings? Or had Ralph invited her, in all innocence? After all, she is his sister-in-law—he probably felt that she and Simon ought to be here on such an occasion. What is it about Anna? It’s not exactly that she is censorious, or prying. She doesn’t deliberately drag skeletons out of cupboards—no one more surprised, or more apologetic, than she when the bones fall rattling round her feet. No, it’s just that in her presence you become suddenly much more aware of your shortcomings, of the shortcomings of your house and family, than you ever are normally. It is as if the glitter of her great swinging earrings, the sheen of her raven-black hair, dragged back with dramatic ruthlessness from her big, pale face—it is as if all this added up to a sort of spotlight blazing into the dark corners of your life. She is like one of those magnifying mirrors—secret, devastating things that you peer into in the privacy of your bedroom, confronting realistically at last your giant pores, your monstrous blemishes.

  And yet, as I say, you can’t accuse Anna of doing it deliberately, or even of having a superior or patronising manner. This evening, for instance, she was simply standing by the table, drinking gin and talking about Italian taxi-drivers, making Ralph and her husband laugh. She wasn’t even looking in my direction, and yet at the very sight of her all my secret doubts and anxieties began tingling in the forefront of my mind. Supposing Mervyn was a dwarf! Or—to be more realistic—suppose he was just very small—shorter than Sarah—a little runt of a man? Or suppose, on the other hand, that he was grotesquely tall, with stooped shoulders and fatuous, poking head? As I watched Anna throw back her head and laugh, I felt as if she was already laughing at him. The rich, musical notes of her merriment reminded me that he might be grossly fat, or boorish, or stupid. And now the smile had left her lips, the story of her Italian holiday was evidently over …. I felt that she was standing there, tense and expectant, waiting for Mervyn to be perfectly frightful. And on top of all this, I noticed now, for the first time, that Janice still hadn’t come down. Whether she was crying, or sulking, or fixing her false eyelashes, I had no means of knowing; I only knew that Anna, too, would have noticed her absence; would be assessing it; allotting it to some labelled pigeon-hole in her calculating and retentive mind. At this thought, Janice’s non-appearance began to swell up in my mind, to take on vast and absurd proportions. Supposing she didn’t come down at all—how odd it would look! Or supposing she did come, but—with Anna watching—made her prejudice against her prospective brother-in-law blatantly and disastrously obvious? Or supposing Sarah herself looked less than radiant as she introduced her fiancé? Supposing … supposing … supposing … and at that moment we all heard the front door slam, and then rapid footsteps in the hall.

  The moment had come.

  CHAPTER III

  I DON’T KNOW about the rest of the company, but for me it seemed to be nearly half a minute before I took in the fact that Sarah had come alone. The tiny, dwarfish Mervyns; the tall, stooping ones; the oafish ones, the vulgar ones—I kept peering past the glossy curtain of her hair for them, long after she had begun explaining how it was that he wasn’t here. I don’t know if she was taken aback by the size of the assemblage she now had to disappoint; if so, she didn’t show it. With characteristic pluck and poise she smiled warmly round the company, as if these were just the very people she had most hoped to see, and proceeded to apologise charmingly and unselfconsciously for Mervyn’s absence.

  “It meant leaving his mother all on her own, you see,” she concluded. “So I’m afraid he won’t be able to come this time.”

  There was a short, stunned silence. If there is one character in modern mythology who draws upon herself the sort of obloquy that used to be directed against witches and Wicked Stepmothers, that character is the Possessive Mother. The notion of keeping a son or daughter at home for our own convenience is one that we parents have all learned to hold in such abhorrence that it was almost as if Sarah had uttered an obscenity.

  “Oh dear! I hope she isn’t ill?” The note of conventional concern in Anna’s voice was perfectly proper. I was the only person who knew that she really did hope that Mrs Redmayne wasn’t ill. Genuine illness would, naturally, have taken some of the shockingness out of the situation, and made the moment that much less embarrassing for Sarah.

  Not that Sarah seemed embarrassed. She appeared to have no idea of the hornets’ nest into which she had walked.

  “Oh no,” she answered innocently. “Not ill. But she—well, she doesn’t like being left on her own, that’s all; it upsets her. So Mervyn thought he had better stay.”

  For a moment it was so shocking that none of us knew what to say. Then:

  “You mean—she expects him to give up his own weekend?”

  “Incredible!”

  “It’s like going back into the nineteenth century!”

  “Is she always like this?”

  “You don’t mean he gives in to it?”

  “But Sarah, darling, you mustn’t let him! For his own sake!”

  Sarah glanced from one to another of us: I sensed the obstinacy that lay behind the unruffled good humour with which she received these admonitions.

  “Well, I think he is quite right,” she said, in a clear, carrying voice. “I think he should put his mother’s wishes first. It’s one of the things I love about Mervyn, the way he’s so good to his mother.”

  She stood very straight, her hair gleaming like metal under the light. She looked young, and proud, and vulnerable; and I wondered how much courage it had taken to make a speech like that.

  Or had it taken none at all? Did she simply not realise the extent to which she had scandalised us? We claim to be unshockable, we modern parents; we pride ourselves on being able to take in our stride anything with which the young may confront us; but every now and then something like this happens, and we find ourselves as red-faced and embarrassed as any Victorian spinster. “Good to his mother” indeed! I could see Liz’s well-read eyes grow round with visions of nameless perversions; Anna was looking intensely, devastatingly aware; and even Peggy couldn’t resist mouthing “I told you so!” at me across the width of the room.

  I decided that the time had come to change the subject.

  “Janice!” I called—my younger daughter had by now sidled into the room with a picked body-guard of silent school-friends—“Come along and help Daddy with the drinks—see that everybody’s got something. Even though Mervyn can’t be here, we still want to celebrate—”

  Out of the corner of my eye I could see Anna observing me with abominable understanding. She knew the extent of my embarrassment; was amused by my attempt to make everything jolly again and
to draw my younger daughter into at least a semblance of convivial behaviour. Nor did she miss one single nuance of Janice’s heavy reluctance to co-operate. Her quick, darting eyes could see at once that something more was amiss than mere school-girl shyness.

  “Janice must be absolutely thrilled about it all!” She hazarded brightly, probing at random for the sore spot that she knew was somewhere. “She must be so delighted for her sister, they’ve always been so close….” No one could have looked more innocently taken aback than Anna when Janice’s cold, black look seared her for a second, showing her that she had scored a bullseye. Anna looked startled; then tolerant. She shrugged her shoulders.

  “Ah, well, the difficult age,” she murmured smilingly into my ear, but loud enough for Janice to hear; and having thus ensured that for the rest of the evening Janice would be at her sulkiest, Anna then proceeded, very sweetly, to condole with me about the problems of sulky teenagers, and to compliment me on my handling of this particular one. She told Liz how marvellous I was at it; and Liz’s husband Bernard; she called on Simon, over by the fireplace, to bear witness to this marvellousness of mine; soon, it seemed that half the room were having their attention drawn to Janice’s sulkiness; and though Janice was apparently out of earshot, there was no doubt that she was aware of the tenor of the conversation; the look she threw at her aunt as she handed her a drink suggested that it was laced with hemlock at least.

  I scowled reproof at her for this display of surliness; but she pretended not to notice, and continued on her injured way, while Anna explained to everyone what a sweet girl she was really; just shy, that’s all. Anna’s own tolerance and good-humour shone like footlights into the situation she had created; she went on and on about the inscrutable virtues of the younger generation, and how one simply had to understand their point of view; and as always, I was mesmerised by some glittering, barbaric quality in her that made it impossible to argue or to answer back. The swinging golden hoops of her earrings, her black shining eyes, the clash of her heavy bracelets as she gestured, driving home some point: they held me in thrall, tamely submitting to one highly controversial opinion after another, until at long last I was released by the ringing of the telephone.

  I leaped to my feet thankfully. Almost certainly it was for one of the girls, but I wasn’t going to miss this chance of escape. I almost ran across the room and out into the hall, shutting the noise of the party behind me as I closed the door.

  “Is that Mrs Erskine? Is there a Mrs Erskine living there?”

  The voice was strange to me; the woman, whoever she was, sounded nervous, a little out of breath.

  “Speaking,” I said; and the voice gave a little breathy laugh. “Oh, that’s all right, then; I wasn’t sure if…. That is, have you by chance got a daughter called Sarah?”

  “I have. She’s here now. Shall I call her for you?”

  “No! Oh no—” the voice interrupted urgently. “No, it’s you I want to talk to, I just wanted to make sure you were the Mrs Erskine; there are several in the phonebook, you see, and I wasn’t sure….”

  “No, you were perfectly right,” I said, a little impatiently—she seemed to be making such heavy weather of it all. “I am Mrs Erskine. I am Sarah’s mother. Now, what can I do for you?”

  There was a tiny pause. Then the voice resumed its hesitant narrative. “Well, you see, it’s like this. I’m terribly sorry to bother you, I really am, especially as we’ve never met. You must think it awful cheek from a stranger, just ringing you up like this, but you see….”

  With my foot, I hooked the hall chair towards me so that I could sit down. This was evidently going to be a long business.

  “The thing is”—the voice was working up towards the point now—“The thing is—I hate to bother you, but have you by any chance got my son with you this evening? My son. A Mr Mervyn Redmayne?”

  “Mervyn!” Light dawned at last. “So you must be Mrs Redmayne? How very nice to hear from you! We really must….”

  “But is he there?” The voice was edged with anxiety now, all the deference gone. “Is Mervyn there? With you?”

  “No. No, he’s not,” I answered. I was beginning to feel bewildered. “I thought—that is, we were expecting him this evening, but Sarah tells me he’s had to put it off. We’re so sorry, we’d all been looking forward….”

  “Oh! Oh yes, of course!” The relief in the voice was unmistakable. “Yes, that’s right. I knew he’d changed his plans. But then, when he still didn’t come home, I began to wonder if he had come to you after all? You see, I was expecting him home before this. He’s not usually as late as this.”

  “No. I see.”

  I didn’t know what to say. She sounded a silly, muddled sort of a woman, and I was sorry for Mervyn, having to arrange his life to fit in with her whims and anxieties. It wasn’t my business, of course, but all the same I found myself saying, rather sharply:

  “We were very disappointed that he couldn’t come. We were looking forward to it so much. We’d invited several friends specially to meet him.”

  “To meet him? Specially to meet Mervyn?”

  “Well, yes. Naturally. As you can imagine, we are all very excited about the engagement, and everyone’s very eager to meet Sarah’s fiancé.”

  “Engagement? Fiancé? Oh, but Mrs Erskine, I think there must be some little misunderstanding. Sarah is a very sweet girl, I am sure, and I daresay she and Mervyn are very good friends; but more than that—Oh no!”

  Her voice sounded quite different now; it was brisk and assured. I have noticed before how the thinking of even the most woolly-minded of people becomes clear and precise as soon as their real interests are threatened. She no longer sounded muddled; she sounded like a woman who knows when she is being attacked, and exactly how to defend herself.

  “Oh no! There’s nothing like that in it,” she repeated, with finality; and then, disingenuously: “Sarah is there, did you say? With you, at home? Right now?”

  “She is,” I assured her drily. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to talk to her yourself?”

  “No. Oh no. That’s all right. I’ll take your word for it. Besides, I’m sure Mervyn will be in any minute now. I’m sure there’ll turn out to be some perfectly ordinary explanation….”

  There will indeed, my good woman, I thought grimly, as I rang off. The perfectly ordinary explanation will turn out to be that your son is a grown man who chooses for himself what to do with his evenings, and what time to come in.

  All the same, I felt uneasy. What was all this about the couple not being engaged? And why had Mervyn made such a point of having to spend the weekend with his mother, if he wasn’t in fact planning to do so? Was he two-timing our daughter? I decided to say nothing to Sarah about any of it. It wasn’t my business—and as things turned out, it would have been quite pointless to worry her, for only ten minutes later Mrs Redmayne rang again, sounding greatly relieved, to say that her son had just that moment come in: he had been held up in the traffic … this, that, and the other. Anyway, all was well.

  I told her I was glad, thanked her for letting me know, and rang off. I had an impulse to ask to speak to the young man himself—to try to find out from his own lips whether or not he considered himself engaged to Sarah; but I realised at once that this would be the height 01 tactlessness. The probability was that he simply hadn’t got round to breaking the news to his mother yet; and for this, in the circumstances, I could hardly blame him.

  CHAPTER IV

  AS IT TURNED out, my guess was correct. The following afternoon, the Saturday, Sarah and I had a long talk, in the course of which she admitted that Mrs Redmayne hadn’t yet been told of the engagement.

  “Though I believe she knows really,” Sarah went on. “Mervyn says he’s sure she does, he can sense it, though she doesn’t say anything. He’s been waiting for an opportunity to break it to her in some way that won’t be too hurtful, but somehow there hasn’t been one. He’s beginning to think that she’s deliberate
ly not allowing an opportunity to arise—she doesn’t want to hear it put into words.”

  She reached across the table and poured herself another cup of tea. We were in the kitchen that afternoon, sitting cosily, just the two of us, with the washing up finished and the coke boiler stoked up and gently glowing through its little window. The November rain was drumming on the window, and I remember I felt safe, and snug, and protected as only rainy winter dusk and a glowing stove can make one. I remember, too, that I was thinking how nice it was, at last, to have a grown-up daughter with whom to gossip and exchange confidences, as one married woman (almost) to another. Mrs Redmayne’s selfish silliness seemed, at that moment, to be supremely trivial and unimportant; a matter for a shrug of the shoulder, a smile, a few words of gentle mockery. But now Sarah was continuing: