Possession

by Celia Fremlin

  “Sarah,” he said gravely. “I’m sorry—I’m not blaming you, it’s not your fault—but I’m afraid we’re finished. I can’t have my mother upset like this. I’m afraid we must call it off.”

  And he held out his hand, no longer trembling, for the return of his ring.

  CHAPTER X

  THE NEXT FEW days were ones that I don’t care to remember. Sarah’s white-faced misery: Janice’s ill-timed jubilation—succeeded by sulks when she discovered that no one was disposed to share her view of the catastrophe as an occasion for rejoicing—quickly brought our once happy domestic routine to the verge of dissolution. The brief art-school term was just over, so that Sarah was at home all day with nothing to distract her from her grief; and to make matters worse—at least, I think it made them worse—we had decided for the time being not to let the news of the break-up spread beyond the immediate family. The decision was mainly Sarah’s: she was so certain (she claimed) that it was all just a misunderstanding which would be cleared up the moment she could contrive to see Mervyn by himself. It would be silly, she said, to upset everyone for nothing.

  She still went on crying, though; and so, for some reason, did Janice. Just to be in on the drama, I suspected, and my irritation with her grew daily. Surely, at seventeen, she should have had more consideration and self-control than to add to our miseries in this way. I had tried hard, over the past weeks, to understand and tolerate her jealousy of her sister’s happiness; and now here she was, equally covetous of her sister’s broken heart! Must I understand and tolerate this as well? Now and then, and utterly unfairly, my irritation with Janice would spill over onto my poor Sarah. There were moments when I could have knocked both their heads together as they wandered about the house, pallid and touchy, or sat tear-stained and silent at our once happy family meals.

  For it was affecting Ralph and me too: there were times when I could feel our marriage shaking, like an old, solid house in a high wind, under the impact of our daughter’s disaster. There was no longer any pleasure in Ralph’s return from work. He no longer came eagerly into the kitchen to pour us both a glass of sherry and then to sit at the kitchen table, talking and laughing over the events of the day, while I put the finishing touches to the meal. Now, the events of the day were no longer such as we could laugh over, or even discuss; they were not merely too painful, but also too boring. The awful monotony of grief gripped us all like a paralysis.

  So I couldn’t blame Ralph for trying, in the end, to keep out of it all. Instead of striding happy and masterful into the kitchen, the heart of our home, he now crept through the front door like a burglar every evening; listened for a moment to ascertain in which room there was no crying going on, and then tiptoed into it, armed with the evening papers, to hide there until it was absolutely necessary to emerge for the evening meal. I missed him as if he was dead, and I believe that he was feeling the same. They are always saying that discord between husband and wife leads to children getting into trouble; but from my own observation over many years I would say it is usually the other way round. It is the troubles of the children that drive a wedge of petrified silence between the parents, and as trouble piles on trouble, so is the rift widened, mercilessly, and by a process which no one can halt.

  At least I don’t think they can. Ralph and I couldn’t, anyway, during this our first real test. For my part, I felt that suddenly I had nothing left to give him; all my emotional energies were draining away into Sarah’s misery—and draining away uselessly, too, as if through a leak in the hot-water system, for my futile sympathy was no help to her at such a time; if anything, I should think it was something of an annoyance. There was nothing to say; she didn’t want to talk; she just moped, or squabbled with Janice, who then moped too, and sulked, and was scolded by me for making everything worse.

  It was while things were like this that Anna had to turn up. Naturally. I have already told you of Anna’s propensity for this sort of thing. Name any humiliation you like: she will be there, taking a look at it. I shall never know how far it is deliberate, and how far it is simply that she is what one might call incident-prone. On a subtler, more domestic level, she is like those people who always chance to be on holiday in just the country where a revolution breaks out; who happen to be at Heathrow airport just when a plane bursts into flames; who unerringly give lifts to hitch-hikers who subsequently have their pictures all over the Sunday papers in connection with some gruesome murder case. Yes, Anna is like that. She must be, because how could it possibly be deliberate? On this occasion, for example, how could she possibly have heard of the ending of Sarah’s engagement when we had kept it such a secret? And for another, surely even Anna wouldn’t deliberately choose such a moment to come swooping in, all smiles and congratulations, with a huge bunch of hothouse flowers for Sarah, and a dazzling programme of Christmas plans for the young couple. They must come to lunch; they must come to the theatre; they must come to the party that Anna was giving specially in honour of their engagement … such was the drive and glitter of her high-powered benevolence that for several minutes she did not seem to notice the leaden nature of our response; and even when she did, she seemed to attach no particular significance to it. She simply redoubled her efforts to brighten us up. Finally—and to this day I do not know whether she had by this time begun to suspect something, or whether it was just sheer, disinterested stupidity—finally she began, without warning, to tell us how marvellous she thought Mervyn was. It was a pity, really, that she hadn’t thought of telling us this before, when things were going happily. Then, she had remarked only that she was glad to hear he was no more than thirty-one, she’d thought he looked so much older; and added that baldness can be quite becoming, really, if only a man can avoid being too self-conscious about it.

  But now—now that all was at an end—she couldn’t say enough in praise of him. His good looks; his intelligence; his marvellous job; “I’d love to get to know him better, dear,” she enthused to Sarah. “That’s why I’m planning this party, specially for the two of you. You must let me know what day would suit you both. Next week? Or the week after?”

  Sarah took it bravely. She smiled—though anyone could see how recently she had been crying—and said: “Thank you, Aunt Anna, it’s sweet of you, but we don’t quite know yet what we’ll be doing these holidays. May I let you know?”

  No awkwardness. No lying, even. I was filled with admiration. Anna scrutinised her niece intently. Affectionate concern, or expert probing for the weak spot?

  “You look pale, dear,” she observed at last. “Doesn’t she, Clare? She’s been doing too much. Out with Mervyn every night, I suppose, and working so hard at Art School all day.”

  This could be sarcastic, too; the idleness and unpunctuality tolerated at Sarah’s art school has to be experienced to be believed, and Anna probably knows it.

  “It’s holidays now,” I pointed out. “They have much longer Christmas holidays than….”

  “Holidays! Oh, isn’t that good? I hadn’t realised you were on holiday already, dear! Then perhaps we could fix for you and Mervyn to come over really soon? Tonight, perhaps? Or tomorrow?” Her little gilt diary with its tasselled gilt pencil tinkled threateningly. If not tomorrow then the next day. If not Wednesday then Thursday. If not next weekend, then the one after. In the end, Sarah would be driven into a corner.

  “Do you mind, Aunt Anna, if we leave it a bit vague?”—she began; and I do believe that her poise and self-control might have carried the day even against Anna, if Janice hadn’t chosen that moment to leap, with incredible clumsiness, to her sister’s defence.

  “Aunt Anna, please don’t keep on at her,” she protested. “Can’t you see she wants to be left alone?”

  She might just as well have said: ‘Can’t you see she’s been jilted?’ There was an awful silence. A look of slow, total comprehension spread over Anna’s face, and then, all in a rush, she began being tactful. She changed the subject with a determination that was like a roll of
drums, and then, like an acrobat on a high wire, she proceeded to display her skill in avoiding all reference to love, men, women, dates, holidays, Christmas—anything that could possibly remind us of our disaster.

  Our secret, clearly, was a secret no longer. But what would Anna do with her new-found knowledge? Would she go round telling everyone, or would she just keep it to herself and Simon, to gloat over in the long winter evenings?

  Am I making her sound a much nastier person than she really is? Am I being unfair? The thing one must remember is that Anna has no children of her own, and I think she minded very much once, until she learnt this technique of hunting out the flaws in other people’s happiness, and retailing them to Simon as they sit together in their beautiful empty home. I think he counts on her for it; he can’t be reassured too often that what he and she have missed was no great shakes anyway. Anything that goes wrong with our children is thus a sort of present for Anna, which I could give her willingly, if I chose, by confiding in her. Since I don’t so choose, she takes it by force, and in a way you can’t blame her, since she puts it to such good use in keeping Simon happy. It is important to remember the unhappiness which lies so often at the roots of spite.

  But hang it all! Do I have to think charitable thoughts about her as well as putting up with her? It’s all very well, this business of inferiority complexes. No doubt it is true that arrogant self-conceit like Anna’s really owes its origin to some deep-seated insecurity. But so do crocodiles owe their origin to small, soft eggs, buried harmlessly in the mud; how does this knowledge help one in confronting the full-grown crocodile? Should one dodge away less fast, or watch the river’s edge less carefully? The point about Anna is that, however she may have started, she really does feel superior now. And when I talk pityingly about her beautiful, empty house, I should qualify the phrase by pointing out that actually all it is is beautiful; I have never seen it empty. Simon and she give parties all the time, and have celebrities to dinner, and long-limbed people in sun-glasses staying for weekends. On top of all this, they adore each other, Simon and Anna do; theirs is one of the happiest marriages I know; and whenever I try to get the better of Anna by pitying her, these are the sort of things I stumble up against.

  One thing I do know: she is never so kind as when she has just discovered that something frightful has befallen us. Thus this evening, after the inquisition was over, she exerted herself to be good company, and to take our thoughts off our troubles. When she left she kissed Sarah with real affection; a sort of Thank you kiss, I suppose, for something having gone wrong. Sarah kissed her back without resentment; and after she had gone, heroically refrained from reproaching Janice for her ill-judged intervention. In fact, she seemed happier and more herself that evening than she had at any time since parting from Mervyn; and when, after I was in bed, I heard her talking on the telephone, I thought, Good, she is making contact with her old friends again, picking up her social life where it left off. I was glad, really that the engagement was at an end. That final scene between Mervyn and his mother had disgusted me in a way which I didn’t think I would be able to forget. Sarah was well out of it.

  I knew this. I knew, too, that her heart would mend before very long; she was, after all, only nineteen. The thing that weighed on me now was the prospect of telling all our friends. Instead of being the first of our set to have a married daughter, I was merely to be the tenth (or thereabouts) to have the debris of a broken love affair wrecking our domestic peace. I thought of that glorious evening, only a short time ago, when I had sat telephoning the news of my triumph far and wide. Now a second evening confronted me—several evenings, probably—of humiliating explanations. Of condolences, of advice, of veiled glee masquerading as sympathy. Some people would be truly kind; others would be kind, but nevertheless revel in the drama of it; others again—those who had suffered some similar disaster—would welcome me, with almost indecent joy, into their ranks. I would become a member of that melancholy and tight-knit secret society, the Failed Parents’ Association, into which one is conscripted by Fate, and from which no member can voluntarily resign. And yet it has a fascination of its own, this underworld of parenthood. You can confess to fellow-members disasters which you would never dream of admitting to the outside world, and after a while you begin almost to feel like a bizarre kind of elite, with your own secrets, your own special rites and customs. You become adept at recognising potential fellow-sufferers in all sorts of places; in the street; at school medical inspections; at meetings of the Parent-Teacher Associations. There is a sort of brightness about these doomed people; an unnatural eagerness to talk about your children instead of their own. The apparently innocent questions they put to you vibrate like an electric drill as they probe desperately to find out if you, too, have a Backward Reader, or a delinquent fifth-former. And if you do—why, then the warmth generated is something indescribable in terms of ordinary friendship. Most friendships are based on some kind of similarity of interests, of basic attitudes; but not these. The tie that unites troubled parents is trouble, and nothing else. The link thus forged is strong as tempered steel, and yet fragile as rare porcelain; for as soon as your misfortunes are over, you are OUT. No one says so; no formal resignation is asked or given; but you know, and they know, that your membership is at an end. The confidences cease; you are back among the smug and the successful; your home is a Good Home once more, and there you are, scrambling back into the cat-race, a little dazed, a little wiser, and wondering how it all happened.

  The reason I know all about this secret organisation is, of course, because I once belonged to it for a short while. It was when Janice, at the age of nine, became involved in the traffic in stolen lipsticks which flourished briefly one summer term at her Primary school. I never quite fathomed how the system worked, and I don’t think Janice did either—this, I suppose was the main reason why it was she who was the one to be caught. Out of all the dozen little girls smudged from chin to cheek-bone with sunset shades of pink, orange, vermilion and pale green, it was Janice who found herself in front of the headmistress; it was Ralph and I who were visited by the polite and somewhat embarrassed manager of the local Woolworths; and it was I, the mother in the case, who crashed like Lucifer from my position in the cat-race, and joined, briefly, the secret community of the damned.

  And now it was going to happen again; and it was going to be worse—(a) because Sarah was older and (b) because being jilted is not a crime, whereas stealing lipsticks is. People nowadays are always much more compassionate about crimes than they are about misfortunes. Perhaps we could pretend that Sarah had jilted him? That would be less humiliating. Or rather, perhaps I could do so; Sarah is hopeless at lying; she doesn’t even approve of it theoretically. Drowsily, I worked out my story. Sarah, of course, must come out of it well; Mervyn not too badly. The story must fit all the facts so far known to the neighbours; it must also be dull. If you can manage to make your troubles sound sufficiently boring, then no one will press you with searching questions; they are too afraid that you will just go on and on.

  Well begun is half done; by the time I fell asleep my story was still far from neighbour-proof, but I had the general outline clear. When the time came—when, that is, Sarah released us from our vow of secrecy—then I would fill in the details. Differently, no doubt, for each confidante: I would subtly vary the narrative according to the inquirer’s level of credulity and her boredom-threshold. To Peggy, of course, I would tell the total truth, just as I always do.

  CHAPTER XI

  AT FIRST I thought it was the alarm clock going off, and I reached out a drowsy hand to silence it. Irritatingly, the sound persisted, and I waited, still half-dreaming, for it to run down of its own accord. But it still went on, and on; and only then, and slowly, did it dawn on me that it was the telephone ringing.

  The telephone. At half past six in the morning! In the automatic way of all mothers, I first checked with my dazed memory that my own husband and children were all here, under my
own roof, so that whatever it was couldn’t be some sort of accident to one of them. I scrambled out of bed and began stumbling downstairs, running through in my mind what I can only describe as the outer circle of possible disasters. Granny? Ralph’s old Uncle Ben? Police, ambulances, hospitals had all flashed through my mind by the time I reached the instrument, and when I finally picked up the receiver I could hardly believe my ears.

  An invitation to lunch! A bright little social voice saying how much it would enjoy meeting me again, and could I manage a quarter to one? A real cosy chatter … a proper good chin-wag—these were the allurements held out for my delectation at this incomprehensible hour in the morning: the voice was growing breathless now, apparently from some built-in inability to stop rather than from any plethora of subject matter, for the same coy phrases were being repeated over and over again while I, at my end of the line, sat slumped and dumb, in a state of paralysed incredulity.

  By now, of course, I had recognised the voice; but my bewilderment was in no degree abated. Why should Mrs Redmayne be ringing me at half past six in the morning? Why, indeed, should she be ringing me at all, now that the connection between our respective children was severed?

  “It’s awfully early,” was all I could think of to say; and into my dazed ears there now poured another flood of incomprehensible goodwill. If quarter to one was too early, well then, let’s say quarter past? Or half past? Any time I liked…. It would be such a pity, wouldn’t it, if the two of us were to lose touch just because of our children’s decision to go their separate ways?

  Since the prospect of losing touch with Mrs Redmayne had been one of the few bright spots in the past harrowing few days, I did not quite know how to answer this. I murmured something about being busy, and ringing her back, and at once her manner sharpened. She had heard the escape-note in my voice, and reacted like a well-trained hunting-dog. And indeed, someone who is so determined to capture you as to telephone at six-thirty in the morning is hardly likely to be put off by improbable tales of ringing back, or such-like civilised myths.