Statues in a Garden

by Isabel Colegate

  ‘You seem restless,’ Aylmer said to her one evening. He had come into her bedroom as she was about to change for tea and found her walking up and down in front of the windows. ‘Is anything the matter? You are not letting this wedding get on your mind, are you?’

  ‘No, it is nothing.’ She stood with her back to him, looking out of the window. ‘It is pretty I mean, I like to see them in the garden, in the sun Ida is lovely, isn’t she? They all are. But sometimes I am afraid that underneath it all there might be something less agreeable.’

  ‘You, the ever sanguine?’ He stood beside her, looking down into the garden. A group was walking up from the tennis court, Violet and Wilfred were sitting under the cedar with Margaret, Ida and John were walking towards them talking. Ida animated and gesticulating. ‘They’re all right,’ he said.

  She turned away rather sharply and said, ‘Of course they are. I must dress. Aren’t they coming in to change? They’ll be late. I’m not going to wear that silly pink thing. I can’t think why Beatrice has put it out. I’ll wear the green one.’

  Aylmer rang for Beatrice, ‘I see the village girl guides have sent Violet a hatpin stand.’

  ‘Yes, a hideous one. They really might have done better.’

  ‘But it was good of them to make such an effort.’

  ‘They seem to think Kitty is going to take over the running of them now. I can’t imagine she will be any good at it. She’s hopelessly irresponsible.’

  ‘I think she’s improving under Miss Benedict.’

  ‘Oh, Miss Benedict. Why does nobody ever stop singing her praises? I don’t believe she’s as wonderful as all that anyway. Oh Beatrice, I’ll wear my green, not that pink horror.’

  ‘I’ll go down then.’ Aylmer went to the door and added, with a look of vague anxiety, before he left, ‘Don’t worry, will you?’

  She did not answer.

  Philip had become aware of something else.

  After he had kissed Alice, she stood quite still for a moment, because she had been taken by surprise. They had been talking about the people staying in the house and Alice had been praising the beauty of the girls, and he, close to her because they were hiding, had said, ‘I don’t think any of them are as pretty as you,’ and kissed her on the cheek. After a moment she moved away from him and said calmly, ‘I can hardly think you mean that.’ And then they heard Cicely’s voice, and then they were discovered. But she was slightly flushed, her expression not as carefree as it should have been, and Edmund, knowing Philip, guessed what might have happened and thought, Blast Philip, looking at her face with attention. It seemed to him that she returned him a look not of confusion but of trust, so he immediately placed himself between her and Philip (since they were all in a close group, hiding) and began a whispered conversation about the progress of the game.

  Philip, annoyed by her reaction, noticed Edmund’s too and thought, So he’s not uninterested either – that’s a joke, with all these eligible girls about – an entanglement with the governess – that would give them something to think about. It gave, of course, more point to his own pursuit, but that, he had to admit, did not for the moment seem to be progressing very rapidly.

  Under the cedar tree they were talking about statues, about what they would all represent if they were to be turned then and there to stone. Ida was to be Youth, Wilfred Fortitude, Violet Spring, someone suggested Retribution for old Mrs Weston, and Truth for Cynthia.

  ‘No, Beauty, of course.’

  ‘Day.’

  ‘Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.’

  ‘The Ideal,’ said Ida.

  ‘Eve,’ said Philip.

  ‘No, I don’t want her to be Eve,’ said Ida. ‘Adam didn’t love her.’

  ‘Oh surely?’

  ‘No, no, he didn’t love her. If he had loved her he would never have sneaked to God in the way he did. He treated her very shabbily.’

  ‘But she had rather ruined everything.’

  ‘He had eaten the apple too, even if she had done it first. And his love should have been stronger – she had not changed. His reaction was selfish, only thinking of his own injury and not of hers through the serpent. But perhaps if he had loved enough he would not even have blamed the serpent. Then they could have had their own Paradise in spite of God.’

  ‘With the serpent in it?’

  ‘Yes, with the serpent. They could have made allowances for the serpent.’

  ‘I think you ask too much of Adam.’

  ‘Of course. That’s the whole point. So she must not be Eve.’

  ‘All right then, let her be Life. Or the Ideal, as you said. What we all dream that Life might be.’

  ‘But that makes her different to each of us.’

  ‘Oh no, we all have the same ideal. She shall be the Ideal. And Sir Aylmer Learning.’

  ‘No, Goodwill.’

  ‘Philip should be Darkness, the Unknown.’

  ‘Or Violence. Edmund should be Hope.’

  Cynthia herself had wandered away from them before the conversation began. She was picking roses. Between her face and a white rose she saw Philip’s dark head, bending ‘Oh no!’ she cried.

  ‘Have you pricked yourself?’ Old Mrs Weston was on her way back to the house with a basket of young dandelion leaves. She made them into rather bitter salads for herself alone.

  ‘No, it is nothing,’ said Cynthia.

  ‘If you are feeling like that, it is important to keep warm and eat well,’ said old Mrs Weston, detached.

  10

  Parliament reassembled on 9th June. The following week Kitty and Alice went to London. Aylmer gave them lunch at the House of Commons, and afterwards they listened to the debate. He was very busy at that time it was going to be a harassing session Ireland and the militant women were the problems. Here we have The Times of 9th June on the question of the women, begging the Government to take some action in view of the danger of private citizens taking the matter into their own hands. ‘Instead of intimidating anybody they (the militant women) are arousing an ugly determination to pay them back in their own coin.’ On the subject of Ireland The Times of the day before blames Ministers for not taking advantage of the recess to inform themselves at first hand of the situation there and abjures them to ‘address themselves honestly to the facts of the most perilous situation which has confronted the Empire in our time.’

  The Conservatives were harrying the Government. Aylmer was in favour of a General Election in the autumn, believing that the Opposition’s extremist tactics over the Irish situation might lose them support in the country, but the Prime Minister wanted to reach some sort of settlement, however temporary, of the Irish problem and go to the country early the following year. As to the danger of civil war in Ireland, Aylmer was unable to believe that it could be a serious possibility. He saw the whole thing as resting simply on the drawing of an appropriate boundary between North and South – his own Party having agreed that Ulster should be excluded from Home Rule – and the deciding upon how or when Ulster should vote itself out or in, and he could not believe those problems to be insuperable, in spite of gloomy forecasts on every side. He spoke briefly in a debate on the adjournment on 17th June.

  He had not meant to speak, but he had been irritated by the previous speakers, who were Bonar Law and Carson, and he also had it in mind that if an election were approaching he might do well to show himself as a more vigorous defender of his Party’s policies than he too often appeared.

  He referred to the Archbishop of York’s recent appeal to Members of Parliament and quoted from it. ‘The difficulty lies not so much in the problem itself as in the spirit in which it seems to be approached.’

  Aylmer was not an outstanding speaker, though he appeared to better advantage in the House of Commons than on the platform. He had a pleasant light voice which carried well and an agreeably reasonable air. In spite of this he found it much more difficult to put his whole point of view in a speech than at a committee meeting, and he had never b
een known as a keen debater.

  ‘Who can deny,’ he said, of his quotation from the Archbishop’s letter, ‘the truth of this observation? A year ago it was a different matter, the points of view held by the opposing Parties were harder then to reconcile. But what is the situation now? It has been agreed – it has been agreed – that special terms are to be given to Ulster, that these special terms shall be negotiated as soon as possible, and that Ulster shall have the right to make up her own mind as to her position. The hon. Member for Bootle adds at the end of his speech a brief acknowledgement of this fact – in passing he mentions it, and says that in that case we shall avoid the evils on which he has been expatiating,’ (‘I said the worst of the evils,’ said Bonar Law loudly). ‘The worst of the evils. But does this fact, this legitimate hope, in any way alter the tone, too long familiar to us all, of the rest of his speech? Not in the least. The one certain fact which seems to have emerged from the whole recent history of this controversy is the irresponsibility of His Majesty’s Opposition, who even now when the end might appear to be in sight reiterate the wild charges against the Government and their foolhardy undertakings to the inhabitants of Ulster. This spectacle of a great political Party, supposed to be seriously considered by the people of this country as an alternative Government, turning themselves for reasons of Party pride and revenge into a Party whose policy, whose considered policy, in the event of the Home Rule Bill being put into force, is one of armed rebellion against. His Majesty’s Government – this is a sorry spectacle. It seems to me now that it is the honour of Parliament itself which is at stake. On the ministerial side we have shown ourselves anxious only for an equable settlement – the Parliamentary Nationalist leaders are anxious for a settlement – the whole country desires it – we are approaching it, we are moving towards it – but there are still people who by their every word and action do their best to prevent it. They have no alternative to suggest to the settlement which we are seeking – their aim is a purely destructive one. They accuse us of trying to coerce the Ulster Unionists. In the same breath they attack us for not having put down by force the Ulster Volunteers. The Chief Secretary has pointed out that the whole history of Anglo Irish relations shows the error of forcible suppression by this country. What is this military fever which has seized the Conservative Party? What is this urge towards precipitate action? “Attack, attack,” they cry, these devotees of action for its own sake – but we must resist this rash appeal as men of sober and mature judgment have always tried to resist it down the centuries. We do not intend to use coercion in Ireland. We do not even intend, despite the provocation, to take up arms against His Majesty’s Opposition. We intend to pursue a policy of peaceful negotiation, and I feel that we have a right at this juncture, in a situation whose gravity we must not attempt to minimize, to call upon hon. Members opposite as well as those of conflicting opinions in Ireland itself to make a serious and constructive attempt to allow an atmosphere to develop in which these negotiations may go forward with some hope of success.

  ‘I refer again to the Archbishop’s letter. “The country expects,” he says, “the country expects Parliament to achieve a solution.” Mr Speaker, Sir, are we in this House going to allow Party faction, lust for Party battle for its own sake, lust for Party power, for Party revenge, to cheat the country of the fulfilment of its just and proper expectations?’

  This speech was to a certain extent and among other things responsible for his being asked a few weeks later when the King made his own appeal for reason and moderation, to take part in the Buckingham Palace Conference. ‘I’d like Weston to be there,’ his sovereign said. ‘He’s a man I trust, and a patient man too.’ And to this the Prime Minister, who also trusted him, agreed. But by the end of July it was too late.

  It was the day after this speech that Kitty and Alice came to lunch with Aylmer. He showed them round, took pleasure in explaining various details of procedure to them, and left them in the Strangers’ Gallery to listen to the debate. They did not stay long because Edmund had asked them to tea in his chambers in the Temple.

  As they came out of St Stephen’s entrance they saw a young woman chained to the railings. Two policemen were attempting to unchain and remove her. She was fighting hard, kicking and clawing and screaming. Her hair was half unpinned, her face white and her large bulging eyes red rimmed and desperate. She looked extremely ill.

  Kitty rushed up to the two policemen. ‘Let her go! Let her go! Oh, how can you?’

  ‘Kitty!’ Alice hurried after her and took her by the arm.

  ‘Keep out of this,’ said the policeman. ‘Go on, you, get her away from here.’

  ‘Come on, Kitty.’ Alice pulled her arm.

  ‘No, no!’ Kitty resisted. They were so near that they could smell the woman. She smelt of sweat and sickness.

  The woman shouted to Kitty. ‘Hit him! Hit him! Go on, do something.’

  ‘Kitty!’

  ‘I will. I will.’ Red faced, Kitty lifted both her fists and jerked nervously in the direction of one of the policemen.

  ‘Go along now or we’ll take you with us. Get her out of the way, will you? Can’t you see we’ve got enough on our hands?’

  They had managed to detach the suffragette from the railing, and now bundled her with a good deal of vindictive pushing and pinching into a police van.

  ‘Help me! Help me! Fight them!’ she shrieked before they closed the door. Her wild face appeared mouthing at the little back window as the van drove off.

  ‘We must do something. Why didn’t you let me? How could you stand there and let those two brutes push her about and not help her? How could you?’

  ‘Kitty, for heaven’s sake let’s walk along a little bit. It’s not fair to your father to stand here quarrelling and shouting. Of course I felt sorry for that poor woman, but she had after all started it.’

  ‘She was right. She had right on her side. It’s quite monstrous that they won’t give women the vote. In the face of tyranny you have to use violence. Oh why didn’t I do anything? Why did you stop me?’

  ‘Because you were making a complete idiot of yourself, you know perfectly well you were. And you are quite quite wrong. There is no need at all for them to use violence – and if the policemen were brutes so was she – she had made herself one.’

  ‘She had not. How can you be so unfeeling about someone who ought to be your own sister? I am very very disappointed in you, Alice.’ Kitty was standing still again. They confronted each other on the pavement in Parliament Square.

  ‘I am disappointed in you, too for being so stupid. It is innocent people like you who cause half the trouble. What do you think human nature is that we can afford to play about with it like this? Do you think human beings are angels? Don’t you realize that it is only himself who makes man a creature of any worth at all? Or woman either, since you will insist on separating them. We are not nice or kind or loving or anything unless we make ourselves so by giving and receiving those qualities all the time. Once the other things are allowed in, hate and unreason and fear and brutality, they spread, they’re infectious. You don’t know – you have never seen a person that has not received love and therefore cannot give it out again. You have probably never even seen an animal in that condition. Humans have to tame each other by endless love and patience in order not to be brutal.’

  ‘I’d rather be a wild animal than a tame one. Lions and tigers are splendid, and noble. And at least natural.’

  ‘There’s nothing splendid or noble about the untamed jungle. Only the stench of blood. Like that woman. She was a perfectly nice and respectable woman and she had made herself smell with violence.’

  ‘But you can’t love and be patient against wickedness. It’s cowardly.’

  ‘You must. It’s the only hope. You must love and love and love it until you have beaten it to its knees.’

  ‘The suffragettes are beating Asquith and McKenna to their knees anyway without wasting time on loving them.’


  ‘They aren’t. They are only holding the whole thing up. They have only done harm, because only harm can be done by the means they use.’

  ‘But splendid things have been done in a thousand different ways by the use of such means. And if you believe in a cause it is glorious to suffer for it, and die for it if necessary.’

  But they had to stop, because there was someone standing quietly watching them. It was Edmund, who, finding himself with half an hour to spare, had walked to meet them. They did not know how long he might have been there.

  ‘How could you?’ Alice turned on him furiously. ‘How could you stand there and listen like that?’ And she turned and walked quickly back the way they had come. He ran after her and took her arm.

  ‘Please come back. I had only been there a moment.’

  ‘No, I am very angry.’ She pulled away from him ‘How dare you stand there laughing at us? How dare you?’

  ‘I am truly sorry. I was not laughing. You were quite right in what you were saying. Only I think perhaps you take too gloomy a view of human nature. But I was so interested, so – so excited that I did pause a moment, but only a moment. Please, Alice, please forgive me, I can’t bear it if you won’t.’ She had changed from the demure and dutiful governess into a creature of passions and extravagances and of course he loved her the better for it.

  She became calmer. They walked on to tea, and were in consequence of the little scene less formal than usual and more animated. After that day Edmund knew that his love for Alice was a serious business, but he was not yet sure what he was going to do about it.

  It was about this time that Reggie Mather warned Aylmer about Horgan. Reggie Mather was a fat jovial banker, the descendant of a long line of fat jovial bankers of Swiss origin, and a back bench Conservative MP of reliably right wing views Aylmer had told him that Philip was going into Horgan’s firm of stockbrokers and had asked hi.m whether he knew anything about it. He said that he didn’t at the time, but a few days later he came up to Aylmer in the smoking room and said, ‘I made a few inquiries about your fellow Horgan, by the by. Didn’t hear much to his credit I’m afraid. I should try and get your nephew out of it as quick as you can, if I were you. It seems he’s a real bad hat, this Horgan, been in trouble a couple of times before he struck lucky in South Africa. He’s making a good deal of money now, apparently, mostly speculating on his own account, playing the markets. He started this stockbroking firm with a fellow called Miller who’d been in the business some time and had quarrelled with his own firm. It’s doing all right for the time being, but it’s not his only interest, and I shouldn’t like to think what your Philip might be drawn into if he joins him, especially if he’s new to the game. This is in complete confidence, mind you, but from all I hear Horgan’s not to be trusted. Not the sort of chap we like to have in the City. I should get the boy out of it if you can.’