Statues in a Garden

by Isabel Colegate

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t dash about so,’ said Mrs Weston coming into the room. ‘It looks undignified and is a bad example to Kitty.’ But Violet had gone.

  ‘I wondered if I could help you at all,’ said old Mrs Weston to Cynthia, who rightly understood her to mean that she was bored and wanted to talk.

  ‘I am worried about Moberley,’ Mrs Weston went on, not giving Cynthia time to take her up on her offer. ‘He is being persecuted by Beatrice. She has him in some sort of thrall, and yet the moment she leaves him alone he hurries back to Ellen, who is much more suitable for him. I think you should have a word with Beatrice.’

  ‘Good heavens, I couldn’t possibly interfere in Beatrice’s relations with her admirers,’ said Cynthia, shocked.

  ‘He’s not an admirer, that’s just the trouble. He’s a helpless victim.’

  ‘But what could I possibly say to her? She would be horrified. We never discuss that sort of thing.’

  ‘I thought perhaps some sort of general warning,’ said Mrs Weston rather vaguely.

  ‘She would be very surprised,’ said Cynthia. ‘It is not at all like me to make a general warning.’

  Mrs Weston smiled reluctantly and walked towards the open window.

  ‘Is Aylmer coming this evening?’ she said, looking out into the sunlit garden.

  ‘I think so,’ said Cynthia.

  ‘He is overworking,’ said his mother.

  ‘I know, but the summer recess will be here before very long.’

  ‘They may prolong the session.’

  ‘Oh, it is surely not so bad as that. You mean, over this Irish business?’

  ‘The European situation is not very good.’

  ‘But it is never very good. Everyone seems to think it better than usual at the moment I sat next to Mr Lloyd George at dinner last week and he said that the external situation was the best it had been this century.’

  ‘I don’t think Mr Lloyd George is much of an expert on foreign affairs.’

  ‘He is very clever. You are always so gloomy. Are you thinking of this Serbian affair?’

  ‘Not particularly I am not thinking of anything particularly. Except Aylmer and his share in the Government.’

  Cynthia wrote, ‘Mr and Mrs Arbuthnot, Auction Bridge case.’

  ‘People are too easily bullied by circumstances,’ said Mrs Weston.

  ‘You mean that Aylmer should do more in some way or other?’ said Cynthia –

  ‘I should like him to express what he stands for, to give words to it,’ said Mrs Weston, ‘rather than just be it. His father, you know, was a much noisier man.’

  ‘Perhaps he thinks some things are too deep for words,’ said Cynthia ‘Or for the hurly burly of politics.’

  ‘He is over fastidious,’ said Mrs Weston. ‘And nothing is too deep for words.’

  We had read in the papers about how the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his morganatic wife, the Duchess of Hohenberg, had been shot on a visit to Sarajevo. We had been shocked, and had felt sorry for the Austrians, and had sympathized to some extent with Mr Horatio Bottomley’s ‘John Bull’ posters which said, ‘To Hell with Serbia’. But I do not remember much talk about a general European war.

  Aylmer came by train. He did not care for long journeys by car.

  He sat in a corner seat in a first class carriage, alternately reading the New Statesman and looking out of the window at the passing sunlit countryside.

  The only other people in the carriage sat in the corner farthest away from him. They were a young couple, and he decided that they were extraordinarily attractive. They looked as if they could neither of them be more than twenty, though she was pregnant. He was a dark haired, well dressed young man with particularly soft large grey eyes, she was dark too and looked as if she might be wearing rouge. She had huge sad brown eyes – perhaps she was foreign? – her voice was so soft that he could not distinguish whether or not her accent was an English one. Their only luggage seemed to be a guitar case which was on the rack above them and a battered attache case which was beside them on the seat. During the course of the journey the young man opened the attache case, disclosing some tattered sheets of manuscript and a packet of sandwiches. The sandwiches were large and inelegant, and looked good. They ate them with evident pleasure, not furtively as people often eat sandwiches on trains, their white young teeth closed on the meat shamelessly. The young man brushed away the crumbs from the girl’s dress they had fallen on to her stomach and he brushed gently because of the unborn child but without self consciousness and without any extra tenderness because their whole attitude to each other was one of tender care.

  Aylmer speculated about them, listening to their conversation as well as he could. They spoke quietly, but they seemed to be talking about how they were going to live – they were going to a cottage somewhere which he knew already but which she had never seen. He gathered from one or two things he heard that they were short of money. But they were travelling first class this seemed a piece of charming improvidence. Aylmer decided that he must be a young man of good family whose literary interests had taken him into Bohemia where he had found the lovely girl (the guitar was hers Aylmer decided), married her, and been cut off by his family. He was a Little Billee who had married his Trilby. It was delightful.

  It occurred to Aylmer that he himself had an indirect influence on their lives. He was part of a government under whose ordinances their life would be lived, a government which in spite of all its conflicts, its undercurrents of interest, its occasional muddles, its failure, inherent in the mere fact of its humanity, to live all the time up to its best ideals, would not mislead them, would not interfere with their love, would see that such things as food and a decent education for their child and a roof over their heads would be available for them, in spite of their lack of wealth, and this, of course, they would hardly know or notice, thinking no doubt that politics was nothing to do with them, despising the politicians probably.

  He began to go over again in his mind the complicated negotiations with two or three Conservatives in which he had been involved for the past few days, trying to find a formula for peace in Ireland. Now that, he thought, that would be a consolation, to have achieved that. And, as well as a consolation, a gratifying political advantage. So he sat thinking of the frontiers of Tyrone and Fermanagh, while the young people murmured in their corner like pigeons.

  When he got out at his station he said good night to them in a friendly manner, and they rewarded him with two charmingly serious smiles.

  He found Cynthia at her lists.

  The wedding presents were being kept in the billiard room, where they were to be displayed on the day before the wedding.

  Cynthia was alone there, among the packing cases and the gleams of silver and mother of pearl, on the floor, reading from a leather bound volume of George Meredith’s poems, a present to Violet from her former governess, Miss Grainger.

  She looked up when he came in, smiled but did not move.

  Leaning over to see what she was reading, he quoted from memory, ‘“Shy as the squirrel and wayward as the swallow” – ah, how appropriate – “When her mother tends her before the laughing mirror” – is this how you feel? –

  ‘“Tying up her laces, looping up her hair,

  Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded,

  More love should I have, and much less care

  When her mother tends her before the lighted mirror,

  Loosening her laces, combing down her curls,

  Often she thinks, were this wild thing wedded,

  I should miss but one for many boys and girls.”’

  Cynthia arched back her neck and groaned. ‘Horrible!’ she said.

  ‘Horrible? It’s perfectly charming,’ he said, surprised.

  ‘It isn’t, it’s revolting, it makes me feel sick.’

  He was shocked. ‘You used to like George Meredith.’

  ‘Well I don’t any more. Silly old man.’

 
; He was annoyed. He walked away. ‘I didn’t think I should find you in this sort of mood.’

  ‘I’m not. I mean I’m not in any sort of mood, particularly. But really, Aylmer, it is so false, that, and futile.’

  ‘I don’t think it is false and futile in the least. It may have, if you like, a touch of sentimentality about that particular verse. But then I always thought mothers did feel sentimental at the thought of their daughters marrying. Fathers certainly do.’

  ‘Oh really, if you mean that because I don’t like a poem of George Meredith’s I haven’t got the proper feelings about Violet’s wedding – that’s too ridiculous.’

  ‘I didn’t say anything about Violet’s wedding. Though I suppose it must be that which has had such a bad effect on your temper.’

  ‘There’s nothing in the least wrong with my temper. I was in a particularly good temper, as a matter of fact, sitting here reading. I suppose it is because you have had a tiring day.’

  ‘You suppose what is because I have had a tiring day? It’s most certainly not I who am in a bad temper. I had a very pleasant journey down and was looking forward to a peaceful walk round the garden before dinner.’

  ‘Then it must be the sight of me that has put you in a bad temper,’ she said distantly, bending her head to sort out the books.

  ‘I am not in a bad temper,’ he said.

  There was a long silence. He stared out of the window. She aimlessly sorted books.

  ‘I didn’t think I should find you like this,’ he said eventually in a hurt tone of voice. ‘It has been a long week. I hardly expected to find this sort of thing when I came home to snatch a few days’ precious rest.’

  ‘What sort of thing?’ she asked flatly.

  ‘You in this mood.’

  ‘I have already said I am not in any sort of mood,’ she said.

  There was another silence.

  ‘I wonder what you would do if you had to run the country,’ he said musingly, ‘if organizing a wedding reduces you to such a state.’

  Silence.

  ‘And then they want to give women the vote,’ he said.

  She still did not speak.

  ‘I’m sorry, that wasn’t fair,’ he said, with an effort. ‘I really am rather tired. Things are very difficult at the moment, you know. This Irish thing is getting more and more tricky and the Opposition never let up, and it’s not as if everything’s entirely smooth in the Cabinet itself, as you know I really must be able to relax when I get home. It’s enormously important to me. You know that.’

  Her voice trembled. ‘Of course. How could I fail to know it? Hasn’t it always been important?’

  He turned to look at her, surprised. ‘But of course it has. Why not?’

  She had covered her face with her hands ‘Why not? Why not indeed?’ she murmured. Then, opening her hands, she threw back her head and looked at him. ‘Why not why not why not?’ she cried. ‘It’s what a home is for, isn’t it, and a wife too? To provide comfort and relaxation and distraction from the real matter of life. To make a nursery world, to be both the nanny and the toy. And nannies don’t need comforting themselves, do they, and a toy only needs a new dress if it’s looking depressed.’

  ‘I don’t understand you,’ he said blankly.

  ‘Why can’t I have any needs?’ she went on. ‘Why can’t I need help or distraction or – oh, how you despise women!’

  ‘That is perfectly untrue,’ he said. ‘I am a great admirer of women, generally speaking. It’s true that I don’t trust emotionalism.’

  ‘Emotionalism,’ she said scornfully. ‘What does that mean? You mean emotions. Haven’t you any emotions?’

  ‘You, of all people, know that I have. But I don’t believe in giving in to them entirely. I believe in reason, and discipline.’

  ‘But I don’t want to be reasonable and disciplined all the time!’ cried Cynthia. ‘I want – I have other – ’ But she could not explain.

  She put her head in her hands again, sitting still on the floor among the wedding presents, and after a time he went away, and walked round the garden alone.

  There were the nightingales in the valley, and the air full of roses and dew, and the fox in the undergrowth, stealing the strawberries, striped by the moonlight with patterns of brambles it was from all this that the house emerged, lit within, like a ship breasting the waves of moonlight, nightingales, movement and roses. Old Mrs Weston paced the deck, back wards and forwards, backwards and forwards, the valley before her, the nightingales bubbling their song in the thorn bushes by the thicket where the fox cubs waited for their mother’s return, and in the different lighted rooms behind her only Ellen slept, the kitchenmaid, who went to bed early because she had to get up at 6.30am, but all the others were awake, and in action.

  Kitty was in the bath, but her mind was active. She had entered into correspondence with Miss Sylvia Pankhurst, who had written to her, in answer to a letter of hers, to say that she did indeed need help in her work for the East End Federation of Working Women. She had gone on to suggest, tactfully, that it might be a good idea if Kitty, before doing anything dramatic like running away from home, came down to one of her meetings in the East End one day when she was in London and could escape for a few hours with a friend perhaps. The letter managed somehow to convey to the sensitive Kitty that Miss Pankhurst doubted whether she understood in the least what such work involved, not that Kitty minded that, for she felt herself perfectly capable of responding to the challenge and proving Miss Pankhurst wrong, but the problem was how to escape, and whether if she took Alice into her confidence she would risk Alice’s taking an altogether opposite view and preventing her going at all.

  When she had finished her bath she went along to Alice’s room.

  Alice, as usual in the evenings, was writing a letter home, or at least she had in front of her a large sheet of paper on which she had written, ‘Dearest Mother and Father’, but after that she had only written Edmund’s name in various different writings and sizes all over the paper.

  Alice had often been in love. Ever since she could remember she had had a habit of falling for people, in such a way that her mind would be nearly always full of the then object of her affection, and though she would pursue her ordinary affairs without much loss of efficiency her mind would still be dwelling on the person, on his features, form, speech, on their last conversation, repeating literally hundreds of times words they had spoken, incidents which had passed between them, a touch of hands or a glance, imagining, again with endless repetition, a disclosure of mutual feelings, an embrace. Since this state of mind was so familiar to her, she was not in the least afraid of accidentally betraying her feelings, nor of their interfering in any way with her work as Kitty’s governess, she did not try to conceal their true nature from herself, but she felt capable of controlling them, nor did the prospect of their leading to un happiness disturb her. She felt herself capable of dealing with unhappiness too. In spite of her dreams she could not seriously think that there was likely to be a happy outcome. She believed that Edmund liked her but thought that the difference in their social situations would prevent him from even considering marriage. She did not, of course, think of any relationship other than marriage quite apart from any views of her own she would have thought it impossible for Edmund to entertain such an idea. She had been kissed on several occasions by the treacherous Irish curate – once or twice rather passionately – but that was the extent of her experience.

  When Kitty came in she covered up the piece of paper on which she had been writing and said reprovingly, ‘I thought you were in bed.’

  ‘I’ve come to say good night,’ said Kitty. She was holding Miss Pankhurst’s letter. ‘Alice, if you were me, what would you do?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Well, about life, and all that I mean, I am condemned, aren’t I, to a certain existence, to coming out next year, finding a suitable husband, living out the rest of my life running his house and supporting him and
doing a few good works and organizing parties.’

  ‘The great majority of women are condemned, as you put it, to something of the sort I mean, to growing up and getting married and being a wife and mother. Is it such a terrible fate? If you mean that you don’t like the way of life of the social class into which you have been born, I agree that at your age it is a little difficult to break away from it, but in a year or two you will be able to decide for yourself how you want to live, and you have quite a strong enough personality to be able to carry it through if you choose to be unconventional.’

  ‘You mean I must wait? But I can’t bear waiting. And, besides, they might marry me off while I was still biding my time, and then I should never be free.’

  ‘No one will make you marry if you don’t want to. And if you have an adventurous disposition you will probably marry a similar sort of person and then you can both be adventurous together.’

  ‘Alice, how dare you be so unbearably sensible? And you know perfectly well it is not as easy as that. You know there would be tremendous difficulties if I tried to do anything in the least unconventional, and I don’t mean only from my own family. Anybody else, outside our sort of world, is bound to think that someone like me must be a complete fool. I want to do all sorts of things, and find out about everything, and make things happen, and end up as Prime Minister – you’re not to laugh, I should be much better in politics than someone like Edmund, for instance – I mean, when I know more. Oh, I can’t bear, I really can’t bear, the thought of next year, and all the idiocies.’ She sat down on Alice’s bed and looked at her seriously. ‘Do you know,’ she said, ‘I was thinking a minute ago, in the bath, of running away and going to live in the East End, and working for women’s suffrage. But that would have been silly, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Very,’ said Alice.

  ‘Because I am much too helpless. I have never even walked down a street by myself. And I should be no use. And worse than that, I should be using those people, and their serious cause, for my own ends. I should be using them for my own private rebellion. Every brick I threw at a window would be a brick thrown from the inside at the windows of the house I was born in. And that would be wrong, wouldn’t it?’