Statues in a Garden

by Isabel Colegate

  But her life had resumed its easy flow. So why should she have had this restlessness lately, or whatever it was?

  It might be, she thought, something to do with being over forty, with being spoilt, and used to praise, and fearing that it might be growing less sincere, with facing the fact that it was time now for her to change from being a beauty into being a wonderful person, and realizing that it was a good deal harder to be a wonderful person than to be a beauty. Or it might be something to do with her children, that they were now grown up and did not need her, but then Kitty, she supposed, did need her, all the same, she somehow could not feel that even Kitty would not have been perfectly all right without her. It had been different when they were younger Indeed with each of them she had felt, in spite of nannies, nursery maids and all the rest of it, that she was quite extraordinarily linked with them, extraordinarily essential to them, in their first few years, as if in some odd way the birth process were not truly over until they were five or six. After that she was much more detached, she loved them, and admired them, and thought them beautiful and clever and self sufficient, and it seemed to her only right and proper that their formative influences should now be coming from other people and not from her. She felt that even Kitty, in spite of all her extravagances of temperament, had a sort of basic equilibrium which meant she was not to be worried about, they had perhaps inherited it from Aylmer, this fundamental soundness.

  For she had Aylmer.

  But she had been to a concert at the Queen’s Hall and had heard a Schumann piano concerto and had had to hold on to the arms of her seat to stop herself from jumping up and running away – running where? – she did not know – out into the street, her hair flying, holding up her skirts, running down Langham Place. It would have been absurd in someone of her age, pathetic merely Philip had been sitting beside her.

  Philip, with his odd position in her life, his detachment, his questions, his cruel jokes, his bright observant eyes, Philip was – well, what? – a great comfort surely?

  Putting on her hat in front of the mirror, she thought in all innocence, Philip is a great comfort to me, and when he came and was shown in and she said, ‘You see I am in my hat,’ she kissed him on the cheek and said, ‘You are a great comfort to me,’ taking his arm as though they were already walking in the park.

  The bridge in St James’s Park, overlooking the lake bustling with ducks, and beyond the lake and the trees the clustered minarets of the Foreign Office, that was where they paused and Philip leant over the parapet and said, ‘I thought you didn’t need comfort.’

  ‘Everybody needs comfort.’

  ‘Against what?’

  ‘Comfort is not against things.’

  ‘For what then?’

  ‘For – well, for being alive, merely.’

  ‘What is wrong with being alive?’

  ‘It’s sad, isn’t it? I mean, people die and that sort of thing – and one gets muddled, can’t remember always what’s the reason for things, and fails, and falls below one’s standards.’

  ‘You don’t fall below yours, do you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Your high standards.’ He looked at her profile, she was gazing at the greedy ducks. ‘Where do you fall below them?’

  He asked with kind interest, and without his usual mockery, so that she answered seriously, ‘Sometimes I think I am not much of a help to Aylmer.’

  He was disappointed. ‘There I can’t have an opinion.’ He looked at the ducks too. ‘How much of a help is he to you?’

  ‘That’s not the point,’ she said, shocked ‘He is doing very important and exhausting work.’

  ‘Why don’t they have a war in Ireland? It would be rather fun. It wouldn’t last long. We need a bit of blood letting. We are getting fat and choleric, it would be like an application of leeches to the body politic. We should all feel much better after it.’

  ‘You are not serious,’ she said mildly.

  ‘Of course I am serious. A brisk fight would clear the air.’

  ‘It is wrong to kill people.’

  ‘Of course. That’s why it’s so exciting.’

  ‘You are ridiculous.’

  ‘Not at all. We should all enjoy it. Think of Aylmer taking a shot at F. E. Smith. I think I should be on the other side. I should be an Orangeman. Edmund and I would be on opposite sides. We might kill each other. Think of that for tragic drama.’

  ‘I don’t want to think of it.’

  ‘But you would enjoy it really. People like terrible things to happen to them. They thirst for drama and tragedy and to sup full of horrors.’

  ‘I think you have a very odd view of human nature.’

  ‘Not nearly as odd as yours. You believe in the perfectibility of man.’

  ‘Yes I suppose I do.’

  ‘You think he is getting better and better, and that soon there will be no more wars and people will love their neighbours as themselves.’

  ‘I can’t say I see much hope of it in the immediate future. But you must admit it’s desirable’

  ‘Not in the least. I think it would be a crashing bore’

  ‘Oh dear. Why do we always quarrel?’

  ‘It is not exactly quarrelling.’

  She laughed and turned to look at him ‘No. It’s not, is it? Come on, let’s walk I shall have to go back soon Edmund is coming round. He is going with Violet and a whole collection of people to some party on the river, and I want to see him. Aren’t you going to it?’

  She had taken his arm again.

  ‘I haven’t been asked,’ he said. ‘I am not such an eligible parti as your son.’

  ‘You do pretend to be cynical,’ she said. ‘Sometimes people marry for love.’

  ‘Would you marry me if you were looking for a husband? Wouldn’t you think you could do better?’

  ‘You would tease me too much. That’s why I wouldn’t marry you.’

  ‘If I didn’t tease you. If I asked you very nicely.’

  ‘Oh look. There’s Edmund. He must have been to the house and come to look for us. He’s going the wrong way. Run after him.’

  ‘We can walk this way, then we shall meet him.’

  ‘But – oh very well. How handsome he looked. You wouldn’t shoot him, I’m sure, if you were an Orangeman.’

  ‘But you love me better.’ He closed his right hand suddenly over hers as it lay on his left arm. ‘You do, don’t you? You do, you do.’

  ‘Philip – no, please – you gave me such a shock.’ She was a little breathless. She tried to pull her hand away. ‘Please, Philip.’

  ‘But you love me better.’

  ‘Oh really.’ She began to laugh. ‘You are absurd. I don’t do anything of the kind. I love you all equally.’

  He loosened his hold on her hand and stroked it gently. ‘You don’t really mind when I bully you, do you?’

  ‘No.’ She smiled at him, her gaze no longer disturbed.

  Edmund was walking towards them.

  He kissed his mother on the cheek ‘You’re looking very well,’ he said. ‘How are you, Philip? They told me at the house that you were out here, so I came to find you. It’s a lovely evening, isn’t it? Have you been having a pleasant walk?’

  14

  Now it was high summer.

  At Charleswood the lawns were turning brown, but the roses clothed the walls and draped the trees with undiminished vigour, the white ones lustrous in the shade Kitty and Alice in the schoolroom with the blinds drawn talked languidly through the hot afternoon and pursued their private dreams old Mrs Weston opened the windows of the Silver Wraith and tied an amber motoring veil round her head, hardly interrupting the harsh flow of her voice into the speaking tube. Moberley nodded, his mind on his engine and regardless of his girls.

  In London the parks were even more burnt up, but the air was cooler by the Serpentine than in the stifling streets. In Bond Street where Wilfred and Violet were slowly walking, the pavements were less crowded than usual, it was
too hot for shop ping. He had said he would buy her a diamond watch as well as the brooch he had already given her as his wedding present, and so they walked up Bond Street, but very slowly because of the heat, and soon they would stop and go somewhere for tea even if they had not found the watch. They could always buy a watch tomorrow and in the meantime walked slowly, she in a shady hat and muslin and he in his bowler, pleased with themselves.

  Cynthia lay on her bed in Queen Anne’s Gate, her curtains drawn but not excluding the sound of traffic, of a passing horse, feet on the pavement and the distant boom of the clocks of Westminster. She was so relaxed that she seemed to float, borne on clouds of warm air, she being pale and fragrant, and vigorous too, like the roses, for as long as she could rest in the afternoons she did not mind the heat. In her mind there was nothing, a floating greyness, faintly violet, nothing more. There are people who spend years of mental and physical discipline in trying to achieve this state, to Cynthia it came naturally when she was, as she would have put it, in the right mood. She had been in the right mood less and less often lately, but the gift had not yet deserted her. It was probably the reason why sleeplessness was an affliction entirely unknown to her.

  It was not unknown to Aylmer who had been sleeping badly for the past week. He was in the House of Commons, playing chess with the Home Secretary, and intermittently discussing an irritating Cabinet meeting which had taken place that morning, and then just as the game was settling his mind, and just as they seemed to have agreed on the necessity for a private meeting with the Prime Minister to urge on him the need for brisker action over certain labour problems, McKenna had to start talking about the Balkans, and Europe, and German ambitions, endlessly tiresome points which he did not want to think about on such a hot afternoon. He tried to dismiss it all with praise of the Foreign Secretary, but failed, and then McKenna used the phrase ‘if it came to a showdown’ and he was forced to contemplate the possibility of European war, which was a possibility he had been doing his best to avoid contemplating for the past two weeks.

  ‘There’s no earthly need for us to be drawn in,’ he said. ‘We have most expressly not committed ourselves, to France, or to Russia, least of all to Serbia. Our only real commitment is our guarantee of Belgian neutrality, and anybody who flouts that is mad – bringing the whole world into conflict like that – no one can afford it. Can’t we get a European conference of some sort?’

  But it was no good, the situation remained worrying, however he expostulated. He could not help being aware of how little he knew, beyond the broadest outlines of policy, about how his country’s foreign affairs were being conducted.

  After his game of chess he sent a note to John Morley asking if he could come and see him. Those members of the Cabinet who most cared about preserving peace must get together there were several on whom he felt he could not rely to put that consideration high enough on their list of priorities.

  He sat for much of the afternoon in the library working out arguments and how they could most cogently be put to Grey and Asquith, later a note came from Morley asking him to dine that evening. He decided to go back to Queen Anne’s Gate in order to have a little time with Cynthia.

  When he got there he found that she was out. They did not know when she would be back, but expected it would not be long because they knew that Mr Philip was expected later.

  He asked for tea and thought, waiting for it, Why always Mr Philip, and never Mr Edmund?

  Edmund and Alice had started a correspondence. It was quite a step. Those were the days of letter writing, but, still, she was the governess. He had started it, on the pretext of continuing a discussion they had begun about G. E. Moore, and now they wrote regularly, keeping their correspondence a secret known only to each other.

  Alice had a pretty, flowing hand. She enjoyed the actual movement of writing, the feel of her pen on the paper, the formation of the letters that was partly why she wrote so much letters home, diaries, now copiously to Edmund. She wrote about Kitty. ‘I have been talking to your father about her. We were very serious, alone together in the library, discussing her future – it made me feel very old and responsible. To my surprise he was quite angry at the thought of her wanting to do something a little different, even if she doesn’t go into politics, which is what she says she wants to do at the moment I had not realized quite how much of an anti feminist he is. I knew, of course, that he had spoken against the granting of female suffrage, but I thought that was because he disapproved of the methods the women’s organizations have been using, but it is something more than that I suppose you probably share his views. I don’t think we have ever discussed it? Of course the sad thing is that I share them too in a way, but after all how can anyone expect us suddenly to find our way unaided about a man’s world, after centuries of oppression and lack of education? But poor Kitty – anyway he was chiefly, I think, in suited that she should not be entirely satisfied with all that he provides for her in the way of charming surroundings, stimulating conversation and all the rest of it. Even the most enlightened parents are so easy to offend, aren’t they? And then he said that the only proper object of a woman’s life was marriage, and having children, and creating, jointly with her husband, a home – not, he said, merely ordering the meals and seeing that the silver is cleaned, but making a positive atmosphere, the most creative thing most people can do – a moral statement, he called it, and that what is most important for Kitty is the finding of someone with whom to share all this, and she will not do so if she goes exploring in foreign fields. And just as I was feeling completely defeated by this he suddenly capitulated and said that she may attend a course of lectures at the London School of Economics next summer if I go with her. So it seems that willy nilly I am to be educated too. And you see he only said that out of a desire to do what was right and good I do find it impossible not to admire your father. I know you do too, but Philip is strange in his attitude to him, isn’t he? – although I believe he really loves him as much as any of you do. But I think he suspects him of making assumptions which he ought not to make – I don’t believe he does, I think Philip is wrong. I suppose it is some sort of envy on his part – almost everything is, isn’t it? – I mean almost everything that seems out of order or that one can’t at first understand, in oneself or others, seems usually to turn out to be some form of envy. But you are lucky to have such wonderful parents. Mine, though I love them dearly, are terribly dull – I wouldn’t usually admit it, but they are, and my father disapproves of everything, really everything – life itself, and inanimate objects, and death – so what is left? I think in spite of their professional relationship he really rather disapproves of God. I don’t do you? But then, probably in reaction against my father, I have gone to the opposite extreme, and approve of almost everything.’

  ‘It can’t last,’ Mrs Weston said, meaning the weather.

  ‘Thundery,’ said Moberley, inclining his head slightly so that his ear was closer to the speaking tube.

  ‘I had the most extraordinarily vivid dream when I was resting after lunch,’ said Mrs Weston. ‘I can’t remember the details. Only the atmosphere.’

  She could remember the details, as a matter of fact, but they were not suitable for Moberley. She had seemed to see Cynthia, in one of those flashes of apparently enhanced reality which dreams sometimes bring, floating through the air on a cloud, or bed, naked, immense, asleep, the still figure seeming, perhaps because of this mental trick which so clarified its definition, to be a matter of the utmost urgency. She could not imagine why a sleeping Cynthia should float thus demandingly into her consciousness.

  ‘Meaningless symbols drop like pebbles into an empty mind,’ she mused to Moberley, ‘and are mercifully lost. Do you be live in dreams I mean in messages, prophecies?’

  He did, of course, though he thought a lot of nonsense was talked about that sort of thing.

  The subject filled the rest of the afternoon more or less satisfactorily until she could say, ‘Would you
drive home now? I think it must be tea time,’ wondering at the same time whether in her increasingly cranky old age she might at last be becoming jealous of her beautiful daughter in law.

  Cynthia returned to find Aylmer already gone.

  ‘I wish I had known he was coming back. I could easily have been here I was only wasting my time, shopping.’

  Philip had been waiting for her.

  ‘Don’t look so worried,’ he said. ‘You’ll see him in an hour or so.’

  ‘No, he will be late I shall be asleep. I sleep so much. Oh dear. Don’t go into politics. You have so little private life.’

  ‘I shan’t. I should never be able to fool myself that my motives were honourable. But I thought playing political hostesses was fun?’

  ‘It is, I suppose. But I have done it a long time. Besides, Aylmer is not ambitious enough for it to be really amusing for me. You have to be deep in intrigue for it to be fun for long.’

  ‘Don’t you intrigue?’

  ‘No. Though I tell people how clever Aylmer is when they ask. Where are you going?’

  ‘Back to my flat to bathe and change. I have to go out to dinner.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘You are losing your pride. You don’t usually ask.’

  ‘I am only trying to take a polite interest.’

  ‘I am having dinner with a girl called Cindy.’

  ‘Who is she?’

  ‘Worse and worse.’

  ‘I am naturally interested in your friends. Particularly the female ones. I want you to marry and settle down.’

  ‘You wouldn’t want me to marry and settle down with Cindy. She is rather common and probably consumptive.’