The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot

by Angus Wilson

  Dr Maung was persuaded to let her be helped downstairs each day, and she lay on the veranda in a bamboo chaise-longue with daffodil yellow cushions. There she lost herself, for long moments, even letting Bill’s memory slip away, in a mass of strange sounds and colours – the glaring crimson of the bougainvillea, the softer, complex blues and browns and greens of the orchids, the neat and highly gaudy beds of gerbera and portulaca, the whirring of the fans, the fainter sound of the water sprinkler. Then she would be wakened from this half-sleep by chance movements – a spray of water shooting suddenly higher into the air; the gibbon increasing the pace of his monotonous swinging; and she would turn a concentrated attention upon the deposition.

  It was only after she had read all these that the amity established with the Marriots was, if not broken, at any rate badly cracked. She found in them no word to support her hysterically held belief that Bill had died by chance. He had moved to protect, all of them said it; some even declared that he had ‘flung himself’. Out of her reading, however, came an appeal that broke through her egotism, that restored in some part her normal concern with others.

  ‘Mr Marriot,’ she said, as he came out, smiling, to his daily moment of full bonhomie – the shaking of the evening cocktails. ‘Mr Marriot, when is the trial of these young men?’

  ‘It began yesterday,’ he said, as his face clouded at this banishment of the routine evening talk of scholarship-filled Oxford and Cambridge, or England without domestic servants.

  ‘I should have been told,’ she said.

  ‘Now, there’s no need to worry yourself about it. I sent your deposition in and the authorities expressed the greatest appreciation of your cooperation.’

  She felt the coming battle and said irritably, ‘I hope the authorities aren’t as foolish as you report them. There was no cooperation. I had nothing to say.’

  Mr Marriot’s face showed glum and sulky. He gave her the mixed gin and passion-fruit juice in silence.

  ‘I hope they aren’t as foolish,’ Meg repeated, ‘for the sake of these young men on trial. What’s going to happen to them?’ Jimmie Marriot assumed an expression of careful deliberation as though his visitor were asking him some nice point of Badai custom.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘capital punishment is not so generally favoured here as it is in Western Europe. On first consideration I should say that the influence of Buddhism had a good deal to do with that, but you’d need a legal expert to trace all the factors …’

  ‘Mr Marriot,’ she interrupted, speaking each word clearly with an accompanying nod of her head as though she were addressing a provoking child, ‘I’m not asking you that. I’m asking you what will happen to the young man who shot Bill.’

  Helen Marriot came out on to the veranda at that moment. Perhaps because she had not followed the conversation from the first, she did not divine Meg’s feelings as her husband had done. ‘I think there’s no doubt that he’ll be hanged, Mrs Eliot,’ she said in assurance.

  Meg stared at her. Everything about her was so small and trim – her little thin face with its turned up nose and small white teeth that showed a fraction above her protruding lower lip; her tiny well manicured hands, her neat little feet. And so clean and bright in her peacock green silk cocktail dress. It made her words seem doubly obscene. You beastly, arty, little hop o’ my thumb, Meg thought.

  ‘Do you suppose I’m clamouring for a man to die?’ she asked, but she strove to be honest even in her distaste. ‘Oh, of course, one side of me wants it. No, not even one side, just a primitive instinct to hurt and torture the person who took Bill from me. But what should I be like if I let that sort of thing take hold of me? Far from bringing Bill back I should lose him for ever.’ She paused to control her anger, then more slowly she said, ‘I can’t remember the time when I wasn’t against capital punishment. This is the test of my sincerity.’

  Helen Marriot said, ‘I see. Well, we don’t think like that.’ Then she asked, ‘And your husband, what were his views?’

  ‘My husband and I didn’t think the same on every subject,’ Meg answered. ‘Ours wasn’t that stultifying sort of love.’ She turned to Mr Marriot, ‘I want to make a plea for clemency,’ she said. ‘Surely coming from the widow and from a foreigner it would have a telling effect?’

  Helen Marriot put her glass down on the long, low table impatiently. ‘Coming from a woman, and a widow at that, it would have no effect whatsoever,’ she said. ‘Coming from an Englishwoman it might have quite ghastly consequences.’ The note of rising anger in his wife’s voice brought Jimmie Marriot to life.

  ‘I understand what you feel, Mrs Eliot,’ he said. ‘Helen said “we” but it isn’t strictly true. I have very pacific feelings too. I hate all cruelty and however you look at it there are some very distasteful emotions involved in hanging a man. But in this case, it’s no good. Whatever we feel they’ll hang the fellow. Not because he killed your husband, Mrs Eliot, but because he tried to kill Prek Namh. And because they think he’s connected with the Communists.’

  ‘All the more reason then why I should protest. I must ask you to forward my pleas to the right quarters.’ She was beginning to weep now.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Eliot, I can’t undertake to do that. We must not be concerned any further in this business.’

  Helen Marriot came over and sat on a cushion beside the chaise-longue. ‘You gave your promise, you know,’ she said. ‘You can’t go back on it.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Meg said, ‘I’ll have to think it over. Women aren’t quite helpless, you know.’ As soon as she had said it she was furious with herself.

  Helen Marriot patted Meg’s hand. ‘Poor Mrs Eliot,’ she said; and Jimmie Marriot said, ‘Yes, that’s right, think it over. But it’s true enough that you can’t help the fellow, if they’ve made up their minds.’

  ‘Which they have,’ Helen said, ‘and it would be very embarrassing.’

  Aung Ma was bowing to announce dinner. With stick in one hand and the other holding Jimmie Marriot’s arm for balance, Meg went in to a dinner of stringy chicken, okra, and potatoes, which she did not want.

  *

  The next morning as Meg was seated again on the veranda beneath a striped umbrella canopy, watching a large yellow and black bird flying in and out of a bottle-shaped nest, a Badai came up the drive pedalling a bicycle rickshaw in which sat Mrs Fairclough. She paid off the man with many smiles and advanced towards Meg – a harmony of blues. Her dress was bright cornflower blue linen, her large panama hat was draped with forget-me-not ribbon, she wore a turquoise necklace and turquoise ear-rings, her blue eyes smiled, brave but sad. It’s hardly worth her while blueing her hair, Meg thought, if she’s going to provide it with such competition.

  ‘Why do you come up the drive in blue

  Fat white woman whom nobody knew?’

  she murmured. But it wasn’t really fair because Mrs Fairclough wasn’t fat and, after all, she knew her, although only slightly. She began to smile and then, remembering Bill’s embarrassment and his subsequent happy suppressed giggles, she felt very pleased to see the old lady, if also horribly tempted to laugh in her face.

  ‘I’m so very glad, dear,’ Mrs Fairclough announced, ‘that you’ve found the peace of this lovely garden.’

  Meg thanked her for being so glad, asked her to sit down and offered her refreshment. To her surprise Mrs Fairclough specified the refreshment she required, ‘A pot of coffee, dear. I always think it’s so much better when it’s stood in a pot. And a glass of iced water. You can’t live long in Italy without knowing that coffee gets lonely without iced water.’ She added that she was not particular about the food. ‘Biscuits, sandwiches, or whatever they’ve got.’ Meg reflected that rich old ladies who lived in hotels probably got used to commanding in this way; it was only fortunate that the Marriots were out. With Aung Ma she now had such a complicated relationship of mutual smiles to efface the past that she was quite reconciled to clapping her hands and giving orders.

&
nbsp; Until the refreshment was served, Mrs Fairclough confined herself to talk of the garden’s beauty interspersed with little jokes like the one about the coffee and the iced water, and with examples of the quaint, human goodness of simple people – peasants or natives – in the many countries she had visited.

  ‘If only,’ she said, ‘the wise of the world could learn from that,’ and ‘Only a little coloured boy no more than knee high but what a mighty truth he proclaimed, bless him, without knowing it.’

  Meg was reminded of a childhood book, Peeps at Many Lands. When Aung Ma had served a lavish display of home-made cakes, fruit, and sandwiches, Mrs Fairclough set to with relish and she threw aside pleasantries for a more serious tone, though still smiling forth a radiant harmony. She put her hand on Meg’s bandaged knee, and when Meg grimaced in anticipation of pain, she gave her a full, personal, and intimate smile.

  ‘I am with you always even unto the end,’ she said. ‘Truth denies sickness, sin, and death. They are not lost, they are only gone before. Hold on to that thought, dear; we are children of God, children of light and the light knows no darkness.’

  Meg could not think how to answer but there was no need, for Mrs Fairclough kept right on talking, though often, with all her eating and drinking, it was not entirely easy to hear what she said. ‘Truth is real and eternal,’ she told Meg, ‘matter is unreal and temporal.’

  Meg speculated how far the old woman was consciously aware of the discrepancy between her doctrine and her greed, but she could find no answer. The truth was that far from resenting the intrusive visit, she found pleasure in the presence of someone who was so pleased with life; particularly someone whose happiness was enough tarnished with self-satisfaction to allow of ridicule with a clear conscience.

  ‘I have been thinking of you so much, my dear,’ Mrs Fairclough said, ‘and I’ve been working for you. Once when I woke in the night I declared the truth about this whole business. Error can seem so real in those hours of darkness. It came to me then that I should find you in peace and sunlight. The peace that passeth all understanding.’ She smiled and smiled. ‘“Still, still with thee when purple morning breaketh, when the tired waketh and the shadows flee.” That’s from one of our hymns, dear.’ Then suddenly the glitter went out of her large blue eyes, and the faintly lipsticked mouth ceased straining with little powder-caked lines and wrinkles. She looked quite serious.

  ‘It seemed to me,’ she said, ‘that you would like a visit from someone who had seen you with him. Someone who could tell you that even in that little time she had seen with what a deep love he cherished you. He saw you afraid, and his love was enough to banish that fear. Love like that can’t die just because he has put off this life, and put on the life immortal. You know all this, of course, but I thought that as there was no one else here who had seen you together, you would like to hear it from me. Was I right?’

  Meg felt that, even if she could not accept all that Mrs Fairclough had said, she could honestly say, ‘Yes. Thank you very much. You have helped me a lot.’

  Whether it was that she had now said all that she had come to say, or whether that she had eaten everything Aung Ma had brought to them, except for a large mango that would have shamed even someone less dainty and fragrant than this baby blue, shellpink old lady, Mrs Fairclough now sat in rather embarrassed silence.

  ‘I’m afraid,’ Meg said, ‘that I wasn’t very friendly on the aeroplane.’

  Mrs Fairclough’s blue ribboned picture hat shook a little involuntarily.

  ‘Oh, I didn’t feel that at all. An old woman travelling on her own is glad to feel such great love as you and your husband gave to one another. You seemed so rich in love, my dear, that you couldn’t help spilling it over on to others.’ The sweet smile she had resumed seemed, in her nervousness, embarrassingly insincere.

  When she got up to leave, her legs below her short skirt were so matchstick-thin that Meg was overwhelmed with pity. She felt that she must show her some affection.

  ‘Could I tell you something in confidence, Mrs Fairclough?’ and when the old woman had sat down again, she told her of her wish to help the young men on trial. ‘They say it’s no use,’ she said, ‘and I feel so powerless.’

  ‘Blessed are the merciful,’ Mrs Fairclough announced, ‘for they shall obtain mercy. All things are possible if we believe. Mrs Eddy tells us in Science and Health …’

  But Meg could not let it all run away like that. She wanted to prove the old lady as fine as she now believed her to be.

  ‘Would you help me?’ she asked. ‘It wouldn’t be fair to go over the Marriots’ heads to the Embassy or the Minister or the police. But this is the man who is defending them.’ She had copied the name from the reports. ‘Would you try to find him and tell him that I would like to see him? Perhaps he could make use of my support.’

  Mrs Fairclough seemed a little bewildered, but she assured Meg that she would arrange it. She, too, had something to give Meg before she left. It was a reprint of one of Mrs Eddy’s hymns in red and black lettering on a card with scalloped edges.

  ‘Mourner! He calls you, “Come to My bosom.

  Love wipes the tears all away”.’

  Meg read. When Mrs Fairclough had gone, Meg was alarmed to find tears coming to her eyes. She felt less embarrassed when they merged into hysterical laughter.

  *

  The pleasure of Mrs Fairclough’s visit kept Meg elated for some time afterwards. To have talked to someone who had spoken to Bill, however absurd the encounter, released her from isolated fear. To have talked to someone from outside, to have enjoyed a ridiculous person, did more; it made her feel that she was not entirely cut off from the woman she had been, the woman who liked people and laughed at them. Looking back, she felt that she had hardly been herself, had hardly been on top of the world, fulfilled and mocking, since before that wretched send-off party that had so strangely presaged the miseries to come. And then too Mrs Fairclough would set in motion her plea for these wretched men, would allow her conscience to work as it always had done, commanding right where it saw that right should be done.

  All the same her conscience told her that the appeal to the defence lawyer differed in no way from any other appeal as far as the Marriots were concerned. She had simply wriggled out of her impossible promise to them. She found it necessary to tell them what she had done.

  To her surprise, they took it very calmly.

  Helen Marriot said, ‘I’m afraid you’re very naïve, you know. What makes you think a stranger like that will take all that trouble? And even if she did, I don’t think their lawyer would do more than thank her profusely and forget about it. The pleas of widows are hardly likely to help his case here. If, that is, he’s putting up a serious case at all in view of the Government’s attitude.’

  Jimmie Marriot toned it down a little. ‘Helen’s got a powerful imagination,’ he said. ‘We don’t know what’ll happen. All the same the views of strangers and especially of women don’t carry a lot of weight. But you’ve done as your conscience bade you, Mrs Eliot. Please don’t think I’ve any hard feelings.’

  Meg found it difficult to speak to them for the next few days. No word came from Mrs Fairclough or from the lawyer, and at the beginning of the second week there Aung Ma told her with a gentle smile, ‘These bad men are hanged.’ She had become devoted to Meg and tried hard to master new English words in order to speak to her.

  At first Meg was so utterly disgusted with herself for not having battled more fiercely to save them that she felt a physical disgust with her own body. It seemed monstrous to be living when she had run away from Bill and he had died; when she had run away from her conscience and these men had hanged. Yet by the evening a strange lassitude had come over her. Always in her life she had got what she wanted, trying only to see that what she wanted did not defy her conscience. Fighting against her mother’s feeble plaintive will, and later backed by Bill’s strength and affection, she had gained her points in life. She had kept he
r will within bounds, never listening to the courtiers’ voices of hysteria that had bade her defy the great ocean of things beyond her control. Even when war, that ocean that had engulfed so many citadels, threatened their happy life, Bill, with foresight, had propelled her into Red Cross work; and, though he had been absent on military service for some months, it had not been long before he was back with her, working in the legal branch of Admiralty in Whitehall. They had both been immensely useful at their jobs so that conscience and will had kept in pace.

  As she thought of the war, the memory of their only casualty made her shudder for a moment, as though her mother’s shadow had cast a chill misery over her. Poor, pluckily battling, bewildered Mother, washed up with a dozen or so other lost impoverished old ladies and buried with them beneath the rubble of a private hotel in Bath. A Baedeker raid, and poor Mother had found so little time or place in life for works of art. Meg forced the image of her mother out of her mind – it had troubled her peace increasingly in this last year, when mysteriously, despite all their secure happiness, the roaring of the ocean without had sounded again and again in her ears and not even Bill’s presence had been able to still it. And now, Bill had gone and she would have to face it alone. She would have to circumscribe her will most deviously if she were not to meet defeat. Yet if defeat was so easy to take as her failure over these men … She pulled herself up in disgust – an acceptance of the hanging of two wretched youths was a petty sort of triumph over her will. But disgust could not keep back the tranquillity that took possession. The last act of the airport tragedy was over. Perhaps, she thought, vengeance was what she had really wanted despite her life-long principles. She was too drowsy and peaceful to pursue the thought.