The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot

by Angus Wilson

  David determinedly checked the train of thought. He was here to help Meg, and he had long ago decided that these aimless speculations upon other people’s lives were a dissipation of spirit, if they were not indeed worse, an idle intrusion into human privacy, only a degree better than idle gossip. Donald was less than Hecuba to him, but, unlike that queen, he was a private person with rights to privacy. If, David told himself, he were properly occupied at Andredaswood, cultivating his own garden, there would be no occasion for these time-wasting thoughts; however, he had now another, if less congenial duty. He concentrated on his sister’s words.

  ‘I know what you’re both thinking,’ Meg said, ‘that there’s no reason to sell the house. You will lend me the money to meet Bill’s debts and to pay the mortgage interest each year. I’m sorry that I can’t accept the offer. I really mean “sorry” because whenever I’ve offered anything to anybody I’ve been hurt when it wasn’t accepted. It seems like refusing friendship.’

  She thought, I really am talking too much. I shouldn’t have said that, because, of course, it is exactly true. I can find no reason for friendship with Donald or indeed with David acting for Gordon.

  ‘I feel very much against the idea of debt at all at the moment. I know you’ll say that’s an unreasonable, emotional reaction which may be purely temporary. All my emotions probably are at the moment. But they’re the only ones I’ve got and I’m not clever enough to see beyond them to more durable feelings. And if you mean the debts to be the sort that are really gifts, I couldn’t ever accept those. David could explain that to you, Donald. It’s to do with our mother, although goodness knows I don’t think I’m like her in most ways. But she had what she called a “horror of debt” and a worse “horror of charity”. My father was what’s called a ne’er-do-well.’

  ‘Meg,’ David said, ‘for all that, you know, Mother would have been willing to borrow money on a sensible basis to secure a home for herself, especially one she loved.’

  Meg said, ‘Maybe. The truth is, David, I admit, that one side of me still says keep the house at any cost. But I know it’s the wrong thing. I couldn’t afford to live in it except by taking lodgers, and truly I doubt if that’s practical. It’s a small house, There’d be no privacy either for myself or for them. But in any case, the other side of me, and I’m sure the right one, is glad that I can’t go on living there. I’ve lived in the Ark, David, snugly and smugly and not knowing it. Well, now I do know, I’m not going to sit there waiting for the rainbow. I must take a plunge and it won’t do me any harm if it’s off the deep end. You remember how Mother used to say that to me if I was in a temper. “Don’t go off the deep end, dear.” I’m not in a temper now but I am going off the deep end.’

  ‘I think, if you feel like that,’ David said, ‘that you’re quite right, Meg, not to want to live there.’

  ‘It’s a point certainly,’ Donald said. ‘With lodgers and so on. It wouldn’t really be her own house, what?’

  ‘Well,’ David said. ‘Yes. But much more than that. Meg’s looking for peace of mind. Not the peace of dead memories. That’s no peace at all.’

  ‘I’m looking for life,’ Meg cried, ‘life to fill the desert inside me.’ She caught a look of embarrassed distress on Donald’s face. She said to David, mimicking her mother’s voice, ‘Your father was always such an actor.’ And to her pleasure, he replied in the same voice, ‘I often wonder whether his life wouldn’t have been different if he’d gone on the stage…’

  To Donald’s evident surprise, they both burst into laughter. It was the only moment of contact they had made that day.

  Hastening to free Donald from embarrassment, Meg said in an easy, conversational voice. ‘Yes, David, what were you going to suggest?’

  And David, anxious for the same end, said a little solemnly, ‘I would like you to consider, Meg, accepting a larger loan from Gordon to pay off the whole mortgage. If Templeton likes to contribute, I think you should accept his offer too. Then you could still sell the house and have a sizeable capital to play with.’

  ‘Play with?’ Meg said, laughing. ‘You don’t mean that, David, but in fact what you do mean comes to much the same thing. Playing at flower shops or interior decorating or perhaps at a house agency with awful witty advertisements. No, thank you. Especially not with a debt to repay from the start, I know you wouldn’t recommend a life just because it meant “being a lady”, but that’s what it would be, David, or else selling my life away in order to be my own boss. I can see it’s worked all right for you with the nursery, but for one thing Gordon has a lot of capital, and for another I shouldn’t like that life. Nobody would recommend it if I was a girl in my ’teens, however much of a lady I was, well, I don’t see why I should take it because I’m forty-three. It seems to me as cut off from the modern world as my own life has been. I must know what’s going on, David, so that I won’t be hit hard again by something I don’t understand.’

  Donald Templeton made a gobbling sound, and she continued, ‘Yes, I know I couldn’t expect to know the ins and outs of Asian politics, Donald. But there is a connexion between that and my sheltered ignorance all the same, I’m sure. Not a logical one, but logic isn’t all there is. In any case what time would I have for learning anything about the world with plucky responsibilities and debts to pay off around my neck? I might do better than Mother but …’

  David felt suddenly a wave of remembered anger. ‘I really think, Meg,’ he said, ‘that you needn’t …’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I don’t want to tread on family corns, my dear, but the situation makes such a depressing parallel. Let me say once and for all, I want to be an employed person in a largely employed world. With the disadvantages and the benefits. But just to show that I’m not being a romantic martyr, I’ll tell you, that when I’ve decided what I’m going to do, I shall use the respite of the little money in hand to get proper qualifications for a decently paid, reliable job. I’ve preached qualifications to others, I don’t intend to be idiot enough myself not to get them.’

  David fancied that Donald must also be drawing a breath of relief at her evident determination. They had done what they could. Donald, indeed, was looking at his watch – a heavy, old-fashioned gold hunter on a waistcoat chain.

  ‘In ten minutes,’ he said, ‘I intend to call a cab and trundle you both off to Wheeler’s for a bite of luncheon.’

  ‘Good heavens,’ Meg cried, ‘I shan’t want anything for hours after all those sandwiches.’

  ‘Nonsense, chicken sandwiches are all right with the preprandial sherry, but they’re not a meal. What? Now before we go, I want to point out to you, Meg, that you either missed completely, or purposely ignored, my principal suggestion to you earlier this morning. If you don’t want to live in the house, let it. You can borrow to pay Bill’s debts. Your brother and I between us won’t notice that. The rent from the house’ll pay the annual interest on the mortgage and leave a small income over. Something to add to the earnings of your qualified job.’

  David looked to see if Donald Templeton’s sharp tone of voice had annoyed Meg, but she was smiling.

  ‘I’m glad something’s roused you, Donald,’ she said, ‘even my proposed wretched little qualifications.’

  ‘Roused?’ he queried. ‘No. I don’t understand your passion to be involved with the modern world, but if you want qualifications, get them. You won’t have any trouble I’m sure. Most of these modern degrees and certificates only demand a smattering of this and that. You could do it on your head. You’re interested in social work, why not do one of these social science courses? You’ll get every Shibboleth of the modern world there – economics, social administration, whatever that may mean, psychology. I believe they throw in the common law of England to make weight. But, for the Lord’s sake, have a bit of money to fall back on.’ Meg was about to reply, but he said, ‘No, don’t answer yet. I’m going to telephone Wheeler’s for a table. Tell me what you think when I come back.’ He stumped o
ut of the room.

  David said, ‘I won’t say anything, Meg. If you want, we can talk tonight. But I’m always available and, if a moment comes when you need someone, call on me. Myself I think it may be a little time before you can make any decision.’

  She said nothing, only shook her head in dissent. She caught his eye for an instant. This is the second moment of contact, she thought, a recognition that there is no lasting contact between us, that the present, for both of us, can find no good in the past. But he began again, in a voice overloud, like a speaker who tries to efface an ill-received opening.

  ‘You know you are welcome to come down to us now or at any time. Gordon specially asked me to say that to you. You’ll find him a bit of an invalid, but of course you wouldn’t say anything.’

  She said, ‘It’s very sweet of you. And of Gordon. But really, no, David. I find it freezing enough in London. But the South Downs!’ She shuddered.

  After a pause he said, ‘I wouldn’t take too much notice of Templeton’s show of temper. I live so out of the world, I’d forgotten what personal pity people feel it necessary to assume. I think the angry clubman is only part of the general pose he’s expected by now to put on.’

  She said, ‘I very much hope not, David. His being angry is the only time that I’ve felt him to be really human.’

  He thought, I simply don’t understand her. And why should I? One can only understand the people one is with every day. And then it’s mostly illusion, even with Gordon. One loves or likes or neither, but it only carries one a certain way; the rest is invention, invented intrusion.

  He said, ‘He was a great friend of Bill’s.’ She answered, ‘Yes. Or rather Bill had no great friends. He was too self-sufficient. Or else too shy.’

  ‘He’s a very kind man,’ David said, ‘and sensible in his own way. He wouldn’t be difficult to make friends with.’

  ‘I imagine that’s how Bill saw it,’ she said, then a moment later, she turned to him, ‘Or do you mean me, David? Do you think friends are what I am needing? Or that I should choose them because they’re kind and can give sensible advice?’ She was less scornful then genuinely puzzled. To David’s relief Donald returned at that moment, allowing no time for him to answer or for her to reply.

  ‘I apologize for this lengthy wait,’ Donald said, ‘but I had some difficulty in securing a cab. However, one is now on its way here. Well,’ he continued, ‘now tell me what you have to say to my suggestion.’

  Meg said, ‘It’s a very good one, Donald. To refuse it would be quite illogical. But I’m going to do so, I shan’t be able to afford to be illogical in the future. So this is my last fling. You see, I want to be finished with the whole thing – house, mortgage, all. I won’t say it’s what Bill would do …’

  ‘Good Heavens! No, why should he?’ Donald barked.

  ‘I’m not going to say that he would do it. I think that’s the sort of shabby pretence people often make about the dead. But I’m quite certain that I should and I’m going to. I’m afraid,’ she added rather lamely, ‘that you disapprove very much, Donald.’

  ‘Disapprove? It’s not for me to approve or disapprove. Bill appointed me executor, what? And I want to help his widow if I can.’ He paused; then, ‘All right, if it’ll make you take a more sensible line,’ he said, ‘I’ll tell you that I think it’s a piece of emotional indulgence.’

  He’s not a very sensible man, David thought, he’s admirable but silly, or perhaps that’s what we mean when we say ‘sensible’ in that rather loose, looking-down-our-noses sort of way. Meg said nothing, and Donald, retreating perhaps from this silent announcement of her indifference to his views asked abruptly, ‘What about the sitting tenants anyway? They may rather get in the way of your scheme.’

  ‘Poor Mr and Mrs Copeman! You will keep on calling them sitting tenants as though they were partridges. Perhaps you think I’m too sporting to shoot a sitting bird; if so, you’re wrong I’m afraid. Mrs Copeman offered to leave so that I can live there. She said that Bill’s death had affected them both very much. I can only suppose she meant the circumstances. Anyway I shan’t hesitate to accept and then sell.’

  David said, ‘Wouldn’t it be better to tell her what you’re going to do?’

  ‘It might be more honest, but it wouldn’t be better. She might change her mind.’

  David said, ‘Ah!’ Donald said, ‘I see.’ He went into the hall and came back holding her coat for her to put on. ‘This is a bit thin for a cold October, what?’

  ‘It is indeed,’ Meg said, ‘I intend to get my fur coats out of store as soon as I can. I’m not going to sell them, they’re much too useful.’ She laughed, but they neither of them responded. She shrugged her shoulders in despair. David saw the slight gesture. Her hardness is hysterical he thought. She needs some gesture of affection to steady her. He found such physical contacts difficult, but he took her hand and pressed it. Oh, dear! she thought, if only he would laugh a little to ease the atmosphere. Donald came back with a light grey overcoat, black hat, umbrella and washleather gloves.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I think we’d better talk about other things now, if we want to digest our oysters, what?’

  As they were getting into the taxi-cab, however, he said suddenly, ‘Have you got something to go on with?’

  ‘To go on with?’ she asked, then, seeing his embarrassed look, she understood. ‘Oh, yes, thank you, Donald,’ she said, ‘I’ve got about three hundred pounds in my own account at the bank. We never had a joint account. I was much too frightened of Bill knowing how extravagant I was.’ It was a slightly arch piece of conversation-making that she had often fallen back upon in Bill’s lifetime on sticky social occasions; only when she had said it, did she realize how bitter it must now sound. She could not look at Donald during the whole taxi-drive for fear of his interpretation. It’s one more reason for not seeing him, she thought, I’m bound to put my foot in it. She wondered why she didn’t consider David’s reaction. After all he seemed to have become severely censorious in his nursery garden of Eden. They must live on the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil down there, she thought, by the way he sits in silent judgement about everything. But his judgements did not touch her. The wires of communication with Donald were so tangled, that there was nothing to do but to cut them; those with David, however, had simply rusted away.

  In the weeks that followed Meg found that most of her communication lines were dead. The three-day gale of newspaper notoriety had shaken some of the posts and toppled others over. The happily married young middle-aged couples who were the friends or acquaintances she had shared with Bill, did not get into the newspapers, except, of course, where the husbands’ speeches appeared in reports of important legal cases or of the annual general meetings of companies. If they had any ambition towards publicity it was strictly confined to the Honours list. Bill had died as a kind of hero in an accident. No one, of course, could help accidents, but they were hardly to be sought after. As to heroism, that was surely more a wartime action – the unemphatic bravery of ‘mentioned in despatches’ shared with other friends. Heroism like Bill’s, no doubt, seemed to them somehow unconnected with their lives, more like saving someone from drowning – a splendid action rightly rewarded with the George Medal, but faintly connected with Boy Scouts, certainly not with one’s friends.

  They were genuinely sympathetic to Meg, but it was an embarrassed sympathy. As she might have expected, the news ‘had got about’; nor, despite all her caution, were these friends unaware of the financial distress Bill had left her in. He had borrowed at times, it seemed, from some of the men; and, although he had always repaid, they were not themselves borrowers and had noted his actions with doubts. Doubts that were now triumphantly justified.

  Kind invitations came to her by every post. She dined in Belgravia and Chelsea, Knightsbridge and Kensington, Hampstead, and even Highgate. One or two wives, on behalf of their husbands, found an intimate occasion to press various offers of help upon her,
one or two husbands, with less sympathetic wives, offered manly counsel that served as an excuse for proffering loans without embarrassing her. There was kindness and sympathy behind it all, but there was also embarrassment and a kind of setting her apart which she found impossible to accept. Was it her mother’s pride, or touchiness, or simply self-punishment in her present mood of guilt? Probably a bit of all three, but the fact was also that she was set apart. These people were happy, married, rich, and established, she was none of these things. Apart, she decided, it should be. After a fortnight she began to refuse the invitations; gradually and, she hoped, with tact, she severed the remaining lines.

  Only the three lame ducks remained. At first, for all her closer friendship with them, she had been very unwilling to see them. Even though she knew that her picture of her past behaviour to them was coloured by exaggerated self-criticism, that she had probably in fact never allowed her impatience or her ridicule to be apparent to them, had indeed never found difficulty in concealing any such emotions because of her very real affection for them, she nevertheless felt sure that they must have sensed some patronage. She could not blame them if they mixed their sympathy now with the same leaven, but she had no wish to offer herself to it. More particularly, though she tried to make less of it, she remembered Bill’s uneasy tolerance of them. She could not bear any implied blame of him, yet she could not be surprised if they mixed it with the sympathy they offered; nor could she be surprised if they suggested a criticism of his spoiling adoration of her, for they must know that this was the origin of his mistrust of them – a fear that they might tire or bore her.