The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot

by Angus Wilson

  Christmas she dreaded, both for the strain it would put upon her acceptance of loneliness and for the well-meant demands that it would bring from her friends. The large circle of acquaintances she had shared with Bill, however, were clearly content to accept her rebuffs. Their Christmas cards, sent no doubt to show they had not forgotten her, seemed, when she remembered the parties and presents exchanged in earlier years, only to suggest that they soon would. Andredaswood presented more of a problem. Gordon, in a. shaky hand that she found almost undecipherable, had written to ask her to stay; but by the same post came a letter from David, telling her of Gordon’s condition and asking her to find an excuse not to accept. To Gordon she wrote that she was already promised to an old friend, but her letter to David, inept as she felt it, only made her feel that grief, far from enlarging, had narrowed her power of sympathy.

  Jill wrote to say that her son-in-law had magnanimously allowed Evelyn to invite her down there for Christmas. ‘As it means being with the baby for a bit I’m swallowing my pride and accepting. If I were on any footing but sufferance with Leonard I should suggest your coming down with me, but as it is, I must be thankful to be invited at all. Anyhow, Christmas isn’t really for the old, so you’re well out of the fuss of it. Apart from going to church I should certainly disregard it if I wasn’t a grandmother.’

  Poll somehow got hold of the name of the secretarial college and, much to Meg’s embarrassment, held her in lengthy conversation over Miss Corrigan’s telephone.

  ‘What are you doing for ghastly Christmas?’ she asked. ‘Do you go to that brother? Or is there a breach? I’ve never known.’

  ‘No, there’s no breach, Poll. But his friend’s ill.’

  ‘Oh! poor him! All the same he must be very sensitive. I shouldn’t put off Christmas just because a friend was ill. Or perhaps it’s just an excuse. Anyway I don’t suppose you’re mad with anger. What will you do?’

  ‘Oh, stay in bed probably.’

  ‘Lucky you! I was going to do that and ask some nice people for a lot of gin in the evening. I mean you and some other ones. But now my Aunt Mary – the one who’s not so bad but rather too keen on opera – has asked me there. It’s miles away in Lincolnshire. Only the house is warm because she’s frightfully rich. She said to bring a friend and I thought of asking you but I should think you’d much rather go to bed.’

  ‘If it isn’t rude, I think I won’t say yes.’

  ‘Rude? Well, I suppose it would be if I told Aunt Mary you’d rather go to bed than stay with her, but as she’s never met you I shan’t say anything about you. Anyway I’m only going because she’s got; lots of lovely “mon” and might leave it to me. She hasn’t got anyone else except a sort of young man that lives there that she thinks might become a singer. But I shouldn’t think that would last, should you? But she wouldn’t leave any to you, so there’s no reason why you should go there. I suppose I couldn’t take a man and say I thought she meant that by “a friend”?’

  Meg could hear Miss Corrigan, tired no doubt of her rather icily courteous withdrawal, fidgeting in the passage outside. ‘I really can’t say, Poll. I don’t know your aunt.’

  ‘Oh, she isn’t all that different from other aunts. All the same I expect it had better be a woman. Who do you think I should ask?’

  ‘I really don’t know. Miss Corrigan’s waiting outside…’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘She’s the principal of the college.’

  ‘I don’t think I could ask her. Even if I wanted to. I mean Aunt Mary did say a friend. Why? Hasn’t she got anywhere to go?’

  ‘No. I’m speaking in her office and she’s waiting outside until I’ve finished.’

  ‘Whatever for? We’re not talking about her. Or at least we weren’t until you started.’

  ‘I really must ring off, Poll.’

  ‘Oh, all right. Is that a good place? It doesn’t sound it. Anyhow, sleep well. And get a lot of food in. If one sleeps all day one often wakes up ravenous.’

  It seemed, then, that Meg might spend the Christmas holiday entirely alone. She planned to pass the three days involved between sleep, work, exercise, and the indulgence of reading the new Hartley novel – he and Forster alone of modern novelists aroused the same craving that she felt for the English novelists of the past. She saw the days as an exercise in relaxing, if only a fraction, the discipline she now found so necessary, in preparation for the years to come when some relaxation would be inevitable. Even so there lurked a panic behind her resolution. She had not, since beginning the course, had so much time to fill with no outside aid. Above all the prospect of providing food seemed entirely repugnant. She bought fruit and a bottle of Beaujolais, a camembert, a French loaf, and some pâté. The smell of the camembert in the room disgusted her and she threw it away. The loaf she could only imagine as it would be on the third day – stale. The wine she suspected would prove as nasty as it was cheap. The pâté, so reminiscent of the Dordogne on the Soho counter, looked only greasy in her room. The fruit alone seemed edible.

  The day before Christmas Eve Lady Pirie rang up and said in her gruffest voice that she supposed Meg was going to her brother’s; no? then Tom would come round the next evening and fetch her in that terrible old car of his. There was no need to pack an evening dress since they would be very quiet over the holiday.

  When Meg demurred, she said, ‘You don’t suppose you’re going to stay in that room by yourself, do you? You can cut your old friends off as much as you like at ordinary times, but Christmas is Christmas. And those are orders.’ Meg accepted them.

  As Viola Pirie had said, they ‘were very quiet’. Meg wondered in how many English homes Christmas festivity had now shrunk to this Skeleton caricature of its old fat family self. Not that she had ever known the days of game pies and brandy snap and the old bachelor family solicitor pulling crackers with the spinster aunt, of which her mother had always spoken so nostalgically when serving the only turkey she could find small enough for their oven at the sad little Christmas dinners of David’s and her own childhood. Such Edwardian and Victorian lavishness, however, had always been part of her myth and happy childhood to set against their own ‘learning to be pleased with quite simple little presents’.

  Now, at Lady Pine’s, the faded little festivity suited her well. The ‘spare’ room turned out to be comfortable and without the slightly stuffy ‘snugness’ that somehow hung round the rest of the flat. More light came into it than into the other rooms; it was not encumbered with photographs, and with the offerings of primitive utensils and basketware and weapons made to Sir Herbert by grateful islanders, as was the drawing room. It was, as Viola Pirie had claimed, a bed-sitting room, with a pretty walnut bureau, two harmless neutral covered armchairs, and few ornaments. Two Lowestoft plates adorned the chimney piece, Meg supposed that they were the pieces Viola Pirie had so often said would particularly interest her. No doubt she had kindly put them there for Meg’s benefit. Meg normally scorned Lowestoft, but she realized that she was pleased to see any tolerable pieces of porcelain again. She was able to work or read in such a room; and no one seemed to mind her being on her own.

  When they sat together Viola rambled on about this or that – the Island days, the governesses she had known, the wrongness of the Church in refusing to remarry the innocent divorced, Aid to the Elderly, Tom’s childhood, the wickedness of a woman she had once known who had refused her husband his conjugal rights, the girl at Barker’s provision counter who managed so splendidly despite the loss of her leg in the bombing, and Sir Herbert’s lovable if difficult fads about home-made jam. It was, Meg thought, as soothing as a purring cat or a kettle singing on the hob.

  On Christmas morning Viola went to church. Tom looked more deathly than ever in a yellow dressing gown. However, he was in high spirits. He had met a man the evening before who might be very useful to him.

  ‘I was saying,’ he told Meg, ‘that most of us were pretty sick of all this stuff about the Angry Young Men
. I mean most of my generation. As a matter of fact as I was telling him you don’t have to have been to a grammar school or whatever to have ideas. A lot of the people who went to public schools have got quite a few ideas about how things ought to be. And this fellow turned out to be a free-lance writer who’s published a good deal of stuff all over the place. He said I ought to make some articles out of it. He’s pretty certain he could get them placed, so long as we can find a gimmick and a good title. He suggested “The Real Young Men”, but I don’t think that’s got what I want. I thought something more like “We don’t make news”.’ He looked a little sad when the title came home to him in all its flatness; nor was he elated by Meg’s asking after the play.

  ‘I’ve put it in cold storage,’ he said. ‘I don’t think there’d have been much difficulty in getting a management to take it. Technically it has what it takes. But that was part of the trouble. It was in danger of being slick. I was probably covering up for a certain immaturity.’ He seemed to recover his spirits as he analysed its defects. ‘There’s nothing against an immature work in itself, of course. As long as it’s faced. That’s why I’ve started this novel. It’s frankly autobiographical as one’s first work’s bound to be. I’ve been running away from that, of course. But if I don’t get a lot of personal stuff off my chest I shall never get started. Anyway some of the best novels are autobiographical. The only snag is libel.’ He looked very shrewd. ‘But I shall show it to a lawyer, of course. Templeton or one of these fellows.’

  Meg was surprised to hear that Tom, too, was now familiar with Donald. He read the first chapter. It began, ‘At that time I still believed in the One and Only Girl. Irene changed all that for me. She’d been around a good deal more than most of our set realized. She only wanted one thing, but she wanted it pretty badly. When she dropped me I was hurt pretty hard. She was a bitch, I suppose. But I’m grateful to her. She taught me a lesson I needed to learn. After that it was hello and good-bye.’

  When he had read for a while, Meg suggested that she should read the rest at her leisure.

  ‘Did you ever know anyone called Irene?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, the names had to be changed, of course,’ he said rather grandly. ‘It’s frightfully good of you to take an interest.’

  She had really enjoyed herself for a few minutes giggling at him, but now, a little conscience-stricken, she said, ‘I wish I could be of any use.’

  ‘Oh, you are,’ he said. ‘It makes a lot of difference having you around. I wish you’d come here more often. Mother gets on my tits a bit when we’re on our own.’

  His manner was a little patronizing, Meg thought, and the smile he gave, instead of appearing gallant as she supposed he intended, was a most unpleasant leer. She couldn’t remember his having used words like ‘tits’ to her before either. I suppose it’s what people call ‘deteriorating’ – too much Irene, she thought and giggled to herself. She felt unusually relaxed.

  Indeed the days passed pleasantly enough. Lady Pirie and her son bickered now and again, especially on Boxing Day and the Sunday that followed. The excess of rich food and the more than ususal drink produced the usual indigestion; and the rainy weather prevented any exercise to counteract it. Tom was untidy and clumsy; he left litter of newspapers everywhere and knocked over full ashtrays. He had promised to mend a cupboard catch and to take a parcel to an old nurse on Boxing Day. He did neither. ‘I have my methods,’ he said, ‘I’ll get round to it.’ ‘Not to worry,’ he always said.

  Viola most of the time was gruffly amiable with him, but her excessive devotion sometimes allowed the gruffness to emerge too tenderly. Sometimes on the other hand the gruffness hardly disguised an angry bark. She had the habit of what Tom called ‘picking on’ things that he said. ‘Not to worry’ clearly worried her a good deal. ‘Not to worry!’ she would exclaim. ‘Why don’t you say “don’t worry” like anyone else?’

  At last Meg said, ‘I think it’s the new catchphrase, Viola.’

  After that Lady Pirie always gave a little laugh when she heard it. ‘Oh, so that’s the new phrase,’ she said, and a little twitch of annoyance jerked her cheek.

  At times Meg noticed each of them watching the other to see if their snapping had thrust home. Once Tom burst out, ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, shut up, Mummy.’ On the whole though the bickering was intermittent and on a very simmering level.

  Meg was surprised to find how little their love-hate tussles disturbed her. She had rested so long from human contacts that she felt quite withdrawn. When both Viola and Tom said that her presence had eased the atmosphere she felt pleased.

  On Boxing night seven or eight people came in for drinks after dinner. Meg heard without interest that morning that there was to be a party, but as the day went on she felt unaccountably depressed and even, by the afternoon, tense with anxiety. She told herself that the dull pain in her stomach was Boxing Day indigestion, but she knew it was alarm. It was only when Viola tactlessly said, ‘I’m afraid it won’t be up to the standard of your parties’ and then blushed, that Meg remembered that this would be her first after-dinner party since the last night at Lord North Street. She realized suddenly that she had firmly linked her anxieties that evening with Bill’s death; and with this realization came the knowledge that somewhere beneath the rational chain of events leading up to Srem Panh lay a whole irrational history whose hold upon her was no less powerful. Who could say which was valid? The thought occurred to her that at any rate the irrational could not make the awful demands upon her conscience that she had suffered in these last weeks. She knew that some censor should act to repress such a frivolity; but it didn’t. In a quite foolish, giggling mood she heard the first guests arrive.

  It was just as well, for the party threatened to be a sad, tepid little affair. Most of the guests were friends of Viola’s, people whom she had known in the colonial days; people of Sir Herbert’s age, retired now and doing odd jobs to make ends meet. They knew that the world was not interested in what they had done, and they were not much interested in what they were doing now. Much of the conversation was about the old days in the Islands. A retired admiral talked to Meg a little about the coaching work he now did at a well-known crammers’; Viola brought up a rather silly widow of a planter who was considered to be rather dashing because she did film-extra work and modelling; a fat man talked to her about hypnotism as a cure for smoking. It was a measure of their dimness that they all considered Viola with her downright manner a ‘tremendous character’. Almost everyone was twenty years older than Meg and forty years older than Tom. One old woman had brought her granddaughters. The elder of these, a rather pretty blonde of about twenty with a hard, aggressive manner, engaged Tom in argument. ‘I think that’s a pretty poisonous point of view,’ she said loudly, and again later, ‘Well, it’s lucky some of us have a slightly less feeble attitude to things.’

  It was obvious, however, rather to Meg’s surprise, that the girl was very attracted by Tom. She kept edging towards him as she was talking and her hard laugh had a sexy, edgy note. Her sister, a tall, rather fat girl with dark hair, whose cheeks burned more crimson as the evening went on, only giggled. Once she turned to Meg and said with pride, ‘They’re at it again. Vanessa’s on the warpath this evening.’ Meg hoped for a moment that the remark had a double meaning; but it wasn’t so. Tom was clearly very pleased with himself.

  The only event that disturbed Meg’s apathy was the sudden arrival of Donald Templeton. He recalled too closely the Lord North Street party. She also thought it embarrassing that since nobody else was in evening dress he should have chosen to come in a dinner jacket with a crimson, embroidered silk waistcoat. His ebullient manner seemed far less tinged with nervousness than at any time she had known him. She could hear his laugh braying out heartily over the little room and always a second later the laughter of the person he was talking to. He laughs at his own jokes, she thought, I’ve noticed that before but, of course, that’s one of the things I don’t care for; all the
same the others were following up with genuine laughter. Indeed he was clearly a great success. He seemed to be giving them a sort of cultural travel guide.

  ‘Stay at the small hotel on the hill,’ he was drawling, ‘and ask for the truite gelée. Don’t let them persuade you into having any of their vintage wines. What? The local red is a very good simple table wine. The church is passable Romanesque, but nothing more. You’ll have seen quite enough Romanesque by then anyway. But take a look at the crypt. Don’t be put off by the old chap that shows you round. And don’t listen to a word he says either. You read French, I suppose. Well, for once there’s a good local guide. There’s a small libraire where you can buy it. Just opposite the Café de l’Univers, as I remember. Most of the cafés there stake this universal claim, what? The point of the crypt is the Carolingian stone carvings. They’re not beautiful, of course, but you won’t see anything else like them, what?’ He seemed almost to be shouting in anger now against some imagined opposition. ‘And go out to Rémy les Asiles,’ he cried. ‘It’s five miles of very bad road but there’s a fourteenth-century Tree of Jesse – a very well preserved bit of painting – that’s not to be sneered at. You’re going in July? Well, get them to give you a thing they make with fresh raspberries and a very decent local sweet white wine to go with it. Don’t fuss with the crayfish, you’ll get them better and cheaper farther south. What?’

  Amid this dogmatic, assertive speech, unfamiliar to Meg, the interrogatives seemed more affectedly irrelevant than ever. And what a wine and food carry on! she thought. She realized suddenly that the party had formed into two groups – one around Donald and a smaller one around Tom. She was left alone. For a moment she was annoyed. Then her old social sense returned to her. This shut-off, quizzing attitude was too like some embittered old maid compensating with ‘Jane Austen sense of humour’. In any case, why should she sneer at Donald? She liked European travel, food, wine, buildings as much as another. To call the voicing of that taste ‘wine and food snobbery’ was simply to fear committal. And as to his patronizing the company, there was no evidence that they felt it to be condescension. It was only a measure, really, of her own estimation of them; Donald was less intolerant, that was all. She was about to make herself join his circle, when Viola Pirie touched Donald’s arm and indicated her isolation with a glance. She had paid the price then, Donald was to be ‘nice’ to her.