(1954) The Comforters

by Muriel Spark

  ‘I shouldn’t call us innocents. Ho!’ said Mr Webster stepping forth. ‘That’s the point… .’ But by this time the old man had gone out of hearing.

  ‘I don’t pretend to understand women,’ Mervyn Hogarth stated over the brandy. He looked at his host as if he were not sure he had said the right thing, for there was a touch of the woman, a musing effect in the baby-faced, white-haired man.

  ‘The lamb was not right or else the sauce, I fear,’ Ernest Manders mused. After all, he had not gone to Sussex. He had contrived a better plan.

  ‘I take it you are speaking in good faith?’ Mervyn Hogarth was saying.

  ‘The lamb —?’

  ‘No, no, the subject we were discussing, I take it —’

  ‘Do let’s take it that way, Mr Hogarth.’

  ‘Manders, I meant no offence. I wanted to make my mind clear —only that. It seems to me a definitely odd suggestion to come from Eleanor, she knows my position, definitely.’

  ‘It was only, you see, that we’re temporarily in a tight place. Baron Stock has withdrawn his support. Naturally Eleanor thought of you. It was a kind of compliment.’

  ‘Oh, definitely.’

  ‘And if you can’t, you can’t, that is quite understood,’ said Ernest.

  ‘Have you approached your brother?’

  ‘Yes. My brother Edwin is a mystic. He is not interested in dancing and will only invest in that which interests him. But he gave us fifty pounds. Eleanor bought a dress.’

  ‘I can imagine Eleanor would.’

  ‘I am myself very detached from money,’ Ernest remarked, ‘that is why I need so much of it. One simply doesn’t notice the stuff; it slithers away.

  He sat back in his chair as if he had the whole afternoon. His guest had discovered that the business proposition for which he had been summoned was an unprofitable one.

  ‘A quarter to three,’ said Mervyn Hogarth. ‘My word, the time does fly. I have one or two things to do this afternoon. People to see. Bore.’

  ‘There was something else,’ Ernest said, ‘but if you’re rushed, perhaps another time.’

  ‘Perhaps another time’ — but Mervyn Hogarth did a little exercise in his head which took no time at all, but which, had it been laboured out, would have gone like this:

  Fares 13s. but had to come to London anyway; dreariness of food but it was free; disappointment at subject of discussion (Ernest had invited him to discuss ‘matters of interest to you’) but satisfaction about Eleanor’s break with Stock and consequent money difficulties; annoyance at being touched for money but satisfaction in refusing; waste of time but now Manders wants to say something further, which might possibly redeem the meeting or on the other hand confirm it as a dead loss.

  The process passed through his mind like a snap of the fingers and so, when Ernest said, ‘There was something else, but if you’re rushed —’

  ‘Something else?’ Hogarth replied.

  ‘Perhaps another time,’ Ernest said.

  ‘Oh, I’m not rushed for the next half-hour. Do carry on.

  ‘Well,’ said Ernest, ‘it may interest you or it may not. I feel, you know, I’ve brought you up to London on a disappointing inducement — I did think honestly it would please you to be substantially connected with the dancing school — and Eleanor was sure you would — I hope you don’t feel it impertinent on our part.’

  ‘He is like a woman,’ Mervyn thought. ‘It’s just like lunching with a woman.’ And he assured Ernest that he hadn’t minded a bit: ‘only too sorry I can’t spare a penny. What was the other question you wanted to mention?’

  ‘Yes, well, that may be of interest and it may not. It’s just as you feel. The lamb was most peculiar, I must apologize. It’s the worst club lunch I do ever remember. I would send a complaint, only I did fire watching with the chef, who is most really nice and almost never has an off day like this.’

  ‘A very good lunch,’ said Mervyn sadly.

  ‘Sweet of you to say so,’ said Ernest.

  ‘This further question —?’

  ‘Truly you’ve time? I should so like to say a few words, something which you might be interested in. You know my brother Edwin?’

  ‘I haven’t met Sir Edwin Manders.’

  ‘He is very rich. You know Helena?’

  ‘His wife, that is? I know of her.’

  ‘She’s rather sweet. You’ve met her mother?’

  ‘As a matter of fact I do know Mrs Jepp.’ ‘Mrs Jepp,’ said Ernest.

  ‘Fine old lady. Lives quite near my place,’ said Mervyn.

  ‘Yes, I know that,’ said Ernest. ‘You visit regularly, I hear.’ ‘I hear,’ said Mervyn, ‘that her grandson had an accident.’

  ‘Only a broken rib. He’s recovering rapidly.’

  ‘Ah, these young people. I met the grandson.’

  ‘I know,’ said Ernest.

  It was creeping on three o’clock and their glasses had been twice filled. Ernest thought he was doing rather well. Mervyn was hoping against time, but really there was no excuse for prolonging the afternoon. Ernest had made it clear, in the soft mannerly style of pertinacity, that the Manders family had started to smell out the affairs of Louisa Jepp. Mervyn would have liked to hit Ernest for his womanly ways, and he said, ‘I must say, Manders, I can’t reveal any of Mrs Jepp’s confidences.’

  ‘Certainly not. Are you going abroad soon?’

  ‘I take it this farce of asking me to lunch in order to ask me for a loan was really intended to create an opportunity to ask —’

  ‘Oh dear, I can’t possibly,’ said Ernest, ‘cope. I am so — am so sorry about the lunch. “Farce” is the word exactly. I do wish I had made you take duck. Most distressing, I did so think you’d be interested in Eleanor’s academy, it is top-ranking absolutely if she only had the capital. How dire for you, how frightful my dear man, for me.’

  ‘Your questions about Mrs Jepp, I can’t possibly answer them, ‘said Mervyn, looking at his watch but unpurposed, settling into his chair, so that Ernest in his heart shook hands with himself: ‘He is waiting for more questions, more clues towards how much I’m in the know.’ He said to his guest, ‘I mustn’t keep you, then. It’s been charming.’

  Mervyn rose. He said, ‘Look here,’ and stopped.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing.’ But as he stood on the top doorstep taking his leave from Ernest he said, ‘Tell Eleanor I shall think over her proposition. Perhaps after all I shall think it over and scrape up a little to help her out. But it’s very grim these days, you realize, and I have my poor boy. He’s a heavy expense.’

  ‘Don’t think of it,’ said Ernest. ‘Please don’t dream.’

  ‘Tell Eleanor I shall do what I can.’

  For about four minutes after his guest’s departure Ernest was truly puzzled by these last-minute remarks. Then he sat back in a cushiony chocolate-coloured chair and smiled all over his youthful face, which made his forehead rise in lines right up to his very white hair.

  He was in Kensington within half an hour, and at the studio. He saw Eleanor in one of the dressing cubicles off the large upper dancing floor, and pirouetted beautifully to attract her attention.

  She sleeked her velvet jeans over her hips, pulled the belt tight as she did always when she wanted to pull her brains together.

  ‘How did you get on? Anything doing?’

  ‘I think so,’ he said.

  ‘He’ll put up the money?’

  ‘I think so,’ he said.

  ‘Ernest, what charm you must have with men. I would have sworn you wouldn’t get an old bit of macaroni out of Mervyn, especially seeing I’m to benefit by it. He’s so mean as a rule. What did he say? How did you do it?’

  ‘Blackmail,’ Ernest said.

  ‘How did you do it, dear?’

  ‘I told you. It isn’t certain yet, of course. And yet — I’m pretty sure you’ll get the money, my dear.’

  ‘How did you manage it?’

  ‘
Blackmail by mistake.’

  ‘What can you mean? Tell me all.’

  ‘I gave him lunch. I explained your difficulties. Asked for a loan. He said no. Then I asked him some other questions about something else, which he took to be a form of blackmail. Then, as he was leaving, he succumbed.’

  ‘What questions — the ones he thought were a blackmailing effort? —What were they?’

  ‘Sorry, can’t say, my dear. Something rather private.’

  ‘Concerning me?’ said Eleanor.

  ‘No, nothing at all to do with you, honestly.’

  ‘Nothing honestly to do with me?’

  ‘Honestly.’

  Then she was satisfied. Ernest left her intent on her calculations, anticipating the subsidy from Mervyn Hogarth. She sat cross-legged on a curly white rug with pen and paper, adding and multiplying, as if the worries of the past had never been, as if not even yesterday had been a day of talking and thinking about bankruptcy. Before he left she said to Ernest, ‘Don’t forget to draw on expenses for the lunch.’

  ‘Helena?’

  ‘Hold the line a minute.’

  ‘Helena?’

  ‘Who’s that? Oh, it’s you, Ernest.’

  ‘I saw Hogarth.’

  ‘Already? Where?’

  ‘At my club. For lunch. Frightful serious little man with a Harris-tweed jacket.’

  ‘Ernest, you are a marvel. You will let me pay for it of course.

  ‘I thought you might like to know how things went. Such a glum little fellow.’

  ‘Tell me all. I’m on edge to know.’

  ‘Laurence is right. There is certainly something going on between your mother and Hogarth.’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘He wouldn’t say, of course. But it’s something important enough to make him most unhappy, most eager to appease us. A bleak little bodikin actually. We had such unfortunate food, lamb like tree-bark, no exaggeration. He thinks we know more than we do. That’s one up for us, I feel.’

  ‘Certainly it is. Can you come right over, Ernest? You could take a taxi.

  ‘It would cost ten bob.’

  ‘Where are you speaking from?’

  ‘South Kensington underground.’

  ‘Oh well, come by tube if you like. But take a taxi if you like.’

  ‘I’ll be with you presently.’

  While Ernest was telephoning to Helena that afternoon Mervyn Hogarth climbed the steps of a drab neglected house at Chiswick. He pressed the bell. He could hear no sound, so pressed again, keeping his finger on it for a long time. Presumably out of order. Just as he was peering through the letter-box to see if anything was doing inside, the door opened so that Mervyn nearly stumbled over the threshold into the body of the blue-suited shady-looking man with no collar, who opened it.

  ‘Is Mrs Hogg living here at present?’ Mervyn said.

  He was acquainted with the place, Georgina’s habitual residence when in London. He had been to the place before and he did not like it.

  On that day Caroline Rose in hospital heard the click of a typewriter, she heard those voices,

  He was acquainted with the place, Georgina’s habitual residence when in London. He had been to the place before and he did not like it.

  It is not easy to dispense with Caroline Rose. At this point in the tale she is confined in a hospital bed, and no experience of hers ought to be allowed to intrude. Unfortunately she slept restlessly. She never did sleep well. And during the hours of night, rather than ring for the nurse and a sedative, she preferred to savour her private wakefulness, a luxury heightened by the profound sleeping of seven other women in the public ward. When her leg was not too distracting, Caroline among the sleepers turned her mind to the art of the novel, wondering and cogitating, those long hours, and exerting an undue, unreckoned, influence on the narrative from which she is supposed to be absent for a time.

  Tap-tick-click. Caroline among the sleepers turned her mind to the art of the novel, wondering and cogitating, those long hours, and exerting an undue, unreckoned, influence on the narrative from which she is supposed to be absent for a time.

  Mrs Hogg’s tremendous bosom was a great embarrassment to her —not so much in the way of vanity, now that she was getting on in life —but in the circumstance that she didn’t know what to do with it.

  When, at the age of thirty-five she had gone to nursery-govern the Manders’ boys, Edwin Manders remarked to his wife, ‘Don’t you think, rather buxom to have about the house?’

  ‘Don’t be disagreeable, please, Edwin. She has a fine character.’

  Laurence and Giles (the elder son, killed in the war) were overjoyed at Georgina’s abounding bosom. Giles was the one who produced the more poetic figures to describe it; he declared that under her blouse she kept pairs of vegetable marrows, of infant whales, St Paul’s Cathedrals, goldfish bowls. Laurence’s interest in Georgina’s bulging frontage was more documentary. He acquired knowledge of her large stock of bust-bodices, long widths of bright pink or yellow-white materials, some hard as canvas, some more yielding in texture, from some of which dangled loops of criss-cross straps, some with eyelets for intricate tight-lacing, some with much-tried hooks and eyes. He knew exactly which one of these garments Georgina was wearing at any given time; one of them gave her four breasts, another gave her the life-jacket look which Laurence had seen in his dangerous sea-faring picture books. He knew the day when she wore her made-to-measure brassiere provided at a costly expense by his mother. That was about the time Georgina was leaving to get married. The new garment was a disappointment to the children, they felt it made her look normal, only, of course, far more so. And they knew their mother was uneasy about these new shapely protrusions which did so seem to proceed heraldically far in advance of Georgina herself; the old bust-bodices were ungainly, but was this new contraption decent?

  ‘I will lift up mine eyes to the hills,’ little Giles chanted for the entertainment of the lower domestics.

  The boys did not share their mother’s view of Georgina’s character. They were delighted when she was to leave to marry her cousin.

  ‘What’s wrong with her cousin, then?’

  ‘Be quiet, Laurence, Miss Hogg will hear you.

  They had found her to be a sneak, a subtle tyrant. Prep school, next year, was wonderfully straightforward in comparison.

  Her pale red-gold hair, round pale-blue eyes, her piglet ‘flesh-coloured’ face: Georgina Hogg had certain attractions at the time of her marriage. Throughout the ‘tragic’ years which followed (for when misfortune occurs to slightly absurd or mean-minded people it is indeed tragic for them — it falls with a thud which they don’t expect, it does not excite the pity and fear of the onlooker, it excites revulsion more likely; so that the piece of bad luck which happened to Georgina Hogg was not truly tragic, only pathetic) — throughout those years since her marriage, Mrs Hogg had sought in vain for an effectual garment to harness her tremendous and increasing bosom. She spent more money than she could afford in the effort — it was like damming up the sea. By that time of her life when she met Caroline Rose at St Philumena’s she had taken to wearing nothing regardless beneath her billowing blouses. ‘As God made me,’ she may have thought in justification, and in her newfound release.

  … ‘As God made me,’ she may have thought in justification, and in her newfound release.

  ‘Bad taste,’ Caroline commented. ‘Revolting taste.’ She had, in fact, ‘picked up’ a good deal of the preceding passage, all about Mrs Hogg and the breasts.

  ‘Bad taste’ — typical comment of Caroline Rose. Wasn’t it she in the first place who had noticed with revulsion the transparent blouse of Mrs Hogg, that time at St Philumena’s? It was Caroline herself who introduced into the story the question of Mrs Hogg’s bosom.

  Tap-tap. It was Caroline herself who introduced into the story the question of Mrs Hogg’s bosom.

  Caroline Rose sighed as she lay in hospital contemplating her memory of Mrs Ho
gg. ‘Not a real-life character,’ she commented at last, ‘only a gargoyle.’

  Mervyn Hogarth, when he was admitted to Georgina’s lodgings by the lazy dog-racing son of her landlady, was directed to Georgina’s room. As he mounted the stairs towards it, he heard the swift scamper of mice, as if that part of the house was uninhabited. He knocked and jerked open the door. He saw her presently, her unfortunate smile, her colossal bust arranged more peculiarly than he had ever seen it before — and he had seen it in many extraordinary shapes — all lopsided, one side heaving up and the other one rolling down, for, possibly in the flurry of confronting him, the right shoulder strap of her bodice had snapped.

  He took in her appearance without being fully aware of it, so anxious was he to speak his mind, give her warning, and be at peace.

  Mrs Hogg said, collecting herself though lopsided, ‘You’re late, Mervyn.’

  He sidled into an easy chair while she made to light the gas-ring under the kettle.

  ‘No tea for me,’ he said. ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘why you have started interfering. You’ve been to see Mrs Jepp. What’s your game?’

  ‘I know what yours is,’ she said. ‘Smuggling.’ She sat down in her chair by the window so that the side where her bust-bodice had burst was concealed from him.

  ‘Mrs Jepp told you that.’

  ‘Yes, and it’s true. She can afford to be truthful.’

  ‘Andrew is involved,’ he said.

  ‘Ah yes, it’s all in keeping, you have ruined Andrew already. It’s only to be expected that you’re making a criminal of him.’

  ‘Why exactly did you go to Mrs Jepp?’

  ‘I know I can do her some good if I have the chance. She’s a wicked old woman. But I didn’t know she had got thick with you and Andrew. When she told me “Mervyn and Andrew Hogarth” I was stabbed, stabbed to the heart.’ And taking her handkerchief she stabbed each eye.

  Mervyn Hogarth, looking at her, thought, I never pity myself. A weaker mind would be shattered by the perversity of my life. There would be plenty to pity if I were a man who indulged in self-pity.