Ankle Deep

by Angela Thirkell

  “Darling, I’d love to, but I have promised to go to some people who are having a cocktail party, and then I’m dining out.”

  “Oh, Valentine, couldn’t you just manage to look in, only for a few moments?”

  “Darling, you know I’d love to, but I have to get home and dress, and I shan’t have a moment.”

  “Couldn’t you perhaps dress five minutes earlier and look in on Vanna on your way to your party?”

  “I’m afraid I simply can’t, darling. I’ll see you tomorrow at lunch, anyway. I must go now — there are six highly important people waiting for me, any one of whom might sack me if he wasn’t pleased. Bless you, bless you, darling, goodbye.”

  Aurea was left with the receiver in her hand, feeling emptier than ever. She hung it slowly up, and went upstairs, and sat down in front of her glass and looked at herself. Gradually the glass became misty, and her image was dissolved in tears. “Oh, Valentine, Valentine” was all she said.

  But life has to be lived, so she had her hair washed, which is very restoring, and thought of having a face massage but didn’t feel in spirits, for you must be feeling rather nice before you can take trouble about making yourself look nice, and went out to dinner. Vanna lived by herself in a delightfully small house with about a pennyworth of garden, which she kept well stocked by buying plants from Mr. Woolworth. Aurea hadn’t seen her since the memorable weekend party, and found her looking much the same.

  “You don’t look a bit grandmotherish, Mrs. Turner,” she said.

  Vanna looked gratified. “How long is it since I saw you?” said she.

  “About — oh, about nearly twenty years. It sounds frightfully grownup, doesn’t it? Arthur was just leaving Oxford then, wasn’t he?”

  “It must have been that year, or the year before. I think we had house parties both years. But Arthur will be able to tell us when he comes.”

  “Oh, is he coming tonight? I didn’t know.” One might have had the face massage after all.

  “I didn’t know either till a few minutes ago. Fanny is off for the evening with one of her admirers, and Arthur rang up to ask if I could have him.”

  “How nice,” said Aurea while she thought, “Which admirer? Is it Valentine?”

  “Arthur said you looked no older than when he last saw you,” said Vanna, “and I am inclined to agree.”

  “That,” said Aurea, “is by artificial light. By daylight my second name is Gorgon.”

  Arthur came in and kissed his mother.

  “How nice that you are here,” said Aurea politely. “I didn’t know you were coming.”

  “I wasn’t,” said Arthur.

  “Who is Fanny out with?” asked Vanna.

  “I didn’t ask her. She rang me up at my rooms, and said she was going to a cocktail party and then to dinner with some friends, so I thought you would take pity on me.”

  “Of course, dear,” said his mother.

  “How very nice for us,” said Aurea. But, oh, to what cocktail party had Fanny gone? with whom was she dining?

  The evening passed pleasantly enough. Vanna was an easy talker, and Arthur expanded with his mother, and they made Aurea laugh. Vanna’s summer in a caravan had become a legend in the family, brought out and elaborated from time to time for the entertainment of discerning guests.

  “You can’t think, Aurea, how ashamed of me my son was when he came down to visit me.”

  “Hardly surprising, mother, considering how disgraceful you looked,” said her dutiful son. “Aurea, can you imagine Vanna with bare legs and clogs, an old black satin dress covered with a hessian apron, and one of her very respectable dear-old-lady mushroom hats, stirring a devil’s cauldron of game — bought, I believe, from a poacher — with a toasting fork?”

  “At, least, Arthur,” said his mother with some dignity, “I was not wearing canvas shoes slashed across the tops with my toes sticking through, nor a hat without a crown. And as for poachers, who shot at least two pheasants out of season?”

  “One must live,” said Arthur sententiously, “and to live one must eat, and pheasants are food. Also, mother dear, if you had come fifteen miles out of your way on a walking tour, on a sweltering hot day, to see your adored mamma, your feet would have been even more swollen than mine and you would have cut your shoes to ribbons. As for my hat, that,” he concluded lamely, “was my own affair.”

  “I’d love to have seen you both,” said Aurea. “My family do a lot of camping, Mrs. Turner, but I don’t like it. I am all for beds with four legs, and a table to eat at, and hot baths.”

  “Sensible woman,” said Arthur approvingly. “I hate uncivilized females like Vanna.”

  “Then why do you let me bring up your children?”

  “That’s Fanny’s doing, mamma. She believes in an uncivilized childhood. So do I, if it comes to that. I was brought up far too civilized. Vanna is terribly selfish and inconsistent, Aurea. She brought me up with hideous Victorian straitlacedness, and when she had ruined my character and launched me in life, she went savage herself, and does all the things I’d like to have done. But unfortunately I am full of inhibitions, implanted by her, and therefore the moral wreck you see me.”

  “But it seems to have been quite a success in your case, Arthur,” said Aurea.

  “Thank you, Aurea,” said Vanna. “You see, it was really altruism. I knew Arthur was the kind of character that has to react against something, so I thought I had better give him something to react against. It was really very noble of me, because in repressing him, I had to repress myself, too. As you say,” she looked fondly at Arthur, “he is rather a success now, and I can enjoy myself being what he calls savage with my grandchildren.”

  “I can’t help being a little sorry for Arthur, though,” said Aurea, “I was brought up very repressed and Victorian myself, only I never got loose, so I have to face a post-war world with a pre-war mind.”

  “You do it very nicely.”

  “Thank you, Arthur, it may look nice, but it doesn’t feel nice. It is so mortifying,” she added plaintively, “to see other people of one’s own age doing cocktails and free love and self-expression, and to be quite incapable of it oneself, however much one might wish it.”

  Vanna and Arthur both burst out laughing. “Don’t try any of them,” said Vanna kindly, “they wouldn’t suit you.”

  “On the contrary, mamma, I think they would suit Aurea very well, and she ought to have a go at them. I am quite ready to encourage her!”

  “Oh, Arthur,” said Aurea, “would you really?”

  “I’d do more than that for you, but we’ll make a beginning.”

  “When?”

  “Tonight, if you like. I’ll take you to a night club.”

  “That’s very kind of you. Would I like it?”

  “We can only try. Of course, Aurea, you are far too critical. You look at everything with a suspicious eye before you leap, and then you don’t leap at all, or if you do you are dissatisfied. You spoil life entirely for yourself by asking questions all the time, and trying to fit facts to some extraordinary standards of your own. It is no good being behind the times, Aurea. If life isn’t what you like, take it in both hands and make it what you want. You seem to think that everything you want must be wrong, but it is just as likely to be right. Have a little courage.”

  “Oh, but I haven’t. I think,” she went on, frowning, because it is so extremely difficult to say what one means when one does not usually take the trouble to formulate one’s thoughts, “I think some people get hold of life first, like you, Arthur,” she said admiringly, “and some people are got hold of. I was got hold of by life a long time ago, and I feel I’ve been pulled and pushed along all my life, always a little faster than I could run. All I really want is to be allowed to stop for a moment at a nice place and look at the view; but it isn’t allowed.”

  “I know one or two quite good views, if I could persuade you to stop and look at them.”

  “Oh, do you? Well, I don’t qu
ite know what you mean, Arthur, but thank you very much; only as I’ve never managed to stop yet, I don’t suppose I shall now. I suppose,” she added, looking confidingly at Arthur and Vanna, “you both think I’m a bit of a half-wit?”

  “No, dear, I don’t,” said Vanna. “You only have an inward eye, and that’s a misfortune in life.”

  “What do you mean by inward eye, mamma?” asked Arthur.

  “Aurea can’t see very far in front of her, and what she sees doesn’t really exist,” said Vanna comprehensively. “She couldn’t as a girl, and she can’t now. She lets ideas fill up the foreground, and spends her time pretending that facts are like ideas, which they aren’t. She can only see what is inside her own imagination. When you met her again the other day, Arthur, you told me that she hadn’t grown up very much, and that’s why. When she meets facts she runs away from them mentally, or winds them up in a cocoon of imaginings. She lives, I should say, largely in an idealized past, or an imaginary future. You can’t change her, Arthur, so don’t try.”

  “I don’t want to, Vanna, not the essential Aurea, but she does need shaking sometimes,” said Arthur chivalrously.

  “So do you, Arthur, and it wouldn’t do you the least good, nor her. Leave her alone, and take her as she is.”

  “Please,” said Aurea, “I am in the room, if you wouldn’t mind remembering it.”

  “You must excuse my mother, Aurea. She is quite uncivilized, as I mentioned before. She has a passion for dissecting her friends, and doesn’t care in the least if the corpse is present or not.”

  “Oh, I don’t mind at all — I just thought I’d mention that I was here. As a matter of fact, it all sounded rather true. How on earth can you know so much about me, Mrs. Turner?”

  “Well, Aurea, I saw a good deal of you for a few days years ago, and I happened to notice you rather specially.”

  “But why?”

  Vanna hesitated for a moment. “I had a reason. Perhaps you interested me more than young men. At any rate, I had some definite impressions about you, and I remembered them very well. You have changed very little since then, that’s all.”

  “Don’t pay any attention to Vanna,” said Arthur, rather quickly. “Living alone, she takes to thinking aloud, don’t you, Mrs. T.?”

  “Graceless cub,” said Mrs. T. majestically, and she and her son began to laugh, both feeling that a danger point had been passed. No one but Vanna knew about Arthur’s early love, and even that was more than half guesswork with her. She had seen them together through a long weekend, idling in a punt, sitting in a garden, talking endlessly, and she had formed her own conclusions and her own hopes. Though she made a practice of announcing her readiness to accept any wife whom Arthur chose to marry, there were undoubtedly types that she preferred. Aurea would have been a daughter-in-law after her own heart. Arthur would have been very kind to her and quite sufficiently firm, and Aurea would have gained strength and confidence, and made him very happy. Vanna had thought, looking at Aurea with the eye of a prospective mother-in-law, that life would go hard with the child unless she married a man who could worship her and govern her at the same time. Arthur was wrong when he accused her of want of courage. She would have boundless courage to endure, and it was quite plain that she had had to call deeply upon these reserves of strength; but equally plain that, living among her imaginings as she did, she would rarely make any determined effort to change the course of her life. It was all a question of wanting hard enough. Aurea would long for things or people with a fruitless longing, but she lacked the vitality to want them in a way that would force life to serve her. Poor child. How curious it was that Arthur could love two such absolutely different types as Aurea and Fanny. They had so little in common that they might belong to different worlds. Luckily, Arthur was very happy with his brilliant Fanny, who knew so exactly what she wanted and invariably got it. Vanna would have liked sometimes to feel that he was more needed by Fanny, but even her affection did not grasp the very deep bond of interdependence which united her son and his wife. Their lives would often run in separate channels for days and weeks, but each had complete confidence, and drew strength from the other at need. Perhaps, thought Vanna, things are as well as they are; but she felt sorry for Aurea, and sighed.

  Aurea said she must really go now, because it was nearly half-past ten. She thanked Vanna very much for a delightful evening.

  “Arthur will see you home,” said Vanna and kissed her very kindly. “I am very glad to have seen you. Good luck, child, and don’t break Arthur’s heart again.”

  Aurea, occupied in collecting her bag and cloak, wasn’t quite sure if she heard the words rightly. In any case she didn’t attach much importance to them, unless they were a sort of joke. So she smiled vaguely, and kissed her hostess good night.

  “Shall I get a taxi?” said Arthur as they went downstairs.

  “No, let’s walk and find one.” So they walked along and found one.

  “Where are we going?” asked Arthur.

  “To mother’s house, of course.”

  “Shan’t we go somewhere more amusing?”

  Aurea thought for a moment. It had really been such a pleasant evening that she had been able to forget about Valentine several times. Perhaps to go on somewhere would help the forgetting, and it might encourage one to free love and self-expression. So she said “Yes, where?”

  Arthur told the man to go to the Vampire in Gerrard Street.

  “Why do we go to a Vampire, and what is it?” asked Aurea.

  “It is a kind of cheap and respectable night club we belong to,” said Arthur, “where I can feed you for much less than at more gilded haunts of vice.”

  “How amusing. I expect papa will ramp when he hears about it.”

  “Never mind,” said Arthur, “you are with me tonight, not with your revered father,” and he tucked Aurea’s arm under his.

  She looked at him with wild fear in her eyes. An instant afterwards she had collected herself, and her face became blank. “Don’t be an ass, Arthur,” she said, disengaging her arm, “or I’ll stop the taxi and go home. I can’t stand being touched.”

  “Oh?” said Arthur.

  “In fact, I’m not sure if I won’t get out at once,” said Aurea, beginning to let the window down.

  “You don’t like being touched?” said Arthur in an interested voice.

  “No,” said she, wrestling with the strap.

  “It was only a friendly action,” said Arthur calmly.

  “If that’s your idea of friendship, I call it a pretty sloppy one.”

  “I don’t like the word, but of course, if you don’t like it, I won’t do it again.”

  Aurea felt she was being silly and making a fuss about nothing, so she sat back. “All right,” she said, wrapping herself up tight in her cloak, and sitting bolt upright in a corner. They both began to laugh.

  “You’re not very romantic,” said Arthur.

  “Oh, not at all,” said she. Where, oh, where was Valentine? With whom was he dancing or talking now? For whom was the high star of romance shining?

  The taxi drew up before a narrow passage. They went into a small entrance hall with a lift in it. Arthur rang, the lift came down, they got in, and the lift went slowly upwards. Aurea counted five stories before they stopped. Arthur couldn’t get the door open. “Damn this thing, it’s always sticking,” said he, rattling the handle. Someone below pressed a button and they went down again. Arthur put his finger on the button called STOP, and pressed it. The lift stopped. Aurea began to giggle.

  “When a lift stops in mid-air,” she announced, “you should prepare for the worst. If the machinery breaks, you should get ready to jump the moment it reaches the bottom, otherwise your legs will be driven right up into your chest.”

  Arthur’s determined concentration upon the button marked six finally overcame the people downstairs, and the lift shot up again. The door at the top was violently opened by a young man who said, “Why the devil are you playi
ng tricks with this blasted lift?”

  “Ask this lady,” said Arthur courteously. “The mistake was hers.” The young man went bright red, gobbled hopelessly, plunged into the lift and disappeared. Aurea found herself in a hall so small that she nearly fell head foremost into a hole, which was where the gentlemen’s coats and hats were kept.

  “That won’t take you anywhere,” said Arthur, taking her by the upper part of the arm and propelling her to the right.

  “That’s the way the lower middle class always take their women-kind across the road,” said Aurea condescendingly. “Our class don’t do it.”

  “Don’t they?” said Arthur. He let her go, and opened a swing door. They entered a large room with a bar, and tables, and a sound of music. Arthur led the way to a seat near a door at the further end, explaining that they could feed in one room while they looked at the dancers in the other.

  “I wonder why one has to eat all the time if one wants —” said Aurea and stopped short.

  “Wants what?”

  “Oh, I mean, one does seem to eat a lot, doesn’t one, in the course of an evening?”

  “Does one?” said Arthur and beckoned a waiter.

  While he ordered supper Aurea looked through into the next room. The theaters were not yet out, so there were not many people dancing. A few couples were sitting at tables around the wall, and a band was wailing in a perfunctory way.

  “How do you like our Vampire?”

  “It’s very nice, Arthur,” said Aurea, who privately thought it dull and noisy, and wasn’t at all inclined for another meal. “It’s has — lots of looking-glasses, hasn’t it?”

  “As I said before, you are much too critical.”

  “I’m not critical. I only said it has lots of looking-glasses, which it has. I think it’s charming — all the people look very nice.”

  “Do they?”

  Aurea turned around and faced Arthur. ‘“Well, if you will press me, Arthur, I think they look as if they all lived at Ealing, and came up to Kensington for the day to look at the shops and have a permanent wave, and then came on here to see life.”