Anglo-Saxon Attitudes

by Angus Wilson

  'No,' said Robin; 'I think you put an end to Mother's protests against Mass last year.'

  He noticed his wife's full olive-green wool skirt billowing around her feet and shivered. She always seemed to wear dead greens or purples that, with her sallow, distinguished camel's face, filled the room with cold. It was true that even in this centrally heated room, offering such warmth against the bitter air outside, Marie Hélène's tall, unbending figure suggested the funereal, shuttered cool of a meridional house in the glare of summer's heat.

  'I have put in a pair of your stout walking shoes,' she said; 'your father likes to take a walk on Boxing Day.'

  'Oh! Don't let us encourage him,' said Robin; 'that walk always upsets Mother's Christmas arrangements and she hates it.'

  'Yes,' said Marie Hélène, agreeing, and then added, 'but the arrangements, after all, are for her husband. If he doesn't like them...'

  Robin laughed. 'You know very well Mother never arranges anything for Father, only for her children.'

  Marie Hélène did not accept a humorous approach to such matters. 'Then the arrangements are not serious,' she said.

  She had no compassion for her mother-in-law's role as a wronged wife, when it sprang from such derelictions of wifely duty. Her own similar position had no element of justice in its cause, only Robin's indulgence of lust.

  'Tante Stéphanie has sent Timothy a leather wallet for Christmas,' she told Robin. 'It is quite hideous Tyrolese peasant work, but he seems to like it.'

  'I can't think why she's so generous,' said Robin, 'after that lawsuit. If I were Madame Houdet I'd never speak to us again.'

  'She's my aunt,' said Marie Hélène. 'Because she took a stupid law case against me for money to which she had no right and lost it, does not make her lose her sense of what is correct.'

  Robin smiled. 'I wish she'd won it. I can't think why she didn't in a French court.'

  Marie Hélène laughed. It was a loud, satisfying sound when it came, which was rarely. 'My dear Robin, you are not quite so English as that. Fortunately French courts are not like the English picture. They are just.'

  'All the same,' said Robin, his handsome, dark face frowning at the prospect of an unpalatable truth. 'After she'd been in Auschwitz and had come back to find the lawyer had tricked her of all her money ...'

  'He committed suicide,' said Marie Hélène with a grimace of horror and disgust. Then, with â look of reverence, she went on: 'Tante Stéphanie is a very courageous woman. She refused the money we offered.'

  'Well, I can't say I blame' her after we'd defeated her in the lawsuit.'

  'I said she is courageous. Of course, she could not accept, but we were right to offer.'

  'I see,' said Robin.

  'In any case,' Marie Hélène remarked, 'she will be well paid by that old Mrs Portway. Tante Stéphanie is not a fool about such things. No doubt she will get the old lady's money when she dies.'

  Robin winced. 'I hope Elvira doesn't mind too much,' he said.

  'Why should she mind?' his wife asked. 'She recognizes no duty to Mrs Portway, she should expect no reward. Of course, the old lady will leave her a legacy, since she is her granddaughter.'

  'French law would demand a little more than that,' Robin laughed.

  'French logic sometimes falls into English sentimentality,' observed Marie Hélène, with the smile she kept for wit. 'Tante Stéphanie writes to me that Yves will come to London this summer. I have written that he will be our guest.'

  'Good heavens!' said her husband, 'he's a monster, or, at least, you've painted him as such.'

  'I don't like him,' said Marie Hélène, 'but he's my cousin.'

  Once again Robin could only say, 'I see.' He added, 'I hope I shall be able to entertain him.'

  'You are a wonderful host, darling,' said his wife with absolute sincerity. Save for his sentimentality, of which she regarded his infidelity as a by-product, Marie Hélène thought her husband perfection.

  Robin began to change into a heavy tweed suit. 'I hope I shan't have a row with John about this business of poor old Pelican,' he said, folding his discarded trousers with obsessive precision. 'It's quite intolerable that he should write all that nonsense in the paper about one of the few thoroughly competent civil servants the country's got. The firm's dealt with Pelican ever since '41 and I've never known a more sensible and useful person. Just because this Cressett - probably some small dealer who's incompetent to run a whelk-stall - complains of an injustice, John starts a public pillorying of a man whose position forbids him to answer back. If Pelican has made a mistake, it's not surprising, with all the work his Ministry carries. It's typical of politicians and journalists; they want a state-run country and they're ready to employ thousands of bureaucrats at our expense to do it, but when one of their employees really can administer, they turn on him. All this self-publicizing sentimentality about individual cases when the country's fighting for its life makes me absolutely sick. Especially that it should be my brother. No business man would dare to be so irresponsible.' Robin as a business man was neither old-fashioned, individualistic, nor sentimental.

  'John is a fool,' said Marie Hélène. 'But I don't think you should take up a stranger's cause against your family.'

  'I take up the cause of the logic that stares anyone in the face who knows what the economic needs of this country are,' Robin said defiantly. He heard the note of pomposity in his own voice that always accompanied anger and calmed himself by brushing his tweed suit very meticulously. 'Well, there's one piece of family piety that I'm thinking of letting the firm in for which should please you,' he said.

  He looked expectantly at Marie Hélène, but she dilated her camel's nostrils slightly and said, 'I do not give blank cheques.' It was one of her favourite English phrases; the very enormity of so prodigal a behaviour fascinated her.

  'It's Donald,' he said. 'He's failed for these University posts again.'

  Marie Hélène smiled - a look that matched her somewhat frostbitten mouth. 'I am sorry,' she said, 'but perhaps he is not so brilliant as Kay thinks him. Not everyone can be a university lecturer.' For Marie Hélène, to be agrégé was quite something.

  'Oh, he's brilliant all right,' said Robin. His brother-in-law was a luxury that the family paid for. He never cared for his purchases to be depreciated. 'But he obviously gets off on the wrong foot with his colleagues. Kay, bless her heart, is worried about their taking so much family money and her husband earning nothing. Mother wrote to me all about it and asked if I could find him something to do. Of course, he's a bit up in the clouds. All this Anglo-Catholicism makes him think we can put the clock back, but there's a tough core of common sense there, all the same. A lot of it is bitterness over not getting the posts. That's why I want to do what I can. As I told Mother, there's no need for Kay to get a conscience, she's entitled to the interest on her dividends as much as anyone else.' He looked to his wife for confirmation of his beloved sister's rights but none was forthcoming. 'Anyhow, I've agreed to give him something to do while he's waiting about. As a matter of fact, these evening lectures at the works have been a great success, despite all the jeremiads I was treated to when I started them. Even some of my dear brother directors have changed their tune, and the union bosses are quite enthusiastic now. Up to now, of course, they've been largely technical, but I don't see why we shouldn't include a bit of training for citizenship, so I'm going to get Donald to do a series on current affairs. A few of his utterances are liable to make our union chaps cry blue murder, but as long as he's kept in check, it won't do any harm for them to be made to think a little beyond their mental horizon of the Depression and watered-down Fabianism.'

  Marie Hélène began to put on her hat before the dressing-table mirror. As she talked, she did not turn, but watched her husband. 'One must never be foolish about business,' she said.

  Robin looked annoyed. 'After all, he is my brother-in-law,' he threw back at her.

  She saw the force of this. 'You are probably right,' sh
e said. 'In any case, these lectures are nice, but hardly important.' Commerce was commerce to her, not a matter for 'frills '.

  As she moved to get her gloves, Timothy appeared in the doorway. 'If we don't hurry up we shall be late. It's after half past six,' he said in a self-satisfied voice. He had finished his book.

  It was Robin's turn now to be annoyed with what he felt to be the boy's priggishness. Marie Hélène, however, was always just in her dealings with her son. 'You are right,' she said with a smile. 'I am glad that you are learning to be prompt. That is very important.'

  Lilian Portway, Elvira's grandmother, walked with a stick; for all else, with her graceful, willowy figure, she might have been forty rather than seventy. She moved with firm strides through the crisp snow, throwing back observations in her commanding, low-timbred voice to little Stéphanie Houdet, who came panting behind with the laden shopping-baskets.

  'They've done nothing, literally nothing, about my bandstand,' she said in the voice of tragedy. 'I shall see the mayor, Stéphanie, and tell him that they won't get a penny more of my money until they've painted my bandstand. Gold,' she said dramatically, 'a deep red-gold and black. I shall give them a lake with black swans and twenty tubs of agapanthus lilies.'

  'But my dear Lilian' - Stéphanie Houdet, unlike her niece Marie Hélène, spoke English with the most uncompromising French accent - 'no one will come any more to this part of the town. It is quite finished.'

  Indeed, the broken-down baroque bandstand, which stood - a relic of Hapsburg glory - in the neglected little garden, seemed almost to have ceased to pretend to be more than a ruin.

  'People will come where one draws them,' Mrs Portway said.

  She had brought crowds to see her play Shaw's heroines in Sloane Square, she had brought crowds to hear her speak of women's rights in Norwich, she had brought crowds, more select, to hear her praise Mussolini's Italy in Knightsbridge and Mayfair drawing-rooms, she could bring crowds to listen to music from 'her' bandstand in a forgotten quarter of Merano any day she willed.

  'Can't,' she said, 'is a word people use too easily today. It's the current cant,' and she laughed her wonderful high-comedy ripple. 'I don't think I ever heard my brother-in-law Reggie say "can't",' she said, and turned back upon her little companion as though daring her to deny this.

  As Madame Houdet had only heard of Canon Portway through a very great deal too much hearsay, she could not deny it.

  'My brother-in-law knew,' Mrs Portway continued, drawing her long, old-fashioned chinchilla coat around her, 'what had to be done, and it was done. He knew that the people must be given back their old services, the age-old services of beauty and dignity. There were protests, but the Sarum rite was sung in his church. He knew that Eorpwald's tomb would be found on our estate. He told them: "Dig!" They dug and they found nothing. Even the great Professor Stokesay lost heart. But my brother didn't. He said: "Dig again", and they found the famous Melpham tomb. And when I came to him and asked him to appear on our platforms, he knew at once where the Church's place was. Up there alongside Mary and Martha, yes, and Mary Magdalene. He stood with me beside Emmeline Pankhurst and he spoke for Women. The little hearts, the "can'ts", said his career in the Church was finished. I wonder how many of them remembered that when they read what The Times had to say of Canon Portway when he died - moral leader, outstanding antiquarian, lover of beauty, fearless fighter, great Churchman.'

  Mrs Portway paused to wind the pale mauve tulle that hung from her chinchilla cap around her willowy neck. It was poor protection against the bitter wind, but, as she grew older, Lilian Portway dressed more eccentrically. Particularly she demanded 'a piece of lovely colour' about her, whatever the weather or place.

  'Very few, I imagine,' she said with a bitter laugh. 'The "can'ts" of this world have small memories as well as small souls. - But I'll have no "can't" from the mayor about my bandstand.'

  She strode forward impatiently, like some erect, silky-haired bear in the landscape of snow and dark evergreens.

  Madame Houdet teetered precariously behind. She would have been more comfortable in her high-heeled patent-leather shoes than in the fur-topped boots that Lilian had bought for her. For all Lilian's striking appearance, it was Stéphanie Houdet who was the better-known figure in the Tyrolese Kurort. To the inhabitants, Austrian and Italian alike, Mrs Portway was just another rich English eccentric: but la vedova francese was something really extraordinary. With her chic black dresses, her flowing crêpe veil, her rouge and lipstick, she moved not a step from the garb of the old-fashioned Provincial French bourgeoise widow. In Poitiers or in Châlons-sur-Marne or in her own Lyons she would have passed unnoticed, but in the little medieval colonnaded town or on the picturesque hillside walks designed in such careful miniature Alpine style for the Austrian invalids of 1911, she was as odd as some macaw got loose among the autumn crocuses. Stéphanie Houdet knew that she was a local figure, but she did not guess the reason. She thought that she was feared because she saw through everyone, 'sales boches' and 'fous italiens' alike. She thought she was respected because of her munificence to the poor, and here she was right, for she held Mrs Portway's purse-strings.

  At her friend's return to the subject of the bandstand, she drew tight her scarlet lips and pulled down her plump little cheeks until the beads of rouge and powder showed in the creases. She had already vetoed this scheme in her own mind as une grande folie, but she never spoke precipitately. Madame Houdet had her own ideas of philanthropy, more nineteenth-century in form than Lilian's theatrical gestures. Crippled children and bent old women brought tears to her eyes and she liked to administer very small sums of her friend's money with lots of gossip and, at the end, a little talk about le petit Jésus and Notre Dame de la Charité. In a foreign but Catholic community it was considered behaviour suitable to her age, but impertinent because of her alien origin. She always, however, got her own way in her schemes. Lilian's extravagant wishes, of which 'her' bandstand was typical, were considered quite absurd for her age but entirely suitable in a rich foreigner. They hardly ever came to anything. As to the origins of their surprising friendship, the common experience of concentration-camp horror that had brought them together in the hotel in Geneva after the war, these had been buried in oblivion in the Kurort, as they would have been elsewhere, with all the other boring details of recent history, never so boring as when they are connected with a war which people wish to forget.

  Madame Houdet, then, avoided any comment on her friend's scheme. They had left the little gardens now and were ascending the hill. On each side loomed vast villas, once splendidly vulgar in their sentimental chalet style, now decayed and squalid beneath their covering of snow. Human habitation, however, set Madame Houdet's tongue on its natural, rapid course of scandal. The Weissblums' eldest son was bankrupt, the Schneiders could get no more credit; as for old Signorina Paccelli, former mistress of a silk magnate, it seemed that she was now completely paralysed down the right side. 'The good God,' said Madame Houdet, 'does not pay on Saturdays, he pays in his own time.'

  It often irked Lilian Portway to be confined to such petty talk and she wondered that Stephanie could be so triumphant about the sins of others when her son behaved as he did, but a friendship that had begun in gratitude for kindness when she was fighting her war nightmares was now her only barrier against loneliness, and, in any case, Stéphanie was such a wonderful manager. It was not only that she managed all the money, but she also managed the present, and Lilian found increasingly irksome anything that cut her off from the past. As usual, she shut her mind to her friend's talk and wandered back in memories - to the Vanbrughs, like herself some of the first real ladies to win success on the stage; to the praises and rebukes of George Bernard Shaw; to Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst - dear Christabel, so sensible, had resisted all her enthusiasm for Fascist Italy; and, as so often nowadays, to Melpham. She remembered the shrubbery with its tangle of St John's wort and, cutting into her friend's gossip, she said, 'The Victorians
did awful things to gardens. Melpham must have been so charming when it was simple parkland, and then my mother-in-law made formal beds and shrubberies, and such hideous ones - St John's wort and double begonias and horrors like that! You know, in a way, Stéphanie, I'm glad that I sold the place when Hugh was killed; it was only association that made it beautiful - being there with Reggie and when Hugh was a little boy. It was an ugly place in itself, and for an old woman on her own it would have been cruel as well as ugly.'

  Madame Houdet gave Mrs Portway a sharp glance; she regarded any reminiscences that went back earlier than their own association as a sign of growing mental enfeeblement in her friend and her attitude to such decline was equivocal.

  'Perhaps if you had lived at Melpham, Elvira would have come to live with you,' she said, looking inquisitive. With Madame Houdet curiosity was always malicious. 'It is sad to think of a young girl without a real home.'

  Lilian Portway gave a throaty chuckle, 'Oh, my dear, how we differ,' she said. 'My advice to any girl would be: "Leave home! Break away! Take all the wonderful things that life has to offer while you can! The gods grow tired of showering their gifts on those who don't make use of them." You don't know the battle I fought, Stéphanie, to get away. I was like a canary released from a cage in those first days in London; I just sang and sang.' Mrs Portway's enthusiasm often carried her into such doubtful metaphors. 'And then came love and marriage. I hesitated, Stéphanie, I hated bondage. But the urge to motherhood, to creation was too great for me. Liberty and creation. Those are the things I have cherished. Little Hugh was born. I was a mother! I'm afraid, Stéphanie, that when soon after I became a widow, I was glad to get back my old freedom. You would think that was wicked, but I know that it was life speaking in me. The greatest was still to come - Major Barbara, Candida, Mrs Hushabye, and the little I could do for Women!'