by Angus Wilson
'All right, Pater,' she called back. In 1936, she still preserved with no self-consciousness much of the vocabulary of her youth.
'He never drinks it if it's there,' she said, but without the smile that would once have accompanied such maternal statements about her father-in-law. 'The doctor says he mustn't fidget on any account. So everything has to be just so. I'll be down in a minute.'
'I'll wait,' said Gerald.
'If you want to,' she said, 'but I'm hardly company for anyone nowadays. I go to bed very early, you know, I get so jolly tired.' When she came down again, she was still dragging the hot-water bottle. 'It was there, of course,' she said, 'all the time.' She led the way into the dining-room. 'Oh dear!' she said, surveying that mahogany wasteland, 'it's only sandwiches. I let cook and Staples out most evenings and they leave something cold, only I never know what it's going to be. I thought it would be tongue. I can boil you an egg in a jiffy, if you like.'
'No,' said Gerald, 'and for God's sake put that hot-water bottle down.' It had become intolerable to him that she should be sunk in this frowsy, deadened domestic role. Her skirt and coat, he noticed, were grubby and creased, but it was the hot-water bottle with its fluffy pink cover that brought on his outburst of anger. 'You're being a bloody fool,' he said, 'and a wilful fool at that. There's no earthly reason why you should live on scraps or appoint yourself inefficient nurse to the old man.'
'Oh, yes, there is,' she said; 'he prefers me to a professional. It's important that he should have what he wants, Gerrie. The doctor says so.'
'And the sandwiches?' he asked. 'What are the servants for?'
'I don't like people about,' she answered. 'I only ask, you know, not to be fussed. I can go on quite easily as long as there's no fussing.' She picked up a sandwich and began eating it where she stood. 'Anyway,' she said, 'accounts are bound to be presented one day. And this is mine. I was jolly lucky to get credit for so long.'
'Either that's just melodramatic nonsense,' Gerald replied, 'or you mean literally money. And if you do, you know perfectly well that I've told you again and again that you have only to ask me.'
'Thank you,' said Dollie bitterly. 'I suppose people who've always had a lot of money find it easy to talk like that. I wish you didn't though, Gerrie; it doesn't fit into my idea of a gentleman. But then I'm awfully old-fashioned.'
'Oh God!' Gerald cried. 'Surely one thing our intimacy means is that we needn't consider stupid things like money. I owe you everything I have and more.'
'I think,' Dollie said, taking her second strong whisky, 'that that's melodramatic nonsense. If you mean spiritual things, you haven't got much to owe to anyone, and if you mean money, then you're simply saying you ought to have paid me off. Thank you. I'd rather get it from the old boy. At least I can give him this in return,' and she picked up the hot-water bottle and waved it in Gerald's face.
Gerald seized it from her and threw it across the room. 'I find it disgusting,' he said, 'that because we have ceased to be lovers, you should regard our relationship as at an end.'
'Do you?' Dollie asked. With her third whisky her cheeks burned bright red, soon her speech would be slurred. 'I had something to give you then, old thing. We look at life very differently. As I see it, when you haven't anything more to give a person, well, then you're on your ownio.'
Gerald looked at her slim little figure, her soft grey eyes, and wavy brown hair. He felt the strange mixture of jauntiness and clinging that was always so attractive to him; he was about to say something when the red, burning cheeks caught his eye and he remembered the endless scenes of the last years. 'I wish in that case,' he said, 'that you would take a job. You're still young.'
Dollie sat down in one of the huge, uncomfortable leather armchairs; she seemed lost in its depths. She began to cry. 'Blast you,' she said. 'I was determined not to do this. Why the hell did you say it?' She looked at him. 'I see. You don't want to think of your own age. Well, I'm sorry,' she said, 'but there it is. We're old. This is 1936, Gerrie. I'm forty-five. In any case, what sort of a job could I take? There's plenty of women looking for jobs who know how to do things. I was just taught to live on others. And I have,' she added savagely.
Gerald was angry now. He resented her tears. 'All right, throw it in my face,' he said. 'I've taken the best years of your life. Does it occur to you how boring these sort of scenes are?' He walked over to the fire and, turning his back on her, warmed his hands. 'I'm sorry,' he said, when he felt in control of himself. When he looked round, he was glad to see she was no longer weeping. She was instead squirting soda-water into her fourth whisky. 'It's just that this is all so squalid,' he went on. 'I can't bear to see you running round after a paralysed old man. Emptying bed-pans.'
Dollie giggled. 'Dance, dance, dance, little lady; leave your troubles behind,' she said. 'You're impossibly romantic, old thing. You won't face anno domini, will you? In any case, I didn't ask you to come here.' She got up rather unsteadily and came over to him. 'The pater is absolutely hot stuff at his own game, isn't he?' she asked, looking up at him earnestly.
Gerald hesitated. 'He's a very great historian,' he said.
'All right then,' Dollie replied. 'I took his son from him. The one thing he cared for. I've taken his money, because he thought he owed a duty to Gilbert's widow. He saw me, Gerrie, as that most romantic thing on earth - a young war widow - the widow of the great Gilbert Stokesay, poet, who died for England. Have you ever heard the old boy recite "In Flanders fields the poppies grow"? You should. And what did I do? I didn't even marry again. I lived with you, Gilbert's best friend, his own favourite pupil, a married man. But he's accepted me in his rather pompous way, poor pet, even when my own family have given me the go-by. And I spent his money. Oh, yes, lots of it, since I left you. You know how I run up bills; I've been betting a lot and losing. The old boy's never so much as grumbled. Oh! I'll give him that. He's always the great gentleman. And now he's stuck up there. He'll recover, but not for long. It's only a matter of time, the doctor says, before he has another stroke, and then he won't recover. You say he's a great historian. I didn't even keep the home fires burning. It's the least I can do, Gerald, to stick by him.'
She broke off and suddenly leaned over, peering into his face. 'Do you remember that scene we had with Inge at the Café Royal? Well, you're not likely to forget it. You said then something about your family life, your children, and - me. I haven't forgotten that. You said, "The lesser has to be sacrificed to the greater." The lesser was me, and you were right.'
She went out of the room, holding a little with one hand to the backs of the chairs, as she made her way, in order to retain her balance. In a moment she was back again with Gerald's hat and overcoat. 'Look,' she said, 'it isn't any good, old thing. You take the high road and I'll take the low road.'
They had met again, of course, but she had taken good care to see that she always got drunk on such occasions and, already before the war broke out, he had ceased to see her....
Both Marie Hélène and Kay were intent on steering the conversation away from l'affaire Pelican; but, to John and Robin, it seemed one of the most potentially succulent of all the many bones over which they had snarled and snapped since boyhood. John's temper was hanging by a thread behind the humorous, bantering air which he more and more used in his days of celebrity when talking to old friends or to the family. He attributed all criticism from those who had known him before his success to envy; the fact that he had often been correct in this supposition was his strongest defence against self-doubt. Robin tried hard to assume the air of detached superiority which he knew from experience would break down his spoilt, younger brother's defences. Their mother, with more truth than she realized, regarded their quarrels as a sort of tribute to her.
'This is really wonderful,' cried John, with extra hearty laughter, pushing back his curly hair with a carefree, boyish gesture. 'I wish our Communist friends were here to see it. It would warm their dear little Marxist hearts, which must always be a
bit lonely on Christmas Day. What a partnership! Robin Middleton, the head of our greatest steel-construction business, the champion of "more free-enterprise houses for all", and Selwyn Pelican, one of our top red-tape manufacturers, the champion of that rousing slogan, "Every brick laid means a civil servant paid". With their combined pull on the noose, who dares to say old England won't be hanged? It's Merdle and the Barnacles all over again, and, by God, we need another Dickens to blow them off the face of the country.' John, watching the growing distaste on Donald's and Robin's faces, pitched the vulgar note the more loudly.
'Really, John, that's libellous!' Kay took up a teasing note. 'Merdle was a wholesale swindler. We don't want Middleton v. Middleton in the courts.' She realized too late that it was not altogether a tactful joke.
Robin's heavy form was sprawled in his armchair. His smooth, well-manicured hand rubbed his fleshy face to conceal his impatience to attack his brother. 'My dear Kay,' he drawled, 'there's nothing John would like better than a family law-suit. A nice bit of sentimental Galsworthian social drama. Think of the publicity!' He chuckled. 'I see our dear Johnnie dressed as Robin Hood, doing a Douglas Fairbanks leap across the court benches, defending the rights of the Common Man.'
Kay tried to make up for her unfortunate attempt at humour. 'I think he could still leap with a little more agility than you, Robin,' she said. She felt herself young again, bringing a schoolgirl sense of fair play to her brothers' quarrels. 'Well, anyway, John, if it's Dickens that's needed, that's easy.' She smiled at her younger brother. 'I do wish you hadn't stopped writing, my dear,' she said.
Robin smiled. 'I believe John feels himself somewhat out of sympathy with the world of literature nowadays. The young tread unpleasantly fast upon our heels, you know. The fashions have changed since Johnnie's jeux d'esprit hit the highbrows in that dawn of freedom 1945! I believe the taste for proletarian vignettes has gone out, hasn't it, Donald?'
Before her son-in-law could affirm the statement, Ingeborg had come to her favourite son's defence. 'Now, Robin my dear,' she said, 'you don't understand anything at all about Johnnie. He is very good friends with young people.' She smoothed the skirt of her silk evening dress. Above its harsh violet, her pink face and flaxen-streaked hair clashed fiercely. She shook her large head complacently. 'I know!' she added.
'Oh, I've no doubt, Mother,' Robin said, his eyes glinting angrily.
'John's famous gift for bridging social gulfs is not unsung, you know.'
Ingeborg turned away from her elder son and put her hand on John's shoulder. 'Dear Johnnie,' she said.
John moved his shoulder abruptly; whatever depth of understanding his mother's gesture implied, he felt it to be out of place. He was glad that Robin had stepped over the border of personal privacy around which they had been skirting the whole evening. If secret citadels were to be attacked, so then should 'open towns'. He leaned his head back against the chair and gave way to frank laughter. 'Oh, my dear Robin!' he cried, 'you shouldn't believe everything that Elvira tells you about the great world of art. She's so busy keeping up with the old avant-garde that she hasn't time to notice the new writers growing up in front of her eyes.' Then, leaning towards his brother, he said deliberately, 'She's incurably romantic, of course. The avant-garde's a lost cause and that's enough for her. It's thwarted maternalism really. She'll be all right when she finds some starving genius of her own age to mend socks for.'
It was the flush that came to her husband's face that brought a responding flush to Marie Hélène's sallow neck. At least, she thought, he might have had the power to control his feelings before his wretched family. She turned to John, and looking down her long nose at him, she said, 'I should not be afraid to meet John in the law courts. I am sure that we should win.' Her imagination had been playing with the idea with relish ever since it had been mooted. It was an unfortunate ground to choose.
John laughed loudly. 'I'm sure you would, Marie Hélène,' he said, 'after the way you trounced your aunt. Poor Madame Houdet! She only had her tragic circumstances to speak for her.'
'The law is concerned with the truth,' said Marie Hélène. She turned her wrist in a contemptuous gesture so that her emerald bracelet-glittered. In that gesture, John thought, one knows the picture she carries of herself. He looked at her yellow arms and heavy green silk dress with disgust. She revived for a moment the long-since-faded earnestness of his youthful dislike of the bourgeois way of life. French bourgeoise snob! 'Oh, of course,' he said, 'I suppose the wretched woman thought that two years in Auschwitz and the loss of all her possessions were truth enough.'
'Really!' Donald's prim voice was shocked out of its drawl. 'Are we to be spared no sentimentality, John, even the exploded realist nonsense that unhappiness is somehow truer than happiness, or that...'
Whatever he would have said further was drowned in Ingeborg's enthusiastic voice. She had not followed the conversation very well, but she sensed that a deflection of the conversation would assist John. 'Bravo, Donald!' she cried. 'I am so glad that at last someone says so. Of course that is so. Happiness is truth. It is only when we are really happy that we know what is true.'
Gerald shook himself uneasily. Old age, he reflected, seemed to have every disadvantage. It cut one off; but it also let in what had long been carefully censored. He had trained himself for years not to hear the embarrassing nonsense that Inge talked, and now it cut through his enfeebled defences. 'It is only when we are really happy that we know what is true.' Inge's sugary words, her glottal Scandinavian sing-song, flowed back through his memories until they had covered with their sticky coating one of the episodes he kept apart as sacrosanct. ...
He was standing at the door of the hotel bedroom, looking back at the disordered bed on which lay the tray with its empty jugs and crumblings of croissants. The traces of butter were liquid now in the intense heat that stifled the room even at seven in the morning. He had been Dollie's lover for four years, but he still left any bedroom they shared with obvious reluctance. Dollie enjoyed their love-making as much as he did; but every episode in its place for her. She had always been greedy for the minutes as they came, but, since she had accepted disreputability, she devoured time.
'It's after seven, Gerrie,' she said. 'We must get going.' She accepted foreign travel only if certain English disciplines were maintained. The 'early start' was first among them. Once she was assured of these obvious symbols of continuity, she could give herself entirely to the moment. She was too much in control of herself to fall into the little superstitions and obsessive acts that had replaced religion for many of her generation and set, but certain conventions had become sacrosanct in her life. Without their fulfilment, she lost momentum.
A letter awaited them at the little hotel reception desk. Dollie opened it. 'Mrs Salad,' she said. 'Her writing is odd. Everything's going swimmingly at Fitzroy Square.'
'What does she say?' asked Gerald.
Dollie laughed. 'Read it to yourself, darling,' she said, and when, surprised, he asked, 'Sure you want to hear what Mrs Salad has to say?' she said, 'Not really, Gerrie, everything in its place.'
'I don't believe Mrs Salad would be out of place anywhere,' he laughed, 'even in Avignon. She'd have found some way of ministering to the pleasures of the exiled popes.'
Dollie did not answer directly, but as she drove the little Wolseley Hornet over the bridge to Villeneuve she looked at him with a frown. They sped past the great stone walls that still guarded the ruins and she said, 'I want to go up there again.'
'All right,' Gerald answered. 'We can go on our way back.'
'You don't need to come, darling,' she said. 'You've got it all in your head. That's why Mrs Salad and things don't put the wind up you. But I need so many goes to make me feel I've really been to a place.'
Gerald once more looked at her with surprise. 'You know that we needn't go back for at least a month, if you'd rather not,' he told her, but she shook her head.
'Oh, no, it'll be quite jolly to be back o
nce we're there,' she said.
They lunched at Aiguës Mortes in a little restaurant in the central square looking across at the statue of Frédéric Mistral so pitifully declaring the nineteenth century's certainty of its taste. But before luncheon, while Gerald drank his vermouth, she had insisted on walking the ramparts despite the grilling noon heat. He caught sudden glimpses of her pale-green linen dress from moment to moment and imagined her there intent on every object - a lizard, and salt-pans in the distance, a Romanesque tower, some old men playing bowls. She would listen when he talked of the historical meaning of what they saw, would even ask questions, but he knew that, if she remembered anything of what he said, she kept it quite apart from what she saw. Her pleasure was direct and sensual. It was part of the atmosphere of concreteness, of certainty which she built around him. There were moments of odd, childish questioning, as this morning, but they were gone very quickly. Mostly she was just there, silent and happy. After the constant rambling of Stokesay, the eager enthusiasm of Rose Lorimer, above all, after the crescendoing whimsy with which Inge so consciously greeted each 'wonderful, natural' stage in the children's growth, Gerald found his energies and confidence depleted. His interpretation of Dollie's silence as affirmation of life brought him new vigour. Without her, he would never have gone beyond cautious articles, lectures only less cautious because he could believe them to be ephemeral. She had given him the assurance needed to generalize his knowledge, to sustain the scope of his long work on Cnut. She allowed him time to find words for his thoughts, and without words he lived in a blur of distrust.
After luncheon, as they sat at a café table over coffee and cognac, the unpleasant little Englishman whom they had noticed during the meal came over to them. 'Well,' he said, 'Snowden's had to eat his words and we've got to pack up and go home. I hope to God they get rid of the whole lot of them,' he said. 'I suppose Ramsay Mac's all right. He's had the courage to own he was wrong, at any rate. As for the rest, the sooner they go back to the board-school teaching or mining or whatever the damned thing was they were doing, the better for the country.
