The Wrong Set and Other Stories

by Angus Wilson

  Johnnie’s affection for them was intensely protective, and increased daily as he heard and saw the contempt and dislike with which they were regarded by many persons in the village. The knowledge that ‘they had been away’ was nothing new to him when Mr Codrington had revealed it that afternoon. Once Miss Dolly had told him how a foolish doctor had advised her to go into a home ‘for you know, caro, ever since I returned to these grey skies my health has not been very good. People here think me strange, I cannot attune myself to the cold northern soul. But it was useless to keep me there, I need beauty and warmth of colour, and there it was so drab. The people, too, were unhappy crazy creatures and I missed my music so dreadfully.’ Miss Marian had spoken more violently of it on one of her ‘funny’ days, when from the depredations caused by the village boys to the orchard she had passed on to the strange man she had found spying in her father’s library and the need for a high wall round the house to prevent people peering through the telescopes from Mr Hatton’s house opposite. ‘They’re frightened of us, though, Johnnie,’ she had said, ‘I’m too honest for them and Dolly’s too clever. They’re always trying to separate us. Once they took me away against my will. They couldn’t keep me, I wrote to all sorts of big pots, friends of Father’s, you know, and they had to release me’. Johnnie realized, too, that when his mother had said that she never knew which was the keeper, she had spoken more truly than she understood. Each sister was constantly alarmed for the other and anxious to hide the other’s defects from an un-understanding world. Once when Miss Dolly had been telling him a long story about a young waiter who had slipped a note into her hand the last time she had been in London, Miss Marian called Johnnie into the kitchen to look at some pies she had made. Later she had told him not to listen if Dolly said ‘soppy things’ because being so beautiful she did not realize that she was no longer young. Another day when Miss Marian had brought in the silver framed photo of her father in full dress uniform and had asked Johnnie to swear an oath to clear the general’s memory in the village, Miss Dolly had begun to play a mazurka on the piano. Later, she too, had warned Johnnie not to take too much notice when her sister got excited. ‘She lives a little too much in the past, Gabriele. She suffered very much when our father died. Poor Marian, it is a pity perhaps that she is so good, she has had too little of the pleasures of life. But we must love her very much, caro, very much.’

  Johnnie had sworn to himself to stand by them and to fight the wicked people who said they were old and useless and in the way. But now, since that dreadful tea-party, he could not fight for them any longer, for he knew why they had been shut up and felt that it was justified. In a sense, too, he understood that it was to protect others that they had to be restrained, for the most awful memory of all that terrifying afternoon was the thought that he had shared with pleasure for a moment in their wicked game.

  It was certainly most unfortunate that Johnnie should have been invited to tea on that Thursday, for the Misses Swindale had been drinking heavily on and off for the preceding week, and were by that time in a state of mental and nervous excitement that rendered them far from normal. A number of events had combined to produce the greatest sense of isolation in these old women whose sanity in any event hung by a precarious thread. Miss Marian had been involved in a unpleasant scene with the vicar over the new hall for the Young Peopled Club. She was, as usual, providing the cash for the building and felt extremely happy and excited at being consulted about the decorations. Though she did not care for the vicar, she set out to see him, determined that she would accommodate herself to changing times. In any case, since she was the benefactress, it was, she felt, particularly necessary that she should take a back seat, to have imposed her wishes in any way would have been most ill-bred. It was an unhappy chance that caused the vicar to harp upon the need for new fabrics for the chairs and even to digress upon the ugliness of the old upholstery, for these chairs had come from the late General Swindale’s library. Miss Marian was immediately reminded of her belief that the vicar was attempting secretly to blacken her father’s memory, nor was the impression corrected when he tactlessly suggested that the question of her father’s taste was unimportant and irrelevant. She was more deeply wounded still to find in the next few days that the village shared the vicar’s view that she was attempting to dictate to the boys’ club by means of her money. ‘After all’, as Mrs Grove at the Post Office said, ‘it’s not only the large sums that count, Miss Swindale, it’s all the boys’ sixpences that they’ve saved up.’ ‘You’ve too much of your father’s ways in you, that’s the trouble, Miss Swindale’, said Mr Norton, who was famous for his bluntness ‘and they won’t do nowadays’.

  She had returned from this unfortunate morning’s shopping to find Mrs Calkett on the doorstep. Now the visit of Mrs Calkett was not altogether unexpected, for Miss Marian had guessed from chance remarks of her sister’s that something ‘unfortunate’ had happened with young Tony. When, however, the sharp-faced unpleasant little woman began to complain about Miss Dolly with innuendos and veiledly coarse suggestions, Miss Marian could stand it no longer and drove her away harshly. ‘How dare you speak about my sister in that disgusting way, you evil-minded little woman’ she said. ‘You’d better be careful or you’ll find yourself charged with libel’. When the scene was over, she felt very tired. It was dreadful of course that anyone so mean and cheap should speak thus of anyone so fine and beautiful as Dolly, but it was also dreadful that Dolly should have made such a scene possible.

  Things were not improved, therefore, when Dolly returned from Brighton at once elevated by a new conquest and depressed by its subsequent results, it seemed that the new conductor on the Southdown ‘that charming dark Italian-looking boy I was telling you about, my dear’ had returned her a most intimate smile and pressed her hand when giving her change. Her own smiles must have been embarrassingly intimate, for a woman in the next seat had remarked loudly to her friend, ‘These painted old things. Really, I wonder the men don’t smack their faces.’ ‘I couldn’t help smiling’ remarked Miss Dolly ‘she was so evidently jalouse, my dear. I’m glad to say the conductor did not hear, for no doubt he would have felt it necessary to come to my defence, he was so completely épris.’ But, for once, Miss Marian was too vexed to play ball, she turned on her sister and roundly condemned her conduct, ending up by accusing her of bringing misery to them both and shame to their father’s memory. Poor Miss Dolly just stared in bewilderment, her baby blue eyes round with fright, tears washing the mascara from her eyelashes in black streams down the wrinkled vermilion of her cheeks. Finally she ran crying up to her room.

  That night both the sisters began to drink heavily. Miss Dolly lay like some monstrous broken doll, her red hair streaming over her shoulders, her corsets unloosed and her fat body poking out of an old pink velvet ball dress – pink with red hair was always so audacious – through the most unexpected places in bulges of thick blue-white flesh. She sipped at glass after glass of gin, sometimes staring into the distance with bewilderment that she should find herself in such a condition, sometimes leering pruriently at some pictures of Johnny Weismuller in swimsuits that she had cut out of Film Weekly. At last she began to weep to think that she had sunk to this. Miss Marian sat at her desk and drank more deliberately from a cut glass decanter of brandy. She read solemnly through her father’s letters, their old-fashioned, earnest Victorian sentiments swimming ever more wildly before her eyes. But, at last, she, too, began to weep as she thought of how his memory would be quite gone when she passed away, and of how she had broken the promise that she had made to him on his deathbed to stick to her sister through thick and thin.

  So they continued for two or three days with wild spasms of drinking and horrible, sober periods of remorse. They cooked themselves odd scraps in the kitchen, littering the house with unwashed dishes and cups, but never speaking, always avoiding each other. They didn’t change their clothes or wash, and indeed made little alteration in their appearance. Miss Doll
y put fresh rouge on her cheeks periodically and some pink roses in her hair which hung there wilting; she was twice sick over the pink velvet dress. Miss Marian put on an old scarlet hunting waistcoat of her father’s, partly out of maudlin sentiment and partly because she was cold. Once she fell on the stairs and cut her forehead against the banisters; the red and white handkerchief which she tied round her head gave her the appearance of a tipsy pirate. On the fourth day, the sisters were reconciled and sat in Miss Dolly’s room. That night they slept, lying heavily against each other on Miss Dolly’s bed, open-mouthed and snoring, Miss Marian’s deep guttural rattle contrasting with Miss Dolly’s high-pitched whistle. They awoke on Thursday morning, much sobered, to the realization that Johnnie was coming to tea that afternoon.

  It was characteristic that neither spoke a word of the late debauch. Together they went out into the hot July sunshine to gather raspberries for Johnnie’s tea. But the nets in the kitchen garden had been disarranged and the birds had got the fruit. The awful malignity of this chance event took some time to pierce through the fuddled brains of the two ladies, as they stood there grotesque and obscene in their staring pink and clashing red, with their heavy pouchy faces and bloodshot eyes showing up in the hard, clear light of the sun. But when the realization did get home it seemed to come as a confirmation of all the beliefs of persecution which had been growing throughout the drunken orgy. There is little doubt that they were both a good deal mad when they returned to the house.

  Johnnie arrived punctually at four o’clock, for he was a small boy of exceptional politeness. Miss Marian opened the door to him, and he was surprised at her appearance in her red bandana and her scarlet waistcoat, and especially by her voice which, though friendly and gruff as usual, sounded thick and flat. Miss Dolly, too, looked more than usually odd with one eye closed in a kind of perpetual wink, and with her pink dress falling off her shoulders. She kept on laughing in a silly, high giggle. The shock of discovering that the raspberries were gone had driven them back to the bottle and they were both fairly drunk. They pressed upon the little boy, who was thirsty after his walk, two small glasses in succession, one of brandy, the other of gin, though in their sober mood the ladies would have died rather than have seen their little friend take strong liquor. The drink soon combined with the heat of the day and the smell of vomit that hung around the room to make Johnnie feel most strange. The walls of the room seemed to be closing in and the floor to be moving up and down like sea waves. The ladies’ faces came up at him suddenly and then receded, now Miss Dolly’s with great blobs of blue and scarlet and her eyes winking and leering, now Miss Marian’s a huge white mass with her moustache grown large and black. He was only conscious by fits and starts of what they were doing or saying. Sometimes he would hear Miss Marian speaking in a flat, slow monotone. She seemed to be reading out her father’s letters, snatches of which came to him clearly and then faded away. ‘There is so much to be done in our short sojourn on this earth, so much that may be done for good, so much for evil. Let us earnestly endeavour to keep the good steadfastly before us,’ then suddenly ‘Major Campbell has told me of his decision to leave the regiment. I pray God hourly that he may have acted in full consideration of the Higher Will to which …’, and once grotesquely, ‘Your Aunt Maud was here yesterday, she is a maddening woman and I consider it a just judgement upon the Liberal party that she should espouse its cause.’ None of these phrases meant anything to the little boy, but he was dimly conscious that Miss Marian was growing excited, for he heard her say ‘That was our father. As Shakespeare says “He was a man take him all in all” Johnnie. We loved him, but there were those who sought to destroy him, for he was too big for them. But their day is nearly ended. Always remember that, Johnnie.’ It was difficult to hear all that the elder sister said, for Miss Dolly kept on drawling and giggling in his ear about a black charmeuse evening gown she had worn, and a young donkeyboy she had danced with in the fiesta at Asti. ‘E come era bello, caro Gabriele, come era bello. And afterwards … but I must spare the ears of one so young the details of the arte dell’ amore’ she added with a giggle and then with drunken dignity ‘it would not be immodest I think to mention that his skin was like velvet. Only a few lire, too, just imagine.’ All this, too, was largely meaningless to the boy, though he remembered it in later years.

  For a while he must have slept, since he remembered that later he could see and hear more clearly though his head ached terribly. Miss Dolly was seated at the piano playing a little jig and bobbing up and down like a mountainous pink blancmange, whilst Miss Marian more than ever like a pirate was dancing some sort of a hornpipe. Suddenly Miss Dolly stopped playing. ‘Shall we show him the prisoner?’ she said solemnly. ‘Head up, shoulders straight’, said Miss Marian in a parody of her old manner, ‘you’re going to be very honoured, me lad. Promise you’ll never betray that honour. You shall see one of the enemy punished. Our father gave us close instructions “Do good to all” he said “but if you catch one of the enemy, remember you are a soldier’s daughters.” We shall obey that command.’ Meanwhile Miss Dolly had returned from the kitchen, carrying a little bird which was pecking and clawing at the net in which it had been caught and shrilling incessantly – it was a little bullfinch. ‘You’re a very beautiful little bird’, Miss Dolly whispered, ‘with lovely soft pink feathers and pretty grey wings. But you’re a very naughty little bird too, tanto cattivo. You came and took the fruit from us which we’d kept for our darling Gabriele.’ She began feverishly to pull the rose breast feathers from the bird, which piped more loudly and squirmed. Soon little trickles of red blood ran down among the feathers. ‘Scarlet and pink a very daring combination’, Miss Dolly cried. Johnnie watched from his chair, his heart beating fast. Suddenly Miss Marian stepped forward and holding the bird’s head she thrust a pin into its eyes. ‘We don’t like spies around here looking at what we are doing’, she said in her flat, gruff voice. ‘When we find them we teach them a lesson so that they don’t spy on us again’. Then she took out a little pocket knife and cut into the bird’s breast; its wings were beating more feebly now and it claws only moved spasmodically, whilst its chirping was very faint. Little yellow and white strings of entrails began to peep out from where she had cut. ‘Oh!’ cried Miss Dolly, ‘I like the lovely colours, I don’t like these worms.’ But Johnnie could bear it no longer, white and shaking he jumped from his chair and seizing the bird he threw it on the floor and then he stamped on it violently until it was nothing but a sodden crimson mass. ‘Oh, Gabriele, what have you done? You’ve spoilt all the soft, pretty colours. Why it’s nothing now, it looks just looks like a lump of raspberry jam. Why have you done it, Gabriele?’ cried Miss Dolly. But little Johnnie gave no answer, he had run from the room.

  SIGNIFICANT EXPERIENCE

  ‘I SUPPOSE’ said Chris Loveridge ‘that no people understand these matters as well as the French’ and since his fellow firewatchers were quite unable to escape from his company, they supposed so too.

  ‘They are’ he went on ‘the only really adult race. They have none of the Anglo-Saxon’s lunatic notion that it is somehow sinful or disgraceful to learn love-making as one would any other art. Any boy of good family is expected to take a mistress by the time he is eighteen and these women have a respected place in society. They are often clever, talented women, and they regard their job of instructing young men in the art of love-making with proper seriousness. The experience a young man may have with an older woman in this way is often highly significant.’

  Jeremy wondered how many more such evenings they would have to endure before a wisely directed bomb removed Chris Loveridge from their midst. Experience with an older woman, indeed; he wondered what Loveridge would do if he told him the story of his affaire with Prue in the summer of 1936; and yet, in a way, it had been significant.

  It was so cool inside the patisserie that Jeremy would gladly have stayed on there for ever. Every afternoon of his holiday he had sat there while Prue was ‘lying
down’ at the hotel, and it was therefore the one ritual of the days together that had not been scarred by her growing possessiveness, her ‘scenes’, her engulfing unhappiness. He loved the little shop with its beaded curtains shutting off the glare of the sun, the bottles with their Dana Gibson figures filled with pink and white and mauve dragées. At twenty-two he still had much of the schoolboy’s appetite and could happily consume unlimited quantities of marron glacés and raspberry water-ices. He was filled with elation as he repeated to himself ‘Tomorrow she and I will separate. Tomorrow I will be alone.’ To think that he had been jealous of Kuno, jealous of his deeper hold on Prue, had hated him for living on Prue’s money – now he was only grateful to this German gigolo whom he had never seen for sending the telegrams that were taking her north to Paris. He only felt afraid that his resolution to let her go would weaken in these last hours – evaporate in the pleasure that her charm and beauty could still provide, dissolve before the pity that her tears could inspire. Tomorrow he would be freed from this struggle, but if only meanwhile he could just sit here in the cool, with his fingers crossed against all dangers.