‘There is very little room,’ said Toni moderately, although she was appalled.
‘Annie can sleep in Etty’s room,’ replied Dolly, in a manner that was almost cheerful.
Indeed Dolly was cheerful, a fact which finally antagonised her mother-in-law. From time to time she gave way to explosions of grief which nevertheless had something enthusiastic about them. She was older, of course, more stolid, harsher: she had had to come to terms with change as well as with age. The pallid sister-in-law, of whom she had taken no notice, was now a married woman and a mother. Her mother-in-law was now a grim but not enfeebled old lady, whose censoriousness could be taken for granted. When she died—and that day could not be far distant—Dolly would make over the flat, she decided, brighten it up, maybe sell it and move nearer to town.
But Toni had her own views on the matter. She felt no animus against Dolly: she simply wanted her to disappear. What animus she felt was for Adèle Rougier and the fiasco of the Catholic funeral which she had so insistently arranged and for which she had no doubt paid. Dolly referred to this several times, hoping either to impart comfort or to impress, possibly both. Toni’s response was not what she expected.
‘Let us come to an understanding, Dolly,’ she said. ‘There is no room for you here. In any case I am used to being alone. You had better find somewhere else.’
‘But Maman chérie, my resources won’t stretch to it. You know how extravagant Hugo was.’
Toni had not known this, had seen no signs of it when Hugo had lived at home.
‘You can rent a small flat,’ she said. ‘I will help you out initially. In fact I will make you a small allowance. But it will be small, Dolly. You will have to get rid of your maid.’
‘Annie stays with me,’ said Dolly flatly.
She found a flat off the Edgware Road, in one of those streets which lead into St John’s Wood. Toni never saw it, which was just as well, as the flat was rather spacious, with separate servants’ quarters and a drawing-room large enough to accommodate four tables of bridge. She settled in quite well, but never forgave Toni for what she considered her insolence. She had not been snubbed in so decisive a fashion since she was a girl at school, jeered at because her mother consorted with prostitutes. Ancient social resentments were stirred in her, just as ancient snobberies had been revived in Toni, on whom she was now dependent for her allowance. By mutual agreement they never met, but chose to communicate through my mother, whom Dolly took to visiting quite frequently.
‘Chere Mère,’ said Dolly, screwing up her mouth into a humorous grimace. ‘I’m afraid she’s getting old and intolerant. Very difficult. I don’t envy you, Etty.’
Old and intolerant Toni was, but she was still capable of settling her own affairs. Shortly before her death she sold the house in Maresfield Gardens and moved into a small suite in a private hotel. She died quietly in her sleep one night, without giving any trouble. She left her money to my mother, with a sum in trust for myself. Dolly’s allowance was to be paid by the bank on the first Monday of every month.
‘Dear Etty, you deserve every penny of it,’ said Dolly, with a caressing glance at my mother. ‘So devoted. And Jane too.’ This surprised me: my mother had been dutiful but not devoted, whereas I had hardly known my grandmother.
‘As for me,’ said Dolly, ‘I shall just have to be brave, shan’t I?’ She gave a brave laugh. ‘It won’t be easy, but I’ve never been one for indulging in self-pity. Remember what I told you, Jane?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what was that?’
‘Something about singing and dancing.’
‘That’s right. You won’t see me with a frown on my face, despite my difficulties. And I must go to Nice soon, to visit Mother. So many expenses.’ She sighed. ‘Well, this won’t do. Such an out of the way place you live in, Etty. I wonder you don’t move. Jane, are you clever enough to ring for a taxi?’
I considered myself grown-up at the time—I must have been nine or ten—and was therefore discomposed at the suggestion that I might not be up to the task of making a telephone call, I who talked to my friend Marigold Chance for hours.
When I returned to the drawing-room I saw Dolly clasp my mother in a lavish embrace.
‘Dear Etty,’ she said, holding her at arm’s length and contemplating her, head on one side. ‘Funny girl,’ she added. She then took and held her hands for a long and musing moment. There was the merest whisper of paper, so faint as to be barely noticeable, as the cheque was handed over.
4
I grew up English and unafraid. My parents’ world was my world: I inherited the long walks, the afternoons of reading, the almost silent company of Miss Lawlor, without surprise, without rebellion, peaceably and comfortably, with a sense of order which I have never recovered. I was happy with my lot, with our modest existence, which I now realise was far from modest by contemporary standards: my father’s work at the bank was secure, while my mother had her own income. Modesty, to me, signified a certain unostentatious prosperity, never indulged, never advertised, and never, ever, mentioned in conversation. I was not aware of money, or of the need to make money. As far as I was concerned I would go to Cambridge, as my father had done, and then something interesting would come along, some job in publishing, which would surely be suitable for someone with my love of books: I thought I had only to advertise this love for the publishers to come running towards me from all sides, with offers of appreciable salaries and agreeable conditions of work. It will be seen that I had confidence in a world of full employment, one which no longer existed. We were on the threshold of the 1980s and although we knew nothing of what was in store for us, the best years of our lives were over. But at the time we could detect no change; our world, or rather my world, was fixed, ineluctable, of the same order as the rising and the setting of the sun.
Some of this confidence came from the sun itself. We had had two radiant and prolonged summers, so extravagant, so unexpected, so altogether exceptional that they had done something to alter our perceptions of ourselves, as if we had been granted a more favourable situation on the planet. Suddenly people had sought shade, coolness; expeditions to shops were undertaken in the very early morning, while the afternoons were given over to drawn curtains and an uncharacteristic siesta. In Battersea Park, where I walked in the blissful glory of the sun, bodies lay under trees in violent out-flung attitudes, like the peasants in Brueghel’s Land of Cockaigne. ‘Don’t go too far,’ my mother would warn me, as I set off on one of my walks. ‘Keep in the shade.’ But I loved that efflorescence and thought the effort of walking negligeable. Sometimes I walked into town, which was not a great distance. I wanted to look at pictures, either in the National Gallery or in the Wallace Collection. This last was a haven of coolness, even of gloom, yet it was deserted, except for discreet knots of American ladies looking at snuff boxes in glass cases. To this day I can retrieve the sensation of walking over the hot gravel of the courtyard, my head hammering from the unforgiving glare, and the sensation of dignity which descended on me as I made my way up the stairs. Ahead of me were the great Bouchers, masterpieces neglected by most visitors but to me of the same order as the astonishing weather, which, if I turned my head, I could see through the dusty windows. In comparison with the pictures the sun suddenly looked tawdry, exhausted. I remembered the bodies of the young men lying under the trees, dreaming like children in their brief half-hour of liberty, and I turned back to the pictures, to the effortless immaculate soaring of the figures in their spectacular universe. The throbbing in my head died away, as did all bodily sensations, as I stood at the top of the stairs, drowning in blueness.
That is my memory of those summers: the glory of the weather and the refreshment of art. It seemed to me that most of life was mirrored in art, or perhaps that it was the great distinction of art to hold a mirror up to nature, to be an interpreter of phenomena, of situations. It will be seen that my understanding was fairly primitive. But it has remained a resource for me, to
search for an analogue in painting for some emotion which I could either not conquer or bear to examine. Later on, of course, I was to find these analogues in music. I never, or rarely, appropriated them from literature, which I was able to study more objectively. Literature for me was a magnificent destiny for which I was not yet fully prepared. Like my parents I read a great deal, sinking into my bed at night with one of the books my father chose for me, but too often distracted by the flushed sky or the solemnity of the advancing night. The nights were short; the mornings dawned brilliant and very early. And then there was another marvellous day to fill.
Like everyone I remember only the summers. I know that in 1976 the autumn was abrupt and wet, but was somehow of lesser importance than the summer it had succeeded. This propensity to remember the summers of our youth has begun to interest me. I think it is inspired by regret for something which has been lost along the way, since it seems to be a universal feeling. Elderly people remember golden days long past with identical expressions of joy and tenderness, or, more properly speaking, longing. As life proceeds, and the long journey is recognised for what it is, the look that is cast back unconsciously falsifies. That there were winters is a fact which is discarded, seemingly forgotten. And the longing for more summer, more life, intensifies as the dark days wear on, as if light and life have become interchangeable, as perhaps they are.
But the summers of which I speak were real enough, as were my long walks, which my mother accepted, as she had accepted the walks she used to take with my father. She no longer took those walks, preferring to move dreamily but contentedly round the flat and to wait for my father to come home and join her. The heart murmur which had been diagnosed when she was a child had resurfaced after years of giving no sign. She was not ill—in fact she had never seemed better—but she obeyed her doctor, rested, and saved her energies for our various homecomings, when she would greet us with joy and satisfaction. Occasionally she would stand still, as if listening to music, and then we knew that her heart had missed a beat, but she was so used to this that it did not seem to alarm her. If my father were present he would unconsciously hold his breath until she began to move freely again. Yet within seconds they would smile at each other and go about their business, as if disorder had no place in their universe, and as if they therefore had no cause to fear.
When I got home from one of my walks my mother would express gratification at my audacity and would hasten to pour out the tea, summoning Miss Lawlor to witness my prowess. I remember Miss Lawlor standing at the door of the drawing-room, her straw hat already in place (she usually went home in the early afternoon, but occasionally liked to linger) and miming admiration in her typically muted fashion. We were all affected by the weather in one way or another.
‘Sit down, Violet,’ said my mother. ‘You’re not going out in this heat without a cup of tea. It’s supposed to cool one down, although I can’t see how it can. It is simply the best drink of all; ours not to reason why. And help yourself to cake. Jane? Eat something, darling.’
But there was no need to encourage me. I ate and drank substantially, as did my parents. Miss Lawlor, as I have said, shared my mother’s lunch, and mine too if I were at home, and helped to prepare our dinner. Gradually she fell into the habit of joining my mother at teatime, which pleased my mother, as they were very fond of each other. Of the two of them Miss Lawlor was the more discreet, if that is possible. Her conversation consisted largely of gentle murmurings of agreement. She was a timid woman who had long sought a shelter from the world’s harshness, and had found this in the church. My mother tried to make her feel at ease in our home and I think succeeded. Although she had come to us from my father’s side of the family she loved both my parents equally well, and was content to share their lives rather than seek one of her own. I never knew her age, although she must have been a good fifteen years older than my father. But age had not attacked her as it attacks more robust women; she simply became a little more tentative every year, while from her faded face her large brown eyes shone forth with undimmed faith in the world beyond this world, which my parents, free-thinkers, took care never to disparage in her presence. Even when we were alone together no aspersions were allowed: the world to come was left intact for those who believed in it. This was considered part of a general courtesy, all the more impressive in that it was completely undemonstrative. Such a training is difficult to lose, even in situations which call for something more decisive. I never lost my temper, even as a child, and have remained incapable of doing so to this day.
After tea my friend Marigold Chance might receive a visit. She lived in Bramerton Street, a short walk over the bridge. She had been my friend since we had started school together at the age of four, and now that our schooldays were approaching their end we had become aware that life might separate us: I would go to Cambridge and Marigold would begin her nurse’s training. I loved her, as I loved everyone; I was not jealous of her beauty, which was considerable and was to remain so until after the birth of her third child. If I envied her at all it was for her relations, who were numerous. I particularly envied her for her two great-aunts, Catherine and Eleanor—Kate and Nell—two vigorous and heroically built women who travelled down from Glasgow every summer with a cargo of shortbread, whisky, Shetland pullovers for Marigold’s father and brother, and kilts for her mother and for Marigold herself. Kate and Nell, who lived together in harmonious spinsterhood, or single blessedness, as they put it, felt vaguely sorry for the perfectly capable girl their nephew had married, simply because they felt sorry for any woman held in bondage to a man. Paradoxically, they doted on Marigold’s father and brother, and were always trying to devise treats for them. From the double bed in which they had spent their chaste night they would rise and make the early morning tea, anxious to get everyone out of the house so that they could get on with some serious baking. ‘Sit down, dear,’ they would say to Marigold’s mother. ‘Let me do that. Or let Nell. That’s what we’re here for, to give you a rest.’
The idea that aunts could be benevolent was new to me. The only aunt I knew was Dolly, who was selfish, capricious and shrewd, but who could not be imagined in the act of doing anyone a good turn. Therefore it was particularly disagreeable to me to get home and find Dolly installed in either my father’s or my mother’s chair. Her visits were now less frequent than they had been after my grandmother’s death, for she seemed to have a mysteriously flourishing social life. She had inherited from my grandmother, or rather she had appropriated from her in lieu of anything more marketable, my grandmother’s entire circle of friends, ‘the refugees’, as she laughingly called them. The old ladies who were my grandmother’s contemporaries still loved their game of cards and were intrigued by Dolly, who seemed anxious to carry on her mother-in-law’s traditions. And these old ladies had married sons and daughters, all of them substantial people, who were not averse to going to St John’s Wood for tea on a Sunday and staying on for bridge and Annie’s canapés. These soirées were remarkably successful. Curiously enough Dolly got on very well with the women, all of whom became her dearest friends until she fell out with one or other of them. These déboires would be reported to my mother with full accompaniment of heaving bosom and flashing eyes. ‘That woman,’ she would say. ‘Don’t even mention the name to me! When I think of all I’ve done for her!’ My mother knew better than to enquire on this point; she knew that her role was essentially a humble one. ‘I’ve introduced her to various people, influential people,’ Dolly would continue. ‘And then she has the effrontery to tell me not to rely on her making up a four in future. She’s going to be busy, she says.’ This was uttered with a fine show of scorn. Neither of us said anything. We knew that Dolly and her ungrateful friend or enemy—it was often difficult to know which—would be on the telephone to each other as usual the following morning. I did not understand such behaviour then, but I do now. It is the behaviour of the true primitive.
Dolly would come to see my mother in the spirit of
a benefactor visiting her indulgence on the unfortunate. No doubt she came for another, simpler reason as well, but my mother was so discreet that we never knew whether this was or was not the case. My father never asked her again, aware that to do so would cause her embarrassment.
‘Dolly was here today,’ she might say apologetically. Later that evening she might sigh, ‘Poor Dolly.’ For whatever pity Dolly felt for my mother was as nothing beside the genuine pity my mother felt for Dolly.
One particular day I got home to find Dolly drinking tea with my mother. It was a chill rainy autumn day, but Dolly was in one of her beautiful silk dresses: she seemed to generate her own microclimate, another characteristic of the primitive disposition. It seemed that she was about to go to Brussels to see Adèle Rougier. She was always about to leave for either Brussels or Nice, although I doubt whether she left London as frequently as she said she did: we had no real notion of her movements since she disregarded matters of fact like dates and times. Her conversation was, as always, filled with the names of people entirely unknown to us but known to Dolly through her bridge-playing afternoons. Sometimes she did go to Nice, to see her mother, but had nothing to say when she returned. Indeed we did not quite know when she had returned, since she was uncharacteristically reticent about her mother, on whom she continued to lavish her entire store of tenderness. The tenderness, I suspect, undermined her: she preferred a more embattled attitude to life, which she was able to exercise more satisfactorily in London or Brussels. Visits to Brussels seemed to yield more in the way of argument and patronage, two of her more preferred modes, as if she were eternally pitted against adversaries, on whom she might decide to confer friendship. My mother, who was treated to a full account of Dolly’s recent triumphs, had nothing against these visits; in fact she encouraged them, no doubt in more ways than one. She regarded Dolly’s life as flighty, even tragic; she wished to get her away from the card table and put her life on an even keel. She saw attendance on an elderly acquaintance as a more serious undertaking than the endless telephone conversations of which her mornings seemed to consist.
Dolly Page 8
