FAMILY CIRCLE

by MARY HOCKING

  ‘Mr. Routh is more than careful.’ I could not contain myself any longer. ‘He is a very good man.’

  ‘And Mrs. Routh, too.’ She went on as though I had merely intervened to record agreement. ‘After all she does for other people, in the schools, and marriage guidance … to have something like this happen in their own family! It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?’

  ‘It happens in most families I should imagine.’

  She screwed up her eyes, perhaps trying to recall the members of her family who had had hallucinations about Khatmandu.

  ‘I can tell you one thing,’ she said, jerking her head towards the inner door. ‘He won’t do her any good. Look at what happened to his own wife. I’ve heard it said he made her worse, he treated her so badly. And I can tell you it wasn’t always as quiet as this in the surgery when she was alive! I wouldn’t want to tell you the things I’ve heard waiting here of a night.’ I tried to concentrate on The Field in case she should relent. She went on, ‘Now, if only it was Dr. Stonor; everyone liked Dr. Stonor, he was really one of us.’

  ‘He couldn’t even diagnose whooping cough!’ Why I should have remembered this unfortunate error on the poor man’s part, I cannot imagine, nor why I should have chosen to come out with such a defensive remark.

  ‘Didn’t you used to come here years ago?’ The woman appeared to take no notice of any expression of opinion contrary to her own; I looked at the broad, flat planes of her face and realized that she was not only spiteful but of low intelligence.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I am a great friend of the Routh family. This is practically my second home.’

  ‘Yes, I thought I remembered you. You’ll be very shocked about this, then.’

  ‘On the contrary, I’m quite surprised to see how well she looks.’

  The woman wrapped her coat about her and bade me good¬night. I guessed that she was going to tell her friends and neighbours how shocked I was.

  The woman had made me angry. It was very quiet after she had gone and I imagined that I could hear the thudding of my pulse. A doctor’s surgery is never a pleasant place at the best of times and in the evening, when one is alone, there can be few places more conducive to hypochondria. I wondered if I should wait outside for Margaret. But by now I had a feeling of having accepted a responsibility when I suggested accompanying her and I began to imagine that it was very important that when she opened that door I should be sitting here, composed and reassuring. I crossed my legs and again consulted The Field. The surgery must have been well-insulated, there was no sound. I was becoming rather alarmed when eventually a door opened and I heard voices, one low, the words indistinguishable, the other brisk and articulate.

  ‘Of course you can manage! How old are you? Twenty-two? That means you are a grown woman.’

  From his tone, he might have been dealing with nothing worse than a case of mild hysteria. This kind of treatment must be particularly shaming to Margaret who had always been stoic about her ailments; I wished that I had waited outside so that there was no witness to her discomfort. There was a further mumbling and this time I did distinguish the words ‘mother and father’ before the other voice cut in decisively, ‘These are difficulties with which you will have to cope sooner or later, Miss Routh. They are a part of life. You are in no way exceptional. Now, how are you getting back? Did you come alone?’

  I heard Margaret say ‘no’ in a suppressed voice and then the door opened and she came into the waiting-room, shutting the door behind her so abruptly that I was denied a view of her persecutor, as I now realized him to be. She looked very subdued and would not meet my eyes. I hustled her out into the night.

  ‘My goodness!’ My whole body positively crackled in the cold air. ‘You want to get another doctor, that’s for sure.’

  She jerked her arm away from me and shouted, ‘Oh, bugger off if you can’t be more sensible!’ She pushed me in the chest and went steaming past me. Her lethargy, at least, appeared to have been cured; I had no chance to catch up with her before she reached the house. But she was waiting for me in the doorway.

  ‘Now don’t go airing your opinion about this,’ she whispered fiercely, ‘or we shall have a bloody great inquest.’

  ‘I feel too confused to have an opinion.’

  ‘Then go and put your face in cold water. It won’t help matters if you’re confused.’ She jerked at the front door with her key and stumped into the hall. Fortunately no one made any comment on the length of our visit, and although Margaret was studiously ignored it was nevertheless apparent that she was the person with whom they were concerned so that my own reactions passed unnoticed. Except, perhaps, by Dr. Ahmed. I was aware of him studying me rather unhappily and when he left, having refused supper, I thought that his farewell glance had something of sympathy in it, if not conspiracy.

  ‘Oh, bugger off, if you can’t be more sensible!’ It seemed incredible that this remark should have emanated from Margaret. Margaret, who, when we were twelve, had suddenly said to me as we lay in this room waiting to slip out for our midnight walk:

  ‘Have you been saved, Pug?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I have. I’ve given myself to Jesus.’

  She had been sitting up in bed with her arms locked round her knees. It was too dark to see each other’s faces, but even so I squirmed down in the bed so that the sheets were over mine.

  ‘I shall pray for you,’ she said.

  And she had, every night before we got into bed. An essential part of being saved was that you had to bear witness in the face of humiliation and at this time she was eager to find someone to humiliate her. This was difficult as most of her family, with the possible exception of Timothy, had been saved too. I suppose I was her only chance. But I was too troubled in my own mind to make mock of her, and for a while she had to make do with Constance. A few years later, however, she found her tormentors at school among a group of girls with whom she was very friendly and whom she much admired. These girls were passing through a highly sceptical stage and Margaret decided that she must show where she stood, so she started a prayer group. The girls who joined were not ones whose company she found convivial. She wrote to me, ‘How difficult it is to understand, Pug, that the people who are not believers are so often more likeable than those who are. I confess this worries me. Does it ever worry you? It can’t be that only those with inadequate personalities are attracted to God, can it? Nevertheless, this does seem to be the case at my school.’ I believe that she did suffer genuinely during this period. She certainly became more human and was prepared to laugh about her youthful priggishness. But she still took life very seriously and would remain silent, even with her family, if anyone was discussed in a way that she thought unkind. Constance, who was notably forthright, came in for frequent disapprobation. I sometimes felt that there was not much sympathy between these two.

  ‘The trouble with Margaret,’ Constance had once said, ‘is that she wants a special relationship with God.’

  ‘We all do, dear,’ her mother answered.

  ‘How very boring for Him! Don’t you think He must find the agnostics much better company?’

  ‘Do you find them better company?’ her father asked.

  ‘Yes, I think so, on the whole.’

  Unlike Margaret, this did not worry Constance. Mr. Routh had by this time ceased to be a practising minister and was making a name for himself as a writer and broadcaster. He was also active in a number of causes of which the C.N.D. movement was one. The Routh family turned out regularly to march and to demonstrate non-violently. Constance enjoyed these activities which gave her plenty of opportunity to meet people of all faiths, religious and otherwise. She was popular and bestowed her favours equally on the believer and non-believer. Margaret, being less gregarious, was more cautious but nevertheless seemed to blossom during this time; like her father, she needed a cause. Timothy, as usual, went along with the rest of the family. I used to think that Mr. and Mrs. Routh worried a littl
e about Timothy, although they would never have admitted it. Timothy had many gifts, but little stamina; in one of his school reports it had been said that he showed great enthusiasm until he encountered the first obstacle. It seemed apparent that Timothy was not going to make any great impression on the world of scholarship. Many parents would have pushed the boy, demanding results which he was not capable of obtaining, threatening him with failure; but the Rouths accepted Timothy’s academic instability as realistically as they would have accepted the fact that you cannot be a long-distance runner if you have a broken leg. They asked no questions, made no demands, offered no suggestions: Timothy’s future must be left in Timothy’s hands.

  I had wanted to marry Timothy ever since I first thought about marriage, which was soon after I first met Timothy. I was careful to conceal this desire from my father. My father believed that what Timothy needed was a good, strong prop and he would not have wanted to see his daughter condemned to this role. But, although I should never have been able to convince my father of it, Timothy had a lot to offer. His face always lit up when he saw me, he was attentive when I talked, he laughed with me but never at me, above all, he made me feel that I mattered. I noticed that he had this effect on other people, too. Since I last saw him, I had had a long and abortive affair with a psychology student; it had been very complex and painful and I was determined that I would never again become involved with a man who showed any symptom whatsoever of complexity. It was with a feeling of gratitude that I remembered Timothy’s uncomplicated goodness. As a little boy, he had even been prepared to lose games if he thought this would please his adversary! I wondered how he would tackle the problem of Margaret. They had always got on very well together. Margaret held strong views and Timothy was easily convinced; this made for an ideal relationship.

  I lay wondering about Margaret until I fell into an uneasy sleep and dreamt that I saw her standing before the yellow idol telling it to ‘bugger off and be sensible!’

  Although the Rouths never attempted to rouse their guests, only the most drugged of sleepers could remain unaware of the family’s early morning activities. These started when Constance went out at half-past six to talk to the donkey, Joshua. The Rouths had saved Joshua from being put down because he was old and useless and he seemed anxious to reward them by living for ever. Constance said that all he needed was to be assured that he was one of the family and to this end she went out early each morning to put his mind at rest. This morning, she was joined by their mongrel, Saul, who did not like to be left out of any reassurances that were being handed out. Saul was a bellicose and, to my mind, thoroughly unlovable dog; it was he who put an end to any further hope of peace.

  I went to the window and looked out. It was still dark, but Constance had put the kitchen light on so that when she moved close to the house I could see her quite clearly. At present she was examining something on one of the donkey’s ears, a sore perhaps? She had always been uninhibited about this kind of thing; there had been talk of her becoming a vet. Saul was leaping up and planting all four paws on her back in an ecstasy of jealousy. In a moment she went into the kitchen and Saul hurled himself after her; the donkey waited, patiently rubbing its nose against the window ledge. I could swear that a smell of age and infirmity wafted up to me. Constance returned carrying a bowl and began to deal with the ear; Saul, who had apparently been shut in the kitchen, made a murderous assault on the door. I reached for my dressing-gown; a leisurely bath would be very pleasant. But I was forestalled by Mr. Routh who came down the corridor at this moment and went into the bathroom. The bathroom was next to my room, and I knew that it was Mr. Routh because his wife always said that he had two left hands and two left feet; perhaps because of his natural clumsiness he always seemed to emulate the character in the Bulldog Drummond stories who never tried a handle until he had attempted to break down the door. The reverberations of his attempts to open the door had only just died down when he started on the window; once in the bath he talked and thrashed about as though he was preaching a sermon to a very active whale. I decided to bath later in the day and went to the lavatory instead; there was a wash basin here and I had a quick strip wash. Mrs. Routh was on the telephone in the hall, talking to someone about the agenda for a meeting of the governing body of a school. I wondered whether the person to whom she was speaking appreciated having a call at a quarter to seven in the morning: Mrs. Routh, I noticed, appeared to be having the conversation all her own way. As far as I could gather, they were deciding who should be nominated as a co-opted governor and Mrs. Routh was in favour of a Mrs. Craig-Warren. ‘She’s really quite sound, if only she could forget for one single moment that she’s a university wife.’

  Twenty minutes later when I appeared for breakfast they were delighted.

  ‘We expected you to lie in bed after your journey,’ Mr. Routh said, plunging at the salt and upsetting it. ‘You mustn’t feel that you have to get up early because we do.’

  ‘I feel quite wide awake,’ I assured him.

  ‘All this nonsense about university lecturers!’ For a moment I thought that he was referring to the time that they rose in the morning, but it appeared that he was annoyed by something he had read in The Guardian’s letter columns. For a peace-loving man, he got annoyed very easily. ‘Of course students want to have the right to comment on their capabilities! Who do they think they are—God? Even He isn’t exempt from criticism nowadays, so I don’t see why these academic gentlemen should expect to be.’

  ‘They’ve lived in an ivory tower for a very long time,’ Mrs. Routh pointed out. She never got angry, but her condemnation always seemed more telling than his. I reached for the marmalade.

  ‘The thing that surprises me is that we make any progress at all in this country. I sometimes think that far from being too ready to rebel, the young are remarkably patient.’ He looked earnestly at me. ‘What do you think, Flora?’

  ‘Oh, I think we’re pretty patient.’

  ‘Tell me, did many people take drugs while you were at university?’

  ‘Quite a few.’ Intellectual argument at breakfast didn’t really suit me. ‘More than a few, I suppose. Perhaps fifty per cent. I don’t know.’

  ‘More than a few, I’m sure you’re right about that. It’s something we’ve got to come to terms with. Men who in their youth found it necessary to get revoltingly drunk at rugger club celebrations in order to demonstrate their manhood are appallingly self-righteous when it comes to young people taking drugs.’

  ‘I don’t think they do it to demonstrate their manhood. It’s just for kicks.’

  ‘And that says a lot for the world they’ve inherited from us!’

  ‘You had a war,’ I pointed out.

  He looked dismayed. ‘That’s a terrible thought, Flora. A terrible thought.’

  I sneaked another piece of toast. Mrs. Routh said, ‘But there’s a lot in it. The war was an outlet for energy, a terrible, destructive way of using what could be the most wonderful, creative force. Now, in peacetime, we have utterly failed to harness all this creative energy …’

  ‘Yes, yes!’ Mr. Routh nodded eagerly, his breakfast congealing on his plate. ‘What a pity Margaret isn’t down yet. This was something she used to feel so strongly about.’

  At this point, Constance, who had been concentrating on a very hearty breakfast, interrupted to ask who would be in for lunch. Mr. Routh had to go to Lewes prison and Mrs. Routh had a governing body meeting, but these appointments were for the afternoon, so they both expected to be in for lunch.

  ‘Expectancy will get you no lunch.’ Constance had a habit of addressing her parents as though they were children, endearing but quite impractical. ‘Either you’re in or you’re not.’

  They confirmed meekly that they were in.

  ‘I’m assuming you’re in, Pug.’

  Constance appeared to be in charge of the house; Mrs. Routh confirmed this later when we were drinking our coffee alone, Mr. Routh having retired to his study and Con
stance to the hall to telephone the meat order.

  ‘We had all that ballet nonsense when she was young, but she got over that.’ It had been the one occasion on which Mrs. Routh had betrayed her feelings, I recalled. ‘Then there was some talk of her being a vet, I expect you remember? But it meant her going to college and she wouldn’t hear of that. She said that she had had quite enough education to last her the rest of her life. And that was only too true. She was very nearly expelled from her school, you know; she took to staying away from lessons unless they really interested her, which wasn’t often. This, of course, was a comment on the school, they should have made their lessons more interesting. But it did give one or two pointers to Constance’s character which we could hardly ignore. She will not be disciplined or regulated, I don’t think she could work in an office, or do any routine nine-to-five job. In fact, I’m afraid she couldn’t work with other people, Constance has to be free. And here, at least, she can be her own mistress. As long as we don’t have rabbit we are all accommodating about food.’

  ‘Do you mind?’ I asked.

  ‘No, my dear. I’m out so much. It really works very well.’

  I was sure that Mrs. Routh would make it work well, but I could not imagine that many other women would have been content to accept this reversal of the usual roles of mother and daughter. Perhaps she felt she owed it to Constance because she had discouraged her from being a ballet dancer. But it was not Constance with whom I was really concerned. I said:

  ‘Margaret doesn’t get up until later?’

  ‘No. She has some tablets which make her sleep. What else they do I have no idea and I don’t like to speculate about it. Once you are in the medicos’ hands …’ She gave a little shrug of her shoulders which expressed fastidious contempt of tablets and medicos alike. I sympathized with her. It must have been hard to have her daughter’s welfare taken out of her hands when she had managed so successfully all these years; the arrogance of the medical profession was indeed intolerable.