“I don't want people to see how we live.”
“How we live!” mocked Henry, as they passed one another.
“How we live,” laughed George, under his breath.
“Do her good this Lady What's It,” said Ethel. “Do her good. Let her see. Let the world see. Let them see what I have been through.”
But she was possessed of a spirit as fanatical as her husband's.
The table was clear and, having given his orders, Mr Beluncle went to the small dark room at the back of the house where he sometimes sat alone; the others crowded into the small kitchen and listened at the closed door. In his room, Mr Beluncle brushed his coat and then nervously pulled a dozen or so unread magazines, issued by the Purification, out of their wrappers-for it would create a bad impression, if the caller really were Lady Roads, when she saw the literature of their religion unread-and sat with a scornful expression on his face, waiting.
“Tidy yourself, Ethel,” he said, when she recklessly came into the room. “I can't imagine she will break in, but take that apron off, do.”
“She can see me as I am and as you have made me,” said Ethel angrily, but she obeyed him. She took off the apron and closed the door of the room. They were talking in quick, lowered voices, with the tenseness of their campaign. One of the boys, after creeping up the passage, reported that the gate was still. He had come into the room. Suddenly there was a new sound. There was a clatter at the front door.
“What's that?” said Beluncle.
The noise rose and a woman's shouting was heard.
“She's in. She's got in,” said Beluncle, and went out in three strides, his neck swelling and his fists clenched. The front door was wide open.
In the dining-room the grandmother had slept, forgotten, through the noise, with her small head sunk like a kitten's as the family bumped past her. She could have wished to dream about her husband, but he rarely came into her sleep; though often he was on die edge of the dream, a presence felt in the next room. She had two kinds of dreams: ones that were grotesquely comical, not fitting-so full of antics they were-to an old lady and she woke up ashamed; others that were about her childhood and the people she had known in her village at that time. As the Beluncles bumped past her she was dreaming she was at a railway junction and that luggage, containing her linen, her silver and clothes, was being lost.
Now she opened her eyes.
She found herself alone. There was no one in the room. There was no tablecloth. There were no knives, forks or plates, no food before her; and the room was silent. The table itself shone like the varnished wood of a coffin. The grandmother was frightened. She did not remember where she was. She called out her husband's name.
“Ernest,” she called, “they have taken everything away.”
No voice answered her and she got down from her chair with a small thump and half fell, half walked to the door.
The hall too was empty.
“Ernest, Ethel!” she cried. “Help me. They have robbed me. Help me.”
To the deaf, all places are silent, but the Beluncles were clattering behind the closed door of their kitchen. She was sure she had been abandoned. She opened the front door and ran out into the garden shouting towards the gate. It was still: if anybody had called they had gone away.
“Robbers. Thieves. Help me. God help me. God help me,” cried out the grandmother.
“They have stolen my money,” she cried.
Beluncle, striding out into the garden, saw her tugging at the bolt of the heavy wooden gate.
“Mother,” commanded Beluncle, taking her small arm and looking down at her.
“Eh,” she said, breaking into tears and hiding her small white head against his coat. “Thieves have robbed me. God, take me to your father. Pray God, take me to him.”
“Now, quiet, mother, quiet,” said Beluncle. “I am here. No one has robbed you. What would the neighbours think if they heard you say that? They would say it is very unkind of you, you naughty girl. And that we weren't looking after you. They might even get the idea I was robbing you and that would be a terrible thing, your own son robbing you, your own daughter.”
The old lady sobbed under his arm.
“Look at all those roses. Aren't they sweet? I gave you one this morning, didn't I? Smell one? Just come over here and smell this one-that's it,” said Beluncle, looking over his shoulder apprehensively at the gate while his mother smelled a rose. “That's it,” said Beluncle, drawing her away. “That's enough. You will take all the smell out of the flower, ha! ha! Now here is a handkerchief, let me dry your eyes.”
She lifted her head, took off her glasses, and allowed him to dab her eyes, and when he had done this she gave herself a small shake and smiled bleakly at first and then a little slyly at him before she put her glasses over her frail lids which were like plum petals, shrunken and a little stained.
“It is Ethel who is robbing me, my son,” said his mother. “Ethel is taking the things from my room. Three sheets have gone. She says she has given them to the laundry man. I lay,” said the old lady mournfully and slyly, “she lies in them with him. I will speak out. I am your mother and you are my son until she took you from me. Now the Lord has taken your father.”
“Now, mother,” said Beluncle severely, “I shall have to get angry with you if you speak like that and then I shall break a commandment. I honour my father and mother. You will break a commandment, too, you will be bearing false witness. You remember that? Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. We must not break the commandments and that is one thing I never do. I keep the commandments and so must you because father can see and God can see too. He sees in our hearts, doesn't He? He sees His image in our hearts. Now you be good.”
They were at the door and Ethel was there to help the old lady up the step.
“She's all right, Ethel,” he said. “She woke up in the room and was frightened.”
Ethel took the old lady's arm and led her into the house and sat her in a chair.
“You poor thing,” Ethel said, and knelt by her chair and held her small hand.
“Go and put the kettle on,” said Ethel to her husband fiercely.
“Oh, dear Lord, take me to him. Take me. Take me,” said the old lady.
“He is with you and watching you all the time, looking after you,” said Ethel. “Up in the sky he is watching you and caring for you. I believe that, dear. I don't follow these new-fangled ideas. I believe God is in Heaven. My mother is there and my daddy. Look, I will tell you something. When I was a little girl I had an Uncle Ted. You've often heard me talk about my Uncle Ted. The big man who was deaf and he sold fish. …”
The old lady brightened.
“Eh,” she said, “there is money in fish. We were in trade when I was a girl. I like trade….”
“Uncle Ted was my favourite. He used to come over on a horse and he always brought me a present.”
“Aye,” said the old lady. “The presents I had when I was a girl. I've kept them all.”
“You have, old dear,” said Ethel, under her breath, and then in her story-telling voice she went on, “and d'you know what he brought me once? Do you know? This brooch.”
And Ethel unpinned a small brooch with a dove on it from her brown frock and gave it to the old lady, who held it covetously.
“It's gold, real gold. It belonged to his mother,” said Ethel.
“Eh, I've always liked a bit of gold,” said the old lady.
“I will give it to you,” said Ethel. “Wait. Let me pin jt to your blouse.”
“Eh,” said the old lady. “Eh, well, I don't know, Ethel. I don't say but what it isn't nice, though it's not as good as the one I had from my mother.”
“Of course not, you old devil,” said Ethel, under her breath. “Isn't it, dear?”
“Nay, it's poor stuff really. Shoddy,” said the grandmother, as pleased as a queen. “But I will keep it.”
And then she started to weep and said:
/> “I have done wrong to say things about you, Ethel. I didn't think you were a good girl when he brought you to me, but you are good. You're the only one who loves me. You take no notice of the things I say. It's my son and my daughter who have broken my heart, from the very first when he brought you with the baby at the breast and not a penny in his pocket, asking for money. We emptied the saving box for him. He will take everything I have. Thank the good Lord God I have got you. While I've got you I am not alone.”
X
The slow Sunday passed. The grandmother sat upstairs in her room and dozed over a love story. In the dining-room where they had had their lunch, Mr Beluncle slept amid his harassed property, and Ethel listened to his loud and crusading snore, a snore that seemed to go burning out on quest after quest. What was he dreaming? Nothing. He never dreamed when he was asleep, only when he was awake. Ethel sat knitting and going over incidents of her life, seeing it all so dramatically, so vividly, so crowded with people and misfortune, so densely inhabited by the dead, that her nervous face grew lined and haggard as she relived it all and she felt ill. She had indigestion.
“I have ruined him,” she said to herself with a certain satisfaction mixed in with her remorse. Then she straightened herself. He was immovable. Ruin did not affect him. In terror she imagined herself going to his funeral. In the carriage was his partner, “the brains of the business”, as she was called, whom Ethel Beluncle hated with all her heart.
“Tou have been his ruin,” she said to Mrs Truslove. The untruth of this pleased her. It was one more of the myths she lived by.
“I am,” she concluded, scared because Beluncle's snoring had broken off and he slept now in a gently whistling interval. A melancholy, watery sound, pitiable and feeble, came from him and commonly this led to waking up. “I am,” she murmured hurriedly, to make things right with herself because one of his eyes opened with accusation, “a wicked girl.” But the eye closed and since he did not wake, and his snoring began again, her thoughts went back to her honeymoon when she had first heard the snore, the first indication to her that there was more in love than she thought.
MR. BELUNCLE
XI
In his bedroom at the top of the house, sitting on a tin trunk because there was no chair there, Henry was reading a French book, losing himself in the foreign tongue and the foreign country.
George was in the garden standing close to the neighbour's fence and Leslie was sitting up in one of the fruit trees looking out happily into the street and the world beyond. But George was stooping by the fence and looking through a hole in the paling. He was studying the couple next door and putting his life at their disposal: how often he wished to give himself to his father, would clean his boots, brush his clothes, bring his paper, and his sadness grew as his father ignored him. Then George behaved badly-swore, went unwashed, lay late in bed, talked loudly of the things that annoyed his father: anything to attract his father's notice and even to be attacked by him. To be the scoundrel and waster of the family was becoming George's ambition: to be drunk, the gambler, the'c'hellish lad” with a powerful motor-bicycle. George could see the garden seat next door and first of all only the feet and legs of the couple. By the movements of the feet, suddenly turning, the couple must be making love: particularly George admired the heavy brogues of the man, and the calves of the woman. George altered his position; now he could see the couple were holding hands, and the man, who had a short red beard, kissed his wife. George watched the wrestling dance of the two pairs of hands.
“Darling, shall I make the tea?” the man said.
George sighed at the man's voice.
“No, dearest, let me.”
George, in imagination, rushed into their house, put the kettle on, laid the tray and then smiling brought it to them. He put the tray down, then he joined their hands and made them kiss each other. He was their slave, their son, lost in them, walking with them in their love.
George loved the clothes of the man. He loved his brown sports jacket, his flannel trousers, his socks, and after that, the man inside them. George tried to walk as the man walked and to talk in his voice. Carefully, as he watched them through the hole in the fence, George copied all the expressions of their faces: their adoration, their sulks, their talking faces and their kissing faces.
“George! What are you doing?”
Mr Beluncle, clogged by his sleep and puzzled by his boredom, had come out for some air. George turned with a happy smile to his father. Mr Beluncle saw before him a fair-haired youth whose clothes were too small for him. This suit of clothes was worn only on Sundays and had not yet been allowed for everyday wear; now, clearly, it would be useless, he would have to buy the boy a new suit. Why should he? Why was the boy not earning his living?
“Take that silly grin off your face,” said Beluncle plaintively. “Why are you wearing out your best suit? Why haven't you changed it? Look at the knees of the trousers, you know it has got to last another year. Have you filled up the car? Why not? That is unkind of you. You know I'm going out.”
The boy was astonished: he threw over his slavery to the couple next door, and childishly admiring the unexpectedness of his father, he started off to the house.
“Where are you going?” said the father.
“To get a can of water for the car-you said,” said the boy.
“Who said?” said Beluncle. “I said you had not filled it.”
The boy stopped like a puzzled dog. Mr Beluncle turned his back and then leaned down to smell a sweet william. He was peeping through George's hole in the fence.
“Are we going out?” said the boy eagerly.
“Who said 'we'?” said Beluncle. “I may be going out. I don't know.”
Mr Beluncle turned and, looking with contempt at the boy, jingled his keys.
“You'd better fill it,” said Beluncle.
“Here,” said Beluncle. “Come back. Why don't you come at once when I say? Where is your brother Henry?”
Leslie's voice came mockingly out of the tree.
“Upstairs in his room, reading.”
“Tell him to come down and be sociable,” said Beluncle, and walked to the tree.
Leslie looked down at him, and just as Beluncle was about to give a roar, Leslie parodied his father's voice:
“Haven't I told you time and time again not to sleep after lunch. Mrs Truslove doesn't sleep in the afternoon.”
Beluncle found himself blushing and he turned away to walk round the garden, working the smile from his face.
“Come down, there's a good boy,” he said. “We're going out. I want you to stay with grandmamma.”
“But grandmamma talks” said the boy, and Beluncle turned to reply to this insinuation, but changed his mind and walked on.
George went up to Henry's room at the top of the house. Below, Mrs Beluncle was playing her repertoire of Sunday hymns and, tiring of them, had moved on to Sea Fever. This playing always brought Henry down because he liked to sing and had a good opinion of his voice.
“You've got to come down,” said George. “We are going out in the car.”
“What mood is he in?” said Henry.
“Filthy,” said George, with sincere pleasure.
“Are they having a row?”
“No,” said George. “She hasn't started anything.”
“He starts them, not her,” said Henry.
“You always take her side,” said George.
“You always take his,” said Henry.
“There's the car,” said George.
They looked out of the window and saw Mr Beluncle admiring his car and dusting it. As he did this he looked to the house for help. He hated doing things alone.
When they were all downstairs Henry said to his father: “George said we are going out.”
“Who said anything about going out?” said Beluncle.
“Oh, you've brought it round to have a look at,” said Ethel.
“That car has got to be taken care of. I don
't want it ruined,” said Beluncle. “It cost a lot of money.”
“Are you selling it?” Ethel said.
“Let us have some tea,” said Beluncle.
“You're just like your mother with your things,” said Ethel.
Beluncle himself did not know whether he was going out. He liked to look at his car. He like to touch it, especially to run his fingers, when it was dusted, over the warm coach-work. He now went off and washed his hands. He liked to glow with the feeling that he owned a motor-car; ideally, he would have liked it in the house. It horrified him that his family should get inside it, mark it, scratch it. He wanted to be alone in it, feeling that it was an addition of wheels, engine and coachwork to himself: he thought of himself as a kind of car. He felt this about his clothes, his shoes, his house, his factory, about all things. Most of his life was passed in thinking of new things he could have.
It annoyed him to see his family thinking, assuming that they would go out in his car, and he punished them for this; he would not tell them whether he was going out or not. Often on Sundays he had had the car brought round, watched the rising and falling emotions of his family and had driven it back thirty yards into the garage. He had, in his imagination, sold it, bought another; sold that one and then, gradually, buying, selling, exchanging, he had come back to his original car. These day-dreams exhausted him and he looked sponge-faced and pale at his family. “Why can't I have the life I want?” he said.
Mr Beluncle put his cup into its saucer and handed the cup across the table to his wife.
“More,” he said.
If they were going to torture him by making him take them out they could wait till he had a third cup of tea.
“I don't know what you are all hanging about for, but if you are going out with me you must hurry. The afternoon's gone.”
“We're waiting for you.”
“For me!” Beluncle stood up and gazed at them superciliously.
“You astonish me,” he said.
They got out at last into the car and Leslie stood at the gate, winking at them.
Mr. Beluncle: A Novel (Modern Library Classics) Page 12
