Tears were falling down Clara’s cheeks. ‘It isn’t his fault.’
‘Nor hers. Nor yours. Nor mine. It just happens. That’s worst of all. Things happen whether we want them to or not. It’s too horrible to bear.’
Clara cried aloud at the searing notion of her sister making the same mistake as her mother, though on a grander scale. She sobbed, unmercifully torn inside. She reached for Emma and held her tight. ‘Please don’t go on like this. I can’t tolerate any more.’
But she didn’t, as Emma thought, mean stop talking about their parents. She was pleading for her not to carry on so senselessly. Don’t go into town so often. Don’t stay out all night with men you pick up. What are you looking for, trying to find, doing to yourself? Why don’t you stay in, sit still, or do something else? She couldn’t explain, knew it would be useless anyway, that it would only bring words crushing back, might even drive Emma to worse things.
Emma too was weeping, both bodies burning together, but nothing more could be said.
16
When Emma stayed in for a few days, Audrey would not be allowed either to feed or change Thomas, nor take him out. Emma was with him from waking up to putting him to bed.
The decorators had come and gone, and she was back in the large front room, Thomas’s crib in the dressing-room opening off. When the weather was fine she sat on the veranda steps. She looked up from her book at Thomas in his pram below staring at a black-and-white cat walking the branch of a plum tree. She read, or she did nothing.
From the living-room window Clara noticed how often she looked straight ahead with a faint smile towards the wall at the end of the garden, a hand occasionally moving to straighten her hair. At the slightest cry she would be down in a moment to comfort Thomas. Or she would pick him up. His priority was total, and Clara did not know whether she preferred Emma’s mood of devoted mother (which excluded everyone else from the union of herself and the baby) or that of the distracted young woman who set off for town like an animal loose out of a cage.
Clara wondered why only these two choices were possible, for neither seemed good for any woman. Clara wanted a stable and predictable order, which guaranteed peace everywhere. She craved the ideal family which did not exist.
Emma’s calm was the eye of the storm, and out of sisterly love Clara shared the space there. But when the tempest broke Clara would be looking for that calm zone in order to escape the pain and fury, and when she realized that no peace existed anywhere she would be reduced to a tearful passion that seemed to damage her beyond all possibility of feeling normal again.
She wondered how long such a permanently threatening state could last. The only danger was to feel that she would not be able to tolerate the disturbance much longer, for she sensed a dismaying fragility in herself that might lead to failure in her duty towards Emma. She assumed that similar thoughts had planted themselves in her father’s heart as well, for he did not speak to Emma, and never asked where she had gone.
He rarely talked to anybody, stayed in his study, and often ate his meals there. When Emma wondered why, it was only to add that she didn’t care, though Clara knew she suffered by being cast as a stranger in the house. To justify his neglect, her father never let the expression of aggrieved deprivation go from his face while either sister was nearby. The turmoil of his earlier life had taught him how to control his family, and Clara saw that only Emma had the courage to prevent such power going unchecked, though at a cost to her that was alarming to witness. It was as if she suspected him of wanting to drive her to some awful fate in return for having, as he supposed, caused their mother’s death.
When Emma was out of the house the pall of her misery shifted to Clara, who could not rest in wondering where she was, and from fretting at what might be happening to her, and worrying about what time she would come back, and how they’d be able to find her if Thomas was taken ill.
Clara stared at him until he moved out of sleep, or the mouth puckered because he could not get free of troubling dreams. She was stricken by a sense of his impermanence, as if at any moment he might stop breathing, or be found not living in the morning, in which case the unity in the family, which even his unwelcome presence had somehow cemented, would be broken for ever. Every live being on earth served its purpose, she thought. Every death reordered the position of those left behind.
Fruit trees blossomed, spheres of pink and white reaching one behind the other as far as the wall, while all beneath was cluttered with nettles and brambles because Percy had dismissed the man who looked after the garden for having taken a few sticks of wood without permission. Percy was too mean to give someone else the job, and when Emma suggested he walk to the nearest dole queue and choose a poor man for the honour, he appeared not to hear. Clara had opened a path with shears but the vegetation grew back to its former density.
White lilac, apple and plum blossom set against sunlight and cloud reminded her that there was nothing they lacked to make life pleasant. They had money, a house, all material things, good health, and yet – Clara turned from the blossom that was so pleasing to the soul – why is it one can cut the misery with a knife?
‘I’ll tell you,’ said Emma, when Clara could not resist voicing her reflections aloud. ‘It’s because we treat each other as if we’ll come to pieces if a cross word is said. I teased father about getting married, but actually did think how good it would be to hear and see another person in the house. Whatever my reasons for having Thomas, one of them was because I wanted to bring a new spirit into the family. I went about it the wrong way, of course. Father would like me to get an upright sanctimonious husband who grovelled with respect for him. So would you. But I couldn’t attach myself to any man for life, even if I thought I loved him. Nothing can be done for us. I can’t stand it here. I was hoping father would throw me out when I went on about him getting married, but he’s too old and soft. He’ll probably just cross me out of his will. He’ll get his own back, somehow, I know he will. There’s only one solution for me.’
‘You’re not going to leave, are you?’
Emma put on her hat at the dressing-table mirror. ‘Do you want me to?’
‘Of course I don’t. But if you’re really fed up you could just take off. With your money you could live anywhere.’
‘I wish I didn’t have it.’
Clara believed her, but such an attitude seemed like an attack on her own existence, and she scoffed: ‘You’d soon wish you had.’
‘You’re so sensible. That’s something else I can’t stand. Suffocating sense! It’s impossible to break out of.’
‘What do you want, then?’
She closed the wardrobe, and surprised Clara by sitting down when she had seemed in a hurry to go out. She needed glasses but hardly ever wore them, and peered into her face. ‘Only one thing.’
‘What?’
‘If anything happens to me, what about Thomas?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, who would look after him?’
Clara wanted to tell her that the maid was doing quite nicely. ‘Nothing’s going to happen to you.’
‘But suppose I went out, stepped off the causeway, and got killed by a motor-car, or a tram? Or imagine I died of double-pneumonia.’
‘You’re as strong as a horse. You’ll live to be ninety.’
She spoke coolly, yet Clara saw the distress behind her darkened eyes. ‘I know. I’m asking you to suppose.’
Some other tone must be used, but Clara’s voice overrode the feeble effort she made, and produced a note of impatience. ‘I don’t imagine Thomas would lack the basic necessities. You can depend on that.’
Emma’s face seemed small. She was pleading, but Clara’s pain prevented her guessing the reason. ‘You’re not being sarcastic, are you? I can’t always tell.’
Clara faced her. ‘Do you think we would put the poor little chap on to the street? Really, why talk like this? You’ll have me in tears in a bit, and there’s absolutely no
need to.’
‘I know,’ Emma laughed, ‘I can’t bear to see you crying. It’s such a sight: the flower of womanhood in a flood of tears! But I must go. I’m off to the Ritz. I met this wonderful chap, an engineer on leave from the Sudan who doesn’t give a damn about anything in the world. So refreshing. We have marvellous fun. I’d love to bring him here, but I don’t think it would be appreciated. He’d have the place topsy-turvy in no time. Father would have a thousand fits.’
‘What’s his name?’ Clara asked, desperate to know. ‘Let me meet him. I won’t run you off, though we might get on better than you think.’
Emma opened the door. ‘He’s going back soon. They all have somewhere to go back to. He asked me to marry him, but I don’t see how I could. I love Thomas too much to have to put him in an orphanage. No man is worth that.’
Clara held her hands. ‘You sound as if you’re in a bit of a mess. Stay with me this evening. Let’s talk. Why don’t we go to the Riviera for a month or two? There’s a pleasant hotel at Beausoleil we can stay at for a while. Or we can go to Menton. It’s a bit quiet, but there are lots of nice walks, and it’s closer to Italy. Thomas can come with us. We can get two or three rooms. Let’s sit down and discuss it. We can go to Cooks tomorrow, and they’ll arrange everything.’
Even while talking, Clara knew that they couldn’t leave their father – though they might be able to get him looked after if Emma agreed to the plan. Anything to keep her from the obviously horrible man she’d met.
Emma’s expression suggested that she might like the idea, but she said: ‘It’s too late.’
‘How is it?’
‘It just is.’
‘Why?’ Clara looked into her face, smelt her rouge and perfume. ‘You don’t believe what you’re saying. Nothing is ever too late.’
Emma said: ‘It is, though. Too late. Too late for me to believe in anything any more. Everything’s changed. I don’t know when it began, or how it happened. There’s nothing left in my mind. It’s all empty. Unless I’m enjoying myself I’m frightened. Just a dreadful emptiness. At times, too often, I feel there’s nothing there at all. Nothing – nothing. You can’t imagine. I didn’t want to tell you, but now I have.’
She has mother’s spirit, but father’s sickness, and she knows she’s got it, whatever it is or was, Clara thought.
‘But I must go, or I’ll be late.’
And she went out.
Clara felt the despair of the one who always stays behind, and could only soothe her pain by imagining that Emma blamed her for not having suggested the same plan for a holiday weeks ago, when it might have been possible.
She lay much of the night waiting to hear the front door open and shut, and fell into thick dreams towards dawn knowing that Emma hadn’t come home. She was away sometimes for days, so Clara didn’t worry. Yet she was troubled, knowing that Emma was always unhappy when they were absent from each other for very long. The same unease afflicted Clara, which nothing but a curtain of common-sense attitudes on her part could disperse. No matter how unjust, or unfeeling, there was no other way if fate were to be given the free hand that was, finally, impossible to stand up against.
17
There was a certain quality about the air at the demise of spring and the onset of summer, a rich green on the burgeoning vegetation that the year could not possibly show again, a week or two of heavy rain shining on slates and wooden huts in gardens, exposing rails and balustrades that needed paint, and gutters that wanted clearing of dead leaves. Paint crumbled, and the body of iron broke through.
The air was warm, yet the wind could turn chilly, and it was hard to say whether a topcoat or only a mackintosh was necessary on going out. The seemingly quiet streets were in fact full of traffic, the noise subdued because unable to rise in the heavy atmosphere.
In the parks there was a haunting overweight from vivid grass and the branches of laden trees. The sky was in constant alteration, with rarely a pattern of recognizable cloud, and when the sun shone the heat could be fierce if only because of its rarity, but when covered again by banks of cloud the watery air seemed cold.
The fluctuating pressure and temperature put Clara into a state of nervousness that she could hardly control. Such weather made the afternoons long. To fall into a chaos of screaming seemed possible, except that an iron barrier separated her from it. Thomas cried from the nursery, and he stopped when Audrey picked him up. But he cried again. Nothing could soothe him. She had never known him to be such a prolonged nuisance. The day was bad enough without the disturbance of a fractious baby to worsen her headache. She closed the door to her room. He hadn’t grizzled so much since Emma had had him circumcised.
She couldn’t be bothered to wind the gramophone, tried to read another chapter from Vanity Fair, then sat down to begin a letter to her old school friend Lucy Middleton. For the dread she felt, there was little to say. Life was dull, she might write, after her mother’s death. The less to be said, the better for all concerned. She had heard no gossip worth putting in, so why waste the postage to New Zealand simply to say that everything was the same as before? It wasn’t, but there was no point in telling anybody. She lifted the pen out of the ink and wiped its nib on the corner of the blotting paper. She felt too unsettled. A rattle at the window told her it was raining again.
She didn’t know what sort of a bird it was, just a small common feathery thing that settled on a bush and shook itself. The way its wings fluttered and head turned quickly from side to side made her laugh. Such antics! The feathers were quite beautiful. It had crowned itself king (or maybe even queen) of the bush, so what more had it to wish for? Was it a flapper in the sparrow world with a bijou nest under the eaves? It flew away. A policeman and another man were at the gate. They talked, then came towards the door. The window was open an inch or two, and she heard the crumble of their boots on gravel. Unable to move, she watched one of them pull the bell.
The sound made her muscles leap. She cried out, but didn’t care to get up. Perhaps Audrey would. Don’t let it happen, whatever it is. Unhappen it, she said. How stupid! When the jangling stopped, she went with straight back and springing steps to ask the visitors in.
Someone had come to see her. The smile must be bright. She never forgot the shape of her lips that went into that particular smile, nor the lurch of her steps. The day had no ending in her life, but she’d hardly noticed its beginning. Ensuing days became part of grief – which creates its own lunar space, she wrote, so that when the sky is clear you can hardly see into it. And neither will you till your own life ends. Perhaps such heartbreak even precedes and waits for your soul as it comes out of life. Her writing deteriorated, the script impossible to decipher.
The idiot smile persisted as she hammered the dead wood of the study door to wake her father. He suffered deep irritation at being pulled from the centre of his daily nap, and with a weepish expression waited, in slippers and dressing-gown, for an explanation.
She was alone, the onus of everything only on her. ‘They’ve come with news of Emma. She’s been found dead.’
She couldn’t shape the words properly, but took him by the cold hand and pulled him along, making sure he didn’t fall down the stairs. How lucky to be old. She sniffed angrily, trying to calm herself. By a few words the world had changed. Wood on the banister was rougher. A glimpse of conservatory plants through an open door seemed to threaten her. She let go of her father’s arm to shut out the draught, and muttered that she must pull herself together. The tonic of her usual words did no good. Those she had just heard moved into her brain for ever.
The old gentleman didn’t seem able to accept the fact that his daughter had been found dead in a Paddington hotel. To tell anything else would have been to suppose just a little too much, and they weren’t the sort of people who would do so, no matter what your position in the world. She wondered if they didn’t enjoy their reticence. It had been imposed upon them, but they certainly made the best of it. It wasn’t their
job to do otherwise. Perhaps it was indeed an accident, but they were trying to find out. They stated that much, that they didn’t know what it seemed, only what they saw. Nothing but scientific conclusions were allowable. They weren’t competent on those lines, the detective sergeant said, to offer any more information.
There were no tears on Percy’s cheeks. She brushed the skin under her eyes and it was also dry. Mustn’t break down in front of them.
‘Is it quite certain?’ Percy’s lips mimicked hers.
The chiming clock released the acid in her by each number. She poured whisky, but none for herself. She didn’t drink, she said. Percy’s glass fell. She picked it up and set it on the mantelshelf where he couldn’t reach it. The bureaucratic finalizing of death would give her much to do. There would be an inquest, and the burial. She hoped it was an accident, and one of the men looked at her. No, no, a thousand times no, I’d rather die than say yes. She fought the words of the common song out of her mind. She used to sing them with Emma when they were children – to annoy their mother. Thinking it permissible, she sat down. If her father slumped she could leap across and catch him. Her calm questions finally made them solicitous. All arrangements would be made. Ten minutes had gone by since the clock had chimed.
She was afraid to look in the mirror in case Emma smiled back. To see even her own reflection would break the strength that being entirely alone gave her. It was a risk she would not take. She could issue orders, and do things, but not with the thought that someone was looking on. Being alone was strength, the more alone the better, for it was easier then to be herself, and if you were as totally yourself as it was possible to be, then you were in control. Nothing could break you down.
But sharp physical pains pierced her, and she fought back the temptation to roar out her soul as she powdered her face and put on her coat and then her hat without looking in the mirror. When she walked to the Green to get a motor cab, in order to go and identify the body, anyone passing on the street would have known that she was not her normal self. Her normal self was tall, blue-eyed, with fair but slightly reddish hair, a proud woman easy to remember and describe. She had been brought up to be, and had always assumed that she was, well-composed and unwilling to feel that any catastrophe could hurt her, though she reflected that it must only have meant those blows directed at someone else. If anything harder than the present blow were to strike she would hope to be conscious only long enough to thank God for it and then die.
Her Victory Page 35
