by Mavis Cheek
‘What about you at forty?’ he whispers. His breath is so seductive that she has to swallow almost her whole glass of champagne to keep in check. Drat that exchange with Mrs Green for the idea of those games keeps tickling away.
‘Oh ... um,’ she searches for something convincing to say to replace what is on the tip of her tongue which is, broadly speaking, How About It? Instead she says, ‘Me – now: so settled, so secure – so bloody bourgeois –’ she laughs, genuinely amused, delighted at her skill in the change of theme. ‘So very contented ...’
Princess Celia, smoothing the folds of her Liberty skirt, feels this to be true.
They chink their glasses and look quite perfect together before separating to their individual seats. Alex fills her glass again and they subside into the rattan armchairs that fit so well among all the plants. Celia is very proud of the way she has done out this little adjunct to their house.
It is a hot, bright evening. At the open door of the conservatory a yellow, scented rose bobs in magnificent finery, sending a heady perfume into the already fertile air. The plants are doing well: busy lizzies in shocking pink and iceberg white flourish; hot red geraniums whose dusty antique scent vies with the bobbing rose cut their colour into the rampant fronds; head-high palms and thick-leaved succulents set their greenery against the variegations of assorted ivies and dieffenbachia. When the English climate permits, Celia may be congratulated on her tongue-in-cheek creation of a little bit of Lost Empire here in Bedford Park. All it needs is a rotating fan, someone to call for a chota-peg, and Willie Maugham to shuffle in. While this amuses Celia she looks across at Alex stretching out his long, casually trousered legs and wonders, not for the first time, if he doesn’t actually take the whole thing seriously. She can imagine him in an Ex-Pat club somewhere clicking his fingers at an obsequious be-turbanned attendant and calling for the gin-wallah.
‘Now what’s so amusing?’ he asks suddenly.
‘I was thinking about the Raj,’ she says, being truthful in the general and deceitful in the particular.
He looks all about him. Up at the ceiling with its cascades of tumbling foliage, around the walls with their splashes of leaf and colour, and down to the raffia rugs and festooned planters on the floor. Then he looks at her, smiles and says, ‘It is a bit like that, isn’t it?’ There is a definite hint of satisfaction in his voice before he calls himself back to the Liberal order and says, ‘What an arrogant nation we were once.’
‘Still are,’ she says, almost without thinking.
‘Oh, I don’t know ...’ His voice is satisfied, certain. ‘I think we’ve learned our lesson.’
Too quickly she says, ‘I don’t. I don’t think you ever learn a lesson over something so seductive as national supremacy. We still go on churning them out of our public schools and they still go on wanting to put the Great back into Britain.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with that. As long as everybody gets the benefit.’
‘Well – I’m not altogether sure ...’ She is feeling a little rusty in discussions such as this. ‘The thing is we were called Great in the first place because we went out and exploited everybody. If we are going to be Great again I rather suspect it’ll be for the same reasons ... Look at South Africa ...’
‘I shouldn’t worry your beautiful head about that, my darling ... especially not tonight.’ He comes over to her and strokes her hair. ‘Because we never are going to be Great like that again. All we can do is to struggle on to make sure we don’t end up like the pygmies of the market place in whatever way we can.’
‘Isn’t that what this Brandreth man was doing?’
‘Sort of.’
‘And he’s being prosecuted?’
‘He overstepped the mark – got a bit too greedy. Great pity really since he’s a personable chap – brilliant, cultivated, well-educated ...’ Alex smiles at her with a boyish look of triumph. ‘Not my old school though – which probably explains his downfall. Obviously the only really good men come from Hartonhouse.’ This is an old joke between them. Alex’s little bit of jingoism. Celia waits for the laugh which usually follows such a statement. Oddly enough it does not come. Instead he says, ‘You know, I’m very glad Henry’s going there.’
It is a reasonable statement for a parent to make so Celia wonders why she feels irritated. Probably, she thinks, because she doesn’t feel the same about her old school. It was very State and very Secondary and brings not one jot of loyalty to her lips. Her irritation is not prepared to go without a push.
‘Don’t count your chickens,’ she says. ‘We don’t know that he will.’
‘Of course he will. And Becky will go to Green-Cloaks. You know my views on sexual equality.’
‘What about equality in general?’ She surprises herself.
‘They will emerge as fulfilled members of the community – well-educated, cultured and able to lead – someone has to. And they will be liberally minded too. Because we are. You can’t say better than that as a gift to the future, now can you?’
‘You used to laugh at all that sort of thing. Remember?’
He smiles at her quite fondly. ‘I used to laugh at a lot of things. I used to call men of my age fogeys. I even had a Who tee-shirt saying “Hope I Die Before I Get Old”. Things change, we grow wiser – that’s all. It wouldn’t be fair not to give him the chance. My school has produced some exceptional men, exceptional ...’
Celia takes a swig from her glass. She wants to ask Alex if he includes himself in this production line of excellence but decides it might be better not to. There is the very faintest pinkening at the top of his cheeks. All the same she wants to say something so she does.
She says, ‘Ours might turn out just to be snobs.’
‘Rubbish ...’ He smiles. ‘They will be honest, caring individuals. Just like me.’ He taps his chest and gives her a sideways look which is supposed to say that he knows he is being immodest and he can laugh at himself. At the same time the gesture and the expression say that he believes what he says. It is an extremely complicated assortment of innuendo.
Celia, who knows her husband very well, as indeed she should after so long, reads them all. For the first time she finds his smugness irritating, which is probably to do with what did not take place earlier. She decides to be a little contentious.
‘I wonder where this Brandreth man went to school?’
‘Rowton, I think ...’
‘Well – there you are then ...’
He laughs. ‘I told you they were a depraved lot. And anyway, what do you know about it?’ He pinches her cheek. ‘Coming from Revolutionary Raynes Park?’
‘I went to an ordinary school, Alex. And I’m all right. Aren’t I?’
‘Things were different then,’ he says. ‘And you, my darling, are perfect and unique.’
Oh Alex, she thinks, how easily that tripped off your tongue.
‘We are moving into the twenty-first century, Celia. Times change. We are educating our citizens for a new era. If we can afford to give them the best then we are obliged to. The baton goes to them, after all. These are the facts.’
It only requires his wig to turn this into a real bit of Perry Mason. Celia feels obliged to become the defence.
‘Won’t it make our children a little – well –’ she swaps snob for something more refined – ‘elitist?’
‘My dear girl,’ says Alex, amused, ‘around here it would be elitist not to afford ...’
And still laughing he pours out more champagne.
Celia cedes defeat. Alex’s arguments are always amusing and witty. She remembers Dave trying to suggest that the Law Society was the biggest closed shop of all and how swiftly Alex had put this down. ‘Since we are an acknowledged nation of same – it is hardly surprising,’ he had said. Which drew such laughter and applause that it had quite drowned her brother-in-law out. Celia, suddenly, knows how Dave felt. However, the children’s education has always been Alex’s province. That and issues like Nuclear
Armament, the Irish Question, Lead-Free Petrol. She gets on with the day-to-day decisions. Which, in their own way, are more than enough.
So Celia accepts the champagne and looks at the bubbling glass. She goes back to easier ground. ‘Those Empire days must have been wonderful: to be in charge, to be waited on, to drink stuff like this in foreign lands and to feel that you were so absolutely top-drawer and right. Very seductive. Too bloody seductive actually.’
They look at each other in surprise. Celia does not usually come out with such things any more.
She continues. ‘I’m glad that I haven’t been given the opportunity of being the White Oppressor. I might have taken them up on it. It’s one thing to have principles. It’s quite another to be called upon to make sacrifices because of them. It must have been hell giving up all that power ... I don’t think we ought to have it again.’
Alex, slightly disgruntled, says, ‘It would be all right providing we used it properly.’
‘Ah,’ she says, wagging her head. ‘But we wouldn’t – would we?’
‘Some of us would – some of us do ...’ His voice has risen very slightly.
‘Ah,’ she says, ‘but that’s the other seduction ...’
‘What is?’
‘Being educated to feel superior so that what you call the common good is really a continuation of your good. Status quo. There, my dear Alex, is the rub of an elitist education, and there – in a more historically obvious form – is the Raj ...’
She chooses to ignore the shadow that crosses her husband’s face after this. The champagne has made her feel relaxed and easy and she has just remembered – pleasant thought – that she is the star of the show tonight: it is all in her honour, even if she did do all the organising and preparation – which was entirely her choice and she enjoyed it. So she can flutter her intellectual wings a little. Why not? She has begun to enjoy the part now. Certainly a fortieth birthday is a great female shibboleth – so far as she is aware she has never called her husband ‘My dear Alex’ before though he has quite often used the sobriquet for her. Quite clearly he is not impressed. And she knows why. For having used it she realises that it is a delightfully subtle way of putting someone down. My dear Alex, she savours mentally, but she decides not to risk it again.
Suddenly she begins to understand the language of being on top. If you go around My dear-ing people you gain a lot of ground. She is heartened by this. It goes some way towards atoning for Alex’s Wagnerian whistling earlier. Her fortieth birthday rises up like a shield to protect her. Just for tonight she can say or do whatever she likes. Tomorrow it will be different, tomorrow it will be back to normal again – but just for tonight, just for tonight ... it reminds her of saying to Henry that he could have whatever he liked once he had submitted to having his verruca frozen out – three ice creams, circus tickets, the A-Team sweatshirt – anything. Similarly for the next few hours she can have whatever she wants. A pity she hadn’t got to this pitch of understanding when they were both upstairs. Ho hum – oh well ...
Anyway, to dispel the slight gloom that descends at the thought of her new maturity being like a verruca, she smiles across at Alex and says, ‘It’s nice to talk so candidly about important things with you – it seems years since we had a serious talk. I mean – we don’t agree on everything, do we, Alex? Nor should we. It sort of lifts us out of the mundane, puts us in touch with each other again. We used to discuss things all the time. I’d like to go on doing it, wouldn’t you?’ Her bright face is eager as it leans towards her husband. Celia is opening the wings of debate, and enjoying it.
Why should marriage mean like-thinking? There is no reason at all.
Once she would argue half the night away with her men and make love for the rest. Forgetting, for the moment, the ambush of children, she thinks she should rekindle this intellectual liveliness with Alex again. Take her children’s education, for example, take the state of the world for another; she would like to unfurl those wings completely and flap them about a bit. She would like to, she would like to – she looks across at her husband and immediately tucks those wings safely back at her side.
Alex, clearly, would not.
He wriggles in his chair so that the canework creaks and groans in complaint. It echoes in his brain which can think of nothing except the Brandreth case. He is longing to launch into the subject again but Celia deflects him.
‘Do you remember how we met?’ she asks safely.
He thinks. ‘Yes,’ he says, letting the rattan settle again. ‘Of course. We met in Trafalgar Square on that Anti-Apartheid rally. We did our bit.’
He is right, of course, their pasts will bear scrutiny.
‘We did,’ she agrees. ‘You were a Young Liberal and I was a Young Socialist. Dear me – what has become of us, Alex?’
The chair resumes its annoyance.
‘What has become of us, my darling ...’ he says lightly, getting up and pulling the bottle of champagne from its cooler and bending to replenish her glass, ‘... is that we have grown up, had children, careers.’
She acknowledges the filled glass with a movement of her head.
‘You’ve had a career –’ It sounds plaintive, which she doesn’t mean.
‘And you, my dear girl, have had the children. They have become yours ...’ Alex is defensive.
‘But would you go back to Trafalgar Square with a banner now? I mean, apartheid seems to be in its last true death throes, thank God. Shouldn’t we be out there putting the boot in?’
‘We don’t buy South African goods.’ He resettles in the suffering chair. ‘Do we?’
‘But that’s not the point, is it? What I’m saying is how we’ve changed. I think that’s sad – that’s all. We’re so respectable. So untouched nowadays ...’
‘A minute ago –’ Alex’s voice is waspish – ‘you were saying that you enjoyed being bourgeois.’
‘That’s the seduction. Like the Raj. It’s so easy, isn’t it? Especially living here. None of us does anything remotely radical nowadays. I enjoy cooking. You enjoy getting cases like the Brandreth one—’
‘My dear girl – Brandreth is a city crook of the first order. My success will have immeasurable consequences—’
‘Within the confines of your profession it will. And his profession. But it won’t touch the oppressed black majority in South Africa – or the millions of unemployed here – business law is about finance protecting finance and the City policing itself, isn’t it? I thought you once said it was the acceptable face of ... Alex! Be careful with that chair – you’ll break it if you go twisting around like that ...’
He stands up. His face is rather pink. A bad sign, that. ‘And what would you do if I went waving banners all around the town instead of turning up for my cases?’ he says.
‘What would you do if I went picketing the South African Embassy instead of shopping in Waitrose or collecting the children from school?’
‘I should take it easy with the third glass,’ he says acidly.
And she thinks, how the hell did we end up nearly having a row on my birthday? So she mutters into her glass, ‘I just thought it was a pity that with all our adult wisdom and influence we’ve lost the passion – lost touch with all the zest—’
He says, ‘Grow up, Celia,’ and she thinks that’s an odd statement considering the occasion.
His voice rises a little. ‘You can’t be radical all your life. Somebody has to take on the baton of reason. I can’t think of anything worse than being an ageing piece of Agitprop. And if I may say so, this is a bloody odd time to be accusing me of being mediocre.’
‘I wasn’t accusing you of anything of the sort. I was just saying that we don’t seem to have the fire for changing things any more ...’
Alex has gone from light pink to a tone more in keeping with the nodding geraniums.
‘I’ve worked my balls off to get this case. I get confirmation today – it’s your birthday which makes it even more special – we’re all se
t for a cheery, celebratory evening and then you come out with all this crap about social conscience. Well, I’ve done my bit. I did it then and I’m doing it now – just in a different way.’ His voice rises, anger, hostility abounds now. ‘And you really ought to be careful setting me apart like this with all your holier-than-thou homespun philosophy. I’m not a middle-aged lump of stone, you know. I do live and breathe and exist as well as you – to the best of my ability I’m out there every day in that market place struggling to do what’s right. It’s no picnic, it’s damned hard work. I do what I can. Somebody’s got to be leader or we’d have anarchy ...’ His voice has gone very loud and matches its timbre to the nodding flowers. ‘I can hold my head up. I may not shove placards in policemen’s faces any more but what I do I do for the Good.’
‘I know,’ she says, feeling slightly alarmed. Why does the phrase ‘Methinks he doth protest too much’ come to mind?
‘My feelings are just as strong as yours, you know. And my needs. Needs that you never seem to ...’
She is just thinking, So are mine – when the doorbell rings.
Alex stops, bashes down his glass on the rattan table, which echoes its vacated sister, so lately suffering under his bottom, and goes to open the door. Celia takes a deep breath, soothed by the scent of the rose and assorted horticulture, and thinks again that she cannot understand why they have got to this pitch. Why can’t she discuss education and South Africa with Alex any more? Why is he so waspish? And why, she wonders, does it unnerve her so? It is as if a dimension of understanding about something was only just out of her reach. To do with Alex. But what?
When he returns, with her sister and her brother-in-law, she has completely composed herself. She has told herself she must not spoil things and she gives Alex a particularly long, sweet smile. Even on her very own fortieth birthday, which is hers to spoil if she chooses, she remembers the lessons she has come to learn as wife and mother. This is the mark of reason now. She lifts her face to be kissed by Isabel and then Dave. Her sister stands looking down at her, head on one side, scrutinising Celia’s hair.
