The Complete Short Stories

by Muriel Spark

  ‘Father, it’s really absurd. A difference of sixteen years … People will say —’

  ‘Don’t be vulgar, Dora dear. What does it matter what people say? Mere age makes no difference when there’s a true affinity, a marriage of true minds.’

  ‘Ben and I have a lot in common.

  ‘I know it,’ he said, and sat a little higher in his chair.

  ‘I shall be able to give up my job, Father, and spend my time here with you again. I never really wanted that job. And you are so much better in health now …’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And Ben will be here in the evenings and the weekends. You get on well with Ben, don’t you?’

  ‘A remarkably fine man, Dora. He’ll go far. He’s perceptive.’

  ‘He’s keen to revive your work.’

  ‘I know. He should give up that job, as I told him, and devote himself entirely to literary studies. A born essayist.’

  ‘Oh, Father, he’ll have to keep his job for the meantime, anyhow. We’ll need the money. It will help us all; we —’

  ‘What’s that? What’s that you say?’

  ‘I said he finds work in the grammar school stimulating, Father.’

  ‘Do you love the man?’

  ‘It’s a little difficult to say, at my age, Father.’

  ‘To me, you both seem children. Do you love him?’

  ‘I feel,’ she said, ‘that I have known him much longer than I have. Sometimes I think I’ve known him all my life. I’m sure we have met before, perhaps even in a former existence. That’s the decisive factor. There’s something of destiny about my marrying Ben; do you know what I mean?’

  ‘Yes, I think I do.’

  ‘He was engaged, last year for a short time, to marry quite a young girl,’ she said. ‘The daughter of a novelist called Kenneth Hope. Have you heard of him, Father?’

  ‘Vaguely,’ he said. ‘Ben,’ he said, ‘is a born disciple.’

  She looked at him and he looked at her, shrewd in their love for each other.

  Open to the Public

  This story, written in 1989, is a sequel to ‘The Fathers’ Daughters’, 1959

  Warily she moves from room to room, lingering over the mortal furniture which resembles in style, but has long since replaced, the lost originals. This is the house of the young Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Les Charmettes, on the outskirts of Chambéry in the Savoie district of France, where from 1736 to 1742 he vitally resided with clever Mme de Warens, his mature friend, thirteen years his senior, to whom he was official lover and whom he called ‘Maman’. It was their summer residence.

  It is early spring. There had been few visitors, the guardian has told her when she bought her ticket and a brochure, downstairs at the entrance. As in most of these out-of-the-way preserved houses of the famous, the good guardian was willing to unfold the history of the place down there in his lodge beside a stove, and not at all anxious about letting a well-behaved and quiet-looking visitor roam free among the chilly rooms, downstairs and up.

  It is upstairs that she finds a fellow-visitor. She is not sure why she is surprised but possibly this is because she hasn’t heard him moving about until she comes upon him staring into the little alcove where Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s bed, or a replica of his bed, is fitted.

  The man is tall and thin, somewhere about thirty, casually dressed in a black short coat and greenish-brown trousers. When he turns to look at her she sees his jersey is black with a rim of his white shirt showing at the neck, so that one might take him for a clergyman, but for the trousers. He has a long face, fairish hair, greyish eyes. His casual outfit is slightly outdated although in fact quite smart and expensive. And she has seen him before. He looks away and then he looks again in her direction. Why?

  Because he has seen her before.

  She continues her tour of the rooms, noticing details as is her way. Close details. The wallpaper in Mme de Warens’s room is original eighteenth century, it is said, with small hand-painted flowers. This is the grandest room in the house. Two great windows look out on to the cold garden of early spring and beyond that, the valley and the mountains. Down there in the garden the enamoured young man Rousseau waited each morning, looking up for the shutters to open and ‘it was day chez maman —She goes downstairs again, having another look at all there is to see.

  She sees the other visitor at the porter’s vestibule, his back turned towards her. He is buying postcards. She leaves the museum and goes her way. Outside the gates a small cream-coloured Peugeot is parked.

  You must have heard of Ben Donadieu, the biographer and son-in-law of Henry Castlemaine the novelist. He had married Dora Castlemaine in 1960, passionate about her ageing father’s once-famous novels which were already falling into a phase of obscurity. About Dora herself he was not at all passionate and for this she was rather thankful. Sixteen years older than Ben, she was then forty-six, spinsterish. Her true object of love was her once-famous father. She married Ben, then about thirty, mainly because he had a job as a schoolmaster, a means of livelihood to assist her father’s dwindling income and to enable her to give up her job and devote herself to her father.

  Henry Castlemaine loved his daughter dearly, and himself a little more. He accepted the basis of the marriage as he had in the long past accepted the adulation of his readers and the discipleship of young critics. Ben moved into the Castlemaine house and in the evenings and school holidays set about sorting the Castlemaine papers, and taking voluminous notes on his conversations with the ageing novelist. Castlemaine was now eighty-five.

  It was about three years later, after the biography was published, that the Castlemaine revival set in. The Castlemaine novels were reprinted, they were filmed and televised. When Henry Castlemaine died he was once again at the height of his fame.

  He left his house to his daughter, Dora. All his papers, all his literary estate, everything. Ben, however, had the royalties from his biography of Henry Castlemaine. They were fairly substantial.

  In those last years of Castlemaine’s life, their financial position had improved, largely through the initial efforts of Ben to revive his father-in-law’s fame. They were able to employ a cook and a maid, leaving Dora free to be a real companion to her father and take him for drives in their new Volkswagen.

  Nobody was surprised when, after Castlemaine’s death, the marriage broke up. Its only real basis had been the couple’s devotion to Dora’s father. Ben, now still a young and sprightly thirty-five and Dora fifty-one, oldish for her age, had nothing in common except their memories of the old man. He had been authoritative and tiresome, but Dora hadn’t minded. Ben had felt the personal weight of his famous father-in-law. He had put up with it, for the sake of the admired works, and his own efforts to promote them, day by day, in his study, docketing the archives, on the telephone to television and film producers.

  In the early days of his marriage he had tried to make love to Dora, and succeeded fairly often out of sheer enthusiasm for her father. Dora herself couldn’t keep it up. She was obsessed by her father, and Ben was no substitute. Now Ben was left with the proceeds of his biography. His work was done. Dora was immensely rich.

  Henry Castlemaine was buried. A crowded memorial service, reporters, television; and the next week it was over. Henry Castlemaine lived on in his posthumous fame, but Dora and Ben were no longer a couple.

  It was at this point that very little was publicly known. It was understood that Dora refused to leave the house of her childhood and her father’s life. Ben took a flat in London and grumbled to his friends that Dora was stingy. She gave him an allowance. The proceeds from his biography could not last forever. He wrote a lot of Castlemaine essays, and was said to be thinking of some other subject, something fresh to write about.

  Within a few months Dora suggested a divorce:

  Dear Ben, I intend to see my lawyer, Bassett. He will no doubt be in touch with you. I know Father would have wished us to stay together and to love each other as he wished f
rom the start. It was Father’s wish that I should never want for anything, indeed he hated to talk about the financial details of life in those old days when his books had started to fade out, and we met. I know that Father would have wished me to show my appreciation, and express his acknowledgment of the part you played in our life, (even although I am of course convinced that the revival of Father’s great reputation would have been inevitable in any case). That is why I have instructed Bassett to offer you a monthly allowance which you are free to accept or reject according to your conscience. The divorce should go through as quietly and smoothly as possible. Father would have wished that at least. Above all, Father, I think, would have wished for complete discretion on the fact that our union was a marriage in name only, even although the situation could be amply testified to by the domestics (who are of course always aware of everything, as Father always said.) So I could have obtained a divorce quite easily on other grounds than mutual consent thus saving the allowance I am offering you in amicable settlement. I trust you have benefited by your stay with us under our roof for these years past.

  Father would wish me to enjoy the fruits of his labours, and soon I shall be taking a trip abroad, especially to those haunts so beloved of Father.

  Yours, in good faith,

  Dora Castlemaine

  It was that ‘in good faith’, more than her formal signature, that chilled Ben’s bones. He recalled a phrase from one of Henry Castlemaine’s books: ‘Beware the wickedness of the righteous.’

  What is there to see in the austere and awesome birthplace of Joan of Arc at Domrémy-la-Pucelle in the Vosges? It is full of grey-walled emptiness, and there is no doubt, someone has been here and has gone. It stands just off the road, in the shade of a large tree. Near by is a bridge over the Meuse where a man hovers, looking down at the water. A small cream-coloured Peugeot is parked dose by, waiting for him, with the driver’s door open. He has got in once and got out again. He has looked round at the woman who has been watching him while he tours the simple birthplace, now open to the public. The woman watches him as he drives away, too fast, away and away, so that the guardian at the ticket entrance comes out to join her on the road, staring after him.

  Ben and Dora were never divorced. He showed her letter round their friends. It had been the couple’s boast that they had few friends, but, as always when ‘a few friends’ come to be counted up, they amounted to a surprising number. Most of them were indignant.

  ‘That’s a shabby way to treat you, Ben. First, you build up a fortune for her, and now she …’

  ‘Ben, you must see a lawyer. You are entitled to …’

  ‘What a cold, what a very frigid letter. But between you and me, she was always in love with her father. It was incestuous.’

  ‘I won’t go to a lawyer,’ Ben said. ‘I’ll go to see Dora.

  He went to see her, unannounced. The door was opened by a tall, fat youth who beamed with delight when Ben gave his name and demanded his wife.

  ‘Dora’s in the kitchen.’

  The father’s smell had gone from the house. Ben glanced through the dining-room door on the way to the kitchen. There was new wallpaper, a new carpet. Dora was there in the kitchen, unhappy of face, beating up an omelette. The kitchen table was laid for a meal, which meal no one could guess, whether lunch or breakfast. It was four-fifteen in the afternoon. Anyway, Dora was unhappy. She clung to her unhappiness, Ben saw clearly. It was all she had.

  The flaccid youth scraped a chair across the kitchen floor towards Ben. ‘Make yourself at home,’ he said.

  Ben turned to leave.

  ‘Stay, don’t go,’ said Dora. ‘We should sit down and discuss the situation like three civilized people.’

  ‘I’ve had enough of three civilized people,’ Ben said. ‘There was your father and you, so very civilized; and I was civilized enough to let myself be used and then thrown out when I was no more use.

  The flabby youth said, ‘As I understand it you were never a husband to Dora. She let herself be used as a means to your relationship with her father.’

  ‘Who is he?’ Ben demanded, indicating the young man.

  Dora brought an omelette to the table and set it before her friend. ‘Eat it while it’s hot. Don’t wait for me.’ She started breaking eggs into the bowl. The youth commenced to eat.

  ‘Isn’t there a drink in the house?’ said Ben. ‘This is sordid.’ He got up and went into the living-room where the drinks were set out, as always, on a tray. When he got back with his whisky and soda, the young man’s place was empty, part of his omelette still on his plate. Ben then saw through the kitchen window the ends of the young man’s trousers and his shoes disappearing up the half flight of steps which led to the garden and a door to the lane behind. Dora, with her omelette-turner still in her hand went to shut the kitchen door which had been left open.

  ‘You can have this omelette,’ said Dora. ‘I’ll make another for myself.’

  ‘I couldn’t eat it, thanks, at this hour. What happened to your friend?’

  ‘I suppose he was embarrassed when he saw you,’ said Dora.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About his coming to live here and opening the house to the public. I owe it to Father. First I’ll have a trip abroad and then, believe me, I’ll arrange for a companion, an assistant, somebody, to help me turn the house into a museum. Father’s rooms, his manuscripts.’

  ‘Well, that was my idea,’ Ben said. ‘That’s what we were always planning to do when Henry was dead.’

  ‘You aren’t the only Castlemaine enthusiast,’ Dora said. ‘I’m not too old to marry again and I could open the house to the public, only certain rooms, the important ones. I’ve had the house repainted and the floors mended. I could do it with a new partner.

  ‘Why on earth should you want to marry again?’

  ‘The usual reasons,’ Dora said. ‘Love, sex, companionship. The Castlemaine idea wasn’t enough, after all. You can’t go to bed with an idea.’

  ‘You used to,’ he said, ‘when Henry was alive.’

  ‘Well, I don’t now.

  ‘Do you mind if I look over the house before I go?’ Ben said.

  Dora studied her watch. She sighed. She put the dishes in the sink.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ she said. ‘What exactly do you want?’

  ‘To see for myself what it’s like now.

  They went from room to room. The chairs were newly upholstered, the walls and woodwork freshly painted. In Henry Castlemaine’s study his papers were piled on the floor on a plastic sheet, his desk had been replaced by a trestle-table on which more papers and manuscripts were piled. ‘I’m working on the papers,’ said Dora. ‘It’ll take time. A lot of his books have been re-bound and some are still at the binders.’

  Ben looked at the shelves. The books that Henry had used most, his shabby poetry, his worn reference books, were now done up in glittering gold and half-calf bindings.

  ‘You’ll never get through those papers yourself,’ Ben said. ‘It’s an enormous job. The letters alone —’

  ‘I’ll have them in showcases,’ Dora said, her voice monotonous and weary. ‘I can get help, lots of help.’

  ‘Look,’ said Ben. ‘I know you can get help. But it’s a professional job. You need scholars, people with taste.

  ‘All right, I’ll get scholars, people with taste.

  ‘Do you intend to marry that young man, what was his name?’

  ‘I could marry him. I haven’t decided,’ she said.

  ‘Do you mean he’s a manuscript expert?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t let a fellow like that touch Father’s papers. But he’d be very good at the entrance-hall, giving out tickets, when I open the house to the public. Can’t you see him in that role?’

  ‘Yes, I can,’ said Ben.

  ‘The divorce should go through —’

  ‘Look, Dora, I must tell you that I’m going to make a claim. I’m entitled to a share of what I’
ve built up for you over the last seven years.

  ‘I expected you would. The lawyer expected it. We’ll make a settlement.’

  ‘Castlemaine was nowhere when I married you.’

  ‘I said we’ll make a settlement.’

  ‘It’s a sad end to our ambitions,’ Ben said. ‘We were always going to open the house to the public, Henry knew that. Now you’ll make a mess of it, are making a mess of it. You’ll never get through those archives.’

  ‘Are you proposing to come back here and work on the papers?’ she said.

  ‘I might consider it. For Henry’s sake.’

  ‘But for my sake?’

  ‘For Henry’s sake. You didn’t marry me for my sake. It was always Father, Father.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘and now Father’s dead. We have no more in common. ‘We still have our ambition for the Castlemaine museum in common, our dreams.’

  ‘It’s time for you to go. I want some sleep,’ Dora said, her eyes fixed on her watch.

  As she closed the study door there was the sound behind them in the study of a bundle of papers slithering to the floor, blown by the draught.

  Then, another thump of paper urged on by the displacement of the first lot. Dora took no notice.

  The visitors, it seems to the young girl-student who is taking her turn at the entrance-desk, appear to be nervously aware of each other, although they have arrived separately. There is something old-fashioned about them both. It is not exactly the cut and style of their clothes that gives them this impression; it is not exactly anything; it is something inexact. They are both English or perhaps American: the girl’s ear is not attuned to the difference, especially as they have each said so few words when buying their ticket. ‘How long has the museum been open?’ and ‘Is that really Freud’s hat?’ Freud’s hat, a bourgeois light-brown felt hat, is hanging on the coat-stand with Freud’s walking stick. The girl follows the visitors. The man is tall, good-looking, around thirty. The woman, prim with her hair combed back into a bun is older. They look studious, as do most people who come to visit the house of Sigmund Freud at 19 Berggasse, Vienna. But the fact that they look at each other from time to time anxiously, then anxiously look away, makes the young guardian of the shrine feel increasingly nervous. There are precious objects lying about: a collection of primitive artefacts on the studio table, manuscripts and letters in the glass-topped show-tables. Could the visitors be accomplices in a projected robbery?