Before the War

by Fay Weldon

  His stepmother had worn white shirts which were always damp under the armpits. And his mother, who his father always referred to as ‘The Vamp’, was like Adela, if not in looks in temperament; fun, dainty, murderous, an absconder. Never there. Sherwyn’s father was like Sir Jeremy, untidy, bookish, ponderous, inept. So yes, probably, way back then Sherwyn had indeed pressed his drunken, charming Oedipal suit on both his stepmother, in Phoebe’s shape, and his mother, in Adela’s shape, thus aiming a blow at his father, in Sir Jeremy’s shape. And it was sheer guilt, not necessarily hangovers, which had rendered him amnesiac. Or so Mungo, Freud-mad, would have had it.

  He was friends with Mungo again. It was Mungo who had brought Sherwyn to Sir Jeremy’s bedside. Mungo had phoned Sherwyn weeks back, before even the advent of the death cap episode. He hadn’t had a card from the girls for some time. Could Sherwyn check with the old man that the twins were safely back from Lausanne and in London, or preferably at Dilberne Court where bombs were less likely to fall?

  Sherwyn said he knew Adela was back from Fontainebleau. He too had no word from the girls, but he assumed they too had returned. He asked Mungo why he didn’t just ask Sir Jeremy himself. Mungo said that last time he’d seen the old man they’d all but come to blows. Sir Jeremy had said there was no way the working class or Communist Parties worldwide would support the war. Mungo had said all classes would unite against fascism. Sir Jeremy had said Mungo was a war profiteer gloating because the Ministry of War had decided all army uniforms would have zipped flies.

  ‘You know how it works.’

  ‘Oh I do, I do,’ Sherwyn said. ‘Unbuttoning’s such a bore.’ He explained that these days he too tried to avoid Sir Jeremy’s company. War talk was bound to end up in disagreements. Communists against fascists, appeasers and patriots and all stages in between – everyone took sides, claimed the moral high ground. Families split, peaceful dinner parties became rancorous. People walked out of rooms when others walked into them, as discord amongst the rulers found its echo in social and domestic life.

  The twins were forgotten. Sherwyn and Mungo agreed to have lunch at Rules. ‘Like old times,’ said Mungo, ‘but this time round you can pay the bill. Bet you’re bloody richer than me.’

  They argued about who had done better in life, who had bedded more women. Mungo acknowledged that his ambition was to write a novel one day, ‘when he had the time’. They talked about Adela, They talked about Adela, who after she’d accused Sir Jeremy of having an affair with his secretary had packed the girls off to a finishing school in Switzerland, become a Seeker after Truth, refused to divorce Sir Jeremy in case he married the girl (which would be a humiliation worse than death) and gone to live in a Gurdjieffian commune in Fontainebleau which devoted itself to the Harmonious Development of Man.

  ‘She was always that way inclined,’ said Sherwyn, over smoked trout. He had decided to watch his weight since he’d been approached at his club by a certain Major Lawrence Grand from a hush-hush outfit he’d set up in a back room of the War Office, and known only as Section D. Espionage had turned out to be his fictional forte. Now, with a war in the offing, perhaps he and his alter ego Delgano could blend properly and become one. But he’d need to be fit.

  Mungo had the roast beef. Still with the build and the geniality of the rugger Blue, he had, however, run to fat and was losing his hair. Sherwyn’s remained luxuriant. He felt quite kindly and generously towards Mungo.

  ‘Poor Adela,’ said Mungo. ‘Superstition. What daddy Freud would call faulty actions rooted in anxiety.’

  Sherwyn said perhaps Adela did not deserve too much pity. She had indeed been distressed to find Sir Jeremy had a single lover to her dozens, but had quickly enough recovered sufficiently to run off with Igor, himself a Seeker after Truth and a long-term follower of Gurdjieff, as were several White Russians.

  ‘Igor Kubanov, the equestrian? The gold medallist? Adela knows him? I’d no idea.’

  ‘Together again,’ said Sherwyn, enjoying himself. ‘Turns out he’s the twins’ father.’

  ‘Impossible,’ said Mungo, after a second or two, sneezing into his roast beef, spluttering into his gravy. A waiter came running. The restaurant was being fitted with blackout blinds. Light and shade kept changing.

  ‘I thought you knew. Igor has all this blonde hair. That’s why he’s such a favourite with the ladies. They lose interest when we go thin on top. But obviously. Think about it. Stella’s blonde hair, Mallory’s Cossack legs.’

  Mungo took time to recover from the shock.

  ‘Truly? I really assumed I was the father. Lord, what a mess!’

  ‘Ah yes,’ said Sherwyn, ‘all those presents. Remorse. What Freud saw as the result of a struggle between ego and superego – parental imprinting.’

  Mungo looked piteously and reproachfully at his friend and ordered apple pie and cream, and Cheddar cheese. Sherwyn took only black coffee. What was it that the mysterious Major Grand of Section D had said? ‘Of course, the kind of people we’ll need will have to be in fairly good physical shape.’ Sherwyn was an excellent French speaker but with no German. Grand, who seemed to be already planning for covert excursions into enemy territory, had intimated that he assumed France would fall. Now was not the time for apple pie and cream, thought Sherwyn, let alone a slab of Cheddar.

  ‘It’s something of a relief,’ Mungo was saying. ‘Not my responsibility after all. But you won’t forget, will you, my friend? Just check the twins are back. They’re nice girls at heart, though it’s a pity about Mallory. Adela never deserved a daughter with those looks, any more than she deserved Vivvie, the monster you married.’ And then, hastily, ‘No, no, not that she wasn’t a nice girl. I was so sorry about what happened. Dear boy, indeed, a loss.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Sherwyn.

  They left the table as friends. Sherwyn did not bring up the possibility that non-identical twins could be fathered by two different men. It seemed unkind. Enough was enough. And in so thinking Sherwyn quite forgot to ask about the twins’ safe return, until he heard about the mushroom poisoning and hastened round to the London Clinic as soon as the great publisher was fit to receive visitors.

  The streets on his way had been noticeably noisier than usual: the clattering and banging, shouts and whistles of a London preparing for war reminded him of being in Galveston in 1933 when the coastal town was expecting a hurricane and was being boarded up for something that might or might not happen. That was for Delgano Goes Deep South.

  And here was Sir Jeremy the appeaser of appeasers, the likes of whom had led to the despoiling of the Czechs, and after the Czechs Poland, who next? Thank God there was Churchill, who’d never changed his tune about the need to stand up to the aggressor. Churchill was a fan of Delgano and had told Sherwyn so.

  Whereas Sir Jeremy was still appeasing Adela.

  ‘It could have been an accident; it could have been Morna the maid who meant it for Phoebe. Phoebe is my secretary, you know. Nothing more. Why blame Adela?’

  ‘Of course not, sir.’

  Sir Jeremy seized Phoebe’s hand and put it to his chest. She let it stay.

  ‘A single bad mushroom! What a fuss! It could have been any number of disgruntled employees. As I say, I am not a man without enemies. It could have been you, young man. Perfectly possible. I never trusted Old Paulines. Nest of fascists!’

  ‘Unlike you, sir, an Old Etonian,’ said Sherwyn, driven to sarcasm. ‘Nest of bourgeois bohemians! Only the rich know how the poor should live, it seems.’

  Sir Jeremy did not rise to the bait. He was staring at Sherwyn through rheumy, unnaturally bright eyes. Phoebe removed her hand and stroked his temples. Thus, Sherwyn thought, his stepmother had stroked his father’s brow when the batty old man had a particularly bad headache. She had loved him. Sir Jeremy seemed not to be focusing properly, as if the mind behind his eyes was flickering in and out, an electric bulb struggling to maintain its proper connection.

  ‘Don’t you write thrillers?’r />
  ‘I do, sir.’ Had the old man forgotten even this? His screws were rapidly coming loose.

  ‘I thought so. Never understood their popularity. Banal trash. Why can’t people learn to think?’

  ‘I believe “people” quite enjoy reading thrillers. Sales thereof rather suggest so.’

  ‘Phooey! Sales! Weren’t you the one who married my daughter Vivien?’

  ‘I was, sir. I loved her very much.’ His saying that surprised Sherwyn, but he could see it was probably true. No-one else had proved satisfactory – other than Rita, he supposed, and that was always on-and-off.

  ‘If my grandson had lived he could have taken over the company. Little Arthur!’

  ‘Yes, Sir Jeremy, but little Arthur didn’t exist. He was all in someone’s head. Vivvie had twins and died and Adela said they were hers and that you were their father. Remember?’

  Phoebe shook her head at Sherwyn and frowned. She needn’t have bothered.

  ‘Ah yes, so she did,’ said Sir Jeremy. ‘Old men forget. Life gets confusing. One minute the Nazis have to be outcasts, moral degenerates, misfits; the next there’s a non-aggression pact with Germany. I try to keep up. Readers think the Nazis and the Germans are the same. It’s a linguistic confusion, not a political one. That’s what that ass Mungo Bolt says. I may give him the Ripple account. He’s done quite well with his zippers.’

  ‘No doubt a mere semantic problem, sir. I was going to ask about the twins. I know you can’t be considered their real father but I imagine you have a legal responsibility and certainly a moral one. You’ve sent for them? They’re already home?’

  ‘Oh yes, the twins. Palm them off on me, would you? Adela did mention them. I’m afraid she’s very upset. Have you sent those train tickets off, Phoebe?’

  ‘Tickets, Jeremy? No. I know nothing about train tickets.’

  ‘But I could have sworn – oh dear, mea culpa! What a forgetful old person I am. But didn’t Adela say they were in Lausanne? Switzerland’s a neutral country. Why should the twins be sent for? They’ll be perfectly safe where they are. Our Swiss socialist friends are very active, though very torn by this sudden Ribbentrop–Molotov business. Who knows which way the Swiss will jump? Who knows anything, these days?

  ‘Who indeed, sir.’ Best to placate, not challenge. It was how Delgano managed the unexpected.

  ‘I must say I too find myself, like the Swiss, rather torn. I really believe it’s not so much the mushrooms as the pact that has brought me to this state. I am feeling rather faded even as I speak. Seven non-aggression pacts in one day, and every one a hidden declaration of war!’

  ‘A portrait of domestic life, perhaps,’ said Sherwyn.

  ‘Married life,’ said Sir Jeremy. ‘You’ve no idea! But tell me, how can good communists ally themselves with fascists? I haven’t felt so bad since Mayfair Lights fell at the sixth in the Grand National. It was damned Becher’s Brook and the fool of a jockey didn’t take it wide enough. Perhaps, dear boy, I need to be alone with Phoebe? She understands me.’

  Sherwyn went straight round to Belgrave Square. Morna opened the door to him. Her hair was untidy and her apron none too clean. She seemed to be barring his way rather than letting him in. She was quite formidable, brawny bare arms and stains down her front but she had a nice face; she really was not the sort to put death cap mushrooms in the soup.

  ‘Lady Adela’s taken to drink,’ Morna said. Perhaps she wasn’t the only one, thought Sherwyn.

  Morna seemed to feel the need to talk and the step was as good as anywhere.

  ‘She doesn’t know what she’s doing, sir. Sir Jeremy has finally lost his marbles, and thinks he’s been poisoned by a death cap. Black shirts, brown shirts, green berets, death caps, what’s the difference? How can he have been? His life’s not in one of your whodunits though he seems to think it is. It was that horse of his having to be shot was the last straw, not herself walking out on him the way she did. Best thing that could have happened to him. But now she’s moved back in and Phoebe’s been sent off to stay in a suite at the Savoy, though she was only ever his secretary. I’m not saying she doesn’t love him, though that’s another matter. But I wouldn’t suppose he can rise to the occasion any more, would you, sir, if you see what I mean? Would you like a cup of tea?’

  Sherwyn thought he should accept in the circumstances, and he did. It would at least get him into the house. Morna led him down to the kitchen, her large rump swaying. The room was in a slovenly state: his servant at the Albany would have been shocked.

  ‘And where are the twins, Mr Sexton? I have to ask. If we’re going to have a war they ought to be back here where they belong.’

  ‘I’m doing what I can,’ said Sherwyn. ‘That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘She can be a right bitch, but it’s the way she says it herself – that children belong to those who look after them, not those who gave birth to them, and who’s that except me, not her. Who’s brought up the twins? Me. None of her strong spices and flavours. She got those from your books, Mr Sexton, if you ask me. Nice bland food, as white as white can be, that’s what children need – and if they’re with me that’s what they’ll get.’

  ‘I am sure you are right,’ said Sherwyn, horrified.

  ‘And who did give birth to them, come to that? Was it the big sister nobody talks about?’

  ‘It was,’ said Sherwyn, giving up. A great burden seemed to fall from his shoulders. ‘It was the big sister. Vivvie. My wife.’

  ‘Stands to reason,’ said Morna. ‘It was the same back home. Everyone’s mother turned out to be their sister, to save the disgrace. But I wouldn’t have thought it coming from this lot, especially her. She’s a walking disgrace. You mean to tell me the father’s not Sir Jeremy either?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, that’s all to the good then. Poor wee things.’ It was not how Sherwyn would have described the twins. ‘In that case you being the father –’

  Sherwyn opened his mouth to object but gave up.

  ‘– you’ll be doing the right thing. They need to be with you. I’d be prepared to carry on, for a consideration. What with the war and everything wages are going to be good in munitions; it’s a temptation. But I’m fond of the girls, I’m not saying I’m not. I should miss them and they’d miss me.’

  He could see that was true enough.

  ‘I’ll think about it, Morna.’

  It was impossible, of course it was. The father Joseph analogy had long ago worn out. He lived in comfort in the Albany and they didn’t take families there. It had been rewarding enough to take them gifts even though they never seemed quite the right choices. He didn’t understand children and he didn’t want to. They were grown now and he couldn’t envisage a life full of shampoos and scent and strewn underwear and love letters and tears and hysterics and face powder spilt everywhere. He knew what female households could be like. Marjorie had left him with no illusions about that.

  ‘Yes, you just think about it, sir. Just you remember those twins belong to me now.’

  She went back to her room and wrote a letter to her sister in Galway telling her all about it.

  Sherwyn found Adela in floods of tears, huddled up under a blanket on the sofa. There was a strong smell of alcohol in the air. The zebra-skin rug which Vivvie had so hated had long since been moved to the Square, but was in a pretty bad state. A decanter of Sir Jeremy’s best whisky seemed to have broken over it and there were slivers of glass everywhere. Adela had not even had the will or energy to clear it up.

  She was distraught and clutched at Sherwyn’s arm. She buried her head on his chest and he let her. He pitied her. She was a little old lady in distress. It seemed she had found Phoebe’s underwear in Sir Jeremy’s bed. He had promised never to see the slut again and had not only broken that promise but had actually moved the whore into the house in her absence. What a stupid excuse – the coming war! Everyone was using it. The underground might get bombed on the slut’s way to work. What did it matte
r if it was? Typists were two-a-penny. She had forgiven Sir Jeremy once before for upsetting her so and they had made their peace. But he had broken the terms of the pact. She would never divorce him, never. She did not approve of divorce, it was immoral. She had gone to join Igor in a religious retreat just to punish him a little, to show Sir Jeremy what it felt like to be jealous.

  More tears, and more.

  ‘Oh come off it, Adela, as if he didn’t know. Give the poor man a divorce.’

  ‘He’d only marry the slut.’

  ‘She seems a nice girl, Adela.’

  ‘You’re just a man, what would you know?’

  ‘Adela, you are a bit drunk.’

  She sat up and dabbed at her eyes.

  ‘I am not drunk, I am upset. If the place smells of alcohol it’s because Morna tripped and broke the decanter. She’s the one who was drunk. If she thinks I’m going to clear up after her she has another think coming.’

  ‘Adela, stop making excuses. You are drunk.’

  ‘Don’t accuse me. Why does everyone always accuse me?’

  ‘Because it’s usually your fault.’

  ‘You’d be upset if you were me. Igor’s left me. That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘I thought it was because of the war. Aren’t all foreign nationals advised to return to their country of origin?’

  ‘Sod the war,’ said Adela. ‘What about me? Igor fell in love with a man and left me.’

  Igor Kubanov a queer? That took some getting used to. Igor the consummate actor, Sherwyn considered, who just went wherever advantage led him?

  ‘He saw all my powders and paints and said I was too old for him. He said it was disgusting, finding himself with an old baboushka. He said that Stefan was all young flesh and firmness. But Sherwyn, there was nowhere to keep anything secret at the Gurdjieff place. You were lucky to have a decent mattress or a cupboard with a door, let alone a proper meal. Bloody esoterics, them and their higher thoughts! They just hate comfort.’