‘I suppose she’s all right for her age,’ said Lewis. ‘But I think she’s pretty unattractive.’
‘She was possibly always heavy in the bust, even as a girl,’ said his mother. ‘Now, of course, her waist is bigger than it was before. That happens to women in their forties,’ she said, giving Lewis’s arm a tap. ‘You should know that. So that you’re not disappointed when your wife gets a little older. The figure loses definition,’ she added, although her own had long disappeared into a kind of Gothic sparseness. Contemplation of Miss Clarke’s misplaced and unsought abundance always brought her a tiny spasm of personal gratitude for her own good fortune. Although Lewis did not know this, Mrs Percy always reflected at this point, ‘After all, I had darling Jack.’ But such thoughts were not to be spoken, and after thinking them Mrs Percy felt a little ashamed.
‘Remember, Lewis,’ she had said. ‘Good women are better than bad women. Bad women are merely tiresome. Learn to appreciate goodness of heart. Learn to look beyond the outer covering. Would you like some of those crumpets for tea?’
They had been passing one of the mild small shops that did duty for a bakery in this unworldly district. Two girls in overalls carelessly swathed uncut loaves in tissue paper and swung bags round by corners, varying this activity with sorties to the window to pick out yellow Bath buns and virulent jam tarts with fingers arched daintily for the purpose.
‘Remember, Lewis,’ his mother had said. ‘Never buy cakes unwrapped.’
‘I wouldn’t buy this stuff anyway,’ said Lewis, whose standards in these matters remained haughtily and unrealistically Parisian. ‘I could just fancy a strawberry tart,’ he added. ‘Freshly made.’ ‘Nevertheless,’ said his mother, ‘I’m sure you won’t say no to the crumpets. Fortunately, they come in packets.’
‘Good afternoon, Hazel,’ she had said to one of the two girls behind the counter. ‘Father feeling better?’
For she had been the genius of the place, he thought, and had somehow made her peace with its lack of pretension, loving its modesty, its uneventfulness, its quiet afternoons. Little ceremonies – the planting of the hyacinth bulbs in the blue china bowls, the drawing of the curtains in the evenings, the bars of soap slipped between the clean sheets in the linen cupboard – all these had kept her happy, kept her attentive, so that with the help of her reading, and with her pride in her son, she had lived a peaceful widowhood, maintained a dignity for which he was grateful. He had had time to reflect on her life, which he now saw as excellent, and which he hoped would always remain with him, and even, when some time had elapsed, cancel out the memory of her death. He would always see her here, against the background of the Common, or else stepping on her narrow beautifully shod feet into the little bakery, the little grocery, exchanging remarks with the shopkeeper, or the girl assistant. Going home to put on the kettle, to build up the fire for the evening, to water the plants. This was a life, thought Lewis, that would always be part of him, although in his mind he longed impatiently to be somewhere else, to be off to a wider, more sophisticated metropolitan setting, one more in keeping with the adult he hoped he had it in him to be, although adulthood still seemed to him to be a long way away. His boyhood, the last days of which he was sorrowfully living, would remain imprinted with his mother’s quiet habits, whose decency he would always defend.
His mother’s presence was particularly strong on this day when he returned the library books she would never exchange for others. He mounted the steps, pushed through the swing doors, obediently straightened his tie. Once again he succumbed to suburban peace, aware of a rawness round his heart which responded gratefully to the books, to the readers, to the sunlight through the windows, to the smell of polish. Mr Baker was there, he noticed, doing the crossword in The Times, although this was forbidden; at least he was not asleep. Miss Clarke was on duty, in a red dress that brought out her high colour; even the lobes of her ears, tightly clasped by large pearl studs, looked suffused. The other girl, the pale one, was searching through the tickets that went back into the books being returned by a very old lady, who drew each one, trembling, from the depths of a woven brown leather bag. Miss Clarke flashed him her famous smile, the one she used to enslave men and reprimand wrongdoers.
‘Mother not with you today?’ she asked. It was the question he had been dreading.
‘My mother has died,’ he said. ‘I’ve brought her books back.’
There was a shocked silence. The pale girl turned round, even paler. Miss Clarke, her hand on her heart, paused in her task.
‘Well, this has been quite a shock,’ she said, after a second or two, lowering the hand to pluck a dazzling white handkerchief from her sleeve. ‘This is a sad day for the library, Mr Percy. We’ve known your mother for ages. Always so kind. Always took an interest. I had noticed she was looking a bit tired, mark you. But I never dreamed …’
‘It was her heart,’ said Lewis miserably, feeling once again the full weight of his misfortune.
‘And then, of course, she missed you,’ Miss Clarke went on inexorably. ‘She once said to me, “I’m counting the days, Madeleine”. But she didn’t want you to know that.’
And now I do, thought Lewis. In order not to prolong the conversation he went over to the shelves to try to find a book that his mother might have liked, hoping to maintain contact in that way if in no other. He found a couple of Edith Whartons, and, feeling lonely and self-conscious, took them to the desk. The pale girl came forward, two spots of red in her cheeks.
‘She was awfully proud of you, Mr Percy,’ the girl said. ‘And she was quite all right on her own, you know. Not weak, or anything. She never complained, never said there was anything wrong. Please don’t blame yourself.’ She ducked her head in embarrassment at having said so much and busied herself with the date stamp.
‘Thank you,’ said Lewis.
‘I was very fond of your mother,’ said the girl. Lewis saw that despite her pallor, or because of it, she had an air of delicacy, or narrowness, that pleased him. Her clothes were asexual: a pale blue sweater and a grey flannel skirt, schoolgirl’s clothes, which made her seem younger than her age. He reckoned she was about twenty-five. What he noticed mostly were her long unmarked slightly upcurling fingers, white as if they had never been engaged in a common or unseemly task. The face, momentarily enlivened by her emotion and the forwardness she obviously thought she was exhibiting, was equally long and pale, and could, he thought, look mournful. The face was framed by thick hair, in a colour midway between blonde and beige, and held back by a black velvet band. Susan had had one of those, he remembered: they must be the fashion. She had large, rather beautiful dark blue eyes, shadowed by long colourless lashes. The skin was fine, the teeth unexpectedly strong, slightly protruding. The chin, he noticed, was a little weak. He wondered why she was not pretty. His mother would have known why the face was so withdrawn, so unmarked. That pose of the head, held slightly on one side, as if listening to an inner voice, those narrow, slightly hunched shoulders, those prayerful hands, set him thinking of pale virgins in stone, the kind he had seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Perhaps all virgins had something in common, he thought, revising her age slightly upward. And yet, outside the V and A, he had never seen one so spectacularly virginal. Everything about her looked untouched. Beneath the pale blue jersey the breasts were scarcely noticeable. He felt drawn to her on account of her little speech, which, he supposed, given her shyness, must have cost her an effort. He was grateful to her for telling him what he had wanted to be told. She was the agent of his deliverance.
‘Tissy, your mother’s here,’ called Miss Clarke.
‘Tissy?’ said Lewis quickly, intrigued by this name, which he had never heard.
‘My name’s Patricia, really. Patricia Harper. When I was little I couldn’t say Patricia, so I called myself Tissy, and the name’s stuck. I get called it all the time now. Would you excuse me, Mr Percy? My mother’s come to take me out to lunch. I just want you to know I was fond of
Mrs Percy, and I’m sorry for your trouble.’
Again she blushed, seemed almost weakened by the effort of speaking. In the face of her alarming fragility he held out his hand, partly in gratitude, partly to reassure himself that she was all right. She clasped his hand lightly with very cold fingers, then turned and disappeared.
‘A tragedy, that girl,’ said Miss Clarke, leaning her bosom on the counter. Mr Baker, looking up, put his finger ostentatiously to his lips. Miss Clarke took no notice.
‘Agoraphobia,’ she said, with melancholy satisfaction. ‘Says she can’t go out alone. Her mother brings her in the morning, collects her for lunch, brings her back at two, and collects her again in the evening. I’ve tried to talk to her, but to no avail. Apparently it came on with adolescence, although I believe there was some family trouble as well. The father,’ she said, lowering her voice to imply discretion, but also comprehension. ‘Another woman, I suppose. That’s usually the way of it, isn’t it? A good little worker, mind you: I’ve no complaints. But who else would have her?’
‘Doesn’t she ever go out, then?’ asked Lewis.
‘Well, I’ve encouraged her, of course. I’ve told her she can’t stay with her mother all her life. But she turns quite faint if you go on at her. Frightened to death, you see. And it ties the mother down too, now that there’s just the two of them. Still, she seems quite happy. And we can’t always have things the way we want them, can we? Into each life a little rain must fall. Anyway you don’t want to hear about all this, what with your recent tragedy.’ She pressed her handkerchief to a ready tear. ‘Taking those, are you? Ah, The Age of Innocence, my favourite book.’ Lewis was ashamed of himself for thinking patronizingly of Miss Clarke. She was a romantic, and therefore an ideal reader, someone like himself. Nevertheless, walking home with the books under his arm, it was Miss Harper, Tissy, whose image stayed in his mind, tiny, chill, eternally distant, like something seen through the wrong end of a telescope. He had thought her quite plain.
She might be somebody he could marry, he thought, quailing at the prospect of his mother’s empty house. The thought, though idle, was sudden yet not surprising. And then he could cure her, and she would be able to go out again. Or else she could stay indoors, waiting for him to come home. It would be nice to be expected again.
He raced through The Age of Innocence and Ethan Frome, and was back at the library two days later. This time he was disappointed: no sign of Tissy Harper, or even of Miss Clarke. No sign of anyone, and only a large indolent girl he had never seen before at the desk. He took out an Elizabeth Bowen and a Margaret Kennedy. He found himself drawn to the books his mother had loved, as if in reading them he could get in touch with her in a way of which she would have approved. In any event such reading seemed to him salutary. He began to think that his official reading, which involved him in grown-up theories about heroism, and nineteenth-century heroism at that, might have led him, not exactly astray, but perhaps a little too far from normal concerns. He whiled away several evenings with what he thought of as his mother’s type of book, and for a time he was soothed and charmed, although the moment at which he was forced to emerge from these tender fictional worlds was always harsh and painful. He began to long for a female presence, something shadowy, beneficent, something that would bring health and peace back into his life, which he perceived as threatened. The desire for such a presence was infinite, although he saw little possibility of its being satisfied. He thought how sad it was for a man of his age to be reduced to loneliness, with only his books for company. At the same time he began to realize that he could not spend his life reading. The British Museum was his refuge, but it was also his prison. He felt mildly distressed when the library closed, but once that moment had passed he strode out down the steps with a feeling of liberation. As the year stretched once more into spring the days perversely got both longer and chillier. Walking home, he could hear sad bird song under a darkening sky. In the gardens crocuses were already splayed and untidy, past their best. Timid buds showed on bushes; even the cheerless privet seemed brighter. In a moment of depression he turned out again one evening after his supper and took the Elizabeth Bowen back to the library. He had left it late and arrived just as the lights were being clicked on and off to signify closing time. But he was rewarded by the sight of Tissy Harper, this time in a pale pink twinset, one arm already inserted into the sleeve of a grey jacket.
‘Take your time,’ she whispered. ‘I won’t put the lights out until you go.’
‘I just wanted to return this,’ he said, placing the book on the counter, near her hand. ‘I’ll come back another day.’ He hesitated, and then asked, ‘Can I walk you home?’
‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘but my mother’s here.’
Her mother was in fact looking at him rather insistently from the vantage point of a seat opposite the one Mr Baker would have been occupying had he not been turned out earlier by Miss Clarke. Ah, but the mother was a surprise. The mother, thought Lewis, was a beauty, a bold strenuous-looking woman, with a curiously out-of-date sexual appeal. She was heavily made up, her mouth a dark red, her eyebrows arched in permanent astonishment, an artificial streak of white inserted into her upswept dark hair. She had exactly the same look of disdain that he remembered from the screen goddesses of his childhood. For all its apparent and carefully nurtured perfection the face was discontented, with an incipient puffiness round the mouth and chin. Lewis could see no resemblance at all between the mother and the daughter, but then he remembered Miss Clarke hinting that the father had gone off with another woman, and he supposed this renegade, this ingrate, to have had the same fair looks that his daughter now possessed.
But why had the father gone off? What sort of a woman did a man go off to, when he had this red-lipped smouldering creature at home? For she was still in the prime of life, not much more than fifty, he supposed. She looked tricky, hard to please, and also capricious, exigent, the last person to be the guardian of a pristine semi-invalid daughter. A fur coat was flung back from a plumpish compact little body; her skirt was short enough to show fine legs in fine stockings. He could see no sign of conjugal or maternal disillusionment in her face, but simply impatience. Mrs Harper looked like a woman whose husband had left only a minute before, to perform some necessary but unimportant duty, and who would return immediately once the duty were out of the way. Mrs Harper, in fact, looked like a woman invisibly accompanied by a man. Yet here she was, tied to her daughter, clocking in at the library four times a day, without any possibility of release from this obligation until the daughter resumed her autonomy.
Lewis felt a pang of pity for them both. He felt too that if he could wean Tissy away from her mother he might effect the happiness of three people. He still retained a sense of chivalry towards women. He was aware of his lack of experience, and ashamed of it, but he was even more ashamed of certain publications bought in Paris and hidden beneath his sweaters until they could be safely deposited in public rubbish bins. These texts had left him with a sense of surprise and disappointment, and he hated the idea that the getting of wisdom involved both. For himself he envisaged something more chaste, if that could be managed: it could be brief, but it must be perfect, heroic. He would be prepared to lose all, but only if at some point he had gained all. Although Tissy Harper, with her prayerful hands and her downcast eyes, might not provide the promised sins of the flesh, she still represented a quest and a safeguard. She would be kind, would not mock or disregard him, would care for him studiously and with gratitude. And her mother could go back to whatever society she had been forced to abandon – he imagined hotel terraces, bridge games, cocktails – when the girl, her so unsuitable daughter, had become her only occupation.
The problem now was how to divide the mother and the daughter for as long as it might take him to pursue his plan. For he had to emancipate her from her tutelage before he could do anything else. The project appealed to him: it had the requisite altruism. He had an obscure feeling that a man
must perform an act of nobility before claiming his prize. This, he knew, was ridiculous. But he had never felt comfortable when he had been merely lewd and selfish. He supposed that in later life, in remote middle age, perhaps, these attributes might be sufficient to motivate him, but by then he would have sunk far from grace, as old people did, his mother excepted. For the time being he knew himself to be not only young but powerless. His powerlessness was reinforced by his virginity, which he felt to be tardy and shameful. In Paris nothing had happened to change his hopeful self. With his abundant hair, his short-sighted smile, and his respectful expression, he had attracted no predatory gaze. And he suspected that he would not have been equal to such a situation. The prospect before him now promised a certain equality, if only of inexperience, and vouchsafed him, at the same time, a quota of generosity, of honour, even. He needed these feelings not only because they were pleasurable in themselves but because they were required to offset certain censorable images that crept back to him from his unofficial Parisian readings. He had no sensation of being attracted to Tissy Harper. What he felt was a mixture of respect and charity. He would rescue her and take his reward. Or, if circumstances permitted, he would take his reward first and leave her with a legacy of freedom, waking her, like the Sleeping Beauty, from the strange enchantment that had kept her a prisoner for so long. For how long? Since the father had left home, Miss Clarke had implied. When would that have been? There was no clue to this. The key to the whole enigma was the mother, he thought. And if he could free them both they could thank him by performing various domestic duties about the place. These were becoming urgent. No matter how many times he changed the sheets he habitually forgot the day on which the laundry was collected and delivered. He was, as always, extremely hungry. If they would look after him, he thought, he would take them both on. He would marry them both.
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