She was barely seventy, not old enough to die, but her vitality had left her when my father died, and I was not enough to reconcile her to life without him. This was the grief that I carried, almost but not quite unnoticed, throughout my adult life. I could not imagine wanting to die if Owen died, and this too was in a sense forbidden knowledge. Although my mother had grumbled at my father, both of them knew that there was no anger in her reproaches, and she would never be in the slightest sense affected by them. As far as I could see, their life together was unambitious, unremarkable, yet I remember it as happy. The fact that this memory was so strong was crucial to my life, for against it I measured everything that happened to me, principally my marriage. I knew that I was not as happy as my mother had been, although the knowledge, which was ineradicable, took a long time to filter through to my consciousness. My mother thus laid a heavy burden on me without knowing it. But she was not to blame, nor was I ever crass enough to blame her. I can say with pride and gratitude that my mother and I loved each other without a shadow. And in the last two weeks of her life, when she could barely get out of bed, I was with her, going back to Gertrude Street only very late. ‘Not up yet?’ I had said to her one morning. I said it playfully, to hide my panic. She merely drew aside the bedclothes to show me her swollen legs and feet. So I let her stay there, although my instincts was to import nurses, doctors, even to get her admitted to hospital. I did none of these things, but it was a struggle to know how to behave in the face of the great separation which was soon to overtake us. I sang to her, and when I felt the tears rising in my throat I hurried out of the room and prepared the milk and the childish biscuits that she liked, or at that stage pretended to like. In the end she slept more and more. Once she woke up, looked at me, and sighed. ‘Fay,’ she whispered. ‘Fay.’ ‘What is it?’ I said. But she never spoke again.
When I left her that evening she was calm and smiling, although she said nothing, merely pressed my hand and held it to her face. I thought it safe to go home. Or did I? Perhaps I could stand no more. I left the house at ten o’clock, and she must have died in the night, because when Joan Barber let herself in on the following morning there was no sign of life: the tap still dripped into the red plastic basin, but that was all—no answer to her call, no stirring as she went up the stairs into the bedroom. She came down again and telephoned me. When I got there the first thing I saw was the abandoned biscuit with which I had tried to tempt her the previous day. Otherwise everything was in order. She had made a will some time before and had given it to me for safe-keeping. She had nothing to leave me but the house, and so it became mine. I think she still regarded it as my natural, my only home. In this she was prescient. But because it enshrined so much love, love that could never come again, I also knew that I would sell it when the time came. This I never told her.
I was surprised by the number of people who came to the funeral, for as far as I knew Mother saw nobody. Yet those of my father’s friends who had survived her turned up faithfully. My father had been a popular man, and his easy simple conviviality had been shared by men like himself, small-time, respectable, in a humble way of business. They came, in their unflattering oblong overcoats and their trilby hats, old men now, eyes watering with the cold or with reminiscence, cigarettes lit with shaky hands. They kissed me as a matter of course: was I not in their eyes still a child? And they promised me their help if I should ever need it: I had only to get in touch. Business cards and pieces of paper bearing telephone numbers were handed over. Owen became impatient, as he had been throughout the ceremony. Once it was over he got in the car and went off to Hanover Square. I went back to the house and served sherry and seed cake to the old men and their wives. Then I cleared up, and carefully locked the front door behind me. ‘Take a taxi, Fay,’ I heard Mother say. So I took a taxi and went back to Gertrude Street. There was nowhere else to go.
Owen was furious at being exposed to my humble origins, for he had managed to forget them, or to overlook them. The tap dripping in the red plastic basin, the old men at the funeral, shook him out of whatever complacency was left to him. My preoccupation with my mother’s dwindling life had been merciful in one way: it had helped me not to think about Owen’s business affairs, which I now suspected were irregular. I surmised that he was keeping part of the money due to the firm and must have been falsifying accounts. Naturally I could not prove this, nor did I ever know whether or not my suspicions were correct. I think now that something was on Charlie’s mind, and that Owen was questioned, but that he was able to give a reassuring account of himself. Owen had brought a great deal of money into the firm in the way of fees: he had a number of important clients, whose lordly manner, it was assumed, had recommended itself to him. Nothing was said, but I have an inkling that a mild word of warning was issued. Coming from Charlie it would have been deceptively mild, but Owen took notice of it. There were in addition one or two telephone calls from his uncle, Bernard Langdon, which left him red-faced and seething. I could be nothing but an additional irritant to him, and I learned to contain my grief, or at least not to display it when Owen was at home, which he was quite frequently then, not out of deference but out of prudence. For a few weeks he went off to Hanover Square every morning like a model employee. I never asked him what transpired there, nor would he have told me if I had. He merely asked me how the sale of the house was progressing. I think he considered it might be a good idea to have some money in reserve, in case any should be demanded of him. I had no idea how things were to be managed. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I was too taken up with my own sadness to brood for long on my husband’s troubles. This was only one indication of the estrangement I had begun to notice.
I was very lonely during the weeks that followed my mother’s death. I knew that I should never again be all the world to anyone, as it says in the song. Normally I despise women who claim never to have got over their parents’ death, or who affirm that their fathers were the most perfect men who had ever lived. I despise them, but I understand them. How can any later love compensate for the first, unless it is perfect? My simple parents had thought me unique, matchless, yet they had let me go away from them without a murmur of protest. I tried to ask myself whether I could have done more—been more—than was really the case, but it was too late, and the questions seemed artificial even as I asked them. Parents do die, and children survive them: moreover I was in my fifth decade and had left childhood far behind. Yet at that time I grew wistful, thinking of all that I had lost or forgone. I had voluntarily entered a world in which a certain obliquity seemed to be taken for granted, pretty manners hiding a very real indifference. No one was unkind to me. But I felt a coldness in the atmosphere whenever my mother-in-law was present, and I was oppressed by the knowledge that I must continue to dance attendance on Julia, if only to please Charlie, on whose goodwill Owen depended. But I saw it for what it was; there was no question of love, or even liking. Even Owen, from whom I now expected little, disappointed me.
I remember at that time I went to the hairdresser’s. I did this regularly, but I remember that visit for two particular reasons. The first was that next to me was a young mother with a little girl aged about three. The child, whose hair was about to be cut for the first time, screamed with terror and clung to her mother. The hairdresser stood by gravely, comb in hand: he recognized that this was a serious moment. The mother, blushing, tried to comfort the child who had suddenly plunged into despair; all around the shop women smiled in sympathy. What impressed me, and what I particularly remember, was the child’s passionate attempt to re-enter her mother, the arms locked around the woman’s neck, the terrified cries of unending love. So dangerous is it to be so close! I had tears in my eyes, witnessing that bond, seeing that closeness, of which only a sorrowful memory remained in my own life. One loses the capacity to grieve as a child grieves, or to rage as a child rages: hotly, despairingly, with tears of passion. One grows up, one becomes civilized, one learns one’s manners, and consequentl
y can no longer manage these two functions—sorrow and anger—adequately. Attempts to recapture that primal spontaneity are doomed, for the original reactions have been overlaid, forgotten. And so the feelings are kept inside one, and perhaps this is better in the long run. A child forgets easily, whereas it is an adult’s duty to remember. But this proves hard, sometimes.
When it was my turn (and the child was soon smiling, and proud of her new short hair) the hairdresser—John, such a nice man—looked at my reflection in the mirror, and said, ‘You’ve got a lot more grey coming through. Have you thought of a tint? I can introduce it quite carefully, while you’ve still got some colour. Then nobody will notice.’ But I felt a little faint and was anxious to get out into the air. Possibly the child had upset me, or I was not eating enough. ‘Let me think about it, John,’ I said. ‘I’ll let you know next time.’ He lifted the hair from my neck, ran his fingers gently through it, something my own husband never thought of doing. ‘It’s good hair,’ he said. ‘Don’t let it go to waste.’ It had been pretty, a light reddish blonde, the sort of natural attribute for which one was admired in the old days. Now it looked quite colourless, although still light. I gave no thought to my looks at that time and regarded the obligation to take care of them as one more of my duties. It was certainly not a pleasure. I was a middle-aged woman, and not making too good a job of it: loveless, mourning my mother, without children of my own, and beginning to regret my youth. ‘Perhaps when you’re feeling a little brighter,’ said kind John, and because he was so kind, so discreet, I nodded gratefully, paid the bill, and made my escape.
It was a beautiful spring, so beautiful that even being out in the street was a pleasure. There were intimations of happiness in the mere fact that yet again fruit trees had blossomed, and afternoons were bright with the first strong sun of the year. I took to wandering, although I still found the district unwelcoming. Solitude became important to me then, and has remained so. Mother would have said, ‘Out of bad comes good,’ and this realization gave me extraordinary comfort. There had been little comfort of any other sort. Vinnie had paid me a visit of condolence, although she had no time for me these days, and had not quite forgiven me for earlier reprimands. She sat at the kitchen table, swiftly eating a plate of bread and butter and evidently annoyed that there was nothing more substantial on offer. ‘You’ll sell the house, of course,’ she said, poking at the corners of her mouth with her terrible handkerchief. ‘What will you do with the money?’ She seemed to think this quite a legitimate question, as perhaps it was. ‘A little cottage somewhere? Owen has always wanted to live in the country, and of course I was brought up in Sussex. Etchingham. Near Eastbourne,’ she added kindly. ‘We could all go down in the car one day and look round. Perhaps two cottages,’ she added coyly. ‘So that I could be near my boy. And you too, Fay, of course.’ I could hear myself making smiling sounds of interest even as I decided to ignore her.
And Julia came, one evening, on Charlie’s arm. I thought that was decent of her. But Julia knew about mothers and was devoted to her own, that still pretty, rather silly woman, so appreciative of her daughter’s looks and accomplishments that she was her most perfect audience. ‘Have a whisky, darling,’ one of them would say to the other; it hardly mattered which, for their voices were astonishingly alike. Mrs Wilberforce confined herself to the most general of remarks and was thus extremely easy to get along with. She had always appeared pleasant enough, largely, I think, because it was in her interest to do so, but also because she was not a reflective sort of woman. She was another of Charlie’s pensioners, and as long as she had access to her daughter and to the amenities of Charlie’s flat, which included his whisky and cigarettes, she was relatively contented. ‘Too terrible for you,’ said Julia. ‘I came as soon as I heard.’ This cannot have been true: my mother had been dead for over a month. But then why should Julia know that? As usual I was having to do battle with my own scepticism, although I was curiously comforted by the visit. ‘If Mummy went I don’t know what I’d do,’ said Julia in a melancholy voice. ‘All the husbands in the world couldn’t make up for her. Although of course Charlie is my prop and mainstay.’
She was right, I reflected; she was more daughter than wife, whereas I had had it in me to be more wife than daughter. My expectations had not been fulfilled, but that was in the nature of an accident. Owen had come along and I had fallen in love with him. I had not known then that it is not necessary to marry every man one loves. I know it now. Now I realize that it is marriage which is the great temptation for a woman, and that one can, and perhaps should, resist it. I should have resisted it, or rather I should have resisted it then and given it a chance to come along later. But as a young woman one loses heart so easily, and then one wants all the appurtenances of marriage, the excitement, and the security, and the promise of a new life. And it is so sad to go without. I think differently now. But old women have more courage than young ones. They have no choice but to be brave.
I put the house on the market and told Joan Barber, who had kept her key, to take whatever she wanted in the way of furniture or linen. I neither wished nor needed to have any reminders of my mother’s life. I knew for a fact that the house had been run down, that the furniture, though comfortable, had always been ugly, and that her clothes, which had once been so pretty, were long out of date. I thought that perhaps Joan could use the material to make dresses for her little girl. My mother would have liked that, to see her floral prints and dark silks given a new lease of life in this way. Joan, to my relief, took a great deal; her husband went over in his van and moved out some of the easier tables and chairs. When I visited the house for the last time there was surprisingly little left, only the looming wardrobes and the shadowy dressing-table in my parents’ bedroom, and the marks on the walls where the bookcases had stood. I visited each of the rooms, mentally saying goodbye, for I knew that I should never go back. Owen was again furious when he asked me, and I told him, what Joan had taken. ‘You mean you just gave her the run of the place? You must be mad, Fay. I hope you don’t think you’re a rich woman now. That money should go straight into the bank. You can have your own account, if you like, but I think you ought to realize how much the upkeep of this house costs me. And it’s not as if you’re contributing in any way. I don’t mean that,’ he added wearily. ‘It’s just that my expenses are rather heavy at the moment.’
Millie came, bless her, and we had a lovely afternoon, sitting over the teacups as we used to do. Millie had known my mother and had accepted her as a natural part of our friendship. Some people, like my husband, allow one no access to their feelings, regard any enquiry as an encroachment. I had had to live with such people and I had not found it easy. But Millie reminded me that there were other, more fruitful ways of being. She cried easily, and just as easily brightened, her cheeks flushing with a lovely colour, to tell me how happy she was, married to her BBC sound engineer. He was some years older than she was, which we all thought rather exciting at the time, but he was a man who managed his life well and who adored his wife. He had a house near Oxford, to which he had planned to retire, and a bachelor flat in London, where he sometimes stayed overnight if he were working late. I asked Millie if she were content with a country life, for she had always been such a vivacious outgoing girl. (One could also be admired for being vivacious, in our day.) She told me that marrying Donald had made her happier than she had ever thought possible. She was radiant as she said this: there was no doubt in her mind. When she met Donald he had been a widower with two grown-up children, the least likely husband for a girl like Millie. But there had always been a certainty about their partnership that impressed me; there was a oneness between Millie and her husband that precluded any questions or comments.
The proof lay in the fact that she loved everything about him, and in turn loved his house, his children, with whom she got on extremely well, her new life away from all her friends, and even Donald’s life, which meant absences in London, sometimes for the
inside of a week, including nights. The mutual trust that existed between them gave her a relaxed wide-eyed appearance, and a permanent and charming half-smile. I have seen women who look like this—as if they were carrying on a conversation with their companion while going about their ordinary business—and they are usually married. If they have been really happy the smile will even survive widowhood. Divorce, never. I felt humble in the face of Millie’s certainty, which I had never known myself. I had felt trembling gratitude, anxiety, exaltation, even fear: I had won Owen in the teeth of great opposition. And he had let himself be won, in a lazy but practical sort of way. My excess of feeling had amused him, for he had none of his own. Of the two of us he was the more passive, but also the more business-like; energy was for work, not for love. We had managed, somehow, although we both knew that this was a misalliance. For this reason we both deserved a little credit.
I said none of this to Millie; I had not spoken of it to anyone, and never should. I saw signs of age in her glossy complexion, now almost innocent of make-up, and the lines around her smiling mouth. She wore country clothes, a tweed skirt and a corduroy jacket. Yet she looked vital, viable, in a way which was no longer available to me; there was an energy there which had to do with plenty. She had brought a full basket with her, eggs from her local shop, jam she had made herself—Millie making jam!—and apples from their own trees which she had stored through the winter. She was in that blessed state of love that makes it natural to give. ‘I go to church now,’ she told me happily. ‘Well, I’ve been so lucky, haven’t I?’ And she told me all about Donald’s children with as much enthusiasm as if they had been her own.
Brief Lives Page 8
