The Solitary Child

by Nina Bawden

  “There is nothing to talk about.” James’s voice was like a whip and I felt the outraged colour flood under my skin. He had never spoken to me like that before. Later, I came to know that it was always his own helplessness that made him angry; the burden he carried was heavier than most and sometimes it became intolerable. But at the time I saw only the unkindness and injustice and smarted under it.

  “Surely she has some rights? It seems unfair—to decide her future without consulting her at all.…”

  “We know what is best for her.” James looked at me with something unexpected in his face, a quality of ruthlessness. He was suddenly like a stranger or perhaps it was only that I was seeing him as a stranger might see him. To see someone you know and love in an entirely new position can be an unnerving experience; I was cold and shocked as if I had looked in the glass and seen my familiar image not only left to right but upside down.

  Mrs. Tenby’s voice was satisfied. “I was quite right, then. You have been imposed upon.… It is not your fault. Maggie is very persuasive and I am sure you are naturally kind.” She spoke as if it were a fault. “But she is often untruthful.…”

  James stated flatly, “You mean she is a habitual liar?”

  Professor Tenby shifted uneasily in his chair. He was a tall, stooping man, wearing a leather-bound jacket. He had a mild, shiny face like a kindly taxi-driver’s and a high, academic forehead that ended in a point, like an egg. He looked unhappy; he caught my eye and gave me a shy, apologetic smile.

  His wife glared at James as if she hated him. “No, of course not. If she is occasionally dishonest, it is only because she is going through a difficult period. Adolescence is a trying time for any girl, for Maggie, with her background, it is unusually so. There is so much for her to come to terms with besides the ordinary problems of her age—the changes in her body, the ethical decisions she has never had to make before.…”

  “She is incapable of an ethical decision,” said James. “You know that as well as I do. And anyway, as I remember my own boyhood, it is more important to come to terms with God.”

  Her eyes were cold. “That is another way of putting the same thing.”

  “It is not. You talk as if all moral judgment was a personal affair.”

  “How can it be anything else?”

  “And when a boy lies or steals or hits an old lady over the head? Has he made a moral judgment?”

  “That is beside the point. In such cases there is usually a troubled background. When you have been brought up in a Glasgow slum, your judgment is bound to be fallible.”

  James was white, his whole body shook with anger. I had the feeling that, as with Ann the night before, this was an old battle and fought on grounds unknown to me.

  “So we must make allowances always? We have all had difficult childhoods. We don’t escape responsibility because of it. If we did, it would make a mockery of all human endeavour … it would make a mockery of life.…”

  Mrs. Tenby said, in a voice as chilly as a winter’s morning, “How you thresh about among these unimportant abstractions. Two years ago, Maggie’s mother died—in unforgettable circumstances. At sixteen, Maggie is a troubled, and sometimes difficult child. Can you really hold her responsible for this?”

  The Professor said gently, “If the soil is starved, the flower grows stunted. But it still turns to the sun.”

  He got up and stood in front of my chair, shielding me from the others.

  “Mrs. Random, I am very interested in gardens—even at this time of the year. Did you know that James has always been proud of his roses? Perhaps you would let an old man have a chance to give you a little advice about your soil. It is very rich here. My job is lecturing and I like to show off.”

  He said, jabbing his walking stick into the wet earth, “Another minute and you would have been crying. And found it impossible to stop.…”

  I blinked at him. “Thank you for rescuing me. I didn’t deserve it. It was all my fault.…”

  The leaves lay thick and sodden in the walled garden, the herbaceous border rustled its dead flowers. He gestured at the rose-bed.

  “You should try winter pruning. I’ve had a lot of success—particularly with my yellow roses. And hop manure in the spring. No, it wasn’t your fault. You’re young and kind and you don’t know the half of it.”

  “It’s no excuse.” I kicked miserably at the leaves. The air smelt mossy and damp.

  “Isn’t it? It’s a mistake, you know, to judge yourself too harshly, Charlotte.”

  “Harriet,” I murmured.

  He poked his stick fretfully among the blackened dahlias. “Harriet,” he repeated with faint impatience as if proper names were not of much account. His eyes were pink and watery in the wind. “It’s an old quarrel between them. If you hadn’t said what you did, they would have found some other opening.”

  “Will you tell me about it?”

  He turned his mild, old face towards me. Back at the house his action had been the product of a sharp and kindly understanding; now I had the feeling that he wearied easily of sympathetic attention to any particular subject. He looked at me with a vague and puzzled air as if he wondered why we were walking together, among the dead flowers, in the spoiled, winter garden.

  “Eva was troublesome, of course,” he said. He assumed a distant, academic air as if he were holding a tutorial. “James blamed us—blamed her upbringing. We thought that a narrow view. She was brought up in South Africa—I had a chair in Natal. Life is very easy there for the young, they are spoiled and gay and careless. They are taught to believe that happiness is a right, they pursue it for its own sake. When we came back to England before the war when she met James, Eva had never known anything other than a life that was easy and pleasant and kind. I don’t believe that the kind of life she had led was responsible for the kind of person she became, although to some extent, perhaps, it hid the root of the trouble. She had never had to face any kind of duty, any kind of harshness; we found out too late that she was incapable of facing it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  His eyes were bleak. “James had been brought up very strictly. His mother was very rigid in her ideas of right and wrong. She was a clever woman, but quite inflexible. She disapproved of Eva from the beginning, she thought her pleasure-loving and light-minded. She saw Eva’s trouble, not as a sickness, but as a moral weakness.…”

  I was quite at sea. “Are you trying to tell me that she wasn’t sane?”

  I spoke the word with awe; madness was what lay behind the walls of the loony bin we passed on the way to school, funny old men mumbling beside the canal, undoing their fly buttons, strait-jackets, padded cells.

  “Oh no! She was very reserved, sometimes you had the feeling that she was, in a curious way, free of another world to which the rest of us had no entry. When she married James she found herself in a society that was completely alien to her, a society in which happiness, you might say, was at a discount. She couldn’t face the coldness of it. Perhaps treatment might have helped her, my wife thought so. But James disagreed.” He paused. The dead leaves crackled beneath our feet. “Without the demands that were made on her—and by normal standards they were not, I suppose, excessive—she would have remained gay and innocent and sweet. She became hysterical and nervy. Most men would have found her impossible. She drove James to—despair.”

  His voice faltered. He looked very old.

  “But he loved her, surely?”

  “Love changes its face very easily, you know. For him, towards the end, it became an almost unbearable responsibility.…”

  We had reached the gate of the walled garden. He walked ahead of me across the cobbled square between the stables and the garage, towards the archway and the house.

  I caught at his sleeve. “And Maggie? What has it to do with Maggie?”

  “Don’t you see? They are both afraid, James and my wife, that she will grow up like her mother. James is afraid that we will be too indulgent, we are
afraid that he would be too harsh with her. But they are both making a mountain out of a molehill. What they each see in her is a distorted image of their own fear, not the truth at all. There is nothing wrong with Maggie. She is a young girl like any other. If she is not always honest it is because she lives in a world of her own. It is quite proper for a young girl to do so. A world somewhere between earth and heaven. There—I’m a sentimental old man, aren’t I?”

  He smiled complacently at himself.

  “What do you think we should do? If she wishes it, should she stay here?”

  “It is up to James. She is his daughter.” He frowned, poking with his stick at a weed that was growing between the cobbles. “She seemed quite happy with us, she said nothing about wanting to live with her father until she knew he had married again. It was unfortunate, in a way, that he didn’t want her to live with him after the acquittal. It might have made things easier for him.…” He avoided my eyes.

  I said brightly, “You mean other people might have thought him less guilty?” He did not answer and I felt the courage drain out of me, leaving me limp and cold and empty. “Why didn’t he want her?”

  “I really have no idea.” He had tired of the subject, his voice was crisp and irritated. He said formally, “You must be cold, Charlotte. Shall we go in?”

  The old eyes stared coldly over my shoulder, the adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. He had forgotten my name. He didn’t care about me. No one did. I thought about the anonymous letter, my mother’s anger, the hostile eyes.… A wave of self-pity washed over me and left me sick and trembling. I wanted to say something that would restore his interest and sympathy but there was nothing to say.

  As we entered the house a hired car turned in at the gate. James brushed past us and went out to speak to the driver. From the bottom of the stairs, Mrs. Tenby said, “Oh, William.…”

  She put out her hands to her husband. Her voice was soft and shocked. The black hat trembled on her grey head, the veined hands twisted together as if in supplication. She had been weeping, she looked an abandoned, sad old woman.

  “Will … he says she must stay here … my sweet darling, my baby.…”

  The Professor put his arm round her and, seeing me, she stood more upright. With one hand she attempted to fasten the hat more securely on her head. She had been brought up to control herself, hide her feelings in front of strangers. The proud habit of years clothed her like armour.

  Her voice tinkled like ice. “I hope you know what you’ve done,” she said.

  James was in the doorway. He was very white. I appealed to him. “What’s happened? What have I done?”

  He looked at me, his eyes withdrawn. “I talked to Maggie. She said you had already promised that she should stay. In the circumstances, it seemed I had no alternative but to accept the responsibility.”

  Janet’s face shone with excitement and indignation.

  “She’s crying, poor little soul. Her Daddy was angry with her.

  Though, to my way of thinking, it seems only natural for her to want to be with her daddy. Really, I don’t know what all the fuss is about.”

  “No,” I said. “Nor do I.”

  “Shall I make you a nice cup of tea, Mrs. Random? You look as if you could do with it.”

  I felt the tears sting in my eyes at her careless kindness. She was not just concerned for me, her generous sympathy embraced mankind. The cure for all ills was a cup of tea.

  “Don’t take on,” she said. “I’ll put the kettle on. The television man went away, seeing as he couldn’t get in the drawing-room. He says he’ll be round next week.” She grinned. “He’s a card he is.” She padded away down the passage, singing “Lover Man.”

  Maggie lay back against the pillow like a tired child, her face flushed and puffy with crying. On her cheek there was a red mark, like a burn, where James had slapped her.

  My anger ebbed away. I said, “Why did you tell your father that I promised you could stay? It wasn’t true, was it?”

  Her lips puckered. “Don’t be angry, please, Harriet, don’t be angry.”

  I said wearily, “No. I’m not angry.”

  “I’m sorry. I really am sorry. I will be good.”

  I bent over and kissed her tentatively. “I’m sure you will. I’ll make you a real promise now—I’ll try and look after you nicely.”

  Her worn-out face smiled at me. “You’re so good.”

  “No. Not good at all.” My heart swelled with shame and pity. I tucked the small hands under the covers and drew the flowered curtains across the window.

  She said, “Harriet.” I turned from the window. Her eyes were watching me. “Harriet, it wasn’t because I told him you’d promised that Daddy let me stay.”

  “Wasn’t it?”

  “No.” She smiled suddenly, a child, hugging a secret. “It was because of something I said to him. I told him I wouldn’t tell you.”

  “Then you’d better not.”

  She said doubtfully, “No? But you’d like to know what it was, wouldn’t you, Harriet?”

  Her eyes sparkled, she was teasing me.

  “No. Not if it was something private.”

  She pouted. “I want to tell you. I’d feel better if I told you.”

  “You must learn to put a promise before your personal comfort.”

  That was beyond her. I laughed and closed the door.

  James said, “I can’t get Channel Nine.” He twiddled with the knobs and the atoms danced on the screen.

  “The man said he’d come back next week. He couldn’t finish it because we were all in here.…”

  “Might have a shot myself.” He shifted his pipe to the other side of his mouth and peered at the back of the set.

  “I shouldn’t. You’ll blow it up.”

  “I don’t like being beaten by these things.” He stood up. “Would you like a drink?”

  “Please.” I thought: drink makes it easier. Is that what he’s thinking? Will we get to the stage where we have to drink to bear each other’s company?

  He poured out two gins. “We ought to eat, I suppose.”

  “I gave Maggie her supper in bed. I’m not hungry, are you?”

  “Not at the moment. Cigarette?”

  He handed me his case and produced his lighter. I moved too close to the flame and the paper flared along the side. I wondered: how long will it be before he says he hates me? Or can we go on like this, chattering like strangers on the edge of silence?

  He sat down. The gin moved sluggishly in his glass like syrup.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “It was wicked to plunge you into this. I am incurably selfish.”

  It was worse than anger. Anger can be healing. Despair and self-pity are like an inoperable cancer; you can only alleviate the pain. I looked at his face, abandoned to weariness like a sick man’s. I had wanted to tell him about the letter, to ease my own shame and fear. Now I knew that I could not add to his burden.

  I said brightly, “Nothing is ever so bad as you think it is.”

  He grinned wryly, “You can only say that, my darling, if you know exactly how bad it is and how bad I think it is. Otherwise it is a meaningless remark.” He drained his glass and poured himself another gin.

  “It’s not fair to expect you to look after her. You’re not much older than she is. And how will you feel when the baby comes?”

  “There are six years between us. At that age it’s a big gap. And she’ll enjoy helping with the baby. We’ll be a real family, then.”

  “How easy you make it sound. You are young, my darling.”

  I said testily, “Is it a crime?”

  “No. Nor a criticism, either.” He hesitated. “Don’t you see that I’m just frightened for you? You look at things so levelly, without fuss. It’s something I love in you. I don’t want it spoilt.”

  There were sudden, bright tears in his eyes and he wiped them away with the back of his hand.

  “I get sentimental when I drink,” he said.


  “Nothing will be spoilt. We will all be happy together.”

  He looked at me oddly. “She’s got under your skin, hasn’t she?”

  I was out of my depth. I said uneasily, “She’s only a child, what a funny thing to say.…”

  His voice sounded flat and dead. “Yes, of course. She’s only a child.”

  “Why didn’t you want her?” It was a clumsy thing to say, how clumsy I didn’t realise until I saw the look on his face.

  He said, in a bright, automatic voice, “A lot of possibly foolish reasons.” He reached for the gin bottle. “When I went to talk to her, after the old man had so tactfully taken you into the garden, she threatened me.” His eyes flickered. “It was something I couldn’t tell her grandparents. She said, if I didn’t let her stay, she’d kill herself. I didn’t believe her but I couldn’t take the risk.” His eyes were wary as if he were gauging the effect of his words on me. “Eva was always threatening suicide. I never told you, did I? When Maggie did the same thing, just now, it was like looking into a coffin.”

  The past padded up and closed around him like a shadow. It did not occur to me that he might have spoken deliberately wielding the bitterness of his memory like a weapon. I was in agony on his behalf; I saw nothing beyond the cruel stupidity of my own blunder. I thought: this is the worst kind of hell, to know that you cannot protect someone you love, even against yourself, to learn the uselessness of tenderness and love and pity.

  I went to him, appalled, and knelt by his chair.

  “Poor darling,” I said, “poor darling. I don’t help much, do I? I’m a useless woman. Do you hate me?”

  “No. You’re my love and my honey.”

  After that it was all right for a bit. We put on gum-boots and went round the farm buildings with a hurricane lamp seeing that everything was shut up for the night. The air was cold and exciting and I clung to James’s arm, giggling a little because of the gin, and slipping in the mud. We ran into a man by the hen-houses, closing the shutters in the door. James said good-night to him and he growled back in a surly fashion. James said it was Evans and he wasn’t really rude, only sometimes he behaved as if the farm belonged to him.