“I suppose she has little to live for, only herself really, and so tries to keep her end up by how she looks.”
“I remember Mrs. Neville, my old friend of before and during the war, telling me that women like nice things to wear, not to attract men, but to give themselves pleasure. To boost their morale, in other words. I suppose the root of the matter—or rather the effect of the injury to the root—is that Elizabeth has never been able to lose sympathy for others, because she has been striving desperately ever since adolescence to maintain her own life. I’ll go and get a pencil.”
“Don’t you bother, Pip. I’ll soon get these out of the way.”
“Are you sure? Yes, Elizabeth is so depleted by her psychic wound draining her spirit that she lives in a vacuum, which she is always trying to fill. Well, thank you for listening. I’m becoming a bore, I’m afraid.”
“It’s rather a trying time for you, isn’t it?”
11 Hillside Road,
Wakenham
12 November, 1936
My dear Phillip,
This is a stand by notice for you. Last night while trying to raise herself up on her pillow, poor Mother fractured her left thigh bone. This, the Doctor and Surgeon attending her say is a very serious and dangerous complication, and because of her bad condition it will be a most difficult matter to deal with. Mother must have an anaesthetic for the setting of the fracture, which may prove fatal, and in any case the accident will lead to an earlier demise. The operation will be this afternoon or tomorrow morning and I will let you know tomorrow how things are.
Greetings to all and love from
Your affec. father,
R. Maddison
Tranquil Vale
Blackheath
Monday
My dearest Son,
Father thought I would upset you by saying I have broken my leg whilst in bed but I am alright.
My love to you all. Write to me when you have time.
Nurse is writing this for me as I am unable to do so.
Your loving
Mother
p.p. J.M.L.
Dear Mr. Maddison,
Your Mother lives for the post, it would be kind if you would send her a letter. She is so devoted to you.
Yours truly,
Jane M. Lewis (Nurse)
Dearest Mother,
You are brave in your suffering because you cannot help being brave. This courage is the spirit of life, which endures and is never lost. No love is ever lost. There is a great reservoir of love which has created life in this world, in many forms which must maintain themselves. You live in me, your son, and in your two daughters, and we live and always shall live with you, and with Father, and in our children and our children in us. Among the Semitic desert tribes this vision of love was before Jesus, but he clarified it and made it real in a way that scientists may, in time to come, accept as proved ‘reality’.
We are all with you, Mother dear. Your spirit shines with a clear, steady flame. I owe what gifts I have to you: not from your words, but from your essential being. I am with you, Mother, always. And I shall look after the two girls, and Father, in due course.
Soon you will be seeing Grannie, and your sister Dorrie, and your brother Hugh. Do you remember one morning, years ago, when you dreamed that you saw Grannie and Dorrie by your bedside, and Grannie said to you, We have come to fetch Hugh? And later that morning we heard that Hugh had been freed of all earthly pain exactly at the time, six o’clock, that the vision of beatitude came to you. There is a paradise, and all true artists work to the glory of its existence, even if they do not always believe with conventional or organised faith. Be happy, Mother, in this vision which was always your vision.
He sat at his desk in dejection. It was something to say to her: not to be written. He cast the second page, and took another line.
And I shall look after the two girls, and Father, until you are well again, and return home. I know how hard it is to endure pain after an operation, before one heals up again. The aching and throbbing of a wound always gets worse before it starts to heal. So keep going, Mother dear. I shall send you a letter every day, you can count on that. Billy and Peter and Roz all send their love, and look forward to seeing you spend your convalescence with us, so hurry up and get better. Ever yours in love, dearest Mother,
Your son, Phillip.
His letter might arrive too late, so he set off for London a few minutes later. On his way up, without breakfast, he found it hard to control his thoughts as he imagined her lying in the tree-shaded room of the nursing home, thin, wasted, refusing all drugs, pretending she did not know what was wrong with her——
If only she did not pretend, the truth could be between them. But she pretended for the sake of others—pretending all was well, otherwise what would happen to Doris whose husband Bob Willoughby had left her unsupported for some years now, and Elizabeth so dependent on her, highly strung and liable to fits, all due, so the doctor had said years before, to the shock at adolescence when the father she adored had turned against her. He spoke to his mother in imagination, begging her to believe him, that she drop all pretence and allow the spirit of truth, of true understanding and compassion, to come between them. Sometimes he shouted as he drove. Mother, why did you always try to suppress the truth when I was a boy, always hushing me, distorting the truth through fear of Father’s wrath. And yet—was he not like her in this weakness? Never doing what he truly wanted to do—forever censoring his own nature. By the time he reached Blackheath he was exhausted.
“Your mother is very weak, not more than two minutes, Mr. Maddison.”
She lay still, only her eyes moved, her nose like a beak without power to peck any living or dead thing, a beak which would never open to sing but go down into the earth, into darkness deeper than the deep blue of the Bavarian gentians of which D. H. Lawrence wrote while dying under the pale blue Mediterranean sky.
He kneeled beside the bed, and took a hand like a claw and pressed it between his hands and heard the slow whisper, Do not worry about me, dear, hardly heard even with his ear close to the yellow lips, I shall soon be well again, Phillip.
There was a respite to summon strength. It is Father I am thinking of, the faint words came again.
Was she dying? He willed her to live, eyes wide open. Take all my strength, Mother. God, help me to give all my strength. Help me always to do the right thing.
Who will look after him when I am gone—he is a very lonely man, Sonny—he has been lonely ever since his mother died——
Yes, Mother, hold on to your truth—I am with you in spirit—do not worry about the girls—I shall look after Doris and Elizabeth.
She seemed to rally. Yes, dear son, I shall be all right soon.
Then the drawn yellow skin that was her face wrinkled with pain and she said as though the very last dreg of life were being burned away within her, It is the nights which are so terrible.
She seemed to die away, then murmured to herself that she would soon be seeing Mamma and Papa again, and Dorrie and Hughie.
When he had to leave he said goodbye which was all he could say until he got to the door when he turned round and said I have forgotten to kiss you, Mother, and the wisp in the bed said in a whisper, It does not matter, and then he knew that he would not see her alive again. How false he had been in thinking that she deceived herself. She was held together by faith in her recovery because there was no alternative but to give up and die selfishly. Mother was unselfishness itself. God in heaven, she would need no purgatory, her life had been a pure flame of the most gentle courage.
*
With the help of Rippingall and a flash-lamp, rows of dusty bottles in the cellar under the dining-room floor, where the main rat tunnels were, were brought up. The bottles were not old; the dust came through cracks in the dining-room floor boards, which were of mixed wood and all hand-sawn some centuries before. So far as Phillip could determine there were lengths of oak, beech, ash, sycamore, and pop
lar. Ancient colonies of the death-watch and furniture beetles had long ago abandoned their mining in the sap wood of the planks.
The bottles varied in shape and colour, being bought as oddments from bins advertised in The Daily Telegram, which was the paper Rippingall took in order to add to his knowledge of racing form. And having few glasses in the pantry, Rippingall had suggested that the Backwoods party should be given in the Norwegian style. This style, he explained, was to partake of many kinds of wine to be drunk in rotation during one meal, with cries of Skol! glasses being raised to shoulder level, and all wine to be renewed after each toast in the same glasses. The meal would start with sherry, he declared, and followed by a dry white wine, then red wine, then white madeira or champagne according to whether the guest were lady or gentleman, after which, he declared, “Anything and everything would be quite all right. They do it just like that in Sweden, sir.”
“But Norway isn’t in Sweden, old soldier.”
“With respect, sir, I suggest that one bottle should go round all the company, followed by another kind of bottle. Of course, sir, there will be scarcely more than enough for each guest, in a manner of speaking, than to wet his whistle.”
“But don’t some wines mix ill with others?”
“Sir, with all those bottles in our cellar, there will be enough for the blithest singing bird, if you follow my meaning.”
Rippingall had a weak sort of grin on his face. His moustachios were waxed by pomade hongroise to horizontal pieces of stiff string. A bluish tinge about his chaps might have come from methylated spirit.
“What can we feed them on, Rippingall?”
“For a real Backwoods party, I recommend a single game pie which would not disgrace Captain Runnymeade’s best at the old Castle, sir. Moreover, I have taken the liberty, as your butler and major domo, to make enquiries in Shakesbury as well as in Colham and Smotheford of the leading pastrycooks, and also took the precaution to see what dishes were available.”
Rippingall unfolded a crumpled piece of paper and gave it to Phillip. On it was written the word Everything underlined several times.
“That, sir, refers to the ingredients. Leave it to me, sir.”
Now a great oval china dish was sitting on the larder slate. Under the crust, moulded with a design of wheat-sheaves and a reaping hook, were two pheasants, a hare, a brace of partridges, a wild duck, two widgeon, two teal, all ordered to be set in aspic with the best chopped Aberdeen Angus beef, with onions and hard-boiled eggs, and sage and thyme and other herbs. Surely it was the pie of a life-time, an historic pie.
Unknown to Rippingall and Phillip, the pastrycook in Smotheford had spent many hours taking out all the bones and rendering the various meats into little shreds, all to be stewed or baked democratically together and combining to one taste and appearance. This Utopian dream of equality was indeed tasteless. The aspic had not set, it was watery. So was the underside of the crust. As for the wine service au Norge, the mixed guests did not appreciate the mixed wines, and Rippingall became upset by the number of hands placed over glasses as he was about to pour from a bottle. And at this juncture there was a wambling of the front door-bell on its wire to the kitchen, which adjoined, and wondering who it was Phillip went to the door and there stood Cabton the writer and a young woman.
Before he could speak, Phillip was offered an outstretched hand while Cabton with a friendly grin said, “How are you? Surprised to see us, aren’t you?”
Phillip took the hand and received a knuckle-grinding grip which made him pull back his hand. He had never felt easy in the presence of A. B. Cabton.
“Hardly the way to welcome a guest, is it?” remarked Cabton. He was dressed in a black leather coat, like the girl.
“We went to Fawley, and were told you were here. Aren’t you going to ask us in?”
Phillip moved aside and the two moved in.
“I suppose you’re touring, Cabton? How goes the writing?”
“Oh, slowly as usual. We heard that you were having a party, so we came along. Quite an affair, isn’t it, to judge by the lot of people we saw through the window. If we’re intruding say so and be done with it. I’ve bought a dozen sheepskins from a fellmonger, so we can sleep anywhere.”
“Would you like to wash?” for Cabton’s hands looked as though he had been changing a sparking plug in darkness.
“No thanks.”
“How about your friend?”
“You mean my wife?”
“I’ll fetch Lucy. Come into the sitting-room.”
“My God,” he said to her behind the larder door. “It’s Cabton, turned up, as usual, without notice.”
“Leave them to me, I’ll manage. You go back and eat your supper.”
Lucy found a place for them. Cabton looked with an amused air at Rippingall. The house-parlourman was dressed in tail-coat and boiled shirt, with Edwardian high collar and white tie, patent leather boots, and his cuffs—for the suit had belonged to his former master, ‘Boy’ Runnymeade—stuck out a good three inches from the sleeve ends. To fatten his moustachio spikes Rippingall had added tow from an old rope-end and rolled it in with wax.
Cabton made a note on a cigarette carton. Butler looks like a dolled up old rat.
As time went on Phillip noticed that Rippingall was filling glasses while the owners were busy talking to neighbours. Mrs. Scrimgeour, the vicar’s wife, observing her rising glassful, said, “I say, what are you doing?”
“Trying to make the party go, Ma’am,” said Rippingall wistfully.
Having swallowed several glasses of mixed wine in quick succession, Phillip tasted the pie and at once cried out for everyone to hurl their platefuls out of the window. Polite murmurs of how good the pie was. Twenty-two people were sitting at the refectory table when the four nearest the window, including the Cabtons and the vicar’s wife, suddenly subsided. Part of the floor-boards, reduced to frass by boring beetles, had given way under the pressure on the long oaken form. Rippingall got to work at once, and with the help of George Abeline, Piers and Phillip, soon reset the legs standing on planks laid cross-wise upon the broken places.
Other unexpected guests arrived. In the middle of the meal, which was illuminated by a row of candle flames blown and guttering in the necks of bottles base to base along the middle of the twelve-foot long oak table, the door half-opened and Billy peeped round. Invited to enter, the pyjama-clad figure instantly fled. There was giggling and whispering outside the door, and then Peter looked round. He came straight in, solemn-eyed, and sat on Piers’ lap. Meanwhile George Abeline had slipped away and was dressing up as a woman in the kitchen, to the fluster of Mrs. Rigg and two other women who were waiting there. Mrs. Rigg had come down from Rookhurst to help, and stay the night. “Oh my dear zoul, vancy that now! Here be Lordy like one of us in the back-house!”
The door opened and George Abeline reappeared rouged, bewigged, and simpering at the Vicar. Phillip saw the Vicar looking puzzled, as though he was thinking, What sort of party is this? Then the other door opened again, a coiled brass cor-de-chasse was thrust in, and shattering bass blasts came from the circular trumpet before it was withdrawn and the door slammed. That was Billy’s joke. Phillip, who had been drinking everything poured into his glass by Rippingall then decided to play the part of irritable host, and throwing down knife and fork he exclaimed to Becket Scrimgeour across the table, “I heard what you said I said. I did not say it! You’re a bloody liar!” and while faces were turned to regard this astonishing outburst Phillip seized one of the bottles and struck the guest on the head with it. The bottle was an Abeline joke; it was made of black cardboard. A pair of men’s braces fell out of it. During the laughter, Rippingall, turning his back momentarily on the guests, threw back his head and swigged a champagne glass filled with brandy.
Phillip had put Channerson, whose paintings of the war had won him a fugacious fame—in that, the war forgotten, Channerson was considered dated by the fugacious critics and art dealers—opposite Captai
n Runnymeade. Both men, after the introduction before dinner, had not said a word to one another since the conventional how d’you dos. ‘Boy’ sat at table next to Melissa, who knowing of the painter’s fine work from Phillip, had spoken across the table to him. When this had happened, ‘Boy’ had withdrawn his head a little, as though remotely in protest at her lapse of manners, but really because he felt he was out of his element. He drank only whisky-and-soda, and nibbled boiled bacon specially prepared by Lucy for him.
Channerson, attracted by Melissa, began to speak of his reception in New York on his second visit to that city, when he had found that he was already forgotten.
“They drop you as completely as they take you up when the newspaper reporters push past you at Ellis Island, seeking the latest ‘celebrity’” he said, ironically. “But then the Americans are the only nation in history to have achieved decadence without civilisation”, and his hearty hollow laughter broke out as his eyes roved around the table.
“My Mother,” said ‘Boy’ Runnymeade, heavily, “happened to be an American.”
“Young American women are the most beautiful in the world,” replied Channerson.
“Apparently not when they grow up, Mr. Channerson?”
“Some remain beautiful, I dare say. But those who grow into what Arnold Bennett called le bloc, no. What do you think?” he asked Phillip.
“I think that your war pictures are already classics, ‘Channers’.”
“I’ve never seen them,” said Runnymeade, and took no further interest in the party. He withdrew from the conversation and left soon after supper. Channerson went to bed. His wife stayed down for awhile, then quietly said goodnight to Lucy.
“I don’t want to disturb the party, so I’ll go up now. ‘Channers’ has only recently recovered from an operation, you know.”
The Phoenix Generation Page 28
