She put the book on the table; she gave it a sad little pat as she shut it.
“We must go,” she repeated, and followed them down the stairs.
Maggie rose. She gave one more look at the cheap lodging-house room. There was the pampas grass in its terra-cotta pot; the green vase with the crinkled lip; and the mahogany chair. On the dinner table lay the dish of fruit; the heavy sensual apples lay side by side with the yellow spotted bananas. It was an odd combination — the round and the tapering, the rosy and the yellow. She switched off the light. The room now was almost dark, save for a watery pattern fluctuating on the ceiling. In this phantom evanescent light only the outlines showed; ghostly apples, ghostly bananas, and the spectre of a chair. Colour was slowly returning, as her eyes grew used to the darkness, and substance. . . . She stood there for a moment looking. Then a voice shouted:
“Maggie! Maggie!”
“I’m coming!” she cried, and followed them down the stairs.
“And your name, miss?” said the maid to Peggy as she hung back behind Eleanor.
“Miss Margaret Pargiter,” said Peggy.
“Miss Margaret Pargiter!” the maid called out into the room.
There was a babble of voices; lights opened brightly in front of her, and Delia came forward. “Oh, Peggy!” she exclaimed. “How nice of you to come!”
She went in; but she felt plated, coated over with some cold skin. They had come too early — the room was almost empty. Only a few people stood about, talking too loudly, as if to fill the room. Making believe, Peggy thought to herself as she shook hands with Delia and passed on, that something pleasant is about to happen. She saw with extreme clearness the Persian rug and the carved fireplace, but there was an empty space in the middle of the room.
What is the tip for this particular situation? she asked herself, as if she were prescribing for a patient. Take notes, she added. Do them up in a bottle with a glossy green cover, she thought. Take notes and the pain goes. Take notes and the pain goes, she repeated to herself as she stood there alone. Delia hurried past her. She was talking, but talking at random.
“It’s all very well for you people who live in London—” she was saying. But the nuisance of taking notes of what people say, Peggy went on as Delia passed her, is that they talk such nonsense . . . such complete nonsense, she thought, drawing herself back against the wall. Here her father came in. He paused at the door; put his head up as if he were looking for someone, and advanced with his hand out.
And what’s this? she asked, for the sight of her father in his rather worn shoes had given her a direct spontaneous feeling. This sudden warm spurt? she asked, examining it. She watched him cross the room. His shoes always affected her strangely. Part sex; part pity, she thought. Can one call it “love”? But she forced herself to move. Now that I have drugged myself into a state of comparative insensibility, she said to herself, I will walk across the room boldly; I will go to Uncle Patrick, who is standing by the sofa picking his teeth, and I will say to him — what shall I say?
A sentence suggested itself for no rhyme or reason as she crossed the room: “How’s the man who cut his toes off with the hatchet?”
“How’s the man who cut his toes off with the hatchet?” she said, speaking the words exactly as she thought them. The handsome old Irishman bent down, for he was very tall, and hollowed his hand, for he was hard of hearing.
“Hacket? Hacket?” he repeated. She smiled. The steps from brain to brain must be cut very shallow, if thought is to mount them, she noted.
“Cut his toes off with the hatchet when I was staying with you,” she said. She remembered how when she last stayed with them in Ireland the gardener had cut his foot with a hatchet.
“Hacket? Hacket?” he repeated. He looked puzzled. Then understanding dawned.
“Oh, the Hackets!” he said. “Dear old Peter Hacket — yes.” It seemed that there were Hackets in Galway, and the mistake, which she did not trouble to explain, was all to the good, for it set him off, and he told her stories about the Hackets as they sat side by side on the sofa.
A grown woman, she thought, crosses London to talk to a deaf old man about the Hackets, whom she’s never heard of, when she meant to ask after the gardener who cut his toe off with a hatchet. But does it matter? Hackets or hatchets? She laughed, happily in time with a joke, so that it seemed appropriate. But one wants somebody to laugh with, she thought. Pleasure is increased by sharing it. Does the same hold good of pain? she mused. Is that the reason why we all talk so much of ill-health — because sharing things lessens things? Give pain, give pleasure an outer body, and by increasing the surface diminish them. . . . But the thought slipped. He was off telling his old stories. Gently, methodically, like a man setting in motion some still serviceable but rather weary nag, he was off remembering old days, old dogs, old memories that slowly shaped themselves, as he warmed, into little figures of country house life. She fancied as she half listened that she was looking at a faded snapshot of cricketers; of shooting parties on the many steps of some country mansion.
How many people, she wondered, listen? This “sharing,” then, is a bit of a farce. She made herself attend.
“Ah yes, those were fine old days!” he was saying. The light came into his faded eyes.
She looked once more at the snapshot of the men in gaiters, and the women in flowing skirts on the broad white steps with the dogs curled up at their feet. But he was off again.
“Did you ever hear from your father of a man called Roddy Jenkins who lived in the little white house on the right-hand side as you go along the road?” he asked. “But you must know that story?” he added.
“No,” she said, screwing up her eyes as if she referred to the files of memory. “Tell me.”
And he told her the story.
I’m good, she thought, at fact-collecting. But what makes up a person — , (she hollowed her hand), the circumference, — no, I’m not good at that. There was her Aunt Delia. She watched her moving quickly about the room. What do I know about her? That she’s wearing a dress with gold spots; has wavy hair, that was red, is white; is handsome; ravaged; with a past. But what past? She married Patrick. . . . The long story that Patrick was telling her kept breaking up the surface of her mind like oars dipping into water. Nothing could settle. There was a lake in the story too, for it was a story about duck-shooting.
She married Patrick, she thought, looking at his battered weather-worn face with the single hairs on it. Why did Delia marry Patrick? she wondered. How do they manage it — love, childbirth? The people who touch each other and go up in a cloud of smoke: red smoke? His face reminded her of the red skin of a gooseberry with the little stray hairs. But none of the lines on his face was sharp enough, she thought, to explain how they came together and had three children. They were lines that came from shooting; lines that came from worry; for the old days were over, he was saying. They had to cut things down.
“Yes, we’re all finding that,” she said perfunctorily. She turned her wrist cautiously so that she could read her watch. Fifteen minutes only had passed. But the room was filling with people she did not know. There was an Indian in a pink turban.
“Ah, but I’m boring you with these old stories,” said her uncle, wagging his head. He was hurt, she felt.
“No, no, no!” she said, feeling uncomfortable. He was off again, but out of good manners this time, she felt. Pain must outbalance pleasure by two parts to one, she thought; in all social relations. Or am I the exception, the peculiar person? she continued, for the others seemed happy enough. Yes, she thought, looking straight ahead of her, and feeling again the stretched skin round her lips and eyes tight from the tiredness of sitting up late with a woman in childbirth, I’m the exception; hard; cold; in a groove already; merely a doctor.
Getting out of grooves is damned unpleasant, she thought, before the chill of death has set in, like bending frozen boots. . . . She bent her head to listen. To smile, to bend, to make believe yo
u’re amused when you’re bored, how painful it is, she thought. All ways, every way’s painful, she thought; staring at the Indian in the pink turban.
“Who’s that fellow?” Patrick asked, nodding his head in his direction.
“One of Eleanor’s Indians I expect,” she said aloud, and thought, If only the merciful powers of darkness would obliterate the external exposure of the sensitive nerve and I could get up and. . . . There was a pause.
“But I mustn’t keep you here, listening to my old stories,” said Uncle Patrick. His weather-beaten nag with the broken knees had stopped.
“But tell me, does old Biddy still keep the little shop,” she asked, “where we used to buy sweets?”
“Poor old body—” he began. He was off again. All her patients said that, she thought. Rest — rest — let me rest. How to deaden; how to cease to feel; that was the cry of the woman bearing children; to rest, to cease to be. In the Middle Ages, she thought, it was the cell; the monastery; now it’s the laboratory; the professions; not to live; not to feel; to make money, always money, and in the end, when I’m old and worn like a horse, no, it’s a cow. . . — for part of old Patrick’s story had imposed itself upon her mind: “. . . for there’s no sale for the beasts at all,” he was saying, “no sale at all. Ah, there’s Julia Cromarty—” he exclaimed, and waved his hand, his large loose-jointed hand, at a charming compatriot.
She was left sitting alone on the sofa. For her uncle rose and went off with both hands outstretched to greet the bird-like old woman who had come in chattering.
She was left alone. She was glad to be alone. She had no wish to talk. But next moment somebody stood beside her. It was Martin. He sat down beside her. She changed her attitude completely.
“Hullo, Martin!” she greeted him cordially.
“Done your duty by the old mare, Peggy?” he said. He referred to the stories that old Patrick always told them.
“Did I look very glum?” she asked.
“Well,” he said, glancing at her, “not exactly enraptured.”
“One knows the end of his stories by now,” she excused herself, looking at Martin. He had taken to brushing his hair up like a waiter’s. He never looked her fully in the face. He never felt entirely at his ease with her. She was his doctor; she knew that he dreaded cancer. She must try to distract him from thinking, Does she see any symptoms?
“I was wondering how they came to marry,” she said. “Were they in love?” She spoke at random to distract him.
“Of course he was in love,” he said. He looked at Delia. She was standing by the fireplace talking to the Indian. She was still a very handsome woman, with her presence, with her gestures.
“We were all in love,” he said, glancing sideways at Peggy. The younger generation were so serious.
“Oh, of course,” she said, smiling. She liked his eternal pursuit of one love after another love — his gallant clutch upon the flying tail, the slippery tail of youth — even he, even now.
“But you,” he said, stretching his feet out, hitching up his trousers, “your generation I mean — you miss a great deal . . . you miss a great deal,” he repeated. She waited.
“Loving only your own sex,” he added.
He liked to assert his own youth in that way, she thought; to say things that he thought up to date.
“I’m not that generation,” she said.
“Well, well, well,” he chuckled, shrugging his shoulder and glancing at her sideways. He knew very little about her private life. But she looked serious; she looked tired. She works too hard, he thought.
“I’m getting on,” said Peggy. “Getting into a groove. So Eleanor told me tonight.”
Or was it she, on the other hand, who had told Eleanor she was “suppressed”? One or the other.
“Eleanor’s a gay old dog,” he said. “Look!” He pointed.
There she was, talking to the Indian in her red cloak.
“Just back from India,” he added. “A present from Bengal, eh?” he said, referring to the cloak.
“And next year she’s off to China,” said Peggy.
“But Delia—” she asked; Delia was passing them. “Was she in love?” (What you in your generation called “in love,” she added to herself.)
He wagged his head from side to side and pursed his lips. He always liked his little joke, she remembered.
“I don’t know — I don’t know about Delia,” he said. “There was the cause, you know — what she called in those days The Cause.” He screwed his face up. “Ireland, you know. Parnell. Ever heard of a man called Parnell?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Peggy.
“And Edward?” she added. He had come in; he looked very distinguished, too, in his elaborate, if conscious simplicity.
“Edward — yes,” said Martin. “Edward was in love. Surely you know that old story — Edward and Kitty?”
“The one who married — what was his name? — Lasswade?” Peggy murmured as Edward passed them.
“Yes, she married the other man — Lasswade. But he was in love — he was very much in love,” Martin murmured. “But you,” he gave her a quick little glance. There was something in her that chilled him. “Of course, you have your profession,” he added. He looked at the ground. He was thinking of his dread of cancer, she supposed. He was afraid that she had noted some symptom.
“Oh, doctors are great humbugs,” she threw out at random.
“Why? People live longer than they used, don’t they?” he said. “They don’t die so painfully anyhow,” he added.
“We’ve learnt a few little tricks,” she conceded. He stared ahead of him with a look that moved her pity.
“You’ll live to be eighty — if you want to live to be eighty,” she said. He looked at her.
“Of course I’m all in favour of living to be eighty!” he exclaimed. “I want to go to America. I want to see their buildings. I’m on that side, you see. I enjoy life.” He did, enormously.
He must be over sixty himself, she supposed. But he was wonderfully got up; as sprig and spruce as a man of forty, with his canary-coloured lady in Kensington.
“I don’t know,” she said aloud.
“Come, Peggy, come,” he said. “Don’t tell me you don’t enjoy — here’s Rose.”
Rose came up. She had grown very stout.
“Don’t you want to be eighty?” he said to her. He had to say it twice over. She was deaf.
“I do. Of course I do!” she said when she understood him. She faced them. She made an odd angle with her head thrown back, Peggy thought, as if she were a military man.
“Of course I do,” she said, sitting down abruptly on the sofa beside them.
“Ah, but then—” Peggy began. She paused. Rose was deaf, she remembered. She had to shout. “People hadn’t made such fools of themselves in your day,” she shouted. But she doubted if Rose heard.
“I want to see what’s going to happen,” said Rose. “We live in a very interesting world,” she added.
“Nonsense,” Martin teased her. “You want to live,” he bawled in her ear, “because you enjoy living.”
“And I’m not ashamed of it,” she said. “I like my kind — on the whole.”
“What you like is fighting them,” he bawled.
“D’you think you can get a rise out of me at this time o’ day?” she said, tapping him on the arm.
Now they’ll talk about being children; climbing trees in the back garden, thought Peggy, and how they shot somebody’s cats. Each person had a certain line laid down in their minds, she thought, and along it came the same old sayings. One’s mind must be crisscrossed like the palm of one’s hand, she thought, looking at the palm of her hand.
“She always was a spitfire,” said Martin, turning to Peggy.
“And they always put the blame on me,” Rose said. “He had the school-room. Where was I to sit? ‘Oh, run away and play in the nursery!’” she waved her hand.
“And so she went into the bathroo
m and cut her wrist with a knife,” Martin jeered.
“No, that was Erridge: that was about the microscope,” she corrected him.
It’s like a kitten catching its tail, Peggy thought; round and round they go in a circle. But it’s what they enjoy, she thought; it’s what they come to parties for. Martin went on teasing Rose.
“And where’s your red ribbon?” he was asking.
Some decoration had been given her, Peggy remembered, for her work in the war.
“Aren’t we worthy to see you in your war paint?” he teased her.
“This fellow’s jealous,” she said, turning to Peggy again. “He’s never done a stroke of work in his life.”
“I work — I work,” Martin insisted. “I sit in an office all day long—”
“Doing what?” said Rose.
Then they became suddenly silent. That turn was over — the old-brother-and-sister turn. Now they could only go back and repeat the same thing over again.
“Look here,” said Martin, “we must go and do our duty.” He rose. They parted.
“Doing what?” Peggy repeated, as she crossed the room. “Doing what?” she repeated. She was feeling reckless; nothing that she did mattered. She walked to the window and twitched the curtain apart. There were the stars pricked in little holes in the blue-black sky. There was a row of chimney-pots against the sky. Then the stars. Inscrutable, eternal, indifferent — those were the words; the right words. But I don’t feel it, she said, looking at the stars. So why pretend to? What they’re really like, she thought, screwing up her eyes to look at them, is little bits of frosty steel. And the moon — there it was — is a polished dish-cover. But she felt nothing, even when she had reduced moon and stars to that. Then she turned and found herself face to face with a young man she thought she knew but could not put a name to. He had a fine brow, but a receding chin and he was pale, pasty.
“How-d’you-do?” she said. Was his name Leacock or Laycock?
“Last time we met,” she said, “was at the races.” She connected him, incongruously, with a Cornish field, stone walls, farmers and rough ponies jumping.
Complete Works of Virginia Woolf Page 235
