Blaming (Virago Modern Classics) (20 page)

Afterwards, outside in the gardens (birds chirping, suburban trees and shrubs in bloom – all that Martha had liked so much), they had to come face to face with him. He never had had much to say, and nothing now.

“Is there anything we can do.…?” James began, shaking hands with him. “Anything practical, anything.…?”

Simon said, “It was really good of you to come. I got some strength from someone else being there.”

“How come we should stay away?” asked James, believing he was getting through barriers with this parlance; then thought it sounded more London-Jewish than anything, and not American at all. Amy lowered her head, not because of her son’s bad acting; but because her own presence there that afternoon had hung so much in the balance, had been such a last-minute decision. Perhaps a wrong one, from her own point of view, she was still inclined to think, and thought so more when she heard her son ask, “You’ll come back to Mother’s, won’t you? Have a bite, and a drink. Ernie will come up trumps, I’m sure. He was very fond of your wife.”

Now, a new funeral gathering was approaching where they were standing – a proper funeral, Dora would have thought, with many people in large black cars, many flowers.

James, Amy and Simon went back to Laurel Walk in James’s car. Simon had gone to the crematorium by bus.

“She spent many happy hours here,” he said disconsolately, when they arrived at Laurel House.

Ernie ought to have had some black kid gloves for the occasion, Amy thought, noting the reverence with which he opened the door, and stood aside as they passed him.

They went into the sitting-room.

“Who painted that?” Simon asked, standing before Martha’s farewell present.

“My husband,”‘ Amy said.

“I didn’t notice it when I came before. I like it. I don’t know much about pictures. It was Martha who did. I tried to learn from her, as I tried to learn so much else; but forgot a lot. I like this, though; because I can understand it; understand it so well.”

“It was one of his early ones,” Amy said. She was anxious and flustered, and was glad when Ernie came in with smoked salmon sandwiches, having, obviously, expected Simon to return with them to Laurel House. I suppose, Amy thought, that he considers this sort of sandwich goes well with disaster. She remembered them on the night of her home-coming from Turkey.

James simply thought of the price of smoked salmon.

Simon could not eat. Even in the best of circumstances he would have been wary of smoked fish. He took a small bite, and laid the sandwich aside. He did not think of the price of salmon, because it did not come into his life. A bit too fishy for him, he decided, and had no appetite, being choked with unshed tears.

“Well, I shall have to get back and sign a few letters,” James said. “Put in an appearance. Can’t
give you a lift, Simon? Very pleased to. Where’s your hotel?”

“In the Cromwell Road. I find it’s rather an expensive area, but everything had to be done in such a hurry. All the same, though it’s good of you, I’ll find my own way back. Nothing else to do, after all, and I’d like to have half-an-hour’s chat with your mother.”

Amy’s eyes turned on James, and could have been messaging, “You betrayer.” Those eyes narrowed, and they blazed, like a furious Siamese cat’s.

James had never been a very kissy son, but he went over to his mother and bent down and put his lips briefly, placatingly, somewhere near her ear. Judas, she thought.

“Thank you,” she said in a distraught voice, certainly not for the kiss, or anything else he had lately done.

“If I wrap them up in foil,” Ernie said, coming in and taking up the dish of sandwiches, “Doctor can have them with his drink this evening. He’d give his soul, I do believe, for a nice smoked salmon sandwich.”

And they can buy all they bloody like of it once they’re married. James was thinking. He held out his hand and shook Simon’s. Meaning to be extra, silently sympathetic, he gave a Masonic pressure, although neither of them had any reason to know this. “As I say…” he began, and then finished, rather lamely, “Well. there aren’t any words.”

“No.”

“Just awfully sorry.”

“Thank you. Thank you for being good friends.”

So James went.

“I shan’t stay long,” Simon said.

“You must stay for as long as you wish. What would you like to drink?”

“Nothing, thank you.”

“Ah, well.” She sighed, sat down, resigned, and clasped her hands on her lap.

“Was it just that she loved England so much?” he was forcing himself to ask. “Some Americans do…. feel more at home here. Or used to. Henry James,” he said vaguely, “T.S. Eliot I can’t remember the others. You must know better than I.”

“I can’t remember, either. And, of course, sometimes, it’s the different way about, and English writers go off and live in New York or California.”

“Did she write to you about being unhappy in the States? For any whatsoever reason? I feel compelled to ask, but don’t answer if you don’t care to. It’s really a question I have no right to put to you.”

“I think she was a bit lonely at first. And wasn’t awfully well, was she?”

Briefly, he brushed his forehead with his hand. “My fault again. I’m afraid I told her those headaches were just to punish me. Every time she did something wrong… . I mean made a mistake, or acted in some way I couldn’t understand or cope with, there were those headaches. I believed the doctor had talked her out of them.”

He is a glutton for self-censure, Amy thought wearily. She said, “Dangerous, being talked out of illnesses. I blame your doctor for doing that.” She was relieved – and Simon was relieved to hear it – to
be able to say that there was blame lying elsewhere. “My husband talked himself into them – though not, of course, the real one – and I suppose that can be dangerous, too.”

“At least, we’re being frank with one another, and this I very much appreciate. I know I must have failed her in some way, and I guess I shall never get over it, or deserve to do so.”

“I failed her, too. But I felt that about my husband when he died. It is a thing one does feel about the dead. But it’s to be got over. I promise you. We have to be resilient to time. Even at my age, I feel that. Are you sure you won’t have a drink? Then I think I shall have to have one on my own.”

“Please, go ahead.”

After this daunting request, she lingered for a little while before filling a glass.

“If only I knew what I did wrong,” he said “Her so sweet and loving letter gave me no idea. And you mustn’t for a moment, reproach
yourself
about anything. Your action — non-action – was simply complying with something she meant to do – or came to mean to do.”

“What action?” Before even taking a sip of the drink, she replaced the glass carefully on the table beside her.

“Making it possible for her to leave me, I mean. She would have found some way, I truly believe, without your help. And I know you meant it kindly and generously. I can’t, however, say thank you. In fact, I find I can’t say any more.”

He stood up, took from his pocket a thickly stuffed
envelope, and laid it on the table beside her.

“What is this?” she asked in great alarm.

“Your money.”

“What money?”

“Why, the fare for the air-ticket and so on. She explained in the letter she left at home…oh, my God, how I hate those left-behind messages, which one can’t reply to! She explained how you had lent it to her. Otherwise, she couldn’t have come here. I’m not a rich man. We had to cut down. She had no washing-machine, for instance: but she never complained about that.”

Amy recoiled from that fat envelope lying there beside her drink.

“I don’t want it,” she said, trying to gain time, to think of some way out, without doing him too much damage.

“I’m afraid I must insist on repaying our debts.”

“But it doesn’t belong to me. I couldn’t take it.”

“You have always been generous: but this is a matter for my conscience, and, perhaps, one day, my peace of mind. I think my wishes come first in this case. Why on earth are you crying?”

“I’m not crying.” She dried her eyes and took a mouthful of gin and tonic.

“Then I certainly beg your pardon. It looked very much like it to me. Well, so there it is.” He tapped the envelope lightly, and began to make his way to the door.

“Stop, Simon!” she said. “I can’t accept this money. When I say it isn’t mine, I truly mean it isn’t mine; and never was mine.”

“And so how else did Martha come by it?” he asked, rather sarcastically.

“I don’t know.”

“But I think you
do
know.”

“It was from her grandmother,” Amy said, driven by desperation.

“Perhaps you don’t know, but her grandmother had died before we arrived in America.”

“But some time earlier, knowing that was going to happen, she sent some money to Martha while Martha was still in England. Apparently, she liked the idea of giving presents, and enjoyed the excitement of it, of knowing the pleasure it gave, rather than just having it doled out after she was dead.”

“Martha told you this?”

Amy nodded.

He looked with loathing at the envelope of money, picked it up, and put it back in his pocket.

“I can see now how I failed her,” he said. “She kept this money a secret from me. She thought I was ungenerous about the way in which I arranged our affairs; not just the money, but perhaps other things, too.”

“I’m sure that that was…”

“There can’t be another explanation – for her secrecy, I mean. You know, this crying doesn’t help.” He, himself, felt so much like weeping that the sight of Amy doing so infuriated him.

“I’m sorry, but I didn’t know what to do. How could I allow you to give me all that money, which didn’t belong to me, never had?”

“You did the right thing, there’s no doubt at all. You told the truth. It’s just that I can’t bear it.”

“I wish I hadn’t told the truth. You forced me into it.

“Her grandmother! I always thought her unstable … if she had known what her money was going to do! And they loved one another, she and Martha.”

“Oh, surely there has been enough blaming without dragging in poor old Grannie.”

“I shall keep remembering times when I denied Martha things. I have only just begun to remember. Once she said she wanted…”

“It won’t do any good. It will do harm.”

On the doorstep, seeing him off – never to see him again, she hoped – she wrung her hands, saying, as he went down the steps, “I’m so sorry. So very sorry. Forgive me.”

He lifted his hand a little to silence her, but did not look back.

Her face was still tear-stained when Ernie brought back the smoked salmon sandwiches at the moment of Gareth’s arrival. She’s really cut up, he thought, not a little surprised.

When she and Gareth were alone, Amy began to cry again, leaning against Gareth’s breast. “Why did I do it? I think I’ve broken his heart. Just for two hundred pounds.”

He smoothed her hair, and gave her his handkerchief to save his soaking wet lapel. “It wasn’t a happy marriage,” he said. “And I agree that you couldn’t have accepted such an amount of money which didn’t belong to you.”

“But I feel I should have – for his sake, his peace of mind.”

What a life before him, Gareth thought, quite contentedly – a life of advising, consoling, sheltering; all of which he could do. Amy moved away from him to roam restlessly about the room. And what, he wondered would Miss Thompson think of the lipstick all over his crumpled handkerchief. Sod Miss Thompson, he thought, as he had so often thought before. He took one of Ernie’s sandwiches.

“You did the only thing,” he said, with his mouth full.

“I don’t know. I simply don’t know. I’m haunted by him tonight, going back over it all, as he will, remembering things. Too much blame.”

“Never a thing to be encouraged. Quite useless. Quite unproductive.”

“I agree,” she said, “but all the same, I know what it feels like.”

“No more,” he said sternly. He held out the dish of sandwiches, but she shook her head vaguely, as if she hardly saw them.

When Gareth had gone, Amy went up to bed, and she stood for a while between the parted curtains, looking out across the river. Summer rain fell softly now, steadily, as if it would go on for ever.

A year ago almost, she thought, trying to pin her mind down to her own predicaments. But Simon’s face could not be forgotten, or his hand taking up the money, with such reluctance, as if to suggest he could never care for such a commodity again.

“What else could I have done?” she asked the rain.

M
y mother knew that she was dying when she wrote this novel. As the cancer inside her developed, so did the determination to finish this book. It was the same determination that she used to fight the illness, remain cheerful, and above all, live to the last moment.

This book is about guilt as well as blame. It explores the feelings of bereavement: the anger, helplessness, boredom and selfishness. It also has humour. My mother knew all about bereavement, but now she was facing her own death.