Family and Friends (13 page)

Dismissing from his mind the provocations of Lili, or possibly Ursie, Alfred once more sets out to try harder. If he finds this place it will be a sign that his efforts have been recognized; if he finds this place, thinks Alfred, he will put off the obedience of his youth and be his own man at last. Then, he promises himself, he will consume hecatombs of women, behave as badly as Frederick, care nothing for the feelings of others. He is like a man on a diet who has visions of outrageous excess, yet who is
plagued by some inner and inalienable knowledge of checks and balances. If I do this, then I can do that. Why, one might object, why not do it anyway? But Alfred knows nothing of impulse, only of effort and hard work. And somewhere below the worldly manner and the increasing scepticism, there still burns the tiny but hardy flame of virtue which has sustained Alfred, much to his regret, for all of thirty years.

The excursions to the country take place in the car, now bereft of its chauffeur. Sofka remains at home, for she has become strangely quiet since the incident with Mrs Beck, and now sits for long afternoons in the cigar-coloured room, emerging only to tell the girls how to prepare the dinner and what sort of table to set. She does not believe in this country house of Alfred’s, regarding it as irrelevant to their true needs. She sees these needs as unchanging and indeed unchangeable, although it appears that certain accommodations must be recognized. There is, for example, Mimi, who has long given rise to a certain vague disquiet. This disquiet has been overlaid, perhaps disguised, by her docile good manners, her charming devotion to her mother and her brother, her almost saintly self-effacement. Her health, too, has not been good, and has justified her stay-at-home existence. She still suffers from that strange languor that beset her on her return from Paris, and now has frequent headaches. Various bottles of pills have replaced the original iron tonic, but their only effect seems to be to make Mimi rather more tired. She still dresses beautifully and goes out, but she goes mostly to the hospital, where she does voluntary work of a vaguely conventual nature. All this reinforces the impression she gives of a maiden lady devoted to good works. Her beauty is still visible to those who never knew her earlier, but to Sofka’s eyes it has undergone some tiny but irretrievable alteration. The high cheek-bones now
accentuate the long slightly hollow cheeks and throw into relief the enormous eyes. And that marvellous hair, which she has never cut, seems to drag her down, massing its heavy coils on her neck like a bridle. She has never regained her lost fullness, and now appears hesitant, perhaps a little awkward, of no discernible age but of unvarying sweetness of expression. Fortunately there is no need for her to live any life other than the one she has decreed for herself. There is no need for Mimi to work, apart, of course, from the voluntary attendance at the hospital which she manages to expand until it fills most of her day. She gets home at about half-past four in the afternoon, to find Sofka waiting for her, with coffee. Sofka tries in vain to tempt her to eat; she has prepared little sandwiches for her. But Mimi is never hungry. After an hour with her mother Mimi goes into her bedroom which now houses the piano that used to be in the old nursery. Sometimes Sofka sits alone in the brown room and tries not to hear what Mimi is singing. ‘
O doux printemps d’autrefois
…’ sings Mimi, in her muted voice, and Sofka shivers. Then she makes her way to the kitchen, where the girls are involved in some passionate tearful argument, and Sofka resumes her old loving authority in her attempts to calm them down and to reconcile them.

Sofka feels for Mimi some of that old pain that she used to feel for her daughters when they were children. What will happen to them? Who will care for them? In the distraction of their growing up, and the turbulence of Betty’s adolescence, this pain was almost forgotten. Now when Sofka looks at Mimi she feels not only the pain but a certain enmity, as if the good daughter had no right to disturb her later years with this unanswered question, this unsolved problem. It is clear now to Sofka that she is in a sense grateful to Frederick, to Betty, for recognizing that events must take their due and inevitable course, even
if the means whereby they took that course were perhaps precipitate, inharmonious. What was once unwelcome is now thankfully acknowledged. But for Mimi she cannot lay down the burden and she casts about in her mind for some way of lightening it. The difficulty is that Mimi gives no cause for complaint apart from her unquestioning acceptance of her fate. Sofka now begins to feel that a little energy, a little heartlessness are called for. And she sees no way of supplying them. Certain changes can only come about from outside. And Mimi herself does not appear to be aware of this. She seems perfectly happy with her mother, and she is devoted to her brother. She is also fond of the girls, Lili and Ursie, who are much more afraid of her than they are of Sofka. There is something about Mimi that makes the girls eye her warily, and then turn to each other with unspoken comment. There is something there that they do not wish to see. This is the impression that Mimi gives to those who know her best.

Curiously enough, it is Alfred who desires Mimi’s company. They set off together in the car to visit various properties, for Alfred is now more than ever intent on finding his mythical home, the one that will be his, the one that nobody can take away from him. He is a harsh and unforgiving driver, taking the corners sharply, always going too fast, muttering under his breath at the condition of the road or the stupidity of other motorists. All of this increases Mimi’s discomfort, for she has never been a good passenger, sensing in the movement of the car a will much stronger than her own. These excursions always follow the same pattern, and they occur at regular intervals. Alfred drives furiously to some country town, where he has arranged to pick up the keys to various vacant properties. Mimi emerges shakily from the car and is set down outside a tea-shop, in which she repairs her
nerves as best she can. In due course Alfred reappears, tight-lipped. ‘No good?’ enquires Mimi. ‘No good,’ he utters, as if it were the end of the world. This search, for him, has become a mythic quest, as it were for the grail. It sometimes seems to him that if the house were to appear, at the end of a long vista, intact, with smoke curling from its chimneys and the golden dogs on the lawn, he might be granted a moment of total recognition before expiring altogether. But for a long time the house refuses to appear, and as Alfred tramps back down the high street of whichever little town has seemed to him to be relevant he has the air of a veteran, dispossessed of all his belongings, returning from the wars.

Finally, and perhaps because the metaphorical implications of these wanderings have become too insistent to be borne, he buys a house, although why this house and not another they will never fully understand. Wren House is quite recklessly inconvenient, and despite its name, which refers not to the architect but to the bird, has the appearance of a large and curiously rebarbative cottage. As the car rocks up a hilly incline, the Kentish orchards on either side seem to groan with the weight of the apples bowing down their twisted branches. Apart from a garage which also houses a sub-post office, there is no other sign of human habitation. There are, however, three bungalows, almost hidden in a little defile, which seem to contain several small children. The parents of these children, Alfred explains proudly to Mimi, will perform various functions at Wren House. There will be someone to cut the logs and plant a very large vegetable garden, someone to clean, and a cook-housekeeper who will eventually occupy one of the small rooms at the top of the house. In fact, all the rooms are small, although there are rather a lot of them. Standing in any one of these rooms, it is possible to look straight into the side of a
voluptuous but obtrusive green hill. Only at the back, in the kitchen, is there any sense of release from this geographical accident. The kitchen, soon to be taken over by the housekeeper, is a large pleasant room, and its back door opens on to a garden which becomes an orchard. Alfred reflects that all these apples will soon be his. Yet he still misses that sense of coming home, and he resolves to acquire two golden retrievers as soon as possible and to see if they make that essential difference.

In due course all weekends are spent at Wren House. Since none of the ancestral furniture will get through the door, let alone fit into the rooms, Alfred has bought some quite nice pieces at country auctions. He has found sofas, and tallboys, and a pretty oval dining-table. These he has had to supplement with beds from the Army and Navy Stores, and, in a gesture of independence, has purchased some massively oversprung divans which, with the addition of new eiderdowns and counterpanes, give the place the look of an hotel. Sofka says nothing. ‘It is his life,’ she explains to herself. She endures the divans and the kitchen garden and the children hanging over the gate; when she can force herself to overlook these things she sees that the countryside is very pretty, and that Mimi is looking much better in this good air. What she cannot quite get over or come to terms with is the housekeeper, Muriel. This distressing addition to the family, and indeed to the oval dining-table, where she dispenses meals, must be treated with smiling reserve, a reserve which Muriel does nothing to reciprocate. Muriel is a robust countrywoman with the instincts of a back-street survivor. She is indulgent to the children of the neighbourhood who can often be found in the kitchen, and despite her preference for her own family and friends, many of whom have profited from Alfred’s lavish housekeeping allowance, is kind enough to treat Sofka and Mimi as if they were old
acquaintances of a faintly unfortunate nature. ‘A little more for Mother?’ she enquires, with a steaming ladle held aloft. Sofka, repressing a shudder, smilingly shakes her head. At last Alfred is able to enjoy those terrible meals he has read about and which he thinks he likes. Muriel is a lavish but uninteresting cook, made fearless by the amount of produce she is able to afford. Yet it is less her cooking that offends Sofka than her appearance, and particularly her appearance at table, where Sofka has no wish to see her. A satin blouse of dubious vintage and an even more dubious pair of trousers greet Sofka’s uninflected gaze; there is a faint smell of Muriel’s cat, whom Muriel greatly loves and to whom she addresses most of her remarks. ‘Alfred,’ says Sofka, after the first of such meals. ‘That woman will have to go.’ ‘Nonsense, Mama,’ says Alfred, more in the interests of territoriality than of wisdom. ‘She fits in here very well. And she’s a good sort, when you get to know her. You will just have to try to adapt.’ They are both aghast at this remark, but Sofka, with remarkable stoicism, accepts it. ‘Well, Alfred,’ she replies, after a terrifying pause. ‘It is your life.’

In view of this conversation, which Muriel has overheard, her independence increases. Soon it is quite common for Alfred to suggest, ‘Mimi, give Muriel a hand, will you?’ Since Muriel grumbles at the amount of work she has to do at the weekends, having done none for the entire week, Alfred feels a vague sense of apology. Mimi, quite equably, begins to clear the table. ‘Just put it down, dear,’ says Muriel, as Mimi prepares to dry the dishes which Muriel insists on washing herself. ‘I’ll just have a quiet moment with Ginger.’ And she scoops up the enormous cat and buries her face in its fur. This quiet moment, complete with lavish endearments and innuendoes (‘You appreciate me, don’t you, sweetie,
even if nobody else does’) can last for some forty minutes, while Mimi stands politely with a tea-towel in her hand. When Mimi moves to the larder in an attempt to cover the rest of the food, Muriel says, ‘Just put it down, dear,’ and buries her face in the cat again. ‘Well, Ginger,’ she says eventually, ‘I suppose I had better get the coffee ready.’ And she does, too late, so that it keeps them all awake.

After dinner, Alfred goes out for a last walk round his domain. In the cool spring evening, he attempts to persuade himself that this is what he wants. As darkness falls, he strides up the little hills, with his imaginary dogs at his heels. In some recess of his being he knows that this is all wrong. He is aware that the inhabitants of the bungalows are watching him curiously out of their windows. He knows that back at Wren House Muriel will be heaving herself to her feet with a loud sigh and asking if anyone wants anything else before she puts her weary bones to bed. It should be all right but it is not, and Alfred begins to think that now it never will be. Oblivious to the indigo sky and the little twisted trees, Alfred strides on. In what glade, in what grove, can Alfred find his peace?

A
LFRED’S OTHER
arrangements are a little more obscure.

Sitting in the garden of Wren House, with straight back, and wearing a paisley silk dress, Sofka tries to reconcile herself to the fact that Alfred no longer tells her everything. Like most mothers, she has forgotten that he never did tell her everything; what she means is that she is excluded from a part of his emotional life about which she would like to ask many questions. Why is he so late home in the week? Why does he invite so few friends to meet her? Why, above all, has he suddenly shot off in the car, after announcing that there will be two extra guests for lunch? They must be very important if he has taken the risk of upsetting Muriel in this daring manner. It is Muriel’s lamentations which have driven Sofka out into the garden, while kind Mimi is attempting to help in the kitchen. And that is another cause for complaint: why does Mimi abase herself in this way? It is not as if she were unused to servants; the least she can do is to behave properly. Sofka is unmoved by the generous spirit thus shown. She is too offended by what she has seen of Muriel’s domain to want her daughter to have any part of it. And now she knows that a punitive air will reign over the lunch, and she is too loving a mother not to grieve for Alfred, whose pleasure might thus be spoiled and who might be humiliated in front of his guests.