Four Gated City (24 page)

Margaret had once been a fine-boned graceful English beauty like Lynda. She was now a tall, handsome, grey-eyed woman with elegant hands. Martha watched the subtlety of the hands as they caressed the cat. The cat started to purr loudly. Margaret picked the animal up and put her ear to it, like a child, to listen to the purring. But the cat didn’t like being picked up, and stopped purring.

‘What do you feel about Mark? ’ demanded Margaret.

And now Martha could not help laughing-out of annoyance, really. Also, she supposed, from affection. Margaret smiled a strained readiness to be told why Martha laughed. She put the cat down, who rolled over and began purring. Margaret stroked the cat. She had tears in her eyes.

The tears were very weakening. ‘Listen, Margaret. There’s just one thing that none of you seem able to see. Mark loves Lynda. I do understand why you all-but there it is.’

‘But it’s ridiculous. It always has been. And before Lynda there was an American, a cousin of Oscar’s. Hopeless-a hopeless girl. And she cared nothing about Mark, and he ran around after her like a little dog.’

‘Well, haven’t you ever loved anyone ridiculous and hopeless? ’

The cat had moved off, and sat licking its ruffled fur to rights.

The grey look Martha now got from Margaret held irritation. Martha recognized it easily as that emotion one feels when another hasn’t seen that truth obvious to oneself.

‘Yes, I have. I was in love with Oscar. I adored him. But one has to live, you know-one
has
to. I
do
know. I could have stayed married to Oscar. But I don’t like-suffering, I suppose. I hate it. Some people enjoy being treated badly. I wasn’t Oscar’s first wife and I won’t be his last-by a long chalk. I’m told the woman he’s going to marry is getting the treatment. Just as I did. Look, Martha dear-1 really
must
-haven’t you any influence at all with Mark? ’

The tears poured out, and, as Martha could see, were unchecked because Margaret had noticed Martha was influenced by tears. Martha was now very angry. Months of resentment came pouring out.

‘I know you are much older than me, and ever so experienced, and you’ve always been able to do exactly as you like. But you seem to me like a little girl. You can’t always have your own way. You always have had it, haven’t you? You can’t stop people doing things just because you think it’s no good for them.’

Margaret stared at Martha, not so much surprised, as wary. Then she turned away her wet face and dabbed at it. Martha looked at a reassuring calm back. Martha had even more strongly the feeling that she was an instrument being played upon. When that face was turned to her again, what look would be placed upon it?

No, she was being unfair. Probably Margaret was acting out of instinct-if that made it any better!

Once again, Martha was sitting in the presence of a strong elderly woman, herself a seethe of conflicting emotions, which she could not control. Some time she was going to have to team to control them.

Margaret turned to her a quiet sobered face.

‘I don’t agree with you, ’ she said. ‘If someone’s doing something that’s simply
silly
, you try and stop them. I wish you’d try and stop Mark. He ought to leave the country for a bit. He could take Francis. He might fall in love with someone that’s some use.’

Martha laughed with resentment. ‘You can’t see that he could never do it? It’s not the kind of thing he could do? ’

‘No. I wish you’d try.’

‘No. I’ve got no right-one hasn’t. Not unless you get right into something and-get your hands dirty too. Only if you fight.’

‘And you won’t? ’

‘Why should I? It’s not my mess!’

‘You want to get married again I suppose? ’

‘Oh for goodness’ sake!’ Martha was becoming incoherent. ‘I don’t want to get married for the sake of it! You talk like a-fortune-teller or something.’

‘Oh! I don’t see why? Why not, if that’s what you want? ’

‘Well one doesn’t say, I want to get married and then go out looking-isn’t that what you meant? ’

Margaret was almost smiling: she was humouring Martha.

Who now stood up, confronting Margaret. Who stood up, ready to leave. The women were furious with each other.

‘If Mark divorced Lynda, it wouldn’t make any difference. He’d either go pining after Lynda, or he’d be in love with someone else ridiculous and hopeless. Or you’d think she was. Can’t you see that? ’

‘Well no, ’ drawled Margaret. ‘Frankly, I don’t. But I must bow to your superior wisdom.’

At the door she said: ‘The man’s got the television to work. It’ll be rather fun, watching it on television.’ She laughed, and apparently genuinely. She was looking forward to the evening. ‘In the old days, when I had an election party I had to be careful to keep the left and the right apart-now it’s the left and the left. I suppose Colin wouldn’t come-he can’t, with the case just starting? ’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Oh well, if you just lump people into a room, they’ll have to behave. But I must say, if Colin’s coming, then it will be tricky with Phoebe and Arthur and Arthur’s wife. I really can’t imagine why they hate the bolshies so much when they’ve got precisely the same aims. If they had their way, this country’d be as bad as Russia-it’s not so far off as it is.’

With this, she went downstairs again, to arrange drinks and food for her party.

By evening the big room, which Martha had only seen as dead and shrouded in enveloping dust-sheets, was full of flowers, and it had a buffet at one end, the television set at the other. Now it presented itself, discreetly festive, as a setting for parties. People started coming early, the attraction being the television set, as much as the election. Most had not got one, or refused to get one, or might get one if this seemed satisfactory. The set was, in short, the focus of the party, almost its chief guest. Margaret was the only person who adored it. Most people seemed apprehensive: in fact one could more or less work out someone’s political bias from the attitude he took towards television.

By ten or so there must have been fifty people in the room in an atmosphere rather like a sweepstake, or the races; and although outside this room, which imposed a truce, they stood for violent antagonisms. Bets were being made, victories and defeats were cheered or booed, everything went on in the greatest good humour.

The Tories were represented by Margaret herself, and by a man who made an appearance early, a formally good-mannered quiet man who was taken down by Margaret to see the basement. Another tenant for it who she thought would be suitable? The man, Mr. Hilary Marsh, was easily overlooked and not remarked much by Martha: afterwards she wished she had paid more attention. There was also strongly present the spirit of Margaret’s first husband; and for her sake even opponents hoped that the Conservative who now held his seat would continue to hold it: he did. The Conservative people held the view that five years of Labour Government had ruined the country by the introduction of red and ruinous socialism, but the electors (they hoped this evening) would see their mistake and where their ingratitude towards their natural governors had led them, and reintroduce the Conservatives.

That section of the Labour Party which actually held the reins (a couple of Ministers were present) was represented by Margaret’s present husband, John, a pleasant man, without much force but with nothing to dislike about him either. He was smilingly attentive to the guests (Margaret’s rather than his, one could not help feeling) and kept the television set working. There was something about him damped down, held back, kept in check-whatever he was, there was a slight uneasiness, hard to put your finger on. Martha
felt it: he presented to her the surface merely of an extraordinary control, while he asked the politest kind of question about Mark’s well-being, about Colin. She was pleased when he moved on.

These, the Labour incumbents, held the view that the country had been in such a bad condition after the war, and particularly after years of Tory rule, that they could not have been expected to do better than they had: and that most of their election pledges had remained unfulfilled through no fault of theirs: ‘The Country’ (a phrase that resounded all evening) would understand this and return them to power with a larger majority than before.

The Labour left was represented by Phoebe, by Phoebe’s ex-husband Arthur, and by his present wife, Mary. Phoebe arrived early with her little girls, pretty blonde creatures excited by being up late for the first time in their lives. His wife came early with the two little children from the new family. Phoebe and Mary, who were great friends, and had been for many years, together greeted Arthur who arrived late with a great mass of supporters. He had kept his seat in South London, with a reduced majority. They were all very excited, and he was a hero that evening. Martha wondered if yet again she would be faced with a shape of flesh like one already known-Mark, Colin, the picture of their dead father-whose spirit was yet utterly different; but Arthur did not look like his brothers, or his father. He was a vigorous-looking man, with an open face, blue eyes open to inquiry, a rocky, rugged, craggy man. An agitator. An orator. A troublemaker. His half-hour’s visit did in fact cause some tension in the general well-being, and people seemed pleased when he left, taking with him his wife, his children; and his previous wife and her children. These, the Labour left, all believed that a Labour Government in power after such a war and after years of Tory misrule, needed to be what it was accused of being by people like Margaret and practically the entire Press-vigorously socialist. They despised the larger part of the party they belonged to for cowardice, pusillanimity, for being unsocialist. They believed, however, that the electorate would vote back the Le’ our Party, because of the existence, in the Labour Party, of people like Arthur, who might yet force it to be what it should be.

Mark was not there. Colin was not there. Invisibly and very strongly present that night was ‘communism’ - a threat. Everyone knew that Mark was with his brother and that his brother was in
bad trouble. People either asked sympathetically after them, or-mostly-did not mention them at all.

If Mark and Colin represented communism, then they represented the view that the Labour Party had always been, would always be, could never be anything else but, a function of capitalism, the force, or trend, in the British nation which made capitalism work, saved it, bolstered it-and could be no more than that even if the Labour Party were composed entirely of Arthurs. (Who, of course, hated the communists, local and international with a bitter passion.) The Labour Party had got in because capitalism (The Tories) being in a jam after the war, it was the right time for it to get in. It had fulfilled none of its election pledges because it could not possibly do so-only a communist government was in a position to change anything radically. And here presented itself an interesting paradox, or political anomaly. For a century at least communism had defined socialist non-communism as bound to fulfil this function; the fatalism, the determinism, which is so oddly rooted in that revolutionary party’s heritage must have it that Labour, or social democracy, by its nature could do no more than what capitalism would allow it do. Q.E.D. Why, then, so much abuse, the gutter criticism, the emotionalism-why such a crying out against the inevitably-behaving and conditioned function, the Labour Party? One might almost believe it a form of love, or of hope; as if, rooted right there, at the heart of an ‘inevitability’, of something determined, there had always been, in fact, half a hope, that perhaps, after all-the Labour Party could be socialist.

Among the guests there was also, but not for long (politics bored him he said) Jimmy Wood, Mark’s partner. He was a short, fair man. Wispy. He had soft baby’s hair on his large head. He had a carefully kept, almost scared, smile. He moved about, with a glass of whisky in his hand, listening, and looking, always on the edge of a group, always with his half-smile. He did not look at the television set, only at the other guests, and as if he were a stranger doomed to be one. He talked briefly to Martha, smiling, or rather, grinning and clutching his glass. He wore strong spectacles. Behind them were small, strained-looking eyes. Mark said he was a variety of scientific genius.

Half through the evening Mark called from Cambridge to say that Martha should get James’s room ready for Sally: she was coming back with him. Paul too.

Martha therefore was away from the party for some time. When she came back, they were saying that even if Labour did get back, it must be with a reduced majority. Margaret and some Tory friends who had come in from a near-by hotel drank to the defeat of the Reds (Labour). Those ‘Reds’ near them drank an opposition toast-everything was very jolly. Mark had sounded harried, even rather frightened, jimmy Wood went, on hearing that Mark would not be there for at least two hours. Mark said that Jimmy and he talked-days at a time. Mark said Jimmy was a lonely man; and so little given to talking about personal affairs, he did not know to this day if he were married.

In the room were two new people. Young men. One was Graham Patten, John’s son by a former marriage. He had a friend with him. Both were in their last year at Oxford. They stood on the side of the noisy scene and despised it. They were also at pains to despise television. Politics were unfashionable among the undergraduates of Britain at that time: Graham and Andrew thought politics were derisory. Dandyism was fashionable: they wore embroidered waistcoats and would not surrender their cloaks, one black lined with scarlet, one scarlet lined with leopard skin. They both maintained supercilious smiles, until someone, unable to stand their frustration, went up to them, when they delivered themselves of a great many observations on a large variety of subjects. They were a bit better when they got drunk, if not very endearing.

Margaret was heard to apologize for them: they would grow out of it, she said.

Mark had told Martha that he would take Sally and the child straight up to the room. She listened for him to come in, and went quietly out into the hall when he did. But Margaret was there seeing some guests out. Afterwards Martha kept the clearest picture of that brief scene.