Four Gated City (58 page)

It was time to go down to supper. She was going to descend down the house, calling Paul, Patty, Mark, Graham, jill, Gwen etc. etc., in a calm competent voice, the voice of the middle-aged woman who has every string in her hands. She had become that person who once she hated and feared more than any other-the
matron. Well, what alternative was there? But now she was there, in that place (but luckily one never stayed in any stage long, these caravanserais were only for limited visits) she could understand the source of that uneasiness. It was that thinking nine-tenths of one’s time about other people, one acquired an insight into them that appalled even oneself. Power. Putting herself back fifteen years into Mrs. Van der Bylt’s drawing-room, she was both the person who sat watching Mrs. Van, half amused, half wary, wholly protective of her own privacy while those small alert greyish blue eyes watched and understood, and Mrs. Van, who looked at Martha and knew, she will do this, she might do this, if I do this and then she will be saved from, or: if she burns her fingers, here, then,
tant pls
, she’ll learn … intolerable!

Martha called:’ Paul! Supper!’ She descended, knowing he would not reply; but would arrive fifteen minutes late for the meal, having made his point. Where the radiator for the central heating had been replaced last winter, the plaster used for casing the pipes into the wall had fallen out. She made a note, like a general putting a pin in a map, ‘wall behind radiator on Paul’s staircase’, and went past her own room, with a loud knock and a call:’ Patty, supper!’ A loud groan, humorous answered her:’ Oh my God, do I have to wake up? Never!’ But Patty would be at the table, washed, bright, ready in five minutes. ‘Mark, Graham, Francis … Lynda do you want to change your mind …’

In the kitchen Francis was laying extra places. Phoebe had come in, with colleagues. Francis was alight with pleasure. He adored people dropping in, people around, visitors, all the atmosphere of casual busy family life. And he adored it with the protective disbelief of a lover who is not loved-only now were Martha, Mark, understanding what Francis had suffered during the bad time when his father was under a cloud, and he had had no friends. For that had been the truth. One understood it, seeing him now, so delighted at-being normal. But for him it would never be normal. Friendship was a boon, a gift, something to be treasured, like love.

Looking at Francis now one thought of love. He was sixteen. He had shot up into his adolescent bloom. He was still like Mark. Martha, who had loved Mark, looked at Francis and knew him: hiding the knowledge. He was a tallish, brown boy, with an open, rather flat face, and his father’s brown eyes. He was also all Lynda, but this did not seem to be of the flesh. Lynda flickered and
glimmered in her son in a glance, or a smile. Francis, sixteen years old and in the midst of adolescent self-garnering, all self and assertion, was at the same time never less himself. His parents flowed in and out of him, his flesh was incandescent; and Martha and Patty confided how well they understood that men loved boys-for did any girl, ever, have this moment of perversely beautiful flowering? The point was, its mortality; it was like looking at a crocus, perfect for a day; and all Francis’s flesh, which, before this moment and after it, must be solid, sensible, indeed, serviceable, was as wildly vulnerable as flowerflesh. And it was not as women that Martha, Patty watched this creature, and could have wept or worshipped-no; in them old males stirred and remembered, both fearing and wishing to pay homage. Not to Francis. Even when he was putting knives and forks on a tablecloth, and setting plates, he was not Francis. He was so beautiful that Martha’s throat started to ache. She sat herself quietly down and watched him: it would all be gone in six months. Meanwhile he was so happy in being ordinary, in being normal, in knowing that in five minutes friends and family would come in and they would all eat a long family dinner.

In came Phoebe’s daughters. They were beautiful too. Fair, blue-eyed, pink-cheeked, charming, but there was no wild gleam in them. They were fourteen, fifteen, just taking shape, ‘setting’ like jellies. Both looked at Francis and sighed for him. Not at all as Martha might, or Patty: pretty girls saw a handsome boy. To see the rest one had to be a conspirator with time. And when Nicky came in, who had passed through his poetic time and was ordinary again, the girls divided their attention between Nicky and Francis. These four sat at the foot of the table, in an enclave of youth. Not only Francis was stimulated by this family evening: Jill and Gwen found normality, or this approximation to it, a drug which made their eyes bright and their cheeks pink with happiness. For Phoebe and Arthur had also been suddenly transformed from vile criminals into admirable citizens, and their names, as often in the papers as they had been during the bad time, suggested a brand of heroic common sense. These children, blossoming, confessed by their happiness how very unhappy they had been, and had never confessed to being.

In came Phoebe with two Africans and a man from one of the committees. He was Jim Troyes, a middle-aged trade unionist from

Bradford. He admired Phoebe. The girls’ attitude towards him said they were jealous of him. They suspected him, probably, of being her lover, but so far they were so happy to admire their mother that the only sign of it was the number of times they said they liked Jim.

When Graham came in, he looked to see if he could sit between the girls and continue his crucifixion, but there was no place for him. He sat between Phoebe, whom he vociferously admired, and Patty, who would spend the rest of the meal handling him, without his knowing it. Mark took the head of the table. Now everyone was there. Except Paul. A single chair stood speakingly empty. As Martha began serving soup, Paul appeared, oblivious of everyone, walked to this chair, sat in it, was alone in the midst of a multitude. People (unless something was done) would continuously examine him but without knowing that they did, while tension built up. He would suddenly assert himself, and there would be an explosion of some kind, which would enable him to make a dramatic exit.

Martha signalled to Mark. He made a grimace, and began, like a sheepdog isolating sheep from a flock, conversation which in a moment must include Paul and as it were defuse him.

It was a question of enabling Paul to appear a splendidly isolationist individual before he was impelled to do it for himself. As it happened the opportunity came fast. Soon everyone was talking about the demonstration that afternoon about Central Africa, and Mark asked Paul if he had been on it with the others. Paul said shrilly that he found demonstrations childish; the other young ones protested and criticized him. He maintained his position, was very rude. At last he subsided, and they were all able to get on with their food.

It would be a long meal if for no other reason than that Phoebe was here and able to answer questions about half a dozen subjects that interested them all. It was very pleasant to see her come into her own, after so many years in the shadow. Her tight face had softened: she was, after all, a good-looking woman. Jim Troyes sitting opposite her certainly thought so: he watched her and smiled with affection and admiration. Her pretty daughters were so pleased to be her daughters, and when the conversation lagged, pleaded ignorance on this or that subject, so that Phoebe might continue to appear as the one person present who always had every fact and figure at her finger-tips, from the probable organization of
the next Aldermaston March, to what was now happening in peaceful and independent Kenya. The two Africans who had been demonstrating that afternoon with the young ones, joked that ‘like all Phoebe’s friends’ they had just finished their obligatory terms of imprisonment for sedition and this was a good sign for their own independence. They invited Phoebe to visit when this event took place:’ when we get our freedom’. They were talking about freedom with a simplicity of approach which reminded the white people of the complications of their own attitudes: the subject of freedom was quickly dropped in the interests of general good feeling.

About now there were, one after another, three telephone calls, one from Margaret, who was in a condition of anxious tears, because a journalist had rung her up to find out why her son had refused to go on ‘her’ committee; and two from journalists wanting to know if Mark would make a statement about why he was against reforming the law on homosexuality. He dealt with all the calls from another room, but he was annoyed, and this showed.

Graham became vociferous about the injustice of locking men up for their natural instincts, etc., and the Africans needed to be told why this cause was as important as others-for instance, seeing that colour prejudice was abolished in Britain.

But while certain political attitudes were taken for granted around this table, and the several thousand like it, others had the power to irritate or alarm. Attitudes about South Africa, and Central Africa which ten years ago were held only by a small handful of people mostly on the left, were now taken for granted among a large enough number of people to merit the words ‘well-informed opinion holds’, but to say that colour prejudice here was a serious problem made everyone look embarrassed. These poor fellows were bound to be over-sensitive, politely smiling faces said. Graham tried to change the subject; to introduce what he was interested in that evening, but Phoebe continued to listen while the two Africans politely tried to convince the young people that race prejudice in Britain was ‘nearly as bad’ as in Africa. Francis said this couldn’t be true because he had a coloured friend at school and everyone liked him. Phoebe said she thought there was something in what Matthew and Freddie said but… again Graham tried to catch her attention but in order to save bad feeling, Jim Troyes began talking about the Press attitude towards homosexuals. He had been absolutely against homosexuals and approved of the
Press, until he had encountered Phoebe and her friends and discovered he was reactionary. Phoebe and Jim and Graham discussed Graham’s committee; while Mark began to talk to Paul-he had been feeling ignored and showed signs of some kind of tantrum or demonstration. Patty explained to Jill and to Gwen how to cook a dish of beef without using any liquid. Jill and Gwen suddenly complained loudly that they knew nothing about cooking, their mother never had time to teach them. People were reminded how precarious was the peace between mother and daughters; that Phoebe found them difficult, and they found her unsympathetic. Phoebe broke off her discussion to listen, and then said she often cooked that particular dish, she didn’t know why Jill and Gwen had to talk like deprived orphans. She was really annoyed.

‘Yes, but you don’t teach us, do you?’ said Jill.

In order to prevent a quarrel, Patty began to talk about another recipe, about food, about marketing. In a moment the tableful of people was plunged into gourmandise-for at this particular time it was not possible for anyone to be uninterested in food and cooking, so far had this pendulum swung. Soon, the silence of their two guests from Africa who were listening to talk which (as the white people heard it as it were through their ears) suddenly sounded callous and greedy, and caused Phoebe to say that they mustn’t think they thought of nothing but their stomachs in this country. Smiling politely, Matthew said that everywhere they went people talked about food. He wished that his own people were anywhere within sight of such standards.

For the third time the Africans had lowered the temperature of this meal, or seminar.

A safe subject was needed. There was only one safe subject and that was’the bomb’, or the Aldermaston March, and now at last Graham was happy because he was wanting to get Phoebe on to the television to talk about this phenomenon.

The trouble was, although the first March had taken place only a few months before, the true facts of the situation had already become absorbed into myth (even faster than public events usually do) and now it seemed like a kind of phoenix which had risen of its own accord out of nothing at all. It was this aspect which interested Graham, but as he approached it not only Phoebe but Patty politely refused to meet him there.

The fact was that for ten years, from the end of the last war,
Phoebe from one political angle, and people like her, Patty from another, and people like her, had organized demonstrations, appeals, committees, etc. etc., about Peace. They were communist-orientated, or Labour-orientated; pacifist, liberal, independent; supported by this country or that, this bloc or that; they went doggedly on in atmospheres of suspicion, dislike and hostility in this country, and in America people lost their passports, went to prison, or were variously threatened. If Russia organized some kind of Peace conference, then our government was likely to refuse visas for incoming delegates; if a non-communist organization organized one, the Russians would issue orders to all their satellites to conform with them in boycotting it. All this had gone on,
ad
nauseam: for years, people had been struggling to get ‘peace’ (one item on a long agenda of good causes) away from an atmosphere where nothing would work or succeed or do anything but create bad feeling. And it went without saying that’the youth’, Graham among them, had regarded all such activity as absurd in the extreme. When eight hundred people had marched out of Trafalgar Square on that Good Friday, it was no more than what had been happening for years under one auspice or other-Patty’s, Phoebe’s, what both stood for. Nothing more was expected by the organizers of this March than that, as usual, one hundred, or five hundred, or a thousand people would turn up, most of them known to one another, and disperse afterwards, while the newspapers commented sourly, if at all, and most of the inhabitants of these islands would know nothing whatsoever about it. Yet by the end of that particular Easter week-end several thousand people had been marching under the black and white banners, most of them young, and newspapers and television commented lengthily, and no one could have been more surprised than the organizers.

Why? What had happened? No one knew.