Last Things (43 page)

Walter finished in a cheerful, ruminative, acceptant tone. ‘That’s the point, isn’t it? If your head’s the proper size, you see that you’re not all that significant. Anywhere. So I finished up here.’ Walter swept an arm as though to take in the Palace of Westminster. ‘Hell, it’s good enough for me.’

‘What you’re saying’, Charles asked him, ‘would apply to anything creative, wouldn’t it?’

‘Unless you were old Will Shakespeare, I should think it did.’

Charles had gone over this argument with me before: not that I disagreed about the fundamentals, though I should have altered the stress. I knew that he had argued it also with his cleverer friends at school since he was thirteen. He said: ‘No one wants to do second-hand things, do they? Scholarship’s second-hand, even the best of it. Criticism’s second-hand–’

‘That comes from having a literary education,’ Walter burst out in his old-style raucous vein. ‘You think a bloody sight too much of criticism if you put it as high as second-hand. Our infernal college’ (he turned to me) ‘after we’d cleared out elected some damn fool who’d written a thesis on the Criticism of Criticism. Instead of electing him they ought to have kicked his bottom down the Cury.’

Charles smiled, but wasn’t to be put off. ‘Anyway, no one wants the second-hand things. And there’s no use doing first-hand things unless one is superb, is that right?’

‘That’s a bit stronger than I meant,’ said Walter, who, despite his conversational style, was a moderate man.

‘Well, is this nearer? You wouldn’t allow the old romantic conception of the artist. That is, an artist is justified whatever he does and it doesn’t matter much whether he’s any good so long as he thinks he is.’

‘That’s puffing nonsense,’ said Walter Luke.

‘I believe it’s disposed of forever. Among my generation anyway,’ said Charles. ‘You’ve never had any time for it, have you?’ He turned to me.

‘That’s putting it mildly,’ I replied.

‘Well, we’ve wiped off quite a lot of possibilities, haven’t we?’ Charles had the air of one who, very early in a hand at bridge, could name where the cards lay.

‘For God’s sake, lad, don’t let me discourage you from anything.’

Walter was subtler than he seemed, or wanted to appear. He had realised some time before that this discussion was not entirely, or perhaps not at all, academic.

‘Please don’t worry. You wouldn’t discourage me from anything if I didn’t discourage myself. Most of those things I’d ruled out long ago.’

‘I hope you’ve left something in,’ said Walter, boisterous and avuncular again.

‘A little.’

‘Well, what’s it going to be?’

‘I can’t tell you anything definite yet.’

‘Tell me something indefinite, then.’

Charles grinned. Not perturbed, he said: ‘I do think that the things worth doing in my time are going to be a bit different.’

‘Why? Different to what?’ Walter said.

‘Different from things that your contemporaries did. I think we ought to do things which will actually affect people’s lives. Quite quickly. Here and now. Not in a couple of generations’ time. In our own.’

‘What does all that add up to?’

‘Don’t I wish I knew?’

‘You’re thinking of something like the other end of this place?’ Walter jerked a thumb in the direction of the Commons.

‘No, not quite that, perhaps.’

‘Anyway, you don’t know yet, do you?’

‘No, not yet.’

‘Oh, don’t rush yourself. There’s plenty of time,’ said Walter. When Charles was expressing indecision, speaking almost bashfully, I doubted it. I didn’t believe that Charles had started the conversation for my benefit, either to challenge or (what might have been more likely, as our relation changed) to prepare me. It was a mistake growing out of egotism or paranoia to suspect that all actions were aimed in one’s own direction. Even with a person to whom one was close: he could have, and had, his own purposes which were quite independent of one’s own. That, I was sure, was true of Charles as they started talking in the guest room. The mention of Roy Calvert had no reference to me, or to any thought of his that Roy’s daughter and I had been dissolving hostilities because of him. He had her on his mind, that was all.

But there had come an opportunity, or a turn in the talk, so that he could say something, not much but something, which he wished me to hear. It might have been easier to do so via Luke, using him as an interpreter, so to speak: quite likely it was, whether out of consideration or semi-secretiveness, or father-son aphasia, of which we all knew the intermittences. scarcely mattered.

The one certain thing was that he had passed on a message. If I asked for its final meaning, I should be evaded. There had been the best of openings to tell me, if he chose. He knew, it didn’t need repeating, it would oppress him if repeated, what I wanted for him. Not his happiness: that was for him to get: to wish that would have been mawkish, and though I could be so about acquaintances, I wasn’t about those closest to me. But I did wish, in the most elementary and primal fashion, for his well-being.

He knew that well enough. Once when he was nine or ten I had taken him for a walk, and he had rushed in front of a car. Quick-footed he had backed away, with not more than inches to spare. The driver cursed, ‘You won’t have a long life, you won’t.’ Charles saw that I was pallid and couldn’t speak. Sometimes when still a child he asked me about it, and got brushing-off answers. Then he gave up asking. But when my eye went wrong he took my arm with solicitous and much more than filial care, much more compensatory than filial, whenever I had to cross a road.

On our corner table, there was a round of drinks. Walter Luke was giving instruction to Charles about science in the last war, pointing with blunt fingers at the end of a stiff, strong arm. Charles had returned to his absorbent posture, chin in hand.

ALTHOUGH towards the end of November Margaret received news that Maurice’s wife was pregnant it was not until Christmas that we saw her. Meanwhile Margaret, whom I have never known beg for favours except for her elder son, was shamelessly using any influence either of us possessed to get him a job in London. She wasn’t searching for anything lofty – just the equivalent of what he was doing in the Manchester hospital or perhaps a clerkship in an almoner’s office. ‘Though I expect he’d think that was too soft an option for him, wouldn’t he?’ she said. She was smiling, making a decent show of being sarcastic, but underneath the sarcasm melted away.

Still, she was being practical. When the baby was born, she was determined to be within reach. Expecting what? Her moods oscillated as I watched them; some moments she was very happy, almost triumphant, as she had been when she was pregnant herself; at others she was dreading, with a rational dread with which I was touched myself, that the child would be born afflicted. Yes, there was a chance, said some of the medical scientists, told of the mother’s family history. Not worse than one in four, perhaps better than one in sixteen. But these were worse odds than one got in any of the ordinary risks of life.

Whatever could be done, Margaret was doing. From the beginning the child was to have the best doctors, whether Maurice and his wife liked it or not. I told her she was behaving like old Mr March in his heyday (I should have mentioned Azik Schiff too, if this conversation had happened three months earlier). Margaret replied, ‘You know what I feel about his marriage, you haven’t needed telling, have you?’ Just for once she was asking for pity or even pitying herself. ‘Well, if they get a healthy child, that’ll make up for everything, I swear I’ll be good to it. And to her as well.’

‘So you will if the child is born – unlucky,’ I said. ‘Even more so.’

I meant it. There were some, including Margaret, who thought that her son Maurice was naturally good. Margaret had more original sin, maybe, but she made herself good by effort. There was no one who would behave better and more patiently – though she wasn’t patient by nature – if the baby was what she often feared. She would cherish it and its mother, so that everyone thought such love came easy to her.

She had invited them to stay over Christmas with us, and on Christmas Eve we had what by courtesy one could call a family dinner party – with Margaret and me, Maurice and Diana, Charles and Muriel. Until recently that had been a night when we had often filled the flat with a mass all comers’ party. But, because I was surreptitiously as atavistic or superstitious as my mother, we had killed the custom dead. On 23 December 1963, George Passant had called on me and had, not broken, but declared the news which still at times hag-rode me: which had cut off any thoughts about one whole phase of my youth. The following night, I had had to be host to one of those mass parties. Not again. That was four years before, and the memory was still sharp and shrivelling.

And yet, as we sat at dinner, I would almost have welcomed a crowd of people trampling in soon. Diana took her place at my right hand, sidling in with her head down, giving out an air of being ill-treated, injured, self-regarding and full of conceit. I had suspected it the first time I met her: now I couldn’t miss it. Margaret had, half-heartedly to be sure, accused me of being hard on her. That I couldn’t take. If I pretended not to see her as I did, who was that a kindness to? I wasn’t going to patronise her. In fact, as Margaret had discovered that afternoon, she wasn’t at all easy to patronise, even for the most necessary of purposes.

To begin with, she had enjoyed being made such a fuss of, which Margaret was doing, spontaneously and happily, as soon as they arrived. Wonderful about the child. Margaret’s sister had no children. Margaret had the two boys. In Margaret’s family this would be the first child of the new generation. Diana was frowning to understand, but Maurice did some explaining. When she had gathered in the praise, she tossed her head, just as I remembered girls at a
palais de
danse
in the provinces when I was a youth, giving the same response when they were asked for a dance. It didn’t mean they were going to refuse. It meant that they would graciously accept, saying in the phrase which I had heard not long since from the lips of Muriel’s mother, ‘I don’t mind if I do.’

Margaret was not used to north-country manners, but she detected that Diana was pleased. On the other hand, she didn’t detect that when Diana was pleased she did not become less obstinate but more. So that, immediately the prospect of a move to London was conveyed to her (by this time Margaret had three different offers arranged for), she refused point-blank. ‘I don’t see why we should.’

Maurice had to placate her. He might have been overconsiderate or even too diffident (for it was he who did the wooing), but it was clear he hadn’t mentioned the possibility, though his mother had been writing to him about it, and his replies had been grateful and willing.

‘It might be a good idea, sweetie,’ he said.

‘That’s as may be. I don’t see why we should.’

Well, they would be nearer to his family and friends. To which she replied, with truculent accuracy, that they would be further from her family and friends.

Doctors, Margaret was speaking of. She could recommend some of the best –

‘We’ve got doctors where we live. Ours aren’t that bad.’

By this time Margaret realised that this wasn’t shadow-boxing. In a mother-cum-sister fashion she began to speak of the flukes of childbirth, how she was certain that Diana wasn’t frightened of anything, but it would take a load off her (Margaret’s) mind if they took some precautions. She would feel happier – she didn’t approve of herself and she didn’t expect them to, but they might humour her – if they didn’t have the baby on the National Health. There was a good nursing home where she had had Charles –

Diana sat with an internal smile, looking deferred to and unmoved.

As a result, when she came to the dinner table, she was the centre of attention. As usual, she was wearing a dress in dingy chocolate brown, a colour for which she seemed to have a strong predilection.

In my eyes, she was plain, not ugly but plain, and the other young people were all personable, her husband much more than that, the most handsome man of his age whom I had seen in that room. Still, by a process of group hypnosis, it was she whom everyone was making up to and was anxious to please.

I had had a word with Charles on our own before dinner, and told him, for his mother’s sake, to do his best. He gave a workmanlike smile, and as he sat by her at the table, I was surprised to see how good his best could be. I had heard from his friends that he took much trouble to help: when he hadn’t a purpose of his own, he had, so they suggested, a lot of free energy, which he would dispense on anyone, without much favouritism or horns-and-halo partiality, who seemed to need it.

Certainly he was making more progress with Diana than any of us. I heard him begin on the attractions of London. Well, that might soften her some time, I thought, concerned for Margaret. As for myself, I shouldn’t have been sorry for that dinner party to be broken up. I was sitting between Diana with whom I couldn’t communicate and who showed no desire to communicate with me – and Muriel, with whom I could communicate, but who had communicated much that we couldn’t mention at that table, so that we were shy and abrupt with each other.

After dinner, Diana was sitting on the sofa between her husband and Charles. She was still being courted by Charles, but his conversational energies were flagging. Maurice watched with an affectionate smile, apparently gratified that she was receiving so much attention. The rest of us scattered round the room, Muriel preoccupied, Margaret once or twice glancing at me as though wishing that she and I had been trained to do simple conjuring tricks. It was about a quarter past nine, just about the time when, before the George Passant trauma, the first big wave of the Christmas party came breaking in. I asked round the room whether anyone would like more to drink. No takers. With someone to join me, I should have been ready to drink a good deal, which nowadays I rarely did.

Then there was a ring at the front-door bell. While Margaret and I were speculating – it wouldn’t be a visitor, perhaps a Christmas delivery from a shop – Charles went out to answer. A voice from the hall. He returned, looking not self-possessed but clouded, followed by his cousin Pat.