The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot (18 page)

D
AVID
P
ARKER
, making as little noise as his very thorough morning ritual of washing and gargling allowed, heard a faint creaking and rustling in the corridor outside his room. Else, it appeared, had also decided that she must be up first on this ‘important day’. If his own stirrings had the same power to penetrate the consciousness as hers, they must, in their anxiety to disturb no one, have successfully woken Gordon from his fitful sleep. David had felt sure that not even Else would stake a claim on half past five, still dark and cold for early October. Now he pictured her, looking more than ever flat and emaciated in her tightly girdled grey woollen dressing gown (
schoolboy
style), with her pepper and salt bun straggling a little – for even Else’s neatness would be daunted by this early hour. Her lips would be bluish and her well-shaped nose red; she would probably be
carrying
her old sand-coloured Jaeger slippers until she had arrived
downstairs
, for Gordon had once said that they flapped.

Years of self-discipline had made anger a rare temptation for David, so that even irritation with another human being’s actions was a cause of concern to his conscience. Yet irritation he did feel at her
forestalling
of his well-laid plans to get away from the house that morning without the distracting jars of human contacts. He had no right to be irritated, he told himself, every duty not to be so. Else denied herself all comforts, poor thing, as it was, except lying in bed until Mrs
Boniface
had made breakfast. To give up that small luxury was surely no pleasure to her: only her kindness could have led her to it. She was no doubt already cutting him sandwiches for his journey. Her love for him and for Gordon was the one strong emotion in a self-effacement that, however admirable, came perilously near to negation; he should be glad to receive it, even when as now it irked him, if it gave warmth to her bleak life.

Nevertheless another thought pressed hard upon him: she, he, all of them perhaps – for he anticipated others upon the scene in the next
hour – had determined to be up the first simply out of the
superstitious
feeling that by so doing they would have mastery of the day, power over its fateful happenings. It was, of course, pure superstition. Of the two plays that were being enacted that day, the one depended not on them, not even upon the doctors, but upon certain mysterious organic changes in Gordon’s body; while the other, the horribly irrelevant second feature, which would keep him from Gordon’s side where he longed to be, depended upon the extraordinary chaos of a dead man’s finances and the reactions of Meg, almost after all these years a stranger, to her changed fortune.

He had written to her that they might need each other in the years to come, because when he wrote the letter of condolence he was so deeply oppressed by the realization that Gordon too might have
followed
Bill into oblivion before many months were gone. Now he wished that he had not written it. He hoped that she would have no need of him. He was determined that if he lost Gordon, he would need neither her nor anyone else. All the same superstition persisted: himself, Else, in some degree many others who worked and lived at Andredaswood, all indeed who had come under Gordon’s
extraordinary
influence, seemed at times of crisis to vie for mastery and power. Some years ago he would have speculated whether this meant that in their search for peace of spirit, their fight for disciplined living, they had suppressed too deeply some inherent need; but now he was strong enough to dismiss such ideas. Gordon laughingly would ascribe them to the Devil; Else would seek to repair some gap in her unity with the world of creatures; himself, more agnostic, accepted the impulsive cynical thought as a destructive element inherent in the human psyche, a quirk to be ignored in the struggle for integration. He smiled at the inadequacy of the terms; he had known too long the limits of his metaphysics to allow speculation to encumber the immediate and supreme demand of moral activity.

Suddenly the morning bird chorus started up from the nearby copse. He looked at his watch – ten minutes to six. He pictured Else, pouring the boiled coffee into the Thermos, listening intently,
drawing
a strength purged of any sentimental sweetness from this creature signal of a new day begun. There had been a time when he had envied her the certainty of her symbols, however inadequate her pantheism; but now he was secure enough in his own path merely to note other roads with sympathy and to maintain his own way.

He hesitated for a moment whether he should put on a suit out of
deference to Meg’s conventionality – for as likely as not the shock of her experience would only have accentuated her narrow sophisticated way of life, as snails draw into their shells when touched. His physical distaste for the constriction of tics, the weight of coats, was too strong. He put on his usual corduroy trousers, open necked khaki shirt, and old wine-coloured pullover, ran a comb through his thick,
prematurely
grey hair, wiry as steel wool, and was ready for the world, even for Else Bode’s stolen march.

Through the kitchen window the sun was rising over the distant South Downs, gold and pink, lurid yet soft and hazy, in a
combination
peculiarly repulsive to his taste.

‘I can’t say I care for dawns,’ he said. Else Bode looked first to the window, then at him, and smiled. The light gave a sweet, rose pink glow to her thin, white face. David looked away.

‘Oh!’ she said, as dismissing a child’s nonsense, ‘you remember bad art too well, David. We have to look at things as they are, not trailing memories that spoil our vision.’

Her English was fluent, but her accent markedly German and in some way governessy. She smiled with approval as she noted his clothes. She thinks I’ve dressed to put Meg in her place, David thought. He wished he had worn the suit. And yet it was natural that Else, who knew his sister only casually as a superficial smart woman, should resent the intrusion of Meg’s tragedy into the anxiety of
Gordon’s
illness. After all I resent it myself, he thought. He would have made no comment, but Else carried her approach further by a small squeeze of his arm. It drove him to protest, though he tried to soften any priggishness in his rebuke with a teasing smile.

‘Yes, Else,’ he said, ‘I didn’t dress up for the occasion. But don’t let’s make too much of it. However I approach it, today will be
difficult
. The manner of approach won’t make
that
much difference.’

‘No. It must be a bad time, of course. But it’s good that you are
going
to be yourself. It will be easier for Mrs Eliot to be herself too. Maybe then you can reach her in order to help her.’

Her clear; sapphire blue eyes looked sweet and sad, her long mouth in smiling drew the wrinkled, white papery skin tight across her cheekbones. Mater dolorosa, David thought, fourteenth-century, in wood; then he remembered the challenge to charity that times of stress offered. He had, after all, settled long ago for the lump of sugary hardness in Else’s wholesome cake. The impingement of personalities could of all things diminish that surplus of inner strength he would
need today if he was to fortify Meg, to give her the conviction of his being all hers in her distress, when in fact he would be more than ever all Gordon’s.

‘Mayonnaise, Else?’ he said, looking at the sandwich filling. ‘You’re indulging yourself again by spoiling me.’ He had intended at all cost to eat breakfast at leisure in some roadside hotel.

‘I would have given you breakfast before you left,’ she said, ‘but the leaves in Ashdown are already turning. Eat your breakfast quietly in the forest. The autumn trees will give meaning to your sadness. I used to go sometimes in the autumn, you know, David, to spend a holiday with my grandmother by the Bodensee. I was always
complaining
that the lake looked so sad. And I was sad too. Do you know what is the awful, meaningless sadness of seventeen years old? My grandmother was an Anthroposophist. There is much so stupid in the Steiner teaching, but also so much good. She used to say to me “Mingle your sorrow with the sadness of the season.” She was right. Our sorrow is good when the season is in tune with it. I have not forgotten the lesson.’

‘I have no time to enjoy the sorrows of autumn today,’ he
answered
; and then because he always feared to treat Else with insufficient seriousness, he added, ‘No, no, your grandmother was quite right. As a general proposition, I agree: the mood may be mellowed by its setting. But today I need the sharp edge of distress to keep me on the alert, not a sweet, sad soporific.’

‘All the same your sister will have to find some road from despair to acceptance.’

David’s bony, equine face, almost tapir-like with its long nose, wrinkled into innumerable lines as he frowned, partly from
annoyance
at Else’s interference, partly in conjecturing Meg’s state of mind.

‘Perhaps she has done so already,’ he said brusquely, ‘I’m not speculating until I’ve seen her. She has great resources of courage.’

‘Oh, yes. I think so, David. To say that she did not need you. That was very brave. Poor woman! She must have wanted all her
resources
with this terrible publicity,’ Else said primly.

David gave her a sharp glance. She had stressed her horror at the news aspect of Bill’s death so often that he had begun to wonder what needs had been suppressed by her passion for an anonymous private life. She should have been an actress. And why not? He
rebuked
himself. Not everyone felt the same distaste for histrionics as himself. And if it were true, her exclusion from the part she should
have played in life was only an additional cause for compassion and admiration.

‘Don’t let’s distress ourselves too much about the publicity,’ he said. ‘From what she wrote in her letter the consul seems to have
protected
Meg very well. And we coped, which is all we can ask. After all the newspaper reporters have to live.’

‘Do you think so? I remember the German newspaper men in thirty-three, you know. No, I don’t find it easy to kill … what do you call those enemies of yours? Wireworm and leather jackets. But
newspaper
men, that’s different.’ Then, worried lest her exaggeration should be taken as a serious exception to her pacifism, she said, ‘
Except
those good men who write the holy words for my bible up in Manchester.’ She had learned to mock herself with painful discipline in her years of refuge in England. She did so somewhat crudely. But now she could laugh to take the conversation away from Meg; and David with the identical aim joined in the laughter. Immediately, however, she put her finger to her lips. ‘Sssh,’ she said. They were both still, remembering Gordon asleep upstairs. He had slept in the last months so little and so lightly.

‘What time are you due at the hospital?’ David asked. In his state of tension over Gordon’s illness he constantly forgot these details as soon as he was told them.

‘A quarter to midday.’ Else’s voice sounded patient. ‘Doctor Blackett says that we may expect the results of the X-ray in two days. I think that is quite good.’

David recalled with irritation that it was he who had given her this information. He limited his annoyance to saying, ‘It isn’t an X-ray, you know.’ He did not say what it was. He had tried in the last weeks of anxiety about Gordon to confine his conversations with Else to practical details. If, in the worst event, she and he had to find a basis for living together without Gordon, any intimacy brought about by their present stress might only be a hindrance to a tolerable, mutually independent relationship. His fears that she did not feel the same need for caution seemed realized, for she turned towards him and said:

‘David, I am sure that Gordon has already won his battle. And we are still full of fears. Our fears cannot help him. Shall we talk a little about it while he is not here?’

David saw no hope of evasion; even to give his reasons for avoiding intimacy would lead them straight into the heart of it.

‘Else,’ he said, ‘don’t you think that we would be wise …’

She looked so defiant at his warning tone. ‘There is no wisdom more important than love,’ she said.

He resigned himself at least to meeting her demands upon his
sympathy,
although, to his distaste, he knew that out of prudence he would not be wholly frank with her.

‘You will be hurt, David. You must be, by something I shall say. But perhaps with all that is hurting you now, it will not be much to add. Yours is a more cruel part than Gordon’s because you have not his faith. This makes your duty to give him strength, yes, even out of your weakness, a very hard one.’

Her honesty was clearly to be complete; David hoped that he could bear it.

‘I believe that I can help you almost not at all,’ she said, ‘but if I can, you must tell me. Will you please tell me now if there are things …’

But that, of course, was exactly what David knew he must not do. Any things he told her now would be distorted. He admired her, was grateful to her, very fond of her after ten or so years; but at the
moment
he resented her; and she, if her love for Gordon was as deep as it seemed, was deceiving herself if she did not resent him too.

‘There really isn’t time now,’ he said. But she would have none of such feebleness.

‘No, David,’ she said, ‘there is tension between us and that makes it harder for him. No matter what it costs us, we must discuss it.’

But time was in fact on his side. Voices came from the lobby by the back door.

‘Aren’t they lovely? Not that I’d
pick
dahlias. I don’t think they’re a house flower really. I prefer the delicate shades like the Michaelmas,’ Mrs Boniface was saying. David thought, she’ll be as much refined cockney at fifty-five as she is now at thirty; Sussex will never change
her
.