The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot (20 page)

It continued to surprise David, even after the four months that Tim had been with them, still to find that so much jolly facetiousness did not irritate him. But so it was. He felt always refreshed by Tim’s
presence
; and this although he had decided that Tim’s loud voice and even louder laugh betrayed a lack of adjustment somewhere which touched his own paternal feelings. It had taken him some time to find a note that could respond, even reassure, without breaking through to an intimacy that might demand too much of both of them. He had learned from wartime experience that neurotic extroverts needed careful handling. He had settled for his own facetious note in response – everyman’s caricature of the whimsical old scholar. By exaggerating the difference in their ages it gave an easy farcical note to their relationship.

‘There was a time when I was young, Tim,’ he said, ‘and I should impress upon you that when I say young I mean very young, when I used to delight in a popular tune about bananas or rather the lack of bananas. But I’m glad to say that my sister very wisely and properly put an end to that. She pointed out to me that all popular dance music
was monotonous in rhythm, utterly uninteresting in melody, and entirely revolting in the sentiments that it sought to express. Her words impressed me deeply, and, although I was only six at the time, I took a solemn oath never to allow any of what you call “numbers” to penetrate my consciousness again. Given the conditions of the world it’s been a hard battle but I’ve won it.’

Tim gave a roar of laughter, then grimacing with pain, put his hand to his forehead.

‘Christ!’ he said. ‘Sorry. But I was out with the outfit last night. We collected quite a few odd beers.’

David’s smile was washy and perfunctory. He had shared Gordon’s amusement at first over Tim’s Five White Aces, so incongruous with the reputation of their own quartet; but the dance band seemed an increasing bore to him now.

Whether Tim sensed this or whether he had suddenly identified the sister David had mentioned with Meg Eliot, widow of the
newspapers
’ five-day hero, he looked self-consciously grave.

‘Mrs Eliot arrives today, doesn’t she?’ he said. ‘Eileen asked me to say that if there’s anything she could do – you know, a woman’s hand.’

David could not easily envisage Eileen Rattray’s up-to-date housing estate mothercraft being particularly serviceable to Meg. ‘Please thank her,’ he said, ‘I’ve no idea what the next step’s going to be. My brother-in-law’s left his affairs in appalling confusion. My sister’s
going
to be very badly off.’

Tim looked shocked. ‘Well, I hope there’ll be a thumping great compensation from someone or other,’ he said. ‘A brilliant man like that. You probably don’t realize the feeling there’s been among
ordinary
people in pubs and places. Even down here. After all Englishmen don’t become heroes every day these days …’ His voice trailed away in embarrassment. He looked a very pink pig. ‘Anyhow if she decides to come to Andredaswood I hope you’ll let her know that everybody will respect her need for privacy.’ He seemed to be offering himself as a watchdog.

It was quite another aspect that dominated David’s mind; and he felt that it should be impressed upon the young man.

‘That must depend, Tim, on the result of Gordon’s examination at the hospital. He goes over to Brighton today, you know. In any case I doubt if he’ll be well enough to have strangers about.’

Tim looked perplexed, but the hearty note returned to his voice.
‘Oh, don’t let the doctors get you down. They’re always pessimistic. Most of them get a rake-off from the undertakers.’ He laughed loudly.

David stared for a moment at a corner of the room where two tulip bulbs decaying into powdery dust were enmeshed in a dirt-hung spider’s web. ‘I think this room ought to be cleared out,’ he said. ‘I may have to stop in London with my sister for a little, I can’t say. If so, I don’t want Gordon to be worried with business. Try to trouble him as little as you can. But tactfully, won’t you?’

Any impatience or distaste that Tim’s obtuseness over personal
matters
, his insufficient appreciation of Gordon, had aroused in David was soon banished when they discussed the practical affairs of the nursery. He was so knowledgeable, so competent, and, though fully aware of it, so modest. Gordon had been mistrustful of the value of a
horticultural
diploma, he tended to despise all formal education; but some buried loyalty in David to the academic life he had renounced was appeased by the obvious advantages Tim’s training had brought to the place, even in the few months he had been with them.

Yet it was more than a good, up-to-date training, David reflected; Tim, for all his hearty naïve exterior, had a high I.Q. and his
intelligence
was applied to the job to the full. For Gordon and himself,
running
the nursery had been the sealing of a bond of their life together; making a success of it was the disciplining of their dilettante interests, an external pattern for their inner lives without which they might have succumbed to a corrosive, anarchic existence. Yet it was always and however pleasantly a discipline, a renunciation of over indulgence in music or in books, or even, as Gordon admitted for himself, of an exaggerated selfish engrossment in the life of the spirit. Theirs was the achievement; but, David reluctantly admitted to himself, Tim’s was the efficiency. He was amused and a little irritated at his reluctance.

Only perhaps in relation to the rest of the staff was Tim’s easy
naïveté
at a disadvantage; he was hardly to be blamed, for the choice of Climbers and, indeed, of one or two of the others was hardly
orthodox
. As Tim said, ‘The trouble is, David, that I feel you and Gordon are on a kind of personal footing with them which is bound to make me resented.’

‘It’s a matter of time …’ David began, but Tim, having reached the subject informally, at an unexpected moment, felt freer than he had ever done when they had met to ‘discuss the staff’.

‘I’m not so sure, you know,’ he said. ‘With old Bob and Collihole probably. But with someone like Climbers, I don’t know. You see
she’s the sort of person I’ve never had to deal with. I don’t know what you call them – distressed gentlewomen or whatever it is. They aren’t in my line. She’s bound to resent me.’

‘Whatever Climbers’ feelings,’ David said, ‘they won’t have
anything
to do with any stereotype of her being a gentlewoman. She has the great virtue of having entirely personal emotions.’

But Tim did not take it. ‘Well, I think she feels pretty personally about me,’ he said. ‘And she gets so worked up about some of the others. Annie, for example, is the sort of wench I can deal with any time. She’s not a bad girl but she’s a bit of a lazy bitch and you have to tell her so sometimes. But Climbers rushes in as though I was acting like the king of Soho or some other brute like that. Honestly I think she’s a bit psycho at times.’

‘She’s a very hard worker and a very good gardener,’ David said, trying by the note of fair pleading in his voice to avoid a priggish rebuke.

‘Oh, yes. That’s perfectly true. I wouldn’t have believed it when I came. But all the same, David, I think you and Gordon should have had the courage to get rid of her.’

David tried to consider the suggestion dispassionately.

‘When she’s a good worker, wouldn’t that be a bit unjust?’ It sounded so housemasterish that he saw at once he must stick to the whole truth. ‘Besides,’ he said, ‘she’s not young and she’s poor.’

‘All right then,’ Tim said. ‘Let her be in charge, at any rate,
nominally
. I could make it work.’

‘No,’ David cried, ‘you have the qualifications, you must have the job. Look, Tim, you won’t get anywhere by veering from side to side. People have to accept unpleasant things, and they will if the things are just. But you have to approach them equably, from a distance and with love.’ He measured the words slowly, but, on seeing Tim’s face at the sound of the last word, he laughed. ‘Oh, I don’t think she
expects
that sort of love from you,’ he said.

Tim, too, roared with laughter. ‘Well, it’s just as well,’ he said, ‘because then I
should
resign.’ They parted on a note of easy facetiousness.

David, as always, knocked on Gordon’s door before going in
.
They had decided from the moment of taking Andredaswood that there would be no ease of living there unless each surrounded their close friendship with a total and conventional regard for the other’s privacy.

The deep voice that told David to come in contrasted oddly with
the tiny body sitting up in the large crimson canopied bed, even more perhaps with the little, drawn face, greyish yellow against the piled up white pillows. He seemed, now more than ever, all bony Roman nose and large brown eyes; but the eyes, like the thick copper-tinted brown hair, lacked lustre. David found that Gordon’s changed
appearance
distressed him every day afresh, not only for the threat it carried but more still just from hatred of the physical change itself. The
surface
of his conscience made him ashamed of this purely physical
reaction
, but his deeper feelings told him he should be proud to feel it.

Gordon was tickling the stomach of a small tortoise-shell cat rolled over in play, its back legs kicking against the hardly touched
breakfast
tray.

‘She’s an abominably randy cat,’ he said.

It had taken David years to habituate himself to Gordon’s animal loving, and more years still to accept his easy delight in his pets’ sexual powers. He felt glad to tease him by saying, ‘What’s abominable about it?’ The first remark of the day, so difficult for him now, had been made.

‘Nothing except that we should never have let poor Oliver be cut. It’s still one of the worst sins on my conscience. Now this poor thing’s got to go out for her fun.’ Oliver, the fat neuter ginger cat, sat on the windowsill, snoring faintly. ‘I don’t suppose,’ Gordon said, ‘that he even has a wet dream now.’

Apart from the cats, there was a clove pug asleep in a royal blue
velvet
lined basket, a borzoi stretched on the hearthrug, and a pink and grey Australian cockatoo climbing with beak and claws over the roof of its ornate Victorian cage. David’s sense of hygiene had not found it easy to accept this menagerie that slept in Gordon’s room. But
Gordon
had insisted. ‘I won’t allow them to go into
your
room,’ he said and he had trained them to keep out of it. ‘Though why you should worry I don’t know,’ he had declared. ‘My animals don’t smell.’ He was quite right, they didn’t. The room was entirely clean, which again was surprising considering that it was filled like a junk shop with a jumble of pleasing, valuable antique furniture and hideous,
worthless
bric-à-brac. This incoherent taste, too, had for long worried David, but Gordon was equally firm. ‘I like tatt,’ he had said.

‘I slept well,’ Gordon announced with a slightly mocking smile. David had agreed not to discuss his health, but he, in return, had promised always to declare if the auguries were good. David felt it a mark of their friendship’s achievement that when Gordon said they
were so, he could be sure there was no deception intended to allay his fears.

‘Oughtn’t you to be gone already?’ Gordon went on.

‘There’ve been a lot of delays,’ David said. ‘Else got up to make me a picnic breakfast. The leaves have turned in Ashdown Forest.’

‘Oh, hell. That’s what comes of confusing God with his creatures. Well, she won’t get far with her conversions if she tries to make them at breakfast time. Leaves turned indeed!’

‘I don’t mind as much as that, you know,’ David said. ‘Then there was Climbers fussing.’

‘About what?’ Gordon asked with a mock imperiousness.

‘Oh! Things.’

‘Fussing about her seniority. Poor old war horse! I’ll have a good get together with her this evening. “Sing away my little tart, if it’s going to ease your heart”.’ Gordon had six or seven quotations, of which this line of Blok’s was one, that he used often and only with the vaguest relevance. ‘Does Climbers ever sing, do you think? Oh, yes, she does. She came with me once to Christmas mass and bawled to the faithful to assemble round her. Perhaps that was why I never urged her to come again.’ He grimaced with self-disgust. ‘I suppose it’s because I’m a whole-hogger. I can understand
your
position. Although of course it’s only real shilly shallying disguised as intellect, no doubt. But this sort of once a year at Christmas business, it’s like Else and God in the trees, it seems to me such nonsense. But, of course, its spiritual pride on my part. I should have watered Climbers’
mustard
seed. How difficult biblical similes are, it makes Climbers’ faith a sort of mustard and cress grown on flannel. However, one always pays. Now I have to sit by and see an old woman I respect and like hurt like a child.’

‘Would she be any less hurt if she were a regular church-going Anglican?’ David asked. Strangely to him, he only felt eased from his anxiety about Gordon when, as now, he was entirely involved with him, giving questions and answers in a pattern fixed over years.

‘Yes,’ said Gordon with certainty, ‘she would. You mould all
unbelievers
, or half believers for that matter, in your own high fashion. Oh, I grant the height of it, David. For heaven’s sake, I couldn’t clothe
myself
in
a self-made iron corset. As you do. But it’s personal.’

‘And faith?’ David asked, ‘is
that uniform?’

‘No. But it’s one and indivisible. And that’s good enough.’

‘I see you all,’ David cried, ‘floating on a cloud at one high level.’
He saw quite clearly the degree to which the image touched upon all that he feared, but in Gordon’s presence he could accept the
temptation
.

‘No. There
are
bumps. But at its lowest we’re sustained and that does help.’ Gordon seemed happily intent on the argument, until David was about to answer, when he turned his head away and began to play with the cat. ‘Oh Lord!’ he said, ‘I’ve had more than enough of this nice green stuff.’ And he laughed.