The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot (24 page)

Kind invitations came to her by every post. She dined in Belgravia and Chelsea, Knightsbridge and Kensington, Hampstead, and even Highgate. One or two wives, on behalf of their husbands, found an intimate occasion to press various offers of help upon her, one or two husbands, with less sympathetic wives, offered manly counsel that served as an excuse for proffering loans without embarrassing her. There was kindness and sympathy behind it all, but there was also embarrassment and a kind of setting her apart which she found
impossible
to accept. Was it her mother’s pride, or touchiness, or simply self-punishment in her present mood of guilt? Probably a bit of all three, but the fact was also that she
was
set apart. These people were happy, married, rich, and established, she was none of these things. Apart, she decided, it should be. After a fortnight she began to refuse the invitations; gradually and, she hoped, with tact, she severed the remaining lines.

Only the three lame ducks remained. At first, for all her closer friendship with them, she had been very unwilling to see them. Even though she knew that her picture of her past behaviour to them was coloured by exaggerated self-criticism, that she had probably in fact never allowed her impatience or her ridicule to be apparent to
them, had indeed never found difficulty in concealing any such
emotions
because of her very real affection for them, she nevertheless felt sure that they must have sensed some patronage. She could not blame them if they mixed their sympathy now with the same leaven, but she had no wish to offer herself to it. More particularly, though she tried to make less of it, she remembered Bill’s uneasy tolerance of them. She could not bear any implied blame of him, yet she could not be surprised if they mixed it with the sympathy they offered; nor could she be surprised if they suggested a criticism of his spoiling adoration of her, for they must know that this was the origin of his mistrust of them – a fear that they might tire or bore her.

The lame ducks, however, broke down all the defences she put up against them; they were not only consistently kind and sympathetic, they proved to be so exactly the same as they had always been.

Lady Pirie had sent a closely written airmail letter to Srem Panh containing nothing but her memories of what Bill had done and said, … If the wisdoms and witticisms recorded there so exactly recalled to Meg rather Bill’s manner of dealing with ‘dear old fogies’ than any utterances she herself could have wished to remember, the true
admiration
Lady Pirie showed in recollecting them and the natural tact she evidenced in her one reference to the shooting – ‘a thing so
apparently
cruel and meaningless, Meg dear, that without faith I do not know how you will be able to accept it; only that knowing you and your courage I know that you
will
find the way’ – were sufficient and more to make up for any naïvetés. She had added to this letter a
postscript
saying that if Meg needed a man to come out to Srem Panh to deal with officials ‘and that sort of thing’ she suggested Mr
Templeton
. She had seen him more than once since that party and he seemed so clever. Tom, of course, would gladly come out there if Meg
wanted
him, and would be a tower of strength – as he always was in a crisis – but officials might be more impressed by an older man. The absurdity of Viola Pirie’s loyalty to her son and her manner of noting yet modifying the world’s estimate of him had been one of the happy signs by which, in the strange isolation of the Marriots’ house, Meg had felt that, among so much in England to which she dreaded
returning
, there were humours and affections she would be glad to know again.

Meg, avoiding Kensington hotels as emblems of the plucky reduced gentility she feared, had temporarily chosen a small hotel near
Victoria Station, where the genteel was seasoned with the disreputable and both were sufficiently transitory to create a rather colourless, seedy atmosphere. Here on the first morning Viola Pirie, informed no doubt by Donald Templeton, telephoned to her with a simple
welcome
home. Only when a week had passed did she press an invitation upon her. ‘I know how busy you must be, Meg‚’ she said, ‘and the last thing you’ll want is to feel tied up with invitations. But if you
suddenly
know you must see someone, my dear, or the hotel menu doesn’t attract you, just put your bonnet on and come round. There’s always something fairly substantial here to eat, because there’s a man in the house. Anyway,’ she said, ‘I can never eat hotel food without stomach rumbles afterwards. And then all the people in those lounges look at me.’

She made no complaint when Meg did not follow up the
invitation
, but merely wrote her a note saying, ‘The committee need
your services as soon as you can spare the time. Talk about the blind leading the blind, it’s old crocks helping old crocks now. And they’re so slow about it. Cackle, cackle, cackle. Darlington and I just pray for your return to speed things up again. Anyway, it’s time you were in harness, Mrs Masters kicked up an awful fuss about Miss Rogers taking that course. She’s not a bad old stick but she does like things her own way. I think she felt that Miss Rogers wouldn’t be her protégée any longer if she had any qualifications. She started a moan, as Tom says, when we said the committee ought to pay for the girl’s course. However, Darlington and I had been doing a bit of lobbying and old Purdyke stuck by us nobly, so we pushed it through. The course is doing Miss Rogers a power of good. She obviously feels she’s there in her own right and she doesn’t sulk so much. So you see how much we depend on you.’

It was a letter that helped Meg a stage further in adapting herself to her new life. Whatever she decided to do, she would not be available for afternoon committees. She knew, indeed, with a certain measure of self-ridicule, that no job would satisfy her that allowed it.
Independence
of that kind was too strongly associated with the life she had left behind her. No more ‘open prisons’! The reality in front was vague in its outline, but she knew that it must begin with the
circumscribed
hours ordinarily demanded of the wage earner. Less welcome was the realization that she doubted her ability to control the
committee
once they knew her to be no longer a goddess descended from the heights of chic worldliness, but only poor Mrs Eliot, can we
give you a lift? To resign from the committee was obviously a step towards the new life, not as immediate or pressing as selling her
porcelain
, but, she had to admit, a good deal less unpleasant. First, however, she must write to Viola to tell her what she was going to do. It meant speaking openly of what she felt sure Viola already knew – her changed financial position–, but at least she could do it on her own terms, saying simply that she and Bill had lived beyond their income, that she would be a good deal poorer and, in fact, have to earn her living. ‘I’m grateful to you‚’ she wrote, ‘more than you can realize for roping me in on the committee. As a result of my work there at least I shall have no illusions that I’m anything but rich compared to many people, and I can also thank God that I’m young enough to be able to fend for myself.’

Once again Lady Pirie’s reply pleased Meg. ‘I had heard something about your money bothers‚’ she wrote, ‘but I
knew you would know just what you wanted to do with your life without a lot of
interference
. I remember when Herbert died far too many people were busy telling me what I should do. Of course I had the widow’s
pension
from the Colonial Office and just as well too, because I’d never have been any good at a job. But Tom was still at school and they would keep on interfering. Tom and I knew just what we wanted without outside advice. It would be different if I
could offer you the sort of advice that a man could. But there, I hear you have your brother to help you. Of course, I’m very sad about the committee and so will Mr Darlington be, but you know best. I wonder if you’ve thought of taking up social work professionally, you’d be so good And it’s something you would find interesting even if things took a better turn later. But you’re sure to have thought of everything and worked it all out for yourself, I
am
going to fuss you about one thing though, and, if you don’t like it, just forget that I wrote it. A hotel’s no life for you and the food won’t be anything like sufficient if you’re working all day. Why don’t you come and P.G. with me? I’ve got the spare room which will make an excellent bed-sitting room. I kept it for Tom to invite friends to stay but I don’t think young people do that sort of thing nowadays. I’m being quite selfish really because I’d decided for some time that I must let it. It’s wrong to keep a room empty with so many people needing somewhere to live. And I could do with the money. But to be honest, Meg, the real thing is that Tom and I are too much alone together. He oughtn’t to be with an old woman all the time. And you and he get on so well together. Forgive
me for being so selfish and if the idea’s quite impossible don’t feel you have to refer to it again.’

The idea was, of course, quite impossible, but, nevertheless,
deserving
of a full and grateful reply which Meg hoped that she provided. For the time being, she wrote, she wanted to be quite on her own. No doubt that mood would only last a short while and then one of the first people she would want to see would be Viola; and Tom, too, of course, if he felt like it. She didn’t see herself living with anyone else, but if ever she felt differently, Viola was the only person she could imagine being indulgent enough of her general untidiness to make such a thing possible. As to social work, she was glad Viola suggested it, because as a matter of fact it was one of the things she had in mind. If she should decide on it, she would expect Viola to write her an absolutely first rate reference and she hoped that Viola realized that she had committed herself to it.

After she had written the letter, she saw that, however it might appear from her words, she did in fact intend to see Viola Pirie; that it was a link unbroken.

And so also it happened with Poll and with Jill. Poll’s first reaction had rather depressed Meg. The letter of condolence she sent to Srem Panh had been so very stilted and conventional that except for a
certain
illiteracy of phrasing it seemed to have nothing of Poll in it.
However
, a few days before she returned to England another air mail letter arrived of a far more characteristic kind and she realized that she should have known that, at times of birth, marriage, or death, Poll would revert to the conventions of her upbringing.

In her second letter Poll said, ‘I do think Bill being killed like that is the most awful balls up and makes me more mad than ever that people talk about God being good and all that. Of course, in my church they wouldn’t do that. To give them their due they don’t pretend in that kind of way. In fact sorrow and sin are their standbys. They’d
probably
say it was a special dispensation to bring you into a state of grace. But although that’s more sensible really, I still think it’s jolly nasty and it’s one of the reasons why I lapsed really. Apart of course from wanting to be divorced. But anyhow I expect you have all your own idea about that. As far as I remember you and Bill were rather proud of being nothing, which seems funny to me too in a way. What
has
made me absolutely mad has been the papers. About how Bill gave his life for this unpronounceable man. I shouldn’t think it was true, would you? And if it was, I think the unpronounceable man
ought to be shot for letting it happen. Bill was one of the most
attractive
men I ever knew. I told you not to go to those awful foreign places. And anyway why are you staying out there now? I should think you would have had enough of those beastly yellow people by now. And the consul must be quite ghastly. Don’t let him bully you or anything, will you? They’re quite unimportant people. Even now, I mean, when quite a lot of kinds of people are more important than they used to be. I hope you’re not
brooding,
Meg, are you? My Mum brooded after Father’s death, although we all told her not to and how she ought to be glad, nicely, of course. But she went on brooding and really she did get to be like an old hen and of no interest to anybody, like hens. And before he died she’d been rather a nice, interesting sort of person, at any rate much better than him. Of course, I can see that when you’ve lost a top attractive kind of husband like Bill you would want to brood. I never did but then the only one I had that
died
was Robson and although he was really the best, he wasn’t exactly up to
brooding
standard. But you
mustn’t.
Because although I keep on saying how attractive Bill was, so are you, and you know I don’t go much for having women about. But like Americans say “you’re a truly lovely person”, only not of course all the awful things they mean. And seeing you turn into a hen would be very sad. Except that with your loud voice and looks it would be more like a peahen which would be better but not much. Anyhow there’s an awful song that they sing on Saturday nights in a pub I go to at World’s End. Only I don’t go any more because I can’t bear the kind of pubs where they sing. I couldn’t really write it just like that, could I? but as the name of an awful song I can. Come home soon.’

A few days after Meg had been at the hotel she returned to find a present of two dozen large yellow Korean chrysanthemums and a bottle of champagne. With them was a note from Poll.

‘I don’t know why you’re staying at a hotel for tarts,’ it said, ‘I had a terrible time finding where you were. I’m not surprised you’ve concealed it. I had to ring up that sex repressed beard, Lady Thing’s son. I should think your staying at that hotel would give
him
ideas. He tells me you’re going to be rather poor. Poor you! Actually you won’t find it so bad as you think. I don’t. I shall write to those beasts of trustees and tell them I must have the money to pay you back what I owe you. It might break that bloody trust. The champagne isn’t very good but nice to have, I thought. P.S. Don’t talk to any of the tarts. I’ve done so once or twice in pubs and they’re
always
insolent.’