The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot (28 page)

The one compensation in this crisis of his life was that his way of living proved of value. He had thought once that it was one which, by small example and through long stretches of time, might yet ‘save humanity’ from the grosser absurdities of self destruction; this was a dream he had now rejected. History, after all, offered so many
examples
of ‘the proper course’, and so few conversions. Perhaps the hope itself had been only one more of the self assertions, ideals,
ambitions
, and pious interferences which were the weapons by which man was destroying himself. But in the last year or so, he had wondered if, even in his own life, he had applied the rule too rigidly to himself, had dogmatized a means of salvation when all he had found was personal safety. After all, he had no doubt that in the howling wilderness sweet voices sounded, and that their sound was the only thing worth
hearing
. Selfishness, self assertion, ideals, dreams and so on lay behind
those
voices. Up to now he had answered this contradiction simply by measuring the magnitude of the voice; Beethoven, Shakespeare, Flaubert, Mozart – what the local W.E.A. man called ‘the big chaps’, in their wide variety of ‘big chapness’ – were the only ones that could defy the discipline of living. The rest of us had the more to make up in self-denial to earn the bounty of those above the rules. But doubts he had had of it all lately, even for the few small self-assertions he had refused himself. Now those doubts were gone. The climax of life – and for him Gordon’s dying was the climax – seemed undeniably to prove him right. He could meet it, he believed, decently for himself and, within the great limitations of human aid, decently for others.

He had been lucky perhaps that his love, and the object of his love, had declared, so openly and once for all, that loneliness was the
condition
of man, a loneliness to be endured and fulfilled in the constant disguise of human contact. It was so simple a truth, but so many lives – Meg’s for instance – seemed shaped to hide it. If the whole discipline of his days, then, was designed to accept this reality, he could at least congratulate himself on his luck rather than on his superior wisdom and so preserve his self-effacement. He smiled with anticipatory
pleasure
when he thought of the amusement he would give to Gordon in telling him the smug conclusion of all this self-inquiry.

This at least was also a consolation of their way of living. His thoughts could still be communicated to Gordon even though they involved his reactions to Gordon’s death. Gordon could speak of his own death, and did so bravely, casually, and no more than was
practically
required. Gordon could and did urge certain courses of action upon them all – David would be foolish if he did not do this, if David were wise he would see to it that Else did that – after he had died. Gordon had certainly no wish to suggest that future should not still follow present in its daily, monthly, and annual trivialities. In the past he had participated, led, in the ‘business of daily life’, now he hardly did so any more; soon pain and then death would withdraw him altogether. But it was nevertheless the triumph of their life together that they could still communicate, from their distant stations of belief and ordered despair, without a single lapse of the truth they both so respected. Indeed they were closer if anything than at any time before. They had each, always, held the other’s personality as so separate a thing, so inviolable, so supremely more than any communication could hope even to glimpse – he in his conviction of man’s utter
loneliness
, Gordon in his conviction of man’s relation to God. Now,
when they were in fact to go their own ways, the separation perhaps seemed less important, the communication more valid. And their love, as he had always told himself it would be, was the less impaired by death because, as a Christian, Gordon could permit it only so limited an expression. And accepting this, he himself had changed his way of life to fit Gordon’s.

There had, of course, been failures and disappointments in their meeting of this climax; but, distrusting perfection, he felt that it should be so. With his own strong sense of insufficiency, it was
difficult
for him to judge how often he had unconsciously failed Gordon. Too often, certainly, for once would be too often; but also, no doubt, very often. Yet it was his nature to exaggerate his own failings, and to do so at this time would perhaps make him over self-conscious, upset the rhythm of communication that at present so happily flowed
between
them. Yet, too, it was easy to face one’s failings, and, in
accepting
, leave them free to grow. What was certain was that on a few but important occasions he had thought Gordon to have fallen below what he had hoped for. Each time he had been disgusted with himself for making such a judgement of a man already in pain and looking beyond it to inevitable agonies and death. But at last it had seemed to him that to deny the judgements would be to lower his regard for his friend.

He had wished then, more than at any time he could remember, that he were able to say, I observe, I don’t judge. But this
sentimentalism
, that passed as a wide and deep love of humanity, as the gentle wisdom taught by the years, was surely the negation of real respect for men. It would never do, least of all where respect and love were involved. Where you respected and loved, you esteemed, you judged. If these self-styled adult ‘observers’ simply meant that judgement should not impair one’s love, they spoke in platitudes; if the love was deep enough, no judgement would impair it. But if they really meant ‘observe’ of someone that one loved, then they could not mean real love – you don’t love microbes. Or perhaps their love meant no more than Pavlov’s love for his dogs. Better really that they should limit it to that; that word ‘observe’ had a sinister ring for any greater love. In any case, he had long felt that the patronage, the godlikeness
implied
in this sort of compassion from above was far more displeasing than the action of judging. So he had judged Gordon on these few occasions and found him wanting, even as a dying man – not by a standard that anyone else would have passed, but by Gordon’s own
magnificent standards. And he had loved him, of course, no less; nor (stupid modern sentimentality) the more. He had railed against the disgusting physical nature of man that should impose such tests upon Gordon’s fineness; had railed as everyone presumably did when those they loved died (his mother was the only other and he hoped that she had known no time to show courage or panic before the V2 from
nowhere
annihilated her) and he had seen the folly of railing. More usefully he had used these judgements to step warily himself, so that circumstances should defeat Gordon as seldom as possible.

The first occasion had been so simple, or was it? – in one sense, failure itself? in another, no failure at all, certainly not one that he could judge.
He
had received the surgeon’s verdict soon after the operation. Shortly after he and Else had got back from Brighton that evening, Terence Loder, their doctor, had come round to
Andredaswood
.

‘It’s too far gone,’ Loder had told him, ‘the liver’s affected as well as the gut. You’ll say, I’m sure, that the photos ought to have shown this without subjecting him to the strain of this operation. They don’t always, I’m afraid. But the verdict’s very final now …’ It was clear that he had a competent line of patter to carry his audience through the immediate shock.

When, apparently, Loder had judged him to be ‘composed’, he had said, ‘It’s a wretched business. He’s a fine man. We’ll spare him all the pain we can, I promise you.’

He had answered, as he realized, angrily, ‘I hope that you can spare him
most
of it.’

Terence Loder hadn’t answered, but after a pause, he had said, ‘One thing I should like to know, Parker. Does he have any idea?’

‘He has thought for a long time that he may die, if that’s what you mean.’

‘I see. He’s a deeply religious man, isn’t he? That often helps them. All the same I think we should stick to my usual rule in these things. Let time break it to the patient. We have only to say that we can’t tell at this stage. It’s kinder, you know. The knowledge of certain death is a terrible thing to live with. One wants to spare anyone from it as long as possible. If he’s as aware as you say, he’ll probably guess what the non-committal verdict means.’

Looking back, he realized that this illogical statement of Terence Loder’s had come nearer to making him lose his temper than anything that had happened in that ghastly week. He had managed, however, to
say icily, ‘Does a non-committal verdict, in fact, never mean that you don’t know?’

And Terence Loder, surprised as well as ruffled, had said, ‘No. Of course not. I was just considering every eventuality …’ The voice had trailed away.

David had said then very formally, ‘It would be quite out of the question, doctor, to keep the truth from Gordon. Apart from other considerations, he is as you say a deeply religious man.’

‘He’s not a Roman Catholic, is he?’

He had found considerable assuagement of his unfair anger in
explaining
to Terence Loder the nature of the Christian preparation for death, a need not confined to Roman Catholics.

Terence Loder had attempted some self-defence. ‘I think it’s exceptional with Church of England people, but still what you say alters the case. Do you wish me to tell him? I’m used to it after all. Or would you prefer to do it yourself?’ David had said that he
would
pre
fer
to do it. They had agreed to a non-committal statement until Gordon was back at Andredaswood and recovered from the immediate effects of the operation.

He remembered the evening he had chosen for the telling as clearly as he could the details of so many nightmares. But had he chosen it any more than those?

Gordon could eat little and his skin was already stretched on his bones in the way that had now given to his eyes the timid-seeming stare of a lemur. He had taken egg-white whipped with brandy and much powdered with caster sugar, which pleased his sweet taste. The first hard frost had come and they sat in the drawing room before a blazing, pine-scented log fire. They had played the records of
Salome
and Gordon had more than usually delighted in the irony of the music transcending an absurd ‘decadent’ theme. He had made his usual
comment
on the pleasure of not seeing Welitsch in the flesh. Little owls screeched and barn owls hooted. They had agreed how pleasant it was that Else had gone to a meeting in Haywards Heath on Nuclear
Disarmament
. She invariably shuddered at the owl’s ill omen; whereas they had long ago agreed that the sound of owls on a cold night reminded them, with delicious, selfish pleasure, that some Words-worthian figure – solitary traveller, leech gatherer, or idiot boy – was miserably lost abroad, while they sat in comfort at home.

Then Gordon, feeling perhaps that comfort was for him an illusory sensation, or perhaps feeling comfortable enough to consider a future
– it was just this vital matter of Gordon’s mood that he could never now know – spoke suddenly of their next book. ‘We ought to get on with “Africa”, you know. The gardeners of England can’t remain suspended among the flora of the New World and of the Antipodes for ever. Besides if we ever get to Asia we might have enough money to see some of the damned things in their lovely natural settings.’

They always spoke of their very successful series of books in this slightly forced facetious vein; it had never quite ceased to worry them both a little that their joint hobby should have proved lucrative, and, indeed, esteemed –
Garden
Flowers
from
the
New
World
had been given leading reviews by the senior critics of the two major Sunday
newspapers
. There were many phrases from these reviews that they used as happy catch-phrases in their daily life – ‘how pleasant for a change to find wide reading so little paraded’ (That’s you, David); ‘Flower plates have become all too depressingly familiar on the walls of our country hotels. How clever, then, to have found more than fifty that are at once unfamiliar, exact, and decorative’ (That’s you, Gordon); but their favourite was ‘Alas, I cannot follow the authors in their
enthusiasm
for the showy cineraria’. As Gordon often said, ‘All together not too bad for a book put together on an entirely haphazard
arrangement
of continents by authors who have never visited them and who owe their material to a lot of ill-written naturalists’ and travellers’ tales.’

In fact, of course, they had both done a great deal of hard work on them, and, no doubt, Gordon was right when he had said, ‘This, David, is the price you pay to your conscience for not going on with that vital work about Richardson’s influence on all those French bores.’ The decision to work on ‘Australia’, the first of the flower books, had been the final curtain to his academic career.

But, faced on that evening with the direct question, he had hesitated, and Gordon had suddenly said, ‘Or shan’t I be alive to see the end of “Africa”?’

The casual tone, at the time, had genuinely seemed to him to come from a man, sure in faith, who had accepted imminent death. He had answered directly.

That Gordon, for perhaps two minutes, had not been able to
control
a physical shaking, that his body had refused to help him in
disguising
his panic terror had been only a sadness for him to see; few men, hearing their death warrant, were not afraid in that moment, and, besides, what was this ‘absolute faith’ he was expecting of
Gordon? Was his own doubt so ‘absolute’? These were childish terms.

When the shaking was under control, Gordon had burst out angrily. ‘Why the hell did Loder leave this to
you
to tell me?’ He had defined the remark quickly, it was true. ‘Loder had no right to leave such an unpleasant job to you.’ Nevertheless he had known that
Gordon
was conscious of having shown terror and that he would rather have shown it before anyone else. Respect of privacy had been the keynote of their relationship, but he had never supposed that, for Gordon, this had involved no call upon ultimate compassion. He had tried always to understand and sympathize with Gordon’s religious beliefs; could it be that Gordon yet thought he would pounce upon a moment’s failure in faith with triumphant glee or mockery? Or was it that Gordon supposed his respect to be so shakily founded as to be lessened by that second of doubt and fear? Whatever the cause it could never now be discussed or explored. The most he could hope to do was to bury it in silence. Nevertheless there was a rent in the close-knit fabric of their understanding.