The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot (41 page)

In politics, perhaps, it was a slightly more strained situation: once they had both, from different positions, been ‘anti-Munich’, now Jill’s conservatism under stress of post-war social change had taken on a more diehard hue, but she had always regarded Meg’s more liberal views as the luxury of a wealthy woman and she was prepared silently to wait for penury to bring her better sense. In any case they didn’t talk a lot and when they did they were held together by a common sense of the ridiculous that ironed out their differences. Jill’s laughter had a slightly more bitter note than Meg’s, but her comments were accordingly rather more pungent. There was between them a
girlhood
tie that had slipped loose as they travelled such different paths in life but that had never been broken by any disagreement about the people they loved; and that, for Jill at any rate, was the only kind of disagreement that counted. She thought it odd, however, that Meg should have lost touch so completely with David, when in their youth they had been so close.

‘I used to envy you having a brother,’ she said. ‘Rex and Jack were all right but they
were
only cousins. I always liked David. And for all his being so clever he seemed so sensible. I was awfully upset when all that pacifist business happened. I felt so sorry for your mother.’

‘Yes. So did David. I think that was one of the troubles. He thought that I ought to make it up to Mother for her disappointment over him. He never would admit that nothing I did mattered to her. “
Marrying
well”, as she would have called it, was about the best thing I could do for her. But when I did, it didn’t really give her
much
pleasure. Not that David and I quarrelled about it. We’ve never quarrelled over anything. It’s just that he so obviously didn’t want to have much to do with us. And I must admit that once I saw that, I didn’t try very hard. I had all I needed in Bill.’

Jill said, ‘Yes, of course. And, after all, you stuck to him during the war. You were right, of course. But not every sister would have done it.’

‘I shouldn’t care for the sort of sister who didn’t. Not that it made much difference to him. At first perhaps, with all those tribunals. But after he’d met Gordon Paget nobody else counted for him. I never really liked the man. Not just because he was so odd, but I don’t care for people who go about influencing. And in the end they had such an extraordinary ménage down there – a lot of cranky women!
Funnily
enough when Bill and Gordon Paget met they got on like a house on fire. But I think Bill was a bit embarrassed by it. I’m afraid David’s going to be very lost now that Gordon’s dead.’

Jill said, ‘I think all men feel very deeply about their friends.
Andrew
felt it dreadfully when Neville Easton was killed. It was one of the only things I could do absolutely nothing about. It’s something quite apart from their feelings for us, I think. We’ve just got to accept it.’

Meg said, ‘David’s never had any feelings for women.’

Jill said, with no difference in her tone, ‘Oh! I see. Well, I suppose that’s something we have to accept too. The papers are always telling us so nowadays. I can’t see it matters very much anyway now that the whole world’s gone to pot.’

‘I wish I could think that it had made David happier. However, Gordon’s left him all his money, so he’ll be quite well off.’

‘Oh,’ Jill said. ‘Then that
does
make your chances of seeing much of him pretty impossible. It’s the greatest barrier of all when one’s poor.’

Meg thought that this, like so many of the beliefs of her friends, was something that she could not judge without more experience. She said only, ‘I don’t imagine David will live very grandly. He seems anxious to immerse himself even more in that nursery now that he’s alone.’ She began to study her notes. She did not particularly want to talk about David and in any case the conversation had run to the limit they usually allowed for talk over their after dinner coffee.

Yet Jill left Alan Moorehead’s
Gallipoli
lying unopened. After a few minutes’ silence she said, ‘Isn’t it a bit grand of you, Meg, living at the Rodin? What do you pay?’ When she was told, she said, ‘Good heavens! and you don’t even have dinner more than three times a week. That can’t go on.’

‘It’s only temporary,’ Meg said, ‘I really couldn’t face a bed-sitting room or a boarding house until I’m settled.’

‘I know. You haven’t learnt to be alone yet, have you? It’ll come. But meanwhile you certainly mustn’t spend all that money. I think,
you know, that you’d better come here, at any rate until you’ve got a job fixed up. The divan’s very comfortable. You’ll save money. You can pay me for your food. I’m used to being alone but I won’t say it isn’t pleasant to have you here for a while. It wouldn’t do as a
permanent
arrangement and, of course, if by some extraordinary chance his lordship allows Evelyn to bring the baby here for a night I’ll have to turf you out. But it only happens once in a blue moon, so you needn’t worry too much about that.’

And so it was arranged. Meg moved in the following week. It proved a regime that allowed her to work without undue depression, without restlessness, and without sudden panics. She managed to
improve
the food a little and, since March that year was very cold, Jill made no serious attempt to economize with the gas fire. They found, it is true, less to say and there was a monotony of existence which Meg knew would prove intolerable over a long period. On some evenings indeed their remarks were confined to announcing aloud whatever they were doing. ‘I’ll just put the kettle on for the bottles, Meg,’ or ‘One more chapter and I shall go to bed,’ but, Meg reflected, this was at least better than talking to oneself. The little surplus of
affection
that Jill had to offer after she had concentrated her love so fiercely upon her daughter and her granddaughter was suddenly unfrozen and flowed over Meg. She was solicitous for her health and her
comfort
, she showed an interest in her progress at the Garsington, sometimes she was lively and amusing as she had been on that first evening. Meg, on her side, felt wanted, which was all that she could ask.

The weekly letter from Evelyn with its Ipswich postmark was the centre of all Jill’s expectancy. Evelyn’s life appeared from the excerpts that were read aloud to be even more circumscribed than her mother’s. It was clear that, like her mother, she too lived in and for her husband. She was tactful enough to say little about him in the letters, confining her news to the baby. However, there was always some item about Leonard’s success. ‘Leonard may be going to the Philadelphia branch for a couple of months in the autumn. It would be tricky because he’d be sent there over the heads of a number of senior men. But we’re keeping our fingers crossed,’ Evelyn wrote. Her mother read out the passage to Meg. ‘I shall keep my fingers crossed too if he goes,’ she said. ‘After all planes can crash and boats can sink.’

Meg could detect no trace of humorous suggestion in Jill’s voice. She must have looked as shocked as she felt, for Jill said, ‘Oh,
she’d
get over it.’

Meg had expected this even less. To cover her embarrassment, she asked, ‘What does he do exactly, Jill?’

‘Oh, he’s a chemist. One of those brilliant young scientists. He works with a big commercial firm in Ipswich. Don’t ask me what they make. I don’t know and I don’t care. But apparently he’s very good. They wanted him as professor at some university in the north – Manchester or Liverpool or somewhere. I suppose that I ought to be thankful to him for turning it down. It would have taken Evelyn even farther away. Not that he would have cared about that. He was only thinking of the money. Trust him.’

Meg said, ‘My dear Jill, he’s bound to think of his career. If only for Evelyn and the baby’s sake.’

She answered, ‘Do you think that makes it any more tolerable?’

The next week’s letter brought a more pleasing item about
Leonard
. Jill was like a triumphant child. ‘The little beast’s sister’s coming to stay with them,’ she told Meg exultantly, ‘so Evelyn’s coming to stay with
me
for two nights and bringing the baby.’

Meg suddenly realized that she had never heard this baby’s name: ‘What’s she called?’ she asked.

Jill pulled a face of disgust. ‘Charmian! The little beast’s choice! I just call her the baby, poor thing. Evelyn says she thinks he and the sister have a lot to talk over and that they’d rather be on their own. I expect the sister mustn’t be worried by the baby’s crying. She’s one of a kind with him, from what I saw at the wedding…. She’s pushed herself up to be some sort of fashion editress. Smart in all the wrong way. I must say that the parents were quite unassuming. He was a builder somewhere in the Midlands.’

Meg told herself as she listened that she must not let all this
snobbery
influence her against Jill. Andrew and she had always been
snobbish
, of course, but in a quite unworrying way. Meg could not have believed that hatred could have brought out such vulgarity in anyone. To deflect the unpleasing moment, she said, ‘Which nights, Jill dear? I’ll get a room this morning at that little hotel I was at near the station.’

‘Tuesday and Wednesday,’ Jill said. She gave Meg a smile of
affection
for accepting her move as so inevitable. Then she said, ‘Meg, it would be quite wonderful if you’d come in one evening and baby-sit. Evelyn never gets to a theatre. If only we could get in to
Salad
Days
! But I expect we’ll find something. I shall have to spend the morning being sweet to that terrible Mr Arkwright, but I must have the two days off.’

Meg watched Jill in the next few days with fascination. It was exactly as though she were being reunited with a lover: she bought new shoes, had her hair done, filled the flat with flowers, she even for some incalculable reason bought a box of Turkish cigarettes. Then toys began to arrive for the baby – a huge and expensive doll, a Jack in the box (‘Isn’t it wonderful,’ Jill cried. ‘I didn’t know you could get them still. I only hope it doesn’t frighten the baby into fits’) and a number of small rattling and swinging things (‘To amuse her while she’s here. They’re all things that can be broken without its
mattering
’). Jill looked years younger, but she seemed also suddenly extremely shy; Meg only feared that if this shy tension persisted it might lead to some outburst with Evelyn.

Two nights before Evelyn was due, the telephone rang in Jill’s
bedroom
. When Jill returned to the sitting room, she was holding her handkerchief to her mouth. She stood in the doorway for a moment. She seemed to be suffering from a choking fit. Meg got up from her chair, ‘Jill, dear, whatever …?’ but the look of real fury in Jill’s eyes cut off her question. Jill, still holding up her handkerchief, turned and went out of the room. Meg heard her retching In the bathroom. She thought, what on earth can have happened? Perhaps it wasn’t fury, perhaps something’s happened to Evelyn or to the baby. When Jill came back, she said nothing, but picked up the
Life
of
the
Princess
Lieven
and went on reading. Only half an hour later did she look up and say:

‘They’re not coming. The little beast’s ordered her to be there to wait on his sister.’ She went to her desk, and taking out the two tickets that she had bought for the ballet, she tore them into pieces.

Meg said, ‘Jill, my dear, you mustn’t let yourself get so upset by it.’

Jill said, ‘Please, shut up.’

She went back to her book. It was not until much later when she was filling the hot-water bottles that she said anything more that evening.

‘I’m sorry this should have happened while you were here, Meg.’

Meg wanted to answer that nothing had happened, but she only said, ‘It’s a tremendous shame, Jill. Perhaps Evelyn’ll manage to get up one day soon instead.’

Jill put the kettle down on the gas ring and stared at her for a moment. ‘Oh, don’t be a fool, Meg,’ she said.

Meg’s rather stupid consolatory remark turned out in fact to have been a justifiable hope. Only a few days later Evelyn rang to say that
Leonard must attend a London dinner of the firm. He had suggested that he should drive her up to spend the evening with her mother.

‘Of course that’s Evelyn’s story. She’s frightfully loyal,’ Jill said. She made it sound like a British Communist’s loyalty to the Kremlin. ‘She obviously had to bully him to agree to it. And even then his highness won’t allow her to bring the baby. In his wonderful
knowledge
of babies he has decreed that it would be unsettling for her. He means, I suppose, that it would unsettle him if she cried on the way home. They’ve got some engaged couple of all things to sit in.’

It amazed Meg how like some old-fashioned servant Jill had sounded once she spoke on this subject, with her ‘his highness’ and her suggestion that the baby-sitters were certain in their
concupiscence
to allow the baby to burn to death unnoticed.

Meg said, ‘Well, it would be rather late, Jill.’

To her surprise Jill announced, ‘French children sit up until very late hours and it does
them
no harm.’

‘But the baby’s a bit young and she
isn’t
French.’

‘Trust the little beast for that. He’s already informed me that speaking French is no asset these days. It was so like him to think of such things as “assets”.’

Meg remembered that for all their true blue, naval background, Andrew had been a proficient linguist and Jill prided herself on her fluency in French.

Jill added, ‘Of course, Evelyn’s French has been absolutely wasted.’

‘There’s one snag,’ she said later. ‘I shall have to see
him.
He’s
calling
for Evelyn here. If he gets back before we’ve returned from the theatre he’ll just have to wait. I’m not going to have Evelyn miss a chance of a show, though I shan’t be able to get tickets for the ballet again, I’m sure. Those others were pure luck.’

She got, in fact, two seats for the new version of
Charlie
’s
Aunt
. ‘It’s a ridiculous show to go to without a man,’ she said, ‘but that’s the little beast’s fault. I couldn’t get anything else.’