The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot (46 page)

‘And how the hell …?’

But David intervened, ‘I’m afraid, Tim, there’s an inevitability of leakage with all these women.’ He smiled in turn at both of them.
‘Nevertheless, Eileen, I’m not entirely content with Terence Loder’s diagnosis. She’s never had depressive fits before.’

Eileen laughed a little scornfully. ‘I don’t think I should start on a home diagnosis, David, it’s liable to be as dangerous as home nursing. The truth is you’re frightened that she’ll stay put here, aren’t you?’

‘I’m very happy to have her here,’ he said. ‘I don’t want her to be dependent on
me
that’s all.’

Tim looked disgusted; but Eileen said, ‘No, that’s very reasonable.’ She considered for a moment. ‘I think, David,’ she said, ‘that we ought to rely on Doctor Loder’s opinion. But if my opinion seems of use to you, I must say that I feel certain she’s not ready to stand on her own feet yet. I’ll tell you what I shall do. I’ll keep an eye on the
situation
myself, and at the same time I’ll look out for any jobs that might suit her. I think we should try to find something far enough away to give her the opportunity to live on her own but not too far in case she feels lost. The thing has to be done by stages, you know.’

David thanked her. He was furious with himself; he had sought agreement and assistance in carrying out his wishes, he had gained only interference.

*

David had been dreading the first week in June. Then must be held the first large cocktail party without Gordon. The two annual winter parties, smaller, indoor, but covering together the same list of guest as the June ‘do’ had been cancelled that year at the last moment.
Gordon
had fought for them but the week before the first had seen his last haemorrhage and collapse. David was determined to avoid all
occasions
that edged around the blank space in mourning black. He
believed
too that Gordon’s charm alone had made their entertainments successful; he was certain that Gordon’s presence, his affectionate, malicious post-mortems alone had made them tolerable. He said, ‘The June party’s always menaced by threats of bad weather. Not content with this, people must discuss weather prophecies for days beforehand and chatter weather platitudes at the party itself. English summer weather! What a theme! The June party becomes like reading a book of
Times
light leaders or a set of old
Punches.
In any case there are so many garden parties at this time of the year that people will be
delighted
to find that there is one less. It will be an advertisement for the place in itself.’

His proposal was very ill-received. Else said, ‘David, I do not think it would be right for Gordon’s friends to think that they are not
wanted here any more. And all our old friends! They have been so good in respecting our wishes to be private, but the time has come when we must recognize their kindness. People speak always of
Gordon’s
June party. And yours. They expect it. To cancel it would be such a selfish indulgence.’

It was as though he were Queen Victoria being told to put off her mourning. He answered coldly, ‘My dear Else, we’re not the royal family, you know.’

But reproachfully her large sad eyes followed him. She said, ‘David, I know that you feel lost without him. I do so too. When a big oak dies, all the small trees suddenly know that they are only small trees. They feel afraid of the light from which they have always been
protected
. But in the end they adapt themselves to the new conditions. But because we are men
and women, and not trees, we remember the big oak and we honour it. I am sorry for the sermon, but it’s true, isn’t it? The June party, especially this one, is in Gordon’s honour, I think.’

He wanted to say, ‘Fiddle-de-dee’, had he not known that Gordon, in less ridiculous words, would have shared Else’s feelings. ‘Not for myself,’ he would have said, ‘but because we disregard piety at our peril.’

Climbers also was much distressed. She saw herself as pledged to certain customers – her favourite ones – on the question of the June party. Her whole success in the nursery seemed to her at stake if she did not ‘keep her word’ now. ‘I think Colonel Fowler will be
frightfully
upset, David,’ she said. ‘He told me last week that they looked on it as the best party of the summer.’ ‘Poor Mrs Archer! She’s arranged for a hired car. And she’s not very well off.’ ‘I think it’s the children who will be disappointed. The Glovers and the Tuckeys.’

Tim simply said, ‘Oh, I think it would be rather impossible to
cancel
it now, David. That’s the trouble with that sort of publicity. It’s not needed, but once you’ve started it, it is an unusual thing; people would think the business was rocky if you left it off. Unless, of course, we were a much bigger sort of business than we are. I imagine that’s why other nurseries wouldn’t think of it.’

David longed to point out many things in answer to this; the June party was not a publicity stunt (but then, of course, since they invited their best local customers, that would not be entirely true); the ‘
business
’ that he and Gordon had built up was infinitely larger than they had ever hoped for (but this, of course, did not make it one of the big
nurseries, even of south-east England); the other nurserymen did not have the personality of Gordon, or indeed of himself (but this, of course, was hardly an answer). He contented himself with saying, ‘It isn’t entirely, or indeed primarily, a business affair, Tim. A great
percentage
of the people we invite are personal friends. And those who are customers are nearly all people we’ve been entertained by.’

‘Well you can always leave out purely personal friends if you don’t want the expense.’

‘It’s nothing to do with the expense.’ David saw no way to explain to Tim what exactly were his reasons. He said, ‘I can’t think of the occasion without Gordon there.’ He thought that Tim concealed both impatience and a smile of amusement at this.

‘Fair enough,’ Tim said, ‘the reasons are personal. Then don’t ask any intimate friends that might upset you. Make it clear it’s an
entirely
business party this year. Eileen will be a bit upset. You
remember
Gordon told her to ask any of her playmates to the three annual parties. But I’ll tell her tonight to say nothing to them. I should have the nursery name printed on the invites, that’ll make it quite clear.’

David thought of Else’s expression if he did this. He said, ‘No. Don’t say anything. I haven’t made up my mind yet. I’ll let you know tomorrow.’ He thought, every one of them is concerned with his or her own interest; but then, of course, so was he.

He looked forward to his quiet drink with Meg in the private garden at six that evening. Since a week ago, when they had given up their expeditions, he had set aside this hour and a half before dinner to be with her. There were seasons in the year when he could not have done so; he doubted if his work truly allowed him to do so now. Nevertheless he felt it a duty and he knew increasingly that the duty was a pleasure. Later, after dinner, she was always so careful not to disturb his work on ‘Africa’, so anxious to fit in with Else, that he was glad when she had removed her distracting self-effacingness to bed. But here in the garden she seemed so genuinely relaxed that her few exclamations of pleasure came spontaneously, and most of their conversation was of the past or of books. And their explorations of the past, David thought, were now without danger of sudden squalls or treacherous reefs beneath the smooth running waters.

They had made so many explanations to one another – of their attitudes to their parents, to each other as they had been in youth, to the caravanserai life with their mother; he had explained his pacifism, she her social ambitions – the years of estrangement really seemed to
have been expiated in mutual confession. The quarrels of childhood, the battles of youth had been fought over again with a historian’s detached judgement. If the victories now seemed less glorious, the defeats less ignominious, and both less decisive, cause and effect had been diagnosed in proper academic fashion and their whole
relationship
could now be accepted as historic stream without too much committal to its inevitability. A nice middle-road historian’s position, he thought to himself with comforting irony. They had said more than once that analysis was not cure, that self-knowledge had no magic power to alter, that review of the past was not revocation; but the statements, he saw now, were probably no more than verbal
safeguards
, for the truth was that they did at last feel free to live together for that short evening time in a past that was dredged of conflict. A loving exchange of family snapshots Meg had called it. But they had both agreed that the evenings were no less cosy because they often mocked at the cosiness.

David admitted that his own quiet acceptance of Meg’s view of their youth concealed as many reservations as did, no doubt, also her eager acquiescence in his analysis. She had said once, ‘How pleased Mother would have been. She was always urging us “to agree to differ”.’ And he had answered, ‘I don’t think she could have
recognized
the state, Meg. Like many of her cherished maxims, it was quite beyond her scope to achieve it.’

There were parts of their lives, of course, that they had, by
unspoken
agreement, buried. About Gordon he was prepared to speak only superficially to her, and, because of this perhaps, she receded from the few confidences she had made about Bill. The future, too, they seldom discussed, though his suspicions of her passivity pushed now and again beneath the surface of his talk with horrid urgency. But books and the past – their own recreation of a dead world, the creations of other worlds by men now dead – mingled together in a growingly easeful communion.

So easeful, David realized, that today he felt prepared, indeed was impatient, to consult her about the party. Reflecting that to do so
implied
an acceptance of her own view of herself as now ‘all right again’, of her position at Andredaswood as ‘settled’, he excused
himself
by saying that unless he asked her for advice, he could not easily expect her to take advice from him.

Stretched almost horizontal on the bamboo chaise-longue, her face dappled with the bright sunshine and the flickering shadows of ilex
leaves above, surrounded by martini, cigarettes, matches,
Jude
the
Obscure
,
she seemed indeed a peaceful, relaxed fixture amid the fussing irritation of Nursery politics – the oracle on tap in the grove.

She listened and then said, ‘But David, you must tell them that you don’t intend to have the party.’ She was so definite, yet her advice rested on shifting ground, for, as with Tim yet how differently, he evaded more than perfunctory mention of Gordon, and she pursued this central theme not at all. So that when he expressed a little more strongly the sentiments of the others in opposing his wish, she said, ‘I see. Well, my dear, parties are always a fuss. But since it seems you must have this one to satisfy them – and they are all of them such darlings – we must make sure that everything goes well and without any bother to you. Dear God,’ she smiled, ‘if I know anything it’s about giving parties. Leave it to me, David. It will be such a pleasure to be of some use. I promise you it will be all right.’

Such echoes of the past came from the assurance, such a conviction of freedom from anxiety, that he felt now quite free. He laughed, of course, at the superstition of his conviction. ‘I don’t know how you propose to do that,’ he said.

‘No, I don’t suppose you do,’ she said, ‘but I wouldn’t promise if I couldn’t, would I?’ They passed at once without his arguing further to a discussion of ‘We are too many’. ‘It
does
jar,’ she said. ‘You were right.’

‘Hardy could only fall back on melodrama when his immediate vision failed him.’

‘Yes,’ she said doubtfully. ‘I know that you academic people
distrust
my sort of testing of fiction by life. But I believe that that’s the key. Arabella and the pigs is melodrama of a kind after all. But that I can believe. She’s so like that awful woman who cooked for Mother in the Deal days. But the suicide of small children!’ She shrugged her shoulders. He was conscious of sinking luxuriously back twenty years into familiar talk of Art and Life.

Meg’s contribution to the party was to go to London. She came back with two new dresses and orders for lobster, chicken, and veal patties placed at Fortnum’s.

‘You see,’ she said, ‘I promised I should help over the party, David.’ It was after eleven at night when she returned and she brought a strange atmosphere of rather dated sophistication into the drawing room where David and Else had been practising the Bartók. She was wearing a new hat that she had bought that day and her scent clashed
with the scent of the tobacco plant coming through the window. She gave herself a whisky and soda and flopped on to the sofa. ‘Oh, it’s so heavenly here,’ she said, ‘Do go on playing.’ It was, David thought, a most curiously stagey behaviour, almost as though Edith Evans had suddenly come to Andredaswood.

Else, who had up to then managed to avoid practising in Meg’s presence, played shockingly. At the end she said, ‘I’m afraid I shall never be happy with it, David. It’s so much from the head and so little from the spirit.’

Meg, leaning over the sofa back to speak to them, asked, ‘What is it?’

‘The first Bartók quartet,’ he told her.

‘It’s quite beyond me. I shouldn’t know if Else was playing the right notes or the wrong ones.’

Not Edith Evans, David thought, Kay Hammond. He looked to see the expression on her face. It was dear that she had said it with a certain malice, yet it was also clear that she was too pleased with life to think that Else or anyone else could be offended. There was nothing in such a mood, either general or particular, that should have pleased him, yet he found himself delighted that she was there, longing for Else to go to bed. He deflected the conversation from Else’s playing.