Henry came down to breakfast wishing the week-end was over. Carol had insisted on this week-end and, though he had not told her so—for in matters domestic he never told her anything—he would have liked to have told her it was an impertinence, if you could use such a phrase about a wife, that she should meddle in the affairs of his family. To show Carol how he felt he wore, as he came into the dining-room, his it-is-rather-hard-that-a-man-in-my-position face, for fifteen years of being married to Carol had not taught him that she never noticed facial antics, any more than fifty years of getting to know himself had taught him that the inner Henry was never fooled by any expression the outer Henry might wear. Carol was already seated at the table reading the local paper. Henry, to attract attention to his expression, paused by her and gave her shoulder two heavy pats, which, had they been given to a wife on the stage or screen, would have caused her to look up and say “Anything the matter, dear?” Carol went on reading the local paper. Henry went to his seat feeling wrong-way rubbed. Carol was full of splendid qualities but she was either not sensitive to the feelings of a husband or—and this the inner Henry believed and the outer Henry denied—she deliberately shut herself away where feelings could not reach her.
Unbelievably Carol’s mother, Mrs. Cussac, had trained her daughter to enable her to do this. Henry held many things against Mrs. Cussac but none more strongly than that a mother should train a daughter for what, when she became a wife, would be a subversive quality. Carol never mentioned this training, and, when he had tried to talk of it to her, used the training to retire into herself, a thoroughly aggravating and dismissing way of dealing with subjects she did not wish to discuss. Mrs. Cussac, the very first time he had met her, had told Henry about Mr. Finkelstein. Henry had not at that moment taken Mr. Finkelstein in for he was dazed at meeting the perfect girl to be his wife. Mr. Finkelstein, Mrs. Cussac told him, had lived in India and trained under a yogi. When he came into Mrs. Cussac’s life he had adapted what he knew to the American way of life. Mrs. Cussac did not say so but it was clearly a very profitable adapting. “Back there in the Far East, from what I could gather, life was all slowed up, but Mr. Finkelstein saw right away that would not help Americans. ‘The pace is fast, Mrs. Cussac,’ he said, ‘so we must move fast. Revelations are given us so that we may adapt them to our needs.’” His ‘adaption,’ according to Mrs. Cussac, had been, the moment he returned to America from India, to build himself a temple and take on, for a fee, followers or chelas of “the way,” of which Mrs. Cussac was one. Owing to the speed of American life he did not ask his pupils to meditate. “It wouldn’t help you, Mrs. Cussac, you’d get all tuckered out trying to concentrate. What you need is harmony.” The way to harmony was to pay Mr. Finkelstein large fees to learn deep breathing accompanied by beautiful thinking. “Never forget your navel, Mrs. Cussac. Each breath must press right on that navel. When the navel is pressed out and the body filled with air let beautiful thoughts flow right in.” Carol had not herself been a votaress of Mr. Finkelstein for, in Mrs. Cussac’s words, he had “passed on” when she was still a child, but by then Mrs. Cussac was sufficiently imbued with his training to hand it on to Carol.
There was one way to get Carol from behind the Finkelstein curtain of breathing and thought, and that was to find a flaw in the running of the home. Henry looked round for such a flaw. There was none. His glass of chilled orange juice, with which Carol insisted he started his breakfast, was waiting with two vitamin pills lying beside it. On his plate lay his breakfast table napkin folded so that the word “Saturday” was facing him. That set of table linen, like so much else they possessed, was a present from Mrs. Cussac. Mrs. Cussac paid fairly frequent visits to Chicago to give way to an urge to shop, which seemed to come over her in waves. She seldom needed anything herself so most of what she bought came to Carol, preceded by explanatory letters. This set of breakfast linen had been preceded by a letter which pointed out the smartness of having the day of the week printed on the corner of the napery, because even the laziest help could not get away with setting out soiled linen, for they could not be so dumb they did not know the days of the week. Henry, when Carol had told him of the gift and what the letter said, had murmured. “Very thoughtful” and nodded graciously towards Mrs. Cussac and Minnesota, where Mrs. Cussac lived. Carol’s face had expressed amusement. Henry disliked unexplained amusement but he had to bear with it on that occasion, for when he asked what she was smiling about she had not answered. It had not crossed his mind then or since to wonder how both in the country house and the London flat they always had clean table linen, though the London flat was run only by Carol and a daily woman, and the country house by Carol and a married couple called Fitch, of whom only the man was of even remote service.
Henry, with “Saturday” across his knees, drank his orange juice and glanced round the room for some slip of one of the Fitches which Carol had overlooked. There was none. The room was in fact looking particularly pleasant. It was a sunny morning and the windows framed the lawn sloping up to the skyline, very green against the early spring blue of the sky. The house was neither his nor Carol’s choice. They had bought it when they married, because it was in the constituency and sufficiently substantial looking to satisfy the local view of the sort of home their member, now he had a wife, should live in. The inside of the house was pure Carol. Carol had a passion for the crisp, fresh, cleanable and washable. This passion had grown since the war in revulsion from the post-war shabbiness of many British homes, with their patched, darned, moth-harbouring, dust-collecting soft furnishings, and their still existing, often unnecessary, makeshifts. “There’s just no reason now not to have the lights repaired.” “There’s just no reason now to use a coffee pot with a lid that doesn’t match.” Henry, from the time of his marriage to the beginning of the war and, in a more limited way since the war had finished, had lived against a constantly changing background. Every few months some room had been, or was being, “made over.” From Minnesota came a constant flow of magazines written about the home beautiful. These were followed by many letters between Carol and her mother, which again were followed by parcels from Chicago on which Carol paid immense sums in duty. Then a room would be closed. Down would come what in her early life Carol had called “the drapes” and in came the painters and the furniture was moved around, and what had been a study in yellow or Queen Anne green re-emerged a study in white and crimson, or lavender blue, and in the re-colouring and the shifting of the furniture the room was a stranger to Henry, even it seemed in its shape. Henry’s taste was for permanence and solidity. He would have liked, no matter how full of dust and moth, velvets and brocades and furniture he had known all his life. He thought, though he had never told any one so, his mother’s house quite perfect. He had come to it first when he was fifteen and now he was fifty and, save for a few minor tidyings up, nothing had been altered, nothing thrown away. He had never mentioned his taste to Carol, for he had come to marriage empty-handed as far as furniture was concerned, and Carol had taken it as a matter of course that the furnishing of her homes would be left to her. He had apologised for his lack of possessions. “I’ve been living in that furnished flat; it seemed no good buying stuff as I shall come into a lot when old Cousin Tom dies, and probably some from my mother too.” The Cussac parents were over for the wedding and Carol and her mother had a private thanksgiving. “When I heard that old cousin who’s made Henry his heir was going strong at eighty I thought it was kind of mean you two couldn’t have everything right away, but now I’m glad as far as the furniture goes. If it was all good old stuff, why, that would be fine, but it’s the terrible things that would come too, and Henry would surely want to keep. It just seems the British can’t get around to throwing anything away.”
Henry gave up the idea of attracting attention to himself by legitimate complaint. He finished his orange juice, swallowed his pills, helped himself to sausages and coffee and opened The Times. The sound of The Times being opened brought Carol out of the local paper.
“Don’t get buried in The Times, Henry. I’ll drive the first part of the road so you can read it then.” She looked at her watch. “We start in twenty-eight and a half minutes.”
In the early days of their marriage Carol had worked out Henry’s calory intake and discovered he took too much of certain foods, and suggested his cooked breakfast should be eliminated and a cereal eaten instead. The idea shocked Henry. Every right-minded Briton began the day with a cooked breakfast, and he looked upon eating a cereal instead as being as peculiar as leaving the Church of England and joining the Church of Rome. Ever since Carol’s suggestion had been made Henry had guarded his cooked breakfast as if he were a dog guarding a bone; at a hint of touching it, or hurrying him over it, he gave a near imitation of a growl. Carol heard his near growl. She took a Finkelstein deep breath, consciously pressing her navel against her girdle, and waiting expectantly for the resulting harmony. She had a special voice she used when practising the Finkelstein method, a carefully modulated, full-of-reasonableness voice.
“Now, Henry, don’t be tiresome. The school said Paul could leave his classroom in time to be standing right outside the gates at twelve o’clock. I asked for this favour so that we need not waste time riding up that long drive.”
“It won’t hurt Paul to wait a minute half as much as it will hurt his overworked father to be rushed.”
Carol, unfortified by the Finkelstein method, might have snapped at Henry. Jane had first written of plans for this week-end weeks ago, and right from the start Henry had been as a wheel stuck in mud, and it had been Carol’s shoulder which urged him out of mud. It had been hard work for Carol. If Henry had ever said he did not want to go, though she would have seen that he went just the same, it would have been easier; she would at least have had something to argue about. All Henry had said when Jane’s letter had first arrived was, “A very nice thought, but I don’t think I can manage that date,” and when Carol had replied, “Why, Henry, of course you can. What could you be doing that Sunday more important than this?” Henry had put on his most pompous, a-man-in-my-position face and Carol, though she disregarded expressions, had registered that he was going to be difficult, and had written by return to say that they would manage that week-end. After that for some weeks the week-end was not mentioned; she corresponded with Jane about arrangements but she thought it better to say nothing to Henry of plans. Then one evening he had remarked, addressing her as if she was part of a public meeting that needed careful handling, “By the way, did I tell you? I’m speaking to some Primrose Leaguers in the constituency on Friday week.” Carol, fortified by Finkelstein breaths, had managed not to say one word of the many she would have liked to have said. The slyness of him! He must have fixed this meeting up with his agent way back when Jane’s letter first arrived, for the member did not address meetings in his constituency at a moment’s notice, especially not Henry who had big ideas of what was due to his position. Remembering her navel and waiting for harmony, which was slow in arriving, Carol rearranged her plans. When she spoke it was in her reasonable post-Finkelstein treatment voice. “Why, Henry, why ever didn’t you tell me sooner? I’ll write to Fitch right away and tell him to expect us. We’ll go down on Thursday I suppose? We have to come back Saturday of course. That’s the family week-end you remember.” That was the moment when Henry became as a wheel stuck in mud. He tried every way he knew to resist Carol’s shoulder. He spoke of fatigue; it might be wise, as they would be in the country, to take a week-end’s rest; he was sure the family would understand. Carol foresaw that one and fixed that they would start early on the Saturday in order to take the children out from, their schools for luncheon. “Maybe your family would, Henry, but you just can’t disappoint Helen and Paul.” There was pressure of work. Hints of consultations with his agent and the local Conservative committee. Then he spoke of headaches. Nothing would have surprised Carol. He seemed so set against the week-end he might have deliberately sprained an ankle or instructed the Fitches to burn down the house. She would not feel sure of him until she had him safely in the car.
Carol had great powers of concentration and really had been reading the local paper, but at the back of her mind was a tumult of thought, a tumult which had raged off and on all her married life and been brought to a roar by this week-end. Why did Henry see so little of his mother? Was it just the British were cold? Carol, brought up on the American matriarchal system, could not believe that it was just normal Britishness. A world which did not revolve round the mother was unworkable. So sure had she been of this that throughout her married life she had done her best to see Henry’s mother held her rightful place in the family circle. It was not easy; Henry’s mother did not seem to know what her rightful place was. It frightened Carol. It meant upsetting the balance of life as she had been brought up to know it. It meant that Helen and Paul, especially Paul, did not act towards her as she and her brothers had acted towards their mother. It meant Henry was far too independent; he seemed unaware that the woman governed the home and should just naturally be deferred to. It took from her the ways of holding her husband and family to which she had been trained. Back home her mother was not just loved, she was an institution. All plans had always been thrown aside by her father if, for some reason, real or contrived, her mother did not want something to happen. The relationship between Carol and her mother was of the closest. Right from the time she could toddle they had been friends, conspiring to see that Carol was better turned out than other children, and later dated up, to the glory of the Cussac reputation and so that not one moment of her glorious youth was wasted. It was “Mother dear, may I have?” all day long, and the answer was “Why yes, my darling.” There was warmth and colour in the relationship; they said lovely things: “Haven’t I got just the most darling daughter?” “Did you ever know any one quite so adorable as this mother of mine?” Nobody ever said things like that in England. Carol had two brothers and the relationship between their mother and themselves was even tighter than that between Carol and her mother. They never, even when they married, quite grew away from being mother’s little boys. They brought their troubles and worries to her and were not ashamed of showing their emotions before her. Nor their mother of showing hers before them. How did you get that wonderful relationship in Britain? How could you get it into your home when it was not in the home of your husband’s family, and your own parents only came over on occasional visits, so were not there to show how things should be? It was unbelievable but this week-end, in the fifteen years that she had been a Caldwell, was the first real family mother-loving occasion that had taken place. Of course of those fifteen years six and more had been war, or immediate war aftermath years. Carol was on what, for Britain, was warm terms with her sisters-in-law and their husbands. She had never failed to remember a special day in any of their lives, and always “said it” with a parcel. Sometimes, in her more despondent moments, it seemed to her that her only connection with the Caldwell family was trails of satin ribbon and wreathed wrapping paper. The sad thing was she liked some of them so enormously, and more than liked her mother-in-law, but she was afraid to show it; saying you liked them seemed to embarrass them. Sometimes, when alone and relaxed, Carol did not bother with the Finkelstein method but let herself go and cried like a baby. “Oh, this ghastly British reserve! Oh, this coldness! If Helen and Paul grow up that way I’ll die.”
Carol stared for concentration at her empty coffee cup, but it took a lot of Finkelstein method before she felt really harmonious. Henry was fond of his children, but he was not always as considerate for them as he should be. It was all very well to joke about them, calling them horrors and so on, she often did it herself, but Henry actually felt tough about them. He would not think it mattered cutting five minutes off Paul’s time with them. He would not worry lest he might be hurting the child. When at last she spoke her voice was grave.
“Why, Henry, you don’t mean that. There’s little Paul just counting the minutes until he sees us.” Carol always finished her breakfast with a glass of iced water. She sipped some of it now before she changed the subject so that Henry should have time to feel ashamed. “Then there are the table reservations. That White Hart Hotel gets so crowded Saturdays and Sundays. I wrote that we would be there at one-thirty sharp. That means we have to be at Parkfield to collect Helen not one minute after one-fifteen.”
The only thing Henry liked about the week-end was that he would see his children for an hour or two, but Carol’s mapping of his day, and the sweet reasonable tone in which she spoke brought out the worst of his temper. He muttered, “Lot of blasted arrangements!”
Carol decided not to hear the mutter, but, all the same, if Henry was to be at all bearable over the week-end he must be put in his place. She opened the local paper.
“Your speech is reported in full; they say you were impressive but ‘it was a disappointment that Sir Henry Caldwell had nothing constructive to say. The Primrose League had hoped for something more thought provoking than rhetorical ragings against the sins of omission and commission of the Labour Party. It was discouraging to many that their member found himself unable . . .’”
“That fellow! Call himself what he likes, he’s a communist; ought not to be allowed to edit a paper.”
“I rather like him. He’s always very pleasant when he comes to the house.”
Henry drank some coffee to help himself not to answer. He never, if he could help it, discussed politics with Carol, for unbelievably Carol and her parents disapproved of his being a politician. It would have been impossible to believe if he had not heard it from Mr. Cussac himself. Mr. Cussac had not so much given his consent to his daughter’s marriage as indicated he had no consent to give; if Carol and her mother wished the marriage to take place all that was left for Mr. Cussac to do was to settle money on Carol. Mr. Cussac was a quiet, small man who had made a fortune large to British, but not to American, eyes. He had an engaging way of suggesting by a lowered voice that he and Henry were in league to outwit what he called “the girls.” As “the girls” seemed to include Mrs. Cussac Henry enjoyed the outwitting idea, though unable to imagine it could ever happen. Mr. Cussac looked as if he might be a dignitary of his church. All the more surprising to Henry that his ideas of what happened if you could outwit “the girls” and go on a stag party were a cross between what gentlemen in Paris wearing strangely pointed shoes offered to lead you to, and what a cotton operative expected in Blackpool during a Wakes’ Week. Henry, though knowing Mr. Cussac’s tastes on stag parties, still saw him nevertheless as a near vicar’s warden, so it was the more horrifying to hear his views on serving your country by governing it. If Henry supposed he had anything to offer Carol it was that he was doing well in the political field. Nothing very startling; he had held various minor offices and served on special committees, and his name, if not a household word, was, provided it was a sufficiently long street, by way of becoming a street-hold one. He was, at the time of his engagement, at the point in his career when anything might have happened to him, even the most exalted happenings. How strange then to hear Mr. Cussac, in his slow voice, explaining that he and Mrs. Cussac, though Henry must not take anything Mr. Cussac said as personal, thought it a pity the man that Carol married could find nothing better to do with his time than go into politics. Mr. Cussac would not, he explained, mind the politics so much if there was anything behind them. The only point of going into politics was to make use of them, but what use was Henry making? Henry had stared at Mr. Cussac with shocked eyes, and the more Mr. Cussac explained what he meant by “use” the more shocked his eyes became, for what “use” would he ever make of politics if, as he understood, he ought amongst many things to have placed various people, including his young brother, in well-paid government jobs, and seen that when there were tenders going he pushed them in the right direction and, as a result, got a rake off. You could not start an argument on ethics with a man who had that very day consented to become your father-in-law, but neither had Henry any intention of giving up his career. He made an ambiguous reply, of which the inner Henry was ashamed, and inwardly trusted that his future would change the Cussac viewpoint. Subsequent conversations with Carol, which skirmished round politics, for Henry was scared to tackle the subject directly, did seem to show that her mind and her father’s were following the same lines, while Mrs. Cussac’s went further. To Mrs. Cussac, politics, no matter what clever use you made of them, just never were nor could be respectable, and the sooner Henry gave them up and got fixed up in a business concern the better.
Once Henry had grasped the Cussac’s views on politics he tried not to let his career be a subject for conversation. It was then he first gave the outer Henry, to awe the Cussacs and help rebuild the morale of the much-shattered inner Henry, his a-man-in-my-position face. There was little else he could do. His old Cousin Tom believed in a governing class as fervently as others believed in immortal souls. He had thought nothing of his cousin Harry; he had made him his estate agent, but that was charity, for he could not see another career which would support him and his family. It was again charity which had, during the 1914-1918 war, made him send for Harry’s boy Henry to see, if he should survive the war, if he could do something for him. A very few talks with Henry and he knew what he would do. The war over he sent him to Oxford, made him his heir and later settled enough capital on him so that he was independent and could try for a seat in Parliament to fight for the right, which meant “Keep those damned Labour fellows out.”
Henry finished his coffee; he got up and walked slowly to the door, not only his face but his body saying a-man-in-my position! Carol, unmoved, looked at her watch.
“You’ve got twelve minutes, Henry. Fitch has your things packed. Now don’t be late.”
Carol drove and to start with Henry read The Times, but more and more the glory of the day distracted him. It was a pale blue and silver morning; there had been a slight ground frost and this had left a glitter of moisture. Catkins hung yellow from their branches, there was prunus in the cottage gardens; every plant and tree was about to burst its buds. As they turned a corner they came on a blackthorn so covered in blossom that Henry caught his breath. Carol slowed down the car. She smiled.
“My, what a day! Is that beautiful.” Henry folded The Times and put it away. Carol gave him another smile. “Feeling better?”
Henry immediately felt worse. He took his eyes off the countryside.
“I don’t know what you mean. I feel perfectly well, thank you. A little tired, perhaps.”
Carol did not speak again for a mile or two. She let the morning do her work for her. She felt Henry relaxing. Presently he began to whistle under his breath. She smiled; that was much better. Henry was indeed at peace when he gave a sotto voce performance of “Pop goes the weasel.”
Henry would not have believed it if Carol had told him she was nervous. He would not have believed that the soignée Carol in the smart tweed outfit could have a heart which missed beats because she was going to talk to her husband. She had been telling herself for weeks that she would ask what she must before the family week-end, but now the time had come she was terribly conscious of how easy it would be to put her words badly, offend Henry and make the week-end even more difficult.
“I guess the children are getting all excited. I just can’t imagine boarding-school. Must be something when your family take you out.”
“I suppose so. I don’t remember very clearly. Mine didn’t come often to my prep. school and I was only fifteen, you remember, when my father died.”
“Didn’t your mother come to see you at Eton?”
Henry moved as if physically uncomfortable.
“No.”
Carol felt as if she were in the dark groping her way with her fingers.
“I guess she was busy. A new baby and Felicity only a mite.”
“I suppose so.”
“Did you keep this Mothering Sunday right from the start?”
Strange how a question like that could open a door so that you could see back down the years. Henry saw the sprawling, charming Queen Anne house they had lived in when his father was agent to Cousin Tom. In his memory the sun was always shining. They must have been keeping Mothering Sunday since he was a baby, but the one Sunday which had stayed clear even to the smell of it was the last he had spent at home, the year he was eight; he went to his prep. school that autumn. He was either a secretive child or else Jane, who would only have been five, was too small for a confidant. He had his mother’s present waiting for what, looking back, seemed months, but was probably only a few weeks. He had bought it in the village with all his Christmas money and thought it perfection. A vase made gaudy by a great deal of gold paint. It had been hard to keep the vase hidden, and impossible not to throw out hints in the unshakable faith that his mother was dying with curiosity to see what he had for her. “Mummie, I’ll give you one hint. It’s something you can put something in if you put in something else as well.” “Mummie, look at my hand, it’s that tall.” His mother, who seemed in memory at that time to have been always running, and usually singing as she ran, would stop, her eyes shining. “You mustn’t tell me, Henry. I want it to be a most wonderful surprise.” On the Saturday he had picked flowers. Easter must have been late that year for the flowers were daffodils and narcissus. He had put the filled vase in his cupboard so that his mother should not see it when she came to put out his light. He had gone to sleep staring at the cupboard, thinking “It’s to-morrow. It’s to-morrow.” In the morning he had waited to be called. It was a terrible crime to disturb his father before breakfast any morning, but particularly on Sunday mornings. He had waited clasping the vase, his hands trembling with excitement, for the breakfast gong. He had to go to the nursery for his breakfast but he passed his mother’s room on the way and was allowed to say “Good morning,” He put down the vase and beat on her door. “Mummie, Mummie. I’ve got your present.” His mother came to her door; she had one of his father’s coats over her arm; she was holding a clothes’ brush. She put a finger to her lips. “Ssh, darling. It’s lovely.” She kissed him. “Run along now though. Daddy was very late last night. He’s still asleep.” Henry could feel even now, forty-two years later, the pain of that moment, the smarting at the back of his eyes, the lump in his throat as he saw his vase that he had expected to enjoy with his mother, each pointing out to the other its excellencies, taken away to be shared, when he should wake, behind a shut door with his father.
“I went to my prep. school when I was eight, you know, and of course mid-Lent came in the term. I used to post her something.”
“What sort of things? You didn’t have much pocket money.”
It was after that Mothering Sunday he had tried to catch his mother’s notice. He was not sure if he had been jealous of his father, or just hungry for affection. His father easily lost patience with him. He had been a quiet child, a bookworm, not good at sport. In his father’s eyes a boy whose life was not filled with blood sports had got something the matter with him. “Come on out, you little rat.” He would snatch his book from him and give a disgusted snort. “Scott! A son of mine to spend a morning reading Scott!” Henry had tried but he was always shaming his father, usually in front of his friends; falling off his pony, catching his line in trees, missing the simplest shots, and, when he was first given a lesson in gutting a rabbit, being violently sick in front of several farmers. His mother, when he was home, helped to put his ego back; usually when his father was telling the story of his latest display, by a smile, to show that to her it was all a lot of nonsense. Once or twice she had said, “Don’t worry, darling. Daddy and all the uncles and grandfather think those sort of things terribly important, but I don’t, and lots of people don’t.” At school he learned something which gave him a new view of himself. Now he would hold not only his mother’s but his father’s notice. They would be proud of him. He was unusually clever; he was top of every class; he looked like being the cleverest boy the school had had for years. He had come home after his first term with a glowing report, except about football and gymnasium. He had handed the envelope with the report to his father and waited for praise. None came. That none came from his father was understandable because of “Tries but shows no aptitude” about the football, but no word from his mother! Each morning he woke certain she would say how pleased she was with him, and every night he went to bed hurt and puzzled. The Head himself had said “Well done, young Caldwell. You’ve made a fine start. You deserve a good holiday.” That holiday had blurred with time into other holidays, all of which in retrospect seemed to have been disappointing. Always he came home expecting a tremendous welcome, with showers of praise. Always he was treated by his father as a bit queer and more strenuous efforts than ever were made to make a sportsman of him. At school he was respected for his braininess but he was never popular. This meant that what little time he had to do with as he liked he spent alone, and in some of this time he made or planned presents for his mother. Christmas presents, Mothering Sunday presents, birthday presents; fearful presents, but part of the Henry of that era. Poems illuminated by himself, framed by himself; books, usually secondhand because they were cheap, totally unsuited to his mother but chosen to draw attention to himself. “Fancy a boy of that age choosing this; I’m sure he’s read it. Isn’t he clever!” Curios, or what passed as curios, with descriptions of them written by Henry. One Mothering Sunday it was a stuffed wild duck with a carefully composed history of the species of duck and its habits, but tactlessly no mention of where, when or by whom it was shot. Somewhere his mother would have those presents, for she would never throw them away, but they had not apparently impressed her at the time; at least they did not appear to draw her attention to the fact that she had a brilliant son. She wrote charming thank-you letters but when the next holiday came round, always anticipated by Henry with such passionate hope in its perfection, she was the same. “Hallo, darling. How lovely to have you back. Daddy is full of plans for you, he’s taking you to a big shoot to-morrow—do try and look pleased about it when he tells you, though I know you won’t be. He’s taken so much trouble to arrange it.” Henry could still feel the pain of that. His mother minding so terribly if her husband was disappointed but never about the disappointment of the son.
“Just any present. Often made them myself like children do.”
Carol groped on. What sort of childhood was it that was locked away from her? It was not, she told herself, that she was curious, it was something much deeper. During the years she had been a Caldwell she had become steadily more engrossed with the family to which she belonged. Her moods had varied; she had felt at various times hurt, resentful, bitter and amused. Why did Henry shut her out? Or did he shut her out? Was there nothing to shut her out from? Was there an inner core in their detached family relationship? If there was, somehow, foreigner though she might be, she was going to shove in and find it. That core, if it existed, was a thing her children ought to know even if she was excluded. She knew that Jane had only written to her about this week-end because Henry would have made an immediate excuse not to go, and she had hoped tact would make her send Henry and stay away herself. She still had Jane’s letter, written in her large, assured handwriting: “Being together for the Saturday night will give us a chance to discuss family things. We shall be just the family except Simon, who must be there to help us as he is the only one who understands the law; there is, of course, a danger George comes with Felicity but I hope he won’t, he gets more of a bore every time I see him.” Jane would never write “You won’t come, will you, this is none of your business?” but how she could hint. Carol had taken hints for years but she was damned if she was going to take this one. Her mother-in-law was her business and Tony was her business and they were what lay behind this family gathering. Tony was Helen’s and Paul’s uncle and they were the only nephew and niece to have to share his surname. If Henry’s mother was going peculiar, wandering like a gipsy and not living in a style becoming to her, who suffered most? Henry, of course, because he was a prominent figure with the same surname but indirectly, Henry’s children. Carol would have given a great deal to be travelling to this family gathering sure of affection and a welcome; but since it was for her children she was travelling, though aware she would get neither—and nothing was more arctic than an unfriendly welcome from an in-law—she travelled serenely, borne up by the Tightness of what she was doing—a wife and mother on duty.
It was clear to Carol she was not going to get Henry to talk by indirect methods. To cut through his defences to get a picture of his relationship with his mother needed wire cutters.
“I don’t want to interfere in your family affairs, Henry, but I’ll be around this evening, and of course I know what’s going to be discussed. I’ve not spoken of this before because I hoped you’d speak of it to me, but what do you think about your mother? I mean the way she’s been behaving since Christmas.”
“I’ve not seen her, as you know. I only know what my sisters tell me. I dare say it’s a mare’s nest.”
“It’s not a mare’s nest that she’s living alone. After all I got her Mrs. Conrad another job. I just can’t bear to think that all she has in the way of help is that terrible Miss Doe.”
“Presumably she likes Miss Doe, and didn’t like Mrs. Conrad. To Margaret she said that she found as she grew older she increasingly valued her privacy. I see no reason to doubt that statement.”
“Maybe it is true but is it right? I just know that if it was my mother I wouldn’t allow it. Why, just anything might happen.”
Henry’s pleasure in the morning was evaporating. There was no escaping the meaning of Carol’s “Just anything might happen.” She knew he hated talking about Tony, and she would not do so directly, but she would try and drive him to talk about him, as if there wouldn’t be enough of Tony over the week-end.
“We’re going over to-morrow. We can see for ourselves if anything should be done.”
“What—in one visit? What’ll we see? If it was my mother who was acting this way I just wouldn’t rest until I got to the back of what was wrong.”
“She’s not your mother.”
“No, but my children have your name and I just can’t bear to think what people are saying. It’s no good being an ostrich, Henry. You can put your head in the sand all you like but they’re saying, amongst other things, ‘Why doesn’t that Sir Henry look after his mother?’ After all, you’re her eldest son.”
“She wouldn’t pay any attention to any view I might express.”
Carol’s voice vibrated with feeling.
“But why not? If only you’d explain to me, Henry. All the years we’ve been married I’ve wondered about that. I’ve never needed to ask before. Your mother seemed to me to lead a lonely life, but she was properly looked after, and little Virginia was a lot with her and there was no need to worry, but things have changed. She lives alone. She refuses to have any one to stay, even Virginia. We hear she’s taken to wandering. Somebody’s got to take charge of her, and I say it should be you. I know you just hate my interfering but I have to.” Carol hesitated, unwilling to use her sharpest goad but sure that she must. She spoke with careful gentleness. “We don’t want any more trouble in the family. It’s hard on the children.” She took her left hand off the wheel and gave Henry’s arm a pat. “Couldn’t you talk to me about things?”
For one moment Henry considered talking to Carol. She only saw about a quarter of the troubles he saw. Laying your burdens on someone else was an undoubted relief. If only he did not know that he already cut a pretty poor figure in Carol’s and her parents’ eyes he might have talked to her; in fact, the inner Henry was in favour of it, but the outer Henry could not unbutton the figure he had built to let the inner Henry out.
“I don’t know why you expect me to have any influence with my mother. There was the First World War, and then Cousin Tom more or less adopting me.”
“Still we could make a plan of what should be done. Does she listen to Jane?”
Henry stared at the fields and hedges sliding by. Queer how far apart he and Jane had grown, yet at one time they had been inseparable. They had never spoken of those days; did Jane remember? The friendship had really started that first holiday after their father died when he came first to the new house. Jane came with his mother to meet him at the station. Odd how some moments out of the past seemed to have photographic qualities. Many far more important moments must have disappeared for ever, but there was the little railway station, and the shabby Morris with the handyman driver who in those days drove it, standing beside it, and there, walking on either side of him, were his mother and Jane. Strange, in so vivid a memory, that his mother alone was blurred. Black. She certainly wore black but he knew that she had worn black at that time so it was not memory. Jane was absolutely clear. He remembered being surprised by her. She was skipping with excitement, apparently because he was home. Her eyes said, “Wait until I get you alone, I have so much to tell you.” She had even changed to look at. She was a nice-looking child with brown eyes and dark curls, but she had always been at cross-purposes with everybody, which had given her a smouldering, sulky look. Her constant cry to him had been: “Oh, you are lucky to be sent away to a boarding school. I simply hate being at home. Oh, I wish I was a boy!” On that morning at the railway station, engrossed though he was with his own emotions, he could feel she was a new Jane. She was happy. It shone from her. She could only have been twelve at that time. She must have been an unusually adult twelve, for she had known exactly the mood in which he would come home, and what was coming to him. She had gripped the rest of the family in her arms, and knew he too would need her. She had shown him over the new house. He noticed with surprise her proprietary air. “I put that shelf in your room for your books.” “I said we’d have Irish stew for lunch because you adore it.” Had she any real sympathy for him when she came to the garage to watch him crying himself sick, or had she just waited for him to break down in order to sweep him, with the rest of the household, under her control? He had moaned between sobs: “She doesn’t care even now if I’m home or not. I thought she’d want me now.” Henry could still hear the tone of Jane’s reply. “She doesn’t care about any one. She still only thinks about Daddy, but she’s glad of me; everybody’s glad of me. You’ll be. You’ll see.”
Henry felt Carol’s question had remained awkwardly long unanswered.
“I doubt if any of us could make Mother do anything she didn’t want to do, but certainly not Jane.”
Henry looked back again at the landscape. Was that the answer? He had never understood what had happened. For three years everybody had been glad of Jane, nobody more so than himself. She had made him feel wanted in a way he never had when his father was alive. In their new home there was no possibility of any one making a sportsman of him, for there was no fishing or shooting and no horses, but Jane found something which took him away from spending his whole time reading and which he did enjoy. Conniving with the handyman driver they learned to drive. No car ever had more lavish attention than the two of them gave to that old Morris. Both being too young for licences they could only drive in lonely lanes, but it was their pride to see that the car was as soignée as an old car could be. Over the cleaning and the polishing of it they had talked of everything under the sun, especially of his future. Jane wanted him to go into the diplomatic and not to marry, so that she might keep house for him. “I’d make a gorgeous ambassadress, you know I would.” He had seen that; Jane would be a good ambassadress, but he had not seen himself as an ambassador. What he had really wanted was to be a professor or don, though he was vague as to how you became such things. Jane, he remembered, had been indignant. The only one of the family who was being properly educated to want to bury himself in a stuffy college where he would be no good to his sisters. It was ridiculous. As one holiday slipped past another, by wordless agreement they dropped the subject of his future. So many boys they knew seemed scarcely to have left school before they were killed, his career either as a diplomat or don seemed too chancy to be worth discussing. Instead they planned for the family. The handyman gardener had long disappeared into some form of war service. There was still a cook, a house-parlourmaid and a nurse, but war or no war they would not do any but their usual work and grumbled endlessly for things, an ever lengthening list, that they could not have. Looking back, Jane seemed at that age to have got through a remarkable amount of work. There were her lessons, given to her and Margaret by a daily governess, but he doubted if she had bothered much with those. There was the garden, which he seemed to remember as being full of vegetables, and certainly nobody looked after it except Jane, assisted by Margaret, unless perhaps, though this he could not remember, his mother helped. Certainly his mother had been the car driver, for he could distinctly recall the shocked discussions he had with Jane about her driving, which had been vile and not good for their beloved Morris. He and Jane seemed in retrospect to have spent a lot of his holidays with a double saw piling up fuel for the winter. Between bouts of sawing how earnest they had been. He remembered hearing that Jane was dissatisfied with Margaret’s education, and how calmly he had accepted “She’s like you, awfully clever, but rather slow about other things, if you don’t mind my saying so. I think she’ll have to get a scholarship at one of those big schools. I’m finding out about it.” He heard that Felicity was, in Jane’s opinion, getting spoiled by Nannie and it was time she started lessons. Nannie had brought them all up and took no nonsense from Jane, and Jane knew it, but worried none the less. It was queer, looking back, how he had come to accept that Jane ran everything and confided in him her household worries. It had never seemed to surprise him that his mother took so little interest. She had been about, and yet somehow she had not. Looking back he could only see her in the haziest way until that spring morning. It was the last day, or nearly the last day, of his Easter holidays. He and Jane were having a final log cutting with the double saw when their mother came by. She stood watching them with the strange smile that she had at that time, which seemed a way of twisting her lips and had nothing to do with how she felt. She said, “What a lot of wood, darlings!” Jane answered, as she always did at that time when speaking to her mother, as if she were a child, that they were a big family and used a lot of wood. Their mother, still staring at the logs, still smiling her queer smile, said, “But not in the summer. I shouldn’t think you need cut such a lot until next holidays.” He could feel even now the pause and the way he and Jane had looked at each other before, slowly, he had said what he had often said before: “I’ll be in the army before the summer holidays. You know that, Mother.” What had happened then he had never understood. His mother had said: “The army! Henry!” Then slowly her face had flushed. She had put both hands to her cheeks and stared at the two of them as if seeing them for the first time. “The army? But you’re fifteen!” They had told her how old they were but she did not seem to need their words; she was sorting facts for herself. “Henry, eighteen. Jane, you’re fifteen. My baby is three. Where have I been?” Without another word she had hurried away.
Carol had been thinking of Jane.
“No, I guess that’s natural. They’re both the independent type. I guess she was always that way, even as a little girl.”
Henry made an agreeing grunt and retired back into the past. It was when he had that first leave from France that he lost his friendship with Jane. He had no idea why, probably they had grown apart. He with his war knowledge; she sheltered in the home. He did not remember that leave clearly; he had been too restless to stay at home; there had been the visit to Cousin Tom and the new future, if he should live, that promised, and there had been the usual hectic time in London. He remembered being hurt with Jane. He had meant, he believed, to have confided in her a little of what he was enduring but she had changed. She seemed, in memory, hard, unresponsive, wrapped up in herself and her own interests and at loggerheads the whole time with her mother. Anyway she had been no good. He had told her nothing and he had never really known her since.
“Yes, she was always independent. She was sent to school the year I joined the army, and Margaret, who was and is the most faithful family letter writer, used to describe the scenes which went on between her and various mistresses. I should think the school had hell with Jane.”
“What about Margaret? Surely, as a doctor, she might be able to make your mother see she can’t live alone. She can put it on health grounds.”
“Margaret! Hope she’ll keep off her practice.”
“I surely hope you behave yourself. You were very rude the last time she dined with us when she told you how well the National Health Service would work. Mind you, Margaret’s not my type, but she’s a wonderful woman. Working away down there in the docks.” Carol laughed. “I do hope she’s got something nice to wear. I’ve seen her in that one coat and skirt for years. I feel sure she does wash, maybe more than most of us, but she always looks kind of mussed up.”
“She always looked like that. Hasn’t changed much. She was a fat, plain little thing with glasses and pigtails; now she winds the pigtails up, that’s the only difference.”
“Didn’t your mother ever see she looked as pretty as she could and had fun?”
“I don’t know. When I was up at Oxford I came home for a dance or two and she was around. I don’t know whether Mother had tried but she always looked damned awful.”
“And Jane and Felicity so smart!” Carol considered Felicity. When she had married she had seen a fair amount of Felicity. They were both newly-weds and much of an age, and had both married dull men. Carol had wondered a lot about Felicity’s reasons for marrying George. Felicity was a charmer; she could probably have married any one; if so, why George? She had, when Carol had first known her, spent a lot of time with her mother. They seemed, from what she said, to be the greatest friends. Because of the births of first Helen and then Paul, and the increasing number of social engagements that came her way as the member’s wife, she had seen less of Felicity in the immediate pre-war years. It was not her fault for she had tried to see more of her, and had suggested that Virginia should come to stay since she and Helen were the same age, but Felicity, who had always been vague, was at that time more illusive and vague than usual, and somehow, without apparently refusing many invitations, just disappeared. Carol did not know when the break between Felicity and her mother had occurred but sometime during the war. It was one of the few family things talked about by the brothers and sisters and which in-laws were allowed to discuss, but it was a dead horse now. Nobody knew what they could have found to quarrel about; they just clearly had and it wasn’t Virginia because she was always, until the last few months, with her grandmother. Carol said:
“A pity about Felicity and your mother. If only they hadn’t got up against each other she was the one to fix things.”
Henry did not bother to answer so obvious a remark. Instead he said:
“I wonder if George is coming. Hope not.”
Carol was not going to confess how much Jane hoped that too, and how broad had been the hint that all in-laws save Simon were warned off. Nor was she going to tell Henry how her own bet was that Felicity would not turn up. She had got Henry safely into the car, and though he wouldn’t turn back now, she did not want him sulking again, especially as they were only a few miles from Paul’s school. He’d sulk all right if Felicity did not turn up. It was possible he would see he had to be there if all the family were there, but if one were missing he would be horrible to manage. Happiness wrapped her as if it were a warm cloak, as she saw on a signpost how near they were to Paul’s school. In her mind she could see Paul standing at the school gate. She could see Helen waiting, with other girls whose parents were taking them out, in the hall at Fairfield. She pushed her worries to the back of her mind. From now on she belonged to the children, and was going to think of nothing but them; she would go back to her probing into the Caldwell family when the children were back in their schools. Maybe having seen Helen and Paul and talking of them afterwards would loosen Henry up. She smiled at him.
“I’ll draw up in a mile or two and you can drive. I must do something to my face before the children see me.”