A Misalliance (20 page)

‘A Mr Fox,’ she remarked to Blanche. ‘He sounded agitated. He would like you to call him back.’

He might like me to, thought Blanche, but I don’t think I will. If he is agitated he can ring his analyst. The person I should ring, of course, is Sally. The thought of Sally brought with it an onslaught of exhaustion. When I’m stronger, she promised herself. When I have decided what to say. For although she remembered every word of the interview at the hotel she had not quite got round to summing it all up. There was unfinished business here, and she did not know how to finish it.

Mrs Duff placed a jug of lemon barley water by her bed. ‘My husband swears by it. I make it myself, of course. And I’ve left a cold chicken in the fridge and a fruit salad. I dare say you’ll be quite hungry by tomorrow. Now is there anything else you want this evening?’

For Mrs Duff, Blanche could see, was anxious to go next door and cook her husband’s dinner: older loyalties prevailed. When she had left, the silence was complete. Darkness had fallen early; the miserable day was over. Leaves dripped outside in the garden. The headache had settled down to a heaviness in the eyes and a sensitivity in the skin of the face and the head; she would be unable to brush her hair for another night. Lying in bed was all that she was required to do, but now she felt less comfortable about it. The sadness of childhood recalled, and the greater sadness that had come with her middle age, turned her thoughts to melancholy and the desire for consolation. In this situation, and unwatched, her brisk mannerisms were of no use to her. They had been summoned up for the benefit of others, of course, and fuelled by the wrong sort of pride. She knew now that real pride
means gusto; real pride involves fearlessness, bravado, confidence, not a façade behind which one cowers, perplexed, like Adam and Eve in their wretched dilemma, eternal children with a problematic parent they were too inexperienced to challenge. She felt exhausted by the sheer continuity of it all. Wrong start, wrong finish. It was, in fact, characters like Sally and like Mousie who had pride, who went into the jungle of human affairs with nothing but their own weapons to defend them, whereas Paul, now that she came to think of it, had exactly the unthinking placatory attitude that doomed him in his quest for strength. Paul, to a certain extent, was Adam. His trouble was that he had got mixed up in the wrong mythology. Sally (whom she must telephone) would go on to other partners: Paul would be stuck with Mrs Demuth, with Mr Demuth always at hand to castigate him. It was a situation which could not be resolved.

And I must stop making stories out of these people, creating false analogies, reifying and mythologizing them, she thought. I have let the National Gallery go to my head. It was this sort of thing that drove Bertie mad.

When she felt stronger (and at the thought she immediately felt weaker) she would telephone Sally, and simply report what had happened. There seemed to be little more that she could do. She might leave another contribution or two under the lid of the teapot, but since she suspected that funds came from elsewhere, she would not make a habit of it. Perhaps Sally would have to be sent off to America to join Paul: this was a very expensive possibility, and yet there seemed no way of escaping from the coils of this dilemma except by extreme actions, such as providing two airline tickets. Surely she was not to be involved to this extent? And yet it seemed likely. It even seemed likely that her conscience was not to be appeased by anything less. Perhaps Patrick might have a better idea, although, knowing Patrick, it would be an idea that favoured non-intervention. Possibly,
at this very moment, Patrick was proceeding from Sally to his analyst, or vice versa. The little girl, who had never spoken in Blanche’s presence, and who was reputed never to speak at all, was the one to be saved. But Blanche once again saw that she had identified too closely with Elinor, and that Elinor might yet learn those lessons that she, Blanche, had never mastered.

Cautiously lifting her head, she addressed herself to the telephone and dialled Patrick’s number. He answered at once, as if he had been waiting for the call.

‘Patrick?’ she said, in a voice which sounded to her three tones higher than normal. ‘It’s Blanche. I’m afraid I’m not very well. I won’t talk long, if you don’t mind.’ The telephone hummed with excited silence.

‘What news?’ asked Patrick, after a short interval, as if he had given her quite enough time to recover.

‘Well, I don’t really know. I saw those people and they’re really quite ordinary, quite respectable. But it’s a funny setup. I think they’re keeping Paul on for a bit, taking him back to America. The whole thing is really out of my hands. It was never really in my hands, as you know. I shall certainly not pursue it further.’

‘I see,’ said Patrick heavily.

‘I’ll telephone Sally, of course, when I feel a bit better. And then I think it’s over to you, if you think you can help. But I would somehow advise against it. Oh, let me talk to you tomorrow or the day after, when I’m myself again. I’m afraid I can’t say any more just now.’

‘I’m in your debt, Blanche,’ said Patrick, in the same heavy tone. ‘I have come to a few decisions myself. I will talk with you shortly.’

‘Goodnight, Patrick,’ said Blanche, and thankfully put the telephone down.

Outside the windows a prematurely black night had established itself. After her conversation with Patrick, the silence
was so total that Blanche stirred deliberately in the bed to find out if she could hear herself. It was just as well, she thought, that she was not an hysterical woman. When she heard the key in the lock she could have clasped her hands in a prayer of gratitude. Mrs Duff had come back, like the Good Samaritan that she was, to say goodnight. But when the door opened, it was to reveal Miss Elphinstone, in her navy blue coat, a plastic rain hood tied loosely over her hat, and bringing in with her her usual air of ecclesiastical gentility.

‘Good evening, Blanche,’ said Miss Elphinstone. ‘I was visiting at the hospital, so I thought I’d look in on my way home and see how you were getting on. Terrible weather we had, and not much better here, I see. Black as Egypt’s night outside.’ And she stepped briskly to the window and pulled the curtains. Immediately the room seemed manageable. Blanche sat up in bed and removed the silk handkerchief from the lamp. ‘Shall we have a cup of tea?’ she suggested. ‘It’s good to see you.’

‘Well, yes, I could do with a cup,’ said Miss Elphinstone judiciously, and went to put the kettle on.

‘Well, you look as if you could do with a break and no mistake,’ she continued as she came back with the tray. ‘In bed at nine o’clock. And that nice chicken in the fridge not touched. Not one of our dishes, by the way.’

‘I’ve had a bad headache,’ said Blanche. ‘I should be all right by tomorrow. You know how these things go. Mrs Duff brought the chicken. She’s been so kind.’

Miss Elphinstone pursed her lips and drank her tea thoughtfully. ‘I’ll look in tomorrow and give you a hand,’ she said. ‘No need to get up if you don’t feel like it. You’ll want to eat something before you go out on manoeuvres again. Just as well I’m back, isn’t it?

‘This will interest you, Blanche,’ she went on, removing something from her leather hold-all and handing it to
Blanche. It was a colour photograph, slightly out of focus, of about eight or ten women, those on the edges of the print indicated by little more than an elbow. ‘Taken outside the Bird Sanctuary at Bourton-on-the-Water. That’s the Women’s Fellowship. Of course, if a certain person had stepped back a bit we could all have got in. I’m naming no names,’ she said firmly. ‘But what an opportunity wasted. After that the camera got mislaid. But that’s another story.’

‘It’s very good of you,’ said Blanche sincerely, for Miss Elphinstone was conspicuous in the middle of the group, leather hold-all well in evidence, worldly smile enhanced by the tilt of an important straw hat. ‘You make all the others look frumpish.’ For there was something heroic as well as elegant about Miss Elphinstone’s demeanour: she could have run a mission station in southern India if she had put her mind to it. She belonged to the days of Empire. She could save a person’s life simply by appearing, as she had just now, in the doorway.

‘I should say it was a success
on the whole
,’ said Miss Elphinstone, retrieving the photograph and giving it a critical glance before putting it away. ‘But the weather didn’t favour us. And the accommodation wasn’t all that commodious. I dare say we shall go back to Devizes next year. And what have you been doing with yourself?’

‘Nothing much,’ said Blanche, sinking back luxuriously into her pillows. ‘Nothing to speak of. It will be nice to get back to normal.’ She realized that her notions of normality had become seriously eroded. It was time to get herself back on to a serious footing, whatever that might entail. The alternative was to drift, and that was not to be thought of. It seems that there is still more work to be done, she thought. But sleep was now stealing on her; through half-closed lids she saw Miss Elphinstone’s hatted shape standing motionless by the door. And then she thought Miss Elphinstone disappeared, but by this time her eyes were quite shut.

Bathed and dressed, Blanche took down from her shelves the
Philebus
of Plato and read that the life of pleasure must be mixed with reason and the life of reason must be mixed with pleasure but that a third quality, to which both reason and pleasure look forward, must be the final ingredient of the good life. Realizing, with a slightly sinking heart, that given the choice she might have settled for a life of pleasure, she laid the book aside. Mention of the life of pleasure led her thoughts ineluctably to Sally. She dialled Sally’s number, heard the receiver being lifted, heard then a quantity of silence, after which the receiver was replaced. This had now happened a number of times. Elinor, she supposed, picking up the telephone and refusing to answer it. There was nothing for it; she would have to go round there. The idea was not encouraging. I am not really up to this, she thought, as she prepared to leave the flat for the first time since the interview with Mr and Mrs Demuth at the Dorchester. But she felt extraordinarily well, as she usually did after a headache, and the weather was cool and gusty, and she longed for a change of scene. Patrick, agitated but cautious, and portentous with information withheld, had told her nothing. Yet she imagined that Sally, with her preternaturally attuned instincts, had somehow got wind of the situation and barely needed Blanche’s confirmation. Nevertheless, she turned her steps to the river and to Sally’s basement,
where, she thought, the life of reason had barely impinged on the life of pleasure, showing that Sally was in a happier and more primitive state than that envisaged for any length of time by Socrates and his friends.

This time she went empty-handed, except for another book for Elinor. This time, she determined, there would be a final accounting. She felt vigorous and energetic, full of rough good sense, slightly brutal. The onset of the autumn winds had delivered her from the languors of summer. Peering down into the basement from the street, through the dusty windows, she saw several garments abandoned on the sofa that served as a bed, but no other signs of habitation. Ringing the bell brought no answer. Propping Elinor’s book up against the door frame, she retraced her steps, slightly disappointed. They must be out shopping, she thought, or possibly at the hospital. Having nothing else to do, she walked up to the hospital and looked round the Outpatients’ Department. No sign. Walking back to the flat she wondered idly if Patrick were religious – men of his anxious type often were – and whether he saw the salvation of Sally as some kind of ethical duty. Plato had implied that honour was the essential quality of the good life and that both pleasure and reason led one to a desire for it. She then wondered whether honour were compatible with mixed motives. It was by no means clear.

She made a few desultory purchases, lingering in the sunny street. Back in the flat she cut up the chicken, immersed the pieces in a herby aspic, and made an apple tart. She tried Sally’s number once more but there was no reply. Thoughtfully, she telephoned Patrick’s office. ‘Patrick,’ she said. ‘I wonder if you could look in this evening? I could give you a light supper. I’m afraid it must be this evening because I am going away. You could? Excellent. About seven?’

She had not thought that she was going away until she had said so. But why not? It was obvious. She was as entitled
to a holiday as everybody else, and September was a beautiful month, October an even better one. In the south the autumn sunshine would be lying heavy and golden; the crowds would have emptied away, the children would be back at school. She would go over the Alps to Italy; she would go to Munich and Vienna and sit in the public gardens; she would go to Paris and walk in the park at Versailles. Meditatively, she got out the Continental timetables. A variety of possibilities suddenly seemed to present themselves to her, and she studied the book for the rest of the afternoon. Gradually the pictures in her mind sharpened. She saw the park at Versailles, always deserted in its farthest reaches, golden leaves settled in drifts around the bases of the statues, the water in the stone basins still, undisturbed by the fountains, and mirroring the slow clouds in their lofty movements. She would go to Paris and eat Berthillon’s ices, read all the latest books sitting at outdoor cafés, dine early and alone, and sleep a long healing sleep. And then, she thought, shutting the book, of course I shall go south again. Of course. And if I sit alone under the palm trees when everyone is having a siesta, and if there is no one to hurry back for, what of it? The sun is God.

‘Patrick,’ she said, as she poured out a couple of glasses of Piesporter. ‘Have you any idea what you are going to do about Sally? You look very unhappy for a man who is emotionally involved. But then I suppose one often does.’

‘Well, actually, I thought of taking her away on a holiday,’ he said uncomfortably.

‘What a good idea,’ said Blanche, in what she hoped was a calm tone. ‘I hope you are prepared to spend a great deal of money.’ He looked shocked. ‘Well, I would hardly imagine that you thought of taking her to the Lake District. I don’t know what your usual holidays are like but I imagine them as rather Spartan. Wayside inns, ploughman’s lunches; that sort of thing. That will hardly do for Sally. Elinor, of
course, will be parked with her grandmother again. Where were you thinking of going?’ she asked politely, after a silence containing volumes of unanswered questions.