A Misalliance (3 page)

‘When in doubt, throw it away. You’re not feeding these people, I hope?’

‘Well, just coffee and cake.’

‘Quite right. Bridge players get so envenomed that I doubt if they will know what they are eating. It’s really just something to break up the arguments, isn’t it?’

‘It probably will be this evening.’ A pause. ‘Any news?’

‘No, no news.’

‘You’re all right?’

‘Tremendous.’

‘You wouldn’t care to join us, I suppose?’

‘It’s kind of you, Barbara, but you know I don’t play. I refused to learn when Mother kept bursting into tears and cheating. Such an atmosphere. The thought of it makes me feel quite ill, even at this distance. But thank you, all the same.’ Another pause. ‘Love to Jack.’

‘I’ll tell him. Until tomorrow, then.’

‘Until tomorrow. And my love to you,’ said Blanche, and put down the receiver. There would be no further calls this evening.

This is what they call freedom, these days, thought Blanche, as she grilled her sole. Freedom to please myself, go anywhere, do anything. Freedom from the demands of family, husband, employer; freedom not to pay social calls; freedom not to play any sort of role. And I daresay some people might want it, since it is supposed to be the highest good. That is, they might want it
theoretically
, but free will, I find, is a terrible burden. If one is not very careful, free will can come to mean there being no good reason for getting up in the morning, becoming ridiculously dependent on the weather, developing odd little habits, talking to oneself, and not having very interesting conversations with
anyone else. One’s thoughts becoming self-referential, untranslatable. The world is not always waiting for one to discover it, particularly when one is my age: the world, that entity bandied about so frequently, is in fact an endless multiplicity of impermeable concerns. And myself with none of my own.

Slowly, thankfully, the day darkened into night. Rain had come on, as it always seemed to these evenings. The tyres of the very few passing cars hissed on the wet road. The sun is God, thought Blanche, pulling her heavy curtains.

Pouring herself another glass, she reflected that time had a different meaning when one experienced it on one’s own. People talked such nonsense about human affairs, she thought. All this prurient concern with ‘relationships’, and the vast literature, high and low, that had grown up about them was really neither here nor there. Love – for that was what was meant – was like the patrician smile on the faces of those nymphs in the National Gallery, admission to the privileges of this world, arbitrary, unteachable, hardly a matter of reason or election. Love was mysterious and, for all the anxious speculation that had grown up in its wake, incommunicable. Love was the passing favour dispensed by the old, cynical, and unfair gods of antiquity; it was the passport to the landscape where the sun shone eternally and where cornucopias of fruit scented the warm air. But for those whom the gods disdained, and Blanche felt herself to be one of them, the world was the one after the Fall, where only effort and mournfulness might lead to a promise of safety, where sins would seem to have been committed without joy, where nothing gratuitous could be hoped for, and no lavishness bestowed, and where one’s partner, one’s referent, one’s
vis-à-vis
, the mirror of one’s life, had turned into an acquaintance of uncertain intimacy, whose conversation, once so longed for, was, more often than not, alien, uneasy, resentful, and boring.

Blanche, an inhabitant of that fallen world, prepared for the evening ritual of dispensation, for the lustrations which would at last leave her free to close her eyes. She ran her second bath of the day and poured into it an essence that smelled of flowers; conscientiously, she once more cleansed and tended the body which seemed to be holding up quite well, despite the various threats of disintegration that the day had held. Her face, in the clouded mirror, had the anxious look, the lugubrious bleached look, of an inhabitant of mediaeval Flanders. Carefully she washed away the day, brushed the hair, smoothed in what she thought of as embalming fluids. Below the long white nightdress, her ribbed Gothic feet shone palely. Thus prepared for her nightly journey into the unknown, the only journey which she did not fear, she stood for a moment at her window, the curtain held back in her hand. Over the dark and silent garden a silent cat stalked. The trees were motionless under their weight of moisture. From the sodden earth came an exhalation of damp. Hearing the owl, Athena’s attendant, hooting in the far distance, Blanche let down the curtain, took off her robe, and went to bed.

Tuesday was Miss Elphinstone’s day and therefore moderately populated. One day a week had been agreed on by both of them shortly after the divorce, when Miss Elphinstone had found Blanche waiting for her in a spotless kitchen and had said, ‘Not worth your paying me for nothing, is it? I’ll come in on Tuesdays and if you want me later in the week you can give me a ring.’ Fear of being eliminated for ever from Miss Elphinstone’s crowded life had spurred Blanche into disposing of the empty bottles and leaving a dirty cup and saucer on the draining board and an ungathered newspaper in the living-room on Tuesday mornings, thus implying a temporary neglect that would require Miss Elphinstone’s crusading zeal and keep her there until lunch-time.

Miss Elphinstone seemed to enjoy a lively and dramatic existence lived in the shadow of some excitable church whose activities absorbed most of her time and whose members abounded in competitive acts of selflessness. Thus was ensured an avalanche of information that took up most of the morning. Severely hatted, and wearing an overall under Blanche’s last season’s black coat, Miss Elphinstone carried an equally severe black leather hold-all which contained a pair of rubber gloves, a change of shoes, and a religious magazine to read on the bus, although as she invariably noticed something of interest on the journey the magazine
remained unread and was occasionally offered to Blanche, whom Miss Elphinstone considered to be in need of spiritual guidance. Retained not so much for her services as for her turn of phrase, Miss Elphinstone thought of Blanche as one of her parishioners but was sufficiently authoritative to refrain from forcing her hand. On arrival she would remove her coat, change the shoes, and sit down at the kitchen table for tea and biscuits. This she was clearly unwilling to do, preferring to stand in the doorway to deliver her monologues. Egress from each room in turn was blocked by Miss Elphinstone’s figure giving an unedited version of the week’s events, each one charged with incomprehensible significance. The cup of tea was Blanche’s attempt to forestall Miss Elphinstone’s colonizing effect on the flat. Being monosyllabic herself, Blanche considered that news, once delivered, was self-limiting. In this she was gravely mistaken, as she had reason to recall once a week. Miss Elphinstone, ennobled by words, demanded an isolated vantage point for optimum effect. She was contemptuous of the tea and biscuits, which she considered a weak civility characteristic of the bourgeoisie. She would sip disdainfully, while putting herself out to accommodate Blanche, in whose life she took a professional interest. Offhand questions were posed, details remembered. Her tone was critical, her agreement rarely offered. ‘Been busy, I see,’ she might say sardonically, nodding her head in the direction of a batch of waferish coconut biscuits. ‘Coming round, is he?’ she might ask, disguising her avidity with a barely assumed detachment. For Bertie, who had once brought tears of scandalized laughter to her eyes, she retained a fascinated respect. Like many blameless women, she loved a disreputable man.

This interlude over, she would carry the cups to the sink, and, donning her gloves, would turn both taps full on. Above the roar of the water she would begin her aria. A coach trip, of an ecclesiastical nature, had been planned to some outlying
beauty spot, but this had brought complications in its wake. There had been an unpleasantness, Blanche might remember, when a newish member’s offer to organize it had been turned down. In view of that trouble last year this came as a surprise to no one. There were various other hazards to be overcome, some of them of a psychological nature – Miss Elphinstone would not burden Blanche with the details. Allusions to this matter were guarded, but none the less forceful. Miss Elphinstone had taken it upon herself to proffer certain suggestions, which had not been too well received. There had been an exchange of views, some of them lacking in cordiality, but Miss Elphinstone had stood her ground.

‘You see my point, Blanche,’ Miss Elphinstone would say some time later, poised in the doorway of the dining-room. ‘I’m in a trap of me own devising.’

Blanche would regret all this news as she later watched Miss Elphinstone putting herself to rights for the journey home. Over and above admiration for Miss Elphinstone’s virtuous yet interesting life, she appreciated her extreme elegance. Miss Elphinstone had none of the waistless high-stomached appearance of the elderly, although she was of an age at which one is normally encouraged to put one’s feet up. A tall pale woman, with abundant grey hair drawn back and secured somewhere in the recesses of her hat, Miss Elphinstone carried herself well and trod gracefully on her narrow and substantially shod feet. Blanche’s black coat hung straight from her thin shoulders; Blanche’s black and white silk blouse was concealed by a spotless if faded overall. The ritual whereby Miss Elphinstone smoothed and tidied her hair without removing her hat fascinated Blanche, and reminded her of convent girls taking a bath in their shifts or matrons undressing on the beach. Frequently Blanche would buy a garment which did not quite suit her but which she could see quite clearly on Miss Elphinstone. ‘Well, I’ll take it off you if you’ve no call for it,’ Miss Elphinstone would
say in a critical tone, her long dry hand lovingly feeling the material. ‘I dare say I can get some wear out of it. It might do for the outing, if the weather holds. Though that’s now in some dispute, as I was telling you. Well, yes, Blanche, if you’re making coffee anyway; I’ve just got time for a cup. I hope you’ll do some proper shopping this week. We’re low on everything, I see. And I’ve defrosted the fridge, so you’d better not fill it up until later.’

Seated once more at the kitchen table, bag and gloves by her side, Miss Elphinstone would sip her coffee and look around with an appraising glance. Blanche would wait for some word of commendation, but, ‘We thought of Bourton-on-the-Water this year,’ Miss Elphinstone would say. And then, ‘Thought about going away yourself? Why don’t you ring up Mrs Jack and ask for a loan of the cottage? I hear we’ve got a touch of gout, so
he
won’t be much in evidence. A bit of fresh air would put you to rights, if I’m any judge.’ How Miss Elphinstone gathered her information was quite unclear to Blanche; she supposed that information, like some heat-seeking particle, flew to its natural home of its own accord or inclination. And Miss Elphinstone’s tangential acquaintance with Bertie’s sister entitled her to that form of patronage which implied a balanced and almost omnipotent weighing up of the evidence. She knew that Barbara and Jack Little possessed a cottage in Wiltshire, and she frequently assigned Blanche to a restorative stay there. But Blanche rarely went, impelled by sheer inertia not to move from the flat, a worrying trend of which she was increasingly conscious.

When the moment of her departure could no longer be delayed, Miss Elphinstone’s procedure was always the same. She would give a final twitch to the curtains, tell Blanche that she found her looking peaked, remind her of the supplies she needed, and would finally close the door behind her. Out in the street, she would look back at Blanche who
would be standing at the window, and would bare her brilliant false teeth in the sort of smile that betokens an impeccable conscience. Blanche would wave her hand until Miss Elphinstone disappeared in the direction of the bus stop.

In the new social uncertainty of her divorced state, in which, she had observed, she was to be left relatively alone so that she might ‘find her feet’, and presumably be returned to her friends as a person who would not give the lie to her former sophistication, rather than one who might rehearse her grievances at inconvenient moments and in civilized gatherings, Blanche was interested, but not surprised, to see that sympathy was on the side of the guilty party. The hubbub of speculation that surrounded her husband’s new liaison had made itself felt even in Blanche’s silent rooms. She was well aware that this speculation contained an element of the desire to see Bertie make a fool of himself or come a cropper, in which case the call would go out to her once more and she would be invited to give her opinion. It was even hoped, vaguely, that she might effect her re-entry into society by marrying again; but until then, she was, like certain Hollywood actresses in the bad old days, on suspension.

She gave so few signs of madness or rage that it was difficult to sympathize with her. Indeed, it was Mousie’s contention, vividly expressed to her sympathetic friends, that Blanche had brought Bertie to the verge of complete emotional sterility by virtue of her ‘intellectual snobbery’. This view had reached Blanche, as such views always will, and had met only honest bewilderment. She perceived the difference between Mousie and herself as a very simple one: Mousie was used to being loved. Metaphorically, Mousie had been holding out her arms, in the certainty of meeting a welcoming embrace, since she was a little girl. Even her nickname, Mousie, bestowed on her at that same early age, betokened spoiling, cherishing, a father’s, if not a mother’s,
indulgence. By holding out her baby arms Mousie had emitted the correct signals: people knew what their response should be. And because she was so delightfully forthcoming, because she was so easy to understand, because she was so artlessly pleased with the response she invariably elicited, she was allowed to be equally artless when the response was perhaps a little lacking in fervour. Tears of rage would start up in her eyes, accusations would pour from her hotly, presents would be spurned. In this way she cemented attachment through guilt, and any discomfort that this might cause would be swept away by one of Mousie’s lightning changes of mood, her gaiety, her demands for affection, of which she could apparently never have enough. Mousie needed to function from a position of emotional dominance; as this was an art which she had learnt in her cradle, and as it had worked so well at that time, she had seen no need to modify it throughout her adult life.