The Beautiful Visit (17 page)

My mother’s frock was not ready in time for that evening. I remember the concert well: it was the last time I ever went to a concert with my family.

The hall was full, and my father’s work was received with a polite, rather uncertain attention. Afterwards, while he was standing on the platform stiff and small in his old evening
clothes, I thought of the water on the piano and almost believed that he was right and I had spilt it on purpose. It was a terrifying idea.

We went afterwards to the house of some friends and drank coffee and ate cakes and everyone congratulated my father all over again. The curtains were not drawn; every window was open and even
then it was not cool. There were thunder and forked lightning. Otherwise it was still, but in that smoky room people talked about music and exchanged endless personal reminiscences and anecdotes.
My father played for a heavy Irish woman who sang, and nobody seemed to mind the ominous rumbling or the brilliant tongues twisting across the sky.

The party broke up very late. My father herded us together and said that we would walk. ‘We can pick up a cab by the park,’ he said and we all knew, my mother and sister and I, that
even if there were a cab we should do no such thing.

The walk was over two miles. As we reached the park there was a tremendous burst of thunder: a few seconds later the rain began, with great angry drops slamming down on to the pavement, and
above, branches of the trees swaying from the impact. Instinctively, we covered our heads and started to run. In a few minutes the futility of running became obvious; we had still most of our
journey before us and neither my mother nor father was strong. We cowered under an enormous plane tree, hoping, I suppose, that the rain would abate.

‘There may be a cab,’ gasped my mother.

The drops from the tree gathered and fell with a metallic drip, and beyond the tree it roared. Soon the leaves would be beaten down and we should be no drier where we were.

‘It will stop,’ said my father, unusually sanguine.

It did not stop. There was another streak of lightning; for a second the sky was lit and we could see the raging clouds hurtling down from their heights. Then thunder, louder than before; I can
remember it almost shaking my spine, and the crescendo of rain that followed. The street was empty of anything but the bouncing rain drops, collecting torrents in the gutter.

‘We’d better walk,’ said my father.

‘We’ll catch our deaths,’ said my mother.

My father shrugged his shoulders and pulled his coat round his chin. There was more thunder and my sister turned to me, her eyes glittering. I knew she was frightened and took her arm as we set
off. After a moment’s hesitation, my father took hold of my mother and then recoiled with a little grunt saying, ‘You’re soaked. You’d better have my coat.’

‘No dear.’ My mother’s cloak of old stamped velvet clung round her legs, the ruffles on the shoulders damply flattened.

‘Don’t be a fool, Evelyne,’ said my father irritably as he ripped off the cloak and thrust her arms into his overcoat. ‘Can’t have you dying of
pneumonia.’

We were by a street lamp, and I remember her wan little smile. So, with her cloak over his arm we walked home.

We arrived after one o’clock. My mother suggested warm milk, but there was no milk.

‘Tea then.’

But my father, who looked exhausted, snorted and said we’d be far better in bed. He left the room and we heard him sneezing on the stairs. My sister quietly and efficiently filled hot
water bottles and we went to bed.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Next morning my father was in bed with a feverish cold. He remained there for two days, refusing to see a doctor; and on the third day came down to his studio in his
dressing-gown.

He was still feverish and very cross and would not eat the meals we brought in to him, but flew into a rage if we asked how he was feeling or suggested any remedy. He smoked until he began to
cough. He was restless, and possessed of a violent desire to tidy all his music and the studio. He pulled everything out of the cupboards and shelves on to the floor; broke a plaster bust of Brahms
which nearly fell on his head; and filled the studio with old photographs of people he could not remember. The dust made his cough worse. He would not let anyone help him and became wilder and less
approachable as the confusion in his room grew. He left cups of tea, and Bovril made with milk, until they were quite cold and had a film or skin and dust on them. He tore the dead flowers out of
the vase I had used, and thrust them head downwards into the bulging waste paper basket with the slimy green stalks in the air and dripping on to the rug. He burned papers in the stove until the
air was clouded with crisp black ash. He did not touch the piano. This went on for three days and my mother was almost beside herself. Whenever any of us went into the studio he would demand some
piece of music; accusing us in a hoarse strained voice of taking it or losing it or throwing it away. There was a terrible mad feeling in the house, as though we were to expect anything to happen
however fantastic or bad.

On the third afternoon my mother gave me his tea to take to the studio, imploring me helplessly ‘to try and persuade him to go to bed.’ We had already asked her why she did not send
for a doctor but she evaded us; she was clearly terrified of my father and utterly unable to manage the situation.

He was scrubbing the mark I had made on his piano, with a curtain which he must have ripped off the pole.

‘Here is your tea, Father.’ He muttered something and did not look at me.

‘Will you come and drink it while it’s hot? You have been working so hard, Father.’

He looked up and I saw that his cheeks were a brilliant pink.

‘You’ll spoil the curtain anyway. I’ll fetch you a duster when you have had your tea.’

‘Come and look at it. It’s
worse
. The damp spreads across the varnish.’ He hung over the stain and drawn by some new fear I went to him. He began scrubbing it again
furiously. I touched him; he seemed to have forgotten me, when suddenly he whipped round, seized my arm and shouted, ‘You did this. You’re responsible for this. It’s getting
worse, I can’t use the piano. I can’t work unless I have order and you’ve made that impossible for me. You must have done it on purpose. Look at this room. Haven’t I been
trying to arrange it for weeks. Look what I’ve tried to do. You’re all against me – all of you . . .’ A frightful fit of coughing shook him. It went on and on until he could
not see, but hung over the piano still gripping my arm, coughing, an intolerable dry agonizing cough, until I could feel the wracking tearing pain in his lungs, through the frantic grasping of his
fingers in my arm. Gradually he stopped; shivered, and whimpered a little, his hair over his face. I pushed back his hair automatically; his forehead was dry and burning. My sister had heard the
shouting and was at the open door. Together we led him upstairs. He did not seem to notice us at all.

He collapsed in bed, and my sister went for the doctor. I went back to the studio; I think with an idea that I might tidy some of the chaos. It was impossible. There were letters in grey ink,
sheets of music paper with a few bars scrawled in the middle, yellow photographs of singers with bands round their heads and opulent shoulders twisted into coy or smug angles. There were tiny
morose men with cellos, and a fat creature with a flute, all of them scrawled with ink that had spurted over the shiny surfaces. To dear Alfred; With kindest remembrances to dear Alfred; To my dear
friend – Alfred. Profuse and forgotten affections sprawled over the grey pictures with their faint yellow gloss. There were programmes, with ‘First Performance’ in brackets under
the announcements of my father’s works. All the machinery of music lay rampant; even the curtain rail was loose and unbalanced, pointing down across the window, with the rings of the
remaining curtain slipping off if anyone slammed a door or a cab passed in the street. There were whole shelves full and untouched. He seemed only to have cleared the less accessible cupboards high
up by the picture rail or down by the skirting board. There were ragged press cuttings, unnaturally thin and flat, of concerts I had never heard: it was all a generation beyond me. He seemed to
have no present; only a long uncertain past about which I knew nothing; except for the bowls filled with light grey ash and the little contorted stubs of cigarettes. And so while I vainly attempted
to arrange his possessions, I sought for some purpose in his life that would comfort me; some joy he had had which I could imagine; some faith or reason which had warmed his heart. I ended by
sitting on the floor staring at the rail across the window. My sister came in with a tray on which she collected the cups and bowls of ash.’

‘The doctor has come.’ She stopped to take a bowl out of my hands. ‘Pneumonia. Isn’t it odd that he should have said that to mother In the street? Do you remember?’
– she persisted, pressing the unnecessary drama at me.

‘Of course, is it bad?’

‘Yes, it’s acute pneumonia of the right lung. We shall have to fight, he will need very careful nursing.’ Her face was lit with her energy and resolve. She was one of those
people who are most themselves when faced with illness.

‘For what purposed?’

‘For what purpose?’ her shocked voice repeated. ‘So that he shall recover.’ She set down the tray and came to me. I don’t think you understand. It’s serious.
He may die. It would be terrible. Mother would be all alone. I have tried to keep the danger of his illness from her. He will need constant nursing until his crisis. But I can do it. You must help
Mother, it is a terrible shock to her. He is delirious.’

I felt the tears spring out of my eyes and put out my hands. ‘I don’t want him to die.’

‘Now you mustn’t do that. You must pull yourself together. There’s going to be quite enough to do without your giving way. Think how much worse it is for Mother.’

‘Or him,’ I sobbed.

‘He doesn’t know anything about it,’ she said quickly. ‘We must pray for him,’ she added seriously.

There was nothing more to say. I got up and followed her, feeling in some curious way deeply ashamed of both of us.

She nursed my father devotedly, until, indeed, there was very little for either my mother or me to do. She sat up with him every night, only consenting to lie down for three hours in the
afternoon. She supervised his broths and medicine; cleaned his room, and was always freshly competent for the frequent visits of the doctor. My mother and I sat dumbly in the living-room, starting
up almost guiltily if we were called by my sister to perform some minor task.

I think my mother was paralysed all through that time: stripped bare of her daily round, dreary and uneventful as it was, she was revealed in all the unbalance and inadequacy of pure despair,
unrelieved by even the warmth of a burning affection for my father. She was simply dependent on him. He was part of her structure, and the possibility of his no longer being in the house was
appalling. She was always ready to acknowledge the superior qualities of her daughter. ‘Oh no, I am sure he would rather your sister did that.’ Her humility was almost unbearable to me.
She did not even claim her share of anxiety or grief, effaced herself and her emotions: but I would see her drop her mending and stare ahead, her eyes dull and desperate in her bewilderment, and I
imagined two little questions stabbing her mind, ‘Will he die?’ and ‘What shall I do?’ just as I found myself endlessly asking, ‘What was the use? Have we been worth
it to him? Was there any alternative for him? Does he care what happens to him now?’

I sat with him, one stifling hot night, having persuaded my sister to go to bed for the first time since he had been ill.

He lay on his back, his head propped with pillows, because breathing was a continuously painful effort to him. Occasionally he dozed. I sat in the dim light, acutely conscious in the silence of
his irregular rasping breaths, until I leaned forward while each separate gasp was achieved, and the minutes hung heavy and single in the airless room. Then some unknown dream or imagined sound
would force him awake, exhausted and querulous. What time was it? he would ask.

The hours struck by the church clock, an eternity apart; ten; eleven; and twelve. I remember him raising himself at the last and asking ‘Is it nearly over?’ and my not knowing what
to reply. He waited a moment then leaned back; an expression of peevish fear like a child flitted across his face. ‘Midnight,’ he murmured. ‘No, it’s only just
begun.’

‘Would you like me to read to you?’

He made a little gesture of indifference with his fingers on the sheet. I searched for a book; those in the room were all about religion (my sister’s design). I found a copy of the
Imitation of Christ
bound in white vellum with a rich golden cross, and opened it at random.

‘On the contempt of all temporal honour,’ I read.

‘Oh that,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to consider my death you know.’ I looked up startled, and found his eyes alive and appraising.

‘Of course not,’ I fumbled. ‘You’re going to get well.’

‘I didn’t mean that,’ he said, and we were silent again, conscious of the chance lost between us.

Part of the night I had an insane desire to tell him that it had been a good thing to devote his life to music, or to have made me, or any of his children; but my own uncertainty loomed before
me so immensely that I was prevented. Snatches of his music and aspects of my sister and myself raced through my mind, but they did not help me even privately to any kind of reassurance; and
finally I was forced to believe in my separate distant brothers who were expected home at any moment. My sister had written to them, with the result that Tom, the schoolmaster, was coming for one
night and Hubert, the embryo accountant, for a week.

And so the night wore wearily away, and I wondered whether it was any comfort to my father to believe that it was as long for me as for him.

He swallowed his medicine, patiently cynical of its properties, and breathed his way painfully through the hours. He did not complain, which made his obsession with time, which was no longer any
use to him, more deeply touching.