The Beautiful Visit (3 page)

The boy didn’t turn over the page but folded it away back into the envelope and his pocket. ‘The rest is just about writing and what to read,’ he said.

I was paralysed. It was the first time I found myself facing something about which I had never thought, and was quite incapable of judging even generally, good from bad.

‘He means, if you are going to change be sure why, and know what you want to change into, or else it would be like throwing your clothes away and being naked.’

‘But if you want to change,’ I said. ‘If you want everything to be different, it’s because the old things are dreary and dead and
anything
else would be new to
you.’

‘Not necessarily good though.’

‘Supposing you wanted them new at all costs? Surely sometimes anything different would be better?’

‘To think or to do?’

‘I can’t separate them,’ I said.

He looked at me rather scornfully. ‘I don’t think you can. But don’t you see by renouncing anything blindly without substitute you expose yourself to any fool or
foolishness.’

‘But supposing you hate everything that is in you,’ I cried desperately, ‘and you’ve never had a chance to know anything else, you only know you must change, what do you
do then? You have to throw things away.’ A litter of fairy books and dolls’ clothes flung across my mind.

‘You can read can’t you?’ he demanded fiercely. ‘And talk to people. Learn, listen, and find out, and then choose.’ And he went on in stern little spurts of energy
and knowledge, serious, even sententious, but it didn’t seem that then; only marvellous and rather frightening that one could be my age and know so much, and then be so fierce, and excited
and serious about it.

My thoughts were like shillings in a pool, glittering and blurred, shimmering to the groping finger and always deeper and more elusive, until you think that perhaps there isn’t a shilling
at all, it seems so far out of reach. I floundered and the words wouldn’t come. He forced me relentlessly into corners, and I felt the back of my neck getting hot, and warm little shivers
down my spine. I didn’t tell him about myself lest he should scorn what then seemed to me such childish endeavour. He raced on through religion, came triumphantly to blasphemous conclusions.
Education was stabbed with a ferocity I had never before encountered; until it lay a bewildered mess of Latin, historical dates and cricket stumps. And then the older generation was subjected to a
vitriolic attack: such remorseless contempt, such despairing anger, such a thunder of criticism was broken over their meek, bald and bun-like heads that I was dumb at the death of so large a body;
trembling with anxious rapture of choice and the still distance of freedom.

He stared at the gravel, his talk calming. The kite lay between us on the bench, its paper stretched between the struts, breathing and rucked a little in the breeze. I had not attempted to argue
or deny, I was quite incapable of either; it just seemed to me that my solitude was at an end; and his talk, his spate of words were rushing, like liquid, into my mind.

‘What about
your
parents?’ he said, suddenly lifting his head.

‘Oh they – I have the same trouble.’

‘Do they stop you doing things?’

‘No, not exactly. There’s nothing for them to stop.’

‘What does your father do?’

‘He writes music.’

‘Oh, that should make it simpler for you.’

‘I don’t think it does. Anyway I don’t think he thought much about it being simple for anyone when he started. There isn’t much money and my mother’s always
tired.’

‘I’m cold,’ he said and rose to his feet. ‘You’re cold too,’ looking down on me. It was an impersonal remark but I blushed and rose with a murmuring denial.
It was blue grey, and the Gardens were nearly empty. We walked home almost in silence, and apprehension superseded the excitement I had known on the bench with the letter and the kite.

Lights were showing from houses, but mine was dark. I noticed the paint bubbled and peeling off the plaster, and the windows powdered and dull with dust.

We went in to tea.

‘Do you always keep your door open?’

‘Yes. It saves so much time.’ My teeth were chattering and I didn’t want to talk.

‘I like that.’ He put the kite on two chairs in the hall.

‘Do you want to wash?’

He looked surprised, and urged me on down the passage. The dining-room was terribly near. I prayed that they wouldn’t all be there. They would put down their cups and their bread and look
up, all towards the door, at him, and at me, and back to him again, and there would be a stealthy concert against speaking first, an awkward calm, which I must clumsily break. I opened the door.
They put down their cups.

‘He’s come to tea,’ I said, and turned to him blocking their sight. ‘I can’t remember your name.’

‘Michael Latham,’ he muttered as though it meant nothing, and he had learned it by heart.

‘Come and sit down, Michael. Milk and sugar, Michael?’ My mother wielded the tea-pot.

My father resumed his reading of
Blackwood’s Magazine
. Michael stared at him. My sister lowered her eyes and scraped strawberry jam neatly with her knife. I could think of nothing
to say. There was an exhausted pupil swallowing tea with a pale film; it was cold, and he had been too nervous and depressed to drink it, until he had felt sure that attention was diverted from him
and his tremendous, thick, white hands. Michael ate an enormous tea, punctuated by monosyllabic replies to my mother’s and sister’s small inquisitive advances. He seemed fascinated by
my father, watching him timidly and bending his head abrupt and shy if my father turned a page or stirred his tea.

How to escape and where? My brothers always seemed to manage it when they had friends to tea. They clattered with one purposeful rush to their large bedroom, where they remained for the evening.
If, for any reason, I had ever gone into their room, they were always to be found standing in a conspiratorial group, quite silent and apparently doing nothing, frozen like animals at an
unavoidable intrusion; hostile, scarcely breathing, with some secret purpose deep in their minds. I could not take Michael upstairs; I knew that for some reason my parents would not like it.

‘Are you going to use the studio?’ I asked my father. The pupil wriggled and hid his hands with a desperate little grin.

‘I have to play something over once. Why?’

‘I thought that if it was empty it would be a good place for us to go,’ I said.

‘Do you want somewhere to play?’

‘No. It doesn’t matter.’

‘Well I want somewhere to play and I can’t move my toys about as you can.’ And he went on reading.

I saw Michael furiously kneading his bread, with shining eyes. There was a meek little silence; my mother was filling the tea-pot and we were all eating our tea, regardless of anything but our
little personal movements.

I knew that if we were to escape I must get up and know where we were to go.

Better get on with it. I rose to my feet and in the same instant I heard Michael say, ‘Could I hear you play, sir?’

My father looked up, a little pleased. ‘Certainly, if you like.’

My heart thudded and I felt very cold. There was a general movement and I found myself in the studio, my father at the piano, with Michael and the pupil in appreciative attitudes. He played for
two hours, and then Michael left. He stopped being shy with my father, thanked him with a great jerk of enthusiasm, and shook his hand twice very quickly. I walked with him down the steps to the
gate.

‘Well thank you,’ he said. ‘I loved hearing your father play. You never told me how good he was. I wish my family were like that.’

I was silent.

‘Music whenever you like and no one minding who you bring home. Marvellous. Thank you very much. Good-bye.’ And he went off with his kite.

I walked slowly back up the path. I would go upstairs, and perhaps I would cry a little because it finished a feeling more quickly and it would be easier to start again. It would be better to
stay alone for a bit in order to know how to talk about it at dinner. I was tired; my legs felt heavy and the sides of my forehead ached. In the hall I met my sister who smiled discreetly, as
though she knew the secret wrong thing, and suggested I lay the table for dinner. So I did. The girl who cooked helped me with fat pasty sighs, pushing her mauve fingers through her greasy hair and
saying ‘Yes Miss’ while she smeared boards and tables with a grey stringy cloth. I filled the water jug from the cold tap in the scullery which roared out in an angry gush, leaving me
with little round cold drops on my arms and chin; wiped the jug with a cloth; and carried it into the dining-room, where it left a little dim damp rim afterwards hidden by a cork mat. I edged the
blue glass mustard pot out of its silver frame, rinsed the malevolent brown crust with my fingers, half expecting it to sting; and mixed the fresh yellow powder to an appealing cream. Then I shook
the leather strap on which hung an assortment of Swiss cow bells, which wrangled among themselves, dreary and at the same time fierce, dying away into one surprisingly clear sweet note as they
settled into a trembling silence.

There was only just time to tear with a comb at my hair before we sat down. They wanted to know all about him. How I had found him. Where he lived, what his father did, and whether he had any
brothers or sisters. The worst of it was that they behaved quite nicely, especially my father, whose comments on his intelligence were unbarbed with sarcasm. I was surprised to find how little I
knew of Michael, but I took a secretly spiteful delight in evading any question the answer to which I knew. They asked if he was coming again, and I realized that unless I went to watch his kite
tomorrow I could not secure him. I said I didn’t know and the talk frittered away to our usual subjects.

I was not alone until I went to bed, and by then I did not want to cry, I did not even feel sad; there was only an exhausted irritation about the whole episode culminating in a dreary
uncertainty about whether to see him tomorrow. I had wanted him so desperately to bring his life to me, and he had identified himself with mine; I had thought he would bring a new air into the
house, and he had merged with my family until I was again alone.

‘I won’t go tomorrow.’ The thought gave me a queer little tinge of pride. ‘He may come again by himself. Or he may not.’

Two tears came out of my eyes. I fell asleep and dreamed that I was having tea at Michael’s house, which had pink and yellow walls. His father wrote me two hundred prescriptions in very
slanty handwriting, which we administered to an enormous shy man and I kept putting my tongue out at Michael, until he burst into tears and washed all the bottles with a grey cloth.

CHAPTER THREE

Michael did not come again, and I had no chance to mind, or to renew my search for anyone else, because a week later I was asked, or rather my sister was asked, to stay with a
family who were spending the Christmas holidays at their home in the country. The family were some distant connection of my mother’s, and my sister did not want to go. My mother wrote
refusing for her, and received a telegram a day later which said: ‘Send another daughter.’ Telegrams in my family meant that you had died or missed a train, so it caused a stir. My
father surprisingly decreed that I should go; so my mother worried over collars and stockings and my sister looked generously aloof. I was at first excited, and then appalled at the enormity of the
adventure, never having stayed anywhere by myself before. And now for a whole ten days I should be surrounded by people I did not know, with new rooms, food, furniture, and country. I knew guests
at parties had to do what was planned for them, although they were given the mockery of a choice; they had to pretend to enjoy it; their time was never their own until they were in bed in their new
room.

Whenever I could consider the visit calmly, I realized, of course, that this was my chance, the chance for which I had longed; to get right away from my family and see new people and a different
life. I was to go in a week from the telegram. As the days fled by I was less and less able to think calmly about it, and prayed that something, anything would happen to prevent it.

My mother took me shopping and bought me a red dress with black braid; a dark blouse; half a dozen stiff collars; a long thin jersey; and a pair of thick shoes. I was very quiet and did not
argue over her choice of colours. She looked at me once in an unusually penetrating manner, and then led me to another part of the shop where she bought a beautiful frock, of rose-coloured silk,
with knife thin pleating round the hem and foaming soft lace at the neck; a perfectly grown-up dress. She said that now I was sixteen I must put up my hair.

The dress fitted without any alteration, and my mother seemed gently pleased. She smiled and said would I like it? ‘There is sure to be a party and I want you to look nice,’ she
said.

The pleasure of the frock, its glowing colour, its delicate silky polish under my fingers, its grace and beautifully fitting silk, was so sharp that my eyes were liquid; I felt myself blushing
deeply and couldn’t speak for enchantment.

‘I don’t think we need try any more,’ my mother was saying to the assistant, and they went out of the little room. When they came back, I was still standing, staring at myself
in the dress. When I had taken it off, the assistant swung the frock with a delicious rustle over her arm.

‘Thank you. It’s beautiful. The most beautiful frock. Thank you.’

They both smiled. I had never seen my mother so much alive, and I felt a little thrill of sympathy as a cord between us: as though we had some private vague plan. I must glitter and be decked
and the reason was clouded and hidden: only they knew a little, I not at all. The assistant went away for wrappings and a pair of pink shoes: we were left alone, with the frock on the counter
between us.

‘Yes, it’s a pretty frock. I hope you have a good time in it,’ said my mother.

She seemed almost wistful. Suddenly I thought of red carpets under glass porches; men in top hats with dark green silk umbrellas helping her out of carriages to the golden luxury of a house
filled with lights and tiny little pink ices and a great shining hard floor on which to dance in a rose-coloured frock – all the things I imagined she had had before she married my father.
She fingered the frock and I could feel her looking ahead for me into those ten days, and beyond, as though I were a pebble to be dropped into water and she an exhausted outside ripple from the
pebble before. I was filled with a pity and distaste for her life, and the ten days suddenly became significant and timeless. I touched the frock: there was a heavy sweet taste in my mouth and the
resistance of panic mounting to a recklessness so that I couldn’t bear to be silent.