The House in Paris (11 page)

An hour later she went to the post again, this time with a letter to Mme Fisher in Paris.

On her way up from the pillar-box through the garden, she came upon Uncle Bill, rooting daisies up with a spud round the edge of the tennis court. The net to keep balls from flying into the view had been put up, the court had been marked once, but they had not played yet. It seemed to her that he looked more alarmed than ever, but she supposed that was only her own mood. But, suddenly looking up, with his creased face red all over from stooping, he said: 'Do you think your aunt is looking well?'

'Why, yes,' said Karen, surprised. ' — Can I find another spud? I should like to do daisies too.'

'There isn't another,' said Uncle Bill distractedly. His face twitched; he looked quickly away from Karen. 'She's going to have an operation, you know.'

'Aunt
Violet?'

'No, you couldn't know; we're not telling the family; she won't hear of upsetting them.'

'Oh — Is it — is it as bad as that?'

Up there in the drawing-room Aunt Violet began playing Schubert: notes came stepping lightly on to the moment in which Karen realized she was going to die. Phrases of music formed and hung in the garden, where violently green young branches flamed in the spring dusk. A hurt earthy smell rose from the piteous roots of the daisies and those small wounds in the turf that her uncle, not speaking, kept pressing at with his toe. Down there below the terrace, the harbour locked in green headlands lay glassy under the close sky. No one familiar in Karen's life had died yet: the scene round her looked at once momentous and ghostly, as in that light that sometimes comes before storms.

'But she's just like she's been always.'

His desperate little blue eyes inside their network of creases crept round to meet Karen's, then guiltily crept away. 'I shouldn't have told you,' he said.

'No, I'm glad you did.'

'It's on my mind,' he said helplessly.

'Then it was better to tell someone.'

'Maybe you're right.'

'But operations are to make people get well.'

Uncle Bill's unflinchingly wretched silence sent Karen down on her knees to heap up the daisy roots. Feeling mown grass brush the sides of her hands, which shook, she swept the daisies round her into a heap. She said, thinking aloud: 'But everything here goes on as if it would never stop.'

'That's what she wants, you know; she likes things to go on.'

They did go on. Every fine morning, Aunt Violet was to be seen trailing about the upper terraces of the garden, followed by Uncle Bill until twelve struck, when she sent him down to the town. There was always some little thing to be done in town. She did not go too, because everything was down hill, which meant walking back up the steep avenue. She said there was always something in the garden to go on doing, but what she did there never showed much. On cold mornings or when it rained, she wrote letters slowly at the table in the bow-window, among the crowd of brass objects, candlesticks, scales, paper-weights, racks and trays. Now and then she would pause and look at the skyline, looking for the right word or something to say next. At one they sat down to lunch at the table decked with daffodils, and Uncle Bill told Aunt Violet whom he had met in town; he never failed to meet somebody. After lunch she went up to rest, Uncle Bill darting constantly in and out to make sure she was still resting. Karen went for her walks then. At a quarter to five tea was carried into the drawing-room, a brass kettle on a tripod over a thin blue flame. No gong rang for this; Aunt Violet appeared by instinct, her back hair a little matted from lying down. Her hair, fine and limp as silk, was built up elaborately in an Edwardian manner and only re-done once a day, before dinner. Almost at once, as though waiting for one another, Aunt Violet would lift off the tea-cosy by its frill and Uncle Bill raise the lid of the muffin-dish to see what kind of hot cakes there were today. The hot cakes were always running with butter: she would look to see if he were pleased, he always was pleased, then they exchanged a smile. Neighbours sometimes came in to tea, but nothing held up the smile between Uncle Bill and Aunt Violet; they only talked rather more about old times and how one had to make the best of things now. After tea she played the piano or did not play the piano, while Uncle Bill kept within earshot to hear what she was at. Aunt Violet came down to dinner wrapped up in old lace, with a submerged diamond brooch glittering through; Uncle Bill put on a velveteen smoking jacket. Later, she sat with her feet up on the sofa, knitting the balls of white wool away, near a lamp, while he rustled through the day before's
Times
forebodingly, and Karen, looking up from some book she had found here, found her thoughts circling objects and light in the room as aimlessly and returning as a moth .. . All the ticking clocks did little to time here. Here they hung on their hill over the inland sea, and seemed as safe as young swallows under an eave. But fate is not an eagle, it creeps like a rat.

'I ought not to have come,' said Karen.

'No, no; she was specially glad.'

'You can't want me here, when ...'

Your aunt feels you are company for me,' he said.

'Is this ... on her mind at all?'

You could see they never spoke of it. The music indoors stopped, which made Uncle Bill look anxiously at the house. Aunt Violet appeared in the French window, touching her back hair vaguely with one hand. With eyes in this light grey evening startlingly light and blue she looked down at them, and Karen saw she already did not live where she lived, but was elsewhere, like the music that had stopped. She saw, too, why the peace of Mount Iris was so fatalistic, as though those two were a couple expecting their first child. Aunt Violet came down the steps from the top terrace to look at the heap of daisies. 'Poor little things,' she said, 'it seems waste.'

'I must get them done before dinner,' exclaimed her husband, and hurried off to the end of the court with his spud.

'We ought to get the court marked again and have tennis soon,' said Aunt Violet. 'I know Uncle Bill would enjoy playing with you.' Was she perhaps conscious something was in the air, like a very light rain of ashes? She glanced up at the sky. Then, taking Karen's arm as though to say: 'Come away from this,' she walked with her to the parapet at the edge of the lawn. They stood looking out through the mended net at the view. You were well-educated,' she said suddenly.

'Why?' said Karen, feeling with horrified tenderness her aunt's hand on her arm.

'You always seem to know what you want to do next. I mean, going off for walks by yourself and knowing where to go to. I never did much until people suggested things.'

'Yes, I know what I want at the moment, but not always after that.'

Her aunt did not take this in but gazed at her own hand lying on Karen's arm intently — surprised, perhaps, that so much had got itself said, for she never spoke much, or as though the hand were a mystery to herself. She was simple enough not to be alarmed by personal talk. She went on: 'As a child, even, you used to have so much character. I remember I always felt you would have an interesting life. You do, I expect, don't you?'

'I suppose so,' said Karen.

'I never had very much character. But people have always been good to me. Perhaps that was the reason.'

'Which was the reason for which, do you mean, Aunt Violet?'

Her aunt, after a moment, said resignedly: 'I'm afraid I don't know.' Karen, looking across the harbour one saw from here, felt her Aunt Violet studying her profile, no more intrusively than if they had been standing yards apart. It was disarming, this disembodied closeness. But then the middle-aged woman withdrew a little, glancing down at her own breast as though Karen's clear-cut outline had made her suddenly shy. 'One sometimes wishes one had done more,' she said.

'But you being you is enough for anybody.'

Aunt Violet took this with such unmoved stillness and sadness that Karen realized how often it must have been said, and what a stone for bread the remark was. There had been her two happy husbands — apart from everyone else. Letting go of Karen's arm, she sat down on the parapet with her back to the view and began to pull rather helplessly at an ivy stem. 'I meant, selfishly,' she said. 'I was thinking more of myself.'

This was like hearing a picture you had always loved to look at, dearer than a 'great' picture, sigh inside its frame. That it should be less sustaining to be than to see Aunt Violet struck you with remorse. To something proud and restless — the spirit, perhaps — that looked out from inside her, nothing must make death more humbling than the idea of its ease: death should have a harder victory.
This
was stepping through still one more door held courteously open for her. Better to be rooted out hurt, bleeding, alive, like the daisies from the turf, than blow faintly away across the lawn like a straw. All these years she had stood by, uncritically smiling, had she been wanting really, like other women, to be the heart of things, to
be
what was going on? No wonder she gave such tender attention to small everyday things, living as people wish they could live over again, slighting nothing. The writing-table overlooking the sea, where she rested her elbows among the brass ornaments, her bedroom curtains drawn across the daylight must be heavy with her regretful wonder, not about death, about life. Every afternoon when they had finished tea, she blew out the wavering blue flame under the kettle, then glanced round the drawing-room where she still was. Closing her piano, she heard the silence. Wherever she had lived, her life had been full of people dropping in for a minute from somewhere else, or making her their somewhere else. No one asked her to understand, or wanted what happened to them to happen to her. Could she have wished to be trodden down in a riot, be a mark for anger or go down on a helpless abandoned ship? Her life here was very much confined, for she must on no account walk uphill. Did she ever think, Well, what if I walk uphill?

'Oh, Karen,' she said presently, as though she had to be clear about some plan for tomorrow,
'are
you going to marry Ray?'

That's what he asked this morning,' said Karen, startled.

'Then it's not quite settled?'

'I thought it was. We seemed to be as much engaged as we could be. I can't see why he has brought it all up.'

'People like to be certain,' said Aunt Violet.

'I don't think it's so much that. He can't be content with just me; he keeps wanting to know my feelings, or whatever it is. What I do is not enough, he always wants to know why. Surely our being happy should be enough for him? Outside, he is so different; you could never guess that. If he wants me, he shouldn't keep asking the whole time. If one begins to think, why should one ever do anything? Marry most of all. Yes, I want to marry him. But I don't want to do anything that a reason's been found for; I want to do something I must do. My painting used to be that.'

Aunt Violet said humbly: 'Couldn't love be a reason?'

'If you look close, there may be a reason for love.'

'Oh! I had never thought of that.'

'I shouldn't want to marry anyone else. He really is a plain man; simply, it doesn't suit him to keep on asking questions. If he must have reasons why we should marry, there are really only too many: we are the same kind of people, we think the same things are funny, we do not embarrass each other, we should have enough money and everybody we meet out at dinner will say what a charming couple we are — Aunt Violet, I know you know I should not go on like this if there were not really something much more. I know the third thing there when we are together is good. And I want him, in every way. No, I know I couldn't bear him to marry anyone else.'

'I don't suppose he'd do that,' said Aunt Violet placidly.

'I don't know. Something funny might happen.'

Her aunt turned on the parapet to look at the view, and the whole question of marriage went out of focus. Karen, stepping up on to the matted ivy beside her, looked across the harbour too. Standing like that, she towered over Aunt Violet as she had been made to feel she towered in character. She felt she was expected to carry anything off: our elders deceive themselves by their hero-worship of youth. Aunt Violet had spoken of Karen's marriage as, simply, a pleasant plan for tomorrow: having been so much a woman all through her own life, had she hoped her niece might be something more? Her open-minded questions touched a spring in Karen that young people dread: all your youth, you want to have your greatness taken for granted; when you find it taken for granted, you are unnerved.

You will keep up your drawing?' said Aunt Violet. 'I am sure it would be a pity to give that up.'

'No, I may stop; I'm afraid of finding I can't draw — You're cold, Aunt Violet, you shivered: ought we to go 'No, I'm not cold. I just want to watch that ship.'

They both watched the trawler with red funnels clear the Lee estuary and steam down Cobh harbour towards the open sea. Round an edge of cloud, the last of an unseen sunset shed light that made the veined leaves under the terrace sharp and still as a photograph.

'The harbour is good company,' said her aunt.

Karen, with her eyes on the ship, said: 'And yet in a way I would rather fail point-blank. Things one can do have no value. I don't mind feeling small myself, but I dread finding the world is. With Ray I shall be so safe. I wish the Revolution would come soon; I should like to start fresh while I am still young, with everything that I had to depend on gone. I sometimes think it is people like us, Aunt Violet, people of consequence, who are unfortunate: we have nothing ahead. I feel it's time something happened.'

'Surely so much has happened,' said Aunt Violet. 'And mightn't a revolution be rather unfair?'

'I shall always work against it,' said Karen grandly. 'But I should like it to happen in spite of me.'

'But what would become of your Uncle Bill? He has always been so good, and no one would think of him.'

Karen saw this was too true. Stepping down from the parapet, she stood frowning at a green stain on the toe of her white shoe. Aunt Violet, still watching the trawler, said: "Was there anyone else you liked?'