The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot (35 page)

As she made her way to the basement where the coats were strewn
on an old double divan bed she saw that some couples were getting down to more than embraces. She wondered for a second that the expression ‘getting down to’ should come into her thoughts, then realized her wish to reduce all this drunken sexual pleasure to the lowest level. She had often challenged Bill for his contempt for what he called ‘kids’ dirty games’.

‘All right,’ she had been used to say, ‘it’s
not
grown up. We aren’t asked to the children’s parties, so what does it matter? Top people take
The
Times
,’ she had teased him, ‘but we can’t all be top.
Someone’s
got to buy
Reveille
.’ She had hated to hear him censorious. But now she thought, I liked his success but I didn’t want the constrained outlook that went with it. Perhaps if I hadn’t driven him so, he would have been more easy going in his attitude to others; perhaps he envied them a life that the blending of all his energies towards success made impossible. She rejected the thought angrily; in whatever else he had been frustrated, his sexual passion, his ease of lovemaking had always woken an answering desire in her.

Suddenly her longing for him was so intense that she felt that her legs would give way on the staircase; sheer misery made the hall and the people crowded there shiver and scatter before her eyes. She held on to the banister. For a moment or so the thought was with her to stay at the party and get drunk – any oblivion from this loneliness. Then, horrified, she realized that, half-formed in her mind, was the image of some man, any man taking her – if she were drunk enough she could forget that it was not Bill. She ran down the stairs now, buffeting her way through the vague figures in front of her.

By the time she had found her coat she had recovered from the fright her thoughts had given her. A young couple were strained tightly against one another behind the half open door. In the corner on the floor, propped against a cupboard door, sat a dark, flushed faced man. With his points of hair, his up-slanted dark eyes and his long curling lips, he must once, Meg thought, have been handsome in a rather showy, Mephistophelean way. Now his eyes were bloodshot and a heavy blue jowl had taken the shape from his face. Leaning against his bent up knees was a thin blonde. She, too, Meg saw, must have been noted for the shapely bone structure of her head – one of the many distinguished Dietrichs of the pre-war days. Now her face seemed merely bone with the skin stretched over it. He had unzipped her dress at the back and was feeling around her breasts. Scrabbling old rat, Meg thought. But the woman seemed hardly to notice his
hand. She was staring straight ahead with her deadened blue eyes and her little wrinkle-edged mouth was snapping away in talk.

‘If they think I have any intention of putting myself out for
anyone
,’ she was saying, ‘they’ve got another guess coming. I’ve had my fill of helping others and you may as well know it.’

As she went up the stairs Meg determined to think no more about it all. It’s not my world and that’s that, she decided, but there’s no point in being censorious. Then she asked herself why she was always so anxious these days not to appear priggish. It’s as though I were an old virgin afraid of turning sour, she thought. I’m not going to pretend. I
don’t
like a lot of public promiscuity; the middle-aged ones at any rate are ugly and squalid. She must have spoken the last thoughts aloud for a little, jolly, grey-haired Lesbian said, ‘Well!
Thank
you.’ Instead of apologizing or explaining, Meg found herself excusing her argument. ‘I dare say it’s all right at any age so long as they’re really
enjoying
it.’ The little Lesbian said in a slightly bitter tone, ‘How very big-hearted of you.’ Meg, thinking that she must be much drunker than she’d supposed, found herself at last outside in the street.

It was only then that she remembered Tom. The altruistic reasons she had found for getting him to accompany her now seemed more threadbare than ever. She wondered why she had pretended to herself without any evidence that Tom would find a more valuable set of friends by going to Poll’s party. I suppose, she thought, I wanted to be of help – for ‘be of help’ read ‘hand out patronage’, she amended. ‘You’ve got an awful lot to learn about yourself, my girl,’ she said aloud. ‘You’re so used to knowing the “right person” that you can’t believe you haven’t always got the answer to everyone’s needs.’ But still that was that. She could only hope that he had enjoyed himself, was doing so now, would do so, because really after his kiss she couldn’t suppose that he was absolutely sex shy, at any rate when he was filled up with drink. She set off to look for a taxi. Even now she found herself deciding that Tom probably never went much further than ‘pawing about’. People who boast a lot of their sexual prowess are never … She asked herself on what experience she based this
long-held
view – on her own behaviour, on Bill’s, on the behaviour of people they knew. People of good taste are silent about their sex life. She saw it high up on a building in Piccadilly Circus flashing in and out in green and orange. What a lot of utterly tasteless prejudices of ‘good taste’ I’ve collected over the years, she thought; I
have
got a lot to learn. In any case Tom was no model of good taste. Good luck to
him! She was reminded of a rather sinister, fat classical master at David’s school. ‘I hope he enjoys himself
to
the full
,’ she said, smacking her lips in imitation of the master’s manner. And come to that, she thought,
I
enjoyed myself; if I couldn’t take the ‘wildness’, well that’s my affair – in any case it’s not surprising if drink makes me a little hysterical at the moment, nothing to worry about. In my own way I enjoyed myself. I shouldn’t want that particular way very often, but there are hundreds of other ways. I shall enjoy them all
to
the
full,
she said, smacking her lips again and giggling. I must be very drunk, she thought. But whatever else, it was a comfort to know that all the ‘learning about herself’ that lay ahead of her wasn’t going to be an entirely miserable experience; a greater comfort.

A motor horn sounded loudly; someone was hooting at her.
Another
of the things she’d been warned about years ago. Really, it seemed that life was almost too like a nice girl’s guess.

It was only Tom. ‘What the hell are you doing capering off like that without me?’ he called. Meg thought, dear God, he’s aggressively drunk; he looks so pathetic when he’s trying to look tough, that
absurd
little beard! I must treat it all very seriously. We don’t want a scene.

She said, ‘I thought you were having fun, Tom, I didn’t want …’

He flung open the car door. ‘Get in,’ he said, cutting her short. She thought, his manners really are appalling.

She said sharply, ‘I never asked you to …’

‘Get in,’ he shouted.

She thought it best to obey. Seated next to him, she said, ‘I hope you didn’t hate it all too much. Poll’s collected a rather terrible crew round her. But I thought it was quite fun. At least …’

Tom said, ‘Shut up.’ She looked at him in amazement; then she realized that the drink had made him not angry but randy. Dear God, she thought, some girl’s turned him down and he’s too drunk to
remember
who I am. Automatically her voice took on a maternal note. ‘Tom, dear,’ she said, ‘watch your driving, won’t you.’ He
immediately
swerved across the road and, when she gave a scream, swerved again. He righted the car.

‘Frightened?’ he asked. ‘Good, I like that’

She wondered what fantastic picture of himself he had built up out of what ghastly ‘tough’ novels. She did not know whether to be more alarmed by the thought that he was completely drunk in charge of the car or by the growing doubt that he was not so drunk as all that. After
all, he seemed in complete control of the steering, and, if so, he must be perfectly conscious of all the nonsense he was spouting at her. Spouting, indeed, was the right word, for every time he spoke, he showered her with spittle; but that proved nothing, he always spat when he spoke. She could cope with him, she felt sure, once they were back at the flat; she would have to do it soothingly because she wouldn’t wish Viola to be brought on the scene; but then nor would he, unless he was much drunker than she now believed. It was in the car that she felt so powerless; she had a dread of motor smashes that the absence of traffic at that hour hardly reassured. He might try to give her one of those unpleasant bristly kisses, but it would not be difficult to avoid him so long as he continued to drive. If he put his arm round her shoulder, she would let well alone – ignore it and talk.

In fact, he put his hand up her skirt. She grasped his wrist firmly; for a moment she thought he was going to tighten his hold on her thigh, but then his fingers relaxed and he allowed her to remove his hand. She forced herself to keep silent, knowing that anything she said in her surprise and anger would sound, at any rate to her own ears, ridiculous. They drove on for a few minutes in silence. She was shivering with the suppression of her feelings. She found a cigarette. He took his lighter from his waistcoat pocket and flicking it with his left hand, gave her a light.

Then suddenly he braked and stopped the car and, turning towards her, began to pull her to him. His grasp was stronger than she could have expected; she had to exert her full force to push him away.

‘Don’t be a bloody fool,’ he said. ‘You know you want it.’ His voice had taken on an artificial, virile, insolent note, yet she knew as he said it that he believed it to be true. With his hands on her shoulder blades he began to bend her back on to the seat. With difficulty she took her cigarette from her lips and deliberately brushed its lighted end against his hand.

He let out a sort of puppy’s yelp. ‘You cow,’ he said, but he still held her with the other arm. She edged towards the car door. ‘I
suppose,
’ he said, ‘I’ve said the wrong thing. I forget you’re still so much the blasted lady. All right.
I
want it. Is
that
better?’

Fumbling for the door handle behind her, she could still register relief that he was in fact very drunk. She pushed his mouth away with her right hand, feeling his saliva on her fingers, and with the left at last twisted the door handle downwards. As the door swung open, he
seemed to give up the struggle. He was, she thanked God, not drunk enough to start the car again as she was getting out.

He leaned drunkenly through the open door. ‘All right,’ he said. Sleep seemed to be overtaking him, for he could hardly get the words out and his eyelids kept closing involuntarily. ‘All right. I’m sorry. I’ve behaved bloody badly. Please get in. If you’ve got to put me in the dirt with Mother, I shan’t blame you.’

She said, ‘Tom, you’re too drunk to drive, and too drunk to talk to. Let me take the wheel.’ For a moment she thought he was about to become angry again, but he fell across on to the passenger’s seat. ‘It’s all yours,’ he said. He was asleep in a minute.

Meg did not herself find driving all that easy – houses and
lamp-posts
seemed so unsteady that night. She crept along slowly and her heart pounded violently when a policeman appeared in one of the deserted Kensington streets. Bill had always driven when they
returned
from cocktail parties. A man and a woman were quarrelling outside High Street Kensington tube station. Their raised voices woke Tom. He smiled strangely – with self-satisfaction and ironically, she thought. Then he spoke. ‘You don’t know what you’ve missed,’ he said. ‘You’re so bloody tightened up. Always have been. Married to an old man. You’ve never had a proper screwing.’ Outside the dismal block of flats she left him sleeping in the car. I hope he gets run in, she thought, a spell of prison would do him no harm. She would
not
touch him now if it were needed to save him from death.

She slept as soon as she was in bed and woke at half past five with choking indigestion. She had gone to bed raging against Tom, she woke still angry with him, but her rage was turned against herself. She looked back on the past weeks with acute embarrassment; she saw herself going about with him from café to pub, acting the
gracious
, amusing, understanding surrogate mother, but regarded no doubt by his friends as his rather elderly next lay – no wonder that they had been embarrassed by her presence. Who knew what mission tales of releasing her from sex starvation Tom had been preaching while she had been playing the woman of the world aunt? She should have guessed at his feelings weeks ago, when first her reduced status had encouraged him to drop the odd dirty word at her, to give her what she now realized were lecherous looks. Instead with her ‘friendly understanding’ she had been encouraging the wretched – no, not wretched,
her
folly didn’t excuse
him
– the filthy little brute. Bill had always said he was that – ‘he’ll get himself into trouble some
time, expose himself or something’. But as Bill’s voice echoed in her ears, she knew that he had been as wrong as she about Tom. Tom was neither a pathetic child nor a delinquent one; or rather he was both, but he was also, she felt sure now, a young man, who for all his inadequacy in other things, got plenty of sex of the kind he wanted. Yet even that she didn’t really know; perhaps his outbreak had been the drunken release of years of repression. Whatever it was, she saw clearly now where she stood in his fantasy – the grand lady who’d been knocked off her pedestal, and it would be no comfort if some psycho-analyst were to tell her that she was only standing in for his mother in the great degradation scene.

Almost more revolting to her than the squalid, dirty dreams he’d presumably always had about her was the idea that she had ever
encouraged
them by appearing so untouchable, like some Victorian
grande
dame.
Nevertheless what he had said of Bill was unforgivable; absurd, untrue, cheap, but still unforgivable. If somehow she could have managed the whole affair better, an him off from the moment he made the first pass in the car, it would never have been said, she need never have heard it; and it was no excuse for her ineptitude to say that she was not used to such scenes; at her age she should have the instinctive power to put an impertinent boy in his place. Now – and the frustration of it increased her fury – she would have to find some way of tolerating his presence for a week or so until she could find a plausible excuse to give to Viola for leaving the flat.