The Rules of Life (6 page)

‘When the Tovey maid had the face to hand me back, ironed and folded and flattened, the poor, ruined, de-natured garment, I did not bother to reproach her. I simply went straight to Julia and said:

‘“Lady Tovey, I am at a loss to understand why you worry so much about your son’s association with me. Nothing as lamentable as this would ever happen in a household over which
I
had control.”

‘I left her dribbling and boggling—she had a heavy jaw, which always seemed to me oddly loose—and made Timothy choose between me and her. He chose me, as I knew he would. I had hoped not to have forced the issue—there is nothing so dreary or repetitive as the conversation of a man torn by guilt—but I took the destruction of my nightdress (wilful or otherwise) as an omen. That is another of the rules.
Little things are sent to warn us
. A car which won’t start, or a log fire which sends smoke back into the room, milk souring in a jug, scrambled eggs burned—any trivial event which comes between the pleasure of two lovers foreshadows the wider breach. Nothing is without meaning. We whirl through our galaxy, matter and spirit hopelessly confused; a ball shot through with lightning streaks of good and bad, strands forever flying out from the central mass, then drifting back in towards it, trapped by the sheer gravity of animation; by the very energy of this great tumbling globe of being.’

I longed to ask Miss Sumpter more about the nature of the ‘central mass’, but if the pinner priests have solved the secret of direct communication with the departed they are keeping it to themselves. I could listen but I could not, as I suspect they can, enquire. It is, I grant, important and sensible for the priests of any religion to maintain a body of arcane knowledge, and when the Revised Great New Fictional Religion takes over I daresay we will have our secrets too; that is only prudent. As it happened, Miss Sumpter seemed to sense my enquiry. When she spoke next I had the clear sensation that she was addressing her remarks directly to me.

‘I can only compare the central globe to that pile of tangled threads to be found at the bottom of a neglected sewing box, but seized up, multiplied by infinity and sent spinning through the cosmos by an immense force. Amongst these tangles we spend our lives. Our task is the disentangling of the threads. They should never have got into this state in the first place.’

Oh, my beloved Miss Sumpter: your delicate fingers, plucking and pulling at my heart! If only you and I had been written into the same script; if only we had shared the same decades. I know you can feel my spirit, pressing in on yours, as I feel yours upon mine: we have been divided by time, by the error of the GSWITS or, more likely, of the Divine Typist who sitteth at His right side. Error, simple error, which by a malign fate dogs the footsteps of the GSWITS, and so dogs the course of all our lives! I would have made you happy, Gabriella—you would have borne my children … No! Stop—it must stop. Since my sessions here in the British Museum with the Sumpter Tapes I have been brusque and unkind to dear Honor. Not her fault she is so solid and practical, compared to the divine translucence of Gabriella Sumpter, re-wound, re-called, re-played. I must not forget that Honor is the mother of my children, and mothers perforce must end up as sensible people. They have no choice. How can I wish children upon Gabriella? Instead, I send curses on the Tovey maidservant, who dared to spoil my Gabriella’s muslin nightdress.

What happened to Gabriella and her beloved Dr Aldred was this. They could not marry, since he had contracted an unfortunate marriage at the age of eighteen and the laws of the land did not at that time allow for divorce by the desire of only one of the partners. Nevertheless, he bought her a wedding ring and she wore it proudly, and the village, in its kindness and goodwill, forbore to ask the young couple too many questions. As well as his medical work, Aldred was doing research into the epidemiology of infantile meningitis, a disease which plagued the neighbourhood: he would work late, late into the night, poring over pages of statistics, and Gabriella would sit by him as he worked, stroking his cheek, biting his ear—and he would of course break off from time to time to embrace her. (The sexual act, Miss Sumpter observed, is a great stimulant to the intellect.) As a result of their joint labours the local epidemic was stopped, a national epidemic prevented, and the young doctor became famous—though not of course rich.

‘Another of the rules’, Gabriella observes, ‘is that virtue is its own reward.
No one becomes rich by doing good
. Aldred gave up his country practise and he and I moved to London where he could the better continue his research. Aldred’s mother bought us a mean little flat in Hackney, within walking distance of the Mile End Research Institute. The beds were damp. Aldred’s mother was both a Catholic and a militant socialist, and did not, frankly, like me: no doubt she thought Aldred should have stayed with his boring wife and children and been a humble country doctor for ever. But people must, of course, aspire: there is no stopping them, no preventing them, if that is in their nature. Aldred’s mother should have saved her breath to cool her porridge. He was her only child. She wished to make him in her own image: a Christ amongst the sufferers. She could see in me, I expect—apart from the sheer youth and erotic energy which had, or so she thought, seduced her son away from the stony path she had laid out for him—that nature, so contrary to her own, which despises sufferers, which believes the halt, the lame and the old are better put out of their misery quickly, leaving the world to those who best inherit it. No wonder the beds she provided were damp!

According to my grandmother’s book there are few things more dangerous than damp beds. No bed should ever be allowed to become so. The moist air of a damp bed carries away the natural heat of a body with the most dangerous rapidity. The body becomes chilled; disease, and often death, ensue.
Sit up all night rather than sleep in a damp bed,
my grandmother advised.
Or, if you are only suspicious of dampness and wish for a night’s rest, wrap yourself in a blanket and cover yourself with all the clothes you can find, so as to allow no escape of heat.
After I had spent several nights so covered up, Aldred agreed that we should move to a house more suitable to my tastes, with rooms of a decent size, and a staff flat, so the servants could keep themselves to themselves, and not intrude on our bliss. I found just such a house in Orme Square, tucked in behind Hyde Park and Queensway. Wisteria hung its purple fronds over low windows; there was a little iron gate: I knew we would be happy there.

‘Aldred was worried about the general expense and the distance from his work, so I contrived to find him a post in Harley Street, which was only just around the corner, as assistant to Mr Clive Cunningham, the famous cosmetic surgeon. Everyone, I think, must take shifts at virtue. Aldred had saved the country from the scourge of meningitis: now he deserved to have some comfort, and some fun. The ailments of the rich, I always think, are easier to accept than the illnesses of the poor. And, the rich being more sensitive, the relief of their suffering is just as gratifying to the doctor. What’s more, the financial rewards are better! To sit up night after night as young lovers in a country cottage is one thing; to sit up in a damp-bedded Hackney slum quite another. It simply could not be. I would go up to Mr Cunningham’s rooms after surgery hours. He was a man of great charm and persuasion—though if my dear Aldred was twice my age he was as old again.

‘Such interesting and well-paid employment as Aldred had been fortunate enough to acquire did not then and does not now come easily, and I had made certain promises to Mr Cunningham, and kept them—I must say perhaps with a little more enthusiasm than was strictly necessary. The fact was that as Aldred advanced in his profession, as he became more prosperous, he became duller. The fiery, dedicated young man who rescued me from distress and destitution made a far better and more romantic lover than the young surgeon who charmed matrons into facelifts! And, do remember, I was not married to Aldred; he had put the house in my name, in recompense, but what are the obligations of gratitude compared to the obligations of marriage? Oh, very few! And that, perhaps, is why I never chose to marry.

‘I was still fond of Aldred. How sad it is, that we turn those we love into what we want, and then find that what we want we do not love! Easier to love a house, I think, than a person. And what a charming house this was; with its little walled back garden, and its pear tree; and walks across the park to the shops, and riding in Rotten Row, and glasses of wine with theatrical people—I loved the theatre—and, for work, the supervision of the servants, or, for excitement, a visit to Mr Cunningham, perhaps even unannounced.

‘His nurse
knew
, of course, and there was always a danger she might tell Aldred. She had to go. Poor woman. It was not, I suppose, her fault; Mr Cunningham claimed she was efficient, and that may be so, but she had a perpetual cold in the nose, and would obviously have been better employed in the public nursing sector, not the private. She reminded me of Nanny McGorrah. To have a head cold, of course, is to weep with the nose instead of with the eyes: it is a mere displacement of grief. The cure is not in aspirin but in self-discovery. Oh, how wearisome life is …’

Here her voice breaks again. Poor woman! What is the point of disturbing her? We cannot help what we are: we cannot any of us go back into the past and undo what we have done—

‘This place I am in now’, says Miss Sumpter, and it seemed to me that at this point her voice began to age alarmingly, ‘is a strange kind of paradise indeed. The corridor between life and death is free of guilt, filled only with the marvel of simply being; but here we must try to understand what we are, and why we are: oh, it is all sub-text, it is so difficult …’

I do suspect the pinner priests of putting words into Miss Sumpter’s head. She was not herself a member of the GNFR: concepts such as ‘sub-text’ must be strange to her. Unless, indeed—and this I find truly exciting—we have it even righter than we know, and the blinding truth of our worldly existence has been revealed to Miss Sumpter after death and through her confirmation and reassurance given back to us. In which case praise be the GSWITS, praise be! Forgive Thou my unbelief!

‘Aldred discovered us,’ my Gabriella continues, when she had regained her strength. ‘I would not have had that happen for the world. I did not want to hurt him. It was just that the danger of being discovered added so greatly to our pleasure: the sound of his calm, wise voice in the next room as Clive’s fingers found my nipples, his mouth the parting between my legs, made the action what it was. It dared the God Eros, compelling him to show his presence—but of course one day Aldred opened the door, which Clive had forgotten to lock—

‘“
I say, Cunningham, old fellow
—’”

‘And then Aldred saw what he saw. He did not hit his rival but he did hit me. A man seldom hits his superior—whom he sees as having greater status, who earns more than he, and is more attractive than he, having lured his woman away. No, such a man merely bows his head and slinks away, defeated—and humiliated. It is the woman he hits, for in their hearts all men despise women, as the cock despises the hen who serves him, as I despise the servants who serve me. Aldred fortunately did not hit me very hard, just enough to perforate an eardrum and make himself feel guilty. Mr Cunningham departed quickly on an urgent case, leaving Aldred to help me to my feet, to wrap a lace tablecloth—a not very interesting, machine-made piece of lace, and rather grubby—around my naked body.

‘“
You are a bully and a ruffian
,” I sobbed. “
You will not even marry me; all you do is neglect me! Do you think you have all this
”—and I indicated the sombre splendour of the room—“
for nothing? No, it is thanks to me! And see, you show your gratitude! By hitting me! What sort of love is that? You may apologise, but I will not be able to hear you, because you have made me deaf
!”

‘It never does to apologise to men, even when in the wrong. All they remember then is your error. It seals into their minds the fact that you have done something to be sorry for. They will never forget it, and will reproach you to the end of your days. Better far to move the blame from you to them. And when discovered
in flagrante delicto
, the rule is,
never apologise, always justify.’

Here the voice paused, and this time when it resumed it had become fluttery and desperate: it reminded me of the sound of the wings of a moth trapped near too bright a lamp. ‘What are they saying to me? That I am wrong? That the rules of expediency are not the rules of life? What do they mean? Someone, help me! There are blackberry stains—I will never get them out. I have tried chloride of soda, essence of lemon and Dab-it-off and nothing helps. Oh hurry, hurry, before the words fade! Perhaps I have not much time. Perhaps when I am healed I will have nothing to say, or the means to say it?’

But after a short, frightening silence in which I thought the lamp had altogether burned her up, my beloved’s voice resumed, young and bright again, as if these frights and warnings had been nothing, were mere passing afflictions. ‘I went home and shut the door and would not let Aldred in for a week. How ill, tormented and tired he looked by the time I relented. My ear was quite better by then, or I would not even have considered opening the door. Poor Aldred was beside himself with jealousy and longing. He begged that we should sell the house, and he would forget medicine, and we would go off together—somewhere, anywhere—only we must be together and I must never, never be unfaithful to him again.

‘“
Not even for your sake, Aldred? I only did it for you!”

‘“
Not even for my sake. And we will have children: then you will he happy and content—
”

‘“
How can we have children? If we can’t marry—if she won’t divorce you? Don’t you see how I have to live, Aldred, disgraced in the eyes of the world? I have to live in the demi-monde. Make my friends amongst artists, writers, actors and other disreputable people, who are all fun and charm, no doubt, but it can hardly count as proper life. They are not proper people. What have you done to me? I came to you an orphaned virgin of sixteen—
”