To Room Nineteen (37 page)

Mary wrote: ‘There aren’t any rabbits any more, had you forgotten myxomatosis? Actually I did make some small rabbits recently, for the children, in blue and green glaze, because it occurred to me the two youngest haven’t seen a rabbit out of a picture book. Still, they’re coming back in some parts, I hear. The farmers will be angry.’

I wrote: ‘Yes, I had forgotten. Well then … sometimes at evening, when you walk in the fields, you think: How nice to see a rabbit lift his paws and look at us. You remember the rotting little corpses of a few years back. You think:
I’ll try again.
Meantime, you’re nervous of what William will say, he’s such a rationalist. Well of course, so are we, but he wouldn’t even play a little. I may be wrong, but I think you’re afraid of William catching you out, and you are careful not to be caught. One sunny morning you take it out on to the field and … all right, all right then, it
doesn’t
hop away. You can’t decide whether to lay your clay rabbit down among the warm grasses (it’s a sunny day) and let it crumble back into the earth, or whether to bake it in your kiln. You haven’t baked it, it’s even rather damp still: the old potter’s rabbit was wet, just before he held it out into the sun he sprinkled water on it, I saw him.

‘Later you decide to tell your husband. Out of curiosity? The children are in the garden, you can hear their voices, and William sits opposite you reading the newspaper. You have a crazy impulse to say: I’m going to take my rabbit into the field tonight and pray for God to breathe life into it, a field without rabbits is empty. Instead you say: “William, I had a dream last night …” First he frowns, a quick frown, then he turns those small quick sandy-lashed intelligent eyes on you, taking it all in. To your surprise, instead of saying: “I don’t remember your ever dreaming,” he says: “Mary, I
didn’t know you disapproved of the farmers killing off their rabbits.” You say: “I didn’t disapprove. I’d have done the same, I suppose.” The fact that he’s not reacted with sarcasm or impatience, as he might very well, makes you feel guilty when you lift the clay rabbit down, take it out to a field and set it in a hedge, its nose pointing out towards some fresh grass. That night William says, casual: “You’ll be glad to hear the rabbits are back. Basil Smith shot one in his field – the first for eight years, he says. Well, I’m glad myself, I’ve missed the little beggars.” You are delighted. You slip secretly into a cold misty moonlight and you run to the hedge and of course the rabbit is gone. You stand, clutching your thick green stole around you, because it’s cold, shivering, but delighted, delighted! Though you know quite well one of your children, or someone else’s child, has slipped along this hedge, seen the rabbit, and taken it off to play with.’

Mary wrote: ‘Oh all right, if you say so, so it is. But I must tell you, if you are interested in
facts,
that the only thing that has happened is that Dennis (the middle one) put his blue rabbit out in a hedge for a joke near the Smith’s gate, and Basil Smith shot it to smithereens one dusk thinking it was real. He used to lose a small fortune every year to rabbits, he didn’t think it was a funny joke at all. Anyway, why don’t you come down for a weekend?’

The Tawnishes live in an old farmhouse on the edge of the village. There is a great garden, with fruit trees, roses – everything. The big house and the three boys mean a lot of work, but Mary spends all the time she can in the shed that used to be a dairy where she pots. I arrived to find them in the kitchen, having lunch. Mary nodded to me to sit down. William was in conflict with the middle boy, Dennis, who was, as the other two boys kept saying, ‘showing off’. Or rather, he was in that torment of writhing self-consciousness that afflicts small boys sometimes, rolling his eyes while he stuttered and wriggled, his whole sandy freckled person scarlet and miserable.

‘Well I did I did I did I did I did …’ He paused for breath, his eyes popping, and his older brother chanted: ‘No you didn’t, you didn’t, you didn’t.’

‘Yes I did I did I did I did …’

And the father said, brisk but irritated: ‘Now then, Dennis, use your loaf, you couldn’t have, because it is obvious you have
not.’

‘But I did I did I did I did …’

‘Well, then, you had better go out of the room until you come to your senses and are fit company for rational people,’ said his father, triumphantly in the right.

The child choked on his battling breath, and ran howling out into the garden. Where, after a minute, the older boy followed, ostensibly to control him.

‘He did what?’ I asked.

‘Who knows?’ said Mary. There she sat, at the head of the table, bright-eyed and smiling, serving apple pie and custard, a dark changeling in the middle of her gingery, freckled family.

Her husband said, brisk: ‘What do you mean, who knows? You know quite well.’

‘It’s his battle with Basil Smith,’ said Mary to me. ‘Ever since Basil Smith shot at his blue rabbit and broke it, there’s been evil feeling on both sides. Dennis claims that he set fire to the Smith farmhouse last night.’

‘What?’

Mary pointed through a low window, where the Smith’s house showed, two fields away, like a picture in a frame.

William said: ‘He’s hysterical and he’s got to stop it.’

‘Well,’ said Mary, ‘if Basil shot my blue rabbit I’d want to burn his house down too. It seems quite reasonable to me.’

William let out an exclamation of rage; checked himself because of my presence, shot fiery glances all round, and went out, taking the youngest boy with him.

‘Well,’ said Mary. ‘Well …’ She smiled. ‘Come into the pottery, I’ve got something to show you.’ She went ahead along a stone passage, a tall, lazy-moving woman, her bright brown hair catching the light. As we passed an open window, there was a fearful row of shrieks, yells, blows; and we saw the three boys rolling and tussling in the grass, while William danced futilely around them shouting: ‘Stop it, stop it at once.’ Their mother proceeded, apparently uninterested, into the potting room.

This held the potting apparatus, and a great many jars, plates, and jugs of all colours and kinds ranged on shelves. She lifted down a creature from a high shelf, and set it before me. Then she left it with me, while she bent to attend to the kiln.

It was yellowish-brown, a sort of rabbit or hare, but with ears like neither – narrower, sharp, short, like the pointed unfolding shoots of a plant. It had a muzzle more like a dog’s than a rabbit’s; it looked as if it did not eat grass – perhaps insects and beetles? Yellowish eyes were set on the front of its head. Its hind legs were less powerful than a rabbit’s, or hare’s; and I saw its talents were for concealment, not for escaping enemies in great pistoning leaps. It rested on short, stubby hind legs, with front paws held up in a queer, twisted, almost affected posture, head turned to one side, and ears furled around each other. It looked as if it had been wound up like a spring, and had half unwound. It looked like a strangely shaped rock, or like the harsh twisted plants that sometimes grow on rocks.

Mary came back and stood by me, her head slightly on one side, with her characteristic small patient smile that nevertheless held a sweet concealed exasperation.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘there it is.’

I hesitated, because it was not the creature I had seen on the old potter’s palm.

‘What was an English rabbit doing there at all?’ she asked.

‘I didn’t say it was an English rabbit.’

But of course, she was right: this animal was far more in keeping with the dried mud houses, the dusty plain, than the pretty furry rabbit I had dreamed.

I smiled at Mary, because she was humouring me, as she humoured her husband and her children. For some reason I thought of her first husband and her lovers, two of whom I had known. At moments of painful crisis, or a parting, had she stood thus – a calm, pretty woman, smiling her sweetly satirical smile, as if to say: ‘Well, make a fuss if you like, it’s got nothing at all to do with me’? If so, I’m surprised that one of them didn’t murder her.

‘Well,’ I said at last, ‘thanks. Can I take this thing, whatever it is?’

‘Of course. I made it for you. You must admit, it may not be pretty, but it’s more likely to be
true.’

I accepted this, as I had to; and I said: ‘Well, thanks for coming down to our level long enough to play games with us.’

At which there was a flash of yellow light from her luminous eyes, while her face remained grave, as if amusement, or acknowledgment of the
truth,
could only be focused in her thus, through a change of light in her irises.

A few minutes later, the three boys and the father came round this part of the house in a whirlwind of quarrelling energy. The aggrieved Dennis was in tears, and the father almost beside himself. Mary, who until now had remained apart from it all, gave an exclamation, slipped on a coat, and said: ‘I can’t stand this. I’m going to talk to Basil Smith.’

She went out, and I watched her cross the fields to the other house.

Meanwhile Dennis, scarlet and suffering, came into the pottery in search of his mother. He whirled about, looking for her, then grabbed my creature, said: ‘Is that for me?’ snatched it posessively to him when I said: ‘No, it’s for me,’ set it down when I told him to, and stood breathing like a furnace, his freckles like tea leaves against his skin.

‘Your mother’s gone to see Mr Smith,’ I said.

‘He shot my rabbit,’ he said.

‘It wasn’t a real rabbit.’

‘But he thought it was a real rabbit.’

‘Yes, but you knew he would think so, and that he’d shoot at it.’

‘He killed it!’

‘You wanted him to!’

At which he let out a scream and danced up and down like a mad boy, shouting: ‘I didn’t I didn’t I didn’t I didn’t …’

His father, entering on this scene, grabbed him by his flailing arms, fought the child into a position of tensed stillness, and held
him there, saying, in a frenzy of incredulous common sense: ‘I’ve never-in-my-life-heard-such-lunacy!’

Now Mary came in, accompanied by Mr Smith, a large, fair, youngish man, with a sweet open face, which was uncomfortable now, because of what he had agreed to do.

‘Let that child go,’ said Mary to her husband. Dennis dropped to the floor, rolled over, and lay face down, heaving with sobs.

‘Call the others!’

Resignation itself, William went to the window, and shouted: ‘Harry, John, Harry, John, come here at once, your mother wants you.’ He then stood, with folded arms, a defeated philosopher, grinning angrily while the two other children came in and stood waiting by the door.

‘Now,’ said Mary. ‘Get up, Dennis.’

Dennis got up, his face battered with suffering, and looked with hope towards his mother.

Mary looked at Basil Smith.

Who said, careful to get the words right: ‘I am very sorry that I killed your rabbit.’

The father let out a sharp outraged breath, but kept quiet at a glance from his wife.

The chest of Dennis swelled and sank – in one moment there would be a storm of tears.

‘Dennis,’ said Mary, ‘say after me: Mr Smith, I’m very sorry I set fire to your house.’

Dennis said in a rush, to get it out in time: ‘Mr Smith I’m very sorry I set fire to your … to your … to your …’ He sniffed and heaved, and Mary said firmly:
‘House,
Dennis.’

‘House,’ said Dennis, in a wail. He then rushed at his mother, buried his head in her waist, and stood howling and wrestling, while she laid large hands on his ginger head and smiled over it at Mr Basil Smith.

‘Dear God,’ said her husband, letting his folded arms drop dramatically, now the ridiculous play was over. ‘Come and have a drink, Basil.’

The men went off. The two other children stood silent and abashed, because of the force of Dennis’s emotion, for which they clearly felt partly responsible. Then they slipped out to play. The house was tranquil again, save for Dennis’s quietening sobs. Soon Mary took the boy up to his room to sleep it off. I stayed in the great, stone-floored pottery, looking at my stranged twisted animal, and the blues and greens of Mary’s work all around the walls.

Supper was early and soon over. The boys were silent, Dennis too limp to eat. Bed was prescribed for everyone. William kept looking at his wife, his mouth set under his ginger moustache, and he could positively be heard thinking: Filling them full of this nonsense while I try to bring them up reasonable human beings! But she avoided his eyes, and sat calm and remote, serving mashed potatoes and brown stew. It was only when we had finished the washing up that she smiled at him – her sweet, amused smile. It was clear they needed to be alone. I said I wanted an early night and left them: he had gone to touch her before I was out of the room.

Next day, a warm summer Sunday, everyone was relaxed, the old house peaceful. I left that evening, with my clay creature, and Mary said smiling, humouring me: ‘Let me know how things go on with your place, wherever it is.’ But I had her beautiful animal in my suitcase, so I did not mind being humoured.

That night, at home, I went into the marketplace, and up to the older potter who stilled his wheel when he saw me coming. The small boy lifted his frowning attentive eyes from the potter’s hand and smiled at me. I held out Mary’s creature. The old man took it, screwed up his eyes to examine it, nodded. He held it in his left hand, scattered water on it with his right, held his palm down towards the littered dust, and the creature jumped off it and away, with quick, jerky movements, not stopping until it was through the huts, clear of the settlement, and against a small outcrop of jagged brown rocks where it raised its front paws and froze in the posture Mary had created for it. Overhead an eagle or a hawk floated by, looked down, but failed to see Mary’s creature, and floated on, up and away into the great blue spaces over the flat dry plain to the
mountains. I heard the wheel creak; the old man was back at work. The small boy crouched, watching, and the water flung by the potter’s right hand sprayed the bowl he was making and the child’s face, in a beautiful curving spray of glittering light.

The chair facing the door was covered in coffee-brown satin. Maureen Jeffries wore dark brown silk tights and a white ruffled shirt. She would look a delectable morsel in the great winged chair. No sooner was she arranged in it, however, than she got out again (with a pathetic smile of which she was certainly unconscious) and sat less dramatically in the corner of a yellow settee. Here she remained some minutes, thinking that after all, her letter of invitation had said, jocularly (she was aware the phrase had an arch quality she did not altogether like): ‘Come and meet the new me!’

What was new was her hairstyle, that she was a stone lighter in weight, that she had been dowered afresh by nature (a word she was fond of) with delicacy of complexion. There was no doubt all this would be better displayed in the big brown chair: she made the change back again.

The second time she removed herself to the yellow settee was out of decency, a genuine calculation of kindness. To ask Peggy Bayley to visit her at all
was
brave of her, she had needed to swallow pride. But Peggy would not be able to compete with the ruffled lace shirt and all that it set off, and while this would be so precisely because of her advantages … that she was married, comfortably, to Professor Bayley (whose mistress she, Maureen, had been for four years) – nevertheless there was no need to rub in her, Maureen’s, renewed and indeed incredible attractiveness, even though it had been announced by the words:
the new me.

Besides, her attractiveness was all that she, Maureen, had to face the world with again, and why not display it to the wife of Professor Bayley, who had not married herself, but had married Peggy instead? Though (she whispered it to herself, fierce and bitter) if she
had tricked Tom Bayley into it, put pressure on him, as Peggy had, no doubt she would be Mrs Bayley … She would go back to the brown chair.

But if
she
had tricked Tom into it, then it would have served her right, as it certainly served Peggy right, if from the start of this marriage Tom Bayley had insisted on a second, bachelor flat into which she, Maureen, was never allowed to go, just as Peggy was not. She, Maureen, would have refused marriage on such terms, she must give herself credit for that; in fact, her insistence on fidelity from Tom, a natural philanderer, was doubtless the reason for his leaving her for Peggy. So on the whole she did not really envy Peggy, who had achieved marriage when she was already nearly forty with the eminent and attractive professor at the price of knowing from the start she would not be the only woman in his life; and knowing, moreover, she had achieved marriage by the oldest trick in the world …

At this point Maureen left the brown chair for the third time, found the yellow settee obvious, and sat on the floor, in the grip of self-disgust. She was viewing the deterioration of her character, even while she was unable to stop the flow of her bitter thoughts about Peggy. Viewing herself clear-sightedly had, in fact, been as much her occupation for the last six months of semi-retreat as losing a stone and regaining her beauty.

Which she had: she was thirty-nine and she had never been more attractive. The tomboy who had left home in Iowa for the freedoms of New York had been lovely, as every fairly endowed young girl is lovely, but what she was now was the product of twenty years of work on herself. And other people’s work too … She was a small, round, white-skinned, big-brown-eyed, black-haired beauty, but her sympathy, her softness, her magnetism were the creation of the loves of a dozen intelligent men. No, she did not envy her eighteen-year-old self at all. But she did envy, envied every day more bitterly, that young girl’s genuine independence, largeness, scope, and courage.

It had been six months ago when her most recent – and, she had hoped, her final – lover, Jack Boles, had left her, and left her in
pieces, that it had occurred to her that twenty – indeed, only ten – years ago
she
had discarded lovers,
she
had been the one to say, as Jack had said – embarrassed and guilty, but not more than he could easily come to terms with – ‘I’m sorry, forgive me, I’m off.’ And, and this was the point, she had never calculated the consequences to herself, had taken money from no man, save what she considered she had earned, had remained herself always. (In her time with Jack she had expressed opinions not her own to please him: he was a man who disliked women disagreeing with him.) Above all, she had never given a moment’s thought to what people might say. But when Jack threw her over, after an affair which was publicized through the newspapers for months (‘Famous film director shares flat in Cannes with the painter Maureen Jeffries’) she had thought first of all: I’ll be a laughing stock. She had told everyone, with reason, that he would marry her. Then she thought: But he stayed with me less than a year, no one has got tired of me before so quickly. Then: the woman he has thrown me over for is not a patch on me, and she can’t even cook. Then back again to the beginning: People must be laughing at me.

Self-contempt poisoned her, particularly as she was unable to let Jack go, but pursued him with telephone calls, letters, reproaches, reminders that he had promised marriage. She spoke of what she had given him, did everything in fact that she despised most in women. Above all, she had not left this flat whose rent he had recently paid for five years. What it amounted to was, he was buying her off with the lease of this flat.

And instead of walking right out of it with her clothes (she was surely entitled to those?) she was still here, making herself beautiful and fighting down terror.

At eighteen, leaving her father’s house (he was a post-office clerk), she had had her sex and her courage. Not beauty. For like many other professional beauties, women who spend their lives with men, she was not beautiful at all. What she had was a focused sex, her whole being aware and sharpened by sex, that made her seem beautiful. Now, twenty years later, after being the mistress of eleven men, all of them eminent or at least potentially eminent, she
had her sex, and her courage.
But
– since she had never put her own talent, painting, first; but always the career of whichever man she was living with, and out of an instinct of generosity which was probably the best thing in her – she now could not earn a living. At least, not in the style she had been used to.

Since she had left home she had devoted her talents, her warmth, her imagination to an art teacher (her first lover), two actors (then unknown, now world-famous), a choreographer; a writer; another writer; then, crossing the Atlantic to Europe, a film director (Italy), an actor (France), a writer (London), Professor Tom Bayley (London), Jack Boles, film director (London). Who could say how much of her offered self, her continually poured-forth devotion to their work, was responsible for their success? (As she demanded of herself fiercely, weeping, in the dark hours.)

She now had left her sympathy, her charm, her talents for dress and decor, a minor talent for painting (which did not mean she was not a discriminating critic of other people’s work), the fact she was a perfect cook, and her abilities in bed, which she knew were outstanding.

And the moment she stepped out of this flat, she would step out, also, of the world of international money and prestige. To what? Her father, now living in a rooming house in Chicago? No, her only hope was to find another man as eminent and lustrous as the others; for she could no longer afford the unknown geniuses, the potential artists. This is what she was waiting for, and why she remained in the luxurious flat, which must serve as a base; and why she despised herself so painfully; and why she had invited Peggy Bayley to visit her. One: she needed to bolster herself up by seeing this woman, whose career (as the mistress of well-known men) had been similar to hers, and who was now well married. Second: she was going to ask her help. She had gone carefully through the list of her ex-lovers, written to three, and drawn three friendly but unhelpful letters. She had remained, officially, a ‘friend’ of Tom Bayley; but she knew better than to offend his wife by approaching him except with her approval. She would ask Peggy to ask Tom to
use his influence to get her a job of the kind that would enable her to meet the right sort of man.

When the doorbell rang, and she had answered it, she went hastily to the big brown chair, this time out of bravado, even honesty. She was appealing to the wife of a man whose very publicized mistress she had been; and she did not wish to soften the difficulties of it by looking less attractive than she could; even though Peggy would enter with nothing left of her own beauty; for three years of marriage with Professor Bayley had turned her into a sensible, good-looking woman, the sleek feline quality gone that had led
her
from Cape Town to Europe as a minor actress, which career she had given up, quite rightly, for the one she was born for.

But Peggy Bayley entered, as it were, four years back: if Maureen was small, delicate, luscious, then Peggy’s mode was to be a siren: Maureen jerked herself up, saw Peggy push pale hair off a brown cheek with a white ringed hand and slide her a green-eyed mocking smile. She involuntarily exclaimed: ‘Tom’s ditched you!’

Peggy laughed – her voice, like Maureen’s, was the husky voice of the sex-woman – and said: ‘How did you guess!’ At which she turned, her hips angled in a mannequin’s pose, letting her gold hair fall over her face, showing off a straight green linen dress that owed everything to a newly provocative body. Not a trace left of the sensible healthy housewife of the last three years: she, like Maureen, was once again focused behind her sexuality, poised on it, vibrating with it.

She said: ‘We both of us
look
very much the better for being ditched!’

Now, with every consciousness of how she looked, she appropriated the yellow settee in a coil of femininity, and said: ‘Give me a drink and don’t look so surprised. After all, I suppose I could have seen it coming?’ This was a query addressed to – a fellow conspirator? No. Victim? No. Fellow artisan – yes. Maureen realized that the only-just-under-the-surface hostility that had characterized their meetings when Peggy was with Tom Bayley had vanished entirely. But she was not altogether happy yet about this flow of
comradeship. Frowning, she got out of the brown satin chair, a cigarette clumsy between her lips. She remembered that the frown and the dangling cigarette belonged to the condition of
a woman sure of a man;
her instincts were, then, to lie to Peggy, and precisely because she did not like to admit, even now, long after the fact, just how badly she was alone? She poured large brandies, and asked: ‘Who did he leave you for?’

Peggy said: ‘I left him,’ and kept her green eyes steady on Maureen’s face to make her accept it, despite the incredulity she saw there.

‘No, really, it’s true – of course there were women all the time, that’s why he insisted on the hidey-hole in Chelsea …’ Maureen definitely smiled now, to remind her of how often she had
not
acknowledged the reason for the hidey-hole. It had been ‘Bill’s study, where he can get away from dreary domesticity’. Peggy accepted the reminder with a small honest smile that nevertheless had impatience. ‘Well of course I told lies and played little games, don’t we all?’ – that’s what the smile said; and Maureen’s dislike of herself made her say aloud, so as to put an end to her silent rancorous criticism of Peggy: ‘Well, all right then. But you did force him to marry you.’ She had taken three large gulps of brandy. Whereas she had drunk far too much in the months after Jack had left her, during the last weeks her diet had forbidden her alcohol, and she was out of practice. She felt herself already getting tight, and she said: ‘If I’m going to get tight, then you’ve got to too.’

‘I was drunk every day and night for two months,’ said Peggy, again with the level green look. ‘But you can’t drink if you want to keep pretty.’

Maureen went back to the brown chair, looked at Peggy through coiling blue smoke, and said: ‘I was drunk all the time for – it was ages. It was disgusting. I couldn’t stop.’

Peggy said: ‘Well all right, we’ve finished with that. But the point was, not the other women – we discussed his character thoroughly when we married and …’ Here she stopped to acknowledge Maureen’s rather sour smile, and said: ‘It’s part of our role, isn’t it, to thoroughly discuss their characters?’ At this, both
women’s eyes filled with tears, which both blinked away. Another barrier had gone down.

Peggy said: ‘I came here to show myself off, because of your boasting little letter – I’ve been watching you patronize me since I married Tom, being dull and ordinary – I wanted
you
to see the new me! … God knows why one loses one’s sex when one’s settled with a man.’

They both giggled suddenly, rolling over, Peggy on her yellow linen, Maureen on her glossy brown. Then at the same moment, they had to fight back the tears.

‘No,’ said Maureen, sitting up, ‘I’m not going to cry, oh no! I’ve stopped crying, there’s not the slightest point.’

‘Then let’s have some more to drink,’ and Peggy handed over her glass.

They were both tight, already; since both were in any case on the edge of themselves with fasting.

Maureen half filled both glasses with brandy, and asked: ‘Did you really leave him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you’ve got better reason to like yourself than I have. I fought, and I made scenes, and when I think of it now …’ She took a brandy gulp, looked around the expensive room, and said: ‘And I’m still living on him now and that’s what’s so horrible.’

‘Well, don’t cry, dear,’ said Peggy. The brandy was slurring her, making her indolent. The
dear
made Maureen shrink. It was the meaningless word of the theatre and film people, which was all right, even enjoyable, with the theatre and film people, but it was only one step from …

‘
Don’t
,’ said Maureen, sharp. Peggy widened her long green eyes in a ‘charming’ way, then let them narrow into the honesty of her real nature, and laughed.

‘I see your point,’ she said. ‘Well, we’d better face it, hadn’t we? We’re not so far off, are we?’