A Circle of Friends Page 12

  ‘It’s your mother,’ said my father. ‘You know we only want your happiness, my dear girl.’

  The trouble was that my brother, Arthur, had been killed right at the beginning of the war, on the retreat to Dunkirk. He was years older than I, thirty-four (I was an afterthought, or more likely a mistake), and he was married and had two daughters, and this was awful for my father because it meant there was no son to carry on ‘the name in the place’. He wasn’t, thank goodness, one of those people who leave everything to a nephew for the sake of the name, but he easily might have been. And there was just me, and I was a girl, and I wanted to marry a quite impossible American, and probably live in America, too. Pamela, my sister-in-law, didn’t want to live at Charncot—not just because of my mother and father, but—well, she was Irish, and she’d taken the children to Ireland with her ‘for the duration’ for safety, and my father thought that wasn’t quite right, though it seemed an obviously sensible precaution to me. Anyway, he didn’t know how he was going to leave his money and property, and I seemed to be the likely inheritor of Charncot because I still lived there, in a fashion, and loved the place, and there was plenty of money for Pamela and her kids, even if she didn’t remarry, which, actually, she did. But if I married an American——

  Freddy said it didn’t seem any bar to him, having a house in England. He knew just what he wanted to do after the war. Everything would have changed by then, he said, and everyone would be friendlier—I think it was friendlier—and there would be a great opportunity for a truly democratic theatre, here and in America, and he was going to run it. And he had no intention of tying himself down to any one country, he was going to be an internationalist. That didn’t please my father, either, because he didn’t think much of internationalists. As far as he could see, people in other countries just caused trouble, and they’d all be a lot happier and more peaceful if they’d only join the Empire. He really understood less about the world even than my mother, and she was a politician.

  ‘It’s your mother,’ he said. ‘She’s a sick woman, and she’s dead set against it.’ He coughed. ‘I’ve got nothing against the fellow personally, you understand. He seems a bright enough chap, and he’s got some money coming to him, hasn’t he? But your mother doesn’t like him.’ He coughed again, and added, as though it was an excuse, ‘She’s not a well woman.’

  I didn’t know what to say, really. I mean, I’d played pregnancy, and then I’d gone and mucked it up. So I said, ‘Look, Daddy, I’m going to marry him whatever happens, you know that perfectly well. And I shall be twenty-one in September and you won’t be able to stop me then, so why not swallow it and say “yes” while you have the chance? It’ll make everything much happier for everybody, and save a lot of heartache. Please say “Yes”.’

  ‘My dear, I’d say it this moment, if I didn’t know just how much your mother’s set against it.’

  And there she was. She’d been listening all the time, I suppose. I don’t know why we weren’t used to her being there when she shouldn’t have been, she always was. She must have made Ethel, her maid, spend hours a day oiling the wheels so she couldn’t be heard. She was awfully tough, my mother. She frightened me. I don’t think she’d ever meant to have me, as I say, and she never made me feel welcome once I’d arrived. She’d adored Arthur, too. It was his death that really killed her. Some people said it was my marriage, but they were wrong. She never recovered from hearing Arthur was missing. When his death was confirmed, she just nodded; she’d always assumed the worst from the beginning. She didn’t really care what I did, not the way she cared about Arthur. It was one of the reasons Pamela preferred not to spend the war with her at Charncot; they were both terribly jealous of each other, even after Arthur was dead.

  ‘If you wish to say it, you have no need to consult me.’ She sat there, looking at us. ‘I’m only the girl’s mother.’

  She always referred to me as ‘the girl’; she knew how much it hurt me, even then, when I was almost of age.

  ‘She seems determined to marry him,’ said my father, his moustache beginning to lift and fall at the corners.

  ‘Then let her. She obviously doesn’t care what we, with our experience and love, consider is best for her. So she must learn from her own mistakes.’ She always talked like that. ‘Jack, I wonder if you’d be so good as to open the french window for me. It’s such a fine day, I think I’ll sit on the terrace. It was rather stuffy in my room.’

  Afterwards, I wondered why she’d given in. I knew my father would never really oppose me, because he did love me, and he didn’t really mind Freddy—he just thought he was very peculiar. If he’d thought he was cruel or mean or anything, it would have been quite different. But I’ve never really been sure why my mother took that attitude. Perhaps she really didn’t care about me at all. Perhaps it was my threat about being twenty-one soon—she must have heard that, I decided. She was terrified of scandal, and if she believed I’d really go through with it by myself, then she would have felt obliged to put a good face on it. I don’t think she can have heard the bit about me being pregnant, but if she did, she almost certainly took that as a threat, too. And she probably thought that if Freddy and I got married, we’d most likely live in America and she wouldn’t have to see us. And, which was more important, the neighbours wouldn’t have to see us either. Because all she really cared about was how the county would look at the matter. The county said quite enough, when the time came, about me marrying an American—the best families are always the most anti-American—but what it would have said if I’d married one pregnant and without my parents’ approval didn’t bear thinking about, though I’m sure that’s precisely what my mother thought about all the time. At least, I think I’m sure. I didn’t understand or like her very much, and she always seemed quite indifferent to me.

  When my father came back from the terrace, he said, ‘I hope you’re satisfied now, my dear.’ And I said, ‘I think you’re sweet, Daddy,’ and I kissed him and burst into tears. I was very glad my mother didn’t see that. And then, when Lawrence came along and he had a grandson (my mother was dead by that time), everything between us was fine again. I’ve always thought it very odd, this thing men have about male descendants.

  In 1944 a son was born of the marriage, and a daughter in 1946. At the end of the war, the husband was discharged from the American army and began to work in the professional theatre. From 1946 to 1951 the family was established in New York City. In 1949 the wife paid a visit with the children to England to see her father. During her absence, the husband, who was engaged in producing a play in New York, met a young girl with whom he became briefly infatuated. A few days after meeting her he committed adultery with her at the matrimonial home, and he continued to do so for several weeks. The relationship ended as quickly as it had begun, and when the wife returned, the husband confessed his misbehaviour, and the wife forgave him.

  ESTABLISHMENT OF DOMICILE

  The wife’s father died in 1951, leaving her considerable property in England. At about this time the husband decided he wished to write rather than to produce plays, and the family moved to England and set up residence in the wife’s house at Charncot. The children were sent to English schools.

  His Lordship was satisfied that the husband evinced an intention at this stage to live in England and that he thereby acquired an English domicile, as did the wife. His Lordship was therefore able to entertain the petition. In 1954 the husband returned to New York to direct a new play.

  Yes, I went back to New York, and I went back to directing plays instead of writing them, but why, Judge, why? Because I couldn’t stand England any longer, that’s why. It’s a small, wet country, and if you’re cooped up in a little village, where it’s always wetter even than in London, you begin to grow mould on your mind. That’s what happened between the fall of 1951 and the spring of 1954, in those two years and a half I grew mould. Some mould’s just fine, it makes very good penicillin, they say, but my mould didn’t do a
thing. I sat for God knows how many hours a day in her father’s study—it was a beautiful place, Charncot, no doubt about that, and the study had everything—ink in the inkwells, paper, a great big desk, books, a log fire in winter—and mould. The mould was my personal, all-American contribution.

  After six months I began to worry that I hadn’t got beyond Act One Scene Two. It was an experimental play, with short, swift scenes, and Act One Scene Two wasn’t very far along—about five pages. And then I suddenly realised why I wasn’t getting anywhere. To write in England you have to be English, and if you’re American all you do is grow riper and riper mould, like Henry James. Henrietta just loved Henry James. We got to fight about him in the evenings, as a regular thing. Her grandfather had had him down for a week-end in 1892 and all his books were there, with the old man’s sprawling signature on the fly-leaves. The bindings were growing mouldy with the damp, just like he did himself.

  And then—well, England, Jesus Christ what a country! It was when the Labour Party was just thrown out, and things were cheering up a little—(not that I approved of the Labour Party getting the kick); but there’s a doggedness about the English, and a dogginess, too, that gets you if you’re an American. They’re doggedly obsessed with who you are and where you went to school and how did you get your money and how long have you had it and are you related to anyone, but anyone, with a Sir to his name. That’s how they’re doggy with it—they go around sniffing at you, and if they don’t like you, they lift their leg against you and go on. Or maybe that means they do like you, you’ve passed the test—I never did work it out. All the time you’re under examination, it’s terrible. And you can’t speak to anyone without him calling you ‘Sir’ or expecting you to call him ‘Sir’. They’re not human, the English, they’re some kind of robots.

  All that got me down, believe me. It was like being at one of those ghastly English schools, only for life, with prefects and rules about who can talk to whom and who can wear what and when. The sort of school Henrietta insisted Lawrence should go to. They believe in obedience and teaching people how to give orders and receive them in England, and I don’t go for any of that. So naturally, I didn’t get anything written. My play was supposed to be about the individual’s effort to stay free in modern society, not just talking about freedom, but acting it out. But in two and half years all I did was to sit in an English jail, not writing, just working myself up about the intellectual dishonesty of the English upper class. It was a pretty jail, sure. Charncot’s a pretty place. Comfortable, too. But better for mushrooms than men. I quit.

  Since that time the parties have maintained two homes, one in New York, the other at Charncot, but His Lordship was satisfied that the latter was the permanent home. The marriage continued happily for a number of years. In the spring of 1961 the husband was detained in New York by complications arising out of the arrangements for his next season of plays. In April of that year both parties met the co-respondent, a young Englishman, at a party. They quickly became very friendly with him, and the husband has freely admitted that he encouraged the co-respondent’s visits and gave a party for him when he left the United States at the beginning of May. The husband joined with the wife in asking the co-respondent to visit them in England during the course of the summer. The wife remained in New York until June, when she left for England, expecting the husband to follow shortly.

  After the wife’s departure the husband began an association with a lady referred to in his discretion statement, and this association soon became adulterous. Business matters kept the husband in New York for far longer than he had planned, and what he has stated he began as a casual affair rapidly became more serious.

  TUTOR

  At the beginning of August the son returned from school to Charncot. The daughter had already been there for some weeks. The wife has stated that she was paying the co-respondent fifteen pounds a week at this time to tutor her son so that he might have a better chance of getting into Cambridge. It was an unusual form of tuition, in that the son was not to be made aware of the tutor’s position in the household; the tutor was to educate him in spite of himself, as it were.

  His Lordship was satisfied that the wife was speaking the truth when she said that her motive was twofold. First, she rightly suspected that the husband disapproved of the son being given special coaching, on the grounds that he should get a university place on his own ability or not at all; and second, she felt that the son was going through a difficult stage in his relationship with his parents and was not open to direct approaches, and that it would therefore be better for the co-respondent to coach him apparently accidentally, through the friendship the son felt for him.

  Thus the wife wished to conceal the real position of the co-respondent from both the husband and the son. Although this was certainly an unusual situation, His Lordship was aware that the young people of today were not the same as those of his own generation, and he accepted the wife’s explanation of the co-respondent’s presence at Charncot. Educational methods had changed a good deal since His Lordship’s day.

  AMATEUR THEATRICALS

  During the course of the holidays, the husband still being in New York, the wife suggested to the children and the co-respondent that they and their friends should put on a play in the local village hall as part of the fête. This they enthusiastically agreed to do. Rehearsals were in full swing when the husband at last arrived from New York and discovered his wife redhanded, as he believed, with the co-respondent in the wife’s bedroom. This was on September 2nd, 1961.

  It was like kneeling on hedgehogs. Every time I took a ‘step’ in the shoes Henrietta had made, vicious horse-hairs impaled my now shrinking and sensitised kneecaps. We’d tried cotton wool, rags, face-flannels and sponges; each time lurking hairs from the original disastrous padding lanced through its substitute like sword-grass through satin, and I bled a little more.

  ‘I can’t think where they’re still coming from,’ she said.

  We were in her bedroom. I was sitting trouserless on the bed, while she examined the shoes against the light of the window. (Since they were sewn on to the trousers they could hardly be examined purposefully in situ.) From the needle-sharp padding, which I was required by Lawrence’s indomitably aesthetic production to kneel on, there projected two long slippers with pointed toes, in the Persian manner. We’d painted them blue to look still more like something from The Thousand and One Nights, and attached red string from the toes to my bejewelled belt, so that they really curled up at the ends. They were beautiful, and they hurt. My knees throbbed at me, purple with protest. I rubbed them, murmuring gently that it would all be over tomorrow night.

  ‘What?’ said Henrietta.

  ‘I was telling my knees that they could rest after tomorrow night. If I ever propose to anyone, I shall do it standing up. I’d make such faces, kneeling.’

  She laughed. ‘That’s one of the advantages of being a woman. All you’re expected to do is sit demurely and wait for the man to finish.’

  ‘Then what do you say?’

  ‘It depends, I suppose.’

  ‘Did Freddy kneel to you? I can’t imagine it.’

  ‘No, he proposed to me in bed.’ She said it so straightforwardly, that I laughed.

  ‘And what did you say?’

  ‘I told him not to be so ridiculous.’ She put her hand inside one of the slippers. ‘I can’t feel any horse-hairs. Are you sure they’re not psychosomatic?’

  ‘Quite sure, thank you.’

  She felt inside the other slipper and produced a single, effete hair, too flaccid to tickle, let alone stab.

  ‘I can’t think where they came from in the first place,’ she said, looking at it.

  ‘It was that sofa-stuffing.’

  ‘But no one ever got jabbed sitting on the sofa. At least, not that I remember.’

  ‘Yes, but it was leather, you see, unlike my knees.’

  ‘So it was. Well, the only thing to do is to start yet again. Were s
ponges better than cotton wool, would you say?’

  ‘No, I think I prefer cotton wool to sponges.’

  She began to rip the shoes off the trousers.

  ‘Will it take long?’ I said.

  ‘Not very.’ She took a large pair of scissors from her work-box and began to cut the padding from the slippers. As it came away, we discovered a viperous nest of horse-hairs between two layers of face-flannel and sponge, both pressed nearly flat.

  ‘How peculiar,’ she said. ‘I thought we’d thrown all the flannel away.’

  ‘Look at it,’ I said. ‘Pure, burnished steel wool.’

  I stroked my knees. It didn’t matter how they’d become gangrenous, really, if I was going to lose them.

  ‘I’ll get a tetanus shot when all this is over,’ I said.

  ‘Shush.’ Henrietta didn’t like being spoken to when she was sewing.

  Respecting her silence I looked at her for a moment, then, feeling this might disturb her, out of the window. Her bedroom had a beautiful view over lawns and flowerbeds to the high iron deer-fence of the park, and beyond it to huge oaks, standing about in that simple, meditative, English way. Then, like a natural ha-ha, a steep hill hid the village except for two stone cottage roofs and the spire of the church. The valley broadened below them into water-meadows, then narrowed and turned left out of sight. Once there’d been deer in the park—Henrietta remembered feeding them as a child. But they’d been sold or killed, or, more probably, they’d succumbed to influenza, the way animals do, and Mr Brooke had never replaced them. She’d been very fond of her father, she said, but she’d hated her mother, who used to creep about the house in a wheelchair. There was a drab portrait of her, done about 1920, in the library; it made her look very thin and not at all aggressive. The lift which had been put in for her was still in working order, a great source of dramatic inspiration to the straw-haired Bailey twins whom Lawrence had press-ganged for Tom Thumb. It was very useful in ‘Hide and Seek’ and ‘Murder’. It had other, more private and furtive functions, too. ‘If I ever want to sneak out of the house at night,’ Lawrence said, ‘it’s jolly useful. And the way things go on here, believe me I often do want to sneak out for an hour’s peace and quiet.’ Hopeless romantic that I was, I was attracted more to its practicality for lovers sneaking in.