A Circle of Friends Read online

  The Grigson children took a sceptical view of their parents, which astonished me. Lawrence had his mother’s red hair and cheeks, but kept his mouth turned sulkily down in adolescent puritanism. He tried to scowl like Freddy, but lacking Freddy’s thick black eyebrows, looked merely petulant. Anne, two years younger, had the eyebrows and her father’s black hair, too. She wore it draped over one eye in the current American teenage fashion, and peeked doubtfully at the world from behind it. Lawrence looked squarely, if sulkily, at one, but wasted few words.

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, mummy,’ he would say, imitating his father’s querulous tone, but his very English accent betraying him.

  Anne, who had a very small, thin voice, would say ‘Jeesus, mummy, can’t you do better than that?’ or ‘Well, I don’t know, I really don’t.’

  Beyond that the children preferred not to go. Their chief tactic was scornful silence. They made it plain, though, that they considered their parents more pitiful than entertaining. Not that they said much to each other, either. When Anne’s American school-friends called, Lawrence was never at home, and it was only after angry scenes that they could even be persuaded to go to the movies together.

  ‘I don’t know what we do wrong, do you?’ said Henrietta one Sunday as we were driving out to Mrs Van Dieman’s cottage in the Connecticut hills.

  ‘We don’t do anything wrong,’ said Freddy. ‘We don’t do anything right, either. Nobody does. God didn’t mean children to get along with their parents. That’s why he made them younger.’

  ‘It’s Lawrence I worry about. He doesn’t seem to like or dislike anything.’ Her voice gave a high squeak of incomprehension. ‘He doesn’t mind school, he doesn’t mind New York, he doesn’t mind England, he doesn’t mind me or Freddy or Anne—it’s all hopeless.’

  ‘If you’d let him go to a democratic, American little red schoolhouse instead of that goddam snob school in England,’ said Freddy, ‘he might be a normal child.’

  ‘What would you do?’ said Henrietta.

  ‘I’ve never had a child, I’m afraid.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be so afraid all the time, Martin,’ said Freddy. ‘Most people are afraid they have got kids.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s because of the mid-Atlantic cultural syndrome,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t think Lawrence will get into Cambridge. Really I don’t. And it’s not that he’s stupid. He’s quite clever, actually. But he won’t take a proper interest in it.’

  ‘Send him to Wyoming State,’ said Freddy. ‘Hell, what difference does it make whether you read Plato in Cambridge, England, Cambridge, Mass, or Cambridge, Maryland?’

  I said, ‘I thought boys were supposed to love their mothers and hate their fathers. Can’t you make that work for you at all?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Freddy. ‘The cultural syndrome works against us. They’re so confused about which is their mother country that they get the parental roles all fouled up, too.’

  ‘Do be serious,’ said Henrietta.

  ‘I am serious. He should be at an American school.’

  ‘Oh, nonsense. All they teach there is double-dating.’

  ‘And a very useful course it is, too. By the time our kids get to college, they know what a girl is, which is more than can be said for yours.’

  Henrietta sighed, as though this was a subject they’d been through often before. Freddy put an arm round her as he drove along. He was genial that morning.

  Freddy affected to see the world as a tragic farce, whose necessary ingredients were personal humiliation and social calamity. He took a savage pleasure in the humdrum horrors of the daily papers. I remember him pointing one evening to a photograph of a small boy whose legs had been hideously scalded by his mother. The boy sat up in bed, his legs heavily bandaged, a scared look on his face. His mother, who had misunderstood the doctor’s directions about boiling water, sat on the bed beside him, smiling proudly out of the photograph. ‘Look at her,’ Freddy said. ‘She’s pleased, for God’s sake, because she got her name in the paper.’ He brooded for a moment. ‘It makes me sick to my stomach. Look at her, and her great big motherly trust in the man of science. She’s a mental defective, I guess. Trust the scientists and we’ll all end up like that kid, right, Lawrence?’ Lawrence looked up from his book and said, ‘I do wish one could get a little peace and quiet around here sometimes.’

  Freddy could be funny in his manic gloom, and he could be jitteringly irritable. Howard said there was some trouble about raising money for the next season of plays. Henrietta was rich, but not so rich that she could afford to lose all that Freddy lost. The Grigsons, I gathered, were staying on in New York later than usual. The children’s April holidays were mostly spent in England, where Henrietta had a house, but this year Freddy didn’t think he could leave till the end of May. After a bad day’s financial worrying, he would snarl at everyone and everything. He would snoop menacingly round the apartment for things Anne or Lawrence might have left lying about, and pounce gloatingly on them. If Henrietta suggested a drink, he would say, ‘You drink too much. It’s sick how much you drink. You and everyone else.’ If someone suggested going out, it would be ‘Why don’t we stay home for a day or two and see if we know our way around?’ But he always took the drink Henrietta silently made for him, and he always went out with us in the end. ‘Sometimes,’ said Henrietta to me one evening, ‘I think Freddy should see a psychiatrist. What do you think?’ I said I didn’t know.

  When we got to Mrs Van Dieman’s we were greeted by an ecstatically angry Percy, who had been tied to a burgeoning tree, out of range of the guests’ ankles. On the long porch we found Adam sitting in a rocking-chair, drinking gin and tonic and talking to George, Mrs Van Dieman’s son. He was a stocky man of forty-five with crew-cut grey hair, and he wrote novels about social life in New York before the first world war. Mrs Van Dieman, whom I was beginning to call Emily, was in the kitchen, making her celebrated mushroom dip.

  ‘Jesus,’ said Freddy. ‘Hi, gang.’

  Henrietta went and stood over Adam, who tilted back in his chair and looked ambiguously up at her.

  ‘Don’t you get up for ladies?’ she said.

  ‘Can’t,’ he said. ‘Every time I try to, the chair knocks me off my feet. You’ll have to lean down if you want me to kiss you.’

  Henrietta bent towards him, and he let the chair rock forward so that his head butted her gently in the chest. She lost balance and fell on top of him.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Henrietta,’ said Freddy. ‘You don’t have to act stoned already.’

  ‘I warned you these things were dangerous,’ said Adam, when Henrietta had rearranged herself on his lap. She put her arms round his neck and said, ‘Now do I get a kiss?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  They kissed mock-passionately, till Adam pulled his face away and said, ‘Now that’ll do, remember there are people still in church.’

  ‘Do I get any altar-wine?’

  ‘You’re to help yourself. It’s all inside.’

  ‘Martin will help me, won’t you, Martin?’

  Mrs Van Dieman’s cottage was in a small valley, and from the porch we could see two or three miles of woods on either slope. A stream ran a quarter of a mile away through clumps of feathery green willows. The only other house in sight was a farm on the other side of the valley, its dark red barn and silver silo bright between the trees.

  Mrs Van Dieman came out with her mushroom dip and welcomed us. George’s wife Marcia followed with the peanuts. She was blonde and twenty and had had two children already; George had already had two wives. By the time Howard arrived with Sally Hinkle, we had all had two drinks, the sun was hot, Percy had retired from distant howling to lie under her tree, and Mrs Van Dieman had disappeared to make the Chinese lunch with Marcia.

  Sally was from South Dakota, where the art of conversation does not flourish. Talking to her was like bouncing a ball on a flat surface. Her answers never quite came up to your questions. Finding myself
beside her, I tried various unrelated topics with no success. Since she was wearing leotards, I resorted, wearily, to the ballet.

  ‘Do you like the ballet?’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Do you go often to the City Centre?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Have you ever seen Fonteyn?’ I said, as the ensuing pause began to accuse me of even more social inadequacy than I felt was quite fair.

  ‘Fonteyn? Oh yes.’

  ‘Don’t you think she’s marvellous?’

  ‘Oh yes. Marvellous.’

  ‘I think she’s awful,’ said Howard. ‘So British.’

  I looked on this attack with relief. ‘What kind of a criticism is that?’

  ‘She’s like one of your guardsmen—perfectly drilled, perfectly lacking in passion. She never puts a foot wrong. It’s intolerable.’

  ‘Some people love our guardsmen,’ said Henrietta.

  Sally smiled gently. Howard looked out at the hills, cigarette dangling. ‘The British have no passion,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, we’re all seething with emotion,’ said Henrietta. ‘We just don’t let it show, that’s all. It’s bad form.’

  ‘I’ll say,’ said Freddy. ‘It’s the climate. You daren’t open your mouth in case you catch flu.’

  ‘I don’t know how many British girls I’ve laid,’ said Howard, ‘but they’re all the same. They say “Please” and “Thank you” all the time. No spontaneity.’

  Howard never spoke in generalisations except to disguise deliberate personal remarks. I wondered whom he was getting at. He was grinning at me, so it had to be someone else. The only English woman there was Henrietta, and she didn’t seem in the least put out.

  ‘I thought,’ said George Van Dieman, ‘that Lady Chatterley’s Lover was available in Britain now. So all that D. H. Lawrence bit is passé, isn’t it? His revolution must have succeeded, mustn’t it?’ He seemed to think he was being too definite. ‘One would have thought so, wouldn’t one, I mean?’

  ‘Of course it is,’ said Freddie, mockingly. ‘They can’t keep the kids off one another these days. They all have to take an examination in Prophylactic Science before they’re allowed to leave school.’

  Howard was, for him, grinning broadly; he had taken the cigarette out of his mouth. ‘Did your Lawrence pass it?’ he said.

  ‘Sure,’ said Freddy. ‘Only with him it was more like Preventive Medicine.’

  ‘How is Lawrence?’ said George. ‘Still determined the world’s got to change before he can enter it?’

  ‘Worse, if anything,’ said Henrietta.

  ‘I’m worried about him getting into heaven,’ said Freddy. ‘Damn it, we’re supposed to try and change the world, but Lawrence won’t OK God, either.’

  ‘You should get Martin to talk to him,’ said Adam. ‘They’re practically the same age. No, I know you’re not really, but you’re much nearer to it than any of us are. Maybe he’d tell you what’s wrong with everything.’

  Freddy scowled.

  Howard put his cigarette back in his mouth and said, ‘I think Martin’s much too deep for Lawrence.’

  ‘Steady on,’ said Henrietta. ‘He’s quite clever, you know. It’s just that he’s not interested in anything.’

  ‘I expect he’s puzzled about things,’ said George. ‘I was at that age. Weren’t you?’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ said Sally, unexpectedly. ‘Oh, yes!’

  ‘I still am,’ said Adam.

  ‘Has he got a girl-friend?’ said George.

  ‘He doesn’t have much chance, really,’ said Henrietta. ‘He’s usually in England for the holidays. He doesn’t know many people in New York.’

  ‘And in England,’ said Freddy savagely, ‘he’s at one of these faggot schools, where they don’t allow girls within ten miles. The only girl he’s ever met is his sister. The British aren’t passionless, Howard, they’re incestuous.’

  ‘Shush,’ said Henrietta, ‘that’s not nice talk about your own children.’

  ‘Whereabouts in England do you live?’ I said.

  ‘Sort of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.’

  ‘It’s terribly, terribly green,’ said Freddy. He looked at his glass, which was empty. ‘How’s the action back there in the kitchen?’

  Marcia called from inside the house. ‘You can come and eat. If you drink any more, you won’t appreciate the cooking.’

  The lunch was delicious but spare. Mrs Van Dieman allowed for each guest only as much as she wanted herself, and she was a picky eater. There was a tiny silver cruet in front of each place, and the wine glasses were scarcely big enough for liqueurs. Even the knives and forks were diminutive. After the meal some of us made up bulk with ordinary-sized fruit. Then we trooped out to the drowsy porch where Percy was allowed to join us. She went round the guests cautiously sniffing their feet. Mrs Van Dieman kept clapping her hands ineffectually and saying, ‘Do push her away. Now stop it, Percy, stop it.’ Percy did not stop. ‘Dogs are so basic, aren’t they?’ said Mrs Van Dieman.

  ‘I don’t see what’s basic about foot-sniffing,’ said Adam. ‘I’d’ve thought it was pretty sophisticated myself.’

  ‘Let the goddam dog use its nose if it wants to,’ said Freddy. ‘There’s no such thing as sexual perversion.’

  Sally looked at him, intrigued, but he closed his eyes and lay back in his chair.

  ‘Who wants to take a walk now?’ said Mrs Van Dieman. ‘It’s so nice in the woods, it’s just beautiful, in fact.’

  ‘It’ll be summer soon,’ said Marcia. ‘You won’t be able to see the view for the leaves.’

  Howard sat down at once in one of the rocking-chairs and said, ‘All exercise is a form of sexual perversion.’

  Eventually Freddy, Sally, George and Marcia went walking, while the rest of us slept.

  ‘Those girls are like sylvan nymphs,’ said Adam, watching them go.

  ‘Silver imps,’ said Henrietta drowsily.

  *

  ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if this were summer and we could go bathing?’ I said, some time later.

  ‘You can if you want,’ said Henrietta. ‘There’s a swimming-hole just down the stream. It’ll be icy, though, with all the snow-water still.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind a quick dip, all the same.’

  ‘Go ahead. Mrs Van Dieman will lend you a towel.’

  ‘I don’t have a costume, though.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. No one will see you. Just sneak a towel out of the bathroom and go. Go on.’

  ‘What are you two planning?’ said Adam, appearing in the doorway.

  ‘Martin wants to swim.’

  ‘That is a great idea. Let’s all go.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Of course I am.’

  ‘But there aren’t any costumes. We can’t all go nude bathing in April. There aren’t enough leaves out.’

  ‘Oh, pouf,’ said Adam. ‘I shall wear my underpants. And so will you, unless you want every neck in the woods craning at you.’

  ‘I have my tiny modicum of shame,’ I said. ‘I’ve never gone nude-bathing.’

  ‘Dear, dear,’ said Adam, as Henrietta went into the house for towels. ‘What a lot of things you have to look forward to. What have you been doing all your life?’

  ‘Nothing, I suppose.’

  ‘I don’t understand, really I don’t. The way you young people just wait for things to happen to you.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  He laid a finger along his nose and said, ‘Ah.’

  Henrietta came out with three small towels. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but she does have this fetish for minutiae.’

  ‘This must be Percy’s,’ said Adam, holding one of them up. It was striped pink and green.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Henrietta. ‘The sun will be off the pool if we don’t hurry.’

  We went down a rather muddy path to the stream, then along the bank for a few hundred yards. We had to scramble over a fallen tree at one pl
ace, and the path was so untrodden as to be almost lost.

  ‘They can’t come yelling and screaming along here to arrest us, anyway,’ said Adam, holding a branch down for Henrietta.

  The pool was some thirty yards wide and twenty long, the water was very clear and the bottom was rocky. It didn’t look very deep.

  ‘Is it safe to dive?’ I said.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Adam. ‘You’d better be careful. I’m going to wade in, myself.’

  Henrietta went behind a tree and said, ‘No peeking, please.’

  ‘I hope you’re going to be at least minimally decent,’ said Adam. ‘Martin, you and I had better skulk over here.’

  We went behind some scrubby bushes and undressed. It was cooler here, out of the sun, and I began to wonder about the whole expedition. It was too late, though, to go back. I unlaced my shoes slowly, unwilling to be the first in. Adam stripped to his underpants, then stepped gingerly over the stony ground towards the pool. By the time I got there he was in the water, gasping and blowing.