20
Mr Challis had paused on his way through the hall of Westwood-at-Highgate that evening and was standing by the window, apparently casually, but in fact completely, absorbed with the evening paper. As he read, he gradually began to frown and compress his lips, for the journal’s Dramatic Critic did not think highly of Kattë; indeed, there was a peevish note in his remarks which suggested that he had not enjoyed his evening at all. Mr Challis did not mind that; he did not write plays for people to enjoy; he wrote out of the creative fire in his soul and hang everybody (and in this he was an artist and to be respected), but he did mind when dramatic critics hinted that he meant well but it hadn’t quite come off, and that was what, with a dismaying unanimity, they one and all hinted about Kattë.
He made a pretence of never reading the notices; did not subscribe to any press-cutting agency, and affected indifference to the critics’ opinions, but he could not resist reading them in secret, and in secret he cared very much what they said.
While he was standing there, his mind busily refuting the critic’s accusations and his frown growing deeper, he became aware that someone close at hand was carrying on an irritable telephone conversation.
‘Ach! it iss all excuses! All day I wait, und never one wort from you! Too much it iss!’
A pause, while the person at the other end of the line evidently tried to explain.
‘Dick Vletcher, Dick Vletcher! And who iss he, I would like you to say, that all day you go with him, when we here are in such great sorrow and trouble. Yes, yes, you haf let me down!’
Another pause. Mr Challis only half heard what was going on, for he was absorbed in what he was reading, but what he did hear jarred harshly upon his already strained nerves; the speaker (it is Zita, he decided distastefully) evidently thought herself alone and therefore under no obligation to control her voice or temper.
‘No, I am angry, Margaret,’ he heard her say next. ‘You are not a goot friend. I haf said to Mrs Challis that perhaps you might here come and help us to-day, and when I ring up your home, you are gone out, where? Your mother she does not know!’
Pause.
‘The line was not engaged all the day!’ snapped Zita, after another listening silence.
Mr Challis thought that this noisy scolding had gone on long enough. It was apparently being carried on in the morning-room with the door open. Putting down the paper, he strode across the hall and looked in at the morning-room with an expression of grave inquiry. Zita, who was sitting at the table with a cup of coffee before her, smoking a cigarette and looking furious, gave a little gasp when she saw him and at once said into the receiver:
‘Here iss Mr Challis wanting me and now I must go. Good-bye, Margaret,’ and hung up.
‘Yess, Mr Challis, you want to speak –’ she was beginning eagerly, getting up and putting out the cigarette, but he merely gave her another grave look and withdrew. He had always found that look, and silence, very successful in dealing with women and inferiors.
He picked up the newspaper again and went across the hall to his study, avoiding on his way a little cart filled with bricks which stood forlornly in the middle of the vast expanse of carpet. Mr Challis frowned; already the house was showing signs that his grandchildren were in residence. One of them could be heard crying upstairs, and that morning there had been a rubber monster lying stranded in the bath when he went to take his own bath; and all day there had been nothing but talk about the damage to the cottage, and people coming in triumphantly or despairingly from visits to the ruins, and people running up and down stairs with bedding and cups of tea.
He glanced up and saw his wife coming down the staircase, looking as disturbed as her naturally gay expression permitted.
‘Hullo, darling. Nice notice in the Banner?’
‘I have not looked,’ he answered coldly, and was going into his study when she went on:
‘Gerry, I’m afraid Grantey’s really bad. I’ve just been talking to Dr James, and he says we must have a nurse to live in, at least for a week or two.’
‘Really?’ he said, pausing, shaken out of his self-absorption by her tone. ‘What is the matter?’
‘Heart. He says she’s worn it out with lifting things and carrying heavy babies up and down stairs for forty years. He told her weeks ago that she would have to be very careful, and she wouldn’t, of course, and then there was that shock last night –’ she ended, and went into the morning-room, whence Zita had fled, to try to arrange about the nurse.
Mr Challis went into his study and shut the door. The massive dog-grate was filled with little picotees from the garden which scented the air with cloves, and fuzzy crooks of young fern. Long rays of evening sunlight shone into the stately room with its grey-green walls – the colour of the picotee foliage – and red velvet curtains. He went to the window and stood looking out into the garden, where the flowers on the magnolia tree were dying, their widely expanded cups streaked with brown. The world seemed to him immeasurably old, as it sometimes does on summer evenings; a vast, ancient mass pitted with valleys and ocean-beds, and every forest, lake and plain covered with layers of human bones; deep, deep under the moss and the fresh rippling water and the rank wet tangles of black seaweed and the blue ice of crawling glaciers. There was no answer. He had been turning lately to the East for an answer, but there was none; none, at least, that satisfied him. A long time ago, so long ago that he could not clearly remember how he had felt when he had possessed it, he had known happiness. It had been when he was a very little boy, less than nine years old, and slowly, like an angel driven out by a fiend, it had gone away; and in its place reigned the fiend; the sad, ever-searching fiend who could find no satisfaction in all the world, and who was always yearning for the angel-happiness that it had driven away.
He sighed, and turned from the window. Was Kattë a success? Yes; the audience had proclaimed it one, even if the critics were doubtful. But this was the first time that the critics had been doubtful about a play of his, and he was chilled and depressed by their verdict. He wanted comforting, a sensation which was unfamiliar to him.
He glanced up as his wife came in.
‘The nurse is coming to-night,’ she said, looking distressed. ‘Poor old Grantey; isn’t it awful?’
‘Do you mean he thinks she’s going to die?’
Seraphina nodded, and sat down and opened the piece of gros-point work which she usually carried about with her and stared distractedly at it, and then she took out her handkerchief. ‘He warned me that she may go any time. She’s much worse than we knew.’
‘It is strange to think of her dying,’ said Mr Challis thoughtfully, after a pause. ‘She is one of those figures I have always taken for granted; a background figure, so familiar that one never thinks of her. It is as if she were – er – one’s toothbrush or something of that sort, such an unobtrusive part of life’s pattern that …’ His voice died away and he stared unseeingly into the sunset.
‘She used to say my hair would never “come to much,” ’ Seraphina said at last, smiling and blowing her nose. ‘I can smell that green soft-soap stuff she used on it now, and she used to curl it round her fingers, bless her, for hours.’
Mr Challis was silent, busy with thoughts of death. How would a narrow, ignorant old woman like Grantey meet that supreme experience?
‘It will be like offering a cup of superb wine to a creature without a palate,’ he said suddenly.
‘What, darling?’ Seraphina had now recovered herself a little, and was putting stitches in her work, but without much concentration.
‘I was speculating on how she will face death.’
‘Oh, well – she believes in Heaven, of course.’
‘They do, I suppose, even nowadays – the older ones, at least.’
‘Of course they do. And she prays for all of us every night, bless her; she let that slip when we were talking about the bomb.’
‘Pathetic,’ murmured Mr Challis.
‘Isn’t it s
weet?’ Seraphina had only caught an apparently sympathetic murmur. ‘I must say it comforts me to think of Grantey praying for me. I’m sure God listens to her – dear, good, kind old thing,’ and she fairly burst out crying, ‘Oh, dear, it’s so awful to think of her dying, and we’ve taken her so absolutely for granted for forty years – I simply can’t realize it may happen.’
‘Does Dr James give no hope at all?’ he asked, after a pause in which he had gazed embarrassedly at her but made no attempt to console her; he was anxious to get on to the subject of the notices of Kattë, but did not wish to appear unfeeling.
‘Well, he did say that he can’t be absolutely sure, of course, but he’s as certain as anyone can be that her heart can’t last much longer. He said – he said – she – she was just worn out –’ and Seraphina broke down again.
‘Don’t distress yourself, my dear,’ he said, after a moment. ‘She has enjoyed giving her life to us, you know. She is a slave by temperament and has passed her life in slavery; therefore she is fulfilled.’
‘What a beastly thing to say!’ said Seraphina, indistinctly from behind her handkerchief. ‘Really, darling, you do say the most swinish things sometimes, anyone would think you were an absolute brute.’
Mr Challis shrugged his shoulders. Always, always, it was the same. Women could never face the truth about themselves or anything else. It did not detract from Mrs Grant’s undoubted merits to call her a slave. In the Ancient World slaves had frequently been figures of nobility and fidelity. Because he looked at the situation with detachment, Seraphina thought him brutal. It was typical of the way she had always misunderstood him.
‘And you’re really very sweet,’ said Seraphina, getting up and going over to a mirror to repair her face, ‘only you won’t let yourself be.’
‘What do you mean?’ demanded Mr Challis, shaken by this novel view of his character.
‘I look like the Wrath of God,’ murmured his wife.
‘I asked you a question, Seraphina.’
‘Darling, you sound like old Mr Barrett. All I meant was, you’re naturally much nicer than you let yourself be. When I first knew you, you were an absolute lamb.’
Mr Challis for the moment had nothing to say.
‘Frightfully solemn and funny. Oh dear, how I used to laugh at you, after you’d gone, you know. (There, that’s better,’ powdering her nose.) ‘When we were engaged, sweetie – you remember.’
‘I cannot say that I do.’
‘You were such a pet, always wanting to improve my mind.’
‘My desire seems to have remained unfulfilled,’ said Mr Challis dryly.
‘Well, you must remember me trying to read all those alarming books you unloaded on me … I did try … only somehow there was never any time for anything; there never has been, has there? – ever since we’ve been married. It’s years since we really let our back hair down and had a good long talk like this, isn’t it? Look here,’ glancing at the clock, ‘I’m supposed to be dining with the Massinghams to-night and it’s after six now – do you think I can go, with Grantey in this state?’
‘Zita is here, I suppose, and Hebe? Is Alexander going to be in?’
‘I don’t know – no – I think he said something about going away – in fact, I think he’s gone.’
‘Isn’t that rather sudden?’
‘Yes, I suppose it is, really – but the fact is’ – she hesitated – ‘I think he’s been rather pining to get away and paint. Hebe says she and the children have been rather on top of him lately.’
‘I sympathize,’ said Mr Challis grimly.
‘Don’t be silly, sweetie. It isn’t the same thing at all. The cottage was simply minute; no room for anything.’
‘Have they quarrelled?’ demanded Mr Challis, thinking impatiently that in family life there was always something happening to irritate and disturb the creative mind.
‘I don’t think so, darling. He just thought he would go off, and Hebe said it was a good idea.’
‘But does she think it a good idea?’
‘I wouldn’t know, darling.’ Seraphina had no intention of exposing her daughter’s matrimonial difficulties to her father’s detached gaze.
‘Doesn’t she talk to you?’
‘Not about Alex, darling,’ lied Seraphina, though Hebe’s laconic hints in any case could hardly be described as talking.
‘I thought women always talked,’ said Mr Challis, with a little sneer. Like most seekers for an ideal woman, he did not really like women, believing that they disappointed and failed him on purpose.
‘Gerry dear,’ said his wife gently, turning to him as she stood by the door with the sunlight on her face, looking like some Julia or Dianeme from a poem by Herrick, ‘I don’t mean to butt in or be rude, and of course I do know everyone says you’re such a marvellous psychologist and I’m not highbrow or anything, but honestly you don’t know much about women. The women in your plays are such hags, darling; absolute witches and hags, if you don’t mind my saying so. I don’t know any women like them and I’ve known hordes of women. Some of them were witches and some were hags, but they weren’t witches and hags in that way – so highbrow and pleased with themselves and not having any young, or any fun, or anything natural. I don’t know why I’m going on like this,’ ended Seraphina, suddenly recollecting herself and giving him a dazzling smile, ‘we are having a heart-to-heart to-night, aren’t we? I expect it’s all this worry about poor darling Grantey.’
Mr Challis said nothing for a moment. Much of what his wife had said he contemptuously ignored as the natural jealousy of an ordinary, attractive woman for the intense, gem-like goddesses of his creative imagination, but it did occur to him that, if she disliked his women, she might be able to suggest why the critics had turned in a body upon Kattë.
‘Men and women never admire the same type of women or even see women in the same way,’ he answered curtly. ‘I am sorry that you do not find my heroines attractive, although I am not surprised, and I congratulate you upon having concealed your dislike of them so successfully and for so long. Er – do you think the critics agree with you?’ he went on, with some embarrassment. ‘Most of them seem to find fault with Kattë, though none of them agree on where the fault lies.’
‘I expect it isn’t cheerful enough, darling,’ answered Seraphina at once. ‘Everybody’s so browned-off with the war just now, they don’t want any more miseries – however well written they are,’ she added hastily.
Mr Challis was so annoyed that he actually gave a bitter laugh, which is a thing people hardly ever do anywhere. This was exactly what Hilda had said to him in even cruder words. Oh, women, women! How narrow and earthbound had Nature created them! How infinitely better to design and create one’s own!
‘There was never a more urgent need for great tragic drama than now,’ he said – almost snapped. ‘Have none of you any conception of the meaning of that great phrase, to purge with pity and terror?’
‘I know, darling, but we are purged, every time we open a newspaper or go to the pictures. We’re being purged all the time; I mean, I’m not, because I don’t mind the raids except when any of you are out in them, and when they show you those films of dead Japanese and General MacArthur walking on them I always shut my eyes, and I never read the papers but everybody can’t do that, and when they go out for a spot of fun they don’t want to be terrified and purged, unless it’s a thriller or a nice juicy murder.’
‘They flocked to see Gielgud’s Macbeth.’
‘Well –’ said Seraphina delicately, and paused. ‘Shakespeare’s different,’ she said at last, thinking – Poor Gerry. He doesn’t know, but he’s had it. ‘And so they’ll flock to see Kattë,’ she went on gaily. ‘No one takes any notice of the critics, you know, and the Camberhams and the Wynne-Fortescues thought it was too marvellous, the best yet. So do cheer up, sweetie,’ coming over and dropping a kiss on his head. ‘I must fly now, I’m too appallingly late.’
‘The Camberhams! The
Wynne-Fortescues!’ muttered Mr Challis, uncomforted. As she went out of the room he said:
‘Er – see that Mrs Grant has all she wants, Seraphina.’
‘There, you see, darling, you are much nicer than you think you are!’ said Seraphina as she shut the door.
Upstairs in her attic room, Grantey was lying in bed glancing at an evening paper which Hebe had just brought up to her. Hebe was sitting in the window-seat, between the faded curtains of ugly yellow cotton, and gazing out across the garden (which was even darker than usual in the shadow beneath the afterglow) at the glimpses of London, exquisitely distinct in the clear evening light. Every steeple and tower and white mass of buildings was visible, vivid and yet soft, as if seen in one of her husband’s paintings. She herself looked paler than usual, and tired, and the sleeves of her grey cotton dress were still damp and rolled up from giving the children their bath, a task which Grantey usually performed for her. The baby was already asleep, being still at the stage when he could be pinned down and must stay down, but from the large apartment on the next floor, which Emma and Barnabas were to share with their mother that night, thumps and shrieks could be heard; not shrieks of anger or pain but the more ominous shrieks of a six-year-old who will not drop asleep until after nine o’clock.
‘They’ll wake Jeremy,’ muttered Grantey, frowning slightly but not looking up from her paper. Though the seriousness of her illness dated only from yesterday, she already showed an alarming obedience to the doctor’s orders and a lack of interest in matters which only a little while ago would have engaged all her attention; her responses to the children’s naughtiness, the damage to Lamb Cottage, and Mr Alex’s going off so sudden-like were mechanical, as if her real interest were somewhere else. And indeed, it was; for the first time in her sixty-seven years it was concentrated, though without her knowledge, upon her own exhausted and failing body, and from now on her strength would be devoted to keeping that body alive. All that she had said was: ‘I am tired, and that’s a fact; a bit of a rest won’t do me any harm,’ but the meekness of this admission had sent a thrill of alarm through Hebe and Mrs Challis; when had Grantey ever confessed to being tired?