‘Don’t be silly.’
‘You must be protected,’ Martin said, with his arm around her, ‘from spongers.’
He was hoping the fuss would not now make it difficult for him to get away after tea, for he had promised his old mother to be home for Sunday supper.
‘I am not a possessive woman,’ his mother always said to him. ‘You are perfectly free. Just use the house as a lodging and come and go as you please. Or take a flat, live elsewhere, do anything you like. Don’t think of me, I’ve had my life. I am not a possessive woman.’
‘She is not a possessive woman,’ he told his friends. ‘My old ma says, “Take a flat if you like, go and live somewhere else, I don’t want you tied to my apron-strings.” She isn’t a possessive mother. But,’ Martin told his friends, ‘I’ve got to stay with her. You can’t let your old widowed mother stew in Kensington when she’s got arthritis. All her cronies have got arthritis. And she fights with Carrie, she literally fights with Carrie. Literally, they pull each other’s hair.’
Carrie was Martin’s old nurse, now, by courtesy, the housekeeper. When Martin was first called to the bar, and was short of money, old Carrie would wander off to the post office and draw out three pounds at a time of her savings; these three pounds she would privately slip to Martin. Several times Martin told his mother of this, intending it as a rebuke to her for her meanness. Mrs. Bowles then wrote a cheque for Martin and, when he was out of the way, went and had a row with Carrie.
These latter days Carrie lived with Mrs. Bowles as an equal. Sometimes they quarrelled and had a real fight, pulling each other’s hair and, with feeble veined hands, pushing each other’s faces, pushing spectacles awry and knocking at each other’s jaws with their helpless knuckles. Carrie had left all her life’s savings to Martin, and she had saved since she was a girl of fourteen. Mrs. Bowles suspected that Carrie’s fortune now surpassed her own dwindling funds, and therefore Carrie was a real rival.
‘I’m not a possessive woman,’ said Mrs. Bowles.
‘You should of pushed him out the nest long ago, ‘said Carrie. ‘You should take a lesson off the birds. You got to push them out. When my brother was a boy thirteen my mother said to him, “There’s five shillings, now go.” That’s pushing them out the nest. My brother had a good position in a club before he died.’
‘This is a different case. A barrister has a struggle. I’m not a possessive woman. Let him marry, let him go.’
‘You got to put them out,’ Carrie said.
‘Are you telling me to turn my own son out of doors? ‘said his mother, and her eyes, which bulged naturally, shone with a bevelled light.
‘Yes,’ said Carrie. ‘It would make a man of him.’
‘Then why do you give him money?’
‘Me give him money? — Catch me.’
‘Martin told me. Last week you gave him money. Twice the week before that. Last month you—’
‘Well, you keep him short, don’t you?’
So Martin could never bring himself to leave Carrie and his mother, even although he no longer needed Carrie’s little offerings. He lost his hair. He worried about his old mother if he went away to the country with Isobel for the week-end. He tried to entertain them and to be a good son. They bored him, but when they went away from home he missed the boredom, and the feud between them which sometimes broke into it.
‘Carrie will have to go away to a home,’ said his old mother, ‘if her arthritis gets bad.’
‘No,’ said Martin. ‘Carrie stays here.’
‘You’re after that money of hers. You may be disappointed,’ his mother said. He hated her fiercely for her continual robbing him of any better motive.
‘I’m fond of Carrie,’ he said. But now his mother had left him wondering if he really meant it.
‘Your mother will be bedridden before long, ‘Carrie said. ‘What’s to happen then?’
‘We’ll get a daily nurse,’ Martin said. ‘We’ll manage.’
‘They won’t stop,’ Carrie said. ‘Not with your mother. Look at Millie.’
‘Oh, nurses are different from maids. Maids always come and go.’
‘Millie was a good girl. She would of stopped if your mother hadn’t made her life a misery.’
He took them both to the country to his mother’s younger sister on occasions. Then he went shopping for small supplies of groceries, pined for the boredom, and cooked whatever meals he did not have with Isobel. He missed the two old women pottering about and blaming each other.
‘I’ve lost a vest, Carrie.’
‘I haven’t got your vest.’
‘I have not said you’ve taken my vest. I think Millie must have taken it.’
‘What would Millie of wanted with a vest down to her knees?’ said Carrie.
‘It was a good warm vest,’ said Mrs. Bowles.
‘You’ve put it away in the wrong place,’ said Carrie, ‘that’s what you’ve done. Look among the table linen.’
This was what Martin missed when they went away to the country, and then, even on his comfortable week-ends with Isobel, he thought of the empty house and the time when he was due to drive down to fetch them home and plonk them in their chairs in front of the television.
‘It isn’t clear.’
‘Be quiet, Carrie.’
‘I’m going to turn it up.’
‘Sit still, Carrie.’
Carrie’s niece had once offered to take her off their hands.
‘Let her go,’ said Mrs. Bowles, and in her anger strained a muscle in her shoulder while heaving Carrie’s trunk from the box-room out on to the landing.
Carrie surveyed the box. ‘I’ll go when it suits me,’ she said, ‘and it won’t be to my relations I’ll go. I could make myself a home tomorrow if it suited me.’
Martin had heaved the trunk back into its old place, for it had left a clear oblong shape on the dusty floor. Martin brushed his trousers and washed his hands.
‘Fetch me the liniment for my shoulder,’ said his mother, ‘there’s a good boy.’
He had bought them the television, and now, comforting Isobel for her broken china, he was wondering how he could get home in time for supper, as he had promised them he would.
He picked up the broken pieces and said, ‘You mustn’t allow Walter Prett into the house again.’
‘He’s never done this before,’ she said.
‘Does he come often?’ Martin stood up in his alarm, with half the sugar basin in his hand, so that a little shower of sugar fell to the carpet.
‘No, Martin,’ she said.
He was suspicious because of the ‘No, Martin,’ instead of merely ‘No.’
‘He’s disreputable,’ Martin said. ‘A sponger and a drunk.’
‘Yes, Martin, I know.’
He was frantic with curiosity. ‘What could any woman see in him?’
‘He can be interesting when—’
‘When he’s not drunk.’
‘Well, he’s got something about him, he’s different from anybody else.’
She got down and picked up all the china. ‘Pour me a drink,’ she said.
Martin looked at his watch and at her plump behind as she knelt over the broken pieces, and wanted to kick it. For he felt suddenly that he was to her only the man who handled her property and shares, and that she slept with him only to ensure his loyalty and save herself the trouble of investigating the property deals.
‘I can’t stay very long. My old ma’s expecting me for supper,’ he said.
‘Let’s have a drink.’ She sniffed away the last of her tears and carried off the tray of broken china.
He had poured their drinks when she returned with new make-up on her face. He had often felt the only safe course would be to marry her, and he felt this now, with fear, because she did not always attract him, and he was not sure she would accept him. At the times when she stood out for her rights, not crudely, but with all the implicit assumptions, he thought her face too fat and found her t
hick neck and shoulders repulsive. At this moment, when she leaned against the mantelpiece with her drink in her hand, he finding himself without the right to question her about the frequency of Walter Prett’s visits, he thought her jaw was too square and masculine. He saw it would be safer to marry her. Often, when she had said, ‘Martin, what should I do without you? I should never be able to manage my affairs without you,’ he had recognised her strong-boned beauty and thought how a sculptor might do something about it. Even at these moments, when he had found the idea of marrying Isobel a soothing one, the panic returned that she might refuse. The thought was not to be borne. He recalled the two old women and thought, after all, it would not be the decent thing to leave them alone.
‘Carrie, you have wiped the oven with the floor cloth.’
‘How could I of wiped the oven with the floor cloth, when the floor cloth’s looking you in the face over there…?’
He left at seven, and on the way home pulled up at a telephone kiosk. He wanted to talk secretly to Ronald Bridges and tell Ronald a little bit about Walter Prett’s offensive behaviour, and to put himself right with Ronald, feeling now as if Ronald’s eye had been invisibly upon him all the afternoon. He was never comfortable when he did not feel all right with Ronald.
But there was no answer from Ronald’s number. Soon Martin was eating cold lamb and beetroot opposite Carrie and next to his mother.
He laid his bald head on his hands and said, ‘Oh, stop nagging each other, you two women.’ And they stopped their quarrel for a little space.
Towards half-past seven on Sunday evening, Ewart Thornton was seated in Marlene Cooper’s flat in Bayswater. He said, ‘I’ve got a pile of homework to do. Maths papers.’
‘Never mind that now,’ she said. ‘Come and have supper.’
He had been smoking a pipe. He tapped it out and worked himself stiffly and hugely out of the deep upholstered chair.
‘Maths papers,’ he said. ‘Preliminary tests.’
‘Ewart,’ she said at supper, ‘the Interior Spiral will be meeting on Tuesday at eight-thirty to discuss our evidence with regard to Patrick Seton. We must present a united front if it comes to a court case as I suspect it will. Now, whom can we trust?’
‘Well, you can trust me, for one,’ said Ewart, ‘but I must say I won’t be able to give any evidence in court.’
‘What!’ said Marlene, holding the cold peas in the serving-spoon suspended.
‘I can’t come to court.’
She tipped the peas on to his plate and still stared at him. ‘You must,’ she said. ‘I’m counting on you.’
‘It will be too near the end of term,’ he said. ‘Why,’ she said, ‘have we got to quarrel every time we meet, Ewart?’ She started to eat.
‘There is no quarrel,’ he said, sprinkling pepper on his salad.
‘You can’t let me down,’ she said, ‘after all this preparation. Patrick’s future may depend upon it.’
‘I’m not convinced of Patrick’s innocence. As you know, I’m a man of principle. I’m not sure that Mrs. Flower isn’t in the right.’
‘But all you need to say is that Patrick is a genuine medium, and that Freda Flower ran after him unmercifully, as you know she did. As you know.’
‘Marlene,’ he said, ‘I advise you to keep out of the case altogether. You are talking wildly. No one would be interested in my evidence.’
‘Well, this is sudden,’ she said.
‘I have told you my views. I’ve advised—’
‘Yes, but I thought, as a member of the Interior Spiral, when it came to the point, Ewart, you would stand by me and…’ She was crying, and it satisfied him to see her cry and to think that he had brought about this drooping of her stately neck, the leaning of her head on her hand, the tremor of her jade earrings, the resigned dabbing of her eyes with her handkerchief, and the final offended sniff.
He introduced his fork into his mouth judiciously and chewed like a wise man until she should be delivered of her distress.
‘I don’t see why you are so surprised. I’ve told you all along that I consider it absurd to go into the witness box on Patrick Seton’s behalf. It would do him far more harm than—’
‘Oh, Ewart,’ she said. ‘No, you were never definite. I can’t believe it.’
It was true he had never been quite definite on the subject before tonight, but he had said enough, from time to time, to allow him now to extricate himself from any charge of sudden betrayal. He recalled that some time previous he had said to Marlene, ‘I can see Mrs. Flower’s point of view. Of course, she was foolish to hand him over the money, even allowing it was a gift—’
‘Oh, it was a gift. Patrick says so. He can prove it. There’s a letter.’
‘It’s a large sum for her to give.’
On another occasion he had said, ‘My sympathies are not entirely with Patrick. He may be a good medium, but as a citizen—’
‘It is time spiritualism was recognised as a mark of good citizenship,’ Marlene said.
More recently, at a meeting of the Interior Spiral —the secret group within the Group — Ewart Thornton had said, ‘There is bound to be a certain amount of prejudice against spiritualists if the case is brought up. My advice is to keep out of it and let the law take its course. Mud sticks.’
‘We must fight prejudice,’ Marlene had said. ‘And we all intend to support Patrick in every way. We must decide what we are going to say. We can’t carry on the Group without Patrick.’ On that occasion Patrick had arrived, frail as a sapling birch with rain on its silver head. ‘We are just discussing,’ Marlene said, ‘our combined witness on your behalf, in the event of its being called for.’
‘Ah-ah,’ Patrick sighed, hunching his shoulders together, ‘the unfortunate occurrence.’
‘And what is more,’ Marlene said, ‘we want your assistance in settling what we are to say about Freda Flower. You will have to give us the relevant dates so that—’
‘We do not all know Mrs. Flower,’ Ewart had said.
‘Oh, don’t we?’ said Marlene.
Ewart had thus feebly worked towards this moment on Sunday evening when, sitting at Marlene’s supper table, he said, ‘I’ve told you all along that I consider it absurd to go into the witness box.’
‘Oh, Ewart. No, you were never definite. I can’t believe it.’
‘Think back,’ he said. ‘I’ve told you all along what my position is.
He leaned both arms confidently on the table, and felt a great awkwardness inside him, and looked at Marlene with an overpowering stare until he perceived her submission: she thought him altogether sure of his rectitude.
Then he experienced a sense of this rectitude, and was satisfied. He would have liked to have disappointed her more than this, because he was greatly attracted by her and greatly disapproved of her. He disapproved of, and was attracted by what she took for granted in life —by her freedom to indulge her spirit, and buy the acquiescence of her followers, and run up debts without worry, and cultivate spiritualists and mediums, and have no need of lovers. He was attracted by and disapproved of the departed Harry who had bought earrings to dangle against this tall lady’s neck, and who had died and been buried and dug up again by her, and cremated, and who was now being trafficked with beyond the grave. He had feasted on anecdotes of her past life, and wanted more, and was avid, in an old woman’s way, for her downfall.
‘I have counted on you,’ Marlene was saying, ‘to witness for Patrick because it would be such good publicity for the Infinity. People would know we are not cranks. No-one would take you for a crank, Ewart.’
This did not move him. He liked very much to see Marlene with her private means trying to win him over; and he knew already he was not a crank. He set his face squarely at her, and felt glad he had conferred with Freda Flower and had canvassed witnesses for Freda.
‘Ronald Bridges,’ she said, ‘has also let me down rather badly to-day.’
‘He isn’t one of us, surely?’
/>
‘Oh, he’s not a spiritualist. But he has let me down, all the same. One thing about Patrick,’ she said, ‘he has never let me down.’
He was anxious to go, for he wanted to telephone to Freda Flower from the cosy seclusion of his own study at Campden Hill. He loved a gossip with a homely woman like Freda Flower, and it had been most pleasant, recently, to settle in to telling her how things were going in the Wider Infinity group, and what was being said. For, like a Christian convert of the jungle who secretly returns by night to the fetish tree, or like one who openly supports a political party and then, at last, marks his vote for the opposite party, he felt justified in Freda Flower to the extent of these telephone conversations even although she was an unsuitable person to meet.
‘Freda, I was at a party last night at Isobel Billows’. You won’t know her — she’s not a member of the Circle. But a lot of us were there. I did my very best, Freda, to persuade members to come forward in your favour. After all, where did all the money go? The members know that Patrick has had far too much handling of the funds, in any case. I tried to impress it on young Tim Raymond, but I’m afraid he is too young and irresponsible. And, my dear, I’m not saying anything against Marlene, but she…’
‘Patrick Seton could look you in the eyes,’ she would say, ‘and tell a lie so that you would believe you were telling the lie, not him.’
‘I can well believe you, my dear,’ he would say time and again, into the telephone receiver, lolling back largely in his chair and pulling his waistcoat over his stomach. ‘And I can’t think why you hesitate to give your evidence in full force.’
Marlene was piling the supper things on to a tray. She looked at Ewart several times as she did so, to see if he appeared as if he could still be persuaded. He stood up like a righteous husband, and contemptuously added the pepper pot to the tray.
‘I won’t keep you, then, Ewart, if you are in a hurry to get back to your work,’ she said.
But he was anxious to help Marlene wash the dishes before returning to gossip with Freda Flower. He liked putting an apron around his large body and he liked holding the cloth in his hands to dry the dishes one by one. Sometimes at the end of term, after the examinations, he invited three of his best boys to dinner on Saturday at his rooms, and he liked that very much —planning the menu, buying in the food, preparing it, cooking it for them, fussing over the stove for them, seeing they had enough to eat, like a solicitous mother.