An End to Autumn (13 page)

She debated whether she should take another whisky but decided against it for after all she had to drive her car and though the Mallows’ house wasn’t very far away anything could happen. In any case she hadn’t had much food, and she had learned from experience that too much whisky on an empty stomach wasn’t good for her.

The clock showed quarter past seven and she rose from her seat, and, coatless, switched off the lights, shut the door and walked to her car. She drove carefully among the multitudes of lights to the Mallows, feeling nervous and slightly feverish, though less so than before she had taken her two whiskies. The rain beat steadily on the windscreen, monotonously cleared by the wiper, and the wind was higher than she had realised it was while she was sitting in her flat.

PART TWO

1

T
HEY SAT AWKWARDLY
on chairs and sofa about the living room, Vera, Tom, Mrs Murphy, Ruth Donaldson and Mrs Mallow.

“Well then,” said Vera brightly, “now that we’re all here I think we should have a drink.”

She went over to the sideboard and Tom was surprised to see four or five bottles there: she must have bought them the previous day for he couldn’t remember their having been there before.

“Ruth?” she said.

“I’ll take a whisky. No water, please.”

“Whisky. No water,” Vera repeated. And then, “Tom, perhaps you could help me.”

“Fine,” said Tom. “I always knew bartending was my destiny.” Mrs Murphy laughed, and the others smiled.

“Mrs Murphy?” said Vera. It occurred to Tom that she had left his mother to the last and this bothered him slightly.

“I’ll take a drop of Martini if you have it. A small drop.”

“Lemonade?”

“That would be all right.”

Vera handed her the glass and then looked inquiringly at her mother-in-law.

“Nothing for me,” said Mrs Mallow, turning apologetically to the others. “I don’t drink, you see.”

“Come on mother,” Tom pleaded, “just for tonight. You don’t have to drive or anything. You don’t have to leave the house. Now if it was Ruth here or even Mrs Murphy.” Finally she was persuaded to take a lemonade, Vera poured out a small Martini for herself, while Tom took a whisky.

They sat in their chairs with their drinks in their hands and there was a silence till Tom remarked,

“Well, it’s good to be sitting here and not thinking about school.”

“You’re perfectly right,” said Ruth. “Mrs Murphy and your mother here don’t know what we have to put up with.”

She drank her whisky rapidly, nervously, while Mrs Murphy looked at her and thought, “Funny she doesn’t wear a better dress than that. She’s an odd one, that.”

“What do you do then?” she asked.

“I teach. That’s what I do. For my sins.”

“For her sins is right,” said Tom. “She teaches Religious Education. We don’t have her problems.”

“Oh,” said Mrs Murphy.

Tom’s mother, as if embarrassed that she had contributed nothing to the conversation so far, suddenly remarked, “Tom teaches English, you know.” The words, so shyly offered, hung nakedly in the room as if unconnected with what had gone before, and Ruth Donaldson who had turned to look at Mrs Mallow turned away again, as if abruptly dismissing her.

“It’s like this,” she said, “Religious Education is a twilight subject, I’m afraid, Mrs Murphy. No one is interested in it. It is taught as a sop to the consciences of education departments. When I came here first I was offered all sorts of cooperation but when I actually arrived what did I find? I found a dull room with some of the window panes smashed, children who aren’t interested in anything I have to offer, and no money available for buying books or maps or anything else. One would have thought that there would have been enough hypocrisy in existence to provide decent working conditions and material, but no. There’s not even enough of that.”

She felt quite happy, the centre of attention for the moment, in that room where she had a number of listeners, and at the same time a glass in her hand, the whisky of which she had already drunk.

“Another?” said Vera, noticing, as she sat slightly apart from the others in her white dress.

“Well, if you like. If you’re sure it’s no trouble.”

What sort of woman was this, Mrs Murphy was wondering, a religious teacher drinking whisky all the time. Mrs Mallow sat smiling on them all, saying nothing.

“I’m sure,” said Tom, “that Mrs Murphy and my mother here will find your problems of interest.”

“Bugger,” thought Ruth savagely, taking the whisky from Vera, and touching her hand slightly as she did so.

Vera gazed at her enigmatically.

“Do you come from Ireland then?” Ruth asked Mrs Murphy. “I thought with a name like that you might come from Ireland.”

“I do. I come from Connemara.”

“Do you go back there often?”

“Not now. I used to go back there but not now.”

There was another silence and Tom glancing at his mother said,

“Are you sure that lemonade is all you want?”

“Yes, Tom, I’m fine.” Her face retained the same fixed smile as if she had decided to put it on with her dress.

“My mother,” he went on, “my mother and I at one time used to live in a tenement in Edinburgh. We met a lot of Irish people there. Very likeable people too. I remember when my father was in hospital … but mother will tell you.”

“What was that, Tom?”

“You remember when my father was in hospital, mother?”

“Oh yes. They made a collection you see. They brought it to me. Was that it Tom?” she asked anxiously.

“That’s right mother. But you didn’t tell it all. This tall Irishman, slightly drunk, came to the door with this collection and he said to my mother, ‘It’s just a little drop of money.’ And when we opened the envelope there were fifteen pounds in it. And yet they didn’t have much money themselves. You see, the Irish are very generous—not much respect for law and order, mind you, if you’ll excuse me Mrs Murphy—but warm and generous. My mother loved it there didn’t you, mother?”

“Yes, Tom.” The centre of attention, she was red with embarrassment, and found it difficult to speak.

“I would say they are like that,” said Mrs Murphy comfortably. Ruth Donaldson glanced contemptuously at the three of them and then winked at Vera who was saying nothing but watching everybody, the Martini in her glass hardly touched.

“Bitch,” thought Tom, noticing the wink. “Warm heartedness is a great virtue. Perhaps some of us have lost it, that sense of community. I sometimes wonder whether the middle classes may not have lost it.” He turned to Vera who smiled but didn’t speak.

“Oh I wouldn’t say that,” said Ruth Donaldson. “Warm heartedness can be found in all classes, I would say.” Her whisky glass was empty again. “It is not an exclusive possession of what we may call, for lack of a better phrase, the lower classes. I would have said that it was a function of the personality who either had or hadn’t got it.” She was puzzled a bit by the end of the sentence which seemed to have got a little out of control and added.

“I think the other view is a sort of sentimentalism, myself.”

“Have you ever read O’Casey?” Tom asked furiously, ready for an argument.

“I have and my opinion remains unchanged.”

“If you’re saying that the people in the big houses are as warm hearted as the people in the tenements,” Mrs Murphy suddenly intervened,” then you’re wrong, begging your pardon. I clean the stairs for them and I know. They stick to their pennies, the same people. You find a rich man and you’ll find a man who sticks to his pennies, and what’s the end of it all, six feet of earth, that’s what I always say.” She looked around her with satisfaction.

Ruth Donaldson was about to say something when Vera interposed.

“If you would all like to go into dinner now. You must be starving. Take your drinks in with you. Ruth? Do you want another one? Anyone else?”

Without speaking, Ruth handed over her glass to be filled and they went into the dining room.

Tom sat at the head of the table, Vera and Ruth facing each other, Mrs Mallow and Mrs Murphy also facing each other.

The shining table had been laid, with two candles in the middle, red napkins in a vase and the best plates and cutlery. The curtains had been drawn but as they were entering Tom heard the wind and rain beating against the window and said, “There seems to be a bit of a storm. The weather has broken.”

In the dusk of the room—for the electric light had been switched off—he saw the candles trembling and casting white circles on the table. It occurred to him that tall and pure as they were they would shed grease on the plates below.

They began with a clear soup which Ruth Donaldson gulped as if she were not at all interested in food while Mrs Murphy and Tom’s mother sipped theirs slowly.

Tom said, “Vera is a very good cook. But you mustn’t imagine I get this sort of food every day.” There was some laughter in which however Ruth Donaldson pointedly did not join, keeping her large head bent over her plate.

Now and again Tom would glance at Vera who hardly entered the conversation but attended to her duties as hostess competently and quietly. She never felt embarrassed by her own silence, but thought of it as a demonstration of power: it was the weakest people who talked the most. Tom wondered what she was up to, and couldn’t make up his mind: perhaps if he got a chance between courses he might ask her. Meanwhile, cool and self-possessed as always, she did exactly what was expected of her but at the same time contributed nothing beyond that as if she had carefully measured out what her responsibility was and was adhering to its limits. The thought suddenly came to him, she is saying nothing because whatever happens I shall not then be able to blame her. She will be able to say, “I didn’t cause any of it. I did what was required of me. I was precisely as generous as I ought to have been. And in any case it was your idea that Mrs Murphy should be invited. Or are you suggesting that she isn’t suitable for company.”

He gazed at the candles as if with a premonition that in some way they were connected with whatever might happen. What I need, he thought, is to get drunk. That’s what I need. Holding all this together is beginning to grow too much for me. The centre is beginning to crack. His mother sat smiling in her chair. She is hating this, he thought, she is hating every minute. She is not at ease, she has nothing to say, she is too embarrassed to speak. And yet we should all be happy round the table, we should feel a communal sense of contentment: why then don’t we? Is it because all human relationships are impossible, the nudge, the sharp points, the egos starving or triumphant, the love that is never sufficient. And at that moment he glanced up and saw Ruth Donaldson’s eyes fixed on his wife with such a naked desire that he almost fainted with the force of it.

He took the bottle of wine and poured some out for everybody including his mother (though she protested) and a large amount for himself. So it’s war he thought. War to the death and he gazed at Ruth Donaldson with rage and hatred.

“I hope this won’t harm you after the whisky,” he said with barbed solicitousness.

“Not at all,” she challenged him across the table. “You should have given your mother more.”

“I won’t drink even this much,” said his mother quietly.

“As a matter of fact she doesn’t need it,” Tom pursued mercilessly, “she doesn’t have to teach religion.”

Point one to me, he thought savagely, as he saw Ruth Donaldson turn pale.

“Are you all right, Mrs Murphy?”

“I’m fine. To tell you the truth I never mix my drinks myself.”

So we’re taking sides, then let us: let us throw caution to the winds and enjoy ourselves. Let’s choose our teams, the rest of us against you and Vera. Or is Vera perhaps being neutral? So far she hasn’t committed herself to either side, she has remained in the dressing room, not a hair out of place. Or perhaps she has committed herself to Ruth Donaldson, and that is what all this is about. It was going to be very hard to prevent the table from becoming a battlefield, and maybe it wasn’t worth making the effort. Who the hell cared about Ruth Donaldson anyway? His own mother had a better claim to mercy than she had.

He drank his wine and watched as Vera put the duckling and orange on the plates.

Suddenly his mother said, “The other day Mrs Murphy and I took a walk up to the castle. Have you ever been there, Miss Donaldson? It’s a very old castle. You can see the whole town from it. You can see this house from it, can’t you, Mrs Murphy?”

“You can that. You can see the whole town.”

“And do you like the town then,” Ruth Donaldson asked sweetly. “Do you like staying here?” And she subtly emphasised the last word as if she meant by it not simply the town but the house in which they were sitting.

“It’s very different from Edinburgh.”

“In what way, Mrs Mallow?”

“Well, it’s smaller. And there’s the sea.”

“Ah, the sea. Of course. That must make a considerable difference. All the difference there is.” And she drank some wine.

“The sea must make a lot of difference, wouldn’t you say, Mrs Murphy? Coming from Connemara you must miss the sea, the boats and the rocks and all that.”

“I don’t know. Would you be missing the sea yourself?” said Mrs Murphy and it seemed to the delighted Tom that she had deliberately exaggerated her Irishness. Good for you, ould woman, he muttered under his breath, and all the Mrs Murphies of the world. May your God go with you.

“Of course,” he said aloud, “it is possible that Miss Donaldson doesn’t deal much with the sea, apart from the Sea of Galilee. Do you, Miss Donaldson?”

“Not even that one, Mr Mallow.”

If this were the Last Supper, thought Tom a little drunkenly, I should go and kiss her as our betrayer. I should perhaps ask her to change this wine back to water, if she can do it. Bloody old hag, and bitch of the first water, or for that matter the second and third and all successive ones.

So she had brought her hate into this room, her frustration, her hypocritical divinity, her loneliness and her sorrow.

Ruth Donaldson drank some more wine rapidly and then said as if to no one in particular: