Her Victory (45 page)

Clara felt riven by fever, cast between freezing and boiling, one part horrified for her father, the other side of her saying to herself: ‘Good for you, Emma, tell him off as he deserves.' She had to admit that in some respects their life had been better when they'd had a place of their own, in that their antagonisms didn't spread.

‘I wasn't trying to annoy you,' Emma said. ‘You could easily have laughed at my suggestion, instead of creating such a tragic atmosphere.'

Their mother had only been dead a few months, and Clara reminded her that people generally needed a year to get over a loved one's death, if they ever did. Emma may not have been malicious, but she was surely insensitive to go on about it when father didn't want her to.

Percy folded his napkin neatly, put it into its ivory ring, and went to smoke a cigar in his study, where he kept a decanter of port and could sit at his desk and stare at the large leather-bordered blotter till he was roused by the need for more port or to relight his cigar; or he would, with the smouldering cigar between his fingers, cover sheets of paper with automatic scribble-writing, using his favourite Waterman fountain pen, till his fingers ached too intensely for him to go on, or until a length of ash scattered itself on the paper as a reminder that he must stop because there were other things in life, such as a further glass of port and another cigar. He didn't notice Clara set a coffee tray on his desk.

‘I suppose,' she said to Emma in the living-room, ‘that he's happy, after his fashion.'

‘I hope so.' Emma added that by talking frankly about his situation she was only helping to bring his thoughts into the open. That was what he found so intolerable. Well, it was understandable. She wouldn't want hers to be forced out in such a way, in which case she wouldn't worry him again. If he wanted to know what he was thinking he could discover for himself – or not, as the case may be. She was sorry, and would apologize in the morning.

Clara said she ought to, and that from now on she should ‘act her age' when at table with father, to which Emma replied that she knew very well what her age was, and couldn't do anything but act it. Her age was part of her. It was a wide age that spanned any number of years, and not a narrow segment of time in which every tight-laced emotion was predictable.

There must be some good in him, Emma went on, because that, presumably, had been similar to what he had loved in mother, and maybe what in the end he couldn't stand about her, because after she had died he didn't want any more of it in the house, at least not from one of his daughters.

‘You're wrong about father,' Clara said. ‘You probably remind him so much of mother that it's doubly painful when you go on as you do.'

‘But mother was always quiet as a mouse.'

‘In the last twenty years she was,' Clara replied, ‘but at the beginning she was very lively – at least by her own account.'

‘Till he crushed it out of her by self-indulgent fits of so-called insanity,' Emma said.

‘He'd had them before he met her.' It's no use asking where it all began. Here we are, yet because we must put up with all the questions and upsets we ought to forget about them. But Clara knew that to do so would mean cutting away nine-tenths of thought and talk. Emma stood before the fireplace and looked at the oil-painting of John above the mantelpiece. She gazed for some minutes, as if passing on her reflections to the face that could never give off the same life she remembered from him.

‘Father used his illness to try and break her spirit.' She turned to Clara. ‘But only John being killed did that. Where's the moral in it all?'

‘I don't know. Is there one?'

‘There must be.'

‘Hating father won't help you to find it.'

‘Oh, I don't really hate him, but I do wish he wouldn't die on us every day now mother's no longer here. He's spitting on her memory. Don't you see, Clara? I love them both, yet I'm trying to make sure we have a better life than she had. Her beginning with father was a terrible mistake for both of them, but mostly for her. He's trying to reduce us to the same state she was in most of her life. And I don't know how to stop him!'

Tears were falling down Clara's cheeks. ‘It isn't his fault.'

‘Nor hers. Nor yours. Nor mine. It just happens. That's worst of all. Things happen whether we want them to or not. It's too horrible to bear.'

Clara cried aloud at the searing notion of her sister making the same mistake as her mother, though on a grander scale. She sobbed, unmercifully torn inside. She reached for Emma and held her tight. ‘Please don't go on like this. I can't tolerate any more.'

But she didn't, as Emma thought, mean stop talking about their parents. She was pleading for her not to carry on so senselessly. Don't go into town so often. Don't stay out all night with men you pick up. What are you looking for, trying to find, doing to yourself? Why don't you stay in, sit still, or do something else? She couldn't explain, knew it would be useless anyway, that it would only bring words crushing back, might even drive Emma to worse things.

Emma too was weeping, both bodies burning together, but nothing more could be said.

16

When Emma stayed in for a few days, Audrey would not be allowed either to feed or change Thomas, nor take him out. Emma was with him from waking up to putting him to bed.

The decorators had come and gone, and she was back in the large front room, Thomas's crib in the dressing-room opening off. When the weather was fine she sat on the veranda steps. She looked up from her book at Thomas in his pram below staring at a black-and-white cat walking the branch of a plum tree. She read, or she did nothing.

From the living-room window Clara noticed how often she looked straight ahead with a faint smile towards the wall at the end of the garden, a hand occasionally moving to straighten her hair. At the slightest cry she would be down in a moment to comfort Thomas. Or she would pick him up. His priority was total, and Clara did not know whether she preferred Emma's mood of devoted mother (which excluded everyone else from the union of herself and the baby) or that of the distracted young woman who set off for town like an animal loose out of a cage.

Clara wondered why only these two choices were possible, for neither seemed good for any woman. Clara wanted a stable and predictable order, which guaranteed peace everywhere. She craved the ideal family which did not exist.

Emma's calm was the eye of the storm, and out of sisterly love Clara shared the space there. But when the tempest broke Clara would be looking for that calm zone in order to escape the pain and fury, and when she realized that no peace existed anywhere she would be reduced to a tearful passion that seemed to damage her beyond all possibility of feeling normal again.

She wondered how long such a permanently threatening state could last. The only danger was to feel that she would not be able to tolerate the disturbance much longer, for she sensed a dismaying fragility in herself that might lead to failure in her duty towards Emma. She assumed that similar thoughts had planted themselves in her father's heart as well, for he did not speak to Emma, and never asked where she had gone.

He rarely talked to anybody, stayed in his study, and often ate his meals there. When Emma wondered why, it was only to add that she didn't care, though Clara knew she suffered by being cast as a stranger in the house. To justify his neglect, her father never let the expression of aggrieved deprivation go from his face while either sister was nearby. The turmoil of his earlier life had taught him how to control his family, and Clara saw that only Emma had the courage to prevent such power going unchecked, though at a cost to her that was alarming to witness. It was as if she suspected him of wanting to drive her to some awful fate in return for having, as he supposed, caused their mother's death.

When Emma was out of the house the pall of her misery shifted to Clara, who could not rest in wondering where she was, and from fretting at what might be happening to her, and worrying about what time she would come back, and how they'd be able to find her if Thomas was taken ill.

Clara stared at him until he moved out of sleep, or the mouth puckered because he could not get free of troubling dreams. She was stricken by a sense of his impermanence, as if at any moment he might stop breathing, or be found not living in the morning, in which case the unity in the family, which even his unwelcome presence had somehow cemented, would be broken for ever. Every live being on earth served its purpose, she thought. Every death reordered the position of those left behind.

Fruit trees blossomed, spheres of pink and white reaching one behind the other as far as the wall, while all beneath was cluttered with nettles and brambles because Percy had dismissed the man who looked after the garden for having taken a few sticks of wood without permission. Percy was too mean to give someone else the job, and when Emma suggested he walk to the nearest dole queue and choose a poor man for the honour, he appeared not to hear. Clara had opened a path with shears but the vegetation grew back to its former density.

White lilac, apple and plum blossom set against sunlight and cloud reminded her that there was nothing they lacked to make life pleasant. They had money, a house, all material things, good health, and yet – Clara turned from the blossom that was so pleasing to the soul – why is it one can cut the misery with a knife?

‘I'll tell you,' said Emma, when Clara could not resist voicing her reflections aloud. ‘It's because we treat each other as if we'll come to pieces if a cross word is said. I teased father about getting married, but actually did think how good it would be to hear and see another person in the house. Whatever my reasons for having Thomas, one of them was because I wanted to bring a new spirit into the family. I went about it the wrong way, of course. Father would like me to get an upright sanctimonious husband who grovelled with respect for him. So would you. But I couldn't attach myself to any man for life, even if I thought I loved him. Nothing can be done for us. I can't stand it here. I was hoping father would throw me out when I went on about him getting married, but he's too old and soft. He'll probably just cross me out of his will. He'll get his own back, somehow, I know he will. There's only one solution for me.'

‘You're not going to leave, are you?'

Emma put on her hat at the dressing-table mirror. ‘Do you want me to?'

‘Of course I don't. But if you're really fed up you could just take off. With your money you could live anywhere.'

‘I wish I didn't have it.'

Clara believed her, but such an attitude seemed like an attack on her own existence, and she scoffed: ‘You'd soon wish you had.'

‘You're so sensible. That's something else I can't stand. Suffocating sense! It's impossible to break out of.'

‘What do you
want
, then?'

She closed the wardrobe, and surprised Clara by sitting down when she had seemed in a hurry to go out. She needed glasses but hardly ever wore them, and peered into her face. ‘Only one thing.'

‘What?'

‘If anything happens to me, what about Thomas?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Well, who would look after him?'

Clara wanted to tell her that the maid was doing quite nicely. ‘Nothing's going to happen to you.'

‘But suppose I went out, stepped off the causeway, and got killed by a motor-car, or a tram? Or imagine I died of double-pneumonia.'

‘You're as strong as a horse. You'll live to be ninety.'

She spoke coolly, yet Clara saw the distress behind her darkened eyes. ‘I know. I'm asking you to suppose.'

Some other tone must be used, but Clara's voice overrode the feeble effort she made, and produced a note of impatience. ‘I don't imagine Thomas would lack the basic necessities. You can depend on that.'

Emma's face seemed small. She was pleading, but Clara's pain prevented her guessing the reason. ‘You're not being sarcastic, are you? I can't always tell.'

Clara faced her. ‘Do you think we would put the poor little chap on to the street? Really, why talk like this? You'll have me in tears in a bit, and there's absolutely no need to.'

‘I know,' Emma laughed, ‘I can't bear to see you crying. It's such a sight: the flower of womanhood in a flood of tears! But I must go. I'm off to the Ritz. I met this wonderful chap, an engineer on leave from the Sudan who doesn't give a damn about anything in the world. So refreshing. We have marvellous fun. I'd love to bring him here, but I don't think it would be appreciated. He'd have the place topsy-turvy in no time. Father would have a thousand fits.'

‘What's his name?' Clara asked, desperate to know. ‘Let me meet him. I won't run you off, though we might get on better than you think.'

Emma opened the door. ‘He's going back soon. They all have somewhere to go back to. He asked me to marry him, but I don't see how I could. I love Thomas too much to have to put him in an orphanage. No man is worth that.'

Clara held her hands. ‘You sound as if you're in a bit of a mess. Stay with me this evening. Let's talk. Why don't we go to the Riviera for a month or two? There's a pleasant hotel at Beausoleil we can stay at for a while. Or we can go to Menton. It's a bit quiet, but there are lots of nice walks, and it's closer to Italy. Thomas can come with us. We can get two or three rooms. Let's sit down and discuss it. We can go to Cooks tomorrow, and they'll arrange everything.'

Even while talking, Clara knew that they couldn't leave their father – though they might be able to get him looked after if Emma agreed to the plan. Anything to keep her from the obviously horrible man she'd met.

Emma's expression suggested that she might like the idea, but she said: ‘It's too late.'