Lewis Percy (17 page)

It was a different matter when he purchased and brought home the typewriter and installed it in his old room. This she regarded as an affront, seeing, quite correctly, that he would spend less time with her, not physically, but mentally, once the means of typing the final draft of his book were actually present in the house. By an enormous mischance Mrs Harper was paying her daughter a visit when Lewis came home with his new Olivetti.

‘I’m surprised you want to bring your work home, Lewis,’ she said. ‘I should have thought you’d want to spend your spare time with Tissy.’

‘But this is my book,’ he attempted to explain. ‘I told you all about it. And the sooner I get it finished the happier I’ll be.’

‘I wonder you don’t do it in the office,’ she said.

‘I work in a library. They don’t use typewriters in libraries. Look,’ he said, turning to Tissy with some impatience. ‘If it’s going to upset you I could apply for a carrel in the university library. But that means using it at the weekends and in the evenings. Would you prefer that? I know I wouldn’t.’

Tissy, who usually let her mother speak for her, merely said, ‘I wonder you can’t give it to somebody else to do. Leave it here if you like, but don’t expect me to dust that room.’

‘Good God, no,’ he said, alarmed. ‘Don’t even go in there. Just leave it entirely to me.’

Mrs Harper brought her prodigious gaze back from her contemplation of her daughter and observed, ‘I would never have allowed separate areas in my house.’

‘Ah,’ said Lewis. ‘But, you see, this is my house.’ And was immediately aware that he had said a fatal thing.

Thereafter he was eternally nervous that they might disturb, even tamper with, his work. The tension became so great that he took his typewriter to the library with him, borrowed the secretary’s office, and typed through the lunch hour when she was out. Pen complained that he never saw him any more.

‘Come to dinner,’ said Lewis recklessly. And then, even more recklessly, ‘Bring George.’ He had no love for George Cheveley, a rascally-looking antique dealer whom he had met with Pen in the Burlington Arcade, and, subsequently, at Pen’s house in Notting Hill. He had disliked the man’s tight smiling face, his longish fair hair, his too correct tailoring. He always greeted him cheerfully, but he was aware of Pen’s discomfort at seeing one side of his life intrude into his altogether innocent friendship with Lewis, which was doubly valued precisely because it was innocent. But Lewis, who had infinite love and tolerance for Pen, merely wanted him to be at ease, whatever he did, and if that meant accepting George, whom he suspected of being a bully, he was perfectly willing to do so. At the same time he was aware that he might have a hard job persuading Tissy to be equally tolerant. But the die was cast and on the whole he was glad of it. Pen was his friend, and it was time that Tissy learned to be more forbearing. Her views sometimes shocked him by their languid ruthlessness; he derived a perverse thrill of annoyance when Tissy and her mother discussed anything of wider import
than their immediate concerns. Calmly, even judiciously, they condemned out of hand any moment of untoward sympathy. ‘Hanging’s too good for them,’ was Mrs Harper’s usual comment on a wide range of people, from Communists to drunk drivers. Unfortunately, in her eyes, quite a lot of men fell into one or the other category. Lewis was pretty sure that George would rank very high on her list. Nor did he doubt that George, who was a cruelly excellent mimic, might have something to say on the matter himself.

Pen’s smile was swept away by a slight frown.

‘The thing is,’ he said, settling himself on the edge of the desk. ‘George is not with me at the moment. My sister’s staying in the house. She’s all set to stay indefinitely, or rather until she finds a flat of her own. Well, she can’t keep coming up from Wales, can she?’

‘What does she do?’ asked Lewis.

‘She’s an actress. She gets tiny parts on television. Actually, she’s too lazy to do any real work. But she’s a great girl, you’d like her. Quite mad, of course.’

‘Bring her,’ said Lewis. ‘Tissy would be thrilled. She watches television all the time.’

‘She’d have to, to catch a glimpse of Emmy. Emmy’s always the painfully upper class woman in a queue complaining about something. Or some mogul’s snooty secretary. She only does it for a laugh; nobody at home bothers to watch her. But she’s an entertaining sort of character, and we’ve always been close. She’s the only one who knows about George.’

‘Come on Saturday,’ said Lewis. ‘I’ll tell Tissy.’

He prepared himself for the further indoctrination of Tissy, who expressed great anxiety whenever he proposed to bring someone to the house. This had reduced their social life to nothing, or rather to the visits of Mrs Harper and the doctor, both of whom preferred to come when Lewis was absent. Susan and Andrew, at the beginning of their marriage, had been invited as a matter of course, and had been, on the whole, a success. Susan and Tissy had not so much looked
each other over as taken tiny sideways glances at each other. Evidently reassured by this examination, they had nevertheless not fallen into a friendship, as Lewis had hoped. Equally, at the outset of their marriage, Professor Armitage had been invited. He had been tolerated, but Lewis had not felt comfortable; as Tissy’s cooking had never progressed beyond little girl accomplishments he had been aware of the inadequacy of the entertainment. And when Professor Armitage had taken up the subject of Lewis’s work Tissy had abruptly risen and begun to clear the table. Lewis had felt deeply hurt, both for himself and for his guest, although Professor Armitage had talked on, seemingly unaware that anything was amiss. Now he was going to require of her something more difficult, since Pen and this Emmy presumably had a run of sophisticated entertainments at their disposal and would be disconcerted if Tissy betrayed incompetence, thus plunging her into further confusion. Walking home, Lewis shook his head at his own folly. But it was done, and he had known that it had to be done.

Tissy took the news of his invitation – already given and accepted – as if her husband were announcing something conceived solely as a personal threat to herself. He could hardly believe his eyes when she shrank back in dismay. Taking refuge beside the cooker, she busied herself with the knife drawer, her whole back registering grievance and panic. Hanging, he reflected, would be too good for him when the news reached Mrs Harper. The dreadful embarrassment to which this marriage was subject almost overwhelmed him, until he realized that Tissy, in her frailty, was even more susceptible to its insufficiencies than he was.

‘Darling, darling,’ he said, putting his arms round her and cajoling her into the centre of the room. ‘You must stop being frightened. There’s a great big beautiful world out there, and sooner or later you’ll have to discover it. I’m not asking you to do anything exorbitant. I’ve simply asked a couple of friends to dinner. We can’t go on living as we are. At least, I can’t. It makes me sad sometimes to just sit here
in the evenings and wait for it to be time to go to bed. And you’re not really happy, are you?’

‘I’m perfectly happy,’ she said, startled.

‘But you could be even happier if you’d only open out a bit. If only you’d let me take you away somewhere, anywhere. We could go to Paris.’ He felt a nostalgia for those grey mornings and for his earlier self, free as a bird, savouring his solitude as he walked the broad avenues that would take him to his daily task. He saw it all now as blameless, innocent. With what zeal he had lived his poor little life, and how he recognized its benefits, yes, even now. He felt eternal gratitude for his own apprenticeship. But as a married man, and a householder, he felt nothing but dryness, interspersed with spasms of desire. He longed for one real upward flight. He longed for his wife to join him. He could hardly believe that she was perfectly happy, as she claimed to be. He was beginning to see that she confused happiness with respectability, and was ready to believe that it was the duty of the married woman to express happiness, for how else could she feel superior to the unmarried?

For Tissy, appreciation of status and possessions constituted happiness, or rather represented it. Not for her the flight or the aspiration: she could not feel safe unless tied to the earth, her feet literally on the ground. How many times she had repudiated him, deflated him! She was at one with her mother there, although she lacked her mother’s generalized hostility, just as she lacked her mother’s vicious prettiness. He realized that his wife considered him to be a specimen of an unfortunate but necessary race, and that, far from there being any personal charge in this, she had absorbed the attitude from her earliest years, environmentally. The shambling doctor had not been cast in a mould heroic enough to break the spell; his failure to do so must be added to his other vices. Tissy had in fact done sterling work in purging herself of cruelty, hatred, and the desire for revenge that such an attitude might have fostered, but in this work of abnegation, of studious refusal to take sides, to accuse or to blame,
she had rendered herself inert, colourless, without ardour. Lewis knew that she trusted him because he had never hurt her, had treated her gently, had loved her. For this she was willing to do her best, to play her part. He realized that they might have kept this bargain for life, faithfully but joylessly. It took something as minor as this announcement that he had invited a friend to dinner to shock her out of her lethargy, the lethargy which she found so necessary. When he saw her expression of fear he knew the extent of her malady.

‘You must ask your mother to help you,’ he said gently, releasing her. ‘She will tell you what to do. And it will be nice to use those Crown Derby plates for once.’

On this level she was at one with him, although he knew that she preferred to enjoy their possessions on her own. Passing him a plate of food, she would be visibly waiting for him to hand it back again, so that she could wash it and put it away and close the cupboard door on it. For once she was going to have to share her belongings, and to do so not merely with a good grace but with a good heart. He saw that this might be too much for her, as it was nearly too much for him to have to watch her. Yet he felt that the test was timely; more, that it was crucial. The dinner party was almost lost from sight. He winced with disbelief when he remembered it. As an occasion for pleasure it was already doomed. He began to dread it almost as much as his wife seemed to do.

Contrary to all reasonable expectations it was his mother-in-law who saved the day. Along with her general implacability and her spoiled expectations, Mrs Harper possessed a certain taste for splendour which her life had refused to gratify. The Belgian convent had left her with a sense of formality with regard to the preparation and presentation of food which Lewis found commendable and impressive. He was always loud and genuine in his praise when he and his wife dined with Mrs Harper, although he suspected that there was something unresolved in her attitude to her own cooking: enormous appetite had to be masked by enormous
indifference. Translated, this meant that Mrs Harper would serve them a perfect leg of lamb with flageolet beans, and watch them, smoking, while they ate it, dousing her cigarette only to bring in the salad, the cheese, and the melting almond flan to finish. This effort at self-domination would exhaust her. ‘Tissy, make the coffee,’ she would sigh. ‘But you’ve eaten nothing, Thea,’ Lewis would protest. ‘The cook eats all the time,’ Mrs Harper would tell him with her usual reluctant smile. ‘That’s why she never sits down to dinner. Did you enjoy it?’ Even this query would be ground out of her, an unwilling concession to the male appetite. ‘Superb,’ Lewis would say. ‘I’ve never eaten so well in my life as I do here.’ The smile would be repeated, only to sink away into the usual mask of imperturbability. Another cigarette would be lit and the case would be closed.

On this occasion Mrs Harper decreed a menu of spinach soufflé, roast poussins, and her almond tart. There would be salad and cheese; Lewis would choose the wine. He considered this excessive, but decided not to interfere. The question of whether Mrs Harper would join them was settled by Mrs Harper herself, who wished her daughter to take credit for the entire performance. Mrs Harper would remain in the kitchen until the chickens were served and then invisibly take her leave. Lewis saw this as generosity, even nobility on her part: his mother-in-law and not his wife would be the heroine of this occasion. On the Saturday afternoon he stood respectfully in the doorway of his kitchen, where Mrs Harper, plump elbows flashing, was already directing operations, emptying cupboards of china and glass, assembling pans and kitchen cloths. Under her mother’s supervision Tissy docilely laid the table, and then went upstairs to have a rest. Lewis, unequal to the task of instructing his wife in her duties, went out, ostensibly to buy the wine, in fact to get away from Tissy. His mother-in-law, he was surprised to note, was, in her present mood, entirely tolerable.

Nevertheless he breathed the rainy spring air with a sense
of relief, feeling the burden of his marriage lighten somewhat in the general lightness of the atmosphere. Narcissi, iris, and tulips stood in buckets outside the greengrocer’s, and he bought lavishly of each of them, inhaling their cool earthy delicacy. He walked a little way, with his armful of flowers, feeling fatalistic, as if any further worrying must be done by somebody else. He had no desire to go home. He was not sure whether he would ever want to go home again. Left to himself he might have slipped away, unnoticed. But so much drew him back, so many possessions, so many accoutrements, and his wife palely presiding over all. Both host and guest in his own house, Lewis no longer felt at home there. He loitered, drifted, strolled in the weak sunshine, nodding to neighbours whom he rarely saw, until consciousness of the tasks ahead returned him to himself. Then, as the light began to fade and the coolness of the day became more noticeable, he sighed and went home to have his bath.

In another part of London, Pen told his sister, in a moderate tone of voice, ‘Tissy, I believe, is a little nervous.’ ‘Oh Lor’,’ his sister replied. ‘Then I suppose I’d better play the fool.’ Nevertheless she dressed with her usual extravagance in a garment brought home by her from Mexico, with much Mexican turquoise jewellery. Holding the material of her dress away from her body, she tipped her usual half-bottle of mimosa cologne into the well of her bosom. Disdaining a bag, she tucked a handkerchief into her brother’s pocket and urged him to hurry. ‘The sooner we go, the sooner we can come back,’ she said. ‘Be kind, Emmy,’ said Pen. ‘Lewis is my friend.’ ‘Oh, I am always kind,’ she threw out contemptuously, already on her way to the door. Pen said nothing, although he knew that this was not altogether true.