Lewis Percy (8 page)

Lewis had laughed and pressed his mother’s arm. He loved her in this mood. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘What happened to her? Did some rotter let her down?’

‘Oh no,’ said Mrs Percy, surprised. ‘There never was a rotter, that’s the trouble. She’s the sort of great-hearted woman who would be magnificent with a rotter. That deep bosom, that high colour. The sacrifices she would have made! The faith in his untested abilities she would have maintained! She would have taken on his parents, his friends, even his lovers. I can just see her keeping open house for all his hangers-on, being decent to the women who ring up, lending him money.’

‘Why wouldn’t someone like that want to marry her?’ Lewis had asked in his innocence.

‘Well, he might be a homosexual,’ his mother had replied. She thought it her duty, for which she braced herself, to introduce her son to these complexities. ‘At any event someone who couldn’t tolerate the intimacy of women. And I have to say, although I shouldn’t, that Miss Clarke gives the impression of someone whose intimacy might be a little tiring.’

She said no more, thinking to spare Lewis the spectacle, which she had quite clearly in front of her, of Miss Clarke,
full-throated, wild-eyed, in the throes of some spectacular but unrequited ardour. It was the sort of thing for which actresses became famous in the theatre. Jacobean tragedy would have suited her, she reflected.

‘The sad thing is that many women of Miss Clarke’s type never marry,’ she said mildly. ‘And yet they would make excellent wives. Miss Clarke probably has a chest of drawers full of exquisite linen,’ (nightdresses, she thought, but kept the thought to herself). ‘She probably still adds to it. And she always looks well turned out, have you noticed? Those very pretty blouses, those high heels. And nice discreet scent. And always well made up. And her hair always immaculate.’

‘I suppose she’s all right for her age,’ said Lewis. ‘But I think she’s pretty unattractive.’

‘She was possibly always heavy in the bust, even as a girl,’ said his mother. ‘Now, of course, her waist is bigger than it was before. That happens to women in their forties,’ she said, giving Lewis’s arm a tap. ‘You should know that. So that you’re not disappointed when your wife gets a little older. The figure loses definition,’ she added, although her own had long disappeared into a kind of Gothic sparseness. Contemplation of Miss Clarke’s misplaced and unsought abundance always brought her a tiny spasm of personal gratitude for her own good fortune. Although Lewis did not know this, Mrs Percy always reflected at this point, ‘After all, I had darling Jack.’ But such thoughts were not to be spoken, and after thinking them Mrs Percy felt a little ashamed.

‘Remember, Lewis,’ she had said. ‘Good women are better than bad women. Bad women are merely tiresome. Learn to appreciate goodness of heart. Learn to look beyond the outer covering. Would you like some of those crumpets for tea?’

They had been passing one of the mild small shops that did duty for a bakery in this unworldly district. Two girls in overalls carelessly swathed uncut loaves in tissue paper and swung bags round by corners, varying this activity with sorties to the window to pick out yellow Bath buns and virulent
jam tarts with fingers arched daintily for the purpose.

‘Remember, Lewis,’ his mother had said. ‘Never buy cakes unwrapped.’

‘I wouldn’t buy this stuff anyway,’ said Lewis, whose standards in these matters remained haughtily and unrealistically Parisian. ‘I could just fancy a strawberry tart,’ he added. ‘Freshly made.’ ‘Nevertheless,’ said his mother, ‘I’m sure you won’t say no to the crumpets. Fortunately, they come in packets.’

‘Good afternoon, Hazel,’ she had said to one of the two girls behind the counter. ‘Father feeling better?’

For she had been the genius of the place, he thought, and had somehow made her peace with its lack of pretension, loving its modesty, its uneventfulness, its quiet afternoons. Little ceremonies – the planting of the hyacinth bulbs in the blue china bowls, the drawing of the curtains in the evenings, the bars of soap slipped between the clean sheets in the linen cupboard – all these had kept her happy, kept her attentive, so that with the help of her reading, and with her pride in her son, she had lived a peaceful widowhood, maintained a dignity for which he was grateful. He had had time to reflect on her life, which he now saw as excellent, and which he hoped would always remain with him, and even, when some time had elapsed, cancel out the memory of her death. He would always see her here, against the background of the Common, or else stepping on her narrow beautifully shod feet into the little bakery, the little grocery, exchanging remarks with the shopkeeper, or the girl assistant. Going home to put on the kettle, to build up the fire for the evening, to water the plants. This was a life, thought Lewis, that would always be part of him, although in his mind he longed impatiently to be somewhere else, to be off to a wider, more sophisticated metropolitan setting, one more in keeping with the adult he hoped he had it in him to be, although adulthood still seemed to him to be a long way away. His boyhood, the last days of which he was sorrowfully living, would remain imprinted with his
mother’s quiet habits, whose decency he would always defend.

His mother’s presence was particularly strong on this day when he returned the library books she would never exchange for others. He mounted the steps, pushed through the swing doors, obediently straightened his tie. Once again he succumbed to suburban peace, aware of a rawness round his heart which responded gratefully to the books, to the readers, to the sunlight through the windows, to the smell of polish. Mr Baker was there, he noticed, doing the crossword in
The Times
, although this was forbidden; at least he was not asleep. Miss Clarke was on duty, in a red dress that brought out her high colour; even the lobes of her ears, tightly clasped by large pearl studs, looked suffused. The other girl, the pale one, was searching through the tickets that went back into the books being returned by a very old lady, who drew each one, trembling, from the depths of a woven brown leather bag. Miss Clarke flashed him her famous smile, the one she used to enslave men and reprimand wrongdoers.

‘Mother not with you today?’ she asked. It was the question he had been dreading.

‘My mother has died,’ he said. ‘I’ve brought her books back.’

There was a shocked silence. The pale girl turned round, even paler. Miss Clarke, her hand on her heart, paused in her task.

‘Well, this has been quite a shock,’ she said, after a second or two, lowering the hand to pluck a dazzling white handkerchief from her sleeve. ‘This is a sad day for the library, Mr Percy. We’ve known your mother for ages. Always so kind. Always took an interest. I had noticed she was looking a bit tired, mark you. But I never dreamed …’

‘It was her heart,’ said Lewis miserably, feeling once again the full weight of his misfortune.

‘And then, of course, she missed you,’ Miss Clarke went on inexorably. ‘She once said to me, “I’m counting the days, Madeleine”. But she didn’t want you to know that.’

And now I do, thought Lewis. In order not to prolong the conversation he went over to the shelves to try to find a book that his mother might have liked, hoping to maintain contact in that way if in no other. He found a couple of Edith Whartons, and, feeling lonely and self-conscious, took them to the desk. The pale girl came forward, two spots of red in her cheeks.

‘She was awfully proud of you, Mr Percy,’ the girl said. ‘And she was quite all right on her own, you know. Not weak, or anything. She never complained, never said there was anything wrong. Please don’t blame yourself.’ She ducked her head in embarrassment at having said so much and busied herself with the date stamp.

‘Thank you,’ said Lewis.

‘I was very fond of your mother,’ said the girl. Lewis saw that despite her pallor, or because of it, she had an air of delicacy, or narrowness, that pleased him. Her clothes were asexual: a pale blue sweater and a grey flannel skirt, schoolgirl’s clothes, which made her seem younger than her age. He reckoned she was about twenty-five. What he noticed mostly were her long unmarked slightly upcurling fingers, white as if they had never been engaged in a common or unseemly task. The face, momentarily enlivened by her emotion and the forwardness she obviously thought she was exhibiting, was equally long and pale, and could, he thought, look mournful. The face was framed by thick hair, in a colour midway between blonde and beige, and held back by a black velvet band. Susan had had one of those, he remembered: they must be the fashion. She had large, rather beautiful dark blue eyes, shadowed by long colourless lashes. The skin was fine, the teeth unexpectedly strong, slightly protruding. The chin, he noticed, was a little weak. He wondered why she was not pretty. His mother would have known why the face was so withdrawn, so unmarked. That pose of the head, held slightly on one side, as if listening to an inner voice, those narrow, slightly hunched shoulders, those prayerful hands, set him thinking of pale virgins in stone, the kind he had seen
in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Perhaps all virgins had something in common, he thought, revising her age slightly upward. And yet, outside the V and A, he had never seen one so spectacularly virginal. Everything about her looked untouched. Beneath the pale blue jersey the breasts were scarcely noticeable. He felt drawn to her on account of her little speech, which, he supposed, given her shyness, must have cost her an effort. He was grateful to her for telling him what he had wanted to be told. She was the agent of his deliverance.

‘Tissy, your mother’s here,’ called Miss Clarke.

‘Tissy?’ said Lewis quickly, intrigued by this name, which he had never heard.

‘My name’s Patricia, really. Patricia Harper. When I was little I couldn’t say Patricia, so I called myself Tissy, and the name’s stuck. I get called it all the time now. Would you excuse me, Mr Percy? My mother’s come to take me out to lunch. I just want you to know I was fond of Mrs Percy, and I’m sorry for your trouble.’

Again she blushed, seemed almost weakened by the effort of speaking. In the face of her alarming fragility he held out his hand, partly in gratitude, partly to reassure himself that she was all right. She clasped his hand lightly with very cold fingers, then turned and disappeared.

‘A tragedy, that girl,’ said Miss Clarke, leaning her bosom on the counter. Mr Baker, looking up, put his finger ostentatiously to his lips. Miss Clarke took no notice.

‘Agoraphobia,’ she said, with melancholy satisfaction. ‘Says she can’t go out alone. Her mother brings her in the morning, collects her for lunch, brings her back at two, and collects her again in the evening. I’ve tried to talk to her, but to no avail. Apparently it came on with adolescence, although I believe there was some family trouble as well. The father,’ she said, lowering her voice to imply discretion, but also comprehension. ‘Another woman, I suppose. That’s usually the way of it, isn’t it? A good little worker, mind you: I’ve no complaints. But who else would have her?’

‘Doesn’t she ever go out, then?’ asked Lewis.

‘Well, I’ve encouraged her, of course. I’ve told her she can’t stay with her mother all her life. But she turns quite faint if you go on at her. Frightened to death, you see. And it ties the mother down too, now that there’s just the two of them. Still, she seems quite happy. And we can’t always have things the way we want them, can we? Into each life a little rain must fall. Anyway you don’t want to hear about all this, what with your recent tragedy.’ She pressed her handkerchief to a ready tear. ‘Taking those, are you? Ah,
The Age of Innocence
, my favourite book.’ Lewis was ashamed of himself for thinking patronizingly of Miss Clarke. She was a romantic, and therefore an ideal reader, someone like himself. Nevertheless, walking home with the books under his arm, it was Miss Harper, Tissy, whose image stayed in his mind, tiny, chill, eternally distant, like something seen through the wrong end of a telescope. He had thought her quite plain.

She might be somebody he could marry, he thought, quailing at the prospect of his mother’s empty house. The thought, though idle, was sudden yet not surprising. And then he could cure her, and she would be able to go out again. Or else she could stay indoors, waiting for him to come home. It would be nice to be expected again.

He raced through
The Age of Innocence
and
Ethan Frome
, and was back at the library two days later. This time he was disappointed: no sign of Tissy Harper, or even of Miss Clarke. No sign of anyone, and only a large indolent girl he had never seen before at the desk. He took out an Elizabeth Bowen and a Margaret Kennedy. He found himself drawn to the books his mother had loved, as if in reading them he could get in touch with her in a way of which she would have approved. In any event such reading seemed to him salutary. He began to think that his official reading, which involved him in grown-up theories about heroism, and nineteenth-century heroism at that, might have led him, not exactly astray, but perhaps a little too far from normal
concerns. He whiled away several evenings with what he thought of as his mother’s type of book, and for a time he was soothed and charmed, although the moment at which he was forced to emerge from these tender fictional worlds was always harsh and painful. He began to long for a female presence, something shadowy, beneficent, something that would bring health and peace back into his life, which he perceived as threatened. The desire for such a presence was infinite, although he saw little possibility of its being satisfied. He thought how sad it was for a man of his age to be reduced to loneliness, with only his books for company. At the same time he began to realize that he could not spend his life reading. The British Museum was his refuge, but it was also his prison. He felt mildly distressed when the library closed, but once that moment had passed he strode out down the steps with a feeling of liberation. As the year stretched once more into spring the days perversely got both longer and chillier. Walking home, he could hear sad bird song under a darkening sky. In the gardens crocuses were already splayed and untidy, past their best. Timid buds showed on bushes; even the cheerless privet seemed brighter. In a moment of depression he turned out again one evening after his supper and took the Elizabeth Bowen back to the library. He had left it late and arrived just as the lights were being clicked on and off to signify closing time. But he was rewarded by the sight of Tissy Harper, this time in a pale pink twinset, one arm already inserted into the sleeve of a grey jacket.