Mr Wrong (14 page)

They had all gone to church. Marie-Laure, because naturally she was a Catholic, must wait until evening for her church. Someone was going to drive her there. They were very
kind, and she wished very much not to be so stupidly afraid and silent, but she seemed very little better at speaking English now than five months ago.

She had thought that she would be home for New Year – through all these lonely, homesick weeks her heart had been set upon it – but now, with this fresh illness of Madame’s
husband, she knew she should stay. ‘Surely she can procure for herself another nurse for the children!’ wrote her mother from France – but Marie-Laure knew that this was not so,
although she dared not explain to her mother why. She attempted to explain the goodness of Madame, but of the terrible drinking of Madame’s husband she dared not write. Until she had arrived
in this family, Marie-Laure had thought that men like Madame’s husband did not exist except in the books of a nature which she was not supposed to read. Indeed, at first, she had not
perceived anything to be wrong. Madame had been kind and charming, and he had been perfectly correct to her. But in scarcely a week she had heard him making Madame a scene, at night – when
the children were mercifully asleep, but she, Marie-Laure, had heard the shouting and the big sound of something smashed. Much later, Madame had woken her and told her to take the children out for
the whole day – to return only in the evening. When they had come back, Madame’s husband was not in the house, and Madame had explained everything about Monsieur, and implored her to
stay because the children had suffered from too many changes of persons in charge.

Since the war, he had become like this, Madame had said. For weeks he would drink an infinite number of bottles of Coca-Cola, and then suddenly he would be out for hours – drinking
somewhere out of the house – and then the scenes would start all over again, and either Madame would take him away to be cured, or Marie-Laure and the children would be packed off to stay
somewhere else in London, or here, with Monsieur’s brother. Each time Madame had said he might this time be cured, and each time when he returned, pale and subdued, and charming to Madame,
Marie-Laure had prayed that Madame’s faith might be answered. But, alas – no; each time no, and her pity for Madame’s terrible life increased, and fought with her private war of
homesickness, which seemed, like her English, and Monsieur, never to get better.

In London, except for the brief, ravishing confidences of Madame, Marie-Laure was alone with the children (the little boy teased her, and spoke too fast, and the girl was jealous of her when
Madame was there, and listless when she was not). She lived for the letters from France: for news of her sister’s baby, for the mosaic of domestic detail which made up her home; wept at a
distance for the death of her canary, marvelled at the magnificence of Madame Grandet’s funeral, and longed for a proper soup, and her own church, and for the inside of a house to be
warm.

She was ironing the best dress of Vanessa: pale
café au lait
– very pretty. These people were rich to have so large a house so crammed with heavy furniture. They had more
money than Madame, but heavens! they were dull! It was unbelievable that the red-faced Monsieur could be the brother of Madame’s husband – so pale, so attractive, in spite of his sinful
life. Had she been Madame, Marie-Laure reflected with sudden fear, she would have selected the drunken brother, not the good red dull one. She sighed. Sometimes she was a little afraid that
everything good was dull. She hung up the freshly ironed frock: soon the big black dog would bark and the letters would come. How terrible for Madame to be spending this day in hospital. She wished
very much that she might be as beautiful as Madame. Then, she thought, I would have a house the envy of all. My legs would be thinner, my husband might even admire them, and bring me flowers.
Already she was eighteen – so soon all this might occur in her life. The big black dog barked . . .

At the very last minute Ann had decided not to go to church with the rest of the family. There was so much to do, she said to her husband: she seemed always to be saying
something of the kind to him. Keeping the ponderous extravagant wheels of the household moving, even slowly, took all her time and energy: precluded her riding, watching him shoot (he adored her to
watch him shoot), playing tennis or golf with him, or even going to London for an occasional day with him to watch cricket (a game which she never understood, and which invariably gave her a
splitting headache); in fact, prevented her from anything which had been originally designed as their mutual interests. Today there was a great deal for her to arrange . . .

She walked slowly upstairs, remembering the look of patient masculine incomprehension on Donald’s face as he tucked his mother carefully into the front of the car. I’ll take off my
hat and get out of this skirt – it’s far too tight on me since Janet, anyway – and see if Ruby really understood that she must clear the dining-room for luncheon
before
she
starts on the bedrooms, and get Mrs Bond to speak to Spragg about the water being cold again this morning, and try to get Marie-Laure to clear up the nursery bedrooms a bit for Ruby . . . it was so
like Lillian to employ a series of girls who were no use in the house and didn’t speak a word of English. The irritation, which she always felt and was ashamed of when she thought of her
sister-in-law, interrupted her plans for the precious time when everyone was out of the house.

Ruby had not understood. As Ann approached her bedroom she heard the shrill, tuneless crooning – in American overlayed by Gloucestershire – which Ruby, who was never without a
wireless except in the bedrooms, employed while making the beds. ‘What would I dew – without yew?’ etc., but the moment Ann opened the door Ruby gasped a brilliant pink,
apologized inaudibly, giggled and made a tumultuous exit with mops and brushes, and a hail of Kirbigrips. Ann sighed, called Ruby back, explained again to her about the dining-room and asked her
whether she had seen Marie-Laure. Ruby couldn’t say for certain, but she fancied she was ironing, and Mrs Bond had said if Ruby showed her face in the kitchen before half-past she’d
have kittens. This was Mrs Bond’s ultimate threat, which, though biologically improbable, masked, as everyone in the household knew, a state of mind and temper which it would be dangerous and
silly to ignore. ‘Clear everything on to trays on the sideboard, then, Ruby.’ Ruby said, ‘What a pity there was no snow,’ and went.

Ann shut the door after her, sat down at her dressing-table and was horrified by how tired and harassed she looked. Her hat was awful. She laughed weakly at it, took it off, and ran her hands
through her hair. She ought to do something about her appearance generally, if it came to that. After all, it was Christmas Day, and here she was, married, with three children and an unusually nice
house. Nobody could call Donald an exacting or difficult husband. Her mother-in-law was extraordinarily good about the difficult business of living with them. Of course they had plenty of room,
which helped. Ann was devoted to the house, and she really liked living in the country – it was only when she was tired, or when she compared her life to Lillian’s, that she felt
discouraged and a little lost. But the sight of Lillian, haggardly attractive, intelligently debonair, had always roused her to some kind of dim resentment, and now, even Lillian’s children
or her mother-in-law’s long-distance anxiety about their father produced the same effect. Russell had always monopolized the attention (and anxiety) of everyone near him. He certainly
monopolized mine, Ann thought – for as long as he wanted to do . . .

She had just returned from three months at a school in Paris, where she had learned some French, some dressmaking, some cooking and a little enthusiastic party patter about the French
Impressionist painters. After that, her mother proceeded to buy her a lot of clothes which she had been in Paris long enough to despise, but not long enough to alter, and sent her to parties. At
one of them, she had met Russell. He had listened to her discoursing on the relative merits of Van Gogh and Cézanne, and had then, with no compunction whatever, tripped her up by introducing
a whole lot of names of what she had assumed to be more painters; told her after she had made a fool of herself that they were impressionist composers, and said that she was pretty enough to be
honest about her ignorance. ‘I burst into tears,’ Ann thought, struggling out of the tight skirt, ‘and then he started to be nice to me. I don’t believe I’ve even
thought about Van Gogh since.’ Certainly, for months after that she had thought of nothing but Russell. They had met again by chance at another party at which Russell had played the piano
most amusingly for hours, and Ann, taking no further chances, and filled with the delicious self-confidence that sometimes permeates the young, decided to collect him. She thought him so wonderful
that some of her ardour communicated itself to him, and eventually he found her discerning, imaginative, a good listener and, she still desperately believed, pretty. His future at that time was to
be a doctor; probably, they thought, a brilliant surgeon: even after he had failed his first exams, twice, she believed that. Meanwhile he did everything else with a facility and charm which she
found dazzling. She began to imagine herself married to him. Of course he would have to pass these examinations first. But he didn’t. The second time he failed was the first time that she saw
him drunk. An indirect result of their first and last row was that he met Lillian. He simply picked her up at a party, and that was that.

Ann had been asked to the wedding, and in a fever of despairing masochism, went. There she met Donald, drank a little too much champagne and actually cried on his shoulder. She went out with
Donald several times after that because he comfortingly combined being Russell’s brother with not looking in the least like Russell. And now here she was. She had Desmond, Roddy and Janet
– and Donald. Lillian had Vanessa and James – and Russell. Ann had the large lovely inconvenient family house, and Lillian had a neat little house in Pembroke Square. Donald managed the
farms, and Russell lurched with varying degrees of reformed pessimism from job to job. Her children, though not particularly distinguished, bless them, were nice, healthy normal children, whereas
Vanessa was a distinctly morbid little girl, and James was utterly spoiled. On the face of it, Ann had everything to be thankful for, and poor Lillian had very little. Heaven only knew how she
managed their permanently rocky finances, the endless humiliating situations with other people, the monotonous exhausting scenes with Russell, without becoming a wreck. But she
did
manage
all of it admirably. She had simply acquired a steadiness, an intelligent tact, an enduring perceptiveness about Russell, which enabled her often to avert and always to smooth over the repetitive
worst moments. This poise seemed to have fined her initial glamour to an elegance, to a charm the penetration of which far exceeded any effect which Russell, even at his best, could provoke. In
fact, what disturbed Ann was that living on her perpetual edge of anxieties and misfortunes Lillian contrived to become more attractive, interesting and amusing, while she, Ann, ensconced upon the
broad plains of secure domesticity, seemed to herself to have become almost anonymously dull. ‘My features look as though they’ve run into each other – I haven’t got a bad
figure, I simply haven’t
got
a figure, and when we do meet people, I can’t think of anything to say to them. Perhaps Lillian
likes
the drama of it all – she’d
probably be miserable if Russell wasn’t there to make trouble.’

She was battling with an extra leaf in the dining-room table; pinching her cold fingers (the central heating was nil – oh dear, the boiler again): but she immediately knew that such
reflections were spitefully unfair, and, deeply ashamed of herself, she went to stop Groucho barking at the poor postman, who was terrified of dogs.

An hour later, she walked slowly round her dining-room table with a pride and delight which even the stern fringe of last-minute touches could not conceal. Decorating a table
was much more exciting than icing a cake. Now it gleamed with all the Christmas fruits: the fat embroidery of pineapples like stump work; clementines; pale green silky apples; oranges and bananas
like china; freckled bulky pears; nuts like tight brown satin, like brown boulders, like Oriental eyes, like commas, like maps of estuaries at low tide; dates packed in glistening treacle-brown
sprays with their decorous paper-lace pelmets; wooden boxes of magic fruits crystallized for a hundred years; peppermint-cream in crisp frilly green, and Turkish delight in a haze of white sugar.
The ranks of glistening glasses, and the stiff bright white of the napkins, the circle of finger-bowls each starred with a small white chrysanthemum, the small red candle and horseshoe roll beside
each place had all been arranged by her until she had made a perfect setting.

‘There is still the Tree to finish,’ she thought, ‘and the Present Chairs, but otherwise . . .’ and quite suddenly, she began to enjoy the day, forgetting, as she forgot
every year, that she never enjoyed Christmas until she had arranged the luncheon table. Groucho barked again – she heard the car – their voices – even the timing was traditional.
Each year she thought there would never be time, and each year there was enough time for the table, and just not enough to powder her nose . . .

The children had all been packed off with the French girl for a walk, poor little devils, but considering what they’d sunk in the way of food and drink, perhaps it was
just as well. Donald had herded them out of the dining-room himself. ‘And no sliding down major till after tea, or I’ll horsewhip the lot of you,’ he had roared unconvincingly,
glaring up at them from the foot of the stairs.

There had been a gale of laughter, and then James, the highest up the staircase, had cocked his head on one side and announced: ‘Hollow laughter: like in books,’ and screaming,
scrabbling, teasing one another, they had rushed away.