Mr Wrong (15 page)

‘It’s amazing how food simply galvanizes them: like stoking up a lot of little boilers,’ he remarked on re-entering the dining-room. His mother smiled gently; his wife said,
‘So unlike our boiler.’

She looked tired, he noticed: she
would
do herself up on these occasions. He put a hand heavily on her shoulder, waited a moment and patted it. ‘Have some brandy, old dear, and stop
worrying about the boiler.’

She shook her head. ‘There’s tea to do, and the Tree and the Present Chairs.’

‘I can do all that,’ he said helpfully. He was not at all sure that he could. ‘Let’s relax for a bit. I’ve eaten so much I can’t move. Mamma:
brandy?’

His mother put her little, fat white hand over her brandy glass.

‘Oh – come on, Madam. I can’t drink all by myself.’

His mother’s hand contracted over the top of her glass, and he thought, ‘Oh, Lord; another brick, I
suppose. Damn Russell.’

‘We will all have a little,’ said his mother. ‘We will drink to Absent Friends.’

‘Right,’ he said – a little too heartily, and poured the drink.

Ann said, ‘I want very little, please,’ and lit a cigarette. Donald thought for the hundredth time, That’s one of the things I’ve never told her. Nobody is allowed to
smoke in the dining-room without asking Madam first. Except Russell, of course.

His mother was saying, ‘When I was a young girl, the servants were never allowed to wash up on Sunday afternoons . . .’

The toast, somehow, was not drunk.

After his mother had been persuaded to rest until Present time, he returned to find his wife still sitting amid the Christmas litter, smoking, drinking her brandy, and eating a peppermint-cream.
This nauseating combination touched him: but because it exposed an area of his emotions which he somehow could not bring himself to express, he laughed and said: ‘Really, Ann, you’re
worse than the children!’ and saw her flush defensively, before she replied, ‘Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.’

He sat down, and poured himself some more brandy. ‘Don’t be silly. It’s Christmas, after all.’

‘You mean I can be as silly as I like?’ Then she saw his glass and exclaimed, ‘Oh, Donald,
don’t
have more brandy!’

He was suddenly, unaccountably, angry.

‘How many times do I have to tell you that my drinking a reasonable amount on these occasions –
not
every day and all days – but occasionally having a couple of drinks
doesn’t automatically mean that I am taking to drink? I’m not like Russell – never have been, for better or worse.’

There was a short pause, and then he added, ‘Sorry. But if there is one thing calculated to drive me into becoming like Russell, it is being watched and nagged every time I do have a
drink.’ And she answered steadily, ‘I wasn’t thinking of him. I was only thinking about your inside, and the doctors saying that brandy was the worst thing. I know you
aren’t like Russell.’

He stared heavily at her; seeing, not her face, but only a reflection of his inability to be gay or sensitive, brilliant or commanding; to avoid this ritual recurring pattern of misunderstanding
between them. He stretched out his hand to her, but the table was too broad; he could not reach her, and she made no move. Helplessly, he said the last, hopeless thing: ‘I expect you wish
that I were.’

The rooms Donald’s mother occupied were unlike the rest of the house. Apart from the rearrangement of furniture upon which she had insisted when her beloved Alec had died
(his dressing-room was now her bedroom, their bedroom was now her sitting-room) she had slowly accumulated a concentration of the smaller, more personal objects which in her day had been strewn all
over the house: the photographs, the framed pieces of family embroidery, the bits of china, and the little presents which darling Alec had always brought back to her from his travels. The walls
were comfortably crowded, the furniture made movement in the room a circuitous business: there were four clocks and eleven little shaded lamps, and (but it was an aroma so essentially her own that
she was not aware of it) the rooms smelled always of bread and butter, and lavender, and Russian leather, and beads. In this elaborately encrusted shell she spent much of her time – and here
time seemed to move for her, although perhaps only as a gentle, rhythmical backwash: the wake of her own ship slowly coming home. Outside, even anywhere else in the house that had been hers for
forty-seven years, she felt like a stopped clock – not broken, but stopped for ever in 1936, when darling Alec had died.

The immediate agony and terror had vanished, and now each day calmly occurred, leaving her with a kind of faint astonishment and awe that she could complete it without him. That was her past. Her present, her future – all distant, incalculable anxiety –
was her eldest son: so physically like Alec that her heart turned over when she saw him; in character so incomparable that she ached with responsibility and shame. The last discovery that she and
Alec had made about one another had been when he was dying, and they found that each had known of Russell’s instability, and each had striven for years to conceal it from the other. The last
revelation had illuminated their whole marriage for them: he had died entirely loving her, knowing that he was entirely loved.

Then she had been left with Russell, at that time half-heartedly engaged upon a job with some advertising firm. On his father’s death she had appealed to him to come home and manage the
estate. ‘Living in the country would drive me nuts, Madam. Let Donald do it, and divide the swag.’ Then he had kissed both her hands with a gesture which belied his words, and added,
‘My dear Madam! There is no woman living for whom I would even consider leaving London – excepting yourself – but I
have
considered it, and it would be no good. I should be
bad and bored. I shall frequently descend upon you, and Donald will be quite happy being a gentleman farmer. He’s cut out for the life.’ Which was perfectly true. Donald was cut out for
it, and did seem, on the whole, happy.

Then, three years later, the war. Russell had immediately joined the navy, but Donald, poor Donald, had proved to have something so wrong with his inside that no service would take him. She
reflected with a certain amount of guilt that the only time in her life when she had really cared desperately about Donald had been a night during Dunkirk when he had actually broken down and wept
at what he felt was his own futility. He had thereafter farmed himself to a standstill of fatigue, while Russell had become a smallboat commander. As one by one his fellow officers were killed, and
as she watched him on his leaves, intent, excited, living always at a tension which it seemed impossible to her he could sustain, her perpetual fear that he too would be killed became complicated
by the curiously persistent thought that perhaps it might be better if he were: at least he was filled with the energy of happiness and success. But he emerged from the war with a D.S.C. and two
bars, and she never discovered how many mentions in dispatches; knocked about a bit, played with the idea of being a doctor, broke a few inexperienced hearts, met Lillian, and married her privately
and at once. Paying off his debts, she had taken the opportunity of warning him that marriage was totally unlike war, and that she would not be able to continue rescuing him financially. He
explained at great ingenious length how neither the war nor Lillian bored him, how he only drank when he was bored, and swore that he would henceforth stand on his own feet, and so on.

It was years later before she discovered that Donald had paid off the same debts . . .

She had begun by disliking Lillian, but, although they had never succeeded in any great degree of sympathy, she had been forced to admire Lillian’s loyalty to Russell,
who, it must be admitted, had run the gamut of impossible behaviour. Their children, in spite of it all, were far more interesting than Donald’s rather dull little crowd – James, a
third edition of Alec; Vanessa, a taut, tense little creature, all eyes and bones and secret reserves. She had taken more trouble with Vanessa’s Christmas present than she had with all her
other presents put together – going to London to choose the doll herself, and then making its clothes elaborately, like the clothes she had worn when she had been a child.

Her clocks struck three one after another; she admired their split-second independence. It was time for the Presents. Of course she had not rested; she had merely concentrated her present
anxiety into this privacy, so that it was concealed from the others. ‘It’s a bad bout this time, I’m afraid,’ Lillian had said on the telephone. ‘Yes, of course, I
said I’d ring Van anyway on Christmas Day, so I’ll tell you more then.’ She wondered why she resented the way in which her daughter-in-law talked about Russell. After all, what
else could poor Lillian say? ‘I’m getting too old to be rational. I even resented that good little Ann smoking in her own dining-room. If Russell were off my mind I should have nothing
else to worry about. Which means, I suppose, that I should have nothing to live for,’ she concluded, and went slowly down to watch all their faces: all that ecstasy of concern which at least
children really have before they open their presents and find that they’ve got what they want.

Presents were given in the drawing-room, which was panelled and decorated with plaster swags and pilasters; with a pair of chandeliers, and heavily draped crimson curtains
– too old and too rotted with dust and the sun ever to be moved. Now it was tricked out with holly and red
crêpe
-paper bells; wavering strands of tinsel trembled from the
chandeliers; mistletoe, which made Vanessa think of very pale wicked people, was clustered in witch-like bunches. At the end of the room stood the Christmas-tree, creaking faintly under its weight
of jewelled regalia. Down the centre of the room stood a row of the dining-room chairs, piled, loaded, hung, with each person’s presents. The most charming surprise about Ann, thought her
mother-in-law, as she stood watching the scene, was the thorough, lovely attention she gave to the enhancing of all these ceremonies. Looking at her, she seemed a small colourless creature, without
the imagination or vitality for such effects. ‘Nobody could arrange it all better!’ she exclaimed, and saw Ann’s quick burning little blush scorch over her face. ‘Anyone can
do it,’ she said hastily; ‘Lillian always has wonderful ideas when she’s here.’

Donald moved towards her; there was something protective in his movement, his mother noticed. ‘You maintain the standard,’ he said, ‘anyone can cut a dash.’ He sounded
almost conciliating, and Ann did not reply.

The gong was rung for the children. They had been waiting for it: their distinct clamour swelled – they rushed into the room on a tidal wave of
anticipation.

The sights to see! It was not only their faces. Roddy, with a quick furtive look round the room first, taking out his painful plate, and dropping it into an empty flower-vase before he got down
to his presents. Desmond, with the knife he had had in his stocking, hacking through the string on all his parcels before he opened one. Janet, still nearly a baby, shrieking with rage when the
yellow tissue-paper was taken off her first present, wanting only to plunge her hands in and out of the lovely crackling colour, not understanding about presents at all. James, picking up each
parcel and shaking it with nervous ravished little movements to find his train. Vanessa, gripping the back of her chair and staring passionately down at her pile, almost as though their wrappings
were transparent, and she knew what lay before her. ‘Do you want scissors, Vanessa?’ called Ann, and Van’s face flashed at once to that expression of blank docility which her aunt
found impenetrable. ‘No thank you, Aunt Ann,’ and she picked up the smaller parcel and carefully unpicked the ribbon.

She won’t open my present yet, thought her grandmother, and turned to watch the amazing variety of gratitude which had begun to explode throughout the room. James raced through his other presents with gabbled thanks until he found his train, and retired to
a corner with it. Roddy, who had been given a tricycle, rode madly round and round in the minimum circle shouting, ‘Watch him riding:
watch
him
riding
!’ Janet took one
look at a white monkey Marie-Laure had unwrapped for her and burst into tears of terror and dislike. Donald had given Ann some garnets, but before she could put them on, Desmond seized his father
for help with Meccano, and Ann had rushed to save the monkey situation with Janet.

Vanessa had reached the doll. Her grandmother watched her fingers – slow – almost clumsy with the ribbon, the lid of the box, the paper: then for a moment Vanessa was obscured from
her by Marie-Laure thanking her for the pretty handkerchiefs. She heard Ann kindly admiring the doll, but no reply; and when she could see Vanessa again her present was still in its box: Vanessa,
not touching it, had gone absolutely white. ‘Gran made all her clothes,’ Ann was saying; ‘take her out, Vanessa, and see.’ With a jerk Vanessa tore her eyes from the doll to
her aunt – a trapped look, almost of hatred – before she lifted it out of the box. ‘Ann doesn’t understand,’ thought her mother-in-law; ‘I know. I can remember
when I was ten, and they gave me a puppy. I couldn’t speak: I thought I was going to die of my delight.’

Her aunt bent down and murmured something in Vanessa’s ear. The little girl nodded without expression, and began picking her way across the room to her grandmother. Somehow, in spite of
the short biscuit-coloured organdie with puff sleeves and a lace collar, in spite of her spindle legs with short white socks and her bony arms clutching the golden gorgeous doll, there was
something wrong about her . . .

‘Thank you very much indeed for the beautiful present.’

She was still very pale. Her grandmother said gently: ‘I’m so glad you like her. She hasn’t got a name, so you must think of one.’ And Vanessa answered immediately:

‘Not now.’ There was a pause, and then she added with a stiff social little smile: ‘Of course, I shall have to think.