Privileged Children (15 page)

Alice and Miranda were in the West End having tea in Lyon’s. They had just been buying material to make new curtains for the kitchen and had also bought various things which they had not intended to buy. They were sitting at a table by the window with their parcels at their feet. Miranda was dressed in black. She wore a hat which was more broad-brimmed than was fashionable, from which there hung a veil. She had discovered that mourning clothes, like an injury, caused people to look away from her.

Through the thick veil Alice could still see, as she gazed, the gold flecks in the iris of Miranda’s eyes, the light freckles on her cheekbone, the faint cleft in her white chin, and the downward curve of the right-hand corner of her mouth. Miranda’s ankle, encased in a burnt-orange stocking, was just touching Alice’s calf.

‘It’s so silly,’ said Alice. ‘Here we are fussing about spending too much money and to cheer ourselves up we go and spend more money on eating here. Oh, why aren’t you eating anything? You said you were hungry.’

‘I just don’t feel like eating anything any more.’

‘Oh well, we’ll take them home with us.’

She put the two scones in her bag.

‘That’s not considered good etiquette,’ smiled Miranda.

‘No, of course not. It’s thrift, and that’s never considered good etiquette, is it?’

‘Oh no. It’s good etiquette to wait until your tailor’s bankrupt before you pay your bills.’

‘Mirandolina,’ said Alice, ‘not everyone who’s upper-class can be so very wicked in every way, can they?’ She put her hand on Miranda’s and gently pressed her wrist. Miranda took her hand away.

‘
Pas devant,
’
she said. ‘No, of course not. Some who are told that their tailor’s on the verge of ruin look most upset and say, “Oh, I’ll order a new suit.” Give me a cigarette.’

Alice held the cigarette case out to her and Miranda, fumbling, took a cigarette and pushed up her veil so that it only hid her eyes.

‘You don’t look well, you know,’ said Alice. ‘Your hand’s trembling like a leaf.’

‘I know,’ said Miranda. ‘I don’t know why.’ She shook her head and her face suddenly crumpled.

‘Oh my God, Alice,’ she said in a whisper which was very low but pierced Alice. ‘I don’t think I can stand this thing about Anatole any longer.’

‘He’ll get used to it,’ said Alice. Her voice was rasping. She hoped it sounded firm. ‘He’s always been going to bed with other women since he married me, not that I mind but I’ll do the same if I want to.’

‘So you’ve said, Alice, but it doesn’t really solve anything, does it, just to keep on asserting that? Especially as Anatole agrees and still looks at us in that awful way.’

‘Mother of God, that man’s a brute,’ said Alice. She wiped her nose on the back of her hand, took hold of Miranda’s arm and would not let it go. ‘He says he quite understands, but he resents us so much and when I ask him what he really wants me to do he won’t tell me. He’s torturing me. If he told me he wanted me to give you up and him to divorce me and marry you and go abroad or something, it wouldn’t be so bad.’

‘Alice, don’t shout, everyone’s looking at us.’

‘They can’t touch us. What do you care about them?’

Miranda said nothing. She was slowly crying. ‘I don’t want to sleep with him,’ she said at last, ‘but perhaps if I did it might make it better.’

Alice stared. ‘You can’t mean that,’ she said. ‘I mean, perhaps you’re right, because for sure he wants to go to bed with you himself. He’s human, after all.’

Miranda smiled.

‘But Mirandolina,’ Alice continued, ‘you couldn’t just give in like that. For the love of God, why ever should you? He’s just jealous and possessive and peeved because you don’t want to sleep with him. It’s not as though he loved you. Look, he’s just like all the people you ran away from — he’s trying to force you to do what he wants, and I damned well won’t let him.’

‘Alice, aren’t
you
possessive? Would you like it if I did want him as much as I want you?’

‘I — no, you’ve got me there, I suppose.’ She stroked Miranda’s arm. ‘I don’t want to be part of a triangle. Neither do you, surely. It’s just him.’

‘He doesn’t want to be part of a triangle,’ said Miranda. ‘Will you just look at the lot of us. What we all want is to sleep with the two others, and for those two to have nothing to do with each other,’ she sneered. She was still quietly crying.

‘That’s not true,’ said Alice. ‘None of us has ever said anything like that. I don’t know what you’re talking about — why, you’re asking me to believe you’re bitch enough to want to split up me and Anatole.’

‘Alice, sometimes I think you’re about twelve years old.’

‘What do you mean? Thank heaven you’ve stopped crying, darling,’ she added.

‘I mean,’ said Miranda, ‘that, like a child, you’re incapable of believing the worst. You’ve got to have your world safe. It’s contemptible. You’ve never rebelled against anything, Alice, have you?’

‘I never had anything bad to rebel against, that’s why,’ said Alice. ‘You talk as though rebelling were something necessary to people — to their souls almost — instead of the result of the wrong pressures.’

‘It is necessary,’ said Miranda. ‘You’ve got to learn to criticise — I mean criticise yourself, and the things you like, and the people you love, as well as everything you’ve been brought up to dislike. Oh yes, you’re very reasonable when your emotions aren’t involved; you pointed out my crude generalisation about the upper classes just now. This is a fault of mine too, of course, I’m not denying that. But because you love me you refuse to see that I am absolutely
filthy, entirely selfish, incapable of giving anyone real unselfish love.’ Her voice was shaking as she crushed and stretched and tore her handkerchief. ‘Don’t interrupt. It’s quite true. I am the greatest bitch that ever lived. If you can say, “I love the greatest bitch that ever lived, I love Miranda,” that’s fine, but you say, “I love Miranda, who is almost perfect,” and what will happen when you realise what I really am? You’ll hate me, and I just can’t bear it.’

‘I don’t know how you can begin to say these things,’ said Alice. ‘Honest to God, it amazes me. You have more courage and more honesty than anyone I’ve ever met.’

‘Honest? My God — look, this is the first time in my life I’ve ever been honest about myself and how loathsome I am, and you object to it. You won’t see the truth, just like a child won’t see that its parents don’t love it, that they’re in a conspiracy to deprive it of individuality, that that’s their purpose.’

‘I don’t believe anyone consciously thinks that,’ said Alice. ‘Oh, Mirandolina, I can’t do anything except whisper to you here, and even if we were at home and I hugged you and did anything you want, you make me feel now that there’s nothing I can do.’

She paused and she dropped Miranda’s arm.

‘Are you telling me that you don’t love me, Miranda?’ She watched her. Miranda’s face was white, the whites of her eyes were shining.

‘You see, you see, now you’re beginning to see. Soon you’ll realise quite how hateful I am.’ Miranda shuddered. ‘It’s for you to decide if I really love you,’ she said, ‘but I promise you, I think I love you more than I thought I’d ever love anyone again.’

‘Again?’ said Alice. She did not know what else to say. She clutched Miranda’s hand again and questions rushed through her mind as Miranda continued.

‘I loved my mother before I realised that she was exactly the same as the rest of them, out to persecute me,’ said Miranda. ‘But that’s irrelevant. I’ve told you about my childhood and God help me if I should become a bore as well as all my other crimes. Alice, you’re so beautiful. I wish you could see yourself now, you’d want to make an “allegory” of
it. You’re so pure, that’s what it is, you’re so much one person. You know what’s right and you’ll fight for it whatever happens. You’re a real knight in shining armour,’ said Miranda, and she was not really mocking. ‘Like a child who takes rabbits out of traps. No child will believe you if you say the rabbit does damage, all they see is an animal in pain. The great thing about you is that you’re not complicated, Alice. You don’t have any doubts. You believe — you’re a natural Catholic. How it’s possible to go to mass and confession regularly and be an anti-clerical I don’t know, but you manage it and I love you for it. I’m sorry, I’m not explaining myself very well. I’m just trying to see why I do love you when I don’t love anyone else. Goodness,’ she said, ‘I love you for exactly the quality I was deriding a few minutes ago.’ She smiled with an elderly, academic pleasure.

Alice was gazing at her, her mouth slightly open. ‘You looked just like my mother then,’ she said. ‘I’d never noticed the resemblance before.’ She paused. ‘I can’t keep up with what you’re saying. So far as I can tell, you’re saying I’m a simpleton.’

‘Of course not,’ said Miranda.

‘You were saying that I’m childlike. I know that to you the word child is a terrible insult. You say it means stupid, dependent, slave.’

‘I wasn’t saying that you’re childlike in that sense, in the usual sense. I suppose I mean in the William Blake sense. He admired and supported children.’

‘Would you like some more cake?’ said Alice. ‘You seem to be feeling better now you’re talking.’ Miranda laughed. ‘Well, how can you be so very horrible as you’re making out if you can laugh at yourself?’ said Alice.

‘Now that is actually true,’ said Miranda. ‘You’ve really made me feel better. Far more than by your passionate nonsensical defences. My darling.’ She put up a hand and nearly stroked Alice’s cheek. Alice quivered, although Miranda withdrew. ‘It’s odd that a woman as intelligent as you should see everything in such black and white terms,’ she said. ‘You behave as though Anatole was quite perfect until he found out that you and I were having a full physical
relationship — as you
said
you didn’t have one with Liza or the other models,’ she added quickly, ‘— and now this man isn’t Anatole at all, it’s a sort of demon who’s taken on Anatole’s form. You can’t see that your Anatole could be jealous as well as thoroughly charming and usually tolerant.’

‘You’re talking about Anatole being jealous, but if you really doubt my word about how I’ve never been to bed with another girl apart from you, I call that insane jealousy.’

‘Alice, don’t start, I do believe you, of course I do,’ hissed Miranda. ‘I’m just a bitch, as I told you. I have to snipe. I’m sorry.’ She began to cry again.

‘You know,’ said Alice, ‘all the unpleasant sides of your character really come from your hating yourself. You’ve got to learn to love yourself, Mirandolina, then you’ll be able to do anything … Oh darling, don’t, please …’ she said, as she looked up and saw Miranda’s tears. ‘Holy Mary, you’re so damned difficult to live with. One minute you’re being perfectly rational, then you’re in a screaming temper, then you’re affectionate, then you dissolve in tears of self-pity. Why can’t you be consistent? Even Finola isn’t as temperamental as you, though one never knows what she’s about.’

‘How dare you accuse me of self-pity,’ shouted Miranda.

A waitress came up to them and muttered, as she took away their tea cups, ‘Excuse me, ladies, you’re upsetting the other customers.’

‘Oh, all right, we’ll go then,’ said Alice, and she pushed back her chair fiercely and grabbed her hat and coat.

Miranda followed her into the street. ‘How can you be rude to people like that?’ she said. ‘It’s terribly unfair.’

‘Oh, of course, one should always be polite but firm with inferiors,’ sneered Alice.

‘That’s not the point,’ said Miranda.

‘Mother of God, you’ll never teach me upper-class manners. And in any case, I thought you were trying to rid yourself of them.’

Alice walked off. Miranda, who was wearing high-heeled shoes, hurried after her with difficulty. She had paused for a moment outside Lyon’s, her hands over her face.

‘Alice — Alice, darling, we mustn’t quarrel. It’s such a terrible, terrible waste of time.’ She looked up at Alice’s
hurt, boyish face. ‘Please forgive me for anything that’s wrong with me,’ she finished. Her voice was very quiet.

Alice embraced her fiercely, in the middle of Bond Street as they were, and Miranda did not look embarrassed, but she did not look happy.

‘I said that the only thing that’s wrong with you is that you don’t like yourself … Mirandolina, you talk as though our time is limited!’

Miranda shook her head.

The preview of Alice’s exhibition was being held in the middle of the General Strike. At Bramham Gardens, everyone was getting ready to go to it. Alice looked very handsome and very tall this evening. She had had her hair cropped and wore earrings and a short skirt, all of which suited her, and all of which alterations in her appearance Miranda had advised.

‘Finola, aren’t you coming?’ she asked.

Finola was sitting in the corner of the kitchen, reading
Peveril
of
the
Peak.
The household had clubbed together at Christmas to buy her the complete works of Sir Walter Scott in a cloth-backed edition, and she was re-reading them already. ‘No,’ said Finola. ‘I’ve seen all the paintings, and none of the ones I like are in it.’

Alice was too happy to be irritated at Finola’s taste, and went out to join Miranda and Liza in the hall.

‘I don’t blame you,’ said Anatole quietly to Finola. ‘I’m suffering agonies of jealousy for her success.’

‘Are you?’ said Finola, looking up. ‘Why don’t you stay here too, then?’

‘She’d be so upset if I didn’t go. And I am glad for her too, of course.’

‘Anatole, you’re so kind sometimes that it’s annoying,’ said Finola.

‘It’s irritating to you because you recognise your own inadequacy in that respect,’ Miranda interrupted.

‘Bitch,’ said Finola. Miranda shrugged.

‘Mother of God, don’t you have a quarrel now! Come on, we must set off now if we’re walking.’

Except for Anatole, who could not walk long distances, they were all walking to Bloomsbury, where the gallery was, to show that they supported the General Strike and would not use services run by supporters of the Government.

Miranda was not wearing a veil. Liza, Alice and Miranda walked abreast, and the two men, Volodya and Charlie, tailed behind them. Volodya’s eyes were fixed on Miranda’s laughing head. Unknown to Alice and Anatole, Miranda had gone to bed with Volodya, but only once. She refused to do so again, even when he came up to her room at night.

When they reached the gallery, many people had already arrived, and Alice was cheered when she entered. Leo staggered across the room to embrace her. She was asked to stand beneath her self-portrait to be photographed. ‘No more book illustrations,’ she said to Leo, clutching his hand and smiling.

‘When I think of our little parties in Diana’s house,’ he sighed, ‘all we hangers-on of the great artists and writers, trying to become first-rate ourselves … You’ve done better than the rest of us, you know. I must sit down, Alice, my legs are like jelly these days.’

Anatole stood listening. ‘I shall be remembered as Alice Molloy’s husband,’ he said.

‘Won’t you be proud to be?’ said Miranda, looking from picture to picture. Two had already been sold.

‘No,’ said Anatole, ‘I wish to be a person in my own right just as anyone else does.’

‘Oh, I didn’t mean that,’ said Miranda.

‘Such a pity we couldn’t have any of Miranda,’ said Leo, rubbing his huge legs with his hands.

‘That one’s Miranda,’ said Alice, pointing out a charcoal drawing of a red-cheeked girl on a bicycle, muffled up with scarves.

‘I know, but it’s not exactly your most impassioned painting of her.’

Alice went over to see Augustus and Clementina. ‘How do you feel about your work, Alice?’ asked Augustus, walking with her to a picture of a City pub. ‘Are you pleased with yourself?’

‘Oh, well, of course I am. Sometimes I have a thrill: I did these! But on the whole I feel that they’re really good work only when I don’t feel they’re mine.’

Augustus nodded. ‘Are there times when you can’t work, and you feel that disaster has struck?’

‘Yes. Those are the worst moments of my life. I never know when ideas and my skill will come back to me again. Sometimes it’s days, sometimes months. I sit in front of the paper, smoking, dabbling, waiting for something to come to me. I’ve wasted acres of paper and canvas that way, but I can’t just do nothing.’

‘What a time to be discussing this, though!’

Acquaintances came up to congratulate Alice and praise her work, many fulsomely. She nodded and laughed and looked round the carefully lit room. She was quite relieved when after twenty minutes of this Mr Tuskin approached her with a long list of severe criticisms, and glad again to escape to the admiration which others bestowed on her.

‘What a glorious whirl she’s in,’ said Anatole to Miranda.

‘Isn’t she? I say, you look very tired.’ Miranda herself was sitting down.

‘Actually, I think I shall go home now.’

‘I’ll come with you. I do hope Alice won’t mind, but I’ve got frightful curse pains.’

‘You shouldn’t have walked all that way.’

‘Well, I can’t walk back, that’s for sure. To hell with condoning the Government’s behaviour. Do let’s take an omnibus.’

They finished their glasses of wine, kissed goodbye to Alice, who did not object at all to their leaving, and were joined at the door by Liza.

It was a cool, bright-blue dusk, and Miranda drew her black shawl over her head and held it close to her. They walked to Great Russell Street to catch the bus, and stood opposite the British Museum.

‘Finola says that she feels sad whenever she passes the British Museum, because, I quote, it makes her think of Metternich and Guizot meeting on the steps after the Revolutions of 1848,’ said Liza with a smile.

‘At least she has a good knowledge of history for someone who is not quite ten,’ said Anatole.

‘Sir Walter Scott’s history, yes,’ said Miranda.

‘You mustn’t be so critical, Miranda. She may grow out of her romanticism, and if she doesn’t, it may give her pleasure all her life,’ said Anatole. The bus came along and they got on, still talking.

‘I find it so odd that Alice, as an artist, doesn’t want to travel. She only knows Dorset and Oxfordshire besides London. She doesn’t even want to see the great Italian works of art, except when one or two of them occasionally come to London. How I’d love to go to Florence!’ said Miranda, fumbling in her purse for two pence. Something across the street caught her eye, and she leant over briefly to see it, for the conductor was standing in her line of vision.

She gave her twopence to him. He was staring at her. ‘You are Miranda, aren’t you? Miranda Pagett? I’m your brother Sebastian. Don’t you remember me?’ cried Sebastian Pagett, for he could not make head or tail of the expression on Miranda’s face.

Sebastian was in his third year at Oxford, and had come down with many other undergraduates to man the London buses.

‘My name is Laura Jones,’ said Miranda.

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Sebastian, and he blushed and walked along the bus. But while handing out tickets, he continued to stare at them.

Miranda and Liza and Anatole were very white, and were trying not to look at him. ‘You are Miranda, I know you are,’ he insisted when he came back to their end of the bus.

‘Yes, I am,’ she had to whisper. She wanted to cry to get rid of the terrible stone in her throat and the feeling of nothingness in her guts, but she could not.

‘When we get to the end of the run, we’ll take a taxi; you must come back,’ said Sebastian, quite gently. ‘Mother’s been so worried, Miranda,’ he added.

Miranda nodded. As soon as he had gone upstairs she said, quite oblivious of the other people on the bus, ‘We’ve got to make a run for it! Quick!’ She pushed Anatole and Liza.

‘Darling,’ said Anatole, ‘there’s a policeman over there.
We can’t. We’ll just have to argue with your parents.’

‘No!’ moaned Miranda. ‘No, no, no, I’ll kill myself, I’ll get off this bus and throw myself under it, and Sebastian will have murdered me!’

‘Don’t, Miranda, please. You’re making it so much worse,’ said Anatole, crying and holding her down.

Liza looked miserably round the bus at the curious, stupid-looking faces of the other passengers. She handed her hip flask to Miranda, who took a swig. Anatole took it from her.

They sat in silence as the bus drove slowly to Putney, where the journey ended. None of them could think, and they could think of nothing to say.

At Putney, Sebastian persuaded one of his friends to take over the bus, and then he rang for a taxi. In the taxi, he studiously avoided Miranda’s gaze, which was no longer bewildered, but one of quiet hatred. Every ounce of Miranda’s energy was being spent on not crying. Hyde Park Corner — Marble Arch — Great Cumberland Place — Bryanston Square — closer and closer — number 129, number 131 — they arrived, and the door opened at Sebastian’s knock. They went into the cold brown hall with the massive, low-slung Victorian chandelier hanging from its ceiling, which as a child Miranda had attempted to touch, standing on the pillar at. the end of the banisters. She was still not crying. She stood close to Anatole and Liza. The maid was new and did not recognise Miranda.

‘Mr Pagett, we wish to be alone for a little while,’ said Anatole. ‘And there is someone whom we must ring up at once.’

Sebastian showed them into the dining room and pointed to the telephone. He did not look any of them in the face, and left the room at once.

‘We could have made it,’ said Miranda in a high, tight voice. ‘You damned fool, Anatole. The policeman didn’t know what was going on, I could see he didn’t. I’ve been presumed dead for a year now.’

‘Miranda, don’t you see? We could have been traced, and then not only would you have been taken back, but Alice could have been accused of kidnapping you and brought to
trial. Our best hope is to persuade your parents to let you alone now. To have fled would only have made things worse. What we must say is this: that we have always known you as Laura Jones, that we have never heard of Miranda Pagett, and that Alice has simply been employing you as a model as she does many other girls.’

‘Mother of God, do you think Father’s a complete fool? He’ll never fall for that!’

‘But Miranda, won’t he be anxious not to have a scandal?’ said Liza. ‘If he is, he won’t try to take Alice to court.’

‘Exactly!’ screamed Miranda.

‘I’ll ring Alice,’ said Anatole. He rang Bramham Gardens, but Finola said that Alice was not yet back. It was much earlier than they had thought. He rang the gallery.

‘Oh hello,’ said someone sleepily on the other end. ‘Who is it?’

‘Anatole. Alice’s husband. Get Alice quickly.’

‘Alice Molloy?’

‘Of course, fool.’

‘No need to be offensive, old chap. She’s just going.’

‘Get her, for God’s sake, before she goes!’

There was a long wait before Alice came to the telephone. ‘What is it?’ she said.

‘I can’t explain now. Come here at once!’

‘Where, for God’s sake?’

‘Number — Bryanston Square.’

‘Holy Mary Mother of God,’ said Alice, and slammed down the receiver.

Liza made Miranda finish the brandy in her hip flask. She had been walking round and round the table while Anatole was on the telephone — whispering, ‘Tell me it’s a nightmare,’ over and over, clutching her ears. They persuaded her to sit down, and not to let her father think, when he came in, that she was still a frightened child.

Sebastian was in the drawing room upstairs. When he had finished two cigarettes he reckoned that he could fetch his parents, who were preparing to go out to dinner.

He met them on the landing. ‘Miranda’s downstairs,’ he blurted.

‘What?’ they cried together.

‘She is,’ he said, nodding his head furiously. ‘She was on the bus. I brought her home.’

‘What cock-and-bull story is this?’ shouted Thomas Pagett. ‘You brought her home, just like that, after she’s been gone for two years? Don’t talk such nonsense, boy! The child would never …’

‘Oh no, it’s not possible,’ moaned Flora Pagett, and she rushed downstairs. She flung open first the study doors, then the dining-room doors. ‘My own darling girl,’ she murmured, standing in the doorway. ‘We thought you were dead!’

‘Don’t faint, Flora, for heaven’s sake!’ her husband shouted from behind her. He pushed past her and saw Miranda, nonchalantly sitting on the fender, her chin (famous for being like that of her Yankee grandmother) held high.

Thomas Pagett blinked and said hoarsely, ‘What are you doing here? Who are these?’ He was almost crying.

‘Let me introduce Anatole Brécu and Liza Brécu,’ said Miranda, with her eyes tightly shut. ‘I’m here, Father, because I was found by Sebastian, and in a few minutes, when Alice arrives, everything will be sorted out for you, but for the moment, will you just sit down and be quiet and not ask any more questions!’

‘Alice? Who’s Alice? Another damned …’

‘Randa, I’m just so pleased you’re home,’ said Flora Pagett, very normally and deliberately. She embraced Miranda’s stiff body. ‘How you’ve changed, dear,’ she continued, dabbing at her eyes with the back of her hand, like a small girl.

‘Leave me alone, Mother, please.’

They waited only a few minutes, twisting their hands in silence, until Alice arrived. Every time Thomas Pagett started to speak, Miranda glared at him, and his wife, looking at her daughter, hushed him. No one looked at anyone else.

They heard Alice, after ringing the bell, arguing with the maid. Neither of the Pagetts attempted to open the door themselves. ‘Let her in, Betsy!’ shouted Miranda’s father.

Alice came into the dining room. ‘We have been waiting
for you, madam,’ said Thomas Pagett. ‘Now can you explain your part in all this?’

Anatole got up. ‘My wife and I,’ he began, ‘had no idea that Laura — Miranda — was your daughter. We knew her as Laura Jones.’

‘Laura — Miranda — has been my model, you see,’ continued Alice, with wonderful earnestness. ‘For two years.’

‘And she lived with you?’ said Thomas Pagett.

‘Yes,’ said Alice.

‘Tell me, Mrs Brécu —’

‘Mrs Molloy.’

‘— are you in the habit of picking up children in the street and having them live with you for two years, modelling for you? Are you not curious as to where their families are? Or did my daughter tell you a pack of lies about all that? And did you not see a single one of the police notices which were pasted up all over London? Do you never read the newspapers?’