Family and Friends Page 16

  Sofka is aware of all this and at the same time profoundly indifferent. She knows that Frederick would not come even if they sent for him, as she senses they might. She knows, but cannot be bothered to tell them, that Frederick, without any of his motives being clear to him, would simply prolong all discussion of such a visit until the reason for it faded from his mind. He is like that; he delays until action becomes irrelevant. Sofka can see him smiting his forehead in amazement, as he used to do when he was a young man. ‘But why didn’t you tell me?’ he will say. ‘I would have come at once.’ Useless to explain to him that the others are so fearful that they might not make their news entirely clear, that Sofka’s illness or weakness or fatigue, whatever it is, has been veiled in so many euphemisms that even if the message were sent Frederick might have some excuse for not finding it terribly urgent. By this time only Sofka is capable of stating, ‘I long for you. Let me see you once before I die.’ And she is too tired even to frame the thought and its consequences. But as she lies there, raised on many pillows in her soft white bed, it is of Frederick and of Betty that she thinks. She sees them quite accurately: bathed in sunshine, in clothes that are not quite serious, exiles, no longer young. They are her favourites, now as then. For Mimi and for Alfred she has only tenderness, respect, acknowledgment. She knows that they will be there to the end. But, in death as in life, it is the absent one who sees to it that the business will remain unfinished, the farewells unsaid: it is the prodigal who does not return who makes the idea of goodness a mockery. Sofka, indifferent on her pillows, feels a throb of sadness only for those who are not gathered in the adjoining room.

  The one whose presence she finds easiest is Lautner, whose devotion is so simple, so absolute, and yet so weightless that there is no need to apologize to him or to reassure him or to thank him. At the very beginning of this illness, she whispered to Lautner, ‘Look after Mimi,’ and since then has said nothing. She saw his eyes fill with tears; she felt his lips brush her hand. Now it is easier not to talk. Strange how Lautner is a better nurse than the nurse herself. When Lautner enters Sofka’s bedroom and sits down by the bed, the nurse retires quietly to the kitchen for a cup of tea. Lautner notices little things that the nurse misses. The fine linen handkerchief has been creased; he will put a fresh one into the hand that lies inert on the lace counterpane. He will sprinkle a little mimosa scent on the lamp, to make the room smell of spring. He will touch Sofka’s lips with glycerine and rosewater, so that they do not become too dry. And although she no longer responds, he will tell her in pleasant detail of the weather outside, describe for her the position of Dorn and Co. on the stock-market, sometimes read her an item from the newspaper: the weather in Nice, in Los Angeles. She likes to see him sitting there, with his newspaper. She likes this reminder of the masculine world, so authoritative, so reassuring, so unlike the tempestuous and secret comings and goings of Alfred. Lautner calls her ‘Mama’, which Alfred despises. Alfred sees it as an attempt to curry favour. But Sofka and Lautner know that it is the word that Lautner has been longing to use for all his adult life. If it means little to Sofka now, it means all the world to Lautner. It means coming home.

  Lautner gets up and draws the curtains, patting their heavy folds carefully together. ‘Strange, how early it gets dark now,’ he says to Sofka, resuming his seat by the bed. ‘As we left home I said to Mimi, “I will leave some lights on, darling. It will make it more cheerful when we come back.” Because I like to keep her spirits up, you know. She is so imaginative, Mama. And with the baby coming, she needs to be kept calm. But she is quite well, quite well. You can see for yourself. Perfectly well. I make sure that she eats properly, and gets her rest. And it is good for her to see her family in the evenings, like this. That way the change does not seem too great to her. It is a miracle, of course.’ He looks down at his hands, smooths the newspaper, composes himself. ‘Clear and sunny in Nice,’ he says. ‘Fine and warm.’

  He is a good man, thinks Sofka. He is like my father. Strange how he calls me Mama. Was he here at the beginning? I came to this country as a girl, leaving my parents behind me. I never saw them again. I married and I left home, but none of us cried. My parents were happy for me, and they had my sisters. I was very proud. My husband was so handsome, so attractive to women. Yet he chose me. I never regretted it, never minded his flirtations. His death was sudden, peaceful. I was spared the sight of him changing into a fretful old man. And as I remember him he was the gallant suitor he had always been. I had the children then, of course. That was what he wanted, it seemed. The wife and children at home, the ladies outside. But I didn’t mind. For when I had the children they were more important to me than anything in the world. Little Alfred, trying so hard to please me. The girls in the old nursery. Mimi’s lovely hair. My beautiful life.

  Lautner thinks, they should have sent for Frederick. It will not be long now. Mimi thinks, if it is a girl I shall call her Sophie. Mama would like that. Alfred thinks, they are all making a fuss. Typical. As soon as she is a little better I shall take her down to the country. Fresh air is what she needs. It was always too stuffy in this flat. Dolly thinks, when will he leave his mother alone and come to me? Is the moment getting any nearer? If it is not, I will wait no longer. Nettie thinks, poor Tanti. I never saw enough of her, never felt entitled to come back, bore them all a grudge for sending me away all that long time ago. Strange to be back. Strange to see Alfred again, to be one of them again. Just like old times.

  Truth to tell, the atmosphere in that drawing-room is not unlike one of those weddings at which the whole clan foregathered. As the girls, Lili and Ursie, come in with silver trays of tea and honey cake, Nettie and Dolly fuss around Mimi who smiles, blushes, much as she always has done. She is thinner, of course, and the bulk of her pregnancy paradoxically makes her look rather gaunt but otherwise she has not changed much. Perhaps the features are more definite, the movements more confident; perhaps she has lost that faltering walk she used to have, perhaps she has lost that enquiring hopeful smile. One would hope so, for she is nearly forty. But generally speaking, the men of this family age more quickly than the women. Hal looks quite dry, quite exhausted, while Dolly is more effulgent than ever. She has done her hair a new way, winding it in a mass behind her head, and even for this simple visit she is wearing a black lace dress. Nettie thinks that dress is in frightful taste. Just like Dolly to usurp the mourning function as well as presuming to treat the evening as a normal evening party. Nettie feels all sorts of sadness. She, like Alfred, was rushed too soon away from her childhood, never had time to be young, was instructed to be an adult before she was ready. When she came back from finishing school, her mother had a husband almost lined up for her: Will, with whom, on the whole, she has been happy. But no children. Strange, how both Dolly and she have had no children, and inexplicable, unless you believe in those old superstitions about the wrong partner producing no children. She has not been unhappy, thinks Nettie, but Dolly is beginning to look hard, cruel. Hal sees it all, of course. For a long time now Nettie has disguised from herself the entanglement which is now obvious; it has kept her away from her aunt’s house. Tact, perhaps, or distaste. In any event, a desire not to see, not to witness. All that is over, or should be. It is a long time now since she and Alfred danced at that wedding, when they were children. She used to think of him, learning to be a man while she sent him postcards of the lake at sunset. She thought he might be waiting for her when she came back. But Dolly had been going out with Frederick, and both girls were eager to be married, and so they had married. And it is only childhood sentiment that turns her mind back to those remote days, because childhood, Nettie knows, is so easily lost, and perhaps she may be forgiven for clinging to these very distant memories.

  Dolly, with one white hand, fingers her pearls, and then lets the hand rest on her black lace breast, holding it there, fingers outspread, until Alfred obeys her will and turns his eyes to her. Oblivious of the others she keeps his eyes captive, appropriatin
g him from this family gathering, extricating him from all other loyalties, claiming him. Dolly is fearless. She will have this man, whom the old woman in the bedroom would deny her: the dead have no power against the living, however binding their wishes may once have been. Hal thinks, drily, the moment is approaching. Will thinks the same.

  Alfred, confused between the claims of past and present, rejects both. He refuses to believe that anything has changed. Or does he? Alfred, in fact, begins to resemble a character in classical tragedy or allegorical painting: on the one hand a figure embodying loyalty, piety, constraint, and on the other the irresistible lineaments of subversion. To do what Alfred is almost about to do requires nerve and practice: Alfred has acquired a little nerve but perhaps not enough practice. But Alfred is aware of the urge to do something. As far as he is concerned his life has been spent in the wings while other members of his family have arranged their futures to suit themselves. The defection, as he sees it, of Frederick and Betty has left him with the fate of Mimi and his mother entirely on his hands. And now that Mimi, apparently the weakest link, in truth the most beloved, has mocked him by this ludicrous marriage to Lautner, leaving him with a mother who gives every sign of declining into gentle invalidism, Alfred sees no need to sacrifice himself further. Since Mimi has made a mockery of Alfred’s dependability by behaving as a woman of ordinary strength, and seems determined to pursue her familial functions along divergent lines, Alfred will have no more of it. If Lautner appears to be so devoted a son-in-law as almost to have usurped the position of a son, then let him make himself useful. If Lautner refuses to remain marginal, then let him be central. Let him assume his major-domo functions here instead of in Kentish Town, and thus release Alfred for that life of risk and impropriety which has been his temptation, his fantasy, and his promised reward ever since he discovered, to his infinite regret and relief, that the farther shores of the real world were not within his compass. How long ago it now seems that he sat at his father’s desk, reading The Conquest of Peru, with Nettie’s postcard of Lac Léman by his side!

  Although as discreet, handsome, and taciturn in appearance as he always had it in him to become, Alfred, inwardly, now begins to develop towards a state bordering on psychopathy. He begins to envisage his actions as being entirely without consequences. He will, he thinks, take Dolly away from Hal; he will simply run off with her, leaving the rest of them to rearrange themselves as well as they can. He will do this not necessarily because this is what he wants but because he has never had his own way, and because his exacerbated manhood demands, now, imperatively, that he have his own way in as spectacular a manner as possible, as if to atone for all the good behaviour that has been expected of him in the past. He has, in all conscience, paid his dues to society and to his family. Above all, to his family. Now it seems to him that he must vindicate his buried self, that essential self still burning beneath the lava accretions of duty, foresight, prudence, accountability, reputation, regularity, good manners, and the unvarying performance of the high-principled man of affairs. As he sees it, the time has come for him to give others cause for comment. He would almost like to force them into a state of alarm, of speculation, of disarray: he would like to be a renegade, like Frederick, like Betty, safe and untouched in their sunlit exile, while he, here, in this dark curtained room, remains monstrously virtuous, his mother’s son. Alfred, longing for the day when, obeying some internal signal shown only to himself, he will make good his escape, is actively biding his time. One day, quite simply, he will shed his habits, like the sober and immaculate suits he always wears; he will walk out of the door and start his life again, somewhere else, with Dolly as the enabling factor. In gardenia-scented exile, he will force them all to take note.

  Alfred almost sees that, when the time comes for him to release his internal imperatives once again, he will abandon Dolly to her fate. He almost sees, and in this he is percipient, that Dolly is not a long-term prospect. Dolly is danger, risk, precipitancy; Dolly is a pretext. With Dolly he will open Pandora’s box, letting loose confusion into the world, into his world. But when the demons of confusion have escaped from Pandora’s box, and only Hope remains, then, Alfred knows (but represses the knowledge as being untimely) that Dolly will not quite do. Dolly’s high-risk factor, compounded as it is of her beauty and her gift for appropriation, will dictate her next move. No doubt Hal will take her back. If not Hal, someone else. Here Alfred, once again, comes seriously close to that abnormal state in which he attributes motives of carelessness and attributes of safety to those whom he should know better. Hal may indeed take Dolly back, but, by the same token, he may not necessarily let her go in the first place.

  Dolly, idle white hand on black lace breast, watches, lazy-eyed, as her tardy lover wills himself into a state of action. Hal’s eyes are lowered impassively as, apparently without volition, he twists his wedding-ring on his finger. Nettie’s eyes are wide with sorrow as she follows Lautner’s progress in and out of the room. It is left to Will, good-natured and always mildly effervescent, to sustain the conversation, which he does, teasing Mimi gently and asking her what the baby is to be called. Mimi, in fact, is conscious of nothing but her husband, her baby, and the knowledge that her health has never been better. She sinks unreflecting into the pleasure of these evenings in her old home, with her family around her. As Will keeps up his flow of jokes it is almost possible to forget why they are all gathered here together, evening after evening, in the warm cigar-scented room.

  A ring at the doorbell alerts them vaguely that someone has called, but conversation from the kitchen leads them to suppose that it is a visitor for Lili or Ursie. It is known that Lili has a suitor, a noisy and impudent charmer called Benjie. Benjie is something of a playboy and he can afford to be: his father is a dealer in antique furniture, a man of some repute in the trade, and Benjie is supposed to be working for him. All he does at the moment is take Lili off in his car to country auctions: Lili has returned from many an expedition of this kind, starry-eyed, to tell Sofka all about it, and Sofka has promised that when Lili gets married she will have as fine a wedding as if she had been one of Sofka’s own daughters. But when the door of the drawing-room opens it reveals not Benjie but Mrs Beck, correct in her decent black coat, her face very faintly and discreetly powdered. ‘Why, Mrs Beck,’ says Mimi, rising. ‘How very nice of you to call.’ Mrs Beck takes Mimi’s hand and nods to the group. As her eyes come to rest on Dolly they turn pitiless, as they did in the old days of hardship. ‘I have come to pay my respects,’ says Mrs Beck, accepting a seat. ‘I have come to pay my respects to my dear friend Mrs Dorn.’

  There is a tiny silence after this remark, as if they have been led back, rather unwillingly, to the reason for their all being here. When the conversation resumes it is of a different order. ‘You are well, Mimi, my dear?’ Mrs Beck enquires, accepting a cup of tea and a slice of almond cake. ‘Very well, thank you, Mrs Beck,’ says Mimi, and, to fill the silence, ‘Ursie, make fresh tea, will you? And come and join us. Tell Lili and Benjie to come too. Let us all be together.’

  So the room fills up, and the very slight ripple caused by Mrs Beck’s entrance dies down. Benjie accepts one of Will’s cigars and amuses them with some of his stories about skulduggery in the antique trade. He is a very good raconteur, and even Hal gives a dry laugh. Alfred smiles too, prepared to tolerate them all in the knowledge that he will soon do so no longer. He feels no animosity, is prepared to be large, hospitable, until such time as he decrees that they must get along without him. He is still the householder, the proprietor, the patron. They will lack for nothing, he promises them silently. They may continue as they are. There will be no change, but one day, quite simply, he will no longer be there.

  ‘And how is your mother this evening, Alfred?’ asks Mrs Beck, impenitent. ‘She is sleeping, Mrs Beck,’ Alfred replies. ‘I will tell her that you called.’ He has always faintly disliked Mrs Beck, with her minatory air, her presence as disturbing as that of an over-active
conscience, and in order to compensate for this dislike has provided for her most generously and has taken her son into the firm. This, if he could be bothered to think about it, could amount to yet another instance of good behaviour against which his ultimate villainy must be measured. Alfred, living his temporary fiction of immunity from the rules, consigns Mrs Beck along with the rest of them. No complaints, he trusts? It would appear, as he looks around the room, that there are no complaints.

  As the clock in the hall gives its mellow boom Mimi looks up, startled. ‘Why,’ she says, ‘I had no idea it was so late. Joseph, we should be going.’ And she gets up heavily, shaking her dress and smoothing it down. It is a general signal. Nettie begins to gather the plates and cups together. ‘Leave that, Nettie,’ says Dolly sharply. ‘The girls will see to it.’ Hal purses his lips. Already she has taken command, he thinks. Nettie takes no notice, receives Mrs Beck’s cup with a smile. As Mimi is helped into her fur coat by Will she turns to Lautner and asks, x2018;Should we disturb her?’ ‘I think not,’ he replies. ‘She will be sleeping by now.’ But he slips out of the room to make sure. Goodbyes are said, lingering and comfortable goodbyes. They will in any event meet again here on the following evening. Benjie kisses Lili’s hair and slaps her gently on the bottom. The girls take this opportunity to make their farewells to the company; they will wash up and go to bed if nothing else is needed, they say. ‘Nothing else,’ smiles Mimi, and she kisses them both good-night, as she has always done. They return her kisses warmly. The girls are no longer afraid of Mimi.