A Misalliance Read online

  ‘Not only can he not see you, but you can’t even make another appointment,’ said the nurse, bristling not so much at the girl’s insolence as at her appearance. ‘The receptionist’s gone off duty.’

  ‘What about this lady?’ said the girl, indicating Blanche.

  ‘Mrs Vernon is a volunteer,’ said the nurse, scandalized. ‘And she’s usually on the wards; nothing to do with this section. No, the best thing I can do is suggest that you come back tomorrow and make another appointment. The doctor’s just leaving,’ she added firmly, seeing the girl rise to her feet with a sudden lifting of the drooped features as the double doors opened once more.

  Blanche could hear laughter and expostulations before the little group – the woman, her child and the subjugated doctor – disappeared back through the double doors. She was left to hear the nurse’s grievances as she lingered, and, unwilling to leave, encouraged her to comment on Mrs Beamish’s character, although it was the child who concerned her. She learned that Mrs Beamish and her daughter put in infrequent and irregular appearances, always with demands that something should be done quickly, although long and patient investigations would have to be undertaken if any kind of reasonable diagnosis were to be arrived at. The little girl had never spoken, but, as she was not deaf, and was apparently in good health, the trouble was obviously psychic; the nurse, her lips pinched, seemed to think the fault lay in a lack of mothering. Chafed by her stiff belt and her heavy shoes, the nurse implied that Mrs Beamish’s fashionable light-heartedness was somehow disreputable, as if anyone as thin as that could not possibly be adequate as a parent. Or even as a substitute parent.

  ‘It can’t have been easy for her,’ ventured Blanche.

  ‘I’ll give you that. And with the husband away all the time. But I mustn’t go on. You’ll be wanting to go home, Mrs Vernon. And I expect you’d like to go back on the wards next week, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Blanche. ‘I much prefer it here.’ She found herself watching the double doors, until it was clear that Mrs Beamish had succeeded in seeing the doctor and would not be available for a very long time.

  Blanche’s motives were perfectly clear to her, as she made her careful way through the side door; she was always quite conscious of her aberrations, which was why they rarely got out of hand. She was possessed by a sudden desire to know more about this woman and her child, and the initial intimation of love she had felt for the little girl eating her cake was now broadened and flattened into a need for information, for confidences, for a means of exchange. If she thought, with an old half-mocking cynicism, that she might be able to help them, she knew, beyond a doubt, that they would provide a focus of interest for her, and that if she mourned the family she had never had, she might just as well make use of these feelings in as sensible and as mutually beneficial a way as possible. Blanche was not an hysterical woman and she saw no unbecoming infatuation developing from her curiosity. Sympathy, she thought; sympathy and interest: surely I cannot be indicted for those?

  Blanche did not deceive herself: she knew that her perceptions were awry. She knew that she, a stranger, could not hope for intimacy with a woman so young and so evidently self-sufficient. She also knew that she did not desire intimacy with such a woman, having registered that unusual sight of otherness, that resemblance to the invulnerable and patrician nymphs of the National Gallery’s Italian Rooms. What drew her to the couple was not the simple longing of a middle-aged woman for a child. There was nothing of the predator in Blanche. What she felt was, to an extent which almost alarmed her, disinterested. She wanted merely to observe the child, to study her, to make her laugh. She would do this in the humblest possible capacity, in the light of such natural impulses as might be appropriate in the circumstances, however they might present themselves. She could think of nothing more extended than this sort of acquaintanceship, the only kind that she allowed herself these days. And yet she felt a powerful stirring of curiosity, a call from the outside world to involve herself, despite the incongruity of the encounter. She felt as if some mild signal had been given, to which she had in some mysterious and unstated way replied.

  Since living alone she had experienced varying degrees of exclusion, and, out of sheer dandyism, had made an ironical survey of the subject. The dinner partner so far gone in age or indifference as to shed a bleak light on her hostess’s intentions; the withdrawal, at awkward times of the year, such as Christmas, into the fortress of the family, thus precluding the proffering of invitations; the stories of rapturous holidays, to which she merely opposed her amused and attentive gaze; and those friends of other days – and they were always busy – who would say to her, ‘But I mustn’t go on about myself. What have you been doing with yourself? Anything nice?’, this remark being prefaced with a look of deep commiseration. She had found no answer to the hungry curiosity of such friends, but remembering her mother’s maxim – ‘The best revenge is living well’ – had merely continued to dress, to leave her home, to pay her cultural visits, as if invulnerability and enlightenment were to be her portion, as if to expect or to hunger for anything else were quite simply beneath her dignity. Thus she irritated many people, particularly those who were anxious to pity her. Blanche refused to be pitied. But at night, after two or three glasses of wine, she would feel her defences fall away, and her mood, heightened artificially by the anticipation of Bertie’s visit, would dissipate as soon as it became clear that he would not come. At such times, standing motionless in her dusky room, or pulling aside the curtain on to the dark and empty garden, she would know an inner desolation that no one must be allowed to suspect. This desolation, compounded with the relief that somehow the day had ended, would accompany her to her bed, where, the wine having fulfilled its purpose, she would usually sleep soundly. But when she did dream she would be aware, whatever the dream’s context, of the shadow of an accompanying smile, a smile that contained both mockery and mystery, the smile of the Goddess with the Pomegranate that had once so alarmed her and had left so strong an after-image that it seemed to steal up on her in unguarded moments, even in sleep.

  Therefore she asked nothing from the child or from the child’s mother. She merely thought it sad that they should have to visit the hospital; she thought too that it would be a fine thing to bring a smile to their faces, a smile of recognition, a smile of mutuality. Nothing would be asked in return, for she felt, if anything, a slight distaste for the confidences of strangers, having received so many in the course of her unaccompanied days. But perhaps a simple interest in their situation would not come amiss, placed as she was in the unintimidating position of vague benevolence conferred on her by her duties at the hospital. It was little enough, she thought, although in fact she was too frail, beneath her armour, to withstand the weight of old acquaintances, with their exaggerations of concern, and it would be of interest to her, and perhaps of some benefit, to observe so young and spirited a woman and to try to understand her connection with the little girl who did not speak, but whose manners, Blanche had noted with something like sorrow, were as punctilious as her own.

  For the child in Blanche had recognized the loneliness of the little girl in the Outpatients’ Department, had recognized too that her inability to speak was not organic but deliberate, that she refused, out of some terrible strength, to come to terms with the world which she perceived as abnormal, unsatisfactory, deficient. The steadiness of the child, as opposed to the effortlessness, the weightlessness, of the mother, indicated a desire for an ordered structured universe, with a full complement of the fixed points of an ordinary, even a conventional childhood. Blanche saw, with what seemed to her to be a true insight, that she was a child who would respond to regular meals, sensible food, traditional games, and a respectable, even a self-effacing mother. She saw, because she knew these things in herself, a resistance to the tired and tasteless cake, of which her mother had offered her not one slice but two; she saw also, in the child’s determined manoeuvres with the teaspoon, her decision to behave well and in as sophisticated a manner as possible, not allowing the disappointments of life with so incompatible a parent to break down her dignity, and even assuming a little more dignity than was customary in the face of such disappointments.

  All of this Blanche thought about intently, but without perplexity. For a recognition on two levels had come about: recognition of the mother as the embodiment of that essence that had seemed to mock her, offering its wordless smiling comment on her empty afternoons, and recognition of the child as being one like herself, refusing, at a heroic level, the role that was offered her and which she considered unsuited to her desires. What those desires might be Blanche did not know, could not see. But she perceived the heroism in the stance, and she required, almost painfully, to see it at close quarters, and to dismantle it, if possible, before it was too late.

  And it had been said that the father was away all the time. Blanche immediately assumed him to be in prison. Was this, then, a form of hunger strike, a waiting, such as she knew from her own experience, for some impossible return? In that case, why was the mother, Mrs Beamish, so light-hearted? And so well-dressed? If there were something like prison in the background there might be money difficulties, for surely the little girl’s impediment could be better served by private treatment rather than haphazard visits to a crowded hospital department. And if there were money difficulties Blanche could see a way in which she might be of help. Her status as an almost wealthy woman, a woman, moreover, who spent very little on herself but would be very happy to spend her money on someone else, would make that entirely possible.

  The more she contemplated her life as it was, the more hopeless she found it to be. A sterile round of almost unmotivated activities, the evenings long and drawn out with waiting, the silent vigils by darkened windows that preceded her nights, were not enough to sustain a life, however gallant and determined. And her odd demeanour, she knew, had worn out everybody’s efforts at comprehension, for she was aware that she was seen as obstinate, unassimilable, refusing to join groups of people like herself for purposes of travel or instruction, in which activities she might be supposed to involve herself honourably, thus leaving the world with no obligations towards her. Blanche knew that there was a limit – very soon reached, in her case – to the efforts one can make on one’s own. It is the sign from outside oneself that delivers such beleaguered lives, lives immersed in the quicksand of their own dolorous reflections, and for some mysterious or even superstitious reason she saw her encounter with Elinor and her mother as embodying that sort of sign. Why this should be she did not know. It was simply that on this particular afternoon at the hospital she had sensed an intensification of her usually abstracted energies, had begun to think of the child, and now indeed of the mother, with something like a creator’s imagination. Her business with them was not over, she thought. In fact it was just about to begin.

  The evening was overcast, with a grey blanket of cloud that would simply darken imperceptibly, bringing with it the inevitable rain. There was no point in hurrying home, for home was untenanted and unattractive, therefore no longer home. Bertie would certainly not look in this evening after his visit yesterday: he liked to retain the option of staying away for unpredictable lengths of time, not wishing to witness too frequently Blanche’s immaculate recitation of non sequiturs. In the intervals between his visits Blanche thought with envy of his fearless involvement with the messier side of life, and even of his labours in Mousie’s chaotic kitchen, feeling herself too monumental ever to commit an untidiness. She practised a scrupulous avoidance of any reference that might be construed as malice or unkindness. When Bertie had told her that he was leaving her for Mousie, she had merely said, ‘Yes, I rather gathered that you might be,’ with a ghastly smile, the blood draining from her cheeks. She now thought that she had been spiritless and disappointing. But she was aware that Mousie, whom she knew to be a type of emotional gangster, given to hijackings and other acts of terrorism, was in fact uncomfortable with her own particular style of endurance, and feared an outbreak of lawlessness for which she must be on her guard. Bertie’s visits were licensed, Blanche thought, so that Mousie could be prepared if necessary to counter any opposition that might be forthcoming; Mousie, and in her train, Bertie, could not quite give Blanche credit for her unnerving good behaviour, which they saw as having a natural term. They preferred to meet the day of her inevitable revolt with a united front. But Blanche hoped that Bertie might have his own private thoughts about her: hoped, though had no way of knowing.

  She turned in to a supermarket to buy a bottle of wine and encountered her virtuous neighbour, Mrs Duff, whose anxious hand on Blanche’s arm belied her reassuring smile and whose overtures of friendship Blanche had so far resisted, sensing in the woman a need to sympathize which might prove too much for her own comfort. Alone of all her acquaintances, Blanche thought, this woman treated her as if she might be wounded, and perversely she felt irritated rather than grateful. Blanche found it intolerable to have witnesses at her defeats; therefore she gave no sign of being defeated. Or so she hoped.

  ‘A little warmer at last,’ offered Mrs Duff. ‘We shall soon be out in the garden again.’ For they shared adjoining gardens behind their respective mansion flats, and although Blanche never sat there she sometimes looked down from her window at Mrs Duff, taking the afternoon air, in a print blouse and a dazzling white skirt, on high summer days.

  They made a little conversation about the weather, what it had been like, what it seemed to be about to be like, what was promised for the days ahead, in tones of great cordiality, as such acquaintances will. Blanche felt a pang of regret that she was not able to respond to Mrs Duff’s overtures in a spirit of open-mindedness or the sort of mutual congratulation that would bring a smile to Mrs Duff’s face. Her enormous consciousness of her own defeat had removed her, apparently for ever, from such an exchange of compliments. There was an innocence about Mrs Duff that Blanche rejected, as no longer hers to share. It was as if she herself had lost her own innocence, could think only in tortured worldly terms, must apply her censorship to every action, every word, and was oddly fearful of revealing herself to others. Yet despite all this, the little girl, perhaps because of her wordlessness, had struck some response from Blanche, had penetrated her defences, and, perhaps for that very reason, was seen to be significant.

  Blanche watched Mrs Duff’s figure marching trimly in the direction of home and, after a short delay, followed her out into the street. The damp evening closed round her, numbing her responses. Looking up, she saw at the bus stop on the other side of the road Mrs Beamish and Elinor, who had evidently managed an appointment with the doctor after all. Instinctively, she raised her hand and waved. Mrs Beamish nodded and smiled, then patted her daughter on the shoulder and indicated Blanche. After a second’s thought Elinor lifted up her arm and waved back.

  ‘Yes,’ said Blanche later on the telephone to Barbara. ‘Quite an interesting day. Not bad at all.’

  FOUR

  At the last moment, as she was about to leave her apartment, Blanche heard the telephone. When she learned that Barbara had succumbed to influenza, she put down her bag, walked to the kitchen and began to assemble supplies, planning in her mind the asparagus soup, the braised wing of chicken, the casserole for Jack’s dinner that would occupy her for the rest of the day. Like a soldier at the barricades, she maintained herself in a state of grim good health, ever fearful of the hazards of falling ill. She had therefore survived the mild ’flu epidemic that had claimed her sister-in-law and seemed to herald the untimely arrival of summer; it had arrived with the warm but still wet weather that now dripped morbidly from the leaves of chestnut trees and greeted every morning with a spectacular show of vapour, the impotent sun a hazy white smudge in an otherwise colourless sky. The delicate steam of her soup, scenting the kitchen, made her think of greenhouses, of wet grass, and of the sun breaking through to shine on rain-spotted windows. Sweating the onion for her casserole and chopping the leek and the carrot, she reflected how glad she was to have an opportunity of doing some substantial cooking again, having restricted herself to stark single items of nourishment for far too long; her attitude to her own well-being was largely functional, without indulgence, easily despatched.

  ‘And yet I manage to keep quite well,’ she said to Barbara, later that morning. ‘There is no need to worry about me as you do. Worry about yourself instead. And drink a little more of this coffee. It is so good for you, whatever they say. Such a heavenly smell. It will soothe your poor head, and make it think of better days.’

  ‘I can’t smell a thing,’ said Barbara. ‘Take it away. But you are very kind, Blanche. I had forgotten what a kind woman you were. I suppose it is because you don’t pretend to be kind, as so many people do. Have you noticed? It is difficult to know how to deal with such people, the sort who say, “If I had known you were ill I should have done something.” And yet you would never let them know because it would be tactless, a sort of intrusion. You would not assume them to be available.’

  ‘Perhaps you should never assume that people are available,’ said Blanche, removing cups and plumping up pillows. ‘Why should they be? But you are right about kindness. Genuine kindness is actually rather rare, more rare than one would imagine. I think it ought to be a cardinal virtue, and yet you don’t see too much of it. Not in the past, certainly not in painting. I have been thinking about this a lot. You know I go to the National Gallery quite a bit?’

  ‘Too much,’ said Barbara, blowing her nose. ‘Nobody needs to go that much. It is becoming an obsession with you.’

  ‘Well, but you see, I am trying to decipher all those expressions. They are held up to one as standards of excellence, to be always admired, and yet there are many terrible lessons there. One realizes that even the Holy Family didn’t have a lot of time for the rest of creation. We will not even speak of the Crucifixion, if you don’t mind. And all the martyrdoms. Those poor saints, throwing away their lives, the only possession they could really call their own. And the cruelty of their tortures. All so that they could be shown in painting, resurrected, in perfect form, with merely a tower or a key or a wheel as a dainty allusion to their sufferings. As if the realm of painting were taking its lead from the kingdom of heaven. I worry about that a lot.’