“But the GARDEN… Come over here!”
George crossed the room, and as he approached the window, which was partly
open, the scent of summer flowers came to him as he never remembered it
before—geraniums, roses, carnations, stocks, mignonette.
“Aye, it’s nice this time of the year. I’m not much of a gardener myself,
but Annie likes it and does a bit now and again… Livia’s garden, we still
call it—used to be a piece of waste ground till she took it in
hand.”
At the word, uttered like a spell between them, Charles stirred uneasily.
“Livia,” he muttered. “My father used to call her Livy… The lost books of
Livy, he used to say, what wouldn’t I give to look into them!” He breathed
deeply into the scented air. “So she planted the garden and burned your
book-covers? Anything else?”
George did not speak.
Charles went on: “My father used to say she made you into a nerve of her
own body and let you do the aching instead of her… unless you were ill or a
child, and then she took all the aches to herself and rocked you to sleep.”
He sat on the arm of a chair, fidgeting nervously with his cigarette-case.
“But that wouldn’t suit me. I’m not a child, and I don’t expect always to be
ill.”
“You won’t be. You’ll get better.”
“I want to work too.”
“You will.”
“Mind if I smoke?”
“Watch the light if you’re not going to pull the curtains.”
“Good old warden. The moon’s so bright you could turn on all the street
lamps.” He suddenly pointed to a photograph on the mantelpiece. “THAT
her?”
“Aye.”
“And the baby?”
“He died.”
“She was young then.”
“Aye. Nearly a quarter of a century ago.”
“You make it sound a long time.”
“It has been a long time.”
“I feel so damned sorry for her, George. My uncle never liked her. Nobody
seems to like her much, for that matter—not how she is now. And the
chances are my father won’t come back. She thinks he will, but to me it
doesn’t seem probable.”
George exclaimed: “By God, though, if she thinks he will, he may. In fact
he’d almost better!”
Charles stared for a moment, then slowly smiled. “Yes, I know. She gets
her own way as a rule. That’s why, when she learns about Julie and
me—”
“You haven’t told her yet?”
“Not yet. Do you think I should?”
George thought a moment, then said: “Aye, might as well get it over.”
“I will then. I’ll wire her tomorrow. Your advice has been pretty good so
far.”
“You mean you’re happy?”
Charles nodded profoundly.
“That’s good. I can see Julie is too. And don’t feel you ought to be
looking after your mother. It’s she who feels she ought to be looking after
you… but you’re against that, and so am I.”
“I know. And she doesn’t really need me, she only needs me to need
her.”
“That’s not a bad way of putting it.”
“Because she’s got a sort of secret strength to face things—and less
fear than anyone I ever met—man or woman. I often used to think when I
was sweating it out over Berlin—God, I wish I had guts of iron like
hers… It was crazy, sometimes, the things she’d do. We were at a restaurant
in Munich once and a crowd of army officers sat down at the next table. They
were pretty drunk and high-tempered, started abusing a waiter for something
or other. Eventually one of them struck the man, and my mother, who was
closer than I was, leaned over and bopped the officer over the head with a
Chianti bottle. Suddenly—quietly—without a word— just like
that.” Charles swung his arm. “Pure slapstick comedy but for the time and
place.”
“What happened?”
“Blood and Chianti all over everything. A riot. Amidst which I managed to
get her out by a back door. The restaurant owner was as keen to save his
premises as I was to avoid an international incident.”
George laughed. “It wasn’t always so serious. Once she and I were arguing
at dinner about something or other quite trivial when she picked up a piece
of apple-pie and threw it at me. And it happened that you could see in from
the street and somebody HAD seen in—and also it was the middle of an
election campaign. They called me ‘Apple-Pie George’ after that for a time.”
George laughed louder at the recollection. “I used to think it harmed my
chances—maybe it did. But I’m glad to know about all this. I’d forgive
her a lot for that.”
“Didn’t you forgive her anyway?”
“Aye, I always found it pretty easy.”
“My father used to say it was easy to forgive her if she was wrong, but if
she turned out to be right then you might as well never forgive
yourself.”
George said after a long pause: “I don’t want to send you away, but if
you’re feeling sleepy… I’ve booked a room for you both at the
Greyhound.”
“The Greyhound?”
“Just along the street. More comfortable than here.”
Charles crossed the room and George put his arm round the boy’s shoulder
as the two walked back to the kitchen. “Don’t you worry, lad. If I can help
her I shall. It won’t all be your job. You can count on me for that.”
“Seems to me I count on you for a lot of things, George.”
George took them over to the Greyhound, said good-night,
and began the
short stroll back to his house. But he felt so wakeful he made a detour past
the Town Hall, his mind being still full of thoughts, strange thoughts, such
as that Charles had actually been under his roof, and that Browdley in
moonlight was really a beautiful place. Not only the Town Hall, but the main
office of the Browdley Building Society, Joe Hardman’s fish-shop, even
Ridgeway’s garage on whose doors, as a halcyon reminder, there could still be
seen the painting of a very gay peace-time charabanc for hire… all so
beautiful… which was absurd, of course; yet even as he admitted it, beauty
and a little sadness remained in what he felt. He could not hope for sleep in
such a mood; but he could work, there was always that. As he entered his
house the hall was bright as bars of silver; he could even read the headline
of the Advertiser, and a typical one, even after five years of war—
“Shall Browdley Have Sunday Cinemas?” So THAT was how his old journalistic
rival still looked at the world, he mused, with extra irony because the
Sunday cinema question had been debated in Browdley ever since he had
campaigned as a young man for his first Council election… and now they were
at it again!… No wonder Lord Winslow could remark that England didn’t
change! But it did change, for all that, beneath the surface of dead issues
regularly flogged to life. George slipped the paper into his pocket as he
walked into the open study doorway.
Suddenly he knew he was not alone. Someone was standing in front of the
window, staring out—as Charles had done earlier—into the garden.
The figure turned, offered a profile against the moonlight, was
unmistakable…
“LIVIA!”
At the instant of recognition he felt his hands clench with shock for
which he must brace mind and heart as well; and he did so, almost as
instantly.
“Where is he? He’s been here, George. I know that. I want to see him.”
He answered in a level voice: “They’re not here now, Livia.”
“THEY? Who’re THEY?”
He answered because it was the way he himself thought of them: “Charles
and Julie.”
He caught his breath, having spoken the phrase; he would have expected a
scene, but for knowing that with Livia one could never expect the expected.
All she did was to cross the room and sit on the arm of his armchair, while
he drew the curtains and switched on the light. He saw then that she looked
tired and rather pale, but not uncomposed. Because he wanted to give her time
to grasp the situation, he did not speak, but went back to the curtains and
pretended to be fixing them with especial care.
“Julie,” she said at last, still quietly. “So that’s her name. Charlie and
Julie. How sweet! Where are they?”
“Why did you come here, Livia?” he countered. “What made you think it
would help?”
“I don’t want it to help. I mean to stop this nonsense. And I know they
ARE here, now you’ve told me she’s with him, because I went to Cambridge
first and talked to his servant at the College… I know, it’s no use you
denying it. Of course I know. And I know your part in it all. I ALWAYS
know.”
“Aye, there’s not much misses you—or ever did. But there’s something
extra to tell you this time.” He added, in a kindly voice, with no note of
triumph in it: “I told you, Livia, my advice would be to let the boy live his
own life. That’s what he’s going to do, and I’ll admit I’m all for it. So
whatever you’ve come to stop you’re too late.”
“I’M too late?” She stared at him with glazed eyes. “Oh no, no. You’re the
one who’s late. You have been all along. And he’s where you put him because
of that. You and your kind of people. You talk about letting him live his own
life—why DIDN’T you, then, when he had one to live—not just half
a one? That’s all he has now because of the mess you’ve made of everything.
You said my father’s victims were all over the town—but yours are all
over the world—people like you who went on making speeches…
speeches… you were making them before he was born—just as you still
are—”
“Livia, you surely haven’t come here just for an argument—”
“I told you what I came here for. I want Charlie. I WANT him. What’s left
of him, that is, after your kind have said all their prayers and made all
their speeches—”
“I don’t know what you’re driving at, Livia. If you mean that my
generation’s largely responsible for the war, then I’ll agree with you.
Charles and I once discussed the same point—”
“Oh, you did, did you? Just a nice friendly discussion. And he forgave
you, I suppose. Man to man and all that. With his shattered nerves and
smashed legs and burned eyes he forgave you—because he too may need to
be forgiven some day.”
“Aye, if he just sits back and lets things happen. I told him that. There
was a children’s ward next to where he was in the hospital, and I asked if he
wasn’t afraid that those kids when they grew up—or his own kids for
that matter—”
Her eyes sharpened.
“HIS? He’ll never have any. Maybe he can’t. It’s like that sometimes. I
hope so, because that would be the best way to end it. My father, me, him,
full-stop…”
“Livia, that’s a terrible thing to say.”
“More terrible to mean.”
“I hope you’ll never let him know you do mean it.”
“I shan’t have to. It’ll come to him when we’re in Ireland.”
“Ireland? I doubt he’ll want to go there now so much.”
“He doesn’t know what he wants. He thinks he wants this girl, but that’s
absurd. I can make him want what he really wants.”
“Livia… remember I said you were too late.” George paused, then added:
“They’re married.”
“WHAT?”
“Three days ago in London. He was going to wire you about it tomorrow.
Perhaps he ought to have done so before, but you can hardly blame him…”
George then saw something which, despite all Millbay had said, he had
tried to believe did not exist. It was a look of implacability so vivid, so
pure in a sense, that he recoiled from it less in revulsion than in elemental
awareness of what it signified. For he was all against it, as a stream of
yielding water is against the rock it will wear down in a million years or
so. And suddenly, without bitterness, he saw Livia as a symbol of all that
must so be worn down, no matter how hard or long the struggle, no matter how
often the victories of greed and despair and intolerance seem to make
nonsense of it.
With his own gentler implacability he stared at hers till the
transfiguration disappeared.
She said at length: “So… you think… you’ve done the trick?”
“It’s no trick, Livia.”
“Last-minute victory, then? Narrow majority? And a hearty vote of thanks
to Mister Mayor…?” But she was her masked self again, so that the stress on
the prefix was only ironic. She went on: “Perhaps you still don’t know what
I’m driving at? You never did—and you’re afraid Charlie might if he got
the chance. You’re afraid he might see things my way. So’s Howard. He wants
him to have lands and a title and riches—”
“Aye, I know, and I agree with you there. They’d be just a burden to him,
and that’s why—”
“That’s why you’d rather give him YOUR kind of burden. Speeches—
promises—the same old never-again stuff. But you shan’t, George
—I can stop that, even now. And as for the little schemer he’s been
duped by, does she think HER influence is going to count?”
“Nay, Livia, not hers. Nor mine, nor his uncle’s, nor yours. Let him get
on his feet, build up his own ideas, see things with his own eyes when he has
the strength to see clearly—that’s all I’m aiming for. He’ll influence
me as much as I will him—I’m not so sure of my own opinions that I’d
try to ram them down somebody’s throat. I’ll take his—if he can
convince me. Or we can keep our own. It doesn’t matter. I know you look at
things differently—”
“So does the man from Mars, maybe.”
That stumped him; he blinked bewilderedly till she continued: “If he could
see the world today he’d think it was in charge of raving lunatics and the
asylums were for sane people who’d gone there for safety. So if anybody
thinks I’m a little out of my mind—Howard does, I know—”
“Livia,
I
don’t. But I do think—for the time being—
you’re not able to help the boy as he most needs helping… Later,
perhaps…”
“Too late—and already you talk of LATER…” She suddenly got up and
began walking towards the door. “I can see this is wasting more time. I’d
better start on my way back. The five-ten, isn’t it? I remember. Can I have a
cup of tea first?”
“Why… of course. I’m only sorry you…” But then he stopped; he didn’t
know what he was only sorry about, except that she had come.
She said, from the hall as she crossed it to the kitchen: “No pressing
invitation to stay a few days, then?”