I found some matches, climbed on the table, lit the gas lamp, then settled down to read. Since I had arrived at the house, found all serene, seen my mother, I was completely reassured. I was wrapped in the security of childhood. Just as the misery had been eternal, so was this. The dread had vanished. For those moments, which I remembered all my life, had already passed out of mind the day they happened. I curled up on the sofa and lost myself in
The Captain
.
I read on for some time. I was beginning to blink with sleepiness, the day’s sun had made my forehead burn; perhaps I should soon have gone to bed. But then, through the open window, I heard a well-known voice.
‘Lewis! What are you doing up at this time of night?’
It was my Aunt Milly, who lived two houses down the road. Her voice was always full and assertive; it swelled through any room; in any group, hers was the voice one heard.
‘I never heard of such a thing,’ said Aunt Milly from the street.
‘Well, since you are up – instead of being in bed a couple of hours ago,’ she added indignantly, ‘you’d better let me in the front door.’
She followed me into the front room and looked down at me with hot-headed, vigorous reprobation.
‘Boys of your age ought to be in bed by eight,’ she said. ‘No wonder you’re tired in the morning.’ I argued that I was not, but Aunt Milly did not listen.
‘No wonder you’re skinny,’ she said. ‘Boys of your age need to sleep the clock round. It’s another thing that I shall have to speak to your mother about.’
Aunt Milly was my father’s sister. She was a big woman, as tall as my mother and much more heavily built. She had a large, blunt, knobbly nose, and her eyes protruded: they were light blue, staring, and slightly puzzled. She wore her hair in a knob above the back of her head, which gave her a certain resemblance to Britannia. She had strong opinions on all subjects. She believed in speaking the truth, particularly when it was unpleasant. She thought I was both spoilt and neglected, and was the only person who tried to govern my movements. She had no children of her own.
‘Where is your mother?’ said Aunt Milly. ‘I came along to see her. I’m hoping that she might have something to tell me.’
She spoke in an accusing tone that I did not understand. I told her that mother was in the other room, busy with Maud and Cissie – ‘playing cards,’ I fabricated.
‘Playing cards,’ said Aunt Milly indignantly. ‘I’d better see how much longer they think they’re going on.’
Through two closed doors I heard Aunt Milly’s voice, loud in altercation. I even caught some of her words: she was wondering how grown-up people could believe in such nonsense. Then followed a pause of quiet, in which I imagined my mother must be replying, though I could hear nothing. Then Aunt Milly again. Then a clash of doors, and Aunt Milly rejoined me.
‘Playing cards!’ she cried. ‘I don’t think much of cards, but I wouldn’t say a word against it. If that was all it was!’
‘Aunt Milly, you have–’ I said, defending my mother. Aunt Milly had reproved her resonantly for suggesting whist last Boxing Day. I was going to remind her of it.
‘Seeing the future!’ said Aunt Milly with scorn, as though I had not made a sound. ‘It’s a pity she hasn’t something better to do. No wonder things get left in this house. I suppose I oughtn’t to tell you, but someone ought to be thinking of the future for your father and mother. I’ve said so often enough, but do you think they would listen?’
Outside, in the hall, my mother was saying goodbye to Maud and Cissie. The door swung slowly open and she entered the room. She entered very deliberately, with her head high and her feet turned out at each step; it was a carriage she used when she was calling up all her dignity. She had in fact great dignity, though she invented her own style for expressing it.
She did not speak until she had reached the middle of the room. She faced Aunt Milly, and said: ‘Please to wait till we are alone, Milly. The next time you want to tell me what I ought to do, I’ll thank you to keep quiet in front of visitors.’
They were both tall, they both had presence, they both had strong wills. They were in every other way unlike. My mother’s thin beak of a nose contrasted itself to Aunt Milly’s bulbous one. My mother’s eyes were set deep in well-arched orbits, and were bold, grey, handsome, and shrewd. Aunt Milly’s were opaque and protruding. My mother was romantic, snobbish, perceptive, and intensely proud. Aunt Milly was quite unselfconscious, a busybody, given to causes and good works, impervious to people, surprised and hurt when they resisted her proposals, but still continuing active, indelicate, and undeterred. She had no vestige of humour at all. My mother had a good deal – but she showed none as she confronted Aunt Milly under the drawing-room mantel.
They had been much together since my parents’ marriage. They maddened each other: they lived in a state of sustained mutual misunderstanding; but they never seemed able to keep long apart.
‘Please to let my visitors come here in peace,’ said my mother.
‘Visitors!’ said Aunt Milly. ‘I’ve known Maud Taylor longer than you have. It’s a pity she didn’t get married when we did. No wonder she wants the cards to tell her that she’s going to find a husband.’
‘When she’s in my house, she’s my visitor. I’ll thank you not to thrust your opinions down her throat.’
‘It’s not my opinions,’ said Aunt Milly, loudly even for her. ‘It’s nothing but common sense. Lena, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.’
‘I’m not in the least ashamed of myself,’ said my mother. She kept her haughtiness; but she would have liked to choose a different ground.
‘Reading the cards and looking at each other’s silly hands and–’ Aunt Milly paused triumphantly, ‘–and gaping at some dirty tea leaves. I’ve got no patience with you.’
‘No one’s asked you to have patience,’ said my mother stiffly. ‘If ever I ask you to join us, then’s the time for you to grumble. Everyone’s got a right to their own opinions.’
‘Not if they’re against common sense. Tea leaves!’ Aunt Milly snorted. ‘In the twentieth century!’ She brought out those last words like the ace of trumps.
My mother hesitated. She said: ‘There’s plenty we don’t know yet.’
‘We know as much as we want to about tea leaves,’ said Aunt Milly. She roared with laughter. It was her idea of a joke. She went on, ominously: ‘Yes, there’s plenty we don’t know yet. That’s why I can’t understand how you’ve got time for this rubbish. One of the things we don’t know is how you and Bertie and this boy here are going to live. There’s plenty we don’t know yet. I was telling the boy–’
‘What have you told Lewis?’ My mother was fierce and on the offensive again. When Aunt Milly had jostled her away from propriety and etiquette and made her justify her superstitions, she had been secretly abashed. Now she flared out with anxious authority.
‘I told him that you’ve let things slide for long enough. No wonder you’re seeing it all go from bad to worse. You never ought to have let–’
‘Milly, you’re not to talk in front of Lewis.’
‘It won’t hurt him. He’s bound to know sooner or later.’
‘That’s as may be. I won’t have you talk in front of Lewis.’
I knew by now that there was great trouble. I asked my mother: ‘Please, what is the matter?’
‘Don’t you worry,’ said my mother, her face lined with care, defiant, protective, and loving. ‘Perhaps it will blow over.’
‘Your father’s making a mess of things,’ said Aunt Milly.
But my mother said: ‘I tell you, you’re not to talk in front of the child.’
She spoke with such quiet anger, such reserve of will, that even Aunt Milly flinched. Neither of them said another word for some moments, and one could hear the tick of the clock on the mantelpiece. I could not imagine what the trouble was, but it frightened me. I knew that I could not ask again. This time it was real; I could not run home and be reassured.
Just then the latch of the front door clicked, and my father came in. There was no mystery why he had been out of the house that night. He was an enthusiastic singer, and organized a local male-voice choir. It was a passion that absorbed many of his nights. He came in, batting short-sighted eyes in the bright room.
‘We were talking about you, Bertie,’ said Aunt Milly.
‘I expect you were,’ said my father. ‘I expect I’ve done wrong as usual.’
His expression was mock-repentant. It was his manner to pretend to comic guilt, in order to exaggerate his already comic gentleness and lack of assertion. If there was clowning to be done, he could never resist it. He was a very small man, several inches shorter than his wife or sister. His head was disproportionately large, built on the same lines as Aunt Milly’s but with finer features. His eyes popped out like hers, but, when he was not clowning, looked reflective, and usually happy and amused. Like his sister’s his hair was on the light side of brown (my mother’s was very dark), and he had a big, reddish, drooping moustache. His spectacles had a knack of running askew, above the level of one eye and below the other. Habitually he wore a bowler hat, and while grinning at his sister he placed it on the sideboard.
‘I wish you’d show signs of ever doing anything,’ said Aunt Milly.
‘Don’t set on the man as soon as he gets inside the door,’ said my mother.
‘I expect it, Lena. I expect it.’ My father grinned. ‘She always puts the blame on me. I have to bear it. I have to bear it.’
‘I wish you’d stand up for yourself,’ said my mother irritably.
My father looked somewhat pale. He had looked pale all that year, though even now his face was relaxed by the side of my mother’s. And he made his inevitable comment when the clock struck the hour. It was a marble clock, presented to him by the choir when he had scored his twentieth year as secretary. It had miniature Doric columns on each side of the face, and a deep reverberating chime. Each time my father heard it he made the same remark. Now it struck eleven.
‘Solemn-toned clock,’ said my father appreciatively. ‘Solemn-toned clock.’
‘Confound the clock,’ said my mother with strain and bitterness.
As I lay awake in the attic, my face was hot against the pillow, hot with sunburn, hot with frightened thoughts. I had added some codicils to my prayers, but they did not ease me. I could not imagine what the trouble was.
For a fortnight I was told nothing. My mother was absent-minded with worry, but if she and my father were talking when I came in they would fall uncomfortably quiet. Aunt Milly was in the house more often than I had ever seen her; most nights after supper there boomed a vigorous voice from the street outside; whenever she arrived I was sent into the garden. I got used to it. Often I forgot altogether the anxiety in the house. I liked reading in the garden, which was several steps below the level of the yard; there was a patch of longish grass, bordered by a flower bed, a rockery and some raspberry canes; I was specially fond of the trees – three pear trees by the side wall and two apple trees in the middle of the grass. I used to take out a deckchair, sit under one of the apple trees, and read until the summer sky had darkened and I could only just make out the print on the shimmering page.
Then I would look up at the house. The sitting-room window was a square of light. Sometimes I felt anxious about what was being said in there.
Apart from those conferences, I did not see any change in the routine of our days.
I went as usual to school, and found my mother at midday silent and absorbed. My father went, also as usual, to his business. He took to any routine with his habitual mild cheerfulness, and even Aunt Milly could not complain of the hours he worked. We had a servant-girl of about sixteen, and my father got up when she did, in the early morning, and had left for work long before I came down to breakfast, and did not return for his high tea until half past six or seven.
For three years past he had been in business on his own. Previously he had been employed in a small boot factory; he had looked after the hooks, been a kind of utility man and second-in-command, and earned two hundred and fifty pounds a year. On that we had lived comfortably enough, servant-girl and all. But he knew the trade, he knew the profits, he reported that Mr Stapleton, his employer, was drawing twelve hundred a year out of the business. To both my parents, to Aunt Milly, to Aunt Milly’s husband, that income seemed riches, almost unimaginable riches. My father thought vaguely that he would like to run his own factory. My mother urged him on. Aunt Milly prophesied that he would fail and reproached him for not having the enterprise to try.
My mother impelled him to it. She chafed against the limits of her sex. If she had been a man she would have driven ahead, she would have been a success. She lent him her savings, a hundred and fifty pounds or so. She helped borrow some more money. Aunt Milly, whose husband in a quiet inarticulate fashion was a good jobbing builder and appreciably more prosperous than we were, lent the rest. My father found himself in charge of a factory. It was very small. His total staff was never more than a dozen. But there he was, established on his own. There he had spent his long days for the past three years. At night I had often watched my mother look over the accounts, have an idea, ask why something had not been done, say that he ought to get a new traveller. That had not happened recently, in my hearing, but my father was still spending his long days at the factory. He never referred to it as ‘my business’ or ‘my factory’ – always by a neutral, geographical term, ‘Myrtle Road’.
One Friday night early in July my mother and father talked for a long time alone. When I came in from the garden I noticed that he was upset. ‘Lena’s got a headache. She’s gone to bed,’ he said. He gazed miserably at me, and I did not know what to say. Then, to my astonishment, he asked me to go with him to the county cricket match next day. I thought he had been going to tell me something painful: I did not understand it at all.
Myself, I went regularly to the ‘county’ whenever I could beg sixpence, but my father had not been to a cricket match in his life. And he said also that he would meet me outside the ground at half past eleven. He was going to leave Myrtle Road early. That was also astonishing. Even for a singing practice, even to get back to an evening with a travel book, he had never left the factory before his fixed time. On Saturdays he always reached home at half past one.