‘Yes, Aunt Milly,’ I said, ‘I’ve heard about his – petition.’
Inexorably Aunt Milly went on: ‘It means that he isn’t able to pay his debts. He owes six hundred pounds – and I suppose I oughtn’t to tell you, but he won’t be able to pay more than two hundred.’
Those sounded great sums.
‘When you grow up,’ said Aunt Milly, ‘you ought to feel obliged to pay every penny he owes. You ought to make a resolution now. You oughtn’t to rest until you’ve got him discharged and your family can be honest and above board again. Your father will never be able to do it. He’ll have his work cut out to earn your bread and butter.’
As a rule at that age I should have promised anything that was expected of me. But then I did not speak.
‘There won’t be any money to send you to the secondary school,’ said Aunt Milly. ‘Your father wouldn’t be able to manage the fees. But I’ve told your mother that we can see after that.’
I scarcely realized that Aunt Milly was being kind. I had no idea that she was being imaginative in thinking three years ahead. I hated her and I was hurt. Somewhere deep within the pain there was anger growing inside me. Yet, obeying my mother’s regard for style, I produced a word or two of thanks.
‘Mind you,’ said Aunt Milly, ‘you mustn’t expect to run away with things at the secondary school. After all, it doesn’t take much to be top of that old-fashioned place your mother sends you to. No wonder you seem bright among that lot. But you’ll find it a different kettle of fish at a big school. I shouldn’t wonder if you’re no better than the average. Still, you’ll have to do as well as you can.’
‘I shall do well, Aunt Milly,’ I said, bursting out from wretchedness. I said it politely, boastingly, confidently and also with fury and extreme rudeness.
Just then my mother came down to join us. ‘So you’ve got back, Lena,’ said Aunt Milly.
‘Yes, I’ve got back,’ said my mother, in a brittle tone. She was pale and exhausted, and for once seemed spiritless. She asked Aunt Milly if she would like a cup of tea in the open air.
Aunt Milly said that she had been telling me that she would help with my education.
‘It’s very good of you, I’m sure, Milly,’ said my mother, without a flicker of her usual pride. ‘I shouldn’t like Lewis not to have his chance.’
‘Aunt Milly doesn’t think I shall do well at the secondary school,’ I broke in. ‘I’ve told her that I shall.’
My mother gave a faint grin, wan but amused. She must have been able to imagine the conversation; and, that afternoon of all afternoons, it heartened her to hear me brag.
Aunt Milly did not exhort my mother, and did not find it necessary to tell her any home truths. Aunt Milly, in fact, made a galumphing attempt to distract my mother’s mind by saying that the news looked bad but that she did not believe for a single instant in the possibility of war.
‘After all,’ she said, ‘it’s the twentieth century.’
My mother sipped her tea. She was too tired to be drawn. Often they quarrelled on these subjects, as on all others: Aunt Milly was an enthusiastic liberal, my mother a patriotic, jingoish, true-blue conservative.
Aunt Milly tried to cheer her up. Many people were asking after her, said Aunt Milly.
‘I’m sure they are,’ said my mother, with bitter self-consciousness.
Some of her women friends at the church were anxious to call on her, Aunt Milly continued.
‘I don’t want to see any of them,’ said my mother. ‘I want to be left alone, Milly. Please to keep them away.’
For several days my mother did not go outside the house. She had collapsed in a helpless, petrified, silent gloom. She could not bear the sight of her neighbours’ eyes. She could guess only too acutely what they were saying, and she was seared by each turn of her imagination. She knew they thought that she was vain and haughty, and that she put on airs. Now they had her at their mercy. She even put off her fortune-telling friends from their weekly conclave. She was too far gone to seek such hope.
I went about quietly, as though she were ill. In fact she was often ill; for, despite her vigour and strength of will, her zest in anything she did, her dignified confidence that, through the grand scale of her nature, she could expect always to take the lead – despite all the power of her personality, she could never trust her nerves. She had much stamina – in the long run she was tough in body as well as in spirit – but some of my earliest recollections were of her darkened bedroom, a brittle voice, a cup of tea on a little table in the twilight, a faint aroma of brandy in the air.
She never drank, except in those periods of nervous exhaustion, but in my childish memory that smell lingered, partly because of the heights of denunciation to which it raised Aunt Milly.
After the bankruptcy, my mother hid away from anything they were saying about us. She was not ill so much as limp and heartbrokenly despondent. It was a week before she took herself in hand.
She came down to breakfast on the first Sunday in August (it was actually Sunday, 2nd August, 1914). She carried her head high, and her eyes were bold.
‘Bertie,’ she said to my father, ‘I shall go to church this morning.’
‘Well, I declare,’ said my father.
‘I want you to come with me, dear,’ my mother said to me. She took it for granted that my father did not attend church.
It was a blazing hot August morning, and I tried to beg myself off.
‘No, Lewis,’ she said in her most masterful tone. ‘I want you to come with me. I intend to show them that they can say what they like. I’m not going to demean myself by taking any notice.’
‘You might leave it a week or two, Lena,’ suggested my father mildly.
‘If I don’t go today, people might think we had something to be ashamed of,’ said my mother, without logic but with some magnificence.
She had made her decision on her way down to breakfast, and, buoyed up by defiance and the thought of action, she looked a different woman. Almost with exhilaration, she went back to the bedroom to put on her best dress, and when she came down again she wheeled round before me in a movement that was, at the same time, stately and coquettishly vain,
‘Does mother look nice?’ she said. ‘Will you be proud of me? Shall I do?’
Her dress was cream-coloured, with leg-of-mutton sleeves and an hourglass waist. She picked up the skirt now and then, for she took pleasure in her ankles, She was putting on a large straw hat and admiring herself in the mirror over the sideboard, when the church bell began to ring. ‘We’re coming,’ said my mother, as the bell clanged on insistently. ‘There’s no need to ring. We’re coming.’
She was excited, flushed and handsome. She gave me the prayer books to carry, opened a white parasol, stepped out into the brilliant street. She walked with the slow, stylised step that had become second nature to her in moments of extreme dignity. She took my hand: her fingers were trembling.
Outside the church we met several neighbours, who said ‘Good morning, Mrs Eliot’. My mother replied in a full, an almost patronizing tone, ‘Good morning Mrs–’ (Corby or Berry or Goodman, the familiar names of the suburb). There was not time to stop and talk, for the bell was ringing twice as fast, in its final agitated minute.
My mother swept down the aisle, me behind her, to her usual seat. The church, as I have said, was quite new. It was panelled in pitch-pine, and had chairs, painted a startling yellow, instead of pews; but already the more important members of the parish, led by the doctor and his sister, had staked out their places, which were left empty at any service to which they did not come. My mother had not been far behind. She had established her right to three seats, just behind the churchwardens’. One was always empty, since my father was obstinately determined never to enter the church.
To the right of the altar stood a small organ with very bright blue pipes. They were vibrating with the last notes of the ‘voluntary’ as my mother knelt on the hassock before her chair. The windows were polychromatic with new stained glass, and the bright morning light was diffused and curiously coloured before it got inside.
The service began. Usually it was a source of interest, of slightly shocking interest, to my mother, for the vicar was an earnest ritualist, and she was constantly on edge to see how ‘high’ he would dare to go. ‘He’s higher than I ever thought,’ she would say, and the word ‘higher’ was isolated in a hushed, shocked, thrilling voice. My mother was religious as well as superstitious, romantic and nostalgic as well as a snob; and she had a pious tenderness and veneration for the old church where she had worshipped as a child, the grey gothic, the comely, even ritual of the broad church. She was disappointed in this new edifice, and somehow expressed her piety in this Sunday-by-Sunday scrutiny of the vicar’s progress away from all she loved.
At that morning service, however, she was too much occupied to notice the vicar’s vestments. She believed that everyone was watching her. She could not forget herself, and, if she prayed at all, it was for the effrontery to carry it off. She had still to meet the congregation coming out after service. That was the time, each Sunday, when my mother and her acquaintances exchanged gossip. In the churchyard they met and lingered before going off to their Sunday meals, and they created there a kind of village centre. It was that assembly my mother had come out to face.
She chanted the responses and psalms, sang the hymns, so that all those round could hear her. She sat with her head back through the sermon, in which the vicar warned us in an aside that we ought to be prepared for grave events. But it was no more than an aside; to most people there, not only to my mother, the ‘failure’ of Mr Eliot was something more interesting to talk about than the prospect of a war. Their country had been at peace so long: even when they thought, they could not imagine what a war might mean, or that their lives would change.
The vicar made his dedication to the Trinity, the after-sermon hymn blared out, my mother sang clearly, the sidesmen went round with the collection bags. When the sidesman came to our row, my mother slipped me sixpence, and herself put in half a crown, holding the bag for several instants and dropping the coin from on high. Those near us could see what she had done. It was a gesture of sheer extravagance. In the ordinary way she gave a shilling night and morning, and Aunt Milly told her that that was more than she could afford.
At last came the benediction. My mother rose from her knees, pulled on her long white gloves, and took my hand in a tight grip. Then she went deliberately past the font towards the door. Outside, in the churchyard, the sunlight was dazzling. People were standing about on the gravel paths. There was not a cloud in the sky.
The first person to speak to my mother was very kind. She was the wife of one of the local tradesmen.
‘I’m sorry you’ve had a bit of trouble,’ she said. ‘Never mind, my dear. Worse things happen at sea.’
I knew that her voice was kind. Yet my mother’s mouth was working – she was, in fact, at once disarmed by kindness. She only managed to mutter a word or two of thanks.
Another woman was coming our way. At the sight of her my mother’s neck stiffened. She called on all her will and pride, and her mouth became firm. Indeed, she put on a smile of greeting, a distinctly sarcastic smile.
‘Mrs Eliot, I was wondering whether you will be able to take your meeting this year.’
‘I hope I shall, Mrs Lewin,’ said my mother with condescension. ‘I shouldn’t like to upset your arrangements.’
‘I know you’re having your difficulties–’
‘I don’t see what that has to do with it, Mrs Lewin. I’ve promised to take a meeting as usual, I think. Please to tell Mrs Hughes’ (the vicar’s wife) ‘that you needn’t worry to find anyone else.’
My mother’s eyes were bright and bold. Now she had got over the first round, she was keyed up by the ordeal. She walked about the churchyard, pointing her toes, pointing also her parasol; she took the initiative, and herself spoke to everyone she knew. She had specially elaborate manners for use on state occasions, and she used them now.
Her hand was still quivering and had become very hot against mine, but she outfaced them all. No one dared to confront her with a direct reference to the bankruptcy, though one woman, apparently more in curiosity than malice, asked how my father was.
‘Mr Eliot has never had much wrong with his health, I’m glad to say,’ my mother replied.
‘Is he at home?’
‘Certainly,’ my mother said. ‘He’s spending a nice quiet morning with his books.’
‘What will he do now – in the way of work, Mrs Eliot?’
My mother stared down at her questioner.
‘He’s considering,’ said my mother, with such authority that the other woman could not meet her glance. ‘He’s weighing up the pros and cons. He’s going to do the best for himself.’
At home my mother could not rest until my father got a job. She pored with anxious concentration through the advertisement columns of the local papers; she humbled herself and went to ask the advice of the vicar and the doctor. But my father was out of work for several weeks. His acquaintances in the boot and shoe trade were drawing in their horns because of the war. The hours of that sunlit August were burning away; somehow my mother spared me sixpence on Saturdays to go to the county; the matches went on, the crowds sat there, though outside the ground flared great placards that often I did not understand. The one word MOBILIZATION stood blackly out, on a morning just after my father’s bankruptcy; it puzzled me as ‘petition’ had done, and carried a heavier threat than to my elders.
It was not till the end of August that my father’s case was published. He had gone bankrupt to the tune of six hundred pounds; his chief creditors were various leather merchants and Aunt Milly’s husband; he was paying eight shillings in the pound. That news was tucked away in the local papers on a night when the British Army was still going back from Mons. For all her patriotism, my mother wished in an agony of pride and passion that a catastrophe might devour us all – her neighbours, the town, the whole country – so that in wreckage, ruin and disaster her disgrace would just be swept away.