The Winds Of Heaven Page 5

  "Who the hell is Gordon Disher?" Anne examined the letters on the hall table as she came into the house. She always entered a house without ceremony, as if she had only left it five minutes before. Even if you had not seen her for months, you were lucky if you got a proper greeting from her.

  "He's a man I know in London," Louise said, coming into the hall to kiss her youngest daughter.

  "Well, I never heard of him," Anne said, although there was

  no reason why she should have, since she took little interest in her mother s affairs.

  Anne was thick-bodied, ungraceful and slovenly. Before her marriage she had possessed a certain wind-blown appeal. Now that she was stuck in the Bedfordshire mud with a man whom she had married partly to defy her father, and partly because no one else had asked her, any ladylike habits that Louise had managed to teach her were disintegrating. Her hair was cut by the village barber, who did not normally "do ladies/' She wore it short, to save trouble, and only washed it every three weeks, for the same reason. Her full mouth was coarsened by a slapdash coating of lipstick. Her skirts were baggy, and her sweaters tight over her large bust and gone at the ribbing. Her voice was loud and often querulous, except when she talked to the dogs. She chain-smoked away a quarter of Frank's hard-earned money. She was disastrously lazy. She would lie about the house, reading magazines and spilling ash on the floor, while the dirt piled up in the corners, and the dogs climbed on to the beds and chairs, and the milk went sour in the musty larder.

  She would seldom bestir herself to help Frank out of doors. Often, after he came in with his soiled hands held carefully, so as not to touch anything until he could get them under the kitchen tap, he had to cook the supper, which he did uncomplainingly, for he had been taught not to raise his voice against a woman.

  He had met Anne at a local cinema, whither she had escaped from the tedium of a week end with her godfather. He had subsequently spent a lot of money on a new suit and trips to London, fearful each time that Anne would not meet him where they had arranged. He had been so proud when she agreed to marry him. In spite of her slapdash ways, she was, as Frank told himself, a lady. Through her he would better himself.

  There were times, however, when Anne's slovenliness and disregard for the niceties of life made him wonder whether he

  would not have done better to marry a girl of his own class, who could sweep a floor and hoe potatoes. But he stifled the thought as soon as it occurred, Frank made many allowances for Anne, and stubbornly continued to love her.

  In spite of the despair into which the sight of her youngest daughter often plunged her, Louise loved Anne, because she was her baby. When she was small she had been endearingly chubby and was the only one of the girls who would allow Louise to cuddle her for long without wriggling.

  She is getting fat, Louise thought, as Anne took off her grubby camel-hair coat, which had looked so smart when Louise

  had gone with her to buy it at Jaeger's. I wonder if she ?

  But she knew that Anne did not want a baby. "I couldn't face the wear and tear," she had said, laughing at her mother's shocked face.

  Frank would have loved a baby. "O.K.," Anne said. "If you'll carry it around for nine months, and then have it for me." She shocked him, too. Frank did not think that women should talk obstetrically, even to their husbands.

  Anne went into the drawing room and opened all Miriam's cigarette boxes to see what brands she had. Simon was in there, unusually tidy and subdued, with his best suit on, and his hair beginning to rise stiffly from the plastering water. He was going back to school tomorrow, and although he liked it well enough when he got there, his thoughts today were dour.

  As it was his last night, he was to be allowed to have dinner in the dining room. Since Ellen was older than he, she had to be included in the honor, and Judy was howling upstairs with futile resentment.

  "Hullo, Aunt Anne," Simon said unenthusiastically from the window seat.

  "Get up, Si," said his father from the doorway, "when a lady comes into the room."

  "It's only an aunt," Simon muttered. Anne made a face at him and cast herself down on the sofa like a sack of groceries, and asked for beer when Arthur offered her a cocktail. She

  reminded Arthur of his gay but rather squalid bachelor days in Chelsea. She was depressingly bohemian.

  Eva arrived in a sports car. Louise went to the window to see what her young man was like. He was not so young as Louise expected. A little too old for Eva, she thought. He was about forty; slim, with a mobile, actor's face. As he helped Eva out of the car, he kissed her.

  The rest of the family were gathered in the drawing room. "This is David, everybody," Eva said casually, trying to carry off the nervous knowledge that her relations were all alert to see what she had dragged up this time from the suspect swamp of the theatre. She put her hand on David's arm, and introduced him protectively, as if he were shy, although his manner was easy and unabashed.

  She is too possessive, Miriam thought. She is afraid hell get away from her. Why is she always like this? She wants too much.

  Eva had known David for three weeks. Their affair was only just beginning. Heaven or hell waited in the future before her.

  Dinner started well. The family gathering would have looked charming to anyone peeping in through the window. Miriam had cooked an excellent dinner, and Mrs. Match pounded in and out, breathing through her mouth, and beaming on those present. Arthur poured the wine attentively, and made a delightful little birthday speech when he toasted Louise. She tried to blink away the tears without having to put her hand to her eyes. Perhaps he did not mind having her in the house after all. The affectionate things he said sounded so spontaneous that she would have never guessed that he had written them down in the bathroom while he was dressing.

  David was a success, and soon dispelled the family's fears that he might be stagey. He said the right things to everybody, even to Anne, whose interest was difficult to capture, and he paid just the right amount of attention to the children without being over avuncular.

  Miriam had not placed him next to Eva, and from time to time he looked across the table and gave her a sweet, private smile. She glowed with pleasure in him, and her mother, who saw every glance, glowed with her. He seemed such a nice man, and perhaps twelve years* difference was not too much after all. Louise began to view him as a son-in-law. Eva was looking so pretty, in spite of the odd, wispy haircut she had acquired since Louise last saw her. Perhaps because of it. The audacious chopping of her dark brown hair into ragged petals stardingly suited her pointed, changing face, which could look suddenly gayer than anyone's, or sadder than anyone's.

  Anne lolled in her chair, but she had brought a passable dress to wear, and she was not arguing. She told a really funny story about Frank staying up all night in his camouflaged commando battle-dress to shoot a fox, which made everyone laugh.

  Miriam was serene, and for some reason a little matronly. Perhaps the ardent hopefulness in Eva made her feel old. Simon had not yet cried, which he usually did when he was going back to school, and Ellen, though excessively shy, because she was sitting next to David and she did not know if he was teasing her, had not spilled anything, or blurted out any information that was better unimparted.

  It was as successful a family affair as anyone could wish for. Then, without warning, in the way of so many family parties which are embarked on with the best intentions, little quarrels began to pop up like bubbles in hot mud.

  An argument started about communism, and because it was among the family, the argument could not be maintained as an interesting discussion. It had to generate into bickering, with personal remarks instead of general ones brought in to prove a point. At one moment Louise was afraid that someone was going to say something about the Catholic church. Should she champion it or not? She did not know what was expected of her. The moment passed, but Anne continued to dogmatize on some trivial point. Arthur became more caustically legal,

  Mrs. Match grew
anxious and dropped a spoon, and Simon finally burst into tears and said he did not want to go back to school.

  He was removed to bed, and Ellen with him. The family, no longer in harmony, straggled out of the dining room. They sat in tired attitudes and talked about nothing very much, and Miriam whispered to Arthur: "For God's sake, get the liqueurs and pour everyone a drink." She was beginning to regret, as she invariably did, the impulse which had prompted her to draw the clan together into an attempt at a Galsworthy gathering. Louise's happy birthday party was degenerating into just another evening.

  David was bored. Eva could see that. He talked to Arthur in a corner, but she knew that he was wondering how soon he could take her home. Would this evening alter his opinion of her, which, whatever it might be, was only just developing? She had wanted him to like her family, and to see another side of her—a complete person, with a background; not just the cute little actress, who flitted among the modern furnishings of her London flat.

  What did he think of it all? Her mind tried unsuccessfully to jab into his, like a thin needle into leather. She had inherited from her mother this anxiety about what people thought of her. Moreover, this was not people. It was David, with whom she thought she was falling in love.

  At the end of the evening, when David was comparing his watch with the clock on the mantelpiece, and Louise was tired, and would have gone to bed if she had not been die guest of honor, Miriam said to Eva: "Mother is a little uncertain about her plans. She wants to know when she is going to you." It was unfair of her to say this in front of everyone. She looked foxy as she said it, which showed that she meant to be unfair.

  "That's all right," Louise said quickly. "I never said "

  She felt like the shoe in Hunt the Slipper, which is passed from hand to hand, with everyone wanting to get rid of it as soon as possible.

  Eva was embarrassed. She was going to hedge, and then she saw her mother's face. Pity, and disgust at herself pushed even David from her mind.

  "Whenever she likes/' she said, quickly affectionate. "I'm longing to have her. How soon can you come, Mother? Your room's all ready."

  Then she saw David's face, and knew what he was thinking, and wondered in confusion: What is going to happen now?

  3.

  JuVAS FLAT in London was like a thousand others; a rabbit warren of small, square rooms, with thin walls that let the sound through. You could also hear noises from the flats on both sides, when the tenants dropped saucepan lids, or raised their voices, and the hum of the lift and the clash of its gates was a ceaseless accompaniment to life, often far into the night.

  Although London was familiar ground to her, Louise did not have enough to do when she was staying with Eva. She could clean the flat, when Eva was out, but if Eva came in and caught her at it, she would say: "Do leave it, Mother. I don't want you to work for me." She said it kindly and meant it kindly, but she was also irritated by the sight of Louise pottering slowly about with a duster and a tin of polish. Eva liked to clean the flat herself, not at conventional times, but suddenly, in the middle of the night, with a frantic whirl of activity and the phonograph playing.

  Eva was terrified of normality. She liked to eat at peculiar times. She got up either at dawn or half-way through the morning. She often wore clothes that did not suit the occasion, and dropped a new fashion like a hot brick as soon as everyone else took it up.

  Louise fitted in as best she could with Eva's irregular life, keeping herself going with snacks in the kitchen when she had no idea what time dinner would be. Theatre people, she knew, were always unconventional, and she felt almost a part of that thrilling world herself when she was sharing Eva's restless life.

  She tried not to get in Eva's way, as she did with all hei daughters, conscious always of her heavy debt to them, which she could never repay or evade. She went out when it was fine, but there is not much you can do in London if you have no money to spend. Louise grew to know the museums of Kensington by heart, and the area of the park near the Round Pond became as familiar to her as her own garden.

  Eva was generous when she thought about it, and if Louise was ever forced to ask her for a small sum would gladly give her mother more than she asked for. You cannot, however, expect a daughter to give you two and four every time you want to go to the cinema to pass the afternoon.

  Eva sometimes took her mother out to a restaurant or the theatre, but she was usually too busy to go out with Louise. Although she had not yet made her way very far on the stage, she had managed to storm the dignified gates of the B.B.C., and her voice was becoming well known to listeners as the ingenue in many radio plays.

  Louise had all the humble British admiration for anyone who wrote for the newspapers or was heard on the wireless. She was intensely proud of her daughter, although Eva always insisted that the B.B.C. for her was only a bread-and-butter stopgap until she could get more regular work in the theatre.

  "But just think, darling/' Louise said. "A theatre audience is so small, compared to the thousands of people who hear you on the air. Your voice goes into homes all over the country/*

  "As background music to conversation, or the sewing machine/'

  "But think of all the sick people/' Louise said sentimentally, "and the lonely ones, to whom you bring so much pleasure/'

  "Oh, Mother," Eva said, "don't drool. I'm not in this game for charity."

  "You always pretend to be so tough, dear," Louise said. "I can't think why. You don't know how many fans you have. .Only this morning the grocer told me he heard your play last night, and how wonderful you were."

  Louise loved to talk to the local tradespeople about Eva. If she was invited to the home of one of the very few London friends her life with Dudley had enabled her to make, and it was a night when Eva was broadcasting, she would ask eagerly if the radio could be turned on. She thought that the friends would want to listen, and would be excited to think that the mother of one of the voices was sitting in the room with them. It was annoying when they talked through the play, or turned off the set unthinkingly, even when Eva was speaking.

  When she was at home, Louise would sit glued to the radio to listen to the plays, nodding her head when she approved of a point, and drawing in her breath at dramatic moments. When Eva came in, tired, and wanting something mad, like a mustard-pickle sandwich, instead of the nourishing stew her mother had cooked for her, Louise wanted to talk about the play, and ask Eva if she didn't think it was the man's own fault that his wife had left him; or why had the woman shot herself just when everything was beginning to come right?

  Louise was surprised when Eva not only did not care to discuss the play, but did not even seem to know much about the plot. She understood this better when Eva took her to see a studio recording. Louise sat cramped in a corner behind the music stands, hardly daring to breathe for fear she should be heard in a thousand homes, and watched in astonished disillusionment the casually-clad actors stroll up to die microphone, read their lines, and fall back in their seats to pick up their knitting or their books until the next cue. When she listened to the wireless, she had always imagined it like a proper stage set, with the actors in costume, and speaking their lines by heart.

  "You're lovably na'ive, Mother/' Eva told her; but now that she had been in a studio, Louise was naive no longer, and took pleasure in destroying whatever illusions the grocer and the milkman entertained about the goings-on at Broadcasting House*

  In addition to her radio work, Eva was now involved with a

  lot of highly intellectual talk about a 'difficult' play, which was to be put on by a progressive young producer as soon as he could find the money. The chief character was an amateur prostitute, discovered half-way through the play to have the gift of healing, and the producer wanted Eva for the part. When the author saw Eva, he wanted her too.

  "But, my dear/' he told her. "You are Deidre! You are my conception of her come alive. It's too thrilling."

  The two excitable young men, with wild hair and spect
acles and prematurely loosened figures, spent a lot of time at Eva's flat, discussing, waving their arms about, listening to her read lines, or reading significant passages themselves in the sort of awe-struck, intoning voice that is usually reserved for a Greek chorus.

  Eva was wild to get the part. If the play were ever produced, she knew that it would attract notice, even if it did not run for very long. She would much rather attract notice in an odd play, which would mystify or nauseate many people, than in a drawing-room comedy which would nurse the matinee audiences along for years.

  When the two young men were throwing themselves about the flat, Louise would keep out of the way, since she did not know what to say to them, and knew that anything she did manage to say would not be relevant. Many times she wished that she were a rich woman. She would finance the play, although she could hardly understand a word of the scribbled-over copy that Eva had given her to read. But she would willingly put up the money, and it would be a success, all due to Eva, and Louise would have a black moir6 dress and a new fur for the first night, and be photographed in the foyer chatting to dazzling people.

  When the Greek chorus was in session, and it was too wet or windy to go out, Louise stayed in her room, which was a small cell, with space for not much more than the bed. The window looked on to a brown brick well in the middle of the block of flats. Sitting on the bed, Louise could see the milk bottles on

  window sills, and the backs of taps and tins of scouring powder in people's mysterious kitchens.

  This May and June with Eva were particularly lonely ones for Louise. Often, coming in and seeing her mother jump up so eagerly from her solitary vigil in the tiny flat, Eva would reproach herself for her neglect. She tried harder than either of her sisters to make Louise happy, but her life at this time was so full of other, absorbing things. She moved in a state of nervous exaltation, between her hopes for the play and her growing passion for David. She was often distracted and vague when she was with her mother. Louise's presence disturbed the dream world in which she was passing the increasingly beautiful summer days.