Snow and Roses Page 8

“Oh nonsense, Mother, he’s devoted to you.”

  “Yes, but that’s different. He’s been married to me for so long that he doesn’t think about being bored. It would be like being bored with one of your own arms and legs, which doesn’t occur to you unless there’s anything wrong with it. That’s why I am sorry about Walter and Karen … although I never liked Karen.”

  “I don’t think I did, but I hardly knew her. I like Walter.”

  “Yes, I’ve always liked Walter. Of course he’s eccentric.” “Is he? How?”

  “Perhaps it’s just that he has been out of this country so much. And then you know he has always been a socialist. But if Walter and Karen had been patient and stayed together they would have been glad when they were old, they would have had so many shared interests, children and grandchildren and that.”

  “You surely can’t live your whole life with somebody you’ve come to find uncongenial for the sake of a few years of possible peace at the end of it?”

  “You might find it worthwhile when you come to them. But you’re not like me, Flora, you’ve always wanted more from people. Like your father, I’ve often thought perhaps he was irritable because he couldn’t find it. Isobel is different. She’s perfectly happy married to Guy. You couldn’t be.”

  “No I shouldn’t have wanted to marry Guy any more than he would have wanted to marry me. But he’s a nice person.”

  “That’s what really matters, there are so many people who aren’t nowadays. Guy is an excellent husband and father. How are you getting on with your book, Flora?”

  “Not at all just now. I never do have much time for my own work in the summer term.”

  “I moved that little writing table off the landing into your room. But I daresay you want a rest before you start work again.”

  They turned back along the empty parade, thankful to have the wind behind them almost lifting them forward.

  “It’s not a bit dull here, Mother. You know I love coming to see you and Dad, and I enjoy the sea and the downs behind. I’m dull this time but it’s not anything to do with being here. It’s because I had a blow last term.”

  She had not meant to say that but it slipped out because she so much wanted to talk about Hugh and to be comforted by the first person to whom she had looked for comfort.

  “I was afraid you were unhappy. Was it anything to do with your work?”

  “Oh, no.”

  “You haven’t had a quarrel with Lalage, have you?”

  “No, Lalage and I never quarrel, not seriously.”

  “I did wonder if there was somebody that you were fond of, and it wasn’t going quite right just now.”

  “He died.”

  Mrs James slipped a hand through Flora’s elbow. A wave dashed up against the concrete parapet, the spray foun-tained over and was blown in their faces. As the wave sucked back they drew apart to avoid a receding channel of water. Most of the holidaymakers were in the café lounges mourning another lost day. One small creature, well packed in mackintosh and p.v.c. boots, skidded against Flora and cannoned off to splash joyfully in a pool; a rosy young mother in bright-coloured anorak and scarf followed her and retrieved her. A gull wheeled down out of the sombre sky and perched on the parapet.

  “You would have told me of course, Flora, if there was anything settled. Was it somebody who wanted to marry you?”

  “No. He was married.” “Oh.”

  Flora felt a shutter come down. She doesn’t want to know any more. What century does she live in—

  “We’d better go home now, Flora. Otherwise lunch won’t be ready when your father comes back from the clinic. It’s not very tempting to stay outside on a day like this, is it?”

  It wasn’t but it was still less tempting to go back to a house that was becoming increasingly claustrophobic, to hear her mother constantly humming tunelessly and quite unconsciously to herself as she moved from room to room, to watch her father reading the paper at lunch and to hear him making small sucking noises because his false teeth no longer fitted and he had not roused himself to see about a new set. Hugh at least would never grow old, never develop tiresome habits and slide into physical degradation.

  They began to climb the steep stone staircase that zigzagged up through the cliff gardens. The day of strong wind had scattered the beds with rose petals, and had made the herbaceous plants look autumnal. The wind sneaked round the cliff in sudden gusts, and tried to push them back down the steps again. They paused for a minute to rest in shelter.

  “By the way, Flora, I forgot to tell you that Walter rang up this morning. He wants to bring Tom over to lunch on Sunday. He said you wanted to see him.”

  “I should like to see him. Last time we met he was a schoolboy just going to do O Levels.”

  “Walter warned me that Tom is now a vegetarian. But that’s quite easy. I’ll make a big cauliflower cheese to go with the joint and I’ll do some extra potatoes. I always think it’s better not to take too much notice of them.”

  “Of vegetarians?”

  “Of young people when they get fancies. They so often do it to attract attention to themselves … look at Walter rushing off to Spain like that when he was seventeen to fight in a war that had nothing at all to do with him. And then he did so well afterwards in the real war, and has ever since.”

  On the esplanade at the top the wind was so strong that it was impossible to talk. Flora felt it exhilarating, but only from a distance as she might know of somebody else feeling it. All her senses were slack, unable to make a clear response. Flat, stale and unprofitable. Oh, come on, pull yourself out of it. Think about other people they used to say to her if she grizzled when young. The only other person she wanted to think about was dead, and the barrier of that last quarrel came between her and happy memories of him. Perhaps it would not always be like that. She wanted to begin to be happy again but had a feeling that even to want it was disloyal to Hugh.

  They crossed the unusually empty road, and walked into the sudden quiet of a sheltered side street: the rain for the moment had stopped. Mrs James took off the dark blue water-proof hat she was wearing, and shook it.

  “These hats are very serviceable but they do make your head hot. You know, Flora, that I am very sorry you are unhappy, whatever caused it. The only thing is to put it all behind you.”

  She replaced the hat tucking in a few short curls of grey hair.

  “This wind does make you sleepy, doesn’t it. We will both have a good rest this afternoon.”

  Tom did not seem to be trying to draw attention to himself. He sat quiet with his long legs in their narrow blue denim trousers stretched out in front of him, his light brown shoulder-length hair falling round his clear, serious young face. He had refused sherry; the Jameses and Walter were drinking theirs, and bringing each other up to date on family news. Once or twice Walter turned and referred something to Tom, who responded with a word or two and with a quick smile of exceptional sweetness.

  Flora moved across to sit next to him.

  “I hear you’re going to Fordwick?”

  To say the name was painful but brought a flicker of life back to her since the place belonged, even though remotely, to her real story.

  “I expect you went up there, didn’t you, for your interview? What is Fordwick like?”

  “Super. Right away from everywhere. The University buildings aren’t finished yet, but that’s all the better. One will see the whole place starting from scratch, and that should mean that they will be able to avoid so many mistakes. There will be no old traditions that will have to be sloughed off.”

  “Do you think that all old traditions need to be sloughed off?”

  “I suppose perhaps not all of them, but I would rather myself go somewhere where there aren’t any.”

  “You wouldn’t have liked Oxford?”

  “No, I didn’t want to go there: nor to Cambridge,” he added as if wishing to be fair even to such places. “I daresay I shouldn’t have got into either of them if I’
d tried. But I didn’t want to try. I thought they’d be—too hidebound and too—too rich somehow; I mean there would be too much of everything that had collected there through the centuries. It would be like going to a very special restaurant and sitting down to a rich meal. I like things simple.”

  Flora glanced across at Walter who was talking to her father and holding out his glass to be refilled. Walter seemed to her worldly in a good sense, a man at home in the world. Karen had never sat loose to social pleasures. How between them had they produced this Puritan son? But Tom was only eighteen.

  “Fordwick itself is just a small fishing village straggling down a creek to the harbour. The University is built on the cliffs above; it looks right out to sea, and along a great stretch of the Northumbrian coast. You can hear the sea birds crying when you wake up in the morning. It’s all open country behind, moors and then fields. The nearest town, which is quite small, is ten miles away.”

  “Some people aren’t going to like that much.”

  “I suppose the kind of people who wouldn’t like it wouldn’t come there, so one will be fairly sure of congenial company.”

  “Are only the people who like to live ten miles from the nearest town congenial company?”

  Tom glanced at his father as he replied, “No, I don’t mean that. But I do myself feel most at home with people who don’t want to clutter up their lives with too many things. You can’t think unless you have space round you. At school there were always too many people and too many things you had to do. At home in the holidays there were such a lot of people too. My mother and sister were so very social they would even sometimes ask people they didn’t like to come for a drink sooner than have no one.”

  “Perhaps they just like the human race.”

  Shocked as if by an accusation he replied seriously, “Oh, but of course I do. Only it’s much better now I live in a flat with my father and he’s out or working so much of the time. We don’t bother each other.”

  “Will he be lonely when you go to Fordwick?”

  Tom looked surprised. Being alone was clearly something he thought you could not have too much of.

  “No, why should he? He’s got friends, if he wants to see anybody he can go and see them or ask them round … I should think he’ll be glad of some peace.”

  “And you—what are you going to read at Fordwick?”

  “Philosophy and Psychology. Ideas are what I’m most interested in.”

  “Do you know yet what you want to do afterwards?”

  “I’m not sure. When I first come down from the University I think I should like to do something quite simple, a manual labour job, something like farming or working down a mine.”

  “Are those quite simple? You need a lot of skills for them nowadays, don’t you? Are you good with machines?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t really tried. Except that I can do a certain amount inside a car. But I suppose I can learn what other people can.”

  “I have a pupil, a very promising one, who comes from a Yorkshire mining family. Perhaps you’d be interested to meet her one day. She’s a budding poet. She’s going to be really good, I think.”

  She began to tell him about Nan. He listened with serious attention.

  “I like poetry,” he said giving it the accolade. “It’s one of the things I hope to have more time for. I like Blake and Shelley. They’re good.”

  Flora agreed that they were. “Do you write poetry yourself?”

  “I haven’t yet but I might.”

  She saw him considering the possibility. Happy child, still in those few years when anything seems possible before choice and your own limitations tie you down. Those years were in themselves a university.

  Flora glanced across the room, and saw her father looking unusually animated and cheerful as he talked to Walter, another man, and out of the active world, bringing an invigorating breeze into the quiet backwater of retirement. While Walter talked his eye was often on Flora and Tom. Realizing that her mother had gone out of the room to get lunch, Flora went to help her.

  “Are you going to be a journalist like your father, Tom?”

  Tom looked up from the large helping of cauliflower and potato which he was contentedly eating.

  “I don’t think so. I don’t suppose I could write well enough.”

  “You wouldn’t be the only one,” Walter observed.

  “And I don’t really want to work for anything that makes a profit.”

  “Rising costs of printing and paper and so on might help you there.”

  When the father and son smiled at one another Flora saw a likeness between them. Otherwise the fair, slight, lanky Tom seemed to have no physical connection with the dark, square-shouldered Walter.

  “You’ll think differently,” Mrs James said, “when you want to get married and start a family.”

  “I don’t want to get married.”

  “A lot of boys say that at your age. They soon change their minds when they come across the right girl.”

  “But if she wanted to change my principles she wouldn’t be the right girl for me, would she?”

  Mrs James did not consider it worth while going into that.

  “I’m sure there will be plenty of charming girls at Fordwick. I hope it isn’t one of those universities where they are always demonstrating and sitting-in, and throwing things and trying to tell their teachers how to teach them. I’m sure your father wouldn’t like you to waste your time on that kind of thing. Would you, Walter?”

  “I should leave it for Tom to decide. I should always respect his honest convictions.”

  “Convictions.” Dr James stabbed a piece of lamb with his fork. “These young people don’t have convictions. They simply want to let off a lot of aggression and draw attention to themselves. Isn’t that so, Flora?”

  “I think a lot of them do have convictions. And a lot just feel solidarity, they want to stand by their own generation, even if they don’t share their feelings very acutely. And then of course for some of them it’s fun to bang about or sit around interrupting other people working. It gives them a feeling of having power in their hands, even if only for a short time. The Establishment so far has generally won.”

  “Power, yes,” Walter agreed. “That’s what most things are about.”

  “They shouldn’t be, Dad.”

  “Perhaps not old boy, but they are.”

  Tom murmured half to himself, “I don’t know why anybody wants it.”

  “The power appears now,” Dr James said, “to be passing into the hands of those who are least fit to use it. We are practically governed by the Unions, eh Walter?

  “So far in our history, there has always been one section of society in power and they’ve always exploited the rest. The Kings exploited the feudal lords until they went on strike at Runnymede. The feudal lords exploited their tenants, oh, more or less kindly, some of them, according to their natures, but they all made them fight their wars and till their land for starvation pay. Then came the rise of the middle class, and the capitalists exploited the working class, and now the working class are coming into power, and I have no doubt they will exploit the rest of us. Whether there will ever come a day when whatever section has the power won’t exploit those who haven’t got it I don’t know but I don’t expect to see it.”

  “Oh Dad. That’s saying you can’t change human nature. Some people do care about what’s just, not only about themselves. Why shouldn’t there be more of them as more people get to see that no other way of living is worth while?”

  “There will always be idealists of course. Quite often they do the most harm.”

  Flora, who knew that Hugh had been one, struck in:

  “Well, but do they? In the long run? Isn’t it because there always are people who care about justice that there are brakes on the use of power? Capitalists in the last fifty years have surely abandoned a lot of their exploitations?”

  “They’ve made what concessions were unavoidabl
e in the hope of keeping the rest of the power in their own hands.”

  “Idealists may make mistakes, Dad, but they’re the only people who aren’t defeatist.”

  Dr James gave a surreptitious push to his mouth so that his misfitting teeth slipped back into place.

  “I have always been glad that my employment was a service and not an industry. In a way it was the same for me whatever government came along. The introduction of the N.H.S. was a considerable superficial change, but not a basic one. My job was still and always to cure people or to alleviate their sufferings. So I was never obliged to make political decisions. When there was a Liberal candidate, I voted Liberal.”

  “Certainly one way of not making political decisions.”

  “That’s very scathing, Walter,” Mrs James said placidly. “The Liberal candidate who stood here in the last election was an excellent man. He has done a great deal of good in the town. He was responsible for two of those homes for old people on the cliff. I voted Conservative, I always have, but I shouldn’t have been distressed if Mr Grayson—that was the Liberal—had got in.”

  Flora was thinking about Hugh who had not often talked to her about politics. She knew that he voted Labour because he believed it to be the best way of getting justice for all those who were still short of it. Hugh had a generous heart, he loved the human race although not in the way in which she had half laughingly suggested to Tom that Karen and Shirley loved it. Hugh was the kind of good man of whom Tom hoped there would be more. She felt herself at this moment much more in sympathy with Tom than with Walter, although the things that Walter said often bit into her mind with a kind of hard truth that was invigorating and enjoyable. “I’ll fetch the coffee.”

  She drew a deep breath of relief to find herself alone in the kitchen. She could hear through the door that they were still arguing. The coffee was bubbling, but she did not hurry, she stacked the dirty plates by the sink, and pushed the spoons and forks into a bowl of water. Perhaps Tom was right and you needed to be alone more. She half wished that she had not come here and had not promised to go to Isobel, but had stayed at the cottage to work through it by herself. She put the coffee pot on the tray and carried it in.