Читать книгу Imagined Selves - Willa Muir - Страница 23

FIVE

On the following Thursday Hector was surprised to find on his office desk a note from Aunt Janet asking him to come in to see her on his way home in the evening. When he saw the envelope he had a vaguely guilty feeling, but even after reading its contents he could not think what was in the wind. Probably nothing much. Perhaps she only wanted to talk over John’s extraordinary invitation to Lizzie. Queer old card, John. Hector looked at him with the secret satisfaction he had felt all the week and reiterated to himself: ‘I’ve kissed your wife, you old pi-jaw, and that’s more than you can say to me!’ He wondered for a second or two if Mabel had said anything to Aunt Janet, and even though he was sure that she was not such a fool he had an uneasy conscience when he met his aunt.

‘Haven’t seen you for a long time,’ he said in a loud, affectionate voice. ‘Been too busy all week being a good boy. Let me see, yes, Monday, at home canoodling the wife; Tuesday, pills at the Club and no drinks – home at ten o’clock; Wednesday, canoodling the wife again, and this is Thursday. See the wings beginning to sprout just where my back tickles?’

Aunt Janet patted him fondly. But he knew his aunt, and he knew that something was bothering her. He sat down and pulled his chair plump in front of her, then, taking her hands in his, he said: ‘Cough it up, Mumsie. Anything you don’t like about your little Hector?’

The pressure of Aunt Janet’s fingers responded as he had expected to the name she liked best to hear him use, and which he never used before others.

‘I want to talk to you about Elizabeth, Hector,’ she said.

Hector’s relief was as great as his astonishment.

‘About Elizabeth? What’s she been doing?’

‘Oh, nothing – nothing that means anything at least. She’s a dear girl, Hector, and I know she loves you, but she’s just a little thoughtless. Thoughtless, that’s all. She doesn’t know how people look at things. And Mabel and I have agreed that perhaps a few hints from you would help her more than anything we could say.’

Hector’s eyes darkened.

‘Mabel’s a little cat. I’d like to know what she can find to pick on in Elizabeth.’

‘Yes, yes, I know, I know. Mabel has her faults, I don’t deny it. But she has more experience than Elizabeth, dear. In some ways Elizabeth is very young for her age. For instance, at the University slang and student manners are all very well, but they don’t do in a place like Calderwick, Hector.’

‘Has she been saying damn or something like that?’ Hector was grinning.

‘It’s much more serious than that, my dear. Although that’s bad enough. You now what a position the Shands have in the town, and I will say this for Mabel, she keeps up her position wonderfully. But Eizabeth seems to be quite unconscious of it. It appears she has been quite rude to some of Mabel’s friends – not unkind, you know, but thoughtlessly rude; and she goes about a great deal with that Mrs Scrymgeour. Mabel and I don’t think Mrs Scrymgeour is a good influence for any young woman. Of course, Dr Scrymgeour is a good doctor, and Mrs Scrymgeour goes to church and all that, but the nice people in this town don’t think very much of her, and Elizabeth is being tarred with the same brush. Little things, Hector, little things; like running about without gloves and saying damn, and screaming with laughter in the street like a mill-girl – all little things, Hector, but they count for a great deal. Mrs Scrymgeour is not the companion for Elizabeth. She spends all her time gossiping in shops, I hear. Well, Elizabeth’s father was a small shopkeeper himself-I don’t like to remind you of that, but —’

‘Stuff and nonsense! Elizabeth has nothing to do with that. I’m damned lucky to have her for a wife, Aunt Janet.’

‘I didn’t mean that, Hector. It’s so difficult. What I mean is that she doesn’t know, she has no standards to tell her that gossiping with tradespeople isn’t the right thing for a Shand. Not that she’s a common girl, at all —’

‘See here, Aunt Janet, you’re backing the wrong horse. Elizabeth has more brains in her little finger than Mabel ever will have in her whole body.’

‘But that’s just why she needs guidance, Hector. If she weren’t a very unusual girl it wouldn’t matter so much. It’s just because she doesn’t think of the little things that somebody must do it for her. And it’s not only Mrs Scrymgeour…. The town is beginning to talk about the way she’s been going about with Mr Murray. Every day this week, Hector.’

‘The town has a damned impudence!’ Hector scowled.

‘She’s told me all about that,’ he went on. ‘The sky-pilot’s in trouble, and Elizabeth is doing her best for him and his measly brother. I don’t say they’re worth it, but that’s no reason for blackballing Elizabeth.’

‘I know, I know; but then people are like that.’

Aunt Janet saw she would have to produce her trump card after all.

‘And with my own eyes, Hector, I saw something I hoped I wouldn’t have to mention. There was a meeting on Wednesday afternoon about the sale of work, which is on the 20th you know, and I saw Elizabeth sitting so close to Mr Murray at one point that one of her feet was between his. I know that others saw it too.’

Hector no longer grinned; he laughed, perhaps too loudly.

‘Sure you weren’t seeing double, Mumsie? Was it only tea you had at the meeting.’

‘My dear Hector, you don’t need to tell me that Elizabeth didn’t intend it: I am sure she didn’t even notice it. And that’s just the point. She must be taught to notice these things.’

Aunt Janet was in her most earnest mood, but she failed to get a serious reply from her nephew. When he suggested chaining up Elizabeth with a padlock during his absence if John would do the same for Mabel she began to grow angry.

‘These things may not matter very much among men, although I should have thought that no decent man would like to see his wife making a fool of herself, but they matter very much among women.’

Women be damned, thought Hector.

He was perturbed, both by Janet’s disapproval of his wife and by her indignation. Her anger always made him feel uncomfortable, but when it was visited on his own head he could allay the storm by a confession and penitence which finally brought absolution. Her anger with Elizabeth merely confused him; he did not know what to do.

‘What’s more,’ added Aunt Janet, ‘this ridiculous idea of John’s is going to bring Lizzie here, and Elizabeth will be exposed to her influence next. If you don’t put Elizabeth on her guard – you don’t know Lizzie, of course, but I do.’

Aunt Janet’s shake of the head relegated Lizzie to unmentionable depths.

Hector, like all the other men of his acquaintance, accepted unthinkingly the suggestion that women were the guardians of decorum – good women, that is to say, women who could not be referred to as ‘skirts’. Good women existed to keep in check men’s sensual passions. A man, driven by physical desire, they argued, is mad and reckless, and his sole protection from himself is the decorum of women. They believed that any decent man would afterwards be grateful to a woman who had prevented him from seducing her. It is possible that ‘the weaker sex’ – a phrase constantly on their lips and in their minds – was an accusation against women for not being entirely exempt from frailty. At any rate, Lizzie Shand used to tell her friends that in Scotland man’s chief end was to glorify God and woman’s to see that he did it.

Hector’s emotions, therefore, as he listened to Aunt Janet’s strictures on Elizabeth’s want of decorum were disquieting and profound. He felt much as the driver of a high-powered locomotive would feel on being assured at the top of a steep decline that his brakes were defective. His business was to drive the engine; the brakes were Elizabeth’s concern, not his; but if she could not do her duty as a woman he would leave the rails and wreck himself fatally.

Hector Shand was not extraordinarily stupid. This apparently logical division of duties between the sexes seemed natural even to clever men in bigger towns than Calderwick. Still more surprisingly it was accepted with pride by accomplished women, who devoted all their ingenuity to putting on the brakes as frequently and as smoothly as possible.

Because Hector’s confusion was painful to himself, and because he felt that women knew their own affairs best, he repeated with increasing energy ‘Women be damned!’ as he made his way home. He had been struck, too, by Mumsie’s reference to the approaching arrival of Lizzie. What could have come over John? He supposed that, after all, John had not wholly escaped the herditary weaknesses of the Shands, and that his weakness was coming out in queer spots, the old hypocrite!

But Elizabeth was so happy to see him that he began to feel resentful of Aunt Janet’s insinuations. Elizabeth was all right.

‘Been to see Aunt Janet,’ he said carelessly. ‘She’s in an awful stew because Lizzie’s coming.’

‘Oh, Hector, I’m looking forward so much to seeing Lizzie!’

‘Whatever for?’

‘She sounds exciting. Besides, just think of meeting another Elizabeth Shand! Elizabeth Shand by birth and Elizabeth Shand by marriage – it gives me the queerest feeling. It’s like seeing yourself in a mirror for the first time.’

‘By God, I hope not! According to Aunt Janet, Lizzie’s a worse Shand than I am. Aunt Janet hates her like poison. A sneering, godless bitch, that’s what she is. Probably drinks like a fish. I shouldn’t wonder. Lying about in the streets of Monte Carlo most likely and damned glad to come here for a decent meal. I wouldn’t have believed it of John. Aunt Janet thinks he must have sent her money to come with. I wonder what his little game is?’

‘You just swallow whatever Aunt Janet says. I don’t believe a word of it. My opinion of John has gone up ever since he asked her.’

‘I don’t swallow everything Aunt Janet says. What have I been doing this last hour but contradicting her to her face?’

Elizabeth was amused.

‘Have you been sticking up for yourself?’

‘No, I’ve been sticking up for you.’

‘For me?’

‘It’s all that little wretch Mabel,’ said Hector hastily. ‘She’s been spinning yarns to Aunt Janet about you. I told her they were yarns.’

‘What yarns, Hector?’

‘Oh, yarns about you letting Mabel’s dignity down in Calderwick.’

‘I like that! Mabel!’ Elizabeth’s tone was scornful enough.

‘And Aunt Janet was begging me to save you from the Scrymgeour female.’

‘Oh, I know all about that,’ said Elizabeth, her nose in the air. ‘Mabel’s set are always trying to have a dig at Emily Scrymgeour. I even heard Mrs Melville calling Emily vulgar because she nods and smiles to her own maid when she meets her in the street. And I said in a loud voice that I’d stop and pull my Mary Ann by the tail if she were to pass me without seeing me. They didn’t like that.’

She added with a laugh: ‘I’m glad you kissed Mabel. It makes me feel more equal to her.’

‘Kiss her every day in the week to please you,’ offered Hector.

Elizabeth settled herself on his knee and pulled his hair.

‘I’m being a good wife this week, am I not?’

‘A peach of a wife, I don’t think! What about your scandalous goings-on with the sky-pilot? Aunt Janet was telling me about that too.’

‘Why, what on earth could she have to tell?’

As lightly as possible Hector retailed the incident reported by Aunt Janet, exaggerating his aunt’s horror. Its effect on his wife was not at all what he had expected.

Elizabeth was more of a prude than either of them realized. She had freed herself only partially from the prevailing suggestion that sex was shameful. If in the beginning she had not enjoyed Hector’s first kiss so much that she was convinced of her great love for him she would have been ashamed to remember it. She had never been accustomed either to give or to receive caresses, and it was only with Hector, her lover and her husband, that she could feel unashamed of her body. But because she set love above marriage she thought herself broadminded, and other people, including Hector, accepted her at her own valuation.

She was flaming with rage and shame.

‘But Aunt Janet knows me!’ she repeated. ‘How could she ever think of such a thing?’

Hector followed her about.

‘I told her it was all rot,’ he kept saying.

‘But that she should think it, Hector. What can one do with people who have such dirty minds. And she knows me; it isn’t as if she didn’t know me.’

That was the sore point for Elizabeth. She began to think that she must be vulgar without realizing it if other people could believe such things of her. Vulgarity was a word she despised, but it had the fascination of mystery. It made her feel woolly-headed, she used to say, because it was so meaningless. Did she lack something, she now asked herself, that everybody else possessed? Had she a blind spot?

With a fresh access of shame she remembered how less than a week ago she had opened her heart to Aunt Janet. Surely, she told herself, surely anybody who wasn’t an utter fool would have realized then what kind of a woman Elizabeth Shand was. If one were to be misunderstood like that the only thing to do was to keep oneself to oneself. It was she who had been the fool to trust Aunt Janet so much.

She felt inclined to avoid everybody except Emily Scrymgeour. As for the minister – she had said already all she could say to him: one could not go on repeating oneself interminably.

‘They can all go to the devil!’ said Elizabeth to Hector. ‘The Murrays too, for all I care. And I’m damned if ever I’ll attend another Ladies’ Work Party!’

The intensity of his wife’s resentment assured Hector more than ever that Elizabeth was right. She wouldn’t let him down.