Rose Macaulay - Dangerous Ages
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Rose Macaulay >> Dangerous Ages
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"Irritate! You can use a word like that! Mother, you don't realise this
ghastly thing."
"I quite see, my dear, that Nan may be carrying on with this artist. And
very wrong it is, if so. All I say is that your going to Rome won't stop
it. You know that you and Nan don't always get on very smoothly. You rub
each other up.... It would be far better if someone else went. Neville,
say."
"Neville is ill." Mrs. Hilary shut her lips tightly on that. She was
glad Neville was ill; she had always hated (she could not help it) the
devotion between Neville and Nan. Nan, in her tempestuous childhood,
flaring with rage against her mother, or sullen, spiteful and perverse,
long before she could have put into words the qualities in Mrs. Hilary
which made her like that, had always gone to Neville, nine years older,
to be soothed and restored to good temper. Neville had reprimanded the
little naughty sister, had told her she must be "decent to mother--feel
decent if you can, behave decent in any case," was the way she had put
it. It was Neville who had heard Nan's confidences and helped her out of
scrapes in childhood, schoolgirlhood and ever since. This was very bitter
to Mrs. Hilary. She was jealous of both of them; jealous that so much of
Neville's love should go elsewhere than to her, jealous that Nan, who
gave her nothing except generous and extravagant gifts and occasional,
spasmodic, remorseful efforts at affection and gentleness, should to
Neville give all.
"Neville is ill," she said. "She certainly won't be fit to travel out
of England this winter. Influenza coming on the top of that miserable
breakdown is a thing to be treated with the greatest care. Even when she
is recovered, post-influenza will keep her weak till the summer. I am
really anxious about her. No; Neville is quite out of the question."
"Well, what about Pamela?"
"Pamela is up to her eyes in her work.... Besides, why should Pamela go,
or Neville, rather than I? A girl's mother is obviously the right person.
I may not be of much use to my children in these days, but at least I
hope I can save them from themselves."
"It takes a clever parent to do that, Emily," said Grandmama, who
doubtless knew.
"But, mother, what would you _have_ me do? Sit with my hands before me
while my daughter lives in sin? What's _your_ plan?"
"I'm too old to make plans, dear. I can only look on at the world. I've
looked at the world now for many, many years, and I've learnt that only
great wisdom and great love can change people's decisions as to their way
of life, or turn them from evil courses. Frankly, my child, I doubt if
you have, where Nan is concerned, enough wisdom or enough love. Enough
sympathy, I should rather say, for you have love. But do you feel you
understand the child enough to interfere wisely and successfully?"
"Oh, you think I'm a fool, mother; of course I know you've always thought
me a fool. Good God, if a mother can't interfere with her own daughter to
save her from wickedness and disaster, who can, I should like to know?"
"One would indeed like to know that," Grandmama said, sadly.
"Perhaps you'd like to go yourself," Mrs. Hilary shot at her, quivering
now with anger and feeling.
"No, my dear. Even if I were able to get to Rome I should know that I was
too old to interfere with the lives of the young. I don't understand them
enough. You believe that you do. Well, I suppose you must go and try. I
can't stop you."
"You certainly can't. Nothing can stop me.... You're singularly
unsympathetic, mother, about this awful business."
"I don't feel so, dear. I am very, very sorry for you, and very, very
sorry for Nan (whom, you must remember, we may be slandering). I have
always looked on unlawful love as a very great sin, though there may be
great provocation to it."
"It is an awful sin." Mr. Cradock could say what he liked on that
subject; he might tell Mrs. Hilary that it was not awful except in so
far as any other yielding to nature's promptings in defiance of the law
of man was awful, but he could not persuade her. Like many other people,
she set that particular sin apart, in a special place by itself; she
would talk of "a bad woman," "an immoral man," a girl who had "lost
her character," and mean merely the one kind of badness, the one
manifestation of immorality, the one element in character. Dishonesty
and cruelty she could forgive, but never that.
"I shall start in three days," said Mrs. Hilary, becoming tragically
resolute. "I must tell Mr. Cradock to-morrow."
"That young man? Must he know about Nan's affairs, my dear?"
"I have to tell him everything, mother. It's part of the course. He is as
secret as the grave."
Grandmama knew that Emily, less secret than the grave, would have to ease
herself of the sad tale to someone or other in the course of the next
day, and supposed that it had better be to Mr. Cradock, who seemed to be
a kind of hybrid of doctor and clergyman, and so presumably was more
discreet than an ordinary human being. Emily must tell. Emily always
would. That was why she enjoyed this foolish psycho-analysis business so
much.
At the very thought of it a gleam had brightened Mrs. Hilary's eyes,
and her rigid, tense pose had relaxed. Oh the comfort of telling Mr.
Cradock! Even if he did tell her how it was all in the course of nature,
at least he would sympathise with her trouble about it, and her annoyance
with Grandmama. And he would tell her how best to deal with Nan when
she got to her. Nan's was the sort of case that Mr. Cradock really
did understand. Any situation between the sexes--he was all over it.
Psycho-analysts adored sex; they made an idol of it. They communed with
it, as devotees with their God. They couldn't really enjoy, with their
whole minds, anything else, Mrs. Hilary sometimes vaguely felt. But as,
like the gods of the other devotees, it was to them immanent, everywhere
and in everything; they could be always happy. If they went up into
heaven it was there; if they fled down into hell it was there also. Once,
when Mrs. Hilary had tentatively suggested that Freud, for instance,
over-stated its importance, Mr. Cradock had said firmly "It is impossible
to do that," which settled it once and for all.
Mrs. Hilary stood up. Her exalted, tragic mood clothed her like a flowing
garment.
"I shall write to Cook," she said. "Also to Nan, to tell her I am
coming."
Grandmama, after a moment's silence, seemed to gather herself together
for a final effort.
"Emily, my child. Is your mind set to do this?"
"Absolutely, mother. Absolutely and entirely."
"Shall I tell you what I think? No, you don't want to hear it, but you
drive me to it.... If you go to that foolish, reckless child and attempt
to interfere with her, or even to question her, you will run the risk, if
she is innocent, of driving her into what you are trying to prevent. If
she is already committed to it, you run the risk of shutting the door
against her return. In either case you will alienate her from yourself:
that is the least of the risks you run, though the most certain.... That
is all. I can say no more. But I ask you, my dear.... I beg you, for the
child's sake and your own ... to write neither to Cook nor to Nan."
Grandmama's breath came rather fast and heavily; her heart was troubling
her; emotion and effort were not good for it.
Mrs. Hilary stood looking down at the old shrunk figure, shaking a little
as she stood, knowing that she must be patient and calm.
"You will please allow me to judge. You will please let me take the steps
I think necessary to help my child. I know that you have no confidence in
my judgment or my tact; you've always shown that plainly enough, and done
your best to teach my children the same view of me...."
Grandmama put up her hand, meaning that she could not stand, neither she
nor her heart could stand, a scene. Mrs. Hilary broke off. For once she
did not want a scene either. In these days she found what vent was
necessary for her emotional system in her interviews with Mr. Cradock.
"I daresay you mean well, mother. But in this matter I must be the judge.
I am a mother first and foremost. It is the only thing that life has left
for me to be." (Scarcely a daughter, she meant: that was made too
difficult for her; you would almost imagine that the office was not
wanted.)
She turned to the writing table.
"First of all I shall write to Rosalind, and tell her what I think of her
and her abominable gossip."
She began to write.
Grandmama sat shrunk and old and tired in her chair.
Mrs. Hilary's pen scratched over the paper, telling Rosalind what she
thought.
"Dear Rosalind," she wrote, "I was very much surprised at your
letter. I do not know why you should trouble to repeat to me these
ridiculous stories about Nan. You cannot suppose that I am likely to
care either what you or any of your friends are saying about one of my
children...." And so on. One knows the style. It eases the mind of the
writer and does not deceive the reader. When the reader is Rosalind
Hilary it amuses her vastly.
4
Next day, at three p.m., Mrs. Hilary told Mr. Cradock all about it. Mr.
Cradock was not in the least surprised. Nor had he the slightest, not the
remotest doubt that Nan and Stephen Lumley were doing what Mrs. Hilary
called living in sin, what he preferred to call obeying the natural ego.
(After all, as any theologian would point out, the terms are synonymous
in a fallen world.)
"I must have your advice," Mrs. Hilary said. "You must tell me what line
to take with her."
"Shall you," Mr. Cradock enquired, thoughtful and intelligent, "find your
daughter in a state of conflict?"
Mrs. Hilary spread her hands helplessly before her.
"I know nothing; nothing."
"A very great deal," said Mr. Cradock, "depends on that. If she is torn
between the cravings of the primitive ego and the inhibitions put upon
these cravings by the conventions of society--if, in fact, her censor,
her endopsychic censor, is still functioning...."
"Oh, I doubt if Nan's got an endopsychic censor. She is so lawless
always."
"Every psyche has a censor." Mr. Cradock was firm. "Regarded, of course,
by the psyche with very varying degrees of respect. Well, what I mean to
say is, if your daughter is in a state of conflict, with forces pulling
her both ways, her case will be very much easier to deal with than if she
has let her primitive ego so take possession of the situation that she
feels in a state of harmony. In the former case, you will only have to
strengthen the forces which are opposing her sexual craving...."
Mrs. Hilary fidgeted uneasily. "Oh, I don't think Nan feels _that_
exactly. None of my children...."
Mr. Cradock gave her an amused glance. It seemed sometimes that he would
never get this foolish lady properly educated.
"Your children, I presume, are human, Mrs. Hilary. Sexual craving means
a craving for intimacy with a member of another sex."
"Oh well, I suppose it does. I don't care for the _name_, somehow. But
please go on."
"I was going to say, if you find, on the other hand, that your daughter's
nature has attained harmony in connection with this course she is
pursuing, your task will be far more difficult. You will then have to
_create_ a discord, instead of merely strengthening it.... May I ask your
daughter's age?"
"Nan is thirty-three."
"A dangerous age."
"All Nan's ages," said Mrs. Hilary, "have been dangerous. Nan is like
that."
"As to that," said Mr. Cradock, "we may say that all ages are dangerous
to all people, in this dangerous life we live. But the thirties are a
specially dangerous time for women. They have outlived the shynesses
and restraints of girlhood, and not attained to the caution and
discretion of middle age. They are reckless, and consciously or
unconsciously on the lookout for adventure. They see ahead of them
the end of youth, and that quickens their pace.... Has passion always
been a strong element in your daughter's life?"
"Oh, passion...." (Another word not liked by Mrs. Hilary.) "Not quite
that, I should say. Nan has been reckless; she has got into scrapes, got
herself talked about. She has played about with men a good deal always.
But as to passion...."
"A common thing enough," Mr. Cradock told her, as it were reassuringly.
"Nothing to fight shy of, or be afraid of. But something to be regulated
of course.... Now, the thing is to oppose to this irregular desire of
your daughter's for this man a new and a stronger set of desires. Fight
one group of complexes with another. You can't, I suppose, persuade her
to be analysed? There are good analysts in Rome."
"Oh no. Nan laughs at it. She laughs at everything of that sort."
"A great mistake. A mistake often made by shallow and foolish people.
They might as well laugh at surgery.... Well now, to go into this
question of the battle between the complex-groups...."
He went into it, patiently and exhaustively. His phrases drifted over
Mrs. Hilary's head.
"... a deterrent force residing in the ego and preventing us from
stepping outside the bounds of propriety.... Rebellious messages sent
up from the Unconscious, which wishes to live, love and act in archaic
modes ... conflict with the progress of human society ... inhibitory and
repressive power of the censor...." (How wonderful, thought Mrs. Hilary,
to be able to talk so like a book for so long together!) ... "give the
censor all the help we can ... keep the Unconscious in order by turning
its energies into some other channel ... give it a substitute.... The
energy involved in the intense desire for someone of another sex can be
diverted ... employed on some useful work. Libido ... it should all be
used. Find another channel for your daughter's libido.... Her life is
perhaps a rather vacant one?"
That Mrs. Hilary was able to reply to.
"Nan's? Vacant? Oh no. She is quite full of energy. Too full. Always
doing a thousand things. And she writes, you know."
"Ah. That should be an outlet. A great deal of libido is used up by that.
Well, her present strong desire for this man should be sublimated into a
desire for something else. I gather that her root trouble is lawlessness.
That can be cured. You must make her remember her first lawless action."
(Man's first disobedience and the fruit thereof, thought Mrs. Hilary.)
"O dear me," she said, "I'm afraid that would be impossible. When she was
a month old she used to attempt to dash her bottle onto the floor."
"People have even remembered their baptisms, when driven back to them by
analysis."
"Our children were not baptised. My husband was something of a Unitarian.
He said he would not tie them up with a rite against which they might
react in later life. So they were merely registered."
"Ah. In a way that is a pity. Baptism is an impressive moment in the
sensitive consciousness of the infant. It has sometimes been found
to be a sort of lamp shining through the haze of the early memory.
Registration, owing to the non-participation of the infant, is useless
in that way."
"Nan might remember how she kicked me when I short-coated her," Mrs.
Hilary mused, hopefully.
Mr. Cradock flowed on. Mrs. Hilary, listened, assented, was impressed. It
all sounded so simple, so wonderful, even so beautiful. But she thought
once or twice, "He doesn't know Nan."
"Thank you," she said, rising to go when her hour was over. "You have
made me feel so much stronger, as usual. I can't thank you enough for all
you do for me. I could face none of my troubles and problems but for your
help."
"That merely means," said Mr. Cradock, who always got the last word,
"that your ego is at present in what is called the state of infantile
dependence or tutelage. A necessary but an impermanent stage in its
struggle towards the adult level of the reality-principle."
"I suppose so," Mrs. Hilary said. "Good-bye."
"He is too clever for me," she thought, as she went home. "He is often
above my head." But she was used to that in the people she met.
CHAPTER XIII
THE DAUGHTER
1
Mrs. Hilary hated travelling, which is indeed detestable. The Channel was
choppy and she a bad sailor; the train from Calais to Paris continued the
motion, and she remained a bad sailor (bad sailors often do this). She
lay back and smelled salts, and they were of no avail. At Paris she tried
and failed to dine. She passed a wretched night, being of those who
detest nights in trains without _wagons-lits_, but save money by not
having _wagons-lits_, and wonder dismally all night if it is worth it.
Modane in the chilly morning annoyed her as it annoys us all. The customs
people were rude and the other travellers in the way. Mrs. Hilary, who
was not good in crowds, pushed them, getting excited and red in the face.
Psycho-analysis had made her more patient and calm than she had been
before, but even so, neither patient nor calm when it came to jostling
crowds.
"I am not strong enough for all this," she thought, in the Mont Cenis
tunnel.
Rushing out of it into Italy, she thought, "Last time I was here was in
'99, with Richard. If Richard were here now he would help me." He would
face the customs at Modane, find and get the tickets, deal with uncivil
Germans--(Germans were often uncivil to Mrs. Hilary and she to them, and
though she had not met any yet on this journey, owing doubtless to their
state of collapse and depression consequent on the Great Peace, one might
get in at any moment, Germans being naturally buoyant). Richard would
have got hold of pillows, seen that she was comfortable at night, told
her when there was time to get out for coffee and when there wasn't (Mrs.
Hilary was no hand at this; she would try no runs and get run out, or all
but run out). And Richard would have helped to save Nan. Nan and her
father had got on pretty well, for a naughty girl and an elderly parent.
They had appreciated one another's brains, which is not a bad basis. They
had not accepted or even liked one another's ideas on life, but this is
not necessary or indeed usual in families. Mrs. Hilary certainly did not
go so far as to suppose that Nan would have obeyed her father had he
appeared before her in Rome and bidden her change her way of life, but
she might have thought it over. And to make Nan think over anything
which _she_ bade her do would be a phenomenal task. What had Mr. Cradock
said--make her remember her first disobedience, find the cause of it,
talk it out with her, get it into the open--and then she would be cured
of her present lawlessness. Why? That was the connection that always
puzzled Mrs. Hilary a little. Why should remembering that you had done,
and why you had done, the same kind of thing thirty years ago cure you
of doing it now? Similarly, why should remembering that a nurse had
scared you as an infant cure you of your present fear of burglars? In
point of fact, it didn't. Mr. Cradock had tried this particular cure on
Mrs. Hilary. It must be her own fault, of course, but somehow she had not
felt much less nervous about noises in the house at night since Mr.
Cradock had brought up into the light, as he called it, that old fright
in the nursery. After all, why should one? However, hers not to reason
why; and perhaps the workings of Nan's mind might be more orthodox.
At Turin Germans got in. Of course. They were all over Italy. Italy was
welcoming them with both hands, establishing again the economic entente.
These were a mother and a _backfisch_, and they looked shyly and sullenly
at Mrs. Hilary and the other English-woman in the compartment. They were
thin, and Mrs. Hilary noted it with satisfaction. She didn't believe for
one moment in starving Germans, but these certainly did not look so
prosperous and buxom as a pre-war German mother and _backfisch_ would
have looked. They were equally uncivil, though. They pulled both windows
up to the top. The two English ladies promptly pulled them down half-way.
English ladies are the only beings in the world who like open windows in
winter. English lower-class women do not, nor do English gentlemen. If
you want to keep warm while travelling (to frowst, as the open air school
calls it) do not get in with well-bred Englishwomen.
The German mother broke out in angry remonstrance, indicating that she
had neuralgia and the _backfisch_ a cold in the head. There followed one
of those quarrels which occur on this topic in trains, and are so bitter
and devastating. It had now more than the pre-war bitterness; between the
combatants flowed rivers of blood; behind them ranked male relatives
killed or maimed by the male relatives of their foes on the opposite
seat. The English ladies won. Germany was a conquered race, and knew it.
In revenge, the _backfisch_ coughed and sneezed "all over the carriage,"
as Mrs. Hilary put it, "in the disgusting German way," and her mother
made noises as if she could be sick if she tried hard enough.
So it was a detestable journey. And the second night in the train was
worse than the first. For the Germans, would you believe it, shut both
windows while the English were asleep, and the English, true to their
caste and race, woke with bad headaches.
2
When they got to Rome in the morning Mrs. Hilary felt thoroughly ill. She
had to strive hard for self-control; it would not do to meet Nan in an
unnerved, collapsed state. All her psychical strength was necessary
to deal with Nan. So when she stood on the platform with her luggage she
looked and felt not only like one who has slept (but not much) in a train
for two nights and fought with Germans about windows but also like an
elderly virgin martyr (spiritually tense and strung-up, and distraught,
and on the line between exultation and hysteria).
Nan was there. Nan, pale and pinched, and looking plain in the nipping
morning air, though wrapped in a fur coat. (One of the points about Nan
was that, though she sometimes looked plain, she never looked dowdy;
there was always a distinction, a chic, about her.)
Nan kissed her mother and helped with the luggage and got a cab. Nan was
good at railway stations and such places. Mrs. Hilary was not.
They drove out into the hideous new streets. Mrs. Hilary shivered.
"Oh, how ugly!"
"Rome is ugly, this part."
"It's worse since '99."
But she did not really remember clearly how it had looked in '99. The old
desire to pose, to show that she knew something, took her. Yet she felt
that Nan, who knew that she knew next to nothing, would not be deceived.
"Oh ... the Forum!"
"The Forum of Trajan," Nan said. "We don't pass the Roman Forum on the
way to our street."
"The Forum of Trajan, of course, I meant that."
But she knew that Nan knew she had meant the Forum Romanum.
"Rome is always Rome," she said, which was safer than identifying
particular buildings, or even Forums, in it. "Nothing like it anywhere."
"How long can you stay, mother? I've got you a room in the house I'm
lodging in. It's in a little street the other side of the Corso. Rather
a mediaeval street, I'm afraid. That is, it smells. But the rooms are
clean."
"Oh, I'm not staying long.... We'll talk later; talk it all out. A
thorough talk. When we get in. After a cup of tea...."
Mrs. Hilary remembered that Nan did not yet know why she had come. After
a cup of strong tea.... A cup of tea first.... Coffee wasn't the same.
One needed tea, after those awful Germans. She told Nan about these. Nan
knew that she would have had tiresome travelling companions; she always
did; if it weren't Germans it would be inconsiderate English. She was
unlucky.
"Go straight to bed and rest when we get in," Nan advised; but she shook
her head. "We must talk first."
Nan, she thought, looked pinched about the lips, and thin, and her black
brows were at times nervous and sullen. Nan did not look happy. Was it
guilt, or merely the chill morning air?
They stopped at a shabby old house in a narrow mediaeval street in the
Borgo, which had been a palace and was now let in apartments. Here Nan
had two bare, gilded, faded rooms. Mrs. Hilary sat by a charcoal stove in
one of them, and Nan made her some tea. After the tea Mrs. Hilary felt
revived. She wouldn't go to bed; she felt that the time for the talk had
come. She looked round the room for signs of Stephen Lumley, but all the
signs she saw were of Nan; Nan's books, Nan's proofs strewing the table.
Of course that bad man wouldn't come while she was there. He was no doubt
waiting eagerly for her to be gone. Probably they both were....
3
"Nan--" They were still sitting by the stove, and Nan was lighting a
cigarette. "Nan--do you guess why I've come?"
Nan threw away the match.
"No, mother. How should I?... One does come to Rome, I suppose, if one
gets a chance."
"Oh, I've not come to see Rome. I know Rome. Long before you were
born.... I've come to see you. And to take you back with me."
Nan glanced at her quickly, a sidelong glance of suspicion and
comprehension. Her lower lip projected stubbornly.
"Ah, I see you know what I mean. Yes, I've heard. Rumours reached us--it
was through Rosalind, of course. And I'm afraid ... I'm afraid that for
once she spoke the truth."
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