Mrs Caliban and other stories Page 11

  ‘And they’d all think: he wasn’t up to it. And they’d be right.’

  It took two years for the family to wean Edward away from Lula. Then they set him up with a suitable bride, an Irish heiress named Anna-Louise, whose family was half-German on the mother’s side. One of Anna-Louise’s greatest assets was that she was a superb horsewoman. Flora liked her. The boys’ father, the old man, thought she was wonderful. His wife realized too late that Anna-Louise was a strong character, not to be bullied. Flora was let off the hook. She didn’t allow her mother-in-law to take out on her or her children any of the failures and frustrations she had with Anna-Louise. She put her foot down. And eventually her mother-in-law came to her to seek an ally, to complain and to ask for advice. Flora listened and held her peace. She was learning.

  James was the one who helped her. He guided her through her mistakes; he was the first person in her life to be able to teach her that mistakes are actually the best method of learning and that it’s impossible to learn without at least some of them. He warned her about things she would have to know, strangers she was going to meet. She was grateful. But she also saw that he was part of the network and that all his actions, though well-meant, were aimed at making her just like the rest of them, whether she wanted to be or not.

  It always came down to the question of money. The money made the difference. They were one of the richest families on the Eastern seaboard. Flora’s own parents were from nice, substantial backgrounds; they’d had their houses and companies and clubs, and belonged to the right places when it had still been worth keeping up with that sort of thing.

  She’d known people who knew the cousins, who gave parties at which she would be acceptable – that was how she had met Edward. Everyone knew about them. Everyone recognized their pictures in the papers. To marry into their ranks was like marrying into royalty, and a royalty that never had to worry about its revenues.

  Her marriage had also changed her own relatives irrevocably. It was as though they had lost their thoughts and wishes; they had become hangers-on. They name-dropped with everyone, they could no longer talk about anything except the last time they’d seen James or Edward or – best of all – the old man.

  They were all corrupted. One early summer afternoon Flora sat playing cards with James and Edward and her sister, Elizabeth, who had married a cousin of the family and thus, paradoxically, become less close.

  Flora thought about the four of them, what they were doing with the time they had. All except for James were still in their twenties and they were like robots attached to a master-computer – they had no ideas, no lives. They were simply parts of a machine.

  She wondered whether James and Elizabeth had slept together long ago, before she had become engaged to him, and thought they probably had. An exhaustion came over her: the artificial weariness enforced upon someone who has many capabilities and is consistently prevented from using any of them.

  The doctors called it depression. She worked on her tennis, went swimming three times a week, and helped to organize charity fund-raising events. She made progress. Now she was an elegant young matron in magazine pictures, not the messy-haired girl who had run shrieking down the hallway from her mother-in-law’s room as she held her squealing baby on one arm and then slammed and locked the door after her. She would never again stay behind a locked door, threatening to cut her throat, to go to the newspapers, to get a divorce. James had stood on the other side of the door and talked to her for five hours until she’d given in.

  And now they had their own happy family together and she moved through the round of public and domestic duties as calmly and gracefully as a swan on the water. But the serenity of her face was like the visible after-effect of an illness she had survived; or like a symptom of the death that was to follow.

  *

  James thought they should take their holiday in a spot more remote than the ones they usually chose in the winter. He was fed up with being hounded by reporters and photographers. And she was nervous about the children all the time. The house had always received a large quantity of anonymous mail and more than the average number of unpleasant telephone cranks. Now they were being persecuted not just because of their wealth, but because it was the fashion. Every day you could read in the papers about ‘copy cat’ crimes – acts of violence committed in imitation of something the perpetrators had seen on television or in the headlines of the very publication you had in your hand. If there had been a hoax call about a bomb at some large public building, it was fairly certain that the family secretaries would be kept busy with their share of telephone threats in the next few days. Everyone in the house was on speaking terms with at least ten policemen. There had been many crises over the years. They counted on the police, although James’s mother, and his sister Margaret’s ex-husband too, said they sometimes thought that most of the information these nuts and maniacs found out about them came straight from the police themselves.

  Anna-Louise’s entry into the family had brought further complications, adding an interest for the Irish connections on all sides. Anna-Louise herself wasn’t afraid. She wasn’t in any case the sort of woman who worried, but on top of that, her children hadn’t been put in danger yet, whereas Margaret’s had: her daughter, Amy, was once almost spirited away by a gang of kidnappers. ‘Fortunately,’ Margaret told friends later, ‘they got the cook’s niece instead. She was standing out at the side of the back drive, and it just shows how dumb these people are: It was Sunday and she was wearing a little hat, white gloves, a pink organdie dress and Mary Janes. If they’d known anything about Amy, they’d have realized she wouldn’t be caught dead in a get-up like that. As a matter of fact, at that time of day on a Sunday, she’d be in her jeans, helping MacDonald in the greenhouses.’

  They had paid handsomely to get the niece back; good cooks weren’t easy to find. But they’d cooperated with the police, which they wouldn’t have dared to do if Amy herself had been the victim: it would have been too big a risk, even though in that particular case it had worked and they had caught the three men and rescued the girl. Flora later began to think it would have been better for the niece not to have lived through the capture; she started to crack up afterwards and developed a bitter enmity towards Amy, who, she told everybody, ought to have been the one to be seized.

  The incident had taken place when Flora was in the beginning months of her second pregnancy. It brought home to her how difficult it was to escape the family destiny: even the children were dragged into it. And though it was only one of the many frightening, uncomfortable or calamitous events from the background of her first few years of marriage, it was the one that turned her into a woman who fretted about the future and who, especially, feared for the safety of her children. James tried to soothe her. On the other hand, his friend and chauffeur, Michael, who kept telling her everything would be all right, seemed at the same time to approve of the fact that she worried. She thought he felt it was a proof that she was a good mother.

  ‘If we go too far away,’ she said to James, ‘the children –’

  ‘We have telephones and telegraphs, and an airport nearby. It isn’t any worse than if we were going to California for the weekend.’

  ‘But it’s so far away.’

  He asked, ‘What could we do, even here, if anything happened?’ The question was meant to mollify, but it scared her even more.

  ‘The doctor says you need a rest,’ he insisted. She agreed with that. It seemed odd that a woman should live in a house as large as a castle, with nothing to do all day but easy, pleasant tasks, and still need a rest. But it was true.

  ‘Michael will be with us,’ he added.

  That, finally, convinced her. If Michael came along, nothing bad could happen, either at home or abroad. She was distrustful of even the smallest disruption to her life, but she wanted to go. And she would be relieved to get away from the menace of all the unknown thousands who hated her without even having met her.

  You could
n’t be free, ever. And if you were rich, you were actually less often free than other people. You were recognized. The spotlight was on you. Strangers sent you accusations, threats and obscene letters. And what had you done to them? Nothing. Even the nice people were falsified by the ideas they had of your life; those who didn’t threaten, begged. Everyone wanted money and most of them felt no shame at demanding it outright. They were sure they deserved it, so they had to have it. It didn’t matter who gave it to them.

  She too had been altered, of course. She had made her compromises and settled down. Of all the people connected with the family only Michael, she felt, had kept his innocence. His loyalty was like the trust of a child. When he drove her into town to shop, when they said hello or goodbye, she thought how wonderful it would be to put her arms around him, to have him put his arms around her. She was touched and delighted by all his qualities, even at the times when she’d seen him thwarted or frustrated and noticed how he went white and red very quickly.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘If Michael comes too.’

  ‘Of course,’ James told her. ‘I wouldn’t be without him. There’s a good hotel we can stay at. I don’t think you’ll need a maid.’

  ‘I don’t want a maid. I just want to be able to phone home twice a day to check if everything’s all right.’

  ‘Everything’s going to be fine. You know, sometimes kids can get sick of their parents. It won’t do them any harm to miss us for a week or two.’

  ‘Two?’

  ‘Well, if we don’t make it at least two, half the trip’s going to be spent in the plane, or recovering from jet-lag.’

  *

  They had parties to say goodbye: the friends’ party, the relatives’, and one birthday party for Margaret’s youngest child, which coincided with a garden club meeting. Flora’s mother-in-law directed the gloved and hatted ladies around flowerbeds that were to be mentioned in the yearly catalogue. Her father-in-law put in a brief appearance at the far end of the Italian gardens, shook hands with a few of the women and came back to the house, where he stayed for quite a while looking with delectation at the children digging into their ice cream and cake. Flora smiled at him across the table. She got along well with him, as did all his daughters-in-law, though Anna-Louise was his favourite. His own daughters had less of his benevolence, especially Margaret, whose whole life had been, and was still, lived in the always unsuccessful effort to gain from him the admiration he gave so freely to others. That was one of the family tragedies that Flora could see clearly. No one ever said anything about it and she’d assumed from the beginning that, having grown up with it, they’d never noticed. It was simply one more truth that had become acceptable by being ritualized.

  The birthday room was filled with shouts and shrieks. Food was smeared, thrown and used to make decorations. One boy had built a palace of cakes and candies on his plate. There were children of industrialists, oil millionaires, ambassadors, bankers and heads of state; but they looked just like any other children, grabbing each other’s paper hats while one of them was sick on the rug.

  Michael too was looking on. He was enjoying himself, but he was there to work. He watched with a professional, noting glance. If anything went wrong, he was there stop it. His presence made Flora feel safe and happy. She began to look forward to the trip.

  The next evening, it was the grown-ups’ turn to be sick on the rug. Five of their guests had to stay over for the weekend. On Monday morning Flora and James left for the airport.

  At first she’d wanted to take hundreds of photographs with her. She’d started looking through the albums and every few pages taking one or two out; then it was every other page. Finally she had a fistful of pictures, a pile as thick as a doorstop. James chose twelve, shoved the others into a drawer and told her they had to hurry now.

  The children waved and smiled, their nurse cried. ‘I wish she wouldn’t do that,’ Flora said in the car. ‘Bursting into tears all the time.’

  ‘Just a nervous habit,’ he told her. ‘It doesn’t seem to affect the kids. They’re a pretty hard-bitten bunch.’ He clasped his hand over hers, over the new ring he had given her the night before. She tried to put everything out of her mind, not to feel apprehensive about the plane flight.

  They were at the airport with plenty of time to spare, so he took her arm and led her to the duty-free perfume, which didn’t interest her.

  ‘There’s a bookstore,’ she said.

  ‘All right.’

  They browsed through thrillers, war stories, romantic novels and books that claimed to tell people how society was being run and what the statistics about it proved.

  They became separated. The first James knew of it was when he heard her laugh coming from the other side of the shop and saw her turn, looking for him. She was holding a large magazine.

  ‘Come look,’ she called. The magazine appeared to be some kind of colouring book for children. There was a whole shelf full of the things. After the paper people in the drawings were coloured and cut free, you snipped out the pictures of their clothes and pushed the tabs down over the shoulders of the dolls.

  ‘Aren’t they wonderful?’ she said. ‘Look. This one’s called “Great Women Paper Dolls”. It’s got all kinds of … Jane Austen, Lady Murasaki, Pavlova. Look at the one of Beatrix Potter: she’s got a puppy in her arms when she’s in her fancy dress, but underneath it’s a rabbit. And –’

  ‘These are pretty good,’ he said. He’d discovered the ones for boys: history, warfare, exploration. ‘As a matter of fact, the text to these things is of a very high standard. Too high for a colouring book.’

  ‘Paper doll books.’

  ‘You’ve got to colour them before you cut them out. But anybody who could understand the information would be too old to want one. You wonder who they’re aimed at.’

  ‘At precocious children like ours, of course. They’ll think they’re hysterical. We can send them these. Paper dolls of Napoleon and Socrates. Look, it says here: if I don’t see my favourite great woman, I may find her in the book called “Infamous Women Paper Dolls”. Oh James, help me look for that one.’

  ‘Flora,’ he said, ‘the children are here. We’re the ones who are supposed to be going away.’

  ‘Yes, but we can send them right now, from the airport. Aren’t they funny? Look. Infamous Women – how gorgeous. Catherine di Medici, Semiramis. And in the other one – here: an extra dress for Madame de Pompadour; the only woman to get two dresses. Isn’t that nice? She’d have appreciated that.’

  She was winding herself up to the point where at any moment her eyes would fill with tears. He said, ‘Who’s that one? Looks like she got handed the castor oil instead of the free champagne.’

  ‘Eadburga.’

  ‘Never heard of her.’

  ‘It says she was at her worst around 802. Please, James. We can leave some money with the cashier.’

  ‘Anything to get you out of this place,’ he told her.

  After they’d installed themselves in their seats and were up in the air, he said, ‘What was the difference between the great and the infamous?’

  ‘The great were artists and heroic workers for mankind,’ she said. ‘The infamous were the ones in a position of power.’

  The speed of her reply took him by surprise. He couldn’t remember if it might have been true. Florence Nightingale, he recalled, had figured among the greats; Amelia Earhart, too. But there must also have been a ruler of some sort: Elizabeth I, maybe? Surely Queen Victoria had been in the book of good ones. And Eleanor of Aquitaine had been on a page fairly near that. He was still thinking about the question after Flora had already fallen asleep.

  *

  They arrived in an air-conditioned airport much like any other, were driven away in limousines with smoked-glass windows and were deposited at their hotel, where they took showers and slept. The first thing they did when they woke up was to telephone home. They didn’t really look at anything until the next day.


  They walked out of the marble-pillared hotel entrance arm in arm and blinked into the sun. They were still turned around in time. Already Flora was thinking about an afternoon nap. They looked to the left and to the right, and then at each other. James smiled and Flora pressed his arm. The trip had been a good idea.

  They strolled slowly forward past the large, glittering shops that sold luxury goods. You could have a set of matching jade carvings packed and sent, jewellery designed for you, clothes tailored and completed in hours. James said, ‘We can do all that later.’ Flora stopped in front of a window display of jade fruit. She said, ‘It’s probably better to get it over with.’

  They stood talking about it: whether they’d leave the presents till later and go enjoy themselves, or whether they ought to get rid of the duties first, so as not to have them hanging over their heads for two weeks. Michael waited a few feet to the side, watching, as usual, without seeming to.

  They decided to do the difficult presents first – the ones that demanded no thought but were simply a matter of knowing what to ask for and choosing the best. They handed over credit cards and traveller’s cheques for tea sets, bolts of silk material, dressing gowns, inlaid boxes, vases, bowls and bronze statuettes. By lunchtime they were worn out.

  They went back to the hotel to eat. Light came into the high-ceilinged dining-room through blinds, shutters, curtains and screens. It was as if they were being shielded from an outside fire – having all the heat blocked out, while some of the light was admitted. About twenty other tables were occupied. Michael sat on his own, though if they had had their meal anywhere in town, he’d have eaten with them.

  James looked around and smiled again. ‘This is very pleasant,’ he said. He beamed at her and added, ‘I think the holiday is already doing its job. You’re looking extremely well after all your shopping. Filled with a sense of achievement.’

  ‘Yes, I’m OK now. Earlier this morning I was feeling a lot like Eadburga.’