A Novel The Size of an Ocean

After the publication, in 1965, of 'Mrs Bratbe's August Picnic', my mother started work on a new novel. It grew into a leviathan of unmanageable proportions, and was never finished. It "shattered in my hands" she wrote to Dan Jacobson. However, there is some remarkable writing in it, and I have decided to put at least the first volume, 'Act of Go', into the wider world. The copyright of course remains with me and my sisters.

You may find more information about my mother, Jacqueline Wheldon, here.

Blogs being what they are, you must read bottom up, from 'Post 1' upwards. The novel begins with a letter from a character, Susan Sage, to a prospective editor, 'Tom'.




Tuesday 29 June 2010

POST 12

Two days later in the early evening Constance went into her Uncle's old office with the intention of inspecting it thoroughly.

It was a desirable, cold, out of the way place on the ground floor, dusty, furnished, and uninhabited. She intended to write her book here some day. She examined the large unused desk. It was sideways on to the front window, giving a view of the front steps. That would have to be changed. She studied the shabby sofa upon which she and Matthew had once been accustomed to unload their second-hand books on Saturday mornings. It stood before the farther grate empty but for a fall of smelly soot in it, at the other end of the room. The whole place was lined with bookshelves, from which Frances had had first pick leaving all the very old leatherbound law books, but plenty of room for books. Coming back to the sofa, it occurred to her that if ever Matthew were to say of herself, `You are so like your mother,' somehow the need she felt and could not describe might disappear.

The last meeting with Matthew had been inconclusive when one had been so sure one was ready for conclusions. Much the same as ever in fact. She had had it in mind to look at him as her mother's lover, to see him as her own father. She had forgotten to do that. No matter. She felt energetic. It even crossed her mind that she might in this place, if she could purloin it, do some homework. A room to her very self. Notes needed to be made, and an approach to Aunt Molly worked out.

She sat down at the dusty desk in the swivel chair and took up an unpainted wartime pencil, untouched for years. She looked at it idly in the rays of evening sunshine. The wood had gone grey round the still sharp point. Her uncle had one day laid it down for the last time without knowing it was the last time. A glimpse of mortality on the end of a pencil.

Impatiently, she opened all the drawers as she often had. Empty. These two unused desks constituted an engine of creation. Typewriter space, work space. The bottom drawer she had never been able to open. It was returned on its runners too far in. Now, this is what she had come to inspect. Unlike the empty drawers it seemed to have something heavy in it. It would repay work to get it open. She lay on the floor to see what might be done from underneath.

Feet pounded heavily up the front steps. The door-bell rang. Feet pounded heavily down. Although slightly curious it was not her policy to allow her self's self to be interrupted by door-bells, phone-bells or imperious calls from the human voice. Besides, she needed leverage, or a screw-driver, or another pair of arms. At last, lying on the floor and with the use of one foot underneath she got a good push and pull on the offending thing. The drawer opened stickily, crammed with scrumpled paper. Underneath the spoiled top sheets, Absecond, Millbrow, Hayter and Fade. Solicitors, stacks of it, dryish, brownish, never gone to salvage. She knelt up and took the reams of paper lovingly from the drawer and put them on the desk. It surely was a sight. At the bottom, a few paper clips and a key. She picked up the key, studied it, and pocketed it. Stationery, especially a pile of good clean paper hitherto always someone else's had an awesome effect on her, a sexual excitement in the pit of the stomach. This huge pile! It was as if Uncle Paul Absecond had left it to her in his will. An inheritance.

Write something on it. She picked up the old pencil.

Others, I am not the first,
Have willed more mischief than they durst,...

She shivered and scribbled it out.

No Matthew, no Ludlow. She had loved Ludlow with Matthew there The happiest days of her life. Matthew was to be married. He was to belong to somebody else exclusively. Constance wondered whether God, in creating the world, really had intended this exclusiveness. For, how exactly, would it get populated if... She chewed the end of the pencil, it was bitter with age. Matthew, finished. Supposing she had answered him truthfully when he asked what was wrong? She sat listening to the quarrelling swifts.

Astonishingly, the door opened. This room was never used except for the purpose of keeping Aunt Molly's missioners from the Labour Party waiting. Matthew dashed in, smiled, and went straight to the telephone of the smaller desk opposite. Constance sat up and watched him.

"Just putting off Patricia for half an hour," Matthew said. "Philip's outside. He wants a bed for the night."

Constance was digesting the significance of putting off the one when the other's image, and in want of a bed, came bolting to life.

"Philip?" She stood up. "Here? He can have mine. He can have mine...."

"Does this damn thing work?"

"What? It doesn't work. Sorry."

"Useless child!" Matthew hurried out. Constance followed and put her nose to the crack in the door. Tom Kellory, carrying his weight equally balanced fore and aft, bounded past and up the stairs, with Camilla Harisonn and her brother Philip behind him. Front door open. More to come? Camilla stopped suddenly at the bottom of the stairs, Philip swerved to pass and she caught his arm.

"Tell me! Tell me now. I wish to know."

Constance, astonished, studied Camilla's dark passionate face but Philip's was out of eye-range.

"Well, am I a girl, or not?"

Constance was about to rush out and say, Certainly damn silly old Camilla you are a girl, when a Presence, thus delaying the rush, pointed to the interesting fact that it is possible to be sincerely contemptuous and at the same time sincerely envious of such incredible comfortably-at-home stupidity, with Philip of all people, as just displayed by the ravishing Camilla.

"If you were going to be in London, they'd let me live here with you. I don't want to go to New York." Camilla said this with an absence of reticence that could be heard all over the house.

"Well, I'm not going to be in London." No. He's going to Korea. As to explosion of voice and force of leg on the stairs, that was much better. Air cleared.

"I shall go home."

"That's a very good idea," he called back.

Camilla jumped off the stairs and made promptly for the front door. Constance saw her safely gone, and came out beaming. "Philip!" She could feel herself glowing all over.

He leapt down the stairs. "Con. Connio..." and then he stopped.

Camilla had shouted from the front garden. There was a sudden squawking hissing on the path outside. Constance saw the yellow-blackish crouched tabby on the young thrush. When she caught up with Philip he was struggling with the huge yowling mass of fur, its back legs pinioned under his left arm.

The mother thrush had hopped on to a low branch of the lilac and was giving off distress signals in between flying out and back again, all claw and vertical flutter, in the direction of the imprisoned cat. The thrush lay faintly squirming, heaving, and at last quite still. A half-gulleted little worm wriggled its pointed end an inch unconsumed out of the prostrate, probably dead, bird's mouth.

Philip was having a bit of trouble with his catch. The huge round male head with little pricked back ears set back now into massive chest and shoulders, had a full fine set of teeth and appeared to be hissing from a gargling position. Camilla was hanging over the animal looking into its eyes unable to capture its gaze and not improving its temper.

"He's got you," she said slowly and laughed. She was incredibly beautiful, quite radiant. A pink flush had come upon the pale brown silk of her face.

"I wonder why we never let nature take its course? We must be programmed!" Philip looked down into the amber cat-eyes giving him so spiteful and absorbed an attention.

"It's our lovely culture."

Camilla, Anglo-Indian, praising or blaming?

"Why can't I let big cats eat little birds, you damn great bag of starvation?" The cat gave out a gargle and hiss from its open throat. If it was frightened, its green eyes still glittered with revenge. All its ancient past, the past of its primeval ancestors was in the present gleaming promise it made of revenge in the immediate future. Thereto its hind legs sprang back against Philip's hip and it almost gained its freedom. "Cam, don't stand there making eyes at it, go and get the devil something to eat."

"What shall I get you?" Camilla crooned to the cat.

"Hop it, girl. Find something. Find Fran." He sat down on the edge of what had once, but not in living memory, been a lily pond. It was now full of clumps of violet starlike flowers. Constance lay on the seat behind him. She had never seen anyone sitting with their legs over the side of the old stone pond under the faded lilac in the front garden. He stroked the cat firmly and gently, but not entirely full of attention for it. After a while it no longer hissed, but looked at him, open mouth like a trap, teeth and eyes full of hatred. He went on stroking it. The evening was quiet and hot. Philip watched or looked in the direction of the parent bird in the lilac giving out signals of distress.

Camilla and Frances came down the front steps and stopped short by the bird.

"Oh." She turned her eyes full on Philip. "I think...I think, I think you're disgusting," she said. They were remarkably the first words she addressed to her long-absent supposed to be lover as Constance understood. "Why didn't you attend to the bird? It's nearly dead."

"Died of fright. Where is it?"

"Here, where you left it, of course." She pointed behind her. "Where'd you expect?"

"Pick it up then. Or are you afraid of the worm?" he laughed.

"You did nothing," she accused them all. Philip, Constance, Camilla. "And now you're rewarding that flea-ridden brute with food."

"Hang on, Cam. Put the stuff down somewhere, and then you young ladies dash off and attend to the bird."

Camilla bent down and picked the bird up gently in thin brown gold-wristed, heart-melting hands, her almond-green and gold-threaded sari round her feet like a pool of water. Frances turned stiffly, gracelessly, on her heel. Philip's presence could make Frances very cross, stiff and graceless. "You'll be covered in fleas as well," she said. "And I dare say that'll suit you too."

"Frances! How can you possibly bring yourself to talk to Philip like that?" Camilla wanted to know following her warder into the house.

Constance stayed, lounging on the seat. She was disinclined to be one of anyone's 'young ladies', especially Philip's. The cat stretched its neck and Philip stroked the not very fine fur under its chin and on its chest. "Bad time for cats. In company, you must behave in a well-bred way. Even when you're very, very hungry," he said softly. All this passion and emotion over a cat. Its name was Barny. It was not hungry. It was a hunter and a thief. A cat of vulgar cat character. It belonged to Mrs. Trent, across the Square. It raided her neighbours' kitchens for their choicest unattended morsels. It ate pigeons, crouched on them under cars; and it had once caught a duck. And here was Barny elevated to portent and mystic source of ethical dissension. What a joke. The cat gave a yawning yowl. "Come on." He held it loosely now under his arm and stood up.

"Oh," he said when he saw Constance. "Pass over the meat." Constance got up and gave him the little plate full of fat, gristle and pieces of string, and he set it down and put the cat on it. His wrist was bleeding from a long puffy scratch across the vein. The animal immediately backed away from the food, went cautiously towards it sniffing all round the plate, and then with a sudden dart, it pulled one of the pieces away. Under the hedge it settled flat on its haunches and started to worry the small gristly chunk with sharp little jerks of the head. Philip beamed. "Milk," he ordered. Constance went reluctantly to do as she was bidden.

In the kitchen, Camilla masterfully took from Constance the saucer of milk and departed with it. Constance knelt down by the bird. It was in the knife box, the knives were all over the table.

"Don't you start frightening it," said Frances. "Get away."

"It's all right now. It needs a rest." But the little fat thing was agitated and getting up and toppling over again. "It's in a state of great anxiety," said Frances, squatting down at a fair distance, her sad gold eyes inviting the little bird to enter them, but a distaste in every limb for going any nearer to it.

"It's not all right. It's choking on the worm. I'll just ...."

"Get away."

Philip came into the kitchen, took his jacket off and started to wash his hands. He stood behind the stooping Frances, drying them on his handkerchief.

"Why don't you do that sort of thing in the bathroom?" she asked without looking at him.

"Do this for me," he said. He held out his wrist, purple swelling scratch; and a piece of sticking plaster. So he still knew where to find that, after all this time, that was pleasing. Constance thought that Frances wasn't ever going to get up. In the end she did, her shoulders raised round her ears somewhere.

"It's bleeding. It needs a proper dressing. It needs some antiseptic," she said. But she did not touch him.

"God damn it. Stick it on."

"It's not dry."

"I'll do it," Constance said.

"Oh, buzz off. I'll do it." He dabbed his wrist drier. "Give me the thing."

Constance took it from Frances. "I'll do it," she persisted.

Frances stood by, burdened with messages so heavy she was having a hard time hauling them to the surface.

"You've no business feeding ghastly carnivorous cats."

Frances hated cats. So cruel. And this particular cat. So unbrushed.

"And you've no business comforting ghastly carnivorous birds, in that case." Frances's eyes opened hard gold shafts. "I bet that worm thought some ghastly carnivorous thrush had got hold of it. What do you want to do? Take charge of the food chains? Rearrange the food webs? Dismantle the carbon cycle?" Philip laughed. "You want to rule the world? What a silly girl you are."

Constance fixed the plaster wordlessly. They were in the middle of some old familiar argument it seemed, probably exactly where they'd left off in Wales.

Constance was working up a generous amount of pure contempt for both of them when Frances left and Philip buttoned his cuffs. How just a man simply buttoning his khaki cuffs could be so moving, dispelling all contempt, unless it was that his hands were so shining and brown, Constance could not think.

"You smell awfully nice," she said.

"Natural odour of sanctity," he said. But it was not. It was the laundering in his shirt. She fell instantly in love with his shirt; the whole sensation suddenly reinforced by memories of Matthew in uniform during the war.

"That bird is dead," he said. He picked the little body up. He consigned it and the worm to the bucket. "It's cold." He and Constance were alone.

She was paralysed with caution and pleasure and guilt. Their eyes met. Philip Harisonn. She had a shock from not having remembered how lively and enquiring his eyes could be.

He came over to her and kissed her on each cheek twice, "Con, Connio, Constance, Con." As he had done so often in the old days when he came home. He was familiar, and a stranger. She was shy. He had her by the shoulders.

"I haven't seen you for ages. Far, far too long." He hugged her.

After a fleeting moment in contact with her, he almost immediately set her back again and looked at her properly for the first time. "You've changed," he said. He dropped his hands to his pockets, looking at her. He really did seem pleased to see her. "You've grown, or something...How are you?" She became a bit withdrawn. She was not up to that negative kind of question going with that positive kind of look.

Any development of this little scene was fortunately interrupted by a business-like Frances. She had expected, she said, to find Mrs. Laver here making a salad.

Something had happened on their holiday in Wales where Philip was stationed that had not improved Fran's manner face-to-face with her lover. Face-to-face it had always seemed distinctly cool to Constance's way of judging lovers. A Philip-visitation of this quite unpremeditated kind, so totally unprepared for mentally, spiritually, physically, domestically, though, thank God, everyone was at least dressed top and bottom, let alone a cat incident on top of it, set Frances, that rock of ages, unbelievably on edge. For more minutes, she would be going round the house, cursing and excited, like a spinning top, at a loss to know where her undivided attention might settle, and control of the world be gained once more.

However that might be, Fran's eyes, whatever the occasion or difficulty of the emotion, if she looked at you at all, never looked away from you to left or right if straight at you would do. And then you would think of topaz and gold and furze-moors and honey and pools of water with the sun on them, and the offer to enter her at her eyes was there, except that, with her eyes still on you, any of that nonsense and she would lock you out instantly, and then you could ponder on abysses, ice and fire, on her vulnerability and defiance and generally get your thoughts in a muddle. Poor Fran. Constance had now got her thoughts in a muddle. But Philip had not.

"Fran!" he said, stopping her in her purposeful twirl of concentrated but haphazard domesticity in the salad-making line and holding her by both hands. "I get such a picture of you from your letters," he did not say damn letters, "that I forget how very beautiful you are." And all this quite openly and as if one, Constance, did not exist.

Reluctantly, tactfully (though what did they care) Constance left the kitchen, but could not forbear to ease her ill-humour, call it jealousy, by crumpling in the corridor at the crack of the door. Silence.

An intention to listen-in had not quite fully formed when, embarrassingly, the door flew back and Frances, followed by Philip, made her way past her sister causing considerable draught in the various acts of skirt-swinging, breath-taking, hair-swirling, and breast-raising, together with various cancellation movements with her hands.

"Ah-ha!" Philip stopped to say, in a ridiculous caught-you voice as he was passing Constance.

"Ah-ha yourself!" Constance said, habits of speech slipping back to those old days when the one was always meeting the other carelessly in these corridors and landings.

Constance dismissed the sulks, together with conceived but unborn plans to make salads, and followed them.