Constance trudged upstairs to the third floor. She had had a marvellous evening. Life was full now of ongoing possibilities once Philip returned on leave at the end of the week; and strains of Delius, awfully quietly, it being midnight, came from Sarah's old upright in her room. All that counted.
But it also counted that she, Constance, had done no homework again. And she had forgotten to bring up a light-bulb for her bedroom and she could not work in bed by candlelight and she was worn out in any case. She passed her bedroom door and went on to the top sitting-room she shared. She regarded with profound distaste the books thrown about all over her desk. Fran's - she had inherited their father's leather-topped brass-handled, mahogany affair rescued and restored from the wreckage of the Old House - was as usual impeccably tidy, with actual pens and pencils and ink in the pen-and-ink stand, and reference books on guard at the ready. Sarah's desk was empty.
Down in the bathroom, Constance, made happy once more by her courageous decision to abandon all thoughts of homework, it was only punitive post-exam homework anyway, examined her newly-washed face above the damp neck-rim of a faded nightgown. It was a shiny, waxy white face, huge dark old eyeholes, red eyes, grey hair, referred to politely but not politely enough as ash. Plain. Good chin-line if you could keep your head half-cocked like that all the time and not a bad nose in the Greek fashion always providing the upper lip rested halfway down the chin. Dirty feet! Gym tomorrow! She yawned and her eyes were just filling copiously with tears of tiredness when a really galvanising racket broke out directly above in Sarah's room. Sarah and Philip no less, in unison, parts and counterparts, solo and duet, andante and allegro, con brio, without discretion, let or hindrance, were singing an old, all too recognisable song, and sending it chiming round the house. Not only was it loud, it was also lewd, Philip having written the words for Sarah, Sarah the music for Philip when they were children. They had based their childhood love-affair on it just at the time Sarah's first lover, Mervyn Evanwood, proposed himself, years ago, as Master of Ceremonies at a sitting-room concert. Astonishing words. Poem of Hate for Sarah Yokeham and Mervyn Evanwood. And he has flown as frail men should, as blows the dogrose off the wood. Breath held, as between wonder and lightning, waiting for the storm to burst from below, Constance hummed and danced upstairs, whirled and hopped onto the landing, wiping her washed, wet feet on the carpet and joining ecstatically in her own childhood once more. Last verse.
I hate you singer on the stage
Because you're such a tempting age
Of ravishing voice and doubtful taste
Because you haven't got much waist.
Your nose is long
Your mouth is wide
And I can almost see inside
You sing your song
And all your teeth
Stand dark among
That pound of beef
You call your tongue
You
call
your
tongue.
And yet you seem to light a fire
In me of all my heart's desire
Your flesh I yearn for like my mother's
Although you spurn me for another's
Don't have him, Sarah Yokeham, or
Plonk, plonk, before you're spoken for
Ever so quietly, and in pretty counterpart
Don't have him Sarah Yokeham or
Plonk, plonk, before you're spoken for.
Nothing could content them, having excited themselves so skilfully in there, but that the repetition of these huge absurdities must follow in canon, quite preventing them from hearing the oncoming crashing of feet. Constance glided smugly to her room and left the door ajar. The candle juddered. She got into bed and listened.
She could not hear what was being said. The racket had stopped. Laughter. She was just about to get out of bed again to join the departures when her bedroom door opened a little.
"Con...are you in bed? Can I come to say goodnight?"
And stay to say goodmorning.
Blinking prettily, she hoped, and sleepily, as if sleepily, to hide such embarrassing inspirations, Constance was about to sit up, having rescued her feet from under Philip's behind, when Frances came in and sat down next to him on the chair at the bottom of the divan. Philip put his head on Frances's shoulder. Frances got up. One would never pass Frances by, but when she pushed back her heavy hair to speak her mind, being as honest as she knew how, her eyes shining, then he must love her completely. Damn them. "Why don't you look at me, or smile at me?" Philip said to Frances, smiling. He got up. He took her hand. He was going to lead her away perhaps. But she did not want to go. She now sat down on Constance's bed, practically on Constance's knees. Lovely view of two backs if viewed longitudinally.
"You never told me how you liked The Man Who Fell Off Snowdon," Philip said.
Constance was well aware that her presence, much as Fran might hate it, would, Fran hoped, make Philip safe. No end to Fran's silliness.
"I didn't like it. It was an attack. Let the sun set on Frances, it said."
"Well," Philip laughed, "misunderstood again! When you hold up to me as a thousand times more significant to Man a city church which I know you may possibly have studied once and certainly never notice except wilfully, you inspire me, I turned you into a mountain..." (There seemed to Constance wide margins for misunderstanding there, if Philip were putting a fair care)
"It's no good joking, Philip." Frances withdrew her hand. He shook her shoulder gently. She seemed only embarrassed and angry, heavy. Her heaviness, the particular kind of immovable sense of her own righteousness irritated him. Anyway, it irritated Constance; anyone would think she Constance was invisible, like some servant, beneath notice.
"You've been arguing with Matthew. You get dreadfully...intense."
"But I learned something. Didn't you? Strange how my mere presence takes all the life out of you," Philip said. Constance moved off irritably about a foot down the bed, earhole exposed.
"In all your letters not one word have you said about staying in the Army."
"I talked to you about it in Wales. Nothing's definite."
"To me, it makes our writing to each other, our whole friendship, of little importance."
"Not that you mind my staying in the Army. You must be rather pleased. We can proceed on paper."
"What exactly does that mean?"
"I've told you what I could. I've only just decided to try. It's impossible to write everything. You don't write everything."
"I do!" Frances must have flushed at that, she was deeply offended. She stood up.
"Especially you." But he must have known she was only defending the importance of their letters in her life, because he turned to smile towards her again.
"There's something ...odd about this decision that you haven't told me," she said.
He shaded his eyes as if from the candlelight, screwing them up. "There are no rules for being yourself," he said. Frances was tense, holding her body hard, trembling a little in the dark room. Her face was crumpled, frowning, her eyes distant. They were both pained by what they saw wherever it was they were looking at. Then Frances turned to him. Her eyes pleaded. Let it be a first simple love. Constance shivered with the message and the insight, and covered her head.
"We can't talk here," Frances said.
"Oh my God! I can leave," said Constance and got furiously our of her bed. Not that that interrupted anybody.
"Certainly we can talk here. The very place you chose. Enjoy the world."
He did not want a first simple love. He moved away from Frances. "I'm back again on Saturday. I'll take you out to supper. How about that?" He looked at Frances hopefully, and took Constance's arm. The meaning of that, Constance looked down at his hand, was that he did not want to frighten Frances.
"No, that's impossible." Oh indeed! Spontaneity was not Fran's strong point. She obviously had not decided what to say to him. If she yearned for him now it was not for his company. Philip examined the junk on the mantelpiece. Constance sighed for all the waste. Frances, after a moment, left.
Philip turned rather helplessly towards the door. "Tell me if you change your mind about supper," he called, but in a way that made Constance feel angry with both of them.
Wednesday, 20 April 2011
Friday, 1 April 2011
POST 15
Aunt Molly came back, with Frances grinning behind her. Philip got up and took Molly by the arm. "How's your golf? How about golf next week when I get back?"
"Golf? Really, Philip? Will you have time? My dear, that would be a treat. You dear soul." Aunt Molly kissed him very fondly and patted him several times. "Darling boy," she said, "You always make me talk too much. Don't go off to that beastly war, that's all."
Constance leaped up, inexplicably unburdened and full of life.
"Tell Sarah for goodness' sake to stop that noise," Molly said. "And Constance, go to bed. It's nearly ten o'clock. School tomorrow!"
"Sarah, as always, is playing very well." Philip kissed Molly. "And I haven't finished with Constance."
"Well, off you go, anyway," Aunt Molly sent them off. "Goodnight!"
When they reached the sitting room, Frances said, "For God's sake Sarah!" Sarah slipped off the piano stool, lingered a moment, and disappeared, sucking her thumb.
Mrs. Kenys had not arrived; and the effect of the conversation with Philip was to make Constance ashamed that she had hoped Mrs. Kenys would not come. She went over and kissed Matthew lightly, playfully, but not really playfully, and when he took her hand and held it, the better to listen to Tom she did not snatch it away.
Tom was giving out his opinion on the atom bomb: it was, he said, disgraceful. For pure essence of ennui this was, after a while, hard to beat. Even so, she looked at Tom's plump hands, his large chin. In the matter of being known and Philip's not having finished with her, she could probably melt for Tom too tonight.
As for Philip, he made the night smell of the future. She watched him as he parted from the silky, sulky Camilla with a swift glow of intelligent amused enmity, returned with interest by Camilla. Constance did not know if he was handsome but could never have helped liking his face. He could easily become the object of her own most profound attention; without she in turn becoming the object of his. Does one-sidedness matter? It didn't matter. If he put his body against hers as he had done earlier, her own face would turn beautiful in his arms.
Even Frances she saw afresh. How Philip must love her. Frances being of large character in Constance's admiring opinion, had returned to life and power, forceful, wilful and radiant. She was putting it on of course, not quite at ease, but it was admirably done, tawny hair brushed unfashionably long, chin up as high as Philip's. Silvery Sarah would probably not come back. Sarah had no desire or perhaps no need to test her independence or her character in public.
If Philip and Frances had made love to each other, how could it possibly have gone so wrong? Something to do with Camilla? If they had not made love, perhaps that was the trouble? How did Philip make Frances so unlike herself? How could Frances even pretend to prefer, at the moment, Tom's attentions to those of Philip?
Well, Tom too is alive, meaning by that no singular thing but that he too lives and breathes and so, for that reason, this time of night and heat, is entirely loveable. What counts is that Constance is melting for all of them. All these men, all her friends. Wants to give to them, be taken by them. Out of herself. And they are being so boring.
"How's old Grodust?" Constance said to Philip who had put himself in a chair next to Frances. Frances was avoiding sofas.
"Grodust? You mean Barbara?" He looked as if he could eat her.
"Barbara? Seem to be a lot of them," she was excited by his intense interest. The Barbara behind the publication of Philip's poems? "Grodusts. No. I mean the General." She met Matthew's eye.
"Come and sit here," Matthew made room, "by your Uncle Matthew."
You are not my Uncle and the time when I wished you were is long past. You are Tom's father and Philip's uncle, and Tom and Philip living with us through the war does not, I hope, turn them into my cousins. In private you have been nakedly Matthew. We have indulged in awful practices. Sitting next to you now makes that seem very distasteful. She sat down.
Incidentally, said a Presence, if you ponder that distaste, persist with it, don't dash off from it, you might discover something quite interesting about fantasies. As to the rites, well, now there is Philip.
"So, you've cheered up. You've been teasing that boy Philip. I've been watching you," Matthew said. She smiled. "What's so amusing?"
"You're making love to me!"
"Am I? Let me tell you. You have a way of looking at people which is shy, mild and persistent, and I may add, calculating. And then you grin like a Cheshire cat. It's not unnoticeable."
"You admit it?" she said softly, taking a drink from his glass of champagne. "You're making love to me?"
"Better than making you cry isn't it?" He went on smiling, only his eyes now. "And how are you getting on at school?"
"All right, thank you," she said and got up, picking up a sponge finger to eat on the way. She stopped at the door leaning there. Oh God! How is School?! It was a lovely evening, but she was doing it all, the lovemaking for herself.
"It's gratifying to know I haven't wasted my cash on his education anyway," said Matthew behind her, looking at his son gratified. Tom was certainly educated; proper little Hitler Mrs. Sage always said he was, and Constance believed that domestic friend of long-standing.
Hating Matthew and envious of the attention Tom got from his father - but what matter? There they all were, a self-contained group under the lamps. They were on to Korea now, good and proper. What did they know? What did any of them really know? It was a very good question to which, she had, since reading the Book of Job, already worked out quite a good answer. They knew nothing, and they never remembered the important thing. God's great maw was after the lot of them. Where were they when God created the earth? Nowhere. They were nowhere. And it was the one thing none of them remembered. None of them remembered. It was, all, such a waste. Not remembering that turned so much to waste. Not remembering made their affairs seem so big and timeless. All of them, wasting her readiness, wasting their turn, our turn, to be alive. As Constance turned to go away, Philip got up, took her hand. "I need your company," he said, and brought her back to sit down by him. The others had not stopped talking. It was a beautiful moment. She would like to have told him how much she admired him, how strange and beautiful he could be to her. But there was no opportunity. Anyone would think there was a limitless number of fine summer nights in a life-time.
"I wouldn't say that," said Philip. "As a matter of fact, I don't understand quite ..."
Constance listened to the silence, much of it her own, as it exploded into the present. Philip arguing, Matthew analysing. No general conversation.
"The limiting political fact is this - no, listen for once. There is at the 38th parallel in Korea, a frontier between the East and the West; it has been attacked; it must be stabilised. We don't have to go any further into good and bad, metaphysics, abstractions, old labels, or ill-used words. This fact is so economic and limited that it has nothing to do with what you call `the needs of the Koreans themselves', leave them aside."
As Matthew Kellory came up formidable, Constance felt her own significance in the world and all the joy of her own thoughts and insights evaporating.
"Ha! That's a good admission anyway. Nothing to do with the needs of the Koreans!" Philip laughed. Nobody else did.
"Not at all." Matthew was quiet and strange. "You make the mistake of thinking you're God. You think that the needs and aspirations of Korea are simply, in one sticky clutch, easily accountable or dismissable by you as you choose."
"The history of the Koreans after four hundred years of waiting, and now we've pushed the Japs off their backs, suggests to me," said Philip, "that they should be united after all this long time; have a chance to re-identify themselves as a nation. We might make that possible if we went flat out against the North." Philip shuffled, went red and stubborn and obviously knowing only what he had picked up that week in the papers, was reluctant to argue but reactively bent on it. He was nowhere near as sure of what he thought as he wanted to sound. He just passionately resented Matthew's authority.
"I suppose you may say that the same thought has occurred to the North from their side. North attacks South. Unification. What's wrong with that?"
Constance sat up, looking anxiously from Philip to Matthew; she was being worked upon to take a side.
"Only your cynicism. Because to unite them from the South in a free-voting democracy is better than unifying them under North Korean Communism. I believe that. I ought to support my beliefs in action." Philip felt himself going much too far; what, after all, did he mean by `in action'? He noticed with relief he had been generally taken to have polemical rather than literal intentions.
"You may be wrong to fight Koreans for what you believe is best for them," said Matthew.
"But I may fight them for what is best for me?"
"That's right. That's the only such moral reason. And for that they will fight you. War as an extension of politics only means the most economic, limited war possible; war as an extension of ideals is limitless and hideous."
Fully-roused men talking; there was more violence than the talk of war in it. More in their voices than in their words. Constance put her head in her hands and looked at them through her fingers. It seemed just possible that she was going to lose one of them. Even Tom was quiet.
"You surely believe that democracy is right? If we can make it possible for everyone, every person in Korea to have his say then we ought." Philip leaned forward squarely, his well-built frame, elbows on thighs, keeping his ground for him.
"It's none of your business."
"War is hideous," said Philip. "We shouldn't go into it except on the most serious provocation, not for politics or power, but only for the highest ideals, and to win outright. If we believe it's a righteous war, we ought to put all our heart and force into it."
"Go ahead," said Matthew. "The old `one response possible'." Matthew sometimes got angry with Tom, but Constance had never heard Matthew speak like this to anyone else.
"The one response possible?" Philip felt all the advantage taken of him; his being put down. Constance felt that too from Frances blushing and leaning away from him.
"`Force to the utmost. Force without stint or limit. The righteous and triumphant Force which shall make Right the law of the world...' Woodrow Wilson, as it happens, but also the consoling and self-flattering satisfaction of tyrants and ideologues everywhere. Lenin. To make a clean sweep. How very self-ennobling, not to have to face the compromising complexities of facts that go against the pure idea. To be so easily able to give up the moderate, the fitting, the thick difficult reality for the emotional ease of your pure plain little abstracting idea of absolute right."
Well, damn Matthew, Constance thought.
Philip, who did not believe in absolute right or unlimited force, but only in unlimited moral courage and his own will, lost his temper and his line of argument. "I suppose one does not have to apply unlimited force even in a righteous war for a pure idea; but only so much as will conclusively win. I'm not inane..."
"Well, pure ideas and, likewise, ideas of purity have always been voracious feeders on flesh and blood. They are also pretty choosy feeders as I personally found out in Dachau five years ago. You may have a chance to judge for yourself, Philip. I agree, if the Americans can turn this into an anti-communist crusade they must. It puts the war on to a false premise, but a crusade will look better for the administration in next year's November elections. You can't put forward a war policy as subtle as limitation and peace-keeping and get away with it in America in election year."
"Because that would be thought to be immoral. Precisely." Philip's mind was working, and so of course his mouth and eyebrows were working and now his eyes were lighting up with ridiculous determination. He didn't know how ridiculous he looked. Constance loved him. Come on Philip. "It's you who's dealing in abstractions," he said. This direction seemed right to him at last and he let out at Matthew with violence and triumph. Frances looked at her feet and away up at the curtain rail. "Stand on the parallel you say. A parallel is an abstraction if anything is. A pretty new one too. And probably indefensible, or why the trouble? You can't have armies teetering on a rationalised imaginary line, on an abstraction like that ..."
"Oh yes, you can have armies teetering on an abstraction as you call it." Matthew took a huge breath. "Forever if you like. But it requires two things. A moral commitment to the stoic endurance of constantly unconsoling affairs, flux; and a deep conviction of the immorality of waste, and the immorality of the clean sweep, oh, and much else," he gasped and held his throat, breathing deeply. He wiped his forehead with the red silk and returned it to the hip pocket of his jacket out of sight.
Frances on account of the deep feeling generated was white now with rage, or was it embarrassment? Against Philip, of course, although she could not possibly have enjoyed Matthew's crack about Lenin. And yet Philip is right, right, right for me. Beowulf in person. The strength of thirty. Only listen to him, full-flood. Your one huge limitless effort. The sinews of your heart. The total heroism for the one right thing. "War is so hideous, how can you be half-hearted?" he asked again, after a moment, and with a visible conviction of it's being really unanswerable. "How can you fight without ideals?" And as if he had half-answered against himself, there was uncertainty and a plea there now.
Matthew smiled wryly and half-admiringly at Philip, and at that smile. Constance felt a rush of love for them both. Whereas Matthew with Tom was of small interest, except anthropologically, Philip and Matthew wrestling together were enormously fascinating, now that Matthew had smiled. As lovers, it would be almost impossible to choose between them. Mouths, those mouths full of words, are for kissing. Those hands, Matthew's teasing out his sense in fine small movements, Philip's freely chopping the air, how they would come to life on your back or your breast or your face, penetrators, love-makers, begetters of children. Her thoughts were not reckless, they were induced quietly now by a blissful, luxurious feeling brought on by just their company in the same room and by the contemplation of everything, mouths, legs, shoes, hands, that was masculine about these living, breathing, jewels of men.
She was offered, by Tom, and accepted, another glass of champagne. But it was impossible to accept the actual reality of the matter: that these men were blind and bound and uncaring of her, bound furthermore to ideas that totally denied her significance to them, wasting her life, while she was blooming for them. It was Frances now who sat on the arm of Matthew's chair.
"My dear Philip," Frances said. "You haven't a leg to stand on."
"So be it," he said mildly and stood up. "Come on, Cam. Camilla!" She was asleep on Tom's shoulder once more. Philip gently stroked her hair. Tom grinned.
"I'm inclined to agree with you, Phil, about all that," he nodded his head in his father's direction.
"Good," Philip said. "Wake her up. It's time we left. I must find Sarah." He left as Aunt Molly came in.
"I see some pleasure in the one huge limitless effort has touched his imagination," Matthew said slowly, gasping a little for breath.
"It might just turn out to be a war for principle," said Tom to his father. "You wouldn't understand that."
"How dare you speak to your father like that. He fought a long and bloody war for your thick hide," Aunt Molly said. "How you stand for it, Matthew, is a mystery to me..."
"I fought a war for him and myself. But I did not bring him up. And I came back a hero. He resents that quite rightly...Ah, hush Tom."
"Can't you see your father's not well. Matthew, my dear, Patricia would like you to telephone. She could not get away. Your car has come back."
"Ah, I see...Thank you. Philip's going to be all right."
"But there's such a thing as being killed," Molly said. "We lost his brother Jim."
"Jim," Matthew closed his eyes. "Ah, Molly, don't remind me." He got up. He was very tired.
"Matthew, are you stuffy? Shall I open more window?"
"I'm fine. I'm fine," he said brusquely, but nobody was fooled. "The Army will bring him back from wherever it sends him if its humanly possible. He pretends not, but it's Korea that's finally done it. Well. That's done all of us. Completely out of the blue."
"It's not just Korea," Molly said impatiently.
"He won't go to Korea," Tom said. "Or stay in the Army. It's just talk. I can tell. Fran agrees."
"He'll get there if he can, don't worry. I don't want him to go, but I understand him," Matthew said.
"One waits for it. In children. I suppose. The decisive act. The I-must-Go."
"Yes. Yes. And I must go Molly. Get some air and some sleep."
"Aren't you going to telephone Patricia?"
"When I get home."
"Go along with your father, Tom. And give him some peace."
Constance kissed Matthew goodnight kindly, but he could hardly wait to get away. His desire to get away restored some of her confidence in his self-hood, but he was a tired old man. She was unhappy now that Patricia had not come. Tom reluctantly went with him.
"Are you coming Philip?" Tom wanted to know.
"We'll follow you. Won't be long."
Constance was sorry to see them go because the evening was not yet at an end with Philip and Camilla still in the house.
"Golf? Really, Philip? Will you have time? My dear, that would be a treat. You dear soul." Aunt Molly kissed him very fondly and patted him several times. "Darling boy," she said, "You always make me talk too much. Don't go off to that beastly war, that's all."
Constance leaped up, inexplicably unburdened and full of life.
"Tell Sarah for goodness' sake to stop that noise," Molly said. "And Constance, go to bed. It's nearly ten o'clock. School tomorrow!"
"Sarah, as always, is playing very well." Philip kissed Molly. "And I haven't finished with Constance."
"Well, off you go, anyway," Aunt Molly sent them off. "Goodnight!"
When they reached the sitting room, Frances said, "For God's sake Sarah!" Sarah slipped off the piano stool, lingered a moment, and disappeared, sucking her thumb.
Mrs. Kenys had not arrived; and the effect of the conversation with Philip was to make Constance ashamed that she had hoped Mrs. Kenys would not come. She went over and kissed Matthew lightly, playfully, but not really playfully, and when he took her hand and held it, the better to listen to Tom she did not snatch it away.
Tom was giving out his opinion on the atom bomb: it was, he said, disgraceful. For pure essence of ennui this was, after a while, hard to beat. Even so, she looked at Tom's plump hands, his large chin. In the matter of being known and Philip's not having finished with her, she could probably melt for Tom too tonight.
As for Philip, he made the night smell of the future. She watched him as he parted from the silky, sulky Camilla with a swift glow of intelligent amused enmity, returned with interest by Camilla. Constance did not know if he was handsome but could never have helped liking his face. He could easily become the object of her own most profound attention; without she in turn becoming the object of his. Does one-sidedness matter? It didn't matter. If he put his body against hers as he had done earlier, her own face would turn beautiful in his arms.
Even Frances she saw afresh. How Philip must love her. Frances being of large character in Constance's admiring opinion, had returned to life and power, forceful, wilful and radiant. She was putting it on of course, not quite at ease, but it was admirably done, tawny hair brushed unfashionably long, chin up as high as Philip's. Silvery Sarah would probably not come back. Sarah had no desire or perhaps no need to test her independence or her character in public.
If Philip and Frances had made love to each other, how could it possibly have gone so wrong? Something to do with Camilla? If they had not made love, perhaps that was the trouble? How did Philip make Frances so unlike herself? How could Frances even pretend to prefer, at the moment, Tom's attentions to those of Philip?
Well, Tom too is alive, meaning by that no singular thing but that he too lives and breathes and so, for that reason, this time of night and heat, is entirely loveable. What counts is that Constance is melting for all of them. All these men, all her friends. Wants to give to them, be taken by them. Out of herself. And they are being so boring.
"How's old Grodust?" Constance said to Philip who had put himself in a chair next to Frances. Frances was avoiding sofas.
"Grodust? You mean Barbara?" He looked as if he could eat her.
"Barbara? Seem to be a lot of them," she was excited by his intense interest. The Barbara behind the publication of Philip's poems? "Grodusts. No. I mean the General." She met Matthew's eye.
"Come and sit here," Matthew made room, "by your Uncle Matthew."
You are not my Uncle and the time when I wished you were is long past. You are Tom's father and Philip's uncle, and Tom and Philip living with us through the war does not, I hope, turn them into my cousins. In private you have been nakedly Matthew. We have indulged in awful practices. Sitting next to you now makes that seem very distasteful. She sat down.
Incidentally, said a Presence, if you ponder that distaste, persist with it, don't dash off from it, you might discover something quite interesting about fantasies. As to the rites, well, now there is Philip.
"So, you've cheered up. You've been teasing that boy Philip. I've been watching you," Matthew said. She smiled. "What's so amusing?"
"You're making love to me!"
"Am I? Let me tell you. You have a way of looking at people which is shy, mild and persistent, and I may add, calculating. And then you grin like a Cheshire cat. It's not unnoticeable."
"You admit it?" she said softly, taking a drink from his glass of champagne. "You're making love to me?"
"Better than making you cry isn't it?" He went on smiling, only his eyes now. "And how are you getting on at school?"
"All right, thank you," she said and got up, picking up a sponge finger to eat on the way. She stopped at the door leaning there. Oh God! How is School?! It was a lovely evening, but she was doing it all, the lovemaking for herself.
"It's gratifying to know I haven't wasted my cash on his education anyway," said Matthew behind her, looking at his son gratified. Tom was certainly educated; proper little Hitler Mrs. Sage always said he was, and Constance believed that domestic friend of long-standing.
Hating Matthew and envious of the attention Tom got from his father - but what matter? There they all were, a self-contained group under the lamps. They were on to Korea now, good and proper. What did they know? What did any of them really know? It was a very good question to which, she had, since reading the Book of Job, already worked out quite a good answer. They knew nothing, and they never remembered the important thing. God's great maw was after the lot of them. Where were they when God created the earth? Nowhere. They were nowhere. And it was the one thing none of them remembered. None of them remembered. It was, all, such a waste. Not remembering that turned so much to waste. Not remembering made their affairs seem so big and timeless. All of them, wasting her readiness, wasting their turn, our turn, to be alive. As Constance turned to go away, Philip got up, took her hand. "I need your company," he said, and brought her back to sit down by him. The others had not stopped talking. It was a beautiful moment. She would like to have told him how much she admired him, how strange and beautiful he could be to her. But there was no opportunity. Anyone would think there was a limitless number of fine summer nights in a life-time.
"I wouldn't say that," said Philip. "As a matter of fact, I don't understand quite ..."
Constance listened to the silence, much of it her own, as it exploded into the present. Philip arguing, Matthew analysing. No general conversation.
"The limiting political fact is this - no, listen for once. There is at the 38th parallel in Korea, a frontier between the East and the West; it has been attacked; it must be stabilised. We don't have to go any further into good and bad, metaphysics, abstractions, old labels, or ill-used words. This fact is so economic and limited that it has nothing to do with what you call `the needs of the Koreans themselves', leave them aside."
As Matthew Kellory came up formidable, Constance felt her own significance in the world and all the joy of her own thoughts and insights evaporating.
"Ha! That's a good admission anyway. Nothing to do with the needs of the Koreans!" Philip laughed. Nobody else did.
"Not at all." Matthew was quiet and strange. "You make the mistake of thinking you're God. You think that the needs and aspirations of Korea are simply, in one sticky clutch, easily accountable or dismissable by you as you choose."
"The history of the Koreans after four hundred years of waiting, and now we've pushed the Japs off their backs, suggests to me," said Philip, "that they should be united after all this long time; have a chance to re-identify themselves as a nation. We might make that possible if we went flat out against the North." Philip shuffled, went red and stubborn and obviously knowing only what he had picked up that week in the papers, was reluctant to argue but reactively bent on it. He was nowhere near as sure of what he thought as he wanted to sound. He just passionately resented Matthew's authority.
"I suppose you may say that the same thought has occurred to the North from their side. North attacks South. Unification. What's wrong with that?"
Constance sat up, looking anxiously from Philip to Matthew; she was being worked upon to take a side.
"Only your cynicism. Because to unite them from the South in a free-voting democracy is better than unifying them under North Korean Communism. I believe that. I ought to support my beliefs in action." Philip felt himself going much too far; what, after all, did he mean by `in action'? He noticed with relief he had been generally taken to have polemical rather than literal intentions.
"You may be wrong to fight Koreans for what you believe is best for them," said Matthew.
"But I may fight them for what is best for me?"
"That's right. That's the only such moral reason. And for that they will fight you. War as an extension of politics only means the most economic, limited war possible; war as an extension of ideals is limitless and hideous."
Fully-roused men talking; there was more violence than the talk of war in it. More in their voices than in their words. Constance put her head in her hands and looked at them through her fingers. It seemed just possible that she was going to lose one of them. Even Tom was quiet.
"You surely believe that democracy is right? If we can make it possible for everyone, every person in Korea to have his say then we ought." Philip leaned forward squarely, his well-built frame, elbows on thighs, keeping his ground for him.
"It's none of your business."
"War is hideous," said Philip. "We shouldn't go into it except on the most serious provocation, not for politics or power, but only for the highest ideals, and to win outright. If we believe it's a righteous war, we ought to put all our heart and force into it."
"Go ahead," said Matthew. "The old `one response possible'." Matthew sometimes got angry with Tom, but Constance had never heard Matthew speak like this to anyone else.
"The one response possible?" Philip felt all the advantage taken of him; his being put down. Constance felt that too from Frances blushing and leaning away from him.
"`Force to the utmost. Force without stint or limit. The righteous and triumphant Force which shall make Right the law of the world...' Woodrow Wilson, as it happens, but also the consoling and self-flattering satisfaction of tyrants and ideologues everywhere. Lenin. To make a clean sweep. How very self-ennobling, not to have to face the compromising complexities of facts that go against the pure idea. To be so easily able to give up the moderate, the fitting, the thick difficult reality for the emotional ease of your pure plain little abstracting idea of absolute right."
Well, damn Matthew, Constance thought.
Philip, who did not believe in absolute right or unlimited force, but only in unlimited moral courage and his own will, lost his temper and his line of argument. "I suppose one does not have to apply unlimited force even in a righteous war for a pure idea; but only so much as will conclusively win. I'm not inane..."
"Well, pure ideas and, likewise, ideas of purity have always been voracious feeders on flesh and blood. They are also pretty choosy feeders as I personally found out in Dachau five years ago. You may have a chance to judge for yourself, Philip. I agree, if the Americans can turn this into an anti-communist crusade they must. It puts the war on to a false premise, but a crusade will look better for the administration in next year's November elections. You can't put forward a war policy as subtle as limitation and peace-keeping and get away with it in America in election year."
"Because that would be thought to be immoral. Precisely." Philip's mind was working, and so of course his mouth and eyebrows were working and now his eyes were lighting up with ridiculous determination. He didn't know how ridiculous he looked. Constance loved him. Come on Philip. "It's you who's dealing in abstractions," he said. This direction seemed right to him at last and he let out at Matthew with violence and triumph. Frances looked at her feet and away up at the curtain rail. "Stand on the parallel you say. A parallel is an abstraction if anything is. A pretty new one too. And probably indefensible, or why the trouble? You can't have armies teetering on a rationalised imaginary line, on an abstraction like that ..."
"Oh yes, you can have armies teetering on an abstraction as you call it." Matthew took a huge breath. "Forever if you like. But it requires two things. A moral commitment to the stoic endurance of constantly unconsoling affairs, flux; and a deep conviction of the immorality of waste, and the immorality of the clean sweep, oh, and much else," he gasped and held his throat, breathing deeply. He wiped his forehead with the red silk and returned it to the hip pocket of his jacket out of sight.
Frances on account of the deep feeling generated was white now with rage, or was it embarrassment? Against Philip, of course, although she could not possibly have enjoyed Matthew's crack about Lenin. And yet Philip is right, right, right for me. Beowulf in person. The strength of thirty. Only listen to him, full-flood. Your one huge limitless effort. The sinews of your heart. The total heroism for the one right thing. "War is so hideous, how can you be half-hearted?" he asked again, after a moment, and with a visible conviction of it's being really unanswerable. "How can you fight without ideals?" And as if he had half-answered against himself, there was uncertainty and a plea there now.
Matthew smiled wryly and half-admiringly at Philip, and at that smile. Constance felt a rush of love for them both. Whereas Matthew with Tom was of small interest, except anthropologically, Philip and Matthew wrestling together were enormously fascinating, now that Matthew had smiled. As lovers, it would be almost impossible to choose between them. Mouths, those mouths full of words, are for kissing. Those hands, Matthew's teasing out his sense in fine small movements, Philip's freely chopping the air, how they would come to life on your back or your breast or your face, penetrators, love-makers, begetters of children. Her thoughts were not reckless, they were induced quietly now by a blissful, luxurious feeling brought on by just their company in the same room and by the contemplation of everything, mouths, legs, shoes, hands, that was masculine about these living, breathing, jewels of men.
She was offered, by Tom, and accepted, another glass of champagne. But it was impossible to accept the actual reality of the matter: that these men were blind and bound and uncaring of her, bound furthermore to ideas that totally denied her significance to them, wasting her life, while she was blooming for them. It was Frances now who sat on the arm of Matthew's chair.
"My dear Philip," Frances said. "You haven't a leg to stand on."
"So be it," he said mildly and stood up. "Come on, Cam. Camilla!" She was asleep on Tom's shoulder once more. Philip gently stroked her hair. Tom grinned.
"I'm inclined to agree with you, Phil, about all that," he nodded his head in his father's direction.
"Good," Philip said. "Wake her up. It's time we left. I must find Sarah." He left as Aunt Molly came in.
"I see some pleasure in the one huge limitless effort has touched his imagination," Matthew said slowly, gasping a little for breath.
"It might just turn out to be a war for principle," said Tom to his father. "You wouldn't understand that."
"How dare you speak to your father like that. He fought a long and bloody war for your thick hide," Aunt Molly said. "How you stand for it, Matthew, is a mystery to me..."
"I fought a war for him and myself. But I did not bring him up. And I came back a hero. He resents that quite rightly...Ah, hush Tom."
"Can't you see your father's not well. Matthew, my dear, Patricia would like you to telephone. She could not get away. Your car has come back."
"Ah, I see...Thank you. Philip's going to be all right."
"But there's such a thing as being killed," Molly said. "We lost his brother Jim."
"Jim," Matthew closed his eyes. "Ah, Molly, don't remind me." He got up. He was very tired.
"Matthew, are you stuffy? Shall I open more window?"
"I'm fine. I'm fine," he said brusquely, but nobody was fooled. "The Army will bring him back from wherever it sends him if its humanly possible. He pretends not, but it's Korea that's finally done it. Well. That's done all of us. Completely out of the blue."
"It's not just Korea," Molly said impatiently.
"He won't go to Korea," Tom said. "Or stay in the Army. It's just talk. I can tell. Fran agrees."
"He'll get there if he can, don't worry. I don't want him to go, but I understand him," Matthew said.
"One waits for it. In children. I suppose. The decisive act. The I-must-Go."
"Yes. Yes. And I must go Molly. Get some air and some sleep."
"Aren't you going to telephone Patricia?"
"When I get home."
"Go along with your father, Tom. And give him some peace."
Constance kissed Matthew goodnight kindly, but he could hardly wait to get away. His desire to get away restored some of her confidence in his self-hood, but he was a tired old man. She was unhappy now that Patricia had not come. Tom reluctantly went with him.
"Are you coming Philip?" Tom wanted to know.
"We'll follow you. Won't be long."
Constance was sorry to see them go because the evening was not yet at an end with Philip and Camilla still in the house.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)