Blaming (Virago Modern Classics) (2 page)

We may be tempted to read this speech purely in terms of that snobbishly inflected light relief – bless the lower orders, aren’t they funny! – which characterizes the appearance of cooks, housemaids and landladies in the plays of Taylor’s contemporaries, Noël Coward and Terence Rattigan. Doubtless it has a smack of this, but Ernie is more than a comic turn within the novel’s dramatic layout. From being practically useful to the newly widowed Amy, he becomes indispensable as a confidant, a figure not unlike those in French neoclassical drama,
whose job is to receive the emotional offloadings of the principal characters and offer comfort with the aid of their own dogged normality.

Blaming
offers a superb illustration of its author’s ability to devise fictional structures in which anything like a straightforward plot arranged as an episodic narrative sequence is almost nonexistent Taylor was always more of a modernist than anyone gave her credit for, and the apparently boneless quality of many of her novels
(Palladian
is a good example from the earliest phase of her career) seems designed to compel us to home in on those crises of apprehension and interpretation between characters which form the real focus of her creative interest. What takes place in
Blaming
looks, when summarized, fairly simple. Amy, whose husband Nick dies suddenly while the pair of them are on holiday in Istanbul, is helped through the practical difficulties surrounding her loss by Martha, an American novelist whom at first she is reluctant to contact again after the two women have gone their separate ways. Eventually Martha secures an invitation to visit. Her presence in Amy’s life is irritatingly intrusive, but a curious bond starts to form between the two women. ‘In a way, Martha became part of the passing of time’, yet Amy continues to resent her prodigality and impulsiveness. She herself develops an ever-closer liaison with the family doctor Gareth Lloyd, under the saturnine gaze of her son and daughter-in-law James and Maggie, altogether less endearing than their two children.

That, more or less, is it, apart from a final episode which comes closer than any other to the traditional idea of things ‘happening’ in a story and which I have no
intention of spoiling for the reader (despite most people’s habit of turning to the introduction after finishing the book). What, then, is
Blaming
about? Early in the book, Amy, curious to read Martha’s novels, borrows one of than from the library. She thought,

What a stifling little world it was, of a love-affair gone wrong, of sleeping-pills and contraceptives, tears, immolation; a woman on her own. Objects took the place of characters – the cracked plate, a dripping tap, a bunch of water-sprinkled violets minutely described, a tin of sardines, a broken comb; and the lone woman moved among them as if in a dream. The writing was spare, as if translated from the French.

Apart from the final detail – and how well
Blaming
itself would render into French – it is hard not to see here the precise opposite of Elizabeth Taylor’s own mature novels, especially this one. Whereas in early works like
At Mrs Lippincote’s
aspects of colour, shape, scent and touch play a significant role in focusing the attention of both the characters and the reader,
Blaming
suggests something like a barely suppressed anger in the way whereby Amy and others force themselves to notice the physical and the visual when time might be better spent on the evaluation and articulation of feeling. The furious dismissal of Istanbul and its attractions at the beginning is an augury of this deliberate inwardness, so that objects appearing later in the book, such as Ernie’s new teeth and the clothes worn by James and Maggie’s guests, seem merely annoying distractions. Even the garden at the back of Gareth’s house is reduced to a correlative of his boredom and longing for Amy.

By paring the purely descriptive element to the bone, Taylor can concentrate on the world of guilt, recrimination and remorse at the heart of her novel. The prevailing mood is one of subdued bleakness which possibly reflects the writer’s own sense of time being against her as she worked, while being entirely consistent with the moral viewpoint pervading her previous books. Though the characters themselves, restless Martha, fretful Amy, aggravating James and the inquisitive grandchild Dora, seem to forge relationships with one another through a medium of disappointed expectations, their creator continually invokes our indulgence towards them for such a negative approach to the business of emotional connection. Human behaviour, she implies, is never as good as we require it to be, yet so much of what we might take for potential evil is really due to the failure to speak out, to those peculiar qualities of reticence and secrecy which are judged to be peculiarly influential in forming the English state of mind.

It’s a Russian rather than an English writer of whom this resigned attitude to human imperfections most reminds us. Anton Chekhov finds the same source of inspiration in the unspoken, the emotionally garbled and confused, the casual understatement providing the words which will somehow speak volumes more than some elaborate flourish of rhetoric. The other more obvious influence on Taylor’s artistic self-restraint is Jane Austen, an often dangerous role-model for novelists who mistake her reserve for mere good manners. That Taylor clearly appreciated just how mercilessly her mixture of clarity and understatement could work is shown by the scene between Maggie and James at the
beginning of
Chapter 5
of
Blaming,
whose dialogue, springing from a professed desire to be usefully consoling to Amy, works towards a position where nothing whatever is to be done for her by either of them. The model here is obviously the similar moment in
Sense and Sensibility
where Mrs Dashwood’s son and daughter-in-law convince themselves that they need give her none of their recently inherited money. It is an act of homage, but also one of shrewd recognition. Whatever Austen’s and Taylor’s ladylike demeanour in their personal lives, neither woman was a lady in the exuberant exercise of her art, and thank goodness for that.

Jonathan Keates

2001

Istanbul was cool. Domes and minarets across the water from where the ship was berthed were a darker grey than the sky. It was a great disappointment after sunnier places. “I thought we should have such heat that I was quite nervous about it,” Amy said. She sat on the edge of her bed and pulled on some tights. “I simply thought Turkey would be the hottest. It sounds so hot.”

“Well, we can look at things,” Nick said.

He could study an object for so long that she – who went in for quick impressions – wondered how there could be any more to see. On this holiday, he had stood for longer than ever, as if trying to imprint details on his mind. Amy sometimes thought that it was done to break her patience. Even the guides, who were too particular, too long-winded for the other tourists, went ahead and lost him. Amy, drifting on, would realise his absence and go back to look for him. He had been lost at Pompeii and in the museum in Cairo: from the Acropolis of Athens, he had turned up only after everyone waiting in the hot bus had become angry and begun to murmur amongst themselves, while the Greek driver was only too ready to lean on the horn to hurry him up.

Amy, because he was convalescing from surgery, said nothing. Ordinarily, she would have gently nagged; now, she merely pointed out that their doctor would not have approved of his standing about so
long and then having to make a mad dash. “That wasn’t what he meant by a holiday,” she said. Always at the mention of his illness his expression was uneasy. He would look at her closely, as if she were behind a case in a museum; he examined her face carefully and then, as if he could come to no conclusion, would sigh and turn away. He was almost convinced that something was being kept from him – by his cheerful doctor, the unruffled surgeon, above all by Amy’s new-found patience. By no means could he drag her down to share his own depression. Crossness she ignored, scarcely a harsh word was she trapped into uttering. The gentler she was, the more his suspicions rose. On one occasion he had been unable to forgo asking her outright. “Of course not,” she said, her eyes wide with surprise. “He said nothing to me that he didn’t say to you. I hardly ever saw him when you weren’t there.” For a while he was appeased, but fairly soon after the thought came to him, “Well, of course, that is what she
would
say.” And he didn’t really want to know. Or did he? Neither way was there any peace of mind. One day he would think she could not act as well as this; the next day he might decide that she was over-playing a part.

And so it had been in some ways a trying holiday – she fussing over him with the patience of a saint, but inwardly quick to be bored, or irritated by such prolonged sight-seeing; and he determined to miss nothing, as if it were his last chance. Sometimes she longed to stay on deck and lie in the sun, instead of getting into a hot bus on the quayside, and going off on a tour. Even in this grey Istanbul she would rather have
remained behind and had a drink than put on her raincoat and go to look at the bazaar. Tomorrow the Topkapi Museum and mosques. The following morning even more mosques, before they sailed in the afternoon for Izmir.

The
Galatea
was something of a freighter and something of a Mediterranean bus. Passengers got on at various ports, others got off. A few – including Nick and Amy and their new-found American friend, Martha Larkin – had booked for the round tour, from Trieste to Trieste.

Amy now tied a scarf over her head and was ready to go. It is his holiday, she told herself, forgoing the drink in the bar. Not I who’ve been in hospital all these weeks.

There had been a time when she had thought that he would not recover, that she would have to make her way through the rest of a meaningless life alone. Every day she reminded herself of those weeks of fear.

She preceded him down the gang-plank to the sordid quayside, where bales were being unloaded from the hold. Making her way towards the waiting bus, she said, “We might find presents for the children.” Although their son was in his thirties, he and his wife and their little girls were always referred to as ‘the children’.

They were driven over the Galata Bridge. It was early evening. The pavements of the Bridge and all the streets were crowded with people hurrying from work, and the ferry boats went back and forth between shore and shore.

In the great covered bazaar, they wandered about,
shaking their heads at boys thrusting goods at them, hardly daring to look in shop windows, because of the owners standing by ready to pounce. “Just to look. Only to look. No buy.” The noise and stuffiness were tiring. They found nothing for the children.

They saw some others from the ship – a German couple they disliked, the ones who always grabbed the front seat in the bus, which Amy would have liked for Nick, to save him effort and give him air. There was the Alexandrian woman, beautifully dressed, slim and graceful, buying more gold bracelets. Already she wore so many that when she raised her arms to smooth her hair, there was a rippling, chiming sound as they softly clashed down to her elbows.

Amy kept looking at her watch. Another twenty minutes before they were all to meet outside by the entrance to the gardens.

“I intend to have a drink before dinner,” she said. “No matter what time it is.”

He looked at her and smiled. “You shall,” he said. “You shall.” There was nothing much in this place for him to examine, and for once he walked at her pace, and would have been glad enough to leave.

At first, when pestered by touts, Amy had smiled politely and shaken her head; but she was by now becoming brusque. The ones she encountered at the end of this tour would marvel at the rudeness of Englishwomen.

Near to the time of departure, they saw Martha Larkin, wandering alone, as usual. She had bought a rather strong-smelling, tooled leather bag.

“Surely a mistake,” she said, holding it well
away from them.

“It may wear off,” said Amy.

Others from the party had bought leather goods, and all were glad to get off the bus and into the fresh air. Amy went nimbly (towards her gin) up the gangway. With one foot on deck, she remembered Nick, had to step aside quickly for the determined German couple, and then saw him, with Martha at his side, coming up slowly, step after breathless step. She felt remorse. As they walked together along the deck, he patted Martha’s arm, to save breath-spending words, and Amy felt ruffled, as she had so long ago when her baby had been content to be nursed by other people.

And now, along the deck, came a steward beating on a gong. “It’s absurd,” Amy said. “Who can be ready for dinner? And in any case, it’s they who’ve made us late.”

“Come,” Nick said to Martha. “Drink in the cabin. Have secret gin.”

Their cabin was but a few paces off and he walked there determinedly, and was quite himself by the time he reached it.

Nick and Amy Henderson were, apart from the Purser, stewards, shop-keepers, the only ones Martha had spoken to on this holiday. She was greatly taken up with her own language, but could not come to grips with any other, although she had strong reactions to them, a sense of inferiority when she heard French, wistfulness listening to Italian, displeasure from German.

She had listened to Nick and Amy talking, not only with relief at understanding what they said, but with her usual passionate delight at the turn of a sentence, and her ear for nuances. She was a novelist, an expatriate one at that, a writer of sad
contes
about broken love affairs, of depressed and depressing women. Her few books were handsomely printed, widely spaced on good paper, well-reviewed, and more or less unknown. Without fretting, she waited to be discovered. From the sales of her last novel she had hoped to pay for this holiday, but could now see that savings would have to be delved into, and perhaps some borrowing done.