Family and Friends (6 page)

On the day of Betty’s departure for her school in Clarins, Sofka weeps as if she is saying goodbye to her for ever. Betty weeps too. There is a kind of random sorrow in Betty that guides her roughly to the inner meaning of these occasions. While the chauffeur loads the suitcases into the car, Betty embraces her mother and her sister. Only Alfred refuses to relax in her arms and turns his cheek stiffly for her kiss. Then the car moves off, very
slowly, with a handkerchief fluttering at the window. On the street, Sofka, her own handkerchief quite soaked, suddenly grips Mimi by the hand, draws her to her side, and drops her head for a moment on to Mimi’s shoulder. Mimi, surprised, smooths her mother’s cheek. Sofka alone knows that she has sacrificed one daughter in order to keep the other.

‘D
EAR NETTIE
,’ writes Alfred, aged sixteen. ‘I hope you are well and happy. Thank you for your postcard showing the lake at sunset. It looks very pretty.’

Alfred sucks his pen and stares out of the window. He is not good at writing letters, perhaps because he is already very good at hiding his feelings. This he needs to do because he imagines his emotions to be so violent that they constitute a danger to others. His feelings are basically a love for Sofka and Mimi, a growing dislike of Frederick whom he sees as idle and flippant, decamping from his office in order, so he says, to give Alfred a taste of being in charge (at sixteen!), and sheer unbridled hatred of Betty, a response that surprises him, and which is in itself rather interesting. Alfred’s purity reacts instinctively to another’s impurity; what he feels for Betty is not in fact hatred but disgust. Alfred senses about Betty, when she passes him, a sharpish odour, the acid sweat of a true redhead, which makes him grit his teeth. In this way, and for this reason, he will always be resistant to the odours of women, shocking them sometimes by a very slight movement of recoil when they bend to kiss him. For this reason too he will only be accessible to a woman whom he recognizes as akin to himself, or to a woman so artificially fragrant that he does not sense her real presence.

Alfred’s heavy burden of feeling, his purity, and his scorn have added a lowering quality to his handsome face which makes him doubly attractive to certain types of women, usually older women. He is perhaps Hippolytus to their Phaedra, and they look at his tall slim body, his long eyelashes, and the compressed line of his red lips and wonder how it would be to initiate him into the mysteries of love … Alfred, stern and unbendingly dutiful, inspires these feelings in a whole range of women, from Frederick’s motherly secretary to one or two of Sofka’s friends. All are careful to censor their reactions, allowing themselves only an anxious smiling concern for his condition. Alfred is preoccupied by his condition and therefore does not notice the range of female sensibilities to which he has access. When he is a little older, this imperviousness will drive women to unwise acts and statements, which they will later regret.

It is in any event the peach-like face and the silky hair of Nettie which form Alfred’s unique wish for the company of a woman other than his mother or his elder sister. But he thinks of Nettie not as a woman, although at nearly sixteen she is all the woman she will ever be, but as a child, that beautiful over-excited over-tired child with eyes black as black glass, her head thrown back, her arms extended, as he tried to dance with her at that long-ago wedding and at two weddings since then. She always seemed to be straining after life in a way that troubled him, for he could imagine nothing better than to stay as he had been, as they had been. With his mother there to care for him and with Nettie to love, Alfred’s dream is crystallized, and in a curious way this dream will survive unmodified throughout his adult life. It seems to Alfred that there are two kinds of love: the one that cares for your welfare, your food, your comfort, and the one that engages your wildest dreams and impulses. At this blessed
point in his life, still in childhood, Alfred possesses both types of love, sacred and profane. He will grieve for such plenitude for ever after.

To Alfred Sofka is quite simply a deity, one who bends her cool lips to his hot cheek or smooths the hair from his forehead when she thinks he has been reading too much. She is the one whose disapproval he would do anything to avoid and whose pain he would burn to avenge. He knows no one as beautiful as Sofka, with a beauty that does not disturb, a beauty always smiling, never challenging, implying caresses of the kind that lull a child to sleep. Even his beloved sister Mimi would do better, thinks Alfred, to follow Sofka in this respect, for Mimi, although good as gold, is also young and he senses in her an innocent stirring which to him spells corruption. It is the love that knows no questing and no conclusion that appeals to Alfred, and he does not yet know that he will not find it on this earth, for he thinks that he has found it in Sofka. And Sofka treats him like the man he has been forced to become. As he departs for the factory every morning, Sofka, in her Japanese silk
peignoir
, stands at the door to embrace him; she smooths his forehead once more, and hands him his newspaper, sending him off to the Westminster Bridge Road with his head held high, able to forget for a moment the grim day that lies ahead, in his pride at joining the community of the world’s workers, in the knowledge that a loving and admiring woman will be waiting for him when he returns. In this way he experiences that good conscience that others never find, perhaps never look for. And when the door closes behind him, he knows that his mother will devote her morning to the grave and seemly pursuits of good housekeeping, and when he returns in the evening, tired with the unnatural tiredness of a young man grappling with an antipathy which he cannot overcome, he knows that
Sofka will have prepared for him the minced veal cutlet and the soft fruit pudding called
Kissel
that he prefers. He does not yet know that his antipathy is the price of his good conscience, and that in later life, bewildered by his inability to find further happiness, he will be reaping the reward of that antipathy and that good conscience, for having overcome that early hurdle he finds himself suspicious of those who take life more easily, and having wrestled the enemy of his boyhood to the ground and worsted it he does not know how to transact with those who have had a more fortunate passage. Some men are children all their lives because they have had admiring mothers who chronicle their every game of football and their every lovable misdemeanour. Alfred too has a mother who watches him, jealous lest a fact of his life escape her. But she has seen to it that his life never will escape her, for he is now locked into a family enterprise from which there is no honourable issue, no issue of choice, that is, but only violent disappearances, as Betty will find out. Sofka, instinctively, through love, but also through fear, has transferred her vigilance from Frederick to Alfred, like a prudent investor transferring funds from one bank to another. Frederick’s light-heartedness, though so enjoyable, really does not measure up to Alfred’s severity. Frederick is for leisure, for diversion, for entertainment; Alfred is for work, for investment, for security.

When Alfred leaves for the factory every morning, breathing conscientiously the only fresh air he will encounter until the evening, and breathing rather hard, as if his antipathy were already at work, he is unaware of the random enquiring glances sent in his direction by many girls and some women. He is aware only of the task before him, planning to plunge directly into the morning’s work so that, in the hour he takes for lunch, he can pay a visit
to Charing Cross Road where Mr Levy has put by an interesting six-volume edition of Shakespeare’s plays, illustrated with photographs of contemporary actors and actresses in appropriate costume. Alfred cannot afford it but Mr Levy is touched by his attention to the books and is allowing him to pay a little towards them every week. For Alfred, although doing a man’s work, is still drawing a boy’s salary. This is thought to be good for him, for, unknown to himself, Alfred has been entered on a long course of character training by those who know better than he does. In this way his character will be trained – by privation, of course – beyond those of any whose friendship he is likely to seek. His character, in fact, will be a burden to him rather than an asset. But that is the way with good characters.

Alfred, trying to deal with the antipathy that this way of life has forced upon him, and trying also to deal with the good conscience which is perhaps only blamelessness in disguise and can be forfeited at any moment, knows from his reading that virtue is its own reward. This seems to him rather hard, for by the same token vice is also its own reward. But if he translates his predicament into fiction, if he views it as a pilgrimage or a perilous enterprise or an adventure, if, in fact, he thinks of himself as Henry V or as Nicholas Nickleby, then he can soldier on, comforted by the thought that his efforts and his determination and all his good behaviour will be crowned with success, recognition, apotheosis. In this way it even crosses his mind that when Nettie comes home she will find him admirable. He desires to be found admirable by Nettie, thinking himself entitled to this desire, since he has obeyed the rules so far. He has, above all, obeyed his mother in everything. He does not yet know that men who obey their mothers in everything rarely win the admiration of other women.

Alfred is a worthy character, although he has had worthiness thrust upon him. His only reward is the approbation of others: of Sofka, of Mimi, who admires him and almost understands him, of Frederick, who is so delighted that his sibling promises to relieve him of all responsibility that he laughingly defers to him on many matters and readily acknowledges that Alfred’s judgment in business is already superior to his own. And there is Lautner who truly respects him. Without Lautner, of course, Alfred’s apprenticeship would be infinitely harder than it is at present; without Lautner at his elbow, always prepared to make suggestions and to work late, Alfred would be much more restricted. And for two years, perhaps three, Alfred repays Lautner’s care and thoroughness; by the age of twenty-one Alfred will know every detail of the workshops and the sheds and the warehouses and will be gravely cognisant of the people who labour for him. In the meantime, he refuses to take more than an hour for lunch and he works so regularly himself that there are fewer opportunities for Lautner to visit the house on Sunday evenings, for coffee and for marzipan cake. And as Lautner sees Alfred succeeding beyond his expectations, he is almost disappointed at his own growing distance from the family. Therefore he makes it his business sometimes to go over to the house with a message or a reminder or even a suggestion. ‘You need not have bothered,’ says Alfred who dislikes the incursion of his everyday life into those blessed truces which are observed at the weekends. ‘It could have waited until tomorrow.’

It is therefore a terrible shock to Alfred’s very hard-won equilibrium to get home one evening and to find Sofka in a state of considerable agitation over Betty. This is doubly unsettling to Alfred; he has never seen Sofka in a comparable state over himself, and in any event he judges Betty to be unworthy of his mother’s care. As far
as Alfred is concerned Betty is a futile and self-regarding girl and he begrudges her the money she has received on her eighteenth birthday. It now appears that, not content with her idleness and her money and her music lessons, Betty is to be allowed a long holiday in Switzerland at the family’s expense. Worst of all, Betty will have access to Nettie for she is to be sent to the same establishment at Clarins where mysterious things are done to make girls worldly, educated, and poised. Like many another man, Alfred views this process with concern. If anyone is to go to Switzerland, let it be his sister Mimi whose vagueness could do with a little tempering; even Alfred can see that. But Mimi is of all things his friend; Mimi, knowing of the six-volume edition of Shakespeare coveted by Alfred, presented it to him the moment her money came through to her. In this way Alfred has received the ideal gift; he could not have bought it himself because he has only his salary, and part of that goes into the household expenses. Their father, in his wisdom, decreed that the girls should have money and the boys shares in the business. So Alfred, burdened with adult cares, is more than a little shocked that Betty should benefit from so much of their mother’s concern.

However, he will be very glad to see the back of her. And of Frederick too, if the truth were known. He feels instinctively that Betty and Frederick form a natural pair, and that he and Mimi form another, quite different, alliance. Together and apart, Mimi and Alfred stand for those stolid and perhaps little regarded virtues of loyalty and fidelity and a scrupulous attention paid to the word or promise given or received. The house seems to him a friendlier place the moment Frederick and Betty are out of it, although he is a little hurt to see the extent of his mother’s grief, when only Mimi and himself are left. For the three days of their absence Alfred is happier than he
has been for some time; when he returns in the evening, it is to find a subdued and rather quiet Sofka, and to hear the strains of a Chopin
étude
drifting down from the old nursery without the interruption of Betty’s high voice or the slight moral exasperation afforded to him by Frederick’s ever good-humoured presence. And although Sofka looks preoccupied and somewhat sad, and although Mimi’s presence does little to cheer her up, Alfred finds that his mother clings to him in a way that makes him feel very strong, as if he is in a better position to care for her alone than with all the others put together. He finds this heartening, and something of a sop to his injured pride.