Good Behaviour (32 page)

‘Slept it off?’ he said. ‘Good girl. Good girl. I’m all right too. Very kind fellow with a sharpish sort of car says he’ll
put me on the train – drive me on to the boat if it comes to that, shouldn’t wonder. And that nice housekeeper of yours is
making me a few sandwiches. I’ll be all right. Don’t worry about me.’

‘But what about me?’ – it came from me in a sort of roaring protest. ‘What can I do?’

‘That’s quite a question. End of an era and all that, my dear. We just have to hack on regardless, don’t we?’ He looked uncomfortable.
He was leaving me without a word that mattered. Didn’t he want to hear about my concussion? Has he forgotten all we had said
to each other? About Richard? About Papa? Was I less to him now than an object beheld and passed by on a train journey? I
must run beside the moving train, press my face upwards to the hastening glass.

‘Give my love to Richard,’ I said, ‘when you write.’

He looked at me; he put me at a distance. ‘We don’t write,’ he said. Then he turned back from the doorway, eagerly, warmly,
to say something I must hear, I felt sure of it. ‘One thing,’ he said, ‘my orchids looked absolutely terrific, well worth
all the bother.’

Mummie came in alone. She looked tall, as a small dog can sometimes convey a false impression of size. She spoke to someone
behind her, so I knew Rose must be near.

‘I think perhaps we should light the lamps. He says he wants to read something … We have to let him, I suppose.’ Her voice
trailed away in a kind of disgusted obedience to ritual, easier to accept and ignore than to disobey. She came nearer. ‘Am
I asking rather a lot, or could someone have kept the fire alight?’

‘I was asleep. Dr Coffey thinks I concussed myself when I fell.’

‘Other people, my dear, think you were blind drunk when you fell.’

‘I suppose you mean Rose thinks so.’

‘I’m afraid Rose was not the only one who thought so; Major Massingham thought so too. And he’s a remarkably good judge.’

‘Mummie – it’s not true.’

‘It happened and I don’t want to discuss it. Not today.’

I didn’t say: It’s because you hate me. It was in my mind. I only looked at her.

She looked back at me. ‘Please,’ she said, ‘you do rather exaggerate.’

‘Oh, what shall I do?’ I said.

‘Your home will always be here with me,’ she said patiently.
‘And another thing – now that all the responsibilities and decisions for Temple Alice are mine I hope perhaps in small ways
you may be more – shall I say – loyal.’

‘Mummie – what do you mean?’

‘You must know perfectly well what I mean – for instance, no more private arrangements with your friend the solicitor – after
all, not quite of our class.’

Rose came in with a cardboard box full of kindling wood. She paused near Mummie. ‘You’re perished, madam,’ she said as if
she had touched her. But there was a wide respectful distance between them; only her concerned voice crossed it.

‘Oh, Rose,’ Mummie said. Her voice was quite changed. It was an appeal to an outer force, a strength to which she could yield,
and still not yield from the astringency of good behaviour. Again a circle was forming – it had already formed. I was back
in the diningroom on a summer night, on a hot September morning; the circle was closing to hold me out. Now the fire rose
and blazed triumphant. Complacent in her success, Rose swept up the hearth.

‘You shouldn’t be doing this, Rose. Where’s Breda?’ Mummie went closer to Rose’s fire, feeling at her hands. ‘Perhaps better
bring the lights. He has to read me something, so he says.’ She looked at me, sitting beyond the heat of the fire, the winter
afternoon darker every minute behind me. ‘Rose could help you to your bedroom; that might be best – that is if you feel quite
all right.’

Heaving myself up from the sofa, one hand grabbing at its arm, I towered, at last on my feet, toppling in my own dreadful
height and world. ‘If you would bring me a stick from the hall,’ I said to Rose, ‘I can manage. Please.’ I cried out, ‘
Please
,’ in my pain.

Rose put an iron arm round me. ‘Ah, what stick, what nonsense,’ she said. ‘Lean on me. You’ll be all right.’ She was like
a nurse of steel, a wardress in power. There was refuge in her great authority, but I would refuse that refuge, I would resist
the abyss of yielding. I pulled myself out of her arm and stood alone.

‘Oh, hold on to her, Rose,’ Mummie said plaintively. ‘She’ll break that other leg of hers if we’re not careful.’

‘Come on.’ I might have been a refusing horse, Rose’s voice was so urgent and impersonal. ‘Bed’s the place.’ Her hands were
on me again.

‘Let me alone,’ I said.

‘I wonder would I tell Mr Kiely come in?’ Rose looked to Mummie, speaking across me as if I were not there. ‘She might go
with him.’ Mummie nodded some silent meaning. Their meeting eyes frightened me. I stood there between them, and the shape
of my future blew up, nightmare large in its certainty of their conspiracy.

‘I’ll ask him so,’ Rose said, ‘and when we have her settled I’ll bring in the drink tray.’

‘The
other
sherry, I think,’ Mummie said, ‘not the you know.’ She didn’t speak after Rose had gone. It was as if she retreated into
her quiet, well-behaved sorrow. She contained it for herself, hid it beneath good manners. Her clothes dressed it gracefully,
distinct from everyday clothes, but not flamboyantly widowlike. When Mr Kiely came in, her unchanged voice forbade any thought
of mourning.

‘Ah, Mr Kiely?’ she almost questioned his identity, as if she were kindly recognising a lesser person, successfully remembering
his name, putting him at ease. ‘And I hear you are most kindly driving Major Massingham to the station. We mustn’t
let him miss his train, must we? So shall we be very quick—’ She looked at the briefcase in his hand.

‘I have the document here,’ he said. ‘If we had a lamp I could read it.’ The darkness came a pulse nearer at his words, our
grandeur and our poverty joining in our discomfort.

‘Yes, yes, of course. They’re just bringing the lights. I wondered if you would perhaps give my daughter an arm across the
hall – I expect she can manage when she gets to the staircase and the bannisters. It would be kind.’

‘Of course. Delighted. No trouble.’ He didn’t even speak to me. I stood there, some sort of animal, hopping lame, that had
to be housed and cared for and put out of sight. Mummie looked at me with agonised distaste.

‘Mr Kiely will help you,’ she said to me, and I knew the dismissal in her voice. But he took me by both hands as if dancing
with a child, to guide me back to the sofa.

‘There are a couple of small legacies and gifts,’ he said, and he looked from me towards the door. ‘Rose Byrne is mentioned
too. They should both be here.’

‘Must we really have all this now?’ Mummie implored, shrinking away from him, putting her feet under her and her hands on
the arms of her chair as if she must get up and say: Goodbye, so kind, but another time would really be better. Before she
could perfect her avoidance of the moment Rose had come with the silver tray of sherry and the smallest glasses, followed
by Breda with the brass lamp and the silver lamp, lighted and smelling faintly of paraffin, ready to be dropped into the baskets
of their standards. They made a new kind of dimness in the room, quelling the afternoon, while simmering in the great spaces
of uncurtained light.

‘Leave those curtains.’ Mummie spoke quite sharply to
Breda, who was going about her usual evening ritual as carefully as on any other day. Now she reared her head like an insulted
hen. ‘Just leave them,’ Mummie said more politely, ‘till later. Thank you.’

Rose turned towards the door too, accepting the dismissal with propriety. Mr Kiely looked up enquiringly from the papers he
was sorting under the lamp, but before he spoke Mummie’s voice encircled Rose: ‘Stay with us, Rose. There’s a message for
you.’ Rose turned from the door, waiting respectfully without eagerness, her sense of good behaviour matching Mummie’s own.
I was the only one to fail the code. Tears, squeezing through spasms of anguish, bounced off my cheeks and fell onto my hands.
My own despair surpassed any love I had known, for Richard, for Papa, for Hubert. At that moment I knew myself entirely bereft.
The sofa murmured and creaked under my sobbing.

Mummie glanced at her watch: ‘Aroon, please. If we don’t get on with this he’s going to miss the boat train.’ She was keeping
strictly to the day’s essentials; things must be done, masks against any vulgar intrusions of grief. I felt like a child who
wets her knickers at a party. Nowhere to hide, no refuge from the shame of it. Rose moved a step nearer.

‘Miss Aroon,’ she said urgently, ‘think of your mother.’ I sobbed, gulping on, regardless.

‘Well,’ Mummie said hopelessly to Mr Kiely, ‘if you can make yourself heard … ’

Mr Kiely stood up near the lamp to read from the papers he had sorted out; he needed the light, improving now beneath its
beaded shade. His dark overcoat was still tightly buttoned. He looked like a priest in a cassock and I was as inattentive
to what he read as to the voice of a clergyman in a cold familiar
church. I was still sobbing and rocking the sofa when he stopped. In the silence I caught my breath, and caught it again.
Something had happened. The silence had nothing to do with good behaviour. It was astonished. It was unbelieving. Rose had
crossed her distance. She stood behind Mummie as if to shelter her.

‘Actually,’ Mummie was speaking to Mr Kiely, ‘I think there must be some silly mistake, don’t you? Because Temple Alice happens
to belong to me.’

‘You made it over to your husband five years ago, didn’t you? The deeds are in my office.’

‘That was just a temporary arrangement. And this is an unfortunate misunderstanding – it can all be cleared up.’

‘I’m sorry, Mrs St Charles. Everything of which he died possessed, with the exception of those small legacies to yourself
and Rose Byrne, is left to his daughter, Iris Aroon.’

‘That’s my name,’ I said.

‘Yes. Do you understand? – He’s left everything to you.’

I wondered if I could go on breathing naturally, through the delight that lifted me. Twice over now this euphoria of love
had elevated my whole body; I was its host. Then the vision changed; it was as though the face of my old world turned away
from me – a globe revolving – I was looking into a changed world, where I was a changed person, where my love was recognised
and requited. Through the long assuring breaths that followed my sobbing I drew in the truth: that Papa loved me the most.
Explicit from the depths of my breathing, like weed anchored far under sea water, I knew a full tide was turning for me. Love
and trust were present and whole as they had been once on a summer afternoon. Inexactly present, inexactly lost, the memory
fled me as a seal
slides into the water with absolute trust in its element. A disturbance on the water closes and there is nothing again. I
particularly wanted Rose to hear it again. I was claiming what was mine – his love, his absolute love. I wanted them to understand
that he had loved me most.

‘Would you read that bit again, the bit about me?’

Mummie moved suddenly in her chair. It was as if she gulped back something she could not swallow. ‘Don’t read it again. I
understand perfectly. I can explain it to my daughter – later, when she is calmer.’

Mr Kiely turned from her to me as though he hadn’t heard: ‘To my dear daughter, Iris Aroon, I give and bequeath … ’

Rose moved closer and closer still to Mummie while he was reading. I thought she was going to put her hands on her shoulders,
but it was only her breath I could hear when Mr Kiely’s voice stopped. Her breathing was like a shadow round Mummie. They
must be minding dreadfully. Empowered by Papa’s love I would be kind to them. Now I had the mild, wonderful power to be kind,
or to reserve kindness. I looked at them with level, considerate eyes.

Mummie looked at her watch. ‘I’m so dreadfully afraid you may miss that train.’ Her voice was full of anxious consideration,
but the dismissal, as she rose to her feet and faintly held out her hand, was obvious. I got up too. The pain in my ankle
was gone, due to the bandaging, I suppose. I walked over to the tray of drink.

‘Do have a glass of sherry,’ I said. And to Rose I said: ‘This seems very nasty sherry. Would you bring us the Tío Pepe?’

‘Ah, no thank you, not now.’ He refused the drink. ‘I really must get off. Come in and see me in the office and we’ll look
into things.’ I gave him my hand quite warmly, because I felt
he was in my employment now. Then I walked easily across to the fire, throwing out all its heat to me from the chimney breast.
I stood there waiting to say something beautiful to Mummie, when Rose should have gone. She stayed on, as though she were
needed, until I remembered Dr Coffey’s woodcock. ‘We’ll have them tonight,’ I told her, ‘and you may take a glass of sherry
for your sauce. It’s better than nothing. Thin potato chips and an orange salad, don’t you think, Rose? And would you ask
Breda to bring us the Tío Pepe.’

‘I know you like it best,’ I said to Mummie when I was left alone with her.

‘I don’t want it, thank you.’ Mummie had sunk back into her chair. She looked smaller and her eyes looked smaller too. Her
pretty hat, worn so concisely, had changed its perfect angle.

‘But you must. It will do you good.’ When Breda brought in the sherry I filled Mummie’s glass to the very brim, and, walking
soundly across the room, I stood above her, shrivelled back again in her chair, and I spoke to her in a voice I didn’t know
myself – a voice humid with kindness: ‘Drink this,’ I said, ‘and remember that I’ll always look after you.’

She took the glass and looked up at me from under the absurd tilt of her hat; in an odd way her look reminded me of a child
warding off a blow.

‘Yes. Always,’ I reassured her firmly.