The Wrong Set and Other Stories Read online

  ANGUS WILSON

  THE WRONG SET

  AND OTHER STORIES

  CONTENTS

  FRESH AIR FIEND

  UNION REUNION

  SATURNALIA

  REALPOLITIK

  A STORY OF HISTORICAL INTEREST

  THE WRONG SET

  CRAZY CROWD

  A VISIT IN BAD TASTE

  RASPBERRY JAM

  SIGNIFICANT EXPERIENCE

  MOTHER’S SENSE OF FUN

  ET DONA FERENTES

  About the Author

  Copyright

  TO BENTLEY AND IAN

  in gratitude

  ‘Mother’s Sense of Fun’ and ‘Crazy Crowd’ were first published in Horizon and ‘Realpolitik’ in the Listener

  FRESH AIR FIEND

  IT had rained heavily the night before and many of the flowers in the herbaceous border lay flattened and crushed upon the ground. The top-heavy oriental poppies had fared worst; their hairy stalks were broken and twisted, and their pink and scarlet petals were scattered around like discarded material in a dress-maker’s shop. But they were poor blowsy creatures anyway, thought Mrs Searle, the vulgar and the ostentatious survive few blows. Nevertheless she chose sticks and bast from the large trug which she trailed behind her, and carefully tied the bent heads, cutting off the broken ones with the secateurs. It was at once one of the shames and one of the privileges of gardening, she thought, that one was put in this godlike position of judgement, deciding upon what should live and what should be cast into outer darkness, delivering moral judgement and analogies. It was only by a careful compensation, an act of retribution, such as preserving the poppies she had condemned, that she could avoid too great an arrogance. She fingered the velvety leaves of the agrostemma sensuously, there were so few flowers of exactly that shade of rich crimson, and how gloriously they lay against their silver foliage. There should be more of them next year – but less, she decided, of the scarlet lychnis, there was nothing more disappointing than a flower spike on which too few blooms appeared. Ragged, meagre, and dowdy for all their bright colours, like the wife of the Warden of St Jude’s. How depressing that one still remembered that dispiriting little woman sitting there talking in her slight North country accent, and dressed in that absurd scarlet suit.

  ‘Your signature on this petition, Mrs Searle, would be such a help. If we University women can give a lead … I mean we’ve all too easily decided that war is inevitable, it’s only by thinking so that we make it, you know.’ ‘Of course,’ she had found herself answering mockingly ‘who can understand that better than I? You don’t remember the last war, but I do. Those hundreds of Belgians, each without a right arm. Oh! it was terrible.’ The ridiculous little woman had looked so puzzled that she had been unable to resist embroidering. ‘Don’t you know Belgium then?’ she had said. ‘Not a man there today with a right arm, and very few with right eyes. Those were all gouged out with hot irons before the Kaiser himself. To make a Roman holiday, of course.’ The woman had gone away offended. Silly little creature, with all her petitions she had been most anxious to prove her ardour in the war when it came, although of course like everyone in Oxford she had been perfectly safe. How they had all talked of the terrible raids, and how they had all kept out of them. At least she had preserved her integrity. ‘Thousands killed brutally in London last night’ she had said to the Master ‘and everyone of us preserved intact. What a glorious mercy!’ They thought she was mad, and so she was, of course, judged by their wretched middle-class norm. ‘I hereby faithfully swear once more’ she said aloud ‘that I will make no compromise, and I utterly curse them from henceforth. May no wife of any fellow in either of the major Universities be fecund, nor may the illicit unions of research students be blessed,’ and she added maliciously ‘May the stream of sherry so foolishly imported by this present government be dried up, so that there may be no more “little sherry parties”.’ It was monstrous when things of importance – spirits for example – were in short demand – though what such jargon really meant one was at a loss to understand – that such frivolities as sherry parties should be indulged.

  Suddenly she could hear the other voice inside her speaking slowly and distinctly, counting in the old, familiar fashion – two bottles of gin in the trunk in the attic, two in the garden shed, one in the bureau, she had the key to that, and then one in the bottom of her wardrobe with the shell mending box. The bureau one was a bit risky, Henry occasionally used that, but with the key in her possession … six bottles in all. I’ll send Henry down with that girl to the pub for a drink before lunch and they’ll be out walking this afternoon, she decided. It had seemed as though the girl’s presence would make things difficult, Henry had obviously hoped so when he had invited her, but by retiring early and leaving them to talk it had been managed….

  The voice shut off and Mrs Searle gave zealous attention to the flowers once more. The clumps of lupins were massed like an overpainted sunset – anchovy, orange, and lemon against skyblue – only the very top of their spikes had been bent and hung like dripping candles. The crests of the delphiniums were broken too, and the petals lay around pale iceblue and dark blue like scattered boat race favours. Mrs Searle shrank back as she surveyed the tall verbascums; their yellow flowers were covered in caterpillars, many of which had been drowned or smashed by the rain, their bodies now dried and blackening in the hot sun. ‘Miss Eccles, Miss Eccles’ she called ‘are you good with caterpillars?’

  A very tall young woman got up from a deck chair on the lawn and moved lopingly across to the flower bed; the white linen trousers seemed to accentuate her lumbering gait and her ungainly height; her thin white face was cut sharply by the line of her hard, vermilion lipstick; her straight, green-gold hair was worn long at the neck. ‘I’ll see what I can do, Mrs Searle’ she said, and began rapidly to pick off the insects. ‘But you are good with caterpillars’ said Miranda Searle. ‘It’s a gift, of course, like being good with children. I’m glad to say that I hold each in equal abhorrence. Don’t you think the verbascum very beautiful? I do, but then it’s natural I should like them. I shared their great quality of spikiness.’ If you were covered with caterpillars, thought Elspeth Eccles, I wouldn’t budge an inch to remove them, I should laugh like hell. She had always believed that absolute sincerity was the only basis for human relationships, and she felt convinced that a little truth, telling would work wonders with Mrs Searle’s egotistical artificiality, but somehow she shrank from the experiment of telling her hostess what she really thought of her spikiness, there was no doubt that for all her futility and selfishness she was a little daunting. It was the difference of age, of course, and the unfair superiority of riches, but still she preferred to change the topic. ‘What are those red and blue flowers with the light foliage?’ she asked. ‘Linum’ replied Mrs Searle. ‘You know – “Thou wilt not quench the burning flax, nor hurt the bruiséd reed”, only that doesn’t sound quite right.’ ‘It certainly seems a little meaningless’ commented Elspeth. ‘Oh! I should hope so’ said Mrs Searle. ‘It’s religious. You surely wouldn’t wish a religious sentiment to have a meaning. It wouldn’t be at all edifying. I doubt if it would even be proper.’ Elspeth smiled to herself in the conviction of her own private creed. ‘No, it’s the phrase “bruiséd reed” that I detest’ said Mrs Searle. ‘It reminds me too much of “broken reed”. Have you ever been in the W.V.S.?’ she went on. ‘Oh blessed generation! Well, I have. Henry made me join the Oxford W.V.S. during the war, he said it was my duty. A curious sort of duty, I did nothing but serve cups of sweet dishwater to men with bad teeth. But what I was thinking of was the way all the women talked in clichés – throughout the winter they
described themselves as “chilly mortals”, and whenever anyone failed to do some particularly absurd task, as I frequently did, they called them “broken reeds”. But I am keeping you from your work, Miss Eccles’ she went on ‘and Henry will never forgive that. It must be wonderful for you both to have a common interest in so many vulgar people. Though perhaps in the case of the Shelley circle, as I believe it’s called – it is Shelley you’re working on?’ – It was the seventh time in five days that she had asked the question, Elspeth noted – ‘as I say in the case of the Shelleys it is more their priggish refinement than their vulgarity that revolts me.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s their basic honesty you dislike’ said Elspeth. ‘Very likely’ said Mrs Searle. ‘I hadn’t realized that they were particularly honest. But if that were so, of course, I should certainly dislike it. How very nice it must be to know things, Miss Eccles, and go about hitting nails on the head like that. But seriously, you mustn’t let me keep you from the Shelleys and their orgy of honesty.’ On Elspeth’s assurance that she would like to remain with her, Mrs Searle suggested that they should go together to gather gooseberries in the kitchen garden.

  Elspeth watched her depart to collect a basin from the house. It was difficult, she thought, to believe that people had once spoken of her as the ‘incomparable Miranda’. Of course the very use of such names suggested an affected gallantry for which the world no longer had time, but, apart from that, the almost Belsen-like emaciation of figure and features, the wild, staring eyes and the wispy hair that defied control hardly suggested a woman who had inspired poets and tempted young diplomats; a woman whose influence had reached beyond University society to the world of literary London, rivalling even Ottoline Morrell herself. A faint look of distressed beauty about the haggard eyes, an occasional turn of the head on that swanlike neck were all that remained to recall her famed beauty, and even these reminded one too much of the Lavery portraits. No, decidedly, she thought it was all too easily described by one of Mrs Searle’s own favourite words – ‘grotesque’. Of the famous charm too, there were only rare flashes, and how like condescension it was when it came, as in some ornate fairy story of the nineties when the princess gives one glimpse of heaven to the poor poet as her coach passes by. That may have been how Rupert Brooke and Flecker liked things, but it wouldn’t have done today. That crabbed irony and soured, ill-natured malice, those carefully administered snubs to inferiors and juniors, could that have been the wit that had made her the friend of Firbank and Lytton Strachey? It seemed impossible that people could have tolerated such arrogance, have been content with such triviality. It was unfair, probably, to judge a galleon by a washed-up wreck. There was no doubt that at some period Miranda Searle had strayed, was definitely détraquée. Even her old friends in Oxford had dropped her, finding the eccentricity, the egotism, the rudeness insupportable. But to Elspeth it seemed that such a decline could not be excused by personal grief, other mothers had had only sons killed in motor accidents and had lived again, other women had been confined to provincial lives and had kept their charity. It was monstrous that a man of the intellectual calibre of Henry Searle, a man whose work was so important, should be chained to this living corpse. She had heard stories already of Mrs Searle’s secret drinking and had been told of some of the humiliating episodes in which she had involved her husband, but it was not until this visit to their Somerset cottage that she had realized how continuous, how slowly wearing his slavery must be. On the very first night she had heard from her bedroom a voice raised in obscenities, a maundering whine. She had guessed – how right she had been – that this was one of the famous drinking bouts. It had enabled her to see clearly why it was that Henry Searle was slowly withdrawing from University life, why the publication of the last volume of Peacock’s letters was delayed from year to year, why the projected life of Mary Shelley remained a dream. It was her duty, she had decided then, to aid him in fighting the incubus, her duty to English letters, her return for all the help he had given to her own labours. But how difficult it was to help anyone so modest and retiring, anyone who had evaded life for so long. She had decided, at last, that it would be easier to start the other end, to put the issue fairly and squarely before Mrs Searle herself. If there was any truth in the excuse of her defenders, if it was in fact the shock of her son’s sudden death, then surely she could be made to see that the living could not be sacrificed to the dead in that way. And yet, and yet, one hesitated to speak, it was the last day of the visit and nothing had been said. ‘It’s now or never, Elspeth Eccles’ she said aloud.

  ‘My dear, Miss Eccles’ her hostess drawled. ‘How this cheers me! To hear you talk to yourself. I was just beginning to feel daunted. Here she is, I thought, the representative of the “hungry generations” – straightforward, ruled by good sense, with no time for anything but the essential – and they’re going to “tread me down”. Flow can I? I thought, with all my muddled thinking and my inhibitions – only the other day that new young physics tutor was telling me about them – how can I resist them? It seemed almost inhuman! And then I hear you talking to yourself. It’s all right, I breathe again. The chink of another’s armour, the mote in our brother’s eyes, how precious they are! what preservers of Christian charity!’ ‘That doesn’t sound a very well-adjusted view of life’ said Elspeth, in what she hoped was a friendly and humorous voice.

  ‘Doesn’t it?’ said Miranda. ‘So many people say that to me and I’m sure you’re all quite right. Only the words don’t seem to connect in my mind and I do think that’s so important, in deciding whether to think a thing or not, I mean. If I don’t connect the words, then I just don’t have the thought. And “adjusted” never connects with “life” for me, only with “shoulder strap’”.

  With her wide-brimmed straw hat, flowing-sleeved chiffon dress, and her constantly shaking long earrings, Mrs Searle looked like a figure at the Theatrical Garden. Party. Laying down the box of Army and Navy Stores cigarettes which was her constant companion, she began rapidly to pick the gooseberries from the thorny bushes.

  ‘Put them all into that bowl will you’ she said, a cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth. ‘I want Mrs Parry to make a fool so we shall need a good number of them.’

  ‘Why do you need more to make a fool?’ asked Elspeth. ‘Because of the sieving,’ said Miranda shortly and contemptuously.

  The two women picked on in silence for some minutes. To Elspeth, it seemed that her own contribution was immensely the smaller; it seemed impossible that with those absurd, flowing sleeves and the smoke from that perpetual cigarette Mrs Searle could pick with such ease. Her own fingers were constantly being pricked by the thorns and the legs of her trousers got caught against the bushes.

  ‘Poor Miss Eccles!’ said Miranda. ‘You must stop at once or you’ll ruin those lovely trousers. It was quite naughty of me to have suggested your doing such a horrid job in such beautiful clothes.’ Elspeth was crouching to pick some refractory fruit from a very low bush, but she stood up and remained quite still for a moment, then in a clear, deliberate voice, she said:

  ‘Now, you don’t think they’re beautiful clothes at all, Mrs Searle. You probably think trousers on women are the height of ugliness, and in any case they cannot compare for elegance with your lovely dress. It’s just that I’m clumsy and awkward in my movements, and you are graceful and easy. What makes you unable to say what you think of me?’

  Mrs Searle did not answer the question, instead she stared at the girl with rounded eyes, then throwing her cigarette on the ground she stamped it into the earth with her heel.

  ‘Oh Miss Eccles’ she cried ‘how lovely you look! Now I understand why Henry admires you so. You look so handsome, so noble when you are being stern, just like Mary Wollstonecraft or Dorothy Wordsworth or one of those other great women who inspire poets and philosophers.’

  ‘How can you say that, Mrs Searle?’ cried Elspeth. ‘You who knew and inspired so many of our writers.’

  ‘
Oh no!’ said Miranda. ‘I never inspired anyone, I just keep them amused. I was far too busy enjoying life to inspire anyone.’

  ‘Then why can’t you go on enjoying life now?’ ‘Oh! Miss Eccles, how charming of you! I do believe you’re paying me a compliment, you’re being sincere with me and treating me as one of your own generation. But you forget that “you cannot teach an old dog new tricks”. And now look what you’ve done, you’ve made me use an ugly, vulgar proverb.’ ‘I don’t think it’s a question of generations’ said Elspeth ‘it’s just a matter of preferring to have things straight instead of crooked. Anyway if people of my age are more straightforward it’s only because we’ve grown up in a world of wars and economic misery where there’s only time for essentials.’

  Mrs Searle looked at her with amusement. ‘If it comes to essentials’ she said ‘elegance and beauty seem to me far more essential than wars.’

  ‘Of course they are’ said Elspeth ‘but they can’t have any reality until we’ve straightened out the muddle and misery in the world.’

  ‘In the world?’ echoed Miranda. ‘I should have thought one’s own private miseries were enough.’

  ‘Poor Mrs Searle’ said Elspeth ‘it must have hit you very badly. Were you very fond of him? Did they break the news clumsily? Won’t you tell me about it?’ And she wondered as she said it whether she did not sound a little too much as though she was speaking to a child, but after all the woman was a child emotionally, a child that was badly in need of reeducation.

  Miranda stopped picking for a minute and straightened herself; when she looked at Elspeth, she was laughing.

  ‘Oh my dear Miss Eccles! I do believe you’re trying to get me to “share”. And I never even guessed that you were a Grouper.’

  ‘I’m not a Grouper’ said Elspeth. ‘I’m not even what you would call religious, that is I don’t believe in God’ she added lamely.