The Lotus House (13 page)

“You’d like this house,” he said.

When Margot arrived back Harriet was out having tea with Miss Johnson.

“Hullo, darling,” said Andrew, “I didn’t expect you so early, the plane must have been punctual for once.”

“You didn’t think of meeting me, I suppose,” said Margot.

“I never meet people unless they’ve been away for at least a year,” said Andrew.

“It seems like a hundred years,” said Margot, “but I don’t suppose you’d have missed me however long I’d been. I expect if some Arab sheik had abducted me, you’d have merely said ‘how interesting’.”

“No,” said Andrew, “I wouldn’t, but it would have been all the same.”

“Oh, you’re hopeless,” said Margot, with a sort of sob.

“Yes,” said Andrew — but looking up at her quickly and with surprise, “I’m hopeless and so are you, and that’s where the fun begins.”

“Does it?” said Margot, “I don’t call it fun.”

“Try,” said Andrew, “you and Harriet take life too seriously, and I’m beginning to think I’ve never taken it on at all.”

“What
are
you talking about?” said Margot.

Andrew kissed her. “Let’s get married,” he said, “I’m sure this house is the sort that would appreciate a
respectable married couple.”

Margot turned away from him but Andrew crossed the room and put on a dance record, caught her to him and whirled her about the room.

With a sudden overwhelming sense of having reached home at last, Margot capitulated. They spun round ever more madly, yet, in her heart, there was an extraordinary stillness and peace.

It
won’t
last,
of
course,
thought her parents’ daughter.
But
it
will
come
again,
thought Andrew’s love,
and
anyway, I
’
ve
known
it
and
I
’ll
remember
it
for
ever,
thought Margot.

As they were still dancing, Harriet came in. She stood astonished while the music slowed to a halt.

“Put on the other side, Harriet,” shouted Andrew, “we don’t want to stop yet and we’ll have to without your help.”

Harriet did as she was told and then Margot, by way of greeting, put out a hand and caught her up with the two of them in the dance.

THAT SPRING PASSED
in a grey mist as far as Aubrey Stacey’s state of mind was concerned. Since Harriet’s visit to his attic and the night that had followed, he had no longer hated nor feared his so-called pupils, he simply accepted the fact that he did not have either the personality or the skills needed to deal with them. Hassan had not appeared for his second term; his father had found a better job in another district. On learning this Aubrey felt a dull relief. He had reached a sort of compromise with his classes; perhaps they sensed that he was no longer antagonistic or even desirous of putting up a fight. At any rate, they ceased to torment him but merely stonewalled any attempt on his part to make them work. He went through the motions of teaching like an automaton and the front row “snobs” had to make the best of it.

During the Easter break he resolved to get down to his magnum opus in earnest and filled a notebook with period data. He was classifying and neatly copying out these for easy reference one afternoon, a job he enjoyed, when he was disturbed by a knock on his door and, opening it, was surprised to see his brother on the threshold.

“Michael!” he exclaimed, “What brings you here?”

“Bad news, I’m afraid, Mole.” It was the old nickname, dating from childhood days when, under the spell of
The
Wind
in
the
Willows,
they had been Ratty and Mole to
each other. The names had outlived the nursery and even school and were still sometimes used, especially by Michael.

“Come in,” said Aubrey, and he led the way to his sitting-room, pushed a chair forward and sat down himself by the open window, as if he needed air.

“It’s Father and Mother,” said Michael, “the police phoned me this morning … an accident with a lorry on the motorway.”

“Serious?” asked Aubrey, but he knew the answer.

“Very, I’m afraid — it was instantaneous.”

“Both?”

Michael nodded and the brothers remained silent for what seemed to Aubrey a long time as he looked from the window, noting meticulously the clouds drifting high in the pale sky, and the brilliant green of the new chestnut leaves.

Then Michael said: “There were no witnesses and the driver of the lorry escaped, but the evidence, such as it is, seems to confirm that it was not his fault, or at least not wholly so. Father shouldn’t really have been still driving; his reactions had slowed up but he so hated any suggestion that he should give it up. It’s hard to take it in, isn’t it? They were both so active still. Mother was with us very recently and we were out and about a lot.”

Aubrey said, “I haven’t seen them for a good while.”

“No, well, time goes by so quickly,” said Michael, “and one is always so busy. Can I have a drink?”

“Yes, of course,” said Aubrey, but he made no move to get it, and it was Michael who poured them both one and took Aubrey his.

“Nice place you’ve got here,” he said, “a good view.”

“Yes,” said Aubrey. The detached remark had cleared the overcharged atmosphere a little and he got up. “My bedroom’s really the better room. Come and see it.”

“Facing south,” said Michael approvingly, “I like a
south bedroom, but whyever the bars? I suppose it must have been a nursery once. Why didn’t you have them taken down? They spoil the outlook.” And then, not waiting for an answer, he went on: “Funny how old this makes you feel all of a sudden, isn’t it? I suppose one’s parents are always a sort of bulwark against old age and death and now the barrier’s down. Well, there’s a lot to see about, of course, and Julia and I hope you’ll come back with us. It’s holidays still, isn’t it? If you’ve nothing special, on perhaps you could come straight away?”

Aubrey assented at once. He put away his papers and went to pack a bag. On his chest-of-drawers stood the photographs of his father and mother in a double frame. Looking at them, Aubrey felt the first real pang of emotion. They had already taken on that remote alien quality that always seemed to belong to the portraits of the dead, and it struck him that he would now never be able to prove his true worth to them. It was this sense of negation that substituted itself for any real grief. He had not encountered death on intimate terms before, and it was its monstrous impossibility that stunned him. This impression did not weaken in the days that followed. He behaved and spoke as he was expected to behave and speak, at the funeral, and at the gathering of friends and relatives afterwards but beneath this façade there was nothing but disbelief. How could anyone who was alive believe in death? Where
were
his parents? Their absence in their own home was extraordinary. Why did he not hear their voices or their footsteps? Everything expected them — all the household objects, their favourite chairs, their clothes, their shoes — his father’s sticks in the hall, his mother’s gardening gloves. There was dust on the mantelpiece where his mother had never allowed dust, that was an outrage. When no one was looking he took out his handkerchief and removed it. But he knew that the emotion he was feeling was different from his
brother’s — it was largely impersonal. The nearest he got to anything closer was the gratitude he felt towards his father when his will made it clear that no difference was to be made between himself and his brother, the elder by half an hour. But gratitude is not grief.

The house was to be put up for sale, and Michael and he met together there again later to settle what they wanted to keep of its contents. Aubrey only wished for some of his father’s books and a fine chiming clock which he had always admired.

“Are you sure you won’t reserve anything else?” asked Michael.

“Quite sure. I’ve not room in my flat, for one thing.”

“But you may marry and want to set up a home,” said Michael, but Aubrey shook his head.

“I shall never marry,” he said decisively.

“Well, anyway, Julia and I have got plenty of storage space and it’s a shame to let so much go to strangers; I shall take some extra pieces and you can draw on us if the time comes that you need them.”

The brothers finished their last look round and went out together. The door clicked to behind them and Michael said, “Well, Mole, I suppose we may never come here again — how strange that is.”

“Very strange,” said Aubrey, “wonderfully strange,” he repeated to himself. Gradually the enormity of death had receded and a feeling of profound ease had taken its place — an inapt ease and a lightness of spirit.

“I wish you’d come and pay us a proper visit soon,” said Michael, “we don’t manage to see enough of each other somehow.”

“Thank you, Ratty,” said Aubrey, “I will.”

There were only a few days of the holidays left now and he had decided to give in his notice as soon as the term had begun, for there would be enough from his father’s estate to enable him to devote himself to his writing, at
least for some time to come. On the evening after he had got back to the Lotus House, he settled down to his manuscript once more.

“I’ll go over the whole thing again first, to get into the right mood for tackling the next part. I’ve got enough notes I know, but in a big work one has to be careful to maintain consistency of plot and characters”. So much had happened since he had begun the novel that he could hardly remember details of the early chapters, only the glow with which he had conceived the whole enterprise. But, as he read his neatly typed pages, the realization grew relentlessly upon him that their glory had departed. It had apparently only existed in his imagination. The book was a study in monochrome, lacking even the neon-lighting of melodrama; the characters, stuffed into their historical roles as if into fancy dress, had never come to life. There were long passages of guidebook description interspersed with sudden bursts of inconsistent action. It was lamentable! Well, no, now he was going to the other extreme — some of it wasn’t so bad, but still it would not do, he saw very clearly that it would not do.

“I’m a failure as a creative writer as well as a teacher,” he declared, but the declaration was almost triumphant. “It doesn’t matter though, it simply doesn’t matter any more.” This discovery was extraordinarily exhilarating. On the top of his desk were arranged all his research notebooks —
It’s
a
pity
to
waste
all
that
I
must
say,
he thought,
perhaps
I’ll
produce
that
monograph
on
old
Cotton
one
of
these
days,
yes,
I
think
I
might
make
quite
a
good
job
of that,
but
what
on
earth
else
shall
I
do?
His eyes wandered round the room as if for a clue, they dwelt lovingly as usual on his books.
I
must
put
up
some
more
shelves
for
Father’s,
he thought. There were two packing-cases of these waiting on the landing.

Then inspiration came — “Of course, that’s what drew me to Cotton, the great librarian, in the first place.
I’ll take a librarian’s course and live happy and humdrum ever after. In my spare time I’ll write my monographs and edit texts. ‘Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room, and hermits are contented with their cells,’” he quoted, “and why not, I should like to know.” He looked again at the magnum opus lying in confusion all over his desk and felt the need for some symbolic act. “I’d like to burn it and see the silly dream vanishing up the chimney in smoke, but that’s the worst of an electric fire. I think I’ll borrow a spade, yes, ‘bury it certain fathoms in the earth’ like Prospero’s book, only I’m not a Prospero and never have been.” For the present however, he shovelled all the chapters back into the drawer. The end of
The
Tempest
was drifting through his mind as he did so. He had a less difficult task than Prospero, after all — it is easier to forgive the dead.

It was getting late, his father’s clock chimed midnight and a new day was beginning as Aubrey went to his bed.
I’ll
get
those
bars
taken
down,
was his last thought before he went to sleep,
Michael
was
right
about
them,
they
do
obscure
the
view.

The bars were duly removed and one warm May afternoon Aubrey was able, by leaning out, to see the first wisteria blooms here and there between their pale patterned leaves. Further down beneath them he caught sight of Miss Cook bent over her border, assiduously weeding and planting.

It was not an uncommon sight, for Janet Cook’s grandfather’s genes had been ever more busily asserting themselves since she had taken over the strip of garden allotted to her by Mrs Sanderson. The box she had once labelled “Sitting-room new carpet fund” was not getting any heavier, for all her spare cash seemed now to go in providing herself with garden tools, sprays and fertilizers, not to speak of seeds, bulbs and plants. She was a regular listener to “Gardeners’ Question Time” and viewer of
“Gardeners’ World” and this did not, with her, result in envy or despondency but in inspiration and achievement. She was rewarded. All her plants behaved well and did what was required of them, making sturdy but not ill-mannered growth both outside and in the house for, emulating Dian, she soon had a row of healthy pot plants on the broad window-sills behind the pink curtains. Letty Sanderson, on the other hand, admitted sadly to herself that though she loved flowers, her plants didn’t seem to like her much! “It’s because I’m sentimental over them,” she sighed; “sentimental”, a dirty word nowadays, could, she feared, be applied to her in general. It was awful to be sentimental and know it: if one didn’t know it, it could make one happy. Anyway she was afraid she really was very sentimental over flowers. She adored their beauty but often forgot to water them, and then to make up for it she watered them too much, and of course that made them bad-tempered. So bad-tempered that they died just to spite her, she thought, as she threw out what had once been a splendid cyclamen given to her by Margot in gratitude for her help with Harriet after the accident. Margot had made a similar presentation to Miss Cook — she had got them cheap from the firm that supplied decorative plants to her art gallery. Janet’s cyclamen, of course, had flourished and the lovely butterfly blossoms would probably renew themselves for years to come, thought Letty, and having seen how successfully the basement border had been cultivated, she had asked Janet to extend and broaden this, and there was now quite a sizeable little sunny flower-garden beneath and beyond the balcony. So, in this second summer, as Aubrey Stacey looked out from his window, he could smell, in addition to the wisteria, the warm late wallflowers and the early fragrant pinks. He could also see a neat edging of deep blue forget-me-nots and a clump of single white peonies just coming into flower. Later,
there would be sweetpeas and roses and just now Janet was busy with her summer planting, snapdragons and petunias and stocks and, in the sunniest spot, a row of zinnias. She had raised all these from seed in what had once been the old scullery and here, too, she kept during the winter the cuttings she had taken from her geraniums and pelargoniums. She loved these. “Anyone’s welcome to all that greenery,” she had said derisively once to Dian, who was describing admiringly the fashionable trailing spider plant that Margot had lately established on the landing of the first floor flat — “a bit of colour for me!”

“Well, that there geranium with a ‘
P
’ does you credit, I must say,” admitted Dian. It was a splendid purple and white pelargonium, the queen of all her pot plants, and had actually been the first she had ever brought. Miss Budgeon of the little corner shop had embarked on a small stand of plants and flowers, squeezed between the fruit and vegetables. Influenced by Miss Sanderson, all the tenants of the Lotus House patronized the corner shop, and one day Janet Cook, after having purchased a nice little cauliflower, found herself transfixed by a vision of glory. It was the finest pelargonium she had ever encountered. She looked at the price and turned away. She was not yet a fully committed addict and the carpet box beckoned. But those extravagantly rich purple and white flowers danced before her eyes all day and were a trouble to her dreams by night. She resisted all the rest of the week, but on Saturday morning she gave in and, in a panic lest the plant should have been sold, she rifled the carpet-fund box and almost ran to the shop, returning guilty but triumphant.