The Centre of the Green Read online

  “And I can’t face responsibility?”

  “Doesn’t look like it, Julian. Sorry to be brutal. Don’t blame you. Don’t really understand it the way your mother does. Just think you ought to get away for a bit. When things have been ironed out, you can——”

  “Make a fresh start?”

  “Yes. Start as well as you can, then see how you finish.”

  But I needn’t come back, Julian thought; I needn’t come back at all. There was nothing to bring him back to this fresh start, no need to make it—no need, at any rate, to make it here. Suppose, during this “holiday”, he could find something, some job, any sort of job—lose his identity, take a new one. You didn’t need much to live on in Spain.

  “What do you think, eh?” the Colonel said.

  No. It was ridiculous. Even in Spain there were work permits to be considered. And yet—to be a tutor? give English lessons? guide tourists? Not to stay for ever necessarily, but at least for a while, and to come back under a new name (somehow) to new people and a new job. He would go with his father for this holiday, and then one morning after breakfast, he would say quite casually, disconcertingly, “I’m afraid I’m not coming back.”

  “What do you say, Julian?”

  He was big with his secret intention. But he must not seem too enthusiastic.

  “Eh, Julian?”

  “All right.”

  “Bit of a change for both of us.”

  “Yes.”

  The Colonel felt a sense of anti-climax. There ought to be more to success than this. He felt no nearer to Julian. What if it were all like this? What if the holiday made no difference at all?

  However, he must not rush things; he knew that. Any sort of relationship between them, any sort of trust, would need time to grow. So he only said, “Suppose I’d better have a word with your mother. Thought I’d like to talk it over with you first, but of course she has to be consulted.”

  Now that Julian had an object to gain, he began to become the Julian who would gain it. The grey tinge left his skin, and bones took shape again beneath the flesh of his face. He put away the Radio Times, and stood up. “Don’t worry, Father,” he said. “I’ll do that. I’m sure I’m better at handling her than you are.”

  *

  A light wind was blowing from the south. Above it, and in the contrary direction, the clouds moved in stately succession across the sun. Earlier in the day there had been a brief shower of rain; the lawn was still damp. It was not really an afternoon for taking tea in the garden. However, the Colonel had gone to a Sale, and Mrs. Baker had set herself to re-create the atmosphere of a childish treat—tea in the garden, supper on the rug by the living-room fire, the picnic, the day at the beach—in which she herself felt most at ease, being both giver and sharer. She had decided to have a little talk with Julian.

  Two tartan rugs had been spread side by side on the damp grass; Mrs. Baker and Julian sat one on each rug, with the tea-tray between them. There was Earl Grey tea in a brown pot, milk for Julian and lemon for his mother, fruit cake on one dish and home-made scones spread with mulberry jam on another. Julian had compromised between sun and cloud by taking off his pullover, but draping it over his shoulders with the sleeves tied round his neck like a scarf. “Aren’t you chilly, darling?” Mrs. Baker said, and Julian replied, “What’s this about sending me to a Home, Mother?”

  Mrs. Baker set her cup down in the saucer, and replaced it carefully on the tray. “I don’t know what you mean.” “What has your father been saying?”—these and other sentences formed themselves simultaneously in her mind, but she kept quiet until she should be more composed.

  “What’s this about sending me to a Home?”

  “Not sending you, dear.”

  “What then?”

  Caught off balance in this way, she fluttered and tacked from side to side, for their usual situation was reversed, and she was without experience in dealing with the new one. She could attack, she could pry, she could probe, but she had not learned, even from her children, to evade. And now her judgement was further confused by the unfairness of it, when she had only been planning to help him. Send me to a Home! It was not like Julian, who avoided bluntness of speech, to put it like that.

  “We won’t talk about it, darling,” she said. “It was just an idea I had for helping you. We’ll discuss it together some other time.”

  But Julian, savouring this new experience, would not let the subject go. “We’ll discuss it now,” he said. “Wasn’t that what you intended? Wasn’t that why you sent father off to the Sale?”

  “Sent him?”

  “Mother, you know you did.”

  Fractionally the balance had shifted, and Julian, no longer the inquisitor, in his turn explained and qualified. Mrs. Baker sensed her advantage, and pressed it too far. “You mustn’t start thinking people are persecuting you, dear,” she said.

  “You mean I’m going potty? Is that why you want——?”

  “Julian!”

  “—to have me put away?”

  Mrs. Baker began to rise to her feet, saying, “If you’re going to be silly about it, I shan’t stay,” but it is not easy to get up quickly from a rug spread on the ground, and Julian was able to catch her hand, and hold her where she was. “Don’t go, Mother,” he said.

  “Let me go.”

  “Don’t you want to know what I’m going to do, then?”

  “You’re going to do?” Mrs. Baker stayed where she was.

  “Yes, I’m going to do. All by myself. At least, not quite by myself. With father.”

  Now Mrs. Baker, who was already shocked by Julian’s tone of voice and obvious enjoyment in hurting her, began to shiver uncontrollably. “Are you cold, Mother?” Julian said. “Would you like my pullover?”

  “No. No.”

  “Father thought we might go abroad until it all blows over. Don’t you think that’s a good idea?”

  “We?”

  “He and I.”

  A cloud which had been hiding the sun grew translucent at one edge. The church clock, a mile away, struck five. At the fifth stroke, the sun shone freely again, and a small yellow butterfly flew across the lawn and hovered over the tea things. It settled on the edge of the plate of scones. Mrs. Baker said, “Julian, why are you trying to hurt me?”

  “I’m not trying to hurt you, Mother.” Julian made a pounce towards the butterfly, but it felt the shadow of his hand, and flew away. He pulled a stem of grass from the lawn, and began to nibble it.

  “If you’d wanted…. If you’d heard anything…. You didn’t have to go behind my back, persuading your father to….”

  Julian spat out the chewed particles of grass, and picked another piece.

  “It’s not that I don’t want you to go. I told Charles so when he suggested it in the first place. We can’t afford it; that’s all.”

  “Charles—— Yes, of course; father said it was Charles’ idea.”

  “Your father had no right——”

  “Mother, if I want to go, and father wants to take me, what’s the objection?”

  “I told you. We can’t afford it.”

  “And if father says we can?”

  No answer. Julian looked at his mother, and saw despair. He felt ashamed of his enjoyment in hurting her. “It’s only for a holiday, Mother,” he said. “Until things are … you know. I’m coming back.”

  Mrs. Baker shook her head.

  “But I will. Of course I will.”

  “It’s not that.”

  “Then?”

  “Oh, why can’t you understand? Why do I have to tell you?”

  Just for that moment in all their dialogue—perhaps in all the years since his growing up—Julian felt an identification with his mother. Why do I have to tell you? Why can’t you know without my telling you? You do know—why make me tell you? He had so often felt that, so often wanted to cry it aloud. But now this memory brought not only sympathy with his mother, but also resentment at what he had so often
been forced to endure, and with this resentment he began to want to hurt her again. So he said, “You mean you wouldn’t mind if you were coming abroad with me. It’s because I’m going with father. That’s why you’re upset, isn’t it? You’d rather put me into a Home for good, locked up and under your eye.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. Did you think I didn’t know. All three of us— Henry, Charles, me—we’ve always known that. You just want to own us. Even when we were kids, we had to hide things from you—things that we’d done or people we’d met that we wanted to have for ourselves. You wanted us to have nothing that you hadn’t given us, nothing that you couldn’t share with us.”

  “I loved you. I loved you all.”

  “Loved! You lived on us. We were food to you. It was like … like a blood transfusion, when they stick that hooked tube thing into your arm, and fill a bottle with your blood. You had your hooks into us all right all the time, draining us, siphoning away love, confidence, affection, trust. And then when they ran out, and we didn’t have any more to give you, when nothing but bile was left, you lived on that. You never once let up, Mother. You never let us rest on a cot with a cup of tea and a biscuit, the way they do in the Transfusion Centres.” Julian’s outburst had made him feel dizzy, and he had to stop. “I expect I’m mixing my metaphors a bit,” he said, “but you know what I mean, don’t you?”

  Mrs. Baker sat with her head lowered, one hand gripping a fold of the tartan rug. Julian’s words made a kind of buffeting in her mind like a wind, ruffling and confusing her thoughts. Only one thing was clear; that he did not understand. He knew, but he did not understand. And she did not know how to make him understand.

  “Anyway, there’s not much point in talking about it,” Julian said. “I’m going with father.”

  “Julian——”

  “You might as well face it, Mother.”

  “Julian!” Mrs. Baker kept her head bent; she could not, for the time being, face anything. She spoke as though muttering to herself, as though ashamed of what must nevertheless be said. “All through the war….” she said, but that was wrong, and she had to start again. “I’ve never wanted…” she said, “… never needed….” She tightened her grip on the rug, and tried again, saying, “I don’t make friends. Even as a girl, I never had more than … one particular friend. I suppose I was shy or something. Anyway there wasn’t any reason for people to want my friendship, or for me to offer. When you boys were young, I didn’t need friends. I was always one of the gang; do you remember, how you used to say that? I was just one of the gang. Not like other mothers. One of you. Perhaps you think I was just playing, Julian, but I wasn’t. I enjoyed all the things we did together, just as you did. Even the very early, childish things—making a snowman, reading from that silly rag book, toboganning on the silver tea tray—I enjoyed all that. I couldn’t do that sort of thing with other people, of course. But with my own children, it was quite acceptable. And in those early days, you never found me … never resented me. Only of course you had to go away to school, and it wasn’t quite the same in the holidays. And the time went by, and you grew up—all of you. I had to grow up with you … I grew up four times altogether; once on my own, once with Henry, once with you, once with Charles. Each of you … each had his first moment of embarrassment, when I wasn’t one of the gang any longer, when you began to see what anyone else would have seen all the time—a middle-aged woman playing at being a child.”

  Mrs. Baker’s voice became more indistinct as she grew less able to halt the tears that she could feel come crowding in behind her words. “You talk about me … draining you,” she said. “It wasn’t that. I didn’t make those demands on you when you were little. I didn’t have to. It was only when you began to doubt … to see me like that…. Then I had to have proof … some sign that I was still one of the gang … that you still loved me, accepted me.”

  Julian stirred and shifted on the rug, embarrassed almost beyond bearing at seeing the gorgon’s weakness so exposed, but Mrs. Baker’s tears were falling freely now, and she did not notice his discomfort. For with the tears, relief had come, the sweet relief of talking out something hidden, something one has feared to say. “All these magazine stories about possessive mothers,” she said. “Did you think I’d never read them? Did you think I didn’t know what was happening? But there wasn’t any alternative. Nobody else could give me what you boys gave me. I didn’t want other people. I wanted you.”

  “Father——”

  “I didn’t marry your father; I was married to him. I don’t mean I was forced into it, dear, but you do what’s expected of you in this world, for all the talk about choice. You’re all sorry for your father. You think I … think I hate him, but it isn’t true. Don’t you see?—I treat your father exactly as you treat me. I even kiss him as you boys kiss me—pulling back a bit, because I’m afraid of the emotional demand I can’t satisfy. When your father came back from the war, he was lost. I knew that; I’m not so silly or heartless as you think. He wanted reassurance from me—just the same little physical signs of love and confidence and being needed as I wanted from you, and I couldn’t give them to him any more than you could give them to me. I couldn’t. Need! Need! You can’t give something just because there’s a need. All you can do is behave … behave as if everything was all right … as if there wasn’t a need, and you didn’t have to do anything about it. You pretend; that’s what you do…. And your father doesn’t ask … not any more. He isn’t like me. He doesn’t cheapen himself by asking all the time.”

  Still keeping her head turned away, Mrs. Baker let the rug go, and extended her hand towards her son. But Julian was out of his depth, and still suspicious of the demand. “Well, I don’t know,” he said. “Pretend then, Mother, if it’s all you can do,” and Mrs. Baker drew back her hand again.

  “Give me your handkerchief, dear,” she said. “I haven’t got one.” She wiped her eyes, blew her nose, and gave the handkerchief back. Then she went indoors to wash the tearstains from her cheeks and bathe her eyes in cold water. Julian, feeling confused and sulky, remained where he was. Something had gone wrong. He had won, he supposed, but after its first successful stages, the interview had gone altogether out of his control. “Oh, Christ!” he said. “What does she expect me to do about it?” and took another piece of cake.

  When the Colonel returned that evening, Mrs. Baker told him that she had been thinking about Charles’ idea and had decided that it could probably be afforded after all. “I thought you might go with Julian, dear,” she said. “You know I can’t bear leaving England.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” the Colonel heard himself saying, “why don’t you come with us. Have a bit of a fling, eh?” and Julian echoed him, “Why not?”

  “Oh no, dear,” Mrs. Baker said, “I wouldn’t dream of it. You two will be far better off on your own.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A Wet Week-End

  Charles awoke from a dream of solitude. It had begun realistically enough. He was at Victoria seeing his father and Julian depart, as he had done that very morning. That was all right; they were as they had been in reality, both quiet, both drab in raincoats and travelling clothes; Julian carried the two suitcases. They were to go by sea from Southampton to Barcelona, then across to Palma by the ferry. All the beginning of his dream, Charles thought as he lay in darkness trying to recall it, had been realistic and natural. He had dreamed even the smell of Victoria, that sour smell of damp and old smoke, laced with the hops from Watney’s brewery close by. The Colonel found a carriage. Julian put magazines on the seat to keep their places, hoisted the suitcases to the rack, and rejoined them at the carriage door, where they stood uneasily, making conversation. In the dream as in fact, a whistle was blown, doors slammed. Charles shook hands with them both, and said, “Enjoy yourselves. I’m sure you will,” and Julian replied, “Surely”. The train pulled away from the platform, and then, he remembered … then it began to grow strange. It was so vivid. Julian app
eared at the end of the train, which was an observation car of glass, as Charles now discovered. Julian said something to Charles, but the glass cut off the sound. What Julian had said was important, but Charles could not hear him, and as he strained to hear, Julian was borne away from him by the train—very slowly, because the train was pulled out like chewing-gum, but nevertheless borne away. Backwards. All the time Charles could descry his brother’s figure, could see the tiny mouth opening, the tiny arms making their important, futile gestures. Then the train disappeared altogether. Already Julian and the Colonel had begun their journey to the sea and the warm south. “What?” Charles shouted, “what did you say?” but it was too late now for that; he should have made the effort sooner. “You haven’t got the message, have you?” a voice inside him said. Nevertheless he was not defeated. Many people had come to watch the train depart; perhaps they had heard, and would tell him what Julian had said. Of course, they were leaving now that the train had gone, but he could stop them. He decided to approach a person in uniform, a porter. “Excuse me——” he said, but he could not hear the porter’s reply either, and, when he tried to question him more closely, the porter went away. Nobody remained on the platform any longer. There was no one left to question. Then the platform itself grew broader. Buildings, carriages, railway lines, the Left Luggage and the loo, all receded. The roof drew back. Charles was alone under the bare sky on a broad and metalled plain. And when he looked down, he saw that he cast no shadow, and so awoke.

  He awoke to darkness. Having succeeded in remembering his dream, he considered whether to get out of bed and write it all down, so as to be able to discuss it with the group at their Tuesday meeting. But what was the point? To interpret the dream was not difficult. It told him what he and the group already knew, that he lived in isolation. How to Live Alone and Like It. There was no reason to go over that ground again. Lately, and a little to his annoyance, Charles’ position in the group had changed. He was no longer attacked for standoffishness. Instead, the others seemed sorry for him—sorry and beginning to be uninterested, because he contributed nothing. “You don’t progress, do you?” Ethel had said recently, “not the way we do.” It was true. Progress or regress, there was usually some difference from week to week in their relations with each other and with the world. Only Charles was always the same, and always on the same polite, uninvolved terms with each of them.