An End to Autumn Read online

  “Well then,” said Tom awkwardly, “we’ll leave you just now. The bathroom is on the left as you leave the room. We’ll leave you then,” he said again. He and Vera left the room, the door still open. He didn’t say anything: it was as if in that moment, in that encounter, his mind had been flooded with images from the past, they all swam on the sea of his fresh feeling, images from tenement rooms in a big city, massive brown wardrobes, sideboards huge and becalmed, ponderous chairs, flowered wallpaper, speckled ceilings inadequately whitewashed.

  A train long and brown, a sinuous snake, bulleted through the walls, and turned into a coffin and then he was standing in a gush of feeling at his father’s grave. The day was clear and warm. The minister was standing at the graveside speaking of the Resurrection and the Life, and the many mansions to which all the mourners were invited. He himself waited, hearing above the words the hum of a wasp about his head, for the moment when he would be summoned to take a cord of the coffin and help lower it into the grave. All around him he saw the intent faces of the mourners, many of them blinking their eyes rapidly, and they seemed to him like the faces he had seen in a painting by Rubens or some other painter (was it Rembrandt?), permanent, puzzled, austere.

  Then he was called and he stepped forward. He stood there looking down into the open grave, feeling slightly dizzy as if he might fall into it, following the small light body of his diminished father. It was as if he and his father had entered a tunnel through which the train would eventually emerge into bright daylight. But he knew that this would not happen. And as the coffin swayed down on its ropes, he woke up and there beside him, standing slightly perplexed, was Vera and across his face passed a shade. Suddenly he put his hand in hers and without saying anything squeezed it slightly and went back into the living room. They stood there in the common light, he more disturbed than she for some reason that he could not put a name to till he realised that the funeral he was remembering could not have been his father’s at all, since he had been too young to attend it.

  He tried to think whose funeral it could have been, but couldn’t remember. She gathered the coffee cups together to wash them and in front of him still on the table was his copy of The Waste Land.

  3

  ON THE FOLLOWING morning Mrs Mallow woke early, the sun pouring through the window, and all around her an unaccustomed silence, except for the cry of seagulls. She felt light and free and happy as if she had thrown the weight of life’s responsibility on others, and had only to follow her own desires. She dressed rapidly after she had been to the bathroom—where she had noticed on top of the cistern a doll with flaxen hair and very clear blue eyes—and then finding that the other two were not yet up, she sat in her room for a while, thinking that she did not want to go out in case she disturbed them. She also left the electric fire unlit lest she should waste too much electricity, which had become so expensive in recent months.

  Her journey to her son’s house had been a response to his repeated suggestions after her own house had been broken into one evening when she had been in church. She had thought of keeping it from him but had not in fact done so for the rather odd reason that it had given her something to tell him when he had visited her, since he believed that she led an uneventful life. The burglars had forced a back window and had taken the small radio which he had given her, as well as a few ornaments, and a clock: there was little else of value in the house. Perhaps because of this they had scattered some documents, including insurance policies, on the floor, and had left the lock of the window smashed. For the first time since she had lived in the house she had felt vulnerable. At first she hadn’t known what to do but had finally decided to phone for the police who came along, had a look at the room, advised her to have the window lock repaired, took a list of the stuff that had been taken (she didn’t know what make the radio had been) and then left her without much hope that she would ever get any of it back. Tom had been incensed when she had told him about it, as if he had been personally threatened. He had stormed down to the police station, and had been very rude to them: and then he had come back and told her that she must come and stay with him and Vera.

  She hadn’t actually thought of that before, though she had wondered what would become of her if she was unable to look after herself. She only thought of this in a vague sort of way and not constantly. She was a rather heavy, big-boned woman and sometimes when she was out shopping, especially among traffic, she felt moments of dizziness as if her body were becoming too large to handle, and also more vague than it had been before. She found too that the world was becoming rather remote, and sometimes had the odd feeling that people were laughing at her and talking behind her back. Her only recreation, if it could be called that, was church. In church she relaxed in a restful silence, different from the silence that surrounded her at home; she could only think of it as a holy silence. Her troubles and torments seemed to fade away, leaving her mind and body light and fresh. Even the smell of the varnished seats conforted her, and sometimes in spring and summer she would look at the small high windows and see beyond them the motion of new green leaves.

  As she was thinking these thoughts she heard movement in the house and knew that either Tom or Vera or both were up. She glanced at her tiny watch and noticed that the time was nine o’clock. She wondered if it would be possible for her to go to church. It was strange to be in somebody else’s house, even though it was her son’s: she had never been in a house before that wasn’t her own or her husband’s. The first one had been a flat in a tenement and now there was the small semi-detached house which she had rented out for a few months. It was odd to be waiting on the pleasure of others, and to adapt to their routine which would probably be very different from her own. It was strange that there should have been a doll in the bathroom when there were no children in the house, and it looked very much as if there wouldn’t be any. A house with children was different, there was a sense of life, laughter, noise, quarrelling. But there was a clean silence about this house as if it had not yet wakened up, as if everything rested securely in its place and would remain so. She quite liked her daughter-in-law or, rather, didn’t dislike her, but she had great difficulty in speaking to her and felt rather frightened of her in a way.

  By ten o’clock she smelt bacon frying, and prepared to go into the living room but then decided against it. She thought her son would come to the door which in fact he eventually did. Casually dressed in a green jersey he seemed in good humour.

  “Did you sleep well?” he asked.

  “Like a log,” she said.

  “That’s good. Would you like to come into the living room? You should have put the fire on.”

  “I’m warm enough,” she answered, for she did feel warm or at least not cold. He seemed surprised to find her already dressed in her brown dress with the brooch at the throat, rather as if he had expected to find her in a dressing-gown.

  She followed him into the living room and he left her, as he said, to go for the papers. Vera came out of the kitchen to say good morning and then went back to her cooking. From the window she could see the sea through a veil of trees which were already turning brown. Tom had once taken her on holiday after he had started working and before his marriage and they had stayed in a hotel, and she felt now as she had felt then, when they were waiting at the table for breakfast, the red napkins folded in front of them, the white cloth on the table, the grapefruit in the glass. “I feel so stupid,” she thought, “I have brought them my stupidity.” But she was comforted by the fact that she could always go back to her own house. After all she had only rented it out for six months and didn’t need to renew the lease if she didn’t want to.

  Vera finally came in with the bacon and eggs, and laid them on the table. “Can I help you?” said her mother-in-law.

  “No,” said Vera, “that will be all right. You sit there and rest.”

  At the same time Mrs Mallow would have preferred to help her, for deep within her was the soul of the servant:
in fact she would have been happy to be a maid, for that would have given her a place, but of course that was impossible. Before her marriage she had done work like that, she had been a waitress, and she had been very happy in her work: she remembered that time as happy and joyous and full of laughter. She didn’t think that Vera had ever done anything like that, or at least she would be very surprised if she found that she had. For a moment she had a brief intuition of those days, of beds being made, of girls shouting and throwing pillows at each other, of breathless rushing and pushing among the foam of white linen, and her face changed and became young again. Then Tom was back with the papers. He had in fact forgotten that his mother might wish to go to church for to him Sunday had become a day when he read the Observer and the Sunday Times, or rather when he and Vera read both papers alternately. His first action was to remove the business section from the Sunday Times and throw it into the waste-paper basket, after which he would read the news section, followed by the part which contained the book reviews, television and theatre notices. Though he didn’t watch much television or for that matter ever saw any plays he read all the reviews carefully as did Vera. He felt, though he was far from London, a responsibility to keep up with what was going on. However, this morning out of a greater responsibility to his mother he didn’t actually start to read the papers, and because of this he felt a slight constraint as if she were coming between him and a way of life which he had created over the years. And immediately afterwards he felt guilty that he should have such a sense of restraint at all.

  As they sat at breakfast it was Vera who wondered if her mother-in-law wished to go to church and Mrs Mallow was immediately grateful to her. Yes, she did wish to go: perhaps she could walk?

  “No, no,” said Tom, “not at all. The church is too far away. I shall take you in the car.” He couldn’t remember when he had been in church last: he was not an atheist nor did he even consider himself an agnostic, he was simply indifferent. He would read theological books now and again, but he would never go to church. He felt no actual hostility towards it, it seemed to be a mediaeval out-dated institution, slightly comic and absurd, which perhaps at one time had served a useful purpose and had a certain aesthetic value but not any more. Vera was less indifferent but didn’t go either. If the church had been St Giles, massive, historical, a hive of music, she might have gone, but the churches in the small town where she now lived did not attract her. They seemed to her to be small, too sociable, and lacking in resonance and true divinity. Her image of the church was one of a chaste holiness, cool and devoted to a cool and reasonable god, who liked music but did not permit excesses.

  “I like going to church,” said Mrs Mallow. “I always went in Edinburgh.”

  “Yes?” said Vera.

  “Though I must say that the church isn’t what it used to be,” Mrs Mallow continued. “There are too many gimmicks.” She used the word “gimmicks” with a certain daring as if she felt it was not quite her sort of word. She was finding it difficult to make conversation for neither Tom no Vera seemed to talk much. In the past she had been used to people who talked a lot, who brought news home to her, who watched the little details of the world and were interested in them. Neither Tom nor Vera was like that at all: for instance they never mentioned events at the school to her. Their silences, she thought, might oppress her but at the same time she accepted that that was how they were. Still, she was looking forward to going to church, in a new town, and on such a fine morning and she felt slightly excited and even apprehensive.

  “Your church is in Victoria Street,” Vera told her. “It’s a fairly large church. What’s the name of the minister, Tom?”

  “Haven’t a clue. It isn’t Munro, is it? I seem to recall someone called Munro. A small man with a moustache who goes about on a bicycle.”

  “I don’t think so. I’ve a feeling it’s some other name.”

  “Well,” said Tom, “my mother will find out in due time. It may come to her as a magnificent surprise.” This last joke had come out of the blue and he laughed loudly, though his mother didn’t laugh at all. He had a habit of coming out with such springing witticisms from a superfluousness of high spirits that overflowed often in the mornings: and after he had said them he would burst out into sudden laughter. Neither Vera nor his mother, he thought, had a sense of the absurd. Tom, on the other hand, had a vision of a small minister in a white cloak appearing as if by miracle in front of his mother and presenting her with a grandiloquent name, his hands folded equably on a bible. He ate his bacon and egg contentedly.

  “Have you any idea when the service starts?” Vera asked.

  “Not the foggiest. Will it not be in the local rag? Oh, sorry, we threw it out didn’t we? You haven’t seen our local paper yet,” he said to his mother. “That is another treat in store for you.”

  Vera looked at him in a puzzled manner as if she thought he was acting strangely and his mother said, “It will be about eleven, I should think. It won’t be earlier than eleven. Sometimes half past but usually eleven. In Edinburgh it is eleven, though you have to be there before.” The words came from her in a rush, for she was on her own home ground, she was contributing facts of which she was sure.

  “I’m sure that will be right,” said Tom. It occurred to him to wonder what Vera thought of his mother. Maybe she considered her dull and dim, which she in effect was, though on the other hand she had her own virtues. He didn’t like her going on in this remorselessly factual way about trivial things and sometimes she embarrassed him, though he felt he ought not to be embarrassed. His mother however wasn’t finished yet.

  “The attendance in our church is going down. It’s mostly women now. Hardly any of the men go. You see them working in their gardens or playing golf.” She stopped as if she had found herself talking about a church which was of a higher class than it had actually been. Her own friends, or at least the women she talked to when she went to church, weren’t high class at all. They were ordinary women whose husbands had very ordinary jobs.

  “Well,” said Tom, “if you’re ready.”

  “I’ll get my coat,” said his mother and she went to her room from which she soon returned dressed to go out. Tom had by this time gone to the car and in a short while she was sitting beside him. It was a nice green car which she liked, and she was happy to be with him. After all he was her own son, she had reared him, and now he had a good job and was quite successful. She was proud of him. She even longed to touch him, to straighten the collar of his jersey, but didn’t dare to do so: he looked so confident and negligent. Never again would she touch him as she had done when he was young, when he had suffered the turmoils of boyhood and youth, when he had the illnesses common to children, when he had seemed so alone and helpless. It was she however who was now the child and he who was setting out into the wide world. Nevertheless she wished that he would go to church.

  The car, almost like a taxi which she had hired, drew up outside the church, the doors of which were open wide revealing the elders like butlers in black suits waiting with hymn books in their hands like salvers, and smiling genially on all who came in, sometimes bending down deferentially to listen to what someone had to say. Tom leaned over and opened the door of the car for her and watched her as she went towards the church, feeling a strange vexation, as if he were allowing her to set out without help on an adventure which he could not take part in because his mind was hostile to it. For he could not bring himself to go to church, and yet why shouldn’t he? Was his mother less important to him than the integrity of his own mind? He watched her, a stranger, approaching the open door: he saw an elder offering her a hymn book, and then she went into the church in her black coat and disappeared. It was like himself going to school for the first time and his mother watching him, no longer able to go with him, having grown too old, however she might wish to be with him.

  He sat in the car for a long time thinking, for it seemed to him that even this simple action of taking his mother to church an
d then leaving her at the door was important, was indeed of the greatest importance. The pathos of it disturbed him, so that he felt pity for his mother who was now sitting on her own among strangers, dependent wholly on the furniture and the language of the church itself, on its continuity and its resonance.

  Finally he turned the car away and drove home. When he went into the house Vera was reading the Observer. She raised her head briefly and said to him:

  “I suppose it has occurred to you that you’ll have to collect your mother later.” As a matter of fact it hadn’t occurred to him and he felt obscurely angry both at himself and at Vera.

  “It hadn’t,” he said tersely. She looked up at him in surprise as if something in his tone troubled her, but he turned to the Sunday Times and to the book page. He spent some time trying to understand the first sentence of a review of a book about psychology, and then glanced up from the paper and looked around him. He couldn’t see Vera behind the Observer which was held up in front of her like the open marble bible in a churchyard. There was a smell of cooking from the kitchen, the clock on the wall ticked irritatingly, the print by Hockney stared down at him.

  He turned back to the Sunday Times, concentrating on the article with great intensity, and feeling that he was fighting against some preoccupation which he couldn’t identify, but at the same time determined to finish reading the papers before he went to collect his mother. The two of them read in silence except that once Tom said, “I hope she will like the church,” and Vera as if completely understanding his thought said, “I hope so too.”

  4

  BEFORE LEAVING FOR school, Vera got into the habit of taking a light breakfast to her mother-in-law in her bedroom, and the latter rose after they had left. She found the house even more silent than her own since it was well away from the noise of traffic. At times she even thought of entering their bedroom to see what it was like, but confined herself to the living room, her own room, the bathroom, the kitchen and the dining room, and another spare bedroom which was as yet only sparsely furnished. The house had an almost spartan newness about it, lacking the clutter of ornaments in her own house, lacking, she thought, any warmth or colour, but giving an impression of whites and yellows and a plentitude of new wood. She could find no photographs, not even wedding ones: it was as if her son and daughter-in-law lived in a world totally free of the past, of relations, committed only to themselves and the reality of their own lives, spare of ancestry. Everything in the house was new, as far as she could see, and had a flawless automatic air about it: she would have been happier if she had found a broken or irregular clock, a squeaking floor board, an old sink. But no, there was none of these. It occurred to her that perhaps they had few if any friends, and that from choice rather than necessity. There were many books all of which seemed far beyond her, even if she had been a more voracious reader. There was a garden which as yet wasn’t in good order, and she thought that perhaps later she might help with that, though she wasn’t an especially good gardener. Outside the house there was a bench on which she could sit if she wanted.