‘Paul, have you done your homework?’
‘No, and I’m not going to.’
This exchange, opening moves in a well-understood game, enabled them now to relax. Martha sat down. Paul gave her a look hostile only for form’s sake. He leaned forward to turn up the sound.
The party-hostess’s voice, which is considered suitable for small children on television and on radio, interpreted the movements of some endearing little puppet animals.
‘You’re missing your Western, ’ said Martha.
His sour smile, most unwilling, said: you score one! to Martha, and also: I hate you!
‘Turn that thing off, then, I’m talking to you.’
He pouted, then switched it off. He sighed exaggeratedly, turned up his eyes to heaven, then bundled himself into a resigned heap, like a sad bird in his dark blue trousers and scarlet sweater. He stared at the floor, waiting.
In dealing with Paul Martha had discovered, created rather, a forceful authoritarian who at first had dismayed, and now merely surprised her. The thing was, she did not believe in it-did not like this way of dealing with children, and could never believe that Paul did not see through her when she made use of this particular personality. Ordered, instructed, told, he would wriggle and sulk, but he obeyed-or often did, as if the game was real. One of the psychiatrists, now numerous, consulted about Paul, had said he needed authority. Mark had said: stuff and nonsense! Which meant he did not choose to try it. Martha, at her wits’ end with Paul, had attempted ‘authority’, as if putting on a new coat. But she always felt as if she were acting in a charade, even when it worked. Which it did, if unpredictably.
There sat Paul, acting a long-suffering resentment. And there sat Martha, acting authority. She wanted to giggle. Catching his eye, she was unable to prevent a smile; he smiled back, a swift, beautiful amused smile, instantly suppressed. For it was outside the rules of this particular game.
Now Martha could either go on, risking a real horns-locked battle, or try coaxing, and teasing.
She was tired. She would have liked very much to go down to her room, lock the door and spend the evening alone. But being alone these days, it was a luxury, a boon, half an hour or an hour stolen where she could. The evening stretched in front of her: the long supper, where so many warring personalities had to be coaxed and balanced, and shielded; and then afterwards, with possibly Phoebe’s girls and young Nicky staying the night-and then Lynda wanted to talk … and then, and then …
How very extraordinary it was, this being middle-aged, being the person who ran and managed and kept going … it was as if more than ever one was forced back into that place in oneself where one watched; whereas, all around the silent watcher were a series of defences, or subsidiary creatures, on guard, always working, engaged with-and this was the point-earlier versions of oneself, for being with the young meant all the time reviving in oneself that scene, that mood, that state of being, since they never said anything one hadn’t said oneself, or been oneself.
Except for Paul, because Martha could not remember this everso dramatic creature, either in herself, or in people she had known … there had been Stella of course. But she had been a young married woman. And then, of course, Paul’s mother Sally-Sarah. But Martha had not herself been, as far as she could remember, anything like Paul; whereas nothing Francis could say, or Jill or Gwen, was a surprise to her.
‘Well, ’ said Paul, magnanimous, like a host, ‘I switched off the programme, didn’t I?’
Martha settled for combat.
‘Well, good. Now you can do your homework.’
‘I don’t think I feel like it.’
Now Paul most luxuriously stretched, and yawned, reaching out two arms behind his head, and then bringing the back of one hand in a graceful movement against his mouth. Over the hand, black eyes drooped at Martha in a languor appropriate to not feeling like it. Almost, she applauded.
‘There’s half an hour before supper.’
‘You can’t make me do homework.’
‘No, I can’t. But I can see you don’t eat any supper.’
‘I don’t want any supper. I drank some milk.’
Oh well then-in that case, milk is all you will get.’
Now Martha waited, amazed at the sheer nonsense of it all. If Paul intended to, he could descend the stairs while they all ate supper and he knew, as she did, that of course she would not make a scene in front of the others, and he would eat with everyone. And, if he didn’t want that, he could descend at any time when people were not in the kitchen, to take what he wanted from the refrigerator.
This was merely a ritual.
Silence. He swivelled himself away from her, so that she could observe him sitting chin on hand, staring into a fateful distance.
Then he suddenly jumped up and said: ΌΚ for half an hour then.’
He departed to his bedroom across the landing where, as Martha knew he would probably do no homework, but might read. So what had been achieved in this bit of farce? Nothing?
She sat looking at the blank television screen. As far as she was concerned, the scene they had just played out was no more real than what they could see on that screen by turning on a switch.
She turned it on loudly: anyone wanting to know, Where is Martha, could be told:’ She’s watching the news.’
The middle-aged scheme, fight, negotiate for these small ten-minute intervals of privacy. She retreated from the machine, seeing its wired, knobbed, buttoned presence as an alien being in this room which was eighteenth century in spirit. Except of course for what Paul brought to it: but one could dispose of the gloss of colour Paul had brought here by walking through from end to end, scooping up objects with both hands and simply depositing them out of the door-how very odd that was. Yet the room shouted Paul, Paul, Paul. Personality: Paul’s personality, a dramatic sulk, a droop of great dark eyes, and a sheen over his rooms like light on a bird’s wing. With Paul’s personality one fought. Ridiculous battles, as far as she was concerned.
When a small baby looked straight at you, for the first time, its eyes having thrown off its milk-glaze, you looked into eyes that would stay the same for as long as it lived. Then the eyes might belong to an infant in a screaming tantrum, a hoyden, an obedient child, a day-dreaming pubescent, someone moonstruck by love-the point was, there was no cheating, no going around, the small baby, and the rest. Oneself, or Paul, had to be, for as long as it was
necessary, screaming baby, sulking adolescent, then middle-aged woman, whose eighteen hours a day were filled with a million details, fragments, reflected off the faceted mirror that was one’s personality, that responded all the time, every second, to these past selves, past voices, temporary visitors. And it was not so silly, not so absurd after all, to insist on the right to feel, while one played these ridiculous games: Do your homework; Remember Lynda’s ill; Be kind to Paul; that all the time one communicated with something else, that person who looked steadily, always the same, from eyes only temporarily glazed over with anger, sorrow, sulk … Because, once the necessary allowance of sulk, or sorrow, or pain had been dealt out, then the reward was that in fact one did speak to the permanent person in Paul, or Francis, or anybody else.
If she didn’t believe that, then it would not be possible for her to stay here, in this house, where the two problematical people Francis and Paul grew, partly under her care, partly her responsibility. For the rest of their experience, what life had dealt them, was so off-centre that there was no resting on normality, as ordinary people, families, could. (What ordinary families, people?)
Stripped: they were being stripped. They
had
been stripped, by their births of everything an ordinary child (who, where?) could hold on to.
The conversations that went on-mostly implicit with Francis; candid, and indeed, shocking with Paul, were in themselves like a stage of growth that everyone had to go through (childhood, pubescence, etc.), because they had so much of the quality of unreality although, probably
because
, they dealt with the basics of morality.
With Paul, above all, one was made naked, and disarmed, not only because of his history, but because, quite simply, he had no sense of right and wrong. When one had finished with the teachers and the headmasters and the psychiatrists, and all their various prescriptions, and descriptions, it was extremely simple: a moral sense had been left out of his make-up.
His extraordinary intelligence enabled him to pick up very fast, like a monkey, what other people expected of one.
‘I was stealing love, that’s all, ’ he had, not so long ago, said airily; and still might say.
But what gave it all its odd ring, its upsetting quality, was that it
became a sort of dogma because it was something he had picked up, out of the air.
If a child stole, a child stole love, so he had read, or heard, or it was in the air of his old school, and now he would say it as other people might say, ‘Sunday is the seventh day of the week.’
‘I don’t know who I am, you see. so I steal things which are a symbol of what I want to be.’
And he would look almost hopefully, certainly puzzled, at Mark or Martha or whoever was around, to see if they agreed, if this was an acceptable formula.
Or: ‘I don’t know who I am, and therefore I am always trying to define my boundaries?’
Behind all this, the reality; a sullen, angry bewilderment that his best, his brightest, was not accepted, not loved and appreciated. For his real skill, and his talents went into-stealing, one form or another of it. At the new school for two years he hadn’t staged any big coup or deal but everyone knew that he continually-no, not pilfered, too niggling a word for Paul, but organized small thefts. He would not stoop to an act of kleptomania: he had been very indignant when someone had said he was a kleptomaniac, for he was perfectly in control of what he did, he said. But he would arrange for half a dozen boys to swoop through a store and emerge with a hundred objects chosen beforehand, by Paul, with skilled care for their easy saleability. All the adults watched and waited, praying that he would not go too far, not be impelled over the edge into expulsion or disgrace before he became fifteen-in a couple of months now; and could legally leave school.
‘Why don’t you steal, Martha?’
‘Because I’d get caught.’
‘That’s because you’d do it so you had to get caught.’
‘Possibly.’
‘Yes. You could steal so you didn’t get caught.’
‘Why should I?’
‘Supposing you were starving, and you didn’t have money would you then?’
‘I don’t know. Probably.’
‘But I want you to think-you’re just wriggling out of it.’
‘All right. But probably I’d get a job.’
‘Suppose you couldn’t?’
‘Then I’d steal.’
‘Would you feel guilty?’
‘Now listen to me, Paul, we’ve done this before-if you want me to say that Marks and Spencer or Selfridges aren’t going to miss even a hundred pounds of goods, I’ll say it. That isn’t the point. The point is, I’d feel guilty. I’ve been brought up like that. I’m not interested in the morality of it. And you don’t feel guilty. So what? But it doesn’t matter how you feel or I feel, if we steal, we’ll get put into prison.’
‘Not if you aren’t caught.’
‘Most people are caught.’
‘No, Martha …” And now he would lean forward, earnest, focused on his point, almost absurdly dramatic in his intensity, because one could see that concentrated here was the energy of much thinking, brooding, resentment. He had to have an answer. ‘I want you to answer truthfully. Do you think it’s wrong to steal?’
‘It depends on who you steal from.’
His face clenched, darkened, his fists clenched-he needed some moral statement from Martha, some final right or wrong. The game, the rules of bringing up children demanded: Yes, that’s right, no that’s wrong.
She couldn’t do it.
‘You must know, Martha. Either it’s right or it’s wrong.’
‘I don’t think it’s either right or wrong at all. It depends entirely on the circumstances. Everything always depends on the circumstances.’
Bitter eyes followed her-betrayed.
‘Why don’t you go and ask someone who’ll give you a black and a white, if a black and a white is what you want? You know what I’ll say!’
A flush, then a conscious look, then a slow smile, like a counter in the game he played, ‘You’re up one’ or ‘I’m up one ‘:’ You’re bringing me up, though, aren’t you?’
‘Partly.’
‘So if I turn out badly, it’s your fault.’
‘Nonsense. Oh, if that’s what you want-welfare workers and psychiatrists and prison officers they’ll say, poor Paul, he’s had a hard life, poor, poor Paul. But I’m not going to say it.
And you won’t say it either
At which point there came a brief flash of what made it all worth while-only for a flash, a moment, before the other game went on,
when her eyes met his eyes, in seriousness, and in responsibility, and some sort of real truth was communicated and shared.
Oh, all right then, ’ he pouted, sulked, slipped away.‘But if I ever do get into trouble, then I’m glad I can fall back on that. Poor Paul, poor Paul, poor Paul, poor Paul…’
‘If you want to be sloppy-and anyway there isn’t anything so very special any longer about poor Paul. Because so many people are having it bad, they are having it worse all the time, and I can imagine a situation when you produce your trump card, poor Paul, mummy dead, father vamoosed to the communists, brought up by mad uncle and his purported mistress, and everyone will just look at you, and be ever so tactful-because they’ve had it worse. The Emperor Paul will have no clothes
‘All right then, Martha, then if that’s true but I’m not admitting it, then why should one try to be good, or kind, or anything …’
‘Because you can ask that question-that’s why.’
‘Well, I’m not going to be!’
‘That’s your funeral!’
The television set, its back to her, emitted noises of human beings in violent conflict. This machine was the real educator of the children of the nation. Francis, so much at school, watched it very little. Paul watched it four or five hours a day. Both had gone through phases with regard to it, the most interesting being this one: they had overheard, or been told, or had read, at any rate had absorbed the idea that they, ‘the inheritors of our future, etc.’, were being fed a view of the world, life, that all was killing and violence. Both had used this idea to attack the adult world: self-consciously on stage, they had seen themselves as corrupted from birth. The adults agreeing with them wholeheartedly and at once, had gone on to claim the same condition for themselves. Francis had reacted by thinking about it: the process had taken him a step further into responsibility. Paul, younger than Francis, was still shrilly on a stage full of murder, arson and ugly sex. It seemed quite likely that he might stay there for the rest of his life. After all, a good many people did.