Ivy Compton-Burnett - Parents and Children

‘I wished to spare my family a shock. And I wrote instead of cabling, to save them the weeks of waiting. I may have been right or wrong, but I have reached my home, and I cannot regret the manner of my coming.’

‘Fulbert,’ said Ridley, looking round with an emotional expression, ‘I could not wish you more than this.’

‘You are wise not to tell me your real feelings. And I will never ask you for them.’

‘You spoke of the gulf between us,’ said Ridley, in a painful manner. ‘If you will come to meet me over it, I will do my part. More I cannot do.’

‘Do let us gloss over this moment,’ said Graham, as if he could not suppress the words. ‘It will become too much.’

‘Father and Ridley might have had their encounter without arranging themselves as the cynosure of every eye,’ said Daniel.

‘Well, nothing need be explained to us later,’ said Isabel. ‘And I trust nothing will be.’

‘Well, you have been present at a scene that would be unique in anyone’s life,’ said Fulbert, looking round on his children. ‘You will live to be glad you have witnessed it. You will carry the memory to your graves. And you will be the wiser. Nothing could have thrown more light on human nature.’

‘I call that almost a personal remark,’ said Hope.

Graham looked again at Ridley, whose eyes were on the ground.

Honor came up to Gavin.

‘Shall we say our “Nunc dimittis”?’ she said, with a gleam in her eyes.

Gavin met the look in silence.

‘I mean, shall we find a chance of going upstairs?’

‘Don’t you want to stay with Father?’

‘I don’t mind, as long as he is here. I want to enjoy my ordinary life, feeling he has come back.’

Gavin gave the matter some thought.

‘We should only be sent for,’ he said.

‘Now let me do something more for you all, than work on your feelings,’ said Fulbert, who had been unfastening a package. ‘I have not come home for that. Let me show you these photographs of the places I saw, and should have seen, if I had been a sound man instead of a sick one. Now put yourselves so that you can see.’

He settled himself in an armchair. Luce leaned over the back. Isabel and Venice sat on the arms, and Honor on her father’s knee. Daniel and Graham stood at the sides, and James and Gavin knelt on the floor in front. Nevill took his stand at a distance, with his eyes on the photographs. Ridley slowly advanced and stood within sight of them, as if he would take a natural part. Eleanor kept her gaze on the group of her husband and children. Regan and Sir Jesse watched it with scarcely a movement of their eyes. Faith stood as if nothing mattered, as long as she did not occupy any space round Fulbert.

‘Here is the house where I lived,’ said Fulbert. ‘There is the window of the room where I lay. For months I saw nothing except through that square of glass.’

Nevill approached and placed his finger on the point.

‘It is where Father was,’ he said.

‘The glass is not square,’ said Gavin.

‘It is oblong,’ said Honor.

‘Father painted the picture,’ said Nevill.

‘It is a photograph,’ said James.

‘It is a picture of a house,’ said Nevill, who knew only photographs of people.

‘Couldn’t you even speak?’ said Honor to her father.

‘Not so that people knew what I meant.’

‘Then they couldn’t do what you wanted?’

‘That was the worst, my little woman. You would have found it out, wouldn’t you?’

‘He would too,’ said Nevill.

‘She couldn’t have, if she didn’t know what you said,’ said Gavin.

‘Ah, the eyes of love can divine a good deal,’ said Fulbert.

‘Then didn’t the people who were with you — didn’t they like you very much?’ said James, in a high, hardly articulate tone.

‘Not as much as my own girls,’ said Fulbert, putting Isabel’s arm about his neck, and a moment later doing the same with Venice’s.

‘Not as much as him either,’ said Nevill.

‘The voyage must have done a good deal for you, Father,’ said Luce. ‘You are thinner and a little older, but you are yourself.’

‘If I were not, you would not see me. I would not have offered you a ghost or a scarecrow for a father.’

‘If Honor couldn’t see you until you were well, she couldn’t have done what you wanted,’ said Gavin.

Fulbert lifted Honor’s hand to his cheek.

‘I wish Father would arrange some caresses for himself from me,’ said Graham. ‘He lets me seem so coldhearted.’

‘My Isabel can’t look at her father enough,’ said Fulbert.

‘He looks at Father too,’ said Nevill. ‘He likes to look at him.’

‘Now you may have these photographs for yourselves,’ said Fulbert. ‘Would you like to divide them or share them?’

‘Share them,’ said James, at once.

‘That is always a good way.’

‘I should like that one with you in it, Father,’ said Isabel.

Fulbert withdrew it and put it into her hand.

‘Mother gave me a photograph of you on the day you went away,’ said Venice.

‘Well, here is another on the day I come back.’

‘You gave me one of yourself on that day,’ said Honor, bringing about a similar result.

James’s eyes rested on the photographs in some doubt of the fate of his suggestion.

‘He would like a little picture,’ said Nevill.

‘Come and sit on my knee like Honor, and I will show them to you,’ said Fulbert.

Nevill moved forward and started back, gazed at his father, and after a moment ran to Ridley and climbed on his knee, as though he were the person interchangeable with Fulbert.

‘Now I must see what I can find in my pockets,’ said Ridley, holding to his line of playing a normal part. ‘Here is a purse and a notebook and a cigar case, and a gold pencil case with lead in it.’

Nevill looked from the objects to Ridley’s face.

‘It is better than a picture, isn’t it?’

‘Is the pencil real gold?’ said Gavin. ‘Did somebody give it to you?’

‘Yes, it was a present,’ said Ridley, not mentioning that the giver was Eleanor. ‘You can make it longer if you pull it.’

‘It moves,’ said Nevill, in a slightly uneasy tone, putting his hand towards it and drawing it away.

‘Pull it and see how long it is,’ said Ridley.

‘He will pull it,’ said Nevill, looking round before gingerly doing so, and breaking into nervous laughter as it yielded to his touch.

‘There is a loose leaf in the notebook,’ said Gavin. ‘I can read grown-up writing now; I can read it as well as Honor; I even like reading it. What is the matter? I can’t hurt a piece of paper. It doesn’t belong to the book.’

Ridley had started and grasped at the paper, but as Gavin moved away, he changed his manner and smilingly held out his hand.

‘I must ask for my property,’ he said.

‘Gavin, give it back at once,’ said Luce. We never read papers belonging to other people.’

‘It is only a list like Mother takes into the town. It isn’t even a long one.’

‘It is a memorandum,’ said Honor.

‘And as such, it fills a place in my life,’ said Ridley, still with hand extended.

‘I shan’t make any mistakes,’ said Gavin. ‘It is sometimes two or three words and sometimes more. What is the matter? You hurt me with your great hand.’

‘The moment has come for me to claim what is my own,’ said Ridley, in a tone that addressed the company.

There was a stir and murmur of protest, and eyes were turned to the man and the child.

‘“Arrange licence. Take house. Train and hotel”,’ read Gavin. ‘It is quite easy. There are only a few more lines. Each one is called an item. The word is printed on the page. I shan’t keep it a minute. Let me just read to the end.’ He eluded Ridley’s grasp and slipped into a space where he could not follow. ‘“Fulbert at Crown Inn from tenth to fifteenth. Keep paper as letter destroyed. Write from abroad, as if it were delayed and forwarded. Read and send lease.” Leave me alone. What harm can I do to a loose page?’