Anna Kavan - Let Me Alone

‘Here we are,’ said Matthew.

Anna saw a large square building standing on the road, with a row of dark bushes in front, evergreen shrubs and ivy. An old-fashioned bell-pull hung down dejected, beside the door. Matthew gave it a tug.

‘You must take us as you find us, you know,’ he said again. He seemed to expect her to turn up her nose at everything.

The repetition of the stupid phrase was annoying.

‘How else could I take you?’ she snapped at him.

He gave her a sharp look out of his blue eyes, censorious. Then he looked down at his hands and fidgeted. She could not tell whether he was angry or abashed. They waited a little on the bleak doorstep, by the darkly-stirring ivy.

Mrs. Kavan opened the door herself. She was expecting them, but not quite so soon, it appeared. She was one of those people who never quite manage to be in time for anything. She looked as though she had hurried into her clothes at the last minute — while the bell was still ringing. She was flushed, and rather ungainly, and excited, as she ushered them in.

‘So here you are!’ she said to Matthew, kissing him.

She couldn’t resist greeting him first, although it was not good manners. And as if she knew she had been guilty of a lapse, she released him hastily, and kissed Anna too.

‘Welcome to our house,’ she cried, rather effusively, to make up.

‘How do you do,’ said Anna, trying to look affable.

She had only seen her mother-in-law once before, for quite a short time, at the wedding. In a way, Mrs. Kavan reminded her of Rachel Fielding, although there was not the least physical resemblance between them. Matthew’s mother was a tall, sombre, weird kind of woman, lean to hungriness, with Matthew’s brown, dry skin, and the vivid blue eyes of Matthew; but something of her own added, a tense quality which the son altogether lacked. It was this intenseness that was reminiscent of Rachel. It made Mrs. Kavan seem a little creepy. And she spoke with a slight but noticeable brogue.

‘Come and have tea,’ she said, touching Anna’s arm, and scrutinizing her sharply, inquisitively, to see what she had done to her son.

Anna noticed that her hand was not quite clean; there were narrow curves of dirt under one or two of the longish nails. The house was hushed and shadowy. In the waning light, a large, high hall was revealed, very bare, almost unfurnished-looking, with a long bare table at the far end under two tall windows, and a great sweep of staircase, really rather fine, climbing up to the shadows overhead. Anna was surprised and pleased. After Matthew’s ominous apologies, she had prepared herself for something sordidly vulgar. Whatever else you might say about River House, it was neither shoddy or commonplace.

They crossed the hall, their footsteps clattering on the bare floor, and came to a solemn-looking drawing-room, with a grand piano, and three vast windows gaping into the dull afternoon. There was more furniture here, and a fire was burning sedately in the big fireplace. Anna stood in the middle of the room, holding her bag and looking about.

‘What big rooms,’ she said, smiling.

Mrs. Kavan nodded at her brightly. She was dressed untidily in old-fashioned, flowing skirts, which seemed to be hitched up, anyhow, round her meagre waist. And she wore a great number of small adornments, beaten-silver bangles, gold neck-chains, buckles, pendants, gold link bracelets, that clinked against one another every time she moved. She went about in a perpetual faint chime and clash of sound.

‘The house is far too big for us,’ she said, watching the girl closely with her bright blue eyes. ‘But we love it too much to desert it for a smaller one.’

‘It seems very nice,’ Anna murmured.

She wandered uncomfortably to the windows, and looked out. Mrs. Kavan’s intentness made her feel uncomfortable. And so did her voice; her quick, soft, suggestive voice, with the insinuating blurred tones coming and going. The straight-forward Anna edged herself away.

She stared out of the window at the wintry afternoon. There was a stretch of grass in front of her, a long slope of grass running between trees, down to another row of trees which formed the boundary. Beyond, she could see vague shapes of houses and trees, with marshy-looking meadows between. It was neither towny nor quite countrified. A thin mist was rising, creeping stealthily up the garden, towards the house. Suddenly she caught an angry gleam, like metal, between the thin trees.

‘Why, there’s the river,’ she said wonderingly. The glimpse of sullen water pleased her like the sight of an old friend.

‘Yes. Didn’t you know?’ said Matthew, from behind.

She turned and faced them. Mrs. Kavan was still watching her fixedly, with a piercing sharp look, and a suspicion that she did not quite conceal.

‘I didn’t know it was so near — at the bottom of the garden,’ Anna said.

‘Oh!’ cried Mrs. Kavan. ‘It’s almost in the garden.’

She eyed the girl intently.

There was a queer hush in the room. Everyone seemed subdued, a shadow was on them. In the queer half-light — half warm yellow light from the fire, half cold misty light from out of doors — they seemed unreal and a little forlorn. Mrs. Kavan stared, and tinkled her array of jewellery. Anna felt lonely and abandoned. Matthew, a stiff, rather puppet-like figure with a neatly closed face, stood as if waiting to be set in motion by somebody.

Anna tried to think of something to say. But her mind was frozen in blankness. There she stood, clasping her snake-skin bag, and wishing for someone to come to the rescue. Never had she experienced a more unpleasant sensation: as if they were all drowning in the shadowy room.

Suddenly, to her immense relief, she heard a footstep on the boards outside. Matthew’s sister Winifred, whom she had not met before, came in, carrying the tea-tray. Here was the last member of the Kavan trio, a tall, gaunt young woman, rather dowdy in her indeterminate clothes, slovenly. She put down the tray with a clatter, and lighted a brass standard lamp. Faces sprang out sharply at one another, startled, in the new light.

Mrs. Kavan introduced her daughter. Winifred turned to Anna as if reluctant, and held out her lean hand, on which the skin showed roughened. She had wiped it unobserved on the skirt of her dress.

‘How do you do,’ she said. Her voice was harsh and uncompromising; reacting from the soft, insidious voice of the mother, perhaps. She shook Anna’s hand once, and then dropped it. ‘You’d better come to the fire and have tea,’ she said. It sounded hopelessly uninviting.

Anna moved and sat down obediently. As she did so, she glanced at the wooden figure of Matthew standing apart, outside the circle of lamplight. His head was very round against the pale wall, his shoulders very stiff. He watched Anna sitting down beside Winifred in her remote, collected fashion, and he did not make any move until his mother pushed forward a chair for him. Mrs. Kavan was watching.

‘Sit down,’ she said, with geniality. ‘Here we are then. Let us have some tea.’

She had now put a suggestion of warmth into her voice. But her eyes were bright with suspicion. Matthew smiled neatly, the pleased, stupid smile, and sat down beside her.

Mrs. Kavan said nothing as she poured out the tea. Winifred held the cups to be filled and passed them on, in an impatient, slightly aggressive way, as if irritated by her mother’s shiftless movements. The older woman handled everything in a peculiarly inefficient manner, almost like a child.

When the four of them had their cups of tea, she held hers close to her chest, so that her neck-chains twinkled against the saucer. Her face was brown and wrinkled like a gipsy’s, but almost predatorily intent, her eyes were alert and inquisitorial. She watched both Matthew and Anna with her blue, piercing eyes.