Anna Kavan - Let Me Alone

‘Isn’t it nice to be all together again?’ she said, smiling genially, under her sharp, mistrustful eyes.

‘Yes. There’s no place like home,’ said Matthew. He was a little relaxed, expanding in the sense of his growing importance, and sitting complacent, drawing in his chin, and smiling contentedly. The pasha among his womenfolk.

‘I hope Anna is going to be happy here,’ said Mrs. Kavan, retaining the same amiable voice, and the contradictory suspicious expression. ‘I hope she is going to look upon River House as her home in England.’

‘You are very kind,’ said Anna uncomfortably.

There came an unexpected demonstration from Matthew. He leaned across his mother’s narrow lap, and patted Anna’s hand which lay limp on her knee. She saw his eyes beaming strangely upon her.

‘Of course it is her home,’ he said, very strange in his beaming importance. ‘If it is mine, it must be hers as well, since we are now one.’

It was repulsive to see his smug face leaning towards her. She wanted to beat him off, to push him back with her hands. But she managed to sit still, rigid with repulsion. And in a moment he drew back and went on with his tea.

During this affectionate passage, Mrs. Kavan sat looking from one to another, a little nonplussed. She felt that there was something not quite right, somewhere. Winifred ate bread-and-butter, and wiped her fingers on her handkerchief. She looked straight ahead, dissociating herself deliberately from the talk.

All the time, Mrs. Kavan was watching Anna. Anna felt it. But she couldn’t quite gather what was behind the old lady’s bright glances; whether it was jealousy, slyness, dislike or simple curiosity. She watched Anna openly and without concealment. She did not mind meeting her eye. She talked to her, and smiled at her, and continually watched her. As Anna saw her sitting over her tea-cup, with her dry, brown, wrinkled skin, her aggravating, ceaselessly-tinkling jewellery, her slightly soiled appearance, her teeth went on edge with repulsion. Mrs. Kavan’s eyes were so blue, that one expected them to be opaque, like Matthew’s. And then one found them pellucid and astute. Like encountering a lynx where one expected a sheep. She was dowdy and not quite clean; but her thin face, and particularly her sharp, thin nose, had a look of refinement. What was she watching for? Anna couldn’t imagine.

The uncomfortable meal came to an end. Winifred packed the tea things on the tray and carried it off. There appeared to be no servant in the house.

Mrs. Kavan rose to her feet and smiled at Anna.

‘Now, my dear, I will take you to your room. You would like to rest.’

Anna glanced at Matthew. He took a brisk step forward to accompany her.

‘I’ll show her the room, mother,’ he said.

‘But I’m not a bit tired,’ said Anna. She did not want to be alone with him, upstairs in the hushed emptiness of the strange house.

Mrs. Kavan smiled with queer, meaning looks.

‘Yes, you are tired; and because you are tired you are not feeling very happy,’ she said. Then, with slightly theatrical emphasis: ‘I know .’ She looked at Matthew, as if for confirmation, with an odd, important smile, suggesting hidden labyrinths of meaning.

‘Mother has second-sight,’ said Matthew proudly.

He smiled, and tilted his round head, but Anna saw that he was quite in earnest. She looked politely, somewhat bewildered, from one to the other.

‘I can read people’s hearts a little,’ said Mrs. Kavan, gazing upon her with significant, peculiar eyes.

Anna wanted to laugh; it sounded so funny. She hoped that Mrs. Kavan, for her own sake, would not peer too deep into this particular heart before her.

‘And do you always like what you see there?’ she asked brightly. For the life of her she couldn’t keep the little tang of mockery out of her voice.

The old lady stiffened at once. The smile went from her face. She stood stiff and disapproving.

‘No, not by any means,’ she pronounced acidly.

Anna felt that the pronouncement had been made against her. The two women looked at one another. There seemed to be a vista of inevitable hostility before them. Anna was depressed and a little disgusted at the prospect.

Matthew escorted her upstairs in silence. He was rather put out because she had not taken his mother’s psychic powers sufficiently seriously. The bedroom was big and cold and looked only half furnished. There was the ominous double bed. Anna was prepared for this.

‘I must have a room to myself,’ she said pointedly.

But Matthew, with a dissembling smile of false reasonableness on his face, was out to assert himself in his own home.

‘Really Anna,’ he said, ‘I think it’s time you gave up this childish whim.’

‘It’s not a whim,’ Anna said, stolid.

He ignored her.

‘I’ve made allowance for the fact that you are very young and inexperienced. I’ve made allowance for your natural shyness’ — strange how he seemed to relish the word ‘natural’ — ‘but now that you have got accustomed to our life together, I think it is time for you to begin to be more reasonable.’

‘What do you mean by being more reasonable?’ asked Anna, coolly, quietly, giving Matthew a straight look. Whilst he glassily stared at her, with accumulating resentment.

‘I mean that you should begin to be a wife to me.’ He fixed his blank blue eyes upon her.

‘No,’ she replied steadfastly. ‘I must have my own room.’

She watched Matthew’s face. The bully was coming up to the surface again. He was trembling with repressed anger. But the spell of chivalry was not quite worn through. It still held him, against his will. He did not want to be chivalrous. He wanted Anna. But still he had to restrain himself.

‘Be sensible!’ he said sharply. ‘My mother will think it so strange if we have separate rooms.’

It was queer to see the struggle behind his neat face — the bully against the gentle knight. Anna wondered which one would win.

‘I can’t help what your mother thinks,’ she retorted. ‘That’s your affair.’

There was a pause. While Matthew rose to magnanimity again.

‘Very well,’ he said, a trifle Christ-like, at last. ‘I’ll get a bed made up somewhere else.’

His tone of voice was so long-suffering, almost martyrized. It was laughable. The victory was with Sir Galahad, for the time being. But the hysterical, brow-beating bully was not far off. His turn would come along soon.

Matthew sighed in a loud, exaggerated fashion as he went out.

Anna sat down on the bed and laughed at that sigh. It sounded too absurd to her — so sanctimonious. The whole situation was simply farcical. She laughed aloud in the cold room. And at the same time, she thought of Sidney and of Oxford, and she wanted to cry. She grew quite hysterical up there by herself.

At supper, Mrs. Kavan was definitely estranged. No doubt on account of the extra room. Anna wondered what Matthew had said to her on the subject. Her mother-in-law eyed her coldly, across the table. And yet she was very affable. All the time her jewellery gleamed and clashed, her blue eyes sent out cold rays, she talked to the girl and praised her dress, and even flattered her a little. But underneath was estrangement.

And Matthew himself gazed at Anna continually, with a wistful expression. But she would not look back at him.

Anna had fallen into a little trance. She sat in front of her plate, and ate mechanically the queer odds and ends of food that were handed to her. What was she doing in this extraordinary household? The old lady talked and fidgeted and darted cold glances in her direction. And the man, the husband, stared and stared with his reproachful, opaque eyes, and the aggrieved, holy-martyr look, so incongruous on his brown, blank face — like a sentimental ape. She felt a little hysterical. And lost — absolutely at sea.