undistinguished by festivity. The parties of bygone days had simply prepared her for nothing but the next party: life had revealed itself as entertainment, enhancement, brilliance, and she could not see why she should do more than lend herself temporarily to her altered state. For this reason she seemed to have entered a period of hibernation, to have literally altered her body’s rhythms, to have slowed down her energies to such an extent that she could spent days marooned on her
chaise-longue
, smoking, and looking thoughtfully out of the window. Her strong white teeth would occasionally crunch through a piece of toast or an apple, for, unlike Blanche, she would have thought it poor-spirited to eat a proper meal without the appropriate company and service. She continued to dress in her avant-garde garments but she had become even less communicative than before, using well-worn phrases that apparently pleased her by their handiness, and lapsing into long periods of ruminative silence.
As far as Blanche could make out, she was not ill, not depressed, not undernourished or traumatized. Rather she showed the immense lethargy of the healthy animal whose needs are not met. And Sally’s basic need was apparently to live on the edge of exhaustion, over-stimulated by wine, noise, laughter, company, and the prospect of an endless rout. It became clear to Blanche that Sally’s life, before her marriage, and possibly for a brief period after it, had been a sort of saturnalia, that the saturnalia had been complicated by creditors, and that the result of these complications was her exile in the basement, while her husband worked to get more money together. Blanche was both appalled and charmed by such fecklessness, and she could not but compare it favourably with her own caution, the modesty of her ownexpectations. She thought back, almost guiltily, to her early married life, her humble walks in the public gardens of those fashionable places, where her husband, impatient, went off to visit his friends; she thought of her visions of sunny gardens and hot days and southern markets, all known once but only in passing and long lost: how nerveless it all seemed, and how weak. She even thought, and not for the first time, that it was her timorous decency, disguised as brusqueness, that had caused her to lose Bertie, and she compared herself with the distantly musing Sally entirely to her own disadvantage. For Sally, like Mousie, like those cynical smiling nymphs in the National Gallery, had known, with an ancient knowledge, that the world respects a predator, that the world will be amused by, interested in, indulgent towards the charming libertine. At that moment Blanche knew herself to be part of the fallen creation, doomed to serve, to be faithful, to be honourable, and to be excluded. She saw that fallen creation, mournful in its righteousness, uncomforted in its desolation, and living in expectation, as she had waited long hours in her drawing-room for the hope that would not return.
Her initial sadness for the mute child was now compounded by an awful unwilling sorrow for the increasingly mute mother, and she felt that unless she resumed her resolutely composed former self she might well join them in their silence. A long and charmless vista of renewed cultural activities opened before her as she prepared to do her duty once again and to divest herself of the dubious but attractive company of Sally Beamish. For a brief moment she felt grave pain as she thought of the little girl, and even greater pain as she considered her own foolishness in wishing to – what? To adopt her? Nothing so specific. To befriend her, to contemplate her. Passive, as ever, in her loves, she had simply wanted to multiply the occasions of seeing Elinor, and was now ashamed to see her needs for what they were.
‘We really must get you sorted out, Sally,’ she said, finally, with a purposefulness which she did not feel. ‘I imagine funds are low. What about
chaise-longue
, smoking, and looking thoughtfully out of the window. Her strong white teeth would occasionally crunch through a piece of toast or an apple, for, unlike Blanche, she would have thought it poor-spirited to eat a proper meal without the appropriate company and service. She continued to dress in her avant-garde garments but she had become even less communicative than before, using well-worn phrases that apparently pleased her by their handiness, and lapsing into long periods of ruminative silence.
As far as Blanche could make out, she was not ill, not depressed, not undernourished or traumatized. Rather she showed the immense lethargy of the healthy animal whose needs are not met. And Sally’s basic need was apparently to live on the edge of exhaustion, over-stimulated by wine, noise, laughter, company, and the prospect of an endless rout. It became clear to Blanche that Sally’s life, before her marriage, and possibly for a brief period after it, had been a sort of saturnalia, that the saturnalia had been complicated by creditors, and that the result of these complications was her exile in the basement, while her husband worked to get more money together. Blanche was both appalled and charmed by such fecklessness, and she could not but compare it favourably with her own caution, the modesty of her ownexpectations. She thought back, almost guiltily, to her early married life, her humble walks in the public gardens of those fashionable places, where her husband, impatient, went off to visit his friends; she thought of her visions of sunny gardens and hot days and southern markets, all known once but only in passing and long lost: how nerveless it all seemed, and how weak. She even thought, and not for the first time, that it was her timorous decency, disguised as brusqueness, that had caused her to lose Bertie, and she compared herself with the distantly musing Sally entirely to her own disadvantage. For Sally, like Mousie, like those cynical smiling nymphs in the National Gallery, had known, with an ancient knowledge, that the world respects a predator, that the world will be amused by, interested in, indulgent towards the charming libertine. At that moment Blanche knew herself to be part of the fallen creation, doomed to serve, to be faithful, to be honourable, and to be excluded. She saw that fallen creation, mournful in its righteousness, uncomforted in its desolation, and living in expectation, as she had waited long hours in her drawing-room for the hope that would not return.
Her initial sadness for the mute child was now compounded by an awful unwilling sorrow for the increasingly mute mother, and she felt that unless she resumed her resolutely composed former self she might well join them in their silence. A long and charmless vista of renewed cultural activities opened before her as she prepared to do her duty once again and to divest herself of the dubious but attractive company of Sally Beamish. For a brief moment she felt grave pain as she thought of the little girl, and even greater pain as she considered her own foolishness in wishing to – what? To adopt her? Nothing so specific. To befriend her, to contemplate her. Passive, as ever, in her loves, she had simply wanted to multiply the occasions of seeing Elinor, and was now ashamed to see her needs for what they were.
‘We really must get you sorted out, Sally,’ she said, finally, with a purposefulness which she did not feel. ‘I imagine funds are low. What about
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