For some minutes I could not think consecutively, then I not only recalled what Antony had said about Carol, but identified myself imaginatively with her life and, as a result, made a remarkable discovery.
Any life that is divided into two drastically divided parts is worlds away from lives which have known variations on only one theme. The dominant fact in Carol’s life is that she passed with a stride from pampered security to naked necessity.
It was easy to evoke the setting of the former phase: a successful, Bohemian, extravagant father who idolised her; an ultra-romantic mother; the kind of friends such parents would inevitably attract; leisure; no problems, except to decide which of her father’s many plans was the most alluring. That was the setting and, despite all external evidence to the contrary, it had isolated her.
Then, overnight, all this vanished. Carol confronted necessity.
The more I identified myself with her experience, the more it seemed to resemble mine in essentials. For vastly different reasons, my life—like hers—consisted of two drastically contrasted parts. Her first contact with actuality—like mine—had been brutal in its crudity. She, too, was an only child. Although her parents were utterly unlike mine, the effect of their influence had been to isolate her from the realities of the everyday world—and the effect of my parents’ influence had been to isolate me from those realities.
This discovery made me forget my surroundings, but at last I looked at my watch. The train would reach Brighton in a quarter of an hour. Soon, therefore, I should be with the once-romantic Mrs. Norton, now a demented creature, haunting the débris of happiness. I was about to meet her—and I was afraid.
If she had been normal, the prospect of meeting her—even in such circumstances—could have been faced, but Antony had made it clear that she was extremely eccentric. So eccentric that, were it not for the devotion of the woman who sheltered her, Mrs. Norton would be “put away.” I should, therefore, find myself confronted by a being familiar with the frontier dividing two worlds. A being of dual insight.
I’ve met many eccentrics in my day and have always been attracted to them, possibly because they reminded me of childhood. (For years, of course. I’ve realised that my parents were “queer” to an exceptional extent, but happiness is happiness, whatever its setting, and—till I was eight—no child could have been happier.)
All eccentrics, in their varying degrees, consciously or unconsciously, adopt an attitude which sets them at one remove—or at several removes—from the world of facts. Instinctively or deliberately, they create an artificial privacy to which all experience is related and thereby distorted. This artificial privacy is easily attained. You have only to look peculiar enough—your manners and whole way of life have only to reveal contempt for herd-values—and you will soon find yourself outlawed by normal humanity. The inhabitants of an eccentric’s world can usually be counted on the fingers. Once isolation is attained, facts are easily banished and fantasy flourishes. And fantasy enables its addicts to evade the full impact of tragic experience—an impact which, if undeflected, might destroy the last defence of sanity. More often than not, eccentricity is the alternative to madness.
I remember talking about eccentrics, one night in New York, with an American artist, who said he had noticed that the eccentrics he’d met either had a patron or a private income—and what he wanted to know was: What happened to those who had neither? I said I did not think there was much mystery about that. They—were put away.
Again I looked at my watch. Then, as I was getting my hat and stick from the rack, a possibility occurred to me—an alarming one.
Suppose Mrs. Norton resembled Carol.
Although she was mad, she might have Carol’s voice—her gestures—the long narrow hands—the lovely feet.
God! I shouldn’t be able to stand that! Not for a single second!
At last I got out of the carriage and walked slowly down the platform.
I had not been to Brighton since 1941 when I spent two days there with a naval officer. Then, everything had a beleaguered air: soldiers manned posts on the front; the foreshore was mined; gaps had been blown in the middle of both piers; concrete blocks and rusty barbed wire disfigured the deserted promenade.
Now there were people wherever you went and the town was gradually reverting to its peace-time aspect, although the gaps still yawned in the piers and some parts of the foreshore were still banned.
After some difficulty, I found the street where she lived. It was on the outskirts of Hove, about a quarter of a mile inland, and consisted of small, stucco-faced, slate-roofed, semi-detached villas—identical in design; drab in appearance; destined to decrepitude. The street represented respectability in extremis. Even the attitudes of the cats in the diminutive front gardens expressed profound pessimism regarding the future.
Number 44. This was it!
I felt that it ought to differ from the others, but could detect only resemblances: the same curtains in the same lugubrious windows; the same garden, divided from its next door replica by the same miniature hedge; the same chipped steps leading to the same blank front door.
Carol had often climbed those steps!
I stood, staring at them, until I suddenly became certain that I was being watched.
I hurried along the narrow path, up the steps, then pulled the bell.
The door opened immediately.
“You! . . . You . . . At last!”
One fear instantly vanished. She was not in the least like Carol. In fact, it was impossible to believe that this apparition, in a shapeless black dress and white tennis shoes, could possibly be Carol’s mother. She had very pale grey eyes which peered here, there, everywhere, as if she were watching the movements of a ghost. The dark hair was streaked with bands of white. Not one of the terribly taut features resembled Carol’s—and the voice held no hint of hers.
“There! That room!”
As she did not move, I went into the room indicated, expecting she would follow me, but found myself alone.
It was a fairly large room with narrow windows at either end. Over the mantelpiece hung one of her husband’s posters, depicting an exotic lady gazing rapturously at a bottle of scent. The discovery that Mrs. Norton had been the model for this poster was a gradual one. Near it, poised precariously, swayed a reproduction of Enigma. Otherwise, there was a remarkable collection of odds and ends, either pinned on the walls or scattered in numerous trays: old dance programmes, paper fans, menus, restaurant souvenirs, picture postcards of continental holiday resorts, snapshots and so on, most of which had a date scrawled on them. There were two photographs of her husband—a large one of a luxuriant Mrs. Norton—and two recent ones of Carol. Near the fireplace, was a big box with a lift-up lid.
Almost touching the fender, was a capacious arm-chair and, opposite it, a much smaller one. By the large chair stood a low round table, littered with oddments and two massive albums. Near the window, leaning against the wall, was a dilapidated sofa on which were a couple of rumpled blankets. The only individual feature about the carpet was a worn track from the door to the end of the sofa—worn, I imagined, by a continual pacing to and fro.
The door opened very slowly—and remained open for a full minute before she appeared.
She still wore the white tennis shoes, but had changed into a closer-fitting black dress which revealed the remarkable frailty of her figure—a frailty difficult to reconcile with the luxuriant Mrs. Norton of the photograph.