The house is such an odd little house, tall and thin and spindly as a doll’s house. The Swanns joke to their friends that when they visit Antonia’s house they have to breathe in.
Recently, their elder daughter Elizabeth moved with her family to an eighteenth-century manor house with five acres, a swimming pool and superb transport links to London for James: there can be no jokes about that. Mrs Swann has encountered unexpected difficulties in describing Elizabeth’s house to her friends. She doesn’t know what tone to strike. She has always ridden Elizabeth well, like an expert jockey rides a racehorse, but lately she has felt herself to be clinging on as the pace gets faster and faster. She finds that she has little to say on the subject: she is simply trying to maintain a foothold.
So there has, unusually, been some relief to be had in the contemplation of Antonia, whose affairs Mrs Swann can encompass in conversation without effort, in the way that a novelist encompasses a minor character. It is achieved by means of repetition: when Antonia appears, it is to enact the qualities of contradiction and eccentricity that already define her to her audience. She is never developed, merely confirmed. Currently, it is far easier for Mrs Swann to revert to stock than to consider how the story of Elizabeth’s unstoppable rise, with all its dark tumult of jealousy and fear, could be told without publicly diminishing its narrator.
But as her husband turns the car up Montague Street, Mrs Swann remembers that it isn’t like that at all. Her sense of Antonia as a set of quirks, like a set of piano keys awaiting her touch, vanishes entirely. Instead there is a dense atmosphere of bitterness and failure that has not enveloped her since the last time she was here, and that tells her better than any road map that her youngest daughter’s house is nearby.
Her husband feels it too. He eyes the street. They linger, not wanting to leave the safe harbour of their fourlitre Mercedes.
‘Will the car be safe out here, do you think?’ he says.
It is Thomas who opens the door. Antonia is standing just behind, in the narrow hall. Mrs Swann sees her eyes, wide and unblinking, sees their expression of wonderment. From the street the hall looks dark, filled with shadows, and Antonia’s eyes are floating among them, gazing at Mrs Swann as though they can see into her soul.
‘Mind your head,’ she says to her husband, as he passes ahead of her beneath the door frame.
He waits for her on the threshold.
‘Be careful you don’t trip,’ he says. ‘There’s a loose board in the floor there.’
Once inside Mrs Swann immediately produces the bag of Christmas presents that is the occasion for their visit. They are lavishly wrapped, the paper glossy and unmarked, the gold ribbon twirled into perfect ringlets. Her husband wrapped them. He is generous with the paper, as only a man can be, for he barely knows what it is he is wrapping. Mrs Swann bought the presents, alone. She left it to her husband to be generous with the paper: her own involvement is with what is inside.
Thomas tries to take the presents, and Mrs Swann discovers that she is reluctant to part with them. Her hands will not let go of the bag.
‘Where’s little one?’ she says, looking around her for Alexa.
‘She’s at a birthday party,’ Thomas says.
‘Oh no!’ cries Mrs Swann. She is astonished. Not once has she imagined this scene occurring without the presence of a child. It is like Mass occurring without a priest at the altar. It casts a dreadful, civilian greyness over everything. ‘Couldn’t she have missed it, just this once?’
Her husband puts a cautionary hand on her arm.
‘Selina,’ he says, ‘don’t get involved. The child has her own life to lead.’
She understands him: he is speaking to her in a language that underlies even her own consciousness, that is the more private and profound for the fact that over the years it has blotted out her native tongue, solitude.
‘Well,’ Thomas says, ‘only until four o’clock.’ He looks at his watch. ‘She should be back any minute.’
‘Oh,’ says Mrs Swann. She doesn’t care when Alexa is coming back. What she wanted was to have her here when she arrived. ‘Hello, Antonia,’ she adds, so that it sounds like an afterthought.
Antonia steps forward, receives a cool kiss on the cheek.
‘Hey, Mum,’ she says.
Her daughter is wearing black trousers, a black T-shirt, black shoes – all negative, like those things in space that can swallow you whole while taking up no room at all. She wears no make-up or jewellery. Her full, fleshcoloured mouth is provocative in its nakedness. Even as a teenager Antonia wore black. The daughters of Mrs Swann’s friends wore Laura Ashley prints with frilled collars, smart little pumps, mohair jerseys in pastel shades, while Antonia went around like a Greek widow in black. Someone once called her that to Mrs Swann’s face – your daughter, the Greek Widow – and there in the supermarket Mrs Swann felt the hot uprush of rage all fenced around with powerlessness, so that she went home bursting with it, with a boiling anger whose urgent need for discharge seemed to threaten a public indignity of the kind Mrs Swann had not experienced since childhood. She remembers it now, the feeling that she might be about to disgrace herself, a feeling so violent, so overpowering, that it led Mrs Swann to pity herself, to pity herself profoundly. And even afterwards, when she had found Antonia in her room and unleashed herself on her daughter’s black-clad form, when she had said and done things that seemed to mirror the disgrace and even, in moments, to become it, she could not feel other than a victim, hitting out in whatever way she could at her attacker.
Such scenes have characterised her relations with Antonia from the beginning: even on her first day of life, Mrs Swann remembers feeling very distinctly that she had lost something, and that it was Antonia who had stolen it from her. She remembers a phrase – codes of formality – that haunted her during Antonia’s babyhood, for the fact that she had already irrevocably violated them. The problem is that once broken, such boundaries are difficult to rebuild. She has tried, but they crumble at the slightest pressure. It would have been different if her husband had taken Antonia’s side. But he did not: Mrs Swann wouldn’t allow him to. Over the years she has often considered cutting free of this control and isolating herself in her anger; she has sensed, instinctively, that if her anger could be isolated it could be cured. But there is something deeper than her anger, something pre-existing, something original and authentic that is only revealed when her husband allies himself with Antonia. Mrs Swann fears it more than anything else. She takes one look at it and knows that there is no alternative – has never been nor ever will be any alternative – to her and her husband standing united against their daughter.
Now Antonia embraces her father there in the hall, in front of Mrs Swann. Her arms encircle him for a second too long; her narrow hips and pert little buttocks stare at Mrs Swann insolently.
‘Shall we go through?’ Mrs Swann says, imperatively. ‘I’d appreciate a cup of tea, if it isn’t too much to ask, after all those hours in the car.’
In the cramped sitting room, Thomas goes around clearing old newspapers off the chairs and picking up dirty cups and glasses. It is like the absence of Alexa, the fact that they haven’t tidied up or prepared for the Swanns’ visit: it makes the world seem grey, random, devoid of belief. Mrs Swann sits with her husband on the velvet sofa, which creaks and shudders under their combined weight.
‘Have you had this recovered?’ she says, fingering the mangy velvet arm.
Antonia shakes her head. ‘It’s the same as always.’
‘Is it? Oh. But the curtains are new,’ she says.
‘I had them made.’ Antonia is obviously pleased. ‘Don’t you think they’re fabulous? They’re antique silk.’
‘Are they?’ Mrs Swann is aggrieved by the curtains. There is something critical about them, something that smacks of personal rejection. ‘Why didn’t you say you wanted curtains? I’ve got boxes of old pairs I could have given you. You could have had them altered for next to nothing.’
Instantly she sees Antonia’s face close, close shut like a door.
‘I wanted green curtains,’ she says. ‘I wanted that particular colour.’
‘What a waste!’ says Mrs Swann. ‘When I think of all those curtains in the attic, all beautifully lined, with proper pelmets, just sitting there gathering dust –’
She thinks of the attic, the twilit space, with its freight of wastage and accomplishment. She pictures it, finding the box and getting it down, unfolding the heavy musty cloth as though it were a section of the past that could be redeemed, relived. It would be good to redeem some of that wastage. She imagines the curtains, her curtains, at Antonia’s window. On second thoughts, perhaps she wouldn’t like it after all.
There is a sound at the door, and a moment later Alexa comes in. At the sight of the Swanns her face lights up, cautiously.
‘Hello, Grandma,’ she says, coming closer.
Mrs Swann grasps her, receives her, pulls her unresisting form on to her lap. She is like a doll, or a teddy bear. Mrs Swann feels that she could tell her everything.
‘Silly Mummy,’ she says. ‘Silly Mummy getting curtains made, when Grandma has boxes of them at home.’
Alexa smiles anxiously, glances at her mother.
‘What curtains?’ she says.
‘All the curtains I’ve got in my attic. You remember my attic, don’t you? Well it’s full to bursting with curtains, all going to waste.’
‘Why don’t you use them?’ Alexa asks her.
‘Grandma can’t use them, darling. Grandma already has curtains in her house.’
Alexa considers it. ‘Why don’t you give them away to charity?’
Mrs Swann feels a faint vexation, a sense of entanglement. She remembers it from her own children, the feeling that a child who had come into the world pure and new, unmarked, had somehow become knotted up, full of snags and resistances. What she liked best was a baby, a clean sheet.
‘Grandma believes that family comes first. If everyone took care of their own family, there wouldn’t be any need for charity, would there?’
Thomas has come in with the tray. Mrs Swann wants to grab it from his hands, a steaming cup, a unit of nourishment. She wonders how she will drink her tea with Alexa on her lap. She sees Thomas wonder the same thing as he passes the cup to her. His hand hovers with it, just out of reach.
‘Alexa, let Grandma drink her tea,’ Antonia says, motioning her to get off.
Alexa tries to move, but Mrs Swann is holding on to her for dear life.
‘Let her stay where she is,’ she says. ‘I won’t hurt her, you know. I think I can be trusted to look after a child without scalding her.’
Antonia and Thomas exchange looks. Thomas places the cup on the table, just out of reach. Mrs Swann joggles Alexa up and down on her knee.
‘We’ll just let it cool down a bit, shall we?’ she says. ‘Mummy and Daddy are such terrible worriers. They think Grandma can’t drink her tea without spilling it. But in fact Grandma’s bigger than they are. That’s funny, isn’t it?’
‘I hear you’ve gone freelance,’ Mr Swann says to Thomas.
‘In a manner of speaking,’ Thomas says.
‘They using you much? I did a couple of years of consulting myself. At the time it looked like that was where the real money was, but personally I couldn’t stand it. I didn’t like the lack of structure. I saw other people getting out, working for themselves, and some of them were making serious money, but it all comes unravelled sooner or later. A lot of them went under. Some of them good friends of ours. Meanwhile I’m drawing my share options and my pension. They all said I was too conservative, that I should take more risks, but look who’s had the last laugh.’
There is a silence. The others drink their tea, but Mrs Swann has been separated from hers.
‘The main difficulty’, she says, ‘was that he hated being at home all day. What’s a man doing, hanging around the house? That was the problem. A lot of those marriages’, she adds significantly, ‘ended in divorce. The women simply couldn’t stand it. They lost all respect for their husbands. I think marriage needs an element of mystery,’ she continues, warming to the sound of her own voice. ‘I told them, but they wouldn’t listen. They thought it would all be long lunches and jumping into bed in the afternoon. I said to them, no, don’t let them come home! A man isn’t a man if he’s in the house all day. You need a man, in a marriage. But they wouldn’t listen. And then they’re surprised when their –’ she remembers Alexa is on her lap ‘– their intimate life goes to pot into the bargain!’
She laughs merrily. She is almost fond of them, these deluded souls she has created. She created them and then she sent them to their doom, for failing to heed her wisdom, her experience.
Thomas laughs too. ‘Oh, Tonie’s pretty mysterious,’ he says.
‘Is she?’ Mrs Swann finds something distasteful in this remark.
‘And she’s hardly ever at home these days. So perhaps that proves your theory.’
Mrs Swann blinks. ‘Why is she not at home?’
‘I told you, Mum,’ Antonia says. ‘I’ve gone full-time. They made me Head of Department.’
Mrs Swann draws herself up. Do they think she suffers from senility? ‘I knew they’d made you a head,’ she says. ‘But I thought it was some kind of – of certificate. I didn’t realise it meant working extra hours. You didn’t tell me that.’
‘They’re getting their money’s worth out of you, are they?’ says Mr Swann, with the laugh he uses to express disapproval.
Mrs Swann clutches Alexa closer. ‘And who looks after little one?’
‘Thomas does.’
‘But I thought Thomas was working from home! How can he work and look after a child at the same time?’
Antonia sighs. ‘I’ve told you all this already, Mum.’
Mrs Swann is trembling. It is the effort of bringing this scene to its just conclusion, of saying what needs to be said: it exhausts her and it invigorates her, both at the same time.
‘So they’ve given you unpaid leave, have they?’ Mr Swann asks Thomas.
‘No,’ Thomas says. ‘I’ve resigned.’
‘Have you now?’ Mr Swann sits back, apparently stunned. ‘You’ve resigned, have you?’
Thomas stands, begins collecting the teacups. Mrs Swann has always had a strong feeling for Thomas, as a thing of value that lies within her daughter’s possession. Antonia’s other boyfriends were mostly people who could either be pitied or despised, but Thomas has always made Mrs Swann feel strangely alert and aware of herself. It is as though it is she he is attracted to, not Antonia. He has a lean, muscular body she would like to touch, with something tough and tensile inside it like a length of rope. She would like to take him; she would like to have him for herself. And yet she is dimly aware that this desire involves Antonia. It is refracted, somehow, from the maternal root. He acts like a prism, receiving her ambivalence and separating it, separating her hatred from her love. She passes through Thomas and she is liberated of her burden of dark feeling.
But looking at him now, she feels the sheen coming off him. She feels the first disintegration of the surface. In the end, she wants him to be destroyed. The reality of the root, of its deep and primary confusion, requires it.
When it is time to go, Mrs Swann draws her daughter aside.
‘You’ve got very thin,’ she says. ‘You look tired. I hope you’re looking after yourself.’
Antonia’s black trousers are tight-fitting, impossibly minute. Mrs Swann remembers, years ago, an afternoon spent in Antonia’s room when she was out; remembers taking clothes from her daughter’s drawers, shirts and trousers and dresses, and forcing her own mottled arms and legs into them. She was so very large, as she still is today. She remembers laughing, at the trousers that wouldn’t go past her knee, at the shirtsleeves her hands could barely worm through.
Antonia looks surprised. ‘I’m fine,’ she says. ‘I feel good.’
Suddenly Mr Swann is by her side. If she could have got him there by magic, he couldn’t have appeared at a better time.
‘You mustn’t let the responsibility wear you out,’ Mrs Swann says. ‘I’m just saying, Richard, that Antonia looks very tired, very worn.’
Mr Swann looks stricken, in his rigid, metallic way. She makes a mental note, to encourage him to change his glasses. The steel frames have a touch of the robot about them. She envisages him in tortoiseshell, something more modern and forgiving.
‘We should have a talk,’ he says to Antonia. ‘Your mother and I have – well, let’s just call them concerns. We think you and Thomas may be making a serious error. We’ll talk in a few days’ time. Please just hear us out.’
Mrs Swann couldn’t have put it better herself.
Antonia looks troubled. ‘All right,’ she says. ‘But I’m fine, honestly.’
In the car on the way home, the Swanns talk everything over. They pick through every strand of the afternoon. By the time they arrive, they have analysed the situation so thoroughly that no further need to discuss it with Antonia herself remains. In bed, in the dark, Mrs Swann lies awake for a few minutes, putting together the story of their visit to Montague Street. There is a word she needs that is the key to it all, a word she has heard several times lately and not entirely understood. But she feels confident that this story will explain the word, or the other way around, when she comes to tell it. She grasps and grasps and finally lays her hand on it. Househusband. She is satisfied. She closes her eyes, and feels herself grow smaller and smaller until she disappears.