The Nice and the Good

Ten

There was a loud crash upstairs, followed by a prolonged wailing sound.

Mary rather guiltily tossed Henrietta's copy of The Flying Saucer Review, which she had been perusing, back on to the hall table, and ran up the stairs two at a time.

The scene, in Uncle Theo's room, was much as she had expected.

Theo was sitting up in bed looking rather sheepish, holding Mingo in his arms. Casie was crying, and trying to extract a handkerchief from her knickers. Theo's tea-tray lay upon the floor with a mess, partly on it and partly round about it, of broken crockery, scattered bread and butter, and shattered cake. The carpet had not suffered, since the floor of Theo's room was always thickly covered with old newspapers and Theo's underwear, and into this fungoid litter the spilt tea had already been absorbed.

'Oh Casie, do stop it,' said Mary. 'Go downstairs and put the kettle on again. I'll clear this up. Off you go.'

Casie went away still wailing.

'What happened?' said Mary.

'She said she was a useless broken-down old bitch, and I agreed with her, and then she threw the tea tray on to the floor.'

'Theo, you just mustn't bait Casie like that, you're always doing it, it's so unkind.'

Mingo had jumped down and was investigating the wreckage on the floor. The woolly fur which stuck out on either side of his mouth, and which he was now fluttering over the broken china, resembled moustaches. His wet pink nose quivered as he shot out a delicate pink lip and very daintily picked up a thin slice of bread and butter. ratuer a guuu 1:a1Ce allu 1111 l:el L41111y P1UPUS111g was CAL IL.

Would you mind putting it on to this?' He held out a sheet of newspaper.

Mary picked up the larger fragments of the cake and put them on to the newspaper. Then, with her nose wrinkling rather like Mingo's, she began to collect the debris on to the tray. Uncle Theo's room, which he rarely permitted anyone to clean, smelled superficially of medicines and disinfectants, and more fundamentally of old human sweat. This rancid odour was alleged by the twins to be the basis of the affinity between Uncle Theo and Mingo, and Mary had come vaguely to believe this, although she regarded the aroma more as a spiritual emanation from the dog-man pair than as a mere physical cause.

The dog was on the bed again now, clasped about the waist by Theo, his four legs sticking out helplessly, his woolly face beaming, his tail, on which he was sitting, vibrating with frustrated wags. Theo was beaming too, his face plumped out with a kind of glow which was too pervasive and ubiquitous to be called a smile. Looking at them sternly, it occurred to Mary that Mingo had come to resemble Theo, or perhaps it was the other way about.

Uncle Theo puzzled Mary. She was also rather puzzled by the complete lack of curiosity about him evinced by other members of the household. When informed, as if this were part of his name or title, that Theo had left India under a cloud, Mary had, as it seemed to her naturally, asked what cloud.

No one seemed to know. At first Mary imagined that her question had been thought improper. Later she decided that really no one was much interested. And the odd thing was that this lack of interest seemed to be caused in some positive way by Theo himself, as if he sent out rays which paralysed other people's concern about him. It was like a faculty of becoming invisible; and indeed Uncle Theo did often seem to have become almost imperceptible in a literal sense, as when someone said, 'There was nobody there. Oh well, yes, Theo was there.'

Why did Uncle Theo paralyse other people's concern about him in that way? On this problem Mary held two contradic89 tory theories between which she vacillated. There was a shallow reassuring theory to the effect that Uncle Theo had so much animal placidity and so few thoughts that he was just not very noteworthy, in the same way in which a spider in the corner might not be noteworthy. It was true that he behaved like an ill person, at any rate he spent an inordinate amount of time in bed, always taking breakfast and tea there, sometimes lunch and di

Yet there were times when Mary favoured another and more u

At these times Mary apprehended his laziness and his relaxation not exactly as despair but as something on the other side of despair of which she did not know the name. It was as if, she thought, someone had had all his bones broken and yet were still moving about like a sort of limp doll. It was not that she caught, through the mask of Uncle Theo's behaviour, any momentary flash or flicker from some other region of torment.

There was no mask. It was simply that the ensemble of Uncle Theo's particular pointlessness could take for her the jump into a new gestalt which showed him to her as a man who had been through the inferno and had by the experience been deprived of his will.

Mary looked at Uncle Theo now as he was, by a familiar technique, exciting Mingo by sniffing over his fur with the audible eagerness of a terrier after a rat. Unlike his younger brother, to whom his resemblance was minimal, Theo was a gaunt man and rather tall. He was partly bald, with longish strings of greasy grey hair curling down his neck. He had a large brow but the features of his face were cramped and GICULUI 11aU aUJCIitly ULUWll L11CI11 U11 LUWa1U5 L11C V111L UI I11S rather long nose. So although he had a large head his face looked small and poky and canine. Mary could never determine, even on fairly close inspection, the colour of his eyes.

Tidying his room once she had found an old passport, and opening it to see what colour Theo himself considered his eyes to be, had found the description: 'Mud'.

Mary had been distressed to find her curiosity and concern about Theo lessening as time went on. Perhaps those invisibility rays were gradually killing her interest in him too and she would soon be just as indifferent as the others. Mary, who was accustomed to receiving confidences, had once or twice tried to question Theo about India, but he had only beamed in his dog-like way and changed the subject. She felt compassion for him and willed to help him, but her relationship to him remained abstract. The sad truth was that Mary simply did not love him enough to see him clearly. He repelled her physically, and she was one of those women who could only care deeply for what she wanted to touch.

'Will you make me some more tea please?' said Theo.

'Yes. I'll send Casie up with it. You must make peace with her. You really do make her unhappy.'

'Don't worry. Casie and I are good friends.' This was true.

Mary had noticed a sort of positive bond between these two.

'I wish you'd go up and see Willy,' she said. 'You haven't seen him for three weeks. Have you quarrelled or something?'

Theo closed his eyes, still beaming. 'You can't expect two neurotic egomaniacs like me and Willy to get on together.'

'Willy isn't a neurotic egomaniac.'

'Thanks, dear! The fact is I gave up Willy for Lent and then found I could do without him.'

'I'm just going to see him now and he's sure to ask after you.

Suppose he – needs you?»