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Three Stories by Walter de la Mare (page 2)
Russell Hoban
Now we come to 'Seaton's Aunt'. Miss Seaton is both a transmitter and a receiver,
so again I see the action under the narrative as intersecting wave patterns
going out and coming in.
'Seaton's Aunt' has
a complimentary relationship to 'Miss Duveen'. Again the narrator recalls a
boyhood encounter with the woman of the title; but where Miss Duveen is the
victim of the shadows Seaton's Aunt is a shadowy aggressor. In Robert Graves's
The White Goddess and in the work of other mythographers you can read
of the triple aspect of women as perceived by ancient primitive males and recorded
by modern scholarly ones: she is successively the maiden, the mother, and the
hag. In Indian mythology Shiva's beautiful consort Parbati becomes Kali the
destroyer with her necklace of skulls. The tendency of some female spiders and
other creepy-crawlies to dine on rather than with their mates has done little
to make us males feel more secure. On the other hand we have such remnants of
old religion as the stone figure called Sheela-Na-Gig protecting us all by displaying
her evil-averting pudenda on the corbal-table of Kilpeck Church and elsewhere.
Men have been impressed by the power of women in one way and another ever since
sex was invented but that is not my main theme here; it is sufficient to say
that Miss Duveen, despite her age, is the vulnerable maiden; and Seaton's aunt
is definitely at the other end of the spectrum, where Medusa lives.
In 'Miss Duveen' the
lady of the title gave us such hints and glimpses as enabled us to extrapolate
her history. In 'Seaton's Aunt' there is nothing so simple as that; it is completely
a character-and-atmosphere story, the two so intermingled that it is impossible
to separate them. The written narrative is mainly a framework within which the
reader is led to endless speculation about this woman who is literature's most
memorable creations. Poor Seaton! From the beginning his prospects don't seem
too good. 'From a boy's point of view', says the narrator, 'he looked distastefully
foreign with his yellowish skin, slow chocolate-coloured eyes, and lean weak
figure. Merely for his looks he was treated by most of us true-blue Englishmen
with condescension, hostility, or contempt.' Seaton, we fear, is destined to
become a victim.
Withers, the narrator,
is not at all a close friend of the unpopular Seaton but, full of gratitude
for 'a whole pot of outlandish mulberry-coloured jelly that had been duplicated
in [Seaton's] term's supplies', he promises to spend the next half-term holiday
with him at his aunt's house.
Seaton's aunt is first
seen from a distance:
…We were approaching the house, when Seaton suddenly came to a standstill. Indeed, I have always had the impression that he plucked at my sleeve. Something, at least, seemed to catch me back, as it were, as he cried, 'Look out, there she is!' She was standing at an upper window which opened wide on a hinge, and at first sight she looked an excessively tall and overwhelming figure. This, however, was mainly because the window reached all but to the floor of her bedroom. She was in reality rather an undersized woman, in spite of he long face and big head. She must of stood, I think, unusually still, with eyes fixed on us, though the impression may be due to Seaton's sudden warning and to my consciousness of the cautious and subdued air that had fallen on him at the sight of her. I know that without the least reason in the world I felt a kind of guiltiness, as if I had been 'caught'. There was a silvery star pattern sprinkled on her black silk dress, and even from the ground I could see the immense coils of her hair and the rings on her left hand which was held fingering the small jet buttons of her bodice. She watched our united advance without stirring, until, imperceptible, her eyes raised and lost themselves in the distance, so that it was out of an assumed reverie that she appeared suddenly to awaken to our presence beneath her when we drew close to the house.
Those
lines are quite wonderful for the way in which they present to us this woman
of power. I doubt that many aunts have been introduced with the word, 'Look
out, there she is!' We must then look up to see her because she's above us at
an upper window. This window opens wide on a hinge, giving us a sense of her
freedom to transmit her physical vibrations. It is a bedroom window, so behind
her is the night and whatever it brings. Her eyes are fixed upon Seaton and
Withers, and Withers feels 'caught'. The silvery star pattern on her black silk
dress suggests witchery and the immense coils of her hair suggests snakes. After
fixing her eyes on the boys she assumes a false reverie from which she rouses
herself to greet Withers and Smithers. When corrected, she says, 'Its much the
same,' making it clear that any friend of Seaton's is an interchangeable entity.
Then she offhandedly tells Wither's, the guest, to bring Seaton, the host, along
with him.
Perhaps I'm belabouring
the obvious but it's because I so admire what de la Mare does and doesn't do
in those lines. A lesser writer might of said:
There was something sinister about the woman; the silvery star pattern on her black silk dress was suggestive of the occult, and the snaky coils of her hair, her hooded eyes and hieratic stillness gave her an air of supernatural power.
De la Mare doesn't do that; he offers no opinion: Seaton's warning,
'Look out there she is!' makes us brace ourselves for something special. Then
young Withers tells us what he sees, how he feels, and what was said. Having
had the journey by train, farm cart, and foot, then the village (where Seaton
stops to buy rat poison at the chemist's), then the outbuildings, the garden
and Seaton's tadpole pond, we now, with this new data, find in our minds the
whole atmosphere of the time and the place. With only that one clue about his
feeling caught, we ourselves experience, exactly and in great detail, Wither's
encounter with that house and that presence. To be able to do this, to refrain
from over-describing but to provide that information that enables the reader
to live the event, is the index of de la Mare's mastery.
Most of the action of
the story is in Wither's three visits to the house of Seaton's aunt: the first
is when Withers and Seaton are schoolmates; the second is when Seaton is engaged
to be married; the third is after Seaton's untimely death. In each of these
visits the aunt makes her appearance in a psychologically choreographed set
piece in which the otherness of her reality dominates the scene. In 'Miss Duveen'
there was the unpleasant and domineering cousin; here we have the step-aunt
who is a physical oppressor. In both stories we are left with a feeling of the
narrator's moral guilt: although drawn unwillingly into a strange alliance,
he ought to have stood by the friend more staunchly than he did, even if ultimately
it would have made no difference. Perhaps that's why both stories have such
power - perhaps all of us recognise in ourselves some guilt, some regret for
something in the past that we ought to have done and did not do.
There isn't a great
deal of overt action in thus story. During a half-term holiday Withers goes
unwillingly with Seaton to the house of Seaton's aunt who is not really his
aunt but his mother's step-sister. The woman treats Seaton with contempt and
Seaton lives in terror of her. He tells Withers, 'I know that what we see and
hear is only the smallest fraction of what is. I know she lives quite out of
this. She talks to you; but it's all make-believe.' He claims that his aunt
is in league with the Devil, that she as good as killed his mother (although
he doesn't say how), and that she constantly spies on him, listening to every
thought he thinks. Furthermore he insists that the house is swarming with ghosts.
'She brings them in,' he says. Withers has strong doubts about all this, and
that night Seaton gets him out of bed to show him that his aunt has not been
asleep but was listening at the door. They go through the dark house to her
bedroom:
Seaton, with immense caution, slowly pushed open a door, and we stood together, looking into a great poll of duskiness, out of which, lit by the feeble clearness of a nightlight, rose a vast bed. A heap of clothes lay on the floor; beside them two slippers dozed, with noses each to each, a foot or two apart. Somewhere a little clock ticked huskily. There was a close smell; lavender and eau de Cologne, mingled with the fragrance of ancient sachets, soap, and drugs. Yet it was a scent even more peculiarly compounded than that.
Trapped
in the room as the aunt returns, the boys hide in a cupboard until she falls
asleep. In the morning 'in the mysterious fashion by which we learn each other's
secret thoughts without a syllable said,' Withers knows that she has followed
every word and movement of the night before.
In Wither's second visit,
the occasion on which he meets Alice Outram, Seaton's fiancée, Miss Seaton,
in dim lamplight and with the light of the moon on the keys, plays Beethoven's
'Moonlight' Sonata, somehow satirising it, dragging 'out of the unwilling keys
her grotesquerie of youth and love and beauty.' For an encore she does an hymn,
A few More Years Shall Roll. Here are the words of the first verse, not
given in the story:
A few more years shall
roll,
A few more seasons come,
And we shall be with
those that rest
Asleep within the tomb…
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