“So you have come to live in England?” she was saying: “And your father is still abroad? I should have thought that it was better, surely, to be abroad nowadays than in England.”
“I agree,” Peter said.
“Then why don’t you go? It would be easy for you, wouldn’t it?”
“It’s Marius’s fault,” Peter said. “He wants to stay.”
“But good heavens, you don’t have to do what Marius wants, do you?”
“Oh yes, I think we do.”
“Why? How dreadful to be dependent on Marius!”
“Yes it’s terribly sinister isn’t it?” Peter said.
Alice turned away. I wondered if it was possible that Peter might defeat her, if defeat was what he wanted. He was nervous, being under fire, and after all it is difficult not to fight back against machine-guns. But I did not particularly want him to win.
“Of course,” she said, “you are terribly lucky to be living here. It really is delightful. I should not mind London so much myself if I could live in a place like this.”
“Do you mind London?” Peter said.
“Doesn’t everyone? No servants, no fun, no food. . ”
“Surely there is plenty of food?”
“Of course, to you, who can eat in a restaurant, who can get anything. . ”
“What I meant was to you,” Peter said.
“To me? Of course to me. I didn’t think you’d understand.”
“I try,” Peter said.
Annabelle was in the background, Marius had not yet come in, and Peter was doing his fighting with a cautious indignation that was still quite pleasant, but which I was afraid at any moment might turn to alarm. Alice rattled on with unceasing attack.
“You know,” she was saying, “really anything can happen to you anywhere nowadays, the other day I was in a taxi, it is too dreadful, and we stopped at a stoplight, and a man got in beside me, just got in, a perfect stranger, just sitting there beside me without even saying a word.”
“Yes?” Peter said. “Yes?”
“He really might have done anything, he might have cut my throat; it is terrible to think that one is at the mercy of people like that, that they are quite on top of you, everywhere.”
“And what did he do?” Peter said.
“I told you, he came and sat in my taxi.”
“He did?”
“Yes. And then people get drunk the whole time, and they come round knocking at your door, or ring you up, and you have to spend hours with them, literally hours, trying to get them away, and you have no peace any more, that is the terrible thing, you have no peace.”
“But the man in the taxi. . ”
“But peace. . ” Peter and I both started talking at once, and then stopped, and Alice darted in quickly.
“It is like living in a workhouse,” she said.
“A workhouse!” Peter said, as if shocked.
“But surely these people. . ” I began again.
“Of whom are you talking?” Peter said to Alice.
“Of everyone,” Alice said.
“You make me almost contented,” Peter said. I saw Annabelle look up at him quickly.
“. . it is because they can’t stand peace,” I went on.
“Contented?” Alice said, ignoring me. “How can you say that, don’t you feel it, don’t you know what I mean, they have power over you, absolute power, in a million ways, and you can’t get away from them, all the fuss, and the dreariness, it is on top of you like a fog, don’t you know what I mean?”
“No,” Peter said.
“Well, good heavens, what sort of idea can you have of life?”
“I still don’t know of whom you are talking,” Peter said. “You personally — why does it strike you as a workhouse?”
“It is what one is deprived of,” Alice said.
“And what is that?”
“Why — fun, easiness, easiness, yes, nothing is ever easy anymore, people are too frightened to be easy: they are starved, really starved, of all the things that make life bearable.”
“It is not ease and fun that make life bearable,” Peter said. “As indeed most people know who at the moment have too much of it.”
“Too much of it?”
“Yes, and the ones who haven’t at least have more than they ever had before, and they are the majority. The ones who have less are the minority and them I don’t know about, except that I shouldn’t think that the fun and ease that they had once ever did them any good, so that they are missing the point when they complain of the lack of it.”
“Of course they complain, they are suffocated, sat on, there is no gaiety any more.”
“For whom?” I said. “For you who still have money enough to create your own gaiety, or for those who have money for the first time and can’t?”
“And who are they sat on by,” Peter said, “other than the man in the taxi?”
“You are being ridiculous,” Alice said.
“I never did get the harm of that man in the taxi,” Peter said.
There was a silence. It seemed that the battle would drift on, interminably, and that no good would come of it. I realized, with surprise, that I had expected good to come of it. There is always the hope of results before a war. And now it seemed that at the end, as always, there would be no results except the weakening of all participants. I looked to Annabelle, but she was still withdrawn from us. I had given up trying to change the direction of the conflict myself. I regretted bringing Alice into such futility, and regretted even more that Annabelle would not help me. She seemed to be waiting for something. Peter was now doing the attacking with a persistence that was little different from Alice’s.
“I don’t trust all this gaiety stuff,” he said. “Cheap food, cheap drink, cheap talk, cheap women, cheap life — oh, I don’t believe in that sort of gaiety at all!”
“It was better than living in a dreadful concentration camp like this,” Alice said.
“A concentration camp?” Peter said. “Oh no, you can’t say anything about that, how can you talk about a concentration camp?”
“Don’t you know what I mean?” Alice said.
Marius came in. He said something about being sorry he was late, and sat down. Annabelle was kneeling on the floor in front of the fire, and she moved to make room for his legs. Alice watched her. Peter was standing by the piano, and it seemed then that what was happening was of more importance than a social battle. The nervousness had gone from Peter’s face, and in its place was a certain comical sadness which is the look of someone who has been hurt and is hiding it. I wondered how it was that Alice had hurt him, for her remark about a concentration camp had been no more, surely, than what he would expect; and then I realized, painfully, that the things that Alice had been saying — her phrases even — were those which Peter might well have said himself.
Realizing this, and watching Annabelle rather than Peter (she still had her back turned; why did she not speak?), I saw the alarm of having words thrown back at one in a way that made them hateful. Peter had spoken against England, but he had spoken against its pride and its complacencies, not its suffering. And now Alice had taken the words he might have used and had turned them into a complaint against the irrelevant lack of amenities. By doing this she had defeated him on the terms which they had accepted. The terms would now have to change — I did not know into what — but I found myself hoping.