Family Matters: Elizabeth Berridge

Elizabeth Berridge’s foreword in Family Matters, a collection of 16 stories, is strong stuff:

There is no substitute for the family. It is society’s first teething ring, man’s proving ground. When repudiated it still leaves its strengthening mark; when it does the rejecting, the outcast is damaged. Within its confines, devils and angels rage together, emotions creep underfoot like wet rot, or flourish like Russian ivy. It is the world in microcosm, the nursery of tyrants, the no-man’s land of suffering, a place and a time, a rehearsal for silent parlour murder. 

These stories focus on different aspects of family life, and it should come as no surprise, thanks to that excerpt from the foreword, that these relationships are often toxic. While the stories dissect various relationships, several of the stories examine the life of widows as they ‘move on.’ Some of the stories are from the 40s while others were published closer to the time of this book’s publication (1979)

Here’s a breakdown of the stories: 

Idolatry in the Afternoon

Breakthrough

Between the Tides

Time Lost

Mr. Saunders

Growing Up

The Beacon

Lullaby

The Story of Stanley Brent

Subject of a Sermon

The Notebooks

The Prisoner

Tell it to a stranger

Breath of Whose Being?

Under the Hammer

Nightcap

Of course with this many stories, I have some favourites. Idolatry in the Afternoon is the tale of 86-year-old Great-aunt Esmé who is visited by William and Kate.  Great-aunt Esmé tells the story of her Uncle Claud, a man who rented a little house in which he discreetly entertained his mistresses. But discretion falls by the wayside when Esmé overhears the servants gossiping about Claud, a divorce and takes note of the statement: “I never thought it counted as adultery if you did it in the afternoon.” This bit of information, not understood by Esmé and her sister Lila, disastrously slips out at the church bazaar tea. 

But the story is more than a memory; it’s also William’s smary, superficial  relationship to his Great-aunt, and Kate’s discomfort and feeling of exclusion when William and Esmé chat. 

Comfortably, Great-aunt Esmé switched off her lamp and composed herself for sleep. Well  they were all gone now, and she was the only one left. Kate was a little like Lila, kind but judging. She wouldn’t approve of the end of the story. And that young scallywag William –well, he didn’t want to hear old women’s tales. Men became bored so quickly, and then they went away … no she wouldn’t tell them.

What a fuss! By tomorrow she’s have forgotten it, anyway. Another bit of cargo dropped overboard to lighten the boat on its lonely journey over a darkening sea. 

In Breakthrough, a recent widow, Mrs. Jameson, is downsizing and moving into a flat. This means that she needs to get rid of many precious family possessions. Her pregnant daughter, Tessa, is supposed to be helping, but Tessa barely manages to hide her impatience. There’s little affection between the two women, and Mrs. Jameson, who relied on her husband for a great deal of support, isn’t coping well with widowhood. There’s resentment brewing in Tessa, and when her mother reaches out for emotional support, Tessa takes the opportunity to strike. 

Time Lost is a cautionary tale. Pat visits Aunt Tazie in Wales every summer. Although there are other nieces, Pat and Tazie have a special relationship. Pat loves visiting Aunt Tazie as ” we were both great readers, the two of us.” So there’s a meeting ground where they read together and squabble over various fictional characters. At one point, Pat asks Aunt Tazie if she’s read Proust:

At once, she blushed, like a child stealing jam, and said in a whisper, “Oh I long to read Proust! I’ve promised myself Proust for years … but I’m leaving him till last, like a bonne bouche.” She gave me a hesitant look, “I’m saving him up for my deathbed, my dear. What a beautiful way to drift off.”

“It will have to be a long deathbed, then Aunt Tazie.”

Life has a way of playing tricks with our plans, and so it is with Tazie with her “longed-for, saved-up pleasure of this last bonne bouche, this Madeleine which had also turned to sawdust in her mouth.”

Mr Saunders is the story of an inmate in a mental home. The narrator’s Uncle Albert is the superintendent and Mr. Saunders, a long-term patient, and an artisan, has become a sort of hospital mascot. He’s allowed a great deal of freedom with Uncle Albert’s permission. …

Under the Hammer is another great favourite. There’s an estate sale afoot at Glanbadarn, and sensible Bella Linton can’t resist going to the sale. Bella is the daughter of a “previous” vicar and the widow of the local doctor. Her father was great friends with the old squire, also known as the Colonel. Bella’s father, the vicar marries again after the death of his first wife, and Bella finds herself with a stepmother and a step sister, Phoebe. Phoebe eventually marries the squire’s son, but now she is a widow too, and she’s shedding the great house that belonged to her husband’s family for many generations. To Bella, the house has many wonderful memories, and Phoebe’s decision to sell it along with its hordes of treasures of the past, seems like sacrilege.

Bella leaned against the big window that looked into the courtyard at the back of the house, then aside at her young step-sister. Young? She had always considered her to be so, and now she saw that age had not withered so much as preserved her. Now her skin showed a certain dryness, as if it might suddenly flake off. Hers was not a body to sag into old age and death; it would explode into dust, each particle dancing with its owner’s infuriating vivacity.

All the village is gathered to bid for items that will look incongruous in their modest homes. Some desire a slice of memory from the great house and others cannot hide their glee at acquiring an item owned by the Rushby-Knightons.  Bella finds that the visit to the house stirs resentment at her stepsister but more than that, she remembers how “always she had left Glanbadarn Hall with more than she came: a bunch of roses, a basket of peaches from the hothouse, asparagus, black grapes.” And then Bella commits an unpremeditated act that she did not think she was capable of. 

The 16 stories showcase the author’s range and talent at dissecting the power of memory and magnifying the complex dark corners of human relationships. We seek companionship, love, friendship and yet all those things often twist with a bitter sting, for in long-term relationships we so often cannot resist evening the score. Here Elizabeth Berridge shows women who are adjusting to being alone, women who confront their pasts, a lonely spinster on holiday, a mother whose charitable occupations alienate her son, a strange triangle which occurs between a married couple and a single male friend, a spinster who becomes attached to a German POW, a widow who prevaricates over the sale of her late husband’s papers, two sisters who meet a clairvoyant, and a rancid moment in a decades long marriage. There was only one story I disliked and that was Lullaby. 

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