The Haywards: Appearance and Reality

               At the beginning of the story, as described in previous posts, Stephen idealises the Haywards. In his distorted view, the Haywards are the perfect family and Stephen wishes his own family were like them. Little by little, we realise how unreliable Stephen's point of  view is and we start perceiving the conflicts and the dark truth behind the Haywards´ immaculate white walls. Stephen also realises his initial conception of Keith´s family was inadequate, but his understanding of their problems is still not complete. We- readers-. are sometimes a step ahead him in interpreting the clues provided by his close observation of this family. A good example of this difference is provided by  chapters 8 and 9.

  In these chapters, we discover that Mr Hayward is controlling his wife closely. In chapter 8, we learn through Barbara Berrill that Keith does the shopping for Mrs Hayward now because Mr Hayward doesn't let her go out on her own. Barbara and Stephen watch from Braemar as Mr Hayward accompanies her to the post for the first time. We can immediately perceive the irony in Stephen's interpretation of this event: “ The summer evening´s so fine that he's been tempted into an affectionate gesture of a quite unheard-of nature. He's torn himself away from the workbench and the garden for once to accompany her on her stroll to the post.” For us, it is clear from the very beginning that  Mr Hayward suspects his wife after she returned home covered in slime and therefore he wants to keep a close eye on her, but it takes Stephen a bit longer -and Barbara Berrill´s help- to understand it: “ Barbara Berrill is right. When Keith´s mother finally reached home that day with her white dress badged with green slime, the situation changed. There's no green slime on the way to the shops or the post, or Auntie Dee´s house. Whatever story she told Keith´s father to explain it, that slime must have suddenly seemed to touch all her absences. So now he has turned the key on her. She has become a prisoner.” Moreover, in Mrs Hayward´s conversation with Stephen in chapter 9, the reader perceives she has escaped from her husband's control for a while, but she has to return as soon as her husband realises she is not at home and goes out of the house to check on her. Therefore, we see how controlling Mr Hayward has become.

          Not only does Mr Hayward follow her around all the time, but he has gone as far as hurting her, probably with the aim to obtain an explanation for her behaviour. As this happens inside the house, it is just insinuated by two clues: the sharpening of the bayonet and the silk cravat Mrs Hayward starts wearing to cover her neck. At the end of chapter 7,  after the caning incident, Stephen realises what Keith´s father is doing: "The grindstone whirs and there's a sudden shower of sparks. I can't see what is happening, but I don't need to because I know. It's the bayonet, the famous bayonet". In the following chapters, Mrs Hayward starts wearing a blue silk cravat, “high under her chin, and fastened in front with a silver clasp”, evidently, to hide the cuts. The clues are there for us- readers - to deduce the relationship between these two events before Stephen as it is only when Keith hurts him with the fake bayonet in chapter 10  that Stephen puts the two things together: “And even in the extremity of my terror I suddenly realise where he learnt to practise this particular form of torture with this particular instrument, and why his mother, in the heat of summer, has taken to wearing that cravat pinned high around her neck.”

     Furthermore, Keith`s mother is suffering not only physically but also psychologically. When she went to ask Stephen to take the basket to the man in the Barns, Stephen notices a change in her: “I think she seemed somehow even more perfect than before. Her lips were redder, her cheeks smoother, her eyes more lustrous.” Evidently, she is all made up to hide the marks of suffering on her face. When she can´t hold herself any longer and starts crying in front of Stephen, Stephen comments: “I can scarcely recognise her now she´s wiped most of the make up on her face.” Stephen is not used to seeing so much pain and distress on her, as in the past she used to looked always relaxed. In chapter 2, she was described in this way: “ She spoke softly and smilingly, with a kind of calm amusement at the world and no excessive movement of her lips. She spent a lot of the day with her feet up on the sofa, or resting in her bedroom, and rested is what she always seemed. She`d appear in the doorway of the playroom, rested, calm and composed(...)” The contrast is so great that Stephen finds it difficult to recognise her face. In fact, this face reminds him of the photos of Mrs Hayward as a little girl that Stephen has seen in her sitting room. Mrs Hayward does not look as an adult any longer but as a pleading little girl. This image suggests how destitute and powerless she has become.

To make matters worse, Mrs Haywards does not only have problems and conflicts with her husband but she has also fallen out with her sister. All along chapter 10, Stephen watches their quarrel from his hideout.  From there, he sees how “Auntie Dee presses her hands to her face, then to her ears" We infer she doesn`t want to hear Mrs Hayward´s excuses and can`t stand the painful conversation about Mrs Hayward´s affair with Uncle Peter, Auntie Dee´s husband.

       In conclusion, the Haywards are far from the perfect family Stephen took them to be. Mrs Haywards is unfaithful, and is having an affair with her sister´s husband. Mr Haywards is violent and oppressive. Gradually, we discover their attractive facade is covering a terrible reality.