A Song of Sixpence (38 page)

An interval elapsed, insufferably long, before the doctor arrived. He was not long in Nora's room. Almost at once he went down to the telephone. I knew, with a slight shudder, what that meant. Then I heard him on the stairs again.

Now a few streaks of dawn were beginning to creep into the boxroom, revealing a dusty clutter of boxes, mops, pails, odd pieces of broken furniture and other lumber. I went to the single window to watch for the ambulance. But when it swung into the still, grey street, I could bear it no longer. Retreating from the window I listened to the sounds of Nora's removal. I could not bring myself to look.

At last all was quiet again. I put on my boots and jacket, and half opened the boxroom door. I could hear nothing. Surely I couldn't be expected to go on enduring this suspense. Cautiously I came along the corridor. The woman was in Nora's room, with her sleeves rolled up and her hands on her hips, surveying a scene of appalling disorder.

Only one thought was in my mind. I said:

‘Will she be all right?'

She spun round. Her face was a deep red, mottled and distorted with anger.

‘I don't know and I don't care. You young blackguard, bringing that slut in here, messing up all my bed-linen, mucking the room so it must be scrubbed, and keeping me up half the night, and all for a two-faced little bitch you pretended was your cousin. I ought to turn you over to the police, that's what I ought. And I will too. Just like they'll be after her.'

I might be scared, yet I had to stand up for Nora.

‘She couldn't help it.'

‘Couldn't she? I'll swear she brought it on herself.'

What on earth did she mean? She must be mad with rage.

‘Brought on what?'

‘You young twister, don't pretend you don't know. She's had a filthy miss.'

I did not understand.

‘A what?' I said.

‘A lowdown dirty abortion from taking pills.' She shouted and caught me a stunning box on the ear that nearly knocked me down. But the brutal force of her words stunned me worse than the blow. Unable to speak, I stared at her dully, so shocked I lost all sense of where I was, or what was making me shake all over. Then something within me gave way. I covered my face with my arm and leaned against the passage wall.

The train, gathering speed after its stop at Glaisend, was on the last stage of its journey to Winton. Alone in the corner of the end third-class compartment I sat with commendable stillness, my hands on my knees, devoid of all sensation but that of profound apathy. For three hours I had been sitting like this, looking fixedly out of the window, dulled by the swift, confused passage of the landscape which served to block off or at least submerge the sluggish current of my thoughts. I hoped this state of blankness would not leave me. I encouraged it, when the scenery failed me, by staring at the advertisements on the opposite side of the compartment until they merged gradually into a mesmerizing blur. Now I'm looking at nothing, I thought, as though this sensation of visual and mental vacuum represented the summit of achievement.

Yet this stupor, a defence against the state of acute shock that I was in, did not always save me. And from time to time, fragments of fear and horror floated up like foul refuse to the surface of my mind. Then, the experience to which I had been subjected struck at me again. The net of deception that had entangled me was not the hardest to bear. Worse than that, worse even than my interrogation and detention by the police, when everything had come out, even the faking of the race, was the thought of Nora. I shuddered as once again the woman's voice rang through my head: ‘ Good-for-nothing little slut … fetch the police … tampering with herself … a mucking abortion …' Life was sordid and hateful, could I ever believe in anyone or anything again?

The suburbs of Winton were now drifting past, the train had begun to slacken speed, and the ticket inspector, sliding open the corridor door, was again in my compartment. With a start, I surrendered the ticket the police sergeant had given me that morning and which had already been punched three times.

‘Winton next stop.' He was disposed to talk, since obviously he did not know that I had spent Sunday in Berwick gaol. ‘You've had a long journey, lad. And an early start.'

I had to think a moment before I could find an answer.

‘You have too, Inspector,' I said at last.

He laughed.

‘That's my job. Are you going on holiday?'

‘No,' I said immediately, as though a button had been pressed, releasing the fixed idea in my mind. ‘I'm on my way to the University to sit an examination, at two o'clock.'

‘Are you now?' he said, impressed.

‘I am. I've been working for it for three months.'

‘I thought you looked a bit hard done by. Well, good luck to you, lad.'

I thanked him. He gave me a friendly nod and went out.

It was true, and I felt a strange relief to have openly established my intention. Perhaps, in my present state, this was no more than an obsessive compulsion, the reflex to those months of constant preparation. Yet I knew that I had given my word to Pin, and after the shambles of that shameful week-end I must try to keep it. Nevertheless, while I understood what I must do, while my movements were directed almost involuntarily towards the objective, I occasionally had difficulty in identifying myself with the individual who must perform them. This tendency of my personality to fade out into a sort of exterior wasteland was a frightening sort of thing in which I seemed to lose myself completely and to wander alone, all identity gone, in a strange shadowy landscape. Yet it was not persistent, and when it passed, as now, I was again Laurence Carroll, possessed by the necessity of attending the University Hall, Gilmore Hill, W.1, at two o'clock precisely this afternoon.

The engine, with a last hissing expulsion of steam, jerked to a stop in Winton North British Station. Obscurely, I felt relieved that we had not come into the Central. I got out of my compartment and walked along the platform to the Queen Street exit, taking pains, as I did so, to confirm that the train had arrived at 12.40, only five minutes late. I had no need to hurry, everything would be performed in a well-regulated manner. Although my ticket had been given up, I still had some coins in my pocket and, as it seemed correct to sustain myself before taking the examination, it became obligatory for me to have lunch. Not far down, on the other side of the street, I saw a Rombach, one of a chain of modest Winton restaurants. I crossed over and entered.

The menu, in light blue typing, offered a choice of mutton chop, boiled ox tongue, or steak and kidney pie. Unhesitatingly I selected the chop and, when it was served, with peas and mashed potatoes, I ate it as though complying methodically with a fixed routine, quite unconscious of any appetite or sense of taste. Although I could not realize this, all my actions were now controlled by an automatism, certain prelude to nervous disintegration, which, even had I tried, I could not have resisted. A clock on the wall of the restaurant above the entrance kept me informed of the time and at twenty past one I asked for my check, paid it at the cashier's box and went out.

A green tram would take me to the foot of Gilmore Hill. They ran frequently on this route and presently one appeared. Although it was crowded with workers going home for lunch, I boarded it handily. But I had to stand during the journey and when we arrived at Gilmore Hill I was not feeling quite so competent, particularly in the management of my legs. I climbed the hill slowly, from necessity rather, than choice. It had apparently turned warmer and I was also experiencing a strange retarding tightness at the top of my head. Even when I reached the coolness of the cloisters this feeling persisted. The clock in the tower struck two o'clock as I entered the University Hall.

‘Cutting it a bit fine, aren't you?' the man at the desk said as he ticked my name off on the list. He handed me the test paper, gave me an odd look and pointed to a vacant desk. I sat down and glanced about me, observing that the other competitors, about twenty in number, contorted in assorted attitudes of concentration, were already writing hard. I refused to be hurried. In an orderly manner I opened the exercise book on my desk and took up the test paper to study the question.

The Ellison Essay

Write an apologia of not less than two thousand words exonerating, as best you can, Mary, Queen of Scots, for her conduct in relation to Lord Darnley and with particular reference to the night of February 9th, 1567.

I might have smiled—the temptation was almost irresistible—not because, at the back of my mind, something, or perhaps someone, had suggested that this, or a comparable subject, might turn up, but solely from the absurdity of the idea that in my present state I could ever bring myself to defend that royal adventuress, even if it were to win the Ellison for me a hundred times over.

Calmly, aware that I was wrecking my chance of success, I dipped my nib in the inkwell and began to write. I did not hesitate, words flowed from my pen, and every word I wrote sprang from the hurt I had received. The period in Scotland covering the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had been my special study, I knew the full history of the unhappy Queen and now, invested with this urge from my subconscious, almost with malice, I scarified her mercilessly and with a subtlety of which I could not have believed myself capable. Under the pretence of defending her, one by one favourable arguments were advanced then ruthlessly demolished, extenuating circumstances suggested, only to be crushed by the hard facts of history.

In this manner I made it obvious that her misguided marriage to the youthful, foolish Darnley, ostensibly a love match, had been conceived for no other reason than her ambitious hatred of her cousin Queen Elizabeth—only one year later the outlawed Earl of Bothwell was her adulterous lover. Estranged from her husband—who lay ill and disfigured, longing for a reconciliation, in the city of Glasgow—was it wifely solicitude that caused her to decree, after a secret meeting with Bothwell, that he might more conveniently recover his health in the lonely, half-ruined house of Kirk o' Fields? Once Darnley was installed, not with comfort perhaps, for it was a miserable dwelling for a sick man, nothing could have been more virtuous than the assiduous attentions of the young and beautiful Queen who devotedly sat through the day with him on her red velvet cushion and at night slept in a bed in the room below.

Unfortunately, on one particular night, the Saturday night of February 9th, she could not well be there. A promise to be present at a masque ball following a wedding had been given, the royal word could not be broken. She kissed her husband good night, saw that his candle light was trimmed. One last touching, pious gesture before she went out. She handed him his book of Psalms. Strange that Paris, Bothwell's servant, soiled with gunpowder, should pass her at the gate. Strange the locking of doors, the dismissal of the few attendants. Strange too that tremendous explosion, almost a royal salute, while she danced the night away.

For more than an hour I had not once looked up, while my pen travelled to and fro across the white pages with a robot regularity. Devoid of conscious thought, it was automatic writing, nothing else, and no planchette could have more relentlessly evoked the past. But gradually, as I approached the final description of Mary awakening on the morning following the murder amidst the silken hangings of her great bed and, already contemplating her marriage to Bothwell, sitting up to enjoy her favourite breakfast of a soft-boiled fresh egg, my bitterness seemed to flag and to be replaced by an extraordinary sensation of lassitude which obtruded itself in a manner so peculiar as to compel my attention. The lines were now wavering on the page, patches of shadow floated before my eyes and when, in an attempt to adjust my vision, I raised my head and looked about me the tightness previously experienced at the top of skull was transformed to an actual vertigo. At the same time, giddily, it dawned upon me that most of the other candidates had handed in their essays, the time allotted must almost have expired. With an effort I completed my final paragraph, blotted the page, and closed the book.

What next? I supposed I should hand it in. But that seemed altogether pointless, and besides, I had a strange disinclination to stand up. Now that I had expelled my venom, rid myself of that fearful sense of outrage against decency, like a devil cast out, I felt weak and limp, altogether spent. The examiner, if that was the term I should apply to him, was leaving his desk and advancing slowly towards me. To my surprise, as he drew near and I could see him better, he appeared to be a clergyman, long, lean and saturnine, complete with dog collar. Had I noticed that when I came in? Surely not.

‘You are the last.' He was addressing me mildly, in a speculative way. ‘ Have you finished?'

‘I believe I have.'

‘Then may I take your book? It's just after four.'

I gave it to him. He was watching me out of the corner of one clerical eye.

‘You've written a lot,' he said rather ironically, turning the pages. ‘I trust you've been kind to the poor woman.'

‘No, I haven't. As far as I'm concerned she was just
a two-faced little bitch.
'

‘Indeed!' He raised his eyebrows, and said nothing more.

Holding on to the desk I stood up. I was reluctant to leave it, but somehow, with a pretence of normality, I got out of the hall. Outside in the cloisters someone was waiting. It looked like Pin. If so, he was in a state of fearful agitation.

‘Laurence! I've looked everywhere for you. Where were you?'

I put my hand to the top of my head to see if it was still there.

‘I can't exactly remember.'

‘Can't remember?' He was weaving in indistinct outlines, as though seen underwater. ‘Have you done a good essay?'

‘No, a damned bad one. I answered it all the wrong way. And I told the examiner so.'