Absent in the Spring (11 page)

They went into the house and Leslie went to get tea with the boys helping her and presently it came in on a tray, with the loaf and the butter and the homemade jam, and the thick kitchen cups and Leslie and the boys laughing.

But the most curious thing that happened was the change in Sherston. That uneasy, shifty, painful manner of his vanished. He became suddenly the master of the house and the host – and a very good host. Even his social manner was in abeyance. He looked suddenly happy, pleased with himself and with his family. It was as though, within these four walls, the outer world and its judgment ceased to exist for him. The boys clamoured for him to help them with some carpentry they were doing, Leslie adjured him not to forget that he had promised to see to the hoe for her and ought they to bunch the anemones tomorrow or could they do it Thursday morning?

Joan thought to herself that she had never liked him better. She understood, she felt, for the first time Leslie's devotion to him. Besides, he must have been a very good-looking man once.

But a moment or two later she got rather a shock.

Peter was crying eagerly, ‘Tell us the funny story about the warder and the plum pudding!'

And then, urgently, as his father looked blank:

‘
You
know, when you were in prison, what the warder said, and the other warder?'

Sherston hesitated and looked slightly shamefaced. Leslie's voice said calmly:

‘Go on, Charles. It's a very funny story. Mrs Scudamore would like to hear it.'

So he had told it, and it was quite funny – if not so funny as the boys seemed to think. They rolled about squirming and gasping with laughter. Joan laughed politely, but she was definitely startled and a little shocked, and later, when Leslie had taken her upstairs she murmured delicately:

‘I'd no idea – they
knew
!'

Leslie – really, Joan thought, Leslie Sherston must be most insensitive – looked rather amused.

‘They'd be bound to know some day,' she said. ‘Wouldn't they? So they might just as well know now. It's simpler.'

It was simpler, Joan agreed, but was it wise? The delicate idealism of a child's mind, to shatter its trust and faith – she broke off.

Leslie said she didn't think her children were very delicate and idealistic. It would be worse for them, she thought, to know there was something – and not be told what it was.

She waved her hands in that clumsy, inarticulate way she had and said, ‘Making mysteries – all that –
much
worse. When they asked me why Daddy had gone away I thought I might just as well be natural about it, so I told them that he'd stolen money from the bank and gone to prison. After all, they know what stealing is. Peter used to steal jam and get sent to bed for it. If grown-up people do things that are wrong they get sent to prison. It's quite simple.'

‘All the same, for a child to look
down
on its father instead of
up
to him –'

‘Oh they don't look down on him.' Leslie again seemed amused. ‘They're actually quite sorry for him – and they love to hear all about the prison life.'

‘I'm sure that's
not
a good thing,' said Joan decidedly.

‘Oh don't you think so?' Leslie meditated. ‘Perhaps not. But it's been good for Charles. He came back simply cringing – like a dog. I couldn't bear it. So I thought the only thing to do was to be quite natural about it. After all, you can't pretend three years of your life have never existed. It's better, I think, to treat it as just one of those things.'

And that, thought Joan, was Leslie Sherston, casual, slack, and with no conception of any finer shades of feeling! Always taking the way of least resistance.

Still, give her her due, she had been a loyal wife.

Joan had said kindly, ‘You know, Leslie, I really think you have been quite splendid, the way you have stuck to your husband and worked so hard to keep things going while he was – er – away. Rodney and I often say so.'

What a funny one-sided smile the woman had. Joan hadn't noticed it until this minute. Perhaps her praise had embarrassed Leslie. It was certainly in rather a stiff voice that Leslie asked:

‘How is – Rodney?'

‘Very busy, the poor lamb. I'm always telling him he ought to take a day off now and again.'

Leslie said, ‘That's not so easy. I suppose in his job – like mine – it's pretty well full time. There aren't many possible days off.'

‘No. I daresay that's true, and of course Rodney is very conscientious.'

‘A full-time job,' Leslie said. She went slowly towards the window and stood there staring out.

Something about the outline of her figure struck Joan – Leslie usually wore things pretty shapeless, but surely –

‘Oh Leslie,' Joan exclaimed impulsively. ‘Surely you aren't –'

Leslie turned and meeting the other woman's eyes slowly nodded her head.

‘Yes,' she said. ‘In August.'

‘Oh my dear.' Joan felt genuinely distressed.

And suddenly, surprisingly, Leslie broke into passionate speech. She was no longer casual and slack. She was like a condemned prisoner who puts up a defence.

‘It's made all the difference to Charles. All the difference! Do you see? I can't tell you how he feels about it. It's a kind of symbol – that he's not an outcast – that everything's the same as it always was. He's even tried to stop drinking since he's known.'

So impassioned was Leslie's voice that Joan hardly realized until afterwards the implication of the last sentence.

She said, ‘Of course you know your own business best, but I should have thought it was unwise – at the moment.'

‘Financially, you mean?' Leslie laughed. ‘Oh we'll weather the storm. We grow pretty well all we eat anyway.'

‘And, you know, you don't look very strong.'

‘Strong? I'm terribly strong. Too strong. Whatever kills me won't kill me easily, I'm afraid.'

And she had given a little shiver – as though – even then – she had had some strange prevision of disease and racking pain …

And then they had gone downstairs again, and Sherston had said he would walk with Mrs Scudamore to the corner and show her the short cut across the fields, and, turning her head as they went down the drive, she saw Leslie and the boys all tangled up and rolling over and over on the ground with shrieks of wild mirth. Leslie, rolling about with her young, quite like an animal, thought Joan with slight disgust, and then bent her head attentively to listen to what Captain Sherston was saying.

He was saying in rather incoherent terms that there never was, never had been, never would be, any woman like his wife.

‘You've no idea, Mrs Scudamore, what she's been to me. No idea. Nobody could. I'm not worthy of her. I know that …'

Joan observed with alarm that the easy tears were standing in his eyes. He was a man who could quickly become maudlin.

‘Always the same – always cheerful – seems to think that everything that happens is interesting and amusing. And never a word of reproach. Never a word. But I'll make it up to her – I swear I'll make it up to her.'

It occurred to Joan that Captain Sherston could best show his appreciation by not visiting the Anchor and Bell too frequently. She very nearly said so.

She got away from him at last, saying, Of course, of course, and what he said was
so
true, and it had been so nice to see them both. She went away across the fields and looking back as she crossed the stile, she saw Captain Sherston at a standstill outside the Anchor and Bell, looking at his watch to decide how long it was to opening time.

The whole thing, she said to Rodney, when she got back, was very sad.

And Rodney, seemingly purposefully dense, had said, ‘I thought you said that they all seemed very happy together?'

‘Well, yes, in a way.'

Rodney said that it seemed to him as though Leslie Sherston was making quite a success of a bad business.

‘She's certainly being very plucky about it all. And just think – she's actually going to have another child.'

Rodney had got up on that and walked slowly across to the window. He had stood there looking out – very much, now she came to think of it, as Leslie had stood. He said, after a minute or two, ‘When?'

‘August,' she said. ‘I think it's extremely foolish of her.'

‘Do you?'

‘My dear, just consider. They're living hand to mouth as it is. A young baby will be an added complication.'

‘He said slowly, Leslie's shoulders are broad.'

‘Well, she'll crack up if she tries to take on too much. She looks ill now.'

‘She looked ill when she left here.'

‘She looks years older, too. It's all very well to say that this will make all the difference to Charles Sherston.'

‘Is that what she said?'

‘Yes. She said it
had
made all the difference.'

Rodney said thoughtfully, ‘That's probably true. Sherston is one of those extraordinary people who live entirely on the esteem in which other people hold them. When the judge passed sentence on him he collapsed just like a pricked balloon. It was quite pitiful and at the same time quite disgusting. I should say the only hope for Sherston is to get back, somehow or other, his self respect. It will be a full-time job.'

‘Still I really do think that another child –'

Rodney interrupted her. He turned from the window and the white anger of his face startled her.

‘She's his wife, isn't she? She'd only got two courses open to her – to cut loose entirely and take the kids – or to go back and damn well
be
a wife to him. That's what she's done – and Leslie doesn't do things by halves.'

And Joan had asked if there was anything to get excited about and Rodney replied, ‘Certainly not,' but he was sick and tired of a prudent, careful world that counted the cost of everything before doing it and never took a risk! Joan said she hoped he didn't talk like that to his clients, and Rodney grinned and said, No fear, he always advised them to settle out of court!

It was, perhaps, natural that Joan should dream that night of Miss Gilbey. Miss Gilbey in a solar topee, walking beside her in the desert and saying in an authoritative voice, ‘You should have paid more attention to lizards, Joan. Your natural history is weak.' To which, of course, she had replied, ‘Yes, Miss Gilbey.'

And Miss Gilbey had said, ‘Now don't pretend you don't know what I mean, Joan. You know perfectly well. Discipline, my dear.'

Joan woke up and for a moment or two thought herself back at St Anne's. It was true the rest house was not unlike a school dormitory. The bareness, the iron beds, the rather hygienic-looking walls.

Oh dear, thought Joan, another day to get through.

What was it Miss Gilbey had said in her dream? ‘Discipline.'

Well, there was something in that. It had really been very foolish of her the day before to get into that queer state all about nothing! She must discipline her thoughts, arrange her mind systematically – investigate once and for all this agoraphobia idea.

Certainly she felt quite all right now, here in the rest house. Perhaps it would be wiser not to go out at all?

But her heart sank at the prospect. All day in the gloom, with the smell of mutton fat and paraffin and Flit – all day with nothing to read – nothing to do.

What did prisoners do in their cells? Well, of course they had exercise and they sewed mail bags or something like that. Otherwise, she supposed, they would go mad.

But there was solitary confinement … that did send people mad.

Solitary confinement – day after day – week after week.

Why, she felt as though she had been here for
weeks
! And it was – how long – two days?

Two days! Incredible. What was that line of Omar Khayyam's? ‘Myself with Yesterday's Ten Thousand Years.' Something like that. Why couldn't she remember anything properly?

No, no, not again. Trying to remember and recite poetry hadn't been a success – not at all a success. The truth is there was something very upsetting about poetry. It had a poignancy – a way of striking through to the spirit …

What was she talking about? Surely the more spiritual one's thoughts were the better. And she had always been a rather spiritual type of person …

‘
You always were as cold as a fish …
'

Why should Blanche's voice come cutting through to her thoughts? A very vulgar and uncalled for remark – really, just like Blanche! Well, she supposed that that was what it must seem like to someone like Blanche, someone who allowed themselves to be torn to pieces by their passions. You couldn't really blame Blanche for being coarse – she was simply made that way. It hadn't been noticeable as a girl because she had been so lovely and so well bred, but the coarseness must always have been there underneath.

Cold as a fish indeed! Nothing of the kind.

It would have been a good deal better for Blanche if
she
had been a little more fishlike in temperament herself!

She seemed to have led the most deplorable life.

Really
quite
deplorable.

What had she said? ‘One can always think of one's sins!'

Poor Blanche! But she had admitted that that wouldn't give Joan occupation long. She did realize, then, the difference between herself and Joan. She had pretended to think that Joan would soon get tired of counting her blessings. (True, perhaps, that one did tend to take one's blessings for granted!) What was it she had said after that? Something rather curious …

Oh yes. She had wondered what, if you had nothing to do but think about yourself for days and days, you might find out about yourself …

In a way, rather an interesting idea.