Cold Pastoral (36 page)

As the signet ring was not on her finger, neither questioned where it was. Then the Catholic spoke in wondering scorn.

“Marriage! One of the Sacraments! How could anyone call that marriage ? There were no vestments, no altar, no candles and no Latin. The minister did not even wear a black coat, and right behind his head was the picture of a fat child, walking down some stairs. Then we signed something and came away. Neither Tim nor I looked at each other, and we were both shivering. It felt cold. Tim said the roadhouse was quite near. On the way he had to tell me what Philip thought. It didn't seem to make much difference. It only made me feel flatter. When we got to the house Tim ordered some supper, and neither of us could think of anything to eat, and then we both said ham and eggs, as it seemed the only food we could remember. Then he looked at me and said: ‘Gretel, this is the first time we've been in a room together, except for school.' I think he was going to kiss me when he saw a piano. He looked so excited, and took my hand and dragged me over. I had to sit down while he played and played and played. I think for a while he was really and truly happy. He quite forgot we were married, because it was the first time he had been able to play the piano to me. His hands looked so firm and at home on the keys that I knew he should have been allowed to study music, even though he starved for a few years. He played bits of a dozen things, but I can't remember one note of what he played. I only heard sound, not music. Oh, I was so flat so—flat—as if I had no knees or elbows….” She slacked in the chair, going as supine as her hands. David did the same thing, as if he must show some sympathy. She commenced to whisper.

“I began to see the room. There was a hooked mat of the Union Jack over the back of a chair. I suppose it was there, because you couldn't step on the flag. You could only lean your back against it. What made me run away was the cushion…”

For the first time in her life Felice wondered if the girl had a cast in her eyes, she withdrew to such an inward stare.

“A cushion, Mary?” she said briskly enough to bring her back.

“Yes, a cushion! It was red satin with a lot of butterflies herring-boned to the top. They went this way and that way, and looked as if a needle had sewed them as they flew. While Tim was playing I felt like the butterflies, more held than I had ever been in my life. I was paralysed and couldn't move. I had to go then, and I couldn't go. I was as cloven to the chair as the angel in the cemetery who had been holding the marble flower for thirty-nine years. I was no more married to Tim than I was to anyone else, and I had to get out before he brought me home to his mother and his Auntie Minnie. I fancied I saw the butterflies move, and I jumped so quickly that Tim jumped too. I said, ‘Tim, I can't stay. You must let me go, to think. I'll goto David and Felice and tell them all about it.' Then I knew he had remembered we were married. He looked at me and his eyes went so heavy when he said, ‘Gretel, so it is your tin-whistle side that I have!' Nobody ever felt so awful, so dreadful! I tried to tell him it was too sudden, that I was jolted out of the Place and I must think, but he just sat on the piano-stool with his hands hanging between his knees. I shook him and implored him to remember the fun we'd shared together, and if we'd been deceitful we'd both been the same way. I tried not to blame him for not telling Philip that he was ridiculous to think we'd done anything shameful, but he blamed himself and called himself names for a long time. Felice,” she said with bewildered bitterness, “we were two people who did not know each other at all. We couldn't meet anywhere.”

“Yes, I understand, Mary, very well indeed. It is often like that. It will come right again when things are normal.”

“Normal, Felice? Perhaps he'll come back in the old way, but it will take a long time to wash out tonight. He blamed me for making him go on with his mining, said he couldn't go on if I let him down—then he got gentle, and talked very softly, and put his arms round me, but I felt dead, dead. Then, then…Oh God, God!—it was so funny—oh God!…” She began to laugh with a dreadful undercurrent of tears, and her body shaking on the edge of hysteria.

“Hush, Mary,” said Felice firmly, “that's not like you to give way. Here, my dear, take my handkerchief.” But no tears had fallen. They had merely gone into wild laughter.

“Felice, Felice,” she said, dropping her head, “at that moment the maid came in to say the ham and eggs were ready.”

Felice looked at her husband. Life's anti-climaxes! He had nothing to say. He had gone into the girl's story.

“Tim got rid of the maid somehow, and he stood leaning against the door. For a moment I thought he was going to use force to keep me. But I said, ‘Tim, please, let me go,' and without a word he moved away from the door, and said, ‘O.K., Gretel,' as he always said. Then I could have cried out loud. For the first time I wanted to stay, and make him see how awful we were, starting on one of the Sacraments with just a man blessing us in his bedroom slippers, and with the picture of a fat child for an altar. To me that could never be marriage, even if I hadn't been thrown into it. Then I remembered Mater and Philip—and I thought I was going foolish—but I left! I just looked back at Tim, and he smiled in the old way—‘O.K., Gretel,' he said again. ‘I know it's black sails for me!' I ran out wishing I could cry and cry, but I'm not used to that….”

Now David was letting a tear fall on the leg of his trousers. Felice met his eyes. Whatever the girl might feel, her marriage to the boy was irrevocable, for life. It was a country without divorce! Then his eyes brightened. She knew he saw annulment. Mary's voice was getting dreary.

“As I ran out I saw the ham and eggs on a table. The fat had grown cold. When I was outside I ran down the road, but the headlights of a car were coming, so I hid behind a spruce tree. From where I stood I could see into the window. Tim was there, standing where I had left him. Then he went to the piano and played like a maniac with the loud pedal down. The girl came in, and he said something, and she came back with a tray and three bottles. He opened them and drank all three. Then he paid and rushed out of the house, past the tree, and down to where his car was parked. I never heard such a noise as the way he started, with everything grinding. Then I ran myself—”

Felice had been listening. She was the only one in the room whose outward ears could function during the girl's incredible story. She had heard the clang of the gate and a distant scrunch, increasing to a loud tramp of feet. There was no care in the feet. They came with violation of this family secret. Were late visitors going to crash in? So many casual people thought a country house was an agreeable end to a long loafing evening. This must be a large party. No, everything about this approach was unrestrained, high, shrill and full of herd excitement. The sound rolled to the steps, clattered to the balcony and paused, before a loud assault of rings and knocks. Every sound was full of resentment for locks and keys. It held confusion and urgency, demanding the right of instant entrance.

The maids were in bed.

Mary Immaculate had come to a dead stop, with her ears caught at last.

“Darling,” said Felice softly, “go to the door.”

The words coiled over to David, making him rise to his feet. Arriving at the noise, he must have opened the door suddenly, the increase in volume was so great. It had a tumbril quality, rattling with the crescendo of a mob. It was difficult to sort words, until they heard one voice beat down others by sheer shrillness of sound.

“…hell to pay, sir. Would Doctor Fitz Henry be here? Someone said they saw his car on the road. Shocking accident half a mile up. Fellow coming back to town; sloven without lights in the middle of the road. The driver went into the ditch to save going through it, but he side-swiped—the horse is dead—”

“Well, my dear fellow, my brother is not a horse doctor, and I'm afraid you must get someone else.” David's voice was like a cool douche on excitement. It had its effect in lowering the suppliant voice.

“Sorry, sir. I mean to say, there's two men dying or dead. The
driver of the sloven was crushed, and the young fellow is stuck full of
glass—”

Young fellow! The awful casualness of David's voice.

“Too bad! perhaps I can get the doctor if it is urgent. Would it be
anyone we know?”

The name was creeping along the hall.

“Well, sir, the man on the sloven is a farmer up the Shore. The
young fellow was…” A dozen mouths said it, with a triumph of
knowledge.

“Vincent! Name of Vincent! Tim Vincent! Young fellow home
from university! Son of a widow! Nephew of…”

As Philip stepped out of the sun-porch, Mary Immaculate leaped
to her feet like the spring of a fountain.

“Jesus of Nazareth!” she said like a wild prayer. “You, Philip—”

Hands sawed the air, trying to clutch at something that might hold
her. Legs crumpled, and she sprawled in long spent lines over a green
chair. David was in the room, with half the invasion at his back.

“Just a moment,” he said coolly, closing the door in its face. “Phil,
you heard, are you going ?”

Philip stood looking from the door shut on the mob to the deathlike
girl in the chair. She was related intimately to the mob.

“I'll look after this, Philip,” said Felice, giving him a shove. “I can cope with a faint. David, go with him.”

“DESPERATE PILOT.”

A
s David pushed Philip towards a car parked behind the trellis, he thought: This is worse than France. At least that was organized. He had to admire his brother. Temper and unreason seemed to be confined to his personal life. Even before the significant issue of this emergency, self had retreated. As he started his car and saw the crowd, his voice was a whip to impediment.

“Stand back, all of you! Do you want another accident? Open the gate, somebody.”

The command made the crowd surge ahead. As the headlights picked it up, David saw men and women flatten themselves against the darkness while Philip roared by. There was no time for comment over Mary Immaculate's startling revelations, and what the outcome would be neither dared conjecture. Safety lay in concentrating on their outward way. It seemed as if none of the joy-riders had gone home. This macabre finish to a summer evening was being witnessed by countless eyes. Better than a fire, people were running helter-skelter to see. Headlights were witless beams, picking up summer colour— the gleam of a girl's hair, or the splash of her painted mouth. At a congested spot some cars had been slanted to illumine the core of excitement. The outcome of the boy and girl's long secret lay in merciless exposure. A car was crumpled in the ditch, bonnet down, with its back wheels reared in tortured surprise. A pony and cart were horribly fused, looking as if the latter had been urged into shaggy haunches.

“Stay here, Dave, and turn if you can. Pass my bag.”

A crowd is as sensitive as a single unit. The doctor's arrival stirred every head in his direction. He moved in the fullest limelight.

“Stand back! Stand back! Stand back, I tell you!”

A baffled roar from some official throat was barely heeded. The crowd moved reluctantly. The curtain was up and the doctor was there to speak the pieces. Philip moved forward, taller than most men, with the light accentuating his white face and black hair. David heard his voice quite distinctly, the professional voice falling idly on fever.

“If I'm to work, kindly give me room. Has anyone telephoned for an ambulance?”

“Yes, sir,” answered a policeman. “It's on the way. There you are, sir. We've made a circle.”

David was able to see. Two figures lay on the road. One had been straightened and lay supine. First aid must have been rendered at once, as the figure had been eased on a sheet, ready for lifting. The sheet was full of dark stains. Near its white edge lay a slighter body, crumpled in a mute heap. First aid seemed to have been supplied there. There was a tourniquet on one wrist, and a thick pad tied above one knee. Philip bent from one to the other, straightening in momentary indecision.

God, thought David sensitively, has he got to decide which one to save? That's a nice problem in his state. If he lives, the boy will have to face a trial for manslaughter. The beer that he drank! The road-house will give evidence, and if the marriage comes out they'll say he was crazed. What publicity! I must get busy on that—find the editor—Phil has made up his mind—the boy! What else could he do?

He saw his brother kneel to the crumpled figure, and turn it over with experienced hands. From the arm turned to the ground came a high jet of blood, with the light giving full value to rich arterial red. Ichor blood, thought David, with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. For a moment he lowered his head, and when he looked again he saw the deft adjustment of another tourniquet. The boy must have recognized his doctor. Agitation had gone into limbs making a defiant effort to rise. Philip seemed to be adequate. As he leaned towards the boy David saw the difference in the two heads. The very dark and the very fair! Whatever was said effected a return to mute weakness. Philip stood up, walking determinedly towards his brother. The crowd craned to hear, but he leaned inside the car.

“Turn, for God's sake! We can take the boy in. There's nothing to do with the other case until the ambulance comes. Hopeless, I'm afraid. Crushed at the thigh and terrific shock. The boy is urgent. Severed an artery, and he's lost a lot of blood. Get going, Dave.”

David had his own idea of leadership. Leaning out of the window he made a cool announcement. “I'm going to turn. This is the doctor's car, and he's taking one of the cases in. Every man for himself.”

Even in the confusion there was a good-humoured laugh. Ready to be distracted, the crowd turned the car almost by hand. Tim was carried to the open door. Stepping inside, Philip received his head and shoulders, propping them sideways, and arranging his legs across the seat. Then he sat on the edge, supporting the body of Mary Immaculate's husband.