Complete Short Stories (VMC) (21 page)

The Hay-Hardys streamed by, heading for the open country.

Most minutely, Tory and Edward examined the draper’s shop, the bicycle shop, the family grocer’s. There was nothing to buy. They were just reading the postcards in the newsagent’s window when Edward’s best friend greeted them. His father, a clergyman, snatched off his hat and clapped it to his chest at the sight of Tory. When she turned back to the postcards, she could see how unsuitable they were – jokes about bloomers, about twins; a great seaside world of fat men in striped bathing-suits; enormous women trotted down to the sea’s edge; crabs humorously nipped their behinds; farcical situations arose over bathing-machines, and little boys had trouble with their water. She blushed.

The afternoon seemed to give a little sigh, stirred itself and shook down
a spattering of rain over the pavements. Beyond the Market Square, the countryside, which had absorbed the Hay-Hardys, lowered at them.

‘Is there anything you want?’ Tory asked desperately, coveting the warm interiors of the shops.

‘I could do with a new puncture outfit,’ Edward said.

They went back to the bicycle shop. ‘My God, it’s only three o’clock,’ Tory despaired, glancing secretly under her glove at her watch.

The Museum Room at the Guildhall was not gay, but at least there were Roman remains, a few instruments of torture, and half a mammoth’s jawbone. Tory sat down on a seat among all the broken terra-cotta and took out a cigarette. Edward wandered away.

‘No smoking, please,’ the attendant said, coming out from behind a case of stuffed deer.

‘Oh, please!’ Tory begged. She sat primly on the chair, her feet together, and when she looked up at him, her violet eyes flashed with tears.

The attendant struck a match for her and his hand curving round it trembled a little.

‘It’s the insurance,’ he apologised. ‘I’ll have this later, if I may,’ and he put the cigarette she had given him very carefully in his breast-pocket, as if it were a lock of her hair.

‘Do you have to stay here all day long with these dull little broken jugs and things?’ she asked, looking round.

He forgave her at once for belittling his life’s work, only pointing out his pride, the fine mosaic on the wall.

‘But floor should be lying down,’ she said naively; not innocently.

Edward came tip-toeing back.

‘You see that quite delightful floor hanging up there,’ she said. ‘This gentleman will tell you all about it. My son adores Greek Mythology,’ she explained.

‘Your son!’ he repeated, affecting gallant disbelief, his glance stripping ten or fifteen years from her. ‘This happens to be a Byzantine Mosaic,’ he said, and looked reproachfully at it for not being what it could not be. Edward listened grudgingly. His mother had forced him into similar situations at other times, in the Armoury of the Tower of London, once at Kew. It was as if she kindled in men a little flicker of interest and admiration which her son must keep fanned, for she would not. Boredom drew her away again, yet her charm must still hold sway. So now Edward listened crossly to the story of the Byzantine Mosaic as he had last holidays minutely observed the chasing on Henry VIII’s breast-plate, and in utter exasperation the holidays before that watched curlews through field-glasses (‘Edward is so very keen on birds’) for the whole of a hot day while Tory dozed elegantly in the heather.

‘Ordinary days perhaps are better,’ Edward thought. Sinking down through him were the lees of despair, which must, at all costs, be hidden from his mother. He glanced up at every clock they passed and wondered about his friends. Alone with his mother, he felt unsafe, wounded and wounding; saw himself in relation to the outside world, oppressed by responsibility. Thoughts of the future and even, as they stood in the church porch to shelter from another little gust of rain, of death, seemed to alight on him, brushed him, disturbed him, as they would not do if he were at school, herded and safe.

Tory sat down on a seat and read a notice about Missionaries, chafing her hands inside her muff while all her bracelets jingled softly.

Flapping, black, in his cassock, a clergyman came hurrying through the graveyard, between the dripping umbrella trees. Edward stepped guiltily outside the porch as if he had been trespassing.

‘Good-afternoon,’ the Vicar said.

‘Good-afternoon,’ Tory replied. She looked up from blowing the fur of her muff into little divisions, and her smile broke warmly, beautifully, over the dark afternoon.

Then: ‘The weather!’ both began ruefully, broke off and hesitated, then laughed at one another.

It was wonderful; now they would soon be saying good-bye. It was over. The day they had longed for was almost over; the polite little tea among the chintz, the wheel-back chairs of the Copper Kettle; Tory frosty and imperious with the waitresses, and once, Edward beginning: ‘Father …’ at which she looked up sharply before she could gather together the careful indifference she always assumed at this name. Edward faltered. ‘He sent me a parcel.’ ‘How nice!’ Tory said, laying ice all over his heart. Her cup was cracked. She called the waitress. She could not drink tea from riveted china, however prettily painted. The waitress went sulkily away. All round them sat other little boys with their parents. Tory’s bracelets tinkled as she clasped her hands tightly together and leant forward. ‘And how,’ she asked, brightly, indifferently, ‘how is your father’s wife?’

Now the taxi turned in at the school-gates. Suddenly, the day withdrew; there were lights in the ground-floor windows. She thought of going back in the train, a lonely evening. She would take a drink up to her bedroom and sip it while she did her hair, the gas-fire roaring in its white ribs, Edward’s photograph beside her bed.

The Hay-Hardys were unloading at the foot of the steps; flushed from their country walk and all their laughter, they seemed to swarm and shout.

Edward got out of the taxi and stood looking up at Tory, his new puncture outfit clasped tightly in his hand. Uncertainly, awaiting a cue from her, he tried to begin his good-bye.

Warm, musky-scented, softly rustling, with the sound of her bracelets, the touch of her fur, she leant and kissed him.

‘So lovely, darling!’ she murmured. She had no cue to give him. Mrs Hay-Hardy had gone into the school to have a word with Matron, so she must find her own way of saying farewell.

They smiled gaily, as if they were greeting one another.

‘See you soon.’

‘Yes, see you soon.’

‘Good-bye, then, darling.’

‘Good-bye.’

She slammed the door and, as the car moved off, leant to the windows and waved. He stood there uncertainly, waving back, radiant with relief; then, as she disappeared round the curve of the drive, ran quickly up the steps to find his friends and safety.

They could hear the breathing through the wall. Ronny sat watching Marian, who had her fingers in her ears as she read. Sometimes he leant forward and reached for a log and put it on the fire, and for a second her eyes would dwell on his movements, on his young, bony wrist shot out of his sleeve, and then, like a lighthouse swinging its beam away, she would withdraw her attention and go back to her book.

A long pause in the breathing would make them glance at one another questioningly, and then, as it was hoarsely resumed, they would fall away from one another again, he to his silent building of the fire and she to her solemn reading of
Lady Audley’s Secret
.

He thought of his mother, Enid, in the next room, sitting at her own mother’s deathbed, and he tried to imagine her feelings, but her behaviour had been so calm all through his grandmother’s illness that he could not. It is different for the older ones, he thought, for they are used to people dying. More readily, he could picture his father at the pub, accepting drinks and easy sympathy. ‘Nothing I can do,’ he would be saying. ‘You only feel in the way.’ Tomorrow night, perhaps, ‘A happy release’ would be his comfortable refrain, and solemnly, over their beer, they would all agree.

Once, Marian said to Ronny, ‘Why don’t you get something to do?’

‘Such as what?’

‘Oh, don’t ask me. It’s not my affair.’ These last few days, Marian liked, as often as she could, to dissociate herself from the family. As soon as the grandmother became ill, the other lodger, a girl from the same factory as Marian, had left. Marian had stayed on, but with her fingers stuck in her ears, or going about with a blank immunity, polite and distant to Enid. They were landlady and lodger to one another, no more, Marian constantly implied.

‘Well, you could make some tea,’ she said at last to Ronny, feeling exasperation at his silent contemplation of her. He moved obediently and began to unhook cups from the dresser without a sound, setting them carefully in their saucers on a tray – the pink-and-gilt one with the moss-rose for Marian, a large white one with a gold clover-leaf for his mother.

‘You take it in to her,’ he said when the tea was ready. He had a reason
for asking her, wishing to test his belief that Marian was afraid to go into that other room. She guessed this, and snapped her book shut.

‘Lazy little swine,’ she said, and took up his mother’s cup.

Enid rose as Marian opened the door. The room was bright and warm. It was the front room, and the Sunday furniture had been moved to make space for the bed. The old woman was half sitting up, but her head was thrown back upon a heap of pillows. Her arms were stretched out over the counterpane, just as her daughter had arranged them. Her mouth, without teeth, was a grey cavern. Except for the breathing, she might have been dead.

Enid had been sitting up with her for nights, and she stood stiffly now, holding the cup of tea, her eyes dark with fatigue. I ought to offer, thought Marian, but I’d be terrified to be left alone in here.

She went back to Ronny, who looked at her now with respect added to all the other expressions on his face. His father had come back from the pub and was spreading his hairy hands over the fire to get warm. He was beery and lugubrious. They were all afraid of Enid. At any sound from the other room, they flicked glances at one another.

‘Poor old gel,’ said Ronny’s father over and over again. ‘Might as well get to bed, Marian. No need for you to make yourself ill.’

Ronny found his father’s way of speaking and his look at the girl intolerable.

Marian had been waiting for someone to make the suggestion. ‘Well …’ She hesitated. ‘No sense, I suppose …’

‘That’s right,’ said the older man.

She went out to the sink in the scullery and slipped her shoulders out of her blouse. She soaped a flannel under the icy water and passed it quickly over her throat, gathering up her hair at the back to wash her neck, curving one arm, then the other, over her head as she soaped her armpits.

Ronny and his father sat beside the fire, listening to the water splashing into the bowl. When they heard the wooden sound as Marian pulled at the roller towel, the older man glanced at the door and moved, stirred by the thought of the young girl.

It was one of the moments of hatred that the son often felt for him, but it seemed to make no impression on his father.

Marian came in, fresh, her face shiny, her blouse carelessly buttoned. ‘Well, good-night,’ she said, and opened the door behind which stairs led up to the little bedrooms. ‘If you want me, you know where I am.’

There was no sophistication in either man to see the ambiguity of her words; they simply took them to mean what she intended.

The door closed, and they heard her creak upstairs and overhead. They
went on sitting by the fire and neither spoke. Occasional faint beer smells came from the father. It did not occur to him to go into the other room to his wife. Ronny took the tea-things into the scullery and washed up. It was dark out there and lit by a very small oil lamp. He remained there for as long as he thought he could without being questioned. The tap dripped into the sink. He smelled the soap she had used. He could no longer hear the breathing.

Marian lay between the rough twill sheets, shivering. Her feet were like ice, although she had rolled them in her cardigan. The only hot-water bottle was in the bed downstairs. She hated this house but had no energy to move from it. Or had she stayed because of that sickened curiosity that always forced her to linger by hearses while coffins were carried out? ‘Ron, too,’ she thought. ‘It isn’t right for us. We’re young. In the morning, I’m not fit for work. If only Enid knew how the girls at the factory went on: “What’s happening now?” “The blinds down yet?” “How awful for you!”’ She drew up her knees, yawned, and crossed her arms on her breast. The young slip into the first attitude with beautiful ease and relaxation.

Because the house had been so quiet for days, the sound of a door bursting open, a chair scraped hurriedly back, shocked Marian out of sleep, and she lay trembling, her feet still entangled in the cardigan. She felt that it was about half-way through the night, but could not be sure. She heard Ron stumbling upstairs, tapping on her door. She put on her raincoat over her night-gown and went out to him.

‘It’s Gran,’ he said. ‘She’s gone.’

‘What had I better do?’ she asked in panic, with no example before her of how she should behave. He had wakened her but did not know why.

‘Ron!’ Enid came to the bottom of the stairs and called up. The light from the room behind her threw a faint nimbus around her head.

‘Yes, Mother,’ he said, looking down at her.

‘Did you wake Marian?’

‘Yes.’ He answered guiltily, but evidently she thought his action right and proper.

‘You will have to go for Mrs Turner,’ his mother said.

‘Why?’

‘She – she’s expecting you.’

‘In the middle of the night?’

‘Yes. Right away – now.’ She turned away from the bottom of the stairs.

‘Who is Mrs Turner?’ Marian whispered.

‘I think—She lays people out.’ Ronny felt shame and uneasiness at his words, which seemed to him crude, obscene.

The girl covered her face with her hands. ‘Oh, life’s horrible.’

‘No, it’s death, not life.’