South Riding (44 page)

“Not,” observed Drew, “what I call a
nice
song.”

Huggins did not think it a very nice song either.

His affair with Bessy Warbuckle had never pleased him. At best it had been a furtive and shameful fumbling in the dark plantation—not love, but a restless appetite; not discovery, but a quest for something that he had never found. Yet even now, watching those dancing figurres, watching the slow swaying movement of the singers, Huggins was haunted by her. Not by Bessy so much as by desire, not by love but by hunger for love, for warmth, for gaiety, for some irresponsible grace of life. It was not possible for a man like Huggins to conduct his personal life perpetually as though it were a public meeting. Nellie was no wife to him. And she wore her mouse-coloured hair imprisoned in a hideous net that was enough to put off any man.

Bessy had been nothing—a lay figure to which Huggins lent for an hour or two his homeless imagination. Yet even that brief and unsatisfactory make-believe had landed him in this complexity of trouble.

If he had money he could send her away and never hear of her again. A little rat like Aythorne would go anywhere for money. Bess had always longed for the excitements of a city. If he had money . . .

If he had money he need not kow-tow to a man like Drew. He could have arranged the carnival according to his own taste. He could have paid the Hubbard piper and so have called the Hubbard tune. He could have censored those too suggestive words, those over-abbreviated tunics. The morals of Kiplington would have been safe in his keeping—if he had money.

If he had money he would never have got into this mess, in debt to Snaith, blackmailed by the Aythornes, too badly worried to do justice to his preaching.

If he had money, he could do anything. He could be a public benefactor like Snaith—laying foundation stones, endowing chapels, building orphanages. Goodness was easy to the rich. How much harder was it for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a poor man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven?

The ballet was moving forward, the dancers dipping and twirling from the darkness into the golden light. Above the lamps the sky was dark peacock blue, pricked with stars.

Money, money. If only I had money, Huggins groaned in spirit. Oh, God! He prayed, but his eyes were caught by whirling muslins. Sweat ran down his face. He was in agony.

Gladys Hubbard, simpering, twisting her raven ringlets, minced forward into the arena and stood confident, posed between the dancers. The tune changed again.

I won’t think of him, Sarah was vowing to herself. My work needs all of me. I’ll get that Holly child back to school; I’ll see her through her exams. I’ll work with Joe for that new housing scheme. I’ll get my new school. I’ll look to the future—to the world outside. This pain is monstrous. It’s humiliating. I’ll hate and despise him.

The orchestra paused. The dancers were still. A girl’s high birdlike soprano rang through the night.

“Nymphs and Shepherds, come away, come away,

Nymphs and Shepherds, come away, come away.

Come, come, come, come away!”

The light brilliant voice rose through the silence, gay and heartless, effortless as a nightingale’s.

Snaith? thought Huggins. Is that the clue? Snaith showed me the way. He put a weapon into my hands. Leame Ferry Wastes? The housing scheme. The rising of real estate there? After all, there’s my life insurance. I could get hold of that. Stillman would hand over the sheds—That’s Aythorne, Stillman, me—no connection now with Snaith. Safe. Subtle. . . .

Through the dusk along the row of profiles he saw Stillman’s dark square face, his upturned nose. A humorous inept face for an undertaker. Huggins wriggled cautiously out of his seat.

“In this grove let’s sport and play!” sang Gladys.

The dancers sported and played, rippling and curtseying round her.

Huggins pushed his way along the back of the form and touched Stillman’s shoulder.

“Nymphs and Shepherds, come away, come away!”

“Can you spare me a minute? I want a word with you.”

Together they stole away on to the asphalt walk by the seawall.

“Friend Alexis, tune your reed, tune your reed.

For to sound across the mead?”

Above the crowds, the waning colour of the ballet, the hushed wash of the rising tide, that invitation carolled, piercing disturbing.

“Would you like to make a bit of profit on that mortgage of yours? The sheds of Aythorne’s?”

If only I had more money I’d enlarge the boarding house myself, Sarah was thinking.

“All our crowd to dance proceed . . .” sang Gladys Hubbard.

“We’ll frolic, with laughter!”

“I tell you, I know it’s a certainty. I’ll ask Drew. You’d take Drew’s judgment?” Huggins persisted. “If I had capital of my own I’d get hold of land there. The new road will make a difference. You’ll see, drainage—access.”

“Till night shall end our holiday.”

Two by two the dancers were leaving the arena; the fading lights lent mystery to their silent figures. They moved like shadows into deepening shade.

“Nymphs and Shepherds, come away, come away!”

More than the dancers now desired to escape, to steal away from the crowds, the lighted garden, the friends, the greetings.

“Come, come, come, come away?”

The grass was dark now and the stage was empty. To that shrill sweetness the carnival had ended.

The last dancers to leave the arena were Daphnis and Chloe. Arm in arm they stole quietly, slowly, across the darkened grass.

None of the spectators had observed the little red-eyed man who stood waiting for Lydia at the performers’ entrance.

During the final song Mr. Holly had stumbled through the standing crowd, and waited, dazed and mute, to tell his daughter that he had been summoned to the Fever Hospital to be told that Gertie had had a relapse after her mastoid operation and was dying. She had died while he was in the matron’s office.

Lydia listened, standing in her brief tunic against the cloakroom door. Performers brushed past her and her father, laughing, dropping coats and slippers, teasing, joking, protesting their thirst, their fatigue and their enjoyment.

Of course, she should have known that she could taste no joy without immediate retribution. She was different from other people, doomed to disappointment and remorse and pain.

Her round brown face set stolidly.

“I can’t find Bert,” gulped Mr. Holly.

“No. He’ll have gone off somewhere.” And well she knew where he had gone, and with whom. “Just let me get my coat, Dad. I’ll come with you.”

“Eh, Lydia, I heard ’em say you were fine,” sobbed Mr. Holly.

“Come away, come away! Nymphs and Shepherds,

come away.”

Gertie is dead, thought Lydia. I left her to dance in a carnival. I was dancing when she died.

“Till night shall end our holiday,
Come, come, come, come away!”

Dry-eyed, frozen-hearted, she linked her arm in her father’s and led him from the crowd.

“Good. I’ll get hold of Drew at once,” cried Huggins, clapping the undertaker on the shoulder. Everything was going splendidly. He was on his way to make a fortune. Snaith had taught him.

“Come, come, come, come away!” the song rang in Sarah’s ears. She was inviting Mrs. Beddows back to her house to supper.

“Oh, Bert! Isn’t the tide rising? Are we safe?”

Violet stood with Bert Holly between the dark cliff and the moving sea. Not far off now, it dragged at the grinding shingle, pushing a white uneven line forward towards the watching lovers.

“Come away! Come away!”

In the Quay Road the fish and chip shops did a roaring trade. Their cheerful windows poured cascades of light on to the dark pavements. Their salty smell, their crisp sound of frizzling fat and shouting voices, enlivened the street.

The news of Gert Holly’s death was spreading round the town. It added a touch of pathos to the drama of the carnival. That poor little thing, dying while her sister danced. Here was appetising matter for disapproval. Lydia oughtn’t to have come! Suppose she spreads the measles? Heartless, with her sister so ill!

“Nymphs and Shepherds, come away!”

Queer, to think of dying during a carnival! Beyond the bustling, glittering shops lay the darkened cliff and the soft surging sea. Like death beyond life. Like mystery beyond the reassuring and familiar details—the fillets of plaice and skate lying brown and hot on their wire grids, dripping fat; the chips swimming in vats of boiling oil; the bright polished covers of the stove, the piles of newspapers beyond the counter.

Poor Mr. Holly’s had a pack of trouble. I always say they live like animals in those caravan places. The little boy’s in hospital too now, isn’t he? Did you say two penn-orth of fish and one of chips, love? Peas, Mrs. Marsh? To take away? How’s your girl?

“Come away! Come away!”

A faint wash of tide lapped the hidden day now. The sands were covered; the cliffs were cold and silent. The lamps of the town shone bright and separate as terrestrial stars below the unbroken darkness. The lovers, the dancers, the bargainers, the planners had gone home to bed.

“Nymphs and Shepherds, come away, come away,

Nymphs and Shepherds, come away, come away,

Come, come, come, come away!”

T
HE JOURNEY
from Maythorpe to Harrogate had become for Carne a road to Calvary.

He would try to vary it. Sometimes he drove to Kiplington, sometimes the whole twenty-five miles to Kingsport, sometimes he went by bus to York, sometimes by train, changing at Leeds. But whichever way he went the peculiar pain of approaching Harrogate tormented him.

He had sat too often in those cross-country trains staring blindly through the windows, uncertain of what new anguish would await his journey’s end. Now at least he had abandoned hope that things would ever be better. Yet, after his reason ceased to believe, his heart still hoped. As the train drew near to Harrogate, his mouth dried, his throat choked with the throbbing of pulses normally unnoticed; a pain convulsed him as though he were being dragged away from his own entrails like a victim of medieval torture.

So that by the time he had reached Harrogate Station and walked across the Stray and down St. Stephen’s Road to the Laurels (Private Nursing Home for Nervous and Mental Cases), he was himself in such a state of nervous and physical exhaustion that he almost felt qualified to become a patient.

To-day he reflected, I’m getting older. Since that heart attack last summer he had tired more easily. He was nervous as a kitten; he did not sleep well. The magnificent body which had never hitherto given him a moment’s trouble, except when he broke a couple of ribs or a collar-bone out hunting, had begun to fail him.

Tramping across the Stray he was assailed by irritation. The well-corseted ladies in tweeds, taking their dogs for a walk, retired colonels exercising their digestions, schoolgirls in uniform, nursemaids with prams, exasperated him by being alive, free and indifferent. He hated Harrogate. A cavalcade of riders on hired hacks, galloping past with bad manners and insecure control, spattered his well-pressed suit with mud. He swore at them.

The grounds of The Laurels were surrounded by a high stone wall. In a porter’s lodge an elderly janitor lisped, “Good-afternoon, Mithter Carne.” The house itself had been a prosperous businessman’s residence built fifty years ago in the centre of a formal urban garden, well-kept and uninviting, with asphalt paths, mown lawns, bone rockeries, and neat clipped shrubberies of variegated laurel and privet. Even on this August afternoon, when the bright sun shone after a mild thunderstorm, the garden had a still forbidding air as though order mattered here more than happiness, and gaiety were a lost art. There were patients out-of-doors, strolling along the paths or lying on the veranda under a red-striped awning, but Carne knew better than to look for Muriel there.

As ever his eyes lifted to a barred first floor window, though he knew that his wife no longer sat waiting for his arrival, beating the iron rods with fine bruised hands, cursing him piteously for his desertion.

He was shivering as he entered the dark cool hall.

Yes, matron was in her office. Yes, she would see him.

He pulled his weary body up the five shallow stairs.

The matron sat as usual in the bright office that blossomed all the year round with chintz tulips, hollyhocks and parrots. There was a bowl of roses on the central table and a work basket on the upholstered sofa. It was a pleasant friendly room. Carne hated it.

He could not hate the matron. Had he done so he would not have left Muriel in her home for half an hour. He liked her quiet efficiency, and her grey hair parted beneath her starched white cap. She fulfilled his notion of what a matron should be.