South Riding (58 page)

“It’s all right I think it’s gone now. I’ll be all right in a few minutes.”

His voice was a whisper. All strength had left him. It seemed incredible that in so short a time such power could be annihilated.

She said, “Do you know what it is?” meaning to tell the doctor so that he could bring remedies.

“Angina. That stuff’s marvellous. Campbell gave it to me. It’s the only thing.”

“Don’t talk now.”

“I’m all right. I can lie here for a few minutes if you let me, and rest. Then I can go.”

“You mustn’t move.”

“Oh, yes.” The reaction had left him weakly hilarious. He grinned up at her. “This is just like one of those what-d’you-call-its in a moral story book. I do apologise—such a trick to play.”

He seemed now to be almost amused by his predicament; but she was not amused. Wrenched suddenly from the crest of expectation to the horror of suspense, she felt herself violated, outraged.

She forced her voice to lightness.

“Listen,” she said. “I’m going to leave you for a moment. I shall tell them that you felt unwell, so came to me, the only person you knew in the hotel. I’m your daughter’s schoolmistress.”

“You don’t look it,” he grinned, and closed his eyes. From a half-sleep he whispered, “There’s no need. No one can do anything. Let me rest.”

“Shall I put off the light?”

“Please. And don’t go—I might want—that stuff.” He still held her hand. With the other, she turned out the lamp and sat there, crouched on the chair beside him. She was pierced with cold, but her shocked and tormented nerves shook off her physical chill. She could see the lights from the lamps outside forming geometrical patterns across the ceiling. The noises from Piccadilly invaded the room. Far below her, workmen on shifts all night were repairing the road. Late home-going cars swept the square, the moving fingers of their headlights sliding along her wall. She moved her own fingers to Carne’s wrist and felt his uneasy pulse. It seemed odd to her, jerky and unsteady, and again she wondered if she should fetch a doctor. The very fact that this might be to her disadvantage urged her.

But his hand was in hers, and she thought that he was sleeping. Perhaps rest might save him. The attack had passed. She tried to think about angina pectoris, to recall any cases of which she had ever heard.

It is my fault entirely, she told herself. I made him dance; encouraged him to drink. I let him come to me. It was all too much for him. If he dies, I have killed him. The big cotton drays began to clatter again across the cobbles. From her seat by the bed, Sarah could not see her watch. It was still quite dark. The water from the overturned jug had been dropping on to the carpet with a slow drip, drip, drip like blood. One rose had caught itself by its thorns and hung head downwards like a drop of blood against the dim white cloth.

Again she thought, This is my bridal chamber. This is my lover, and turned towards the man on the dark bed.

He moved in his sleep and groaned a little, then murmured, “My love, my love, my dear and little love.”

She knew that he was thinking of his wife.

She thought—This story could not have a happy ending. It did not even have a happy beginning. I deserved this. Whether he lived or died the results were equal. He belonged to a past age; his world was in ruins. There was no hope for him—alive or dead.

Her mind raced hither and thither seeking comfort, but she found none. She had not even amused him for one evening. She had nothing, nothing, not even the joy of losing, for he had never been hers.

Then she ceased even to question, and sat still, as though she were part of the furniture, waiting for him to wake up or to die.

At last he stirred. He said quietly, “Are you awake?”

“Yes. Are you better?”

She turned the light on.

“What time is it?”

He released her hand. It was lifeless with cramp. She looked at her watch on the dressing-table and said, “Half-past five.”

“Then I’d better be moving.”

“Oh, please don’t.”

“I’m quite all right now—really. It’s all over. I know this game.”

He pulled himself cautiously upright on the pillows, thrust his long legs from the bed, groping for his slippers.

She found them for him, and would have put them on, humbly grateful for this small chance of service, but he pushed her gently aside.

“Oh, no. You’ve done too much.”

She could tell that he was better—weak and still a little dazed, but himself again. He sat on the edge of the bed apologising.

“I—have no words.”

“You need none. I—I wish you were not ill.”

“So do I.” He gave a little half laugh. “Is that my key?”

“And your amyl.”

She handed him his possessions.

“Let me at least get the lift for you.”

“No. I shall be all right. It’s downstairs this time.”

He stood up. She saw that he was a man of over fifty, ravaged by illness, shaken, weak. He tried to smooth his tossed hair, and she saw now that it was brindled with silver. He fastened his crumpled dressing-gown and looked down at her, not knowing what to say.

Then he saw the overturned vase.

“Oh—your roses!”

“I knocked them over.” She turned to pick them up. She did not want to look at him any longer. Her heart was sick with grief.

“I am so sorry.” He was apologising for the tumbled flowers, but she knew now that this was all he would say.

With a smile half shy, half swaggering, he took one rose and pushed it, with a trembling hand, into the buttonhole of his red dressing-gown.

“Good-bye—and thank you. I don’t suppose I shall see you in the morning. I shall probably rest till noon.”

“Promise to send for a doctor if you feel ill again.”

“I promise.”

He pressed the rose more firmly into its place as though this frivolous gesture were his final comment on a closed episode, then smiling at her, turned and with extreme care walked across the room and out of the door. She followed him and saw his tall figure move down the dim corridor. She hoped that he might turn his head before he vanished. But he moved straight forward, grasping the stair rail, and climbed slowly down, out of her sight, out of her life, she thought, for ever.

She closed the door and went back to her bed. She saw the dishevelled clothes and the hollow left in the pillow by his head. She pictured again the night as she had intended it to be, and as it had been. She looked into the future and saw no happiness for him, no comfort for herself.

Shivering with cold, with misery and with exhaustion, she crept into the bed where he had lain and found the sheets still warmed by his warm body. Drawing them closer, fitting herself into the place that he had made for her, she thought, this is the one mercy that he has shown me.

Then, warmed by his warmth, she lay, shuddering, till dawn.

“3.
That the Committee recommends the raising of the County Rates from
8
s
. 10
d
.
to
12
s
. 6
d
.”

Minutes of the Finance Committee. January 22, 1934.

“12.
That the several resolutions on the Minutes of the Finance Committee of the 22nd January
1934
be and the same are hereby approved and confirmed.
”

Resolutions of the County Council of the Administrative County of
York, South Riding, February 1, 1934.

L
IFE
at Willow Lodge moved through a cycle of festivities— Christmas, Easter, Whitsun and the Summer Holidays—with smaller feast-days interspersed between them, horse shows, bazaars, the Flintonbridge Point-to-Point, the High School Speech Days.

But of all these focal points the most active, persistent and inescapable was Christmas. The season began almost as soon as the little boys ran round the Kiplington streets shouting “Penny for the Old Guy” on frosty November evenings; long before notices went up in the lighted Kingsport windows, “Please Shop Early,” its imminence overshadowed all other Beddows’ activities; it rose slowly to its climax with the carving of the family turkey at midday dinner on Christmas Day, and subsided gradually through Boxing Day, the maids’ holidays, indigestion and crumbling evergreen decorations until the old calendars could be thrown away, the garlands taken down, and the New Year had come.

The normal ardours and endurances of a Christmas season were multiplied twenty-fold for Mrs. Beddows by her own temperament and her husband’s parsimony. It was true that since Willie came to live with her she had had a little money to spend upon her benefactions. But her heart was so generous, her range of acquaintance so wide and her delight in human relationships so unstaled, that she could have spent a national income without difficulty. As it was, she was put to desperate straits to accommodate her lavish tastes to her narrow fortune.

All through the year she and her family set themselves to accumulate the objects which she could bestow as gifts at Christmas. In a chest on the front landing known as the glory hole they stored the harvest of bazaars and birthdays, of raffles, bridge-drive prizes, bargain sales, and even presents which they had themselves received at former Christmases. Into the glory hole went blotters, pen-wipers, and painted vases, dessert d’oylies, table-centres and imitation fruits of wax or velvet, lampshades, knitted bed-jackets and embroidered covers for the
Radio Times
, all the bric-a-brac of civil exchange or time-killing occupation. The indictment of a social system lay in those drawers if they but knew it—a system which overworks eight-tenths of its female population, and gives the remaining two-tenths so little to do that they must clutter the world with useless objects. Mrs. Beddows did not see it quite like that; presents were presents; bazaars were bazaars, and Sybil was teaching the Women’s Institute class raffia work and glove-making. Surely these were good things? She did not question further.

Early in the month the contents of the glory hole were brought down into the dining-room and sorted. Aunt Ursula’s plant pot might do for the Rectory people; but Mr. Peckover’s framed verse (“A Garden is a lovesome thing, God wot”) must not be sent to Dr. Dale. All last year’s donors must be this year’s recipients, but once the known debts were honourably fulfilled, the real excitement of the season started. As cards, hair-tidies and markers began to arrive by every post, they were checked against the list of out-going presents, and consternation reigned in Willow Lodge if it were found that Cousin Rose, who had sent a cut-glass vase, had been rewarded only by three coat-hangers in a cretonne case. Unexpected gifts sent the family ransacking drawers and cupboards to find suitable q.p.q.s. (Beddows’ jargon for “quids pro quos.”) The nearer the approach to Christmas Day itself, the lower ran the supply of possible exchanges, until finally even this year’s presents were hastily repacked and despatched again hot from the post, with cards altered and brown paper readdressed.

Beside this transaction of civilities, there was the real business of benevolence to which all ready cash must be devoted—orders of beef to every Beddows ex-maid and her husband—(and since all maids at Willow Lodge left to marry, the list was formidable)—coals and blankets for ageing or invalid neighbours, toys, oranges, pennies and sweets for all the local children, and parcels of tea, cake and even whisky to dozens of often disreputable acquaintances who seemed to reemerge in Mrs. Beddows’ consciousness only at Christmas time.

Nor was this all. To Willow Lodge at every season came beggars, derelicts, victims of domestic quarrels or economic injustices, the aged, infants and invalids; but between December 15 and January 5, the pilgrims doubled in number and desperation.

On the day before Christmas Eve Mrs. Beddows had already interviewed a farm-worker whose wife was prematurely in labour, and for whom a nurse had to be found by persistent telephoning; a poultry-keeper, who had fled to Yorkshire after failures in the south, on whom the bailiffs had descended to seize incubators and hens against unpaid removal bills, an elementary school teacher in trouble about the local Christmas Tree (which the squire had suddenly refused, on hearing that the nonconformist children were to share it), and a mother who had just discovered that her schoolgirl daughter of sixteen was going to have a baby. Between the dining-room and the drawing-room Mrs. Beddows trotted, resourceful, indefatigable and domineering. She put the fear of God into the bailiff’s men; she suggested that the school teacher could get a tree from Colonel Collier’s plantation for the asking if she and her boy friends would provide the transport; she rang up the Kingsport rescue worker about the schoolgirl, and she returned to the parcels in the dining-room exhausted but triumphant.

“Well,” she exclaimed, clearing a tangle of string and handkerchief sachets out of the arm-chair, “we may be poor, but you can’t say we don’t see life.”

“The post’s in, Mother,” said Sybil.

“Oh, my goodness! And I was hoping for a nap. Your Uncle Richard’s sent me
The Ranch of the Crooked S.
I thought I might have a look at it. Oh, by the by, has the Hollies’ parcel gone yet?”