This Real Night (39 page)

At first I could not find the place in the long list of ‘Killed on Active Service’. Then I read it aloud, till I came to the words ‘only son of the late—’ and then I stopped. Cordelia had omitted the distinctive middle name of our father, which he had always used when he wrote or spoke in public, and she had not mentioned the place where he was born and where he had lived till he was unfortunate. Nobody who read the announcement could guess that Richard Quin was Papa’s son.

‘Cruel,’ wept Mamma, ‘cruel.’

‘She is coming this afternoon,’ Mary said to me.

‘What shall we do?’ I asked, knowing that there was no answer.

‘And listen,’ said Mary. ‘There is somebody at the front door. It is sure to be that doctor.’

‘I will not see him,’ wailed Mamma.

‘You shall not,’ I said, and went to bar him out. But it was not the doctor, it was Rosamund, in her outdoor uniform, without her handsomeness, pale and too stout. She laid her arms about our shoulders, then knelt by Mamma’s bed and told her, ‘I could not come before.’

‘It is not possible that instead of the doctor it should be you,’ Mamma sighed. ‘I had thought that now everything would go wrong. Ah, my poor bairn.’

‘I suppose I should take it better, since we have always known it was going to happen,’ said Rosamund, ‘but till now I was never quite sure that we were not telling ourselves the story because we wanted it not to happen. But, oh, how all of me knows now that it is true. Not a bit of me, to the fingernails, but knows it.’

‘My poor bairn, my poor bairn,’ said Mamma, ‘it is so wrong for me to trouble you now. But you will be able to lift me, I think, and it hurts me so when people touch me, you must forgive me for being selfish.’

‘You are not being selfish at all,’ said Rosamund. ‘You are saving me. Nursing is my music, I am more than me when I nurse. But I weaken, I told you once, I felt like giving up nursing because of the children who get burned, and Richard Quin being killed is like that. When I heard I wanted to walk out of the hospital. But now I must nurse you, of course I can lift you, and that puts me back in safety.’

‘Yes, yes, you can lift me and make it easy for me to go,’ said Mamma, ‘and you can help Mary and Rose not to think too much of it.’ Again she drowsed.

Rosamund went on kneeling by the bed, her cheek on the counterpane, close to Mamma’s hand, and she closed her eyes. But presently she sat up and covered her ears as if to shut out a noise, and said softly, ‘The house is so quiet now.’

‘Yes,’ said Mary. ‘We thought it quiet when he was away in camp, or when he had first gone to France, but it was not as quiet as this.’

‘But everywhere it is the same,’ said Rosamund. ‘In hospital too, it is so quiet. I have been on night duty and when I have walked along the corridors I have had to stop and stand still, my footsteps rang so loud on the stone. Oh, I am so glad to be here. I cannot bear the hospital just now. It is horrible to go on and on down long corridors knowing that where you are going is right at the end, and that you must keep on till you get there.’ She dropped forward on her knees again, and laid her face against Mamma’s hands, and said, ‘But with her it seems all right. You go and do whatever you have to do. I shall be here.’

‘Yes, children,’ sighed Mamma, without opening her eyes. ‘Get on with your playing.’ But when we reached the door she called us back, with more strength than we liked. She said, ‘Say nothing to Cordelia when she comes. She cannot help it. But see that I am put in the paper as your Papa’s wife. And on the stone too.’ She started up in bed, agony flecked her lips. ‘Your poor Papa,’ she moaned.

‘Oh, quiet,’ said Rosamund, ‘quiet.’

Mamma stopped, but asked indignantly, ‘And why should I be quiet?’

‘You know quite well why you should be quiet,’ said Rosamund . ‘To cry and toss yourself about, it lets in the other ones.’

‘Yes, yes, I had forgotten,’ said Mamma. ‘Am I older or younger than you? I forget. But anyway my memory is going. They never came back to your house, did they?’

‘No, no, never again after that day you and Rose came to visit us,’ said Rosamund. She moved slowly towards the door, stretched herself and yawned, and said lazily, confidently, ‘It will be all right. I will go and wash and put on my indoor uniform.’ But she did not hurry. Now there was an immense sense of leisure about the house, and an unchanging white light, all day it was as if it was a cold dawn.

I couldn’t think what time it was when I came downstairs and saw Cordelia standing in the hall, slowly taking off her gloves. She looked very small and the blood had gone from her face. Was it an hour when I ought to offer her a meal? And, if it were, would it be luncheon or tea? She winced at the sight of me and wavered as if she wanted to run out of the house. I suppose she felt guilty about the announcement of Richard Quin’s death, and as our eyes met I said, ‘
The Times.
..’

She said placidly, ‘I thought it looked quite nice. But how is Mamma? Kate let me in, but she does not seem to realise anything.’

I was carrying a tray, I came down and laid it on the hall-table, I put my arms round the incomprehensible and uncomprehending world of her body. It was stiff with fear. There was no use talking to her about
The Times
announcement, there never would be any use. I said, ‘Mamma is much worse. It is the end. The doctor says that she has only a few days to live.’ To my surprise her body relaxed, and her face was flooded with pure and affectionate relief. I thought, ‘Does she know more than any of us? Is it true that in dying Mamma will escape from an appalling calamity that is going to break over us?’ But Cordelia was always wrong.

She said vaguely, ‘I wish I could come down here to stay, it must be dreadful for you with nobody to take the responsibility.’

‘Rosamund is here,’ I said, and she answered, ‘What a pity she has not finished her training,’ but she was not seriously disturbed. Her eyes went past me and saw my mother’s coach rounding the bend in the road which would take her clear of the lava pouring down from the volcano.

Rosamund leaned over the landing banisters and told her that Mamma had heard her arrive and wanted her to come up at once, because she felt sleepy. I realised that Mamma was exercising that technique to which it was very hard to put a name, as she was also candid. And as she went into the room she told Cordelia in a very faint voice not to kiss her, as she could not bear to be touched. Then she cut into Cordelia’s enquiries by saying more strongly, ‘That’s a pretty coat. Stand away from the bed so that I can see it.’

It was one of those Cossack coats that women wore in the First World War, the very short, full skirt deeply hemmed with fur, and it fanned out round Cordelia’s beautiful, slender, strong legs, gleaming in black milanese stockings.

‘So pretty,’ said Mamma. ‘You look like a doll. And the little veiled hat, so pretty too. Dear Cordelia.’ Her voice trailed away and she closed her eyes.

‘You had better go now,’ said Rosamund, and Mamma whispered from the sheets, ‘So sorry, goodbye, dear.’

Once outside the room and down the stairs, Cordelia said, ‘She is far worse than I thought. You would not think anybody could be so thin and live,’ and there was peace in her voice. It was not to be argued with, her persuasion that our mother was being borne into safety. But then she frowned and shook her head, and I knew that she had remembered to see with what special severity the impending danger would afflict her. This was her usual nonsense. Yet the patience and tenderness in my mother’s voice when she said, ‘You look like a doll,’ forbade me to feel anger. Kate brought us tea with hot buttered scones, and we ate them with the tears running down our cheeks and into our mouths. Presently I said, ‘Is there anything of Richard Quin’s you would like to have?’ and she did not answer, but looked at me with eyes that might have been those of a seer, or of a doll. I remembered how hateful she had been about Richard Quin’s exhibition at New College, but I also remembered what Richard Quin had been, the mischievous smile Rosamund had given as she leaned over the banisters and heard Cordelia belittling her, the patience and tenderness in my mother’s voice, so I went on eating buttered scones. Rosamund looked round the corner of the door at us and went away again; and Cordelia, to whom Rosamund’s presence was always a challenge, said in a very grown-up way, ‘You should not distress yourself by handling his things now, when you have so much else weighing on you.’ But her nostrils were dilating again, she was afraid, again she was holding back something terrible she thought she knew.

Rosamund was again at the door. ‘I told your Mamma that you were eating hot buttered scones, and she said something about bread and butter and being carried on a shutter. She is worried because she can’t remember the verse.’

I ran up and knelt by the bed. Mamma was laughing. ‘After all the times I have heard your Papa repeat that I can’t remember how it goes. How my mind is going. Has gone.’ I recited:

‘Werther had a love for Charlotte

Such as words could never utter,

Would you like to know how first he met her?

She was cutting bread and butter.

Charlotte was a married lady,

And a moral man was Werther,

And, for all the wealth of Indies,

Would do nothing for to hurt her.

So he sighed and pined and ogled,

And his passion boiled and bubbled,

Till he blew his silly brains out,

And no more by it was troubled.

Charlotte, having seen his body,

Borne before her on a shutter,

Like a well-conducted person,

Went on cutting bread and butter.’

We laughed and laughed silently, as if this were a secret between us, until laughter hurt her too much, and she began to sob, and I wept into the quilt. I felt her fingers on my hair, very lightly and reluctantly, for it was now as painful for her to touch as to be touched, and softly, as if this too were a secret, she said, ‘It is so foolish, I keep on thinking that I wish I could die rather than give you all this trouble.’ She raised her hand with difficulty, and laid the palm against the wall, as she had done so often just after we heard that Richard Quin had been killed; and a listening look came into her eyes. ‘And it will be worse before the end,’ she said. ‘I cannot go easily. You must forgive me. It seems to be quite an iron rule that it should happen like this. Go downstairs, now, dear.’

But at the door I turned and came back to her; and indeed she needed comforting. ‘But to cause trouble. You will need to forgive me. And when it is too bad do not let the children see me.’

‘What children?’ I asked, cautiously. I was wondering if she had forgotten that we were all grown-up.

She slept all that afternoon and all that evening. At ten o’clock that night, when Rosamund was going up to bed and Mary and I were settling down in our chairs on each side of Mamma, there was a ring at the door. I went down and found Constance on the doorstep, the arrows of a rainstorm striking down through the night behind her. In the hall, we were speaking of Mamma’s state, when she lifted her fair face, solemn and glazed with raindrops, and held up her hand to hush me. Then from the room above, thinly wailed, we heard my father’s Christian name. We were to hear it many times during the next three days and nights. Mamma had suddenly changed into a demented skeleton, who jerked about and cried my father’s Christian name with as fierce an anguish as if it were he and not Richard Quin who had just been killed. She cried it so loud that it could be heard in the street, she cried it wolfishly, there was no love left in her. She did not speak of Richard Quin any more, she did not recognise Mary or me. Constance and Rosamund and Kate she knew, only to the degree of knowing that these were the ones who were strong enough to lift her. No drug alleviated the pain of either her flesh or her spirit. They gave her injections, but though she sometimes slept it was not after she had had them, but at unpredictable times, when her anguish became confused and expostulatory. It was as if she retreated into sleep to carry on an argument more forcibly, and when she awoke again it was her anguish that had been refreshed, not her.

But her sleep gave us refreshment, which we desperately needed. I had often wondered why doctors and keepers sought to soothe lunatics who were violent, why their families were so distressed, why they did not shut them in padded cells and let them indulge in what they had chosen as their pleasure. But now, watching my mother, who had become as hideous as a cankered and distorted tree on a windswept marsh, shaken by a demon that lived in each branch, I understood. As she screamed and writhed, the room became dangerous. Had it not been for Constance and Rosamund and Kate, who bent over her, like priestesses and athletes, cunningly bending their knees and getting the right grip to bind without inflicting pain, my mother’s anguish might have got loose, not to be made captive again, at least by us. They were injured, these strong women, though Mamma was so frail. The sweat ran down them, their breath was quick and shallow, when we took them food they ate it as if they had been starved for days, the one who was off duty slept as if she would never wake again.

There was a great deal to do. Miss Beevor called on the first morning of this phase to see what she could do for us, and suddenly there broke into our conversation, screeched three times, my father’s Christian name. Her poor innocent eyes stared up at the landing. The name was screeched again. The white kid bag, with Athens in poker-work on it, dropped at my feet, and Miss Beevor ran out of the house and down the steps. I caught her up with the bag three houses along the street, and she quavered, ‘My own Papa and Mamma passed away so peacefully, I did not think it would be like this,’ and I remembered too late what my mother had said about not letting the children see her when it was too bad. I sent telegrams to Aunt Lily and Nancy Phillips, who had both said they wanted to come and see Mamma when they had heard about Richard Quin, and told them not to come until we sent for them; and I rang up Mr Morpurgo and told him to cease his daily visits, as Mamma needed complete quiet. I heard a sigh, and the click of a replaced receiver. I told Cordelia too, though I was not sure if that were right. This took time; and we had also to do the cooking, we got the charwomen out of the house as soon as possible.