by Ursula Bloom
‘But, don’t you see, it does make it all the worse when you do hate someone? Then you feel you’ve been hard and ought to have been kinder,’ she explained.
He recognised the point.
‘Of course we’ll have to send a wreath. I’ll get in touch with Mrs. Minch, and I’d better break it to my father when he comes in. Nobody say anything to him.’
He must be careful.
When James Blair got in some time later, and had seated himself down at his desk, Hugo went to him, not liking the job too well.
‘I thought I’d better come and see you about Minch,’ he said.
‘Is he still away? If he’s going to start getting ill we’ll have to fill his place. This is the second time that he’s done it this year.’
‘I think you should be prepared for a shock,’ and then, as his father stared at him stupidly, ‘He’s worse, I’m afraid.’
‘Are you trying to tell me that he’s dead?’
‘He’s pretty bad. I don’t think that he’ll live.’
‘Then he is dead!’
‘Yes, I’m afraid that he is dead,’ said Hugo, ‘he died in the night.’
‘Most inconvenient. Damn the fellow, he always did take advantage of his position here.’ There was not one word of regret. After all this time, and when his father before him had known Ebenezer, there was no expression of remorse. Ebenezer had been unpleasant, but he had served the firm faithfully and well. At this moment it struck Hugo that it was not in his father’s power to feel sympathy or kindliness, or to have any of the more understanding emotions.
‘I thought that I’d better go down and see Mrs. Minch. It must have been very unexpected, and Miss Helstone said that she sounded very strange on the telephone.’
‘Why be sentimental? It’s no good encouraging the woman to make a scene. Minch is dead, that’s all there is to it. It happens to us all in time. Don’t be a fool about it.’
Hugo went out of the inner office, resisting the desire to slam the door. Earlier this morning he had been quite sorry for his father, believing that it would be a severe shock to him, but now he had come to the conclusion that the man was brutal, he had no finer senses; it might have been that losing his own wife had dulled him, but he carried his harshness too far.
Hugo paid no attention, and acting on his own wishes he travelled down to Dulwich that afternoon.
He turned up the tired little street with the houses so sordidly alike, and the privet hedges which fouled the earth of the front gardens. He saw the house immediately, its blinds drawn down on the horror of death, like closed lids. It was dreadful to think that Jessie Minch’s life was over. Of course she ought to have left Ebenezer years ago, and not have given up all her best years to him. Hugo doubted if his father would give her a pension, even a small one, because he would have no sentimental niceties of feeling.
Jessie herself came in answer to his knock, and immediately she saw him her whole face changed. He had not thought that she would be so pleased. She radiated.
‘Oh, Mr. Hugo, how very good of you! Come inside, do please come inside.’
‘I was so sorry to hear of your trouble.’
She took him into the front room, the one that she and Ebenezer had hardly used because it was kept for best. It was faultlessly prim with its ruched art silk cushions, and embroidered fire screen, the rug she had made herself before the fire, and the green china rabbits she had collected and which were arranged in droves along the shelves and mantelpiece.
‘I’ll make you some tea, Mr. Hugo, oh, I am so grateful to you for coming. I thought I couldn’t bear it a moment more. I’m so glad to see you.’
‘I never thought you’d be so pleased. I was afraid that perhaps I might be intruding.’
‘How could you? You’re the only person who would think of being with me.’ She gave a gasp, then because she felt afraid of her own emotion, ‘I’ll fetch some tea.’
‘Please don’t trouble to make it for me. I didn’t come down to be a nuisance to you.’
‘You’re never that. Besides, if I have some tea, I’ll be calmer. I’m a bit strung up.’ Realising her difficulty, he let her go, and sat back with a cigarette. It was a dreadful room with the beige paper panelled by autumn leaves, with the enlarged photographs hung in the panels, and the too brightly polished furniture, and shadow cretonne. He could not imagine how anybody could live in a room like this. She was a long time, and came back with suspiciously red eyes, and a tray with a pot of tea, and a plate of swiss roll neatly arranged on a crochet doyley.
‘I’m afraid, Mrs. Minch, that it must have been very sudden.’
‘Very sudden. He’d been worse in the afternoon, and at night his temperature started going up. At midnight he didn’t know me. He didn’t know me,’ she said, and she sat down in the occasional chair and stared before her.
‘It was better that he should go than hang on as an invalid, which it might have meant. Pneumonia sometimes does that for people.’
‘Yes, of course.’ He had the impression that there was something that she wanted to say, but did not find it easy.
‘What is worrying me is the future. What will you do? I know that it is very early days, but have you any people to go to? Anybody to help you?’
‘I shall marry.’
It was the very last thing that he had ever anticipated, so that he could not hide his surprise as he repeated it. ‘You’ll marry?’
‘There’s been somebody for a long time. He is just retiring from the Navy. We’ve been in love for some years, only Ebenezer wouldn’t divorce me. He didn’t believe in it. You know what he was like.’
The story seemed to be fantastic to Hugo, who could only think of Jessie as a much older woman, too old for the sweetness of romance.
‘I’m glad,’ he said, but felt that it was insufficient, ‘I’m very glad. Does he know about this?’
‘I wired and told him at once.’
She was complacent, quite calm, but he noticed that her hands twitched in her lap, and that she seemed to have very little control over them.
‘It has relieved my mind enormously that there should be somebody else,’ he said, putting his cup down. ‘I was worried about your future; my father is a very hard man, and I doubted if he would do much even though your husband had given us all those years of service.’
‘I shall be all right.’
He did not like the tone of her voice, and for a moment he wondered if she had invented the whole thing. She was staring past him, with her eyes fixed, and he saw that her hands were still twitching nervously in her lap. He said, ‘Mrs. Minch, is something worrying you? Couldn’t I help a bit? You can trust me, you know.’
The twitching went to her face, and he saw that she was trying to control her feelings. When she spoke, her voice was strained, and much older. ‘I hated him so much,’ she said.
‘I know. We have both been taught in a bitter school. Maybe we understand what it was like more than anybody else in this world.’
But she wasn’t listening.
‘I wanted him to die. Last spring, when he was so ill, I wanted him to die. I prayed for it. He made me wicked, and vile, and hateful, he made me want him to die. Now I’m frightened.’
‘Because he is dead, I know. But do understand that he would have died before you anyway. Your wishing it, and praying for it, did not hurry it by one hour. You mustn’t think that.’
She looked at him and he saw that her nostrils were dilated, and her mouth drawn in, so that her upper lip was wrinkled into a fine moustache of small lines. ‘I wanted him to die,’ she said.
‘And his dying has freed you.’
‘Yes.’
‘When I heard of it,’ said Hugo, ‘I thanked heaven. I felt that it was a mercy to know that you were away from all that misery.’
‘It was your father who made him like he was.’
He said nothing.
For a moment she was quiet and only her fingers moved, locking and interlo
cking, twitching and plucking in her lap. Then she said, ‘Did your mother change with your father? Ebenezer changed me so much. He made me wicked. I wasn’t always like this, it was he that made me so. What did your father make your mother?’
‘I always feel that it was her death that made him so hard.’
‘I believe that he was always like it. I don’t believe she changed him, I believe he changed her.’
Hugo had never thought of that. He looked at Jessie Minch, and now he saw that there was something most unreal about her. Two bright spots of colour flamed into her white face, contrasting horribly with its chalkiness; her eyes were dark, and her lips twitched.
‘Won’t you tell me what’s worrying you?’ he asked.
‘I can’t go to my grave without telling someone. I can’t. I thought that I’d be able to hold my tongue and keep quiet, but when you came, I couldn’t. You’re kind. You’d understand. If they find me, they’ll hang me. I’m so frightened that they’ll catch me. I’m so frightened.’
He had never seen a woman tremble like it; she was like a tree which has been terribly still with the thought of thunder, and then, just before the storm breaks, is beaten this way and that, in a frenzy of throbbing leaves. He went to her and tried to steady her, putting his arms round her. Used to holding Isolde, he found her stout and well corseted, and was amazed that anything so solid should shiver like that.
‘I’m your friend, Mrs. Minch, you can tell me.’
‘I killed him.’
‘Nonsense! It’s just that you’re worked up. You are imagining it.’
‘I’m imagining nothing, it’s the truth. He was getting better and started sneering at me, and he told me that he wouldn’t die to please me. I knew that he wasn’t going to die. He threw an egg at me and when it hit me it changed me. I couldn’t help it. I came downstairs into the kitchen for fresh sheets for his bed, and they were lying there. Those sheets, the ones that weren’t aired. They were very damp, I tell you. I don’t know how I’d got the courage, but it was remembering the egg, and my blood being yellow, and Jim, wanting Jim so much. I took them up and I put them on his bed. They were so damp.’
Her voice had risen so that it had gone squeaky and he tried to silence her.
‘Hush,’ he said, ‘go gently now. There is nothing to be afraid of. I’m your friend.’
‘He said that they were damp, and I told him it was because he felt so hot. He slept for a time and woke restless. I sat by him and I couldn’t have moved a hand to save him then because something held me back. I was remembering all the cruel things he’d done. Once a blancmange fell on the floor and he made me eat it. He stood over me whilst I ate it. There was a bit of the hearthrug on it but he made me swallow it just the same, exactly the same. He wanted to be cruel.’
A nerve was beating in Hugo’s forehead, he realised that he could not control it. ‘Gently,’ was all that he said.
‘I sat beside him and I wasn’t myself at all. I was some other woman. Then he started to get worse. When I took his temperature it had gone up and he kept shivering though he was so hot. I got the doctor to him at nine, and he said he’d fix up for him to go into hospital next day, because it was pneumonia all right. He didn’t know me at midnight. The last time that he spoke to me was about eleven, when he looked at me almost as if he knew, and he said, “I’ll pay you back for this. I’ll make you squirm.” He would too! I am squirming. I’m frightened, I’m terrified.’
‘Has the doctor given his certificate?’
‘Oh yes. You see, it was pneumonia, and coming so soon after the other attack his heart wouldn’t stand it. The doctor said that he’d half expected it.’
‘Does the other man know?’
‘No, he wouldn’t understand. He never knew how awful Ebenezer really was. You know because you’ve had something like it yourself. You do understand.’
He said, ‘Yes, I understand,’ and knew that his own heart was making curious noises, and that he felt uncertain. He could not betray Jessie Minch, because he felt that what she had done had been right. He knew that he ought not to keep her confidence according to the law of England, but he believed that this was something outside the law of England. No court would ever understand how much she had suffered; the fact that she had a lover would merely lower her in their estimation. The case would be bound to go against her. She had suffered enough.
‘Mrs. Minch,’ he said, ‘you’re never to tell another living soul of this, not even him. If ever you feel that you are bursting to tell somebody, then come to me, and talk it off your chest, but as far as everybody else is concerned, this never happened. Your husband would have died anyhow. He wasn’t getting better. You must get that into your head. His time had come, and all I can say is thank God that it had come.’
She stared at him with dazed eyes, but the vivid spots of brick colour had died out of her cheeks and she was chalk white.
‘Please give me some courage so that I can go on.’
‘I can only give you this courage. You’ve got to forget. You have got to take what life is going to offer you and believe that none of this happened.’
‘Oh, Mr. Hugo, I’m so vile.’
‘Not really. At the moment you have been through so much that you cannot see things clearly and properly. Be calm. Give yourself time. Much greater events are coming into this world, I am sure; after these first few weeks it will be much easier for you to forget. Be patient.’
He stayed talking to her for another hour, in the dreadful little room that she and Ebenezer had always thought too good for general use. Much later he went home, hardly believing the truth of what had happened.
As he travelled down to Lynton Lodge in the train he did not listen to the discussions going on about him; for the first time since the crisis he was not interested in the papers, he had other things to think about.
It wasn’t the fact that Jessie Minch had murdered Ebenezer as successfully as if she had handed him a cup with arsenic in it, it was that she had suggested that his mother might have had some reaction to his father, something which he should find out.
Jessie’s reaction to Ebenezer had been to turn on him. She had been goaded to the pitch when she could stand no more. Her love had been transferred to another man, and she had eventually killed Ebenezer for that other man. Jessie was not a murderess by nature, she was appalled at what she had done. But he believed that he had made it possible for her to shut the door on all that, and finally to forget it.
How had his own mother reacted?
She had not turned on his father, he knew; she had died when the child was born. He wondered now if she had died because her heart was broken and she could not bear life with so hard a master.
Until now he had always thought of their married life as having been happy, he had always supposed that his father had changed from the shock, and that it had warped a mind which had, until that shock, been normal.
Now he wasn’t so sure.
Isolde had been right when she had said that he ought to find out more about his mother, Muriel had been right too. Only he had never seen a way in which he could find out more. Marguerite was a lovely shadow. When a man starts delving into the shadows the substance becomes unreal.
Strange to relate, but wonderfully true
That even shadows have their shadows too.
The way ahead looked foggy.
During the evening he tried to get his father into a talkative vein, but James Blair was moody. He was now convinced that all this pandering to Hitler was a great mistake, and that Britain would pay very dearly for it in the long run. It was an inauspicious moment to tackle him. The nine o’clock news was singularly depressing.
‘You’ll have to join up,’ said James Blair, ‘that’s going to be the next thing.’
‘The R.N.V.R. for me,’ said Hugo slowly.
Their eyes met. James Blair rose, gripping the arms of his chair, and it seemed that those jaundiced eyes narrowed. For a moment it seemed that he wa
s going to say something, but the words did not come.
‘Well?’ said Hugo, and it was a challenge.
James Blair sank back into his chair. He said nothing. To-morrow, thought Hugo, I shall do what I have always longed to do. Again that destroyer raced through his brain, her decks stripped for action.
When Hugo got to the office in the morning, he found that he was wanted to go over to Thurloe Place. There had been trouble recently with a buyer there, a man who was a very good client. It wasn’t something that could be answered by post, it was something that called for a personal interview.
He got up.
‘Miss Helstone,’ he called, ‘I shall have to go across and attend to this myself. Will you make the appointment for me?’
‘Certainly, Mr. Hugo.’ She had a writing pad in her hand, and a pencil, her face looked anxious, and as she saw him glance at her, she said, ‘It’s all this war news. It gets me fussed. Upsettin’, that’s what it is. Just upsettin’.’
‘Very,’ he agreed.
Hugo went by Met. to South Kensington. When he got to Thurloe Place and rang the bell he was surprised to find that the man was out. He could not understand what had happened to Miss Helstone’s message, and could only gather that life had upset her too much.
‘He had to go out,’ explained the maid, ‘but he’ll be back in an hour. He said would you like to wait?’
‘I think I’ll call back. It’s such a lovely morning, I’ll get some air.’
He had no idea what he would do with the time on his hands, but it was such a beautiful day that he couldn’t spend it indoors. The plane leaves were just beginning to curl, and a few of them were dark smudges in the gutter. The arcade at South Kensington station was pleasantly cool, with its delicatessen, and the Chinese shop, cluttered with junk. He passed through it, to Sussex Place, lazy in the hot September sunshine. A new edition was out and the paper boys were rushing about. It all looked very much like war in spite of the contrasting peace.