by A. J. Cronin
Closing her eyes tight in the way she had, Harriet swallowed the medicine at one ill-tempered gulp and for one second remained sitting upright with her eyes tight closed and the medicine glass in her hand. Then she opened her eyes and screamed.
“It’s not the medicine.” She screamed and the glass fell out of her hand.
Aunt Carrie’s tears were frozen with horror. For half a second she stood petrified, then she rushed to the switch and turned on the full illumination of the room. She dived for the bottle. A shrill cry came from her like a frightened rabbit. The bottle said liniment. She had given Harriet a poisonous liniment. She screamed, louder than Harriet.
Harriet was clutching her stomach and writhing on the bed. For the first time since she took to her bed Harriet knew real pain. She was in agony. Her face was a greenish white and her lips all puffed and burned by the liniment.
“Water,” she gasped feebly, clutching with both hands now, clutching at her fat white stomach. “It’s burning on fire.”
Swooning with horror Aunt Carrie fled to the water bottle on the wash-basin and tore back with a tumbler of water. But the water would not go down. Harriet could not drink the water; it ran out of her puffed useless mouth all over the nice clean bed-clothes.
Harriet did not seem to realise that the water was wetting her in all the wrong places.
“Water,” she still gasped feebly. “It’s burning on fire.” But however much she tried, she could not drink the water to put out the fire.
A glimmer of reason now pierced Aunt Carrie’s panic and, clattering the tumbler upon the commode, she bolted out of the room to fetch a doctor. Along the corridor she raced and down the stairs, her long bunioned feet performing a miracle of speed, and in the back vestibule she brushed into Ann who was on her way upstairs to bed.
Aunt Carrie clutched at Ann.
“The doctor,” she moaned. “Telephone for the doctor, any of them, to come at once, quick, quick, the doctor.”
Ann took one look at Aunt Carrie. She was a sensible woman, habitually taciturn, and realising that something dreadful and serious had occurred she did not stop to ask any questions. She went instantly to the telephone and very capably rang up Dr. Lewis who promised to come immediately. Ann thought for a moment, then, in case there should be some unavoidable delay, she rang up Dr. Proctor, her own doctor, and asked him to come as well.
Meanwhile Aunt Carrie had darted to the pantry in search of whiting. She had the belief that whiting was an antidote of value. And, returning with the packet of whiting in her hand, she suddenly observed Richard emerge from the drawing-room. He came slowly, disturbed from his own meditation by the unusual flurry, and supporting himself against the lintel of the door he said heavily:
“What is the matter?”
“It’s Harriet,” she gasped, holding the whiting so tightly In her agitation that a thin white stream poured out of the corner of the packet.
“Harriet?” he repeated dully.
She could not wait, she could not endure it; she turned with another cry, and fled upstairs. He followed slowly.
Harriet was still stretched upon her bed under the bright glare, lying amongst her rows and rows of bottles. She had stopped moaning now. She lay sideways and twisted up and her puffed-up mouth was fallen open. A gummy mucus had formed on her blackened lips.
Occasionally Harriet’s legs gave a little twitch and with that twitch Harriet’s breath came back to her in one quick snore. Sick with terror at that quick infrequent snore, Aunt Carrie mixed the whiting in a frenzy of haste and endeavoured to get some of it past Harriet’s swollen lips. She was still trying to do this when Richard entered the room. He stood staring at Harriet, quite stunned.
“Why, Harriet,” he said in a thickened voice.
Harriet answered by puking back some of Aunt Carrie’s whiting.
Richard came forward in a kind of stupor.
“Harriet,” he mumbled again in a besotted sort of way.
He was interrupted by the abrupt entry of Dr. Lewis who walked in cheerfully with his black gladstone bag. But when Dr. Lewis saw Harriet his cheerfulness dropped from him. His manner altered completely and in a subdued tone he asked Aunt Carrie to ’phone for Dr. Scott to come immediately. Aunt Carrie ran to do this at once. Richard retreated to the alcove by the window where, like some strange figure of destiny, he stood silent, watching.
Dr. Scott came with great dispatch and Dr. Proctor, who had walked up from Sleescale, arrived at exactly the same time. The three doctors put their heads together over Harriet. They did a great many things to Harriet. They injected Harriet with little syringes and lifted Harriet’s unresistant eyelids and pumped at Harriet’s stomach. They pumped and pumped at Harriet’s stomach and got the most extraordinary amount out of Harriet’s stomach. They all saw what a good dinner Harriet had eaten—it was incredible the quantity of asparagus she had put away. But Harriet did not see. Harriet, being dead, would not see any more.
At last, after a final attempt at resuscitation, the doctors were obliged to give it up and, wiping his forehead, Dr. Lewis advanced towards Richard who still stood rigidly in the window alcove.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Barras, sir.” He looked genuinely distressed. “I am afraid we can do no more.”
Barras did not speak. Dr. Lewis, looking at him, saw the hard pounding of his temporal arteries, the dusky suffusion of his brow, and mingling with his sympathy came the instinctive thought that Barras’s blood pressure must be high. “We have done everything possible,” he added.
“Yes,” Richard said in a strange voice.
Another wave of sympathy rushed over Dr. Lewis. He gazed at Barras with sorrow in his eyes. He did not know of course that he was, to all intents, looking at Harriet’s murderer.
SEVENTEEN
Even Hilda was distressed. For weeks after Grace and she had returned to hospital from attending their mother’s funeral at Sleescale she remained taciturn and brooding. Now she admitted the abnormal atmosphere at the Law. Because she was worried she snapped at the patients, was rude to Ness, went through her work with a tireless efficiency. And towards Grace she was again possessive, jealously affectionate.
It was the end of their half-day off and they were walking slowly along Regent Street, making for Oxford Circus to take a bus from Knightsbridge. Hilda, concluding a bitter diatribe on the humiliating complications of family life, glanced towards Grace sarcastically:
“You’re always on about wanting to straighten things out. Now’s your chance to go back home and try it.”
“Well,” Grace said quietly, “I wouldn’t be much use now.”
“How do you mean?”
Here their bus swung into the kerb.
Grace waited until they had taken their seats. Then, the minute they sat down she broke the news that she was going to have a baby.
Hilda flushed horribly. She looked as if she were going to be ill. She remained absolutely still while the woman conductor came and took their fares; then in a low, wounded voice she said:
“As if it wasn’t bad enough getting married. As if we hadn’t had enough trouble lately. You’re a fool, Grace, a ghastly little fool.”
“I don’t think I’m a fool,” Grace answered.
“Well, I do,” Hilda jerked out, very pale now and bitter. “War babies aren’t amusing.”
“I never said they were, Hilda, only mine might be.”
“Just a silly little fool,” Hilda hissed, staring hard in front of her. “Losing your head with that Teasdale and now this. You’ll have to leave the hospital. It’s sickening. I’ll have nothing to do with it. I’ve kept out of the family complications up till now and I’ll keep out of this. Oh, it’s so silly, it’s so beastly ordinary, it’s what silly ordinary beastly little nurses are doing all over the country. Having war babies to war heroes! O God, it’s… it’s disgusting. I’ll have nothing to do with it, nothing; you can go away and have your beastly infant by yourself.”
Grace said nothing
. Grace had a simple way of saying nothing when to say nothing was the best answer in the world. She and Hilda had never really come together again since her marriage with Dan. And now this! That Grace, whom she had petted and protected, dear little Grace, who had slept in her arms, should be having a baby, a war baby, shocked and nauseated Hilda and made her swear that she would keep herself clear of the whole disgusting affair. Tears stood in Hilda’s eyes as she rose stiffly at Harrod’s and marched out of the bus.
So Grace had to make her own arrangements. Next morning she went to see Miss Gibbs. Traditionally, Miss Gibbs should have been kind, but, like Hilda, Miss Gibbs was not kind. Miss Gibbs said, with a glint of teeth and temper:
“I’m sick and tired of this sort of thing, Nurse Barras. What do you think we have you here for—to nurse the wounded or propagate the race? We’ve taken the trouble to train you and educate you to a certain usefulness. This is how you repay us! I’m afraid I’m not very satisfied with you, Nurse Barras. You are not the success your sister has been. She doesn’t turn round and say she’ll have a baby. She stops in the theatre doing her job. This last month you’ve been three times reprimanded for carelessness and talking in the corridors. And now you come with this story. Things are very difficult. I am not pleased. That will do.”
Grace felt almost as if she were not married at all, Hilda and Miss Gibbs had made it sound so indecent. But Grace was not easily cast down. Grace was simple and artless and careless, the most unassertive person in the world, but she had a quiet way of keeping up her heart even although, as Miss Gibbs said, things were difficult.
In her individual way Grace went ahead with her plans. Since her mother’s funeral her dread of returning to the Law had increased. She wrote to Aunt Carrie and Aunt Carrie’s reply, full of suppressed fears and pious premonitions, and ending with a fluttering postscript, twice underlined, made Grace feel that she could not go home.
She thought a little over Aunt Carrie’s letter, then she decided what she would do. Somehow it was easy for Grace to make a decision; matters which would have worried Hilda for a fortnight never worried Grace at all, she hardly seemed to consider them but just made up her mind. Grace had the capacity of making molehills out of mountains. It was because she never thought about herself.
On the first Saturday of January when she had a whole day off from the hospital, Grace took the train into Sussex. She had an idea that she would like Sussex, that it would be warm and sunny there, different from the inhospitable bleakness of the North. She did not know a great deal about Sussex but one of the nurses had once spent a holiday at Winrush, near Parnham Junction, and she gave Grace the name of the woman, Mrs. Case, with whom she had stayed.
The train bowled Grace down into Sussex and bowled her out on the platform of Parnham Junction. It was rather uninspiring, the junction, a few corrugated sheds, empty cattle pens and stacks of dented milk cans. But Grace was not put down.
She spied a signpost on which was written the word Winrush, and as the distance marked down was only a mile she set out to walk to Winrush.
The day was windy and fresh and green. There was a most beautiful smell of moist earth in the wind mixed up with the salty smell of the sea. It struck her with a kind of pain that, when the world could be so lovely a place as this, the war should go on, mutilating the face of nature, wrecking beauty, destroying men. Her young brow clouded as she walked along. But it cleared slightly when she came to Winrush. Grace felt that Winrush was wonderful the minute she walked into it. Winrush was a very small village, just one little street with the country at one end and the sea at the other. In the middle of that one little street was one little shop which bore a very home-made, very hand-painted notice: Mrs. Case—Grocery, Drapery, Chemistry. There was not much sign of chemistry, except for a packet of seidlitz powders in the window, but Grace liked that little shop very much and she looked in the window a long time making out all the things she had known in her youth. There was a sweet called Slim Jim, rather thin and rationed-looking to be sure, and another called Gob Stoppers, big beautiful red and white balls, which were built only to deceive, because you thought there was a nut inside and there wasn’t. Altogether Grace entertained herself a good deal at the window, then she took an impulsive breath and walked into the shop. She went into the shop so impulsively she stumbled and nearly fell, for it was dark in the shop and there was a step which she had not seen. As Grace fetched up with a bump against a barrel of nice seed potatoes, from behind the counter a voice said:
“Oh, my dear… that wicked old step.”
Clinging to the barrel Grace looked at the person who had called her my dear. She decided that it must be Mrs. Case. She said:
“I’m quite all right. I’m always clumsy. I hope I haven’t damaged the barrel.”
Mrs. Case said, with a little nod of approval at her own repartee:
“Oh, my dear, I hope you haven’t damaged yourself.”
Grace smiled; anyone would have smiled at Mrs. Case for Mrs. Case was such an oddity, a small old woman with bright beady eyes and a hump back. Mrs. Case’s hump oughtn’t to have been romantic—it was her spine which was deformed since she had suffered from Pott’s disease when a child—but somehow it was romantic; indeed her head was so sunk into her body and her eyes so bright and beady that Mrs. Case actually gave the comical impression of sitting upon her own shoulders like an old hen sitting upon eggs. A brown hen, of course, for Mrs. Case’s skin was all a warm wrinkled russet except under her nose where it was darker. The dark spot under Mrs. Case’s nose advanced the suggestion that Mrs. Case took snuff. And Mrs. Case did.
“I came in to see you about rooms,” Grace went on politely. “Nurse Montgomerie, a friend of mine, recommended me to come.”
“Oh yes.” Mrs. Case rubbed her hands together reflectively. “I remember her, she was a sparky one. Did you want the rooms for next summer?”
“Oh no. It would be the spring,” Grace said quickly; then she added: “You see, it’s rather different with me. You see. I’m going to have a baby.”
“I see,” Mrs. Case said after a longish time.
“You see, that makes it rather different.”
“Yes, my dear, I see. That do make it rather different. Oh, I do see that.”
Here Grace burst out laughing; there had been such a lot of seeing between Mrs. Case and herself and it was such a dark little shop. In a minute Mrs. Case laughed too but not altogether heartily. Then she said:
“You do seem fond of a joke, I will say. Have you any objection to my asking if you got your husband in the war or anywhere, my dear?”
Grace had no objection. Grace told Mrs. Case about Dan. Grace more or less explained herself and Mrs. Case looked friendly again and slightly relieved. She said:
“I did know to be sure, my dear, I can tell a face when I see one. But people have got to be careful what with these Germans and the price of butter. Perhaps you’d like me to show you the rooms, my dear.”
The rooms were splendid; at least, that was what Grace thought. There were two of them, connecting, and on the second floor. The floors were uneven and the ceilings given to unexpected bulges; you had to duck your head pretty sharp as you went over to the bed, and the sitting-room was unquestionably not a room to stand in, but they were very clean, these rooms, with fresh darned muslin curtains, a handsome picture of Queen Victoria’s coronation, a case of birds’ eggs collected by Mrs. Case’s nephew, an enlargement of Mrs. Case’s husband who had worked on the railway and died of a floating kidney, and a lovely view of the garden. It was a long garden with an orchard of cherry trees and Grace saw them as they would be in spring, all trembling upon the edge of blossom. There were cows in the field beyond and a line of elms. Grace stood at the window and one tiny tear came into her eye—it was all so beautiful, it hurt her a little and made her think of Dan.
She turned to Mrs. Case:
“I’d like to take the rooms if you would let me have them.”
Pleased, Mr
s. Case nodded.
“You come down, my dear, and have a cup of tea and we’ll talk it over.”
They went downstairs, Grace and Mrs. Case—Mrs. Case holding to the banister because she had a limp—and they had several cups of tea and talked it over. Mrs. Case was free from now onwards and Mrs. Case was never grasping.
“If I said fifteen shillings a week,” remarked Mrs. Case, her head to one side like an inquiring bird, “considering the circumstances, my dear, would that be asking too much?”
“No indeed,” said Grace, and the matter was settled without a word of argument.
They continued to talk in growing understanding. Mrs. Case was a mine of useful information. There was a telephone in the village, at old Mr. Purcell’s farm, and he would surely oblige them with the use of it. And Fittlehampton was only three miles away and there were numbers of estimable doctors in Fittlehampton. It was a long, long conversation between Grace and Mrs. Case, and though in the end it involved confidences as to how the late Mr. Case’s kidney had floated him to glory, it was extremely warm and satisfactory.
Later, as she caught the four-ten from Parnham Junction, Grace felt extraordinarily happy and uplifted. Grace was not clever. Hilda and Miss Gibbs might contend that Grace was careless and stupid and easy-going. Hilda and Miss Gibbs would have recommended Grace to a competent maternity hospital replete with water-beds and douche cans; they would have thought her mad had they seen her setting out for Parnham Junction and pressing her slightly snub nose against the pane of Mrs. Case’s shop window.
When she returned to the Home Grace felt so happy she wanted to make it up with Hilda. Glowing, she went into Hilda’s room. Standing on the threshold, her cheeks brightened by the fresh night air, her eyes full of confidence and hope, she said:
“I’ve fixed up, Hilda. I’ve found the most lovely spot in Sussex.”
“Really!” Hilda said coldly. She burned to know where Grace had been and what she had arranged but she was too hurt and proud to show it.