by Ursula Bloom
‘You might at least keep the servants out of this,’ he said coldly. ‘Of course your mother encourages you. You make a fool of yourself. It’s because you have no tradition behind you. That’s your trouble. No tradition.’
Luke felt gay over it. He had himself drawn the ticket he fancied; ‘Weedy, with pale red hair and anaemia,’ it read!
They saw Penelope coming up the garden with Adam. She was unbelievably slender and had one of those nondescript pale pink faces, fair hair and pale lashes, not helped by cosmetics. She had no eyebrows. This time Adam had swung the pendulum very much the other way, he had flown high for a sound pedigree and the well-finished fetlocks that go with it. Luke’s curiosity satiated in one glance, he lost all interest in her. Carolyn was sickly nervous. Penelope was entirely Roedean; she had been captain of hockey at Lady Margaret Hall; she liked salmon fishing, and deer stalking, the Lido and Antibes, she thought that Cannes was rather common, and Venice bourgeois! Luke could have analysed all that about her as she came up the garden.
‘You see,’ he explained to his mother afterwards, ‘she’s really got a shooting stick for a face.’
‘But she’s very pretty?’
‘So dumb, and how!’
She wished that he wouldn’t delve into these cheap Americanisms, which irritated James if he chanced to overhear them, and, traditional gentleman as he was, he often chanced. She had an idea that Luke did it to annoy him; what he called ‘jollying Dad up!’
‘I’m sure Penelope’s a very nice girl,’ she said.
‘Don’t you believe it, Mummy,’ and he laughed. But Carolyn never got the chance to know if Penny was really a very nice girl, because she never disclosed that much of herself.
It was Luke who drove James and Carolyn to Adam’s wedding. James was in a bad mood, because he had a special case coming on which was going wrong. He had to leave early for a consultation in the Temple.
‘He’s got the blight worse than our roses this year,’ said Luke as he helped his mother into the car.
Marty was back from Hollywood, and there with Hilda. He was looking well, if a bit over brown, his mother thought; Hilda looked shocking, dressed up for the occasion.
‘I thought Hilda looked frightful undressed, but by heck! She’s a darned sight worse all togged up,’ said Luke.
He had his mother’s arm, taking her up the aisle in unhurried pomp as he said it. Darling ’Ukef’ancis! No respect for churches or weddings or his brother’s feelings. In spite of his naughtiness, she loved him best of the three. They had exquisite moments together, and she knew that they always would have exquisite moments.
He had got an inspiration for her picture, and had been painting her these lazy summer afternoons, sitting under the beech tree at the end of the lawn, where the grass grew long and the strip of woodland began. Luke had been surprisingly successful with a problem picture in a spring exhibition, something that Carolyn only half understood and which James admitted that he thought ‘quite crazy’.
It was a picture of a country churchyard, taken from Dedbury of course, with its even lines of graves, some docketed with headstones like teeth, but all in grim inescapable parade. Walking by the low wall was a gipsy girl, and Carolyn had an idea it was the gipsy girl who had finished the Mirabel Whittingham affair. An acacia tree in a shimmer of white blossom trembled over the gate, and by it was a crude leering public house sign mocking both. The world approved the picture, but Carolyn felt rather sick when she saw it, because it was too true. Life is like that! Even rows of graves, beauty, and the vigorous flow of life poured into those graves, whilst the public house sign mocks at it all in a curiously inanimate way.
Luke had not shown her the picture that he was painting of her because he wanted that to be a surprise too.
‘But surely I’ve a right to see it? I might hate it and object to it being exhibited?’
‘Don’t fuss me, Mummy,’ he replied, and then one day when he flung aside his brush triumphant in a good day’s work, ‘I sometimes think of life as being meant for you and me, and no one else. Funny, that! As if we two stood alone, two towers of the Taj Mahal …’
‘You talk like Hilda and Marty.’
‘But I could never be really like them. Those lustful red roses of thorns they yap about, always think that Swinburne is a bit sadistic, don’t you?’ Then suddenly, ‘Oh Mummy, all those girls in my life don’t matter really. You’re the one! You realise that, don’t you?’
‘Yes, Luke,’ she said, ‘I know that,’ and turned from him because she did not want him to see how deeply she was moved. Her fingers went to the filigree gold chain that she always wore about her throat, slipped down inside her frock; it was a little gesture she made when nervous.
He bent forward and kissed her.
Adam’s wedding was over, he had comported himself with smug satisfaction; Penelope was almost as bad. She said and looked all the right things. The guests had disappeared, the last confetti was a drift of coloured snow at the gate corners. James had had to catch the earlier train to Town, leaving before the bride, so that Luke drove his mother home, very quietly.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘it struck me that Marty and Hilda weren’t hitting it off as well as they did; they seemed to be a bit strained.’
‘Oh, I don’t think so. I think it was the hat that Hilda had on, and those orchids. Hilda isn’t the sort who ought to wear orchids.
‘I could make a problem picture out of Hilda’s hat; it would be very cruel.’
‘I daresay you could, but Daddy and I would much rather you didn’t. Hilda is a nice person, and I should hate her to be hurt, so please don’t entertain any ideas of that kind, ’Ukef’ancis.’
They got in late.
It was one of those still summer nights when the trees look much as cardboard trees set for a great play. It would be a hot day to-morrow, there was full promise of it in the sultriness, that lethargy of night which gives the feeling that it is endless, and the morrow matterless. The stars were pale. Luke said they looked like yellow flowers reflected in a dark pool, and the pool was the sky.
Luke went to his room and lay down on the balcony bed. Recently his lung had bothered him again, he felt dimly tired all the time, with everything becoming an effort. He had told no one that trouble was brewing once more, he did not want Carolyn to be worried before she had to be. It was when he was alone that the calamity overwhelmed him most. Night was so final. During the day he had to go at express speed so as to escape the pursuant horror, because he was pursued and knew it. Carolyn might think that he was cured, he always hoped that he would be able to blind her to the fact that the thing was continuing within him. Sometimes he thought that he could cheat her by his abundant vitality, but he could never cheat himself.
She had been through too much that was hurtful in her life; it was the wall at the bottom of her garden, the wall she had never been able to get away from. In his own way Martin had inherited it too; somehow one expected it in James and Adam, but not in Marty, and it had been a shock to find it there. Luke knew it. God keep me from walls! he thought.
He got up restlessly and went into the bedroom, to the easel which stood in the corner, draped with a sheet. He drew it back and standing there stared at the picture. It was a beautiful study of Carolyn sitting on the grass. She had that girlish quality which she had never lost, and there were daisies growing on the lawn and a handful of them gathered in her lap; the hair that had not yet faded, caught a filter of sunshine which fell like a fine net through the branches above her. In a corner of the tree was the dream that she had always dreamt but which had never materialised. He had depicted it as a little shrine, a madonna in blue, set high on an altar with candles burning before her, in a pale maze of flame. High up and far away was the candle-flame where she could not reach it, in the green leafiness of tree, and behind her was the high brick wall. The bricks were homely, stained with a century of mellow sunshine; they glowed darkly red, but they were still a wall from which she could not escape.<
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It was part of her life.
It was the best piece of work that Luke had yet done, and he knew it. Suddenly he wondered why she had been born his mother. Why she should be imprisoned when every instinct in her fought to escape, yet failed to get away. She would never run off with another man, because Carolyn’s code was one of loyalty. She would stay married to his father through the years, and he to her. Because she remained faithful to her own self, she would die imprisoned.
‘Oh, you poor darling!’ he said, as he drew the sheet again.
He wished that he did not feel so confoundedly depressed by the futility of it all.
XII
LUKE’S WALL
Arthur was back in the sanatorium again.
Almost daily Carolyn was cutting flowers to send him, packing them herself and dispatching the long boxes from the village post office where they were sometimes weighed on the sweets scales, for it was also a general shop.
On the day that he was taking his picture up to London to the galleries where the exhibition would be held, she said, ‘Luke, I wonder if you would let me come with you, and then take me down to see Arthur? I think he is rather bad. He doesn’t say so, but then he writes scrappy letters. After all, he has no one to visit him and I would like to go down and see what is happening.’
Luke loathed the idea of going anywhere near the sanatorium. It was like a Pharaoh visiting a pyramid, he thought. He had concealed from Carolyn the fact that the lung was bad again, he was trying to conceal it from himself, and the thought of what he might see in the sanatorium appalled him. Institutional life was alarming. Standing there and listening to her appeal, he found himself unable to find words in which to parry it; it was then that he recognized this as being his prison which stood at the end of his road and shut him off from the rest of the world. He could endure anything rather than a visit to such a place.
‘Must I, Mummy?’
‘You needn’t come in with me if you don’t want to. You can leave me there and stay outside. I don’t suppose I should be very long, so that you aren’t likely to get bored. It’s in Kent.’
‘All right, as long as I don’t have to go inside.’
‘Very well.’
They left the canvas at the galleries. Carolyn still had not seen it and had stopped enquiring about it, realising that he wanted to give her a surprise. Then he turned the car down the Maidstone road one brilliant day. They saw the sanatorium long before they were within easy reach of it; it was a large, sprawling white building, set well up on the hill with the woods rising around it. As they came to the village, Luke spotted the little inn on the road. ‘I shall go back there, Mummy, it looks to be a good place to wait, and maybe I can get a snack.’
‘Yes, darling.’
He had the impression that she was nervous, and saw that her hand was trembling. ‘You were very fond of Arthur, weren’t you?’
‘I’ve known him practically all my life. When you grow older, you hate seeing the ties broken, and the older you get the more ties snap. The security of living seems to slip from you, the companionship, all the friendships that were real. I suppose that is what hurts most.’
‘I’ll be waiting at the inn.’
‘Thank you.’ For a moment her hand closed over his.
He put her down at the lodge gates, feeling guilty that he was not going in with her, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Now he knew why she never argued with James about his reserve; it is difficult to face the walls in life.
The inn was quiet, just a pub, and full of yokels. Luke went out into the garden under the trees, and here the sweet williams blossomed alongside the canterbury bells, with good old-fashioned fat bells on them, and a syringa in blossom behind. A girl brought him the bread and cheese that he had ordered, and long lettuces with succulent yellow hearts, all to be washed down with beer. He saw that the girl was small and fair, with golden eyelashes like Penelope’s, only behind this girl’s features there was personality. He liked her full red mouth and the funny little upturned nose. He liked her immaturely big breasts, which seemed to be too big for her taut cotton frock; he liked her buxomly-curved hips, because he had never cared for the modern outline. Walking sticks with anaemia horrified him, he said.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked her.
‘Hetty Reason.’
‘That’s a nice name. Tell me about yourself?’ and he hoped that he sounded encouraging.
‘I shan’t half catch it if my father knows that I’m here talking to you. He’s strict about strangers, he won’t even let me go to the cinema. Would you believe it, but I’ve never even been to the pictures?’
‘What a father! No wonder that he has such a delightful daughter!’ The tired feeling disappeared as the contents of the tankard went down. Thank Heaven at this stage you could always drown it! The sanatorium faded like a mirage in a desert. Walls were made to be circumvented, he told himself quickly, there was always a way round them even if Carolyn hadn’t found the way round hers.
Hetty said, ‘But I want to go to the pictures. I want to see Eddie Cantor, the man with the goosegog eyes.’
‘Good Lord! Why choose him? I suppose I wouldn’t do instead?’
‘You’ve got very nice eyes,’ she said. She stood at the side of the small green-painted table, with the wind blowing wisps of her hair like a halo round her face. He’d like to paint her that way, and putting out a hand took hold of her wrist. It was clumsily large after Carolyn’s, but the flesh was firm and dryly warm. He liked the feel of it. ‘Oh, but you mustn’t do that,’ she said.
‘Yes I must, why not?’
It amused him to flirt; he was that sort of young man and wished to get his fill of it. He drew her down on to the seat beside him; she smelt pleasantly of strong soap, of new milk and country sweetness. He had forgotten the sanatorium now, and Arthur forced to stay within it. If he didn’t forget this sort of thing sometimes, he would be eternally remembering it! The ghost round the corner, a hideously silent ghost with beckoning fingers, and the horror in its eyes. A ghost that coughed, and putting a white phantom hand to its lips, brought it away stained red. It wasn’t that Luke was afraid to die. It was just that he was young, anxious to live and enjoy life. The thought hurt so much.
He nuzzled his face into the warm softness of her throat, seeking escapist satisfaction.
‘Oh, stop it! If my father sees, he’ll be furious, and I shan’t half catch it.’
But her father didn’t see.
They sat in the warm sunshine sheltered from the inn by the syringa bush. A black cat came stretching itself indolently on the lawn, and as it stretched Luke could see the silver curve of its unsheathed claws each in a small furry black cushion sensitively soft. He did not know why it attracted him so much. He felt much better for being out here with Hetty, who chattered easily, and obviously liked flirtation as much as he did. Then he glanced at his watch.
‘Good Lord, would you believe it? Mummy ought to have been back by now.
‘You’re waiting for your mother?’
‘Yes.’ He got up. ‘I’ll walk up the lane and see if she is coming.’
‘You’ll be back?’
He put a finger under her chin, a darling mid-teen chin that threatened to be a double one. ‘Of course I’ll be back, Hetty, one of these days I’ll come and kiss you again. Maybe I’ll paint your picture.’
‘Oh, do you take photographs?’ eagerly, as though this was the be-all and end-all of her existence.
‘No, I paint my pictures, it’s not quite the same thing, and not half so profitable.’ He walked out into the lane.
It was a typical Kentish lane, narrow, with a chalky road, and low hedges on the side where honeysuckles and wild roses had a floury dust upon them, and the linnets twittered together. Luke walked a little way, turning the corner, and then it was that he saw Carolyn coming to him. Instantly he knew that whilst he had been killing time she had suffered. He ought to have stayed with her. He ought not to h
ave been frittering the moments there, whilst she walked the garden that is pain. He didn’t know why he did these things, for girls meant nothing to him, not one of them had really been important, they were just something to stop him thinking. But Carolyn was thought itself. She walked slowly as though she was very tired, as if she had endured an ordeal and could not face much more. Hurrying to her, Luke asked no questions; he knew what she wanted, and threading an arm in hers drew her along with him.
‘I’ll take you home, Mummy. Don’t tell me anything just now. We’ll go back together. It’ll be all right.’
She said nothing.
He tucked her into the car beside him and turned the bonnet towards London. He had an idea that through the dark pointed leaves and waxen blossoms of the syringa, Hetty Reason was watching him, but he knew that he would never come back again.
He did not dare to look at his mother as she slumped down there beside him, but went on through London with its steady stream of traffic and never spoke a word, but stared solemnly ahead. Only when they were out the other side with the strings of Barnet houses behind them, and the fields beginning, undulating Hertfordshire fields, and the blue distance of the Buckinghamshire hills, only then did she speak.
‘I don’t think they can do much for him, Luke.’
‘No?’ rather sharply, because he had the morbid intuition that the same thing applied to him.
‘He’s very bad. So weak, yet so optimistic with it. I’m glad that he feels that way, really, I wouldn’t like him to know how ill he is. He was talking of going down to Polprinth when better again, wants all of us to join him there. I’m to tell Mrs. Clare to get the house ready for him. Oh, how I wish it were possible!’
‘You never know what lies ahead, Mummy. Anything is possible really.’
‘No, ’Ukef’ancis, it isn’t. This is the end. I’ll never see Arthur again, and I know it. He has been a good friend to me, it has been nice to know that he was there, and that I could turn to him.’
‘Mummy, why didn’t you marry him?’