The Yellow Houses

by Stella Gibbons

  ‘You’re a sweetie, too.’

  ‘Thank you. But it was a rotten thing to say, Mrs Cornforth, and you know it. And . . . I don’t feel all that grateful for being called a sweetie.’

  She shrugged. ‘Oh God. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’d hoped we were friends enough for you to take the truth.’

  Wilfred pressed his lips to keep back a furious, confused sentence, and at that moment Miss Dollette came in, carrying two pale green candles.

  ‘Here you are, darling – are they the right colour?’

  ‘I said jade, not that washed-out . . . I’ve been needling Wilfred.’

  ‘Well, you like needling, don’t you?’ Miss Dollette said faintly, fitting the candles into silver sockets. ‘Did you enjoy it?’

  ‘For about three seconds.’ Katherine laughed again. ‘Is the stuff ready? I’ll get it.’ She hurried away.

  Wilfred stood, undecided, still feeling resentment and pain. For an instant, he wished he were sitting at the table in Shirley’s bright, cheerful home, or Joan’s, playing one of those card games which he used to dislike so much, with Sheila’s husband’s red, tamed face opposite. Then the picture faded. Miss Dollette was his friend – and there was no need, with her, to hide troubled feelings.

  ‘What’s up with Mrs Cornforth?’ he asked bluntly.

  Miss Dollette looked up slowly.

  ‘She’s bored, Mr Davis, and when Katherine is bored it – it can be dangerous.’

  ‘Dangerous?’ He stared.

  She nodded, rearranging the place settings that Katherine’s fidgetings had disturbed.

  ‘You – you don’t mean she’s mental or anything like that?’

  ‘Oh no. Nothing like that. But boredom makes some people dangerous – and cruel.’

  ‘But that’s like some teenage delinquent!’ Wilfred burst out. ‘Mrs Cornforth must be over forty.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Mr Davis – no – dear Wilfred – I’m a coward, and always have been, though I’m trying very hard not to be. My heart is still beating too fast because of what I said to Katherine just now, and I’m wondering if I was right to say it, and I’m so afraid that if – if anything happens, it’ll be my fault. You see, I love Katherine. She’s all I’ve always wanted to be and never could: warm and brave, and loving towards people. (Oh! I’m so afraid of people.) She’s like a golden dragoness – but a good one. And, you see, it was I who asked that she might come with us.’

  There was a pause. Her soft voice seemed to linger on the air.

  He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, it’s all beyond me.’

  ‘Oh, I know. It must be. It’s such a big story, you see, the story of the Yellow Houses. But will you be patient, especially with her? Will you, if I ask you? Just be patient? Don’t try to understand, just accept and wait for what – what is going to happen?’

  Before he could answer, there was a cry from the hall. ‘Laf! Laf! Supper!’

  The voice rang through the house like a beautifully toned bell; the colour of her hair, and her fiery dress, and the copper leaves she had strewn on the table, were all in the sound. ‘Blazing hot!’

  She swept in, carrying a tray, and set the covered casserole on the table, and in a moment Mr Taverner entered and took his place.

  ‘Glory and splendour tonight,’ he remarked, as he began to serve the food.

  ‘That was me,’ Katherine said instantly. ‘I’m tired of cosiness in the kitchen.’

  ‘So. Well, it looks very civilized. Congratulations.’

  ‘Oh you know I can do it when I want to.’

  He glanced at her, but said nothing, and they began to eat. Wilfred, steadily packing into himself what seemed the first real food he had eaten for a week, could feel an extraordinary warmth – atmosphere? – pulse? – stealing towards him from where Katherine sat.

  It was a cloudy night. The curtains were not quite drawn, and between them the sky showed a pale, sinister red from the reflected glare of the town’s lamps and those in the road itself – temporarily erected following complaints to the council of orgies in the dimness of the newly created wasteland. And Wilfred could make out a leaping, golden-red glare, low down. The dropouts must have lit a bonfire on the space directly opposite the Yellow House.

  32

  Three journeys: three destinations

  ‘Why do you just sit there staring? Why don’t you go out and do something for them?’ Katherine’s voice seemed to strike him like a blow.

  ‘Oh, Mrs Cornforth – yes, I was thinking about those kids. As for going out – I don’t really feel I could do anything useful if I did,’ Wilfred said. He had actually started at her words.

  ‘Young bodies! – souls in agony and deadly peril!’

  ‘I don’t believe it’s as bad as all that, really. I run into my old colleagues at the Town Hall from time to time, you know, and I hear things––’

  ‘You don’t really care.’

  ‘I care all right, Mrs Cornforth, but I’m – I’m getting on, you know, and – as I was saying, I’ve heard about that bunch out there. They’re just teenagers, out for a lark.’ His hand went to a pocket for his handkerchief. His forehead was sweating.

  ‘You shut your eyes. You shut them tight. You might be blind, for all you see. And you choose to be like that. You choose to be blind.’

  ‘I think you’re trying to quarrel with me,’ he said desperately.

  He did not dare to glance at the other two. From far off, from very far away, he felt a breath of coolness and comfort, and remembered, crushing his handkerchief in his damp hand, the fern-scented linen of that other handkerchief – the one that had led to his sitting where he sat now – trembling and full of strange fears.

  ‘Anything for a bit of life!’ she said, and he had not believed that her voice could sound so coarse. He could see, out of the corner of his eye, the slight movements made by Mr Taverner and Miss Dollette in the act of eating, and again he felt comforted. But he was sweating in the uncanny heat pulsing from her. He now felt her to be his enemy.

  There was silence – but no lessening of danger. Danger?

  He tried to make his tone reasonable.

  ‘It was always a quiet, decent little place, Torford –’

  ‘Yes,’ she said bitterly. ‘That was why Laf chose it.’

  Mr Taverner put down his knife and fork, and said ‘Katherine’.

  She whirled on him. ‘Yes, “Katherine” – the outsider, the one who shouldn’t be here – the one who’s sick of this half-dead, half-alive set-up, and the whole boring idea.’

  ‘You knew the plan,’ Mr Taverner said, ‘and the rules. I told you myself.’

  ‘As far as you are a self, I suppose.’

  He shrugged. ‘Oh Katherine. And will you, can you, I ask you for the last time, be careful? Felicity and I have done what we set out to do––’

  ‘One retired clerk patted off to sleep, and a half-baked boy sent down to Wales to a boring job. Big deal!’

  ‘We don’t want the work ended here by . . . I need not tell you, need I?’

  ‘Oh yes you need – I’d like you to. One of my troubles is that I’ve never known enough.’

  ‘You’ve been told all that you were ready to know.’

  ‘But I’m a bit “unreadier” than you throught, aren’t I? Your nice, comfortable Yellow Houses seem milk-and-water to me.’

  ‘Not milk, Katherine. But certainly water. Cold water, in a cup. That’s the motto of the Yellow Houses and on that they work. They always have.’

  All had risen, and were standing.

  ‘Always!’

  ‘For nearly two thousand years,’ Mr Taverner said, without raising his voice. ‘Since the Wanderings ended. Since the cities began rising, all over Europe. Since the first Yellow House, in half-ruined Rome in the year 350 AD. That was the best, that’s our model, because they had more to struggle with. The idea of small comfortings, small advances, small foundations on which larger things could be built, was s
o new. People were more like you, Katherine, in those days, fiery and unchastened. Our work seemed – so small in those days.’

  ‘I didn’t know they were as old as that,’ she muttered, and was silent.

  Wilfred, too, was silent; keeping so because he felt that, at last, veils were being lifted. So it was an Order, a Brotherhood, of some kind, as he had suspected.

  ‘Well,’ Katherine said at last, ‘the Yellow Houses aren’t enough for me.’

  ‘I know, dear one.’

  ‘So what’s to happen to me? I’m not going to stay here, in this one. I’ll go mad.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘It’s all right for you and Felicity,’ she shouted, snatching up a glass and dashing it to the floor. ‘Can’t you see? You’re all right. You’ve got things to do – well, one thing, made up of a lot of little fiddling things – and you do it. But I’ – she drew in breath as if it hurt – ‘I want more to do. I want to reach out, and haul in, until my arms ache and my hands are bruised and I’m used. I want to feel used. Can’t you understand?’

  ‘Of course I understand, Katherine, I’m not a half-wit. You put it very clearly indeed. And I do you the justice to be certain that if you were bruised and hauling and stretching and aching, you would feel fulfilled, whereas I should merely be uncomfortable and wanting a bit of peace, and – useless. You’re a natural fisher of men; women included, of course. Now where do you want to go? Tell me.’

  Wilfred was watching Katherine’s beautiful, troubled face. For an instant, terror flashed into it.

  ‘Katherine!’ Mr Taverner called sharply. ‘No! That’s a temptation – away with it!’ and Wilfred saw her expression of agonized fear change, and fade, and pass.

  ‘However full your dotty little mind is of drama,’ Mr Taverner was saying, ‘don’t indulge in that sort of nightmare-dreaming. Felicity and I and the rest of us can’t imagine what it’s like there. You really must stop being – so ambitious, Katherine. Our Master Himself didn’t go there. He did once refer to it, but He never went there, and you know why.’

  ‘Because,’ she said slowly, ‘there’s no hope there.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘And,’ Mr Taverner went on, his tone becoming dry, ‘it’s an exclusive place, as I said the other day to Wilfred; you’ll never qualify. In fact, dear Katherine, you’re going to end up somewhere, and as something, very different.’

  She looked at him, questioningly, almost as a child would, and he nodded. Then he said something that Wilfred did not catch, and this surprised him, because, until now, every word that Mr Taverner spoke had been distinct. And Katherine – the fiery, passionate, trouble-making Katherine – drooped her head like an ashamed little girl, and was silent.

  In a moment, Mr Taverner laughed, and up came her head.

  ‘Well, I shan’t – like it.’

  ‘‘You will “when you get there”, as they say.’

  ‘I’m not sure if I believe it.’

  ‘It’s true, darling – or will be.’

  ‘Oh . . . well . . . then I can go to the other place, the second one?’

  ‘If you truly want to, Katherine. You may not like that, either, you know, when you’re there.’

  ‘Oh I will – I will. There’s hope, there, and I can help and love –’ She whirled round on Wilfred, and, before he realized what was going to happen, put her arms round him and pressed him to her soft full breast and kissed his lips. ‘Sorry I was a bitch, love.’

  ‘It’s – it’s all right,’ he stammered. ‘It’s – quite all right, Mrs Cornforth.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ she said, smiling at him while tears started from her eyes, and, gathering her skirts in both hands, she ran from the room.

  ‘Trust Katherine for the perfect exit,’ murmured Mr Taverner. ‘Now I suggest that we sit down again. I would like to see a truly dramatic situation in which everybody was lying back in armchairs. The food is lukewarm by now, and I certainly don’t want mine . . . How about you?’ to Wilfred, who shook his head.

  ‘I’ll just sweep up that glass,’ Miss Dollette said, but Mr Taverner held up a hand.

  ‘Leave it, dear.’

  ‘For them to do?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve a reason.’

  ‘I was only wondering if they would – now. You must have noticed, ever since things changed for them, their manner is different. They may feel, well, that it’s below their dignity.’

  ‘They’ll do it.’

  ‘I’m so glad for them,’ she murmured.

  ‘It’s Katherine . . . I didn’t tell her. I want her to find out for herself. She’s exactly their idea of a goddess, of course. I wonder if she’ll say “Big Deal” about the change in them?’

  The conversation was carried on in low tones while the two rapidly cleared the table. Wilfred, suddenly, silently joined in the task. Blow all this mystery, he thought, stepping round the fragments of glass on the floor. When you think you’ve got everything clear, it starts all over again. I’m fed up with it.

  ‘I think I’ll go to bed,’ said Miss Dollette when the laden trolley had been wheeled into the kitchen. ‘There’s going to be so much to do, and I’m tired.’

  ‘You and I will sit awhile?’ Mr Taverner suggested to Wilfred. ‘Katherine has gone out – did you hear the front door slam?’

  ‘They have lit the fire,’ Miss Dollette called to them as she went upstairs.

  ‘Good,’ Mr Taverner called back. ‘Next year they’ll have the stubble fires lit for them.’

  *

  In the drawing room the newly kindled flames danced their light over pink walls and apricot satins. They settled themselves, and Mr Taverner opened a box on a table beside his chair and held it out to Wilfred.

  ‘Cigars, eh? Well, thank you – quite a treat.’

  Slowly the rich smell of the smoke filled the room. Wilfred leant back and watched it curling upwards, and wished he felt as peaceful as it looked, and that Pat might be sitting opposite, instead of that long, lanky, mysterious man.

  ‘A vicious circle,’ observed Mr Taverner. ‘That’s why we have to, we must, go on.’

  ‘What for? Why?’ Wilfred demanded bitterly.

  ‘To learn. But we can choose. We can learn, and go on, or we can stay in the circle.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were religious,’ said Wilfred, insolently. He stared at Mr Taverner. And Mr Taverner looked back at him, with his faint smile, and was silent. Wilfred suddenly looked down at the floor, penitent and ashamed, and saw in his mind’s eye a clear picture of a statue: one of those Indian statues of a god sitting cross-legged, broken into fragments. But the piece of warm-hued stone holding the lips still offered its slight, infinitely comforting, smiling message.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said at last.

  ‘My dear man, it’s all right.’

  ‘The fact is, I’m . . . flustered. You know I’ve been happy here, with you and Miss Dollette, as happy as I could be anywhere without my Pat. But you must admit it’s a funny house . . .’

  ‘I hope so. I shouldn’t like to live in a place that wasn’t funny. Katherine wants to, and the place where she’s going to work is never funny. Ironic, yes; funny, no. By God (who gave us funniness) no.’

  ‘You know very well what I mean. And this time I’m not going to be put off with yarns about haunting. I don’t believe you, and that’s flat.’

  ‘I hoped you wouldn’t.’

  ‘Hoped I wouldn’t? – Do you think I like all this mystery, and talk about “helpers” and – and all that? What did all that mean about Mrs Cornforth wanting to go to some place where there’s “no hope”?’

  ‘I told you. Hell is an exclusive club,’ Mr Taverner answered lightly. Yet Wilfred received a disturbing impression of controlled desperation under the lightness.

  ‘Hell? But no one believes in that nowadays! Even the Church doesn’t.’

  There was a pause. Then Mr Taverner went on: ‘Katherine spoke without imagination. She doesn’t truly want, of cou
rse, to go to that – it isn’t a place – where there’s no hope.’ Even the slight colour that usually gave an appearance of health to his face had faded. ‘Talk of something else – now – at once. Please.’

  ‘She must be mental,’ Wilfred said, after a pause. He was scared. Vague thoughts skimmed through his mind of phoning Sheila or Joan, packing a bag that night and going over to Mrs Wheeby. She’d understand. She and Cousin Fred are my own sort.

  ‘Oh no. Far from it. And don’t mistake, dear man. Katherine is going much, much further than you or I or Felicity will.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that, somehow. You know, I never could really like her, not as I do you and Miss Dollette. But there’s something about her . . . You want her to be all right, somehow. I don’t know . . .’

  ‘She will be,’ nodded Mr Taverner. ‘She will be all right. I’m sure.’

  ‘But you keep on sort-of-dodging, Mr Taverner! What are you and Miss Dollette doing here? Is it a kind of, well, a community for helping people?’

  ‘Certain people, yes.’

  ‘Certain people . . . I’ve wondered sometimes what you would do, you and Miss Dollette, if someone really vile turned up here wanting help – a sadist, for instance? Someone who enjoys hurting and being cruel, someone really bad?’

  ‘They wouldn’t. Not our pigeon.’ Mr Taverner got up and stood by the mantelshelf, and carefully rested his cigar on an ashtray.

  ‘But . . . aren’t those the people who really need the help?’

  ‘They’re the kind Katherine wants to help. And will.’

  Wilfred gave it up, for the moment. He felt, and he knew, that he was ‘getting nowhere’. Every new fact that he seemed to discover only opened out onto more unanswerable questions. He suddenly felt excessively tired and his thoughts turned, with refreshment and relief, to the happy fate of Mary. Plenty to deal with there! And it was all straightforward! Difficult, perhaps, and unfamiliar, but straightforward. Earthly . . . funny word to think of. He made a last attempt.

  ‘Mr Taverner . . .’

  Mr Taverner looked at him attentively.

  ‘You said something when we were having supper about there having “always” been Yellow Houses. In foreign cities . . . In Rome. Yellow Houses, you said. Why yellow? Were they always yellow?’