Ely did not think Mrs Grainger was superior. He did not stop to think whether or not she was familiar with motor cars. He admired Mrs Grainger and her dark beauty; and he felt more at his ease with her than with any other young woman; without ever going to the length of analysing it he had when he was with her a feeling of friendliness, of companionship, which was absolutely wanting when he was with other women. That was the main reason why he had jumped at Mrs Clair’s holiday suggestion. He would be at the seaside at no more expense than in his lodgings – that was important, with all his savings locked up in his car – but the main thing was that he would be at the seaside with friends; Ely had spent lonely holidays at the seaside and had been unhappy all the time. The loud-voiced girls on promenade and pier had no attraction for him.
Marjorie was surprised to see that Ely’s disappointment equalled hers. She was a little thrilled and a little touched by it, too.
‘Mother would come in and sit in the house, I expect, if we asked her,’ she said, thinking rapidly. ‘It isn’t her evening for church, is it?’
‘No. She was at home when I left. Shall I go and fetch her?’
‘Yes, do.’
It was marvellous that with a motor car you could send a message to Mother and bring her back again, all in less than ten minutes. In Marjorie’s experience that would have taken at least three quarters of an hour on foot, although Mother could still walk quite fast. A motor car meant freedom in all sorts of ways.
Mother seemed quite pleased to come around. She beamed upon Marjorie and Mr Ely, and waved to them as they set off down the road with a crashing of gears. Mrs Clair walked back from the gate and settled herself in the shabby sitting-room – with the door open so that she could hear the children if they cried – still smiling, but now it was a smile without any hint of kindness behind it. It was a hard, tight-lipped smile, and although her eyes had a faraway look there was no softness in them, either. Mrs Clair sat, straight backed, her hands in her lap, gazing out into space. She was seeing visions, wherein her son-in-law should receive the punishment he deserved. Her plans were bearing fruit already. Even her daughter’s chastity would not be too high a price to pay. At least, if Marjorie were unfaithful to him, that would be one injury done to that devil, one instalment of the repayment.
Her quick ears caught the sound of the car drawing up at the gate when they returned, and she went out to meet them. Ely was helping Marjorie out of her seat; they were both pleasantly flushed and excited.
‘Shall we both stay to supper with you, dear, as you’re all alone?’ asked Mrs Clair.
‘Oh yes,’ said Marjorie. ‘You will stay, won’t you, Mr Ely?’
‘Thank you,’ said Ely.
The long summer evening was only just ending with the fall of night. He had enjoyed himself so much, despite the tension of driving through traffic, that he did not want to have to admit to himself that the day was over, nor return lonely to Dewsbury Road.
They had a jolly little supper party all together in the kitchen with scrambled eggs on toast, and the remains of a trifle, and several cups each of the strong tea which Mrs Clair was inclined to drink to excess – her only weakness. Mrs Clair showed herself as properly impressed when Marjorie described the route over which they had driven – they had covered twenty miles of main road in the country at the cost of ten miles of suburban streets.
‘When we’re at The Guardhouse,’ said Ely – he had fallen into the habit, along with the others, of alluding to the Sussex coast as The Guardhouse – ‘we’ll be right in the country to start with. We won’t have to go through miles of traffic every time we want a run in the old bus.’
‘Won’t that be good!’ said Marjorie.
What Ely had just said was an enormous relief to her. It assured her that Ely had no intention, during the imminent holiday, of standing on his rights as a board-paying lodger and going off to enjoy himself by himself every day. He was going to consider himself as one of the party, and she would be asked to accompany him sometimes at least. The worldly pleasures of Hastings and Eastbourne would be open to her, and all the fabled inland to which char-à-bancs penetrated, Bodiam and Herstmonceux and Chanctonbury Ring. Mother would be glad to take charge of the children on those occasions. She glanced across at her mother, and was surprised to detect a glint of pleased triumph in her eye – Mother was evidently glad, too, that her daughter was going to have a good holiday this year. She looked rather like a matchmaking mother whose daughter had just brought home an eligible suitor – Mother was a perfectly sweet old thing.
8
On Saturday morning the children awoke early, full of excitement at the fact that their holiday was due to begin today. Even Anne, who was generally so self-possessed, was infected by Derrick’s excitement. Before seven o’clock they were running through the house in their night clothes, and came pattering into their parents’ bedroom, which meant a bad start to Ted’s day – to lose half an hour’s sleep and to have to deal with children before breakfast were both of them maddening things to have happen. Marjorie precipitated herself out of bed and shooed the children from the room. She took her clothes with her so as to dress with the children and disturb Ted as little further as possible.
‘This is like Christmas,’ said Anne, pulling down her vest over her wriggling body – getting up early, and visiting her parents in her night clothes, while full of a feeling of delightful things about to happen, had been the start of the odd association of ideas.
‘Thank goodness it isn’t as cold as Christmas,’ said Marjorie, fastening her suspenders, and looking sideways out of the window where the blessed sun was already promising another hot day.
It had been very hot during the night – Ted had snored and tossed and disturbed her. Partly, too, that was because he had wanted her again last night. He had put hot hands on her at bedtime, and sent her into a sudden panic, because she had been dreaming flimsy dreams that the morrow’s separation was going to be permanent, and this crude reminder of her present entanglement had come as a shock to her. Panic stricken, she had told him hurriedly the only lie she could think of at the moment – one she hardly ever dared to employ, because Ted was so sharp. But even in face of a good excuse Ted had always shown resentment and annoyance.
‘That’s a nice thing to happen,’ he grumbled. ‘The last night we’re going to have for three weeks.’
Because of his annoyance, Marjorie verily believed, he had snored and tossed during the night and kept her from sleeping. She had loathed his hot coarse hairy body last night.
‘Christmas!’ Derrick was shrieking. He had found the big drum-shaped toffee tin which was one of his chief treasures and was beating on it with a stick, making a noise which would disturb Mrs Taylor, let alone Ted.
‘Be quiet, children,’ said Marjorie, and then, desperately, ‘Go out into the garden, both of you. You can go into the lane, if you like, if you’re very careful and don’t climb on the fence.’
That was a sufficient inducement to make the children go quietly. The lane was a little footpath which ran between the back gardens of that side of Harrison Way and the electric railway. Generally speaking, Marjorie forbade the children to set foot there, because with only one low line of railing between them and the rails she was afraid lest they should climb over. So it had all the fascination of forbidden ground to the children, with the added attraction that from the lane they could see – what was hidden from their view in the garden – the roofs of the trains passing up and down along the shallow cutting.
But breakfast, after she had prepared the meal and called the children in, was an unpleasant affair. Ted was gloomier and surlier even than usual, partly perhaps because of last night, and partly because no man with the prospect of three weeks’ hard work with the auditors during a heat wave could be expected to listen with patience to prolonged chatter about a holiday which other people were going to enjoy. And Derrick made matters ever so much worse. H
is vague memories of other holidays were flooding back to him, mingled with distorted mental pictures of this motor car which had loomed so large in Mummy’s and Grannie’s conversations of late.
‘Is Auntie Dot going to be in the moty car?’ he asked.
‘Be quiet, Derrick,’ said Marjorie, too late.
Ted had dropped his knife and was glaring across the table at him.
‘Silly little fool,’ he said.
No one yet had told Derrick that Auntie Dot was dead – Marjorie had been trying to shield him from the knowledge of death, and was hoping that he would just forget about her. But (as she told herself now with bitter self-reproach) no one could ever rely upon a child either forgetting or remembering anything. Derrick was frightened now, and yet sturdily set upon asserting his individuality.
‘Not a little fool,’ he said, and Ted reached across the table and clouted the side of his head. That sufficed to change Derrick from an upstanding child into a howling baby. Marjorie ran round behind him. The habits of years were just strong enough to hold her back from imperilling discipline by picking him up and comforting him and taking his side against his father. She was on the verge of casting aside discretion, all the same; nor was she mollified by the sight of Anne’s white face on the other side of the table – Anne, who, without being told, had guessed at Auntie Dot’s death, and hated to hear her name mentioned, and hated her father’s violence even more.
‘Why don’t you ever teach the kids sense, Madge?’ demanded Ted. ‘Silly bloody fools the whole lot of you. Too much of this holiday business, that’s what it is. For two pins I’d say you weren’t to go.’
He saw a flash of fear pass over Marjorie’s face, and exulted in it. He wanted to hurt someone.
‘It’d do you all a world of good,’ he said ‘to find there’s something you can’t have. That silly blitherer Ely and his motor car! Motor car! Ten years junior to me in the office, and buys a car!’
That was a fortunate digression. Ted’s grievances had tumbled out so fast that he had been led into a mention of George Ely when actually it was Marjorie and the children he had been wanting to attack. When he had finished his sneer at Ely he had to stop and collect himself before resuming his tirade, and once having stopped it was not so easy to start again. He gulped and swallowed, and Derrick’s howls put up a sturdy opposition and hindered the clear thinking necessary for the resumption of a really damaging offensive.
‘I can’t even finish my breakfast in peace,’ he said, casting about for a fresh grievance, and that recalled him to the habits of ten years. He looked at the kitchen clock. ‘God! I’ll be late at the office.’
His violence was directed now into a hurried pulling on of his shoes. He grasped his hat and fled, with one last malediction on a household where there was never time for a second cup of tea at breakfast time, and the only comment on his behaviour was supplied by Derrick, who, tears forgotten, announced solemnly:
‘I think Daddy’s silly.’
‘Sh! You mustn’t speak about Daddy like that,’ said Marjorie, instinctively again. She had tried for years now to maintain, for the sake of discipline, a loyal attitude towards her husband, and she could not abandon it now.
Upstairs beds had to be stripped, and windows closed, and blinds pulled down, and yesterday’s packing completed. Downstairs there was a joint and vegetables to be cooked, so that Ted could have a last good meal before they left him, and so that there would be enough cold meat to carry him over the weekend. Anne was able to master her excitement sufficiently to dry up the breakfast things for her mother, and lay the dinner table, but for all her help Marjorie had enough to do that morning (thanks also to the necessity for seeing that Derrick did not get into mischief) to keep her in a whirl all the time. There were a thousand things to remember about the milkman and the baker and so on; Marjorie hoped she had remembered them all. It was so hot in the little house – Marjorie ran up and down the stairs twenty times that morning, flushed, and with her hair untidy.
Not until Ted had come back from the office and dinner was actually on the table did she have any time to feel excited. She would have said that she did not feel excited at all, not even when she saw, from her seat at the table, that the clock said a quarter past one and she recalled to herself that Mr Ely was coming for them at two-thirty. Yet she could hardly eat a mouthful of the dinner she had cooked – roast beef and baked potatoes and peas and Yorkshire pudding, and apple pie and custard, a real Sunday dinner, in fact, on a Saturday.
Ted did not notice her lack of appetite – he never had eyes for things like that – but he ate with relish, the morning’s bad temper dormant. Ted liked a good dinner, especially beef and Yorkshire. After dinner he went into the sitting room, much to Marjorie’s relief, and turned on the wireless, so that Marjorie could fly round again, washing up, putting everything ready, and then run upstairs to take off her overall and put on her summer frock (with a coat over it) and carry downstairs the bags and parcels which were waiting. There were half a dozen last-minute domestic matters about which she wanted to remind Ted, but she would not risk it now. She might write to him about them when she reached The Guardhouse.
For so long in her life had her primary duty been to run her house well that even now she acted automatically as if that duty was to continue. She even averted her attention, uneasily, from the thought that it might not be the case now. She did not think she was being weak. She thought she was being driven by irresistible circumstances. With a little shudder she shook herself free from all this nightmare. She was going to escape from it for three weeks, and she need worry about nothing for that time.
She resettled her hair, which had been disarranged by putting on her frock, and looked at herself in the glass. Her experiences of the morning, she decided, had left hardly any trace. The summer frock made her look fresh and cool, she was discreetly powdered, and – exceptionally for her – she had reddened her lips so that they were not quite so pale as they had become of late. However foreign to her nature it might be to pose as something she was not, there was nevertheless somewhere at the back of her mind a mental picture of herself, cool and leisurely and soignée, walking gracefully out to the motor car to be borne away to her three weeks at the seaside.
She heard the squeak of a motor horn at the gate, and then loud squeals from Anne and Derrick.
‘Mummy, Mummy, the motor’s come! Mummy, Mr Reely’s here! Is Grannie there, Mummy? Is the luggage ready, Mummy? Mummy, have you got my boat?’
The picture she made in the sunshine, walking out to the gate, with the children capering beside her and a heavy bag in each hand, was really far more attractive than the one she had visualised, for the thought of the contrast made her show her white teeth in a friendly smile. Ted came grouchily after her with the remaining bundles, but he was sufficiently sensitive and flexible not to display bad temper in front of Ely and Mrs Clair. They packed themselves in with difficulty – there was only just room for everything and everybody – and it was only when the door was shut on them that Marjorie realized that she had not kissed her husband goodbye, and this was the first time she was leaving him since Derrick was born. She was glad it had happened that way. She waved her hand, and Ely let in the clutch and the car moved jerkily down the road. At the corner Marjorie looked back and wondered, before she resolved not to let unpleasant thoughts mar her holiday, how she would be feeling when she saw it again. Fifty yards further on was the corner where the little lane at the back of the houses emerged into Simon Street. Mrs Posket was there, walking up to the station to meet her husband – she often took the path along the railway, because the backs of houses are often so much more informative than the fronts. She waved to them, pleased at having seen such an important thing as Mrs Grainger going away for a holiday with young Mr Ely from the gas showrooms – not that she meant anything by that, mark you.
9
The holiday was not perfect right from the start, of
course. George Ely took three hours to drive the seventy miles of crowded Saturday afternoon main road down to The Guardhouse, and by the time they reached it everyone was very cramped and tired, and hungry and thirsty. Derrick, in fact, had cried with fatigue before they had gone half way, and had not been comforted by the sharp words which his overwrought mother had flung at him over her shoulder. And at The Guardhouse when they arrived there were of course no provisions, no tea, nothing; even the beds would have to be made before they could rest. Marjorie contemplated with sick weariness the three-quarter mile walk to the shops.
Mrs Clair it was who rose to the occasion with a decision and energy which would have been creditable in a woman half her age – just as it had been Mrs Clair who had soothed Derrick into silence when he had cried in the car, and who had coaxed him into dozing for the rest of the way.
‘Now, first we want some nice flowers,’ she said, brightly. ‘Anne, can I trust you and Derrick to pick me some nice ones in the field there?’
‘Oh yes, Grannie,’ said Anne; if a suggestion were presented to her in the right way she was an amenable child enough, and the responsibilities of the task given her were delightful. Her enthusiasm infected Derrick, and the two of them ran into the field with their fretfulness and hunger forgotten for the time at least, to set about the business of gathering dandelions and buttercups.
‘There’s the beds to do,’ went on Mrs Clair briskly to her daughter, ‘but we want tea first, I think, don’t we? I’ll go off to the shops. We’ll want bread, and milk, and –’
Mrs Clair ticked off on her fingers the interminable list of items necessary for the weekend shopping and of a household devoid of every single necessity. Young Ely, having stretched his cramped legs in the garden, came up in time to listen. He was dizzy and tired with the strain of driving – the farthest he had ever driven as yet in one day, and amid traffic all of which had seemed to him to be hurtling along at dangerously high speeds. But he was a helpful soul, and oddly domesticated despite (or perhaps because of) the recent years he had spent in lodgings.
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