The Wingless Bird

by Catherine Cookson

  What was going on upstairs was what had been going on since the previous evening: Agnes and Reg had hardly left Charles’ bedside; they both knew that the end was near at hand. Charles had had two bad turns during the night and each time they thought he had breathed his last. Now he was lying quiet, except that he was finding it difficult to breathe; but in between gasps he was making an effort to speak. Agnes had hold of his hand, but it was at Reg he was looking: ‘You’re…back…home. Everything…will be…all right. Work…out.’

  ‘Don’t talk, old fellow. Don’t talk.’

  ‘Only chance…I’ll have.’ There was even a smile on his face now, and this almost broke Agnes down and she bowed her head until the thin words came to her: ‘My dear one, so happy…I’ve been…so happy. You must…be, you hear?…Be…happy. I love…you both…very lucky…been very lucky.’

  Charles died at eleven o’clock, and once again the house went into mourning.

  Two

  ‘I will have to be making my way back before it’s dark. The roads are such a mess; if it freezes the night on top of all this slush, the buses won’t run. It’s good they stop at the bottom of the road now. It makes it easier; I haven’t got to trouble Robbie to get the car out. As I was saying, lass, you’ve got to make your mind up. You just can’t go on like this, you’re all skin and bone. You can sell the place and come back. Oh, it will be like old times.’

  What old times? Agnes asked herself as she looked at her mother’s face and listened to her going on. ‘But, as Robbie says, you wouldn’t get what it’s worth for this place, not today, you wouldn’t, with things the way they are in the country, strikes and rumours of strikes, people knocking each other over for jobs, for more money. And the women are as bad, never satisfied. But then, as Robbie says, nobody’s getting what they were promised. Land for heroes to live in, that’s what they were promised. Anyway, as I tell them, look after yourselves, and if everybody does the same, there’ll be less trouble everywhere.’ Then she put her hand out and laid it on Agnes’ shoulders, saying, ‘I worry about you, lass, here on your own at nights.’

  ‘I’m hardly on my own, Mother, with eight indoor staff and six still outside.’

  ‘Yes, that’s another thing. As Robbie was saying, feeding all this lot just to look after one person. But then I told him, it’s your own money and you can do what you like with it. By the way, when is the other one due back?’

  ‘Any time now, I think.’

  ‘I don’t know why he bothers. What are they going to do to him this time?’

  Agnes told herself to keep calm, so she said, ‘Grafting his lips again, I think.’

  ‘Well, he must be a devil for punishment, for from what I understand it’s a painful business, any grafting. And what can it do for him, after all? Because it’s the skin, isn’t it? It’ll always be in patches. Will he start coming back? I mean, after Charles died he…he came quite a bit, didn’t he? As Robbie said at the time, he looked as if he was sorry he had let the place go, I mean, passed it over like, because he seemed to have got used to coming out. But then, as he said, he never made the journey in the daytime.’

  ‘Robbie seems to say a lot, doesn’t he, Mother?’

  ‘Well, don’t snap at me, lass; he’s all I’ve got to talk to…’

  ‘And Jessie, of course, and Betty Alice and those down in the shop and the customers.’

  ‘Oh, you are in a way, aren’t you?’

  ‘No, Mother, I’m not in a way, as you term it, but I do get a bit tired hearing of Robbie’s opinion.’ And she could have added, ‘and he is the person you couldn’t stand because he was so common.’ It was odd how people changed, and yet fundamentally not at all, because underneath her mother was the same person that she had grown up with. That part of her character was still dominant. No; leopards didn’t change their spots. Here and there some might fade, even enough to deceive the onlooker into thinking it was they who had been in the wrong and misjudged the poor animal.

  She closed her eyes tightly and turned away, asking herself what was wrong with her. Time and again now, she would find her thoughts dissecting phrases or applying them to different people. It had been Jessie when she last visited the shop. Jessie too had changed, for she was acting now as if she had always owned the place; in fact, that she had created the business and forgetting it was only through her kindness that she was there at all.

  She saw her mother to the door and into McCann’s care, for he, as usual, was to see her to the bottom of the road and onto a bus. Their parting was cool.

  When she returned to the drawing room she found that she was shivering, yet the room was warm, even hot. A huge fire was blazing in the wide open grate and as she dropped onto the couch opposite to it and lay back, her lips were drawn in between her teeth and her eyes tightly closed as she said to herself, ‘Never! Never will I go back there.’

  After a moment she sat upright. Why was she blaming her mother for changing? Surely the biggest change had been in herself. All the time Charles had been alive she had never felt as if this house was home. There had been times when she longed to be in those rooms above the shop; but since his going she had been unable to bear the thought that she would leave here. At the same time, however, it was also an unbearable thought that she would spend the remainder of her life without a purpose: starting the day by giving orders to Mrs Mitcham; then walking round the garden, looking at the livestock; forcing herself to eat meals that she didn’t want; having to be polite all the time; not to raise one’ s voice when one saw something that was being done that shouldn’t be done, or something that wasn’t done that should have been, and the thing becoming a habit and acceptable, such as Mary Tyler’s picking up hidden parcels of food on her day off. She had inadvertently come across her doing this as she was going out by the west gate. Having been walking through the woodland she had been out of Mary’s sight. And so she had made it her business to be there on Mary’s next day off. The same thing happened. Then why, she asked herself, hadn’t she done something about it? Because someone else on the staff was likely in the know and she didn’t want to cause ripples in the household. After all, what was a parcel of food? She could have laughed about it with Charles, but Charles was no longer there.

  For the first few weeks after Charles’ death, Reg had come in the evenings; and on two occasions when there was a storm he had stayed and slept in his own room. But she hadn’t seen him now for nearly a month. Had he still been in the hospital she could have visited him; but for the last operation he had gone down to some place near the South coast; there was a man there, she understood, working wonders with plastic surgery.

  It was about ten minutes later when McCann tapped on the door and came into the drawing room, saying brightly, ‘She caught the bus, ma’am, and it’s starting to snow again. Shall I draw the curtains, ma’am?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, please, McCann. It gets dark so quickly.’

  After drawing the curtains he attended to the fire, banking the sides up with logs of wood while leaving the middle glowing and saying as he did so, ‘There’s nothing like a wood fire, is there, ma’am?’

  ‘No, it’s very comforting.’

  ‘Will you be having dinner in the dining room tonight or would you like it served in here?’

  ‘It would be nice in here, McCann, thank you. But tell Mrs Mitcham I’m not very hungry; I had rather a big lunch.’

  ‘Oh, Mrs Mitcham wouldn’t agree with you there, ma’am. As she says, you hardly eat enough to feed a sparrow, but nevertheless I’ll tell her.’

  Alone again, she looked about her. The room was filled with silence; even the fire wasn’t crackling. Fallen snow always brought silence with it, muffling sound, cocooning darkness: the night could never be night when it was snowing. And the snow had crept into her. It was numbing her body and her mind.

  She seemed to startle herself when she sprang up from the couch. She would go and change. She had got into the habit of changing for dinner. Charles had never
hinted that she should do so, but she knew it was the thing to do in a house like this and she knew he had been pleased when she formed the habit. But there were times now when she didn’t bother to change. Tonight, however, she must change. She must do something. If only, she told herself, she had a friend, a woman friend. Strange that, she hadn’t a woman friend. It was also strange that she could probably have one in Elaine, because they had taken to each other, the times they had met. But now Elaine was living a new life, and happily so.

  As she was passing through the hall she thought: if only I could go into the kitchen and sit and talk with them. But that would have embarrassed them. Yet Charles had been able to do that. He would sit on the edge of the table and sample Cook’s cakes. She had even seen her smack his hand away as she had been wont to do when he was a boy.

  What would she put on? Something warm. It would have to be dark though. But why should it have to be dark? She had been in black for three months. Charles wouldn’t have wanted her to be in black at all, but, as her mother had said, there was such a thing as respect.

  There was that plum-coloured velvet. Yes, she’d put that on. She’d always liked that. It was of the quality that Mrs Bretton-Fawcett would have worn. Charles had helped to choose it from a shop in Harrogate…

  McCann wheeled in her dinner on a service trolley, and he reported back, first to the kitchen and then to Mrs Mitcham’s room, that the mistress was dressed in that velvet plum affair, the one with the full skirt. The immediate reaction to this news was, ‘Oh, that’s good,’ although Mrs Mitcham did add, ‘It used to be a full year at one time; but then, things are changing. Nothing has been the same since the war.’

  Agnes had reached the lemon mousse when she heard voices in the hall, and she almost choked on a mouthful of the pudding, while she commanded herself to stay where she was: ‘Sit still,’ she said.

  She had the spoon in her hand and was looking towards the door when he opened it, saying, ‘Hello, there.’

  She was on her feet now going towards him. She still had the spoon in her hand and she said, ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m all right. How are you? What are you going to do with that spoon?’

  ‘Oh.’ She looked at the spoon and laughed; then, turning back towards the trolley, she made the obvious remark, ‘I was just finishing dinner.’

  She looked at him again. His top lip was fuller; his lower had a new fullness and shape too.

  ‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘I wonder if there’s any left?’ He pointed to the meal.

  ‘Oh, yes, yes. Oh, here’s McCann.’ She now called down the room. ‘The Colonel would like something to eat, McCann. Can you fix it?’

  ‘Certainly. Certainly. It will be ready in a few minutes, sir.’

  When the door had closed they both sat down on the couch, and now she asked quietly, ‘When did you get back?’

  ‘Oh—’ He seemed to think a moment, then said, ‘Wednesday.’

  Today was Friday.

  As if reading her thoughts he said, ‘I’ve been very busy rearranging my life.’

  ‘Oh. That sounds interesting.’

  ‘Well, it all depends. Anyway, I’ll tell you all about it when I’ve had something to eat, a really decent meal. You know, they don’t know how to cook down south; and they don’t do much better up here, either. That’s something I’m going to put to the next committee. They have no imagination in that kitchen, you know, where food is concerned. They change the menu every week, but it’s only back to front: the second week they start with the pudding!’

  She was meant to laugh, but she couldn’t. She had an overwhelming urge to cry, not with sadness…but with what? She couldn’t answer, except she felt a sort of relief. But why?

  Her voice was quiet now as he asked, ‘How’ve you been?’

  She wanted to say, ‘Lonely,’ but instead she said, ‘Missing him.’

  He turned and looked into the fire and nodded towards it as he said, ‘Well, that’s natural. Have you been down to the shop; I mean, stayed there?’

  ‘No.’

  He turned to her again. ‘You mean you’ve been here on your own all this time?’

  ‘Yes. Where else would I be?’

  ‘But…but you indicated when I last saw you that you would go down and stay with your mother.’

  ‘Did I? I don’t remember.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, you know you did. Have you visited them?’

  ‘Once or twice.’

  ‘And they?’

  ‘They’ve been up here once or twice.’

  ‘Aggie.’ He bent his head towards her now. ‘When people say once or twice, you don’t know whether it’s four or five times, or what.’

  ‘Well, it hasn’t been four or five times, either way.’

  ‘And you’ve been here on your own?’

  ‘Well, Reg, where on earth would I be but here, if I wasn’t at the shop? We sold the cottage, you know.’

  The door opened and McCann entered bearing a heavily laden tray, and when he went to put it on the side table Reg said, ‘Bring it over here, McCann. Put it on top of the trolley.’ He now lifted Agnes’ half-finished pudding, saying, ‘Mrs Farrier won’t want to finish that, I’m sure.’ Then when the cover dishes were lifted he sniffed and said, ‘That smells good. Thank Cook for me, will you, McCann?’

  ‘I’ll do that, sir. And what would you like to drink, sir?’

  ‘Oh, a light wine if you have it.’ He glanced at Agnes, and she, looking at McCann, said, ‘And bring some port up too, please, McCann.’

  Watching him eat, she noticed as she had never done before that all his teeth were still perfect, but that the checkered skin on his face hardly moved.

  They spoke little during the time in which it took him to eat the meal, but now and again his eyes smiled at her. When he finished he said, ‘I was ready for that. This weather gives one an appetite…’

  Half an hour later, the remains of the meal cleared away, a glass of port to his hand on a wine table, they were still seated side by side on the couch, and after a longish silence, he said, ‘This is nice. It recalls old times.’

  ‘Before my time?’

  He did not turn his glance as he replied, ‘Yes, before your time, Aggie. Days long ago in a different life, in a different world. One wants to say the past doesn’t matter, it’s what happens now that’s important. And that’s right too, because the past only lives in our memories. It is the present that one has to take into account, the day, the hour, the minute. That’s all we live in, you know, the present minute…Do you think we could be friends, Aggie?’

  She was startled, so much so that she swivelled round on the couch and when she met his gaze she repeated, ‘Friends? I…well, I thought we were, in a way.’

  ‘Never acknowledged. I want to be able to think we are friends, that you know we are friends. That’s all I ask, no more, never no more. Do you know those words of Byron? “Friendship is love without his wings’’.’

  The colour seemed to be flooding up through her body, right to the roots of her hair. She gave him no answer as to whether she did or not, and after a moment he said, ‘A month ago, before I knew that I was going down south to have this done—’ He tapped his lip, then added, ‘An improvement, isn’t it?’

  Still she didn’t answer; and now he went on. ‘Well about then, I was going to ask if you would like to take a lodger for three days a week. You see I have taken on this remedial business with the fellows back there. That was three times a week. But what was I going to do with myself for the rest of the time? And especially now that I’d made the break into the outer world again, at least into a sheltered part of it, such as here.’ He spread his hand out. ‘I’d noticed, too, on my short trips, a little laxity in the yard. This happens, you know, when there’s not a man about the place. And so, I wondered if you would like me to come back for a time, until you got really on your feet again. Charlie’s going obviously knocked you for six, and it did me, too. I didn’t think of the pr
oprieties because, as I said to myself, who would bother with proprieties when they saw me?’

  Now she did speak. ‘Don’t say things like that, please!’

  ‘All right, all right, don’t upset yourself. Anyway, I’m putting my application in again. Would you like me to come back? You could try it for a short time until you make up your mind what you are going to do with your life. You know, you just can’t sit on your backside here all day, moping. And by the look of you that’s what you are doing. Do you want to go back to the shop?’

  ‘No. No, I don’t want to go back to the shop, ever.’

  ‘I’m glad of that. Yet I had an idea that your mother was in favour of your selling up here.’

  ‘She has nothing to do with my life. I have no intention of selling anything. And, I’ll say it now, I don’t consider this place mine, although strangely I’ve come to like living here. I still think of it as yours, and I’d be very happy to transfer it back to you any day.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing; and I don’t want it back. But, as you once said, there is already a walled garden and the rest of it can be walled; it could be the extent of my world for half the week. I feel, though, I must keep up my connection with the hospital. I’ve talked it over with Willett. He likes the idea. Of course, I’ll likely have to go in for another patching sometime. That will be up to me. We’ll see. I don’t think they can do much more. Anyway, what do you think?’

  She didn’t answer but pulled herself up from the couch and stood with her back to him, and he, rising too, leant towards her and, putting his hand on her shoulder, turned her round, saying, ‘Oh, my dear. Oh, for God’s sake, don’t cry, Aggie! Please. Please.’ Abruptly now he took his arm away and stepped towards the fire, saying, ‘For God’s sake! Aggie, don’t. I can’t stand your crying.’