by Anna Gilbert
He smiled, remembering her delight as she came out of the shade into the sunlight – delight at having found him there – and how she had stood, feet among the daisies, head in air, as if waiting to hear the airborne music he had promised. It must end on a high note. The thought pleased him. He went quickly back to the house. There was nothing he needed. He got into his car and without a farewell backward glance drove off to Howlyn.
CHAPTER XXI
The day was warm, a spring day with all the features that poets love: blossom, bird-song and the indescribable sweetness in the air that seems both new and long familiar. Seated on the base of a vanished column in the south transept, Margot had her back to the priory wood. She used to look that way, hoping he would come.
The thrush in the cherry tree stopped singing and presently the blackbird on the gatehouse piped a few tentative notes. They had both preferred blackbirds. Miles said that thrushes were classicists, formal and self-assured, whereas blackbirds were romantic, striving after the unattainable, She had agreed; and now the plaintive phrases of a song left unfinished were as sad as they were sweet.
What had possessed her to leave him like that without a word? He had called after her and she had left him desolate with only a few more hours to live – and then no life at all. There would have been time to go back and find some way – some words – to make things better. It was too late now.
Since she had heard the news two days ago she had been tormented by the thought that in leaving him like that she had driven him too far. They said there had been mist and low cloud over the Cumbrian mountains and although he was more than competent, he was not yet used to sudden changes in visibility. If he had intended never to come back, he had left no sign, no message. Yet, she felt in her heart that he had meant it to happen, that life had been too much for him to manage alone. He was not equal to its awful realities.
She heard the back door of the Hall open and close. Toria was coming through the garden and up the hill to find her. There was no escape. In Toria’s movements there was always a relentless quality. She came near and stopped, deliberately, as if the purpose of her entire life had been to arrive at that spot and at that time. She had something in her hand. The post? She must write to Alex. He would be devastated by the news. Being so far away made things worse. When the news of their mother’s death had reached him he had gone out into the bush alone and, as he wrote ‘got through it somehow’. As he grew older his language was becoming simpler.
Toria sat down on a portion of what was left of the south wall. There was no barrier between them. When Ewan brought the news, Margot was alone in the house and it was Toria who told her. She had little to say but she had supplied a rock-like reliability that was better than sympathy.
‘This is for you,’ she said, when she had sat for a while without speaking. She indicated the object she held but didn’t part with it. ‘Mr Rilston asked me to give it to you.’
‘Do you mean Miles?’ There was no other Mr Rilston. There was now no Mr Rilston at all. The long line had come to a sudden end on the grey screes of the mountain above Wastwater. ‘How could that be when he…?’
‘I went to see him.’
‘When?’
‘Just after you saw him.’
She had set off for Bainrigg before Margot did and with the same intention, to see Mr Rilston. The news of his engagement had alarmed her. She had been wrong in waiting instead of speaking to him when Ewan first told her of Miss Grey’s intentions. It might now be too late. Hearing Margot at some little distance behind her in the wood, she had diverged to a higher path and waited there – it was not long – until Margot came back and was met by Dr Lance.
‘Why did you want to see him?’ Margot had listened with growing anger. ‘What possible reason could you have?’
‘There was something I thought he ought to know.’
‘You thought! You don’t mean…?’ Surely there was only one thing Toria was in a position to tell. ‘You promised not to tell. Didn’t you realize that it would distress him? In fact you may have been responsible for.…’ She stopped just in time. ‘I had grieved him enough. If I had behaved differently he might have been happy – it couldn’t have been for long.’
‘You’re wrong about what I had to tell him. I promised not to, didn’t I? In any case I don’t want those words nor even her name ever to pass my lips again. It’s not for me to wreak vengeance on her. That’s in higher hands. The truth about her will come out in time without another word from me, and from what I hear it’s coming out already.’
Margot’s brief anger left her. Toria’s interference was preposterous, whatever form it had taken, but she had had good reason to resent Linden who had been responsible for her relapse into vagrancy. Burdons’ had been the only home she had: no wonder she bore a grudge. Except that there had always seemed a peculiar intensity in her resentment as if from some other unknown cause.
She herself had now cause for even deeper resentment. Grieving for Miles, she had been mercifully free from thoughts of Linden as if subconsciously avoiding the latest demonstration of her baneful influence, the most cruelly effective of her lies. Now, to be reminded of her was to feel unable to think of her as a normal, if flawed, human being. But what else could she be? With a tremor she recognized as superstitious, Margot turned with relief to Toria whose humanity was not in doubt.
‘You had something else to tell him?’
‘It was for your sake, to bring you and him together again. I knew he could not love her: I knew her too well for that. She had inveigled him as she nearly did Mr Alex. What I did was for the best but I judged wrong. I grieve for it. The only comfort is that with her there would be only misery for him. But it doesn’t do to interfere in people’s lives. We’re all in higher hands.’
It was a lesson Margot too was beginning to learn.
‘What I told him made him happy, I do know that.’ Toria’s whole aspect had softened. ‘But what it may have led to – I don’t know. I told him you loved him.’
It was outrageous. No one else in the world would have behaved in such a way. Margot’s indignant protest would have been justified but not for the first time Toria’s ability to sweep aside the trivial silenced her. Toria dealt only in essentials whether lofty or base.
‘It was true, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, it was true.’
‘When I said it, his face lit up. He was suddenly at peace. “I understood that there was someone else”, he said. “No”, I told him, “only you”. I haven’t often seen happiness in a man’s face, much less been the one to bring it, but I saw it then. “If only I’d known”, he said. “If only I’d been sure”. Then when I was leaving him he said, “I have nothing to give her – except this”. He took it out of his pocket. “Give her this with my dearest love”.’ Toria held out the envelope. ‘I waited to give it to you. You haven’t been wanting to see anyone.’
‘It’s a roll of film.’
And when, a few days later, Margot opened the packet of photographs, she saw again the gate by the ash tree where they had parted for the first time; the stone-pit full of last year’s flowers; the priory ruins taken from the edge of the wood. (He had come as far as that.) She kept them to herself until she felt calm enough to show them to Toria.
‘And this one of you, Miss Margot. It’s the most beautiful photograph I ever saw in my life.’
‘He never saw it.’
‘But he saw you looking like that. Looking at him like that.’
Had he understood that it was love for him that made her look like that? In the moment of meeting she had felt the thrill of pure happiness in loving which no other thrill can equal, and had seemed to see it mirrored in his face. And that was all: the recognition of mutual love instantly doomed. Such ecstasy could not have lasted but need it have been so brief, so ruthlessly ended in the absolute finality of death?
She sat for a long time with the photograph in her hand. It told her how she had appeared to him and
for the last time. But straining every resource of memory to picture him as he had looked at her, she could only hear his voice calling her name – and remember that she had walked away without answering or looking back.
The spring days crept by. The blackbird practised daily and perfected its song, a threnody for first love. Regret for what might have been was slow to fade. After a time she put the photographs away with his letters. It was to be years before she would look at them again without heart-ache.
CHAPTER XXII
Jane Bondless had grown used to the unpredictability of circumstances and the futility of planning too far ahead. Miss Crane never recovered from the illness which had kept her in Cannes, but lingered month after month, while at Bourton-on-the-Water, Constance Bondless dealt single-handed with the purchase and restoration of the house they had chosen. And the room Margot had painstakingly prepared at Langland Hall remained empty.
Consequently Edward’s plan was executed in reverse. Jane could not come to England; instead Margot went to Cannes. Her low spirits and languor after Miles’s death had alarmed her father who had not realized the closeness of their attachment. It may have been a word of warning from Toria Link that drove him in sudden panic to take Margot to Cannes himself. They arrived within twenty-four hours of his telegram.
‘You’re the most sensible woman I know,’ he told Jane. ‘You’ll know what to do.’
She knew there was nothing to be done but wait for the change of scene, fresh company and a share in looking after Miss Crane to have a healing effect. Margot grew fond of the old lady and stayed until she died in the following July – then helped with the sad final arrangements and the closing of the apartment. When she and Jane were free to go home, they were reluctant to part and Jane was persuaded to make a short visit to Langland before joining her sister: a welcome spell of leisure in which she had ample time for letter-writing.
Langland Hall
19 August, 1931
Dear Connie
You were right – up to a point. There is everything here to supply the background of one of Mrs Radcliffe’s or Bram Stoker’s novels: a ruined priory with at least one hooting owl; an old house, rather dark with rambling passages, cavernous cellars and seven unoccupied bedrooms (there may be more) – situated in open country merging into moorland where heather is in full bloom.
So much for the setting. The characters have strayed from a different milieu. Not a trace of Dracula in Edward Humbert. He is kind, preoccupied – a clever forehead (you know I always notice foreheads) – much saddened since I saw him last – and older. Aren’t we all?
My room is charming: a bay overlooking the garden, pale chintzes, a traditional local quilt in white honeycomb; and Margot has converted the dressing-room that opens off it into a tiny sitting-room where I am writing this.
James Pelman met us at Elmdon station and brought us here. He asks to be remembered to you. I told him that you hadn’t forgotten those holidays in Cornwall long ago when he was always the one to come to the rescue in emergencies. Remember when you were stuck halfway up – or halfway down Ebb Cliff? I gather that Lance is very like his father.
The two couples who have the smallholdings, the Todds and Amblers, produce fresh vegetables, home-grown tomatoes and marrows and we have abundant eggs and goat’s milk. Edward was quite touchingly pleased when I told him how much I enjoyed such luxuries. Apparently there were tremendous difficulties when he first took over the Hall, but in the hands of Mrs Beale, the housekeeper, things now run very smoothly. In fact I’m not needed here and thanks to dear Miss Crane’s generosity I need never work for my living again. But I have promised to stay on as a guest for a week or two. Margot and I are going to find it hard to part with each other: we have got on so well together.
Has Jobson finished repairing the wall under the bathroom window? There’s no point in ordering a carpet for the sitting-room until he has renewed those floorboards, but you could be looking at samples. A soft green? Bluish, not yellowish.
More later.
My love,
Jane.
P.S. I must just add – there is one person here who matches the setting: a rather daunting woman, in her forties, I should guess, known as Toria Link. Why did I put it like that? Toria is her name, short for Victoria, I suppose. Too old to be a tweenie but a sort of woman of all work. Even Mrs Beale treats her with caution. I believe she is devoted to Margot. The interesting thing is that she reminds me of someone – I can’t think who. A long pale face, deadly serious, like one of the awe-stricken onlookers in an oil-painting of a massacre or a shipwreck. I’m sure she has a history.
Having finished her letter, Miss Bondless found Margot in the garden and they walked down to Fellside to the post office. The late August day was warm, their pace leisurely. Although they had been together for the best part of a year – perhaps because of that – there was much to talk about.
‘If only Mother could have known how well things have turned out! How comfortably for Father, I mean. Mrs Beale has been a godsend.’
When in the previous autumn Mrs Rilston left for Cheltenham and Bainrigg House was closed, Mrs Beale lost no time in transferring herself to Langland Hall. It was well known that Mr Humbert was in need of a housekeeper and even before Mr Miles’s tragic death, Mrs Beale had had no intention of remaining at Bainrigg under the new Mrs Rilston, of whom strange things were being said in the village. It couldn’t possibly be true that Mr Miles’s fiancée had been involved in some way in the death of that girl whose body was found in the Lucknow Chimney, but neither could one take orders from the sort of person of whom such things were said. Her arrival at Langland, bringing with her Jenny and Elsie, had put Margot’s mind at rest. But now—
‘I hadn’t realized how different it would be. I feel like a guest in my own home.’
‘A pleasant feeling, surely.’
‘It doesn’t feel right, especially after having been idle for so long.’
‘You did think of taking up your studies again. You would have time now.’
Time, but no inclination to retreat into the byways of history. The long holiday had itself been a retreat; the sunshine and palms, the outdoor cafés and well-to-do people with time on their hands already seemed unreal, all the more so in contrast to Fellside with its Co-operative store and the headstock and chimney of its colliery. Men were coming out of the pit gates at the end of a shift, faces blackened with coal dust, eyes and lips black-rimmed and strangely pale.
‘Good God! How do they stand it? One has to see them like this to realize what it does to them.’
‘It was drummed into us as children. “Never forget that the comfort we enjoy depends on men working a thousand feet underground in seams no higher than this table, for eight hours a day”. It used to be longer.’
‘That must have curbed your youthful appetites. But your father was right: personally I shall never feel the same about stirring a fire.’
‘You’re back home then, Miss Margot.’
One of the men had stopped. It was a moment before she recognized him.
‘Ewan! How are you? Father told me that you had left us.’
He was thinner, his features taut and more firmly defined.
‘It was a good life at the Hall but I was getting soft.’ Despite the long shift underground Ewan spoke with energy. ‘I told Mr Humbert – I want to get to grips with the workers’ struggle against the capitalist exploitation of labour. “You can’t do it on your own”, he said, “and you need education and experience”.’
The upshot was that under Mr Humbert’s guidance he had applied for one of the Mineworkers’ Training Schemes. It involved work underground and attendance at the Elmdon Technical College.
‘I’ll have a certificate and maybe get a Union job some day. As I see it now if you want justice in the world you have to fight for it. We want to see these pits nationalized instead of run to fill the pockets of the likes of Laverborne. And we want to get more working men into Parliament.
’ In his blackened face his eyes shone; his lips, pallid pink, were eloquent.
‘Come on, Ewan lad.’ A hand was clapped on his shoulder. ‘Get off your soap box or you’ll miss the bus.’
‘I’d better be pushing off.’
‘Come and see us, Ewan. And remember me to your mother.’ And, when he had gone, ‘I’ve never seen him so happy. I wonder what can have changed him.’
‘He’s found an aim in life.’
‘Toria will miss him.’
‘They were friends?’
‘In a strange sort of way. I remember her saying that he had a good heart.’ At that time there had been little sign of it.
‘There’s something familiar about her as if I’d seen that face somewhere else.’
They walked home in companionable silence, Jane teased by a resemblance she could not place, Margot dismayed to find herself envying Ewan and wishing that she too could have an aim in life.
‘Ewan was right,’ she said, as they sat down to lunch. ‘Life can be too soft and easy. I don’t want it to be like that.’
She had the impression that Jane was not listening. Since there were just the two of them, the meal was informal and it was Toria who brought in the omelette. Her stately manner certainly commanded attention: Jane’s eyes never left her until the door closed behind her.
‘She’s beginning to haunt me. I expected to find a ghost or two at Langland but not the ghost of somebody I’ve forgotten.’
But the face with its high cheekbones and deep-set eyes was too striking to be that of a ghost – unless the ghost of a martyr perhaps. It was unlikely that in all her varied experience she had seen the woman before. It must be that she was like someone else, or the woe-begone yet forceful countenance, as she had suggested to Connie, was such as an artist might choose as the prototype of suffering womanhood, to include in a painting, the subject a catastrophe of some kind. She could have seen a similar face looking out from a canvas in a gallery or some civic building.