“He didn’t hate you. Nobody does. Nobody can.”
“Somebody does. Every day since I’ve been home, every hour, I feel two minds like two pairs of hands, pulling me in opposite directions. Two pairs of eyes, watching me from different places. One is for me, the other against. Is one of them myself? I listen at doors. I take sentences apart and look for hidden meanings. I try to question Mrs. Tench about my childhood. Could I have hurt my father when I was a child? Is that why he, why I—“ I stopped because of his miserable face. “Never mind, Mike. I was only talking. That was hurt talk, it doesn’t mean anything. I was only—”
“Blowing your top?”
“That’s it Can’t we go now? I’ve seen all I wanted to see. And I do thank you, Mike.”
“Sure we can go. Where to? Lunch? The club has music on Thursdays.”
Thursday. Until that minute I had forgotten it was Thursday. Thursday, the one day in the week when I could be alone in the house, the only day, and I had never taken advantage of it Standing with Mike in that miserable shack, I began to make my plans.
They had no definite form, not then. They were plans for an afternoon of freedom; for thinking, for wandering, for being alone. I told myself I would do the things I had always wanted to do, I would look for my childhood in the house where I was born. I found it. And I found two other children hiding behind the years; two little girls like me, a child named Katy and another one whose name I have forgotten. I found them in the convent garden, whispering a story. They brought the garden to my father’s room this afternoon and whispered as they used to. They told me the same story they had told me years ago, a story about a house. I think they came because they knew I would need that story, soon. I needed it tonight; I will need it again tomorrow.
Standing in the shack, I answered Mike. “I can’t lunch today, Mike. You’ve just reminded me of something. Thursday is the servants’ half-day and we lunch early. Mother and I have dinner with the cousins. Tench drives us all in. The old ritual, remember?”
He was satisfied.
When I turned at the door for a last look, I saw the gold pencil. It was lying in a corner, waiting to be found. I knew what it was before I picked it up; I knew what the engraving said: Love to Father from Isabel. I had saved for it when I was twelve and given it to him for Christmas. I put it in my dress pocket, and Mike looked away. But Tray watched me through the open door, grinning.
“The cousins are right,” I said to Mike. “He does grin.”
Mike left me at the entrance to our drive, and I walked to the house with Tray beside me. I knew what I was going to do and say...Was that only this morning?
It was nearly one o’clock when I entered the house, and Anna met me at the door. I know now she wanted to talk, but Mother called to me from the dining room, and I went in.
Mother was reading letters and jotting notes on the backs of envelopes. She looked up with a frown that changed at once into a smile. “Oh, dear, that yellow frock! Really, Isobel, I do think—”
“I’m not in mourning,” I said. “Not any more. Please, Mother.”
“You mean it depresses you?”
“Yes, Mother.”
“So that has been your trouble. I wish you had told me before. How was your drive? Was it fun? Did you see anyone we know?”
“No, Mother. We kept to the country lanes because we had Tray with us.”
Anna, handing me salad, knocked the wooden spoon to the floor.
“Anna,” Mother said, “well serve ourselves. You needn’t wait. And tell Tench I want the car at three. Also, I expect you to be ready to leave when I am, all of you. No more of that silly quarreling, or sulking, or whatever it was that I heard this morning. I’ve a thousand small errands today and too little time for them. Three o’clock, Anna.” She returned to her envelopes and penciled notes.
I watched a column of small, neat figures grow and mentally rehearsed the first lie I had ever told her. Mother, Mrs. Barnaby wants me for dinner tonight. She sent word by Mike. I’d love to go. The cousins won’t miss me. Please say yes.
Mother added, frowned, and added again. She jabbed and dug, crossed out and rewrote, until the pencil broke between her firm little fingers and she flung it aside. “Let it go,” she said. “I don’t like summing up.” She was laughing at herself, quietly. I couldn’t laugh then.
“Will tins help?” I slid the gold pencil across the table.
At first she didn’t recognize it. “No, but thank you, dear. I’m afraid nothing can help me. I’d hoped to find a new fur coat at the bottom of that column, but it looks as though I must wait a month or two.” Then: “My dear child, wasn’t that your father’s?”
“Yes. It was a present from me. He lost it and I found it.”
“Then by all means use the pretty thing if it gives you pleasure. Isobel, you’ll change your frock before we leave, wont you? I understand, but the poor cousins, you know, might not.”
I told my lie. “Mother, Mrs. Barnaby wants me for dinner tonight She sent word by Mike.” I told it easily and elaborately. “The cousins wont miss me. Its you they really want.”
“Its you Lucy Barnaby wants!” She sat with her chin cupped in her hands. “Lucy Barnaby thinks I’m a selfish mother; she’s as transparent as a child. And she knows quite well this is our evening at the cousins’. Isobel, shall we give a little dinner ourselves and show old Lucy Barnaby I’m not a jailer?”
“I don’t know, Mother. But she asked me there for tonight. I’d love to go.”
“Oh, that! Yes, of course you may go. My poor little girl, does a small thing like that please you so much?”
I had reached out and taken her hand. “I’ve been lonely,” I said. That was all I dared to say, and it was true.
“I know. I’ve watched you and grieved for you.” She said nothing of her own grief and her sleepless nights. “And I know you miss your little friends at school. We brought you home to a strange house, my dear, but your father wanted it so.”
“I’d like to give the house to you, Mother.”
“Give it? This house? To me? My dear child, you are very generous and sweet, but it isn’t yours to give, not yet. Not until your birthday. Well wait and see how we feel about it then. Now!” She reached for the gold pencil. “For the present, a little party, en famille. Why didn’t I think of that before? It’s high time we gave some thought to you, conventions to the contrary. I never did believe in outward mourning, but the poor cousins—
However, I can talk them over to my way of thinking. The prospect of an unexpected dinner—“ She was both laughing and sober. “I think I need this little party, too. It will give me something to do.”
“Yes, Mother.”
“A pretty table, cards later, perhaps a little music. Tomorrow? Yes, tomorrow. Why wait? I can see the cousins’ faces!” She rolled the pencil between her fingers. Her eyes clouded. “I haven’t seen this for weeks,” she said softly. “It hurts. He always carried it I thought he had it with him when—”
“No. I found it.”
“So you told me.” The new mood left as the old one returned. She moved envelopes about the table as if they were cards. She drank her coffee in sips, as if it were the evening port She was back in the circular room, on that night waiting and watching the windows. I wanted to cry for the pain she was hiding from me.
“The dinner, Mother,” I said. “If it will tire you, don’t do it just for me.”
She stood up slowly, gathering her envelopes, not returning the pencil. “I’m doing it for myself, too,” she said. “Don’t forget that.” She touched my cheek as she passed my chair. “Give Lucy Barnaby my love. I’ll said her a note in the morning.” She walked firmly from the room.
The rest of the day and the early evening would be mine, in an empty house. I was planning, alone, when Anna came into the dining roan.
Anna came to dear the table, too quickly. I knew she had been listening at the service door. She was wearing her holiday hat to prove that
she was early and everyone else was late. Her eyes were red. “You didn’t eat anything,” she said. “You messed your food around the plate. That fools your mother, but it don’t fool me. There’s people in this world that would give their lives for what you waste. You’re the same as somebody else I could mention but won’t. Well, I’m ready to start, but I don’t see anybody else. No names, of course.”
“Is anything wrong in the kitchen, Anna?”
“Wrong? What did she say to you about me after she sent me out of the room?”
“If you mean my mother, she said only what you heard yourself. Have you and Mrs. Tench had a quarrel?”
“Quarrel? Me? I never quarrel. Ada Tench is a second cousin on my father’s side, and I never let myself forget it. But I have rights like anybody else. I have my own work, and I do it. I don’t ask anybody to do it for me. Ada may be my senior and twenty dollars a month more, but I don’t need her help.”
“What help, Anna?”
“Who brings your breakfast when you sleep late? I do. Did I bring it this morning? I didn’t. Why? You ask me that one. Why? I don’t want to say anything unless I’m asked outright.”
“But I know why. Mrs. Tench said you were worried about Tray.”
“Worried! That’s like her. I was having hysterics, if you call that worried. I was out of my mind, and she threatened to slap me in the face. Ada. She said if I so much as opened my big mouth again, I’d get fired. But I won’t get fired, because I’m not talking. You didn’t happen to hear me having hysterics?”
“No. Anna, will you give me some coffee, please?”
She filled my cup, her hand shaking, and leaned against the table. Anna is a tall, thin woman with hungry, craving eyes, unlike Mrs. Tench in every way. She should have married and had children to spoil Sick children. She collects young animals. Her kittens and lame squirrels overrun the stable. She has a cage of fallen birds in her room at the cottage. I don’t know how she finds so many.
“Anna, Mrs. Tench said you were upset because Tray wouldn’t eat his breakfast. Is that your trouble? Is that what you want me to ask you?”
“There, you did it! You asked! You wanted to know about your own breakfast, and I had to tell you!” She sat in my mother’s chair, forgetting herself. “Miss Isobel, when did you ever see hamburger in this house?” The words were absurd, but the look on her face wasn’t She was frightened. “If you make fun of me—”
“No, Anna, no. Don’t look like that. I missed you this morning, and I’m glad you’re talking to me now. What do you mean?”
“If you laugh—”
“I won’t laugh, I promise. I never laugh at odd things. Something odd happened this morning, didn’t it and Mrs. Tench doesn’t want you to tell me?”
She leaned forward, her elbows on the table, and whispered. “Listen. You listen. I’ve been watching you this past month. You can’t fool me, I’ve known you too long. I’ve been watching you for longer than a month, and I know you’ve been asking yourself questions in your mind the same as I have. You don’t talk to anybody; you keep to yourself; but you do your thinking just the same. Now that’s all I’m going to say about that. I’m not supposed to have good sense, according to some people, but I can see things, can’t I? Now you listen. You remember that morning?”
“Which morning?” But I knew.
“You know. After your father. That one. You remember about the bowl and the chain and the fresh meat?”
“I remember.”
“Did you ever think to do anything about that bowl and chain?”
“No. Why should I?”
“Did you think that dog walked into the five-and-ten with his money in his mouth and said to the girl, ‘Pease give me a water bowl and a nice chain, I got to tie myself up in the stable tonight because they think I’m burned alive?’ Do you think that?”
“I told you what happened, Anna. Someone found the dog on the road and brought him back. And took care of him.”
“Who did?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps one of the poor men down in the shacks. My father used to visit them. Did you know that?”
“I heard it.”
“He was sorry for them. He gave them food and talked to them. Maybe one of them took care of Tray.”
“Did one of them ever come forward and tell you so? That kind always comes forward; they want credit for a good deed. Credit and the hand stretched out to take it in cash.”
“I’m only guessing, Anna. Anyone could have done it. Tray’s name and address are on his license plate.”
“Have it your own way. You could be right and you couldn’t. I won’t argue that. But let’s hear you guess this one. You remember the night I locked that dog in the kitchen because the passage was cold? I did it out of pure kindness. I locked that door myself. Tench himself locked the windows earlier, like he always does. Everything was locked, locked, locked. And then what? Then in the morning himself is still locked in, but his coat is soaking wet and he’s got sand and gravel on his feet. Remember that?”
I drew back as far as I dared, pushed my chair away from the table. It was an old story but a new terror.
Her lips were dry, and she drank the water from my mother’s glass. “Don’t go,” she whispered. “I haven’t finished. You can’t go yet.”
“I won’t.”
“Listen. Now I’m coming to it I give him a bowl of milk every morning. He always had it before; your father said he was to have it I used to send it up to your father’s room, and he had it there. So now I give it to him myself, in the kitchen. He comes for it; he knows it’s there. Well, this morning he didn’t come. I called him, and he didn’t come. Then I went to look for him. I thought he was dead or something, I drought somebody’d poisoned him at last. But he wasn’t dead. He was sleeping in the furnace room, and he’d already had his breakfast. Some of it was still there, on the stone floor. Hamburger, raw, fresh. Good chopped round, good enough to cook and eat yourself. What’s your guess about that, Miss Isobel? We haven’t had any chopped meat in this house for weeks. Where did he get it? Did he walk out of the house again, it being locked, and go to the chain butcher with his money in his mouth and say, I want some chopped round, please? Five miles there and five miles bade?”
“He—he found it?”
“Where is there any place to find it?”
“The Barnabys’ cook—”
“No, I asked. I went over there myself and put it to that woman. I made her swear. They don’t have any hamburger either. Fresh meat that you could eat yourself.”
“It dropped out of a car, Anna. Anna, you’ve got to dear the table, it’s getting late.”
“Late? I’m ready. Listen. You know what I think?” Her face was as white as paper. “You remember how your father was, Miss Isobel? He wouldn’t eat what we brought him half the time. Like the dog. But he didn’t starve either. Like the dog. He got his food from somewhere else, too, only he didn’t leave it around for people to find. You know what I think? I think your father’s soul entered that dog.” She covered her face with her hands.
I leaned forward and watched the tears trickle through her fingers. I didn’t know my own voice when I heard it. I was whispering as she had. “I dare you tell that to your priest, Anna.”
She uncovered her face, and we looked deep into each others eyes.
“I dare you. I dare you tell that to your priest.”
“Do you want me to burn? I can’t tell, I can’t tell.”
“I dare you.”
“I’ll lose my own soul. Ill lose my faith. I’ve lost it.”
“Tell him and see what he says. Then tell me. I want to know what he says.”
“Hell say I’m lost”
“Ask him. Tell him. He may only say you’re crazy.” We drowned in each other’s eyes.
She said, “Are we?”
After lunch I sat in the circular room and waited for three o’clock. I sat in the circular room and held a piece of embroidery in my hands, an old-f
ashioned piece, clamped between wooden hoops. My convent work, disarming work, suitable to a loved and sheltered child. The bright silk skeins were on the table, my little stork scissors were beside the silk. I wore my gold thimble. I knew how I would look to anyone who passed the open door.
I knew what would happen at three. I knew the routine of the Thursday holiday. At three, Tench and Mrs. Tench and Anna would drive Mother to the village. They would call for her when they returned from town, late. The servants would shop, but this time Anna would slip away from the others. She would have a suitable excuse, and she would shop, too, for the sake of appearances. Anna would buy another kind of face cream, and Tench and Mrs. Tench would buy another savings bond. They believe in the future; they talk about it when they sit in their cottage at night. I’ve heard them, when I’ve stood under their window on the nights when I couldn’t sleep.
Mother would gossip all afternoon with the cousins. They believe in the past. They like to talk about the days when they all lived together in the little house in the village. ,
The cousins would entertain at the piano, one of them playing, another singing, another keeping time and turning the music. I’ve seen and heard them, too, sitting on the hassock that is called my hassock because it once was Mothers.
“Our dear old piano! Have you ever heard a better tone?”
“Here comes your favorite, Maude! Do you remember? Robin Adair. “What’s this dull town to me—Robin’s not near.’”
Mother would listen, shading her eyes with her hand, crying a little, thanking them when it was over.
At dusk Mother would say, “Something smells good, dears. I hope you haven’t gone to any trouble.”
“We’ve put the big pot in the little one for you, Maude dear. We found you a plump squab. A little chop for the rest of us, but we found you a plump squab.”
The House Page 4