by Molly Keane
Tears are such rotten behaviour, but a disgraceful warmth and ease followed them for me, and I knew a purpose, and a power to fulfil it, actually belonging to me and to nobody else. I was someone. I felt respect for myself and a sense of authority. I would dismiss Nurse, and I would have her out of the house and on the train to Dublin before Mummie left her studio. But I owed myself some ceremony in the act. I rang the bell and sent Breda to summons Nurse to the library. I arranged myself in Papa’s chair at the writing table, pen, ink, paper, tidy bundles of bank notes, a neat heap of silver, and my own aloof expression all set before she came coolly rustling in, fresh and pink-cheeked as the African lilies Mummie had left on a low table.
‘I suppose you thought we should have a little talk.’ She sat down, crossing her neat legs. I hadn’t asked her to sit down, and the only thing I could do about it was to stand up myself.
‘Is there anything for us to discuss, Nurse – except your wages and the time of the train to Dublin?’ My voice sounded frozen to me, light and disparaging. I don’t know where it came from.
‘My salary amounts to thirty-four pounds, six and eight. I can have my cases packed in ten minutes – and gladly.’
‘Yes,’ I said, still in the same voice. ‘Yes.’ I felt some pleasure in producing it. ‘Perhaps you’d like to count these notes.’
She accepted them from me. She counted them quickly. ‘Well. Thank you.’ She tucked my money warmly between her apron front and the bold blue stripes of her dress. ‘Will you be driving me to the station, Miss St Charles?’
‘I hope Tommy can take you.’ She still delayed. ‘Perhaps you should start packing.’
She turned back again from the door. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘you can’t name it, and I won’t name it. It’s a nasty name for a nasty thing.’
‘What are you talking about?’ I was surprised back into the use of my own voice.
‘That’s all I’m going to say. Only, if I was you—’
‘And if I were you I should get my suitcases packed as quickly as possible. I would rather hate you to miss your train.’
My rejoinder was both neat and dignified, but as she went out of the room a peculiar curiosity, an unspoken unpleasant surmise, stayed with me. It was as if her body, clean and fresh as pine needles, had left a smell behind it on the air, a clinging smell, which I would rightly ignore.
26
The wonderful thing that came out of my decision and sacrifice was Papa’s improvement. We all felt it like a radiance.
Rose had a nurse’s freedom with him now. She could warm his foot, or rub methylated spirit and powder into his heel or his bottom; she could give him clean sheets every day, and freshly ironed pyjamas sometimes twice a day. One guessed that a little accident had happened, but he never looked frightened or distressed, only amused and apologetic. Rose would soak him in eau-de-cologne, disparaging to nothing that sharpish tinge of ammonia. She would brighten and tidy him with almost professional dexterity, and leave him propped on clean pillows, scented and burnished. When she went away to see about tea, he would look after her longingly. Or perhaps, as he pushed up his moustache, he was looking longingly towards the door because Mummie was coming in. She would bring a little bunch of cyclamen or a freakish early sprig of daphne, anything that smelled sweet and strong when she pinched it or threw it on the fire.
Rose and I came in with the tea. Teatime with Papa had become a habit, now. Mummie was sitting on a low nursing chair near his bed. She was leaning back, away from him, miserably silent as he tried to tell her something. He was making a great effort.
‘I say, I say, I say,’ he was going on like a comic starting his patter, and Rose was just in time to share in his struggle. She put down the tray and leaned across his bed to straighten the blue bird’s-eye scarf in the neck of his blue silk pyjama coat, and to mop his mouth a little. ‘Beastly,’ he struggled on, ‘beastly, beastly . . .’
‘Yes, I know, darling. I’ve always thought so,’ Mummie answered at random, desperate for him to stop. When he lay back on his pillows like a stuffed doll, it was easier for her to sit quietly, and pinch on her verbena leaves and think of other times. But Rose, lifting him up as if she would shake words out of him, was living in the present, and lending him her strength for his effort.
‘What’s beastly, Major? Tell us, Major. You nearly had it.’
‘Beastly – cold – bathwater,’ he finished on a senseless note of memory. But not quite – Rose held the clue.
‘No more cold baths,’ she comforted him, ‘since her ladyship have went. And no more cups with spouts neither.’ She poured out his tea in a proper china cup and put in cream and sugar, both disapproved by Nurse, and fed him gently. She acted as though she had dispossessed his life of Nurse, while I had done it, and longed for him to know that it was my doing.
Mummie had been less than grateful when she heard of Nurse’s departure. ‘Gone? Without her wages?’
‘No. I paid her.’
‘You can’t have, without consulting me.’
‘I sold my yearling. I thought you’d be pleased.’
‘You are a remarkably poor judge of pleasure.’
‘Papa and Rose are delighted.’
‘Oh yes. Rose will have him all to herself now. Far too much for her.’
‘Dr Coffey thinks Rose and Tommy can manage.’
‘It will give Rose far too much to do,’ she said again. And then, with extreme distaste: ‘Who is going to hear him if he calls for “something” in the night?’
‘Can’t Rose sleep in the pink room, where Nurse slept?’
‘Not really.’
‘Why not?’
‘Oh, Aroon, would you kindly leave the matter to me. Haven’t you interfered about enough?’ She sounded more distressed and exasperated than actually angry.
I didn’t press on. I would wait. I felt stronger. It was not happiness that was growing in me, but it was some kind of reason and purpose. Perhaps I would be the one to undertake the grim discussion with Mr Kiely; he had almost suggested it. Four days later he did suggest it. A letter enclosing three tenpound notes and a five-pound note came for me, saying: ‘We got a nice little price, didn’t we? Your winnings herewith. Perhaps Mrs St Charles or yourself would drop into the office someday soon, to discuss the other matters.’
How to tell her, without saying he had written to me? Don’t tell her, don’t tell her anything. That became my strength and my stratagem. That was why I didn’t say that I knew for certain Rose was sleeping in the pink room every night now. If she didn’t have to know she would let matters take a course of their own. Rose knew that too. She had not asked for any direction about sleeping in the pink room. There she was and thank God she was, sleeping lightly, ever ready for his call, and competent in all necessities.
Soon I knew something else I was going to keep to myself. I knew the Crowhurst girls had gone away. I would let Mummie find it out. Although I could have told her this, I was learning to keep everything to myself now that I was a woman of means; no, a girl of means; no, a woman. You are a woman if you have had a lover in your bed as I have had. Poor things, always the Crowhurst ‘girls,’ and without any means.
‘I suppose you heard the Crowhurst girls did a midnight flit?’
I had gone to Mr Kiely’s office without Mummie, and with another great package of bills. He leaned across the wide top of his desk as if he would narrow the distance between us. I thought it would have suited his position in life better if he had sat upright. I was there on business. I had not come in for a gossip, or a cup of tea, or a cigarette, all of which I was offered.
‘Yes. They’re going to Husband’s Budsworth for a month or two,’ I said.
‘Not the address the post office has for forwarding letters,’ he corrected me. ‘I happen to have a little business to settle up for them. I sold their three-year-old.’
I wasn’t going to ask him about the business, but he had guessed rightly at the creep of curiosity in my mind.
‘T
hey’re terrors to make a deal –’ he laughed – ‘but they’re two great girls.’
‘Who feeds the dogs?’ My voice sounded tremulous to me; the news of their going was such bliss. Still, one had to show some concern for animals.
‘That tinker fellow they had around the horses; he goes in every day.’
‘Fancy leaving the tinker in charge,’ I said. ‘How sad.’
‘About your own little trouble.’ He whisked the papers in a cardboard file together. ‘I think we have the worst cases quietened for the present. They’ll wait on till they see how things go with the Major.’
‘My father is so much better.’ I felt a broad delight in being able to tell him this. It was my due. He did not look nearly as pleased as I expected.
‘Ah, well,’ he said, ‘there’s always a change in these cases.’
I put on my gloves before I said goodbye, and I gave him just the ends of the fingers. I had seen Mummie do that. It has a repelling effect.
‘Pleased with your win?’ he asked. I felt my face flare up. How had I forgotten to say thank you? And he had ignored my glove tips; he was shaking, no, holding, my hand beyond them. ‘Well,’ he let my hand go easily, ‘we must chance another little gamble.’
Irritated and confused, I stumbled out of the room. Why think of him at all? There were other, less irritating, matters to consider. The Crowhurst flight for instance. The reason I enjoy other people’s disasters is because they involve my understanding and sympathy in a way their successes never can – I like feeling genuine pity. Even when I know they are unworthy of my interest, I don’t think I am ever ungenerous to friends more unlucky than myself. I would have loved to go and see what the Crowhursts’ dear little house looked like, felt like, smelt like now.
27
Day by day Papa improved a little. His speech was better, although his mind and memory were still utterly confused. There was a touching quality in his polite acceptance of all his embarrassing dependence on Rose, and every day I was finding more comfort and order in my heart through my importance to him. I was the one who read aloud the racing correspondents.
‘That fool,’ he would say. And ‘No. No. No,’ to each of the selected runners. On the days when he was right in his contradictions we were absolutely triumphant. I thought how, when spring came, I would lead him about the place in the donkey-chaise. Papa would be pleased, and so should I. It would be delightful, taking him round like something in a pram.
I saw quite a vista of things I could do for Papa – plans and pleasures for which he would love me. Now and then I would tell him of these cheering prospects, but he did not always understand or even much look forward to them. For instance, when I planned for the future summer, days when I might drive him to the sea (in the car, of course, not in the donkey-chaise) and even envisaged the kind of sandwiches we might take with us, he grew quite fussed and angry.
‘No. No,’ he said. ‘Awful. Awful.’
‘But, Papa, think what fun. You could fish for mackerel from the pier.’
‘Shan’t.’ He looked at me in a very funny way. ‘She’d come for me.’ It was quite a long sentence. He really was improving.
I encouraged him to try further: ‘Who, Papa? Who would come for you?’
‘Whosit. Whosit—’ He seemed really upset. ‘Walkin’ on the water.’
‘You don’t mean Jesus, Papa?’
‘I know who I mean.’ He shut his eyes and didn’t say another word.
‘I could untangle your line.’ He only glared at me. ‘And if you felt like a little snooze in the car I could go and prawn the rock pools.’
‘Poor thing,’ he said distinctly.
‘No. I’d love it,’ I answered. ‘And we could buy fresh lobsters when the boats come in.’ I did so love fresh lobster. Their taste in my mind brought clearly into the present winter bedroom that day of clear September light when Richard and I ran between the cornfields and the sea: when I was so light on my feet, so sure in my wonder. The ends of my salty hair were in my mouth; his lean cold hand in mine. Now, with all my winter clothes heavy on me (it is the greatest nonsense that fat people don’t feel cold) I could sustain my truthful memories and fill the time till he came back to me, as he must. Then, of course, I would put my hand in his again, and drift lightly down the aisle beside him, dressed in white satin. (No. Parchment satin perhaps, for a big girl.) Hubert’s near grave, and Papa’s efforts to speak to us would be faraway things that day.
28
It was in November, when the hours light enough for painting were short, and the weather was always too wet or too frosty for gardening, and the restoration of the Crowhurst girls’ side-table as good as completed, that Mummie opened for herself a new occupation – a campaign for economy.
That was the morning when I was late in meeting the postman. Rose had called me to help her lift Papa while she changed his under sheet. When that was done, I hurried across the gallery to look down through the circle to see if Richard’s letter, or any letter, had come for me. I saw Mummie then, looking into the empty drawer, a bunch of unopened bills in her hand. She stood so still that I could see her breath sigh out, making a neat little haze as she looked and considered. Then she shut the drawer carefully – she was gently considerate to all furniture – and went floating down the length of the hall, the letters still in her hand, and lightly up the stairs.
‘Nothing for you,’ she said, as she passed me by. That was all for the moment. But at lunchtime it began. It began with the dogs’ dinners. The dogs’ food, meat and brown bread, soup and proper green food, was brought into the diningroom. Papa had always mixed up the dinners himself, sure of the correct quantities, and showing deference towards individual likes and dislikes. At times when he had an uninteresting guest beside him, or the talk was too boring, this rite provided him with a wonderful means of escape; it avoided bad manners, and it avoided the intolerable guest. We had no guests now. We did try to speak to each other a little, especially when Breda was in the room.
When the time came for me to mix up the dogs’ dinners I knew Mummie was looking at me in the oddest way. ‘What enormous dinners you are giving those dogs,’ she said.
I was quite surprised. ‘You must be thinking of cats’ dinners. These are quite small dinners for dogs.’
‘They are only twice the size of the dogs!’ She spoke so sharply that I stood looking at her, and the dogs sat, looking at me. ‘The most appalling bill came from the butcher today,’ she went on. ‘I’m quite used to dishonesty, but this is unbelievable.’ She was looking at me across the dry white chrysanthemums in the silver potato ring, and across the icy white distances of tablecloth. ‘Well, why don’t you feed them?’
‘All right, Mummie. I’ve still got to chop up their spinach.’
‘And another thing –’ She leaned towards me, looking upwards. My enormous size, as I stooped above the dogs’ dinners, filled my mind like guilt. ‘Another thing I should like to know: where are all the business letters which I have so carefully put away in their usual place?’
‘I gave them to Mr Kiely.’
‘Do I understand that you gave them to your friend the solicitor? Don’t you think you take rather a lot on yourself?’
‘But you wouldn’t see him, Mummie.’
‘How did he know the letters were there?’
‘I must have told him.’
‘So I should imagine.’ She tapped out the words. ‘After that you proceeded to dismiss your father’s nurse.’
‘You know he’s been much better since she left, much happier.’
‘The nights are far too much for Rose.’ It was like a cry coming from her.
‘Rose doesn’t mind,’ I reassured her. ‘She’d do anything. She gets up three times in the night.’
‘Yes. Between you, you’ll kill him – rather sooner than you think, perhaps.’
It was such a terrible thing for her to say, so unbelievably wrong, when we were doing everything for Papa. But I kept calm and r
easonable.
‘The trouble about nurses,’ I reminded her gently, ‘is that they have to be paid. And we don’t seem to have the money for that.’
‘Which particular fool told you so? Your Mr Kiely, I suppose.’
‘Well, yes. And he says—’
‘I don’t wish to hear what he says. I only know that he has done little or nothing since your father’s illness except by-pass my authority. As for finding any ready money, which is what he is there for, and what he is paid to do – that’s the last thing he thinks of. And who economises, I ask you? Who cuts down on anything? Look at the size of those dogs’ dinners –’
‘Mostly brown bread.’
‘– and the size of the butcher’s bill. I can’t look at it. It makes me quite sick.’
‘I expect it goes back for years. And we do have to eat.’
‘Perhaps if you were willing to eat just a little less, we wouldn’t have this appalling bill; of course you happen to be a big girl.’ She might as well have said: You happen to have three legs. I went on talking to the dogs. ‘And all for red meat – why does it say that? What meat is not red? I ask myself.’
‘Rabbit,’ I told her.
‘Rabbit? Then we might have rabbit more often. Not that I can eat rabbit.’
‘Neither will the maids.’
‘Why do we have so many maids? All eating their heads off. A little brown bread and butter is enough for me. Thin bread and butter. Perhaps you and the dogs could sometimes manage with rabbit? I’ll speak to Rose . . .’
Things went on from there, fluttering attempts at economies, projects envisaged and unfulfilled; penance for all was her final object. She felt we must all suffer.
‘I sometimes wonder,’ she said when I came into the library one evening, changed into my warmest blue velvet and wishing I owned twin silver foxes, ‘where you think money comes from?’ She was sitting in her own little chair. The flowers of her tapestry made a ghost summer, falling round her to the floor.