Dinah's Husband: A heartfelt story of love and marriage in the 1930s

by Ursula Bloom

  ‘Yes, he’s coming with me.’

  She hated the dining-room for looking so annoyingly bright. The sun against the lattice windows, the gleam of the cloth fresh and clean, and the smell of bacon and coffee and the China tea which Max always drank. She sat down with the small monogrammed napkin on her knee; even the monogram was aggravating this morning.

  ‘I’ll do some mending,’ she said.

  ‘Won’t you be lonely?’ from Piers.

  She did not know if that were a cue for her to follow or if it were only said for the sake of something to say. As she did not know what the answer was, she said nothing. Max finished his marmalade and pushed the chair back. He made a few casual remarks as he went about the room collecting his pipe, pouch and matches, and all the time she was aware of a sense of enveloping helplessness. The two went out into the little hall which they had had built on, and which had become amazingly mature, settling into the rest of the house as though it had always been there.

  ‘Piers hasn’t got a gun,’ she said, and knew this was an excuse to keep him with her.

  ‘What’s that?’ Max looked back into the room; he had his gun already in his arms, carrying it differently from the way that he usually did.

  ‘Why are you carrying it that way? Surely it isn’t very safe?’

  ‘Oh, it’s safe enough! You can’t catch an old bird on chaff. I’ve shot too much and too far. I’m lending Piers my old gun.’

  ‘Oh!’ said she rather disappointedly.

  The excuse hadn’t worked. Now she did not know why she had offered it, save that she had been afraid, she had no idea why. Max came across the room and kissed her, lightly, as though he were in a hurry. She thought perhaps it was because Lisa had already come into the hall with a tray to clear away. Max was old-fashioned about the servants; it was the upbringing of the late nineteenth century and the mother who wore velvet and toques like hassocks.

  ‘We’ll be back in good time,’ he said, ‘and it will be good to be out in the fields after so long. If we are a bit late it’ll be because we have had good sport.’

  ‘Yes. It’s cold lunch anyway.’

  She did not watch them go down the crazy path to the gate through the orchard of small dwarf apple trees, with the well in the centre of it. The trees were full now with hard, bitter little apples, autumn was approaching quickly, and they would go back to Hampstead. In a way she would be glad to be back there, after this. The association with Piers was bound up in the cottage, and hurt too much.

  She went to her sewing basket and tried to forget everything in mending, but somehow she could not sew, her neck ached too much with tiredness. She was restless with that same formidable restlessness which had stopped her sleeping last night. After a while she pushed the sewing aside. She would do the flowers. She could not sit here thinking of the atmosphere which had risen like a thick blanket upon the three of them. She went out into the garden, collecting sunflowers and michaelmas daisies. The zinnias had been caught in the first frost, which had come very early. It still hung on the cobwebs, making them gauze of sheer brilliance; the earth was cold though the sun was hot, and the mist was driving back from the hills, whilst the warm autumnal day crept out of it. She grouped the flowers in the wall vases which Max liked so much, and she made little posies for the bowls.

  Then she reminded herself that it was silly to waste time doing this when in a week Piers would have gone away, perhaps for ever. Now he was near her and she ought to be within sight of him. It was idiotic to stay here, fidgeting about in the house, when her eyes were hungry for him. If she went out, past the Four Feathers down to the brook, she would be able to see the men in the distance, and the sight of them would help her. She had no intention of going nearer, because she had always detested shooting, and kept her distance.

  She crossed the lane, with the overgrown ditch full of nettles and hemlocks and fine white frost, and she passed the Four Feathers into the fields beyond. She went down the path that was soggy with autumn. The trees had the first snatches of gold in them, and the hedges were going russet. The berries were here in fine red clusters, and told their own story of the hard winter to come. She would stand under the willow, its tarnished leaves dropping, and there she would be able to see the vista of the fields spread before her.

  The river was over full. There had been a great deal of rain, but even the force of the water was clogged because the river bed itself needed clearing out. There were too many lilies, too much verdure closing in on either side. Tangled loosestrifes and willow herbs long-since flowered, rushes and reeds, and an old willow, dead a couple of years and fallen half across the water, leaning ridiculously like some drunken person towards the rushes on the far side.

  The meadows were a check pattern across the valley. She could see every detail of them, for the mist had gone now and the day was very clear. It would probably rain before night.

  Presently she saw Piers walking close to a hedge, quickly and very upright in that long loose-limbed stride that she liked. She could see Max moving slowly towards the stile half a mile away, and she knew that he was already tired, and that he was carrying his gun wrongly. She wondered why he had persisted in holding it that silly way, when usually he was so particular about it. It did not look as if they had had much sport.

  She stood very still.

  Then she heard a shot, not unpleasantly close, but setting an echo chattering through the autumn day. It was not Piers, for he was still walking by the hedge; it must have been Max when he got to the stile. Probably the sound of his footsteps had started up a rabbit there; she tried to see. The gap in the hedge where the stile was set seemed to be blocked, and she watched it coldly until she saw that Piers was not walking any more, but had started to run. He had thrown his gun down and was running very fast across the field in the direction of the stile.

  Then she knew at once.

  She knew by the sick turnover of her heart, the start and the noise that it made, suddenly changing into a dynamo. Max must have made up his mind last night, he must have decided that he was not going to leave things as they were, and he had thought that the only fair way was for him to shoot himself. The tarnished willow still blew, the choked river still gurgled, but she had started to run from them, and as she ran she prayed, a foolish, childish prayer to herself. ‘Oh God, don’t let Max be dead. Don’t let Max be dead.’

  2

  She ran across the meadow. It was thick and the grass was harsh, so that she stumbled on the uneven ground, sometimes almost falling, but pulling herself up again. She made for a hole in the hedge and scrambled through it, not even noticing the brambles that scratched her, and the tall nettles in the ditch on the other side. The grass in the second meadow was finer, and she remembered it was the field where they always found the little button mushrooms. She was rapidly nearing the stile, and she saw that Piers had laid Max on the ground. She tried to call to him, but she was running so fast and her heart was making such a noise that she was quite breathless. The sound would not carry.

  She had the impression that this was not really happening; it was a nightmare and soon she would wake up again to find that it was merely a dream. She must have been almost fifty yards away when Piers heard her and turned. He got up abruptly and came running to her.

  ‘You mustn’t come here! Dinah, you mustn’t come here!’ he called.

  But still she ran on blindly, straight into his arms. ‘It isn’t true.’

  ‘You must be very brave. Go home. Go back to the cottage and telephone for the doctor.’

  ‘He’s dead?’ she asked, and knew the answer before she asked it.

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  She heard herself give a gasp that she had not expected. It was as though her body went on ahead of her mind, and she recoiled from the horrible noise. ‘He can’t be dead,’ she wailed.

  ‘Dinah, do as I say. You must do as I say. Go home and get the doctor here quickly. Go quickly, my pretty.’

  She knew that
she had become merely an automaton. It would have amazed her had she been capable of amazement, but now she merely obeyed. She turned and ran back towards the village. She had no memory of scrambling through the hedge again, though she must have done it, for her arms were torn and there were the big white splotches of nettle stings on her wrists. She crossed the bridge, but knew nothing of it, and went across the road past the Four Feathers and in at her own gate.

  The ’phone was in the hall, and, still quite without consciousness of it, she rang up Dr. Wellby.

  A voice which she did not recognise as her own asked him to go to the field, then she found that the telephone receiver was hanging, making gulping sounds at her like a Frenchman drinking soup, and she herself slumped to the floor. She did not faint. She thought that she was going to, but somehow she never actually lost consciousness and wished that she could. Lisa heard her, and came running out of the dining-room where she had been laying the lunch.

  ‘Gnä Frau!’ she exclaimed.

  She helped Dinah on to the hall chair, the old one with the worm in it, which they had not noticed when they had bought it. She was thinking poignantly of that afternoon in the King’s Road, focusing on it desperately, the trees in Royal Avenue, the little cinema at the corner of the street, and the railings against the Duke of York’s barracks.

  She said helplessly, ‘Could you get me some brandy?’ and knew that it horrified Lisa, who considered that teetotalism was one of the vital importances in a desirable mistress. She went to the corner cupboard and fumbled for the flask which Max kept there for emergencies.

  ‘’Ow much?’ she asked, ‘I do not know ’ow much.’ There was no reply. At that particular moment Dinah did not know how much; her mind was too dazed.

  Lisa doled out a meagre dose and held it at arm’s length as though she felt that to touch the stuff must pollute her. Dinah took it, and drank it. She had never known that a body could cease to function so dramatically, could go numb and act only as though it were some clockwork toy which made all the motions, yet had no control over those motions.

  She drank the brandy, did not taste it, and still sat there staring before her. Slowly a warm flood streamed through her. It was a disturbing flood, because it brought a more acute realisation of her predicament.

  She said, ‘Lisa, something awful has happened. It’s the master. He has been most dreadfully hurt.’

  ‘The master?’

  ‘Yes, there’s been a frightful accident.’ Then she was torn helplessly between the longing to cry and the idiotic desire to laugh. She did not know which was uppermost, both were terrible. She got up. If she moved it meant that part of her had to concentrate on that movement, and therefore she was less likely to cry. She went upstairs to the bedroom with the forget-me-not blue quilt and the petunia curtains. Max had said that they would clash, and then, when he had seen the finished room, had sat down on the bed and had gasped at it. ‘You’re a judge, Dinah, and no mistake! I would not believe it of you. What a clever kid you are!’

  He would never call her a kid again, he would never come into this room any more. She sat down on the corner of the bed, just where he had sat last night, and she stared helplessly before her. She did not know for how long.

  3

  Piers came into the room. His face had gone chalky under his tan, and it gave him an extraordinary appearance. He sat down on the bed and put an arm round her, but she hardly felt that arm, for at this particular moment she did not realise that he was there at all. She was too far away for that.

  ‘Dinah, my pretty, you must not take it so badly. He died without knowing what had happened.’

  She turned her head. ‘He killed himself.’

  ‘No, Dinah, you must not say that, for I’ll swear that he didn’t kill himself. It was an accident; it was just the way that he was carrying his gun. It wasn’t anything else.’

  ‘He never carried his gun like that before.’

  ‘You think that he did it on purpose? Of course he didn’t! If he had planned it out he could not have done it this way, because he would never have been certain that it would kill him. He knew too much about it to take that risk.’

  She shook her head. ‘Max did know. He was always clever.’

  ‘But not clever enough for that.’

  She clung to Piers. It was something to feel that he held her fast, even though the overwhelming horror of that accident still dazed her and she focused her memory on that still inert thing lying on the grass, which was Max, yet wasn’t; so like yet so wholly unlike.

  ‘You mustn’t think that he suffered, because he didn’t. It was over in a second.’

  ‘Just as he meant it to be.’

  ‘Nonsense!’

  She said, ‘He did do it,’ and now she was surprised at her own calmness. ‘He meant to do it because he believed it was the only fair way out for us. He had had his fun in life, and he wanted to give us ours.’

  ‘But we both told him that we wouldn’t hear of such a thing. I tell you it was an accident. Dozens of men have been killed in just the same way, getting over a stile with a gun, and the catch slipping, and then …’

  ‘But not Max! I don’t want to talk about it; I know it wasn’t an accident, you see.’

  He said nothing, but sat there holding her like a child, and she heard the sound of a cart stopping outside the gate, of footsteps on the stairs and whispering, mysterious voices; she knew that the still inert thing which was Max, was being carried to his room. Suddenly she screamed, and hid her face.

  Death and she had not met before, and she did not want to meet him now. She felt sick; she felt that she would give the world if only she could faint away and be out of all this for a while. Then the door on the landing closed again, and the footsteps, heavy ones, obviously belonging to countrymen who had been called in to help, went down the stairs; there was the sound of the horse clumping into the distance and the cart wheels.

  Piers, said, ‘Darling, I’ve got the little doc coming in to see you. I think he might be able to help?’

  ‘Nobody can help,’ she said.

  She had little faith in Dr. Wellby, rather over-bustling, over-anxious. She saw him come in, dapper, with an incongruous bow tie, a shooting coat and an amiable though foolish smile. Like a tadpole, she thought, an aimless tadpole who hasn’t the good taste to stick to his own pond!

  The doctor was disgusted at losing a good patient who should have known better than to be so idiotically careless. Of course the old fellow had been carrying his gun the wrong way; you would have thought the old fool knew better! Then he had slipped. Not so steady on his feet as he used to be, and finding stiles more difficult. The worst of these men who knew a lot about shooting was that they got slipshod; use made them take risks, they took chances and then got bowled out.

  It was most aggravating when paying patients with chronic asthma made fools of themselves, and more particularly so when the man should have known better. He took one glance at Dinah. Shock, said he to himself.

  He made the usual bromide prescription, and went downstairs again to see the policeman about the inquest. Mrs. Hale, he said, could not be disturbed. The policeman had better see Mr. Grant, who had been the last man to see the deceased alive, and could be relied upon to give evidence. The policeman, well used to the doctor, scratched his head and said that he would see Mr. Grant, but they ought to have a pretty quick inquest because Mr. Grant was sailing for some outlandish spot early in the coming week.

  Just as though everything were conniving to be difficult, thought the little doctor, as he swung out into the road again and back home.

  He hated Sundays. He hated the roast beef and too hot horseradish sauce that his wife invariably produced. It meant that she made him stay in and talk to her, or they went for a dull walk, or much worse the Stephens at the rectory had that odious daughter of theirs down for the week-end, which meant a musical party. Muriel Stephens was studying the piano at a London school of music, and if there was one thing t
hat made the doctor’s blood curdle, it was Muriel’s piano playing. He hated Sundays anyway, because if he slept in the afternoon he awoke with a fat head, and felt awful, and if he didn’t sleep he felt that he had been done out of something.

  Now to lose one of his best patients was the last straw, and all through the old fool’s carelessness. Max’s asthma last winter had been worth the doctor’s car taxation for the whole year. It was a damned shame, he kept telling himself.

  ‘The old chap has been shot getting over a stile,’ he told his wife when the beef appeared and he sat down to carve it. ‘An accident, of course, might have happened to anybody. Funny that he should be such an ass, he knew something about shooting, though really you would not have thought so seeing what’s happened now.’

  She asked, ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘As a doornail.’ The doctor was busily sharpening the carving knife, and putting energy into it. ‘There’ll be an inquest and a wreath. I suppose we shall have to get a bought one this time, seeing what good patients they’ve been, and what a mess you made of that marguerite wreath you bodged up for that Smith child.’

  His wife did not take the criticism well. ‘As a doctor’s wife, a good doctor’s wife,’ she said tartly, ‘one does not expect to have to be expert at wreathmaking.’

  He said nothing.

  4

  It was to Dinah as though a smoke screen had descended upon her, completely blotting out shapes and objects and with them her power of reasoning. There was an inquest at the village school, when she sat between her father and mother, who had been sent for and installed at the Four Feathers, which they disliked very much.

  Her mother had no idea what it was all about; her father was irritated at being dragged down into the country when he wanted to stay in London. Piers gave evidence as though he were one of those superfluous bronzes which clutter up the war memorials and parks of London. His face was quite expressionless. The doctor gave his briskly as though he almost liked doing it. Dinah was asked to say that her husband had been normal when they parted. Had he ever suggested that he might do away with himself? She said no, wearily. Was he happy? As far as she knew, yes.