that " She took a deep breath, and said quietly: "David
has gone back to his wife. He isn't going to marry me. He never meant to. Tm not going to see him any more. Well?" She looked up, as Louise remained silent. "Aren't you going to say: I told you so?"
k Louise took her into her arms, Eva rested her wet head on her mother's shoulder, but she would not cry. They sat there for what seemed a long time, feeling each other's breathing.
"When you were a child/' Louise said at last, "I always thought you'd be the happiest one."
"So did I." Eva raised her head, and twisted her mouth into a smile, "It got away from me."
WHAT was to be done with Louise? The question was troubling the rest of the family as much as it troubled Louise herself.
'Til get a job/' she told them. "I don't want you to worry about me."
"But what could you possibly do?" they asked, as she knew they would.
'Til find something. I might work in a shop. I could sell things. Plenty of women my age do it. Look at poor Miss Pitt, Miriam, where you always get the children's shoes."
"Oh, Mother, really," Miriam said. "You're not poor Miss Pitt." She would not hear of Louise having a job. What would people say? It would look as if her daughters had cast her off to fend for herself. And her ridiculous ideas about working in a shop! Really, Mother was a little touched sometimes. There was Arthur's position to consider. Barristers who were rising to the top of their profession did not have mothers-in-law behind the haberdashery counter.
"And to be quite frank, Mother," Miriam said spikily, "I don't quite see how you'd ever manage to get a job, much less hold it down."
"Why shouldn't I?" Louise protested. "I'm not such a fool as you think I am. Why do you always belittle everything I try to do for myself? You're bossy, Miriam. You always were. It used to be on all your school reports."
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"Please don't let's quarrel about this, Mother. We're merely trying to do what's best for you."
As if I were a child, Louise thought. Packed off willy-nilly to old Nanny, or Auntie someone, because it isn't convenient to have him in the house. But a child has more right to a say in the matter than I do, I have no right to be anything but grateful and amenable. I mustn't get like Ruth Gamham's mother. A difficult old lady. Nothing worse. Better be shot than that.
There was a great deal of telephoning back and forth among the sisters. They agreed that it was inconvenient of Sybil to have a heart attack at a time like this. Eva was due to go up to her repertory company in a few days. Miriam was off to Austria, and Anne was feeling ill and cross, and flatly refused to have her mother to stay,
"Why should I?" she asked Eva. "You and Miriam go galli-rantfng off and leave me to hold the baby—and that's not meant to be a joke. I can't have anyone in the house just now. I just can't. I'm supposed to rest, and you. know what Mother is- She fusses so/'
"Damn lucky to have anyone wanting to fuss over you," Eva said. "I .think you're a pig, Anne/' She gave her the insult mechanically. She could not care about Anne's troubles. She could not think about anything these days except fighting her dismal battle against the humiliation of her heartbreak. The £act that she had known all along that David would break her heart did not make it any easier to fight. Eva could only run. She must run away where no one knew her. Away from London and the flat, with its memories -of David in every corner. Away from the theatre people who said: "Bad luck about the pky. The foulest luck for you, darling," and: "Where's David these days?" Away from the well-meant sympathy of her mother, and the tactfully disguised relief of Miriam and Arthur that the unfortunate affair was over-Miriam talked to Anne sternly. "Listen/' she said, "I don't care how you feel. You've just got to have Mother while we're in Austria. Otherwise she'd have to go to a hotel, and you
know who'd have to pay. Why should Arthur have to fork out for that just because you're so selfish? Mother will have to come to you at least until we get back. After that I suppose well have her. I haven't broken that to Arthur yet. He'll have to put up with it."
Miriam was telephoning in her bedroom. She did not know that Louise was in her bathroom, cleaning the hath for lier, and had heard the conversation,
Afterwards, Louise came to Miriam and said: "I dorft want to go to Anne's."
"Why not? You'll have to, Mother. There's nowhere else far you to go. You know I'm shutting this house up, and Eva has let a friend have her flat/'
'Til think of something. I'll get a living-in job- as a compOT-ion, or a housemaid, or—or anything."
"Oh, Mother, please. We've been into all that. You can't start working at your age. A housemaid! That's not even funny. What do you think this family is? I wish you* d think of our side of it sometimes.'"
"I'm trying to. I hate to be a nuisance.*"
"Oh, what's the good of talking about it?" Miriam said irritably. 'There's too much talk about everything in this family."
"That's what your father used to say. He often said he wished he had a son, instead of all the chattering women in his house."
"He was probably right," Miriam said. But if she had had
When Miriam was out of the house, Louise rang up Anne. Frank answered the telephone. Anne was lying down. Could he take a message?
"I just called to say I shan't be coming to stay with you," Louise said. "I'm—I'm making other arrangements."
"Oh? Well, I'm sorry," Frank said. "We were looking forward to having you/'
"Oh, Frank/' Louise felt that she had to speak the truth to him. "Don't pretend. I know Anne doesn't want to be bothered with me now. No, it's all right. I don't blame her. I know what it gets like toward the end, when you're so tired of waiting."
"Where will you go, Mother?"
"I don't know yet, but I'll think of something. I just can't be dependent on the girls any longer. It isn't fair on them, and— here's a thing that nobody's thought of yet—it isn't very easy for me, either."
"I've often thought that," Frank said candidly. He could speak more easily on the telephone than when he was face to face with someone. "Poor Mother," he said. "I'm darned sorry for you. Wish I could help. Look here, you'd better come to us. I'll talk to Anne."
"I can't/' Louise gripped the telephone and spoke rapidly, her pride collapsing under his rugged sympathy. "Oh, Frank, I don't know what to do. Miriam says I can come here when they get back, but I'm sure they don't want me, and I don't want to come. I just can't go on like this for the rest of my life, never knowing where I'm going to be, always packing and unpacking. Don't think I'm ungrateful. The girls have been wonderful, but I hate it, Frank. It's so—Frank, are you* there?"
"Right here." His voice came surprisingly loud from the silent receiver. "I was thinking. Listen, Mother, I've got an idea. Not much of a one. You'll think I'm crazy, I expect, so jump down my throat if you want to. There's a chap near here —I talked to him the other day, and he mentioned this. Said anyone could have it cheap."
"Have what? A house? But you know I "
"Well, it isn't exactly a house. It's a—oh, no, you couldn't. Let's forget it."
"But what is it? Tell me."
"Well," said Frank hesitantly. "To tell the truth, it's a caravan. Did you hear what I said? A caravan. Decently fitted out,
and that. This chap had it for the extra people he took on when he bought more land. He's got a pre-fab up now, and he wants to rent it. Needs a lick of paint, of course, and some touching up inside, but I could do that. I was thinking, we could park it in the field the other side of the cold-frames. Nice big tree there to give you shelter. It's got a heater and Calor gas for cooking, and I could put you up a water tank and things like that." His voice had grown enthusiastic, but he broke off and said: "But you couldn't, though, could you? It wouldn't do."
'Why not? It would be a home. I'd love it. I'll have a dog. A cat, too, perhaps. A crazy ol
d woman living in a caravan, that's what I'll be. A sort of local hermit. Children will come and stare, and run away in terror if I look out." She laughed. 'Whatever will Miriam say? There she is now, Frank. I'd better run down and break it to her before I lose courage. Go and tell the man that we'll have it."
"Granny/* Ellen put her hands on her hips, and looked round the narrow space, no wider than a railway carriage. "It's heaven."
"Not quite," Louise said, stumbling over the suitcases and wondering where on earth she was going to put everything, "but we'll try and make it so."
For once in her life, some good luck had come to Ellen. When Mrs. Match's grandson had German measles, Ellen had gone to him and ordered him to breathe at her, until she felt she must be sucking in a fog of germs. The day before the family was due to leave for Austria, a rash appeared, and Ellen could not go. Simon and Judy had had German measles. They had sensibly had nearly everything, while Ellen, annoyingly, had not caught diseases when she was young, and could be relied on now to fall sick at the most inconvenient times.
Miriam had been furious when Ellen came sheepishly with her pyjamas unbuttoned, to show her the rash. The child was not sick enough to be sympathized with. Miriam began to be martyred about having to"stay behind with Ellen, while Arthur
went on with the other two, but Louise said: "Leave her with me* She can come to the caravan."
"Hardly the place to have measles, I should have thought/' Miriam raised her eyebrows.
"Miriam, dear, it's not a tent: You go off and enjoy your holiday, and let me look after Ellen/'
Miriam had to agree, although she did not approve of Ellen going to the caravan. The child was farouche enough as it was; She did not approve of Louise going there, either, although it certainly solved the immediate problem of what was to be done with her.
When Miriam rang up Eva in Lancashire to tell her of the es±cax)rdinary way their mother proposed to live, Eva had said: "Why not? Don't be so stuffy. I think it's a marvelous idea. I'd Hke to do It myself."
"No doubt you would. I think it's most unsuitable."
"Most unsuitable," Ellen said, mimicking what she had heard her mother say. "Most unsuitable, Arthur, and quite mad. Oh, Granny, ta think of those others," she exclaimed, "sitting in that awful train, and being told not to fidget, and getting out into that terrible snow, with people running about red in the face and saying how glorious it is. It isn't glorious." She shuddered. "It's cold. And everyone wants to rush off all the time and do things. I hope they break their legs."
"Now, Ellen," Louise said. "Why be spiteful? You've got everything you want, haven't you?"
"Yes." Ellen collapsed on to the lower bunk with a sigh. "Everything I want."
When Louise grew accustomed to living in the cramped space, and cooking on the tiny stove, and fighting with the oil heater, which Anne prophesied would suffocate them both as sure as hell, she found that she, too, had everything she wanted. She was alone with the person she loved best in the world. She had her own home, without the ordinary cares of housework, for there was not much you could do in a caravan, except to keep it as tidy as possible. If you did not put every-
thing away, you became silted up in a surprisingly short time,
"I don't see how you stand it," Anne said, the first time she visited them, several days after their arrival. She had refused to come and help when Frank was painting and cleaning the caravan, saying that if her mother wanted to go crazy, she could do it without any assistance from her.
'Til make you a cup of coffee/' Louise said proudly, being a hostess for the first time since Dudley died. "Then you'll see how nicely my stove works, when it does work. Harry made me a new chimney out of a piece of drainpipe. Sit down. There, on that bench behind the table. There's nowhere else, except the bunks/'
Anne maneuvered her spreading bulk with difficulty behind the table, and sat with her arms on it, glowering round the caravan. "Those curtains look familiar," she said.
"They should. Frank got them out of your attic, and Ellen and I cut them down. We haven't hemmed them yet, but we will, when we get a needle. I hope you don't mind. Frank didn't think you even knew they were there."
Anne grunted. "What's that door?" she asked.
"A cupboard." Ellen opened it eagerly to show the tiny space which held the few clothes that she and her grandmother had bought. "Isn't it neat? And look—here's our shelves for china and tins—we practically live on baked beans—and please note the carpet. Uncle Frank bought it for us at an auction/' Whatever the shortcomings of the caravan, to Ellen it was perfect.
"But what do you do all day?" Anne asked. Louise never went up to the house unless she was asked. She was determined not to be a nuisance to Anne, just because she was living on her land. If she ran out of milk or bread, or needed an extra blanket, she would go without it sooner than ask Anne, and if the water tank needed filling, or die stove went wrong, which it frequently did, she would wait until she could find Frank in the yard to ask him to fix it.
"Oh, there's masses to do," Ellen said. "We help Uncle Frank and Harry, you know, when it's not. too cold. Granny
gets a bit blue if she stays out too long in this weather, and I've got chilblains, but then I always do." She showed Anne a red and swollen finger. "Then we sit in here with the heater going and get up a terrific fug. You ought to see how the windows steam up. We play the radio and we read. It's heaven at night, with the tree tapping down on the roof, and the wind trying to get at us from outside. The caravan fairly rocks sometimes/'
"Sounds entrancing," Anne said, making a face over her mother's coffee, Louise had never been able to make coffee, and tinned milk did not improve it. There was no shop in the village, and a bus only once a week to the little town.
"And we leaxn bits of poetry," Ellen went on. "Granny's got a surprisingly good memory for it. Isn't that funny when she forgets so many other things?"
Louise had begun to read and learn poetry by heart after she was married. Dudley never read anything except newspapers and magazines, and often, when he was at home, he did not talk to her for hours on end. She had found that learning poems was a soothing way to take her mind off the disappointment of her marriage, a disappointment that had crept in before the honeymoon was over, and whose extent she did not dare to admit, even to herself.
When her daughters began to reach a sensible age, she had tried to read poetry to them, and to inspire them to learn it, but they had shut their minds to it, half through embarrassment, half through doubting that their mother could have anything worthwhile to offer. Then Louise remembered regretfully how, when she was a child, her father had tried to convey his own love of poetry to her, and she would have none of it. How sad it was to be a parent and have your children only discover after you were dead the things they might have shared with you. But how delightful to be a grandmother with a responsive grandchild, who opened her heart to you without embarrassment, because she had no one to talk to at home.
Ellen usually wanted to learn sad poems. She spoke them dolefully, and sometimes sniveled a little, as she still sniveled
happily over the picture 'Good-bye, Old Friend/ which she had brought with her to hang in the caravan. She was a morbid child, delighting in old-fashioned stories with sadly moral endings, and finding no pleasure in the modern children's books, which ended so brightly, with the children coming out triumphant, and the grown-ups worsted.
Sometimes she insisted on learning love poems. She dwelt on lines like: The paradise of your imperfect lover, repeating it over and over again in fascination. She desperately wanted a lover, although she did not quite know what it was.
"Has Mummy ever had a lover*?"
"Of course not/' Louise caught her breath. "Happily married people don't/'
"A pity in a way. It might have been exciting for her. I don't suppose Daddy ever wrote poetry to her. He's too busy. Once, I saw her looking at a photograph of a man, but when I came into the room, she put it away in a drawer, and turned ro
und, looking cross. Odd, wasn't it?"
"Well, perhaps " Louise was at a loss. What instinct
brought the poor child so perilously close to the truth?
"Poor Mummy," Ellen said. "She's really rather pretty without her glasses. Perhaps you were too, at one time. Did you ever have a lover, Granny?"
"No, dear." Louise was thankful to steer away from Miriam. "Oh, well, of course, there was your grandfather."
"That's not the same. It has to be someone you're not married to, doesn't it? Like Mr. Disher."
"Don't be silly, Ellen."
"No one could write a poem about him, though. It's sad to be so fat. Why don't you invite him down here for the week end? He'd never get behind the table, but he could have the camp stool on the other side."
"And where would he sleep? He's ill, anyway. He couldn't come."
"Is he still in the hospital?"
"I don't know." Louise had written to Gordon. Disher, asking
if she could visit him, but he had not answered. She was beginning to think that he might have died, lonely and unmourned, with only obliging Mrs. Dill to go to his funeral.
Ellen was miserable when the time came for her to leave the caravan. She did not want to go home to Pleasant-ways, and hear Simon and Judy tell of their exploits in the snow. She did not want to go back to school
"But you shall come again in the Easter holidays," Louise promised her, "if Mummy lets you. Your Aunt Anne will have had her baby by then."
"When the fruits ripe it will drop/ Mrs, Match says. I hope she'll let me do things for it. I don't expect shell be much good at it. She's so funny with me sometimes; I don't think she likes children."
"She'll like her own," Louise said optimistically.
"What's she going to call it?"
"She hasn't even thought,"
Louise missed Ellen very .much when she had gone. There did not seem much point in doing alone the things they had enjoyed together, like making cakes, and digging a little bed for spring flowers, and taking the bus into town to shop and go to the cinema. Set off in the rough field beyond Frank's yard and his neat rows of cold-frames, the caravan was a lonely place. It stood on the windy side of a slight slope; Anne's house stood on the other, so that at night she could not even see the lights burning, nor feel that there was anything near her except the barren trees and rustling hedges, alive with the mysterious night life of the field. The strange cry of a bird woke her sometimes in fright, and she longed for the small bulge of Ellen's sleeping body in the bunk above her.
The Winds Of Heaven Page 23