Nine Lives (Timeless Classics Collection)

by Ursula Bloom

  ‘Miss Sprockett,’ said he, ‘when you have finished I should very much like to have a word with you in my office.’

  Miss Sprockett’s cheeks flushed a little, emphasizing the broken veins which gave it a map-like appearance. She had a secret foreboding that this was going to be unpleasant. ‘I’m afraid I have very little time today, Mr. Saunders, for I’m in a hurry. It’s my morning for doing the flowers at the church.’

  ‘I think perhaps you had better see me,’ he said drily, and she knew that the assistants were quivering with anguish at his tone, whilst the customers had turned round to look at her.

  She had always thought that Daniel was an odious man, and today was unlikely to change her opinion. She looked sourly at him, but she recognized that there was no escape. It wasn’t her morning for the flowers at church at all, because she only did the fifth Sundays in the month, and thank goodness, there were precious few fifth Sundays. She paid for the mending wool, and then followed Daniel into his holy of holies, and tried to convince herself that all this was nothing.

  He shut the door behind them with a most unpleasant finality.

  ‘Miss Sprockett,’ said he, ‘I understand that you have informed my wife and several of her friends that I was the father of Arabella Finch’s child?’

  He left no loophole for escape; no way out.

  She didn’t know what to do, but stared at him, her pendulous little face sagging forward. Then she said the only thing that a woman ‒ even a very good woman ‒ can say under the circumstances.

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘But my wife assured me it was so, and I believe my wife.’ This was not entirely true, for Daniel had only sounded Mary out, and had known that there was ground for his suspicions by the elusive quality of her replies. ‘Do you realise that such talk is defamation of character? It is a slander, and there is a law against it.’

  Miss Sprockett gripped her umbrella closer for support, her anxious fingers running round the spokes clasped in their elastic band. She was counting them in her agony, although she knew quite well the number that they would make, but she always did this when she was nervous. She moistened her pale blue lips with an unwilling tongue, for in her apprehension her mouth had gone uncommonly dry.

  ‘I said nothing,’ she insisted, though with some reluctance. ‘Only what everyone else was saying.’

  ‘Exactly, and I intend suing you for slander.’

  She sat bolt upright, staring at him in dismay. Her tongue had been her undoing several times in her life, for she was always saying silly things, and could not stop herself. She was always imparting news, outrageous news for it amused her, and she could not drag herself away from it. She could see now beyond the windows of his office where the shop lay spread below her. The assistants were working hard, the customers talking together, and she didn’t know what to do.

  She could certainly never face a case for slander. She climbed down a little but there was still some fight left in her.

  She said, ‘I’m sorry if I hurt you, but I was only repeating what I had already been told.’

  ‘I am afraid that does not alter the slander of it. If you utter it at all, it constitutes a slander, you know.’

  ‘Oh dear!’

  The law was difficult, and she knew very well that it cost money. Miss Sprockett’s means were meagre; they amounted to mere competency, and frequently not even that. Her living had to be pruned closely, even to buying only the cheapest flowers for the fifth Sunday in the month at church. ‘If you apologized …?’ said he, watching her very closely.

  ‘Oh, I will. I will apologize, only too gladly,’ said she, enormously relieved at the easy way which now offered itself.

  He drew a piece of paper towards him headed with the name of the shop, Saunders and Son, (he hoped at Christmas there would be another son to carry on), Drapers and Silk Mercers. She watched him glassily, not understanding why he should try to employ paper, but watching him attentively whilst he wrote. He was more fluent with a pen than his manner conveyed, and the apology was admirably worded, leaving nothing to the imagination.

  ‘If you will sign here,’ he said, offering her a pen.

  ‘Sign? But why must I sign anything?’

  ‘Your apology. It must be published in the paper.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Miss Sprockett, recoiling from the pen, and clasping her umbrella even closer to her, whilst her fingers still mechanically counted off the ribs. ‘Oh no, nothing would make me do that, because then everybody would know what had happened. I couldn’t do that.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Daniel, ‘you don’t mind everybody knowing about me, but you do object to everybody knowing that the whole thing was a lie, and you were the one who propagated it. Very well then. Don’t sign. Most unfortunately for your sake, I shall have to sue you, for you have forced my hand.’

  She was desperate at the idea, begging him not to do it. He must know that she had not got the means to face a legal action, and she did not know what she would do to pay for it. Why she had already apologized, and what more did he want! Daniel was a man of action and he had no mercy. He gave her two minutes by his father’s gold watch, and when the time was up, the unhappy Miss Sprockett seemed to have aged considerably. She tried to persuade him, imploring him in her thin tinny voice, and he knew that the tears were not too far away. He had no sympathy. Women like Miss Sprockett undermined small towns by this very nature of theirs; they did not care what they said, nor how they said it. Lies or truth it all came under the category of news, and the less truthful, the more exciting it was. He shook his head when she tried to play upon his sympathy. His good name had to be cleared, he told her, and whatever else might happen he would have it cleared. He forced her hand, even though his tongue was in his cheek.

  In the end she nodded mutely.

  Daniel presented the paper to her, and she read it through, knowing quite well that she would hate every word that he had written there. It was formidable, but she signed because she could think of no other way out. Then she got up and walked from the office and out of the shop.

  One thing was certain.

  She was more sure now than she had ever been before that Arabella Finch’s child was his, and that he was doing all this to be annoying. She was in the right, and he hated her for it. But she’d get her own back one day.

  The next week the local newspaper published the announcement at the top of the personal column in the most impressive manner, and the whole town gaped with interest.

  It was the best piece of news that the paper had ever produced, and Miss Minnie Sprockett had gone to bed with a fictitious cold in the head. Mary when she read the paper at the breakfast table, burst into tears.

  ‘Now what’s the matter?’ asked her husband from the far end. He could see her puckered face working as she bent her head wretchedly over the dark crimson tea-cosy that she had knitted.

  ‘What ever did you say to poor Miss Sprockett?’

  ‘I was obliged to force her hand. There was little else that I could do, for after all, she had forced mine.’

  ‘But how shocking for the poor thing! Now there will be a great deal of the most unpleasant publicity, and I don’t think I can bear it, Daniel. Especially now. Being like this makes every thing so very much worse.’

  He would never understand women.

  ‘What about me? You don’t seem to care that they should bandy my good name about the town? It was you who said that I must vindicate myself, and I have vindicated myself, but you like that no better. Well, I don’t give a couple of damns.’

  ‘Please don’t swear about it, Daniel.’

  ‘I’m not swearing, I’m speaking the truth. I’m telling you that I cleared myself. The wretched woman admitted that she lied, she told me that much, and now you ‒ who wanted this ‒ are annoyed.’

  ‘I hoped that nobody would ever know.’

  ‘What? With that gossipy little hag going round the town? Of course they knew. Everybody knew. And wha
tever you feel about it, it had to be stopped.’

  She began to cry again, dropping her face on to her hands.

  ‘What else could I do?’ he insisted. ‘Do you realise that Mr. Watson had heard it? He sent for me. He very nearly stopped my being a sidesman. A nice thing that would have been.’

  ‘Oh, surely not! Mr. Watson has far too much respect for both of us.’

  ‘Please allow me to manage this. You may think I have been unkind, but it was the only course that was left open to me, and I tell you Mary, that I HAD to clear myself.’

  She sat quietly sobbing, and hating everything. At this moment she did not believe that she could ever go out into the streets again. Miss Sprockett would cease to be her friend, she would think that Mary had been at the back of all this, though Mary had never said a thing.

  Daniel rose, buttoning his coat. ‘I’m sorry you are taking it so badly; it had to be,’ and he went off to the shop.

  A little later, even though she had thought that she would not dare, Mary went out into the brilliance of the May morning, with the green tassels tossing in the trees, and the scribble of white daisies and buttercups on the grassy spaces. She felt terrible. Having a baby was a sickening ordeal, and she wasn’t sure that she really wanted a baby so much after all. She didn’t love it. She had thought that when one found a child was coming, instinctively one loved it. She didn’t. It was confusing and complexing to find herself so peculiar, but for the time being she was not even fond of the baby.

  A small kitten sat sunning itself on the doorstep of one of the tall Renaissance houses in this, the older part of the town. The kitten was soft-looking, fluffy and very pretty; she mewed to attract Mary’s attention, looked at her with bland eyes, then put out a rounded paw to play with a piece of fluff which was dancing through the light air of Spring. Although ordinarily Mary didn’t care about cats this one attracted her. It was such a very nice kitten. Nine lives, she thought, a cat has nine lives and I have only one. It hardly seems to be fair.

  She saw the yellow lurcher coming up the road; it was a dog which stood high on its legs, angular of body with brown eyes that were set together too closely under the pointed ears. Seeing the kitten, before Mary could stop it, the lurcher made a dart at it. She heard its jaws snap, then the kitten shot past her, a flash of tabby and white, and swarmed up the lime tree beside her. Its eyes had become malevolent as it poised in the first crook of the branches, and turned to look down. It was a raw-angry, wild creature. Its fur standing on end, and its pink mouth spitting hatred.

  On the second it had changed to a furious little tiger, and Mary would not have believed that so much hatred could have been contained in so small a body. All the strength of its nine lives spat anger from that tree.

  Mary did not know why the sight of it terrified her, but it did. She walked on wanting to forget the kitten; she could not bear to think of its sweetness, its softness and the innate charm suddenly changed to something so furious that it hurt her.

  She came to the small house on the insalubrious side of the street, which was all Miss Sprockett could afford on her miserable pittance. Mary tapped at the door, and received no reply; she tapped again. Now she knew that Miss Sprockett was inside, for she was aware of the quiver of a madras curtain which fluttered against the window, and knew that her eyes did not deceive her. After a long wait a slatternly woman came to the door. The woman ‘scrubbed out’ for Miss Sprockett twice a week, and she looked enquiringly at Mary.

  ‘Miss Sprockett ain’t seeing no one,’ she said, and without waiting for argument, she shut the door with an air of finality.

  Mary wanted to cry.

  This quarrel was none of her own making, and she did not see why she should be dragged into it for she had done nothing; she walked down the street with the feeling that someone had slapped her in the face, and not knowing what to do.

  Now the kitten had descended from the tree branch and was a soft tabby ball of fur coquetting with the piece of fluff which had blown back into the gutter. The kitten rolled over on its back, recapturing it with swansdown paws in which silver hooks lurked. Its eyes were twinkling with delight, bland again and no hint of the tiger in them. Mary didn’t know why the kitten should enchant her so much, and she went home unable to stop herself from thinking about it. That was a bad day.

  For the first time she had begun to dislike her husband, to see that he was commercially hard, a business man and at heart quite cold. She hated herself for becoming aware of his faults, but unfortunately she had arrived at the conclusion that she could see right through him.

  During the early afternoon she felt so ill that she sent for Dr. Hennekey, who was a nice old man and kind to her. He had read the notice in the personal columns and knew that this must make a certain impression on the child who would be born.

  ‘It is most important that you should be happy,’ he told her, ‘imperative that your life should be serene and run easily, for all this time your baby is taking impressions from you, and they must be the right kind.’

  ‘I hate all this wretched gossip, Dr. Hennekey.’

  ‘I know. All small towns talk, it’s their way. This is just a lot of silly women chattering, and if I were you, I’d try to forget it.’

  ‘How can I?’ she asked.

  ‘Why not take a fortnight’s holiday? Go somewhere nice, where you would meet fresh people, some sunshine, and some entertainment, and ‒ if you’ll take my advice ‒ you won’t let your husband go with you.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to go alone, just now.’

  ‘Nonsense. Of course you would. Think that one over, and believe me; it IS a good idea.’

  Mary knew that she would be frightened to go alone to some strange place, and therefore she never told Daniel of the doctor’s suggestion. When he returned for lunch he was full of himself, and the effect of the public apology on local people. Others had congratulated him on taking a strong line and forcing matters, and he found those congratulations immensely satisfying.

  He was cock-a-hoop.

  It is a curious thing in life that it should always work in cycles, event capping event. Adventure mounts upon adventure just as in the quiet patches which come between, boredom surmounts boredom.

  Dr. Clark had a stroke.

  It had been difficult for him during the last year, for several of the paying guest’s relatives had got behind with their just debts, and were annoyed when they were pressed for payment. Families grew tired of beggaring themselves to support their mentally unstable relatives, even if they were extremely grateful to be rid of an irksome presence.

  Dr. Clark had become more and more impoverished which worried him, for he felt it was ungentlemanly to be hard up. At two in the afternoon he suffered a severe stroke, and died before either Mary or her husband could drive out to Holbeins to see him. Mrs. Clark was completely bewildered by what had happened, and one of the most difficult points which now presented themselves was that there seemed to be nobody who could control the peccadilloes of the p.g.’s. Dr. Hennekey said that the patients must be returned to the bosoms of their families, who were the people whose duty it was to make the proper arrangements for them. After all, none of them were actually certified, only ‘queer’, though so close to the borderline that it made life peculiarly uncomfortable for those in their immediate vicinity. He personally telegraphed the relatives, and very soon a sense of grim horror had descended on several homes, as they faced the awful problem of what shall we do with him ‒ or her?

  There was no doubt about the effects of Dr. Clark’s death being far-reaching. Next day, one after the other, hired cars drove out from Eresham and reluctant relations fetched their undesirable aunts and uncles away, whilst the house remained shrouded against the significant presence of death.

  It was during those few hours that Daniel Saunders found ambitions possessing him. He had always disliked the fact that in Eresham he ranked as a shopkeeper, and there glittered into his mind the sudden inspiration of acquir
ing a country house. Although his own house was pleasant, it was unpretentious, and Dr. Clark had left Holbeins with a mortgage on it. It was large and roomy, standing back in good grounds, also there was adequate stabling and a beautiful garden.

  The idea came to him in a flash; he would pay off the mortgage, keep his mother-in-law on as a help in the home, and so relieve Mary at a time when she most needed it, and incidentally give himself some kudos which he needed.

  What a remarkable thing to do on the top of all this chatter and scandal; what a coup!

  When the funeral was over, and the subsequent meal completed in the sad-looking house, the will was read. That was little help to the unfortunate widow, who now realised that her liabilities were a good deal greater than she had expected and was most distressed. Daniel then announced his intentions.

  ‘I’m sick of living in the town, it is right down there in the hollow, very stuffy in summer, and horrid in winter. It would be much nicer for Mary if I bought this place, and you of course,’ to his mother-in-law, ‘will stay on here.’

  At that moment Mary knew that she almost warmed to him. Ecstasy touched for an instant ‒ the child, too! In the glow of impulse she almost rejoiced. It would be delightful to have her old home for herself, and to be permitted to run it. But she would want to be rid of all this old scratched and shabby furniture, reminiscent of the patients. She would not want stuff so dated, and she said so. Of course not, said her husband, for he was in a lavish mood. Out of their unhappiness over the death of her father and that awful notice in the personal columns of the local paper, everything was changing. She would have a new home.

  When she got home, she heard a faint mewing coming out of the back of the house. ‘What’s that?’ she asked the maid.

  ‘It’s a stray. We’ve tried shooing it away, but it won’t go,’ explained Emily. She did not want the kitten to be taken from her, possibly drowned by one of the men, for she personally very much liked cats.