by Graham Swift
‘Jane, would you like to sit down?’
The only place would have been inside the Humber. Like Ethel and Iris. But she wasn’t going to faint. She was still clutching the handlebars of her bicycle.
All the available evidence was that—whatever had detained him—he was trying to minimise his lateness. He must have been driving fast at any rate. And he had taken the minor road which, though narrower and twistier, was a short cut, crossing the railway line by a bridge and so avoiding the level-crossing on the main road, which it might have been just his luck to find shut against him.
But he never crossed the railway line.
He was known to be a sometimes speedy yet knowledgeable user of the local lanes. So he would certainly have known about the short cut—if you were heading for Bollingford—and known about the distinct right-hand bend the road made half a mile or so before the railway bridge. It was more of a corner in fact, indicating perhaps where surveyors and landowners had once failed to agree. There was even a large oak on the apex of the bend, marking the hazard. And Paul Sheringham had driven straight into it.
It was bright sunshine, a glorious day. There was no possibility that he had not seen the bend, the approaching, still leafless oak. There were road signs anyway. And he must have taken this bend scores of times. Perhaps his brakes had failed. The condition of the car could never reveal this. Perhaps—since no other traffic was involved—some innocent yet fatal factor, such as a stray farm animal, was responsible. Though would you crash into a tree to avoid a lesser, if significant, mishap?
The conclusion, even the formal verdict of an inquest, would be that a terrible—a ‘tragic’—accident had occurred. And this conclusion was reached not just from lack of witnesses or evidence to the contrary, but because it was the conclusion that everyone—the Sheringhams and Hobdays particularly, who had considerable connections with local officialdom—wished to reach. No one wished to believe that, two weeks before his marriage to Miss Emma Hobday and while actually driving to meet her, Paul Sheringham had driven fatally into a tree for any other reason than that it was an accident.
Mr Sheringham senior would no doubt have explained, when asked, that because of the peculiarity of the day there would have been no one at Upleigh when his son departed. Both the cook and the maid, he would have stated, would have been at their mothers’ homes. And this might have produced another breast-shaking spasm from Mrs Sheringham. And the visiting policeman might have thought that he had asked questions enough, and put away his notebook.
But she, Jane Fairchild, would not have to answer any questions. Why should she? She was only the maid at Beechwood, not even at Upleigh. She had simply ridden off on her bicycle, and gone nowhere near, as it happened, the scene of the accident (though Mr Niven might have thought that was why she had gone pale). Then she had returned, somewhat early.
And she had never heard—it was a never-spoken fact—as she wandered naked round that house any distant ‘crump’. Would there have been a detectable ‘crump’? And she had never seen, in so far as she’d looked from any window, any smudge in that blue sky.
Though she had heard the telephone ring.
Mr Niven didn’t actually take hold of her. Not then. And she didn’t faint, even if she had gone pale.
He repeated, ‘I’m so sorry, Jane, I’m so sorry to have to tell you this.’
Why did it seem, at that complexion-changing moment, that she might have been someone else? It was an expression: ‘not to be yourself ’. Why did it seem that she might have been Emma Hobday? Or that she might have been Mr Niven’s own daughter (though Mr Niven didn’t have one), who was also Emma Hobday. That Mr Niven was, himself, Mr Hobday. That the characters in this story had all been jumbled up.
Why did it seem that Mr Niven was projecting onto her a whole confusion of scenes that she might have been in, but wasn’t? She was only the maid—and, temporarily, not even that. Why did it seem that this day and its now terrible meaning—it wasn’t Mothering Sunday any more at all—had blurred the usual order of things between herself and Mr Niven?
He might have been speaking to his wife.
‘Jane. Jane, I have left Clarissa—Mrs Niven—with the others. In Henley. She felt she might be of better—service—there. Of course Emma—Miss Hobday—will drive to be with them. If she is able to. There was the question of whether they might all drive to her—to Bollingford. She is in Bollingford. Did I explain that? Or whether they might all drive to be at the Hobdays’. There is the question, Jane, of where everyone—ought to be. But I thought I should be here, Jane. I thought I should be here to . . .’
‘Yes, Mr Niven?’
‘To go to Upleigh.’
‘Upleigh?’
‘Yes. I stopped here first to use the telephone. I have just done so. I was just leaving. I have spoken to Clar—to Mrs Niven. They are still at Henley. But they have decided to meet Miss Hobday—at the Hobdays’. That is the decision. I think that is the best plan. Miss Hobday must come first. Mr and Mrs Sheringham do not wish to return yet to Upleigh. Not yet. You can understand. I shall drive to the Hobdays’ myself later. I am glad—I mean I am sorry—to be able to explain all this to you. But, Jane, you are back early—?’
‘I thought, sir—it doesn’t matter now—I might just come back here and read my book for a bit.’
‘Your book?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, if you— I mustn’t—’
‘It doesn’t matter, Mr Niven. My book doesn’t matter.’
‘Someone must inform the staff at Upleigh, you see. Mr Sheringham has told me that your—opposite number—is called Ethel. And the cook is called Iris.’
‘But—’
‘Yes, I know, they have gone to their families. Like Milly. But they must be made aware as soon as possible of the—circumstances. Mr and Mrs Sheringham told me—oh good God—that Paul drove them both to the station this morning, but they will return separately. This—Ethel—most likely first. So I must go to Upleigh, you see, to await her. To inform her.’
‘Not the station, sir?’
Had she gone pale twice?
‘That might not be the best place for such a purpose. In any case—how can I put this, Jane?’
‘Put what, sir?’
‘I feel that someone must—ascertain the situation at Upleigh in any case. I mean the situation as Mister Paul would have left it.’
‘But—’
‘Yes, of course, he would simply have left the house. Good God, he was going to be brushing up on his law apparently. Yes, he would simply have left the house. There is no situation. But I feel—someone should check the situation. To prepare the Sheringhams. I mean, to reassure them. They are not ready to return there yet. They feel they should be with Miss Hobday. But you can imagine, Jane, you can imagine. The state of their— I offered to do what I have just told you. To make sure of things at Upleigh. They said that when he—when Mister Paul—left, and as the house would have been empty, he would have left a key, under a piece of stone—a stone pineapple, they said. Mrs Sheringham said it was a stone pineapple. By the front porch. So—’
‘So—?’
‘I must drive to Upleigh. To wait for this Ethel. And to ascertain—’
Mr Niven did not seem entirely ready for the task he had plainly volunteered for. He cleared his troubled throat.
‘Jane—may I ask you something?’
‘Ask me what, Mr Niven?’
She was still gripping the handlebars of the bicycle. She realised she was even squeezing its brake levers, though she was standing, quite still, beside it.
‘If you would accompany me.’
‘Go with you, sir?’
‘Of course, I understand it is still your day. If you wish, Jane, if you wish just to read your book—’
‘Your book, Mr Niven.’ She had no idea why she corrected him.
‘Of course.’
A brief contortion crossed his face, as if the beginning of a smile had turned in
to something else.
Was he going to sob? This wasn’t his son. He was only an entangled neighbour.
‘Yes, sir. I will go with you.’
‘I appreciate that, Jane. That is very good of you. I don’t suppose you have ever been inside Upleigh House—’
‘Would you mind, Mr Niven, if I went in first and had a glass of water?’
‘Yes—of course. Forgive me. This is all such a shock. And you have been cycling around all day! Yes, yes, of course, you will need to collect yourself, refresh yourself. Forgive me. I will be here, Jane, by the car, when you are ready.’
And perhaps that five minutes or so made all the difference. And when had it ever happened before: Mr Niven waiting for her? Even standing by the car, when she reappeared, with its leather-lined door opened for her. She thought again of Ethel and Iris.
Inside the house—inside another empty house—her face had momentarily flooded, before she drenched it anyway with cold water. She might even have stifled a scream.
They drove to Upleigh. It was not a long drive at all. But he drove very slowly and carefully, as if to some appointment he might have wished not to be keeping. They found it hard to speak. Yes, she felt like Ethel. She might have been Ethel.
And as it happened, Ethel was ahead of them. The docile and dutiful Ethel had decided, as if unequipped for her day of freedom, to return in time even to make the Sheringhams their tea, should they themselves be back early enough to require it. Her ‘day’ with her mother must have been a matter of just a couple of hours, and perhaps, for her own reasons, she had preferred not to stretch it out any longer. She would have alighted from the 3.42, then simply walked. It was only a mile or so. There were short cuts through fields. The sun would have been turning a deeper gold. Primroses peeping, rabbits hopping. It would have taken the agile Ethel maybe twenty minutes. And they might have been the best twenty minutes of her day.
Even as they drove up the Upleigh drive, between the limes, she had seen the tell-tale sign: the upstairs window. Tell-tale only to her. It was closed now. Someone had closed it. Who else but Ethel? Ethel had been in the bedroom and closed the window.
And so she’d gasped—audibly to Mr Niven—as they still drove up the drive. And Mr Niven had taken it perhaps as a general gasp of distress, since they were both no doubt thinking—if in different ways—of how Paul Sheringham had driven down this very drive only hours ago in the opposite direction. For the last time. So Mr Niven had said needlessly, ‘Yes, it’s terrible, Jane.’
And it was a gasp of distress, but it contained a small gasp of relief. And she otherwise betrayed nothing.
The sun was now off the front of the house and the gravel. When they got out of the car there was even a distinct chill in the air after the earlier heat of midday. And while Mr Niven began looking for ‘this pineapple thing’ and while she restrained herself from pointing at it or saying anything, Ethel suddenly opened the door—as she naturally would, since it seemed that there were visitors. She might even have thought, hearing the car from within, that it was Mr and Mrs Sheringham returning. But there she was on the porch suddenly, with a surprising air of being in charge of—of guarding—the whole edifice of Upleigh.
And as she watched Ethel open the door she naturally thought of when she had last seen it being opened.
‘Mr Niven—?’ Ethel had mustered, with a mixture of surprise and composure which didn’t begin to embrace the puzzle of why Mr Niven was there with Jane What-was-her-name, the maid from Beechwood.
Were all maids being offered rides today?
And Mr Niven said, ‘You are Ethel, aren’t you?’ Which was also puzzling.
So there had been no need to wait for Ethel. She struggled, later, to imagine what that might have been like. And the whole procedure of informing Ethel took place at the front porch. Since Ethel plainly wouldn’t be told to go in and sit down, not by Mr Niven who wasn’t her own master, even though it was clear from his manner that something really awful might be about to be uttered. And was that Beechwood girl supposed to be coming inside and sitting down too?
Ethel, in fact, suddenly changed. Or perhaps her true Ethelness appeared. She would never know if her (and even Paul Sheringham’s) whole conception of Ethel had been mistaken from the beginning.
Ethel’s eyes, even as Mr Niven was grappling with words again, had suddenly bored into her own as if she, Ethel Bligh, knew everything. Though equally they might have been saying, just as unswervingly, ‘We maidservants have to stick together, don’t we, and know our place in the world?’
Her look went a lot further anyway than a mere bewildered, ‘And what are you doing here? What are you doing consorting with your master?’
Behind Ethel, she could just make out, through the vestibule and the shadows of the hall, the table and the bowl with the white clusters of orchids. It was somehow incredible that they should still be there.
‘I have some distressing news, Ethel,’ Mr Niven began. ‘If I may call you Ethel?’
‘Yes, sir.’
And so Ethel was informed. And stood there, like an unbudging defender on the front porch, as if she were fully prepared, now so much harm had apparently come to this house, to prevent any further assaults upon it. Mr Niven, who was still on the gravel below, seemed to cower before her sudden authority.
‘Then it is just as well, Mr Niven, I came back early, so I can be of assistance. I must have known in my bones something was wrong. That I might be needed. Mr and Mrs Sheringham—they must be quite beside themselves. They must be in such a state again.’ Ethel had said that deliberate ‘again’. ‘I will be here for them when they return. I will inform Cook when she returns. I will take—I will make, if required—any telephone calls.’
‘Ethel—’
But Ethel had carried on, perhaps in rare defiance, for her, of the speak-when-spoken-to rule.
‘I have already tidied around. I have tidied Mister Paul’s room—’
‘That is just the point, Ethel.’
‘The point, Mr Niven?’
‘I need to ask you— I am here to ascertain—’ Mr Niven floundered. ‘Did you find anything, in Mister Paul’s room?’
‘Anything? I don’t know what you mean, Mr Niven.’
‘Like—a note, Ethel. Anything written.’
‘No, sir. I did not find anything written. And I would not have read it if I had, sir.’ Ethel almost looked as if her next words might have been a snappy, ‘Would that be all, sir?’ Or even a, ‘And what business would that be of yours?’
‘Then— That is all right, Ethel. That is all—all right.’
‘Are you all right, sir? Would you be requiring a cup of tea or anything?’
‘No, thank you, Ethel. Are you all right? Would you require—our company? Or Jane here’s company?’
That was a possibility she, the Beechwood maid, hadn’t been prepared for and she waited, surrenderingly, for Ethel’s grasping of the initiative.
‘No, sir. I can manage, thank you.’
But she had said it not looking at Mr Niven, but squarely, unwaveringly at her ‘opposite number’.
And her look was like the look of the sternest and most forgiving of parents.
So, she would never know many things. But she knew now that, certainly by the time the Sheringhams returned, Ethel would have thoroughly ‘tidied up’ Mister Paul’s room. The flung-aside trousers, the bedclothes. The sheets would have been replaced (though no one, Ethel must later have reflected on this, was going to sleep in them), the removed ones bundled into the laundry basket, waiting for Monday’s copper. The kitchen table—a simple kindness to Cook Iris—would have been cleared and cleaned. And everything returned to as it should be. Even though everything was different.
And Ethel would one day find her way into another minor (not so minor) character—in If the Truth Be Known. She would be transmuted and (though only the author would know) honoured by fiction. She would not be called Ethel (she would be called Edith) or be anything
like Ethel, or even be a maid, but she would be one of those characters who exist, seemingly, on the periphery of things and yet know everything. And she would be one of those characters whose real ‘character’ goes for most of the time unsuspected and unperceived. But that was a general truth she, the author, would know by then to apply to the creation of character in fiction, as it was a general truth about life and people.
But she would never know exactly how much Ethel had known all along. And she would never know what Ethel did or thought or imagined or felt when she was left alone again in that house in the interval before the Sheringhams (and Cook Iris) returned, and even, in time, the police appeared, just for some routine questions.
She would hardly have composed a thank-you note to her mother.
They drove back. The sun was dipping and turning orange. The afternoon was waning. And crispening. It was only March. Ethel would light fires too, no doubt, among her other tasks. The right thing to do in the circumstances, keep the home fires burning. Just as she herself would do soon, when she became a maid again at Beechwood.
What was she now, for the time being?
Mr Niven said, after a long silence, ‘I’m sorry to have kept you from your reading, Jane. I’m so sorry to have used up your time. What is the book at present? I forget.’
‘It’s all right, sir. It doesn’t matter.’
She was sitting beside him in the front seat, where, when her husband drove, Mrs Niven would sit. She was trying very hard not to weep, to hold herself together.
If only Mr Niven might say, ‘You must take the evening off. You must take a long hot bath.’ But maids never took long hot baths or were given unscheduled evenings off, especially when they had had the day off anyway. In a little while she would have to resume her duties. She would have to be at least as strong as Ethel.