‘What the devil!’
‘I dropped the kettle. I dropped the kettle.’
‘Fill a basin with warm water, Simmonds. I must loosen her stockings by soaking them.’
Mr. Simmonds was not a man to panic. Rapidly, he took some cold water from the pail under the table and warmed it with a little hot from one of the two kettles still on top of the kitchener. He produced a clean cloth and watched while the doctor gently removed the stockings from the scalded flesh by bathing her lower legs and feet.
‘Father, fetch the first-aid box. In the cupboard in my classroom. Please. I must deal with my hand.’
‘Let me see it,’ said Furnival. ‘Is it very painful?’ With Simmonds gone, he had dropped the doctor’s brisk concern for a more intimate tone nudged into life by his ministrations. She had fine, firm legs. He let his hand run over her knee again.
‘Extraordinarily,’ she replied, and brought the flat of her good hand smartly across, catching him full on the side of the face. Had she been standing, the blow would have made him stagger.
‘Good God, woman!’ he exclaimed. She wished she had not been so impetuous but, in that moment, she blamed him for everything; her own painful injuries were just a tangible example of what must inevitably follow his announcement and to have him taking advantage of her was intolerable. Nevertheless, she was glad that his Indian tan meant that his cheek did not glow with the force of her blow when her father came back into the kitchen.
Simmonds’ prompt return deflected any further reaction from the doctor. His eyes flashed but he compressed his lips and merely continued to dress her burns in a brisk, professional manner.
‘There’ll be no scarring,’ was all he said.
Perhaps silence was to be his revenge for her assault for it compelled her to be the one to deliver the explanation which her father clearly expected. She tried to say that she had just dropped the kettle. But it would not do.
‘Why, Delia, did you drop the kettle? You must tell me and you must tell me before Dr. Furnival leaves us.’ Her father was in danger of drawing entirely false conclusions but, in her damaged state, she could not think of anything to pacify him with Furnival still present, besides a limp repetition that it was nothing but her carelessness. She thought at first that her father would understand her but then the doctor got to his feet.
‘I prescribe bed with a couple of hot-water bottles. Good for shock.’
‘Indeed. And what, Dr. Furnival, might have occasioned the shock?’
‘Why the burns, man, the burns.’
‘No, Dr. Furnival, the shock which caused the accident. My daughter is not a woman who has accidents.’
There was no point in subterfuge.
‘Please tell my father, Dr. Furnival, what you told me just now.’
‘I’m sorry if it was my news that—’
‘I am sure you know it was. Father, Dr. Furnival said he has heard Bertie singing.’
There was just too long a pause. Simmonds was barely able to mask the tremor in his voice.
‘Singing words?’
‘Singing a hymn, accompanied on the organ by Mrs. Cordingley … by all accounts.’
Delia had been ready to support her father, to deflect Furnival’s attention from anything unguarded which he might say, but the sudden revelation that Anstace Cordingley was involved struck her with a debilitating, visceral force. She guessed that her father felt something at least equal to her own consternation but he now had himself completely in check and was able, within the same moment as hearing this additional news, to switch the focus of their conversation. He seized on the opening Furnival had carelessly given him.
‘“By all accounts.” So I understand that you are only reporting hearsay. That this is mere rumour?’
‘There is no doubt, man. Mrs. Jackman heard him and came around immediately to tell my wife—’
‘So it will be around the village before breakfast,’ said Delia, coming in to reinforce her father’s attack. It enabled him to push his point home.
‘Only, Delia, on Mrs. Jackman’s say-so. You’ll forgive me, Furnival, if I say that I cannot quite understand why you have concerned yourself with this gossip: Mrs. Jackman—you’ll agree — is not renowned for her veracity. A little caution should be exercised. Perhaps Mrs. Furnival too could be invited to entertain some caution before repeating the story.’
‘You are being pompous, Simmonds, and oddly disinterested. But if you don’t believe what I’ve told you then ask Bertie yourself. Yes,’ he sneered, ‘see what Bertie has got to say. Perhaps he will surprise us all with a fund of stories he has been saving up.’
The doctor left the house, leaving father and daughter with a peculiar feeling of embarrassment in each other’s company. They skirted around the enormous issue.
‘Where is he? It’s way past the time I said for his tea.’
‘You must lie down,’ replied her father.
‘There is no need to fuss unnecessarily. It’s really only my hand that hurts.’
‘Even so. I shall take your mother her tea. What else is there to be done?’ There was no note of genuine concern for her in his voice. If there was anything behind its weariness, it was deep, deep anger.
He filled the teapot from one of the other kettles and, taking his wife’s tray, left Delia alone in the kitchen. She knew that now, more than ever, they needed to be locked tightly together to prevent the repercussions of this news from overwhelming them but they had ceased to live, other than in parallel, for many years. For a moment, she wondered whether she would be best to run, whether she would be better off on her own, starting afresh elsewhere.
Someone else may have lit the fuse but the Rector’s wife would fan the flame and then, when the explosion came, the doctor (and no doubt the Rector himself) would be there too to pick through the wreckage and express a professional interest in the strewn corpses: the exposed muscle lying along the bone, the careful packing of the gut and vital organs, the map of vein and artery, and the corruption of the flesh. The secrets which had been gnawing away beneath father and daughter’s composure for the length of the boy’s life would be laid bare.
She would need all her strength in the trials to come. There could be no wavering, if she stayed in Dunchurch.
She knew that this Easter eve had assumed a momentous, a monstrous significance. The chrysalis had split; a thin blood was already pumping through the creature’s wings and they could never again be packed away. It would only be a short matter of time before the imago would be out. She had no idea what nightmarish proportions it might assume. And it had been Anstace’s doing. She had created the perfect environment to realise this metamorphosis. Metamorphosis was her forte: from ‘Anstace Catchpool’, as she had been when they were at school together, to ‘Anstace Cordingley’, when she married Geoffrey. Even Hubert had once toyed with her name, calling her ‘Anastasia’, his resurrection.
Is it a resurrection which Anstace has now effected in Bertie? Perhaps, thought Delia, I have always known it would come to this eventually. Perhaps these years have just been a time of waiting, a gestation.
Delia realized she had merely become inured to the burden she had been carrying but it was as if, slung over her back, its weight had suddenly shifted, throwing out her gait and posture, wracking her long-numbed muscles with the pain of a new awaking.
Cruelly on cue, the backdoor opened and Bertie came in warily, wide-eyed. He latched the door behind him and leaned for a moment with his back against it, his cap pulled from his head crunched between his hands. He took in the disaster, clue by clue. He must have seen the fury and something worse flood into her eyes and wash out the naked misery.
He turned and bolted into the night before she could reach him, screaming over and over again, ‘Bertie! Bertie! Bertie! Bertie!’
All she heard in reply was the owl’s call.
The natural noises, flitting through the village, were overlaid that night with other sounds. Doors slammed. Footsteps
rang along the road. Voices, shrill and excited, were picked up and thrown down the breeze as neighbour passed on the news to neighbour. There had been a Miracle in Dunchurch.
Mrs. Childs, the housekeeper from the Big House, had come over to the South Lodge herself with a message from Lady Margery asking that Mrs. Cordingley be good enough to step over directly to her ladyship. Having delivered the note, the housekeeper hesitated, clearly under orders to make sure that Anstace obeyed the summons without delay.
‘You go back, Mrs. Childs,’ said Anstace. ‘I promise I shall follow within the half-hour.’
‘Thank you, madam. If it doesn’t put you out.’
‘It’s you who have been inconvenienced. I am sorry that Lady Margery did not think she could telephone.’
‘I’m not sure that Lady Margery will ever feel comfortable using the telephone herself. Though she sees its merits when we want to order something from Canterbury.’
Mrs. Childs left and Anstace prepared to follow her, in response to her mother-in-law’s summons. She buttoned her coat and set her hat straight with a firmness which suggested resolution, but she chose to take a less direct route to the Big House, through the woods. She had a feeling she would need all her composure; a little time to gather it was necessary.
It had been a beautiful afternoon; spring had undeniably arrived. However, the shadows had now lengthened noticeably and a chill nipped the air. Despite the exertion of walking, Anstace shivered a little. Suddenly, she heard the call. The whooping sound rang oddly through the English trees. She thought it more like a cry one would hear in a tropical jungle or even a primaeval forest, but it had its answer: the soft hoot of a tawny owl.
Then ahead of her, Anstace saw the boy. He was running down the broad, grassed ride which the woodmen used to drag the timber out of the forest. He slowed and stopped, not because he had seen her but to call again. In front of him, a little patch of night detached itself from the gathering gloom. It glided on a cushion of silence along the ride, beating down and back with its wings just once. There would have been just the brush of air on the boy’s cheek as it came to perch on his shoulder, needling the wool of his jersey with its talons, positioning itself like a nesting cat. The boy ‘spoke’ to the bird, making quiet clicking noises in his throat. Suddenly, he started running, away from Anstace homeward toward Courteney Road. If he had looked in her direction, she would only have registered as a shadow, a wraith on the edge of his perception. The owl held fast to his shoulder, spreading its wings only for balance as the boy ran faster and faster, punishing his legs.
He creates his own world around him, thought Anstace.
When she passed the schoolhouse, there was just enough light to see the bird perched, sentinel, by the belfry.
Lady Margery was waiting for Anstace in her yellow boudoir. Characteristically, she wasted no time in pleasantries. ‘What has been going on, Anstace? The servants are agog with talk. The whole house is electric with it. Much as it grieves me to sink to asking the servants what has been happening in my own family, I had to ask Mrs. Childs to enlighten me. Now I want to hear what you have to say.’
‘How kind to include me as “family”, Lady Margery.’
‘Do not try to indulge in smart banter. You don’t have the temperament for it and you simply sound impertinent. Well? They say you have worked some miracle on the Simmonds boy. I have never heard anything so shockingly blasphemous.’
‘I am not sure I understand what a miracle is. But Bertie Simmonds can talk and he can sing too. He has been singing for me for some time. There’s nothing miraculous in that. I just think that he did not want to talk at home. It’s not a very happy house. He came with me when I went to play the church organ. Mr. Hoyle and the Rector have been happy for me to do so, from time to time. Recently, I have been going to the church most weeks. I played a favourite hymn which I’d played before on the piano at home and Bertie started singing to it; naturally enough, surely.’
‘And what have the boy’s parents to say about all this?’
‘All this? They know he visits me frequently as I used to visit the schoolhouse. The talking began hesitantly—it remains so— and so I encouraged him to sing. He could sing someone else’s words, you see. I don’t know what rendered him mute. More than shyness, I feel. It will take some time no doubt before he finds his own voice, but Geoffrey and I wanted to help him.’
‘Geoffrey knew of this?’
‘Of course. Bertie was frequently at South Lodge.’
‘Might one ask why?’
‘He liked to come. I think he may be rather frightened of his family.… He was not frightened of Geoffrey who was marvellous with him.’
‘That’s an extraordinary word to use to describe my son. I sometimes think that you forget I knew him from birth. I was familiar with every facet of his character. It was never robust and, in the end, he betrayed all we held dear. Oh, you can purse your lips and raise your eyebrows, Anstace. It won’t change the way I feel. He was a disappointment and a failure. You did your best to re-instate him here at Mount Benjamin and you succeeded to a degree, I’ll give you that. With your quiet, modest, Quaker ways a veneer of respectability was achieved—at least in the eyes of others. What your motive was … well, I don’t care to speculate. It is immaterial now. He’s dead and there is no reason we should trouble each other ever again.’
‘You don’t trouble me, Lady Margery. And I still have no idea why you trouble yourself with wanting to speak to me about Bertie Simmonds, or with speaking to me at all.’
It was true. Since Geoffrey’s funeral, the few conversations Anstace had had with Lady Margery had all been unpleasant. Each of them had been initiated by the older woman who seemed compelled to reiterate the same barren themes: with her son now dead, she was free to sever all contact with the woman she had been obliged to acknowledge as her daughter-in-law; now Geoffrey had gone, there was no reason to pretend that any ties existed between his mother and his widow; since Geoffrey had had the grace to die, perhaps the disgrace which he had brought upon the family might be expunged from memory; with Geoffrey dead, leaving no heir, the responsibility for securing the future of Mount Benjamin sat with Lady Margery alone; Anstace had no function.
Why then, Anstace wondered, was Lady Margery drawing her back into her orbit of interest?
‘At least you recognise that it may be a trouble to me,’ snapped Lady Margery.
‘Not of my making.’
‘Perhaps not but village gossip is rarely without some substance. I won’t have it.’
‘Is there something else?’
‘I can never tell whether you are unnaturally naïve or exceptionally devious. Of course there is something else. Whenever our name is linked to that family, there has been something else. What is it that compelled Geoffrey and now you to have truck with them? Well? Have you nothing to say? At least this has brought me to my senses. You will have to leave South Lodge. I shall find another tenant.’
The fact that she would lose her home registered fleetingly but Anstace was far more affected by the knowledge that, with her gone, Bertie would have no one. For the past few months, he had begun to stir. His very nature had begun to quicken, sprout and grow. Now, facing her as she was, she could believe her mother-in-law was capable of rallying the villagers, their scythes glinting from the stone, to cut him down.
Who else was there, besides herself, to nurture him? Gladys Baxter perhaps had some fondness for him, but she had no influence with Delia or Frederick Simmonds. No, it was she, Anstace, who had watched Bertie struggle through infancy and school, wary and shy, only escaping bullying, she was sure, because he was the schoolmaster’s son. How could she abandon him? Even if she lodged in Canterbury she would be too remote. To turn away would be a sort of apostasy.
‘I can’t. I won’t.’
‘Why? Answer me that!’ Lady Margery banged her hand down hard on the elegant lacquered dressing table, rattling the silver bibelots and antique scent bottles displ
ayed on it. Anstace was shaken by the old woman’s naked fury as she continued. ‘Tell me once and for all what this boy is to you. Tell me! Is he yours? Is he yours and Geoffrey’s? Have you been harbouring this deceit in front of my nose? You and he! Another gross betrayal? I will be told!’
Defence of Geoffrey was uppermost in Anstace’s mind. He had been a good, good man. His integrity was pure and if he had practised any deception it was because the world compelled him to. His mother’s notion of what rank and tradition demanded, society’s conventions, the pharisaical moral codes which pompous, self-serving people championed — all these had forced Geoffrey to don a disguise for his own self-preservation. He had loathed doing so and, she was sure, he had felt a blessed relief that, with her, he had at last been able to slough off what he saw as a hypocrisy. She would not have him charged falsely with this other subterfuge. The memory of her husband’s final hours, which she had inadvertently made more difficult, made her all the more forceful.
‘Geoffrey did not have the least idea,’ she shouted back. ‘Not the least. Don’t accuse him of that. No, Bertie’s not mine. I am not his mother. How could I be? I wish Geoffrey and I had been parents to Bertie but we weren’t.’
‘Then who? Do not prevaricate. You have no right to duck and dodge.’
‘Geoffrey said he could not have been. But we only spoke about it the once.’ The strain of this interrogation was suddenly too much for Anstace and she began to shake. It was a nervous reaction and had nothing to do with fear. The emotions which she had kept folded away, since his death, now shook themselves free as great sheets of grief crackling in the turbulence. ‘He said he could not have been … could not have been … but…’
Lady Margery stood over Anstace and shook her by the shoulders. She had little strength but her bony fingers dug into the soft muscle at the base of Anstace’s neck and made her wince in pain.
‘But what? But what? Who then? Who?’ Still the old woman probed and jabbed. She would wring the truth out of her now; there was no restraint, no decorum.
That They Might Lovely Be Page 7