The schoolmaster gave him a sharp look, prompting the Rector to distance himself from any hostility in the future which might emanate from Lady Margery.
‘We have not seen eye-to-eye, Simmonds, I’m aware of that; but I do not want you to think I shall exploit this business, as Chairman of the Managers, to your or Miss Simmonds’ detriment. There’ll be a fuss. That’s inevitable. But I do not intend either of you to be unduly worried about your positions here at the school. Not as things stand at present, at any rate. This business about Mrs. Cordingley and the boy’s singing has set tongues wagging but noisy gossip may serve to drown out the other babble. We’ll see. It may still come to nothing. But I thought you ought to be prepared.’
Nothing the Rector said amounted to anything suggesting concrete support but it was a relief to Frederick Simmonds to pick up the cue and deliver his prepared response to all talk of Bertie singing.
‘We are so very grateful for the attention Mrs. Cordingley has given Bertie. It seems she may have found a key to unlock that which we believed closed forever.’ He even managed a smile to play across his lips. ‘Very grateful. It is a shame the news has spread so awkwardly.’
The Rector had no desire for the conversation to take this turn. He knew his wife had acted foolishly, with no credit to herself or, by association, to him. Simmonds was being pretty decent in limiting himself to ‘awkwardly’ as an adverb to describe Hetty’s role. He was glad that the schoolmaster, no doubt following his own example, was behaving with commendable restraint and therefore, his Christian duty done (to a man whom he cordially disliked), the Rector felt he could take his leave with a clear conscience. He still felt some genuine anxiety on Miss Simmonds’ behalf, having only ever regarded her as a very capable, respectable young woman and an asset to the school. Nevertheless, he did not think he was obliged to speak to her, personally, on such a delicate matter as Lady Margery’s charge. He could leave that to her father.
He left the schoolhouse and walked back to the rectory aware that his dominant emotion was resentment directed toward Lady Margery. Never had he been thrown into such an awkward business. It was unforgiveable that the even keel of his life was likely to be disturbed indefinitely and, in all probability, in ways which he could still not truly anticipate.
Tuesday, 22 April 1930
Although she acknowledged the rectitude of her husband calling so promptly on Mr. Simmonds, Hetty Jackman struggled to summon sufficient courage to make her visit to Mrs. Cordingley. The Rector was relentless in his badgering, telling his wife that it really was her responsibility, and a weighty one too, charged with profound significance. No one else could lift it for her because it was she alone who had presumed to make public the innocent, private interaction between Mrs. Cordingley and Bertie Simmonds. Hetty Jackman was made to feel as though she had stolen something of inestimable sentimental value to someone else, or abused another’s trust or behaved indecently in some indefinable way. An abject apology was the least that was due. The more she procrastinated the more solid this shadowy sense of guilt became. She remained unclear as to what precisely she was guilty of but that seemed to paralyse her even more, as if this proved that her own moral compass was inadequate. In the end, it was Clare Furnival’s telephone call which sent her scurrying along the lane to the South Lodge. Mrs. Furnival had passed on the shocking news that Lady Margery had been taken ill, had most probably suffered a stroke.
Mrs. Furnival was sure that Hetty could only agree that Lady Margery was famous for her firmness of mind; that she was the last person anyone would have expected to suffer a seizure or be assailed by some apoplectic fit; that something extraordinary must have occurred for her to be afflicted in this way; that one could only be left guessing what it could be.
Hetty Jackman was shaken to her core. Would people think she was to blame for this catastrophe? It seemed so unfair when she had simply given a description of what she had witnessed. Surely it was Mrs. Cordingley who should take the blame. She therefore went to the South Lodge seeking absolution for herself rather than proffering an apology.
‘Mrs. Jackman, what a surprise!’ Anstace Cordingley invariably answered her own front door. Even before she had been widowed, she had only had irregular help in the house instead of a live-in housemaid.
‘Yes. Is it? May I come in? My husband said I should have called sooner. Perhaps I should. I really don’t know. But then Mrs. Furnival called and made me feel so wretched — about Lady Margery, I mean—and I’m not sure why, because I really have not done anything. It is you (if it were you and Bertie Simmonds’ singing which made Lady Margery ill) who surely carries the blame if anyone does and…’
‘Of course you must come in. Do.’
Anstace led her into the drawing room and chose to sit close to Hetty Jackman so that their knees were almost touching. Perhaps unconsciously, she echoed the Rector’s wife’s posture, sitting forward on the edge of her chair as if crouched over some precipice.
‘Do you think you should start at the beginning?’ she asked. ‘But let’s leave out any talk of blame, shall we? What is there to be blamed for? Bertie is singing, certainly. And that is a good thing; I’m sure we agree on that. Lady Margery has suffered a stroke, it is true, but she is of an age when the body starts wearing out in one way or another. I don’t think anyone really knows what triggers one debility rather than another. So just tell me why you’ve come?’
Faced with such gentle understanding, Hetty Jackman, overwrought as she was, burst into tears. Anstace found her a clean handkerchief but offered nothing else in the way of sympathetic support. She waited for her to find her own composure.
Her husband’s usual response to her weeping was to register weary irritation and this, over time, had conditioned Hetty Jackman to follow her own tears with a sense of grievance. They enabled her to bolster her self-worth. It was others’ lack of understanding which was the cause of the emotional turbulence she was enduring.
‘I don’t expect you to understand,’ she said belligerently, shuddering under the last of her sobs.
‘No doubt you have called to help me to.’
‘I have done nothing to be ashamed of.’
‘Good.’
‘You could not have expected me to remain silent.’
‘I did not expect you to be there in the first place but, no, I would not have expected you to remain silent.’
‘So why am I to be blamed?’
‘I hoped we could avoid all talk of blame. But if you are blaming yourself for something, you need to be clear what it is.’
‘I witnessed a Miracle and now everyone blames me.
‘There was no miracle, Mrs. Jackman. Or if there were, it had nothing to do with Bertie and me.’
‘I heard him singing with my own ears.’
‘So did I.’
‘Well then! And you said yourself that you wouldn’t expect me to keep silent about such a wonder.’
‘That’s not the same as agreeing with the fact that you didn’t.’
‘It was my Christian duty!’
‘Was it? For me, you see, it is a question of motive. What was there to be gained by telling Dr. and Mrs. Furnival and everyone else before you had spoken to Bertie’s family or me or even Bertie? None of us knew what you were about. Whilst I thought I heard the church door bang closed, I did not know for sure that anyone had heard Bertie singing or that such a sensation would follow if they had.’
‘It was a Miracle. I witnessed a Miracle!’ Mrs. Jackman twisted the handkerchief she had been given as if it were a thing she wanted dead.
‘I’m not sure any miracle should be made public property. Are they not essentially private affairs?’
‘They’re there for the glory of God, for the glory of God!’
‘And how does that sit with the glory of Hetty Jackman?’
‘That’s a nasty thing to say.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You talk of glory? What glory? I am suffering, Mrs. Cording
ley. I am suffering for my Faith.’
‘Are you sure of that?’
‘It is simply not fair.’
‘I suspect fairness has never sat hand in hand with Faith.’
‘Oh, you have no understanding. None at all. I doubt if you even know what Lady Margery plans to do. If she is spared, it will all come out and then where will you be? If she isn’t, well, Edward and I know what we know. We know what she believes and I have no doubt that Truth will out.’
‘You are getting cross and making very little sense.’
‘You must face the facts, Mrs. Cordingley.’
‘Neither of us can undo what has occurred. I realise that. But you seem to be implying something more.’
‘I see you think I cannot be trusted. I should have guessed,’ she said. She sniffed and pulled again at the handkerchief.
‘To be frank, Mrs. Jackman, it’s your motives I don’t trust. Can you appreciate that?’
‘I have no motives, as you call them.’
‘That is not honest.’
Hetty Jackman was not proof against the other woman’s still composure. She grew petulant and started to gather herself together to leave.
‘I came here to offer my friendship—’
‘I think that’s disingenuous.’
‘—not to be talked down to.’
‘That was not my intention. I just need to understand why you came. We can’t be friends if we’re not honest with one another.’
‘Or open. You haven’t told me the truth. I think I have a right because I was there. You can’t keep it a secret any longer. You can’t keep it all to yourself. It’s too late. Everything will come out and you’ll need friends who understand everything.’
Anstace struggled to imagine what the other woman believed she needed to know.
Whatever the past concealed, whatever secrets lurked in the shadows, for Anstace they had no significance compared to Bertie’s current predicament. It was an image of Bertie—grubby, neglected, friendless, a waif—which prevented Anstace now from softening toward Hetty Jackman and accepting her ‘friendship’. It was immaterial to her, whether Hetty Jackman was her ally or not. But Bertie’s situation was different; it was impossible that she should offer him up for Mrs. Jackman’s satisfaction.
‘Mrs. Jackman, please understand. I have no secret. It was not even a secret that Bertie could sing; it was just that no one else yet knew. He only talked to me because I would listen. It was a private thing for him, not a secret one. I don’t think you heard anything miraculous because what happened was not at all extraordinary. Bertie should have been singing all his life but he started late; that’s all. It was not a miracle because it falls within our scope of understanding. So I believe. I am sorry if you wish it were otherwise.’
‘And what about everything else? What about the circumstances? You cannot mean to tell me that Bertie Simmonds is who we thought he was. Let me tell you this: Lady Margery knows otherwise.’ Hetty Jackman’s mind was a blunt thing. Once set upon a particular track it could not be easily diverted. Subtlety of thought or argument made no impression. It was this inadequacy, rather than any malevolence, which now drove her to smarting aggression, wielding what her husband had divulged in confidence like a weapon.
Anstace sensed a stirring. It might not just be Bertie awakening. The thought chilled her that something else could be waking which, once roused, would overpower the child she loved and he would be lost again. Letting Bertie sing in the church to enjoy the acoustics had been worse than carelessness, worse than folly. She had been irresponsible with so fragile a child in her charge.
And having failed him, she had then betrayed him to Lady Margery. That she had been bullied into doing so was no excuse. Nor was her hope that the information would remain perpetually dormant any justification.
Hetty Jackman was not the danger. How could she be? Silly, vain woman that she was. It was also inconceivable that she could be Lady Margery’s lieutenant. Somehow, though, Hetty Jackman, like a winged-thing ever-circling for carrion, had spied out a prize to swoop upon. Had Lady Margery been indiscreet? That seemed so unlikely unless, struck by her sudden illness, there had been a delirium and things said which had now reached the Rector’s wife.
Anstace spoke.
‘Mrs. Jackman, you seem intent upon making a sensation out of this. Let me say again: there was no miracle. It concerns me that you think there might be. He is vulnerable and, if you insist upon dramatising his singing and draping him in all sorts of fanciful speculation, I think you’ll hurt him.’ She paused before continuing, making every word count. ‘I will not allow him to be harmed by you or anyone else.’
‘I suppose by “anyone else” you mean Lady Margery but why would she harm her only grandchild.’
So it was awake and roaming.
‘I had no idea Lady Margery would talk about Bertie in this way to others.’
‘She told the Rector yesterday in strict confidence.’
‘And he told you. Whom have you told?’
Anstace had the bleak satisfaction of seeing Hetty Jackman suddenly sag as she realised what she had divulged. She pressed home whatever advantage she had.
‘You need to think hard, Mrs. Jackman. Who else knows? I think that Lady Margery would only have spoken to your husband in her illness, or in a state of weakness preceding her illness. She will most certainly regret having done so when she recovers. She may recover completely. Dr. Furnival is not unhopeful. You should bear that in mind, Mrs. Jackman.’
‘I’m sorry, I’m sure, if I have spoken out of turn. It’s been so hard.’ She reinforced her self-pity, that constant companion of the weak, with feeble self-justification. ‘I witnessed a Miracle to the Glory of God. I had a duty. What else could I have done? Even Lady Margery must understand my Christian dilemma. You can explain to her as soon as ever she’ll understand.’
Anstace stood. That this was a dismissal was clear.
‘I’m sorry you think so ill of me, Mrs. Cordingley,’ Hetty Jackman wheedled, as she too rose to her feet. Anstace did not feel this pathetic statement warranted any response and she merely escorted Mrs. Jackman to the front door and bade her good night.
Anstace went upstairs to finish packing an overnight case before walking up to the Big House where she planned to help nurse her mother-in-law. However tangled her feelings for Lady Margery, it would not be right to leave her merely to Mrs. Childs, the housekeeper, and the hired nurses.
That night she dreamed that she was standing with Hetty Jackman in a long attic, feebly lit by tiny dormer windows buried in ivy, their panes swathed in cobwebs. Around them, covered in dustsheets, old blankets and tarpaulins, was the detritus of the past. They were standing in front of a fantastically shaped object, unrecognisable beneath the grey cloth which covered it. Hetty Jackman wanted Anstace to lift the dustsheet to reveal what lay beneath. Anstace thought she ought to know what sat there but she could not remember. She was loath to raise the dust by twitching the sheet free when she did not know what she would find. She was frozen with indecision.
Thursday, 24 April 1930
Unusually, her mother was standing at her bedroom window. The lace curtains, which as children Hubert and Delia had been forbidden to touch, had been disturbed. The heavy, cream folds were hanging unevenly and swaying accusingly, although her mother was now a step or two back from the window.
‘Mother?’ she asked. There was no response.
‘What are you doing, mother?’ Delia asked again.
‘I have been watching the rain. I have been watching the rain slide in waves down the school-roof. So much rain. I am sure it will be enough.’
Delia scarcely heeded her. The roles they now played were the reverse of what they had been during her youth. At first, as her mother had declined, Delia had grabbed the opportunities to assert herself which had presented themselves. These were more than the assumption of domestic responsibilities, complemented by the chance she had to step into the teaching r
ole her mother vacated. There was also the chance to recast her own character. It had been liberating.
It was as if, so Delia sometimes thought, I had been orphaned and allowed to step free from a legacy of wrong turnings. No longer can mother regard everything I do through a film of prejudice, coloured by the errors and blunders of youth.
Of course, neither of her parents had died but both, in their separate ways and for their private reasons, had removed themselves from an intimate role in her life. So Delia had chosen to stay in Dunchurch, become a teacher in her father’s school and assume the role of mistress of the household whilst her mother withdrew into herself. There had been factors, of course there had, influencing that choice but it had been deliberately made.
The independence bequeathed to Delia had nudged her toward a firmness of resolve and an abhorrence of self-pity. She would always accept the consequences of her decisions. If they were negative, she would never slide into an abject apology either to herself or others. It was only at times when she allowed herself to reflect on the way her mother, once so sharp and dogmatic, had faded since Hubert’s death, that Delia felt herself drooping. The solution was simply to keep her mother at an emotional distance.
This was not particularly difficult for, over the years, Muriel Simmonds had encircled herself with a wall of inconsequential platitudes to deflect any intrusive interest. A light, staccato voice and the chatter it carried was her armour. She assumed it whenever she had to tolerate anyone else’s company. It might appear brittle but it was steel: plated, riveted and welded. If there had to be talk, Muriel Simmonds could dominate it with a constant stream of bubbles: conversational ephemera to abort any quickening thought. Any visitors, having heard something about a ‘breakdown’, would exchange speaking glances whilst their hostess smothered anything but the most superficial exchanges.
This manic cheerfulness had largely replaced the savage anger which Muriel Simmonds had carried for the first few years after the end of the war. Occasionally, however, she would succumb to a gloomy despondency and retreat into silence, assaulted by dumb despair or caught in the throes of an inarticulate fury. At these times, she routinely spent the whole of each day alone, free from both the imposition of anyone else’s presence and the tyranny of her own babbling. Her silence, Delia supposed, was both a place of retreat and a refuge.
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