That They Might Lovely Be

by David Matthews

  On their way to the Big House the following afternoon, Delia felt compelled to talk to Bertie. When she had believed him to be incapable of speech, she had grown to believe him as good as deaf. She had allowed the one debility to blossom into a general incapacity. She could not now fall into that error. It was absolutely necessary to talk to him as they walked briskly through the village, avoiding any contact with their neighbours, if only to remind her that this was a boy who could listen and understand, who might indeed comment on what he was to hear. She felt awkward maintaining a monologue and, in her nervousness, the topic she found herself regaling him with was when she had visited the Big House previously.

  She had never spoken about this to anyone. What was it about this wretched boy’s situation which meant that she selected him to be her confidant, her confessor? Perhaps it was because, though suddenly thrust to the centre of their lives, he alone, of all her acquaintances, had no recollection of how either she or Geoffrey had been sixteen years ago.

  She could hardly believe it herself. With all that had come between them since, it did not seem possible that once she had imagined ‘an understanding’ developing between her — the daughter of the village schoolmaster—and him — the local squire. Had she really been so extraordinarily naïve?

  She focused all her recollection on describing to Bertie the interior of the Big House, as far as she could remember it. It would prepare him for what he would see but it also diverted her from dwelling on the memories of her own emotions.

  She remembered the way so much polished wood had impressed her. In addition to the furniture, waxed to a high gloss, the bannisters and the broad treads protruding from either end of the stair-runner all gleamed richly like ripe horse chestnuts, freshly exposed. It was not just the beauty of the woodwork that struck her, it was the evidence that this was a place which had, for centuries, had staff to care for it. The portraits that hung on the walls were probably not particularly well executed but they told of lineage and the sort of family that deemed it appropriate to leave an image of its significant members for the next generation. (How great the contrast with her own home and the range of studio photographs, in tones of sepia, on the mantelpiece!) She recalled the stillness in the Big House, accentuated by the audible tick of time passing, counted by innumerable clocks. She remembered being amused by the fact that they told wildly different times—two clocks could be a good ten minutes or so out—as if punctuality were unimportant and that, for this family, time itself was in service. The house had been cold even though she had visited during the summer months, with that chill about it which suggested it had never really ever warmed up. But perhaps she was projecting some pathetic fallacy on the place for, apart from Geoffrey’s careless sociability, there had been no indication from anyone else she had met there that she was to be welcomed as a guest with any degree of warmth.

  Her awareness of the social hierarchy and of these, its higher strata, where she would only be admitted under sufferance, flooded back to her. She suddenly wondered whether she ought to be approaching the Big House from the rear, to be admitted through the service entrance. However, too much had happened since she was here last as a mere girl (and too much was likely to occur following this afternoon) to push her into any subservient role. She took hold of Bertie’s hand firmly and strode resolutely up the three stone steps to the front door.

  Mrs. Childs opened the door and then escorted them through the vast stone-flagged hall, past the main reception rooms and up the great staircase to reaches of the house where Delia had never been. She mounted the stairs; she heard the oak creak under her step but these sounds brought back no memories. Geoffrey’s hand would have covered this pineapple newel post thousands of times but she had never before felt its worn edges. He would have slept in a room off this broad gallery. He and Anstace, perhaps, had lain together in a bed behind one of these polished doors but she, Delia—who in her girlish fancies had danced across the roofs, spun on the chimneystacks of twisted brick and peered through the speckled skylights, dreaming of when she might be mistress here—she had never even climbed the backstairs.

  Mrs. Childs had clearly been given her instructions for, when Delia was admitted to the little Regency boudoir where Lady Margery was settled, Bertie was commanded to remain in the gallery and told to amuse himself by looking at the pictures. Delia entered the room and was struck immediately by how pretty it was. A leaded oriel window commanded views to the south and west and the sharp spring sunlight played on the panes, turning some brightly opaque and catching the stiff, faded silks that draped the window, quickening the creams and shot golds. It did not strike her as a room that had seen much use; it had simply been allowed to mellow for a hundred-odd years.

  The jealousy and resentment which had been building up within her, unbidden, since setting out from the schoolhouse, now stabbed her viciously. Why had events twisted everything away from her? Why, after everything, was this stricken old woman still established in this fine house? What had she done to deserve this beautiful little room, even at the end of her life?

  There were no answers to these questions, nor would there ever be. She knew that. She had been through this self-torture before and knew that the only way to overcome it was to assume the hard sardonicism that was now her invariable mood.

  She diverted herself by recognising that the lovely room’s wizened incumbent, twitching a little under Mrs. Childs’ ministrations, would not live to relish it much longer. Like Delia’s mother, she would fall prey to the miracle of Bertie’s singing.

  But, Delia silently resolved, not before she has served my purpose.

  She remembered her father’s words: the important question was what she wanted.

  Lady Margery had been asleep but she understood perfectly that it was Miss Simmonds who had called on her. She allowed Mrs. Childs to prop her up and tuck an embroidered shawl around her but she then dismissed the housekeeper and waved to a cane chair at the foot of her couch so she could fix her visitor with her one clear eye.

  Delia did not flinch under that scrutiny. The incarnation of Lady Margery which she had long nursed in her imagination could not be rendered more terrible by some attack of paralysis.

  This woman had had her own son imprisoned for his conscientious objection to a war that had eventually taken Delia’s own brother and set in motion physical and emotional bereavements and their warped consequences which even now she was having to endure. Lady Margery’s feudal eye had roamed tirelessly across the village, asserting her tyranny of class. For the first time, Delia seriously wondered whether a significant amount of blame should not sit on Lady Margery’s shoulders. It had been her domination that had driven Geoffrey to rebel. Had he not been so defined by this contrariness, that rebellion might never have deviated into the horrible corruption into which he had sunk by the time of his release from prison.

  So much of the ghastly confusion which now beset them had sprung from his mother’s provocation of Geoffrey’s moral collapse. That, thought Delia, led in turn to his willingness to contaminate me. Facing Lady Margery, ravaged by physical decay, is suddenly very easy. She deserves everything coming to her. There is nothing to pity. Instead, I merely loathe this wracked creature whose right eye lurks under its dead lid, whose sagging right cheek muscles press on the corner of the mouth where a bubble of saliva has gathered, before dribbling down the chin.

  When it spoke, the voice was alien. The words were thick, heavy on the sibilants, reminding Delia not so much of the slurred speech of a drunkard as the drawl of a sybarite. It was wickedly smooth. The mouth struggled to produce a smile but it was twisted into something rivetingly grotesque.

  ‘My … dear, Misssimmonds,’ said the voice and the ring-clustered fingers clawed at a lawn handkerchief in an attempt to raise it to the wet lips. ‘Misssimmonds … I have strength enough for … thisinterview … but none to spare. You must … do me the courtess-sy of … answering my questions frankly … can I have that … a-ah … ssuranc
e?’

  ‘I can promise nothing. I have no idea why you wish to see me. I have no idea why you wanted me to bring my brother—’

  ‘Ah, yes … your brother. Quite …. quite. Shall … we start there? You will not … deny that I have … some … claim on you to … hear the truth?’

  ‘What truth do you wish to hear?’

  And then, as Lady Margery struggled to express herself, Delia knew for certain that her mind was as distorted as her body. The wretched woman had conceived an idea and, however monstrous it might be, it would be impossible now to make her realise how grossly it was proportioned, for she was desperate to will it into life. She had given birth to and nursed this obsession secretly, under the blanket of her stroke where no one else had been able to intervene. And now the thing had its own energy, sucked from the old woman’s last reserves.

  It was obscene. The wretched woman’s fanciful yearning had exhumed a speculation which Delia thought had been buried long ago. But, as Lady Margery prodded and probed, Delia subdued her instinctive adhorrence. She remembered her resolve that her own advantage might be more effectively served not so much by the well-worn, habitual denial as by a limited confession. If a corpse could be propped up into some attitude of the living, it could delude the gullible.

  Lady Margery sought at first to clarify in her own mind her son’s whereabouts in between his release from Ipswich prison and his return to Dunchurch, with Anstace on his arm. She had always known that Delia had not been in Dunchurch for most of 1919. She wanted to establish a connection here but Delia refused to be drawn. She was adroitly evasive. Faced with such an adversary, the old woman began to tire. She could no longer afford to be circumspect.

  ‘Were you … my son’s mistress at that time? Tell me. You know … I have a … letter.’

  ‘I cannot believe he regarded me as such.’

  ‘And the boy … was born in … in secret … some time afterwards.’

  ‘There was no secret.’

  ‘You and … your mother were away from … Dun … church for some months. Your father wrote … to me (I have … his letter … still) but the talk and … speculation were never … satisfactorily ex … plained. Your mother was … beyond childbearing. She connived at your … shame. And when … she knew she would be dis … covered, she took her own life. She—’

  ‘You have gone too far!’ Delia was on her feet, towering over the recumbent figure. ‘I shall not stay to hear any more. You are cruel. You are ridiculous.’

  Lady Margery summoned all her strength and shouted. She felt herself to be engaged in a battle too primitive to maintain even a veneer of civility.

  ‘Give me my grandson!’

  Silence does not exist; there are only degrees of quiet. And in the thick quiet, which was sucked into the wake of this anguished, desperate cry, there came the sound of a door handle being turned and the reedy voice of a child singing.

  ‘In life, no house, no home

  My Lord on earth might have;

  In death, no friendly tomb

  But what a stranger gave.

  What may I say?

  Heaven was his home;

  But mine the tomb

  Wherein he lay.

  Here might I stay and sing—’

  The eeriness of it brushed up the back of Delia’s neck and over her scalp. But she broke the spell and, turning, snatched at the boy in one fluid movement. She dragged him across to the couch where she held him fiercely by the shoulders before her so he and Lady Margery could regard each other.

  ‘You’ll find no evidence for what you claim. His birth certificate will record that his parents are Frederick and Muriel Simmonds. You cannot shame us. Whatever you do you cannot expect us to conspire with you.’ And then she threw down her own question, ‘Why do you want a grandson when you destroyed your own son so effectively?’

  Lady Margery did not seem to be listening. Her head had fallen back to one side and she was staring beyond them both at a large painting of a boy, dressed in the fashionable sailor’s rig at the turn of the century. As Delia hurried Bertie from the room, almost colliding with Mrs. Childs who must have been attracted by the noise, she supposed there was a superficial resemblance between Bertie and the boy in the painting.

  It was a portrait of Geoffrey at a similar age.

  Whit Sunday, 7 June 1930

  Bertie was squatting on the floor, feeding the owl parts of a mouse he had trapped. Delia refused to notice him. And then he spoke.

  ‘Who … who am I?’

  The three words hung there suspended. Delia stared at him. The owl swiveled its head, blinking back at her.

  ‘Who am I?’

  The same words were repeated but she could not tell if he intended them for a challenge or a test.

  ‘What? Why are you talking?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You know who you are.’

  ‘You tell me who.’ The pitch of his voice rose and now the owl spread its wings and flapped at her balefully. ‘I can talk. Mother is dead. Talk made her cross.’

  ‘Who told you to?’

  ‘I want to know. Who am I?’

  ‘Take that creature out of here. You and its filthy habits. I’ll not have it!’

  ‘Who am I?’ He was standing up now, arms hanging straight by his sides, fists clenched.

  ‘Father! Father!’ Delia called her father not so much for protection (for all the aggression in his stance, she knew Bertie could not harm her) but because she knew they were on the edge of a crisis which Frederick Simmonds had to experience.

  She made a dash around the kitchen table and grabbed the boy by the neck of his jersey. The owl flew free and started to circle the kitchen in growing agitation. Bertie went limp as if he were nothing more than a thing of rags and straw, hers simply to lug around at will. But, despite this sudden passivity, she sensed the force he still held within himself. This limpness was strategic; he was in complete control.

  ‘Father!’ she screamed.

  Frederick Simmonds hurried into the kitchen, his spectacles in one hand, a book in the other.

  ‘What? How dare you disturb me! What are you about?’

  ‘Ask him, Bertie. Ask him!’ She shook him, hoping to raise his belligerence against her father.

  ‘Who am I?’ He whispered it now. ‘Who? Who?’ The rest of the question died on his breath like an owl’s cry.

  ‘This is what we shall have, Father. These questions, this cussed restlessness. Where shall it lead now he has taken to talking? I told you he was listening last night when we were discussing that wretched, wretched Trust.’

  Frederick Simmonds looked at his daughter and registered her drawn features. He saw the whites of her knuckles as her hand gripped Bertie’s collar and imagined worse violence to come. They had been shielded by the mask of mute idiocy which the boy had obligingly worn, sensing their desire that his place was simply to hover on the edge of things. If his wife had instigated this negation of the boy’s substance, they had all conspired to have him only inhabit the shadows. They had neglected him. Simmonds knew it. Their culpability was as sharp to him as the several cases of neglect he had seen, over the years, in the village. It did not matter now. Nothing now remained in the same perspective. The light had shifted, illuminating some corners and shrouding others in shadow. The boy had now chosen to speak. That was all it was. He had thrown off a disguise; that was all and they would have to regard him as he now was. It was impossible that their lives could continue along the old path. In addition, of course, there were others involved now, meddling and scheming for their own ends. The Trust, which Lady Margery’s solicitors had sent him, was only the latest manifestation of interference.

  ‘Let him go, Delia. Release him. Come here,’ he said to Bertie, and he pulled out a chair on the other side of the table. ‘So you were listening when Delia and I were talking last night. You heard us talking about this Trust. Did you understand it?’

  The boy shook his head but he looked Fred
erick Simmonds in the eye. Perhaps it was the word ‘trust’, not fully grasped in this strange context, which provoked this reaction but he faced the man he knew as his father as if he could depend upon him.

  ‘Lady Margery wants to give you her money. She has put it into something called a Trust. It is a place of safekeeping because she trusts the people she has asked to look after it all for you until you are a grown-up. She has done this because she thinks you belong to her. She thinks you are her grandson. Nothing anyone can say to her will make her change her mind now. She has created this Trust and she has appointed a new firm of solicitors to make sure it is not tampered with. You are quite right to ask who you are. That is the heart of the matter. Lady Margery thinks you are one person. We think you are another. Tell me. Who you would like to be? Yes,’ he said, leaning forward now, bringing his face close to Bertie’s and returning his gaze with the same intensity. ‘Who do you want to be?’

  Bertie did not reply. There was just a working of the jaw, as if he were trying to grind something indigestible before he could swallow it.

  ‘Do you want to stay here with Delia? Or do you want to go to Anstace Cordingley? You can do either. It depends on who you want to be. Can you tell me? You see, Bertie, I don’t care who you are. So you can tell me.’

  He was met with silence. Frederick Simmonds let the silence sit between them for several minutes and then he stood up and nodded to the open door. Bertie rushed over to it. He raised his hand and the owl flew to him. He ran outside.

  ‘So, Delia. It is for us to decide. He will be whom we determine. I think you are right. Nothing will get any easier. And so, I propose we send Lady Margery the boy she wants. Nothing need be said. No lies need be told. That is clear from the letter from Waterson and Duguid, these new solicitors who seems to be acting for her now. It’s hardly surprising, I suppose.’