That They Might Lovely Be

by David Matthews

  He did not even take the tray when he left. He just closed the door behind him and it might have been that none of it had even happened.

  Delia sat on the edge of the bed, unmoving, for hours. Only the passage of time and not her own will would allow mind and body to synchronise. She was confused as if her existence were stretched across a number of different planes. From nowhere came a memory of watching the huge looms at work in her great-uncle’s carpet factory in Kidderminster. She could only have been four or five when her mother had taken them on a rare visit to her family in the midlands. Delia could see now the shifting frames of warp, thumping to the pistons’ rhythm as the many coloured threads were woven into it. Lying over that memory was Hubert with Geoffrey at the Whitsun Tenants’ Ball, they were dancing a frantic reel and she was spinning, spinning between them. Was she some sort of shuttle to be passed from Hubert to Geoffrey to this other man? She asked the question again and again while the faces of the children in her class stared back at her, unanswering, dumb. Did no one know the answer? She had the cane in her hand and twitched it menacingly looking for someone to thrash. Where was he? Where was he? Geoffrey. None of it could have happened if it had not been for Geoffrey. He had begged her to join him in Ipswich. Whatever excuses he might make, it had been his hand that penned the lines. Whatever had happened to her, it was Geoffrey who was answerable. He was responsible. He would have to pay.

  Still feeling oddly disembodied, as if she were reluctant to inhabit her own flesh, she stood and crossed over to the door. It was her body which seemed to know its way to the upper-storey. It retraced her steps to Room Eleven while she floated some way above it. The door to Room Eleven was in front of her when Pollard stepped out of an adjacent room. She shrank back into herself.

  ‘Thought I heard someone on the stair. Guessed it might be you as there’s no one else likely to come up here. Not unless they’re expected,’ he whispered.

  ‘I want to see Geoffrey.’

  ‘Keep your voice down. You want to see him now? Do you? I’ll show you.’

  He was not rough with her, but she would not have broken free easily from his grasp as he took her into the next room. It was little more than a small lumber room, cluttered with old furniture and boxes. There was no light and, for a moment, she wondered if she were safe until she saw a point of light on the wall and realised it was that which Pollard was interested in.

  ‘You don’t know your luck, you don’t. After all I’ve done for you, you want to go back to him. Don’t you know what he is? Have a look through there. Go on, have a look. Fucking faggots. They’ve not done yet.’

  His voice was shrill with a suppressed excitement which alarmed her. She did not want to upset him. Pressing her face against the wall, she could see into Geoffrey’s room. She did not intend to look properly; the sordidness of spying repelled her. But as she made to pull away, having just seen a glimpse of movement, she felt Pollard’s hand on the back of her neck.

  ‘No,’ he hissed. ‘You look at that. You get a look at that.’ He was right behind her and she felt him pressing himself into her rear, pinning her in position so she, it seemed, could be his eyes and spy through the peephole.

  The men were no more than four feet or so from her on the other side of the wall. They were naked from the waist down and one, it was Jessop, was pushing himself into the other, who was bent forwards, half-supported by the boudoir chair. She had seen deers rutting and had the country-child’s familiarity with the farm beasts’ mating. How could this act between men be the same?

  She was forced to watch, with the man behind her, gripping her neck and squirming against her rump so hard she could feel him swelling. Before her eyes, Jessop shifted his position and she saw that the second man—of course it was Geoffrey—was clutching in his hand the photograph of Hubert, while bending to Jessop’s sweaty work.

  Delia could take no more. She pushed herself away from the wall with such force, it sent Pollard toppling into the piled furniture. There was a shout from Jessop next door.

  ‘Damn you!’ said Pollard. He picked himself up but lost none of his presence of mind and threw her out into the corridor just as Jessop burst out of the other room.

  ‘I’m surprised at you, Arthur. Knocking her off in the lumber room when there’s plenty of comfy beds to choose from. You just can’t keep it tucked away can you? I hope you haven’t messed-up, my lad, ‘cause if you have, there’ll be a reckoning.’

  ‘I don’t think so, uncle. I don’t think so. “Live and let live.” Isn’t that right?’

  The older man glared at his nephew who stood before him truculently, his arm now encircling Delia’s waist, aping the lover. Jessop dropped his belligerent tone and slid into the smooth jocularity Delia was familiar with. ‘You been broadening your education, Miss Simmonds. I can see that. Not quite the sort of thing for the classroom, I’d say. But we can keep a secret; can’t we, Arthur? All we know is that we came up here to look in on old Geoff and found the two of you at it like there’s no tomorrow. Making up for all those years apart, I suppose. Can’t say we’re surprised. Why else would you travel all this way to see a man in his lodgings?’

  Delia was crumbling. She needed space and time to make sense of everything but she knew that somehow he had found her out, somewhere there had been a dream of seduction and elopement and a new beginning. She began to bleat from the wretchedness of it all. Was there no help? Would Geoffrey do nothing to extricate her? She called out to him and pushed past Jessop. Geoffrey looked up from buttoning his flies as she came into his room.

  ‘You shouldn’t have. Delia, you shouldn’t have,’ he said wearily.

  Jessop interrupted any further talk.

  ‘Take her back to her room, Arthur, and leave her there. There’s broadminded and broadminded, you see, Miss Simmonds, and my widowed sister runs a respectable house. She won’t have goings-on. By rights we ought to turn you out but it’s late and we’re understanding. The war’s turned lots of things upside-down. I reckon you’ve been turned inside-out. Isn’t that the truth? You and Mr. C. Well, well. Best you get some rest, Miss Simmonds. Sleep’s the other thing beds are good for. I’ll see you in the morning when we can talk everything through. I’m sure we can come to a little arrangement to suit all parties.’

  Delia tried to shrug off Pollard’s arm but he wouldn’t have it. With mock-courtesy, he escorted her downstairs to her room. He bade her good night, ushering her in while tutting and shaking his head in a charade of disapproval, as he closed the door.

  Delia lay on top of the bed, with the lumpy eiderdown pulled over her. Sleep, as she had known it, never came. She couldn’t believe it would ever come again as she spun in a helpless tarantella of whirling images, half-dreamed, half-remembered. She lived and relived the last few hours and tried desperately to sear her memory clean of the compelling antics burnt into it.

  Gradually, her mind sieved what might have happened from what actually occurred. If she were not to be granted oblivion, she knew that she would have to confront what she had been exposed to and what she had connived at. How did it all sit? How did her own behaviour, the presumption of Pollard, the way he had with him, her own response, what Jessop had been doing with Geoffrey, his passive surrender, the lusts, the falling—how did it all twist together? And was this grossness the backcloth on which had been stitched the romantic embroidery she had encountered through the novels and plays they’d read at school? Was this the truth of it? If so, what lies, dreadful, loathsome lies they had been spun! Only Angelo, from Measure for Measure, of all she had encountered, revealed something of the sordid horror. Her mother, she remembered, had thought it a most unsuitable play for young girls to be studying—perhaps to stave off the moment when the illusion of romance had to be torn down. Angelo knew; he fell prey to the thing he had abhorred above all else, then lost himself and every noble aspect by seducing Mariana while desiring Isabella, the nun. He took the one so blindly he believed it was the other and then, satiated, g
roped his way to hypocrisy, denial and self-loathing.

  Angelo had his narrative. She would have to find hers when the spinning in her head had ground to a stop and she could hold her own gaze without averting her eyes.

  Jessop did not return to the upper-storey. He guessed it would be best to leave Geoff to his own devices. His prisoner had been getting nervously overstrung since conniving in the plot to inveigle Delia to Ipswich.

  Geoffrey sat slumped on the boudoir chair, shaking from nervous exhaustion. The months since his release had been no brighter than his incarceration. He had seldom strayed from the garret room Jessop and Mrs. Pollard had provided. Where else could he go? He had no funds without contacting his uncle Kingsnorth or that slick nephew of his who had come to the hearing. Kingsnorth & Kingsnorth would do nothing without drawing in Lady Margery and Geoffrey could not bear that. He could not trust his imagination with a meeting between triumphant mother and shattered, broken son. He was finished. All that was left was penance for killing Hubert by wishing him away so he would never be exposed in his wretchedness.

  ‘Out of vanity … selfishness … self-loathing … lovelessness. I ran out of love.’

  Hubert had died forsaken. There was nothing for Geoffrey to do except suffer. Knowing there could be no recompense, made the suffering all the more necessary. He would allow himself no dignity. He would claim no rights to any decency. He would let himself become Jessop’s creature, attracting the lewd fascination of Pollard, knowing that one day the youth would have his turn and then beat Geoffrey to a pulp for letting him.

  This was the future Geoffrey envisaged. He thought nothing worse could happen until he realised that Jessop and his sister saw him as a lure to extort money from whoever might pay. They had been frustrated that no one (‘Despite your fine connections, Geoff’) had make contact with him since his release. Did this gentleman really mean so little, they wondered? And then came such a sweet little letter from Delia Simmonds. She was ripe for the plucking but ‘Geoff’ would have to play his part. And he had.

  Jessop’s bullying, his threats and taunts, had been fruitless until he had accidentally discovered the only thing that Geoffrey cared about: that worn photograph of the young man. He had picked it up idly one evening after he had had his bit of fun and had been delighted to see the listless resignation, which Geoffrey wore, fall away. Geoffrey had tried to snatch the photograph from him but he fell over his own trousers, tangled around his ankles. Jessop laughed at him, kneeling on his chest, his boot in Geoffrey’s groin, waving the picture above his head while his victim hurled at him every abusive epithet he had acquired from his years at the Front.

  ‘I’ll look after this handsome bugger, I think. We can talk about what you’ll have to do to get another look at him, when I see you again.’ Jessop had kicked him in the genitals and left the room.

  Delia’s arrival had restored Hubert’s photograph to Geoffrey. Jessop had been true in that. Geoffrey nursed the photograph like an icon. He sat in front of it, studying every detail of Hubert’s expression, trying to recall the days before it was taken and then the last time he had seen the man himself, when he had just disembarked. Hubert’s likeness was all that Geoffrey had as an amulet against his abuse. He had held onto it that night, in his desperation, even when bent over, servicing Jessop’s lust. But Hubert’s charm was not strong enough to confront the menace which had engulfed him. Geoffrey’s sense of culpability dragged him to a deeper Hell now he knew that Delia was also entrapped. It was one thing to be degraded and punished for his own worthlessness; it was another when his moral collapse sank another soul.

  Gradually, his nervous trembling subsided and he crawled toward the door. If he could only see her again, he might find the strength to help her get out of the house and escape.

  His door was locked. Jessop had taken the key. He had known he could no longer trust Cordingley. Sensitive, aristocratic types like him had a way of crumbling which took everyone else down with them; as if that somehow compensated for all their previous dishonourable lapses. Jessop knew he wouldn’t be able to jiggle him to his tune for much longer. He just needed long enough to work a profit.

  By dawn, the nauseous phantasmagoria which had haunted Delia had passed, like a fever broken. She felt wasted and heavy-limbed but her spirit was strong. Her mind was tuned to every sound in the house. At last, it seemed to be stirring. She wanted to be up and to get free of the place. Already there was a discernible lightening from the east; the pressure of full bladders was rousing some from their sleep; the scuttling of mice behind the wainscoting and the call of prowling cats would begin to intrude on those still slumbering.

  She longed for a proper wash but the taps, on the basin in the w.c., along the landing, spluttered ineffectually and so noisily she just used the lavatory and retreated back to her room to pack her things away into her Gladstone. She made her way downstairs.

  The stairboards creaked their betrayal and, as she made her way along the hall, Mrs. Pollard emerged from the back of the house. Delia wondered how much she knew and how much she suspected. The woman had lost none of her hardness but there was nothing else in her manner to imply that she had a different perspective from the day before. She was clearly affronted that Delia was leaving so peremptorily but that could be understandable from a landlady’s perspective.

  ‘Why Miss Simmonds, you’ll not go without breakfast. There’s no reimbursement you know so you might as well stay for it. I’m sure Mr. C will be down … or if you want to pop up … I hope everything has been satisfactory, I’m sure. Will you be back? Is he leaving with you? He’s run up a hefty bill, I can tell you. We’re not a charity though we likes to be charitable. Where do I send his bill then?’

  Delia’s instinct told her that Jessop was not on hand to support his sister’s remonstrations and they had not talked since the night before. Mrs. Pollard was as yet ignorant of what had been going on. There could be no greater spur to effect Delia’s departure. She paid what was demanded and left while Mrs. Pollard complained loudly about being taken advantage of.

  By the time Delia had found her way to Ipswich station, she had decided to send a telegram to Joachim Place. There was a post office on hand and time enough before she could leave for Saffron Walden. She could not delay in constructing an alibi around which to fashion her narrative. She hoped Anstace would not be staying with her aunt for her story could then remain unchallenged as a confusion over plans, a simple misunderstanding, and Dorothy Lean could be drawn into unsuspecting collusion against Delia’s return home.

  Even if Anstace were at Joachim Place, Delia was determined to manage her predicament.

  Saturday, 22 February 1919

  When the letters came a week later, Delia realised how naïve she had been, believing that through will alone, she would be able to suppress what had happened.

  For hours at a time, in the week since her return to Dunchurch she had succeeded in displacing the visceral sense of degradation which threatened to overwhelm her. She cast the whole experience not as memory but as the legacy of a potent dream, held somewhere on the edge of her mind where, one day, it would at last be pushed over, dropped, forever lost. Until then, she would protect herself against this haunting as an oyster coats a gritty irritant in a pearled husk, building up layers and layers of forgetting. She would become inured and then, as time passed, even comfortable with accommodating this swaddled thing. In this way, the persona she assumed need reflect nothing from that brief space in Ipswich. She had never gone there. She had never been exposed to Geoffrey’s vicious cowardice. This strategy was made easier by her mother’s almost total withdrawal and her father’s brooding silences. They had their own preoccupations and were oblivious to her turmoil. The present which they inhabited was not a realm in which Delia intruded. Her experiences need have no relevance to them.

  But this deliverance which she manufactured for herself was an illusion.

  The first letter was from Dorothy Lean. It was addressed to
Delia’s father but enclosed a longer explanatory letter to Delia.

  It was delivered by the postman just after she and her father had breakfasted; Muriel Simmonds had not yet left her bedroom. Frederick Simmonds slit the envelope and passed the smaller envelope it had enclosed to his daughter. It did not take him long to read the letter addressed to him.

  ‘You did not tell me that you had seen Geoffrey Cordingley when you went up to Saffron Walden at the weekend.’

  Delia hesitated. The protective casing she had secreted around the events of those two days shivered and fell away in a shower of razor-sharp fragments. A wave of sickening vulnerability crested over her. With her own letter, still unopened, she could not guess who had written to her father. The hand on the envelope in front of her was a stranger’s but a moment’s reflection told her it was too well-formed to be Jessop’s or Mrs. Pollard’s. That was enough to rouse her defences.