I opened my mouth to ask: ‘Which one?’ but changed my mind.
My gaze took in titles like Tanglewood Tales, Human Anatomy, Lamb’s Essays, Origin of Species, Pilgrim’s Progress, Royal Reader No. V . . .
She seemed to divine the trend of my thoughts, for she remarked: ‘An odd collection, isn’t it? But every one is a dear friend. It was through these books that I learnt of the world and its sophistries. These books and my husband were my only tutors.’ She spoke with a certain pride, with a deep affection, too, her manner getting a trifle vacant. She uttered low, reminiscent grunts. Old-lady grunts.
I turned and asked: ‘What’s in that room over there—the small room? Is it a disused room, too, like the windward ones?’
‘That? No. Oh, no,’ she told me. ‘That’s where Gregory stays when he comes here to see me.’ She moved towards the connecting door and beckoned me to follow her. And during the next few minutes I saw how absurd it is to let one’s imagination get the better of one. For there was nothing whatever sinister about this little room. I saw a small bed, with a table beside it on which stood an old-fashioned portable gramophone and an album of records (all 78’s by the look of them)—I thumbed through the album casually. There was a clothes-cupboard which she opened so that I could see the contents: tiny trousers and shirts and what looked like a miniature cricket cap.
‘I always keep a clean supply of clothes ready for him,’ she said. ‘It saves his parents the bother of having to pack for him when he comes to spend a week-end with me.’ She wagged her head and sighed—then suddenly stiffened.
The telephone began to ring.
I felt her hand on my wrist. ‘Don’t answer it.’
‘But . . .’
‘Let it ring until it stops.’
‘But it must be your son. Mitchell.’
‘I’m aware of that. Mitchell is the only person who puts through telephone calls to this house.’ Her grip on my wrist tightened. I could sense the breathlessness in her manner.
The wind whined round the eaves.
‘Mr. Woodsley, have you ever felt overcome by both horror and joy at the same time?’
I shook my head. I made an attempt to return into the other room, but she stayed me. ‘Please. Let’s remain in here for a moment, if you don’t mind. I know my behaviour must seem strange, but bear with me, my boy.’ I could feel her trembling.
I indulged her, and we stood there, listening to the wind—and the ringing of the telephone. Every now and then a chilly draught curled round my ankles or twined clammy tentacles about my neck.
After a moment I could not help murmuring: ‘Very strange behaviour.’
A shaky chuckle came from her. ‘Michael was just as volatile and blunt as you are—but he was tolerant, too. Yes, he was always considerate of my whims. I’m not a bad woman, Mr. Woodsley—but I’m strange. Strange in a strange way.’
The wind continued to drum round the building like a live, frustrated creature outside in the dark. The telephone continued to ring.
‘Strange in a way not one of my fellow creatures would dream possible. But I’m not bad. Nor am I insane. You must never be afraid of me.’ She uttered an exclamation of impatience. ‘Why doesn’t he put down the phone! Can’t he realise by now I’m not going to answer it?’
Her hand with the lamp trembled so much that I thought it wise to relieve her. I took the lamp and advised her to be calm.
Suddenly the phone grew silent, and she relaxed. She smiled and said with a sigh: ‘That’s much better. I thought he would never give up.’
As we moved back into her own room I remarked: ‘If this is a game, I think it a bit unfair that you should keep me in the dark.’
She patted my shoulder in a motherly manner, and smiled. ‘Don’t you like mysteries? Don’t tell me you don’t. All humans do.’
‘I must be the unique exception. I detest mysteries. Especially in houses like this which possess, so to speak, all the accessories for weird and ghostly phenomena.’
‘No, you only say that to sound clever. Search your heart and you’ll find I’m right. The perplexing always appeals to people, and I’m certain you’re no exception. You see, I can be plain-spoken, too.’ She wagged a playful finger at me.
I shrugged and bade her good night, and as I was going out she called after me: ‘Would you care to go for a walk with me in the morning after breakfast?’
‘No objections at all,’ I said. ‘Hope it won’t be too far, though, because I want to do a bit of painting before the sun gets too high.’
‘Yes, you did mention it at dinner. You want to do a picture of the house, you said.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, you need have no fear. I don’t intend to go very far. Half a mile or so. I’m taking you to the cemetery.’
3
I am not religious. That is why I avoided Morning Prayers. These were conducted by Mrs. Scaife before breakfast in the dining-room, and four of the five servants had to be present, the fifth, McTurk, the poultry-man, having insisted on being an absentee on the grounds that he had too much work to do in the morning.
As on the previous mornings, I reclined in my easy chair (the one I had selected as my favourite) in the large sitting-room while I waited for the performance to come to an end.
There was no dividing wall between sitting-room and dining-room. Four fluted pillars with Corinthian capitals marked the boundary, so to speak, between the two rooms, and from my easy chair I commanded an unhindered view of everything going on in the dining-room.
The walls of the sitting-room were dark-brown and varnished, giving the atmosphere in here a restfulness and dignity rather than gloom. The furniture was Victorian—heavy, ornate, carved table-legs, what-nots, a mantelpiece with a mirror, a sofa, rocking-chairs. The easy chair in which I sat had once been an armchair, erect and prim, but, on Mitchell’s request, two years before, it had been remodelled and modernised by Tappin, the man-of-all-work. Three huge lithographs in black frames depicting mass scenes by Gustav Doré decorated the northern, eastern and western walls (there was no southern wall; where the southern wall should have been the fluted columns stood), one to each wall, and below each, like acolytes in attendance on a priest, hung two sepia landscape scenes in gold frames—cows and misty mountains and trees; and deer and misty mountains and trees; and sheep and misty mountains and trees; distant cows, water, misty mountains and trees.
Wearing her olive-green dressing-gown and with her Bible, a small one in worn morocco leather, Mrs. Scaife came downstairs and took her place near the old, heavy, carved, mahogany sideboard. And as though they had divined her advent by some psychic means, the servants entered from the pantry and began to range themselves round the room.
Tappin, the man-of-all-work, posted himself under a big picture of Doctor Scaife. He was a heavily built, lumbering negro, and had a permanent bloodshot mark on the white of his left eye that, somehow, gave him a certain attractiveness when he smiled, though when he was serious or dismayed it could look repulsive—even grotesque.
Jackman, the cook, a thin, tall negress, took up a position near a southern window so that she could surreptitiously watch (so I discovered later) the kitchen and tell by the smoke from the chimney whether the fire she had lit for heating water for coffee was ‘going down or keeping up.’
Malverne, the housemaid, an anaemic-looking Red Leg girl with a remarkably good figure, stood very primly, her hands clasped before her, between the picture of Mr. Gladstone and the one of Edward VII.
Bayley, the yard-boy and messenger, stood right under Edward VII. He was the only one of the four of them, it appeared, who had not fallen into the habit of taking up a regular position at Morning Prayers. He was a boy of about fifteen, and one whose portrait I was determined to paint before I left Eltonsbrody. He had a dull, moronic expression that could alter with startling suddenness to one of intelligence and mischief, and his costume consisted of an old cream-coloured waistcoat worn over an orange (sometime
s pink or green) sports-shirt. This waistcoat—so Jackman had told me—he slept in at night as well as wore during the day. It only left his person on the occasion of his twice-a-week bath and on Sundays when he changed it for a dark-green one. Both waistcoats, Jackman had said, had once been the property of Doctor Scaife.
Morning prayers took the form of a reading of the Scriptures as dictated by the Book of Common Prayer (Mrs. Scaife was Anglican, and had, in fact, met Doctor Scaife at a bazaar meeting at the Rectory of St. Joseph’s Church which is not far from Eltonsbrody).
This morning, she told them, the First Lesson was from Joshua, the Second from Luke. She never, it seemed, quoted chapter and verse.
She read the Lessons in an expressive and distinct voice, and I could not help thinking that she would have made a very successful wireless announcer. Lowering the Bible after she had read the Lessons, she bowed her head, and the others bowed theirs, too.
‘Our Father,’ she began, and the servants joined in from ‘which art in heaven.’ The sound of their voices saying the Lord’s Prayer made a murmurous rumble throughout the room, creating perfect harmony, I thought, with the persistent droning of the wind past the house and the subdued flapping of the piece of canvas sacking that Tappin had hung out of the pantry window the afternoon before. (To this day I have not discovered to what use this sacking was put). The bleating of a goat from the pens beyond the poultry-run might have been an upsetting note, but it was too remote. The wind muffled it and wafted it off into the mahogany trees whose foliage kept up their soft background lisping.
They had got as far as ‘and forgive us our trespasses’ when the accident of the picture happened.
I heard a scraping whisk and thud and a cry. It was Malverne who cried out. Bayley started back with a gasp and a loud ‘Oi!’, his face blank and idiotic.
It was the picture of Mr. Gladstone. It lay, face down, on the floor, two or three triangular pieces of glass pushing out from under the heavy brown frame. The thick, dusty cord at the back had snapped.
Tappin advanced towards it slowly, with a lumbering caution. His left eye with the bloodshot mark seemed to me positively baleful. ‘But how dat happen?’ he said in a perplexed voice.
Bayley looked at me as I approached. He grinned. ‘Sir, ef Oi didn’t move it woulda hit me,’ he said.
‘Naturally,’ I replied.
Mrs. Scaife was smiling at me.
Then Tappin began to pick up the fallen picture. ‘Miss Dahlia, dis is a bad soign,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘A very bad soign.’
His mistress glanced at him sharply. Her smile had vanished. She snapped: ‘What? What’s that? A bad sign?’
‘Yes, Miss Dahlia. A very bad soign. It mean somebody going to dead.’
‘Oh, shut up! Shut up! What utter nonsense!’
They all glanced at her in surprise. I myself was a bit taken aback at this display of anger. And anger it was. She glared at Tappin, her face pale, her hand clutched tight round the Bible.
Tappin stared at her in dismay.
‘Death! Death! It means that somebody is going to die. Why should you be so morbid, man? Can’t you see it’s an accident? Look at the cord! It’s rotten. Look, Mr. Woodsley! Look!’ She turned towards me, her manner anxious, agitated. ‘Please convince this superstitious idiot that there’s no reason to come to gruesome conclusions because a picture has fallen from the wall!’ She snatched the picture from Tappin. ‘See! Look at the cord! Worn and rotten!’ She held the cord and jerked it between her fingers. It snapped. ‘See that!’ She looked at me in triumph. ‘Absolutely no good. It snapped from sheer age. Yet this fool wants to make out that it’s a sign of death!’
Abruptly I said: ‘But many people do consider it a sign of death when a picture falls from the wall, Mrs. Scaife. Even in England.’
She looked at me and stiffened. ‘What do you mean, Mr. Woodsley? Are you—do you mean to tell me you’re going to support this—this country lout in his superstitious beliefs?’
I was in no way put out. I chuckled and said: ‘I’m afraid, Mrs. Scaife, that I can’t agree with you that the superstition is limited only to country louts. I know a great number of people—civilised town-folk in England—who not only take seriously the falling-picture superstition but even believe in such omens as the smashed mirror and the hooting of an owl outside a window. Not only peasants in Barbados.’
She stared at me for an instant, baffled, then asked: ‘Do you mean that you believe in these absurd superstitions?’
‘I never said so. I believe in only what my reason can encompass. But all the same, I feel you’re being rather unfair to this fellow. I can’t see any need for you to get so worked up over a trivial incident like this. What’s the matter, Mrs. Scaife? Even if he does feel it’s a sign of death why should you be so upset? If you consider it absurd, then why not shrug your shoulders and forget the matter? Why make a scene?’
This I knew, was going a bit far, and I had expected to be sharply snubbed. But she did not snub me. She uttered a nervous, jerky sound and turned off, murmuring: ‘You’re perfectly right, Mr. Woodsley. I’m making a fuss about nothing, really.’ She handed the picture back to Tappin. ‘You may have this mess cleaned up, Tappin. And please get a new piece of glass fitted back in this picture.’
‘Yes, Miss Dahlia,’ he said, his dismay merging into relief.
His mistress smiled and told him: ‘I’m afraid my behaviour must have startled you, Tappin. Well, never mind! I didn’t sleep very well last night. Put it down to that.’
A little later, when she and I were sitting down to breakfast at the long, ponderous dining-table capable of accommodating well over a dozen people, I said to her: ‘Something is on your mind, Mrs. Scaife. Even at the risk of seeming officious, I’m going to express the opinion that you’re worried.’
She smiled. ‘I have already told you, Mr. Woodsley, that you must never consider it officious to express any opinion concerning myself and my affairs. I welcome it—welcome it sincerely. Yes, I admit I am worried. I meant to tell you of it when we go for our walk.’ Suddenly she became a little dreamy in manner. She began to smile to herself as she unfolded her napkin, as though musing upon some matter that called forth both her sorrow and her delight.
I waited for her to go on, wondering whether she could be sane.
Without looking up, she said: ‘I know you’re thinking me a lunatic, but please don’t attach too much importance to my behaviour this morning—nor last night. Do you remember something I said last night?’ She looked at me. ‘Horror and joy, Mr. Woodsley. Have you ever found yourself in the grip of both at once?’
The question was not rhetorical, so I shook my head and replied: ‘No. And I can’t see how it’s possible for anyone to be both horrified and joyful at one and the very same time.’
She sat forward at once, her eyes on me—eager, alive. ‘I know! Oh, I know! Perfectly right, my boy. That’s why I mentioned it. It’s so remarkable. But that’s just how I feel. I’m overjoyed and yet I’m horrified and depressed. I know it sounds quite mad, and many times I’ve questioned my own sanity, too. The doctor has often done that, but he was tolerant and understanding. That’s why we got on so well.’
She put down her knife and fork, shifted in her chair with a sort of feverishness, her gaze steady on me. ‘I may as well tell you, I’m—’ she hesitated—‘I’m not what we might call an ordinary person. Perhaps before you leave I may tell you about it, because you, somehow, inspire me with a feeling of trust. In many ways, you’re identically like the doctor. Not black and ugly. No, you’re very handsome. But I mean plain-spoken and—and lacking in hypocrisy. I wish Mitchell were like you. We might have been closer. As it is, I despise him heartily. He’s simply another tissue hypocrite of a politician and a society figure-head! All he can talk about is this stupid federation of the West Indies and the people he had cocktails with at Government House. Tch, tch! But there! I’m getting worked up again!’ She sighed and relaxed, and began to
pick at the bacon rashers in her plate.
I kept observing her quietly as I ate.
‘I do so like simple, straightforward people,’ she began to mumble, half to herself. I could see that she was making a great effort to control herself, but even though she spoke in a mumble there was a quivering intensity in her manner. ‘God must have sent you to me, Mr. Woodsley. You’re the first person I’ve felt like confiding in since the doctor died.’ Her gaze had strayed past me to the sideboard.
The sun was thrusting slanted pointers into the room. Filtered as it was through the foliage of the casuarinas, the sunshine made shifty, rib-like patterns on the walls and on the draped part of the cloth that covered the sideboard.
‘It’s strange how the imagination can convert the ordinary into the significant,’ she said quietly. ‘When one’s mind, for instance, is centred on the subject of death everything seems to conspire to reveal the presence of the Gaunt Spectre. Look at that sunlight playing on the walls. I can see dancing skeletons in those patterns. Notice the rib-like formation?’
‘Why should your mind be centred on the subject of death?’ I asked.
She shrugged. ‘Well, why shouldn’t it, my boy? I think we should all keep our minds centred on the subject of death. It’s the one exciting event we can every one of us look forward to experiencing—and look forward with the absolute certainty that we won’t be disappointed.’
I made no comment, and after a silence she went on: ‘Take that picture falling. I was perfectly aware of the superstition, but it irritated me to hear that black fool saying it so confidently. It was the last thing I’d wanted to hear—at the moment. Poor Tappin. I gave him a scare. We’re such good friends. I don’t think I’ve scolded him for years. I love my servants, Mr. Woodsley. Even McTurk, grouchy as he is. They’ve been with me for years—and Tappin is a good man. He may look odd, what with that cast in his eye, but he’s a versatile fellow. A good gardener, a good carpenter, a good joiner, a reliable messenger. He goes to town to do my shopping every Wednesday and Saturday. My God! Look! Look at that!’
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