Cold Pastoral

by Margaret Duley

  “That fog-horn,” shuddered Felice, giving way to some gloom. “It takes me back to the war and Mournful Mary announcing an air-raid; I can see myself flying to a dug-out. Mary, did you sleep? You look very white.”

  “I’m always white, Felice.”

  “Different white,” she said decidedly.

  “Valley lilies, whiter still than Leda’s love,” quoted David as if part of his mind went on by itself.

  Mary Immaculate thought of Tim! He would have to be thinking of her in that hour.

  “God!”

  They all leaped at the sound of the telephone, but Mary got there first.

  “Yes,” she said with a pounding heart.

  Philip’s words came like conversational doom.

  “Mary, I must tell you she’s sinking. The comeback is definitely not there. It’s a matter of a few hours…”

  The blood was leaving her head, running out through scuppers in her feet. She had never fainted in her life and this was no time for innovation.

  “Yes, we will come,” she whispered steadily, bending her head almost to the floor with the mouthpiece under her lips.

  “Yes, you must all come. Call a taxi at once.”

  It was one of those incredible days leaving a carbon copy on the mind. The storm tried to hold them with vindictive delays. The distance from the taxi to the hospital door seemed the core of a cold maelstrom. Fur pointed to tails in a few seconds. They stood round in outdoor clothes with the misery of wet cats. Finding a waiting-room, they waited for Philip, seeing the trundle past of stretchers and carts with prone bodies going to unknown miseries. Then Philip came with a drawn black-and-white look, escorting them without a word. There was a long, shocked halt by a narrow bed with no greeting from its suffering occupant. Then they were evicted for some treatment. Cruelty lay in the stimulation holding her back from death. Why torture her? was the unspoken question in every unprofessional mind. They went to and fro while grapnel-hooks went into time. Once there was inclusive recognition from the mater’s eyes and the sound of her voice.

  “My son, must this go on?”

  They knew what she meant; the salines and sips. Philip was suspended in torture between his role of doctor and son. Glad enough to leave her in peace, he had to fight to the last for the preservation of life. It was a supreme courtesy when she seemed to divine it.

  “Let them continue,” she said, closing her eyes.

  They left again, biting their lips. Back once more they knew they would wait until the end. Twilight had come to the endless day, and a cessation in the storm, but unrest had come inside to Lady Fitz Henry. She stirred and wandered whispering the incoherencies of departing minds. Once she told Mary Immaculate to shut the door as she went and to stand up straight. The girl won control on her knees, her lips moving in a silent entreaty for peace at the last. Philip stood like a rock and the nurse made a motionless outline at one side of the bed. David sat with his head down and Felice beside him. It seemed the only room in the whole institution. No other sounds were heard but the mutter of the woman who had always kept her thoughts to herself. Deep relief breathed in the room when the voice became mute and the body slacked in a straight line. Mary Immaculate rose from her knees. Nobody stopped her when she leaned over the still face. Death was not frightening her, concerned as she was in following it as far as she could. Putting her hand on the brow, she nearly jerked it away. This, she thought, must be the death-dews. The shock over, she let her fingers make a contact with incipient death. Some communion was established. After a long time, the girl heard the ghost of a whisper.

  “Mary.”

  “I’m here, Mater dear, smoothing your hair.”

  What was said the others could not hear. Their eyes saw some agreement from the fair head while their ears heard the soothing corroboration of her voice. “Yes, Mater, whatever you say.”

  For a fleeting second Lady Fitz Henry unclosed dull eyes and the others crept close to her bed.

  “My sons,” she whispered. Then, as if she had overlooked something, she struggled towards, “Felice—”

  Dropping back, two of them cried, but too softly to intrude on her passing. Philip stood unchanged, a tower of a man, while the girl let her hand continue towards its cold tryst. They did not know whether it was seconds or minutes, when they heard a small snort and saw the sag of a jaw. In a split second the girl’s hand held it up.

  “Philip!” she cried in agony.

  With equal quickness his hand replaced her own, speaking over his mother’s dead face.

  “Go home, Mary, all of you.”

  “No, Philip, we’ll wait for you.”

  What had they done? When all arrangements were completed Philip had to give his mother to other hands. There was nothing left but to return and receive her. They shivered with depressed vitality and gained the warmth of the hall. There stood Hannah like a figure of woe.

  “How is she?” she asked in a grating voice.

  Philip ran his hand over his forehead.

  “I thought you’d rather hear from us than on the telephone. She died an hour ago.”

  There was a fateful silence as they all leaned against things, too exhausted for further battering. Every word of Hannah’s was a flay to their nerves.

  “Do you mean to say, Mr. Philip and Mr. David, that you let my mistress go to her Maker without the help of my hands? Her whom I’ve served for fifty years. Have you done that to me?”

  They had! Philip did not seem to have any imagination left to realize his great fault.

  “She was unconscious, Hannah, and you never go out in the winter. Death is impersonal, you know.”

  “Mr. David, did you think of me?”

  “No,” he said, reduced to automatic honesty. “It was all so sudden—”

  “She was there,” said Hannah, pointing to Felice, “and she was there,” she accused, making a projectile of a finger at Mary Immaculate.

  “Of course,” said Philip sharply. “Hannah, please don’t make a scene. We’re very tired. I’m sorry you feel wronged, but you must admit there was little time for thought. A mere day and a half’s illness and then this….”

  “Mr. Philip is right, Hannah. It’s a time to help and not to blame. We’re all sorry for you, but she had no room for any of us at the last. It would have been a worry—”

  “I was never—”

  “And,” interrupted Felice firmly, “there’s work to be done. She’ll be returning in a couple of hours and the room must be prepared. Shall I ask the maids and let you go to bed?”

  “Let me do it, Felice,” whispered, Mary Immaculate, clutching at activity.

  “You will not,” said Hannah in harsh refusal. “I’ll do the work in this house. Then I’ll know I was at least her servant.”

  Turning from them, she shuffied towards the drawing-room doors. The dazzle of the great chandelier hurt their eyes. Before they had the energy to move, Hannah was pushing back furniture against the walls. She worked as if she knew funeral preparations.

  “Come,” said Felice, slipping her hand in David’s arm. “We’ll be sensible and sit by the fire and talk about her naturally. She’s only been half here since…”

  “Yes,” muttered Philip. “Felice, do you think we did all we could?”

  “What human hands could, Philip,” she said in a quick, comforting voice.

  Felice must have shaped up to death before, thought the girl. She seemed so adequate with all her nerves beaten down. For herself, she was in awe to the fact of death; that strange dropping of the screen on replying lips and eyes. Now that the ugliness was over, it seemed a majestic enchantment. It was her first intimate experience of it, something she had to travel on with. A bit of herself was going to the other side. It puzzled her that she had no inclination to tears. David’s facile acceptance of emotions let him weep, also Felice. Philip was full of control and black shadows, though he looked as if the tears were running down inside the taut line of his jaw.

  “Let�
��s go,” said Felice, urging them out of immobility.

  They moved down the hall with a united front, dropping their things as they went. In the mater’s sitting-room, the fire was bright and the curtains drawn.

  “I’m sorry about Hannah,” said Philip exhaustedly. “It was one of the things we didn’t do….”

  Generous, he was using the plural. He had done it all and was searching his mind for deficiencies of service. Mary Immaculate could not bear it. Privately she thought Hannah had never been any more to the mater than a capable servant of long standing.

  “Philip,” she said, “it was not one of the things that would have helped. Hannah would have cried and sniffed, and that would have been disturbing….”

  “Yes,” said David irrelevantly, “she only saved a pillow from the fire.”

  A bit of himself had come back to his voice. He was talking, rather than criticising Hannah, although he continued appraisingly:

  “Age hasn’t sweetened her. I believe she minded our poverty more than Mater. What will we do with her now? She’ll be one-winged without her. I fancy she’s gone sour. Felice dear,” he said to his wife, “let’s all have a drink. We’re becalmed in great heaviness.”

  It was his way of playing up.

  “Of course, darling. I’ll fetch it myself. The maids are busy. Can’t Mary have a drink, Philip?”

  “Yes, if she wants it.”

  “I don’t,” she said. “I don’t need what I’ve never had.”

  David reached for her hand.

  “Darling,” he said very sincerely, “you were so sustaining, rubbing her dear head and holding up her chin. Wasn’t she, Phil?”

  “Yes,” he said briefly.

  “But, David,” she asked in wonder, “what difference can death make between two people who love each other. I somehow can’t see—perhaps I’m foolish—I’m new…”

  “Can’t see what, Mary,” they both asked together.

  “I can’t see the separation. Don’t they live on in you—us— because it’s we who will carry them round.”

  David blew his nose very loudly, struggling to control ready tears. Philip got up to open the door for Felice. As he rose he bent over the girl, kissing her hair.

  “Mary, would it be intruding to ask what Mater said to you? Was it for you or for all of us?”

  She looked up very steadily. “It was for me, Philip.”

  Later, the scrunch of snow and the loaded tramp of feet was hard to bear, carrying in its sounds the very sight of the mater’s return. It was Hannah who had her moment then, and, in reparation, the family stood back, letting her feel authority.

  When the house had settled back to its own creaks and moans they went in a body to look. The light was very strong, and the iceberg mantelpiece, with its reflecting mirror, invited them for a long walk. Mary Immaculate dropped on her knees and prayed. When she rose she looked with personal eyes. The whiteness and cold majesty nearly threw up a barrier, but the tough quality of her mind put death in its proper proportion. Quite naturally she stooped down and looked in the mater’s face. How the nose lived on in its chiselled perfection. As if to reassure the mater of their presence she drew her hand lightly down the cold cheek. Its ice startled her, but there was no recoil in her hand.

  “Dear, dear Mater,” she whispered, with an intensified wish to penetrate her silence.

  David collapsed on a chair, giving way to unaffected tears. Felice stood over him, silently stroking his hair.

  Philip stood with his nose as chiselled as his mother’s. He looked as if he might join her if restoration did not come. Health seemed to be cracking in the tight strain of his face. Stepping to his side, the girl slipped her arm through his.

  “Philip, you’re very tired. You’ve been up all night. Listen, Philip, I know what she was like as a mother, but she’s remembering what you were like as a son. It’s natural to cry….”

  His face was in her hair, and his body shook with grief and exhaustion. She guided him to the settee she had sat on when he told her the mater had a weak heart. Kneeling on it with one leg, she knew the experience of holding a man’s body in her arms while he cried. When he started he did it rather terrifyingly, with long gasps coming from the depths. They were not David’s facile tears, but hard tears of repression.

  With her eyes on Lady Fitz Henry’s dead face, the girl’s mind stirred in shocked reflection. Where was she in all this? The mater had used her last few breaths to tell her to do as Philip said. That meant the end of Tim, and to say so was to betray like Judas. What had she started in the garden? Hocus-pocus, childish enchantment. Tim was as bound up in her as he was in his music, and to do without both would be to whirl him to some dark pit of futility. Philip was in her arms, crying exhausted tears and giving her a feeling of his taut, long body. Felice had her arms round David, and the expression on her face said that she was grieved but happy. At that moment David had all her motherhood. Felice was suggesting that they all go to bed with hot drinks. David stood up as if in obedience to direction, looking red-eyed at his mother’s face. Felice slipped her arm in his, and they had a moment of still contemplation. Now, thought the girl, Felice will take him to bed and put her arms round him and help him to go to sleep. Tonight she could help Philip like that, smooth his head and let him drop into sleep, empty of thought. But the mater was dead, and she had lost direction. When she got lost again, there would be no calm black-and-white woman to come and see her, reducing the foolishness in her. Bereavement became intensified, running down her body in long dread. Instantly Philip forgot himself.

  “Mary, you’re cold and you haven’t cried, yourself.” He looked up in her face with his black hair tumbled on his forehead. “You shouldn’t ask me to do what you don’t do yourself.”

  A light hand tidied his hair.

  “I would cry if I could, Philip, right out loud at the top of my voice.”

  “You sound exhausted, my dear. Let’s all say good night and go to bed. If Mater were here she’d insist on—”

  “Common sense,” supplied the girl. “She thought that was the most important of all.”

  Felice seemed to collect them in a solid little bunch.

  “Tomorrow the house won’t be our own. Let’s make this our last look.”

  In dead silence they looked down at the calm face as white as the satin around it. Then Philip drew up a panel.

  “I hope the snow stops,” he said in a relaxed voice.

  “God, such a winter funeral!” said David rebelliously.

  “But it’s so fresh and clean,” said Mary Immaculate. “The sun will get in the grave before her.”

  Her hand in Philip’s arm, she knew he would sleep like someone felled.

  They left the lights full on and closed the doors.

  So different from the girl’s childish memory of death. Then people sat up all night in the room with the body. Always they ate, and a wake was one of the occasions of the Cove. The smell of oranges round the mater? Appalled at the different ways of living, she shivered to bed, where she stared wide-eyed into darkness.

  FIFTEEN

  “DESTINY WILL FIND A WAY.”

  David and Felice were receiving condolence calls while Mary helped Philip list letters, wreaths and cables.

  Already Philip looked better. His face had dropped the mask of strain and the smudges round his eyes. His health was resilient. A man of controlled appetites, it was never abused. Not for him the large drink when he was exhausted. David could stay himself that way, but it was a point of honour with Philip never to attend a case smelling of spirits.

  In the midst of her occupation the girl became conscious of his long brooding over a letter. Continuing apparently absorbed, she saw nothing in front of her.

  “Mary, read that,” he said, passing the letter. “That last bit…”

  She was mute with surprise that Philip should be portentous over the written word. She read: “Applaud us when we run, console us when we fall, cheer us when we reco
ver, but let us press on—in God’s name, let us press on.”

  She was used to direct speech from Philip. What was he trying to say? Above all, his eyes were searching the effect of the significant sentence.

  “I can’t imagine not pressing on,”she ventured tentatively.

  The ease of mutual work was over. She could merely suspend her pencil and wait.

  “Mater was the right person for you,”he said as if delighted with the survey of his eyes.

  Chop and change, she thought. But she was sure if he stared deep enough he would see Tim sitting in the middle of her forehead. She could trust her face only so long, and Philip was regarding her with a long, rolling boil of eyes that would not break.

  She stirred, sitting up. “Yes, Mater was wonderful, everything—”

  “I expect she knew you best,” he said in some bafflement. “I wonder if you’re what I think you are?”

  “I believe you’d like me better if I was like that,” she said vaguely.

  “I couldn’t like you better, Mary.”

  The reply was indirect. Were both her men finding flaws in her? She was somehow unsatisfying to them both. Since Tim’s going she had reluctantly blazed a trail towards self-analysis. Hitherto the preoccupation in herself had gone into an intense cram of living, and, when the day was spent, she had pulled the pillow low under her neck and dropped to extinction. Now she knew Philip had stopped being a son. It was as if he had prayed and fasted long enough. The Place was his with his mother’s income. In addition, he was solidly established and might become formidable in his security. Impossible to imagine him a prey to indecision. Having put his nose to the grindstone, he was in sight of his deserts. He was no happy Jack, she thought. But Tim had worked, too, knowing the joyless grind of application without ambition. Had he not tried to make her face up to an adult life? She had the sensation of running by the river bank, away from the question in his heavy-lidded eyes. Where could she run now, from Philip? Between the leather chairs, the library table and round and round in a circle? Was she part of Philip’s inheritance? Was she different from other girls, with some changeling qualities? Many of her contemporaries seemed sure of love, past thought and action that did not include some boy. They appeared to live with little incidents they intensified in their imaginations. They would pine and roll their eyes and long for a sight of the boy. Then, if they saw him unexpectedly, they would blush to the roots of their hair and run away. Such conduct confounded her. If she were in that ecstatic state she would be delighted to see the boy, and enjoy him without blushes and palpitations. What were men and women to each other to make them act in that demented way? Would all the joys of every day be lessened if she married Philip or Tim? A vivid picture of the mater commending her to Philip made her jitter with responsibility. Cold as it was in the new-fallen snow, she wanted to go out and walk away doubts in the evening air. But Philip was talking. More chop and change! There were housekeeping plans, Hannah in temporary charge, with Felice keeping the accounts.