‘Are you cold?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she said, although the night was chilly. If they went back to her rooms, Lydia would be there; and whatever the subject of this conversation might prove to be, Margaret assumed it would be private.
They walked in silence until they reached the river. Then at last, leaning over the parapet of the embankment wall, he turned to face her.
‘My father has been much affected by my mother’s death,’ he said. ‘She was his companion throughout the day, while I was working at the hospital. It was not merely that she acted as our housekeeper: she allowed him to talk to her, to rave about his grievances. I find now that he cannot be left alone for very long. Yet I cannot find a servant patient enough to bear with his rages.’
‘Ought he perhaps to receive hospital care?’ asked Margaret.
‘He is lucid enough for part of the time to understand what his condition is. He has lost everything in life except the support of his only son. I cannot rob him of that as well.’
Margaret felt her body chilling with something sharper than the frost in the air.
‘So what do you intend to do?’ she asked quietly.
Charles gave a single deep sigh. Then he spoke in a businesslike manner.
‘My father has a widowed sister who lives in the country,’ he said. ‘She came to London for my mother’s funeral and was shocked at the change in her brother’s condition. She has written to tell me that the doctor in her village is about to retire. I have decided to buy his practice and settle down to country life with my father.’
‘But you are a surgeon!’ exclaimed Margaret, using the professional objection to express all the disappointment she felt.
Charles shrugged his shoulders.
‘I have become a very bad surgeon in these past weeks. My life at home has not been good for my concentration at work. I am as well fitted as any other medical man for general practice, and I may do as much good there as in a hospital. My aunt has already found a village woman who will act as our housekeeper. She is a simple soul, I am told, but kind. My father’s situation has been explained to her and she will indulge his outbursts without becoming upset or indignant herself. My aunt is willing for him to walk each day to visit her. The walk will occupy a little time, providing exercise and fresh air, and she will give him tea and company before he walks back again. It all represents an offer which I cannot bring myself to refuse.’
‘I see that the arrangement is a convenient one for your father,’ Margaret said quietly. ‘You can hardly expect it to seem equally welcome to me.’
‘No,’ agreed Charles. He stared down into the water as though he could not face her. ‘We have always known, haven’t we, that this moment might come? It need not be the end of our friendship. We can correspond. It would help to reconcile me to my quieter life if I could share it with you at least in letters.’
Margaret slowly shook her head.
‘I don’t think I could bear to go on in such a way.’
‘But it was you who first said with such assurance that we could be friends.’
‘That was three years ago.’ As she spoke, Margaret wondered whether it had been true even then. Certainly it was not enough for her now. Only hope had enabled her to endure it for so long. She looked into his eyes. ‘In that time I have grown to love you. I cannot any longer bear the strain of longing for something I may not have. But there has never been any way for me to conquer my longing unless you should send me away. The first time you tried I would not allow it. Lydia told me then that I was unwise, and perhaps she was right. Now that it is happening again, I must try to accept it.’
‘I am not sending you away,’ said Charles. ‘I have to go away myself, but that is a different matter.’
‘The effect is the same.’
‘But I love you too!’ he exclaimed. He flung his arms over the parapet, groaning to himself. ‘Oh, if only you were any other woman! Any other woman in the whole world! If the obstacle were your name alone, I would marry you and present you to my father as Mrs Scott and we would invent a whole past life with which to answer his questions. But he knows your face. I cannot let him see you.’
‘Then there is nothing more to say, is there?’ Margaret bit her lip, determined not to weep.
‘I cannot endure that you should be angry with me.’
‘I am not angry. I admire your loyalty to your father. It is my misfortune that I cannot deserve the same loyalty myself. But I am well aware that the sins of the fathers must be paid for by their daughters.’
I have paid twice, she thought to herself, but she was ashamed that at this moment the memory of David Gregson should intrude into her mind. Instead she looked steadily at Charles, trying to memorize for ever his strong features, his kind eyes, his thick, fair hair, his sturdy shoulders and firm hands.
‘You have no choice,’ she continued. ‘Perhaps it is unkind of me not to continue as you would like. But if I were to consent, I am afraid that I would quickly come to wish for your father’s death; the very thought makes me feel wicked. Now it is time for me to plan a career for myself. I had always intended to return to Bristol. It was only because you were in London that I stayed on, taking whatever appointment I could find in the hope that it in fact need only be temporary. It is time for me to be selfish in considering my own future.’
She lacked the strength to face the sadness in his eyes and instead looked down into the river, as he had done earlier. The water was dark, moving imperceptibly to break the reflections of the gas lamps into darts and splinters of yellow light. A mass of floating brushwood was trapped just below, borne down towards the sea by the current of the river and then pressed back again by the tide surging up from the estuary. She had been like that herself for the past three years - floating in a backwater, waiting for some stronger current to carry her away. It was not a way of life of which she could be proud. She might see herself now as striking out into midstream, but the current could only carry her out to sea, further and further away from any prospect of the home and family life which she had been brought up to believe provided the natural, the most contented existence for a woman.
From herself she could not conceal her yearning for such a life - but she could conceal it from Charles, who had nothing of the kind to offer and must not be allowed to feel guilty. She smiled at him again with as much cheerfulness as she could summon.
‘You have been honest with me from the moment you discovered who I was,’ she said. ‘I am grateful to you for that. It is not your fault or mine that the obstacle between us is insurmountable. I very much regret that my father’s misfortunes should prove to have such disastrous effects on my own relationships. But the time has come, has it not, to accept the situation? Will you take me home now?’
Once before he had held her in his arms, and Margaret still remembered the happiness which had overwhelmed her then. Now, as he stepped forward and pressed her close to his body, they were both equally unhappy. Neither of them spoke, for there was nothing more to say.
The silence lasted until a cab carried them away from the river. The horse’s hooves struck the road with a clear sharp sound, as if each step were hammering a nail into the coffin of Margaret’s love. Charles escorted her up the steps to her door, but still they could not speak. Margaret left him standing there as she ran up the stairs to the sitting room where Lydia was waiting for her.
‘There is a letter for you, from your brother in Jamaica,’ Lydia told her. Her cheeks were flushed as she held it out. It was ridiculous that such a small thing could break Margaret’s control, but if she had not hurried straight into her own, bedroom she would have burst into tears at once.
‘Tomorrow,’ she mumbled. ‘I’m too tired now.’
When she began to cry, with the door locked and her head pressed down into the pillow, there was anger in her distress. Why should life go on for everyone else as though nothing had happened, when her own life was ruined? Why should everyone else be free to follow
their own inclinations when she and Charles were imprisoned by history? The unfairness of it all overwhelmed her and she was still resentful when she sobbed herself to sleep.
Next morning, forcing herself to be calm and cool, she apologized to Lydia for her brusqueness on the previous evening. Lydia was hesitant about making any comment until the cause of her friend’s unhappiness was revealed, and Margaret could not bring herself to say in so many words that she had parted from Charles for ever.
‘I have decided to return to Bristol, Lydia,’ she said. ‘I shall look for an appointment there as soon as possible.’
‘And Dr Scott?’ Lydia asked.
‘Will be moving to a country practice with his father.’ There was an awkward pause. ‘You told me a long time ago that I was unwise to continue such a friendship. I am taking your advice at last.’
Lydia looked at her with eyes full of sympathy, but Margaret hurried to change the subject.
‘You said there was a letter from Ralph?’
‘Yes,’ Lydia went to fetch it. ‘He has been in Jamaica for three years. He must surely be planning to return to England soon for a holiday.’
The eagerness in her voice could not be disguised. It was clear that she was in love with Ralph, and there was no reason why she should not be fortunate in her love. For a second all Margaret’s indignation returned. That she and she alone should be prevented from finding happiness by events which were none of her making seemed very hard. Then she managed to smile at her friend as she opened the letter and looked first of all at its ending.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You are right. He is coming home.’ She frowned a little to herself at the last sentence of all.
‘And I trust that I may see you as soon as I arrive back,’ he wrote. ‘I am in a considerable difficulty - all of my own making - and badly need advice.’
Margaret forgot both her own unhappiness and the pleasure which Lydia was trying vainly to conceal. Her memory darted back to an incident she had almost forgotten. She remembered Claudine shivering in the hall of Brinsley House; and Ralph, white-faced, on his knees beside his bed. But he had been only a boy when he succumbed to the temptation offered by the French girl. Now he was a man, a man of God. It was unthinkable that his predicament on this occasion could be of the same kind.
Unthinkable - yet often, during the next few weeks, as she waited to see him again, Margaret’s mind returned to the question. What could have happened in Jamaica to cause Ralph such anxiety?
Part III
Ralph and Margaret
1
It is common for a missionary who has never before left his home country to make unconsciously two contradictory assumptions: that tropical islands are hot, humid and frequently filthy; but that mission stations function with clean, neat and bustling efficiency. When Ralph arrived in Jamaica to take up his pastorate as a Baptist minister he was prepared for the island’s high temperature and steamy atmosphere and not surpised to find the streets of Kingston thick with refuse in which pigs and goats foraged for their suppers. But he had expected the mission itself to be hygienic and well-ordered.
Hope Valley was neither. He reached it after nightfall and was welcomed at once to the simple two-roomed house which for the past thirteen years had been the home of Pastor Conway and would now become his own. Early the next morning he was taken on a tour of inspection, and was not impressed by what he saw.
The village stood on both sides of a stream which fell sharply from the mountains further inland towards the sea. It was a collection of ramshackle wooden huts, each perched untidily on a pile of rocks to raise it from the ground. The walls of the huts were made of any material which had come to hand: splintered planks or sections of old packing cases for the most part, the gaps between them patched with sacking and split bamboo cane. To prevent the roofs from blowing off they had been piled with heavy objects for which no immediate use could be found. Each hut was surrounded by its own small patch of land. In it a wood fire burned, pigs and hens scratched around, and an undisciplined variety of plants flourished luxuriantly. In the walled garden of Brinsley House vegetables had been grown in cleanly-weeded straight lines. Ralph viewed the haphazard system of cultivation here with disapproval.
The sun was shining now with a heat which made him uncomfortable in his black suit, but there had been rain in the night and the mud paths which led steeply from one shack to another had become slippery streams. Steam rose from the ground like mist, carrying with it a smell which made him wonder about the villagers’ sanitary arrangements. But he had enough tact to conceal his thoughts.
‘Hope was one of the first Free Valleys,’ Pastor Conway explained. ‘When the slaves were emancipated, the planters in this area refused to allow them to stay on the plots of land which they’d previously cultivated for their own support. The men had to find new homes, and our mission was given this valley to form a new village.’
He looked proudly around, as though unconscious of any shortcomings in his surroundings. Ralph looked with him. There seemed to be a great many people within a small area. Young men sat on the ground with their backs against the trunks of trees, doing nothing; plump women moved ponderously around their plots, and more children than seemed reasonable tumbled about the area, shouting and running. In Kingston Ralph had noticed all shades of colour, but here the people were very black, their white teeth continually flashing in happy smiles. They looked as poor as could be imagined, but contented.
‘Can the community support itself from the land?’ Ralph asked.
‘Not any longer, alas! Many of the plantations nearby have been allowed to run down. Their owners live in England and take no interest, except in their revenue; they are selfish men who do not recognize obligations. Their overseers tell them that sugar is no longer an economic crop, with the cost of labour here and high duties at home, and they are not prepared to expend either thought or money in restocking the estates. So some of our older men have become unemployed, and many of the younger ones have never worked at all. A great many difficulties are caused by lack of money and enforced idleness.’ Pastor Conway hesitated. ‘You will discover very quickly, I fear, that the morals of these poor people leave much to be desired. Centuries of slavery in which they were forbidden to marry have left their mark. They seem to feel that marriage and settled family life are matters of no importance. You will find that the women become mothers very frequently, but are much slower to become wives.’
By now they had reached the chapel, constructed out of wood, but a larger building than the rest. It stood on a platform of rock, high in the settled part of the valley, like an acropolis. Ralph stood for a moment, enjoying the breeze and looking down at the huddle of shacks on either side of the stream. They came to an end along what was clearly a demarcation line, but it was difficult to see why, since the flatter ground below was an uncultivated jungle.
‘Is all the land which was given to the mission under cultivation?’ he asked.
‘The fields below, stretching from the line you can see right to the coast, were all sugar-cane fields when the grant was first made and were not included in it. The stream at that point is a boundary between two estates; Larchmont on the left and Bristow on the right. We have no claim to either, although in both cases their owners appear to have abandoned all responsibility. The higher ground is ours, but you will see the difficulties.’
Pastor Conway led Ralph to the other side of the chapel so that they could look up to the head of the valley. It seemed to Ralph that he had never in his life seen such intense greenness, unrelieved by any other colour. The hills on either side of the stream rose so steeply here that they almost formed a gorge. But although its sides were like cliffs, they were entirely covered by trees, each with so little space that half the roots dangled downwards, searching for earth. The need for light had drawn all the trees up, so that coconut palms rose above the feathery branches of casuarinas but were overshadowed by mango trees, and these in turn were made to look small by c
ottonwoods. As if each foot of earth were not sufficiently occupied, creepers and vines entwined the trunks of the trees with their huge golden-veined leaves before sending tendrils dropping from the top to root again.
‘There is food to be found there,’ said Pastor Conway. ‘In the right seasons the children can pick ackees or mangoes or coconuts or breadfruit. And these people are very generous. Whatever food there is will be shared. But you will see that this upper land is far too steep for houses, and the layer of earth above the stone is too thin for cultivation. We must be content, I fear, with what we have.’
There was one more sight which he wished to show. They scrambled up the side of the stream until they could go no higher, for the water fell sheer over rocks at the head of the valley. It came down with a clatter and a dazzle of spray and was then absorbed into a deep round hole, darkened by the trees above it.
‘The people call it the Baptist Hole,’ Pastor Conway explained. ‘They told me when I came that baptisms had always taken place here, and so I kept up the practice. But I have sometimes wondered whether it may have had a significance to them long before the mission came here. If you want to change the custom, your first weeks here might be the right time.’
Ralph thought it better to wait until he had formed his own impression, but he accepted Pastor Conway’s other recommendation - that Sister Martha, a stiff-backed grandmother, should continue as housekeeper. It did not take him long to learn that she was accustomed to lay down the law in the pastor’s name - even, if necessary, to the pastor himself. It was Sister Martha who informed Ralph when and what he would eat, what duties he should perform, and which families must be summoned for reprimand.
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