Cordelia

by Winston Graham

  ‘Have you ever seen our works?’ he said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is that something that would – interest you?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sure it would.’

  ‘We must take you over some time. Tell me. How do you find young Crossley?’

  ‘I think he is – agreeable.’

  ‘Very agreeable indeed. Personally I like him. I have one fault only to find with him – and that is that he comes from the theatrical world.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed, and waited.

  ‘There is a certain brittleness – a superficial warmth that is to be guarded against. I feel that friendship in that sphere means a little less than it does in ours. Don’t you agree?’

  ‘I’ve really had nothing to do with people in the theatre before.’

  ‘Quite so. Our relationship will continue, I trust, on a friendly basis. It is just that we come from different worlds. Ours is real, solid, perhaps a little hard-headed, down to earth. His is a little brighter but a little falser. You understand what I mean?’

  Chapter Six

  Brook was worse, and they ‘sent down to the Polygon’. Brook had quinsy, he was told, and must stay in bed for two days. With a rising sense of excitement and panic she saw Monday approaching. On Monday morning Brook was a lot better, and, the concert being a Chopin concert, he was anxious to make every effort to go.

  Mr Ferguson left for Oldham with the issue undecided, but Robert Birch arrived and was so definitely against the idea that his patient began to feel worse again.

  All day she was quite exceptionally attentive. A peculiar feeling, a sort of guilt without reason. She must cosset him. It was a defence against her own gathering excitement.

  After dinner she read to him. All day he had been both patient and grateful. They were on the last chapter of The Warden, and when she finished it Brook said he wanted to know the sequel. He had had Barchester Towers given him once as a birthday present but had never read it. It might possibly be in the lumber-room with all his school books and children’s things. She jumped up at once and, taking no notice of his hoarse protests, she fluttered her hand at him and went out.

  The lumber-room was on the next floor, a great attic with a sloping roof and small dormer windows set too high. She picked her way with raised skirts, treading delicately like a cat among the dust towards some bookshelves and a pile of ragged books on the floor. Having glanced over the first, she knelt down and began to look through the pile.

  It was here. ‘To dear Brook from his loving Mother, on his eighteenth birthday.’ Open it gingerly. Even the leaves uncut. So the boy had treated his birthday present. Had Mr Ferguson disapproved of it? She often wondered about Brook’s mother, whether she had been downtrodden by her domineering husband or whether she had somehow escaped the influence. A single remark made by Uncle Pridey once suggested that she had willingly accepted her yoke.

  By her knee was a small blue leather case and she picked it up and clicked back the catch. Two or three letters fell out, but the main content was a slim book which she opened. ‘Diary for the year 1865.’ Household accounts in a small neat hand, and here and there were pages of writing. No names, only initials, and she turned it idly, almost incuriously, until a few words went through her and she thought: This is the writing-case. He had called for it once, a month later, but on Mr Ferguson’s instructions she had diplomatically been ‘out’. Since then she had heard little or nothing of the Massingtons. Margaret was never mentioned in the house. After Dan Massington’s visit curiosity had flared up in her, but it had not been satisfied and had gradually died away in the day-to-day preoccupation of living.

  The page was January the fourth.

  If it were not wicked to do so I should ask God to punish him for his everlasting prying into religion. He claims to be deeply religious but he doesn’t understand anything about faith. He thinks it a sign of modern enlightenment to be able to argue out the Biblican stories with that evil man S.-S. who takes pleasure in speaking blasphemy in my presence. For weeks now they have been talking of Plato and metempsychosis and whether we live again after death in the body of an animal. What wickedness! To bed early and waiting for B., who as usual sits there listlessly saying nothing. What I would say if I were in his place!

  Cordelia closed the book guiltily and then, driven on, she flipped it open again.

  February 12: The third day and still no inclination to get up, but I suppose I must make the effort. Mr F. has pretended to be kind and I have pretended to appreciate it for Brook’s sake; perhaps for my own sake. For five weeks Mr F. and I have not quarrelled, never an ill word. Nearly the longest ever. He has been to my bedside and brought me grapes, and a young capon specially ordered from Sharpe’s of Smithy Door. Have thanked him adequately. But under it all is caution, tension, enmity buried an inch deep. There is not a second of naturalness between us. I wish he would die. God forgive me, but I feel he’s squeezing the blood out of my veins. Sometimes I think it is his life or mine.

  Shut the book. She felt as if she had been reading something wicked and forbidden. The first wife had at last spoken to the second, and would, if one wished it, speak again and again. More surely than through any medium.

  She could see it all, see Slaney-Smith’s jarring irreverences and how a woman with a less easy temperament than hers would find Frederick Ferguson’s manner quite unbearable. Indeed they were the sort of notes which, in an exaggerated nightmare, she might have come to write herself. She picked up the copy of Barchester Towers and ran from the room.

  When she went back into the bedroom, Brook was too occupied with his own complaint to notice any change in her face and manner. Reading soothed her as well as him this time and brought her reassurance. Margaret had evidently been a bit unstable. She was a normal girl, feeling undoubtedly the sort of feeling Margaret sometimes experienced but in so much less a degree that it could be cheerfully borne.

  Evening came and she tried not to dress with special care. But she did her hair three times in three different styles before she finally put on her evening gown, which was of a light rose-coloured velvet with Valenciennes lace on the sleeves and petunia-coloured ribbons at the throat.

  The fortunate possession of a dressing-room saved her from Brook’s eyes, and when she at last came in he was writing in bed. She sat beside him and kissed his forehead.

  ‘I am so sorry you’re not able to come.’ She bent to read what he had been writing.

  Once on a time came Sorrow

  Saying,

  ‘Stay with me and be my bride.’

  I answered him ‘good morrow’,

  Praying

  He would leave my side.

  For Sorrow’s love is grief,

  Unwanted,

  Grief before the morn;

  Joy and pleasure’s thief

  And haunted

  By a crown of thorn.

  ‘I like that,’ she said eagerly.

  ‘Do you? Yes, I think I do. It’s simple. Would you add to it?’

  ‘No, it seems complete to me.’

  ‘Three verses are more usual.’

  ‘Well, why not be unusual?’

  He bit at the pencil. ‘Perhaps you’re right. Tell Crossley I’m sorry I couldn’t come. Be sure to explain what’s the matter. Don’t let him think it’s something to do with the séance.’

  ‘Of course not. I’ll see he understands. Good-bye, dear.’

  Uncle Pridey, of course, had not dressed. Unlike his brother, he set no store by clothes, and his dowdy suit, grey with age and dust, would be conspicuous in the front rows. The bell went almost as soon as she got down, and Stephen Crossley was announced.

  He came in, she thought, trying to control his exuberance, the characteristic unstudied swing of his shoulders and head, trying to adjust himself to the manners of the people he was visiting; but his lively brown eyes lit up as he saw her, and when she apologized for Brook’s illness and Mr Ferguson’s absence he looked as if he could hardly b
elieve his ears.

  ‘Brook’s uncle is coming if he may,’ she said quickly, turning to Pridey. ‘ I have been specially asked to apologize on their behalf.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Stephen, making a little bow in Pridey’s direction. ‘Thank you for coming. Thank you both for coming.’

  In the carriage on the way to Town the gaunt old man began to talk about his book, which was to be called Habits and Heredity in Mice. She had never heard him talk about it before. She hadn’t even been sure that there really was a book. Stephen encouraged him. He kept looking at Cordelia, as if not yet able to believe his luck.

  Carriages were thick outside the Gentlemen’s Concert Hall, and the fashions sombre and impressive within. Blavatsky, fresh from American triumphs, was playing the twenty-four preludes and the nine scherzos. Stephen had had to use all his influence to get such good seats at such short notice.

  As they sat down and Uncle Pridey began to read and to disagree with the Programme Notes, Stephen said in an undertone:

  ‘I’ve had a miserable weekend!’

  ‘Oh?’ said Cordelia.

  ‘D’you realize how it is when you feel you’ve hurt someone – someone whose goodwill, whose good opinion, you know, means more to you than almost anything else?’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I suspected my call on Friday had been misunderstood. I suspected something I said had given you offence. I went away fit for tears.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, feeling happy in spite of herself. ‘No … I don’t think so.’

  ‘Well, now, you don’t know how relieved I am to hear it! On Friday night I kept thinking it over in my head; round and round it went like a cat in a cage. Was it this, was it that? Did I tell you too much of Gustave’s opinion of you?’

  ‘Please don’t think any more of it.’

  ‘I might have expected such kindness from you. But there was something?’

  ‘No … I am glad to be here tonight. Which are the critics, Mr Crossley, do you know?’

  ‘Would you do me the honour,’ he said, ‘of calling me Stephen?’

  ‘We have only met three times.’

  ‘Three times, is it? I thought it was once.’

  ‘Once?’

  ‘Yes. It’s once that I’ve met you – and that once has lasted since the first time we set eyes on each other.’

  ‘Well, that’s only a fortnight ago.’

  ‘What a head you have for figures. Could you not call me Stephen just to try your tongue on the name? Some people find it hard to say.’

  She said: ‘I shouldn’t have thought that.’

  Uncle Pridey put the programme in her lap. ‘Could write better notes than that myself,’ he said. ‘Some day I’ll do so. Such milk-and-water stuff. Enervating! Enough to put you off any music.’

  She smiled. Life was no longer quite the serious thing it had become these last months. It suddenly occurred to her that perhaps Uncle Pridey was different because he was away from Grove Hall.

  ‘Do you always come to these concerts, Uncle Pridey?’

  ‘Only missed two in fourteen years. That’s not bad for an old man. Have a sweet.’ He passed the bag along.

  ‘Do you come alone?’

  ‘Of course. You don’t need four ears to listen to music, young woman.’

  ‘We never see you here.’

  ‘I sit at the back. Can’t afford these velvet seats. And the company’s too frivolous.’

  She glanced at the people about her, sober merchants and their wives, hard-heeled bankers, wealthy Jews and Germans, bearded doctors, town councillors and clergymen. The cream of the city’s sobriety and respectability. She glanced then surreptitiously at Stephen Crossley, noticed for the first time his well-shaped head, his long capable hands.

  A burst of applause greeted the appearance of Blavatsky. The great man acknowledged his welcome and sat down. There was a pause while he adjusted his seat and while the noises of the audience died away. In it Cordelia turned to the young man.

  ‘Would you like to see the programme … Stephen?’ she asked.

  You couldn’t rely on Uncle Pridey. That was what Brook always said. Most of the time he was reasonable and well behaved; but every now and then an eccentric impulse would betray him.

  At the end of the concert his conduct was monstrous. There was not a respectable woman in England who would not have condemned him.

  On the way out he caught sight of a crony of his called Cornelius who played the oboe at the orchestral concerts, and he muttered his apologies and pushed his way across the stream of people moving towards the door. There he found himself involved with six other self-opinionated excitable old men in a discussion on the merits of Verdi and Meyerbeer. Stephen and Cordelia waited in the carriage for some minutes before he reappeared. Then it was to thrust his head in at the window of the coach and say he must go back to the club with Cornelius and could Crossley see his niece home?

  Stephen cleared his throat. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Yes, I can. And afterwards? Shall I send the carriage back for you?’

  ‘No, I’ll walk home. It’s only two miles. Always do.’

  Before they started, Stephen got out and spoke to the coachman. Then he turned to look after the shambling figure of the most blessed Uncle Pridey before climbing in again.

  In the darkness of her corner Cordelia was wondering what might be the effects of Uncle Pridey’s appalling breach of taste. Stephen sat down beside her. The lights of Peter Street flickered and glimmered as the horses broke into a trot.

  After a moment or two she turned to look out of the window at the passing scene, at the people streaming away and crowding for buses, at the old woman still selling hot potatoes on the corner, a shawl round her head and a battered umbrella at her side.

  Stephen said: ‘You’ll be taking supper with me first, of course.’

  ‘Oh, no, thank you … What a wonderful pianist. I feel full of music.’

  ‘But I’ve already booked a table at Cottam’s. The evening would be cut off in its prime without it.’

  ‘I think it’s been a lovely evening. Thank you all the same.’

  ‘It is a quiet place.’

  ‘… I’d rather not, Mr Crossley.’

  ‘Stephen,’ he said.

  ‘I’d rather not … Stephen.’

  He tapped on the trap door and spoke to his coachman. They turned another corner and jogged off in silence. Some drunken men were coming out of a public house singing and shouting.

  ‘You’re thinking we should not be alone together,’ he said. ‘Well, it’s happened and I’m grateful it’s happened. I am going away tomorrow and it may be months before I come back.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I hope you are. I hope you are.’

  She felt suddenly flat.

  ‘Cordelia,’ he said. ‘May I call you Cordelia?’

  ‘Yes – if you wish to.’

  ‘Cordelia,’ he said. ‘Cordelia, Cordelia, Cordelia … Cordelia …’

  It was strange. Every time he spoke it he seemed to increase the intimacy between them.

  ‘Cordelia,’ he said. ‘Cordelia …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Do you know how I feel about you?’

  ‘I think you like me.’

  ‘Oh, pah, it’s not that! It is nothing small and plain and level and commonplace and mediocre. Upon my soul it is not!’

  ‘I’m sorry …’

  ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘That’s what it is, as you know.’

  Her heart was thumping now. ‘No,’ she said, denying it wildly. ‘I didn’t know! How could I know?’

  ‘By the grace of Heaven, and everything I said and did and looked. There now, I shouldn’t have spoken so soon.’

  ‘How can you know yourself? It’s – not possible.’

  ‘Not possible!’ He was indignant. ‘What’s time to do with it? Can’t you die in an hour? I knew in an hour and the half of an hour. I knew when I saw you. I’d not dreamed of the like
s of you. By God, I’ve tortured myself, thinking, if I’d known this woman earlier might she not have become my wife instead of his? Would it have been possible? Tell me that before I go.’

  ‘I can’t answer you, Stephen. I don’t know. Please don’t ask me.’

  ‘Your answer gives it all away. If it had not been possible, wouldn’t you have said so on the instant of speaking?’

  ‘I can’t answer either way. It isn’t fair to ask me. You’re not being fair at all. Please don’t say any more.’

  It was much darker here in the first suburbs. They passed the warm gleam of a coke fire where a watchman sat huddled in the shelter of an upended cart.

  The brief respite gave her back some control. What had she said!

  ‘Thank you for the compliment you’ve paid me. But you’ve mistaken what I meant when I–’

  ‘Compliment! I’ve paid you no compliment. The honour is mine, for I’ve known you a while and you’ve been kind as a saint.’

  ‘No saint, Stephen.’

  ‘No, and I’m glad, come to think of it.’

  ‘I’ve got a ring on my finger, not one round my head.’

  ‘Well, I’d rather have that, though it’s bad enough. Tell me, are you happy with Brook?’

  ‘… Of course.’

  ‘And do you love him? Answer honestly.’

  ‘Why should I answer every question you choose to ask?’

  ‘How long have you been married?’

  ‘Nearly a year and a half.’

  ‘Your feelings are so obedient that they do what duty tells them, eh? Like a regiment of soldiers. I wish mine were. I can’t believe anyone is so well behaved …’

  For a while there was silence. They had been talking in quiet pent-up voices which only just reached the corners of the carriage.

  Stephen said at last: ‘Well, you’re bound. I grant you that. I grant you it all. But does it mean you must say no to a friendship between us? Good Lord, I doubt that! But then it doesn’t arise since I’m leaving Manchester tomorrow and may not return. Oh, well, what you feel can’t stand in my way, can it? And you can’t stop me from loving you, your voice, the lights and shades of your hair, the glint in your eyes, the inmost you, call it any name, that’s known as Cordelia. No, not if I were married fifty times and you a hundred. And I shall love you until there’s no more of me. There, that’s another vow for you – and I swear it’s as strong and hard-wearing as any made in church. You’re the witness to it. It’s not in ink so it won’t fade with time.’