Cordelia

by Winston Graham

  ‘Hullo,’ said a voice.

  A woman was standing with a hand on his chair. She smiled at him coolly. A black dress with imitation diamonds, and her hair was dyed. He couldn’t for a moment believe that she was really speaking to him.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m all right, Mac,’ she said quickly. ‘And how are you?’

  They stared at each other. Her hard brown eyes assessed his innocence.

  ‘What do you want?’ he said, reddening.

  ‘Like to come ’ome with me and have a nice time?’

  ‘No, thanks.’ He got up, glad of the noise in the bar.

  ‘Well, buy a girl a drink.’

  Flushing up to his ears, he put a two-shilling piece on the table and threaded his way towards the door. Someone was laughing and he suspected it was at him.

  Outside, the cold air greeted him like a newly sharpened knife. He felt full of self-contempt. He couldn’t even answer a woman of her sort without stumbling, making her laugh. He turned again towards Town. No return yet. Perhaps no return at all tonight. His father might feel a little anxiety. Perhaps they’d think he had gone the way of Slaney-Smith. But that would not be fair to Cordelia. She at least had stood by him.

  He saw another public house and stopped, glancing in at the steamy window. Couldn’t go on walking all night. A deadly fatigue was coming over him, superseding the false energy. Feet were very cold; he didn’t usually come walking in these shoes. He went in.

  Quieter in here. He ordered another whisky and seemed to drink in with it a deadly despair. Did anything matter? He was done for, defeated. It was not only a material, it was a moral, defeat. The pretty dream had faded – had faded into the light of common day. Who had written that? Shades of the prison house. Well, he was back in his prison again. The songster in his cage can sing … Sometimes in the past he had assuaged his disappointments with poetry. Not writing of his disappointments the way some people did – that was too close. But putting something on paper was a help. He’d always dreamt of fame, the sudden discovery, the glowing reviews, being received among the great ones.

  Daydreams had often served him, but they wouldn’t work now. He had another whisky and took out an old envelope and a pencil. Perhaps for once he would write directly of his disappointment. Nothing else would hold his thoughts.

  The iron-bosomed cloud obscures the light;

  Halts my tired footsteps in the frosty dark.

  Bitter my thoughts and bitter his delight

  As the lone wolf’s bark.

  Forth from his glittering doorway’s empty leer

  Skulks into light his friendship and his trust,

  A fatherly affection insincere

  As the harlot’s lust.

  Before ambition and the greed for power …

  He wrote on, the thing coming in a spate unusual to him. He felt it was good. There were flaws, but the whole framework, the inspiration, was sound. His feelings, the hatred in him, was a constant spur. Ideas, satiric images came into his mind and were set down. He ran out of paper and slit the envelopes open, scribbling on the insides. He didn’t care now who watched him. He ordered another drink but left it untouched.

  At length, with perspiration cold on his forehead, he could do no more. He had written twelve verses. Three more he felt would round it off, but although he knew the general shape of them, they wouldn’t come.

  Well, it was a big thing done. It would normally have taken him weeks to squeeze out. He was chilly and it was time to go home.

  Yes, home. He could face it now – perhaps not the disappointment but at least the thought of Grove Hall. He had written the worst out of himself. Once again his poetry had come to his help.

  He got up and drank the whisky off at a draught, gathered up his precious paper, buttoned his coat.

  He didn’t know how long he had been there but it was late. As he came out he found there had been a fall of snow, and more flakes were drifting in the wind. The buses had stopped running and there was no cab about. He settled down to walk, the wind blowing icy round his limbs.

  The whisky had drained his soul of old ambition and filled it with new. The Bulletin would almost certainly publish this poem even if it would not get him for subeditor. It might make his name. A fitting revenge upon his father – the only one to which there was no reply. If one could only write with this concentration, with this feeling, more often. He had gone to the limits of vituperation yet in the best tradition of verse, like Pope, like Dryden.

  He had never drunk so much before and about halfway home he began to feel ill. He sat on a wall, deadly faint, and held his head in his hands. Then he staggered on a few hundred yards before he was sick.

  He knew the way so well that he could not deceive himself as to the distance yet to go, and when the gates of Grove Hall at last showed up they were like an oasis to a fainting traveller. He sat in the snow to recover. There was pride to consider. He must go in with his head high.

  He was not displeased when he saw the front door of the house open and Cordelia, muffled in a fur coat, standing on the steps.

  He caught a cold; that was to be expected.

  He refused to retire to bed, feeling this would help his father to justify himself on another count. On Monday he didn’t go to the works, but when Mr Ferguson had left he strode boldly into the study and helped himself to the copy of the partnership deed. Then he took it off to a solicitor – not the family solicitor – in Town.

  His worst suspicions were justified and he came home frustrate and sickly.

  For another day he postponed writing to Hugh, toying with bold and desperate schemes. He worked, too, on his poem, polishing and pruning and until only one more verse was needed to finish it off. But that one would not come.

  His appetite as usual had left him, but he went down to supper determined to face his father out. This time there was to be no climbing down. He sat there at the table staring inimically at his father from time to time and saying over to himself the verses of the poem, applying each one to the man before him, savouring its effect.

  Cordelia spent the meal in horrible discomfort, wondering every moment from Brook’s expression if there would be an outburst. The slightest thing, she could see, would be enough to set it off. She sensed now that it had been hopeless to attempt a compromise. This cleavage cut right down to the roots of their association. There was no bridge.

  It could not go on much longer: the frigid silences of the last ten days were nothing to this. She determined to make Brook keep to his room for a couple of days. Some time then she must face Mr Ferguson. At least they could talk, could make plans. She and Brook must leave as soon as possible, find another house.

  Breaking in on this decision was a curious sound beside her and she saw Brook turn his plate round with an impatient gesture and push it away. She looked at him and saw that he was staring straight in front of him and licking his lips. The maid came across to take his plate but he did not seem to notice her hand. Cordelia hesitated to say anything, to break the heavy silence. If this was the beginning of another outburst … Mr Ferguson was breathing heavily while he ate.

  ‘What’s matter, Brook?’ said Aunt Tish, in a frightened voice. ‘What’s matter, love?’

  Brook put his hand on the table and with a sudden sweep pushed a heap of crockery across the cloth, upsetting salad dressing and a glass of wine. For a second Cordelia thought, This is going too far, but then she saw that he didn’t know what he was doing. His hand had clutched the table-cloth and he was trying to get up.

  ‘Brook!’ She pushed back her chair and was beside him, but not in time to prevent him falling forward across the table in a faint.

  Curious, the almost relief. Not another and fiercer quarrel; here is something to deal with, rub his hands, send the servants for brandy, talk about something normal in a normal voice. Callous? But it pricked the swelling bubble; give anything for that.

  In a few minutes he began to come round; Mr Fergu
son stood back, plucking at his lip with an air half of concern, half of hostile detachment. Get him straight to bed; overdoing it; needed rest; and send down to the Polygon just to be on the safe side. Robert came quickly, examined his patient, told him he’d got a chill; bed for perhaps a week, then he’d be all right again. Out in the corridor he said:

  ‘What’s he been doing, sleeping out all night?’

  ‘No. He went out on Saturday and caught a chill.’ She looked up. ‘It’s not – anything serious?’

  He said: ‘We mustn’t get alarmed unduly. I’d suggest … D’you know if Nurse Charters is available? No, well, I could call in as I go home. If she’s not I think I can get someone else.’

  ‘But – does he need that? He’s been upset, and I shouldn’t want him needlessly alarmed. I’m sure I’ll be all right tonight.’

  ‘Better with a nurse. You look tired, if I may say so. I’d advise it for your sake.’

  She flushed. ‘ I’m very well, thank you.’

  He looked at her with that long perceptive look of his. ‘I’d advise it nevertheless. You have to be considered.’

  At the bottom of the stairs the old man was standing.

  He said with a faint unfriendly inflexion: ‘Well?’

  Birch repeated what he had said:

  ‘Oh? Is that necessary? The boy is always ailing something. I think this business of having nurses in at the slightest excuse is bad for him. It gives him an overweening sense of his own importance.’

  Robert said: ‘There’s more than the slightest excuse tonight.’

  ‘Why, what’s the matter?’

  ‘He has a patch developing again on both lungs.’

  They both stared hard at him.

  ‘You mean pneumonia again?’

  ‘Yes.’

  A sinking feeling in the stomach. Mr Ferguson looked as if he would like to deny it all, as if he still suspected Brook of doing this with a desire to anger him.

  ‘It’s very singular. I confess I’m surprised.’

  ‘No more surprised than I was, sir. The last time I saw him he was very well.’

  ‘No doubt. No doubt. Well, Mrs Ferguson can manage, surely. You can stop it before it develops. It’s not likely to be so serious as last time.’

  ‘All the symptoms are there, I’m afraid. We shall be able to tell better in another twelve hours. I confess I was – disappointed when I sounded him.’

  So it had to happen again, the nursing, the delirium, the crisis, the long convalescence. Horrified and weary at the thought. She

  mustn’t feel weary. It was her duty to see him through again.

  The old man did not move from the foot of the stairs.

  He said: ‘ Is there grounds for a second opinion?’

  ‘I don’t think anything would be served by it at the moment.

  But naturally–’

  ‘You know, Birch, why I always feel this way.’

  ‘Yes. Certainly. It can do no harm. I’ll send a note to Mr Plimley

  first thing in the morning.’

  He still did not move, and they had to step past him, leaving

  him frowning up towards the landing above.

  At the door Robert Birch picked up his coat and said quietly:

  ‘Brook told me last Tuesday that he was taking an appointment

  in London. Has there been a quarrel with his father?’

  ‘Yes …’

  She waited but the young man did not speak. He was buttoning

  his coat, his face uncommunicative.

  She said in rising alarm: ‘Is he very ill?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. But he seems to have such nervous

  exhaustion: I’ll be round early in the morning, about seven-thirty.

  If you want me before–’

  She caught his arm. ‘ I can very easily do without sleep for one

  night, Robert. I think I can help him. It may help if he feels he

  can talk freely about it all. Then Nurse Charters can come by day

  as she did before.’

  He hesitated. ‘Very well. I know he’ll be in the best possible

  hands.’

  But everything didn’t happen the same. From the start nothing was the same.

  Brook was as rational as his watcher and talked with her until she bade him go to sleep. This he obediently did, but his sleep was distressed. About three he woke and said in a hoarse anxious voice:

  ‘Pass me a pencil. I – think I’ve – got the last verse of that – poem.’

  She turned up the gas. ‘You mean …’ He was too tired to explain. He handed her the sheets of paper,

  while he very laboriously began to trace the words that had come

  into his mind. She read the poem and was appalled at the venom

  of each verse.

  She said: ‘When did you write this?’

  He read in a faltering whisper:

  ‘Blood on the altar of his greed, I am,

  The sacrificial lamb.

  ‘Listen–’ He looked at Cordelia. ‘If I’m – not well enough, send this to Hugh – tomorrow. Put it in his paper. Tell him. If I’m not well enough to – write and explain – this will explain.’ The pencil dropped from his hand and he lay back faint on the pillows.

  A feeling of panic seized her. She felt she urgently needed company, some company, to see her through the rest of the night. She pulled at the lever bell on the wall and hoped that its tinkling would waken one of the maids. Then she opened the door and ran over to Mr Ferguson’s room and burst in without knocking.

  Scarcely ever been in here. Smell of cloth and moth balls and eau de Cologne. He was instantly awake. Perhaps not asleep.

  ‘Brook,’ she said. ‘He looks worse. I’d like the doctor.’

  A great creaking of the bed. He was out and she saw a dim bulk struggling into a dressing-gown. In a moment he was beside her.

  ‘Let me see.’

  They went across the landing and she went in. Brook’s eyes were closed and his breathing was coming very fast. But some instinct told him that his father was there. As Mr Ferguson came quietly in he opened his eyes and half raised his head.

  ‘Get out!’ he whispered with intense hatred. ‘Get out of my room!’

  Frederick Ferguson looked about him as if seeking a chair; finding none, he backed towards the door and went out with his hand to his eyes.

  ‘Brook!’ she said. ‘ Please! Keep calm. You’ll upset yourself. Please! It isn’t worth it! For my sake, Brook!’

  He lay back on her arm and looked up vacantly into her eyes.

  ‘“The sacrificial lamb,”’ he said. ‘Strange. All day I tried to get the line. Then it came – quite easily – as if – I only had to pick it up.’ He frowned, trying to concentrate. ‘Remind me tomorrow, dear. Must look it over once more – before you send it. Get it written out … Drop a note.’

  A maid came hurriedly into the room, and Cordelia sent her fleeing for the doctor.

  But before Robert Birch could get there Brook was dead.

  Chapter Five

  Now of all times I must not give way to hatred, to hysterical resentment. To grief, yes – and true grief, though queerly mixed. Perhaps it’s the shock that makes me feel so much. I never dreamt this time. Nobody did. It’s as if he slipped quietly away, through our fingers, out of a room while no one was looking; one moment he was speaking, then we looked up and he was gone, and there is no coming back through that door.

  ‘Yes, Ian, dear, only for two or three days. Grandma will find you lots to play with, and I’ll come and see you every day. No, Nanny will stay here tonight and join you tomorrow. No, dear, your train’s too big to take. Well, just the engine, then.’ Brook was like this not long ago, lace collar, linen suit, white socks; and another woman, perhaps like me, watched him romp, never guessing.

  Brook playing croquet on the lawn that first summer of marriage. Brook in bed with this complaint and that, tiresome, irritable, ailing, yet gra
teful for her care, appealing to the latent motherliness in her. Brook playing Chopin Nocturnes on a May evening. Brook so pitifully proud of the son that was not his. The reading of the poems at the Athenaeum, nervous voice growing more secure as he went on, flushed cheeks and subdued triumph when it was over. The curious oases of mutual concord, at Southport and in Wales, amid all the worst stresses of her affair with Stephen.

  She had loved him a little, perhaps more than she realized. It was not in her nature to despise affection, and many times her heart had responded to his. Now it seemed to her that it had not done so with sufficient warmth and sincerity.

  Oh, of course, there was the other side; dishonest to herself to forget that now, his sulkiness, his occasional meannesses, all the rest. But did not most of them derive from his sense of inferiority, his frustration? Where was it all now – flushed cheeks, shaky voice, thin curly hair, introspective eyes, the sentience and the understanding …

  ‘I’m more sorry than I can say, Cordelia. I blame myself for not having realized how far the disease had developed; but it happened that the inflammatory process hadn’t reached more than a fraction of the lung in contact with the chest wall. In those circumstances it’s almost impossible to tell. And it was so unlike Brook to hide his illness that it put me right out in my estimate. Forgive me, you can’t want my excuses, but I felt it necessary to say this much to you. I – felt it necessary – to explain …’

  ‘I think he’d exhausted himself. You weren’t to know.’

  ‘Do you understand – and this isn’t a conventional expression of sympathy – if there’s anything I can do to help you, anything at all, please let me know.’

  ‘Thank you, Robert.’ But there was nothing he could do to help – much as he wished to. Only these last months had she come to realize how much he wished to.

  Perhaps there was some hysteria in her on those first lonely nights, but it seemed to her that only half the crisis was resolved and that, Brook now being beyond his father’s reach, Ian might any time come into immediate danger. Frederick Ferguson must not be allowed to touch his life. With horror she pictured the sturdy little boy (already mouse-quiet at prayers) growing slowly into another Brook: overawed and overborne in all things, thinking as his grandfather willed him to think until …